We Sure Aren't the Tenenbaums

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"So, is your father still a misogynistic asshole?"

Tony's head snapped up. The tumbler of whisky he had been nursing clunked uncaringly back onto the tabletop. The man who spoke walked around him to slide into the other side of the booth, his impeccable suit going well with the lackadaisical jazz that filtered through the bar.

Tony grinned, unwilling to temper his joy at seeing the other man after the truly appalling day he'd had at the Navy Yard. He quirked an eyebrow and leaned back in the booth "You're mother still an unrepentant cougar, stalking the world of the twenty something men with the confidence of Madonna?"

"Yes," The slim brunette laughed and signaled to a waitress.

"My dad too," Tony smiled again "How the hell you been, Arthur?"

Arthur loosened his tie and motioned that he'd have what Tony was drinking when the waitress approached "I'd be better if you'd taken the position in California. Coming to D.C. to see you is going to get me locked up one day."

"Please," Tony dismissed him "You know you love skirting the FBI and the CIA, hell the NSA too, right on their own turf."

Arthur only grinned. The waitress returned with his drink and he and Tony toasted one another.

Tony furrowed his eyebrow "Seriously though, I thought you weren't going to be stateside for months, wasn't there an incident in Minnesota?"

Arthur raised an eyebrow, leaning back and casually sipping his drink "You're not supposed to know about the incident in Minnesota."

Tony pointed at himself "Uh, Federal Agent?"

"Don't remind me," Arthur said, purposefully tart "Every family has to have their black sheep though, I suppose."

"That'd be your sister," Tony returned "Haunting the Hamptons still is she? You'd think she'd have been content with that stock market guy—though I got to tell you, cuz, that's the last of your sister's weddings that I'm going to."

"She'd be better served playing the stock market herself," Arthur muttered "Airbus is going to rocket up tomorrow when they release their new plan."

Tony laughed. He distractedly eyed the bar as he responded "I'm assuming I'm not supposed to ask how you know that."

"You assume correctly."

Tony shifted in his seat; there was something about the six or so patrons at the bar that was bothering him. Still, he didn't get to see the only member of his family he could stand every day, so he shifted his attention back to where it belonged. "I'd still like it if you went the "Ocean's Eleven" path, though I bet you could give "Ronin" a run for its money."

"You have a disturbing relationship with Robert de Niro."

"Tell me about," Tony quipped back "You'd think the boss would know who he was, you know both of them being good ol' back in the day types, but he has no cinema credibility whatsoever."

Arthur ducked his head and tried not to mock his cousin too harshly "You still call him 'boss' in the bedroom, Anthony?"

Tony grumbled at the use of his full name but grinned when he replied "Only when I'm being creative."

Tony rolled his eyes at Arthur's resulting smirk but didn't let conversation drop for long, the next moment he was back, nosily, on his cousin's case "That was a smooth evade by the way, so are you going to tell me what has you suddenly in town any time soon?"

Arthur's face went carefully blank, and Tony was aware that this stony visage meant that he had said something that either made the other man defensive or uncomfortable. Arthur drained his drink. Tony almost let the subject drop; something about the soft air of the jazz club was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He couldn't figure it out.

"Business," Arthur finally threw out. He pushed his empty glass away from him but didn't signal the waitress for another.

Tony nodded; it was what he'd suspected at any rate. He figured it should probably make him uncomfortable. He had no illusions about his cousin's less than strictly legal life style. But hey, he and the slimmer man had been inseparable until Arthur went off to West Point and Tony exiled himself to Ohio State.

"You know it should be scary that you managed to track me all the way to a club I rarely even go to?"

Arthur shrugged "You're my cousin; I leave my nose out of your bank accounts and phone records. You should be thankful enough for that."

"You and Gibbs should meet someday," Tony mused "I have no doubt that it'd be prime entertainment for me."

"Probably not the best idea," Arthur replied "Considering you might one day have to explain why my face is on MSNBC or CNN."

"He doesn't watch much TV," Tony countered, but nodded anyway. It was safer for Arthur this way. Tony would simply enjoy the idea as a pipe dream; take it out on the next rainy day when he needed some amusement.

"You are right though," Arthur began, backtracking in their conversation like they had let something hand "You don't normally come here—."

"—again, creepy that you know this—,"

"—which makes me wonder why you decided to come here anyway."

"Can't I just be in the mood for jazz?" Tony didn't expect Arthur to believe this though, international criminals tended to be on the observant side normally. A skill that tended to make Christmas with the family interesting on occasion.

Arthur simply stared back at him. Tony figured that he had his mother's eyes. Finally Arthur relented and signaled the waitress for another drink.

"Serial killer," Tony flicked his eyes to the side, avoiding his cousin's gaze. He'd never been able to put a mask on with the other man, not even when they were kids. "He was attacking female naval lieutenants. We couldn't anticipate his moves quick enough because he didn't have a narrow victim type; he just went after the first female of lieutenant rank he could find. We found out his mother was a lieutenant, apparently there was some pattern of abuse."

"So, you caught the killer?" Arthur prodded as gently as he could, his cousin was obviously uneasy about his most recent case.

"Not before he killed another woman," Tony said voice barely above a whisper "We couldn't close the case quick enough."

"So is that why you're not at your apartment or with your lover?"

Tony had to laugh at the question, letting the haunted feeling the day had left with him drain away a bit "It's weird to think of him as my 'lover'."

Arthur's eyes narrowed. It was a look that was normally only privy to those that attempted to put a bullet in him. "So this is about Gibbs then? Is he blaming you for this?"

"No," Tony said quickly, but the question clearly rankled him.

"So you're worried that he's going to blame you then?" Arthur continued, ignoring subtlety "He's an idiot if he blames you. He wouldn't be worthy of you if he did."

Tony buried his face in his hands, but eyed his no nonsense cousin through the cracks in his fingers. "Gee, you know how to compliment a man."

Arthur snorted. Tony smiled.

When the waitress approached their table Tony took the new glass with a smile, but went rigid when he looked over the waitress's shoulder to the bar.

"What?" asked Arthur, wary. He waited until the waitress headed elsewhere.

"I've been having weird feelings for a while," Tony said. His eyes were trained on a man sitting nonchalantly at the end of the mahogany bar. "And I couldn't figure out what it was."

Arthur turned to scan the club. He didn't pick up any immediate threats.

"It's got to be that guy at the bar," Tony was careful not to point the paisley clad man out in an obvious way; instead he simply inclined his head. Arthur followed his gaze. "He's been casing our table."

The one thing Tony could rely on was his cousin having a stern code of precaution when it came to threats, so he was a little stunned when, instead of glaring suspicion, Arthur decided to grin impishly.

What the hell?

"Oh," Arthur said "Him, don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it?" Tony parroted. "I should not worry that we could be being cased by a potential nut job at a club in Georgetown?"

Okay, okay, so Tony was aware that sounded a little paranoid.

"He's an associate," Arthur said, turning back to the table as if the man at the bar was of no concern. "He's been here for a while. He probably thought I hadn't noticed him when he'd tried to slip in here unnoticed."

Tony shook his head and put his hands on the table "Okay, I'm going to pointedly ignore the criminal associate that followed you to a club where you're meeting your federal agent cousin."

"Well to be fair," said Arthur, feigning a bored tone "I told him that he would have to shower alone because I was going to meet an attractive man at a semi-romantic location."

Tony was glad he hadn't been drinking, it would have been spat all over the table "Er, what?"

Arthur just grinned and shrugged. Tony grimaced, okay, when had his cousin found an appreciation for humor? And when had it been decided that Arthur was the one that got to tease him?

"Is that…" Tony struggled for a moment to bring a slip of information to the forefront of him mind. The long day and the whisky weren't helping. "Mr. Eames?"

"Is it."

"He's not good enough for you," Tony said instantly.

Arthur rolled his eyes, a movement that Tony was all too familiar with "It's sweet when you try, and fail, at being protective. Please remember I'm only seven months younger than you, asshole."

"Backhanded compliments, they're truly your forte," Tony muttered under his breath. Louder he said "And he looks half a decade older than us."

"Four years, actually."

Before Tony could say much else, the man at the bar suddenly stood from his barstool, picked up his drink, and then made his way towards the table.

"Your boyfriend's coming this way."

"Ignore him and he just might go away."

"You know, Arthur darling," the man announced as he reached the table, and Tony was a little caught off guard by the British accent "I can read lips quite efficiently."

"I know," Arthur replied, not moving to make room for the man to sit down "I simply choose to not acknowledge."

The Englishman made a humming noise low in his throat, smirking and raking his eyes over Arthur's frame. Tony managed to feel dirty just witnessing the exchange.

This Mr. Eames began to speak again, his tone was purposefully quiet and unconcerned even though his words weren't "Of course you're aware of all the abilities I have with lips, Arthur."

Tony coughed and stood. Immediately. "Anthony DiNozzo!" he said, probably too loud, sticking his hand out. "Arthur's cousin."

"You can call me Eames, mate," Eames replied, shaking Tony's hand, amused.

Arthur didn't even appear to be nonplussed by his partner's words. Tony figured the overtly lewd comments must be a regular thing in that case. Arthur did slide further into the booth, though, so that Eames could sit beside him.

"Well," Arthur raised an eyebrow in Tony's direction and put a hand on Eames' thigh "Don't ever say family coming to town wasn't an event."

"We sure aren't the Tannenbaums," Tony agreed. He had to laugh down into his glass, avoiding the way that this Eames was curling a relaxed arm around Arthur's shoulders. He could admit that he didn't feel nearly so bad about his day anymore.

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This was a fill for the Inception kink-meme on Livejournal. The prompt was "Anything. Arthur and Tony are cousins (and each is the only one the other gets along with in the family) or went to school/college together. Fancy suits and fonts of useless knowledge (Tony - movie trivia, Arthur - minuta of the marks the Inception team hit). Partners that others might think are unsuitable/unlikely (Gibbs and Eames)."

I would have posted this in my Inception drabble series, but I wanted to make sure it would get posted as a crossover.

Hope you enjoyed!