Imaginary, Part III
Eames utilizes the airport hotel for a quick shower and a change into his maroon Victor & Rolf suit - it’s been a red week, ok, he’s not making any excuses. After which he’s got a good three hours to kill until he’s due for the first meeting for the job at a warehouse to the south of Barcelona. The warehouse, to the best of his knowledge, used to belong to a company that dealt exclusively in the production and shipping of carousel horses, and has been empty for some 16 months. At least, Eames dares to hope, the décor will be more interesting than what he usually has to put up with.
Now the question remains what to do in the next three hours. Well, ladies and gents, Eames thinks in his best circus ringleader voice, which happens to be based off of an old forgery of his and is hence very excellent. On the one hand, I could stay in my room watching the telly and sighing wistfully over love lost. Love that had never been real in the first place. Maybe he should paint his nails. Maybe he could watch Twilight.
Or he could go outside into the beautiful Spanish sunshine, and explore Barcelona. Again.
Because even when he is being a pathetic git Eames likes to be the least pathetic git he can be, Eames chooses the latter option. The Torre de Collserola has always been one of his favourite Barcelona haunts, right up there with the Casino de Barcelona, and at the top of the tall glass tower, Eames feels like for the first time in a long time he can relax.
When one works as he does in the dreamscape business, one almost inevitably develops an appreciation for architecture. Eames has read the books, done the drawings, picked and chose between eras for looks he likes best, and he has already told several people in the business that he sees no problem with the ‘70s, mostly to see their faces twitch. He knows the difference between a frieze and a fresco, is what he’s saying, but still there’s something entirely different about a city spread out like a map in 3D, like a maze. He likes seeing where the symmetry of civilization meets the curves of Nature’s rivers and hills and vice versa, and especially he likes seeing them merge together into a category entirely its own, which is why Venice will to him always be the most beautiful city in the world. Eames has built entire worlds in the dreamscape based on Venice.
It’s when he’s looked his fill, drunk Barcelona in through his eyes like some long-lost vintage, heady with height, that the feeling closes over his head. He’s turning toward the elevator, sweeping his eyes cursorily over the crowd - a couple fighting (she’s cheating on him), tourists with their fanny packs pretending to be more interested than they actually are, a group of suits having a business discussion disguised as an outing, boring, boring, boring - when a flash of dark hair stops him short.
He can’t say why. He only caught a glimpse from the back with a wall of people between them, couldn’t even say if it was a woman or man he saw, but there was something about the stance, the complete suppression of body language. It was like a blind designed specifically for him. Point towards any person in the crowded observatory, and without even trying he could tell you at least one or two things about them: occupation, what kind of books they read if at all, what they considered most important in life. Within ten minutes he could copycat their nervous ticks for you, walk with their stride and talk with their inflections, if not their voices. It’s his job to notice those things, has always been second nature and so to be presented with this - it’s like a black hole in his consciousness, a complete mystery where Eames had never thought he’d find one.
Real life doesn’t present you with challenges like that. He fumbles his token out of his pocket, spins it around his knuckles. When he looks back up, the dark head is gone.
Damn.
Eames is still completely preoccupied when he makes it to the warehouse, although in all fairness the decrepit building gives his mysterious stranger a good run for his - or her - money. His employer had mentioned it had been used to house carousel horses. What he’d failed to mention was that they were still there, small wooden models in increasingly kitschy colours all over the place, making it look like the squat building had been overrun by My Little Ponies. Eames laughs himself hoarse - no pun intended - and, once he’s finally regained control of himself, settles himself onto a particularly garish example, sitting side-saddle and regarding his team primly over steepled fingers. His employer, who for some reason has taken it into his head that he’s needed here, looks like he’s beginning to regret employing him already. The ducklings seem no less disconcerted. Gods, they really are wet behind the ears, all in their early twenties is he’s any judge. So he winks at them. “Don’t worry about it. All extractors go a bit funny in the head with time,” he confides in a stage whisper. That was maybe a little unkind of him, but it’s worth it to watch them turn green.
Then he frowns and counts noses. “Where’s the last one?” he asks, turning towards their employer.
“Oh, er … he’s going to be late, he’s running down some leads,” the man says, still flustered. Eames nods, and determines to completely dismiss him from his mind. If he has such little control over himself, there’s no chance he’ll be able to keep the extractors - who, after all, get to play god in their dreams - in line. Eames’ job, then. Brilliant. He gets to hold hands and wipe noses for two duckies just barely out of grad school, plus the errant one, wherever he is.
“Alright. You,” he say, pointing to the one on the left, who has blond hair in a preppy ponytail and truly enormous glasses. “What do you do?”
“Architect. And my name’s Tiff, by the way. Tiffany.” She looks him directly in the eye. Good for her.
“Is it? Get used to using another one. You?”
The other girl has a chin that looks like she could carve granite with it, although in her case he’s guessing looks are deceiving. “Extractor. Diana.”
“Excellent,” he says, and not even that sarcastically. “You can call me Eames. It’s our point man that’s missing, then?”
“Not anymore,” a voice calls from behind him.
Eames looks over his shoulder, ready with a cutting remark for the late arrival. The words shrivel and die in his throat. First he sees the suit, which looks quite frankly edible; then he recognizes the dark head. It’s his mystery from that afternoon, and he can see now that he was right about not being able to read him. The man makes up for his absolute lack of tells with his presence, because by the set of his shoulders and the dismissive tilt of his head he is completely comfortable in the space he occupies, and even more indifferent as to where that space is. It’s the attitude of a long-time dreamer, something Eames has only seen in the best, those who have either mastered the dream completely or fallen victim to it. Cobb holds himself like that, as do a few others, but even when they’re not entirely there, Eames can read them. Mostly what they feel is longing - for the dream, for the absolute certainty of what is or is not reality. This man is not like that.
That’s all peripheral, though, because this is not just any man.
It’s Arthur.
So, self, Eames thinks, any suggestions for what to do if, speaking hypothetically, your lifelong crush who by the way does not actually exist turns up in your real life? Fortunately, his subconscious is happy to oblige with an answer, and he’s double-checked his poker chip twice before he’s even aware he took it out of his pocket. This is definitely reality. Eames feels sick.
He risks another glimpse at Arthur - Arthur, who looks older now, somehow exactly like he’d imagined and nothing like it, and so much like he did at ten, and fifteen.
Eames should have known that Arthur would grow up to be devastatingly sexy. He really, really should have guessed. But Eames had spent a lot of time telling himself he wasn’t thinking about Arthur, never let himself look for him in anything more than the slenderness of someone else’s fingers, the set of someone else’s shoulders, the curve of someone else’s hair. It was only in moments of weakness that he let himself imagine Arthur getting older as he was, and with time the mental image turned into a collage of those scraps of Arthur he had found in other people. And yes, Arthur does still have a slender build, and yes, his eyes and cheeks aren’t as round as they used to be; but somehow Arthur is so much more than the sum of all the parts Eames has been collecting like someone with a guilty scrapbook. He’s beautiful. He’s even more of an enigma in real life than he was in Eames’ childhood dreams.
He’s looking at Eames like he’s cracked in the head.
What Eames wants to do is touch Arthur, not even sexually - ok, yes he does, quite a lot actually - but just to see that he’s real. He wants another fistfight, for old times’ sake. He wants to apologize for kissing him without asking. He wants to do it again. He wants to tell Arthur he’s in love with him, because the confession is more than a decade overdue and Eames is getting really fucking tired of holding his tongue. He wants to tell him he’s missed him. He wants Arthur to tell him the same.
But because Eames has learned the hard way not to pin his hopes on a fantasy, what he does instead is lean back on his painted wooden horse (he can’t really complain of a lack of dramatic setting), look Arthur very deliberately up and down, and say, “Darling, you look positively delicious.”
Arthur’s shield of impassivity cracks, and Eames is childishly delighted to see him look so absolutely contemptuous. “My name is Arthur,” he says coldly, bypassing the elephant in the carousel warehouse.
Eames will never call him by his name.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, though believe me when I say it could be even more pleasurable, for both of us. I’m Eames.” He absolutely does not check to see whether Arthur registers surprise at the name.
Having said that, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be called “Peter” again anytime soon.
( part 4)