Eames the Liar, by Featherfish (R)

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

Title: Eames the Liar
Fandom: Inception, Rocknrolla
Pairing: Arthur/Eames, past Eames/One-Two
Length: app 40k
Author on LJ: featherfish
Author Website: fic listing on author's journal
Why this must be read: It's Crossover Week on crack_van, so I'm going to be reccing a few of my favorite crossovers and fusions, because Inception fandom has some amazing examples in all kinds of other fandoms. And like Lacey before me, I'm starting with a RocknRolla AU.

This is an AMAZING RocknRolla x-over where Eames' past is Handsome Bob. I read this fic before I had seen RocknRolla, but I didn't need it to appreciate or understand what was happening. In addition to being totally 100% full of love for Arthur/Eames, and especially Eames' uncertainty and hesitation and total devotion to Arthur, it's a wild cinematic ride from start to finish: narrative jump cuts, non-linear omniscient POV, fab characterizations, BAMF!Yusuf, Arthur & Eames being so fucking in love, the movie references, the crazy plot-- it's all fabulous.

It is bullshit, and Eames knows it. The only person ashamed of Eames is Eames, because Eames knows that Eames is a dirty liar. The night Eames is referring to took place a good year and a half before now, and there was absolutely no shagging anywhere in it. This was the night Arthur became a stick in the mud, and Eames thinks he’s wrecked his little window of opportunity. Their first job together is over and it went well, and they figure a little celebration is in order.

Eames doesn’t remember much about that night, and he believes it’s because he wanted so badly to remember every last detail, to frame it forever in his mind, to have it endless and perfect. What he got for his trouble was a blur, half-remembered sentences he can’t be sure he didn’t invent, and Arthur’s smile, and, infuriatingly, the total of the tab. He remembers the darkness of the room Arthur dragged him into, remembers the deep, sexy laugh in his throat as he pushes Eames against the door and kisses him. He doesn’t remember the kiss. The kiss is the black hole.

What he remembers is Arthur smoking again, this time it’s a clove, sweet-smelling, poison-breathing falseness, lying to itself and to all young people that it could be better than the cigarette because of the simple superficial detail of taste. Masked cigarette, masked boy. Eames laughs.

“Don’t laugh,” protests Arthur, because he’s been talking about something or other that seemed dreadfully important at the time, and he has miles of insecurity to hide. “I’m being serious.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Eames lies. “Just for the hell of it.” He reaches out and plays a little with Arthur’s hair, back when it still hung in his face. “You should be serious more often, it suits you.”

“Cute,” says Arthur. He tilts his head back. “You know you’re really sexy at this angle?”

Arthur’s been trying to seduce him all night and Eames isn’t having it. Eames doesn’t want the bad lie. Eames wants the bad liar. Eames wants him sober and wants him knowing who he is and what he wants. Eames has never felt like this about anyone before, almost.

“Shh,” he says.

“What do you want to do to me?” says Arthur, leans close, presses himself against Eames, thin, warm, lithe body, perfect little waist, Eames could fit his arm around it and hold Arthur in the crook of his elbow.

Arthur tugs at his earlobe, pinched lightly between his teeth. “What do you want?” he whispers.

Such fine little points, is Arthur. Teeth, nails, eyelashes, tapered fingers, trim waist, the fabric of his voice, the feel of his clothes tight beneath Eames’s fingertips. Does he even sweat? What noises could he possibly make, with his voice so taut and controlled? Arthur is every lovely detail Eames could ever have imagined, and every lovely detail he could ever want to know.

Eames remembers gripping his shoulders, gently extracting himself, pushing him away.

“Darling boy,” he says. “I would give anything to love you.”

Arthur looks at him, a blank slate, marble, unmolded. Eames wants to hold him, to kiss him again. He will not.

“But you aren’t who I want to know,” Eames says, and this is where it happens, this is where he sets it off. “You’re something else, something I don’t think you understand, and something I understand too well. And for as long as you think that’s acceptable, you will only be parts of a greater, unrealized whole.”

Eames leaves Arthur alone, stupidly, in that little room, swallowed up in the lung-blackening pool of spiced pungent smoke.

It is after this that Arthur gives up the lie: he becomes the stick in the mud that is the true Arthur, the Arthur who is at peace with being an uptight guy in a suit. Unfortunately, with the persona also goes the seductive attitude, the wanting looks, the innuendo. With the true Arthur comes the challenge of getting Arthur to admit he likes you, and getting him to admit he’s okay liking you, okay liking men, okay having any kind of sexuality at all. And sure, real Arthur doesn’t want anyone to know he and Eames shared a drunken smoke-filled kiss in the back of a bar over a year ago, and Eames thinks his window is gone, thinks maybe Arthur doesn’t want him anymore and it was all a missed opportunity. Their relationship becomes fraught with this unresolved sexual tension that has everyone rolling their eyes.

It’s a month after the Fischer job ends before Arthur drinks a little too much and calls Eames and says “Why haven’t we done it yet, you fucking douchebag?”

Eames the Liar