[INCEPTION] Fic: Royal Flush (Gen, Eames and Cobb friendship) ~6500 words
Okay, I hope it's not in bad form but I edited this a bit after I'd posted it. Nothing too big, just a mention of Eames' former totem. CAUSE I AM NOW CONVINCED THAT IT WAS A POKER CHIP, OKAY. OKAY.
Title: Royal Flush
Summary: For the inception_kink prompt: Eames is so condescending to and disapproving of Arthur because he's jealous of his relationship with Cobb. Take that however you want, platonic, romantic, whatever--just as long as Eames wishes he were in Arthur's place and doesn't think the other man deserves to be there.
AN: Eames and Cobb friendship, some Arthur. No slash. (Well, maybe, if you squint.) Also, a bit Eames-centric, for history and stuff like that. Thank you to falques for proofreading! Any and all mistakes that may be found still are all mine.
QUOTE: 'Well,' Arthur said finally, when he was still met with silence, 'It was nice talking with you, Eames. Just figured you wanted to know.' False cheer, Eames thought snidely, was the worst thing in the world. Especially when its irony stabbed him with guilt.
During that conference, which Eames henceforth dubbed the White Board Convention, but only in his mind, of course--
--he'd never say such a thing out loud because Arthur would laugh, and Ariadne would laugh, and Cobb, who already seemed like he was carrying the weight of everyone in the room on his shoulders, looked like he could explode at any moment--
Cobb took Arthur aside and it was a lengthy discussion, with Arthur nodding the whole time and Cobb explaining something that may have sounded lengthy, probably something authoritative. He saw how Arthur interrupted every now and then and Cobb, patiently, listened.
When Arthur glanced Eames, as if feeling the weight of a thousand eyes on him, it was with irritation and when Cobb glanced his way as well, Cobb nodded at him and pulled Arthur farther away from the group.
On the other side of the room in fact, which was a bit of an overkill, Eames thought, considering that Yusuf was already speaking loudly enough and Eames was sure he was the only one not paying attention.
After the conference, when each went about their separate tasks, Eames was at the table, reviewing Peter Browning's file. Arthur sat down across from him with a tired huff. Eames' eyes flickered up for a brief moment before looking back down at the page.
Arthur looked like he had just ran a whole mile to the warehouse, or possibly sprinted his way up the stairs. Eames knew it was neither because Arthur, like the put-together man that he was (and Eames was not), only ever moved in so haggard a pace when he had to. Or, possibly, in dreams.
(And a glance at the tail-end of a very long tattoo that peeked from in between the buttons of his shirt told him that this was not a dream.)
So Arthur must be tired about something. Eames wasn't a nosy person, not by choice. When he had to research other people, he did so by the artful task of eavesdropping. If not that then outright hacking into personal information. He didn't pry the information from anyone, not unless he had to.
In this case, he didn't need to, not immediately, but Eames knew that in the end, he did. There was a time when Eames was the one who knew Cobb's (and Mal's, if they were together) whereabouts and it was Arthur, who was by then just a snit of a college-undergraduate, who asked Eames to relay messages to Arthur's new employer.
But before he could even begin strategizing the conversation it would entail, Arthur did it for him, "You know that stuffed animal Cobb was lugging around the other day?"
Eames remembered. It was big and it was hairy and everything that Eames figured a little kid would have wanted for their birthday. He nodded.
"He just asked me to trim its fur," Arthur said, with a heavy sigh, making it sound like it was no mundane task but some do-or-die scenario that cost him his pride.
Eames supposed it may have cost him his pride somewhat, especially if he had to do it outside which the lack of stuffed toy fur on Eames' sweater vest implied. "Sending it to the kids?"
"Yeah but James--"
Eames interrupted, "Has asthma, I know."
Arthur eyed him, raising an eyebrow slightly. There was curiosity there that, for once, Eames didn't rise to.
Eames shrugged, sitting back and crossing his legs. He was still reading the page--or was trying to, at least, but all thoughts were on his memories of a very young Philippa and an infant James. But of whom he had last seen sitting on the carpet on their living room floor. He could almost hear the audio of a Blues Clues episode echo in the periphery of his mind.
"It was his birthday last week."
Eames' only indication of having heard was the slight flicker in his eyes. From the way his head was lowered to read the small text on the page that sat on his lap, however, Arthur probably didn't see it.
"Apparently they threw a small party at the Chuck-E-Cheese. Well, his grandmother did. And the Prof," Miles, Eames supplied in his head, and vividly remembered the kindly old man with the open face. They always called him Prof because by the time Eames and Arthur had met him, Miles had still been teaching in UCLA. "Bought him this medieval toy castle big enough that he could fit in through the gate."
This Eames didn't know. He knew their birthdays, Philippa on the fifteenth of January and James on the third of July. But for almost three years his last memory of any of Cobb's children's birthday parties were Philippa's second.
Which was not in Chuck-E-Cheese but at home, where the Prof broke in a bottle of wine after the kids had gone to bed and they (that is, Eames, Cobb, Arthur, Mal, and two other friends Eames could only vaguely remember, a back-up architect named Henry and the resident mechanic Amy) finished it and two cheap box-cartons of wine until well into the night.
"I was going to ask if you wanted to give him anything too but I had to catch the post-office before it closed." Eames looked up from the file. Arthur almost looked apologetic. When Eames didn't reply, Arthur continued, "I got him this small model of the Louvre."
Typical of Arthur. Before Eames left, he and Arthur had argued several times over what to watch on television when the kids were around and playing in the living room. Eames wanted The Simpsons, They're yellow, Arthur, of course Philippa won't think it's real. Arthur wanted Animal Planet whenever Bindi Irwin's show was on, It's never too early to learn.
(Eames, of course, couldn't argue with that, not when Miles was around puttering in the kitchen. As an educator, Miles usually agreed with Arthur. The bloody brown noser.)
"Well," Arthur said finally, when he was still met with silence, "It was nice talking with you, Eames. Just figured you wanted to know." False cheer, Eames thought snidely, was the worst thing in the world. Especially when its irony stabbed him with guilt.
"I got him a lion's tooth pendant," Eames said, eyes still fixed on the file. His eyebrows drew together, as if he was thinking exceptionally hard about what he was reading. "Lifted it off a tourist in Mombasa. Said it was a souvenir from his visit to a Maasi tribe." (Eames lifted it, sure, but from a lion hunter he had haggled with over the price of lion hide. Served the bastard right anyway.)
Arthur, surprised, could only say, "Oh."
Eames nodded almost distractedly. He made a show of turning the page with an irritated flick of his thumb.
"Where is it?" Arthur badgered on.
"Well it's not on me right now, is it?"
Arthur huffed in slight irritation, "James is too young for stuff like that anyway. He might just choke on it," and with that Arthur stood and left the table.
Eames grit his teeth. "He'll grow up spineless with all this sheltering." Arthur hadn't heard, which Eames almost felt thankful for.
He didn't say that he left the necklace in Mombasa, when Cobb invited him to join the team without so much as a warning and Eames, like the fool he was, blindly followed him with complete disregard for the pending extraction job he left behind or the suitcase he had yet to use since he arrived in Kenya.
**********************
Ariadne was already laying back on a chaise when Eames entered the room. It was high noon and Eames had already had his fill of a very heavy brunch so he skipped out on the group lunch the others went to.
(To take a bit of a breather, Saito had said, who was not one to miss an opportunity to dine at the Le Troquet.)
Ariadne, it seemed, sat this one out as well. She was looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling, with her hands folded on her stomach, when Eames took the chaise beside her and laid down as well.
This close to her, Eames noticed that she wasn't as still as he had first thought. And whatever ran through her mind was nothing as calm as Eames assumed. Boy troubles? Probably. All the classes she was going to be absent for? Most likely.
"Eames, have you been attacked by a projection before?" Ariadne asked, seemingly out of the blue.
Ah. Eames frowned up at the ceiling. "Countless times." He went on after a beat, "Don't tell me Arthur's been showing you layouts of military camps and siccing his cavalry subconscious on you. The bastard."
Ariadne shook her head, she didn't sound like she was amused. Eames looked at her from the corner of his eye. She didn't seem to get the joke either but from the unsurprised look on her face and, well, the question itself, Eames didn't doubt that Ariadne had already gone into a dream filled with projections either.
"Mrs Cobb killed me the last time I met a projection."
Eames was even more confused. "Mal?"
He could never forget Mal. She was the one who introduced him to Cobb, after all. He was there on their wedding day, sitting somewhere near the bridesmaids with a foolish grin on his face, too knackered to have listened to the best man speech that Cobb's college classmate had given. But not too knackered to have stumbled out of the reception with Mal's maid of honor wrapped around him.
"Why would she?"
"She looked so angry. She stabbed me while the other projections held me down."
The few times Eames saw Mal angry was when Cobb did something spectacularly dangerous that risked an eternity in limbo--and that was a good several times, as adventurous as Cobb had been when he was still the main architect of the team. And that other time, when Cobb refused to off Amy in a dream where she was bleeding from a bullet in the jugular. He had still needed the mechanic to rig some Range Rover or other and didn't let up until Amy's task was finished.
But hardly any of those could have been memorable for Cobb enough to have his projection of his wife to be an angry version of the very elegant and very charming lady that Mal had been when she was still alive.
"Do you know what happened?" Ariadne asked again, this time turning her head on the chaise to look at Eames properly.
Eames didn't meet her eyes and instead looked up at the ceiling with a concentration that was almost stubborn. "She died."
"Yeah, I know that," Ariadne shook her head. Or as much as she could shake her head. But the faint rustle of her hair against the chaise was clue enough for Eames. "But how did she die?"
Eames frowned and realized that he didn't actually know.
He had received a letter at some point, from Henry of all people. (Henry, the back-up architect, was someone who manned the suitcase. Cobb's understudy, who only stepped in when Cobb had wanted to challenge himself on a routine job of extracting divorce-related secrets from cheating spouses.) Something about a fall from a very tall building and the ensuing legal chaos that resulted in Cobb leaving the country. When he received the letter, however, it was already months too late. Mal had already been buried and Cobb was already on the run.
The post office had had some difficulty tracking him down. It wasn't until he was released from the very disorganized and very hellish hole of a South African prison when he got his hands on his backdated mail--a whole lot of them, mostly of bills that were a couple of years overdue, a birthday card from his mother in Somerset, and the last picture of Philippa in the Karate Kid Halloween costume Eames himself had bought for her that Cobb sent (the date at the back of the picture said it had been taken in October 2008, almost a month after he left America). It was attached to a letter, Happy Birthday, Miyagi! ♥ Philippa & Mom & Dad & Baby Jamie, written in crayon, and Eames had pictured Mal patiently guiding Philippa's shaky hand on the paper. There had been a picture of an infant James as well.
"Eames?"
"No," Eames answered. "I don't know how she died." But he wished he did.
If Ariadne had said something in reply, Eames didn't know, and they both waited in silence until the rest of the group came in. They were testing the kick, all of them this time and not just Arthur, and once Yusuf had administered the sedatives (a very light one that made room for dying and the simplest of second levels), it was a smooth, sucking tumble into--
--New York.
Eames was riding shotgun in a silver, pre-2000 Bentley. It looked terribly upperclass next to the army of yellow taxis that lined the busy New York roads. (He noted that one of them was a projection of Henry and he glanced at Arthur, who was at the driver's seat. Arthur made a vague motion with his hand which Eames understood as, Yeah, that's what happened to him.)
"Eames." Cobb caught his attention and Eames turned his ear towards the back. "There's a gun under your seat," Cobb instructed and just as Eames bent slightly to reach underneath, he saw Cobb himself hand Arthur a Desert Eagle, which Arthur without so much as a glance off the road.
What he found was a small but astoundingly heavy case. Opening it, Eames found the pieces of a disassembled Heckler & Koch MG4. He smirked to himself as his hands immediately went to assembling the gun with practiced ease. The MG4 had been his weapon of choice back in the day until he got his hands on the Belgian P90 (but that was already in Johannesburg, when he accepted the job that had kept him away from America and, indeed, from freedom itself). Cobb had never seen him use the P90 before.
"Get the other one," Cobb added, once Eames had inserted a full magazine with a resounding click.
He threw the empty case outside the window, which Eames noticed from the corner of his eye visibly irked Arthur. Cobb didn't comment on it; so Eames pointedly ignored it, and fished the other case from underneath. Pieces of the Grad assault rifle, sleek like the AK-47. Typical, conventional.
"That's Arthur's," Cobb added as an afterthought.
Of course, Eames thought, and snorted loudly enough that Arthur threw him a look, risking two seconds from manning the streets, which Eames was amused even more. But he assembled Arthur's damn rifle and he assembled it well, finishing with a slightly exaggerated flourish.
Arthur entered a building's parking entrance and up they went, to the fifth floor of an indoor parking lot. It was full of parked cars and Arthur pulled to a stop at the top of the winding car path. They were still on a slight incline when Eames opened the door and got out.
The group walked further in, where the afternoon sun from outside grew dimmer as they went deeper.
A slightly large congregation of men, mostly tall and bulky, mostly wearing monochromatic gradients. All wearing the darkest shades. It didn't take long for Eames to realize that they had walked into the middle of a mafia's exchange transaction. Clearly enough, there were several big suitcases on the floor in the middle.
They opened fire.
Eames was the first to react and, rather liberally as was his wont, pulled the trigger on his sub-machine gun and fired back. The group dispersed, hiding behind cars and wide circular columns.
Eames crouched behind an old Toyota, machine gun poised against his shoulder. The weight of it felt familiar as was the presence of Cobb and Arthur just somewhere to his left. It felt like old times.
They exchanged bullets for a while, until some of the projections climbed on their SUV and circled them. Eames quickly moved to a less exposed position, beside Ariadne where she was crouching behind a column, hands clapped to her ears.
"Are you alright?" Eames shouted at her from above the noise of gunfire.
Ariadne nodded up at him, but however artficial this world was, the fear was genuine in her eyes. She was new to this, even though she had already been killed by Mal in Cobb's subconscious. She didn't know what it felt like to be shot at and, well, to get shot. And die from it.
The SUV neared them quickly and Eames, sensing the danger of an SUV in such close proximity (having been run over by the tires of a Hummer before), stood and dragged Ariadne up to her feet. He kept her close behind him as they moved from one column to the other, to where the Saito and Yusuf were holding their own from behind a wall of luxury cars.
"Just keep close to me, sweetheart," he told Ariadne, and kept on firing. The windshield shattered and the SUV swerved and Eames quickly backed up, wrapping an arm around behind him to steady the girl.
The SUV swerved and rushed past him. Eames spotted a gunman seated at the back, the window pulled down, and before he could pull the trigger, he felt a shock of pain in his abdomen.
Fuck, Eames cursed, this again.
He fired. The projection died just as the SUV crashed into the wall. Grunting, he rushed the both of them to a nearby column, where he promptly leaned on the concrete to survey the damage.
Blood had already spread through his shirt--a very good one, he thought offhandedly. Pain spread like wildfire from the pit of his belly to his torso. It quickly became very difficult to breathe.
"Fuck," he cursed again.
"Oh, God," he heard Ariadne exclaim beside him, then he was being pressed further into the wall as Ariadne put pressure on the wound.
Eames breathed out a laugh that forced itself from in between his gritted teeth. "'salright, sweetheart. It's just a little blood. I'll see you later, yeah?"
Without much thought to it, Eames handed Ariadne the rifle.
"Go on, wake me up," Eames urged, as his hand slipped on the column and he thudded fully against it.
"Eames!" Arthur shouted in warning, and Eames turned sharply to the general direction of his voice. It pulled at his wound and he grunted at as he forced himself upright.
Three projections were closing in on them and, instinctively, he took Ariadne by the shoulders, spun her around until she pressed against him and pulled her finger that hovered over the trigger. The machine gun fired and the projections dropped dead.
"Oh my God," Ariadne said, with widened eyes.
Eames laughed, but before Ariadne could pount the rifle at him this time, Cobb called out to him, "Eames, get her to the ledge!"
The kick. Of course.
With gritted teeth, Eames took the rifle back from her, one hand pressing against his wound. It had been a while since Eames had last been shot and this may be a dream but it didn't make a fucking bullet wound any less fucking, bloody, Eames cursed out loud, fucking painful.
He must have said it out loud because Ariadne took his arm over her shoulder in a futile attempt at carrying some of his weight. They hobbled-stepped quickly to the ledge, or as quickly as an almost bent-over Eames and a short-legged Ariadne could manage. A ledge that was more of a glassless window, really, the barrier that prevented reckless cars from crashing into the sidewalk below.
It was going to be a very high drop.
"Come on, then," he told Ariadne. She hesitated, and he was getting impatient. A growing light-headedness sapped at his strength and his rifle was getting progressively heavier, a clear sign that he was going to pass out soon from blood loss.
Might as well, he thought.
Ariadne climbed on top of a car until she was balancing herself precariously over a sheer drop.
"Arthur!" He heard Cobb shout behind him. Eames looked in time to see Arthur drop to his knees, clutching at a shot to his chest and Cobb, without hesitation, leveled his gun and shot him clear in the head. Arthur pitched forward with a silent thud.
"Fucker," Eames cursed.
Ariadne must have seen this as well and when she did, impulsively tried to get down to help Arthur (who was on the last throes of brain activity before truly succumbing to wakefulness) but Eames, who really wanted to die already, impatiently shoved her off the ledge and she fell, felt the kick, and woke up.
Eventually, Eames did too, when a projection had taken advantage of his distraction to put a bullet into his heart.
He came to with a start. His hand quickly shot to his abdomen. He felt no pain but the memory of it was so fresh in his mind that he still winced as he sat himself up.
"Hey, you okay?" Ariadne asked him, concern on her face.
Arthur was already seated at the table, altering notes and going back to his bloody books. Saito and Yusuf were still under, and at a glance at Cobb's chaise told him Cobb was too.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Eames said, even though his smile was a bit shaky. He stood up, running a hand through his short hair, and without another word left the room altogether to the sound of the others finally waking up.
Of the six of them, only Arthur and Eames failed to test the kick by jumping off the stone barrier. Eames knew this and wasn't concerned by it at all. But of the two of them, Cobb killed Arthur first and his death was a painless one.
Eames knew it was petty, but it bothered him anyway.
**********************
Eames had gone for a smoke outside on the sidewalk and took more than the usual ten minutes one Marlboro.
He was leaning against the wall and went ignored by mostly everyone who walked past him which was fine by Eames, he didn't take notice of them either.
The problem with manipulated dreams, one could remember the events quite vividly. Eames never remembered his own dreams, the real ones. He never remembered the middle of it, like Cobb had told him when he was a offered a job all those years ago. He never remembered the end, either, if he had reached a cathartic state or if it was an open-ended dream that could possibly continue its torment on another night when he was pulled under by liquor or kept under by sheer exhaustion.
He didn't care for Arthur, who looked mostly unaware of his surroundings up until he raised his head. And even then, Cobb had taken barely a second to finish the job to wake him up.
What he remembered was the sound of Cobb's voice, of concern that, however unnecessary it was in the dream, still tinted Cobb's usually calm baritone.
There was a time when Eames was the one who watched Cobb's back, picked off the projections with a sniper rifle from a distance or cleared the path with a grenade launcher before Cobb shouldered through the remains and went about his task undisturbed. However unnecessary was the trust in a dream, or, well, optional, Eames liked to believe that Cobb worked more efficiently because he knew Eames was there to take care of the rest.
He understood that some things changed. In the three years that he been gone from the team, Henry and Amy had left as well. Mal had died, after which Cobb had left the country, leaving the children with their grandparents.
Somewhere, in between, during, or after all those, Arthur had become Cobb's go-to guy. The friend, if not the best then certainly the most trusted, that Eames had once been and while all this registered on an intellectual level--he understood, really he did. He would have done the same.
But the regret and the guilt that Eames had avoided from ever acknowledging during the time that he had been away--all throughout his year-and-a-half in prison, where there was certainly a huge serving of time for introspection, and his small travels throughout Africa that raked in meager income--was a different matter all together when physical distance was no longer something he could rely on.
He grimaced as he worried his forehead with his hand in a gesture that used to calm him but now seemed to do nothing at all.
"There are you are."
Eames turned around to find Arthur, with his hands in his pockets, in a stance that exuded his usual self-confidence and Eames, who was at that moment feeling very frustrated with himself and the situation in general, looked away.
He smoked his cigarette with an almost dismissive air about him, expecting Arthur to ignore him as well.
But, Arthur being Arthur, did not. "We're giving it another go. Let's go."
Eames smiled at him but it was not pleasant at all. "Rather obedient of you, darling, to come fetch me when I'm needed."
Arthur's eyebrow twitched. Good. It told Eames that his words affected him, at the very least. "Cobb told me to get you."
Eames' smile turned to a full blown laugh, drawn out and strained. "Oh, I'm sorry. Very obedient, then."
Arthur was not amused but was still mostly unruffled by it all. Eames thought the slight roll of Arthur's eyes was convincing enough to look like Arthur was genuinely taking it all in good humor when the stiff line of his shoulders as well as the sudden stillness of his shuffling feet all told Eames differently.
Maybe Arthur would make a good forger as well.
Eames sobered at the thought. He felt an irrational stab of jealousy prick at the back of his mind, it was subtle but Eames was currently in no position to be objective.
"Let's go, Eames," was Arthur's calm reply and started to head back into the building.
"That scene," Eames said, and Arthur stopped to turn back to him with an effort that seemed to cost him most of his patience. "That was a memory."
Arthur nodded. "It was during the summer, before Mal died. Cobb and I were supposed to retrieve those cases. Apparently, the mark thought that a mafia-handled suitcase was the safest place to store his secrets."
"The memory of a dream?" Eames asked. He had never heard of that before, but then again, he was rarely an architect in any of the jobs he had worked on.
"It was Mal's idea," Arthur answered. "We needed projections that would attack us."
Mal, whom Eames highly respected for her cleverness. She was the one who had forced Eames to make a totem, even though he claimed that he didn't need one. He did, at some point, make one. A small leadened disc painted over with the bold red of a regular poker chip. (When dropped to the floor from a height as tall as his hip, a non-dreamed floor should crack under its weight.) When he had lost it before he was sent to prison, he had another one made. Just in case. Since there was no lead in prison--the sporks they were given during mealtimes were plastic, and the smoke of melting plastic was too blackened for it go unnoticed--he had to improvise with what was available.
(A tattoo, a long one that snaked from the inside of his elbow down to the center of his chest. When he took off his shirt, he always kept a tank top underneath so no one, not even the few short-lived partners he had bedded since that time had seen what the tail-end of his tattoo looked like.)
"She had plenty of ideas, didn't she." Eames mused, dropping his cigarette to the sidewalk and putting it out with his shoe.
Arthur was silent, and it wasn't until they'd both started heading back inside when he replied. "Yeah, she did."
There was something about his tone that Eames found curious but when he eyed him, rather deliberately in an attempt to hint at an explanation, he was met with a stony silence that even Eames knew was something he shouldn't cross.
**********************
Evening came and by that time, all of them had thoroughly exhausted themselves with the series of running around, getting shot at, and diving head first over the parking lot's stone barriers. But after all that, nearly several hours spent dreaming, they had all gotten used to the kick and the height they needed to effectively improvise one (if the need arose, which they all hoped did not, but Eames thought you could never help these things from happening anyway).
Ariadne felt like she had just had a crash course in warfare and Eames, who stuck by her and blowed the brains out of every projection that even came close to raising their guns in their direction, did not die again.
Eames hung back when the rest of the team left one by one. (Saito's driver had been waiting for him the whole time, the poor bugger.) All the papers had been cleared from the table, only to be replaced by an array of weapons which Eames was currently examining one by one. Assembling and disassembling each with techniques that got smoother and quicker every time. Memorizing every detail, especially the rocket launcher Eames picked out himself.
Cobb hung back as well and hooked himself up on the device without asking for Eames' help.
(Yusuf didn't stay this time. He took one long look at Eames--which Eames completely missed--having immersed himself in the guns' instruction manuals, and figured he didn't need to be around this time anymore.
Cobb may have thought the same thing; Eames hadn't heard Cobb say anything before he went under.)
Minutes passed, then hours. Eames checked his watch. It was already half-past three and his eyes were tired, his fingers aching slightly.
Cobb still hadn't woken.
Eames knew the routine, someone needed to be around to check if something went wrong with the device. So he made a fresh pot of coffee, poured himself a big mug of it (with a dash of whiskey, because dreams aren't the only things that needed strong kicks), and pulled up a chair next to the device. He settled in, an AK-47's instruction manual open on his thigh.
Cobb awoke almost an hour later, and it was to Eames with a different manual on his thigh and a third mug of coffee but still very much awake despite the exhaustion that leadened his head.
"Morning, Cobb," Eames greeted him, standing up to help Cobb put away the device.
"You're still here." Cobb observed unnecessarily but Eames didn't tease him for it and instead simply set aside his coffee and proceeded to neatly wrap the IV line to a loose ball.
"Never leave a sleeping person unattended," Eames recited, "Rule number--," he trailed off, smiling slightly at the memory of him, in his mid-twenties, fresh out of a long flight from London, and a very animated, very ambitious Cobb.
Cobb finished the thought for him. "Seven, before the--"
"Rule number eight, never leave the attending person without a gun." Eames patted his belt, where a small pistol was holstered at his hip, usually hidden by his suit jacket.
When Eames put the device away, in a locked cabinet mounted up the wall, to which only Cobb had the key, he turned back to find Cobb sitting on the chaise, his head held in his hands.
Eames frowned, but didn't say anything. He took the time to refill the mug with coffee before sitting on the chair he occupied earlier.
He offered the coffee to Cobb, who took it with a grateful nod.
"Hungry? I think Ariadne's left her bread somewhere here," Eames started, but at Cobb's apparent lack of interest, didn't even bother to check anymore.
Eames gave Cobb the time--and space, subtly wheeling away from him an inch at a time whilst looking at something that he pretended was really rather interesting.
When Cobb broke the silence, Eames was all ears and he inwardly grimaced at the flare of enthusiasm that could not have been a natural response, considering that he had spent the last thirty six hours with very little sleep.
"I didn't kill her," Cobb began.
And Cobb told him, all of it. Eames didn't dare interrupt.
Mal's death, the Inception.
(At that point, Eames eyes had widened fractionally in surprise. Cobb hadn't noticed; his eyes were busily trained on the gradually dimishing coffee at his hands. Then, in an untimely flare of admiration for Cobb and Mal, came to understand how Inception could truly work.)
Cobb's children. Henry, then Amy, who ended up being hired by MIT after all, just like she had always (naturally) dreamed.
Then Arthur.
At this Eames looked away, first at his hands, then at his shirt, which he unconsciously parted slightly to peek at the tail-end tattoo branded just below his breastbone.
The tight grasp of guilt tightened in Eames' chest. It was a sobering feeling, he mused, now that he no longer found a reason to avoid it. It was a more sobering feeling than intense hangovers had been; took his breath and constricted his throat in a way that a failed job infested his morale when he awoke.
Eames gritted his teeth. He took a steadying breath and nodded to himself, dispelling the jealousy he had harbored for Arthur and his closeness to Cobb.
He was there for the best of their lives. Their engagement, their wedding, the birth of their children.
Arthur was there for the worst and Eames thought he could never live up to that, the dedication and the loyalty that Cobb found in the only friend, the only person after Mal's death, who was there. Someone on whom he could thoroughly rely, and had.
Still did.
Eames cleared his throat, in an attempt to steady his voice. "I'm sorry."
Cobb shook his head, "What's past is past."
Eames understood that, as well. He, too, had brushed off Cobb's apologies when Eames had been shot in the leg (a wound that pained him still, these days, and caused the slight unevenness in his step when Eames ran on his last reserves of strength) during that time when anti-extractor security guards weren't the only form of security guards they had stumbled into. (When both Cobb and Eames realized that not all of their targets will be easily accessible.) He hadn't understood Cobb's insistence then, the urgency in his voice when he asked if they were Okay, if what's past certainly was past, and that all was forgiven.
Eames understood that now.
Cobb looked up at him, some of the shadow in his eyes lifting as he raised the mug to his lips and downed the rest of the coffee. "What about you, Eames? What have you been up to these past few years?"
Eames shrugged, "A lot of things," he replied as he stood from the chair, took the now empty cup from Cobb and went to make some more coffee. Something told him this was going to be yet another sleepless night.
"When you didn't write or call after you took that Joburg job, we--"
"Yeah," Eames interrupted, the smile on his face was humored but the amusement was half-hearted at best. "Got arrested."
Cobb raised his eyebrows in surprise and Eames took that as a sign to continue.
It really did take them the rest of the night.
Eames' story was a short one but the anecdotes in between took much longer than he thought they would. He realized then that he hadn't had anyone to tell them to until now.
The Johannesburg job was a set-up. A organization that paraded around as a NATO-approved name had gotten together the best, and apparently, the seediest in each field.
("You see why I went and you and Arthur didn't?" Eames joked, and this time his smile held no hint of irony.
When Cobb smiled back, Eames felt the slightest stirring of hope that that maybe, after all this and after the Inception job, they really would be Okay.
"A stickler like Arthur would want out in no time, I bet," Eames mused.
At this Cobb laughed and Eames laughed as well and the mood remained light for a relatively long time after that.)
Eames told Cobb of the extraction job that the organization had turned on them. The architect, a German metaphysicist who went by some name Eames failed to remember, was an inside man and the maze he created had been a trap; that it didn't take long until each one of them had had their trade secrets pried from their systems.
("A year and a half?"
Eames nodded. "It was merciful of them, if you ask me," he shrugged, "But South Africa is a rich country. Blood diamonds and all that. As a population, they're a third world, sure, but individually, many of them can put Saito's company to shame.")
A job for the government had cut his time in prison short and although he had been inactive for many months, Eames never failed to brush up his skills. He didn't need to start from the beginning, since forging and, hell, stealing Eames believed had always been ingrained in a person's nature, if not their biology.
He brushed through the time when he first met Yusuf.
("The sleaziest bastard I had ever met, honestly," Eames chuckled at the memory of their first meeting. "Laced those sedatives of his with aphrodisiacs, for the more attractive clients."
At this, the two of them glanced almost suspiciously at the makeshift chemistry lab Yusuf had set up.
They laughed again.)
And when the first light of morning touched the Parisian skyline, Eames felt lighter than he had in such a long time.
They both stood, stretching limbs that cracked slightly as they raised their arms and twisted their torsos.
("Getting old," Cobb smirked.
"Yeah, well, you're older," Eames smirked back. It was petty but that was how it had been between them.)
Then Cobb offered his hand and Eames, smiling widely, shook it with a certainty that did not feel forced this time.
When Cobb left to freshen up in the adjoining bathroom, Eames opened his shirt and untucked the tank top beneath. The tattoo on his chest was as whole as only he knew. A snake of a thing, of conjoined poker chips, Aces, Hearts, Clubs, and Diamonds where, just above his ribs, they ended in a Royal Flush.
He took off his watch and with an experienced flick of his thumb opened the metal plate at the back. Behind the ticking hands was a round ceramic magnet. He passed it over the King of Diamonds. When he felt a slight tug of pain, when the slight metals in the cheap, prison-manufactured tattoo ink gravitated towards its pull, Eames knew it was real.
He laughed, a hearty bark of laughter, as he put his watch back on and buttoned his shirt.
This time, Eames relief was profound and there may have been other times when he had wished for reality and could only find dreams memorable only through other people's minds; the satisfaction of getting what he finally wanted was a more genuine burrowing of warmth in his belly that his projections of Cobb--which varied from violent to angry to merciful--had never quite given him.
Title: Royal Flush
Summary: For the inception_kink prompt: Eames is so condescending to and disapproving of Arthur because he's jealous of his relationship with Cobb. Take that however you want, platonic, romantic, whatever--just as long as Eames wishes he were in Arthur's place and doesn't think the other man deserves to be there.
AN: Eames and Cobb friendship, some Arthur. No slash. (Well, maybe, if you squint.) Also, a bit Eames-centric, for history and stuff like that. Thank you to falques for proofreading! Any and all mistakes that may be found still are all mine.
QUOTE: 'Well,' Arthur said finally, when he was still met with silence, 'It was nice talking with you, Eames. Just figured you wanted to know.' False cheer, Eames thought snidely, was the worst thing in the world. Especially when its irony stabbed him with guilt.
During that conference, which Eames henceforth dubbed the White Board Convention, but only in his mind, of course--
--he'd never say such a thing out loud because Arthur would laugh, and Ariadne would laugh, and Cobb, who already seemed like he was carrying the weight of everyone in the room on his shoulders, looked like he could explode at any moment--
Cobb took Arthur aside and it was a lengthy discussion, with Arthur nodding the whole time and Cobb explaining something that may have sounded lengthy, probably something authoritative. He saw how Arthur interrupted every now and then and Cobb, patiently, listened.
When Arthur glanced Eames, as if feeling the weight of a thousand eyes on him, it was with irritation and when Cobb glanced his way as well, Cobb nodded at him and pulled Arthur farther away from the group.
On the other side of the room in fact, which was a bit of an overkill, Eames thought, considering that Yusuf was already speaking loudly enough and Eames was sure he was the only one not paying attention.
After the conference, when each went about their separate tasks, Eames was at the table, reviewing Peter Browning's file. Arthur sat down across from him with a tired huff. Eames' eyes flickered up for a brief moment before looking back down at the page.
Arthur looked like he had just ran a whole mile to the warehouse, or possibly sprinted his way up the stairs. Eames knew it was neither because Arthur, like the put-together man that he was (and Eames was not), only ever moved in so haggard a pace when he had to. Or, possibly, in dreams.
(And a glance at the tail-end of a very long tattoo that peeked from in between the buttons of his shirt told him that this was not a dream.)
So Arthur must be tired about something. Eames wasn't a nosy person, not by choice. When he had to research other people, he did so by the artful task of eavesdropping. If not that then outright hacking into personal information. He didn't pry the information from anyone, not unless he had to.
In this case, he didn't need to, not immediately, but Eames knew that in the end, he did. There was a time when Eames was the one who knew Cobb's (and Mal's, if they were together) whereabouts and it was Arthur, who was by then just a snit of a college-undergraduate, who asked Eames to relay messages to Arthur's new employer.
But before he could even begin strategizing the conversation it would entail, Arthur did it for him, "You know that stuffed animal Cobb was lugging around the other day?"
Eames remembered. It was big and it was hairy and everything that Eames figured a little kid would have wanted for their birthday. He nodded.
"He just asked me to trim its fur," Arthur said, with a heavy sigh, making it sound like it was no mundane task but some do-or-die scenario that cost him his pride.
Eames supposed it may have cost him his pride somewhat, especially if he had to do it outside which the lack of stuffed toy fur on Eames' sweater vest implied. "Sending it to the kids?"
"Yeah but James--"
Eames interrupted, "Has asthma, I know."
Arthur eyed him, raising an eyebrow slightly. There was curiosity there that, for once, Eames didn't rise to.
Eames shrugged, sitting back and crossing his legs. He was still reading the page--or was trying to, at least, but all thoughts were on his memories of a very young Philippa and an infant James. But of whom he had last seen sitting on the carpet on their living room floor. He could almost hear the audio of a Blues Clues episode echo in the periphery of his mind.
"It was his birthday last week."
Eames' only indication of having heard was the slight flicker in his eyes. From the way his head was lowered to read the small text on the page that sat on his lap, however, Arthur probably didn't see it.
"Apparently they threw a small party at the Chuck-E-Cheese. Well, his grandmother did. And the Prof," Miles, Eames supplied in his head, and vividly remembered the kindly old man with the open face. They always called him Prof because by the time Eames and Arthur had met him, Miles had still been teaching in UCLA. "Bought him this medieval toy castle big enough that he could fit in through the gate."
This Eames didn't know. He knew their birthdays, Philippa on the fifteenth of January and James on the third of July. But for almost three years his last memory of any of Cobb's children's birthday parties were Philippa's second.
Which was not in Chuck-E-Cheese but at home, where the Prof broke in a bottle of wine after the kids had gone to bed and they (that is, Eames, Cobb, Arthur, Mal, and two other friends Eames could only vaguely remember, a back-up architect named Henry and the resident mechanic Amy) finished it and two cheap box-cartons of wine until well into the night.
"I was going to ask if you wanted to give him anything too but I had to catch the post-office before it closed." Eames looked up from the file. Arthur almost looked apologetic. When Eames didn't reply, Arthur continued, "I got him this small model of the Louvre."
Typical of Arthur. Before Eames left, he and Arthur had argued several times over what to watch on television when the kids were around and playing in the living room. Eames wanted The Simpsons, They're yellow, Arthur, of course Philippa won't think it's real. Arthur wanted Animal Planet whenever Bindi Irwin's show was on, It's never too early to learn.
(Eames, of course, couldn't argue with that, not when Miles was around puttering in the kitchen. As an educator, Miles usually agreed with Arthur. The bloody brown noser.)
"Well," Arthur said finally, when he was still met with silence, "It was nice talking with you, Eames. Just figured you wanted to know." False cheer, Eames thought snidely, was the worst thing in the world. Especially when its irony stabbed him with guilt.
"I got him a lion's tooth pendant," Eames said, eyes still fixed on the file. His eyebrows drew together, as if he was thinking exceptionally hard about what he was reading. "Lifted it off a tourist in Mombasa. Said it was a souvenir from his visit to a Maasi tribe." (Eames lifted it, sure, but from a lion hunter he had haggled with over the price of lion hide. Served the bastard right anyway.)
Arthur, surprised, could only say, "Oh."
Eames nodded almost distractedly. He made a show of turning the page with an irritated flick of his thumb.
"Where is it?" Arthur badgered on.
"Well it's not on me right now, is it?"
Arthur huffed in slight irritation, "James is too young for stuff like that anyway. He might just choke on it," and with that Arthur stood and left the table.
Eames grit his teeth. "He'll grow up spineless with all this sheltering." Arthur hadn't heard, which Eames almost felt thankful for.
He didn't say that he left the necklace in Mombasa, when Cobb invited him to join the team without so much as a warning and Eames, like the fool he was, blindly followed him with complete disregard for the pending extraction job he left behind or the suitcase he had yet to use since he arrived in Kenya.
**********************
Ariadne was already laying back on a chaise when Eames entered the room. It was high noon and Eames had already had his fill of a very heavy brunch so he skipped out on the group lunch the others went to.
(To take a bit of a breather, Saito had said, who was not one to miss an opportunity to dine at the Le Troquet.)
Ariadne, it seemed, sat this one out as well. She was looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling, with her hands folded on her stomach, when Eames took the chaise beside her and laid down as well.
This close to her, Eames noticed that she wasn't as still as he had first thought. And whatever ran through her mind was nothing as calm as Eames assumed. Boy troubles? Probably. All the classes she was going to be absent for? Most likely.
"Eames, have you been attacked by a projection before?" Ariadne asked, seemingly out of the blue.
Ah. Eames frowned up at the ceiling. "Countless times." He went on after a beat, "Don't tell me Arthur's been showing you layouts of military camps and siccing his cavalry subconscious on you. The bastard."
Ariadne shook her head, she didn't sound like she was amused. Eames looked at her from the corner of his eye. She didn't seem to get the joke either but from the unsurprised look on her face and, well, the question itself, Eames didn't doubt that Ariadne had already gone into a dream filled with projections either.
"Mrs Cobb killed me the last time I met a projection."
Eames was even more confused. "Mal?"
He could never forget Mal. She was the one who introduced him to Cobb, after all. He was there on their wedding day, sitting somewhere near the bridesmaids with a foolish grin on his face, too knackered to have listened to the best man speech that Cobb's college classmate had given. But not too knackered to have stumbled out of the reception with Mal's maid of honor wrapped around him.
"Why would she?"
"She looked so angry. She stabbed me while the other projections held me down."
The few times Eames saw Mal angry was when Cobb did something spectacularly dangerous that risked an eternity in limbo--and that was a good several times, as adventurous as Cobb had been when he was still the main architect of the team. And that other time, when Cobb refused to off Amy in a dream where she was bleeding from a bullet in the jugular. He had still needed the mechanic to rig some Range Rover or other and didn't let up until Amy's task was finished.
But hardly any of those could have been memorable for Cobb enough to have his projection of his wife to be an angry version of the very elegant and very charming lady that Mal had been when she was still alive.
"Do you know what happened?" Ariadne asked again, this time turning her head on the chaise to look at Eames properly.
Eames didn't meet her eyes and instead looked up at the ceiling with a concentration that was almost stubborn. "She died."
"Yeah, I know that," Ariadne shook her head. Or as much as she could shake her head. But the faint rustle of her hair against the chaise was clue enough for Eames. "But how did she die?"
Eames frowned and realized that he didn't actually know.
He had received a letter at some point, from Henry of all people. (Henry, the back-up architect, was someone who manned the suitcase. Cobb's understudy, who only stepped in when Cobb had wanted to challenge himself on a routine job of extracting divorce-related secrets from cheating spouses.) Something about a fall from a very tall building and the ensuing legal chaos that resulted in Cobb leaving the country. When he received the letter, however, it was already months too late. Mal had already been buried and Cobb was already on the run.
The post office had had some difficulty tracking him down. It wasn't until he was released from the very disorganized and very hellish hole of a South African prison when he got his hands on his backdated mail--a whole lot of them, mostly of bills that were a couple of years overdue, a birthday card from his mother in Somerset, and the last picture of Philippa in the Karate Kid Halloween costume Eames himself had bought for her that Cobb sent (the date at the back of the picture said it had been taken in October 2008, almost a month after he left America). It was attached to a letter, Happy Birthday, Miyagi! ♥ Philippa & Mom & Dad & Baby Jamie, written in crayon, and Eames had pictured Mal patiently guiding Philippa's shaky hand on the paper. There had been a picture of an infant James as well.
"Eames?"
"No," Eames answered. "I don't know how she died." But he wished he did.
If Ariadne had said something in reply, Eames didn't know, and they both waited in silence until the rest of the group came in. They were testing the kick, all of them this time and not just Arthur, and once Yusuf had administered the sedatives (a very light one that made room for dying and the simplest of second levels), it was a smooth, sucking tumble into--
--New York.
Eames was riding shotgun in a silver, pre-2000 Bentley. It looked terribly upperclass next to the army of yellow taxis that lined the busy New York roads. (He noted that one of them was a projection of Henry and he glanced at Arthur, who was at the driver's seat. Arthur made a vague motion with his hand which Eames understood as, Yeah, that's what happened to him.)
"Eames." Cobb caught his attention and Eames turned his ear towards the back. "There's a gun under your seat," Cobb instructed and just as Eames bent slightly to reach underneath, he saw Cobb himself hand Arthur a Desert Eagle, which Arthur without so much as a glance off the road.
What he found was a small but astoundingly heavy case. Opening it, Eames found the pieces of a disassembled Heckler & Koch MG4. He smirked to himself as his hands immediately went to assembling the gun with practiced ease. The MG4 had been his weapon of choice back in the day until he got his hands on the Belgian P90 (but that was already in Johannesburg, when he accepted the job that had kept him away from America and, indeed, from freedom itself). Cobb had never seen him use the P90 before.
"Get the other one," Cobb added, once Eames had inserted a full magazine with a resounding click.
He threw the empty case outside the window, which Eames noticed from the corner of his eye visibly irked Arthur. Cobb didn't comment on it; so Eames pointedly ignored it, and fished the other case from underneath. Pieces of the Grad assault rifle, sleek like the AK-47. Typical, conventional.
"That's Arthur's," Cobb added as an afterthought.
Of course, Eames thought, and snorted loudly enough that Arthur threw him a look, risking two seconds from manning the streets, which Eames was amused even more. But he assembled Arthur's damn rifle and he assembled it well, finishing with a slightly exaggerated flourish.
Arthur entered a building's parking entrance and up they went, to the fifth floor of an indoor parking lot. It was full of parked cars and Arthur pulled to a stop at the top of the winding car path. They were still on a slight incline when Eames opened the door and got out.
The group walked further in, where the afternoon sun from outside grew dimmer as they went deeper.
A slightly large congregation of men, mostly tall and bulky, mostly wearing monochromatic gradients. All wearing the darkest shades. It didn't take long for Eames to realize that they had walked into the middle of a mafia's exchange transaction. Clearly enough, there were several big suitcases on the floor in the middle.
They opened fire.
Eames was the first to react and, rather liberally as was his wont, pulled the trigger on his sub-machine gun and fired back. The group dispersed, hiding behind cars and wide circular columns.
Eames crouched behind an old Toyota, machine gun poised against his shoulder. The weight of it felt familiar as was the presence of Cobb and Arthur just somewhere to his left. It felt like old times.
They exchanged bullets for a while, until some of the projections climbed on their SUV and circled them. Eames quickly moved to a less exposed position, beside Ariadne where she was crouching behind a column, hands clapped to her ears.
"Are you alright?" Eames shouted at her from above the noise of gunfire.
Ariadne nodded up at him, but however artficial this world was, the fear was genuine in her eyes. She was new to this, even though she had already been killed by Mal in Cobb's subconscious. She didn't know what it felt like to be shot at and, well, to get shot. And die from it.
The SUV neared them quickly and Eames, sensing the danger of an SUV in such close proximity (having been run over by the tires of a Hummer before), stood and dragged Ariadne up to her feet. He kept her close behind him as they moved from one column to the other, to where the Saito and Yusuf were holding their own from behind a wall of luxury cars.
"Just keep close to me, sweetheart," he told Ariadne, and kept on firing. The windshield shattered and the SUV swerved and Eames quickly backed up, wrapping an arm around behind him to steady the girl.
The SUV swerved and rushed past him. Eames spotted a gunman seated at the back, the window pulled down, and before he could pull the trigger, he felt a shock of pain in his abdomen.
Fuck, Eames cursed, this again.
He fired. The projection died just as the SUV crashed into the wall. Grunting, he rushed the both of them to a nearby column, where he promptly leaned on the concrete to survey the damage.
Blood had already spread through his shirt--a very good one, he thought offhandedly. Pain spread like wildfire from the pit of his belly to his torso. It quickly became very difficult to breathe.
"Fuck," he cursed again.
"Oh, God," he heard Ariadne exclaim beside him, then he was being pressed further into the wall as Ariadne put pressure on the wound.
Eames breathed out a laugh that forced itself from in between his gritted teeth. "'salright, sweetheart. It's just a little blood. I'll see you later, yeah?"
Without much thought to it, Eames handed Ariadne the rifle.
"Go on, wake me up," Eames urged, as his hand slipped on the column and he thudded fully against it.
"Eames!" Arthur shouted in warning, and Eames turned sharply to the general direction of his voice. It pulled at his wound and he grunted at as he forced himself upright.
Three projections were closing in on them and, instinctively, he took Ariadne by the shoulders, spun her around until she pressed against him and pulled her finger that hovered over the trigger. The machine gun fired and the projections dropped dead.
"Oh my God," Ariadne said, with widened eyes.
Eames laughed, but before Ariadne could pount the rifle at him this time, Cobb called out to him, "Eames, get her to the ledge!"
The kick. Of course.
With gritted teeth, Eames took the rifle back from her, one hand pressing against his wound. It had been a while since Eames had last been shot and this may be a dream but it didn't make a fucking bullet wound any less fucking, bloody, Eames cursed out loud, fucking painful.
He must have said it out loud because Ariadne took his arm over her shoulder in a futile attempt at carrying some of his weight. They hobbled-stepped quickly to the ledge, or as quickly as an almost bent-over Eames and a short-legged Ariadne could manage. A ledge that was more of a glassless window, really, the barrier that prevented reckless cars from crashing into the sidewalk below.
It was going to be a very high drop.
"Come on, then," he told Ariadne. She hesitated, and he was getting impatient. A growing light-headedness sapped at his strength and his rifle was getting progressively heavier, a clear sign that he was going to pass out soon from blood loss.
Might as well, he thought.
Ariadne climbed on top of a car until she was balancing herself precariously over a sheer drop.
"Arthur!" He heard Cobb shout behind him. Eames looked in time to see Arthur drop to his knees, clutching at a shot to his chest and Cobb, without hesitation, leveled his gun and shot him clear in the head. Arthur pitched forward with a silent thud.
"Fucker," Eames cursed.
Ariadne must have seen this as well and when she did, impulsively tried to get down to help Arthur (who was on the last throes of brain activity before truly succumbing to wakefulness) but Eames, who really wanted to die already, impatiently shoved her off the ledge and she fell, felt the kick, and woke up.
Eventually, Eames did too, when a projection had taken advantage of his distraction to put a bullet into his heart.
He came to with a start. His hand quickly shot to his abdomen. He felt no pain but the memory of it was so fresh in his mind that he still winced as he sat himself up.
"Hey, you okay?" Ariadne asked him, concern on her face.
Arthur was already seated at the table, altering notes and going back to his bloody books. Saito and Yusuf were still under, and at a glance at Cobb's chaise told him Cobb was too.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Eames said, even though his smile was a bit shaky. He stood up, running a hand through his short hair, and without another word left the room altogether to the sound of the others finally waking up.
Of the six of them, only Arthur and Eames failed to test the kick by jumping off the stone barrier. Eames knew this and wasn't concerned by it at all. But of the two of them, Cobb killed Arthur first and his death was a painless one.
Eames knew it was petty, but it bothered him anyway.
**********************
Eames had gone for a smoke outside on the sidewalk and took more than the usual ten minutes one Marlboro.
He was leaning against the wall and went ignored by mostly everyone who walked past him which was fine by Eames, he didn't take notice of them either.
The problem with manipulated dreams, one could remember the events quite vividly. Eames never remembered his own dreams, the real ones. He never remembered the middle of it, like Cobb had told him when he was a offered a job all those years ago. He never remembered the end, either, if he had reached a cathartic state or if it was an open-ended dream that could possibly continue its torment on another night when he was pulled under by liquor or kept under by sheer exhaustion.
He didn't care for Arthur, who looked mostly unaware of his surroundings up until he raised his head. And even then, Cobb had taken barely a second to finish the job to wake him up.
What he remembered was the sound of Cobb's voice, of concern that, however unnecessary it was in the dream, still tinted Cobb's usually calm baritone.
There was a time when Eames was the one who watched Cobb's back, picked off the projections with a sniper rifle from a distance or cleared the path with a grenade launcher before Cobb shouldered through the remains and went about his task undisturbed. However unnecessary was the trust in a dream, or, well, optional, Eames liked to believe that Cobb worked more efficiently because he knew Eames was there to take care of the rest.
He understood that some things changed. In the three years that he been gone from the team, Henry and Amy had left as well. Mal had died, after which Cobb had left the country, leaving the children with their grandparents.
Somewhere, in between, during, or after all those, Arthur had become Cobb's go-to guy. The friend, if not the best then certainly the most trusted, that Eames had once been and while all this registered on an intellectual level--he understood, really he did. He would have done the same.
But the regret and the guilt that Eames had avoided from ever acknowledging during the time that he had been away--all throughout his year-and-a-half in prison, where there was certainly a huge serving of time for introspection, and his small travels throughout Africa that raked in meager income--was a different matter all together when physical distance was no longer something he could rely on.
He grimaced as he worried his forehead with his hand in a gesture that used to calm him but now seemed to do nothing at all.
"There are you are."
Eames turned around to find Arthur, with his hands in his pockets, in a stance that exuded his usual self-confidence and Eames, who was at that moment feeling very frustrated with himself and the situation in general, looked away.
He smoked his cigarette with an almost dismissive air about him, expecting Arthur to ignore him as well.
But, Arthur being Arthur, did not. "We're giving it another go. Let's go."
Eames smiled at him but it was not pleasant at all. "Rather obedient of you, darling, to come fetch me when I'm needed."
Arthur's eyebrow twitched. Good. It told Eames that his words affected him, at the very least. "Cobb told me to get you."
Eames' smile turned to a full blown laugh, drawn out and strained. "Oh, I'm sorry. Very obedient, then."
Arthur was not amused but was still mostly unruffled by it all. Eames thought the slight roll of Arthur's eyes was convincing enough to look like Arthur was genuinely taking it all in good humor when the stiff line of his shoulders as well as the sudden stillness of his shuffling feet all told Eames differently.
Maybe Arthur would make a good forger as well.
Eames sobered at the thought. He felt an irrational stab of jealousy prick at the back of his mind, it was subtle but Eames was currently in no position to be objective.
"Let's go, Eames," was Arthur's calm reply and started to head back into the building.
"That scene," Eames said, and Arthur stopped to turn back to him with an effort that seemed to cost him most of his patience. "That was a memory."
Arthur nodded. "It was during the summer, before Mal died. Cobb and I were supposed to retrieve those cases. Apparently, the mark thought that a mafia-handled suitcase was the safest place to store his secrets."
"The memory of a dream?" Eames asked. He had never heard of that before, but then again, he was rarely an architect in any of the jobs he had worked on.
"It was Mal's idea," Arthur answered. "We needed projections that would attack us."
Mal, whom Eames highly respected for her cleverness. She was the one who had forced Eames to make a totem, even though he claimed that he didn't need one. He did, at some point, make one. A small leadened disc painted over with the bold red of a regular poker chip. (When dropped to the floor from a height as tall as his hip, a non-dreamed floor should crack under its weight.) When he had lost it before he was sent to prison, he had another one made. Just in case. Since there was no lead in prison--the sporks they were given during mealtimes were plastic, and the smoke of melting plastic was too blackened for it go unnoticed--he had to improvise with what was available.
(A tattoo, a long one that snaked from the inside of his elbow down to the center of his chest. When he took off his shirt, he always kept a tank top underneath so no one, not even the few short-lived partners he had bedded since that time had seen what the tail-end of his tattoo looked like.)
"She had plenty of ideas, didn't she." Eames mused, dropping his cigarette to the sidewalk and putting it out with his shoe.
Arthur was silent, and it wasn't until they'd both started heading back inside when he replied. "Yeah, she did."
There was something about his tone that Eames found curious but when he eyed him, rather deliberately in an attempt to hint at an explanation, he was met with a stony silence that even Eames knew was something he shouldn't cross.
**********************
Evening came and by that time, all of them had thoroughly exhausted themselves with the series of running around, getting shot at, and diving head first over the parking lot's stone barriers. But after all that, nearly several hours spent dreaming, they had all gotten used to the kick and the height they needed to effectively improvise one (if the need arose, which they all hoped did not, but Eames thought you could never help these things from happening anyway).
Ariadne felt like she had just had a crash course in warfare and Eames, who stuck by her and blowed the brains out of every projection that even came close to raising their guns in their direction, did not die again.
Eames hung back when the rest of the team left one by one. (Saito's driver had been waiting for him the whole time, the poor bugger.) All the papers had been cleared from the table, only to be replaced by an array of weapons which Eames was currently examining one by one. Assembling and disassembling each with techniques that got smoother and quicker every time. Memorizing every detail, especially the rocket launcher Eames picked out himself.
Cobb hung back as well and hooked himself up on the device without asking for Eames' help.
(Yusuf didn't stay this time. He took one long look at Eames--which Eames completely missed--having immersed himself in the guns' instruction manuals, and figured he didn't need to be around this time anymore.
Cobb may have thought the same thing; Eames hadn't heard Cobb say anything before he went under.)
Minutes passed, then hours. Eames checked his watch. It was already half-past three and his eyes were tired, his fingers aching slightly.
Cobb still hadn't woken.
Eames knew the routine, someone needed to be around to check if something went wrong with the device. So he made a fresh pot of coffee, poured himself a big mug of it (with a dash of whiskey, because dreams aren't the only things that needed strong kicks), and pulled up a chair next to the device. He settled in, an AK-47's instruction manual open on his thigh.
Cobb awoke almost an hour later, and it was to Eames with a different manual on his thigh and a third mug of coffee but still very much awake despite the exhaustion that leadened his head.
"Morning, Cobb," Eames greeted him, standing up to help Cobb put away the device.
"You're still here." Cobb observed unnecessarily but Eames didn't tease him for it and instead simply set aside his coffee and proceeded to neatly wrap the IV line to a loose ball.
"Never leave a sleeping person unattended," Eames recited, "Rule number--," he trailed off, smiling slightly at the memory of him, in his mid-twenties, fresh out of a long flight from London, and a very animated, very ambitious Cobb.
Cobb finished the thought for him. "Seven, before the--"
"Rule number eight, never leave the attending person without a gun." Eames patted his belt, where a small pistol was holstered at his hip, usually hidden by his suit jacket.
When Eames put the device away, in a locked cabinet mounted up the wall, to which only Cobb had the key, he turned back to find Cobb sitting on the chaise, his head held in his hands.
Eames frowned, but didn't say anything. He took the time to refill the mug with coffee before sitting on the chair he occupied earlier.
He offered the coffee to Cobb, who took it with a grateful nod.
"Hungry? I think Ariadne's left her bread somewhere here," Eames started, but at Cobb's apparent lack of interest, didn't even bother to check anymore.
Eames gave Cobb the time--and space, subtly wheeling away from him an inch at a time whilst looking at something that he pretended was really rather interesting.
When Cobb broke the silence, Eames was all ears and he inwardly grimaced at the flare of enthusiasm that could not have been a natural response, considering that he had spent the last thirty six hours with very little sleep.
"I didn't kill her," Cobb began.
And Cobb told him, all of it. Eames didn't dare interrupt.
Mal's death, the Inception.
(At that point, Eames eyes had widened fractionally in surprise. Cobb hadn't noticed; his eyes were busily trained on the gradually dimishing coffee at his hands. Then, in an untimely flare of admiration for Cobb and Mal, came to understand how Inception could truly work.)
Cobb's children. Henry, then Amy, who ended up being hired by MIT after all, just like she had always (naturally) dreamed.
Then Arthur.
At this Eames looked away, first at his hands, then at his shirt, which he unconsciously parted slightly to peek at the tail-end tattoo branded just below his breastbone.
The tight grasp of guilt tightened in Eames' chest. It was a sobering feeling, he mused, now that he no longer found a reason to avoid it. It was a more sobering feeling than intense hangovers had been; took his breath and constricted his throat in a way that a failed job infested his morale when he awoke.
Eames gritted his teeth. He took a steadying breath and nodded to himself, dispelling the jealousy he had harbored for Arthur and his closeness to Cobb.
He was there for the best of their lives. Their engagement, their wedding, the birth of their children.
Arthur was there for the worst and Eames thought he could never live up to that, the dedication and the loyalty that Cobb found in the only friend, the only person after Mal's death, who was there. Someone on whom he could thoroughly rely, and had.
Still did.
Eames cleared his throat, in an attempt to steady his voice. "I'm sorry."
Cobb shook his head, "What's past is past."
Eames understood that, as well. He, too, had brushed off Cobb's apologies when Eames had been shot in the leg (a wound that pained him still, these days, and caused the slight unevenness in his step when Eames ran on his last reserves of strength) during that time when anti-extractor security guards weren't the only form of security guards they had stumbled into. (When both Cobb and Eames realized that not all of their targets will be easily accessible.) He hadn't understood Cobb's insistence then, the urgency in his voice when he asked if they were Okay, if what's past certainly was past, and that all was forgiven.
Eames understood that now.
Cobb looked up at him, some of the shadow in his eyes lifting as he raised the mug to his lips and downed the rest of the coffee. "What about you, Eames? What have you been up to these past few years?"
Eames shrugged, "A lot of things," he replied as he stood from the chair, took the now empty cup from Cobb and went to make some more coffee. Something told him this was going to be yet another sleepless night.
"When you didn't write or call after you took that Joburg job, we--"
"Yeah," Eames interrupted, the smile on his face was humored but the amusement was half-hearted at best. "Got arrested."
Cobb raised his eyebrows in surprise and Eames took that as a sign to continue.
It really did take them the rest of the night.
Eames' story was a short one but the anecdotes in between took much longer than he thought they would. He realized then that he hadn't had anyone to tell them to until now.
The Johannesburg job was a set-up. A organization that paraded around as a NATO-approved name had gotten together the best, and apparently, the seediest in each field.
("You see why I went and you and Arthur didn't?" Eames joked, and this time his smile held no hint of irony.
When Cobb smiled back, Eames felt the slightest stirring of hope that that maybe, after all this and after the Inception job, they really would be Okay.
"A stickler like Arthur would want out in no time, I bet," Eames mused.
At this Cobb laughed and Eames laughed as well and the mood remained light for a relatively long time after that.)
Eames told Cobb of the extraction job that the organization had turned on them. The architect, a German metaphysicist who went by some name Eames failed to remember, was an inside man and the maze he created had been a trap; that it didn't take long until each one of them had had their trade secrets pried from their systems.
("A year and a half?"
Eames nodded. "It was merciful of them, if you ask me," he shrugged, "But South Africa is a rich country. Blood diamonds and all that. As a population, they're a third world, sure, but individually, many of them can put Saito's company to shame.")
A job for the government had cut his time in prison short and although he had been inactive for many months, Eames never failed to brush up his skills. He didn't need to start from the beginning, since forging and, hell, stealing Eames believed had always been ingrained in a person's nature, if not their biology.
He brushed through the time when he first met Yusuf.
("The sleaziest bastard I had ever met, honestly," Eames chuckled at the memory of their first meeting. "Laced those sedatives of his with aphrodisiacs, for the more attractive clients."
At this, the two of them glanced almost suspiciously at the makeshift chemistry lab Yusuf had set up.
They laughed again.)
And when the first light of morning touched the Parisian skyline, Eames felt lighter than he had in such a long time.
They both stood, stretching limbs that cracked slightly as they raised their arms and twisted their torsos.
("Getting old," Cobb smirked.
"Yeah, well, you're older," Eames smirked back. It was petty but that was how it had been between them.)
Then Cobb offered his hand and Eames, smiling widely, shook it with a certainty that did not feel forced this time.
When Cobb left to freshen up in the adjoining bathroom, Eames opened his shirt and untucked the tank top beneath. The tattoo on his chest was as whole as only he knew. A snake of a thing, of conjoined poker chips, Aces, Hearts, Clubs, and Diamonds where, just above his ribs, they ended in a Royal Flush.
He took off his watch and with an experienced flick of his thumb opened the metal plate at the back. Behind the ticking hands was a round ceramic magnet. He passed it over the King of Diamonds. When he felt a slight tug of pain, when the slight metals in the cheap, prison-manufactured tattoo ink gravitated towards its pull, Eames knew it was real.
He laughed, a hearty bark of laughter, as he put his watch back on and buttoned his shirt.
This time, Eames relief was profound and there may have been other times when he had wished for reality and could only find dreams memorable only through other people's minds; the satisfaction of getting what he finally wanted was a more genuine burrowing of warmth in his belly that his projections of Cobb--which varied from violent to angry to merciful--had never quite given him.