Fic: Voyage to You (Inception, PG)
title: Voyage to You
author: ilovetakahana
pairings: eventual Arthur/Eames, Dom/Mal mentioned.
warnings: Um, warning for Granado Espada? I used to be a huge fan/player of this MMORPG [European/US players might have heard of it as Sword of the New World]. So now you know I used to be a gamer myself. Anyway, this is a retake of this story, which I posted for cherrybina's birthday - i.e. the one where they all play this game, and Eames is in culinary school. :) So warnings for food, schmoop, drinking, and game geekery.
Title taken from this track off the Granado Espada OST.
Visual aids for the world of the game: official game art. The characters in this are: a male musketeer [left foreground], a female scout [right foreground, sitting], a female elementalist [center left], a male fighter [center, with sword], a female fighter [center right, with pistol], and a male wizard [background, with top hat].
disclaimer: I don't own the original stories, series, or characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: Boys in love, but before that they have to do dungeon crawls and find something to eat along the way.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Sometimes there is nobody to play with on a Friday night: Ariadne has drama club, and Dom and Mal run off on study dates [that will really end in the two of them getting sloshed somewhere and making out], and Yusuf has been known to simply forget that everything else outside the chem labs exists.
Every time this happens Arthur sighs, and scrubs his hands over his face, and mopes a little. During the week, he gets by on coffee and emergency stashes of chocolate bars and roasted almonds, and he throws himself through the hours from Monday to Thursday so he can fall into bed, exhausted, on Friday mornings, and sleep the day away - before getting up in the evenings, ready to spend the entire weekend playing.
The other members of the guild have long since stopped questioning his methods because he is raid leader on the weekends, and one of the siege commanders besides. The guild has basically beat the shit out of every boss the game has to offer, they seldom lose during the weekly sieges, and they still have time left over to train up their newbie members and alt teams.
It's a Friday and a resigned Arthur logs on, decides to work on one of his alt teams. He's finally given in to Ariadne's excited outbursts, and he takes his newly-outfitted builder team out on a quick questline.
He's halfway to the boss when someone knocks on the door. It's eight-thirty in the evening. Arthur looks at his phone - no one has texted to say they're coming over - and he makes sure the characters have enough materials to keep defending themselves before he gets up and opens the door.
Eames is standing in the corridor with a large blue dish and his laptop in its backpack.
"Um, hello."
Arthur raises an eyebrow at him for a moment, at the smell of butter and baking around him, and then shrugs. "Same rules as the first time you played with us. You remember the password for my wi-fi?"
"Yeah."
Once the blue dish is on the tiny dining table next to the window and Eames is on the floor at the foot of the bed, Arthur finishes off the boss, claims his quest rewards - and then he leaves his team in town, sitting together in a safe spot, in order to poke curiously at the dish. Scrawled on a piece of paper on the lid are the words "sour cherry".
"Oh, yeah, that's for you," Eames says.
Arthur takes the lid off and there's a perfect crust on the top, five slashes letting a delicious whiff of steam out, and golden-brown edges against deep red filling. He digs a fork out of one of the boxes near his bed and he hovers uncertainly over the pie, trying to decide where to start.
The first bite is enough to make him sigh, and say, "Okay, shit, this is like crack, it's amazing."
"Thanks," Eames says. "Made it myself. First time, too."
Arthur stares at him for a very long moment. "Wait, wait. So you have time to grind long enough to get three master-level musketeers, you have time to make pie - do you actually go to school?"
"Yusuf didn't tell you? I'm in culinary school. Want to have my own restaurant."
Arthur laughs. "So what is this, a class project?"
"Not really." Eames is grinning, all crooked teeth and nearly-closed eyes. "Just noodling around after class. I do this thing, you know, where I'm working all week, not really sleeping, and then on Friday I turn that part of my head off and, shit, I'm free for another couple of days, I want to do something that isn't for a grade. I have a key to the kitchens, and I go there and I just, I just try things out. I get amazing ideas there. And then there was a cherry pie and then I didn't know what to do with myself so I came here. You did say it was all right to come by, unless you messaged us otherwise."
Arthur thinks about last week, when Eames joined them for the first time [dragged along by Yusuf by the looks of it]. He hadn't had much to say then, just crisp acknowledgements for game-related orders.
It takes him a long moment to realize that his thinking also means he's staring at an oblivious Eames, who is buying in-game supplies in another town, and he quickly looks away, digs back into the pie. He swallows that bite down, puckering and grinning at the fruit filling, and then he says, "Coffee?"
"Sure," Eames said.
As Arthur pulls his coffeemaker out of its hiding place, scoops coffee grounds, rinses mugs, he asks, "What're you doing today?"
"Training a summoner."
"I might as well help you out. Master-level or not, two players and six characters do not a proper raiding team make."
///
Arthur is revising a research paper a few weeks later when his mobile phone buzzes a message alert at him.
Bad day. Can I come over? Got something to eat as usual. - E
It's a Thursday evening, and Arthur only has this document to finish and tomorrow is a school holiday - so he texts back as he finishes the paper, Come on over. He gets the coffee started, picks up stray pieces of laundry here and there, and clears Eames's usual space for him.
But the Eames who walks in isn't carrying a laptop. Just the usual pie dish, a six-pack of beers.
So Arthur sets his laptop to sleep mode and goes to sit on his bed, looks down at Eames sitting on the floor below him. "Okay, I can't guarantee I can give you any good advice, but I have time to listen to you, if you like."
Eames is still in his whites, mostly clean, except for his cuffs, which are stained with grease and juices. "Not much to say, really. Tried to ask a guy out, got the world's rudest brush-off. Homophobic slurs and all. So I chopped up some shit and I cooked - and I came here. Pathetic, right?"
"I'm...no, Eames, not pathetic. You were looking for someone to talk to. I'm here."
Pause. Pause. And then: "Don't you ever go out? I come here every Friday and you're here, you're playing, you always have time to help me do quests or you actually run around the maps and look for bosses because you have nothing better to do. Rudest question ever, but - are you actually interested in people? I would have pegged you for Ariadne's type, or for Mal's.... I asked them and Yusuf too, and they were all shrugs and 'I don't know'."
Arthur laughs, pats Eames's shoulder, offers him a mug of coffee. "Either we can drink the coffee now and break into your beer later, or - do you want something in the coffee instead? I have this," and he pulled out the flask he stashed in the bottom of the desk. "It's rum, and not very good rum, but, you know. Have some, if you want it."
Eames laughs back and drops a healthy slug into the mug in his hands. "Cheers. Going to answer the question, then?"
"I was getting to that," Arthur says, and by this time he's lying down on his stomach with a pillow in his arms. "Since you just told me you like guys, I figure it's safe for me to tell you - I'm queer, Eames. And also desperately busy for the most part. Trying to burn through college in a hurry will do that to you. Architecture will do that to you.
"As much as I'd like to go out, I'd really rather log into an online game, I'd really rather be grinding, because then at least I don't have to try to impress anybody, try to conform to whatever idea they might already have of me. All I need to do is kick lots of monster ass.
"Don't get me wrong, I love Ariadne dearly, but, well, I may look like her type but really, I'm not. She said so herself. As for Mal, well, she's about to get together with Dom, so even then I'd be poaching. So, no, I'd rather have them as my friends, though I can't always say I appreciate them mother-henning me."
"You're...very level-headed, aren't you?"
"I am, but watch them roll their eyes," Arthur snickers, and then he gives up and he picks his flask up from the floor, swallows half the remaining rum easily. "Mal says I should have someone to take care of me, as if I don't want that. Just...not looking, not here, not yet."
"We're a right pair, aren't we," Eames says, after a long silence, during which he finishes his coffee and Arthur gets the coffeemaker going again.
And that makes Arthur look at him. "Are we."
Eames shrugs instead of answering, and opens tonight's dish.
Arthur inhales appreciatively. Savory, herbs, eggs, meat. "That actually smells rather amazing."
"It's just, well, I have no idea what this is," Eames chuckles, and shows Arthur the contents. Ground meat and scraps of scrambled egg, bits of green and white here and there, a thin coat of gravy at the bottom.
"Call it dinner," Arthur says, and produces his forks, and the two of them settle in to eat.
After they clean the dish, Arthur watches as Eames cracks open two of the beers. They're sitting down, companionably, side by side on the bed.
"Thanks," Eames says, after a brief silence. "Really."
"When you asked the girls about me, did you tell them why you were asking?" Arthur asks, suddenly bold.
"No, why?"
"Good, then this'll be a surprise for everyone involved, and for you and me too," and then Arthur leans in to kiss him.
And he smiles when Eames simply breathes his name, like it's something sweet and needed, and falls into him, into the kiss.
///
"Finally," Arthur laughs, and it looks like he's woken up just in time because it's Friday once again and everyone is coming over.
"What's with you?" Eames says, and he backs out of the bathroom. His hair is still damp from the shower.
"Everyone's on their way."
"Oh, good," and Eames throws on his shirt and his jeans. "Then we can all do that dungeon run that opened last week."
"Yup," Arthur says, and he rolls out of bed and kisses Eames. "Good thing you made cupcakes."
///
No one is really surprised when they come in, later, and Eames and Arthur are sitting side-by-side at the foot of the bed. Eyes focused on their computers. Cupcake crumbs and frosting around their mouths. Hands linked between them on the floor.
author: ilovetakahana
pairings: eventual Arthur/Eames, Dom/Mal mentioned.
warnings: Um, warning for Granado Espada? I used to be a huge fan/player of this MMORPG [European/US players might have heard of it as Sword of the New World]. So now you know I used to be a gamer myself. Anyway, this is a retake of this story, which I posted for cherrybina's birthday - i.e. the one where they all play this game, and Eames is in culinary school. :) So warnings for food, schmoop, drinking, and game geekery.
Title taken from this track off the Granado Espada OST.
Visual aids for the world of the game: official game art. The characters in this are: a male musketeer [left foreground], a female scout [right foreground, sitting], a female elementalist [center left], a male fighter [center, with sword], a female fighter [center right, with pistol], and a male wizard [background, with top hat].
disclaimer: I don't own the original stories, series, or characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: Boys in love, but before that they have to do dungeon crawls and find something to eat along the way.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Sometimes there is nobody to play with on a Friday night: Ariadne has drama club, and Dom and Mal run off on study dates [that will really end in the two of them getting sloshed somewhere and making out], and Yusuf has been known to simply forget that everything else outside the chem labs exists.
Every time this happens Arthur sighs, and scrubs his hands over his face, and mopes a little. During the week, he gets by on coffee and emergency stashes of chocolate bars and roasted almonds, and he throws himself through the hours from Monday to Thursday so he can fall into bed, exhausted, on Friday mornings, and sleep the day away - before getting up in the evenings, ready to spend the entire weekend playing.
The other members of the guild have long since stopped questioning his methods because he is raid leader on the weekends, and one of the siege commanders besides. The guild has basically beat the shit out of every boss the game has to offer, they seldom lose during the weekly sieges, and they still have time left over to train up their newbie members and alt teams.
It's a Friday and a resigned Arthur logs on, decides to work on one of his alt teams. He's finally given in to Ariadne's excited outbursts, and he takes his newly-outfitted builder team out on a quick questline.
He's halfway to the boss when someone knocks on the door. It's eight-thirty in the evening. Arthur looks at his phone - no one has texted to say they're coming over - and he makes sure the characters have enough materials to keep defending themselves before he gets up and opens the door.
Eames is standing in the corridor with a large blue dish and his laptop in its backpack.
"Um, hello."
Arthur raises an eyebrow at him for a moment, at the smell of butter and baking around him, and then shrugs. "Same rules as the first time you played with us. You remember the password for my wi-fi?"
"Yeah."
Once the blue dish is on the tiny dining table next to the window and Eames is on the floor at the foot of the bed, Arthur finishes off the boss, claims his quest rewards - and then he leaves his team in town, sitting together in a safe spot, in order to poke curiously at the dish. Scrawled on a piece of paper on the lid are the words "sour cherry".
"Oh, yeah, that's for you," Eames says.
Arthur takes the lid off and there's a perfect crust on the top, five slashes letting a delicious whiff of steam out, and golden-brown edges against deep red filling. He digs a fork out of one of the boxes near his bed and he hovers uncertainly over the pie, trying to decide where to start.
The first bite is enough to make him sigh, and say, "Okay, shit, this is like crack, it's amazing."
"Thanks," Eames says. "Made it myself. First time, too."
Arthur stares at him for a very long moment. "Wait, wait. So you have time to grind long enough to get three master-level musketeers, you have time to make pie - do you actually go to school?"
"Yusuf didn't tell you? I'm in culinary school. Want to have my own restaurant."
Arthur laughs. "So what is this, a class project?"
"Not really." Eames is grinning, all crooked teeth and nearly-closed eyes. "Just noodling around after class. I do this thing, you know, where I'm working all week, not really sleeping, and then on Friday I turn that part of my head off and, shit, I'm free for another couple of days, I want to do something that isn't for a grade. I have a key to the kitchens, and I go there and I just, I just try things out. I get amazing ideas there. And then there was a cherry pie and then I didn't know what to do with myself so I came here. You did say it was all right to come by, unless you messaged us otherwise."
Arthur thinks about last week, when Eames joined them for the first time [dragged along by Yusuf by the looks of it]. He hadn't had much to say then, just crisp acknowledgements for game-related orders.
It takes him a long moment to realize that his thinking also means he's staring at an oblivious Eames, who is buying in-game supplies in another town, and he quickly looks away, digs back into the pie. He swallows that bite down, puckering and grinning at the fruit filling, and then he says, "Coffee?"
"Sure," Eames said.
As Arthur pulls his coffeemaker out of its hiding place, scoops coffee grounds, rinses mugs, he asks, "What're you doing today?"
"Training a summoner."
"I might as well help you out. Master-level or not, two players and six characters do not a proper raiding team make."
///
Arthur is revising a research paper a few weeks later when his mobile phone buzzes a message alert at him.
Bad day. Can I come over? Got something to eat as usual. - E
It's a Thursday evening, and Arthur only has this document to finish and tomorrow is a school holiday - so he texts back as he finishes the paper, Come on over. He gets the coffee started, picks up stray pieces of laundry here and there, and clears Eames's usual space for him.
But the Eames who walks in isn't carrying a laptop. Just the usual pie dish, a six-pack of beers.
So Arthur sets his laptop to sleep mode and goes to sit on his bed, looks down at Eames sitting on the floor below him. "Okay, I can't guarantee I can give you any good advice, but I have time to listen to you, if you like."
Eames is still in his whites, mostly clean, except for his cuffs, which are stained with grease and juices. "Not much to say, really. Tried to ask a guy out, got the world's rudest brush-off. Homophobic slurs and all. So I chopped up some shit and I cooked - and I came here. Pathetic, right?"
"I'm...no, Eames, not pathetic. You were looking for someone to talk to. I'm here."
Pause. Pause. And then: "Don't you ever go out? I come here every Friday and you're here, you're playing, you always have time to help me do quests or you actually run around the maps and look for bosses because you have nothing better to do. Rudest question ever, but - are you actually interested in people? I would have pegged you for Ariadne's type, or for Mal's.... I asked them and Yusuf too, and they were all shrugs and 'I don't know'."
Arthur laughs, pats Eames's shoulder, offers him a mug of coffee. "Either we can drink the coffee now and break into your beer later, or - do you want something in the coffee instead? I have this," and he pulled out the flask he stashed in the bottom of the desk. "It's rum, and not very good rum, but, you know. Have some, if you want it."
Eames laughs back and drops a healthy slug into the mug in his hands. "Cheers. Going to answer the question, then?"
"I was getting to that," Arthur says, and by this time he's lying down on his stomach with a pillow in his arms. "Since you just told me you like guys, I figure it's safe for me to tell you - I'm queer, Eames. And also desperately busy for the most part. Trying to burn through college in a hurry will do that to you. Architecture will do that to you.
"As much as I'd like to go out, I'd really rather log into an online game, I'd really rather be grinding, because then at least I don't have to try to impress anybody, try to conform to whatever idea they might already have of me. All I need to do is kick lots of monster ass.
"Don't get me wrong, I love Ariadne dearly, but, well, I may look like her type but really, I'm not. She said so herself. As for Mal, well, she's about to get together with Dom, so even then I'd be poaching. So, no, I'd rather have them as my friends, though I can't always say I appreciate them mother-henning me."
"You're...very level-headed, aren't you?"
"I am, but watch them roll their eyes," Arthur snickers, and then he gives up and he picks his flask up from the floor, swallows half the remaining rum easily. "Mal says I should have someone to take care of me, as if I don't want that. Just...not looking, not here, not yet."
"We're a right pair, aren't we," Eames says, after a long silence, during which he finishes his coffee and Arthur gets the coffeemaker going again.
And that makes Arthur look at him. "Are we."
Eames shrugs instead of answering, and opens tonight's dish.
Arthur inhales appreciatively. Savory, herbs, eggs, meat. "That actually smells rather amazing."
"It's just, well, I have no idea what this is," Eames chuckles, and shows Arthur the contents. Ground meat and scraps of scrambled egg, bits of green and white here and there, a thin coat of gravy at the bottom.
"Call it dinner," Arthur says, and produces his forks, and the two of them settle in to eat.
After they clean the dish, Arthur watches as Eames cracks open two of the beers. They're sitting down, companionably, side by side on the bed.
"Thanks," Eames says, after a brief silence. "Really."
"When you asked the girls about me, did you tell them why you were asking?" Arthur asks, suddenly bold.
"No, why?"
"Good, then this'll be a surprise for everyone involved, and for you and me too," and then Arthur leans in to kiss him.
And he smiles when Eames simply breathes his name, like it's something sweet and needed, and falls into him, into the kiss.
///
"Finally," Arthur laughs, and it looks like he's woken up just in time because it's Friday once again and everyone is coming over.
"What's with you?" Eames says, and he backs out of the bathroom. His hair is still damp from the shower.
"Everyone's on their way."
"Oh, good," and Eames throws on his shirt and his jeans. "Then we can all do that dungeon run that opened last week."
"Yup," Arthur says, and he rolls out of bed and kisses Eames. "Good thing you made cupcakes."
///
No one is really surprised when they come in, later, and Eames and Arthur are sitting side-by-side at the foot of the bed. Eyes focused on their computers. Cupcake crumbs and frosting around their mouths. Hands linked between them on the floor.