My first Inception fic-enjoy! Any critiques/corrections/advice is greatly appreciated; reviews are love!
Warnings: Strong language (Eames drops the F-bomb, but I think that's actually it), implied m/m, character death
Disclaimer: Inception et al belong to Christopher Nolan. I own nothing but the poetry (if I may be so vain) of the words.
"Open wide your eyes; see the signs; and words form on your lips—have you convinced yourself of this?"
~Shine Bright Baby
Eames hated suits.
No, that was incorrect. He hated wearing suits. He absolutely adored them on Arthur, gleaning flushed, visceral pleasure from the sight of the younger man wrapped and neatly packaged in Armani and Givenchy, Yves Saint-Laurent and John Galliano. They finished him, Eames thought; and as much as he longed to lure Arthur into the practice of Casual Fridays, he knew he would die—happily—of shock at the sight of the Point Man in jeans and a t-shirt. Good Lord.
The slim hope of Eames succeeding in the battle for casual attire, however, had died with Mallory Elizabeth Aurelia Monet -Cobb—wife, mother of two, dearly beloved. Upon receiving the news, Arthur had promptly pulled out his gun and shot the hotel armchair to pieces, afterwards retiring to the unharmed couch to sleep (perchance, to dream), still sheathed in ebony silk and starched white linen.
Eames picked Bacardi Rum as his poison of choice, speedily vacating the hotel room in search of the darkest, sweatiest, cheapest bar he could find. Arthur had silently declined his invitation, resting tight-lipped and porcelain on the sofa, gun held hot and lustrous in his hand.
So the forger was left to drink alone, slumped at the bar with his shirt unbuttoned practically to his navel, the music sending shattering cracks through his heart with every thump of the bass. He had gotten completely and thoroughly sloshed that night, kissing any boy, girl, or item that was thrown his way with false bravado and needy tongue.
Arthur was asleep by the time Eames—dressed only in his socks, boxers, and creased olive slacks—returned. The forger thought him almost dead-looking, very neatly-pressed in Louis Vuitton. Even in sleep, his jaw had not relaxed, wobbling lines of worry carved in his smooth forehead.
In a moment of drunken spontaneity, Eames considered undressing the younger man, that marble sculpture in elegant three-piece, perhaps taking him back to bed. Instead, he found himself vomiting all over the mutilated armchair and Arthur's shoes, and then passing out on the floor.
The funeral was exactly a week later. Dom had pulled himself together by that time, for the children if nothing else, but Eames could still replay the ragged, hopeless outpouring of desolate, weeping words that had come pouring out of the phone the previous Wednesday.
It was eighty degrees for the service and the sun tinted everything gold, bronzing the trees and setting the stringy redwoods on fire. Figures—people out of Dom's past dressed in solemn, unpractical satins and wools—cast long, cool shadows, oil spills of black echo onto the ground.
Everything seemed hyper-real, to the point that Eames could see through Mal's eyes and pick up the shimmer of fantasy glinting in the atmosphere. The grass looked as if it was conjured out of a lawn commercial, the sky an almost heartbreaking shade of blue, brushed with wisps of tooth-white, spun sugar clouds.
The clouds were positively rubicund compared to Arthur's face. His skin was so pale it was nearly translucent, his eyes deep-set and black, rimmed with dusky indigo. Eames felt huge, a strapping giant of a man standing next to him, dressed in lightly-pinstriped Burberry with a silky shirt in such a light pink he hoped Arthur wouldn't notice the difference.
He was successful. There was no comment made on any facet of Eames' choice in clothing, partly because it might've been tasteful for once in his swarthy life, partly because Arthur was no longer present, disappearing immediately after the final shovel of dirt. How he managed to escape Cobb's raw, bone-cracking embraces the forger did not know, but he was impressed.
Not impressed enough to allow the man his privacy—that would just be out of character, and we couldn't have that, could we? After hugging Cobb and planting soft kisses on the tender tops of James and Philipa's heads, he loped across the lawn—that spreading sun-kissed field the ethereal, luminescent green of a praying mantis—and hailed a taxi back to the hotel.
They had moved to the hotel down the street the morning after they'd gotten the news. Kicked out, to be specific—the neighbors had complained about the gunshots. It had been almost amusing, to Eames, at least. He was always the reason anyone got evicted from a public premises: never Arthur and rarely Cobb.
Everyone is allowed their moment of weakness, of course, even Arthur. Repeating something with the expectation of differing results, however, is the definition of insanity, which is why Eames is theoretically insane and why he was so surprised to see another chair full of bullets.
The forger's first instinct was to find the gun, which he did with relative ease. It was lying in the middle of the sofa, marked by a crinkled dent in the wall above. Eames noticed a silencer, which meant Arthur had thought his rage through this time. Or at least, he had up to the point of hurling the weapon against the wall. Eames frowned.
"Arthur," he called, sliding off his jacket and dropping it over the pistol, "Arthur, love, where are you?"
There was a whimpering, so faint and rhythmic it could've been the keening of the washing machine, or the bubbling of the tea kettle, but Eames knew better. Eames liked to think he always knew better.
Besides, Arthur never drank tea—always coffee.
He was in his bedroom, sitting right in the center of the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest, long, slim arms wrapped around them tighter than Eames laced his shoes. His head was buried in the valley between his patella and his collarbone, the whimpering coming muffled through his legs.
Eames was shocked by absolutely everything. The crying especially, but also the fact that the Point Man was wearing a t-shirt—a t-shirt, for God's bloody sake, and a ratty one at that—accompanied by a loose pair of fleece pyjama pants in red and green plaid.
"Oh, darling," Eames breathed, feeling the cracks in his heart beginning to fissure.
Arthur looked up at him, eyes reddened and puffy, skin pallid and streaked. He said nothing, his chest heaving and shaking raspy breaths. His hair was wavy, Eames noticed, falling un-gelled into his forehead in swooping almost-curls.
He ventured slowly forward to sit on the bed, taking most of the weight in his thighs so as not to tilt the mattress. Arthur would speak soon, if he was to speak at all, and Eames knew to wait, hands splayed across the textured fabric of his trousers.
"Why am I like this?" he whispered, the words painfully serrated and harsh. Those eyes, those dark, fathomless eyes were boring into Eames' own ocean-colored ones with a swelling undertone of pleading so distressed it hurt.
"Like what, pet?" Eames murmured, too conscious of his own breathing.
Arthur fell quiet, beginning to rock back and forth in the depression he had created in the coverlet. It was a few minutes before he spoke again, and his voice had deteriorated into something even more wounded.
"I wanted him, you know," he choked, "so bad. When I first started… I always hoped that… maybe a divorce…"
Eames began to fell a growing pressure to shush Arthur, to lay a hand over those pale, sleek lips like one would cover a wound, but it would not do to let this fester. So Arthur continued babbling, spewing out grief-stricken phrases.
"I thought…thought it was over…but then, at the funeral, it all…all came rushing back. And I felt—I felt glad, for a moment—oh god—"
He collapsed back into himself, audibly sobbing. Before he had even finished his sentence, however, Eames had already kicked off his shoes and unfastened the top four buttons of his shirt. Carefully, delicately, he crawled into the center of the bed and wrapped his arms around Arthur, prying him off of his knees and pressing his cheek to pale pink cotton.
"Your shirt," the Point Man protested feebly, trying to push away. Eames snorted and then thought better of it, placing a sturdy hand on russet brown locks and stroking.
"Fuck it, love," he whispered, "It doesn't matter."
Hiccupping, Arthur relented, dropping his hands to his lap and letting Eames pull him into his chest. The forger began to hum something low and gentle, a song of the talonneurs of Paris.
"N'ayez pas peur, mon amour. Quelqu'un vous aime, je t'aime, je t'aime," he murmured, placing his lips right above Arthur's ear. Arthur shuddered, his sobs quieting to watery breaths.
"M'aimes-tu? Vraiment?" he mumbled into the rosy fabric and Eames froze, his body stiffening. Arthur knowing French was not something he had expected. He debated feigning ignorance, or perhaps, pretending he had not heard, but honesty was the best policy. Bracing himself for the crumbling of the world, he spoke from the bottom of his bruised and shattered heart.
"Oui," he spoke, so quiet it was barely vocal, "je t'aime."
There was a moment of silence, and then a soft 'mmm' from Arthur, something almost contented, almost relaxed. Eames could breathe again, he realized, and a smile hovered on his lips.
They fell asleep there, the two of them—Arthur in his pyjamas, Eames in the remnants of a two-thousand-pound suit. He remembered wondering if this was to become a habit, the cuffs of his shirt chafing on his wrists.
He also remembered waking up alone, to the smell of coffee and Arthur, lacquered in Versace with slick, perfect hair and redness still tainting his retinas. He mentioned nothing of the previous afternoon and evening, greeting the forger with a quiet 'good morning' and handing him a mug.
Eames didn't speak, didn't mind. He accepted the coffee with a gracious nod of the head and took a sip, tasting nutty earth and bitter richness and Somali skies tainted with exactly four creams and three sugars.
He smiled. It was a start.
(The French means something along these lines: N'ayez pas peur, mon amour. Quelqu'un vous aime, je t'aime, je t'aime. – Don't be afraid, my love, somebody loves you. I love you, I love you. M'aimes-tu? Vraiment? –You love me? Really? Oui. Je t'aime. –Yes. I love you. Also, a talonneur is a prostitute.)