Can You Picture That?
Sep. 11th, 2010 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ifeelbetterTitle: Can You Picture That?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ifeelbetter
Warning: This ended sadder than I originally intended. There have been calls for a sequel. It is in the works. It will be happier. Probably.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value besides one truly awesome ukulele.
Word Count: 1,750
Summary: Backstory!fic. When Arthur first vets Eames for a job, he discovers thousands of pictures and a MySpace page. This is, obviously, a terrible idea for a criminal. They begin a long-term argument about Eames's penchant for photography. Arthur begins to collect the discarded photographs when Eames leaves them all over the warehouse.
Notes: Prompt from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
inception_kink meme: Arthur realizes how much of a fucking camera whore Eames is.
I should make a separate list for the mopey fics I write. I quite like how this one turned out, though, even if it took a sad turn at the end.
There was a time when Cobb's team didn't have a go-to forger. They worked ad hoc, with whoever was nearby and mostly by word-of-mouth. Someone would know someone whose brother knew a forger and, a couple of days later, some guy would show up and he'd be alright. Then they'd do the job, the guy would barely scrape by and Arthur would tighten his jaw and shake his head at Cobb (a tiny motion, you'd have to know it was coming to catch it) and they'd leave the guy there when they disappeared.
So Arthur hadn't been surprised to hear Cobb on his cell, wrangling a new forger's name out of someone called Phil.
Cobb barely spoke, just grunted in almost-affirmatives (it was no secret to the general pool of mind criminals that Cobb was picky). When he repeated the name, Arthur made a note.
Eames.
He was already sitting at his computer so he'd typed the name into Google, just to see what came up.
"He has a MySpace page," he told Mal.
She snorted, rustling the pages of Le Monde. "You're sure it's the right Eames?" she asked, not looking away from her paper.
Arthur looked over at Cobb, caught his eye, and mouthed, "given name?"
Cobb switched the phone to his other hand and turned away from Arthur. He didn't like to negotiate two conversations at once but he begrudgingly asked, "What's his first name?"
He listened for a moment and then cupped his hand around the bottom of the phone and told Arthur, "He doesn't know."
"Any distinguishing features?" Arthur asked, squinting at the massive collection of thumbnails. "Tattoos?"
The answer was yes. And it was the right Eames.
"He's a camera whore," Mal said, standing behind Arthur's chair. She said it like it was a joke, like they weren't international criminals who couldn't afford to be jeopardized by such amateurish stupidity.
Cobb seemed more amused than angry too. He hadn't been so predisposed to amusement two years ago, before he started dating Mal. Post-marriage, he'd grown a sense of humor that frequently made Arthur want to gag.
When Cobb had bent Arthur's ear for a session of spontaneous sentimentality about the color of Mal's hair a couple of days after meeting her, Arthur had done some quick mental calculations and had factored in a certain degree of laxity entering into their routine as Cobb's admittedly fantastic romantic life blossomed. He wasn't the best point man in the business for his system of color-coding, after all.
It still didn't mean he had to like the way neither of them was willing to listen to his complaints--completely legitimate complaints--about Eames's photographic promiscuity.
It was the beginning of a very frustrating period of Arthur's life.
* * * * * *
Eames didn't stop with the photos though he was willing, with amazingly bad grace, to take down the MySpace page. He still kept photos by the thousand on his personal laptop.
Arthur would have, with any other person, been willing to concede the partial victory and leave the debate alone. Somehow, Eames tried his patience and tested his reserve and all that added up to an endless and completely childish conversational tug-of-war.
Arthur would point out the obvious dangers of having all those photos of Eames just lying around. Eames's love of photographs, whether he was featured in them or not (though, obviously, he adored being in them, you could see it in every fiber of his being) was a weakness.
Eames made a couple of good counter-points early on (they were his photos, no one else had access to them, after all) but eventually gave over the debate to even more childish returns. He stuck his tongue out a couple of times. He definitely threw a pen at Arthur once.
"It's evidence," Arthur frequently pointed out.
Somehow, that just meant Eames escalated and starting carrying around an ancient Polaroid camera.
The tiny photos got underfoot. Eames left them where he took them, dropping them onto the floor or flipping them onto the nearest surface (including into the sink).
It was only reasonable, then, that Arthur collected them all. And he was an organized man so he filed them in a tin box, giving folders topical descriptions ("Annoying Eames" and "Stupid Eames" being just a couple), written in marker on the tabs of hanging folders.
It would be unwise to leave them in the warehouse, he thought. The warehouse had been raided twice the year before, once by the police and once by a rival team.
So he took the tin box home.
* * * * *
And then that job was over and Arthur waited for a sign that they'd be moving on, that Eames would be left behind. Mal looked like she was waiting for the sign too but she was looking into Arthur's face, watching him squirm under the expectation.
But Cob didn't say anything. He just passed Eames a folded piece of paper afterwards. Arthur knew it would have a date and a location on it and that Eames was part of them team. He knew it somewhere in the pit of his stomach where the knowledge sat like a lump of lead.
* * * * *
The tin box had to be expanded after a year. And the file system was no longer efficient. For one thing, "Stupid Eames" was now filled to overflowing.
If Arthur had been a different sort of man, he would have started other categories. There would definitely have been a folder for "Beautiful Eames" and it would have expanded pretty quickly as well. It would have outstripped "Stupid Eames" easily.
But Arthur was not that type of man. He saw the possibility when he emptied his pockets of each day's discarded Polaroids, letting them scatter across his coffee table. He knew exactly which ones would have gone into that folder.
But he wasn't that type.
He decided to organize them chronologically instead.
* * * * *
Arthur wondered whether he needed to add a file marked "Not Safe for Children" when he found one particularly scandalous photo.
Eames had gotten it into Arthur's back pocket without him noticing.
* * * * *
Eames disappeared for weeks at a time, sometimes longer, so Arthur didn't really worry when he didn't join them for a job in Buenos Aires.
But the next job, in Singapore, and Eames's absence started something ticking.
When he finally showed up in Toronto, Arthur bit his tongue before he let himself say something angry. There were cuts and bruises all over him, a particularly nasty gash across the bridge of his nose and one of his eyes was swollen nearly shut.
Arthur sighed internally. He took Eames's camera out of his hands and stepped back.
The photo was not one that would have gone into the "Beautiful Eames" file, if Arthur had ever made it.
It would have gone into a folder Arthur hadn't thought of a name yet but one that had a lot to do with the way Eames was looking at him.
"What do you do with them?" Eames asked.
Arthur almost pretended not to know what he was talking about but thought better of it. You don't kick a man when he's down.
"I organize them," Arthur said.
Eames chuckled. "I bet you do." He didn't sound like he was joking.
Arthur didn't know what that meant, really. But he shook the photo a couple of times, waiting for Eames's eyes to appear.
* * * * *
Eames sent photos to his phone sometimes. It had become such a part of his routine by that point to collect and catalog Eames's photographic detritus that Arthur couldn't bring himself to delete them.
Then Eames started texting about the system Arthur used to organize the photos.
I KNOW U HAVE A SYSTEM, the text said.
Arthur rolled his eyes at his phone and wished a technology had been invented that could convey scorn and condescension as easily as a text message.
Of course I have a system. Otherwise it wouldn't be organized, he typed.
FOLDERS? DO YOU HAVE COLOR CODING?
Arthur chose not to admit that, yes, the folders had recently been awarded a color-coding system. And that a pink hi-liter had been involved in several stages.
Folders. With titles. He could admit that much, surely.
BEST/WORST DRESSED?
With you, it's only Worst. Arthur wondered whether he should ask if Eames knew how to get out of capslock but decided that would be a bit too much.
WAIT FOR IT, Eames replied enigmatically.
Arthur's questions were answered a moment later when his phone received a photo that made his eyes water.
He didn't reply but he did print out a copy and paste it to the front flap of the "Worst Dressed" folder.
* * * * *
There was a crescendo building between them, something like a romance (though neither was romantic). Arthur and Eames both knew it even as they circled each other, tugging and pulling at the boundaries of what they allowed each other.
There was the night when a Polaroid was shoved under Arthur's door depicting the other side of his door, the green paint and the copper knocker. And Arthur opened the door and heard the click before he saw Eames, grinning, pulling the photo out of the camera.
There was the morning, too, when Arthur laughed and took six Polaroids of their eggs and toast. He called it an artist's series.
And then, one bleak Parisian night, Mal jumped.
Arthur shredded everything they had, everything that could lead any of the new myriad pursuers to them, and packed his life into one small valise. Suits and books and furniture all had to go--even the familiar grooves of his life, the streets he walked down, had to change.
He told Eames he burned the photos. He said it like it was a sterile fact, like it wasn't what it obviously was: back off, there's more important work to be done.
Eames nodded, something grimly like a smirk on his face.
Arthur kept the photo from Toronto, the one where Eames looked at him and Arthur had felt it to his toes.
The photo, if Arthur had been a different type of man, he could have pointed to and told someone (but who?), "This is the moment I fell in love."
He'd been right, though. The photos were a risk.
Author:
ifeelbetterWarning: This ended sadder than I originally intended. There have been calls for a sequel. It is in the works. It will be happier. Probably.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of value besides one truly awesome ukulele.
Word Count: 1,750
Summary: Backstory!fic. When Arthur first vets Eames for a job, he discovers thousands of pictures and a MySpace page. This is, obviously, a terrible idea for a criminal. They begin a long-term argument about Eames's penchant for photography. Arthur begins to collect the discarded photographs when Eames leaves them all over the warehouse.
Notes: Prompt from
inception_kink meme: Arthur realizes how much of a fucking camera whore Eames is. I should make a separate list for the mopey fics I write. I quite like how this one turned out, though, even if it took a sad turn at the end.
There was a time when Cobb's team didn't have a go-to forger. They worked ad hoc, with whoever was nearby and mostly by word-of-mouth. Someone would know someone whose brother knew a forger and, a couple of days later, some guy would show up and he'd be alright. Then they'd do the job, the guy would barely scrape by and Arthur would tighten his jaw and shake his head at Cobb (a tiny motion, you'd have to know it was coming to catch it) and they'd leave the guy there when they disappeared.
So Arthur hadn't been surprised to hear Cobb on his cell, wrangling a new forger's name out of someone called Phil.
Cobb barely spoke, just grunted in almost-affirmatives (it was no secret to the general pool of mind criminals that Cobb was picky). When he repeated the name, Arthur made a note.
Eames.
He was already sitting at his computer so he'd typed the name into Google, just to see what came up.
"He has a MySpace page," he told Mal.
She snorted, rustling the pages of Le Monde. "You're sure it's the right Eames?" she asked, not looking away from her paper.
Arthur looked over at Cobb, caught his eye, and mouthed, "given name?"
Cobb switched the phone to his other hand and turned away from Arthur. He didn't like to negotiate two conversations at once but he begrudgingly asked, "What's his first name?"
He listened for a moment and then cupped his hand around the bottom of the phone and told Arthur, "He doesn't know."
"Any distinguishing features?" Arthur asked, squinting at the massive collection of thumbnails. "Tattoos?"
The answer was yes. And it was the right Eames.
"He's a camera whore," Mal said, standing behind Arthur's chair. She said it like it was a joke, like they weren't international criminals who couldn't afford to be jeopardized by such amateurish stupidity.
Cobb seemed more amused than angry too. He hadn't been so predisposed to amusement two years ago, before he started dating Mal. Post-marriage, he'd grown a sense of humor that frequently made Arthur want to gag.
When Cobb had bent Arthur's ear for a session of spontaneous sentimentality about the color of Mal's hair a couple of days after meeting her, Arthur had done some quick mental calculations and had factored in a certain degree of laxity entering into their routine as Cobb's admittedly fantastic romantic life blossomed. He wasn't the best point man in the business for his system of color-coding, after all.
It still didn't mean he had to like the way neither of them was willing to listen to his complaints--completely legitimate complaints--about Eames's photographic promiscuity.
It was the beginning of a very frustrating period of Arthur's life.
Eames didn't stop with the photos though he was willing, with amazingly bad grace, to take down the MySpace page. He still kept photos by the thousand on his personal laptop.
Arthur would have, with any other person, been willing to concede the partial victory and leave the debate alone. Somehow, Eames tried his patience and tested his reserve and all that added up to an endless and completely childish conversational tug-of-war.
Arthur would point out the obvious dangers of having all those photos of Eames just lying around. Eames's love of photographs, whether he was featured in them or not (though, obviously, he adored being in them, you could see it in every fiber of his being) was a weakness.
Eames made a couple of good counter-points early on (they were his photos, no one else had access to them, after all) but eventually gave over the debate to even more childish returns. He stuck his tongue out a couple of times. He definitely threw a pen at Arthur once.
"It's evidence," Arthur frequently pointed out.
Somehow, that just meant Eames escalated and starting carrying around an ancient Polaroid camera.
The tiny photos got underfoot. Eames left them where he took them, dropping them onto the floor or flipping them onto the nearest surface (including into the sink).
It was only reasonable, then, that Arthur collected them all. And he was an organized man so he filed them in a tin box, giving folders topical descriptions ("Annoying Eames" and "Stupid Eames" being just a couple), written in marker on the tabs of hanging folders.
It would be unwise to leave them in the warehouse, he thought. The warehouse had been raided twice the year before, once by the police and once by a rival team.
So he took the tin box home.
And then that job was over and Arthur waited for a sign that they'd be moving on, that Eames would be left behind. Mal looked like she was waiting for the sign too but she was looking into Arthur's face, watching him squirm under the expectation.
But Cob didn't say anything. He just passed Eames a folded piece of paper afterwards. Arthur knew it would have a date and a location on it and that Eames was part of them team. He knew it somewhere in the pit of his stomach where the knowledge sat like a lump of lead.
The tin box had to be expanded after a year. And the file system was no longer efficient. For one thing, "Stupid Eames" was now filled to overflowing.
If Arthur had been a different sort of man, he would have started other categories. There would definitely have been a folder for "Beautiful Eames" and it would have expanded pretty quickly as well. It would have outstripped "Stupid Eames" easily.
But Arthur was not that type of man. He saw the possibility when he emptied his pockets of each day's discarded Polaroids, letting them scatter across his coffee table. He knew exactly which ones would have gone into that folder.
But he wasn't that type.
He decided to organize them chronologically instead.
Arthur wondered whether he needed to add a file marked "Not Safe for Children" when he found one particularly scandalous photo.
Eames had gotten it into Arthur's back pocket without him noticing.
Eames disappeared for weeks at a time, sometimes longer, so Arthur didn't really worry when he didn't join them for a job in Buenos Aires.
But the next job, in Singapore, and Eames's absence started something ticking.
When he finally showed up in Toronto, Arthur bit his tongue before he let himself say something angry. There were cuts and bruises all over him, a particularly nasty gash across the bridge of his nose and one of his eyes was swollen nearly shut.
Arthur sighed internally. He took Eames's camera out of his hands and stepped back.
The photo was not one that would have gone into the "Beautiful Eames" file, if Arthur had ever made it.
It would have gone into a folder Arthur hadn't thought of a name yet but one that had a lot to do with the way Eames was looking at him.
"What do you do with them?" Eames asked.
Arthur almost pretended not to know what he was talking about but thought better of it. You don't kick a man when he's down.
"I organize them," Arthur said.
Eames chuckled. "I bet you do." He didn't sound like he was joking.
Arthur didn't know what that meant, really. But he shook the photo a couple of times, waiting for Eames's eyes to appear.
Eames sent photos to his phone sometimes. It had become such a part of his routine by that point to collect and catalog Eames's photographic detritus that Arthur couldn't bring himself to delete them.
Then Eames started texting about the system Arthur used to organize the photos.
I KNOW U HAVE A SYSTEM, the text said.
Arthur rolled his eyes at his phone and wished a technology had been invented that could convey scorn and condescension as easily as a text message.
Of course I have a system. Otherwise it wouldn't be organized, he typed.
FOLDERS? DO YOU HAVE COLOR CODING?
Arthur chose not to admit that, yes, the folders had recently been awarded a color-coding system. And that a pink hi-liter had been involved in several stages.
Folders. With titles. He could admit that much, surely.
BEST/WORST DRESSED?
With you, it's only Worst. Arthur wondered whether he should ask if Eames knew how to get out of capslock but decided that would be a bit too much.
WAIT FOR IT, Eames replied enigmatically.
Arthur's questions were answered a moment later when his phone received a photo that made his eyes water.
He didn't reply but he did print out a copy and paste it to the front flap of the "Worst Dressed" folder.
There was a crescendo building between them, something like a romance (though neither was romantic). Arthur and Eames both knew it even as they circled each other, tugging and pulling at the boundaries of what they allowed each other.
There was the night when a Polaroid was shoved under Arthur's door depicting the other side of his door, the green paint and the copper knocker. And Arthur opened the door and heard the click before he saw Eames, grinning, pulling the photo out of the camera.
There was the morning, too, when Arthur laughed and took six Polaroids of their eggs and toast. He called it an artist's series.
And then, one bleak Parisian night, Mal jumped.
Arthur shredded everything they had, everything that could lead any of the new myriad pursuers to them, and packed his life into one small valise. Suits and books and furniture all had to go--even the familiar grooves of his life, the streets he walked down, had to change.
He told Eames he burned the photos. He said it like it was a sterile fact, like it wasn't what it obviously was: back off, there's more important work to be done.
Eames nodded, something grimly like a smirk on his face.
Arthur kept the photo from Toronto, the one where Eames looked at him and Arthur had felt it to his toes.
The photo, if Arthur had been a different type of man, he could have pointed to and told someone (but who?), "This is the moment I fell in love."
He'd been right, though. The photos were a risk.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-12 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-12 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-05 07:41 pm (UTC)Being an epic hoarder myself, I loved that Arthur systematically filed away all Eames' photos, though my heart wept when he said he burned them (I must be in denial, I keep hoping that they are actually safely tucked away in his super-secret hiding spot). I also really liked that he kept one, because that for me was an indication of how much he feels for Eames/how he is able to admit to himself that it's love.
Haha, basically, thanks for writing and sharing :)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-15 05:05 am (UTC)Sidenote, do you know of the guy who took a polaroid picture every day (http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15131) for 18 years? This made me think of him.