Inception: in our bedroom after the war

[papered.livejournal.com]

my first inception fic, guys - I can't believe I'm doing this. it usually takes me a lot longer to get settled into a fandom before I even think about writing anything, but there's just something about this fandom. written for a prompt over at inception_kink, :3.

also, thank you to meiface for TEACHING ME ABOUT COFFEEMAKERS, which I don't own and never use because I am a tea-drinker at heart.


in our bedroom after the war
inception: arthur/eames
pg-13, 2712 words
prompt: a role reversal where Arthur is the one pining after Eames.

You've always known that he's not actually serious.

All the flirting and casual endearments, the way he practically undresses you with his eyes sometimes - all of that is just a part of who he is as an individual, and has nothing to do with who he is in relation to you. He greets you with beatific smiles that twists at something inside your chest, but he smiles at every other pretty face he comes across just the same. You've never been stupid, or self-deluded - you know he doesn't mean it, that you won't be enough, so it's better to draw the lines from the start and hold yourself at arm's distance.

It's too bad that you've never been exactly reasonable about things when it comes to Eames.


So inevitably, you give in. After years and years of keeping yourself in check, you close your eyes one day and let yourself say yes, let him lead you to his hotel room after the job in Chicago and peel off your suit layer by layer until all that's left is Eames' fingers on your chest and Eames' mouth pressed hot against the junction of your throat and Eameseameseames.

~

The worst part is, it feels like he means it.

Eames is almost painstakingly careful, brushing kisses down your throat as he presses you into the bed, body a firm weight against your own. The heat in his eyes make something curl in the pit of your stomach, and you try but fail to make yourself hold back the sound that bursts out of your throat. Eames looks delighted at your reaction, and leans down to mouth at the expanse of your chest. Darling, he says, voice honey-smooth as his calloused fingers curl surprisingly gently around your shoulders, and every effort you've been making to remember that this means nothing goes down the drain. You let yourself go and arch into him instead, shamelessly wanting more, more of his kisses and smiles and touches (more of him). He obliges by sliding a leg between your own and pressing up, and you let him take you apart piece by piece until there are fragments of you strewn all around the hotel room.


In the morning, you watch the long line of his legs disappear as he casually pulls on his jeans, listen to him say, sorry darling, but I have to go - I'll catch you later? as he packs up his suitcase and moves on to the next job, leaving you behind like dust in the wind. You turn your face into the pillows and pretend you don't hear him, that you're not already missing the warmth of his body pressed against your own. Is it heartbreak, you wonder, if you knew what you were getting into right from the beginning?

~

You manage to avoid him for all of a month before Dom calls you all in for a job again. You're prepared to make an excuse, to lie and say that you're already busy with something else, but when it comes down to it, you've never been able to refuse Dom anything when he needs you, so you agree.

You don't know exactly what you're expecting, but whatever it is, it's something other than Eames smiling and laughing and reading things over your shoulder like he's always done. If you don't think about it, it's like everything is exactly the same, and you can't decide if that makes you more relieved that there won't be any awkward confrontations or angry that you made no difference at all.

It's a simple job. The Mark is young, his mind, unmilitarized, and he doesn't stand a chance against Dom's team.

Afterward, Ariadne drags everyone out to the closest club for celebratory drinks. That's the idea, anyway, except two drinks later, most of the team has either disappeared or joined the dance floor, and it's just you and him again, him with his hooded eyes and dangerous smiles. You're no dancer, but the beat of the music feels like it's pulsing through your veins, and you wish you could look away but all of a sudden you want him so badly that it feels a little like it's killing you.

So of course, when he leads you into a washroom stall with his palm burning into the small of your back, you can't even pretend to resist. He pushes you against the door and kisses you first, and this time it's brutal and controlling but that's exactly what you want. His fingers leave bruises against your sides, and you know that you'll look at the marks later when you're alone and it'll be a reminder of all the reasons this isn't enough.

You know this, just like you know that the smart thing to do right now would be to push Eames away, to get the hell out of here while you still have your dignity left. But (and let's be realistic here) this is Eames, and you've never been good at self-preservation when it comes to him. So you let him pull you close instead until you're chest to chest and heart to heart, let him whisper sweetheart into the hollow of your throat and kiss you until your mouth is swollen.

~

The time after that, it happens in Tokyo. Then Melbourne, and Casablanca, and Copenhagen and Shanghai. It becomes a routine, of sorts. After every job in every city, Eames is there at the end of the day, sometimes following you out and other times casually sidling up to snake an arm around your waist after you've left the facility you've been working in. The others are too observant not to notice, but apparently choose not to the comment on it. You're grateful for that, you think.

He's not yours. You know this every time he traces nonsensical patterns on your chest or mouthes kisses up your spine, but you let him anyway, because you won't ever admit it out loud but sometimes, you think to yourself that you're stupidly in love with his wild eyes and shocking lack of inhibition. Maybe you're a masochist and maybe this is going to kill you someday, but you'd rather have pieces of him like this than not have him at all. It's your choice, you think. You choose to let him do this, and maybe it's not such a big deal after all. And you'll just keep on going like this, keep holding on and letting him in until -

until one day it's not your choice at all.

It happens in Vancouver. Another city, another job, and there's nothing marked different about this one to put you on your guard. When it's time to leave, you bid everyone farewell, tell Ariadne that you'll drop by her place when you're in Paris next week. Something like anticipation is buzzing under your skin, leaving you oddly restless, and when you leave the building, the cool air hits you like a wave. You're expecting Eames to be right behind you, but when he's not, you shrug it off, because it's no big deal. He'll catch up with you later, like he always does.

Your suit provides no insulation against the January weather, and the evening wind chills you to your very bones. It's not until you're back in your empty hotel room that you realize your eyes are stinging.

~

The next time you see him, he's wearing a scarf. It covers the entire expanse of his throat, and Ariadne teases him about her fashion choices rubbing off on him - and really, she was flattered he wanted to imitate, but didn't it make more sense for him to wait until they were somewhere other than the always-warm Taiwan?

Eames laughs it off and says something charming in reply.


Later, he corners you in the washroom and gives you a handjob that ruins your trousers and has you weak in the knees for hours afterward.

Later still, when the job is complete, you leave as you always do with suitcase in hand. Eames is behind you this time, but so is Yusuf and Saito as they discuss Yusuf's latest research on the chemical property of some new compound you don't know the details of. There's an unexpectedly strong gust of wind as you all step out, and the force of the rushing air sounds a little like a whistle. As it blows your hair askew, you think you see a hint of dark purple through the white of the material around Eames' neck.

~

You start turning down Dom's jobs. Not all of them - not the extract-and-go jobs you can do with just the two of you, or even the more complicated ones that requires Yusuf's newest solution or Ariadne's careful planning or Saito's endless bank account. Just the ones where you need a thief or forger.

The others notice. Of course they do - you're being so fucking obvious about it that you'd be ashamed if you weren't too drained to care. Dom tries to talk to you about it once, but you know him well enough to know exactly how to evade his questions, and considering how he's not exactly the type to enjoy heart-to-hearts, it's not too difficult to close the subject. Ariadne is harder to avoid when she corners you one day, but you do your best until she shakes her head and tells you that for two people who are supposedly so brilliant, you're both behaving like complete idiots.


You do see him, once. For closure, you tell yourself when you can't stand it any longer. With your connections, it's not hard to figure out what Eames is up to, and you follow him into a bar in Dubai late one night with a hat low on your head. Maybe he sees you and maybe he doesn't - it doesn't really matter, because either way, he doesn't acknowledge you. You watch as he settles himself down, hears his three shots of vodka, love to the bartender behind the counter. He seems tired, dark bruises under his eyes a sharp contrast to his pale face, but the smile he gives her is exactly the way you remember, so so familiar down to the crinkle of his eyes, and you almost give it all up, almost go up to him and say please and I don't care anymore and I miss you.

And then a curvy brunette finds her way to the seat next to him, a suggestive hand settling on his arm. Her nails are long and painted firetruck red, visible from even across the room. Eames laughs lightly at something she says, and you leave, slipping out of the bar with your face down so that you blend seamlessly into the shadows.

The heaviness in your chest feels like the persistent pulse of blood behind a bruise.

~

The months pass.

You don't know what you expect. For things to just continue like this, you suppose, day after day, as unrealistic as it might seem.

You know that what you don't expect is for your doorbell to start ringing at 4AM in the morning one day. You quickly pull on a shirt, and it's probably just your neighbour's seventeen year old son drunk again and ringing at the wrong door, but you reach for the knife you keep by your bedside table anyway, just in case.

What you don't expect is the sight of Eames slouched against the adjacent wall, tired bags under his eyes and looking as if he hadn't shaved in two days, and you still think he's the most beautiful thing you've seen in a long time.

"Arthur," he says, voice slightly hoarse. "Can I come in?"

You open your mouth to ask what he's doing here, but the syllables stick in your throat and all that comes out is a raspy breath. For a second, you consider refusing him, but then you wonder who you're trying to kid. Letting the door swing open, you step back and let him follow you into your apartment.

You carefully don't meet his eyes as he settles hiself onto your couch. He's wearing an outrageous paisley shirt that clashes horribly with your living room decor and everything else he has on, and it reminds you of a time when you would have happily given him grief for it. The thought sends something sad surging through your chest.

The silence stretches on. To occupy yourself, you head into your kitchen to make coffee, studiously ignoring the way his eyes follow you as you go. As you dump the grounds into the coffeemaker, you realize that you can't seem to stop your hands from shaking.

"Christ, Arthur," comes Eames' voice suddenly from right behind you, and you drop the spoon you're holding. "Just. Stop for a second. Please."

He grasps your shoulders when you turn around to face him, and it's the first time he's touched you in months. His fingers burn into your skin, and you let him lead you back to the couch, coffee forgotten. He looks at you carefully with tired eyes, fatigue on every line of his face, and suddenly you feel exhausted and bared like someone's reached inside your chest and stripped away whatever last shields you had left.

"Eames," you say, and goddamnit he can still do this to you, still make you a little weak at the knees. "What do you want from me, Eames?"

His face crumples a little at the sound of his name. "I'm a fucking idiot," he says brusquely, followed by a softer "Please." Even now, you can't stand hearing the misery in his voice, and before you know it you're reaching for him and pulling him towards you.

"God, Arthur," he says, sounding wrecked even with his head buried in your shoulders, and his voice is soft as he breathes a confession into the junction where your spinal column meets your shoulders. "I'm fucking in love with you."

Your heart stutters. He's still talking, voice slightly muffled by your shirt, something about I'm sorry and I don't have any right but give me one more chance, please, but it's like you can't hear anything past the admission.

"Eames," you say again, cutting him off, and he falls silent immediately, almost as if he's afraid of what you're going to say.

You think about everything you could say. Everything from god I missed you and you're such an idiot to you have no right and I can't believe you're doing this again and finally, if you don't mean it this time, I'm never going to recover.

And then you leave words to the wind and lean in to kiss him instead.


He freezes for just a moment, his mouth a perfect o beneath yours for a split second before he makes a soft sound - broken in the middle - and kisses you back. By the time you pull back, your lips feel swollen and he's panting a little. Your grip on his shoulders must be painful by now, but all he does is wrap his arms around your waist and bury his face into the hollow at the base of your throat.

"Darling," he says, voice hoarse, and the word sends a pang of nostalgia through you, strong enough to almost knock you over.

You could draw this out, you think. You know you were the one in the wrong, and that you could talk about it all if you wanted, recount every heartache and painful second, and he'd listen and torment himself and apologize for it all, because that's what Eames is like.

But you don't want to. Not right now, not when all you want to do is hold onto him for a while. You're not delusional enough to think that you can both just carry on like this, but you think to yourself that the talking can wait until later.

So you kiss him again. His stubble rubs against your chin, and you smile a little, knowing he'll be able to feel it against his lips.


When he presses you into the covers later and promises you that everything is going to be okay, you believe him.

fic started: September 20, 2010
fic finished: September 22, 2010