Fic: Snapshots Past & Present (2/2)
Fandom: Inception
Title: Snapshots Past & Present (2)
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 7000-8000
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Genre: romance
Disclaimer: nothing of value here is mine
Summary: Eames could run like the wind when he wanted to but Arthur has always had a talent for fighting for what he wants.
CHAPTER TWO - ARTHUR
(now)
“Well, why the fuck did you take the bloody job, Arthur?! You were the one telling me that Parker was a lunatic!”
Arthur shrugged noncommittally. It had been the first name to pop to mind since he had been making it a point to not look for work over the next few weeks because he’d been anticipating indulging in reprehensible behavior with his boyfriend in a hotel suite in Cyprus for fuck’s sake. Instead, he was standing in the middle of an apartment in the shittiest neighborhood in London, breathing in mold and freezing his ass off.
Eames sat on the sofa as he pulled on shoes, socks, and a sweater than looked two sizes too big. He looked thin. Sometimes, Arthur forgot that they were almost of a height. When Eames was heavier, muscles bulkier, he could dwarf Arthur, the threat of potentially being over-powered a not insignificant turn-on that Arthur would rather lose a testicle than admit. But when Eames lost some of the bulk, as he periodically did, they were not so different in size that they didn’t occasionally mistakenly grab each other’s t-shirt. Now, Eames had lost weight over the past few weeks, and, though Arthur loved his usual well-muscled look, he had to admit there was something to be said for this one, too, where Eames looked lean and lanky, close to a six-pack with hip bones that begged to be grabbed and that swayed in silent, shadowy invitation when he stood and shimmied into the sweater.
“Arthur?”
Arthur peeled his eyes off the V of Eames’ unfastened jeans.
“What?”
Eames scowled and stomped his feet impatiently into his boots. “When did you last see your tail?”
“Huh.” Eames didn’t look to be in the frame of mind to take unnecessary sexual innuendo well. Arthur ransacked his brain for London landmarks. “The Tower.”
“Sodding hell and gone from here. Okay, look. Stay here . . . .”
Even though Arthur was loving this whole knight-in-shining-armor routine, there were limits. “I’m not staying in this rat hole.”
“Arthur, please. Stay here and stay away from the windows.” Jesus, it was almost as if they had just met and never worked together before. Arthur had managed more difficult escapes with a Blackberry and a library card. “One Two, get him some coffee . . . proper coffee, not that instant shit you’re always flinging about. I’ll be right back.”
And that was that. A thick silence fell across the room as Eames’ boot falls echoed into the distance. Arthur watched One Two watch him. So this was the other man. For one brief moment, Arthur considered just shooting him and being done with it.
Then One Two was pulling open cupboards in the galley kitchen and looking surprised when they all proved to be empty.
“Proper coffee. Right.” The man grinned a lop-sided toothy grin, as if they shared this great secret, and Arthur fought the unexpected urge to grin back. “That means the pub.”
♠ ♠ ♠
If One Two’s rap sheet could be believed, the man had made a career out of pub brawls and two-bit cons. It was only to be expected then that he seemed to know everyone in this particular pub. Arthur picked a booth near the back and waited in the dark as One Two fetched their drinks: a cup of coffee for Arthur and a pint of Guinness for himself.
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
Arthur sipped his coffee and found that it was tea.
“This isn’t coffee.” He shouldn’t need to be pointing this shit out.
One Two shrugged, clearly not giving a fuck. “Earl Grey’s ‘bout the same thing, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Bob’s gotten himself some expensive tastes over the years.” One Two’s beady little eyes raked over Arthur who was sure he now needed a shower.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that it’s a real shame how Half-Arsed Parker came down with appendicitis at the last minute and had to cancel that gig.” Arthur froze, and One Two kept grinning. “Should take Bob at least an hour or so to find that out, though. So, in the meantime, what do you say ‘bout telling me why you’re really here, sunshine.”
It shouldn’t have been funny but it was. He was being called out by the same sort of street thug Arthur generally kept on call for messy clean-ups and muscle jobs and to whom he never, ever gave his real cell phone number. Arthur decided the brave it out. He didn’t like One Two anyway.
“An hour? I would have thought Eames would work faster than that on his home turf.”
“Not his home turf anymore, is it? Not really. Not since he started working with you lot.”
“He works with lots of lots.” Arthur should know; tacking Eames down for a job was a bit like trying to tack down water with a nail gun. Sleeping with the man hadn’t made one bit of difference as far as that went.
“He works with you,” One Two corrected him. “And I should know. You’ve had him trotting the globe so much he gave up his flat in London. Rented piece of shit but still. It’s been at least six months since he’s been by mine and within a week of that, here you are.”
“Yeah, well, I think we can all agree that’s been a mistake.”
“Oh, I don’t know that I would call it a mistake, love. Don’t know how much longer Bob could have managed to haul his arse out of bed with his head in knots like that. You’ve done a number on him, that’s for sure.”
“I’ve done a number on him?” That had to be some sort of weird British joke. Arthur had given up a five-star vacation to follow after Eames like a lost puppy when he should have just left the man to hole up in his rat-infested hovel with his street thug homeboy as he apparently preferred to do.
One Two cocked his head at Arthur and slouched back further into the booth.
“How much do you know about Bob really?”
“I know he goes by Eames these days.”
“No, seriously. Bob likes to play his cards close to the chest so it’s not a mark against you if the file’s a bit thin.”
“Is that the voice of experience?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” One Two’s reply was lined with pain, but he held Arthur’s gaze evenly all the same. “When you’ve known a bloke as long as I’d known Bob and called him your best mate, you don’t expect him to shine up and tell you he’s into blokes, you know? After all, we’d both been shagging Hannah, hadn’t we? Granted we didn’t know we were both shagging her, at the same time no less, and she had just tried to throw Bob under the train at the Islington tube station the week before . . . .”
“Is this supposed to be going somewhere?” Arthur interrupted the painful dissertation on Eames’ sordid dating career. They had never discussed their dating histories but Eames’ forgeries were too thorough for Arthur to think he’d learned all that he knew about female anatomy from Grey’s. Still, he didn’t need to hear One Two expound on the details.
One Two’s voice softened. “It was supposed to be a one-off. Bob was supposed to be going up the river for a couple and I’d lined up strippers, not knowing any better, you know. When he finally came clean . . . well, it was supposed to be just the one time.”
Confirmation that Eames and One Two had been lovers was doing unpleasant things to Arthur’s gut. He pushed the tea away and considered just fucking leaving already. He didn’t need to wait for Eames to come back and break things off permanently between them. Arthur had already decided that his Christmas present to himself this year was going to be a swift kick back into reality.
“Of course, Bob’s got the devil’s own luck, hasn’t he?” One Two’s laugh was too brittle to be sincere; the scars obviously ran deep. Besides, Arthur didn’t agree. Eames wasn’t lucky; four hours next to the man at the roulette table in Monte Carlo had proven that much. He had an obsessive eye for detail and took as much pains to hide that fact as Arthur did to market it; any luck he had was hard-won. “When he didn’t get jail time after all, I made him promise no one else would find out about our . . . thing. It was two years before we talked again and, by then, he’d fallen in with your crowd.”
“My crowd?”
“The high end outfits. No more two-bit cons for Handsome. We haven’t worked together since.”
Arthur surrendered to confusion. “Is this supposed to be cheering me up or warning me off?”
One Two sighed and took a long pull on his Guinness.
“Sunshine, it’s me telling you that, no matter what Bob says or how he acts, he feels too much for the people he fucks and they’ve generally fucked him over in the end, even if it is by dying like Declan, the fucking twat. He won’t talk about it, so you had better. And if it’s to tell him something bloody stupid like ‘we should see other people’, you won’t be seeing him for a bloody long time. Now, I’ve known the man long enough to want to see him happy for a fucking change so I’ll give you the advantage none of the others had. Not even me.”
“One Two, that is the least tempting offer . . . .”
“Ask.” One Two cut him off. “Ask whatever it is you came all this way to find out about Bob and, if I know it, I’ll tell you.”
It was a powerful offer. Something in Arthur accepted implicitly that One Two knew quite a lot about Eames; the two men had known each other a long time, enough time for shared history alone to fill in plenty of blanks. A flood of questions pressed against the dam of Arthur’s teeth: Where did Eames grow up? Did Eames have family? Did Eames give a shit about this thing with Arthur? And was his fucking name really Robert anyway?
Unfortunately, One Two really would answer. Three weeks of desperation, sleepless nights, and missed meals suddenly caught up to him. Arthur rubbed his eyes and accepted the bitter truth. The answers meant nothing if they didn’t come from Eames.
In the end, there was really only one question Arthur felt like asking.
“So, how did you two meet?”
One Two blinked at him. A long pause. Then One Two threw back his head and laughed.
“Jesus! I don’t remember it’s been that long.”
“Having a nice chat then?”
Arthur jumped and looked up to find Eames staring back, clearly furious. One Two seemed unfazed, though. Bastard was facing the door and must have seen Eames enter.
“Hey, Bob. Fancy a pint?”
“Not really.” Icicles hung from every syllable. “I need to talk to Arthur alone for a minute, One Two.”
Eames didn’t bother to sit. Somewhere in the course of his travels, he had traded in the sweater for a beat-up black leather jacket that looked well past its day. He’d probably resurrected it from a dumpster; Eames liked to forge in life almost as much as he did in dreams.
“What happened to my jumper?” One Two asked, picking up on the change of wardrobe as well.
“I left it somewhere around Mumbles’. You hated it anyway so don’t bother crying about it now. Arthur . . . .”
Arthur refused to feel guilty about this. “I lied about Parker,” he admitted with a careless shrug he didn’t feel.
Eames exploded. “Why the hell would you do something like that?! I ran halfway around London to find out the fuck’s in hospital, worrying the entire time that a band of trigger happy half-wits were peppering your brain with forty-five caliber bullets!”
Put that way, Arthur felt a little guilty after all.
“He said it would take you at least an hour to figure it out,” he muttered, cheerfully throwing One Two under the bus. One Two looked satisfyingly chastised when Eames rounded on him.
“Admit it. You’ve been out of circulation for a while, Bob.”
“Thanks for the fucking vote of confidence, mate.”
“I think you’re over-reacting a wee bit.”
“Over-fucking-reacting?!” Eames closed his eyes and took a deep breath; Arthur could practically hear him counting to ten in his head. “Arthur, you are supposed to be in Cyprus. Why are you not?”
“You knew about Cyprus?”
“I would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to not know. You made the arrangements at work.”
Arthur refused to get upset about this. “And still you cock-blocked me at the hotel to run back here?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to go to Cyprus. Did you consider that?”
“You gave up Cyprus to freeze your bollocks off in my flat?” One Two said. “Mate, that’s mad.”
“Stay out of this, One Two!”
“No, I don’t think so, Bob. Not this time.” One Two looked uncharacteristically sober despite his choice in breakfasts. “So he came after you instead of just letting you run like the others. ‘S no reason to cut the man off at the knees.”
“The others?!” Arthur’s temper flared despite his best intentions. “Just how many people have you led down this path anyway?”
Eames’ eyes glimmered with an intense light.
“Just you, Arthur.”
Then he was gone. One Two waved the bartender down for another Guinness and smiled sadly at Arthur.
“That’s your cue to run after him, sunshine. Don’t worry. I’ll manage the tab.”
Arthur considered throwing the tea in the man’s face but decided it would take too long. Eames could run like the wind when he wanted to.
CHAPTER THREE - ARTHUR
(now)
Arthur had always appreciated that he and Eames were a bit like complimentary bookends. Where he prized the ability to mark endless details down on an Excel spreadsheet and plan accordingly, Eames relished the opportunity to navigate the sordid waters of people’s lives and plot his course by whim. It was a skill that required imagination and a certain non-linear approach to life. Generally, Arthur appreciated that about Eames; it kept life together interesting. Today, however, Arthur wished Eames were a little less random in his choices. Over an hour later, Arthur finally managed to track him down to a bench on the Embankment.
Eames sat merged as one with an uncomfortable looking wooden bench. He hunched into the dubious warmth of the battered leather jacket and kept his hands stuffed in its pockets as he stared morosely out at the Thames, broad shoulders tense and dark hair in tuffs from tugging through it. The London Eye circled in the distance. Water and sky were the same drab shade of gray, and the temperature hovered somewhere around freezing. All in all, Arthur would rather have been in Cyprus at the moment. This conversation promised to be painful.
Not waiting for the invitation that was unlikely to come, Arthur sat down next to Eames.
“Why is it always the holidays, Arthur?” Eames asked eventually. “Why do people always pull this shit at the holidays?”
Including you hung unspoken in the frozen air between them. Arthur shrugged; he refused to apologize for giving a fuck about the people he slept with.
“Universal desire to spend the time with those you care about, I guess.” Not that this might not be love, frighteningly enough, but Arthur wasn’t ready to use that word yet, and the day had left him too raw to play coy. Beside him, Eames sighed and dropped his head.
“I’m not worth this, Arthur.”
“I think I get to make that call for myself, Eames.”
“Then make it. How many more holidays do you think you’re up for planning just to have me fuck them up?”
Arthur considered the question seriously; life with Eames was always going to be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and this would not be the only time shit like this happened. “I’m not sure. It might depend on why you did it.”
“Right. Well, Arthur, this may shock you but I am not generally given to being the stable one in a crowd. I like being at loose ends for the most part. This thing we do . . . I like it. I won’t say I don’t. But that’s all I have on offer, darling. For some unfathomable reason, people look at me and think there are untold depths of character just waiting to be discovered but the sad truth is there really, really isn’t. I like the sex. I would like to think we are friends of a sort. But that’s all.”
“Because you’re a shallow shit with a skill set that includes great sex and a serious sexting addiction.”
“Well, so long as the sex is great, darling.”
Arthur wasn’t buying the half-assed grin any more than he was buying the cheesy line. “Eames, that has to be the worst ‘it’s-not-you-it’s-me’ commitment-phobic break-up speech I’ve ever heard.”
Eames scowled.
“Stop trying to play me like a mark and talk to me honestly for a minute.”
“I’m not playing a game, Arthur.”
“Great. Then what the hell is it about you and the holidays? Don’t tell me it’s because you like to keep all your relationships on a shallow sexual level. You’ve been working through the holidays even before we met.”
“Arthur . . . .”
“What is it, Eames? Because I’m not leaving I hear something close to a plausible truth.”
Eames shifted and looked at him, a dark, dangerous gleam in his eyes.
“Really? Alright, then. My mother died on Christmas.”
It was probably a poor prognostic indicator for their relationship but an unavoidable side-product of their work that Arthur’s first reaction was to weigh the likelihood that Eames was finally telling him the truth. Eames must have seen the question on Arthur’s face because he simply shook his head.
“It’s the truth, Arthur. Catherine Eames Fielding. I’ll give you date and parish if you’d like to double check.”
“So Eames is . . . .”
“Was her name. I took it up after I left London which is why One Two has an impossible time holding on to it.”
“One Two has problems holding on to most thoughts.”
“Not the important ones, generally.” Eames glanced off into the distance. “I’m not telling you this for sympathy, Arthur, or because you believe yourself capable of browbeating the truth out of me. It’s been twenty some years; I think I have as much of a handle on it as anyone could. I’m telling you this in the hope that it will somehow help you appreciate why it is I may not feel as much like celebrating the holidays as others do.”
“Eames . . . .”
“Everyone loses people, Arthur. Even on Christmas. That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.”
No, the point was nastier and much more difficult to resolve but not impossible. Arthur may not have been as gifted at reading people as Eames but this hardly required a mind reader. In the plus column on his spreadsheet, Arthur now knew Eames cared about him . . . about them . . . enough to consider committing to this relationship. In the minus column, Eames was still a moody commitment-phobe whose abandonment issues appeared sadly justified by life history and who was definitely ready to bolt because he was seriously considering committing to this relationship.
“Is this where I’m supposed to pick up and leave?” Arthur finally asked.
Eames smiled tiredly. “The point I’m trying to make is that you can’t promise to not, love. You didn’t exactly pick a line of work with an exceptionally long life expectancy.”
“Neither did you.”
“Making my point doubly pertinent, thank you, Arthur.”
“Only if I was looking for you to promise me a happily ever after which would be ridiculous. Eames, try looking at it this way. If I walked away from you right now and dropped dead in front of the closest Marks and Spencer’s, would you feel it any less poignantly for having stood me up in Cyprus?”
Eames slumped back and rolled his eyes. “Christ, Arthur! Tell me we are not still talking about Cyprus.”
“We are not still talking about Cyprus . . . although I don’t understand why these conversations have to take place in a frozen blight because they would feel equally miserable in warm weather only I wouldn’t be worrying about frostbite.”
“Arthur . . . .”
“I’m saying that it’s already too late for me, Eames,” Arthur cut him off. Best to get it all out while he still had the nerve. “I’m invested in you . . . in us. If you died right now, I’d be a hopeless mess. I’d be less likely to be as hopeless a mess in a year or ten if I could at least look back and feel we’d made the most of our time together.”
“You really believe that, don’t you? Even after Mal Cobb.”
“Yes,” Arthur replied firmly because he wasn’t Dom. “You don’t believe me?”
“I think you’ve over-simplified things in an effort to achieve your much beloved specificity on the subject, darling.”
“I think it’s too late for you, too.”
“Thank you, Arthur,” Eames muttered dryly.
“Just stop running, Eames. Trust me.”
And there it was. Eames stared at him. Arthur stared back. Arthur had fought for this thing with Eames as hard as he knew how. His conscience would be clear regardless of the outcome but, Jesus, he would be a lot happier if Eames would just fucking jump with him already. His dick would be ecstatic because, despite the angst and the cold and the fact that Arthur was fucking exhausted from all the running around, Eames still looked unbelievable in his own unshaven, dumpster-chic way, and Arthur had missed him, damn it.
The minutes ticked by. Arthur lost all feeling in his toes and fingers. When Eames finally spoke, his voice sounded battered.
“Arthur, I hope you meant all that.”
Arthur snorted. “Because I often say things I don’t mean. I meant it, Eames.”
“Alright, then.”
As romantic declarations went, Arthur had heard better. Brendan Russo in the eleventh grade had written him a goddamn song, for fuck’s sake. Of course, Brendan Russo also currently drove a cab for a living and still lived with his mother.
Then Eames leaned in and kissed him, hard and desperate and almost blisteringly hot against the backdrop of a London winter, and everything he hadn’t said in words came pouring out of his soul and straight into Arthur’s mouth. Arthur struggled to catch his breath, to catch up to Eames, then gave up entirely when the other man reached to cradle Arthur’s head in both hands and sweep deeper into his mouth. He leaned over Arthur, one knee on the bench, blocking the muted light and skin-exfoliating wind until Arthur’s world narrowed down to the taste of Eames against his tongue, the feel of Eames’ warmth pressed against him, and the smell of Eames all around him. The kiss felt like a promise. It felt like forever.
Lips bruised and nose numb, Arthur gripped Eames’ forearm with fierce resolve.
“We are not going back to One Two’s.”
Eames laughed against his lips, a low, bubbling rumble Arthur had never heard before. “This is London, darling. There are thousands of hotels.”
Arthur shook his head, still breathless, head still spinning. “I have a better idea. Let’s go back to mine.”
♠ ♠ ♠
Arthur had bought the townhouse in Westminster with his first entirely criminal paycheck. The idea of hiding out in it was ludicrous; he could see Parliament from the top floor after all. He’d bought it because he had loved the idea of living in London. He hadn’t set foot back in it since signing the papers at the estate agent’s.
He’d never been so grateful to own it.
They stumbled up the steps to the front door with Eames groping Arthur’s ass under his coat and Arthur still trying desperately to perform a tonsillectomy on the man sans surgical instruments. The need to find the fucking key pulled them apart for a second. Then they were inside the dark, slightly musty front hall, and Arthur scrambled for the light switch as Eames kicked the front door shut. Once he’d clicked the locks into place, Eames leaned back against the front door, a lean study in black leather and denim. Arthur thought he’d never looked more decadent.
“Westminster, Arthur? Really?”
Just because he was stupidly hooked on the man didn’t mean Arthur was above sneering at him. “Shut up, Eames. If we had to rely on your resources, we’d be doing this under a bridge.”
“ ‘Doing this’? Taking a lot for granted, aren’t we, darling?”
“Just shut up.” Then Arthur was on him like a starving man.
Eames was ridiculously beautiful. No man should have lips like that. Arthur ran his thumb possessively over Eames’ lower lip then leaned in for another bruising kiss. He loved the way Eames’ lips plumped and reddened even more when they did this. But where Arthur had been worrying about the man’s health in that thin jacket only hours earlier, he now decided that Eames wore too many clothes in general. The leather jacket wound up an untidy heap in the front hall (en route back to the nearest garbage dumpster if Arthur had anything to say about it). He tugged at Eames t-shirt and yanked at the snaps on the man’s jeans until he had both hands splayed wide over those incredible hips and the taut muscles between them.
Jesus. He’d forgotten Eames had been going commando all fucking day.
Arthur swore. Eames pulled back to laugh and Arthur used the opportunity to manhandle him into the living room. Three steps and a shove later, Arthur finally had Eames where he’d wanted him for a goddamn month: half-naked on his back, legs splayed in shameless invitation, and eyes hazy with lust. Arthur generally preferred thousand count sheets at a five star resort instead of a dust-sheet covered sofa as their venue but at the moment, he really didn’t give a shit.
Arthur loved everything about sex with this man.
Eames was the consummate chameleon in everything he did and, although that fact troubled Arthur from time to time during his sane moments, it never bothered him during sex. Go figure. The man could read Arthur’s moods like they were pages in a book. At times, Eames’ clever hands would take him apart, seam by seam, with a touch as light as a butterfly’s wing, never stumbling over a button, zipper, or cufflink. Other times, like now, he ripped at Arthur like a greedy kid. Coat, tie, jacket, then shirt were yanked and torn until Arthur knelt poised above Eames’ head, shirttails wrinkled and tangling over pants that now stretched somewhere around mid-thigh. Neither of them had even stopped to get their shoes off and Arthur was too far gone to think about stopping to do it now. With a Mona Lisa smile, Eames leaned up to rake his stubble across the sensitive skin at Arthur’s midsection before ducking down.
Fuck! He wasn’t going to survive this.
“Eames, wait,” he panted.
“No.”
When Eames tugged at the remaining scraps of clothing with his teeth, Arthur’s sharp, brilliant, always-on-the-go brain skidded to a complete halt. His hands scrambled for purchase and found only the taut cotton fabric of the dust-sheet. Sweat ran down the sides of his face and his hair flopped across his brow. No hair gel created could keep him together when they did this and it didn’t matter anyway because Arthur knew Eames loved watching him come apart, loved seeing what they did to Arthur. Every time.
This time, when Arthur glanced down, breath coming in shorter and shorter pants, hot and flushed and dizzy and foggy and stupidly desperate with nownownow echoing in his ears, he found Eames staring back up at him, mouth obscenely full and eyes filled with . . . .
shitjesusfuck
Arthur’s world exploded in a blinding burst white hot light. He was only distantly aware of Eames crying out beneath him. When Arthur finally came to, he was draped over Eames who didn’t seem to be feeling any pain.
“You’re still dressed,” Arthur said, sex-slowed and only temporarily sated.
“Hmmm,” Eames murmured, eyes still closed and one large hand running soothing circles over the bare skin of Arthur’s back.
“We should shower.” Arthur was reasonably certain this place had running water.
“In a minute.”
Arthur let himself be lulled back into a drowsy half-sleep. Later, they would clean each other up, using too much hot water and taking too much time with the antique bathroom fixtures so that they came out of it all a little prune-like, but it was still better than showering alone. Later, they would pull back on whatever wrinkled bits and pieces of salvageable clothing they could find and troll the stores in a half-assed attempt to look for groceries and return with little more than ice cream and beer. Later, he would unwrap Eames on the king-sized four poster upstairs and christen the bed by slowly taking the man apart piece by piece.
For right now, though, Arthur was content to lie still and bask in the hope of forever.
♠ ♠ ♠
Part One: http://pheyne.livejournal.com/880.html