Chapter Text
1.
Burst pipe, Eames will think later, and chuckle. Burst pipe is about to become his secret catch phrase for all is right with the world.
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It’s 9 AM on a Saturday morning. Eames isn’t normally up at 9 AM on a Saturday morning, but – he wasn’t feeling it last night, didn’t end up going out on the prowl with Si and Cheri to London House night over at King King like he normally would, and didn’t stay up to the wee hours working on a painting or pulling a print. He caught up on some apparently much needed sleep instead, and thus is up at a normal human hour today.
Up in time to watch a sheet of water cascading into his tub from a visibly widening rent in the ceiling.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he says to himself.
He heaves himself up the staircase of his charming Arts & Crafts era condo in Silver Lake to the door of the guy who lives in the flat above him, the source of all that sudden water. The man Eames thinks of as Corporate Barrister Guy, the one he sees on occasion in the condo’s carpark, getting into his BMW in a sharply tailored suit, hair slicked back, looking rather grim and impenetrable.
They’ve nodded to one another in the past, normally in the early AM, when Eames is slinking home from fun and Mr. Corporate is apparently heading out to work, already putting out fires over his iPhone 5, balancing it and his jacket and his briefcase and his keys and a cup of coffee in his hands while he tries to fight his way into his car. They’ve lived on top of each other for over a year now and have never shared a word between them; Eames doesn’t even know the guy’s name, but – he guesses they’re in for a hell of an introduction now.
Eames bangs on the flat’s door like his fist’s a battering ram, no mistaking that this is something that needs to be dealt with this moment. He figures the guy’s in the shower, he won’t want to come out, so he keeps banging.
“Ok ok ok,” he hears from beyond the door, “Jesus.” Mr. Corporate opens up, sopping wet, nothing but a towel around his hips, looks at Eames who’s still just in his pyjama bottoms, and says, ready for a fight, “Problem?”
“Your shower, mate,” Eames says, raising himself to his full height in light of the other guy’s clearly annoyed face. If Corporate wants to bring it, Eames won’t hesitate to step up. “Your shower’s leaking a tsunami into my bathroom, yeah? I think maybe you’ve a burst pipe.”
“Oh,” the guy says, suddenly not nearly so pissed off, “oh, shit – shit, sorry about that. Here, come in, come in.”
Eames follows him into the bathroom, briefly taking in the guy’s flat and – it’s a surprise, really. Nothing like what he expected in the brief moments he’d spent considering Mr. Corporate in the past.
“The water’s off now, obviously, so – hopefully it’s stopped flooding your place,” the guy is saying, snapping Eames’ attention away from his décor back to the matter at hand. “Fuck, sorry about that, man. I’ll get a plumber in here today to find out what the fuck’s going on.” He grins at Eames sheepishly, seems to realize suddenly he’s standing practically naked in his toilet with a total stranger, then offers his hand, “I’m Arthur, by the way, Arthur Leventhal. You’re Tom, right?”
They shake. “Eames,” Eames nods. “Tom Eames.”
“Eames,” Arthur corrects himself. “Wow, man – we’ve seen each other around, but – shitty introduction,” Arthur laughs. “Sorry bout that,” he says again.
He walks forward and backs Eames out of the bathroom and into the small front bedroom. Arthur turns his back, grabs a light Japanese robe from his closet and puts it on, lets the towel drop from under it, and that’s when Eames notices two remarkable things: Arthur has a tattoo on his back, a rather lovely tattoo composed solely of calligraphy and ocean swells (and Eames has always been a big fan of tattoos, god knows); and that there’s a wetsuit hanging from a hook on the wall beside the closet’s pocket doors, next to what’s obviously a well-loved surfboard.
“So, since I’ve apparently ruined your condo, can I offer you a cup of coffee, Eames?” Arthur smiles at him. Eames notices his hair is dripping, all rucked up in front, no product in it. It’s curly, it’s lovely, it’s a bloody revelation.
Eames glances around Arthur’s room. The wall behind his bed is dominated by a huge silkscreen print by Charles Bartlett of Duke Kahanamoku on his longboard, the blues of the thing bluer than blue, the spray of the waves illuminating the surfer’s back, his features dimmed – Christ, it’s lovely, how the man’s not the point of the piece, it’s all wave for Bartlett. Eames has always liked that about his work, always liked that about surfing culture generally, even though he’s lived in Southern California for five years and has never actually attempted it.
Mr. Corporate’s a surfer, Eames thinks. Of all things.
“Coffee,” Eames says. “Erm, yeah – yeah, that’d be lovely. Let me deal with my bathroom ceiling a moment? And you can get dressed, and – we’ll get that plumber, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Arthur says happily. “I’ll, um – I’ll make that call, put the kettle on while we wait for the guy to come.”
Eames nods, leaves the flat in the strangest of moods. He was all wound up from the destruction of his bathroom, expecting nothing but Yuppie pissiness from a neighbor whose number he thought he had, but – everything was different and lovely and wholly unexpected, the guy’s demeanor and home radiating a kind of deep peace that Eames would never have predicted.
He grabs his mop, unearths every towel he has in the house, and starts to deal with the plaster and lathe and wet mess that is his bathroom. And then the shocking blues of that Bartlett piece flash across his mind, followed by the sweet chocolate and cream of Arthur’s hair and skin, and – suddenly, suddenly he doesn’t mind at all.