#igrpdc

Her name is Mal, short for Mallorie. Wrong, Arthur thinks to himself. His Quebecois French is still enough to know what the name means. He feels shame in the spiteful way he stares at her. She is fantastic, he knows. He knew it from the moment she held his face in her adoring hands.

Still, his fingers keep working at the loose thread in his tie, hands trembling with the force it takes not to unravel completely.

“I really wanted you to meet her,” Cobb says. His voice is smooth and pliant and warm in a way that Arthur has never really heard before, and it feels like death; feels worse than that, even. “You’re the most important friend I have, and—well—”

Arthur has an eye for detail, an acute sense of attention and observation that goes unrivaled in most cases. He had seen the ring on their fingers from across the room when he first walked in, but he allows Cobb to introduce the concept to him anyway. He tries to go someplace else, numb himself to the growing grief that builds in his chest, clawing its way up his throat to sit bitter on his tongue.

Once upon a time ago, Arthur imagined sharing space with Cobb; he imagined fingers intwined across mahogany and shoulders brushing and silent, searching looks. It was a finely crafted fantasy; in reality, one dark-haired, dark-eyed face substitutes for another, and it makes him want to cry.