Fic: Halfway Romantic (Inception)
Title: Halfway Romantic
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2400
Warnings: OOC, Crack
Summary: For the prompt ' Arthur is bad at wooing and seduction and attempts to make Eames fall for him by buying utterly unsuitable things; Eames is baffled.' 5 (occasionally absurd) gifts Arthur gives Eames in December to try to win him over, and 1 gift he promises him. In which everyone is in the holiday spirit and Arthur wants to punch a wall.
A/N: I'm conflicted about this. Situational comedy, YMMV, seriously. Extended pairing list: Arthur/Eames, Ariadne/Yusuf, Eames/team, author/Manhattan. Thanks so much to brit and neve for the beta. ETA: edited.
"Um," Eames says uncertainly to Arthur, "You know that I'm still subletting and that my apartment hardly gets any sunlight? and that I'm only in New York 3 weeks out of the year? Also, what are we going to do about the partridge?"
1.
One day, a flower delivery arrives for Eames at the warehouse. It's a vase of pink roses, elegantly arranged.
"Who are these flowers from?" Arthur asks suspiciously.
Eames checks the note that came with it and actually looks a little embarrassed. "Grateful client," he says.
"Really," Arthur says, and narrows his eyes.
The next day, Eames comes into the warehouse, still sneezing. "Very funny, Arthur," says Eames. "A delivery for 2400 roses? Are you aware my apartment is basically 200 square meters? We don't even have anywhere to put them all, and my roommate isn't too happy."
"Isn't your roommate the one who tried to sell Ariadne crack the other day on 93rd and Beale?" Yusuf asks suspiciously.
"You're subletting from a crack dealer?" Arthur demands.
"He's-he's an old friend from school, okay!" says Eames. "Can we get back to the point here? We're stacking roses in the bathtub, Arthur. I can hardly get through my hallway without feeling like I'm in the second act of The Nutcracker." He takes off his jacket, tosses it on a chair, and glares at Arthur.
Eames ends up donating all the flowers to a children's hospital.
2.
The days get colder and colder. Ariadne switches to wool scarves and starts wearing a heavier coat; she's sipping pumpkin lattes on the desk as the topic meanders to plans for the holidays.
"How about you, Eames?" Arthur asks. "Anything special you're hoping for this Christmas?"
"Well, my aunt always gets me socks," Eames says. He's lounging lazily in the chair, wearing a Santa hat.
"That sounds like a terrible gift," Ariadne says sympathetically.
"Well, it has its upside. They're-pretty dead useful, you can never have enough," Eames says. "Same concept with underwear, really."
"Really?" Arthur says.
"You know that was a joke, right?" Eames says slowly, the next day. "Is this a joke, Arthur? Arthur, you just sent me--what am I possibly going to do with 600 pairs of underwear?"
"These are all from the collections of prominent designers," protests Arthur. "Think of it as part one of an educational experience."
"That's actually a brilliant idea," Yusuf volunteers. "That's like two years worth of underwear, right there. Think of the amount of time you'd save in laundering."
"But that's awful. Who would want to not wash underwear for two years?" Ariadne asks.
"Well, it depends on the underwear," says Yusuf.
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about over there, but that's really enough," shouts Cobb from the other side of the warehouse.
In the end, Eames takes the enormous box, brings it to the Salvation Army a few blocks down, and donates it all to charity. The girl at the booth is dark-haired and pretty, and she smiles at him and ducks her head and touches his elbow as they chat. Yusuf is there too, striking up a conversation with another volunteer. Other girls come up and smile and crowd around them, and someone who looks like Miranda Kerr strokes Yusuf's neck and giggles.
Ariadne and Arthur stare.
"I think American girls really dig our cute British accents," Yusuf says, on the way back, stuffing eight crumpled slips of paper in his pocket. Eames is putting numbers in his pocket as well. "I agree, it's-"
"I'm going to punch the next person who says another word," says Arthur.
3.
Arthur wants all of it. He wants to take Eames to the Met, and walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, and drink hot chocolate from Brooklyn pastry shops. He wants to kiss the snowflakes from his eyelashes by the pier and take him home and drink wine and share kisses and eat tasty bivalves over candlelight. He wants to stroke Eames' neck, and kiss his lips, and slowly take off his clothes, and then burn the clothes. But Eames just rolls his eyes at him; he never notices.
And maybe Arthur is getting a little wound up, but he still has to see Eames every day, so he spends the weekend practicing expressions in the mirror until it looked like he didn't care, until he was perfectly cool, crisp, buttoned-down, and then he goes to work and refrains from punching Eames in the face and screaming something dramatic and embarrassing.
"Did you check your mail today?" he asks Eames, in the warehouse the next day.
"What?" Eames mumbles, yawning. "No, I've been... up all night with this, what, was it something important from the client?" His eyes are hazel in the light as he turns his head; their noses bump as he leans forward, and Arthur's heart starts hammering until Eames tips over and falls asleep on his shoulder.
Arthur sighs and wrestles him onto a couch.
That evening, Eames storms up to the hotel suite Ariadne is staying at, where Arthur and Ariadne are discussing schematics for the newest level. He puts an enormous box packed in ice on the carpet and says, "Arthur. Are you kidding me? Is this the package you were talking about? Did you actually overnight me live lobsters from Maine?"
"I thought it would be nice to have dinner together," Arthur says.
Ariadne begins to clear up the papers. "Use the kitchen in my suite," she says cheerfully, "Yusuf and I are going holiday shopping. Cheers, you two."
"So how exactly do you cook live lobsters?" Eames asks.
Arthur thinks back to the Fischer job-Eames looking at Saito, the tone in his voice when he said, 'he's in agony,' the concerned looks he gave to Fischer, the way he was so patient and kind with Ariadne building the third level.
"With a large knife through the head, I've heard," says Ariadne. "Happy holidays."
"I don't think an evening knifing lobsters in the head is going to exactly make me feel like I'm-ringing in the new year," says Eames, under his breath, "unlike some maniacs I happen to work with."
Arthur envisioned his brilliant plan of a quiet dinner with salad and poached buttered lobsters and creme brulee, and maybe getting drinks afterwards, not this. But Ariadne catches his eye and gives him a thumbs up before she leaves, and when he looks back Eames is gingerly filling the pot with water and lobsters and turning on the heat.
Arthur frowns. He has been chopping shallots for a few minutes when all of the sudden there are several large clanks. They both turn around to witness the lobsters attempting to knock the lid off the steaming pot.
"Oh my god," Eames says, scrambling back, sliding traumatized against the wall, "This is like a B horror film."
Maybe a fruitcake would have been better, Arthur thinks.
Low shrieking noises emanate from the pot, the sound of steam whistling through shells.
4.
The holidays are approaching. Arthur had seen security footage of Eames that morning, sneakily putting peppermint sticks wrapped in bows over their desks. The mood in the team is cheery. Ariadne hangs up some mistletoe, and Eames and Ariadne giggle under it, and Eames even says, "I love you, mate," and gives Yusuf a kiss on the cheek when he wanders under. Arthur resists the urge to punch a wall.
That afternoon, he watches Eames asleep on the sofa chair one level down in dreamspace, and brushes the hair off of his forehead, and sighs, 'why are you so frustrating?' He wonders what could impress him, what could possibly move him.
"Eames," he says, the next day, dragging in a medium-sized young tree in a large pot, "This is for you. Happy December."
"Erm," says Eames. "Thanks," slowly. "Is that a-" A partridge hops from the tree and begins wandering around the warehouse, pecking at the ground.
"It's a partridge and a pear tree," Arthur says.
"Right," Eames says slowly. "Um, this isn't going to be followed by the entire-"
"Oh! No. Just the tree," says Arthur. "unless you want-I mean not that I'm not really excellent at finding 24 turtle doves and 84 swans and -"
"I'd be down for 108 dancing girls, if we're talking business," says Yusuf.
"Don't be ridiculous, Yusuf, what would you even do with 108 dancing girls?" Ariadne says sharply.
Arthur can't stop looking at Eames. He looks astonished; he's looking at the pear tree and then back to Arthur like there's some kind of cognitive dissonance, then he looks at Arthur and mouths something that is either 'seriously you are unhinged what is wrong with you' or possibly 'kiss me, darling' or maybe it's 'I want you to take me hard on that desk over there, right now, oh sweetheart, oh baby.' It was possible, Arthur thought, squinting. Eames has said some improbable things before.
Example: A month ago, Ariadne had built them a perfect replica of the Bodh Gaya Buddhist temple underneath the sacred Asvatta tree, 450 km from Calcutta, with the smell of incense and grass waving sweetly in the air.
"I'm dying for a burrito," Eames had said, four hours in.
"Oh, me too," Yusuf had said. Cobb had given them baleful stares. Eames had at that point conjured five burritos and gave them to the team, and Arthur had felt his heart skip a beat. Eames was funny and brilliant and he made great burritos, and Arthur felt an odd, quivering feeling, a tender love trembling across his heart, like sunlight.
"I can definitely think of some things to do with 108 dancing girls," Yusuf says in a smirking tone, snapping Arthur out of his reverie. Ariadne glares at him and stomps off.
"Um," Eames says uncertainly to Arthur, "You know that I'm still subletting and that my apartment hardly gets any sunlight? and that I'm only in New York 3 weeks out of the year? Also, what are we going to do about the partridge?"
"I was thinking we could keep it as a team pet," Arthur says. Ariadne is now cuddling with and cooing over the partridge, which is nuzzling her scarf.
"I don't think that's going to quite work," says Eames. He looks at the tree in bafflement, and says, "Honestly, I think I liked you better when you were cold and robotic and sense-making. This is a little unnerving."
"Well, what do you want me to do, Eames," Arthur says. He steps closer, pitches his voice low so no one could hear it above the chirping of the partridge, and maybe this is unfair, but he feels so wound up, so-"I'm in love a little," he says softly, letting it go, no taking it back now.
5.
The fifth gift Arthur gives Eames, a few days before Christmas, is just a plain envelope. Eames opens it and takes out the colorful Christmas card and reads it. "This is really a kind of sarcastic note," he says.
"Oh, there's more," says Arthur.
Eames tips the envelope and a key falls into his palm.
*
"What a nice apartment," says Eames, sliding open the glass doors. "Wow, look at the view on this terrace."
Arthur tries to ignore the warm feeling generated from this comment, seeing Eames' point of reference was a drug den. "Right, that corner usually gets a lot of light, so I was thinking we could put the pear tree there... you can keep it and stay at my apartment whenever you're in New York."
"Thank you," Eames says quietly. "I'll go-get the tree."
Afterwards, Arthur asks, "Do you want to take a walk?"
They walk past rows of Christmas trees crammed against wooden fixtures on the sidewalk, and go to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and look up at the stained glass windows and try to convince management to add a timeshare of a partridge to join the pet peacocks in their adjacent park. Arthur buys walnut cake and peppermint hot chocolate from the pastry shop across the street, and they sit out on the steps of the cathedral in the frosty weather, and Eames leans over and kisses him.
1.
A year passes.
It's the next Christmas, and they're stumbling out onto the streets of London, flushed and laughing from another holiday party. The year had been full of ups and downs, and Arthur would really prefer not to remember some parts of it, like the time he almost died in Germany, or the time Eames almost killed a man in Colombia, or that unfortunate incident with Cobb and the feather boa.
The most important thing is that he's here, with Eames, with all their body parts, and maybe it is the mulled wine but he does feel oddly warm inside.
"I have something to say," he announces, swaying slightly.
"Maybe you shouldn't, oh my god, Arthur, you're completely smashed," says Eames, catching him as Arthur falls onto him.
"Well, it's Christmas, when else am I going to say this," he says earnestly and insistently, "look, Eames-" he stumbles over a fire hydrant.
"I really love you. I want to be with you all the time, I want to buy you so many gifts-" Eames is laughing at him, his cheeks pink. Arthur clings to Eames' shoulders and kisses his neck; he leans into him and whispers, "You don't have a ring yet, sweetheart... but I'm going to get you one."
Eames stops and stares at him, his hazel-gray eyes suddenly soft and intense.
And then Arthur trips and falls into a fountain.
"Wow, that was... halfway romantic," says Eames, hands in his pockets, looking down at him.
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2400
Warnings: OOC, Crack
Summary: For the prompt ' Arthur is bad at wooing and seduction and attempts to make Eames fall for him by buying utterly unsuitable things; Eames is baffled.' 5 (occasionally absurd) gifts Arthur gives Eames in December to try to win him over, and 1 gift he promises him. In which everyone is in the holiday spirit and Arthur wants to punch a wall.
A/N: I'm conflicted about this. Situational comedy, YMMV, seriously. Extended pairing list: Arthur/Eames, Ariadne/Yusuf, Eames/team, author/Manhattan. Thanks so much to brit and neve for the beta. ETA: edited.
"Um," Eames says uncertainly to Arthur, "You know that I'm still subletting and that my apartment hardly gets any sunlight? and that I'm only in New York 3 weeks out of the year? Also, what are we going to do about the partridge?"
1.
One day, a flower delivery arrives for Eames at the warehouse. It's a vase of pink roses, elegantly arranged.
"Who are these flowers from?" Arthur asks suspiciously.
Eames checks the note that came with it and actually looks a little embarrassed. "Grateful client," he says.
"Really," Arthur says, and narrows his eyes.
The next day, Eames comes into the warehouse, still sneezing. "Very funny, Arthur," says Eames. "A delivery for 2400 roses? Are you aware my apartment is basically 200 square meters? We don't even have anywhere to put them all, and my roommate isn't too happy."
"Isn't your roommate the one who tried to sell Ariadne crack the other day on 93rd and Beale?" Yusuf asks suspiciously.
"You're subletting from a crack dealer?" Arthur demands.
"He's-he's an old friend from school, okay!" says Eames. "Can we get back to the point here? We're stacking roses in the bathtub, Arthur. I can hardly get through my hallway without feeling like I'm in the second act of The Nutcracker." He takes off his jacket, tosses it on a chair, and glares at Arthur.
Eames ends up donating all the flowers to a children's hospital.
2.
The days get colder and colder. Ariadne switches to wool scarves and starts wearing a heavier coat; she's sipping pumpkin lattes on the desk as the topic meanders to plans for the holidays.
"How about you, Eames?" Arthur asks. "Anything special you're hoping for this Christmas?"
"Well, my aunt always gets me socks," Eames says. He's lounging lazily in the chair, wearing a Santa hat.
"That sounds like a terrible gift," Ariadne says sympathetically.
"Well, it has its upside. They're-pretty dead useful, you can never have enough," Eames says. "Same concept with underwear, really."
"Really?" Arthur says.
"You know that was a joke, right?" Eames says slowly, the next day. "Is this a joke, Arthur? Arthur, you just sent me--what am I possibly going to do with 600 pairs of underwear?"
"These are all from the collections of prominent designers," protests Arthur. "Think of it as part one of an educational experience."
"That's actually a brilliant idea," Yusuf volunteers. "That's like two years worth of underwear, right there. Think of the amount of time you'd save in laundering."
"But that's awful. Who would want to not wash underwear for two years?" Ariadne asks.
"Well, it depends on the underwear," says Yusuf.
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about over there, but that's really enough," shouts Cobb from the other side of the warehouse.
In the end, Eames takes the enormous box, brings it to the Salvation Army a few blocks down, and donates it all to charity. The girl at the booth is dark-haired and pretty, and she smiles at him and ducks her head and touches his elbow as they chat. Yusuf is there too, striking up a conversation with another volunteer. Other girls come up and smile and crowd around them, and someone who looks like Miranda Kerr strokes Yusuf's neck and giggles.
Ariadne and Arthur stare.
"I think American girls really dig our cute British accents," Yusuf says, on the way back, stuffing eight crumpled slips of paper in his pocket. Eames is putting numbers in his pocket as well. "I agree, it's-"
"I'm going to punch the next person who says another word," says Arthur.
3.
Arthur wants all of it. He wants to take Eames to the Met, and walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, and drink hot chocolate from Brooklyn pastry shops. He wants to kiss the snowflakes from his eyelashes by the pier and take him home and drink wine and share kisses and eat tasty bivalves over candlelight. He wants to stroke Eames' neck, and kiss his lips, and slowly take off his clothes, and then burn the clothes. But Eames just rolls his eyes at him; he never notices.
And maybe Arthur is getting a little wound up, but he still has to see Eames every day, so he spends the weekend practicing expressions in the mirror until it looked like he didn't care, until he was perfectly cool, crisp, buttoned-down, and then he goes to work and refrains from punching Eames in the face and screaming something dramatic and embarrassing.
"Did you check your mail today?" he asks Eames, in the warehouse the next day.
"What?" Eames mumbles, yawning. "No, I've been... up all night with this, what, was it something important from the client?" His eyes are hazel in the light as he turns his head; their noses bump as he leans forward, and Arthur's heart starts hammering until Eames tips over and falls asleep on his shoulder.
Arthur sighs and wrestles him onto a couch.
That evening, Eames storms up to the hotel suite Ariadne is staying at, where Arthur and Ariadne are discussing schematics for the newest level. He puts an enormous box packed in ice on the carpet and says, "Arthur. Are you kidding me? Is this the package you were talking about? Did you actually overnight me live lobsters from Maine?"
"I thought it would be nice to have dinner together," Arthur says.
Ariadne begins to clear up the papers. "Use the kitchen in my suite," she says cheerfully, "Yusuf and I are going holiday shopping. Cheers, you two."
"So how exactly do you cook live lobsters?" Eames asks.
Arthur thinks back to the Fischer job-Eames looking at Saito, the tone in his voice when he said, 'he's in agony,' the concerned looks he gave to Fischer, the way he was so patient and kind with Ariadne building the third level.
"With a large knife through the head, I've heard," says Ariadne. "Happy holidays."
"I don't think an evening knifing lobsters in the head is going to exactly make me feel like I'm-ringing in the new year," says Eames, under his breath, "unlike some maniacs I happen to work with."
Arthur envisioned his brilliant plan of a quiet dinner with salad and poached buttered lobsters and creme brulee, and maybe getting drinks afterwards, not this. But Ariadne catches his eye and gives him a thumbs up before she leaves, and when he looks back Eames is gingerly filling the pot with water and lobsters and turning on the heat.
Arthur frowns. He has been chopping shallots for a few minutes when all of the sudden there are several large clanks. They both turn around to witness the lobsters attempting to knock the lid off the steaming pot.
"Oh my god," Eames says, scrambling back, sliding traumatized against the wall, "This is like a B horror film."
Maybe a fruitcake would have been better, Arthur thinks.
Low shrieking noises emanate from the pot, the sound of steam whistling through shells.
4.
The holidays are approaching. Arthur had seen security footage of Eames that morning, sneakily putting peppermint sticks wrapped in bows over their desks. The mood in the team is cheery. Ariadne hangs up some mistletoe, and Eames and Ariadne giggle under it, and Eames even says, "I love you, mate," and gives Yusuf a kiss on the cheek when he wanders under. Arthur resists the urge to punch a wall.
That afternoon, he watches Eames asleep on the sofa chair one level down in dreamspace, and brushes the hair off of his forehead, and sighs, 'why are you so frustrating?' He wonders what could impress him, what could possibly move him.
"Eames," he says, the next day, dragging in a medium-sized young tree in a large pot, "This is for you. Happy December."
"Erm," says Eames. "Thanks," slowly. "Is that a-" A partridge hops from the tree and begins wandering around the warehouse, pecking at the ground.
"It's a partridge and a pear tree," Arthur says.
"Right," Eames says slowly. "Um, this isn't going to be followed by the entire-"
"Oh! No. Just the tree," says Arthur. "unless you want-I mean not that I'm not really excellent at finding 24 turtle doves and 84 swans and -"
"I'd be down for 108 dancing girls, if we're talking business," says Yusuf.
"Don't be ridiculous, Yusuf, what would you even do with 108 dancing girls?" Ariadne says sharply.
Arthur can't stop looking at Eames. He looks astonished; he's looking at the pear tree and then back to Arthur like there's some kind of cognitive dissonance, then he looks at Arthur and mouths something that is either 'seriously you are unhinged what is wrong with you' or possibly 'kiss me, darling' or maybe it's 'I want you to take me hard on that desk over there, right now, oh sweetheart, oh baby.' It was possible, Arthur thought, squinting. Eames has said some improbable things before.
Example: A month ago, Ariadne had built them a perfect replica of the Bodh Gaya Buddhist temple underneath the sacred Asvatta tree, 450 km from Calcutta, with the smell of incense and grass waving sweetly in the air.
"I'm dying for a burrito," Eames had said, four hours in.
"Oh, me too," Yusuf had said. Cobb had given them baleful stares. Eames had at that point conjured five burritos and gave them to the team, and Arthur had felt his heart skip a beat. Eames was funny and brilliant and he made great burritos, and Arthur felt an odd, quivering feeling, a tender love trembling across his heart, like sunlight.
"I can definitely think of some things to do with 108 dancing girls," Yusuf says in a smirking tone, snapping Arthur out of his reverie. Ariadne glares at him and stomps off.
"Um," Eames says uncertainly to Arthur, "You know that I'm still subletting and that my apartment hardly gets any sunlight? and that I'm only in New York 3 weeks out of the year? Also, what are we going to do about the partridge?"
"I was thinking we could keep it as a team pet," Arthur says. Ariadne is now cuddling with and cooing over the partridge, which is nuzzling her scarf.
"I don't think that's going to quite work," says Eames. He looks at the tree in bafflement, and says, "Honestly, I think I liked you better when you were cold and robotic and sense-making. This is a little unnerving."
"Well, what do you want me to do, Eames," Arthur says. He steps closer, pitches his voice low so no one could hear it above the chirping of the partridge, and maybe this is unfair, but he feels so wound up, so-"I'm in love a little," he says softly, letting it go, no taking it back now.
5.
The fifth gift Arthur gives Eames, a few days before Christmas, is just a plain envelope. Eames opens it and takes out the colorful Christmas card and reads it. "This is really a kind of sarcastic note," he says.
"Oh, there's more," says Arthur.
Eames tips the envelope and a key falls into his palm.
*
"What a nice apartment," says Eames, sliding open the glass doors. "Wow, look at the view on this terrace."
Arthur tries to ignore the warm feeling generated from this comment, seeing Eames' point of reference was a drug den. "Right, that corner usually gets a lot of light, so I was thinking we could put the pear tree there... you can keep it and stay at my apartment whenever you're in New York."
"Thank you," Eames says quietly. "I'll go-get the tree."
Afterwards, Arthur asks, "Do you want to take a walk?"
They walk past rows of Christmas trees crammed against wooden fixtures on the sidewalk, and go to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and look up at the stained glass windows and try to convince management to add a timeshare of a partridge to join the pet peacocks in their adjacent park. Arthur buys walnut cake and peppermint hot chocolate from the pastry shop across the street, and they sit out on the steps of the cathedral in the frosty weather, and Eames leans over and kisses him.
1.
A year passes.
It's the next Christmas, and they're stumbling out onto the streets of London, flushed and laughing from another holiday party. The year had been full of ups and downs, and Arthur would really prefer not to remember some parts of it, like the time he almost died in Germany, or the time Eames almost killed a man in Colombia, or that unfortunate incident with Cobb and the feather boa.
The most important thing is that he's here, with Eames, with all their body parts, and maybe it is the mulled wine but he does feel oddly warm inside.
"I have something to say," he announces, swaying slightly.
"Maybe you shouldn't, oh my god, Arthur, you're completely smashed," says Eames, catching him as Arthur falls onto him.
"Well, it's Christmas, when else am I going to say this," he says earnestly and insistently, "look, Eames-" he stumbles over a fire hydrant.
"I really love you. I want to be with you all the time, I want to buy you so many gifts-" Eames is laughing at him, his cheeks pink. Arthur clings to Eames' shoulders and kisses his neck; he leans into him and whispers, "You don't have a ring yet, sweetheart... but I'm going to get you one."
Eames stops and stares at him, his hazel-gray eyes suddenly soft and intense.
And then Arthur trips and falls into a fountain.
"Wow, that was... halfway romantic," says Eames, hands in his pockets, looking down at him.