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kathierif_ficTitle: Puzzle Pieces
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kathierif_fic
Fandom: Inception
Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Cobb/Ariadne (implied)
Rating: FRT-13
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Eames doesn’t know what Cobb was thinking when he put him and Arthur together, but they are actually great as partners.
A/N: written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
au_bingo, prompt “law enforcement”. Cop!AU, 2046 words.
Eames doesn't know what Cobb was thinking when he gave him Arthur as new partner, doesn't know if Cobb was thinking at all in the first place or if he was just blindly throwing people together and hoping there wouldn't be any problems while he tried to deal with Mal's death and the fact that he alone is responsible for their two little kids now.
He doesn't know if Mal's death, so sudden and unexpected - as unexpected as the death of a detective on duty during a bank robbery really can be, and Eames knows better than a lot of his co-workers that there is the latent awareness of the dangers of their job and then, there is the acute feeling of being invincible, safe from harm because they are cops, they are the good
guys, and the good guys, the heroes, always, without a fail, survive until the very end, mostly because the movie would be rather boring otherwise, and that these two can't be brought together for most of the time - he doesn't know if it's that which made Cobb lose his mind and partner him up with Arthur.
Arthur, who is so completely the opposite of everything Eames is and does.
They are like day and night, Arthur and he, or like cats and dogs, bickering all day long if left to their own devices and reports.
Arthur is methodical and structured, he likes protocols and rules. He's so much by the book that Eames sometimes wonders if Arthur actually helped writing it, or at least modernizing some of the older books that had existed even before Arthur was born.
Arthur is good at the traditional parts of police work, at putting puzzle pieces and clues together and at writing endless pages of reports. He can do all the things Eames has little patience for, and he does them in half the time Eames would need and with that smug twitch of contempt at the corners of his mouth.
Eames knows that look all too well. Most of the time, it is directed at him, and it is a nice change of pace seeing Arthur look at someone else like this, as if he has got something stuck to the sole of his highly polished Italian leather shoe.
"Arthur, darling..." he drawls when he's watched Arthur for long enough to amuse himself. Arthur's eyes narrow at the hated petname, but he takes a step away from their witness, a twitchy little bloke with an apparent drug problem, when Eames pushes himself away from the wall and sits down opposite the man. This is his area of expertise, right here. He has a knack of
talking to people and needle out the information they need, even when the people don't exactly want to reveal whatever Eames is after.
Eames says it's a gift.
Arthur says it's scamming people, barely legal, but he usually has something like amusement and fondness in his voice when he does, and as long as Eames uses his powers and skills for work and not to get Ariadne, the cute rookie Cobb picked up somewhere, to tell him what Cobb is planning, or to bring him coffee, he doesn't complain too much.
It only takes Eames a little bit over half an hour to find out what he wants to know - they now have a name of one of the drug runners, that's a good starting point if they ever want to catch Browning, the big name behind most of the drug sales around, and Arthur doesn't look at him anymore as if he wants to put Eames in jail along with their suspect.
Their relationship had a rocky start, but it has evened out. Eames respects Arthur, and Arthur admits freely that Eames is the best at what he does, and that he couldn't do it.
It's enough to make them work together smoothly, without Cobb having to interfere every day.
It doesn't stop Eames from teasing Arthur as much as possible, but that's just how he communicates affection. He wouldn't let anything happen to Arthur, ever.
"So I hear you and Ariadne have a date tonight," he mentions while falling in step with Arthur on their way out of the precinct and to a new crime scene, armed robbery with at least two dead bodies and several injured. Arthur turns a delightful shade of pink, the faint blush covering his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and Eames grins, satisfied with his success.
"It's just dinner," Arthur protests as they walk toward their car. Arthur is driving, as usual, and Eames has long given up complaining about that.
He knows Arthur is a terrible control freak, someone who has plans and contingency plans for every possible situation.
Someone who is great at solving crime not because of his ability to look at a piece of evidence sideways and see it in a different light, the way Eames does, but because he has the patience and will to put all these little puzzle pieces together, again and again until he finds the way they fit and let him see the whole picture.
~~~
"It's just dinner," Arthur repeats, a sharp resigned edge to his words when he stands, 7pm on the dot, and shrugs into the suit jacket that looks like custom-tailored to his physique, even if he could never afford that on a cop's salary.
Eames holds up both hands in a defensive gesture. He hasn't been planning on commenting on Arthur's and Ariadne's dinner again, no matter what Arthur thinks he's seeing on Eames' face.
"Have fun," he calls after Arthur's tense shoulders, and he really means it.
He wants Arthur to relax, to have a good time, even if he is convinced that he will crash and burn with her.
Ariadne, he thinks, is not good enough for Arthur; she is too young, too inexperienced, too innocent.
Besides, she has a crush on Cobb, and Eames is pretty sure that the same reasons that make her so wrong for Arthur would make her a perfect match to Cobb if he ever gets his shit together and starts an attempt to do something about that Mal-shaped hole in his life and his heart.
But Arthur - Arthur, Eames thinks, needs something different. Someone strong enough to catch him when he stumbles, someone to stand up for themselves, someone who can hold Arthur close even when he struggles because he can’t see how much he needs it, someone who can fuck him into oblivion and the mattress, someone like...
Eames blinks and takes a few mental steps back, to observe the puzzle pieces in his mind and to take stock as to how he managed to get to his conclusions, double- and triple checking his facts and the evidence.
Arthur would be proud of his systematic approach, if he knew.
No matter how he turns and twists it, the results remain the same.
Eames wants Arthur for himself, thinks he’s what Arthur needs.
He wants Arthur.
Okay, that isn’t exactly a new relevation. He’s wanted Arthur for years now, and he has reached a state of zen and peace about this want. What’s new is the conviction that Arthur needs him, wants him back.
“Huh,” he says, takes a deep breath and tries to focus back on their case and on Browning.
Fifty-three minutes later, he gives up with an annoyed huff and goes home. There isn’t much he can do anyways, not before Yusuf down in the labs can tell him more about the drugs they’ve confiscated. Yusuf is Eames’ friend, in a way, and Eames is reasonably certain that Yusuf made their case a top-priority and will come back to him as soon as humanly possible. Yusuf is one of the best CSIs Eames has ever worked with, but no matter what television says, those experiments don’t get finished within minutes.
So yeah, as long as the results aren’t in, there isn’t anything Eames can do.
It’s better to sprawl out in front of the tv and stop thinking about the case for the night.
Or about Arthur.
The problem is, of course, that Eames is good at what he does. He has a hunch about something, it proves to be true more often than not, and he has a very strong gut feeling about Arthur, almost enough to make him reach for his phone and try to call his partner to find out what he’s doing and if he’s still with Ariadne.
He doesn’t. If Arthur and Ariadne are still on their not-date and he calls now, Arthur will probably call him a stalker and hang up without answering any of Eames’ questions.
Not that Arthur would answer a personal question like that without some serious prodding and proverbial arm-twisting.
~~~
It’s almost 11 pm when the sound of the doorbell ringing yanks him out of the exhausted haze he has fallen into.
He goes through the motions, fluidly gliding to his socked feet and grabbing his gun before he goes to check who his visitor is. Tension makes his muscles hum, adrenaline chasing away the remnants of his exhaustion, but before too long, he realizes who has come to interrupt his peace and crime-drama, and he slouches against the doorjamb as he lets Arthur come in.
Arthur is holding a foil-wrapped package that smells enticingly and a bottle of wine. He hesitates for a brief heartbeat, as if he wonders what he’s doing there, but then he shoves both at Eames and bends down to take off his shoes.
“I told you it’s just dinner,” he snaps, his voice oddly muffled. “I brought you some back.”
Leftovers, then.
Eames is still pathetically graceful as he unwraps the food and starts eating while Arthur goes through his cabinets and cupboards, hunting for wine glasses and a bottle opener before pouring the wine.
~~~
“She said Cobb asked her out,” Arthur reveals, halfway through the bottle. “Wanted to let me down gently.” He snorts.
Eames winces, hides his facial expression behind his own glass and bites his tongue until the insane urge to say I told you so has disappeared.
~~~
“What are you doing here?” he asks, once the bottle is empty and they’re starting the second one, from Eames’ stash this time.
Arthur frowns unhappily, the corners of his mouth turned down almost comically.
“Don’t know,” he murmurs finally. “Couldn’t think of anyone else I wanted to be with right now, to be honest.”
Eames laughs and twists onto his side, and then, he brushes his lips against Arthur’s cheek, the corner of his downturned mouth, the tip of his nose.
Arthur looks at him from wide eyes, but then, he tangles his hands in Eames’ shirt with almost inhuman strength and pulls himself closer and into a deep kiss and Eames thinks, in that split second where he’s still capable of thought before all his focus is on Arthur and the taste of his tongue, that this is why they work so well together: they have different approaches, different methods, but at the end, they arrive more often than not at the same conclusions:
Eames wants Arthur.
Arthur wants Eames.
And tomorrow, they’ll find a way to combine their skills again to hunt down Browning.
But for now, the case is the last thing they both think about.
~~~
Eames doesn’t know what made Cobb decide to toss him and Arthur together as partners, considering how different they are from each other and how much friction he had to expect from that move.
He doesn’t know, but, he thinks as he tightens his arms around Arthur’s bare waist and pulls the sheets back up to their shoulders while he waits for his alarm to beep the next morning, he’s reasonably sure that, whatever Cobb wanted to achieve with the move, this - them, together in bed - is not it.
He doesn’t care.
Judging from his soft snuffles as he curls against Eames’ side, neither does Arthur.
Author:
kathierif_ficFandom: Inception
Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Cobb/Ariadne (implied)
Rating: FRT-13
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Eames doesn’t know what Cobb was thinking when he put him and Arthur together, but they are actually great as partners.
A/N: written for
au_bingo, prompt “law enforcement”. Cop!AU, 2046 words.Eames doesn't know what Cobb was thinking when he gave him Arthur as new partner, doesn't know if Cobb was thinking at all in the first place or if he was just blindly throwing people together and hoping there wouldn't be any problems while he tried to deal with Mal's death and the fact that he alone is responsible for their two little kids now.
He doesn't know if Mal's death, so sudden and unexpected - as unexpected as the death of a detective on duty during a bank robbery really can be, and Eames knows better than a lot of his co-workers that there is the latent awareness of the dangers of their job and then, there is the acute feeling of being invincible, safe from harm because they are cops, they are the good
guys, and the good guys, the heroes, always, without a fail, survive until the very end, mostly because the movie would be rather boring otherwise, and that these two can't be brought together for most of the time - he doesn't know if it's that which made Cobb lose his mind and partner him up with Arthur.
Arthur, who is so completely the opposite of everything Eames is and does.
They are like day and night, Arthur and he, or like cats and dogs, bickering all day long if left to their own devices and reports.
Arthur is methodical and structured, he likes protocols and rules. He's so much by the book that Eames sometimes wonders if Arthur actually helped writing it, or at least modernizing some of the older books that had existed even before Arthur was born.
Arthur is good at the traditional parts of police work, at putting puzzle pieces and clues together and at writing endless pages of reports. He can do all the things Eames has little patience for, and he does them in half the time Eames would need and with that smug twitch of contempt at the corners of his mouth.
Eames knows that look all too well. Most of the time, it is directed at him, and it is a nice change of pace seeing Arthur look at someone else like this, as if he has got something stuck to the sole of his highly polished Italian leather shoe.
"Arthur, darling..." he drawls when he's watched Arthur for long enough to amuse himself. Arthur's eyes narrow at the hated petname, but he takes a step away from their witness, a twitchy little bloke with an apparent drug problem, when Eames pushes himself away from the wall and sits down opposite the man. This is his area of expertise, right here. He has a knack of
talking to people and needle out the information they need, even when the people don't exactly want to reveal whatever Eames is after.
Eames says it's a gift.
Arthur says it's scamming people, barely legal, but he usually has something like amusement and fondness in his voice when he does, and as long as Eames uses his powers and skills for work and not to get Ariadne, the cute rookie Cobb picked up somewhere, to tell him what Cobb is planning, or to bring him coffee, he doesn't complain too much.
It only takes Eames a little bit over half an hour to find out what he wants to know - they now have a name of one of the drug runners, that's a good starting point if they ever want to catch Browning, the big name behind most of the drug sales around, and Arthur doesn't look at him anymore as if he wants to put Eames in jail along with their suspect.
Their relationship had a rocky start, but it has evened out. Eames respects Arthur, and Arthur admits freely that Eames is the best at what he does, and that he couldn't do it.
It's enough to make them work together smoothly, without Cobb having to interfere every day.
It doesn't stop Eames from teasing Arthur as much as possible, but that's just how he communicates affection. He wouldn't let anything happen to Arthur, ever.
"So I hear you and Ariadne have a date tonight," he mentions while falling in step with Arthur on their way out of the precinct and to a new crime scene, armed robbery with at least two dead bodies and several injured. Arthur turns a delightful shade of pink, the faint blush covering his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and Eames grins, satisfied with his success.
"It's just dinner," Arthur protests as they walk toward their car. Arthur is driving, as usual, and Eames has long given up complaining about that.
He knows Arthur is a terrible control freak, someone who has plans and contingency plans for every possible situation.
Someone who is great at solving crime not because of his ability to look at a piece of evidence sideways and see it in a different light, the way Eames does, but because he has the patience and will to put all these little puzzle pieces together, again and again until he finds the way they fit and let him see the whole picture.
~~~
"It's just dinner," Arthur repeats, a sharp resigned edge to his words when he stands, 7pm on the dot, and shrugs into the suit jacket that looks like custom-tailored to his physique, even if he could never afford that on a cop's salary.
Eames holds up both hands in a defensive gesture. He hasn't been planning on commenting on Arthur's and Ariadne's dinner again, no matter what Arthur thinks he's seeing on Eames' face.
"Have fun," he calls after Arthur's tense shoulders, and he really means it.
He wants Arthur to relax, to have a good time, even if he is convinced that he will crash and burn with her.
Ariadne, he thinks, is not good enough for Arthur; she is too young, too inexperienced, too innocent.
Besides, she has a crush on Cobb, and Eames is pretty sure that the same reasons that make her so wrong for Arthur would make her a perfect match to Cobb if he ever gets his shit together and starts an attempt to do something about that Mal-shaped hole in his life and his heart.
But Arthur - Arthur, Eames thinks, needs something different. Someone strong enough to catch him when he stumbles, someone to stand up for themselves, someone who can hold Arthur close even when he struggles because he can’t see how much he needs it, someone who can fuck him into oblivion and the mattress, someone like...
Eames blinks and takes a few mental steps back, to observe the puzzle pieces in his mind and to take stock as to how he managed to get to his conclusions, double- and triple checking his facts and the evidence.
Arthur would be proud of his systematic approach, if he knew.
No matter how he turns and twists it, the results remain the same.
Eames wants Arthur for himself, thinks he’s what Arthur needs.
He wants Arthur.
Okay, that isn’t exactly a new relevation. He’s wanted Arthur for years now, and he has reached a state of zen and peace about this want. What’s new is the conviction that Arthur needs him, wants him back.
“Huh,” he says, takes a deep breath and tries to focus back on their case and on Browning.
Fifty-three minutes later, he gives up with an annoyed huff and goes home. There isn’t much he can do anyways, not before Yusuf down in the labs can tell him more about the drugs they’ve confiscated. Yusuf is Eames’ friend, in a way, and Eames is reasonably certain that Yusuf made their case a top-priority and will come back to him as soon as humanly possible. Yusuf is one of the best CSIs Eames has ever worked with, but no matter what television says, those experiments don’t get finished within minutes.
So yeah, as long as the results aren’t in, there isn’t anything Eames can do.
It’s better to sprawl out in front of the tv and stop thinking about the case for the night.
Or about Arthur.
The problem is, of course, that Eames is good at what he does. He has a hunch about something, it proves to be true more often than not, and he has a very strong gut feeling about Arthur, almost enough to make him reach for his phone and try to call his partner to find out what he’s doing and if he’s still with Ariadne.
He doesn’t. If Arthur and Ariadne are still on their not-date and he calls now, Arthur will probably call him a stalker and hang up without answering any of Eames’ questions.
Not that Arthur would answer a personal question like that without some serious prodding and proverbial arm-twisting.
~~~
It’s almost 11 pm when the sound of the doorbell ringing yanks him out of the exhausted haze he has fallen into.
He goes through the motions, fluidly gliding to his socked feet and grabbing his gun before he goes to check who his visitor is. Tension makes his muscles hum, adrenaline chasing away the remnants of his exhaustion, but before too long, he realizes who has come to interrupt his peace and crime-drama, and he slouches against the doorjamb as he lets Arthur come in.
Arthur is holding a foil-wrapped package that smells enticingly and a bottle of wine. He hesitates for a brief heartbeat, as if he wonders what he’s doing there, but then he shoves both at Eames and bends down to take off his shoes.
“I told you it’s just dinner,” he snaps, his voice oddly muffled. “I brought you some back.”
Leftovers, then.
Eames is still pathetically graceful as he unwraps the food and starts eating while Arthur goes through his cabinets and cupboards, hunting for wine glasses and a bottle opener before pouring the wine.
~~~
“She said Cobb asked her out,” Arthur reveals, halfway through the bottle. “Wanted to let me down gently.” He snorts.
Eames winces, hides his facial expression behind his own glass and bites his tongue until the insane urge to say I told you so has disappeared.
~~~
“What are you doing here?” he asks, once the bottle is empty and they’re starting the second one, from Eames’ stash this time.
Arthur frowns unhappily, the corners of his mouth turned down almost comically.
“Don’t know,” he murmurs finally. “Couldn’t think of anyone else I wanted to be with right now, to be honest.”
Eames laughs and twists onto his side, and then, he brushes his lips against Arthur’s cheek, the corner of his downturned mouth, the tip of his nose.
Arthur looks at him from wide eyes, but then, he tangles his hands in Eames’ shirt with almost inhuman strength and pulls himself closer and into a deep kiss and Eames thinks, in that split second where he’s still capable of thought before all his focus is on Arthur and the taste of his tongue, that this is why they work so well together: they have different approaches, different methods, but at the end, they arrive more often than not at the same conclusions:
Eames wants Arthur.
Arthur wants Eames.
And tomorrow, they’ll find a way to combine their skills again to hunt down Browning.
But for now, the case is the last thing they both think about.
~~~
Eames doesn’t know what made Cobb decide to toss him and Arthur together as partners, considering how different they are from each other and how much friction he had to expect from that move.
He doesn’t know, but, he thinks as he tightens his arms around Arthur’s bare waist and pulls the sheets back up to their shoulders while he waits for his alarm to beep the next morning, he’s reasonably sure that, whatever Cobb wanted to achieve with the move, this - them, together in bed - is not it.
He doesn’t care.
Judging from his soft snuffles as he curls against Eames’ side, neither does Arthur.