Arthur shoots himself in the head in his childhood dining room, wakes up in a cold sweat.
"What the fuck?" he asks, rising up from his chair to glare at Eames, pulling out his own line.
"My mistake, love," Eames says, apologetic, but Arthur can see it, he's not sorry at all.
"You had no right," Arthur says, pulling his gun. Everyone else around them stiffens, freezing in place. Eames, the bastard, smiles and shrugs.
Arthur's finger trembles on the trigger before he stalks out of their shitty offices. He quits the job the next day.
The truth is, his mother is dead. But he remembers her kitchen, their dining room. Eames had conjured it up perfectly, somehow dredging up the details, letting Arthur fill the space. He hates how unguarded he had been back then, hair-trigger anger, letting everything get to him.
Now, he watches as Eames picks the lock on the backdoor of his old house. The paint is new, some awful yellow color Arthur flinches at, but the bones are the same. Eames is wearing a hideous pink shirt, stooping down to door level.
Arthur smokes his cigarette and waits against the railing. The family is on vacation in Greece, and it isn't like they anticipated two ex-military thieves breaking in over spring break. The lock takes Eames a matter of minutes, despite the alarm, and Arthur sits at the same dining table.
"Scratching the itch?" Eames asks, plucking the cigarette from Arthur's mouth and putting it to his. Arthur glares, but only partly.
He looks around at his former home, the mundane, ordinary paraphernalia, the clock he used to watch during dinner. Arthur takes a breath in, the unfamiliar smell of a new family, and nods.
Eames pulls his gun out from his waistband, sets it on the table, and sits next to him. Arthur leans in, lets Eames put an arm around his shoulder.
"If you want to aim that at me, for old times' sake, I'll understand."
Arthur laughs, caught by surprise. He shakes his head and picks up the gun, looking at it. It's Eames's favorite, this old marbled thing with etchings on it that Arthur can't decipher. It has character, Eames insists. Arthur thinks it has shit recoil, but that's neither here nor there.
"No, I think I got that out of my system a couple years ago."
Eames laughs privately, this soft thing, and Arthur can feel it. "Good to know, darling. Good to know."
Arthur relaxes into him, lets the time pass.
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