. (isconfetti) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-30 16:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | arthur, door: inception, eames |
Who: Eames and Arthur
What: 1/2: Shenanigans, dealing with Evan's near-alcohol poisoning (kind of)
Where: The warehouse, Paris
When: After the memories plot
Warnings/Rating: Foreplay
Arthur still felt there was a logistical, if thin, chance that this was all a dream. He did not expect anyone to share that suspicion, nor did he plan on acting on it. Arthur didn’t act unless he was absolutely certain, or unless he was forced by circumstances or emotion to do otherwise--and he tended to be irritable during the latter. He did not make irrational decisions, and he wasn’t planning on killing everyone just to prove a point. (That was why it was a lot better that he have these suspicions, and not Eames.)
The hotel’s recent effect somewhat diminished those odds, however. It was very, very unlikely that anyone might have the ability to turn his subconscious into an exact memory of that scene with Ariadne, especially from her perspective, and with such fine detail. Arthur had not thought a great deal about it after, and he didn’t think that was something his subconscious would deeply treasure, even if that did make him the asshole Cory accused him of being. Arthur made a mental note to apologize to Ariadne the next time he saw her. As long as Eames wasn’t around.
The sudden influx of other people’s experiences still made him somewhat tense, however, and Parisian gun laws could be what they were, Arthur would still go to the warehouse armed, just to be sure. Cory was worried about Evan, God knew why, and Arthur just wanted to see Eames in one piece. He checked the side door to see if it was locked, and used his key if it wasn’t.
Eames had been in Paris a few solid hours by the time he heard the side door (which was unlocked) open. He'd sobered somewhat, but not entirely, and he was currently sprawled out on one of the lawn chairs they regularly used, wondering why the bloody thing couldn't be more comfortable.
The warehouse was as it always was, a mostly-empty space devoid of any personality, housing equipment in corners and on nearly every flat surface. The PASIV was at Eames' elbow, on the small table there, but it wasn't hooked up, and it wasn't running. The last thing Eames wanted right then was a bloody dream. This was all quite surreal enough, thank you. Unlike Arthur, Eames knew perfectly well this wasn't a an actual dream. He couldn't change here (he'd tried), and he could change in any dream, regardless of how deep he was. It was his specialty, what people paid him for, and he'd honed it down to an art. No, Eames knew this bloody hell wasn't a dream.
Dressed rather sedately in gray slacks and a white button down (three buttons tugged open harshly enough to send them flying onto the warehouse floor), Eames was slightly pasty on the lawn chair, sweat dotting his brow. He didn't bother opening his eyes; he knew it was Arthur by the speed of the designer footfalls. "Did this make you think it was rather more a dream, darling, or less?" he called out.
The unlocked door made Arthur a little nervous, as did Eames actually lying still and not lounging comfortably about. He scanned the warehouse, looking for a trap that eventually he decided didn’t exist. He took his hand off the gun inside his jacket and moved confidently over to Eames’ chair. Eames could trust his talent, but Arthur didn’t have a similar gauge, and if it was a dream then he couldn’t trust potential-projection-Eames’ opinion. It was all pretty hairy, as problems went.
Arthur put four fingers on the PASIV case, just to get a feel for the metal, and then looked into the other man’s face. He didn’t look good. Before answering, Arthur hesitated and then sat down on the edge of the chair, bringing with him faint hints of sharp green cologne and warm Paris air. “Logic says slightly less. One of the things I saw isn’t likely to be immediately available to anyone else, and it was very sharp for subconscious recollection. You don’t look good.” It was all one statement, from his tone.
Eames quirked a brow, but he still didn't open his eyes. "You had to touch the PASIV before informing me that I look like arse? Thank you, Arthur for being so bloody thorough." It was lazy, the sentence, and the admonishment came with Eames' regular sarcasm wrapped around the words. "What did you see, darling?" he asked a moment later, as Arthur sat on the edge of the chair. He did drag open his eyes then, mossy green and hard to focus on the man at his hip. He reached out a hand, and he skimmed two thick fingers along Arthur's thigh, along the seam of whatever designer-brand trouser Arthur was wearing. The touch was tangible, a hard press of fingers through the fabric, enough to make it through to the skin beneath as if there was nothing in the way.
Arthur was watching him with concentration, dark eyes intent on his as soon as they opened. He tried to see what was wrong, as if seeing could help, even if he knew it was just Evan and Evan’s problems there. He didn’t know what touching the PASIV had to do with anything, but he glanced at it as if realizing how much he oriented his life around it even when it was just a case in a room. If the place caught fire Arthur would grab Eames, grab the case and try to get out. The order was not lost on him.
Arthur’s train of thought was interrupted by the caress, and he swayed a little on the spot, redistributing his weight. Clearing his throat he said, somewhat grimly, “Cory and I saw the wreck. From Evan’s point of view.” And then, as if pointing out the obvious helped, “...He was upset.” Arthur was wearing a suit the dusky color of pigeon’s wings with hints of blue at the sleeves. It was pure wool and to be honest he’d put it on without thinking. Everybody had these go-to items, one couldn’t be thinking about clothes all the time.
Eames wielded fashion disasters like a rather annoying blade, and he didn't notice what Arthur was wearing just then beyond the fact that the color suited his face. Rather, he did notice the sway, and the way Arthur cleared his throat, and he smiled, despite the thin, grim line of Arthur's mouth. "How upset, Arthur? Dangerously so?" he asked, because somehow Evan taking his own life was not a great loss, but Cory taking his was. "Do we know how it works, darling, over there? If they die?" He didn't even bother pretending he believed it might be a dream, even for Arthur's benefit. Therefore, dying had to have some implication for them. The most obvious implication was death, of course, but he really hoped there was some proof otherwise. Arthur was the point man, after all; he should know. The hand that was trailing along Arthur's thigh slid up to the other man's hip, fingers looping beneath belt and waistband thoughtlessly.
Arthur hesitated. He wasn’t sure why he felt like he was betraying Cory’s confidences; he stole confidences for a living, after all. “Maybe dangerously, if I gave him more time to think on it. He doesn’t have much else to do, but think about it.” Arthur’s eyes moved from Eames’ face down his chest and hips to look at the hand at his hip, and his next blink lasted a little too long. “...Nobody I know has ever come back. I didn’t catch anything on the journals to that effect. You?” Arthur seemed to have less concern for Cory than Eames, but the shared experience of the memories had thawed that somewhat.
"The rules here are different, darling. It might be worth looking into," Eames said, giving Arthur a look that said he expected Arthur to do all the necessary background checking regarding this mess they were in. After all, Mal was here, and that meant the rules were not ones they were familiar with. It was Arthur's job to do all the required research, and Eames trusted no one to do it better, even after the fiasco with Fischer's unexpectedly militarized mind. He didn't try to keep the smirk off his face as he watched Arthur follow the progress of fingers to hip. "I didn't know you thought I was dangerous," he added after a moment, the smirk warming into something infinitely more intimate. "It's rather a compliment." And even with the wan features, Eames managed to look quite dangerous just then.
“You think it has rules?” Arthur asked, little hints of a smile digging deeper into one cheek. “You?” It would be unwise to bring up Fischer’s subconscious training. That one still stung, and it was the fastest way to put Arthur in a foul and very distant mood. He didn’t really understand Eames’ last comment; he didn’t yet know that everyone’s experience had been totally different. “What do you mean, dangerous?” He brought his eyes back up to Eames’ face, finding the smile unnecessarily beguiling and hiding it with another slow blink. “Not at the moment.” Lie. “Right now you look ill. What’s he taken?” Arthur was not feeling too fond of Evan, clearly. He put a set of cool fingers up to touch the side of Eames’ neck.
"Even dreams have rules, Arthur," Eames said, sounding smug and practical all at once. He watched that smile dig deeper into one of Arthur's cheeks, and he did not bring up the Fischer incident. "I mean that I saw your thoughts, darling, a few of them actually, and you were thinking I was rather dangerous in one of them." There was something in those mossy green eyes that said there was more to it than that, but he didn't add anything else just then, nothing of what he saw from the other man's mind. Instead, he pushed himself up when Arthur pressed those cool fingers to his neck. He pressed into the touch, fingers of his other hand reaching for Arthur's arm for stability. "Just quite a bit of booze, Arthur." And quite a bit was an understatement. "That man, his lover, rather told him off, and he hasn't stopped drinking since."
Arthur sniffed to show what he thought of the rules in dreams. He broke those for a living, thank you very much, and it wasn’t always an easy task. Yes, that was one of the things that made this more likely to be reality, the lack of ability to manipulate, but it still wasn’t absolute proof. Arthur liked to be absolute.
Arthur’s lashes went all the way up toward his brows, and then crunched down again in disturbance. “You saw one of my thoughts?” he asked. He was not as disturbed as a normal person would have been; he shared dreams too often, saw intimate secrets that were not meant to be seen. He tended to guard his, though. That they would be so easily shared... “But I thought it was Evan’s, and yours... others, too.”
Eames’ pulse was pretty good, but Arthur would have liked it stronger, and he left his hand where it was. It was odd to see Eames drunk and not smell the liquor. Arthur put his other hand over Eames’ hip and braced himself on the other side of the chair, leaning down so his face was closer. “You want some water?” he asked, somewhat muted.
"You thought your own thoughts immune, Arthur?" Eames asked, noting Arthur's indication that he'd received at least one memory of his. It didn't worry him like it might others, because Eames didn't actually keep anything hidden intentionally. He was simply unaware of his own emotions at times, preferring to simply act on them than think them through or worry what they meant. Labels made him feel claustrophobic, and that was enough for him, for example; he didn't try to bloody figure out why. "That you get to know what the rest of us think, but that we don't get the same in return?" He sounded almost amused at that, Arthur's perception of his own invulnerability.
The fingers on Eames' neck didn't register as a mere taking of his pulse, and Eames leaned forward when Arthur asked if he wanted water. "No, darling. Water is not what I want." He was almost smiling, definitely smirking slightly. He smelled of cigarettes this close (cigarettes, Evan, and not his own cigars), and of sweat and too much heat, but no whiskey, not even on his skin yet, already at the point where he wasn't even sweating it out. His hand on Arthur's hip slid around to the other man's back and tugged him closer still. "What did you see?" he asked, always the perceptive sod and aware something had changed somehow.
Arthur was annoyed at Eames’ mocking of his perception of the event. Of course it was colored by his own experience, limited by what he had seen and no more. Not even Cobb had been readily forthcoming about the situation, not unless there was an unexpected flow of words in the journal tucked in Arthur’s jacket. It represented a hard edge as Arthur moved a small inch closer and pressed the edge of his ribs into Eames’ side. The dark eyes didn’t blink, yet the oddly confident amusement was still there... and oh yes, it was new. “Nothing important. But you’re right, it’s not seeing, it’s knowing. Different from dreams, isn’t it?” Privately he thought Eames could use some water, but he didn’t say that just yet.
Eames' hand moved from Arthur's arm to his chin, which he gripped in his thumb and forefinger and tipped up. "Different than dreams," he agreed, distracted by whatever was different in Arthur's eyes. He was having trouble focusing on everything, including the difference, but he knew he wasn't imagining it. "Why won't you tell me, darling?" he asked, his thumb brushing back and forth against Arthur's chin in an unthinking caress. He meant to talk about the other things he'd seen, about the fact that Cory should be assured that Evan's problems were not his fault, but they all seemed suddenly unimportant. "Rather, why don't you tell me what you know now that you didn't know before?" he asked, mossy gaze sliding left and right, tracking Arthur's own gaze with his own.
Arthur’s own gaze moved to watch his own fingers slide up the inside Eames’ neck. The pressure was heavy enough to make indents, and he didn’t know if the heat was his own perception or something unhealthy that should sink through into concern. The man was ridiculously well-built. It wasn’t fair, in the end. Maybe he had found that out in the dream. Memory. Vision. Thing. Arthur’s eyes came back to Eames’ and he smiled. It just wasn’t a smile that made an appearance often. “You think about me when I’m not there,” he said. Arthur’s smug wasn’t anything near as overt as Eames’, manifesting more as a boyish success than anything like arrogance.
Eames chuckled, and it was the chuckle of a man that was well satisfied, despite feeling like arse. He rubbed his thumb over Arthur's chin once more, and then he let himself lean back against the reclined back of the chair. The chair groaned in protest, but it held, and Eames stretched his arm out and carefully slid his hand beneath Arthur's suit at the hip, and then he tugged Arthur's shirt free of his waistband. Fingers slid up against Arthur's skin, and Eames' eyes were heavy lidded brown-green, bark and moss and a smirk alongside. His fingers were gun-calloused and rough, and the touch was entirely real. "Do I, darling? I never noticed."
The muscle under Eames’ fingers--and there was muscle, almost everything that wasn’t bone, really--quivered and Arthur’s eyes grew shadowed again with the heavy line of his lashes. “Yes,” he said, belatedly but somewhat defiantly, “You do. Even when you’re with someone else.” It was a risk to say it, but a calculated one. If what he saw was a pattern then in the man ran, well then... Arthur would just have to go track him down again. Eames was good at running but Arthur was better at chasing.
Arthur had just decided that he was willing to chase. “Start noticing.” The smile deepened to one side again and Arthur leaned again onto the chair. He didn’t much care if it came apart underneath them. The hand on the chair opposite Arthur lifted and slid along Eames’ hip to the last button of the white shirt. Arthur tangled one thumb in it, almost idly.
The defiant certainty was new, and Eames rather liked it. It would likely prove infuriating in time, in that good way that things sometimes did, but it was new just then, and he rather wanted to poke at it as you did a new toy, to see how it worked and how much it could handle. "Do I?" he asked, not actually thinking through the situation, not beyond the moment, not into what it could all mean. "What do I think, Arthur, when I'm with someone else?" he asked, not contradicting the claim, not agreeing with it either. Poke.
The start noticing earned Arthur a rather entertained chuckle. "I intend to, when you school me on what I'm to notice," Eames said agreeably, his fingers sliding higher beneath the corner of shirt he had freed, large and capable hands closing over Arthur's ribs, silently possessive calloused fingertips doing all the talking that was required.
By this time, Arthur had gotten rid of the lowest button with one hand, taking his time with it, and with all the other questions. He turned his waist so he was facing Eames as best as he was able without actually being on top of him, something he was saving, or perhaps savoring. One or both. He realized when his shirt didn’t pull oddly that he’d forgotten to put on a tie. There was only one remaining button because the shirt wasn’t on properly, something Arthur found simultaneously irritating and endearing, and not one more than the other.
“You just think about me, and what I’m doing, and why,” he said, in the same defiant tone that he didn’t seem to hear himself using. “And you have to learn to notice things on your own.” He drew the quickly warming fingers down the triangle of exposed skin. “It’s good for you.”
Beneath Arthur's hand, Eames was rather too warm, clammy at the same time, but thick and muscle and no give whatsoever. Eames looked down at the thumb that tangled in his shirt, and he looked back up at the dark-eyed man at his side. "Chances are rather good I'm going to die, darling," he said practically, quietly, rumble and whisper.
Arthur stopped all movement. “What makes you say that?” he asked, sounding dangerously practical, more the normal Arthur than a moment ago.
"Do I?" Eames asked of needing to learn things on his own. He learned things about other people, not about himself. That was the nature of the forger, but it was not the nature of the man. Eames much prefered to react, rather than to think. To feel, rather than to label. It was simply his way. "Is it good for me?" he asked, but he didn't wait for a response before making his macabre statement, and he watched as Arthur's movement stilled. His thumb brushed back and forth, along Arthur's ribs, a slow, slow journey over muscle-covered bone. "Let's be realistic, darling," he said, and it was a rather logical statement for Eames, all things considered.
Eames’ flirtatious string of questioning just earned him a smaller smile, repressed amusement but arch simplicity. Eames liked that kind of thing much better than long explanations, Arthur knew. The muscle along the ribs had stilled, and Arthur’s heart took on a steadier beat as his chest moved everything else one breath at a time. The calm eyes were direct as Arthur tipped his head slightly to one side. He laughed a little, a bit humorless, disbelieving. “If this isn’t a dream, I’m not going to let you die.” As if this simply wasn’t possible. He took his hands from Eames’ stomach and transferred them to his shirt. “Maybe we should get you to a bed and get something that isn’t alcohol in you before we go any further with this,” he added, frowning his concern.
"Arthur, darling, you can't control everything with sheer willpower," Eames informed the other man, knowing Arthur regularly felt that, yes, he could control everything. It was one of the reassuring things about Arthur in general, that rather daunting competency. But the mistake with Fischer had shown Arthur to be only human, and Eames liked him more for it. It wasn't as safe, no, but it was real and messy, and Eames approved of those things. "There isn't a bed here," Eames added, a logical rebuttal to Arthur's suggestion, and then he slid his hand from beneath Arthur's shirt and pulled him forward by the loose ends of the meticulously pressed fabric. "Quit frowning. We don't get enough time for you to waste it in frowning, Arthur," he chastised, pulling Arthur until he could feel Arthur's slight, sturdy weight against his body. The lawnchair groaned in protest, and Eames' grip on Arthur's shirt moved higher.
Eames generally made Arthur feel a bit small and skinny, some leftover impression in his mind when the man insisted on looming, but sitting, he didn’t have that hesitation. “You’re going to break the chair,” Arthur said, another smile breaking through the frown of concern like sunshine. Arthur spread both hands against Eames’ shoulders and, with affected casualness, tipped forward so he was balancing on the edge of Eames’ thigh and the chair. He stopped pulling at his clothes but not touching them. Conversationally he added, “I don’t control with sheer willpower, I arrange things so they happen how they should. We won’t let anything happen to Evan, or you. We just go back to the drawing board on that, is all.” Like Evan was made of building blocks he simply needed to shore back up.
"We're going to break the chair," Eames corrected, even as he took Arthur's slight weight as Arthur leaned forward using his shoulders for balance. "I'm not certain Evan is salvageable," Eames said, no real concern for the other man in his voice. He wasn't actually thinking about Evan just then, his thoughts firmly turned to the man against him. Ill though he was, Eames still reacted to all that solid warmth against his body, and he made a sound in the back of his throat that was nearly a growl as he stretched up and claimed Arthur's mouth with dry lips. His fingers worked, freeing the buttons that lined Arthur's shirt, and spreading the fabric open so that he could slide his calloused palms along the other man's ribcage.
Arthur's expression a moment before yielded his opinion of that. Of course Evan could be saved. Even if it took inception, Arthur would figure it out. If Evan had to be placed in some safe place where he would not be of harm until his mind healed, that would be fine too. Arthur always figured out the right way to manage what he wanted.
Arthur's mouth yielded to his in the way it always did, an unexpected softness and warmth different from his fingers and his personality. The belated pressure against his tongue was accompanied by an abrupt shifting of Arthur's weight on the chair, a rotation of hips that ended with one of his feet bracing the chair's leg backward while everything else moved forward onto Eames' lap and against his chest. It was a rather impressive display of flexibility if either had the wit to pay attention, but Arthur was too busy turning into the kiss and working his hands around Eames' neck.
Eames had no idea what Arthur was thinking about as a solution for their problem, but it wouldn't have surprised him. Arthur tended to think other people could be as logically contained as he, himself, was, and it never ceased to entertain Eames - well, it never ceased to entertain Eames unless Eames was put out with him about it at the time. But he knew none of that then, and he was a predictable man in many ways, lack of logic notwithstanding. Arthur's mouth yielding stole all other thought away entirely.
Eames strained up when Arthur shifted in the chair, an attempt to wrap an arm around the slighter man and keep him there. But the move, unnecessary as it was, brought him closer the man on his lap. Back free of the lawnchair's backrest, Eames slid his hand along the column of Arthur's throat, thumb exerting pressure beneath Arthur's chin and causing Arthur to tip his head back (whether he wanted to or not). Eames growled against the salt-warmth of Arthur's throat, and he worried his teeth down Arthur's neck. A sharp shove sent Arthur backward, tipping the balance of the chair intentionally.
Arthur leaned into Eames with all of his weight, feeling the long stretch of his heel down against the chair and the floor as only a distant sensation of tension that went well with the rest of him, the line of his throat, the width of his chest, the web of forefinger and thumb, all strung tight as a bowstring. Instead of chasing Eames' teeth he leaned back and enjoyed being caught, wondering at the hard line of Eames' thigh against his own and feeling the chair's bonds creak under them both.
The shove was unexpected, but Arthur's life was unexpected and he had long since learned to react without thinking. At the shove he shifted forward instead of giving in to gravity, the usual hard pull of falling panic as familiar to him as the nip of a dream needle in his skin. For a hanging, timeless moment Arthur's weight countered Eames' on the chair, and they hovered there on two legs while Arthur got his bearings and realized what the shove was for. He glanced backward, almost lazily, at the floor, and then smiled and let the balance go with a delicate shift of shoulders.
Men and chair went over sideways.