Think It Over (Look No Further)
Title: Think It Over (Look No Further)
Author: ifeelbetter
Rating: G
Warning: Angst AND schmoop for the price of one.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value. For realsies.
Summary: Arguments over a few years and how Eames gets the winning card he never knew he had.
Word Count: 3,021
Notes: I filled this prompt for inception_kink's kink_meme this morning and then I made it into...this in the middle of the night. It's longer now, for one thing. And it has angst, for another. That happened.
Two years after the Fischer job.
Ariadne wore her hair short these days. Eames mentioned it (with a leer) without taking a breath between "Ariadne, what a long time it's been!" and "You're simply ravishing." Arthur didn't say anything but he did hook his hands into his waistcoat and tilt his head slightly at her before continuing with his description of the job.
She steepled her fingers on the desk in front of her while he mentioned every excruciating detail. Eames had started to doodle on the yellow pad of paper in front of him. By the time Arthur finished, Eames had covered two sheets of paper in obscenities.
"You've gotten over the pulling pigtails thing, right, guys?" she asked, point blank, leaning back in her chair. "Because I can't work with you if you're still..." She waved a hand dismissively.
"Still what?" Arthur asked, his brow furrowing.
"I know what she means," Eames gloated. He swiveled his chair to face her. "Not really but no promises."
She nodded. Arthur's furrowed brow deepened into a frown.
"I suppose I can manage," she said finally. Her new haircut made her look sleek and efficient and much more of an adult than the girl they had watched Cobb train. "I missed you," she admitted.
"I still don't understand the thing about pig-tails," Arthur said, annoyed.
"Let it go, pet," Eames said gently.
Ariadne sighed, expecting a two-hour bout of bickering and chair-tipping. She nearly bit her tongue when Arthur's face cleared and he nodded curtly.
"Fine," he said. It didn't sound like a grudging retreat, either.
Eames patted Arthur's hand across the table. Arthur simply watched the movement and, when Eames's hand withdrew, he began to collect the various papers he had strewn in front of him, tapping them into a neat pile.
Six months after the Fisher job.
"Do you even know anything about how cars work or are you just trying to impress me with your machismo?" Eames asked, leaning lazily against the side of the car. He smirked. "If it's the latter, I have to say...it's working."
"Yes, I know how cars work," Arthur said distractedly. "It's my job, you know."
"To fix cars? Darling, you sell yourself short."
"To know things." Arthur sighed and shut the hood with more force than was absolutely necessary. "It doesn't matter, anyway. There's too much damage."
"It was a gunfight. Of course there's too much damage."
Arthur gritted his teeth instead of responding. He shaded his eyes and surveyed the scenery surrounding them, leaning heavily on the car. His hand was resting over one of the bullet holes. It prickled his palm.
"Where are we?" Eames asked, also taking in the luscious vegetation and distinct lack of humanity surrounding them.
"Somewhere in Maryland," said Arthur. "We have to get to Pittsburgh by tomorrow. Cobb will assume we're dead if we don't."
"He wouldn't, really, though," Eames scoffed but lost his certainty when Arthur gave him a look. "Would he?"
"And then there will be paperwork," Arthur threatened. He enjoyed the way Eames blanched at the thought.
"Saints preserve us," Eames said. Arthur squinted at him, the sunlight glinting off the window of the car behind him and casting a halo around him. He had an inkling that Eames might be mocking him.
"Reams of it."
"So...Pittsburgh or bust?" Eames grinned. "Can we hitchhike? You can be Claudette Colbert and I'll be Clark Gable."
"This is a civilized country, Eames, unlike some backwater former empires I could name."
"You wound me, pet." He removed his sunglasses from the neck of his shirt and put them on. They obscured his eyes entirely and Arthur found himself staring at his own face. "What would you suggest?"
"We have trains. Buses. Airplanes." Arthur started to unbutton his crisp white shirt. "We'll just walk back to the last town we passed and see what they have by way of public transportation."
Eames didn't respond. Arthur shrugged the shirt off, folded it carefully and went to hide it away in his suitcase in the trunk.
"Eames." He raised an eyebrow. He could feel Eames's eyes on him even through the mirrors.
"Yes. Public transportation. Yes." Eames coughed politely in that way only a Brit can do. "You have the best plans, darling."
Five years after the Fisher job.
They were so much better than Yusuf remembered. Eames must have taught Arthur some superficial forging skills because he could shift his features just slightly enough that the projections passed by him, their eyes shifting automatically past him to Yusuf.
Eames, for his part, sat through all the prep work and, despite the various unpredictable mishaps that always happen (Yusuf had thought, two years ago, that Fisher's militarization going un-noted in Arthur's research had been a sign that he had past his prime. He knew now how easily a thing like that could slip under the radar), he never threatened to abandon them.
But they still bickered like children.
"If you ever bothered to buy the coffee, you could have some of the coffee," Arthur shouted, waving a bag of his hugely expensive coffee beans and not noticing in his wroth that he was spilling the contents across the floor.
"If someone didn't insist on coffee beans that can only be bought for three hours once a week from an amnesiac sexagenarian, maybe I would buy the coffee on occasion," Eames shouted back, pausing to take a long drink from the mug (that had "Arthur's" written on a piece of masking tape wrapped around the base).
"You're obnoxious," Arthur said, waggling the nearly empty bag at Eames.
"I can buy the coffee," Yusuf tried to intercede.
"No," Arthur spat through gritted teeth. "That's not the point."
"I must have missed the point, then," Eames said.
Arthur threw the coffee bag at his head.
"Very mature, pet," Eames said, pulling coffee beans out of his hair.
And, just like that, the fight was over. Arthur ducked his head and breathed out long sigh.
Eames looked strained, watching the curve of Arthur's neck.
He brought his own mug and a bag of the ridiculously expensive coffee beans to loft the next day.
Six months after the Fisher job.
They had left the suitcases in the trunk of the car. As much as the idea of two days without a fresh shirt pained Arthur, it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last.
Eames was thrilled at first but lost his enthusiasm after three miles of walking. Arthur was keeping a brisk pace and Eames had fallen behind. He'd shucked off his button-down shirt as well--it was a garish mustard color and Arthur had been happy to see the back of it--and then, a mile later, had taken off his undershirt and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans.
Arthur had retained his undershirt and wouldn't dream of ruining the line of his trousers in a similar way.
He didn't mind keeping Eames behind him. It kept his mind from wandering, as it had done at first, up and down Eames's tattoos.
Then it began to rain.
There was no warning, only the sudden gathering of deeply foreboding clouds over their heads and a clap of thunder a breath before the rain began to pelt them. They were both drenched and squelching in their shoes--Arthur's were Italian leather but he was man enough to not whimper at their distress--within a few feet.
"This is absurd!" Eames shouted over the rain. "Haven't you ever heard the saying, you know, about having enough sense to come in out of the rain?"
"It's just a drizzle," Arthur said peevishly. Water was dripping off his chin.
Eames grabbed his hand, forcing him to turn and look at him.
"We should get out of the rain," Eames insisted.
Arthur knew his frown smacked of petulance. "Fine. What's your plan, then?"
Eames pointed behind Arthur, his finger mere inches from Arthur's cheek. Arthur didn't turn, didn't want to move, until Eames shook his finger insistently.
There was a farmhouse, all the lights on inside, and it looked wonderfully domestic.
"We can't kill a family of farmers and steal their house," Arthur said, appalled. Eames smacked him lightly, playfully, against the side of the head.
"I don't want to kill them, darling." He grinned his Cheshire cat smile, the one that spelled Up To No Good. "I'm going to charm them."
"Yeah, fine, that works," Arthur admitted begrudgingly.
Seven years after the Fisher job
"You look thinner," Eames said as soon as he saw Arthur. His voice was carefully neutral but the gaze, the one that sank into Arthur, was weighted.
"Shut up," Arthur said.
"It's true," said Phillipa pertly. She twisted her blonde hair around one finger and blew an enormous bubble with her neon green gum. "You're wasting away."
"That wasn't nice, Phil," Cobb chided. He was fuller than he had been the last time all three of them had been in one room, both in the way he seemed to fill space (like living was joy again) and the way his son could accurately claim that his father's lap was cushiony.
"Yeah, Phil," said Arthur, his eyes laughing. "You should be nice to me."
She gave him the sort of look that only a teenager can. "Yeah right," she snorted.
"Come on, Phil," he wheedled. Eames watched him like a hawk. Arthur reached out for Phillipa's wrist and she begrudgingly allowed him to pull her in for a hug. "We're friends, yeah?"
Phillipa granted him a smile, then, but turned back to her father. "You gonna help me with my Calculus?" she asked, hand on hip.
Arthur laughed.
"He's here for dinner," Cobb began to protest.
"It's fine," Arthur interrupted. "I professionally know everything. I can handle Calc."
Eames watched them retreat but forced his attention back to Cobb when they sat themselves at a wide table in the next room. Cobb made small talk--the kind small town men always make and that Cobb could do now with flare and pride. He loved his small town and the sort of man he was in it and Eames felt like an interloper.
His eyes kept being pulled back to the curve of Arthur's neck as he bent over Phillipa's homework in the next room.
After they'd finished their dinner (an idea of Cobb's, a sort of partial nostalgia for something he had left behind), Eames followed Arthur out onto the porch.
Arthur didn't look at him when he sat on the porch swing next to him. He pushed his feet back slightly so the swing rocked gently.
"Are you still thinking about it?" Eames asked finally. He found he didn't have it in him to be subtle. He never had.
Arthur leaned his head back. "I can see Orion's Belt," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
"I know."
Eames leaned his head back as well, staring up into the starry sky.
"I did. Think about it, I mean," Arthur said quietly, his eyes still fixed on the sky. "It never made sense."
"It's not about sense, darling."
"But it is. It has to be about sense when we both ... when we could, either of us, die ..."
"I'd stop," Eames said. Arthur swiveled his face so that he could see Eames's profile. "I'd stop in a minute, I'd never look back, I'd move to any little hicksville you like, if you'd just--" He bit back the end of the sentence.
"You wouldn't, though. You'd be miserable," Arthur said, his voice getting even quieter.
"You don't know that." Eames turned his face so that their noses were almost touching and Arthur could see all the edges of Eames's promise reflected in his eyes. He could see old age and two-point-five kids and a dog and even the white picket fence if Arthur said he wanted it, if he said he wanted Eames.
"I'd be miserable," Arthur tried, lying.
"I'd buy you suits. You could wear Armani in the kitchen. You could work at a university. Or for the FBI." Eames was pleading openly, begging, but not pathetic. Arthur admired that about him, how begging was dignified when he did it. When Arthur asked for things, he felt the degradation of not already having through to the core of his being.
"What would you do?" he asked because he liked the way Eames imagined things.
"Barefoot in the kitchen, obviously. Raising the little ones. Proper housewife stuff," Eames joked. "Raise petunias. That sort of thing."
Arthur smiled. Eames couldn't help reaching out to touch it, to whisper his thumb across the curve of it.
"Oh, pet," he breathed, "how I've missed you."
Six months after the Fisher job.
"I will not now, nor will I ever, roll in the hay with you," Arthur said, his hands on his hips. Eames's grin didn't even falter, it grew slightly, and he patted the spot next to him on the stack of hay.
"Just a little tumble, darling," he said.
Arthur glared.
"They honestly don't have a room to spare in the farmhouse," Eames said, managing to sound slightly apologetic. "There are eight people living up there." He flopped back into the hay, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Arthur was horrified.
"Then we'll just wait for the rain to stop and then--"
"It's not stopping tonight. They checked the weather, it'll go on all night. It'll get worse, even."
Arthur closed his eyes, trying to unclench the anger holding court in his gut.
He perched on the edge of the hay, trying to keep away from Eames as much as possible. He still hadn't changed despite the fact that the nice motherly woman had given them each a pair of matching striped pajamas.
Arthur wasn't willing to change before Eames did. If anyone was going to introduce nudity to this evening, he sure as hell wanted it not to be him.
Eames turned his head to look at him, the cat-ate-the-canary grin subsiding into something happier and warmer and Arthur breathed out something he wasn't sure he had been holding.
"Shall I strip first or will you?" Eames said, breaking the moment.
"We're changing at the same time and you're going to face the wall and not turn around because it will be hard for me to get you to Pittsburgh tomorrow without your head." He couldn't really put much venom behind the words, though, not with that warmth in Eames's eyes, not with him looking at him like that.
"I make no promises," Eames said, pushing himself up. "I'm only human."
But he didn't look. Arthur knew because he snuck a glance or two over his own shoulder, taking in the curve of Eames's back and the way his muscles rippled like magic.
Arthur's pajamas hung loosely off him, sinking low on his hips. They were meant for a much bigger man than him--a colorblind man, judging from the colors--and his hands were lost in the fabric. He rolled up the sleeves as Eames finished dressing.
Of course the pajamas fit him and the stupidly bright colors didn't seem to put a dent in that Eamesness that bothered Arthur so much. They both lay down awkwardly and stiffly. Within a few minutes, Eames had nestled himself in and his breathing began to even out.
The hay was ridiculously uncomfortable, making Arthur toss and turn for ages. Eames huffed out a sigh finally and hooked an arm around Arthur, stilling him.
"Eames," he hissed. He didn't struggle against the grip though. He settled into it a little.
"Not now, darling. Yell at me in the morning," Eames breathed into his ear, his voice muffled by sleep.
"I'm going to," Arthur promised but Eames's arm was warm and suddenly the prickle of the hay had vanished from his neck. It was replaced by the altogether more pleasant steady stream of breath from Eames.
Eames was mostly asleep, anyway, Arthur rationalized. And he was more comfortable than the hay. So the fact that he leaned into Eames, that he hooked an ankle around one of Eames's, had everything to do with that and nothing to do with the way he smiled into Eames's shoulder.
Eames pet his hair gently in his sleep.
Arthur would think of this every time Eames called him "pet" in the future. He'd think of the way Eames's fingers felt and he'd duck his head and, no matter what the argument was, he'd let Eames win that one.
Only when Eames called him "pet."
Seven years after the Fisher job.
Arthur laughed a breathy laugh against Eames's fingers.
"Pet," he repeated. Eames didn't understand, his confusion clear on his face.
"You said 'pet,'" Arthur laughed again, wonderingly, like Eames had cracked a magic spell or found the last piece in a puzzle. "You would call me 'pet' right then. You just would."
"I don't understand," Eames said, feeling that the conversation had moved away from him.
"Do you remember that night, in the barn?" Arthur put a hand into Eames's hair, weaved it through the strands like Eames had done that night.
"Yes," Eames said, still confused.
"I thought, when you were-- I thought it was like you were petting me," Arthur said. He leaned his face into Eames's hand so that the fingers that had ghosted were flushed again his cheek. "I've always thought of that, when you called me 'pet.'"
"I didn't know," Eames said. He brushed a kiss onto the corner of Arthur's mouth because he thought he might be allowed to now, even if he didn't understand yet.
"Every time," Arthur continued as Eames pressed another kiss into his neck and he didn't stop him, "And it was like code, then. Like a Get Out of Jail Free card."
Eames wasn't really listening, not to the words, not when he might be winning.
"I'd give you anything if you called me 'pet,'" Arthur admitted.
Eames didn't catch the words. All he heard was one vibrant, lasting, essential, "Yes."
Author: ifeelbetter
Rating: G
Warning: Angst AND schmoop for the price of one.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value. For realsies.
Summary: Arguments over a few years and how Eames gets the winning card he never knew he had.
Word Count: 3,021
Notes: I filled this prompt for inception_kink's kink_meme this morning and then I made it into...this in the middle of the night. It's longer now, for one thing. And it has angst, for another. That happened.
Two years after the Fischer job.
Ariadne wore her hair short these days. Eames mentioned it (with a leer) without taking a breath between "Ariadne, what a long time it's been!" and "You're simply ravishing." Arthur didn't say anything but he did hook his hands into his waistcoat and tilt his head slightly at her before continuing with his description of the job.
She steepled her fingers on the desk in front of her while he mentioned every excruciating detail. Eames had started to doodle on the yellow pad of paper in front of him. By the time Arthur finished, Eames had covered two sheets of paper in obscenities.
"You've gotten over the pulling pigtails thing, right, guys?" she asked, point blank, leaning back in her chair. "Because I can't work with you if you're still..." She waved a hand dismissively.
"Still what?" Arthur asked, his brow furrowing.
"I know what she means," Eames gloated. He swiveled his chair to face her. "Not really but no promises."
She nodded. Arthur's furrowed brow deepened into a frown.
"I suppose I can manage," she said finally. Her new haircut made her look sleek and efficient and much more of an adult than the girl they had watched Cobb train. "I missed you," she admitted.
"I still don't understand the thing about pig-tails," Arthur said, annoyed.
"Let it go, pet," Eames said gently.
Ariadne sighed, expecting a two-hour bout of bickering and chair-tipping. She nearly bit her tongue when Arthur's face cleared and he nodded curtly.
"Fine," he said. It didn't sound like a grudging retreat, either.
Eames patted Arthur's hand across the table. Arthur simply watched the movement and, when Eames's hand withdrew, he began to collect the various papers he had strewn in front of him, tapping them into a neat pile.
Six months after the Fisher job.
"Do you even know anything about how cars work or are you just trying to impress me with your machismo?" Eames asked, leaning lazily against the side of the car. He smirked. "If it's the latter, I have to say...it's working."
"Yes, I know how cars work," Arthur said distractedly. "It's my job, you know."
"To fix cars? Darling, you sell yourself short."
"To know things." Arthur sighed and shut the hood with more force than was absolutely necessary. "It doesn't matter, anyway. There's too much damage."
"It was a gunfight. Of course there's too much damage."
Arthur gritted his teeth instead of responding. He shaded his eyes and surveyed the scenery surrounding them, leaning heavily on the car. His hand was resting over one of the bullet holes. It prickled his palm.
"Where are we?" Eames asked, also taking in the luscious vegetation and distinct lack of humanity surrounding them.
"Somewhere in Maryland," said Arthur. "We have to get to Pittsburgh by tomorrow. Cobb will assume we're dead if we don't."
"He wouldn't, really, though," Eames scoffed but lost his certainty when Arthur gave him a look. "Would he?"
"And then there will be paperwork," Arthur threatened. He enjoyed the way Eames blanched at the thought.
"Saints preserve us," Eames said. Arthur squinted at him, the sunlight glinting off the window of the car behind him and casting a halo around him. He had an inkling that Eames might be mocking him.
"Reams of it."
"So...Pittsburgh or bust?" Eames grinned. "Can we hitchhike? You can be Claudette Colbert and I'll be Clark Gable."
"This is a civilized country, Eames, unlike some backwater former empires I could name."
"You wound me, pet." He removed his sunglasses from the neck of his shirt and put them on. They obscured his eyes entirely and Arthur found himself staring at his own face. "What would you suggest?"
"We have trains. Buses. Airplanes." Arthur started to unbutton his crisp white shirt. "We'll just walk back to the last town we passed and see what they have by way of public transportation."
Eames didn't respond. Arthur shrugged the shirt off, folded it carefully and went to hide it away in his suitcase in the trunk.
"Eames." He raised an eyebrow. He could feel Eames's eyes on him even through the mirrors.
"Yes. Public transportation. Yes." Eames coughed politely in that way only a Brit can do. "You have the best plans, darling."
Five years after the Fisher job.
They were so much better than Yusuf remembered. Eames must have taught Arthur some superficial forging skills because he could shift his features just slightly enough that the projections passed by him, their eyes shifting automatically past him to Yusuf.
Eames, for his part, sat through all the prep work and, despite the various unpredictable mishaps that always happen (Yusuf had thought, two years ago, that Fisher's militarization going un-noted in Arthur's research had been a sign that he had past his prime. He knew now how easily a thing like that could slip under the radar), he never threatened to abandon them.
But they still bickered like children.
"If you ever bothered to buy the coffee, you could have some of the coffee," Arthur shouted, waving a bag of his hugely expensive coffee beans and not noticing in his wroth that he was spilling the contents across the floor.
"If someone didn't insist on coffee beans that can only be bought for three hours once a week from an amnesiac sexagenarian, maybe I would buy the coffee on occasion," Eames shouted back, pausing to take a long drink from the mug (that had "Arthur's" written on a piece of masking tape wrapped around the base).
"You're obnoxious," Arthur said, waggling the nearly empty bag at Eames.
"I can buy the coffee," Yusuf tried to intercede.
"No," Arthur spat through gritted teeth. "That's not the point."
"I must have missed the point, then," Eames said.
Arthur threw the coffee bag at his head.
"Very mature, pet," Eames said, pulling coffee beans out of his hair.
And, just like that, the fight was over. Arthur ducked his head and breathed out long sigh.
Eames looked strained, watching the curve of Arthur's neck.
He brought his own mug and a bag of the ridiculously expensive coffee beans to loft the next day.
Six months after the Fisher job.
They had left the suitcases in the trunk of the car. As much as the idea of two days without a fresh shirt pained Arthur, it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last.
Eames was thrilled at first but lost his enthusiasm after three miles of walking. Arthur was keeping a brisk pace and Eames had fallen behind. He'd shucked off his button-down shirt as well--it was a garish mustard color and Arthur had been happy to see the back of it--and then, a mile later, had taken off his undershirt and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans.
Arthur had retained his undershirt and wouldn't dream of ruining the line of his trousers in a similar way.
He didn't mind keeping Eames behind him. It kept his mind from wandering, as it had done at first, up and down Eames's tattoos.
Then it began to rain.
There was no warning, only the sudden gathering of deeply foreboding clouds over their heads and a clap of thunder a breath before the rain began to pelt them. They were both drenched and squelching in their shoes--Arthur's were Italian leather but he was man enough to not whimper at their distress--within a few feet.
"This is absurd!" Eames shouted over the rain. "Haven't you ever heard the saying, you know, about having enough sense to come in out of the rain?"
"It's just a drizzle," Arthur said peevishly. Water was dripping off his chin.
Eames grabbed his hand, forcing him to turn and look at him.
"We should get out of the rain," Eames insisted.
Arthur knew his frown smacked of petulance. "Fine. What's your plan, then?"
Eames pointed behind Arthur, his finger mere inches from Arthur's cheek. Arthur didn't turn, didn't want to move, until Eames shook his finger insistently.
There was a farmhouse, all the lights on inside, and it looked wonderfully domestic.
"We can't kill a family of farmers and steal their house," Arthur said, appalled. Eames smacked him lightly, playfully, against the side of the head.
"I don't want to kill them, darling." He grinned his Cheshire cat smile, the one that spelled Up To No Good. "I'm going to charm them."
"Yeah, fine, that works," Arthur admitted begrudgingly.
Seven years after the Fisher job
"You look thinner," Eames said as soon as he saw Arthur. His voice was carefully neutral but the gaze, the one that sank into Arthur, was weighted.
"Shut up," Arthur said.
"It's true," said Phillipa pertly. She twisted her blonde hair around one finger and blew an enormous bubble with her neon green gum. "You're wasting away."
"That wasn't nice, Phil," Cobb chided. He was fuller than he had been the last time all three of them had been in one room, both in the way he seemed to fill space (like living was joy again) and the way his son could accurately claim that his father's lap was cushiony.
"Yeah, Phil," said Arthur, his eyes laughing. "You should be nice to me."
She gave him the sort of look that only a teenager can. "Yeah right," she snorted.
"Come on, Phil," he wheedled. Eames watched him like a hawk. Arthur reached out for Phillipa's wrist and she begrudgingly allowed him to pull her in for a hug. "We're friends, yeah?"
Phillipa granted him a smile, then, but turned back to her father. "You gonna help me with my Calculus?" she asked, hand on hip.
Arthur laughed.
"He's here for dinner," Cobb began to protest.
"It's fine," Arthur interrupted. "I professionally know everything. I can handle Calc."
Eames watched them retreat but forced his attention back to Cobb when they sat themselves at a wide table in the next room. Cobb made small talk--the kind small town men always make and that Cobb could do now with flare and pride. He loved his small town and the sort of man he was in it and Eames felt like an interloper.
His eyes kept being pulled back to the curve of Arthur's neck as he bent over Phillipa's homework in the next room.
After they'd finished their dinner (an idea of Cobb's, a sort of partial nostalgia for something he had left behind), Eames followed Arthur out onto the porch.
Arthur didn't look at him when he sat on the porch swing next to him. He pushed his feet back slightly so the swing rocked gently.
"Are you still thinking about it?" Eames asked finally. He found he didn't have it in him to be subtle. He never had.
Arthur leaned his head back. "I can see Orion's Belt," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
"I know."
Eames leaned his head back as well, staring up into the starry sky.
"I did. Think about it, I mean," Arthur said quietly, his eyes still fixed on the sky. "It never made sense."
"It's not about sense, darling."
"But it is. It has to be about sense when we both ... when we could, either of us, die ..."
"I'd stop," Eames said. Arthur swiveled his face so that he could see Eames's profile. "I'd stop in a minute, I'd never look back, I'd move to any little hicksville you like, if you'd just--" He bit back the end of the sentence.
"You wouldn't, though. You'd be miserable," Arthur said, his voice getting even quieter.
"You don't know that." Eames turned his face so that their noses were almost touching and Arthur could see all the edges of Eames's promise reflected in his eyes. He could see old age and two-point-five kids and a dog and even the white picket fence if Arthur said he wanted it, if he said he wanted Eames.
"I'd be miserable," Arthur tried, lying.
"I'd buy you suits. You could wear Armani in the kitchen. You could work at a university. Or for the FBI." Eames was pleading openly, begging, but not pathetic. Arthur admired that about him, how begging was dignified when he did it. When Arthur asked for things, he felt the degradation of not already having through to the core of his being.
"What would you do?" he asked because he liked the way Eames imagined things.
"Barefoot in the kitchen, obviously. Raising the little ones. Proper housewife stuff," Eames joked. "Raise petunias. That sort of thing."
Arthur smiled. Eames couldn't help reaching out to touch it, to whisper his thumb across the curve of it.
"Oh, pet," he breathed, "how I've missed you."
Six months after the Fisher job.
"I will not now, nor will I ever, roll in the hay with you," Arthur said, his hands on his hips. Eames's grin didn't even falter, it grew slightly, and he patted the spot next to him on the stack of hay.
"Just a little tumble, darling," he said.
Arthur glared.
"They honestly don't have a room to spare in the farmhouse," Eames said, managing to sound slightly apologetic. "There are eight people living up there." He flopped back into the hay, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Arthur was horrified.
"Then we'll just wait for the rain to stop and then--"
"It's not stopping tonight. They checked the weather, it'll go on all night. It'll get worse, even."
Arthur closed his eyes, trying to unclench the anger holding court in his gut.
He perched on the edge of the hay, trying to keep away from Eames as much as possible. He still hadn't changed despite the fact that the nice motherly woman had given them each a pair of matching striped pajamas.
Arthur wasn't willing to change before Eames did. If anyone was going to introduce nudity to this evening, he sure as hell wanted it not to be him.
Eames turned his head to look at him, the cat-ate-the-canary grin subsiding into something happier and warmer and Arthur breathed out something he wasn't sure he had been holding.
"Shall I strip first or will you?" Eames said, breaking the moment.
"We're changing at the same time and you're going to face the wall and not turn around because it will be hard for me to get you to Pittsburgh tomorrow without your head." He couldn't really put much venom behind the words, though, not with that warmth in Eames's eyes, not with him looking at him like that.
"I make no promises," Eames said, pushing himself up. "I'm only human."
But he didn't look. Arthur knew because he snuck a glance or two over his own shoulder, taking in the curve of Eames's back and the way his muscles rippled like magic.
Arthur's pajamas hung loosely off him, sinking low on his hips. They were meant for a much bigger man than him--a colorblind man, judging from the colors--and his hands were lost in the fabric. He rolled up the sleeves as Eames finished dressing.
Of course the pajamas fit him and the stupidly bright colors didn't seem to put a dent in that Eamesness that bothered Arthur so much. They both lay down awkwardly and stiffly. Within a few minutes, Eames had nestled himself in and his breathing began to even out.
The hay was ridiculously uncomfortable, making Arthur toss and turn for ages. Eames huffed out a sigh finally and hooked an arm around Arthur, stilling him.
"Eames," he hissed. He didn't struggle against the grip though. He settled into it a little.
"Not now, darling. Yell at me in the morning," Eames breathed into his ear, his voice muffled by sleep.
"I'm going to," Arthur promised but Eames's arm was warm and suddenly the prickle of the hay had vanished from his neck. It was replaced by the altogether more pleasant steady stream of breath from Eames.
Eames was mostly asleep, anyway, Arthur rationalized. And he was more comfortable than the hay. So the fact that he leaned into Eames, that he hooked an ankle around one of Eames's, had everything to do with that and nothing to do with the way he smiled into Eames's shoulder.
Eames pet his hair gently in his sleep.
Arthur would think of this every time Eames called him "pet" in the future. He'd think of the way Eames's fingers felt and he'd duck his head and, no matter what the argument was, he'd let Eames win that one.
Only when Eames called him "pet."
Seven years after the Fisher job.
Arthur laughed a breathy laugh against Eames's fingers.
"Pet," he repeated. Eames didn't understand, his confusion clear on his face.
"You said 'pet,'" Arthur laughed again, wonderingly, like Eames had cracked a magic spell or found the last piece in a puzzle. "You would call me 'pet' right then. You just would."
"I don't understand," Eames said, feeling that the conversation had moved away from him.
"Do you remember that night, in the barn?" Arthur put a hand into Eames's hair, weaved it through the strands like Eames had done that night.
"Yes," Eames said, still confused.
"I thought, when you were-- I thought it was like you were petting me," Arthur said. He leaned his face into Eames's hand so that the fingers that had ghosted were flushed again his cheek. "I've always thought of that, when you called me 'pet.'"
"I didn't know," Eames said. He brushed a kiss onto the corner of Arthur's mouth because he thought he might be allowed to now, even if he didn't understand yet.
"Every time," Arthur continued as Eames pressed another kiss into his neck and he didn't stop him, "And it was like code, then. Like a Get Out of Jail Free card."
Eames wasn't really listening, not to the words, not when he might be winning.
"I'd give you anything if you called me 'pet,'" Arthur admitted.
Eames didn't catch the words. All he heard was one vibrant, lasting, essential, "Yes."