Fic: You Have To Want It [2/?] (Inception, Arthur/Eames)
Title: You Have To Want It [2/?]
Pairing(s): Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG to PG-13.
Summary: Inception AU. Arthur is a student at a college for the arts. Eames is, too. Arthur's not so sure how he feels about this.
Author's Note: Thank you to dragonlet for beta'ing this yet again.
Yusuf had insisted Arthur attend all of the bizarre getting-to-know-you events Freshmen were encouraged to go to. Arthur wasn't certain if it was because Yusuf actually enjoyed the silly games, or if he just felt like he needed to share the misery of the games they had all outgrown in third grade. There was an inane game of Bingo where one of the RAs nearly gave himself a heart attack, a rather superfluous and extremely awkward lecture on Sexual Education - A loud British boy in the second row kept winning condoms and lube, one set for every correctly answered question - and a series of truly awful 'name games', where his roommate became 'Yodeling Yusuf', and he, for a lack of creativity, became 'Amazing Arthur.' He wasn't pleased. He was also quite sure he would never see most of these students again, and didn't particularly care if the purple haired girl to his left was in fact 'Sanguinolent Sam'. Though he was rather impressed with her vocabulary.
He and Yusuf finally trudged inside for a rather lackluster dinner, taken from a faintly terrifying lunch line. Arthur wound up with a plate of truly disgusting, grayish pork loin and a wilted salad. Yusuf had cocoa puffs. Arthur found something intrinsically wrong with eating cereal for dinner, dubious meat or no. After dinner, they went back to their floor, and were stopped by their RA to be informed of movie night and Capture the Flag. Yusuf didn't remain in their room long, having been interested in the movie, and he was soon wandering off to go watch The Neverending Story.
Arthur opted to instead join in on the game of Capture the Flag. While he didn't look it, Arthur was actually quite an active young man. He wasn't precisely athletic - he dabbled in track in high school, and had heavily flirted with joining the soccer team - after a few courtships, however, he and sports decided to go their separate ways. He was a fan of both jogging and yoga, in a much steadier relationship. He planned to have a relatively pleasant (if somewhat unpleasantly messy) time outrunning the opposing 'Tower' of the dorms. (The dorms, while being in one building technically, were two separate four floor structures generally referred to as the North and South towers. Arthur just so happened to inhabit the South Tower, generally also known as the girl's tower.) Arthur had to do considerable amounts of searching to find a pair of running shorts, and in the end had to borrow a green shirt (his tower's 'color') from a pleasant young man down the hall. Dressed appropriately, he made his way downstairs to join his dorm's team on the grassy common area.
As the two opposing teams faced each other in the center of campus, Arthur felt confident in both his abilities, and in the sheer complete ludicrousness of the entire situation. He, like many of the other students, was barefoot. Others were still in jeans and sneakers or flip-flops. They were in a mishmash of green and blue shirts, depending on their dorm tower, with a smattering of reds and grays and other colors for those who had given up on matching their team. Most of them were not in anything approaching 'in shape', and their lines for the start of the game were scraggly, at best.
The opposing side of the field was more heavily populated with boys; Arthur's side, more girls. Arthur was briefly concerned, before deciding to count it as an advantage. His team was lighter and more fleet of foot, and frankly infinitely better-looking, if more strangely dressed.
Arthur dug his bare toes into the damp grass, hoping he wouldn't slip and fall the moment they all took off. He eyed the boy across from him. He was broad-shouldered and thick-wasited, with messy dark-blonde hair and a blue hawaiian shirt. He looked like the sort of boy who was more suited to football than art. And he was smiling. At Arthur. It was a rather nice smile - friendly, and open. However, there was just enough of a hint of mischief in his eyes to make Arthur feel distinctly unsettled. Or, really, just plain worried.
The whistle blew, and Arthur was off like a shot, bobbing and weaving around enemy and teammate alike. He kept well away from the trees, which dropped nuts and spiky, large, round seeds that could stab at the sensitive undersides of his feet, or cause him to slip and twist his ankle. His long legs carried him far away from a short girl who was chasing him, and he advanced up the hill toward the circle of stones that surrounded the North Tower flag. He was gaining on his goal, closer and closer, close enough to touch it - to wrap his fingers around it -
Whump.
Arthur was suddenly and brutally pinned by what felt like two hundred pounds of brainless, huge neanderthal. He gasped for breath and mentally bemoaned the state of the shirt he had borrowed, which was now likely covered in mud, like every other part of his body he could still feel, or at least the ones that weren't stinging from the unexpected fall.
“Eames! Tag, don't tackle!”
The gorilla on his back levered itself off of Arthur with a grunt. Arthur rolled over, catching his breath and getting a good look at his would-be attacker.
It was the smiling linebacker. He offered Arthur a hand, which he grudgingly took, and lifted him back onto his feet. Arthur winced as he looked at the state of his clothing and felt the twinge in his knee that meant it would be very nicely bruised come morning.
“Sorry, darling.” The grubby caveman - Eames - had a surprisingly cultured-sounding British accent. “Got a bit carried away.”
Had the galumphing idiot just winked at him?
Before Arthur had time to process the action, as well as the fact that this was also the boy who had run into him in the parking lot (and likely the condom-winning Brit from earlier in the day), he was off and trotting back to rejoin the game. Arthur managed, before he was out of earshot, to shout after him.
“I am nobody's darling!”
Eames appeared to take no notice, or even to hear Arthur at all.
Thankfully, the ill-fated game marked the end of Freshmen Orientation. Classes would begin the following Monday, and as such, Arthur spent his weekend gathering supplies and books for the months to come. He spent a large amount of time familiarizing himself with the subject matter they would be studying, reading his textbooks from cover to cover.
Yusuf spent much of his final weekend out of the room, which suited Arthur just fine. Though he liked the other boy, he was less than enthusiastic about socializing when he could be preparing. Yusuf was something of a social butterfly, it seemed, and had a near-constant parade of various people and new friends in and out of their room. Arthur found them pleasantly easy to ignore beyond a few requisite pleasantries, called down from where he was seated atop his bed.
Safe in his dorm room was how Arthur spent his last two days of freedom.
Pairing(s): Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG to PG-13.
Summary: Inception AU. Arthur is a student at a college for the arts. Eames is, too. Arthur's not so sure how he feels about this.
Author's Note: Thank you to dragonlet for beta'ing this yet again.
Yusuf had insisted Arthur attend all of the bizarre getting-to-know-you events Freshmen were encouraged to go to. Arthur wasn't certain if it was because Yusuf actually enjoyed the silly games, or if he just felt like he needed to share the misery of the games they had all outgrown in third grade. There was an inane game of Bingo where one of the RAs nearly gave himself a heart attack, a rather superfluous and extremely awkward lecture on Sexual Education - A loud British boy in the second row kept winning condoms and lube, one set for every correctly answered question - and a series of truly awful 'name games', where his roommate became 'Yodeling Yusuf', and he, for a lack of creativity, became 'Amazing Arthur.' He wasn't pleased. He was also quite sure he would never see most of these students again, and didn't particularly care if the purple haired girl to his left was in fact 'Sanguinolent Sam'. Though he was rather impressed with her vocabulary.
He and Yusuf finally trudged inside for a rather lackluster dinner, taken from a faintly terrifying lunch line. Arthur wound up with a plate of truly disgusting, grayish pork loin and a wilted salad. Yusuf had cocoa puffs. Arthur found something intrinsically wrong with eating cereal for dinner, dubious meat or no. After dinner, they went back to their floor, and were stopped by their RA to be informed of movie night and Capture the Flag. Yusuf didn't remain in their room long, having been interested in the movie, and he was soon wandering off to go watch The Neverending Story.
Arthur opted to instead join in on the game of Capture the Flag. While he didn't look it, Arthur was actually quite an active young man. He wasn't precisely athletic - he dabbled in track in high school, and had heavily flirted with joining the soccer team - after a few courtships, however, he and sports decided to go their separate ways. He was a fan of both jogging and yoga, in a much steadier relationship. He planned to have a relatively pleasant (if somewhat unpleasantly messy) time outrunning the opposing 'Tower' of the dorms. (The dorms, while being in one building technically, were two separate four floor structures generally referred to as the North and South towers. Arthur just so happened to inhabit the South Tower, generally also known as the girl's tower.) Arthur had to do considerable amounts of searching to find a pair of running shorts, and in the end had to borrow a green shirt (his tower's 'color') from a pleasant young man down the hall. Dressed appropriately, he made his way downstairs to join his dorm's team on the grassy common area.
As the two opposing teams faced each other in the center of campus, Arthur felt confident in both his abilities, and in the sheer complete ludicrousness of the entire situation. He, like many of the other students, was barefoot. Others were still in jeans and sneakers or flip-flops. They were in a mishmash of green and blue shirts, depending on their dorm tower, with a smattering of reds and grays and other colors for those who had given up on matching their team. Most of them were not in anything approaching 'in shape', and their lines for the start of the game were scraggly, at best.
The opposing side of the field was more heavily populated with boys; Arthur's side, more girls. Arthur was briefly concerned, before deciding to count it as an advantage. His team was lighter and more fleet of foot, and frankly infinitely better-looking, if more strangely dressed.
Arthur dug his bare toes into the damp grass, hoping he wouldn't slip and fall the moment they all took off. He eyed the boy across from him. He was broad-shouldered and thick-wasited, with messy dark-blonde hair and a blue hawaiian shirt. He looked like the sort of boy who was more suited to football than art. And he was smiling. At Arthur. It was a rather nice smile - friendly, and open. However, there was just enough of a hint of mischief in his eyes to make Arthur feel distinctly unsettled. Or, really, just plain worried.
The whistle blew, and Arthur was off like a shot, bobbing and weaving around enemy and teammate alike. He kept well away from the trees, which dropped nuts and spiky, large, round seeds that could stab at the sensitive undersides of his feet, or cause him to slip and twist his ankle. His long legs carried him far away from a short girl who was chasing him, and he advanced up the hill toward the circle of stones that surrounded the North Tower flag. He was gaining on his goal, closer and closer, close enough to touch it - to wrap his fingers around it -
Whump.
Arthur was suddenly and brutally pinned by what felt like two hundred pounds of brainless, huge neanderthal. He gasped for breath and mentally bemoaned the state of the shirt he had borrowed, which was now likely covered in mud, like every other part of his body he could still feel, or at least the ones that weren't stinging from the unexpected fall.
“Eames! Tag, don't tackle!”
The gorilla on his back levered itself off of Arthur with a grunt. Arthur rolled over, catching his breath and getting a good look at his would-be attacker.
It was the smiling linebacker. He offered Arthur a hand, which he grudgingly took, and lifted him back onto his feet. Arthur winced as he looked at the state of his clothing and felt the twinge in his knee that meant it would be very nicely bruised come morning.
“Sorry, darling.” The grubby caveman - Eames - had a surprisingly cultured-sounding British accent. “Got a bit carried away.”
Had the galumphing idiot just winked at him?
Before Arthur had time to process the action, as well as the fact that this was also the boy who had run into him in the parking lot (and likely the condom-winning Brit from earlier in the day), he was off and trotting back to rejoin the game. Arthur managed, before he was out of earshot, to shout after him.
“I am nobody's darling!”
Eames appeared to take no notice, or even to hear Arthur at all.
Thankfully, the ill-fated game marked the end of Freshmen Orientation. Classes would begin the following Monday, and as such, Arthur spent his weekend gathering supplies and books for the months to come. He spent a large amount of time familiarizing himself with the subject matter they would be studying, reading his textbooks from cover to cover.
Yusuf spent much of his final weekend out of the room, which suited Arthur just fine. Though he liked the other boy, he was less than enthusiastic about socializing when he could be preparing. Yusuf was something of a social butterfly, it seemed, and had a near-constant parade of various people and new friends in and out of their room. Arthur found them pleasantly easy to ignore beyond a few requisite pleasantries, called down from where he was seated atop his bed.
Safe in his dorm room was how Arthur spent his last two days of freedom.