[FIC - R] Artistic Differences (Arthur/Eames)
Title: Artistic Differences
Author: ampers_and
Rating: R for sexual situations and language
Fandom: Inception
Disclaimer: I definitely do not own Inception
Summary: Eames has a problem and Arthur can't help him at all. Such is life.
Word Count: 1,361
Pairing: Eames/Arthur
Author's notes: Written for tourdefierce who asked for guns. <3 to 16shadesofwild for the feedback.
Arthur is good at breaking things down and Eames is good at building them back up again and that’s only part of the reason why they make sense.
Of course, there’s nothing usual about their lives.
They deal in smoke and mirrors and exposition and too much sanctity for the human mind to truly comprehend. They give it a good effort, though.
Arthur strips away the layers of personality between his soul and his brain until he is some walking, talking embodiment of agitated ennui and pre-menstrual hot flashes. Eames follows but stops short, leaving himself no less fragmented but somewhat more self-aware. Able to slip in and out of his own skin like no one else, he adopts the weight of others as if it is his personal goal to make Atlas weep at every turn.
Neither one is a complete human being but that’s alright because they never deal in complete realities anymore-just half-truths and suppressed memories and more often than not, they find themselves caught between enclosing walls of regret and guilt; some rich bastard’s years of therapy proving to have all been wasteful pretense.
Everything is all right because they’ve gotten used to it.
- - - - - - - - - -
Arthur can count on his fingers the number of times he has been thrown for a loop. He gathers intelligence well-effortless, thorough and diligent-qualities that had determined his years with the Air Force. Even then, Arthur had felt a disconnect between the man with ISR and three wings and a swoosh stitched to his arm and the man he saw in the mirror every day.
After years, Arthur has come to the conclusion that this life is not so different after all.
From his vantage point on the roof, he can see clearly. One, two, three, four windows-big bay ones with balconies attached. The old hotel has buttress style supports and Arthur takes a moment to consider the fact that they don’t make buildings like that anymore. He doesn’t lament it, though.
Arthur shifts his hips incrementally, peering through the sight of the M107 at his shoulder, tracking Eames’ path up the street and into the hotel.
- - - - - - - - - -
Their conversation would seem stilted and dry to the casual observer as their cultural knowledge is little more than the impounded culmination of everything that can be found in the stacks of old libraries, unwavering yet delicate like sheets of microfiche.
They know little of current events or politics, borders bleeding into one another until countries may as well be cities, cities glorified playgrounds, rusty and dangerous and fun.
Identities are foster homes, shaky trust lost at the drop of a hat. They are a strange breed of human.
- - - - - - - - - -
What people don’t know can’t hurt them.
That’s Eames’ philosophy, applied here as, what Arthur doesn’t know can’t hurt him.
Because Eames has a plan.
It isn’t a very good plan but then again, few of them are-on paper anyway. Paper is flimsy and malleable; you can’t white-out actions into oblivion and write over them in barely legible script, after all, like you can with words. In practice, Eames has the uncanny ability to make anything work.
Because Eames has a grenade in his pocket and a finger on the pin and he’s minutes away from pulling it out. It will cause enough of a distraction to allow Arthur the opportunity to finish the job. And it will wake Eames up, getting him out of there unhurt.
Ostensibly.
- - - - - - - - - -
If a sumo wrestler falls from a height of ten stories, crushing several unfortunate pedestrians when he hits the ground, the wrestler in question will be as, if not more, injured than the people under him. In that same regard, those who plant ideas can’t come out the other end without a few seeds in their own minds, sprouting and taking root with each passing day.
As much as Fischer himself has been fundamentally altered so, too, have the group of individuals who spent hours if they spent an eternity down there, facilitating the inception.
It’s impossible to come out of a job like the Fischer one and not be changed.
Inceptions are the herpes of the dreamscape.
- - - - - - - - - -
Eames keeps walking, his strides even and casual. He knows Arthur is watching. He knows Arthur will know what to do. Finger easing the pin out of place, Eames’ final thought is, You’d better wake up before heat rips through him, yanking his mind out of the dream with a gasp that’s altogether too loud and relieved for a man of his level-headedness.
Arthur watches Eames go up in a blaze of no-glory and springs into action thinking, Idiot! but he’s acutely aware that Eames is anything but.
Later-moments, minutes, hours-Arthur jerks awake. Eames is sitting up in the next bed, carefully unrolling his shirtsleeves.
"What was that?" Arthur asks, sitting up and yanking the IV from his wrist. He immediately regrets the action as his body reminds him that this is the Real World and it's time to behave in the way Real People do.
"It worked, didn't it?" Eames asks right back, infuriatingly three steps ahead in conversation as he usually is. His heart is beating faster than it rightly should be but he isn't about to bring it up.
"That's not the point. It was a damn stupid thing to do."
"That’s not altogether correct," Eames says, agreeing in his mind all the while. It was a stupid thing to do. He might not have woken up.
"This is the third time you've clocked out early." It isn't that they work together all that often, it's just that it has been so long that Arthur knows what to expect from Eames, and kamikaze moves have never been his style. "Give me some warning next time."
"And what would that accomplish?" Eames is still focused on his shirtsleeves, fingers fumbling with the slick material of his silk button-up. "Give you some time to plan ahead? Alleviate your blood pressure, perhaps?"
He looks up then and continues, "Warning, no warning, it's all the same to you."
Arthur raises an eyebrow. "You're being intentionally cryptic."
"You mean to tell me you aren't a little afraid of it all?" Eames asks, faux-innocence only proving to irritate Arthur further.
“Fuck you,” Arthur says and Eames just jerks his head, lips twitching. He knows what comes next.
- - - - - - - - - -
To Arthur, sex is like dismantling a handgun. To Eames, sex is like sex-no more and certainly no less.
The click of the safety is heavier than that of a lock in a door but not dissimilar. The scrape of the magazine-metal on metal on plastic-one finger holding the release button, is no less satisfying than clothing dropping away like so many bullets.
Reaching for the barrel, pulling back the slide, the final bullet falls to the floor. A poker chip Arthur didn’t think Eames relied on anymore. He lets go as he pushes back, leaning up and reaching down.
“You are afraid,” Eames says as he feels Arthur’s palm against the outline of his cock.
“No.”
Flipping the slide over, exposing the string and the barrel of Eames’ coarse body to the light and Arthur is all clinical precision intermingled with candor.
Hand on thigh, hand on ass, hand on dick, hand on head over heel over breath and they barely even know what they’re doing anymore.
Eames is afraid and Arthur can’t say “Yes” to save his life and they are so fundamentally different than they once were. Together, at least, in their discrepancies.
Everything is unsatisfactory and there are no resolutions.
Resolutions are for the tale-end of bad years, devised in the minds of individuals who feel it is in their power to truly change, not realizing that people can’t change.
People are changed.
Author: ampers_and
Rating: R for sexual situations and language
Fandom: Inception
Disclaimer: I definitely do not own Inception
Summary: Eames has a problem and Arthur can't help him at all. Such is life.
Word Count: 1,361
Pairing: Eames/Arthur
Author's notes: Written for tourdefierce who asked for guns. <3 to 16shadesofwild for the feedback.
Arthur is good at breaking things down and Eames is good at building them back up again and that’s only part of the reason why they make sense.
Of course, there’s nothing usual about their lives.
They deal in smoke and mirrors and exposition and too much sanctity for the human mind to truly comprehend. They give it a good effort, though.
Arthur strips away the layers of personality between his soul and his brain until he is some walking, talking embodiment of agitated ennui and pre-menstrual hot flashes. Eames follows but stops short, leaving himself no less fragmented but somewhat more self-aware. Able to slip in and out of his own skin like no one else, he adopts the weight of others as if it is his personal goal to make Atlas weep at every turn.
Neither one is a complete human being but that’s alright because they never deal in complete realities anymore-just half-truths and suppressed memories and more often than not, they find themselves caught between enclosing walls of regret and guilt; some rich bastard’s years of therapy proving to have all been wasteful pretense.
Everything is all right because they’ve gotten used to it.
- - - - - - - - - -
Arthur can count on his fingers the number of times he has been thrown for a loop. He gathers intelligence well-effortless, thorough and diligent-qualities that had determined his years with the Air Force. Even then, Arthur had felt a disconnect between the man with ISR and three wings and a swoosh stitched to his arm and the man he saw in the mirror every day.
After years, Arthur has come to the conclusion that this life is not so different after all.
From his vantage point on the roof, he can see clearly. One, two, three, four windows-big bay ones with balconies attached. The old hotel has buttress style supports and Arthur takes a moment to consider the fact that they don’t make buildings like that anymore. He doesn’t lament it, though.
Arthur shifts his hips incrementally, peering through the sight of the M107 at his shoulder, tracking Eames’ path up the street and into the hotel.
- - - - - - - - - -
Their conversation would seem stilted and dry to the casual observer as their cultural knowledge is little more than the impounded culmination of everything that can be found in the stacks of old libraries, unwavering yet delicate like sheets of microfiche.
They know little of current events or politics, borders bleeding into one another until countries may as well be cities, cities glorified playgrounds, rusty and dangerous and fun.
Identities are foster homes, shaky trust lost at the drop of a hat. They are a strange breed of human.
- - - - - - - - - -
What people don’t know can’t hurt them.
That’s Eames’ philosophy, applied here as, what Arthur doesn’t know can’t hurt him.
Because Eames has a plan.
It isn’t a very good plan but then again, few of them are-on paper anyway. Paper is flimsy and malleable; you can’t white-out actions into oblivion and write over them in barely legible script, after all, like you can with words. In practice, Eames has the uncanny ability to make anything work.
Because Eames has a grenade in his pocket and a finger on the pin and he’s minutes away from pulling it out. It will cause enough of a distraction to allow Arthur the opportunity to finish the job. And it will wake Eames up, getting him out of there unhurt.
Ostensibly.
- - - - - - - - - -
If a sumo wrestler falls from a height of ten stories, crushing several unfortunate pedestrians when he hits the ground, the wrestler in question will be as, if not more, injured than the people under him. In that same regard, those who plant ideas can’t come out the other end without a few seeds in their own minds, sprouting and taking root with each passing day.
As much as Fischer himself has been fundamentally altered so, too, have the group of individuals who spent hours if they spent an eternity down there, facilitating the inception.
It’s impossible to come out of a job like the Fischer one and not be changed.
Inceptions are the herpes of the dreamscape.
- - - - - - - - - -
Eames keeps walking, his strides even and casual. He knows Arthur is watching. He knows Arthur will know what to do. Finger easing the pin out of place, Eames’ final thought is, You’d better wake up before heat rips through him, yanking his mind out of the dream with a gasp that’s altogether too loud and relieved for a man of his level-headedness.
Arthur watches Eames go up in a blaze of no-glory and springs into action thinking, Idiot! but he’s acutely aware that Eames is anything but.
Later-moments, minutes, hours-Arthur jerks awake. Eames is sitting up in the next bed, carefully unrolling his shirtsleeves.
"What was that?" Arthur asks, sitting up and yanking the IV from his wrist. He immediately regrets the action as his body reminds him that this is the Real World and it's time to behave in the way Real People do.
"It worked, didn't it?" Eames asks right back, infuriatingly three steps ahead in conversation as he usually is. His heart is beating faster than it rightly should be but he isn't about to bring it up.
"That's not the point. It was a damn stupid thing to do."
"That’s not altogether correct," Eames says, agreeing in his mind all the while. It was a stupid thing to do. He might not have woken up.
"This is the third time you've clocked out early." It isn't that they work together all that often, it's just that it has been so long that Arthur knows what to expect from Eames, and kamikaze moves have never been his style. "Give me some warning next time."
"And what would that accomplish?" Eames is still focused on his shirtsleeves, fingers fumbling with the slick material of his silk button-up. "Give you some time to plan ahead? Alleviate your blood pressure, perhaps?"
He looks up then and continues, "Warning, no warning, it's all the same to you."
Arthur raises an eyebrow. "You're being intentionally cryptic."
"You mean to tell me you aren't a little afraid of it all?" Eames asks, faux-innocence only proving to irritate Arthur further.
“Fuck you,” Arthur says and Eames just jerks his head, lips twitching. He knows what comes next.
- - - - - - - - - -
To Arthur, sex is like dismantling a handgun. To Eames, sex is like sex-no more and certainly no less.
The click of the safety is heavier than that of a lock in a door but not dissimilar. The scrape of the magazine-metal on metal on plastic-one finger holding the release button, is no less satisfying than clothing dropping away like so many bullets.
Reaching for the barrel, pulling back the slide, the final bullet falls to the floor. A poker chip Arthur didn’t think Eames relied on anymore. He lets go as he pushes back, leaning up and reaching down.
“You are afraid,” Eames says as he feels Arthur’s palm against the outline of his cock.
“No.”
Flipping the slide over, exposing the string and the barrel of Eames’ coarse body to the light and Arthur is all clinical precision intermingled with candor.
Hand on thigh, hand on ass, hand on dick, hand on head over heel over breath and they barely even know what they’re doing anymore.
Eames is afraid and Arthur can’t say “Yes” to save his life and they are so fundamentally different than they once were. Together, at least, in their discrepancies.
Everything is unsatisfactory and there are no resolutions.
Resolutions are for the tale-end of bad years, devised in the minds of individuals who feel it is in their power to truly change, not realizing that people can’t change.
People are changed.