Work Text:
You watch him as he sleeps, inky eyelashes fluttering gently against pale cheeks. His chest rises and falls in time with his steady, rhythmic breathing, and you wonder if he’s dreaming about you. You dreamt about him that night -- the way his lips feel against the hollow of your neck, how his tongue loves to trace the hard line of your jaw. He hasn’t touched you like that in at least a week, probably more, and you miss it; you crave it, really, like a drowning man craves a lifesaving breath of air. Eames stirs, curling in closer to your body, an unconscious habit of the past few years of sharing the same bed. You try not to let it give you false hope but your heart skips a tiny beat anyway. Fucking stupid thing.
Your fingers curl ever so slightly around his, and you smile as you remember just how perfectly they fit.
+++
Three more weeks pass - three weeks of not enough touching, too much silence, and even more secrets - before you realize the two of you haven’t even sat down to a meal together in ages. It’s only when he stumbles home just past sunrise (you’re awake because you never did sleep well when his warmth wasn’t by your side) that you finally notice how exhausted he looks; the job is slowly taking its toll on him. He’s still the most beautiful sight in the world, as far as your eyes are concerned, but there are lines of worry in that breathtaking face that weren’t there just months ago. His job, the one he can’t talk about so you don’t ask about it, has kept him out overnight yet again. You’ve just made a pot of tea so you ask him to join you, and try not to act too surprised when he actually pulls out the chair across from you.
Eames’ eyes are dull, almost lifeless you notice, as he shrugs out of his worn leather jacket. You place a steaming cup of Earl Grey in front of him (two sugars and just a touch of lemon), and he looks up, mumbles thank you in a slightly hoarse voice. You idly wonder who he was shouting at or laughing with at work but you say nothing, just smile at him and go back to your tea and toast. Eames is silent for a long while, the only sounds coming from him being the intermittent sip sip sip as he drains his cup. A thousand questions burn through your mind, each one more important than the last: where were you last night; are you hurt; why won’t you talk to me anymore; do you still love me. But you can’t ask a single one; the answers might be more than you can bear.
When he finally does speak it startles you, the silence so heavy that you’d thought nothing could pierce it. You look up with an embarrassed little cough, ask him what he’d said. Tea’s good, and there is a crooked smile accompanying the words. It’s more like the shadow of a smile, the bright and blinding smile with the hint of dimples that used to dazzle you, the smile you haven’t seen in so long. Still, it’s more than Eames has given you in quite some time so you can’t help but smile back. His eyes don’t seem as dead any more, and you can feel your heart starting to race even though you don’t know why.
The way he lets his hand brush your arm as he gets up to take a shower sets your skin on fire.
+++
The first time Eames kisses you in a month you can barely remember to breathe. His lips are pressed to yours, moving with such uncertainty that it feels like the first time all over again -- just gone midnight in the warehouse, Eames practically trembling as he curled his fingers at the back of your neck. You don’t know why he’s decided to kiss you but you don’t exactly care to ask. It feels too good, too familiar, and you don’t want it to ever stop. It does, eventually, but the trade off is Eames pushing you back into the cushions of the couch, eyes ablaze with a lust for you that you thought you’d never see again.
He fucks you slow at first, palms taking time to reclaim scarred skin long abandoned, whispering inaudible nothings into your collarbone, cursing softly against your neck to let you know how good it is. Eames is once again the man you fell in love with, all tenderness when it’s least expected with soft touches and softer kisses. You try not to think about the fact that he doesn’t look at you; after going for so long with little more than small talk passing between the two of you, you think better than to question this.
Eames holds back as long as he can, then he starts to move faster, hips snapping forward almost aggressively. He flips you over onto your stomach, the harsh fabric of the old couch rubbing your cheek almost raw but you don’t care at that point. The gentle touch is gone, and now he’s fucking you with abandon, short grunts and soft growls rumbling low in his chest. You take the affection (or is it really just attention) from him any way you can get it, ignoring the sharp pain behind your eyes as he bites almost savagely at the back of your shoulder. It’s not like Eames has never been a bit rough before; This doesn’t mean anything, you tell yourself as he grabs roughly at you, pulls and strokes until you’re coming. He isn’t quite done yet, hands clutching so hard at your hips that you can almost feel the bruises blossoming beneath his fingertips, still fucking you into the couch even though you’re trembling and breathless.
It isn’t much longer until Eames comes, too, and your name tumbles out from between his lips in a choked whisper. His weight feels comforting as it collapses onto your back, sweat-slick skin sticking together, his ragged breaths puffing against the shell of your ear. You can’t remember the last time Eames laid tangled with you like this, the heady scent of Eames and sex clouding your senses and taking over your mind. For just a moment, your brain supplies the pleasant illusion that things are back to normal and you almost begin to believe it.
Until Eames pushes off you and pads into the bathroom with not so much as a word to you, let alone the three you had fooled yourself into thinking you were about to hear.
+++
The next morning Eames is gone before the sun rises, and you know it’s not because of you; it’s just a part of his routine now that the his job demands more of him than any other he’s ever had. But he’d slept as far on his side of the bed last night as he possibly could have, and things weren’t any different at all. You lay in bed for over an hour, holding back the stupid tears that you tell yourself you are far too old too shed, mulling things over in your confused brain. In the end you figure that he had just needed it as badly as you did, and it wasn’t anything more than a rash response to a physical impulse. He probably regretted it as much a you regretted not seeing the encounter for what it really was.
After a too-hot shower that leaves your skin just slightly red all over, you stumble into the kitchen for a cuppa. If there had been any vodka in the house, you think you would’ve gone for that instead but the Darjeeling will have to serve its purpose (you just know that Eames used the last of the Earl Grey for himself). A small, folded square of paper on the table catches your eye but you ignore it for the time being because the kettle isn’t going to start itself.
As the water slowly begins to heat you sit down and pick up the paper, turning it over in your hands a few times before actually looking at it. You try not to work yourself into a panic; it doesn’t have to be a goodbye letter - it might just be the grocery list. It’s not until you can’t seem to unfold the damn thing that you realize your hands are shaking. Get it together, you scold yourself, pausing to close your eyes and take a deep breath. You resolve to just pull open the paper, nearly tearing it in your haste to see whether or not your world is about to crumble around you.
Happy birthday, darling, reads the messy, familiar scrawl. It takes a minute before it hits you , and you have to get up to glance at the calendar hanging crookedly on the side of the refrigerator. The tenth of March. Your birthday. You hadn’t even realized the date, the days of inattention and loneliness blurring together for so long. And Eames had remembered. There is no gift, just the note, but it means more to you than anything he’s ever given you. Because even with the severe strain on your relationship, the confusion of the night spent on the couch together after week upon week of nothing, the lies you’re both forced to tell each other and the secrets that exist where there were none before, even with all of that Eames managed to remember your birthday. To someone else, it might have been too little too late; what was a simple note when things were so broken between two people who were supposed to be in love?
Not to you, though. You can’t help the smile that just curves the corners of your mouth as you carefully refold the note and tuck it into the palm of your hand. You get up and walk into the bedroom, pull out the small box you’ve tucked away in the back of the closet. You open it and run a finger over the contents -- your old Edith Piaf record, one of Eames’ hideous plaid ties, a length of frayed ribbon that had been wrapped around the square of fudge Eames bought you on your first “real” date, various bits and pieces of your life together -- then you lay the note inside. You promptly hide the box away once more, not allowing yourself enough time to turn into a great, big girl over the entire thing. But the smile never quite leaves your face the entire day because you know, even if it’s fleeting and over by the next sunset, that Eames still cares.
You ignore the small voice in the back of your head that insists he might even still love you.
+++
Eames sleeps on the couch for the next four nights, and you’re almost smug as you tell the voice in your head how foolish it had been.
(Smug because the alternative is to let the hole in your chest rip open even further, and you don‘t think you‘re strong enough to heal from that no matter how many tortures, whether in dreams or reality, you’ve endured.)