In My Skintight Jeans

[theravenwrites]

It has been too long since I last posted, my friends. Too long. This is why I should be independently wealthy: so that I don't have to bother with this whole higher education nonsense and can sit around all day writing and squeeing over lovely, lovely boys. But such is life.

Actually I have been writing, which is the really sad part. I just can't seem to finish anything. Plus I get distracted by reading all the wonderful things everyone else is posting and then I realize I'm late for class/rehearsal/meals/etc. But there is something I would like to share with you all. It's a WIP, not something I'd normally post, but I am starting to think I'll never ever finish it and what I have I am intrigued by, if not exactly proud of.

I Get No Kick From Champagne

Eames is lounging on a dilapidated couch in his overpriced hotel suite in Vegas when he gets the call from Yusuf.

“Eames,” Yusuf says, voice tight with worry. “Cobol is targeting Arthur for extraction.”

Eames pushes himself to sitting and the remote falls off his chest and onto the floor. “When? Where?”

“In two days on a train in Italy.”

“And you rang me first?”

“I don’t have Arthur’s number, could you-”

“I’ll go. I’ll be there.”

“I was going to suggest you call him and warn him. Aren’t you in the States?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just give me the details.” Eames downs the rest of his Scotch and starts to pull himself to his feet.

“Are you and Arthur still not talking? I thought, after-”

“I said don’t worry about it.”

“Right. Well. My friend Nomatha was offered the job watching the PASIV for Cobol on this. She called me for advice, but she’s willing to help us out. I promised her we’d pay, of course.”

Eames shrugs into his jacket and begins to gather his wallet, someone’s passport and his stash of Euros. “Of course. I’ll handle it. Just tell me where I can meet them.”

Which is how Eames finds himself trotting through a crowded Italian train station, trying to figure out which track is the Roma Express. He manages to vault the steps just as the conductors start giving the all clear.

Inside, he edges his way through streams of people moving toward their seats. Practically the only thing that has gone right so far is that he was able to book a compartment in first class all to himself, next to what Nomatha had assured him would be the sight of the attempted extraction. He doesn’t quite dare burst in there and confront them all in reality. While he doesn’t think Arthur would go as far as helping Cobol to smash him into pulp, it really doesn’t do to take such chances.

Both Arthur and Cobol will already be in place, having boarded like Eames was supposed to in Venice. Instead he’d had to settle for stepping on at the stop in Bologna after his connecting flight got delayed so much he’d ended up just switching.

He hasn’t talked to Arthur yet, hasn’t even tried to call. He tells himself that between flying for a day and arranging things with Nomatha, he hasn’t had the time. And the chances that Arthur would even pick up are slim to none.

He has to wait half an hour for Nomatha to ring his mobile, which she does after she has sent everyone under. They’ve been waiting for a long enough period between stops to guard against interruptions of people looking for seats. He hastily recaps the water bottle he’s been worrying at and nearly flings himself into the adjacent compartment.

Nomatha greets him with a complacent nod and helps him get plugged in. He gives her a grateful; smile before he goes under, but she keeps whatever feelings and opinions she has about this operation to herself. Eames prefers it that way, since he has an idea of what she thinks of his competence.

He opens his eyes at the end of a street. There are only two other people around and they are sitting in an idling car a few houses ahead. Eames ducks behind a tree and quickly pulls a smoke bomb and a low-impact grenade out of his pockets. He wants to slow the extraction team down, not collapse the dream.

After he chucks his missiles at the car and it disappears in a cloud of smoke, he jogs up the street a bit before slowing to a stroll. The street is a quiet one with few houses, most of them large and set back from the road with large sloping lawns and many trees. There is no sidewalk. It could almost be in the countryside, somewhere. Somewhere with maple trees turning fiery orange and red and cicadas thrumming in intense swells.

Eames picks his way along the left side of the road, looking for the right house. With his first step here, he knew the house would be instantly recognizable to him, like coming home, but he’s less and less sure that’s how he wants it to be.

Somehow he can’t quite feel the urgency he knows he should. There’s something about this place that is lulling him into false memories of lazy summer holidays playing croquet in the back garden, and maybe in an hour or two when twilight approaches, instead of eating dinner they’ll grab a glass or two of wine of lemonade and sit on the front porch, lit by a few citronella candles that don’t really work.

The house, when he approaches it, has a porch that would be perfect for summer evenings. It wraps almost all the way around the ground floor, dotted with large windows, open so that the curtains are fluttering in and out with the light breeze. There’s almost certainly a porch swing involved.

As for the rest of the house, it’s brick with several gables. Eames knows that inside there will be old hardwood floors, and probably the doorframes will be a little dodgy, but the ceiling high bookshelves and comfortable furniture will more than make up for it.

Eames walks up the gravel driveway (a bitch to shovel in winter, he thinks), appreciating the crunch the soles of his shoes make. He’s in no hurry.

The front door is ajar, so he opens the creaky screen door and slips inside. Even the slap of the shaky screen door falling closed behind him is subdued. Inside it’s cooler but not cold. Eames blinks to adjust his eyes to the dimmer lighting, although streams of light swimming with dust motes are somehow coming in from all the windows at once, regardless of their orientation. A black cat is curled in one of the patches in the entryway. It regards Eames with one languid eye, then goes back to sleep.

Eames steps past the crowded coat rack and into the living room proper. He takes a moment to admire the massive collection of books and art. The prints are an eclectic mixture of styles, from the Renaissance to post-war British painters. It really doesn’t work at all.

But he needs to find Arthur. He continues through to the back of the house where two steps down bring him into an old kitchen. The floor is stone and there is a large wooden table, an enormous brick hearth but all the appliances are ruthlessly modern. And Arthur.

One can never forget Arthur.

He has his back to Eames, sitting at the table reading a newspaper, a mug steaming at his elbow.

“Hi babe,” Arthur says without turning around, and Eames has the strange impression that Arthur is speaking to him from impossibly far away, underwater even. “There’s more tea if you want.”

Eames’s fingers itch with the desire to smooth his hands over Arthur’s shoulders, clad in a soft-looking jumper with the sleeves pushed up. But despite whatever their relationship has been in the past, it has never been one with much physical contact.

Instead he goes over to the counter where a ridiculous kitty teapot rests in a horrible teacosy. The tea smells good when he pours it into a mug plucked automatically from the shelf directly above. He adds plenty of milk and sugar, enough so that he knows Arthur would rightly call it a dessert, as he has done in the past.

He drags the chair next to Arthur even closer and sits down. Somehow he feels like he can get away with this here. He tries to take a peek at the paper over Arthur’s shoulder, but he hasn’t even managed to see what language it’s in before Arthur shifts it and turns to him. Their faces are very close. Arthur’s pupils look blown wide, dark pools.

“How was your day?” Arthur asks and smiles without revealing his dimples.

“Good,” Eames says, a little hesitant.

Arthur pats Eames on the knee. Eames looks down at his hand, so incongruously placed, but it isn’t removed. Eames looks back at Arthur, who licks his lips, darts a glance at Eames’s mouth, leans incrementally forward, freezes and leaps out of his chair like it’s burning him, all in the space of two or three seconds.

Eames is very confused.

“Did you pick up the orange juice like I asked?” Arthur asks with his back to Eames, preparing another cup of tea and taking his time with it.

“Um, no, sorry, I must have forgotten,” Eames says.

“Well we can make a grocery run after dinner. We need a couple other things as well.”

“Okay?”

“Do you want to cook or shall I?”

Eames has never seen Arthur cook. This is not so strange, he’s never been to any of Arthur’s apartments, after all. Neither has Arthur been to any of his. They’ve never managed to get that far towards being actual friends.

But Eames has a purpose for being here, and it is not to play at keeping house with Arthur, no matter how easy it may be to lean into this. He clears his throat.

“Darling, have you checked your totem lately?”

Arthur looks at him blankly for a moment, then arranges his features into that alien smile once more. If Arthur was acting a bit goofier, Eames might think he was drunk.

Arthur sets another mug in front of Eames, prepared exactly the way he likes it, even though Arthur once swore he would never contribute to Eames’s eventual obesity.

“Why would I do that?” Arthur asks, head cocked to one side and his hands on his honest-to-god hips.

“Because this is a dream.”

Arthur returns to his seat and when he passes behind Eames’s chair, he actually ruffles his hair.

“You know we’ve been retired for over a year now, hon. What?” Arthur continues to look at him guilessly.

“But I would just feel better if we could make sure.”

Arthur gives him what is probably supposed to be a fond looks but ends up just making him look like he is in deep intestinal distress.

“If you’re that concerned we can always take our totems out of the safe upstairs.”

Eames takes the proffered hand and allows Arthur to lead him back to the entryway where the staircase is and up to the first floor. The upstairs is more of the same: perfectly decorated to both their tastes, and even though he knows that the master bedroom will be likes this as well, he still can’t help but linger in the doorway.

The room is bright because of two large windows, and taking up most of the room is a bed, covered in a brightly colored, thick duvet. A few articles of clothing have been left strewn about, places less reverentially than the carefully stacked books that cover most of the flat surfaces in the room.

Eames swallows thickly. He doesn’t realize he’s still connected to Arthur until he gets tugged rather sharply along by the hand. Arthur looks angry, expressive face pulled into a sharp scowl, briefly, before it is smoothed out once more to placid.

They wind up in what is obviously a shared office. There are two desks on opposite ends of the good-sized room, with shelves and filing cabinets in between. One of the desks is neat as a pin, the other threatening to collapse under a maelstrom of papers and folders.

For the first time since he got here, Eames wants to laugh: Cobol finally got something wrong. He is just as neat, if not neater, than Arthur in his desk space. But since he’s afraid it would come out sounding hysterical, he suppresses the urge.

Arthur drops his hand in order to crouch in front of a cheap safe, the kind many homeowners buy, the kind that might be a deterrent to most regular burglars but would be a walk in the park for Eames to break into.

Rising and pivoting on his heel, Arthur drops a poker chip into Eames’s hand, keeping a red die between his fingertips. Eames flips the poker chip a few times while Arthur turns back to the safe. Eames then takes his real totem out and repeats the process. With a relieved breath, he extends the fake back to Arthur.

Arthur who has just tried to hand him a sheaf of papers and who trails off in the middle of saying, “Oh, honey, look what else was in the safe…”

“Eames?” he asks. Eames frowns at him.

Eames places the poker chip in Arthur’s unoccupied palm and tugs the papers towards himself in order to flip through them.

“What the hell, Arthur. These are completely crap plans for inception. ‘Negative emotion always trumps positive.’”

“Eames.”

“Present.”

Gone are the false totems and information. They have been replaced by a sleek Glock. Eames scowls.
“What are you doing here?” Arthur asks, all business once more. This is the Arthur Eames knows: perfect posture, steady gaze, poker face.

“Well, I thought I was rescuing you from extraction by Cobol,” Eames begins. “But now I see you have it fully under control.”

“I thought,” Arthur says, and actually looks unsure of himself for a second.

“You thought I was their forger?” Eames asks, not bothering to try and hide the bite in his voice.

Arthur has the grace to look a little embarrassed. “They have me very heavily sedated,” he bites out.

“Haven’t you noticed none of my projections are around?”

This has been an odd feature to this dream. Arthur’s mind is one of the most heavily militarized Eames has ever known, besides his own or Cobb’s.

“This is starting to sound like an even dodgier set up than before,” Eames comments. “My vote is for getting the hell out of here.”

“I can’t.”

“Pardon?”

“If I die, even on the first level, I’ll drop into limbo because of the sedative.”

Eames pauses to consider this. “How do you know all of this?”

“I told Cobb I would be the bait. He shouldn’t take such risks when he’s just gotten back with his family.”

“But for you it’s fine? Why the hell didn’t you come to me for help? Ah, but of course it was for Cobb. Whatever was I thinking?”

“This doesn’t concern you.”

“I beg to differ, considering that you let Cobol believe the best scenario involved us living together.”

“It hardly means anything. It was-”

They’re interrupted by the sound of the screen door thwapping against the frame. They broth freeze and turn towards the sound of footsteps in the hall below echoing up the staircase. It’s only when Arthur’s shoulder brushes his that Eames realizes how close they’ve gotten. He wants to put some space between them but he doesn’t dare make a sound.

“Darling?” calls a voice, and the accent is reminiscent of Stephen Fry at his most fusty. They both flinch, and when Eames flicks a glance at Arthur, his cheeks are pinking slightly.

“Darling?” the voice calls again.

Eames has to nudge Arthur before he’ll respond.

“Up-up here… babe.” Eames glares at him until he amends, “But don’t come up. I’ll be right down.”

“You need to get out before you ruin everything,” Arthur hisses, waving the gun about.

Eames has never known Arthur to be anything but perfectly conscientious about where he points his gun, but he has to grab the gun and twist it away from his stomach and what would be a slow and agonizing death. Arthur’s grip is surprisingly lax, and Eames almost fumbles the transition.

Arthur won’t meet his eyes and he’s already moving towards the hallway. He says over his shoulder, “Be quiet about it, use-”

“A pillow, I know,” Eames says, following Arthur’s straight back as far as their bedroom.
He doesn’t kill himself right away. Instead he sits on the edge of the bed and listens to the stilted conversation below until they walk to the back of the house, presumably into the kitchen for more tea.

“How has your day been? Did you do the gardening you wanted?” says fake Eames.

“Oh, yes, I got that done this morning. We should, um, think about planting a few more trees out back.”

“Ah, jolly good idea, old boy. Maybe a sycamore or two. You know, a funny thing happened when I was at the barber’s. They had a TV set up, don’t you know, and there was a clip of that Fischer fellow, what’s his name?”

“Robert?”

Eames sighs and scrubs his face with his hands. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, swinging in like some hero. He’d expected Arthur to be grateful for his help, his rescue. But he should have known Arthur would never let himself be so blindsided by any of his enemies. And taking such a risk for Cobb is hardly out of character, either. And yet, he hadn’t been expecting this situation.

His irritated reverie is interrupted when he hears the sound of a ladder clattering against the eaves outside one of the windows. He jumps in surprise and rolls on his stomach to the other side of the bed in order to take a peek outside. He can just barely make out the ladder sloping down and a figure beginning to climb.

He flexes his hand on the gun, adjusting his grip. He wants to shoot this man, not himself.
But he lies back and presses one of the pillows, which smells faintly of Arthur, and how is that even possible, to the side of his head. He digs the muzzle of the gun into it, hard, so that he can feel it through the stuffing, a weight against his temple. He pulls the trigger.

He wakes up to the soothing rumble of a train. He’s warm from where the sun is coming through the window and shining on him. They’re passing through countryside now, fields of sunflowers all turned towards the sun as far as the eye can see.

Eames fumbles for the lead at his wrist, feeling fuzzier than normal coming out of a dream. Whatever they dosed Arthur with must have affected his experience as well. He’s moving slower than he should, considering that the extraction, such as it is, isn’t going to take much longer in dream-time, let alone reality.

As he navigates the wires stretching from the PASIV set between the two rows of seats, connected to Arthur, asleep with the vaguest frown on his face, and two other men, one tall and thin, the other greasy and paunchy, he searches in his pocket for the roll of cash to give to Nomatha, sitting closest to the door, reading a book. She acknowledges him with a nod, then goes back to reading.

Eames stumbles heavily against the doorframe in his efforts to get out when the train tilts along a curve, almost falling on top of the woman. “Sorry,” he breathes, and then he’s fleeing back to his own private compartment where he puts his head between his knees and tries to still the shaking of his hands.

His heart is beating fast and he is reminded of the feeling that comes from waking abruptly out of a nightmare or just the palest hint of the one time he’d had to knock a serious addiction.

Even though he knows exactly how much time is left to go before the dream ends, which is precisely two minutes before the train is due to stop at Siena, it still feels like forever, endless Elysian fields passing by outside, until he hears people moving out into the aisle and the train begins to slow. He watches out the window as people disembark, picking out the extractor and the forger with ease as they move off in separate directions.

When the train starts off again, he considers staying where he is and leaving Arthur alone. Instead he sighs and goes back out into the aisle. There’s a good chance Arthur is even more incapacitated than he was after that Somnacin cocktail.

Two middle-aged American women are turning away from Arthur’s compartment in disgust, dragging behind them two impractical suitcases and talking loudly about drunk Italians. Eames practically has to plaster himself against the side to allow them past, and he still gets his foot run over for his trouble.
Limping a tad, he goes into the compartment, only to realize what the women were disgusted by. Half of him had expected Arthur to already be gone after his dithering about, but instead he is sprawled all over one seat bench, vomit splattered on the floor. He’s spitting unattractively when Eames enters and one of his eyes is starting to swell shut from what must have been a good punch to the face.

“Arthur,” Eames says, stepping over the sick to help Arthur sit up. His head lolls against Eames’s shoulder and he is utterly boneless, a hot, feverish weight against his side.

“Woke me up with a punch. Want me to know what they did. Ha.” Arthur speaks with effort, slurred so much Eames can barely understand him.

“Can you walk?” Eames asks.

Arthur shrugs one shoulder. Eames slings Arthur’s arm around his neck, whatever the shoulder-shrug means, and drags them both to standing. Arthur’s fetid breath against his cheek is not all that pleasant. It takes wrapping his arm around Arthur’s slim waist in order to navigate around the vomit and out into the corridor. Luckily by this time nearly everyone has found a compartment,
Arthur slumps down in the seat. Eames his half-full bottle of water from earlier to Arthur’s lips.

“Rinse,” he commands, as if speaking to a child, then gets out of the way as Arthur gracelessly lists to the side to spit on the floor.

“Now drink,” he says, and Arthur gulps down the rest of the bottle.

He’s sweating, so Eames helps him out of his jacket and tie, even rolls up his sleeves for him. Finally he
sits down next to Arthur in silence. Arthur’s doing his best to remain upright under his own power, but the swaying of the train is too much for him.

“What does Cobol know about me?” Eames asks, voice hard. This is important.

He makes one last effort towards consciousness before he lets Eames guide him into lying down. “They only know Bob,” he says as his eyes close.

“That’s nice,” Eames says, sarcastic. “So I’ll be able to keep working professionally then, while Cobol knows all about my personal life.”

He’s about to continue on a self-righteous tirade, when he notices Arthur fisting the material of his trousers in his lap. He looks pathetic, and that is not a common sight.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur grinds out.

“Well in that case,” Eames can’t help himself from saying, knowing that his tone has become ugly, mean. He smoothes Arthur’s hair off his forehead.

Eames rides with Arthur drooling on his lap until the next stop in Rome. He leaves Arthur to finish the ride to Naples, asleep on the seat with both their suit jackets draped over his shoulders, because he’d gotten the chills by then.