04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 00:25:12 UTC
[ It's perfectly natural for Eames to hear Arthur come in rather late, if one thinks of near-midnight as late to dreamers, which he doesn't but all the same by casual notations it's still somewhat later by association alone. He'd spent the day searching for the PASIV until the search had gone bone-dry and, exhausted and perhaps somewhat defeated, had a few drinks before returning to the apartment to rest (because only four hours of sleep isn't enough for someone who can spend hours at a time under, regardless of the fact that he shouldn't feel tired at all, because he's been through all of this before and that's just how things are here).
It's the ruckus of what he hears through the thin walls, having the room adjacent to the bathroom, that wakes him. He spends two minutes debating simply rolling over and going back to sleep, but once awake he tends to stay awake so kicks off the thin sheets, hiking his sleep trousers up over his ass as he meanders out of his bedroom and toward the bathroom, bracing his hands on either side of the
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 00:47:05 UTC
[ He hears Eames' approach before his voice, which helps Arthur to not be so startled as to hit his head on the overhang of the cupboard located beneath the sink. After his less than pleasant but more or less harmless encounter with the Boy From the Fountain Hitherto Named Sora Or At Least Until Next Time, he had half forgotten the slice splitting the skin of his right forearm, baring things that really oughtn't be bared unless one planned on, say, removing that arm, permanently. The blood wasn't pumping of course; Arthur is dead, lest we forget. But more than that, Arthur knew - as he knows now, as he is sure Eames can deduce in a blink (which only irritates Arthur more) - the real problem at hand wasn't the injury. It was and is how he treats it, or doesn't. His thoughts at first were closer to: just let it be. Though these changed over because there was blood, though none of the running, bleeding out variety. Enough to ruin any new clothes
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 01:22:06 UTC
[ Eames could attempt to, let Arthur to his business, but he catches sight of the wound - calling it a wound is polite, because it's more like the mottled left-overs of a cocoon, maybe, it's the first thing that comes in mind, that much of a split of skin - and cringes, and it becomes less of an option. It's not that Eames has a habit of holding onto people, because that time where the four of them worked closely knit with one another, interwoven in dreams, and the time even before that where they shared housing on base for conveniency's sake because Eames was the only one who didn't mind Arthur's neurotic tendency to clean everything at one in the morning on Thursdays (every Thursday) and Arthur didn't mind the fact Eames lifted weights at three in the morning even though everyone had basic and form-check at six anyway, so long as he put them away in the corner when he was finished - all of that is before, and this isn't that
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 01:44:25 UTC
[ With half a length wrapped not too clumsily, Arthur catches onto the forthright motion in view a second too slow, his wrist caught then and elbow as well, familiar with the weight and articulation of hands making the frame. He stills his own movement, statuesque as he does nothing but peer at the other man, like he could take him apart with a glance; but that's never been Arthur's specialty to his own knowledge, so much as Eames'. His gaze smooths to something less searching, less grasping - boxed up, like much of everything else has given itself over to being, between Arthur and everyone. No exceptions. ]
It's not like I'm going to bleed out - it's fine.
[ This point feels definitively valid, reasonable to Arthur who doesn't mind the shallow blood on the bandage as long as the bandage is thickly layered enough to keep it from everything else. Part of him knows just how ridiculous the whole set of circumstances happens to be, not even the death but their living arrangement - one they haven't had in so long that Arthur almost doesn
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 01:59:06 UTC
Arthur.
[ And Eames is just so frustrated with him, all the fucking time - this is why they don't work together well, anymore, not in the way they used to fluidly come together in all things regarding projections or other people in the dreamshare program (some British, like Eames himself on lend from England, some French, most American, a few Germans interspersed). Arthur keeps him out and Eames always does better with those who let him in, a little bit, so that he doesn't have to use all of his skills to pry them open. Cobb is open to him in ways that are never intimate because it would be strange were it that, but he treats him like an equal on the field and that's all Eames really ever wants - respect for his age and for his intellect and more importantly his experience, though he's not a very good at spelling or math he's voracious with books and the maps of streets, good with people. He could have tried inception on his own, elsewhere, with his own team at the header, but he'd gone with Cobb because he was brilliant, and Arthur
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 02:30:48 UTC
[ Jaw clenching, the scrape of his own teeth gritting sounds chalky, grated in his ears and pitching itself against the timbre of Eames' voice, a white noise rebuttal. Things weren't always this strained between them, which perhaps is part of what feeds into the tension now. Along the edge of his sight, Arthur can trace back as far as when they were different, skin deep and otherwise, though the bare bones have remained the same, gotten ground deeper into the blood. He could make his way past the forger, probably - maybe, or maybe not if he doesn't want to risk a broken limb in addition to a sliced one. The tightness in his jaw runs itself down into the set of his mouth and throughout the rigidity of his shoulders as he scrapes his vision from gray eyes - greener or bluer depending, or not gray at all, also depending - to the twist of Eames' own displeasure, a mouth and some words and the breadth of his frame in the doorway
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 02:58:45 UTC
[ Eames allows him to pass, staying silent (and he can't even add for once onto that because he has stayed silent about a myriad of things, in combination of simply not caring and larger things to be focused on, mostly to do with the ways he perceives Arthur to be idiotic). He flicks off the lights in the bathroom for now, if just to save on electricity even though he'll be back here to replace the kit soon enough. Following Arthur to the kitchen, he notes the chairs, notes the way Arthur's fingers are splayed out on the back of one rather than sitting, but still he says nothing - and isn't that something, really, the silence that settles. Eames doesn't sit right away, instead washing his hands in the kitchen sink and using a few paper towels to dry them, tossing those in the bin before easing down onto the chair that had been kicked out, pulling the kit toward himself to reopen
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 03:22:53 UTC
A new arrival ran into me with his...well it wasn't a sword. I don't know what it was, come to think of it.
[ There is, of course, a great deal more to that exchange - how the boy was chained up and Arthur decided to help him out with that, how the boy gave him the name 'Sora' but Arthur doesn't actually believe that that's his name, how the boy refused a hospital which was oddly something he could sympathize with except that this boy was bleeding from his wrists and his neck and could actually stand some legitimate medical treatment. He leaves all of that out, including the part where he gave the boy his jacket, though considering the absence of it - only in waistcoat and button-down on top now, it's self-evident. Arthur takes the seat he drew for himself, and drags it a few inches closer to facilitate the matter of stitching without making it unnecessarily - or additionally - irritating. His gaze snags on the number done on his forearm, the blood a strange depletion against the skin ripped back in a way that looks more problematic
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 03:59:17 UTC
[ Ran into him.
With his sword or whatever.
Eames looks at him a little incredulously, admittedly unguarded in it, before he shakes his head and tears the gloves from their packaging to slide his hands into. Thankfully, out of luck mostly, they're sized large so that he doesn't have to fight to squeeze into the damn things, and he pulls the alcohol swabs out next, rubbing them firmly up and down the pale inside of Arthur's forearm. It doesn't matter that Arthur is dead now, it's a matter of time before he gains his life back - Eames is certain of this; it's his own dream, of course he wouldn't keep Arthur around and dead that would just be disturbing on so many levels he doesn't want to touch right now. He supposes he can't be skeptical, not here, and it's not like he's bewildered at the incident itself but maybe more at the flippant way Arthur regards it. It could have been much worse, he figures, involving Arthur hacked in two, but even then. ]
You musn't be so careless.
[ It's not the accident, no, for whatever it was - it's
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 04:19:31 UTC
[ As with the injury itself, Arthur is only loosely aware of the contact. Eames' words don't carry the chiding tone of someone overly affectionate, of what an outsider might expect considering the chosen phrasing; but they were never so clear cut, so black and white, even when the days passed normally and the nights were communal instead of strained. The arm hanging at his side has the hand lightly caught on the edge of the chair, and his fingers flex almost imperceptibly. Really though, one of the last things Arthur wants or needs to deal with right now is Eames telling him something about how careful he is or isn't being.
He looks at the forger, follows an unofficial line from a shoulder to the crook of his neck, to the hard line of his jaw up to just beyond the right eye. ]
Believe it or not, he caught me off guard.
[ While this is utterly true, it's only fair to strike down now for the record that Eames isn't wrong; Arthur has gotten blithe about his mere existence, though part of him understands it's heavily erroneous - this
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 11:42:52 UTC
I meant in general.
[ Eames thinks about offering Arthur something to drink, or something to take the edge off of what he's about to do - or even sending him to the bloody hospital, for Christ's sake - but the point seems much more intent on focusing on how much he isn't living, how he doesn't need anything, that Eames thinks fuck it. He keeps Arthur's arm flat against the table, leaning over it as he lines up the split edges of the wound best he can. The lack of blood leaking profusely makes the entire affair much easier, more like working with a practice doll than a real person, and Eames starts sewing the split muscle together with the catgut thread. He'll get the skin afterward, naturally, but a process is a process and - living or not - he's going to treat Arthur as he would anyone else. ]
If it hurts- [ He prompts, glancing at Arthur's features again, but doesn't expand on it. ]
You aren't dead, Arthur. [ Not dead like his precious Mallorie, in any case. ] It's only a dream, but treating your body this way isn't going to
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 18:05:31 UTC
[ His first response silence, he watches Eames align the split skin. Arthur doesn't flinch even a little, just observes like it's happening to someone else, the hand at his side a loose angle of wrist-bone jutting out for how the fingers remain lightly hooked on the chair edge. The ruling awareness lets the vague flicker of warmth from Eames' hands, from his proximity register more so than the needle and subsequent administrations, but it wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows Arthur that he would prefer the latter. He slips into a quasi-comfortable distance - trying yet again to look at what is happening here from a new overpass, one where he can remotely approach the possibility of sense being made - and only comes out of it with his head jerking up (as if he can feel his arm, as if it hurts like it shoulder) at the next utterance.
You aren't dead.
And Arthur can hear the unspoken even if he can't read minds. Not like Mal. The stillness of him seems to ingrain itself for a moment, for two moments, for three. It's only a dream
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 18:40:33 UTC
[ Eames knows it for what it is - a little volatile, the twist of a knife to spill onto the table. Were he more mature, he would ignore it entirely - serve Arthur his own dosage of a cold shoulder - but there's something about the air, when they're in the same room nowadays, that pulls on him to never treat Arthur like a proper professional, to pull at his proverbial pigtails until he snaps
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 19:10:23 UTC
[ Saying nothing? That's for people who understand each other's silences. Childish? Arthur doesn't know whether he's more incredulous or angry or something not quite either. Maybe, a thin voice as far back as he can reach whispers, maybe it's because he's right. Maybe not. Arthur can't square with that, is the real thing blockading this argument all the way around. Under the fingers and the needle and the focus all pinpointed, he considers just wrenching away and some of that may be clear in the sudden tension that laces itself throughout his frame, cut up arm included. ]
And you were so adult when I turned it around on you.
[ He can't laugh about it, not even sardonically, but the way he refuses to look at Eames again serves a similar function: contradiction, acknowledging without acknowledging. That Eames stormed out of here when Arthur had implied it might not be his dream, that he might not be real, and suddenly, now, here, his arm lain open and the echo of a heartbeat cresting his awareness, it's childish of Arthur to make
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 19:29:50 UTC
I didn't say I was, now did I? The difference is that you like to uphold yourself a pedestal higher.
[ As though it makes him the morally better person. As though throwing shit away for the sake of someone else leaves him anything to stand for other than stupid behavior that, in the end, gets him nowhere. Cobb would have created his successes, travelled his miles, eventually brought himself into the predicament with Saito regardless of whether or not Arthur had come along. That Arthur believes his presence is of much importance to a grieving man is silly, maybe even a bit vain, because Cobb has never needed anyone's help except for when he travels the span of distance to ask for it himself. Arthur readily just makes himself a resource out of what, Eames presumes, he believes is friendship and properly supportive to a man whose wife you were in love with, as if trying to make up for it. But this is the shit Eames stopped giving mind to so long ago, because Arthur's a grown man with childish ideals and he's accepted that. There's
( ... )
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 20:03:39 UTC
[ The problem with Arthur stems from his strength, as most weaknesses do. It comes out of history and drags along whoever might be so unfortunate as to get snagged by a stray hook or razor's eye. How Arthur fell in love with Mal was not how he loved Dom, things he can't even think to himself now, doesn't admit because it feels foolish and obsolete and a number of other adjectives that he hasn't got the time for. He can acknowledge that there was something bright back then though, days that lit up from the inside: gold rooms, dreams where the sky and the water became just one thing, and Arthur walked through it with them, he walked through it all - and it felt like home.
Then came the jump, came running, came tailoring himself to the kinds of capabilities that best suited this line of work they know inhabit - or, did, in Dom's case. Arthur knows they aren't good people, and he'll never claim otherwise. It's not like he's proud of the invasions but he can admit to never having had moral distress over them either. The things Arthur
( ... )
It's the ruckus of what he hears through the thin walls, having the room adjacent to the bathroom, that wakes him. He spends two minutes debating simply rolling over and going back to sleep, but once awake he tends to stay awake so kicks off the thin sheets, hiking his sleep trousers up over his ass as he meanders out of his bedroom and toward the bathroom, bracing his hands on either side of the ( ... )
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It's not like I'm going to bleed out - it's fine.
[ This point feels definitively valid, reasonable to Arthur who doesn't mind the shallow blood on the bandage as long as the bandage is thickly layered enough to keep it from everything else. Part of him knows just how ridiculous the whole set of circumstances happens to be, not even the death but their living arrangement - one they haven't had in so long that Arthur almost doesn ( ... )
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[ And Eames is just so frustrated with him, all the fucking time - this is why they don't work together well, anymore, not in the way they used to fluidly come together in all things regarding projections or other people in the dreamshare program (some British, like Eames himself on lend from England, some French, most American, a few Germans interspersed). Arthur keeps him out and Eames always does better with those who let him in, a little bit, so that he doesn't have to use all of his skills to pry them open. Cobb is open to him in ways that are never intimate because it would be strange were it that, but he treats him like an equal on the field and that's all Eames really ever wants - respect for his age and for his intellect and more importantly his experience, though he's not a very good at spelling or math he's voracious with books and the maps of streets, good with people. He could have tried inception on his own, elsewhere, with his own team at the header, but he'd gone with Cobb because he was brilliant, and Arthur ( ... )
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[ There is, of course, a great deal more to that exchange - how the boy was chained up and Arthur decided to help him out with that, how the boy gave him the name 'Sora' but Arthur doesn't actually believe that that's his name, how the boy refused a hospital which was oddly something he could sympathize with except that this boy was bleeding from his wrists and his neck and could actually stand some legitimate medical treatment. He leaves all of that out, including the part where he gave the boy his jacket, though considering the absence of it - only in waistcoat and button-down on top now, it's self-evident. Arthur takes the seat he drew for himself, and drags it a few inches closer to facilitate the matter of stitching without making it unnecessarily - or additionally - irritating. His gaze snags on the number done on his forearm, the blood a strange depletion against the skin ripped back in a way that looks more problematic ( ... )
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With his sword or whatever.
Eames looks at him a little incredulously, admittedly unguarded in it, before he shakes his head and tears the gloves from their packaging to slide his hands into. Thankfully, out of luck mostly, they're sized large so that he doesn't have to fight to squeeze into the damn things, and he pulls the alcohol swabs out next, rubbing them firmly up and down the pale inside of Arthur's forearm. It doesn't matter that Arthur is dead now, it's a matter of time before he gains his life back - Eames is certain of this; it's his own dream, of course he wouldn't keep Arthur around and dead that would just be disturbing on so many levels he doesn't want to touch right now. He supposes he can't be skeptical, not here, and it's not like he's bewildered at the incident itself but maybe more at the flippant way Arthur regards it. It could have been much worse, he figures, involving Arthur hacked in two, but even then. ]
You musn't be so careless.
[ It's not the accident, no, for whatever it was - it's ( ... )
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He looks at the forger, follows an unofficial line from a shoulder to the crook of his neck, to the hard line of his jaw up to just beyond the right eye. ]
Believe it or not, he caught me off guard.
[ While this is utterly true, it's only fair to strike down now for the record that Eames isn't wrong; Arthur has gotten blithe about his mere existence, though part of him understands it's heavily erroneous - this ( ... )
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[ Eames thinks about offering Arthur something to drink, or something to take the edge off of what he's about to do - or even sending him to the bloody hospital, for Christ's sake - but the point seems much more intent on focusing on how much he isn't living, how he doesn't need anything, that Eames thinks fuck it. He keeps Arthur's arm flat against the table, leaning over it as he lines up the split edges of the wound best he can. The lack of blood leaking profusely makes the entire affair much easier, more like working with a practice doll than a real person, and Eames starts sewing the split muscle together with the catgut thread. He'll get the skin afterward, naturally, but a process is a process and - living or not - he's going to treat Arthur as he would anyone else. ]
If it hurts- [ He prompts, glancing at Arthur's features again, but doesn't expand on it. ]
You aren't dead, Arthur. [ Not dead like his precious Mallorie, in any case. ] It's only a dream, but treating your body this way isn't going to ( ... )
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You aren't dead.
And Arthur can hear the unspoken even if he can't read minds. Not like Mal. The stillness of him seems to ingrain itself for a moment, for two moments, for three. It's only a dream ( ... )
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And you were so adult when I turned it around on you.
[ He can't laugh about it, not even sardonically, but the way he refuses to look at Eames again serves a similar function: contradiction, acknowledging without acknowledging. That Eames stormed out of here when Arthur had implied it might not be his dream, that he might not be real, and suddenly, now, here, his arm lain open and the echo of a heartbeat cresting his awareness, it's childish of Arthur to make ( ... )
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[ As though it makes him the morally better person. As though throwing shit away for the sake of someone else leaves him anything to stand for other than stupid behavior that, in the end, gets him nowhere. Cobb would have created his successes, travelled his miles, eventually brought himself into the predicament with Saito regardless of whether or not Arthur had come along. That Arthur believes his presence is of much importance to a grieving man is silly, maybe even a bit vain, because Cobb has never needed anyone's help except for when he travels the span of distance to ask for it himself. Arthur readily just makes himself a resource out of what, Eames presumes, he believes is friendship and properly supportive to a man whose wife you were in love with, as if trying to make up for it. But this is the shit Eames stopped giving mind to so long ago, because Arthur's a grown man with childish ideals and he's accepted that. There's ( ... )
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Then came the jump, came running, came tailoring himself to the kinds of capabilities that best suited this line of work they know inhabit - or, did, in Dom's case. Arthur knows they aren't good people, and he'll never claim otherwise. It's not like he's proud of the invasions but he can admit to never having had moral distress over them either. The things Arthur ( ... )
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