ignore this if y'all haven't seen "Inception" or just don't care :)

[domenicapm]

Title: Letting It Out
Author: domenicapm
Pairing/Characters: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13?
Warning(s): Fluff, a few naughty words. Also, it's unbetaed, so there may be mistakes/run-on sentences.
Summary: May have been slightly inspired by this.
Disclaimer: These character, alas, are not mine, and I am making no profit from writing or posting this.
Word Count: 3500-ish

You didn't realize how unused you'd become to physical contact, until Eames came along.

All that shit about personal bubbles and keeping one's hands to oneself? That's you, you in a nutshell. There's a reason why you wrap yourself in layers of cotton and wool, a reason you are so perpetually tucked-in and shellacked and put-together. Many reasons, actually, but chief and foremost among those is the feeling it gives others, a distinct impression of you can look but don't you dare touch. Air hostesses and waitresses stop just short of putting a hand on your sleeve; pretty girls (and boys) in posh clubs slide onto the barstool next to you and inch gradually over toward you, but can never quite bring themselves to brush up against you, or even graze the heel of your hand with their knuckles. People in crowds, they don't exactly lean away from you, but you can tell that they take extra care not to bump into you.

Your own mother, on the infrequent occasions when you visit her, shakes your hand instead of hugging and kissing you-but then again, that's your mother. It's just her way.

And you know, it works. Works for you. People, you tell yourself, are so messy, and you are so glad that you never run the risk of having coffee spilled down your front, or ending up with finger-smudges on your cuffs or collar, or having to go about your business smelling like the bank teller's cheap perfume.

It's not a phobia, or a fixation, or a disorder. You'd just prefer that people leave you alone. Okay? Okay.

With Cobb, it's-Well, you've hugged Cobb exactly three times in the entire span of your friendship: once after Phillipa was born, once after James was born, and once when you both should have been at Mal's funeral, but instead were hiding out in Johannesburg. The first two times, you had practiced it in your head beforehand, and you were quick and efficient, you knew exactly where each hand was going to end up, which arm went where, how long to hold the hug, and when to let go. The third time was honestly a bit (a lot) frightening, but you've forgiven Cobb because he was in a bad place and you couldn't blame him, even though he sort of lunged at you and then clung and you were afraid that he might cry on you.

Also, to be perfectly honest, despite the initial shock, it hadn't been bad at all, and you had felt a little comforted, as if the embrace had somehow dispersed some of the grief you shared with him. It had been a very trying time for both of you, one of very few times when you felt afraid.

Eames, though. Eames was different. Eames didn't give two shits whether you were down with this whole touching thing or not, Eames was a tactile sort of guy and he'd invade your space without a second thought.

With Eames, the unsaid look but do not touch vibe did not work, and you actually had to resort to heavily-italicized threats (“Eames, I swear to god, nudge me one more time and I will blow your fucking head off!”) to get the message through.

It wasn't until much, much later when you finally realized that you had begun threatening on principle alone, and that you hadn't stopped to consider whether you actually minded Eames' bumps and nudges and the way his fingers sometimes accidentally brushed over your wrist when he reached over your arm for a pencil or a newspaper clipping. Even then, you only considered it for a brief moment, after Cobb had jaunted off to Mombasa to retrieve him, after Ariadne had walked out but before she came back, while you puttered around the warehouse, cleaning and rearranging. And of course you had decided that no, there really was nothing pleasurable about the whole business, and you had only yourself to blame after all, because in a moment of extreme weakness, you'd given in.

Once, and only once, you had voluntarily touched Eames.

It happened in Moscow, in another of the dusty warehouses that Cobb was wont to rent, and it was the first time that either of you had worked with Eames. You and Cobb had been hired to extract from an art dealer in the city, an oily sort whom your employer, his business partner, suspected of dealing in stolen modernist art. Which, your employer also suspected, he had stolen from her after she'd stolen it from a private collection. (It was a job that you actually didn't have to feel guilty about, since both parties involved were so loathsome and you hated the Modernist movement anyway. Talentless hacks, the lot of them.) Cobb had heard of Eames from the architect you'd hired on a previous job, who had never actually worked with Eames but had worked with an extractor who had, and as a result, was full of stories extolling his nearly-supernatural skills as a forger.

You hadn't been much impressed by the hearsay referral. Cobb, however, had been so intrigued that he'd gone to the extraordinary trouble of tracking him down in order that he might assist the two of you on this job, a particularly tricky extraction that required forging the subject's mother and confidante.

You disliked him immediately because he was loud and obnoxious and he was apparently much cleverer about certain things than you would ever be. He upset you by leaving magazine leaves and newspaper sections strewn about on tables and desks and countertops, and his habit of chewing on toothpicks and coffee-stirrers set your own teeth on edge. And then, of course, there were his clothes: every single piece of his wardrobe seemed to have been manufactured with the sole purpose of clashing hideously with every other piece of clothing on the face of the earth. He wore silk shirts and tweeds, with loafers; he wore paisley with linen slacks (in the middle of winter in Moscow, no less); he wore paisley in the first place, for god's sake; he had a couple of luridly-patterned silk scarves that he would loop around his neck when he felt particularly offensive.

Just thinking about Eames' various crimes against good taste was enough to give you a splitting headache.

In the beginning, you were pretty sure that Eames' disregard for personal space was just carelessness. The very first day that the two of you worked together, he stood behind you and read over your shoulder as you worked on your laptop. You politely cleared your throat and waited for him to take the hint, but instead of moving, he leaned down and actually rested his hand on your shoulder. You immediately felt your whole body go stiff, and Eames must have noticed, too, because he stepped back and broke contact, but you heard a smirk in his voice when he said, “Goodness, somebody's a little touchy, aren't they?”

You injected as much scorn into your voice as possible. “The opposite, Mr. Eames. Some of us don't like being used as other peoples' furniture.”

“Oh, but you'd look so lovely in my living room. I have the most exquisite rococo revival side-chair; you'd match it so perfectly.”

You hated rococo, both the first wave and revival, and were about to tell him that it was tacky and fussy, but he reached over your shoulder to pick up the file folder you'd put together on the subject's mother at that exact moment, adding absently, “It's just as well, I suppose.  You're all bones; you wouldn't be very comfortable as a sofa, would you?” After flipping casually through it, he tapped you on the shoulder (probably just to feel you flinch) and said, “You know, it would be helpful to know where she gets her hair done.”

You knew exactly why he wanted to know, and hating yourself for missing that information, you immediately began compiling a list of all the salons in Moscow, grouped by proximity to the woman's home and clientele demographic. “I really doubt you have a rococo revival anything in your apartment, Mr. Eames,” you had said spitefully, though it didn't seem to sting him very much, as he didn't even bother looking up.

Eames was hateful, but he was so good at what he did that you couldn't bring yourself to demand that Cobb fire him-tailing the subject's mother to her hair appointment, that had been genius, he'd learned twice as much about her as he needed from that one excursion, after all. So you contented yourself with trying to make his life as miserable as he seemed set on making yours. The two of you sniped at each other so loudly and constantly that Cobb shook his head and said it was worse than looking after a pair of five-year-olds, worse than living with a couple going through a divorce, even.

You found yourself sort of agreeing with him, and couldn't wait until the job was completed.

On one mind-numbingly cold, blustery Tuesday morning in March, you walked into the warehouse to find Eames already there, even though it was only eight-thirty. He had already brewed a pot of coffee, and stood, mug in one hand, looking out one of the tall, narrow, grimy windows. You hung up your coat and hat, fixed yourself some coffee, and did your best to ignore him. After working with him for nearly a month, you felt actually exhausted at the prospect of dealing with Eames today and it was too early anyway; the one saving grace he had about him was that he rarely made an appearance before eleven.

But on that day, there was something off. (And it wasn't just that the coffee he'd made was pitifully weak; those damn English and their tea.) He was quiet, and he was still, and he was never either of those things and somehow, you found it more upsetting than you found his normal behavior. From your desk, you also saw that his shoulders looked rather slumped, not just his normal horrible posture, either, but an expression of defeat or something, and you finally sighed and braced yourself and asked, “What's the matter, Eames?”

Eames turned from the window and threw a tight, bitter smile your way. “My sister called me at three this morning. My mother died yesterday.”

“I'm sorry, Eames,” you said, and actually meant it.

“She'd been ill for a long time. It wasn't entirely unexpected,” he told you, and you weren't sure what to say next. You meant to tell him that you knew how he felt, you remembered from losing your father but the memory felt too intimate to share between antagonists and the words never even made it to your throat.

Instead, you said, “I imagine you'll need time off, at least for the funeral?”

“I'm...not exactly invited to the funeral,” he replied. “Besides, it's on Friday.”

The subject had a dental appointment on Friday, a routine procedure for which a local anesthetic would normally be sufficient, but because your subject was extremely susceptible to pain-and was extremely vocal about it-his dentist had arranged for him to be put under. (In a rare moment of camaraderie, you and Eames and Cobb had all appreciated the irony of doing an extraction during an extraction.) A better chance might not come along for weeks or months; you had to go through with it on Friday.

There was nothing else to be said about it, really, but you felt awkward already and Eames looked miserable, so what the hell, you got up and went over to where he was standing and actually put your hand on his shoulder in what you hoped was a sympathetic manner. It worked; in fact, it worked a little too well.  Before you knew what was happening, Eames had wrapped his arms around you and was leaning his chin on your shoulder. You heard him sniffle and then finally it registered: Oh, god, Eames was actually crying on your shoulder. Resisting the urge to push him away, you took a deep breath and tried to compose yourself and, when his shoulders rose and then fell once, as if in a sob, you patted him on the back.

You found yourself thinking less and less about the prospect of tear-stains on your jacket, and more about the way it felt to have been folded into Eames' arms: how much broader he was than you, how rough the cloth of his ridiculous jacket felt against the palm of your hand, how your freezing finger-tips and nose appreciated the warmth radiating from him. You caught yourself relaxing, bit by bit, soothed by the rhythmic, slow patting of your own hand between Eames' shoulders, half-wishing that somebody had thought to do this for your twelve-year-old self after your father had died.

You felt unshed tears stinging your eyes, and you felt all the pinholes in all the dams you'd built up within yourself over the years, and you realized how weak the whole system was, and you thought you might die if it all collapsed now, at this moment.

Eames' arms tightened around you for an instant, and then he released you. His face wasn't tear-streaked, but his eyes looked rather red, and he sniffled a bit more as he stepped back and reached out to straighten your tie and-gods above-smooth down the shoulders and sleeves of your jacket. One corner of his mouth quirked up slightly, wryly, as he said, “Thank you, Arthur.”

Embarrassed and more than a little unsettled by your reaction to the contact, you replied, “Please never, ever mention this again, okay? Never.” And then, a little less brusquely-“Why don't you give yourself a few hours to...decompress? You look like you didn't sleep last night.”

Again, Eames' wry little half-smile. “Thank you, Arthur.”

As he walked past you, you heard yourself telling him to please not thank you again.

Neither of you ever mentioned it again, at least not to the best of your knowledge. By the time that Eames sauntered back in, it was well past one in the afternoon and Cobb only raised his eyebrows and suggested that since the Forger had finally decided to clock in for the day, they could do one more run-through of the first level.

-----
Cobb is already gone.

Cobb has already gone, is probably right now on his way back to his home and children, and you have been left alone in the middle of LAX, still half-groggy and stiff from a ten-hour nap in your seat, the inside of your wrist still itching slightly from where the PASIV needle had gone in. You've turned your die over and over in your fingers, a dozen times now, and you know this is real but it still doesn't feel like it.

Half of you is still down there, retracing your steps and asking yourself how you could have possibly overlooked that one detail, the most important detail, the one that nearly cost you the job and the others' lives and minds. You feel like you need to apologize, but there's nobody to apologize to. Everyone's already on their way to something else, moving on.

Except you.

Cobb's gone, and for the first time in a long time, you're not sure where you're going. Not sure what you want.

Not that you're blaming him, of course.

It's just that you can't seem to move yourself, not mentally and not even physically at this point, and so you sit down on a bench not far from the luggage carousel, fully intending to get a grip on yourself, perhaps pull out your phone and make a reservation for a hotel or book another flight. Instead, you feel yourself slumping forward, elbows on your knees. Exhausted, in body and mind, your throat funny and tight, your eyes stinging suspiciously-

“Oy. Arthur. I sincerely hope that you're not beating yourself up over how things unfolded down there.”

A shadow has fallen over you, Eames' shadow, you realize upon hearing his voice, and Eames is not the person you want to see right now. “Go away, Eames. We're supposed to be splitting up and heading out, remember?”

“And I was on my way to do exactly that. You, however...”

“I'm resting,” you say defensively.

“Arthur.”

The tone of his voice quite clearly tells you that you're being ridiculous and stubborn, but he nevertheless sits down. “Darling, whatever's bothering you, just let it out, already,” he says, and his solid, warm arm goes round your shoulders. Instead of automatically flinching away-and, possibly, leaving Eames with a black-eye to warn him away from trying this ever again-you feel yourself actually leaning into his touch like an attention-starved cat. You're in the middle of a very stern talk with yourself about not crying on a bench at LAX, and how Eames is clearly the devil and you shouldn't listen to him when he tells you to let it out, Arthur darling, when the dam bursts.

The deluge starts with a trembling sigh and ends with you hiccuping and choking against Eames' shoulder, mumbling semi-coherently about missed details and your career and how it wasn't supposed to be like this, you were supposed to go to law school, for Christ's sake, and your mother is so disappointed in her only son. That's why Cobb was such a father figure to you, and now Cobb is gone, and after you nearly fucked up everything, too, and now you're making a scene in the middle of LAX, you're absolutely certain that people are gathering around to stare at you like some circus freak...

“Nobody's even batting an eye, Arthur.” Eames squeezes your shoulder sympathetically before rummaging around in his jacket pockets, producing a dubiously-wrinkled handkerchief and handing it over to you. You blow your nose into it while trying not to think about the things that hankie might have seen before now. “You know, it wasn't your fault. I mean, not entirely. At least you didn't let in a bitter, angry projection of your dead wife intent on seeing all of us die horrible, painful deaths.”

You stare at Eames, who looks as though he's trying hard not to smile. “Feel better yet?” he asks.

The strangest thing is, you do. You're embarrassed, yes, and the slight shame accompanying crying in Eames' arms has colored your cheeks a little, but most of the pent-up tension and anxiety (and though you won't admit it, grief) that had built up in the pit of your stomach is gone. You feel lighter. You feel so much better, in fact, that you turn your head to look Eames in the eye and you smile at him.

“You're welcome, Arthur,” he says, his arm lingering around you for one more long moment before he rises and slings his worn leather duffel bag over his shoulder. Extending one hand in your direction, he continues, “Come on. I don't even remember the last time I ate, and what with all the running and jumping and shooting at things and blowing up other things, I'm afraid I've worked up quite an appetite.”

Overwhelmed, you glance from his hand to his eyes, crinkled at the corners from the grin spread over his face, and then you pull yourself off the bench without assistance. “Thank you, Mr. Eames,” you tell him, hoping that he gets the, “...but that's quite enough for today, I think,” implied by your refusal of his assistance. “I seem to remember that there is a passable Chinese place not far from here. Unless you'd prefer something else?”

Eames is smiling, you know by his voice as he says, half under his breath, “Well well well, it looks like we shall make you a real boy yet.”

“I take it, Chinese is fine with you, then?” you reply, ignoring his comment, shifting your duffel stiffly from one shoulder to the other.

He wins you over just a little when he reaches out, as if to ruffle your hair, and then halts his hand, mid-air, before jamming it into his pocket. “Arthur, I promise you that I shall be a perfect gentleman,” he assures you, his voice all seriousness even though his eyes still glint with amusement.

“Mr. Eames, I doubt you even know how to be a perfect gentleman,” you say, setting off and leaving him to scramble after you.

“Nevertheless, I shall put forth my very best effort,” you hear him say from a few feet behind you.

Eames, true to his word, doesn't even try to kiss you until three weeks later, after he's walked you to the door of your hotel room.

You don't punch him, or stomp on his foot, or even flinch. (Not very badly, anyway.) In fact, you reach out and wrap your arms around him, pulling him closer, and you can't even find it within yourself to be embarrassed about it.

You never realized how much you missed human contact until Eames came along.