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Eames is quite content, rustling through the sports pages of his imported copy of the Mail on Sunday (which he buys purely for its football commentaries – the rest is hardly the cutting edge of journalism) and licking the last traces of marmalade from his fingers, when he is quite rudely disturbed by a pounding on the door of his hotel room.
It is not even eight in the morning yet. The others should still be deep in jetlagged sleep. Eames dusts the toast crumbs from him lap and gets up to open the door. He does this cautiously; the knocking is really quite aggressive.
Arthur is standing in the hallway outside Eames’s room, scowling for all he is worth. His hair is tousled. He is wearing his glasses, a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. His feet are bare.
This is new.
“Good morning,” Eames says cautiously.
“You are a jackass,” Arthur says.
“Right,” Eames says slowly. “For what reason?”
Arthur cranks his scowl up another notch.
“I am not having this argument in the hall where everyone can see,” he says. And he shoulders his way past Eames and into the room, his bare feet stomping.
Eames peers up and down the deserted corridor.
“Fair enough,” he says.
He ducks back inside the room and closes the door. Arthur’s arms are folded across his chest. He is looking at Eames expectantly.
“Problem, darling?” Eames asks.
“I’m waiting for an explanation,” Arthur says.
“Of...?”
Arthur’s nostrils flare. His jaw is all tight where he is clenching his teeth, poor love. Eames’s gaze drifts to the pot of tea still sitting beside The Mail. When in doubt, tea is always the answer. He picks up a clean cup from the tray.
“Tea?” he offers.
“What you just did back there was unprofessional, unacceptable and, frankly, embarrassing for everybody,” Arthur says.
Eames goes quiet, the teacup dangling uselessly in his grasp.
“Remind me,” he says. “What exactly did I do?”
“Kissing me! Right in front of Cobb and the others! I was mortified. Nobody knew where to look! It’s too far Eames. A joke is a joke, but that was too far.”
Arthur is so angry that he is shaking a little. His chest is heaving. For a moment, it is all so convincing that Eames thinks, Did I...?
But then he shakes his head. He sets the teacup down carefully and slides both his hands into his pockets, trying to keep his movements as slow and unthreatening as possible.
Eames’s voice is quite calm when he says, “I didn’t kiss you, though, Arthur.”
“Yes. You did. Right before the fire alarms went off and the hotel started to collapse around us,” Arthur snaps.
“Hm,” says Eames.
Then he glances very pointedly at the walls of the room; they are all completely intact. The absence of fire alarms is positively deafening.
Arthur blinks. He looks around also, and something begins to dawn on his face.
“Arthur,” Eames says, adopting a condescending tone. “Did you have a dream?”
“What?” Arthur says. His anger has turned into something far more skittish. He looks at Eames uncertainly.
“Did you have a dream about me kissing you?”
“No,” Arthur says quickly. But he has stopped scowling now, and his cheeks have turned bright pink.
For someone in the business of fraud, Arthur is a terrible liar. Eames smirks.
“Are you sure?” he says.
Arthur opens his mouth to reply, but closes it again before any words can make it out.
“Darling,” Eames says. “I know that subconscious thoughts speak louder than words, but really. You should have said something.”
As Eames steps closer to him, Arthur’s tongue darts out, licking nervously at his lips and this is all the invitation Eames needs.
He curls one hand around Arthur’s shoulder and slots his other hand beneath Arthur’s jaw to tilt his face up to the right angle. Perhaps it is the remnants of a dream working their magic, but when Eames kisses him, Arthur parts his lips and his mouth is soft and pliant, moving hesitantly against Eames’s. Arthur smells of clean laundry and sleep, and Eames breathes in the scent of him greedily. There is morning stubble around Arthur’s mouth, which scratches a little, but Eames still steps closer, until their bare toes nudge together. Their tongues slide against one another, slick and easy.
It is companionable, relatively short - a quiet, uneventful kiss. Yet it has so much potential. When Eames pulls away, he does so reluctantly, and then can’t seem to stop smiling.
Arthur swallows. For a moment, he looks like he might want to smile too, but then he knits his eyebrows together sternly.
“Well, you can’t get out of that one on a technicality,” he says, “Now I have a legitimate reason to be fucked off.”
Arthur is trying to scowl again.
It would be far more effective if he weren’t still staring so intently at Eames’s mouth.
Poor love.