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Arthur has been on a plane for the last 17 hours.
His cab breaks down 15 minutes from his house, and it’s a Saturday night, after two.
Fuck it.
He’ll walk.
He’s barely out of the cab before it starts to snow.
Of course.
There’s a wind, too, a wicked one, damp and unforgiving, and he curses the tropical heat his linen suit was meant to temper, and his lack of foresight in not changing in the airport.
His hands are shaking, teeth chattering, by the time he gets to his apartment door. He fumbles the keys a few times before he manages to let himself inside.
He breathes easy for a moment, glad to be home.
Then the shaking overcomes his momentary contentment and he starts peeling off his soaking, half-frozen clothes, despairing at the thought of the water damage to his loafers and the state his hair must be in. He strips down to the essentials - boxers and Beretta - leaving the rest of his things in an undignified heap on the floor. It’s a waste, but sometimes Arthur can afford to be wasteful.
He thinks about losing himself in a scalding hot shower, but the idea of bed is too tantalizing, and instead he heads straight for his bedroom, giving the shower idea a pass.
He’s still in the hallway, just outside his room, when he hears shallow breathing. Someone is in the apartment.
He curses, drawing his gun, flicking off the safety, back against the wall.
There’s muffled movement from within the room, and Arthur hears the unmistakable sound of another safety being turned off.
“If you aren’t Arthur, then this is a gun in my pocket and I am most certainly not going to be happy to see you.”
It’s Eames.
He lowers his gun, shoulders sagging against the wall, and breathes a shaky, “Fuck,” momentarily too relieved to be pissed.
The moment passes quickly when he enters his bedroom and sees Eames sitting up, possibly naked, in Arthur’s bed.
He’s getting his tattoos all over Arthur’s 800-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
Eames grins at him, and Arthur considers re-drawing his gun.
“What the fuck, Eames,” Arthur hisses, allowing himself to fully embrace the part of the proceedings where he’s super pissed.
“What are you doing here?” Eames responds a little blearily, rubbing at his face with the back of a hand.
He’s still holding the gun.
“I live here, you idiot,” Arthur snaps, crossing the room and taking the Glock out of Eames’ clumsy grasp.
He’s holding both guns, now. Somehow, he doesn’t think Eames is particularly threatened by that.
“What are you doing here?” he demands heatedly, waving the guns at Eames a bit anyway.
Eames pauses, clearly trying to come up with something. Arthur can see the moment he decides to go with the truth.
“I crash here when you’re away. But really, did the job go wrong? I thought you weren’t due back until Wednesday.”
Arthur doesn’t even know where to begin with that one. And there’s still the other matter of how fucking cold he is. He’s shaking like a leaf, and he does the only thing he can think of in his exhausted and pissed off state.
Arthur jabs him with Eames’ own gun and demands he move out of Arthur’s side of the bed.
He doesn’t let Eames get any further, climbing in beside him and greedily trying to syphon the warmth off Eames’ skin by plastering himself against Eames’ back.
“You will explain this to me in the morning,” Arthur makes clear, biting his lip to stop his teeth from chattering, and burying his head into the shallow dip of Eames’ back, right between his shoulder blades.
“Anything you say, darling,” Eames agrees, and Arthur can hear the delighted smile in his voice.
Eames’ skin is right there and Arthur gives in, biting Eames’ shoulder, just a little.
“I’m serious. There will be a discussion. Possibly about the back rent you will be paying me.”
“How about you take it out in trade?” Eames suggests, his voice already growing heavy with sleep.
Arthur can feel himself starting to drift, too, his limbs thawing, growing pleasantly warm and tingly.
Against his better judgement and self-control, he murmurs, “I’ll consider it,” just before he closes his eyes.
---
In the morning, Eames makes them breakfast while Arthur showers and re-acclimatizes. He luxuriates in the scalding hot water, taking inordinate amount of pleasure from washing his hair from a regular-sized bottle of shampoo.
He puts on sweatpants and a t-shirt, and wanders into the kitchen, sniffing appreciatively.
There’s pancakes and what Eames informs him are vegetarian sausages.
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” Arthur murmurs rhetorically as he sits down.
Eames ignores him as expected, putting a plate and cup of coffee in front of Arthur and smiling benevolently.
“Anyone would think I was your guest and you were the charming host,” Arthur remarks dryly.
Eames grins. “I’m an excellent host.”
Arthur takes a long sip of coffee to fuel the strength of his glare. “What you are is a squatter, at best. You’re a hostile invader at worst.”
“I made you breakfast,” Eames points out, still smiling.
Arthur takes a bite of pancakes drenched in syrup, and has to bite back a moan.
Eames’ smile gets considerably more self-satisfied, which is saying something, given how smug it already was.
“This changes nothing,” Arthur informs him, just before he spends the next ten minutes with his mouth too full of pancakes and veggie sausages to speak.
When he’s done, Eames is leaning back in his chair, arms folded, beaming at Arthur.
Arthur swallows the last delicious bite, and refocuses his energies on glaring at Eames hard enough to set him on fire.
“What are you doing here, really.”
Eames shrugs. “I told you, I come here sometimes. I like it here.”
“Why?”
“It smells like you.”
Of all the things Arthur could have predicted, that particular response was definitely not one of them.
“It smells like me,” he repeats, trying to find some logic in the words.
Eames nods. “I’m very fond of you, after all.”
Arthur shakes his head rapidly, like that might help shake out the crazy.
When he stops, Eames is still sitting at Arthur’s kitchen table like he owns the place, like he belongs.
“You’re fond of me.” Eventually, things will start making more sense and he’ll be able to do something other than parrot Eames’ words back at him.
Now is not that time.
Eames nods again. “In the spirit of specificity, I could clarify that what I really meant was that I’m in love with you. Did you not already know that?”
Arthur did not know that.
He really didn’t.
He’s not sure he knows it now. Or believes it, anyway.
He considers his options, and then, to his shame, he runs away.
He runs all the way into his bathroom, in which he locks himself.
He pulls one of his emergency disposable cellphones out from underneath the sink, and calls Cobb.
“I need your help,” he hisses as soon as Cobb picks up.
“What! Arthur? Are you alright? Where are you - I can--”
“I’m - it’s fine. I’m home. I’m alright.”
Dom releases a shaky breath, and then there’s a long silence.
“Don’t do that to me, Arthur, come on.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, just. I worry.”
Arthur smiles.
“I know. Which is stupid, because out of the two of us, we both know that you’re the one we should be worried about.”
Dom laughs, just a little. They’re at the stage where they can, occasionally. They can’t laugh about what happened, about Mal, but they can laugh a little about what Dom was like after, now that he’s home, now that he has his kids back, now that he’s regained some of his sanity.
“What’s the problem?”
The reality of Arthur’s situation snaps him back to attention. “Eames is in my house. In my house, Dom. I came home last night and he was just - just here. He told me he comes here sometimes, like, while I’m away. What the fuck!”
Dom laughs.
“Why are you laughing?” Arthur asks, feeling something suspicious drop in his stomach. “This is no laughing matter! Eames is in my house!”
“I know.”
“You know? Because I just told you?”
“No. Because I’m the one who told him where you live.”
What the fuck.
“What the fuck! Why the fuck would you do that?”
Dom laughs again. “He made a convincing argument.”
Arthur takes back everything nice thing he’s ever said about Cobb. Every last thing. And really, there haven’t even been that many. Dom should have cherished them.
“You’re not my best friend anymore. I’m disowning you,” Arthur informs him darkly.
“You’ve tried it, never takes,” Dom responds, sounding infuriatingly unconcerned.
“He’s in my house, Dom.” Arthur is aware he’s getting shrill, and that he’s repeating himself, but he can’t do anything about either of those things.
“And is there food in your house? Has the utility bill been paid? Heat still on?”
Yes, (probably) yes, and yes.
“I take perfectly good care of myself,” Arthur mutters hotly.
“No you don’t,” Dom says gently. Arthur can imagine the slightly sad, mostly fond smile on his face.
“You can’t let Eames into my apartment and hire him out as some kind of domestic servant just because sometimes I forget to buy groceries and worrying at me from opposite coasts isn’t satisfying enough for you.”
“I didn’t let him in, I just told him where you lived. I was going to mail him my spare key, but he told me that was cheating.”
That’s hardly the issue, and also, “How long has this been going on?”
“A couple months, now. I’m surprised this was the first time you caught him. He’s been picking up after himself, of course, but it’s not like he’s being that careful. It’s a bit sloppy of you, really,” Dom chides.
Arthur is dangerously close to getting on a plane just so he can punch Cobb right in his squinty, smarmy face.
“I hate you, and have always hated you.”
“You should get better friends,” Dom agrees.
“Eames isn’t going to be that friend, Dom,” Arthur warns, wishing he sounded more credible.
“He cares about you, Arthur.”
“Right. Nothing says I love you like breaking into your house and squatting there while you’re away.”
Dom laughs. “Admit it, it’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for you.”
The really sad part is that it’s true.
“Goodbye forever,” Arthur says as forcefully as he can, and Dom laughs while Arthur hangs up on him.
---
There is food. Lots of it. Not just pancake fixings and delicious coffee, which Eames doesn’t even drink.
“There’s too much food here. You never could have eaten it all before Wednesday,” Arthur points out, scouting through his cupboards and pantry. In all honestly, Arthur was only somewhat aware his apartment even had a pantry, let alone a well-stocked one.
Eames is washing dishes, mostly ignoring him.
It’s all very infuriating.
“Are those goodie rings!” he exclaims despite himself, grabbing the yellow package gleefully.
“How did you even get these?” he asks between cookies he's stuffing into his mouth, one after another.
He has another two stacked around his forefinger, waiting to be devoured.
“I know a bloke in Toronto. He sent them down for me.”
Arthur thinks this over while he eats another delicious, chocolaty, Canadian cookie.
“You had a friend send cookies to my apartment, where you don’t actually live?” Arthur has never in his life seen Eames eat a goodie ring. Or any other kind of cookie, for that matter. He’s never demonstrated any kind of sweet tooth at all, which Arthur has always privately disapproved of.
Eames finishes up the dishes and turns to Arthur, smiling patiently.
“That’s just it, I’ve decided that I do.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve enjoyed my visits, but cleaning up after myself and leaving before you come home has gotten to be a bit of a bore. It’s all very well and good to sleep in your bed and wear your clothes while you’re gone, but the best part of your apartment - I’ve always suspected - is when you’re actually in it. This experience has only cemented that belief,” he explains, waving around the kitchen, at Arthur.
“You can’t just move in! I live here! I decide who else does!”
Eames looks at him very seriously, a startlingly sweet, genuine smile still tugging at his lips.
“Arthur, may I please live here?”
“No, you’re terrible,” Arthur snaps, but he does so just as he puts another cookie in his mouth, so the message might get a bit garbled.
When he swallows to correct himself, Eames hands him a glass of milk and smiles at Arthur in a way he never has. The smile steals Arthur’s voice, so he takes a long sip of milk instead and says nothing at all.
---
Eames has apparently ordered him - them? - cable. He appears to use it exclusively to watch documentaries about flora and, occasionally, fauna.
“I like plants better,” Eames says, as though that makes any sense.
Arthur sits down on the couch beside him, elbowing Eames to give him more room.
Eames doesn’t move an inch.
Arthur sighs and resigns himself to having their whole sides and knees touch.
“I thought you only cared about people,” he says.
“You thought wrong,” Eames says lightly, and then spends the next hour explaining to Arthur the life-cycle of the plants and animals that live amidst the Caucasus, which Arthur has to admit is actually pretty cool.
Not that he’s going to tell Eames that.
---
When Arthur comes home from shaking down a source and hears something that sounds disturbing like mewing coming from the kitchen, he tells himself he’s imagining things.
Surely there isn’t really mewing coming from inside his apartment.
Surely there isn’t really a cat accompanying said and obviously imaginary mewing.
Surely.
He steps through the kitchen doorway, and there Eames is, sitting cross-legged on the floor, beaming down at a tiny grey ball of fluff as it drinks water from one of Arthur’s hand-blown glass bowls.
“Explanation,” he grits out, looming over the scene imperiously.
Eames just winks at him, picks the kitten up, and holds the little creature out to Arthur.
“She’s yours,” Eames announces like this isn’t his worst in a long line of terrible ideas.
“I’m pretty sure she’s not,” Arthur begs to differ, eyeing the kitten as disdainfully as he can manage.
It’s sort of batting at the air, still held aloft by Eames, and a small, reluctant part of Arthur melts a little. He keeps this reaction out of his face, which remains stony and impassive.
He recrosses his arms for added effect.
Eames puts the kitten down and it promptly proceeds to slip on the tiled floor, scrambling on its tiny legs to regain its momentum, dashing off and disappearing behind the refrigerator.
If it gets stuck back there, Eames had damn well better know he’s going to be the one to get the kitten out.
Arthur raises his eyebrow in a manner he hopes will convey this fact.
Eames takes a moment to look properly chagrined, then gets up off the floor, leaning in to pat Arthur on the shoulder. It’s the same kind of aborted, half-gesture he’s been greeting Arthur with for weeks now, whenever Arthur leaves and comes back and finds Eames still in his apartment. They’re leading up to something, and Eames is making it pretty clear what that something is, but still Arthur can’t quite take him, or any of it, seriously.
The ridiculously complicated meals Eames keeps cooking for him and bizarre gifts don’t help. Last week it had been an exquisite Monet forgery (Arthur hopes) for the living room, and the week before that, a crate of lobsters flown in via helicopter from Maine.
“Why is there a kitten in my house?”
“I thought you might want one,” Eames answers easily.
Arthur sighs. “I don’t.”
“I think you do,” Eames responds, sounding supremely confident, now.
The kitten reappears out from behind the fridge, covered in dust, and for a second, Arthur can’t help but smile down at it. It’s just so... endearing.
When he looks back up at Eames, Arthur blanches immediately. In all his time with Eames, over many triumphs, Arthur honestly didn’t think Eames could look any more smug. Apparently he was wrong.
“I don’t want one,” Arthur insists weakly.
Eames leans in again, close but not touching, as he says, “You do - and just in case I wasn’t entirely clear, I don’t just mean the cat when I say this - you’ve wanted one for years. And it’s time you let yourself have what you want.”
Not waiting for Arthur to respond, Eames leans down, picks the kitten up off the floor, and leaves the kitchen without another word.
---
Arthur ends up naming the cat Dominic, partly because it’s rumpled and grey and something about the pattern of the fur on its face makes the kitten look perpetually squinty, but mostly, he names her Dominic because Dom is an asshole who is at least 40% responsible for all of Arthur’s life’s suffering, and he deserves some recognition for that.
---
Dom calls.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” he announces cheerfully.
“They’re really not.”
“Really? Eames told me you guys got a cat. That’s a big step.” There’s something serious and approving in his tone, but Arthur knows better. He can tell when Dom is holding in a laugh.
“Eames brought the cat home without even asking me. There was no ‘we’ in the equation. Also, you’re an asshole.”
“Don’t be that way, Arthur. You’ve always wanted a cat! And besides, Eames was telling me just the other day about how much you love having the company.”
Arthur seriously considers hanging up right there, but he takes a moment to calm himself with a few deep, soothing breaths before he says, “Eames needs to stop stretching his metaphors.”
Dom does laugh, finally, at that, but softly, fond, not mocking. There’s a long pause after his laugh, and then Dom clears his throat significantly. Arthur can imagine the earnest, pinched expression his face.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Arthur.”
“Since when is happy on the table?” Arthur snaps reflexively. “Nobody said anything about happy!”
“I just did,” Dom replies, and then, before Arthur can do it, he hangs up.
Arthur continues sitting in the empty bath tub, which has somehow become the location for all his recent talks with Dom, glaring morosely at nothing until Dominic appears out of nowhere, purring loudly and balancing delicately on the lip of the tub.
Arthur resists for a minute more, trying to hold onto his ire, and then he gives in, smiling at his kitten and pulling her onto his lap, petting Dominic behind her ears while she buries closer.
---
Arthur is researching in the living room when he hears banging coming from the bathroom.
Concerned, he gets up to investigate.
He finds Eames crouched underneath the sink, sleeves rolled up, swearing, covered in water, wrench in his hand.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Eames grunts, nearly bangs his head on the pipes, and then answers between gritted teeth, “Fixing. The. Sodding. Drain.”
So it would appear. But, “Why?”
Eames makes another low, displeased sound, followed rapidly by a shout of triumph.
“You know what they say, Arthur. It’s a crap job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”
Arthur gets the feeling they’re not just talking about the drain anymore.
“That somebody doesn’t have to be you,” he points out, a little more unkindly than he means to.
Eames just sighs, the same patient way he has for weeks, and says, “No, I suppose it doesn’t. But I want it to be.”
Eames wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think Arthur wanted that that too, they both know it, but Arthur isn’t any more ready to have this conversation than he was six weeks ago when Eames didn’t so much move in as announce his hostile takeover of Arthur’s apartment, life, and heart.
So, just as he did then, Arthur hightails it out of the room and hopes that Eames will accept the dinner he prepares as apology and thanks enough.
---
Arthur isn’t sure what time it is. Very late, or very early, depending on who you ask. He’s working, yelling over the phone at a particularly reluctant source, so close to the information he needs that he can taste it, when he hears Eames’ key in the door.
After successfully breaking in enough times to feel satisfied, Eames acquiesced to Arthur’s demand that he take a god damn key, already. Eames’ eyes had gotten alarmingly soft around the edges when Arthur gave him the damn thing, but really, it wasn’t like that. It was just that Arthur had been worried that the neighbors were going to start to talk if Eames kept breaking into Arthur’s apartment. That’s all.
Arthur registers Eames’ return and then goes back to his phone call, issuing a few particularly creative threats that finally get the job done, and he hangs up with a thrill of satisfaction.
He drops his head, closing his eyes against a sudden wave of exhaustion that hits right after the adrenaline from the success of the call dissipates, and doesn’t open them back up again until he hears Eames cough pointedly behind him.
Arthur turns around, looking up, and Eames hands him a cup of what smells like coffee.
Arthur moans gratefully, and snatches the cup out of Eames’ outstretched hands. He blows on it carefully, and then takes a long, satisfying drink.
“Thank you,” he says, still clutching the cup close to his face, inhaling the smell greedily.
Eames’ voice is warm when he says, “Anytime.”
Looking up at him, Arthur feels a fleeting, blinding urge to lean up and kiss Eames, but it passes, stubbornness and fear stopping him cold.
He waits for a look of frustration or disappointment to cross Eames’ face, but he just smiles at Arthur, warm and patient, like it doesn’t matter how many opportunities Arthur wastes, Eames is always going to be there, waiting to give him another one.
---
It’s not just Arthur who’s working all hours: Eames is planning a job of his own. Arthur is reasonably sure it’s a high-end jewel heist, but Eames hasn’t volunteered any information, and until he does, Arthur isn’t going to interfere.
This is what he reminds himself, forcefully and not for the first time, as he sits at home alone, with Dominic sleeping in his lap, pretending to focus on the TV playing in front of him when in actuality every one of Arthur’s thoughts is consumed with the knowledge that Eames has been gone for almost 48 hours, and that there’d been something strained and almost remorseful about the look in his eyes before he left.
He doesn’t know where Eames is - and the measures he’d have to take to figure it out might very well put Eames in more danger than leaving it alone - but that doesn’t stop Arthur from spending the whole night awake, eyes fixed on their front door, one hand petting his kitten and the other attached firmly to his gun.
---
It’s only when Eames comes home, breathless but no worse for wear, that Arthur realizes he never once stopped to consider that Eames had just left. He’d been worried, half-terrified and ready to tear the city apart looking for Eames, but not once had he entertained the possibility that Eames had finally decided he was tired of Arthur, tired of waiting.
He wants to find a way to tell Eames so, because it feels like something, it feels like a lot, but in the end, all Arthur says is, “Thank god you’re back, we’re almost out of goodie rings and I will be damned if I’m going all the way to Canada to get my next sugar fix.”
It’s close enough to an admission, as close as Arthur can get, and for that reason, it’s enough for Eames.
He grins at Arthur across the room and says, “Missed you too, darling.”
---
They’re at a bakery three blocks from Arthur’s apartment that he didn’t even know exists.
It has the best hot-cross buns he’s ever tasted.
He eats one as they peruse the shelves, barely paying attention to the items Eames puts in their little basket.
When Arthur finishes his bun, he says, “You remember that first morning? When you said...”
“When I said I loved you,” Eames supplies helpfully, looking at the two loaves of bread in his hands instead of at Arthur.
Arthur only wishes he found baked good equally fascinating so he could stop himself from staring at Eames.
“Yeah, that. Why did you say that?”
It’s hardly the time or the place to ask this; in fact it’s long past. But it’s finally the time when Arthur’s ready to.
Eames just chuckles. “Because I thought you ought to know, and because it had become apparent that half a decade of flirtation and following you loyally around the globe, coming whenever you called and joining whatever new kamikaze mission you and Cobb had dreamed up wasn’t doing the trick.”
Arthur swallows, wishing he had something to do with his hands. He picks up the closest item, which turns out to be a tray of peanut butter brownies.
“Don’t get those, I can make you better ones,” Eames assures him, voice casual like they’re not in the middle of what is certainly one of the top three strangest conversations Arthur has ever had.
“I can’t... I mean--”
“You don’t have to say it back, Arthur. You don’t even have to mean it yet.”
Arthur just stares at him, wondering how on earth they got here.
Eames pats him on the shoulder, still smiling. “Do you want me to go?”
Arthur thinks about going back to his apartment alone, thinks about trying to make any of the groceries Eames has bought into something resembling a meal, thinks of sitting on his couch alone, of going to bed alone.
“No.”
Eames’ answering grin is soft, but triumphant.
“That’s good enough for right now.”