the "we should be whispering" appendix
hi again, I'm working on this thing and it's not QUITE done yet, but it has already become clear that I can't use my favorite part. for a lot of reasons, but mostly it's just irrelevant and disrupts the narrative flow, so whatever, I sacrificed. but my loss is your gain, or something! because here's the bit I cut out, completely out of context, from a story I'm probably going to call "we should be whispering all the time." I think I'll probably do a little link to this entry in the actual story itself because I really just am TITANIC-ing this shit, I'LL NEVER LET IT GO, so people will just have to deal with the fact that my ot3 is Arthur/guns/suits. (Arthur/Eames/the-threat-of-violence is a close second, though.)
EDIT: "we should be whispering..." got out of control and now this is the master post for ALL the linked flashbacks/tracklists/Venn diagrams/whatever. SIGH.
*
"There is actually a funny story about how Eames learned that it is always, always, always important to figure out where Arthur’s weapons are concealed..."
Here’s the funny story about how Eames always knows how many weapons Arthur is carrying: back when they were a thing (or, not precisely a thing, not a real thing, but a sort of thing wherein two relatively mature adults have relations of the carnal variety and do their level best to never speak of it or acknowledge it to any living thing), Eames did not know about how many weapons Arthur could hide under the suits. Arthur clearly gets them tailored so the jackets and trousers don’t reveal any incriminating bulges and Eames knows that now but at the time he only knew about the obvious guns (the ones in the shoulder holsters) and the knife in the sock garter, and so when Eames had Arthur pressed up against the refrigerator in Arthur’s kitchen, fumbling around with the impossible buttons of Arthur’s waistcoat, he did not immediately understand what Arthur meant when he said “gun’s gonna go off.” It didn’t help that Arthur muttered the words practically down Eames’s throat, but Eames moved to Arthur’s neck and said, “darling, already?” and, aha, there was that last pesky button and Arthur didn’t even have time to finish saying “fuck you, that’s not what I meant” before the Beretta in Arthur’s jacket lining went off and put Arthur’s woefully insufficient tea kettle out of its misery.
“Would you believe I didn’t do that on purpose?” Eames said and Arthur had laughed, actually laughed, and tried to make Eames stand back while he pulled out all manner of knives and pistols and what Eames thinks might actually have been piano wire from mysterious places about his person. And Eames kept trying to put his hands on Arthur anyway, even though, apparently, touching Arthur was about as safe as walking through an unmarked minefield in Vietnam. He didn’t even think about stopping because Arthur kept laughing, was still laughing when he carelessly loosened his tie and still laughing when he let Eames close again, and he didn’t stop laughing until the cops showed up and he had to explain the bullet hole in his kettle.
*
"... there was a time not too long ago when this would have been a decidedly sexy encounter..."
There used to be a time when Arthur would push Eames into a bathroom to do something other than yell at him. It wasn’t too long ago that they’d spend the whole day needling each other, each pushing the other as far as possible. Stupid shit: kicking chairs and sarcastic smirks, teasing and standing too close. It was almost a game, but it was mostly flirting. Impossible, childish, competitive, unprofessional flirting, which is exactly the way Eames likes it.
And it always ended up with someone getting pushed into the bathroom, and both of them swearing and snarling, fumbling crazily and being immensely pleased with themselves, getting off on their own reckless stupidity as much as anything else. Eames misses that, the desperation of those moments and the slow build towards it, the way the tension would start in his shoulders in the morning, work its way down into his forearms and fingers by noon, rising and heating until Eames felt like he could break things with his bare hands, snap anything clean apart, felt like he was straining against himself to get at Arthur.
Maybe that’s why he can’t stop, can’t just leave Arthur alone. Because Eames misses that. Because - not that he would ever admit this to anyone else, least of all Arthur - Eames hasn’t felt something that warm and uncomplicated since. And that’s what it is, really, that’s what he misses the most: when he thought of the two of them as ‘uncomplicated,’ whether they were or not, he misses feeling that way. He misses being - not sure of Arthur, but not cautious of him either. He misses being uncomplicated.
*
"You can’t start a fight with me in a cave and not expect a few bats!"
In retrospect, a cave was not the best place to have a conversation about what exactly this whole thing was, especially since ‘conversing’ with Arthur about feelings usually meant ‘shouting.’ Eames decided it wasn’t really a cave, so it didn’t really matter. It still echoed like a cave though, so it still felt like Arthur’s voice was coming at him from all sides when he said, “Are you kidding me, Eames? You want to do this right now?”
“Well, yeah,” Eames said. “Since we’ve got a minute, and you seem to be incapable of having a civil conversation when we’re awake-”
“We’re in the middle of a fucking job, you asshole, can’t this wait?”
“So what I’m getting from this,” Eames said, trying to be as conversational as he could, “is that between me and the job, the job is more important?”
“Is that even a serious question?” It was too dark to see Arthur’s face, but he sounded annoyed.
“I’m afraid it is,” Eames said. “Would you mind giving me a serious answer?”
“So my choices here are A) do the fucking job or B) talk about my feelings with you in a fucking cave? Are you really going to be shocked when I go with option A?”
“Forget the job for a second, forget the fucking cave, and just-”
“Not everything has to be about us all the time, not everything in our lives is actually about each other, not even most of the things, actually,” Arthur said, now absolutely shouting, “and not everything has to be about what we’re fucking feeling, some things can actually be about us working the job we’re on and not - not... Eames? Do you hear-”
But by then it was too late.
“Are these mine or yours?” Eames yelled over the sound of bats rushing through the cave, ducked away from what felt like hundreds of tiny clawed wings and feet swirling around him, cutting him everywhere he was exposed.
“I want to shoot you right now,” Arthur yelled back. “So fucking much.”
“So probably yours, then?”
“I want to shoot you in your fucking face,” Arthur yelled, and then did.
*
"...he purposefully doesn’t remember what a thrill it was when he realized Arthur didn’t want to murder him."
The first time Eames realized Arthur didn’t want to murder him was also the first time he made Arthur laugh, really laugh - the full-bodied, eyes-shut, deep-dimples laugh that is Eames’s personal favorite, and the laugh that Arthur is the stingiest about. They were working late, Arthur going over the mark’s business records a thousand times, testing Eames’s retention of the information so he could convincingly pull off a seductive and savvy accountant who would be impressed with the mark’s insider trading tips. It was dull work and they were both tiring of it, and Eames made a joke, he doesn’t even remember now what he said though he’s tried dozens of times, trying to duplicate Arthur’s response - a quick little choke of surprise, looking at Eames wide-eyed and off-guard, and then a laugh, a real one - and try as he might to remember what he could have possibly said to make Arthur laugh like that, all Eames remembers thinking is how much he liked that Arthur, real and human and unprofessional, snorting unattractively and not threatening to shoot Eames for being distracted on the job.
“You know, darling,” Eames said when Arthur had calmed down, “I’m honestly surprised you didn’t shoot me for that.”
Arthur chuckled again. “Come on, Eames. You know I wouldn’t shoot you. Not fatally, anyway.”
But Eames hadn’t known that, not really, not until Arthur had said it, smiling and shaking his head like Eames was still making jokes. And Eames had thought, he doesn’t actually want to kill me after all and was cheerful for the rest of the week, just thinking about how little Arthur wanted him dead.
*
"...Yusuf has doodled a little cartoon Ariadne on the track listing..."
*
"Is this a Venn diagram of their interests?"
*
"Then again, he and Arthur have had some pretty strange ideas of foreplay, so maybe he’s not in a position to judge."
Like whenever Eames sees Arthur totally competent and lethal. Whenever Arthur’s doing some handy stunt-driving that would put Grand Theft Auto to shame, or whenever he’s firing round after round into a mass of projections, every shot deadly. Whenever Eames sees that crazy, focused look in Arthur’s eyes he has to touch him, has to get close to him. It’s absurd. Evolutionarily speaking, there has to be something deeply fucking wrong in Eames’s head for that to be so hot to him. Surely a normal brain would want to run from that expression, not towards it. Surely a normal person with an actual sense of self-preservation would know better, but Eames doesn’t and really, Arthur doesn’t either. Arthur loves it when Eames improvises, especially when it’s dangerous and ill-conceived. It seems to go against everything Arthur is, but it’s clearly true. When Eames goes off book (as long as it works) Arthur always somehow finds a way to get him alone, to get to some place where he can grab Eames and push his fingers into Eames’s skin, leaving bruises that Eames presses his own fingers against for weeks after, keeping the marks dark and deep.
Eames never kept track of how many times they’d gotten off in dreams, on jobs, quick and needy and breathless, trying to remember to keep an eye out for the team, for projections, for fucking freight trains, if Cobb is on the job. He never kept track because he just assumed it would continue; the way they couldn’t help it, Eames never thought there would be anything that would snap them out of it. Because that Arthur - that hungry, prideless, sharp Arthur who wanted to do filthy things to Eames in someone else’s brain - isn’t the same as Arthur when he’s awake. That Arthur doesn’t worry about the job, or what’s dignified, or whether his fucking suit has a goddamn wrinkle. That Arthur is Arthur without the bullshit, without the constant filter. That Arthur is undiluted and, frankly, unhinged and if Eames had known that he’d only have him a few dozen times he would have counted every second of it.
*
"That's because we can't fuck up any worse than we already have done..."
That last fight was, unsurprisingly, the worst.
Like most fights, it started small and then became a fucking nightmare and neither of them were backing down, neither of them were changing, nothing was being resolved or admitted or anything. It was horrible. Eames felt like he’d been shouting for hours and Arthur’s voice had gone slightly ragged and still they kept coming back to it, circling the same point viciously.
“Why can’t you just give me an answer, any answer, I don’t even care if it’s true at this point,” Eames said.
“You don’t care, that’s exactly my point! Why bother, why go through this, when it isn’t even important? Why even try to make this something to fight about?” Arthur snapped back.
It was like reciting lines for a play, Eames thought. Once more, with feeling.
“I just want to know what the fuck you think this is, I don’t see why that’s unreasonable,” Eames said.
“You just want to fucking win,” Arthur snarled.
“Win what?” Eames said. “What is there to possibly win from this?”
“What do you think this is, if it isn’t a fucking game?”
Eames felt a sharp pang, like a cramp almost, and realized it was because he’d stopped breathing. “This is a game?”
“Don’t act surprised,” Arthur said. “You knew that.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Eames said. “Maybe I just thought a little better of you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Arthur said, eyes sharpening.
“You and feelings? It’s not going to happen, is it? I’m just wasting my time, right?”
“You always throw that at me, every fucking time. What the fuck do you want from me, Eames?”
“I want to have a fucking conversation,” Eames said. “What do you want?”
“I want to fucking disembowel you right now!” Arthur yelled. “God, how are you so irritating! Why do I fucking do this with you, over and over, when you are so fucking irritating?”
“So don’t,” Eames said. The second the words were out of his mouth he felt this calming cold sweep over him. It was all a game. With Arthur it was always going to be a fucking game. Arthur would chuck him eventually, he’d always known that. It’s who Arthur was, and there was no point. “Let’s just not, then, yeah? Congratulations. You win.”
And then he left, flew to the only place he could think of and let Yusuf work the story out of him with several bottles of whiskey and a significant amount of cake batter. It was not a good week for Eames, but it was never as bad as that first moment, the first time Arthur finally admitted that it was all just a fucking game. That one never quite got better.
*
EDIT: "we should be whispering..." got out of control and now this is the master post for ALL the linked flashbacks/tracklists/Venn diagrams/whatever. SIGH.
*
"There is actually a funny story about how Eames learned that it is always, always, always important to figure out where Arthur’s weapons are concealed..."
Here’s the funny story about how Eames always knows how many weapons Arthur is carrying: back when they were a thing (or, not precisely a thing, not a real thing, but a sort of thing wherein two relatively mature adults have relations of the carnal variety and do their level best to never speak of it or acknowledge it to any living thing), Eames did not know about how many weapons Arthur could hide under the suits. Arthur clearly gets them tailored so the jackets and trousers don’t reveal any incriminating bulges and Eames knows that now but at the time he only knew about the obvious guns (the ones in the shoulder holsters) and the knife in the sock garter, and so when Eames had Arthur pressed up against the refrigerator in Arthur’s kitchen, fumbling around with the impossible buttons of Arthur’s waistcoat, he did not immediately understand what Arthur meant when he said “gun’s gonna go off.” It didn’t help that Arthur muttered the words practically down Eames’s throat, but Eames moved to Arthur’s neck and said, “darling, already?” and, aha, there was that last pesky button and Arthur didn’t even have time to finish saying “fuck you, that’s not what I meant” before the Beretta in Arthur’s jacket lining went off and put Arthur’s woefully insufficient tea kettle out of its misery.
“Would you believe I didn’t do that on purpose?” Eames said and Arthur had laughed, actually laughed, and tried to make Eames stand back while he pulled out all manner of knives and pistols and what Eames thinks might actually have been piano wire from mysterious places about his person. And Eames kept trying to put his hands on Arthur anyway, even though, apparently, touching Arthur was about as safe as walking through an unmarked minefield in Vietnam. He didn’t even think about stopping because Arthur kept laughing, was still laughing when he carelessly loosened his tie and still laughing when he let Eames close again, and he didn’t stop laughing until the cops showed up and he had to explain the bullet hole in his kettle.
*
"... there was a time not too long ago when this would have been a decidedly sexy encounter..."
There used to be a time when Arthur would push Eames into a bathroom to do something other than yell at him. It wasn’t too long ago that they’d spend the whole day needling each other, each pushing the other as far as possible. Stupid shit: kicking chairs and sarcastic smirks, teasing and standing too close. It was almost a game, but it was mostly flirting. Impossible, childish, competitive, unprofessional flirting, which is exactly the way Eames likes it.
And it always ended up with someone getting pushed into the bathroom, and both of them swearing and snarling, fumbling crazily and being immensely pleased with themselves, getting off on their own reckless stupidity as much as anything else. Eames misses that, the desperation of those moments and the slow build towards it, the way the tension would start in his shoulders in the morning, work its way down into his forearms and fingers by noon, rising and heating until Eames felt like he could break things with his bare hands, snap anything clean apart, felt like he was straining against himself to get at Arthur.
Maybe that’s why he can’t stop, can’t just leave Arthur alone. Because Eames misses that. Because - not that he would ever admit this to anyone else, least of all Arthur - Eames hasn’t felt something that warm and uncomplicated since. And that’s what it is, really, that’s what he misses the most: when he thought of the two of them as ‘uncomplicated,’ whether they were or not, he misses feeling that way. He misses being - not sure of Arthur, but not cautious of him either. He misses being uncomplicated.
*
"You can’t start a fight with me in a cave and not expect a few bats!"
In retrospect, a cave was not the best place to have a conversation about what exactly this whole thing was, especially since ‘conversing’ with Arthur about feelings usually meant ‘shouting.’ Eames decided it wasn’t really a cave, so it didn’t really matter. It still echoed like a cave though, so it still felt like Arthur’s voice was coming at him from all sides when he said, “Are you kidding me, Eames? You want to do this right now?”
“Well, yeah,” Eames said. “Since we’ve got a minute, and you seem to be incapable of having a civil conversation when we’re awake-”
“We’re in the middle of a fucking job, you asshole, can’t this wait?”
“So what I’m getting from this,” Eames said, trying to be as conversational as he could, “is that between me and the job, the job is more important?”
“Is that even a serious question?” It was too dark to see Arthur’s face, but he sounded annoyed.
“I’m afraid it is,” Eames said. “Would you mind giving me a serious answer?”
“So my choices here are A) do the fucking job or B) talk about my feelings with you in a fucking cave? Are you really going to be shocked when I go with option A?”
“Forget the job for a second, forget the fucking cave, and just-”
“Not everything has to be about us all the time, not everything in our lives is actually about each other, not even most of the things, actually,” Arthur said, now absolutely shouting, “and not everything has to be about what we’re fucking feeling, some things can actually be about us working the job we’re on and not - not... Eames? Do you hear-”
But by then it was too late.
“Are these mine or yours?” Eames yelled over the sound of bats rushing through the cave, ducked away from what felt like hundreds of tiny clawed wings and feet swirling around him, cutting him everywhere he was exposed.
“I want to shoot you right now,” Arthur yelled back. “So fucking much.”
“So probably yours, then?”
“I want to shoot you in your fucking face,” Arthur yelled, and then did.
*
"...he purposefully doesn’t remember what a thrill it was when he realized Arthur didn’t want to murder him."
The first time Eames realized Arthur didn’t want to murder him was also the first time he made Arthur laugh, really laugh - the full-bodied, eyes-shut, deep-dimples laugh that is Eames’s personal favorite, and the laugh that Arthur is the stingiest about. They were working late, Arthur going over the mark’s business records a thousand times, testing Eames’s retention of the information so he could convincingly pull off a seductive and savvy accountant who would be impressed with the mark’s insider trading tips. It was dull work and they were both tiring of it, and Eames made a joke, he doesn’t even remember now what he said though he’s tried dozens of times, trying to duplicate Arthur’s response - a quick little choke of surprise, looking at Eames wide-eyed and off-guard, and then a laugh, a real one - and try as he might to remember what he could have possibly said to make Arthur laugh like that, all Eames remembers thinking is how much he liked that Arthur, real and human and unprofessional, snorting unattractively and not threatening to shoot Eames for being distracted on the job.
“You know, darling,” Eames said when Arthur had calmed down, “I’m honestly surprised you didn’t shoot me for that.”
Arthur chuckled again. “Come on, Eames. You know I wouldn’t shoot you. Not fatally, anyway.”
But Eames hadn’t known that, not really, not until Arthur had said it, smiling and shaking his head like Eames was still making jokes. And Eames had thought, he doesn’t actually want to kill me after all and was cheerful for the rest of the week, just thinking about how little Arthur wanted him dead.
*
"...Yusuf has doodled a little cartoon Ariadne on the track listing..."
*
"Is this a Venn diagram of their interests?"
*
"Then again, he and Arthur have had some pretty strange ideas of foreplay, so maybe he’s not in a position to judge."
Like whenever Eames sees Arthur totally competent and lethal. Whenever Arthur’s doing some handy stunt-driving that would put Grand Theft Auto to shame, or whenever he’s firing round after round into a mass of projections, every shot deadly. Whenever Eames sees that crazy, focused look in Arthur’s eyes he has to touch him, has to get close to him. It’s absurd. Evolutionarily speaking, there has to be something deeply fucking wrong in Eames’s head for that to be so hot to him. Surely a normal brain would want to run from that expression, not towards it. Surely a normal person with an actual sense of self-preservation would know better, but Eames doesn’t and really, Arthur doesn’t either. Arthur loves it when Eames improvises, especially when it’s dangerous and ill-conceived. It seems to go against everything Arthur is, but it’s clearly true. When Eames goes off book (as long as it works) Arthur always somehow finds a way to get him alone, to get to some place where he can grab Eames and push his fingers into Eames’s skin, leaving bruises that Eames presses his own fingers against for weeks after, keeping the marks dark and deep.
Eames never kept track of how many times they’d gotten off in dreams, on jobs, quick and needy and breathless, trying to remember to keep an eye out for the team, for projections, for fucking freight trains, if Cobb is on the job. He never kept track because he just assumed it would continue; the way they couldn’t help it, Eames never thought there would be anything that would snap them out of it. Because that Arthur - that hungry, prideless, sharp Arthur who wanted to do filthy things to Eames in someone else’s brain - isn’t the same as Arthur when he’s awake. That Arthur doesn’t worry about the job, or what’s dignified, or whether his fucking suit has a goddamn wrinkle. That Arthur is Arthur without the bullshit, without the constant filter. That Arthur is undiluted and, frankly, unhinged and if Eames had known that he’d only have him a few dozen times he would have counted every second of it.
*
"That's because we can't fuck up any worse than we already have done..."
That last fight was, unsurprisingly, the worst.
Like most fights, it started small and then became a fucking nightmare and neither of them were backing down, neither of them were changing, nothing was being resolved or admitted or anything. It was horrible. Eames felt like he’d been shouting for hours and Arthur’s voice had gone slightly ragged and still they kept coming back to it, circling the same point viciously.
“Why can’t you just give me an answer, any answer, I don’t even care if it’s true at this point,” Eames said.
“You don’t care, that’s exactly my point! Why bother, why go through this, when it isn’t even important? Why even try to make this something to fight about?” Arthur snapped back.
It was like reciting lines for a play, Eames thought. Once more, with feeling.
“I just want to know what the fuck you think this is, I don’t see why that’s unreasonable,” Eames said.
“You just want to fucking win,” Arthur snarled.
“Win what?” Eames said. “What is there to possibly win from this?”
“What do you think this is, if it isn’t a fucking game?”
Eames felt a sharp pang, like a cramp almost, and realized it was because he’d stopped breathing. “This is a game?”
“Don’t act surprised,” Arthur said. “You knew that.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Eames said. “Maybe I just thought a little better of you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Arthur said, eyes sharpening.
“You and feelings? It’s not going to happen, is it? I’m just wasting my time, right?”
“You always throw that at me, every fucking time. What the fuck do you want from me, Eames?”
“I want to have a fucking conversation,” Eames said. “What do you want?”
“I want to fucking disembowel you right now!” Arthur yelled. “God, how are you so irritating! Why do I fucking do this with you, over and over, when you are so fucking irritating?”
“So don’t,” Eames said. The second the words were out of his mouth he felt this calming cold sweep over him. It was all a game. With Arthur it was always going to be a fucking game. Arthur would chuck him eventually, he’d always known that. It’s who Arthur was, and there was no point. “Let’s just not, then, yeah? Congratulations. You win.”
And then he left, flew to the only place he could think of and let Yusuf work the story out of him with several bottles of whiskey and a significant amount of cake batter. It was not a good week for Eames, but it was never as bad as that first moment, the first time Arthur finally admitted that it was all just a fucking game. That one never quite got better.
*