Fic: On Tilt (Inception) 2/2
Arthur, Eames thought, was impossible. He came by in the morning after Arthur left for work, moved a few shirts out and then remembered he left a scarf with Arthur, in a bag that he'd placed in the office upstairs the other day.
It had a palmprint ID lock. Eames eyed it in annoyance and exasperation. Fifteen minutes later, he broke it open and walked in, picking up the scarf from the closet. He slowed down and looked at the printouts in the manila folders on the desk.
That evening, their extractor looked through the signal interceptions Eames tossed on the table, and Yusuf leaned over him, eyes wide.
"Doesn't it look like they're tracking research on every dreamsharing extraction team in the western hemisphere?" he said, drawing a hand down the page. "I had no idea their security threats were this sensitive. Look at the advances in this technology. Remote dreamsharing is real."
"How did you crack these signals? It's computationally infeasible with encryption like this."
"Broke into a private key in a government office," Eames said shortly. There was an optimal way to take advantage of this, but Eames had never felt so angry before; he couldn't think. And he thought, in some dissociated corner of his mind, that Arthur was so fucking calm, so even-tempered. He'd get over it.
*
Arthur had talked to Mal about the kick equations and put in 30 more pages of research and filed memorandums of conversations back at the office in Washington and ran five more paradox models through the computer while the office tried to frantically drive in the source of the leak that had started last week.
"Three undercover agents were shot in Bombay earlier today by dreamshare thieves," Cobb said to Arthur, looking stressed out. "They must have traced our private key; I think all our encrypted communications are compromised."
So he was putting in long hours at work, and coming home; the silence in his apartment felt cold and empty. He called Eames after the first week, but Eames didn't respond, didn't come back, and Arthur came home one afternoon to find his things cleared off the bathroom shelf; his closets suddenly much less cluttered.
It was as clear an answer as any, but he had already cooled off, had already regretted it; he wanted to see Eames, to apologize and maybe they would start working at fixing the distance between them. So one cold and windy afternoon he shrugged on a coat and walked over to the block of Harlem apartments that Eames was leasing.
Just as he reached the corner, Eames walked out of the building, meeting a girl who was standing casually at the street lamp. Instinct made Arthur stop, flatten himself in the shadows, unseen. Arthur couldn't see much from the distance, just a profile that was disarmingly beautiful in the dimming light, a brief flash of a very young face and limpid hazel eyes. She put her arm on Eames', leaning in, as a cab pulled up. Eames opened the door for her.
He felt numb, that entire week, it faded to a dull embarrassed ache, and of course it was easy to be distracted by the work to be done at the office and new security measures to be put in place in response to apparently broken encryption. By the time he looked up it was already Friday, already eight o'clock; there were four other researchers in the office.
The PASIV device began beeping rapidly. The laptop attached to it launched a mapping device as their satellite kicked in. Arthur looked at the device and swore quietly.
"That's the New York senator's office in Harlem," one of the other researchers said, looking at him worriedly. "That's under surveillance. Are we going to try to connect? Four people?"
Arthur nodded tightly, and he unspun a line and closed his eyes.
*
Up top, they were in a locked office in Harlem. Two levels below, they were on the fourth floor of a Washington landmark building, a large, airy restaurant overlooking the city.
"I'm sure it won't take long to get this sorted out," the senator said to Eames, her voice still confused as she stood up; "You know you're the reason I got this far. I wouldn't do anything that would disappoint my constituents." But her voice was hesitant, and Eames looked at her and thought, she's not calling my bluff; she's lying. Eames could sense her getting increasingly stressed.
The client wanted to dig up dirt on a politician to support a court case against her, and Ariadne built a maze of Senate offices on the second level for her to lead them to the secret, after they aggressively questioned her in the first.
"Excuse me," Eames said, brushing past her as he walked by, walking quickly out the building and leaving her to talk to Spence, who would try to get more information. He had forged a colleague of hers, and he swiped himself into her office. The key fit into the locked desk perfectly, and inside was a safe. Eames leaned over and cleared the rotation, then slowly turned the dial past the sticking point, applying a steady tension. The sound of the tumblers aligning was preternaturally loud in the dreamspace. Three minutes later, the lock clicked open. He leaned against the mantel and perused the papers casually.
Footsteps sounded almost imperceptibly and something hard and metal ground right below the small of his back.
"You've got ten seconds to hand those over or I'll blow a hole into the base of your spine," a low voice said in his ear.
Eames tensed, then twisted so quickly that he slammed against the bookshelf which tipped against the gun, jerking it from the gunman's hand before he could pull the trigger, and then they were sprawling onto the ground and it was Arthur's weight that was on top of him, Arthur who was punching him viciously in the face; the words disappeared on his throat.
He had never had a problem with stray projections, ever, and knowing that this was remote dreamsharing and Arthur was in some cozy office overlooking the Hudson didn't make it any worse; he only got angrier as he grabbed him and tackled him, seizing the rifle by the barrel and jerking it away. In response, Arthur threw him off the railing on the second floor, all the windows shattering; they both fell fifteen feet onto the grass and rolled. Eames' breath was knocked out of him. They grappled; Eames pinned him to the ground and he thrashed beneath him powerfully, knocked his head back before he slammed him again to the ground, struggling with him, striking at the bundle of nerves at the base of his neck,
Arthur's face was furious, seemingly for allowing him to gain the upper hand.
"Right," Eames said in his ear, feeling his heart pound. "How about this, sweetheart. You deal, or I'll shoot you."
with a sudden jerk, Arthur swivelled to hit him, struggling violently; Eames reflexively slammed him down hard. Arthur let out a gasp and he immediately let go before he realized it-Arthur brought his elbow up with a backhanded strike that had all the force of his shoulder behind it, then he grabbed him; a crushing blow landed on the side of his head and Eames recoiled.
Arthur grabbed his gun and shot him before he could move, and he felt the bullet penetrate his side and go through his spine and he immediately went down as his spinal cord was severed from the waist. Arthur got up, grabbed Eames and shoved him into the wall.
"How about you don't threaten me," he said. "The registration on this PASIV is stolen from the military and your team has a bounty you're not going to quite be able to escape. Your forgery is very good, why don't you tell me who you really are."
When Eames said nothing, he shot him in the shoulder and moved his hand up, slowly tightening his hand around his throat.
"I know we're two levels down. We have two more hours before your kick."
Eames couldn't breathe; he was asphyxiating; blood was bubbling from his side. There was something dirty and masochistic about this and the truth was, it was hard to maintain a forgery under pain; you lost control of your mind, you didn't even know who you were anymore.
Arthur slammed him into the wall again, and with one pained gasp, his forgery slipped.
Arthur dropped him immediately. Eames landed on the ground and winced, looking up at him. Arthur was staring at him, backing up; his expression was disbelieving.
"Is this some kind of joke? Eames?" Arthur said in a shaky voice, but it was too late; there were loud shouts and one scream and then a gunshot downstairs. The dream wobbled, then began to collapse. Spence, he thought, he must have been shot-
They woke up in the first level, almost simultaneously. They were on some sleek modern couches in a beautiful airy Martha's Vineyard home, facing the coastline with wide open windows.
"Hi," said Eames. They looked at each other in the dim light.
Arthur immediately reached for a gun and Eames ducked behind a couch as gunfire exploded above his head.
"You bastard," Arthur yelled, as Eames ran for it. His shock seemed to have given way to extreme anger. Eames had never seen Arthur lose control like this before. "You- lying-"
"Oh, fuck you, Arthur, I wasn't the only one who was lying," Eames said.
"And you thought I would never find out you've stolen millions of dollars in military technology and destabilizing governments? Was it hard stealing information from me all that time?"
"Of course it was hard," Eames snapped. "Being with you was like being buried alive, you're so fucking cold-"
"You can go to hell for all I care," Arthur said; Eames woke with a start.
*
"The police had a lock on their location, but they say the room was empty when they got there," the agent said, putting down the phone as Arthur dropped the PASIV line, still remembering the dream collapsing. "Arthur, what happened? Did you ID the dreamer up top?"
"Yes. And I've found out who was resposible for the leak," Arthur said. He looked out the window, feeling impossibly grim. "They've got a fucking forger."
*
The senator was still asleep, and Kiesler was already wiping down the room quickly and efficiently. "We have to leave-we have to leave now."
"What happened? Did you get the numbers?" Spence said impatiently.
"Yes," Eames said tersely. Spence nodded, and tossed packs to the rest of the team. "That's a quarter-million. Wire you the rest to your accounts after I meet with the client. We have to stay low for a while."
"What happened?"
"There was sabotage on the lower level by the Feds," Kiesler said shortly. "Extraction. Addresses. Numbers. They know where we are, it's going to be a matter of time before they connect to the rest of the team."
"Ariadne," Yusuf said quietly, turning to go, as they kept the door open. She shook her head at him, but walked outside. Eames didn't leave, and when they were alone, he stepped forward and shoved Spence. "What the hell?" he said, dangerously. "How did we get these people on our tail? Tell me about what you didn't from the last job. Embassy extraction. Anything I was missing?"
"We sold the military codes to an insurgent group in Pakistan," Spence admitted.
"How much?"
"Ten million US dollars."
Eames stared at him. He had to be willfully ignorant of the consequences at a price like that; that was terrorist funding, and the government would have put them on a fucking hit list.
"Would have been nice to get some warning; I wasn't intending on leaving New York."
"Oh, shut up, I know about your fucking girlfriend," Spence said, viciously snapping the PASIV. "Got someone you finally care about?" Eames didn't say anything. Spence stepped close to him, eyes cool, a hard robin's egg blue, one hand posessive on his arm as Eames jerked away. "They won't ever know you or learn what you want," he said quietly, and Eames suddenly thought of the time he thought he could change himself for someone, be anyone for someone, when he wanted to explore all the paradoxes and subtleties and edges of emotions.
Ariadne was waiting for him outside the door, eavesdropping.
"Didn't we tell you to leave?" Eames said. She looked wide-eyed at him.
"My god," Ariadne said tentatively, "You and Spence were exes?" as Eames walked past her very calmly.
*
So what happens when you earn close to a million dollars on political extractions before getting spectacularly caught and then a few extra tens of thousands on playing poker and scamming people at blackjack at a cards club over the course of six months is-you go back to school.
Halfway into the second semester, during a discussion on bracing, the boy across the circle in the advanced structural architecture class looked right at Ariadne and said,
"You can completely power an elevator with just a counterweight, did you know?" and smirked.
"So how about that date, hm?" he said to her, after class.
"Maybe later," she said lightly, turned around, grabbed the textbook, slammed it neatly and precisely into his chest, and walked away as his friends laughed. It was Friday. The campus was bright and sunny, co-eds lounging lazily on the grass, copies of Kant and Burke splayed on their heads. Ariadne looked for a recycling bin for her soda, and then she walked back to her apartment and threw a few essentials in a suitcase. Six hours later, she was on a plane, curled up with a book and headphones on.
It had been six months since she had spoken to Eames, when they were leaving New York; he had been tense and quiet then, but had helped her chase off a few government tails and stay low in Paris before registering for classes again. He had barely spoken to her then, but his latest note had asked for help on a difficult extraction.
She had always thought Eames would favor hiding out in easygoing and sunny tropical locales, forging poker chips and getting easy money cheating and gambling, but when she stepped out of the airport after a long line, it was cold and windy. SO2 mist, oil smoke, cement dust drifted in the air, and there were huge snowdrifts on the ground. When she got to the hotel, she discovered it was $6 a night, but only probably because of the peeling paint, worn carpets, and sullen service; her window had a view of a pile of gravel, and the locks could be breached simply by leaning on the door.
She met Eames in his room and then they walked outside to talk about the build and discuss, in half hour spurts of debate, whether a half-crumbled block of cement and a pole abandoned on a corner used to be part of a gas station or not.
The extraction took a week during her spring break and he wouldn't let her to the people on point, only asking her to show him how to implement them in the dream.
"They're kind of dangerous," he said breezily.
She raised an eyebrow. "Really, what are you doing? Yusuf tells me you're taking every job in the dreamspace. Where are you going to be next week?"
"Monte Carlo," he said, smiling. "Want to come?"
She laughed. "No. I'm still a student."
Their team ended up stealing the secret, but a month later, she heard that the Russian government really cracked down on extraction thefts.
*
"When you go back to Paris, can you check on Ariadne?" Yusuf had said to Eames, over the phone, right before they had left New York.
"I'm not a nurse, Yusuf," Eames had said, disparagingly.
Yusuf sounded disapproving. Eames sighed and scrubbed his face in frustration and said, "Why isn't she with you?" Pause. "You know, she's pretty far gone on you."
"Don't say those things, she's a colleague. and also 17," Yusuf said.
*
On the smooth white sand, two girls in bikinis, sun-streaked hair across their shoulders, sauntered by Eames, laughing to each other and pausing as they passed him, seeing if he would respond. When he ignored them, they walked coolly along, chattering animatedly.
Eames spent two weeks in Monte Carlo running a con with a boyish, mischievous man named Kerr, whom he had known from back when they were both in SAS and regularly beating the rugby players in 5-1 no-limit games weekly. They worked at nights in the main casino with invisible ink and electronic clear contacts, and soon were up close to a million dollars with their stake. They both decided to stay for a few high-limit poker games, and were playing one evening when Kerr suddenly stiffened and looked away.
"Eames. Isn't that your extractor?"
Eames looked up. Across the room, Spence was talking quietly to another man; he didn't look up, but he could still see him.
"Looks like him," he said neutrally. Kerr looked like he was going to say something like 'he scares the shit out of me' but at the last moment, thought better of it. Eames mucked his cards.
The flop came up. Eames hit the table in annoyance and leaned back, and half the table stiffened, tense and electric-he had just revealed some information about his hand, and thus some information about the distribution of cards around the table. One of the men watching the flop stood up; he was already annoyed at Eames, and now he snapped,
"What are you doing? We're playing for a lot of money; will you be fucking serious?"
"There a problem here?" the floorman said as the dealer signalled him.
"There's half a million dollars here and this asshole just hit the table," the man said.
"Warnings for both of you, there's no profanity here," the floorman said severely. Eames just rolled his eyes and slouched further as the floorman walked away and the other player glared at him; he should leave anyway; it was late and he was sick of these people. And then he definitely should have left because Spence came in and sat at the seat to the right of him.
They watched as the cards were dealt again and a few hands were played in silence.
"You want action, Eames?" Spence said quietly, watching his hand. Eames didn't respond.
"Eames? Want action?"
"No," said Eames said, but he raised; Spence called, everyone else at the table folded until they were the only two people in the hand. "How do you feel about a coin flip?" Spence said, suddenly, and Eames looked sharply at him; Spence knew he was marking cards.
"A-" he checked the pot, "$300,000 coin flip, hm? If we're going to play for that, why don't we play for real stakes, Spence. One million."
"One million if you win," Spence agreed coolly, "If you lose I want your help with a two-week extraction in New York."
"I'm not keen on working on more political extractions after the last one went rather badly," he said, which he thought was admirably soft-pedaled considering that half the team had let the other half get tortured in the dreamspace and sparked an international chase.
"You can hardly do better. That's part of the job, and you know it." He riffled his cards. "Don't tell me you're embarrassed, Eames. Don't tell me you've been thinking all along you could walk away."
"You don't think I could?"
"Don't forget, I know you, Eames. Do you really think that's who you are?"
Eames thought about hitting him; his muscles bunched under the coat, and he felt angry, too angry to be rational when he said, "Let's see the next cards."
They placed down their cards: Q-K, A-2. The dealer put down the flop: K, 4, 5, 7, A.
"Nice hand," said Eames dryly.
"I'll see you at ten on Monday," Spence said. "New York. Don't be late."
Eames shrugged and looked out the window. "Drinks are on you next time," he said carelessly.
*
Warm spring weekends started drifting through New York again and Cobb left a standing invitation for Arthur to visit them at their beach house out on the island.
The gatherings were always noisy and full of backslapping bohemie. By day, friends or family would come by and they would all go out with the children. James and Philippa loved riding in the car going down the hill at terrifyingly breakneck speeds to board the boats, over Mal's protests; all day long they would be playing touch football and tennis, sailing, waterskiing. Arthur stayed in with Mal, who didn't like sports; she would read and paint, and Arthur would join her to read or play the piano in the afternoon.
In the evening, Mal hosted loud, raucous, and informal parties, inviting all the stylish French journalists and artists she knew. Multiple times, she would buttonhole Arthur near the coffee table or the doorways and say brightly, "Arthur, have you met Tom? He's in bond sales," or "Jackie, this is Arthur, who researches architectural designs."
It was a little weak, but Arthur was polite, so when Mal came by with a young woman in hand and said, "Arthur, have you met Helen? She's from Lyons," Arthur nodded and shook her hand.
"Hi, it's nice to meet you," Helen said in a smiling voice and a slight French accent. She was slender with grey eyes and long slightly hyperextended legs; she wore a spare sleeveless aline dress, an almost classically Givenchy look; her voice was light and melodic.
"Nice to meet you," he said. "I visited Lyons for business a few months ago; what neighborhood are you from?"
Helen was a former ballet corps member at the Lyons opera house; she had moved to the states to finish after her ballet career and graduated a few years previous. She loved painting and had tremendous recall on art history. Arthur introduced her to several of Mal's acquaintances who taught in the field at the local college, and they joined a crowd out on the balcony, who promptly got so rowdy that one of Cobb's old college friends almost put a foot through a Pashgian sculpture before she quickly intervened to move it.
"Don't you adore that girl from Lyons?" Mal said later that evening, in the early morning hours, as she leaned over and extricated multiple plates from behind the couch. Most of the guests had already left, and Cobb was outside, talking to those who had planned on staying the night. "She's such a lovely, sophisticated, decorative person."
Arthur couldn't help smiling as he helped her load the dishes and clean up. "Is that all there is?" he teased.
"You're a bit decorative yourself," Mal said, smiling. "If you can spare the time from the office, that is." She grew serious. "You are alright, aren't you, Arthur? Cobb says you've been spending so much time in research."
"It's just how work is." It was nice to think that Mal was so wildly optimistic about people.
*
If he thought about it rationally, it should have been easy. Going on the run for an extended period was difficult; lying about your identity was more than just deceit; it was overcoming a lifetime of built-up habits, it was relearning the sound of your own name. Any connection with friends and family, a memory of a city, a fondness for certain places and hobbies, a birthday or a middle name, had to disappear.
Back at the office, he gave it a week before he was at it again late Tuesday night, and Cobb came up behind him, watching the numbers scroll past the screen.
"Um," Arthur said, tensing. "I'm tracking down the extraction thefts; the team formally assigned to the investigation are having some difficulties."
"I've heard," Cobb said. "Though it's getting easier now. I still haven't got through all that new research."
Cobb had come in a few weeks earlier, bringing intelligence from up the chain of command. It had been almost like Christmas come early, one of the research analysts had told Arthur; in one packet, there were names, dates, locations and meetings, rumored crimes and lists of compromised security codes as well as descriptions of how they were compromised-a leak, and an amazing intelligent report at that. But he looked energetic as ever, if a bit sober.
"Arthur, you're the best at what you do, but maybe you're too close to this. You're trying to find their forger, right? What are you going to do if you know where he is? And don't try to make this about work."
Arthur sighed. "I don't know," he said quietly.
"Mal says don't be silly and that he is probably relaxing on a cruise ship in the Indian Ocean," Cobb said lightly. "and laughing at us working stiffs undoubtedly."
"He's not," Arthur said grimly.
He thought he knew Eames, more than he'd ever known anyone; he knew his signature, his favorite authors, his childhood nicknames-but it wasn't real. Arthur satisfied himself by knowing everything there was to find about Eames, and he found it. He tracked packages turning up in Mexico City, an ATM withdrawal in Santa Monica twelve hours previously, misleading flight paths across the world, the internet connections behind an anonymity network, scanning facial recognition technology through closed-circuit cameras. Arthur found his family and associates; he found every address Eames'd ever had, from gritty neighborhoods in Europe to beaches in Latin America.
The only thing he couldn't find was his current location.
That's enough, he told himself, enough now. It's been eight months. He should try calling Helen, who was lovely and charming and had smiled at him politely over wine when they were outside on the railing of Cobb's house; and then he went home and thought about the way Eames looked the first time he met him, thought about how he never wanted to stop. He could do better. His life was a little charmed but it was so full of pretensions of fear and coyness and love. Eames was so much rougher than that; he was a liar and a thief and also, really, an asshole, and Arthur lay awake at night and thought about the way Eames' gaze felt brushing the back of his neck.
*
New York was cold and windy when Eames took the flight over on Monday. Spence worked with a mixture of people from old and new extraction teams out of an old Harlem brownstone; the client was the government of a rising Asian economy who wanted to extract jet purchasing orders from a hungry rival. The mark was the state minister was visiting the UN for a summit that weekend.
It took a week before he gave in and walked over to Arthur's old neighborhood, thinking all the time that it was stupid beyond belief. There was a famous author on architectural design doing a talk and book signing at a local bookstore there that Saturday evening. He walked inside and spent an hour in the crowded store and stacks, paging desultorily through fiction, autobiographies, histories and art books, until he saw Arthur step in, hugging his coat tightly to himself in the frigid weather.
He paused, his hand still on a book on Californian minimalism. Arthur casually grabbed one of the books for signing and walked over to the stacks on the opposite wall, and he was going to go, Eames thought, he was leaving right now, it was already absolutely pathetic and ridiculous to come all this way to be able to see someone for five seconds anyhow. He glanced back, and Arthur looked up and met his eyes-a two inch gap between the books, between the shelves, a room full of stacks, forty people between them.
Eames calmly put the book down and walked away quickly. Outside, it had gone past twilight into evening. Arthur followed him, maneuvering through the crowd, and Eames ran over to a sedan, keyed it and revved the motor in reverse, shooting out of parking with just a millimeter of clearance, and immediately floored the pedal.
And Arthur, because he was a motherfucking psychopath, grabbed the car, jumped out and landed on the hood and held on as Eames swore in three languages and swerved violently to shake him; Arthur, looking absolutely murderous, punched the windshield hard; fractures spiderwebbed across it. They sped down the wide avenue. An intersection was coming up; a bus was waiting at the light. Eames yanked the steering wheel a sharp left and slammed the brakes, skidding sideways. The sedan avoided the other cars but crashed into the storefront windows of a warehouse across the street.
The car skidded to a stop in the middle of the dark room. Arthur had been thrown to the ground on the other side at the last sharp turn. Cardboard boxes and stacks of furniture were everywhere, high padded walls and stacks of chairs. Eames got out of the car and his eyes darted towards the shockingly still, crumpled figure on the floor across the room.
Arthur got up, wincing a little; his expression was dark with anger. "I didn't even know you were capable of coming back into the country, Eames," he said coldly. "Isn't that a bit difficult?"
"In what way," Eames said. "Mess with you, and you'll wait eight months, then punch the windshield of a stolen car?"
Arthur hit him in the throat so hard that Eames couldn't breathe, couldn't move, for long seconds, and then Eames wildly grabbed a chair and threw it. Arthur ducked and it clattered to the ground, and suddenly they were rolling on the ground, trying to kill each other, moving across the large and darkened warehouse.
"You're losing your touch, Eames, you used to throw better than that," he said. He viciously threw Eames into one of the wall mirrors, and Eames stumbled back, his breath knocked out of his body. He grabbed Arthur's collar and dragged him sideways before throwing him across the floor and Eames slid hard across a table, silverware crashing to the floor, chairs knocking over, before he landed hard and with a jolt on his side on the ground. Arthur got up and punched him, twice, hard jabs with all the force of his shoulder behind it, throwing Eames into a cheap cabinet, the wood splintering, and yanked a pistol out of his jacket; Eames shoved him and it skittered to the ground.
Arthur dove for it, Eames grabbed the automatic from the car and they both turned, guns raised, hammers cocked. Both breathing hard. Arthur had a series of scratches and cuts on his cheekbone and a split lip and dust and debris all over him. Eames' heart felt like it was hammering out of his chest, about to explode, and his heart was in his throat.
He had said all those things, so far in the past now, and tried to make it true, but looking at the dark intensity in Arthur's eyes, he knew it was a lie. His heart was pounding, and he felt shaken, emotional, he felt like he was going to fall apart with mistimed aggression and incredibly bad decision-making. He lowered the gun slowly.
Arthur swore softly and his arm trembled. Their eyes met. Eames surveyed him for a moment, and got up. He reached out and knocked the pistol out of Arthur's hand. It clattered to the floor. Arthur just looked at him helplessly.
Eames said, "shouldn't you kiss me now or-"
Arthur punched him in the face.
*
"I fucking hate you," Arthur said, his voice shaking.
So Arthur had a vicious right hook; he was x-circle lethal within 200 yards, Eames was going to pay for his stupidity but then Arthur stepped close; Eames turned his head and they kissed. It was appalling how good it felt, and time slowed and stretched out between them until it felt like minutes between breaths, between heartbeats. All Eames could think about was the way Arthur tasted, dangerous like absinthe with extra sugar, sweet like a memory; he had thought he never wanted to kiss anyone again.
His fingers brushed against Arthur's arm; Arthur's shoulderblades felt sharp and kittenish under his palm as he pressed them together, and they were kissing again, so hard and deep their teeth scraped and they stumbled back into the wall, with a restrained desperation, pushing and shoving and the twist of Arthur's hips against his made him feel shivery sparks.
"I hate you," Arthur whispered, but he pressed forward into him, running his arms over Eames' shoulders. His knee pressed against Eames' thigh Eames closed his eyes and his voice was uncontrolled, rushing as he said, "I hate what you do to me."
"What?" Arthur answered, mocking, pushing him back, "You never liked me, you just wanted to sleep with me, to uncover me- why did you drop the gun?"
"You know why," Eames said. He knew Arthur didn't feel the same. "And don't tell me you haven't been thinking all this time about how I lied to you, how I was just another ill-advised pickup on your last job-" He was startled at how tight and angry his voice sounded; his hands fumbled as he unbuttoned Arthur's pants. He held him hard against the wall, licked his own hand and began to jerk Arthur off with long slow strokes. "You're such a perfectionist, you have all these ideas of what you believe in, but deep down all you really want is for me to fuck you until you scream my name," Eames said as Arthur twisted underneath him. "God, don't," he said; his voice sounded stunned and breathless, and he leaned forward and pressed his cheek against Eames'; his hips jerked forward, almost involuntarily.
He went slick under Eames' fingers and then he was clenching his fists against the wall and coming with a gasp, his body shaking. A flush tinged his cheeks; he looked gorgeous and smelled like sex and the way he leaned against the wall showed off the sleek lines of his body that Eames had instinctively memorized and tried not to think about. Shit, he thought. What am I doing, and then Arthur opened his eyes and kissed him.
"Tell me," he said, pressing into him; "Tell me why." He unbuckled Eames' belt and began to stroke him with slow caresses, proprietary and measured, and Eames, who was so close already, gasped as Arthur increased the pace, heard himself moan loudly in Arthur's mouth. Arthur turned him around and pressed him against the wall.
"Will you look at me?" Arthur said, tilting his chin into a kiss before moving back, and Eames swore at him and opened his eyes, he knew everything was on his face and he didn't care.
It felt like he was breaking apart and being put together again, and afterwards, they sat on the ground in dim shadows, and Arthur kissed his neck. "Come stay with me," he said.
"I can't," Eames said. He knew this with extremely cold certainty, and he realized how irresponsible he had been acting. "It's." He pulled away. "Nothing's changed, Arthur." He got up, pulled himself together, grabbed a coat.
"So you don't even want to try?"
"There are things I need to do, places that you can't..." Eames said, hesitating.
"reach?" Arthur said quietly.
*
Arthur went back to his apartment, put a frozen pack of mirepoix on his bruised cheek and stared at the clock. For one long moment, he had absolutely no idea what to do. He never felt before like he had so little control over himself; he had never thought he was anyone's to jerk around like that, but apparently he was. All the things he'd wanted Eames to say but couldn't-that was life sometimes; that was gambling.
He picked up the phone and started calling numbers. A serene slightly British-accented voice picked up on the fourth ring.
"Hello, this is Yusuf."
"Hi Yusuf," Arthur said, leaning against the counter. "Can I speak to you for a moment?"
*
Yusuf was still at the university, and he lived in a nice brownstone with a black trellis railing in front of it. The next morning, Arthur slowly opened the gate to the steps, and Yusuf opened the door on the first ring.
"Hi, Arthur. Come in," he said. His eyes widened when he saw the bruises all over Arthur's arms and shoulders. "Are you alright?" Inside, there were two cats on two chairs around the kitchen table, a tortoiseshell sleeping with its long fluffy tail curled around it and a gray tabby which looked up when he came in and blinked slowly and disdainfully but refused to move from the chair. Yusuf shooed the other cats off around the kitchen table and Arthur took a seat.
"So. Dreamsharing," he said. It was obvious now, considering what Yusuf researched in. Yusuf cleared his throat, embarrassed. "Yes. Most of it is incidental to my actual research," he admitted. "I understand you work for the government dreamsharing program."
"I want to talk to you about Eames," Arthur said.
"Wait, we're talking about this now?" said Yusuf. "Look, I should have said this before. We're friendly and he's good at what he does but you shouldn't fall for him, I don't think he's got much heart." He squinted at Arthur. "though I always thought he had a bit of a soft spot for you," he added.
"He punched me, crashed me into a storefront window and threw me off a building," Arthur said.
"What?"
Yusuf said nothing as Arthur told him about what happened the other night.
"That would explain a lot of things, actually," he said, finally. He looked unhappy, and then he pulled out a slip of computer printouts and slid it over to Arthur. "We had a theft yesterday afternoon at our lab; I'm missing some key formulations that could be used for extraction and I'm reasonably sure it was Eames."
"Why would he do that?"
"Laziness undoubtedly," Yusuf said dryly. "But," he hesitated. "I think he's selling out his old team."
"What?"
"He's been doing some incredibly dangerous extractions," Yusuf said. "And enforcement is getting tighter everywhere. I was just going to meet him at the hotel and warn him when you called me last night," he added unhappily.
"Wait," Arthur said, "You know where Eames is?"
"He's with a team running an extraction on the foreign minister of South Korea here for the U.N. summit," Yusuf said. "They're at the Waldorf-Astoria. I need to go and tell him about the effects of this," but Arthur grabbed his arm.
"Not without me," he said, meeting his eyes.
Arthur made the taxi stop by his apartment first on the way to the hotel. "What's that?" Yusuf said, looking at the duffel that Arthur was carrying.
"Hardware," Arthur said shortly.
"Eames will kill me if you get hurt, so maybe you could just," Yusuf suggested, "stay out of the way." Arthur gave him an incredulous look, and Yusuf rolled his eyes. "You haven't met the extractor we've been working with," Yusuf said. "Look, it's not the greatest idea to get attached to people in this business. Every weakness is exploited, every irrationality arbitraged out."
*
This was probably the most reckless thing Spence has ever done, Eames thought. They had dropped the minister when she had stepped out, dropped the contingent of bodyguards, dragged her off to an unused room in her suite. It was clean-there was almost no noise.
"Two minutes," Spence was saying. "I'll go two levels deep. Anything goes wrong, cut the lights and pull the alarm." Keisler was to station at the hallways and monitor the other rooms, and their point person opened the PASIV and set them up.
Ten seconds later, Eames opened his eyes. The watcher looked at him sharply. "What happened?"
"Hit by a projection," Eames said shortly. This was not the ideal way he wanted to do this, in the middle of a job, but the rival was extremely keen on blocking various defense policies and was willing to pay for an assassination to do so. As the watcher knelt to give him another line, Eames moved suddenly and twisted his arm around his back and smashed his head against the wall. He was out cold.
"What the hell are you doing?" Keisler said, coming into the room. His eyes widened when he saw the watcher on the ground.
Eames turned and he had a split second to fling himself backwards as Keisler grabbed a gun on the floor and started shooting. A barrage of automatic fire ripped into the fabric of the couch next to him, then tore through the walls of the offices as Eames darted through the shattered doorway.
*
Yusuf walked past the long rows of mirrors and plush carpet, taking the elevator upstairs. Maybe he was being truly paranoid, he thought. He should go back. Eames was probably just off doing something peaceful.
*
"You bastard!" Keisler screamed. Eames rechambered a round and walked down the hallway, bookcases and furniture collapsing behind him as bullets ripped into them.
The adjacent room was for storage: aluminum frames of books that began to collapse as Eames dove for cover underneath them. The rounds were empty, and Eames dropped the Beretta and started running for it as Keisler emptied a round into the spaces between them, the hot smell of burnt metal tinging his nose. His face was taut with rage as he leaned back and stopped to reload, switching out magazines with quick, angry movements and beginning to fire again.
Eames grabbed the gas pipe and twisted, hard. The next bullet ignited on contact and a firestorm erupted from the pipe, sweeping out of the room, andKeisler dove out of the room, landing on the carpet as smoke billowed up above them. The fire alarm shrieked. Eames took the opportunity to run for it, and as passersby screamed, he could hear a familiar voice shout in alarm.
He crashed to the ground just as bullets ripped into the panel above him, and he turned and squeezed out one well-aimed shot: the last bodyguard, standing in the doorway, dropped. Then he turned and saw Yusuf was in the doorway, staring at him as if he was a complete idiot.
"What are you doing here," Eames said, getting up.
"I ran up as soon as I heard the noise," Yusuf said. "You idiot!" he added, following him, as the alarm slowly faded out behind them. "How could someone as stupid as yourself possibly be able to-"
"Break your private key? Smuggle information through encrypted channels? Work as a double agent for six months?" Eames said, brushing past him.
"Live!" Yusuf yelled. "You weren't going to test out the overclocking solutions on yourself, were you?"
"My god, of course not," Eames said. "I wanted to switch out the sedatives." He folded his arms underneath his jacket and gave Yusuf a handgun. Then he walked into the last room and Yusuf gave a start at seeing the PASIV set up. Eames ran over and gently shook the minister awake. "Hey, you're alright, come with me, let's get you downstairs-"
"You switched out the sedatives?" Yusuf said, just as the two other team members woke up, and their architect reached for the gun. Eames squeezed off a shot and the gun dropped, but then Spence was tackling him and lashing out, knocking his gun away onto the floor and throwing him across the room.
Yusuf grabbed the minister and knocked her to the ground as bullets ripped into the walls, then returned fire as Spence dodged for cover. Yusuf then shot, seemingly wildly: all the windows on the other side of the room shattered.
"You're an awful shot, Yusuf," Spence said, standing up and shooting once, calmly. The bookcases crashed on them, hitting Yusuf's shoulder hard and trapping them. Spence turned to Eames, who was on the floor.
"So you were the mole," Spence said, his voice tight with anger. "Well done, Eames. Didn't think you had it in you to sell us out. How much did the CIA pay you for this sort of information?" He raised the gun and his finger tensed on the trigger.
"As it turns out, rather a lot," Eames said.
"So what happened? Your talents as a thief won't be half as appreciated with the other side." Spence said. "Looks like you've finally run out of luck."
He levelled his pistol two feet from Eames' forehead. "It's a pity. Your forges were perfect. Goodbye," he said tonelessly as his finger curled.
The shot didn't even sound in the room.
Eames felt his forehead, the blood dripping. Not from him. From an exit wound. Spence slumped onto the ground. Undeflected by glass from the broken windows, the sniper's shot was neat, precise, and perfect-as if it had been fired pointblank.
Tension fought to accelerate Eames' heartbeat. The moment seemed to stretch out forever. "Yusuf?" he said finally. He hauled the bookcases off. "Are you alright?" he said breathlessly.
"I'm fine," Yusuf said, though he was wincing. He looked at Eames, and then determinedly took a cellphone from his pocket and gave it to him. Eames stared at him, picked up the phone, and then walked over to the window.
There was a telescope on the window, and he picked it up and looked through it. Far into the distance, maybe some mile away on the roof of some downtown skyscraper, he could see Arthur, his rifle positioned neatly, beginning to disassemble his weapon with efficient, practiced movements. Arthur suddenly looked up, as if he could feel Eames' gaze on him, even so far away.
"Hi, Eames," Arthur said in his ear. His voice, low and even, felt shockingly intimate in the silence of the room.
"I thought I told you to stay away," Eames said. His voice was breaking.
"Eames..." Arthur said. "Are you upset?"
Eames closed his eyes. "God, Arthur, you can't possibly think this is a good idea. I suppose you just expect me to go weak at the knees and fall into your arms? We're so different." He was feeling slightly hysterical, and it came out in the fading sarcastic edge of his voice. "Do you think it'll be easy for us to stay together and drink coffee in fashionable cafes in Europe and you'll meet my snobby parents and check that M40A1 in the cloak room and we'll. just. stay together?"
"Eames, really, you've never been this upset before," Arthur said.
"I thought you were just going to let me go," Eames admitted.
"What the hell were you thinking with," Arthur said in an exasperated and scornful tone.
"I don't know," Eames said. "I thought you didn't-. I don't know," he said again.
*
Later, much later, after they had watched Congress get swarmed by police, after Arthur and Eames sat on the benches outside and Arthur petted one of the bombsniffing dogs, and Eames leaned into his touch and smiled at him and they were generally sickening together, after Yusuf got clearance to test forgeries for the military program and dragged Eames, protesting, into it-
He met Ariadne at the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge.
They had corresponded with postcards over the last few months, Yusuf sending her notes from conferences while she snapped pictures of particularly elegant structures and things she thought he might like. Now, her hair was loose in a ponytail, curling on her shoulders. She had graduated school, and gotten a job offer from an architecture firm here; she had written him and was visiting New York and their office.
"Wait, do you want a bagel?" he asked her. "Or-coffee-we can get,"
"I ate on the plane."
"Do you need to rest or anything. are you sure you're not-"
"I slept on the plane," she said, smiling.
"Oh."
She had gotten thinner. Her gaze, sophisticated and cool and challenging, slid past him. He was struck by how much older she looked. Like she had left her adolescence behind forever.
"I love this skyline," Ariadne said, looking out onto the river.
"If you work your way up you'll get to change it," Yusuf offered.
She gazed at him, eyes amused and skeptical, assessing. "I'll have to be, really, really old," she said after a moment, laughing. "I won't even have my name on part of these buildings until I'm partner, probably." She grinned cheekily at him. "You think I'm slumming it with you guys? I still dream, you know."
"Maybe you can teach me," said Yusuf. Her heel hooked onto the structural triangle bracings on the walkway railing and she lifted herself up and smiled at him.