Prompt Post No. 6
* * * Round 6 is now closed to new prompts. * * *
Welcome to Round 6 of the Inception Kink Meme. This post will be closed to new prompts once it reaches three thousand comments. Also, please check our updated rules.
( Rules... )
Welcome to Round 6 of the Inception Kink Meme. This post will be closed to new prompts once it reaches three thousand comments. Also, please check our updated rules.
( Rules... )
Also I should really warn for astronomical levels of sap, fluff, total implausibility, and gratuitous movie star cameos.
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I Seem to Be a Verb.
The thing about London that Arthur liked most was that if you wanted to disappear everyone would let you, without a lot of fuss. And if you wanted to open a bookshop that only sold books on applied sciences, people might call you a lousy businessman, but mostly they'd leave you alone. Basically, no one in London gave two shillings for what Arthur did, which was why Arthur liked London enough to sell books on architecture, design, and engineering at a bookshop called The Robie House, a name he'd chosen on a whim when he was signing the papers and regretted ever since.
"No, he said into the phone for the third time that morning. "No, I'm not Frank Lloyd Wright. He's actually dead. No, the real one's in Chicago. Yes, it's open to the public. No, sorry, I don't sell Spark notes. Try Barnes & Noble. Sure. You too."
Had it been Christmas, or any of the lesser holidays involving candy, Arthur might have been headed towards a bad mood, because he actually liked the few patrons he had, and he liked selling books far more than he liked curating famous architectural works from overseas without pay. But it was only 11:30 on a Sunday morning, and three calls was quite low for the norm, and it was drizzling a nice sour downpour that made everything gray and crisp and lovely, which was just how Arthur liked it. He liked it even more because in weather like this, anyone who came into the store was damn well going to buy *something,* because they'd battled puddles and lorry sloshes and faulty umbrellas to be there, and even if they'd come hoping to buy Paddington Bear or J.D. Robb, they were going home with a book. One of Arthur's best customers, in fact, was one of these. She'd come huddling in out of a freak snowstorm, looking for a book for her tiny daughter. Arthur sold her Flatland. The next week she came back. "I read it aloud to her," she said. "It didn't go as planned."
"I'm sorry," Arthur said.
"I'm going to bring her in so you can explain why she doesn't turn into a pinpoint when she faces the mirror."
Arthur gave her a look. "You've read Flatland before," he accused.
"Maybe, but you'll never know," she answered. "I'm Mal, by the way."
"I'm Arthur," he said, and she'd shaken hands and come once a week ever since. Mal had a dour husband who sometimes came in with her and hovered by the door while she shopped, and two bright children who Arthur mostly liked as long as they didn’t try to talk to him, which they did these days with increasing persistence, as if they sensed that prolonged exposure might be wearing him down. For children, they were freakishly smart. He was even starting to grow fond of the dour husband, especially when the children would accost him and beg him to buy them books they’d found, despite the fact that nothing Arthur sold was really kid-friendly. (Flatland was debatable, as he was certain Mal had already known.)
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“It’s a big customer draw, I’m telling you,” she said on Wednesday.
“It’s an extra forty pounds a month in cat food,” Arthur replied.
“James and Phillipa would love a cat,” Mal said from two aisles over.
“See?” Ariadne batted her eyes at him.
“James and Phillipa aren’t paying customers,” Arthur answered.
“That’s not true,” Mal said, noisily turning the page of whatever she was reading. “James paid you in Bratz stickers when you were over last week.”
“And Phillipa offered to do your hair like Twilight Sparkle,” Ariadne added.
“All the more reason not to get a cat,” Arthur said. “They already have me.”
“Aww, but you can’t snuggle up to yourself at night when you sleep,” said Ariadne. “Unless the snuggle position is taken and you’ve been hiding it from us.”
“It’s not,” said Mal. “I’d be able to tell.”
“You think so?” said Ariadne, craning her head around the bookshelf to look at Mal. “I don’t know, Arthur’s poker face is pretty serious.”
“When he’s happy he frowns more,” said Mal, who flipped another page and didn’t look up.
Arthur huffed at them both and retreated upstairs. His last boyfriend, Yusuf, had been rather spectacularly hot and gorgeous and brilliant, in bed and out of it, and Arthur had maybe-tentatively started to get attached around the time Yusuf had decided Arthur was too intense for him. Actually what he’d said was, “I’m going to Canberra for a doctorate,” which was the most ridiculous reason for a breakup Arthur had ever been saddled with.
“But we could still skype,” he’d said blankly. Yusuf had sighed and patted him on the cheek, which Arthur figured was as close to, “You’re too intense for me,” as Yusuf was capable of getting.
Most days he didn’t miss being with someone, even someone as remarkable as Yusuf. He’d had been gone about eight months, and Arthur was getting back into the dating scene as slowly as someone could be who spent all his days and nights with decaying books on engineering and design, and whose only reliable income source were the fifteen to twenty copies of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat that he sold every year at Christmastime. Yusuf was getting his P.H.D. in chemical engineering, and Arthur was losing money by the month while doing nothing to curb the inevitable extinction of the bound book.
If he were being totally honest with himself, a cat would be kind of nice. But it might have separation anxiety, and/or Arthur might be too intense for it, and he could never go anywhere for more than a day because he didn’t know any of his neighbors, and despite London being an awfully nice place to get lost in, it wasn’t very handy for asking random strangers to petsit for you. He could probably get Mal and her family to do it, in a pinch-they were almost his friends by now, he suspected-but he wasn’t quite sure of them yet, especially Dour Husband, and it was easier just to wait til he was more settled.
As settled as he would ever get in a musty, two-story specialized bookshop on Portobello Road, where the books and the customers were all rare and overpriced.
He loved it, though. He loved the dust motes illuminated in the windows on sunny days and the rattling of the radiator in the winter, and the old rod-iron spiral staircase leading to the second-floor landing and his Buckminster Fuller collection. He loved the looks on faces when patrons happened across exactly what they were looking for. And he loved the absolute stillness of mornings like today-when the only sound was the steady rhythm of rain on the roof, and the chill in the air bespoke a day of cozy isolation, just him and the books.
Or so he was thinking when the shop bell rang and Eames walked in.
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And now Eames was standing in front of the touristy shelf and looking at the titles as if he had meant to wander in off the street and start book-buying at Arthur’s shop. The Eames, the same Eames who had come out just after his first major film break, when Arthur was 17 and just getting used to the feeling of not wanting to die of shame every time another boy crept into his wank fantasies. The same Eames that Arthur had emulated, forcing himself to act as if being gay was no big deal-until finally, one day, it wasn’t, and Arthur could breathe for the first time since he hit puberty. The same Eames that Arthur had kept up with over the years, even though he didn’t “keep up” with the lives of celebrities, or with barely anything that happened outside of this shop anymore.
He was dressed as though he could have been out for a mid-morning jog, except that his bodyguards, who had glided noiselessly in behind him and now stood hovering near the doorway, were both wearing suits. Arthur had seen Eames in just about every level of array and disarray imaginable over the years, from borderline jailbait poses to Oscar photoshoots, but he’d never thought about any of those things as beautiful.
But this-firm muscles that peeked through the sleeves of Eames’ sweatshirt, bunching up his frame as though it couldn’t quite contain all of him; the rain dripping off his neck and his ears, which he was ignoring in order to study the titles, going over each of them one by one (Eat, Pray, Love, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves) and smiling a little at some of them; the way he held himself, gingerly, shifting his weight whenever the floor creaked beneath his steps, like a cat picking and finding his way over a land mine-all of this was beautiful.
All of this Arthur noted in the span of a few short seconds. He blinked, watched, and made himself look away before he could be caught staring.
Eames was in his bookshop. His bookshop, which lost him money every month and made him ridiculously happy and brought him nice things once in a while, had brought Eames.
Arthur fiddled with the inventory books, which he hadn’t opened in about three weeks, and smiled to himself. He kept smiling while Eames wandered through the place, sliding in and out of the corner of his vision. After a while he glanced up to see Eames thumbing through one of the books from the archaeology section. He had removed his sunglasses, granting Arthur one long, glorious look at his face shortly before it disappeared behind the shelves. Arthur had once read a Guardian review of The Withdrawn that had called Eames’ face “a house of pain.” It had stuck with him. But in person, Eames’ face didn’t particularly house anything. It was still like the rest of him-surface tension, Author thought. He wondered what it would be like to see laugh lines ripple across it.
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“Are you done?” said the bodyguard, giving him the fisheye.
“I don’t know,” Arthur snapped. “Is he done?”
Perhaps, he thought a second later, that wasn’t the best sort of reply. Miraculously, though, it got a double-take and a chuckle out of the bodyguard. Arthur decided not to press his luck. “What can I help you with, sir?”
“Do you have any educational books for kids?” said the bodyguard.
“That depends,” said Arthur. “Are they kind of kids that like to read books or are they the kind of kids that you have to use bodily force to drag into a classroom?”
The bodyguard laughed again. “Hey, Prianka,” he said to the other bodyguard, who was still stationed by the door. “Listen to this wisearse.”
“Don’t mind him,” said the other bodyguard. “He’s just giving you a hard time.”
Arthur couldn’t figure out which of them she was addressing, so he cleared his throat and continued. “We have some books against the wall over there for children, but they’re all science-related. Some picture books and some for new readers. A few intermediate. If you have reluctant readers, I’d go with something space-related.”
“Yeah,” said the bodyguard. “Yeah. My niece loves planets and shite. She’s five.”
“You should get her The Moon,” Arthur said. “It’s an older book but they re-released it a few years ago. It’s full of Nasa photographs. She’ll like it.”
“You got a copy? My niece is so smart she likes big books, none of this kid stuff,” said the bodyguard, narrowing his eyes a little at Arthur. Arthur knew that look from years of dealing with uni profs and overzealous parents-it was the prove-you’re-worth-your-salt-as-a-bookseller look, because everyone thought they knew more than you when it came to books.
Arthur was used to it, so he just said, “It’s a decent size. We’ve got a copy, I’ll show you.”
He moved around the cash register, and then got no further, because Eames suddenly popped back into his vision and placed a book on the counter in front of him. “Here you are, Martin,” he said. “The Moon.” He flashed Martin a brief, life-altering grin that could have included Arthur, almost, at the periphery. “Seymour Simon. My mum used to read me this book.”
Then he slid another on top of it. “Give her this one as well,” he added, and threw a glance Arthur’s way.
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Eames blinked at him, and Arthur remembered. He looked down at the book. “Oh,” he said when he did. “Wow.”
Eames beamed at him. “I can’t believe there’s even a bookstore in London with a copy of this.”
“Wow,” said Arthur again. “Yeah, you-you found my only copy.” Which wasn’t what he meant. What he meant was, You’re the first person who’s ever picked up my forty-year-old copy of Switch On the Night, which isn’t even for sale, which never mattered before because no one ever touched it, but you did, and you’re in my store, and you’re Eames.
“This is the original, too, from the fifties.” Eames pointed to the spine. “Look, you can tell from the spine,” he said to Martin. “The older books were bound with cloth and wheat starch. The newer ones all use polyvinyl acetate. Makes the paper smear more.”
“Really?” said Martin.
“Yep.”
“Your dad teach you that when he was forging all those account books?”
“Shh, not so loud,” said Eames, cutting a glance back at Arthur. “He didn’t really,” he said. “At least they never proved anything.”
“Coming from someone who technically doesn’t exist before 1997, I’m not sure that’s comforting,” Arthur said.
Eames looked shocked for a moment, and then laughed out loud.
“Thinks he’s smart,” said Martin the bodyguard.
“He probably is,” said Eames. “You are, aren’t you?” he said to Arthur.
“What?” said Arthur.
“Smart,” said Eames.
“Oh,” said Arthur. “No.”
“No?” said Eames. “I thought all people who ran bookstores were smart.”
Arthur looked at him for a moment. Took a good, hard look. Eames had crinkles along the edges of his mouth. He was fucking gorgeous. And he knew the difference between wheat paste and PVA, and he refused to tell anyone his first name, and Arthur had seen every one of his films at least three times and knew that his lifelong dream was to become a spy, but that he’d settle for playing James Bond, and-fuck it.
He huffed out a breath. “I’m not smart because I’m about to give a book away.”
Eames made a pained sort of face. “No, really, I don’t-”
“No-no, shut up, it’s not ‘cause you’re famous,” said Arthur, and Eames blinked and shut up. “You’re the only person who’s ever come in here and picked up the Bradbury. I do things like that, sometimes-certain books that are too cool to sell, I’ll just put them out around the store just to see if anyone finds them, if anyone even notices. It’s just been sitting over there in the corner next to George’s Secret Key to the Universe. Waiting here all that time for you, I guess. Take it,” he said. “It’s yours.”
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He held out his hand.
“Arthur,” Arthur said, taking it. “I’m Arthur.”
“Thank you, Arthur,” said Eames.
His handshake was firm and utterly peremptory, and Arthur did his best not to notice.
Eames looked delighted. “You hear that?” he said to Martin. “It loves me!”
“You think everyone loves you,” said Prianka. Even from the back of the shop Arthur could see her eyes roll.
“No, they’re just intimidated by the size of my BAFTA,” said Eames. Then he winced. “Oh, god, that sounded egotistical.” He threw a half-glance at Arthur. “But, seriously, have you ever seen one up close?” Eames asked him. “They’re huge. You could take out half a city block with one. I told my mum the one they gave me was bigger than any actual role I’ve ever had.”
“Not L’Hôpital,” said Arthur, and then immediately regretted it.
Eames never stayed focused on one thing for very long, Arthur had noticed-but now he took a long, appraising look at Arthur. It was unnerving and uncomfortable, having those eyes-greener up close than Arthur had ever realized, or at least they were today-trained directly on you, keen and penetrating. Arthur swallowed and held his gaze, reminding himself that there was nothing wrong in being an eccentric who owned a bookstore and had seen every Eames film at least three times, even the disaster that was L’Hôpital that no one had heard of (except for Ebert, who’d called it Eames’ On the Waterfront and director Fischer’s Brown Bunny). There was nothing wrong with being a fan-even if being the kind of fan who’d seen L’Hôpital meant you were probably the kind of fan who knew about the parallel behind-the-scenes disaster that was Eames’ tumultuous relationship and breakup with Fischer. Anyone who’d paid attention knew that it had wrecked them both-Eames for a long time and Fischer perhaps permanently.
Except Eames was here, in Arthur’s shop, and he didn’t look wrecked at all.
“Well, if you’ve seen that one, then you’re right,” Eames said at last, presumably after satisfying himself that Arthur wasn’t going to follow him home or lie in wait for him at airport terminals. “Clearly you’ve no sense at all.”
Arthur smiled back at him before he could help himself. He gave the cover of Switch On the Night a farewell pat and slid the book across the counter, but Eames refused it. “Hold on a tic,” he said in his lovely louche accent. “Aren’t you going to inscribe it? My mum always told me never to give a book away without writing who it’s from, who it’s to, and the date and occasion.” Arthur stared at him. Eames waggled his fingers. “Hurry along,” he said.
Arthur stared a bit longer. Then he realized he’d been gripping the countertop ever since Eames let go of his hand. He released it and reached for the nicest pen he had, trying not to look like a fanboy having a fever dream. Trying not to think about the irony that after all these years, he was giving Eames an autograph.
For Eames, he wrote in the top right corner of the frontispage. From Arthur, he wrote just below. Then, below that, Thanks for your patronage and love of the printed word- he hesitated. What did you say, given the chance, to someone who had no idea what a hero they’d been to you through all the years? Someone whose life had, in some incredibly indirect but still incredibly real way, shaped your own?
-and for living a life that inspires, he finished.
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He offered his hand again. Arthur took it. This time it was more of a warm clasp, and Arthur was trying not to do anything as embarrassing as let their fingers linger when bodyguard #2 called from the front of the store where she was still lodged, impervious, “Somebody’s trying really hard to have a meet-cute.”
Arthur felt his cheeks flame up before Eames even let go of his hand. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Eames said. “Until you really get to know someone, everything’s a meet-cute.” He gave Arthur a reassuring smile, as if he was used to people embarrassing themselves in front of him or awkwardly accidentally flirting-because he was, Arthur reminded himself, and then felt his face redden even further. Martin shifted on his feet, looking faintly alarmed, as if he’d fallen down on his body guarding and Arthur might decide to leap across the counter and pounce at any moment. Arthur sullenly considered not letting his niece have The Moon, but that was probably petty.
“Put this one on mine, then,” said Eames, taking The Moon out of Martin’s hands.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Martin. “You have to let me buy some things for my own niece.”
“That’s not in any rulebook I know,” said Eames. “Besides, I clearly can’t give her the Bradbury anymore, I’ve got to keep it. Oh, and no giving this one away, either,” he added to Arthur. “I can’t have Martin thinking he works for free.”
“In that case, it’ll be three hundred pounds,” said Arthur, deadpan.
Eames gave him a tiny smile. “No sense at all,” he said again, sliding over his credit card, which Arthur rang up for the correct amount of £14.
He put the parcels in separate bags at Eames’ request; Eames gave one to the bodyguard and hugged the other close to his chest, declaring that he meant to keep an eye on the Bradbury until it understood who was boss.
“That’ll be the day,” said Martin.
“Thank you, Arthur, for the book,” said Eames. “It’s very kind.”
“Nice meeting you,” said Arthur, but Eames had already turned away. He slid his sunglasses back on, wrapped his hoodie around the paper bag, and pulled it tight over his forehead. Then he slipped out into the rain, the two bodyguards drifting after him like mist.
“I heard Eames was filming around here,” said Mal a few days later. “Dom said he saw a photo of him on Portobello Road the other day. How nice if someone like that were to come in here.”
“Yeah,” said Arthur. “Yeah, it would be.”
And that was that.
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