oh lord, I'm fic-writing again
Everytime I think I'm going to stop writing fanfiction, I write more. And here it is for your viewing pleasure (or not).
It's a WIP of indeterminate length, it's slash, and it's Inception, but it's not just Inception. But saying anymore would be telling, wouldn't it, darling? And that just wouldn't do.
Title: Eames the Liar (pt. 1/?)
Rating: R for profanities, adult situations, misadventures of a sexual nature
Fandom: Inception aaaand...
Genre: Gay postmodern action romance? Fuck genres. You know me, it's the weird shit I usually do.
Summary & Notes: An origin story of sorts, set a few years after the events of Inception. Eames and Arthur have gone into business for themselves, and they get a client that dredges up some rather unwelcome memories for a certain forger. Arthur narrates, but the narration is weird and unreliable, because that's how I roll. So if Arthur talks about things he wasn't present for, or if it suddenly switches to third person and back for no apparent reason, don't be weird about it.
This, is Eames.
She doesn’t look like an Eames, I know. She looks like a Tanya, or a Jasmine, or maybe even a Stella. But she’s not. I don’t care how sexy she is, I don’t care how good she looks in that little black dress or how well she wears those Louboutins. She isn’t any of those things. Because really, she’s this guy-handsome, devil-may-care, pale and British Mr. Eames, with absolutely no sense of fashion and the uncanny but endlessly useful ability to make you think he’s somebody else.
Eames often says he knows every gangster in London. This doesn’t really surprise anyone-no one’s totally clear on his past, his history as a criminal, what led him to the top of the forger food chain in the heady world of dream-infiltration, and nobody really feels the need to ask. They know it had to be good, and that’s good enough for them. See, Mr. Eames is good at a lot of things, but all of them are based in one key ability: his ability to lie. If you asked anyone in the business who was the most likable, trustworthy guy they’ve ever worked with, there’s a pretty good bet you’d get across-the-board votes for guess who. But it’s not that he’s good with your secrets, or always lets you know what he’s thinking, nothing like that. It’s his confidence. He makes you like him, makes you trust him, makes you believe everything he says. And that just naturally extends to his job. He wants you to think he’s a hot black girl in her twenties? Done. Maybe a sixty-year-old American bureaucrat? No problem. I’ve even seen him pull off an eleven-year-old Chinese boy with a stunted leg.
The point is, nobody really thought about actually asking Eames who he was, where he came from. I don’t even know what his first name is, and that’s me, and if anyone’s going to know it should definitely be me, but I choose not to ask. I know nobody knows. To everyone he’s just Eames. And that’s typical for the London gangster, all with their cute nicknames and titles, no other identification needed. For a surname Eames is common enough, but in this business, you say Eames to another guy engaged in the trade, and he knows who you mean.
Which is why it doesn’t surprise me any when our meet with the latest in a long run of rich English crime lord clients gives a massive double take when he walks into the room and his eyes drift over to Eames.
What does surprise me is the way the blood drains from Eames’s face when it happens.
“Archy,” I say, ever the friendly businessman. I shake his hand, and I notice his eyes don’t really move too much from my partner. “Have a seat.”
The job is about Archy’s boss: one Johnny Quid, former rocker, former junkie, full-time Real RocknRolla. I didn’t know what that meant when we got into this, but it’s always my job to do the research and I figured out pretty fast. Eames only just got in today, and I assumed pretty correctly that he knew all the terms and maybe even most of the players, so why bother explaining things?
I can tell from the way he’s staring at me across the table that this is a case where I really should have.
“So, the famous Arthur,” says Archy approvingly, slick and full of English charm. He broods on me for a minute, then turns to Eames, who shifts his gaze onto the job folder so hard I’m almost surprised it doesn’t spontaneously go up in flames. Cool and determined, Archy says, “And you are…”
Hilarious. So I get to be middleman to whatever this is.
“This is my partner Mr. Eames,” I tell him. I look at Eames, waiting for him, feel free to jump in any time here, you bastard, but it’s all on me as usual. “Best forger in the business, if you can get past the occasional silent treatment.”
“You’ve got it under control, Arthur,” says Eames coolly and without looking up.
Archy looks delighted. Not like gleeful, but like he’s seeing something that really, really intrigues the hell out of him, and he never thought he’d ever see it, and ain’t this his lucky day. Something seriously went down here. I clear my throat and push business forward in hopes of getting him out of here and getting to the bottom of this.
Eames doesn’t respond well under pressure, and you can’t wring a damn thing from him if he doesn’t want you to, but you could say I’ve got him fingered in kind of a different way from anyone else. You know, the kind of way where he takes his clothes off if I look at him right. That kind of way.
Anyway.
So Archy explains the deal, how Johnny took over his late father’s empire and started up a nice racket in just about every dirty business there was to be had. Apparently he’s smart, smarter than anyone, and just about impossible to kill.
“Does that mean you’ve already tried to kill him?” I ask, and he smirks at me.
“No,” he says. “I have nothing against Johnny.”
“And yet here you are,” says Eames, and this is well after I’ve already come to the conclusion he’s not going to say a single damn thing this entire meeting. It catches us both by surprise, though I suspect for different reasons, and we look at him for a moment.
“Johnny’s been through a lot,” says Archy, once he decides he’s done eyeing Eames and trying to make him uncomfortable. “He’s come a long way in a little time, but I’m worried about him, to be honest.”
“About him or about yourself?” says Eames.
It’s times like these when I know to stay the fuck out of everybody’s way. I sit and watch back and forth between them as they have their official stare down of the No Arthur Allowed Club.
“About him,” says Archy, and the room temperature loses about five degrees. “That’s why I said ‘I’m worried about him, to be honest.’”
“Well to be honest with you, Archibald,” says Eames, and he’s turning into someone I don’t know, but unlike all the other times where he does that, this time he’s still Eames, and that’s more than a little alarming, “I don’t really know how far I can trust your honesty, do I?”
There’s another gaping silence during which I really don’t know what to do.
“You know, you’re still quite handsome,” says Archy, and he’s back to catlike smoothness. “Even with the fashion change.”
“I think you’ll find I’ve changed more than just that,” says Eames.
“Okay,” I say, deciding enough’s efuckingnough and I’m going to risk crossing into it. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I can assure you both it is less than productive.”
Archy shoots a look at me then, and he’s looking a little delighted again. Back at Eames, he says, “Does he not know about you, you enormous wanker?”
“Shut up, Archy,” says Eames, and real abruptly he gets up and starts walking away.
“Eames!” I shout, useless because this is one moment where looking at him the right way isn’t going to help.
“I’m not dealing with him until he learns some fucking manners,” says Eames, and my untrained ear catches the faint trace of a different accent, something that’s been covered up.
“Excuse me,” I say to Archy, which is stupid but what else was I going to do? and I go running after him as he departs into the next room.
“Eames,” I say, following him in. “Eames!” I catch him on the shoulder and spin him around, and he’s anticipating it enough that he gets right in my face and knocks me back a little.
“How the fuck could you not have informed me about this?” he snaps. “Why didn’t I know it was him, of all fucking people?”
“Well I didn’t know you two had all this history, did I?” I protest. “You weren’t around, I just thought-”
“Jesus Christ, Arthur,” he says, and he’s really torn up about this, pacing around like a caged animal. Something is really, really wrong.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I say as gently as I can, as pissed off as I am. “Look, I don’t even know what’s going on in there. Your name didn’t exactly come up in his file.”
“Well it wouldn’t, would it?” he says.
“Eames, just tell me what happened,” I say with great patience. He is quiet for a moment, and for a moment I think I’ve got him, but I’d be wrong.
“Finish up with him,” he says. “Find out what he wants. I’ll be upstairs.”
He goes, and I don’t feel like trying to stop him. Truth is I’ve never seen him this rattled, and that scares me a little. I take a moment to straighten myself out, and then I go back in to deal with Archy, who’s waiting for me calm as ever, like I just stepped out for a smoke.
“You’ve been working with him long?” he asks casually as I return to the table and sit back down.
“Few years now,” I say guardedly. “First it was just a handful of jobs here and there, but we became business partners last year.” He’s not looking at me, examining his cuticles.
“Know anything about his background?” he wonders.
“Listen, don’t toy with me,” I say, losing my patience in a big damn hurry because to hell with this shit. “You and I both know I’m completely in the dark about what just happened. You’ll tell me or you won’t, and I’ve got a pretty good idea which. There’s only one other person I’m gonna get it from, and that’s up to him. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with business here and call it a day. I’ve got damage control to run, or didn’t you notice?”
I sit back, previously unaware I’d leaned forward at all, and exhale in an irritable burst. I wasn’t quite expecting to get that open with him, and I can tell he wasn’t expecting it either, the way he’s looking at me, half-impressed. Gets him to focus, though, and soon enough he’s back on track.
Turns out Archy’s big problem these days is being out of the loop. He’s a guy who likes knowing things, and back when he was working for Johnny’s stepfather, this Lenny Cole guy, that’s all he did, was know things. But the business has changed since then, and I get the feeling Archy had a pretty big hand in it changing, and maybe now he regrets it a little.
So our job is simple: get inside Johnny Quid’s head and figure out whether or not and to what extent he’s planning something behind Archy’s back, something big, something dangerous, and something that’ll ruin them both and topple the empire.
“Have you got any stipulations about who we use?” I ask, because it’s always good form to make sure.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he says, charitably. “I’m new to this whole extraction business. Only recently heard anything about it. I don’t exactly know anyone involved.”
“Is that so,” I say with a calm smile that annoys him just a little.
“Just use people you know you can trust, all right?” he says. “People that aren’t gonna waste my time.” As if this reminds him not to waste his own time, he gets up and buttons his coat in a hurry. Like an afterthought, he slides a little card of scribbled information across the table to me. “Johnny’s stationed in this estate a few miles outside London for the next couple of weeks. How long is it going to take you to be in position?”
“Do you have a deadline?”
“Soon as possible’s fine with me,” he says.
I shrug. “We’ll need a few days in between to run a full background check and get the people we need. And once we arrive it might take us a few more to figure out the right time and place.”
He waves a hand dismissively. “Come on, I can get you whatever information you need. I can get you to him when he sleeps, too.”
“Much obliged,” I say. “But we like doing our research ourselves, if you don’t mind.”
He smiles a little suggestively, just a little. “Right,” he says. “Well, I look forward to seeing what clever games you two can play.” He darts a look at the door Eames disappeared through, then back at me. “Keep in touch, but only between the hours of three and five, and only at the number I gave you.”
I give him a nod and a wave that comes dangerously close to being a salute, and he’s finally off.
There’s just a few moments where I think about looking through the case file, letting Eames brood upstairs by himself. But the file is full of reasons to worry, and may or may not be full of things I might not be ready to know about my partner, and he looks especially good when he broods. So I sigh and I go upstairs.
---
...So if you haven't got it by now, it probably means you need to watch Guy Ritchie's 2008 London gangster movie RocknRolla, starring a lot of cool people including Gerard Butler as One Two, Mark Strong as Archy, Tom Wilkinson as Lenny Cole, Thandie Newton as Stella, and Tom Hardy as Handsome Bob. It's no LockStock or Snatch, but it's totally worth your while. Even if you don't feel like it, familiarity with RocknRolla is not necessary to your enjoyment of the piece overall. Either way.
More soon.
Part 2
It's a WIP of indeterminate length, it's slash, and it's Inception, but it's not just Inception. But saying anymore would be telling, wouldn't it, darling? And that just wouldn't do.
Title: Eames the Liar (pt. 1/?)
Rating: R for profanities, adult situations, misadventures of a sexual nature
Fandom: Inception aaaand...
Genre: Gay postmodern action romance? Fuck genres. You know me, it's the weird shit I usually do.
Summary & Notes: An origin story of sorts, set a few years after the events of Inception. Eames and Arthur have gone into business for themselves, and they get a client that dredges up some rather unwelcome memories for a certain forger. Arthur narrates, but the narration is weird and unreliable, because that's how I roll. So if Arthur talks about things he wasn't present for, or if it suddenly switches to third person and back for no apparent reason, don't be weird about it.
This, is Eames.
She doesn’t look like an Eames, I know. She looks like a Tanya, or a Jasmine, or maybe even a Stella. But she’s not. I don’t care how sexy she is, I don’t care how good she looks in that little black dress or how well she wears those Louboutins. She isn’t any of those things. Because really, she’s this guy-handsome, devil-may-care, pale and British Mr. Eames, with absolutely no sense of fashion and the uncanny but endlessly useful ability to make you think he’s somebody else.
Eames often says he knows every gangster in London. This doesn’t really surprise anyone-no one’s totally clear on his past, his history as a criminal, what led him to the top of the forger food chain in the heady world of dream-infiltration, and nobody really feels the need to ask. They know it had to be good, and that’s good enough for them. See, Mr. Eames is good at a lot of things, but all of them are based in one key ability: his ability to lie. If you asked anyone in the business who was the most likable, trustworthy guy they’ve ever worked with, there’s a pretty good bet you’d get across-the-board votes for guess who. But it’s not that he’s good with your secrets, or always lets you know what he’s thinking, nothing like that. It’s his confidence. He makes you like him, makes you trust him, makes you believe everything he says. And that just naturally extends to his job. He wants you to think he’s a hot black girl in her twenties? Done. Maybe a sixty-year-old American bureaucrat? No problem. I’ve even seen him pull off an eleven-year-old Chinese boy with a stunted leg.
The point is, nobody really thought about actually asking Eames who he was, where he came from. I don’t even know what his first name is, and that’s me, and if anyone’s going to know it should definitely be me, but I choose not to ask. I know nobody knows. To everyone he’s just Eames. And that’s typical for the London gangster, all with their cute nicknames and titles, no other identification needed. For a surname Eames is common enough, but in this business, you say Eames to another guy engaged in the trade, and he knows who you mean.
Which is why it doesn’t surprise me any when our meet with the latest in a long run of rich English crime lord clients gives a massive double take when he walks into the room and his eyes drift over to Eames.
What does surprise me is the way the blood drains from Eames’s face when it happens.
“Archy,” I say, ever the friendly businessman. I shake his hand, and I notice his eyes don’t really move too much from my partner. “Have a seat.”
The job is about Archy’s boss: one Johnny Quid, former rocker, former junkie, full-time Real RocknRolla. I didn’t know what that meant when we got into this, but it’s always my job to do the research and I figured out pretty fast. Eames only just got in today, and I assumed pretty correctly that he knew all the terms and maybe even most of the players, so why bother explaining things?
I can tell from the way he’s staring at me across the table that this is a case where I really should have.
“So, the famous Arthur,” says Archy approvingly, slick and full of English charm. He broods on me for a minute, then turns to Eames, who shifts his gaze onto the job folder so hard I’m almost surprised it doesn’t spontaneously go up in flames. Cool and determined, Archy says, “And you are…”
Hilarious. So I get to be middleman to whatever this is.
“This is my partner Mr. Eames,” I tell him. I look at Eames, waiting for him, feel free to jump in any time here, you bastard, but it’s all on me as usual. “Best forger in the business, if you can get past the occasional silent treatment.”
“You’ve got it under control, Arthur,” says Eames coolly and without looking up.
Archy looks delighted. Not like gleeful, but like he’s seeing something that really, really intrigues the hell out of him, and he never thought he’d ever see it, and ain’t this his lucky day. Something seriously went down here. I clear my throat and push business forward in hopes of getting him out of here and getting to the bottom of this.
Eames doesn’t respond well under pressure, and you can’t wring a damn thing from him if he doesn’t want you to, but you could say I’ve got him fingered in kind of a different way from anyone else. You know, the kind of way where he takes his clothes off if I look at him right. That kind of way.
Anyway.
So Archy explains the deal, how Johnny took over his late father’s empire and started up a nice racket in just about every dirty business there was to be had. Apparently he’s smart, smarter than anyone, and just about impossible to kill.
“Does that mean you’ve already tried to kill him?” I ask, and he smirks at me.
“No,” he says. “I have nothing against Johnny.”
“And yet here you are,” says Eames, and this is well after I’ve already come to the conclusion he’s not going to say a single damn thing this entire meeting. It catches us both by surprise, though I suspect for different reasons, and we look at him for a moment.
“Johnny’s been through a lot,” says Archy, once he decides he’s done eyeing Eames and trying to make him uncomfortable. “He’s come a long way in a little time, but I’m worried about him, to be honest.”
“About him or about yourself?” says Eames.
It’s times like these when I know to stay the fuck out of everybody’s way. I sit and watch back and forth between them as they have their official stare down of the No Arthur Allowed Club.
“About him,” says Archy, and the room temperature loses about five degrees. “That’s why I said ‘I’m worried about him, to be honest.’”
“Well to be honest with you, Archibald,” says Eames, and he’s turning into someone I don’t know, but unlike all the other times where he does that, this time he’s still Eames, and that’s more than a little alarming, “I don’t really know how far I can trust your honesty, do I?”
There’s another gaping silence during which I really don’t know what to do.
“You know, you’re still quite handsome,” says Archy, and he’s back to catlike smoothness. “Even with the fashion change.”
“I think you’ll find I’ve changed more than just that,” says Eames.
“Okay,” I say, deciding enough’s efuckingnough and I’m going to risk crossing into it. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I can assure you both it is less than productive.”
Archy shoots a look at me then, and he’s looking a little delighted again. Back at Eames, he says, “Does he not know about you, you enormous wanker?”
“Shut up, Archy,” says Eames, and real abruptly he gets up and starts walking away.
“Eames!” I shout, useless because this is one moment where looking at him the right way isn’t going to help.
“I’m not dealing with him until he learns some fucking manners,” says Eames, and my untrained ear catches the faint trace of a different accent, something that’s been covered up.
“Excuse me,” I say to Archy, which is stupid but what else was I going to do? and I go running after him as he departs into the next room.
“Eames,” I say, following him in. “Eames!” I catch him on the shoulder and spin him around, and he’s anticipating it enough that he gets right in my face and knocks me back a little.
“How the fuck could you not have informed me about this?” he snaps. “Why didn’t I know it was him, of all fucking people?”
“Well I didn’t know you two had all this history, did I?” I protest. “You weren’t around, I just thought-”
“Jesus Christ, Arthur,” he says, and he’s really torn up about this, pacing around like a caged animal. Something is really, really wrong.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I say as gently as I can, as pissed off as I am. “Look, I don’t even know what’s going on in there. Your name didn’t exactly come up in his file.”
“Well it wouldn’t, would it?” he says.
“Eames, just tell me what happened,” I say with great patience. He is quiet for a moment, and for a moment I think I’ve got him, but I’d be wrong.
“Finish up with him,” he says. “Find out what he wants. I’ll be upstairs.”
He goes, and I don’t feel like trying to stop him. Truth is I’ve never seen him this rattled, and that scares me a little. I take a moment to straighten myself out, and then I go back in to deal with Archy, who’s waiting for me calm as ever, like I just stepped out for a smoke.
“You’ve been working with him long?” he asks casually as I return to the table and sit back down.
“Few years now,” I say guardedly. “First it was just a handful of jobs here and there, but we became business partners last year.” He’s not looking at me, examining his cuticles.
“Know anything about his background?” he wonders.
“Listen, don’t toy with me,” I say, losing my patience in a big damn hurry because to hell with this shit. “You and I both know I’m completely in the dark about what just happened. You’ll tell me or you won’t, and I’ve got a pretty good idea which. There’s only one other person I’m gonna get it from, and that’s up to him. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with business here and call it a day. I’ve got damage control to run, or didn’t you notice?”
I sit back, previously unaware I’d leaned forward at all, and exhale in an irritable burst. I wasn’t quite expecting to get that open with him, and I can tell he wasn’t expecting it either, the way he’s looking at me, half-impressed. Gets him to focus, though, and soon enough he’s back on track.
Turns out Archy’s big problem these days is being out of the loop. He’s a guy who likes knowing things, and back when he was working for Johnny’s stepfather, this Lenny Cole guy, that’s all he did, was know things. But the business has changed since then, and I get the feeling Archy had a pretty big hand in it changing, and maybe now he regrets it a little.
So our job is simple: get inside Johnny Quid’s head and figure out whether or not and to what extent he’s planning something behind Archy’s back, something big, something dangerous, and something that’ll ruin them both and topple the empire.
“Have you got any stipulations about who we use?” I ask, because it’s always good form to make sure.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he says, charitably. “I’m new to this whole extraction business. Only recently heard anything about it. I don’t exactly know anyone involved.”
“Is that so,” I say with a calm smile that annoys him just a little.
“Just use people you know you can trust, all right?” he says. “People that aren’t gonna waste my time.” As if this reminds him not to waste his own time, he gets up and buttons his coat in a hurry. Like an afterthought, he slides a little card of scribbled information across the table to me. “Johnny’s stationed in this estate a few miles outside London for the next couple of weeks. How long is it going to take you to be in position?”
“Do you have a deadline?”
“Soon as possible’s fine with me,” he says.
I shrug. “We’ll need a few days in between to run a full background check and get the people we need. And once we arrive it might take us a few more to figure out the right time and place.”
He waves a hand dismissively. “Come on, I can get you whatever information you need. I can get you to him when he sleeps, too.”
“Much obliged,” I say. “But we like doing our research ourselves, if you don’t mind.”
He smiles a little suggestively, just a little. “Right,” he says. “Well, I look forward to seeing what clever games you two can play.” He darts a look at the door Eames disappeared through, then back at me. “Keep in touch, but only between the hours of three and five, and only at the number I gave you.”
I give him a nod and a wave that comes dangerously close to being a salute, and he’s finally off.
There’s just a few moments where I think about looking through the case file, letting Eames brood upstairs by himself. But the file is full of reasons to worry, and may or may not be full of things I might not be ready to know about my partner, and he looks especially good when he broods. So I sigh and I go upstairs.
---
...So if you haven't got it by now, it probably means you need to watch Guy Ritchie's 2008 London gangster movie RocknRolla, starring a lot of cool people including Gerard Butler as One Two, Mark Strong as Archy, Tom Wilkinson as Lenny Cole, Thandie Newton as Stella, and Tom Hardy as Handsome Bob. It's no LockStock or Snatch, but it's totally worth your while. Even if you don't feel like it, familiarity with RocknRolla is not necessary to your enjoyment of the piece overall. Either way.
More soon.
Part 2