A/N: Possibly a little OOC and if it's not smirktacualr enough I apologize. Please enjoy!
His smirk.
It was his smirk that drove her insane. Not because it was dashing and irresistible, well, maybe slightly, but mainly it was that it hindered her attempts to gauge his true emotion. Whether he was mocking her or if he was amused, proud, unimpressed. All she knew was that when they interacted she received two facial expressions: "the thinker" and "the smirk".
She couldn't figure out why it bothered her so much. The others all had their quirky expressions. Eames had his own version of "the smirk", but it always had a smug, sexual undertone to it, making it easy to discern how he felt. His constant use of the word "darling" also gave away his bursting overconfidence. Yusuf was, well, Yusuf. He had a bit of a creeper smile and considering the amount of time he spent working with, concocting, and using chemicals, it was easy to see why he seemed slightly off balance. Cobb... she really couldn't blame him. His stony face greeted her constantly, but it was his eyes that scared her the most. By looking into his eyes the sorrow, the regret, and the secrets he held inside became visible. Their piercing shade of blue heightened the effect. She remembered when she first met him it was his eyes that made her stop. Even before she dove into his dreams there was something about him that made her feel a small amount of pity. Once she found out more about him, she was not only furious that he had been keeping his past life contained inside his subconscious, but she was terrified of the pain he was in, scared it would break through. Low and behold, her gut instinct turned out to be right. It scared her how right she could be sometimes.
But Arthur was different. She tried reading his eyes too and found nothing. However she earned herself look number three "the perplexed" and a blush that lasted for a good half hour, even after she awkwardly excused herself to go outside and ponder banging her head into a wall consecutively for a couple minuets. She considered herself to be a bright, above average maturity girl for her age, but there was something about Arthur that seemed to make that front melt and disappear completely, putting her back in that awkward high school mentality she saw the other girls get into around pretty boys. Despite her lengths to not associate herself with such behavior while she was in high school, she kicked herself for beginning to sympathize with them.
She thought back to the incident. It happened about midway through preparation. She had been going over the layout of the hotel with him, explaining the rooms, how they were sequenced and so on. He had been wearing "the thinker" expression for the entirety of the conversation, which was nice. At least he gave off the air that he cared. It was better than Eames making some smart remark in his impeccably sassy British accent. Cobb refused to look at her work, which disappointed her to no end, but made her equally mad at his refusal to deal with his problem. Yusuf didn't need to deal with anything beyond the first level, but sometimes stopped by out of pure curiosity. Since the hotel would be Arthur's domain, she spoke to him when she could, trying to find an excuse to draw him into conversation or to just speak with him at all. He was a hard nut to crack and she made a game out of trying to figure him out.
While she had been pointing, gesticulating, and tucking her hair behind her ear whenever it got in her face, she stole longer and longer glances at him. They went from "do you follow me" to "will you just look at me". Finally when that tactic seemed to be failing she enticed him into looking at something in the model, she forgot what, but while he was staring she stepped back and watched his eyes. She knew he probably had the peripheral zone of a super human, but dared to stare anyway. They were such a lovely shade of brown. The dim lighting in the warehouse gave them an even darker edge. There was an extremely guarded individual behind them however she felt that façade came from his past experiences, especially his line of work. To see him concentrated on work, focusing on the task at hand, the eyes scanning as his brain calculated, made her stop. She felt her mouth open slightly as her gaze shifted from his eyes to the rest of his face. The little professional inside her head was screaming at her to knock it off and get back to work, but she couldn't.
If he knew she was looking, he had to, there was no way, he showed no signs of it. He pulled back from the model before she could compose herself and turned to face her, catching her by surprise. He stared right back at her, his face as blank as his eyes, before it morphed into the quizzical expression. The blush came so quickly she had no time to excuse herself without it being obvious why she was leaving. Once he saw the blush he smirked. If she had ever wanted to hit anyone beside Eames, it would've been Arthur right then and there. She wanted to wipe that expression off his face with on good smack, but had no legitimate reason to without making the situation more awkward. She cleared her throat to try and continue attempting to at least turn back to the model but the magnetism of his smirk burned through her back. She turned to look at him. He stood straight, hands in his pockets, still smirking and if her eyes weren't deceiving her, there was a smug amusement in his eyes. She promptly excused herself and marched outside with as much dignity as she could muster. When she had looked back, casually of course, he was staring after her in the same position. What she didn't know is that after she had left, he smiled.
Later that evening when she was leaving, instead of receiving a curt nod and good night after she indicated her vacating of the premises, he had stopped what he was doing and leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head, with a knowing smirk plastered on his lips.
"Good night" she had said, tentatively, trying not to give away that she had been shaken up earlier.
Smirk.
Silence.
"Um…"
Smirk.
More silence.
"Right…"
Smirk
"Good night again then. See you tomorrow."
Raised eyebrow. Smirk.
She had left in a huff, bothered to no end he had gotten the better of her when it had been her quest to get the better of him After that incident he never really treated her the same again, meaning she never saw the end of his gloating smirk. Why did that man have to be blessed with incredible handsomeness, brains, a penchant for sharp dressing, and the world's most infuriatingly dashing smirk?
She leaned back, pulling herself out of her inner soliloquizing to stare up at the obnoxiously sunny, with a hint of toxic smog Los Angeles sky. Although southern California, L.A. especially, was not her favorite place in the world it was better than canned, unmentionably questionable airplane air, despite the fact they had been in first class. She may have been asleep the whole way, but that didn't mean she wasn't breathing it. She shivered at the thought, turning instead to her small cup of coffee. Coffee wasn't something she had all the time, but after her most recent experience she needed a jolt that wasn't quite as strong and unhealthy as alcohol, but just enough so.
It made her smile that she was thinking about Arthur in a time like this. She had just finished participating in pulling off one of the most dangerous and thought to be impossible jobs in the extraction business, as her first official gig. As she began to become lost in her thoughts again the smile that had been playing on her lips faded in an instant. She felt as though she'd been hit by a brick or some blunt object, possibly even that train that had come barging down the city street. Inception. They'd done it. After months of preparation and the job starting off with everything going wrong, they still managed to pull it off. Maybe she did need some alcohol after all.
She placed her elbows on the table and put her head in her hands, staring down into her coffee like it was going to suddenly reveal the mysteries if the universe. She was then hit by another revelation. He had kissed her. He of all people would know it wouldn't have worked but he'd done it. And if her memory served her correctly, he had sported the most triumphant smirk in the history of Arthur smirks. She felt her lips curl into the similar expression. Maybe she had been looking too deeply to find his opinion of her. Maybe that mysterious expression was meant as a message to her. Maybe his language lay in his different faces rather than his words. Maybe she had gotten the better of him. She laughed despite herself. She was being a hopeless romantic lunatic, fantasizing about what wasn't there, even though it made a small part of her happy to think she was right. It wasn't like her to act this way, but it was a refreshing change from the down-to-business attitude she'd been restrained by for the past number of months.
In a pure moment usually reserved for blonds she felt her arms collapse as she folded them to bury her face so as to clear her head when she forgot that her coffee had been right there. However her genius move earned her large amounts of caffeinated beverage all over the sleeves of her shirt, scarf, and lap. Nothing beats public humiliation. Hear that? Nothing. Conversation or the world at that point, stopped for a second to stare before it began to move on as if nothing were amiss, even though some continued to stare, glancing back and forth occasionally to make sure nothing else would go flying. She thanked the forces of the universe for a least sparing her the dignity of not letting out some horrid girly screech threaded with obscenities. She would have liked to keep her head buried in the safety of her folded arms, away from the cruel stares of the world but that was no longer an option. She attempted to keep her composure as she stood to retrieve napkins from the condiments bar, wishing it wouldn't feel as though it were a million miles away, when she found a hand holding out a stack right in her face. It took her eyes what seemed like hours to travel up from the floor to the face of the Good Samaritan. She sucked in air as her eyes met the dark brown orbs of, of course, who else would it be?
"Arthur?" It was more of a squeak than anything else.
He smirked. She remained slack jawed before smiling back sheepishly as he handed her some napkins and began to delicately wipe off the table. Without speaking they cleaned off the table. Their hands touched momentarily. They looked at each other. The smirk had vanished, but this time she saw something in his eyes. Maybe she wasn't so wrong after all.