Please note that: 1. the first scene takes place a few years before the prologue;
2. it's called vue which is french for 'sight'. Enjoy!
Antichambre
Part one: Vue
Arthur woke up early in the morning to the loud sound of breathing that wasn't his own. Sunshine was barely entering the room through the curtains, but it was pretty much possible to see a body that also didn't belong to him laying beside him on the bed, clearly in deep sleep.
The intruder was lying on his stomach, face half-covered by his arms. Arthur watched him for a few moments, feeling still asleep and listening to the distant sound of light rain.
Thinking back about early strategies for life, the only and obvious conclusion was that this was most definitely not what Arthur had planned for himself.
Life was already troubled enough without any help – and if there is something every human being knows it's the formula for making both life and mind fucked up in one single step, which would be, of course, falling in love.
It took Arthur some good minutes to realize it was not quite right to have a man laying face down on his bed, inside of his hotel room.
When it hit him, he got up from the mattress so quickly his back hit the headboard noisily, but the asleep form didn't even flinch.
"Eames!" Arthur whispered as loud as possible, his heart thundering inside of his chest. "Eames!"
The man mumbled incoherently and shifted his face to the left a bit.
Arthur was used to be constantly proud of himself for always choosing his job over anything. After all, he was the point man, and nothing less could be expected of him: all of his work should be precise; therefore there was nothing wrong with being precise himself.
The thing is, he should have known by then, whenever you assume you're too good for something as evil and beautiful as love, you'll end up as the fool.
"Eames, wake up!" Arthur punched the man on the shoulder. This time, he actually frowned.
"Yes, Arthur. Good morning."
"What the heck is going on here?" Arthur asked frantically, because although they've been drinking the night before, but there was no way in hell he had drank enough to forget how Eames had ended up sleeping on his bed.
"I am sleeping, dear, and you should to the same, it's terribly early." The forger said, managing to arch an eyebrow without opening his eyes. Arthur snorted, worst expectations rising to the surface. It is such a pain in the ass to get him to talk when he's just woke up, he thought.
"I can see you're sleeping, Eames, my question is why the hell are you doing it on my bed."
That got Eames to fully open his eyes and, to Arthur's horror, crack a mischievous smile.
"So you remember nothing."
Arthur let his body fall against the headboard and covered his face with his hands.
"I do remember. I just don't see why we are together on this bed, so please enlighten me." He said, not even ten percent sure he wanted to know.
"I'm only messing with you, darling. Nothing happened."
Sweet relief washed his whole body as he slipped to the mattress. "Thanks God."
"You were a little bit drunk, so I offered to walk you to your room and you accepted – cheerfully, I must add," Eames explained while laying on his elbows and rubbing his face lazily. "You went to bed and I went to the kitchen to grab us some late-night snack. Then, when I came back, you invited me to sleep here."
Arthur's hands fell to his lap. "I did not."
"Indeed you didn't, I invited myself over." Eames smiled, looking pleased with himself.
"Why would you do that?" Arthur asked with wide eyes, shocked by how easily the forger could crawl into his bed.
Eames turned to fully face him. "Well, Arthur, you have a king-sized bed and my room is miles away from here."
"It's on the freaking other side of the corridor," Arthur said between gritted teeth. "Now please invite yourself out."
He got a fake hurt expression in response to that and Eames got up from the bed in a cat-like motion. "So prone to overreact, Arthur. I didn't even touch you, and I could bet you're disappointed by that." He winked teasingly and offered Arthur a smile while running his fingers through his messed hair. "I'll just take a quick shower then I'm leaving, I have to look decent after all."
Arthur thought on that morning that he hated Eames more than anything, but, after all, the accident was followed by so many more, all of them somehow related to the damn English man, Arthur discovered himself able to remember it almost fondly, and maybe wish his dilemmas could be as simple as waking up to a sneaky forger who had decided to share a bed.
He took his time choosing clothes, for as much as Eames' bath wasn't nearly as fast as he had promised, but eventually Arthur heard the shower turning off.
Despite being annoyed and still kind of freaked out, he waited for Eames to get dressed (which made the smile on the forger's face even wider, which, on the other hand, made Arthur roll his eyes) and they left the apartment together.
"Look, Arthur, there's rain but it's a sunny day. Do you know how unusual those days are?" Eames remarked, pointlessly but cheerful as ever, as they walked out of the building.
As unusual as the tiny smile tugging at Arthur's lips, probably.
They had known each other for no more than a year.
•
There were lots of moments in Arthur's life where the bastard forger who Cobb dared calling a co-worker was included. These moments were marked like fire on his mind and, unfortunately, there wasn't much Arthur could do about them.
He'd replayed the entire story on his own mind a thousand times, maybe only to try to figure out where the watershed was, where had Eames stopped being the annoying affectionate English boy and became utter trouble, and where Arthur's sanity started being fucked, as well as at what point he had decided to stop running in circles and deal with everything.
Telling it from his memories, the tale would go something like that.
•
Whenever you assume you're too good for love, you will definitely end up as the fool, because not only Arthur fell in love, he fell in love hard. As if that wasn't just enough, he fell for the most wrong person he could think of.
The previously brilliant point man scolded himself repeatedly for hiding for so long from the feeling, since now destiny was clearly trying to teach him a lesson by making love take the form of the one person Arthur disliked as soon as he laid his eyes on them – and they laid his hands on him.
It didn't make any sense at all in his mind, and even though people say that's how love is supposed to feel, he couldn't help but hate. Hate himself, hate his karma and, evidently, hate Eames.
And he hated Eames thoroughly.
(It did take Arthur more than a few minutes to realize he had fallen in love with the forger just as hard as he hated him.)
As for the hate part, for him it was easily understandable: Eames was everything Arthur was not, from his bad taste for clothing to his constant flirtatious manners. However, that was okay: he had been forced to work and behave around more than a few jerks before.
To him, Eames was a whole new kind of jerk.
As much as the other way round, every aspect of Arthur seemed to bother him, except Eames was unable to keep his thoughts only to himself. After nothing but a couple of days of knowing about each other's existence, the forger had analyzed and reported out loud all the attributes Arthur apparently needed to change as fast as possible. He couldn't be fully blamed: Arthur felt the exact same way about him and could very well produce a giant list about things Eames was doing wrong according to the point of view of common sense, but he managed to keep it inside of his head, while Eames had the urgent need to vocalize.
As extensive as his patience was, Arthur began to have a hard time focusing whenever the English man was around. He'd tried to calm down and regain concentration more times than he could count already, and that was a bad sign if there was one – for all his life, Arthur had known his own concentration as nothing less than perfect.
He remembers telling himself at some point, after all, life is but a succession of challenges, and that was precisely what Eames meant: a challenge, a big, annoying one, but would eventually go away. He remembers then smiling to himself, and that was when Arthur decided he stood on a higher level where Eames couldn't reach him.
Anyway, Eames did not share this opinion.
•
The two of them were sitting across from each other on a large table filled with pure work. Arthur had two of his laptops on and was scribbling like mad on three different lists, while Eames looked through his files and wrote rather peacefully, even though his eyebrows were furrowed and looked kind of tense: Arthur's personal and absent note, while replaying the scene on his mind. The evening was golden to him: it was wonderful to work when Eames was as busy as he was, because it meant his mouth was shut.
"Please hand me the red marker, pet."
Arthur's heart performed a particularly painful beat.
"Excuse me?" he asked raising his eyes from the papers and losing focus swiftly.
"The red marker. It's right next to your hand." Eames said a bit slower this time.
"I got your request, I meant–" the clueless look on Eames' face stopped Arthur from going any further; the man probably haven't even noticed what he'd said. He's British after all, Arthur realized, it's like him to be full of these terms. "Never mind."
That was the first of many glorious times Eames proved him wrong.
He grabbed the marker and handed it over, averting his eyes back to the job, but for some reason - which would most likely be Eames, yet again - the lists now looked enormous and tiring.
Eames reached out and Arthur felt their fingertips brushing in a slight touch even though he was already trying to draw his attention back to the job. But those fingers didn't move; instead they lingered there, almost entwining with Arthur's, touching so very gently and still kind of teasingly, while Eames never really took hold of the marker.
He lifted his eyes abruptly and met the strong look of the forger, along with a small smirk. Eames took the marker at last and returned to writing with a full smile on his lips.
Bastard, Arthur shouted mentally. He did have a clue on everything.
Fingertips burning in a strange way and feeling silly in which was not even close to being the last time after Eames showed up in his life, he told himself he would not let the forger play any cards on him.
"I'm well aware professionalism isn't one of your most remarkable features, but you should consider letting those who value their jobs do it in fucking peace." He hissed and earned himself a confused expression from the forger, who looked so innocent for a moment Arthur almost apologized to him, but regretted it instantly. "I'm leaving, I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."
With that, Arthur stood up and walked out of the room – he felt angry at Eames, but wasn't entirely sure of the reason while slamming the door behind him.
That was it: the first wrong turn.
I'm not a native english speaker and have no beta, so please feel free to point out any mistakes. Comments & criticism are love and keep me going!