(Untitled)

[paisleythief]

Eames is usually one to be asleep at this time. Its too damn late to be considered early and its too damn early to figure out if the reciprocal makes sense. For a moment he wonders if Mal is traipsing through dreams again, or if someone's meddling with the circadian rhythms of the house, but he doesn't hear anyone moving about upstairs and it doesn

Comments

[byextension]

Tilting his head from one side to the other, Arthur blinks back some tension, a strain running up his right shoulder that he hadn't noticed earlier.

"Why? Another boarder?" he asks, regarding the dreaming. He knows that sometimes it's just natural waking but that other times it's true that an errant telepathic thought can drive a sharp end to someone else's dormancy - usually a new one. Arthur could as soon call them students; that's what Dom calls them, and really it's more accurate in that they needn't pay for their stays here, but Arthur chooses this word because it entails the aspect of the experience that he thinks is more important - that they sleep and eat and dream here, live here.

Learning is the foremost reason to be here, but it's not the only one and it doesn't take looking at mutant-types to know that much. Taking a deeper breath, he considers his shirt before just slinging it over his shoulder, and pressing his lips thin, pulling at his hands absently as if to kick feeling back into them where they're a little numb from gripping the equipment too tightly.

[paisleythief]

Eames shakes his head, eyeing the arc Arthur's shirt makes as he flicks it over his shoulder. If he were still trying to taunt the powers out of the other man, he'd make a comment or leer a bit more openly, but-- clad in his sleeveless white shirt and baggy old sweats, Eames figures now is hardly the time.

"Not that I can tell. Or if it is," Eames clarifies, because Arthur has a way of desiring the infuriatingly specific. "They certainly didn't leave that impression. I'm sure Dom would be stomping around the grounds in that terrycloth robe of his if there were someone new approaching."

Noting the distinct lack of another presence moving about in the house (the cold stairs, the stillness of the kitchen-- the little signs of life a body leaves behind when its passed through a place) Eames glances around the gym. It seems to be just the two of them, which answers one question but brings to mind a more pertinent one. "Am I to assume our dearest Mallorie has finally drifted off into dreams of her own?"

The way he says it makes it clear he doesn't believe this to be the case.

[byextension]

Mention of Dom makes Arthur smile briefly, his mouth quirking upward at both sides with the flash of dimples that say he's genuinely amused at the mental picture. The terrycloth robe really is awful, Arthur thinks and a little ridiculous - very fatherly looking he supposes and then backs away from that parallel as quickly as he comes to it. He shouldn't make that kind of connection where it doesn't belong. Mention of Mallorie is enough to distract and it's easy to shift his focus, though this one comes with the flattening of his mouth - neutralizing again, more severe as he ducks his head as though looking at something on the floor; he's not.

"No, but," he barely keeps himself from outright frowning - the discipline of learning how to not really show anything, especially when one determines it's the easiest way to not be noticed. "No," he repeats. "She's not."

But sometimes she wants to be on her own, even like this, Arthur thinks and it's not personal; he knows she cares about him, but it's true he tries to come here and work - to keep moving - so that he doesn't have to think about it - about Mal, sitting alone and half haunted by everyone else's thoughts because tonight is one of those windows where Dom sleeps to keep himself sane rather than staying up so as to help Mal sleep. It makes sense and they understand each other and the arrangement but Arthur sometimes wonders if there isn't something else to be done for it.

Not that he knows enough about it to make those kinds of suggestions.

He lives here but he's never really been a part of it, save for his sometimes-dabbling in the technology labs, tinkering with someday-mechanisms that might not even work. He's good with machines, not very good with people, and a question mark every time Eames is in the vicinity. Eames unnerves him and he doesn't know why but Eames also impresses him - as do all mutants. And though he'd never admit it - consciously even to himself - sometimes Arthur wishes he was one.

Just to fit that much better in this place.

Absently, one of his hands keeps kneading the end of his shirt over the front of his torso, like he's trying to work the moisture out of it for no apparent reason, or drying his hand. He's not. It's a nervous tic even if he doesn't know that he's doing it.

[paisleythief]

Where the Cobb's get the funding required to run such an expansive facility is anyone's guess. Eames has seen several people pass through the halls with that dewy look of nostalgia usually reserved for alumni and homesick, would-be adults. From his conversations with the other man, Eames figures they must have made a pretty penny from their academic pursuits-- before Mallorie's power spiked and put her in a dangerous spot. The humanitarian in Dom had left Stanford to help his darling wife and, somewhere along the way, gathered this rag tag little family together.

It was hard not to feel included when in the Cobb's presence. How they included you could vary on a wide spectrum-- Mallorie with those eyes of hers and Cobb, the fire of a man with a passion for knowledge and little else-- but perhaps that's why they worked together so well. Otherwise known, in Eames' book, as why people came back with checkbooks and eager pens. It wasn't Dom's cooking, that much was certain.

Arthur, usually a study in subtlety, is somehow sharper in the quiet of the night. During the day he's... not so much dulled as he is simply tuned down a notch, more withdrawn, curled up inside his own head as if he could ignore the body attached. Dom's never said as much, but he knows the other man finds something fascinating about the boy-- he's not a bleeding heart, and he wouldn't take the other in if he didn't see a payoff for the action in the foreseeable future. Or, if someone with a more reliable insight into the matter hadn't tipped him off to that bit of information. Eames can see from Dom's stance- Arthur has fixed countless things and seems to have a real knack with those hands of his- but Eames' interest in the boy comes from a different angle.

Much the same angle his neck takes when he ducks his head, searching the floor for answers or words-- neither of which he will find.

"You worry about her." Eames points out, mostly because its true, but also because he's still learning Arthur's reactions to these statements. The ones that anyone should be able to take in stride but seem to pull response after response from the other.

[byextension]

"A lot of people do," he deflects and not subtly; he knows he's no good at this, but it's true that more than a few people make moon eyes about and concerning Mal, all of them harmless, all of them concerned for her. No reason for Arthur to be different except for that whole part where he is; she favors him and everyone knows that too even if no one - including Arthur - knows why. Vaguely he recalls once being told that he had a shut-off way about him that either made people want to discard him right away or try to fix him, and that these were the only parts of him that stood out. He's not certain he agrees. Neither of those qualities seems like it would stick out to begin with, in his opinion, and Mal doesn't seem the kind of person to want to fix things so much as explore and push them - which reminds him again of Dom and perhaps why he and Mal are so integral with each other. Arthur can't understand it but he can see it, and that's enough.

Dom helps and loves Mal. Mal inspires and drives Dom. They synthesize.

Sometimes Arthur looks into Dom's eyes and sees Mal's, and vice-versa. It's strange, disconcerting, and heartening all at once in ways he could never identify or explain - given one life time or ten.

His cheeks hollow out with another breath as he turns himself, bracing his hand absently on the handle of the cycle nearest to him to finish the torquing of his back, the audible cracks running in a popping fashion through the air more gratifying than the feel of it. Then he looks over at Eames again, pausing as if he might say something before looking away, walking past him. He's close enough that given a millimeter of angle their arms would brush; they don't, and when he gets to the doorway leading back into the hall he stops.

"You staying?" he prompts, hand on the light-switch, the line of his shoulders stiff. It's not quite an invitation to follow...but it's not not one either. Eames unsettles him, yes, but because Arthur can't pinpoint why he decides it's unreasonable. If he's going to be awake, it's not a terrible thing to have company; it's just that Arthur knows he doesn't make very good company himself, so he rarely leaves that option open. It probably says something - subconsciously - that he leaves it open regarding Eames.