fic: you build me up (you break me down) (fringe/inception; peter, eames, arthur)
Title: you build me up (you break me down)
Author: empressearwig
Pairing/Fandom: Peter, Eames, Arthur; Fringe/Inception
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4400
Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is all for fun. This hasn't happened and will never happen. Etc.
Summary: Peter always has a friend.
Author's Notes: Written for the Tik Tok challenge for nothing_hip, albeit in an incredibly late fashion. And because irishmizzy made me do it.
The first time Peter sees Eames is across a poker table. They're playing in an abandoned warehouse in Berlin, and Peter can tell less than an hour into the game that Eames is the only other player that he needs to worry about. Reading people is what Peter does, it's how he survives, but Eames won't cooperate. He simply plays, slouching elegantly in his chair, a slightly sardonic smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, as if the whole thing is beneath his contempt.
Frankly, it annoys the hell out of Peter.
But he won't let that distract him, not when there's money at stake, and by hour ten, it's down to just him and Eames, the way that Peter knew it was always going to end.
He looks at his cards. Pushes his chips all in. Looks across the table.
Eames barely reacts, just nods his head.
Peter turns over his cards.
The smallest hint of a real smile crosses Eames face and Peter knows in that instant that he's lost. Eames flips over one card and then the other. He wins.
Peter pushes back from the table, sending his chair clattering across the concrete floor, and heads for the door.
Eames voice calls after him. "It was a good try. Can I buy you a drink for your trouble?"
Peter doesn't bother to dignify that with a response. The sound of his laughter follows Peter out the door.
***
The second time is in a pub in one of the seedier parts of London. It's the anniversary of his mother's death and one of two days each year that Peter lets himself get blind drink without worrying about the consequences.
He's made more than a good start on it when he senses someone sliding onto the stool next to his. Peter ignores them, and hopes they'll go away. Some things are better done alone. This is one of them.
"You know," the person sitting next to him says conversationally, "when I offered to buy you a drink, this wasn't quite what I had in mind." He makes a disapproving clucking noise. "Couldn't you have at least chosen a better brand of whiskey if you wanted to get sodding drunk?"
Peter's preparing to turn his head to tell whomever it is to fuck off when it all clicks into place. He grits his teeth and looks at Eames. "What are you doing here?"
The man doesn't even bat an eyelash. If Peter's ever met anyone (besides his father, the voice in the back of his head reminds him) that gets under his skin so easily, he can't remember them. "Having a drink. What are you doing here?"
That's it, Peter's going back to ignoring him. He pours himself another drink. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eames make a gesture toward the bartender and another glass appears. Eames helps himself to the bottle and Peter lets him. It's not worth the fight.
He hears Eames light a cigarette, tastes the smoke in his throat. It burns, acrid, against the whiskey as he drinks. Peter welcomes the burn.
When the bottle is empty, Eames replaces it without a word. Peter nods his thanks and when he takes the first drink, he wants to laugh. Expensive whiskey will get the job done just as well.
They're there for hours, Peter methodically drinking, Eames lighting cigarette after cigarette. They don't speak and Peter is grateful for that. It seems that whatever the other man's faults, he knows when to keep his mouth shut. It's just another thing about Eames that Peter wouldn't have been able to guess.
Peter doesn't know when he loses consciousness, but when he wakes up, it's to light pouring through the drawn curtains of his hotel room. His head is pounding and his mouth tastes like day old socks. He's alone.
There's a folded piece of paper on the nightstand along with his room key, and when Peter unfolds it, he's half expecting a proposition. But it's a phone number and nothing else. His first instinct is to throw it away. Something about Eames throws Peter off balance and if Peter's going to be off balance he prefers it be through situations of his own making. Eames is not a situation of his own making.
Peter checks out of the hotel that afternoon and gets on a plane to Prague. He takes the phone number with him. He never calls.
***
When Eames shows up at the restaurant in New York where Peter is waiting tables six months later, Peter isn't surprised. He's not sure how Eames keeps finding him, but Peter's more or less accepted that no matter where he is, Eames will turn up like a bad penny. If it were anyone else, it would worry Peter, but despite the fact that he still can't read Eames worth a damn, it doesn't. This worries Peter instead.
Peter stops at his table and looks at him expectantly. Eames is looking back at him with the same sardonic smirk that he'd been wearing the night they met. It annoys Peter just as much as it did then.
The smirk on Eames face grows deeper. "Peter," he says. "So nice to see you again."
"Can I tell you about our specials?" Peter asks, flipping the pages on his order pad. He glances back at Eames who looks like he's barely managing to contain his laughter. "What?"
"It's just --" Eames makes a sweeping hand gesture around the restaurant, and Peter knows what he's seeing, chipped formica and paper placemats. "Don't you think this is all a bit beneath you, darling?"
Peter quirks an eyebrow at him. "You think you know me well enough to know what's beneath me?" Eames opens his mouth to speak and Peter points his order pad at him. "Don't answer that."
Eames closes his mouth obediently. It's maybe the first time Peter's ever seen him do what he's told.
"The specials?" Peter repeats.
"Right," Eames says, glancing down at the menu once. He hands it to Peter. "Bring me whatever is least likely to give me food poisoning, would you?"
Peter walks away. Eames' eyes follow him all the way back to the kitchen. Peter wonders just what it is that he wants this time.
***
Eames is waiting outside the kitchen door when Peter's shift ends, leaning against the brick wall and smoking. When he sees Peter, he drops the cigarette to the ground and straightens. "I thought we might finally have that drink," he says mildly. "Do you know anywhere?"
Peter studies Eames face. Whatever it is Eames wants from him, he wants it enough to have found Peter in two different cities on two different continents. Whatever it is that Eames wants, Peter's sure it's not a threat. He nods his head. "I know a place."
He takes Eames to bar two blocks away, one where the wait staff usually heads after they finish for the night. It's noisy, with out of date pop music playing over the crowd and just plain tacky, and half the reason that Peter picks it is to see just how out of place Eames will look there. The bartender nods to Peter when they walk in the door and Peter holds up two fingers and nods his head toward the back of the bar. He doesn't stop to see if Eames will follow him.
There's an empty table and Peter slides onto one of the chairs. Eames takes the opposite one, loosening his tie as he does, not looking out of place at all and Peter can feel himself frowning. He doesn't understand how Eames never looks like he doesn't belong. It's a gift that Peter envies.
Two beers materialize in front of them and Peter takes one, drinking deeply. Eames pulls the other bottle toward him, but doesn't drink. His fingers tap against the cheap wooden table in time to music. Peter wonders, not for the first time, just who Eames is.
"So what are you doing here?" Peter asks finally. He doesn't want to ask, it gives Eames more control than Peter likes anyone to have, but he wants answers. This is the only way he sees to get them, since the other methods he's tried to come up with information about the man sitting across from him all come to the same dead end; on paper, Eames does not exist.
If Eames doesn't exist, if this has all been some giant hallucination, Peter thinks that he belongs in St. Claire's alongside his father. Peter is certain that Eames is not a hallucination.
"Would you believe me if I said that I just wanted the pleasure of your company?" Eames asks.
Peter just gives him a look and Eames sighs.
"I thought not." Eames leans back in his chair and his face grows more serious than Peter's ever seen it before. "I have a proposition for you."
Peter's eyebrows shoot straight up to his hairline and Eames waves a dismissive hand at him. "Not that kind of proposition, darling. You'd know if I meant otherwise. A business proposition."
"What kind of business?" Peter asks, curious despite himself. He can't think of anything that Eames would want with him, but then, the man seems to delight in proving Peter wrong.
"I've heard --" and here Eames smiles, briefly, at Peter's frown, "-- yes, Peter, you weren't the only one doing background checks, that you were a man of many talents."
Peter shrugs. He doesn't see the harm in acknowledging it. "That might be true," he allows. "So?"
"So," Eames says, finally taking a drink and making a face. "You Americans will drink anything, won't you?" He shakes his head. "And I've lost the thread again. Which is that I might have a use for a man who can do anything."
Now Peter's definitely curious. "What sort of use?"
A smile turns up the corners of Eames mouth. "Are you asking me if this is, strictly speaking, legal? The answer is no. Does it matter?"
Peter shakes his head. That's never mattered. Just the challenge. "You didn't answer my question," he points out. "Exactly what are we talking about?"
Eames leans forward, elbows on the table. "Tell me, Peter. Do you remember your dreams?"
Peter starts to shake his head again and then stops. He does sometimes. Now. He wishes he didn't. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Now who's the one not answering questions?" Eames counters. He leans back. "But we can leave that for the moment. Have you ever heard of shared dreaming?"
Peter stares. Shared dreaming sounds like one of the projects that Walter was always working on when he was growing up, the projects that were always more important than Peter or his mother. He thought he'd left all that behind in Boston years ago. He doesn't have any desire to revisit it. "No," he says shortly and stands. "And I don't really think I want to." He tosses money onto the table. "I'll see you around, I'm sure."
"Was it something I said?" Eames calls after him, but Peter doesn't look back as he heads for the door.
The night air is bitterly cold against his face as he steps outside and Peter turns up the collar of his coat before heading down the street. He hopes Eames doesn't find him again. He's sure that he will.
***
The thing of it is, once Eames brings up dream sharing, Peter can't stop thinking about it. He quits his job at the restaurant a week later and buys a plane ticket to Seattle. He finds a job on a fishing boat which fills his days and he spends his nights doing research.The more he learns about it, about how it works, what it can do, the more he wants to know.
He has a feeling that's what Eames had in mind.
He hates that Eames was right.
He doesn't know how long he spends sitting in his darkened motel room just staring at the phone number that Eames left. He has no idea if the number is still good, or what he'd say if he actually called.
Peter's pretty sure there would be gloating involved. It's not really something that he wants to deal with.
He leaves Seattle two days after he's learned all he can about dream sharing. This time he leaves the phone number behind.
He's tired of the rain.
***
Eames finds him sitting by a pool in Dubai, just like Peter suspected that he would. What Peter hadn't suspected was that Eames would turn up with a friend in tow. He's sort of surprised that Eames has friends.
"Arthur," the stranger says, offering Peter his hand to shake. "You must be Peter."
He nods, shading his eyes from the sun with his other hand, as he shakes Arthur's hand. He tries to be unobtrusive about his study of the other man, but the cool assessment in Arthur's eyes tells him that he knows exactly what Peter's doing and that he's doing the same. It actually makes Peter like him.
Eames is fanning himself with his hand. "Now that we have the tedious introductions out of the way, do you think we might adjourn to some place cooler? Boiling to death is not one of my life's ambitions, gentlemen."
"I didn't know you knew what that word meant, Eames," Peter says, tucking his hands into his pockets. He sees the small hint of a smile at the corners of Arthur's mouth. They're going to get along just fine, Peter decides then and there.
Eames starts to clutch dramatically at his heart, but gives up halfway through the gesture, like it's too much effort to even bother. In the heat, it kind of is. "You wound me, Peter," he says instead. "I think you should buy me a drink to make it up to me."
Peter raises an eyebrow at him and Eames laughs, wrapping an arm around Peter's shoulders and steering him towards the doors that open to the hotel bar. "Fine," he says. "I'll buy you a drink. And Arthur, too, if he's gracing us with his presence."
The bar is mostly glass and chrome, the air a cool relief after the heat outside. The three of them settle at a table and Eames orders them all some ridiculous cocktail that Peter's never heard of before and after his stint as a bartender in Los Angeles, he's heard of them all.
When the waiter is gone, Peter looks back and forth between Eames and Arthur. They're an odd pair. Arthur's dressed in a linen suit that should be horribly wrinkled but isn't, Eames in a loud silk shirt and rumpled jacket. But there's a familiarity between them, even if it's a reluctant one. He's afraid this is going to be another one of those things about Eames that he can't figure out.
He's kind of gotten used to it.
And that's not a thought Peter wants to dwell on. "So," he says. "What brings you to Dubai? Did you come for the waters?"
Eames elbows Arthur in the arm. "See, I told you that you'd like him. Didn't I tell you that you'd like him?"
"You did," Arthur says, managing to simultaneously sound amused and shove the arm away. Peter's admiration of Arthur grows by the second.
"You've been talking about me to your friends?" Peter asks. "I'm touched."
"Oh, you shouldn't be," Eames says cheerfully. "You should hear the things that I say about Arthur here, when he's not around."
Peter's very glad when their waiter appears with their drinks. He waits until the waiter is gone to continue. "You didn't answer my question, you know. What are you doing here, Eames?"
Eames takes a sip of his drink and smiles. "The same thing I was doing in New York. Tell me, Peter. Did you happen to look into the matter we discussed?"
"Eames," Arthur says pointedly, nodding his head toward the people surrounding them. "Do you really think this is the best place to be talking about this?"
"We're in a crowded room, Arthur," Eames dismisses his concerns with a wave of his hand. "Besides, if I know you, and I do, you've already swept the hotel for bugs. It's fine."
Peter narrows his eyes at Eames. "Just what are you into?"
The quick smile surprises him. "Oh, any manner of things," Eames says airily. "Now, you're the one dodging questions and I do believe we've had this portion of the conversation before. Did you?"
Peter nods, slowly.
"Good." Eames looks too pleased. "That will make things considerably simpler."
"Somehow I don't think anything with you is simple," Peter mutters under his breath, folding his arms over his chest. "Just what do you want from me?"
It's Arthur who answers. "We have a job. And for various reasons, the person I --" Eames raises an eyebrow and Arthur sighs "-- fine, we normally work with is unavailable. Eames thinks you might make a good substitute with the proper training. Would you be interested?"
Peter doesn't want to be interested. He really, really doesn't want to be interested. But he is. "If I were," he says. "Just what would this job entail?"
Arthur shakes his head. "First, we see if you can handle it. If you can, then you get the details."
"Prudent," Peter says.
Eames leans over the table, blocking Arthur from view. "I've often suspected that's Arthur's middle name," he confides. "Such a stick in the mud."
"I'm sitting right here," Arthur points out.
"So you are," Eames says, patting him on the knee. He takes an envelope out of his jacket pocket and slides it across the table. "Here."
Peter takes it and opens it. There's a plane ticket inside. "Paris?" he reads out loud. He looks back at the two men. "Why Paris?"
"Why not?" Eames asks. He stands and Arthur follows. "I hope we'll see you there, Peter. If not --" He shrugs his shoulders. "Well, I won't let that get in the way of our friendship. I've taken quite a liking to you, you know."
"I'd noticed," Peter says wryly. He shakes Arthur's hand. "It was nice to meet you."
"Likewise," Arthur says. He nods his head toward the ticket in Peter's hand. "Think about it carefully. What we're offering -- it's not the easiest thing to walk away from."
"Walking away is something I'm very good at," Peter says simply. It's the absolute truth. Arthur nods, his face a mask of understanding.
There's nothing more to say and Eames and Arthur walk away, leaving Peter behind in the crowded bar. He sits back down at the table and draws out the ticket once more. He has a feeling that he'll be going to Paris very soon.
***
It's a week later and he's on a plane. He spends the entire flight arguing with himself about why he's doing it -- for money, for the challenge, because he can -- all of them are good reasons. They're all good excuses. When it comes right down to it, Peter is doing it because he's curious. He's too much his father's son to be anything else. No amount of wishing it away has ever changed that.
He checks into a cheap hotel and waits for Eames to contact him. He doesn't have to wait long.
An hour after sunset there's a knock on Peter's door. He knows who it is, but he picks up the gun from the nightstand before he crosses to the door anyway. Until he knows exactly what's going on, it's better to be safe than sorry. Probably after that, too.
He checks the judas hole and Eames is standing on the other side of the door, looking amused as ever. It's Peter's least favorite of Eames' many facial expressions.
Peter opens the door.
If Eames is surprised to see Peter with a gun, he doesn't show it. "Peter," he says, pushing his way into the room. "Couldn't you have chosen nicer accommodations? We are going to pay you, you know."
"And I might be seeing that when?" Peter asks, checking the hallway and closing the door. He sets the gun down on the dresser and looks at Eames expectantly.
"Well, that's more Arthur's territory," Eames says, turning from the window. "He's such a stickler about things like completing the job first. I've told him a hundred times --"
"Eames," Peter interrupts. "Was there a point to this visit?"
"Yes, of course," Eames says. He draws a card out of his pocket and holds it out, dangling it between two fingers. Peter takes it. "This is where we'll be working. Be there tomorrow."
Peter nods.
"Lovely." Eames brushes past him on the way back to the door. He turns back, hand on the doorknob. "Oh, and Peter?"
Peter raises an eyebrow. "Yes?"
"Bring the gun."
***
Peter shows up at the warehouse the next day. Eames and Arthur are both there, and he's introduced to two other men; Nash, the architect, and Cobb, the extractor. The one that Peter is here to learn from. The one that can't go back to the States. Peter doesn't ask why. He just shakes Cobb's hand and says, "When do we start?"
They get started immediately.
The first thing that Peter learns is that it's nothing like he expected it would be. Constructed dreamspace is so much more vivid, so much more alive. The first dream that they take him into is a busy city street and Peter swears that he can almost smell the blend of car exhaust and human sweat mixed with a thousand other things that city streets always have. When he wakes, and Eames asks him what he thought, Peter just shakes his head. There really aren't words for it.
After that, they get down to work in earnest. From Arthur, Peter learns about the mark, an American businessman based out of Chicago. Arthur can rattle off all the man's business interests, legitimate and otherwise, the way he takes his coffee, the names and birthdays of his wife, children and mistress, how much he hated his second grade teacher. Nash teaches Peter how dreams are built, the way that they're designed as mazes that only they know how to navigate. And from Eames -- well, the first time Peter sees Eames in a dream, he understands why it is that he's never seen Eames looking out of place. He wonders how long it takes to learn to forge, but he never mentions it. He's fairly certain Eames would take it as encouragement.
But all of that, no matter how important, is peripheral to what Peter learns from Cobb.
Peter has lived his entire life relying on his ability to learn how to do anything, to read anyone, to understand what it is that makes people tick, why they do the things that they do. He's spent his entire life thinking that he was good at it. When he meets Cobb, he realizes just how much there is that he doesn't know.
Cobb can read someone in less time than it takes to blink, he knows just what questions to ask and when to ask them, how to tell where someone has buried their deepest secrets. What Cobb does is a combination of gift, skill and art, and Peter makes himself an eager apprentice.
There's only a month to prepare for the job, a relatively standard case of corporate espionage, Arthur assures him, as if there's anything standard about stealing things from people's dreams. That Arthur can say that with a straight face convinces Peter that Arthur meant what he told him before, that this business is very hard to walk away from.
Peter wishes he didn't understand why, but he does. It's why he starts making plans to leave as soon as the job is done.
He doesn't mention this to the rest of the team.
***
The job goes off without a hitch. They pay off the mistress and she slips the mark a sedative in with his after dinner aperitif. When he falls asleep, she lets them into the apartment and after that, it's basically just a matter of hooking him up to the PASIV. For such an important man, he is terrible about keeping secrets. Peter finds the plans for the new tech and memorizes them before the mark and his projections are even remotely suspicious.
When they're done, Peter recreates the plans from memory and Arthur contacts their employer to arrange for the drop off. They're in a room at the O'Hare Hilton, and Peter knows that as soon as this is finished, they'll all board separate flights for separate countries and then this will all be over. Like the end of a dream.
Peter can feel Eames eyes on him from across the other room. He doesn't look. Instead, he watches Arthur, who's pacing around the room, speaking German on the telephone, gesturing more animatedly with his hands than normal.
Arthur hangs up and turns back to face them. "It's done."
This time, when Peter leaves, Eames doesn't follow. He never does.
***
It's six months later and a Tuesday when Eames walks back into Peter's life.
Walter is rattling off a list supplies he needs before he can finish his latest autopsy and Astrid is dutifully jotting it all down on a notepad. Peter's bent over a lab table working on his own project, trying to find a use for the rest of the parts from Walter's old electron microscope and is grateful beyond measure to see Olivia walk through the door.
"Olivia," he says, straightening up and wiping off his hands. "Please tell me you have something for us."
"Yes, Agent Dunham," Walter says, coming over to stand next to Peter. "Is there a case?"
Olivia nods, a frown on her face. "Walter, have you ever heard about people being able to steal from dreams?"
"From people's dreams?" Astrid asks, ranging herself beside Peter. "How is that even possible?"
"Of everything we've seen, that's what you choose to ask that question about?" Peter quips, but his mind is gone elsewhere. He hears Walter start to give the history of the army's experiments with dream sharing, but he doesn't listen. It's nothing he hasn't heard before. It's nothing he hasn't done before.
Peter wonders where in the world Eames is right now, and what it would take to get him to come to Boston.
Author: empressearwig
Pairing/Fandom: Peter, Eames, Arthur; Fringe/Inception
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4400
Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is all for fun. This hasn't happened and will never happen. Etc.
Summary: Peter always has a friend.
Author's Notes: Written for the Tik Tok challenge for nothing_hip, albeit in an incredibly late fashion. And because irishmizzy made me do it.
The first time Peter sees Eames is across a poker table. They're playing in an abandoned warehouse in Berlin, and Peter can tell less than an hour into the game that Eames is the only other player that he needs to worry about. Reading people is what Peter does, it's how he survives, but Eames won't cooperate. He simply plays, slouching elegantly in his chair, a slightly sardonic smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, as if the whole thing is beneath his contempt.
Frankly, it annoys the hell out of Peter.
But he won't let that distract him, not when there's money at stake, and by hour ten, it's down to just him and Eames, the way that Peter knew it was always going to end.
He looks at his cards. Pushes his chips all in. Looks across the table.
Eames barely reacts, just nods his head.
Peter turns over his cards.
The smallest hint of a real smile crosses Eames face and Peter knows in that instant that he's lost. Eames flips over one card and then the other. He wins.
Peter pushes back from the table, sending his chair clattering across the concrete floor, and heads for the door.
Eames voice calls after him. "It was a good try. Can I buy you a drink for your trouble?"
Peter doesn't bother to dignify that with a response. The sound of his laughter follows Peter out the door.
***
The second time is in a pub in one of the seedier parts of London. It's the anniversary of his mother's death and one of two days each year that Peter lets himself get blind drink without worrying about the consequences.
He's made more than a good start on it when he senses someone sliding onto the stool next to his. Peter ignores them, and hopes they'll go away. Some things are better done alone. This is one of them.
"You know," the person sitting next to him says conversationally, "when I offered to buy you a drink, this wasn't quite what I had in mind." He makes a disapproving clucking noise. "Couldn't you have at least chosen a better brand of whiskey if you wanted to get sodding drunk?"
Peter's preparing to turn his head to tell whomever it is to fuck off when it all clicks into place. He grits his teeth and looks at Eames. "What are you doing here?"
The man doesn't even bat an eyelash. If Peter's ever met anyone (besides his father, the voice in the back of his head reminds him) that gets under his skin so easily, he can't remember them. "Having a drink. What are you doing here?"
That's it, Peter's going back to ignoring him. He pours himself another drink. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eames make a gesture toward the bartender and another glass appears. Eames helps himself to the bottle and Peter lets him. It's not worth the fight.
He hears Eames light a cigarette, tastes the smoke in his throat. It burns, acrid, against the whiskey as he drinks. Peter welcomes the burn.
When the bottle is empty, Eames replaces it without a word. Peter nods his thanks and when he takes the first drink, he wants to laugh. Expensive whiskey will get the job done just as well.
They're there for hours, Peter methodically drinking, Eames lighting cigarette after cigarette. They don't speak and Peter is grateful for that. It seems that whatever the other man's faults, he knows when to keep his mouth shut. It's just another thing about Eames that Peter wouldn't have been able to guess.
Peter doesn't know when he loses consciousness, but when he wakes up, it's to light pouring through the drawn curtains of his hotel room. His head is pounding and his mouth tastes like day old socks. He's alone.
There's a folded piece of paper on the nightstand along with his room key, and when Peter unfolds it, he's half expecting a proposition. But it's a phone number and nothing else. His first instinct is to throw it away. Something about Eames throws Peter off balance and if Peter's going to be off balance he prefers it be through situations of his own making. Eames is not a situation of his own making.
Peter checks out of the hotel that afternoon and gets on a plane to Prague. He takes the phone number with him. He never calls.
***
When Eames shows up at the restaurant in New York where Peter is waiting tables six months later, Peter isn't surprised. He's not sure how Eames keeps finding him, but Peter's more or less accepted that no matter where he is, Eames will turn up like a bad penny. If it were anyone else, it would worry Peter, but despite the fact that he still can't read Eames worth a damn, it doesn't. This worries Peter instead.
Peter stops at his table and looks at him expectantly. Eames is looking back at him with the same sardonic smirk that he'd been wearing the night they met. It annoys Peter just as much as it did then.
The smirk on Eames face grows deeper. "Peter," he says. "So nice to see you again."
"Can I tell you about our specials?" Peter asks, flipping the pages on his order pad. He glances back at Eames who looks like he's barely managing to contain his laughter. "What?"
"It's just --" Eames makes a sweeping hand gesture around the restaurant, and Peter knows what he's seeing, chipped formica and paper placemats. "Don't you think this is all a bit beneath you, darling?"
Peter quirks an eyebrow at him. "You think you know me well enough to know what's beneath me?" Eames opens his mouth to speak and Peter points his order pad at him. "Don't answer that."
Eames closes his mouth obediently. It's maybe the first time Peter's ever seen him do what he's told.
"The specials?" Peter repeats.
"Right," Eames says, glancing down at the menu once. He hands it to Peter. "Bring me whatever is least likely to give me food poisoning, would you?"
Peter walks away. Eames' eyes follow him all the way back to the kitchen. Peter wonders just what it is that he wants this time.
***
Eames is waiting outside the kitchen door when Peter's shift ends, leaning against the brick wall and smoking. When he sees Peter, he drops the cigarette to the ground and straightens. "I thought we might finally have that drink," he says mildly. "Do you know anywhere?"
Peter studies Eames face. Whatever it is Eames wants from him, he wants it enough to have found Peter in two different cities on two different continents. Whatever it is that Eames wants, Peter's sure it's not a threat. He nods his head. "I know a place."
He takes Eames to bar two blocks away, one where the wait staff usually heads after they finish for the night. It's noisy, with out of date pop music playing over the crowd and just plain tacky, and half the reason that Peter picks it is to see just how out of place Eames will look there. The bartender nods to Peter when they walk in the door and Peter holds up two fingers and nods his head toward the back of the bar. He doesn't stop to see if Eames will follow him.
There's an empty table and Peter slides onto one of the chairs. Eames takes the opposite one, loosening his tie as he does, not looking out of place at all and Peter can feel himself frowning. He doesn't understand how Eames never looks like he doesn't belong. It's a gift that Peter envies.
Two beers materialize in front of them and Peter takes one, drinking deeply. Eames pulls the other bottle toward him, but doesn't drink. His fingers tap against the cheap wooden table in time to music. Peter wonders, not for the first time, just who Eames is.
"So what are you doing here?" Peter asks finally. He doesn't want to ask, it gives Eames more control than Peter likes anyone to have, but he wants answers. This is the only way he sees to get them, since the other methods he's tried to come up with information about the man sitting across from him all come to the same dead end; on paper, Eames does not exist.
If Eames doesn't exist, if this has all been some giant hallucination, Peter thinks that he belongs in St. Claire's alongside his father. Peter is certain that Eames is not a hallucination.
"Would you believe me if I said that I just wanted the pleasure of your company?" Eames asks.
Peter just gives him a look and Eames sighs.
"I thought not." Eames leans back in his chair and his face grows more serious than Peter's ever seen it before. "I have a proposition for you."
Peter's eyebrows shoot straight up to his hairline and Eames waves a dismissive hand at him. "Not that kind of proposition, darling. You'd know if I meant otherwise. A business proposition."
"What kind of business?" Peter asks, curious despite himself. He can't think of anything that Eames would want with him, but then, the man seems to delight in proving Peter wrong.
"I've heard --" and here Eames smiles, briefly, at Peter's frown, "-- yes, Peter, you weren't the only one doing background checks, that you were a man of many talents."
Peter shrugs. He doesn't see the harm in acknowledging it. "That might be true," he allows. "So?"
"So," Eames says, finally taking a drink and making a face. "You Americans will drink anything, won't you?" He shakes his head. "And I've lost the thread again. Which is that I might have a use for a man who can do anything."
Now Peter's definitely curious. "What sort of use?"
A smile turns up the corners of Eames mouth. "Are you asking me if this is, strictly speaking, legal? The answer is no. Does it matter?"
Peter shakes his head. That's never mattered. Just the challenge. "You didn't answer my question," he points out. "Exactly what are we talking about?"
Eames leans forward, elbows on the table. "Tell me, Peter. Do you remember your dreams?"
Peter starts to shake his head again and then stops. He does sometimes. Now. He wishes he didn't. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Now who's the one not answering questions?" Eames counters. He leans back. "But we can leave that for the moment. Have you ever heard of shared dreaming?"
Peter stares. Shared dreaming sounds like one of the projects that Walter was always working on when he was growing up, the projects that were always more important than Peter or his mother. He thought he'd left all that behind in Boston years ago. He doesn't have any desire to revisit it. "No," he says shortly and stands. "And I don't really think I want to." He tosses money onto the table. "I'll see you around, I'm sure."
"Was it something I said?" Eames calls after him, but Peter doesn't look back as he heads for the door.
The night air is bitterly cold against his face as he steps outside and Peter turns up the collar of his coat before heading down the street. He hopes Eames doesn't find him again. He's sure that he will.
***
The thing of it is, once Eames brings up dream sharing, Peter can't stop thinking about it. He quits his job at the restaurant a week later and buys a plane ticket to Seattle. He finds a job on a fishing boat which fills his days and he spends his nights doing research.The more he learns about it, about how it works, what it can do, the more he wants to know.
He has a feeling that's what Eames had in mind.
He hates that Eames was right.
He doesn't know how long he spends sitting in his darkened motel room just staring at the phone number that Eames left. He has no idea if the number is still good, or what he'd say if he actually called.
Peter's pretty sure there would be gloating involved. It's not really something that he wants to deal with.
He leaves Seattle two days after he's learned all he can about dream sharing. This time he leaves the phone number behind.
He's tired of the rain.
***
Eames finds him sitting by a pool in Dubai, just like Peter suspected that he would. What Peter hadn't suspected was that Eames would turn up with a friend in tow. He's sort of surprised that Eames has friends.
"Arthur," the stranger says, offering Peter his hand to shake. "You must be Peter."
He nods, shading his eyes from the sun with his other hand, as he shakes Arthur's hand. He tries to be unobtrusive about his study of the other man, but the cool assessment in Arthur's eyes tells him that he knows exactly what Peter's doing and that he's doing the same. It actually makes Peter like him.
Eames is fanning himself with his hand. "Now that we have the tedious introductions out of the way, do you think we might adjourn to some place cooler? Boiling to death is not one of my life's ambitions, gentlemen."
"I didn't know you knew what that word meant, Eames," Peter says, tucking his hands into his pockets. He sees the small hint of a smile at the corners of Arthur's mouth. They're going to get along just fine, Peter decides then and there.
Eames starts to clutch dramatically at his heart, but gives up halfway through the gesture, like it's too much effort to even bother. In the heat, it kind of is. "You wound me, Peter," he says instead. "I think you should buy me a drink to make it up to me."
Peter raises an eyebrow at him and Eames laughs, wrapping an arm around Peter's shoulders and steering him towards the doors that open to the hotel bar. "Fine," he says. "I'll buy you a drink. And Arthur, too, if he's gracing us with his presence."
The bar is mostly glass and chrome, the air a cool relief after the heat outside. The three of them settle at a table and Eames orders them all some ridiculous cocktail that Peter's never heard of before and after his stint as a bartender in Los Angeles, he's heard of them all.
When the waiter is gone, Peter looks back and forth between Eames and Arthur. They're an odd pair. Arthur's dressed in a linen suit that should be horribly wrinkled but isn't, Eames in a loud silk shirt and rumpled jacket. But there's a familiarity between them, even if it's a reluctant one. He's afraid this is going to be another one of those things about Eames that he can't figure out.
He's kind of gotten used to it.
And that's not a thought Peter wants to dwell on. "So," he says. "What brings you to Dubai? Did you come for the waters?"
Eames elbows Arthur in the arm. "See, I told you that you'd like him. Didn't I tell you that you'd like him?"
"You did," Arthur says, managing to simultaneously sound amused and shove the arm away. Peter's admiration of Arthur grows by the second.
"You've been talking about me to your friends?" Peter asks. "I'm touched."
"Oh, you shouldn't be," Eames says cheerfully. "You should hear the things that I say about Arthur here, when he's not around."
Peter's very glad when their waiter appears with their drinks. He waits until the waiter is gone to continue. "You didn't answer my question, you know. What are you doing here, Eames?"
Eames takes a sip of his drink and smiles. "The same thing I was doing in New York. Tell me, Peter. Did you happen to look into the matter we discussed?"
"Eames," Arthur says pointedly, nodding his head toward the people surrounding them. "Do you really think this is the best place to be talking about this?"
"We're in a crowded room, Arthur," Eames dismisses his concerns with a wave of his hand. "Besides, if I know you, and I do, you've already swept the hotel for bugs. It's fine."
Peter narrows his eyes at Eames. "Just what are you into?"
The quick smile surprises him. "Oh, any manner of things," Eames says airily. "Now, you're the one dodging questions and I do believe we've had this portion of the conversation before. Did you?"
Peter nods, slowly.
"Good." Eames looks too pleased. "That will make things considerably simpler."
"Somehow I don't think anything with you is simple," Peter mutters under his breath, folding his arms over his chest. "Just what do you want from me?"
It's Arthur who answers. "We have a job. And for various reasons, the person I --" Eames raises an eyebrow and Arthur sighs "-- fine, we normally work with is unavailable. Eames thinks you might make a good substitute with the proper training. Would you be interested?"
Peter doesn't want to be interested. He really, really doesn't want to be interested. But he is. "If I were," he says. "Just what would this job entail?"
Arthur shakes his head. "First, we see if you can handle it. If you can, then you get the details."
"Prudent," Peter says.
Eames leans over the table, blocking Arthur from view. "I've often suspected that's Arthur's middle name," he confides. "Such a stick in the mud."
"I'm sitting right here," Arthur points out.
"So you are," Eames says, patting him on the knee. He takes an envelope out of his jacket pocket and slides it across the table. "Here."
Peter takes it and opens it. There's a plane ticket inside. "Paris?" he reads out loud. He looks back at the two men. "Why Paris?"
"Why not?" Eames asks. He stands and Arthur follows. "I hope we'll see you there, Peter. If not --" He shrugs his shoulders. "Well, I won't let that get in the way of our friendship. I've taken quite a liking to you, you know."
"I'd noticed," Peter says wryly. He shakes Arthur's hand. "It was nice to meet you."
"Likewise," Arthur says. He nods his head toward the ticket in Peter's hand. "Think about it carefully. What we're offering -- it's not the easiest thing to walk away from."
"Walking away is something I'm very good at," Peter says simply. It's the absolute truth. Arthur nods, his face a mask of understanding.
There's nothing more to say and Eames and Arthur walk away, leaving Peter behind in the crowded bar. He sits back down at the table and draws out the ticket once more. He has a feeling that he'll be going to Paris very soon.
***
It's a week later and he's on a plane. He spends the entire flight arguing with himself about why he's doing it -- for money, for the challenge, because he can -- all of them are good reasons. They're all good excuses. When it comes right down to it, Peter is doing it because he's curious. He's too much his father's son to be anything else. No amount of wishing it away has ever changed that.
He checks into a cheap hotel and waits for Eames to contact him. He doesn't have to wait long.
An hour after sunset there's a knock on Peter's door. He knows who it is, but he picks up the gun from the nightstand before he crosses to the door anyway. Until he knows exactly what's going on, it's better to be safe than sorry. Probably after that, too.
He checks the judas hole and Eames is standing on the other side of the door, looking amused as ever. It's Peter's least favorite of Eames' many facial expressions.
Peter opens the door.
If Eames is surprised to see Peter with a gun, he doesn't show it. "Peter," he says, pushing his way into the room. "Couldn't you have chosen nicer accommodations? We are going to pay you, you know."
"And I might be seeing that when?" Peter asks, checking the hallway and closing the door. He sets the gun down on the dresser and looks at Eames expectantly.
"Well, that's more Arthur's territory," Eames says, turning from the window. "He's such a stickler about things like completing the job first. I've told him a hundred times --"
"Eames," Peter interrupts. "Was there a point to this visit?"
"Yes, of course," Eames says. He draws a card out of his pocket and holds it out, dangling it between two fingers. Peter takes it. "This is where we'll be working. Be there tomorrow."
Peter nods.
"Lovely." Eames brushes past him on the way back to the door. He turns back, hand on the doorknob. "Oh, and Peter?"
Peter raises an eyebrow. "Yes?"
"Bring the gun."
***
Peter shows up at the warehouse the next day. Eames and Arthur are both there, and he's introduced to two other men; Nash, the architect, and Cobb, the extractor. The one that Peter is here to learn from. The one that can't go back to the States. Peter doesn't ask why. He just shakes Cobb's hand and says, "When do we start?"
They get started immediately.
The first thing that Peter learns is that it's nothing like he expected it would be. Constructed dreamspace is so much more vivid, so much more alive. The first dream that they take him into is a busy city street and Peter swears that he can almost smell the blend of car exhaust and human sweat mixed with a thousand other things that city streets always have. When he wakes, and Eames asks him what he thought, Peter just shakes his head. There really aren't words for it.
After that, they get down to work in earnest. From Arthur, Peter learns about the mark, an American businessman based out of Chicago. Arthur can rattle off all the man's business interests, legitimate and otherwise, the way he takes his coffee, the names and birthdays of his wife, children and mistress, how much he hated his second grade teacher. Nash teaches Peter how dreams are built, the way that they're designed as mazes that only they know how to navigate. And from Eames -- well, the first time Peter sees Eames in a dream, he understands why it is that he's never seen Eames looking out of place. He wonders how long it takes to learn to forge, but he never mentions it. He's fairly certain Eames would take it as encouragement.
But all of that, no matter how important, is peripheral to what Peter learns from Cobb.
Peter has lived his entire life relying on his ability to learn how to do anything, to read anyone, to understand what it is that makes people tick, why they do the things that they do. He's spent his entire life thinking that he was good at it. When he meets Cobb, he realizes just how much there is that he doesn't know.
Cobb can read someone in less time than it takes to blink, he knows just what questions to ask and when to ask them, how to tell where someone has buried their deepest secrets. What Cobb does is a combination of gift, skill and art, and Peter makes himself an eager apprentice.
There's only a month to prepare for the job, a relatively standard case of corporate espionage, Arthur assures him, as if there's anything standard about stealing things from people's dreams. That Arthur can say that with a straight face convinces Peter that Arthur meant what he told him before, that this business is very hard to walk away from.
Peter wishes he didn't understand why, but he does. It's why he starts making plans to leave as soon as the job is done.
He doesn't mention this to the rest of the team.
***
The job goes off without a hitch. They pay off the mistress and she slips the mark a sedative in with his after dinner aperitif. When he falls asleep, she lets them into the apartment and after that, it's basically just a matter of hooking him up to the PASIV. For such an important man, he is terrible about keeping secrets. Peter finds the plans for the new tech and memorizes them before the mark and his projections are even remotely suspicious.
When they're done, Peter recreates the plans from memory and Arthur contacts their employer to arrange for the drop off. They're in a room at the O'Hare Hilton, and Peter knows that as soon as this is finished, they'll all board separate flights for separate countries and then this will all be over. Like the end of a dream.
Peter can feel Eames eyes on him from across the other room. He doesn't look. Instead, he watches Arthur, who's pacing around the room, speaking German on the telephone, gesturing more animatedly with his hands than normal.
Arthur hangs up and turns back to face them. "It's done."
This time, when Peter leaves, Eames doesn't follow. He never does.
***
It's six months later and a Tuesday when Eames walks back into Peter's life.
Walter is rattling off a list supplies he needs before he can finish his latest autopsy and Astrid is dutifully jotting it all down on a notepad. Peter's bent over a lab table working on his own project, trying to find a use for the rest of the parts from Walter's old electron microscope and is grateful beyond measure to see Olivia walk through the door.
"Olivia," he says, straightening up and wiping off his hands. "Please tell me you have something for us."
"Yes, Agent Dunham," Walter says, coming over to stand next to Peter. "Is there a case?"
Olivia nods, a frown on her face. "Walter, have you ever heard about people being able to steal from dreams?"
"From people's dreams?" Astrid asks, ranging herself beside Peter. "How is that even possible?"
"Of everything we've seen, that's what you choose to ask that question about?" Peter quips, but his mind is gone elsewhere. He hears Walter start to give the history of the army's experiments with dream sharing, but he doesn't listen. It's nothing he hasn't heard before. It's nothing he hasn't done before.
Peter wonders where in the world Eames is right now, and what it would take to get him to come to Boston.