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All in all, Arthur is lucky that this night isn't like one of those conversations that happens where one is in a noisy, crowded room and shouts the most embarrassing thing ever just as the music cuts out. All he has to be worried about is being mortified in front of people he'll see every minute, waking or not, for at least the next ten days.
And really, with enough shots of unlabelled Italian rotgut in him, none of this will be his fault. Arthur can compartmentalize with the best of them, and the shame of a drunken self isn't really the same as being ashamed of himself. The embarrassing moment that he's going to kick himself for was when they started drinking, because he should have known better. No one, in the history of the world, has ever had a dignified drunken experience with their coworkers, and when you consider that the average person's coworkers don't have anything more to go on than whatever mementos are tacked up in the office...
Well, it's a miracle that any of the truths have been about real events, because any one of them, even Yusuf - who spends barely any time with them - could ask Ariadne questions for days about the quirks in her subconscious that she hasn't managed to train out yet. Arthur's sure that Cobb's got some gems stored away, just as Arthur's filed away some interesting moments on each of them.
"I'm just saying," Ariadne says, for what has to be the fiftieth time, "that maybe next time we do a job that doesn't involve a recluse who lives in a nearly-inaccessible chalet. Not that the snow isn't lovely," she adds with a nod to Cobb, who is probably planning on flying his kids in to make snow angels, for all the thought he's putting into work lately, "but it would be lovelier if there wasn't quite so much if it, and if it wasn't keeping me quite so stuck."
And then she says "L'Chaim," working her way through her repertoire of toasts, and they down their shots of the clear, alcoholic invitation to disaster that Eames had selected from the stock in the cellar.
It's been a game of Truth or Truth, given the company and their surroundings. There's no one to prank-call or ding-dong-ditch, and they seem to have mutually shunned the teenaged make-out dares. No one is braving the whiteout storm to go lick frozen metal or tempt hypothermia.
Dom earns the right to ask the next question when he offers, "Run over by clown car," as his most embarrassing dream death. He's got a more-than-usually evil glint in his eye when he turns to Arthur, so he's clearly got something specific and embarrassing in mind. "First perfect kiss," he says, and Arthur instantly knows what story Dom wants him to spill.
The problem is, Arthur takes his Truth or Truth very seriously, even if it means exposing lies he's already told to people in the room in the past. Eames looks suspiciously invested, and Arthur has to wonder whether Dom's been passing the story around behind his back.
"No such thing as a perfect kiss," Arthur says. Eames looks disappointed, which must mean that he was expecting the same story Dom is.
"C'mon, Arthur," he wheedles, "tell everyone about Persephone." Eames and Ariadne exchange a glance at the name, like they've any room to throw stones.
"Hand to God," Arthur says. "Perfect kiss: never happened. I'll tell the story though."
Persephone had been Arthur's obsession during his sophomore year in college. She was a women's studies major, and she played bass in a band, and she hated most of Arthur's friends on principle because she thought they were all robots for the forces of globalization. She'd had dark, dark brown hair, and beautiful ears, and amazing breasts, and in hindsight, she was very polite about Arthur's desire to put her up on a pedestal even though it was the last place she wanted to be. They met at a coffeeshop every day for a week before she asked him out on a date, and Arthur had done nothing but tell Dom about how it was going to be the most romantic evening in the history of completely boring college towns.
And afterwards, Arthur'd told Dom that it was amazing, from the moment he saw her to their perfect kiss goodnight. He'd been so infatuated with her, and he really had wanted it to be perfect, but in the end, the kiss had mostly been... wet. And then she'd blown him in the hallway outside her apartment and it had been over in about a minute and a half.
Not his smoothest year, twenty. But interesting, and Persephone had let him follow her around for a couple of months while she tried to teach him critical thinking and observation skills that have served him well since. Although, she probably thought he'd be applying them to something more mundane, like choosing appropriate dates.
The story he tells the group is true, and he only abridges the ending because he doesn't want to give Ariadne any ideas.
"I don't think that kind of perfect exists, anyway," he says. "It's all artificial expectations."
Ariadne hisses and throws one of her ballet flats at him. Yusuf, who is visibly fighting the need to say "Who throws a shoe, honestly?" picks it up and tosses it back to her, which goes to show why he's the chemist and not the point man, because there is never a reason to give ammunition politely back to the enemy.
Eames says "Clearly, you've just been kissing the wrong people." Then he winks and puckers his lips, just to be extraordinarily predictable.
Arthur ignores Eames and claps his hands once to gather the group's attention. "So, Yusuf, why don't you tell us why you can't cross the border into Lithuania?"
The inevitable sequel to the kissing conversation is slightly more private, with slightly less potential to dredge up the mortifying behavior of his youth, because everyone but Eames is passed out, but if Eames keeps talking at his current volume, that may not be true for long.
"I'M JUST SAYING," he interrupts to elaborate, "you can't have a perfect kiss if you don't know who you're kissing, and you don't know where you want it to go. I've had hundreds of perfect kisses. Each different, each perfect in it's own way."
Arthur would be tempted to roll his eyes, if he hadn't drunk such a staggering amount. It's pretty likely that if his eyes make any sort of looping motion, his body will take it as a cue to kick off the spins, and like his first night with Persephone, he also doesn't want to relive any of the time he spent purging his stomach in college. Instead, he lets his head flop to the side in a gesture that would indicate disdain if there were any justice in the world. "I will allow," he says, holding up a single finger to indicate the smallness of his willingness to allow, "that you think they were perfect, because your definition of perfect is wrong."
Eames moves from stretched out on the floor to kneeling in front of Arthur with a speed that makes Arthur a little dizzy, and more than a little amazed that Eames managed to halt his momentum before toppling over in the other direction. "And your definition of perfect is small-minded, which is why you'll never find joy," he says. If there's one thing that Arthur is always willing to admit, it is that Eames knows how to find the joy in his life.
If there's another thing that Arthur is always willing to admit, it is that Eames is way too close to him, and try as he might to find a place to look that is less unsettling than directly into Eames's eyes -- like his left eyebrow, his lips, his chin -- his face isn't offering a lot of options. Looking down below his face gets him an eyeful of Eames's chest, visible down the open neck of his shirt, and as much as Arthur can tell himself that it's not indecent to look at a man's naked chest, it feels indecent when it's Eames's skin and ink and crisp curls of hair that he's getting a glimpse of.
He closes his eyes for a second, which makes him feel a little swimmy, but at least it's a different sort of swimmy, and when he opens them again, Eames has moved back so that Arthur can focus on his whole face and nothing at all. It forms him neatly back into Arthur's conversational adversary instead of a collection of pieces that Arthur wants to touch.
"Okay, great and powerful Oz, tell me what my imperfect kisses and I have been missing all these years."
Eames manages to roll his eyes just fine, Arthur notices. "How should I know? You haven't introduced me to any of the ladies you've been squandering your attentions on." Eames also still has control of his eyebrows, as he demonstrates by raising one of them. "Unless you want to go on a projection-hunt. I could offer you some tips then."
"Not while we're drunk, Eames," Arthur says. He waves a hand, possibly less gracefully than the airy gesture of permission he was going for. "Hypothesize. Make shit up. You're good at that."
When he looks away from his waving hand and back over to Eames, he's leaned against the base of the chair across from Arthur's couch, studying him like he doesn't already know Arthur in uncomfortable detail.
"Well," he says. "If I know you, Arthur, you won't be happy unless you're impeccably dressed, on a bridge in bloody Venice with some poncy violin player following you around."
Entirely without his permission, Arthur's mouth says, "What, a mountaintop villa outside Altare isn't good enough?" Eames's face suddenly seems very, very close, and very sharp, and very still, even though there's a good four feet of navy blue shag carpet and dead air between them, and Arthur's ceasing to trust his eyes.
After a moment, Eames smiles. "Not while we're drunk, Arthur," he says, and then, in a further demonstration of agility - and Arthur has an uneasy feeling, relative sobriety - he hops to his feet and turns to leave the room. "Water, I think, yeah?" he calls over his shoulder.
Whether it's due to the water, or the crisp mountain air, or a full night's sleep (on a surprisingly comfortable bed for a rented home), or the dubious benefits of drinking just one type of liquor, straight, Arthur doesn't feel quite like he wants to die in the morning. Of course, he stays very still in bed when he first wakes up, just to make sure. After a minute or two he notices that his nose is cold, and this gets added to the list of possible hangover preventions when Arthur thinks of it, because he can't remember ever waking up hungover and cold. It was usually an unpleasant clammy warmth like he'd been left to ferment in a plastic bag overnight.
The room Arthur chose is on the ground floor, facing west and up the mountain, so it's a little cavelike and probably prone to damp, but it's also sheltered and quieter than the rooms upstairs that feel like they're hanging in the trees. It's a good planning space, though he wasn't intending to do much planning while hiding under the covers and trying not to remember too much about the previous night. It's perfectly acceptable to run down his list for the morning, though: check on the cistern and water lines to the house; note the gauge on the tank for the generator; move firewood since they're going to be cut off from the village for at least two more days; and try to figure out whether he took his own clothes off last night to end up wearing sleep pants and what feel like hiking socks on his feet; and how much distance he can reasonably keep from Eames.
A shower will have to wait until he checks their water supply, which makes the typically cheering prospect of getting out of bed and putting on clean clothes pale slightly. He settles for pulling on one of the thermal shirts he'd packed. And putting briefs on under his flannel pants, Christ. After a piss and yet another glass of water and a thorough brushing of his teeth and washing of his face, he even feels brave enough to open the bedroom door to find out if the horrors of blinding sunlight or the smell of an English breakfast wait to knock him over.
When he opens the door into the shared space, it's the heat that nearly knocks him over, courtesy of the fire that someone has already built back up. The smell of coffee and something like bread draws him to the kitchen, and introduces him to the sight of Eames standing at the window. That is, Eames standing at the window, holding a cup of coffee, and wearing his own pair of baggy sleep pants and an undershirt that does nothing to disguise either the shape of his body or its many decorations.
Arthur has the sudden urge, for the first time since he was a very, very young teenager, to pull his hands inside his sleeves, and it's at least partly to ensure that he keeps his fingers to himself. The sudden welling of saliva in his mouth could be from the smell of food, or late-onset hangover nausea as easily as it could be the sight of Eames's shoulders. He sits down on the far side of the heavy table (a little suddenly, not entirely by design) and makes enough noise doing it to attract Eames's attention where his socked footsteps hadn't. Just to be sure on the nausea front, and how horrifying is it that throwing up might be the more preferable option, he swallows and waits a second before saying good morning.
While he's waiting, Eames smiles at him, gorgeous and sunny and brighter than the light reflecting off the snow outside. Then he taps a knuckle against his temple. "How's the head?" He asks in an unusually moderate, considerate tone, considering that Eames himself doesn't appear to be suffering.
"Good," Arthur says after a moment. "Better with coffee, maybe. Is there...?"
" 'f course, love. Fresh pot, even. Ariadne took most of the last one with her to crawl back into bed."
The endearment doesn't sound like it comes with any more or less effort than usual, but by the time Arthur registers the word, Eames has already turned back to the counter to pour a mug. When he comes back to the table, he's got a plate of golden yellow... somethings in his left hand, and he sets them down in front of Arthur with his coffee. "Biscuits," he says to whatever expression appears on Arthur's face. "Uh, American biscuits, or maybe Italian, but not biscuits." His forehead wrinkles for a second. "Fat and sugar and eggs and polenta, mainly. Cornbread, maybe, yeah? I was up early, and the rest of the pantry's pretty intimidating. Did you do that?"
"No, I. Really?" Arthur says, still stuck back on the part where Eames woke up early and baked. "I ordered staples for a week, but I guess the caretaker assumed, you know, foreign party in for two weeks..." It's one more thing to add to his list for the morning: inventory food. He briefly considers moving that to the top of the list, due to proximity and the fact that the others will want food before they worry about fuel consumption rates, but --
"Do I get more than one try?"
Eames's interruption genuinely derails Arthur's train of thought, which says something for how fuzzy his brain must be, so he takes a sip of coffee and breaks off a piece of biscuit to test. "More than one try at what?"
"The kiss, Arthur. Do I get more than one try? Because a perfect first kiss, I'll admit that's a bit twee, but a second or third..." When he lets the thought complete itself, it's accompanied by a smile that's less devilish than usual. "Or if not, do I get to tell you what to do?"
Arthur swallows past what might be panic rising in his throat, if he were the type of man to panic. What he wants to say is something like, "Really?" but that's admitting an inequality that he's loathe to let into the conversation. Choosing a more measured response he says, "Do you think my idea of perfection is you ordering me around?" It's intended to be sarcastic, but it loses some of it's edge between Arthur's brain and his mouth. It loses the rest of its edge between Arthur's mouth and Eames's ear, if the twist of his lips into a smirk is any indication.
"I guess we'll have to see," Eames says, before taking a sip of his coffee, and then pushing his chair back so that he can stand.
When he gets up, unsurprisingly, he circles to Arthur's side; when he gets there, he turns the chair next to Arthur so that it's facing away rather than tucked under the edge, and then straddles it. When he's sitting in the chair, Eames's knees bracket Arthur's; he seems to have unconsciously turned to follow Eames, like a sunflower.
"How about I just tell you to relax," Eames says, and Arthur rolls his eyes at the futility of that advice ever working, on him, or on anyone else in supposed need of relaxing.
"How about I just tell you to get on with it so that you can be wrong," Arthur shoots back, but again it comes out warmer than intended, and then Eames's face is bewilderingly close to Arthur's for the second time in as many days. Then his right hand is cradling Arthur's jawline, and his left is on Arthur's thigh, and Arthur really is sitting much more on the edge of his chair than he remembered.
And then Eames kisses him, a little off-center, mostly on his bottom lip, and the first thing Arthur notices is the scratch of Eames's bristle on his chin. It's nearly the only thing he notices, because Eames pulls back almost as soon as he'd started. Arthur opens his eyes, and tries to meet Eames's look steadily, or as steadily as you can when you can only really look at one eye at a time.
"Whoops," Eames says, leaving most of the noise in breath on Arthur's lips.
Their lips are together again before Arthur can put together words to ask. This time there's nothing off-center about it but the slight tilt of Eames's head, and his nose just brushes Arthur's. This time Arthur notices that Eames's lips feel as soft and smooth as they look, and he pulls back a fraction of an inch to self-consciously test his own with his tongue. Eames moves to follow him, and then there's a moment of suction, and another where Eames's lips part and Arthur follows suit, and then there's a light nip on Arthur's lower lip, and Eames pulls back, slightly farther than before.
Arthur catalogues the twitch of a wrinkle between Eames's eyebrows, notes that Eames seems to be studying his face rather than looking into his eyes, and resists the urge to lean into the pressure of Eames's thumb stroking his cheekbone thoughtfully. Instead, he stares at Eames's lips and tries to decide which prize he wants to win. When Eames takes his hand off Arthur's leg to run it through his own hair, Arthur follows the movement enviously with his eyes, but keeps his hands on his thighs. His hands are deliberately not tucked in his sleeves, but it's a close thing between that and gripping the fabric of his pants.
"Oh, I see," Eames says, and this time when he leans in, the fingers of his left hand find the longish bits of hair on the back of Arthur's head. He doesn't tug, but it gives the touch a sense of solidity that Arthur feels in his lips and most of the rest of his body. If there was ever really a decision to make or an argument to be won, Eames has it; Arthur's last thought before he gives himself over entirely to kissing is that he hopes Eames is in for more than the conquest.
Some time later, there's a yelp, and Arthur hears Ariadne say, "I knew it!" in a voice that echoes off the ceiling in the living room. When Arthur looks over his shoulder, Yusuf's standing in the doorway looking apologetic. "We'll just be..." he waves over his shoulder. "Sorry, sorry."
Before Arthur can watch Yusuf back out of the room, Eames is using the hand on the back of his neck to guide their mouths back together. "That one doesn't count," he says, when his lips are an inch from Arthur's. "Act of God or something." Arthur doesn't take the chance to tell Eames that he doesn't need any more practice.