(no subject)
So I've been toying with some Inception ideas, mostly alternative ways that Eames and Arthur met. I have two main ideas that might end up being ten. But here is one. (The other is, perhaps, a bit crackier. Um. A bit.)
I actually bothered to get a beta on this. (Yeah, I KNOW, crazytown.) Thank you, Amber.
Suppression
The first time they meet is because of Dominique. Like so much that went spectacularly awry in that phase of his life.
"Arthur?" The soft shore lilt of her faded Trinidadian accent flutters out of his phone. "Would you do me a little favor? A tiny one. Barely a favor at all."
Arthur wonders what it would feel like to say no. "Sure, but my timeframe's tight. I have something lined up soonish." He doesn't really, but his dignity demands the lie.
She laughs, bright chimes falling into his ear. "No problem. We work around you, right? You're doing me a favor!"
Chicago in the summertime. He thinks about calling her back, retroactively pulling the plug. He pulls up Orbitz instead.
*
She meets him at the airport, comfortable in the heat in a white linen dress that accentuates the burnished brown of her skin. The tight ringlets of her halo of curls smell like the pillowcase he pretends isn't sitting on the otherwise barren shelf of his apartment.
"You're too skinny!" She grabs his laptop case and slings it over her shoulder. "I have a great space, in The Loop. This city! I always forget that it's real, not one of those low-slung, nothing places like so much of the States."
He's a bit jetlagged and just nods. Her hand holds his arm just below the elbow, grounding herself in her enthusiasm so she doesn't fly away into the air, spiraling into the suffocating oppressive grey.
"…but I knew no one else could pull this off. Were you very far away?"
She has a car service. He's glad she's not driving because that never ends well.
"Shanghai," he answers while he climbs into the backseat of the Town Car.
Her eyes light up as she settles next to him. She opens her mouth, but before she can say anything he pulls the box out of his jacket pocket.
"You didn't have to," she says taking the gift. Yes, he really did have to.
She extracts the carved jade bracelet with exactly the expression he knew she'd wear-the true pleasure of the collector. She slips it on, throws her arms around him. It's a little bit like dosing yourself with a little arsenic in your coffee every morning-little by little the immunity is supposed to build. He's not sure it's working the way it should.
"It's nothing," he says into her shoulder. This is what slowly killing yourself feels like.
It's nothing, he tells himself. It's nothing.
*
The space is beautiful, refurbished plaster work in egg-and-dart under high cornices. The view of the lake is unexpected and superb.
The company leaves something lacking, however.
"I didn't say we had to do it that way, only that it's one of the options." Arthur scowls up at the whiteboard where Mr Eames has just drawn a classical stick figure hangman on a gallows.
"No need to get heated about it, old boy. I'm simply suggesting something more subtle." This statement comes with a head tilt and a wink. Arthur narrows one eye in return. "The mark's an acquirer. So we give him something to acquire."
"Like what? A woman? A property?" Arthur looks at Dominique, who is tracing lines over a large notepad.
"Why not the Ring of Power?" she says off-handedly.
Arthur laughs at that, momentarily unself-conscious. His mood plummets again when his eyes swing back to Eames who is watching him unabashedly, his cocky élan evaporated into…something too close to sympathy for Arthur to want to deal with.
Eames turns back to the board. "I was thinking something with a bit more panache. Big game hunting."
Dominique doesn't respond, wrapped up in her creation, and Eames doesn't laugh at his self-made joke.
Arthur pauses then asks, "Wait, are you serious?"
*
They're booked in the same hotel, of course. Arthur had micromanaged that for efficiency when it had seemed efficient. Eames slips into the seat next to his at the bar. His suit is tan linen, which is passable, but his shirt's an ungodly conch pink. There are pistachios in a dish on the bar, and Eames sets to cracking them. He doesn't eat the nuts, though, just spits them back out with the shells and stacks them on Arthur's discarded napkin.
"When I was at school, I made the mistake of falling for someone quite impossible. I was used to being the impossible one in the room, I suppose, so it was only fitting. It ended up as you'd imagine." The bartender smiles and offers a greeting. "B&B, if you please."
The bartender fades away. Arthur bites a piece of ice and waits for Eames to continue. Which fails to happen. His drink arrives and he lets the bartender collect the pistachios and napkin.
Finally, Eames says, "I would simply suggest that you hosting the dream on this job might not benefit the ultimate goal of the team."
"Fuck off," Arthur bites out. He's too raw to have some jackass waltz into his life commiserating over something Arthur thought he'd beaten. Or at least had some ability to obfuscate. It's too soon, and he knows it. He should have found it in him to tell her no, at least to fabricate a job he was on, too tied up, too busy, sorry.
"At least you didn't end up spending a year on Tonga." Eames doesn't elaborate on that. They finish their drinks in silence.
*
The mark is the usual secret-patent scientist. This one has the dubious honor of inventing an untraceable toxin that makes Ebola look like a good death. Arthur still has crystalline moments of conscience. Not on this job. Not because the nation states waging war through shell corporations are particularly good at hiding their machinations that he can pretend to not notice. He notices. He's just working this job, though, just minding the details and waiting for it to be over, like a wage slave.
He goes under with Eames, because he has to.
They're standing on a plain of tall grass dotted with baobab trees dangling lurid red fruit.
"The fruit has to go," Arthur says.
"Don't be like that!" Eames is dressed as a Great White Hunter, replete with pith helmet and knee boots. Arthur looks down, he's dressed the same. He's holding a shot gun.
"This is ridiculous."
Eames just laughs. "It makes sense here."
Arthur can smell burning grass, cordite, a sweet fragrance he assumes comes from the fruit on the trees. A breeze picks up, blowing the grass, bending it. The sound of the wind against the stalks fills the plain.
"This is good work." Arthur has to admit that. A cloud paints a shadow across Eames's smiling face.
Eames pats him on the back twice, slightly too hard. "You've hardly seen the best part yet, sweetheart."
Just then the sound of hooves trampling the grass rises, hundreds of feet hitting the ground which begins to shake with the force. Arthur sights his gun. A dark mass darts into his vision from the left, horns shaking, great heads bobbing towards them. Just as Arthur begins to press the trigger of his gun, the herd parts, two huge lowering, racing jets of beasts stampede on either side of the two brave hunters.
And the way of dreams, as fast as the action began, it ends.
Arthur's heart races and his mouth is dry.
"Is that what we're hunting?" Arthur turns, but he can't see the animals in the either direction.
Eames laughs as he lights a cigarette. His lighter is heavy chrome, engraved, but it's too far for Arthur to see with what. "Oh no," Eames says around a plume of smoke. "That's just the wallpaper."
When the sedative wears off, Eames is perched on the chaise next to him. Arthur shakes off the lingering effects of the drugs and gets his hands braced under himself to leverage up further.
"Well?" Eames asks. His thigh is wedged against Arthur's calf. Today the linen is a soft green, the shirt light blue.
"The fruit has to go," Arthur manages as he scoots away, breaks physical contact. He's uncomfortable in an inexplicable way that pisses him off. Eames is too forward, too something.
Eames lifts an eyebrow. "I'm still deciding if you're absolutely repressed or if it's just that you're in extremis. I'll get back to you on that." The comment feels like a parting shot when Eames stands and walks out of the room.
Everyone thinks he's repressed. The entire point of the suits is that they keep people at arm's length, give the wrong impression. His wardrobe is less about his own professionalism and more about everyone else's lack of it.
*
The mark has a regular weekly massage where Arthur feels fairly confident he probably falls asleep considering the hours he works.
"Right, so we only have to knock out everyone in the spa, erase their memories, and hope no one comes to while we're all under ourselves." Eames doesn't like the plan.
"Do you have a plan of your own you'd like to offer, or are you just shooting me down for shits and giggles?" Arthur wants this job over.
"Shits and giggles, Arthur, really?" Eames laughs and the situation would probably have devolved into eye gouging and hair pulling, but Dominique interrupts.
"This is a fifteen minute job, max." She taps her cheek with one finger. "We book appointments and slip in, I can occupy the masseur. You two can go in without me."
"I was just getting to the details," Arthur spits at Eames before turning to Dominique. "But I think you'd be more valuable under than me. You and Eames can go under and I'll bamboozle the masseur for however long I have to."
Dominique smiles, the perfect curve of her bottom lip dries up the words in his mouth. "You flatter me, but no. We both know that's not true. Besides, maybe I can get some free spa time out of this."
The argument turns out to be academic. The mark turns up dead the next day. Official cause of death -heart failure. Arthur muses that everyone eventually dies of heart failure, but he's pretty sure something else preceded the mark's.
They were paid up front.
*
A week later, Dom calls.
"How are you?" Dom always tries to take care of everyone. Sometimes it's endearing, sometimes it's like sandpaper against raw skin.
"Is this about work?" Arthur doesn't think he needs nannying. Not at this point. Maybe six months ago.
There's a long pause where Dom lectures him with silence. "Yeah, it is. Are you ready to work?"
"I'm a week out from a job already." Light dances out of his aquarium against the otherwise unlit apartment. The shadows of fish and seaweed skitter across his body.
"I'm not gonna ask." Dom sighs all the same.
"Good," is all Arthur says.
"I'll be in London by next weekend. I've already got our thief locked down. Kevin recommended him." Dom's tone's shifted to amused.
Kevin doesn't recommend anyone. "Well, he's bound to be a headcase then." The black ops end of the business is full of the exact kinds of people one would expect, loaded with ex-military, the kind of people it's best to avoid if at all possible.
"I thought you could use some big time R&R." Dom's laughing now, amused by himself.
"Babysitting armed madmen? Remind me never to vacation with you again." Arthur's smiling, too. It's on.
*
Arthur's standing in Sainsbury's pondering a packet of crackers and toying, once again, with taking up the store's delivery service when something suddenly pings him. He doesn't put the crackers down, but he tunes into his environment acutely, ears pricking up and his peripheral vision taking in the motion around him.
"Very nice," drawls a sadly familiar voice. "Have you been kidnapped before, then?"
Arthur turns his head to find Eames smiling at him. Both of his hands are in his trouser pockets, which are slate grey and barely rumpled. He's wearing a lavender shirt with no tie and the top two buttons undone. He pulls a hand out of his pocket and plunges it into his right jacket pocket. He lifts a dark purple tie in the air. "I can still get in the club, if you want. Too hot for it otherwise."
In this line of work, people do pop up seemingly out of nowhere. He's run into colleagues in bizarre locations-a ferry in Greece, a restroom at the Getty in L.A., a noodle shop in Hong Kong. This, however, is not a coincidence.
"What do you want?" Arthur sets the crackers back on the shelf. He knows exactly where all the exists are in the store.
Eames shrugs one shoulder. "You could do with a rebound fling."
Arthur opens his mouth to retort, but in the split second before he does, he realizes that Eames is their thief, that Dom's has no idea he's being manipulated, and that Eames is completely sincere, all at once.
"How long did it take to find me?" He has his pride, after all.
"Darling, I didn't have to find you, I've always known where you were." That sends pins and needles down Arthur's spine. "Don't get overwrought!" Eames grabs him by the elbow. "Let's not make this awkward." A woman walks by them briskly. She's preoccupied with her mobile.
"I'm about to make a break for it, and that really pisses me off because this is where I always shop. Don't make me finally cave in to home delivery, Mr. Eames."
Eames's laughter startles the women with the phone so badly she bobbles it and it flies into the air. She doesn't look at them, though.
"Let it never been said that I severed a man from his punctilious habits. Especially when that means his trousers are always tailored just so and he can be found examining labels at Sainsbury's every Tuesday at threeish." His arm comes around Arthur's back, like they're dear companions, as he steers him out of the store.
Outside, he runs through several scenarios for escape. Eames definitely has a gun, but he's probably not so brave as to start blazing away with the wall-to-wall CCTV…
"Do you actually think if I was going to kidnap you I'd do it in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, let alone the CCTV?" Eames drops his arm. His hands go back into his pockets. "I'd be insulted, but you haven't seen my work."
"What the hell do you want?" The adrenaline fades and rage rolls in to fill the void. He considers just storming off. The problem is that their pool is so small, he's bound to bounce off of this guy again. If he cedes the upper hand, he might be fucked on a job later.
"To have a spot of fun. I want it, you need it. Win-win." Arthur watches as Eames reaches out to run a finger from the dimple in the knot of his tie down to the top of his waistcoat, just barely pressing under the fabric, just enough to pop the button. He glances up, ready to shove Eames away, hurl some invective about insanity and over stepping boundaries, but Eames's mouth is parted slightly and his pupils are blown wide even in the daylight.
Arthur pauses.
"This isn't my city anymore," Eames drawls, his tongue flicks out on his bottom lip. "But I have a particular skill, Arthur." His tone has rapidly become obscene, and Arthur realizes they've grown precipitously closer. "I can knock up a bit of trouble anywhere on the globe."
He smells like old fashioned bay rum and cigarettes.
Arthur isn't thinking about Dominique.
*
This is how Arthur, consummate professional and fan of order and due diligence, ends up in an illegal gambling den drinking absinthe and opining on art.
"Freud hasn't ever been my taste." He rolls his head on the back of the sofa he's sprawled on, laughing slightly. The nap of the purple velvet fabric brushes against his neck, sybaritic and absolute perfection.
"Grotesque realism, yeah." The Irish girl he's been chatting with is a big fan of fauvism, so he's not surprised she likes Freud.
He has his arm on the back of the couch, stretched out, his fingertips in the ends of her long black hair. His jacket hangs from a hook not too far from the cluster of couches and chairs along the wall at his back. The lighting comes mostly from lamps suspended over the gaming tables, fifty feet away. He can't see the floor under his foot properly. His other leg is cocked up on the cushions, ankle resting on his knee.
It seems like everyone in the room is smoking but him. His companion stubs out her latest, blowing the smoke across his chest.
"Darling," and of course Eames arrives exactly on cue. "Enjoying yourself?" He settles in the velvet armchair next to Arthur's head.
"I think it's physically impossible not to enjoy yourself in my present state." He considers another glass. But he would have to move. Unless someone else poured it and handed it to him.
"I halt at the threshold of feeding you like an infant ape." Eames's vowels slide thicker against the consonants. He's probably down a half bottle of scotch. Arthur isn't surprised Eames can read his mind. That comes rapidly with dream sharing. "What're we discussing?"
"Freud," the Irish girl has leaned away from Arthur, elbow propped on the back of the couch and head on her hand.
Eames laughs. "That seems unlikely." He rattles the ice in his glass meaningfully.
"The painter," Arthur says, the words seem to float away.
"Ah, overrated. That whole lot, Bacon being the worst, flinging their therapy on canvas to subject the rest of us to their early childhood trauma just bores me."
Arthur sits up, gets both feet on the ground, and regards Eames. Who is smirking at him under half-closed eyes. "Matisse?" Arthur watches Eames fish his cigarettes out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
"The palate doesn't appeal, washed out. It looks like the skirts of a blowsy tramp."
Arthur laughs, he feels the vibrations roll all through him, down to his numb fingertips.
A fight breaks out at one of the card tables. Voices twine and furniture topples.
"Dev'll never learn." Eames's hand hangs over the arm of the chair, cigarette dangling. He shakes his head, but continues to smile.
Arthur doesn't ask about what Eames knows about the scuffle. He doesn't really care. He turns to say something to the Irish girl, but she's gone. Eames is watching him when he looks back again.
"What do you want with me?" Arthur thinks he should at least ask. He touches the die in his pocket, whorls of his fingers stroking over the indented circles. He doesn't pull it out or even cup it in his hand.
Eames reaches for the ashtray and puts his cigarette out. "There're only so many people who do what we do, Arthur. You don't find it lovely to spend an evening with someone you don't have to lie to? More than you want to lie, that is."
Arthur has had more than one friend or lover who shares his occupation. The longer you're on the job, the smaller your circle becomes. It's just too taxing to keep up the pretense of being a consultant or working for a fictional company that necessitates constant globetrotting. Sometimes that means being alone for long stretches, of spending time between jobs with casual flirtations without questions or not bothering with human interaction at all.
Eames doesn’t seem like the kind of person to care about lying, for pretense or for his own amusement. He's almost certainly lying about everything to some end Arthur can't ascertain this inebriated.
"I don't trust you." Arthur is blunt about it, no reason not to be.
Eames touches a finger to the corner of his mouth, smiles slowly. "That's because you're an intelligent fellow. I don't trust me, either."
Arthur laughs before he realizes he feels the impulse.
When you spend more perceived time dreaming than awake, your life becomes fluid, seeping out of the safe lines normal people draw. Arthur's job is to keep drawing the lines, to stay vigilant that everyone on his team remembers they even exist. When he starts forgetting himself, life gets dangerous.
"You want to go under, then?" Eames leans towards him, arm braced on his thigh, squinting one eye against the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth. "I want to see what lurks below. The leviathans shaking your subconscious."
*
The cab ride is a bit of a blur. Arthur only distinctly remembers the creeping back and forth of Eames's fingernail pricking at his inseam. Never higher than mid-thigh. Never acknowledged.
Eames's place is as ridiculous as the rest of him. The foyer's crowded with stacked books jumbling together, first editions stacked on top of paperbacks. There's an ancient hall tree hung with umbrellas and hats and scarves ranging from raggedy to brand new. Eames heads up the stairs without looking back. Arthur places his hand on the beautifully turned banister, the wood warming to his touch immediately, and watches Eames climb. He considers turning and walking back out the door. Considers it for the exact amount of time it takes Eames to climb halfway to the landing.
Arthur thinks the worn carpet on the stairs is a Kashan.
Eames has turned on a single bulb clamp light attached to his headboard. More books tumble over a Regency table employed next to the bed. Eames is fiddling with the PASIV, his shoes casually toed off next to the bed. Arthur wades through the room, just drunk enough to be able to suppress the distilled intimacy of the scene. This isn't frantic fumbling in a bar bathroom or indulging ill-advised lust over a long weekend. Nothing so simple as sex.
Arthur unbuttons his vest and shrugs it off. Eames doesn't look up until he's loosening the knot on his tie. He watches baldly, eyes riveted on Arthur's fingers and never straying to his face. "Do you want to do it?"
Eames flushes, the blood creeping across his face a dark grey in the white halogen light. "Next time."
He meets Arthur's eyes and Arthur is in the moment, right there, feeling the air in his lungs, smelling the dust and spice of Eames's soap and cologne, eyes straying over the unmade bed and Eames rolling up his sleeves.
Arthur hangs his coat, tie, and vest over the finial on the headboard. He reaches to remove his cufflinks, and Eames lunges. He catches Arthur's wrist right below the cuff and brings his arm to his face. The motion causes Arthur to half topple on the bed. He goes the rest of the way down on his side of his own volition, no fight against gravity in him.
"A pawn. Wry, Arthur. Very wry." Eames leans back and drops Arthur's arm. Considering how awkward their position, he's graceful as he props himself back on the headboard and watches as Arthur rights himself and does likewise.
"Can I take them off now?" Arthur exaggerates reaching for his cuff. Eames just smiles. And watches. Arthur slips the jewelry into his pocket with his die. He leans forward and unspools a lead from the case. "Shall we?"
He doesn't wait to watch Eames do likewise.
*
He's standing in the grass behind the house. Barefooted. He's got a glass of tea in his hand. Condensation runs against the wet glass and against his fingers. If he turns, he'll see the back porch.
"This is pretty sedate." Eames is sitting in the grass at Arthur's feet. "Is this naturalization? Or has no one been by to cut it recently."
"No one lives here anymore," Arthur tells him. The screen door bangs in the wind.
"There are people in the house."
And when Eames says that, Arthur hears them, laughter and whistling, feet pounding on floorboards, children shrieking.
"No, that was before." He hurls the glass towards the apple trees growing together with neglect and wheels around to climb the stairs to the porch.
He knows Eames follows, even though he can't see him or hear him. He reaches for the knob to the screen door and flings it open and he walks into the coffee shop around the block from his apartment in Ann Arbor.
Eames jostles him. "Oh, I see now."
"What do you see?" Arthur watches the barista stare at Eames and thinks they should move on soon.
"How old are you? Fifteen?"
Eames is wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Arthur looks down and lifts the hem of his own t-shirt. It's blue. He's wearing red Chucks and jeans.
"Sixteen."
The patrons in front of them in line turn to stare at them.
"Let's go," Eames grabs his elbow. Pulls Arthur against his side. "It's all right, I'm not prying, love. We can keep walking." As they approach the door, one of the projections moves to follow them. Eames snatches open the door and flings Arthur through it.
They're back in the illegal casino. Eames is sitting next to him on the couch.
Arthur pulls a hand down his face and clutches in his pocket for his die.
"Was it Cobb that recruited you?" Eames's voice telegraphs neutrality in a way that Arthur doubts is so strained in reality.
"No. Why does it matter?" Arthur is back in his blue and white pinstripe, but Eames is still in jeans and a t-shirt.
"It apparently matters quite a lot, and I only tolerate a certain kind of scrupulousness. I don't traffic in children, for instance."
Dixieland jazz starts playing in undulating volumes.
Arthur smoothes his tie. Across the room the tables topple one after another, the din mixing with the music to drown out what Eames is saying.
"I said," he whispers right into Arthur's ear. "That…"
He startles awake. The immediate awareness he normally has when kicked out of an assisted dreams is absent, the absinthe dulling some of his faculties and enhancing others. He hears Eames's uneven conscious breathing, feels the way the memory foam mattress cradles him.
"Round two," Eames says and Arthur's standing on a path in a formal garden.
"This goddamned house," Eames pulls on his bottom lip and shakes his head. Midday gives over to just past dusk, tea lights flickering through the garden. Arthur looks down and he's in formal wear. "That's better."
Eames steps closer and reaches for Arthur's tie. He straightens it with his lips puckered, seemingly riveted. His eyelashes brush his cheeks and Arthur notices he's recently shaven, a small mark near his ear still red. Arthur touches his thumb to the cut.
Eames closes his eyes and sighs through his nose. "The safety razor, yes." He pats Arthur's hand and steps back. "Well, let's bravely face the inevitable then."
He takes five steps further and the entire garden is full of people. Music swells and Arthur loses sight of Eames entirely.
"You, boy, what are you doing here?" A regal women with steel grey hair in pearls and a mauve evening gown scowls at Arthur.
"I'm about to dance, actually," Arthur replies.
"I do not believe you are." The woman looks around, obviously searching for someone to boot Arthur from the property.
"Leave him be," Eames is back, but not the same at all. His hair is longer and his tux a totally different cut. He has his hands in his pockets and a defiant scowl on his face. "Do you want me to suffer through this or do you want me to leave before you've had your chance to show me off?" He speaks down his nose in a hushed tone that Arthur recognizes as well practiced.
The woman huffs. "Every inch your father." She opens a fan, flaps it twice, and flounces off.
"Well, she's right about that, any road." Eames glides to Arthur's side.
The texture of this memory is well worn. "Anxiety dream," he says.
"Quite. Which is odd." Eames's hand slides to the small of Arthur's back.
"What are you doing?" Arthur thinks antagonizing the projections is a bad choice.
"Exactly what they expect me to." He tugs Arthur against his side and snatches a glass of champagne off a try of a passing waiter. "Come on, then."
Eames wanders off and Arthur has no choice but to follow him.
They round a hedge and they're standing in Eames's bedroom. The room's different, on the Regency table is a compass and wrinkled paper bag on top of different books. The bed's made. Hazy, grey sunlight strains through the drapes.
They're in jeans and t-shirts. Eames reaches for him, his fingers tugging at the neckline of Arthur's shirt. And Arthur goes, falls against him, his mouth landing on the hinge of Eames's jaw.
"Yeah, of course," Eames murmurs. His hand slides down the back of Arthur's jeans, it barely fits and pulls the denim tight against Arthur's erection. Arthur breaks away to pop the buttons on the fly. Eames kisses his ear, slides teeth against the shell. "Shhh, quiet as a mouse, the beast lurks downstairs."
Arthur gets his pants open and is momentarily shocked by the sight of bright orange underwear.
"What?" He's going to protest this ridiculous indignity, but Eames laughs low in his chest and topples them over onto the bed.
"Shhhh," he says again, against Arthur's mouth. "Shhhhhhhh." Arthur darts his tongue out to settle the vibration on his lips, to dull the tingle, and Eames touches it with his own tongue.
Arthur pushes him over but Eames rolls them the other way, weighing Arthur down into an unfamiliar mattress with a dip that his back settles into. He can't quite roll out or get his elbows out of the well of fabric pooling around him. Eames reaches into his jeans and jerks him, his knuckles brushing over Arthur's belly just hard enough to be maybe too much.
He's suffocating on the kiss, suspending in the morass of the blankets, unable to move or even struggle, totally immobilized.
He comes with a whoooooooosh of air as Eames pulls back on the kiss, gives him room to breathe out and in quickly. His spine goes from rigid to liquid, sparks flying out from his belly button as Eames coaxes the aftershocks.
"Too much," Arthur croaks and shoves a little.
He reaches for Eames, grabs for the button of his jeans. The fabric is wet and hot. Eames huffs out a laugh, bruised and deeper than Arthur's heard before. He leans down and presses his lips to Arthur's ear. "Too late."
Eames's weight on him is comforting somehow. Arthur drifts a little, drifts more, and falls asleep.
*
He comes to and sits bolt upright. He pulls his die from his pocket and feels the weight of it. His cufflinks are warm from resting in his pocket. He pulls out the lead and wipes it with an alcohol swab from his pocket before respooling it.
Eames closes the case and sets it on the floor.
"Would you care for a pair of pajamas?" Eames's voice sounds the same as in the dream.
"No, I'm fine." Arthur strips down to his undershirt and boxers, hangs his shirt and trousers on the other end of the bed from the rest of his clothes.
Eames moves around the room knocking against things and grumbling to himself for long enough that Arthur's asleep before he settles back into bed.
*
Arthur wakes up the next morning with a hangover and the malaise that comes from making bad decisions while intoxicated. Eames is thankfully absent. There's a towel and a toothbrush lying on the bed next to him. No note.
Arthur gets dressed and considers regret. He's done worse. Far worse, Christ. His mouth is full of fog and his fingers are swollen, but he feels pretty ok all around.
He doesn't look for Eames or avail himself of the access to the facilities further than to relieve himself. He lets himself out and grabs a cab.
*
"You look good." Dom smiles and grabs him by the upper arms. It's not a hug, but it's their compromise.
"I've been worse." Arthur smiles back.
They fall in step with all the other arrivals and relations flowing away from Customs.
"What a flight, Jesus." Dom grumbles. "Not one, not two, but three crying babies. Plus the ticket lottery won me a talker blocking the aisle."
"You could've upgraded to first class. It's not like you can't afford it. Puritanical frugality." Arthur snatches Dom's roller bag from being trampled by a herd of tourists not looking where they're walking.
"Yeah, yeah," Dom laughs it out. "Hey, I forgot to book a room…"
"Already taken care of. As is the venue, background checks, the whole shebang." Arthur smooths his tie and pulls his sunglasses out of his pocket.
I actually bothered to get a beta on this. (Yeah, I KNOW, crazytown.) Thank you, Amber.
Suppression
The first time they meet is because of Dominique. Like so much that went spectacularly awry in that phase of his life.
"Arthur?" The soft shore lilt of her faded Trinidadian accent flutters out of his phone. "Would you do me a little favor? A tiny one. Barely a favor at all."
Arthur wonders what it would feel like to say no. "Sure, but my timeframe's tight. I have something lined up soonish." He doesn't really, but his dignity demands the lie.
She laughs, bright chimes falling into his ear. "No problem. We work around you, right? You're doing me a favor!"
Chicago in the summertime. He thinks about calling her back, retroactively pulling the plug. He pulls up Orbitz instead.
*
She meets him at the airport, comfortable in the heat in a white linen dress that accentuates the burnished brown of her skin. The tight ringlets of her halo of curls smell like the pillowcase he pretends isn't sitting on the otherwise barren shelf of his apartment.
"You're too skinny!" She grabs his laptop case and slings it over her shoulder. "I have a great space, in The Loop. This city! I always forget that it's real, not one of those low-slung, nothing places like so much of the States."
He's a bit jetlagged and just nods. Her hand holds his arm just below the elbow, grounding herself in her enthusiasm so she doesn't fly away into the air, spiraling into the suffocating oppressive grey.
"…but I knew no one else could pull this off. Were you very far away?"
She has a car service. He's glad she's not driving because that never ends well.
"Shanghai," he answers while he climbs into the backseat of the Town Car.
Her eyes light up as she settles next to him. She opens her mouth, but before she can say anything he pulls the box out of his jacket pocket.
"You didn't have to," she says taking the gift. Yes, he really did have to.
She extracts the carved jade bracelet with exactly the expression he knew she'd wear-the true pleasure of the collector. She slips it on, throws her arms around him. It's a little bit like dosing yourself with a little arsenic in your coffee every morning-little by little the immunity is supposed to build. He's not sure it's working the way it should.
"It's nothing," he says into her shoulder. This is what slowly killing yourself feels like.
It's nothing, he tells himself. It's nothing.
*
The space is beautiful, refurbished plaster work in egg-and-dart under high cornices. The view of the lake is unexpected and superb.
The company leaves something lacking, however.
"I didn't say we had to do it that way, only that it's one of the options." Arthur scowls up at the whiteboard where Mr Eames has just drawn a classical stick figure hangman on a gallows.
"No need to get heated about it, old boy. I'm simply suggesting something more subtle." This statement comes with a head tilt and a wink. Arthur narrows one eye in return. "The mark's an acquirer. So we give him something to acquire."
"Like what? A woman? A property?" Arthur looks at Dominique, who is tracing lines over a large notepad.
"Why not the Ring of Power?" she says off-handedly.
Arthur laughs at that, momentarily unself-conscious. His mood plummets again when his eyes swing back to Eames who is watching him unabashedly, his cocky élan evaporated into…something too close to sympathy for Arthur to want to deal with.
Eames turns back to the board. "I was thinking something with a bit more panache. Big game hunting."
Dominique doesn't respond, wrapped up in her creation, and Eames doesn't laugh at his self-made joke.
Arthur pauses then asks, "Wait, are you serious?"
*
They're booked in the same hotel, of course. Arthur had micromanaged that for efficiency when it had seemed efficient. Eames slips into the seat next to his at the bar. His suit is tan linen, which is passable, but his shirt's an ungodly conch pink. There are pistachios in a dish on the bar, and Eames sets to cracking them. He doesn't eat the nuts, though, just spits them back out with the shells and stacks them on Arthur's discarded napkin.
"When I was at school, I made the mistake of falling for someone quite impossible. I was used to being the impossible one in the room, I suppose, so it was only fitting. It ended up as you'd imagine." The bartender smiles and offers a greeting. "B&B, if you please."
The bartender fades away. Arthur bites a piece of ice and waits for Eames to continue. Which fails to happen. His drink arrives and he lets the bartender collect the pistachios and napkin.
Finally, Eames says, "I would simply suggest that you hosting the dream on this job might not benefit the ultimate goal of the team."
"Fuck off," Arthur bites out. He's too raw to have some jackass waltz into his life commiserating over something Arthur thought he'd beaten. Or at least had some ability to obfuscate. It's too soon, and he knows it. He should have found it in him to tell her no, at least to fabricate a job he was on, too tied up, too busy, sorry.
"At least you didn't end up spending a year on Tonga." Eames doesn't elaborate on that. They finish their drinks in silence.
*
The mark is the usual secret-patent scientist. This one has the dubious honor of inventing an untraceable toxin that makes Ebola look like a good death. Arthur still has crystalline moments of conscience. Not on this job. Not because the nation states waging war through shell corporations are particularly good at hiding their machinations that he can pretend to not notice. He notices. He's just working this job, though, just minding the details and waiting for it to be over, like a wage slave.
He goes under with Eames, because he has to.
They're standing on a plain of tall grass dotted with baobab trees dangling lurid red fruit.
"The fruit has to go," Arthur says.
"Don't be like that!" Eames is dressed as a Great White Hunter, replete with pith helmet and knee boots. Arthur looks down, he's dressed the same. He's holding a shot gun.
"This is ridiculous."
Eames just laughs. "It makes sense here."
Arthur can smell burning grass, cordite, a sweet fragrance he assumes comes from the fruit on the trees. A breeze picks up, blowing the grass, bending it. The sound of the wind against the stalks fills the plain.
"This is good work." Arthur has to admit that. A cloud paints a shadow across Eames's smiling face.
Eames pats him on the back twice, slightly too hard. "You've hardly seen the best part yet, sweetheart."
Just then the sound of hooves trampling the grass rises, hundreds of feet hitting the ground which begins to shake with the force. Arthur sights his gun. A dark mass darts into his vision from the left, horns shaking, great heads bobbing towards them. Just as Arthur begins to press the trigger of his gun, the herd parts, two huge lowering, racing jets of beasts stampede on either side of the two brave hunters.
And the way of dreams, as fast as the action began, it ends.
Arthur's heart races and his mouth is dry.
"Is that what we're hunting?" Arthur turns, but he can't see the animals in the either direction.
Eames laughs as he lights a cigarette. His lighter is heavy chrome, engraved, but it's too far for Arthur to see with what. "Oh no," Eames says around a plume of smoke. "That's just the wallpaper."
When the sedative wears off, Eames is perched on the chaise next to him. Arthur shakes off the lingering effects of the drugs and gets his hands braced under himself to leverage up further.
"Well?" Eames asks. His thigh is wedged against Arthur's calf. Today the linen is a soft green, the shirt light blue.
"The fruit has to go," Arthur manages as he scoots away, breaks physical contact. He's uncomfortable in an inexplicable way that pisses him off. Eames is too forward, too something.
Eames lifts an eyebrow. "I'm still deciding if you're absolutely repressed or if it's just that you're in extremis. I'll get back to you on that." The comment feels like a parting shot when Eames stands and walks out of the room.
Everyone thinks he's repressed. The entire point of the suits is that they keep people at arm's length, give the wrong impression. His wardrobe is less about his own professionalism and more about everyone else's lack of it.
*
The mark has a regular weekly massage where Arthur feels fairly confident he probably falls asleep considering the hours he works.
"Right, so we only have to knock out everyone in the spa, erase their memories, and hope no one comes to while we're all under ourselves." Eames doesn't like the plan.
"Do you have a plan of your own you'd like to offer, or are you just shooting me down for shits and giggles?" Arthur wants this job over.
"Shits and giggles, Arthur, really?" Eames laughs and the situation would probably have devolved into eye gouging and hair pulling, but Dominique interrupts.
"This is a fifteen minute job, max." She taps her cheek with one finger. "We book appointments and slip in, I can occupy the masseur. You two can go in without me."
"I was just getting to the details," Arthur spits at Eames before turning to Dominique. "But I think you'd be more valuable under than me. You and Eames can go under and I'll bamboozle the masseur for however long I have to."
Dominique smiles, the perfect curve of her bottom lip dries up the words in his mouth. "You flatter me, but no. We both know that's not true. Besides, maybe I can get some free spa time out of this."
The argument turns out to be academic. The mark turns up dead the next day. Official cause of death -heart failure. Arthur muses that everyone eventually dies of heart failure, but he's pretty sure something else preceded the mark's.
They were paid up front.
*
A week later, Dom calls.
"How are you?" Dom always tries to take care of everyone. Sometimes it's endearing, sometimes it's like sandpaper against raw skin.
"Is this about work?" Arthur doesn't think he needs nannying. Not at this point. Maybe six months ago.
There's a long pause where Dom lectures him with silence. "Yeah, it is. Are you ready to work?"
"I'm a week out from a job already." Light dances out of his aquarium against the otherwise unlit apartment. The shadows of fish and seaweed skitter across his body.
"I'm not gonna ask." Dom sighs all the same.
"Good," is all Arthur says.
"I'll be in London by next weekend. I've already got our thief locked down. Kevin recommended him." Dom's tone's shifted to amused.
Kevin doesn't recommend anyone. "Well, he's bound to be a headcase then." The black ops end of the business is full of the exact kinds of people one would expect, loaded with ex-military, the kind of people it's best to avoid if at all possible.
"I thought you could use some big time R&R." Dom's laughing now, amused by himself.
"Babysitting armed madmen? Remind me never to vacation with you again." Arthur's smiling, too. It's on.
*
Arthur's standing in Sainsbury's pondering a packet of crackers and toying, once again, with taking up the store's delivery service when something suddenly pings him. He doesn't put the crackers down, but he tunes into his environment acutely, ears pricking up and his peripheral vision taking in the motion around him.
"Very nice," drawls a sadly familiar voice. "Have you been kidnapped before, then?"
Arthur turns his head to find Eames smiling at him. Both of his hands are in his trouser pockets, which are slate grey and barely rumpled. He's wearing a lavender shirt with no tie and the top two buttons undone. He pulls a hand out of his pocket and plunges it into his right jacket pocket. He lifts a dark purple tie in the air. "I can still get in the club, if you want. Too hot for it otherwise."
In this line of work, people do pop up seemingly out of nowhere. He's run into colleagues in bizarre locations-a ferry in Greece, a restroom at the Getty in L.A., a noodle shop in Hong Kong. This, however, is not a coincidence.
"What do you want?" Arthur sets the crackers back on the shelf. He knows exactly where all the exists are in the store.
Eames shrugs one shoulder. "You could do with a rebound fling."
Arthur opens his mouth to retort, but in the split second before he does, he realizes that Eames is their thief, that Dom's has no idea he's being manipulated, and that Eames is completely sincere, all at once.
"How long did it take to find me?" He has his pride, after all.
"Darling, I didn't have to find you, I've always known where you were." That sends pins and needles down Arthur's spine. "Don't get overwrought!" Eames grabs him by the elbow. "Let's not make this awkward." A woman walks by them briskly. She's preoccupied with her mobile.
"I'm about to make a break for it, and that really pisses me off because this is where I always shop. Don't make me finally cave in to home delivery, Mr. Eames."
Eames's laughter startles the women with the phone so badly she bobbles it and it flies into the air. She doesn't look at them, though.
"Let it never been said that I severed a man from his punctilious habits. Especially when that means his trousers are always tailored just so and he can be found examining labels at Sainsbury's every Tuesday at threeish." His arm comes around Arthur's back, like they're dear companions, as he steers him out of the store.
Outside, he runs through several scenarios for escape. Eames definitely has a gun, but he's probably not so brave as to start blazing away with the wall-to-wall CCTV…
"Do you actually think if I was going to kidnap you I'd do it in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, let alone the CCTV?" Eames drops his arm. His hands go back into his pockets. "I'd be insulted, but you haven't seen my work."
"What the hell do you want?" The adrenaline fades and rage rolls in to fill the void. He considers just storming off. The problem is that their pool is so small, he's bound to bounce off of this guy again. If he cedes the upper hand, he might be fucked on a job later.
"To have a spot of fun. I want it, you need it. Win-win." Arthur watches as Eames reaches out to run a finger from the dimple in the knot of his tie down to the top of his waistcoat, just barely pressing under the fabric, just enough to pop the button. He glances up, ready to shove Eames away, hurl some invective about insanity and over stepping boundaries, but Eames's mouth is parted slightly and his pupils are blown wide even in the daylight.
Arthur pauses.
"This isn't my city anymore," Eames drawls, his tongue flicks out on his bottom lip. "But I have a particular skill, Arthur." His tone has rapidly become obscene, and Arthur realizes they've grown precipitously closer. "I can knock up a bit of trouble anywhere on the globe."
He smells like old fashioned bay rum and cigarettes.
Arthur isn't thinking about Dominique.
*
This is how Arthur, consummate professional and fan of order and due diligence, ends up in an illegal gambling den drinking absinthe and opining on art.
"Freud hasn't ever been my taste." He rolls his head on the back of the sofa he's sprawled on, laughing slightly. The nap of the purple velvet fabric brushes against his neck, sybaritic and absolute perfection.
"Grotesque realism, yeah." The Irish girl he's been chatting with is a big fan of fauvism, so he's not surprised she likes Freud.
He has his arm on the back of the couch, stretched out, his fingertips in the ends of her long black hair. His jacket hangs from a hook not too far from the cluster of couches and chairs along the wall at his back. The lighting comes mostly from lamps suspended over the gaming tables, fifty feet away. He can't see the floor under his foot properly. His other leg is cocked up on the cushions, ankle resting on his knee.
It seems like everyone in the room is smoking but him. His companion stubs out her latest, blowing the smoke across his chest.
"Darling," and of course Eames arrives exactly on cue. "Enjoying yourself?" He settles in the velvet armchair next to Arthur's head.
"I think it's physically impossible not to enjoy yourself in my present state." He considers another glass. But he would have to move. Unless someone else poured it and handed it to him.
"I halt at the threshold of feeding you like an infant ape." Eames's vowels slide thicker against the consonants. He's probably down a half bottle of scotch. Arthur isn't surprised Eames can read his mind. That comes rapidly with dream sharing. "What're we discussing?"
"Freud," the Irish girl has leaned away from Arthur, elbow propped on the back of the couch and head on her hand.
Eames laughs. "That seems unlikely." He rattles the ice in his glass meaningfully.
"The painter," Arthur says, the words seem to float away.
"Ah, overrated. That whole lot, Bacon being the worst, flinging their therapy on canvas to subject the rest of us to their early childhood trauma just bores me."
Arthur sits up, gets both feet on the ground, and regards Eames. Who is smirking at him under half-closed eyes. "Matisse?" Arthur watches Eames fish his cigarettes out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
"The palate doesn't appeal, washed out. It looks like the skirts of a blowsy tramp."
Arthur laughs, he feels the vibrations roll all through him, down to his numb fingertips.
A fight breaks out at one of the card tables. Voices twine and furniture topples.
"Dev'll never learn." Eames's hand hangs over the arm of the chair, cigarette dangling. He shakes his head, but continues to smile.
Arthur doesn't ask about what Eames knows about the scuffle. He doesn't really care. He turns to say something to the Irish girl, but she's gone. Eames is watching him when he looks back again.
"What do you want with me?" Arthur thinks he should at least ask. He touches the die in his pocket, whorls of his fingers stroking over the indented circles. He doesn't pull it out or even cup it in his hand.
Eames reaches for the ashtray and puts his cigarette out. "There're only so many people who do what we do, Arthur. You don't find it lovely to spend an evening with someone you don't have to lie to? More than you want to lie, that is."
Arthur has had more than one friend or lover who shares his occupation. The longer you're on the job, the smaller your circle becomes. It's just too taxing to keep up the pretense of being a consultant or working for a fictional company that necessitates constant globetrotting. Sometimes that means being alone for long stretches, of spending time between jobs with casual flirtations without questions or not bothering with human interaction at all.
Eames doesn’t seem like the kind of person to care about lying, for pretense or for his own amusement. He's almost certainly lying about everything to some end Arthur can't ascertain this inebriated.
"I don't trust you." Arthur is blunt about it, no reason not to be.
Eames touches a finger to the corner of his mouth, smiles slowly. "That's because you're an intelligent fellow. I don't trust me, either."
Arthur laughs before he realizes he feels the impulse.
When you spend more perceived time dreaming than awake, your life becomes fluid, seeping out of the safe lines normal people draw. Arthur's job is to keep drawing the lines, to stay vigilant that everyone on his team remembers they even exist. When he starts forgetting himself, life gets dangerous.
"You want to go under, then?" Eames leans towards him, arm braced on his thigh, squinting one eye against the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth. "I want to see what lurks below. The leviathans shaking your subconscious."
*
The cab ride is a bit of a blur. Arthur only distinctly remembers the creeping back and forth of Eames's fingernail pricking at his inseam. Never higher than mid-thigh. Never acknowledged.
Eames's place is as ridiculous as the rest of him. The foyer's crowded with stacked books jumbling together, first editions stacked on top of paperbacks. There's an ancient hall tree hung with umbrellas and hats and scarves ranging from raggedy to brand new. Eames heads up the stairs without looking back. Arthur places his hand on the beautifully turned banister, the wood warming to his touch immediately, and watches Eames climb. He considers turning and walking back out the door. Considers it for the exact amount of time it takes Eames to climb halfway to the landing.
Arthur thinks the worn carpet on the stairs is a Kashan.
Eames has turned on a single bulb clamp light attached to his headboard. More books tumble over a Regency table employed next to the bed. Eames is fiddling with the PASIV, his shoes casually toed off next to the bed. Arthur wades through the room, just drunk enough to be able to suppress the distilled intimacy of the scene. This isn't frantic fumbling in a bar bathroom or indulging ill-advised lust over a long weekend. Nothing so simple as sex.
Arthur unbuttons his vest and shrugs it off. Eames doesn't look up until he's loosening the knot on his tie. He watches baldly, eyes riveted on Arthur's fingers and never straying to his face. "Do you want to do it?"
Eames flushes, the blood creeping across his face a dark grey in the white halogen light. "Next time."
He meets Arthur's eyes and Arthur is in the moment, right there, feeling the air in his lungs, smelling the dust and spice of Eames's soap and cologne, eyes straying over the unmade bed and Eames rolling up his sleeves.
Arthur hangs his coat, tie, and vest over the finial on the headboard. He reaches to remove his cufflinks, and Eames lunges. He catches Arthur's wrist right below the cuff and brings his arm to his face. The motion causes Arthur to half topple on the bed. He goes the rest of the way down on his side of his own volition, no fight against gravity in him.
"A pawn. Wry, Arthur. Very wry." Eames leans back and drops Arthur's arm. Considering how awkward their position, he's graceful as he props himself back on the headboard and watches as Arthur rights himself and does likewise.
"Can I take them off now?" Arthur exaggerates reaching for his cuff. Eames just smiles. And watches. Arthur slips the jewelry into his pocket with his die. He leans forward and unspools a lead from the case. "Shall we?"
He doesn't wait to watch Eames do likewise.
*
He's standing in the grass behind the house. Barefooted. He's got a glass of tea in his hand. Condensation runs against the wet glass and against his fingers. If he turns, he'll see the back porch.
"This is pretty sedate." Eames is sitting in the grass at Arthur's feet. "Is this naturalization? Or has no one been by to cut it recently."
"No one lives here anymore," Arthur tells him. The screen door bangs in the wind.
"There are people in the house."
And when Eames says that, Arthur hears them, laughter and whistling, feet pounding on floorboards, children shrieking.
"No, that was before." He hurls the glass towards the apple trees growing together with neglect and wheels around to climb the stairs to the porch.
He knows Eames follows, even though he can't see him or hear him. He reaches for the knob to the screen door and flings it open and he walks into the coffee shop around the block from his apartment in Ann Arbor.
Eames jostles him. "Oh, I see now."
"What do you see?" Arthur watches the barista stare at Eames and thinks they should move on soon.
"How old are you? Fifteen?"
Eames is wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Arthur looks down and lifts the hem of his own t-shirt. It's blue. He's wearing red Chucks and jeans.
"Sixteen."
The patrons in front of them in line turn to stare at them.
"Let's go," Eames grabs his elbow. Pulls Arthur against his side. "It's all right, I'm not prying, love. We can keep walking." As they approach the door, one of the projections moves to follow them. Eames snatches open the door and flings Arthur through it.
They're back in the illegal casino. Eames is sitting next to him on the couch.
Arthur pulls a hand down his face and clutches in his pocket for his die.
"Was it Cobb that recruited you?" Eames's voice telegraphs neutrality in a way that Arthur doubts is so strained in reality.
"No. Why does it matter?" Arthur is back in his blue and white pinstripe, but Eames is still in jeans and a t-shirt.
"It apparently matters quite a lot, and I only tolerate a certain kind of scrupulousness. I don't traffic in children, for instance."
Dixieland jazz starts playing in undulating volumes.
Arthur smoothes his tie. Across the room the tables topple one after another, the din mixing with the music to drown out what Eames is saying.
"I said," he whispers right into Arthur's ear. "That…"
He startles awake. The immediate awareness he normally has when kicked out of an assisted dreams is absent, the absinthe dulling some of his faculties and enhancing others. He hears Eames's uneven conscious breathing, feels the way the memory foam mattress cradles him.
"Round two," Eames says and Arthur's standing on a path in a formal garden.
"This goddamned house," Eames pulls on his bottom lip and shakes his head. Midday gives over to just past dusk, tea lights flickering through the garden. Arthur looks down and he's in formal wear. "That's better."
Eames steps closer and reaches for Arthur's tie. He straightens it with his lips puckered, seemingly riveted. His eyelashes brush his cheeks and Arthur notices he's recently shaven, a small mark near his ear still red. Arthur touches his thumb to the cut.
Eames closes his eyes and sighs through his nose. "The safety razor, yes." He pats Arthur's hand and steps back. "Well, let's bravely face the inevitable then."
He takes five steps further and the entire garden is full of people. Music swells and Arthur loses sight of Eames entirely.
"You, boy, what are you doing here?" A regal women with steel grey hair in pearls and a mauve evening gown scowls at Arthur.
"I'm about to dance, actually," Arthur replies.
"I do not believe you are." The woman looks around, obviously searching for someone to boot Arthur from the property.
"Leave him be," Eames is back, but not the same at all. His hair is longer and his tux a totally different cut. He has his hands in his pockets and a defiant scowl on his face. "Do you want me to suffer through this or do you want me to leave before you've had your chance to show me off?" He speaks down his nose in a hushed tone that Arthur recognizes as well practiced.
The woman huffs. "Every inch your father." She opens a fan, flaps it twice, and flounces off.
"Well, she's right about that, any road." Eames glides to Arthur's side.
The texture of this memory is well worn. "Anxiety dream," he says.
"Quite. Which is odd." Eames's hand slides to the small of Arthur's back.
"What are you doing?" Arthur thinks antagonizing the projections is a bad choice.
"Exactly what they expect me to." He tugs Arthur against his side and snatches a glass of champagne off a try of a passing waiter. "Come on, then."
Eames wanders off and Arthur has no choice but to follow him.
They round a hedge and they're standing in Eames's bedroom. The room's different, on the Regency table is a compass and wrinkled paper bag on top of different books. The bed's made. Hazy, grey sunlight strains through the drapes.
They're in jeans and t-shirts. Eames reaches for him, his fingers tugging at the neckline of Arthur's shirt. And Arthur goes, falls against him, his mouth landing on the hinge of Eames's jaw.
"Yeah, of course," Eames murmurs. His hand slides down the back of Arthur's jeans, it barely fits and pulls the denim tight against Arthur's erection. Arthur breaks away to pop the buttons on the fly. Eames kisses his ear, slides teeth against the shell. "Shhh, quiet as a mouse, the beast lurks downstairs."
Arthur gets his pants open and is momentarily shocked by the sight of bright orange underwear.
"What?" He's going to protest this ridiculous indignity, but Eames laughs low in his chest and topples them over onto the bed.
"Shhhh," he says again, against Arthur's mouth. "Shhhhhhhh." Arthur darts his tongue out to settle the vibration on his lips, to dull the tingle, and Eames touches it with his own tongue.
Arthur pushes him over but Eames rolls them the other way, weighing Arthur down into an unfamiliar mattress with a dip that his back settles into. He can't quite roll out or get his elbows out of the well of fabric pooling around him. Eames reaches into his jeans and jerks him, his knuckles brushing over Arthur's belly just hard enough to be maybe too much.
He's suffocating on the kiss, suspending in the morass of the blankets, unable to move or even struggle, totally immobilized.
He comes with a whoooooooosh of air as Eames pulls back on the kiss, gives him room to breathe out and in quickly. His spine goes from rigid to liquid, sparks flying out from his belly button as Eames coaxes the aftershocks.
"Too much," Arthur croaks and shoves a little.
He reaches for Eames, grabs for the button of his jeans. The fabric is wet and hot. Eames huffs out a laugh, bruised and deeper than Arthur's heard before. He leans down and presses his lips to Arthur's ear. "Too late."
Eames's weight on him is comforting somehow. Arthur drifts a little, drifts more, and falls asleep.
*
He comes to and sits bolt upright. He pulls his die from his pocket and feels the weight of it. His cufflinks are warm from resting in his pocket. He pulls out the lead and wipes it with an alcohol swab from his pocket before respooling it.
Eames closes the case and sets it on the floor.
"Would you care for a pair of pajamas?" Eames's voice sounds the same as in the dream.
"No, I'm fine." Arthur strips down to his undershirt and boxers, hangs his shirt and trousers on the other end of the bed from the rest of his clothes.
Eames moves around the room knocking against things and grumbling to himself for long enough that Arthur's asleep before he settles back into bed.
*
Arthur wakes up the next morning with a hangover and the malaise that comes from making bad decisions while intoxicated. Eames is thankfully absent. There's a towel and a toothbrush lying on the bed next to him. No note.
Arthur gets dressed and considers regret. He's done worse. Far worse, Christ. His mouth is full of fog and his fingers are swollen, but he feels pretty ok all around.
He doesn't look for Eames or avail himself of the access to the facilities further than to relieve himself. He lets himself out and grabs a cab.
*
"You look good." Dom smiles and grabs him by the upper arms. It's not a hug, but it's their compromise.
"I've been worse." Arthur smiles back.
They fall in step with all the other arrivals and relations flowing away from Customs.
"What a flight, Jesus." Dom grumbles. "Not one, not two, but three crying babies. Plus the ticket lottery won me a talker blocking the aisle."
"You could've upgraded to first class. It's not like you can't afford it. Puritanical frugality." Arthur snatches Dom's roller bag from being trampled by a herd of tourists not looking where they're walking.
"Yeah, yeah," Dom laughs it out. "Hey, I forgot to book a room…"
"Already taken care of. As is the venue, background checks, the whole shebang." Arthur smooths his tie and pulls his sunglasses out of his pocket.