fic - The Murmur of the Innocents 12
Title: The Murmur of the Innocents 12
Author: yjudaes
Team: angst.
Prompt: biased.
Word Count: 1633
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: This is a story about Arthur's taste in artwork. I am not much of a writer! This was written vaguely in response to a prompt by metacheese. Please be warned before you click on any of the links in this story that the imagery associated is disturbing and contains fairly explicit suggestions of violence, in some cases against children. No happy ending. Thank you to seraphwings for the beta.
The job in Toronto goes south. Mostly for Eames, who, it turns out, did something or other to deeply offend the Canadian government at some point in his unsurprisingly disreputable life. They drive back across the border instead of flying, having judged airports too risky. "Ah, fuck," Eames says, digging through his bag for some form of identification which will, theoretically, get him through the crossing without all forms of law enforcement bearing down upon them. "This country is difficult for me."
"It's fine," says Arthur, later, exiting onto 90 headed for Chicago. "I have an extra bedroom. You might as well stay with me."
Normally he isn't the type of person to make that sort of offer, because who knows what kind of a houseguest Eames is. But they've already got a job lined up in Havana for which they leave in three weeks, and Arthur has at least known Eames long enough to consider the (admittedly insignificant) expense and inconvenience of Eames getting a hotel somewhere, when they're both coming from and going to the same place. And with Dominick Cobb settling happily into a SoCal retirement, as loathe as he is to admit it, Arthur has found lately that the people he can bring himself to think of as friends are few and far between.
This is how they end up in Chicago together. Arthur has a duplex in Lincoln Park, right off Armitage, half of which he rents to a lawyer and her novelist husband. It's a beautiful house with a long stoop, and Eames makes a vague noise of approval when Arthur pulls into the driveway.
Arthur opens the door and steps inside to disarm his security system, and then he's picking through the pile of mail on the little table just inside the entry when he hears Eames say, "My god," in what can only be described as horror. Arthur turns immediately, and sees Eames looking with an expression of complete repulsion at the Helnwein Arthur has sitting at the end of the entryway.
Truthfully, he's not the first person to be scared shitless by that painting. Especially at night, it's the first thing you see, if you look straight down the hallway, and it's lit in an eerie bluish twilight glow from the outside windows. "That's awful, Arthur," says Eames.
"It's a Helnwein," Arthur replies, slightly offended.
Eames makes a noise and shakes his head. "Please tell me you haven't got one of those upstairs in the guest room as well."
"No," Arthur says truthfully. The guest room has a pair of what Arthur considers to be benign Angela Strassheim prints, hanging in glossy black frames. When Eames sees them, he gives Arthur a dark look but doesn't say anything else.
"You can get a hotel, if my choice of artwork offends you that much," Arthur mutters dryly, and goes to get a glass of water and fall with relief into his own bed, hard pillow and all.
~*
It turns out that Eames without a job is a lot like Arthur without a job; useless, and more irritating than usual. He putters around Arthur's house trying to find things to do, and more often than not ends up breaking something he was attempting to fix in what Arthur can only assume is some sort of misplaced show of gratitude. The fourth day, he does something to Arthur's espresso machine that makes it start brewing hot water and coffee grounds instead of actual espresso, and Arthur has had it.
They get on the Metra and go down to the Art Institute. "I'd never pictured you as a connoisseur of artwork, you know," Eames comments, getting so close to one of the Monet haystacks that a guard asks him to take a step back. "It seems to lack that quality of functionality that I always associate with you."
Arthur narrows his eyes. He's standing in front of a Toulouse-Lautrec drawing. "I guess you misjudged me," he says.
"I suppose I have," Eames replies, moving out of the room.
At the Field Museum, Eames does something completely unexpected, and kisses Arthur, right underneath Sue, right in front of a whole group of high school students who are all holding clipboards and gawping at them. "Stop," Arthur hisses, but he can't conceal his surprise. In a rare moment of honesty, he thinks to himself that when he pictured this, it was always at the end of a job, drunk on adrenaline and too much liquor, sometime in the obscure hours of the morning. Not in the middle of the day, both of them stone-cold sober, with the backdrop of a fossilized tyrannosaurus rex.
"I want to go look at the animals," Arthur says, pulling away, turning his face from the expectant look Eames is giving him.
They're standing in front of the Tsavo Man-Eaters, when Eames says, "Arthur, you can't possibly be enjoying this."
There are a thousand different things Eames could mean by that. Arthur doesn't look at him, focusing instead on the black patches of fur on the upright lion's chest. He starts to ask what do you mean, but Eames cuts him off. "This is incredibly morbid," Eames continues. "We're staring at the mounted skins of a pair of lions who killed twenty-eight human beings."
Arthur shrugs. "Nature is a cruel mistress," he says. "Come on, if it's bothering you, we can go look at the butterflies again."
~*
He lets Eames into his bedroom that night, in a sudden moment of impulsiveness. He usually tamps those instincts well down - Arthur likes to plan things, he likes schedules and itineraries, because every time he does something off-the-cuff, it seems to go pretty badly. On the job, his instincts are usually good. Elsewhere, their track record would get a racehorse sent to the glue factory.
He couldn't say exactly what it is, the feeling that compels him to do it. Maybe this is what loneliness is - knowing that everyone else could probably get on with their lives just fine, if you suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. He finds himself wanting to have a connection, however brief, the kind of connection you can't just snuff out or dismiss as a business relationship.
This isn't the way to go about that, he thinks, letting Eames pull his shirt over his head. Eames kisses like a wild thing, all sharp teeth and animal possession. Like a man-eating lion, Arthur thinks, as Eames's hands card through his hair, which is longer than it should be and springs free of its severe style easily. He feels like clay in Eames's hands, willing to be shaped into whatever Eames wants.
"Wait," he says, because it's dark, and if he's going to do this he might as well be able to see. He reaches behind himself and turns on the lamp next to his bed, and Eames stops immediately. And stares.
Arthur stares back for a moment, but he quickly realizes he's not the one being scrutinized. His room is on the corner of the house, and two of the walls are mostly taken up by windows. One of the other walls has two more Helnweins - Modern Sleep 1& 2. The wall behind his bed is home to the Francis Bacon painting that's almost certainly the most valuable piece of art Arthur owns.
Eames hasn't moved. "Are you really this disturbed by my taste in artwork?" Arthur asks, incredulous, aware what a ridiculous picture he himself must be making, with his shirt off, his pants half-unzipped and his hair a complete, irredeemable mess.
The gaze that snaps back to him is sharp. "Yes," Eames says. "I think I am, Arthur. What is this about? I never thought you were --" he gestures with one empty hand, around the room. "I never thought you were the sort of person to be obsessed with all this needless, shocking, ugly violence."
"Obsessed," Arthur echoes. "This isn't about that, Eames! It's not some kind of shock tactic! It's not -- fucking Jeff Koons, for god's sake! I would think you'd know --"
"Know what?" Eames counters. "Arthur, you have an enormous painting of a dead child in a bloody military uniform in your foyer! Are you telling me you honestly believe there's a purpose to that, other than to shock and horrify?"
Well, it's beautiful, for one, Arthur thinks. "It's a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and the subsequent commercialization of that imagery. It's an indictment of a militaristic culture which ruthlessly glamorizes war and violence! Maybe it is shocking, but it's meant to expose the hypocrisy of condemning and condoning violence at the same time."
Eames splutters. "Arthur, you were in the military!" he says. "And fucking -- Francis Bacon? My god, you can't really be the sort of person who considers the human condition that unbelievably bleak."
Arthur doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't feel like defending his taste in artwork, and he certainly isn't about to extrapolate on what it means about his worldview or his psyche. He sits heavily on the bed, hands on thighs, and looks at Eames silently, his chin slightly raised.
"I honestly," Eames says, and shakes his head. "I had no idea, Arthur. I had no idea."
He turns and leaves, and Arthur sits on his bed, bewildered. He thinks of The Murmur of the Innocents 12 hanging on his wall downstairs and wonders if, out of all the questionable things he's done in his life, owning that painting really does make him a terrible person.
~*
The next day, Eames gets a hotel room downtown. He leaves without a word. Arthur wants to stop him and say, listen, you're wrong about me, but he's not sure it's true, and he's always hated lying about himself.
The job in Havana goes perfectly. Afterwards, Arthur goes to Paris to meet Ariadne. Eames goes to Port Elizabeth. And that's that.
Author: yjudaes
Team: angst.
Prompt: biased.
Word Count: 1633
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: This is a story about Arthur's taste in artwork. I am not much of a writer! This was written vaguely in response to a prompt by metacheese. Please be warned before you click on any of the links in this story that the imagery associated is disturbing and contains fairly explicit suggestions of violence, in some cases against children. No happy ending. Thank you to seraphwings for the beta.
The job in Toronto goes south. Mostly for Eames, who, it turns out, did something or other to deeply offend the Canadian government at some point in his unsurprisingly disreputable life. They drive back across the border instead of flying, having judged airports too risky. "Ah, fuck," Eames says, digging through his bag for some form of identification which will, theoretically, get him through the crossing without all forms of law enforcement bearing down upon them. "This country is difficult for me."
"It's fine," says Arthur, later, exiting onto 90 headed for Chicago. "I have an extra bedroom. You might as well stay with me."
Normally he isn't the type of person to make that sort of offer, because who knows what kind of a houseguest Eames is. But they've already got a job lined up in Havana for which they leave in three weeks, and Arthur has at least known Eames long enough to consider the (admittedly insignificant) expense and inconvenience of Eames getting a hotel somewhere, when they're both coming from and going to the same place. And with Dominick Cobb settling happily into a SoCal retirement, as loathe as he is to admit it, Arthur has found lately that the people he can bring himself to think of as friends are few and far between.
This is how they end up in Chicago together. Arthur has a duplex in Lincoln Park, right off Armitage, half of which he rents to a lawyer and her novelist husband. It's a beautiful house with a long stoop, and Eames makes a vague noise of approval when Arthur pulls into the driveway.
Arthur opens the door and steps inside to disarm his security system, and then he's picking through the pile of mail on the little table just inside the entry when he hears Eames say, "My god," in what can only be described as horror. Arthur turns immediately, and sees Eames looking with an expression of complete repulsion at the Helnwein Arthur has sitting at the end of the entryway.
Truthfully, he's not the first person to be scared shitless by that painting. Especially at night, it's the first thing you see, if you look straight down the hallway, and it's lit in an eerie bluish twilight glow from the outside windows. "That's awful, Arthur," says Eames.
"It's a Helnwein," Arthur replies, slightly offended.
Eames makes a noise and shakes his head. "Please tell me you haven't got one of those upstairs in the guest room as well."
"No," Arthur says truthfully. The guest room has a pair of what Arthur considers to be benign Angela Strassheim prints, hanging in glossy black frames. When Eames sees them, he gives Arthur a dark look but doesn't say anything else.
"You can get a hotel, if my choice of artwork offends you that much," Arthur mutters dryly, and goes to get a glass of water and fall with relief into his own bed, hard pillow and all.
~*
It turns out that Eames without a job is a lot like Arthur without a job; useless, and more irritating than usual. He putters around Arthur's house trying to find things to do, and more often than not ends up breaking something he was attempting to fix in what Arthur can only assume is some sort of misplaced show of gratitude. The fourth day, he does something to Arthur's espresso machine that makes it start brewing hot water and coffee grounds instead of actual espresso, and Arthur has had it.
They get on the Metra and go down to the Art Institute. "I'd never pictured you as a connoisseur of artwork, you know," Eames comments, getting so close to one of the Monet haystacks that a guard asks him to take a step back. "It seems to lack that quality of functionality that I always associate with you."
Arthur narrows his eyes. He's standing in front of a Toulouse-Lautrec drawing. "I guess you misjudged me," he says.
"I suppose I have," Eames replies, moving out of the room.
At the Field Museum, Eames does something completely unexpected, and kisses Arthur, right underneath Sue, right in front of a whole group of high school students who are all holding clipboards and gawping at them. "Stop," Arthur hisses, but he can't conceal his surprise. In a rare moment of honesty, he thinks to himself that when he pictured this, it was always at the end of a job, drunk on adrenaline and too much liquor, sometime in the obscure hours of the morning. Not in the middle of the day, both of them stone-cold sober, with the backdrop of a fossilized tyrannosaurus rex.
"I want to go look at the animals," Arthur says, pulling away, turning his face from the expectant look Eames is giving him.
They're standing in front of the Tsavo Man-Eaters, when Eames says, "Arthur, you can't possibly be enjoying this."
There are a thousand different things Eames could mean by that. Arthur doesn't look at him, focusing instead on the black patches of fur on the upright lion's chest. He starts to ask what do you mean, but Eames cuts him off. "This is incredibly morbid," Eames continues. "We're staring at the mounted skins of a pair of lions who killed twenty-eight human beings."
Arthur shrugs. "Nature is a cruel mistress," he says. "Come on, if it's bothering you, we can go look at the butterflies again."
~*
He lets Eames into his bedroom that night, in a sudden moment of impulsiveness. He usually tamps those instincts well down - Arthur likes to plan things, he likes schedules and itineraries, because every time he does something off-the-cuff, it seems to go pretty badly. On the job, his instincts are usually good. Elsewhere, their track record would get a racehorse sent to the glue factory.
He couldn't say exactly what it is, the feeling that compels him to do it. Maybe this is what loneliness is - knowing that everyone else could probably get on with their lives just fine, if you suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. He finds himself wanting to have a connection, however brief, the kind of connection you can't just snuff out or dismiss as a business relationship.
This isn't the way to go about that, he thinks, letting Eames pull his shirt over his head. Eames kisses like a wild thing, all sharp teeth and animal possession. Like a man-eating lion, Arthur thinks, as Eames's hands card through his hair, which is longer than it should be and springs free of its severe style easily. He feels like clay in Eames's hands, willing to be shaped into whatever Eames wants.
"Wait," he says, because it's dark, and if he's going to do this he might as well be able to see. He reaches behind himself and turns on the lamp next to his bed, and Eames stops immediately. And stares.
Arthur stares back for a moment, but he quickly realizes he's not the one being scrutinized. His room is on the corner of the house, and two of the walls are mostly taken up by windows. One of the other walls has two more Helnweins - Modern Sleep 1& 2. The wall behind his bed is home to the Francis Bacon painting that's almost certainly the most valuable piece of art Arthur owns.
Eames hasn't moved. "Are you really this disturbed by my taste in artwork?" Arthur asks, incredulous, aware what a ridiculous picture he himself must be making, with his shirt off, his pants half-unzipped and his hair a complete, irredeemable mess.
The gaze that snaps back to him is sharp. "Yes," Eames says. "I think I am, Arthur. What is this about? I never thought you were --" he gestures with one empty hand, around the room. "I never thought you were the sort of person to be obsessed with all this needless, shocking, ugly violence."
"Obsessed," Arthur echoes. "This isn't about that, Eames! It's not some kind of shock tactic! It's not -- fucking Jeff Koons, for god's sake! I would think you'd know --"
"Know what?" Eames counters. "Arthur, you have an enormous painting of a dead child in a bloody military uniform in your foyer! Are you telling me you honestly believe there's a purpose to that, other than to shock and horrify?"
Well, it's beautiful, for one, Arthur thinks. "It's a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and the subsequent commercialization of that imagery. It's an indictment of a militaristic culture which ruthlessly glamorizes war and violence! Maybe it is shocking, but it's meant to expose the hypocrisy of condemning and condoning violence at the same time."
Eames splutters. "Arthur, you were in the military!" he says. "And fucking -- Francis Bacon? My god, you can't really be the sort of person who considers the human condition that unbelievably bleak."
Arthur doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't feel like defending his taste in artwork, and he certainly isn't about to extrapolate on what it means about his worldview or his psyche. He sits heavily on the bed, hands on thighs, and looks at Eames silently, his chin slightly raised.
"I honestly," Eames says, and shakes his head. "I had no idea, Arthur. I had no idea."
He turns and leaves, and Arthur sits on his bed, bewildered. He thinks of The Murmur of the Innocents 12 hanging on his wall downstairs and wonders if, out of all the questionable things he's done in his life, owning that painting really does make him a terrible person.
~*
The next day, Eames gets a hotel room downtown. He leaves without a word. Arthur wants to stop him and say, listen, you're wrong about me, but he's not sure it's true, and he's always hated lying about himself.
The job in Havana goes perfectly. Afterwards, Arthur goes to Paris to meet Ariadne. Eames goes to Port Elizabeth. And that's that.