[Inception][Eames/Arthur, Saito/Cobb] fly me to the moon (and let me dream among the stars)
I think I've written more for Inception than I have for any other fandom before. I don't even know. This is my longest fic yet and it is completely ridiculous and I had a blast writing it. It was supposed to be gen...and it ended up not being gen at all, and instead it's Eames/Arthur AND Saito/Cobb. This thing is a beast. Enjoy!
Title: fly me to the moon (and let me dream among the stars)
Fandom: Inception
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Eames/Arthur, Cobb/Saito
Word Count: 6,670
Warnings: Lots of ridiculousness, including Harry Potter and jdrama references. Also, Frank Sinatra lyrics were butchered for the sake of a title. You have been warned.
Summary: Saito recruits the team to test out new uses for the PASIV device. Eames, as usual, takes this as a opportunity for seduction.
Notes: written for this prompt at inception_kink: DREAMSCAPE FIELD TRIPS! Dreamscapes have to look/feel real to convince the subject that they're really awake; but what about TEAM FIELD TRIPS?! Cobb lets them have one group-field trip into any place/time/setting they want every six months. :D :D :D and they can go ANYWHERE and do EVERYTHING.
Disclaimer: Inception, the ideas behind it, and these characters do not belong to me; I'm just playing in their universe.
fly me to the moon (and let me dream among the stars)
Like most great ideas, this one begins with Saito. He shows up at the warehouse in LA about six months after the Fischer job, lugging a PASIV device and looking as though he belongs there. Arthur and Ariadne are the only ones there at the time, and Saito begins without preamble, setting the briefcase on the table and looking Arthur straight in the eye.
"Have you ever used this device for leisure activities?" he asks.
Arthur glances at Ariadne, who, being new, has no idea. Of course they have, he wants to say. Back in the day, the PASIV device was used like a drug, before it became illegal and went on the black market. But this is Saito he's talking to, and there's no way that Saito doesn't already know the history of dream sharing.
"Some of us hook up to it in after hours in order to dream," Ariadne explains. (Nobody mentions that 'some of us' mostly means Cobb, although all three of them know it.) "Is that what you mean?"
Saito shakes his head. "I'll pay you handsomely," he says, "if you assist me in researching ways to use the device for...group activities."
Ariadne exchanges a look with Arthur, like she's terrified that Saito means something like 'orgies', but Arthur has an inkling as to where this is going (at least, he assumes it's not going to involve orgies).
"You mean like, group vacations and field trips?" he asks. Saito nods.
"I am interested in developing dream tourism," he explains, "and I want to hire the best to make it work."
Arthur takes the job immediately. The sum Saito offers is almost as much as for the Fischer job, and this time, nobody is likely to shoot at them. They might even be able to convince Cobb to return for this one, since it's not (technically) illegal or dangerous.
Ariadne's eyes are wide, and it's obvious she's already devising schemes for mazes in her head.
*****
"You have so little imagination about this," Eames points out, reaching over Arthur to gesture at the list of ideas for possible group dreaming retreats. The list reads: TROPICAL ISLAND, JAPAN, GREECE, UNDERWATER, THE MOON??? and it's not even like he came up with the last one - that's Ariadne's contribution. "Using the PASIV device for pleasure," (and Arthur hates the way 'pleasure' rolls off Eames' tongue) "means that you are essentially limitless. You can go anywhere. You can do anything."
"Yes, I'm aware," he says stiffly. "Do you have any better ideas?" Of course Eames does; why else would he be pestering Arthur in the first place?
"You've forgotten time travel. You could go into the past or into the future, or you could go into worlds that never existed. You could recreate a fictional world. Saito'll make a killing alone just from all the people who wish they could attend Hogwarts," Eames adds with a mutter.
"What was that?" Arthur is confused, as he always is when the others forget that he's a pop culture black hole.
"Nothing, darling," Eames murmurs in his infuriating way, writing lazily with Arthur's marker, 'TIME TRAVEL, FICTIONAL WORLDS, HOGWARTS' in jumbled, hard-to-read letters at the end of the list. He saunters away smugly and Arthur glares after him, partly because his idea is nothing short of genius and partly because it's Eames.
Yusuf is the next person to provide him with unwanted input. "Why stop at the moon?" he asks. "You could go anywhere. You could walk around on Mars, or go to one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn." He strokes his chin, looking at the list and thinking. "I could possibly even design a compound that could help simulate different conditions while dreaming, like zero gravity." Arthur has had enough of zero gravity to last him a lifetime, personally, but he adds Yusuf's ideas to the list. 'OTHER PLANETS & MOONS.'
"What about a kick?" he asks. "In zero gravity, you won't be able to provide a fall."
"This is relatively safe," Yusuf replies. "Not a lot of time will be programmed into the PASIV device. You could go on a day trip with just an hour of dreaming, and we won't go past the first level. A kick shouldn’t be needed." Arthur nods, but after years of performing dangerous dream stunts, not having a kick makes him nervous.
Cobb just looks at the list and shakes his head, smiling, but at least he's there. Arthur had known that the idea of developing new uses for the PASIV device would have him back in the field, and there's something comforting about having Cobb around again, micromanaging all of their research and naturally falling into the role of leader, one that Arthur never quite fit right. Plus, this time Cobb's actually paying attention and not walking around with crazy eyes, so Arthur thinks it's a good sign.
Saito comes back and looks at their list with a very satisfied expression. "Excellent," he says. "When do we leave?"
*****
"Logistically, you'd have to hire a dreamer to dream the vacation for your clients," Arthur tells Saito as they walk around on a tropical beach. Saito is dressed to the nines in navy swim trunks and holding an oversized pink drink in his hand, complete with ridiculous red umbrellas sticking out of it. Arthur has steadfastly refused to wear a swimsuit and is in a loose dress shirt and belted slacks, as close to casual as he allows himself to get (and his dress shirt is open a few buttons at the collar, even if that is Eames' doing, so can anyone really complain?) "And you'd probably want to hire an architect as well, although you could technically combine the jobs."
"However, if I do not let my clients do the dreaming, the dream may not reach their…specifications," Saito points out.
"Not a good idea," Arthur sits on a large lounge chair and looks out at the ocean. Saito sits in the chair beside him, sipping his drink. It is sunset and the sky is splashed with pinks, oranges, and reds. "An untrained dreamer can introduce all sorts of random elements into the dreamscape without intending to. If you have to, you can let the dreamer enter into one of the client's dreams first to see what they're dealing with, but the actual experience should be designed and controlled at all times."
Saito is obviously impressed. "I see when I hired the best to help me develop this, I did not make a mistake," he says warmly. Arthur has to resist the urge to blush.
Eames drops into a chair on Arthur's other side. "Well this is boring," he says, barely glancing at the sunset. "If I wanted the tropical island experience, I'd just ship off to Tahiti."
"This is just a test," Arthur says with a roll of his eyes.
"And Ariadne did a lovely job of designing it, to be sure," Eames acknowledges, glancing over to the left, where Ariadne and Yusuf are engaged in a full on splash fight in the ocean. Ariadne's projections walk through the beach occasionally, although not a whole lot of them; obviously Ariadne's subconscious feels that beaches at sunset should be quieter. Arthur finds he agrees with her.
(Since this isn't an extraction and there is no specific subject, they had tested to see if the dreamer could also populate the dreams with their own subconscious. It seems to work decently well, and actually keeps the dreams more stable than normal.)
"Wherever did you get that drink?" Eames is asking, leaning over Arthur in an annoying way to grab Saito's drink and take a sip. "Ah, a Mai Tai. Excellent choice." As he places the drink back, he's still in annoying proximity to Arthur, and Arthur grimaces, but Eames ignores it. Cobb approaches them after a moment.
"It almost makes me want to bring my children here," he says, but Arthur can tell that he doesn't mean it. Cobb would rather pay an arm and a leg and take his children to a real tropical island, someplace where spinning tops fall to gravity and Mal isn't waiting in the wings.
"Even the water feels real!" Ariadne calls from the ocean.
Saito takes a big gulp from his Mai Tai. "So where else will you take me?" he asks.
*****
"I've always wanted to pilot a dirigible," Eames' eyes are bright and his hair is mussed from the wind and the pair of unwieldy goggles that are lodged in it. Otherwise, he looks relatively normal; he's wearing a suit with a vest and a long coat, and a long pocket watch hangs out of one of his pockets. (Arthur himself is wearing his usual Armani, and he doesn't care if it means he has no imagination.)
"You're piloting your dirigible right towards the Eiffel Tower," Arthur points out. It's early evening again, and turn of the century Paris bustles below them. There are other dirigibles in the air around them, presumably piloted by Eames' projections since they weren't in Ariadne's original designs. Eames adjusts his course and they sail past the Eiffel Tower, getting close enough that Arthur feels like he could reach out and touch it. The view is breathtaking, and he finds himself clasping onto Eames' arm momentarily.
"Well darling, it's just you and I and this great big dirigible-" Eames begins, but then Ariadne comes upstairs from the lower deck of the gondola and Arthur springs away from him quickly. Her eyes are also bright and she's wearing a corset and a ridiculous amount of petticoats. "Ariadne, you look lovely," Eames says appreciatively.
"Eames, there's an airship race!" she says, all excitement. "We've been watching it. They're amazing." Her imagination is in overdrive. She grabs Arthur by the hand and drags him down to the lower level before he can protest. He glances over his shoulder and Eames has a slightly pained look on his face for a moment before concentrating on piloting once more.
The others are clustered at the other end of the deck, right below where he and Eames had been standing, and staring off into the distance. It takes Arthur a moment to recognize that they have one more passenger than they should, but a projection of Mal, dressed in a Victorian-style dress with lots of lace, is clinging to Cobb's arm like she belongs there.
He stops and reaches for the gun he always brings with him into dreams, even when they're supposed to be safe, but Ariadne stops him with a hand on his arm. "She's no longer a manifestation of his guilt," she tells him quietly. "She's harmless now. Just a memory."
It still makes Arthur feel unsettled, but he joins them to watch the airship race all the same. He barely notices the slightly protective glances he shoots at Cobb are being mirrored by Saito, who seems equally distrustful of Mal.
*****
Arthur looks down at his clothes, horrified. He's dressed like a prince out of a fairy tale, in white brocade and a long cape, and it looks absolutely horrible. This isn't his dream - it's Ariadne's - but he concentrates hard and soon he's in a suit once more, which doesn't fit into his surroundings at all but is better than the monstrosity that Ariadne placed him in.
He's obviously in a castle, although from the mixing of architectural styles, he can guess that it's not a real place. He glances out of one of the windows into a central courtyard where several people are dismounting from horses, and for a moment he can't tell if it's the rest of his team or projections. There is a veiled lady in a long crimson dress being escorted by a knight wearing a full helmet.
He runs into Saito in the hallway, dressed in the same ridiculous robes as he was wearing but with a crown on his head. He nods to Arthur.
"Ariadne's subconscious made you a king," Arthur tries to keep the smirk out of his voice and fails a little, but Saito seems pleased.
"Ariadne and her knight have arrived," he says, showing Arthur down into the courtyard, where the veiled lady is indeed Ariadne. She shoves the veil off of her head and gives Arthur a stern look.
"You stand out like a sore thumb! My projections are going to be all over you." The knight laughs slightly, and Arthur suspects that it must be Eames, because who else would laugh immaturely at that?
He frowns at her. "I was dressed like a fairytale prince. This is much better." One of Ariadne's projections walks by them, a beautiful brunette wearing violet silk, and stops to stare at Arthur. After a moment, she winks saucily, and Arthur is horrified. "Your projections are awfully forward."
"It's my subconscious," Ariadne says breezily. "I can't help it." Saito looks like he's trying to suppress his laughter.
Another horse clatters into the courtyard and Cobb dismounts, dressed in leather pants and a really awkward looking tunic. Arthur wonders why Cobb couldn't have played the prince, but decides not to ask. The brunette projection is still hanging around them, batting her eyelashes at Arthur, and he rolls his eyes.
"This is very interesting," Cobb says, looking at the castle with some awe. "I wasn't expecting you to go into so much detail." Ariadne blushes prettily at his compliment, and Arthur decides not to mention the inconsistencies in the architecture (at least not until later). Projections of servants come out to help Cobb dismount and take the three horses away, presumably to some sort of stable.
Saito navigates himself over towards Cobb and asks him something too low for Arthur to hear, but that's when Arthur notices that they're missing someone.
"Where's Yusuf?" he asks.
"What?" asks the knight, and then he goes, "oh!" and takes off his helmet and Yusuf is standing there, smiling at them sheepishly. "I forgot you wouldn’t be able to tell it was me." But now there is an even better question. Where is Eames?
The brunette projection places a hand on his shoulder and whispers something utterly scandalous to him. Arthur feels the tips of his ears go red, and that's when he realizes. "Eames!" he growls, grabbing her by the wrist and glaring at her intensely. She stares back, not a projection at all, eyes vivid with promise and mouth curved into a smile.
"Is that a no, darling?" she says, pulling her arm free and smoothing her hands over her violet dress. Arthur can't help but look at the way the dress accentuates her body, and the sudden silence means that he's at the scrutiny of everyone else.
Ariadne breaks the silence with a giggle. "Eames, you make a lovely courtier," she says. Eames beams with delight.
"I did think it was time to be a little more creative." She glances at Arthur. "Why are you dressed in a suit again? Do you have no imagination at all?"
Arthur makes a face.
*****
Eames and Ariadne fight rather spectacularly over who gets to be the dreamer for Hogwarts, but in the end, Ariadne wins. Arthur ends up sitting in a classroom wearing a uniform with a blue tie and surrounded by projections also wearing blue uniforms. Arthur wishes he had actually read the Harry Potter books back when they were popular so that he would know what was going on. The projections start filing out of the classroom and Arthur follows them, hoping they'll lead him to the rest of the team.
Sure enough, they go to a large hall where long tables are set up, and most of the team is clustered around one of the tables at the far end, looking much younger than they are in real life. Cobb is blond and baby-faced, all teenaged heartthrob, and Ariadne looks the same. Yusuf is slimmer and his face is rounder, and Eames is lazily splayed out on the benches, less husky than normal. Although his mouth is a bit too big, his face also has that teenaged heartthrob look, Arthur notices, and squashes that thought angrily.
Arthur sits as far away from him as possible, and Eames winks at him.
"Ariadne, I can't help but notice your projections discussing the Quidditch game this afternoon," he says. Arthur notes that his tie is green. "Should be an interesting match."
"Oh?" Ariadne asks with a laugh. "Have you decided to play?"
"You couldn’t stop me if your life depended on it," Eames turns his mischievous expression from Arthur to her. Saito approaches them then, or at least Arthur assumes that it's Saito; he's much ganglier and he looks like a character out of a Japanese drama, with his hair gelled back into spikes and his uniform shirt slightly unbuttoned.
"This is impressive," he tells Ariadne. Younger, he seems to be more open with his expressions, and Arthur watches him overtly survey the table before squashing himself in between Cobb and Yusuf, and he notes absently that Cobb gives him a sulky teenager look.
They end up at Eames' match, watching him fly around on a broomstick and bash extremely fast flying balls with a club. It seems very appropriate, and Arthur can't seem to take his eyes off of Eames' face, bright and smiling, as he flies figure eights through the air.
*****
Yusuf gives them all a drop of a compound to mix in their drinks for the next outing. The compound does something to affect brain chemistry and simulates the effect of being in lesser gravity within the dream, according to his careful testing. He has another compound that can be used to simulate zero gravity, but they decided to test the least dramatic compound first. They all drink up and hook to the PASIV device. Arthur has spent some time doing impressive zero gravity acrobatics in the past, especially during the inception job, so he's not really all that concerned about it.
Yusuf dreams them onto the moon, and the first thing Arthur notices is the bright green and blue globe of the Earth directly above him. It knocks the breath out of him. Arthur is very rarely overcome with emotion, but the sheer wonder that courses through him at seeing the Earth for the first time from space is undeniable. Yusuf has put them all in space suits (probably for realism's sake) and Arthur wonders if they could possibly eliminate that aspect eventually, making it so that people could stand on the surface of the moon and still be able to breathe.
Two other space-suited figures make their way over a dune towards him, and Arthur raises his hand to wave. There don't seem to be any projections around, which is probably for the best. As the figures come into view, it is obvious that they are Cobb and Saito. Cobb is staring wonderingly at the bright planet in the sky, but Saito is simply smiling smugly.
"Almost as good as the real thing," he says in a way that implies that, yes, Saito has in fact been to the moon in reality. "Yusuf and Ariadne constructed this dreamscape well." Their space suits must have an intercom, for his voice sounds a bit tinny, as though it's over a radio. For a moment, Arthur wonders where the others are; the terrain around them is slightly hilly, making visibility difficult. Ash-gray dust is kicked up under his feet as he makes his way towards Cobb and Saito, noting the particular bounce in his step from the lower gravity. He jumps slightly, indulging in an unusual whimsy, and is surprised when Saito grabs his space suit by the ankle and pulls him back down.
"Be careful," he warns. "You would not want to bounce too high and have trouble returning. This gravity is very light." Arthur nods. A speck in the distance is growing closer and closer, he notes, and soon it is obviously some sort of space vehicle, although it doesn't look like the ones Arthur has seen in the news. Presumably, Yusuf played with the dream somewhat and created his own craft, and this is confirmed when the shuttle sets down and Eames comes out, in the same space suit as the rest of them and waving eagerly.
Saito and Cobb make their way inside the shuttle, but Arthur stays outside, hesitant to leave the image of the Earth behind. He almost misses the way Saito holds onto Cobb's arm as they maneuver into the shuttle.
"Darling," Eames says. "You must come in. Yusuf wants to show us some other sites." Arthur doesn't reply, instead staring up at the Earth, thinking about how small he really is, how large the world is, and how on that planet before him, billions of people are going about their business. In reality, even he is on that planet, not on the moon at all. How deep does the dream go? Could he fly back to Earth in this dream if he really wanted to? "The Earth will still be there," Eames tells him gently, and to his surprise, he takes his arm with a large gloved hand. Eames pushes off from the surface with his boots and drags Arthur along, and they both float in an arc until they reach the side of the shuttle. "Come now."
Arthur gives in and allows himself to be pulled inside. Ariadne is beaming at them from inside her own space suit, and Yusuf is piloting the controls as only the dreamer could do expertly. Cobb and Saito are seated back to back on the shuttle floor, supporting each other, although from Cobb's expression, he's anywhere but there.
"I was thinking we'd see the Apollo 11 landing site," Yusuf tells them as the shuttle takes off. Despite the movement away from the surface, there is still a minimal amount of gravity available in the shuttle, probably due to Yusuf's compound.
As they're en route, Eames comes up to Arthur. "You know, this could be interesting," he says with a leer that is completely visible through his helmet. "I've always been curious what it would be like to have sex with no gravity."
"Absolutely not," Arthur says, and he turns his face away so that Eames can't see the blush that's slowly creeping up the side of his face. Eames chuckles.
"Why, Arthur," and the tone of his voice makes it very obvious that he's smiling. "I never said I wanted to have sex with you without gravity." Arthur turns to glare at him, momentarily forgetting that he's still flushed, and Eames' grin is wide enough to swallow whole planets. Arthur takes a moment to hate him very much.
"We’re here!" Yusuf announces like a kid in a candy store. He bounds out of his pilot's seat as Ariadne operates the ramp, and he leads the charge out of the shuttle to see the landing site.
"Scientists," Eames mutters, shaking his head and momentarily forgetting about torturing Arthur. "I never fully understand them, but I do love them."
Saito murmurs something in Japanese that nobody can translate, but Arthur assumes from the tone that it's a fond sentiment of some sort. He never leaves Cobb's side the whole time.
*****
Arthur is listening to Debussy and aimlessly sketching staircases when Ariadne corners him in the warehouse after everyone else has gone home.
"Have you thought at all about where you want to go?" she asks curiously. "I can help you design the setting and then you can dream it."
"Where I want to go?" Arthur is surprised to be asked. Everyone else had been so full of exciting ideas that it had never occurred to him that eventually they would want to go somewhere that he wanted to go. Arthur prefers places with elegance, good architecture, and well-tailored clothing, with some jazz or classical music in the background. He's well suited to designing hotels, pagodas, and bars, but he's not sure if his taste runs quite on par with everyone else's idea of an interesting day trip. "I don't really have a preference, Ariadne."
"You and Cobb can't both get away with not choosing a destination," Ariadne insists. "Cobb doesn't dare dream yet because he's still afraid of Mal, but you don't have an excuse! C'mon, Arthur. Where would you go if you could go anywhere?"
Arthur briefly toys with going back to the earlier part of the century, with tailored suits and fedoras and smoky clubs filled with live jazz music. The romance of the period appeals to him, but it seems too similar to what he normally dreams up on occasion, even if it is a bit grittier. "Time travel," he tells Ariadne.
"Okay." She pulls the top off of her pen with her teeth and quickly jots down some notes onto a pad she's carrying. "When do you want to go? We'll have to research it." The Debussy on Arthur's iPod switches to a Puccini aria from La Bohème and Arthur muses about possibly going to turn of the century Europe somewhere, Italy or Paris maybe. He squashes that quickly, however, when he recalls the similarities it would have to Eames' steampunk dream. Arthur forces himself to think even earlier.
"What are you listening to?" Ariadne asks, pushing the forward button on his iPod. One of Beethoven's later pieces comes on and Ariadne looks perplexed, as though college students don't listen to classical music anymore, but suddenly and swiftly, Arthur knows when he wants to go.
"The British Regency era," he declares firmly. "That's where I'd pick, if I could go anywhere." Ariadne raises an eyebrow.
"Like from Jane Austen?!" she exclaims delightedly. "I mean, we'll have to do some research, but we could go to a ball, or socialize with the upper crust in Bath or London, or-" Her imagination, as usual, is much wilder than his, but Arthur feels like that's okay.
"So how does this work?" he asks. "I'm the dreamer, right?"
She nods. "You imagine where you want to be and what you want it to look like. Then we go into your dream and we'll help construct it clearly together and draw some blueprints that you'll memorize to give it the right mood. Once you feel like you've got it down, we bring everyone in for a field trip."
Arthur pretends to be nonchalant about the whole thing until she goes home. Then he throws himself into Regency era research, because Arthur never does anything halfway when it comes to accuracy.
*****
The ballroom is lit with the soft glow of candlelight and people are milling around, some starting to line up in the center to begin dancing. Arthur tugs on the sleeves of his navy-blue jacket and glances around the room, momentarily forgetting himself and thinking, 'it feels almost like a dream.'
Then Ariadne sails by his line of sight, dancing a scotch reel with Saito while wearing a lovely dress of white muslin with a blue Spencer jacket. Arthur is pleased at the details, especially at the way Ariadne's hair is done up - apparently his mind even insists on accuracy for everyone else's clothing.
He scans the room. Yusuf is loitering in the corner, entertaining a group of his female projections with a story that requires significant hand gestures, and Cobb is watching Saito and Ariadne dance, his expression unreadable. The mood of the room is hazy, the air heavy like a summer evening, and Arthur feels a bit drunk with feeling. Perhaps it's the combination of candlelight, the music, and the soft murmur of people chatting in the background, but there is something very comfortable about the whole scene, and Arthur can feel the ghost of a smile creeping onto his face.
That smile very abruptly disappears when Eames arrives, walking in as though he owns the place and handing off his top hat at the door. The sight of him wearing a double-breasted maroon jacket, only a few of the buttons fastened near the bottom, and the way the cravat ties at his neck makes Arthur want to squirm where he stands, although he can't put his finger on why. It obviously unsettles him enough, however, because all of Arthur's projections stop in the middle of their motions and stare as one at Eames.
Arthur clears his throat uncomfortably and tries to calm his racing heart, telling his mind that it's okay, he's just dreaming, and who cares if Eames looks unnaturally good at the moment? The projections stop staring and go back to whatever they were doing, and Arthur breathes a sigh of relief. If he'd had to explain why his projections had suddenly converged on Eames at that moment, it would have been mortifying. He feels a blush coming on and desperately tries to repress it.
He loses track of Eames in the crowd when Ariadne comes up and asks him to dance a cotillion with her. He's not very sure of his steps, even though he's studied the dances of the period, but somehow the dream interprets his unsteadiness and the dance seems to form around him. He finds himself enjoying the movement, the elegance, the music, and again is on the verge of a smile when one of his hands is taken by Eames and he is whirled away from the dance floor quite abruptly.
"Good evening," Eames says, bowing slightly as Arthur snatches his hand away. "May I have the next dance?" Arthur is very carefully not looking at how his cravat is so elegantly knotted, especially since Eames probably did none of it himself.
"No." He feels like he has to say this a lot around Eames. Suddenly the room feels too warm, the air too thick and the lights too bright, and he makes his way through the crowds to where his mind has handily built a lovely balcony overlooking a pond. No one is out there, and glancing up, Arthur can look into the clear night sky and see stars. He takes deep gulps of fresh air, hating how Eames tampers with his self-control.
He doesn't know why he doesn't expect Eames to follow him, but a gentle hand on the back of his elbow makes him jump. Eames stands next to him on the balcony, eyeing the stars as well, and doesn't move his hand from Arthur's arm.
"You're so stubborn," he murmurs, his voice soft. Arthur can barely hear him over the music from inside.
"I don't know what you mean," he says stiffly. This is his dream; what is Eames doing, messing his emotions all about? If he becomes too emotionally unstable, his projections could turn on the rest of the team and then it will have been all Eames' fault. Somehow, while he's thinking this, Eames turns and starts crowding him against the outside wall, getting far too close.
"What are you so afraid of?" he asks, his voice still murmuring like butter, sending shivers down Arthur's spine. Arthur wants to say, you and things will never be the same and this is unprofessional, but he somehow can't seem to choke the words out past the lump that's forming in his throat. He fixates on the buttons of Eames' jacket, but Eames hooks two fingers under his chin and drags his gaze back up to look him in the eye. "Arthur," he says, and Arthur's name is all long vowels rolling off Eames' ridiculous tongue.
He tries to make his expression stern, but Eames backs him even further against the wall and is so close he's practically brushing against him. In the dimness, his eyes look all pupil, and Arthur licks his lips without thinking. "I'm not afraid," he says defiantly.
"Oh?" Eames has to lean upward just slightly, but he whispers in his ear, "that's not what I think, darling." His breath ghosts across Arthur's earlobe and, oh, it's not like Arthur's a saint. He twists his hand into Eames' ridiculously intricate cravat and pulls him the last inch to meld their mouths together, kissing him with all of the pent up aggravation of years of pigtail pulling. Eames smiles against Arthur's mouth, wraps an arm around his back, and pulls them firmly against one another. He's all warmth and he smells amazing (this is probably not historically accurate, one detached part of Arthur's mind notes). Arthur could kiss him forever, his back up against the wall of wherever they are, Eames' hand massaging circles against his back that he can feel through the thick fabric of his jacket and shirt.
Eames pulls away after a moment, his eyes brilliant with laughter, and for a moment Arthur is afraid it was all a joke. Then Eames leans in and kisses him again, and Arthur allows himself to stop worrying. It's not difficult; his mind feels very hazy, almost as though he's drunk, and the world has shrunk to just contain Eames in front of him.
"We should get back to the others," Eames whispers at that moment, which is exactly what Arthur does not want to hear, but he knows it's true. Eames' lips are even more pronounced than usual, swollen from kissing, and Arthur figures he probably looks a little disheveled as well, but for the first time in a long time, he can't really bring himself to care. He wants Eames, wants all of him like his skin is on fire, but he wants it to be outside the dream - just in case.
They go back into the room, Eames' hand lingering on the small of Arthur's back. Arthur stares in astonishment at what he sees. The music is slightly off key, faster than usual, and his projections, so elegant and refined a few minutes before, have started to act as though they have all had entirely too much to drink. Yusuf has three ladies and a gentleman all backing him into a corner of the room, Ariadne is dancing with a very hands-on fellow to the distorted music, and Cobb and Saito are watching it all with amusement. Arthur vaguely notes that Saito's arm seems to be around Cobb's waist, and that Cobb doesn't seem to mind. He wonders if it's going around.
Eames is even more amused than anyone else. "It would seem," he says with a smug tone, "I have suitably disrupted your subconscious."
Arthur scowls and tries not to blush. It's hard not to, especially when one of his intoxicated projections tries to grope Ariadne in the middle of the dance floor.
*****
Saito surveys the team as they're gathered in a meeting to evaluate the dream tourism project. "This experiment turned out better than I ever expected," he tells them, his smile calculating. Behind Arthur, Eames kicks the bottom of his chair and Arthur ignores it. "Dream tourism does seem as though it could be possible…for those willing to pay a fee." Arthur's pretty sure that fee is going to be quite hefty, but he doesn't say anything, because if Saito wants to charge the billionaires of the world an arm and a leg to go on unrealistic dream vacations, who is he to stop him?
"But Saito," Ariadne sits up in her chair straighter. "We never went into your dream." There's a slight smirk on her face, like she knows exactly what Saito's dream is and wants to go there.
Saito thinks for a moment before grinning. "We could do one final test, I suppose."
"Wait. What's Saito's dream?" Cobb asks. Only Ariadne seems to know; everyone else is as puzzled as Cobb.
"Is this really necessary?" Arthur asks. There are other jobs they could be doing, after all, jobs that will allow them to make more money (not that they need it after two Saito jobs, but it's the principle of the thing. Arthur can't stand inefficiency.)
Eames, being the traitor he is, says, "it would be quite unfair to allow the rest of us to have our dreams and not Saito, don't you think, Arthur?"
"He did allow the rest of us to live our dream vacations," Yusuf points out.
"I'll pay extra," Saito adds flippantly, as though money doesn't matter. Although for him, it probably doesn't.
"Let's do it!" Ariadne hops up from her chair, heading over to the PASIV device. Yusuf is close on her heels and Eames is already getting up out of his slouch by the time Arthur registers that yes, they mean at this moment.
Arthur expects Saito's dream to be something incredibly complex and detailed, maybe someplace like the inside of a nebula or a star, something huge and powerful. When he ends up in the front of a Japanese classroom, taking tallies for who will participate in what activity during Sports Day, it almost takes him five whole minutes to realize he's even in a dream. He only puts two and two together when a very Japanese Eames skulks in late, his uniform in disarray and his black hair spiked in typical delinquent fashion.
"You're late," Arthur points out.
"Sorry, class rep," Eames drawls, carefully enunciating the rolling consonants of the typical gangster dialect, and that's when Arthur realizes they're somehow all speaking Japanese. He's about to break character and say something, but watching a teenaged, Japanese Eames slouch in his seat in the back and give him an obvious leer knocks the words from his mouth for a moment.
He's almost got his bearings again when a shriek goes up outside, and as one, all the girls in the classroom run to the windows.
"It's Saito!"
"Oh my god!" There's a stampede out of the classroom, everyone completely ignoring Arthur's yells of "where are you going?!" and "we still have class!" The only girl who doesn't leave is a Japanese Ariadne, who is sitting by the window looking forlornly out.
"Looks like you lost them, class rep," Eames drawls from the corner. Arthur ignores him and goes to the windows to see what's going on below.
A long black car has pulled up in front of the school and a teenaged Saito has gotten out, although his hair is longer than it was at Hogwarts, and he's not wearing the school uniform but instead a pair of tight leather pants and a bedazzled shirt that looks more like something a girl would wear at a nightclub. As he stands there, a mob of girls (and some boys) surrounds him, shrieking loudly. He blows a kiss into the crowd and some of the members of the mob faint.
"Saito just finished his new album," one of the student projections who stayed in the classroom tells Arthur, looking slightly jealous.
Of course Saito would be a Japanese pop idol in his dreams, Arthur thinks with fond exasperation.
"I like his trousers," Eames murmurs from beside him. Arthur jumps slightly; he hadn't even seen him move from his seat.
"Don't even think about it," he mutters. Eames grins at him and throws an arm around his shoulders, pulling him against his side. It's very warm, and he does make that uniform look surprisingly good.
"Class rep?" their teacher says from behind him, and Arthur turns around to see Yusuf, looking terribly confused. "Where did the rest of the class go?"
"Saito's here," says the jealous projection. Nobody seems phased at all that the class bad boy is cozying up to the class rep, which Arthur is slightly thankful for even as he untangles himself from Eames' embrace.
"He's my brother, you know," Ariadne says sadly from the back. "He doesn't know. We had different mothers." Down in front of the school, a gasp rings out from the mob, and Arthur glances back out the windows to see pop star Saito giving a teenaged, Japanese Cobb a very long, thorough kiss in the middle of the crowd.
That's the moment he realizes they're in a Japanese primetime drama.
Behind him, Eames just starts laughing.
end
ETA 8/14: I want to thank all of you for your lovely comments! I didn't have a chance to reply individually until a ton of time had already passed, so instead I'm just eta-ing here at the end to say YOU ARE ALL LOVELY and I read every comment! ♥
Title: fly me to the moon (and let me dream among the stars)
Fandom: Inception
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Eames/Arthur, Cobb/Saito
Word Count: 6,670
Warnings: Lots of ridiculousness, including Harry Potter and jdrama references. Also, Frank Sinatra lyrics were butchered for the sake of a title. You have been warned.
Summary: Saito recruits the team to test out new uses for the PASIV device. Eames, as usual, takes this as a opportunity for seduction.
Notes: written for this prompt at inception_kink: DREAMSCAPE FIELD TRIPS! Dreamscapes have to look/feel real to convince the subject that they're really awake; but what about TEAM FIELD TRIPS?! Cobb lets them have one group-field trip into any place/time/setting they want every six months. :D :D :D and they can go ANYWHERE and do EVERYTHING.
Disclaimer: Inception, the ideas behind it, and these characters do not belong to me; I'm just playing in their universe.
fly me to the moon (and let me dream among the stars)
Like most great ideas, this one begins with Saito. He shows up at the warehouse in LA about six months after the Fischer job, lugging a PASIV device and looking as though he belongs there. Arthur and Ariadne are the only ones there at the time, and Saito begins without preamble, setting the briefcase on the table and looking Arthur straight in the eye.
"Have you ever used this device for leisure activities?" he asks.
Arthur glances at Ariadne, who, being new, has no idea. Of course they have, he wants to say. Back in the day, the PASIV device was used like a drug, before it became illegal and went on the black market. But this is Saito he's talking to, and there's no way that Saito doesn't already know the history of dream sharing.
"Some of us hook up to it in after hours in order to dream," Ariadne explains. (Nobody mentions that 'some of us' mostly means Cobb, although all three of them know it.) "Is that what you mean?"
Saito shakes his head. "I'll pay you handsomely," he says, "if you assist me in researching ways to use the device for...group activities."
Ariadne exchanges a look with Arthur, like she's terrified that Saito means something like 'orgies', but Arthur has an inkling as to where this is going (at least, he assumes it's not going to involve orgies).
"You mean like, group vacations and field trips?" he asks. Saito nods.
"I am interested in developing dream tourism," he explains, "and I want to hire the best to make it work."
Arthur takes the job immediately. The sum Saito offers is almost as much as for the Fischer job, and this time, nobody is likely to shoot at them. They might even be able to convince Cobb to return for this one, since it's not (technically) illegal or dangerous.
Ariadne's eyes are wide, and it's obvious she's already devising schemes for mazes in her head.
*****
"You have so little imagination about this," Eames points out, reaching over Arthur to gesture at the list of ideas for possible group dreaming retreats. The list reads: TROPICAL ISLAND, JAPAN, GREECE, UNDERWATER, THE MOON??? and it's not even like he came up with the last one - that's Ariadne's contribution. "Using the PASIV device for pleasure," (and Arthur hates the way 'pleasure' rolls off Eames' tongue) "means that you are essentially limitless. You can go anywhere. You can do anything."
"Yes, I'm aware," he says stiffly. "Do you have any better ideas?" Of course Eames does; why else would he be pestering Arthur in the first place?
"You've forgotten time travel. You could go into the past or into the future, or you could go into worlds that never existed. You could recreate a fictional world. Saito'll make a killing alone just from all the people who wish they could attend Hogwarts," Eames adds with a mutter.
"What was that?" Arthur is confused, as he always is when the others forget that he's a pop culture black hole.
"Nothing, darling," Eames murmurs in his infuriating way, writing lazily with Arthur's marker, 'TIME TRAVEL, FICTIONAL WORLDS, HOGWARTS' in jumbled, hard-to-read letters at the end of the list. He saunters away smugly and Arthur glares after him, partly because his idea is nothing short of genius and partly because it's Eames.
Yusuf is the next person to provide him with unwanted input. "Why stop at the moon?" he asks. "You could go anywhere. You could walk around on Mars, or go to one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn." He strokes his chin, looking at the list and thinking. "I could possibly even design a compound that could help simulate different conditions while dreaming, like zero gravity." Arthur has had enough of zero gravity to last him a lifetime, personally, but he adds Yusuf's ideas to the list. 'OTHER PLANETS & MOONS.'
"What about a kick?" he asks. "In zero gravity, you won't be able to provide a fall."
"This is relatively safe," Yusuf replies. "Not a lot of time will be programmed into the PASIV device. You could go on a day trip with just an hour of dreaming, and we won't go past the first level. A kick shouldn’t be needed." Arthur nods, but after years of performing dangerous dream stunts, not having a kick makes him nervous.
Cobb just looks at the list and shakes his head, smiling, but at least he's there. Arthur had known that the idea of developing new uses for the PASIV device would have him back in the field, and there's something comforting about having Cobb around again, micromanaging all of their research and naturally falling into the role of leader, one that Arthur never quite fit right. Plus, this time Cobb's actually paying attention and not walking around with crazy eyes, so Arthur thinks it's a good sign.
Saito comes back and looks at their list with a very satisfied expression. "Excellent," he says. "When do we leave?"
*****
"Logistically, you'd have to hire a dreamer to dream the vacation for your clients," Arthur tells Saito as they walk around on a tropical beach. Saito is dressed to the nines in navy swim trunks and holding an oversized pink drink in his hand, complete with ridiculous red umbrellas sticking out of it. Arthur has steadfastly refused to wear a swimsuit and is in a loose dress shirt and belted slacks, as close to casual as he allows himself to get (and his dress shirt is open a few buttons at the collar, even if that is Eames' doing, so can anyone really complain?) "And you'd probably want to hire an architect as well, although you could technically combine the jobs."
"However, if I do not let my clients do the dreaming, the dream may not reach their…specifications," Saito points out.
"Not a good idea," Arthur sits on a large lounge chair and looks out at the ocean. Saito sits in the chair beside him, sipping his drink. It is sunset and the sky is splashed with pinks, oranges, and reds. "An untrained dreamer can introduce all sorts of random elements into the dreamscape without intending to. If you have to, you can let the dreamer enter into one of the client's dreams first to see what they're dealing with, but the actual experience should be designed and controlled at all times."
Saito is obviously impressed. "I see when I hired the best to help me develop this, I did not make a mistake," he says warmly. Arthur has to resist the urge to blush.
Eames drops into a chair on Arthur's other side. "Well this is boring," he says, barely glancing at the sunset. "If I wanted the tropical island experience, I'd just ship off to Tahiti."
"This is just a test," Arthur says with a roll of his eyes.
"And Ariadne did a lovely job of designing it, to be sure," Eames acknowledges, glancing over to the left, where Ariadne and Yusuf are engaged in a full on splash fight in the ocean. Ariadne's projections walk through the beach occasionally, although not a whole lot of them; obviously Ariadne's subconscious feels that beaches at sunset should be quieter. Arthur finds he agrees with her.
(Since this isn't an extraction and there is no specific subject, they had tested to see if the dreamer could also populate the dreams with their own subconscious. It seems to work decently well, and actually keeps the dreams more stable than normal.)
"Wherever did you get that drink?" Eames is asking, leaning over Arthur in an annoying way to grab Saito's drink and take a sip. "Ah, a Mai Tai. Excellent choice." As he places the drink back, he's still in annoying proximity to Arthur, and Arthur grimaces, but Eames ignores it. Cobb approaches them after a moment.
"It almost makes me want to bring my children here," he says, but Arthur can tell that he doesn't mean it. Cobb would rather pay an arm and a leg and take his children to a real tropical island, someplace where spinning tops fall to gravity and Mal isn't waiting in the wings.
"Even the water feels real!" Ariadne calls from the ocean.
Saito takes a big gulp from his Mai Tai. "So where else will you take me?" he asks.
*****
"I've always wanted to pilot a dirigible," Eames' eyes are bright and his hair is mussed from the wind and the pair of unwieldy goggles that are lodged in it. Otherwise, he looks relatively normal; he's wearing a suit with a vest and a long coat, and a long pocket watch hangs out of one of his pockets. (Arthur himself is wearing his usual Armani, and he doesn't care if it means he has no imagination.)
"You're piloting your dirigible right towards the Eiffel Tower," Arthur points out. It's early evening again, and turn of the century Paris bustles below them. There are other dirigibles in the air around them, presumably piloted by Eames' projections since they weren't in Ariadne's original designs. Eames adjusts his course and they sail past the Eiffel Tower, getting close enough that Arthur feels like he could reach out and touch it. The view is breathtaking, and he finds himself clasping onto Eames' arm momentarily.
"Well darling, it's just you and I and this great big dirigible-" Eames begins, but then Ariadne comes upstairs from the lower deck of the gondola and Arthur springs away from him quickly. Her eyes are also bright and she's wearing a corset and a ridiculous amount of petticoats. "Ariadne, you look lovely," Eames says appreciatively.
"Eames, there's an airship race!" she says, all excitement. "We've been watching it. They're amazing." Her imagination is in overdrive. She grabs Arthur by the hand and drags him down to the lower level before he can protest. He glances over his shoulder and Eames has a slightly pained look on his face for a moment before concentrating on piloting once more.
The others are clustered at the other end of the deck, right below where he and Eames had been standing, and staring off into the distance. It takes Arthur a moment to recognize that they have one more passenger than they should, but a projection of Mal, dressed in a Victorian-style dress with lots of lace, is clinging to Cobb's arm like she belongs there.
He stops and reaches for the gun he always brings with him into dreams, even when they're supposed to be safe, but Ariadne stops him with a hand on his arm. "She's no longer a manifestation of his guilt," she tells him quietly. "She's harmless now. Just a memory."
It still makes Arthur feel unsettled, but he joins them to watch the airship race all the same. He barely notices the slightly protective glances he shoots at Cobb are being mirrored by Saito, who seems equally distrustful of Mal.
*****
Arthur looks down at his clothes, horrified. He's dressed like a prince out of a fairy tale, in white brocade and a long cape, and it looks absolutely horrible. This isn't his dream - it's Ariadne's - but he concentrates hard and soon he's in a suit once more, which doesn't fit into his surroundings at all but is better than the monstrosity that Ariadne placed him in.
He's obviously in a castle, although from the mixing of architectural styles, he can guess that it's not a real place. He glances out of one of the windows into a central courtyard where several people are dismounting from horses, and for a moment he can't tell if it's the rest of his team or projections. There is a veiled lady in a long crimson dress being escorted by a knight wearing a full helmet.
He runs into Saito in the hallway, dressed in the same ridiculous robes as he was wearing but with a crown on his head. He nods to Arthur.
"Ariadne's subconscious made you a king," Arthur tries to keep the smirk out of his voice and fails a little, but Saito seems pleased.
"Ariadne and her knight have arrived," he says, showing Arthur down into the courtyard, where the veiled lady is indeed Ariadne. She shoves the veil off of her head and gives Arthur a stern look.
"You stand out like a sore thumb! My projections are going to be all over you." The knight laughs slightly, and Arthur suspects that it must be Eames, because who else would laugh immaturely at that?
He frowns at her. "I was dressed like a fairytale prince. This is much better." One of Ariadne's projections walks by them, a beautiful brunette wearing violet silk, and stops to stare at Arthur. After a moment, she winks saucily, and Arthur is horrified. "Your projections are awfully forward."
"It's my subconscious," Ariadne says breezily. "I can't help it." Saito looks like he's trying to suppress his laughter.
Another horse clatters into the courtyard and Cobb dismounts, dressed in leather pants and a really awkward looking tunic. Arthur wonders why Cobb couldn't have played the prince, but decides not to ask. The brunette projection is still hanging around them, batting her eyelashes at Arthur, and he rolls his eyes.
"This is very interesting," Cobb says, looking at the castle with some awe. "I wasn't expecting you to go into so much detail." Ariadne blushes prettily at his compliment, and Arthur decides not to mention the inconsistencies in the architecture (at least not until later). Projections of servants come out to help Cobb dismount and take the three horses away, presumably to some sort of stable.
Saito navigates himself over towards Cobb and asks him something too low for Arthur to hear, but that's when Arthur notices that they're missing someone.
"Where's Yusuf?" he asks.
"What?" asks the knight, and then he goes, "oh!" and takes off his helmet and Yusuf is standing there, smiling at them sheepishly. "I forgot you wouldn’t be able to tell it was me." But now there is an even better question. Where is Eames?
The brunette projection places a hand on his shoulder and whispers something utterly scandalous to him. Arthur feels the tips of his ears go red, and that's when he realizes. "Eames!" he growls, grabbing her by the wrist and glaring at her intensely. She stares back, not a projection at all, eyes vivid with promise and mouth curved into a smile.
"Is that a no, darling?" she says, pulling her arm free and smoothing her hands over her violet dress. Arthur can't help but look at the way the dress accentuates her body, and the sudden silence means that he's at the scrutiny of everyone else.
Ariadne breaks the silence with a giggle. "Eames, you make a lovely courtier," she says. Eames beams with delight.
"I did think it was time to be a little more creative." She glances at Arthur. "Why are you dressed in a suit again? Do you have no imagination at all?"
Arthur makes a face.
*****
Eames and Ariadne fight rather spectacularly over who gets to be the dreamer for Hogwarts, but in the end, Ariadne wins. Arthur ends up sitting in a classroom wearing a uniform with a blue tie and surrounded by projections also wearing blue uniforms. Arthur wishes he had actually read the Harry Potter books back when they were popular so that he would know what was going on. The projections start filing out of the classroom and Arthur follows them, hoping they'll lead him to the rest of the team.
Sure enough, they go to a large hall where long tables are set up, and most of the team is clustered around one of the tables at the far end, looking much younger than they are in real life. Cobb is blond and baby-faced, all teenaged heartthrob, and Ariadne looks the same. Yusuf is slimmer and his face is rounder, and Eames is lazily splayed out on the benches, less husky than normal. Although his mouth is a bit too big, his face also has that teenaged heartthrob look, Arthur notices, and squashes that thought angrily.
Arthur sits as far away from him as possible, and Eames winks at him.
"Ariadne, I can't help but notice your projections discussing the Quidditch game this afternoon," he says. Arthur notes that his tie is green. "Should be an interesting match."
"Oh?" Ariadne asks with a laugh. "Have you decided to play?"
"You couldn’t stop me if your life depended on it," Eames turns his mischievous expression from Arthur to her. Saito approaches them then, or at least Arthur assumes that it's Saito; he's much ganglier and he looks like a character out of a Japanese drama, with his hair gelled back into spikes and his uniform shirt slightly unbuttoned.
"This is impressive," he tells Ariadne. Younger, he seems to be more open with his expressions, and Arthur watches him overtly survey the table before squashing himself in between Cobb and Yusuf, and he notes absently that Cobb gives him a sulky teenager look.
They end up at Eames' match, watching him fly around on a broomstick and bash extremely fast flying balls with a club. It seems very appropriate, and Arthur can't seem to take his eyes off of Eames' face, bright and smiling, as he flies figure eights through the air.
*****
Yusuf gives them all a drop of a compound to mix in their drinks for the next outing. The compound does something to affect brain chemistry and simulates the effect of being in lesser gravity within the dream, according to his careful testing. He has another compound that can be used to simulate zero gravity, but they decided to test the least dramatic compound first. They all drink up and hook to the PASIV device. Arthur has spent some time doing impressive zero gravity acrobatics in the past, especially during the inception job, so he's not really all that concerned about it.
Yusuf dreams them onto the moon, and the first thing Arthur notices is the bright green and blue globe of the Earth directly above him. It knocks the breath out of him. Arthur is very rarely overcome with emotion, but the sheer wonder that courses through him at seeing the Earth for the first time from space is undeniable. Yusuf has put them all in space suits (probably for realism's sake) and Arthur wonders if they could possibly eliminate that aspect eventually, making it so that people could stand on the surface of the moon and still be able to breathe.
Two other space-suited figures make their way over a dune towards him, and Arthur raises his hand to wave. There don't seem to be any projections around, which is probably for the best. As the figures come into view, it is obvious that they are Cobb and Saito. Cobb is staring wonderingly at the bright planet in the sky, but Saito is simply smiling smugly.
"Almost as good as the real thing," he says in a way that implies that, yes, Saito has in fact been to the moon in reality. "Yusuf and Ariadne constructed this dreamscape well." Their space suits must have an intercom, for his voice sounds a bit tinny, as though it's over a radio. For a moment, Arthur wonders where the others are; the terrain around them is slightly hilly, making visibility difficult. Ash-gray dust is kicked up under his feet as he makes his way towards Cobb and Saito, noting the particular bounce in his step from the lower gravity. He jumps slightly, indulging in an unusual whimsy, and is surprised when Saito grabs his space suit by the ankle and pulls him back down.
"Be careful," he warns. "You would not want to bounce too high and have trouble returning. This gravity is very light." Arthur nods. A speck in the distance is growing closer and closer, he notes, and soon it is obviously some sort of space vehicle, although it doesn't look like the ones Arthur has seen in the news. Presumably, Yusuf played with the dream somewhat and created his own craft, and this is confirmed when the shuttle sets down and Eames comes out, in the same space suit as the rest of them and waving eagerly.
Saito and Cobb make their way inside the shuttle, but Arthur stays outside, hesitant to leave the image of the Earth behind. He almost misses the way Saito holds onto Cobb's arm as they maneuver into the shuttle.
"Darling," Eames says. "You must come in. Yusuf wants to show us some other sites." Arthur doesn't reply, instead staring up at the Earth, thinking about how small he really is, how large the world is, and how on that planet before him, billions of people are going about their business. In reality, even he is on that planet, not on the moon at all. How deep does the dream go? Could he fly back to Earth in this dream if he really wanted to? "The Earth will still be there," Eames tells him gently, and to his surprise, he takes his arm with a large gloved hand. Eames pushes off from the surface with his boots and drags Arthur along, and they both float in an arc until they reach the side of the shuttle. "Come now."
Arthur gives in and allows himself to be pulled inside. Ariadne is beaming at them from inside her own space suit, and Yusuf is piloting the controls as only the dreamer could do expertly. Cobb and Saito are seated back to back on the shuttle floor, supporting each other, although from Cobb's expression, he's anywhere but there.
"I was thinking we'd see the Apollo 11 landing site," Yusuf tells them as the shuttle takes off. Despite the movement away from the surface, there is still a minimal amount of gravity available in the shuttle, probably due to Yusuf's compound.
As they're en route, Eames comes up to Arthur. "You know, this could be interesting," he says with a leer that is completely visible through his helmet. "I've always been curious what it would be like to have sex with no gravity."
"Absolutely not," Arthur says, and he turns his face away so that Eames can't see the blush that's slowly creeping up the side of his face. Eames chuckles.
"Why, Arthur," and the tone of his voice makes it very obvious that he's smiling. "I never said I wanted to have sex with you without gravity." Arthur turns to glare at him, momentarily forgetting that he's still flushed, and Eames' grin is wide enough to swallow whole planets. Arthur takes a moment to hate him very much.
"We’re here!" Yusuf announces like a kid in a candy store. He bounds out of his pilot's seat as Ariadne operates the ramp, and he leads the charge out of the shuttle to see the landing site.
"Scientists," Eames mutters, shaking his head and momentarily forgetting about torturing Arthur. "I never fully understand them, but I do love them."
Saito murmurs something in Japanese that nobody can translate, but Arthur assumes from the tone that it's a fond sentiment of some sort. He never leaves Cobb's side the whole time.
*****
Arthur is listening to Debussy and aimlessly sketching staircases when Ariadne corners him in the warehouse after everyone else has gone home.
"Have you thought at all about where you want to go?" she asks curiously. "I can help you design the setting and then you can dream it."
"Where I want to go?" Arthur is surprised to be asked. Everyone else had been so full of exciting ideas that it had never occurred to him that eventually they would want to go somewhere that he wanted to go. Arthur prefers places with elegance, good architecture, and well-tailored clothing, with some jazz or classical music in the background. He's well suited to designing hotels, pagodas, and bars, but he's not sure if his taste runs quite on par with everyone else's idea of an interesting day trip. "I don't really have a preference, Ariadne."
"You and Cobb can't both get away with not choosing a destination," Ariadne insists. "Cobb doesn't dare dream yet because he's still afraid of Mal, but you don't have an excuse! C'mon, Arthur. Where would you go if you could go anywhere?"
Arthur briefly toys with going back to the earlier part of the century, with tailored suits and fedoras and smoky clubs filled with live jazz music. The romance of the period appeals to him, but it seems too similar to what he normally dreams up on occasion, even if it is a bit grittier. "Time travel," he tells Ariadne.
"Okay." She pulls the top off of her pen with her teeth and quickly jots down some notes onto a pad she's carrying. "When do you want to go? We'll have to research it." The Debussy on Arthur's iPod switches to a Puccini aria from La Bohème and Arthur muses about possibly going to turn of the century Europe somewhere, Italy or Paris maybe. He squashes that quickly, however, when he recalls the similarities it would have to Eames' steampunk dream. Arthur forces himself to think even earlier.
"What are you listening to?" Ariadne asks, pushing the forward button on his iPod. One of Beethoven's later pieces comes on and Ariadne looks perplexed, as though college students don't listen to classical music anymore, but suddenly and swiftly, Arthur knows when he wants to go.
"The British Regency era," he declares firmly. "That's where I'd pick, if I could go anywhere." Ariadne raises an eyebrow.
"Like from Jane Austen?!" she exclaims delightedly. "I mean, we'll have to do some research, but we could go to a ball, or socialize with the upper crust in Bath or London, or-" Her imagination, as usual, is much wilder than his, but Arthur feels like that's okay.
"So how does this work?" he asks. "I'm the dreamer, right?"
She nods. "You imagine where you want to be and what you want it to look like. Then we go into your dream and we'll help construct it clearly together and draw some blueprints that you'll memorize to give it the right mood. Once you feel like you've got it down, we bring everyone in for a field trip."
Arthur pretends to be nonchalant about the whole thing until she goes home. Then he throws himself into Regency era research, because Arthur never does anything halfway when it comes to accuracy.
*****
The ballroom is lit with the soft glow of candlelight and people are milling around, some starting to line up in the center to begin dancing. Arthur tugs on the sleeves of his navy-blue jacket and glances around the room, momentarily forgetting himself and thinking, 'it feels almost like a dream.'
Then Ariadne sails by his line of sight, dancing a scotch reel with Saito while wearing a lovely dress of white muslin with a blue Spencer jacket. Arthur is pleased at the details, especially at the way Ariadne's hair is done up - apparently his mind even insists on accuracy for everyone else's clothing.
He scans the room. Yusuf is loitering in the corner, entertaining a group of his female projections with a story that requires significant hand gestures, and Cobb is watching Saito and Ariadne dance, his expression unreadable. The mood of the room is hazy, the air heavy like a summer evening, and Arthur feels a bit drunk with feeling. Perhaps it's the combination of candlelight, the music, and the soft murmur of people chatting in the background, but there is something very comfortable about the whole scene, and Arthur can feel the ghost of a smile creeping onto his face.
That smile very abruptly disappears when Eames arrives, walking in as though he owns the place and handing off his top hat at the door. The sight of him wearing a double-breasted maroon jacket, only a few of the buttons fastened near the bottom, and the way the cravat ties at his neck makes Arthur want to squirm where he stands, although he can't put his finger on why. It obviously unsettles him enough, however, because all of Arthur's projections stop in the middle of their motions and stare as one at Eames.
Arthur clears his throat uncomfortably and tries to calm his racing heart, telling his mind that it's okay, he's just dreaming, and who cares if Eames looks unnaturally good at the moment? The projections stop staring and go back to whatever they were doing, and Arthur breathes a sigh of relief. If he'd had to explain why his projections had suddenly converged on Eames at that moment, it would have been mortifying. He feels a blush coming on and desperately tries to repress it.
He loses track of Eames in the crowd when Ariadne comes up and asks him to dance a cotillion with her. He's not very sure of his steps, even though he's studied the dances of the period, but somehow the dream interprets his unsteadiness and the dance seems to form around him. He finds himself enjoying the movement, the elegance, the music, and again is on the verge of a smile when one of his hands is taken by Eames and he is whirled away from the dance floor quite abruptly.
"Good evening," Eames says, bowing slightly as Arthur snatches his hand away. "May I have the next dance?" Arthur is very carefully not looking at how his cravat is so elegantly knotted, especially since Eames probably did none of it himself.
"No." He feels like he has to say this a lot around Eames. Suddenly the room feels too warm, the air too thick and the lights too bright, and he makes his way through the crowds to where his mind has handily built a lovely balcony overlooking a pond. No one is out there, and glancing up, Arthur can look into the clear night sky and see stars. He takes deep gulps of fresh air, hating how Eames tampers with his self-control.
He doesn't know why he doesn't expect Eames to follow him, but a gentle hand on the back of his elbow makes him jump. Eames stands next to him on the balcony, eyeing the stars as well, and doesn't move his hand from Arthur's arm.
"You're so stubborn," he murmurs, his voice soft. Arthur can barely hear him over the music from inside.
"I don't know what you mean," he says stiffly. This is his dream; what is Eames doing, messing his emotions all about? If he becomes too emotionally unstable, his projections could turn on the rest of the team and then it will have been all Eames' fault. Somehow, while he's thinking this, Eames turns and starts crowding him against the outside wall, getting far too close.
"What are you so afraid of?" he asks, his voice still murmuring like butter, sending shivers down Arthur's spine. Arthur wants to say, you and things will never be the same and this is unprofessional, but he somehow can't seem to choke the words out past the lump that's forming in his throat. He fixates on the buttons of Eames' jacket, but Eames hooks two fingers under his chin and drags his gaze back up to look him in the eye. "Arthur," he says, and Arthur's name is all long vowels rolling off Eames' ridiculous tongue.
He tries to make his expression stern, but Eames backs him even further against the wall and is so close he's practically brushing against him. In the dimness, his eyes look all pupil, and Arthur licks his lips without thinking. "I'm not afraid," he says defiantly.
"Oh?" Eames has to lean upward just slightly, but he whispers in his ear, "that's not what I think, darling." His breath ghosts across Arthur's earlobe and, oh, it's not like Arthur's a saint. He twists his hand into Eames' ridiculously intricate cravat and pulls him the last inch to meld their mouths together, kissing him with all of the pent up aggravation of years of pigtail pulling. Eames smiles against Arthur's mouth, wraps an arm around his back, and pulls them firmly against one another. He's all warmth and he smells amazing (this is probably not historically accurate, one detached part of Arthur's mind notes). Arthur could kiss him forever, his back up against the wall of wherever they are, Eames' hand massaging circles against his back that he can feel through the thick fabric of his jacket and shirt.
Eames pulls away after a moment, his eyes brilliant with laughter, and for a moment Arthur is afraid it was all a joke. Then Eames leans in and kisses him again, and Arthur allows himself to stop worrying. It's not difficult; his mind feels very hazy, almost as though he's drunk, and the world has shrunk to just contain Eames in front of him.
"We should get back to the others," Eames whispers at that moment, which is exactly what Arthur does not want to hear, but he knows it's true. Eames' lips are even more pronounced than usual, swollen from kissing, and Arthur figures he probably looks a little disheveled as well, but for the first time in a long time, he can't really bring himself to care. He wants Eames, wants all of him like his skin is on fire, but he wants it to be outside the dream - just in case.
They go back into the room, Eames' hand lingering on the small of Arthur's back. Arthur stares in astonishment at what he sees. The music is slightly off key, faster than usual, and his projections, so elegant and refined a few minutes before, have started to act as though they have all had entirely too much to drink. Yusuf has three ladies and a gentleman all backing him into a corner of the room, Ariadne is dancing with a very hands-on fellow to the distorted music, and Cobb and Saito are watching it all with amusement. Arthur vaguely notes that Saito's arm seems to be around Cobb's waist, and that Cobb doesn't seem to mind. He wonders if it's going around.
Eames is even more amused than anyone else. "It would seem," he says with a smug tone, "I have suitably disrupted your subconscious."
Arthur scowls and tries not to blush. It's hard not to, especially when one of his intoxicated projections tries to grope Ariadne in the middle of the dance floor.
*****
Saito surveys the team as they're gathered in a meeting to evaluate the dream tourism project. "This experiment turned out better than I ever expected," he tells them, his smile calculating. Behind Arthur, Eames kicks the bottom of his chair and Arthur ignores it. "Dream tourism does seem as though it could be possible…for those willing to pay a fee." Arthur's pretty sure that fee is going to be quite hefty, but he doesn't say anything, because if Saito wants to charge the billionaires of the world an arm and a leg to go on unrealistic dream vacations, who is he to stop him?
"But Saito," Ariadne sits up in her chair straighter. "We never went into your dream." There's a slight smirk on her face, like she knows exactly what Saito's dream is and wants to go there.
Saito thinks for a moment before grinning. "We could do one final test, I suppose."
"Wait. What's Saito's dream?" Cobb asks. Only Ariadne seems to know; everyone else is as puzzled as Cobb.
"Is this really necessary?" Arthur asks. There are other jobs they could be doing, after all, jobs that will allow them to make more money (not that they need it after two Saito jobs, but it's the principle of the thing. Arthur can't stand inefficiency.)
Eames, being the traitor he is, says, "it would be quite unfair to allow the rest of us to have our dreams and not Saito, don't you think, Arthur?"
"He did allow the rest of us to live our dream vacations," Yusuf points out.
"I'll pay extra," Saito adds flippantly, as though money doesn't matter. Although for him, it probably doesn't.
"Let's do it!" Ariadne hops up from her chair, heading over to the PASIV device. Yusuf is close on her heels and Eames is already getting up out of his slouch by the time Arthur registers that yes, they mean at this moment.
Arthur expects Saito's dream to be something incredibly complex and detailed, maybe someplace like the inside of a nebula or a star, something huge and powerful. When he ends up in the front of a Japanese classroom, taking tallies for who will participate in what activity during Sports Day, it almost takes him five whole minutes to realize he's even in a dream. He only puts two and two together when a very Japanese Eames skulks in late, his uniform in disarray and his black hair spiked in typical delinquent fashion.
"You're late," Arthur points out.
"Sorry, class rep," Eames drawls, carefully enunciating the rolling consonants of the typical gangster dialect, and that's when Arthur realizes they're somehow all speaking Japanese. He's about to break character and say something, but watching a teenaged, Japanese Eames slouch in his seat in the back and give him an obvious leer knocks the words from his mouth for a moment.
He's almost got his bearings again when a shriek goes up outside, and as one, all the girls in the classroom run to the windows.
"It's Saito!"
"Oh my god!" There's a stampede out of the classroom, everyone completely ignoring Arthur's yells of "where are you going?!" and "we still have class!" The only girl who doesn't leave is a Japanese Ariadne, who is sitting by the window looking forlornly out.
"Looks like you lost them, class rep," Eames drawls from the corner. Arthur ignores him and goes to the windows to see what's going on below.
A long black car has pulled up in front of the school and a teenaged Saito has gotten out, although his hair is longer than it was at Hogwarts, and he's not wearing the school uniform but instead a pair of tight leather pants and a bedazzled shirt that looks more like something a girl would wear at a nightclub. As he stands there, a mob of girls (and some boys) surrounds him, shrieking loudly. He blows a kiss into the crowd and some of the members of the mob faint.
"Saito just finished his new album," one of the student projections who stayed in the classroom tells Arthur, looking slightly jealous.
Of course Saito would be a Japanese pop idol in his dreams, Arthur thinks with fond exasperation.
"I like his trousers," Eames murmurs from beside him. Arthur jumps slightly; he hadn't even seen him move from his seat.
"Don't even think about it," he mutters. Eames grins at him and throws an arm around his shoulders, pulling him against his side. It's very warm, and he does make that uniform look surprisingly good.
"Class rep?" their teacher says from behind him, and Arthur turns around to see Yusuf, looking terribly confused. "Where did the rest of the class go?"
"Saito's here," says the jealous projection. Nobody seems phased at all that the class bad boy is cozying up to the class rep, which Arthur is slightly thankful for even as he untangles himself from Eames' embrace.
"He's my brother, you know," Ariadne says sadly from the back. "He doesn't know. We had different mothers." Down in front of the school, a gasp rings out from the mob, and Arthur glances back out the windows to see pop star Saito giving a teenaged, Japanese Cobb a very long, thorough kiss in the middle of the crowd.
That's the moment he realizes they're in a Japanese primetime drama.
Behind him, Eames just starts laughing.
end
ETA 8/14: I want to thank all of you for your lovely comments! I didn't have a chance to reply individually until a ton of time had already passed, so instead I'm just eta-ing here at the end to say YOU ARE ALL LOVELY and I read every comment! ♥