Valerie knows Arthur (takespoint) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-01 20:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | arthur, door: inception, eames |
Who: Eames and Arthur
What: Plans for the future.
Where: Arthur's Apartment, Paris, Inception Door.
When: Just after Clark leaves.
Warnings/Rating: Innuendo?
Arthur took the few seconds necessary to accompany Clark to the door because he was avoiding being in close proximity to Eames wherever possible. He felt guilty about being attracted to someone who was practically in a hospital bed with his throat torn out, and he still hadn’t quite overcome his irrational anger or the deepset, shaky fear that continued to linger at the bottom of his stomach. So he moved after Clark, keeping his arms at his sides to prevent them from crossing defensively over his chest, and still somewhat fascinated at the idea of having Superman in his living room. Both men stepped around the patches of bare concrete where Arthur had torn up the stained parquet flooring, and Arthur stood back as Clark turned the French handle to the linen closet--which opened up onto the candlelit interior of Passages Hotel. Ever polite, Clark shook Arthur’s hand before he left. “I’ll let you know if there are any changes,” was all Arthur could think to say, and then the big man was a skinny girl again, and the girl was striding away without a backward glance.
Arthur stared out after her. He still had her phone in his pocket, but it didn’t matter all that much, it probably would only work in Las Vegas, anyway. Somewhat mechanically, Arthur closed the linen closet door and stepped back for a moment. Eventually, when he could put it off no longer, he walked slowly back to the bedroom door and leaned onto the frame. “So?” He’d showered again, and he was wearing a different shirt in some unreal color between sapphire and green. Gray slacks tamed the shirt down somewhat, and the ensemble distracted from sober eyes and pale face.
Eames was in the process of attempting to stand, having expected rather more polite conversation between Arthur and the man with the blue eyes, but he’d apparently misjudged, and he ended up caught with one hand on the wall and his muscles tensed as he prepared to stand. He stopped, of course, because Arthur would, no doubt, have a fit about it, and he sighed instead. “I was hoping to find where you’d hidden my trousers,” he explained, as if Arthur wasn’t standing there looking like a distant figure in a fashion magazine. He didn’t add that he wanted a smoke, because Arthur would likely rant about that as well, and Eames very much needed a smoke. It had been less than twenty-four hours, and his mind was already clouded with the beginnings of the antidepressant withdrawal, and he had a distinct feeling that thinking was not going to be high on his list of strengths in the coming days.
“Darling,” Eames added, his smile going intentionally charming, “fetch them for me, will you?” It was, perhaps, cheating, but Eames didn’t care. Getting Arthur annoyed enough to throw the trousers at his head would work just fine. “Are you sleeping with the French doctor?” he asked, outwardly casual, but the question was terribly intentional. “What was his name? I don’t recall.”
Just standing there without anything but boxers on was cheating, but Arthur had gone to a lot of trouble for many years to make sure Eames didn’t know that. To anyone else that did not understand his personality, it wouldn’t make sense why Arthur would go to so much trouble to hide his feelings for a man who was so readily available to anyone who asked, but those who did understand him would know that Arthur didn’t want to be “anyone who asked.” He would rather not try at all, rather take his time until he felt the outcome was most likely to be uniquely suited to his desires, and then he would try. Arthur approached such things with the same efficiency he approached a job.
It did annoy him quite a lot that Eames was going to try to stand again, just as Eames had known it would, but besides a quiver of tension in one side of his jaw, there wasn’t much sign of it. The comment about the French doctor got to him, though. “Félix,” he replied, shortly. He shoved off the doorframe and moved into the room. He bent down at the edge of the bed and fished out Eames’ stained trousers, and he held them out to him from an armslength distance. He had folded them neatly in half and then into thirds, and he had kept them in that state because he assumed that Eames would ask for his chip almost as soon as he was able--which he again assumed was now. “I didn’t touch anything in the pockets,” he said, toward that end, sounded like his cold, militarized little self again.
“You didn’t answer the question, Arthur,” Eames said, holding onto the wall as he reached for the perfectly folded trousers. It took a few seconds, but he settled himself comfortably on the bed again, muscled thighs spread and blanket nowhere to be found. The pocket of the trousers were ransacked, and the telltale red chip was flipped between his fingers and weighed in his palm before he set it on the pillow and hunted out the pack of Lucky Strikes. He packed them against the wall behind his head, the turn of his torso eliciting a hiss from between his teeth and a fumble of the matches, which had joined the chip on the pillow. He tugged a cigarette from the pack, and then he used it to point at the floor as he looked at Arthur. “If you would?” he asked, because he didn’t think he could manage it himself. Arthur looked sufficiently aggravated not to lecture him about his health with, just then, was a good thing.
The annoyance brought Arthur running, but the sounds of pain worked faster. Arthur left the edge of the bed immediately and accelerated forward until he was at Eames’ knee. He left the chip where it was, rejoicing in the back of his head only because he’d get to throw the disgusting trousers away, and made a grab for the cigarette. “You’re not smoking.” Arthur had vague medical notions of cancerous things spreading from Eames’ esophagus into the wound on his neck, and the sight of the smoke and nicotine stains sinking into his precious second-best bedspread was almost as horrific.
Eames gave Arthur, who was very close now, a very direct and determined look. “Darling, you either hand over the cigarettes, or you deal with me pressuring you on that question you don’t want to answer,” he said plainly, because his head was throbbing with more force with each moment that passed, and he was quickly losing the ability for all higher thought. It worried him, and unlike the very careful, logical Arthur (with his compartment for hiding everything he felt), Eames was all surface, and the concern was visible in his very blue eyes. “Your choice, Arthur.”
Arthur didn’t like that look on Eames’ face, and he knew the man didn’t hide very much. If he wanted to hide, he’d look like someone else in some other dream. Arthur looked from Eames to the smoke, a quick flick of his tongue wetting his lips, and then he turned his back. He spread the curtains out very wide, and then pushed the windows open as wide as they would go. He crossed the room, ignoring Eames for the duration, and turned on the fan in the neighboring bathroom. He returned and grudgingly gave Eames one of the cigarettes after he shook it from its place. He reached past him for the matches. “Felix,” he used the American pronunciation now, for some reason, “lives with his boyfriend. So don’t try to charm your way into his pants while you’re here,” he added, dryly.
Eames tucked the cigarette between his lips, after watching all of the preventative measures to keep the apartment from smelling like smoke. He felt, rather strongly, that Arthur could do with having his perfectly manicured life mussed up. His bowed lips, almost obscenely pretty for a man, tipped up just slightly at the edges, and his lazy expression lit with something knowing through the unfocused haze of his eyes. “Does he?” he asked, waiting for Arthur to light the cigarette for him. “Do you think that would stop me, darling, if I’d any real interest in the man?” It was obvious what the answer was, accompanied as the question was by that twitch of a grin and the smugness of the voice around the unlit cigarette. The smile widened. “I didn’t know you realized that I could be charming, Arthur.”
Arthur turned the paper packet of matches over in his hands, wondering if Eames cultivated the cheap just to annoy him, and he peeled one off in the hopes that the nicotine addiction would be enough to make the man sweat just a little, and not because sweat looked pretty (though it did) but because he didn’t want to make winning easy for him. “I said ‘try,’” Arthur said, in a voice as dry as the matches. He gave a little pull with manicured fingernails, and the sulphuric snap of the flame preceded the grudging peace offering held out in Eames’ direction. He was back to armslength.
Eames watched the snap that brought the match to life with interest, the manicured fingers drawing his attention as they had in the past. He was somewhat fond of hands. He leaned forward to light the cigarette without taking the match, and he sat back with a groan. The cigarette was swiped away from his lips with expert fingers, back again after the exhale without a hint of sweating at almost being denied. He’d been smoking since he’d been having sex, and that was quite a long time. “What are we to do about Cory and Evan, given this turn of events?” he asked, carefully shifting back against the wall again, mussing the sheets as he went and raising one knee and resting his forearm against it. The fabric of the boxers pulled tight, which Eames barely noticed. He sighed. “I must get Evan off these drugs, Arthur,” he said, uncharacteristically serious just then.
The back of Arthur’s throat went dry and he abruptly (silently) cursed the current fashion trends that stipulated silhouettes and thin trousers. The stupid man was like that on purpose, but Arthur had never had occasion to lounge about with him sans clothing. It made ignoring him more difficult, and he was distracted by desperately hoping the heat wouldn’t show. He took the armslength to the end of the bed--all the way to the end of the bed--and sat on the corner facing the window. He put a sweaty palm flat on one knee. “So we dry him out. Cory is.... he’s upset about... things,” (Cory was here shouting at him to mind his own business), “but he’d help. He knows more about withdrawal than I do, but we could use the dreams to alleviate the worst of it. In dreams I think you and I could help. I’m not sure, we’ve never tried it.”
Now, Eames was cotton-brained, drugged, in pain, and he wasn’t the smartest man to ever grace the planet, but even he could read that kind of discomfort on a man. He smiled, and he let it slide, but the knowledge was tucked away where he could very easily pluck it up when he felt better again. There existed the fact that he couldn’t actually do anything now and, luckily, there was enough medication in his system to dull the immediate desire to take Arthur’s discomfort and show the well-dressed man just how much he truly could be discomfited. “It’s not only the matter of drying him out. They aren’t street drugs, Arthur. We’re talking about an alcoholic with hallucinations and enough antidepressant and antianxiety medicine in him to keep him continually numb. I can’t be sure he won’t throw himself off the nearest casino before I can stop him.”
Arthur, accustomed to an Eames that took every advantage in every situation, relaxed somewhat. He concentrated out the window, thinking. Arthur had given a nod toward the Parisian custom of windowsill planters, but the only reason the leaves were still green was because his neighbor was a nice woman that rented out half the year, and she watered for him. Though the view was blue sky unless you got near enough to look down on the water, the green plants made a natural frame to a room otherwise dominated by the cultured hand of man. Arthur spread his heels on the floor the way he did when he wasn’t concentrating on himself. “Maybe we taper things off. Get the sister to help. Like I said, Cory is willing. Well. I mean, not willing to let the man jump off a building. I still think we can put him in dreams for the worst of it.” He looked up. “Do you have any better ideas?”
“None,” Eames admitted, closing his eyes as he took a long drag of the cigarette that was held so casually between his fingers. The exhale came just as slowly, with a tip of his head backward, exposing his bandaged throat as he blew smoke above the bed. “Best to have you control Cory until they’re in Evan’s apartment. Cory’s is, I suspect, hardly acceptable. As for Stella, she can bring smoothies.” He smiled. He did like Evan’s sister, simple though she was. He cracked open an eye, and he let his gaze take in the impeccably dressed man on the bed. Yes, feeling desire again might be rather a good thing, he decided.
Arthur sighed. “Cory lives with his parents. Mostly they leave him alone, but if they find any signs that he’s on drugs or on some kind of downward spiral, they’ll intervene. They can tell he’s not... adjusted.” Cory was furious with him, and shouting a lot, but Arthur didn’t care. This was a life and death issue, and Cory’s privacy issues wouldn’t overcome his relative willingness to assist. Arthur looked sideways at Eames at the smoothie comment, which made no sense to him, and he thought it was some kind of implication the woman was stupid, which might be. He’d only seen her once, after all. “After the wound is healed we’ll get back to Evan’s, then. Cory’s in no hurry to be himself again.” Arthur liked being in his nice womb of an apartment, with all his scented soaps and his closets near at hand, and he sighed at the prospect of Cory’s seedy clothes and Evan’s apartment, which he imagined to be some kind of hellhole with bottles four deep and tramps dropping by every evening.
Eames stubbed the cigarette out on the windowsill with a stretch, not caring about the dearth of an ashtray. “This evening,” he corrected. “It will be easier to keep Evan from drinking if he’s too injured to fight him on it. In case you’ve not noticed, Evan is considerably stronger than Cory.” It wasn’t voiced as a criticism. Rather, it was merely the truth. He closed his eyes again as he tipped his head back, and she sighed. “I’m not looking forward to this, Arthur, even if it does mean I can have sex again once we’re through it.” There was a hint of a smile in his voice when he said the words, and he let his bent knee fall sideways, bare and haired and against the fine fabric of Arthur’s shirt at the elbow.
“No, Eames!” Arthur said, trying to intercept the cigarette before it made a burn on his precious windowsill--but it was too late. “Eames, dammit,” Arthur despaired, sliding to his feet and fetching yet another washcloth (he was getting low) from the bathroom. He tried to scrub at the ash without getting it on his expensive silk weave, and shot Eames a dirty look (not the good kind) over his shoulder. “Many people are stronger than me. If I need to break his kneecap to keep him there, then so be it.” Arthur was in a mood that managed to take him past the embarrassment and innuendo, his typical tactic when dealing with Eames was to stay as irritated as possible and therefore ignore that kind of thing. Arthur moved out of range of knees, more deliberate than he realized.
Eames was laughing. There was no other word for it. Laughter, as he watched Arthur scrub at the windowsill. “You place too much importance in things being orderly and clean, Arthur,” he said through the laughter, which was melting into a warm and raspy chuckle. The intentional escape from the bare knee did not go unnoticed, and Eames chuckled one last time before nudging Arthur toward the edge of the bed with his bare foot. It was work to lie down, and it came with a handful of winces, a few groans, and enough effort to bead sweat along his brow, but he managed it. “You’re not breaking anyone’s kneecaps,” he asserted, finally, once he was situated, and he took a deep breath as he settled once more. “The shirt, for the record, is lovely, but it’s nothing that would be improved by some rumpling, Arthur.”
Arthur bristled like a hedgehog. “I appreciate your fashion advice, Eames, but it’s hardly necessary.” He gave the windowsill a last swipe then turned to watch with a scowl as Eames settled back into bed with what Arthur felt was unnecessary discomfort. He shouldn’t have been sitting up to begin with. “If Cory asks me to help him keep Evan in that apartment, I’ll break whatever I have to break.” He said it with a rather too-smug smile. There really would have been danger only if he had said such a thing without expression. “You might be laid up for a few months, but bones heal.”
Eames, comfortable now, merely reached out a hand and touched lazy, unthinking (really) fingers to Arthur’s hip as he turned. “Yes, darling. Now, do try to keep from turning on that bloody French music while I sleep.” His fingers dragged back and forth. Yes, getting back in the game might be rather a wonderful thing.
Arthur set his back teeth together and again backed out of reach. “Stop fondling me. The music comes from outside. I’ll shut the window in a minute.” This wasn’t good. Eames had been casually flirtatious before, probably because he thought it irritated Arthur (which it did), but he’d never gone out of his way to touch him as if he knew it would have an effect. Had Felix been talking? Eames didn’t speak French, but Felix watched too much Jersey Shore with subtitles.
Eames chuckled, eyes closed now, voice already beginning to thicken with sleep. “Arthur, if I was fondling you, you would know.”