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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3a
Unexpected Plot Twist: Act 3 in two parts, second part
Arthur hears Ariadne come home from her latest round of firearms therapy. They don't talk it about, so he hasn't gotten to make all the, frankly, very bad double entendres and euphemism-laden sarcastic remarks he's been saving up. Their age gap and gender difference makes it impossible for him to mock her sex life without permission, which is why he's bottling up the jokes until she brings it up herself. But then, le deluge.
He's immersed in a flamewar on Reddit over something asinine which is why he misses the tread in the hallway until someone is nearly pushing the door to his study open. He hits the light and pulls his gun in a fluid motion so that he's crouched using his chair for cover when the door swings open.
"You still have the safety on," the tone is amused. The silhouette is all-too familiar. Arthur re-holsters his gun as he stands. He tries to muster up some anger. It's there, but it's faint and smothered in relief.
He lands the first punch but the second is blocked with a hand around his wrist.
"Perhaps I miscalculated the threat-level," Eames whispers, voice still his half-condescending, aloof drawl.
Arthur doesn't say anything, because he knows intrinsically that everything he has to say now is brittle and not something that can be unsaid again.
Eames flips him around when he gets an opening and pins Arthur's arms to his sides. Arthur could break Eames's hold, but his shoulder won't like it and he doesn't want to put himself out of commission for some real threat in the near future because of his pride.
"Shh shh shh," Eames presses his mouth to Arthur's neck. "Don't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I went off my head."
"Why're you here now?" Arthur can't help asking, even though he hates himself for indulging the childishness.
"You called me," Eames sounds totally earnest. "Did you think I was staying away of my own volition?"
All he had to do was call.
Arthur realizes with precision that they will have similar conversations until they're done with each other. They'll always see the world in such fundamentally different ways that they'll misjudge each other's motivations and reactions, and no matter how well they know each other in the future that each fight will come from this primary inability to meet in the middle.
"Let me go," he controls his voice, gives nothing.
Eames does, immediately. He doesn't step away, though.
"I thought you needed..." Eames begins.
"Space, I know," Arthur pivots and reverses their positions, shoving Eames into the wall with his arm braced against his back. "I don't need space. Have I ever asked you for space?" When Arthur commits to something, he does it with both feet, forever, and it's never him who makes the choice to walk away.
Eames grunts, the laughter's bubbling there again. Arthur can't tell if it's humor or hysteria.
"I needed you to be in the room when I woke up," Arthur says it because he can't hold it in. He's already forgiven Eames for this, probably forgave the mistake before it ever happened. Arthur's pain isn't directed at Eames, it's inward, anger at himself for needing instead of wanting.
"I'm sorry," Eames says, and this time Arthur knows he means it. He means it too much, really, which is why Arthur doesn't want to have this conversation. The thought that they might have a relationship full of tiny cuts flashes through his mind. He's already destroying this in his mind before it even begins.
He bites the back of Eames's neck and shoves against him harder. He wants to be furious, tries to manufacture the feeling, but all he feels is the bright longing that's driven him into this room, hunched over computer monitors scrabbling with his fingernails to get free of the story of his life so he can have something for himself.
Arthur yanks Eames off the wall and walks him over to his desk. Eames lets him pin him with his body so they're both bent over it between computer equipment. "I won't ever want space. I'll always see you going away as running from me. I'll remember this period in years to come and get angry again with myself that you got inside me so easily, that I barely even resisted you. These things aren't negotiable like which side of the bed you like or if we're having Italian for dinner. Do we understand each other?"
"Yes," Eames breathes.
Arthur lets him go and stands up. He runs a hand through the hair he no longer has. "Killing my enemies was romantic, if psychotic. Please refrain from murder sprees to express affection in the future."
"They were all very bad men." Eames says with his face still pressed against the wood of the desk.
Arthur knows that, and Eames probably saved quite a few lives. They've both killed their share of people, but the calculation is a bit...overkill. Eames doesn't move as Arthur watches him.
"Do you want me to come back over there?" Asking is part of the humiliation, part of the whole experience. Eames wants to be punished because then he can let go of some of the guilt he doesn't like feeling.
"Please do." His voice is threaded with promises that can't be spoken.
Arthur leans over him but doesn't touch. "Please? Already?" he blows in Eames's ear.
"I've been bloody well waiting since the first time I saw you take Cobb down a peg with a lifted eyebrow and a carefully worded reprimand." The clipped vowels are strained. Eames's done playing now. This is serious, no masks or pretending. Or as close to that as Eames is able to be.
"I really should let you twist in the wind," Arthur settles his weight on Eames's back. "After you left me to Ariadne and my family." He rubs his erection along the seam of Eames's pants, slowly and methodically. He could easily get off with four layers of clothes between them with a few twists of his hips.
Arthur leans so that his cheek is pressed to the side of Eames's neck. "I already forgave you," Arthur sighs into his ear. "For everything. I forgave you not being there in the hospital. I forgave you when I saw you for you not finding me immediately. But I'll bring it up as a weapon, and I'm sorry for that. Preemptively." He means it the same way he's meant all the things he's said to lovers in the past that are true at the time and no longer true when circumstances change. All he can do is be genuine in the moment.
"You never need apologize to me." Eames gives up the pretense of being held in place and dislodges Arthur to twist and grab him by his good arm and his chin. He brings their faces close together. "Don't apologize for who you are."
Arthur knows he's saying something Arthur doesn't get. Maybe he never will. He doesn't push it. Arthur kisses Eames's mouth open, slides his tongue over his teeth and against Eames's. He lets go. Of himself, mostly. It's always himself that keeps him from making the kinds of mistakes that make up other people's lives.
He pulls back. Eames looks as close to stunned as his face is able with its self-assured configuration.
"I'm going to fuck you," Arthur says. Arthur means it in all the ways that sentence can be construed.
"Yes," Eames breathes into his mouth. Arthur hears I love you in the single syllable.
Arthur twists Eames's collar and shoves him to his knees. There's no pretense here, Eames popping Arthur's fly and yanking the fabric down with scarred hands tipped in broken fingernails. Arthur expects wet heat and suction, but he gets Eames pulling hickies over Arthur's inner thighs and his tongue licking the crease of his hip. Arthur braces his feet firmly on the floor and holds onto the edge of the desk.
Eames pulls up on his left hip and pushes down on his right. Arthur runs his dick over his cheek and considers shoving him over and holding him down to fuck his mouth.
"Turn about," Eames pulls and pushes harder. Arthur kicks his pants and underwear into Eames's lap and twists. He doesn't just turn, he turns and braces his arms on the desk so there's some space between his dick and the various unsexy objects nearby. He doesn't bother to disguise it when he licks his palm and starts to jack himself off, because Eames doesn't bother hesitating sucking on behind Arthur's balls with enough force to knock a low grown from Arthur's mouth.
Arthur can feel the slick scars on the pads of Eames's fingers as he peels Arthur's ass open. Arthur's hand stills when Eames's tongue makes contact because he's already feeling the tremors. The muscles in his thighs shake and some document crinkles in the hand he fists under his face. Arthur rubs his cheek against the desk, cool wood on the burn of his skin, panting, now on the edge of begging himself as Eames works his tongue inside.
Eames moans. The vibrations combined with his hand coming up to smooth around the head of Arthur's cock cause bright blooms in Arthur's belly that sends them both into a crumpled, come-covered heap on the floor.
Arthur belated realizes Eames is cleaning them up with his current favorite sweater.
In the dim light of the hall they're both mostly darkness against the gloom, so Arthur isn't in danger of a corneal imprint of Eames's taut mouth and hollowed out stubbled cheeks.
*
Arthur leaves Eames on the floor and hobbles his way to the bath. He doesn't feel like he needs to act like they're anything but the classless dicks they are, and it's not like Eames can't wash himself off in the sink of the kitchen if he's that desperate. He pulls on sweatpants and a t-shirt and isn't ashamed of the fact that he's never gone completely soft, that he's half-hard in the shower and it shows through the fleece of his pants. First blush of love hard-ons are impossible to control, and he knows Eames will love it. He does check the hallway for Ariadne, though, before he ducks out of the room and out into common spaces.
Eames is sitting in the living room barefoot in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. There are two mugs of tea sitting on the table in front of him. He lifts his chin towards them, then sprawls back on the couch with one arm along the back. "Off with the shirt, let me see the damage."
This is unmistakably a command.
Arthur sits in the ratty leather armchair across from him. "It's healing. It was in and out, no complications."
Eames stares at him for a few seconds before leaning forward and making his distinctive throat click. The hair on the back of Arthur's neck stands up. "I didn't ask any of that, did I?""
The only word to describe the mood is intense.
Arthur peels his shirt off.
Eames's eyes lock on the bandage on Arthur's shoulder and his face falls into the hard lines of combat. He's livid, that much is clear.
"The bandage," Eames runs his thumb over his bottom lip. It can stand to be changed anyway.
Arthur peels the tape away. "Go get the med kit out of the kitchen."
"Arthur," Eames's voice cracks.
Arthur pauses mid-peel. "Is there a problem?"
There is clearly a problem. Eames looks like he's about to start breaking the furniture.
Eames clicks his tongue and when he speaks, it's with a veneer over the words, the same voice he uses with clients. "Did you know that I was sitting right at your feet when the shot came through the window?"
"No, I can't remember." He remembers the conversation they were having, but that's it.
"The blood from the wound hit my face. Not a first, obviously, but a rather memorable experience. I'd promised myself this conversation wasn't ever going to happen, by the way. I don't know why I'm bothering to disclaim that, but I am."
Arthur recognizes immediately a classic case of PTSD. He knows it from the inside out. He bends over and picks his shirt up, pulls it on. The situation clicks together, snap, and Arthur knows that Eames's big unsaid is that he watched Arthur take a round and didn't jump in front of it.
The situation is absurd, but Arthur's used to that. "Let's fix this before this spins out of control." Arthur is a big fan of confronting something directly. This is where he and Dom have often come to blows.
"One cannot fix the facts of the past, Arthur." Eames looks at something over Arthur's left shoulder refusing to meet his eyes.
"Of course you can, dumbass. We have a PASIV, we can make whole worlds, why can't we unmake this one?"
Eames lifts an eyebrow and flicks his eyes to Arthur's. "You actually bought into the party line of therapy through dreamsharing?"
"Anything's worth a shot." Eames's eyes narrow. "Bad phrasing."
*
They're in a camp in the desert.
"Oh, could this be any more cliché?" Eames groans.
Arthur looks down and he's in uniform, but it's not one he ever wore. His sidearm is wrong, too.
"You look all right, though. That I can admit." Eames catcalls him.
The projections around them go about their routine tasks without even glancing at them.
"I guess I get to share your sleeping bag for warmth after all," Arthur remarks as two men walk by saluting them.
"Oh, Arthur, it's sweet that you take me so seriously, but I made all of that up."
Arthur is saved from having to burst Eames's bubble by an IED attack. He hits the deck just as Eames drops to cover him.
"I'm a trained killer, you know," Arthur grumbles.
*
In scenario two, Arthur is in a medevac bird staring down at a man he doesn't know on a gurney. Eames is nowhere in sight.
"ETA three minutes," someone with a British accent says in Arthur's earphones.
"Affirmative," Arthur replies hoping that's good enough to keep the projections from turning on him. He hates the falling dreams.
They land at field hospital, people swarming around. He does his best medic impersonation and doesn't get ripped limb from limb, so he's pretty confident. Until he runs into Eames coming out of a tent covered in arterial splatter with the grim set to his shoulders that screams FUBAR.
"Hey," Arthur calls, but Eames just keeps walking.
Ok, this is a direct memory then. Arthur realizes what he does isn't important because all that matters is the Eames-related storyline in this dream. He trails behind and watches the action unfold. Eames addresses a group of men. Everyone turns equally as grim as Eames, except the one who bursts into tears. No one scolds the crying man, one of his friends even wraps an arm around his back and pulls his face to his chest.
They salute Eames and one of the men says "Can we bury him?"
Eames nods. Arthur suddenly recognizes Morris as he steps up to Eames's side. They walk in locked step until they disappear into a tent. The men move towards the first tent Eames exited. Arthur knows he shouldn't, but he peeks inside when the men collect there. There's a dead dog laying on a gurney.
There's nothing for Arthur to do, so he walks the parameter of the dream until he gets the kick.
*
In the third dream, Eames is sitting across from him at a folding table. He's down to his undershirt, the tags around his neck not tucked in.
"You should tuck those in," Arthur says automatically.
"Are you a superstitious man?" Eames lets smoke drift out of his mouth and pulls it back in through his nose.
"Habit." Arthur says to deflect the question.
"That's both true and a lie," Eames replies. Arthur feels unsettled, like something is creeping around in the back of his mind.
"Is this real?" It feels real. His skin is dry from the lack of humidity and his face and neck ache with the slight radiation burn of too much sun.
"Do you want it to be?" Eames asks.
"I have to know what happens first," Arthur admits.
"Do you read the last page of a book first?" The fire at the end of Eames's cigarette burns brighter as he inhales on the other end.
"No, the whole final chapter."
"That doesn't surprise me one bit," Ariadne says behind him. He turns and the dream collapses.
*
"Hey, wanna tell me what's going on?" She pulls the cannula out of her arm angrily.
Eames stretches. "Recreational dreaming, love, what's all the fuss?"
Ariadne's mouth pops open to issue a scathing retort, but she closes it again without saying anything.
"Oh," Eames says. He gets up and slides to his knees next to her chair. "I should have called, too true. I'm insufferable, a churl. Do you forgive me? What if I brought you a gift?"
"I'm not your ten year old, neglected daughter, asshole."
Arthur notes that she doesn't reject the gift. "We could have been fucking in there," Arthur wishes that was true, and he regrets the tone as soon as he makes the comment.
She doesn't look put off by the remark, though. "I snooped around before barging into the tent. I'm not stupid."
"But something of a voyeur." Eames settles on his heels.
"Please, like you wouldn't have done the same thing!"
"Oh dear. No, I do not believe I would since I've caught Morris in flagrante delecto previously and would not want to be accused of fancying him."
Arthur is in no way surprised that Eames went there.
Ariadne pinks but she doesn't back down. "I meant if I was fucking Arthur, you'd have looked."
"Oh. Yes, and it'd also be pistols at dawn, I imagine." Ariadne flicks the end of Eames's nose gently and his smile crinkles the sides of his eyes with deep lines.
This is the moment that Arthur realizes that he's stuck with both of them.
Possibly, for good.
*
They spend half the night in real time working their way through Eames saving Arthur from bombs, gunshots, knives, and in one memorable event, an avalanche.
They're somewhere frigid. Arthur rubs his hands together and blows on them to heat them up.
"Here, let me," Eames says and reaches over to rub his warm hands over the backs of Arthur's fingers. The friction feels good, but he gets pins and needles as the feeling comes back.
"Ow, goddamn it, I hate the cold," Arthur bitches. Fucking cold, why not the tropics.
"I know, love," Eames makes the clicking sound in the back of his throat that makes Arthur feel warmly fond. He unzips his parka halfway and turns to they're facing each other on the crates they're sitting on. "Here then," he says as he leans forward a little.
"What?" Arthur manages before Eames grabs his wrists and jabs Arthur's hands into his coat on his sides. The pins and needles fade to scorching heat, Arthur must have been close to frostbite. He's sitting awkwardly, pitched so that his center of gravity is wrong, and the muscles in his back start to twitch.
"Just put your head on my shoulder, come on," Eames unbalances him more so that Arthur ends up slumped against him, his hands digging in further down Eames's sides until they're under the waist of his pants at the small of his back. His face is pressed into Eames's neck. It's uncomfortable, his body twisted the wrong way.
"Here," Eames pushes him back and for some reason Arthur just lets Eames pull him onto his lap, it's seems like the natural thing to do, to slide his knees either side of Eames's hips and unzip his coat to press their chests together. The kiss flows from that, open and hot, Eames's hand brushes over the crack of his ass over and over as their hips stutter together.
They flow together until the world is just them, just them touching…
No, something's wrong.
Arthur remembers suddenly. "No," he says. "I'm going to fuck you" he says against Eames's cheek.
He's awake before Eames is. Just a split second, but enough to have the momentum when Eames tries to lunge for him. He rides Eames back down to the mattress, a hand holding one of Eames's wrists to the bed, straddling him.
"Before, I think you misjudged my compliance." Arthur runs his tongue over Eames's jugular and presses down with his hips.
Eames moans, unrestrained, and rolls his hips up to meet Arthur's. "We both know that’s not true. What fun would there be in only one season in a man?"
"You're the one who wants to be spanked, then?" with his free hand Arthur yanks Eames's shirt open.
"For you, anything, but not particularly," he feints his face away when Arthur goes in for a kiss.
They tumble over and over until they fall to the ground, legs twisting up, both of them on their sides, neither trying to get away. Eames kisses him with abandon, every emotion going through him telegraphed by the way he flutters his fingers over Arthur's eyelids and presses against him like it's not enough, that there won't ever be enough. "This is like dying," he says when Arthur breaks away to get them back into the bed.
They've both died on numerous occasions, so Arthur understands what he means. Every second is elongated and the shock never goes away. Each time Arthur's died, the shock is always exactly the same, startling and terrifying. What if this is real? you think. WHAT IF THIS IS REAL?
The sex is almost fumbling. Arthur's hands are shaking from adrenaline and Eames gasps because Arthur has a broken fingernail. They're both almost trying to get this out of the way, which they both seem to silently agree on somewhere along the way. They're lying on their sides so the angle's funny, Arthur only manages to slide the head in over and over, and the stimulation's too much.
He thinks this is real when he comes, because it's all too sloppy to be otherwise. He realizes about ten seconds later when Eames comes into the sheets and not all over Arthur that this is their very pathetic version of making love. The laugh comes perhaps too soon after Eames's gasped grunts, he realizes too late.
"Fuck you," Eames groans, so they're good.
*
"What happened?" Arthur can't believe he's sleeping with someone who smokes in bed and he's not even complaining.
"Over-enthusiastic pistol-whipping due to the advancement of my inebriated state." The words just drip out of Eames's mouth around the filter of his cigarette while Arthur's having issues with motor control. "I knew one day I'd fuck the smug out of you."
Arthur would protest, but he thinks that's exactly what's happened.
"I doubt they'll kill your family, but it's not out of the realm." Eames says it with the level of coldness he needs to in order to keep Arthur from thinking about it too hard. This is the thing Arthur's been avoiding.
"It's fifty-fifty," Arthur rubs his eyelids.
"Well, I suppose it's go big or go home, isn't it?" Eames puts his cigarette out and curls against Arthur's side. He drags the abused mattress down so that they're fused together in a divot.
"Twitter first, then facebook, then youtube." Arthur replies.
Eames sighs with a nap on the edges. "I brought myself off in the dark, time and again, imagining what vengeance you'd exact." He lays his palm flat on Arthur's belly. The moment stretches out and neither of them make any declarations, but Arthur realizes they've come to a place where they don't need to.
"If you burn my sheets, I'll set you on fire." He has to stretch to switch the lamp off. He feels their breathing sync before he drifts to sleep.
*
Arthur takes a specific sort of pleasure in a precisely executed job. He's perfectly suited to detail-oriented work because he can multitask in layers and his swift assessment of others means he's a masterful delegator.
Eames takes up the public message boards--well, public for various iterations of said-- he's able to exactly replicate Arthur's syntax and typing style. There's no glitch-Arthur goes from one person to two people overnight, and as a result the job picks up steam exponentially.
Arthur knew Ariadne was a proficient coder, but she picks up tweaks and filling chinks like she did dream architecture. He decides to just assume from now on that she's a very well adjusted genius and to expect her to live up to that standard.
"I guess if you're both officially dead, that's sort of like being vampires," Ariadne informs Arthur after her third vodka gimlet and fifth hour palling around on EVE online with her criminally-minded internet friends.
"Everyone ends up officially dead sooner or later." Arthur glances up from the chat window cascade on his laptop. "It's taken me longer than I expected, to be honest,"
"The movies make this look a lot more pewpewpew and a lot less greasy take away curry," she makes a whooping noise that probably indicates a met objective.
"Take away curry?" Arthur lifts an eyebrow.
"Just out with it," she answers.
"What?" Arthur feigns ignorance.
"You've been dying to needle me about Phillip since we got here."
"Phillip Morris?" Arthur cranes his neck around to look at her. "Are you serious?"
"It's a family name," she says in a rush. "Shut up." She pulls her headphones on with an air of finality. Arthur's sure it is a family name, that he'll be Phillip Morris XI when Arthur looks into it.
"Oh, dear. What has been going on whilst I was ducking the NSA?" Eames arrives on cue with what smells like fried delight.
"You chose him," Arthur grumbles, going back to his chats. "There better be fried pickles in there."
Eames pitches his voice down to the cabernet murmur that flips Arthur's stomach over. "Indeed to keep her busy, sweetheart. He has a bit of a type, if you'd like to know."
Arthur watches Ariadne typing delightedly while singing along with her iPod. "So you pimped Ariadne out so she'd keep busy and leave me alone?"
"I wouldn't put it quite so crassly, but quite." He passes over the pickles. "Now we can debate free will versus predestination, as god in this scenario I'll champion free will as god is wont."
*
The first strike is Twitter trending. This part is easy, mostly because Arthur banked on the naïve whims of fourteen year old boys too young to understand that cultivating an FBI file before high school's out is one of the first steps in a life on the margins of respectable society. He gambles on the teenage rebellion impulse and wins the house.
They trend #yoursafteyisamyth first followed by #don'ttrustthemilitaryindustrialcomplex. Eames particularly enjoys #therealterroristisyou.
Needless to say, the US media machine goes into a feeding frenzy.
"Chum in the water," Eames says as they watch BBC's coverage of the American news outlet's coverage of the phenomena. Arthur drags a nail across the line on Eames's cheek where his beard ends. He's no longer surprised that they even think in the same metaphors.
Celebrities bleat out tweeted reaction statements and controversy spawns controversy--and this is even before Kanye blows an aneurysm and issues a rap about the whole thing. FoxNews blames Obama and Keith Olbermann blames the Westboro Baptist Church.
"Do you think any of those nuts know how to plug a computer into a socket?" Ariadne asks no one in particular.
Eames hauls Arthur to bed after the three of them share celebratory glasses of cognac. He holds Arthur down by the back of the neck and licks the edges of the bandage on his shoulder.
Eames leaves bruises on Arthur's hips and a bitemark over his tailbone.
*
Facebook is a bit of a longer con. All over the world various internet underbelly malcontents in a loose network of have registered fake Facebook pages. People have gone into very elaborate detail with this. Eames has a page for a fifteen year old girl in Bruges that is frighteningly detailed, including a network of other socks of her friends, and their friends, with pictures and videos and in-jokes. It's, in short, a masterpiece.
On the same day, after an agreed upon signal (the updating of a Youtube stream with a video of baby pandas in the Wolong Panda Sanctuary), every one of these fake Facebook accounts jump to life with stories of American government conspiracies all linked to various source material on wikileaks. The stories go viral within six hours.
There is no other story this week.
Arthur steps up behind Eames as he's futzing with the kettle and wraps an arm around his chest. Arthur's fingers glide over skin-warmed cashmere the color of half-dried blood. He kisses behind Eames's ear eliciting the high trill that indicates Eames is just himself, fully here and not wearing anyone else today.
Arthur slips his hand down Eames's belly and into his pants. He's already half-hard just from the Arthur's proximity. Eames's hands hit the range as his body curls downwards, Arthur an echoing parenthesis around his back. There's not enough room in Eames's pants for this to really work, and Arthur's about to peel his hand off of Eames's hip to open his fly when Eames does it himself.
"It burns," just a whisper and he doesn't pull away, as a matter of fact he fucks into Arthur's hand as he makes abortive mews and throaty sighs. Arthur drops his face to bury his nose in the fabric of Eames's sweater, to pull him inside, the burnt tobacco and sweat scent of him yanked breath by breath into his lungs. Arthur's moving by instinct, two fingers pressing into Eames's mouth, hand moving over his cock in the lazy beat of his own masturbation sessions, pulled out of time by the solidness of Eames against his chest, the hazy unreality of his skin under his tongue and the rosy smell of his soap.
When Eames knocks him away, Arthur hits the floor hard, his whole body shocked out of a near stupor. The second and a half it takes Eames to turn and crumble to the ground stretch out like Arthur's riding a near-death experience. He sees every muscle move, the bunch of his shoulders, the cut of his biceps under the thin wool, the cut of his pelvic V where his pants have slid down.
Eames's mouth is half open, tongue touching his top lip. He drops to his knees fluidly, one hand reaching for the back of Arthur's head and the other dropping to his hip. They tangle on the cracked linoleum, mouths together, and it's not frenzied but quiet. Eames's mouth opens and they breathe together until the kettle screams.
*
Arthur makes a series of coded texts on disposable phones from train stations on the Continent. The last one is to Emma--I'll be home soon.
He walks into INTERPOL in Paris a week to the day the Facebook job went live. He's met by Hal McCreary and Jonah Lewis (Col. USMC ret), and they all sit down like this is a regular meeting between businessmen. Arthur is dressed in crisp charcoal Boateng and the platinum Marine Corp insignia cuff links Eames slipped into the inside pocket of the jacket as it was hanging on the closet door.
"I'm not coming in," Arthur isn't going to prolong this. He has a set of objectives and things he'll compromise on and others he won't.
"You can all be dead by this afternoon." McCreary's the hard kind of career spook whose finger hasn't ever hesitated on a trigger. He's still slim and fit in his late forties, wearing an inconspicuous face topped by unremarkable hair. Arthur could have gotten luckier than pulling this guy.
"We're not here to bring you in," Lewis taps the manila folder in front of him. McCreary cuts his eyes at Lewis, clearly pissed off to be torpedoed so early in the negotiations. "You have knowledge we want. We have the ability to reset the counter. This is an even trade."
"Why are you bullshitting me?" Arthur leans forward on his elbows. "The lives of everyone I care about for something that could destroy entire nations? This is a fair trade? Nothing about this is fair." He sits back and only barely restrains himself from cracking his neck. "None of us believe in fair to begin with. Here's my counter offer: you leave me and mine the hell alone and I won't blow the lid off of dreamsharing including details of specific jobs worked on the soil of sovereign nations not our own."
"That's fucking treason," McCreay points a finger at Arthur's face. "You'll get a firing squad for that, boy."
"Let's keep cool," Lewis clears his throat.
"I'm a citizen of the world," Arthur remains stoic, but he had to practice that line over tea with Ariadne. It's a horrible line and 100 percent Eames.
"Even if you don't take your legal obligations towards the US government," Lewis begins.
"My legal obligation towards the US government ended the minute someone at the Pentagon decided to disappear me to pick my brain apart. We both know exactly how that would have happened. The moral obligations you're about to broach are murkier, true. Those ended the minute someone decided taking out my family was acceptable collateral damage."
"I don't understand how you think you have fucking leg to stand on here, Da Costa. We have you for treason, espionage, who the fuck knows what kind of property crime, murder…if it's illegal you've probably done it. "McCreary's about to crack a rib in a second.
"We both know you can't take me out completely, the whole house of cards will implode if word got out you'd done that. Every asset who ever met me will turn on you, so cut the shit about treason and prison time. I'm not giving you inception, but I will pull the plug on the rest of the plans I have if I get reassurance that we're at a stalemate and the doomsday clock is reset to five 'til midnight."
McCreary's face goes red enough that he might literally be having a stroke.
"We'll contact you through the usual channels," Lewis says.
And that is that.
*
To make their point, Eames leaks details of a series of missions he worked playing both ends against the middle on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to wikileaks. Arthur's completely unsurprised since that job always seemed to have Eames's fingerprints all over it.
Eames has taken to wearing tailored straight-legged trousers in textured fabrics that attract Arthur's unconscious tactile fixation. Arthur sits close when he can and catches his fingernails on the knobbly grain of tweed or the soft nap of corduroy. They fit together like quotation marks, someone's arm on the back of the couch, the other's shoulder on a chest. Arthur's laughter bleeds into the vibration of Eames's chest.
Eames's mark on him is indelible. Arthur recognized that when they were playing games in New York. Now he can actually feel it in the way he can smell Eames on his skin and the fact that he's already started growing his hair back out.
*
They get their answer with their morning coffee when one of the CNN Latest News column buttons reads Gay Rights icon Arthur Da Costa released from hospital. The article quotes a Pentagon spokesman Arthur's never heard of stating that Arthur's resting comfortably in the UK with his partner and would like sensitivity to his desire to remain out of the public eye for the time being for recuperation.
"So we all escape Gitmo?" Ariadne scans her Twitter feed.
"For now," Eames's face is shuttered, which is good because he'd be shit at his job if he wasn't a cynic. He's bundled up in a grayscale, cable sweater, wool slacks, wool socks on his feet. He looks perfect, a set-piece from a retro photo shoot, and when his eyes droop and his mouth curves, Arthur doesn't look away from his eyes.
"You two're still getting married, aren't you?" Ariadne sips her coffee and doesn't even look up from her computer.
"Oh yes, darling," Eames blows on his coffee. "I already have the rings picked out."
"I told you no about that," Arthur blows on his own coffee and lifts one eyebrow as he pulls his phone out of his pocket to feed some angry birds.
~fin
Yes, don't worry, the wedding a whole other story. As is the side bit about Ariadne. Don't worry, Liz isn't going to stop being a greedy enabler any time soon. I hope you enjoyed the show!
A little coda fic I wrote and forgot to link here: Arthur'a ring
Part 2
Part 3a
Unexpected Plot Twist: Act 3 in two parts, second part
Arthur hears Ariadne come home from her latest round of firearms therapy. They don't talk it about, so he hasn't gotten to make all the, frankly, very bad double entendres and euphemism-laden sarcastic remarks he's been saving up. Their age gap and gender difference makes it impossible for him to mock her sex life without permission, which is why he's bottling up the jokes until she brings it up herself. But then, le deluge.
He's immersed in a flamewar on Reddit over something asinine which is why he misses the tread in the hallway until someone is nearly pushing the door to his study open. He hits the light and pulls his gun in a fluid motion so that he's crouched using his chair for cover when the door swings open.
"You still have the safety on," the tone is amused. The silhouette is all-too familiar. Arthur re-holsters his gun as he stands. He tries to muster up some anger. It's there, but it's faint and smothered in relief.
He lands the first punch but the second is blocked with a hand around his wrist.
"Perhaps I miscalculated the threat-level," Eames whispers, voice still his half-condescending, aloof drawl.
Arthur doesn't say anything, because he knows intrinsically that everything he has to say now is brittle and not something that can be unsaid again.
Eames flips him around when he gets an opening and pins Arthur's arms to his sides. Arthur could break Eames's hold, but his shoulder won't like it and he doesn't want to put himself out of commission for some real threat in the near future because of his pride.
"Shh shh shh," Eames presses his mouth to Arthur's neck. "Don't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I went off my head."
"Why're you here now?" Arthur can't help asking, even though he hates himself for indulging the childishness.
"You called me," Eames sounds totally earnest. "Did you think I was staying away of my own volition?"
All he had to do was call.
Arthur realizes with precision that they will have similar conversations until they're done with each other. They'll always see the world in such fundamentally different ways that they'll misjudge each other's motivations and reactions, and no matter how well they know each other in the future that each fight will come from this primary inability to meet in the middle.
"Let me go," he controls his voice, gives nothing.
Eames does, immediately. He doesn't step away, though.
"I thought you needed..." Eames begins.
"Space, I know," Arthur pivots and reverses their positions, shoving Eames into the wall with his arm braced against his back. "I don't need space. Have I ever asked you for space?" When Arthur commits to something, he does it with both feet, forever, and it's never him who makes the choice to walk away.
Eames grunts, the laughter's bubbling there again. Arthur can't tell if it's humor or hysteria.
"I needed you to be in the room when I woke up," Arthur says it because he can't hold it in. He's already forgiven Eames for this, probably forgave the mistake before it ever happened. Arthur's pain isn't directed at Eames, it's inward, anger at himself for needing instead of wanting.
"I'm sorry," Eames says, and this time Arthur knows he means it. He means it too much, really, which is why Arthur doesn't want to have this conversation. The thought that they might have a relationship full of tiny cuts flashes through his mind. He's already destroying this in his mind before it even begins.
He bites the back of Eames's neck and shoves against him harder. He wants to be furious, tries to manufacture the feeling, but all he feels is the bright longing that's driven him into this room, hunched over computer monitors scrabbling with his fingernails to get free of the story of his life so he can have something for himself.
Arthur yanks Eames off the wall and walks him over to his desk. Eames lets him pin him with his body so they're both bent over it between computer equipment. "I won't ever want space. I'll always see you going away as running from me. I'll remember this period in years to come and get angry again with myself that you got inside me so easily, that I barely even resisted you. These things aren't negotiable like which side of the bed you like or if we're having Italian for dinner. Do we understand each other?"
"Yes," Eames breathes.
Arthur lets him go and stands up. He runs a hand through the hair he no longer has. "Killing my enemies was romantic, if psychotic. Please refrain from murder sprees to express affection in the future."
"They were all very bad men." Eames says with his face still pressed against the wood of the desk.
Arthur knows that, and Eames probably saved quite a few lives. They've both killed their share of people, but the calculation is a bit...overkill. Eames doesn't move as Arthur watches him.
"Do you want me to come back over there?" Asking is part of the humiliation, part of the whole experience. Eames wants to be punished because then he can let go of some of the guilt he doesn't like feeling.
"Please do." His voice is threaded with promises that can't be spoken.
Arthur leans over him but doesn't touch. "Please? Already?" he blows in Eames's ear.
"I've been bloody well waiting since the first time I saw you take Cobb down a peg with a lifted eyebrow and a carefully worded reprimand." The clipped vowels are strained. Eames's done playing now. This is serious, no masks or pretending. Or as close to that as Eames is able to be.
"I really should let you twist in the wind," Arthur settles his weight on Eames's back. "After you left me to Ariadne and my family." He rubs his erection along the seam of Eames's pants, slowly and methodically. He could easily get off with four layers of clothes between them with a few twists of his hips.
Arthur leans so that his cheek is pressed to the side of Eames's neck. "I already forgave you," Arthur sighs into his ear. "For everything. I forgave you not being there in the hospital. I forgave you when I saw you for you not finding me immediately. But I'll bring it up as a weapon, and I'm sorry for that. Preemptively." He means it the same way he's meant all the things he's said to lovers in the past that are true at the time and no longer true when circumstances change. All he can do is be genuine in the moment.
"You never need apologize to me." Eames gives up the pretense of being held in place and dislodges Arthur to twist and grab him by his good arm and his chin. He brings their faces close together. "Don't apologize for who you are."
Arthur knows he's saying something Arthur doesn't get. Maybe he never will. He doesn't push it. Arthur kisses Eames's mouth open, slides his tongue over his teeth and against Eames's. He lets go. Of himself, mostly. It's always himself that keeps him from making the kinds of mistakes that make up other people's lives.
He pulls back. Eames looks as close to stunned as his face is able with its self-assured configuration.
"I'm going to fuck you," Arthur says. Arthur means it in all the ways that sentence can be construed.
"Yes," Eames breathes into his mouth. Arthur hears I love you in the single syllable.
Arthur twists Eames's collar and shoves him to his knees. There's no pretense here, Eames popping Arthur's fly and yanking the fabric down with scarred hands tipped in broken fingernails. Arthur expects wet heat and suction, but he gets Eames pulling hickies over Arthur's inner thighs and his tongue licking the crease of his hip. Arthur braces his feet firmly on the floor and holds onto the edge of the desk.
Eames pulls up on his left hip and pushes down on his right. Arthur runs his dick over his cheek and considers shoving him over and holding him down to fuck his mouth.
"Turn about," Eames pulls and pushes harder. Arthur kicks his pants and underwear into Eames's lap and twists. He doesn't just turn, he turns and braces his arms on the desk so there's some space between his dick and the various unsexy objects nearby. He doesn't bother to disguise it when he licks his palm and starts to jack himself off, because Eames doesn't bother hesitating sucking on behind Arthur's balls with enough force to knock a low grown from Arthur's mouth.
Arthur can feel the slick scars on the pads of Eames's fingers as he peels Arthur's ass open. Arthur's hand stills when Eames's tongue makes contact because he's already feeling the tremors. The muscles in his thighs shake and some document crinkles in the hand he fists under his face. Arthur rubs his cheek against the desk, cool wood on the burn of his skin, panting, now on the edge of begging himself as Eames works his tongue inside.
Eames moans. The vibrations combined with his hand coming up to smooth around the head of Arthur's cock cause bright blooms in Arthur's belly that sends them both into a crumpled, come-covered heap on the floor.
Arthur belated realizes Eames is cleaning them up with his current favorite sweater.
In the dim light of the hall they're both mostly darkness against the gloom, so Arthur isn't in danger of a corneal imprint of Eames's taut mouth and hollowed out stubbled cheeks.
*
Arthur leaves Eames on the floor and hobbles his way to the bath. He doesn't feel like he needs to act like they're anything but the classless dicks they are, and it's not like Eames can't wash himself off in the sink of the kitchen if he's that desperate. He pulls on sweatpants and a t-shirt and isn't ashamed of the fact that he's never gone completely soft, that he's half-hard in the shower and it shows through the fleece of his pants. First blush of love hard-ons are impossible to control, and he knows Eames will love it. He does check the hallway for Ariadne, though, before he ducks out of the room and out into common spaces.
Eames is sitting in the living room barefoot in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. There are two mugs of tea sitting on the table in front of him. He lifts his chin towards them, then sprawls back on the couch with one arm along the back. "Off with the shirt, let me see the damage."
This is unmistakably a command.
Arthur sits in the ratty leather armchair across from him. "It's healing. It was in and out, no complications."
Eames stares at him for a few seconds before leaning forward and making his distinctive throat click. The hair on the back of Arthur's neck stands up. "I didn't ask any of that, did I?""
The only word to describe the mood is intense.
Arthur peels his shirt off.
Eames's eyes lock on the bandage on Arthur's shoulder and his face falls into the hard lines of combat. He's livid, that much is clear.
"The bandage," Eames runs his thumb over his bottom lip. It can stand to be changed anyway.
Arthur peels the tape away. "Go get the med kit out of the kitchen."
"Arthur," Eames's voice cracks.
Arthur pauses mid-peel. "Is there a problem?"
There is clearly a problem. Eames looks like he's about to start breaking the furniture.
Eames clicks his tongue and when he speaks, it's with a veneer over the words, the same voice he uses with clients. "Did you know that I was sitting right at your feet when the shot came through the window?"
"No, I can't remember." He remembers the conversation they were having, but that's it.
"The blood from the wound hit my face. Not a first, obviously, but a rather memorable experience. I'd promised myself this conversation wasn't ever going to happen, by the way. I don't know why I'm bothering to disclaim that, but I am."
Arthur recognizes immediately a classic case of PTSD. He knows it from the inside out. He bends over and picks his shirt up, pulls it on. The situation clicks together, snap, and Arthur knows that Eames's big unsaid is that he watched Arthur take a round and didn't jump in front of it.
The situation is absurd, but Arthur's used to that. "Let's fix this before this spins out of control." Arthur is a big fan of confronting something directly. This is where he and Dom have often come to blows.
"One cannot fix the facts of the past, Arthur." Eames looks at something over Arthur's left shoulder refusing to meet his eyes.
"Of course you can, dumbass. We have a PASIV, we can make whole worlds, why can't we unmake this one?"
Eames lifts an eyebrow and flicks his eyes to Arthur's. "You actually bought into the party line of therapy through dreamsharing?"
"Anything's worth a shot." Eames's eyes narrow. "Bad phrasing."
*
They're in a camp in the desert.
"Oh, could this be any more cliché?" Eames groans.
Arthur looks down and he's in uniform, but it's not one he ever wore. His sidearm is wrong, too.
"You look all right, though. That I can admit." Eames catcalls him.
The projections around them go about their routine tasks without even glancing at them.
"I guess I get to share your sleeping bag for warmth after all," Arthur remarks as two men walk by saluting them.
"Oh, Arthur, it's sweet that you take me so seriously, but I made all of that up."
Arthur is saved from having to burst Eames's bubble by an IED attack. He hits the deck just as Eames drops to cover him.
"I'm a trained killer, you know," Arthur grumbles.
*
In scenario two, Arthur is in a medevac bird staring down at a man he doesn't know on a gurney. Eames is nowhere in sight.
"ETA three minutes," someone with a British accent says in Arthur's earphones.
"Affirmative," Arthur replies hoping that's good enough to keep the projections from turning on him. He hates the falling dreams.
They land at field hospital, people swarming around. He does his best medic impersonation and doesn't get ripped limb from limb, so he's pretty confident. Until he runs into Eames coming out of a tent covered in arterial splatter with the grim set to his shoulders that screams FUBAR.
"Hey," Arthur calls, but Eames just keeps walking.
Ok, this is a direct memory then. Arthur realizes what he does isn't important because all that matters is the Eames-related storyline in this dream. He trails behind and watches the action unfold. Eames addresses a group of men. Everyone turns equally as grim as Eames, except the one who bursts into tears. No one scolds the crying man, one of his friends even wraps an arm around his back and pulls his face to his chest.
They salute Eames and one of the men says "Can we bury him?"
Eames nods. Arthur suddenly recognizes Morris as he steps up to Eames's side. They walk in locked step until they disappear into a tent. The men move towards the first tent Eames exited. Arthur knows he shouldn't, but he peeks inside when the men collect there. There's a dead dog laying on a gurney.
There's nothing for Arthur to do, so he walks the parameter of the dream until he gets the kick.
*
In the third dream, Eames is sitting across from him at a folding table. He's down to his undershirt, the tags around his neck not tucked in.
"You should tuck those in," Arthur says automatically.
"Are you a superstitious man?" Eames lets smoke drift out of his mouth and pulls it back in through his nose.
"Habit." Arthur says to deflect the question.
"That's both true and a lie," Eames replies. Arthur feels unsettled, like something is creeping around in the back of his mind.
"Is this real?" It feels real. His skin is dry from the lack of humidity and his face and neck ache with the slight radiation burn of too much sun.
"Do you want it to be?" Eames asks.
"I have to know what happens first," Arthur admits.
"Do you read the last page of a book first?" The fire at the end of Eames's cigarette burns brighter as he inhales on the other end.
"No, the whole final chapter."
"That doesn't surprise me one bit," Ariadne says behind him. He turns and the dream collapses.
*
"Hey, wanna tell me what's going on?" She pulls the cannula out of her arm angrily.
Eames stretches. "Recreational dreaming, love, what's all the fuss?"
Ariadne's mouth pops open to issue a scathing retort, but she closes it again without saying anything.
"Oh," Eames says. He gets up and slides to his knees next to her chair. "I should have called, too true. I'm insufferable, a churl. Do you forgive me? What if I brought you a gift?"
"I'm not your ten year old, neglected daughter, asshole."
Arthur notes that she doesn't reject the gift. "We could have been fucking in there," Arthur wishes that was true, and he regrets the tone as soon as he makes the comment.
She doesn't look put off by the remark, though. "I snooped around before barging into the tent. I'm not stupid."
"But something of a voyeur." Eames settles on his heels.
"Please, like you wouldn't have done the same thing!"
"Oh dear. No, I do not believe I would since I've caught Morris in flagrante delecto previously and would not want to be accused of fancying him."
Arthur is in no way surprised that Eames went there.
Ariadne pinks but she doesn't back down. "I meant if I was fucking Arthur, you'd have looked."
"Oh. Yes, and it'd also be pistols at dawn, I imagine." Ariadne flicks the end of Eames's nose gently and his smile crinkles the sides of his eyes with deep lines.
This is the moment that Arthur realizes that he's stuck with both of them.
Possibly, for good.
*
They spend half the night in real time working their way through Eames saving Arthur from bombs, gunshots, knives, and in one memorable event, an avalanche.
They're somewhere frigid. Arthur rubs his hands together and blows on them to heat them up.
"Here, let me," Eames says and reaches over to rub his warm hands over the backs of Arthur's fingers. The friction feels good, but he gets pins and needles as the feeling comes back.
"Ow, goddamn it, I hate the cold," Arthur bitches. Fucking cold, why not the tropics.
"I know, love," Eames makes the clicking sound in the back of his throat that makes Arthur feel warmly fond. He unzips his parka halfway and turns to they're facing each other on the crates they're sitting on. "Here then," he says as he leans forward a little.
"What?" Arthur manages before Eames grabs his wrists and jabs Arthur's hands into his coat on his sides. The pins and needles fade to scorching heat, Arthur must have been close to frostbite. He's sitting awkwardly, pitched so that his center of gravity is wrong, and the muscles in his back start to twitch.
"Just put your head on my shoulder, come on," Eames unbalances him more so that Arthur ends up slumped against him, his hands digging in further down Eames's sides until they're under the waist of his pants at the small of his back. His face is pressed into Eames's neck. It's uncomfortable, his body twisted the wrong way.
"Here," Eames pushes him back and for some reason Arthur just lets Eames pull him onto his lap, it's seems like the natural thing to do, to slide his knees either side of Eames's hips and unzip his coat to press their chests together. The kiss flows from that, open and hot, Eames's hand brushes over the crack of his ass over and over as their hips stutter together.
They flow together until the world is just them, just them touching…
No, something's wrong.
Arthur remembers suddenly. "No," he says. "I'm going to fuck you" he says against Eames's cheek.
He's awake before Eames is. Just a split second, but enough to have the momentum when Eames tries to lunge for him. He rides Eames back down to the mattress, a hand holding one of Eames's wrists to the bed, straddling him.
"Before, I think you misjudged my compliance." Arthur runs his tongue over Eames's jugular and presses down with his hips.
Eames moans, unrestrained, and rolls his hips up to meet Arthur's. "We both know that’s not true. What fun would there be in only one season in a man?"
"You're the one who wants to be spanked, then?" with his free hand Arthur yanks Eames's shirt open.
"For you, anything, but not particularly," he feints his face away when Arthur goes in for a kiss.
They tumble over and over until they fall to the ground, legs twisting up, both of them on their sides, neither trying to get away. Eames kisses him with abandon, every emotion going through him telegraphed by the way he flutters his fingers over Arthur's eyelids and presses against him like it's not enough, that there won't ever be enough. "This is like dying," he says when Arthur breaks away to get them back into the bed.
They've both died on numerous occasions, so Arthur understands what he means. Every second is elongated and the shock never goes away. Each time Arthur's died, the shock is always exactly the same, startling and terrifying. What if this is real? you think. WHAT IF THIS IS REAL?
The sex is almost fumbling. Arthur's hands are shaking from adrenaline and Eames gasps because Arthur has a broken fingernail. They're both almost trying to get this out of the way, which they both seem to silently agree on somewhere along the way. They're lying on their sides so the angle's funny, Arthur only manages to slide the head in over and over, and the stimulation's too much.
He thinks this is real when he comes, because it's all too sloppy to be otherwise. He realizes about ten seconds later when Eames comes into the sheets and not all over Arthur that this is their very pathetic version of making love. The laugh comes perhaps too soon after Eames's gasped grunts, he realizes too late.
"Fuck you," Eames groans, so they're good.
*
"What happened?" Arthur can't believe he's sleeping with someone who smokes in bed and he's not even complaining.
"Over-enthusiastic pistol-whipping due to the advancement of my inebriated state." The words just drip out of Eames's mouth around the filter of his cigarette while Arthur's having issues with motor control. "I knew one day I'd fuck the smug out of you."
Arthur would protest, but he thinks that's exactly what's happened.
"I doubt they'll kill your family, but it's not out of the realm." Eames says it with the level of coldness he needs to in order to keep Arthur from thinking about it too hard. This is the thing Arthur's been avoiding.
"It's fifty-fifty," Arthur rubs his eyelids.
"Well, I suppose it's go big or go home, isn't it?" Eames puts his cigarette out and curls against Arthur's side. He drags the abused mattress down so that they're fused together in a divot.
"Twitter first, then facebook, then youtube." Arthur replies.
Eames sighs with a nap on the edges. "I brought myself off in the dark, time and again, imagining what vengeance you'd exact." He lays his palm flat on Arthur's belly. The moment stretches out and neither of them make any declarations, but Arthur realizes they've come to a place where they don't need to.
"If you burn my sheets, I'll set you on fire." He has to stretch to switch the lamp off. He feels their breathing sync before he drifts to sleep.
*
Arthur takes a specific sort of pleasure in a precisely executed job. He's perfectly suited to detail-oriented work because he can multitask in layers and his swift assessment of others means he's a masterful delegator.
Eames takes up the public message boards--well, public for various iterations of said-- he's able to exactly replicate Arthur's syntax and typing style. There's no glitch-Arthur goes from one person to two people overnight, and as a result the job picks up steam exponentially.
Arthur knew Ariadne was a proficient coder, but she picks up tweaks and filling chinks like she did dream architecture. He decides to just assume from now on that she's a very well adjusted genius and to expect her to live up to that standard.
"I guess if you're both officially dead, that's sort of like being vampires," Ariadne informs Arthur after her third vodka gimlet and fifth hour palling around on EVE online with her criminally-minded internet friends.
"Everyone ends up officially dead sooner or later." Arthur glances up from the chat window cascade on his laptop. "It's taken me longer than I expected, to be honest,"
"The movies make this look a lot more pewpewpew and a lot less greasy take away curry," she makes a whooping noise that probably indicates a met objective.
"Take away curry?" Arthur lifts an eyebrow.
"Just out with it," she answers.
"What?" Arthur feigns ignorance.
"You've been dying to needle me about Phillip since we got here."
"Phillip Morris?" Arthur cranes his neck around to look at her. "Are you serious?"
"It's a family name," she says in a rush. "Shut up." She pulls her headphones on with an air of finality. Arthur's sure it is a family name, that he'll be Phillip Morris XI when Arthur looks into it.
"Oh, dear. What has been going on whilst I was ducking the NSA?" Eames arrives on cue with what smells like fried delight.
"You chose him," Arthur grumbles, going back to his chats. "There better be fried pickles in there."
Eames pitches his voice down to the cabernet murmur that flips Arthur's stomach over. "Indeed to keep her busy, sweetheart. He has a bit of a type, if you'd like to know."
Arthur watches Ariadne typing delightedly while singing along with her iPod. "So you pimped Ariadne out so she'd keep busy and leave me alone?"
"I wouldn't put it quite so crassly, but quite." He passes over the pickles. "Now we can debate free will versus predestination, as god in this scenario I'll champion free will as god is wont."
*
The first strike is Twitter trending. This part is easy, mostly because Arthur banked on the naïve whims of fourteen year old boys too young to understand that cultivating an FBI file before high school's out is one of the first steps in a life on the margins of respectable society. He gambles on the teenage rebellion impulse and wins the house.
They trend #yoursafteyisamyth first followed by #don'ttrustthemilitaryindustrialcomplex. Eames particularly enjoys #therealterroristisyou.
Needless to say, the US media machine goes into a feeding frenzy.
"Chum in the water," Eames says as they watch BBC's coverage of the American news outlet's coverage of the phenomena. Arthur drags a nail across the line on Eames's cheek where his beard ends. He's no longer surprised that they even think in the same metaphors.
Celebrities bleat out tweeted reaction statements and controversy spawns controversy--and this is even before Kanye blows an aneurysm and issues a rap about the whole thing. FoxNews blames Obama and Keith Olbermann blames the Westboro Baptist Church.
"Do you think any of those nuts know how to plug a computer into a socket?" Ariadne asks no one in particular.
Eames hauls Arthur to bed after the three of them share celebratory glasses of cognac. He holds Arthur down by the back of the neck and licks the edges of the bandage on his shoulder.
Eames leaves bruises on Arthur's hips and a bitemark over his tailbone.
*
Facebook is a bit of a longer con. All over the world various internet underbelly malcontents in a loose network of have registered fake Facebook pages. People have gone into very elaborate detail with this. Eames has a page for a fifteen year old girl in Bruges that is frighteningly detailed, including a network of other socks of her friends, and their friends, with pictures and videos and in-jokes. It's, in short, a masterpiece.
On the same day, after an agreed upon signal (the updating of a Youtube stream with a video of baby pandas in the Wolong Panda Sanctuary), every one of these fake Facebook accounts jump to life with stories of American government conspiracies all linked to various source material on wikileaks. The stories go viral within six hours.
There is no other story this week.
Arthur steps up behind Eames as he's futzing with the kettle and wraps an arm around his chest. Arthur's fingers glide over skin-warmed cashmere the color of half-dried blood. He kisses behind Eames's ear eliciting the high trill that indicates Eames is just himself, fully here and not wearing anyone else today.
Arthur slips his hand down Eames's belly and into his pants. He's already half-hard just from the Arthur's proximity. Eames's hands hit the range as his body curls downwards, Arthur an echoing parenthesis around his back. There's not enough room in Eames's pants for this to really work, and Arthur's about to peel his hand off of Eames's hip to open his fly when Eames does it himself.
"It burns," just a whisper and he doesn't pull away, as a matter of fact he fucks into Arthur's hand as he makes abortive mews and throaty sighs. Arthur drops his face to bury his nose in the fabric of Eames's sweater, to pull him inside, the burnt tobacco and sweat scent of him yanked breath by breath into his lungs. Arthur's moving by instinct, two fingers pressing into Eames's mouth, hand moving over his cock in the lazy beat of his own masturbation sessions, pulled out of time by the solidness of Eames against his chest, the hazy unreality of his skin under his tongue and the rosy smell of his soap.
When Eames knocks him away, Arthur hits the floor hard, his whole body shocked out of a near stupor. The second and a half it takes Eames to turn and crumble to the ground stretch out like Arthur's riding a near-death experience. He sees every muscle move, the bunch of his shoulders, the cut of his biceps under the thin wool, the cut of his pelvic V where his pants have slid down.
Eames's mouth is half open, tongue touching his top lip. He drops to his knees fluidly, one hand reaching for the back of Arthur's head and the other dropping to his hip. They tangle on the cracked linoleum, mouths together, and it's not frenzied but quiet. Eames's mouth opens and they breathe together until the kettle screams.
*
Arthur makes a series of coded texts on disposable phones from train stations on the Continent. The last one is to Emma--I'll be home soon.
He walks into INTERPOL in Paris a week to the day the Facebook job went live. He's met by Hal McCreary and Jonah Lewis (Col. USMC ret), and they all sit down like this is a regular meeting between businessmen. Arthur is dressed in crisp charcoal Boateng and the platinum Marine Corp insignia cuff links Eames slipped into the inside pocket of the jacket as it was hanging on the closet door.
"I'm not coming in," Arthur isn't going to prolong this. He has a set of objectives and things he'll compromise on and others he won't.
"You can all be dead by this afternoon." McCreary's the hard kind of career spook whose finger hasn't ever hesitated on a trigger. He's still slim and fit in his late forties, wearing an inconspicuous face topped by unremarkable hair. Arthur could have gotten luckier than pulling this guy.
"We're not here to bring you in," Lewis taps the manila folder in front of him. McCreary cuts his eyes at Lewis, clearly pissed off to be torpedoed so early in the negotiations. "You have knowledge we want. We have the ability to reset the counter. This is an even trade."
"Why are you bullshitting me?" Arthur leans forward on his elbows. "The lives of everyone I care about for something that could destroy entire nations? This is a fair trade? Nothing about this is fair." He sits back and only barely restrains himself from cracking his neck. "None of us believe in fair to begin with. Here's my counter offer: you leave me and mine the hell alone and I won't blow the lid off of dreamsharing including details of specific jobs worked on the soil of sovereign nations not our own."
"That's fucking treason," McCreay points a finger at Arthur's face. "You'll get a firing squad for that, boy."
"Let's keep cool," Lewis clears his throat.
"I'm a citizen of the world," Arthur remains stoic, but he had to practice that line over tea with Ariadne. It's a horrible line and 100 percent Eames.
"Even if you don't take your legal obligations towards the US government," Lewis begins.
"My legal obligation towards the US government ended the minute someone at the Pentagon decided to disappear me to pick my brain apart. We both know exactly how that would have happened. The moral obligations you're about to broach are murkier, true. Those ended the minute someone decided taking out my family was acceptable collateral damage."
"I don't understand how you think you have fucking leg to stand on here, Da Costa. We have you for treason, espionage, who the fuck knows what kind of property crime, murder…if it's illegal you've probably done it. "McCreary's about to crack a rib in a second.
"We both know you can't take me out completely, the whole house of cards will implode if word got out you'd done that. Every asset who ever met me will turn on you, so cut the shit about treason and prison time. I'm not giving you inception, but I will pull the plug on the rest of the plans I have if I get reassurance that we're at a stalemate and the doomsday clock is reset to five 'til midnight."
McCreary's face goes red enough that he might literally be having a stroke.
"We'll contact you through the usual channels," Lewis says.
And that is that.
*
To make their point, Eames leaks details of a series of missions he worked playing both ends against the middle on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to wikileaks. Arthur's completely unsurprised since that job always seemed to have Eames's fingerprints all over it.
Eames has taken to wearing tailored straight-legged trousers in textured fabrics that attract Arthur's unconscious tactile fixation. Arthur sits close when he can and catches his fingernails on the knobbly grain of tweed or the soft nap of corduroy. They fit together like quotation marks, someone's arm on the back of the couch, the other's shoulder on a chest. Arthur's laughter bleeds into the vibration of Eames's chest.
Eames's mark on him is indelible. Arthur recognized that when they were playing games in New York. Now he can actually feel it in the way he can smell Eames on his skin and the fact that he's already started growing his hair back out.
*
They get their answer with their morning coffee when one of the CNN Latest News column buttons reads Gay Rights icon Arthur Da Costa released from hospital. The article quotes a Pentagon spokesman Arthur's never heard of stating that Arthur's resting comfortably in the UK with his partner and would like sensitivity to his desire to remain out of the public eye for the time being for recuperation.
"So we all escape Gitmo?" Ariadne scans her Twitter feed.
"For now," Eames's face is shuttered, which is good because he'd be shit at his job if he wasn't a cynic. He's bundled up in a grayscale, cable sweater, wool slacks, wool socks on his feet. He looks perfect, a set-piece from a retro photo shoot, and when his eyes droop and his mouth curves, Arthur doesn't look away from his eyes.
"You two're still getting married, aren't you?" Ariadne sips her coffee and doesn't even look up from her computer.
"Oh yes, darling," Eames blows on his coffee. "I already have the rings picked out."
"I told you no about that," Arthur blows on his own coffee and lifts one eyebrow as he pulls his phone out of his pocket to feed some angry birds.
~fin
Yes, don't worry, the wedding a whole other story. As is the side bit about Ariadne. Don't worry, Liz isn't going to stop being a greedy enabler any time soon. I hope you enjoyed the show!
A little coda fic I wrote and forgot to link here: Arthur'a ring