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mister-eames · 3 months

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Borrowing the word generator fic prompt challenge from my friend @roosterbox!

Todays word: sausage

----

"Well, look who it is," is what Ariadne begins with when Eames arrives at the office that morning. She turns her head to exhale a plume of cigarette smoke downwind. "Trouble in paradise, I take it?"

Eames pauses at the door, loosely grasping the handle.

"Pardon?"

She points her thumb somewhere over her left shoulder. "You know, with the whole ---" she balls her hands into fists and mimics a series of tiny explosions, "---thing."

He casts a wary look at the door, suddenly unsure of the contents within, then back at Ariadne, perplexed.

"Maybe give him a wide berth," she suggests.

He's far too hungover for this.

"I'm... not following," he blinks. "Give who a wide berth?"

The tiny woman makes a circle out of her pointer finger and thumb and winks exaggeratedly at him. "O-kay. That's how we're playing it then."

Righteo.

With a yank to the metal door Eames enters, shaking off the weird interaction, leaving Ariadne outside in the fierce, chilly Berlin winds. The youth these days, honestly.

"Hallo," Eames loudly greets his colleagues, unwinding his scarf from his neck as the sauna-level heating immediately hits him. "Guten morgen!"

"Eames! Hello," their chemist greets, appearing out of nowhere.

Sandeep is nervous young man on the best of days, looking particularly rattled on this perfectly ordinary one. He wrings his hands together as Eames makes a beeline for his desk, eyes darting about.

"Sandeep," he nods, then again, over to the desk furthest from the entrance. "Arthur."

"Yes, hello," Sandeep says again, trading increasingly worried looks between Eames and Arthur. There is sweat on his upper lip.

It sure is hot in here. Eames removes his coat too, hanging it on the back of his chair.

It takes several minutes for Eames to extract all of the field data he'd managed to retrieve the day prior from his bag. Receipts, pin locations, recorded messages, even discarded newspapers; all minutiae, and all utterly vital in composing the pigment that paints the broad strokes in forgery, as it were. He's shadowed the marks twin for all of five hours and knows his lunch order, his favourite cafe, political leanings, preferred brand of cigarettes, and the exact, saliva-soaked, smacking noise he makes when he chews his peppermint gum, open-mouthed, which he did all damn day.

A quirk Eames is going to have to momentarily adopt. Ugh.

Nothing to be done for it, he supposes, even if he is already cringing so hard he's developed a minor tic. He slides his glasses on and starts to make sense of his notes.

It takes him a solid hour to realise Arthur hasn't acknowledged him. Not even once.

---

Ariadne keeps shooting him worried glances. Sandeep has dropped three beakers and left the office an hour ago after a... verbal incident... and hasn't yet come back.

And Arthur -- well.

He seems very, very preoccupied in sharpening the same three 2B pencils, is the thing. Not that Eames is one to judge. Especially not after the time he saw Arthur utilise a sharp pencil as a weapon in a dream one time. Very resourceful, that man. Utilitarian.

Lovely.

Arthur slaps down one of his newly sharpened pencils on his desk with a frightening amount of force and an equally frightening grimace on his face.

Ariadne looks at Eames again. Perhaps because Arthur does not seem to be doing any actual work.

Well, Eames can help him with that. Collecting his notes, Eames rises and ambles over to Arthur's desk, stopping short as he takes in the peculiar state of it. Paperclips, bent out of shape to the point of irrevocable deformity, litter the surface, alongside several scrunched up balls of paper.

The aforementioned pencils sit primly in the centre amidst the chaos.

"Can I help you?" Arthur demands, wielding one.

"Notes," Eames tentatively holds his folder out, somewhat taken aback by his tone and the force in which Arthur snatches it from his hands. "On the forge."

Eames catches Ariadnes eye, finally. She mimics another explosion.

"Err...alright, Arthur?"

With a wave of his free hand, Arthur dismisses Eames in lieu of an actual response, flicking through Eames' paperwork with jerky, agitated motions.

"Right," he says, Arthur's silence becoming increasingly uncomfortable. "...Good. Is there anything else you --"

The pencil in Arthur's grip snaps clean in half.

"Never mind," Eames, alarmed, gestures to his desk, inching away. "I've got to...."

He retreats.

---

Arthur, exuding a downright hostile, malefic aura, ignores both Eames and Ariadne for the most part; except to snap at them like an agitated crocodile whenever one ventures too close to his desk or 'talks too loud' or 'breathes like a congested bovine', which is a shame, because the kitchenette is right behind Arthur's set up and Eames loves a good tea-break chat.

Speaking of. Eames isn't sure what crawled up Arthur's rectum and perished, but it is now mid-morning and Tetley's waits for no man.

"Can I get you a cuppa?" Eames offers, magnanimously.

Directing a glare at Eames that could wither a sequoia, Arthur slides on a pair of midnight black headphones.

"Err..."

It's as clear a statement as any. The death metal he plays is so loud that Eames can hear it through the headphones and over the screech of the boiling kettle.

"I'll have a coffee," Ariadne yells to be heard over the din. "White, two sugars, please!"

---

After some internal deliberation, something clearly seems to be the matter.

---

Once, in their early days of working together, back when Eames was young and impulsive and quick to take things to heart, Arthur's professional ire rubbed him the wrong way at the wrong time. Took his poor mood personally. A blow to his ego.

So, Eames did whatever any young lad who had never held a real job would do - he nicked a tampon out of their extractors bag and presented it to Arthur. Eames had told him, "here, you're clearly on the rag," thinking himself so damn clever, puffed up with his own satisfaction and the sound of his team-mates laughter.

Sure, it led to a barny of almighty proportions that led to Arthur freezing him out for a year, but they were young and dumb then.

Eames would like to think they've grown since.

With that in mind, after an entire morning of weathering Arthur's potent animosity, Eames thinks he's finally narrowed down the problem.

The audible stomach gurgling is what tips him off.

Perhaps Ariadnes' never seen this side of Arthur before, but Eames has, enough to put two and two together. The snark, the twitchiness, the bitchiness; this is Arthur at hangriest. A situation easily remedied.

Ariadne would know, if she knew Arthur like Eames did. Perhaps placated him with a danish or a bagel. A succulent hot chocolate, maybe, like that one time, in Ohio, where Arthur got whipped cream on the corner of his lips, licking them over and over, his countenance softening in a haze of glucose and a chocolate-y scent had permeated the office. He'd smiled at Eames, then. There had been dimples.

"I'm getting lunch," Eames announces suddenly, standing.

He knows just the place.

---

The only thing that fills the office now upon Eames' return is the sound of Arthur's plastic knife scraping against the polystyrene tray as he cuts, no, hacks into the potatoes and variety of wurst that Eames brought back for him.

It's worse than the pencil-sharpening.

Even Ariadne winces as Arthur forcefully stabs a sawed-off portion of sausage and eats it.

Eames watches, transfixed, mouth dry, as Arthur seems to take great satisfaction in mutilating the food in a manner that can only be described as savage.

"Alright, Arthur?" he dares to ask again.

Instead of answering, Arthur locks eyes with him and, very slowly, chews a chunk of wurst.

---

At four-o'clock on-the-dot Ariadne packs up her bag and departs without so much as a goodbye, discomfort writ visibly all over her face.

Eames can commiserate. He too has seen the shredded remains of Arthur's lunch in the kitchenette bin.

"Penis jokes," Arthur says as soon as Ariadne's out, voice as hard as his steel-eyed glare. "Nice one, Eames. How old are you?"

Eames pauses.

"What?" he asks dumbly.

"The lunch," Arthur gestures. "Really? I thought we'd moved past that."

"I'm not... following."

"The sausage."

"The wurst?"

"The sausage. You really are an asshole."

"Because of... lunch...?"

Arthur tuts darkly, standing too, placing his laptop and papers into his messenger bag with gentleness despite the rigid line of his spine and shoulders.

"Because I'm sick and tired of your stupid jokes, alright?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The--the lunch," Arthur repeats, voice rising with fervour as he secures his bag across his torso, "the text last night!"

"Are you fucking on something?"

"Are you? You sent me a photo of your dick!"

Affronted, Eames says, "I did not."

"You did so." Arthur affects a poor imitation of his accent, "Come over, Arthur. I need your help, if you catch my drift. Wink-ey face." Arthur shakes his head. "Fucking worst pick-up line ever."

"I swear to you, I didn't send you a --" he fishes his phone out of his pocket, thumbing through his recent texts for evidence, opening up his log with Arthur, "-- look, hang on a tick..." where is the damn---

---oh.

There it is. Erect and proud like a flag pole.

Hazy memories of getting drunk in his hotel room come swimming back to the fore. He'd gotten back to his hotel room tired, cranky, aching to loosen up. So he took a shot of vodka every time he remembered the sound of his marks disgusting chewing. At some point he blacked out, but he does recall thinking it was a good idea to send something flirty and subtle to Arthur. But he always thinks that.

Although, to be fair, he did think it was rather odd that he woke up in the bathtub with his pants around his ankles this morning.

"Looks like I did."

Arthur huffs. "That's what I just said..."

Eames stops listening as a rare feeling of shame washes over him. His stomach turns. Jesus Christ, good one Eames, now you've gone and done it. Of course Arthur would be livid over such a thing. Eames can hardly blame him.

Of course Arthur would raise hell at the very thought of such a lewd come-on, especially from Eames of all people. Of course he'd be repulsed; it's Eames after all and Arthur has never seen him that way. Arthur has never -- Arthur would never want that with --

"...and then I went to your hotel room and you didn't even answer the door! What the fuck, Eames?"

Eames stills.

"Back up. You did what?"

Drumming his fingers on the bag-strap, Arthur averts his eyes somewhere just past Eames, mouth twisting to the side. The stern lines of Arthur's body sag with heaviness.

"Just another joke at my expense, right?"

Eames feet are set on a path towards Arthur before he can command them otherwise. "It wasn't a joke. I must have fallen asleep."

"Great," Arthur rolls his eyes, still refusing to meet Eames eyes. "Passing out before the punchline. Excellent."

"So...you came to the hotel room?"

"Yes."

He steps closer again, ducking his head to catch Arthur's gaze. "You wanted to... 'help' me."

"And now I want to shoot you."

"Arthur, I've been trying to be very subtle," Eames says softly, trying to not get his hopes up, feeling as if his heart, beating with the bass of a djembe, is teetering on a tightrope, on the verge of flight or failure. "About my feelings."

Arthur's mouth twists even more, pursing unpleasantly. "Yeah. I got the message loud and clear."

"I'm not sure you do." Tentatively, Eames places his hand on Arthurs upper arms, grateful when Arthur doesn't immediately punch him in the face. "I bought you lunch because you were hungry."

"And?"

"And I took a job in Germany in the middle of winter."

"You wanted a job."

"Yes; with you."

"...Oh."

"Yeah."

"You..."

"I don't need the money. And let's face it; this is the worst job. Possibly ever."

"You do hate the winter," Arthur says, voice small.

Eames nods. "And Germany."

"That's why it's so hot in here," Arthur says, gesturing to the wider office. "The heater. I know you hate the cold."

Eames has been sweating in here for two weeks.

But there isn't anywhere else I'd rather be.

He admits, helpless, "I would never leave you locked out on purpose. I've wished to woo you properly."

"Oh," Arthur blinks, a sudden smile unwinding his lips. He steps forward and looks Eames right in the eye with none of the flint from before, but all of the fire. "I mean, I appreciate it, but..."

Arthur forcefully tugs him in and kisses him.

#yep that really was the first word that popped up in the random word generator #it was fate #here take my mostly un-edited offerings #you do not want to know what was going through my head as I wrote this #i don't even know what this is #inception #arthur x eames

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