Title: Out Foxing

Fandom: Inception and Oceans 11/12/13

Prompt: From inception_kink on LJ: Eames and the Nightfox have been competing for years for the title of 'Greatest Thief in the World'. In a global competition of finely honed skills and enormous egos, their attempts to one-up each other escalate to ludicrous proportions.

Summary: This has really gone too far.

Category: General/Humor

Rating: PG [For Language]

Word Count: 1,404

Disclaimer: Nothing's mine

Author's Notes: So this didn't come out nearly as epic as the prompt deserves, but it was worth a shot. Enjoy.

Out Foxing

By the time he's nabbed the Klimt, Eames knows this has gone too far.

They've been going through an art faze (that in and of itself ought to have tipped him off – that they have identifiable fazes) and he's still got three Degas, a Dali and Pollack sitting in his flat waiting to be fenced, in addition to the spoils of their jewelry, book and artifact fazes (all though, Saito has expressed interest in the Shang dynasty tortoise shell writings Eames lifted from that museum in Shanghai and he's been trying to pawn off some of the Cartier he's collected on Ariadne).

That should have been another clue that all this has spiraled out of control – he hasn't been overly concerned with fencing any of what he's picked up, which is very unlike him. Eames loves money; money lets him do all of his favorite things – women, men, casinos, impressive munitions, fashion that makes Arthur roll his eyes, etc. It lets him keep up his debonair, international thief image, which, he likes to think suits him rather well. Billions of dollars in modern and postmodern paintings, ancient texts, diamonds and other miscellaneous artifacts from long defunct civilizations sitting unsold and collecting dust in his parlor do not.

But lately, all he can bring himself to care about is out thieving, out playing and out foxing that little French bastard and his silly little knickknacks. It's starting to become a problem, Eames decides, sitting at home in London on the Rococo settee he stole out of a private collection in Monte Carlo, feet propped on the Olmec stone head he pulled from a museum in San Lorenzo and studying the Kimt.

They had started this little game innocently enough a few years back, completely by accident. The Little French Bastard (Toulour, Eames, his name is Toulour, Arthur has reminded him ever since he asked the point man to look into this) had been gaining notoriety and coming out from his mentor's shadow; Eames had been branching out from his exploits in forgeries and counterfeiting. Then, a set of earrings (worn by some dead duchess centuries before Eames's dear own grandmother had been born) vanished mysteriously from a museum in Vienna and had been heavily guarded enough it made the papers. Eames hadn't had the faintest idea who'd taken them at the time and they could have been made of moon rocks for all he cared, but the challenge and the notoriety had, well, inspired him to go after something just as grand.

Eames' successful theft of a mummified pharaoh's necklace (amulet, Eames, not a necklace, to grant the pharaoh luck on his journey into the afterlife, Yusuf had explained when he'd heard the story) from the British Museum had been fabulously sensational and out shone the missing ducal earrings. Not long after that, the replacement of a dead tsarina's engagement ring with a single onyx fox figurine had blown over Eames' Egyptian success and the game had begun – Toulour would pull something and leave his little foxes (partly to taunt Interpol but mostly to let Eames know it was his turn) and then Eames would have to come up with something just a little bit more valuable and inaccessible to swipe (or rather replace with a blank poker chip to signal Toulour).

Of course, then the Americans had shown up in Amsterdam, accepted the Frenchman's challenge and not only outsmarted Toulour but humiliated him in front of LeMarc (who, even in retirement was still arguably the best thief in the bloody world) and things had quickly spiraled out of control.

That's when they started in on their fazes.

Following the Americans' upstaging of Toulour, it had been valuable knickknacks in the same vein as the Coronation Egg the Frenchman had lost to LeMarc and the Americans. Then they'd drifted back to jewelry, which turned into artifacts, which turned into valuable texts, then furniture and so on.

There had been a few dry spells in between, which Eames had filled with dream work and a few solid holidays to sunnier shores and Toulour had used to try again to regain a bit of his dignity from the Americans and keep up his public playboy image. Eames had even fit the bloody inception (the, not a, he'd decided – it had so far been the only documented successful one and deserved a more specific article) into one of those breaks, but now that was finished, they are back, hard at work relieving the world's rich and famous of valuable property and Eames has begun having doubts.

It isn't guilt.

Bloody hell, he isn't sure he even has a proper conscience anymore. A little, warped one maybe (he has to admit, even he'd felt a little bad when they thought they'd failed and sent the heir to a major corporation permanently into the recesses of shared consciousness), but nothing that would have him feeling bad for nicking the world's treasures from the international elite.

It's more like annoyance.

Since they've resumed their game after that last break, they're down to about a theft every two weeks or so and it's starting to interfere with his social agenda. There's a bloody fortune sitting in his bank accounts that needs spending, not to mention the combined worth of the sizeable amount of swag in his sitting room that needs hawking and planning the latest and greatest one-man heist every other week takes up considerable amounts of time, not to mention a substantial amount of imagination and energy.

Now Eames hasn't had the least bit of trouble with the imagination part (he is Eames after all and not his favorite darling sourpuss point man), but bloody hell he's getting tired and to be perfectly honest, more than a little concerned about this whole thing continuing to spiral out of control, get him caught with enough stolen loot to buy his own bloody airline and nailed with so many charges that not even good old Saito can phone call away. Toulour's all ready shown he's not opposed to playing dirty, breaking Rule Number One and ratting out his competition when they best him and Eames wouldn't put it past him to call up Interpol (or worse, the various rich and powerful Eames has been stealing from) and giving them a little hint about who's leaving poker chips in place of valuable merchandise. And even though Eames is confident he's been careful enough to keep any of this from coming back to him (at least legally), he's fairly sure some of those rich and powerful would only need a name to come after him.

Eames would really rather not have to worry about dodging anything (except maybe calls from his mum) so, he muses, this has got to stop.

Now.

Only he's not sure how. First, because he's not sure his pride would let him concede to the Little French Bastard and second and infinitely more problematic, because he's not really sure he wants it to stop. All things considered, it's a great game – loads of fun that has the potential to pay off well over six figures per round. Toulour is worthy adversary – most of his other favorite troublemakers are either busy (Saito's running a multi-billion dollar company, Arthur's throwing himself back into legal dreamshare, Ariadne's finishing up school), retired and boring (Cobb's playing Mr. Mom, Yusuf's decided he's had quite enough of the field for the time being), or dead (he doesn't like to think about that list) – and Eames never has played well by himself.

And most importantly (and most troubling), Eames is actually having fun.

As tiring this game is getting, it's the most fun he's had outside of dreamshare in years. The limitations of the real world have forced him to come up with all sorts of clever new tricks to get the goods and make sure nothing can be traced back to him. Despite his present lack of concern for cashing in on his spoils and the risk involved in stashing his growing pile of loot in his flat, he loves how profitable this is. He especially loves the news report that chatters from the television behind him - a Picasso out of the Musee D'Orsay in Paris vanished this morning, the only clue to the culprit a lone onyx figurine of a fox, Interpol declines to comment.

Game on.