![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: drop your differences at the door
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 2,400
Spoilers: None
Fandom: Inception
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Category: Arthur/Eames AU - Underworld fusion.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Summary: They really shouldn't - but they do.
Part One | Part Two
"I know you think it's terribly romantic and mysterious to sit on top of a roof and stare at the horizon but you just look like a twat."
Arthur clenches his teeth and looks over his shoulder to see the hulking figure of Eames behind him. Eames is wearing a paisley shirt and pants such a garish shade of purple that Arthur's left to wonder as usual where he can find such atrocious things. The shirt is too small, the line of buttons stretching obscenely so Arthur figures it didn't come from a shop but probably from off someone's back. "You shouldn't be up here," Arthur says. "Ariadne is on the next roof over."
"Looking romantic and mysterious I suppose?" Eames hazards with a smirk and Arthur turns back to his survey of the night sky, but now that Eames has mentioned it he feels like a bit of an idiot. He backs off the roof ledge and turns. "Which one's Ariadne again. Small pixie-ish lass with dark hair?"
"Yep, that's the one," Arthur agrees.
"So, that your new partner then?" Eames asks and even though his tone is neutral, his shoulders tense ever so slightly, not enough that anyone who didn't have heightened senses would notice. "In all ways?"
"Of course not," Arthur dismisses. "That wouldn't be very professional." Eames raises an eyebrow at that and moves the toothpick he's chewing around in his mouth.
"What's with the toothpick?" Arthur asks.
Eames instantly looks uncomfortable. "I'm trying to quit smoking." Eames very obviously looks Arthur up and down. "Can you think of any better ways for me to satisfy my oral fixation?" he leers.
"Why are you quitting? It's not like it's going to kill you," Arthur says.
Eames pulls a don't make me say it face but when Arthur just watches him steadily, he huffs a put-upon sigh. "Yousaidyoudidn'tlikeit," he gets out all in one breath.
"What was that?"
Eames sighs again, throwing an eye roll into it for good measure. "You said you didn't like it. You didn't like my hair and your clothes all stinky."
Arthur bites his bottom lip to keep from outright grinning. "Are you quitting smoking for me?" he asks.
"If you keep looking smug I'm going to take up cigars or that herbal shit that only sixteen year old girls smoke," Eames warns.
Arthur is struck often by how completely adorable Eames can be. It's quite strange, considering what he is.
"Anything I can give up for you since you're being so charitable" Arthur asks.
"Being a Death Dealer?" Eames asks, taking the toothpick from his mouth, snapping it in two and tossing it off the roof. He's not looking at Arthur which means he's only half-joking.
"Eames," Arthur sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. He'd been hunting werewolves decades before he'd met Eames, before he'd hesitated when he was supposed to have been putting a silver bullet straight through Eames' heart.
"I know love, I know," Eames says, reaching out and snagging a hand in Arthur's coat, tugging him in. Arthur knows its crazy, he's got Ariadne on the opposite roof and Dasher and Elliot milling down below but he lets Eames curl around him anyway.
000
"Where do you tell your fellow cute little slaughterers of my kind you go when you make off with me, hmm?" Eames asks. He's watching Arthur put his outfit back together of the items of clothing that were tossed haphazardly across the motel room in their haste while propped up on one arm. Socks, pants, shirt, waistcoat. Arthur's pretty sure he had a tie and underwear when he arrived but he can't find them for the life of him now. He can usually find items by scent but considering he was the one wearing them and he took them off himself they won't smell of anything.
Eames always laughs when Arthur buries his nose in his skin, hungry for scent. He's been with his own kind and one thing he truly missed was the smell. Humans smell like food and his own kind smell like nothing. Only Eames smells like raw unabashed need, like the woods and wild things.
"They're used to me disappearing," Arthur says, tugging his coat on after retrieving it from the floor near the motel room's doorway.
"I forgot," Eames says. "Rumor has it you're the Dark Prince's favorite little toy." Arthur looks up at Eames' tone from checking through his pockets. If he didn't know any better, he would swear that Eames has just sounded jealous for the second time in as many hours.
"I know you can't really understand this, but we have a hierarchy," Arthur explains. "It's fortunate that I'm on Saito's good side."
"We have a hierarchy," Eames protests but at Arthur's raised eyebrow he shrugs, the movement making him slump flat on his back again. "Okay, more of a pecking order." Eames reaches across to his own jacket which is draped over a lamp set on the bedside table and digs around for a moment, unearthing a fairly squashed packet of cigarettes with a crow of triumph.
"I thought you were quitting for me," Arthur says mildly.
"You can't expect a man to forgo his post-coital smoke," Eames scoffs. "Totally doesn't count."
000
Despite being almost one hundred percent sure he smells nothing like Eames or what he's just done with Eames when he arrives back at the mansion, Ariadne still collars him as soon as he steps through the door and wrinkles her nose when she tugs him closer. "Have fun?" she prods and Arthur resists the urge to rise to the bait because regardless of the way she acts, she couldn't know what he's been up to.
He wouldn't still be standing if she did.
That's something else he misses, people he can trust. He knows Ariadne would have his back if they were in a fight but the opportunity to sell him out in any other capacity would not pass her by. It's useful that Saito has an odd soft spot for him but it doesn't stop the others from wanting to be in that position, have the favor that they crave and work for that Arthur receives with apparently no effort, actually the opposite of effort which irks them to no end.
"I didn't realize I had to check in with you now," Arthur snarls, prying Ariadne's fingers loose from his jacket and stepping away. He just wants his room and his books and some quiet to think. Arthur isn't stupid enough not to know that getting... attached to Eames is a hazardous business but he knows that he is.
The only way it's going to end is badly, for the both of them considering what they are but he can't seem to stop the unadulterated craving he feels for the werewolf.
A weight hits his back and Arthur stumbles a couple of steps. Ariadne is on him, arms hooked around his neck and legs cinched around his waist. She digs her knees into his sides, hard enough that if he were human he knows his ribs would have been pulverized. "There's something Cobb wants you to see before you scurry off and make like an emo teenager," she says, sliding from his back.
Arthur huffs in annoyance, but Cobb is the one person he can actually tolerate in the whole place and he never wastes anyone's time with anything that isn't important.
Arthur follows Ariadne into one of the many studies in the bottom floor of the mansion. Cobb is sitting behind a desk with an open laptop in front of him and a hand in his hair. He looks up when they enter and waves an impatient hand. "Arthur, good. Come look at this and tell me what you think."
Arthur looks at Ariadne but her face is carefully blank despite him being sure that she knows exactly what's going on. He rounds the desk and leans over Cobb's shoulder. There's a freeze-frame of a grainy video of what looks like a subway station. Cobb clicks on the image when he's sure Arthur can see it and as it begins, Arthur watches two large figures run onto the platform, people scattering in their wake. There's no sound so it's not completely clear at first why the people scatter like that until Arthur sees sections of the tiled columns on the platform break away and then three men he recognizes appear in the lower bottom half of the frame, very obviously firing weapons. "Isn't that-?"
"Was Aaron's team," Cobb says and Arthur looks back at the screen but then back to Cobb's profile when what he says registers.
"Wait, was?" he barks and Cobb reaches up a hand without looking and tilts Arthur's face back to the screen.
Arthur looks more closely and one of the first figures spins, pulling a weapon from his jacket. The picture is terrible and there's no reason for him to be as sure as he is, but suddenly Arthur knows that he's looking at Eames. "When was this?" he asks, hoping he doesn't sound as strangled as he feels.
"Yesterday," Cobb says in a dismissive tone.
"Before you disappeared," Ariadne pipes up from the other side of the room. She's thrown herself into a leather armchair in the corner, legs hooked over the back and head lolling off the seat so she's looking at Arthur upside down.
Arthur feels a mixture of relief and confusion at this piece of news. Relief because it means he saw Eames after this happened which means Eames escaped from these Death Dealers unscathed and Arthur isn't about to watch him be put down like a dog in the street, but confusion because he'd seen Eames after this happened and Eames hadn't mentioned it.
Eames fires his weapon and instead of merely stumbling, Arthur watches Aaron who'd been in front of Clifford and Bronx, the other two Death Dealers, drop like a wet sack. Arthur frowns because bullets hurt like fuck but they certainly don't drop a vampire. As he watches, Aaron writhes on the ground and Clifford and Bronx split apart and take cover. "What's happening?" Arthur asks, voice hushed in awe. He's seen the way Aaron is writhing on the ground before, but only when it was a werewolf shot by silver. As they watch, Aaron's movement ceases and his body seems to start collapsing in on itself.
"That we don't know," Cobb says, snapping the laptop shut. "Bronx and Clifford didn't return."
"What do you want me to do?" Arthur asks and Cobb's face hardens.
"Take whoever you want out with you tonight and find those bastards," Cobb grates. "Find out what they did, what they have."
"We'll start at the station, track their scent," Ariadne pipes up and Arthur snaps a glare at her, but he's mostly angry with himself.
How could he be so stupid.
How indeed.
000
"Arthur!" Eames says, sounding inordinately pleased. "Heart of my heart, throb of my loins - erk!" Eames' jovial patter cuts off when Arthur jams his forearm against Eames' throat and pushes him up against the wall behind. While Eames is unchanged, Arthur has the strength advantage and he uses it now to lift Eames off his feet.
It will be a whole other ball game if Eames decides to change.
"I assume you've heard about my little altercation," Eames croaks.
"What the hell did you do?"
"Can't we discuss this rationally?" Eames asks but Arthur's only response is to increase the pressure on Eames' windpipe. He knows he's not going to hurt Eames, but he wants to provoke him, make Eames change so he has something to fight.
Infuriatingly, just like the first time they encountered each other, Eames refuses to change. It saved Eames' life that first time and it makes Arthur drop him this time, step away and scrub hands through his hair. Eames stumbles a little when his feet hit the floor and he automatically reaches out to Arthur but Arthur bats his hands aside viciously and moves further back, shaking with unspent rage. "Did you kill all three of them?" he asks.
"Yes," Eames says, unapologetic, gaze steady.
"Christ, don't you understand -"
"Arthur, how about you understand something, hmm?" Eames interrupts, voice a low growl. "They were chasing us for no other reason but for what we are. What was I supposed to do?"
"Not... that," Arthur says. "What happened to Aaron was-"
"What?" Eames interrupts again, throwing his hands up in frustration, advancing on Arthur with his shoulders up, teeth bared. "What do you think it's like to be shot by silver? It's fucking horrendous and not always fatal and if we aren't lucky enough to die straight away and we get caught then we have hours, maybe days of torture to look forward to in one of your less than tasteful lairs."
"That's not... you just don't understand," Arthur says, thinking this confrontation isn't going according to plan at all. He was ready to fight, perhaps die for what he believed in but Eames was starting to make everything blurry. Before Eames, his life was very black and white. He was a Death Dealer, werewolves were bad, it was his job to kill them, case closed.
"What don't I understand?" Eames asks and he's definitely angry, but it's a hopeless kind of anger, frustration and resignation. "You know what? You're right, I don't understand. I don't understand why vampires feel this burning desire to eradicate us off the face of this earth. If anything, us non-humans should stick together, or at the very least we should be the wronged party but we stop being your guard dogs and you declare war on us? It's lunacy."
"That's not why I..." Arthur starts and then snaps his mouth shut. He can't believe he nearly...
"Why do you do it?" Eames asks. The fight, what little there was, goes out of him. "You seem a fairly rational sort of chap most of the time. Why do you do it?"
"I can't... this was a mistake. They're tracking your scent now. You have to go."
"You came to warn me? Arthur, I didn't know you cared," Eames says, sounding sad.
Arthur turns, heads for the door of Eames' apartment. Somewhere he knows Eames will have to leave and never return to. The place is saturated in his scent and once the other Death Dealers pick it up from the subway station, they'll be able to find it.
Arthur could just from memory.
"What was it you shot them with?" Arthur asks, just before he leaves. He knows it's paltry but he needs to make some kind of effort to do his job.
"You have your secrets, I have mine."
Part Two
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 2,400
Spoilers: None
Fandom: Inception
By:
kellifer_ficCategory: Arthur/Eames AU - Underworld fusion.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Summary: They really shouldn't - but they do.
Part One | Part Two
"I know you think it's terribly romantic and mysterious to sit on top of a roof and stare at the horizon but you just look like a twat."
Arthur clenches his teeth and looks over his shoulder to see the hulking figure of Eames behind him. Eames is wearing a paisley shirt and pants such a garish shade of purple that Arthur's left to wonder as usual where he can find such atrocious things. The shirt is too small, the line of buttons stretching obscenely so Arthur figures it didn't come from a shop but probably from off someone's back. "You shouldn't be up here," Arthur says. "Ariadne is on the next roof over."
"Looking romantic and mysterious I suppose?" Eames hazards with a smirk and Arthur turns back to his survey of the night sky, but now that Eames has mentioned it he feels like a bit of an idiot. He backs off the roof ledge and turns. "Which one's Ariadne again. Small pixie-ish lass with dark hair?"
"Yep, that's the one," Arthur agrees.
"So, that your new partner then?" Eames asks and even though his tone is neutral, his shoulders tense ever so slightly, not enough that anyone who didn't have heightened senses would notice. "In all ways?"
"Of course not," Arthur dismisses. "That wouldn't be very professional." Eames raises an eyebrow at that and moves the toothpick he's chewing around in his mouth.
"What's with the toothpick?" Arthur asks.
Eames instantly looks uncomfortable. "I'm trying to quit smoking." Eames very obviously looks Arthur up and down. "Can you think of any better ways for me to satisfy my oral fixation?" he leers.
"Why are you quitting? It's not like it's going to kill you," Arthur says.
Eames pulls a don't make me say it face but when Arthur just watches him steadily, he huffs a put-upon sigh. "Yousaidyoudidn'tlikeit," he gets out all in one breath.
"What was that?"
Eames sighs again, throwing an eye roll into it for good measure. "You said you didn't like it. You didn't like my hair and your clothes all stinky."
Arthur bites his bottom lip to keep from outright grinning. "Are you quitting smoking for me?" he asks.
"If you keep looking smug I'm going to take up cigars or that herbal shit that only sixteen year old girls smoke," Eames warns.
Arthur is struck often by how completely adorable Eames can be. It's quite strange, considering what he is.
"Anything I can give up for you since you're being so charitable" Arthur asks.
"Being a Death Dealer?" Eames asks, taking the toothpick from his mouth, snapping it in two and tossing it off the roof. He's not looking at Arthur which means he's only half-joking.
"Eames," Arthur sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. He'd been hunting werewolves decades before he'd met Eames, before he'd hesitated when he was supposed to have been putting a silver bullet straight through Eames' heart.
"I know love, I know," Eames says, reaching out and snagging a hand in Arthur's coat, tugging him in. Arthur knows its crazy, he's got Ariadne on the opposite roof and Dasher and Elliot milling down below but he lets Eames curl around him anyway.
"Where do you tell your fellow cute little slaughterers of my kind you go when you make off with me, hmm?" Eames asks. He's watching Arthur put his outfit back together of the items of clothing that were tossed haphazardly across the motel room in their haste while propped up on one arm. Socks, pants, shirt, waistcoat. Arthur's pretty sure he had a tie and underwear when he arrived but he can't find them for the life of him now. He can usually find items by scent but considering he was the one wearing them and he took them off himself they won't smell of anything.
Eames always laughs when Arthur buries his nose in his skin, hungry for scent. He's been with his own kind and one thing he truly missed was the smell. Humans smell like food and his own kind smell like nothing. Only Eames smells like raw unabashed need, like the woods and wild things.
"They're used to me disappearing," Arthur says, tugging his coat on after retrieving it from the floor near the motel room's doorway.
"I forgot," Eames says. "Rumor has it you're the Dark Prince's favorite little toy." Arthur looks up at Eames' tone from checking through his pockets. If he didn't know any better, he would swear that Eames has just sounded jealous for the second time in as many hours.
"I know you can't really understand this, but we have a hierarchy," Arthur explains. "It's fortunate that I'm on Saito's good side."
"We have a hierarchy," Eames protests but at Arthur's raised eyebrow he shrugs, the movement making him slump flat on his back again. "Okay, more of a pecking order." Eames reaches across to his own jacket which is draped over a lamp set on the bedside table and digs around for a moment, unearthing a fairly squashed packet of cigarettes with a crow of triumph.
"I thought you were quitting for me," Arthur says mildly.
"You can't expect a man to forgo his post-coital smoke," Eames scoffs. "Totally doesn't count."
Despite being almost one hundred percent sure he smells nothing like Eames or what he's just done with Eames when he arrives back at the mansion, Ariadne still collars him as soon as he steps through the door and wrinkles her nose when she tugs him closer. "Have fun?" she prods and Arthur resists the urge to rise to the bait because regardless of the way she acts, she couldn't know what he's been up to.
He wouldn't still be standing if she did.
That's something else he misses, people he can trust. He knows Ariadne would have his back if they were in a fight but the opportunity to sell him out in any other capacity would not pass her by. It's useful that Saito has an odd soft spot for him but it doesn't stop the others from wanting to be in that position, have the favor that they crave and work for that Arthur receives with apparently no effort, actually the opposite of effort which irks them to no end.
"I didn't realize I had to check in with you now," Arthur snarls, prying Ariadne's fingers loose from his jacket and stepping away. He just wants his room and his books and some quiet to think. Arthur isn't stupid enough not to know that getting... attached to Eames is a hazardous business but he knows that he is.
The only way it's going to end is badly, for the both of them considering what they are but he can't seem to stop the unadulterated craving he feels for the werewolf.
A weight hits his back and Arthur stumbles a couple of steps. Ariadne is on him, arms hooked around his neck and legs cinched around his waist. She digs her knees into his sides, hard enough that if he were human he knows his ribs would have been pulverized. "There's something Cobb wants you to see before you scurry off and make like an emo teenager," she says, sliding from his back.
Arthur huffs in annoyance, but Cobb is the one person he can actually tolerate in the whole place and he never wastes anyone's time with anything that isn't important.
Arthur follows Ariadne into one of the many studies in the bottom floor of the mansion. Cobb is sitting behind a desk with an open laptop in front of him and a hand in his hair. He looks up when they enter and waves an impatient hand. "Arthur, good. Come look at this and tell me what you think."
Arthur looks at Ariadne but her face is carefully blank despite him being sure that she knows exactly what's going on. He rounds the desk and leans over Cobb's shoulder. There's a freeze-frame of a grainy video of what looks like a subway station. Cobb clicks on the image when he's sure Arthur can see it and as it begins, Arthur watches two large figures run onto the platform, people scattering in their wake. There's no sound so it's not completely clear at first why the people scatter like that until Arthur sees sections of the tiled columns on the platform break away and then three men he recognizes appear in the lower bottom half of the frame, very obviously firing weapons. "Isn't that-?"
"Was Aaron's team," Cobb says and Arthur looks back at the screen but then back to Cobb's profile when what he says registers.
"Wait, was?" he barks and Cobb reaches up a hand without looking and tilts Arthur's face back to the screen.
Arthur looks more closely and one of the first figures spins, pulling a weapon from his jacket. The picture is terrible and there's no reason for him to be as sure as he is, but suddenly Arthur knows that he's looking at Eames. "When was this?" he asks, hoping he doesn't sound as strangled as he feels.
"Yesterday," Cobb says in a dismissive tone.
"Before you disappeared," Ariadne pipes up from the other side of the room. She's thrown herself into a leather armchair in the corner, legs hooked over the back and head lolling off the seat so she's looking at Arthur upside down.
Arthur feels a mixture of relief and confusion at this piece of news. Relief because it means he saw Eames after this happened which means Eames escaped from these Death Dealers unscathed and Arthur isn't about to watch him be put down like a dog in the street, but confusion because he'd seen Eames after this happened and Eames hadn't mentioned it.
Eames fires his weapon and instead of merely stumbling, Arthur watches Aaron who'd been in front of Clifford and Bronx, the other two Death Dealers, drop like a wet sack. Arthur frowns because bullets hurt like fuck but they certainly don't drop a vampire. As he watches, Aaron writhes on the ground and Clifford and Bronx split apart and take cover. "What's happening?" Arthur asks, voice hushed in awe. He's seen the way Aaron is writhing on the ground before, but only when it was a werewolf shot by silver. As they watch, Aaron's movement ceases and his body seems to start collapsing in on itself.
"That we don't know," Cobb says, snapping the laptop shut. "Bronx and Clifford didn't return."
"What do you want me to do?" Arthur asks and Cobb's face hardens.
"Take whoever you want out with you tonight and find those bastards," Cobb grates. "Find out what they did, what they have."
"We'll start at the station, track their scent," Ariadne pipes up and Arthur snaps a glare at her, but he's mostly angry with himself.
How could he be so stupid.
How indeed.
"Arthur!" Eames says, sounding inordinately pleased. "Heart of my heart, throb of my loins - erk!" Eames' jovial patter cuts off when Arthur jams his forearm against Eames' throat and pushes him up against the wall behind. While Eames is unchanged, Arthur has the strength advantage and he uses it now to lift Eames off his feet.
It will be a whole other ball game if Eames decides to change.
"I assume you've heard about my little altercation," Eames croaks.
"What the hell did you do?"
"Can't we discuss this rationally?" Eames asks but Arthur's only response is to increase the pressure on Eames' windpipe. He knows he's not going to hurt Eames, but he wants to provoke him, make Eames change so he has something to fight.
Infuriatingly, just like the first time they encountered each other, Eames refuses to change. It saved Eames' life that first time and it makes Arthur drop him this time, step away and scrub hands through his hair. Eames stumbles a little when his feet hit the floor and he automatically reaches out to Arthur but Arthur bats his hands aside viciously and moves further back, shaking with unspent rage. "Did you kill all three of them?" he asks.
"Yes," Eames says, unapologetic, gaze steady.
"Christ, don't you understand -"
"Arthur, how about you understand something, hmm?" Eames interrupts, voice a low growl. "They were chasing us for no other reason but for what we are. What was I supposed to do?"
"Not... that," Arthur says. "What happened to Aaron was-"
"What?" Eames interrupts again, throwing his hands up in frustration, advancing on Arthur with his shoulders up, teeth bared. "What do you think it's like to be shot by silver? It's fucking horrendous and not always fatal and if we aren't lucky enough to die straight away and we get caught then we have hours, maybe days of torture to look forward to in one of your less than tasteful lairs."
"That's not... you just don't understand," Arthur says, thinking this confrontation isn't going according to plan at all. He was ready to fight, perhaps die for what he believed in but Eames was starting to make everything blurry. Before Eames, his life was very black and white. He was a Death Dealer, werewolves were bad, it was his job to kill them, case closed.
"What don't I understand?" Eames asks and he's definitely angry, but it's a hopeless kind of anger, frustration and resignation. "You know what? You're right, I don't understand. I don't understand why vampires feel this burning desire to eradicate us off the face of this earth. If anything, us non-humans should stick together, or at the very least we should be the wronged party but we stop being your guard dogs and you declare war on us? It's lunacy."
"That's not why I..." Arthur starts and then snaps his mouth shut. He can't believe he nearly...
"Why do you do it?" Eames asks. The fight, what little there was, goes out of him. "You seem a fairly rational sort of chap most of the time. Why do you do it?"
"I can't... this was a mistake. They're tracking your scent now. You have to go."
"You came to warn me? Arthur, I didn't know you cared," Eames says, sounding sad.
Arthur turns, heads for the door of Eames' apartment. Somewhere he knows Eames will have to leave and never return to. The place is saturated in his scent and once the other Death Dealers pick it up from the subway station, they'll be able to find it.
Arthur could just from memory.
"What was it you shot them with?" Arthur asks, just before he leaves. He knows it's paltry but he needs to make some kind of effort to do his job.
"You have your secrets, I have mine."
Part Two