halfway gone!
I've passed 150k words this year, which is half of my yearly goal for getyourwordsout. Obviously this means I'm volunteering to write you commentfic.
Rules:♠I will write for: Inception, Merlin, J2, Generation Kill, JE, Gundam Wing, the odd Jdrama maybe. I mightmightmight be able to be bullied into writing for Hawaii 5-0 ( Read more... )
Rules:♠I will write for: Inception, Merlin, J2, Generation Kill, JE, Gundam Wing, the odd Jdrama maybe. I mightmightmight be able to be bullied into writing for Hawaii 5-0 ( Read more... )
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When they first met, Eames wouldn't necessarily have said that he'd have called Arthur the 'traditional' type when it came to relationships, but he wouldn't have ruled it out either. Mostly he'd have said that Arthur was the type to keep his work and his personal life separate, and that he most likely did a very good job at that. That turned out to be true, if you ignore the great big caveat that is Eames himself.
It hadn't started out very seriously, of course. Things seldom do, or at least they seldom do for Eames, whose wanderlust is matched only by [urge to gamble, something about risk-taking, ikd]. Arthur was a sometimes business associate and an occasional fuck, and very good at both. Good enough that eventually things were upgraded to 'sometimes business associate, frequent fuck, assuming we're in the same city'. They discussed some ground rules for themselves--together--and left ground rules from themselves--apart--well enough alone. This system worked quite well for Eames, and presumably worked quite well for Arthur or he wouldn't have kept it up.
What really shook things up was the fallout from the Fischer job. One not-entirely-seamless inception later, and Cobb's out of the game, likely for good. Arthur and Eames pretend not to know each other from the airport to the hotel, separate cabs, same big bed, same as always, except when Eames arrives, Arthur has a bit of a proposition for him.
"I like working with a partner. Interested?" Arthur had said, and honestly, Eames could see the appeal, so that was the end of it. Eames has some special skills in his repertoire, but he's by no means a specialist, and he's very selective in advertising those skills. There are, after all, plenty of good thieves; distinctiveness is only an advantage some of the time.
They work well together, better than Eames might have thought, snapping together like clockwork rather than like puzzle pieces. Arthur is more than willing to let Eames handle his own shit, now that he's not one of the wildcard variables in Arthur's complex mental equations. It's nice, like Arthur remarked once, off hand, before a job put together by a client Eames didn't like and an architect Arthur didn't trust, knowing there's going to be one person in the room you don't have to watch your back around. It's a good feeling, the trust and the security.
It changes their personal dynamic too, in ways that have nothing to do with the fact that they're in the same city more often than not now. It's closer, steadier, the trust and security from their business partnership bleeding over. But it's more than that too, something in the genuine affection Eames feels for Arthur, something in the way Arthur's light up when he sees Eames. It's in the way Arthur acquires copies of every key to every piece of property Eames owns, and in the casual way Arthur lets Eames into his personal space wherever they are, whenever he wants to be there.
Once, in the hushed space between breaths, Arthur says, "You're better at this than Cobb was," like a confession. He's talking about the partnership, this thing between them, not the sex, and Eames isn't sure he believes in love, but if he does, he's pretty sure this is it.
What it isn't, is exclusive. There's no question that they're together. It's easy and natural, like the way they come home to the same apartment at night. They also sleep with other people, and that's easy and natural too.
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