*simpler than black and white
ARTHUR x EAMES; INCEPTION FIC written for this prompt at inception_kink. Oh Tom Hardy, you really are suit porn ♥
simpler than black and white
By hipokras
Five times Arthur failed to convince Eames to get a tailored suit, and the one time he found Eames outside his door in a tailored three-piece; "girls bore me with their silly ideas of poofy white dresses and groom's tuxedos." [Arthur x Eames]
First
When Ariadne's pet rabbit died, she was devastated and Arthur was the nearest to pick up the pieces. That was how Eames found them: the architect sobbing in the corner, with Arthur's arm wrapped around her. He raised a silent eyebrow at the pair, met by Arthur's glare.
Within minutes, Yusuf had joined Eames, the two of them staring, unembarrassed. The suggestive glint in Yusuf's eye made Arthur wish there was something he could hurl at the man. And Ariadne chose that moment to hitch a loud snuffle, and bury her face in his shoulder. "Use protection," mouthed Eames slowly and clearly, and sauntered away with a grinning Yusuf.
"Have you thought about how you're going to lay Mr. Snuffles to rest?" asked Arthur awkwardly, once they were left alone.
Ariadne lifted a tear-stained face, eyes shining with hope. "You mean a funeral? Will you help?"
He glanced down at the suit he was wearing, feeling he was already dressed for one. That was he heard from Eames on a daily basis anyway. "Absolutely," he said, recognising the opportunity to get the entire team to dress in formals for a change. Hah, finally we'll look good. "I'll make the arrangements; you decide what you're going to say."
Cobb was vaguely sympathetic when Arthur approached him. He cocked his head and squinted at the point man, half-listening and not sure what he was agreeing to. Arthur wasn't all too concerned with Cobb anyway, who was always willing to wear a suit when on business.
When he went to Yusuf, the latter grinned salaciously up at Arthur, who merely shook his head in exasperation. It was too complicated to explain why he did not intend to crawl into Ariadne's tear-soaked bed. "Just be there," he sighed. "And wear a suit."
"Okay," agreed Yusuf amicably. He squinted at Arthur in eerie imitation of Cobb. "You love this, don't you, man? Stuffing us all in penguin costumes." Arthur judiciously suppressed the smirk.
The only problem was, and he knew it, was Eames.
"'Ello, darling," greeted Eames, smiling broadly in creepy imitation of a drag queen. Arthur was convinced the bastard was doing it on purpose. "There's an inter-office memo going on about you bodily stuffing people into penguin suits. I quote," he added hurriedly, when Arthur's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"It's an ordinary three-piece suit, and it's appropriate for a funeral," he said stiffly.
"Of course," agreed Eames. "Fair enough. All good."
"What's the catch?"
"Nothing at all." An angelic smile. "Although... I am supposed to be in Mombasa five minutes ago."
"Perfect solution," agreed Arthur flatly. One less Eames to bother him, one happier Arthur. Then why wasn't he more pleased?
Second
"How was Mombasa?" asked Arthur dryly, balancing his phone on the crook of his shoulder as he rummaged through the contents of Eames's ridiculously messy desk for a stapler.
"Fantastic weather we're having here," replied Eames cheerfully. "Been in three fights since the morning, and won as many. Pretty good day, actually."
"How close are you to the airport?" growled Arthur, seeing where this was going. "Cobb wants you for this job, and you had better show up on time."
"Not sure if I can make it on time, darling." Eames did not sound apologetic in the least. "Lots of things to be taken care of here. Including evading a criminal record with the police. Imperative that I do the last one, actually. There's no way I'm reaching San Francisco before tomorrow night."
Arthur gritted his teeth so loudly that Eames could hear it over the phone. "You'd better be here by noon, or I'll-" Yusuf, passing by, winced at what he heard the point man say. Eames sauntered into the warehouse at eleven fifty-nine exactly, with the worst attempt at feigned nonchalance.
"Hello, darling."
"Your wardrobe is atrocious," announced Arthur, hand in his pocket to feel for the reassuring presence of his totem. "You want one last look at the file?" he added solicitously.
"It's not that hard, darling," said Eames, with a condescending smirk. "There's nothing complicated about a mark that pops wood at the sight of businesswomen in pinstripes. Rather, I suspect BDSM."
"Spare me," said Arthur, sounding stiffer than usual. "At least you could have dressed the part." He raked his eyes over the Bermuda shorts hanging off Eames's hips with poorly disguised contempt.
"I didn't know which would be worse," he admitted frankly. "Looking like you, or the fake boobs."
Later, when the mark was cornered and sedated, Arthur was still pissed off at Eames, which the rest of the team was finding harder to ignore. Cobb had to step on Arthur's foot more than once to keep the peace.
"But look at him," protested Arthur, jerking his head at Eames, who stood out like a sore thumb amid the suited people milling around the trading house which the mark would enter.
"Oh, I'm looking," said Ariadne, stifling a laugh in her sleeve. Arthur glanced around to see what was so funny, and did a double take. "Hi, gorgeous," she added, and Arthur blanched.
Gone was unshaven, suntanned Eames, sunglasses perched on the bridge of his lotion-smeared nose. And Ariadne wasn't joking: this new Eames was a looker. Because the bastard of a forger looked like himself after he'd met a razor and a Louis Vitton tailor. The fact that this was an illusion did not stop Arthur's trousers from feeling uncomfortably tight.
He blinked and a brunette with whip-straight hair and stern spectacles stood there instead. "Excuse me," muttered Arthur, when he realised he wasn't going to be rid of his particular problem anytime soon.
Third
Eames thought it was hilarious to bring up the last job whenever Arthur complained that he never wore a suit. "It doesn't count if it was an illusion in our heads," the point man gave his standard retort. "Your wardrobe is pathetic."
"Been breaking into my bedroom to check for yourself, darling?" he asked innocently, with a not-so-innocent smirk.
"Yes, that's exactly what it is," agreed Arthur flatly. "And you're coming with me. Now. I don't care who you have to cancel on for it."
Eames rose laconically out of his chair. "And where might we be going?" he asked; despite the lazy tone he adopted, there was a guarded undertone. Arthur glanced irritably around at him, dismissive of the forger's suspicion.
"Where else? I'm taking you shopping."
He turned away and walked past, not noticing Eames shaking his head in amusement. "Bloody hell, how do you never fail to surprise me?" the latter murmured ruefully under his breath. To check, he fingered the poker chip in his pocket, not exactly sure if this was real.
An hour later, he was being prepped and pinned up like a mannequin, while Arthur and his tailor kept up a stream of coded signals that even Eames did not understand. How did a nod of Arthur's head translate into the tailor's cue to jab a pin into Eames's leg?
"The indignity of being your dress-up doll is very keen," interrupted Eames mildly after the longest half-hour of his life, during which he was told his body type was "all wrong, oh, so, so wrong" for pulling off anything but loud colours.
Arthur glanced up, eyebrows arched questioningly, as though he hadn't really thought of Eames in that capacity. Liar, thought the forger, grudgingly impressed by Arthur's subtle and unusual idea of enemy torture. "You look nice," he offered non-committally.
Eames glanced down at himself, bits of broadcloth hanging over his shirt and trousers attached with pins and wondered briefly if Arthur was blind. "Thank you," he said slowly. "Your condescension is always endearing."
"I wasn't condescending," muttered Arthur, though in retrospect, it would uncomplicated his emotions if he was. He wasn't even sure if this was an emotional problem as much as it was a purely physical one, the irrepressible conviction that the very sight of Eames did things to him he couldn't control. "You do look good. Or you will, when my tailor's done with you at any rate."
"Oh. In that case, thank you." Eames met his eye from across the room, tipping him a wink as though to say that this conversation would be their secret. Arthur was glad that the rest of the team wouldn't need to know just how he was thawing before a certain forger. Yes, that was exactly why the sight of him sent a warm flush creeping down Arthur's collar. He was simply glad that the others didn't know how he was running out of reasons to dislike Eames. In fact, he was sure he liked Eames a little too much.
Fourth
The top five things to not do with someone who makes you question your orientation is dinner. Dinner is a purely couple-y activity, a shoddy excuse to hold the other person's hand while they gaze stupidly into your eyes. Eames was typically amused by Arthur's denunciation of candlelit dinners.
"So who was the girl who broke your heart and left you such a cynic?" he questioned, leaning forward in his chair with the familiar glint in his eye.
"No one," retorted Arthur defensively, while mentally running a checklist of all the ruined dates he'd had at candlelit tables. Technically, what they were doing now didn't qualify as such: Chinese take-out in the warehouse by the light of Eames's table-lamp. It wasn't romantic, but Arthur didn't want the risk of it turning into something like that.
"I'll let you know when I believe that," snorted Eames, whipping away the last dumpling before Arthur could. The latter glared at him. "You're the type who perennially falls too hard, too fast. It's written all over your intense, broody face."
Arthur bristled at the implication. "Hey, that's not true," he said. "I could have been a heartbreaker."
"The only heart you've broken, darling, is your Mater's china heart-shaped ornament, and then you cried over it even more than she did."
"What the hell?" There was no heat in Arthur's exclamation; he was used to Eames's ribbing. "And who calls their Mum Mater?"
Eames arched an eyebrow, pointing his chopsticks at Arthur. "I had you pegged as one of those fluffy upper-crust Limey brats. Son of a peer of the realm, and all that."
"Your imagination is spectacular," sighed Arthur, but he didn't venture any more information about his childhood all the same. It was the same reticence Eames usually brought to the table- something he understood perfectly.
"What is not spectacular is your dressing sense. What happened to my tailor? He swears he sent you a freshly dry-cleaned, perfectly custom-made wardrobe, and yet here you are." His nose turned up at the sight of the paisley Eames was swathed in, eliciting a loud laugh from the forger.
"Let's just say I'm not a suit kind of guy and leave it at that," he said lightly, fishing boiled green vegetables out of his chop suey. They landed on one of the empty takeout boxes, and Arthur sighed loudly before he leaned over and picked them up all at once.
It was then that he noticed that Eames was using a rubber band to hold the chopsticks together as he ate. The amused snicker escaped before he could stop himself. Eames glanced questioningly at him, and Arthur was forced to ask if he didn't know how to use chopsticks in the first place.
"Well, no," admitted Eames. "Didn't get a lot of practice in Mombasa." There was a guarded self-defensiveness in his tone, a reluctant fear of mockery, and it made Arthur's heart melt.
"Here," he said, leaning further forward and closing his hand around Eames's. "Let me show you."
Fifth
"I have tickets."
Arthur was minutes away from running a hot bath and sinking into the tub with his most soothing instrumental CD, when his phone began to ring. Ordinarily, he would have let it go to voice mail, with the one exception of Cobb, but this time he added another name to the list.
"Tickets to what exactly, Eames?" he growled, not interested in the forger go on forever about the Sox; in his opinion, it was too late in the evening for that. Hell, it was always too late in the day for baseball, as far as he was concerned.
"Marriage of Figaro. Heard your ringtone the other day, and I had to ask several people to find out what it was." Eames chuckled on the other line, and Arthur shook his head. He didn't know why this always amused him: Eames stereotyping him as the artsy, pretentious intellectual, and himself as the all-American boor (albeit one with a British accent.) "Thought you might like to spend a couple of hours listening to your ringtone play endlessly. What do you say?"
"What are you going to wear?" The question was reflexive. Arthur hadn't even stopped to consider saying no, or doubt that Eames would be coming as well. He could virtually feel Eames smirk on the other line.
"If you think I'm coming in a penguin suit, think again."
"Seriously, Eames? Seriously? It's the opera, it doesn't get more black-tie than that unless you're at your own wedding. Oh god," added Arthur, breaking off as a new, more horrifying thought occurred to him. "I pity the bride who marries you. You probably won't wear a tuxedo to your own wedding."
"Girls bore me with their silly ideas of poofy white dresses and groom's tuxedos," said Eames casually, a little too casually for the conversation. "Besides, you have fifteen minutes to get dressed. I'm picking you up." He hung up with a click, though not so perfunctorily, that it could be considered rude.
Arthur was left staring at the phone for several befuddled minutes before he realised that knowing Eames, the bastard would probably come five minutes early just to catch him off-guard. It took a little longer to catch the full and all implications of what Eames had just said.
*
When he buzzed Eames up to his floor, he was still in no fit state to go to the opera. He wasn't dressed for the part, let alone mental ability. His brain had slowed down so much that it took a long time for him to process what he was seeing when he opened his door.
"Shit," was all that slipped out. It was a good kind of mind-numbed, awe-struck, dumb-founded shit because Eames was on his doorstep. Eames was on his doorstep and wearing tailored Armani. It was also confused kind of shit because he didn't know either what to make of the fact that Eames was standing on his doorstep or the way Eames was staring at him.
"I've never seen you when you don't look like a penguin or a cheerful undertaker," began the latter casually. In his mind, Arthur was already starting to distrust Eames whenever he started to use his casual tone. "Although, this isn't what I had in mind."
And then Arthur remembered that he'd been intending to dip into the hot bath and immerse himself in Chopin and steam. Maybe a bathrobe wasn't the best thing to open the door in. He glanced down hurriedly to ensure it was still tied closed, but he never found out if it was.
Edarling." He stepped forward past the doorway, a little too much into Arthur's personal space than what he'd allow for other people. But Arthur wasn't too sure he minded because Eames looked like he was on the verge of kissing him.
He met Eames's eyes for a second, clear, grey, uncertain and propped up with a false façade of confidence. He stepped into the circle of Eames's arms, and tilted his head until his lips met the forger's. "Screw you," he murmured, "but a little more literally than Figaro," and felt Eames's chuckle rumble through his body like a pleasurable shiver.
-- finis --