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The last work day before Christmas, Dom walks in on Mal and Eames in the stock room during lunch hour. There's a lot of cursing and 'I don't believe this!' (Dom) and uncontrollable giggling too flushed with the heady charm of fresh romance to be empathetic or kind (Mal). Eames keeps glancing at Arthur, drawn by the raised voices, like they're sharing a good inside joke, like three years past means there are no wounds to be torn open even as Dom and Mal are practically spitting their own blood, six months still fresh at each other across boxes of toner and rolls of paper. Arthur goes back up to the front and spends an hour reorganizing the ornaments on the scraggly plastic Christmas tree.
At three o'clock, Dom comes back from an errand with a bottle of scotch and declares it happy hour. It's Friday, so no one objects to his unhealthy coping mechanisms. Yusuf, who has a giant toner stain across the front of his shirt, takes one look at Mal and Eames and their pathetic attempts to look bashful and throws up his hands.
"I live in a soap opera."
"My question," says Ariadne, the architecture student from the bakery next door who had come in one day to get prints for a project done and never left, "Is how you're going to explain to James and Phillipa that Mommy is now dating uncle Eames and daddy is dating uncle Arthur because uncle Eames and uncle Arthur had a divorce just like mommy and daddy and no, ok, but really, doesn't this strike anyone else as a little incestuous?"
"Are love is true and untainted," Arthur says, expressionless. Dom glances over at him fondly. Arthur twitches.
"Mal and I share the bond of strangers in a strange land," Eames says, pressing his hands together. "The connection of living on a continent not our own--"
"Let's not go calling you continental, darling," Mal cuts in.
"There, you see, I knew that was coming-- stop it, don't hit me you horrid Frenchwoman, help help I'm being oppressed; it's like that time the French won a battle-- oh wait."
"What were you saying about your love?" Yusuf asks dryly. Eames inches further away from Mal and her sharp elbows.
"Love in a distant land, love in--"
"Love in the time of ammonia and ha ha ha joke's on you it's raining again, motherfucker, were you expecting glamour?" Ariadne pours herself more scotch. Arthur, as the only other native of the city, clinks his glass against hers in camaraderie.
"It’s illegal to use ammmonia,” Eames says. “And it rains in every international city, darling. London, Vancouver. Only difference here is you don't have to pay the robots who run the trains."
"Where the fuck's my fucking train?!" Yusuf and Ariadne sing in unison. Eames nods wisely.
"Just so."
Dom looks like he's going to start crying into his glass of scotch. Mal is wrestling with a tube of blueprints, trying to get an elastic on one-handed while she cradles her glass possessively in the other. Ariadne shakes her head.
"What do you say, Yusuf, shall we start up an elicit affair?" Ariadne flutters her eyelashes. "I'm feeling left out."
"I'm married," Yusuf says, holding up his hands. "How do you think I got out of Mal and Eames creepy x-pat sexcapades?"
"There's always Saito," Mal calls over. The elastic band flies out of her hand and half way across the room.
"That has to be a conflict of interest," Ariadne says, frowning. "Does it count if he owns the strip mall where you work? I mean, obviously Mal and Dom have no problem dating employees, but--"
"I'm kind of uncomfortable with this conversation," Arthur says. Eames pats his knee.
"There there, this can only end favourably. Haven’t you seen Secretary?"
Arthur blushes scarlet. Eames smiles brightly. Ariadne makes a horrified noise. "And suddenly everything makes far more sense than I ever wanted it to."
"Have more scotch," Yusuf advices her. She does.
"He's at least got you to move out of Surry," Eames says lightly.
"And right into Stepford," Arthur retorts. "My neighbour dropped off a casserole last week because she'd heard I had the flu. Real people do not do that."
"Langley can't be all that bad," Eames shrugs.
"The president of the strata council greeted me personally when I moved in to Dom's place. There're monthly meetings."
"On the bright side, we don't have to worry about you getting mugged on your way home from work every day," Ariadne says.
The phone rings. Arthur jerks up to grab it, but Dom holds up a hand. Mal licks a drop of scotch off her upper lip and yells towards the nearest handset "Busy drinking, sorry!"
"You guys are the best role models," Ariadne says earnestly.
"We try, ma chère," Mal says, walking over to drape herself over the back of Eames' chair. Eames tips his head back to nuzzle at her neck.
"Can we pretend that you guys are still a secret?" Dom asks listlessly. Arthur moves to pat his knee in patronizing reassurance then realizes what an Eames thing it is to do and stops. Eames smirks at him because the bastard never misses a thing, is always watching everyone in the room no matter how distracted he might seem.
Arthur likes to think of himself as a pragmatist, which is practically a requirement to stay sane working with people as passionate and high-strung as Dom and Eames and Mal. He'd known his thing with Eames wasn't going to go anywhere, just like he'd seen Mal and Dom's marriage falling apart long before they had, just like he's known that he quietly, inconveniently fucking imprinted on Dom three weeks after they first met almost six years ago. He supposes this is what people mean when they say they're "in love", the private fear that Dom will leave him, the way he doesn't get angry when Dom uses the last of the toothpaste, the way he's willing to live with two children just so that he can go to sleep next to Dom every night. He's listened to Mal and Dom tell stories of their first years of charming French romance, watched vaguely uncomfortably while Eames fell all over himself to give Arthur anything he could possibly want, and now he can see the way Mal and Eames can barely stand to stay away from each other, their inside jokes and uncontrollable grins. It's disappointing, in an abstract sort of way, when his own feelings for Dom had been entirely content to lie quiet and unobtrusive at the back of his mind, and, when Dom had approached him, shy and tentative two months after splitting with Mal, his feelings had simply rolled over and settled back to sleep, a bit more comfortable and sated but otherwise unchanged. He thinks the ridiculous rush of love could be fun, even as it strikes him as entirely impractical and unrealistic.
"You're thinking very loudly, darling," Eames says. Dom has gone up to the front to deal with a customer, and Mal is showing Ariadne and Yusuf something on her phone. Eames stands close beside Arthur's chair, hands clasped behind his back.
"I'm concerned that I'm settling," Arthur says before he can think better of it.
Eames glances towards Dom and shakes his head, laughing under his breath. "Listen, pet. You're always going to go back to him, you know that as well as I do. You try and move on, find something better, and you're just going to leave a trail of disappointment in your wake when you realize that none of them are Dominic fucking Cobb."
"If you say the words 'true love'..."
Eames coughs on his swallow of scotch. "I was actually going to go with unhealthily loyal, Stockholm syndrome, creepily devoted... shall I go on?"
"Wow," says Arthur flatly. "You have been so helpful, I don't know why we ever broke up."
Eames presses his lips together. "Haven't the foggiest." He walks away, which is probably the smart choice, and Arthur is left alone in the corner with his drink and his maudlin contemplations. Having sent the customer on their way with a celebratory candy cane and an unwieldy package, Dom picks up his glass from where he'd hidden it behind a poinsettia and comes over to stand where Eames had been beside Arthur’s chair.
"What's wrong?" he asks, hand falling lightly to Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur shrugs.
"Nothing."
Dom's eyebrows go up. "Try again."
Arthur frowns in surprise. Dom is incredibly oblivious except when he isn't at all and as much as he knows that Dom is actually very good at people when he wants to be it still shamefully takes Arthur by surprise when he sees it in casual action.
"I'm having a momentary midlife crisis fifteen years too early," he says, glib but honest.
Dom squeezes his shoulder. "Holidays do that to people."
"*People* do that to people," Arthur says, glancing towards Mal and Eames who are fighting for possession of Mal's phone.
Dom follows his gaze, and he's quiet for a minute. "That kind of love," he says carefully, "is like the first strike of a match on very dry kindling. It flares up and then it either settles into a quiet blaze or it fizzles out just as quickly as it started. It's hot and it's unexpected and it makes you want to take a step back."
Arthur holds up a hand. "Can we not, please, with the extended metaphors and the wise owl routine?"
Dom sighs. "Fine, fine, I see how it is. It was a really good metaphor, too, but that's fine."
"Our love is just as valid, I'm not missing anything, shut up, Arthur, you are not a teenaged girl. I'd also like to mention that I'm not the one who instated compulsory on-the-clock self-medication through alcohol when I found out our exes are fucking."
"Your feelings are also valid," Dom says primly. "And... how do I put this nicely? Mal and I had a marriage and two children. You and Eames had..."
"Incredibly acrobatic and enthusiastic sex?" Arthur offers.
"La la la la!" Dom says loudly.
"Drink more," Ariadne calls over to him. Dom does so.
"What's this about our far too short-lived sex life?" Eames asks. Mal perks up.
"Did he do the thing," she asks Arthur, "with his tongue, just before you--"
"Yes," says Arthur quickly. He suspects he has just bitten off more than he can chew without the rest of the bottle of scotch in his glass.
Mal chuckles. "I must say. Dom may be bigger, but Eames knows how to use his mouth--"
"Please stop," Dom says desperately.
Mal does not stop. Yusuf goes to fetch the emergency wine from Mal's office. Arthur goes to put up the 'closed' sign and turn on the Christmas lights. Eames catches him at the front window, staring out at the rain. He presses in behind Arthur, arms bracketing his torso, breath ruffling the hair at the back of his neck.
"You're doing fine, pet," he says lowly. "We all are."
Arthur nods. Neither of them move for a few minutes after that.