ifeelbetter | Always Where I Need to be

Title: Always Where I Need to be
Author:

ifeelbetter
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value.
Word Count: 3,002
Summary: Eames drunk-dials Arthur.
Notes: Written for the

inception_kink meme. Prompt was Eames is drunk and lonely and drunk-dials Arthur. Some kind of deep-ish conversation ensues (schmoop would be awesome). I have definitely delivered the schmoop. And, by semi-popular demand (cough

lamboystercough) and strategic use of animated Tom Hardy, it has nearly doubled in size.

Unknown caller.

Arthur pondered his phone for a minute. It had the most basic of ringtones, a single tinkling bell, that warbled five times before his decision would have been made for him. It reached three and a half before he flipped it open.

"Hello?" Arthur asked carefully. It could be a job. It also could be a former mark out for violent and bloody vengeance but what the hell. It could be a job and it had been too long between jobs.

"Cheers, mate, look--" Eames said, a roar of crowded noise in the background. "Yeah, it's Arthur. I got Arthur here." There was a swell in the noise, unmistakably a crowd of drunken men.

Arthur frowned and folded over the corner of the page he was on in Great Expectations.

"Arthur? You there, Arthur?" shouted Eames. There was some kind of chant beginning in the background. Arthur could imagine the kind of grungy sports bar Eames would choose. It would be one with some rickety wooden stools around uncomfortably small and equally rickety wooden tables, topped off with a sticky floor. There would be low lighting and a pool table or two tucked away in various corners, maybe even decorating the walls.

"Yes," he said.

"I told them you'd know, see, because you're a Point Man and you guys always know everything--" there was another surge of noise "--shut up, you wankers! I'm talking to Arthur!" Someone booed loudly and then there was a guffaw of laughter.

"Just ask whatever it is you were going to ask," said Arthur wearily, "and let me go back to my book."

"Yeah, alright. François Villon, the thief from--"

"Paris. I know who François Villon is, Eames."

"Of course you do, darling. What was the name of his gang again? It had something to do with--"

"Gang de Coquillards is what you're thinking of."

"He didn't even have to look it up. I told you," said Eames. Someone cheered Arthur's name. "They think you're wizard, did you know?"

"Just what I always wanted. Good night, Mr. Eames."

Arthur ended the call. Instead of pocketing the phone again, he dropped it carelessly onto the end table. He opened his book again but paused briefly to return to his phone and save Eames's new number. He called the new number "Drunk Eames."

It joined the ranks of various numbers with some variation of “Eames” as their ID. “Eames in Beijing” and “Eames in Mendoza” got geographical tags because Eames had mentioned where he was calling from. “Stupid Eames” was the number Eames had used to call Arthur back after a job to finish a petty quarrel they’d started more than a week before. Arthur had won the thing the first time round but Eames kept poking it, not letting it lie and definitely not admitting defeat with any kind of grace.

He flipped the phone closed and dropped it again onto the end table.

* * * * * *

"Arthur. Arthur. ARTHUR. Arthur," Eames was saying before Arthur had even finished putting the phone to his ear.

"What, Eames?" he said. He could have whined about being in bed but thought better of it. The TV was flickering across the room, volume so low it might have been on mute.

"The pub, right? It was playing that show--the gay one about wizards. I thought of you." Eames dropped the phone with a clatter. Arthur could hear him hiss a curse before he re-gained control of the wayward phone. "Sorry. What was I saying?"

"Gay wizards make you think of me. I'm not sure that's a compliment."

"That's stupid. You're not a gay wizard at all," Eames said, his words slurring together. "No, you're like the prince, y'see?"

"Not at all, I'm proud to say," said Arthur, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"But me, I'm just like the manservant. Wizard. Whatever." The way Eames said “manservant” made it sound positively indecent.

"Are you? How nice for you."

"You're not listening, Arthur," Eames said reproachfully.

"And you're talking rubbish. I'll listen properly when you don't talk rubbish."

"I'm not talking rubbish." There was a long heaving sigh on the other end of the line. Whatever bar Eames was in, it had calmed down considerably since the first drunken call a couple of hours before.

"Eames?" asked Arthur, testing the emptiness that had fallen into the conversation.

"Yeah, alright," Eames replied nonsensically and the call ended, clicking off into silence. Arthur looked down at the blinking words, "Drunk Eames," and shook his head.

What a strange fellow, he thought.

* * * * * *

2:42 AM.

You've reached the number 555-020-5522. Please leave your name and number and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

"Arthur? You're not picking up. Arthur. ArtHUR. What if I promised to be reasonable? I'll stick to safe topics. I can go back to trivia, even. I'll just leave the ends of facts I think I know and you can scoff and fill in the blanks and feel superior. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Come on, darling, just pick up the phone. What if I--"

End of message.

* * * * * *

3:23 AM.

You've reached the number 555-020-5522. Please leave your name and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

"Ronnie Briggs and the Great Train Robbery...was that 1964 or 1978? Please get back to me as soon as you can, darling. I'm holding my breath till you call."

End of message.

* * * * * *

Arthur ignored the two calls but listened to the message Eames left each time, staring up at his dark ceiling. Then he pretended he couldn’t call back, not if he was going to get any sleep. He let his arm flop over the side of the bed, tilted towards the bed-stand. He was just resting the tips of two of his fingers on his phone, like an affirmation. He wasn’t waiting for a call.

The next time the phone rang, he picked it up halfway through the first ring.

"It was 1963, Eames," he said because Eames was right: the only thing Arthur loved more than obscure trivia (especially about famous thieves) was the opportunity to show off.

"I knew you were listening, kitten," said Eames. There was a tinny buzz coming from his phone this time. No crowds at all.

"Where are you?" Arthur asked.

"Scarborough. Drinks with some mates."

"Drinking. How novel that must be for you."

There was no answer from the other end of the call. Arthur reached across his bed and switched on the bedside lamp, flooding his room with light.

"Eames?"

"The thing is," Eames said, "is the real thing here. And that's quite a bit your fault."

"You're not making sense, Eames."

Eames didn't seem to mind. He plowed on, ignoring Arthur's protests. "And I think it's only fair that you take your fair share of responsibility. That's all I'm saying. An even distribution sort of thing." He hiccuped loudly.

"You're drunk," Arthur pointed out. "You're drunk and you're not making sense."

"I'm locked in a stall in the bathroom stall at a dive in Scarborough just to hear your dulcet voice, pet. I know I'm not making sense."

Arthur pushed himself up in the bed, letting his head fall back against the headboard.

"What do you want me to say, Eames?" he asked.

Eames waited a beat or two before responding, leaving Arthur unsteady.

"What was John Dillinger's middle name?" he asked finally.

"Herbert."

The phone clicked and Arthur was left, again, staring at the blinking "Drunk Eames" on his cell. Outside his window, a trickle of rain began to beat against the glass.

* * * * * *

Arthur got a text two hours later, just as he was about to nod off.

If I lied, if I was nearby, what would you do?

Arthur frowned. It was a fair question. He had been known to hold a grudge for months against people who wasted his time over the phone. There was a forger in Dubai who he refused to work with ever again (Cobb liked to tell people Arthur had sworn a blood oath and spit on the ground to seal this vow) based on the fact the man had asked a stupid question two times, the second over the phone. Everyone in the business knew that Arthur disliked vapidity in general and in particular over the phone. It made his skin crawl.

But, even after a night’s worth of inane drunk dials, Eames didn’t fit into that bracket of annoyance in Arthur. It was like he had constructed rules for how the world was allowed to behave and then Eames had just taken one step to his left, out of bounds. New rules had to be constructed, new standards devised.

I'd let you in he typed. He stared at the words, re-reading them, and then added: Are you out in the rain? That was an important point. If he was out in the rain, it was punishment enough.

He hit send.

Downstairs came the reply.

Arthur walked over to the window and pushed it open. Sure enough, there was a bedraggled and soaking Eames sitting on his doorstep. Eames didn't look up.

Arthur went back to his phone and typed a response: Catch.

He went back to the window and saw Eames reach into his pocket and pull out his phone. He looked up at Arthur then and Arthur dropped a set of keys into his lap, his aim perfect.

Arthur didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell Eames the apartment number or the fact that only one staircase goes up to the apartments, the other heading down to the basement. He doesn’t need to, that much is apparent from the way Eames deftly maneuvered the front door even though only residents knew about the way it sticks at first until you yank it upwards and out.

Arthur padded out of his bedroom, flicking on the lights as he passed through the hallway and living room.

“Should I be concerned that you know your way to my apartment despite the many precautions I have taken to be hidden here?” Arthur asked when Eames pushed open the door.

“No,” Eames said, wobbling slightly. He was still quite drunk but no longer rambunctious. He had settled into a melancholy sullenness.

Arthur shrugged. He opened the cupboard he was standing next to and pulled out a carefully folded towel. He tossed it to Eames who, despite the fact he couldn’t stand properly, caught it expertly with one hand. It landed draped across his arm, like a caricature of an English butler, like a trick.

“Don’t drip on my carpet,” Arthur commanded.

Eames looked down at his feet, at the pool formed around his soaked (and ridiculously bright green) sneakers. He looked back up at Arthur, meeting his eyes with some sort of studied intention that was lost in the general unsteadiness of his drunkenness. Then he looked back down at his feet and took a ginger step to the side, off the carpet.

“M’clothes are all wet,” he informed Arthur.

“I can see,” Arthur said, raising an eyebrow. “Wait here.”

Eames didn’t, of course. He followed Arthur back down the hallway to his bedroom and leaned heavily against the doorframe while Arthur rummaged through his bureau looking for some article of clothing that might fit Eames’s much wider frame. He could feel Eames watching him as he moved. Everything else about the man may have been made unsteady and unfocused but Eames was certainly unwavering in his gaze.

“Look,” Arthur said finally, straightening up, “you’re being creepy. Go shower or something. That’s what people do, yes? When they crash at other people’s houses after annoying them all night with hilarious drunken phone calls? I’m sure I saw it in a film once.”

Eames’s eyes narrowed. “S’never happened to you before, has it?” he said.

“No, my house has never been used as a haven for drunkards before, amazingly enough.”

“From being uptight, you Yanks,” Eames said, sighing at the effort it took to shift his body slightly to lay his back flat against the frame, his head bending further back to rest against the wood. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. He closed his eyes and Arthur could feel that happening too, just like he had felt his heavy gaze on his neck.

“Be that as it may,” Arthur said, feeling that arguing the point would lead nowhere but back to “Stupid Eames” and combining “Drunk Eames” and “Stupid Eames” would only ruin his night. Morning. Whatever. “Take a shower, Eames,” he insisted.

“M’dripping again,” Eames pointed out. It was true. He had left watery footprints (not muddy, somehow) down Arthur’s hallway and was making another decently large pool where he stood.

Arthur sighed his best long-suffering sigh. “You’re a hassle is what you are,” he said.

Eames opened his eyes to look at Arthur again. Without dropping his eyes, he started to un-do his belt. He undid his fly next, Arthur’s eyes widening, and peeled himself out of the sopping trousers. His boxers clung to his thighs—Arthur swallowed—and he began to un-button his hideously mustard shirt.

“You should—“ Arthur began to say but had to pause for another swallow, his mouth suddenly running dry. He hadn’t quite made up his mind how to finish the sentence, either. It could have gone many different ways.

“Shower. I know. I can find my own way, thanks,” said Eames, dropping the shirt into the pile of his discarded trousers. Arthur just had time to register the thought tattoos before Eames swept, careening, back into the hallway.

The soggy boxers hit the doorframe with a wet thump, thrown from the far end of the hallway.

Arthur picked up the pile of clothes automatically, his mind still frozen on the tattoos, and went to put them in his washing machine. Then he went back to his room and pulled out a faded T-shirt (a joke gift from someone—Mal? Dom, even, back when he had a sense of humor?) with “Fingers are over-rated, explosions of awesome” written across the front. It was stretched enough that it would fit Eames, wider frame and all. Sweatpants, also old and stretched thin, would do for him as well.

All this happened on a layer of Arthur’s consciousness that did not at all interrupt the metronome insistence of tattoos.

* * * * * *

Somehow, though Arthur had a reputation for being able to predict the minutest of behaviors in perfect strangers, he always ended up surprised by the Eames’s next predictable move. In anyone else, Arthur would read endearments as a come on and would react politely but dissuasively. In anyone else, drunken texts would immediately be filed under “wants attention” and he would behave the way you behave with grown children. In anyone else, nudity would be…nudity.

But Arthur was always surprised by Eames, like Eames switched off an essential sector of Arthur’s brain. And then Arthur behaved in ways that surprised himself, echoing off the surprise that simmered under every reaction to Eames, like a reflection of light bouncing around a hall of mirrors.

* * * * * *

“Your clothes are in the wash,” said Arthur, standing outside the bathroom door.

Eames had the towel wrapped around his waist (which surprised Arthur) and looked far more sober far too quickly. Arthur held out the carefully folded pile of clothes. Eames looked down at it and then back up at Arthur, his gaze shifting slowly, still restrained by a liquored lethargy.

“It’s all I have that would fit you,” Arthur explained, surprised to find he sounded apologetic.

“S’fine,” Eames mumbled.

“The shirt was a gift,” said Arthur. “I didn’t buy it.”

Eames shrugged and pulled the pants on, not bothering to close the door for privacy but keeping the towel in place—almost in modesty—until the pants were on. Then he unfolded the T-shirt and read the text.

He huffed a laugh and pulled it on. Arthur felt something twist in his gut—enjoying the laugh? proud of his shirt?—but didn’t say anything.

* * * * * *

Eames slept on the couch, falling asleep almost before his head touched the pillow Arthur had left there to catch his head.

Arthur could have stood in the doorframe between the hallway and living room and watched Eames sleep, his wet hair making the pillow darken under his head. He thought about it and, almost appalled, turned and returned to his own room.

* * * * * *

They sniped at each other over pancakes the next morning—Eames used all of Arthur’s blueberries—and it felt like it always did. Eames, fully awake and sober, was far more amused by the T-shirt than drunken-and-sleepy Eames had been.

Arthur pretended to be annoyed at the teasing but really his stomach still had that twist to it, the one that absurdly loved the T-shirt now, much more than he had loved it for whoever gave it to him. It must have showed on his face, at least a little bit, because of the soft way Eames’s eyes were crinkling at him.

And it was the blueberries and pancakes Arthur tasted on Eames’s lips when he leaned across, surprising them both, and kissed him in mid-taunt.

“Only you,” said Eames, when he pulled back a moment later.

Arthur didn’t get it. He waited for Eames to finish the thought, bridge the gaps.

“Only you,” he repeated, “would wait till the morning after I throw my drunken self upon your tender mercies.”

“Oh,” said Arthur. “Was that what that was?”

Eames shook his head, amused and disbelieving, and pushed the plate of pancakes out of the way.

* * * * * *

Eames ended up staying three weeks.