Eames/Arthur: Interagency Relations
This wasn't even for a kinkmeme prompt. I'm just writing Eames/Arthur on my own, now. *FLAILS*
Inspired by: My National Security/Terrorism/Intelligence class, this picture from mary_re, and this song from bookshop--because BAMF FBI SA Arthur would accept no less for his theme song.
Summary: FBI!Arthur and On-Loan-to-the-CIA!Eames. Pretty much. I wish I had been able to work in more characters. I desperately want "THE EPIC ADVENTURES OF MI6!EAMES AND MILITARY SCIENTIST YUSUF."
Arthur snarled, pulling up the leg of his expensive, and now mostly ruined, Dunhill slacks to remove his secondary Glock from its ankle holster. This was not how this operation was supposed to go.
“Freeze!” he shouted at the blur of movement in the corner of his eye. He gritted his teeth, trying to find some traction on the slippery ground. The flash bang had left everyone either stunned or down on the ground, and he could hear heavy footsteps getting away as he swung his legs around, pushed himself up, and started running. Arthur hated raiding possible centers of terrorist activities in the rain. It always involved him trying to find a new, creative way to skid through water, and his vest was heavy when soaked.
The suspects were headed toward what looked like a white truck, and he put on a burst of speed in the hopes of at least catching one of them. The one carrying a heavy bag of, Arthur was sure, illegal substances was lagging behind, and Arthur was so close to his goal he couldn’t even feel his legs burned.
Then, it happened.
Arthur hadn’t even noticed the black car heading their way, so focused on the task at hand, but he definitely couldn’t ignore the splash of water it kicked up as it drifted around the corner at an easy 60 miles per hour. There were four flashes from one of its back windows, and if the rain weren’t so damn loud, Arthur was sure he would have heard four familiar, muffled clicks. As it was, he simply slowed down, staring with wide eyes at the car continued toward him.
“Shit,” he whispered before diving to his right, which proved unnecessary as the car made a perfect stop next to the suspected terrorist he had been chasing. The sleek black door opened quickly, just long enough for two arms to reach out and drag both the bleeding-but not dead, Arthur suddenly realized-man and his bag into the car.
As the door clicked shut, Arthur could just about make a “Sorry, darling” minced by the pitter patter of the rain, and then the car was performing a smooth 180 turn and speeding off again.
Arthur pushed himself onto his knees in the rain, wondering what the fuck had just happened for a full two minutes before his body decided that the fun was over, and it was fucking cold.
--
Arthur had never really chosen to join the FBI. He had been a European history and French major in college, and if his counselor had suggested picking up a little Arabic for shits and giggles, it had almost been easier to just pass the class than say no. Becoming part of the Army MP had almost been nice, an interesting way to get through his ROTC payback. Then, of course, he hadn’t been able to find a job after he had gotten out, but his father had always wanted a professional in the family, so Arthur had dived right back into law school.
Unfortunately for his father, Arthur hated being a lawyer. Fortunately for the FBI, one of Arthur’s old army sergeants dropped by for a visit just as the local FBI office had a spot open up in their SWAT. Arthur, already half-crazy from the suits and the paperwork, only needed about three hours worth of convincing before he applied.
Unhappily for Arthur, being a special agent for the FBI meant just as many suits and paperwork. If not more so, he amended, grimacing at the stack of newly scanned forms on his desk. They were currently much warmer than Arthur was, although he had changed as soon as he had gotten back to Quantico.
“Arthur?” a voice piped up from the door, and Arthur paused in trying to wrestle his hair back into its usually gelled state. Ariadne, one of their current interns, was at the door with a far more impossible looking pile of paperwork in her arms. She was looking a little stressed, grimacing with the effort of balancing all of the file folders in her arms. He rushed over to help, but she shook her head with a smile. “Don’t worry. You got to debrief anyway,” she informed him before stumbling down the hall.
Swearing, Arthur quickly finished up with his hair before striding down to his SSA’s office. He was surprised to be called up so soon, but he wasn’t too worried-Cobb wasn’t exactly the most frightening person in the world.
The door was, predictably, already open, and Arthur positioned himself before SSA Cobb’s desk patiently.
“You know, if you insist on doing that, I might just have to go back to calling you Sergeant-”
“Anything but my last name,” Arthur interrupted, taking that as his cue to sit. Dom Cobb gave him a satisfied nod, finally looking up from his own papers.
“So, I heard about what happened. Pretty dramatic stuff,” Cobb began, and Arthur could already tell by the odd quality of his voice that there was bad news lying down the road.
“They aren’t blaming us for anything, are they?” Arthur asked, brow furrowed.
“No,” Cobb was quick to reply.
“Because I can’t explain it,” Arthur went on. “I know execution style, and this-this was beyond that. Definitely skilled, if not a little over the top, but efficient. Hell, I’m impressed,” he admitted.
“Glad to be of service,” a third voice piped in, and Arthur froze in his seat. He recognized that voice, and in his hurry to turn around to see its owner, he was surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash.
Standing there in a tasteful, Yves Saint Laurent three-piece was a bear of a man-broad shoulders, well-trimmed beard, careful stance. He had the same bearing as every special ops soldier Arthur had ever met, but his smile was charmingly lop-sided, and his atrocious tie spoke of some sort of interesting, personal quirk (or visual handicap).
Arthur wasn’t sure what was worse: The fact that he knew this person was the man who had just dispatched four suspected terrorists with flair or the itch at the back of his mind that assured him that that swift execution would be nothing compared to what this man did to him.
When Cobb said, “This is Eames, he’s currently on loan to the CIA,” Arthur felt sure it would be the former.
Then he followed up with, “He’ll be your partner for the newest… uh. FBI/CIA joint venture,” and Arthur decided it officially didn’t matter. He closed his eyes and wished desperately that this was not really his life. When he opened them, the already infuriating British man was still standing there, waving his fingers in a greeting that was too full of unwarranted joy.
He was fucked. The FBI was fucked. The entire nation was fucked.
“Pleasure to be working with you, Special Agent Arthur,” Eames purred in his extremely unique British drawl.
Fucked.
--
There was no secret that the FBI and CIA hated each other. They had hated each other since the beginning of the beginning, back when the CIA had still been the OSS, and the scariest people in the world spoke German or Japanese. They still hated each other now, because three-letter government agencies held grudges forever.
At one point in Arthur’s training, he had thought this was silly, but the job had constantly proven him wrong. Since 9/11, CIA and FBI jurisdictions had overlapped more than ever, and the two agencies were constantly butting heads. The CIA prided themselves on having the best of the best, on being sneakier than ninjas, but having more explosive power than a hydrogen bomb. Of course, if Arthur had learned anything from the numerous CIA agents he had juggled and run around, this really was more pride than anything.
What he really hated, however, were the foreign agents the CIA rented out. They generally floundered in the foreign environment, their training causing even bigger clashes with the local FBI. Even worse were the occasional good ones. He still remembered the beautiful woman from the French DGSE who had swept in, stolen Cobb’s heart for a whirlwind nine months, before disappearing for weeks. Then the KIA tag had popped up on Cobb’s constant searches into international databases he probably shouldn’t have been touching, and the whole world seemed to stop. Dom had never recovered.
Arthur had never forgiven the CIA since, and whenever he was forced to work with the agency’s operatives, he always made sure to keep a careful distance.
Well, that hadn’t worked, and once again he growled at Eames to stop leaning over his shoulder (or breathing on his neck or distracting Arthur with thoughts of those lips in bed-and no, he did not care if that last one was really not Eames’ fault). The fact that he had to deal with all of this while in the African Sahara, dressed in familiar desert BDUs, and carrying around a 100 pound pack was just the cherry on top of the sundae.
--
Arthur kicked at the wheel of the busted humvee, swearing at the military issued vehicle. He really should have known better than to trust anything the Army would give to its men. Eames, wearing a truly hideous safari hat, simply laughed at his frustration. It had been half an hour since the clunker had broken down and they still had at least three more miles of sandy desert to trek through.
“Time to walk,” Eames said, vocalizing the truth Arthur hadn’t wanted to face. Growling, he grabbed his pack from the temporary CIA agent and slipped it on.
“I sure hope your contact has an Apache up their sleeve,” Arthur complained half-jokingly. He was alarmed at Eames’ thoughtful expression.
“I’ve learned not to rule anything out,” Eames explained as Arthur oriented them and they set off.
“So, let’s get this straight. The guy you kidnapped-”
“-From under your nose-”
“-was working for another terrorist group,” Arthur finished with a scowl.
“As proven by the information we got out of him afterward, yes,” Eames confirmed. His face was oddly serious. “We had someone run a test on the chemicals he was hauling around. It wasn’t your regular SCUD chemicals he was carrying around.”
Arthur shivered despite the hot Saharan sun. He could still remember the chemical warfare training they went through in Basic, being trapped in a gas chamber with his MOPP suit on and trying not to throw up. “You’re sure the results weren’t wrong?”
“When it comes to chemicals, Yusuf is never wrong,” Eames replied, and as if sensing Arthur’s discomfort, his thoughtful expression slid right off and into a flirtatious grin. “He makes the best aphrodisiacs-for the right price.”
“It’s good to know how low you’ll sink,” Arthur deadpanned, hiding his smile as Eames barked out a laugh. “So, he said their base was out here-”
“One of them,” Eames reminded him. “He only had about half of the things necessarily to cause a chemical disaster in that bag.”
“So, we’re looking for the rest,” Arthur concluded, digging in his backpack for the thick files of research Ariadne had compiled on the fly. An ex-architecture student before she switched to global studies, Ariadne had a way with blueprints and buildings. She had printed out the layouts of the most likely buildings the lab would be hidden in with helpful suggestions on what they would probably find where. “So, who’s your contact?” Arthur finally asked, looking up from his map.
“That’s a surprise,” Eames told him, his crooked smile too endearing to be fair. Arthur quickly looked away.
“I hate surprises,” he replied, matter-of-factly. This was obvious-no one in their line of work liked surprises.
“That’s just because you have no imagination,” Eames shot back and wouldn’t stop smiling through Arthur’s silent treatment.
--
“Shit,” Arthur swore passionately, throwing himself forward to duck behind the nearest wall. If rain was a terrible thing to slide through, then sand had to be at least five times worse. He grimaced and tried to be thankful he was in BDUs and not a suit. “Where did they come from?” he yelled over to Eames, who had managed to dive behind an adjacent wall. The man was loading the grenade launcher attached to his SCAR and firing freely. Arthur was almost jealous-his M16 was nowhere near that big.
“I’m not sure it matters right now!” Eames called back, grabbing a grenade from his pack. Arthur was almost in awe of the man’s artillery supply, and at least it answered the question of where Eames had disappeared to for a few hours back at the nearest US military camp. Apparently, the CIA paramilitary was very big on “procuring supplies whenever possible.”
Focusing back on the task at hand, Arthur tried to glimpse around the corner. They were outnumbered and pinned down, and if they didn’t make headway soon, even Eames would run out of explosive power. He heard the familiar sound of impact and rubble falling and got an idea.
“Do you have a riot shield?” Arthur suddenly called out, and Eames looked over at him with the most skeptical look. “Oh, don’t pull that shit,” Arthur bit out, and the other man’s expression instantly changed to gleeful joy. He reached under his pack and pulled out a very familiar FBI SWAT riot shield, carefully sliding it over to Arthur before turning back to engage. “Give me some cover fire,” Arthur instructed again, shouldering his M16 and pulling up the riot shield.
“Run fast, darling,” Eames acknowledged, throwing out a carefully placed flash bang before he started shooting again.
Arthur kept his head down, trying to fold his frame behind the riot shield as he ran. He could hear the bullets zooming past him, and even more distantly, the sound of people dying as Eames’ SCAR tore through them. Keeping focused on where he had heard a very recognizable sound, he broke into a run and slid through the sand-
Right behind an RPG team.
“Hi,” he greeted affably, crashing the riot shield into one person before turning his M16 on the other one. Arthur reached for the now abandoned RPG launcher and their pile of ammunitions.
The problem with insurgents was that they were smart enough to spread out. Luckily, RPGs had quite a shockwave. In the following ten minutes, which felt like ten hours, Arthur proceeded to slide through more sand than Virginia had on all its beaches. Trying not to think about every careful shot Eames was making to cover his frantic running-the man had apparently switched to an M40-he concentrated on loading and firing the RPG launcher until, on the sixth reload, a hand came down on his shoulder.
He brought his M16 up immediately, and Eames backed away with both hands up. Sighing with relief, Arthur stood, the riot shield still in one hand and the RPG swung over his other shoulder. “Okay,” Eames purred, a smile on his sandy, soot-covered face, “maybe you do have a bit of imagination.”
Arthur gave him a wry grin, about to respond when three loud bangs rang out. He felt a body fall against his back, and he immediately jumped forward to look behind him. One of the attackers had apparently been crouching up to him with a knife in his hand-and now two holes in his chest with one between his eyes.
“Well, that was fortunate,” Eames remarked with altogether too much ease. “Glad to see you here.”
“I’m not the one with the reputation of standing people up,” a melodic, familiar voice replied, and Arthur’s eyes very carefully moved up to stare at a ghost. “Arthur, how are you?” the shade greeted him, her pistol already holstered.
Mal put her hands on either side of his face and gave him quick air kisses to his cheeks, as if she hadn’t just viciously executed an enemy. As if, Arthur thought in a daze, she wasn’t dead. “B-But,” he tried to protest, but Mal put a gloved finger against his lips.
“It’s not easy being DGSE,” she explained, a wink to cover up the sadness in her eyes. “How is he?”
“Missing you,” Arthur replied. “All the time,” he thought he’d throw in, because it was almost painfully true.
“What, do we know each other then?” Eames asked, and if Arthur hadn’t just spent three miles in the Saharan and a firefight at sunset with him, he would almost say the man looked put out.
As it was, Arthur figured he officially knew too much about Eames at this point. He could read the pleasure in his eyes too clearly.
--
As far as intelligence operations went, Eames and Mal assured him, it was practically an in and out job. Unfortunately for them, Arthur was not an intelligence officer. He was law enforcement, FBI, and nothing about Eames sneaking into a terrorist base with some effective application of Arabic, French, and conman tricks seemed “in and out.”
“I thought we came here as a team-to investigate as a team,” Arthur stressed again, frowning over the map Mal had brought with her.
“We are,” Eames replied. “Look, we need you on point. I know you’re better with a sniper rifle than Mal, which means you have to stay outside!”
Outside and far away, and that made Arthur scowl. “What exactly is Mal going to do?”
“I have explosives to set up as soon as Eames is finished with his information gathering,” she replied, and her look was so knowing Arthur couldn’t return it.
“Look, it’ll be fine. Yusuf gave me some knock out chemicals before I left. It’ll be easy,” he cajoled, and Arthur let out a breath in resignation. He wasn’t going to be winning this fight.
FBI/CIA joint venture, his ass. He was officially going to be lying in a safe spot while the two spies threw themselves into the heart of the action. Arthur stood up and went to stand outside of their temporary base of operations-a tiny, rundown house that had probably belonged to civilians before the terrorist group had moved in and were then consequently cleared out by Mal and her small team.
Speaking of which-“You like him,” teased the smooth, French syllables he could still remember from dinners at Cobb’s place.
“I barely know him,” he dismissed, but Mal’s laughter tore the ruse to pieces.
“He is very odd. Likable on the outside, prickly on the inside, and then a soft teddy bear under that,” Mal told him, wrapping her arm around his waist and resting her head against his shoulder. He shifted to accommodate her but refused to uncross his arms or to look at anywhere other than the horizon.
“He’s good at what he does,” Arthur waved away again.
“Oh, he’s better,” Mal assured him, leaving with a kiss on the cheek before disappearing.
Arthur took a deep breath before going back inside.
--
He didn’t get a proper moment with Eames until right before the operation. Too much time was devoted to making sure they had all the right equipment, the logistics of the plan, and Eames spent hours before a mirror putting together his disguise and accent. It was all worth it, Arthur thought, because he was absolutely flawless afterward.
“I didn’t know you were a conman,” Arthur told him, in a brief moment where they were both triple-checking their inventory. Eames, despite being practically unrecognizable at the moment, shot him a familiar grin that was completely and utterly the man Arthur had grown to know and care about.
“There are lots of things you don’t know about me,” Eames replied. “But isn’t it more fun that way?”
Arthur nodded, almost unable to reply in the face of Eames’ normality. It was as if the man was reassuring him without a single word of comfort, and Arthur didn’t know whether to be grateful or appalled. “Be careful, Mr. Eames,” he finally said, separating his sniper gear from the rest of the supplies that would go with Mal and Eames.
“Of course, Arthur,” Eames replied, and Arthur decided he liked the sound of his name coming from those lips.
He was dropped off a good distance away, and Arthur kept an eye on Mal’s (actually working) humvee as it kicked up sand in the distance. His hands worked automatically to assemble the rifle, and he took his time to clean every piece again, just in case. Food, water, ammo, and even a towel to lie on-his part of the mission seemed comfy compared to the rest.
Of course, in the end, the mission was about as in and out as any of the CIA’s missions-which is to say not really. Through his scope, Arthur watched every entrance and knew the exact moment when Eames ran out, throwing off various bits of his disguise as he made for the zip line Mal had set up “just in case.” Arthur picked off the men chasing him as soon as they reared their heads, watching as each man’s head was thrown back. Eventually, they seemed to realize it wasn’t very safe to step out, because they stopped chasing Eames who finally made it to humvee around the time Mal slipped out of an outdoor vent.
Arthur waited until they were at least a quarter of a mile away, until the first man dared to peek his head outside the building again, before he grabbed the remote lying next to him. Standing up to get a better look at the building, he pressed the red, shiny button Mal had handed him with an appeasing grin. The following chain explosion was epic enough for Hollywood and, thanks to the various chemicals stored within, particularly colorful. Arthur had his gear packed and ready to go before Mal and Eames even reached him.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it darling?” Eames asked, smiling as he dropped the very important flash drive into Arthur’s hand.
“You mean, aside from the strip-and-run thing you did?” Arthur sniped, unable to resist smiling back. “Yeah, I guess.”
It turned out that Mal didn’t actually have an Apache helicopter on hand, but the Black Hawk she showed them was just as nice.
--
“How was the trip?” Ariadne asked, jumping up from her cubicle. It was Monday, and Arthur was back to his suits and gelled hair. “You look tanner than usual.”
“It was absolutely wonderful. We brought you back a souvenir,” a cheerful, English voice replied, and Ariadne’s eyes widened as Eames seemed to suddenly appear behind an exasperated Arthur. She walked up to them and held both her hands out, and Eames happily dropped a colorful scarf Arthur had bought on a whim into her hands.
“It’s perfect! Thanks.” She wrapped the scarf around her neck despite how much it clashed with her business formal wear. “Are you…” she began, but Arthur was quick to cut her off.
“Does Cobb need to see me?” he asked, ignoring the wide grin on Eames’ face.
“I don’t think so,” Ariadne replied. “Last I heard, he was screaming like a little girl.”
Eames and Arthur exchanged knowing looks. “Mal,” they both said at once, before turning back to Ariadne’s patiently curious expression.
“In that case, I’ll be in my office,” Arthur told her, ignoring Eames as he shadowed his every step.
Closing the door behind them both, he finally turned around to stare down Eames, who was also back in his gorgeous suits and horrendous ties. “I thought the FBI/CIA venture was over? Isn’t MI6 going to want you back?”
“Eventually,” Eames seemed to agree before sliding up almost too closely to Arthur, and he could hear his own heartbeat quicken. “Until then, I thought there might be more I could do for-hmm. FBI/CIA relations.”
“Stop trying to make that sound even halfway appealing,” Arthur grimaced.
“You mean stop succeeding at making that sound-” Eames began, but Arthur cut him off with a kiss before he could get any farther.
Arthur knew that Eames smelled like sandalwood and took milk with his tea and had endearingly crooked teeth. It was, of course, nice to be reminded of it all up close and personal. “And what’s going to happen when you go back?” he whispered, trying not to sound as worried as he felt.
“Just because MI6 might want me back, doesn’t mean I have to go, darling,” Eames assured him from a breath’s distance away, an arm already secured around Arthur’s waist.
“Dom and Mal-” he tried to protest, but Eames’s chuckle overrode him.
“Are probably very happily getting reacquainted in the office down the hall.”
Arthur frowned. “I wanted that office one day,” he objected.
“Then we’ll clean it,” Eames assured him, “and mess it up for the next uppity special agent.”
Arthur smiled, just a little weakly, before giving in and slouching against Eames. Well, if his life was going to be full of government secrets and dangerous interagency operations anyway, it couldn’t hurt to risk this.
He definitely wasn’t going to have sex in his FBI office, though. No. No, not at all.
"I've always wanted to have a badass boyfriend," Eames flattered, eyes just a little dilated. "That RPG-riot shield look is very you..."
Well, okay. Maybe.
Inspired by: My National Security/Terrorism/Intelligence class, this picture from mary_re, and this song from bookshop--because BAMF FBI SA Arthur would accept no less for his theme song.
Summary: FBI!Arthur and On-Loan-to-the-CIA!Eames. Pretty much. I wish I had been able to work in more characters. I desperately want "THE EPIC ADVENTURES OF MI6!EAMES AND MILITARY SCIENTIST YUSUF."
Arthur snarled, pulling up the leg of his expensive, and now mostly ruined, Dunhill slacks to remove his secondary Glock from its ankle holster. This was not how this operation was supposed to go.
“Freeze!” he shouted at the blur of movement in the corner of his eye. He gritted his teeth, trying to find some traction on the slippery ground. The flash bang had left everyone either stunned or down on the ground, and he could hear heavy footsteps getting away as he swung his legs around, pushed himself up, and started running. Arthur hated raiding possible centers of terrorist activities in the rain. It always involved him trying to find a new, creative way to skid through water, and his vest was heavy when soaked.
The suspects were headed toward what looked like a white truck, and he put on a burst of speed in the hopes of at least catching one of them. The one carrying a heavy bag of, Arthur was sure, illegal substances was lagging behind, and Arthur was so close to his goal he couldn’t even feel his legs burned.
Then, it happened.
Arthur hadn’t even noticed the black car heading their way, so focused on the task at hand, but he definitely couldn’t ignore the splash of water it kicked up as it drifted around the corner at an easy 60 miles per hour. There were four flashes from one of its back windows, and if the rain weren’t so damn loud, Arthur was sure he would have heard four familiar, muffled clicks. As it was, he simply slowed down, staring with wide eyes at the car continued toward him.
“Shit,” he whispered before diving to his right, which proved unnecessary as the car made a perfect stop next to the suspected terrorist he had been chasing. The sleek black door opened quickly, just long enough for two arms to reach out and drag both the bleeding-but not dead, Arthur suddenly realized-man and his bag into the car.
As the door clicked shut, Arthur could just about make a “Sorry, darling” minced by the pitter patter of the rain, and then the car was performing a smooth 180 turn and speeding off again.
Arthur pushed himself onto his knees in the rain, wondering what the fuck had just happened for a full two minutes before his body decided that the fun was over, and it was fucking cold.
--
Arthur had never really chosen to join the FBI. He had been a European history and French major in college, and if his counselor had suggested picking up a little Arabic for shits and giggles, it had almost been easier to just pass the class than say no. Becoming part of the Army MP had almost been nice, an interesting way to get through his ROTC payback. Then, of course, he hadn’t been able to find a job after he had gotten out, but his father had always wanted a professional in the family, so Arthur had dived right back into law school.
Unfortunately for his father, Arthur hated being a lawyer. Fortunately for the FBI, one of Arthur’s old army sergeants dropped by for a visit just as the local FBI office had a spot open up in their SWAT. Arthur, already half-crazy from the suits and the paperwork, only needed about three hours worth of convincing before he applied.
Unhappily for Arthur, being a special agent for the FBI meant just as many suits and paperwork. If not more so, he amended, grimacing at the stack of newly scanned forms on his desk. They were currently much warmer than Arthur was, although he had changed as soon as he had gotten back to Quantico.
“Arthur?” a voice piped up from the door, and Arthur paused in trying to wrestle his hair back into its usually gelled state. Ariadne, one of their current interns, was at the door with a far more impossible looking pile of paperwork in her arms. She was looking a little stressed, grimacing with the effort of balancing all of the file folders in her arms. He rushed over to help, but she shook her head with a smile. “Don’t worry. You got to debrief anyway,” she informed him before stumbling down the hall.
Swearing, Arthur quickly finished up with his hair before striding down to his SSA’s office. He was surprised to be called up so soon, but he wasn’t too worried-Cobb wasn’t exactly the most frightening person in the world.
The door was, predictably, already open, and Arthur positioned himself before SSA Cobb’s desk patiently.
“You know, if you insist on doing that, I might just have to go back to calling you Sergeant-”
“Anything but my last name,” Arthur interrupted, taking that as his cue to sit. Dom Cobb gave him a satisfied nod, finally looking up from his own papers.
“So, I heard about what happened. Pretty dramatic stuff,” Cobb began, and Arthur could already tell by the odd quality of his voice that there was bad news lying down the road.
“They aren’t blaming us for anything, are they?” Arthur asked, brow furrowed.
“No,” Cobb was quick to reply.
“Because I can’t explain it,” Arthur went on. “I know execution style, and this-this was beyond that. Definitely skilled, if not a little over the top, but efficient. Hell, I’m impressed,” he admitted.
“Glad to be of service,” a third voice piped in, and Arthur froze in his seat. He recognized that voice, and in his hurry to turn around to see its owner, he was surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash.
Standing there in a tasteful, Yves Saint Laurent three-piece was a bear of a man-broad shoulders, well-trimmed beard, careful stance. He had the same bearing as every special ops soldier Arthur had ever met, but his smile was charmingly lop-sided, and his atrocious tie spoke of some sort of interesting, personal quirk (or visual handicap).
Arthur wasn’t sure what was worse: The fact that he knew this person was the man who had just dispatched four suspected terrorists with flair or the itch at the back of his mind that assured him that that swift execution would be nothing compared to what this man did to him.
When Cobb said, “This is Eames, he’s currently on loan to the CIA,” Arthur felt sure it would be the former.
Then he followed up with, “He’ll be your partner for the newest… uh. FBI/CIA joint venture,” and Arthur decided it officially didn’t matter. He closed his eyes and wished desperately that this was not really his life. When he opened them, the already infuriating British man was still standing there, waving his fingers in a greeting that was too full of unwarranted joy.
He was fucked. The FBI was fucked. The entire nation was fucked.
“Pleasure to be working with you, Special Agent Arthur,” Eames purred in his extremely unique British drawl.
Fucked.
--
There was no secret that the FBI and CIA hated each other. They had hated each other since the beginning of the beginning, back when the CIA had still been the OSS, and the scariest people in the world spoke German or Japanese. They still hated each other now, because three-letter government agencies held grudges forever.
At one point in Arthur’s training, he had thought this was silly, but the job had constantly proven him wrong. Since 9/11, CIA and FBI jurisdictions had overlapped more than ever, and the two agencies were constantly butting heads. The CIA prided themselves on having the best of the best, on being sneakier than ninjas, but having more explosive power than a hydrogen bomb. Of course, if Arthur had learned anything from the numerous CIA agents he had juggled and run around, this really was more pride than anything.
What he really hated, however, were the foreign agents the CIA rented out. They generally floundered in the foreign environment, their training causing even bigger clashes with the local FBI. Even worse were the occasional good ones. He still remembered the beautiful woman from the French DGSE who had swept in, stolen Cobb’s heart for a whirlwind nine months, before disappearing for weeks. Then the KIA tag had popped up on Cobb’s constant searches into international databases he probably shouldn’t have been touching, and the whole world seemed to stop. Dom had never recovered.
Arthur had never forgiven the CIA since, and whenever he was forced to work with the agency’s operatives, he always made sure to keep a careful distance.
Well, that hadn’t worked, and once again he growled at Eames to stop leaning over his shoulder (or breathing on his neck or distracting Arthur with thoughts of those lips in bed-and no, he did not care if that last one was really not Eames’ fault). The fact that he had to deal with all of this while in the African Sahara, dressed in familiar desert BDUs, and carrying around a 100 pound pack was just the cherry on top of the sundae.
--
Arthur kicked at the wheel of the busted humvee, swearing at the military issued vehicle. He really should have known better than to trust anything the Army would give to its men. Eames, wearing a truly hideous safari hat, simply laughed at his frustration. It had been half an hour since the clunker had broken down and they still had at least three more miles of sandy desert to trek through.
“Time to walk,” Eames said, vocalizing the truth Arthur hadn’t wanted to face. Growling, he grabbed his pack from the temporary CIA agent and slipped it on.
“I sure hope your contact has an Apache up their sleeve,” Arthur complained half-jokingly. He was alarmed at Eames’ thoughtful expression.
“I’ve learned not to rule anything out,” Eames explained as Arthur oriented them and they set off.
“So, let’s get this straight. The guy you kidnapped-”
“-From under your nose-”
“-was working for another terrorist group,” Arthur finished with a scowl.
“As proven by the information we got out of him afterward, yes,” Eames confirmed. His face was oddly serious. “We had someone run a test on the chemicals he was hauling around. It wasn’t your regular SCUD chemicals he was carrying around.”
Arthur shivered despite the hot Saharan sun. He could still remember the chemical warfare training they went through in Basic, being trapped in a gas chamber with his MOPP suit on and trying not to throw up. “You’re sure the results weren’t wrong?”
“When it comes to chemicals, Yusuf is never wrong,” Eames replied, and as if sensing Arthur’s discomfort, his thoughtful expression slid right off and into a flirtatious grin. “He makes the best aphrodisiacs-for the right price.”
“It’s good to know how low you’ll sink,” Arthur deadpanned, hiding his smile as Eames barked out a laugh. “So, he said their base was out here-”
“One of them,” Eames reminded him. “He only had about half of the things necessarily to cause a chemical disaster in that bag.”
“So, we’re looking for the rest,” Arthur concluded, digging in his backpack for the thick files of research Ariadne had compiled on the fly. An ex-architecture student before she switched to global studies, Ariadne had a way with blueprints and buildings. She had printed out the layouts of the most likely buildings the lab would be hidden in with helpful suggestions on what they would probably find where. “So, who’s your contact?” Arthur finally asked, looking up from his map.
“That’s a surprise,” Eames told him, his crooked smile too endearing to be fair. Arthur quickly looked away.
“I hate surprises,” he replied, matter-of-factly. This was obvious-no one in their line of work liked surprises.
“That’s just because you have no imagination,” Eames shot back and wouldn’t stop smiling through Arthur’s silent treatment.
--
“Shit,” Arthur swore passionately, throwing himself forward to duck behind the nearest wall. If rain was a terrible thing to slide through, then sand had to be at least five times worse. He grimaced and tried to be thankful he was in BDUs and not a suit. “Where did they come from?” he yelled over to Eames, who had managed to dive behind an adjacent wall. The man was loading the grenade launcher attached to his SCAR and firing freely. Arthur was almost jealous-his M16 was nowhere near that big.
“I’m not sure it matters right now!” Eames called back, grabbing a grenade from his pack. Arthur was almost in awe of the man’s artillery supply, and at least it answered the question of where Eames had disappeared to for a few hours back at the nearest US military camp. Apparently, the CIA paramilitary was very big on “procuring supplies whenever possible.”
Focusing back on the task at hand, Arthur tried to glimpse around the corner. They were outnumbered and pinned down, and if they didn’t make headway soon, even Eames would run out of explosive power. He heard the familiar sound of impact and rubble falling and got an idea.
“Do you have a riot shield?” Arthur suddenly called out, and Eames looked over at him with the most skeptical look. “Oh, don’t pull that shit,” Arthur bit out, and the other man’s expression instantly changed to gleeful joy. He reached under his pack and pulled out a very familiar FBI SWAT riot shield, carefully sliding it over to Arthur before turning back to engage. “Give me some cover fire,” Arthur instructed again, shouldering his M16 and pulling up the riot shield.
“Run fast, darling,” Eames acknowledged, throwing out a carefully placed flash bang before he started shooting again.
Arthur kept his head down, trying to fold his frame behind the riot shield as he ran. He could hear the bullets zooming past him, and even more distantly, the sound of people dying as Eames’ SCAR tore through them. Keeping focused on where he had heard a very recognizable sound, he broke into a run and slid through the sand-
Right behind an RPG team.
“Hi,” he greeted affably, crashing the riot shield into one person before turning his M16 on the other one. Arthur reached for the now abandoned RPG launcher and their pile of ammunitions.
The problem with insurgents was that they were smart enough to spread out. Luckily, RPGs had quite a shockwave. In the following ten minutes, which felt like ten hours, Arthur proceeded to slide through more sand than Virginia had on all its beaches. Trying not to think about every careful shot Eames was making to cover his frantic running-the man had apparently switched to an M40-he concentrated on loading and firing the RPG launcher until, on the sixth reload, a hand came down on his shoulder.
He brought his M16 up immediately, and Eames backed away with both hands up. Sighing with relief, Arthur stood, the riot shield still in one hand and the RPG swung over his other shoulder. “Okay,” Eames purred, a smile on his sandy, soot-covered face, “maybe you do have a bit of imagination.”
Arthur gave him a wry grin, about to respond when three loud bangs rang out. He felt a body fall against his back, and he immediately jumped forward to look behind him. One of the attackers had apparently been crouching up to him with a knife in his hand-and now two holes in his chest with one between his eyes.
“Well, that was fortunate,” Eames remarked with altogether too much ease. “Glad to see you here.”
“I’m not the one with the reputation of standing people up,” a melodic, familiar voice replied, and Arthur’s eyes very carefully moved up to stare at a ghost. “Arthur, how are you?” the shade greeted him, her pistol already holstered.
Mal put her hands on either side of his face and gave him quick air kisses to his cheeks, as if she hadn’t just viciously executed an enemy. As if, Arthur thought in a daze, she wasn’t dead. “B-But,” he tried to protest, but Mal put a gloved finger against his lips.
“It’s not easy being DGSE,” she explained, a wink to cover up the sadness in her eyes. “How is he?”
“Missing you,” Arthur replied. “All the time,” he thought he’d throw in, because it was almost painfully true.
“What, do we know each other then?” Eames asked, and if Arthur hadn’t just spent three miles in the Saharan and a firefight at sunset with him, he would almost say the man looked put out.
As it was, Arthur figured he officially knew too much about Eames at this point. He could read the pleasure in his eyes too clearly.
--
As far as intelligence operations went, Eames and Mal assured him, it was practically an in and out job. Unfortunately for them, Arthur was not an intelligence officer. He was law enforcement, FBI, and nothing about Eames sneaking into a terrorist base with some effective application of Arabic, French, and conman tricks seemed “in and out.”
“I thought we came here as a team-to investigate as a team,” Arthur stressed again, frowning over the map Mal had brought with her.
“We are,” Eames replied. “Look, we need you on point. I know you’re better with a sniper rifle than Mal, which means you have to stay outside!”
Outside and far away, and that made Arthur scowl. “What exactly is Mal going to do?”
“I have explosives to set up as soon as Eames is finished with his information gathering,” she replied, and her look was so knowing Arthur couldn’t return it.
“Look, it’ll be fine. Yusuf gave me some knock out chemicals before I left. It’ll be easy,” he cajoled, and Arthur let out a breath in resignation. He wasn’t going to be winning this fight.
FBI/CIA joint venture, his ass. He was officially going to be lying in a safe spot while the two spies threw themselves into the heart of the action. Arthur stood up and went to stand outside of their temporary base of operations-a tiny, rundown house that had probably belonged to civilians before the terrorist group had moved in and were then consequently cleared out by Mal and her small team.
Speaking of which-“You like him,” teased the smooth, French syllables he could still remember from dinners at Cobb’s place.
“I barely know him,” he dismissed, but Mal’s laughter tore the ruse to pieces.
“He is very odd. Likable on the outside, prickly on the inside, and then a soft teddy bear under that,” Mal told him, wrapping her arm around his waist and resting her head against his shoulder. He shifted to accommodate her but refused to uncross his arms or to look at anywhere other than the horizon.
“He’s good at what he does,” Arthur waved away again.
“Oh, he’s better,” Mal assured him, leaving with a kiss on the cheek before disappearing.
Arthur took a deep breath before going back inside.
--
He didn’t get a proper moment with Eames until right before the operation. Too much time was devoted to making sure they had all the right equipment, the logistics of the plan, and Eames spent hours before a mirror putting together his disguise and accent. It was all worth it, Arthur thought, because he was absolutely flawless afterward.
“I didn’t know you were a conman,” Arthur told him, in a brief moment where they were both triple-checking their inventory. Eames, despite being practically unrecognizable at the moment, shot him a familiar grin that was completely and utterly the man Arthur had grown to know and care about.
“There are lots of things you don’t know about me,” Eames replied. “But isn’t it more fun that way?”
Arthur nodded, almost unable to reply in the face of Eames’ normality. It was as if the man was reassuring him without a single word of comfort, and Arthur didn’t know whether to be grateful or appalled. “Be careful, Mr. Eames,” he finally said, separating his sniper gear from the rest of the supplies that would go with Mal and Eames.
“Of course, Arthur,” Eames replied, and Arthur decided he liked the sound of his name coming from those lips.
He was dropped off a good distance away, and Arthur kept an eye on Mal’s (actually working) humvee as it kicked up sand in the distance. His hands worked automatically to assemble the rifle, and he took his time to clean every piece again, just in case. Food, water, ammo, and even a towel to lie on-his part of the mission seemed comfy compared to the rest.
Of course, in the end, the mission was about as in and out as any of the CIA’s missions-which is to say not really. Through his scope, Arthur watched every entrance and knew the exact moment when Eames ran out, throwing off various bits of his disguise as he made for the zip line Mal had set up “just in case.” Arthur picked off the men chasing him as soon as they reared their heads, watching as each man’s head was thrown back. Eventually, they seemed to realize it wasn’t very safe to step out, because they stopped chasing Eames who finally made it to humvee around the time Mal slipped out of an outdoor vent.
Arthur waited until they were at least a quarter of a mile away, until the first man dared to peek his head outside the building again, before he grabbed the remote lying next to him. Standing up to get a better look at the building, he pressed the red, shiny button Mal had handed him with an appeasing grin. The following chain explosion was epic enough for Hollywood and, thanks to the various chemicals stored within, particularly colorful. Arthur had his gear packed and ready to go before Mal and Eames even reached him.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it darling?” Eames asked, smiling as he dropped the very important flash drive into Arthur’s hand.
“You mean, aside from the strip-and-run thing you did?” Arthur sniped, unable to resist smiling back. “Yeah, I guess.”
It turned out that Mal didn’t actually have an Apache helicopter on hand, but the Black Hawk she showed them was just as nice.
--
“How was the trip?” Ariadne asked, jumping up from her cubicle. It was Monday, and Arthur was back to his suits and gelled hair. “You look tanner than usual.”
“It was absolutely wonderful. We brought you back a souvenir,” a cheerful, English voice replied, and Ariadne’s eyes widened as Eames seemed to suddenly appear behind an exasperated Arthur. She walked up to them and held both her hands out, and Eames happily dropped a colorful scarf Arthur had bought on a whim into her hands.
“It’s perfect! Thanks.” She wrapped the scarf around her neck despite how much it clashed with her business formal wear. “Are you…” she began, but Arthur was quick to cut her off.
“Does Cobb need to see me?” he asked, ignoring the wide grin on Eames’ face.
“I don’t think so,” Ariadne replied. “Last I heard, he was screaming like a little girl.”
Eames and Arthur exchanged knowing looks. “Mal,” they both said at once, before turning back to Ariadne’s patiently curious expression.
“In that case, I’ll be in my office,” Arthur told her, ignoring Eames as he shadowed his every step.
Closing the door behind them both, he finally turned around to stare down Eames, who was also back in his gorgeous suits and horrendous ties. “I thought the FBI/CIA venture was over? Isn’t MI6 going to want you back?”
“Eventually,” Eames seemed to agree before sliding up almost too closely to Arthur, and he could hear his own heartbeat quicken. “Until then, I thought there might be more I could do for-hmm. FBI/CIA relations.”
“Stop trying to make that sound even halfway appealing,” Arthur grimaced.
“You mean stop succeeding at making that sound-” Eames began, but Arthur cut him off with a kiss before he could get any farther.
Arthur knew that Eames smelled like sandalwood and took milk with his tea and had endearingly crooked teeth. It was, of course, nice to be reminded of it all up close and personal. “And what’s going to happen when you go back?” he whispered, trying not to sound as worried as he felt.
“Just because MI6 might want me back, doesn’t mean I have to go, darling,” Eames assured him from a breath’s distance away, an arm already secured around Arthur’s waist.
“Dom and Mal-” he tried to protest, but Eames’s chuckle overrode him.
“Are probably very happily getting reacquainted in the office down the hall.”
Arthur frowned. “I wanted that office one day,” he objected.
“Then we’ll clean it,” Eames assured him, “and mess it up for the next uppity special agent.”
Arthur smiled, just a little weakly, before giving in and slouching against Eames. Well, if his life was going to be full of government secrets and dangerous interagency operations anyway, it couldn’t hurt to risk this.
He definitely wasn’t going to have sex in his FBI office, though. No. No, not at all.
"I've always wanted to have a badass boyfriend," Eames flattered, eyes just a little dilated. "That RPG-riot shield look is very you..."
Well, okay. Maybe.