Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: T
Length: 4,077
Disclaimer: don't mind me, I'm just playing
Summary: This is for a prompt in the
inception_kink but I forgot what round so there is no finding the link since I will not sink hours in search. I do have a life outside of this stuff and it really should get at least a third of my attention. This is the exact prompt, though: Eames forcibly washes all that shit gel out of Arthur's hair. Canon compliant please, and if you can manage this without making Eames a lecherous douche and Arthur a hissy bitch, that would be super awesome, nonnies.
*stamps foot like a hissy bitch* It's SO HARD putting Arthur in a manhandling scenario where he isn't a bitch! But challenge accepted!
Arthur’s heart was growing as he watched Cobb leave the airport with his father in law, the trance the extractor had seemingly fallen into in his good fortune was finally beginning to break into a wide, beaming smile as he rushed off to see his children again. The dark haired young man stood off at a distance watching, not because it would be a serious risk approaching him, but because he wouldn’t know what to say if he did.
I’m happy for you, Cobb was the basis of the sentiments running through Arthur’s mind, but that wouldn’t do; saying that was redundant, because as a friend Cobb would already know Arthur was happy for him. The other stuff--despite the shit you just pulled, you’re still my best friend, man, so don’t be a stranger or the even harder to say, don’t fuck up your life again because you and those kids are the only people who really care about me--those were all that were left to be said in a moment like this, but they were also things Arthur would never say because people didn’t actually say shit like that out loud.
Maybe in a few days or a few weeks, the bulk of the emotional stuff would be out of the way and Cobb would be settled in and Arthur could drop by and have a drink and catch up and, through non-verbal signals and very little eye-contact, those aforementioned things could be conveyed and that would be enough.
Arthur was thinking these things and not paying attention until Eames was next to him saying, “We’re awake and not eggs. Let’s celebrate.”
Arthur did not flinch or give it away that he was surprised by the forger’s close presence at his side, simply turned his head and frowned at him, “Thought you were watching Fischer.”
Eames waved a hand, “He’ll keep.”
Arthur looked back at the cab that was driving away with Cobb and Miles, “Yeah, let’s get a drink.”
They turned and headed for the car park and Arthur asked, “Where’s Saito? He should join us. I want to hear about Limbo from somebody who’s not prone to romantic frivolity.”
“I was hoping it’d just be us, actually.”
Arthur stopped walking and gave Eames a steady look. The Englishman kept his back straight and met Arthur’s analytical gaze with confident ease, the corners of his mouth only barely tilted upwards. Arthur had known him for all of six months, had only actually been in his presence a few hours a day for about half of that, and the majority of that face-time had been this last job.
There was no denying Eames’ physical attraction (sheer strength and that mouth) but he was also among some of the most intelligent men Arthur had ever worked with and had a quiet dignity about him. True, the snarky comments and childish love of physical humor weren’t particularly favorable to Arthur, but they were in no way deal breakers, either. (In fact, they might actually turn out to be character flaws specifically engineered to be loved.)
The truth was Arthur had been for a while now nursing a steadily growing attraction for the hands-down-most-imaginative member of his team and in that moment right after Eames’ confession that he wanted drinks to be a date, Arthur almost smiled. He stopped himself, though. Thank God.
Obviously, it wasn’t as if he was a robot that never smiled in front of people. (Arthur had nothing against being kind and polite.) But this would not have been a kind and polite smile; this would have been a dimple smile. And it wasn’t that Arthur was ashamed of his dimples, but he didn’t like to show them to just anybody. Not a lot of people could take them seriously. Plus, just whipping them out in such a moment as this would show his eagerness, which was not cool.
A moment passed with Arthur being very much like a duck on water (appearing calm and collected on the outside but scrambling like hell under the surface), dimples stayed safely out of sight, and Arthur started walking, kept his voice in that safe range of almost-emotionless. “Let’s make it dinner.”
… … …
They made arrangements for Arthur to pick Eames up. (Arthur was pleasantly pacified by how easily Eames handed over the reins and let him pick the time and restaurant, et cetra; if he’d shown the dimples such would not be the case; history had proven this for an irrefutable fact many times over.) Eames handed Arthur a piece of paper that he’d written on and which turned out to be an address to an apartment building in LA. This came as a surprise, because Arthur had expected it to be a hotel and room number as his would’ve been if he’d had to surrender his natural controlling ways.
They’d walked to the car park because that was where Eames was going and Arthur had just sort of tagged along as they talked and the point man was further surprised when Eames pulled keys from his pocket and made a nearby black mustang bee-boop and unlock its doors. “You were in Africa,” Arthur smirked, no exclamation point, just curiosity and an eyebrow slightly up, “How in the hell do you have a car waiting for you here?”
“I do have friends, Arthur,” Eames snorted in a what-the-hell-is-the-matter-with-your-logical-thinking kind of way. Arthur rolled his eyes to cover the embarrassment of his own mistake.
“Need a ride?” Eames asked as he unceremoniously dumped luggage into the trunk.
“No,” Arthur answered on reflex, then, thinking he really wouldn’t mind riding in that car, he headed for the passenger side door of the vehicle, smirking, “I don’t need one, but I wouldn’t say no to this.”
… … …
Eames was showing off when he swiftly parallel parked in a tight space, Arthur knew he was, but he couldn’t bring himself to call him out on it. He climbed out and retrieved his only bag from the back seat. Eames was leaning toward the open passenger side window, “See you tonight.” His tone was only barely lower than his usual speaking voice, but somehow that laced the words with so much promise that Arthur could only shoulder the strap of his bag, clear his throat and say, “Dinner,” with a curt nod.
As if that’s the way you’re supposed to respond to a comment like that. Eames drove off smirking and Arthur’s stomach was aflutter, putting delightful tension in his back and his mind wouldn’t stop racing around the possibilities that lay in his immediate future. Honestly, Arthur hadn’t been so flustered by someone since he was a teenager.
So, okay, he couldn’t help but be on the early side of punctual in going to retrieve the Englishman. This was because he was experiencing an almost uncontrollable eagerness to see the apartment, a space that Eames slept in that was not a hotel room. Arthur spent a ridiculous amount of focus, on the walk over, (it wasn’t far from his hotel) imagining what kind of place it would be.
He buzzed at the street intercom that said Nolan beside it, as the note directed him to, and Eames answered, “Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Arthur said.
“Ten minutes to spare, knew you wouldn’t keep me waiting,” and then the loud buzz. Arthur opened the door while he had the chance, but stood there for a moment, thinking he might go and come back later, make Eames wait just because he was uncomfortable with the idea that Eames knew he would be eager enough to come early.
It’s okay to let people know you feel things that you aren’t quite sure about yet, Mal had told him once. He’d written her off as his best friend’s new pushy girlfriend who went around talking about feelings too much, but over time he’d learned how much she’d already cared for him even by then and that she just hadn’t wanted him to miss out on things because of his preference to wait and get a proper understanding of something from every angle before acting.
This made him a damn good point man, but kept him lonely the rest of the time.
With a sigh, he abandoned all notions of making Eames wait and went on in because it occurred to him that Eames had too many angles to get a proper understanding of in the time restraints that his dinner reservations allotted. Inside there was no elevator, the only option to the third floor: three flights of polished, wide, wooden stairs. At the top, Arthur rapped on the door and smirked at the peephole just in case Eames was peeping.
A faint snort on the other side said, yes, he was.
The door opened. Arthur’s jaw went slack and he blinked. Eames was in dark-washed blue jeans and a white button down shirt and his hair was wet and hanging in his green eyes. He smiled gorgeously and looked Arthur from head to toe, his gaze lingering on Arthur’s slicked hair.
“Ready?” Arthur asked, thinking surely Eames still had to do something with his freely falling-across-his-forehead hair. Eames’s eyes dropped down to his and he stepped back, “Actually, I’m not. Hope you don’t mind coming in for a quick sit while I sort something?”
Arthur frowned, but couldn’t say no on grounds of being late for the reservations, because he was early. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t been keen to see inside the apartment in the first place. He bobbed his head, stepped in with a casual, “Not at all.”
With a sweep of his arm, Eames showed him to the couch and then went off around a corner. Arthur looked around a living room with hard wood floors, vegetation in the corners, black leather furniture, a desk with a desktop computer on it beneath the row of blind-covered windows, a television surrounded by not-quite-tidy shelves of DVDs.
“The bloody hell?” Eames’ voice sounded from the hallway, the acoustics of it immediately letting Arthur know he was in the bathroom. Arthur headed that way even as Eames said, “Arthur, come have a look at this!”
The bathroom door was half open and Arthur could see Eames bending over the sink, could hear the water running. He’d just pushed the door open when Eames pointed down the drain and said, “Have you ever seen plumping do that?”
Puzzled, Arthur peered down the drain and all of sudden Eames had a hold of him.
“The fuck--?” If he had the space, Arthur could have gotten out of the hold, but Eames had him pinned to the counter, bent over it, his body flush against Arthur’s backside. Survival instincts burst like firecrackers in Arthur’s head even though Eames had no weapons and wasn’t man handling him any more than was necessary, apparently, to push his head into the sink and under the running tap.
“EAMES WHAT THE FUCK?” Arthur bellowed as the hot water touched his scalp. He managed to land a hard elbow in Eames’ ribs, which bought his freedom from the hold. He only got straightened (water dribbling down his scalp and hair slopping into his face) and turned around to face his attacker when Eames had his arms around him again, turning him right back around and bending him right back over the counter and putting his head right back into the stream of hot water--Jesus, the man really was sheer strength. “This is for your own good, Arthur, trust me.”
“Trust you?” Arthur demanded darkly, even as Eames’ fingers started to massage his scalp with the weight and heat of the water, “What are you doing?”
Eames snorted, “I’m only going to have my way with your hair, so stop panicking.”
Arthur’s cheeks flared with heat, “I’m not afraid you’ll rape me.”
Eames spoke confidently, “Not now, but you were ten seconds ago.”
Ignoring that, Arthur asked, “The fuck is you’re problem with my hair, anyway?”
“The ratio of human hair and product, that’s what,” Eames chortled. “We’re not in Europe anymore and we’re not trying to impress employers into believing we can handle whatever it is they want us to do. Don’t you want to let loose every now and then?”
“Not as much as you apparently,” Arthur mumbled, resigning himself to the hair wash because getting out of Eames’ hold was a lost cause. Plus, he kind of didn’t want to get out of it; it was good having Eames pinning him down like this. He tried his best not to push his ass back against Eames’ hips.
Thick fingers made soothing circles across his scalp, churning around the weight of his sodden hair as streams of hot water raced over his face to drip from his nose and chin. The feel of it made his eyes drop closed and his breath sighed right out of him. Eames must have felt him relax because his grip on him loosened. But he didn’t step back or to the side, kept his hips right where they were. Maybe stood even a fraction closer.
Arthur’s heartbeat started sounding in his ears, not nervously, but in a Hey I’ve Got a Lot of Blood to Send South way. There was a pause as Arthur was gently pulled out from under the tap, Eames pumped generous amounts of liquid hand soap out of a metal dispenser and then the room started to smell like spring time flowers and back under he went, this time the water over his face was thick and sudsy.
The silence in the bathroom was surprisingly comfortable, as if this rather ape-like social grooming scenario was a common activity on first dates. It wasn’t a bad way to go, really, Arthur reasoned as he felt Eames hardening behind him thanks to his slight, involuntary movements against him as he shifted his weight around. With a rather-to-showy clear of his throat, Eames released him, shut off the water, and took a big step sideways--away--and plucked a fluffy dark blue towel from the shelf.
Arthur squeezed what water he could from his sopping locks and reached for the towel, but Eames’ big hands swamped it over his head and started scrubbing away the wetness with playful agitation. Arthur straightened with his neck loose enough that Eames’ hands were rolling his head around between them as if it were some kind of sports ball. When the forger finally lowered the towel, Arthur blinked in the light and focused on Eames’ face.
Eames was smiling, but in a way Arthur hadn’t seen him do before, almost shyly. It wasn’t until Eames’ fingers curled in the hair over his ear and his thumb deliberately touched his cheek, that Arthur understood--Fuck, he’d been smiling his dimple smile. Eames caught his face and wouldn’t let him when Arthur tried to look away. The bigger man’s smile grew into something wicked, “Knew I’d get you to show me a real smile, but I wasn’t expecting that.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, “Go on and tell me they make me look fourteen. I know.”
“No,” Eames disagreed cordially. His eyes flicked up and he snorted, “You’re hair right now, maybe. But not your smile.”
Arthur looked over into the mirror, found his hair completely unruly, part of it dried into shocks that stood up ridiculously in all directions while other parts clumped in wet locks that hung down and curled over his ears and into his eyes. His dimples were still showing; they wouldn’t go away. Beside him, Eames’ hair was drying, fallen softly this way and that and Arthur had the urge to put his fingers through it.
Eames had a similar urge and didn’t stop himself. Arthur let the man comb those gentle thick fingers through his hair for several moments and had to ask, “So it bothered you so much you couldn’t even wait until after the first date to tell me you preferred a more natural hairstyle?”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Eames corrected. “I just got myself excited, expecting to see you all laid-back and casual; I didn’t like it when you showed up looking as starched and formal as ever, something snapped and I lost my manners; I won’t apologize though.”
Arthur put a smoldering smile on his lips, “If you’d had patience, another way to see me laid back and casual would have been to wreck me and then keep me for the night.”
“Goddammit, I like that idea,” Eames puffed in a single breath and he leaned in to catch Arthur’s lips, but the flowery-smelling young man pulled out of range with a cruelly playful glint in his dark eye and he stepped away with a prim,
“Dinner first, Mr. Eames.”
Eames’ shy smile came back and he nodded, agreed, “Dinner first.”
… … …
Arthur woke on his stomach, no pillow, stretched out comfortably on an unfamiliar mattress with his arms bent and hands above his head, naked with just a rumpled thin sheet down across his ankles. The room was filled with daylight through the blinds of the room’s two windows, the quiet peace of morning hung as a contented hum stretching from corner to corner around him.
Next to him in the bed that was large enough that they weren’t touching or close to it, Eames was on his back with his arms up over his head, one forearm over his eyes. Enough of the tangled sheet was on him to keep him modest, but the slithering ink down his thick right thigh was in full view as well as the tattoos on his rib cage and biceps. The one on his ribs was cover work because originally, he’d had his information (name, serial number, rank, everything) tattooed there in the way many soldiers did since up under the arms is a place least likely to be burned in a war zone and thus the ink would help with body identification.
But after leaving the service and taking aliases, it was necessary to hide his real name. He did so with what looked like a horned cherub playing the flute in the forest; Eames said it was Puck, from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream made to have his little brother’s face, “because Ian was always a little mischief maker,” Eames had explained as they fell asleep last night. Arthur hadn’t missed the past tense but didn’t ask and wasn’t told.
Eames woke to find Arthur studying the snake on his thigh, slithering wickedly up as if joining its master after a job well done convincing Eve to eat the apple. Arthur showed his dimples freely, “Good morning.”
“Good night,” Eames said, with a softly curving smile, blinking rapidly to chase off dreams and enjoy reality. His body came to life, lines not of ink appearing and fading as muscles flexed, tensed, bulked while the man stretched luxuriously, and rolled heavily onto his stomach, coming at last into Arthur’s personal space, where he fell back into soft stillness once again. Arthur snorted softly, twisting now that he’d caught the cat-stretch like a virus.
Arthur’s body told him just how good last night had been. All the right muscles ached. Once he’d writhed around enough to pull the stiffness away, he settled again on his stomach, twice as comfortable as before. When he looked at Eames again, the man buried his shy smile in the pillow he brought over with him, fanned the sheet over Arthur’s backside like he might be cold, letting his heavy hand stay on one cheek. Arthur felt himself blush lightly.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” Eames asked softly. His voice was low but not rumbly, as if his vocal chords needed to warm up first. The effect was that Arthur suddenly felt like he was tucked in next to a secret, the raw sound of the man, not an act at all.
His heart sped up, and his lungs pulled heavy for a proper breath, and Arthur rolled onto his back to hide the dimples he couldn’t fight right now. He grunted an affirmative, which was hard enough to do so he busied himself with finding a pillow. His was in the floor, half under the bed, and cold for it.
As he sank into the cool plumpness of the pillow, Eames’ fingers brushed along the skin of Arthur’s arm just where it rested against the bed. Arthur bit his lip and rolled into the forger, open to the idea of going a few rounds right now, but the forger only breathed languidly and wrapped his arms around the point man.
“Feels good to wake up next to you,” he said with his eyes closed, smiling.
Arthur balked. Eames felt the reaction and opened his eyes, focusing with a few blinks, “What, darling? Don’t you agree?”
The point man looked anywhere but at the man holding him as he nodded as casually as possible. Eames laughed, mostly breath through his perfect nose, and shook his head. “Oh, Arthur, darling, that’s my favorite thing about you, I think.”
Arthur’s eyes widened in horror as he looked up into the eyes of a man just saying shit like this out loud, serious, like it was talk of the weather. He had no voice or else he would have asked the forger to shut up because Arthur had always been painfully empathetic and felt others’ embarrassment-especially when the person didn’t seem to feel it themselves.
Eames ran his fingers through Arthur’s hair, and for a moment, Arthur thought Eames had only been talking about it-physical traits--which wasn’t so bad. He started to relax, but then the forger started talking again with his usual amount of sarcasm, “You’re so economical with words. You don’t say just anything do you? I love that.”
Arthur gulped. Sarcasm or no, Eames was talking about feelings. Feelings talk was not okay-Arthur wasn’t comfortable in fields in which he did not excel. He usually made it a point to excel at everything, but nobody was perfect, and the voicing of soft shit-emotions-that was a skill Arthur was willing to trade for good marksmanship any day of the week in this business.
Unfortunately, he had nowhere to even begin explaining this.
Arthur’s reply was to kiss and kiss good. Not only did it shut the Brit up and spare Arthur from writhing in mortification, but it was the only way Arthur could convey the similar sentiments he felt but couldn’t say.
It was good to wake up next to someone, safe, trusting and trusted, and Eames was fucking the most fun he’d ever had--right up until all the gooey-words anyway.
When Arthur’s devouring kiss ended, they had rolled into the center of the bed and were out of breath. Their lips smacked apart, and Eames’ eyes flashed, hands running up Arthur’s thighs, “Is that how you really feel, darling?”
Arthur’s breaths skipped, and this time he looked at the artistic depiction of Puck in order to nod. Absently, he traced the little horns of the hob-goblin, making the ticklish Brit twitch ever so slightly.
You’re the first one to really get me Arthur needed to say. Or you’re fucking amazing, did you know that? Even, I can’t believe I feel this way for a man with a fairy tattoo. He opened his mouth but the feelings wouldn’t bend into words, making the slight man feel like some kind of gangly ape-too stupid for communication.
Eames caressed Arthur’s dimples, coaxed him to make eye contact and then simply nodded, eyes sparkling like he hadn’t heard the one about his fairy-tat before.
Arthur expelled a hot breath and kissed the man again. Slowly, he began to grind and Eames moaned, “Mmmm, tell me, Arthur.” Then faster until both were making wanton sounds of desire, undignified but free, so free.
Eames flipped Arthur onto his back and the point man fisted the sheets above his head gasping, “Yes, yes, Eames, fucking...yeah,” because for the first time in his life, Arthur felt like he could really talk to someone without having to say a word.
Fin.