The Coldest Night

It is the season of ice. The air is cool. The moon hangs low in the sky, like a glowing opal set in smooth jet.

Dressed in a charcoal parka, black trousers and shoes, with a dark rucksack hauled over his shoulder, Eames weaves his way through the empty streets of endless houses, passing illuminated lamps and tall trees with their branches stretching up like black, spidery fingers.

He is exhausted. His joints have iced up due to the endless travelling over the past few days but the need to see Arthur, to curl up besides him and borrow his body heat is his most searing ache, so he keeps going, breath billowing out of his mouth like smoke.

When Eames finally reaches their two-story house, he stops to look at it. They have only occupied it for a few weeks but it is their very own private realm. The door is glinty blue. The frost-bitten cornices give it an eccentric twist and it has a strict symmetrical arrangement of rectangle windows, which have fogged up because of the weather.

Carefully, Eames makes his way down the ice-encrusted path, the dark, dead-looking bushes shuddering in the breeze. He tugs out his keys out of his coat pocket, shoves a thin silver one into the lock, twists it and pushes the door open.

More cold hit his face. A biting irritation causes his lips to freeze tightly together when he realises that there was no soft whirring coming from the heating system. It had been churning away before he had left and it appeared to have finally died.

With a small sigh, he steps into the hallway, dumping his bag. He shuts the door with his shoulders, the clang of the lock and the noise of keys shattering down into a glass bowl vibrates off the blank, grey walls.

He pulls off his parka and hangs it besides Arthur's dark coat. His knuckles graze against the fabric and it briefly crosses his mind to bury his nose in it and suck up every molecule of Arthur's scent.

However, his excitement is sliding and dipping around in his chest, so he heads straight up the stairs, each little groan and creak intensified in the silence. He slips down the dark hallway, carefully avoiding a few unpacked boxes. He reaches their bedroom door and very gently pushes it open.

Moonlight stretches across the naked, navy-blue walls as the thick, purple curtains are only half-closed. The room is populated with four pieces of furniture; a giant wardrobe and two cabinets that are on either side of large bed.

Eames feels his lips automatically shift into a wide smile. How can he not smile? He is looking Arthur, his eyes closed, face suspended in sleep as he hibernates underneath an ebony duvet.

Treading lightly, he moves across to the bed and kneels down. He strokes the soft black hair with the back of his knuckles.

"Hey," says Eames softly, "I'm home."

Since Arthur doesn't stir, he slides his hand down on to the alabaster skin. He stops on the slope of his cheek.

It's cold.

So cold, in fact, that it spills through Eames and onto the floor and silently starts to fill up the room like icy water, numbing him, freezing his insides.

Shivering, he pulls back the covers, revealing Arthur lying on top of white sheet, wearing an oyster-coloured shirt.

Arthur is frozen, eyes iced shut. His skin has been dusted with snow and frost trails down the side of lips, past his chin and pools out underneath him.

Eames places his hand on Arthur's shoulder and starts shaking it, trying to rouse him. His lips are moving, forming words but he can't hear anything because all sound has been suck out of the room. He slips his fingers down his neck, pressing two of them into the waxy, cool flesh and he waits, staring.

Slowly, a small glinting splinter of realisation slides its way into his mind…

Neither of them are going to warm up ever again.

Written for the following prompt: Eames never expected to come home and find a dead Arthur in his bed.

I've been putting off uploading this because I wanted to start the new year (HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!:) ) with something cheery and light but I was like f-it.

Anyway hank you for reading. Txx