A/N: I wrote this by candlelight, surrounded by a million cups of Earl Grey, with Van Morrison playing in the background and the RWC – yay the Abs! – muted on the television. Fantastic atmosphere. Do try it.
On a more serious note, I haven't seen Inception since it came out at the movies and I'm not really sure where this came from; it is emphatically not my usual style of writing, either, and I know I haven't quite mastered the art of writing slash. So with that off my chest, I'd appreciate your feedback, in case this is a pairing I'd like to pursue further.
Oh, and I wasn't sure if there was a canon or accepted fanon first name for Eames, so I picked one at random. Cheers.
-for you!
A bar, Singapore, dark and cloudy, heady with smoke and the laughter of people who should have gone home hours ago. Where the whiskey is undrinkable and don't even think about the vodka. Where everyone knows everyone and people who keep to themselves stick out like a transvestite on a rugby pitch.
That's okay. He's been here before. It's a friendly place, all amiable questions from the locals easy to diffuse with a simple made-up story, no-one coming too close for too long or staying too far away. Every time he forgets about the whiskey, though, and ends up drinking rather too much lager to compensate for the taste.
That night started like any other, one would suppose, with leaning haphazardly – but never awkwardly – against the bar, legs neatly arranged over the poles of a barstool, dark eyes languidly watching the city-girls' skirts flare out like hula-hoops as they spin.
There's room for everyone here, the serious drunks under a table by the door, the dancers flying across the open floor, the clinically depressed hunched into the noxious fumes from their vodka-glasses. He notices, though, the only person in the room he's never seen before, laughing with a group of locals like he's been there every day of his life. He's acting like he's had far more than he's actually consumed, tipping back his chair and guffawing from the depths of his belly.
He's cute. Arthur notices that straight away, which is odd; he doesn't usually notice that about men. But he's always open to anything, so he freely admits that the other man – older than him, but only just, British going by the accent – is rather attractive.
After a few minutes of Arthur staring at him he turns around and catches his eye – from this distance he can't quite tell what colour they are, but they burn with a sharp, wry gleam that goes right through his body. The man smiles, thin lips unusually red, like roses on white sheets. Arthur is transfixed, but he's shy, so he smiles shortly back and orders another drink.
Typically, it's the other man who makes the first move. Arthur has turned back to the dancers and the lager and firmly forbidden his eyes from straying back to where they naturally want to rest. But suddenly there's a languid, sarcastic British drawl in his ear. "You come here often, darling?"
In a predictably dignified manner, he jumps and spills a fair amount of lager down his waistcoat. The stranger chuckles, deep and slow, and it sends shivers through the muscles in his legs until he's glad he's sitting down. He coughs quietly, ignoring the chuckles, and tries to retain a bit of dignity. "Only when I'm in town," he replies.
The truth is he's in town a lot. Singapore is one of those places; anyone from anywhere in the world can get a job doing just about anything, as long as it's illegal. The stranger hands him a pile of napkins to help him soak up the excess from his waistcoat and sits down on a barstool beside him. "You'll stink like a drunk on your way home," he comments idly, smirking at him.
Arthur glares. "Oh, well," he says bitterly. "It's not like I'm going to be bringing anyone home."
"Really?" The stranger quirks an eyebrow at him and his stomach writhes uncomfortably, trying animalistically to wriggle closer to the other man. He's wearing some sort of exotic cologne, all lemon and pomegranates, and Arthur leans closer and inhales again and again because it smells so good. "That's a pity."
He has a little smug smile on his rosebud lips that should be irritating and insufferable but instead manages to be contagious and entrancing. Arthur dips his eyebrows in sarcastic acquiescence, but really he doesn't mind. Sex is never high on his list of priorities; and there's no-one in the room he'd want to take home except the man opposite him, who knows it all too well. "So where are you from, then?" he asks, taking the last swig of his lager grimly.
The stranger smiles again, sipping delicately at the red wine that one of the locals bought him. "Guess."
Arthur hates guessing games, but for the stranger he plays anyway. "England somewhere."
He dips his head. "And you're American. So we understand each other." Arthur's heard that it's the opposite, but he's not about to complain. He's not sure he does understand the Englishman, though; he thinks he knows what that flirtatious smile and fingers caressing the stem of his wineglass are about, but is that just wishful thinking?
"Do we?"
The stranger leans forward, and Arthur's watching his face, but even so he feels the slow, gentle spidery climb of thin fingers over his. "I rather thought so." Arthur swallows and those hawk-sharp eyes – they're hazel, he notices dumbly – track the bobbing of his Adam's apple, down and up again like a buoy on the tide. He can't help but inch his head closer to that face, so oddly delicate on such a stocky body. The Englishman notices the movement and boldly bridges the gap until he's an inch away, and Arthur is consumed by the pomegranate smell until he's dazed and dizzy and not quite sure how to make the next move.
But it's up to him to make it, so after another deep lungful of lemons and musk he tilts his chin forwards until their lips touch. The stranger's lips are soft and wet and defined and they feel beautiful against his, just letting them touch gently, with no demands or expectations, until Arthur feels like he might explode from the tingly rush of something shooting from his lips to his groin and making his slick, gelled hair stand on end. Then the Englishman's thin, sharp lips part slightly and press harder, and the fingers on Arthur's hand slide up to his bicep and he shivers into the kiss, lifting a hand of his own to the stocky neck and tangling his fingers in the sandy, sweet-smelling hair.
The stranger breaks the kiss, the wry smile back on his rosy lips, neither man's hand moving from the other's body. "So," he mutters, the words ghosting over Arthur's lips in breaths that taste of red wine. "My hotel room or yours?"
Arthur's hotel room is small and simplistic, but elegantly so, black silk sheets against white walls and cream carpets. They stumble inside, hands clutching at each other, lips jammed together and feet tangled. The Englishman backs him into the wall, caressing his sides with his spiderlike fingers, sucking and biting at his bottom lip, and he can feel the rough texture of the wall digging into his head and it's grounding, electrifying. The moment the other man's hands touch the buttons on his lager-stained waistcoat he whimpers, and feels the shiver and the smile in the Englishman's rosebud lips.
He pushes back, his body flush against the other, the two staggering back until the stranger twists them round so Arthur's on the bed, scooting up the soft satin duvet to rest his head on the pillow. The Englishman climbs on top of him, on all fours; bends his head to touch their lips together again, gentle and chaste, feathers his tongue gently against Arthur's pliant lips and they part for him to slip his tongue between them to brush the roof of his mouth and meet his own tongue, moans softly as Arthur's arms throw themselves around his neck and pull him down, because he needs more, needy and desperate.
So the other man complies, kissing down Arthur's throat and letting out a deep, rumbling growl, lowering his body until their clothed groins meet and sparkle with electricity.
He knows the other man's name – Jack – and it's a good name, sharp and staccato, easily shouted at moments like this when the sudden contact shocks him, a jolt of pleasure making him yell and twitch. Jack smiles his sexy smile and grinds down again, eliciting another yelp and strangled call of his name.
Arthur pulls at the Englishman's shirt until it hits the floor, leaving his chest bare and gorgeous above him. It takes his breath away as he runs his fingers up bare, broad shoulders. Jack disposes of Arthur's shirt, too, his tie abandoned in the cab from the bar, and once both are shirtless they fumble with belts and buttons and zippers until Arthur can slip a hand into the other man's trousers and receive a desperate grunt in return.
It happens without ceremony, with groans and loud words, with sweat slipping through fingers and dampening satin sheets, with rolls of prickly yesGodNOW breaking like waves over and over until both men are hoarse and boneless, side by side, panting together.
After, they lie in each other's arms and sigh, and Arthur doesn't think he's ever felt like this in his life. It's a few long minutes before the Englishman drops a kiss on the top of his head and tries to speak, his voice quiet and raspy. "I have to leave early in the morning," he says, and Arthur feels his chest deflate like a Whoopee Cushion. "I have a contract in Mexico." He's been tossed off before, but only when he didn't care, only when he would've if they didn't. But of course – of course – this perfect night with a complete stranger could never be anything else.
"Okay, then," he says, trying to keep his voice bright and upbeat but feeling it wobble anyway. The stranger chuckles, low and sarcastic, and even though Jack's laughing at him it's not a cruel laugh, so Arthur feels better.
"I wasn't going to go now," he corrects, planting another kiss into Arthur's hair. "I just didn't want you to wake up alone and think I'd tossed you off." He feels pathetic for the relief that floods him at the words, but it doesn't stop him from burying his face in the broad chest and clutching him closer. "Can I call you when I get back? I shouldn't be more than three days."
Arthur sighs and feels happy. He doesn't know why the Englishman wants to keep this – whatever it is – alive, but he's grateful; the knowledge fills his chest with a warmth that feels like cough syrup. "Where's back?" he asks lazily. It doesn't matter; wherever it is, he'll go there in a heartbeat and stay as long as he can.
"Wherever you like."
He rolls over, feeling the impression of where the other man's body has been grow cold on his chest, and digs around in his suitcase for his business card. The stranger fingers it flippantly, turns it over, chuckles. It's a plain card, his name on one side, his phone number on the other. Anyone who usually wants to call him knows his occupation anyway. "Quite the man of mystery, aren't you?" he comments wryly, so that it's Arthur's turn to chuckle.
"Well, I don't know what you do, either," he protests.
"You only have to ask, darling," Jack replies, tightening his arm around his still-bare waist.
But Arthur doesn't ask. Somehow tonight is for making the connection, for knowing that there's something there without having to define it. And there's a promise of next time, where specifics can be made and they can be sure, because he doesn't want to be left at the end with naught but a name and all the details one never needs to know about a person they'll never see again, because he knows nothing lasts.
He's in the dream business. He knows nothing lasts. So he's disappointed, but not surprised as a week goes by and his phone stubbornly refuses to ring with anything but a job offer he's hesitant to take. One more week, he promises, and then he'll stop hoping and moping like a girl in a British rom-com and suck up to the fact that he has, after all, been royally tossed off.
A week later he takes the job. It sounds like a big one, something to occupy his mind entirely, for a man he's worked with before. He turns up calm as ever, cool, collected, confident. He's been working in the abandoned warehouse for three days when the forger walks in.
A basement, Manhattan, cold and clinical, and suddenly it's all coming back to him; how the tea-lights on the bar glinted off his hair and his lips and his sharp hazel eyes, how Van Morrison had been crooning his inarticulate speeches as they pretended they weren't watching each other, how his bedsheets had smelled of lemon and pomegranates and musk when he'd woken up alone. He'd been able to smell it still for weeks, every time he'd been on the cusp of forgetting a wisp of it hitting his nose or lingering on his shirt-sleeves. And the basement suddenly is filled with it, heavy and choking until Arthur is sure he can't breathe, one coherent thought stamping out reason.
You again.