Prompt fill: Not the Fixing Kind
Title: Not the Fixing Kind
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not claim profit or ownership of any recognizable plots/characters.
Word-count: approx 1,500
Summary: Eames wants and wants and wants all sorts of things Arthur doesn’t give him. Arthur gives Eames something he didn’t know to want, instead.
Written for ifeelbetter’s (prompt) at inception_kink
Well cause if you think you need some money, well, you can't have mine.
If you think you want some conversation, try a pick up line.
But if you think you need some lovin', ooooooh that's fine.
Go listen to Pomplamoose. I DEMAND IT!
---
Not the Fixing Kind
---
“Look, Arthur it’s just two hundred dollars. I’ll pay you back.”
“Eames,” Arthur says, flat and exasperated as he considers slamming the door in Eames’s face. “You don’t ever pay people back.”
“I don’t pay people I don’t like back. For you, Arthur, I swear. I promise. It’s just a little issue with some guys who can’t take a joke. As soon as I sort it, I can take another job, and then I’ll post it to you. I’ll bring it to your door with tulips, please Arthur.”
“I’m not giving you any money, Eames, I’m not.”
“Please may I just come inside for a minute, it’s minus twenty degrees out here. I haven’t got a coat.”
His breath paints the air soft, voluminous white between them. He really hasn’t got a coat, and Arthur can see the shivers wracking his arms even though Eames’ voice is unaffected. Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and backs out of the way, swinging the door open. Eames brushes past him regally, tweaking Arthur’s collar as he does so, and Arthur already regrets letting him in.
It’s six years before they’ll know each other’s secrets. Before Eames will know Arthur inside out, from the fluttering of his pulse as he wakes to the way he likes his coffee. Before Arthur will know how to tell when Eames is afraid.
It’s four years before Mal dies and leaves fissures on their hearts making it so they won’t ever fit together quite right again.
It’s three years before they’ll be the best in the business at what they do, good enough to live like kings in chateaus across Europe.
It’s a year before Arthur will wear his first real suit, or kill a man. A year before Eames will fuck a mark dispassionately in someone else’s body for a job the first time.
“Two hundred dollars,” Eames pleads. He’s so young, even if neither of them knows it yet.
“Eames, if I had it, I might consider it. I’m broke. Look at this apartment. You think I’d be living in this shithole if I had a spare two hundred bucks. I just ate two pieces of stale toast for dinner.”
“How can you be broke, Arthur? I know for a fact that you just pulled a job for the Stinson family.”
“Yeah, I had to, or else they were going to kill my mother. You know how it is. Since we had to move out of legit work, it’s been bad.”
“You did legit work?”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. Not everyone goes into the business by the same screwed up routes as you.”
Eames takes a look around. The flat is painfully neat with the exception of the desk, which is overflowing with partially crumpled research print-outs. His laptop, which Eames estimates to be from 1986, is buried beneath a pile of manila folders.
Despite the precise arrangement of Arthur’s jackets on the wall pegs and alignment of the sofa, Eames can see that Arthur isn’t lying when he says he’s broke. None of the furniture looks like anything Arthur would pick out for himself. It has the greasy-grey film of second and third hand thrift store purchases. Arthur himself has a thin, slightly mal-nourished look about him, and his pants have uneven stitches around the knee signifying that Arthur has inexpertly mended a hole or two in the seam.
“Okay,” Eames says dejectedly, collapsing onto Arthur’s couch. “Can I get a piece of toast?”
“Sure,” Arthur says.
Arthur runs down to the corner store to buy a packet of cigarettes while Eames is eating his toast, and when he comes back, Eames is asleep on the futon serving as Arthur’s bed in the other room. His shoes leave wet, wintry prints on the bottom of the quilt. Arthur pushes Eames over enough to make room to lie down beside him. The heating doesn’t work as well in this room. After a few minutes and shivering just a little, Arthur rolls into the space between Eames’s arm and his ribs, and tries not to think about anything except falling asleep.
He wakes to sunlight. The safe in the corner of the room, usually covered by a floral tablecloth, is wide open. Fuck, Arthur thinks.
His spare gun is gone, but Eames hasn’t touched the few hundred dollars Arthur is hoping will last him until some other lowbrow, quick and dirty job comes up, and pays out a few hundred more. Cheers, reads the note on top of the pile of cash.
---
“I can’t talk right now, Eames,” Arthur says, answering the phone. Be very, very careful, he thinks distractedly.
“How’d you know it was me?” Eames answers, cheerful on the other end of the line.
“No, Eames, I really can’t talk.”
“What? What do you mean by that? Is it because I sent you those postcards? I didn’t even notice they were pornographic until after I sent them.”
“Eames, that’s not possible, you’d had to have looked at them to -- No, you know what, you can’t trick me into conversing with you. I can’t talk because I’m diffusing a bomb, Eames.”
Click.
Arthur thinks, Blue wire or red wire?
-
“I can’t talk right now, Eames.” Arthur answers, whispering into the phone.
“I think I’m drunk, darling,” Eames says, in German.
“That doesn’t surprise me, Eames, seeing as I know you always keep your time zones straight and it’s currently two-thirty in the morning here.”
“Are you in Munich?” Eames says, sounding surprised.
“No,” Arthur sighs. “You’re in Munich.”
“That would explain why I’m speaking German, wouldn’t it.”
“Yes,” Arthur replies. “I don’t mean to be rude, Eames, but as it so happens I’m in an international assassin’s closet waiting for him to fall asleep so I can extract who his next hit is.”
“Well fine then,” Eames says, laughing too loudly. Arthur winces as he hears footsteps on the other side of the door. “You’re about to hang up on me aren’t you,” Eames says, the inflection of his voice something like tragedy.
“How’d you guess?” Arthur hisses.
Click.
-
“I can’t talk right now, Eames.”
“Ha! But I’m at your door. Can’t hang up on me now, can you, darling.” Eames grins absurdly at him through the slight crack in the door.
Arthur slouches against the wall and tries to breath in through his nose. It doesn’t go well. He ends up coughing in Eames’s face. “Ugh,” he says. “Please. I mean I literally can’t talk. It feels like there are knives in my throat. Just leave me alone.”
“Here, look, Cobb said you were ill. I’m being a friend, Arthur. I have soup. You have to let me in. We don’t need to talk. At least take the soup.”
Arthur shifts to the side. It’s a different apartment, a different life from last time, but Arthur is momentarily thrown back into remembering himself as he was three years ago.
Eames pushes Arthur down onto the sofa, (brown leather and modern this time), digs around in Arthur’s closest until he finds a few more quilts and heaps them across Arthur who burrows further into the warmth, almost against his will. Eames brings him soup twenty minutes later, after he’s almost half asleep. Arthur sits up and tries to explain that he’s not usually such a wreck and that Eames should leave and thanks, really thanks, but Eames shakes his head, smiling with his eyes.
“Shh,” he says, pressing his finger against Arthur’s feverish lips, so cool and smooth compared to how Arthur feels. “You don’t have to talk,” he whispers.
---
Arthur opens the door. Eames comes in. They don’t say anything. Eames is still wearing his suit from the funeral. Arthur doesn’t like the way Eames looks in it. He’d always thought he’d be glad to see Eames in something stiff and dark and precise, but it’s all wrong. Eames stops as they draw even, touching Arthur briefly on his wrist, and pressing slightly into him as Eames brushes past him. He smells like Jack Daniels and mud. Arthur lets Eames lean against him. He brushes his nose along Eames collarbone lightly enough that it’s only the ghost of touch. Ghosts. Ghosts amongst them, is all they have tonight.
“I left her daisies,” Eames says after a long time. They’re sitting on Arthur’s bed in the dark, now. Eames is drinking tea he made with the kettle he somehow produced from Arthur’s cupboards even though Arthur’s never bought a kettle in his life. “She didn’t like roses.”
“No,” Arthur agrees. “Cobb will be gone by next week. I’ll probably leave with him.”
“Well, I’ll be around,” Eames says, “I don’t live here anymore than I live anywhere else. I hear Moscow is a hotbed of corporate espionage right now. Start there, maybe. I’ve always thought you should go to Moscow. That degree in Russian Literature of yours ought to come in use sometime.”
Arthur shifts until their shoulders lean together. He closes his eyes. Eames touches his wrist and it feels like a kiss of snowflakes, still cold, and a little damp.
“Where do you think she went? Do you think she’s happier? She called me once, a few months ago. She said, “Eames, I’m dreaming”. Was I supposed to have known, I mean, should I feel guilty?”
“Stop it,” Arthur says, “I’m not your therapist, Eames.”
Eames falls silent. Arthur stands up abruptly. He steps between Eames’s legs and sets his hands against Eames’s coat with slow deliberation. Eames jacket falls to the floor first, and then his tie, and then Arthur undoes each pearlescent button of Eames’s shirt.
“You think you need something,” Arthur says, softly, almost against Eames’s mouth, “You always think you need something from me. This is what I can give you.”
Eames brushes his fingers against Arthur’s neck and into his hair, drawing their lips together, with such lengthening hesitance that when their mouths finally connect, Arthur lets out a tiny, accidental sound.
“Mmm,” Eames murmurs, knowing that he hurts right, now, that everything hurts here between them and outside in a world that has irrevocably changed for the worse. But he knows that it’ll be okay, because Arthur’s fingers are against Eames’s bare chest and pushing him back on to the bed and he blinks at Eames in the dark through the fringe of his lashes, and that’s fine.
End
Note: Thanks to the people who commented on the original post. I think I ought to mention that it was the day of people whose fic you worship comment on something you wrote. I made this face a lot :D
(x-posted to eames_arthur and inception_kink)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not claim profit or ownership of any recognizable plots/characters.
Word-count: approx 1,500
Summary: Eames wants and wants and wants all sorts of things Arthur doesn’t give him. Arthur gives Eames something he didn’t know to want, instead.
Written for ifeelbetter’s (prompt) at inception_kink
Well cause if you think you need some money, well, you can't have mine.
If you think you want some conversation, try a pick up line.
But if you think you need some lovin', ooooooh that's fine.
Go listen to Pomplamoose. I DEMAND IT!
---
Not the Fixing Kind
---
“Look, Arthur it’s just two hundred dollars. I’ll pay you back.”
“Eames,” Arthur says, flat and exasperated as he considers slamming the door in Eames’s face. “You don’t ever pay people back.”
“I don’t pay people I don’t like back. For you, Arthur, I swear. I promise. It’s just a little issue with some guys who can’t take a joke. As soon as I sort it, I can take another job, and then I’ll post it to you. I’ll bring it to your door with tulips, please Arthur.”
“I’m not giving you any money, Eames, I’m not.”
“Please may I just come inside for a minute, it’s minus twenty degrees out here. I haven’t got a coat.”
His breath paints the air soft, voluminous white between them. He really hasn’t got a coat, and Arthur can see the shivers wracking his arms even though Eames’ voice is unaffected. Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and backs out of the way, swinging the door open. Eames brushes past him regally, tweaking Arthur’s collar as he does so, and Arthur already regrets letting him in.
It’s six years before they’ll know each other’s secrets. Before Eames will know Arthur inside out, from the fluttering of his pulse as he wakes to the way he likes his coffee. Before Arthur will know how to tell when Eames is afraid.
It’s four years before Mal dies and leaves fissures on their hearts making it so they won’t ever fit together quite right again.
It’s three years before they’ll be the best in the business at what they do, good enough to live like kings in chateaus across Europe.
It’s a year before Arthur will wear his first real suit, or kill a man. A year before Eames will fuck a mark dispassionately in someone else’s body for a job the first time.
“Two hundred dollars,” Eames pleads. He’s so young, even if neither of them knows it yet.
“Eames, if I had it, I might consider it. I’m broke. Look at this apartment. You think I’d be living in this shithole if I had a spare two hundred bucks. I just ate two pieces of stale toast for dinner.”
“How can you be broke, Arthur? I know for a fact that you just pulled a job for the Stinson family.”
“Yeah, I had to, or else they were going to kill my mother. You know how it is. Since we had to move out of legit work, it’s been bad.”
“You did legit work?”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot who I was talking to. Not everyone goes into the business by the same screwed up routes as you.”
Eames takes a look around. The flat is painfully neat with the exception of the desk, which is overflowing with partially crumpled research print-outs. His laptop, which Eames estimates to be from 1986, is buried beneath a pile of manila folders.
Despite the precise arrangement of Arthur’s jackets on the wall pegs and alignment of the sofa, Eames can see that Arthur isn’t lying when he says he’s broke. None of the furniture looks like anything Arthur would pick out for himself. It has the greasy-grey film of second and third hand thrift store purchases. Arthur himself has a thin, slightly mal-nourished look about him, and his pants have uneven stitches around the knee signifying that Arthur has inexpertly mended a hole or two in the seam.
“Okay,” Eames says dejectedly, collapsing onto Arthur’s couch. “Can I get a piece of toast?”
“Sure,” Arthur says.
Arthur runs down to the corner store to buy a packet of cigarettes while Eames is eating his toast, and when he comes back, Eames is asleep on the futon serving as Arthur’s bed in the other room. His shoes leave wet, wintry prints on the bottom of the quilt. Arthur pushes Eames over enough to make room to lie down beside him. The heating doesn’t work as well in this room. After a few minutes and shivering just a little, Arthur rolls into the space between Eames’s arm and his ribs, and tries not to think about anything except falling asleep.
He wakes to sunlight. The safe in the corner of the room, usually covered by a floral tablecloth, is wide open. Fuck, Arthur thinks.
His spare gun is gone, but Eames hasn’t touched the few hundred dollars Arthur is hoping will last him until some other lowbrow, quick and dirty job comes up, and pays out a few hundred more. Cheers, reads the note on top of the pile of cash.
---
“I can’t talk right now, Eames,” Arthur says, answering the phone. Be very, very careful, he thinks distractedly.
“How’d you know it was me?” Eames answers, cheerful on the other end of the line.
“No, Eames, I really can’t talk.”
“What? What do you mean by that? Is it because I sent you those postcards? I didn’t even notice they were pornographic until after I sent them.”
“Eames, that’s not possible, you’d had to have looked at them to -- No, you know what, you can’t trick me into conversing with you. I can’t talk because I’m diffusing a bomb, Eames.”
Click.
Arthur thinks, Blue wire or red wire?
-
“I can’t talk right now, Eames.” Arthur answers, whispering into the phone.
“I think I’m drunk, darling,” Eames says, in German.
“That doesn’t surprise me, Eames, seeing as I know you always keep your time zones straight and it’s currently two-thirty in the morning here.”
“Are you in Munich?” Eames says, sounding surprised.
“No,” Arthur sighs. “You’re in Munich.”
“That would explain why I’m speaking German, wouldn’t it.”
“Yes,” Arthur replies. “I don’t mean to be rude, Eames, but as it so happens I’m in an international assassin’s closet waiting for him to fall asleep so I can extract who his next hit is.”
“Well fine then,” Eames says, laughing too loudly. Arthur winces as he hears footsteps on the other side of the door. “You’re about to hang up on me aren’t you,” Eames says, the inflection of his voice something like tragedy.
“How’d you guess?” Arthur hisses.
Click.
-
“I can’t talk right now, Eames.”
“Ha! But I’m at your door. Can’t hang up on me now, can you, darling.” Eames grins absurdly at him through the slight crack in the door.
Arthur slouches against the wall and tries to breath in through his nose. It doesn’t go well. He ends up coughing in Eames’s face. “Ugh,” he says. “Please. I mean I literally can’t talk. It feels like there are knives in my throat. Just leave me alone.”
“Here, look, Cobb said you were ill. I’m being a friend, Arthur. I have soup. You have to let me in. We don’t need to talk. At least take the soup.”
Arthur shifts to the side. It’s a different apartment, a different life from last time, but Arthur is momentarily thrown back into remembering himself as he was three years ago.
Eames pushes Arthur down onto the sofa, (brown leather and modern this time), digs around in Arthur’s closest until he finds a few more quilts and heaps them across Arthur who burrows further into the warmth, almost against his will. Eames brings him soup twenty minutes later, after he’s almost half asleep. Arthur sits up and tries to explain that he’s not usually such a wreck and that Eames should leave and thanks, really thanks, but Eames shakes his head, smiling with his eyes.
“Shh,” he says, pressing his finger against Arthur’s feverish lips, so cool and smooth compared to how Arthur feels. “You don’t have to talk,” he whispers.
---
Arthur opens the door. Eames comes in. They don’t say anything. Eames is still wearing his suit from the funeral. Arthur doesn’t like the way Eames looks in it. He’d always thought he’d be glad to see Eames in something stiff and dark and precise, but it’s all wrong. Eames stops as they draw even, touching Arthur briefly on his wrist, and pressing slightly into him as Eames brushes past him. He smells like Jack Daniels and mud. Arthur lets Eames lean against him. He brushes his nose along Eames collarbone lightly enough that it’s only the ghost of touch. Ghosts. Ghosts amongst them, is all they have tonight.
“I left her daisies,” Eames says after a long time. They’re sitting on Arthur’s bed in the dark, now. Eames is drinking tea he made with the kettle he somehow produced from Arthur’s cupboards even though Arthur’s never bought a kettle in his life. “She didn’t like roses.”
“No,” Arthur agrees. “Cobb will be gone by next week. I’ll probably leave with him.”
“Well, I’ll be around,” Eames says, “I don’t live here anymore than I live anywhere else. I hear Moscow is a hotbed of corporate espionage right now. Start there, maybe. I’ve always thought you should go to Moscow. That degree in Russian Literature of yours ought to come in use sometime.”
Arthur shifts until their shoulders lean together. He closes his eyes. Eames touches his wrist and it feels like a kiss of snowflakes, still cold, and a little damp.
“Where do you think she went? Do you think she’s happier? She called me once, a few months ago. She said, “Eames, I’m dreaming”. Was I supposed to have known, I mean, should I feel guilty?”
“Stop it,” Arthur says, “I’m not your therapist, Eames.”
Eames falls silent. Arthur stands up abruptly. He steps between Eames’s legs and sets his hands against Eames’s coat with slow deliberation. Eames jacket falls to the floor first, and then his tie, and then Arthur undoes each pearlescent button of Eames’s shirt.
“You think you need something,” Arthur says, softly, almost against Eames’s mouth, “You always think you need something from me. This is what I can give you.”
Eames brushes his fingers against Arthur’s neck and into his hair, drawing their lips together, with such lengthening hesitance that when their mouths finally connect, Arthur lets out a tiny, accidental sound.
“Mmm,” Eames murmurs, knowing that he hurts right, now, that everything hurts here between them and outside in a world that has irrevocably changed for the worse. But he knows that it’ll be okay, because Arthur’s fingers are against Eames’s bare chest and pushing him back on to the bed and he blinks at Eames in the dark through the fringe of his lashes, and that’s fine.
End
Note: Thanks to the people who commented on the original post. I think I ought to mention that it was the day of people whose fic you worship comment on something you wrote. I made this face a lot :D
(x-posted to eames_arthur and inception_kink)