"we mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling" oh, the two of you had sex? you explored each others bodies one drunken night? now the two of you are left to wonder if it meant more to you than it did to him? if the chemistry is nothing more than a game to be won? if asking him to dinner would make you a fool; the loser of the match?
Okay, so I'm joining the Arthur/Eames Inception fandom (plus subcategory Bane/Blake from TDKR I suppose) BUT it appears that in the SEVEN FUCKING YEARS this has been a thing NO ONE HAS NAMED IT. (Please inform me if I am mistaken, I would love that). So, until I am informed otherwise, I'm gunna just start my own: Eathur (get it? Like ether? Like diethyl ether, the anesthetic? Eh? Eh?) and Bake (because, clearly, we are all baked to be shipping Blake/Bane. Either in the sense of high, or in the sense of burning in hell, take your pick). Though, TBH, I kinda like Blane too... hmm... like the train in The Dark Tower books...
they live in dorms. they are roommates. arthur wants to graduate summa cum laude. eames wants to have sex with his roommate. these are both very difficult goals to achieve.
eames is majoring in anthropology and minoring in sociology
all of his electives are languages
arthur is majoring in something awful like finance or business
or perhaps Computer Information Systems which is apparently something that exists
arthur assumes eames is a slacker because he's always lounging around their dorm but eames has a 4.0 gpa
eames assumes lots of things about arthur every single day and he tells arthur about each and every one of them
which is annoying not only because it's hard to study with eames yapping in his ear but also because eames is always correct
eames makes it a personal goal to sleep with arthur before arthur graduates (he is set to graduate two years early)
arthur of course decides to kiss eames the moment his commencement ceremony is over
but really. the guy was taking like 8 courses a semester. how was he supposed to have a sex life in those conditions
arthur liked eames from day 1 but he actively chose not to because if he started sleeping with his roommate he would never get anything done
eames meanwhile flirts with arthur for an entire semester before realizing he genuinely has a crush on the guy
shortly after moving in with each other, eames makes some off-hand reference to some obscure art movement, effortlessly and correctly relating it to a book he read recently
arthur nearly breaks his pencil from the strain of not walking over, sitting on eames' lap, and tearing his clothes off
eames thinks arthur hates him but the truth is that arthur is shoving his feelings down so hard that the man is vibrating on a constant basis
arthureames are so You Taught Me A Secret Language I Can't Speak With Anyone Else with their silences, and glances, and knowing when to leave or watch his six, and worrying about him behind his back, and tracking him across countries as he leaves you hidden messages or inside jokes in the airlines he chooses, and the pasts you don't share but leave face-up on tables knowing he'll nose into it while you sleep, and hotel rooms that become singular while the two of you pretend to not notice, and what it means when he drops the endearments and deigns to call you by your name
so get this there's Guy 1 who's thinking Man, it's just too bad he doesn't want a relationship and that the only intimacy that I can have with him is sex. But I'm not going to bring this up in case talking to him scares him off and then I lose him completely. and THEN there's Guy 2 who's thinking Man, it's just too bad he doesn't want a relationship and that the only intimacy that I can have with him is sex. But I'm not going to bring this up in case talking to him scares him off and then I lose him completely. and then they don't have a meaningful conversation for the next 50k words and by that point they have both made themselves miserable but they both view the other persons misery as a reflection of themselves rather than a reaction to weeks of emotional unfulfillment. and then they die.
So I didn’t get in on secret saito or anything, because I’m terrible, so have a Christmas - y ficlet because reasons not limited to I watched inception on a tom hardy kick and I needed to
Arthur and Eames were far more alike than either were willing to admit.
Arthur in particular was aware of it, he’d noticed it on more than one occasion, but he had also chosen to ignore it. He knew better than to acknowledge it because if he did then Eames would comment on it, would goad him into a fight and then laugh in his face when he -rightfully mind you- got angry about it.
Eames was a duplicitous man. He was obvious about it, in the way he did everything. He had smiled in Cobb’s face and out right told him he would turn him in for the prize money in Mombasa, and Cobb had assured Arthur he would never do that, had assured Eames of it too.
Arthur knew better though, if the money had been enough to wipe out Eames’ gambling debts he would have wrapped Cobb up with a bow for Cobol. If he had gambling debts that was. Forging chips had always been a speciality of Eames’ right alongside reference papers. It was the only reason he could think that Eames always carried at least one poker chip on himself at all times, used one as a totem in some way. It was why Arthur had never accepted an I.O.U. from him, had always made him pay cash up front for coffees -or in his case teas- and meals.
It was also why he kept close tabs on his wallet any time he was in the same room. He’d watched the man pay people and slip the money back into his own pockets too many times to count and he wasn’t about to lose what was rightfully his.
He had heard Eames introduce himself with dozens of names, hundreds of variations of the same stories, each so close to unraveling at the slightest misstep that it fascinated him sometimes. He had sat for an hour at the next table over and listened to Eames spin a tale to a mark’s assistant, a fully fledged lawyer in her own right, about a case he’d won once that had never in any capacity happened. He had marveled at the way the man had kept her attention so perfectly, so well, that she hadn’t noticed Arthur nearly missing the lift of her datebook or the heavy handed way he’d slipped it back in her bag.
Of course he was only heavy handed in comparison to Eames, a known thief and forger who would most likely never get out of prison again if he was convicted of even half of what he had actually done.
The thing that made Arthur uncomfortable about all that was he was similar.
He didn’t do it in his real life, the real world. He only did it in the dream, to case a mark, when he was absolutely forced to to keep what they were doing secret and out of the limelight. He wasn’t a man that lied and cheated his way through real life to get what he wanted.
The dream was an entirely different story. Eames had been the one to point it out, had told him it was the thing that made him ‘scary’. An innocuous nod of the head, a glance down at his feet to prepare himself, and then he would do what he needed to, be it murder or mayhem or whatever else fell to him to do.
“You don’t even notice you do it, do you darling?” Eames had asked, perched on the side of Arthur’s desk like he had asked him not to do so many times before and calling him darling like he had asked him not to do so many times before. “That’s adorable Arthur.” He had purred out the name in a way that made Arthur readjust his tie.
He wasn’t a bad person. He didn’t lie and cheat his way through life. He provided a service, simple as that. He did research, he made plans, he studied the locations and times and helped plan the dreams. If he had to have a zero gravity fight in a free falling hallway and take out a few dozen men along the way that was just the nature of the business.
So when he received a package in the mail one afternoon at just about Christmas where the only return address was a scrawling ‘Darling’ he was more than a little surprised. He knew where Eames was, he always knew where all of them were, but he wasn’t aware that any of them knew the address of the flat he kept in Chicago. The address was printed right on the label, however, and when he read the name Arthur he could almost hear the rolling purr of the name.
The package was a long cylinder, brown heavy duty cardboard with thick plastic end caps. A painting tube. It was just about 14 inches long, and didn’t weigh much as Arthur shifted it from hand to hand, deciding if he was even going to open it but the curiosity he tried to squash down in his chest wouldn’t let him go.
Fine. He would open it carefully ad see what was inside and then he would close it back up and send it back. That way he wouldn’t be curious and he wouldn’t give Eames the satisfaction of knowing he’d opened the gift. It was the best of both worlds.
He’d carefully, oh so carefully, unscrewed the bottom end cap, angling the tube the other way so that whatever was inside wouldn’t get damaged. It came out easily when he had finished unscrewing it, and when he looked inside there was a thick piece of canvas rolled around a smaller tube. He ticked an eyebrow, staring at it and trying to get a look at the paint he assumed was on it, judge what it might be based on the colors and the brush strokes but nothing was showing.
Alright, he would -very carefully- take it out and look at it and then roll it right back up and put it right back in the tube. Although the idea that Eames might have painted a nude of himself flashed through his mind and his fingers hesitated to pull what he assumed was a painting out.
No, he sighed, no Eames wouldn’t have sent a nude portrait of himself like this. It would have come in an enormous box with a giant bow, and possibly some glitter.
He tilted the tube so that the painting and smaller tube would slide out into his waiting hand. Once he had them he set the outer tube down, unrolled the painting and found it protected from the inner tube with thick wax paper. He glanced at the inner tube where Eames had scrawled something else.
Not an hour goes by when I don’t think about George — Francis Bacon
Arthur stared at the words like he might have misread them. Francis Bacon, aside from being Irish like Arthur’s family, was known more for his abstracted works - which Arthur hated - than his portraits and facial studies. George Dyer had been his friend, and at some points his lover, and his emotional paintings of the man were gorgeous, some of Arthur’s favorites. Arthur had always been more partial to his studies and portraits, had taken to decorating his dreamed buildings with them when they were preparing, when they were working.
Had he ever decorated a building when he’d gone down with Eames?
Had he ever even mentioned Bacon around Eames?
He stared at the written quote, the elegant slant of the cursive letters, and wondered if even that was duplicitous. Could Eames copy handwriting as well as he did people in dreams? His fingers traced the name, Francis Bacon, and then dropped to the thick wax paper and pulled it away from the canvas.
Laying on his kitchen counter between an egg timer that looked like a miniature hourglass and the local phonebook he’d only just brought in after a week of sitting in the hallway was “Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer”, the muted and flat green background clashing with his treated oak countertop. He stared at the painting, the profile of the man warped and twisted, a hole stretching from his left eye down to his jaw, throwing off the face shape and features in such a raw and frightening way. Isabel faced forward, no gaps or missing pieces to her face, but somehow equally off with her disproportioned face. The brush strokes were quick, impulsive, and between the haunting colors that made the face almost ethereal and the sculptural way it was painted Arthur had to swallow hard to remember to breathe.
He slipped his fingers under the painting to touch the canvas side again, terrified to touch the actual paint. When he did he found the canvas was rough, old, the unmistakable marks of having been mounted and framed impressed there.
It was only after he felt the impressions that he noticed the note, curled up between the wax paper and the canvas and quickly grabbed it. It took him a moment to flatten it out enough to read and when he did he was shaking his head, eyes locked on the words.
It’s real darling, and it took quite some getting. Have a very happy Christmas. - E
The short little confirmation of what his fingers had already found was followed by a phone number, South Africa based on the 01127 at the start, Mombasa by the 254-41. Eames was nothing if not direct.
Arthur stared at the painting, at the note, at the inside tube which he had dropped in sheer surprise at the site of the painting.
What the hell was he supposed to do with this? Was he supposed to frame it, hang it over his fireplace and drink wine and talk about it at dinner parties? Was he supposed to fill that space on his bedroom wall that it would sit just perfectly in and go to sleep every night staring at George and Isabel and thinking of Eames? Was he really supposed to just roll it back up and put it back in the tube and send it back to him with no other address than ‘Darling’ and a few air mail stamps to vaguely dictate which country it came from?
It was just after dawn on Christmas eve before he finally picked up the phone. The note with the number was tucked away in the painting tube again, leaned up against the door frame by his winter shoes so that he would be able to take it out after the holiday, without having to ruin the nice shoes he wore for work between the snow and the road salt, but he didn’t need it.
He might not have a photographic memory but numbers he had grown accustomed to memorizing. Between weights and heights and Somnacin doses, dates, times, a phone number was easy. Even an exceedingly long overseas number.
There was a long and dramatic pause before the call rang through, and after five rings he decided he’d give it two more and then he was hanging up. It took exactly one and a half for the person at the other end to pick up. “Arthur.” He pretended he didn’t bite his lower lip at the way the other man purred out his name. “I take it your present arrived then darling?”
“Mr. Eames.” Arthur answered, and he pointedly ignored the ‘mmmm’ that came over the line. Professional courtesy, that’s all this was. “That wasn’t a present, that was a $150 million painting.”
He could hear the smile, “I would have gotten you something to go with it but it seemed extravagant. Should I have? Gotten you another surprise that is?”
Arthur leaned a little more against the headboard of his bed, staring at the pair of portraits that hung on his wall, just there at the end of his bed in a temporary frame. “Is this the kind of thing you “get” all the people that hate you, Mr. Eames?”
Eames chuckled, “Only the very best of them darling.” There was a long pause, “Only you.”
Arthur took a moment to soak the way he said that in. “How do you know my address, Mr. Eames?” It was the first thing that popped into his head when his eyes ran over the misshapen face of George.
Eames didn’t answer right away as he moved around, the sounds of a city in the background, but there was a knock at the door and Arthur climbed out of bed. “I may have sent something else.” Eames suddenly admitted, sounding not even the slightest bit guilty.
“Mr. Eames…”
“I’ll leave you to it darling, do enjoy.” The click of Eames hanging up on him was drown out by a second round of knocks at the door Arthur was heading for. He shook his head and pocketed his phone.
Waiting was a very haggard looking delivery boy who gruffly shoved a pen pad into his hands for a signature. “Merry Christmas.” The kid mumbled as he held out an envelope. It had a proper return address this time, with the sender's name listed only as E and the street address printed so clearly Arthur knew it was intentional. He flipped the thing over with a grunt back at the delivery boy as he left and tore it open haphazardly.
Inside the manila envelope was a single plane ticket, Arthur Penrose - a favorite alias of his when he was forced to use one - first class seat on a small private plane, set to leave in two hours from O’Hare to Moi International. It was round trip, only the departure date filled in.
He felt the weight of it in his hand and knew immediately that there was something else in the envelope. He tilted it and the thing inside rolled to the bottom corner, then to the top and out the farther he turned it. In his hand rested a single poker chip, red, $100, with the words Mombassa Casino across it. It was fake. He felt the roughness of it, the worn place where fingers had rubbed the spot in the center. This was Eames’ totem.
Well he did know how to make a gesture, he supposed.
That was how he wound up sitting on a plane at ten am on Christmas eve, sipping at the free champagne and staring longingly at the painting tube resting on the seat across from him. It would be just over twenty-one hours before he would touch down again, before he would be standing there on solid ground, looking at Eames, being near him.
What was he doing? This was incredibly stupid. He had reasoned that it was a vacation and he could just hand the painting back to him, even though he technically had a return address. It wasn’t like he could return a totem through the mail. He could just ignore the way Eames always stands too close, always makes a point to poke and prod at him whenever he can. He could pretend he doesn’t see the way Eames leans in when they talk, how he gently puts a hand at Arthur’s elbow every time they were close enough. Or he could just shut up and accept it.
Neither option seemed entirely plausible with Eames being on the other end.
It’s not until the flight attendant wakes him up, telling him in that practiced voice that you’re only a half hour out that he really considers how colossally dumb this is and also how little he cared about that now that the moment’s here.
He wasn’t watching carefully when the plane pulled up to it’s assigned place on the tarmac like he expected someone to be there waiting for him. He certainly wasn’t watching with pleasant surprise when a Hyundai came into view, Eames perched on the hood the same way he would perch on Arthur’s desk. He certainly didn’t reach into his pocket and start playing with the poker chip where it sat in his pocket.
By the time he climbed out of the plane, painting tube in his hand and bag slung over one shoulder absently Eames is running a coin back and forth across his knuckles with the biggest grin Arthur has ever seen plastered ear to ear. “Well fancy seeing you here Darling.”
Arthur scowled at him, “Did you have an alert set up if the ticket was used or something?” He fished in his pocket for the poker chip and held it up for him to see when he didn’t answer. “I thought you might like to have this back.”
Eames just kept smiling and stopped rolling the coin across his knuckles, holding it up so Arthur could see it. It wasn’t a coin but another poker chip, a perfect replica of the one he was holding. “I gave that to you darling.” Arthur watched as Eames hopped down off the car and walked around to the passenger side, opening the door for him.
At first Arthur considered just climbing in the driver’s seat and ignoring the inviting way Eames draped himself against the side of the car. The only thing that stopped him was the fact he didn’t have a license in South Africa and the certainty that Eames would put on that pouty face he always used when Arthur denied him anything. So he went around behind the car instead, opening the back to set his bag and his painting, yes his because he figured Eames owes him for wearing that ugly button down and linen jacket that draped perfectly over his shoulders.
He shut the door and went to take the offered seat when Eames leaned over the door, just a little. “So are you my present then Arthur?” Arthur didn’t have a tie to adjust this time when he purred out his name, “Or did you bring me something too?”
Arthur swallowed, twice before he managed to slide into the car with a short “You’ll have to find out, Mr. Eames. When we get back to your place.”
Alright ladies and gents, I'm still sick (btw don't let your kid give you pink eye cause it can spread to your sinuses and you'll be miserable for a week) and apparently i pulled a muscle coughing so I'm stuck on my couch this weekend. I want to write atm but my laptop is charging so i can't even do that, so instead i want to request everyone's favorite dream husbands fics so i have something to read! What have you got for me??
