AELDWS Week 5 - Drabbles
Here are the drabbles for week 5!
The prompt was:
Prompt: role reversal
Word count: 250 words exactly
There will be a double elimination this week
#1
Title: Building a Memory
Author: sofia_gigante
Warning: none
Summary: Arthur is tasked with the impossible--becoming a ghost from Eames’ past.
Arthur was never going to get it right.
It took a month alone for Eames to teach him how to build the face, and another two weeks for the body. The voice and mannerisms were almost hopeless.
When they weren’t hooked up to the PASIV, Eames had Arthur researching, studying old photo albums and super-8 movies.
“I’m not a forger, Eames!” Arthur finally said one day, frustration getting the better of him. “I’m never going to perfect this!”
Eames looked up from the hospice worker schedules and building layout.
“You have to, love. You’re the only one I trust.”
Arthur went back to work.
*******
It was Eames’s dream--the cozy London flat he’d been raised in. In the corner, his wizened mother sat knitting, slightly less frail than she was in her hospital bed above. They had thirty seconds.
“Mum?” Eames knelt beside her. “Look who I found.”
She looked up at Arthur, her eyes filling with tears. “Julie? Is that you, dearest?”
Arthur saw himself reflected in her spectacles-a girl of twelve, fair, freckled, and gangly. She wore the same flowered dress as she had in many of the pictures--and on the “Missing” poster Arthur had memorized.
“Yeah, Mummy, it’s me,” Arthur whispered.
“Where have you been, my baby girl?” Eames’s mother stood, tottering over unsteadily, and crushed Arthur to her chest. “I never gave up looking…”
Arthur glanced at Eames, and the broken look in his eyes told Arthur everything he needed to know.
He’d finally gotten it right.
#2
Title: High Stakes
Author: scribblscrabbl
Warnings: none
Summary: It's an old game of one-upmanship with a new set of rules.
They do it because the job is easy bloodless money to fill the time, because they’re bored, and because neither of them has ever walked away from a little friendly competition.
“The point man and the forger. Your reputations precede you.” Their employer, a filthy rich megalomaniac who’s clearly running out of legitimate hobbies on which to waste his extravagant wealth, points at Arthur. “Arthur, right?”
“I’m Eames. The better-looking one,” Arthur says, affecting an outrageous honeyed drawl, topped off with a wink that would have Eames choking on air if he were any less of a professional.
Eames reaches a hand out to Preston, stifling the urge to pull at the ruthless half Windsor slowly strangling the life out of him, and says, voice dry as tinder, “Arthur. Why don’t we move onto something more work-appropriate?”
*
When Arthur says he can forge, he means he can bloody forge, with fucking surgical precision, and Eames wants to pin Arthur against the nearest surface with his hips and growl, you’ve been holding out on me, darling. Instead he returns calmly to his research, spreadsheeting the hundredth spreadsheet while contemplating a death by designer office supplies.
But the job doesn’t go off; Preston’s charged with insider trading and they go home, so Eames offers magnanimously to call it a draw.
“Nope,” Arthur says, all dimples, dropping a file into his lap. “Here’s everything you failed to dig up on our mark. You’re stuck being Chewbacca to James’s Hans Solo next Halloween. Sucker.”
#3
Title: Talk
Author: squishywitch
Warnings: brief description of an anxiety attack
Summary: Eames is a lot of talk. There's a reason for that.
“What gives?”
Arthur’s voice snaps Eames out of his reverie, glazing over the pages of a book he picked up in the airport. A serial killer in Stalinist Russia; the content is compelling enough, but he cannot make himself sink into the style, not when his head’s buzzing like this. He looks over at Arthur, confused, and makes a humming noise to convey as much.
“That,” Arthur says, gesturing at him. “I usually can’t get a word in edgewise with you. No running commentary? I feel like I’m talking to myself here.”
Had Arthur been talking? Eames can’t quite recall. Where his head’s been, he doesn’t know.
And there’s no accusation in Arthur’s words, only soft ribbing, but it makes Eames’s chest tighten. Here he’s been, sitting quietly, with his guard down. No sarcasm, no mask, nothing to hide behind.
It hits him like a bullet to the gut: he trusts Arthur.
He trusts Arthur.
“Eames?” Arthur prompts.
Oh.
Damn.
“I--I’m sorry, I--” Eames says, thinks maybe he says more, but whatever it is, it’s tangled in the blur that follows: scramble from the bed, suitcase overturned in the floor, snatch up an orange bottle, dive into the bathroom, slam and lock the door.
There, laid bare before him as he pops a clonazepam, is his biggest fear: that someone might see what he never meant them to see, that someone might discover who he is beneath the endless forge, and that that someone might be someone he cares about.
#4
Title: Hubris, Apotheosis
Author: involuntaryorange
Warnings: none
Summary: Forging is harder than it looks.
“We’re going to have to change our plan of attack,” Dom says. “Unless we can find someone new.”
Eames carelessly drank the local water, and now he’s on a course of antibiotics that don’t play well with Somnacin. He’s stuck topside, doing research, and the team is out a forger.
“I’ll try it,” Arthur says. “How hard could it be?”
Eames snorts.
“What? I’m very observant!”
“Forging is more than just observation, darling. You need to feel the person in your bones. It’s hard to explain.”
“Evidently,” Arthur grumbles. “Whatever, let’s go under and I’ll give it a shot.”
***
Once they’re in the dreamscape, Arthur focuses and shifts into Dom.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dom says.
“Weird to see yourself, huh?” Arthur can’t help but be smug.
“…Not exactly,” Dom says, conjuring up a mirror. Arthur recoils.
Ariadne starts giggling. “You look like Sloth from The Goonies!” Arthur gives her the finger.
Ariadne demands that he try her next. He does better, in that he looks like a human, but he gets her eye color wrong and forgets to make himself shorter.
He tries Yusuf, but he can’t make his hair curly.
He tries Saito, but the result is vaguely racist.
Arthur shuts his eyes in frustration as Dom and Ariadne start arguing about alternate plans. Eames was right. Eames, with his stupid face and his shoulders and his pocket-watch and…
Dom interrupts his self-recrimination. “Eames? I thought you couldn’t come under with us.” He looks around, squints. “Where’d Arthur go?”
#5
Title: Forgery
Author: earlgreytea68
Warnings: none
Summary: Arthur is the best thief Eames knows.
Eames kept forging Arthur. He loved pushing his hands through Arthur’s hair, tangling it up the way he longed to in real life. He perfected a copy of the way Arthur smiled, dimples and all, so he could see it whenever he wished.
It was a terrible habit, he thought. It was the worst kind of torture, to know he could so easily shape himself into Arthur’s likeness but remained clueless as to how to shape himself into what Arthur would like.
“Do you forge people you know?” asked Arthur one night, leaning on the bar they’d been colonizing for hours. His color was high with drunkenness; Eames wanted to kiss the flush on his cheekbones.
“No,” he said. “I only forge people I have no hope of ever knowing.”
“Philosophy,” said Arthur with tipsy authority. “That’s philosophy.” Then he brandished Eames’s wallet, adding unnecessarily, “I stole your wallet.”
“I know,” said Eames.
Arthur pouted adorably. “Am I not getting any better at being a thief?”
“You’re an abysmal pickpocket, Arthur, and please don’t try it on people who aren’t me.” Eames looked at Arthur, deliciously mussed, and thought of how effortlessly Arthur had picked Eames’s lock and stolen his heart and now Eames sat around morosely forging him. “But you are a fabulous thief,” said Eames. “The best thief I know, frankly.”
“Liar. You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” Arthur flashed him an amusingly accusatory look.
Fond enough that Eames automatically catalogued it for forgery later.
#6
Title: First Impressions
Author: chasingriver
Warnings: none
Summary: Arthur isn’t exactly what Eames expected.
When Arthur shows up on his first day wearing an ancient hoodie and faded jeans, carrying a bag of sandwiches, Eames can hardly be blamed for making the wrong assumption.
“Thanks, love. How much do we owe you?”
“Excuse me?” The delivery boy sounds incredulous. And pissed off.
“For the sandwiches.” He shouts into the back, “Cobb, you ordered these, right?”
Cobb wanders in, confused. “Oh, Arthur. I thought you got in tomorrow.”
“Arthur?” Eames says, dumbfounded. “You’re Arthur?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not at all. It’s just that Cobb didn’t mention your budding career as a rap artist.”
Arthur glares first at Eames - who’s wearing an exquisitely tailored suit - and then at Cobb. “You didn’t tell me this job had a dress code -”
“- I didn’t expect you to wear that,” Cobb says.
“- or a forger who’s an asshole,” Arthur finishes.
“Ignore him,” Cobb says, and Eames isn’t sure if it’s directed at him or Arthur.
“At least let me dress you in the dream level, darling, or you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Unless we set it at a concert -”
He’s cut off when Arthur throws the bag of sandwiches at his head.
“Christ,” Cobb says. “Eames, be nice. Arthur, find something that makes you look old enough to buy a drink.”
Eames envisions Arthur in a pair of well-fitting trousers and silently thanks Cobb for bringing him on board. “I do apologize, Arthur. Perhaps I could introduce you to my tailor?”
#7
Title: Come as You Are to the Costume Party
Author: kedgeree11
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Now that you mention it, Eames has always wanted to kiss himself.
A six-foot-tall lobster is trying to blend into the wallpaper. A belly dancer backs up the stairs, protectively clutching her toffee apple, and Batman actually ducks behind the sofa as Arthur rounds on the other Arthur, with his slicked-back hair and perfect grey three-piece.
"Hilarious," Arthur snarls. "Look! I'm laughing because I'm Eames and everything's a joke to me. Especially Arthur."
Eames glowers down Arthur's fat-lapelled, sherbet-striped shirt, pleated trousers, and the tattoos it took him three hours to draw on so Eames would finally see Arthur could be fun and playful too. "Whereas I, Arthur, would never grace a clown like Eames with even one of my precious dimples."
"Because you're such an uptight stick-in-the-mud, Arthur. And I know I think that because Dom told me!"
"Um. Do I hear Phillipa?" The lobster blurts and flees.
"Lovely, another opportunity for my patented Eames is disappointing look."
"That's just how your face looks," Arthur scowls furiously. "You can't help it."
"I'm Arthur and I can't help driving Eames completely mad-"
"But I know that because I know people so I must already know Arthur fucking adores my stupid clown clothes-"
"-with my come-kiss-the-frown-off-me face and little waistcoat buttons and hands-"
"-and stupid sex mouth and big stupid arms and-"
"-that could hold your whole heart and-" Eames blinks. "What?"
Arthur stares. "What?"
So maybe Arthur doesn't need the costume, but...
"I'm Eames." Arthur takes a deep breath and looks Eames in the eye. "And Arthur is in love with me."
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