Fic: Grace Period [Inception]
Title: Grace Period
Character/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Ariadne, Cobb, Saito
Rating: PG -13
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warnings: Um...much rambling...
Summary: Arthur, Eames thinks, has always been a creature of extraordinary grace. So really, it comes as no surprise that he's also mesmerizingly agile and elegant when falling out of a helicopter and off the edge of a mountain.
Author's Notes: Written for the square "cuddling for warmth/snowed in" for hc_bingo
Arthur, Eames thinks, has always been a creature of extraordinary grace.
Eames is an actor, a chameleon; always watching and observing, always adapting and changing to fit the circumstances and to fulfill the needs of any particular given situation. Forging is an art form, only as complicated as one makes it but by no means simple or a craft to be underestimated. It is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, a bit of Picasso here and Dali there meshed together with Monet and a dash of Warhol on the side. It's all in the eye of the beholder, and Eames has certainly beheld a very great deal.
When he first sets eyes upon Arthur, the immediate words that spring to his mind are something along the lines of sharp and clean-cut and oh so bloody gorgeous. There's something intimidating in the way the point man carries himself: in the way he stands by Dom's side (as if he hears the seductive whispers of all that he could be, but remains ever-loyal all the same), something noble in the angle of his clean-shaven jaw (a bone structure fit for royalty, Eames thinks, for he's copied such a design many a time to pass off as a member of aristocracy before), in the curl of his long fingers around the grip of a gun that spirits Eames's mind and imagination back to smoke-filled bars and forbidden whiskey in speakeasies flooded with the crooning of a husky-throated singer.
He's not sure what he's expecting, to be honest - and that's the thing about Arthur that immediately intrigues the forger, the way Eames can know every detail of the other man's meticulously planned and religiously followed schedule, and (even to present day) still manage to be surprised by something - the weighty hand and brutality of a jaded soldier? The awkward but useful competence and emotionlessness of a machine? The savagery of a guard dog fighting for its master?
Then, he sees the point man in action.
Eames grew up with four rough and tumble elder brothers, his childhood is filled with memories of fisticuffs and scuffles in the schoolyard, because if you weren't going to stand up for yourself, no one was going to do it for you. His hands are scarred, evidence of altercations in bars and unfortunate run-ins with the inevitable enemies that being a thief and a liar for a living makes. He's learned how to fight, perhaps not professionally, but Eames likes to think he can hold his own pretty damn well in a brawl, and is proud of that. He fights hard and fast and dirty, sharp jabs here and a strategically placed elbow there, relentless and adaptive.
Arthur, though? Arthur fights as if engaged in a dance, his movements sharp yet fluid, exerting control and strength, but just enough to get the job done: no more, no less. He's precise and curt and powerful, just as he is in every other aspect of being himself, but with an underlying agility that makes Eames think of his mother and worn ballet pointe shoes, grand jetés and arabesques and pas de chats across a stage. Arthur's a whip, all lithe frame corded with lean muscle and poise, a picture in motion.
So really, it comes as no surprise that he's also mesmerizingly agile and elegant when falling out of a helicopter and off the edge of a mountain.
- * - * -
"They're gaining on us!" Ariadne yells to the pilot above the shrieking of the wind and roar of the helicopter's roter blades, her thin voice nearly lost amidst all the noise. Her face conveys all that speech cannot though: her eyes are wide with fright and her lips have gone white with terror; her hair whips wildly about her face and gives her the appearance of a madwoman - that, or a poor unfortunate girl who hasn't seen a hairbrush in weeks. Snow has settled on her thin shoulders and were Eames not too busy trying to stay alive, he would reach over to brush away the white flakes from the suit jacket because he knows how Arthur is about his suits ( steamed, pressed, neatly hung).
As if to punctuate Ariadne's warning, the spray of gunfire draws nearer and Eames curses, loading another magazine into his Desert Eagle. "And exactly how badly did you and Cobb piss these people off again, darling?" He yells, term of endearment slipping from his lips purely out of habit because as of right now, Eames isn't feeling anything particularly warm or affectionate for the helicopter cabin's other occupant. It probably has something to do with the fact that he can't feel his bloody fingers. Or his toes. Or his nose, for that matter.
Or maybe because they're flying over the bloody Himalayas in the middle of a fucking blizzard, (honestly, it's a miracle they haven't crashed by now; they're going to have to give the pilot a pretty fat tip because damn, that man can fly ) trying to escape from their mark - who actually isn't a mark at all and instead a bunch of goons working for Cobol Engineering something or other - and, per usual, it's all Cobb's fault.
From across the tiny space, Arthur doesn't even spare him a glance, eyes still narrowed at their pursuers, gun held like an extension of his arm. "We didn't give them what they wanted, and turned right around to pull off a job that should've been impossible for the man they hired us to steal from in the first place," the point man answers flatly, voice low and yet somehow loud and clear as a bell (that's not surprising, though. Eames can always hear Arthur perfectly well whenever he speaks). He pulls the trigger once and Eames faintly hears the scream of a man falling from the helicopter on their tail, not at all unlike the Wilhelm scream used far too much in movies. "So you tell me, Eames," Arthur finally turns and shoots him a glare, cold and curt and annoyed. "How badly did we piss them off?"
It's the obvious condescension in his tone that sets Eames's teeth on edge, because he's crouching down in a helicopter too small for even a party of one, let alone two grown men and a young woman, he's freezing his tail off, and, to top it all off, he's getting shot at when he should be sitting back and deciding whether to head to Las Vegas or Tokyo after another successful extraction. Eames thinks that anyone would feel just a bit irked in the same situation, and Arthur's holier-than-thou attitude is doing nothing to help. He opens his mouth to bite back a sharp retort, because despite what many believe, Eames is just as good as dishing it out as he is at receiving, when a second look at the other man makes him bite his tongue.
Arthur's in nothing but what remains of his suit after he draped his suit jacket around Ariadne's shoulders, kneeling beside the open space where the door used to be (no match against the relentless spray of a machine gun, apparently) in the remaining two pieces of his three piece suit, wind whipping his de-gelled hair about his face, vest open and flapping about his lean frame. He looks stunning, like James Bond minus all the fancy gadgets and gentlemanly charm, leaving behind dangerous accuracy and unbridled skill in the art of death.
But that's not the reason Eames's rebuke dies a premature death in his throat, it's the pallor of Arthur's face and the gauntness of his cheeks, the dark circles under his eyes and the way he looks dead on his feet from having tried to pull double duty as both extractor and point man. It's because Arthur is bleeding from a cut on his neck onto his starched, not-so-white anymore collar and shivering like a half-dead leaf in the wind -
-and it's because of the bullet that whizzes out of nowhere, catching Arthur across the temple and spraying a wide arc of crimson. A window shatters and the point man's head jerks back; he pitches backwards, balancing for one brief moment on the precipice of the abyss - and then topples out of the helicopter.
And for that one brief moment, Eames stops breathing.
"ARTHUR!!" Ariadne screams, and Eames lunges for the point man. His fingertips brush the faintest whisper of a red silk tie but Arthur's gone, a dark speck disappearing downwards into the blizzard and Eames is flat on his front, one hand still outstretched into the emptiness below, heart pounding in his throat.
In all the long years he and Arthur have been playing this coy game, dancing in and out and around each other; out of all the times he has let the point man slip through his fingers, Eames hates himself for this one the most.
No. "Come back." The words tumble numbly from his lips in a barely audible whisper, and then he's rearing up and charging toward the pilot's cabin, a hurricane of anger and desperation and regret- "GO BACK!!"
"What?!" The pilot hollers, looking at the forger as if he's gone insane and Eames gazes back with wild eyes, knowing that in that instant, he very well may be. He's moving even before he can comprehend it, grabbing the first aid bag strapped to the roof of the cabin and moving toward the open space where the door used to be.
"Eames, no!" Ariadne's arms are latching on around his waist and she's got tears in her wide eyes. "No, you can't!"
In any other circumstance, he would heed her words, because there is no doubt in his mind that what he's about to do is perhaps the stupidest thing he's ever done, and that's on a long list of crazy and stupid things in one lifetime. But this is Arthur, and with that knowledge, every instinct in him is telling him to go after the point man. To not lose him again.
And besides, Eames has always been sort of stupid when it comes to Arthur.
"I must," he whispers, and steps out into nothing.
- * - * -
The phone is ringing. It's loud. And annoying as hell. And right next to his ear.
With a groan, Cobb flings a hand out to grope blindly around for the lamp and switches it on, cursing the sudden brightness and whoever that's calling at - he squints disbelievingly at the clock - five-fucking-thirty in the morning. It's his cell though, and those who have this number are few and far in between, and most of them, he's sure, are well aware of the difference between time zones and of proper communication etiquette, so this must be important.
It better be.
Muttering under his breath, Cobb finally locates the phone and he lifts it up to his ear, grunting a rather grumpy sounding: "Hello?"
"COBB!" someone shrieks, someone very obviously female and with that nasally tone usually acquired while in the midst of a long, hard cry and Cobb jerks the phone away from his ear in surprise, all wisps of sleep gone from his mind. Given that his daughter only ever calls him "Daddy" and the only other females he interacts with on a semi-regular basis are the mothers of the other children at James's daycare, that narrows down the list of the potential identities of this mysterious caller, and he brings the phone back to his ear with just the slightest hint of uncertainty.
"Ariadne?"
"Oh thank God! Cobb, they're gone; they're both gone and I don't know what to do, I don't know-"
Ariadne's voice is thin and tinny on the other end of the line, and Cobb vaguely wonders how awful her cell reception must be, and if she's on a cell phone at all. He hears what sounds like muffled shouting in the background, hastily spoken words in a language that doesn't even sound remotely like French or English and if that wasn't enough, the fact that the poor girl sounds halfway hysterical is enough to send Cobb stumbling for a pair of pants and a jacket. "Ariadne, what's wrong?"
"The job," she says, and her voice is thick with tears. "It was a set up. A trap. Someone from Cobol Engineering who has it out for you and Arthur."
Cobol Engineering. A cold fist hits him in the gut and Cobb sucks in a deep breath. "Ariadne," his tone had started off soothing in attempts to calm the architect down, but now Cobb can hear his voice rising with worry and confusion. "Where are you? What happened? Where's Arthur?"
Ariadne fails to choke back a sob and her next words are a jumbled, garbled mess of a run-on sentence: "They caught us by surprise by pretending to be a mark, we should have known because Arthur said, he said the research didn't add up and there's no reason why the mark would be in Tibet of all places but we went anyways and then we barely got out in time; there was a MEDEVAC helicopter there but they followed us and then Arthur and Eames were arguing and Arthur got shot in the head and then he fell out of the helicopter and Eames jumped out after him-"
Arthur got shot in the head and fell out of the helicopter. Cobb's blood turns to ice for a half second, before it begins to boil with rage. "Where are you?"
"Um." She sniffs. "A hospital. In Mustang. Nepal."
"Are you safe?"
"I...I don't know." Her voice cracks, and Cobb can hear a fresh wave of tears coming as he imagines Ariadne looking around herself, only now noticing the unfamiliarity of her strange surroundings. "I guess," she offers meekly. "The pilot lost the people chasing after us."
"Okay." He's fully dressed now, and already making up a mental apology to offer Miles for calling him at this hour in the morning, begging him to play babysitter again. Although Cobb guesses that telling his father-in-law "your brightest student is stuck in the middle of nowhere, Nepal and Arthur apparently got shot in the head and fell out of a helicopter" will suffice. After all, Miles is as fond of Cobb's former point man as much as Mal was-
"We should adopt him," she laughs jokingly, and nods out the window, to where Arthur is carrying Phillipa on his back, running barefoot through the backyard as his little charge laughs and laughs, tiny hands grasping onto the back of his vest and no doubt wrinkling the material, but neither of them seem to care.
Dom smiles and draws his wife to him, kissing her on the forehead as one hand automatically drifts downwards to settle on the swollen curve of her belly. "Mal, we've been through this already," he teases playfully, and she tosses her head back and laughs, echoing her daughter's delight.
"We might as well, Dom. He's practically family already."
"Cobb?" Ariadne's voice breaks through the fog of memories in his mind and he shakes his head, hard.
"Just stay put, Ariadne," Cobb says, and his voice is steel. "I've got a phone call to make, and we'll get this straightened out."
- * - * -
Fischer might've been onto something when he pitched a fit about being caught in an avalanche, because Eames is tired, cold, wet, and all around miserable.
His hiking boots, while better suited for the environment than Ariadne's trendy boots and those Italian designer loafers Arthur had been sporting, still are not the ideal for an endless trek through the bloody Himalayas to find a poncy point man with a stick up his arse. He's wearing a jacket and has wrapped the bandages from the first aid kit around his hands for warmth, but he's soaked through from his rather uncomfortable landing from x hundred feet and to drag his morale even deeper, the forger thinks he's actually walking in circles.
Although the sun set long ago and night is rapidly closing in around him, Eames finds himself nearly blinded by the utter whiteness surrounding him, and his throat tightens. It reminds him too much of the past, of his mother's blank gaze as she sat by the window in her wedding dress, waiting day after day for a husband that would never return; later she would sit in a white building dressed in white clothes and stare at a white wall as blanch-faced doctors shook their heads mournfully and pronounced her mind gone; a blank slate.
White was the color of the suit Arthur wore their third job together, and Eames remembers all too clearly the way desire curled deep down low in his belly, a searing heat that gradually, over the years, has softened into something quiet and foreign and precious that Eames dares not put a name to, lest it be lost.
"Are we all set?" Cobb obviously is, with his double-breasted tuxedo and a radiant Mal on his arm. "Arthur?"
"Ready." The point man steps into the room, and Eames's jaw falls slack. It stays that way as Mal disentangles her arm from her husband's and goes up to fuss with Arthur's bowtie and when Arthur merely smiles and lets her, Eames feels the instant spark of lust give way to something entirely different.
Arthur leaves the room first, brushing past Eames with his eyes set straight ahead, ignoring him completely and when Cobb and Mal follow, the latter leans toward the forger and with a soft, knowing smile, asks if he's done catching flies yet.
After the job that night, he went out and drank away the dull ache in his chest, because he knew, just like he knows now, that Arthur - uptight, intelligent, stick-in-the-mud point man extraordinaire - is too good for a man like him. Everyone knows it, even if they don't say so out loud. Eames is an actor, a mimic, a verisimilitude - he wears loud colors and garish patterns for a reason. Many (Arthur included) simply assume the forger has no fashion sense, but Eames does it because he is a tabula rasa, a blank slate waiting to be filled with the likes and dislikes and preferences of others. He takes and takes even just to build his own identity, and gives nothing in return. Of course he doesn't. He's a thief.
He's the man that can (quite literally) become anything, taking a bit of everything and everyone - and Arthur deserves better than that, he deserves someone who knows not how to only take, but how to give too, and unconditionally at that. Eames dares not sully him, the proverbial white knight with his white, starched collared Oxford shirts and doubtlessly lily white arse (no, that is something Eames has never actually seen, despite what others may think).
Huh. Apparently, wandering around on a snow-covered mountain range makes him a maudlin, sentimental drunk without the booze. Well, this time around he has no snowmobile, no skis, no explosives, no threat of dropping into limbo, and nothing else to distract him but his own thoughts.
And that, that is always very dangerous territory with Eames.
He figures he's been trudging through the seemingly endless landscape of white for about an hour or so when he finally spots something that isn't the color of bleached teeth or milk. Of course, while the red staining the snow means that Arthur must be somewhere nearby, it's not exactly comforting.
Neither is seeing Arthur slumped over in the snow a few meters away, unmoving.
He's scrambling in the snow then, literally wading through the drift until he reaches the other man's prone form, reaching out trembling fingers toward the blood caked in Arthur's dark hair, brushing the tangled strands gently away from the forehead, knuckles gently bumping against the wound where the bullet grazed the point man's temple. Head wounds bleed like a bitch, and his fingers come away red. They then drop lower to Arthur's throat, and Eames heaves a sigh of relief when he feels a pulse - weak and thready, but still there.
"Alright, pet," he whispers aloud, and slings the first aid kit onto his back, bending his knees to fit an arm around Arthur's frame and trying not to thinking about how there's something oddly captivating in the curl of Arthur's form against the snow, the tilt of his head, and darkness of eyelashes fluttering against pale cheeks like drops of oil, something graceful, even in stillness that likens unto death. "Alright, now," Eames murmurs, as much a reassurance to himself as it is to Arthur, who clearly cannot hear him. "You're alright. I've found you."
Fortuitously, ironically, blessedly - or perhaps an odd combination of the three - a cave looms in the distance, its mouth open and beckoning, beckoning the pair into its inky depths.
- * - * -
"Saito-san?"
He looks up from the spread of files and reports before him that detail the disbanding of Robert Fischer Jr.'s corporate empire and its sale to multiple different buyers, raising an eyebrow at the secretary standing nervously in the doorway.
She's a young one, pencil skirted with a colorful blouse and black-wire framed glasses, shy and nervous and far too educated for this job. Saito has read her resume. Working for a man such as himself is truly considered a great honor, but he knows she should be studying astrophysics at some top-rate university, not pushing papers and taking phone calls, and vaguely, he wonders if she would consider enrolling if he fired her. He tries searching around for her name in his mind, before giving up without too much of a fuss.
None of his assistants have names anymore. The time he spent in limbo was not kind on some of his mental faculties.
"Hai?"
Her face colors. "Gomenasai, demo..." she motions to his phone uncertainly, which he's been ignoring, as he always does late into the night. Saito is a man who likes to follow a certain set of self-imposed rules, and usually, those rules are followed by all those around him, to the letter. This must be important because while his new secretary is certainly overqualified for the job, she is also the discerning sort, and Saito can appreciate such a becoming characteristic. "Mr. Cobb?"
He picks up the phone immediately. "Mr. Cobb."
"Saito." Cobb's voice is tight and strained, and Saito's eyes narrow; he sits up just a bit straighter.
"I suppose you have not called to discuss things of a trivial matter."
"I'm calling in a favor."
Saito smiles. This, he can do. After all, he is indebted to the man. "What is it you need, Mr. Cobb?"
"You're in Tokyo?"
"Correct."
There's a brief pause. Then, "How fast can you get to Nepal?"
- * - * -
She's been sitting here for an hour. Maybe two. Maybe three. She's lost track of time, and she really doesn't care.
Ariadne stares down at her feet, at her boots, a nicely tanned leather that stands out against the grey floor and taupe walls of the hospital corridor and not for the first time, she thinks that this hospital is more reminiscent of a prison than anything else. But then again, it doesn't matter. Both are places of death, and the only difference is that the hospital smells like antiseptic.
Her boots thump against the plastic chair she sits slumped in, fingers wrapped around a tepid cup of tea. From beside her, the pilot (Harry something or other. He's a closed mouthed fellow, and after Arthur promised him a reasonable portion of the cut, he was in with little to no questions asked, only a brief "so when do I get paid?" Eames had chuckled and declared that he liked him.) shoots her a worried glance, but she pays him no attention.
She didn't sign up for this. Thump-thump. There's a splotch of red near the toe on the right foot. A splotch of Arthur's blood. Thump-thump. She sets the tea aside, turns her totem over and over in her hands, running the tip of her index finger against the engraving on the bottom. Thump-thump. She didn't come back for this.
"Ariadne?"
Her head shoots up at the voice, the voice that haunts her dreams when she still can dream, the voice that opened her eyes to more than reality and still inspires her to build cathedrals, craft mountains, to dream of and create all things impossible and wonderful and amazing. "Cobb."
He's standing at the end of the hallway, Saito behind him and Ariadne struggles to her feet, stumbles, and then breaks into a flat-out run, boots clicking against the floor, a splotch of red against tan against grey tile, red-tan-grey, red-tan-grey.
She's had a dream like this once before. In that dream, she runs at the man and hits him again and again, and there are tears in her eyes and on her cheeks blurring her vision so that she never sees his face; she's angry, oh so angry but so lost and helpless at the same time and as the man stands there like a statue and lets her lash out at him, Ariadne feels a great pain in her chest, very much like heartbreak.
Say what you will about dreams coming true; Ariadne only wishes it could've been under a different set of circumstances.
- * - * -
"Alright, darling. Here we are. Easy now."
The forger gently pillows Arthur's head on his own jacket, careful not to jostle the bandages wrapped around the wound to his temple, murmuring quietly to no one in particular. He sits back for a moment, biting the inside of his cheek, trying to find a way out of this predicament because Arthur's clothes are wet and there's no way to warm him up besides the obvious. Anyone else and he would already been busy; he's been told once or twice that he has some skill in this department...but that's with anyone else and this is Arthur. Arthur of little imagination and great skill, Arthur of the white suit (of armor) and lily white arse, Arthur who is off limits.
Despite his better judgment, his fingers are undoing the buttons on the point man's Oxford dress shirt - why the goddamn are there so many buttons?! - and then he's pulling Arthur forward to help divest him of his clothing. Once upon a time, Eames would have tried this, only with a nice dinner beforehand and all the gentlemanly charm he could muster. Now, he's only doing it so Arthur doesn't freeze to death.
Arthur is cold. Too cold. And too thin. He feels like a sack of flour in Eames's arms, and that is definitely not okay. As he shrugs off his own shirt, the forger feels a sudden fierce and irrational hate bubbling up in his chest, dark and black and ugly. He hates Cobb for going off and leaving his point man without an extractor to stand beside; he hates the bloody bastards who did this to Arthur; he even hates Arthur just a little for being so stubborn and strong and seemingly invulnerable.
It only makes his current state all that more difficult to bear.
As Eames lays the vest aside, his fingers brush against a strange pocket sewn into the inside of the vest - a small, barely noticeable compartment - resting right over where the point man's heart would be. It bulges outwards slightly, the protrusion in a shape of a cube and he takes great care not to touch it.
His fingers stop suddenly at the catches of Arthur's trousers and he looks away, heaving an exhale of frustration, face suddenly very warm. Man up, he growls inwardly, and stupidly almost tears the trousers in his flustered haste to get them off in the least awkward way possible.
Arthur lies limply against his chest, a solid but comfortable weight, arms trapped between their chests and head nestled in the crook of Eames's neck; his hair is gel-less, damp from the snow and Eames cards his fingers through the soft strands before he can stop himself, other arm curved protectively around Arthur's bare back. The flat of his palm brushes against the slightly raised puckered skin of a scar on the point man's shoulder and Eames feels the urge to brush his lips over the imperfection, the evidence of Arthur's loyalty as a point man or perhaps a memento from a wild party gone wrong back in his college days (if he can believe that uptight Arthur is capable of having that type of fun. But then again, he supposes he shouldn't assume. Unexpected surprises, and all.).
That unnamable emotion flutters in Eames's chest and he chokes out a half-derisive huff of laughter. And there, sitting half-bare in a damp, dirty cave in the Himalayas and holding the infuriating, intriguing, beautiful point man in his arms, praying to a God he's not even sure he believes in, he bows his head and murmurs softly, three forbidden words a mere whisper of breath against Arthur's skin. After all, there's no one around to hear, right?
Yet another assumption.
Carefully cradled in the warmth of the other man's embrace, Arthur's brow furrows ever so faintly and as Eames begins to hum a half-forgotten lullaby in the back of his throat, the fingers of Arthur's left hand curl in slightly to brush against the forger's collarbone, and his lips twitch in what might have been a smile.
- * - * -
Much like everything else Saito owns or in some way oversees, his healthcare is excellent.
But his physicians aren't miracle workers.
Eames needs more than several days of bed rest and fluids to even begin to see the other side of recovery and while he's spared the horrors of frostbite, but comes down with a nasty bout of pneumonia that lands him bedridden for weeks. Ariadne is in and out of his room a lot, sitting by his side or reading over by the window and upon several occasions, he catches her crying softly, tears trailing down her cheeks and soaking the pillow she's hugging to her chest. Cobb researches the hell out of their supposed "mark" and Cobol Engineering quickly finds out that it doesn't matter whether or not Dominic Cobb is retired - if you've pissed him off, you're going to be very sorry. Especially now that he has a multi-billionare business mogul on his side.
One afternoon, the forger wakes to the shuffle of feet in the room and a pair of artist's hands gently pulling the sketchbook out of a dozing Ariadne's lap, setting it aside and carefully draping a blanket over her form. "She's wearing herself out with all this crying," comes the low-pitched voice, quiet in the still room. "Survivor's guilt."
Eames blinks several times and smiles wanly, tired. "Well, it's not really survivor's guilt if no one died, is it now?" He tilts his head and narrows his eyes at the impeccably dressed man approaching his bed. "You just can't have the good grace to take just the slightest bit ill, can you?"
Arthur sits down on the side of the bed, his arm barely brushing Eames's, gentle concern in his eyes and an amused smile twitching at his lips. "Apparently not."
Arthur, Eames thinks, is indeed a creature of extraordinary grace, but sometimes, he can be a right sneaky bastard too.
- * - * -
Well...that was my first attempt at something other than angst and heartbreaking tragedy. I hope I didn't get too OOC...please tell me if that's the case!
Character/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Ariadne, Cobb, Saito
Rating: PG -13
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warnings: Um...much rambling...
Summary: Arthur, Eames thinks, has always been a creature of extraordinary grace. So really, it comes as no surprise that he's also mesmerizingly agile and elegant when falling out of a helicopter and off the edge of a mountain.
Author's Notes: Written for the square "cuddling for warmth/snowed in" for hc_bingo
Arthur, Eames thinks, has always been a creature of extraordinary grace.
Eames is an actor, a chameleon; always watching and observing, always adapting and changing to fit the circumstances and to fulfill the needs of any particular given situation. Forging is an art form, only as complicated as one makes it but by no means simple or a craft to be underestimated. It is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, a bit of Picasso here and Dali there meshed together with Monet and a dash of Warhol on the side. It's all in the eye of the beholder, and Eames has certainly beheld a very great deal.
When he first sets eyes upon Arthur, the immediate words that spring to his mind are something along the lines of sharp and clean-cut and oh so bloody gorgeous. There's something intimidating in the way the point man carries himself: in the way he stands by Dom's side (as if he hears the seductive whispers of all that he could be, but remains ever-loyal all the same), something noble in the angle of his clean-shaven jaw (a bone structure fit for royalty, Eames thinks, for he's copied such a design many a time to pass off as a member of aristocracy before), in the curl of his long fingers around the grip of a gun that spirits Eames's mind and imagination back to smoke-filled bars and forbidden whiskey in speakeasies flooded with the crooning of a husky-throated singer.
He's not sure what he's expecting, to be honest - and that's the thing about Arthur that immediately intrigues the forger, the way Eames can know every detail of the other man's meticulously planned and religiously followed schedule, and (even to present day) still manage to be surprised by something - the weighty hand and brutality of a jaded soldier? The awkward but useful competence and emotionlessness of a machine? The savagery of a guard dog fighting for its master?
Then, he sees the point man in action.
Eames grew up with four rough and tumble elder brothers, his childhood is filled with memories of fisticuffs and scuffles in the schoolyard, because if you weren't going to stand up for yourself, no one was going to do it for you. His hands are scarred, evidence of altercations in bars and unfortunate run-ins with the inevitable enemies that being a thief and a liar for a living makes. He's learned how to fight, perhaps not professionally, but Eames likes to think he can hold his own pretty damn well in a brawl, and is proud of that. He fights hard and fast and dirty, sharp jabs here and a strategically placed elbow there, relentless and adaptive.
Arthur, though? Arthur fights as if engaged in a dance, his movements sharp yet fluid, exerting control and strength, but just enough to get the job done: no more, no less. He's precise and curt and powerful, just as he is in every other aspect of being himself, but with an underlying agility that makes Eames think of his mother and worn ballet pointe shoes, grand jetés and arabesques and pas de chats across a stage. Arthur's a whip, all lithe frame corded with lean muscle and poise, a picture in motion.
So really, it comes as no surprise that he's also mesmerizingly agile and elegant when falling out of a helicopter and off the edge of a mountain.
- * - * -
"They're gaining on us!" Ariadne yells to the pilot above the shrieking of the wind and roar of the helicopter's roter blades, her thin voice nearly lost amidst all the noise. Her face conveys all that speech cannot though: her eyes are wide with fright and her lips have gone white with terror; her hair whips wildly about her face and gives her the appearance of a madwoman - that, or a poor unfortunate girl who hasn't seen a hairbrush in weeks. Snow has settled on her thin shoulders and were Eames not too busy trying to stay alive, he would reach over to brush away the white flakes from the suit jacket because he knows how Arthur is about his suits ( steamed, pressed, neatly hung).
As if to punctuate Ariadne's warning, the spray of gunfire draws nearer and Eames curses, loading another magazine into his Desert Eagle. "And exactly how badly did you and Cobb piss these people off again, darling?" He yells, term of endearment slipping from his lips purely out of habit because as of right now, Eames isn't feeling anything particularly warm or affectionate for the helicopter cabin's other occupant. It probably has something to do with the fact that he can't feel his bloody fingers. Or his toes. Or his nose, for that matter.
Or maybe because they're flying over the bloody Himalayas in the middle of a fucking blizzard, (honestly, it's a miracle they haven't crashed by now; they're going to have to give the pilot a pretty fat tip because damn, that man can fly ) trying to escape from their mark - who actually isn't a mark at all and instead a bunch of goons working for Cobol Engineering something or other - and, per usual, it's all Cobb's fault.
From across the tiny space, Arthur doesn't even spare him a glance, eyes still narrowed at their pursuers, gun held like an extension of his arm. "We didn't give them what they wanted, and turned right around to pull off a job that should've been impossible for the man they hired us to steal from in the first place," the point man answers flatly, voice low and yet somehow loud and clear as a bell (that's not surprising, though. Eames can always hear Arthur perfectly well whenever he speaks). He pulls the trigger once and Eames faintly hears the scream of a man falling from the helicopter on their tail, not at all unlike the Wilhelm scream used far too much in movies. "So you tell me, Eames," Arthur finally turns and shoots him a glare, cold and curt and annoyed. "How badly did we piss them off?"
It's the obvious condescension in his tone that sets Eames's teeth on edge, because he's crouching down in a helicopter too small for even a party of one, let alone two grown men and a young woman, he's freezing his tail off, and, to top it all off, he's getting shot at when he should be sitting back and deciding whether to head to Las Vegas or Tokyo after another successful extraction. Eames thinks that anyone would feel just a bit irked in the same situation, and Arthur's holier-than-thou attitude is doing nothing to help. He opens his mouth to bite back a sharp retort, because despite what many believe, Eames is just as good as dishing it out as he is at receiving, when a second look at the other man makes him bite his tongue.
Arthur's in nothing but what remains of his suit after he draped his suit jacket around Ariadne's shoulders, kneeling beside the open space where the door used to be (no match against the relentless spray of a machine gun, apparently) in the remaining two pieces of his three piece suit, wind whipping his de-gelled hair about his face, vest open and flapping about his lean frame. He looks stunning, like James Bond minus all the fancy gadgets and gentlemanly charm, leaving behind dangerous accuracy and unbridled skill in the art of death.
But that's not the reason Eames's rebuke dies a premature death in his throat, it's the pallor of Arthur's face and the gauntness of his cheeks, the dark circles under his eyes and the way he looks dead on his feet from having tried to pull double duty as both extractor and point man. It's because Arthur is bleeding from a cut on his neck onto his starched, not-so-white anymore collar and shivering like a half-dead leaf in the wind -
-and it's because of the bullet that whizzes out of nowhere, catching Arthur across the temple and spraying a wide arc of crimson. A window shatters and the point man's head jerks back; he pitches backwards, balancing for one brief moment on the precipice of the abyss - and then topples out of the helicopter.
And for that one brief moment, Eames stops breathing.
"ARTHUR!!" Ariadne screams, and Eames lunges for the point man. His fingertips brush the faintest whisper of a red silk tie but Arthur's gone, a dark speck disappearing downwards into the blizzard and Eames is flat on his front, one hand still outstretched into the emptiness below, heart pounding in his throat.
In all the long years he and Arthur have been playing this coy game, dancing in and out and around each other; out of all the times he has let the point man slip through his fingers, Eames hates himself for this one the most.
No. "Come back." The words tumble numbly from his lips in a barely audible whisper, and then he's rearing up and charging toward the pilot's cabin, a hurricane of anger and desperation and regret- "GO BACK!!"
"What?!" The pilot hollers, looking at the forger as if he's gone insane and Eames gazes back with wild eyes, knowing that in that instant, he very well may be. He's moving even before he can comprehend it, grabbing the first aid bag strapped to the roof of the cabin and moving toward the open space where the door used to be.
"Eames, no!" Ariadne's arms are latching on around his waist and she's got tears in her wide eyes. "No, you can't!"
In any other circumstance, he would heed her words, because there is no doubt in his mind that what he's about to do is perhaps the stupidest thing he's ever done, and that's on a long list of crazy and stupid things in one lifetime. But this is Arthur, and with that knowledge, every instinct in him is telling him to go after the point man. To not lose him again.
And besides, Eames has always been sort of stupid when it comes to Arthur.
"I must," he whispers, and steps out into nothing.
- * - * -
The phone is ringing. It's loud. And annoying as hell. And right next to his ear.
With a groan, Cobb flings a hand out to grope blindly around for the lamp and switches it on, cursing the sudden brightness and whoever that's calling at - he squints disbelievingly at the clock - five-fucking-thirty in the morning. It's his cell though, and those who have this number are few and far in between, and most of them, he's sure, are well aware of the difference between time zones and of proper communication etiquette, so this must be important.
It better be.
Muttering under his breath, Cobb finally locates the phone and he lifts it up to his ear, grunting a rather grumpy sounding: "Hello?"
"COBB!" someone shrieks, someone very obviously female and with that nasally tone usually acquired while in the midst of a long, hard cry and Cobb jerks the phone away from his ear in surprise, all wisps of sleep gone from his mind. Given that his daughter only ever calls him "Daddy" and the only other females he interacts with on a semi-regular basis are the mothers of the other children at James's daycare, that narrows down the list of the potential identities of this mysterious caller, and he brings the phone back to his ear with just the slightest hint of uncertainty.
"Ariadne?"
"Oh thank God! Cobb, they're gone; they're both gone and I don't know what to do, I don't know-"
Ariadne's voice is thin and tinny on the other end of the line, and Cobb vaguely wonders how awful her cell reception must be, and if she's on a cell phone at all. He hears what sounds like muffled shouting in the background, hastily spoken words in a language that doesn't even sound remotely like French or English and if that wasn't enough, the fact that the poor girl sounds halfway hysterical is enough to send Cobb stumbling for a pair of pants and a jacket. "Ariadne, what's wrong?"
"The job," she says, and her voice is thick with tears. "It was a set up. A trap. Someone from Cobol Engineering who has it out for you and Arthur."
Cobol Engineering. A cold fist hits him in the gut and Cobb sucks in a deep breath. "Ariadne," his tone had started off soothing in attempts to calm the architect down, but now Cobb can hear his voice rising with worry and confusion. "Where are you? What happened? Where's Arthur?"
Ariadne fails to choke back a sob and her next words are a jumbled, garbled mess of a run-on sentence: "They caught us by surprise by pretending to be a mark, we should have known because Arthur said, he said the research didn't add up and there's no reason why the mark would be in Tibet of all places but we went anyways and then we barely got out in time; there was a MEDEVAC helicopter there but they followed us and then Arthur and Eames were arguing and Arthur got shot in the head and then he fell out of the helicopter and Eames jumped out after him-"
Arthur got shot in the head and fell out of the helicopter. Cobb's blood turns to ice for a half second, before it begins to boil with rage. "Where are you?"
"Um." She sniffs. "A hospital. In Mustang. Nepal."
"Are you safe?"
"I...I don't know." Her voice cracks, and Cobb can hear a fresh wave of tears coming as he imagines Ariadne looking around herself, only now noticing the unfamiliarity of her strange surroundings. "I guess," she offers meekly. "The pilot lost the people chasing after us."
"Okay." He's fully dressed now, and already making up a mental apology to offer Miles for calling him at this hour in the morning, begging him to play babysitter again. Although Cobb guesses that telling his father-in-law "your brightest student is stuck in the middle of nowhere, Nepal and Arthur apparently got shot in the head and fell out of a helicopter" will suffice. After all, Miles is as fond of Cobb's former point man as much as Mal was-
"We should adopt him," she laughs jokingly, and nods out the window, to where Arthur is carrying Phillipa on his back, running barefoot through the backyard as his little charge laughs and laughs, tiny hands grasping onto the back of his vest and no doubt wrinkling the material, but neither of them seem to care.
Dom smiles and draws his wife to him, kissing her on the forehead as one hand automatically drifts downwards to settle on the swollen curve of her belly. "Mal, we've been through this already," he teases playfully, and she tosses her head back and laughs, echoing her daughter's delight.
"We might as well, Dom. He's practically family already."
"Cobb?" Ariadne's voice breaks through the fog of memories in his mind and he shakes his head, hard.
"Just stay put, Ariadne," Cobb says, and his voice is steel. "I've got a phone call to make, and we'll get this straightened out."
- * - * -
Fischer might've been onto something when he pitched a fit about being caught in an avalanche, because Eames is tired, cold, wet, and all around miserable.
His hiking boots, while better suited for the environment than Ariadne's trendy boots and those Italian designer loafers Arthur had been sporting, still are not the ideal for an endless trek through the bloody Himalayas to find a poncy point man with a stick up his arse. He's wearing a jacket and has wrapped the bandages from the first aid kit around his hands for warmth, but he's soaked through from his rather uncomfortable landing from x hundred feet and to drag his morale even deeper, the forger thinks he's actually walking in circles.
Although the sun set long ago and night is rapidly closing in around him, Eames finds himself nearly blinded by the utter whiteness surrounding him, and his throat tightens. It reminds him too much of the past, of his mother's blank gaze as she sat by the window in her wedding dress, waiting day after day for a husband that would never return; later she would sit in a white building dressed in white clothes and stare at a white wall as blanch-faced doctors shook their heads mournfully and pronounced her mind gone; a blank slate.
White was the color of the suit Arthur wore their third job together, and Eames remembers all too clearly the way desire curled deep down low in his belly, a searing heat that gradually, over the years, has softened into something quiet and foreign and precious that Eames dares not put a name to, lest it be lost.
"Are we all set?" Cobb obviously is, with his double-breasted tuxedo and a radiant Mal on his arm. "Arthur?"
"Ready." The point man steps into the room, and Eames's jaw falls slack. It stays that way as Mal disentangles her arm from her husband's and goes up to fuss with Arthur's bowtie and when Arthur merely smiles and lets her, Eames feels the instant spark of lust give way to something entirely different.
Arthur leaves the room first, brushing past Eames with his eyes set straight ahead, ignoring him completely and when Cobb and Mal follow, the latter leans toward the forger and with a soft, knowing smile, asks if he's done catching flies yet.
After the job that night, he went out and drank away the dull ache in his chest, because he knew, just like he knows now, that Arthur - uptight, intelligent, stick-in-the-mud point man extraordinaire - is too good for a man like him. Everyone knows it, even if they don't say so out loud. Eames is an actor, a mimic, a verisimilitude - he wears loud colors and garish patterns for a reason. Many (Arthur included) simply assume the forger has no fashion sense, but Eames does it because he is a tabula rasa, a blank slate waiting to be filled with the likes and dislikes and preferences of others. He takes and takes even just to build his own identity, and gives nothing in return. Of course he doesn't. He's a thief.
He's the man that can (quite literally) become anything, taking a bit of everything and everyone - and Arthur deserves better than that, he deserves someone who knows not how to only take, but how to give too, and unconditionally at that. Eames dares not sully him, the proverbial white knight with his white, starched collared Oxford shirts and doubtlessly lily white arse (no, that is something Eames has never actually seen, despite what others may think).
Huh. Apparently, wandering around on a snow-covered mountain range makes him a maudlin, sentimental drunk without the booze. Well, this time around he has no snowmobile, no skis, no explosives, no threat of dropping into limbo, and nothing else to distract him but his own thoughts.
And that, that is always very dangerous territory with Eames.
He figures he's been trudging through the seemingly endless landscape of white for about an hour or so when he finally spots something that isn't the color of bleached teeth or milk. Of course, while the red staining the snow means that Arthur must be somewhere nearby, it's not exactly comforting.
Neither is seeing Arthur slumped over in the snow a few meters away, unmoving.
He's scrambling in the snow then, literally wading through the drift until he reaches the other man's prone form, reaching out trembling fingers toward the blood caked in Arthur's dark hair, brushing the tangled strands gently away from the forehead, knuckles gently bumping against the wound where the bullet grazed the point man's temple. Head wounds bleed like a bitch, and his fingers come away red. They then drop lower to Arthur's throat, and Eames heaves a sigh of relief when he feels a pulse - weak and thready, but still there.
"Alright, pet," he whispers aloud, and slings the first aid kit onto his back, bending his knees to fit an arm around Arthur's frame and trying not to thinking about how there's something oddly captivating in the curl of Arthur's form against the snow, the tilt of his head, and darkness of eyelashes fluttering against pale cheeks like drops of oil, something graceful, even in stillness that likens unto death. "Alright, now," Eames murmurs, as much a reassurance to himself as it is to Arthur, who clearly cannot hear him. "You're alright. I've found you."
Fortuitously, ironically, blessedly - or perhaps an odd combination of the three - a cave looms in the distance, its mouth open and beckoning, beckoning the pair into its inky depths.
- * - * -
"Saito-san?"
He looks up from the spread of files and reports before him that detail the disbanding of Robert Fischer Jr.'s corporate empire and its sale to multiple different buyers, raising an eyebrow at the secretary standing nervously in the doorway.
She's a young one, pencil skirted with a colorful blouse and black-wire framed glasses, shy and nervous and far too educated for this job. Saito has read her resume. Working for a man such as himself is truly considered a great honor, but he knows she should be studying astrophysics at some top-rate university, not pushing papers and taking phone calls, and vaguely, he wonders if she would consider enrolling if he fired her. He tries searching around for her name in his mind, before giving up without too much of a fuss.
None of his assistants have names anymore. The time he spent in limbo was not kind on some of his mental faculties.
"Hai?"
Her face colors. "Gomenasai, demo..." she motions to his phone uncertainly, which he's been ignoring, as he always does late into the night. Saito is a man who likes to follow a certain set of self-imposed rules, and usually, those rules are followed by all those around him, to the letter. This must be important because while his new secretary is certainly overqualified for the job, she is also the discerning sort, and Saito can appreciate such a becoming characteristic. "Mr. Cobb?"
He picks up the phone immediately. "Mr. Cobb."
"Saito." Cobb's voice is tight and strained, and Saito's eyes narrow; he sits up just a bit straighter.
"I suppose you have not called to discuss things of a trivial matter."
"I'm calling in a favor."
Saito smiles. This, he can do. After all, he is indebted to the man. "What is it you need, Mr. Cobb?"
"You're in Tokyo?"
"Correct."
There's a brief pause. Then, "How fast can you get to Nepal?"
- * - * -
She's been sitting here for an hour. Maybe two. Maybe three. She's lost track of time, and she really doesn't care.
Ariadne stares down at her feet, at her boots, a nicely tanned leather that stands out against the grey floor and taupe walls of the hospital corridor and not for the first time, she thinks that this hospital is more reminiscent of a prison than anything else. But then again, it doesn't matter. Both are places of death, and the only difference is that the hospital smells like antiseptic.
Her boots thump against the plastic chair she sits slumped in, fingers wrapped around a tepid cup of tea. From beside her, the pilot (Harry something or other. He's a closed mouthed fellow, and after Arthur promised him a reasonable portion of the cut, he was in with little to no questions asked, only a brief "so when do I get paid?" Eames had chuckled and declared that he liked him.) shoots her a worried glance, but she pays him no attention.
She didn't sign up for this. Thump-thump. There's a splotch of red near the toe on the right foot. A splotch of Arthur's blood. Thump-thump. She sets the tea aside, turns her totem over and over in her hands, running the tip of her index finger against the engraving on the bottom. Thump-thump. She didn't come back for this.
"Ariadne?"
Her head shoots up at the voice, the voice that haunts her dreams when she still can dream, the voice that opened her eyes to more than reality and still inspires her to build cathedrals, craft mountains, to dream of and create all things impossible and wonderful and amazing. "Cobb."
He's standing at the end of the hallway, Saito behind him and Ariadne struggles to her feet, stumbles, and then breaks into a flat-out run, boots clicking against the floor, a splotch of red against tan against grey tile, red-tan-grey, red-tan-grey.
She's had a dream like this once before. In that dream, she runs at the man and hits him again and again, and there are tears in her eyes and on her cheeks blurring her vision so that she never sees his face; she's angry, oh so angry but so lost and helpless at the same time and as the man stands there like a statue and lets her lash out at him, Ariadne feels a great pain in her chest, very much like heartbreak.
Say what you will about dreams coming true; Ariadne only wishes it could've been under a different set of circumstances.
- * - * -
"Alright, darling. Here we are. Easy now."
The forger gently pillows Arthur's head on his own jacket, careful not to jostle the bandages wrapped around the wound to his temple, murmuring quietly to no one in particular. He sits back for a moment, biting the inside of his cheek, trying to find a way out of this predicament because Arthur's clothes are wet and there's no way to warm him up besides the obvious. Anyone else and he would already been busy; he's been told once or twice that he has some skill in this department...but that's with anyone else and this is Arthur. Arthur of little imagination and great skill, Arthur of the white suit (of armor) and lily white arse, Arthur who is off limits.
Despite his better judgment, his fingers are undoing the buttons on the point man's Oxford dress shirt - why the goddamn are there so many buttons?! - and then he's pulling Arthur forward to help divest him of his clothing. Once upon a time, Eames would have tried this, only with a nice dinner beforehand and all the gentlemanly charm he could muster. Now, he's only doing it so Arthur doesn't freeze to death.
Arthur is cold. Too cold. And too thin. He feels like a sack of flour in Eames's arms, and that is definitely not okay. As he shrugs off his own shirt, the forger feels a sudden fierce and irrational hate bubbling up in his chest, dark and black and ugly. He hates Cobb for going off and leaving his point man without an extractor to stand beside; he hates the bloody bastards who did this to Arthur; he even hates Arthur just a little for being so stubborn and strong and seemingly invulnerable.
It only makes his current state all that more difficult to bear.
As Eames lays the vest aside, his fingers brush against a strange pocket sewn into the inside of the vest - a small, barely noticeable compartment - resting right over where the point man's heart would be. It bulges outwards slightly, the protrusion in a shape of a cube and he takes great care not to touch it.
His fingers stop suddenly at the catches of Arthur's trousers and he looks away, heaving an exhale of frustration, face suddenly very warm. Man up, he growls inwardly, and stupidly almost tears the trousers in his flustered haste to get them off in the least awkward way possible.
Arthur lies limply against his chest, a solid but comfortable weight, arms trapped between their chests and head nestled in the crook of Eames's neck; his hair is gel-less, damp from the snow and Eames cards his fingers through the soft strands before he can stop himself, other arm curved protectively around Arthur's bare back. The flat of his palm brushes against the slightly raised puckered skin of a scar on the point man's shoulder and Eames feels the urge to brush his lips over the imperfection, the evidence of Arthur's loyalty as a point man or perhaps a memento from a wild party gone wrong back in his college days (if he can believe that uptight Arthur is capable of having that type of fun. But then again, he supposes he shouldn't assume. Unexpected surprises, and all.).
That unnamable emotion flutters in Eames's chest and he chokes out a half-derisive huff of laughter. And there, sitting half-bare in a damp, dirty cave in the Himalayas and holding the infuriating, intriguing, beautiful point man in his arms, praying to a God he's not even sure he believes in, he bows his head and murmurs softly, three forbidden words a mere whisper of breath against Arthur's skin. After all, there's no one around to hear, right?
Yet another assumption.
Carefully cradled in the warmth of the other man's embrace, Arthur's brow furrows ever so faintly and as Eames begins to hum a half-forgotten lullaby in the back of his throat, the fingers of Arthur's left hand curl in slightly to brush against the forger's collarbone, and his lips twitch in what might have been a smile.
- * - * -
Much like everything else Saito owns or in some way oversees, his healthcare is excellent.
But his physicians aren't miracle workers.
Eames needs more than several days of bed rest and fluids to even begin to see the other side of recovery and while he's spared the horrors of frostbite, but comes down with a nasty bout of pneumonia that lands him bedridden for weeks. Ariadne is in and out of his room a lot, sitting by his side or reading over by the window and upon several occasions, he catches her crying softly, tears trailing down her cheeks and soaking the pillow she's hugging to her chest. Cobb researches the hell out of their supposed "mark" and Cobol Engineering quickly finds out that it doesn't matter whether or not Dominic Cobb is retired - if you've pissed him off, you're going to be very sorry. Especially now that he has a multi-billionare business mogul on his side.
One afternoon, the forger wakes to the shuffle of feet in the room and a pair of artist's hands gently pulling the sketchbook out of a dozing Ariadne's lap, setting it aside and carefully draping a blanket over her form. "She's wearing herself out with all this crying," comes the low-pitched voice, quiet in the still room. "Survivor's guilt."
Eames blinks several times and smiles wanly, tired. "Well, it's not really survivor's guilt if no one died, is it now?" He tilts his head and narrows his eyes at the impeccably dressed man approaching his bed. "You just can't have the good grace to take just the slightest bit ill, can you?"
Arthur sits down on the side of the bed, his arm barely brushing Eames's, gentle concern in his eyes and an amused smile twitching at his lips. "Apparently not."
Arthur, Eames thinks, is indeed a creature of extraordinary grace, but sometimes, he can be a right sneaky bastard too.
- * - * -
Well...that was my first attempt at something other than angst and heartbreaking tragedy. I hope I didn't get too OOC...please tell me if that's the case!