Idle Hands

[ifeelbetter]

Title: Idle Hands
Author: ifeelbetter
Warning: This is nearly a month old. What. It's a total geezer by the standards of this fandom.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value besides one truly awesome ukulele.
Word Count: 2,075
Summary: Civilian, non-criminal life does not suit Arthur. He gives it his best shot, though.
Notes: Prompt from inception_kink meme: Arthur is actually attempting to have a normal life after the events of Inception... find a normal job, have normal hobbies, you know, things that don't involve dreams, guns, explosions or death. It's ... not going well.




1.

The hammock swung gently back and forth, making a gentle creak at the farthest points of its reach. Arthur looked out over the lake beside him, dimmed by the sunglasses he was wearing, at the sparkle of sunlight and the perfectly blue sky reflected seamlessly in the placid water. There was a Margarita in his hand, a dusting of sea salt running around the brim of the glass. His sister owned actual Margarita glasses, covered in dust and cobwebs in the back of her cupboard. She'd brought the drink to him on a little tray, a tiny doily underneath.

He hadn't done anything for an entire day. He had just swung listlessly in the hammock, back and forth and back and forth, sipping slowly on the Margarita.

He was so bored it hurt.

2.

"Not that it isn't lovely having you here, Artie--" he sister said, a glance passing between her and her husband that stank of matrimonial telepathy.

"I thought I'd leave tomorrow," he interrupted. He knew that was what she wanted to know. She was like their mother--she didn't think people were being proper people if they weren't employed. It didn't matter that he had enough money in the bank to retire to a castle in Scotland if he'd wanted to. He needed employment.

"Oh. I wasn't--" she protested but checked herself. "Have some more potatoes. You look half-starved."

"I eat fine," he said, not really paying attention anymore. It was too easy, really, because they always had this exchange. He could have been asleep and finished it properly.

"You never did eat enough starch," she said, just like their mother used to.

"I'm fine."

"At least have another slice of the turkey. You like the turkey."

He spooned another helping of the potatoes onto his plate and pushed them moodily around the plate.

"Maybe I need a hobby," he said thoughtfully.

"You should try fishing," his sister's husband volunteered. He was a quiet guy by nature, the kind who could find true happiness waiting on a boat with a stick in his hands, waiting for a string to jiggle.

"Yeah, OK," said Arthur. It was worth seeing if he was that kind of guy too.

3.

He was not that kind of guy.

The sun was hot, the clothes were ridiculous and the whole thing made his general boredom multiply like some sort of viral infection, bursting out of every pore.

"Not fishing, then," he said, two weeks later, dropping the hat (with little fuzzballs and fake fish dangling haphazard around it's brim) delicately into the trash.

He was staying at a bed and breakfast somewhere in Michigan. There was a tiny old man with an equally old dog sitting on the porch when he left in the morning and who had laughed himself silly when Arthur returned.

"I bet you're better suited to something a bit more exciting," the man had said, whistling through the gaps in his teeth. "Try riding a horse. You could train up, compete in the rodeo come July."

Arthur thought about it.

Horses could be good.

While he stripped the hideous black rubber boots (who wears boots beyond the knees besides streetwalkers?), he opened his laptop. He contemplated briefly and then typed equestrian into Google.

Then he added Wales as an afterthought. He sent out an e-mail while he was still pulling off the left boot, promising to pay an obscene amount for a private tutor. He booked a flight in the next breath.

Why Wales? he wondered. It had just popped into his head, the way Cobb described the perfectly executed inception.

Then again, why not Wales? He had all the time in the world.

It probably had nothing to do with the text message from Eames sitting, technically unread (if Arthur didn't open it, it didn't count as having been read), with the subject line, in Wales, wish u were here. Or, if it did, it was probably just some kind of subliminal thing.

4.

He'd expected more of a challenge from horses, to be honest. But maybe he should have expected it to come easily to him. It wasn't like he was entirely inexperienced in guiding less intelligent beings into the logical path. He'd worked with a team in Piscataway, once, that had been so monumentally stupid that he'd worried for the future of the human race and sent an angry letter to the Darwin estate, demanding an explanation for the survival of such a thoroughly unfit branch of the species.

He'd gotten a polite form-letter in response.

But he picked up horseback riding in a day. Less, even. He was comfortable by the end of the day, his private tutor amazed and the management showering him with praise.

So he bought a horse.

He got another text from Eames. The subject line was too vague (This too shall pass), he had to open it. Wales a bust. Monte Carlo next. Won't spoil the surprise ending.

Arthur shook his head. He decided he'd name his horse Darling, just because he could.

He spent the next three days teaching it to leap effortlessly over great distances. The bigger, the better. He liked the way he could feel the air through his fingers, loosely tangled in the reins.

And the required equestrian attire wasn't all that bad. Better than fishing, even if the trousers were a tad on the ridiculous side.

Stop texting me, he sent Eames.

The reply came in seconds. Shan't.

5.

One of the trainers pulled him aside after two weeks and tried, in a very British way, to tell him that he was over-doing it a bit. Horses don't really ever learn how to do cartwheels. It just wasn't done.

So he paid a hefty sum to a stable to house Darling and opened Google again.

Hobbies were obviously a bust. They just didn't keep his interest long enough. He needed a job.

Google told him to consult craigslist. He frowned at Google. It sounded like a ridiculous operation, to be frank. But if it was good enough for the common man, it might just be good enough for Arthur.

He chose Florida. No reason, especially not the photo Eames had sent him from Miami.

He bought a ticket and rented a house on a whim, right in the middle of Miami. He'd figure out the job thing when he got there. Maybe he'd be a barista. He had always thought kindly of baristas.

He pulled out his phone, ignoring the un-read texts (all 4 of them) from Eames and just responded: I'm retired. Going to have normal job in Florida. Leave me alone.

He pocketed the phone but had to pull it out again a moment later when it buzzed annoyingly against his thigh.

Try yoga. I hear fantastic things about yoga.

Arthur rolled his eyes as he typed his response: I want a job, Eames. I can't teach yoga.

Eames's response was rapid-fire again.

You could be an expert in anything you put your mind to. Call it a dare.

That prickled something in the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck, almost like a shiver down his spine. He threw the phone into his suitcase (still traveling light, just like Mal taught him years ago) and tried not to think about it the entire flight to Miami.

He also tried not to think about it when he opened his laptop again in Miami and Googled the local yoga schools.

6.

Arthur was beginning to lose faith in humanity. Yoga was simple. An obnoxiously loud woman complained nasally about the complexity of one of the poses and Arthur just wanted to shake her and shout, "Try building a skyscraper with your mind!"

All yoga consisted of was putting his appendages in creative places. And memorizing sequences. Granted, some were harder to accomplish than others but he had them all ingrained solidly by the end of the first week.

The yoga studio graduated him up three levels and then ran out of advanced classes. The head of the studio, a man with dread-locks down to his knees, teared up when he talked to Arthur about his chakras.

"I don't suppose you'd let me teach at your school?" Arthur asked.

The man actually began to cry a little then, mumbling something about beau savants and perfect alignment. Arthur frowned, trying to come up with a reaction that wouldn't encourage the man to cry more but was simultaneously comforting.

He tried patting him on the shoulder.

He ended up getting a daily slot in the schedule and minimum wage. Arthur had never been paid minimum wage before. His college and university tuition had been paid by Interested Parties (the government) and then he had been paid exorbitant amounts to do extraordinary things (for the government) and then had started to steal for a living. So it was a novelty to be paid minimum wage.

It lost its appeal pretty quickly.

He was just finishing with his Tuesday morning group, having left them in Corpse Pose (a title that amused Arthur considering most of his experience with corpses had taught him they tended not to lie around like calm, dignified Sleeping Beauties) when he caught sight of a familiar jacket through the studio's large front windows.

Tweed. Of course Eames would wear tweed in Miami.

He rushed the students and hurried them out of the studio faster than he had ever done before. He also ignored the receptionist's attempts to attract his attention. Instead, he pushed the big glass doors open, making both wheeze as they cranked apart. Eames was perched on the railing of the wheelchair accessible ramp.

"No one wears tweed in Miami," he told Eames, his hands on his hips. This was an important point.

"I wear whatever I like, wherever I like," Eames said, grinning roguishly. One of the things Arthur found most disquieting about Eames was his ability to grin roguishly. Arthur had never found a use for the word "rogue," not even in the innermost recesses of his private observations, before he met Eames. Then it just kept popping into his head.

"You look ridiculous," Arthur pointed out. It wasn't an accusation, just a statement of absolute, objective fact.

"And you look fantastic, as always," said Eames, his gaze dragging slowly down and then even slower on the way back up, all the way to Arthur's eyes. "Miss the pinstripes, though."

"Don't be an ass. Yoga instructors can't wear three-piece suits."

Arthur hopped up onto the railing, perching beside Eames. He had spent the previous evening arguing with the cable company about his satellite dish. Now, just sitting next to Eames, he could feel a tiny bit of a thrill under his skin, like he used to years ago. Back when it was him and Cobb...and Mal.

"I have a job in Shanghai," said Eames, facing outwards, towards the street. It wasn't even like he was talking to Arthur, even, just voicing his thoughts to the open air.

"Oh?" said Arthur. He tapped the railing with one foot, testing the durability. Not a nervous tic at all.

"The organization's absolute bollocks. Extractor has never worked with a Point Man, would you believe it," said Eames. He pulled the end of a cigarette out from behind his ear, the one not facing Arthur.

"Must be a really amateur business," said Arthur. He wrinkled his nose when Eames struck a match against the railing and lit the cigarette. It smelled unlike any cigarette Arthur had ever smelled before but seemed, oddly, to round out Eames's scent like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

"You have no idea," said Eames. He took a long pull from the stubby cigarette, ignoring Arthur's disgusted expression. "How's yoga? I've heard--"

"Fantastic things about yoga, I know," Arthur interrupted, the hum of boredom settling in around him by the mere mention of his pedestrian occupation. "It's nice. Very...flexible."

Eames looked curious, turning his face towards Arthur. He had scruff all across his jawline and a golden tan reaching beyond the open collar of his hideous Hawaiian shirt. "Flexible?" he repeated.

Arthur shrugged.

"Sounds fascinating," Eames said, his tone so carefully neutral that Arthur knew he was amused.

"It is," he insisted doggedly.

"You couldn't take a week off, maybe, and help out a couple of old friends...?" Eames suggested.

"A couple? Who else?"

"Oh, Ariadne's the architect. And Yusuf might stop by." Eames puffed out a perfect smoke ring. "And me, of course. You could help me out."

"Do you need my help, Mr. Eames?" Arthur asked. He pushed off the railing and stood directly in front of Eames, his hands on Eames's knees.

Eames tossed the end of the cigarette onto the curb next to Arthur's left foot.

"Or you could always argue with the phone company all evening," said Eames, not answering the question.

Arthur pushed forward, pushing Eames's knees apart slightly, just enough to get really in his face. "I just might," he said.

Eames smiled wider, more of his crooked teeth, as if Arthur was speaking in code and only he understood it.

"I could promise you adventure, foreign places, car chases, damsels in distress, intrigue, anything you like," he said, reciting the items of his offer as he edged his fingers up Arthur's arm, staring from the elbow. "We could topple empires and rescue virtuous captives and defeat monsters. They'd sing songs about us, pet."

Arthur's week had promised nothing more than the New York Times and a bowl of cereal every morning and long, empty hours between that and a sad, pathetically healthy dinner for one in the evening.

Then Eames's fingers were tracing up his neck, ghosting down his jawline, and he was leaning into it, into Eames. There were Eames's knees, pressed again his sides and Eames's fingers finding their way into his hair and behind his neck. And their mouths touching was like fireworks, explosive and colorful.

"And that. Much much more of that," Eames promised.

Arthur growled and pulled Eames back, closer. Shanghai, Madrid, Wales, even Miami--it didn't really matter. He'd go, he'd follow, he'd fucking run.