This post contains fic!
Hello, f-list! In an effort to a) keep all of my writing sort of organized, or at least to tell myself that it is organized, and b) put off doing my homework, I have put together this post. It is a collection of the little bits and bobs I've written for the fluff meme (part two!) and for my Halloween treats post. Think of it as, I don't know. The week-after-Halloween candy clearance sale? OR SOMETHING. Something both delicious and discounted, essentially. And no, this metaphor doesn't work.
(Standard disclaimer applies-- that is to say, nothing you recognize belongs to me, for goodness sake OF COURSE IT DOESN'T. That includes the book titles in the third drabble in this post.)
It's not that Arthur doesn't understand panic. He'd like to look down on people who lose it completely on the job, who fall apart in the middle of their own minds, but he can't quite manage it. Mostly it's because he remembers the third time he ever went under, remembers the sickbadwrong feeling of water filling his lungs as the sky went dark and--
So.
So it isn't that he doesn't understand it, it's only that he hasn't got any use for it. He'd left it behind-- along with flame throwers, grenade launchers, and other rather fanciful tools of destruction-- as an inefficiency. He hasn't really looked back.
Which is probably why, when Eames turns up at the door of the LA apartment with blood staining his jeans Arthur spits out one or two or fifteen obscenities and drags him inside. It is probably why he slams his first-aid kit onto the counter with considerably more force than necessary, and it is probably why he can't stand to watch his own hands shaking. It is almost definitely why he mutters, "Fuck, fuck, I hate being in love," as he watches Eames sleep the sleep of the not-quite-lethally-wounded in Arthur's-- or their? or, well, anyway-- bed. Panic turns out to be a bit different, a bit more raw, when it's on behalf of someone else and Arthur hates it with all of the ferocity he is so justifiably infamous for.
But in the morning Eames wakes up, and stretches, and then proceeds to sprawl shamelessly across the bed and call Arthur "darling" and make faces which promise things a man with a bullet wound in his thigh really cannot deliver. Which is all very annoying, and not at all endearing, not at all, and the point, really, is that maybe some things are worth the fear.
This is how Halloween goes: Arthur ends up at Dom's house because Philippa had insisted that he be there to shower compliments on her costume (she is a magical fairy princess with-- she tells everyone within earshot-- sparkly wings, the power of teleportation, and a black belt in kung fu). Eames ends up at Dom's house because Arthur does. Dom takes the children trick-or-treating, leaving behind him dire, whispered warnings of what will happen if Eames and Arthur defile the kitchen table like last time, do not pull that disgusted face with me Arthur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Arthur tries frantically to mediate the mostly-accidental glowering he does every time he answers the door, fails at least sixty-five percent of the time, scares scores of children away, and then watches as Eames eats an entire bag of Three Musketeers.
This is how Halloween goes: fairly well, actually, all things considered. Besides which, on the drive home Eames produces two bags of M&Ms from absolutely nowhere, which are obviously, he explains solemnly as Arthur picks out the blue ones to eat first, tokens of true love.
"It can't be just any book, though, that's what I'm telling you," Ariadne says, scanning the shelves. She's already considered and rejected Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul, Knitting With Dog Hair: Better A Sweater From A Dog You Know and Love Than From A Sheep You'll Never Meet, and Does Anything Eat Wasps: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask (because, she had explained, she wasn't bringing anything onto a plane that contained the word "unsettling").
Yusuf nods, looking solemn. "It has to be stupid enough that you don't feel obligated to finish it once you're back on the ground, but interesting enough that it takes your mind off of the fact that human beings were never meant to be thirty thousand feet in the air."
"They've got a point, darling, selection of reading material can be crucial," Eames says. "Besides, I haven't yet decided which tacky souvenir I'm going to saddle you with, and we can't have that."
"Oh God," Arthur says, "kill me now."
"I would, I really would, but I don't need another black mark on my record," Cobb says, grinning. Arthur exercises all of his considerable will power and does not smack him upside the head.
"I'm sure Saito could get you expunged of my murder," he says, and then, rather incongruously, "fucking shitting ow."
"Language!" A decidedly ferocious woman says. She's middle-aged, she's wearing a pink hat complete with massive and terrifying floral arrangement, and her rolling suitcase has just steamrollered Arthur's toes.
"Unless you're going to hit me over the head with the lead weights you've obviously packed and put me out of my misery," Arthur says, "fuck off."
"Dear, dear," Eames says, darting neatly around the shocked woman to hold up an overly large I ♥ New York t-shirt, "language, Arthur. Honestly."
There is a prolonged pause during which Arthur contemplates homicide, Yusuf and Ariadne contemplate novels which almost definitely feature Fabio on the cover, and Arthur contemplates homicide.
"Oh, never mind it darling," Eames says. "I'm going to buy you the most atrocious snow globe the world has ever seen, and then we'll shepherd everyone to the gate and get them on the plane. All in one piece. I promise."
"You can fuck off as well," Arthur says, but he's definitely smiling.
----
ALL OF THOSE BOOKS? REAL BOOKS. HONESTLY.
"You," Eames says, stumbling out of the car, "you cheat. You cheat atrociously!"
"Well no, actually," Arthur says, "I'd say I cheat quite well. I mean, I won."
"You cheat blatantly," Eames amends, taking a few steps toward Arthur (aka The Cheating Cheater of Cheaterdom). "I might-- nay, I would!-- go so far as to call it transparent. You display a wanton disregard for the predetermined track, and you clearly don't feel the need to wait for any sort of starting gun. You are a terrible human being!"
"You seem pleased," Arthur says calmly, still leaning against the hood of his own car.
"Well," Eames says. "Well. Perhaps."
Perhaps he is secretly, in his heart of hearts, fond of Cheating Cheaters of Cheaterdom. But really, cutting that last corner had just been egregious.
On the morning of August 19th, a broad-shouldered, horribly dressed, and generally gorgeous man walks into the supply room of Calvin S. Hall High School and says, “Would you by any chance happen to know where the glitter’s kept around here?”
Arthur open his mouth, closes it again, and blinks (twice).
“No,” he says, glancing around him in an attempt to make sure he hasn’t accidentally wandered into the local elementary school by mistake.
The man doesn’t really seem to register the negative reply, busy as he is rifling through drawers and ransacking cabinets. Arthur watches with the same kind of horrified fascination he might lend a train wreck as various organizational systems are met, overwhelmed, and destroyed.
“Er, excuse me,” Arthur says, jolted out of his stupor by the horror he feels when the man turns, with Serious Intent, toward the filing cabinet. “I can personally assure you that you aren’t going to find any glitter in there.”
The man sighs, wheels around, and finally meets Arthur’s eyes.
“You’re keeper of the filing cabinet, are you?” He asks, except that about halfway through the sentence his tone shifts from where-oh-where-has-the-glitter-gone to something Arthur can only describe as oh-why-hello. Everything from “filing cabinet” on seems to be a wholehearted (and not entirely unsuccessful) attempt to turn a perfectly ordinary, if slightly needling, inquiry into a sultry pick-up line.
Arthur finds himself fighting the urge to both blush and roll his eyes, and is infinitely more horrified by the former impulse.
“As it happens, yes,” he says, his voice entirely flat. The man is now leaning against the damn filing cabinet in a way which he imagines wouldn’t look out of place in a specific sort of night club, but which certainly looks out of place when it involves a filing cabinet. He has a look on his face which suggests he is infuriatingly, smugly amused by this conversation (and probably also Arthur, and possibly the entire world). Arthur catalogs these things dispassionately, and comes to the only possible conclusion: he really, really cannot stand this man.
“Well, perhaps you can tell me where to get a key to my classroom, then,” the man says. Arthur takes a deep breath in through his nose. Of course he’s the new history teacher. Of course he is.
Yusuf separates his days into two categories: "Oh God That Was An Utter Disaster, Stop The World I Want To Get Off" and "Okay." Generally speaking, he knows which sort of day it's going to be within the first five minutes, and certainly he knows by eleven thirty when he rounds up his charges and herds them in the general direction of sustenance. But if he hasn't, he knows by eleven thirty-one when everyone digs messily into paper sacks and metal tins because this, this is when he knows if everyone's lunches are Right.
Fischer's lunch, for example, is not Right if his au pair has accidentally left the crusts on his precise, geometric sandwiches. What's actually inside the sandwiches hardly seems to matter, though it is usually some variation on peanut butter and jelly.
Saito's lunch is not Right if it contains fewer than five items. He counts every day, in an imperious tone which tends to approach a shout.
"ONE," he will declare as he carefully places a juice box on the table.
"TWO," he will proclaim as it is joined by a bag of apple slices.
"THREE," he will announce as a chocolate pudding cup is produced, inspected, and set down.
"FOUR," he will pronounce as half of a sandwich, its contents unknown, emerges to join its fellows.
But Lord help everyone if all of this is not followed by a triumphant decree of "FIVE," and something, anything else. Yusuf does not understand why five is the magic number, but it certainly is. The last time Saitos' lunch had been inadequate, containing a paltry three items, he had stalked into the corner and refused to participate in reading circle until someone had sent out for some grape juice and a cheese stick.
Mal has a sweet tooth, and so her lunch is not Right if it is overly burdened by anything besides dessert. But Mal has never yet thrown a temper tantrum over a lunch gone wrong-- instead she begs, borrows and steals until she's accumulated a satisfying number of chocolate bars, lollipops, and gummy candies of all sorts. Cobb-- whose lunch is always Right because it is, without fail, always the same-- doesn't wait to be asked before handing over his chocolate chip oatmeal cookie.
Ariadne's lunches are not Right if they do not contain enough items with flat surfaces. When Yusuf had asked about it once, beleaguered and bewildered, she had grinned her gap-toothed grin at him and said, "Hafta make buildings!" And it is certainly true that every day a skyscraper slowly rises from the table, made of sandwiches and granola bars and dangerously wobbling juice boxes. How these structures stay standing is anyone's guess, but it is only Ariadne who is permitted to take them apart again.
Arthur is, as is so often the case, a calm shelter in the ridiculously grubby, sticky storm that is lunchtime. He is blessedly indifferent to his lunch. He is a supremely uninterested eater, the furthest thing from picky Yusuf has ever seen, and he is extraordinarily allergy-free. His lunches are consumed with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency, and when he is finished he always retreats, quietly, to the Dress-Up corner. Yusuf has an irrational suspicion that he is canvassing the room for escape routes.
"How would it be, just speaking theoretically, if we were in love?" Eames says.
Arthur turns a startling and endearing shade of pink, which is nothing but encouragement.
"Just to try it out," Eames says. "Just to see how it would go. I could woo you via workplace harassment and the possibly one or two delectably raunchy eCards, and maybe read you some Dr. Seuss in a highly suggestive tone, so as to spoil it for you forever whilst simultaneously making you inexplicably hot and bothered. And perhaps we could go out for dinner a few times, and fight so viciously over the check that we got thrown out of the restaurant and no one had to pay."
"Eames," Arthur says in a vaguely strangled tone which probably means Arthur is either about to keel over out of embarrassment or draw his gun. Eames presses on, because that is what he does.
"And eventually, of course, we'd move in together and you'd probably turn out to have a ridiculously sexy propensity for cooking complex Italian food, or possibly have every takeout place within a five-mile radius on speed dial, or maybe both. You'd leave washcloths in the shower, which would be a bizarre and fascinating inconsistency, and I would interpret it as a sign of your affection even though it would be no such thing, and you would read bits of The New York Times global news section out loud in the mornings while I was shaving, because keeping me informed about a variety of violent dictatorships would be your attempt to make sure I traveled safely. I would buy you wildly inappropriate and overly expensive gifts, and quote Shakespeare at inopportune moments, and make it a priority to kiss you so hard you forgot your own name. I really do think we might want to give it a try, love. For science."
"Instead of telling you I loved you I could insult your intelligence and occasionally save you from a violent and bloody death," Arthur says.
"Yes, exactly, that's exactly--" Eames says, and then stops. Arthur peers at him sideways, a smile twisting his mouth up, up, and away.
"Oh, right," Eames says, and gives chase.
Besides which, things are still in-progress! Lots of things, as it happens! The Harry Potter!AU, for one, as well as a Glee!AU (for one of the holiday fic requests, hooray) and a Harry Potter fic (more things which are not Inception-related, good Lord this is shocking!) about the Marauders between graduation and, you know, that time where one of them died, one of them got sent to Azkaban, and one of them spent twelve years as a rat.
(Standard disclaimer applies-- that is to say, nothing you recognize belongs to me, for goodness sake OF COURSE IT DOESN'T. That includes the book titles in the third drabble in this post.)
It's not that Arthur doesn't understand panic. He'd like to look down on people who lose it completely on the job, who fall apart in the middle of their own minds, but he can't quite manage it. Mostly it's because he remembers the third time he ever went under, remembers the sickbadwrong feeling of water filling his lungs as the sky went dark and--
So.
So it isn't that he doesn't understand it, it's only that he hasn't got any use for it. He'd left it behind-- along with flame throwers, grenade launchers, and other rather fanciful tools of destruction-- as an inefficiency. He hasn't really looked back.
Which is probably why, when Eames turns up at the door of the LA apartment with blood staining his jeans Arthur spits out one or two or fifteen obscenities and drags him inside. It is probably why he slams his first-aid kit onto the counter with considerably more force than necessary, and it is probably why he can't stand to watch his own hands shaking. It is almost definitely why he mutters, "Fuck, fuck, I hate being in love," as he watches Eames sleep the sleep of the not-quite-lethally-wounded in Arthur's-- or their? or, well, anyway-- bed. Panic turns out to be a bit different, a bit more raw, when it's on behalf of someone else and Arthur hates it with all of the ferocity he is so justifiably infamous for.
But in the morning Eames wakes up, and stretches, and then proceeds to sprawl shamelessly across the bed and call Arthur "darling" and make faces which promise things a man with a bullet wound in his thigh really cannot deliver. Which is all very annoying, and not at all endearing, not at all, and the point, really, is that maybe some things are worth the fear.
This is how Halloween goes: Arthur ends up at Dom's house because Philippa had insisted that he be there to shower compliments on her costume (she is a magical fairy princess with-- she tells everyone within earshot-- sparkly wings, the power of teleportation, and a black belt in kung fu). Eames ends up at Dom's house because Arthur does. Dom takes the children trick-or-treating, leaving behind him dire, whispered warnings of what will happen if Eames and Arthur defile the kitchen table like last time, do not pull that disgusted face with me Arthur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Arthur tries frantically to mediate the mostly-accidental glowering he does every time he answers the door, fails at least sixty-five percent of the time, scares scores of children away, and then watches as Eames eats an entire bag of Three Musketeers.
This is how Halloween goes: fairly well, actually, all things considered. Besides which, on the drive home Eames produces two bags of M&Ms from absolutely nowhere, which are obviously, he explains solemnly as Arthur picks out the blue ones to eat first, tokens of true love.
"It can't be just any book, though, that's what I'm telling you," Ariadne says, scanning the shelves. She's already considered and rejected Chicken Soup for the American Idol Soul, Knitting With Dog Hair: Better A Sweater From A Dog You Know and Love Than From A Sheep You'll Never Meet, and Does Anything Eat Wasps: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask (because, she had explained, she wasn't bringing anything onto a plane that contained the word "unsettling").
Yusuf nods, looking solemn. "It has to be stupid enough that you don't feel obligated to finish it once you're back on the ground, but interesting enough that it takes your mind off of the fact that human beings were never meant to be thirty thousand feet in the air."
"They've got a point, darling, selection of reading material can be crucial," Eames says. "Besides, I haven't yet decided which tacky souvenir I'm going to saddle you with, and we can't have that."
"Oh God," Arthur says, "kill me now."
"I would, I really would, but I don't need another black mark on my record," Cobb says, grinning. Arthur exercises all of his considerable will power and does not smack him upside the head.
"I'm sure Saito could get you expunged of my murder," he says, and then, rather incongruously, "fucking shitting ow."
"Language!" A decidedly ferocious woman says. She's middle-aged, she's wearing a pink hat complete with massive and terrifying floral arrangement, and her rolling suitcase has just steamrollered Arthur's toes.
"Unless you're going to hit me over the head with the lead weights you've obviously packed and put me out of my misery," Arthur says, "fuck off."
"Dear, dear," Eames says, darting neatly around the shocked woman to hold up an overly large I ♥ New York t-shirt, "language, Arthur. Honestly."
There is a prolonged pause during which Arthur contemplates homicide, Yusuf and Ariadne contemplate novels which almost definitely feature Fabio on the cover, and Arthur contemplates homicide.
"Oh, never mind it darling," Eames says. "I'm going to buy you the most atrocious snow globe the world has ever seen, and then we'll shepherd everyone to the gate and get them on the plane. All in one piece. I promise."
"You can fuck off as well," Arthur says, but he's definitely smiling.
----
ALL OF THOSE BOOKS? REAL BOOKS. HONESTLY.
"You," Eames says, stumbling out of the car, "you cheat. You cheat atrociously!"
"Well no, actually," Arthur says, "I'd say I cheat quite well. I mean, I won."
"You cheat blatantly," Eames amends, taking a few steps toward Arthur (aka The Cheating Cheater of Cheaterdom). "I might-- nay, I would!-- go so far as to call it transparent. You display a wanton disregard for the predetermined track, and you clearly don't feel the need to wait for any sort of starting gun. You are a terrible human being!"
"You seem pleased," Arthur says calmly, still leaning against the hood of his own car.
"Well," Eames says. "Well. Perhaps."
Perhaps he is secretly, in his heart of hearts, fond of Cheating Cheaters of Cheaterdom. But really, cutting that last corner had just been egregious.
On the morning of August 19th, a broad-shouldered, horribly dressed, and generally gorgeous man walks into the supply room of Calvin S. Hall High School and says, “Would you by any chance happen to know where the glitter’s kept around here?”
Arthur open his mouth, closes it again, and blinks (twice).
“No,” he says, glancing around him in an attempt to make sure he hasn’t accidentally wandered into the local elementary school by mistake.
The man doesn’t really seem to register the negative reply, busy as he is rifling through drawers and ransacking cabinets. Arthur watches with the same kind of horrified fascination he might lend a train wreck as various organizational systems are met, overwhelmed, and destroyed.
“Er, excuse me,” Arthur says, jolted out of his stupor by the horror he feels when the man turns, with Serious Intent, toward the filing cabinet. “I can personally assure you that you aren’t going to find any glitter in there.”
The man sighs, wheels around, and finally meets Arthur’s eyes.
“You’re keeper of the filing cabinet, are you?” He asks, except that about halfway through the sentence his tone shifts from where-oh-where-has-the-glitter-gone to something Arthur can only describe as oh-why-hello. Everything from “filing cabinet” on seems to be a wholehearted (and not entirely unsuccessful) attempt to turn a perfectly ordinary, if slightly needling, inquiry into a sultry pick-up line.
Arthur finds himself fighting the urge to both blush and roll his eyes, and is infinitely more horrified by the former impulse.
“As it happens, yes,” he says, his voice entirely flat. The man is now leaning against the damn filing cabinet in a way which he imagines wouldn’t look out of place in a specific sort of night club, but which certainly looks out of place when it involves a filing cabinet. He has a look on his face which suggests he is infuriatingly, smugly amused by this conversation (and probably also Arthur, and possibly the entire world). Arthur catalogs these things dispassionately, and comes to the only possible conclusion: he really, really cannot stand this man.
“Well, perhaps you can tell me where to get a key to my classroom, then,” the man says. Arthur takes a deep breath in through his nose. Of course he’s the new history teacher. Of course he is.
Yusuf separates his days into two categories: "Oh God That Was An Utter Disaster, Stop The World I Want To Get Off" and "Okay." Generally speaking, he knows which sort of day it's going to be within the first five minutes, and certainly he knows by eleven thirty when he rounds up his charges and herds them in the general direction of sustenance. But if he hasn't, he knows by eleven thirty-one when everyone digs messily into paper sacks and metal tins because this, this is when he knows if everyone's lunches are Right.
Fischer's lunch, for example, is not Right if his au pair has accidentally left the crusts on his precise, geometric sandwiches. What's actually inside the sandwiches hardly seems to matter, though it is usually some variation on peanut butter and jelly.
Saito's lunch is not Right if it contains fewer than five items. He counts every day, in an imperious tone which tends to approach a shout.
"ONE," he will declare as he carefully places a juice box on the table.
"TWO," he will proclaim as it is joined by a bag of apple slices.
"THREE," he will announce as a chocolate pudding cup is produced, inspected, and set down.
"FOUR," he will pronounce as half of a sandwich, its contents unknown, emerges to join its fellows.
But Lord help everyone if all of this is not followed by a triumphant decree of "FIVE," and something, anything else. Yusuf does not understand why five is the magic number, but it certainly is. The last time Saitos' lunch had been inadequate, containing a paltry three items, he had stalked into the corner and refused to participate in reading circle until someone had sent out for some grape juice and a cheese stick.
Mal has a sweet tooth, and so her lunch is not Right if it is overly burdened by anything besides dessert. But Mal has never yet thrown a temper tantrum over a lunch gone wrong-- instead she begs, borrows and steals until she's accumulated a satisfying number of chocolate bars, lollipops, and gummy candies of all sorts. Cobb-- whose lunch is always Right because it is, without fail, always the same-- doesn't wait to be asked before handing over his chocolate chip oatmeal cookie.
Ariadne's lunches are not Right if they do not contain enough items with flat surfaces. When Yusuf had asked about it once, beleaguered and bewildered, she had grinned her gap-toothed grin at him and said, "Hafta make buildings!" And it is certainly true that every day a skyscraper slowly rises from the table, made of sandwiches and granola bars and dangerously wobbling juice boxes. How these structures stay standing is anyone's guess, but it is only Ariadne who is permitted to take them apart again.
Arthur is, as is so often the case, a calm shelter in the ridiculously grubby, sticky storm that is lunchtime. He is blessedly indifferent to his lunch. He is a supremely uninterested eater, the furthest thing from picky Yusuf has ever seen, and he is extraordinarily allergy-free. His lunches are consumed with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency, and when he is finished he always retreats, quietly, to the Dress-Up corner. Yusuf has an irrational suspicion that he is canvassing the room for escape routes.
"How would it be, just speaking theoretically, if we were in love?" Eames says.
Arthur turns a startling and endearing shade of pink, which is nothing but encouragement.
"Just to try it out," Eames says. "Just to see how it would go. I could woo you via workplace harassment and the possibly one or two delectably raunchy eCards, and maybe read you some Dr. Seuss in a highly suggestive tone, so as to spoil it for you forever whilst simultaneously making you inexplicably hot and bothered. And perhaps we could go out for dinner a few times, and fight so viciously over the check that we got thrown out of the restaurant and no one had to pay."
"Eames," Arthur says in a vaguely strangled tone which probably means Arthur is either about to keel over out of embarrassment or draw his gun. Eames presses on, because that is what he does.
"And eventually, of course, we'd move in together and you'd probably turn out to have a ridiculously sexy propensity for cooking complex Italian food, or possibly have every takeout place within a five-mile radius on speed dial, or maybe both. You'd leave washcloths in the shower, which would be a bizarre and fascinating inconsistency, and I would interpret it as a sign of your affection even though it would be no such thing, and you would read bits of The New York Times global news section out loud in the mornings while I was shaving, because keeping me informed about a variety of violent dictatorships would be your attempt to make sure I traveled safely. I would buy you wildly inappropriate and overly expensive gifts, and quote Shakespeare at inopportune moments, and make it a priority to kiss you so hard you forgot your own name. I really do think we might want to give it a try, love. For science."
"Instead of telling you I loved you I could insult your intelligence and occasionally save you from a violent and bloody death," Arthur says.
"Yes, exactly, that's exactly--" Eames says, and then stops. Arthur peers at him sideways, a smile twisting his mouth up, up, and away.
"Oh, right," Eames says, and gives chase.
Besides which, things are still in-progress! Lots of things, as it happens! The Harry Potter!AU, for one, as well as a Glee!AU (for one of the holiday fic requests, hooray) and a Harry Potter fic (more things which are not Inception-related, good Lord this is shocking!) about the Marauders between graduation and, you know, that time where one of them died, one of them got sent to Azkaban, and one of them spent twelve years as a rat.