Archive of Our Own

(16)

Eames has burned to death just once in his hundred-plus years on Earth, but it had been the only death to linger.

"Don’t be foolish," Mal says, following his gaze across the Hub to where Arthur is coming out of the archive room, brushing his hands against his thighs. Eames likes his hands; those quick, clever fingers and the way they run across the surface of whatever alien tech falls through the Rift without fear or hesitation.

"Eames, no," Mal says. "You can’t — "

It was the heat that had stayed with him, after. A crackling all along his nerves, making him feel too big for his skin, like he could rupture at any moment. Like maybe he’d enjoy it.

"Sorry, love," he says, and he means it, he really does. "Afraid I already have."

She lets out a curse in French and takes hold of his wrist, her grip tight. “I don't understand why you would do such a thing to yourself."

"Don’t think I ever had much choice," Eames says, still staring at Arthur, wondering how it is that Mal can bear to touch him.

(1)

Eames’ first death is also his shortest.

25 seconds is what the gray-skinned man tells him, fingers still against the rough wood of Eames’ kitchen table. 25 seconds before M1S-6E — Misbe, Eames almost corrects — was able to get his heart pumping again.

"We’ll need to have it removed and analyzed," the man says. Something whirs behind the lenses covering his eyes. "There is the possibility that the flaw in your cardiac muscle is present among the other E4Ms."

He’s expected to come quietly, Eames knows. Sacrifice himself for the greater good. Standard genetic coding; no backup required.

"Yeah, all right then," he says, scratching absently at his chin. "Lead the way."

He’ll miss his kitchen, he thinks. The herbs in their blue pots all around the sink. The way the breeze comes in through the window after sunset, bringing with it the scent of damp earth and wheat.

There’s something off about it now, though, he realizes as he walks towards the front door. A faint odor of smoke. Almost like —

“Eames!”

He stops and turns at Misbe’s shout, coming from somewhere outside. A loud, flashing thing whizzes just past his right ear, and Eames turns again, mouth open on a warning, but.

It’s too late. The gray man’s body is slumped on the floor, bits of brain and wiring splattered over the wall and coat hook.

“Eames, get out of the way! For Pete’s sake!”

And then Misbe is there, pushing him aside and rifling through the man’s pockets with a grim look on his face. “We don’t have long,” he says. “We need to get out — now.”

Out where? Eames wants to ask. He stumbles after Misbe onto his porch. Everything’s burning. There’s a metal object, partially crumpled, lying on its side a few yards away. FREE OUR FOOD, it says in big blocky letters.

“You’re lucky that one’s a dud,” Misbe says. “And I’m lucky I was skulking around here trying to eavesdrop when they hit us, so thanks for almost dying on me this morning.”

“Happy to oblige,” Eames manages. He still doesn’t understand what’s happening, doesn’t understand why the gray man let it happen.

“I fished his keycard out of his pants,” Misbe says, squinting to see through the smoke. “We might be able to use his ship to get off-planet before things get really bad.”

“It’s next to the barn,” Eames says, coughing. “Come on, I can find it even in this mess.”

He grabs Misbe’s hand, pulling him along, trying to get his scattered thoughts in order.

“It won’t have enough fuel for both of us to get off-system,” he says. He doesn’t need to voice what landing in a stolen ship on their parent planet could lead to.

“We’ll figure that out later, Eames,” Misbe hisses, and there are bright beams piercing the smoke now, the dull echo of clanging metal getting louder behind them.

“You go ahead, I’ll see if I can hold them off,” Eames says. He tries to smile. “I mean, I’m the one — ”

— with the defect, he’s about to say, when suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore. A brief pulse of red light illuminates his face, and then what’s left of Misbe crumples, smoke filling the space.

Go, he hears in his head, and his body surges forward in the absence of other orders.

25 seconds to get his heart working again. Maybe. Misbe has — had — been known to exaggerate, sometimes.

Still, these are the things that Eames knows for sure: it takes him one and a half minutes to get inside the ship, another three to clear Demeter’s atmosphere. Five hours to find himself surrounded by nothing but starlight and what feels like an impending madness, adrift in all that emptiness.

Eleven years (or one hundred and ninety-five thousand, depending) to reach his second death, which is also his longest.

(13)

Eames is not easily wooed, but it’s hard to say no to a man who brings you a pterodactyl.

“Heard you were looking for this,” the man says. He’s wearing a three-piece suit and his hair is mussed, brown curls tumbling over his forehead. There’s a pterosaur flying in small circles above him, attached to his wrist with a rope. “Took some time to catch her, but I managed. You’re the head of Torchwood Three, right? I’m from Torchwood One.”

“Didn’t that get destroyed last month?” Eames asks, trying to decide which of them he wants to be staring at more.

“Yeah, about that,” says the man, and his American accent solidifies into something more specific. New York, maybe. “You wouldn’t have any positions open, would you?”

“Might do,” says Eames.

“My name’s Arthur, by the way,” he says, extending his hand — the one with the rope around it — out for a handshake.

“Yeah,” Eames says. “Of course it is.”

(9)

Eames inherits Torchwood Three on a bloody New Year’s Eve in 1999. The first thing he does, after dealing with the bodies and paperwork, is build a greenhouse in one of the supply rooms.

He could just walk away, he knows. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. Except Rose and the Tardis, maybe, for what they’ve done for him. Or maybe they’re the ones who owe him.

Either way, he can wait another decade or two to settle up accounts. There isn’t much else he’s good at, these days.

(4)

He’s lying in a mud puddle outside a pub, which is par for the course by now. The umbrella tip poking him in the kidney and bright white ankle boots in front of his face are new, though.

“All right, all right,” he says, struggling up into a squat. There’s dried blood on his shirt surrounding a long, jagged tear in the cloth, but the skin underneath is pale and smooth, just like the last three times.

“Huh,” the woman says. Eames can’t see her face very well under that hat, but she seems young to be wandering around alleyways poking at strangers, given the year (which, Eames can’t help but remind himself, is about 40,000 days short of the twenty-first century and not at all what he’d programmed into the vortex manipulator before its circuitry fried).

“Can I help you?” Eames asks.

“Ariadne Perkins, on official Torchwood business,” she says, sticking out her hand like she expects Eames to take it.

“Grand,” says Eames. “What've I got to do with it?”

Ariadne draws her hand back, frowning. “Well, I suppose there’s only one way to be sure, really.”

“Sure of what?” Eames says, and finds himself blinking down the barrel of what is definitely not a standard-issue parasol stick.

“Sorry about this,” Ariadne says, not sounding sorry in the slightest.

(17)

“You’ve got mustard on your tie,” Arthur says as he hands Eames a file, looking as delectably prim as always. “And what looks like pollen all over your hands.”

Eames lets his fingers graze against Arthur’s as he takes the papers, watching Arthur’s face for any sign of reaction.

“Thank you, darling,” he says, giving the file a quick glance before tossing it on his desk. “Have you figured out what that that silver-looking pole is yet?”

Arthur pulls out a notebook from an inner pocket and licks his finger before flipping through the pages.

Eames buries his head in his hands and sighs.

“I’m still running some tests,” Arthur says, ignoring Eames, “But I’m pretty sure it’s not a weapon. Some kind of sensor, maybe — it lights up when it’s placed in water.”

“Throw it in with the other non-killing, non-sentient things,” Eames says into his desk. “Yusuf brought in some new stuff this morning that takes priority; there’s a device that looks a little too much like a grenade for my comfort.”

It’s an opening; an opportunity for Arthur to ask: “Seen a lot of those in your life, huh?” and for Eames to maybe try and tell the truth for a change, but of course Arthur doesn’t take it.

“I can analyze it tonight when the Hub’s empty,” Arthur says instead. “Less risk of taking out the whole team if it decides to explode.”

“You do realize I live in the Hub, don’t you?”

“Maybe you should move,” Arthur says, shrugging, and leaves before Eames can respond.

(2)

He’s drunk. He knows he’s drunk, and that drinking is a piss-poor way of dealing with what is very much a self-inflicted situation, but so be it.

“Careful, Captain,” he hears, and then feels two hands on his shoulders, pushing him back into his seat. Something’s wrong with the accent — twentieth-century American, he guesses, odd for a dingy cellar bar in London at the height of the Blitz.

“Yankee,” Eames says, or tries to. Everything’s gone blurry, and he’s not sure about the sounds coming out of his mouth.

“Well spotted,” the man says. He’s got nice eyes, and Eames tells him so, even though you’re not supposed to say that to other men in 1941, but it doesn’t matter because everything is covered in soot and smoke and he’s probably going to be dead within the month, regardless. Eames tells him that, too.

“Yeah, I think it’s time we got you back to your base. Unless you actually live here, which frankly wouldn’t surprise me, based on the smell.”

“Ship,” Eames says; then, remembering how he’s dressed: “Air ship.”

“Right,” says the man. “You live on a zeppelin?”

They’re outside now, Eames realizes, walking towards the wharf. His hands are cold. He tries to fit them in the man’s coat pockets and is met with a huff.

“You smell nice,” Eames says, because he hasn’t been dropped in the gutter yet so why not push his luck.

“You smell like a rat-infested distillery,” the man says, elbowing him in the chest. “And stop trying to feel me up, Christ!”

“Eames,” Eames says, enunciating carefully. “Name’s Eames.”

“Of course it is,” says the man. “Look, we’re at my hotel. You can stay in my room tonight, and we can talk in the morning when you’re feeling more sober, okay?”

There’s a quick pulse of fear — have they met before? — but also a heaviness to Eames’ limbs that prevents any sort of physical action.

“Sorry,” Eames says, because whatever it is, he probably does feel bad about it and would do it again in a heartbeat.

“Yeah,” says the man. “You will be tomorrow, if you’ve still got all that liquor in you. Remind me to put a bucket near the bed, okay?”

“Bed,” Eames agrees, nodding. He’s able to get through the hotel door more or less upright, but nearly topples over on the staircase, eyes drifting closed.

“Fuck,” he hears, then: “Oh no, I’m not carrying you up, move it!”

Somehow Eames manages to get his legs moving again, but he’s grateful the room’s only on the second floor, a tiny thing with just a narrow cot neatly made up.

“‘S not yellow,” Eames says, even as he’s dropping down on top of the faded blanket.

“Sorry, I didn’t get to decorate,” says the man, sounding oddly amused by the whole situation. “Come on, let’s get your boots off.”

Eames helps by lying more or less still throughout the boot-pulling process, but he jerks back when he feels fingers on his left wrist.

“Don’t.” His voice is clear for the first time since he got pulled out of the bar.

“Fine,” the man says, stepping back to remove his own boots. “Sleep with your watch on. Where’d you get that thing, anyway? Does it even tell time?”

“Diff’rent kind of watch,” Eames says, tongue gone fuzzy again, and really, it would only be fair if he woke up and found the thing missing. Still, it reassures him that the other man doesn’t seem to know what it is. There’s something not-quite-right about him, but whatever he is, at least he’s not a Time Agent from the fifty-first century out for revenge.

That’s good enough for Eames to close his eyes and sink into the mattress, thin as it is. He feels the man’s fingertips brush against his forehead, soft and cool. “Go to sleep, Mr. Eames,” he hears before it all goes dark. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Except Eames wakes before dawn with a jolt and at least three types of nausea roiling inside him, and slips off the bed and past the man curled up on the floor beside it, a man who looks awfully young to have come all this way just to die in an air raid and fuck, Eames hates it, Eames should just leave and go off somewhere else, somewhere green and bright and not at all (exactly) like the place he’s spent so much effort leaving behind.

He makes it as far as the next street over before he’s violently ill into someone’s already bedraggled rosebush. And he feels awful about that too, patting the plant in apology before stumbling back to his (stolen) ship.

19 hours later, he sees a blonde woman in denim trousers dangling up in the air and decides to go play the hero for once, rather than villain or victim.

(3...)

Her name is Rose, she says, and it (almost) feels like fate.

Close enough, at any rate, that when Eames wakes up in the year 200,100 with her and the Tardis nowhere in sight, he doesn’t think about what it all means, just gropes for the strap around his still-tingling wrist.

He knows where (when) they stop to refuel: Cardiff, in the year 2006. All he needs to do is meet them again, and they’ll fix it, she’ll fix it, this thing that’s broken and breaking inside him, like a root exposed to frost.

(15)

“You should get some sleep,” Arthur says, leaning against the doorway of Eames’ office. It’s late, and Arthur’s lost the suit jacket at some point, down to just his waistcoat and Oxford.

“Or,” says Eames, “I can continue to sit here and stare at nothing until the sun’s up.”

“In that case, you should probably turn your head a little to the left,” says Arthur, and there’s a quirk to his mouth that’s almost a smile.

“I can try to sleep, if that’s what you want,” Eames says, still staring at him, too tired to keep the words from spilling out. “Or we could...talk.”

Arthur pulls himself away from the door in one smooth motion.

“What’d you want to talk about?”

Eames shrugs. He hasn’t slept for 56 hours by this point; everything is hazy around the edges, soft and sharp at the same time.

Arthur sighs and walks over, coming around Eames’ desk and pulling on the chair until Eames is facing him again.

“I read your file,” Arthur says. “Do you need me to shoot you so you can sleep?”

Eames’ brain stutters and re-starts. There are several questions he should be asking right now — what file? Ariadne’s? She said she’d destroyed it — did someone make a copy? — what did it say? — but instead he goes with: “I usually leave that until I hit the 80-hour mark.”

Arthur nods, then folds his legs — long and lean and gorgeous in slim-cut black wool — underneath him so he can sit at Eames’ feet.

“Er — ”

“You wanted to talk,” says Arthur, resting one hand on Eames’ knee. “So let’s talk.”

“I — I don’t think we’ve settled on a topic yet.”

“Tell me about the Doctor,” Arthur says, and Eames thinks, No, but Arthur’s looking up at him, a brief flash in his eyes — need, maybe; or maybe Eames is imagining things, maybe he’s projecting — but.

“I haven’t seen him for a while,” is what Eames says. “Might not recognize him if I did; his kind come back different sometimes, I’ve heard.”

“His kind,” Arthur says, frowning. “He’s not like you. And you — you’re not like anyone, are you?”

Eames can’t stop the laugh from bubbling out, too loud and abrupt. “No,” he says. “Not yet, at any rate.”

Arthur looks up at him, then pulls one of Eames’ hands down to hold in his own. “I want you to get some sleep, Eames.”

Eames thinks this might be only the fifth time they’ve ever touched, but his brain is too full of fog to be sure. Arthur’s skin is warm and solid and there’s a soft glow to him now, maybe, or no, Eames is just seeing things, Eames needs to close his eyes because Arthur wants him to sleep.

“All right then,” Eames says, and leans back in his chair.

He wakes up the next morning to an empty office and a crick in his neck, and thinks: Oh.

(5)

He’s never been in America before. Given the oppressive weight of the air around them, the wet thick heat like nothing he’s ever felt, Eames thinks he’ll be quite happy never to repeat the experience.

“I thought you’d be glad to get out of Cardiff, the way you moan about the food,” Ariadne says, struggling to keep up with Eames while maneuvering around various branches and rocks. She’s holding the Thing, and Eames is maybe walking a bit faster than necessary to get away from its incessant beeping.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t realize getting out of Cardiff meant getting tossed around in a glorified tin can on top of a watery abyss for nearly a week just to investigate a lightning storm,” Eames says.

“A very odd, very powerful lightning storm,” says Ariadne, stepping over a log. “And I didn’t know you were scared of the ocean. You’ve never mentioned it.”

“I don’t mention a lot of things,” Eames says. “I’m a man of silence and intrigue.”

Ariadne lets out an unlady-like snort. “Uh-huh. Let’s see— you were left for dead on some kind of space outpost by a woman and her time-traveling alien friend — ”

“How — ”

“No interrupting! And, uh, you tried to use the thing on your wrist to meet them in Cardiff at some point in the year two-zero-zero-six, except it didn’t work right and dropped you off in one-eight-nine-five before breaking completely. Oh! and somehow in that process you lost the ability to die. Or stay dead, at any rate.”

She glances at Eames’ stupefied face. “You talked quite a lot in those early days, especially after a few bottles of gin.”

Eames huffs out a breath and resists the urge to trip her in the mud. “You've left out the part where you shot me with your umbrella and then forced me to join your merry gang of miscreants.”

“Hey, I had to verify that the rumors were true,” Ariadne says, raising her voice to be heard over the beeps. “That’s just good science! Besides, haven’t I kept my end of the bargain? No one’s tossed you in a cage and sliced you open. Yet.”

“Very kind of you to negotiate on my behalf,” Eames says. “And so selfless, to save me from torture so I could serve as cannon-fodder for whenever anything nasty drops out of the Rift. Or for any time you need someone to escort you to the middle of nowhere to investigate who-knows-what.”

“We’re only about fifteen miles away from the Capitol, you noodle,” Ariadne says. “That’s hardly the middle of nowhere. It was really quite nice for UNIT to invite us to take a look.”

Eames grunts but otherwise doesn’t respond. He’s actually starting to enjoy himself now that the sun’s coming up, nothing but birdsong in the air around them.

Birdsong and beeping from the infernal device that Ariadne refuses to let anyone else touch; a device that the UNIT team was so desperate for that they “invited” Torchwood to join their investigation. He wonders how upset they’ll be when they wake up and realize they’ve been left behind at the camp.

“This way,” Ariadne says, veering off the path into some bushes. “The signal’s getting stronger.”

“You really shouldn’t trust it,” Eames says. “You shouldn’t trust anything that comes from the Rift. It’s probably leading us straight into a crocodile pit.”

“First off, you need to brush up on your geography,” says Ariadne. “And second, for someone who’s not exactly human, you’re surprisingly suspicious of alien tech.”

“I’m not — ” Eames starts, then swears under his breath as he ducks beneath a branch. “I’m not suspicious because it’s alien. I’m suspicious because it came through the Rift. That thing warps whatever it touches.”

“Like Cardiff, you mean.”

“Exactly like Cardiff, thank you. I can’t be the only one who finds it strange how no one else in that damn city seems to care about the giant rip in the time-space continuum up in the sky, or all of the things that come tumbling out of it.”

“Well, the Thing seems to be working all right so far,” Ariadne says, giving its front metal plating a fond pat. “Can’t imagine we’d have found this place otherwise.”

Eames stares up at the barn in front of them. It takes him a second to realize that it’s actually there, wood rotted and slats missing but very much still a barn, in the middle of a swamp.

“Huh.”

“And look,” Ariadne says, running over to place her hand on the siding. “Scorch marks from the lightning that everyone saw!”

There’s a rustling noise, somewhere inside the barn, and Eames moves to get in front of Ariadne. “Someone’s in there,” he whispers.

“Obviously,” Ariadne says, pushing him out of the way and peering around the corner to where there’s a gap in the wood. “Hello!” she calls out. “We come in peace.”

“Blatantly untrue,” Eames says, shoving her back behind him again. He’s drawing the gun from his waistband when he hears a creak and suddenly there’s a girl standing in front of them, barefoot and holding a lump of cloth.

“I’m real s-sorry,” she says. Her long brown hair is tangled around her shoulders, and the dress she’s wearing is streaked with mud and something that Eames just knows is blood. “I didn’t mean to trespass, I just wanted to get out of the storm and then no one seemed to mind so I — so I stayed. Please don’t call my da, he doesn’t know — please — ”

Ariadne recovers first. “It’s all right, miss, you’re not in any trouble,” she says, stepping closer. “Why don’t we go inside and sit down? We just wanted to ask you about — about that storm you just mentioned. We’re, uh, from the National Weather Service and we heard there was an awful lot of lightning around here about ten days ago.”

“My name’s Eames,” Eames offers as Ariadne herds them inside. “That’s Ariadne.”

“Sarah,” says the girl. “And, uh, this is Arthur.”

She dips down and Eames sees a tiny pink face surrounded by cloth, brown eyes staring up at him. Ariadne grips Eames’ arm so tight he knows there’ll be a bruise there tomorrow. If he doesn’t die in the meantime, at any rate.

“Oh, how lovely!” Ariadne says. “When was he born?”

“Same night as the storm,” Sarah says, smiling down at the baby. “I was real worried before then; hadn’t felt him kick in a bit. I thought something was wrong. And then it started raining so I ran in here, and then all the lightning — well, it seems kind of funny now, but back then I thought it was the Lord punishing me for what happened with Thomas...” She trails off, biting her lip. “Y-you won’t make me go back home, will you? He came out a little early, but he’s perfect. And, and, we got food here, there used to be a vegetable plot out back and some of it’s still there...”

The Thing lets out one long, high-pitched whine before resuming its beeps.

“No,” says Ariadne, voice soft and sad. “No, we won’t make you go home.”

Then she stumbles forward, eyes slipping shut. Eames catches her before she hits the hard-packed ground, easing her down.

“Just a little nerve pinch,” he tells Sarah, getting back up. “She’ll have a headache when she wakes up, but otherwise she’ll be fine.”

“Why — why did you hurt your friend?” Sarah asks, backing away. “Who are you?”

“Stop,” Eames says, grabbing her arm. “And listen very carefully. I’m going to give you some money. You need to walk west about 100 yards, then follow the path into town. Stay far away from any camps you pass by. Buy yourself a nice dress and a ring and a train ticket, and head north. Keep moving. They can’t find you if you keep moving.”

“I don’t understand,” Sarah says.

Eames sighs. He doesn’t want to know, but maybe he should. Insurance, for when this all inevitably goes bad.

“Sarah,” he says, “what else happened the night your son was born?”

“Why do you — ”

“Please,” he says. “It’s important.”

Something shifts in Sarah’s eyes. “You’re not going to hurt him.”

“No,” Eames says.

“Your friend would have.”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“You really need to tell me, Sarah.”

She licks her lips, pulls the baby closer towards her chest. It hasn’t escaped Eames’ notice how unnaturally quiet he is.

“L-like I said, it was raining, and I was real scared about the baby, because he’d been so still. I ran into the barn right when the lightning hit.”

“And then?”

“It was — bright. So bright. I thought everything was on fire, but I couldn’t feel anything, I couldn’t even see, it was just — light, everywhere — and — and — ”

She looks down at the ground. “Then it started to hurt, real bad. Felt like there was a poker inside me, trying to split me open from top to bottom. I didn’t — no one said it would hurt that bad, I couldn’t move the next two days, ended up licking rainwater off the beams, but...but it was okay, because he was okay.”

Eames doesn’t know what to say, so he just says: “I’m sorry.”

Sarah shrugs. “I knew what I was getting into when I ran off. I just — I just wasn’t expecting it to hurt that much. But he’s a real good baby; hasn’t cried once and sleeps through the night like clockwork.”

“Can I hold him?” Eames asks. “I’ll give him back, I promise.”

Sarah looks at him for a long moment. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

She shifts the bundle of cloth into Eames’ arms. The baby looks small and pink and just like a baby. Eames stares into his eyes. The baby stares back. Eames places a finger against the baby’s mouth, and he frowns against it but doesn’t bite.

Eames sighs. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, but he’s not about to give Torchwood a newborn.

“He’s fine,” Eames says. “Just keep an eye on him.”

Sarah moves to take the bundle back. “I was planning on doing that already,” she says. “But thanks all the same.”

“Here,” Eames says, and hands her his coin-purse. “This should be enough to hold you for a while.” He slips off his coat and hangs it on her shoulders, then bends down to unlace Ariadne’s shoes. “Keep yourself out of sight until you can get cleaned up. And these might be a bit big for you, but they’re better than nothing.”

Sarah takes the shoes from him with one hand, standing straight and solemn. “Won’t you be in trouble when your friend wakes up?”

“Nah,” Eames says, giving her a grin. “Don’t you worry about me.”

He waits half an hour after they leave, then gets out his revolver. The first four bullets go into the Thing, with a fifth aimed at a nearby wall for authenticity.

The sixth he aims straight at his chest.

(6)

“I can’t believe she took my boots!”

“At least she didn’t shoot you,” Eames says. He feels bad about lying to Ariadne, but not enough to tell her the truth.

“Yeah, well, maybe you deserved it,” Ariadne says. “I brought you with me as protection, and you get beaten by a sixteen year-old girl!”

They’re making their way — slowly, in deference to Ariadne’s feet — back to the camp.

“She was probably an alien, too,” Eames says. “Or possessed by one.”

“Ugh,” says Ariadne. “That makes it even worse.”

“You know, I thought you’d be more upset about losing the Thing than your shoes,” Eames says.

Ariadne frowns at her feet, stockings crusted with mud and torn from the rocks. Eames had offered a piggyback ride and gotten a smack in response a mile back.

“Maybe you were right,” she mumbles.

“I — what? When?”

Ariadne lets out a long breath. “I thought we’d find some sort of tentacle thing in that barn, not a terrified girl and her baby. I don’t know, I just — ”

Eames bites back a laugh. “You’re actually relieved they got away, aren’t you?” God. He can’t believe Torchwood lets them work together.

“Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t have to make that choice,” Ariadne says, and Eames wonders if she suspects what really happened. “Hopefully it won’t end in disaster.”

Most things eventually do, Eames wants to tell her, but she’s still young. She’ll figure it out in her own time, if she lives that long.

(7)

(12)

“Eames, is everything okay? You’ve been...off,” Mal says.

Eames has died twice in the past week, and felt more tired when he woke up than when he'd gone down. Rose is out there somewhere now, a Rose more or less like the one that he knew, and he could go find her, he could —

“You don’t want to be buried, do you?” he asks, leaning back in his office chair and flipping a pen between his fingers.

“Pardon?”

“When you die. You’re not set on burial, are you? Because I read — there’s this thing they’re doing in Sweden now, with compost —” probably not the right thing to mention, with Mal and her love of Chanel — “well, anyway, they grow a tree and that sounds much lovelier than just rotting in the ground, doesn’t it?”

“I haven’t thought about it much,” says Mal, coming to lean against his desk.

“Really? You seem like the sort to have your last will and testament all set out.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You know. You’re organized, efficient...” brilliant, Eames wants to say. Brilliant and beautiful and it doesn’t matter, one way or the other I’ll still have to watch them put you in the ground, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t...

“You need to get some rest, Eames,” Mal says.

“I’ll be alright, love,” he says, and almost manages a smile when the Rift alarm blares and Fischer comes running in to tell them there’s a dinosaur flying over Cardiff and Yusuf yells that pterodactyls aren’t dinosaurs, they’re pterosaurs, and Mal just wants to know if they’re meant to shoot it or bring it back alive, and he loves them, he loves all of them but not too much, not so much it’ll kill him when they’re gone.

(24)

The Doctor comes back to refuel from the Rift in April of 2010. Eames doesn’t lock down the Hub this time, watches as Yusuf and Fischer run out to see who’s making their alarms blare like nothing they’ve ever heard, Mal gliding behind them.

“You’re not going up there?” Arthur asks. He leans a hip against Eames’ desk and blows across the top of his coffee cup. Eames doesn’t even try not to stare at his mouth.

“No,” Eames says. “Didn’t really turn out too well for me the last time I tried to join up. And it’s not like I can leave Fischer in charge.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “He’d probably get himself blown up within the first month. By Mal, for being overlooked as the logical successor.”

If he’s going to take any of you, it’ll be Mal, Eames thinks, but doesn’t say. It isn’t true, anyway. If he was going to take someone, it would be Arthur.

“You’re not curious to hear what he knows?” Eames asks, because. Sometimes he can’t help but press at the wound.

Arthur shrugs and takes a long sip of his coffee. “Don’t really want to run the risk of getting stuck with him on some other planet,” he says. “Besides, we’ll probably run into each other at some point, right?”

“Maybe,” says Eames. “Though — he’s not really the sort to show up when you need him. Not in my experience, at least.”

“I feel like there’s a story here,” says Arthur, pausing with his cup near his mouth, “and that I’m probably going to want to hurt a certain Time Lord very badly once I hear it.”

Eames can’t help but grin. “Sweetheart,” he says, reeling Arthur in for a hug and ignoring the hands trying to push him back. “I'll tell you all my stories one day, I promise.” Or most of them, anyway.

“Good,” says Arthur into his shoulder. “I’d hate to get bored,” and Eames’ stomach does an odd little flip.

“Why do you smell like lavender?” Arthur asks, drawing back with narrowed eyes. “Did you go poke that thing after I told you not to?”

“Er,” says Eames, mind springing back to more pressing matters. “No?”

(8)

(Go.)

He could. Maybe he can prevent his past self from ever seeing Rose. Or maybe he can take his past self’s place, do it over again, do it right —

(Stay.)

There are risks, of course. Eames doesn’t know what will happen if he runs into his other self. On Demeter they were all supposed to stay in their zones, follow the protocols to prevent a “crossing.” Misbe had once spotted another M1S while exploring out-of-bounds and it hadn’t seemed to have an impact, but he’d always been an odd one. And that was different, obviously.

Maybe.

(Go.)

Eames hasn’t slept in three nights. Neither has the rest of his unit, but it’s more than the German bombers keeping him up. He keeps a coin in his hand, flips it in between his fingers and slams it on the table when the urge to toss it gets too great.

All he has to do it get up and catch a ride into London with the Americans in the morning. Then it’s just a matter of spotting Rose and the zeppelin.

(Stay.)

He stays behind at the barracks, of course, though he does sit outside and stare at the sky until the air raid signal goes off.

(22)

The one time Eames managed to get drunk enough to picture it (because, despite what Mal thinks, he doesn't enjoy inflicting pain on himself), he saw them in the sunshine, in a meadow in springtime, a warm breeze over their skin and soft grass underneath. It was a slow, tempered thing, because even in his dreams Eames was too terrified to push too hard.

Just his hands gliding over Arthur, Arthur's eyes fluttering shut and his mouth opening on a soft moan as Eames spread open his thighs; their chests brushing against each other as Eames moved; Arthur saying, “Eames.”

And that was enough, really. That was all it took to have Eames coming into his fist, grip almost bruising tight to make up for all the softness.

"How many times have you gotten off thinking about me in here?" asks Arthur, looking down at Eames' sad little cot in the Hub's sub-basement. He’s shirtless and holding himself stiffly, like he wants to be unconcerned about that fact but can't quite get there.

Eames decides to pull off his shirt in solidarity. "You don’t want to know the answer to that one, lovely," he says, because it's easier than saying, I wanted you too much to let myself think about having you.

"Fuck," says Arthur, turning around and frowning at Eames' chest. Eames looks down too, wondering if maybe he missed a spot while clearing away the spatter from that afternoon’s misadventure.

“What?” he asks. This is still new enough to be terrifying, especially after the adrenaline-fueled haze of their first time.

"Just — you," says Arthur, gesturing vaguely at Eames with his left hand, which he then runs through his hair with a huff. "You look like you wrestle bulls in your spare time, it's ridiculous."

"...sorry?" says Eames, fingers pausing at the buckle in his belt.

"No," says Arthur, "I mean — it's ridiculous how much I want you."

"Oh," says Eames, and he can't help the smile, doesn't quite know where to put it.

"Yeah," says Arthur, shrugging. His cheeks are flushed pink and Eames wants to kiss him so he won't have to see, because it's too much, he can't —

"Arthur," he says, "Please get on the bed and stop talking while I get my trousers off, or this is going to be over before it starts."

Arthur looks up at him, eyes flashing. "Fuck that," he says, and pulls Eames towards him, hands gripping Eames' sides. He swallows Eames' moan with his mouth and makes quick work of the belt and trousers, pushing them down impatiently and biting at Eames' chin.

"You have no fucking idea," Arthur rasps out, "The shit I've had to deal with because of your fucking mouth."

"My mouth?" Eames manages, hands skimming over Arthur's back before finally darting down to his ass, spreading him open under the wool fabric of his slacks and rubbing a finger over his hole, expecting any second to be pushed back — but Arthur snarls at him, pulling him in even tighter, latching onto Eames' neck and biting down.

"Your mouth, your chest, your fucking thighs," Arthur says, breath misting over the mark he's left. "You look like a paisley-wrapped ham half the time and I still — ”

Eames doesn't let him finish, covering his mouth in a bruising kiss and pushing him down to the bed, slotting his body over Arthur's and kicking away the clothes still pooled around his ankles before sliding Arthur’s trousers off.

"Sweetheart," he says when he finally needs to let go to breathe, "You're making it very difficult for me to go slow."

"Fuck slow," says Arthur, and suddenly his fist is around Eames' dick, warm and dry and perfect. "You have any lube in here or are we doing this with spit and perseverance?"

Eames reaches blindly under the cot, trying to hold the rest of himself perfectly still.

"Did you want — ?" he asks, not sure how to put it, while Arthur takes the bottle with his other hand and opens the cap with a flick of his wrist.

"I want you to fuck me, Mr. Eames," he says, and Eames' dick pulses in Arthur's grip.

He stops trying to talk, grabs the bottle from Arthur and slicks up his fingers, pressing down to get at Arthur's mouth again.

Arthur's fist is moving lazily around both of them now, palm slick with lube, and Eames feels like he's burning from the inside out. This was as far as they’d gotten the other night; just rutting against each other until Arthur had stilled and gasped and spilled across Eames’ stomach and Eames almost thought he’d gotten shot again until he realized no, that was just Arthur, and he’d come so hard it’d felt like dying, only not at all.

He’s making noises into Eames’ mouth now, hips bumping up with every push of Eames’ fingertips, and Eames grabs Arthur's thighs to hold him still so he can push himself in, so this, at least can be slow.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he breathes out, and Arthur stills underneath him, bottom lip caught in his teeth.

“Eames,” he says. “I need — you — ” and he’s gripping Eames so tight there’ll be bruises, cock pulsing between them, and Eames needs to close his eyes for a second, for that final push in until he’s flush against Arthur’s ass.

Arthur makes a soft, wounded sound as Eames finally settles, and Eames lifts one hand to tuck around his ear.

“Hello, darling,” he says. “Doing okay?”

Arthur takes a deep, shuddering breath and smacks Eames’ shoulder. “Move,” he grinds out, and Eames does, sliding back just an inch before pushing in, trying to bite back the noises threatening to spill out so he can focus on Arthur’s, Arthur whose skin is glowing, brief flares of light as Eames brushes up against his prostate.

“Eames,” Arthur says, “Eames, please — ” and Eames doesn’t know what he wants but tries to give it to him, sliding his hand down and rubbing his nail against one nipple on the way.

“Fuck,” Arthur pants, hips twitching up and almost bucking Eames off, so Eames lifts him up with his other hand behind Arthur’s back until he can get his mouth on him, biting at the soft, rosy peaks until Arthur is panting into Eames’ hair, knuckles white against Eames’ shoulders.

“Come on darling,” Eames says, trying to ignore the tightness around his dick, “just let go, I have you, Arthur — ”

And Arthur does, spilling into his hand and body seizing around Eames as he manages another two thrusts before collapsing, spent.

“Ugh,” says Arthur after a few minutes of jagged breathing. “You’re all — sticky.”

“I think you’ll find that’s mostly you,” Eames says, shifting over to the side and slipping out, trying not to laugh at the look on Arthur’s face. “All right, now that’s mostly me,” he says, “but it’s nothing a shower won’t fix.”

“Too tired to move,” says Arthur, but he manages to turn himself over onto his belly before spreading his arms wide with a sigh. “Guess you’ll just have to clean me up.”

“Demanding, aren’t we,” says Eames, but he’s already kissing down Arthur’s back, dick twitching in renewed interest. “I’m afraid there might be consequences to such things.”

“Is that some weird future slang for orgasms?” asks Arthur, muffled somewhat by a pillow. “Because those are the only consequences I’m really interested in right now.”

“Ask and ye shall receive,” says Eames, grinning.

“Yeah, because it’s always that simple with you,” says Arthur, and there’s a sad note to his voice that Eames doesn’t understand but will do his best to get rid of, right here and now.

(11)

Mal frowns at him and he knows she won’t let it go, now that she’s figured out he set off the Hub alarms on purpose to lock them all in.

He’s never told her (or any of them) about Rose or the Doctor, doesn’t know how to explain that there’s another him up there on the surface, or that he’s the reason all their equipment has to be powered down for the day.

He’s thought about it. He can trust Mal, maybe. She hasn’t told anyone about his inability to die (“You mean to stay dead,” he always corrects, because it’s an important distinction) and he thinks she’d understand. Thinks maybe she feels it too, the unease that comes with existing in a world that’s never quite what it should be.

But he stays quiet, hides away in his greenhouse while the others complain and eventually settle down to play a fractious game of poker.

The cherry tomato in his hand, that’s real. The man above ground, laughing as he chases after Rose and the Doctor? That’s something else; something that isn’t his to touch.

(14)

“Eames,” Mal says, “Why is there a lovely young man pacing through our corridors?”

“He is lovely, isn’t he? Looks quite nice in that suit.”

“Eames.”

“I hired him to go through our piles, sort through things.”

“Why?”

“Well, they certainly need sorting. Also he brought us Myfanwy, and he brews excellent coffee.”

“That reptile is a menace,” says Mal, eyes narrowing. “And you don’t like coffee.”

“Just because I don’t drink the swill you and Yusuf survive on, doesn’t mean I don’t like coffee when it’s properly brewed,” says Eames. “By which I mean when there’s hot cocoa powder mixed in.”

Mal raises an eyebrow. “He’s making you mochas? Is he trying to court you or bribe you?”

Eames shrugs. “I think he’s just grateful I gave him a job after the mess that went down at Canary Wharf.”

“Just don’t do anything stupid, Eames,” Mal says, putting her hand on his shoulder. “You know it can’t end well.”

Eames makes a vague humming noise in reply, but doesn’t disagree.

(18.1)

“I don’t trust it,” Fischer says. “Nothing that pink can be trustworthy.”

“I fail to see how putting it into a secure containment pod counts as trusting it,” Yusuf says.

“I agree with Fischer,” Mal says. “Better safe than sorry. We should just shoot it.”

“He,” Eames says. “That’s a male, you can tell by the ridge on his forehead.”

“You know what he is?” Arthur asks. He’s been quiet until now, hanging back while Fischer and Mal stuffed the alien into the Hub’s containment pod and Yusuf tried and failed to get a blood sample.

“He’s a Lyrgonian,” Eames says, frowning. He has a bad feeling about this, but at the same time can’t give Mal the order to shoot when the guy hasn’t actually done anything yet. “Must’ve fallen through the Rift on his way somewhere else.”

“I don’t know, Eames, it — he — didn’t put up much of a fight once we cornered him,” says Mal. “It almost seems as if he wanted to be brought here.”

“Lyrgonian,” Yusuf says, fingers moving over the surface of his touchpad. “That’s not in our database.”

“They’re distant relatives of the Thresh; I don’t think there’s ever been one on Earth,” Eames says, walking to stand next to the pod. “They’re energy thieves. Hoarders. As far as anyone knows, they just like stockpiling it on their planet. But the only thing giving off enough juice around here is the sun, and that’s a bit big to fit in a carry-on.”

One of the Lyrgonian’s eyes focuses briefly on Arthur before snapping back to Eames, wide pink mouth opening with a hiss.

“Shoot him,” Eames tells Mal, because she’s the only one whose gun can pierce the pod’s walls. “Now.”

Another hiss, followed by something resembling a smile.

“Wait, what?” Arthur asks, pushing past Mal to stand in front of the pod. “What’s he saying? Can you understand him? I can grab the translator, we can — ”

“You need to move out of the way, Arthur,” Mal says, and Eames starts drawing his own gun just as the Lyrgonian rasps out, “Arthur,” and it all goes to hell.

(18.5)

Eames wakes up with a headache, which means he wasn’t dead; just knocked out. There are blue arcs of light fizzling out on the floor around him, and that means he’s been out for less than five minutes and also that Arthur figured out the taser-grenade and has been keeping it tucked away in his Paul Simon suit just in case.

Eames struggles upwards, his hands cuffed behind him. Mal, Yusuf, and Fischer are slumped over in a pile on his left.

And Arthur is standing right outside the containment pod, negotiating with the Lyrgonian via the translator he must’ve fetched while Eames was unconscious.

“Arthur!” he yells, and this is the closest thing to pure panic he’s felt in decades. “Arthur, get away from that thing, you don’t know — ”

Arthur’s right hand pauses over the pod’s control panel. His left is holding Mal's gun. He doesn’t turn to look at Eames, but Eames sees it, that pause, and for a second he thinks it’ll be okay.

“Arthur,” he says again, and he’s almost reached him, almost there —

Arthur punches the code in and the pod unlocks. His hand is still raised when the Lyrgonian slithers out, grabbing the gun from him.

The bang is nearly deafening, echoing through the Hub.

“Fuck,” Eames mutters, looking down at the blood spreading across his abdomen.

At least the Lyrgonian missed his heart — Eames has enough experience with gut wounds to know he’s got at least 30 seconds, more than enough time to bring his cuffed hands around the thing’s neck and snap its spine before collapsing and bleeding out on the floor.

(19.1)

“Okay,” says Fischer. “Is everyone else confused, or am I the only one who’s apparently been getting Retcon pills ground into their tea every morning?"

“Don’t be so dramatic,” says Mal. “It would be much easier to just kill you if we wanted you quiet.”

“You seem to be taking this rather calmly,” says Yusuf, looking up from where’s he attached a bioscanner to Eames’ chest to confirm that Eames is in fact human (more or less) and not some sort of resuscitating alien doppelganger.

Eames doesn’t hear Mal’s reply, woozy from waking up and eyes fixed on the slim body curled up in the containment pod, blood-stained and still.

“Why — ” he tries, mouth too dry to be intelligible, then gives it another go: “Why is Arthur in there? Is he — is he hurt?”

Mal places her hand on Eames’ shoulder. “He’s fine, physically. That’s your blood he’s covered in.”

Oh.

Eames shakes off Yusuf’s contraption and manages to walk over to the pod. “Right,” he says. “Arthur and I need to have a little chat. The rest of you, I’ll see in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” says Fischer, “Are we just going to ignore the fact that one of our teammates almost got all of us killed — and in fact briefly succeeded with you — which, again, what — ”

“Explains a lot, really,” says Yusuf. He’s frowning down at the scanner’s readouts. Eames already knows what they say: 99.99% human DNA. Close enough that it could just be a calibration error.

Fischer slumps down to the ground and groans.

“Who put Arthur in there?” Eames asks. Arthur, who still hasn’t moved. Eames very much needs to be able to get his hands on him and feel for a pulse, but he has a feeling that they’ve changed the door code.

“I did,” says Mal.

“Open the door, please,” Eames says.

“Or we could not do that,” says Fischer, still on the floor. “Not until he tells us who he is and why he’s making deals with homicidal lizard things.”

“He’s not human, is he,” says Mal. It’s not a question.

“Arthur is Arthur,” says Eames, “and our teammate, and that’s all that matters.”

“I feel like what just transpired should also matter, if only a little,” says Yusuf, holding up one hand.

Eames shrugs. “Torchwood Three contract gives everyone a pass the first time they almost kill everyone else,” he says. “I put that clause in myself; otherwise I’d spend all my time recruiting new members.”

“If you want to let him out, you figure out how,” says Mal, lifting her chin and glaring at Eames. “I’m going home to Dom and the kids.”

Eames doesn’t watch her walk away; can’t move his eyes away from Arthur.

“You too,” he tells Yusuf and Fischer. “Out."

“C’mon,” he hears Yusuf say. “Let’s go get a pint and leave them be.”

“Wait, did Mal just imply she has children? Seriously, what — ”

Their voices trail off until the Hub is almost silent, humming faintly around Eames.

“Arthur,” he says, bending down to get closer to where Arthur’s made himself into a ball on the pod’s floor. “Arthur, darling, you wouldn’t happen to remember the code Mal used to lock you in there, do you?”

Arthur uncurls a little. His hands are stained a dark red; streaks of it all over his face and suit. “3-2-6-9-0-1-2,” he whispers.

“Thank you,” Eames says, and gets up to type it in.

The door opens with a soft whoosh, but Arthur doesn’t move. Eames bends down again.

“Well, if you’re not coming out, then I’m coming in. Budge over."

He squeezes himself in beside Arthur, his left arm pushed up against Arthur’s side. There’s a quick press of fingers against Eames’ wrist, and he can’t help but smile.

“I’m all right, really.”

Arthur keeps his face hidden in his knees. “I kept telling myself you’d wake up, but then you — you just kept being dead,” he says.

“Takes a while, sometimes,” says Eames, stretching out a little, letting more of his body spill onto Arthur’s. “Bit inconvenient.”

They’re quiet, then, as Eames waits. The bare skin of his chest is rubbing against Arthur’s shirt in a maddening sort of way, but he forces himself to stay still.

“Mal’s right,” Arthur finally says. “I’m not human. I don’t know what I am, but it’s not human. He said he’d tell me if I let him out, but — maybe he didn’t know, either.”

“I’d sort of guessed at that first part,” says Eames. “Given how remarkably well you’ve aged. You must be, what? Nearly 110 by now?"

Arthur shifts, like he can’t decide whether he wants to move closer or further away. “I didn’t think you remembered me,” he says. “You were so drunk in that pub, and then you snuck out while I was asleep...”

“That was the first time we met,” says Eames. “For me, at any rate. For you it must’ve been the second; I know, time travel does horrible things to linear conceptions of selfhood.”

Arthur doesn’t respond to that; lifts his head just enough to look at his bloodied hands. “My mom kept the shoes you gave her,” he says. “That was one of her favorite stories, you know? The handsome foreigner who came to her rescue on a dark and stormy night and helped bring me into this world.”

“That is not even remotely what happened,” says Eames, affronted for Ariadne’s sake

“I know,” says Arthur. “I was there, remember?”

“You were forming memories as a newborn,” says Eames. “Well, that must’ve made breastfeeding awkward."

And that, at least, gets Arthur to raise his head all the way. “Fuck, Eames, that’s what you’re taking away from this?”

“As someone grown in a lab and granted consciousness only after my body went through puberty,” says Eames, “I am in fact very interested by the whole Oedipal nature of human development, yes.”

“First of all, no,” says Arthur, and he’s sitting up perfectly straight now and Eames can’t help but feel proud of himself, “And second of all, you were — what?”

“Genetically-engineered farming equipment, to put it crudely,” Eames says, and it’s liberating, really, this whole honesty thing. Liberating and terrifying and he hopes he’ll never have to do it again.

“That’s not — you — what?”

“Well, what did you think when you saw the tattoo on my chest just now?” asks Eames, almost insulted. “I’m not actually a big enough ass to get my own name etched into my skin. It’s a tag; model E4M, unit 3S.”

“Are you fucking serious? You think I was looking at your tattoos while you were bleeding out on me?” asks Arthur, and if he was a cat he’d be bristling right now, and fuck, he’s gorgeous and Eames should probably stop looking at his mouth.

Arthur’s eyes narrow. “Wait,” he says. “Are you — is this supposed to make me feel better about what just happened? Are you trying to distract me? Is that what this is?”

“No,” Eames lies, resting his forehead against Arthur’s and fuck it, if this goes badly he can always jump off a bridge or something, easy enough, and he brings his hand up to Arthur’s face but can’t quite bring himself to let it land, just angles his own mouth and presses down and —

Nothing.

Something very small inside of Eames sputters and dies.

Until:

“Oh,” and it’s Arthur, Arthur just made that noise, Arthur’s got both hands gripping Eames’ arms and his tongue delving into Eames’ mouth like he’s starving, knees bumping into Eames’ thighs and fuck, that’s Eames’ own blood he’s tasting, smeared across Arthur’s chin and it should maybe put a damper on the situation but it’s Arthur and —

“Fuck!” Arthur says, jerking away. He’s rubbing his elbow and grimacing, and Eames realizes that maybe a tiny reinforced cylinder isn’t the best place for this kind of thing.

“Arthur, darling,” he says, “You’re glowing a bit.”

“It wasn’t that great a kiss, Eames,” says Arthur, releasing his elbow. “Stop flattering yourself.”

The glow’s gone down enough now to be barely noticeable.

Eames sighs. “Let’s go and get cleaned up, yeah?”

(19.9)

Arthur goes off to shower alone, and Eames lets him be.

It’s possible (probable) the Lyrgonian knew what he was hissing about. Eames thinks it over, examines it from all angles like a strange seed that’s gotten mixed in with the grain, too small to be dangerous, but.

Arthur pads over, barefoot and naked except for the towel slung around his hips, looking vulnerable and defiant under the Hub’s lights.

No, Eames decides. Already too late to put a stop to it. Always was, really.

“I’ve never had sex,” Arthur says, his tone neutral. “It seemed risky, considering.”

Eames huffs out a laugh. “Worried you might do some damage?”

He expects Arthur to glare at him, say something biting in response. Instead, Arthur reaches out a hand, touches fingertips to the spot where there’d been a bullet less than three hours before.

“Does it hurt, when you die?”

“Always,” Eames says, mouth going dry.

Arthur nods, lets his hand trail down and away from Eames’ body. “It didn’t, for me. Nothing does, not for long.”

Everything inside Eames lurches, then stills. “It didn’t? How — ”

“It was just the once, I think,” says Arthur, eyes fixed on the ground. “Mom died and the whole world was at war and I figured, what the hell, and then I got shot my first week overseas and woke up in a trench full of corpses, not a scratch on me.”

He looks up, then, and smiles at Eames, rueful. “I haven’t aged since then, as far as I can tell. And now — ” his fingers reach into Eames’ left trouser pocket and slip out holding a pocketknife — “this is what happens when I get injured.”

The blade slices through Arthur’s palm before Eames can do more than let out a panicked breath, skin stitching itself back together almost immediately.

“Not sure if there are limits to that,” says Arthur. “Never tried shooting myself in the head or anything — ”

“Please don’t,” Eames manages to say.

“But it seemed — prudent, I guess — to limit access to this body until I knew about what it could do.”

“Well,” Eames says, picking up Arthur’s hand and swiping his thumb over the skin, “That is indeed one option, but I believe there may be another.” He raises his eyebrows, flicks his tongue out to wet his lips.

“Fuck,” Arthur says. “I can’t believe I’m actually considering it.”

“Hey now,” Eames says, “While I think I’ve proven my body to be suitably indestructible, my feelings are another matter.”

Arthur is already walking towards the ladder leading down to Eames’ bunk, towel slipping lower and lower with each step. “Sorry,” he says over his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll be nicer once I finally get laid.”

(He isn’t, or not until he finally falls asleep, still softly glowing and making Eames’ heart pulse rabbitlike in his chest, and Eames hadn’t lied when he said dying hurt, he just hadn’t mentioned that the coming back was the worst part, every time.)

(20)

Eames forces himself away from Arthur and into the archive room, where he spends the night rooting through dozens of boxes until he finds the one labeled, “Necklace, crystal — non-Earth origin.”

He waits until Arthur is awake and standing by the coffee machine before slipping it around his neck.

“Is this your version of a letterman jacket?” Arthur asks, tugging at the white chunk of rock. “Not really my style. Also, where the fuck were you this morning?”

Hiding, would be the honest answer, but Eames just shrugs. “Went looking for that,” he says. “It’s a dampener — should diffuse your energy levels across a wider area, get the readings down to within normal range.”

Arthur turns back to the machine, begins measuring out coffee beans.

“And that’s important because?”

“Because our friend from the other day isn’t the only one with the tools to track you down.”

“So he was here for me,” says Arthur, voice calm and steady. He still has his back to Eames, but Eames can read the tenseness of his shoulders, the anger stiffening his spine.

“He was,” Eames agrees, forcing himself not to take a step back when Arthur turns to face him again.

“And he said something about it, and you — you decided to wait twelve hours before telling me?”

“Well,” said Eames, rubbing the back of his neck, “In my defense, I only got confirmation that he wasn’t talking nonsense last night, with the glowing and whatnot, and then you fell asleep — and don’t, you know you’re impossible to wake up once you’re out, which could be normal for your sort, I guess — ”

“My sort?”

“Ravalus was the Thresh word,” says Eames, staring at a point over Arthur’s left shoulder. “Literally, it translates to ‘star-god,’ but don’t let it get to your head.”

Arthur lifts one hand to Eames’ chin and forces him to meet his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “So there are others like me, somewhere out there?”

“Nowhere you can reach, I’m afraid,” says Eames. “Not even the Doctor can manage inter-dimensional travel with any consistency, and even if we could get you there, there’s no saying what we’d end up as — ”

Arthur pulls back a little. “Eames, are you trying to tell me that I’m — a huge ball of helium and hydrogen from some other dimension?”

“Technically, I think you’re only meant to be a giant ball of gas in this dimension,” says Eames. “The Lyrgonian wouldn’t have bothered if there was no way to — undo whatever happened, but — ”

“I might not survive the process,” says Arthur. He drops his hand, goes to lean against the counter. “I’d kind of given up hope of ever really knowing who — or what — I was,” he says after a few minutes. “So this doesn’t change much, I guess.”

“There’s worse things than not knowing who you are, Arthur,” Eames says, drawing closer to put his hands on Arthur’s hips. “Imagine, for instance, knowing every single line of your genetic code and why it’s there, while also knowing you’ll spend the rest of your considerable life trying to ignore its directives.”

Arthur looks at him, eyes dark and somber. “I never got that part,” he says. “Why you chose to stick around instead of just, like, getting a cabin somewhere.”

It’s Ariadne’s fault, Eames wants to say. She lived too long and too bright and by the time she’d gone he’d already rooted himself here, but no, that’s not right — it was the vortex manipulator’s fault for landing him here in the first place, or Rose’s, or even Misbe’s —

I should have died, is the truth. I should have turned myself in for analysis but ran off instead and then I couldn’t, I can’t, all I can do is stay here —

“Maybe I’ve just been waiting for you,” Eames says instead, wondering at how it doesn’t feel like the line that it is.

Arthur scrunches his nose. “God, I can’t believe I actually slept with you.”

“Enthusiastically, even,” Eames says, teasing for real now, and it’s good; safer, with Arthur distracted and making toast for them both, worrying about what to do when the others show up at the Hub instead of wondering more about his origins and future —

Eames ignores that train of thought to take a huge bite of toast right over Arthur’s shoulder, showering him with crumbs and laughing at Arthur’s squeak of distress.

(21)

Mal’s the first one back in the Hub that morning.

She stalks over to Arthur, says, “Next time I will not hesitate to shoot through you,” and gives Eames a sharp look on her way to the weapons locker.

“She’ll calm down a bit after some time at the firing range,” Eames says, and Arthur shrugs.

“I didn’t join Torchwood to make friends.”

Yusuf and Fischer stumble in an hour later, still smelling faintly of rum. They give Eames and Arthur a wide berth until they need Arthur to settle an argument about the level of sentience required before killing something becomes murder, and Eames isn’t allowed to participate since he doesn’t eat meat.

“I never really got why cannibalism was so taboo considering everything else people do to each other,” says Arthur.

“Arthur, mate, you’re not exactly making me feel better about your whole — thing,” says Yusuf.

“Speaking of,” says Fischer, a little too brightly, “what’s the verdict, anyway? What exactly are you?”

“Fischer,” says Eames, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “Drop it or I’ll drop you. And I mean that in the nicest, most Retcon-filled way.”

“He deserves to know,” says Mal, appearing in the entrance to the archive room. “It isn’t fair to keep such things secret.”

“You want fair, go work at a Tesco,” Eames says, and he knows this won’t be the last of it, not if he wants Mal to stay quiet, but it’ll have to do for now.

“I worked at a Sainsbury’s one summer,” says Yusuf, spinning around in his desk chair. “I think I’d rather take my chances here. You think Weevils are bad? Try telling a pensioner that her coupon’s invalid.”

The Rift alarm sounds then, almost as if in agreement, and something in Eames settles. They’ll get over this, one way or another. And if anyone gives Arthur trouble, or if he can’t get Mal to stand down — well, that’s a problem for another day.

(23)

“Happy one-year anniversary,” Mal says, handing Eames a slim package wrapped in plain brown paper.

“Thank you,” says Eames, because he has manners. “Shouldn’t it be for Arthur as well?”

“It is,” says Mal, and Eames tears off the paper in careful strips to find a blank notebook underneath.

“You can write him notes,” she says. “I do it with Dom; sometimes it’s easier to communicate from separate spaces.”

“Mal,” Eames says, but he doesn’t know how to ask. He never had to before.

“It isn’t for me to tell him,” Mal says, reading his face. “But you should, at some point during your millions of years together.”

“You never struck me as an optimist,” Eames says. “Millions of years, really?”

“You are essentially immortal, no?” asks Mal. “And stars live for very long, I’ve been told.”

But not forever, Eames thinks.

“He should know,” Mal says, as if Eames has actually said it out loud. “He should know, the kind of devastation his death could cause.”

“Not what I meant by 'optimist,'” says Eames, as if she hasn't said anything. “You don’t honestly think he’ll spend his whole life by my side, do you?” He thumbs through the notebook. It’s a fancy one; thick creamy pages and a dark green cover.

“Where else would he go?”

“Millions of years is a long time, Mal. He’ll get bored of me, or resentful. He’ll leave,” Eames says, keeping his voice steady. And he’ll come back, he doesn’t say, because it’s too tenuous a hope. He’ll come back because I’ll be the only one who’ll really know him, and we’ll — cycle through it, and it’ll be okay, because even when he’s not with me I’ll know he’s out there somewhere, and it’ll be enough.

It will be.

Mal cocks her head at him. “You love him too much, I think.”

“I’d cut out my own liver for him,” Eames says, smiling at her. “Might hurt less, actually, than whatever the hell is going on inside me most days.”

“There’s a chance he might love you just as much.”

Eames barks out a laugh.

“That’s not,” he says, but he doesn’t know how to finish that thought. He sighs instead, slumping down in his chair. “Just leave it alone, Mal.”

“He loves you, you idiot,” she says. “Talk to him, and maybe he’ll tell you himself.”

"What would I ever do without you, hmm?" he asks, flipping through the notebook again, somewhat unnerved by all that blank space.

"The same stupid things you do now," Mal says drily, "Only with less shame."

(10)

Eames recruits Mal three years after Fischer and Yusuf. She’s fighting off two Weevils by herself next to the remains of her half-devoured father; sits besides Eames after he gets disemboweled trying to help her and watches as his body pulls itself together, bit by bit, until he’s awake again.

She hands him one of her husband’s shirts, still clean and dry under the protective plastic from the cleaner’s, and helps get him standing.

“I think I could use a drink,” she tells him. “You?”

She doesn’t belong here, not on this filthy rain-streaked alley in Cardiff, not with her hair and perfume and the tilt of her head, the way she looks at Eames without seeing him.

“Sure,” says Eames, flicking the rain off his face. “My treat, even.”

Much later, in the bar, Mal draws a finger over the rim of her glass and frowns.

“I should be crying, I think,” she says. “It would be a cliché to say that none of it feels real, but it’s true.”

Eames shrugs, takes another sip of his whiskey. “Grief does funny things to our heads,” he says. “My first time in space, I thought I saw a whole cluster of stars just wink out of existence. And I knew it was nonsense, that I was just — projecting, I suppose, but.”

“But?” Mal asks.

“It wasn’t nonsense. Billions saw seven stars disappear in a huge flare of light, and two planets got burnt up in the process. The Thresh sent a ship to investigate and confirmed there were six dead neutron stars, and no hint of the seventh. And no one could figure out what had happened, or how. The six stars were old, but not that old, and the seventh was a newborn by astral standards.”

“The Thresh? Another alien kind?”

“Yeah,” says Eames, rubbing the back of his head, trying to picture the ones he’d met. “More reptilian than anything else. Good at telling stories, though. They worshipped stars, treated them as conscious beings on a different plane of existence, so beautiful that to our eyes they manifested as pure light — they said there must’ve been a war of some sort, and those six were killed in battle.”

“And the seventh?”

“Cyrus, the princeling. Spirited away by the dying elders into our world, to spare his life.”

“I think your Thresh would have noticed a star hurtling out of nowhere.”

“But he wouldn’t be a star, anymore. Not on the outside. Not if they did it right,” says Eames, gesturing a bit wildly with his glass. “Besides, who knows when and where he’d have landed? Inter-dimensional travel is like poking through a crumpled up piece of paper. Hard to tell where point A connects to point B.”

“Eames, this is a fairy tale,” Mal says.

“Never said it wasn’t.”

“What is the point, then?”

“The point is, sometimes what we think is madness is just — the universe unfolding, I suppose.”

Mal gives him a slow, measured look and finishes off her wine.

“I don’t think he was really my father,” she says. “Not for years now. I think — something else, under his skin. Possible, yes?”

“In Cardiff?” Eames asks. “Probable, really.”

Weevils don’t generally eat human beings, after all.

“Are all of your stories as sad as that one?” Mal asks, resting her head on one fist. Her hair is dry now and starting to frizz.

“Don’t really have that many,” says Eames, smiling at her. “Besides, that one’s not too bad. Someone’s still alive at the end.”

“True,” says Mal. “But I am not sure that makes up for what happened to whoever was living on those two planets."

Eames shrugs, downing the last of his whiskey. “No such thing as a happy ending for everyone.”

(25)

He comes into the room without a sound, takes a look at Eames and slips off his trousers, unbuttons his shirt. Hangs both carefully on the back of a chair before lying down next to Eames, curling his body into the spaces Eames has left for him.

“This is a bomb shelter for plants, not a bedroom,” Arthur says, but his tone is mild, almost friendly. “You’re lucky I don’t have allergies.”

“Hmm,” Eames agrees, stretching his arms but not quite touching Arthur, not yet. “I’d say you’re welcome to join me, but it seems like you already have.”

“Yeah, well,” Arthur says. He wriggles around until he manages to move the pillow under his head, then turns to kiss Eames on his upper arm. “This place has its uses.”

Later, when they’re both covered in a faint sheen of sweat and basking in Arthur’s (literal) afterglow, Eames stills feels restless, unsettled.

“What do you think would’ve happened, if I’d stayed in your hotel room that night?” he asks.

“Well,” says Arthur, eyes closed, “For one thing, you’d be dead by now, and for another, we’d never have met in the first place. So everything worked out in the end.”

He sounds so matter-of-fact about it, that Eames suddenly wonders —

“You’ll spend the night here?” Eames asks, shifting closer until their foreheads touch. “I mean — stay with me, yeah?”

Arthur opens his eyes and gives him a long, steady look that Eames can’t read — and maybe one day he’ll be able to, and maybe not — and says, “Yeah.”

( )

He should feel guilty about it, maybe. The lies he tells Arthur. Not really lies, though — more like omissions. There’s no mystery to Eames, everything’s been pre-programmed and set, but.

There’s a flaw with his heart. Something not-quite-right in his chest. And maybe Arthur should know, might even be reassured — that Eames knows what it’s like, to carry a threat under one’s skin, and can love Arthur all the more for it. But.

There’s a weight to such secrets, a heaviness to anchor them down.

Star-child, the Lyrgonian hissed. He’ll burn your whole world when he goes.

Fair enough, Eames thinks. Just as long he doesn’t leave him behind.

[End]