Fic: Picspam Wars (Inception, G)
title: Picspam Wars
author: ilovetakahana
pairing: Arthur/Eames
warnings: utter crack brought to you by the combined awesome of cherrybina's Jailbait JGL post and Fuck Yeah Tom Hardy. *hangs head* This idea was co-plotted with the amazing chn_breathmint.
proper warnings: Picspam of JGL and THard, some mild angst and walks down memory lane, implied pre-slash. Snark, banter, and one use of the word "bitch" in relation to Ariadne.
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: Arthur and Eames talk about similar experiences in their past.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Eames was smirking when he came into the office.
That was never a good sign.
Ariadne, bless her, asked the obvious question: "What did you do this time?"
Eames only chuckled and tugged on one end of her scarf. "Oh, I can't tell you. Someone might decide to kill me."
"Someone meaning Arthur. Well, I'll leave you to it," and Ariadne shrugged, the suspicious look leaving her eyes, "but kindly don't try to kill each other near my table; I'm building the levels today."
Arthur sighed and took that opportunity to say, "Have I ever told you that you are a filthy and traitorous bitch, Ariadne," and rubbed the bridge of his nose with calloused fingers.
"Who, me?" was all the response he got, and a wide, blinding grin, as she disappeared into the depths of the warehouse du jour.
Arthur sighed again, more loudly this time, and manfully resisted the urge to bang his head on his desk.
When he looked up, Eames was sitting in a nearby chair, grinning down at his mobile phone.
Here we go, Arthur thought, and said, "Do I even want to ask."
"Actually I'm pleased you're interested. Because I think I know the person in these photographs, and I might as well ask the man with the research skill to help me identify him," and Eames raised his iPhone to Arthur's eye level.
It took an immense amount of willpower on his part, but Arthur managed to avoid squeaking, screaming, or pulling his hair out in despair. Or all three at once.
The photo was of...him. Him in black and white, with much longer and wavier hair worn loose and flowing around his face. His eyes are closed. He is dressed in a white shirt, and a jacket with peaked lapels and contrasting piping in wide stripes.
He was fifteen.
"Eames," he hissed.
"Yes?"
The grin on the other man's face was nothing short of shit-eating.
"Where. The hell. Did. You find. THAT."
Impossibly, the grin grew even wider. "That's for me to know, and you to find out. Oh, and I have more. Want to see?"
"NO, Eames." He just managed to not cringe. Arthur took a deep breath and looked away from Eames and his thrice-damned phone. "And if you show that or any of whatever other pictures you've got to the others I will take extreme pleasure out of killing you, slowly, right here."
"Oh but isn't that such a waste," was the reply.
Arthur gave in and banged his head despairingly on his desk.
***
Eames began to email him other pictures over the course of the week.
The only consolation, if consolation it was, was that Eames was sending the photos to one of his private email addresses.
Here was a photo of Arthur in a blue shirt and jeans, hair still unkempt - and wet this time, apparently - standing against some kind of cloth backdrop, arms thown open wide. The expression on his face had been his only answer to the idea "Come and get me".
The pictures are uncaptioned for the most part, except for the one that shows Arthur with his hair literally all over the place, wearing a suit and looking like he was about to take a drag from the cigarette held in his fingers.
In truth, he had spent that entire night with his eyes watering from the cigarette smoke.
That photo simply said, "Obviously you were a model of some sort. Please feel free to tell me all the details."
***
It took Arthur three days to get over his shock and to formulate a counterattack.
In the first email, he simply wrote, "This would have looked nice if only you weren't wearing it."
The two photos are of Eames posing on a city street, with his hair long enough to brush his collar. The shirt was only partway buttoned up, and the suit was very subtly pinstriped.
Arthur very quietly saved copies of the photos to one of his secure file servers, and started looking for others.
***
The job went off without a hitch.
In fact, they wound up planning the job so well that Arthur and Eames were left to guard everyone on the first level of the dream.
A glance at the PASIV told them that they would have twenty minutes to kill.
Arthur had already accumulated a huge folder of photos of Eames modeling all sorts of clothes. There were no new photos as of a date five years ago, the last one being of him in a glen plaid waistcoat matched with a white shirt and a red tie. The back of the waistcoat matched the tie.
Who knew that plaid and scarlet would make for an extremely good look on him?
He locked eyes with Eames over Cobb's and Ariadne's sleeping bodies.
"Okay, hands on the table time," Arthur said, and he watched as Eames's wary look dissolved into a single raised eyebrow.
"Obviously we have been working in similar industries for far longer than we'd care to admit or even knew as of last week. So you tell me your secrets and I'll tell you all of mine."
Even here, in the dream, Arthur could feel his heart beating double-time. Eames had spent a lot of time modeling beautifully constructed suits, it was true - but some of the photos, in undershirts or even next to no underwear, left him with sweaty palms, a wildly racing pulse, and an overactive libido.
Arthur watched as Eames ran a variety of expressions past him - and wondered why he wanted to sigh in relief when the other man settled on curiosity.
"I'm going to assume you found the ones of me in my smalls, or perhaps without them," Eames said.
Arthur nodded tightly.
"Which says it all, truth be told. I was never a model in the professional sense. Those photos were the result of being in a relationship with a man who wanted to be a photographer. He was a very nice guy, wanted me to be dressed well, but kind of strange. He would never have made it in the industry, too timid and rather an idiot. He taught me how to observe people, and lent me his clothes, and, well, not much of anything else. I left him when I entered the dreamshare business."
"Where is he now? Did he go looking for you?"
"Gone. Died. Natural causes." Eames looked away. "I miss him, you know, from time to time. He hated it when I wore patterns like this," and he motioned to the purple paisley overlaid on a white shirt pinstriped with black. "He'd laugh and yell and laugh some more. Good times."
After a moment of silence Eames visibly pulled himself together and said, "Right, I've showed you mine, now you show me yours." A ghost of a smile lurked around his mouth.
Arthur sighed. "I really was a model, Eames, and mostly because I had to pay my own way through college. It wasn't always easy for me to make enough money for the bills, for the student loans. Architecture is not a cheap subject to study." He grimaced. "Half the time I was underage, and the photographers would make a point out of making me do drastic things: smoke, drink, pose with naked people. Everything except do drugs, and those, I ran away from. Literally, in some cases."
"You weren't always comfortable with that," Eames observed.
"Duh," Arthur said shortly. "When I was fourteen and fifteen I didn't care about anything except my books. The modeling was a chore, nothing else."
"But you clearly got something out of it. Your taste in shirts, if nothing else."
"It was a learning experience, yeah."
They fell into a short and companionable silence that lasted until they were hit by the kick.
***
Normally they all went their separate ways after a job, not to see each other until something else came along that needed all of them together again.
But Arthur found himself working slowly on his habitual purge.
It wasn't until an equally slow-moving Eames looked up at him and asked, "Would you like to go out for a drink?" that he realized what he had been waiting for.
Arthur smiled, smoothed the lapels of his suit, and said, "I'd love to."
***
One month later
"omigodomigodomigod," Ariadne squeaked as she opened another email with attachments.
For the past week her private inbox had been inundated with photographs.
When Cobb walked around to her desk, the laptop screen had gone into sleep mode, but she was still speechless, blushing and occasionally emitting a squeak of a giggle, or a whispered "Arthur" or "Eames".
He squinted at her for a long moment, and then pulled out his mobile phone and hit speed dial.
"Arthur," and his voice came over the line.
Cobb frowned.
He sounded like he was happy.
Cobb shook it off, and growled, "When you get here tomorrow you are going to have to explain what the hell is going on with Ariadne. She's been mentioning your names at random times, you and Eames! You've broken her brain!"
When Arthur answered it was on the tail end of a short, hearty laugh. "Okay, Cobb, but please bring your own brain bleach, just in case."
Cobb squinted again as Arthur hung up and he was left with the busy tone.
Was that Eames laughing in the background?
author: ilovetakahana
pairing: Arthur/Eames
warnings: utter crack brought to you by the combined awesome of cherrybina's Jailbait JGL post and Fuck Yeah Tom Hardy. *hangs head* This idea was co-plotted with the amazing chn_breathmint.
proper warnings: Picspam of JGL and THard, some mild angst and walks down memory lane, implied pre-slash. Snark, banter, and one use of the word "bitch" in relation to Ariadne.
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: Arthur and Eames talk about similar experiences in their past.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Eames was smirking when he came into the office.
That was never a good sign.
Ariadne, bless her, asked the obvious question: "What did you do this time?"
Eames only chuckled and tugged on one end of her scarf. "Oh, I can't tell you. Someone might decide to kill me."
"Someone meaning Arthur. Well, I'll leave you to it," and Ariadne shrugged, the suspicious look leaving her eyes, "but kindly don't try to kill each other near my table; I'm building the levels today."
Arthur sighed and took that opportunity to say, "Have I ever told you that you are a filthy and traitorous bitch, Ariadne," and rubbed the bridge of his nose with calloused fingers.
"Who, me?" was all the response he got, and a wide, blinding grin, as she disappeared into the depths of the warehouse du jour.
Arthur sighed again, more loudly this time, and manfully resisted the urge to bang his head on his desk.
When he looked up, Eames was sitting in a nearby chair, grinning down at his mobile phone.
Here we go, Arthur thought, and said, "Do I even want to ask."
"Actually I'm pleased you're interested. Because I think I know the person in these photographs, and I might as well ask the man with the research skill to help me identify him," and Eames raised his iPhone to Arthur's eye level.
It took an immense amount of willpower on his part, but Arthur managed to avoid squeaking, screaming, or pulling his hair out in despair. Or all three at once.
The photo was of...him. Him in black and white, with much longer and wavier hair worn loose and flowing around his face. His eyes are closed. He is dressed in a white shirt, and a jacket with peaked lapels and contrasting piping in wide stripes.
He was fifteen.
"Eames," he hissed.
"Yes?"
The grin on the other man's face was nothing short of shit-eating.
"Where. The hell. Did. You find. THAT."
Impossibly, the grin grew even wider. "That's for me to know, and you to find out. Oh, and I have more. Want to see?"
"NO, Eames." He just managed to not cringe. Arthur took a deep breath and looked away from Eames and his thrice-damned phone. "And if you show that or any of whatever other pictures you've got to the others I will take extreme pleasure out of killing you, slowly, right here."
"Oh but isn't that such a waste," was the reply.
Arthur gave in and banged his head despairingly on his desk.
***
Eames began to email him other pictures over the course of the week.
The only consolation, if consolation it was, was that Eames was sending the photos to one of his private email addresses.
Here was a photo of Arthur in a blue shirt and jeans, hair still unkempt - and wet this time, apparently - standing against some kind of cloth backdrop, arms thown open wide. The expression on his face had been his only answer to the idea "Come and get me".
The pictures are uncaptioned for the most part, except for the one that shows Arthur with his hair literally all over the place, wearing a suit and looking like he was about to take a drag from the cigarette held in his fingers.
In truth, he had spent that entire night with his eyes watering from the cigarette smoke.
That photo simply said, "Obviously you were a model of some sort. Please feel free to tell me all the details."
***
It took Arthur three days to get over his shock and to formulate a counterattack.
In the first email, he simply wrote, "This would have looked nice if only you weren't wearing it."
The two photos are of Eames posing on a city street, with his hair long enough to brush his collar. The shirt was only partway buttoned up, and the suit was very subtly pinstriped.
Arthur very quietly saved copies of the photos to one of his secure file servers, and started looking for others.
***
The job went off without a hitch.
In fact, they wound up planning the job so well that Arthur and Eames were left to guard everyone on the first level of the dream.
A glance at the PASIV told them that they would have twenty minutes to kill.
Arthur had already accumulated a huge folder of photos of Eames modeling all sorts of clothes. There were no new photos as of a date five years ago, the last one being of him in a glen plaid waistcoat matched with a white shirt and a red tie. The back of the waistcoat matched the tie.
Who knew that plaid and scarlet would make for an extremely good look on him?
He locked eyes with Eames over Cobb's and Ariadne's sleeping bodies.
"Okay, hands on the table time," Arthur said, and he watched as Eames's wary look dissolved into a single raised eyebrow.
"Obviously we have been working in similar industries for far longer than we'd care to admit or even knew as of last week. So you tell me your secrets and I'll tell you all of mine."
Even here, in the dream, Arthur could feel his heart beating double-time. Eames had spent a lot of time modeling beautifully constructed suits, it was true - but some of the photos, in undershirts or even next to no underwear, left him with sweaty palms, a wildly racing pulse, and an overactive libido.
Arthur watched as Eames ran a variety of expressions past him - and wondered why he wanted to sigh in relief when the other man settled on curiosity.
"I'm going to assume you found the ones of me in my smalls, or perhaps without them," Eames said.
Arthur nodded tightly.
"Which says it all, truth be told. I was never a model in the professional sense. Those photos were the result of being in a relationship with a man who wanted to be a photographer. He was a very nice guy, wanted me to be dressed well, but kind of strange. He would never have made it in the industry, too timid and rather an idiot. He taught me how to observe people, and lent me his clothes, and, well, not much of anything else. I left him when I entered the dreamshare business."
"Where is he now? Did he go looking for you?"
"Gone. Died. Natural causes." Eames looked away. "I miss him, you know, from time to time. He hated it when I wore patterns like this," and he motioned to the purple paisley overlaid on a white shirt pinstriped with black. "He'd laugh and yell and laugh some more. Good times."
After a moment of silence Eames visibly pulled himself together and said, "Right, I've showed you mine, now you show me yours." A ghost of a smile lurked around his mouth.
Arthur sighed. "I really was a model, Eames, and mostly because I had to pay my own way through college. It wasn't always easy for me to make enough money for the bills, for the student loans. Architecture is not a cheap subject to study." He grimaced. "Half the time I was underage, and the photographers would make a point out of making me do drastic things: smoke, drink, pose with naked people. Everything except do drugs, and those, I ran away from. Literally, in some cases."
"You weren't always comfortable with that," Eames observed.
"Duh," Arthur said shortly. "When I was fourteen and fifteen I didn't care about anything except my books. The modeling was a chore, nothing else."
"But you clearly got something out of it. Your taste in shirts, if nothing else."
"It was a learning experience, yeah."
They fell into a short and companionable silence that lasted until they were hit by the kick.
***
Normally they all went their separate ways after a job, not to see each other until something else came along that needed all of them together again.
But Arthur found himself working slowly on his habitual purge.
It wasn't until an equally slow-moving Eames looked up at him and asked, "Would you like to go out for a drink?" that he realized what he had been waiting for.
Arthur smiled, smoothed the lapels of his suit, and said, "I'd love to."
***
One month later
"omigodomigodomigod," Ariadne squeaked as she opened another email with attachments.
For the past week her private inbox had been inundated with photographs.
When Cobb walked around to her desk, the laptop screen had gone into sleep mode, but she was still speechless, blushing and occasionally emitting a squeak of a giggle, or a whispered "Arthur" or "Eames".
He squinted at her for a long moment, and then pulled out his mobile phone and hit speed dial.
"Arthur," and his voice came over the line.
Cobb frowned.
He sounded like he was happy.
Cobb shook it off, and growled, "When you get here tomorrow you are going to have to explain what the hell is going on with Ariadne. She's been mentioning your names at random times, you and Eames! You've broken her brain!"
When Arthur answered it was on the tail end of a short, hearty laugh. "Okay, Cobb, but please bring your own brain bleach, just in case."
Cobb squinted again as Arthur hung up and he was left with the busy tone.
Was that Eames laughing in the background?