FIC: Categorizing Normal Pt. 1/2 (Arthur/Eames)
Title: Categorizing Normal
Fandom: Inception (crossover with Addams Family Values) Yes, I might be asking for a little trust about this one…
Pairing: ArthurxEames
Rating: R
Word Count: ~3500
Warnings: AU, language, violence, unbeta’d
Summary: Eames has always known that Arthur was a bit scary. Honestly, it might have been part of the attraction. What he didn’t know is that, apparently, scary runs in Arthur’s family.
Author’s Note: Written for inception_kink for this crazy, fabulous prompt Arthur is Pubert Addams
Disclaimer: I do not own Inception or it characters. This is a work of fiction, and I make no profit from it. Also, mature content means mature.
Categorizing Normal
“It’s just that I really thought we were friends now.”
Arthur didn’t turn to see the pout that accompanied Ariadne’s words. He didn’t have too. The conversation was one he’d been witness to many times before.
“Well, of course, we’ve friends!” Eames returned cheerfully. “The best of friends. I could break into song, hmm?”
“No.” Neither Eames or Ariadne responded to Arthur’s snapped command, but Eames didn’t break into a poor version of ‘We’re the Three Best Friends That Anyone Could Have’ either.
Arthur refused to acknowledge when Eames instead started humming the tune. He’d found that with all things concerning Mr. Eames, it was all about picking your battles.
Ariadne wasn’t one to be deterred, however. “I’ve known you for two years. You know I won’t do anything with it.”
Eames turned his chair lazily back and forth, his fingers steepled under his chin and a smile lighting up his face. “As they say, knowledge is power and power corrupts. I just can’t be responsible for that, I’m afraid.”
Ariadne threw up her hands with a huff and turned her full attention on Arthur who had thus far avoided being drawn into the discussion. That time had apparently past.
“Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
Arthur sighed and turned his own chair away from his desk before shrugging. Ariadne’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You already know, don’t you?” she accused.
Arthur felt a smile threatening at the corners of his mouth. “Actually, no, I don’t.” Any chance that he had to control the full fledge grin was destroyed when both Ariadne and Eames looked at Arthur with comic disbelief. Dimples on display for all to see, Arthur chuckled and planted his elbows on his knees before glancing between the two. “Look, I don’t know why he doesn’t want to share, but I can sympathize. So, it has never been something I’ve gone out of my way to know. Some people have truly horrible names.”
“Yes,” Eames drew out slowly. “Because Arthur is so very terrifying.”
Arthur pushed back into his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle. “First of all, it’s adorable that you think Arthur is my real name.” Ariadne’s surprised squawk went ignored. “Secondly, to some, naming your child something as plain and normal as Arthur is frightening.”
“So, what’s your real name then?”
Arthur grinned at Ariadne’s wide, expectant face.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Come on!”
“Yes, darling, do share. Show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
Arthur would have had to be deaf and blind and dumb (in every sense of the word) to have missed the exaggerated innuendo behind the words, but instead, he shook his head and turned back to his desk. Still feeling two sets of eyes on him, he turned his head and although his face remained blank, his eyes glinted wickedly in the artificial lighting of the room. “I have a brother named Pugsley. As family names go, he got off rather easy, in my humble opinion.”
“You have a brother?” Ariadne gasped.
Arthur returned to his work and soon he was so focused on his research, he forgot he wasn’t alone in the room.
Also, Pubert really was a horrible name.
~~~
It’s not as though Eames hadn’t noticed that Arthur was a little odd at times. But, in their profession, odd was a bit of a prerequisite, wasn’t it?
The job had gone pear-shaped from the word ‘go’ and Eames would just like to enter into the record that death by electrocution fucking sucked. That is all.
Out of sheer, stupid luck they somehow managed to escape with their lives topside, if not in the dream. Later, Eames and Arthur found themselves drinking away their shared failure in a booth tucked away in the back of the bar at the hotel.
“… years since I was electrocuted,” Arthur slurred happily beside him and Eames might have discarded the statement due to the army of empty glasses littering their table, or clucked with sympathy that poor little Arthur had to died that way twice, expect for the fact that Arthur seemed gleefully nostalgic about it.
“Pardon?”
“You’re right,” Arthur said rubbing his face with what might have been considered affection against Eames’ shoulder. “I probably deserved it. She was bringing home her fiancé, after all.”
“Arthur, what are you getting on about?” He shifted and caught Arthur’s chin with his fingers, tilting his head up to meet his eyes. After a moment, he let go like he’d been burned. It wasn’t fair, really, that Arthur should be so heart-clenchingly beautiful.
“He’s an accountant!” Arthur spat with the venom one might use to swear, ‘he’s the spawn of Satan’. Had the situation not been off up to this point, this last would have set off alarms all on its own. Eames had steadfastly believed that in a different life, Arthur would have made a dull, though probably still dashing, super-accountant. “I was thirteen. Of course I was going to do something! She overreacted. Honestly, what’s a little hydrochloric acid among family?”
Eames waved the waiter away who was bringing another round of drinks. Arthur had apparently had enough. “Arthur,” Eames began carefully and god help him if Arthur didn’t smile up at him, blinking with the innocent intensity only the thoroughly pissed can achieve. “What are you talking about?”
“Wednesday’s totally ina- inapro… propriate reaction to my welcoming Glicker to the family!”
So, brilliant, Eames lamented silently, that’s the end of the world, then. Arthur had stuttered.
Arthur pushed himself away from Eames in a huff and crossed his arms over his chest. Eames’ shoved his hand into his trouser pocket and rubbed the chip there. This was reality. A reality where Arthur glared in a manner that could only be described at petulant. Sweet Jesus…
“You could barely even see the scars by the time the wedding rolled around,” Arthur muttered angrily and turned to look at Eames with his eyes narrowed. “You believe me, don’t you, Mr. Eames?”
The chip still screamed ‘reality’ from his pocket and Eames used his free hand to rub his palm over his face before wrapping his arm around Arthur’s shoulders and pulling him back into his side. “You’re a little scary, aren’t you, darling?”
“You’ve no idea, mon cher,” Arthur replied sleepily against the skin of his neck and before Eames’ could process that, Arthur slumped entirely against him and started to softly snore.
~~~
Then there was the time with the fire. Dreamscape, of course, but still chilling.
The mark was a bad man with worse projections. Cobb and Ariadne were off somewhere plucking the information needed from the man’s mind and Arthur and Eames were left with the tried and true job of ‘creating a distraction as needed’.
The mark had a tendency toward colonial architecture and Eames had just barely made it out of the mansion, falling to his knees on the grass as he twisted around to see if Arthur had made it out behind him.
Minutes passed with no sign of Arthur or the hordes of blood thirsty projections and Eames forced himself to stand, stumbling slightly as he walked toward the building with its pristine white columns and wraparound porch. Before he enthusiastically put a hole in his head, it was only good manners to check that Arthur wasn’t stuck somewhere unable to do the same. He had just made it to the stairs when the door opened and Arthur stepped out into the night.
He was humming something under his breath and didn’t seem to notice Eames while he proceeded to empty the container in his hands over the scuffed, white boards of the porch. The smell of gasoline burned Eames’ nostrils and he recoiled, possibly making a noise because Arthur froze before snapping his head in Eames’ direction.
“Mr. Eames,” he said softly before tossing the gasoline container toward the door. Adjusting his cuffs, and without taking his eyes off of Eames, Arthur moved down the steps like a nobleman, all grace and privilege. “You’re going to want to step back.”
At that moment, the door burst outwards, the projections streaming onto the porch. Arthur slipped a hand into a pocket inside his suit and pulled out an antique silver lighter.
“Arthur, what are you… Are you bloody insane?” Eames yelled and fell backward onto his arse in his hurry to move away.
Arthur tilted his head to the side, like a puppy pondering a crippled butterfly. “Define insane.”
With a flick, Arthur lit the lighter and tossed it over his shoulder. It arched in slow motion as the projections reached greedily to yanked Arthur back.
The explosion was ground shaking. Eames’ resulting and imminent death was hardly an afterthought.
He woke up with Arthur’s final expression burning into the back of his eyes. The smile on his face had been soft, serene, beautiful and sinfully wicked and it sent chills racing through his mind. Eames couldn’t shake the idea that this Arthur… backlit by a raging inferno, dangerous and gleeful… wasn’t who Arthur had become, but rather, who Arthur really was.
He slowly opened his eyes and was caught in Arthur’s deep brown gaze. His expression was once again controlled but his eyes searched Eames, and something like shame and anxiousness flickered in Arthur’s look.
“Well,” Eames said sitting up and pulling out the needle at his wrist. “Not the direction I would have taken, but I congratulate you on your imagination.”
Arthur continued to look at him from his reclined position on the lawn chair. He swallowed twice and shook his head. “No, Eames, that wasn’t imagination… that was normal… no, not normal… my normal… you don’t understand. Every ounce of my not inconsiderable imagination goes into trying to be your normal.”
Eames combed his fingers through his hair and held onto the back of his neck, looking down at Arthur. “My normal?”
Arthur pulled at the needle in his arm and closed his eyes. After a moment, Arthur gave a short, sad chuckle but the small smile seemed sincere. “That was child’s play and I’ve worked so hard to grow up.”
Eames was prevented from continuing by Cobb and Ariadne stirring beside them.
“Got it,” Cobb said and Arthur was once more the staid and efficient point man.
~~~
So, of course, Eames wouldn’t let it go.
Arthur had entertained the ridiculous idea that Eames might just decide it wasn’t worth the mystery. He’d never actually believed the thought, but it had been comforting the whole three seconds it had held under the litany of Arthur’s subconscious chiding in a uncomfortably familiar accent, ‘not bloody likely, darling’.
Ariadne was a busybody of the highest order, just ask Cobb, but Eames was just as bad, if not subtler. If Ariadne walked up to a man’s defenses and just started beating down the door, demanding entrance, then Eames was like a commander of a great siege, meticulously and patiently gathering his massive army outside his walls, slowly squeezing off supply lines, until no matter which way Arthur turned, there Eames was, leaving no avenue of escape.
The notion sent white-hot chills up Arthur’s spine. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t find them extremely pleasant.
The thing was though, all of Eames’ questions and staring and irritating jabs didn’t feel like disgust or mistrust. No, instead, it seemed like Eames’ motive had less to do with ‘attack and destroy’ and more to do with ‘learn and understand’.
Arthur was intrigued.
Eames was intelligent, spontaneous, and, well, ridiculously attractive. Arthur appreciated beauty in nearly every form, but Eames had always skirted a line, something dark and primal, and Arthur had spent a significant amount of his acquaintance with Eames trying to ignore that very thing.
Now with Eames’ focus on him so intent, Arthur had decided to test just how far Eames’ curiosity would take him, how much he could handle before he run away screaming. They all did, eventually.
So, yes, it was stupid, and sure to end in misery, but Arthur, curse his mate-for-life-and-the-hereafter-while-we’re-at-it-parents, hoped.
~~~
Another job, another city, another hotel and Arthur found himself riding up the elevator with Eames.
Today, fighting through a city of militarized psychopaths, (Arthur’s personal favorite), Eames had watched Arthur grin like a lunatic while he tipped boiling tar out of a cauldron onto the unsuspecting heads of their pursuers. Eames hadn’t so much as flinched. In fact, and Arthur couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think it had been him that had dreamt up the feathers.
And he knew he hadn’t dreamt up the grin on Eames’ face, or the conspiratorial wink Eames’ gave him as he brushed a white feather from Arthur’s cheek.
“Penny for your thoughts, pet?”
Arthur blinked and brought himself back to the elevator. Eames’ hand was pressed against his lower back and Arthur could smell Eames’, all spice and heat, he had gotten so close. He schooled his features and told himself to step away.
His body didn’t listen and his mouth…
“Today was,” Arthur began but his words died slowly when he foolishly looked at Eames, his easy smile and his stormy eyes, his strong jaw with its dust of stubble. All sense of hesitation or uncertainty vanished replaced by something almost violent in its urgency. “Come back to my room.”
“That sounds a bit like a command, darling,” Eames said and although the inflection in his voice perfectly portrayed the lightheartedness in the words that Arthur might have expected, the look that accompanied them couldn’t have been more serious.
Arthur didn’t respond for a moment, and instead closed what little gap was left between them until their thighs brushed and their chests were pressed together. “Do you recall, Mr. Eames, a single time when I’ve asked you to do anything?”
Eames growled deep in his chest and Arthur swore he felt the noise radiate through him. His eyes slid shut while he swallowed down what might have been a whimper. Suddenly, Eames’ hands wrapped around Arthur’s hips, yanking him even closer.
“I can’t say I can,” he whispered against Arthur’s lips before nudging Arthur’s face to the side and biting at the skin bared on his neck. “But if you did ask, Arthur, if you said ‘please’, I’d fucking undo you.”
Arthur laughed, loud and clear, slamming Eames against the wall of the elevator and ignoring the look of surprise on Eames’ face to instead focus on the strip of skin revealed when he tugged at the collar of Eames’ shirt.
“In that case…” he said silkily, looking up at Eames through his dark lashes, before ducking his head to bite at Eames’ collar bone. “Please, mon cher.”
~~~
Arthur supposes he could wax poetic about sex with Mr. Eames. He could describe the taste of his skin or the paradox of forceful but soft fingers seemingly fucking everywhere, or even the startling brilliance of black ink bleeding in patterns over smooth, tan skin.
He could, but, honestly, it’s the morning after that changes everything.
Arthur had left Eames asleep on the bed and taken a shower. With each mark or bite he found, he pressed his fingers harshly into it and smiled, hidden safely behind the curtain. Afterwards, he stood with a towel wrapped around his waist in front of the mirror. He hadn’t shut the door behind him and could see Eames watching him from the bed in the reflection of the mirror.
Rubbing viciously at his hair, he deemed it dry enough and dropped the towel to the floor.
He heard a choked sound behind him and turned to see Eames pushing off the covers and crawling to sit on the edge of the bed. His eyes were wide and focused on Arthur like he’d never seen him before. “Arthur,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Your hair, love. It’s…”
Arthur’s hands immediately went to his head and he tried to slick back the mess of lazy curls, but it was an action futile from the start.
Eames was up and across the room in the blink of an eye, his fingers curling around Arthur’s wrists and bringing them down to his sides. With a look that brooked no argument, he released one of Arthur’s wrists and caught a curl between his fingers, rubbing it before tugging gently.
“Why would you hide this?” A sentence couldn’t hold anymore confusion or disbelief.
Arthur released a soft sigh. “When I was a baby I got very sick. For awhile, they didn’t think there was any cure. I did get better, but the curls upset my father and the dimples break my mother’s heart.”
The silence that fell over them might have been uncomfortable as Eames considered this explanation but for the way his fingers moved over Arthur’s hair in a nearly unconscious need to touch.
“When you were younger, you were sick and although you survived, you were left scarred with gorgeous curls and devastating dimples, leaving your parents traumatized by the change.” The summary was stated in such an exaggerated and, yet, dry tone, Arthur couldn’t help but grin. With the hand that had still been holding Arthur’s other wrist, Eames reached up and cupped the side of Arthur’s face, his thumb catching in the dimple at the side of his mouth.
Arthur turned enough to trap the thumb between his teeth.
Eames barked in laughter and Arthur cleared his throat. “Just as example of my normal,” he said and shrugged.
“When I was a sprog, I got very sick with the chicken pox. For awhile, I thought I was going to die, I itched so much. I have a scar on my hip from where I blatantly disregarded everything my mum said and scratched until the little bugger bled.”
Arthur’s grin grew and he pressed a hand over Eames’ hip and a small star-shaped scar he’d noticed the night before. “Your normal, then,” he explained and shook his head slightly in an attempt to shake the hair away from his face. Eames looked absolutely mesmerized.
“Could you…” Eames asked and his fingers fisted into Arthur’s hair.
He didn’t finish the question, but Arthur was beginning to see that maybe, somewhere between ‘my normal’ and ‘your normal’ he and Eames might be able to create ‘our normal’.
“Yeah,” he said, pressing his mouth to Eames’ and licking slowly over his lower lip. “Yeah, for you.”
If anyone noticed that Arthur didn’t slick his hair back quite as severely, and instead gelled it away from his face with the gentle waves still visible, they didn’t say anything.
It could be because they were distracted that Eames was suddenly and inexplicably allowed to touch it while still keeping his entrails tucked safely inside his stomach.
~~~
Maybe, in the beginning, Eames had thought that being in a relationship with Arthur would be simple and, perhaps, without Eames to spice things up, a tad dull. Of course, this conclusion was drawn from a persona that Arthur had presented the world, not a fake him, per say, but a polished, more ‘family friendly’ him. And for the definition of ‘family’, Eames could only assume Arthur hadn’t included his own.
Now though, Arthur was opening up, letting through parts of himself that he carefully called ‘his normal’.
For instance, their first Halloween together where Arthur planned for weeks in advance a haunted house the likes of which Eames had never seen. Traps and monsters and blood and Arthur grinning manically before toppling Eames into a creepily realistic coffin and… well, that’s not really part of the story, is it?
Arthur’s normal insisted that they were simply and solicitously providing the ‘trick’ to the requested ‘trick or treats’ of the evening.
Eames’ normal, when it wasn’t helping mix what Arthur deemed the perfect consistency for realistic blood and meticulously winding slimy ‘intestines’ around a pole, frantically hissed that ‘terrorizing’ was a much more apt word than ‘trick’.
All those years when Eames thought Arthur was a stick in the mud, it wasn’t because Arthur didn’t want to have fun, but rather that everyone else’s definition of fun was honestly beyond Arthur’s understanding. Or maybe, when Eames was being honest with himself, it was that Arthur’s fun leaned heavily toward bone-chillingly terrifying…
But then Arthur would cock his head to the side in exasperation, a shy smile pulling at his mouth, and Eames really couldn’t care less that carnivals and cotton-candy made Arthur shudder or that he honestly seemed allergic to musicals, the color pink, and small, fluffy animals.
So what if the best sex he’d ever had with Arthur was after an impromptu stroll through a graveyard in New Orleans or that Arthur laughed until they were asked to leave the museum during on exhibit featuring the Salem Witch Trials. (“Jesus, Eames, I think that’s my great-great aunt Hestia!”)
When Arthur invited him home, Eames wasn’t worried. Arthur was his and he loved every wicked laugh and condescending comment. Yes, Arthur was a little scary, but Eames knew it was more bark than bite.
What came next was Eames’ fault really… Arthur had warned him, years ago in a corner booth.
“You’re a little bit scary, aren’t you, darling?”
“You’ve no idea, mon cher.”
To Be Continued…
Fandom: Inception (crossover with Addams Family Values) Yes, I might be asking for a little trust about this one…
Pairing: ArthurxEames
Rating: R
Word Count: ~3500
Warnings: AU, language, violence, unbeta’d
Summary: Eames has always known that Arthur was a bit scary. Honestly, it might have been part of the attraction. What he didn’t know is that, apparently, scary runs in Arthur’s family.
Author’s Note: Written for inception_kink for this crazy, fabulous prompt Arthur is Pubert Addams
Disclaimer: I do not own Inception or it characters. This is a work of fiction, and I make no profit from it. Also, mature content means mature.
Categorizing Normal
“It’s just that I really thought we were friends now.”
Arthur didn’t turn to see the pout that accompanied Ariadne’s words. He didn’t have too. The conversation was one he’d been witness to many times before.
“Well, of course, we’ve friends!” Eames returned cheerfully. “The best of friends. I could break into song, hmm?”
“No.” Neither Eames or Ariadne responded to Arthur’s snapped command, but Eames didn’t break into a poor version of ‘We’re the Three Best Friends That Anyone Could Have’ either.
Arthur refused to acknowledge when Eames instead started humming the tune. He’d found that with all things concerning Mr. Eames, it was all about picking your battles.
Ariadne wasn’t one to be deterred, however. “I’ve known you for two years. You know I won’t do anything with it.”
Eames turned his chair lazily back and forth, his fingers steepled under his chin and a smile lighting up his face. “As they say, knowledge is power and power corrupts. I just can’t be responsible for that, I’m afraid.”
Ariadne threw up her hands with a huff and turned her full attention on Arthur who had thus far avoided being drawn into the discussion. That time had apparently past.
“Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
Arthur sighed and turned his own chair away from his desk before shrugging. Ariadne’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You already know, don’t you?” she accused.
Arthur felt a smile threatening at the corners of his mouth. “Actually, no, I don’t.” Any chance that he had to control the full fledge grin was destroyed when both Ariadne and Eames looked at Arthur with comic disbelief. Dimples on display for all to see, Arthur chuckled and planted his elbows on his knees before glancing between the two. “Look, I don’t know why he doesn’t want to share, but I can sympathize. So, it has never been something I’ve gone out of my way to know. Some people have truly horrible names.”
“Yes,” Eames drew out slowly. “Because Arthur is so very terrifying.”
Arthur pushed back into his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle. “First of all, it’s adorable that you think Arthur is my real name.” Ariadne’s surprised squawk went ignored. “Secondly, to some, naming your child something as plain and normal as Arthur is frightening.”
“So, what’s your real name then?”
Arthur grinned at Ariadne’s wide, expectant face.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Come on!”
“Yes, darling, do share. Show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
Arthur would have had to be deaf and blind and dumb (in every sense of the word) to have missed the exaggerated innuendo behind the words, but instead, he shook his head and turned back to his desk. Still feeling two sets of eyes on him, he turned his head and although his face remained blank, his eyes glinted wickedly in the artificial lighting of the room. “I have a brother named Pugsley. As family names go, he got off rather easy, in my humble opinion.”
“You have a brother?” Ariadne gasped.
Arthur returned to his work and soon he was so focused on his research, he forgot he wasn’t alone in the room.
Also, Pubert really was a horrible name.
~~~
It’s not as though Eames hadn’t noticed that Arthur was a little odd at times. But, in their profession, odd was a bit of a prerequisite, wasn’t it?
The job had gone pear-shaped from the word ‘go’ and Eames would just like to enter into the record that death by electrocution fucking sucked. That is all.
Out of sheer, stupid luck they somehow managed to escape with their lives topside, if not in the dream. Later, Eames and Arthur found themselves drinking away their shared failure in a booth tucked away in the back of the bar at the hotel.
“… years since I was electrocuted,” Arthur slurred happily beside him and Eames might have discarded the statement due to the army of empty glasses littering their table, or clucked with sympathy that poor little Arthur had to died that way twice, expect for the fact that Arthur seemed gleefully nostalgic about it.
“Pardon?”
“You’re right,” Arthur said rubbing his face with what might have been considered affection against Eames’ shoulder. “I probably deserved it. She was bringing home her fiancé, after all.”
“Arthur, what are you getting on about?” He shifted and caught Arthur’s chin with his fingers, tilting his head up to meet his eyes. After a moment, he let go like he’d been burned. It wasn’t fair, really, that Arthur should be so heart-clenchingly beautiful.
“He’s an accountant!” Arthur spat with the venom one might use to swear, ‘he’s the spawn of Satan’. Had the situation not been off up to this point, this last would have set off alarms all on its own. Eames had steadfastly believed that in a different life, Arthur would have made a dull, though probably still dashing, super-accountant. “I was thirteen. Of course I was going to do something! She overreacted. Honestly, what’s a little hydrochloric acid among family?”
Eames waved the waiter away who was bringing another round of drinks. Arthur had apparently had enough. “Arthur,” Eames began carefully and god help him if Arthur didn’t smile up at him, blinking with the innocent intensity only the thoroughly pissed can achieve. “What are you talking about?”
“Wednesday’s totally ina- inapro… propriate reaction to my welcoming Glicker to the family!”
So, brilliant, Eames lamented silently, that’s the end of the world, then. Arthur had stuttered.
Arthur pushed himself away from Eames in a huff and crossed his arms over his chest. Eames’ shoved his hand into his trouser pocket and rubbed the chip there. This was reality. A reality where Arthur glared in a manner that could only be described at petulant. Sweet Jesus…
“You could barely even see the scars by the time the wedding rolled around,” Arthur muttered angrily and turned to look at Eames with his eyes narrowed. “You believe me, don’t you, Mr. Eames?”
The chip still screamed ‘reality’ from his pocket and Eames used his free hand to rub his palm over his face before wrapping his arm around Arthur’s shoulders and pulling him back into his side. “You’re a little scary, aren’t you, darling?”
“You’ve no idea, mon cher,” Arthur replied sleepily against the skin of his neck and before Eames’ could process that, Arthur slumped entirely against him and started to softly snore.
~~~
Then there was the time with the fire. Dreamscape, of course, but still chilling.
The mark was a bad man with worse projections. Cobb and Ariadne were off somewhere plucking the information needed from the man’s mind and Arthur and Eames were left with the tried and true job of ‘creating a distraction as needed’.
The mark had a tendency toward colonial architecture and Eames had just barely made it out of the mansion, falling to his knees on the grass as he twisted around to see if Arthur had made it out behind him.
Minutes passed with no sign of Arthur or the hordes of blood thirsty projections and Eames forced himself to stand, stumbling slightly as he walked toward the building with its pristine white columns and wraparound porch. Before he enthusiastically put a hole in his head, it was only good manners to check that Arthur wasn’t stuck somewhere unable to do the same. He had just made it to the stairs when the door opened and Arthur stepped out into the night.
He was humming something under his breath and didn’t seem to notice Eames while he proceeded to empty the container in his hands over the scuffed, white boards of the porch. The smell of gasoline burned Eames’ nostrils and he recoiled, possibly making a noise because Arthur froze before snapping his head in Eames’ direction.
“Mr. Eames,” he said softly before tossing the gasoline container toward the door. Adjusting his cuffs, and without taking his eyes off of Eames, Arthur moved down the steps like a nobleman, all grace and privilege. “You’re going to want to step back.”
At that moment, the door burst outwards, the projections streaming onto the porch. Arthur slipped a hand into a pocket inside his suit and pulled out an antique silver lighter.
“Arthur, what are you… Are you bloody insane?” Eames yelled and fell backward onto his arse in his hurry to move away.
Arthur tilted his head to the side, like a puppy pondering a crippled butterfly. “Define insane.”
With a flick, Arthur lit the lighter and tossed it over his shoulder. It arched in slow motion as the projections reached greedily to yanked Arthur back.
The explosion was ground shaking. Eames’ resulting and imminent death was hardly an afterthought.
He woke up with Arthur’s final expression burning into the back of his eyes. The smile on his face had been soft, serene, beautiful and sinfully wicked and it sent chills racing through his mind. Eames couldn’t shake the idea that this Arthur… backlit by a raging inferno, dangerous and gleeful… wasn’t who Arthur had become, but rather, who Arthur really was.
He slowly opened his eyes and was caught in Arthur’s deep brown gaze. His expression was once again controlled but his eyes searched Eames, and something like shame and anxiousness flickered in Arthur’s look.
“Well,” Eames said sitting up and pulling out the needle at his wrist. “Not the direction I would have taken, but I congratulate you on your imagination.”
Arthur continued to look at him from his reclined position on the lawn chair. He swallowed twice and shook his head. “No, Eames, that wasn’t imagination… that was normal… no, not normal… my normal… you don’t understand. Every ounce of my not inconsiderable imagination goes into trying to be your normal.”
Eames combed his fingers through his hair and held onto the back of his neck, looking down at Arthur. “My normal?”
Arthur pulled at the needle in his arm and closed his eyes. After a moment, Arthur gave a short, sad chuckle but the small smile seemed sincere. “That was child’s play and I’ve worked so hard to grow up.”
Eames was prevented from continuing by Cobb and Ariadne stirring beside them.
“Got it,” Cobb said and Arthur was once more the staid and efficient point man.
~~~
So, of course, Eames wouldn’t let it go.
Arthur had entertained the ridiculous idea that Eames might just decide it wasn’t worth the mystery. He’d never actually believed the thought, but it had been comforting the whole three seconds it had held under the litany of Arthur’s subconscious chiding in a uncomfortably familiar accent, ‘not bloody likely, darling’.
Ariadne was a busybody of the highest order, just ask Cobb, but Eames was just as bad, if not subtler. If Ariadne walked up to a man’s defenses and just started beating down the door, demanding entrance, then Eames was like a commander of a great siege, meticulously and patiently gathering his massive army outside his walls, slowly squeezing off supply lines, until no matter which way Arthur turned, there Eames was, leaving no avenue of escape.
The notion sent white-hot chills up Arthur’s spine. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t find them extremely pleasant.
The thing was though, all of Eames’ questions and staring and irritating jabs didn’t feel like disgust or mistrust. No, instead, it seemed like Eames’ motive had less to do with ‘attack and destroy’ and more to do with ‘learn and understand’.
Arthur was intrigued.
Eames was intelligent, spontaneous, and, well, ridiculously attractive. Arthur appreciated beauty in nearly every form, but Eames had always skirted a line, something dark and primal, and Arthur had spent a significant amount of his acquaintance with Eames trying to ignore that very thing.
Now with Eames’ focus on him so intent, Arthur had decided to test just how far Eames’ curiosity would take him, how much he could handle before he run away screaming. They all did, eventually.
So, yes, it was stupid, and sure to end in misery, but Arthur, curse his mate-for-life-and-the-hereafter-while-we’re-at-it-parents, hoped.
~~~
Another job, another city, another hotel and Arthur found himself riding up the elevator with Eames.
Today, fighting through a city of militarized psychopaths, (Arthur’s personal favorite), Eames had watched Arthur grin like a lunatic while he tipped boiling tar out of a cauldron onto the unsuspecting heads of their pursuers. Eames hadn’t so much as flinched. In fact, and Arthur couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think it had been him that had dreamt up the feathers.
And he knew he hadn’t dreamt up the grin on Eames’ face, or the conspiratorial wink Eames’ gave him as he brushed a white feather from Arthur’s cheek.
“Penny for your thoughts, pet?”
Arthur blinked and brought himself back to the elevator. Eames’ hand was pressed against his lower back and Arthur could smell Eames’, all spice and heat, he had gotten so close. He schooled his features and told himself to step away.
His body didn’t listen and his mouth…
“Today was,” Arthur began but his words died slowly when he foolishly looked at Eames, his easy smile and his stormy eyes, his strong jaw with its dust of stubble. All sense of hesitation or uncertainty vanished replaced by something almost violent in its urgency. “Come back to my room.”
“That sounds a bit like a command, darling,” Eames said and although the inflection in his voice perfectly portrayed the lightheartedness in the words that Arthur might have expected, the look that accompanied them couldn’t have been more serious.
Arthur didn’t respond for a moment, and instead closed what little gap was left between them until their thighs brushed and their chests were pressed together. “Do you recall, Mr. Eames, a single time when I’ve asked you to do anything?”
Eames growled deep in his chest and Arthur swore he felt the noise radiate through him. His eyes slid shut while he swallowed down what might have been a whimper. Suddenly, Eames’ hands wrapped around Arthur’s hips, yanking him even closer.
“I can’t say I can,” he whispered against Arthur’s lips before nudging Arthur’s face to the side and biting at the skin bared on his neck. “But if you did ask, Arthur, if you said ‘please’, I’d fucking undo you.”
Arthur laughed, loud and clear, slamming Eames against the wall of the elevator and ignoring the look of surprise on Eames’ face to instead focus on the strip of skin revealed when he tugged at the collar of Eames’ shirt.
“In that case…” he said silkily, looking up at Eames through his dark lashes, before ducking his head to bite at Eames’ collar bone. “Please, mon cher.”
~~~
Arthur supposes he could wax poetic about sex with Mr. Eames. He could describe the taste of his skin or the paradox of forceful but soft fingers seemingly fucking everywhere, or even the startling brilliance of black ink bleeding in patterns over smooth, tan skin.
He could, but, honestly, it’s the morning after that changes everything.
Arthur had left Eames asleep on the bed and taken a shower. With each mark or bite he found, he pressed his fingers harshly into it and smiled, hidden safely behind the curtain. Afterwards, he stood with a towel wrapped around his waist in front of the mirror. He hadn’t shut the door behind him and could see Eames watching him from the bed in the reflection of the mirror.
Rubbing viciously at his hair, he deemed it dry enough and dropped the towel to the floor.
He heard a choked sound behind him and turned to see Eames pushing off the covers and crawling to sit on the edge of the bed. His eyes were wide and focused on Arthur like he’d never seen him before. “Arthur,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Your hair, love. It’s…”
Arthur’s hands immediately went to his head and he tried to slick back the mess of lazy curls, but it was an action futile from the start.
Eames was up and across the room in the blink of an eye, his fingers curling around Arthur’s wrists and bringing them down to his sides. With a look that brooked no argument, he released one of Arthur’s wrists and caught a curl between his fingers, rubbing it before tugging gently.
“Why would you hide this?” A sentence couldn’t hold anymore confusion or disbelief.
Arthur released a soft sigh. “When I was a baby I got very sick. For awhile, they didn’t think there was any cure. I did get better, but the curls upset my father and the dimples break my mother’s heart.”
The silence that fell over them might have been uncomfortable as Eames considered this explanation but for the way his fingers moved over Arthur’s hair in a nearly unconscious need to touch.
“When you were younger, you were sick and although you survived, you were left scarred with gorgeous curls and devastating dimples, leaving your parents traumatized by the change.” The summary was stated in such an exaggerated and, yet, dry tone, Arthur couldn’t help but grin. With the hand that had still been holding Arthur’s other wrist, Eames reached up and cupped the side of Arthur’s face, his thumb catching in the dimple at the side of his mouth.
Arthur turned enough to trap the thumb between his teeth.
Eames barked in laughter and Arthur cleared his throat. “Just as example of my normal,” he said and shrugged.
“When I was a sprog, I got very sick with the chicken pox. For awhile, I thought I was going to die, I itched so much. I have a scar on my hip from where I blatantly disregarded everything my mum said and scratched until the little bugger bled.”
Arthur’s grin grew and he pressed a hand over Eames’ hip and a small star-shaped scar he’d noticed the night before. “Your normal, then,” he explained and shook his head slightly in an attempt to shake the hair away from his face. Eames looked absolutely mesmerized.
“Could you…” Eames asked and his fingers fisted into Arthur’s hair.
He didn’t finish the question, but Arthur was beginning to see that maybe, somewhere between ‘my normal’ and ‘your normal’ he and Eames might be able to create ‘our normal’.
“Yeah,” he said, pressing his mouth to Eames’ and licking slowly over his lower lip. “Yeah, for you.”
If anyone noticed that Arthur didn’t slick his hair back quite as severely, and instead gelled it away from his face with the gentle waves still visible, they didn’t say anything.
It could be because they were distracted that Eames was suddenly and inexplicably allowed to touch it while still keeping his entrails tucked safely inside his stomach.
~~~
Maybe, in the beginning, Eames had thought that being in a relationship with Arthur would be simple and, perhaps, without Eames to spice things up, a tad dull. Of course, this conclusion was drawn from a persona that Arthur had presented the world, not a fake him, per say, but a polished, more ‘family friendly’ him. And for the definition of ‘family’, Eames could only assume Arthur hadn’t included his own.
Now though, Arthur was opening up, letting through parts of himself that he carefully called ‘his normal’.
For instance, their first Halloween together where Arthur planned for weeks in advance a haunted house the likes of which Eames had never seen. Traps and monsters and blood and Arthur grinning manically before toppling Eames into a creepily realistic coffin and… well, that’s not really part of the story, is it?
Arthur’s normal insisted that they were simply and solicitously providing the ‘trick’ to the requested ‘trick or treats’ of the evening.
Eames’ normal, when it wasn’t helping mix what Arthur deemed the perfect consistency for realistic blood and meticulously winding slimy ‘intestines’ around a pole, frantically hissed that ‘terrorizing’ was a much more apt word than ‘trick’.
All those years when Eames thought Arthur was a stick in the mud, it wasn’t because Arthur didn’t want to have fun, but rather that everyone else’s definition of fun was honestly beyond Arthur’s understanding. Or maybe, when Eames was being honest with himself, it was that Arthur’s fun leaned heavily toward bone-chillingly terrifying…
But then Arthur would cock his head to the side in exasperation, a shy smile pulling at his mouth, and Eames really couldn’t care less that carnivals and cotton-candy made Arthur shudder or that he honestly seemed allergic to musicals, the color pink, and small, fluffy animals.
So what if the best sex he’d ever had with Arthur was after an impromptu stroll through a graveyard in New Orleans or that Arthur laughed until they were asked to leave the museum during on exhibit featuring the Salem Witch Trials. (“Jesus, Eames, I think that’s my great-great aunt Hestia!”)
When Arthur invited him home, Eames wasn’t worried. Arthur was his and he loved every wicked laugh and condescending comment. Yes, Arthur was a little scary, but Eames knew it was more bark than bite.
What came next was Eames’ fault really… Arthur had warned him, years ago in a corner booth.
“You’re a little bit scary, aren’t you, darling?”
“You’ve no idea, mon cher.”
To Be Continued…