Charmless Man [Arthur/Eames One-shot]
Title: Charmless Man
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Arthur/Eames
Summary: Everyone on the Team sees Arthur as the slick, sophisticated Point Man. But Eames, on the other hand, watches him through a rather rose-tinted view.
Beta: The awesome fallslowoften
Word Count: Short, only 652.
Disclaimer: None of the idea for Inception or its characters is mine in any way. Neither is "Charmless Man" and its lyrics, by Blur.
Charmless Man
I met him in a crowded room
Where people go to drink away their gloom
He sat me down and so began
The story of a charmless man
Educated the expensive way
He knows his claret from a beaujolais
I think he'd like to have been Ronnie Kray
But then nature didn't make him that way
Despite what the rest of the Team may think, Arthur’s not as sophisticated as he’s portrayed to be.
The three piece suits, the slicked back hair, the silk and polyester mix coat tails- its just him. Him and his little illusion he lets the world observe and play their part in- the uptight as hell, expensively tailored, sleek and stylish Point Man with a mind like a bullet train and a crossfire like a hitman. Always coming up with the right answers, always knowing what to do, when to activate, how to survive.
But I’ve seen beneath that.
And that’s not the way Arthur really is at all.
In those moments when we’re alone, those pockets of intimacy we rarely share between jobs and assignments, I see right through him. With his head on my chest, his gelled comb-over rustled into millions of black peaks upon his crown, he looks like a shadow of his former, educated facade. Sharp jawline reflecting the moonlight through the Kenyan hotel window; deep brown eyes looking up into mine, half unbuttoned shirt wafting in the warm evening breeze. At this very moment, he looks so very vulnerable- like he needs protection from something that’s out to get him. Almost as if, wrapped in my thick-boned arms, he’s a six year old again- yes, a six year old Arthur- scared from the monster underneath his bed.
But of course, you would know what I’m talking about.
Wouldn’t you?
He thinks his educated airs those family shares
Will protect him, that you will respect him
He moves in circles of friends who just pretend that they like him
He does the same to them and when you put it all together
There's the model of a charmless man
Despite what the rest of the Team may think, Arthur has quite a lot of things to hide.
I might just wave it to look like I don’t care- a string of intricate words can halt many a protest when in the presence of others.
Before the public, projections, anyone, I always have to act as if I know nothing of the real Arthur I’ve come to know and memorize. I have to act as if the man sitting beside me, working beside me on the often assignment, is only an acquaintance- a man I know only through contacts of work and extraction. When the Fischer job appeared out of nowhere, and Cobb mentioned that he would be involved, I could hardly withhold the sudden butterflies that appeared at the very bottom of my stomach. It’s always like that, though. Every time I hear his name, my heart lurches to attention before I quickly pull it back into line with the rest of me.
But it’s not as if he doesn’t do it too.
Restrict his affection towards me so to disguise what he really thinks, what he really feels, what he really wants to do to me. In the warehouse, before the lot of them, it only takes one slipped smile to reassure that his reformed ploy- the one the entire world seems to be falling for- is only for that while longer. A cheeky remark, a subtle raised eyebrow; it’s these things about Arthur that make me remember the man that’s buried down, deep down, beyond what others perceive him to be.
But you know. Don’t you?
Of course you don’t.
You don’t know Arthur like I do.
You don’t love Arthur like I do.
He is only the model of a charmless man to you, after all.