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Eames woke alone in his bed. From the light outside, it was pre-dawn, and a glance at the clock by the bed confirmed that.
He sat up, noting that the baby monitor he’d put next to the bed was missing along with Arthur. He assumed he was up with Lucky, but, when he checked, Lucky was sleeping peacefully in her cot in the room next door, which had been, up until Eames’s frantic reorganization the day before, an office.
Eames wandered out into the flat and came upon evidence of Arthur at the small table in the living area that Eames used for everything. Arthur had tidied it up into some form of organization, because of course he had, and in the middle of it, next to the baby monitor, was a piece of paper with Arthur’s precise handwriting across it.
Birth certificate
--date (8 mos?)
--location (is US easier or harder? Check laws)
Adoption papers
--good forgery
--middle name
--last name?
--identities?
Residence
--compare preferences w/E
L accoutrements
--carriage?
--more clothing
--more toys
--baby food? requires research
Eames lifted his eyebrows at the list, picked up the pen that had been left next to it, and added to it.
Then he picked it up and wandered into the kitchen, where he found Arthur frowning at his coffeepot.
“It doesn’t brew faster if you scowl at it,” yawned Eames, and then, because he could, basically draped himself over Arthur and kissed the back of his neck.
“It’s very good coffee,” remarked Arthur.
“I knew you were coming,” Eames mumbled into Arthur’s skin, skimming his nose along Arthur’s hairline. “And I know you’re a coffee snob.” Eames bit Arthur’s earlobe lightly, then said, “I fixed your to-do list,” and stuck it in front of Arthur’s face.
Arthur took it and read the addition and lifted his eyebrows. “Sex.”
Eames rested his chin on Arthur’s shoulder. “It’s number one on the list, see? I put it up top.”
“I can see that,” Arthur agreed affably. “Any suggestions as to who I ought to have sex with?”
“I have a couple of candidates in mind,” said Eames, and brushed his fingers along Arthur’s abdomen, just above the waistband of the boxers he was wearing.
“A couple?” said Arthur, sounding amused.
“All right, one,” Eames admitted, and dipped his hand into Arthur’s pants.
“I thought that was more likely,” said Arthur, and tipped his head back against Eames’s shoulder. “Have you submitted an application?”
“Ages ago,” said Eames, stroking him to hardness.
“I don’t remember seeing it,” murmured Arthur. “What are your qualifications?”
“The fact that I can make you hard with just a look.” Eames bit at Arthur’s collarbone and was gratified when Arthur’s breath caught.
“No, you can’t,” Arthur managed, even as he caught his hand into Eames’s hair to press his mouth closer to his skin.
Eames smiled and sucked a bruise into Arthur’s neck.
“Fuck,” said Arthur, and caught at the counter as his balance wobbled.
Eames said into his ear: “The Beijing job. It was one look. You had to sit tucked under your desk, fuming because you couldn’t slink out for a moment alone.”
“You fucking cheated there,” Arthur accused. “That wasn’t just a look, you were also licking whipped cream off your finger as obscenely as possible.”
“That’s just how I lick things off my fingers,” said Eames innocently.
“Why the fuck was the whipped cream on your finger in the first place? Fuck, how are you so good with your hands?”
Eames hummed, satisfied, and said, “What do you think about my qualifications?”
“They’re awful,” said Arthur, “but you’re really excelling at the interview.”
“I haven’t even got to the oral part yet,” remarked Eames.
Arthur turned abruptly, disturbing Eames’s rhythm, and bit his way into a fierce kiss. “Take me to bed,” he commanded.
“Did I just beat coffee and a to-do list?” asked Eames, delighted.
“I’d tell you not to get smug but I’m decades too late for that,” said Arthur.
***
Arthur woke alone in the bed. Over the baby monitor on the bedside table, he could hear Eames murmuring to Lucky, who was loudly squawking back at him. Arthur marveled for a moment at how very well he slept when Eames was around. He never slept through things. But he had apparently slept through Eames getting up, through Eames bringing the baby monitor back into the room, through Lucky waking up, and through Eames going to her.
It was amazing. It was magnificent. Arthur stretched and rubbed his face into the pillow and felt just all-around wonderful. Then he stretched and sat up, catching sight of the piece of paper Eames had put next to the baby monitor. Arthur’s list.
He smiled and then rolled himself out of bed, hastily pulling on enough clothing to be respectable in front of Lucky.
Eames was leaning over Lucky, coaxing her into a shirt. He smiled brightly at Arthur when he showed up in the doorway and said, “Hi.”
“You’re…dressed,” said Arthur, surprised. “And, like, showered.”
“I am indeed. You sound shocked. I do sometimes shower, you know.” Clothing on, Eames picked Lucky up and carried her over to Arthur. “Say good morning to Arthur, poppet.”
Arthur took her automatically, still feeling thrown. “I slept through you showering?”
“You were dead to the world.”
Arthur frowned a little, dodging Lucky’s grabbing of his lower lip. “Did you drug me?”
“Yes. I absolutely drugged you. My bodily fluids contain well-known narcotics. My semen is especially potent. Sometimes people have been known to keel over in the midst of blowing me.”
“I hate you,” said Arthur, rolling his eyes.
“Uh-huh,” said Eames, clearly unconcerned, and kissed him. “Are you going to get dressed? Or do you plan to lounge around all day looking thoroughly ravished? Because I’m okay with that, trust me, but your to-do list had a lot of shopping on it, and I don’t want to be accused of thwarting a to-do list.”
For a long moment Arthur debated doing all of the shopping online and never leaving Eames’s apartment, just sprawling around all day with him and with Lucky, being thoroughly irresponsible.
Arthur thought he possibly really was drugged, considering how unusually he was behaving. He said, “No, I should definitely take her shopping.”
“Then I’m going to feed her while you shower, and then we’ll spoil her with very expensive toys.”
Eames took the baby back, and Arthur turned to watch him walk down the hallway with her toward the living room.
“We have to buy her practical things!” Arthur called after him.
“Go and shower, love,” Eames called back to him.
***
It was a gray, dreary day, but Arthur bit his tongue about it, because at least it wasn’t actively raining and he didn’t want to jinx that. He followed Eames’s lead on where to go shopping, because he didn’t know London especially well and hadn’t had adequate time to research in between his emotional breakdowns and lots of sex and weird sudden sleeping.
Arthur stood between two carriages—prams, Eames kept correcting him, and Lucky seemed to think that word as ridiculous as Arthur did, because she giggled every time Eames said it—and pushed both of them back and forth experimentally.
“This one is easier to maneuver,” he mused, “but this one would be easier to transport. Which do you think?”
“Whichever you like, love,” said Eames, busy eating Lucky’s fingers because Lucky loved to have her fingers eaten, considered it the height of entertainment.
So Arthur picked one.
Arthur stood surrounded by baby clothes and said, “I don’t know, do you think we should buy her shoes, too? I mean, she might want to try to learn to walk, right?”
“Whatever you think best, love,” said Eames, and dropped a blanket on Lucky’s head to make her laugh.
So Arthur decided on shoes.
They took a break at a café Eames recommended, and Arthur savored the very good coffee and watched Lucky try to break the new toy he’d bought her. It was supposed to promote logical reasoning, but Arthur thought it was just promoting new ways of making noise and causing destruction.
Arthur said, “Stephen said we should be starting her on baby food. I thought maybe peaches for a fruit, and carrots for a vegetable. I hate peas, so I’m boycotting peas on her behalf.”
Eames looked amused and said, “As you wish, love,” and rescued Lucky’s toy from the floor.
When they got back to Eames’s flat, laden down with bags, Lucky was sound asleep in Arthur’s arms.
Arthur said, “I’ll put her to bed.”
Eames said, “I’ll open wine.”
Arthur carried her into her room. Lucky’s room. In Eames’s flat. Arthur put her in the crib and looked around. It was barely furnished, but it had the essentials. Eames had gone out and gotten her an entire room; that was how much Eames loved her.
“Lucky little girl,” Arthur whispered to her, and kissed her head as he left her sleeping.
Eames was sitting on the couch, his legs kicked out on the coffee table. He’d taken his shoes off, and Arthur looked at his mismatched socks and sighed.
“She’s going to wear matching socks all the time,” Arthur said, settling next to him. “At least until she has her own opinion on the matter.”
“If you say so, darling,” said Eames, smiling at him, and clinked their wineglasses together.
Arthur propped his elbow on the back of the couch and leaned his head against his hand and contemplated Eames closely. “So. My to-do list.”
“Yes, the forgeries. I can handle those. Where would you like her to be from?”
“Where would you like to settle with her?”
“Where do you own places? I assumed you’d want somewhere in America, somewhere sunny and bright.”
“Eames,” said Arthur, because he’d had enough of this. He put his wineglass down, then extracted Eames’s wineglass from his hand and put it down as well.
“Oh,” said Eames brightly. “This seems promising. Are we going to make out now?”
“No,” said Arthur solemnly. “She’s ours.”
“Yes,” Eames agreed, looking a little quizzical now.
“All day, every time I’ve asked you anything, you’ve deferred to me. You never do that. I just asked you where you wanted to live the rest of your life, and you basically told me to pick. That’s not you.”
“I…do that sometimes,” said Eames lamely. “Trust your judgment.”
“That’s not what this is. I’m not going to take her from you if you push back a little. I’m not going to disappear with her because you happen to like peas and want her to have peas. You don’t have to do all of this my way, and I don’t want you to, because she’s ours. When we forge the papers, we’ll forge her to be ours. I want you to say, ‘Fuck you, Arthur, I’ll put mismatched socks on her if I want to, stop being such an uptight prick.’”
Eames looked at him for a very long moment, his eyes inscrutable. Then he lifted a hand and cupped it along the back of Arthur’s head, half-cradling him and half-holding him in place. And he said, “I walked out that day, and I think it might have given you the impression that I’m willing to gamble with you, and with her, and with this, and I’m not. I panicked as soon as I walked out the door that I’d waited for years for you and just thrown you away. This is important to me, you are important to me, and she is important to me, and I want the two of you to be so blindingly happy—”
“Listen to me,” Arthur said, and closed his hands in Eames’s shirt and pulled him close, close enough to press their foreheads together, close enough to catch his mouth in a quick, breathless kiss. “I don’t want you to forge for me. Never forge for me. I don’t want you to try to figure out what you think I want from you, who you think you have to be. You have to be you. Just you.”
“You say that like it’s simple,” managed Eames into the lack of space between them.
“It will be,” said Arthur. “Eventually. You’ll get used to being loved like this.”
Eames crushed him to him, dragged him onto his lap and kissed him messily and stripped him of his clothing even more messily.
“Fuck the fucking bedroom,” Eames said thickly, when he pulled back briefly.
“Agreed,” said Arthur.
***
“So where do you want to live?” asked Arthur, curled in sweaty, uncomfortable post-coital bliss. “You’d go crazy in an American suburb, don’t pretend you wouldn’t.” Arthur kissed his chest to show that didn’t bother him.
“Oh, and you’d take to it like a fish to water?” said Eames, combing at Arthur’s wrecked hair.
Arthur chuckled. “So it ought to be a city, somewhere.”
“I was thinking.”
“Mmm,” said Arthur, marveling at how comfortable Eames’s chest was.
“Have you ever been to Lisbon?”
Arthur considered. “Once. Years ago.” He shifted so he could see Eames. “Do you like Lisbon?”
“I do. The people are friendly, the city’s charming, the climate’s good, and it’s got a decent location. Plus, neither one of us has spent much time there.”
“Little chance we’d run into people who know us.”
“Exactly.”
The idea was kind of attractive. He didn’t remember Lisbon one way or the other, because that job had been demanding and he’d never really come up for air. But he trusted Eames’s judgment on it. “Do you speak Portuguese?”
“Well enough to flirt,” said Eames.
Arthur rolled his eyes.
“Do you speak Portuguese?” Eames asked him.
“No, but I can learn. It’s not far from Spanish, we should both be able to pick it up. I considered Spain for her, you know? But we’ve both worked too many jobs in Spain. Portugal is a good idea.”
“We’ll take a trip there and make sure you really like it. Now what’s next on your to-do list?”
“We have to pick a birthday for her.”
“About how old do you think she is?”
“Let’s say she’s eight months,” said Arthur. “So if we work our way backward—”
“Let’s say New Year’s Day,” said Eames. “We might be a couple of weeks off but we’ve no way of knowing and I like the idea of her birthday being the first day of the year. Clean slate. I’ve always been attracted to the idea of clean slates.”
“January 1,” said Arthur. “It’ll give us something to celebrate every New Year’s.”
“Like we wouldn’t have anything to celebrate otherwise?”
“It’ll give us something extra to celebrate.”
“Now tell me about this job,” prompted Eames.
Arthur stretched and snuggled harder against him. “They want me very badly. I’ll have to travel sometimes but they’ve made it very clear that they’ll come to me. If I tell them they need to send their people to Lisbon to see me, they won’t even blink.”
“Well, at least I approve of their opinion of your value,” remarked Eames.
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know. Take jobs here and there, I suppose, if it works for us. I was joking before, when I pretended to have no money. I have plenty of money. I can pull my weight for a bit.”
“I’m not worried about that,” said Arthur. “What about painting?”
“Forging like that is so finicky and annoying,” said Eames. “It’s why I switched to dream forgery.”
“No, I mean: painting whatever you like. Painting for you. We’ll find a place with a studio and you could be a painter, if you wanted.” Arthur shifted so he could see him again.
Eames looked thoughtful. “I’ve never really thought about that before.”
“Maybe you should,” said Arthur lightly. “Anyway, we’ll see what you think when we get to Lisbon. We don’t have to figure everything out right now.”
“You want to go to Lisbon without a plan?” Eames lifted his eyebrows. “Who are you, and what have you done with my Arthur?”
“Must be one of the side effects of your narcotic-laced semen,” said Arthur.
***
Arthur fell in love with Lisbon at first sight, which gratified Eames, who had been a little nervous about the proposal. But Arthur loved the age of the city, loved the tipsy buildings on the steep hills, loved the profusion of sidewalk cafes, loved the food, even loved the language, tumbling into it easily. Lucky seemed taken with it as well, smiling widely at everyone.
They found a place in the middle of the city, walking distance to everything they might desire, with lots of light and lots of room, and Arthur hinted at a studio space for Eames, even though Eames was bewildered by his insistence on it.
It was so oddly, amazingly simple to fall into the rhythm of life with Arthur and Lucky. Eames sat and forged papers for her and Arthur tried to coax her into walking and spoke careful English and Spanish and Portuguese to her (he said he’d start on the French and Japanese and Korean later). In the evenings, they walked her along the narrow streets as the sun set, and everyone was friendly to them and cooed at their adorable baby. They became regulars at the place down the street, dropping in frequently, until they were addressed by name.
It was Eames who made friends, because Eames always did. He took Lucky to parks sometimes during the day while Arthur worked, and eventually he struck up conversations with the mothers with babies that he met there. Some natives, some expats, and eventually he somehow found himself convincing Arthur to host dinner parties with him, as if they were a completely normal couple and Eames wasn’t working on his fifth full set of illegal passports for all of them, just in case they had to make a quick getaway.
Arthur had to take a business trip in the fall. Eames was inclined to go along, but Arthur demurred and told him to stay home with the baby.
Which made Eames suspicious, but he let Arthur have his way. Stuck at home with very little to do, he found himself having long, one-sided conversations with Lucky, who listened intently and seemed to understand. And, during one of those conversations, he found himself saying, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should start painting.”
And when Arthur came home there was a studio where he had said there ought to be.
He stood in the doorway of it, Lucky on his hip. She was snuggled into him, her face against his neck, because she’d missed him desperately and was clearly going to be clingy for a little while.
Arthur smiled at him and said, “It’s fantastic.”
Eames looked at his one meager canvas. “Arthur, it’s literally an outline of a building.”
“But it’s going to be fantastic. I can tell. Lucky can tell, too.”
“It was all Lucky’s idea,” said Eames.
“Of course it was. She’s brilliant.” He shifted, holding her away a little bit so he could see her. “You’re brilliant, and I missed you terribly.” Arthur covered her in kisses while she giggled at him.
Eames smiled at the pair of them.
“I missed you, too,” Arthur said, turning toward him. “The Hong Kong whores aren’t nearly as good as I remembered.”
“Too bad,” Eames said, walking over to back him gently against the wall, careful of Lucky. “The Lisbon whores are bloody fantastic.”
Arthur was smiling when Eames kissed him. It was Eames’s favorite way to kiss Arthur.
That night, Eames looked at Arthur, sprawled on their couch reading with Lucky sound asleep on his chest, fist clutched into the expensive fabric of his shirt.
Arthur glanced up from his book and said, “I know you’re thinking I could go put her to bed, and I know, but we’re fine for now.”
Eames said honestly, “I was thinking how I don’t understand how this got to be my life.”
“You went and got yourself almost killed.”
“Thank God. I kept up on the news while you were away,” remarked Eames conversationally, leaning back in his chair.
“Did you?” Arthur was still pretending to be reading. “And what happened in the world while I was gone?”
“Increased economic sanctions against Iran, the stock market went down and then up in Tokyo, and a dog saved a cat from a burning building in Seville. Touching public interest story.”
Arthur made an interested sound and flipped the page of his book.
“And also, I couldn’t help but notice, a drug lord went missing in Nicaragua.”
“Missing?” said Arthur blandly. “Really? How dreadful.”
“They think he’s probably dead. But I tend to doubt they’re going to find the body. I have this sneaking suspicion he was killed by someone fastidiously thorough.”
“I’m sure the Nicaraguan police will do everything they can to find the killer,” said Arthur, straight-faced.
Eames chuckled. “Did you think I wasn’t going to find out that you stopped over in Nicaragua?”
“Why would I stop in Nicaragua when I was flying between Hong Kong and Lisbon?” inquired Arthur.
“Stop it,” said Eames good-naturedly. “I know exactly which identity you used for the travel. I made you that identity.”
Arthur was silent for a moment. He put his book aside and smoothed his hand over Lucky’s head and said, finally, “He was a loose end. I hate loose ends.”
“I know. I’m glad you did it. Did you think I’d be angry? Aside from the fact that he was going to kill her, he was also going to kill me. I fully support your ridding the world of him.”
“I wanted you to have plausible deniability,” Arthur said. “If something happened…I didn’t want anyone to be able to implicate you. I wanted you to still have Lucky, free and clear.”
“And what would I have done if something had gone wrong? If you just never came home?”
Arthur looked across at him. “That’s why I used an identity you had made. I wanted you to be able to track me, if you had to. I knew you’d know what I was doing. If anything happened.”
It wasn’t that Eames didn’t understand why Arthur had done what he did, and it wasn’t even that Eames was angry about it. It was just that he was terrified to think of how wrong it could have gone, how Arthur could have died alone in Nicaragua and Eames would have been oblivious in Lisbon. He said, “Next time you decide to murder someone, tell me. We ought to be co-conspirators. I’m sure that’s what the fraudulent marriage certificate I just drew up for us means.”
Arthur chuckled. “I’m hoping that I’m done murdering people. Isn’t that what it means to go legit?”
“How is it anyway?” Eames asked. “Are you happy?”
Arthur smiled at him and said, “Yes.”
***
In the end they decided on a clean slate for both of them. Arthur stayed Arthur, and Eames officially gave himself Eames as a first name, but they chose an entirely different last name for both of them and gave it to Lucky as well. Arthur would have preferred to change their names entirely, but he confessed to being somewhat attached to both of them, and Eames decided that the possibility that they’d be tracked now that Arthur had got rid of Lucky’s father was remote. They had made enemies in dreamsharing but no recent ones, and Eames thought it unlikely anyone would come after them for old grudges that could have been avenged at much earlier times. So they left their names. And Arthur gave Lucky the middle name Emily, in case, he said, she didn’t like her unusual name.
“She loves her unusual name,” Eames protested. “Don’t you, Lucky? Do you love your name, Lucky?”
Lucky, her beloved cat toy in her mouth, smiled delightedly at Eames.
They tested the new papers by going to Vienna in early December. Arthur had volunteered to do some training for some corporate VIP, and Eames had always been partial to Vienna and was itching for a little bit of a trip, so it seemed a perfect excuse.
Which was how he was standing in a Vienna Christmas market holding Lucky and saying to Arthur, “Darling, you’re being a spoilsport. I think the wreath is gorgeous.”
“Charlie!” someone shouted, and Eames started, looking off to his left, where the exclamation had come from.
Arthur was saying, “I think it’s tacky and garish. It’s got, like, sixteen different patterns. That isn’t necessary. Hear that, Lucky? You can do multiple patterns, but their scale has to complement each other. This wreath is violating—”
Eames wasn’t paying attention to Arthur. Eames was staring fixedly at the man walking inexorably toward them in the Christmas market.
Who said, “Holy Christ, it is you,” and stopped in front of him and looked generally expectant.
Eames said awkwardly, “Hello.”
“At first I couldn’t be sure it was you, because here you are holding a baby.” He crouched down a bit to talk to Lucky directly. “Hello, little child of Charlie. What are you called?”
Eames was completely thrown. Arthur was still standing by the wreath they’d been debating, eyebrows lifted. Eames said, “This is, um, Arthur.”
“Hello, Arthur,” said William to the baby.
“No, no, this is Arthur,” Eames said, and gestured toward Arthur.
William blinked in momentary confusion, then said, “Oh. Right. Arthur. Sorry. How nice to meet you.” He extended a hand.
Arthur shook it evenly, looking not the least bit thrown by any of this. Because Arthur never looked thrown by anything.
“This is my brother William,” Eames explained.
“Who I’m sure he never mentions,” said William jovially. “Considering we weren’t invited to any wedding. Or informed of the birth of any child. Not even a birth announcement.” William fixed him with a hard look. “Unless you’ve started working as a nanny and the child isn’t yours?”
“We didn’t send out birth announcements,” said Eames, still feeling out of his depth, because he always did when it came to his family, always felt like he didn’t know the contents of the rulebook they’d apparently all been given at birth and that somehow had overlooked him, always felt like he wasn’t and could never be what they expected, no matter his talent at forgery. For instance, he was quite sure William had never expected to come across his little brother holding a baby in a Vienna Christmas market with his lover beside him.
“Well, let’s start with the little one’s name,” suggested William, sounding not the least bit surprised by this situation, sounding, in fact, as if he’d stopped being surprised by Eames’s failure to do anything in a usual way.
“She’s called Lucky,” said Eames.
As if confirming that nothing could surprise him, William made none of the What an interesting name! comments they got from almost everyone else. William just said, “Hello, Lucky. Welcome to the family that you surely know absolutely nothing about.”
“I didn’t…” said Eames, because he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t close to his family and never had been, and it had never occurred to him to tell all of them on their remote English estate that he had forged himself a marriage to a world-renowned criminal mastermind and together they’d fake-adopted a drug lord child they’d kidnapped.
“We adopted Lucky,” said Arthur, saving him. “It isn’t even finalized yet. We didn’t want to make all sorts of grand announcements if it turned out we’d have to give her back.”
“Oh,” said William, looking between them, and Eames watched him connect the dots. Eames had never had made any grand proclamations about his sexuality, mostly because Eames had done as little talking about himself with his family as possible. His family, actually, did as little talking about anything besides the weather and fox-hunting anyway. William continued, “Oh, of course. I didn’t even think of how much bureaucratic process must be involved in… Well. Anyway. What are you doing in Vienna? Do you live here now?”
“No,” said Eames, and didn’t say where they did live, because he was a terrible person who just didn’t want William banging down their door babbling about sending Lucky to some boarding school somewhere because of her important family history or whatever. “Do you live here now?”
“No, no, just here on business and thought maybe I’d have a poke around, see if I could get some Christmas shopping done. How…lucky, eh?” William chucked Lucky under the chin and laughed uproariously.
Eames didn’t know what to do with any of this. He hadn’t expected William to show up and he wasn’t comfortable enough in the life he was leading to know how to play the role of Happy Family Man Eames right now. So he looked to Arthur for help, because in job after job Eames had looked to Arthur for help when he needed to buy himself time to put on his face. It was instinctive. “Arthur,” he said. “Didn’t you say that we had—”
“Reservations, yes,” said Arthur, picking up his cue effortlessly, because Arthur always did. “Sorry, but it took me ages to get us in; we’ve got to go.”
“Of course, of course. It really was good to see you, Charlie. You should come and visit. Mum and Dad would be chuffed to see the little one. None of us ever did understand why you ran the way you did.” William hesitated. “Did you think we’d be upset about…” Then he said firmly to Arthur, “It’s lovely to meet you. Welcome to the family.” And then he gave Arthur a determined kiss on the cheek and a hug.
Eames felt his jaw drop. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen William hug anyone. Even Arthur blinked in almost comical shock after William had walked away.
Then Arthur said, “I’ve decided Lucky doesn’t like puns. We might not have thought through her name.”
“Christ,” said Eames, distressed, “of all the places to run into family. It never even occurred to me—”
“Stop, it’s fine. I’m going to pay for this stupid wreath you want and then we’ll go back to the hotel.”
Eames watched Arthur pay for the wreath and then he said, fretting, hearing himself babble helplessly, “There’s really nothing wrong with any of them. I just don’t belong and never belonged and it was easier to run away. And then look at what we do for a living, Arthur. How was I supposed to go home and lie and lie and lie about what it was I was doing with my life? I mean, I could have, but was it really worth the effort?”
“It’s your family,” said Arthur calmly, “so it’s your call. But if you want to at least introduce Lucky to them, if you want them to know that she exists and I exist and that you’re happy and taken care of and they can stop worrying about you, which they seem to do in their free time, then it’s fine with me.”
“We have this dreadful old house, Arthur. It’s stiff and drafty and everyone and everything is pretentious, it’s, like, black tie for dinner.”
“Lucky for you I look good in a tux,” rejoined Arthur calmly.
***
In the end it wasn’t as bad as Eames had been dreading. They spent three days at the family estate and everyone was incredibly polite to Arthur and doted over Lucky. It wasn’t exactly a delightful free-for-all of a family reunion, and there was the usual eggshell brittleness to their interactions, but Eames thought they just weren’t good at being anything else. He thought it was clear that they loved him and were pleased to see him, and that they didn’t mind that he’d brought a husband in tow, and that they were delighted by the baby and not at all affected by the fact that she was adopted.
It was interesting, thought Eames, that when it came to falling in love for the last time, for the time that was going to last him the rest of his life, he’d chosen Arthur, who was controlled and reserved in his own way, who made him work so hard for the intimate smiles, for the brushes of affection. And Eames loved that about Arthur, cherished his dimples and snuggles and silly jokes all the more for the fact that he knew they were rare and hard-won and special.
Eames hadn’t thought hard about his family in years, but seeing Arthur juxtaposed against them, smoothly formalistic in a way that thrilled them, he realized that he had somehow decided to spend the rest of his life coaxing love from an outwardly reserved person, in much the same way that he had spent his childhood. And knowing that, in some very real way, his parents had influenced the fact that he had ended up with Arthur and was now happier than he’d ever imagined being, everything about home seemed more bearable.
They flew straight to California from England, because Arthur thought that they might as well visit his parents while they were in the habit of being social.
Arthur’s parents were not at all what Eames would have expected. They were both very…Irish-looking. They were all red hair and freckles. And they were exuberant in their affection. Arthur was still so emotionally reserved, even when he was being effusive, that Eames had assumed he’d been raised in a house without much demonstrative love, like Eames himself, but he was very wrong about that. Arthur’s parents wrapped him up in bear hugs as soon as they saw him, and exulted over how happy they were that Arthur had found someone, and how they just knew he must be delightful, and they couldn’t wait to get to know him a little bit better, and did he golf because they loved golfing and Arthur hated it but they would love to go golfing with Eames and exchange embarrassing Arthur stories. Eames thought they were in danger of fainting with rapture over him, and that was before they even saw Lucky.
Arthur said mildly, “Please give Eames some breathing room,” carrying Lucky in her car seat around the side of the rental car.
His parents peered in at her and made exclamations of how perfect she was.
“Let me at least get her inside so you can see her properly,” Arthur told them, all calm pragmatism, and Eames realized with amusement that Arthur had been practicing to run point among excitable teams his entire life.
Lucky showed off for them as much as possible. She had followed Arthur’s lead and picked up on Eames’s stiff uncertainty and been somewhat withdrawn at Eames’s family’s house, a little fussy and difficult and judgmental, less prone to her usual giddy smiles. But she shifted, chameleon-like, in the very different atmosphere of Arthur’s parents’ place.
“She’s a born forger,” commented Arthur drily, watching Lucky flirt her way into another cartoon on television. “Gives people who they want. Good thing she’s got you to make sure she doesn’t lose sight of herself entirely.”
“Really?” replied Eames. “Because I was going to say good thing she’s got you for that.”
Arthur’s parents’ house was all mid-century modern, with low, sleek furniture that reminded Eames of Arthur himself, and Lucky took to pulling herself up and walking around the perfectly sized coffee tables and chaise lounges. Arthur’s parents kept trying to tempt her into her first steps, holding gaily wrapped gifts just out of her reach. Lucky would give them an oh, please look and drop to all fours and crawl easily over to them, and then Arthur’s mother would usually say, “Oh, aren’t you sweet?” and catch her up and smother her with kisses.
Which always made Eames hide a smile, because Arthur wasn’t very much like his parents but he did smother Lucky with kisses a lot, most of the time when he thought Eames wasn’t watching.
He said to Arthur, keeping his voice low as they lay in bed one night in the cramped guest room, Lucky sleeping soundly in the portable cot that had been stuck at the foot of their bed, “This isn’t what I expected.”
“I know they’re a bit much,” said Arthur apologetically.
“They’re lovely. They think you walk on water, by the way.”
“They are lovely,” agreed Arthur ruefully. “They deserved a much better son than they got.”
“If you asked them, I’m fairly sure they’d say they lucked out to get you.”
“You say that because you’re stupidly besotted with me,” said Arthur, and hooked his foot around Eames’s ankle.
“Am I?”
“Yeah, I’ve been noticing it for a while now, but I’ve decided not to say anything, because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings by pointing out how incredibly ridiculous you’re being.”
“I appreciate that. That’s what I always say about you, you’re always worrying about hurting my feelings.”
“You are a delicate flower,” said Arthur.
***
It was Arthur’s idea that they be back in Lisbon for Christmas. Eames didn’t seem to care either way, but Arthur was oddly homesick. He wanted their life back. The visit with Eames’s family had been fraught for him because he had been so anxious to make a good impression, in a way that he hadn’t felt in years. And the visit with his parents was just making him feel guilty that he wasn’t better at all of the domestic things that other people seemed to effortlessly excel at.
Like spending Christmas with his family. Instead he was running back to Lisbon.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said to his mother awkwardly.
She was feeding Lucky happily, because his mother was happiest when she was fussing over Lucky. Lucky basically had her mouth hanging open like a baby bird, because eating was Lucky’s favorite time of day. To Lucky, eating ought to be all times of day.
“I understand, Arthur: You want to spend your first Christmas with your little family in your own home. You deserve that, of course. You ought to go and enjoy it.” His mother wiped up some baby food from Lucky’s chin and beamed at her. “But you will have to come back much more often now, because we cannot let you just disappear with this little one here, hmm?”
“We can Skype,” Arthur suggested.
“What’s that?” said his mother, glancing at him.
And Arthur experienced a sudden weird surge of affection for her. She had taken in a toddler no one else had wanted, and he had turned out to be the opposite of her temperament, and she had never blinked. She had just loved him anyway. “I’ll teach you,” he said. “You know, we have her because of you.”
His mother looked up at him, surprised.
“Nobody wanted her,” he said. “I was a little boy who nobody wanted, and you took me in, and all I could think was…that it was time for me to pay it forward.”
His mother’s gaze was soft on him. “Then you know, finally, what I think you never really understood before. You’re not my good deed, Arthur. You’re my blessing. You named her Lucky, as if you thought that you were the lucky one as a baby, and that now it’s her. But now you know: you were never the lucky one. Your father and I, we were the lucky ones. You’re not paying anything forward. You’re enjoying the biggest gift of your entire life.”
And suddenly, just like that, everything in Arthur’s head shifted into a different focus, like he’d twisted a kaleidoscope. Because he knew with certainty that he wouldn’t care who Lucky turned out to be. She could be opposite him in every way, and he would adore her anyway.
The way his parents had done with him.
And while he was in the middle of that epiphany, Lucky protested her starvation.
***
They stopped in New York on their way back across the country, and Eames insisted they ask Stephen to dinner. Stephen made much of Lucky and said she looked fantastic and he was pleased that Eames had no limp and barely noticed that he had ever been shot anymore. He was very smug with Arthur over how well things had turned out, which caused Eames to say that night as they lay in bed, “I really like your friend Stephen, you know, he’s a very clever bloke,” and Arthur had had to find a way to shut him up.
When they got back to Lisbon, Eames said he wanted to decorate for Christmas. Arthur said blankly that they had decorated, because he’d put the hideous Christmas wreath from Vienna up, and Eames had looked so crestfallen that Arthur had gone out the next day and found him a Christmas tree. Eames suggested, hesitantly, white lights and maroon ribbon on the tree.
“Classic,” he said. “Classy. Right?”
Arthur looked at him and thought of how automatically Eames forged, of how much Eames determined what you wanted and gave it to him. So Arthur bought them the most garish decorations he could think of for the tree, threw fluffy bright silver garland over everything in their apartment, wrapped blinking lights around neon tinsel. It was worth it for the way Eames’s face lit up, the way Lucky reached for all of the brightly colored objects in unmistakable delight. It was also worth it for the excellent fuck under the Christmas tree.
On Christmas morning Arthur woke to Eames next to him, to the sound of Lucky’s steady breathing over the baby monitor, and had the astonishing thought: You have everything you ever wanted. And a lot you never even thought to ask for.
Arthur shifted to drape himself over Eames and kissed him awake.
Eames murmured sleepily, “Happy Christmas, darling. Did you check to see if Father Christmas came?”
Arthur almost said something ridiculously sappy like Why would Father Christmas come here? What could he possibly bring us better than what we already have? He caught himself in time, though, and said instead, “I’m not worried about Father Christmas coming.”
Eames laughed.
***
Their Christmas Day was enormously lazy. They went a bit overboard with the presents for Lucky, and she was predictably much more impressed with the boxes and wrapping paper and bows, chasing her way through them.
Arthur gave Eames paints and paintbrushes and canvases. Eames gave Arthur a painting.
And in the afternoon, just as Eames was making them eggs because they both couldn’t be bothered with anything more complex, Lucky took her first step, one small toddle away from the coffee table, in the direction of the kitchen, where Arthur was standing debating with Eames the merits of tabasco sauce in eggs. He would remember that conversation for the rest of his life, because it was his statement of, “British people shouldn’t be allowed any fucking opinions on food—” that got cut off when he noticed Lucky’s step.
And that meant that the first batch of eggs got terribly burnt as they tried to convince Lucky to do it again.
On New Year’s Eve they spent the early evening applauding Lucky’s increasingly daring forays into walking.
“Let me take a selfie of us,” Arthur said, squeezing everyone together so they would fit.
“A selfie?” said Eames, sounding surprised.
“To send to Cobb.” Arthur took the picture, studied it, paused. “I may not have told him yet about…everything.”
Eames’s lips twitched. “So you’re going to break it all to him in a text?”
“It’s how I deal with emotional news,” Arthur informed Eames primly.
Eames grinned. “Break up with me in a text, darling, and I’ll break your legs.”
“How should I break up with you?”
Eames considered. “Never,” he suggested.
Arthur kissed him until Lucky complained about it. And then he sent their selfie to Cobb with the text: Happy New Year! Eames and I forged ourselves a marriage certificate and adopted a baby together. We’ll have to visit so you and the kids can meet her. And then he turned his phone off.
When Lucky fell asleep on the couch, Arthur made her a little fort to keep her safe, wanting to keep her close as the new year approached. Eames opened a very expensive bottle of champagne that he claimed to have stolen—Arthur was never sure when Eames was serious about stealing things—and suggested cards, which meant they cheated against each other progressively more outrageously, and Eames had crawled over a flung hand of cards to kiss a laughing Arthur on the floor, protesting his innocence, when the clock chimed midnight.
“Oh.” Eames lifted his head up and looked down at Arthur’s wide, dark eyes. “Happy New Year, love,” he said and carefully kissed each of Arthur’s cherished dimples.
“Happy New Year,” said Arthur, tipping his head to kiss Eames’s lips, and then he squirmed out from under him and want to throw open their windows. The celebrations on the streets below filtered up to them.
Eames walked over to him and tucked him up against him and looked at Lisbon at midnight on the dawn of a new year.
Eames said, “It’s official. We are tremendously old. We didn’t set foot outside on New Year’s Eve.”
“Hey,” said Arthur, “at least we stayed up until midnight.”
“Christ, let us never get so old and boring that you suggest going to bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve. Unless your purpose in so suggesting is a good shag.”
“Noted,” said Arthur. “Where were you last New Year’s Eve?”
“Belfast,” Eames said. “I don’t even remember what I did. Probably a pub crawl? I didn’t know anyone but the team, and I wasn’t friendly with them, and the night is a blur. Where were you?”
Arthur was silent for a second. Then he said, “Utah. I went skiing. Took myself on vacation. I was alone, and it was this brilliant night, cold and crisp, and there were all these stars above me and all this snow around me and it should have been so fucking beautiful, and I was wondering what I was doing with my life and if it was ever going to change, and whether or not I should call you and say, you know, let’s start a new year together.”
Eames pressed a kiss to Arthur’s clavicle and considered. “Are you serious?” Because he wasn’t sure.
“Yeah,” said Arthur.
“Hmm.” Eames took a breath. “I’d say you should have rung me, but I’m happy with how things turned out.”
“Not what I thought it would be like if I ever got you to spend a New Year’s Eve with me,” said Arthur.
“Better, I hope.”
“So far. I’ll let you know how the sex measures up later.”
“You have never stopped filling out bloody mental surveys about sex with me, have you?” remarked Eames good-naturedly.
“Don’t worry, you’re my highest-ranked sexual partner.”
“Five stars on Arthur’s Sexual Yelp, be still my heart.”
Arthur chuckled and turned to give him a swift, light kiss, before extracting himself from Eames’s arms and walking over to Lucky. “Happy New Year, little one,” he said. “And happy birthday.” He leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“I think it’s going to be a good year,” said Eames.
“It’d be hard to top this one,” said Arthur.
“But that won’t stop us from trying,” said Eames.