[Fic] New York Lights
Title: New York Lights
Fandom: Inception
Pairing(s): Eames/Arthur
Rating: R (sexy times, language, a punch to the mouth, etc.)
Summary: Written for the Inception Kink Meme (inception_kink)
Original Prompt: Alphabet City, New York, 1989. Happy ending and a lot of fluff please!
Notes: idk, you guys. I don't even know what happened here. But uh. Have some poor boy New York fun.
Additionally, that line about only eating toast and expired turkey bacon and such is based on life. I AM TOO POOR TO BUY FOOD HOW IS THIS MY LIFE LMAO. /cries
Arthur met Eames the day after he moved to New York City.
It was winter, a frosty January with temperatures dropping well below freezing, and Arthur was feeling optimistic about his future. He had his first month’s rent paid and had a roommate that seemed relatively normal. Even if the apartment had no heat and the windows didn’t shut, it was still perfect to Arthur at that moment. After spending years in Canadian suburbia, New York was a beautiful, vibrant, artistic city with endless opportunities. He could look around any street corner and find an artist worth writing about at that point, and Arthur’s writing was good enough to sell to any magazine he wanted.
Or so he thought.
It was in this state of mind that Eames came knocking on his door, with large bags under his eyes, track marks up his uncovered arms and shivering from the cold.
“Hello, darling. Mind if I borrow a light?”
Arthur was struck dumb. He stared the strange guy up and down, taking in the rumpled t-shirt and jeans, tattoos visible at the arms, British accent and easy smirk pulling at the corners of a full pair of lips. There was certainly nobody like this in suburban Ontario.
“Uh... yeah, I guess,” Arthur mumbled, going back inside and digging a lighter out of his suitcase. “Here,” he hummed, passing it over.
The man nodded and pulled a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear. “Cheers,” he said around it, passing the lighter back to Arthur. “Eames, by the way.”
“Sorry?”
“My name. Eames. And you’re Cobb’s new roommate, then?” His smirk widened as he took a long drag on the cigarette, holding it in his lungs.
“Oh.” Arthur nodded, holding a hand out. “Arthur.”
Eames simply gave him a mock two-finger salute and took a step back. “Well, Arthur, I will see you around then.”
And Arthur was left there with his hand hanging out the door, confused as to who the hell just knocked on his door.
---
It took three months of living on frozen bread, expired turkey bacon and leftovers for Arthur to realize that bohemian life in New York really wasn’t as fantastic as he thought it would be. He was surrounded by creative people, yes, but nobody at a magazine or a newspaper even took a second glance at the pieces he wrote on these people. He wrote bland, dry material just to scrape up enough money for rent and, on occasion, food, but it was draining and exhausting and it was cold in his apartment still, since the window didn’t shut.
He wasn’t sleeping fantastically. Outside the ever-open window, the only sounds he ever heard were dogs barking, sirens and shouting in Spanish. It was enough to tax his sleep schedule. He couldn’t get to sleep before two in the morning anymore, when the shouting started to die down slightly and he was sure nobody was going to hop in through the window and stab him in his sleep.
New York was truly nothing like he thought it would be.
At least he had some privacy. His roommate, Cobb, was constantly out doing whatever it was he did with his French girlfriend and tacking up a sheet in the window provided him with some privacy from the neighbours. At least he could sit in the cold and the quiet and just write during his days on the typewriter he had bought at a flea market back in Ontario.
He went down the street to a tiny cafe sometimes, to visit the girl who worked there, Ariadne-she always gave him free coffee, so he wasn’t exactly complaining. She was nice enough and smart, so holding up a conversation with her wasn’t difficult. She was a sculptor, or so she told him.
Arthur wrote a piece on her later, which he actually managed to sell to a small time art magazine. Ariadne was thrilled and bought him a new typewriter when she sold one of her sculptures. She became Arthur’s closest friend in New York, apart from Cobb, who he was still preoccupied with his girlfriend, Mal.
“So, tell me,” Ariadne hummed, hanging upside down off the edge of Arthur’s bed, “who is your next artistic conquest? Find anyone interesting?”
Arthur just shrugged. “Not yet. Nash’s work is becoming repetitive and hard to sell to anyone. I’m trying to find someone exciting.”
“You mean someone like me?” She grinned.
“Sure. Someone like you.” Arthur let himself smile, just the tiniest bit. He went and flopped down on the bed beside Ariadne, staring up at the ceiling. “I just wish it were easier, finding someone brilliant. Someone who doesn’t even know they’re brilliant yet, but has something that just...”
“Stands out?” Ariadne finished for him. “Something different, right?”
“Yeah,” he sighed, looking thoughtful. It was true, New York was full of bright, artistic and vibrant people, but among a sea or bohemian artists, it was difficult to stand out. Eventually, everybody’s post-impressionist paintings blurred together and Arthur just wanted to find something new in the depths. He had gone to plenty of art shows and even scoured graffiti tags, but none of it was special enough to hold his interest.
Ariadne sat up and laid down beside Arthur, looking up at him. “You’ll find someone else. There must be a million artists in New York right now-one of them is bound to be the next Picasso.” She smirked.
“I sure hope you’re right.”
“I’m always right.”
---
It was not long after that Arthur got another knock on his door.
It had been months since Arthur first met Eames, but there he was again, in a wifebeater and horrific mustard yellow slacks that Arthur simply wanted to tear off of him and burn. “Uh... yes?”
“I seemed to have locked myself out of my apartment,” he hummed. “My roommate should be back in a few hours, but I was wondering if I could hang out in here until he got back.”
Arthur raised both his eyebrows. “You don’t have anywhere else to go?”
“Well, I could, but it’s March right now, I don’t have a coat and it’s downpouring outside.” Eames’s laugh was light and easy.
Arthur swallowed and chewed on his bottom lip. Eames looked like a convict, sure, but he didn’t seem like the type of person who would come in, bludgeon him over the head and steal all his belongings. Not that he had much to steal, unless expired yogurt was worth anything.
“I guess you can come in for a little while.” He pulled the door open a little wider and ushered Eames inside. “Sorry there’s nothing to eat or... do, really. We can’t afford cable and I can’t afford food at the moment.”
“Quite alright, darling,” Eames hummed, smiling that easy sort of smile and sitting down on Arthur’s bed. “So you’re a writer, then?”
Arthur paused, blinking at Eames. “How did you know that?”
“Well, from the stack of papers there and the typewriter and the fact that you live in a place such as this, I thought it the only option,” Eames snickered. “What do you write? Poetry or prose?”
“Prose. Journalism,” Arthur said curtly. He really didn’t like talking about himself, much less to this strange guy he had met once months ago. “I write about New York’s up and coming artists.”
“Bit of a hard sell to the stodgy newspapers, isn’t it?”
“A bit,” Arthur hummed, sitting back down beside his typewriter. “Why, what do you do?”
Eames’s smile grew. “That, darling, is a secret.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow. Suspicious. Was he a drug dealer? That seemed likely, from the sleazy way of dress to the sleazy smirk. The track marks running up his arms certainly added to that theory. “What’s with marks on your arms?” he asked mildly.
“Ah, those,” Eames hummed fondly. “Well, my flatmate, Yusuf, creates different... compounds, mostly sedatives, and he likes to let me test them.” He grinned. “They’re really quite good and give you quite the rush, if I do say so myself.”
Arthur blinked at Eames. “Interesting,” he mumbled, looking down and shuffling through the loose papers scattered over the ground.
“It really is,” Eames chuckled, staring up at Arthur’s ceiling. “So have you discovered any truly fantastic artists yet in your gallivanting around New York City, Arthur?”
“One,” Arthur murmured, smiling slightly. “Ariadne. She’s a sculptor and she’s very talented. I sold a piece I wrote on her to small magazine, and somebody bought one of her sculptures because of it.”
“Sounds as if you are very fond of her.”
“She’s a good friend of mine.”
Eames just nodded and folded his arms over his chest. Arthur stared at him, frowning slightly in concentration. He was strange and different and vaguely irritating with his incessant chatter. He had an air of intelligence hanging about him, but he seemed to keep it hidden. It wasn’t uncommon to see Brits in New York, but most of them worked sub-legally and Arthur could only wonder if Eames was another one just hiding from the government without a work visa, working jobs under the table to pay the rent.
He was intriguing.
---
Arthur didn’t tell Cobb or Ariadne about his visit with Eames-he figured it irrelevant to them and, really, he wasn’t exactly friends with Eames. They made light conversation, each sizing the other up as they went along. Arthur had no idea what to expect from Eames, though Eames seemed to have him all figured out. It was unnerving to say the least.
It was only about a week later that Eames once again was rapping his knuckles against his door. Arthur sighed, “What is it now?” but opened the door wider anyways.
“Actually, I was wondering if you would care to get a bite to eat with me.” Eames was grinning that easy, defence-melting grin and Arthur could feel himself caving already.
“I’m broke. I can barely pay the rent this month.”
“I’ll buy, darling, don’t worry,” Eames laughed.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “I’m not some charity case. I have food to cook, I just can’t afford to eat out.”
“Shall we call it a date then, and have me required to buy?”
Arthur blinked a few time-a momentary lapse in brain function-before snorting. “No. No we’ll not call it date. We will not call it a date,” he grunted, shaking his head, but finding himself smiling the tiniest bit.
“Come with me anyways. It’ll be fun and I’m fucking starving.”
Arthur sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Alright, fine. Nowhere expensive, though, I just want a sandwich or something,” he mumbled, grabbing his coat from the closet and slipping it on.
“Darling, if I could afford anywhere more expensive, I would certainly not be living here,” Eames chuckled.
He took Arthur to a crowded, dimly lit little restaurant with people yelling over live music and waitresses swerving expertly between compact tables and people standing up to sway to the music. The air was heavy with smoke and the smell of stale beer, so much so that Arthur wrinkled his nose. The music was good, though-acoustic guitar and no vocals, a calm demeanour to the hectic atmosphere.
“Bit busy,” Eames hummed, more to himself than anything, Arthur figured. He ushered a waitress over and leaned close, whispering something in her ear, smiling the entire time. She smiled back and rolled her eyes, shoving a menu into Eames’s chest.
“You’re awful,” Arthur sighed, grabbing the menu and looking through it.
---
They ate on the side of the road, on the curb with boxes of food in their laps. It was chilly out, but not freezing cold-enough to be comfortable in a sweater.
“So, art,” Eames hummed, licking some unidentifiable sauce from his fingers. “Tell me why you write about it.”
Arthur shrugged, trying to figure out how he was supposed to eat the giant burger he was holding. “I don’t know. I’ve always appreciated art. Started with the small galleries in my hometown, went to the cities to see bigger ones... couldn’t stop. I loved discovering new artists I’ve never heard of by reading magazines and papers and articles and... well that’s what I’m doing here,” he hummed.
Eames nodded. “Where are you from originally?”
“Canada.”
“You’re Canadian?” Eames snorted, shoulders shaking with laughter. “Jesus bleeding Christ. I’m British. We’re practically related eh?”
“Canada hasn’t been a part of England since eighteen sixty-four!” Arthur snorted, taking a huge bite of his burger and swallowing with only some difficulty.
“Except during World War One, apparently, when Canadians fought for Britain.”
Arthur rolled his eyes and glanced over at Eames. He knew Eames was definitely intelligent, just from the little quips of information he threw around. “Apparently.”
“I’m just saying that Canada isn’t a real country. You still have the bloody Queen as your figurehead. She could overturn any decision the governor general or Prime Minister made if she wanted to. I’m sure you Canadians wouldn’t approve, but the point is that she could.”
Arthur narrowed his eyes, setting his food down and simply staring at Eames for a moment. “How do you know so much about Canadian politics?”
“I may not look it, darling, but I do have some common knowledge of the world.”
“Not many people know so much about Canadian politics of all things. Not even many Canadians know that much about Canadian politics. Some don’t even know who the Queen is.”
“Now that’s just right depressing if you ask me.”
“Could you maybe answer one of my questions?”
“Depends on what you’re asking, love.” Eames smirked.
“Eames.” Arthur frowned, forehead creasing. He started to stand up to leave when he saw Eames had no intention of answering anything.
“Wait, wait,” he sighed, grabbing Arthur’s forearm. “I will propose a deal, then.”
“And what would that be?” Arthur raised an eyebrow, tentatively sitting back down.
“One question every time you see me and I will answer truthfully. Starting now, right now.”
Arthur sighed and mulled it over. This had to be some sort of twisted game that Eames played with everybody he met. The strange thing was, though, that Arthur didn’t really mind the idea of this exchange with Eames. There was something about him that put him both on edge and at ease at the same time. He was a difficult man to judge and Arthur had no idea what to do around him.
“Fine,” Arthur sighed. “But you’re only allowed to ask me one as well. Any more than one and I’m allowed to lie.” He smirked, holding out his hand.
“Right,” Eames purred, “it’s a deal then, sir.”
He gave Arthur that mock two-finger salute and he couldn’t help but laugh.
---
“Are you here legally?”
Arthur asked Eames his first question as they as they were walking through the rain-slicked streets of the East Village. They sky was gray and Arthur was hungry and not in the best of moods, but Eames had insisted that they check out this little cafe right in the heart of the Village-heard it was spectacular.
“Define legally.” Eames grinned, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat.
“Do you have a work visa?”
Eames paused and let out a tired sounding sigh. “No. It expired two months ago.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“One question at a time, love.”
---
Eames frustrated Arthur beyond his understanding. He never gave anything away about himself-everything had to be a mystery for Arthur to unravel. Whether it was what he did for a living, why he insisted on staying in New York, where he was from, or what his tattoos meant, he only ever answered one question at a time. It drove Arthur crazy in a way he didn’t understand.
It was making it difficult for Arthur to write anything. The only thing that popped into his mind were potential questions he could ask Eames about his life. All the artists he found were bland and dry and hardly inspiring in the least. Arthur was frustrated and irritated and he directed it all at Eames. Him and his stupid games that he insisted on playing. It was completely ridiculous.
“What’s with that storm cloud?” Ariadne laughed from the corner of his apartment, digging around in the fridge.
“What storm cloud?” Arthur grunted, eyes not even moving from the blank page in his typewriter.
“The one hanging over your head of course,” she snickered, opening a bottle of whatever soda Cobb had left in there. “You’re totally preoccupied. Usually you just write, even if you have nothing to write about.”
“It’s nothing,” Arthur mumbled. He eventually just gave up and flopped back onto the floor, glaring at the ceiling like it was the source of all his problems.
“It’s something, you’re just not telling me what,” she hummed, standing directly over Arthur. “Tell me, maybe I can help.”
Arthur shrugged and looked up at her with a smirk. “My next door neighbour is fucking with my head. Basically.”
“Basically,” Ariadne repeated. “How so? He seems nice enough. The blond one right, with the badass tats?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” Arthur grumbled, closing his eyes. “We’ve just been hanging out a bit. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t get it either. He’s frustrating and he only tells me about himself one question at a time and then that’s it. I’ve been trying to hold back in the same way, too, but he just isn’t fazed by it. It’s like he does this all the time.” He frowned.
Ariadne raised an eyebrow and sat down right beside Arthur’s head. She pressed her lips together and took another sip out of the bottle she was holding. “Sounds like you really like him.”
“I don’t really. He’s interesting, but not likeable in the least,” he sneered.
“Right.” Ariadne rolled her eyes, patting Arthur’s arm. “Well, unless you tell him this stuff instead of me, I think you’re going to be stuck with this one-question-one-answer thing for awhile, Arthur.” She grinned. “Now why don’t you write another amazing piece about me to take your mind off of him?”
Arthur smiled and shook his head. “Later,” he grumbled.
---
Arthur may have found Eames frustrating and difficult to be around, but that didn’t prevent him from going back. He found himself becoming more and more intrigued by Eames as he continued to ask questions. As it turns out, Eames was from Newcastle in England and worked in Amsterdam for some time before coming to New York. Arthur still hadn’t asked why he came to New York, but it was on the list, certainly. He also found out that Eames was thirty-two and that his father was in politics back in England.
After awhile Arthur actually found himself enjoying the time he spent with Eames, asking him one question and finding out a little tidbit more information.
It was, in a way, exhilarating.
It was late into spring in New York and was thankfully starting to warm up. The stuck window in Arthur’s apartment was becoming less of an issue and Cobb had just went out and bought an entire half a chicken to celebrate the warm weather. It wasn’t much, but it was certainly a relief from stale bread and expired yogurt.
He was sipping a cup of coffee that Ariadne had brought him after she finished work and typing up a piece on a beautiful painting that Cobb and his girlfriend had done together when Eames just came waltzing through the stuck window.
Arthur nearly dropped his coffee in shock.
“W-what are you doing in here?” he hissed.
“Ah, right. Well, you see, darling, the concoctions that Yusuf makes are not exactly legal-”
“I am aware.”
“-and the police are currently searching the apartment. Yusuf is away visiting family in Mombasa, you see, and I am the only one in there, though I am not officially in the rental agreement. So you can imagine why I fled, being an illegal immigrant in an apartment full of illegal narcotics and such.”
“Not wanting to get arrested and deported, I imagine.” Arthur rolled his eyes. “I suppose you can stay here for awhile. I’m guessing the cops are going to seize the apartment anyways,” he mumbled. “You can sleep on the couch.”
Eames’s face broke into a truly devastating grin. “Thank you.”
“But I get to ask two questions today.”
Eames chuckled and sat down on the couch, slinging his arm over his eyes. “Well... fair is fair.”
Arthur smiled, victorious. “First off, I want to know your first name.”
“Right. Knew this one was coming,” Eames hummed, the barest of smiles visible at the corners of his mouth. “It’s August,” he murmured, “but for the love of God don’t call me that, it’s bloody awful. Eames will suit me just fine.”
“Sure, sure.” Arthur grinned, mentally filing it away with the rest of the information he knew about Eames. “Next...” he paused, lips pressing together. He had a million more questions to ask Eames, but only one more to ask. He hated having to choose which ones he wanted to know most and save the rest for later. He wished he could just go and ask, but Eames wanted to play this fucking game. Arthur sighed. “What do you do?”
“That’s a very vague question.”
“I mean,” Arthur paused, hand waving vaguely in the air, “what is it that you actually do? Like I’m a writer, so I write. What do you do?”
Eames’s arm slipped away from its place over his eyes and he stared very seriously at Arthur for a moment. “I don’t think I can really tell you that.”
“Why not-”
“But,” Eames interrupted him, “I can show you.”
Arthur blinked for a moment, mind racing and breath catching. He was unnecessarily excited about this. “Alright.”
Eames smiled and walked out the door, Arthur following. They walked through back alleyways and tiny, dark alcoves of the city that Arthur didn’t even know existed. They squeezed through the cracks between impossibly close buildings and leaped over fences until Arthur was sure they were in the darkest, deepest depths of the city itself.
“This is what I do.”
Arthur looked confused for a moment before he looked up.
There, staring down at him, was a huge, wall length mural of the New York City skyline, painted together in bright Technicolor. It looked nothing like the New York he knew, but did at the same time. The sky was pink, the buildings green and blue and yellow and orange. The clouds were purple lined in red and all the colours seemed to bleed together in a mass of joy and a celebration of the city itself. It was, beyond a doubt, beautiful.
“You did this?” Arthur breathed, reaching out and touching the rough cement building.
“Took me four months, but yeah. I finally finished it,” Eames hummed, looking pleased.
Arthur just gaped and stared and couldn’t look away. This wasn’t the dull acrylics on canvas that he saw all around the East Village. This wasn’t beautiful realism in oils. This wasn’t anything and it was everything that was New York all in one piece, painted onto the side of a building.
“I want to write about you.” Arthur swallowed.
Eames smiled fondly at Arthur. “Go right ahead.”
---
The piece on Eames’s work sold quickly, and Eames made a name for himself painting bright and vivid New York scenes onto the gray buildings all over the city. Arthur didn’t use Eames’s real name, of course, as he didn’t want him to be deported, but it made people pay attention the work that he did, even if they never met the artist. Eames didn’t make money off of his work, but they were celebrated by people all over the East Village, and even beyond.
Eames continued to stay with Arthur, and Arthur continued to write about Eames.
The summer passed in a blur of questions, laughter, paint, heat and humidity. Yusuf was still laying low in Mombasa, or at least that was what he heard from Eames, so it was only logical that Eames stay in Arthur’s apartment still.
As October drew to a close and the weather began cooling down once again-the window was still stuck-Eames began slipping into Arthur’s bed. It was comfortable enough for the both of them, as the weather was freezing and it was difficult to stay warm in the blankets and clothes they had.
It was completely platonic of course. They kept space between them when they slept. Even if Arthur awoke to find Eames had slung an arm around his waist in the middle of the night and buried his face into Arthur’s shoulder, he knew it was because it was cold out and nothing else. Eames was a close friend and close friends were able to wrap themselves around each other in the middle of the night and keep it platonic.
Eames may be brilliant, in more ways than one, but he was Arthur’s friend and it ended there.
It was only when Arthur was in the shower-the only privacy he had anymore-feeling the slow burn of arousal in the pit of his stomach that he realized he should be worried. He stroked himself quickly, efficiently and tried not to think about anything, like he normally did. He bit his lip and blocked out any images and fantasies and simply focused on the feeling. His breath came sharp and stinted through his nose as he stroked faster, head leaning back against the warm tile, steam making it difficult to breath-
And suddenly, an image of Eames infiltrated his mind like a virus.
He let out a surprised moan as he came, jerking and breathless, to the image of Eames on his knees with that sardonic smirk on his face.
“Fuck.”
---
Arthur made sure to keep his distance in bed after that. He curled in on himself and shivered in the dark, but he didn’t want any more images of Eames like that infiltrating his mind again. It was ludicrous-Eames was his friend and he didn’t think about friends in that way. It was probably the lack of food and too much work taking a toll on his system, convincing him that he felt things that he really... didn’t.
Eames seemed to take notice that Arthur was avoiding him, though-Eames was strangely perceptive and it was like he could see right through Arthur. It was unnerving. Eames would simply shoot him strange looks in the morning when they both woke up, but never say anything. Arthur supposed that was a good thing because he really didn’t want to have to explain how he was having heavy sex fantasies about Eames while jerking off. It could prove to be sufficiently awkward.
So Arthur simply stamped whatever feelings he had about Eames down and tried to completely ignore them and act like everything was normal.
Except it wasn’t, not for Arthur at least. And he was never really a good actor. His writing was starting to suffer, his fingers stuttered and paused over keys on his typewriter as he tried to write another piece about Eames. It was driving him insane. It was frustrating and juvenile and he shouldn’t be letting personal feelings affect his work of all things-he had to be professional. He needed to make money to live.
It was a cold morning in November. The sun was just hovering below the horizon, the sky overcast and gray, casting the city in a sort of blue-washed monochrome. Arthur sighed and shifted uncomfortably, toes numb and morning wood pressing against uncomfortably against the jeans he had worn to bed. His sniffled, nose running from the cold seeping in through the window.
It was a terrible morning to say the least.
He shifted again, backwards, only to feel Eames pressing solidly against his back. He paused and didn’t dare glance back. He knew that he should get up, but the air was frigid and Eames was just so warm....
He felt his erection throb in his pants and he stifled a frustrated groan. This wasn’t going to work. He needed a cold shower or something, but couldn’t find it in himself to slip out of the bed and make the long, freezing trek to the bathroom.
His heart jumped into his throat when he felt Eames slide an arm around him, face pressing into the back of his neck. “Darling,” Eames whispered, voice heavy with sleep, “let me.”
And he reached down, hand slipping into Arthur’s jeans and Arthur’s brain short-circuited before he could wonder just how Eames knew.
Arthur let out a desperate, shaky, embarrassing noise when Eames wrapped a hand around his cock and moved it, slow enough to be teasing. His fingers were warm and firm and he moved with purpose. Arthur squirmed and bucked into that wonderful hand, eyes squeezing shut and breath coming in gasping suction of air. His head tilted back and pressed against Eames’s shoulder, hands opening and closing in the sheets.
Suddenly Eames squeezed and Arthur honest-to-God whimpered.
“Come on,” he whispered, straight into Arthur’s ear, “come on, darling, that’s good.” It was meaningless, just something to say, but it shot straight down Arthur’s spine and left his fingertips tingling.
He grit his teeth and reached behind himself to grip Eames’s thigh. He hissed out something incoherent as Eames swiped his thumb over the head of Arthur’s dick, mumbling more nonsense into his ear. Arthur let out a choked cry, biting down hard onto his lip as he came onto the front of his jeans and Eames’s hand.
As soon as he came to his senses, Arthur shot out of bed and ran straight into the bathroom.
What the fuck was that?
---
Arthur couldn’t bring himself to look at Eames for the rest of the day. He stayed in the corner of the apartment, writing until the early hours of the morning, when Eames had gone to sleep and Arthur could curl up on the couch. Arthur wanted to forget about that morning so badly, but at the same time just wanted to relive the moment over and over in his head.
It had felt amazing-Eames surrounding him, touching him, breathing into his ear... Arthur had wanted it, badly. That didn’t change the fact that Eames was his friend, though, and Arthur didn’t want to get involved with his friends. But friends didn’t just give each other handjobs in the morning, either.
Arthur groaned and pulled the blanket over his head, falling into an uneasy sleep.
When he woke up the next morning, Eames was gone. Arthur wondered briefly if Yusuf was back and Eames went back to stay with him. He also wondered if Eames had just up and left without a word, off to stay with another friend he had in the city of something of the like.
The apartment stayed empty for weeks.
Arthur began to wonder if Eames was ever coming back, or if he had simply chosen to leave forever. Cobb came back occasionally, picking up some of his stuff and bringing Mal with him sometimes. The apartment felt a little less sparse when he was there. Ariadne came over and talked him out of his slump. He didn’t tell her about what happened between him and Eames, simply mentioned that he had up and left out of the blue. Ariadne could see right through him, though, as always.
“He’ll come back when he’s ready to,” she would say cryptically and pat Arthur on the shoulder. It didn’t make him feel much better about the whole situation, but her presence helped.
He wrote and sold a few articles on a few new artists’ works he had been meaning to finish over the empty weeks and wandered the city. He would cringe every time he saw one of Eames’s paintings on the side of a building and would forget for a moment that he was looking for other artists to write about as well.
He tried writing about Eames. He tried finishing the half-started pieces about him, but only ended up burning the pages in an empty oil drum to heat his apartment. It was stiflingly, numbingly cold without him there. When the snow started falling outside, Arthur hung up a spare sheet in the window just to keep the snow from blowing straight in through the window.
It was mid-December with Arthur was trying to type with numb, shaking fingers when he heard a knock at his door.
And there, standing in the doorway, grinning in a denim jacket and hideous, rose pink button-down stood Eames. Arthur balked. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do....
So he punched him in the jaw.
“You fucker,” he snapped, “where the fuck did you go? What the fuck were you doing for a month and a half?”
Eames just laughed and Arthur was ready to punch him again. “Jesus, darling, I never realized you had such a mean right hook. Wouldn’t have expected it.”
“Answer my fucking questions, you bastard.”
Eames’s grin only widened at that point. “Which one? You know I’m only allowed one at a time.”
Arthur grit his teeth and just barely refrained from breaking Eames’s nose. “Are we honestly still playing this game?”
“Always.”
Arthur shook his head and glared icily at Eames. He expected him to only ask one question? There were so many that he wanted to ask-namely why the hell he left for a month and a half. But the more Arthur thought about it, the more he realized that he had one question itching at the back of his mind. One question that could make or break their relationship and one question that frustrated him more than any other.
“Eames,” he breathed out, expression still hard, “what do you want from me?”
Eames’s grin fell and his expression turned suddenly serious. “Oh, darling,” he murmured, stepping forward and backing Arthur into the apartment, shutting the door behind them. He was looking Arthur up and down and then straight into his eyes, searching. They were so close and Arthur’s heart was ready to beat straight out of his chest. “Everything.”
His voice was barely a whisper.
Arthur couldn’t open his mouth to say anything, stunned into silence. Eames reached forward and brushed his fingers down Arthur’s jaw, sending electric shivers through his body.
“What don’t I want?” Eames’s smile was soft as he took another step forward. This time Arthur didn’t move.
“Then why don’t you just kiss me already?” Arthur hissed out, voice shaking.
Eames laughed and leaned down, lips at the farthest corner of Arthur’s mouth.
“One question at a time.”
Fandom: Inception
Pairing(s): Eames/Arthur
Rating: R (sexy times, language, a punch to the mouth, etc.)
Summary: Written for the Inception Kink Meme (inception_kink)
Original Prompt: Alphabet City, New York, 1989. Happy ending and a lot of fluff please!
Notes: idk, you guys. I don't even know what happened here. But uh. Have some poor boy New York fun.
Additionally, that line about only eating toast and expired turkey bacon and such is based on life. I AM TOO POOR TO BUY FOOD HOW IS THIS MY LIFE LMAO. /cries
Arthur met Eames the day after he moved to New York City.
It was winter, a frosty January with temperatures dropping well below freezing, and Arthur was feeling optimistic about his future. He had his first month’s rent paid and had a roommate that seemed relatively normal. Even if the apartment had no heat and the windows didn’t shut, it was still perfect to Arthur at that moment. After spending years in Canadian suburbia, New York was a beautiful, vibrant, artistic city with endless opportunities. He could look around any street corner and find an artist worth writing about at that point, and Arthur’s writing was good enough to sell to any magazine he wanted.
Or so he thought.
It was in this state of mind that Eames came knocking on his door, with large bags under his eyes, track marks up his uncovered arms and shivering from the cold.
“Hello, darling. Mind if I borrow a light?”
Arthur was struck dumb. He stared the strange guy up and down, taking in the rumpled t-shirt and jeans, tattoos visible at the arms, British accent and easy smirk pulling at the corners of a full pair of lips. There was certainly nobody like this in suburban Ontario.
“Uh... yeah, I guess,” Arthur mumbled, going back inside and digging a lighter out of his suitcase. “Here,” he hummed, passing it over.
The man nodded and pulled a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear. “Cheers,” he said around it, passing the lighter back to Arthur. “Eames, by the way.”
“Sorry?”
“My name. Eames. And you’re Cobb’s new roommate, then?” His smirk widened as he took a long drag on the cigarette, holding it in his lungs.
“Oh.” Arthur nodded, holding a hand out. “Arthur.”
Eames simply gave him a mock two-finger salute and took a step back. “Well, Arthur, I will see you around then.”
And Arthur was left there with his hand hanging out the door, confused as to who the hell just knocked on his door.
---
It took three months of living on frozen bread, expired turkey bacon and leftovers for Arthur to realize that bohemian life in New York really wasn’t as fantastic as he thought it would be. He was surrounded by creative people, yes, but nobody at a magazine or a newspaper even took a second glance at the pieces he wrote on these people. He wrote bland, dry material just to scrape up enough money for rent and, on occasion, food, but it was draining and exhausting and it was cold in his apartment still, since the window didn’t shut.
He wasn’t sleeping fantastically. Outside the ever-open window, the only sounds he ever heard were dogs barking, sirens and shouting in Spanish. It was enough to tax his sleep schedule. He couldn’t get to sleep before two in the morning anymore, when the shouting started to die down slightly and he was sure nobody was going to hop in through the window and stab him in his sleep.
New York was truly nothing like he thought it would be.
At least he had some privacy. His roommate, Cobb, was constantly out doing whatever it was he did with his French girlfriend and tacking up a sheet in the window provided him with some privacy from the neighbours. At least he could sit in the cold and the quiet and just write during his days on the typewriter he had bought at a flea market back in Ontario.
He went down the street to a tiny cafe sometimes, to visit the girl who worked there, Ariadne-she always gave him free coffee, so he wasn’t exactly complaining. She was nice enough and smart, so holding up a conversation with her wasn’t difficult. She was a sculptor, or so she told him.
Arthur wrote a piece on her later, which he actually managed to sell to a small time art magazine. Ariadne was thrilled and bought him a new typewriter when she sold one of her sculptures. She became Arthur’s closest friend in New York, apart from Cobb, who he was still preoccupied with his girlfriend, Mal.
“So, tell me,” Ariadne hummed, hanging upside down off the edge of Arthur’s bed, “who is your next artistic conquest? Find anyone interesting?”
Arthur just shrugged. “Not yet. Nash’s work is becoming repetitive and hard to sell to anyone. I’m trying to find someone exciting.”
“You mean someone like me?” She grinned.
“Sure. Someone like you.” Arthur let himself smile, just the tiniest bit. He went and flopped down on the bed beside Ariadne, staring up at the ceiling. “I just wish it were easier, finding someone brilliant. Someone who doesn’t even know they’re brilliant yet, but has something that just...”
“Stands out?” Ariadne finished for him. “Something different, right?”
“Yeah,” he sighed, looking thoughtful. It was true, New York was full of bright, artistic and vibrant people, but among a sea or bohemian artists, it was difficult to stand out. Eventually, everybody’s post-impressionist paintings blurred together and Arthur just wanted to find something new in the depths. He had gone to plenty of art shows and even scoured graffiti tags, but none of it was special enough to hold his interest.
Ariadne sat up and laid down beside Arthur, looking up at him. “You’ll find someone else. There must be a million artists in New York right now-one of them is bound to be the next Picasso.” She smirked.
“I sure hope you’re right.”
“I’m always right.”
---
It was not long after that Arthur got another knock on his door.
It had been months since Arthur first met Eames, but there he was again, in a wifebeater and horrific mustard yellow slacks that Arthur simply wanted to tear off of him and burn. “Uh... yes?”
“I seemed to have locked myself out of my apartment,” he hummed. “My roommate should be back in a few hours, but I was wondering if I could hang out in here until he got back.”
Arthur raised both his eyebrows. “You don’t have anywhere else to go?”
“Well, I could, but it’s March right now, I don’t have a coat and it’s downpouring outside.” Eames’s laugh was light and easy.
Arthur swallowed and chewed on his bottom lip. Eames looked like a convict, sure, but he didn’t seem like the type of person who would come in, bludgeon him over the head and steal all his belongings. Not that he had much to steal, unless expired yogurt was worth anything.
“I guess you can come in for a little while.” He pulled the door open a little wider and ushered Eames inside. “Sorry there’s nothing to eat or... do, really. We can’t afford cable and I can’t afford food at the moment.”
“Quite alright, darling,” Eames hummed, smiling that easy sort of smile and sitting down on Arthur’s bed. “So you’re a writer, then?”
Arthur paused, blinking at Eames. “How did you know that?”
“Well, from the stack of papers there and the typewriter and the fact that you live in a place such as this, I thought it the only option,” Eames snickered. “What do you write? Poetry or prose?”
“Prose. Journalism,” Arthur said curtly. He really didn’t like talking about himself, much less to this strange guy he had met once months ago. “I write about New York’s up and coming artists.”
“Bit of a hard sell to the stodgy newspapers, isn’t it?”
“A bit,” Arthur hummed, sitting back down beside his typewriter. “Why, what do you do?”
Eames’s smile grew. “That, darling, is a secret.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow. Suspicious. Was he a drug dealer? That seemed likely, from the sleazy way of dress to the sleazy smirk. The track marks running up his arms certainly added to that theory. “What’s with marks on your arms?” he asked mildly.
“Ah, those,” Eames hummed fondly. “Well, my flatmate, Yusuf, creates different... compounds, mostly sedatives, and he likes to let me test them.” He grinned. “They’re really quite good and give you quite the rush, if I do say so myself.”
Arthur blinked at Eames. “Interesting,” he mumbled, looking down and shuffling through the loose papers scattered over the ground.
“It really is,” Eames chuckled, staring up at Arthur’s ceiling. “So have you discovered any truly fantastic artists yet in your gallivanting around New York City, Arthur?”
“One,” Arthur murmured, smiling slightly. “Ariadne. She’s a sculptor and she’s very talented. I sold a piece I wrote on her to small magazine, and somebody bought one of her sculptures because of it.”
“Sounds as if you are very fond of her.”
“She’s a good friend of mine.”
Eames just nodded and folded his arms over his chest. Arthur stared at him, frowning slightly in concentration. He was strange and different and vaguely irritating with his incessant chatter. He had an air of intelligence hanging about him, but he seemed to keep it hidden. It wasn’t uncommon to see Brits in New York, but most of them worked sub-legally and Arthur could only wonder if Eames was another one just hiding from the government without a work visa, working jobs under the table to pay the rent.
He was intriguing.
---
Arthur didn’t tell Cobb or Ariadne about his visit with Eames-he figured it irrelevant to them and, really, he wasn’t exactly friends with Eames. They made light conversation, each sizing the other up as they went along. Arthur had no idea what to expect from Eames, though Eames seemed to have him all figured out. It was unnerving to say the least.
It was only about a week later that Eames once again was rapping his knuckles against his door. Arthur sighed, “What is it now?” but opened the door wider anyways.
“Actually, I was wondering if you would care to get a bite to eat with me.” Eames was grinning that easy, defence-melting grin and Arthur could feel himself caving already.
“I’m broke. I can barely pay the rent this month.”
“I’ll buy, darling, don’t worry,” Eames laughed.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “I’m not some charity case. I have food to cook, I just can’t afford to eat out.”
“Shall we call it a date then, and have me required to buy?”
Arthur blinked a few time-a momentary lapse in brain function-before snorting. “No. No we’ll not call it date. We will not call it a date,” he grunted, shaking his head, but finding himself smiling the tiniest bit.
“Come with me anyways. It’ll be fun and I’m fucking starving.”
Arthur sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Alright, fine. Nowhere expensive, though, I just want a sandwich or something,” he mumbled, grabbing his coat from the closet and slipping it on.
“Darling, if I could afford anywhere more expensive, I would certainly not be living here,” Eames chuckled.
He took Arthur to a crowded, dimly lit little restaurant with people yelling over live music and waitresses swerving expertly between compact tables and people standing up to sway to the music. The air was heavy with smoke and the smell of stale beer, so much so that Arthur wrinkled his nose. The music was good, though-acoustic guitar and no vocals, a calm demeanour to the hectic atmosphere.
“Bit busy,” Eames hummed, more to himself than anything, Arthur figured. He ushered a waitress over and leaned close, whispering something in her ear, smiling the entire time. She smiled back and rolled her eyes, shoving a menu into Eames’s chest.
“You’re awful,” Arthur sighed, grabbing the menu and looking through it.
---
They ate on the side of the road, on the curb with boxes of food in their laps. It was chilly out, but not freezing cold-enough to be comfortable in a sweater.
“So, art,” Eames hummed, licking some unidentifiable sauce from his fingers. “Tell me why you write about it.”
Arthur shrugged, trying to figure out how he was supposed to eat the giant burger he was holding. “I don’t know. I’ve always appreciated art. Started with the small galleries in my hometown, went to the cities to see bigger ones... couldn’t stop. I loved discovering new artists I’ve never heard of by reading magazines and papers and articles and... well that’s what I’m doing here,” he hummed.
Eames nodded. “Where are you from originally?”
“Canada.”
“You’re Canadian?” Eames snorted, shoulders shaking with laughter. “Jesus bleeding Christ. I’m British. We’re practically related eh?”
“Canada hasn’t been a part of England since eighteen sixty-four!” Arthur snorted, taking a huge bite of his burger and swallowing with only some difficulty.
“Except during World War One, apparently, when Canadians fought for Britain.”
Arthur rolled his eyes and glanced over at Eames. He knew Eames was definitely intelligent, just from the little quips of information he threw around. “Apparently.”
“I’m just saying that Canada isn’t a real country. You still have the bloody Queen as your figurehead. She could overturn any decision the governor general or Prime Minister made if she wanted to. I’m sure you Canadians wouldn’t approve, but the point is that she could.”
Arthur narrowed his eyes, setting his food down and simply staring at Eames for a moment. “How do you know so much about Canadian politics?”
“I may not look it, darling, but I do have some common knowledge of the world.”
“Not many people know so much about Canadian politics of all things. Not even many Canadians know that much about Canadian politics. Some don’t even know who the Queen is.”
“Now that’s just right depressing if you ask me.”
“Could you maybe answer one of my questions?”
“Depends on what you’re asking, love.” Eames smirked.
“Eames.” Arthur frowned, forehead creasing. He started to stand up to leave when he saw Eames had no intention of answering anything.
“Wait, wait,” he sighed, grabbing Arthur’s forearm. “I will propose a deal, then.”
“And what would that be?” Arthur raised an eyebrow, tentatively sitting back down.
“One question every time you see me and I will answer truthfully. Starting now, right now.”
Arthur sighed and mulled it over. This had to be some sort of twisted game that Eames played with everybody he met. The strange thing was, though, that Arthur didn’t really mind the idea of this exchange with Eames. There was something about him that put him both on edge and at ease at the same time. He was a difficult man to judge and Arthur had no idea what to do around him.
“Fine,” Arthur sighed. “But you’re only allowed to ask me one as well. Any more than one and I’m allowed to lie.” He smirked, holding out his hand.
“Right,” Eames purred, “it’s a deal then, sir.”
He gave Arthur that mock two-finger salute and he couldn’t help but laugh.
---
“Are you here legally?”
Arthur asked Eames his first question as they as they were walking through the rain-slicked streets of the East Village. They sky was gray and Arthur was hungry and not in the best of moods, but Eames had insisted that they check out this little cafe right in the heart of the Village-heard it was spectacular.
“Define legally.” Eames grinned, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat.
“Do you have a work visa?”
Eames paused and let out a tired sounding sigh. “No. It expired two months ago.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“One question at a time, love.”
---
Eames frustrated Arthur beyond his understanding. He never gave anything away about himself-everything had to be a mystery for Arthur to unravel. Whether it was what he did for a living, why he insisted on staying in New York, where he was from, or what his tattoos meant, he only ever answered one question at a time. It drove Arthur crazy in a way he didn’t understand.
It was making it difficult for Arthur to write anything. The only thing that popped into his mind were potential questions he could ask Eames about his life. All the artists he found were bland and dry and hardly inspiring in the least. Arthur was frustrated and irritated and he directed it all at Eames. Him and his stupid games that he insisted on playing. It was completely ridiculous.
“What’s with that storm cloud?” Ariadne laughed from the corner of his apartment, digging around in the fridge.
“What storm cloud?” Arthur grunted, eyes not even moving from the blank page in his typewriter.
“The one hanging over your head of course,” she snickered, opening a bottle of whatever soda Cobb had left in there. “You’re totally preoccupied. Usually you just write, even if you have nothing to write about.”
“It’s nothing,” Arthur mumbled. He eventually just gave up and flopped back onto the floor, glaring at the ceiling like it was the source of all his problems.
“It’s something, you’re just not telling me what,” she hummed, standing directly over Arthur. “Tell me, maybe I can help.”
Arthur shrugged and looked up at her with a smirk. “My next door neighbour is fucking with my head. Basically.”
“Basically,” Ariadne repeated. “How so? He seems nice enough. The blond one right, with the badass tats?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” Arthur grumbled, closing his eyes. “We’ve just been hanging out a bit. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t get it either. He’s frustrating and he only tells me about himself one question at a time and then that’s it. I’ve been trying to hold back in the same way, too, but he just isn’t fazed by it. It’s like he does this all the time.” He frowned.
Ariadne raised an eyebrow and sat down right beside Arthur’s head. She pressed her lips together and took another sip out of the bottle she was holding. “Sounds like you really like him.”
“I don’t really. He’s interesting, but not likeable in the least,” he sneered.
“Right.” Ariadne rolled her eyes, patting Arthur’s arm. “Well, unless you tell him this stuff instead of me, I think you’re going to be stuck with this one-question-one-answer thing for awhile, Arthur.” She grinned. “Now why don’t you write another amazing piece about me to take your mind off of him?”
Arthur smiled and shook his head. “Later,” he grumbled.
---
Arthur may have found Eames frustrating and difficult to be around, but that didn’t prevent him from going back. He found himself becoming more and more intrigued by Eames as he continued to ask questions. As it turns out, Eames was from Newcastle in England and worked in Amsterdam for some time before coming to New York. Arthur still hadn’t asked why he came to New York, but it was on the list, certainly. He also found out that Eames was thirty-two and that his father was in politics back in England.
After awhile Arthur actually found himself enjoying the time he spent with Eames, asking him one question and finding out a little tidbit more information.
It was, in a way, exhilarating.
It was late into spring in New York and was thankfully starting to warm up. The stuck window in Arthur’s apartment was becoming less of an issue and Cobb had just went out and bought an entire half a chicken to celebrate the warm weather. It wasn’t much, but it was certainly a relief from stale bread and expired yogurt.
He was sipping a cup of coffee that Ariadne had brought him after she finished work and typing up a piece on a beautiful painting that Cobb and his girlfriend had done together when Eames just came waltzing through the stuck window.
Arthur nearly dropped his coffee in shock.
“W-what are you doing in here?” he hissed.
“Ah, right. Well, you see, darling, the concoctions that Yusuf makes are not exactly legal-”
“I am aware.”
“-and the police are currently searching the apartment. Yusuf is away visiting family in Mombasa, you see, and I am the only one in there, though I am not officially in the rental agreement. So you can imagine why I fled, being an illegal immigrant in an apartment full of illegal narcotics and such.”
“Not wanting to get arrested and deported, I imagine.” Arthur rolled his eyes. “I suppose you can stay here for awhile. I’m guessing the cops are going to seize the apartment anyways,” he mumbled. “You can sleep on the couch.”
Eames’s face broke into a truly devastating grin. “Thank you.”
“But I get to ask two questions today.”
Eames chuckled and sat down on the couch, slinging his arm over his eyes. “Well... fair is fair.”
Arthur smiled, victorious. “First off, I want to know your first name.”
“Right. Knew this one was coming,” Eames hummed, the barest of smiles visible at the corners of his mouth. “It’s August,” he murmured, “but for the love of God don’t call me that, it’s bloody awful. Eames will suit me just fine.”
“Sure, sure.” Arthur grinned, mentally filing it away with the rest of the information he knew about Eames. “Next...” he paused, lips pressing together. He had a million more questions to ask Eames, but only one more to ask. He hated having to choose which ones he wanted to know most and save the rest for later. He wished he could just go and ask, but Eames wanted to play this fucking game. Arthur sighed. “What do you do?”
“That’s a very vague question.”
“I mean,” Arthur paused, hand waving vaguely in the air, “what is it that you actually do? Like I’m a writer, so I write. What do you do?”
Eames’s arm slipped away from its place over his eyes and he stared very seriously at Arthur for a moment. “I don’t think I can really tell you that.”
“Why not-”
“But,” Eames interrupted him, “I can show you.”
Arthur blinked for a moment, mind racing and breath catching. He was unnecessarily excited about this. “Alright.”
Eames smiled and walked out the door, Arthur following. They walked through back alleyways and tiny, dark alcoves of the city that Arthur didn’t even know existed. They squeezed through the cracks between impossibly close buildings and leaped over fences until Arthur was sure they were in the darkest, deepest depths of the city itself.
“This is what I do.”
Arthur looked confused for a moment before he looked up.
There, staring down at him, was a huge, wall length mural of the New York City skyline, painted together in bright Technicolor. It looked nothing like the New York he knew, but did at the same time. The sky was pink, the buildings green and blue and yellow and orange. The clouds were purple lined in red and all the colours seemed to bleed together in a mass of joy and a celebration of the city itself. It was, beyond a doubt, beautiful.
“You did this?” Arthur breathed, reaching out and touching the rough cement building.
“Took me four months, but yeah. I finally finished it,” Eames hummed, looking pleased.
Arthur just gaped and stared and couldn’t look away. This wasn’t the dull acrylics on canvas that he saw all around the East Village. This wasn’t beautiful realism in oils. This wasn’t anything and it was everything that was New York all in one piece, painted onto the side of a building.
“I want to write about you.” Arthur swallowed.
Eames smiled fondly at Arthur. “Go right ahead.”
---
The piece on Eames’s work sold quickly, and Eames made a name for himself painting bright and vivid New York scenes onto the gray buildings all over the city. Arthur didn’t use Eames’s real name, of course, as he didn’t want him to be deported, but it made people pay attention the work that he did, even if they never met the artist. Eames didn’t make money off of his work, but they were celebrated by people all over the East Village, and even beyond.
Eames continued to stay with Arthur, and Arthur continued to write about Eames.
The summer passed in a blur of questions, laughter, paint, heat and humidity. Yusuf was still laying low in Mombasa, or at least that was what he heard from Eames, so it was only logical that Eames stay in Arthur’s apartment still.
As October drew to a close and the weather began cooling down once again-the window was still stuck-Eames began slipping into Arthur’s bed. It was comfortable enough for the both of them, as the weather was freezing and it was difficult to stay warm in the blankets and clothes they had.
It was completely platonic of course. They kept space between them when they slept. Even if Arthur awoke to find Eames had slung an arm around his waist in the middle of the night and buried his face into Arthur’s shoulder, he knew it was because it was cold out and nothing else. Eames was a close friend and close friends were able to wrap themselves around each other in the middle of the night and keep it platonic.
Eames may be brilliant, in more ways than one, but he was Arthur’s friend and it ended there.
It was only when Arthur was in the shower-the only privacy he had anymore-feeling the slow burn of arousal in the pit of his stomach that he realized he should be worried. He stroked himself quickly, efficiently and tried not to think about anything, like he normally did. He bit his lip and blocked out any images and fantasies and simply focused on the feeling. His breath came sharp and stinted through his nose as he stroked faster, head leaning back against the warm tile, steam making it difficult to breath-
And suddenly, an image of Eames infiltrated his mind like a virus.
He let out a surprised moan as he came, jerking and breathless, to the image of Eames on his knees with that sardonic smirk on his face.
“Fuck.”
---
Arthur made sure to keep his distance in bed after that. He curled in on himself and shivered in the dark, but he didn’t want any more images of Eames like that infiltrating his mind again. It was ludicrous-Eames was his friend and he didn’t think about friends in that way. It was probably the lack of food and too much work taking a toll on his system, convincing him that he felt things that he really... didn’t.
Eames seemed to take notice that Arthur was avoiding him, though-Eames was strangely perceptive and it was like he could see right through Arthur. It was unnerving. Eames would simply shoot him strange looks in the morning when they both woke up, but never say anything. Arthur supposed that was a good thing because he really didn’t want to have to explain how he was having heavy sex fantasies about Eames while jerking off. It could prove to be sufficiently awkward.
So Arthur simply stamped whatever feelings he had about Eames down and tried to completely ignore them and act like everything was normal.
Except it wasn’t, not for Arthur at least. And he was never really a good actor. His writing was starting to suffer, his fingers stuttered and paused over keys on his typewriter as he tried to write another piece about Eames. It was driving him insane. It was frustrating and juvenile and he shouldn’t be letting personal feelings affect his work of all things-he had to be professional. He needed to make money to live.
It was a cold morning in November. The sun was just hovering below the horizon, the sky overcast and gray, casting the city in a sort of blue-washed monochrome. Arthur sighed and shifted uncomfortably, toes numb and morning wood pressing against uncomfortably against the jeans he had worn to bed. His sniffled, nose running from the cold seeping in through the window.
It was a terrible morning to say the least.
He shifted again, backwards, only to feel Eames pressing solidly against his back. He paused and didn’t dare glance back. He knew that he should get up, but the air was frigid and Eames was just so warm....
He felt his erection throb in his pants and he stifled a frustrated groan. This wasn’t going to work. He needed a cold shower or something, but couldn’t find it in himself to slip out of the bed and make the long, freezing trek to the bathroom.
His heart jumped into his throat when he felt Eames slide an arm around him, face pressing into the back of his neck. “Darling,” Eames whispered, voice heavy with sleep, “let me.”
And he reached down, hand slipping into Arthur’s jeans and Arthur’s brain short-circuited before he could wonder just how Eames knew.
Arthur let out a desperate, shaky, embarrassing noise when Eames wrapped a hand around his cock and moved it, slow enough to be teasing. His fingers were warm and firm and he moved with purpose. Arthur squirmed and bucked into that wonderful hand, eyes squeezing shut and breath coming in gasping suction of air. His head tilted back and pressed against Eames’s shoulder, hands opening and closing in the sheets.
Suddenly Eames squeezed and Arthur honest-to-God whimpered.
“Come on,” he whispered, straight into Arthur’s ear, “come on, darling, that’s good.” It was meaningless, just something to say, but it shot straight down Arthur’s spine and left his fingertips tingling.
He grit his teeth and reached behind himself to grip Eames’s thigh. He hissed out something incoherent as Eames swiped his thumb over the head of Arthur’s dick, mumbling more nonsense into his ear. Arthur let out a choked cry, biting down hard onto his lip as he came onto the front of his jeans and Eames’s hand.
As soon as he came to his senses, Arthur shot out of bed and ran straight into the bathroom.
What the fuck was that?
---
Arthur couldn’t bring himself to look at Eames for the rest of the day. He stayed in the corner of the apartment, writing until the early hours of the morning, when Eames had gone to sleep and Arthur could curl up on the couch. Arthur wanted to forget about that morning so badly, but at the same time just wanted to relive the moment over and over in his head.
It had felt amazing-Eames surrounding him, touching him, breathing into his ear... Arthur had wanted it, badly. That didn’t change the fact that Eames was his friend, though, and Arthur didn’t want to get involved with his friends. But friends didn’t just give each other handjobs in the morning, either.
Arthur groaned and pulled the blanket over his head, falling into an uneasy sleep.
When he woke up the next morning, Eames was gone. Arthur wondered briefly if Yusuf was back and Eames went back to stay with him. He also wondered if Eames had just up and left without a word, off to stay with another friend he had in the city of something of the like.
The apartment stayed empty for weeks.
Arthur began to wonder if Eames was ever coming back, or if he had simply chosen to leave forever. Cobb came back occasionally, picking up some of his stuff and bringing Mal with him sometimes. The apartment felt a little less sparse when he was there. Ariadne came over and talked him out of his slump. He didn’t tell her about what happened between him and Eames, simply mentioned that he had up and left out of the blue. Ariadne could see right through him, though, as always.
“He’ll come back when he’s ready to,” she would say cryptically and pat Arthur on the shoulder. It didn’t make him feel much better about the whole situation, but her presence helped.
He wrote and sold a few articles on a few new artists’ works he had been meaning to finish over the empty weeks and wandered the city. He would cringe every time he saw one of Eames’s paintings on the side of a building and would forget for a moment that he was looking for other artists to write about as well.
He tried writing about Eames. He tried finishing the half-started pieces about him, but only ended up burning the pages in an empty oil drum to heat his apartment. It was stiflingly, numbingly cold without him there. When the snow started falling outside, Arthur hung up a spare sheet in the window just to keep the snow from blowing straight in through the window.
It was mid-December with Arthur was trying to type with numb, shaking fingers when he heard a knock at his door.
And there, standing in the doorway, grinning in a denim jacket and hideous, rose pink button-down stood Eames. Arthur balked. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to do....
So he punched him in the jaw.
“You fucker,” he snapped, “where the fuck did you go? What the fuck were you doing for a month and a half?”
Eames just laughed and Arthur was ready to punch him again. “Jesus, darling, I never realized you had such a mean right hook. Wouldn’t have expected it.”
“Answer my fucking questions, you bastard.”
Eames’s grin only widened at that point. “Which one? You know I’m only allowed one at a time.”
Arthur grit his teeth and just barely refrained from breaking Eames’s nose. “Are we honestly still playing this game?”
“Always.”
Arthur shook his head and glared icily at Eames. He expected him to only ask one question? There were so many that he wanted to ask-namely why the hell he left for a month and a half. But the more Arthur thought about it, the more he realized that he had one question itching at the back of his mind. One question that could make or break their relationship and one question that frustrated him more than any other.
“Eames,” he breathed out, expression still hard, “what do you want from me?”
Eames’s grin fell and his expression turned suddenly serious. “Oh, darling,” he murmured, stepping forward and backing Arthur into the apartment, shutting the door behind them. He was looking Arthur up and down and then straight into his eyes, searching. They were so close and Arthur’s heart was ready to beat straight out of his chest. “Everything.”
His voice was barely a whisper.
Arthur couldn’t open his mouth to say anything, stunned into silence. Eames reached forward and brushed his fingers down Arthur’s jaw, sending electric shivers through his body.
“What don’t I want?” Eames’s smile was soft as he took another step forward. This time Arthur didn’t move.
“Then why don’t you just kiss me already?” Arthur hissed out, voice shaking.
Eames laughed and leaned down, lips at the farthest corner of Arthur’s mouth.
“One question at a time.”