Disclaimer: I would trade my house for ownership of Eames. Not kidding.
Warnings: The obvious spoilers.
Overall Rating: G / K+
Author's Note: Admittedly, I'm not a very big fan of Ariadne, but I liked how this sounded in my head so I rolled with it. However, I had an incredibly hard time grasping on to her personality (either I wasn't paying attention when she was talking or there wasn't one) so if anything seems terribly out of character, I apologize.
What the Brown Eyes See
Observation is something that Ariadne always gives herself time for. As an architect (in both the real world and in dreams) she can understand the importance of every little detail, and as such takes her time in finding the details that others might look over. People, however, are more difficult to understand than buildings. Learning to observe and interpret the behavior of her peers had been a much more difficult skill to acquire, but one that she counted being just as important as the pillars supporting a building.
She had never been more thankful for this skill than when she found herself in the company of Cobb and the team he had created for their Inception job.
Arthur. Oh boy, he was a looker. A part of the young girl had instantly latched on to the point man. He was closer in age to her than Cobb was, and surprisingly normal in comparison. They hit it off almost immediately, and it wasn't a large ego that left her believing that the man was as attracted to her as she was to him.
When Eames joined, well, it had been frustrating to say the least. He was almost always around, leaving the chance of getting to work with Arthur alone at almost zero. And as awful as that had been the part that made his presence so unbearable was the fact that she couldn't get a single handhold on his personality. He was a no-nonsense, diligent worker, who liked to joke around and slack off. Everything about him seemed to contradict something else.
The first time that Eames addressed her personally Ariadne had been completely shocked. It had been after she had asked about kicks, and it was the moment she really started to figure the man out. She had glanced over only to find Arthur flailing in an attempt to keep his chair from tipping. He finally recognized her presence and he had only done so for an excuse to ruffle the point man's feathers. And the entire time doing so his eyes had never left the younger man. By the time evening had rolled around she had realized that they never really did.
You know those people whose eyes give away everything they're feeling? Well, Eames wasn't one of those people; it had taken Ariadne almost the entire two weeks they were preparing for the job to sift through the vague hints of emotion she had seen in those ocean depths. Attraction wasn't a very surprising find; it was the utter devotion that had left her mind reeling and her gut clenching with the beginnings of guilt.
Arthur had made it sound like he had worked with Eames multiple times before this job, and when asked, he had confirmed that Eames had always taken time to antagonize him, the "stick in the mud" team-mate. Ariadne didn't know Eames too well, and although she felt no particular fondness for the British man, she wanted no part in breaking his heart. Certainly not for something as trivial as a small bout of lust.
So she backed off. Her flirting tendencies stopping and the time she spent with Arthur decreasing to almost never.
She had never believed her friends when they told her playing hard to get was the way to win a guy. Apparently, she should have listened.
When Arthur told her to kiss him, she hadn't even hesitated; her body seeming to run on auto-pilot. She had enjoyed it, but as soon as she spotted a blonde business women she was reminded of the disguise Eames had projected when the dream began, and of the reason why she wasn't supposed to do things like that.
She had avoided meeting Eames' eyes for the rest of the mission.
Looking at them now, she's glad she turned down the offer of coffee that Arthur had proposed after the inception job. The two men are sitting on the couch in their new home-base. Just watching TV; but for once the emotions in Eames' eyes are obvious, and she wonders how someone as intelligent as Arthur hasn't noticed.