Inception Fic: we were once cinema gods in the night, Arthur/Eames, R, [2/2]
THIS STORY IS FUCKING DONE NOW JESUS CHRIST. Part One can be found here.
Title: we were once cinema gods in the night [2/2]
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: R
Wordcount: 10,556 (this part)/~21,000 (full story)
Warnings: Discussion of past drug use, generally appalling language, canon character death
Summary: That's the thing about Hollywood--everyone has a Hollywood story.
Arthur and Eames fucked once, and only once, on the Cobol set.
They'd been building up to it for years, of course, flirting, drawing closer and pulling away; Eames would be (purposefully) photographed making out with some hot young model and Arthur had his pick of guys, and he took advantage of it when he had time. They got to know each other anyway, over too many late nights and too few beers, via ridiculous emails, on the cutting room floor and the dance floor but never, never, the actual floor, and then Mal died and everything went to hell.
Dom wouldn't shut down production, which was the second basically insurmountable hurdle Arthur was trying to vault, if you counted Mal's death as the first. Arthur certainly did, when he considered it at all; he was mostly trying not to, for the sake of not losing focus. Because someone had to be focused, someone had to keep it together, someone had to keep track of the money Dom was spending willy-nilly and the completely wrecked set schedule and the way Eames couldn't hold character. Someone had to keep the crew from striking and someone had to appease the studio and someone had to keep their head above water.
Arthur wasn't used to problems he couldn't solve with the right amount of backbreaking effort. Arthur wasn't used to mountains he couldn't just pony up and climb.
He was working late, going over the dailies and trying to work out the most effective way to confront a grieving widower/boss/friend about the drug problem he was visibly developing, when Eames walked in. And even that, even that was another problem, because Eames was just shy of shattered, edging away from being himself in favor of being everyone but his fucking character, and Arthur lifted his head, steeling himself for the inevitable rant.
But Eames just looked tired, sick and heavy with the weight that they were all carrying, and maybe a little concerned. He sat down on the table in front of Arthur, looking down at him as he fiddled with a poker chip he'd snatched from Props.
"What is it?" Arthur asked, and his voice sounded so dragged out that even he was a little surprised. "What do you need?"
"Nothing in particular. Let's get you some dinner, yeah?" Eames said, reaching out to--to do something, straighten Arthur's collar or something--and then visibly thinking better of it. "A man cannot subsist on krafty alone."
"I'm too fucking busy for dinner," Arthur muttered, and Eames sighed.
"Indulge me," he said, and somehow they ended up back at Eames' apartment with Chinese, because Eames had always been possessed of a strange ability to get exactly what he wanted.
They ate mostly in silence; all the things they could have talked about were either as unpleasant or as trite as each other. Eames tried once or twice anyway, small-talk about various extras, but inevitably that led to the sketchy-looking strangers that Arthur had seen going in and out of Dom's trailer, and after that he didn't bother. They ate, and when they finished Arthur shut himself in Eames' bathroom and splashed water on his face, trying to ignore how absolutely fucking terrible he looked.
And then he came out again, and Eames was standing by the window with a joint caught between two fingers, and Arthur suddenly didn't have any control anymore.
It was just pot, which was what made the whole thing so stupid. It was just pot, Arthur had smoked pot with Eames a hundred times, at parties and outside of clubs and once, inadvisably, in his trailer. It was just pot and Arthur didn't have a problem with pot, but Eames was standing there in the window with circles under his eyes and drugs in his hand and Dom was using and everything was falling to pieces, and it wasn't even really a choice.
He crossed the room in three strides, ripped the joint from Eames' hand, threw it out the window, and snapped, "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Bloody hell!" Eames cried, leaning out the window and fruitlessly attempting to snatch the joint from midair. "Oi, that was some quality dank, what are you--"
"Is professionalism some kind of fucking lost art?" Arthur demanded. "Jesus, did it sink with Atlantis while I wasn't paying attention? How fucking stupid can you possibly get? God, what if they ran a drug test--"
"What if who ran a drug test?" Eames asked, honestly confused. "The studio? Even if they did, this is Hollywood, love, I doubt they'd care about a little--"
"You don't know that!" Arthur snapped. "You don't know that and anyway that isn't the fucking point, the point is that just because you're sad doesn't mean you can just go ahead and make terrible fucking decisions--"
"Ah," Eames said, and suddenly he looked as angry as Arthur had ever seen him. "So it's like that, is it?"
"Like what?"
"I'll play Dom fucking Cobb for you if you want me to, darling," Eames said, his eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits, "but I think the least you could do is bloody ask."
And what Arthur could have done--what Arthur should have done--is corrected him then and there. He should have said, "Fucking hell, that's not what I'm doing," or even "Fucking hell, that's not what I meant to be doing," which was less absolving but more true.
But he was frustrated, and he was tired, and it had been a long time since he'd just gone ahead and taken something solely for himself, and so what Arthur did do was lean forward and snarl directly into Eames' mouth.
"Fuck you," he hissed, biting Eames' lower lip and drawing it in, "fuck you," and then Eames was grabbing him around the waist and hauling him forward, crushing their mouths together.
Eames was bigger than him, empirically--Arthur had always known that, since that bar they'd met in, but it was especially true in that moment. He'd bulked up for Cobol, put on enough muscle that when he tightened his fingers and fucking threw Arthur into the wall, Arthur went, hitting it too hard. And even as he felt the sting, sharp and aching, where bruises would probably form in the morning, even then he was shoving a hand down into Eames' pants to cup his balls just a shade too tight.
"Don't fuck with me," he snapped, and Eames smiled and winced at once.
"Just fuck you, right?" he said, voice thick, and it wasn't really a question, but Arthur tightened his grip for half a second anyway. Eames let out a noise that was something between a keen and a growl and captured his mouth again.
They shoved each other to the bedroom, tearing their clothes and biting, snapping. Eames' lips were swollen and bruised by the time Arthur body-checked him onto the bed, impossibly bigger then they'd fucking been already, and Arthur bore down on them. Nine-odd years of flirting and not-flirting, of purposefully missing the point, will do things to you, will make you desperate and too rough the same way grief and fury and stress will, and between it all they were violent with each other, far too hard.
"Arthur, Arthur," Eames mocked, straddled over him, the full length of his cock buried in Arthur's ass, "never figured you for the type to spread your legs, always business with you, isn't it--"
"What part of shut up and fuck me is so fucking complicated?" Arthur demanded, breathless.
"You never actually gave me that instruction," Eames said, nipping his collarbone with too much teeth. "You implied it, but you never specifically said--"
"Shut the fuck up and fuck me, Mr. Eames," Arthur hissed, "right fucking now, I swear to god."
And Eames did, pounding into him until the last dregs of orgasm had been rung from him. Arthur lasted longer, and when he pulled himself off he made a point to come all over Eames' stupid hideous comforter, thinking about all the models he'd probably had in here, all the people who'd touched him before. Eames' mouth curled up in a smirk, watching him.
"Depraved little thing, aren't you?" he asked, his eyes slightly narrowed. And Arthur could have said a hundred things, but the weight of this decision was already setting over him, and with it the warm, familiar blanket of exhaustion. He moved anyway, to stand up, to get some air and clear his head and handle this like an adult, but then Eames was throwing an arm across him, trapping him.
"Let me have this," he said, and his eyes were still narrowed, but there was a slightly bitter twist to his mouth now. Arthur felt something like guilt twinge at the base of his spine. "Just, Christ, I know you're a fucking asshole, but let me have this one little bloody thing, alright?"
"Fine," Arthur said, "fine, just don't--"
"I'm not trying to sodding spoon you, Arthur, for fuck's sake," Eames growled, his voice going dangerously tense again. "If you could just--just don't go, I just don't want to--"
"Yeah," Arthur said, because he was exhausted and Eames' voice, strung up and wired like that, made his head hurt, "yeah, okay, fine, that's fine, I'll stay. Jesus, calm down."
Eames didn't get any closer, but he did relax, so his arm was draped loose and heavy across Arthur's waist. There was space between them, enough that they weren't touching except for that carefully held spot, but Arthur felt some of the tension seep out of his own shoulders anyway.
And then he was waking up, the soft light of dawn filtering in, Eames snoring next to him.
Arthur was facing the wall, in the exact spot he'd been in when he'd passed out the previous night--he tended not to move much in his sleep, as a general rule, and even less in strange beds. Eames, on the other hand, was splayed across the bed on his stomach, his face tilted towards Arthur on the pillow.
His hand, predictably, had migrated to rest on Arthur's ass in his sleep.
Arthur shifted a little, out from under the grip, mostly to see if Eames would wake. He didn't, and Arthur winced up at the ceiling, feeling the exertion of the previous nights manifest itself in a dull, relentless ache. He was sleep-riddled, still, and so if he allowed himself a moment to just look, it wasn't necessarily as fucking humiliating as it would have been if his wits were entirely about him.
The thing is, he'd never seen Eames asleep before, not in all the time they'd known each other. It was…Arthur hadn't realized, not fully, the degree to which Eames was playing a role all the time, not until he saw him without any way to play one. He just looked tired, lines on his face that didn't show when he was awake, his mouth open slightly.
Arthur found himself wondering, suddenly, how many people Eames had allowed this close, how many people Eames had let in this far. Because while he was sure Eames had had his share of scores up here, trails of gorgeous girls and starry-eyed boys tumbling over each other to get a hand on him, he was equally sure he rarely let them stay. Discretion wasn't something you could afford to be lax about when you were a media darling, and anyway Eames was one of the most guarded people Arthur had ever met--and he'd spent a nearly a third of his life in Hollywood, for fuck's sake.
And then Arthur was thinking, oddly, of the Cannes apartment, three years his at that point. He was thinking about how he'd texted Eames the address, not even really considering it, when he'd texted Dom--a place four people knew was his, and Eames was one of them. Why? Arthur hadn't expected him to come, hadn't even wanted him to come, but he'd shot it off anyway.
Tell no one, that text had said, the same to Dom and Eames, but in case you need to find me when I'm gone.
He'd had scores of men up there, Arthur had, taking advantage of his infrequent and well-deserved vacations. He let them stay the night, usually, because it wasn't worth his time to go through the rigmarole of kicking them to the curb when he was done with them. He'd fucked and been fucked there, and in the morning he'd padded around absently, more or less oblivious to the presence of his assorted guests, knowing he wasn't visible enough to be recognized or followed by the press--how long had it been for Eames, since he'd been afforded that luxury? The ease of not having to think about it?
It was stupid. Arthur knew it was stupid, to cast Eames as some kind of--well, to cast him as anything, really, because that was the trouble with Eames. He was always sliding into these roles people made for him, these roles he made for himself. Of everyone in his life, professionally speaking, Arthur had known him the longest, the best--Mal was dead and Cobb hadn't met him until he was already over the wide-eyed wonder of his first film, until he was already shifting into someone harder.
Arthur stared at Eames, face slack with sleep, and remembered his trailer on the Gone With The Wind set. He'd spent a ridiculous amount of his first big paycheck outfitting it, and they'd sat in there one night, beers resting on the floor by their feet. Arthur had been so fucking young then, twenty-two and damnably fresh-faced, and he'd tried harder, because he'd had more to prove. He wouldn't have touched Eames for anything, because he needed to be taken fucking seriously, but he'd been in that trailer anyway and Eames had showed him the record player, the vintage copy of The White Album Arthur had laughed and laughed about. And then Eames had started screwing around with Mal and Arthur had just gotten more uptight, had driven that stick of professionalism further up his own ass.
They were a study in misfire, the two of them, even then, and Arthur reached out a hand and let it rest on Eames' cheek almost absently, angry and sorry and unsure, for once in his life.
Eames smiled and butted up against the touch, rubbing against Arthur's palm in his sleep, unguarded and tender, more tender than Arthur would have imagined possible.
Arthur is a man of few regrets; there's no business like show business, and it's not prudent in a world where everyone is watching for mistakes to linger on the shit you've done wrong. He only allows himself to mourn a decision when he knows, decisively and without argument, that it was the wrong one, and getting out of that bed that morning was one of those bad choices. It would have been so easy to press his thumb a little harder, to fucking say something, to wake him up on that note instead of alone--he should have considered Eames' stupid ego, the way he always put more weight on things than was necessary, his tendency toward dramatic and ill-thought-out.
But he didn't, which is why Eames stumbled into the kitchen twenty minutes later to find him showered, dressed, and making coffee.
"Oh, love," he said, condescending and rife with pity, looking over the kitchen with that terrible smirk curling his mouth again, "you've got the wrong end of the stick."
"Have I?" Arthur asked. "Do tell."
"You can't be…" Eames paused, sighed, and gestured broadly. "Not that it wasn't lovely, of course, but I can't have you making me coffee. This isn't--"
"Oh," Arthur said, catching on. And really, the anger bubbling up under his surface, erasing his desire to explain that this had been about a lot of things but none of them were Dominic fucking Cobb, was entirely unjustified.
"Terribly sorry," Eames said, not sounding it, "but I just, you know, I can't be--I have a career to think of."
"I know," Arthur replied, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "So do I, for that matter. You're right."
"I am?" Eames said, startled. Somewhere, distantly, Arthur registered that he was seeing Eames break character, knew what that meant, and dismissed it anyway.
"Of course you are," Arthur said, taking a long pull from his cup and checking his watch. "Shit, I've got to get out of here. I'll see you on set, right? We've got--"
"So that's it?" Eames said, and oh, god, he was careening wildly through his options now, wrong-footed and still not quite awake, and Arthur wanted to push him into the wall and demand a little bit of fucking honestly.
But he'd always had more control than that.
"What's it?" he said, instead.
"You're just going to--we're just going to go back to business as usual, then? Just like that it?"
"I don't see why we shouldn't," Arthur said. "Wasn't that your point?"
"You," Eames said, his voice tight, and then, sounding completely impassive about it, "right, well, you've always been a bit of a chilly bastard, haven't you? Have a lovely morning."
And then he turned around and went back into the bedroom, letting the door snick shut behind him as Arthur let himself out.
--
TMZ.com, December 17, 2010
Eames and producer Arthur Levine were spotted at Proclus last night, partying with the likes of Jude Law and Mary-Kate Olsen. Though both parties' camps have declined comment, onlookers say the meet-up was more than strictly professional…and then there's the shots of Eames getting into Levine's car, below. Are these two at it again? Keep watching TMZ for updates.
--
"Good morning, sunshine," Amanda says, and Arthur can hear her damn grin over the phone.
"I saw it already," he informs he, forcing himself up out of bed and shutting his laptop. "I'm sure there will be more in a few hours, and nothing happened, he slept on my couch. Thanks for fielding the calls, by the way."
"Not a problem. You know I never sleep."
"I'm really starting to think that's true," Arthur says, heading toward the kitchen. He stops, staring at Eames sprawled across the couch, and sighs. "Hold on."
"Eames," he says, holding the phone to his shoulder and bending down to poke him, "Eames, wake the fuck up, we've got forty five minutes to get to set."
"Piss off," Eames groans, "I'm dying."
"You're hungover," Arthur says, amused. "Get in the shower, I'll find you some Tylenol or something, we've got shit to do."
"Oh, Christ, light, why," Eames groans, throwing a hand over his face. "You're going to have to rewrite the whole script, I'm not fit for anything save horror films today."
"That's always been true," Arthur agrees cheerfully, "and yet. Up, you lazy shit, come on."
"I loathe you," Eames says, pulling himself upright. "I despise you with every fibre of my being."
"Also, we've made TMZ," says Arthur, "again. Thanks for that."
"I need Julie," Eames moans. "And a sledgehammer. And immediate death."
"Shower," Arthur says firmly, pushing him in the general direction of the bathroom, and picks up the phone to address Amanda again. "Not a fucking word."
"You never let me have any fun," she complains, even as Eames calls out "And what kind of poofter shampoo is this?" over the sound of running water. Arthur goes out onto his porch, shutting the glass door to drown out at least one of his problems.
"How bad is it?"
"Not bad, on the scale of things," Amanda says; he can hear the shrug in her voice. "You're not really news compared to him, no offense, and it's not like there haven't been rumors for years. It's mostly Nash trying to push the angle."
"Why, exactly, haven't I ruined that guy's fucking life yet?"
"Because you're a good person, somewhere very very deep down inside," Amanda says promptly, "and also because he toes the line between stretching the truth and actually committing libel pretty well."
"I hate this fucking town," Arthur sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Okay, can you just--run me through the schedule for today again, and then…"
He gets lost in the conversation for a couple minutes, going back and forth on the shit he has to get done, and when he comes in off the porch to grab his laptop Eames is freshly showered and on the phone with Julie. Arthur half listens to him planning a few different interviews as he flips through the documents Amanda's forwarded to him, and they kind of avoid awkwardness by not speaking to each other at all.
It's comfortable, though, the way Eames rolls his eyes at Arthur when Julie's said something particularly amusing, the way Arthur tosses him an apple and makes a disapproving face when he digs around in Arthur's cupboards for something more substantial. Neither one of them hangs up until they're in the car, and Eames demands they stop for coffee, and then they're so close to set that it's easy enough to slip into discussion of the day's work ahead.
Amanda and Julie are waiting for them together when they get in, both with their Blackberries in hand, laughing about something.
"Well," Eames says, "that's the most terrifying thing I've seen in some time."
"Do you ever think they're engineering our downfall?" Arthur asks. "I mean, between the two of them--"
"Please," Julie says, rolling her eyes. "If we wanted to bring you two down we would have done it ages ago, it's not like either one of you is particularly bright."
"I resent that," Eames says.
"I don't," Arthur says, shrugging. "I fully contend that Amanda is smarter than me."
"See, that's why my boss is better than your boss," Amanda tells Julie, grinning. "At least mine is willing to admit that he's a moron."
"I didn't say that," Arthur points out. "Now, trade coffee with me."
"Why?" Amanda asks, even as she's handing it over. "Starbucks out of soy again?"
"I don't understand why it's so fucking hard to keep it in stock," Arthur grumbles. "It's not like it's hard to find."
Amanda takes a sip of his cup and makes a face. "Goddamn it, Arthur, you've ruined me for regular milk."
"You've trained her to take her coffee with soy?" Eames asks, his eyebrows up.
"No," Amanda snaps, before Arthur can, "I'm not his dog. It was just easier then listening to him bitch and kvetch and try to convince me to get him a line on shutting down entire corporations every time he couldn't get--"
"Jesus, let's move on," Arthur snaps, because Eames is laughing at him now. "Eames, you need to get to hair and make-up, Blaine is going to have a fit and a half about the circles under your eyes."
"I warned him already," Julie says, scrolling through some list on her phone. "But Arthur's right, you'd better get down there, you're shooting in half an hour and and Access Hollywood will be here for the onset stills at four--"
"Arthur, you're meeting with Yusuf and Jacob--Jacob Hendrickson, the stunt guy, why don't you ever read my emails--before the first shot to go over the blocking for next week, Yusuf wants to change up the angle and Jacob says it's not in his contract, they're waiting for you in--"
"Have a good morning, love," Eames calls over his shoulder, as Julie leads him away. She smacks him for not paying attention, and Arthur waves him off, listening to Amanda; if he's smiling, it's obviously just a trick of the damn light.
--
TMZ.com, January 3, 2007
Sources report that actor Eames spent several hours in police custody today, though there is no official arrest report on record as of yet. According to bystanders, Eames had "a complete breakdown," on the set of The Cobol Job, going so far as to threaten director Dominic Cobb and break several thousand dollars worth of equipment.
"Any tension on set today has been resolved," said producer Arthur Levine. "This is a non-story."
Somehow, TMZ doesn't think so…
--
TMZ.com, October 25, 2007
A TMZ EXCLUSIVE: Dominic Cobb Arrested For Drug Possession at Cobol Premiere
The premiere of The Cobol Job was thrown into chaos earlier this evening when director Dominic Cobb was removed from the premises in handcuffs, following an attempted fist-fight with his lead actor, Eames, whose discontent with the film is widely known. Why the police chose to disrupt the premiere in this way is unknown as of yet, though TMZ can report that they were called to the scene following the altercation with Eames. The initial arrest report indicates that Cobb was in possession of both cocaine and heroin; as of yet, Eames is not in custody.
No one from either camp could be reached for comment, but check back for updates…
--
rottentomatoes.com, November 18, 2007, Review: The Cobol Job (Excerpt)
Some advice on The Cobol Job: don't see it.
No, seriously. If you're looking for entertainment, you might check out the controversy surround director Dominic Cobb's arrest at the film's premiere; you might also consider watching paint dry, it would probably be more interesting. We're not sure if it's Cobb's meandering, strange directorial choices, a far cry from his usual visceral filmmaking, or Eames' lackluster performance…
…no, we're sure. It's Eames.
Aside from the fact that the script itself leaves something to be desired on the originality front (angry mobsters chasing down a criminal who's crossed them? Really? Haven't we been to this movie?), Eames' performance is frankly off-putting. Maybe it's just that we've come to expect too much from him, that we've taken for granted the way he can fall into a character; maybe we've all given him too much credit. Whatever the reason, he's odd here, unconvincing, and seems to be focused nearly constantly on something beyond the camera...
--
The night of the Cobol premiere was, easily, the worst night of Arthur's life.
There was of course the fact that the film was fucking terrible; Arthur knew the film was fucking terrible. He'd seen it in its entirety and tried in vain, repeatedly, to get Dom to pull the plug; it was going to get panned, and it was going to lose money. There really wasn't any way for it not to lose money, considering how much they'd spent on set, holding locations, shooting and reshooting scenes--any way Dom could burn cash, he did. It was a disaster, of course it was a disaster, and so that was the first problem.
The second problem was that Dom showed up high as a fucking kite, fighting Arthur when he tried to drag him past the cameras waiting outside, and the third problem was Eames, because Eames was always a problem.
Things had been uncomfortable between them after their…whatever it was….to say the least, and the tension there had only increased when Eames pitched his little on-set fit. And then he'd walked onto the red carpet with a Victoria's Secret model on his arm, looking every inch the impeccable movie star while Arthur struggled to drag Dom inside, and something in him had snapped.
It some ways--in many ways--Arthur blames himself for what ended up happening that night. If he'd been less distracted, if he'd been focusing his attention on Dom and not on his own stupid, petty jealously, he might have been able to stem the tide of the inevitable.
Probably not, though.
"Amanda," he said, waving her over from where she'd been chatting with some reporter. "Get me everything you can on Eames' date."
"Are you going to tell me what happened between you two?" Amanda asked, raising her eyebrows. She looked lovely--in a dark blue dress with her hair coiffed, not a trace of the nervousness she used to show at these things--and irritated at having been interrupted. Arthur made a mental note to give her a nice long vacation when all of this was over.
"No," he barked, "just do it, and get me some kind of--a Xanax or something for Dom, Jesus Christ."
"Yeah, okay, I'm on it," she sighed, and vanished into the crowd again.
Arthur installed Dom in a chair--first mistake, what the fuck had he been thinking, leaving him alone--and went to get a drink. And it so happened that Eames was at the bar at the same time, and Arthur couldn't exactly not speak to him because he'd brought someone with him to the premiere; that wasn't even an acceptable impulse.
"Arthur," Eames said, smiling sharply at him. "Still having fun fighting losing battles?"
"I'm surprised you even showed," Arthur snapped. "Going to try to drum up some more bad press for this film?"
"Actually," Eames drawled, "my being here is a favor to you. Or would you rather have dealt with the fallout of the star not bothering to stop by?"
"Don't fucking start," Arthur said, throwing back the shot that the bartender dropped and signaling for another. "You've got your own game here, you always do."
"Have I told you how sick I am," Eames said, narrowing his eyes, "of you misappropriating my profession into everything else I do? If I wanted to con you I would bloody con you, it's not like it would be hard."
"So you're not playing games," Arthur said, looking pointedly at the drinks that had just been set down in front of Eames' hand--a whiskey and soda, Eames' preferred beverage, and something pink and fruity. "Then the arm candy is, what, an accessory?"
Eames smiled, but it was dark, twisted. "Ah, Arthur," he said, "that's your game, not mine. You know full well that we don't have to play."
"Are you going to try to make this about me now?" Arthur growled. He glanced around, made sure no one was in earshot, and continued, "I thought you had a career to think of, Mr. Eames."
"Well I rather thought I deserved more than being a stand-in for your director du jour," Eames said, and he wasn't smiling anymore. "But as you didn't seem particularly bothered about that--"
"Fuck you," Arthur said, "you go straight to fucking hell, Jesus, this is exactly why I never wanted to get involved with you to begin with. The level of unprofessional bullshit--"
"You're the one that's made this unprofessional," Eames snapped. "I would have been perfectly content to let it alone--"
"That's a fucking lie and you know it," Arthur hissed. "Do you think I'm blind, do you think I didn't notice the way you stared at me on set, do you think I don't see what you're doing, bringing someone like that here--"
"Why, darling," Eames said, mocking, his mouth curling up in a sneer, "don't tell me I've made you jealous."
"Even if you had," Arthur said, because one bad turn deserved another, "it's not like she'll still be interested in you after she sees your performance tonight."
That had been a low blow; Arthur regretted it the second it came out of his mouth, regretted it from the moment Eames blinked and leaned back a fraction of an inch, the closest he'd come to reeling in shock in the public eye.
He regretted it considerably more ten minutes later, when Dom made a stoned, snide comment about Eames' acting skills and Eames jumped at it; Arthur had to pull them off of each other and pull them off of each other again, and in the process revealed the gram bag of heroin Dom'd had concealed in his pocket.
"Christ," Eames said, staring at it.
"Fuck," Arthur breathed, because there were photographers and someone, in the middle of the brawl, someone must have called the police. And they were coming in now, just a few of them but enough, and that was the photo--Arthur with one hand on Dom's chest and one hand on Eames', the three of them staring at the bag at their feet as the officers pulled out the handcuffs.
--
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:15 AM PST
saw about cobb. you okay
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:16 AM PST
what do you even care
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:18 AM PST
are you drunk?
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:21 AM PST
of course i'm fucking drnk, i put dom in rehab this morning, still begs the question of what its to you
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:30 AM PST
for what its worth im sorry it happened like it did
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:35 AM PST
i'm sorry it happened at all
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:35 AM PST
oh fuck i shouldn't have sent that i didn't mean that
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:40 AM PST
do you know how hard you make it for me to deal with you sometimes
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 3:13 AM PST
yeah
--
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, July 22, 2008, 6:06 PM PST
God Jude Law is an asshole.
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, July 22, 2008, 6:10 PM PST
i told you working with him wasn't a good choice
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, July 22, 2008, 6:11 PM PST
No, you told me to cast you instead, and I think we've kind of proved we're better off not working together.
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, July 22, 2008, 6:12 PM PST
must you be so determined to hold onto that
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, July 22, 2008, 6:13 PM PST
I wouldn't be, if you weren't worse.
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, July 22, 2008, 7:02 PM PST
tell me whats gone wrong with jude then
--
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:00 PM PST
goddamn it arthur i miss you im sorry
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:15 PM PST
fuck ignore that last text im a little
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:15 PM PST
fuck
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:22 PM PST
you make no fucking sense to me did you know that darling no bloody sense atall
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:32 PM PST
for fucks sake whatdo i have to do here
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, December 8, 2009, 9:45 PM PST
Jesus Christ, isn't it like 2AM there? Go to sleep.
--
Saito does end up coming into town, because luck only goes so far and it was inevitably going to happen at some point. At Dom's urging--"I don't have any place in that meeting, Arthur, god, if anything I'll scare him off, you do it,"--Arthur takes him to lunch. Or, rather, Arthur attempts to take him to lunch; Saito deftly changes the time, the day, and the location of the meeting, not bothering to hide the fact that he's doing it solely to establish control.
Arthur likes him a lot, actually. He's Arthur's kind of guy.
They're talking about the NASDAQ over their salads, both waiting until their meals arrive to get to the more serious discussion, when Arthur's phone rings. It's Ariadne; he silences it and goes back to the conversation, but two seconds later it rings again.
"Please," Saito says, waving a hand toward the phone. "Don't be lax with my investment on my account, Mr. Levine. Take the call."
"It'll just be a second," Arthur says quickly. Then he picks up the phone and barks, "I'm in a meeting. What?"
"You have to get to set right now," Ariadne says. "Dom's rigging Eames up for the stunt--"
"What?"
"I know," Ariadne says, "I know, I've tried to stop them but--"
"Fucking shit," Arthur snaps, "I'll be there in ten, don't you dare let this happen, set something on fire if you have to," and hangs up the phone.
Saito's eyebrows are at his hairline.
"I was of the impression that my set could spare you for an hour or so," he says. "Apparently I was mistaken."
"Mr. Saito, I apologize," Arthur says, trying not to betray his fury more than he already has. "I do have this under control, but I need to--"
"Go," Saito says, "by all means. But do keep in mind that my participation in the project is not unconditional."
"I'm very aware of that," Arthur says, standing up. "I appreciate this, and I assure you that I--"
"Go," Saito insists, his eyes sharp, and Arthur flees.
"Amanda!" he screams into his phone, all but shoving the valet out of the driver's seat of his Rover and throwing himself in. "Dom's rigging Eames up for the stunt, why the fuck didn't I know about this?"
"Because I didn't know until ten seconds ago," Amanda says, and thank god for her unshakable cool, she really is invaluable. "I've got the restaurant on the other line; they're going to apologize to Saito again and put his meal on our tab, the most recent traffic report is in your email--"
Arthur switches to his Bluetooth and pulls up the traffic report even as he says, "For fuck's sake, this is why he pushed me to take the meeting alone, I can't--is that Julie?"
"She's yelling at Eames," Amanda says. "About, among other things, the stipulations of his contract."
"Good," Arthur says, "great, fuck, okay, do whatever the fuck you can to stall it--god, can you pull Yusuf off the--"
"Dom offered him a 15% raise if he'd shoot it."
"With what fucking money?" Arthur screams, swerving to avoid hitting a slowing taxi and leaning on his horn. "Fucking shit, okay, I have to jump off, call me if there's any--"
"Developments, yeah, of course, I'll send someone out to park your car, bye."
Arthur hangs up and drives like a fucking lunatic, mentally marking all of the traffic cams whose tickets he'll be receiving later. He gets angrier and angrier as he goes, and by the time he pulls into the lot and hands off his keys to a gofer he's never laid eyes on--who might be a fucking thief, Jesus, he doesn't even care--he's as furious as he's ever been in his life.
"Shut this the fuck down," he bellows, crashing onto set. It's chaos--Dom is grinning like the goddamn maniac he is while Julie screams up at Eames, who is fully rigged up. The stunt's a pretty basic zipline run, something that Eames actually could do himself if it weren't for the hairpin turn involved. As it is…and Jesus, the mats that are out are the ones that Jacob specified, Jacob who is actually a trained fucking professional and knows how to take a fall--
"Don't be such a tight ass, Arthur," Dom calls. "It'll be better this way. More real."
"We're not fucking insured for this!" Arthur yells. "You idiot, you asshole, don't you understand we'll be fucked if he does this even if he doesn't fall and break his goddamn neck--"
"I didn't know you cared, darling," Eames calls out, and then Dom calls action and he's jumping and Arthur's running and he sees the cable snap before he even has time to--
It shouldn't be possible, but in that second, that split second while Eames is falling, Arthur has time to think a million things. And what he settles on--and it's so strange, that this should be what comes to mind--what he settles on is a conversation he'd had with Wes Craven at the release party for Dom's fifth movie, when Mal was still alive, before everything went so terribly wrong.
"The thing about horror, as a genre," Wes said, leaning in too close to Arthur, the whiskey heavy on his breath, "is that it's not so much about the content of the film as it is how it makes you feel. Do you see what I'm saying?"
"Not really," Arthur admitted, drunk on satisfaction and gin and the way Eames had smiled at him from across the room a second before. "You'll have to elaborate."
"Well," Wes said, "you know that feeling, when you wake up from a nightmare, and something creaks in your house? And you know that your security hasn't gone off, and your dog isn't barking--but you're still mostly asleep, and so it occurs to you that your dog could be dead, that someone could have turned your security off. And it's completely illogical, and you know that, but for a moment, you can't help but think it."
"Think what?" Arthur asked, and then Wes leaned even closer and grinned like the Chesire Cat. Despite himself, Arthur felt a chill run down the back of his spine. Wes really was a very creepy man.
"Someone is in my house," he said.
And this is what Arthur is thinking as Eames is falling: he is thinking of Wes Craven and the way Eames had brushed his fingers against Arthur's hips that night, thinking of that chill up his spine. He's thinking of how this feeling, this complete fucking panic, is as close to that sensation Wes had described as anything he's ever felt.
Eames is in my house, Arthur thinks, and then there's the sickening crunch of him missing the mats as he hits the ground.
"Call a fucking medic!" someone screams, and it takes Arthur a second to realize it was him. He's on the ground next to Eames, in a crouch, and Eames is unconscious--Jesus, of course he is. The thought crosses Arthur's mind that maybe he's dead, that maybe he's fucking died, and he reaches out to check for a pulse without shutting up.
"You idiot," he yells, relief coursing through him as he feels the pounding of bloodflow against his fingers, "goddamn it, god fucking damn it, what the fuck were you thinking, why the fuck would you do that?" And Eames doesn't answer him, because of course Eames can't hear him, because Eames is unconscious.
"You'd better wake the fuck up so that I can fucking kill you!" Arthur yells, and then the medics are there and pulling him back as they load Eames onto a stretcher.
Arthur is breathing hard as he shakes off the hands that have pulled him to his feet. The set, which had been a hotbed of activity before, is silent but for the wail of the sirens now. Yusuf is staring at his camera, looking sick, and Ariadne's hand is over her mouth, and Julie--it's the first time Arthur's ever seen her look anything less than perfectly composed, but her cheeks are wet, and she's talking to an EMT about allergies and emergency contacts in stunned, hushed tones. It occurs to Arthur, distantly, that ambulances don't just show up, and he wonders kind of idly how long he was on the ground, screaming at Eames, in front of all these people.
And then he sees Dom out of the corner of his eye, and decides he doesn't care.
"You," he hisses. The ambulance is pulling away as Arthur stalks over to where he's standing, stock still, his eyes trained on the dangling, broken cable. "You, this is your fault, how fucking dare you--"
"I didn't think," Dom says, blinking. "Jesus, I didn't think--"
"You never think!" Arthur cries. "You never fucking think, you let me do all your motherfucking thinking for you and you always, always have--"
"Arthur," Dom starts, "Arthur, I'm--"
"No," Arthur growls, advancing, "no, you know what, whatever you want to say you can shut the fuck up about it, because I don't want to fucking hear it. I don't care that you started my career and I don't care how much of my fucking success you're responsible for, you shouldn't have done this."
"I know--"
"You don't," Arthur yells, "you obviously fucking don't, god, shit, I can't even--you didn't deserve your fucking career back before and you definitely don't deserve it now."
Dom opens his mouth--to argue, probably--and it's all Arthur can do not to hit him.
"Don't you dare," he snaps, "don't even, you want to try to reason with me you can think the fuck again. I told you not to do this, I told you fifteen times and you did it anyway--you sent me to have lunch with fucking Saito, goddamn it, how long have you been planning--and if he dies, Dom, you get to fucking live with that. I hope you're proud of yourself."
"Arthur," Dom says, and Arthur's probably gone too far already, so he doesn't see the point in pulling his last punch.
"I should have known better than to work with you again," he hisses. "You trainwreck. You fucking asshole."
Dom steps back from him, like Arthur has actually hit him, which feels about right at the moment. Arthur himself whips around and makes his way toward the edge of the lot, his rage all-consuming and blinding.
"Amanda!" he barks, but she's already next to him, and he doesn't stop to address the open mouthed stares of the rest of the crew as he heads for his car.
--
The next 24 hours are more or less a blur.
Amanda comes to his apartment with him, and she helps as Arthur runs through as much damage control as humanly possible. Largely she fields shit from the press while Arthur deals with the insurance companies, with trying to keep Saito from pulling his funding.
He keeps asking her to check in with Julie, pushing and pushing for updates, until finally, around two in the morning, she sighs.
"Arthur," she says, "I think she's asleep, and even if she isn't, she's not--she's not answering, I think you're just going to have to wait until--"
"God fucking damn it," Arthur snaps, and he picks up the coffee cup sitting next to his computer and hurls it into the wall. It shatters, and the coffee goes everywhere, and Arthur runs a hand through his hair, yanking on it.
Amanda, fuck it all, doesn't even look fazed. She just sighs and puts her hand on his shoulder, rubbing lightly.
"It's not your fault," she says. "You do know that, right? You can't control everything."
"I can try," Arthur growls. Amanda sighs again, like he's so predictable, and really sometimes Arthur hates her for being so goddamned good at her job.
"Fuck," he says, "fuck, okay, you know what, you should try to get some sleep."
"I don't sleep," Amanda says. "I thought you knew."
"As much as I believe you," Arthur says, trying to smile at her, "it's okay, really. Go ahead."
"You're sure," she says. "Because I can--"
"Go on," Arthur says, waving a hand. "You're still getting a massive raise after this debacle, don't worry."
Amanda rolls her eyes. "If you think I do this job for the money you're even stupider than I thought."
"Oh, Jesus, you're being nice to me," Arthur says. "The apocalypse is here, huh? Did I ever get around to having you pack me a bag?"
"You're an asshole," Amanda says, but fondly, and she bends down to kiss him on the cheek before heading into his living room to crash on his couch.
With nothing else to distract him--even in Los Angeles, there are only so many work calls you can make in the middle of the night--Arthur spends several instructive hours digging up everything he can on Nash and obsessively refreshing TMZ. It's a pre-emptive measure more than anything else, and it's probably pointless, but it makes him feel less like fucking killing someone.
--
TMZ.com, January 4, 2011
Actor Eames rushed to hospital after on-set accident; updates will be ongoing as TMZ learns more.
--
Arthur finally gives in and goes to the hospital the next afternoon, because Julie is still MIA and he's going to lose his fucking mind if he doesn't.
Predictably, he doesn't even make it in the damn doors before he runs into Nash.
He's as slimy as Arthur remembers him being, a camera in his hands, and he's smiling. He's smiling like it's the score of the month, and he snaps a picture of Arthur, scowling and underslept, before he says, "Come to see your boyfriend? How touching."
"Can it, Nash," Arthur growls.
"Of course," Nash continues, "you've missed him by about an hour, if the limo that pulled up before was anything to go by. The rest of the vultures followed him, but I had a hunch you might show up."
"Did you," Arthur says, flat.
"It must be terrible," Nash purrs, and it's all mockery, and Arthur is actually kind of relieved, because this is a problem he can handle. "Always out of the loop. You don't feel compelled to give me a quote in your moment of need, do you, Arthur?"
And, as it happens, Arthur can act pretty well when he wants to. He purposefully casts his eyes down, takes a shuddering breath, and says, "God, that bastard," and is gratified when he sees Nash's face light up out of the corner of his eye.
"Holy shit," Nash says, "do you feel compelled to--"
"Not here," Arthur says, "not all out in the open, anyone could see, that would be--"
"Follow me," Nash says quickly, because of course he knows all the tucked away places, "come on, there's a little--"
He leads Arthur around the side of the hospital; there's an empty parking lot and a trashcan, and a number of spent cigarette butts. Arthur does a quick scan of the area to make sure no one can see them as Nash says, his voice honey-smooth, "Now, why don't you start from the--"
He's got Nash slammed up against the cement wall before he can get the rest of the sentence out.
"You stupid fuck," Arthur snarls, "that was too fucking easy."
"You gonna hit me?" Nash asks, his eyes wide. "I wish you would, that'd make a great fucking story."
"Do you think I give a shit what you print about me?" Arthur demands. "About your sad little job, following these people around like you're begging for their fucking table scraps? I could ruin you."
"This is assault," Nash says, somewhere between terrified and gleeful. Arthur presses him against wall a little harder, hoping to heighten the terror.
This is wrong. This is a bad decision. But Arthur is very, very angry, and this is a considerably better outlet than some of the others he could choose right now.
"You go ahead and sue me, Nash," Arthur says, his voice low. "You want to see how fast I come back with libel? Stalking? Not to mention the breaking and entering, if some of the shit I've seen is anything to go by, and all the confidential documents you seem to have gotten your hands on over the last few years. I have a fucking dossier on you, so you go right the fuck ahead."
"It'll never stick," Nash says, and it's definitely all panic now. Arthur grins at him.
"You want to bet on that?" he asks. "Because I'm fucking serious. Nothing would thrill me more than to tear your ass limb from goddamn limb."
"Jesus," Nash spits, "Jesus, Arthur, fine, what the fuck do you want?"
"You stay away from me," Arthur snaps, "and you stay the fuck away from Eames. Or give me the excuse, your call. I'd really love the fucking excuse."
Nash swallows hard and nods, and Arthur lets him go.
"You really are a bastard," Nash grunts. "You know that, right?"
"Run along," Arthur says, waving a hand, and Nash doesn't need to be told twice. Arthur allows himself a slight grin, feeling calmer than he has in hours, and pulls out his phone.
"Amanda," he says, when she picks up, "I need you to--"
"Find Eames because he's checked himself out of the hospital?" Amanda finishes for him. "Yeah, I know, I was just about to call you. He's back at his hotel--banged up, bad concussion, and there's a cut on the back of his head, but overall he's apparently mostly okay."
"He always did have ridiculous luck," Arthur says, and if the relief flooding his veins breaks into his voice, leaves him sounding a little choked, Amanda's good enough not to call him on it.
"He's apparently being very pleasant," she continues, and he can hear her eyeroll. "Julie is thrilled."
"I can imagine," Arthur says, almost laughing. "Okay, well, I'm heading over there now. Thanks."
"Anytime," he hears her say, and heads for his car.
--
All the curtains are drawn in Eames' hotel room, and the lights are out. He's still wearing sunglasses, though, what little ambient light apparently being too much for him, and Julie's face is tense when she lets Arthur in the door.
"You should be in the hospital," he says to Eames over her shoulder. "You're lucky your assistant is so willing to cater to your insane whims."
Eames winces. "Could you talk quieter, please? This is like the worst hangover of my life, but a thousand times more agonizing."
"God, can you babysit him for awhile?" Julie asks, sounding strained. "Murder would look really bad on my resume, but I was starting to think I wouldn't have any other choice."
"I don't require babysitting," Eames mutters.
"Quiet, the adults are talking," Julie says, and Eames scowls.
"I'm on it," Arthur assures her. "Go take a break. If you could do me a favor, though?"
"Anything to get him off my hands," Julie says, to an irritated huff from Eames. Arthur can't help but laugh a little, and if it's more than half based in his stunned, almost sickening relief that Eames is more or less alright, he's not going to admit to it.
"Could you call Amanda and ask her to make sure Nash isn't actually filing assault charges against me right now?"
"Yep, yep, definitely, whatever you say," Julie says, as she grabs her purse and beats a hasty retreat.
This, of course, leaves Arthur and Eames alone in the hotel room, which is more or less the desired result.
"What'd you do to Nash?" Eames asks, and he sounds more tired than anything else. And that's a relief too, really, even if it's only because he's quite literally had all of his bullshit knocked out of him.
"I put the fear of god into him," Arthur says, sitting down on the coffee table across from Eames. "Or, rather, the fear of me."
Eames sighs. "Bloody hell, I was hoping you'd killed him."
"He couldn't have filed assault charges from the grave," Arthur points out. Eames growls low in his throat and rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead.
"If anyone could," he mutters. "Look, if you're here to yell at me about the stunt, I completely understand and I was a prat and everything, I'm fully prepared for my tongue lashing, but if you could maintain a low volume--"
"I'm not here to yell at you about the stunt," Arthur tells him. "I really fucking should be, but I'm not."
"Oh, then it's just the disembowelment?" Eames asks. "Fabulous. If you could be as quick as possible, darling, put me out of my misery--"
"It was never about Dom," Arthur says.
"Wait," says Eames, "wait, what?"
"It was never about fucking Dom," Arthur says, "I can't believe you didn't know that--I mean, honestly, what the fuck is wrong with you--and, look, okay, I won't keep doing this with you anymore. We're going to be honest about this, or I'm fucking leaving and that's it."
"What are we even--"
"Don't," Arthur says. "Don't fuck with me."
"Just fuck you," Eames says, quietly, almost sad, "right?"
Arthur sighs then, because he can't help but sigh. "No, Eames," he says, "no, you're not listening to me, you never listen. It was never about Dom, and it was never about--it was never just about fucking, Jesus Christ."
"Then what was it about?"
"You," Arthur snaps, raising his voice a little. "You and me, you bastard, what the fucking fucking fuck made you think it was ever about anything else--"
"Don't yell," Eames says, wincing, "Christ, bloody hell, don't--"
"You deserve it," Arthur says, but quieter. "You deserve worse, I watched you--I had to watch you--"
"I'm sorry about that," Eames cuts in, "for what it's worth. It was a stupid thing to do."
"That's the understatement of the century," Arthur growls, "but that's not what we're talking about. Jesus, Eames, I'm trying to be honest with you here, and it was--you know, I never wanted to, we fucking work together, and I could never tell how much of any of it was just you being you and how much of it was--"
"I can't help being how I am," Eames points out.
"I know," Arthur sighs. "I know you can't, that's what I'm saying, could you just shut up--"
"I'm just trying," Eames says, "I'm trying to get to your point, here."
"You know what, fuck this," Arthur says, and then he closes the distance between them, swift and sure, to kiss him.
"Oh," Eames says, surprised, against his mouth. And then "Oh," again, but deeper, with more intent, as he threads his fingers through Arthur's hair and pulls him closer. Arthur bites down on his bottom lip, lightly, because he's been wanting to do that for years, and Eames rewards him with a low growl of pleasure.
"Christ," Eames says, pulling back a little, looking ridiculous with that bandage wrapped around his head, with those fucking sunglasses in the dark room, "oh, Christ, I've been a complete arse, haven't I?"
"You have always been," Arthur says, pausing to kiss him swiftly again, "a complete fucking ass. Always."
"Well it's not like you're much better," Eames murmurs, lifting his hand to trace a line down Arthur's cheek. Arthur grins at him, sharp and dangerous and maybe revealing all of the things he's thinking about doing, if the way Eames grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him in again anything to go by.
"Hey," Arthur says, drawing back, "hey, look, we need to--I'm not asking for--I understand that you've got a career and I've got a career and whatever, but I just want to try this, alright? Because it's gotten pretty fucking obvious that not trying this isn't really working out for us."
"I agree wholeheartedly," Eames says, trying to pull Arthur forward, but Arthur resists.
"But it has to be you," he says. "We need to be clear on that, I'm not going to start--if what you want is someone who falls for your--your lines, or whatever, then you're barking up the wrong fucking tree. I don't want to have to sift through your shit all the damn time."
"In all honesty, I don't particularly want to have to give you shit all the damn time," Eames says, his voice very serious. "So, you know, two way street and all that, I won't have any more of this chilly ridiculous nonsense from your end--"
"Done," Arthur says at once. "You know damn well I don't do anything by halves."
"Well, there's that, then," Eames says, his smile sudden and brilliant under his sunglasses, and Arthur draws his mouth in again with a ragged breath, relieved beyond belief that they can finally stop fucking talking about it.
Epilogue
"We don't have to do this," Arthur says, for the fourth time. It comes out muffled, though, because he's got one of his cufflinks between his teeth, fastening the other side with his left hand.
Eames laughs at him and leans across the backseat of the limo to pull his arm forward and do it himself. "Sorry, what was that? You're not exactly intelligible when your mouth is otherwise occupied."
He accompanies this last with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, for which Arthur hits him. "Dirty fuck."
"Takes one to know one," Eames says, releasing Arthur's sleeve. "Seriously, though, what were you saying?"
"That this is stupid," Arthur sighs. "You should get out first, and then I'll have the driver go around the block or something--"
"Do you really think they'll have that much of a field day over us showing up together?" Eames asks. "I mean, really, it's our movie--"
"It'll just confirm the rumors," Arthur argues. "Which, you know, wouldn't have so much steam if you hadn't--"
"Yes, yes, I know, I'm terrible," Eames says easily. "To be entirely honest, I'm not particularly bothered by what the press says about it."
"Oh, Jesus, you've finally lost your mind," Arthur mutters. "I knew that concussion was going to come back to bite me in the ass--how many fingers am I holding up?"
"You're hilarious," Eames informs him, rolling his eyes. Then his face shifts, just slightly, barely noticeable if you're not looking for it. "But, I mean, of course, if it's your own name you don't want in the papers--"
"Don't even try to pull that shit with me," Arthur growls. "You think I can't tell when you're acting? You know I don't give a fuck about the press. You're the one whose reputation is at stake; it's not my picture midwestern teenagers are hanging on their walls."
"Ew," Eames says, shuddering and looking relieved, all at once. "Don't make me think about that, darling, it's vile."
"Doesn't make it less true," Arthur says. "Not to mention the Academy--"
"Bugger the Academy," Eames says decisively, and there's really no reason at all that should make Arthur's throat constrict a little. Fucking Hollywood.
"We're here," he points out, rather than pushing that little declaration into something even more maudlin. "Last chance to come to your senses."
"Just get out of the bloody car, Arthur, alright?" Eames says, grinning at him, and Arthur sighs and opens the door.
The cacophony starts a second later, when Eames climbs out behind him. Long since used to the red carpet, Arthur ignores the crowd screaming Eames' name to look around. He nods at Dom, who pauses in his conversation with a reporter and smiles guardedly at him; Arthur is pretty sure they're never going to be able to work together again, but he's also beginning to think they may be able to salvage a friendship, so that's alright. Ariadne and Yusuf are probably already inside--Arthur'd had to talk both of them into coming to the damn premiere, busy as they've both been on their new film--and Saito and his wife appear to have just arrived.
Amanda and Julie are nowhere to be seen, which actually suggests that there are fires to be put out, and he's just preparing to go find those fires, actually, when Eames says, "Arthur."
He turns around, and Eames is grinning at him, and Arthur has not gotten to be where he is in this business by being easily surprised. He knows what Eames is going to do a second before he does it, and he's already got one hand in his pocket, curled around his phone in preparation for the damage control he'll have to get on at once, when Eames steps in to kiss him.
There are, despite the circumstances, actually a lot of ways he could play this. He could push Eames back and laugh, say something joking about not wanting to be part of another stunt; he could push Eames back and swear, yell about that gay shit not being funny. He could act drunk, he could make Eames act drunk, he could duck away and hope none of the photographers caught the intent--
--but fuck it, if Eames doesn't care he really doesn't, and anyway he's never been the kind of guy to avoid giving as good as he gets.
Arthur lifts his free hand and cups Eames' jaw, pulls him that last half a centimeter in, raising his eyebrows. And Eames is laughing, delighted, putting his hand on the small of Arthur's back because he's such a fucking glutton for attention, and really, really, this is the stupidest thing he's ever done.
"Asshole," Arthur has time to say, and then their lips are meeting, and Arthur closes his eyes as the cameras go wild.
Title: we were once cinema gods in the night [2/2]
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: R
Wordcount: 10,556 (this part)/~21,000 (full story)
Warnings: Discussion of past drug use, generally appalling language, canon character death
Summary: That's the thing about Hollywood--everyone has a Hollywood story.
Arthur and Eames fucked once, and only once, on the Cobol set.
They'd been building up to it for years, of course, flirting, drawing closer and pulling away; Eames would be (purposefully) photographed making out with some hot young model and Arthur had his pick of guys, and he took advantage of it when he had time. They got to know each other anyway, over too many late nights and too few beers, via ridiculous emails, on the cutting room floor and the dance floor but never, never, the actual floor, and then Mal died and everything went to hell.
Dom wouldn't shut down production, which was the second basically insurmountable hurdle Arthur was trying to vault, if you counted Mal's death as the first. Arthur certainly did, when he considered it at all; he was mostly trying not to, for the sake of not losing focus. Because someone had to be focused, someone had to keep it together, someone had to keep track of the money Dom was spending willy-nilly and the completely wrecked set schedule and the way Eames couldn't hold character. Someone had to keep the crew from striking and someone had to appease the studio and someone had to keep their head above water.
Arthur wasn't used to problems he couldn't solve with the right amount of backbreaking effort. Arthur wasn't used to mountains he couldn't just pony up and climb.
He was working late, going over the dailies and trying to work out the most effective way to confront a grieving widower/boss/friend about the drug problem he was visibly developing, when Eames walked in. And even that, even that was another problem, because Eames was just shy of shattered, edging away from being himself in favor of being everyone but his fucking character, and Arthur lifted his head, steeling himself for the inevitable rant.
But Eames just looked tired, sick and heavy with the weight that they were all carrying, and maybe a little concerned. He sat down on the table in front of Arthur, looking down at him as he fiddled with a poker chip he'd snatched from Props.
"What is it?" Arthur asked, and his voice sounded so dragged out that even he was a little surprised. "What do you need?"
"Nothing in particular. Let's get you some dinner, yeah?" Eames said, reaching out to--to do something, straighten Arthur's collar or something--and then visibly thinking better of it. "A man cannot subsist on krafty alone."
"I'm too fucking busy for dinner," Arthur muttered, and Eames sighed.
"Indulge me," he said, and somehow they ended up back at Eames' apartment with Chinese, because Eames had always been possessed of a strange ability to get exactly what he wanted.
They ate mostly in silence; all the things they could have talked about were either as unpleasant or as trite as each other. Eames tried once or twice anyway, small-talk about various extras, but inevitably that led to the sketchy-looking strangers that Arthur had seen going in and out of Dom's trailer, and after that he didn't bother. They ate, and when they finished Arthur shut himself in Eames' bathroom and splashed water on his face, trying to ignore how absolutely fucking terrible he looked.
And then he came out again, and Eames was standing by the window with a joint caught between two fingers, and Arthur suddenly didn't have any control anymore.
It was just pot, which was what made the whole thing so stupid. It was just pot, Arthur had smoked pot with Eames a hundred times, at parties and outside of clubs and once, inadvisably, in his trailer. It was just pot and Arthur didn't have a problem with pot, but Eames was standing there in the window with circles under his eyes and drugs in his hand and Dom was using and everything was falling to pieces, and it wasn't even really a choice.
He crossed the room in three strides, ripped the joint from Eames' hand, threw it out the window, and snapped, "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Bloody hell!" Eames cried, leaning out the window and fruitlessly attempting to snatch the joint from midair. "Oi, that was some quality dank, what are you--"
"Is professionalism some kind of fucking lost art?" Arthur demanded. "Jesus, did it sink with Atlantis while I wasn't paying attention? How fucking stupid can you possibly get? God, what if they ran a drug test--"
"What if who ran a drug test?" Eames asked, honestly confused. "The studio? Even if they did, this is Hollywood, love, I doubt they'd care about a little--"
"You don't know that!" Arthur snapped. "You don't know that and anyway that isn't the fucking point, the point is that just because you're sad doesn't mean you can just go ahead and make terrible fucking decisions--"
"Ah," Eames said, and suddenly he looked as angry as Arthur had ever seen him. "So it's like that, is it?"
"Like what?"
"I'll play Dom fucking Cobb for you if you want me to, darling," Eames said, his eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits, "but I think the least you could do is bloody ask."
And what Arthur could have done--what Arthur should have done--is corrected him then and there. He should have said, "Fucking hell, that's not what I'm doing," or even "Fucking hell, that's not what I meant to be doing," which was less absolving but more true.
But he was frustrated, and he was tired, and it had been a long time since he'd just gone ahead and taken something solely for himself, and so what Arthur did do was lean forward and snarl directly into Eames' mouth.
"Fuck you," he hissed, biting Eames' lower lip and drawing it in, "fuck you," and then Eames was grabbing him around the waist and hauling him forward, crushing their mouths together.
Eames was bigger than him, empirically--Arthur had always known that, since that bar they'd met in, but it was especially true in that moment. He'd bulked up for Cobol, put on enough muscle that when he tightened his fingers and fucking threw Arthur into the wall, Arthur went, hitting it too hard. And even as he felt the sting, sharp and aching, where bruises would probably form in the morning, even then he was shoving a hand down into Eames' pants to cup his balls just a shade too tight.
"Don't fuck with me," he snapped, and Eames smiled and winced at once.
"Just fuck you, right?" he said, voice thick, and it wasn't really a question, but Arthur tightened his grip for half a second anyway. Eames let out a noise that was something between a keen and a growl and captured his mouth again.
They shoved each other to the bedroom, tearing their clothes and biting, snapping. Eames' lips were swollen and bruised by the time Arthur body-checked him onto the bed, impossibly bigger then they'd fucking been already, and Arthur bore down on them. Nine-odd years of flirting and not-flirting, of purposefully missing the point, will do things to you, will make you desperate and too rough the same way grief and fury and stress will, and between it all they were violent with each other, far too hard.
"Arthur, Arthur," Eames mocked, straddled over him, the full length of his cock buried in Arthur's ass, "never figured you for the type to spread your legs, always business with you, isn't it--"
"What part of shut up and fuck me is so fucking complicated?" Arthur demanded, breathless.
"You never actually gave me that instruction," Eames said, nipping his collarbone with too much teeth. "You implied it, but you never specifically said--"
"Shut the fuck up and fuck me, Mr. Eames," Arthur hissed, "right fucking now, I swear to god."
And Eames did, pounding into him until the last dregs of orgasm had been rung from him. Arthur lasted longer, and when he pulled himself off he made a point to come all over Eames' stupid hideous comforter, thinking about all the models he'd probably had in here, all the people who'd touched him before. Eames' mouth curled up in a smirk, watching him.
"Depraved little thing, aren't you?" he asked, his eyes slightly narrowed. And Arthur could have said a hundred things, but the weight of this decision was already setting over him, and with it the warm, familiar blanket of exhaustion. He moved anyway, to stand up, to get some air and clear his head and handle this like an adult, but then Eames was throwing an arm across him, trapping him.
"Let me have this," he said, and his eyes were still narrowed, but there was a slightly bitter twist to his mouth now. Arthur felt something like guilt twinge at the base of his spine. "Just, Christ, I know you're a fucking asshole, but let me have this one little bloody thing, alright?"
"Fine," Arthur said, "fine, just don't--"
"I'm not trying to sodding spoon you, Arthur, for fuck's sake," Eames growled, his voice going dangerously tense again. "If you could just--just don't go, I just don't want to--"
"Yeah," Arthur said, because he was exhausted and Eames' voice, strung up and wired like that, made his head hurt, "yeah, okay, fine, that's fine, I'll stay. Jesus, calm down."
Eames didn't get any closer, but he did relax, so his arm was draped loose and heavy across Arthur's waist. There was space between them, enough that they weren't touching except for that carefully held spot, but Arthur felt some of the tension seep out of his own shoulders anyway.
And then he was waking up, the soft light of dawn filtering in, Eames snoring next to him.
Arthur was facing the wall, in the exact spot he'd been in when he'd passed out the previous night--he tended not to move much in his sleep, as a general rule, and even less in strange beds. Eames, on the other hand, was splayed across the bed on his stomach, his face tilted towards Arthur on the pillow.
His hand, predictably, had migrated to rest on Arthur's ass in his sleep.
Arthur shifted a little, out from under the grip, mostly to see if Eames would wake. He didn't, and Arthur winced up at the ceiling, feeling the exertion of the previous nights manifest itself in a dull, relentless ache. He was sleep-riddled, still, and so if he allowed himself a moment to just look, it wasn't necessarily as fucking humiliating as it would have been if his wits were entirely about him.
The thing is, he'd never seen Eames asleep before, not in all the time they'd known each other. It was…Arthur hadn't realized, not fully, the degree to which Eames was playing a role all the time, not until he saw him without any way to play one. He just looked tired, lines on his face that didn't show when he was awake, his mouth open slightly.
Arthur found himself wondering, suddenly, how many people Eames had allowed this close, how many people Eames had let in this far. Because while he was sure Eames had had his share of scores up here, trails of gorgeous girls and starry-eyed boys tumbling over each other to get a hand on him, he was equally sure he rarely let them stay. Discretion wasn't something you could afford to be lax about when you were a media darling, and anyway Eames was one of the most guarded people Arthur had ever met--and he'd spent a nearly a third of his life in Hollywood, for fuck's sake.
And then Arthur was thinking, oddly, of the Cannes apartment, three years his at that point. He was thinking about how he'd texted Eames the address, not even really considering it, when he'd texted Dom--a place four people knew was his, and Eames was one of them. Why? Arthur hadn't expected him to come, hadn't even wanted him to come, but he'd shot it off anyway.
Tell no one, that text had said, the same to Dom and Eames, but in case you need to find me when I'm gone.
He'd had scores of men up there, Arthur had, taking advantage of his infrequent and well-deserved vacations. He let them stay the night, usually, because it wasn't worth his time to go through the rigmarole of kicking them to the curb when he was done with them. He'd fucked and been fucked there, and in the morning he'd padded around absently, more or less oblivious to the presence of his assorted guests, knowing he wasn't visible enough to be recognized or followed by the press--how long had it been for Eames, since he'd been afforded that luxury? The ease of not having to think about it?
It was stupid. Arthur knew it was stupid, to cast Eames as some kind of--well, to cast him as anything, really, because that was the trouble with Eames. He was always sliding into these roles people made for him, these roles he made for himself. Of everyone in his life, professionally speaking, Arthur had known him the longest, the best--Mal was dead and Cobb hadn't met him until he was already over the wide-eyed wonder of his first film, until he was already shifting into someone harder.
Arthur stared at Eames, face slack with sleep, and remembered his trailer on the Gone With The Wind set. He'd spent a ridiculous amount of his first big paycheck outfitting it, and they'd sat in there one night, beers resting on the floor by their feet. Arthur had been so fucking young then, twenty-two and damnably fresh-faced, and he'd tried harder, because he'd had more to prove. He wouldn't have touched Eames for anything, because he needed to be taken fucking seriously, but he'd been in that trailer anyway and Eames had showed him the record player, the vintage copy of The White Album Arthur had laughed and laughed about. And then Eames had started screwing around with Mal and Arthur had just gotten more uptight, had driven that stick of professionalism further up his own ass.
They were a study in misfire, the two of them, even then, and Arthur reached out a hand and let it rest on Eames' cheek almost absently, angry and sorry and unsure, for once in his life.
Eames smiled and butted up against the touch, rubbing against Arthur's palm in his sleep, unguarded and tender, more tender than Arthur would have imagined possible.
Arthur is a man of few regrets; there's no business like show business, and it's not prudent in a world where everyone is watching for mistakes to linger on the shit you've done wrong. He only allows himself to mourn a decision when he knows, decisively and without argument, that it was the wrong one, and getting out of that bed that morning was one of those bad choices. It would have been so easy to press his thumb a little harder, to fucking say something, to wake him up on that note instead of alone--he should have considered Eames' stupid ego, the way he always put more weight on things than was necessary, his tendency toward dramatic and ill-thought-out.
But he didn't, which is why Eames stumbled into the kitchen twenty minutes later to find him showered, dressed, and making coffee.
"Oh, love," he said, condescending and rife with pity, looking over the kitchen with that terrible smirk curling his mouth again, "you've got the wrong end of the stick."
"Have I?" Arthur asked. "Do tell."
"You can't be…" Eames paused, sighed, and gestured broadly. "Not that it wasn't lovely, of course, but I can't have you making me coffee. This isn't--"
"Oh," Arthur said, catching on. And really, the anger bubbling up under his surface, erasing his desire to explain that this had been about a lot of things but none of them were Dominic fucking Cobb, was entirely unjustified.
"Terribly sorry," Eames said, not sounding it, "but I just, you know, I can't be--I have a career to think of."
"I know," Arthur replied, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "So do I, for that matter. You're right."
"I am?" Eames said, startled. Somewhere, distantly, Arthur registered that he was seeing Eames break character, knew what that meant, and dismissed it anyway.
"Of course you are," Arthur said, taking a long pull from his cup and checking his watch. "Shit, I've got to get out of here. I'll see you on set, right? We've got--"
"So that's it?" Eames said, and oh, god, he was careening wildly through his options now, wrong-footed and still not quite awake, and Arthur wanted to push him into the wall and demand a little bit of fucking honestly.
But he'd always had more control than that.
"What's it?" he said, instead.
"You're just going to--we're just going to go back to business as usual, then? Just like that it?"
"I don't see why we shouldn't," Arthur said. "Wasn't that your point?"
"You," Eames said, his voice tight, and then, sounding completely impassive about it, "right, well, you've always been a bit of a chilly bastard, haven't you? Have a lovely morning."
And then he turned around and went back into the bedroom, letting the door snick shut behind him as Arthur let himself out.
--
TMZ.com, December 17, 2010
Eames and producer Arthur Levine were spotted at Proclus last night, partying with the likes of Jude Law and Mary-Kate Olsen. Though both parties' camps have declined comment, onlookers say the meet-up was more than strictly professional…and then there's the shots of Eames getting into Levine's car, below. Are these two at it again? Keep watching TMZ for updates.
--
"Good morning, sunshine," Amanda says, and Arthur can hear her damn grin over the phone.
"I saw it already," he informs he, forcing himself up out of bed and shutting his laptop. "I'm sure there will be more in a few hours, and nothing happened, he slept on my couch. Thanks for fielding the calls, by the way."
"Not a problem. You know I never sleep."
"I'm really starting to think that's true," Arthur says, heading toward the kitchen. He stops, staring at Eames sprawled across the couch, and sighs. "Hold on."
"Eames," he says, holding the phone to his shoulder and bending down to poke him, "Eames, wake the fuck up, we've got forty five minutes to get to set."
"Piss off," Eames groans, "I'm dying."
"You're hungover," Arthur says, amused. "Get in the shower, I'll find you some Tylenol or something, we've got shit to do."
"Oh, Christ, light, why," Eames groans, throwing a hand over his face. "You're going to have to rewrite the whole script, I'm not fit for anything save horror films today."
"That's always been true," Arthur agrees cheerfully, "and yet. Up, you lazy shit, come on."
"I loathe you," Eames says, pulling himself upright. "I despise you with every fibre of my being."
"Also, we've made TMZ," says Arthur, "again. Thanks for that."
"I need Julie," Eames moans. "And a sledgehammer. And immediate death."
"Shower," Arthur says firmly, pushing him in the general direction of the bathroom, and picks up the phone to address Amanda again. "Not a fucking word."
"You never let me have any fun," she complains, even as Eames calls out "And what kind of poofter shampoo is this?" over the sound of running water. Arthur goes out onto his porch, shutting the glass door to drown out at least one of his problems.
"How bad is it?"
"Not bad, on the scale of things," Amanda says; he can hear the shrug in her voice. "You're not really news compared to him, no offense, and it's not like there haven't been rumors for years. It's mostly Nash trying to push the angle."
"Why, exactly, haven't I ruined that guy's fucking life yet?"
"Because you're a good person, somewhere very very deep down inside," Amanda says promptly, "and also because he toes the line between stretching the truth and actually committing libel pretty well."
"I hate this fucking town," Arthur sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Okay, can you just--run me through the schedule for today again, and then…"
He gets lost in the conversation for a couple minutes, going back and forth on the shit he has to get done, and when he comes in off the porch to grab his laptop Eames is freshly showered and on the phone with Julie. Arthur half listens to him planning a few different interviews as he flips through the documents Amanda's forwarded to him, and they kind of avoid awkwardness by not speaking to each other at all.
It's comfortable, though, the way Eames rolls his eyes at Arthur when Julie's said something particularly amusing, the way Arthur tosses him an apple and makes a disapproving face when he digs around in Arthur's cupboards for something more substantial. Neither one of them hangs up until they're in the car, and Eames demands they stop for coffee, and then they're so close to set that it's easy enough to slip into discussion of the day's work ahead.
Amanda and Julie are waiting for them together when they get in, both with their Blackberries in hand, laughing about something.
"Well," Eames says, "that's the most terrifying thing I've seen in some time."
"Do you ever think they're engineering our downfall?" Arthur asks. "I mean, between the two of them--"
"Please," Julie says, rolling her eyes. "If we wanted to bring you two down we would have done it ages ago, it's not like either one of you is particularly bright."
"I resent that," Eames says.
"I don't," Arthur says, shrugging. "I fully contend that Amanda is smarter than me."
"See, that's why my boss is better than your boss," Amanda tells Julie, grinning. "At least mine is willing to admit that he's a moron."
"I didn't say that," Arthur points out. "Now, trade coffee with me."
"Why?" Amanda asks, even as she's handing it over. "Starbucks out of soy again?"
"I don't understand why it's so fucking hard to keep it in stock," Arthur grumbles. "It's not like it's hard to find."
Amanda takes a sip of his cup and makes a face. "Goddamn it, Arthur, you've ruined me for regular milk."
"You've trained her to take her coffee with soy?" Eames asks, his eyebrows up.
"No," Amanda snaps, before Arthur can, "I'm not his dog. It was just easier then listening to him bitch and kvetch and try to convince me to get him a line on shutting down entire corporations every time he couldn't get--"
"Jesus, let's move on," Arthur snaps, because Eames is laughing at him now. "Eames, you need to get to hair and make-up, Blaine is going to have a fit and a half about the circles under your eyes."
"I warned him already," Julie says, scrolling through some list on her phone. "But Arthur's right, you'd better get down there, you're shooting in half an hour and and Access Hollywood will be here for the onset stills at four--"
"Arthur, you're meeting with Yusuf and Jacob--Jacob Hendrickson, the stunt guy, why don't you ever read my emails--before the first shot to go over the blocking for next week, Yusuf wants to change up the angle and Jacob says it's not in his contract, they're waiting for you in--"
"Have a good morning, love," Eames calls over his shoulder, as Julie leads him away. She smacks him for not paying attention, and Arthur waves him off, listening to Amanda; if he's smiling, it's obviously just a trick of the damn light.
--
TMZ.com, January 3, 2007
Sources report that actor Eames spent several hours in police custody today, though there is no official arrest report on record as of yet. According to bystanders, Eames had "a complete breakdown," on the set of The Cobol Job, going so far as to threaten director Dominic Cobb and break several thousand dollars worth of equipment.
"Any tension on set today has been resolved," said producer Arthur Levine. "This is a non-story."
Somehow, TMZ doesn't think so…
--
TMZ.com, October 25, 2007
A TMZ EXCLUSIVE: Dominic Cobb Arrested For Drug Possession at Cobol Premiere
The premiere of The Cobol Job was thrown into chaos earlier this evening when director Dominic Cobb was removed from the premises in handcuffs, following an attempted fist-fight with his lead actor, Eames, whose discontent with the film is widely known. Why the police chose to disrupt the premiere in this way is unknown as of yet, though TMZ can report that they were called to the scene following the altercation with Eames. The initial arrest report indicates that Cobb was in possession of both cocaine and heroin; as of yet, Eames is not in custody.
No one from either camp could be reached for comment, but check back for updates…
--
rottentomatoes.com, November 18, 2007, Review: The Cobol Job (Excerpt)
Some advice on The Cobol Job: don't see it.
No, seriously. If you're looking for entertainment, you might check out the controversy surround director Dominic Cobb's arrest at the film's premiere; you might also consider watching paint dry, it would probably be more interesting. We're not sure if it's Cobb's meandering, strange directorial choices, a far cry from his usual visceral filmmaking, or Eames' lackluster performance…
…no, we're sure. It's Eames.
Aside from the fact that the script itself leaves something to be desired on the originality front (angry mobsters chasing down a criminal who's crossed them? Really? Haven't we been to this movie?), Eames' performance is frankly off-putting. Maybe it's just that we've come to expect too much from him, that we've taken for granted the way he can fall into a character; maybe we've all given him too much credit. Whatever the reason, he's odd here, unconvincing, and seems to be focused nearly constantly on something beyond the camera...
--
The night of the Cobol premiere was, easily, the worst night of Arthur's life.
There was of course the fact that the film was fucking terrible; Arthur knew the film was fucking terrible. He'd seen it in its entirety and tried in vain, repeatedly, to get Dom to pull the plug; it was going to get panned, and it was going to lose money. There really wasn't any way for it not to lose money, considering how much they'd spent on set, holding locations, shooting and reshooting scenes--any way Dom could burn cash, he did. It was a disaster, of course it was a disaster, and so that was the first problem.
The second problem was that Dom showed up high as a fucking kite, fighting Arthur when he tried to drag him past the cameras waiting outside, and the third problem was Eames, because Eames was always a problem.
Things had been uncomfortable between them after their…whatever it was….to say the least, and the tension there had only increased when Eames pitched his little on-set fit. And then he'd walked onto the red carpet with a Victoria's Secret model on his arm, looking every inch the impeccable movie star while Arthur struggled to drag Dom inside, and something in him had snapped.
It some ways--in many ways--Arthur blames himself for what ended up happening that night. If he'd been less distracted, if he'd been focusing his attention on Dom and not on his own stupid, petty jealously, he might have been able to stem the tide of the inevitable.
Probably not, though.
"Amanda," he said, waving her over from where she'd been chatting with some reporter. "Get me everything you can on Eames' date."
"Are you going to tell me what happened between you two?" Amanda asked, raising her eyebrows. She looked lovely--in a dark blue dress with her hair coiffed, not a trace of the nervousness she used to show at these things--and irritated at having been interrupted. Arthur made a mental note to give her a nice long vacation when all of this was over.
"No," he barked, "just do it, and get me some kind of--a Xanax or something for Dom, Jesus Christ."
"Yeah, okay, I'm on it," she sighed, and vanished into the crowd again.
Arthur installed Dom in a chair--first mistake, what the fuck had he been thinking, leaving him alone--and went to get a drink. And it so happened that Eames was at the bar at the same time, and Arthur couldn't exactly not speak to him because he'd brought someone with him to the premiere; that wasn't even an acceptable impulse.
"Arthur," Eames said, smiling sharply at him. "Still having fun fighting losing battles?"
"I'm surprised you even showed," Arthur snapped. "Going to try to drum up some more bad press for this film?"
"Actually," Eames drawled, "my being here is a favor to you. Or would you rather have dealt with the fallout of the star not bothering to stop by?"
"Don't fucking start," Arthur said, throwing back the shot that the bartender dropped and signaling for another. "You've got your own game here, you always do."
"Have I told you how sick I am," Eames said, narrowing his eyes, "of you misappropriating my profession into everything else I do? If I wanted to con you I would bloody con you, it's not like it would be hard."
"So you're not playing games," Arthur said, looking pointedly at the drinks that had just been set down in front of Eames' hand--a whiskey and soda, Eames' preferred beverage, and something pink and fruity. "Then the arm candy is, what, an accessory?"
Eames smiled, but it was dark, twisted. "Ah, Arthur," he said, "that's your game, not mine. You know full well that we don't have to play."
"Are you going to try to make this about me now?" Arthur growled. He glanced around, made sure no one was in earshot, and continued, "I thought you had a career to think of, Mr. Eames."
"Well I rather thought I deserved more than being a stand-in for your director du jour," Eames said, and he wasn't smiling anymore. "But as you didn't seem particularly bothered about that--"
"Fuck you," Arthur said, "you go straight to fucking hell, Jesus, this is exactly why I never wanted to get involved with you to begin with. The level of unprofessional bullshit--"
"You're the one that's made this unprofessional," Eames snapped. "I would have been perfectly content to let it alone--"
"That's a fucking lie and you know it," Arthur hissed. "Do you think I'm blind, do you think I didn't notice the way you stared at me on set, do you think I don't see what you're doing, bringing someone like that here--"
"Why, darling," Eames said, mocking, his mouth curling up in a sneer, "don't tell me I've made you jealous."
"Even if you had," Arthur said, because one bad turn deserved another, "it's not like she'll still be interested in you after she sees your performance tonight."
That had been a low blow; Arthur regretted it the second it came out of his mouth, regretted it from the moment Eames blinked and leaned back a fraction of an inch, the closest he'd come to reeling in shock in the public eye.
He regretted it considerably more ten minutes later, when Dom made a stoned, snide comment about Eames' acting skills and Eames jumped at it; Arthur had to pull them off of each other and pull them off of each other again, and in the process revealed the gram bag of heroin Dom'd had concealed in his pocket.
"Christ," Eames said, staring at it.
"Fuck," Arthur breathed, because there were photographers and someone, in the middle of the brawl, someone must have called the police. And they were coming in now, just a few of them but enough, and that was the photo--Arthur with one hand on Dom's chest and one hand on Eames', the three of them staring at the bag at their feet as the officers pulled out the handcuffs.
--
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:15 AM PST
saw about cobb. you okay
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:16 AM PST
what do you even care
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:18 AM PST
are you drunk?
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:21 AM PST
of course i'm fucking drnk, i put dom in rehab this morning, still begs the question of what its to you
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:30 AM PST
for what its worth im sorry it happened like it did
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:35 AM PST
i'm sorry it happened at all
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 2:35 AM PST
oh fuck i shouldn't have sent that i didn't mean that
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, March 3, 2008, 2:40 AM PST
do you know how hard you make it for me to deal with you sometimes
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, March 3, 2008, 3:13 AM PST
yeah
--
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, July 22, 2008, 6:06 PM PST
God Jude Law is an asshole.
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, July 22, 2008, 6:10 PM PST
i told you working with him wasn't a good choice
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, July 22, 2008, 6:11 PM PST
No, you told me to cast you instead, and I think we've kind of proved we're better off not working together.
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, July 22, 2008, 6:12 PM PST
must you be so determined to hold onto that
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, July 22, 2008, 6:13 PM PST
I wouldn't be, if you weren't worse.
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, July 22, 2008, 7:02 PM PST
tell me whats gone wrong with jude then
--
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:00 PM PST
goddamn it arthur i miss you im sorry
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:15 PM PST
fuck ignore that last text im a little
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:15 PM PST
fuck
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:22 PM PST
you make no fucking sense to me did you know that darling no bloody sense atall
Text from Eames to Arthur Levine, December 8, 2009, 9:32 PM PST
for fucks sake whatdo i have to do here
Text from Arthur Levine to Eames, December 8, 2009, 9:45 PM PST
Jesus Christ, isn't it like 2AM there? Go to sleep.
--
Saito does end up coming into town, because luck only goes so far and it was inevitably going to happen at some point. At Dom's urging--"I don't have any place in that meeting, Arthur, god, if anything I'll scare him off, you do it,"--Arthur takes him to lunch. Or, rather, Arthur attempts to take him to lunch; Saito deftly changes the time, the day, and the location of the meeting, not bothering to hide the fact that he's doing it solely to establish control.
Arthur likes him a lot, actually. He's Arthur's kind of guy.
They're talking about the NASDAQ over their salads, both waiting until their meals arrive to get to the more serious discussion, when Arthur's phone rings. It's Ariadne; he silences it and goes back to the conversation, but two seconds later it rings again.
"Please," Saito says, waving a hand toward the phone. "Don't be lax with my investment on my account, Mr. Levine. Take the call."
"It'll just be a second," Arthur says quickly. Then he picks up the phone and barks, "I'm in a meeting. What?"
"You have to get to set right now," Ariadne says. "Dom's rigging Eames up for the stunt--"
"What?"
"I know," Ariadne says, "I know, I've tried to stop them but--"
"Fucking shit," Arthur snaps, "I'll be there in ten, don't you dare let this happen, set something on fire if you have to," and hangs up the phone.
Saito's eyebrows are at his hairline.
"I was of the impression that my set could spare you for an hour or so," he says. "Apparently I was mistaken."
"Mr. Saito, I apologize," Arthur says, trying not to betray his fury more than he already has. "I do have this under control, but I need to--"
"Go," Saito says, "by all means. But do keep in mind that my participation in the project is not unconditional."
"I'm very aware of that," Arthur says, standing up. "I appreciate this, and I assure you that I--"
"Go," Saito insists, his eyes sharp, and Arthur flees.
"Amanda!" he screams into his phone, all but shoving the valet out of the driver's seat of his Rover and throwing himself in. "Dom's rigging Eames up for the stunt, why the fuck didn't I know about this?"
"Because I didn't know until ten seconds ago," Amanda says, and thank god for her unshakable cool, she really is invaluable. "I've got the restaurant on the other line; they're going to apologize to Saito again and put his meal on our tab, the most recent traffic report is in your email--"
Arthur switches to his Bluetooth and pulls up the traffic report even as he says, "For fuck's sake, this is why he pushed me to take the meeting alone, I can't--is that Julie?"
"She's yelling at Eames," Amanda says. "About, among other things, the stipulations of his contract."
"Good," Arthur says, "great, fuck, okay, do whatever the fuck you can to stall it--god, can you pull Yusuf off the--"
"Dom offered him a 15% raise if he'd shoot it."
"With what fucking money?" Arthur screams, swerving to avoid hitting a slowing taxi and leaning on his horn. "Fucking shit, okay, I have to jump off, call me if there's any--"
"Developments, yeah, of course, I'll send someone out to park your car, bye."
Arthur hangs up and drives like a fucking lunatic, mentally marking all of the traffic cams whose tickets he'll be receiving later. He gets angrier and angrier as he goes, and by the time he pulls into the lot and hands off his keys to a gofer he's never laid eyes on--who might be a fucking thief, Jesus, he doesn't even care--he's as furious as he's ever been in his life.
"Shut this the fuck down," he bellows, crashing onto set. It's chaos--Dom is grinning like the goddamn maniac he is while Julie screams up at Eames, who is fully rigged up. The stunt's a pretty basic zipline run, something that Eames actually could do himself if it weren't for the hairpin turn involved. As it is…and Jesus, the mats that are out are the ones that Jacob specified, Jacob who is actually a trained fucking professional and knows how to take a fall--
"Don't be such a tight ass, Arthur," Dom calls. "It'll be better this way. More real."
"We're not fucking insured for this!" Arthur yells. "You idiot, you asshole, don't you understand we'll be fucked if he does this even if he doesn't fall and break his goddamn neck--"
"I didn't know you cared, darling," Eames calls out, and then Dom calls action and he's jumping and Arthur's running and he sees the cable snap before he even has time to--
It shouldn't be possible, but in that second, that split second while Eames is falling, Arthur has time to think a million things. And what he settles on--and it's so strange, that this should be what comes to mind--what he settles on is a conversation he'd had with Wes Craven at the release party for Dom's fifth movie, when Mal was still alive, before everything went so terribly wrong.
"The thing about horror, as a genre," Wes said, leaning in too close to Arthur, the whiskey heavy on his breath, "is that it's not so much about the content of the film as it is how it makes you feel. Do you see what I'm saying?"
"Not really," Arthur admitted, drunk on satisfaction and gin and the way Eames had smiled at him from across the room a second before. "You'll have to elaborate."
"Well," Wes said, "you know that feeling, when you wake up from a nightmare, and something creaks in your house? And you know that your security hasn't gone off, and your dog isn't barking--but you're still mostly asleep, and so it occurs to you that your dog could be dead, that someone could have turned your security off. And it's completely illogical, and you know that, but for a moment, you can't help but think it."
"Think what?" Arthur asked, and then Wes leaned even closer and grinned like the Chesire Cat. Despite himself, Arthur felt a chill run down the back of his spine. Wes really was a very creepy man.
"Someone is in my house," he said.
And this is what Arthur is thinking as Eames is falling: he is thinking of Wes Craven and the way Eames had brushed his fingers against Arthur's hips that night, thinking of that chill up his spine. He's thinking of how this feeling, this complete fucking panic, is as close to that sensation Wes had described as anything he's ever felt.
Eames is in my house, Arthur thinks, and then there's the sickening crunch of him missing the mats as he hits the ground.
"Call a fucking medic!" someone screams, and it takes Arthur a second to realize it was him. He's on the ground next to Eames, in a crouch, and Eames is unconscious--Jesus, of course he is. The thought crosses Arthur's mind that maybe he's dead, that maybe he's fucking died, and he reaches out to check for a pulse without shutting up.
"You idiot," he yells, relief coursing through him as he feels the pounding of bloodflow against his fingers, "goddamn it, god fucking damn it, what the fuck were you thinking, why the fuck would you do that?" And Eames doesn't answer him, because of course Eames can't hear him, because Eames is unconscious.
"You'd better wake the fuck up so that I can fucking kill you!" Arthur yells, and then the medics are there and pulling him back as they load Eames onto a stretcher.
Arthur is breathing hard as he shakes off the hands that have pulled him to his feet. The set, which had been a hotbed of activity before, is silent but for the wail of the sirens now. Yusuf is staring at his camera, looking sick, and Ariadne's hand is over her mouth, and Julie--it's the first time Arthur's ever seen her look anything less than perfectly composed, but her cheeks are wet, and she's talking to an EMT about allergies and emergency contacts in stunned, hushed tones. It occurs to Arthur, distantly, that ambulances don't just show up, and he wonders kind of idly how long he was on the ground, screaming at Eames, in front of all these people.
And then he sees Dom out of the corner of his eye, and decides he doesn't care.
"You," he hisses. The ambulance is pulling away as Arthur stalks over to where he's standing, stock still, his eyes trained on the dangling, broken cable. "You, this is your fault, how fucking dare you--"
"I didn't think," Dom says, blinking. "Jesus, I didn't think--"
"You never think!" Arthur cries. "You never fucking think, you let me do all your motherfucking thinking for you and you always, always have--"
"Arthur," Dom starts, "Arthur, I'm--"
"No," Arthur growls, advancing, "no, you know what, whatever you want to say you can shut the fuck up about it, because I don't want to fucking hear it. I don't care that you started my career and I don't care how much of my fucking success you're responsible for, you shouldn't have done this."
"I know--"
"You don't," Arthur yells, "you obviously fucking don't, god, shit, I can't even--you didn't deserve your fucking career back before and you definitely don't deserve it now."
Dom opens his mouth--to argue, probably--and it's all Arthur can do not to hit him.
"Don't you dare," he snaps, "don't even, you want to try to reason with me you can think the fuck again. I told you not to do this, I told you fifteen times and you did it anyway--you sent me to have lunch with fucking Saito, goddamn it, how long have you been planning--and if he dies, Dom, you get to fucking live with that. I hope you're proud of yourself."
"Arthur," Dom says, and Arthur's probably gone too far already, so he doesn't see the point in pulling his last punch.
"I should have known better than to work with you again," he hisses. "You trainwreck. You fucking asshole."
Dom steps back from him, like Arthur has actually hit him, which feels about right at the moment. Arthur himself whips around and makes his way toward the edge of the lot, his rage all-consuming and blinding.
"Amanda!" he barks, but she's already next to him, and he doesn't stop to address the open mouthed stares of the rest of the crew as he heads for his car.
--
The next 24 hours are more or less a blur.
Amanda comes to his apartment with him, and she helps as Arthur runs through as much damage control as humanly possible. Largely she fields shit from the press while Arthur deals with the insurance companies, with trying to keep Saito from pulling his funding.
He keeps asking her to check in with Julie, pushing and pushing for updates, until finally, around two in the morning, she sighs.
"Arthur," she says, "I think she's asleep, and even if she isn't, she's not--she's not answering, I think you're just going to have to wait until--"
"God fucking damn it," Arthur snaps, and he picks up the coffee cup sitting next to his computer and hurls it into the wall. It shatters, and the coffee goes everywhere, and Arthur runs a hand through his hair, yanking on it.
Amanda, fuck it all, doesn't even look fazed. She just sighs and puts her hand on his shoulder, rubbing lightly.
"It's not your fault," she says. "You do know that, right? You can't control everything."
"I can try," Arthur growls. Amanda sighs again, like he's so predictable, and really sometimes Arthur hates her for being so goddamned good at her job.
"Fuck," he says, "fuck, okay, you know what, you should try to get some sleep."
"I don't sleep," Amanda says. "I thought you knew."
"As much as I believe you," Arthur says, trying to smile at her, "it's okay, really. Go ahead."
"You're sure," she says. "Because I can--"
"Go on," Arthur says, waving a hand. "You're still getting a massive raise after this debacle, don't worry."
Amanda rolls her eyes. "If you think I do this job for the money you're even stupider than I thought."
"Oh, Jesus, you're being nice to me," Arthur says. "The apocalypse is here, huh? Did I ever get around to having you pack me a bag?"
"You're an asshole," Amanda says, but fondly, and she bends down to kiss him on the cheek before heading into his living room to crash on his couch.
With nothing else to distract him--even in Los Angeles, there are only so many work calls you can make in the middle of the night--Arthur spends several instructive hours digging up everything he can on Nash and obsessively refreshing TMZ. It's a pre-emptive measure more than anything else, and it's probably pointless, but it makes him feel less like fucking killing someone.
--
TMZ.com, January 4, 2011
Actor Eames rushed to hospital after on-set accident; updates will be ongoing as TMZ learns more.
--
Arthur finally gives in and goes to the hospital the next afternoon, because Julie is still MIA and he's going to lose his fucking mind if he doesn't.
Predictably, he doesn't even make it in the damn doors before he runs into Nash.
He's as slimy as Arthur remembers him being, a camera in his hands, and he's smiling. He's smiling like it's the score of the month, and he snaps a picture of Arthur, scowling and underslept, before he says, "Come to see your boyfriend? How touching."
"Can it, Nash," Arthur growls.
"Of course," Nash continues, "you've missed him by about an hour, if the limo that pulled up before was anything to go by. The rest of the vultures followed him, but I had a hunch you might show up."
"Did you," Arthur says, flat.
"It must be terrible," Nash purrs, and it's all mockery, and Arthur is actually kind of relieved, because this is a problem he can handle. "Always out of the loop. You don't feel compelled to give me a quote in your moment of need, do you, Arthur?"
And, as it happens, Arthur can act pretty well when he wants to. He purposefully casts his eyes down, takes a shuddering breath, and says, "God, that bastard," and is gratified when he sees Nash's face light up out of the corner of his eye.
"Holy shit," Nash says, "do you feel compelled to--"
"Not here," Arthur says, "not all out in the open, anyone could see, that would be--"
"Follow me," Nash says quickly, because of course he knows all the tucked away places, "come on, there's a little--"
He leads Arthur around the side of the hospital; there's an empty parking lot and a trashcan, and a number of spent cigarette butts. Arthur does a quick scan of the area to make sure no one can see them as Nash says, his voice honey-smooth, "Now, why don't you start from the--"
He's got Nash slammed up against the cement wall before he can get the rest of the sentence out.
"You stupid fuck," Arthur snarls, "that was too fucking easy."
"You gonna hit me?" Nash asks, his eyes wide. "I wish you would, that'd make a great fucking story."
"Do you think I give a shit what you print about me?" Arthur demands. "About your sad little job, following these people around like you're begging for their fucking table scraps? I could ruin you."
"This is assault," Nash says, somewhere between terrified and gleeful. Arthur presses him against wall a little harder, hoping to heighten the terror.
This is wrong. This is a bad decision. But Arthur is very, very angry, and this is a considerably better outlet than some of the others he could choose right now.
"You go ahead and sue me, Nash," Arthur says, his voice low. "You want to see how fast I come back with libel? Stalking? Not to mention the breaking and entering, if some of the shit I've seen is anything to go by, and all the confidential documents you seem to have gotten your hands on over the last few years. I have a fucking dossier on you, so you go right the fuck ahead."
"It'll never stick," Nash says, and it's definitely all panic now. Arthur grins at him.
"You want to bet on that?" he asks. "Because I'm fucking serious. Nothing would thrill me more than to tear your ass limb from goddamn limb."
"Jesus," Nash spits, "Jesus, Arthur, fine, what the fuck do you want?"
"You stay away from me," Arthur snaps, "and you stay the fuck away from Eames. Or give me the excuse, your call. I'd really love the fucking excuse."
Nash swallows hard and nods, and Arthur lets him go.
"You really are a bastard," Nash grunts. "You know that, right?"
"Run along," Arthur says, waving a hand, and Nash doesn't need to be told twice. Arthur allows himself a slight grin, feeling calmer than he has in hours, and pulls out his phone.
"Amanda," he says, when she picks up, "I need you to--"
"Find Eames because he's checked himself out of the hospital?" Amanda finishes for him. "Yeah, I know, I was just about to call you. He's back at his hotel--banged up, bad concussion, and there's a cut on the back of his head, but overall he's apparently mostly okay."
"He always did have ridiculous luck," Arthur says, and if the relief flooding his veins breaks into his voice, leaves him sounding a little choked, Amanda's good enough not to call him on it.
"He's apparently being very pleasant," she continues, and he can hear her eyeroll. "Julie is thrilled."
"I can imagine," Arthur says, almost laughing. "Okay, well, I'm heading over there now. Thanks."
"Anytime," he hears her say, and heads for his car.
--
All the curtains are drawn in Eames' hotel room, and the lights are out. He's still wearing sunglasses, though, what little ambient light apparently being too much for him, and Julie's face is tense when she lets Arthur in the door.
"You should be in the hospital," he says to Eames over her shoulder. "You're lucky your assistant is so willing to cater to your insane whims."
Eames winces. "Could you talk quieter, please? This is like the worst hangover of my life, but a thousand times more agonizing."
"God, can you babysit him for awhile?" Julie asks, sounding strained. "Murder would look really bad on my resume, but I was starting to think I wouldn't have any other choice."
"I don't require babysitting," Eames mutters.
"Quiet, the adults are talking," Julie says, and Eames scowls.
"I'm on it," Arthur assures her. "Go take a break. If you could do me a favor, though?"
"Anything to get him off my hands," Julie says, to an irritated huff from Eames. Arthur can't help but laugh a little, and if it's more than half based in his stunned, almost sickening relief that Eames is more or less alright, he's not going to admit to it.
"Could you call Amanda and ask her to make sure Nash isn't actually filing assault charges against me right now?"
"Yep, yep, definitely, whatever you say," Julie says, as she grabs her purse and beats a hasty retreat.
This, of course, leaves Arthur and Eames alone in the hotel room, which is more or less the desired result.
"What'd you do to Nash?" Eames asks, and he sounds more tired than anything else. And that's a relief too, really, even if it's only because he's quite literally had all of his bullshit knocked out of him.
"I put the fear of god into him," Arthur says, sitting down on the coffee table across from Eames. "Or, rather, the fear of me."
Eames sighs. "Bloody hell, I was hoping you'd killed him."
"He couldn't have filed assault charges from the grave," Arthur points out. Eames growls low in his throat and rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead.
"If anyone could," he mutters. "Look, if you're here to yell at me about the stunt, I completely understand and I was a prat and everything, I'm fully prepared for my tongue lashing, but if you could maintain a low volume--"
"I'm not here to yell at you about the stunt," Arthur tells him. "I really fucking should be, but I'm not."
"Oh, then it's just the disembowelment?" Eames asks. "Fabulous. If you could be as quick as possible, darling, put me out of my misery--"
"It was never about Dom," Arthur says.
"Wait," says Eames, "wait, what?"
"It was never about fucking Dom," Arthur says, "I can't believe you didn't know that--I mean, honestly, what the fuck is wrong with you--and, look, okay, I won't keep doing this with you anymore. We're going to be honest about this, or I'm fucking leaving and that's it."
"What are we even--"
"Don't," Arthur says. "Don't fuck with me."
"Just fuck you," Eames says, quietly, almost sad, "right?"
Arthur sighs then, because he can't help but sigh. "No, Eames," he says, "no, you're not listening to me, you never listen. It was never about Dom, and it was never about--it was never just about fucking, Jesus Christ."
"Then what was it about?"
"You," Arthur snaps, raising his voice a little. "You and me, you bastard, what the fucking fucking fuck made you think it was ever about anything else--"
"Don't yell," Eames says, wincing, "Christ, bloody hell, don't--"
"You deserve it," Arthur says, but quieter. "You deserve worse, I watched you--I had to watch you--"
"I'm sorry about that," Eames cuts in, "for what it's worth. It was a stupid thing to do."
"That's the understatement of the century," Arthur growls, "but that's not what we're talking about. Jesus, Eames, I'm trying to be honest with you here, and it was--you know, I never wanted to, we fucking work together, and I could never tell how much of any of it was just you being you and how much of it was--"
"I can't help being how I am," Eames points out.
"I know," Arthur sighs. "I know you can't, that's what I'm saying, could you just shut up--"
"I'm just trying," Eames says, "I'm trying to get to your point, here."
"You know what, fuck this," Arthur says, and then he closes the distance between them, swift and sure, to kiss him.
"Oh," Eames says, surprised, against his mouth. And then "Oh," again, but deeper, with more intent, as he threads his fingers through Arthur's hair and pulls him closer. Arthur bites down on his bottom lip, lightly, because he's been wanting to do that for years, and Eames rewards him with a low growl of pleasure.
"Christ," Eames says, pulling back a little, looking ridiculous with that bandage wrapped around his head, with those fucking sunglasses in the dark room, "oh, Christ, I've been a complete arse, haven't I?"
"You have always been," Arthur says, pausing to kiss him swiftly again, "a complete fucking ass. Always."
"Well it's not like you're much better," Eames murmurs, lifting his hand to trace a line down Arthur's cheek. Arthur grins at him, sharp and dangerous and maybe revealing all of the things he's thinking about doing, if the way Eames grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him in again anything to go by.
"Hey," Arthur says, drawing back, "hey, look, we need to--I'm not asking for--I understand that you've got a career and I've got a career and whatever, but I just want to try this, alright? Because it's gotten pretty fucking obvious that not trying this isn't really working out for us."
"I agree wholeheartedly," Eames says, trying to pull Arthur forward, but Arthur resists.
"But it has to be you," he says. "We need to be clear on that, I'm not going to start--if what you want is someone who falls for your--your lines, or whatever, then you're barking up the wrong fucking tree. I don't want to have to sift through your shit all the damn time."
"In all honesty, I don't particularly want to have to give you shit all the damn time," Eames says, his voice very serious. "So, you know, two way street and all that, I won't have any more of this chilly ridiculous nonsense from your end--"
"Done," Arthur says at once. "You know damn well I don't do anything by halves."
"Well, there's that, then," Eames says, his smile sudden and brilliant under his sunglasses, and Arthur draws his mouth in again with a ragged breath, relieved beyond belief that they can finally stop fucking talking about it.
Epilogue
"We don't have to do this," Arthur says, for the fourth time. It comes out muffled, though, because he's got one of his cufflinks between his teeth, fastening the other side with his left hand.
Eames laughs at him and leans across the backseat of the limo to pull his arm forward and do it himself. "Sorry, what was that? You're not exactly intelligible when your mouth is otherwise occupied."
He accompanies this last with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, for which Arthur hits him. "Dirty fuck."
"Takes one to know one," Eames says, releasing Arthur's sleeve. "Seriously, though, what were you saying?"
"That this is stupid," Arthur sighs. "You should get out first, and then I'll have the driver go around the block or something--"
"Do you really think they'll have that much of a field day over us showing up together?" Eames asks. "I mean, really, it's our movie--"
"It'll just confirm the rumors," Arthur argues. "Which, you know, wouldn't have so much steam if you hadn't--"
"Yes, yes, I know, I'm terrible," Eames says easily. "To be entirely honest, I'm not particularly bothered by what the press says about it."
"Oh, Jesus, you've finally lost your mind," Arthur mutters. "I knew that concussion was going to come back to bite me in the ass--how many fingers am I holding up?"
"You're hilarious," Eames informs him, rolling his eyes. Then his face shifts, just slightly, barely noticeable if you're not looking for it. "But, I mean, of course, if it's your own name you don't want in the papers--"
"Don't even try to pull that shit with me," Arthur growls. "You think I can't tell when you're acting? You know I don't give a fuck about the press. You're the one whose reputation is at stake; it's not my picture midwestern teenagers are hanging on their walls."
"Ew," Eames says, shuddering and looking relieved, all at once. "Don't make me think about that, darling, it's vile."
"Doesn't make it less true," Arthur says. "Not to mention the Academy--"
"Bugger the Academy," Eames says decisively, and there's really no reason at all that should make Arthur's throat constrict a little. Fucking Hollywood.
"We're here," he points out, rather than pushing that little declaration into something even more maudlin. "Last chance to come to your senses."
"Just get out of the bloody car, Arthur, alright?" Eames says, grinning at him, and Arthur sighs and opens the door.
The cacophony starts a second later, when Eames climbs out behind him. Long since used to the red carpet, Arthur ignores the crowd screaming Eames' name to look around. He nods at Dom, who pauses in his conversation with a reporter and smiles guardedly at him; Arthur is pretty sure they're never going to be able to work together again, but he's also beginning to think they may be able to salvage a friendship, so that's alright. Ariadne and Yusuf are probably already inside--Arthur'd had to talk both of them into coming to the damn premiere, busy as they've both been on their new film--and Saito and his wife appear to have just arrived.
Amanda and Julie are nowhere to be seen, which actually suggests that there are fires to be put out, and he's just preparing to go find those fires, actually, when Eames says, "Arthur."
He turns around, and Eames is grinning at him, and Arthur has not gotten to be where he is in this business by being easily surprised. He knows what Eames is going to do a second before he does it, and he's already got one hand in his pocket, curled around his phone in preparation for the damage control he'll have to get on at once, when Eames steps in to kiss him.
There are, despite the circumstances, actually a lot of ways he could play this. He could push Eames back and laugh, say something joking about not wanting to be part of another stunt; he could push Eames back and swear, yell about that gay shit not being funny. He could act drunk, he could make Eames act drunk, he could duck away and hope none of the photographers caught the intent--
--but fuck it, if Eames doesn't care he really doesn't, and anyway he's never been the kind of guy to avoid giving as good as he gets.
Arthur lifts his free hand and cups Eames' jaw, pulls him that last half a centimeter in, raising his eyebrows. And Eames is laughing, delighted, putting his hand on the small of Arthur's back because he's such a fucking glutton for attention, and really, really, this is the stupidest thing he's ever done.
"Asshole," Arthur has time to say, and then their lips are meeting, and Arthur closes his eyes as the cameras go wild.