Fic: After (gen)
title: After
author: ilovetakahana
rating: Gen
pairing: Arthur / Eames
warnings: none except that this is my first Inception fic.
disclaimer: I don't own the story or the characters.
summary: after the job, Arthur reels Eames in.
The job is done, Cobb is gone, the rest of the team has left with murmured promises of getting together for another job soon. [Is that Saito asking Yusuf and Ariadne to train him? In what?]
Arthur sighs, runs his hands through his hair, pats the pocket he's sewn into each of his vests and shirts, the secret pocket that holds his loaded die over his heart. Now that the job was done it was okay to be just himself, to stop playing the part of the stalwart point man, to breathe.
Does he ever need to breathe now. Inception is not a job he would want to undertake twice although he knows that if Cobb ever came back to the business he will want to try that again. [He will. He will.]
There is a twinge in his gut that makes him think of food and a very heavy-handed tumbler of scotch on the rocks and he calls a cab to take him to his favorite restaurant in the country.
He knows he's being followed almost from the start - but he knows who the follower is and frankly, after all that teasing inside the layers of dreams, the incongruous gentleness, those looks, holy God those looks - frankly, he thinks he's going to need him.
Eames takes his time showing up in the dining room. He looks far more put together than he did in the dreams - the man actually owns a decent shirt and it's pressed so sharply the creases could cut through butter and whispers - and he looks both confident and questioning as he pulls up to the chair opposite Arthur's.
Arthur waves him into the chair and then signals for menus, offering one to Eames but then....
"I'll have what he's having," Eames murmurs, his eyes darting everywhere.
Arthur nods and asks for the house specials, scotch on the rocks, and a bottle of champagne for later.
Eames is looking at everyone except him. He can't find it in his heart to be offended. Forgery was a skill that was always on, always picking up new things and new people, and if they hadn't had him along on this job it would never even have gotten off the ground. So he's content to wait for the other man.
It takes a few moments but Eames finally sighs and looks at him, cataloguing over. And then he sighs again, far more deeply this time, and puts his head in his hands. "I am normally renowned for my subtleties, darling," voice husky and muffled.
"This wasn't what you had in mind?" Arthur asks, with a little smile to show he's not actually needling for once.
Eames chuckles like it's being pulled out of him on a wire. "Dear Arthur," he rasps. "I was thinking of something a little grittier. A little more interesting."
"And this isn't?"
The food arrives. Eames is far more interested in the drinks, however, and greedily downs half his tumbler, ice clinking, shivering a little as the concentrated shock of alcohol hits his bloodstream.
He watches intently as, finally, the other man gets it. They are here precisely because they can consider each other as the most important and interesting thing in the room. They are here, and they have come back from that job, and nothing will ever be the same again.
***
Upstairs, in his suite, he opens the champagne, pours glasses, sets the bottle back into the ice. And turns to Eames, toasting him: "To Cobb. To inception. To this fucking job we never thought would actually work."
And if that's how they're going to start, Arthur thinks vaguely as Eames drains his glass and then walks over to kiss him, well, they've done much, much worse.
author: ilovetakahana
rating: Gen
pairing: Arthur / Eames
warnings: none except that this is my first Inception fic.
disclaimer: I don't own the story or the characters.
summary: after the job, Arthur reels Eames in.
The job is done, Cobb is gone, the rest of the team has left with murmured promises of getting together for another job soon. [Is that Saito asking Yusuf and Ariadne to train him? In what?]
Arthur sighs, runs his hands through his hair, pats the pocket he's sewn into each of his vests and shirts, the secret pocket that holds his loaded die over his heart. Now that the job was done it was okay to be just himself, to stop playing the part of the stalwart point man, to breathe.
Does he ever need to breathe now. Inception is not a job he would want to undertake twice although he knows that if Cobb ever came back to the business he will want to try that again. [He will. He will.]
There is a twinge in his gut that makes him think of food and a very heavy-handed tumbler of scotch on the rocks and he calls a cab to take him to his favorite restaurant in the country.
He knows he's being followed almost from the start - but he knows who the follower is and frankly, after all that teasing inside the layers of dreams, the incongruous gentleness, those looks, holy God those looks - frankly, he thinks he's going to need him.
Eames takes his time showing up in the dining room. He looks far more put together than he did in the dreams - the man actually owns a decent shirt and it's pressed so sharply the creases could cut through butter and whispers - and he looks both confident and questioning as he pulls up to the chair opposite Arthur's.
Arthur waves him into the chair and then signals for menus, offering one to Eames but then....
"I'll have what he's having," Eames murmurs, his eyes darting everywhere.
Arthur nods and asks for the house specials, scotch on the rocks, and a bottle of champagne for later.
Eames is looking at everyone except him. He can't find it in his heart to be offended. Forgery was a skill that was always on, always picking up new things and new people, and if they hadn't had him along on this job it would never even have gotten off the ground. So he's content to wait for the other man.
It takes a few moments but Eames finally sighs and looks at him, cataloguing over. And then he sighs again, far more deeply this time, and puts his head in his hands. "I am normally renowned for my subtleties, darling," voice husky and muffled.
"This wasn't what you had in mind?" Arthur asks, with a little smile to show he's not actually needling for once.
Eames chuckles like it's being pulled out of him on a wire. "Dear Arthur," he rasps. "I was thinking of something a little grittier. A little more interesting."
"And this isn't?"
The food arrives. Eames is far more interested in the drinks, however, and greedily downs half his tumbler, ice clinking, shivering a little as the concentrated shock of alcohol hits his bloodstream.
He watches intently as, finally, the other man gets it. They are here precisely because they can consider each other as the most important and interesting thing in the room. They are here, and they have come back from that job, and nothing will ever be the same again.
***
Upstairs, in his suite, he opens the champagne, pours glasses, sets the bottle back into the ice. And turns to Eames, toasting him: "To Cobb. To inception. To this fucking job we never thought would actually work."
And if that's how they're going to start, Arthur thinks vaguely as Eames drains his glass and then walks over to kiss him, well, they've done much, much worse.