fic: A Stranger I Know Well

[snakevsladder]

A Stranger I Know Well
Arthur/Eames (background Cobb/Mal)
R
high school au, ~5100 words.

written for "study buddies" for hs_bingo. pure self-indulgence. (patchworkwounds is a star for holding my hand through this.)



Arthur doesn't know how he got roped into this.

He's reasonably certain it was Cobb's fault, because somewhere down the line most things end up being Cobb's fault: he'll ask, and he and Arthur have helped each other out so many times since they first sat next to each other during freshman year that Arthur doesn't know how to say no anymore. It's Ariadne who gives him a thumbs up as she leaves him at the door of the library, though, so she's the one he frowns at.

It's not that he actually dislikes Eames--

(“He's not that bad,” Cobb tells him over lunch. “He's smart, you'll still get a good grade.”

“If you don't get laid out of all this, this is such a waste of time,” Arthur says flatly. He really regrets always forgetting to bring his own lunch and having to opt for the cafeteria option. It tastes like cardboard with the consistency of sludge, and it's doing nothing to improve his mood right now.

Ariadne laughs, but Cobb has a soft look on his face that Arthur has never seen when he's talked about any of his past crushes, and so Arthur ends up nodding.

“Fine. I'll swap,” he says, and pushes his lunch away before it has to chance to get too close to his clothes.)

-- it's just that while he doesn't know him particularly well (or at all, really), what he does know of him has never reflected that well. Whenever Arthur sees him, Eames seems too relaxed, like he's not taking anything seriously, and while Arthur believes Cobb when he says that Eames is smart, he just thinks he'd have probably been much better off working with Mal. Mal is sensible. Mal doesn't have a reputation for winning a hundred dollars by beating the substitute teacher everyone's fairly sure is on drugs at poker.

“You can smile, Arthur,” Ariadne says before she goes. “It's not like Cobb's gonna screw you over with this, you know that.”

“You've only been here a couple of months,” Arthur says, “you're not even in the same grade. What do you know?”

“Lots,” Ariadne says brightly, and walks off in the direction of her locker, hair swishing behind her.

Arthur allows himself a small, not quite self-pitying sigh, straightens his sweater sleeves and walks into the library. He strides purposefully through the shelves until he reaches the table just behind the classic literature section that Eames is already sitting at. There is nothing on the table's surface. “Hi,” he says as he approaches, refusing to feel weird or awkward about it. “I'm Arthur. Turns out we're working together now.”

A slow, warm smile spreads across Eames' face, and he quirks his eyebrows at Arthur, amused and appraising. “Well,” he says. He pushes the chair opposite him out with his foot and it scrapes loudly across the floor. “Hello there.”

*

Arthur decides ten minutes into meeting Eames in the library that his first impression of Eames was mostly right. Eames slouches low in his chair and seems to have the perpetual hint of a smirk hovering at the corners of his mouth, an expression that blooms into a full smile every time Arthur shoots down a suggestion, and he doesn't seem to have that much else to add to the discussion himself. He doesn't even introduce himself when Arthur sits down, and Arthur wonders if he expects him to already know his name or if he just everyone to know his last name by now and feels that's all he has to go by. It's a little arrogant, if that's the case. Eames was the new guy over a year ago, now, so he doesn't have that notoriety to rely on anymore.

Arthur thinks that having to make a movie trailer in order to pass their senior year of Film is a pretty dumb idea - it's invariably going to wind up as fifteen copies of horror or rom-com trailers from the past couple of years - but he has to admit to himself that it's probably even worse that he and Eames manage to come up with absolutely no ideas in the whole hour they're in the library. Arthur spends the time watching the clock to the left of Eames' shoulder, trying to ignore the way Eames shifts in his peripheral vision every few seconds. He drums his finger tips on the table top in a slightly faltering rhythm; Arthur finds it a little distracting.

They split the paper into eight different squares, ready to do a storyboard. The squares remain stubbornly blank.

“So,” Eames says as they finally decide to give up for the day, and it sounds like a summary of how little they've achieved. “Nothing romantic. No horror, no humour?” He raises his eyebrows. He sounds like he finds the whole thing faintly humorous, as though they're not going to fail this class if they don't manage to pull something off.

Arthur just nods. He doesn't want to do anything predictable; there's no point in doing it at all if it's not going to stand out. “It's not like we'd be able to do any of it well at school. It's really not worth it.”

“And what exactly would we be able to do well at school?” Eames asks.

Arthur frowns. “Well that's the problem,” he says, and Eames laughs.

“Well let's hope that between us we have a good imagination,” he says, and stands up. Arthur stands up quickly as well.

As Arthur gathers his stuff together and packs it neatly back into his bag, he thinks almost longingly of Mal and the quiet organisation he observes from her in class.

*

“A con man,” a loud voice says.

Arthur, who is searching through his locker for a Math text book and therefore not expecting Eames to sneak up on him before first period, jumps very slightly. He shifts backward in an attempt to make the movement seem deliberate, and turns to raise a curious eyebrow at Eames.

“What?” he asks.

“A con man,” Eames repeats. He's looking straight at Arthur, confident, one arm resting on the door of Arthur's locker, and he leans in a little closer. “Our trailer. For our film. It should be about a con man, and we can just sort out disguises instead of plot.”

Mouth already open to reply, Arthur pauses. He's about to object without even thinking about it, an automatic reaction based on the fact that there's no real detail to what Eames is saying, the way it's not a real idea yet. It is something different, though. He hesitates for a moment and then says instead, slowly, “I guess that could work.” He looks pointedly at Eames' arm until he moves it and Arthur can close his locker again with an echoing clang. “But we'd need people to--” he begins.

“Arthur,” Eames cuts in, speaking in a gentle voice that has nothing in common with his grin. “Arthur, you know this isn't planning time. Save it for the library, okay? I'll see you later.”

Arthur pins his slightly surprised feeling down to the fact that it's so early in the morning, and that Eames came out of nowhere, and maybe just a little on not expecting Eames to have an idea at all, however harsh that may sound. Eames doesn't walk away, though: he saunters off down the corridor, small groups of students parting to let him through without him having to say a word, and someone like that just doesn't strike Arthur as the thinking things through type. He knows guys like Eames. They're all show.

He goes to his class only to find that he's left his textbook in his locker for the first time all year, and has to spend the whole lesson leaning slightly to his left so he can see Cobb's, trying to ignore the way Cobb spends all of his time staring at the back of Mal's head and drawing shapes that look like buildings in the margin of his notebook.

*

They meet behind classic literature again, at the same table as last time. This time Arthur gets there first. He's familiar with being the early one in most situations; he's more comfortable with it, and he gets their blank storyboard out of his bag, smoothing it down flat on the table just as Eames arrives.

“You're late,” Arthur says, even though it's only a couple of minutes later than they'd agreed on. He's facing the clock again. He can't help it.

“Oh. Terribly sorry, darling,” Eames says, not sounding it at all. He sits down, not opposite Arthur this time but next to him.

Something about the way he speaks and moves, grand and over exaggerating, means that Arthur thinks he knows what he's going to come out with next even before he says it. “Anyway, I've been thinking.

I'm volunteering myself to be our con man,” Eames continues, proving Arthur right. “Then we don't have to worry about getting a lot of other people involved and we can just get on with it.”

Arthur is impressed: he appreciates efficiency, and he nods. “Not bad.” He doesn't mean to sound so surprised about it, but he doesn't apologise either.

“And everyone always loves the suave, smooth talking English guy, after all. I can be like the cooler James Bond. Mr. Saito'll go mad for it.” Eames nods at Arthur's sweater vest. “I can dress like you.”

“I don't dress like James Bond,” Arthur insists. He doesn't - it's not like he's wearing something hugely inappropriate like a suit or a tux to school every day. He just likes to look nice. He has some pride.

“It's a compliment,” Eames says. “Although you have to admit you do a little bit. You're the only person at school who dresses like we actually have a uniform, you know that?” He grins at the frown that Arthur can feel creasing across his forehead. “Don't worry, though, you make it work.”

Arthur decides not to reply to this. He picks up a pencil instead. “So I get to do all the camera work?”

“I came up with the idea. I'm the actor, Arthur, I can't do the menial labour as well.”

Arthur, in spite of himself, smiles down at the paper.

*

They decide to shoot most of the scenes in the parts of the school that they can pass off as offices or unidentifiable buildings, just to make things easier on themselves. They wait until after school, when it's mostly empty but there are a enough extra-curricular clubs still going on that no one questions their presence.

Contrary to what he'd said, Eames doesn't show up wearing clothes similar to Arthur. He turns up a few minutes late again, but this time he has a whole bag of clothes with him, an unobtrusive sleeve flapping out the top as he hurries over. He greets Arthur with, “I'm ready to transform.”

Arthur holds the camera they have on loan from Mr. Saito. “I'm ready to montage.” Eames drops the bag on the floor between them, and Arthur is struck by how heavily it drops for something that is presumably just full of fabric. “What have you got in there?” he asks.

Eames laughs. “Everything,” he says. “The drama department was very generous. I don't think they could resist the potential fame we might bring them.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, although it takes some effort not to laugh in return. His mouth twitches at the corners as he meets Eames' eyes, and he leans down to look away, picking up the bag in his other hand and giving it back to Eames. “Go on then.”

“Of course. I wouldn't want to keep you from your work,” Eames says, and takes the bag into the nearby bathroom.

When he comes back, he's wearing a suit.

It's not just a shirt or a tie with sweat pants, which is the sort of thing that Arthur had been expecting, even after Eames' James Bond speech; it's a suit with a jacket and everything, and Arthur hadn't even suspected Eames of being the type of guy who would actually own a suit. Arthur looks at him for a few seconds as he comes back into the corridor. He blinks a few times.

Eames raises his eyebrows at him, and after another surprised second, Arthur comes out with the first thing that floats into his head before the moment reach the inexplicable awkwardness he can feel it slipping into. “Your shoes don't match it.”

“Keep them out the shot, then,” Eames replies simply. “Any other criticisms?”

Arthur tilts his head a little to the side, considering, and Eames half laughs at him as though he wasn't expecting Arthur to actually give it any thought. “Yeah,” Arthur says, “your tie's all...” He pauses and waves his hand to indicate that Eames' tie is askew. Eames just looks at him. “Come here,” Arthur adds impatiently.

He takes a couple of steps toward Eames, closing the distance between them until he's close enough to reach out and straighten Eames' tie for him. The fabric is soft and smooth beneath his fingers, and he lingers for a second as he tightens the knot to make it neater. Up this close, he can see the shadows of stubble lining Eames' jaw. “There.”

He steps back to find Eames looking at him oddly, but he doesn't say anything, just drops his hands back down to his sides. It's not his fault if Eames can't dress himself as sharply as a convincing con artist would, and they have to make the trailer at least slightly realistic if they want to get a decent grade at the end of it. The silence seems strange, though. The corridors at school are never this quiet, and neither, for the most, part is Eames.

“Alright then?” Eames says after a few beats.

“Okay,” Arthur says. He turns the camera on.

*

Arthur is fairly certain that the sight of Eames in a blonde wig and a somewhat ill fitting, clearly borrowed dress walking down their school corridor as he films should be completely ridiculous, borderline hilarious. There's something almost convincing in the swing of Eames' hips, the way he seems to shift into a new role each time he puts a different outfit on, but he's still undeniably just a school boy in a dress. Arthur could never mistake him for anything else.

He doesn't know why exactly it is that he's not laughing.

*

“Arthur,” Ariadne says one lunch time.

“Yeah,” he says absently. She doesn't carry on and add anything else, so he looks up at her only to find her giving him the type of searching look he's sure someone younger than him shouldn't have mastered. “Yes?”

“Arthur,” she repeats. Now that he's actually tuning in past the general haze of noise, he notices she sounds a little exasperated. She leans across to tap his forehead and he raises his eyebrows at her in question, the movement making her finger slide up before she leans back. “Where are you?”

“Right here,” he says. “Opposite you in the lunch hall.”

“Oh whatever,” she scoffs. “Sure, but other than that, I mean?”

“Nowhere,” he says. It's even mostly true. “I'm just thinking about how much more work I've got to do.” He has a recently acquired mountain of Math homework on top of everything else now.

Ariadne rolls her eyes at him, but she's smiling again. “You're always all work, Arthur,” she says, and it suddenly occurs to him that it sounds like something Eames would say. A few seconds later, he wonders when exactly he got to know Eames well enough to think that sort of thing when he's not there. He does the same thing with Cobb and Ariadne, and sometimes even Yusuf, even though they're not sitting next to each other in Chemistry almost every day this year, but for some reason he doesn't quite slot Eames neatly into the friends category with them.

Eames doesn't really fit neatly anywhere, when Arthur gives the matter some thought. He's not used to not having specific spaces for anything. It's - it's different, he decides. It's almost unsettling, although it just misses the mark.

*

After a week of filming around school wherever they can get away with, they watch what they've got so far back on the tiny screen on the camera. Arthur holds it out in front of him and Eames crowds up behind him to see, and Arthur pretends that he doesn't notice how close Eames is to him, or how when Eames exhales a soft gust of laughter at any mistakes, Arthur can feel the breath on the back of his neck. It's distracting, and Arthur simply doesn't do distraction. He especially doesn't do distraction when there's still a lot of work that needs doing, when they're still nowhere near done.

“I think,” Eames says, once they reach the end and he steps back to an almost respectable distance, “we need to film a few scenes somewhere else.”

Arthur was about the say the same thing. “Yeah. And I think we'll need some more people in it too,” he adds. He says this slowly: he's reluctant about getting too many people involved. They can mess up too easily, and it's always hard to get a bigger group organised.

“Anyone in mind?” Eames asks.

Arthur shakes his head.

“What sort of people might a smooth con man like myself con?” Eames asks. He sounds only mildly curious, as though he's talking to himself, just voicing his thoughts out loud, and may come up with his own answer any second now, so Arthur gives him a moment. He's about to volunteer Cobb or Ariadne when a grin breaks across Eames' face. “Don't worry that pretty head of yours about it, Arthur, I've got the perfect mark for us. Leave it to me dear. ”

To Arthur, it seems that the better he gets to know Eames, sometimes, the less he knows what to make of him. Eames has had some good ideas so far, though, so he just nods and smiles wryly. “I'll do my best not to.”

“Well, I suppose it's nice that you're going to try,” says Eames, and the look he slides in Arthur's direction is suddenly far too knowing.

*

Robert Fischer is eyeing them both suspiciously. Fischer is in their Film class, and Arthur has the camera in his hand as they explain the set up, so he isn't sure why Fischer doesn't trust them when he even knows about the assignment himself.

“You're a successful business man,” Arthur is telling him. It shouldn't be too hard for Fischer to act the part, Arthur thinks. It's common knowledge that Fischer's father is the head of his own vastly successful business, and he acts as though he's going to be inheriting the company any day now instead of some time in the far off future. “And we just have to show you and Eames talking, to show he's roping you in.”

“It's easy to be charmed by me,” Eames cuts in, “so you don't need to worry about having to try too hard with the acting.”

Arthur has no smart comment to make there. He'd never admit it to Eames - he hates to admit it to himself, even in the back of his mind - but Eames is a little charming, in an irksome, unavoidable way. Arthur supposes it must be why he gets away with flirting and throwing around endearments in high school, where people get beaten up and bullied for much less. Whilst Fischer continues to look at them like he's struggling to identify any ulterior motives, Eames slides his glance across to Arthur as though he knows exactly what he's thinking. There's a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth, sparking in his eyes.

Arthur ignores him. “You'll only be in it for a few seconds,” he says to Fischer. “It would really help us out.” Fischer finally nods.

It wasn't part of their plan to have Eames wear the dress and wig again for these sections of the trailer. The plan was for Arthur to film the two of them engaged in a meeting of sorts in a carefully arranged corner of the lunch hall that's masquerading as a restaurant, but Eames takes one look at Fischer's apprehensive expression and claims that they need a scene of lunch time seduction, not business talk. Fischer's eyes go wide, and Arthur has to duck his head and look very closely at the settings of the camera so neither of them see his smile.

He has to admit it: it's funny, and it works even better than their original idea would have done. It gives it a twist he probably wouldn't have thought of himself.

Arthur hates Eames a little bit for that, just enough that he keeps his lips sealed and the compliment buried.

*

Arthur still doesn't quite know how he got roped into working with Eames, but he doesn't mind so much anymore. While he might not be as comfortable around him as he is around a lot of other people - or around a few people, at least, when it comes to school - he's not strictly uncomfortable, either, and he's confident that with just one scene left to film outside of school, they're going to get a good grade at the end of it. He no longer has a problem with that particular situation.

He's discovering, however, that he apparently now has a very different kind of problem.

He wakes up one night with his breath already coming in shorter, sharper bursts than normal, his sheets tangled around his ankles and the sweatpants he sleeps in tenting. It's a relatively cool night, with his window cracked open just enough to let a faint breeze flow through, but Arthur still feels warm all over, heat prickling under his skin. His hand slides down without any conscious thought behind the action, and he lets out a slow breath when he curls his fingers around his cock, eyes blinking shut again as he tilts his head back against the pillow. He jerks himself off fast and steady, biting his lip to keep quiet in the early morning gloom of his bedroom.

Arthur doesn't know how long he'd been dreaming for, but it must have been a while because it doesn't take long until he's tensing up and coming, hips shoving up into his fist as he grunts softly, his heels digging into his mattress.

For a few seconds, he lies there, staring unseeingly up at his ceiling, hand still wrapped loosely around his softening dick. It's not until he's cleaned up that the dream actually comes back to him as anything more than a blur, and even then it's all half-forgotten snippets, images that come out of nowhere and seem hazy, like he's looking at them through an out of focus camera. He remembers the phantom scrape of Eames' stubble against his skin, across his neck, over his collarbone, his thighs; Eames' large hands curled around his hips, then twisting in the sheets as Arthur leaned over him, into him.

Arthur blinks. “Shit,” he whispers to himself, just to summarise the situation out loud. “Shit.”

The next day, at least for a while, he barely remembers, and when he does, he pushes any unwelcome thoughts to the back of his mind and ignores them.

*

It's harder to ignore everything about Eames when Eames is sitting on Arthur's neatly made bed, leaning back on his elbows and looking around curiously as Arthur stands in the middle of the room.

All of a sudden, Arthur finds himself feeling absurdly uncertain and unsure, which is particularly stupid considering they're in his bedroom, and considering they're there because of school work.

He thinks it's mostly because his bed is the most obvious and prominent piece of furniture in his room. He's sure it wouldn't have mattered before, but now Arthur is very aware, no matter how hard he tries not to be, that he's imagined Eames here (or at least his subconscious has) before, in very different circumstances. The more he tries to not think about it, the worse it is, the closer to the surface of his mind if climbs, and so he forces all of his concentration into the last piece of filming they have to do instead of focusing on how comfortable Eames looks, sprawled out on his bed.

“Your room is bloody tidy,” Eames says accusingly, as though it's a bad thing. “Even your desk is neat. Who are you?”

“All the mess is in the closet,” Arthur says honestly. He has to do his homework at his desk, and he can't concentrate if that's too cluttered; it just makes sense to hide it all away.

“I don't believe you have any mess, Arthur.” Eames stretches. Arthur looks away for a moment. When he looks back, Eames is smiling, that smooth, knowing quirk of his lips again. “So, you need me at the desk?”

“You're planning,” Arthur says instead of answering directly. He searches through his bag until he finds the sheets of paper he's looking for and pins a vaguely sketched blue print and an indecipherable list to the wall his desk faces. It's not quite the set of a rich con artist's home, but he figures it will do for just the brief few seconds it will appear in their makeshift movie trailer.

Eames looks at home sitting at Arthur's desk, as well. He slouches and fiddles while Arthur sets up the camera, but as soon as he begins filming Eames slips into character, straightening up, eyes sharp.

“You're a pretty good actor, you know,” Arthur comments, once they've stopped filming for the last time ever. “I'm impressed.”

Eames laughs delightedly, standing up. “A compliment? Finally? Are you sure?”

He takes a step in Arthur's direction, and as Arthur watches him move he's sure his room was never this small before. “You don't need to sound so surprised, Eames.”

“But you're such a mystery,” Eames says. Arthur is sure Eames' voice isn't always quite that low, either; it's never more of a murmur than anything else the way it sounds this second. He's sure that when Eames speaks he usually looks at Arthur's eyes, at the general area of his face, and not specifically at his mouth. Arthur gets the feeling that Eames is still half laughing at him, even now - even as the space between them disappears entirely and all Arthur can see is Eames' face. In some weird twist of physics, his room has ceased to exist.

“Not really,” Arthur says, because the back of his brain seems to have decided that the way to deal with this unexpected situation is to continue talking as though it's perfectly normal to be able to feel Eames' breath on his cheek every time Eames exhales. He wonders if Eames can feel his breath too. He wonders if it's as shaky as it feels as it passes through his throat.

“Arthur,” Eames mutters quietly, and Arthur decides that there can only be one reason for Eames to be standing so close to him, even if Eames flirts with everything under the sun on a day to day basis. He decides that being nervous in his own house, in his own bedroom, is completely fucking ridiculous, and he takes it upon himself to shuffle forward, to lean in until their lips meet instead of waiting for Eames to make the inevitable move himself.

Eames' lips are softer than Arthur was expecting. His mouth is warm and the hand he cups around the back of Arthur's head feels huge, and when he moves in closer and his stubble rubs over Arthur's jaw, Arthur feels it all the way through him. Arthur was once forced to kiss Yusuf in an ill-advised, drunken round of truth or dare, but that was nothing like this. This feels like kissing a guy, all lines and heat and tightly controlled strength. It's not, by definition, the best kiss Arthur's ever had, but it's different to any other. Arthur's blood feels like it's thrumming through his veins.

He curls his fingers tight into the front of Eames' shirt even as Eames pulls back and they both suck in twin, sharp breaths. For once, Eames doesn't look quite as laid back as usual.

“We've been wasting time with all this filming,” Eames says a little hoarsely. Then he leans back in and kisses Arthur again, harder this time, wetter, pressing even closer to him with a low, throaty noise, and Arthur loses his smart come back in Eames' mouth.

*

“And I'm seeing her tomorrow even though we've finished our trailer now,” Cobb is saying. “She said she's going to teach me French.” He pauses significantly. “The French we never learn in class. Arthur, I owe you.”

Arthur has somehow zoned out without realising, his attention snagged by the glimpses of Eames he keeps catching from across the room. Eames is at a table near the door, laughing at something one of his friends is saying, and Arthur's mind keeps drifting back to how that sound felt buzzing against his lips, like he no longer has any power over it. He almost wishes he was back in class, where he couldn't afford the same kind of distraction. All this gazing is making him feel like he's dangerously close to pathetic territory, and at least he's fine and functioning perfectly normally for as long as he's busy.

After a few seconds, Arthur amends his wish and decides he'd rather just skip straight to after school, where he and Eames will be editing their trailer in the dark, cramped space of Mr. Saito's specialist computer suite. He needs to ensure they do a good enough job on it, after all.

Ariadne looks between them. She sighs, pushes away her left over lunch and says, “Jesus, guys, come on.”