nobody's little weasel
Happy Thanksgiving! If you are Canadian. We all know real Thanksgiving isn't for a month or so.
Now I know I told you to punch me in the face if I posted anything not related to things I am supposed to be working on between now and mid-December, but I respectfully request that you...don't. It's just a wee little kinkmeme fill! Sometimes I miss the good ole days of gallivanting around the kinkmeme as an anon, so I do this to relive my youth. Apparently, my youth was roughly six months ago.
.nobody's little weasel
his final year of university, eames finds a notebook in the dining hall. written for this prompt.
notes: title from amelie.
thank you to gelbwax for the beta and encouragement.
and, finally: this fic takes place on the campuses of not one, but two, colleges that I did not attend, so I mostly made stuff up. if there are lies about your alma mater herein, don't hate me (thanks to livingtea for providing some details).
pg13 . 7522 words
Eames had seen Amelie. Mal made him, because they had to watch a video for French class and she liked things that were twee. They borrowed her boyfriend’s laptop because the screen was bigger than either of theirs and holed themselves up in Eames’ dorm room. That was when Eames was still living in a dorm room, a little cell of a space that Mal said always smelled like feet.
Eames would have blamed Yusuf, honestly, but the truth was that Yusuf was hardly ever in the room, so mostly Eames just denied it.
So, Amelie. Eames had seen it, so he knew all about quirky people meeting their quirky soulmates through quirky hobbies and photo albums, and then almost being too scared, and hearts turning to stone for lack of love and blah, blah, blah.
Eames had liked the movie, really. Kind of. If Mal asked.
He just didn’t believe in it, is the point, and so when he finds a moleskine notebook wedged under his table in the student canteen and flips through it idly, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Maybe a little invasive, sure, but the black cover of the notebook is nondescript and Eames isn’t sure how anyone expects him to return it if he doesn’t flip the cover open and look inside.
And he fully intends to return it, which is why he flips the cover open and looks inside. It’s a thin notebook, but most of the pages are riffled like they’ve been written in, and the first several are filled with cramped writing in black ink that Eames finds difficult to read. It looks like a class schedule and there’s something a few pages in that appears to be a map of the RISD campus, with little asterisks in front of a few of the buildings.
RISD. It figures. Some RISD kid with a friend on campus, came by the Ratty for lunch, left their notebook, which means that if Eames can find this person it will probably cover all his good deeds for the year.
The comics start four pages in, jagged lines sketched in the same rich black ink, but the surprise is that they’re good. If it’s someone from art school of course their illustrations are good, but the comics are clever besides. Eames recognizes Doctor Saito from the economics department, which seems like an odd choice for a RISD student. Maybe they’re in the dual degree program. Mal’s friend--well, not friend, precisely--but that one girl, Ariadne, is in it, if Eames recalls. He could ask her, or ask Mal to ask her.
Mal probably wouldn’t. Mal doesn’t like Ariadne at all. It has something to do with Dom Cobb and the zombie pub crawl last October, though Mal has never been willing to explain it properly.
And then Mal is there, trilling Eames’ name and settling into the chair opposite his. Eames looks up expectantly as Mal deposits a tray of food on the table and immediately sets into conversation
“So I was thinking, next semester’s our last semester, right?” she says. “And we haven’t had a class together since we were first years and I carried you through French. So how about we take something? I have next semester’s course listings.”
She sets a paper packet on the table, flips through and jabs it with her pen.
“I highlighted the ones that would work best. Or we could take some art class, I know how you feel about art students.”
“That’s a malicious rumor,” Eames says, and Mal laughs a little, twirling a finger through her hair.
“I’m your best friend,” Mal says, stabbing a fork into her salad. “Don’t give me that. I remember Sebastian and Riley.”
“One of my best friends,” Eames corrects, even though Mal is his best friend, more or less. It is, in some ways, a deeply unfortunate state of affairs.
“I’ll send you my schedule,” Eames says. “If there’s a class that fits and isn’t awful, I’ll take it.”
“Fair enough,” Mal says, grinning. “I’m thinking art history.”
“Of course you are,” Eames says, prodding at his own plate. The pasta had seemed like an okay idea, at the time, but the sauce is congealing a little strangely. Moving off campus was supposed to mean eating in the dining hall less.
“You know Ariadne?” Eames asks, against his better judgment. Mal scoffs impolitely at the name.
“I’d hardly say I know the little twit,” she says.
“Is she in the dual degree program? With RISD?” Eames presses, because once the subject is broached he may as well carry it home. Mal angles her head slightly, tapping a slender finger on her chin.
“Going after another art student, are you?” she asks. “We all know you’re just lobbying to be included in a performance piece.”
“Like the theatre department isn’t one giant performance piece,” Eames says. “No one except for you thinks I’m lobbying to be included in a performance piece, and, if I were, I could get included on my own merit.”
“Your own merit,” Mal repeats, coughing a little and nodding vigorously. “Of course Eames. If that merit is at the intersection of your left leg and your right--”
“Please shut up,” Eames says. “I have class.”
“No you don’t,” Mal says, turning back to her salad. “But I know you have practice for your little play, so run along, why don’t you?”
“Run along, why don’t you?” Eames mutters as he slides his pasta into a rubbish bin. He sees another student give him a withering look, and he grins sardonically at her. She probably didn’t take the pasta. He’s well within his rights to throw out something so disgusting. She comes up beside him anyway.
“You know how much food is wasted every year by this university?” she hisses.
“In pounds or kgs?” Eames asks, and the girl frowns.
“Perhaps you’d like the figure in stone,” he muses, and she lets out a small, exasperated huff.
“You have to understand,” Eames says in an effort to be sympathetic. “That pasta was terrible.”
“That’s not the point,” the girl says, and then she flounces off. Eames is left wondering if he was so terribly earnest, when he was a freshman.
He doubts it.
“You know,” says a voice from his left. “You could’ve let her give you her spiel.”
“I figure if I don’t do it the real world will,” Eames replies. “Consider it part of the education she’s paying for.”
The guy next to him snorts, and Eames hazards a glance.
He rather wishes he hadn’t been so flip, because the guy to his left is kind of shockingly attractive. He’s wearing what looks like a thin, soft henley under a heavy cardigan, and his shoulders are hunched up as if in anticipation of cold. He has a sweep of dark, curling hair and a sharp nose, and there’s a grin playing at his lips, like there’s a joke here that Eames hasn’t quite caught.
The guy peels off towards the doors to the left, fluttering his hand in something akin to a wave.
“See you around,” he says. Which seems unlikely, because Eames has never seen this person before in his life. Eames nods a couple times before gathering his bearings and heading to rehearsal. They’re still doing table reads, and it’s pleasant enough--three years in the department means that Eames is friendly with most of the cast already, and the quiet, spare room they use for table reads feels halfway to being home. Eames has, in the past, come here to study--wedging two chairs together so he could put his feet up, giving anyone else who came in withering stares.
He still has that moleskine notebook in his bag. He saw it when he reached in to remove his highlighted script, slim and dark and neat and very much not his. Eames has one or two notebooks, spiral bound; Eames stuffs his notebooks full of papers like each one is a filing folder, and he usually spills coffee on them so that the papers get riffled when they dry.
He’s already spilled coffee on his script, actually. When he turns the pages they rustle loudly, and Elizabeth occasionally squints at him from across the table, pursing her lips in a disapproving frown.
She should be looking at her own script, really. She couldn’t possibly have memorized her lines already.
Eames’ character isn’t in this scene, and in lieu of paying attention he toys with the strap of his bag, wondering what else is in the moleskine. Mal interrupted that particular train of thought with her class scheduling, which is very much typically Mal. She builds her life out of little schemes and larger production, and only leaves things up to chance when it seems poetic.
She’s Eames’ ostensible best friend, though. But there’s a good reason to let her talk about taking art history together instead of telling her he found a notebook full of chickenscratch handwriting and comic books on the table, because if he told her about the notebook then the notebook would become a production.
Eames has a line to deliver. He does so.
When the table read is done with Eames walks with Taylor back towards his apartment. Eames has known Taylor for at least as long as he’s known Mal--they were in a class together as freshmen--but he and Taylor are only friends in the most superficial of ways.
They slept together, once, after striking the Death of a Salesman set. Eames had been Biff and Taylor had been Happy. It felt weirdly incestuous, but they can talk comfortably enough now, moving through the leaf-cloaked sidewalks towards their apartments.
Maybe Yusuf will have made dinner already. Maybe he’ll let Eames have some. It would almost certainly be better than the pasta, if it exists, but the disadvantage of with living with someone who dropped out of school to devote their life to haute cuisine, or whatever it is Yusuf is doing, is that they very rarely want to cook when they’re at home.
The advantage is that Eames occasionally scores free food, and, also, Yusuf works nights and so his snoring is usually relegated to the parts of the day when Eames is out.
He’s home now, though, catatonic on the couch. He inclines his head slightly when Eames enters the room, his eyebrows furrowing slightly.
“Eames,” he says.
“You’re here,” Eames says. “And awake.”
“I wasn’t before you came in,” Yusuf replies. “You didn’t bring dinner, did you?”
“You didn’t make dinner, did you?” Eames counters, and Yusuf guffaws.
“McDonald’s,” he says. “Go down the block and get me a Big Mac, and I’ll forgive you for waking me up.”
Eames picks up a t-shirt that’s crumpled on the floor and chucks it in the general direction of Yusuf’s head.
“There’s something in the fridge,” Yusuf grumbles. “If you’re going to be an ass.”
“Something,” Eames echoes, going into the kitchen. There is something in the fridge. It looks like pasta.
He’ll probably end up eating it anyway. He puts the tupperware in the microwave and drops his bag on the table, extracting the notebook. He’s got it upside down, though, and he finds a folder inside the back cover, filled to bursting with clippings. Eames spills them out onto the table, and they slide across the scarred surface.
It’s the lingering recollection of watching Amelie that makes Eames rifle through for strips of photo booth photographs, but there aren’t any. There are photos cut from magazines, occasionally with references or notes scrawled on the back, and there are frames clipped from comic books, and there are copies of probably every M. C. Escher print in existence. The photographs tend to be blurred and strange, low apertures with heavy bokeh, but all the drawings are precise, black and white and very neat. The comic frames are almost always alive with motion in a way the notebook’s owners drawings aren’t.
The comics are all dated, almost daily, and they begin in the previous fall and stop abruptly two days prior to today. Some are just one frame, or two, but there’s an entire storyline about a life guard that makes it apparent the illustrator has a bit of a vindictive streak. And is attracted to men, for what that’s worth, and while Eames would peg the handwriting as masculine he refuses to allow himself to think that, because that path leads only to woe, or something akin to.
“What’s this?” Yusuf asks, sitting down across from Eames at the table and sliding a bowl of pasta and a fork across the table towards him.
“Something I found in the Ratty,” Eames says, glancing up. “Some kid’s notebook.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Yusuf hums, picking up the nearest clipping and turning it over in his hand. “Gonna give it back?”
“If I can find any clues as to the owner,” Eames says. “This person’s not showing their hand at all.”
“Maybe they’re paranoid,” Yusuf says. “You seen any squirrely looking buggers around lately?”
“I think they’re at RISD,” Eames says, flipping through the notebook. “There’s a campus map, in the early pages, from last year. So maybe a second year?”
“What else is in there?” Yusuf asks, and Eames shrugs.
“Comics, mostly,” Eames says. “Is there a program for that?”
“Illustration,” Yusuf provides. “Or maybe animation? I don’t know, but do you remember Isabel? She was in illustration, I think.”
“I don’t,” Eames says, settling his hands on the table. “Isabel? Illustration?”
“Isabel,” Yusuf repeats. “Tiny little thing? She liked waffles.”
“We should have some waffles,” Eames says. “Why would you even bring up waffles, when we’re eating this?”
“This is fresh pasta,” Yusuf says, gesturing with his fork. “None of that dried crap.”
“But waffles,” Eames mutters, shuffling together the papers and putting them back into the folder. “Seriously, Yusuf. I know there’s a waffle iron in one of these cabinets, and you could make them, but because I’m not some little wisp of a girl you aren’t going to.”
“Exactly right,” Yusuf says, nodding. “It’s good you know where you stand in this relationship.”
“We need to get you laid again,” Eames says. “Preferably by someone who likes waffles, and leaves leftovers.”
“Too busy,” Yusuf replies. “Way too busy.”
They both laugh a little, though it’s not especially funny. The pasta is, Eames will allow, better than the pasta at the dining hall, although it’s still somehow a disappointment. Eames flips the notebook closed, anyway, and draws it across the table to him. Later he puts it on his desk, rucks up the blankets over his head, goes to sleep.
The notebook doesn’t stick with him, precisely, which is not to say he forgets it. It’s always there on his desk, and sometimes he glimpses Saito on campus and chuckles to himself a little, because in the illustrator’s rendering--well, the joke doesn’t really make sense without seeing it.
Eames doesn’t know how to find this person, though. He could put an ad on Craigslist, perhaps, or plaster ‘Found’ signs on street corners, but that feels like exposing something that might be intimate--there’s no page of this Eames wants to photocopy, and he has a weird delusion that he’ll find some clue he’s been missing if he just waits a few more days or weeks, and then he’ll be able to return the thing properly.
He wonders if the owner of the notebook started a new one without a moment’s concern for the lost pages, which comprise a year and a half’s worth of sketched memories. Eames had looked for ads describing such a book, but there weren’t any, and he has to wonder about that, too. Maybe the owner didn’t want it back.
Eames does not find the owner. What happens instead is that Mal and Dom break up, it turns to be not Ariadne’s fault at all, and play rehearsals increase exponentially.
So Eames doesn’t really have time for much else. It’s not until they’re coming up on winter break that he flips through the notebook again, and then he pauses on one page, a picture of a guy, squinting. He has a thatch of pale hair and his face is on the scruffy side, and he is almost certainly Dom Cobb. Eames doesn’t know how he missed it before. He brings the book out to show Yusuf, handing it to him.
“Does this look like Dom Cobb?” he asks, and Yusuf blinks.
“Who?”
“Mal’s boyfriend,” Eames says, then amends, “Ex-boyfriend.”
Yusuf peers at the notebook.
“You still have this?” he asks. “I thought you were going to give it back.”
“Does that look like Dom Cobb?” Eames repeats. “I know you met him.”
“I don’t have a very good memory,” Yusuf says, waving one hand vaguely. “For faces. Ask Mal.”
“We have a moratorium on talking about Dom Cobb right now,” Eames says. “Because of the break-up. But I think it’s Dom Cobb, which means he probably knows whose notebook this is, which means I just need to ask Dom Cobb.”
“Do you always use both of his names? Yusuf asks, and Eames shrugs.
“Off topic,” he says, and then he shakes his head. “Of course Dom Cobb knows this person.”
“Whatever,” Yusuf says, looking past him at the television. “I’m glad you’re one step closer to solving your little mystery.”
Eames laughs a little, settling down next to Yusuf on the couch. They watch whatever’s on until Yusuf has to go to work, and then Eames pulls the blanket from the back of the couch down over himself and wonders how he can find Dominic Cobb without riling Mal.
Dom Cobb proves elusive, but Eames catches him the last day of exam week, sitting alone in the dining hall with a psychology textbook spread out before him and a squint firmly affixed to his face. When Eames sits down across from him, he looks bewildered.
“Is this about Mal? Because--”
“No,” Eames interjects. “And please don’t say whatever you were going to say, because I don’t want to know.”
“Right,” Dom says, and then gestures broadly. “There’s another empty table over there, you know.”
“No,” Eames says again. “I just--” he fishes around in his bag. “I have this notebook, I think it’s a RISD student’s and there’s a picture in it I think is you, and I was wondering if you knew whose it was. So I could return it.”
When the notebook is open on the table Dom peers down at it, then jabs his finger at the frame Eames is indicating.
“That?” he says. “I don’t think that’s me.”
“Say it was.”
“So you’re asking who I think would’ve drawn it?” Dom asks, and Eames nods slowly, because Dom is duller, even, than Eames recalls.
“Ah--Ariadne, maybe?” Dom says.
“Isn’t she in architecture?” Eames asks.
“Architecture,” Dom affirms.
“Does she carry notebooks like this?”
“Not usually, no,” Dom says, glancing it. “But she’s artsy.”
“Is she doing a dual degree?” Eames asks, even though it’s probably not relevant. Dom shakes his head.
“Whatever,” Eames says. “Just think about it, okay? Someone from RISD, uses these notebooks, draws a lot. Do you know anyone doing an illustration degree?”
“Illustration,” Dom echoes. “I don’t think so. Ariadne’s really the only person I know at RISD.”
“Do you know anyone doing a dual degree?” Eames asks, and Dom squints again.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I’m not sure if anyone actually does dual degrees. You know you have to be accepted to both schools?”
“Thank you,” Eames says, getting up to go. “That’s very insightful, Dom.”
Dom turns back to his textbook, apparently nonplussed by Eames’ mockery, and Eames goes to his own table to eat. He’s not done when he looks up and sees the guy who told him off for being unfriendly to pasta girl at the beginning of the semester leaving the dining hall. He’s wearing a peacoat that’s flapping open and jeans that, at least from where Eames’ is sitting, look unusually thin.
Eames wonders if this only happens in college, this thing where you see people you don’t know at all just frequently enough that it feels like you might know them. Maybe in another life. Or maybe they had a class together once or something, though the guy is good looking enough that Eames is fairly certain he would have noticed. But it could have been a big lecture hall, freshman year, some gen ed that everyone and their roommate was enrolled in, and Eames might have glanced past him without fully knowing what he was seeing.
He wonders about that over winter break, after he recovers from the jet lag. He’s coming up on his last semester, and then he’s going to graduate, and at this point he probably doesn’t know ninety percent of the people on campus. Or something--it’s a big proportion, anyway, and if he missed anything important there’s never going to be an opportunity to recoup those losses.
He brings the notebook home with him. It doesn’t take up much space in his carry-on, and he likes flipping through the pages and wondering about the social lives of people he’s never met. There’s this entire network--friends, roommates, professors--that doesn’t overlap with Eames’ social group at all, except in the person of Cobb. Which is ridiculous, because Cobb is the most ridiculous person in Eames’ social group, full stop.
That includes Mal, who insists that Eames come to Paris to see her over the break. He goes, because he likes Paris and he likes Mal, despite all his efforts to the contrary after they met at international student orientation.
It was that French class that really sealed it, though. Probably because without Mal Eames never would’ve made an A.
She kisses him on both cheeks when he gets off the train, and then immediately leads him to the same cafe they go to every time Eames visits, as if he didn’t know the way.
“You could come visit me sometime,” he says, and Mal laughs.
“There’s nothing there,” she says. “And I know you love the coffee here. And the baguettes.”
“Are you a cliche?” Eames asks. “Or am I? Is this a cliche?”
“I’m the cliche,” Mal says. “Only an ex-pat could raise a Parisian as cliched as I am. That’s why I spend times with the likes of you.”
“And date Americans?” Eames says, and Mal raises an eyebrow.
“You want to talk about Dominic now?” she says. “You avoid it all semester--”
“I figure he’s on another continent right now, so what’s the worst that could happen?” Eames says, and Mal laughs.
“I felt like I hardly saw you last semester,” she says. “Which is why it’s good we’re taking that class together now--”
“Cobb, Mal,” Eames says, and she grins a little. “Not that I’m not looking forward to our class.”
“Cobb and I,” Mal sighs dramatically. “This is just a bump in the road.”
“Cobb is not that great,” Eames says.
“Exactly,” Mal says, flourishing a hand. “But he’s good.”
Eames looks at her for a moment, and finds himself nodding.
“What are you going to do then?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “We’ll see. We broke up because he’s afraid of what will happen when I graduate, but--you know he’s never liked it that I’m older than he is.”
“By a year,” Eames provides. “If he broke up with you because of a one year age difference, this isn’t a stable relationship.”
“It’s not stable, but it’s good,” Mal says. Eames quirks an eyebrow at her and Mal grins impishly.
“You,” she says, tapping a spoon on the rim of her cup. “You’re the one we should be talking about. You’re the consummate singleton.”
“Thank you,” Eames says, inclining his head in what might be a bow.
“Some day your prince will come,” she says. “Ideally within the next five months or so.”
“I don’t think I want a prince,” Eames says. “And before you say that, I don’t want a princess, either.”
Mal smiles at Eames like she sees right through him.
He’s twenty-two. He doesn’t need to fall in love. He’s young enough to sleep with a few people, graduate unattached, move to some city that’s more interesting than Providence without worrying about the sort of attachments that should be left in--well, college.
He kind of wonders what it’s like for Mal and Dom, though, and when he catches them having an intense discussion in their favorite coffee shop their first day back on campus he has to grin a little. He runs into Ariadne outside, wearing a scarf that covers half her face. She glances at the table and does a quick double take, then makes eye contact with Eames and groans exaggeratedly.
“Please don’t tell me they’re getting back together,” she says, falling into step besides him.
“Please don’t tell me you are actually trying to seduce him away,” Eames says, and Ariadne pulls her scarf lower on her face and sticks out her tongue.
“No,” she says emphatically. “Your friend’s crazy paranoid. Dom’s so not my type. But my friend always ends up putting up with all sorts of crap when Dom and Mal are together.”
“Your friend who?” Eames asks.
“Arthur,” Ariadne says. “You don’t know Arthur?”
“I’ve never even heard of Arthur,” Eames says, and Ariadne shakes her head.
“Arthur’s how I know Dom in the first place,” she says. “He and Dom both T.A. for Professor Saito? And when Dom’s dating Arthur always gets stuck with all the crap.”
“Dom T.A.s for Saito?” Eames asks, and Ariadne laughs.
“You really don’t know anything,” she says. “Who do you even spend time with?”
“Theatre people. Mal. My roommate. Dom’s not in the economics department.”
“Neither is Arthur,” Ariadne says, then shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
“You know we’ve never really talked before,” Eames says. “Do you use moleskine notebooks for anything?”
“No, I don’t use those,” Ariadne says. “And I’m pretty sure we never talked because I’m your best friend’s self-declared arch-nemesis.”
“Right,” Eames says. “That.”
Ariadne keeps walking with him.
“I saw your play last semester.”
“I’m gay,” he says, and Ariadne laughs.
“You were good,” she continues. “I wasn’t hitting on you. Let’s be friends.”
“What?” Eames asks, shaking his head.
“You’re going home, aren’t you?” she asks. “I’m cold. Make me a cup of tea.”
“Don’t you have your own friends?”
“I’m just trying to make Mal more jealous, really,” Ariadne says. “And I want some tea, because my apartment’s way past here.”
“Right,” Eames says. “I’ll make you a cuppa. Do you like waffles?”
“What?”
“Flirt with my roommate and maybe he’ll make us waffles,” Eames says, shoving the door repeatedly with his hip until it finally swings open. Ariadne is laughing.
Yusuf is not home, so the waffle proposition fails on all fronts, but the tea works out alright and Ariadne turns out to be more likable than Eames had expected when Eames only ever saw her from a distance with a background soundtrack of Mal’s griping.
“You know Mal can never know about this,” Eames says.
“I’m just using you for tea,” Ariadne says.
“Well maybe she’ll get over it if she and Dom get back together,” Eames says, inclining his head.
“You should have a party and invite us all,” Ariadne suggests. “It will be great. I’ll try to get your roommate to make us waffles. It could be a breakfast party.”
“I’ll run it by Mal,” Eames says. “We have class together tomorrow.”
Their art history class isn’t the huge lecture hall Eames had anticipated, and instead he and Mal are seated across a broad table from Ariadne and the cafeteria guy. There are other people in the room as well, but those are the two Eames hadn’t expected. Ariadne raises her eyebrows at him and grins.
“What is this class?” Eames asks, leaning over towards Mal.
“Contemporary Architecture?” she says. “Did you not even look at the course title?”
“You gave me the CRN, you said it was art history, I registered. It’s our last semester. It seemed unbecoming to worry.”
“Unbecoming?” Mal asks.
Eames shoves her with his elbow. He’s keeping one eye on the guy across the table, who’s talking to Ariadne. He has sharp dark eyes and fine features and his hands are folded on the table in front of him, atop a thin black notebook.
There’s no way to know. All sorts of people use those notebooks.
The professor has them go around the table and introduce themselves, and the guy says his name is Arthur and somehow manages to avoid saying both his class and his concentration, even though both questions are supposed to be answered. Instead he shunts his eyes around the room like he’s expecting something though he’s not sure what, and Eames can’t tell what it might be. As soon as lecture begins in earnest Arthur is scribbling intently in his notebook, barely looking up.
Ariadne would have been the person to ask, Eames realizes. He should have asked her yesterday, and in the meantime Arthur has been there, skulking around the fringes of Eames’ life, being kind of beautiful.
“Eames, Mal,” Ariadne says, catching up with them after class. Arthur is trailing after her.
“This is my friend Arthur,” she says, indicating him. “This is Eames, and Mal.”
“We’ve met,” Arthur says, gesturing between himself and Mal before turning to Eames. “And I think I’ve seen you somewhere.”
Eames has been told that his memory for faces is occasionally frightening, which might explain why he doesn’t say anything at that moment and instead thrusts forward a hand.
“Good to meet you,” he says, and Arthur catches it and they shake hands, and now they’ve met. That’s done.
Eames could just ask him what’s in his notebook, but if all there is is notes that would be strange.
“So you and Dom are back together, eh?” Arthur asks, nodding at Mal. “He told me today.”
Ariadne meets Eames’ eyes and nods slightly, then mouths ‘He’s Canadian’ like that’s extremely meaningful.
Arthur elbows Ariadne in the ribs.
“People who aren’t Canadians says ‘eh,’” he says. “That’s a thing.”
“Not really,” Ariadne says.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “What’s your concentration? You skipped that part in class.”
“He goes to RISD,” Ariadne says, and Arthur glances at her.
“I can speak for myself,” he says. “I’m at RISD, with Ariadne.”
“Architecture?” Eames asks, given the subject matter of the class and everything else.
“No,” Arthur says, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and glancing off down the hall. “Illustration, actually.”
“We do spend time with people in different disciplines,” Ariadne says.
“We should go,” Mal says, glancing between Eames and Ariadne. “We’re meeting with Dom for lunch.”
“We are?” Eames asks, and shrugs at Ariadne and Arthur in a way he hopes conveys apology. “I haven’t spoken to Dom since we got back.”
Arthur mutters something to Ariadne. It sounds like the last word is a sarcastic ‘scintillating.’ Eames really, really wants--something. For Arthur to be behind the notebook. For Arthur to be really interesting, regardless.
Lunch with Dom is less interesting, and Eames spends most of it trying to subtly ask questions about Arthur, which proves impossible, because Dom wouldn’t recognize a subtle question if it bit him in the ass, which Eames’ questions kind of do, because they aren’t actually subtle at all. Mal gives him an inquisitive look, and then Eames ducks out early to go back home to the notebook and see if there’s anything, anything at all, that might indicate that it’s Arthur’s. There’s a girl who could be Ariadne--hair in waves and scarves looped around her neck--but there’s no names on anyone.
Eames isn’t even sure if it should matter whether Arthur made this. He’s still--he’s still someone Eames would want to talk to, someone he would invite to a breakfast party at his apartment if such an event came to pass.
Ariadne would know, anyway. Arthur’s her friend. Eames just needs to ask her. He puts the notebook back in his bag in case the opportunity should arise.
Their art history professor, Dr. Jenkins, assigns them partners for discussion over the semester--it’s in alphabetical order by last names, and Eames winds up with Arthur, which is just his luck, because he’s always been ridiculously lucky. Mal winds up with Ariadne, and scowls. Eames winks at her, because, really, she and Ariadne would probably be friends if it weren’t for Dom.
“So,” Eames asks, catching Arthur after class. “We could just meet for coffee every week. I know a place--”
“I’m busy,” Arthur says. “I’ll e-mail you my schedule, but we should probably just meet on campus.”
“Oh,” Eames says, and Arthur twists to look at his face.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll get the project done. I’m awesome at projects.”
“I’m sure,” Eames says, grinning uncertainly and then falling into step besides Arthur when it’s apparent that Mal and Ariadne aren’t going to be approaching anytime soon. “So you’re in illustration, then? Why do you T.A. for Saito?”
“Because he likes me,” Arthur says simply.
“What do you want to do with that?” Eames asks. “With a degree in illustration, I mean?”
“What do you want to do with one in theatre?” Arthur asks. His hands are deep in his pockets, like they usually are, and he’s looking straight ahead.
“Point taken,” Eames replies. “How do you know I’m in theatre?”
“You said as much, last week,” Arthur says. “I’m going this way. See you around.”
Eames keeps an eye on him as he disappears down the streetlight-illuminated sidewalk, drifting bits of snow falling past. He could have just asked about the book.
It doesn’t seem like the right time. He goes home, instead, and sends an email to Ariadne with ‘Breakfast Party?’ as the subject line. She writes back almost immediately--‘Your roommate in?’--which means Eames needs to go talk to Yusuf about it.
“Who are you trying to impress?” he asks, idly rifling through cabinets like food will just show itself if he waits.
“Your face,” Eames mutters. Yusuf laughs.
“Nice try,” he says. “Come on, we don’t have parties for no reason around these parts.”
“Yes we do,” Eames says. “Maybe I just want to reconcile Mal and Dom and Ariadne.”
“Isn’t Ariadne the one who--at the zombie pub crawl?”
“She says no,” Eames replies. “She’s cool. You’d like her.”
Yusuf turns and arches an eyebrow at him.
“Didn’t I introduce you to Maia?”
“Oh, yeah,” Eames says. “Her. She can come, too.”
“Whatever,” Yusuf says. “I’ll make waffles, but we have to do it on a Thursday.”
And so the breakfast party coalesces, and after several conversations with Mal Eames convinces her that they should invite Ariadne, and Eames mentions Arthur to Ariadne in a way he hopes isn’t begging her to make him come. Other than that there’s not much planning; Yusuf gives Eames strict orders to bring home a dozen eggs, and that’s pretty much it. Eames buys some beer for good measure, and then he wanders around the kitchen while Yusuf makes waffle batter and complains until Maia arrives to distract him.
It’s not a big deal, it just feels like it should be. Mal and Dom arrive together, followed by Arthur and Ariadne, and the whole thing is surprisingly comfortable.
“You call this a party?” Ariadne asks. “It’s just some people with waffles.”
“Shut up,” Eames says. “I’ve been wanting waffles for months, and Yusuf would never make them for just me.”
Arthur, across the room, glances at Yusuf like there’s a question he doesn’t want to ask, then pulls his legs up into his chair. Eames has been aware of Arthur, almost painfully so, since the beginning of the semester at least, and he should just ask him if he keeps little notebooks full of comics.
He could have asked Ariadne already, but the right opportunity never presented itself.
And what if the book isn’t Arthur? What then? Eames has already sketched in all the empty details of Arthur’s life with the notebook--he’s funny in a sardonic way, he’s a compulsive documentarian, he likes blurry photographs and prints by Escher, and as much as Eames would like to believe that it wouldn’t make a difference if it isn’t Arthur’s notebook--it does make a difference, because if it’s not Eames knows nothing about Arthur at all, and everything he thinks he knows is like background information about some character in a play, entirely fabricated. He had flipped through the book at his desk before everyone arrived, alternately wondering about that and trying not to think about it.
He should just ask. He is turning into Amelie.
Only then Arthur goes to the bathroom. Eames points down the hall and says it’s the second door on the left, and it’s not a big deal until Arthur comes back holding the notebook itself, eyes narrowed to pinpoints.
“Why do you have this?” he asks. Which answers most of Eames’ questions, though not in the way he wanted them to be answered. Everyone is looking at him--Mal and Ariadne look confused before Ariadne’s face shifts towards understanding, Yusuf is whispering an explanation to Maia, and realization is slowly dawning on Dom’s face.
“I found it,” Eames says. “In the Ratty.”
“You found it. In the Ratty,” Arthur repeats. “And you didn’t try to give it back?”
“There’s nothing identifying in there,” Eames says. “I didn’t know who to give it to.”
Arthur huffs a little, and where his knuckles clutch the book they’re edging white.
“So you just read it, did you?” he asks. “Of course you did.”
“At least you got it back,” Ariadne chimes from the sidelines.
“No thanks to him,” Arthur says, reaching for his coat and shrugging it on. Ariadne shoots Eames a sympathetic glance, and Eames just sits there, feeling stiff and uncomfortable and exposed.
Arthur probably feels the same way, but he’s storming out.
“These waffles are good,” Maia contributes, and Yusuf kisses her on the nose while everyone else turns to stare at Eames.
“I forgot Arthur was at RISD,” Dom says, almost apologetic.
“Eames?” Mal says. “What’s going on?”
“Should I go after him?” Eames asks Ariadne.
“Give him some time,” she says.
“I found his notebook,” Eames says to the room at large, shrugging somewhat helplessly.
“I’ve never even seen inside one of those notebooks,” Ariadne says.
“Oh,” Eames says. It kind of makes sense. Well--it makes sense in light of Arthur’s response. “Should you go after him?”
Ariadne shakes her head.
“Arthur’s skittish,” she says. “Like a little deer. If you go after him he just runs further.”
Yusuf laughs.
“Nice job, Eames,” he says. “Real nice.”
That’s pretty much the end of the party, but they have leftover waffles in their fridge for a week, and Arthur avoids Eames for more or less the same amount of time. Arthur skips class, conspicuously, and Eames catches Ariadne by the elbow when they’re leaving.
“Where is he?” he asks.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose that information,” she says. “We’re friends, it’s a thing. But if I were at liberty to disclose--he might be in the studio.”
“And that is?”
“Figure it out,” Ariadne says, slapping a hand on his back. “I need to talk to Mal.”
It takes Eames an hour to find the illustration department, and the secretary is just leaving but he sends Eames down the hall and up some stairs.
“He’s been in a lot, lately,” the man says as Eames leaves. “Too much.”
Arthur’s the only one there, standing up at a wood-topped table in the back. The room is ringed by windows and it’s dark outside, and Arthur doesn’t look up when Eames enters the room.
“Hey,” Eames says, and Arthur looks up at him and then back at the table in front of him, laying his hands flat on the tabletop and spreading his fingers out across the surface. “You didn’t come to class today.”
“Sorry,” Arthur replies, but the word sounds like a challenge.
“A guy might think you’re avoiding him.”
“A guy might be right.”
Eames lifts himself up until he’s sitting on one of the tables.
A few minutes pass before Arthur speaks.
“That’s it?”
“I liked your notebook,” Eames says, and Arthur slaps the table and looks up at him.
“You liked it?” he says. “What the fuck?”
“I just thought--you know--it was good. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Eames drums his fingers on the counter top, and Arthur just stands there looking at him.
“It was personal,” he says evenly. “I’m not ashamed of it, but I hate you for reading it.”
“Okay,” Eames says. “Will you be in class on Thursday?”
“I was sick on Tuesday,” Arthur says. “I got a cold. Was your roommate sick when he made those waffles?”
“No,” Eames says. “We still have leftovers if you like.”
“I don’t like,” Arthur says. “I’ll be in class on Thursday. Why are you still here?”
“I really liked your notebook,” Eames repeats.
“That’s great,” Arthur says. “That’s really great, Eames. Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Have you ever seen Amelie? Mal made me watch it,” Eames continues.
“What the fuck, Eames?” Arthur asks. “This is not a romantic comedy. And if it were, it wouldn’t be a French one.”
“Why not?” Eames asks.
“Because we aren’t speaking French, you dumbass,” Arthur says. “And because you have all the power here. You’ve read my notebook and all I know about you is that you’re in the theatre department and in my art history class and apparently British.”
“By way of London,” Eames provides, and Arthur’s glance turns withering.
“That’s not enough, Eames.”
“So we go on a date,” he says. “And you ask me whatever you want.”
“You’re asking me out?” Arthur says, and Eames stares at him.
“I thought that was what I was doing all along,” Eames says, and Arthur presses his forehead into his hands and then looks up at Eames again.
“Come on,” Eames says. “One date. Just the one, and then you can tell me to fuck off.”
“Fuck off,” Arthur says, looking up at him. “I’m telling you now.”
Eames pushes the heels of his hands into the tabletop and waits. He should probably leave right now, could probably leave, but it seems like if he takes just a moment he could, perhaps, figure out what he needs to do.
“You talked to me in the cafeteria once last semester,” he says. “About something stupid. That was the day I found your notebook. And then you disappeared and said ‘See you around.’”
“Well I guess I did,” Arthur says evenly. “See you around, I mean.”
“I remembered you,” Eames says. “I saw you around a couple of times.”
“But you only asked me out after you already knew everything about me.”
“That’s the thing, Arthur,” Eames says. “I don’t know everything about you. I just know that I want to.”
Eames hefts himself off the table and slides to the ground.
“I’m doing a one man show at the end of the semester,” he says. “I’m working on the script and it’s sort of autobiographical. I’ll e-mail it to you tonight. You don’t have to read it but--think about it, okay?”
Eames leaves before Arthur can say anything, and it occurs to him that now he actually needs to write that script, or, at the very least, write something.
The e-mail goes out at three in the morning, it’s probably riddled with spelling errors and not impressive in the least, but maybe it’s abject awfulness will make Arthur more inclined have pity on Eames and go on the stupid date.
And if he doesn’t--that can be the end of it. This semester is for graduating--for endings, not beginnings.
Class on Thursday is nothing short of painful, and Arthur is almost completely inscrutable. Ariadne doesn’t even look like she knows what’s happening, and the lecture is dull. Arthur brushes past Eames when they’re leaving, and Eames figures he needs his space or something and goes to lunch with Mal instead of following him.
He’s on his way back to his apartment when he burrows his hands into his jacket pockets when his fingers reach a crumpled piece of paper. He extracts it and smooths it out between his palms.
It’s a drawing of Arthur looking straight out of the frame like he’s looking at Eames, and there’s a little speech bubble that just says, “Okay.”
Underneath there’s a map--the intersection of a few streets, an asterisk, and beneath that, an address, and a time.
Eames goes. Of course he does.
Now I know I told you to punch me in the face if I posted anything not related to things I am supposed to be working on between now and mid-December, but I respectfully request that you...don't. It's just a wee little kinkmeme fill! Sometimes I miss the good ole days of gallivanting around the kinkmeme as an anon, so I do this to relive my youth. Apparently, my youth was roughly six months ago.
.nobody's little weasel
his final year of university, eames finds a notebook in the dining hall. written for this prompt.
notes: title from amelie.
thank you to gelbwax for the beta and encouragement.
and, finally: this fic takes place on the campuses of not one, but two, colleges that I did not attend, so I mostly made stuff up. if there are lies about your alma mater herein, don't hate me (thanks to livingtea for providing some details).
pg13 . 7522 words
Eames had seen Amelie. Mal made him, because they had to watch a video for French class and she liked things that were twee. They borrowed her boyfriend’s laptop because the screen was bigger than either of theirs and holed themselves up in Eames’ dorm room. That was when Eames was still living in a dorm room, a little cell of a space that Mal said always smelled like feet.
Eames would have blamed Yusuf, honestly, but the truth was that Yusuf was hardly ever in the room, so mostly Eames just denied it.
So, Amelie. Eames had seen it, so he knew all about quirky people meeting their quirky soulmates through quirky hobbies and photo albums, and then almost being too scared, and hearts turning to stone for lack of love and blah, blah, blah.
Eames had liked the movie, really. Kind of. If Mal asked.
He just didn’t believe in it, is the point, and so when he finds a moleskine notebook wedged under his table in the student canteen and flips through it idly, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Maybe a little invasive, sure, but the black cover of the notebook is nondescript and Eames isn’t sure how anyone expects him to return it if he doesn’t flip the cover open and look inside.
And he fully intends to return it, which is why he flips the cover open and looks inside. It’s a thin notebook, but most of the pages are riffled like they’ve been written in, and the first several are filled with cramped writing in black ink that Eames finds difficult to read. It looks like a class schedule and there’s something a few pages in that appears to be a map of the RISD campus, with little asterisks in front of a few of the buildings.
RISD. It figures. Some RISD kid with a friend on campus, came by the Ratty for lunch, left their notebook, which means that if Eames can find this person it will probably cover all his good deeds for the year.
The comics start four pages in, jagged lines sketched in the same rich black ink, but the surprise is that they’re good. If it’s someone from art school of course their illustrations are good, but the comics are clever besides. Eames recognizes Doctor Saito from the economics department, which seems like an odd choice for a RISD student. Maybe they’re in the dual degree program. Mal’s friend--well, not friend, precisely--but that one girl, Ariadne, is in it, if Eames recalls. He could ask her, or ask Mal to ask her.
Mal probably wouldn’t. Mal doesn’t like Ariadne at all. It has something to do with Dom Cobb and the zombie pub crawl last October, though Mal has never been willing to explain it properly.
And then Mal is there, trilling Eames’ name and settling into the chair opposite his. Eames looks up expectantly as Mal deposits a tray of food on the table and immediately sets into conversation
“So I was thinking, next semester’s our last semester, right?” she says. “And we haven’t had a class together since we were first years and I carried you through French. So how about we take something? I have next semester’s course listings.”
She sets a paper packet on the table, flips through and jabs it with her pen.
“I highlighted the ones that would work best. Or we could take some art class, I know how you feel about art students.”
“That’s a malicious rumor,” Eames says, and Mal laughs a little, twirling a finger through her hair.
“I’m your best friend,” Mal says, stabbing a fork into her salad. “Don’t give me that. I remember Sebastian and Riley.”
“One of my best friends,” Eames corrects, even though Mal is his best friend, more or less. It is, in some ways, a deeply unfortunate state of affairs.
“I’ll send you my schedule,” Eames says. “If there’s a class that fits and isn’t awful, I’ll take it.”
“Fair enough,” Mal says, grinning. “I’m thinking art history.”
“Of course you are,” Eames says, prodding at his own plate. The pasta had seemed like an okay idea, at the time, but the sauce is congealing a little strangely. Moving off campus was supposed to mean eating in the dining hall less.
“You know Ariadne?” Eames asks, against his better judgment. Mal scoffs impolitely at the name.
“I’d hardly say I know the little twit,” she says.
“Is she in the dual degree program? With RISD?” Eames presses, because once the subject is broached he may as well carry it home. Mal angles her head slightly, tapping a slender finger on her chin.
“Going after another art student, are you?” she asks. “We all know you’re just lobbying to be included in a performance piece.”
“Like the theatre department isn’t one giant performance piece,” Eames says. “No one except for you thinks I’m lobbying to be included in a performance piece, and, if I were, I could get included on my own merit.”
“Your own merit,” Mal repeats, coughing a little and nodding vigorously. “Of course Eames. If that merit is at the intersection of your left leg and your right--”
“Please shut up,” Eames says. “I have class.”
“No you don’t,” Mal says, turning back to her salad. “But I know you have practice for your little play, so run along, why don’t you?”
“Run along, why don’t you?” Eames mutters as he slides his pasta into a rubbish bin. He sees another student give him a withering look, and he grins sardonically at her. She probably didn’t take the pasta. He’s well within his rights to throw out something so disgusting. She comes up beside him anyway.
“You know how much food is wasted every year by this university?” she hisses.
“In pounds or kgs?” Eames asks, and the girl frowns.
“Perhaps you’d like the figure in stone,” he muses, and she lets out a small, exasperated huff.
“You have to understand,” Eames says in an effort to be sympathetic. “That pasta was terrible.”
“That’s not the point,” the girl says, and then she flounces off. Eames is left wondering if he was so terribly earnest, when he was a freshman.
He doubts it.
“You know,” says a voice from his left. “You could’ve let her give you her spiel.”
“I figure if I don’t do it the real world will,” Eames replies. “Consider it part of the education she’s paying for.”
The guy next to him snorts, and Eames hazards a glance.
He rather wishes he hadn’t been so flip, because the guy to his left is kind of shockingly attractive. He’s wearing what looks like a thin, soft henley under a heavy cardigan, and his shoulders are hunched up as if in anticipation of cold. He has a sweep of dark, curling hair and a sharp nose, and there’s a grin playing at his lips, like there’s a joke here that Eames hasn’t quite caught.
The guy peels off towards the doors to the left, fluttering his hand in something akin to a wave.
“See you around,” he says. Which seems unlikely, because Eames has never seen this person before in his life. Eames nods a couple times before gathering his bearings and heading to rehearsal. They’re still doing table reads, and it’s pleasant enough--three years in the department means that Eames is friendly with most of the cast already, and the quiet, spare room they use for table reads feels halfway to being home. Eames has, in the past, come here to study--wedging two chairs together so he could put his feet up, giving anyone else who came in withering stares.
He still has that moleskine notebook in his bag. He saw it when he reached in to remove his highlighted script, slim and dark and neat and very much not his. Eames has one or two notebooks, spiral bound; Eames stuffs his notebooks full of papers like each one is a filing folder, and he usually spills coffee on them so that the papers get riffled when they dry.
He’s already spilled coffee on his script, actually. When he turns the pages they rustle loudly, and Elizabeth occasionally squints at him from across the table, pursing her lips in a disapproving frown.
She should be looking at her own script, really. She couldn’t possibly have memorized her lines already.
Eames’ character isn’t in this scene, and in lieu of paying attention he toys with the strap of his bag, wondering what else is in the moleskine. Mal interrupted that particular train of thought with her class scheduling, which is very much typically Mal. She builds her life out of little schemes and larger production, and only leaves things up to chance when it seems poetic.
She’s Eames’ ostensible best friend, though. But there’s a good reason to let her talk about taking art history together instead of telling her he found a notebook full of chickenscratch handwriting and comic books on the table, because if he told her about the notebook then the notebook would become a production.
Eames has a line to deliver. He does so.
When the table read is done with Eames walks with Taylor back towards his apartment. Eames has known Taylor for at least as long as he’s known Mal--they were in a class together as freshmen--but he and Taylor are only friends in the most superficial of ways.
They slept together, once, after striking the Death of a Salesman set. Eames had been Biff and Taylor had been Happy. It felt weirdly incestuous, but they can talk comfortably enough now, moving through the leaf-cloaked sidewalks towards their apartments.
Maybe Yusuf will have made dinner already. Maybe he’ll let Eames have some. It would almost certainly be better than the pasta, if it exists, but the disadvantage of with living with someone who dropped out of school to devote their life to haute cuisine, or whatever it is Yusuf is doing, is that they very rarely want to cook when they’re at home.
The advantage is that Eames occasionally scores free food, and, also, Yusuf works nights and so his snoring is usually relegated to the parts of the day when Eames is out.
He’s home now, though, catatonic on the couch. He inclines his head slightly when Eames enters the room, his eyebrows furrowing slightly.
“Eames,” he says.
“You’re here,” Eames says. “And awake.”
“I wasn’t before you came in,” Yusuf replies. “You didn’t bring dinner, did you?”
“You didn’t make dinner, did you?” Eames counters, and Yusuf guffaws.
“McDonald’s,” he says. “Go down the block and get me a Big Mac, and I’ll forgive you for waking me up.”
Eames picks up a t-shirt that’s crumpled on the floor and chucks it in the general direction of Yusuf’s head.
“There’s something in the fridge,” Yusuf grumbles. “If you’re going to be an ass.”
“Something,” Eames echoes, going into the kitchen. There is something in the fridge. It looks like pasta.
He’ll probably end up eating it anyway. He puts the tupperware in the microwave and drops his bag on the table, extracting the notebook. He’s got it upside down, though, and he finds a folder inside the back cover, filled to bursting with clippings. Eames spills them out onto the table, and they slide across the scarred surface.
It’s the lingering recollection of watching Amelie that makes Eames rifle through for strips of photo booth photographs, but there aren’t any. There are photos cut from magazines, occasionally with references or notes scrawled on the back, and there are frames clipped from comic books, and there are copies of probably every M. C. Escher print in existence. The photographs tend to be blurred and strange, low apertures with heavy bokeh, but all the drawings are precise, black and white and very neat. The comic frames are almost always alive with motion in a way the notebook’s owners drawings aren’t.
The comics are all dated, almost daily, and they begin in the previous fall and stop abruptly two days prior to today. Some are just one frame, or two, but there’s an entire storyline about a life guard that makes it apparent the illustrator has a bit of a vindictive streak. And is attracted to men, for what that’s worth, and while Eames would peg the handwriting as masculine he refuses to allow himself to think that, because that path leads only to woe, or something akin to.
“What’s this?” Yusuf asks, sitting down across from Eames at the table and sliding a bowl of pasta and a fork across the table towards him.
“Something I found in the Ratty,” Eames says, glancing up. “Some kid’s notebook.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Yusuf hums, picking up the nearest clipping and turning it over in his hand. “Gonna give it back?”
“If I can find any clues as to the owner,” Eames says. “This person’s not showing their hand at all.”
“Maybe they’re paranoid,” Yusuf says. “You seen any squirrely looking buggers around lately?”
“I think they’re at RISD,” Eames says, flipping through the notebook. “There’s a campus map, in the early pages, from last year. So maybe a second year?”
“What else is in there?” Yusuf asks, and Eames shrugs.
“Comics, mostly,” Eames says. “Is there a program for that?”
“Illustration,” Yusuf provides. “Or maybe animation? I don’t know, but do you remember Isabel? She was in illustration, I think.”
“I don’t,” Eames says, settling his hands on the table. “Isabel? Illustration?”
“Isabel,” Yusuf repeats. “Tiny little thing? She liked waffles.”
“We should have some waffles,” Eames says. “Why would you even bring up waffles, when we’re eating this?”
“This is fresh pasta,” Yusuf says, gesturing with his fork. “None of that dried crap.”
“But waffles,” Eames mutters, shuffling together the papers and putting them back into the folder. “Seriously, Yusuf. I know there’s a waffle iron in one of these cabinets, and you could make them, but because I’m not some little wisp of a girl you aren’t going to.”
“Exactly right,” Yusuf says, nodding. “It’s good you know where you stand in this relationship.”
“We need to get you laid again,” Eames says. “Preferably by someone who likes waffles, and leaves leftovers.”
“Too busy,” Yusuf replies. “Way too busy.”
They both laugh a little, though it’s not especially funny. The pasta is, Eames will allow, better than the pasta at the dining hall, although it’s still somehow a disappointment. Eames flips the notebook closed, anyway, and draws it across the table to him. Later he puts it on his desk, rucks up the blankets over his head, goes to sleep.
The notebook doesn’t stick with him, precisely, which is not to say he forgets it. It’s always there on his desk, and sometimes he glimpses Saito on campus and chuckles to himself a little, because in the illustrator’s rendering--well, the joke doesn’t really make sense without seeing it.
Eames doesn’t know how to find this person, though. He could put an ad on Craigslist, perhaps, or plaster ‘Found’ signs on street corners, but that feels like exposing something that might be intimate--there’s no page of this Eames wants to photocopy, and he has a weird delusion that he’ll find some clue he’s been missing if he just waits a few more days or weeks, and then he’ll be able to return the thing properly.
He wonders if the owner of the notebook started a new one without a moment’s concern for the lost pages, which comprise a year and a half’s worth of sketched memories. Eames had looked for ads describing such a book, but there weren’t any, and he has to wonder about that, too. Maybe the owner didn’t want it back.
Eames does not find the owner. What happens instead is that Mal and Dom break up, it turns to be not Ariadne’s fault at all, and play rehearsals increase exponentially.
So Eames doesn’t really have time for much else. It’s not until they’re coming up on winter break that he flips through the notebook again, and then he pauses on one page, a picture of a guy, squinting. He has a thatch of pale hair and his face is on the scruffy side, and he is almost certainly Dom Cobb. Eames doesn’t know how he missed it before. He brings the book out to show Yusuf, handing it to him.
“Does this look like Dom Cobb?” he asks, and Yusuf blinks.
“Who?”
“Mal’s boyfriend,” Eames says, then amends, “Ex-boyfriend.”
Yusuf peers at the notebook.
“You still have this?” he asks. “I thought you were going to give it back.”
“Does that look like Dom Cobb?” Eames repeats. “I know you met him.”
“I don’t have a very good memory,” Yusuf says, waving one hand vaguely. “For faces. Ask Mal.”
“We have a moratorium on talking about Dom Cobb right now,” Eames says. “Because of the break-up. But I think it’s Dom Cobb, which means he probably knows whose notebook this is, which means I just need to ask Dom Cobb.”
“Do you always use both of his names? Yusuf asks, and Eames shrugs.
“Off topic,” he says, and then he shakes his head. “Of course Dom Cobb knows this person.”
“Whatever,” Yusuf says, looking past him at the television. “I’m glad you’re one step closer to solving your little mystery.”
Eames laughs a little, settling down next to Yusuf on the couch. They watch whatever’s on until Yusuf has to go to work, and then Eames pulls the blanket from the back of the couch down over himself and wonders how he can find Dominic Cobb without riling Mal.
Dom Cobb proves elusive, but Eames catches him the last day of exam week, sitting alone in the dining hall with a psychology textbook spread out before him and a squint firmly affixed to his face. When Eames sits down across from him, he looks bewildered.
“Is this about Mal? Because--”
“No,” Eames interjects. “And please don’t say whatever you were going to say, because I don’t want to know.”
“Right,” Dom says, and then gestures broadly. “There’s another empty table over there, you know.”
“No,” Eames says again. “I just--” he fishes around in his bag. “I have this notebook, I think it’s a RISD student’s and there’s a picture in it I think is you, and I was wondering if you knew whose it was. So I could return it.”
When the notebook is open on the table Dom peers down at it, then jabs his finger at the frame Eames is indicating.
“That?” he says. “I don’t think that’s me.”
“Say it was.”
“So you’re asking who I think would’ve drawn it?” Dom asks, and Eames nods slowly, because Dom is duller, even, than Eames recalls.
“Ah--Ariadne, maybe?” Dom says.
“Isn’t she in architecture?” Eames asks.
“Architecture,” Dom affirms.
“Does she carry notebooks like this?”
“Not usually, no,” Dom says, glancing it. “But she’s artsy.”
“Is she doing a dual degree?” Eames asks, even though it’s probably not relevant. Dom shakes his head.
“Whatever,” Eames says. “Just think about it, okay? Someone from RISD, uses these notebooks, draws a lot. Do you know anyone doing an illustration degree?”
“Illustration,” Dom echoes. “I don’t think so. Ariadne’s really the only person I know at RISD.”
“Do you know anyone doing a dual degree?” Eames asks, and Dom squints again.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I’m not sure if anyone actually does dual degrees. You know you have to be accepted to both schools?”
“Thank you,” Eames says, getting up to go. “That’s very insightful, Dom.”
Dom turns back to his textbook, apparently nonplussed by Eames’ mockery, and Eames goes to his own table to eat. He’s not done when he looks up and sees the guy who told him off for being unfriendly to pasta girl at the beginning of the semester leaving the dining hall. He’s wearing a peacoat that’s flapping open and jeans that, at least from where Eames’ is sitting, look unusually thin.
Eames wonders if this only happens in college, this thing where you see people you don’t know at all just frequently enough that it feels like you might know them. Maybe in another life. Or maybe they had a class together once or something, though the guy is good looking enough that Eames is fairly certain he would have noticed. But it could have been a big lecture hall, freshman year, some gen ed that everyone and their roommate was enrolled in, and Eames might have glanced past him without fully knowing what he was seeing.
He wonders about that over winter break, after he recovers from the jet lag. He’s coming up on his last semester, and then he’s going to graduate, and at this point he probably doesn’t know ninety percent of the people on campus. Or something--it’s a big proportion, anyway, and if he missed anything important there’s never going to be an opportunity to recoup those losses.
He brings the notebook home with him. It doesn’t take up much space in his carry-on, and he likes flipping through the pages and wondering about the social lives of people he’s never met. There’s this entire network--friends, roommates, professors--that doesn’t overlap with Eames’ social group at all, except in the person of Cobb. Which is ridiculous, because Cobb is the most ridiculous person in Eames’ social group, full stop.
That includes Mal, who insists that Eames come to Paris to see her over the break. He goes, because he likes Paris and he likes Mal, despite all his efforts to the contrary after they met at international student orientation.
It was that French class that really sealed it, though. Probably because without Mal Eames never would’ve made an A.
She kisses him on both cheeks when he gets off the train, and then immediately leads him to the same cafe they go to every time Eames visits, as if he didn’t know the way.
“You could come visit me sometime,” he says, and Mal laughs.
“There’s nothing there,” she says. “And I know you love the coffee here. And the baguettes.”
“Are you a cliche?” Eames asks. “Or am I? Is this a cliche?”
“I’m the cliche,” Mal says. “Only an ex-pat could raise a Parisian as cliched as I am. That’s why I spend times with the likes of you.”
“And date Americans?” Eames says, and Mal raises an eyebrow.
“You want to talk about Dominic now?” she says. “You avoid it all semester--”
“I figure he’s on another continent right now, so what’s the worst that could happen?” Eames says, and Mal laughs.
“I felt like I hardly saw you last semester,” she says. “Which is why it’s good we’re taking that class together now--”
“Cobb, Mal,” Eames says, and she grins a little. “Not that I’m not looking forward to our class.”
“Cobb and I,” Mal sighs dramatically. “This is just a bump in the road.”
“Cobb is not that great,” Eames says.
“Exactly,” Mal says, flourishing a hand. “But he’s good.”
Eames looks at her for a moment, and finds himself nodding.
“What are you going to do then?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “We’ll see. We broke up because he’s afraid of what will happen when I graduate, but--you know he’s never liked it that I’m older than he is.”
“By a year,” Eames provides. “If he broke up with you because of a one year age difference, this isn’t a stable relationship.”
“It’s not stable, but it’s good,” Mal says. Eames quirks an eyebrow at her and Mal grins impishly.
“You,” she says, tapping a spoon on the rim of her cup. “You’re the one we should be talking about. You’re the consummate singleton.”
“Thank you,” Eames says, inclining his head in what might be a bow.
“Some day your prince will come,” she says. “Ideally within the next five months or so.”
“I don’t think I want a prince,” Eames says. “And before you say that, I don’t want a princess, either.”
Mal smiles at Eames like she sees right through him.
He’s twenty-two. He doesn’t need to fall in love. He’s young enough to sleep with a few people, graduate unattached, move to some city that’s more interesting than Providence without worrying about the sort of attachments that should be left in--well, college.
He kind of wonders what it’s like for Mal and Dom, though, and when he catches them having an intense discussion in their favorite coffee shop their first day back on campus he has to grin a little. He runs into Ariadne outside, wearing a scarf that covers half her face. She glances at the table and does a quick double take, then makes eye contact with Eames and groans exaggeratedly.
“Please don’t tell me they’re getting back together,” she says, falling into step besides him.
“Please don’t tell me you are actually trying to seduce him away,” Eames says, and Ariadne pulls her scarf lower on her face and sticks out her tongue.
“No,” she says emphatically. “Your friend’s crazy paranoid. Dom’s so not my type. But my friend always ends up putting up with all sorts of crap when Dom and Mal are together.”
“Your friend who?” Eames asks.
“Arthur,” Ariadne says. “You don’t know Arthur?”
“I’ve never even heard of Arthur,” Eames says, and Ariadne shakes her head.
“Arthur’s how I know Dom in the first place,” she says. “He and Dom both T.A. for Professor Saito? And when Dom’s dating Arthur always gets stuck with all the crap.”
“Dom T.A.s for Saito?” Eames asks, and Ariadne laughs.
“You really don’t know anything,” she says. “Who do you even spend time with?”
“Theatre people. Mal. My roommate. Dom’s not in the economics department.”
“Neither is Arthur,” Ariadne says, then shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
“You know we’ve never really talked before,” Eames says. “Do you use moleskine notebooks for anything?”
“No, I don’t use those,” Ariadne says. “And I’m pretty sure we never talked because I’m your best friend’s self-declared arch-nemesis.”
“Right,” Eames says. “That.”
Ariadne keeps walking with him.
“I saw your play last semester.”
“I’m gay,” he says, and Ariadne laughs.
“You were good,” she continues. “I wasn’t hitting on you. Let’s be friends.”
“What?” Eames asks, shaking his head.
“You’re going home, aren’t you?” she asks. “I’m cold. Make me a cup of tea.”
“Don’t you have your own friends?”
“I’m just trying to make Mal more jealous, really,” Ariadne says. “And I want some tea, because my apartment’s way past here.”
“Right,” Eames says. “I’ll make you a cuppa. Do you like waffles?”
“What?”
“Flirt with my roommate and maybe he’ll make us waffles,” Eames says, shoving the door repeatedly with his hip until it finally swings open. Ariadne is laughing.
Yusuf is not home, so the waffle proposition fails on all fronts, but the tea works out alright and Ariadne turns out to be more likable than Eames had expected when Eames only ever saw her from a distance with a background soundtrack of Mal’s griping.
“You know Mal can never know about this,” Eames says.
“I’m just using you for tea,” Ariadne says.
“Well maybe she’ll get over it if she and Dom get back together,” Eames says, inclining his head.
“You should have a party and invite us all,” Ariadne suggests. “It will be great. I’ll try to get your roommate to make us waffles. It could be a breakfast party.”
“I’ll run it by Mal,” Eames says. “We have class together tomorrow.”
Their art history class isn’t the huge lecture hall Eames had anticipated, and instead he and Mal are seated across a broad table from Ariadne and the cafeteria guy. There are other people in the room as well, but those are the two Eames hadn’t expected. Ariadne raises her eyebrows at him and grins.
“What is this class?” Eames asks, leaning over towards Mal.
“Contemporary Architecture?” she says. “Did you not even look at the course title?”
“You gave me the CRN, you said it was art history, I registered. It’s our last semester. It seemed unbecoming to worry.”
“Unbecoming?” Mal asks.
Eames shoves her with his elbow. He’s keeping one eye on the guy across the table, who’s talking to Ariadne. He has sharp dark eyes and fine features and his hands are folded on the table in front of him, atop a thin black notebook.
There’s no way to know. All sorts of people use those notebooks.
The professor has them go around the table and introduce themselves, and the guy says his name is Arthur and somehow manages to avoid saying both his class and his concentration, even though both questions are supposed to be answered. Instead he shunts his eyes around the room like he’s expecting something though he’s not sure what, and Eames can’t tell what it might be. As soon as lecture begins in earnest Arthur is scribbling intently in his notebook, barely looking up.
Ariadne would have been the person to ask, Eames realizes. He should have asked her yesterday, and in the meantime Arthur has been there, skulking around the fringes of Eames’ life, being kind of beautiful.
“Eames, Mal,” Ariadne says, catching up with them after class. Arthur is trailing after her.
“This is my friend Arthur,” she says, indicating him. “This is Eames, and Mal.”
“We’ve met,” Arthur says, gesturing between himself and Mal before turning to Eames. “And I think I’ve seen you somewhere.”
Eames has been told that his memory for faces is occasionally frightening, which might explain why he doesn’t say anything at that moment and instead thrusts forward a hand.
“Good to meet you,” he says, and Arthur catches it and they shake hands, and now they’ve met. That’s done.
Eames could just ask him what’s in his notebook, but if all there is is notes that would be strange.
“So you and Dom are back together, eh?” Arthur asks, nodding at Mal. “He told me today.”
Ariadne meets Eames’ eyes and nods slightly, then mouths ‘He’s Canadian’ like that’s extremely meaningful.
Arthur elbows Ariadne in the ribs.
“People who aren’t Canadians says ‘eh,’” he says. “That’s a thing.”
“Not really,” Ariadne says.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “What’s your concentration? You skipped that part in class.”
“He goes to RISD,” Ariadne says, and Arthur glances at her.
“I can speak for myself,” he says. “I’m at RISD, with Ariadne.”
“Architecture?” Eames asks, given the subject matter of the class and everything else.
“No,” Arthur says, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and glancing off down the hall. “Illustration, actually.”
“We do spend time with people in different disciplines,” Ariadne says.
“We should go,” Mal says, glancing between Eames and Ariadne. “We’re meeting with Dom for lunch.”
“We are?” Eames asks, and shrugs at Ariadne and Arthur in a way he hopes conveys apology. “I haven’t spoken to Dom since we got back.”
Arthur mutters something to Ariadne. It sounds like the last word is a sarcastic ‘scintillating.’ Eames really, really wants--something. For Arthur to be behind the notebook. For Arthur to be really interesting, regardless.
Lunch with Dom is less interesting, and Eames spends most of it trying to subtly ask questions about Arthur, which proves impossible, because Dom wouldn’t recognize a subtle question if it bit him in the ass, which Eames’ questions kind of do, because they aren’t actually subtle at all. Mal gives him an inquisitive look, and then Eames ducks out early to go back home to the notebook and see if there’s anything, anything at all, that might indicate that it’s Arthur’s. There’s a girl who could be Ariadne--hair in waves and scarves looped around her neck--but there’s no names on anyone.
Eames isn’t even sure if it should matter whether Arthur made this. He’s still--he’s still someone Eames would want to talk to, someone he would invite to a breakfast party at his apartment if such an event came to pass.
Ariadne would know, anyway. Arthur’s her friend. Eames just needs to ask her. He puts the notebook back in his bag in case the opportunity should arise.
Their art history professor, Dr. Jenkins, assigns them partners for discussion over the semester--it’s in alphabetical order by last names, and Eames winds up with Arthur, which is just his luck, because he’s always been ridiculously lucky. Mal winds up with Ariadne, and scowls. Eames winks at her, because, really, she and Ariadne would probably be friends if it weren’t for Dom.
“So,” Eames asks, catching Arthur after class. “We could just meet for coffee every week. I know a place--”
“I’m busy,” Arthur says. “I’ll e-mail you my schedule, but we should probably just meet on campus.”
“Oh,” Eames says, and Arthur twists to look at his face.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll get the project done. I’m awesome at projects.”
“I’m sure,” Eames says, grinning uncertainly and then falling into step besides Arthur when it’s apparent that Mal and Ariadne aren’t going to be approaching anytime soon. “So you’re in illustration, then? Why do you T.A. for Saito?”
“Because he likes me,” Arthur says simply.
“What do you want to do with that?” Eames asks. “With a degree in illustration, I mean?”
“What do you want to do with one in theatre?” Arthur asks. His hands are deep in his pockets, like they usually are, and he’s looking straight ahead.
“Point taken,” Eames replies. “How do you know I’m in theatre?”
“You said as much, last week,” Arthur says. “I’m going this way. See you around.”
Eames keeps an eye on him as he disappears down the streetlight-illuminated sidewalk, drifting bits of snow falling past. He could have just asked about the book.
It doesn’t seem like the right time. He goes home, instead, and sends an email to Ariadne with ‘Breakfast Party?’ as the subject line. She writes back almost immediately--‘Your roommate in?’--which means Eames needs to go talk to Yusuf about it.
“Who are you trying to impress?” he asks, idly rifling through cabinets like food will just show itself if he waits.
“Your face,” Eames mutters. Yusuf laughs.
“Nice try,” he says. “Come on, we don’t have parties for no reason around these parts.”
“Yes we do,” Eames says. “Maybe I just want to reconcile Mal and Dom and Ariadne.”
“Isn’t Ariadne the one who--at the zombie pub crawl?”
“She says no,” Eames replies. “She’s cool. You’d like her.”
Yusuf turns and arches an eyebrow at him.
“Didn’t I introduce you to Maia?”
“Oh, yeah,” Eames says. “Her. She can come, too.”
“Whatever,” Yusuf says. “I’ll make waffles, but we have to do it on a Thursday.”
And so the breakfast party coalesces, and after several conversations with Mal Eames convinces her that they should invite Ariadne, and Eames mentions Arthur to Ariadne in a way he hopes isn’t begging her to make him come. Other than that there’s not much planning; Yusuf gives Eames strict orders to bring home a dozen eggs, and that’s pretty much it. Eames buys some beer for good measure, and then he wanders around the kitchen while Yusuf makes waffle batter and complains until Maia arrives to distract him.
It’s not a big deal, it just feels like it should be. Mal and Dom arrive together, followed by Arthur and Ariadne, and the whole thing is surprisingly comfortable.
“You call this a party?” Ariadne asks. “It’s just some people with waffles.”
“Shut up,” Eames says. “I’ve been wanting waffles for months, and Yusuf would never make them for just me.”
Arthur, across the room, glances at Yusuf like there’s a question he doesn’t want to ask, then pulls his legs up into his chair. Eames has been aware of Arthur, almost painfully so, since the beginning of the semester at least, and he should just ask him if he keeps little notebooks full of comics.
He could have asked Ariadne already, but the right opportunity never presented itself.
And what if the book isn’t Arthur? What then? Eames has already sketched in all the empty details of Arthur’s life with the notebook--he’s funny in a sardonic way, he’s a compulsive documentarian, he likes blurry photographs and prints by Escher, and as much as Eames would like to believe that it wouldn’t make a difference if it isn’t Arthur’s notebook--it does make a difference, because if it’s not Eames knows nothing about Arthur at all, and everything he thinks he knows is like background information about some character in a play, entirely fabricated. He had flipped through the book at his desk before everyone arrived, alternately wondering about that and trying not to think about it.
He should just ask. He is turning into Amelie.
Only then Arthur goes to the bathroom. Eames points down the hall and says it’s the second door on the left, and it’s not a big deal until Arthur comes back holding the notebook itself, eyes narrowed to pinpoints.
“Why do you have this?” he asks. Which answers most of Eames’ questions, though not in the way he wanted them to be answered. Everyone is looking at him--Mal and Ariadne look confused before Ariadne’s face shifts towards understanding, Yusuf is whispering an explanation to Maia, and realization is slowly dawning on Dom’s face.
“I found it,” Eames says. “In the Ratty.”
“You found it. In the Ratty,” Arthur repeats. “And you didn’t try to give it back?”
“There’s nothing identifying in there,” Eames says. “I didn’t know who to give it to.”
Arthur huffs a little, and where his knuckles clutch the book they’re edging white.
“So you just read it, did you?” he asks. “Of course you did.”
“At least you got it back,” Ariadne chimes from the sidelines.
“No thanks to him,” Arthur says, reaching for his coat and shrugging it on. Ariadne shoots Eames a sympathetic glance, and Eames just sits there, feeling stiff and uncomfortable and exposed.
Arthur probably feels the same way, but he’s storming out.
“These waffles are good,” Maia contributes, and Yusuf kisses her on the nose while everyone else turns to stare at Eames.
“I forgot Arthur was at RISD,” Dom says, almost apologetic.
“Eames?” Mal says. “What’s going on?”
“Should I go after him?” Eames asks Ariadne.
“Give him some time,” she says.
“I found his notebook,” Eames says to the room at large, shrugging somewhat helplessly.
“I’ve never even seen inside one of those notebooks,” Ariadne says.
“Oh,” Eames says. It kind of makes sense. Well--it makes sense in light of Arthur’s response. “Should you go after him?”
Ariadne shakes her head.
“Arthur’s skittish,” she says. “Like a little deer. If you go after him he just runs further.”
Yusuf laughs.
“Nice job, Eames,” he says. “Real nice.”
That’s pretty much the end of the party, but they have leftover waffles in their fridge for a week, and Arthur avoids Eames for more or less the same amount of time. Arthur skips class, conspicuously, and Eames catches Ariadne by the elbow when they’re leaving.
“Where is he?” he asks.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose that information,” she says. “We’re friends, it’s a thing. But if I were at liberty to disclose--he might be in the studio.”
“And that is?”
“Figure it out,” Ariadne says, slapping a hand on his back. “I need to talk to Mal.”
It takes Eames an hour to find the illustration department, and the secretary is just leaving but he sends Eames down the hall and up some stairs.
“He’s been in a lot, lately,” the man says as Eames leaves. “Too much.”
Arthur’s the only one there, standing up at a wood-topped table in the back. The room is ringed by windows and it’s dark outside, and Arthur doesn’t look up when Eames enters the room.
“Hey,” Eames says, and Arthur looks up at him and then back at the table in front of him, laying his hands flat on the tabletop and spreading his fingers out across the surface. “You didn’t come to class today.”
“Sorry,” Arthur replies, but the word sounds like a challenge.
“A guy might think you’re avoiding him.”
“A guy might be right.”
Eames lifts himself up until he’s sitting on one of the tables.
A few minutes pass before Arthur speaks.
“That’s it?”
“I liked your notebook,” Eames says, and Arthur slaps the table and looks up at him.
“You liked it?” he says. “What the fuck?”
“I just thought--you know--it was good. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Eames drums his fingers on the counter top, and Arthur just stands there looking at him.
“It was personal,” he says evenly. “I’m not ashamed of it, but I hate you for reading it.”
“Okay,” Eames says. “Will you be in class on Thursday?”
“I was sick on Tuesday,” Arthur says. “I got a cold. Was your roommate sick when he made those waffles?”
“No,” Eames says. “We still have leftovers if you like.”
“I don’t like,” Arthur says. “I’ll be in class on Thursday. Why are you still here?”
“I really liked your notebook,” Eames repeats.
“That’s great,” Arthur says. “That’s really great, Eames. Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Have you ever seen Amelie? Mal made me watch it,” Eames continues.
“What the fuck, Eames?” Arthur asks. “This is not a romantic comedy. And if it were, it wouldn’t be a French one.”
“Why not?” Eames asks.
“Because we aren’t speaking French, you dumbass,” Arthur says. “And because you have all the power here. You’ve read my notebook and all I know about you is that you’re in the theatre department and in my art history class and apparently British.”
“By way of London,” Eames provides, and Arthur’s glance turns withering.
“That’s not enough, Eames.”
“So we go on a date,” he says. “And you ask me whatever you want.”
“You’re asking me out?” Arthur says, and Eames stares at him.
“I thought that was what I was doing all along,” Eames says, and Arthur presses his forehead into his hands and then looks up at Eames again.
“Come on,” Eames says. “One date. Just the one, and then you can tell me to fuck off.”
“Fuck off,” Arthur says, looking up at him. “I’m telling you now.”
Eames pushes the heels of his hands into the tabletop and waits. He should probably leave right now, could probably leave, but it seems like if he takes just a moment he could, perhaps, figure out what he needs to do.
“You talked to me in the cafeteria once last semester,” he says. “About something stupid. That was the day I found your notebook. And then you disappeared and said ‘See you around.’”
“Well I guess I did,” Arthur says evenly. “See you around, I mean.”
“I remembered you,” Eames says. “I saw you around a couple of times.”
“But you only asked me out after you already knew everything about me.”
“That’s the thing, Arthur,” Eames says. “I don’t know everything about you. I just know that I want to.”
Eames hefts himself off the table and slides to the ground.
“I’m doing a one man show at the end of the semester,” he says. “I’m working on the script and it’s sort of autobiographical. I’ll e-mail it to you tonight. You don’t have to read it but--think about it, okay?”
Eames leaves before Arthur can say anything, and it occurs to him that now he actually needs to write that script, or, at the very least, write something.
The e-mail goes out at three in the morning, it’s probably riddled with spelling errors and not impressive in the least, but maybe it’s abject awfulness will make Arthur more inclined have pity on Eames and go on the stupid date.
And if he doesn’t--that can be the end of it. This semester is for graduating--for endings, not beginnings.
Class on Thursday is nothing short of painful, and Arthur is almost completely inscrutable. Ariadne doesn’t even look like she knows what’s happening, and the lecture is dull. Arthur brushes past Eames when they’re leaving, and Eames figures he needs his space or something and goes to lunch with Mal instead of following him.
He’s on his way back to his apartment when he burrows his hands into his jacket pockets when his fingers reach a crumpled piece of paper. He extracts it and smooths it out between his palms.
It’s a drawing of Arthur looking straight out of the frame like he’s looking at Eames, and there’s a little speech bubble that just says, “Okay.”
Underneath there’s a map--the intersection of a few streets, an asterisk, and beneath that, an address, and a time.
Eames goes. Of course he does.