sky-blue dreams and blood-orange ice-cream (7/7)
title: sky-blue dreams and blood-orange ice cream (7/7)
rating: R
word count: 1932
pairings: arthur/eames, cobb/mal
summary: Arthur dreams in black and white, Eames dreams in technicolor. They meet in a dream, aged fifteen and eighteen, amidst white snow and black lampposts. This is a story detailing their lives, together and apart, since that day.
note: FINALLY. IT IS DONE. Thank you for bothering to read, even though it has taken me several months to get around to finishing this story, which was my first foray into the glorious world of A/E. I’m sorry it took this long.
nb: I wrote this ending months ago. (I always seem to write ends before beginnings, which is a bit inconvenient.) Um. After much debate and indecision and angst, I decided to keep it as the past me had intended. I hope you like it, in any case. Thank you for sticking with it through all this time. I imagine that would have been extremely frustrating to say the least.
But it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really fucked it up this time
Didn't I, my dear?
- Mumford and Sons, “Little Lion Man”
Arthur looks up from his files. “Did you say something?”
Cobb pinches the bridge of his nose. “We've got ourselves a forger. He's coming in next week.”
Arthur nods. He has heard of them (of course) but has never worked with one as of yet. There aren't very many around, and even less that are worth their time.
“I think he'll give us the edge we need for this job.” Cobb stifles a yawn, rubbing the nape of his neck. “You said as much yourself; we need a new ruse, something different and innovative. A shapeshifter’s just the thing.”
“Is he any good?”
“He's well on his way to being the best in his discipline, according to Mal,” Cobb replies with a smile, for amongst the few things Arthur respects are Mal, brilliance and a challenge.
Arthur grunts, in grudging assent.
He is turning to leave when Arthur says offhandedly, far too flippantly. “So, what's his name?”
Cobb sighs, sensing the onset of a migraine. Thankfully, he is clocking off now; eagerly anticipating being able to get home to his beloved wife and child, relishing the thought of a home-cooked dinner and warm, comfortable bed as opposed to limp instant noodles and back-breaking lawn chairs. “Are you going to run a background check on him?”
“Maybe,” murmurs Arthur demurely as he flips open his Moleskine. Over the years Cobb has gathered this is his way of saying fuck, yes, need you even ask?
“It won't work, it's only an alias. Mal wouldn't tell me his real name. Which, by the sounds of this enterprising fellow, is probably yet another alias.”
Arthur just looks at him blankly till Cobb wearily gives in, too tired to argue. It is one of Arthur’s more taxing idiosyncrasies, probably in part responsible for his immense success in the role of Point Man; this all-consuming need to know everything about everyone within his radius or sphere of influence. Far be it from Cobb to get in the way of that. Arthur can be disturbingly spiteful if hindered.
Arthur spends the whole week searching for information about the forger named Felix, but there is nothing worth mentioning.
Not one single fucking thing.
He calls up every contact and informant in his extensive network. Even the few who have worked with him fail to provide more than a sketchy, half-assed profile of the man. Brown hair. Eyes that may be grey or blue or green; no one is really sure. Well-built. Imaginative. Charming. Evasive. Capable. Affable. Not entirely honest.
All entirely unhelpful.
Arthur buries his head in his hands after yet another phone call, this one to a high-profile diplomat in Turkey who had just giggled something about accents and lips.
So when Cobb smirks at him and victoriously mouths told you so, Arthur just grits his teeth and ungraciously hands over the chocolate, telling himself he is most definitely not impressed.
***He is facing away from Eames, poring over blueprints, pointing something out to a man who must be the infamous Dominic Cobb. He is wearing a tailored suit and is still thin, but wiry rather than skinny, muscle and sinew shifting between the clean-cut lines of his perfectly pressed jacket.
Eames' fingers fly to the Dunhill lighter in his pocket and he swallows, throat dry. Because this is not a dream, black and white and just out of his reach. This is reality; living, breathing reality and Eames is suddenly terrified (because what are the chances, what are the fucking chances) and hopeful and so bloody uncertain.
And then Mal; lovely Mal; is introducing him. He wonders, belatedly, how much she knows; indeed if she knows. No, surely not. But the thought remains, infective and persistent.
“Gentlemen, this is our forger, Mr. Eames - most recently operating under the name Felix.”
Both men turn around. Cobb, taller and more genial than Eames had envisaged, immediately steps forward with a curious, welcoming smile. Eames shakes the outstretched hand, easily exchanging the usual courtesies of polite conversation.
On the other hand, Arthur (for this is Arthur, that black-and-white boy from a still-vivid, never-forgotten dream), Arthur just stares at him, jaw clenched and hands firmly hidden in his pockets. Once upon a time, Arthur would have flushed and squirmed and smiled, eyes crinkling and dimples deepening. This Arthur does none of these things, and Eames feels the difference keenly.
“Just Eames will do, darling,” he says, viciously prolonging the word, unsure whether he is addressing Mal or Arthur. It doesn't seem to matter.
This is an Arthur Eames does not know. This Arthur is well past seventeen years of age. This Arthur has fine lines around his mouth that Eames knows are from frowning rather than smiling. This Arthur has fastidiously slicked back hair that no longer falls messily into dark, dark eyes.
This Arthur's mouth tautens and his eyes smoulder, but that's it.
It is so fucking anti-climactic, so devoid of any other perceptible emotion that Eames would laugh, if he didn't feel so much like screaming and reaching out and clenching deceptive wrists that are not at all frail and saying Arthur, Arthur and you weren't waiting and why did you run and eight fucking years and come here, you idiot.
Mal clears her throat uncomfortably. “Eames, this is Arthur, our Point Man.”
Eames grins lecherously and watches in grim immature satisfaction as Arthur stiffens, instantly on guard.
“A pleasure to finally meet you, Arthur.”
***“Still dream, Arthur?” a voice purrs, lazy and insidious; familiar and too close, much too close.
Arthur bristles and instinctively reaches for the red die sitting atop his desk. Just like that, memories and feelings he has carefully and methodically shut away rush back, crowding the fringes of his vision, threatening to escape from beneath his hot, aching eyelids.
“I try not to if I can help it, Mr. Eames,” he manages to say, and his voice is dismissive, curt, indifferent. And yet, why is it that he feels so fucking exposed?
Eames stepped into the warehouse with Mal five hours ago and Arthur hasn't been able to stop looking at him since. Of course no one has noticed, not even far-too-observant Eames, because Arthur has learned subtlety over the years. For five hours, there had been a pounding roar in his head - he's real, he's fucking real, Arthur you asshole, dear god he's real.
Once upon a time, there were so many things Eames knew about him (he wonders if Eames knows them still?) - how the tips of Arthur's ears and the soles of his feet are ticklish, how he shivers when lips are pressed to the knob of bone at the nape of his neck, how he has a failing for almond biscuits and Lillian Gish, how he despises early mornings and the cold.
How he is delightfully accommodating when kissed.
“That's a shame,” Eames muses lightly; lips stretching into a tight, fake smile.
They exchange a few more stilted, reservedly civil comments - about the job, the weather, Phillipa, the dreamscape; neutral, safe topics that eventually peter out into awkward, excruciating silence. Eames fiddles with a poker chip the whole while and it grates on Arthur, though he can find no plausible reason why it should.
Arthur wants to say many things, amongst them: I'm sorry and you're not smoking and I came back and you're real and why weren't you waiting and I'm so fucking sorry and what happens now.
Instead, he simply nods mutely as Eames bids him good-night and melts into the darkness.
He drives through two red lights on the way home, stands under the shower for an hour and crawls into bed, shaking and drained and inexplicably saddened.
Because Eames is real but Arthur hadn't believed it.
Because all those times, Eames had entered Arthur's dreams knowingly, willingly, deliberately.
Because it means Eames had accomplished something Arthur was never able to without Dom Cobb and the PASIV. Eames had escaped, aged eighteen, in his own way and in his own time and according to his own rules. Escaped into a world of black-and-white and silence and Arthur.
And what had Arthur done in return? He had shattered Eames’ carefully proffered heart and run away.
It is that insight that makes the whole fucking mess worse.
***They slip into a wary routine of banter and one-upmanship, Arthur contemptuously caustic and Eames coolly amused all the while. A fractious undercurrent of uneasy tension festers between them, electric and brooding.
Cobb skirts around them, prudently affecting complete obliviousness. Mal chews on the insides of her cheeks and frowns worriedly at them, but wisely, intuitively, refrains from saying anything.
They never go under without either Mal or Cobb with them.
Sometimes, Eames thinks Arthur looks at him with something very much like regret in his eyes. Sometimes, Arthur thinks Eames will say something honest for once.
On particularly shitty mornings when the mark seems impenetrable and Mal has not smiled for days, Arthur might find a steaming mug of brewed coffee, his favorite newspaper and what looks like a muffin sitting innocently and unobtrusively atop his color-coded files and alphabetized paperwork.
The weight of Eames' gaze will prickle at his spine. He will sit down calmly, impassively sip the coffee (bitter, sugary and just right) and quickly hide behind the newspaper so that Eames won't see the perplexed, reluctant half-smile touching the corners of his mouth.
On particularly shitty mornings as Eames settles into a lawn chair with Cobb yelling out last minute instructions and not as much time as he would have liked to work on his forgery, calm composed unruffled Arthur will silently touch his hand and take the retractable cannula from his grasp.
And Eames always gives in; allows Arthur to roll back his cuff and swab the skin overlying the delicate network of vessels with alcohol, allows Arthur to insert the needle and merely grins like a fool when the tips of Arthur's ears redden and he says “Stop staring, Mr. Eames.”
And yet.
Mostly, Arthur is ruthless.
Mostly, Eames is insufferable.
Just because they can be.
But maybe, Arthur thinks as he sips his just-right coffee that smells faintly of cinnamon and Eames.
But maybe, Eames thinks as Somnacin thrills through his veins and the last thing he sees is Arthur.
Maybe that's all right too.
Epilogue
Two months and seventeen days afterwards, ten years late (but perhaps not too late), Arthur allows himself to dream in technicolor.
At the edge of a rotting wooden pier he finds a man with tanned skin and blue-green-grey eyes (older, but still as strikingly beautiful) who perhaps has been waiting all along, just not in the same place. Arthur could laugh at the absurdity of it all.
The man smiles crookedly, murmurs infuriatingly -about time you came back home, darling- and leans in to kiss Arthur, hard and sweet, tasting of orange ice cream and blue sky.
Arthur trembles violently. His left hand is splayed against a warm, breathing chest; nails digging into whispering fabric, trying to almost claw into the paler inked skin he knows must be hiding beneath the delicately-patterned shirt. He is not sure (has never been sure) if he is pulling this man towards him or pushing him away.
The fingers of his right hand tighten slowly, ever so slowly, around a slim, stained pistol.
THE END.
rating: R
word count: 1932
pairings: arthur/eames, cobb/mal
summary: Arthur dreams in black and white, Eames dreams in technicolor. They meet in a dream, aged fifteen and eighteen, amidst white snow and black lampposts. This is a story detailing their lives, together and apart, since that day.
note: FINALLY. IT IS DONE. Thank you for bothering to read, even though it has taken me several months to get around to finishing this story, which was my first foray into the glorious world of A/E. I’m sorry it took this long.
nb: I wrote this ending months ago. (I always seem to write ends before beginnings, which is a bit inconvenient.) Um. After much debate and indecision and angst, I decided to keep it as the past me had intended. I hope you like it, in any case. Thank you for sticking with it through all this time. I imagine that would have been extremely frustrating to say the least.
But it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really fucked it up this time
Didn't I, my dear?
- Mumford and Sons, “Little Lion Man”
Arthur looks up from his files. “Did you say something?”
Cobb pinches the bridge of his nose. “We've got ourselves a forger. He's coming in next week.”
Arthur nods. He has heard of them (of course) but has never worked with one as of yet. There aren't very many around, and even less that are worth their time.
“I think he'll give us the edge we need for this job.” Cobb stifles a yawn, rubbing the nape of his neck. “You said as much yourself; we need a new ruse, something different and innovative. A shapeshifter’s just the thing.”
“Is he any good?”
“He's well on his way to being the best in his discipline, according to Mal,” Cobb replies with a smile, for amongst the few things Arthur respects are Mal, brilliance and a challenge.
Arthur grunts, in grudging assent.
He is turning to leave when Arthur says offhandedly, far too flippantly. “So, what's his name?”
Cobb sighs, sensing the onset of a migraine. Thankfully, he is clocking off now; eagerly anticipating being able to get home to his beloved wife and child, relishing the thought of a home-cooked dinner and warm, comfortable bed as opposed to limp instant noodles and back-breaking lawn chairs. “Are you going to run a background check on him?”
“Maybe,” murmurs Arthur demurely as he flips open his Moleskine. Over the years Cobb has gathered this is his way of saying fuck, yes, need you even ask?
“It won't work, it's only an alias. Mal wouldn't tell me his real name. Which, by the sounds of this enterprising fellow, is probably yet another alias.”
Arthur just looks at him blankly till Cobb wearily gives in, too tired to argue. It is one of Arthur’s more taxing idiosyncrasies, probably in part responsible for his immense success in the role of Point Man; this all-consuming need to know everything about everyone within his radius or sphere of influence. Far be it from Cobb to get in the way of that. Arthur can be disturbingly spiteful if hindered.
Arthur spends the whole week searching for information about the forger named Felix, but there is nothing worth mentioning.
Not one single fucking thing.
He calls up every contact and informant in his extensive network. Even the few who have worked with him fail to provide more than a sketchy, half-assed profile of the man. Brown hair. Eyes that may be grey or blue or green; no one is really sure. Well-built. Imaginative. Charming. Evasive. Capable. Affable. Not entirely honest.
All entirely unhelpful.
Arthur buries his head in his hands after yet another phone call, this one to a high-profile diplomat in Turkey who had just giggled something about accents and lips.
So when Cobb smirks at him and victoriously mouths told you so, Arthur just grits his teeth and ungraciously hands over the chocolate, telling himself he is most definitely not impressed.
***He is facing away from Eames, poring over blueprints, pointing something out to a man who must be the infamous Dominic Cobb. He is wearing a tailored suit and is still thin, but wiry rather than skinny, muscle and sinew shifting between the clean-cut lines of his perfectly pressed jacket.
Eames' fingers fly to the Dunhill lighter in his pocket and he swallows, throat dry. Because this is not a dream, black and white and just out of his reach. This is reality; living, breathing reality and Eames is suddenly terrified (because what are the chances, what are the fucking chances) and hopeful and so bloody uncertain.
And then Mal; lovely Mal; is introducing him. He wonders, belatedly, how much she knows; indeed if she knows. No, surely not. But the thought remains, infective and persistent.
“Gentlemen, this is our forger, Mr. Eames - most recently operating under the name Felix.”
Both men turn around. Cobb, taller and more genial than Eames had envisaged, immediately steps forward with a curious, welcoming smile. Eames shakes the outstretched hand, easily exchanging the usual courtesies of polite conversation.
On the other hand, Arthur (for this is Arthur, that black-and-white boy from a still-vivid, never-forgotten dream), Arthur just stares at him, jaw clenched and hands firmly hidden in his pockets. Once upon a time, Arthur would have flushed and squirmed and smiled, eyes crinkling and dimples deepening. This Arthur does none of these things, and Eames feels the difference keenly.
“Just Eames will do, darling,” he says, viciously prolonging the word, unsure whether he is addressing Mal or Arthur. It doesn't seem to matter.
This is an Arthur Eames does not know. This Arthur is well past seventeen years of age. This Arthur has fine lines around his mouth that Eames knows are from frowning rather than smiling. This Arthur has fastidiously slicked back hair that no longer falls messily into dark, dark eyes.
This Arthur's mouth tautens and his eyes smoulder, but that's it.
It is so fucking anti-climactic, so devoid of any other perceptible emotion that Eames would laugh, if he didn't feel so much like screaming and reaching out and clenching deceptive wrists that are not at all frail and saying Arthur, Arthur and you weren't waiting and why did you run and eight fucking years and come here, you idiot.
Mal clears her throat uncomfortably. “Eames, this is Arthur, our Point Man.”
Eames grins lecherously and watches in grim immature satisfaction as Arthur stiffens, instantly on guard.
“A pleasure to finally meet you, Arthur.”
***“Still dream, Arthur?” a voice purrs, lazy and insidious; familiar and too close, much too close.
Arthur bristles and instinctively reaches for the red die sitting atop his desk. Just like that, memories and feelings he has carefully and methodically shut away rush back, crowding the fringes of his vision, threatening to escape from beneath his hot, aching eyelids.
“I try not to if I can help it, Mr. Eames,” he manages to say, and his voice is dismissive, curt, indifferent. And yet, why is it that he feels so fucking exposed?
Eames stepped into the warehouse with Mal five hours ago and Arthur hasn't been able to stop looking at him since. Of course no one has noticed, not even far-too-observant Eames, because Arthur has learned subtlety over the years. For five hours, there had been a pounding roar in his head - he's real, he's fucking real, Arthur you asshole, dear god he's real.
Once upon a time, there were so many things Eames knew about him (he wonders if Eames knows them still?) - how the tips of Arthur's ears and the soles of his feet are ticklish, how he shivers when lips are pressed to the knob of bone at the nape of his neck, how he has a failing for almond biscuits and Lillian Gish, how he despises early mornings and the cold.
How he is delightfully accommodating when kissed.
“That's a shame,” Eames muses lightly; lips stretching into a tight, fake smile.
They exchange a few more stilted, reservedly civil comments - about the job, the weather, Phillipa, the dreamscape; neutral, safe topics that eventually peter out into awkward, excruciating silence. Eames fiddles with a poker chip the whole while and it grates on Arthur, though he can find no plausible reason why it should.
Arthur wants to say many things, amongst them: I'm sorry and you're not smoking and I came back and you're real and why weren't you waiting and I'm so fucking sorry and what happens now.
Instead, he simply nods mutely as Eames bids him good-night and melts into the darkness.
He drives through two red lights on the way home, stands under the shower for an hour and crawls into bed, shaking and drained and inexplicably saddened.
Because Eames is real but Arthur hadn't believed it.
Because all those times, Eames had entered Arthur's dreams knowingly, willingly, deliberately.
Because it means Eames had accomplished something Arthur was never able to without Dom Cobb and the PASIV. Eames had escaped, aged eighteen, in his own way and in his own time and according to his own rules. Escaped into a world of black-and-white and silence and Arthur.
And what had Arthur done in return? He had shattered Eames’ carefully proffered heart and run away.
It is that insight that makes the whole fucking mess worse.
***They slip into a wary routine of banter and one-upmanship, Arthur contemptuously caustic and Eames coolly amused all the while. A fractious undercurrent of uneasy tension festers between them, electric and brooding.
Cobb skirts around them, prudently affecting complete obliviousness. Mal chews on the insides of her cheeks and frowns worriedly at them, but wisely, intuitively, refrains from saying anything.
They never go under without either Mal or Cobb with them.
Sometimes, Eames thinks Arthur looks at him with something very much like regret in his eyes. Sometimes, Arthur thinks Eames will say something honest for once.
On particularly shitty mornings when the mark seems impenetrable and Mal has not smiled for days, Arthur might find a steaming mug of brewed coffee, his favorite newspaper and what looks like a muffin sitting innocently and unobtrusively atop his color-coded files and alphabetized paperwork.
The weight of Eames' gaze will prickle at his spine. He will sit down calmly, impassively sip the coffee (bitter, sugary and just right) and quickly hide behind the newspaper so that Eames won't see the perplexed, reluctant half-smile touching the corners of his mouth.
On particularly shitty mornings as Eames settles into a lawn chair with Cobb yelling out last minute instructions and not as much time as he would have liked to work on his forgery, calm composed unruffled Arthur will silently touch his hand and take the retractable cannula from his grasp.
And Eames always gives in; allows Arthur to roll back his cuff and swab the skin overlying the delicate network of vessels with alcohol, allows Arthur to insert the needle and merely grins like a fool when the tips of Arthur's ears redden and he says “Stop staring, Mr. Eames.”
And yet.
Mostly, Arthur is ruthless.
Mostly, Eames is insufferable.
Just because they can be.
But maybe, Arthur thinks as he sips his just-right coffee that smells faintly of cinnamon and Eames.
But maybe, Eames thinks as Somnacin thrills through his veins and the last thing he sees is Arthur.
Maybe that's all right too.
Epilogue
Two months and seventeen days afterwards, ten years late (but perhaps not too late), Arthur allows himself to dream in technicolor.
At the edge of a rotting wooden pier he finds a man with tanned skin and blue-green-grey eyes (older, but still as strikingly beautiful) who perhaps has been waiting all along, just not in the same place. Arthur could laugh at the absurdity of it all.
The man smiles crookedly, murmurs infuriatingly -about time you came back home, darling- and leans in to kiss Arthur, hard and sweet, tasting of orange ice cream and blue sky.
Arthur trembles violently. His left hand is splayed against a warm, breathing chest; nails digging into whispering fabric, trying to almost claw into the paler inked skin he knows must be hiding beneath the delicately-patterned shirt. He is not sure (has never been sure) if he is pulling this man towards him or pushing him away.
The fingers of his right hand tighten slowly, ever so slowly, around a slim, stained pistol.
THE END.