(no subject)
At Home in The Sea
~20k
PG
Notes: this is my help_japan fic for terribilita! I'm sorry it is so late :x Eternal thanks to figletofvenice, bauble, and ifeelbetter for beta-ing and being v. rational in the face of e-mails such as "WHAT AM I WRITING" and "HA HA HA HA HA WHAT ARE WORDS". They are the best, this is a fact.
I.
Eames's freelancing terms are as follows: Will only accept jobs from Dom Cobb or jobs that come through Dom Cobb. Team maximum is four. Pay 100% upfront. Everyone must already be under before he'll hook in. He gets to back out at any time if he sees fit to do so.
The list of demands is ridiculous, of course, and he acknowledges that. Hell, he might as well ask for seventeen mermaid companions and a comb made out of Satan's teeth. More than a handful of people have told him to fuck off. But the fun part -- for Eames, at least -- is that he has all the negotiating power. More than a handful of people have told him to fuck off before coming back and accepting the terms, like the world's most begrudging boomerangs. He likes to think he's passing on the hard-earned wisdom of the physical boundaries of dreaming, but the truth is that he mostly likes the paycheck.
Of course, there's always the nagging fear that he's orchestrating his own coup, but considering the low percentage of successful forgeries, at this point, it's like he's getting paid to train people how to fail. He couldn't think of any better arrangement.
Probably the single factor that eases the sting of such an unfair transaction is that Cobb is a well-known public figure in dreamshare, in as much as dreamshare has public figures. People trust him, and he trusts Eames. If Cobb weren't such an earnest bastard, then Eames would give him a hefty cut. As it is, Cobb is quite the earnest bastard, and Eames has only offered once.
He drops into the dream as a tall, almost willowy man about ten years his senior, with silvery hair and eyes to match. The narrow face borders on severe. He's made enough mistakes from when he was first becoming acquainted with less-than-legal activities and now, for the moment, anonymity is something he relishes. People don't know what's coming if they don't know what to look for.
The dream is in the exact same closet of a storage room everyone is sleeping in topside, save for the rolled-up curtain door and the sunlight that streams in. "Is this it?" he asks, unbuttoning the double-breasted jacket and shaking out his cuffs. The words come out several semitones higher than normal, but he doesn't bother to drop the accent.
"Yeah," says Cobb, staring hard at Eames with his chin tilted up. It looks like appraisal, but mostly he's trying not to laugh. "Yeah, hey, nice to see you," he picks up again as he walks toward Eames. "Been a while, hasn't it?"
They shake hands. Eames even briefly clasps his free hand around Cobb's forearm, for show. When they release, he looks around at the rest of the group: a dark haired woman slouching in a desk chair, legs crossed. A bald man in cargo shorts up against the wall behind her, and another man in slacks, with a straight back and hands in his pockets.
"So." Eames opens his arms. "Welcome to a crash course in dream forgery."
*
There's Payal, the chemist. Patrick, the architect. Arthur, the point man. All of them speak with a faintly formal air, deferring to Eames's apparent age. In all the sessions that Eames has led, no one ever even suspected that Eames wasn't actually who he looked like. The mind takes things at face-value far too often, even while being aware of all the fantastic possibilities of dreaming. Sometimes it simply isn't wired to bridge certain gaps.
Cobb stands around and chaperones as Eames begins to walk everyone through the basics. Boring, routine stuff, and the only stand out in the bunch is Arthur, simply because his ratio of effort-to-results is comically high.
"Shit," Arthur says with his own mouth, but his eyes are two different colors and the brow ridge is heavy enough to belong to australopithecus.
Payal has to lean against the wall and laugh herself hoarse. "He said 'blue eyes', not 'half-blind caveman'," she finally gasps, but her attempts at blonde hair go just as badly, and then it's the troubleshooting portion of the session. Equally as boring and routine, but at least people find unique ways to muck it all up.
"You're expecting to see your own hair, is the problem. Not consciously, of course, I know you're not doing it on purpose," Eames adds when Payal opens her mouth to deny it. "But on some root level, you know what you really look like. Try to let go of that, however briefly."
Payal catches it for about five seconds, hair like sunburned flaxseeds. "Cool," she says, beaming. Eames gives her a reserved smile in return.
"Any other nuggets of wisdom?" Arthur butts in, still looking like a gussied up swamp creature with a face full of bee stings, and a disgruntled one at that.
Eames doesn’t tell Arthur about the first time he forged, how none of his fingers matched, how his hair resembled a patchwork quilt of varying colors. The thing that no one wants to hear is that their first few dozen forgeries will look cheap, like Halloween costumes, and they'll probably be used just as often.
Instead he smirks at him and says, "Practice makes perfect. If all else fails, you could always slap on one of those charming Groucho Marx disguises."
"Forging is hardly worth the trouble, don't you think?" says Patrick. He hastily adds, "No offense intended. I'm just wondering how often you get a chance to use your skills -- I imagine they would have taken you a long time to perfect."
Surprisingly, Arthur is the one who cuts in: "Forgery is either superfluous or vital to extraction," he recites, as if reading from a textbook. "You want a simple smash-and-grab, you want a minimum number of people. But our mark grew up in a town with a population of 400, and she had her honeymoon at a hotel within city limits. That narrows projections and familiar faces down to a very small scope."
"Which means that the dream manipulation needs to be more tightly woven," Cobb picks up smoothly. "And that's why Boone is here."
Boone is apparently Cobb's made-up name for Eames. Eames fears for his future children. "No offense taken, Patrick," Eames says breezily. "And you're correct. I could have chosen another masochistic hobby that's much less time-consuming."
He lifts his shoulders in a subtle, dignified shrug. "Then again, every standard deck of cards has a joker or two, and they tend to come in handy every once in a while."
*
Arthur keeps flicking him these short glances for the rest of the week, almost like he can't help himself. By the last day before the job is scheduled, Payal and Patrick can cobble together a passable imitation of a couple that the mark met years ago on her honeymoon, while Arthur can cobble together a passable imitation of a human face that's not his own.
"But just barely," Eames says to Cobb. "Make sure he's in the background. The far background. Or perhaps you could mold the dream to him, some kind of mythical theme where the presence of a cyclops would be unremarkable."
Cobb raises his eyebrows. "Sure," is all he says before changing the subject. "So, how would you rate your teaching success? Do you think I'll have to come up with backup plans?"
Maybe Eames should cut ties with him, if he knows him well enough to correctly interpret his insults as something other than. "Most likely no need," he answers. "It'll be a three-minute conversation at most. And the honeymoon was over a decade ago, her subconscious should attribute natural aging to any discrepancies in their appearance."
Cobb nods. "You're right. Yeah, I guess that's all, then. Thanks for doing this on short notice."
Eames shakes out his cuffs and smooths a hand over his hair. "Any time, dear boy," he says.
"Maybe I will take that cut you offered me," Cobb says.
"Offer's off the table," Eames says over his shoulder as he strolls out toward the sun.
"Boone," Arthur calls, and Eames waits until he catches up. The accompanying smile is small, not quite conspiratorial but not quite overly chummy, either. It's Arthur encapsulated into a single expression, going by what Eames has gleaned over the past week.
"So you're not going to show us?" Arthur asks.
Eames blinks. "I'm sorry?"
Arthur studies him carefully. Finally, he says, "I figured your forgery would slip at some point, but it hasn't. So. Now I'm asking."
"Oh, you think -- " Eames lets his hand float halfway up to his face, an absent-minded gesture to fight the inexplicable urge to smile. "I'm flattered, but I'm afraid you're letting your imagination get the best of you." He pretends to rethink his words. "Or perhaps it's paranoia? One of the undocumented side effects of extended Somnacin use, you know."
"Side effects that only occurred in people who had their names on a hit list before any kind of Somnacin exposure," Arthur parries. But he nods and says, "Alright. Just thought I'd ask anyway."
If he was wheedling and coy about it, maybe it'd be a different story. As it is, Eames says, "I'm horribly scarred. Childhood accident," which is as good a confirmation as any. "Do refrain from trying to uncover the mystery. Think of it as a masked ball, if that helps," he says brightly. "Maybe you could pop out for a bit and purchase the Groucho Marx disguise I suggested."
Arthur smiles again, and this time it's the kind that could easily make someone forget about the circumstances -- namely that he's a mind criminal of high caliber and could probably twist Eames's fingers into pretzels. While the job of a forger is to read people, the job of a point man is to know people and to have the capability to take them apart. Most point men Eames knows have risen from the ashes of some behind-the-scenes person, the puppetmaster behind the curtain. (Though, he once knew a point man who was a former accountant. He didn't last very long.)
Arthur's curiosity is understandable, though. Hiding anything in a dream -- appearances and otherwise -- for a lengthy amount of time is nearly impossible. In most cases.
"He doesn't have that much to hide, anyway. Don't waste your energy," Cobb advises just as music begins floating through at a soft volume.
"And that's my cue. It's been a pleasure." Eames nods to everyone. The last thing he sees before he wakes up is Arthur's small smile and slightly narrowed eyes, the stance of someone who's just accepted a challenge.
*
Even in the dead of winter, Nash looks like he's freshly emerged from a sauna soak of steam and aerated amphetamines. His eyes are constantly flitting around the bar, and the ends of his hair curl damply as he swallows a beer down. Second-hand anxiety usually drags through Eames whenever he's around, but Nash has connections and is one of the few people in dreamshare whom Eames meets with on a semi-regular basis.
He tells Eames about the vague talk regarding counteractive measures for extraction, something about training projections to keep intruders out; a crude, spray-and-pray kind of deal that should be effective nonetheless. Eames mostly saves 'crude' for last minute escapes and patch-up jobs in real life. He doesn't appreciate it in dreams, simply because he doesn't like to leave a trail, let alone blaze a warpath across someone's consciousness.
"You're breaking into minds, Eames, I really don't think that leaves room for scruples," Nash laughs.
Eames waves him off. "That's too black and white. Try to think outside of the box every once in a while, yeah?"
Nash pretends to swing his beer bottle at Eames. "So hey, where've you been?" he asks. "I got in a couple days ago and you weren't around."
"Tokyo," Eames says vaguely. "Short stint, you couldn't have missed me for long."
"Shibuya?" Nash presses, and it's either a miraculous guess or --
Eames leans a fraction closer. "Do tell, Nash."
"Nah," Nash says a bit incongruously. He shrugs. "I mean, someone might be looking for you. People've been asking where you are. I figured it had something to do with Cobb, but then I also figured that he'd call you himself if that was the case." He shrugs again. "I thought maybe you should know."
Details have never been Nash's strong suit, but information comes as readily as ice melting into water, and just as helplessly, too.
"You think it's something bad?" Nash asks in an oddly innocent tone. "Because if it's something bad, man, then maybe you shouldn't be hanging out here for too long, you know?"
"Cheers," Eames eventually says after he finishes off his drink in one long pull. "I owe you one."
"You owe me a lot," Nash corrects. "Several a lots."
"We'll discuss the specifics later." Eames claps him on the shoulder and maneuvers out of the bar.
Shanghai is seeing the day's peak in foot traffic, which means that Eames blends in as one of millions of commuters rushing across sidewalks and through subway stations. Making a stop at the flat is risky, but he doesn't have anything on him except for 300 yuan and a tiny package for a tiny diorama that he purchased out of sheer curiosity. It's hardly any money and he doubts he can fashion a weapon out of minuscule pieces of cardboard, and so he bangs into the flat to collect a small rucksack of essentials.
When he opens the door again, Arthur is standing in the hallway as if having materialized solely from the intensity of Eames's dread.
"Hi," says Arthur. Arthur with that flat American accent and almost incongruously deep voice, Arthur with those sure hands, Arthur who had been so curious.
"Hello. Who are you looking for?" Eames asks with a bland pleasantness. He doesn't expect to deter Arthur so easily, but figures it's worth a try.
"I can't say you were easy to find, Mr. Eames," says Arthur. "You're very good at this, I'll give you that much."
"Excuse me?" is all Eames says.
"Cut the shit."
Eames smiles politely. "I'm sorry, but if you continue you to be belligerent, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Or else I'll be forced to call the authorities."
He moves away from the door slowly, but slams it shut the last few centimeters. Or, he tries to; it glances off Arthur's shoe instead.
"Ow," he yells. Eames fervently hopes he broke a toe or two.
When Arthur pushes the door open again, Eames grabs a small vase from the adjacent shelf and swings it at Arthur, who manages to block it with a well-placed elbow. As it shatters, his other hand connects with Eames's jaw with the sharp sound of bones against skin. Eames stumbles to the side, then bears his weight on that leg and swing-kicks Arthur back out and into the opposite wall of the hallway.
Arthur is fast, though -- Eames barely has time to straighten up before Arthur's coming at him again, jabbing at Eames's nose with two upward snaps of his arm. He makes contact both times, tempering the force just short of breaking it.
"Bugger this," Eames announces stuffily, before leaning down a little and driving his shoulder against Arthur's chest. The aim is a bit off, seeing as how his center of gravity is still freewheeling, but he hears a satisfying breath being punched out anyway.
Then he wraps his arms around Arthur's waist, lifts him bodily, and drops him onto the ground, back first. "Now," Eames pants, "who are you looking for?"
"Some paranoid asshole who beats up people trying to offer him a job," Arthur wheezes. He continues to struggle.
"Submit," Eames pushes.
"Fight back," Arthur counters. "Christ, I can't breathe, get off me."
For some reason, Eames's body shifts before he even realizes it. A millisecond later, he curses silently as he hears something he'd recognize anywhere. When he directs his gaze downward, Arthur is, as expected, pointing a gun right at Eames's crotch with the safety off.
"Ah," says Eames.
"Yeah," Arthur agrees. He's wheezing a lot less now, the little shit, and his eyes are clear while he very obviously sizes Eames up. Probably reconstructing whatever he had thought of Eames in the first place, and committing his real facial features to memory alongside a handful of derogatory commentary.
"Mr. Eames," Arthur says, and Eames flinches when the gun prods at him. "Would you like this job or not?"
"Well, I had to make you work for it somehow," Eames declares. When blood from his lip drips onto Arthur's hand, Eames wipes it off with the heel of his palm. As confessions go, it's a neat one, succinct.
Judging by the fleeting smile, Arthur appreciates this.
*
The next time his phone rings with a freelancing offer, it's not Cobb on the other end. It's Arthur.
*
II.
Eames is in a horrible sports bar, hands wrapped around a hoagie and dutifully facing the hanging flat-screen like the rest of the patrons, when his phone starts ringing and he gets grease all over his trousers trying to fish it out.
"Yeah," Eames says loudly, shoving the phone between his shoulder and ear while reclaiming custody of the hoagie.
"Hey. It's Cobb."
"How did you get this number?" Eames asks with his mouth full, mostly because Cobb hates people chewing with their mouth open.
"Arthur," says Cobb.
"How irksome."
"Because you'll have to change the number again?"
"Because by now I'm realizing that Arthur sticks to you worse than a bad case of the clap," Eames proclaims. "Alright, what is it this time?"
Cobb starts going off about something or other, hatching a plan mostly by talking out loud to himself, and Eames finds his thoughts drifting back to Arthur. Arthur keeping tabs on him isn't new, but it's the first time he's given such information to anyone else. This implication of something resembling partnership is a surprise, because drawing out any kind of identifiable loyalty from Arthur is like coaxing music out of a violin. Press too hard and you kill the sound; play too lightly and nothing but horrible whispers come out.
But what does Eames know. He played violin for a few months in primary school, then bleeted at the trombone for a while until it stood in as a weapon during an unexpected fist fight and he tried to strangle the other boy with the loop.
He drinks two more pints and leaves this story in voicemail form on Arthur's phone, because Cobb is strangely kneadable sometimes and spills Arthur's number after only a few passive-aggressive hints.
*
Arthur always finds him, is the thing. Even that month where Eames's main residence was on a fairly disreputable cruise liner that docked in the dreariest of ports, Arthur fucking found him. Maybe the 'disreputable' part had tipped him off.
He's like a thorny arse ache that Eames has to bear. When Eames agrees to jobs with most other extractors, he comes out uninjured, sane, and with enough money to purchase said disreputable cruise liner. When he agrees to jobs with Arthur, he more often than not gets killed within the dream, burns through an intense flood of adrenaline that can't be healthy, and lies awake at night as architectural paradoxes parade around in his head on loop. If he were any other greedy criminal with an overinflated sense of self-preservation, he'd be living on his own island by now, guilt-free. But, as it is, he's a greedy criminal with an overinflated sense of self-preservation who also gets bored very, very easily. He might even look forward to that thrilling, almost crazed feeling of pulling off a successful job; to Arthur giving him that wide, unencumbered smile that seems novel every time Eames sees it.
Arthur says things like, "Listen, you little asshole," and, "Thanks, have a good one," and, "But if we can somehow take a shortcut -- not that this isn't a solid idea, because it is -- but with a shortcut that goes here, then maybe -- ", and, "Bless you," no matter how many times anyone sneezes.
To Eames, Arthur says things like, "I'm glad it's bleeding, that was for cutting and running with my contact," and, "Three extra packets of hot sauce, how are your taste buds still working," and, "Not to be rude, but that's pretty stupid," and, "Are you sure you've thought this through?"
"Just because I lack your educational pedigree doesn't mean I'm a caveman," Eames says after that last one, despite having no idea about Arthur's education. "I can even count to ten. Listen: one, two, three -- "
Then, after he's underestimated the fierceness of a placid octogenarian's subconscious and they've been ripped out of the dream by a tornado, Eames says, "Alright, that doesn't count."
"I told you she grew up in Tornado Alley. Why do you always mess up the easy ones?" Arthur huffs as they jog down the hallway and out of the building, but both of them know that it was just shit luck that caught them in its grip, nothing more, nothing less.
For some reason Arthur seems very reluctant to trust him without compunction, despite Eames having given no indication of falling short. No serious indication, in any case -- Eames may cross Arthur every now and again, but part of his skill set includes being able to char bridges without burning them completely.
Eames doesn't take it personally, though, because Arthur doesn't trust anyone completely. Even Cobb. He'll stand up for people, protect them, inform them, converse with them, make them laugh, but he rarely lets anyone give anything back. Eames suspects that it's his one loose thread to hang on to, a defense mechanism for if and when he gets burned.
In any case, Eames doesn't protest, and even encourages it a little -- masks such instances as flaws that he's at fault for and acts accordingly. This is what he gives Arthur, though he suspects it's a bit like trying to shove a square block into a 5-sided hole, all with a misguided eagerness that often seems bumbling rather than helpful.
If he's being honest, Arthur is still a bit of a blind spot, really; a scotoma in Eames's vision, and there's just something he isn't seeing, hanging around his periphery and dodging out of the way whenever Eames tries to grab at it.
*
He bounces around for a while. Passes a birthday blackout drunk, gets punched in the left kidney particularly hard, ends up at a strange winter solstice celebration, loses a toenail, grows it back, loses a pinkie nail, mourns its pitifully malformed replacement, and siphons money from a sloppy laundering scheme out of a corporation based out of Belgrade for the better part of a year before they even notice anything.
Because Arthur has impeccable timing, he calls just as Eames is reheating a television dinner and wondering where to go next.
"I need help," Arthur grumps.
"Go on," says Eames, no longer fazed by such a demanding greeting.
"I need to tranq someone from an unseen location, probably about a hundred yards away," Arthur clarifies. "Unless I can find a way into the building, in which case I'll need a sedative and a way out as well."
"Wouldn't do to get trapped once you're in," Eames agrees. "And what will you do with the hefty baggage?"
"It's a delayed release. He has three bodyguards everywhere he goes; if we want to go in undetected, it has to be timed for when he gets home. Can you help or not?"
Eames shovels a congealed chunk of mac and cheese into his mouth. "I'll be there with bells on, darling. Lose the tranq, we'll live on the wild side for this one."
They agree to catch the first flight out of their respective cities before hanging up. Naturally, when the phone rings again not ten minutes later, it's Corbitt, asking for some help in lifting a prototype of some drug or other.
"Can't, I'm afraid," Eames says. "I've just agreed to lend my expertise to another person in need."
"Who?" Corbitt demands, because he's the type to take a simple first-come-first-serve policy as a personal affront.
"Arthur."
"Arthur," Corbitt repeats. "Arthur asked for help."
"Yes?" Eames confirms as he starts rooting around the flat for his wallet and passport.
"Arthur asked you for help." Corbitt snorts. "Either he's pulling one over on you, or it's part of a plan to lure you to a place where you definitely don't want to be. You piss him off lately?"
Wallet's on top of the telly. Passport is somewhere not in plain sight. "Not that I can recall," Eames replies, distracted.
"Either way, it's your dumb risk. Call me if you change your mind."
Corbitt hangs up right as Eames locates the passport in one of his trouser pockets. He tosses the phone onto the bed and flips through the stamped pages to make sure there's nothing amiss. It's only afterward that he is able to rehash the conversation with full attention, but then he's running late for his flight and doesn't give it further thought.
*
Russia is horribly, stereotypically cold, like the whole country’s been dipped into a tank of liquid nitrogen. The address manifests itself as a lonely two-storey building made of unpainted concrete which, from the looks of it, has served as a punching bag of defacement for the general populace. There are scorch marks spiking up the walls, spray paint graffiti marring the windows, and holes left behind by bullet spray. It's all quite depressing. Eames glances at it pityingly through bare tree branches that cut up the view like a broken mirror.
"Corbitt thought it was quite amusing," Eames says, squinting and pulling his beanie down more snugly.
Arthur doesn't look up. "You have this horrible habit of starting out in the middle of a story, I don't know if you're aware of that."
"I live to make things difficult for everyone," Eames says. "You just happen to be included."
"Too bad your work is actually respectable. Otherwise I wouldn't associate with you at all," Arthur says. Jet-lag sends his personality down the toilet. "So. Corbitt thought it was amusing -- ?"
Eames watches carefully for any other reaction, but Arthur keeps sharpening his knife with long strokes instead.
"He thought it was amusing, that you'd asked for help," Eames says, then adds, "from me."
"Corbitt is a dumbass," Arthur says without looking at Eames. He puts the knife away and starts army-crawling toward the chain link fence, and that's the end of that, apparently.
They successfully sneak in and dose the target with a delayed release sedative in his coffee. However, they then get cornered by an unexpected guard change and the only possible exit is illuminated with a spotlight so enormous that it could double as Broadway stage.
"Really," Arthur says in a wooden voice, staring at the spotlight as if he'll be able to extinguish it with the power of an intense glare.
"Improvise," Eames says. "Come on, get in here."
He pulls Arthur into one of the many empty rooms lining the hallway. By the looks of it, it's a security control center -- lots of video feeds from inside the compound, as well as some exterior shots. They make quick work of it, with Arthur leaning over him to tap his finger against the monitors.
"East and south wings are off limits," Arthur says. "So is the second floor -- "
" -- unless you feel alright about jumping out a window," Eames interrupts.
"I'd rather avoid any potential broken bones, but it's an option," Arthur relents. And this is what Eames likes about working with Arthur: their ability to build off each other, skipping up a scaffolding of ideas and just as quickly knocking down whatever won't work.
They've narrowed it down to two possibilities when heavy footfalls start coming closer at a steady clip. Eames looks at Arthur, arms tensed for a fight, but Arthur touches his elbow in a silent message and he relaxes them instead. Not a second later, Arthur is flicking his eyes up to the large, utilitarian air duct running overhead.
Arthur, having the slight height advantage, wordlessly hops up onto the monitors, pops out the single panel with cross-hatching, and motions for Eames to get up. He has to briefly hug Arthur for balance, but Arthur laces his hands together and hoists him up into the vent like it's nothing. Eames scoots a little ways down before looking back and seeing only light shining into empty space.
"Arthur," he whispers, breaking the silence.
Then the panel gets tossed in, and Arthur is pulling himself up with ease. He somehow folds himself up to get the panel latched again. Eames holds his breath as Arthur moves in beside him, praying that the vent won't collapse; they align their hips onto a row of rivets to hopefully hold the weight better.
And they wait.
Someone enters the room and starts fiddling around with the computers. There's a flash of static from a walkie-talkie, as well as some muted Russian. Some banging, and then an extended conversation over the walkies. When two more sets of footsteps enter the room, Eames starts cursing up a storm in his head. If he tries to crane his neck up, the back of his skull presses against metal. If he tries to look down, Arthur's nose gets mashed against his forehead.
Uncharacteristically, it's Arthur who shifts abruptly, something akin to a hypnic jerk. Eames snaps his head back up and tries to silently communicate the threat of disembowelment if Arthur makes any kind of noise, but Arthur looks almost nauseated, like he's on the verge of some kind of panic attack.
Alarm bells start clanging in Eames's head. Without thinking, he takes Arthur's hand and squeezes it so hard that he almost feel Arthur's knuckles pressing together. Arthur makes a tiny noise, but he doesn't move.
Three more walkie conversations and a long series of beeps later, Arthur still hasn't moved and Eames's legs have long since fallen asleep. He can't even feel where Arthur's knees are digging against his own anymore. There is sweat beading all over Arthur’s forehead; Eames stares at the largest one until it slides down, curving into the corner of Arthur's eye. Arthur blinks rapidly, breathing in a strangely shallow rhythm that makes Eames nervous to listen to.
He's been in closer quarters with people before -- hell, he's been buried alive with someone before, and good thing she had a thigh holster with multiple weapons -- and it's never triggered anything more than a deep annoyance and a step-by-step plan of precisely how he's going to exact his revenge. But now he's practically humming with suppressed adrenaline, every sensory point on his skin flickering to life like lights on a city grid.
There's a series of rustling noises, and then the sound of a chair rolling a short distance. Eames holds his breath as he listens to whoever it is walk around. Unmistakably, a door creaks open and the footsteps continue on.
Eames holds up two fingers. Arthur opens his eyes and nods.
The remaining two men leave within the next minute. Even after the noises fade, they still wait, just to make sure. It’s only when Eames finally relaxes the tiniest bit that he realizes how cramped his body is, strung tight from toes to fingers. Arthur now has his eyes closed again -- Eames can see it through the thin haze of light that filters through the cross-hatched panel. His lips are a straight, pale line, and he looks like he’s barely breathing.
Instinctively, Eames touches his fingers to Arthur's chest. The only reaction is that Arthur’s eyelids tremble the tiniest bit.
"Breathe," Eames tells him, in a hush of air. When Arthur squeezes his hand, he squeezes back out of instinct.
"How much longer do you think," Eames murmurs, and in the absence of immediate danger, his body is slowly processing the physics of their current situation, and how closely they're stretched out beside each other. He imagines his breath condensing on the skin of Arthur’s cheek.
Eames actually hears Arthur’s throat working. "Few more minutes," Arthur whispers back. "Just to be safe."
Eames counts, slowly. When he gets to 250, he wordlessly straightens his leg and kicks out the paneling. Arthur doesn't even startle, just rolls out and onto the ground, landing on his feet but ending up on his hands and knees.
"Jesus Christ," Eames says. He goes to the door and scans both sides of the hallway to make sure they're clear.
When he turns back, Arthur is pale, still breathing shallowly, but on his feet. His lashes stand out against the pallor of his skin. Eames finds himself reaching out about halfway in an aborted movement.
"Steady there," Eames says instead. "What is it? Oxygen deprivation?"
"I’m claustrophobic," Arthur replies, as if he hasn’t spent the better part of an hour crammed into a metal coffin.
Suddenly, irrationally, Eames finds himself angry. He wants to shout at Arthur -- and for what, he has no idea, because it’s not like there had been any other options. Instead, he rubs at his mouth.
"You’re looking at me doubtfully," Arthur points out.
"You’re forgetting that I was recently crammed inside an air duct for who knows how long," Eames says. "I think this is simply the way my head tilts, now."
"Permanently inquisitive," Arthur reiterates.
"And how," Eames agrees.
The spike in emotion is still riding high. He can’t even look at Arthur, but at least now he can acknowledge that he’s angry because he’s worried. He’s fucking worried, for Christ’s sake. For this bastard who he’s seen die hundreds of deaths, who saved his life many times over but cocks a trigger and kills him without hesitation.
He concentrates on the monitors and finds their first choice escape route has now been vacated by the guard. "The garbage chute is open for business," he says shortly, and takes off through the hallway with Arthur on his heels.
Eames doesn't look back, and is about to swing himself into the chute when Arthur says, "We just pulled off a job despite incredibly shitty circumstances, and you’re, what, worried about me being claustrophobic? You almost got killed about twelve times in a span of two hours, and you’re pissed because I didn’t tell you about my aversion to small spaces? Really?"
His tone isn’t condescending. In fact, judging by the upturned corner of his mouth, he finds the whole thing endearing.
"Glad you're getting your wind back," Eames tells him, using sarcasm to hide anything else that may show through in his voice. "Now piss off. I'm trying to make a dashing escape here."
As Eames is swinging his legs in, Arthur catches him by the sleeve. "Eames," he says, a half-smile tugging at his lips, and his tone is such a strange mix of self-deprecating and hopeful that Eames finds himself wanting to smile back, wanting to reach out and rub his thumb along the shape of Arthur's mouth until it gives way. The desire is sharp, concentrated -- panic floods him for a brief moment, but at least that's something he's good at controlling.
"Arthur," he replies simply, but Arthur doesn't continue and they end up looking at each other as if playing a game to see who will blink first.
Eames folds his arms over his chest and falls down into the darkness, effectively forfeiting.
He realizes later that he was waiting for something in that moment. Maybe Arthur was, too.
*
III.
While Eames is in Mombasa, Arthur pays him a single, unexpected visit, announced only by the creak of the bedroom door. Once Eames has been very rudely kicked out of bed, Arthur stares down at him and says, "You stole it."
"Stole what?" Eames croaks, half his face still covered by the thin, woolly blanket. He's half-convinced this is a dream, but that warm bloom of recognition in his chest at the sight of Arthur, despite his glower, is all too real.
"The security codes. The security codes that took me two months to get, and you know it took that long because you were there the entire time."
"You're behaving as if you don't have ten backups. Now we can share the knowledge between each other," Eames says. "It'll bring us closer together. I feel more intimate with you already. May I brush my teeth before continuing this conversation?"
"It's not a conversation," Arthur counters. "It's me reaming you out for once again being a completely thoughtless jackass."
Eames reaches out of his blanket cocoon to scratch his nose. "That's not true. If I were completely thoughtless, I wouldn't have left enough evidence for you to instantly know that the codes being stolen was my doing. And then you'd be on a warpath with no one to direct the anger toward."
Finally, he sits up and squints at Arthur. "Aren't you glad, now?"
A second later, he's sprawled on the floor again with some unholy pain running through the right side of his body. Studying pressure points and unconventional methods of pain is one of Arthur's hobbies. Luckily Eames gives him many opportunities to put the theoretical study into practice.
"Fuck you," Arthur says. "What the hell did you do with them anyway? Who do I need to find and strangle? If you sold duplicates as well, I'll shoot out your good knee."
"Nothing. No one," Eames chokes out.
"What do you mean, 'nothing?'" Arthur asks after a pause. "What?"
The pain is beginning to subside and he sits up once more to find that Arthur is giving him a funny look. Then he mentally backtracks.
Arthur's right to be confused. Eames only ever steals things for personal gain, but this time he'd taken the codes to indulge some strange instinct to disrupt the product of Arthur's careful, time-consuming focus, to topple over his house of cards. If he's being completely honest, he doesn't think he was ever going to do anything with them at all.
Eames is now wide awake.
"Yet," he amends. Talking his way out of this corner is far more favorable than dwelling on why, exactly, he hadn't sold the codes. "Nothing yet. I was shopping around, as you do." He rubs his eyes. "Second drawer on the left. Bin is in the corner."
Arthur heads over to the roll-top desk and retrieves the codes. "You know," he says conversationally, procuring a fancy butane lighter out of his pocket and licking the flame along the edges of the envelope, "sometimes I wonder if it'd be easier to cut all ties and hand you over to the highest bidder."
"Well, of course it'd be easier, but it would also render life terribly dull," Eames says. "To wit: if you really did travel all this way to cause me bodily harm? You could have hired someone to do that."
"I could have gotten someone to pay me for the chance to cause you bodily harm," Arthur corrects. He drops the smoldering envelope into the bin and turns around. "That better be the only copy."
"When have I ever made backups of anything?"
"You make backups all the time," Arthur says, but he walks out into the hallway as Eames stands up, leaving the blanket as a puddle on the floor.
He peeks out the doorframe as he puts on a shirt. "Feel free to stay a while," he calls, and pauses when he notices something strange.
There's a duffel sitting on the floor next to the tiny nook of a kitchen. Upon closer inspection, it remains a duffel and not an illusion. Two things are evident: his sarcasm is also prescient, and this is going to be more than a day trip.
"I hope your sofa bed works," Arthur says from where he's standing by the window, peeking past the edge of the heavy linen curtain. He doesn't meet Eames's eyes, and this is about as awkward as Arthur ever gets. Dodging an explicit request for permission is probably as much for Eames's sake as Arthur's -- he has a feeling that this visit has some significance attached to it, but he's not sure if he's ready to delve into the reasons why.
"It's passable," Eames says carefully. "Though I take no responsibility for any slipped discs or sciatica."
Arthur lets the curtain fall back into place. He nods.
*
In New York, Arthur takes the subway, always standing, always with his right hand curled up around the overhanging bar; in Rome, Arthur zips about on a scooter, feet planted flat and neatly parallel. And in Mombasa, as it turns out, Arthur rides around on a bike. The one he procures has a seat that's peeling in patches of black, but the heels of his oxfords catch easily on the rusted pedals. Most of the time he heads out early and returns, with a damp shirt and disheveled hair, when the sun is tilting through the westerly window. Occasionally, there will be two canvas bags full of multicolored fruit hanging from the handlebars.
It's not so bad, really. In general, being in the same space as Arthur takes less effort and results in less psychosis than Eames had previously imagined -- though, when he first began to entertain such thoughts at all is a mystery.
They eat at irregular times, four to five meals a day. At night, Eames does pull-ups from the doorframe until cramps make it impossible. Then he holds his arms up into a cross and lets Arthur’s feet slap against his palms in an arrhythmic beat. He'd heard a story a few months back, about Arthur pulling off some ludicrous stunt involving a motorbike and a hairpin curve, his left kneecap being the only casualty. The injured leg is still slow, but it’s flexible enough.
"How about a challenge," Eames says one day, holding a hand high above his head. In response, Arthur drops down and does a neat leg sweep instead, leaving Eames on the carpet, blinking up at the ceiling.
Sometimes it still surprises him, the ways they’re alike.
A couple weeks after Arthur's sudden appearance -- Eames's best estimate, since keeping time in constant sweltering weather and no real routine proves to be difficult --, Arthur hears from Cobb, who's emerged from some shady black market dealings that Arthur would rather not even know about, judging by his end of the conversation.
"As sorry as I am to see you leave, this is the last time my flat will be offered up as a hotel," Eames calls out as Arthur packs his things.
He's sprawled on the sofa, absently reading an article about neurological diseases. Yusuf had sent it to him, complete with annotations and loads of underlined passages. Eames barely has a working knowledge of science, but considering that most of the people in Yusuf's life are effectively dead to the world, he feels a sympathetic obligation to take a stab at sharing his interests.
"No skin off my back," Arthur says, passing by with a stack of photos. "You're probably the worst host ever."
Eames idly listens to him rustle around some more, the sounds of his comings and goings familiar by now, and is snapped out of his reading only when something jostles his feet against each other.
"Hey," Arthur says, hand still curled into a loose fist. "Thanks."
"Cheers," says Eames.
The door clicks shut and he's left alone, face titled up toward the lazy ceiling fan. It spins silently.
One moment he's reading about anosognosia, and the next he's staring over the top of the paper again as he finds that he can't recall Arthur ever giving a reason for the visit. His assumption was that Arthur had gotten tangled up in something potentially dangerous and needed to wait for it to blow over, but upon second thought, doesn't remember him saying anything of the sort.
Falling for such a simple method of evasion should be embarrassing, but Eames spends a moment basking in that wry, begrudging respect that only Arthur can coax from him.
*
A month later, Cobb comes to find him.
"Inception," Cobb starts, and Eames thinks, Arthur.
*
IV.
To Eames, there are attainable goals, and there are pursuits best left abandoned. Jobs are usually easy to categorize, but this second go around at inception is straddling the line between the two. Eames fittingly feels as if he's stuck in purgatory, spending day after day mired in the planning stages.
Everyone raises their voices at least four times a day, Cobb throws a lot of things, and Ariadne makes it a point to storm out of the warehouse often enough for it to become commonplace. It should seem like a comedy, a farce, but all the pockets of time in between the extravagant gestures is what grounds it in reality -- Yusuf staring out a window while a solution thaws, Ariadne sitting small and quiet in a dark corner as she carves out the nuances in her totem, Arthur coming and going through the night, smelling like fresh cigarette smoke every time.
As far as housing goes, the warehouse gets a bit drafty at night, but the walls soak up heat from the summer sun, simmering under a slow burn that extends well into dark. Though they do have rooms at various bed-and-breakfasts about town, only Ariadne and Saito choose to spend nights elsewhere. Yusuf and Cobb are usually up til the wee hours, testing his new version of Somnacin, while Arthur and Eames use the time to tighten up whatever plan they've laid so far.
Eames gets used to blinking his eyes open only to realize that he's fallen asleep. He gets used to rolling over and seeing Arthur stretched out on his side, legs slightly bent at the knees.
*
Having confirmed -- and reconfirmed, and then reconfirmed again, much to Eames's delight -- Yusuf's assurance that the new variation of Somnacin would leave inner ear function intact, he sends them all in to a dream to make sure that the sedative will hold steady for three levels. On the first level, they leave Yusuf, who paces around the warehouse, and Ariadne, who is waving around a dremel tool.
"I think the physics check out," Yusuf announces. "Nothing seems sluggish or out of sorts."
"Yeah," Ariadne agrees. "This dremel tool still sucks. Mirrors real life pretty well."
On the second level, they leave Cobb moving around the now-empty warehouse in his own world, as he so often does these days.
"Looks good," he says simply, hands in his pockets. He glances up at the ceilings.
"Shall I replicate it a third time?" Eames asks.
Cobb gives him a faint smile. "Nah, have fun with it."
Arthur looks wary, but Eames dreams up a quiet, sunny beach. They each walk in opposite directions and end up right back where they started, which was the plan. One of the projections holds Arthur up, however; Eames stands at a distance and watches carefully, only exhaling when Arthur starts making his way toward Eames once more.
"Who was that?" Eames prods.
"A projection," Arthur answers. He curls his toes in the sand.
"How illuminating. Was he any more forthcoming than normal, or was he speaking in tongues? Anything out of the ordinary?" Eames doesn't realize that he's fishing until after it's already done.
"I don't know, you tell me. He was saying that he thought you felt bad about leaving him alone that morning in Tampa, and told me to reassure you that he didn't mind at all." Arthur pauses and looks up. "Residual guilt, or abnormally forthcoming?"
"Probably the former," Eames concludes. "Anyone would be sad to see me go."
"I'm sure," Arthur says dryly, but his eyes relax into a smile.
Music comes tearing through the idyllic scene. Some Yngwie Malmsteen monstrosity courtesy of Yusuf. Eames shifts his gaze to the bluffs overlooking the ocean.
"Ready for a small hike?" Arthur asks. He offers Eames another small smile before turning to lead the way.
*
The flight is due to leave in twelve hours. All of them have cleaned the warehouse out, kicking aside things that can be passed off as scraps and bagging everything else up to toss later on. The whole place reeks of bleach or carbolic acid and Eames's right hand is permanently molded into the shape of a scrubber handle.
He cracks his knuckles again and tries to relax. Twelve more hours.
"Third level," Arthur prompts.
"Third level," Eames repeats, staring up at the waterlogged ceiling. He cradles the back of his head with one hand, shifting around a bit to get more comfortable. They're coming up on thirty hours no sleep. "Third level, third level. Funny, that -- you're not even going to be on the third level."
"I still need to know what's going on," Arthur says, "and, more importantly, I need you to know what's going on. It's going to be kind of pointless if the dreamer has to stop and ask for directions."
"No need to get snippy," Eames says. "You honestly can't be that torn up about the fact that you'll be sitting cozy in a hotel while the rest of us parade around in snow suits and try not to get killed by avalanches."
"It'll be unstable," Arthur says for the millionth time. "Avalanches are actually a very real possibility."
Eames turns his head, but Arthur's face is obscured by his arms. He's been carrying on this entire conversation while holding steady in a full plank on his elbows. Then he peeks past his shoulder, hair falling over his eyes, and Eames can see that he's smiling.
"A joke," Eames crows. "That was a joke. Bravo."
"Just in case everything goes to shit tomorrow, I want to let you know," Arthur says, "that I won't hold it against you."
"Your generosity never ceases to surprise me. It brings a tear to my eye, honestly," says Eames.
"Well, you pretty much single-handedly came up with the plan, so who better to blame?" Arthur shrugs as best he can.
Eames suddenly realizes that he's smiling -- that he's been smiling as he stares up at the ceiling again, sprawled and relaxed on his lumpy excuse for a mattress. "I see," he says. "Your lack of contribution was a conscious decision to avoid blame, should anything happen to go wrong."
"Yes, of course," Arthur agrees. "It took you that long to put two and two together?"
Eames huffs out another laugh. If he looks out of the corner of his eye, he can see the straight planes of Arthur's back, cast into light and shadow by the single overhanging light directly above the door.
Eames is someone who passes time by examining the fine muscle control of strangers -- the slip of their thumbs while maneuvering chopsticks, how their insteps ripple and change with their gait. It's all the same bone-to-muscle connections, sparked into movement by the same physical circuitry. Theoretically, there should be nothing significant about Arthur, or the way his body moves.
Arthur remains still, head hanging down so that his forehead nudges against his thumb knuckle. His stomach is trembling. Eames drums his fingers on his own stomach and pretends not to look.
*
Half an hour after Dom blinks his eyes open and everyone looks away in relief, they dutifully file off the plane. Down at baggage claim, Eames ducks into the bathroom and only washes his hands before reemerging. His heart beats audibly with almost every footstep, as if it's spurring on the paranoia that this is still a dream, that all the travelers around him will suddenly snap their attention to him and converge en masse.
He keeps walking. Nobody pays attention to him.
At such a fast pace, he eventually passes Arthur up. The sight of Arthur's brisk walk falls away from his periphery, but Eames can still see it in his mind, clear as anything. He could slow down, wait until Arthur falls into step beside him. He could turn around, make eye contact.
He could offer. Propose a drink.
Last time he did such a thing, however, was when he was arse over heels drunk and propositioned an off-duty policeman, who then almost arrested him for soliciting. The time before that was with someone who took offense at trying to be pulled by a man, and the two times before that turned out to be a trap to get him alone and vulnerable. There have been no other times.
Nothing memorable came from any of these instances, but they did leave a bad taste and a lingering reluctance to assume or put himself on the line for anything of the sort.
In the end, they split off after exiting through the Lufthansa Airlines doors. Arthur gets into a shuttle and Eames slips into the line for taxis, and that's that.
*
Part 2
~20k
PG
Notes: this is my help_japan fic for terribilita! I'm sorry it is so late :x Eternal thanks to figletofvenice, bauble, and ifeelbetter for beta-ing and being v. rational in the face of e-mails such as "WHAT AM I WRITING" and "HA HA HA HA HA WHAT ARE WORDS". They are the best, this is a fact.
I.
Eames's freelancing terms are as follows: Will only accept jobs from Dom Cobb or jobs that come through Dom Cobb. Team maximum is four. Pay 100% upfront. Everyone must already be under before he'll hook in. He gets to back out at any time if he sees fit to do so.
The list of demands is ridiculous, of course, and he acknowledges that. Hell, he might as well ask for seventeen mermaid companions and a comb made out of Satan's teeth. More than a handful of people have told him to fuck off. But the fun part -- for Eames, at least -- is that he has all the negotiating power. More than a handful of people have told him to fuck off before coming back and accepting the terms, like the world's most begrudging boomerangs. He likes to think he's passing on the hard-earned wisdom of the physical boundaries of dreaming, but the truth is that he mostly likes the paycheck.
Of course, there's always the nagging fear that he's orchestrating his own coup, but considering the low percentage of successful forgeries, at this point, it's like he's getting paid to train people how to fail. He couldn't think of any better arrangement.
Probably the single factor that eases the sting of such an unfair transaction is that Cobb is a well-known public figure in dreamshare, in as much as dreamshare has public figures. People trust him, and he trusts Eames. If Cobb weren't such an earnest bastard, then Eames would give him a hefty cut. As it is, Cobb is quite the earnest bastard, and Eames has only offered once.
He drops into the dream as a tall, almost willowy man about ten years his senior, with silvery hair and eyes to match. The narrow face borders on severe. He's made enough mistakes from when he was first becoming acquainted with less-than-legal activities and now, for the moment, anonymity is something he relishes. People don't know what's coming if they don't know what to look for.
The dream is in the exact same closet of a storage room everyone is sleeping in topside, save for the rolled-up curtain door and the sunlight that streams in. "Is this it?" he asks, unbuttoning the double-breasted jacket and shaking out his cuffs. The words come out several semitones higher than normal, but he doesn't bother to drop the accent.
"Yeah," says Cobb, staring hard at Eames with his chin tilted up. It looks like appraisal, but mostly he's trying not to laugh. "Yeah, hey, nice to see you," he picks up again as he walks toward Eames. "Been a while, hasn't it?"
They shake hands. Eames even briefly clasps his free hand around Cobb's forearm, for show. When they release, he looks around at the rest of the group: a dark haired woman slouching in a desk chair, legs crossed. A bald man in cargo shorts up against the wall behind her, and another man in slacks, with a straight back and hands in his pockets.
"So." Eames opens his arms. "Welcome to a crash course in dream forgery."
*
There's Payal, the chemist. Patrick, the architect. Arthur, the point man. All of them speak with a faintly formal air, deferring to Eames's apparent age. In all the sessions that Eames has led, no one ever even suspected that Eames wasn't actually who he looked like. The mind takes things at face-value far too often, even while being aware of all the fantastic possibilities of dreaming. Sometimes it simply isn't wired to bridge certain gaps.
Cobb stands around and chaperones as Eames begins to walk everyone through the basics. Boring, routine stuff, and the only stand out in the bunch is Arthur, simply because his ratio of effort-to-results is comically high.
"Shit," Arthur says with his own mouth, but his eyes are two different colors and the brow ridge is heavy enough to belong to australopithecus.
Payal has to lean against the wall and laugh herself hoarse. "He said 'blue eyes', not 'half-blind caveman'," she finally gasps, but her attempts at blonde hair go just as badly, and then it's the troubleshooting portion of the session. Equally as boring and routine, but at least people find unique ways to muck it all up.
"You're expecting to see your own hair, is the problem. Not consciously, of course, I know you're not doing it on purpose," Eames adds when Payal opens her mouth to deny it. "But on some root level, you know what you really look like. Try to let go of that, however briefly."
Payal catches it for about five seconds, hair like sunburned flaxseeds. "Cool," she says, beaming. Eames gives her a reserved smile in return.
"Any other nuggets of wisdom?" Arthur butts in, still looking like a gussied up swamp creature with a face full of bee stings, and a disgruntled one at that.
Eames doesn’t tell Arthur about the first time he forged, how none of his fingers matched, how his hair resembled a patchwork quilt of varying colors. The thing that no one wants to hear is that their first few dozen forgeries will look cheap, like Halloween costumes, and they'll probably be used just as often.
Instead he smirks at him and says, "Practice makes perfect. If all else fails, you could always slap on one of those charming Groucho Marx disguises."
"Forging is hardly worth the trouble, don't you think?" says Patrick. He hastily adds, "No offense intended. I'm just wondering how often you get a chance to use your skills -- I imagine they would have taken you a long time to perfect."
Surprisingly, Arthur is the one who cuts in: "Forgery is either superfluous or vital to extraction," he recites, as if reading from a textbook. "You want a simple smash-and-grab, you want a minimum number of people. But our mark grew up in a town with a population of 400, and she had her honeymoon at a hotel within city limits. That narrows projections and familiar faces down to a very small scope."
"Which means that the dream manipulation needs to be more tightly woven," Cobb picks up smoothly. "And that's why Boone is here."
Boone is apparently Cobb's made-up name for Eames. Eames fears for his future children. "No offense taken, Patrick," Eames says breezily. "And you're correct. I could have chosen another masochistic hobby that's much less time-consuming."
He lifts his shoulders in a subtle, dignified shrug. "Then again, every standard deck of cards has a joker or two, and they tend to come in handy every once in a while."
*
Arthur keeps flicking him these short glances for the rest of the week, almost like he can't help himself. By the last day before the job is scheduled, Payal and Patrick can cobble together a passable imitation of a couple that the mark met years ago on her honeymoon, while Arthur can cobble together a passable imitation of a human face that's not his own.
"But just barely," Eames says to Cobb. "Make sure he's in the background. The far background. Or perhaps you could mold the dream to him, some kind of mythical theme where the presence of a cyclops would be unremarkable."
Cobb raises his eyebrows. "Sure," is all he says before changing the subject. "So, how would you rate your teaching success? Do you think I'll have to come up with backup plans?"
Maybe Eames should cut ties with him, if he knows him well enough to correctly interpret his insults as something other than. "Most likely no need," he answers. "It'll be a three-minute conversation at most. And the honeymoon was over a decade ago, her subconscious should attribute natural aging to any discrepancies in their appearance."
Cobb nods. "You're right. Yeah, I guess that's all, then. Thanks for doing this on short notice."
Eames shakes out his cuffs and smooths a hand over his hair. "Any time, dear boy," he says.
"Maybe I will take that cut you offered me," Cobb says.
"Offer's off the table," Eames says over his shoulder as he strolls out toward the sun.
"Boone," Arthur calls, and Eames waits until he catches up. The accompanying smile is small, not quite conspiratorial but not quite overly chummy, either. It's Arthur encapsulated into a single expression, going by what Eames has gleaned over the past week.
"So you're not going to show us?" Arthur asks.
Eames blinks. "I'm sorry?"
Arthur studies him carefully. Finally, he says, "I figured your forgery would slip at some point, but it hasn't. So. Now I'm asking."
"Oh, you think -- " Eames lets his hand float halfway up to his face, an absent-minded gesture to fight the inexplicable urge to smile. "I'm flattered, but I'm afraid you're letting your imagination get the best of you." He pretends to rethink his words. "Or perhaps it's paranoia? One of the undocumented side effects of extended Somnacin use, you know."
"Side effects that only occurred in people who had their names on a hit list before any kind of Somnacin exposure," Arthur parries. But he nods and says, "Alright. Just thought I'd ask anyway."
If he was wheedling and coy about it, maybe it'd be a different story. As it is, Eames says, "I'm horribly scarred. Childhood accident," which is as good a confirmation as any. "Do refrain from trying to uncover the mystery. Think of it as a masked ball, if that helps," he says brightly. "Maybe you could pop out for a bit and purchase the Groucho Marx disguise I suggested."
Arthur smiles again, and this time it's the kind that could easily make someone forget about the circumstances -- namely that he's a mind criminal of high caliber and could probably twist Eames's fingers into pretzels. While the job of a forger is to read people, the job of a point man is to know people and to have the capability to take them apart. Most point men Eames knows have risen from the ashes of some behind-the-scenes person, the puppetmaster behind the curtain. (Though, he once knew a point man who was a former accountant. He didn't last very long.)
Arthur's curiosity is understandable, though. Hiding anything in a dream -- appearances and otherwise -- for a lengthy amount of time is nearly impossible. In most cases.
"He doesn't have that much to hide, anyway. Don't waste your energy," Cobb advises just as music begins floating through at a soft volume.
"And that's my cue. It's been a pleasure." Eames nods to everyone. The last thing he sees before he wakes up is Arthur's small smile and slightly narrowed eyes, the stance of someone who's just accepted a challenge.
*
Even in the dead of winter, Nash looks like he's freshly emerged from a sauna soak of steam and aerated amphetamines. His eyes are constantly flitting around the bar, and the ends of his hair curl damply as he swallows a beer down. Second-hand anxiety usually drags through Eames whenever he's around, but Nash has connections and is one of the few people in dreamshare whom Eames meets with on a semi-regular basis.
He tells Eames about the vague talk regarding counteractive measures for extraction, something about training projections to keep intruders out; a crude, spray-and-pray kind of deal that should be effective nonetheless. Eames mostly saves 'crude' for last minute escapes and patch-up jobs in real life. He doesn't appreciate it in dreams, simply because he doesn't like to leave a trail, let alone blaze a warpath across someone's consciousness.
"You're breaking into minds, Eames, I really don't think that leaves room for scruples," Nash laughs.
Eames waves him off. "That's too black and white. Try to think outside of the box every once in a while, yeah?"
Nash pretends to swing his beer bottle at Eames. "So hey, where've you been?" he asks. "I got in a couple days ago and you weren't around."
"Tokyo," Eames says vaguely. "Short stint, you couldn't have missed me for long."
"Shibuya?" Nash presses, and it's either a miraculous guess or --
Eames leans a fraction closer. "Do tell, Nash."
"Nah," Nash says a bit incongruously. He shrugs. "I mean, someone might be looking for you. People've been asking where you are. I figured it had something to do with Cobb, but then I also figured that he'd call you himself if that was the case." He shrugs again. "I thought maybe you should know."
Details have never been Nash's strong suit, but information comes as readily as ice melting into water, and just as helplessly, too.
"You think it's something bad?" Nash asks in an oddly innocent tone. "Because if it's something bad, man, then maybe you shouldn't be hanging out here for too long, you know?"
"Cheers," Eames eventually says after he finishes off his drink in one long pull. "I owe you one."
"You owe me a lot," Nash corrects. "Several a lots."
"We'll discuss the specifics later." Eames claps him on the shoulder and maneuvers out of the bar.
Shanghai is seeing the day's peak in foot traffic, which means that Eames blends in as one of millions of commuters rushing across sidewalks and through subway stations. Making a stop at the flat is risky, but he doesn't have anything on him except for 300 yuan and a tiny package for a tiny diorama that he purchased out of sheer curiosity. It's hardly any money and he doubts he can fashion a weapon out of minuscule pieces of cardboard, and so he bangs into the flat to collect a small rucksack of essentials.
When he opens the door again, Arthur is standing in the hallway as if having materialized solely from the intensity of Eames's dread.
"Hi," says Arthur. Arthur with that flat American accent and almost incongruously deep voice, Arthur with those sure hands, Arthur who had been so curious.
"Hello. Who are you looking for?" Eames asks with a bland pleasantness. He doesn't expect to deter Arthur so easily, but figures it's worth a try.
"I can't say you were easy to find, Mr. Eames," says Arthur. "You're very good at this, I'll give you that much."
"Excuse me?" is all Eames says.
"Cut the shit."
Eames smiles politely. "I'm sorry, but if you continue you to be belligerent, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Or else I'll be forced to call the authorities."
He moves away from the door slowly, but slams it shut the last few centimeters. Or, he tries to; it glances off Arthur's shoe instead.
"Ow," he yells. Eames fervently hopes he broke a toe or two.
When Arthur pushes the door open again, Eames grabs a small vase from the adjacent shelf and swings it at Arthur, who manages to block it with a well-placed elbow. As it shatters, his other hand connects with Eames's jaw with the sharp sound of bones against skin. Eames stumbles to the side, then bears his weight on that leg and swing-kicks Arthur back out and into the opposite wall of the hallway.
Arthur is fast, though -- Eames barely has time to straighten up before Arthur's coming at him again, jabbing at Eames's nose with two upward snaps of his arm. He makes contact both times, tempering the force just short of breaking it.
"Bugger this," Eames announces stuffily, before leaning down a little and driving his shoulder against Arthur's chest. The aim is a bit off, seeing as how his center of gravity is still freewheeling, but he hears a satisfying breath being punched out anyway.
Then he wraps his arms around Arthur's waist, lifts him bodily, and drops him onto the ground, back first. "Now," Eames pants, "who are you looking for?"
"Some paranoid asshole who beats up people trying to offer him a job," Arthur wheezes. He continues to struggle.
"Submit," Eames pushes.
"Fight back," Arthur counters. "Christ, I can't breathe, get off me."
For some reason, Eames's body shifts before he even realizes it. A millisecond later, he curses silently as he hears something he'd recognize anywhere. When he directs his gaze downward, Arthur is, as expected, pointing a gun right at Eames's crotch with the safety off.
"Ah," says Eames.
"Yeah," Arthur agrees. He's wheezing a lot less now, the little shit, and his eyes are clear while he very obviously sizes Eames up. Probably reconstructing whatever he had thought of Eames in the first place, and committing his real facial features to memory alongside a handful of derogatory commentary.
"Mr. Eames," Arthur says, and Eames flinches when the gun prods at him. "Would you like this job or not?"
"Well, I had to make you work for it somehow," Eames declares. When blood from his lip drips onto Arthur's hand, Eames wipes it off with the heel of his palm. As confessions go, it's a neat one, succinct.
Judging by the fleeting smile, Arthur appreciates this.
*
The next time his phone rings with a freelancing offer, it's not Cobb on the other end. It's Arthur.
*
II.
Eames is in a horrible sports bar, hands wrapped around a hoagie and dutifully facing the hanging flat-screen like the rest of the patrons, when his phone starts ringing and he gets grease all over his trousers trying to fish it out.
"Yeah," Eames says loudly, shoving the phone between his shoulder and ear while reclaiming custody of the hoagie.
"Hey. It's Cobb."
"How did you get this number?" Eames asks with his mouth full, mostly because Cobb hates people chewing with their mouth open.
"Arthur," says Cobb.
"How irksome."
"Because you'll have to change the number again?"
"Because by now I'm realizing that Arthur sticks to you worse than a bad case of the clap," Eames proclaims. "Alright, what is it this time?"
Cobb starts going off about something or other, hatching a plan mostly by talking out loud to himself, and Eames finds his thoughts drifting back to Arthur. Arthur keeping tabs on him isn't new, but it's the first time he's given such information to anyone else. This implication of something resembling partnership is a surprise, because drawing out any kind of identifiable loyalty from Arthur is like coaxing music out of a violin. Press too hard and you kill the sound; play too lightly and nothing but horrible whispers come out.
But what does Eames know. He played violin for a few months in primary school, then bleeted at the trombone for a while until it stood in as a weapon during an unexpected fist fight and he tried to strangle the other boy with the loop.
He drinks two more pints and leaves this story in voicemail form on Arthur's phone, because Cobb is strangely kneadable sometimes and spills Arthur's number after only a few passive-aggressive hints.
*
Arthur always finds him, is the thing. Even that month where Eames's main residence was on a fairly disreputable cruise liner that docked in the dreariest of ports, Arthur fucking found him. Maybe the 'disreputable' part had tipped him off.
He's like a thorny arse ache that Eames has to bear. When Eames agrees to jobs with most other extractors, he comes out uninjured, sane, and with enough money to purchase said disreputable cruise liner. When he agrees to jobs with Arthur, he more often than not gets killed within the dream, burns through an intense flood of adrenaline that can't be healthy, and lies awake at night as architectural paradoxes parade around in his head on loop. If he were any other greedy criminal with an overinflated sense of self-preservation, he'd be living on his own island by now, guilt-free. But, as it is, he's a greedy criminal with an overinflated sense of self-preservation who also gets bored very, very easily. He might even look forward to that thrilling, almost crazed feeling of pulling off a successful job; to Arthur giving him that wide, unencumbered smile that seems novel every time Eames sees it.
Arthur says things like, "Listen, you little asshole," and, "Thanks, have a good one," and, "But if we can somehow take a shortcut -- not that this isn't a solid idea, because it is -- but with a shortcut that goes here, then maybe -- ", and, "Bless you," no matter how many times anyone sneezes.
To Eames, Arthur says things like, "I'm glad it's bleeding, that was for cutting and running with my contact," and, "Three extra packets of hot sauce, how are your taste buds still working," and, "Not to be rude, but that's pretty stupid," and, "Are you sure you've thought this through?"
"Just because I lack your educational pedigree doesn't mean I'm a caveman," Eames says after that last one, despite having no idea about Arthur's education. "I can even count to ten. Listen: one, two, three -- "
Then, after he's underestimated the fierceness of a placid octogenarian's subconscious and they've been ripped out of the dream by a tornado, Eames says, "Alright, that doesn't count."
"I told you she grew up in Tornado Alley. Why do you always mess up the easy ones?" Arthur huffs as they jog down the hallway and out of the building, but both of them know that it was just shit luck that caught them in its grip, nothing more, nothing less.
For some reason Arthur seems very reluctant to trust him without compunction, despite Eames having given no indication of falling short. No serious indication, in any case -- Eames may cross Arthur every now and again, but part of his skill set includes being able to char bridges without burning them completely.
Eames doesn't take it personally, though, because Arthur doesn't trust anyone completely. Even Cobb. He'll stand up for people, protect them, inform them, converse with them, make them laugh, but he rarely lets anyone give anything back. Eames suspects that it's his one loose thread to hang on to, a defense mechanism for if and when he gets burned.
In any case, Eames doesn't protest, and even encourages it a little -- masks such instances as flaws that he's at fault for and acts accordingly. This is what he gives Arthur, though he suspects it's a bit like trying to shove a square block into a 5-sided hole, all with a misguided eagerness that often seems bumbling rather than helpful.
If he's being honest, Arthur is still a bit of a blind spot, really; a scotoma in Eames's vision, and there's just something he isn't seeing, hanging around his periphery and dodging out of the way whenever Eames tries to grab at it.
*
He bounces around for a while. Passes a birthday blackout drunk, gets punched in the left kidney particularly hard, ends up at a strange winter solstice celebration, loses a toenail, grows it back, loses a pinkie nail, mourns its pitifully malformed replacement, and siphons money from a sloppy laundering scheme out of a corporation based out of Belgrade for the better part of a year before they even notice anything.
Because Arthur has impeccable timing, he calls just as Eames is reheating a television dinner and wondering where to go next.
"I need help," Arthur grumps.
"Go on," says Eames, no longer fazed by such a demanding greeting.
"I need to tranq someone from an unseen location, probably about a hundred yards away," Arthur clarifies. "Unless I can find a way into the building, in which case I'll need a sedative and a way out as well."
"Wouldn't do to get trapped once you're in," Eames agrees. "And what will you do with the hefty baggage?"
"It's a delayed release. He has three bodyguards everywhere he goes; if we want to go in undetected, it has to be timed for when he gets home. Can you help or not?"
Eames shovels a congealed chunk of mac and cheese into his mouth. "I'll be there with bells on, darling. Lose the tranq, we'll live on the wild side for this one."
They agree to catch the first flight out of their respective cities before hanging up. Naturally, when the phone rings again not ten minutes later, it's Corbitt, asking for some help in lifting a prototype of some drug or other.
"Can't, I'm afraid," Eames says. "I've just agreed to lend my expertise to another person in need."
"Who?" Corbitt demands, because he's the type to take a simple first-come-first-serve policy as a personal affront.
"Arthur."
"Arthur," Corbitt repeats. "Arthur asked for help."
"Yes?" Eames confirms as he starts rooting around the flat for his wallet and passport.
"Arthur asked you for help." Corbitt snorts. "Either he's pulling one over on you, or it's part of a plan to lure you to a place where you definitely don't want to be. You piss him off lately?"
Wallet's on top of the telly. Passport is somewhere not in plain sight. "Not that I can recall," Eames replies, distracted.
"Either way, it's your dumb risk. Call me if you change your mind."
Corbitt hangs up right as Eames locates the passport in one of his trouser pockets. He tosses the phone onto the bed and flips through the stamped pages to make sure there's nothing amiss. It's only afterward that he is able to rehash the conversation with full attention, but then he's running late for his flight and doesn't give it further thought.
*
Russia is horribly, stereotypically cold, like the whole country’s been dipped into a tank of liquid nitrogen. The address manifests itself as a lonely two-storey building made of unpainted concrete which, from the looks of it, has served as a punching bag of defacement for the general populace. There are scorch marks spiking up the walls, spray paint graffiti marring the windows, and holes left behind by bullet spray. It's all quite depressing. Eames glances at it pityingly through bare tree branches that cut up the view like a broken mirror.
"Corbitt thought it was quite amusing," Eames says, squinting and pulling his beanie down more snugly.
Arthur doesn't look up. "You have this horrible habit of starting out in the middle of a story, I don't know if you're aware of that."
"I live to make things difficult for everyone," Eames says. "You just happen to be included."
"Too bad your work is actually respectable. Otherwise I wouldn't associate with you at all," Arthur says. Jet-lag sends his personality down the toilet. "So. Corbitt thought it was amusing -- ?"
Eames watches carefully for any other reaction, but Arthur keeps sharpening his knife with long strokes instead.
"He thought it was amusing, that you'd asked for help," Eames says, then adds, "from me."
"Corbitt is a dumbass," Arthur says without looking at Eames. He puts the knife away and starts army-crawling toward the chain link fence, and that's the end of that, apparently.
They successfully sneak in and dose the target with a delayed release sedative in his coffee. However, they then get cornered by an unexpected guard change and the only possible exit is illuminated with a spotlight so enormous that it could double as Broadway stage.
"Really," Arthur says in a wooden voice, staring at the spotlight as if he'll be able to extinguish it with the power of an intense glare.
"Improvise," Eames says. "Come on, get in here."
He pulls Arthur into one of the many empty rooms lining the hallway. By the looks of it, it's a security control center -- lots of video feeds from inside the compound, as well as some exterior shots. They make quick work of it, with Arthur leaning over him to tap his finger against the monitors.
"East and south wings are off limits," Arthur says. "So is the second floor -- "
" -- unless you feel alright about jumping out a window," Eames interrupts.
"I'd rather avoid any potential broken bones, but it's an option," Arthur relents. And this is what Eames likes about working with Arthur: their ability to build off each other, skipping up a scaffolding of ideas and just as quickly knocking down whatever won't work.
They've narrowed it down to two possibilities when heavy footfalls start coming closer at a steady clip. Eames looks at Arthur, arms tensed for a fight, but Arthur touches his elbow in a silent message and he relaxes them instead. Not a second later, Arthur is flicking his eyes up to the large, utilitarian air duct running overhead.
Arthur, having the slight height advantage, wordlessly hops up onto the monitors, pops out the single panel with cross-hatching, and motions for Eames to get up. He has to briefly hug Arthur for balance, but Arthur laces his hands together and hoists him up into the vent like it's nothing. Eames scoots a little ways down before looking back and seeing only light shining into empty space.
"Arthur," he whispers, breaking the silence.
Then the panel gets tossed in, and Arthur is pulling himself up with ease. He somehow folds himself up to get the panel latched again. Eames holds his breath as Arthur moves in beside him, praying that the vent won't collapse; they align their hips onto a row of rivets to hopefully hold the weight better.
And they wait.
Someone enters the room and starts fiddling around with the computers. There's a flash of static from a walkie-talkie, as well as some muted Russian. Some banging, and then an extended conversation over the walkies. When two more sets of footsteps enter the room, Eames starts cursing up a storm in his head. If he tries to crane his neck up, the back of his skull presses against metal. If he tries to look down, Arthur's nose gets mashed against his forehead.
Uncharacteristically, it's Arthur who shifts abruptly, something akin to a hypnic jerk. Eames snaps his head back up and tries to silently communicate the threat of disembowelment if Arthur makes any kind of noise, but Arthur looks almost nauseated, like he's on the verge of some kind of panic attack.
Alarm bells start clanging in Eames's head. Without thinking, he takes Arthur's hand and squeezes it so hard that he almost feel Arthur's knuckles pressing together. Arthur makes a tiny noise, but he doesn't move.
Three more walkie conversations and a long series of beeps later, Arthur still hasn't moved and Eames's legs have long since fallen asleep. He can't even feel where Arthur's knees are digging against his own anymore. There is sweat beading all over Arthur’s forehead; Eames stares at the largest one until it slides down, curving into the corner of Arthur's eye. Arthur blinks rapidly, breathing in a strangely shallow rhythm that makes Eames nervous to listen to.
He's been in closer quarters with people before -- hell, he's been buried alive with someone before, and good thing she had a thigh holster with multiple weapons -- and it's never triggered anything more than a deep annoyance and a step-by-step plan of precisely how he's going to exact his revenge. But now he's practically humming with suppressed adrenaline, every sensory point on his skin flickering to life like lights on a city grid.
There's a series of rustling noises, and then the sound of a chair rolling a short distance. Eames holds his breath as he listens to whoever it is walk around. Unmistakably, a door creaks open and the footsteps continue on.
Eames holds up two fingers. Arthur opens his eyes and nods.
The remaining two men leave within the next minute. Even after the noises fade, they still wait, just to make sure. It’s only when Eames finally relaxes the tiniest bit that he realizes how cramped his body is, strung tight from toes to fingers. Arthur now has his eyes closed again -- Eames can see it through the thin haze of light that filters through the cross-hatched panel. His lips are a straight, pale line, and he looks like he’s barely breathing.
Instinctively, Eames touches his fingers to Arthur's chest. The only reaction is that Arthur’s eyelids tremble the tiniest bit.
"Breathe," Eames tells him, in a hush of air. When Arthur squeezes his hand, he squeezes back out of instinct.
"How much longer do you think," Eames murmurs, and in the absence of immediate danger, his body is slowly processing the physics of their current situation, and how closely they're stretched out beside each other. He imagines his breath condensing on the skin of Arthur’s cheek.
Eames actually hears Arthur’s throat working. "Few more minutes," Arthur whispers back. "Just to be safe."
Eames counts, slowly. When he gets to 250, he wordlessly straightens his leg and kicks out the paneling. Arthur doesn't even startle, just rolls out and onto the ground, landing on his feet but ending up on his hands and knees.
"Jesus Christ," Eames says. He goes to the door and scans both sides of the hallway to make sure they're clear.
When he turns back, Arthur is pale, still breathing shallowly, but on his feet. His lashes stand out against the pallor of his skin. Eames finds himself reaching out about halfway in an aborted movement.
"Steady there," Eames says instead. "What is it? Oxygen deprivation?"
"I’m claustrophobic," Arthur replies, as if he hasn’t spent the better part of an hour crammed into a metal coffin.
Suddenly, irrationally, Eames finds himself angry. He wants to shout at Arthur -- and for what, he has no idea, because it’s not like there had been any other options. Instead, he rubs at his mouth.
"You’re looking at me doubtfully," Arthur points out.
"You’re forgetting that I was recently crammed inside an air duct for who knows how long," Eames says. "I think this is simply the way my head tilts, now."
"Permanently inquisitive," Arthur reiterates.
"And how," Eames agrees.
The spike in emotion is still riding high. He can’t even look at Arthur, but at least now he can acknowledge that he’s angry because he’s worried. He’s fucking worried, for Christ’s sake. For this bastard who he’s seen die hundreds of deaths, who saved his life many times over but cocks a trigger and kills him without hesitation.
He concentrates on the monitors and finds their first choice escape route has now been vacated by the guard. "The garbage chute is open for business," he says shortly, and takes off through the hallway with Arthur on his heels.
Eames doesn't look back, and is about to swing himself into the chute when Arthur says, "We just pulled off a job despite incredibly shitty circumstances, and you’re, what, worried about me being claustrophobic? You almost got killed about twelve times in a span of two hours, and you’re pissed because I didn’t tell you about my aversion to small spaces? Really?"
His tone isn’t condescending. In fact, judging by the upturned corner of his mouth, he finds the whole thing endearing.
"Glad you're getting your wind back," Eames tells him, using sarcasm to hide anything else that may show through in his voice. "Now piss off. I'm trying to make a dashing escape here."
As Eames is swinging his legs in, Arthur catches him by the sleeve. "Eames," he says, a half-smile tugging at his lips, and his tone is such a strange mix of self-deprecating and hopeful that Eames finds himself wanting to smile back, wanting to reach out and rub his thumb along the shape of Arthur's mouth until it gives way. The desire is sharp, concentrated -- panic floods him for a brief moment, but at least that's something he's good at controlling.
"Arthur," he replies simply, but Arthur doesn't continue and they end up looking at each other as if playing a game to see who will blink first.
Eames folds his arms over his chest and falls down into the darkness, effectively forfeiting.
He realizes later that he was waiting for something in that moment. Maybe Arthur was, too.
*
III.
While Eames is in Mombasa, Arthur pays him a single, unexpected visit, announced only by the creak of the bedroom door. Once Eames has been very rudely kicked out of bed, Arthur stares down at him and says, "You stole it."
"Stole what?" Eames croaks, half his face still covered by the thin, woolly blanket. He's half-convinced this is a dream, but that warm bloom of recognition in his chest at the sight of Arthur, despite his glower, is all too real.
"The security codes. The security codes that took me two months to get, and you know it took that long because you were there the entire time."
"You're behaving as if you don't have ten backups. Now we can share the knowledge between each other," Eames says. "It'll bring us closer together. I feel more intimate with you already. May I brush my teeth before continuing this conversation?"
"It's not a conversation," Arthur counters. "It's me reaming you out for once again being a completely thoughtless jackass."
Eames reaches out of his blanket cocoon to scratch his nose. "That's not true. If I were completely thoughtless, I wouldn't have left enough evidence for you to instantly know that the codes being stolen was my doing. And then you'd be on a warpath with no one to direct the anger toward."
Finally, he sits up and squints at Arthur. "Aren't you glad, now?"
A second later, he's sprawled on the floor again with some unholy pain running through the right side of his body. Studying pressure points and unconventional methods of pain is one of Arthur's hobbies. Luckily Eames gives him many opportunities to put the theoretical study into practice.
"Fuck you," Arthur says. "What the hell did you do with them anyway? Who do I need to find and strangle? If you sold duplicates as well, I'll shoot out your good knee."
"Nothing. No one," Eames chokes out.
"What do you mean, 'nothing?'" Arthur asks after a pause. "What?"
The pain is beginning to subside and he sits up once more to find that Arthur is giving him a funny look. Then he mentally backtracks.
Arthur's right to be confused. Eames only ever steals things for personal gain, but this time he'd taken the codes to indulge some strange instinct to disrupt the product of Arthur's careful, time-consuming focus, to topple over his house of cards. If he's being completely honest, he doesn't think he was ever going to do anything with them at all.
Eames is now wide awake.
"Yet," he amends. Talking his way out of this corner is far more favorable than dwelling on why, exactly, he hadn't sold the codes. "Nothing yet. I was shopping around, as you do." He rubs his eyes. "Second drawer on the left. Bin is in the corner."
Arthur heads over to the roll-top desk and retrieves the codes. "You know," he says conversationally, procuring a fancy butane lighter out of his pocket and licking the flame along the edges of the envelope, "sometimes I wonder if it'd be easier to cut all ties and hand you over to the highest bidder."
"Well, of course it'd be easier, but it would also render life terribly dull," Eames says. "To wit: if you really did travel all this way to cause me bodily harm? You could have hired someone to do that."
"I could have gotten someone to pay me for the chance to cause you bodily harm," Arthur corrects. He drops the smoldering envelope into the bin and turns around. "That better be the only copy."
"When have I ever made backups of anything?"
"You make backups all the time," Arthur says, but he walks out into the hallway as Eames stands up, leaving the blanket as a puddle on the floor.
He peeks out the doorframe as he puts on a shirt. "Feel free to stay a while," he calls, and pauses when he notices something strange.
There's a duffel sitting on the floor next to the tiny nook of a kitchen. Upon closer inspection, it remains a duffel and not an illusion. Two things are evident: his sarcasm is also prescient, and this is going to be more than a day trip.
"I hope your sofa bed works," Arthur says from where he's standing by the window, peeking past the edge of the heavy linen curtain. He doesn't meet Eames's eyes, and this is about as awkward as Arthur ever gets. Dodging an explicit request for permission is probably as much for Eames's sake as Arthur's -- he has a feeling that this visit has some significance attached to it, but he's not sure if he's ready to delve into the reasons why.
"It's passable," Eames says carefully. "Though I take no responsibility for any slipped discs or sciatica."
Arthur lets the curtain fall back into place. He nods.
*
In New York, Arthur takes the subway, always standing, always with his right hand curled up around the overhanging bar; in Rome, Arthur zips about on a scooter, feet planted flat and neatly parallel. And in Mombasa, as it turns out, Arthur rides around on a bike. The one he procures has a seat that's peeling in patches of black, but the heels of his oxfords catch easily on the rusted pedals. Most of the time he heads out early and returns, with a damp shirt and disheveled hair, when the sun is tilting through the westerly window. Occasionally, there will be two canvas bags full of multicolored fruit hanging from the handlebars.
It's not so bad, really. In general, being in the same space as Arthur takes less effort and results in less psychosis than Eames had previously imagined -- though, when he first began to entertain such thoughts at all is a mystery.
They eat at irregular times, four to five meals a day. At night, Eames does pull-ups from the doorframe until cramps make it impossible. Then he holds his arms up into a cross and lets Arthur’s feet slap against his palms in an arrhythmic beat. He'd heard a story a few months back, about Arthur pulling off some ludicrous stunt involving a motorbike and a hairpin curve, his left kneecap being the only casualty. The injured leg is still slow, but it’s flexible enough.
"How about a challenge," Eames says one day, holding a hand high above his head. In response, Arthur drops down and does a neat leg sweep instead, leaving Eames on the carpet, blinking up at the ceiling.
Sometimes it still surprises him, the ways they’re alike.
A couple weeks after Arthur's sudden appearance -- Eames's best estimate, since keeping time in constant sweltering weather and no real routine proves to be difficult --, Arthur hears from Cobb, who's emerged from some shady black market dealings that Arthur would rather not even know about, judging by his end of the conversation.
"As sorry as I am to see you leave, this is the last time my flat will be offered up as a hotel," Eames calls out as Arthur packs his things.
He's sprawled on the sofa, absently reading an article about neurological diseases. Yusuf had sent it to him, complete with annotations and loads of underlined passages. Eames barely has a working knowledge of science, but considering that most of the people in Yusuf's life are effectively dead to the world, he feels a sympathetic obligation to take a stab at sharing his interests.
"No skin off my back," Arthur says, passing by with a stack of photos. "You're probably the worst host ever."
Eames idly listens to him rustle around some more, the sounds of his comings and goings familiar by now, and is snapped out of his reading only when something jostles his feet against each other.
"Hey," Arthur says, hand still curled into a loose fist. "Thanks."
"Cheers," says Eames.
The door clicks shut and he's left alone, face titled up toward the lazy ceiling fan. It spins silently.
One moment he's reading about anosognosia, and the next he's staring over the top of the paper again as he finds that he can't recall Arthur ever giving a reason for the visit. His assumption was that Arthur had gotten tangled up in something potentially dangerous and needed to wait for it to blow over, but upon second thought, doesn't remember him saying anything of the sort.
Falling for such a simple method of evasion should be embarrassing, but Eames spends a moment basking in that wry, begrudging respect that only Arthur can coax from him.
*
A month later, Cobb comes to find him.
"Inception," Cobb starts, and Eames thinks, Arthur.
*
IV.
To Eames, there are attainable goals, and there are pursuits best left abandoned. Jobs are usually easy to categorize, but this second go around at inception is straddling the line between the two. Eames fittingly feels as if he's stuck in purgatory, spending day after day mired in the planning stages.
Everyone raises their voices at least four times a day, Cobb throws a lot of things, and Ariadne makes it a point to storm out of the warehouse often enough for it to become commonplace. It should seem like a comedy, a farce, but all the pockets of time in between the extravagant gestures is what grounds it in reality -- Yusuf staring out a window while a solution thaws, Ariadne sitting small and quiet in a dark corner as she carves out the nuances in her totem, Arthur coming and going through the night, smelling like fresh cigarette smoke every time.
As far as housing goes, the warehouse gets a bit drafty at night, but the walls soak up heat from the summer sun, simmering under a slow burn that extends well into dark. Though they do have rooms at various bed-and-breakfasts about town, only Ariadne and Saito choose to spend nights elsewhere. Yusuf and Cobb are usually up til the wee hours, testing his new version of Somnacin, while Arthur and Eames use the time to tighten up whatever plan they've laid so far.
Eames gets used to blinking his eyes open only to realize that he's fallen asleep. He gets used to rolling over and seeing Arthur stretched out on his side, legs slightly bent at the knees.
*
Having confirmed -- and reconfirmed, and then reconfirmed again, much to Eames's delight -- Yusuf's assurance that the new variation of Somnacin would leave inner ear function intact, he sends them all in to a dream to make sure that the sedative will hold steady for three levels. On the first level, they leave Yusuf, who paces around the warehouse, and Ariadne, who is waving around a dremel tool.
"I think the physics check out," Yusuf announces. "Nothing seems sluggish or out of sorts."
"Yeah," Ariadne agrees. "This dremel tool still sucks. Mirrors real life pretty well."
On the second level, they leave Cobb moving around the now-empty warehouse in his own world, as he so often does these days.
"Looks good," he says simply, hands in his pockets. He glances up at the ceilings.
"Shall I replicate it a third time?" Eames asks.
Cobb gives him a faint smile. "Nah, have fun with it."
Arthur looks wary, but Eames dreams up a quiet, sunny beach. They each walk in opposite directions and end up right back where they started, which was the plan. One of the projections holds Arthur up, however; Eames stands at a distance and watches carefully, only exhaling when Arthur starts making his way toward Eames once more.
"Who was that?" Eames prods.
"A projection," Arthur answers. He curls his toes in the sand.
"How illuminating. Was he any more forthcoming than normal, or was he speaking in tongues? Anything out of the ordinary?" Eames doesn't realize that he's fishing until after it's already done.
"I don't know, you tell me. He was saying that he thought you felt bad about leaving him alone that morning in Tampa, and told me to reassure you that he didn't mind at all." Arthur pauses and looks up. "Residual guilt, or abnormally forthcoming?"
"Probably the former," Eames concludes. "Anyone would be sad to see me go."
"I'm sure," Arthur says dryly, but his eyes relax into a smile.
Music comes tearing through the idyllic scene. Some Yngwie Malmsteen monstrosity courtesy of Yusuf. Eames shifts his gaze to the bluffs overlooking the ocean.
"Ready for a small hike?" Arthur asks. He offers Eames another small smile before turning to lead the way.
*
The flight is due to leave in twelve hours. All of them have cleaned the warehouse out, kicking aside things that can be passed off as scraps and bagging everything else up to toss later on. The whole place reeks of bleach or carbolic acid and Eames's right hand is permanently molded into the shape of a scrubber handle.
He cracks his knuckles again and tries to relax. Twelve more hours.
"Third level," Arthur prompts.
"Third level," Eames repeats, staring up at the waterlogged ceiling. He cradles the back of his head with one hand, shifting around a bit to get more comfortable. They're coming up on thirty hours no sleep. "Third level, third level. Funny, that -- you're not even going to be on the third level."
"I still need to know what's going on," Arthur says, "and, more importantly, I need you to know what's going on. It's going to be kind of pointless if the dreamer has to stop and ask for directions."
"No need to get snippy," Eames says. "You honestly can't be that torn up about the fact that you'll be sitting cozy in a hotel while the rest of us parade around in snow suits and try not to get killed by avalanches."
"It'll be unstable," Arthur says for the millionth time. "Avalanches are actually a very real possibility."
Eames turns his head, but Arthur's face is obscured by his arms. He's been carrying on this entire conversation while holding steady in a full plank on his elbows. Then he peeks past his shoulder, hair falling over his eyes, and Eames can see that he's smiling.
"A joke," Eames crows. "That was a joke. Bravo."
"Just in case everything goes to shit tomorrow, I want to let you know," Arthur says, "that I won't hold it against you."
"Your generosity never ceases to surprise me. It brings a tear to my eye, honestly," says Eames.
"Well, you pretty much single-handedly came up with the plan, so who better to blame?" Arthur shrugs as best he can.
Eames suddenly realizes that he's smiling -- that he's been smiling as he stares up at the ceiling again, sprawled and relaxed on his lumpy excuse for a mattress. "I see," he says. "Your lack of contribution was a conscious decision to avoid blame, should anything happen to go wrong."
"Yes, of course," Arthur agrees. "It took you that long to put two and two together?"
Eames huffs out another laugh. If he looks out of the corner of his eye, he can see the straight planes of Arthur's back, cast into light and shadow by the single overhanging light directly above the door.
Eames is someone who passes time by examining the fine muscle control of strangers -- the slip of their thumbs while maneuvering chopsticks, how their insteps ripple and change with their gait. It's all the same bone-to-muscle connections, sparked into movement by the same physical circuitry. Theoretically, there should be nothing significant about Arthur, or the way his body moves.
Arthur remains still, head hanging down so that his forehead nudges against his thumb knuckle. His stomach is trembling. Eames drums his fingers on his own stomach and pretends not to look.
*
Half an hour after Dom blinks his eyes open and everyone looks away in relief, they dutifully file off the plane. Down at baggage claim, Eames ducks into the bathroom and only washes his hands before reemerging. His heart beats audibly with almost every footstep, as if it's spurring on the paranoia that this is still a dream, that all the travelers around him will suddenly snap their attention to him and converge en masse.
He keeps walking. Nobody pays attention to him.
At such a fast pace, he eventually passes Arthur up. The sight of Arthur's brisk walk falls away from his periphery, but Eames can still see it in his mind, clear as anything. He could slow down, wait until Arthur falls into step beside him. He could turn around, make eye contact.
He could offer. Propose a drink.
Last time he did such a thing, however, was when he was arse over heels drunk and propositioned an off-duty policeman, who then almost arrested him for soliciting. The time before that was with someone who took offense at trying to be pulled by a man, and the two times before that turned out to be a trap to get him alone and vulnerable. There have been no other times.
Nothing memorable came from any of these instances, but they did leave a bad taste and a lingering reluctance to assume or put himself on the line for anything of the sort.
In the end, they split off after exiting through the Lufthansa Airlines doors. Arthur gets into a shuttle and Eames slips into the line for taxis, and that's that.
*
Part 2