The Proposal
Title: The Proposal
Word Count: 1000 - 1500
Genre: romance
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Inception is not mine
Summary: see above title
Author’s Note: I should have stopped myself and apologise now for not. Unbeta-ed so all fault lies with me.
Arthur proposed over grilled fish and tzatziki in Santorini. Eames, who had always prided himself on his brittle wit and incomparable originality, promptly responded by spewing his mouthful of fish across the table. It was a sign of just how long they had been together that Arthur simply picked the flakes of fish out of his yogurt.
“You’ve never thought about it?” Arthur asked.
“Thought about what? Getting married? Of course . . . just, not necessarily as something that applied to me. Personally.” Because, naturally, it could apply to him impersonally. Shock was making him sound like a right idiot.
Arthur cocked his head thoughtfully. “Because you’re involved with a man or for broader philosophical reasons?”
“Rising divorce rates?”
Arthur shrugged. “Personal commitment versus societal pressure. Choice versus conformity. Equal rights versus manufactured elitism. The usual.”
“I’m not that complicated, Arthur.” Arthur’s disbelieving snort spoke volumes about his opinion on that topic. Eames ploughed on because the truth seemed important to get out, for once. “I just hadn’t met someone I’d consider marrying.”
“What about me?”
“I heard the question the first time, Arthur.”
“I just thought I’d try it again since I missed your answer the first time.” Arthur leaned back in his chair. “Unless the fish thing had a deeper meaning.”
Eames pushed aside his dinner. It was a weeknight. The cruise ships had already left port for the day, and the restaurant was quiet except for them and a family of four near the entrance. Restaurant was a bit of a glorified term, really; the place was little more than a walk-through with wooden tables and rickety chairs and fish the owner caught fresh each day that his wife cooked on the outdoor grill. It was the sort of place Eames loved and Arthur tolerated. Ironically, Arthur had elected for a more casual look and looked ridiculously dishevelled (for Arthur anyway) in cut-offs, t-shirt, and battered Ray-Bans. He’d kicked off his sandals at some point during their meal and hooked his bare feet around the chair legs. Eames had chosen a dressier look (for him anyway) and now felt absurdly hot in his paisley button-down and navy cargo shorts. Outside, the Mediterranean pounded against the stone wharf and Eames could hear the restaurant’s trademark golden awning fluttering in the swelteringly hot breeze. Dusk was falling and the air smelled of figs.
Eames committed all of it to memory.
Across from him, Arthur sighed. “Look, Eames, forget it . . . .”
“How do you see it changing things? Our getting married.” Even the word felt wrong in his mouth, too round and rolling all over the place.
Eames braced for a list of practicalities. Tax remedies. Joint health insurance. Even though Eames was already a card-carrying member of the National Health Service, Arthur suffered from an unfathomable obsession with making certain that Eames was insured for medical care in places like the Gobi desert where, apparently, work was plentiful and healthcare expensive. They already lived together, as much as two people without a steady postal code could be said to be living together anyway so . . . .
When Arthur finally answered, his reply was at once simpler and much more complicated.
“I’m a traditionalist at heart, Eames. I can’t change that. I like the idea of an acknowledged relationship.”
Fuck. Eames scrambled for an end-run around that one and came up empty.
“You’re not going to start calling me your husband, are you?”
Arthur pinked, which was an answer in itself.
“You’re a heathen,” he muttered and reached for his beer.
“No, really, Arthur. This isn’t minor. It wouldn’t be minor in any case but particularly in our line of work. As if the Cobb mess wasn’t enough of an example of the potential for matrimonial disaster in dreamscape work, we’d be under the constant threat of tangential violence.”
“I wasn’t going to send out wedding invitations, for fuck’s sake.”
“Even so, ours is a small world, Arthur. Word would get around, and there are more than a few individuals who would relish the opportunity to abduct you in an attempt to get back at me.”
And vice versa. More so vice versa though neither of them said it.
“I wasn’t planning on working forever,” Arthur said with a scowl. “Were you?”
“No.”
Arthur sighed and tossed back the last of his beer. “Seriously, where did you think this thing with us was going anyway, Eames?”
An early and painful death when they were still working regularly with Cobb. Now, possibly, a cosy semi-early retirement. Eames felt his skin settle back onto him, intact and surprisingly comfortable for a change. He tilted his head back to stare at the cracked ceiling and let his pulse settle to something approaching manageable. Across from him, Arthur had started talking again and Eames had missed something important. Again.
“ . . . wasn’t a casual, off-the-cuff question. I didn’t dress up because I didn’t want to spook you. But I don’t want this to interfere with what we already have, okay? I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m not sure what I was thinking when neither of us can even manage to stumble through the ‘L’ word in the middle of sex.”
“You would believe me if I told you I loved you in the middle of a fuck?”
Arthur rolled his eyes but swallowed hard, and Eames considered himself a thousand kinds of fool for not realising this before. Words might have been cheap to him, easily forged and often times meaningless as a result, but they meant everything to Arthur. Eames silently promised to make it up to Arthur, starting now.
“I say I love you all the time, you idiot.” Alright. Not perhaps the best start but he was still new to this, hadn’t said it to anyone since his mother actually. “I fetch you morning coffee.”
Arthur set his sculpted lips in a stubborn line, refusing to be mollified.
“Only when I haven’t already made coffee. Besides, you’ve bought Dom coffee before.”
“Once. You made me.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Eames abandoned coffee.
“I carry a mobile for you.”
“Only because I keep stuffing them in your pockets. You went through six cell phones last month. Did you know that?”
“I cook for you. Eggplant Parmiagiana. Nothing says true love like Italian food, darling.” That point was harder to argue and Eames could see the cracks start in Arthur’s stony façade. “I love you, Arthur. Did you really believe my answer would ever be anything other than yes?”
Arthur grinned at him with deep dimples and a new gleam in his dark eyes, suddenly and utterly incandescent in his happiness, so beautiful that Eames thought he might be getting chest pains just from looking at him.
Tags: arthur, eames, inception