This snippet was written by taibhrigh and is a wip storyline.
For Nyx who wanted Arthur/Eames
The midday trip through The Met was the only thing that Eames had planned that was more for himself than it was Arthur. Though, their first stop at the museum was all for Arthur. With the help of Ms. Potts, he had secured a private viewing of Escher’s The Encounter for Arthur since the lithograph was not currently on display.
“You talk to him more,” Arthur said quietly, indicating a very old piece of paper with what amounted to doodles on it. “Is he amused that his doodles are in a museum? Would you be amused if one of your notebooks of half sketches and doodles ended up in a museum?”
Eames laughed. “I think Leo finds a lot of things amusing. But to answer your question, yes, I would find it amusing.” The thing was, meeting Leonardo da Vinci was like Arthur meeting Gorgo —someone they had both admired as kids and people they had thought they would never meet as they had passed long before either of them had been born. Eames had been giddy, then absolutely petrified when he realized one of his own forgeries was on display in Leo’s house.
He and Arthur were paused just outside of Gallery 962 when he leaned in and whispered, “That one is a forgery.”
“Yours?”
“No,” Eames happily admitted. “Too hard to forge oil on wood; plus getting the aging right. Too much smog and chemicals for anything I could have gotten my hands on. My guess is whoever made the copy did it within the same century.”
“And no one has noticed?”
“I’m just saying the one hanging here now is a forgery. Not the one that hung there the last time I was in The Met.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow at him, but then shrugged and leaned in closer to the painting. “Think we should tell anyone?”
Eames snorted. “At The Met, absolutely not. One of the not-so dead artists, probably. We can text Leo later and let him know and he can deal with it. For all we know one of them did it on purpose or as a prank on one of the others.”
Arthur gave him a look.
“Darling, I’m not getting involved in their shenanigans. I’m far too young for that.”
Arthur shook his head and laughed. “We’ll see how you feel about that next century.”
Eames could only shrug; he was positive he would still be too young. But maybe Leo would let him use something out of that storeroom of his. Only time would tell and he and Arthur would have that now.
They continued to wander through the exhibits for another few hours before ending the visit with an Afternoon Tea in the Dining Room at The Met.
The thought of those pranks is very amusing, and Eames entering the fray as well.
Thank you!