Cobblestone Waltz (1/1)
Title: Cobblestone Waltz
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In which Eames is the point man, and Arthur is the forger.
AN: Has this already been done before? I don't know. If so, then I want a link :D
"Forging is an art form," Arthur says and throws pregnant glances at everyone in the room. "It is a powerful means of safety."
"Hmhm, safety," Eames replies sleepily, feeling his eyes roll back into his head. He is not really listening, but he does not need to either, since Arthur is holding a small speech on his trade every single day, a defence mechanism that is mainly aimed at Eames.
Everyone knows there is a stigma attached to forging, the notion that only ruthless people posses the audacity to slip into someone else's skin, the belief that only those who want to deceive you have an interest in studying you.
Arthur is not audacious, he is probably everything but, and he has a natural interest in studying that goes far beyond people, the entire team knows that and Arthur is probably aware they do, but as soon as Eames enters the warehouse with his blueprints and whiteboards, files and folders, the forger straightens his suit and clears his throat, ready to tell them over and over again just how valuable he truly is.
"Safety" is the word he always uses, to an extend that makes Eames think he wants the word to leave a white hot imprint on their brains.
Safety Safety Safety Safety.
Eames pinches the bridge of his nose and wishes himself back to bed.
**
Just like Arthur, Eames is probably the best at what he does. He notices the other's sneer when they work at opposite tables in the warehouse, when Eames' desk is littered with papers and hastily scrawled post-it notes that are too dirty to stick anywhere anymore, every free spot covered in his huge scrawl that sometimes only he can read.
Arthur's desk looks as if someone arranged it using a ruler, photos carefully piled up, notes at the back, while newspaper clippings and other information sits carefully filed, in sheet protectors in his various folders.
In the morning Arthur will complain that he can't read Eames' scrawl on the whiteboard, and if Eames does not remember a detail immediately, he will rummage in his pile of stained paper, coffee rims on every single page, front and back, while Arthur rolls his eyes at him.
They couldn't be more different, and this is why with combined strength, they are the best at what they do.
**
Arthur watches Eames, and he has watched him for years. At first he liked to think he had Eames all mapped out, with the way he sauntered into a room and winked at him, a perfect display of a human being without any professionalism.
He would voice his doubts over this man, Arthur thought, get him replaced immediately before the team would take any damage, but Eames turned out to be sharper than he dressed, and Arthur found that probably for the first time since he became a forger, he had let prejudice win him over.
Eames neither really needed papers nor did he need a map, most of the time he was able to easily memorise important aspects of a job and recognise potential risks, and as much as he liked to joke about those risks, he avoided them whenever he could, for the team's sake as well as his own.
Arthur thought he had long figured out what Eames was all about, but sometimes at night when only the two of them remain in the dimly lit warehouse, after Yusuf has gathered his flasks and syringes and excuses himself, Eames steps become heavy, a dull, weary scuffle that matches the dark rings under his eyes that do not disappear even when he smiles.
**
Eames has an unhealthy obsession with watching Arthur forge. To him it is the most intriguing thing to watch Arthur change, slowly sometimes, shaking his new limbs and checking his features, as if it takes effort to grow into a body, bone by bone, muscle by muscle, and as if even after all these years, he sometimes dislikes the feeling of a body that is less rigid and not as perfectly groomed as his own.
Sometimes, if Arthur does not concentrate enough, bits of him will linger behind for a moment, his hazel eyes, his dimples or pieces of his clothing, and Eames will stare in utter amazement at this imperfect canvas, two worlds clashing violently in one body.
Arthur gets angry and blames him for such slips, and Eames likes to think that he is in fact to blame because Arthur gets strangely queasy sometimes, as if he is being watched doing something utterly intimate.
**
Sometimes Arthur will run to the warehouse at the crack of dawn. He enters by picking the lock, and with the first rays of sunlight as his only witness, he tenderly runs a finger over Eames' blueprints that are probably only a few hours old by then, and while most of it make sense to him, he knows that there are aspects of Eames' work only the point man himself will understand.
He feels strangely jealous at that, wondering if he could learn those tricks and secrets if he just watches Eames long enough, and hoping that as soon as he knows every crease in Eames' face, every dark ring and every bruise, there will be an answer to all of his questions, and answer to the enigma that is Eames.
Eames on the other hand will appear behind him with a noisy sip of his morning tea, handing Arthur a coffee, black with just the slightest hint of sugar.
He will ask what darling is doing here, the pet name rolling off his tongue with a British accent so mixed that Arthur thinks he might break trying to every track down its original origin. Eames will make a well-practised joke about Arthur's beauty sleep, or the non-existent lonely companion in Arthur's bed, but the only thing Arthur will notice is that Eames only bought coffee for one.
**
Eames wonders if pure cynicism turned Arthur into a forger. Maybe Arthur thought people were easy to read, and their exterior was easy to reproduce, because they were all just damn alike, liars and killers, constantly putting themselves before others, constantly afraid of their surroundings.
Arthur never puts himself before others, Eames thinks. His fierce loyalty and all the bravery he possesses can turn him into a one-man army if need be, if Eames makes a mistake and they find themselves thrown into an unexpected situation.
"Safety", Eames thinks, safety safety safety safety, and it will end up being the word he and Arthur argue about, when Arthur rips the needle from his arm and calls Eames a careless loaf.
Eames blinks and wonders if all the layers of clothing, the slicked back hair and the carefully arranged features aren't just a forger's trick, a wall of insecurity employed to hide the true core.
He blinks and sees Arthur smile, but it's all just wishful thinking, a construct of his imagination, hidden behind all the anger and frustration Arthur feels towards those he impersonates.
**
"If I asked you to impersonate me, would you do it?" Eames asks Arthur, but the the other man only blushes and tells him to stop joking because he does not want to tell him that he, the best forger there is, is unable to.
Eames' great strength seems to be inconsistency. He will plan the smallest details of a job just to turn up hungover on the day, and he will joke about matters that aren't funny in the slightest, just to turn serious a moment later. He pretends to wear his emotions on his sleeve, but he goes deeper than that, much deeper, to a place where Arthur cannot follow.
"You have to think a little less," Eames tells him, and his fingertips touch Arthur's cheek, "Think a little less about me or I'll have to assume you're infatuated with me!"
The weirdly cordial smirk turns into a full-fledged grin, the fingertips turn into a pat, and with a wink, Eames is gone.
He should be the forger, Arthur thinks, he already knows everything.
**
After that, the forging begins to turn out wrong. Arthur can't concentrate no matter how hard he tries, and Eames' silent encouragement, his unblinking eyes focused on Arthur, only make it worse, so when Cobb suggests he should take a break, he does.
"Safety" is the last thing he thinks before he turns the lock and hides the key, to safety.
Eames' shadow however is persistent, it follows him wherever he goes. In cityscapes Arthur begins to see his drawings, lines straight and smooth despite the unsharpened pencils he always uses.
Arthur starts avoiding coffee at a diners at two am in the morning because the coffee is bad and the waitresses call him darling in a lazy drawl, a pale comparison to Eames' pronunciation and the way he tacks the syllables next to each other.
**
Eames gives Arthur five months before he goes after him. When Arthur left he looked scared and confused, the complete opposite of the coolly calculated figure Eames has come to know, and the point man suspects - he knows - it is his fault.
"Stop hiding" is the only thing he says to Arthur when he finds him in a uncharacteristically small hotel in Rome, a half-hearted attempt to disappear, because Arthur probably knew Eames would find him. He was the point man, for god's sake.
"If you want to ask me something just ask," Eames says and rubs his eyes tiredly, "Stop trying to read my mind."
He invites himself in and stays.
**
"Can't you be a little more creative?" Eames asks as he takes a look at Arthur's sketches, huffing good-naturedly.
"It's a diagram, there is logic involved," Arthur says without looking at him, and places a coaster under Eames' mug before another brown rim can start to form on the paper underneath.
"You taught me that yourself. By the way," he says and inspects Eames' desk, picking up a few crumpled pieces of paper, "I could say the same about you. Why are blonde women all you seem to come up with?"
"But this one has a pixie cut," Eames says forcefully, pointing at a sketch in Arthur's hand.
"Seriously Eames," Arthur sighs, the sound much less playful, "I told you about a thousand times--"
Suddenly there is an arm around his waist and lips at his ear.
"Appearances aren't everything, right darling?"
"Right."
He forgot, Arthur thinks seconds before they kiss, that the point man had a brilliant memory after all.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In which Eames is the point man, and Arthur is the forger.
AN: Has this already been done before? I don't know. If so, then I want a link :D
"Forging is an art form," Arthur says and throws pregnant glances at everyone in the room. "It is a powerful means of safety."
"Hmhm, safety," Eames replies sleepily, feeling his eyes roll back into his head. He is not really listening, but he does not need to either, since Arthur is holding a small speech on his trade every single day, a defence mechanism that is mainly aimed at Eames.
Everyone knows there is a stigma attached to forging, the notion that only ruthless people posses the audacity to slip into someone else's skin, the belief that only those who want to deceive you have an interest in studying you.
Arthur is not audacious, he is probably everything but, and he has a natural interest in studying that goes far beyond people, the entire team knows that and Arthur is probably aware they do, but as soon as Eames enters the warehouse with his blueprints and whiteboards, files and folders, the forger straightens his suit and clears his throat, ready to tell them over and over again just how valuable he truly is.
"Safety" is the word he always uses, to an extend that makes Eames think he wants the word to leave a white hot imprint on their brains.
Safety Safety Safety Safety.
Eames pinches the bridge of his nose and wishes himself back to bed.
**
Just like Arthur, Eames is probably the best at what he does. He notices the other's sneer when they work at opposite tables in the warehouse, when Eames' desk is littered with papers and hastily scrawled post-it notes that are too dirty to stick anywhere anymore, every free spot covered in his huge scrawl that sometimes only he can read.
Arthur's desk looks as if someone arranged it using a ruler, photos carefully piled up, notes at the back, while newspaper clippings and other information sits carefully filed, in sheet protectors in his various folders.
In the morning Arthur will complain that he can't read Eames' scrawl on the whiteboard, and if Eames does not remember a detail immediately, he will rummage in his pile of stained paper, coffee rims on every single page, front and back, while Arthur rolls his eyes at him.
They couldn't be more different, and this is why with combined strength, they are the best at what they do.
**
Arthur watches Eames, and he has watched him for years. At first he liked to think he had Eames all mapped out, with the way he sauntered into a room and winked at him, a perfect display of a human being without any professionalism.
He would voice his doubts over this man, Arthur thought, get him replaced immediately before the team would take any damage, but Eames turned out to be sharper than he dressed, and Arthur found that probably for the first time since he became a forger, he had let prejudice win him over.
Eames neither really needed papers nor did he need a map, most of the time he was able to easily memorise important aspects of a job and recognise potential risks, and as much as he liked to joke about those risks, he avoided them whenever he could, for the team's sake as well as his own.
Arthur thought he had long figured out what Eames was all about, but sometimes at night when only the two of them remain in the dimly lit warehouse, after Yusuf has gathered his flasks and syringes and excuses himself, Eames steps become heavy, a dull, weary scuffle that matches the dark rings under his eyes that do not disappear even when he smiles.
**
Eames has an unhealthy obsession with watching Arthur forge. To him it is the most intriguing thing to watch Arthur change, slowly sometimes, shaking his new limbs and checking his features, as if it takes effort to grow into a body, bone by bone, muscle by muscle, and as if even after all these years, he sometimes dislikes the feeling of a body that is less rigid and not as perfectly groomed as his own.
Sometimes, if Arthur does not concentrate enough, bits of him will linger behind for a moment, his hazel eyes, his dimples or pieces of his clothing, and Eames will stare in utter amazement at this imperfect canvas, two worlds clashing violently in one body.
Arthur gets angry and blames him for such slips, and Eames likes to think that he is in fact to blame because Arthur gets strangely queasy sometimes, as if he is being watched doing something utterly intimate.
**
Sometimes Arthur will run to the warehouse at the crack of dawn. He enters by picking the lock, and with the first rays of sunlight as his only witness, he tenderly runs a finger over Eames' blueprints that are probably only a few hours old by then, and while most of it make sense to him, he knows that there are aspects of Eames' work only the point man himself will understand.
He feels strangely jealous at that, wondering if he could learn those tricks and secrets if he just watches Eames long enough, and hoping that as soon as he knows every crease in Eames' face, every dark ring and every bruise, there will be an answer to all of his questions, and answer to the enigma that is Eames.
Eames on the other hand will appear behind him with a noisy sip of his morning tea, handing Arthur a coffee, black with just the slightest hint of sugar.
He will ask what darling is doing here, the pet name rolling off his tongue with a British accent so mixed that Arthur thinks he might break trying to every track down its original origin. Eames will make a well-practised joke about Arthur's beauty sleep, or the non-existent lonely companion in Arthur's bed, but the only thing Arthur will notice is that Eames only bought coffee for one.
**
Eames wonders if pure cynicism turned Arthur into a forger. Maybe Arthur thought people were easy to read, and their exterior was easy to reproduce, because they were all just damn alike, liars and killers, constantly putting themselves before others, constantly afraid of their surroundings.
Arthur never puts himself before others, Eames thinks. His fierce loyalty and all the bravery he possesses can turn him into a one-man army if need be, if Eames makes a mistake and they find themselves thrown into an unexpected situation.
"Safety", Eames thinks, safety safety safety safety, and it will end up being the word he and Arthur argue about, when Arthur rips the needle from his arm and calls Eames a careless loaf.
Eames blinks and wonders if all the layers of clothing, the slicked back hair and the carefully arranged features aren't just a forger's trick, a wall of insecurity employed to hide the true core.
He blinks and sees Arthur smile, but it's all just wishful thinking, a construct of his imagination, hidden behind all the anger and frustration Arthur feels towards those he impersonates.
**
"If I asked you to impersonate me, would you do it?" Eames asks Arthur, but the the other man only blushes and tells him to stop joking because he does not want to tell him that he, the best forger there is, is unable to.
Eames' great strength seems to be inconsistency. He will plan the smallest details of a job just to turn up hungover on the day, and he will joke about matters that aren't funny in the slightest, just to turn serious a moment later. He pretends to wear his emotions on his sleeve, but he goes deeper than that, much deeper, to a place where Arthur cannot follow.
"You have to think a little less," Eames tells him, and his fingertips touch Arthur's cheek, "Think a little less about me or I'll have to assume you're infatuated with me!"
The weirdly cordial smirk turns into a full-fledged grin, the fingertips turn into a pat, and with a wink, Eames is gone.
He should be the forger, Arthur thinks, he already knows everything.
**
After that, the forging begins to turn out wrong. Arthur can't concentrate no matter how hard he tries, and Eames' silent encouragement, his unblinking eyes focused on Arthur, only make it worse, so when Cobb suggests he should take a break, he does.
"Safety" is the last thing he thinks before he turns the lock and hides the key, to safety.
Eames' shadow however is persistent, it follows him wherever he goes. In cityscapes Arthur begins to see his drawings, lines straight and smooth despite the unsharpened pencils he always uses.
Arthur starts avoiding coffee at a diners at two am in the morning because the coffee is bad and the waitresses call him darling in a lazy drawl, a pale comparison to Eames' pronunciation and the way he tacks the syllables next to each other.
**
Eames gives Arthur five months before he goes after him. When Arthur left he looked scared and confused, the complete opposite of the coolly calculated figure Eames has come to know, and the point man suspects - he knows - it is his fault.
"Stop hiding" is the only thing he says to Arthur when he finds him in a uncharacteristically small hotel in Rome, a half-hearted attempt to disappear, because Arthur probably knew Eames would find him. He was the point man, for god's sake.
"If you want to ask me something just ask," Eames says and rubs his eyes tiredly, "Stop trying to read my mind."
He invites himself in and stays.
**
"Can't you be a little more creative?" Eames asks as he takes a look at Arthur's sketches, huffing good-naturedly.
"It's a diagram, there is logic involved," Arthur says without looking at him, and places a coaster under Eames' mug before another brown rim can start to form on the paper underneath.
"You taught me that yourself. By the way," he says and inspects Eames' desk, picking up a few crumpled pieces of paper, "I could say the same about you. Why are blonde women all you seem to come up with?"
"But this one has a pixie cut," Eames says forcefully, pointing at a sketch in Arthur's hand.
"Seriously Eames," Arthur sighs, the sound much less playful, "I told you about a thousand times--"
Suddenly there is an arm around his waist and lips at his ear.
"Appearances aren't everything, right darling?"
"Right."
He forgot, Arthur thinks seconds before they kiss, that the point man had a brilliant memory after all.