(no subject)
OKAY. LISTEN, SELF. YOU HAVE THINGS TO DO NOW. YOU HAVE MANY MANY THINGS TO DO NOW. YOU CAN LEAVE INCEPTION_KINK ALONE FOR BIT. IT'S GOING TO BE OKAY.
:(
Champion Sound
Prompt: Arthur is a DJ, Eames is a bartender.
Arthur is a busy guy. He goes to class, has a part-time job, occasionally deigns to hang out with other people, spends weekend nights at an art-house theater by himself, and studies. There’s always studying.
Arthur is also pretty broke. Studying doesn’t pay the bills, at least not yet. The filing job at the dean’s office only schedules him for a few hours a week, and although he is perfectly adept at customer service, it also makes him drink a lot. That kind of knocks the option down a few pegs.
So when his older brother donates two turntables to him, saying, “Hey, now you can actually listen to all those old jazz and classical vinyls instead of just looking at them,” Arthur weighs his choices. He makes a spreadsheet and figures that art-house theaters can take the backburner for a bit if he somehow spins those weekend nights into paying gigs.
He buys a mixer and gets to work.
*
His first gig goes fine because it’s a boring set. Beat-matching had come easily enough for him, so he plays it safe and spends the whole night spinning songs from the Billboard Hot 100. Nobody notices that he’s yawning the entire time because they’re all too busy lurching around on the dancefloor. Arthur supposes he can mark that as a success.
His first gig with his own mixes fails terribly. People wrinkle their noses in confusion when the Monteverdi/NWA mashup comes in, and more than half have trickled away by the time he gets to the ‘songs with jazz flute’ part of the night. He’s pretty irked about the sheer amount of people who fail to appreciate jazz flute, but he knows when to give in. The rest of the night is salvaged by his iPod and a half-hour mix that he’d thrown together on his computer a few nights before.
When Arthur is almost done, some blond guy leans over the speakers. He nods at Arthur, who nods back.
“Interesting choice of songs,” the guy calls. “I’m Dom Cobb, I manage 528491. Send me another mix that you made and I might hire you for a couple nights a week if you’re interested.”
Arthur accepts the proffered card and Dom turns away, but he doubles back and taps the table. “Tone down the more unique choices, and no jazz flute,” he says with a slight smile.
Arthur sighs.
*
528491 sounds like any other bougie bar that’s trying too hard, but when Arthur walks in the next Friday, he sees that it’s just a normal bar. Neat but not meticulously so; there are bare lightbulbs hanging in zig-zagging lines all along the ceiling, a pool table in the back, and a small dancefloor on the opposite side of the bar. The floor is just short of being a grimy mess, but the bar and everything else that matters is clean enough.
Cobb catches up to him and shows him to the corner where the PA system and a small riser are set up. Then he introduces Arthur to the rest of the staff. Arthur is hopeless when it comes to names, but he does well with faces and files them away into his mind.
That is, except for Eames the bartender, who gives him a huge smile and says his name with an accent, and Arthur can’t think of anything else.
*
Eames the bartender was obviously hired because his face rakes in a jar full of tips every night. That amount can go up even higher if he doesn’t bother leaning over the bar and instead just forms his mouth around words very, very carefully.
He has all the symptoms of being a douche, starting from his dumb haircut with the buzzed sides, to the fact that he very obviously works out a lot, and also just by looking up at his additions to the chalkboard menu above the bar. Among the usual ‘REDBULL VODKA’ and ‘MOJITO’, there is also ‘PRICK QUENCHER’ and ‘THIS DRINK WILL KICK YOU IN THE FACE’ written in broad, all-caps handwriting.
“The ‘Adios Motherfucker’ isn’t creative enough for him?” Arthur had asked Cobb the first night. “And what the hell does ‘prick quencher’ mean?”
In short, Eames the bartender is exactly the type of guy Arthur will stare at from a distance but never talk to. He’s perfectly fine with that.
*
Of course, nothing goes according to plan.
Eames, as it turns out, is witty and nice and everything else Arthur had been hoping he wasn’t. On top of that, he’s actually a good bartender, getting everyone served without that irritable air that a lot of frazzled bartenders tend to have. His competency pisses Arthur off, or so he tells himself.
There’s a second bartender on Saturdays, the one with the curly hair who mixes the craziest drinks Arthur’s ever seen. When the number of people at the bar dwindles, Eames takes a break and hangs around the pool table or clears glasses away or has a smoke out by the small awning, basically just being everywhere in Arthur’s periphery. Arthur gets used to glancing up quickly and looking for Eames. Sometimes, when Eames is behind the bar but isn’t busy making a drink or chatting up customers, he’ll be facing the cash register and nodding his head to the music. This gives Arthur some strange satisfaction and he always ends up having a string of smooth segues that leave people whooping and clapping. If Eames looks bored or distracted, Arthur changes it up without thinking and ends up getting more people into the music as a bonus.
It doesn’t mean anything. Eames is just a good barometer for how the rest of the bar patrons are enjoying the music, that’s all.
One night, after a particularly good set during which Arthur could have sworn that Eames was making drinks to the beat of the music, Eames breaks the unspoken rules that Arthur had put into place by crossing the dancefloor and standing right on the other side of Arthur’s set up. This is the closest they’ve been to each other since the initial meeting.
“You sounded great tonight,” Eames says. It’s almost last call and he has a drink in his hand.
“Thanks,” Arthur says without looking directly at him.
He hears the clink of ice cubes and almost passes out when Eames says, “So, let’s talk about how I’m your muse.”
That sound is the sound of Arthur’s plan crumbling down around him. “What?” he asks dumbly.
“I definitely take it as a compliment,” Eames says. “It’s been a while since I’ve been romanced quite so creatively.”
Arthur finally finds his voice. “It’s been a while since I’ve met someone so cocky,” he says. Never mind the fact that Eames might be a tiny bit correct. “Honestly, that was a little gauche,” he adds, messing with the faders and his headphones just to have something to do.
Eames stands there and watches Arthur’s hands as he lifts off one vinyl and substitutes it for another. Finally, he grins and raises his glass. “Cheers,” he calls before heading back to the bar.
*
The next week passes far too quickly. On Friday, Arthur manages to lug all his equipment in and start off before seeing anyone, but then a girl sets a drink on top of a speaker and points over her shoulder. When he instinctively looks in that direction, Eames actually gives him the finger guns. Finger guns.
“Oh my god,” Arthur mutters against the lip of the glass, because pointedly not drinking it would be too obvious. It would also make him feel like he’d be losing this game, because apparently now they are playing a game.
Then he changes his mind and decides that finger guns and whatever else are fine, because the drink is pretty much the best thing he’s tasted. It goes down smooth and the burn of alcohol is only a muted afterthought.
Eames keeps sending over drinks with different people, like his very own giggling parcel service, and Arthur keeps drinking them. It’s only at the end of the night, when he tries to maneuver out of the booth, that he realizes his feet aren’t moving in the direction he’d like them to. Also, he’s slumped practically halfway over the railing and can’t quite seem to stand up even remotely straight. The floor is tilting up to greet him hello when something catches him around the waist and pulls him upright.
“This was supposed to be me making you a bit more pliable before I asked you on a date, but it’s backfiring horribly,” Eames laughs. His hand is warm over Arthur’s hip as he leads them to the bar and deposits Arthur onto a stool.
“You weren’t actually supposed to start talking to me,” Arthur manages to say. “That’s breaking the rules.”
“Good god, you’re like a petulant child.”
“I usually don’t associate with good looking people,” Arthur yells. Oh god, seriously, what is he even saying.
Eames has his elbow propped up onto the bar, hand supporting his chin as he smiles at Arthur. It’s terribly distracting.
“You’re a mess,” he states. “What did I give you, four drinks? Five drinks?”
Arthur squints over his shoulder at the DJ booth. He turns back to Eames and says, “I count sixteen empty glasses. What was in those, rubbing alcohol?”
That’s the last thing he remembers until the next morning, when he wakes up on his bed. He’s still dressed, but his shoes are lined up by the dresser. There’s also a note right beside his clock:
1. you kept trying to eat a bowl of empty peanut shells
2. i have no idea if this is actually your flat or not, but the key fit
3. if you wanted me to take you home, all you had to do was ask
4. it’s just a date
- e
It’s a note worthy of rereading about a hundred times, but Arthur only gets to six before he has to stumble out of bed to puke.
*
His hangover is still lingering around his stomach and head when he gets to the bar that night. The other bartender -- Yusuf -- is cutting limes and raises his knife in greeting. Arthur holds his hand up as well, then makes his way over to the bar.
“What’s with the mass of limes?” he croaks.
Yusuf waves his knife around again. “Eames called in sick, but somehow found time to put a new drink on the menu,” he explains. He gets a funny look on his face as he jabs the knife upward. “Take a look.”
Arthur takes a few steps backward until he can read the menu. On the lower right hand corner, in the middle of a cloud of freshly erased chalk, there are blue letters that say, ‘THE SNOBBY DJ: CAUTION, IT’LL SNEAK UP ON YOU.’
Arthur’s mouth goes dry.
*
Somehow, he finishes his set. When he shuffles outside, he’s still wearing earplugs and jumps when someone grabs his elbow and spins him around. It’s Eames. Of course. He says something, but it’s muffled.
“Wait, wait,” Arthur says, pinching out his earplugs.
“I know this great diner,” Eames begins.
“I’m still hungover,” Arthur hedges.
“It has plenty of soup and bread and greasy fries,” Eames says.
He smiles and shows no signs of wavering. In fact, he seems content to stand there all night as long as Arthur hems and haws. It’s probably because he’s hungover that Arthur suddenly likens this moment to when he’d first gotten those turntables; he had everything within his grasp, and all he needed to do was work a little for it.
He mentally makes a face at his thought process.
“You’re a lot easier to read than you think you are,” Eames says. He holds out his hand and says, “Come on, then.”
Arthur cracks a smile. He places his earplugs onto the palm of Eames’s hand and says, “Where is this diner?”
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Prompt: 5 times Eames has tried to woo Arthur with grand gestures he saw in American teen movies, and one time it worked. (Only a 4+1 though.)
i.
Apparently the boombox needs batteries.
As it is, Eames doesn’t have any batteries, nor is there an outlet nearby to plug in to, and so he is left standing on a freshly watered lawn while holding a silent boombox over his head, watching Arthur stare at him through the bay window of his apartment.
Eames keeps holding it up anyway. Perhaps the gesture itself will be enough.
Arthur draws the curtains.
ii.
“I saw it in The Notebook,” Eames explains as he hammers away at a nail. He misses about 90% of the time and ends up denting the wood instead.
Yusuf shakes his head. “You actually think this is going to work,” he states.
“Not at all,” Eames says. “Barring some incredibly violent head injury. But I’m having fun with it all the same.”
The finished product is something resembling a chair, if a normal-looking chair had been crushed to bits before being reassembled before being crushed to bits once more before being reassembled again.
“This look like a torture device,” Arthur says.
“I took a woodshop class once,” Eames says, and it’s almost a non sequitur considering the state of the chair.
iii.
“Let’s say we had to pretend to be married in order to pull off a job,” Eames says. He taps his pen against the composition notebook that’s lying open in his lap, then amends, “Married, or otherwise in a relationship. Do you think you’d fall madly in love with me?”
“No,” Arthur says without looking up from his laptop.
Eames taps his pen again, then crosses off six movie titles from the list he’s written down.
iv.
The job is done and most everyone has jetted off again, holding to the rhythm of any job they have, but Eames is still in the warehouse, studying the laptop screen. He prefers pen and paper most of the time, but this is a case where easy editing is important.
“What,” Eames starts when a hand pushes the laptop closed.
“Don’t do a speech,” Arthur says, his hand still pressing down.
Eames smiles. “But speeches are so much fun. Are you sure?”
They look at each other for a beat, and then Arthur slides his hand away and shrugs on his coat in silence.
“I really delve into the history of it all, such as how we met and the first time you called me an idiot,” Eames reminisces. “It’s pretty much a verbal timeline in poetry form. I won’t read it if you really don’t want me to, but know that the world will be lesser for it.”
Arthur has reached the door by now. He looks over his shoulder and calls, “I’ll see you soon, Mr. Eames.”
v.
During the months afterward, Eames spends his time hopping from one tropical island to another. It’s all warm beaches and white sand and extremely strong drinks disguised in fruity colors. Eames indulges in pretty much everything and never wears a shirt. It’s marvelous.
He’s lying on a beach one day when he feels someone sit down next to him. It's hard to push down the smile and that buoyant feeling that always comes with being found by a specific someone.
“I’m having a hard time pinpointing what this one was,” Arthur says.
Eames likes being drunk in the afternoon. It makes everything hazy and dream-like. He lets his eyelids droop to half-mast, studying Arthur openly. “This was the one where I go far, far away to let you live your life. Or something. Butterflies, and setting them free.”
Arthur turns to look at him. The sun is shining straight into Eames’s eyes, so he can’t make out Arthur’s expression. Experimentally, he plucks the floral mini-umbrella out of his drink and tucks it over Arthur’s ear. He moves slowly so as not to poke Arthur in the eye by accident or anything -- Arthur could easily duck away, or bat Eames’s hands back, but instead he stays very, very still.
“Come back,” Arthur finally says. “We’ve got a job for you.”
Eames lays his hands over his chest. “Yes, alright,” he agrees. He closes his eyes and says, “You know you’ve got an umbrella over your ear? You look ridiculous.”
When he squints his eyes open again, Arthur has his head ducked down, the way he always does when he’s smiling.
:(
Champion Sound
Prompt: Arthur is a DJ, Eames is a bartender.
Arthur is a busy guy. He goes to class, has a part-time job, occasionally deigns to hang out with other people, spends weekend nights at an art-house theater by himself, and studies. There’s always studying.
Arthur is also pretty broke. Studying doesn’t pay the bills, at least not yet. The filing job at the dean’s office only schedules him for a few hours a week, and although he is perfectly adept at customer service, it also makes him drink a lot. That kind of knocks the option down a few pegs.
So when his older brother donates two turntables to him, saying, “Hey, now you can actually listen to all those old jazz and classical vinyls instead of just looking at them,” Arthur weighs his choices. He makes a spreadsheet and figures that art-house theaters can take the backburner for a bit if he somehow spins those weekend nights into paying gigs.
He buys a mixer and gets to work.
*
His first gig goes fine because it’s a boring set. Beat-matching had come easily enough for him, so he plays it safe and spends the whole night spinning songs from the Billboard Hot 100. Nobody notices that he’s yawning the entire time because they’re all too busy lurching around on the dancefloor. Arthur supposes he can mark that as a success.
His first gig with his own mixes fails terribly. People wrinkle their noses in confusion when the Monteverdi/NWA mashup comes in, and more than half have trickled away by the time he gets to the ‘songs with jazz flute’ part of the night. He’s pretty irked about the sheer amount of people who fail to appreciate jazz flute, but he knows when to give in. The rest of the night is salvaged by his iPod and a half-hour mix that he’d thrown together on his computer a few nights before.
When Arthur is almost done, some blond guy leans over the speakers. He nods at Arthur, who nods back.
“Interesting choice of songs,” the guy calls. “I’m Dom Cobb, I manage 528491. Send me another mix that you made and I might hire you for a couple nights a week if you’re interested.”
Arthur accepts the proffered card and Dom turns away, but he doubles back and taps the table. “Tone down the more unique choices, and no jazz flute,” he says with a slight smile.
Arthur sighs.
*
528491 sounds like any other bougie bar that’s trying too hard, but when Arthur walks in the next Friday, he sees that it’s just a normal bar. Neat but not meticulously so; there are bare lightbulbs hanging in zig-zagging lines all along the ceiling, a pool table in the back, and a small dancefloor on the opposite side of the bar. The floor is just short of being a grimy mess, but the bar and everything else that matters is clean enough.
Cobb catches up to him and shows him to the corner where the PA system and a small riser are set up. Then he introduces Arthur to the rest of the staff. Arthur is hopeless when it comes to names, but he does well with faces and files them away into his mind.
That is, except for Eames the bartender, who gives him a huge smile and says his name with an accent, and Arthur can’t think of anything else.
*
Eames the bartender was obviously hired because his face rakes in a jar full of tips every night. That amount can go up even higher if he doesn’t bother leaning over the bar and instead just forms his mouth around words very, very carefully.
He has all the symptoms of being a douche, starting from his dumb haircut with the buzzed sides, to the fact that he very obviously works out a lot, and also just by looking up at his additions to the chalkboard menu above the bar. Among the usual ‘REDBULL VODKA’ and ‘MOJITO’, there is also ‘PRICK QUENCHER’ and ‘THIS DRINK WILL KICK YOU IN THE FACE’ written in broad, all-caps handwriting.
“The ‘Adios Motherfucker’ isn’t creative enough for him?” Arthur had asked Cobb the first night. “And what the hell does ‘prick quencher’ mean?”
In short, Eames the bartender is exactly the type of guy Arthur will stare at from a distance but never talk to. He’s perfectly fine with that.
*
Of course, nothing goes according to plan.
Eames, as it turns out, is witty and nice and everything else Arthur had been hoping he wasn’t. On top of that, he’s actually a good bartender, getting everyone served without that irritable air that a lot of frazzled bartenders tend to have. His competency pisses Arthur off, or so he tells himself.
There’s a second bartender on Saturdays, the one with the curly hair who mixes the craziest drinks Arthur’s ever seen. When the number of people at the bar dwindles, Eames takes a break and hangs around the pool table or clears glasses away or has a smoke out by the small awning, basically just being everywhere in Arthur’s periphery. Arthur gets used to glancing up quickly and looking for Eames. Sometimes, when Eames is behind the bar but isn’t busy making a drink or chatting up customers, he’ll be facing the cash register and nodding his head to the music. This gives Arthur some strange satisfaction and he always ends up having a string of smooth segues that leave people whooping and clapping. If Eames looks bored or distracted, Arthur changes it up without thinking and ends up getting more people into the music as a bonus.
It doesn’t mean anything. Eames is just a good barometer for how the rest of the bar patrons are enjoying the music, that’s all.
One night, after a particularly good set during which Arthur could have sworn that Eames was making drinks to the beat of the music, Eames breaks the unspoken rules that Arthur had put into place by crossing the dancefloor and standing right on the other side of Arthur’s set up. This is the closest they’ve been to each other since the initial meeting.
“You sounded great tonight,” Eames says. It’s almost last call and he has a drink in his hand.
“Thanks,” Arthur says without looking directly at him.
He hears the clink of ice cubes and almost passes out when Eames says, “So, let’s talk about how I’m your muse.”
That sound is the sound of Arthur’s plan crumbling down around him. “What?” he asks dumbly.
“I definitely take it as a compliment,” Eames says. “It’s been a while since I’ve been romanced quite so creatively.”
Arthur finally finds his voice. “It’s been a while since I’ve met someone so cocky,” he says. Never mind the fact that Eames might be a tiny bit correct. “Honestly, that was a little gauche,” he adds, messing with the faders and his headphones just to have something to do.
Eames stands there and watches Arthur’s hands as he lifts off one vinyl and substitutes it for another. Finally, he grins and raises his glass. “Cheers,” he calls before heading back to the bar.
*
The next week passes far too quickly. On Friday, Arthur manages to lug all his equipment in and start off before seeing anyone, but then a girl sets a drink on top of a speaker and points over her shoulder. When he instinctively looks in that direction, Eames actually gives him the finger guns. Finger guns.
“Oh my god,” Arthur mutters against the lip of the glass, because pointedly not drinking it would be too obvious. It would also make him feel like he’d be losing this game, because apparently now they are playing a game.
Then he changes his mind and decides that finger guns and whatever else are fine, because the drink is pretty much the best thing he’s tasted. It goes down smooth and the burn of alcohol is only a muted afterthought.
Eames keeps sending over drinks with different people, like his very own giggling parcel service, and Arthur keeps drinking them. It’s only at the end of the night, when he tries to maneuver out of the booth, that he realizes his feet aren’t moving in the direction he’d like them to. Also, he’s slumped practically halfway over the railing and can’t quite seem to stand up even remotely straight. The floor is tilting up to greet him hello when something catches him around the waist and pulls him upright.
“This was supposed to be me making you a bit more pliable before I asked you on a date, but it’s backfiring horribly,” Eames laughs. His hand is warm over Arthur’s hip as he leads them to the bar and deposits Arthur onto a stool.
“You weren’t actually supposed to start talking to me,” Arthur manages to say. “That’s breaking the rules.”
“Good god, you’re like a petulant child.”
“I usually don’t associate with good looking people,” Arthur yells. Oh god, seriously, what is he even saying.
Eames has his elbow propped up onto the bar, hand supporting his chin as he smiles at Arthur. It’s terribly distracting.
“You’re a mess,” he states. “What did I give you, four drinks? Five drinks?”
Arthur squints over his shoulder at the DJ booth. He turns back to Eames and says, “I count sixteen empty glasses. What was in those, rubbing alcohol?”
That’s the last thing he remembers until the next morning, when he wakes up on his bed. He’s still dressed, but his shoes are lined up by the dresser. There’s also a note right beside his clock:
1. you kept trying to eat a bowl of empty peanut shells
2. i have no idea if this is actually your flat or not, but the key fit
3. if you wanted me to take you home, all you had to do was ask
4. it’s just a date
- e
It’s a note worthy of rereading about a hundred times, but Arthur only gets to six before he has to stumble out of bed to puke.
*
His hangover is still lingering around his stomach and head when he gets to the bar that night. The other bartender -- Yusuf -- is cutting limes and raises his knife in greeting. Arthur holds his hand up as well, then makes his way over to the bar.
“What’s with the mass of limes?” he croaks.
Yusuf waves his knife around again. “Eames called in sick, but somehow found time to put a new drink on the menu,” he explains. He gets a funny look on his face as he jabs the knife upward. “Take a look.”
Arthur takes a few steps backward until he can read the menu. On the lower right hand corner, in the middle of a cloud of freshly erased chalk, there are blue letters that say, ‘THE SNOBBY DJ: CAUTION, IT’LL SNEAK UP ON YOU.’
Arthur’s mouth goes dry.
*
Somehow, he finishes his set. When he shuffles outside, he’s still wearing earplugs and jumps when someone grabs his elbow and spins him around. It’s Eames. Of course. He says something, but it’s muffled.
“Wait, wait,” Arthur says, pinching out his earplugs.
“I know this great diner,” Eames begins.
“I’m still hungover,” Arthur hedges.
“It has plenty of soup and bread and greasy fries,” Eames says.
He smiles and shows no signs of wavering. In fact, he seems content to stand there all night as long as Arthur hems and haws. It’s probably because he’s hungover that Arthur suddenly likens this moment to when he’d first gotten those turntables; he had everything within his grasp, and all he needed to do was work a little for it.
He mentally makes a face at his thought process.
“You’re a lot easier to read than you think you are,” Eames says. He holds out his hand and says, “Come on, then.”
Arthur cracks a smile. He places his earplugs onto the palm of Eames’s hand and says, “Where is this diner?”
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Prompt: 5 times Eames has tried to woo Arthur with grand gestures he saw in American teen movies, and one time it worked. (Only a 4+1 though.)
i.
Apparently the boombox needs batteries.
As it is, Eames doesn’t have any batteries, nor is there an outlet nearby to plug in to, and so he is left standing on a freshly watered lawn while holding a silent boombox over his head, watching Arthur stare at him through the bay window of his apartment.
Eames keeps holding it up anyway. Perhaps the gesture itself will be enough.
Arthur draws the curtains.
ii.
“I saw it in The Notebook,” Eames explains as he hammers away at a nail. He misses about 90% of the time and ends up denting the wood instead.
Yusuf shakes his head. “You actually think this is going to work,” he states.
“Not at all,” Eames says. “Barring some incredibly violent head injury. But I’m having fun with it all the same.”
The finished product is something resembling a chair, if a normal-looking chair had been crushed to bits before being reassembled before being crushed to bits once more before being reassembled again.
“This look like a torture device,” Arthur says.
“I took a woodshop class once,” Eames says, and it’s almost a non sequitur considering the state of the chair.
iii.
“Let’s say we had to pretend to be married in order to pull off a job,” Eames says. He taps his pen against the composition notebook that’s lying open in his lap, then amends, “Married, or otherwise in a relationship. Do you think you’d fall madly in love with me?”
“No,” Arthur says without looking up from his laptop.
Eames taps his pen again, then crosses off six movie titles from the list he’s written down.
iv.
The job is done and most everyone has jetted off again, holding to the rhythm of any job they have, but Eames is still in the warehouse, studying the laptop screen. He prefers pen and paper most of the time, but this is a case where easy editing is important.
“What,” Eames starts when a hand pushes the laptop closed.
“Don’t do a speech,” Arthur says, his hand still pressing down.
Eames smiles. “But speeches are so much fun. Are you sure?”
They look at each other for a beat, and then Arthur slides his hand away and shrugs on his coat in silence.
“I really delve into the history of it all, such as how we met and the first time you called me an idiot,” Eames reminisces. “It’s pretty much a verbal timeline in poetry form. I won’t read it if you really don’t want me to, but know that the world will be lesser for it.”
Arthur has reached the door by now. He looks over his shoulder and calls, “I’ll see you soon, Mr. Eames.”
v.
During the months afterward, Eames spends his time hopping from one tropical island to another. It’s all warm beaches and white sand and extremely strong drinks disguised in fruity colors. Eames indulges in pretty much everything and never wears a shirt. It’s marvelous.
He’s lying on a beach one day when he feels someone sit down next to him. It's hard to push down the smile and that buoyant feeling that always comes with being found by a specific someone.
“I’m having a hard time pinpointing what this one was,” Arthur says.
Eames likes being drunk in the afternoon. It makes everything hazy and dream-like. He lets his eyelids droop to half-mast, studying Arthur openly. “This was the one where I go far, far away to let you live your life. Or something. Butterflies, and setting them free.”
Arthur turns to look at him. The sun is shining straight into Eames’s eyes, so he can’t make out Arthur’s expression. Experimentally, he plucks the floral mini-umbrella out of his drink and tucks it over Arthur’s ear. He moves slowly so as not to poke Arthur in the eye by accident or anything -- Arthur could easily duck away, or bat Eames’s hands back, but instead he stays very, very still.
“Come back,” Arthur finally says. “We’ve got a job for you.”
Eames lays his hands over his chest. “Yes, alright,” he agrees. He closes his eyes and says, “You know you’ve got an umbrella over your ear? You look ridiculous.”
When he squints his eyes open again, Arthur has his head ducked down, the way he always does when he’s smiling.