I'm not entirely sure about this 'fic, or this pairing. It was just something I wanted to try - Inception just had my head buzzing with all sorts of ideas for everything, I needed to put some sort of fanfiction down. I've seen it twice in the past week and was meant to be going again today - I can't get enough of that film.
Anyway, even if I don't think these two suit as a couple, they're certainly my favourite characters.
When Eames watched Ariadne and Arthur leave the airport together he threw away any dregs of hope he had kept behind and made sure no one was looking before narrowing his eyes in to a glare at their backs.
Everyone always assumed that due to the way he interacted with Arthur that their past had been a bad one. Competitive maybe, in the business that they were in. Or perhaps Arthur just didn't have the capacity to avoid conflicting with Eames' charm. At least, Eames called it charm.
The truth was, their past had been good. Better than Eames ever expected life to be again. But he'd accepted long ago that moping and brooding never got a man anywhere apart from further in to a hole of depression. He would never get those sorts of looks or touches or words from Arthur again; the man even avoided brushing past him in passing, for God's sake. There was no use at all in dwelling on it.
But then again, Eames was nothing if not crafty. He still had one card he could play whenever he wanted, and he knew it was what Arthur worried about when he caught Eames' eye; No one else knew about what they'd had. It was a secret that had yet to be unveiled, and Eames had the freedom to do so whenever he pleased. It gave him an ill-gotten feeling of power.
He'd wanted to do it at the airport. To march over and tell Ariadne everything there and then and watch Arthur break. Not to hurt the girl – he had nothing against her at all. He just kept thinking about how maybe, just maybe, that could be the final straw that would break Arthur's back and make sure that he would never interrupt Eames' life with raw and pointless memories again. But then he thought about it more. He couldn't ruin Arthur. Not if he tried.
It'd been so difficult to smile and take it whilst they were doing the job together. The slightest comment, the tiniest reference or inside joke that no one else would understand anyway would send Arthur off in to his own special brand of subdued rage and Eames would be berated for it whenever they were alone. Eames did his best to make sure this wasn't often, and kept up the slights and snipes and slips of the tongue up as much as he pleased with no guilt whatsoever, thank you very much.
And the funny thing was (he had to laugh so as not to cry) Eames could have anyone else in the world apart from the man he wanted.
But, as he often said in a hushed tone when Arthur got particularly angry with him, the resentment etched in to every pore, "The good times really were something, though, weren't they?". Arthur never replied, of course. He'd never admit to it now.
That was the thing with dreams and everything they involved. The harder you tried to hold on to it, the easier it slipped away.