arthur and eames calling each other from halfway across the world! (can be established relationship or not idrc)
(this is REALLY BAD but it’s something soooo)
*
After the third ring, Arthur is ready to hang up. He isn’t quite sure what possessed him to call in the first place -- naivety, maybe. Or just impulse. Eames always incites a certain level of primal impulse in him. And he knows this isn’t safe. In fact, this might take the cake for the dumbest thing he’s done in the last six months (and that’s really saying something, considering he’s currently living in a shithole in Siberia due to circumstances that are entirely his own fault).
He moves his thumb toward the ‘end call’ button on the burner phone, and just when he’s about to press down there’s a click on the other line, and the shuffle of indistinct movement.
“‘Lo?” the voice on the other end of the line says. It’s more of a grunt than a word. Of course it’s still night in London, and Arthur knows this. But he’s never given much care to disrupting Eames’s sleeping habits, so why start now?
“This is stupid,” Arthur replies, because it is.
There’s silence for at least ten seconds, all of which Arthur spends staring harshly down at the grimy tile floor below his bare feet. The lack of response begins to fester in his mind and Arthur realizes, of course, Eames is furious with him. They’ve always had a very comprehensive plan if something like this happened to one of them, only sometimes plans have to get tossed to the wind when things go unexpectedly. And what happened the previous month in Lusaka was -- to say the absolute least -- unexpected. (How was Arthur supposed to know that Samir would betray him? Besides the fact that it’s his job to know these things, he’s human, and some people are smart enough to play ball in the same league as him. So when Samir led Arthur straight into a trap with the syndicate that’s been hunting him for months? Well… he had to act fast and carelessly to make it out of there alive).
“Eames, I--” Arthur starts.
“Where are you?” Eames suddenly sounds alert. Arthur can hear the mattress springs crunch in the background, and that one pesky creaky floorboard groan under his feet.
“You know it isn’t safe for me to say,” Arthur says. “I would have called earlier, except I shouldn’t even be calling now…”
“Arthur,” Eames breathes Arthur’s name and there’s a quiver to it, and it gives Arthur pause.
“What?”
Another pause, then --
“You’re alive.”
The words are muffled, like Eames is pressing his mouth to something, possibly his hand. Regardless, they splinter into Arthur’s chest in staccato jabs. Oh.
He’d spent the last month so disconnected from human contact in order to keep himself and everyone he loves safe, that never for a minute did he think that somehow word wouldn’t get out that he escaped with his life. Someone, somewhere, must have lied.
“I am.” Arthur pads over to a chair at the small kitchen table and leans against it with the hand not holding the phone. “I made it out. Somehow. It was messy.”
There’s silence again, and it seems to draw on even longer this time. Eames’s breathing on the other end is uneven. Arthur feels guilt rising in his throat like bile. I should have called sooner.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Eames, I’m so sorry. If I’d known… I would have called. I should have called.” Pursing his lips, he adds: “I just wanted to keep you safe and out of this nightmare.”
“Where are you?” Eames asks again, slightly more urgently.
“You know I can’t tell you. Obviously if I could, I already would have. These guys… Fu’s guys… they’re out of control. Completely unstable and dangerous.”
And then Arthur hears a noise that it takes a moment for his brain to register for what it is: laughter. Laughter. It’s light and airy and relieved and it knocks Arthur off-guard so much he shifts the phone to his other ear just to make sure he’s really hearing it.
“What the fuck,” he says.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Arthur, are you having a laugh? I thought you were dead. Do you really think they’re still out there looking for you? Any of them?”
Arthur sinks into the kitchen chair and blinks at the grease stains on the wall opposite him.
“Oh.”
“Did you really think… oh bloody fucking hell, Arthur, come home, you absolute git.”
“A git that’s still breathing,” Arthur reminds him, already rushing to shovel all of his belongings into his rucksack.
“Yes,” Eames sighs, sounding like he’s just run a marathon and a half. “Still breathing.”
