Fic: this room and this radio play [Inception]
This has been a crap week. More about that later, but for now, fic! that I am actually not too fond of, but whatever, we'll see how you like it
Title: this room and this radio play
Fandom: Inception
Pairing/Rating: Arthur/Eames, NC-17
Word Count: 8,440
Date Completed: 17 September 2010
Disclaimer: These people? Aren't mine.
Author's Notes: Title [adapted] from Elbow's "Switching Off." For old_blueeyes and _pinkchocolate, who were, like, Olympic-champion handholders/sounding boards/betas this week. I can't even tell you, you guys, they're just. Amazing. I can very honestly say this fic would have been scrapped on my second day of working on it if not for them, I was that close to giving up. But it's here, done, and being posted, even if only out of stubbornness, and I cannot thank these two women enough for helping me get there. Eppy and Annie, you're the best. ♥ ♥ ♥
A few things about actual content:
It’s different from when he’s working a job. Working a job is all about constructing reality, building from what you know can be and is true. You lay concrete foundation for your marks to hold their footing on and put in the city brick by brick around them. It’s dreamspace, illogical and impossible by nature, but it’s purposefully warped into something that can exist, could exist, the possibility at the core of the dream enough to keep the mark (usually, unless something goes very, very wrong) blissfully unaware.
When Arthur dreams alone, it’s training, in theory a way to put his time to good use for both his job and his survival. In practice, it’s more like playing. Dreaming alone, for someone who knows their way around the dreamspace, is freedom, license to explore. Arthur takes it often and willingly. He hooks himself into a PASIV four nights a week, if he can, and spends a REM cycle building impossible things: windows in time-lock with glass that runs in rivers, double-decker buses the size of ocean-liners inside, city districts layered like white cakes and just as clean. He practices building what could never be, and it’s the perfect test, really.
After you’ve built the impossible, anything real seems easy enough.
***
A few nights a week, Arthur forces himself to sleep without the PASIV.
He doesn’t like doing so. It’s disconcerting to sleep without dreams, and even more so to sleep in dreams he can’t consciously control (which Arthur does still have, and more often than he’d like; he’s been in the business long enough that he doesn’t always dream on his own, but it happens enough, and is unpredictable enough when it does, to really aggravate his control issues). But the active disconnect is more restful than any somnacin-aided sleep could be, so especially when he’s prepping to work a job, no matter the difficulty, Arthur leaves the PASIV in its suitcase and sleeps naturally. Adequate preparation is worth the occasional discomfort on his part.
Tonight is a PASIV-free night. In reality, Arthur is lying in a queen-sized bed in a room at London’s Ritz, courtesy of the politician whose son he’s going to spend the next week training in sub-security.
In his sleep, Arthur is dreaming in Technicolor. He is in a kitchen, light blue walls and appliances straight out of the eighties. The coffee mug in his hands is spring green and chipped, the coffee inside it steaming, dark, and bitter-smelling. Next to him, Eames is battling with a fuschia toaster, and that’s more of a totem than Arthur needs. His kitchen would never hold such garishly colored appliances.
“It’s stuck again,” he says. “It always gets stuck when I use it. Bloody thing must have it out for me.”
“Yes,” Arthur hears himself say, “I’m sure the toaster has quite the grudge against your breakfast. Possibly because you insist on sticking knives in it.”
Eames looks over at him, lips pursed and arms crossed. “You give it a try, then,” he says. The way he shoves the toaster over, yellow-handled butter knife still sticking straight up out of one slot, is as petulant as his voice.
Arthur sighs and reaches for the appliance. He pulls the knife out, then depresses the lever on Eames’ toast again. As soon as he hears it latch, he turns the setting dial to “OFF,” and the lever springs back up again, bringing the toast with it. In the back of his mind, Arthur thinks this seems like an inordinate amount of focus to give toast.
Eames snorts. “Of course it works for you. Everything always works for you.”
“Not everything,” Arthur says. It sounds placating and false-modest even to his own ears. If his subconscious is any good, Eames, whose business is putting on airs, will see through it in a second.
His subconscious is good tonight, and Eames snatches his toast away with a rather rude, still petulant half-shove to Arthur’s shoulder. “Everything always works for you,” he repeats, “even the impossible things.”
Eames’ knife makes scraping sounds against the bread as he spreads bright orange marmalade on it. Arthur wonders again at his subconscious’ focus on toast.
***
After the inception job, Arthur doesn’t see Eames again for another eight months. When he does, it’s by accident, at least on his part.
Arthur is taking a vacation. It’s just a small one, a week in Berlin to see a special exhibit on Bali style the Bauhaus is hosting and generally reacquaint himself with the city. He likes Berlin, the way it’s reconstructed itself and the prevalence of sleeker, more modern designs even in the older inner city. It suits him, and while he never builds from memory in dreams, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t build from an influenced perspective.
Eames meets him at a bar Arthur visits his third night in the city.
“Aren’t you a long way from home?” he says, as if he has any room to talk. Both of them travel far too much.
“What do you want, Eames?” Arthur says.
“Whiskey sour,” Eames smirks, “if you’re buying.”
Arthur takes another sip of his bourbon. “Buy it yourself.”
“You wound me, Arthur,” Eames says, then signals the bartender over. “Whiskey sour for me, and another of whatever he’s drinking.”
Arthur rolls his eyes. He could cancel the order, but free bourbon is free bourbon, and worth spending another twenty minutes in even Eames’ company.
“So,” Eames says, settling himself into the stool next to Arthur. “What’re you doing in Berlin?”
“Vacation,” Arthur says.
Eames laughs, surprise evident. “Vacation, really? I didn’t realize you even knew what that was.”
Arthur scowls. “Of course I do. Just because I don’t take them often-”
“And here’s where you try to make me feel bad for enjoying my leisure time, right?” Eames says. Arthur’s scowl deepens, drawing another laugh from Eames. “Thought so. Getting predictable, there.”
The bartender sets the drinks Eames ordered in front of them. Arthur drains his first bourbon and reaches immediately for the second, not drinking yet but holding it close and ready.
Eames raises an eyebrow. “In that much of a hurry to get away from me, are you?”
Arthur pointedly does not take a drink, unwilling to give Eames the satisfaction of confirmation. Eames smiles anyway, and it’s clear that this was a losing battle from the start.
“What do you want, Eames?” Arthur says again.
“Heard you were in the neighborhood,” Eames says.
“Since when is Berlin your neighborhood?” Arthur takes another swallow, lets the bourbon slide thick and slow down his throat.
“It’s not, really,” Eames concedes. “But I have been here since last week. I’m doing some travelling, revisiting my favorite places and seeing a few new ones. Putting Saito’s money to good use, you know.”
Arthur’s money from Saito, minus the cost of the newest fall suit collection by Yves Saint Laurent, is sitting in a Swiss bank account, along with all the rest of the money he’s accrued over the years in this business. He uses enough to cover his plane tickets and wardrobe and the utilities and maintenance in the New York apartment he sees less often than the places he visits on job, and the rest stays put and builds up more interest than he knows what to do with. It’s not that Arthur doesn’t enjoy luxury; he just doesn’t have the patience for it right now. Some day he will, and then the money and all its interest will come in handy. For now, he lets it be.
Still, Eames is expecting a teammate’s understanding, not Arthur’s neuroses. Arthur nods in acknowledgment, if not agreement, and says, “So you decided to track me down and buy me a drink?”
Eames downs half his whiskey sour in one go. He replaces the glass on the bar with an exaggerated sigh. “Sure,” he says. “why wouldn’t I?”
Arthur can think of any number of reasons, not in the least being the conditions of their separation last time. But if Eames wants to play at avoidance through ignorance, Arthur is more than ready to comply. He shrugs and takes another drink of his bourbon. Half a glass left.
“So apart from your whirlwind tour of Germany, what else have you been up to?”
“Working.”
“I figured. It’s always the job with you, isn’t it?” There’s something teasing in Eames’ voice, laced further with something verging on dark that Arthur shies away from categorizing. Arthur’s never been much of an avoider; unsurprisingly, Eames brings out the worst in him.
Again, Arthur shrugs. “It keeps me focused,” he says.
“But not happy.”
In lieu of a proper response (and knowing full well Eames will take this for a response in and of itself; Arthur’s not happy about it, but he’d rather to cut his losses while this is still the worst of them), Arthur downs the rest of his bourbon before standing.
“As fun as this has been, I need to get back,” he says, shrugging into his coat. “Early morning tomorrow.”
“Or you could keep me company a while longer,” Eames says. “Here or elsewhere, take your pick. Although I will say, the bed at my hotel room is ex-”
“No,” Arthur says. It comes out more abruptly than he intended, but he lets it stand.
Eames just nods. “Well,” he says, smirk slipping back into place on his mouth, “you enjoy your early morning, then.”
His expression, when he turns to look at Arthur, has an almost imperceptible stiffness to it that Arthur knows he’d miss if he weren’t looking for it. For a second, Arthur’s good-bye sticks in his throat, one of the few times in his adult life anything his made him speechless.
Something in his posture must give him away, because whatever tightness was on Eames’ face bleeds away, softening the corners of his mouth and eyes, and his voice is the smallest amount wondering as he says, “Arthur-”
“Good night, Eames,” Arthur says, reaching past him to put enough money to more than cover all three of their drinks on the bar. It slows his exit, but it feels necessary. Fuck if Arthur is giving Eames any more leverage to walk away with tonight.
***
In the simplest terms, what they do is fuck.
Actually, that’s about it. In the only terms, what they do is fuck. They may limit it exclusively to dreams, and it may be barely about the orgasm and more about the aggressive release of tension, but it’s still fucking. It’s raw and rough and baring, a crude solution and cruder application of the PASIV (never mind that this, or something like it, is what it was originally designed for; their entire industry has evolved it beyond that, and part of Arthur can’t help but feel like they’re sullying the equipment by dragging it so far down below the skill-set they’ve developed for it) to a problem they should have been able to fix on their own. But they weren’t, or haven’t been, and this-sharing dreams and fight-fucking their way through them-allows them to coexist peacefully enough to do their jobs on the occasions they are stuck working together.
There are rules, of course, because (Arthur insisted, back when this first started) there are always rules: the job stays first, hence why they’re doing this in to begin with. They fight constantly, they fuck it out in the dreamspace, and they don’t acknowledge it back in reality. They don’t let it get personal. They don’t get attached. They don’t ever talk about it, not to anyone, not even to each other.
And, Arthur has to admit, it works, even if it was originally Eames’ idea. It’s inelegant, it’s base, it’s like nothing Arthur himself would ever design. But it works, and it lets them work together, even if only barely.
It’s just another part of the job, simple as that. It’s another part of the job, and Arthur doesn’t mind; it’s all it can be.
***
Eames has him pressed tight against a wall, and Arthur is so hot with it he can scarcely breathe. Eames’ mouth is slipping where it sucks on Arthur’s jaw, his teeth scraping rough rhythms Arthur can feel against his skin. Arthur has one hand wrapped around Eames’ neck to hold him there, Eames’ hair feeling too short and bristly where it brushes the top of Arthur’s index finger. Arthur wonders for a second when Eames took to wearing it so short, and then loses that thought as Eames’ hands slip around to grab Arthur’s ass, pulling him close enough that their hips press flush together and the heat of it drives an involuntary whimper out of Arthur’s throat.
Eames chuckles, warm and whispery with stubble against Arthur’s skin. “Impatient tonight, are we?”
There’s a level of fond familiarity in the way he says it that presses against Arthur even more suffocatingly than the heat of Eames’ body caging him in against the wall. He narrows his eyes and flexes his hands where they grip Eames’ hips, thumbs rubbing circles on Eames’ skin in a second’s preparation before he spins them until their positions are reversed. Eames’ laugh is surprised and sudden, but his face, when Arthur leans back to see it more clearly, is that same fondness, like he was expecting this, like Arthur has done this too many times for him not to.
No matter. Arthur lets it go, the pressure of Eames’ cock against his thigh too insistent and interesting to ignore. When he moves back in to kiss the stupid smile off of Eames’ lips, however, he gets distracted by the glint of something metal against Eames’ (bare, and when did they lose their shirts?) chest. It’s foreign-or rather, because Arthur is perfectly capable of recognizing military-standard dog tags, it’s foreign on Eames.
Eames has a military past, but it is probably the one thing about himself he keeps hidden; even Arthur had to search to learn about it. It’s strange, then, that Eames would be wearing them now. Arthur brings a hand up to touch them, feels the metal hot from Eames’ skin and sticky-damp from Eames’ sweat.
“Why are you wearing these?” Arthur says.
Eames groans and tips his head back. “We’ve talked about this. I know you’re not happy, I know you don’t want me to go, but it’s not as though I have a choice.”
Arthur blinks, distracted by the way the line of Eames’ throat moves with his words, and by the way what Eames is saying makes no fucking sense.
Eames continues, oblivious. “And I won’t forget you, darling. I never could, no matter what the Germans-”
“What the fuck,” Arthur interrupts, “are you talking about?”
He’s already stepping back from Eames, despite the way Eames’ fingers are clinging to his hips, trying to hold him in place and distractingly close. Arthur fishes his die out of his pocket even though he already knows this is a dream-they don’t do this in anything but; that hasn’t changed. Sure enough, the weight of his die is wrong in his palm, and he doesn’t bother throwing it to confirm. He knows this part of himself well enough.
“You’re dreaming, love,” Eames says, voice sounding teasing and that strange sense of fond again.
Arthur narrows his eyes. “I know. I don’t remember hooking into the PASIV, though, so why are you here?”
“You didn’t,” Eames says.
“Then why are you here?” Arthur repeats. He looks more closely at Eames, at the dog tags around his chest and the military-short cut of his hair and the old-styled trousers hanging on his hips. “And why are you in period military dress?”
“Maybe you felt like a little role-playing,” Eames says, shrugging. “It’s your subconscious. You tell me.”
“And why,” Arthur says, in perfect forced calm, “would my subconscious make me the war widow to your dashing army officer?”
“I think I’m Air Force, actually. And you really think I’m dashing?” Eames arches his eyebrows playfully, then, at Arthur’s glare, drops them and repeats, voice more serious, “It’s your subconscious. You tell me.”
“You’re my subconscious,” Arthur points out.
Eames just grins. “Who knows, then? Maybe you just like impossible things.”
Arthur wakes up before he can respond to that. For good measure, he rolls his die once, twice on the night table next to him. He doesn’t need the confirmation, though. Eames is no longer there, and that’s proof enough that Arthur is back where he fell asleep.
***
After Berlin, Arthur takes a job in Zurich extracting the secrets of one bank’s new sub-security-based account access system for a rival bank’s CEO. Switzerland isn’t his favorite place, especially this time of year, but the irony of the job amuses him too greatly to turn it down.
Zurich is, as it should be, frozen. The streets are slick with ice under Arthur’s boots, the wind chilled and biting where it finds the open skin of his face, the exposed corners of the top of his throat above his coat collar. Arthur focuses on completing the job and moving on to warmer climes, and is grateful to be working with a team of veterans, who all agree with him on at least the first goal.
The job itself is straightforward work, easy once they figure out a way to accommodate for the likely higher-than-average level of sub-security they’ll be facing in the mark’s mind. They finish planning within a week and schedule to execute it two days later when the mark goes in for extensive dental reconstructive work, which leaves them with two days to lie low and undiscovered in Zurich.
Arthur spends the time in his hotel room. There’s nothing in Zurich that particularly interests him, at least not enough to face the freezing cold to see, and the hotel has decent room service, so Arthur feels justified in this decision. He mostly works on his laptop, hacking college databases and online journals to catch up on the latest developments in manipulating dreamspace and arranging his next job somewhere south of the equator (he hasn’t been to Rio in a while, and his contact there has a job that looks promising). He has to stretch the work long past his typical standards of efficiency to make it fill the time he has, but he makes do. He’s always been good at that.
The afternoon of the second day, Arthur’s email inbox pings with a new message, which isn’t surprising. He’s the best at his job; he’s used to a steady volume of incoming new mail. What he isn’t used to, or hasn’t been for the last eight months, at least, is an email from Eames’ address. Attached are two pictures that Arthur opens with more curiosity than he’d ever properly admit.
For a moment, Arthur just looks at the scanned images on his screen, eyes narrowed in assessment. There’s something to this, he knows, something buried in the overly-bright pixels and stupid font to explain why Eames is breaking the radio silence he’s held since the inception job ended, and with a method he’s used to annoy Arthur all the years they’ve known each other-a method Arthur would expect. There’s something in this for Arthur to find, Arthur just isn’t sure what, as of yet.
He doesn’t have the time to get there now, though. He may be working at intentionally-reduced efficiency, but there is still a schedule to follow, research to do and a job to focus on. Arthur brings up an article on the ethics of using the PASIV to stimulate the growth of creativity in early childhood and begins to read.
If the pictures stay open in a separate window, it’s only because Arthur is a problem-solver by nature, and they represent the most significant challenge to accommodate for he’s had in (nine) months. To dismiss them fully would be a level of irresponsibility he can’t allow.
***
The first time they did this, they were ready to kill each other while co-opting on a job in Beijing. It was only their first time working together, and they were already at each other’s throats more than anyone on the team could bear, so when Eames suggested a way to sort things out, Arthur could hardly refuse. He could (and still can) admit that Eames is right, when necessary. They needed to get past this, at least enough to work together to finish the job. Arthur was a professional above all; as such, he was willing to put aside his personal tastes for the sake of his work, same as he was willing to put aside anything else.
Arthur stepped into the dreamspace ready and itching to fight. He got to, landed a punch on Eames’ jaw and another hard on his solar plexus, making Eames double over and wheeze satisfyingly. Eames, for his part, got in his own punch to Arthur’s face, solid and clean, splitting Arthur’s lip against his teeth like it was nothing. One or the other of them lunged just on the wrong side of controlled and sent them rolling into the dusty ground of the dream Eames had constructed. There were more hits, one that left Arthur’s ribs sore, another that made Eames’ nose leak blood like a faucet, and then, suddenly, there weren’t. There was just Eames grabbing Arthur’s wrists to still them after an elbow to Arthur’s sternum left him stunned enough for Eames to straddle and pin him.
“Let’s try something new, shall we?” Eames said, eyes gleaming angry and smug, and then he leant in and kissed Arthur, hard enough against Arthur’s split lip that Arthur grunted with the sharp pain of it. Eames made a sound like he was laughing-bastard-and pressed harder, rougher, licking at Arthur’s cut-open mouth in stinging little swipes and strengthening his hold on Arthur’s wrists when Arthur tried to pull away until he had them tight enough to bruise.
Two can do this, Arthur thought. He opened his mouth under Eames’ kiss and bit at the tongue Eames slipped in, grinning a little when he tasted blood and Eames reeled back a second later.
“Fucking ow,” Eames said, the first time all through this he’d verbally acknowledged when Arthur had hurt him. He ran his tongue over his teeth gingerly, smeared them red with blood like his lips and winced as he did. His hold on Arthur’s wrists loosened just a little in his distraction, enough that Arthur decided to seize the opportunity and yank them free, pulling Eames down towards him with the momentum and rolling them over before Eames could protest.
Frustratingly, Eames looked almost happier with Arthur on top of him, pushing him down into the dirt. He opened his mouth to no doubt say something that would make Arthur punch him again, so Arthur did them both a favor and kissed him to keep him quiet.
It wasn’t really a kiss, the way Arthur did it. It was too calculated, his teeth biting at Eames’ bottom lip and his tongue sliding into Eames’ mouth in short, aggressive strokes. Eames brought one hand up to cup Arthur’s jaw, holding him there with a splayed-finger grip that genuinely hurt, five points of pressure digging into bone.
Eames’ other hand settled on Arthur’s hip, grip just as strong to keep him steady as Eames started rocking his hips up hard and fast. Arthur swore into the kiss and fucked down, felt Eames’ erection rigid and hot through their clothes. With anyone else, Arthur would have been moving back to shove those clothes away; with Eames, they were a barrier he wanted, friction-rough and dirty, a reminder that this was something Arthur would never do where it mattered, where he’d have to face the consequences of a ruined suit and whatever else.
And it was good, the challenge of fucking Eames through the almost painful constriction of their slacks. Everything about it ached in a way that was surprisingly satisfying, from the sting of Arthur’s lip to the slight nausea in his throat from tasting too much coppery blood, the tight hold Eames had on him to the building tension in Arthur’s muscles as he got closer, closer. But even though it was good, Arthur was almost afraid it wouldn’t be enough, the too-limited range of motion he had in that position. Only then Eames forced Arthur’s mouth away and Arthur’s head into a different angle, started nipping and sucking along the line of Arthur’s jaw, overlapping his own fingers where they were still dug in, until he reached Arthur’s earlobe and bit into it, sharp and making Arthur thrust faster, deeper, angled right so that his cock would have been touching Eames’ if it weren’t for the cloth layers between them. And it was something for Arthur to (never) analyze later that it was that thought that made him come with a whine, right into his Canali trousers like they were a careless teenager’s twenty-dollar jeans.
Under him, Eames shifted his hand down from Arthur’s jaw to his hip. He pulled Arthur in closer and bucked up, all rhythm gone, wild and wilder still when Arthur pushed himself up enough to slip a hand between them and palm Eames through the fabric of his slacks. Eames made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, and Arthur smirked as he pressed down hard with the heel of his hand and heard Eames let out that noise again. Eames was close, every bit of it evident in the feel of the tautness of his muscles against Arthur’s own loose body, in the desperate curve of his throat. Arthur wanted, suddenly and inexplicably, to see what Eames looked like when he came, undone and for once not caring about making sure everyone knew he was the cockiest bastard around.
Fuck if he was going to let Eames know that, though.
“Come on,” Arthur said, squeezing Eames through his pants and somehow managing to make his voice sound passably impatient. It wasn’t his best effort, especially not where Eames was concerned, but it was apparently enough because Eames cursed and froze and came, face going as open as Arthur had expected.
Arthur rolled off of Eames to let him come down, and Eames made no move to stop him. For the rest of their hour in the dream, they lay there, sated and lazy and silent, no longer any tension thick with the dust in the air.
***
Taking a job in Cairo isn’t intentional. Rather, the location changes abruptly with the mark’s new travel plans, and the team Arthur is working with makes do.
Cairo is one of those places Arthur has never fully enjoyed, even though he feels like he has a responsibility to. Cairo has great architecture, true, but it also has winds that dust Arthur’s hair white with sand, sun that turns his skin pink from heat and burn, and streets that set his head and feet aching from the difficulty of navigating them. Cairo is history that has held no interest for Arthur since he toured its remnants on his first visit here, and, again, he spends most of his down-time in his hotel room.
Eames’ email-expected now; the Tahiti postcard marked his return to old habits, and Arthur has been receiving updates on Eames’ travels steadily over the past few months-comes midway through the first afternoon. As usual, the message itself is blank, and Arthur goes straight for the attached images.
Arthur snorts softly as he closes the files. He couldn’t care less about the sights of Cairo, as he’s sure Eames well knows, the same as he is sure that Eames is happier now in Vegas than he ever would be in Egypt.
Over the edge of his laptop, the rich light of early evening is visible. Arthur knows that, were he so inclined, he could look out the window of his hotel room and see Cairo bathed in orange-yellows and rose-golds and shadows, the city staining dark with the growing lengths of elapsed time. He is far enough away from the historic district that his isn’t a view people would kill for; instead, the image of present Cairo’s sun-burnt and hazy skyline is one people would pay money to other people to kill for, and that would somehow be okay, even if the difference isn’t substantial.
Were he so inclined, Arthur could slather on the sun-block he needs even this late in the day and head out, skin coated oily-thick and fingerprints leaving greasy marks on every bit of Egyptian history he touched. He could take Eames’ advice easily and go, enjoy himself and get to know a city he’s working in, for once.
Were he so inclined, this could be the best evening Arthur has had in a long time, too marked with the excitement of new exploration to be otherwise.
But he isn’t. Cairo is characterized by its historical significance, its ability to preserve itself as the world shifts around it. Arthur’s tastes are defined by his modernity, sleek and polished and forward-thinking. They are neither of them suited to each other, and reaching a point of being so would require more of a change than Arthur is presently interested in making.
***
Arthur is sitting in a cathedral, looking up, because this is what he always does in cathedrals. He isn’t a devotee of religion by any means, so he occupies himself with studying the architecture of its structural centers: in this case, the wide marble support columns stemming up from the floor, the way the stone eaves of the ceiling soar in graceful arcs above his head, how the light from the windows colors the edges and endpoints of everything with shadows. It’s a prime-
“You were saying, my son?” a voice next to him interrupts, and Arthur freezes, turns with a sense of doomed curiosity to confirm whether or not what he thought he heard is accurate.
It is. Seated next to him in the pew is Eames, wearing the dark costume of a priest and what may very well be the most amused grin Arthur has ever seen on his face. Arthur reaches into his pocket and removes his die, not once taking his eyes off Eames, like he might twist into something even that will totally defy Arthur’s comprehension skills the second Arthur turns away. Arthur doesn’t need the confirmation that this is a dream, but he wants it, wants something stable and familiar, something he knows. The die clatters as he rolls it against the dark wood of the pew, turning up a one and then a five, and there’s a certain sense of security that comes with being aware of his situation, or at least more so than he was.
“Yes, you’re dreaming, very good,” Eames says, and Arthur thinks he understands, just then, where Eames’ issues with condescension stem from.
Arthur glares at him. “I didn’t-”
“No,” Eames cuts him off, “you didn’t hook yourself up to the PASIV.”
Arthur’s glare intensifies. “And how do I know you didn’t hook us both in?”
“I told you you were dreaming. Would I still be here if I had done that and actually represented a foreign presence meddling with your head?” Eames’ smile has disappeared, his face gone still and serious. It looks out of place on his features, a level of intense, overpowering focus on a single goal that Arthur associates more with himself than anyone else, least of all Eames.
Oh.
Between that and the fact that Arthur’s projections would have already torn an outsider apart by now, especially an outsider who gave himself away, there isn’t significant evidence to support continuing under the assumption that this is a PASIV-aided dream Arthur has somehow been brought into unknowingly. He’ll still check for insertion marks when he wakes up, of course, but for now, it makes more sense to treat this as another self-generated dream.
Eames smiles again, wide and knowing like he’s aware of Arthur’s thoughts-which, if he is Arthur’s subconscious, Arthur figures he pretty much is. “Excellent,” he says. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to stop being paranoid. It can’t be good for your complexion. You’ll get wrinkles, and then where will you be?”
“What are you even doing here?” Arthur says.
“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before,” Eames says. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”
Arthur narrows his eyes in frustration.
“If it helps, I’m also sure I gave you an answer last time.” Eames winks. Arthur feels the beginnings of a headache.
The thing about self-generated dreams is that, while they’re possible to detect, they are exceedingly difficult to control, largely because they are also exceedingly difficult to puzzle out. There’s no road map or plan to their progression, at least nothing that is easily recognizable to anything but your subconscious itself. Arthur does not have the patience or the mental will power tonight to deal with unknown dream-logic, especially not when Eames is sitting right next to him, a smirking, hot reminder of exactly how long it’s been since Arthur last had sex, dream-contained or otherwise.
“Don’t even think about it,” Eames says.
“What?” Arthur says.
It’s Eames turn to roll his eyes. “Subconscious, Arthur. Don’t act so surprised when I know what you’re thinking.”
Arthur does not pout. He doesn’t. Eames still cracks up at whatever look is on Arthur’s face presently.
“Oh, believe me, I wish we could, too,” Eames says, laughing. “Unlike you, however, I have respect for the cloth.”
Arthur snorts. “We both know that’s not true.”
“Okay, it’s not,” Eames concedes pleasantly. “But it is nice to be the one calling the shots for a change. I can see why you get off on this. And you might seriously want to reconsider whether or not you have a thing for role-playing, because this”-he brings a hand up to tug at his priest’s collar-“is getting a tad obvious, don’t you think?”
“I do not,” Arthur starts, indignant, but cuts himself off at the ridiculously amused look on Eames’ face. Arthur has seen that expression too many times not to know he isn’t going to convince Eames of anything the man doesn’t already believe. “Oh, whatever.”
“That’s it, love. Pick your battles.” Eames pats Arthur’s thigh consolingly, condescendingly. Arthur pointedly does not shove it off, no matter how much he wants to. Petulance does not become him.
Irritation, though, is something Arthur can pull off quite well, and has a history to testify to that, especially with Eames. He does turn to glare at Eames, but Eames is looking the other way at something across the church from them, and instead of Eames’ stupid, smirking face, Arthur gets an eyeful of the equally-stupid priest’s collar around Eames’ neck. The equally-stupid, tight priest’s collar, the top edge of which is covered by the curl of Eames’ hair, back to its proper length and style.
Arthur looks away before his thoughts can veer further down that path, but can’t help glancing back at Eames a few seconds later. The view this time is even worse, because Eames is looking ahead towards the altar, and Arthur is left staring at the familiar shape of his profile cut off by the unfamiliar line of the collar, sharp black against the faint tan of Eames’ skin, still residual the last time Arthur saw him from his time in Mombasa. The buckle flashes dully in the stained-glass-filtered sunlight when Eames swallows, and Arthur is starting to seriously think a large part of him has a thing for the look of metal against (Eames’) skin. Or maybe it’s just his larger attraction to all things paradoxical; the necessary impossibility of Eames ever justifiably wearing a symbol of celibacy is a contradiction worthy of the term if ever Arthur has found one, and it’s logical that, given the firsthand knowledge he has to justify his categorization, the attraction would present as sexual in this case.
Eames sighs, loudly and obviously meant to get Arthur’s attention, or at least to get it on his terms, and not whatever about him has distracted Arthur now. Arthur blinks and shifts his eyes up to Eames’ face, where Eames is looking at him like he can’t believe how stupid Arthur is being. Arthur just glares back, feels like he’s missing a point here when Eames rolls his eyes again, fishes a rosary out of his pocket, and starts flicking the beads through his fingers in a way Arthur can only describe as obscene.
Fucking subconscious.
***
Arthur knows what his subconscious is doing-it’s not nearly as subtle as it would like to think it is-and he does not approve.
He spends the next five nights dreaming with the PASIV, constructing whole cities arranged in fish-eye views and kaleidoscope refractions: fragmented buildings with entrances in one street and exits in a different one, spiderweb alleys with no discernible connections between them that still let him walk through the entire city on one continuous path. The whole time, he wishes for a challenge.
***
Arthur goes home, such as it is, to New York and finds a veritable mountain of parcels waiting for him. He spends the first hour back in his midtown loft unwrapping them and lining their contents-some of the tackiest souvenirs he has ever seen, coconut-shell car fresheners and glossy acrylic coffee mugs and poly-cotton sweatshirts that will never see anything but the back of Arthur’s closet, if he even lets them get that far-on his kitchen table.
They look unquestionably out of place here, all bright colors and cluttered, terrible graphics against the clean hardwood and bone white of the loft. There’s also a postcard laid flat on every “gift” (and Arthur uses that term loosely), but Arthur doesn’t have to look at them to know who they’re from.
Eames.
Eames, who has outdone himself in selecting colors solely for how large Arthur’s headache will be when he examines them. Eames, who has spent a small fortune sending Arthur the worst array of tourist-trap knick-knacks when he knows perfectly well they’ll have no place in Arthur’s home, and nor will Arthur make room for them. Eames, who has written, Thinking of you, on the back of every postcard, all thirty-two of them, just that and nothing else, and it’s enough to make Arthur wonder if Eames ever stopped thinking of him.
Eames, who is the worst ever at courtship, or maybe the best, because all his stupid gifts are still on Arthur’s table, and Arthur is ignoring his three-million-dollar view of the sort of city he entered this business to learn how to build in favor of staring at them. Eames, who, Arthur is starting to think, might actually have had the right idea this whole time.
***
When they were in Paris planning the inception job, they did this a lot. Everyone on the team had their after-hours secrets, things they kept buried deep into the night and deeper into their own minds. This, how and how often (every night, by the end) they shared dreams off the job, was theirs.
One night, Eames put them in an empty, dusty market Arthur recognized from the first time they did this. This time, there was no fighting. It was all Arthur in control and Eames pliant under him; Arthur shucking off just their pants and underwear and using the lube from his pocket to prep them both; Arthur sinking down on Eames’ cock and riding him fast, Eames’ hands gripping Arthur’s hips like anchors and one moving in to jerk him off when Arthur told him to but doing nothing to change or influence Arthur’s pace. Eames was still rough, hold on Arthur too hard and kisses too biting and voice scratching as he groaned out, Bastard, you utter bastard, but the way he looked at Arthur was soft and unfamiliar, or maybe too familiar, something Arthur had seen half-formed glimpses of before and never let himself notice.
He noticed now, though, and his skin prickled at the sight. This wasn’t-fuck, this wasn’t why they did this, and Eames should know that. He did know that, but he was still looking at Arthur that way, even more so when a swipe of his thumb over the head of Arthur’s cock made Arthur jerk and gasp and come, and impossibly more when Eames pushed up into Arthur desperately and pulled him down for a kiss that felt far too knowing for Arthur’s taste. He let Eames have it, mostly because he could already feel Eames coming, but as soon as Eames finished, Arthur rolled off him and away.
He didn’t look back at Eames for the rest of their time in the dream. When they woke up in the warehouse, Arthur removed the IV line no more quickly than he normally did, watched Eames in the right corner of his vision do the same. Arthur packed up the PASIV, shut the briefcase with a click, and put on his jacket in preparation to go.
“Arthur,” he heard Eames say, at the same time as he felt Eames touch his left shoulder lightly. Arthur turned, and Eames was looking at him with that same soft expression, this time all over his face. His hand moved away from Arthur’s shoulder and paused in between them, so small a hesitation that Arthur wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t so unusually fixated on Eames and the look on Eames’ face and whatever it was Eames was going to do next. For an instant, Arthur thought Eames might reach out and touch him, his cheek or his hair or his shoulder again, intimate by nature of being contact between them out here, where there were consequences and rules and Eames to disregard all of them.
“We don’t,” Arthur said before Eames could do anything. In a second, Eames’ face was back to its default smirk, twisted and knowing. His hands were shoved deep enough into his pockets that his shoulder hunched a little, and he looked at once older and younger than Arthur had ever seen him.
“Right,” Eames said, nodding mostly to himself. “Of course. If you ever-”
“We don’t,” Arthur repeated, softer this time but no less firm, because damn it, Eames should know this. Eames’ shoulders hunched in a fraction of a degree more, something Arthur shouldn’t have noticed. He did anyway. It changed nothing.
“Good night, Eames,” Arthur said, and then he grabbed the PASIV case and left.
The next night, Arthur packed up and planned to leave the warehouse early. It wasn’t necessarily an issue of avoidance so much as it was one of preserving a well-functioning team dynamic. After last night, things between himself and Eames would unavoidably be awkward if they spent any time in each other’s company outside of being focused on the job. For the team’s sake, they could not afford for any of that awkwardness to bleed over into their working dynamic. They all had to make sacrifices for the sake of the job; a veteran like Eames should understand.
In the end, he needn’t have bothered. Eames understood better than Arthur had expected. He walked out as fast as his suave composure would allow him after Cobb released them for the night, and again all the nights after, sparing Arthur both the decision and the chance to make it.
***
The next time Arthur dreams with the PASIV, he’s back in the Technicolor kitchen. Eames is eating toast again, this time spread with dark red strawberry jam he keeps having to lick off his lips. Arthur’s coffee mug has chips in the same places as before. Smoothing them away takes more focus than it should.
“Did you hear me?” Eames says.
Arthur glances up guiltily, tries and probably fails to keep it off his face, if the indulgent way Eames is looking at him is anything to go by.
“I said, I think we should get a dog.” Eames takes another bite of toast. “A Dalmatian. I’ve always wanted one of them, ever since I read that book as a kid.”
A glop of jam slides off his toast and onto the lavender plate he’s holding. He scoops it up with a finger and licks it off, smiling when he catches Arthur watching him intently. After a few seconds of silence and Arthur staring, he says, “I think this is the part where your neat-freak self is supposed to protest, love.”
Arthur shakes himself, looks down into his coffee mug like the dark brown of its contents hold all the answers. “No dogs,” he says. “They smell. We travel too much. It’s impractical. That’s-”
“The reality of the situation, right,” Eames finishes for him, no doubt because he knows Arthur hates it when he does that. “But there’s the rub: this isn’t reality. Dreamspace, remember? You can make all the dogs you want.”
Arthur scoffs; of course he remembers. He just doesn’t want a dog. A dog would be something for him to create, something new to focus on, and easy as it would be, Arthur doesn’t know if he actually could. Right now, Eames is standing across the kitchen from him in hideous polka-dotted boxers and a white undershirt that Arthur can only guess is his-it’s too tight on Eames to be his own-and tearing his focus away from him seems suddenly like the most impossible thing Arthur could do.
Eames’ smile softens into something that looks vaguely familiar, like maybe Arthur has seen it before and chosen not to catalog it. “Now you’ve got it,” he says, reaching out to brush Arthur’s bedhead off his face and into some semblance of order. Then he vanishes, and Arthur is alone in the kitchen with a sense of déjà vu and something that doesn’t feel like quite as sweeping a revelation as it should.
***
Just to see where it gets him, Arthur chances a dream without the aid of the PASIV the following night. He finds himself wearing a codpiece, which is as clear a sign as any that this is a dream. Eames is wearing one, too, and somehow looks less unfortunately fashion-challenged than he normally does. Arthur isn’t sure he likes what this might be saying about his fashion tastes.
He also doesn’t like the fact that he appears to be standing on a balcony. With Eames looking up at him from a moonlit courtyard. In Elizabethan dress.
Seriously, Arthur’s subconscious is not subtle at all. He’d be worried about how that reflects on him as a person if he weren’t so annoyed.
“But soft,” Eames starts out, a smirk already wide and prominent on his lips, “what light-”
“Kill yourself,” Arthur says.
“Oh, I will,” Eames says. “Never you worry. Only I think we’re supposed to consummate our forbidden love first, and I was looking forward to that part.”
Arthur glares at him. “I get it already.”
Eames smiles. “I know,” he says, and, well. He’s Eames, but he’s still a projection of Arthur’s subconscious. Arthur supposes that more than anyone, more even than Arthur himself, he does.
***
In the end, it comes down to Paris, because Eames is a romantic if ever there was one.
Arthur catches an overnight flight into Charles de Gaulle, touching down with the sunrise and barely an hour of dreamless sleep to his name. He spends ten minutes in line for a taxi, another twenty in the backseat of the cab, and then he’s watching the driver take off from the sidewalk in front of Eames’ brownstone. He doesn’t worry that Eames won’t be in town-a quick call to Cobb on the way to the airport had confirmed what Arthur already knew-he just climbs the stairs to Eames’ doorstep, rings the chime, and steps back to wait.
It’s early enough that the wait is longer than Arthur thinks it normally would be. When Eames finally opens the door, he looks rumpled and bleary-eyed, clearly still half-asleep until the second he notices who is standing in front of him. Arthur can tell exactly when that happens because Eames’ eyes go sharp, flicking from Arthur’s face to his luggage-(PASIV-)free hands and back again. They’re a little soft as they do, a little openly wondering, and looking at Eames, wide-eyed and blinking in a pair of awful plaid pajama bottoms and nothing else, Arthur feels his chest go tight with something he doesn’t try to classify, but also doesn’t try to ignore. It’s a start.
“Arthur,” Eames finally says, voice rough with sleep and what Arthur thinks is Eames’ failing effort at hiding his own happiness. “What are you-”
“Shut up,” Arthur says, and then he steps forward and kisses Eames. Eames makes a quiet sound against Arthur’s lips, surprise, maybe, or contentment, makes another one when Arthur licks into his mouth like that will tell him which it was. Eames’ mouth is hot and sour with morning breath and old toothpaste, and the stubble around it scrapes at the skin of Arthur’s chin and jaw, and Arthur lets himself fully acknowledge that he has never wanted anything more.
Arthur brings a hand up to curl around the back of Eames’ neck, the other around the bony curve of his hip, both holding on as if Eames might disappear now that Arthur’s finally started to allow himself this. But when Eames shifts against him, it’s only to get closer, both arms hooking around Arthur’s shoulders and pulling him in tight, tight enough that Arthur can feel every line in Eames’ body where it presses flush against him, solid and warm and breathtakingly, perfectly real.
Of course, right then is when a car drives by, honking loudly as it goes, and even though there’s nothing saying it was for them, the noise is enough of an obnoxious and unexpected distraction that Eames breaks the kiss to laugh. He’s still laughing when he leans his forehead against Arthur’s and says, happy and familiar, “We really need to get you inside and up to bed, darling.”
“Yes,” Arthur says, “we do,” and then he’s stumbling over the threshold into Eames’ home when Eames tugs at him, Eames’ grin impossibly wide and genuine and matching Arthur’s own, and it really is the simplest, the easiest thing Arthur has ever done.
Title: this room and this radio play
Fandom: Inception
Pairing/Rating: Arthur/Eames, NC-17
Word Count: 8,440
Date Completed: 17 September 2010
Disclaimer: These people? Aren't mine.
Author's Notes: Title [adapted] from Elbow's "Switching Off." For old_blueeyes and _pinkchocolate, who were, like, Olympic-champion handholders/sounding boards/betas this week. I can't even tell you, you guys, they're just. Amazing. I can very honestly say this fic would have been scrapped on my second day of working on it if not for them, I was that close to giving up. But it's here, done, and being posted, even if only out of stubbornness, and I cannot thank these two women enough for helping me get there. Eppy and Annie, you're the best. ♥ ♥ ♥
A few things about actual content:
- This was originally inspired by this pic old_blueeyes sent me when I asked for a prompt. The scene that grew directly from it should be readily obvious. Don't ask me how the rest of this came about.
- This fic operates on the assumption that without the assistance of the PASIV, self-generated dreams are uncontrollable, even for someone who is trained in dreamspace manipulation and is aware of being in a dream at the time. I can't remember if canon ever fully specified on this; if it did and I've got it horribly wrong, or if this contradicts your understanding of the role of the PASIV in dreaming and the nature of self-generated dreamspace too greatly, please consider this fic a slight AU in that respect. My apologies.
It’s different from when he’s working a job. Working a job is all about constructing reality, building from what you know can be and is true. You lay concrete foundation for your marks to hold their footing on and put in the city brick by brick around them. It’s dreamspace, illogical and impossible by nature, but it’s purposefully warped into something that can exist, could exist, the possibility at the core of the dream enough to keep the mark (usually, unless something goes very, very wrong) blissfully unaware.
When Arthur dreams alone, it’s training, in theory a way to put his time to good use for both his job and his survival. In practice, it’s more like playing. Dreaming alone, for someone who knows their way around the dreamspace, is freedom, license to explore. Arthur takes it often and willingly. He hooks himself into a PASIV four nights a week, if he can, and spends a REM cycle building impossible things: windows in time-lock with glass that runs in rivers, double-decker buses the size of ocean-liners inside, city districts layered like white cakes and just as clean. He practices building what could never be, and it’s the perfect test, really.
After you’ve built the impossible, anything real seems easy enough.
***
A few nights a week, Arthur forces himself to sleep without the PASIV.
He doesn’t like doing so. It’s disconcerting to sleep without dreams, and even more so to sleep in dreams he can’t consciously control (which Arthur does still have, and more often than he’d like; he’s been in the business long enough that he doesn’t always dream on his own, but it happens enough, and is unpredictable enough when it does, to really aggravate his control issues). But the active disconnect is more restful than any somnacin-aided sleep could be, so especially when he’s prepping to work a job, no matter the difficulty, Arthur leaves the PASIV in its suitcase and sleeps naturally. Adequate preparation is worth the occasional discomfort on his part.
Tonight is a PASIV-free night. In reality, Arthur is lying in a queen-sized bed in a room at London’s Ritz, courtesy of the politician whose son he’s going to spend the next week training in sub-security.
In his sleep, Arthur is dreaming in Technicolor. He is in a kitchen, light blue walls and appliances straight out of the eighties. The coffee mug in his hands is spring green and chipped, the coffee inside it steaming, dark, and bitter-smelling. Next to him, Eames is battling with a fuschia toaster, and that’s more of a totem than Arthur needs. His kitchen would never hold such garishly colored appliances.
“It’s stuck again,” he says. “It always gets stuck when I use it. Bloody thing must have it out for me.”
“Yes,” Arthur hears himself say, “I’m sure the toaster has quite the grudge against your breakfast. Possibly because you insist on sticking knives in it.”
Eames looks over at him, lips pursed and arms crossed. “You give it a try, then,” he says. The way he shoves the toaster over, yellow-handled butter knife still sticking straight up out of one slot, is as petulant as his voice.
Arthur sighs and reaches for the appliance. He pulls the knife out, then depresses the lever on Eames’ toast again. As soon as he hears it latch, he turns the setting dial to “OFF,” and the lever springs back up again, bringing the toast with it. In the back of his mind, Arthur thinks this seems like an inordinate amount of focus to give toast.
Eames snorts. “Of course it works for you. Everything always works for you.”
“Not everything,” Arthur says. It sounds placating and false-modest even to his own ears. If his subconscious is any good, Eames, whose business is putting on airs, will see through it in a second.
His subconscious is good tonight, and Eames snatches his toast away with a rather rude, still petulant half-shove to Arthur’s shoulder. “Everything always works for you,” he repeats, “even the impossible things.”
Eames’ knife makes scraping sounds against the bread as he spreads bright orange marmalade on it. Arthur wonders again at his subconscious’ focus on toast.
***
After the inception job, Arthur doesn’t see Eames again for another eight months. When he does, it’s by accident, at least on his part.
Arthur is taking a vacation. It’s just a small one, a week in Berlin to see a special exhibit on Bali style the Bauhaus is hosting and generally reacquaint himself with the city. He likes Berlin, the way it’s reconstructed itself and the prevalence of sleeker, more modern designs even in the older inner city. It suits him, and while he never builds from memory in dreams, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t build from an influenced perspective.
Eames meets him at a bar Arthur visits his third night in the city.
“Aren’t you a long way from home?” he says, as if he has any room to talk. Both of them travel far too much.
“What do you want, Eames?” Arthur says.
“Whiskey sour,” Eames smirks, “if you’re buying.”
Arthur takes another sip of his bourbon. “Buy it yourself.”
“You wound me, Arthur,” Eames says, then signals the bartender over. “Whiskey sour for me, and another of whatever he’s drinking.”
Arthur rolls his eyes. He could cancel the order, but free bourbon is free bourbon, and worth spending another twenty minutes in even Eames’ company.
“So,” Eames says, settling himself into the stool next to Arthur. “What’re you doing in Berlin?”
“Vacation,” Arthur says.
Eames laughs, surprise evident. “Vacation, really? I didn’t realize you even knew what that was.”
Arthur scowls. “Of course I do. Just because I don’t take them often-”
“And here’s where you try to make me feel bad for enjoying my leisure time, right?” Eames says. Arthur’s scowl deepens, drawing another laugh from Eames. “Thought so. Getting predictable, there.”
The bartender sets the drinks Eames ordered in front of them. Arthur drains his first bourbon and reaches immediately for the second, not drinking yet but holding it close and ready.
Eames raises an eyebrow. “In that much of a hurry to get away from me, are you?”
Arthur pointedly does not take a drink, unwilling to give Eames the satisfaction of confirmation. Eames smiles anyway, and it’s clear that this was a losing battle from the start.
“What do you want, Eames?” Arthur says again.
“Heard you were in the neighborhood,” Eames says.
“Since when is Berlin your neighborhood?” Arthur takes another swallow, lets the bourbon slide thick and slow down his throat.
“It’s not, really,” Eames concedes. “But I have been here since last week. I’m doing some travelling, revisiting my favorite places and seeing a few new ones. Putting Saito’s money to good use, you know.”
Arthur’s money from Saito, minus the cost of the newest fall suit collection by Yves Saint Laurent, is sitting in a Swiss bank account, along with all the rest of the money he’s accrued over the years in this business. He uses enough to cover his plane tickets and wardrobe and the utilities and maintenance in the New York apartment he sees less often than the places he visits on job, and the rest stays put and builds up more interest than he knows what to do with. It’s not that Arthur doesn’t enjoy luxury; he just doesn’t have the patience for it right now. Some day he will, and then the money and all its interest will come in handy. For now, he lets it be.
Still, Eames is expecting a teammate’s understanding, not Arthur’s neuroses. Arthur nods in acknowledgment, if not agreement, and says, “So you decided to track me down and buy me a drink?”
Eames downs half his whiskey sour in one go. He replaces the glass on the bar with an exaggerated sigh. “Sure,” he says. “why wouldn’t I?”
Arthur can think of any number of reasons, not in the least being the conditions of their separation last time. But if Eames wants to play at avoidance through ignorance, Arthur is more than ready to comply. He shrugs and takes another drink of his bourbon. Half a glass left.
“So apart from your whirlwind tour of Germany, what else have you been up to?”
“Working.”
“I figured. It’s always the job with you, isn’t it?” There’s something teasing in Eames’ voice, laced further with something verging on dark that Arthur shies away from categorizing. Arthur’s never been much of an avoider; unsurprisingly, Eames brings out the worst in him.
Again, Arthur shrugs. “It keeps me focused,” he says.
“But not happy.”
In lieu of a proper response (and knowing full well Eames will take this for a response in and of itself; Arthur’s not happy about it, but he’d rather to cut his losses while this is still the worst of them), Arthur downs the rest of his bourbon before standing.
“As fun as this has been, I need to get back,” he says, shrugging into his coat. “Early morning tomorrow.”
“Or you could keep me company a while longer,” Eames says. “Here or elsewhere, take your pick. Although I will say, the bed at my hotel room is ex-”
“No,” Arthur says. It comes out more abruptly than he intended, but he lets it stand.
Eames just nods. “Well,” he says, smirk slipping back into place on his mouth, “you enjoy your early morning, then.”
His expression, when he turns to look at Arthur, has an almost imperceptible stiffness to it that Arthur knows he’d miss if he weren’t looking for it. For a second, Arthur’s good-bye sticks in his throat, one of the few times in his adult life anything his made him speechless.
Something in his posture must give him away, because whatever tightness was on Eames’ face bleeds away, softening the corners of his mouth and eyes, and his voice is the smallest amount wondering as he says, “Arthur-”
“Good night, Eames,” Arthur says, reaching past him to put enough money to more than cover all three of their drinks on the bar. It slows his exit, but it feels necessary. Fuck if Arthur is giving Eames any more leverage to walk away with tonight.
***
In the simplest terms, what they do is fuck.
Actually, that’s about it. In the only terms, what they do is fuck. They may limit it exclusively to dreams, and it may be barely about the orgasm and more about the aggressive release of tension, but it’s still fucking. It’s raw and rough and baring, a crude solution and cruder application of the PASIV (never mind that this, or something like it, is what it was originally designed for; their entire industry has evolved it beyond that, and part of Arthur can’t help but feel like they’re sullying the equipment by dragging it so far down below the skill-set they’ve developed for it) to a problem they should have been able to fix on their own. But they weren’t, or haven’t been, and this-sharing dreams and fight-fucking their way through them-allows them to coexist peacefully enough to do their jobs on the occasions they are stuck working together.
There are rules, of course, because (Arthur insisted, back when this first started) there are always rules: the job stays first, hence why they’re doing this in to begin with. They fight constantly, they fuck it out in the dreamspace, and they don’t acknowledge it back in reality. They don’t let it get personal. They don’t get attached. They don’t ever talk about it, not to anyone, not even to each other.
And, Arthur has to admit, it works, even if it was originally Eames’ idea. It’s inelegant, it’s base, it’s like nothing Arthur himself would ever design. But it works, and it lets them work together, even if only barely.
It’s just another part of the job, simple as that. It’s another part of the job, and Arthur doesn’t mind; it’s all it can be.
***
Eames has him pressed tight against a wall, and Arthur is so hot with it he can scarcely breathe. Eames’ mouth is slipping where it sucks on Arthur’s jaw, his teeth scraping rough rhythms Arthur can feel against his skin. Arthur has one hand wrapped around Eames’ neck to hold him there, Eames’ hair feeling too short and bristly where it brushes the top of Arthur’s index finger. Arthur wonders for a second when Eames took to wearing it so short, and then loses that thought as Eames’ hands slip around to grab Arthur’s ass, pulling him close enough that their hips press flush together and the heat of it drives an involuntary whimper out of Arthur’s throat.
Eames chuckles, warm and whispery with stubble against Arthur’s skin. “Impatient tonight, are we?”
There’s a level of fond familiarity in the way he says it that presses against Arthur even more suffocatingly than the heat of Eames’ body caging him in against the wall. He narrows his eyes and flexes his hands where they grip Eames’ hips, thumbs rubbing circles on Eames’ skin in a second’s preparation before he spins them until their positions are reversed. Eames’ laugh is surprised and sudden, but his face, when Arthur leans back to see it more clearly, is that same fondness, like he was expecting this, like Arthur has done this too many times for him not to.
No matter. Arthur lets it go, the pressure of Eames’ cock against his thigh too insistent and interesting to ignore. When he moves back in to kiss the stupid smile off of Eames’ lips, however, he gets distracted by the glint of something metal against Eames’ (bare, and when did they lose their shirts?) chest. It’s foreign-or rather, because Arthur is perfectly capable of recognizing military-standard dog tags, it’s foreign on Eames.
Eames has a military past, but it is probably the one thing about himself he keeps hidden; even Arthur had to search to learn about it. It’s strange, then, that Eames would be wearing them now. Arthur brings a hand up to touch them, feels the metal hot from Eames’ skin and sticky-damp from Eames’ sweat.
“Why are you wearing these?” Arthur says.
Eames groans and tips his head back. “We’ve talked about this. I know you’re not happy, I know you don’t want me to go, but it’s not as though I have a choice.”
Arthur blinks, distracted by the way the line of Eames’ throat moves with his words, and by the way what Eames is saying makes no fucking sense.
Eames continues, oblivious. “And I won’t forget you, darling. I never could, no matter what the Germans-”
“What the fuck,” Arthur interrupts, “are you talking about?”
He’s already stepping back from Eames, despite the way Eames’ fingers are clinging to his hips, trying to hold him in place and distractingly close. Arthur fishes his die out of his pocket even though he already knows this is a dream-they don’t do this in anything but; that hasn’t changed. Sure enough, the weight of his die is wrong in his palm, and he doesn’t bother throwing it to confirm. He knows this part of himself well enough.
“You’re dreaming, love,” Eames says, voice sounding teasing and that strange sense of fond again.
Arthur narrows his eyes. “I know. I don’t remember hooking into the PASIV, though, so why are you here?”
“You didn’t,” Eames says.
“Then why are you here?” Arthur repeats. He looks more closely at Eames, at the dog tags around his chest and the military-short cut of his hair and the old-styled trousers hanging on his hips. “And why are you in period military dress?”
“Maybe you felt like a little role-playing,” Eames says, shrugging. “It’s your subconscious. You tell me.”
“And why,” Arthur says, in perfect forced calm, “would my subconscious make me the war widow to your dashing army officer?”
“I think I’m Air Force, actually. And you really think I’m dashing?” Eames arches his eyebrows playfully, then, at Arthur’s glare, drops them and repeats, voice more serious, “It’s your subconscious. You tell me.”
“You’re my subconscious,” Arthur points out.
Eames just grins. “Who knows, then? Maybe you just like impossible things.”
Arthur wakes up before he can respond to that. For good measure, he rolls his die once, twice on the night table next to him. He doesn’t need the confirmation, though. Eames is no longer there, and that’s proof enough that Arthur is back where he fell asleep.
***
After Berlin, Arthur takes a job in Zurich extracting the secrets of one bank’s new sub-security-based account access system for a rival bank’s CEO. Switzerland isn’t his favorite place, especially this time of year, but the irony of the job amuses him too greatly to turn it down.
Zurich is, as it should be, frozen. The streets are slick with ice under Arthur’s boots, the wind chilled and biting where it finds the open skin of his face, the exposed corners of the top of his throat above his coat collar. Arthur focuses on completing the job and moving on to warmer climes, and is grateful to be working with a team of veterans, who all agree with him on at least the first goal.
The job itself is straightforward work, easy once they figure out a way to accommodate for the likely higher-than-average level of sub-security they’ll be facing in the mark’s mind. They finish planning within a week and schedule to execute it two days later when the mark goes in for extensive dental reconstructive work, which leaves them with two days to lie low and undiscovered in Zurich.
Arthur spends the time in his hotel room. There’s nothing in Zurich that particularly interests him, at least not enough to face the freezing cold to see, and the hotel has decent room service, so Arthur feels justified in this decision. He mostly works on his laptop, hacking college databases and online journals to catch up on the latest developments in manipulating dreamspace and arranging his next job somewhere south of the equator (he hasn’t been to Rio in a while, and his contact there has a job that looks promising). He has to stretch the work long past his typical standards of efficiency to make it fill the time he has, but he makes do. He’s always been good at that.
The afternoon of the second day, Arthur’s email inbox pings with a new message, which isn’t surprising. He’s the best at his job; he’s used to a steady volume of incoming new mail. What he isn’t used to, or hasn’t been for the last eight months, at least, is an email from Eames’ address. Attached are two pictures that Arthur opens with more curiosity than he’d ever properly admit.
For a moment, Arthur just looks at the scanned images on his screen, eyes narrowed in assessment. There’s something to this, he knows, something buried in the overly-bright pixels and stupid font to explain why Eames is breaking the radio silence he’s held since the inception job ended, and with a method he’s used to annoy Arthur all the years they’ve known each other-a method Arthur would expect. There’s something in this for Arthur to find, Arthur just isn’t sure what, as of yet.
He doesn’t have the time to get there now, though. He may be working at intentionally-reduced efficiency, but there is still a schedule to follow, research to do and a job to focus on. Arthur brings up an article on the ethics of using the PASIV to stimulate the growth of creativity in early childhood and begins to read.
If the pictures stay open in a separate window, it’s only because Arthur is a problem-solver by nature, and they represent the most significant challenge to accommodate for he’s had in (nine) months. To dismiss them fully would be a level of irresponsibility he can’t allow.
***
The first time they did this, they were ready to kill each other while co-opting on a job in Beijing. It was only their first time working together, and they were already at each other’s throats more than anyone on the team could bear, so when Eames suggested a way to sort things out, Arthur could hardly refuse. He could (and still can) admit that Eames is right, when necessary. They needed to get past this, at least enough to work together to finish the job. Arthur was a professional above all; as such, he was willing to put aside his personal tastes for the sake of his work, same as he was willing to put aside anything else.
Arthur stepped into the dreamspace ready and itching to fight. He got to, landed a punch on Eames’ jaw and another hard on his solar plexus, making Eames double over and wheeze satisfyingly. Eames, for his part, got in his own punch to Arthur’s face, solid and clean, splitting Arthur’s lip against his teeth like it was nothing. One or the other of them lunged just on the wrong side of controlled and sent them rolling into the dusty ground of the dream Eames had constructed. There were more hits, one that left Arthur’s ribs sore, another that made Eames’ nose leak blood like a faucet, and then, suddenly, there weren’t. There was just Eames grabbing Arthur’s wrists to still them after an elbow to Arthur’s sternum left him stunned enough for Eames to straddle and pin him.
“Let’s try something new, shall we?” Eames said, eyes gleaming angry and smug, and then he leant in and kissed Arthur, hard enough against Arthur’s split lip that Arthur grunted with the sharp pain of it. Eames made a sound like he was laughing-bastard-and pressed harder, rougher, licking at Arthur’s cut-open mouth in stinging little swipes and strengthening his hold on Arthur’s wrists when Arthur tried to pull away until he had them tight enough to bruise.
Two can do this, Arthur thought. He opened his mouth under Eames’ kiss and bit at the tongue Eames slipped in, grinning a little when he tasted blood and Eames reeled back a second later.
“Fucking ow,” Eames said, the first time all through this he’d verbally acknowledged when Arthur had hurt him. He ran his tongue over his teeth gingerly, smeared them red with blood like his lips and winced as he did. His hold on Arthur’s wrists loosened just a little in his distraction, enough that Arthur decided to seize the opportunity and yank them free, pulling Eames down towards him with the momentum and rolling them over before Eames could protest.
Frustratingly, Eames looked almost happier with Arthur on top of him, pushing him down into the dirt. He opened his mouth to no doubt say something that would make Arthur punch him again, so Arthur did them both a favor and kissed him to keep him quiet.
It wasn’t really a kiss, the way Arthur did it. It was too calculated, his teeth biting at Eames’ bottom lip and his tongue sliding into Eames’ mouth in short, aggressive strokes. Eames brought one hand up to cup Arthur’s jaw, holding him there with a splayed-finger grip that genuinely hurt, five points of pressure digging into bone.
Eames’ other hand settled on Arthur’s hip, grip just as strong to keep him steady as Eames started rocking his hips up hard and fast. Arthur swore into the kiss and fucked down, felt Eames’ erection rigid and hot through their clothes. With anyone else, Arthur would have been moving back to shove those clothes away; with Eames, they were a barrier he wanted, friction-rough and dirty, a reminder that this was something Arthur would never do where it mattered, where he’d have to face the consequences of a ruined suit and whatever else.
And it was good, the challenge of fucking Eames through the almost painful constriction of their slacks. Everything about it ached in a way that was surprisingly satisfying, from the sting of Arthur’s lip to the slight nausea in his throat from tasting too much coppery blood, the tight hold Eames had on him to the building tension in Arthur’s muscles as he got closer, closer. But even though it was good, Arthur was almost afraid it wouldn’t be enough, the too-limited range of motion he had in that position. Only then Eames forced Arthur’s mouth away and Arthur’s head into a different angle, started nipping and sucking along the line of Arthur’s jaw, overlapping his own fingers where they were still dug in, until he reached Arthur’s earlobe and bit into it, sharp and making Arthur thrust faster, deeper, angled right so that his cock would have been touching Eames’ if it weren’t for the cloth layers between them. And it was something for Arthur to (never) analyze later that it was that thought that made him come with a whine, right into his Canali trousers like they were a careless teenager’s twenty-dollar jeans.
Under him, Eames shifted his hand down from Arthur’s jaw to his hip. He pulled Arthur in closer and bucked up, all rhythm gone, wild and wilder still when Arthur pushed himself up enough to slip a hand between them and palm Eames through the fabric of his slacks. Eames made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, and Arthur smirked as he pressed down hard with the heel of his hand and heard Eames let out that noise again. Eames was close, every bit of it evident in the feel of the tautness of his muscles against Arthur’s own loose body, in the desperate curve of his throat. Arthur wanted, suddenly and inexplicably, to see what Eames looked like when he came, undone and for once not caring about making sure everyone knew he was the cockiest bastard around.
Fuck if he was going to let Eames know that, though.
“Come on,” Arthur said, squeezing Eames through his pants and somehow managing to make his voice sound passably impatient. It wasn’t his best effort, especially not where Eames was concerned, but it was apparently enough because Eames cursed and froze and came, face going as open as Arthur had expected.
Arthur rolled off of Eames to let him come down, and Eames made no move to stop him. For the rest of their hour in the dream, they lay there, sated and lazy and silent, no longer any tension thick with the dust in the air.
***
Taking a job in Cairo isn’t intentional. Rather, the location changes abruptly with the mark’s new travel plans, and the team Arthur is working with makes do.
Cairo is one of those places Arthur has never fully enjoyed, even though he feels like he has a responsibility to. Cairo has great architecture, true, but it also has winds that dust Arthur’s hair white with sand, sun that turns his skin pink from heat and burn, and streets that set his head and feet aching from the difficulty of navigating them. Cairo is history that has held no interest for Arthur since he toured its remnants on his first visit here, and, again, he spends most of his down-time in his hotel room.
Eames’ email-expected now; the Tahiti postcard marked his return to old habits, and Arthur has been receiving updates on Eames’ travels steadily over the past few months-comes midway through the first afternoon. As usual, the message itself is blank, and Arthur goes straight for the attached images.
Arthur snorts softly as he closes the files. He couldn’t care less about the sights of Cairo, as he’s sure Eames well knows, the same as he is sure that Eames is happier now in Vegas than he ever would be in Egypt.
Over the edge of his laptop, the rich light of early evening is visible. Arthur knows that, were he so inclined, he could look out the window of his hotel room and see Cairo bathed in orange-yellows and rose-golds and shadows, the city staining dark with the growing lengths of elapsed time. He is far enough away from the historic district that his isn’t a view people would kill for; instead, the image of present Cairo’s sun-burnt and hazy skyline is one people would pay money to other people to kill for, and that would somehow be okay, even if the difference isn’t substantial.
Were he so inclined, Arthur could slather on the sun-block he needs even this late in the day and head out, skin coated oily-thick and fingerprints leaving greasy marks on every bit of Egyptian history he touched. He could take Eames’ advice easily and go, enjoy himself and get to know a city he’s working in, for once.
Were he so inclined, this could be the best evening Arthur has had in a long time, too marked with the excitement of new exploration to be otherwise.
But he isn’t. Cairo is characterized by its historical significance, its ability to preserve itself as the world shifts around it. Arthur’s tastes are defined by his modernity, sleek and polished and forward-thinking. They are neither of them suited to each other, and reaching a point of being so would require more of a change than Arthur is presently interested in making.
***
Arthur is sitting in a cathedral, looking up, because this is what he always does in cathedrals. He isn’t a devotee of religion by any means, so he occupies himself with studying the architecture of its structural centers: in this case, the wide marble support columns stemming up from the floor, the way the stone eaves of the ceiling soar in graceful arcs above his head, how the light from the windows colors the edges and endpoints of everything with shadows. It’s a prime-
“You were saying, my son?” a voice next to him interrupts, and Arthur freezes, turns with a sense of doomed curiosity to confirm whether or not what he thought he heard is accurate.
It is. Seated next to him in the pew is Eames, wearing the dark costume of a priest and what may very well be the most amused grin Arthur has ever seen on his face. Arthur reaches into his pocket and removes his die, not once taking his eyes off Eames, like he might twist into something even that will totally defy Arthur’s comprehension skills the second Arthur turns away. Arthur doesn’t need the confirmation that this is a dream, but he wants it, wants something stable and familiar, something he knows. The die clatters as he rolls it against the dark wood of the pew, turning up a one and then a five, and there’s a certain sense of security that comes with being aware of his situation, or at least more so than he was.
“Yes, you’re dreaming, very good,” Eames says, and Arthur thinks he understands, just then, where Eames’ issues with condescension stem from.
Arthur glares at him. “I didn’t-”
“No,” Eames cuts him off, “you didn’t hook yourself up to the PASIV.”
Arthur’s glare intensifies. “And how do I know you didn’t hook us both in?”
“I told you you were dreaming. Would I still be here if I had done that and actually represented a foreign presence meddling with your head?” Eames’ smile has disappeared, his face gone still and serious. It looks out of place on his features, a level of intense, overpowering focus on a single goal that Arthur associates more with himself than anyone else, least of all Eames.
Oh.
Between that and the fact that Arthur’s projections would have already torn an outsider apart by now, especially an outsider who gave himself away, there isn’t significant evidence to support continuing under the assumption that this is a PASIV-aided dream Arthur has somehow been brought into unknowingly. He’ll still check for insertion marks when he wakes up, of course, but for now, it makes more sense to treat this as another self-generated dream.
Eames smiles again, wide and knowing like he’s aware of Arthur’s thoughts-which, if he is Arthur’s subconscious, Arthur figures he pretty much is. “Excellent,” he says. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to stop being paranoid. It can’t be good for your complexion. You’ll get wrinkles, and then where will you be?”
“What are you even doing here?” Arthur says.
“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before,” Eames says. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”
Arthur narrows his eyes in frustration.
“If it helps, I’m also sure I gave you an answer last time.” Eames winks. Arthur feels the beginnings of a headache.
The thing about self-generated dreams is that, while they’re possible to detect, they are exceedingly difficult to control, largely because they are also exceedingly difficult to puzzle out. There’s no road map or plan to their progression, at least nothing that is easily recognizable to anything but your subconscious itself. Arthur does not have the patience or the mental will power tonight to deal with unknown dream-logic, especially not when Eames is sitting right next to him, a smirking, hot reminder of exactly how long it’s been since Arthur last had sex, dream-contained or otherwise.
“Don’t even think about it,” Eames says.
“What?” Arthur says.
It’s Eames turn to roll his eyes. “Subconscious, Arthur. Don’t act so surprised when I know what you’re thinking.”
Arthur does not pout. He doesn’t. Eames still cracks up at whatever look is on Arthur’s face presently.
“Oh, believe me, I wish we could, too,” Eames says, laughing. “Unlike you, however, I have respect for the cloth.”
Arthur snorts. “We both know that’s not true.”
“Okay, it’s not,” Eames concedes pleasantly. “But it is nice to be the one calling the shots for a change. I can see why you get off on this. And you might seriously want to reconsider whether or not you have a thing for role-playing, because this”-he brings a hand up to tug at his priest’s collar-“is getting a tad obvious, don’t you think?”
“I do not,” Arthur starts, indignant, but cuts himself off at the ridiculously amused look on Eames’ face. Arthur has seen that expression too many times not to know he isn’t going to convince Eames of anything the man doesn’t already believe. “Oh, whatever.”
“That’s it, love. Pick your battles.” Eames pats Arthur’s thigh consolingly, condescendingly. Arthur pointedly does not shove it off, no matter how much he wants to. Petulance does not become him.
Irritation, though, is something Arthur can pull off quite well, and has a history to testify to that, especially with Eames. He does turn to glare at Eames, but Eames is looking the other way at something across the church from them, and instead of Eames’ stupid, smirking face, Arthur gets an eyeful of the equally-stupid priest’s collar around Eames’ neck. The equally-stupid, tight priest’s collar, the top edge of which is covered by the curl of Eames’ hair, back to its proper length and style.
Arthur looks away before his thoughts can veer further down that path, but can’t help glancing back at Eames a few seconds later. The view this time is even worse, because Eames is looking ahead towards the altar, and Arthur is left staring at the familiar shape of his profile cut off by the unfamiliar line of the collar, sharp black against the faint tan of Eames’ skin, still residual the last time Arthur saw him from his time in Mombasa. The buckle flashes dully in the stained-glass-filtered sunlight when Eames swallows, and Arthur is starting to seriously think a large part of him has a thing for the look of metal against (Eames’) skin. Or maybe it’s just his larger attraction to all things paradoxical; the necessary impossibility of Eames ever justifiably wearing a symbol of celibacy is a contradiction worthy of the term if ever Arthur has found one, and it’s logical that, given the firsthand knowledge he has to justify his categorization, the attraction would present as sexual in this case.
Eames sighs, loudly and obviously meant to get Arthur’s attention, or at least to get it on his terms, and not whatever about him has distracted Arthur now. Arthur blinks and shifts his eyes up to Eames’ face, where Eames is looking at him like he can’t believe how stupid Arthur is being. Arthur just glares back, feels like he’s missing a point here when Eames rolls his eyes again, fishes a rosary out of his pocket, and starts flicking the beads through his fingers in a way Arthur can only describe as obscene.
Fucking subconscious.
***
Arthur knows what his subconscious is doing-it’s not nearly as subtle as it would like to think it is-and he does not approve.
He spends the next five nights dreaming with the PASIV, constructing whole cities arranged in fish-eye views and kaleidoscope refractions: fragmented buildings with entrances in one street and exits in a different one, spiderweb alleys with no discernible connections between them that still let him walk through the entire city on one continuous path. The whole time, he wishes for a challenge.
***
Arthur goes home, such as it is, to New York and finds a veritable mountain of parcels waiting for him. He spends the first hour back in his midtown loft unwrapping them and lining their contents-some of the tackiest souvenirs he has ever seen, coconut-shell car fresheners and glossy acrylic coffee mugs and poly-cotton sweatshirts that will never see anything but the back of Arthur’s closet, if he even lets them get that far-on his kitchen table.
They look unquestionably out of place here, all bright colors and cluttered, terrible graphics against the clean hardwood and bone white of the loft. There’s also a postcard laid flat on every “gift” (and Arthur uses that term loosely), but Arthur doesn’t have to look at them to know who they’re from.
Eames.
Eames, who has outdone himself in selecting colors solely for how large Arthur’s headache will be when he examines them. Eames, who has spent a small fortune sending Arthur the worst array of tourist-trap knick-knacks when he knows perfectly well they’ll have no place in Arthur’s home, and nor will Arthur make room for them. Eames, who has written, Thinking of you, on the back of every postcard, all thirty-two of them, just that and nothing else, and it’s enough to make Arthur wonder if Eames ever stopped thinking of him.
Eames, who is the worst ever at courtship, or maybe the best, because all his stupid gifts are still on Arthur’s table, and Arthur is ignoring his three-million-dollar view of the sort of city he entered this business to learn how to build in favor of staring at them. Eames, who, Arthur is starting to think, might actually have had the right idea this whole time.
***
When they were in Paris planning the inception job, they did this a lot. Everyone on the team had their after-hours secrets, things they kept buried deep into the night and deeper into their own minds. This, how and how often (every night, by the end) they shared dreams off the job, was theirs.
One night, Eames put them in an empty, dusty market Arthur recognized from the first time they did this. This time, there was no fighting. It was all Arthur in control and Eames pliant under him; Arthur shucking off just their pants and underwear and using the lube from his pocket to prep them both; Arthur sinking down on Eames’ cock and riding him fast, Eames’ hands gripping Arthur’s hips like anchors and one moving in to jerk him off when Arthur told him to but doing nothing to change or influence Arthur’s pace. Eames was still rough, hold on Arthur too hard and kisses too biting and voice scratching as he groaned out, Bastard, you utter bastard, but the way he looked at Arthur was soft and unfamiliar, or maybe too familiar, something Arthur had seen half-formed glimpses of before and never let himself notice.
He noticed now, though, and his skin prickled at the sight. This wasn’t-fuck, this wasn’t why they did this, and Eames should know that. He did know that, but he was still looking at Arthur that way, even more so when a swipe of his thumb over the head of Arthur’s cock made Arthur jerk and gasp and come, and impossibly more when Eames pushed up into Arthur desperately and pulled him down for a kiss that felt far too knowing for Arthur’s taste. He let Eames have it, mostly because he could already feel Eames coming, but as soon as Eames finished, Arthur rolled off him and away.
He didn’t look back at Eames for the rest of their time in the dream. When they woke up in the warehouse, Arthur removed the IV line no more quickly than he normally did, watched Eames in the right corner of his vision do the same. Arthur packed up the PASIV, shut the briefcase with a click, and put on his jacket in preparation to go.
“Arthur,” he heard Eames say, at the same time as he felt Eames touch his left shoulder lightly. Arthur turned, and Eames was looking at him with that same soft expression, this time all over his face. His hand moved away from Arthur’s shoulder and paused in between them, so small a hesitation that Arthur wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t so unusually fixated on Eames and the look on Eames’ face and whatever it was Eames was going to do next. For an instant, Arthur thought Eames might reach out and touch him, his cheek or his hair or his shoulder again, intimate by nature of being contact between them out here, where there were consequences and rules and Eames to disregard all of them.
“We don’t,” Arthur said before Eames could do anything. In a second, Eames’ face was back to its default smirk, twisted and knowing. His hands were shoved deep enough into his pockets that his shoulder hunched a little, and he looked at once older and younger than Arthur had ever seen him.
“Right,” Eames said, nodding mostly to himself. “Of course. If you ever-”
“We don’t,” Arthur repeated, softer this time but no less firm, because damn it, Eames should know this. Eames’ shoulders hunched in a fraction of a degree more, something Arthur shouldn’t have noticed. He did anyway. It changed nothing.
“Good night, Eames,” Arthur said, and then he grabbed the PASIV case and left.
The next night, Arthur packed up and planned to leave the warehouse early. It wasn’t necessarily an issue of avoidance so much as it was one of preserving a well-functioning team dynamic. After last night, things between himself and Eames would unavoidably be awkward if they spent any time in each other’s company outside of being focused on the job. For the team’s sake, they could not afford for any of that awkwardness to bleed over into their working dynamic. They all had to make sacrifices for the sake of the job; a veteran like Eames should understand.
In the end, he needn’t have bothered. Eames understood better than Arthur had expected. He walked out as fast as his suave composure would allow him after Cobb released them for the night, and again all the nights after, sparing Arthur both the decision and the chance to make it.
***
The next time Arthur dreams with the PASIV, he’s back in the Technicolor kitchen. Eames is eating toast again, this time spread with dark red strawberry jam he keeps having to lick off his lips. Arthur’s coffee mug has chips in the same places as before. Smoothing them away takes more focus than it should.
“Did you hear me?” Eames says.
Arthur glances up guiltily, tries and probably fails to keep it off his face, if the indulgent way Eames is looking at him is anything to go by.
“I said, I think we should get a dog.” Eames takes another bite of toast. “A Dalmatian. I’ve always wanted one of them, ever since I read that book as a kid.”
A glop of jam slides off his toast and onto the lavender plate he’s holding. He scoops it up with a finger and licks it off, smiling when he catches Arthur watching him intently. After a few seconds of silence and Arthur staring, he says, “I think this is the part where your neat-freak self is supposed to protest, love.”
Arthur shakes himself, looks down into his coffee mug like the dark brown of its contents hold all the answers. “No dogs,” he says. “They smell. We travel too much. It’s impractical. That’s-”
“The reality of the situation, right,” Eames finishes for him, no doubt because he knows Arthur hates it when he does that. “But there’s the rub: this isn’t reality. Dreamspace, remember? You can make all the dogs you want.”
Arthur scoffs; of course he remembers. He just doesn’t want a dog. A dog would be something for him to create, something new to focus on, and easy as it would be, Arthur doesn’t know if he actually could. Right now, Eames is standing across the kitchen from him in hideous polka-dotted boxers and a white undershirt that Arthur can only guess is his-it’s too tight on Eames to be his own-and tearing his focus away from him seems suddenly like the most impossible thing Arthur could do.
Eames’ smile softens into something that looks vaguely familiar, like maybe Arthur has seen it before and chosen not to catalog it. “Now you’ve got it,” he says, reaching out to brush Arthur’s bedhead off his face and into some semblance of order. Then he vanishes, and Arthur is alone in the kitchen with a sense of déjà vu and something that doesn’t feel like quite as sweeping a revelation as it should.
***
Just to see where it gets him, Arthur chances a dream without the aid of the PASIV the following night. He finds himself wearing a codpiece, which is as clear a sign as any that this is a dream. Eames is wearing one, too, and somehow looks less unfortunately fashion-challenged than he normally does. Arthur isn’t sure he likes what this might be saying about his fashion tastes.
He also doesn’t like the fact that he appears to be standing on a balcony. With Eames looking up at him from a moonlit courtyard. In Elizabethan dress.
Seriously, Arthur’s subconscious is not subtle at all. He’d be worried about how that reflects on him as a person if he weren’t so annoyed.
“But soft,” Eames starts out, a smirk already wide and prominent on his lips, “what light-”
“Kill yourself,” Arthur says.
“Oh, I will,” Eames says. “Never you worry. Only I think we’re supposed to consummate our forbidden love first, and I was looking forward to that part.”
Arthur glares at him. “I get it already.”
Eames smiles. “I know,” he says, and, well. He’s Eames, but he’s still a projection of Arthur’s subconscious. Arthur supposes that more than anyone, more even than Arthur himself, he does.
***
In the end, it comes down to Paris, because Eames is a romantic if ever there was one.
Arthur catches an overnight flight into Charles de Gaulle, touching down with the sunrise and barely an hour of dreamless sleep to his name. He spends ten minutes in line for a taxi, another twenty in the backseat of the cab, and then he’s watching the driver take off from the sidewalk in front of Eames’ brownstone. He doesn’t worry that Eames won’t be in town-a quick call to Cobb on the way to the airport had confirmed what Arthur already knew-he just climbs the stairs to Eames’ doorstep, rings the chime, and steps back to wait.
It’s early enough that the wait is longer than Arthur thinks it normally would be. When Eames finally opens the door, he looks rumpled and bleary-eyed, clearly still half-asleep until the second he notices who is standing in front of him. Arthur can tell exactly when that happens because Eames’ eyes go sharp, flicking from Arthur’s face to his luggage-(PASIV-)free hands and back again. They’re a little soft as they do, a little openly wondering, and looking at Eames, wide-eyed and blinking in a pair of awful plaid pajama bottoms and nothing else, Arthur feels his chest go tight with something he doesn’t try to classify, but also doesn’t try to ignore. It’s a start.
“Arthur,” Eames finally says, voice rough with sleep and what Arthur thinks is Eames’ failing effort at hiding his own happiness. “What are you-”
“Shut up,” Arthur says, and then he steps forward and kisses Eames. Eames makes a quiet sound against Arthur’s lips, surprise, maybe, or contentment, makes another one when Arthur licks into his mouth like that will tell him which it was. Eames’ mouth is hot and sour with morning breath and old toothpaste, and the stubble around it scrapes at the skin of Arthur’s chin and jaw, and Arthur lets himself fully acknowledge that he has never wanted anything more.
Arthur brings a hand up to curl around the back of Eames’ neck, the other around the bony curve of his hip, both holding on as if Eames might disappear now that Arthur’s finally started to allow himself this. But when Eames shifts against him, it’s only to get closer, both arms hooking around Arthur’s shoulders and pulling him in tight, tight enough that Arthur can feel every line in Eames’ body where it presses flush against him, solid and warm and breathtakingly, perfectly real.
Of course, right then is when a car drives by, honking loudly as it goes, and even though there’s nothing saying it was for them, the noise is enough of an obnoxious and unexpected distraction that Eames breaks the kiss to laugh. He’s still laughing when he leans his forehead against Arthur’s and says, happy and familiar, “We really need to get you inside and up to bed, darling.”
“Yes,” Arthur says, “we do,” and then he’s stumbling over the threshold into Eames’ home when Eames tugs at him, Eames’ grin impossibly wide and genuine and matching Arthur’s own, and it really is the simplest, the easiest thing Arthur has ever done.