In certain light (2/2)
In certain light
Part one
“Do you have any jobs lined up after Lyon?” Arthur asks over lunch.
They’re coming up on mid-January; the last of the thrilling holiday crimes over with, but not yet close enough to spring for the avaricious to reawaken from hibernation and covet oil-painted flower gardens. February is always a slow month.
“Not as such,” Eames answers, glancing at Arthur cutting his roasted chicken into neat pieces over his salad. “Why, do you have a lead?”
“Cobb wants us to come work some jobs in the states with him,” Arthur explains. “Federal work.”
Eames raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t Mrs. Cobb a bit far along for extraction work?”
“Mal’s not going in,” Arthur says. “Dom’s taken over extracting and hired another architect. He wants you there as assurance, basically. To work with him the way you and Mal used to work together, from opposite ends.”
“And he wants you as well, I assume.”
Arthur half-smiles at him, brief and sharp. “He always wants me. I’m the best.”
Eames can’t exactly argue with that. “America it is, then,” he agrees, so after Lyon they pack their bags and dive back into dreaming.
Cobb has assembled a good team. The architect is an American, Ayuko Oyame, fresh out of graduate school. She’s ostensibly there as Cobb’s apprentice, but it’s obvious within the first few days that she’s handling the brunt of the architectural design work, allowing Cobb to focus on extraction. She’s comfortable with dream-sharing in a way that even Eames has never been, confident of the technology and her own subconscious, refusing to put limitations on what they can achieve.
She and Arthur hit it off immediately. After around the seventh time Eames and Cobb end up in the middle of a serious - and largely theoretical - discussion of the human psyche and awareness of the subconscious, they make a silent pact never to go near the south end of the office space when Ayuko and Arthur have those looks on their faces.
The chemist is Iranian, and introduces herself as Khazar, no surname. Having set similar boundaries on his own personal information, Eames respects her choice to keep that confidential. Arthur, he suspects, has no such regard for privacy and has compiled a full personnel file within the first twenty-four hours of meeting her, but at least he’s discreet about it.
It’s been a few months since Eames has worked with a full team. He’s mildly surprised by how much of an extra wheel he feels sometimes, when he looks around and absolutely no one has need of him for anything.
A partnership tends to mean working in very close quarters, at a rather high level of dependency. Arthur still comes to him here when he needs something, but it’s a rare occasion. Ayuko hardly every thinks to ask, unless she’s simply testing out her theories on someone and needs to say them out loud, and then most of the time she goes to Cobb or Arthur. He volunteers as a test subject for Khazar when she needs one, but he’s completely out of his depth when it comes to chemistry, so he can’t do much else.
Cobb, he thinks, is probably in a similar position, but then Cobb is married and going home every night to his lovely, heavily-pregnant wife.
“Ready to get back into it?” Cobb asks him, when they’re a day away from running the first job and everyone has settled into their unique pre-heist rituals.
“As ever,” Eames replies easily.
Two months, he thinks. Three jobs. And then he and Arthur can get back to the lucrative business of white collar crime.
* * *
“Fitzpatrick just called for a limo to the airport, let’s move,” Cobb’s voice rings out across the office space. Eames drops the magazine he’s been reading and gets to his feet.
He doesn’t have much else to do, luckily. They’ve all been prepared for Fitzpatrick to make that call at a moment’s notice, so Eames estimates three minutes at the most before they’re ready to go. Khazar has already grabbed her case with the sedative vials stowed safely away, Cobb has the PASIV, and Arthur…
Eames turns around and chokes.
Arthur is standing in the middle of the office, in full view of everyone, changing into his limousine driver’s uniform. At another time, Eames would be biting his tongue trying to determine the best cheeky remark about office attire. Any other time.
Right now he can only stare.
The late afternoon sun sets Arthur’s wings on fire, highlighting reds and oranges into flickering tongues of flame. When he bends over to pull on his shoes, they fan out over his back in sweeping arcs, etching a pattern of blood-red veins and tangerine streaks across Arthur’s bare skin.
No one else has seen yet. No one else has noticed.
“Arthur,” Eames strangles out, and it must be sharp enough to make Arthur’s head snap up, tense and ready for whatever disaster Eames has just foreseen. Eames can’t explain, though, not with everyone here (and now they’re all looking at him as well), can’t very well say, ‘Arthur, you might want to put a shirt on, your wings are glowing,’ so he just stands mute.
Arthur finally seems to understand, once he recognizes Eames’ line of sight and whatever expression is on his face. He shakes his head minutely, but pulls the shirt on all the same, buttoning it up the front with practiced dexterity.
Eames exhales slowly, already mourning the loss, itching to have those vivid, living colours at his fingertips. He can remember the warmth of them, the way they flicker and dance when Arthur moves in rhythm with him, and he wants to touch.
Arthur waits until he’s tugged the ridiculous driving cap onto his head before coming over to where Eames still stands, caught out and aching.
“Not everyone can see what you see,” Arthur says quietly, for Eames’ ears alone. “No one else in this room can.”
Eames stares at him again, but Arthur just gives him one last look and moves off, meeting Cobb at the door to the elevator. When Eames glances around, he sees that Arthur is evidently telling the truth. No one else appears disturbed in the least. The only strange look is directed at him, by Khazar as she passes. No one looks twice at Arthur.
Eventually Eames pulls himself together and joins them, his mind swimming with questions. Who else could see? Why? What were the criteria? Since not everyone had them, were those the only people who could see them? Christ, did that mean Eames had them?
Well, no. Clearly he would have noticed that.
By the time they reach the rendezvous point where Arthur is scheduled to drop off everyone but Ayuko, Eames can’t think about anything besides the glorious spread of Arthur’s wings colouring his skin. He hasn’t seen them like that in weeks, unfettered and splendid.
If they finish the job on schedule, they’ll be out and gone before nightfall.
Questions, he thinks, can wait.
He leans over and puts his hand on Arthur’s wrist. “Come to my room tonight,” he murmurs, low enough that Ayuko won’t hear.
Arthur holds his eyes for one, two seconds, and then nods.
Eames squeezes his wrist, lightly, and gets out of the car. There’s still plenty of time before sunset.
* * *
“Do you need me for the job in Sarajevo?”
Eames raises his eyebrows. The question is rather apropos of nothing, which Arthur is rarely inclined to be. “Not looking forward to experiencing the wonders of the Ars Aevi?” he asks mildly in turn, because he’s not sure what it is Arthur’s angling for.
“Do you need me?” Arthur asks again.
Eames frowns. “No, I suppose not,” he answers. “Why?”
Arthur finishes cleaning his gun - and Eames’ gun, as he’d been doing it anyway and Eames knows the trick of being charming in order to acquire small favours - and slides it back into the holster, checking the safety one last time as he does.
“Cobb’s asked me to stick around, do some work with him here,” Arthur answers finally. “He needs a point man.”
The fact that Cobb had Arthur first is a bone that never fails to stick in Eames’ throat. “I suppose I’ve gotten used to having you around,” Eames says cautiously.
Arthur hands over Eames’ gun. “Cobb needs me more,” he says, perfectly even, and Eames wonders if he knows how close to the target he’s struck that particular blow.
“Well, by all means, if Cobb whistles,” Eames says pleasantly.
Arthur’s eyes narrow, but he refuses to rise to the bait; which is frustrating, because Eames is currently spoiling for a fight.
“And if I need you again?” Eames asks, an ugly note in his voice that he hadn’t meant to let slip.
“Then you know where to find me.”
It hasn’t escaped Eames’ notice that Arthur had waited until after their last contracted job with Cobb to spring this on him, when they’re meant to be in Sarajevo in a week’s time. Eames likes to think he’s enough of a professional that he wouldn’t walk out on a job purely out of spite, but he is irritated with Arthur for not giving him the option.
Eames holsters his gun with quick, peeved efficiency. “I’m sure I’ll manage somehow,” he says. “As you said, it’s not as if I really have need of you.”
He takes longer than necessary to stand up, collect his newspaper from the table and button up his jacket. He lingers in the hope that Arthur will say his name, will apologize, will explain that of course he’s staying with Eames, he hadn’t been seriously considering Cobb’s offer and wasn’t planning to accept it.
Arthur watches him and doesn’t say anything.
Eames books a flight out in the morning. He doesn’t bother saying goodbye when he leaves.
* * *
Strictly speaking, Eames doesn’t need Arthur. He’d worked alone for years before Arthur came along, and it hasn’t been so long that he’s lost his edge.
He can admit to himself that he has grown used to having Arthur there with him, watching his back and producing entire file cabinets full of useful information. More than that, he’s become addicted to the sort of high-risk, monumental-undertaking jobs at which he and Arthur as a team had excelled. The inherent challenge of those jobs multiplies exponentially when it’s one person alone.
Even when he knows Mal must be about due and Cobb can’t be working, which undoubtedly puts Arthur at loose ends, he doesn’t call. It’s a matter of pride now. Anything he could do with Arthur, he can do alone.
He makes it through three jobs before he finds himself buried in a pile of outdated tax returns, trying to make sense of the endless columns of numbers by using a highlighter and a calculator.
“Bugger this,” he decides succinctly, and finds himself a new partner.
McKenzie is the daughter of two of Eames’ oldest friends and once-rivals, although they were out of his league at the time and are now comfortably retired. She comes highly recommended from other sources as well, so Eames gives her a call and asks, rather charmingly, if she’d like to see the world with him.
She’s not Arthur, but then no one is. She’s still competent, and while her strong suits are not necessarily perfectly complementary to Eames’ own shortcomings, they manage well enough when they put their heads together.
Having someone else around on his jobs goes against most of what Eames was taught, and what he’s learned the hard way after a considerable amount of backstabbing, double-crossing and open betrayal. Arthur hadn’t factored into that somehow, perhaps because Eames had been inside his mind and already trusted him as much as he trusted anyone.
He’s very aware of the dangers with McKenzie, even though she’s just getting started and has little to gain by selling him out. Others have done it for less. He keeps his contacts to himself, gives her only the barest, necessary details about their assignments, and does all of the job screening himself. It means doing more work, but he’d prefer a few headaches over ending up in a South American prison cell.
Eames buys plane tickets and meals for both of them, claiming it’s all part of the arrangement. Really he’s just doing it so that when Arthur checks up on him - as he undoubtedly will - he’ll see the receipts. It’s petty, perhaps, but still satisfying.
Thinking of Cobb and his pet architect, he takes on training McKenzie as best he can, teaching her from his experience what she hasn’t already learned from her parents and her own budding career.
They get along well, and he enjoys having her around. Together they pull jobs no one else will touch, and make a truly obscene amount of money doing them. McKenzie has a wicked sense of humor, a quirky fashion sense, and she understands all of his cultural references. Eames doesn’t miss having Arthur around at all.
Then Cobb, damn him to hell, calls and tells Eames he needs a forger.
* * *
Eames had known, intellectually, that Mal must have had the baby by now. Somehow that doesn’t fully connect for him until he shows up at the Cobb residence and Mal greets him at the door, with her hair cut short above her shoulders and an infant wrapped in a blanket in her arms.
“Eames,” she says, lovely as always even though she looks like she could use a week’s worth of sleep. She gives him kisses on both cheeks, both of them mindful of the baby, and ushers him in. “You made it. Come in, please.”
“Motherhood seems to suit you,” he says, and she warms at the compliment, introducing him to tiny Phillipa and passing him the bundle of blanket so that he can cradle and fuss over her. “To think, your parents will just hand you over to any staggeringly-attractive international criminal who walks through their door,” he tells Phillipa, rubbing his finger over her cheek as she gurgles spit bubbles at him.
Mal laughs, touching his arm to steer him through the house. “The boys are out back in the yard. Does Arthur know you’re here?” she asks, glancing at him.
“Not unless he heard the bell,” Eames guesses, and then re-evaluates that question cautiously. “Did Cobb not tell him I’d been invited?”
“Dom wasn’t sure you would come,” Mal explains; which isn’t an explanation at all, really. Since when, Eames thinks, does Arthur not have full control over hiring on every team he works with?
Perhaps a better question is why Cobb thinks it necessary to hide Eames’ involvement from Arthur until the last possible minute. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, certainly, but Eames doesn’t like to hold a grudge. They weren’t indebted to each other. Arthur can do as he bloody well wishes.
Phillipa screws up her tiny red face when Mal opens the back door and sets a wind chime to softly tinkling, prompting Eames to return her before she can really work herself up into a proper strop. “She wouldn’t go down earlier,” Mal says, bouncing Phillipa gently. “She always gets excited when Arthur’s here. Right out back,” she tells him, indicating the door, so Eames pushes his hands into his pockets and walks out onto the patio.
Whatever he’d been expecting, it isn’t Arthur and Cobb bare-chested and barefoot in the bright California sun, moving slowly through a martial arts drill. Capoeira, Eames thinks, or something very similar. It’s obviously Arthur’s fighting style and not Cobb’s; Cobb’s movements aren’t as fluid, and whenever he fumbles, Arthur pauses while he corrects.
In the bright midday sunlight, Arthur’s wings are nearly transparent, but Eames can still see them. He can hardly notice anything else. He’s seen them in motion before, but never like this, never spread out to their fullest extent and dancing wildly as Arthur steps through the drill.
He barely notices Mal coming up next to him, but when he does register her presence, the first thing he realizes is that she’s not watching Cobb and Arthur. She’s watching him.
He looks at her, studies her face. “You can see them, can’t you?” he asks quietly.
She smiles. “I thought you could. I saw you reach out for them, when you had been shot. That was the first time I had ever seen, and when I saw him with you I thought, for a moment, that I was still dreaming.” She touches a pocket in her shirt, and rubs something through the fabric. “That was when I found a way to always be sure.”
Eames is briefly chilled. It hadn’t occurred to him once that seeing Arthur with wings made of fractured light might mean he was dreaming. He doesn’t know why he’s never thought of it. He ought to have questioned his reality every time he caught a glimpse of something so fantastical. Perhaps it’s that there’s something about Arthur that has always felt irrefutably real.
“Cobb can’t see them,” Eames says, testing.
Mal shakes her head. “I asked him what he saw, when he looked at Arthur. He said a fine man.” She smiles again, in a way that shares the secret and the joke between the two of them. “He is not cunning enough to lie to me.”
Eames weighs his words carefully. “You’ve never wondered,” he asks, “why you could see them when others couldn’t?”
In the yard, Arthur drops to the grass. His legs whip around in a move that would have swept Cobb’s feet out from under him if they’d been actually sparring rather than merely drilling. His wings flare out as if to help him balance, dancing in the sunlight like light from a prism.
Mal watches him with such fondness that at any other time, Eames would have mistaken the target of her glance.
“Perhaps,” she says, “I have simply always believed that Arthur is extraordinary.”
When Arthur finally stops devoting his full attention to the martial arts lesson a moment later and notices them, there’s a brief, silent argument with Cobb. Like nearly all of their fights, this one involves a lot of Arthur glaring stonily and Cobb squinting, and is largely incomprehensible to anyone else around them.
Arthur finally picks up his t-shirt from the grass and uses it to wipe the sweat from his face. “I take it you have a plan for the Balkirk job, then,” he says to Cobb.
“I might. We can talk about it over dinner, now that Eames is here.” Cobb comes up and kisses Mal’s temple, squeezing her shoulders as if he can’t be this close without touching her, before he extends a hand to Eames in greeting. “Welcome back to the states. I’m glad you made it.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it.”
It’s true, although Cobb may not realize his sincerity. Eames never turns down a dream-forging job unless there are pressing reasons to do so. He loves all of his work, bond forgery and art theft and confidence schemes alike, but becoming someone else, playing a role so convincingly that you can fool a sibling, a parent, a lover…that’s a rush like no other.
“Dinner will be in a couple of hours, if you’d like to stick around,” Cobb says. “Make yourself at home.”
He and Mal go inside, almost certainly a deliberate move to give Eames and Arthur some privacy. Eames wonders which they’re expecting, a shouting match or fisticuffs. He doesn’t feel particularly inclined to either.
Arthur comes to the edge of the patio and stops there, two steps down, looking up at Eames with his wings spread wide as if in challenge. He doesn’t make any move to put his shirt on, just stands and waits.
“I could offer you a hot shower and fresh towels, if you’d like to come by my hotel after dinner,” Eames offers, before he’s even thought it through. “We could get drinks and catch up.”
Arthur’s gaze remains unreadable. “We should probably go before dinner, or we won’t beat the sunset,” he says. “Or were you planning on me staying the night and being there in the morning?”
Eames stares at him, speechless.
Arthur takes the two steps up to the patio to meet Eames on his level, slow and measured, until they’re face to face. His voice is remarkably calm. “You think I can’t recognize one of your cons when I’m on the other side of it?”
The perfectly even tone doesn’t make the words any less of a slap in the face. “If you weren’t enjoying it, you could have said something before now,” Eames responds finally, stung. He may have done a lot of things in his time, but foregoing consent has never been one of them. It’s not an accusation he appreciates.
“I didn’t say that,” Arthur says. “I just thought we should be honest with each other.”
“Did you?” Eames inquires, silk-smooth. “Does that include the reason you decided to run back to Cobb? Or should I have figured that one out already on my own?”
Arthur doesn’t say anything.
Eames suspects that if he doesn’t leave now, he’ll likely do something to offend the Cobbs’ hospitality. He leans into Arthur’s personal space, coldly furious, daring him to flinch. “A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”
Arthur’s lips press together in a thin line. Eames stalks back into the house, none too gentle about the back door banging shut behind him.
“Eames,” he hears Arthur call after him, under the jangle of the wind chime.
Eames makes his excuses to Mal, kisses Phillipa goodbye on her soft, round cheek, and leaves before either of them can say anything truly unforgiveable.
* * *
Arthur shows up at his hotel room.
Eames takes a second to be truly annoyed at the scope of Arthur’s resources before steeling himself for another fight. “If you’ve come to call me a monster again, I’m not in the mood.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Arthur says quietly.
Eames waits for a full ten seconds before growing irritated with patience. “Well then?”
“Can I come in?” Arthur asks, and Eames might still be supremely hacked off, but he also wants an explanation. He steps back and makes an exaggerated gesture for Arthur to enter, not bothering to step aside to make more room.
Arthur does a single, efficient visual sweep of the hotel room before turning around, and the fact that he hadn’t gone so far as to check the exits and the bathroom tucked out of sight around the corner is in itself a demonstration of trust. It’s unfortunately one Eames isn’t particularly inclined to appreciate.
“If I hadn’t wanted anything, I would have stopped you,” Arthur says. “I wanted it.”
“I know,” Eames replies, exercising considerable control by not shutting the door with more force than strictly necessary. “I was there.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur says. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
Eames studies him. Arthur is wearing his emotions on his sleeve again, offering up his own vulnerability as reparation. Eames doesn’t know how far he can trust that, even if he wants to.
“And what did you mean, precisely?”
Arthur moves forward slowly, carefully, and knowing that he’s being maneuvered into a corner with a respectful amount of caution doesn’t make Eames any more pleased about it.
“Eames,” Arthur says quietly.
“I’m fucking furious with you,” Eames warns him, allowing Arthur’s approach only because he knows his back is to the wall and there’s nowhere to retreat.
“I know,” Arthur says, and pulls his shirt off over his head.
Eames inhales sharply. Arthur has picked his battleground well; the sun is just starting to sink low on the horizon, and the light flooding through the window means Arthur is spectacularly backlit, the sun’s rays picking out every touch of colour haloing his silhouette.
Arthur holds his eyes as he sinks to his knees, and Eames’ legs feel weak even before he feels Arthur’s hands at his belt.
“Christ,” Eames whispers, and drops his head back against the wall when Arthur starts sucking him, the pull of his mouth soft and strong. He doesn’t close his eyes for long, because opening them means seeing Arthur in front of him, bobbing steadily on his cock, saliva already sliding down to coat the shaft and glistening on Arthur’s open mouth. His wings rise up from between his shoulder blades, stretching close enough for Eames to touch.
Eames reaches out to run his fingers through streaks of emerald shading into azure, and Arthur’s rhythm stutters, his throat working. “Fuck,” Eames says, dragging his hand through pink, purple, teal. Arthur makes a noise in his throat, just enough that Eames can feel it vibrate under his skin.
“Fuck,” he says again, spreading his legs slightly wider, gaining enough leverage that he can set the rhythm, pushing forward into the hand Arthur wraps around the base of his cock, now slippery with spit.
The sun begins to set while Arthur still has Eames’ cock down his throat, and when the orange glow from the window hits the rainbow dazzle of Arthur’s wings, the entire world catches fire.
* * *
Eames gets married on a Tuesday in July.
He’s been splitting his time between taking jobs with McKenzie and working dream-extractions with Cobb and Arthur, but there have been enough difficulties for McKenzie during his absences to make marriage an expedient solution for immigration and the tax bureau alike. He spends thirty-five minutes with McKenzie in front of the registrar, and signs all of the necessary paperwork an hour before catching his flight back to America.
“In case you hadn’t heard, congratulations are in order,” he announces when he walks into the warehouse Cobb’s team has been using as a base. He has his jacket slung over one shoulder at the perfect angle for his new wedding band to catch the light, a rakish grin on his face. “I’ll bet you never thought you’d see the day someone made an honest man of me.”
He’s watching for Cobb’s reaction, primarily, but it’s not what he’d been expecting. He’d anticipated shock, followed by suspicion, and finally a demand to be let in on the joke. When he gets instead is surprise and something like guilt, visibly set aside within a moment and replaced by a false expression of support.
Eames’ smile freezes. Halting, he catalogues every reaction in the room: Khazar looking away, her customary sobriety tinged with discomfort; Ayuko openly dismayed and not making much of an attempt to hide it; Mal still and graceful as a statue, every line of her face etched in unhappiness. Every one of them glancing at Arthur, and just as swiftly away again, studiously not looking at him in a way that’s even more obvious than if they had.
And Arthur, looking straight at Eames, with an expression so blank Eames almost can’t believe it.
Eames isn’t a fool. Everyone in this room has telegraphed clearly that they think he’s just broken Arthur’s heart, and Eames isn’t caught off-guard by much, but he’d be lying if he said he’d ever seen this coming.
His entire job is reading people. Ruthlessly, his mind starts sorting through the details.
He’d have known if Arthur had developed feelings for him. He knows Arthur inside and out, and has since before they’d even partnered together. Even when they’d started fucking and Eames had been half-looking for it, nothing had changed. Arthur’s behavior hadn’t altered in the slightest.
Arthur is expressive about his feelings to the point that it sometimes causes Eames physical pain. He’s obvious, transparent. He treats Eames now the same way he always has, with sarcasm and aggravation and dry humor, getting under his skin and making up for it with small, meaningful gestures. He’s exactly the same.
Which means that if everyone else in this room is right, Arthur has been hiding this from him since before Eames knew him well enough to tell. Since before Eames even had Arthur mapped out in his head, before he’d paid attention enough to notice. Arthur has been hiding this for years.
Eames had been wrong about which secrets Arthur has been keeping.
Somehow, in the middle of that maelstrom, he finds his voice. “Arthur, a word,” he requests, and doesn’t look at anyone else when they leave the room.
The mask has dropped by the time they get outside. Arthur looks weary, and uncharacteristically raw. If Eames had doubted before, he doesn’t now.
“You never said anything,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound accusing, but he’s off-balance. It feels rather as though the world has shifted two feet to the left.
“What would you have said?” Arthur replies, in a tone that suggests the question is entirely rhetorical.
“I -,” Eames begins, and pauses. He doesn’t know, is the problem. It’s not that he’s never considered this might happen; it’s just that he’d dismissed those thoughts as soon as they’d occurred.
“I already know how you feel, Eames,” Arthur says quietly. “I’ve always known. That’s why.”
Even taking that into account, even acknowledging that Arthur has been keeping this to himself for the entirety of their relationship, professional and otherwise, there’s something else that doesn’t factor in.
“Everyone else knows,” Eames says.
Arthur colours. Eames watches with distracted fascination as a pink flush spills over the bridge of his nose. “I know,” he says, looking away. “Apparently I’m not very good at hiding it.”
Eames wants to argue the point, since Arthur is evidently very good at hiding it from him, but he suspects that if his baseline values hadn’t been wrong, he would have seen it, too. If he’d been looking for it in the right way, he still might have.
He thinks he owes Arthur an apology, but he isn’t sure quite what to apologize for. “The marriage is to McKenzie,” he says, which seems like the next best thing. “It’s a business arrangement.”
Arthur’s mouth quirks like he’s going to laugh, and he drags a hand over his face. Eames approaches him cautiously, too conscious of being more than likely to make the wrong move.
“If I’d known,” he says carefully.
Arthur does laugh then, a soft huff of breath. “You’re not even that attracted to me,” he says.
“I’m flexible,” Eames replies automatically.
“You’re five percent flexible,” Arthur returns. “Ninety-five percent red-blooded heterosexual.”
“Arthur,” Eames says, because he thinks it will make Arthur stop, and he doesn’t know what else to do right now.
“It’s fine,” Arthur says, straightening. “I told you. I already knew.”
“Arthur,” Eames says again. He’d get closer if Arthur would let him, but Arthur is holding himself carefully apart, every line of him warning Eames to keep his distance.
He takes a step anyway, and ignores the way Arthur tenses in response.
“Give me some time,” he says finally.
Arthur nods without looking at him, and Eames lets him go.
* * *
When Mal gets pregnant for a second time, Eames jumps on his window of opportunity and leans on Arthur so hard that he thinks Arthur might be arranging a hit just to get Eames to leave him alone.
“Be reasonable,” Eames coaxes, from a phone booth halfway around the world. “I’ve already made the arrangements. You’ll get fifty percent of everything. I’ll even buy you coffee.”
“Do you know what time it is in L.A. right now?” Arthur replies dourly.
“I got into a fistfight with Cobb over you,” Eames tells him. “It’s all agreed upon. You’re mine until the spring.”
“You did what?”
“We settled it like men,” Eames replies. “Forget about that. Come to Iceland.”
Arthur grumbles something unflattering that ends up mostly muffled by his pillow and the poor phone reception, but he gets on the plane.
They celebrate the renewal of their partnership with a crime wave that hits thirteen countries in just over six months, and earns both of them enough money that they have to open new investment accounts just to spread it out.
Eames is painstakingly considerate and Arthur is suspicious, but they fall back into old patterns and things feel right in a way they haven’t for a while, everything smooth and easy. After a while, Arthur stops narrowing his eyes every time Eames turns up with fresh coffee, and the enormous metaphorical elephant in the room gives them some room to breathe.
The truth of the matter is, Eames wants to figure out how he feels about things, and he can’t do that when Arthur is three continents away and in an entirely different hemisphere. He needs to be close, studying Arthur, examining the way they fit together from all possible angles.
It finally clicks when they’re pulling a dream-sharing job in Helsinki, just the two of them, militarizing the subconscious of a CEO who has at least two teams of extractors already hired to crack her open.
Perhaps less fortunately, it clicks while they’re getting the shit kicked out of them by the subconscious they’ve just successfully militarized.
“Arthur,” Eames shouts across the kitchen to where Arthur is pinned down behind an industrial-size oven. “What would you say if I told you I’d had an epiphany?”
“I’d say I’m bleeding,” Arthur answers, his right arm pinned tight against his chest with a dark stain soaking through his shirt, “and that now is not a good time.”
“Yes, but what if I told you -”
Regrettably, this is when the projections get tired of using automatic weapons and throwing stars, and come up with concussion grenades.
Eames jerks awake to see Arthur clutching his skull, falling half-out of his chair. The migraine must already be setting in. Arthur’s gotten them after every dream this week, every time he’s been killed. Their working theory is that it has something to do with Arthur having been the one to militarize the dreamer, so in a way it’s his own mind turning on him, both inside the dream and out. It’s still only a hypothesis, but it’s the best they’ve come up with.
“Don’t,” Arthur says sharply when Eames reaches out toward him, so Eames lets him stagger off to the bathroom and takes care of their mark. Their client. He still hasn’t quite gotten used to that.
When he goes looking fifteen minutes later, he finds Arthur still in the bathroom, his hair damp and both hands covering his eyes.
“I should probably apologize,” Eames says, careful to keep his voice down. “I think they learned to upgrade like that from me.”
“It’s fine,” Arthur answers tiredly. “They would have gotten us anyway. I’m the one who taught her how to create back doors into cul-de-sacs.”
Arthur probably would have bled out eventually anyway, from the knife wound that had ripped apart his arm. His shirt had been half-shredded, and all that had been visibly left of his three-piece suit was the tie knotted around his elbow. Eames wishes he could say Arthur looks a great deal better now.
Arthur looks up at him for a second before wincing away from the fluorescent lights. “You had an epiphany?”
It seems slightly less immediate here in the real world, where Arthur may have concussion grenades still going off inside his skull but his shirt is still pristine, with no trace of bloodstains. “Not here,” Eames decides. “Let me take you home.”
They’ve reached a compromise when it comes to the migraines, which is that Eames is allowed to be as solicitous as he bloody well wants to, so long as it’s never mentioned again once Arthur has recovered. Mainly this arrangement exists because when he’s laid out flat and presumably wishing for death, it’s more of an effort for Arthur to make Eames go away than it’s worth.
“I got a tip from Fletcher,” Eames comments on the way into their hotel. “We have another two clients, if we decide to move ahead with the plan.”
The Helsinki job, in this case, isn’t so much a job as it is part of a much larger con. Between them, Arthur and Eames know a good percentage of the dreaming community, and they generally hear about extraction contracts earlier than most. Early enough, for example, for them to meet with the mark and offer their skills at subconscious militarization.
And if there are only a handful of people out there who can successfully navigate a militarized subconscious in order to get an extraction job done, well. Who are they to turn down more work?
The entire plan, however, depends on Arthur being able to function after the extraction portion of their scheme, which is currently heavily in question. If his reaction to their mark here isn’t an isolated case, continuing on is foolhardy.
“We’ll never know until we try,” Arthur says quietly. “Take the first one, at least. Take both; then we’ll have a better idea of whether this one is a fluke.”
“You’re incredibly bloody-minded when you choose to be,” Eames says admiringly. He herds Arthur up the stairs, because they learned the hard way that Arthur can’t stomach the elevator in this state, and makes sure that they’ve dropped the blackout curtains and left all the lights off inside before letting Arthur in.
After he gets the shower running, he retreats to the kitchenette to make some tea, because migraine or no, if Eames offered to help him with the actual showering, Arthur would find something horrible to stab him with.
He drinks his tea and reads what information is available on the two marks Fletcher had named, and after an appropriate post-shower grace period, he pokes his head into the bedroom to check on Arthur.
Arthur is face-down on top of the bedcovers, a towel wrapped modestly around his hips and the rest of him still damp, beads of moisture drying on his back and calves. Eames clucks disapproval, tries not to be too horrified that he’s turning into his mother, and goes to sit gently on the edge of the bed.
“You’ll catch a chill,” he says, quietly in case Arthur has fallen asleep, because if he’s going to turn into his mother, he may as well go all the way.
“It’s fine,” Arthur replies, or something to that effect. Eames only catches the bits of it not swallowed by the pillow.
Eames reaches out and traces the pale skin between Arthur’s shoulder blades. He’s familiar enough by now with the narrow expanse of Arthur’s bare skin to recognize where the wings would begin, if they had the curtains open. He draws twin lines parallel to Arthur’s spine, and Arthur shivers slightly but doesn’t protest.
“Would you like to hear about my epiphany now?” Eames asks lightly.
Arthur makes a noise that could mean either ‘yes,’ or ‘fuck off’. Eames chooses to interpret it as the former.
He strokes the lines down Arthur’s back again, making a path through the water droplets still stubbornly clinging to Arthur’s skin. After a moment, he says, “You never told me why I could see them when others can’t.”
He expects Arthur to tense up, but Arthur is either too incapacitated to cause himself the extra pain, or he genuinely doesn’t have an answer to that question and has nothing to hide. He turns his head to the side, facing Eames but with his eyes still closed, and they remain there for a few minutes, breathing quietly.
“I think you choose who sees them,” Eames tells him at last, running his fingers through the slightly-warm air above Arthur’s back, through invisible strands of light. “I think the only time anyone can see them is when you’re willing to let that person see all of you.”
Arthur’s eyes open to slits. Eames runs his fingers through the air again, and Arthur’s eyes slide slowly closed, his muscles relaxing gradually as he exhales.
“It’s just like the sight of you in ripped jeans,” Eames continues. “Or the stories about what your sister told you when you were children. It’s another aspect of you that not everyone is permitted to see. You have to want them to see it.”
Peeling his eyes open again clearly requires effort, but Arthur does so, studying him in the near-darkness. “I can’t control it,” he says finally. “I never have.”
“You don’t control anything else you give away, either,” Eames informs him, unable to repress a slight smile. “You may think you do, but you’re bollocks at it.”
“I know,” Arthur says, exhaling again. Eames traces the lines on his back again, one and then the other.
“Can you blame me,” he asks quietly, “for being so blinded by the extraordinary that I failed to appreciate everything hidden beneath it?”
The bedclothes rustle as Arthur gathers himself, employing extreme effort in rolling onto his side so that they can better see one another. Eames holds Arthur’s gaze, sitting very still and waiting for whatever judgment Arthur decides to pass.
“What does that mean?” Arthur asks finally.
It means, Eames thinks, that when he sees Arthur in a dream ruthlessly garroting projections with kitchen appliances, he still wants. It means there isn’t anything missing from Arthur right now, even though the blinds are closed. It means Arthur had been revealing himself piece by piece, and Eames had gotten caught up on one fragment of the whole.
“It means,” he answers, “that five percent isn’t so insignificant, statistically speaking.” His lips twitch in a smile. “And that everything means something.”
Arthur is still for a moment, and then tips his chin up just slightly. “Eames,” he says quietly.
Eames takes the invitation, leaning forward to meet him, running his tongue lightly along Arthur’s lip instead of deepening the kiss because he can tell Arthur is trying not to move more than he has to.
“Don’t be wrong about this,” Arthur says, a soft warning Eames knows better than to ignore. He reaches out to slide his hand along Arthur’s waist, but Arthur catches his wrist and holds him off. “If you try to touch me right now, I’m going to throw up,” he says, the tightness around his eyes evidence of the truth of that claim.
“You do know how to give a compliment,” Eames tells him, but he takes the hint, backing off and relinquishing his claim on Arthur’s personal space.
“You have the worst timing,” Arthur counters, his eyes already shutting, body sinking into the embrace of the bedcovers. He’ll be out for an hour or more, Eames knows from experience, before he’s up to facing the world again.
Eames chuckles. “Get some rest,” he advises. “I’ll be in the other room if you need anything.”
He’s almost through the bedroom door when Arthur calls softly, “Eames.”
Eames turns around, hand poised on the doorknob, eyebrows raised.
“You’re right,” Arthur tells him. “I did want you to see.”
Eames allows himself a smile and says, “Then I’m glad I finally did.”
Part one
“Do you have any jobs lined up after Lyon?” Arthur asks over lunch.
They’re coming up on mid-January; the last of the thrilling holiday crimes over with, but not yet close enough to spring for the avaricious to reawaken from hibernation and covet oil-painted flower gardens. February is always a slow month.
“Not as such,” Eames answers, glancing at Arthur cutting his roasted chicken into neat pieces over his salad. “Why, do you have a lead?”
“Cobb wants us to come work some jobs in the states with him,” Arthur explains. “Federal work.”
Eames raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t Mrs. Cobb a bit far along for extraction work?”
“Mal’s not going in,” Arthur says. “Dom’s taken over extracting and hired another architect. He wants you there as assurance, basically. To work with him the way you and Mal used to work together, from opposite ends.”
“And he wants you as well, I assume.”
Arthur half-smiles at him, brief and sharp. “He always wants me. I’m the best.”
Eames can’t exactly argue with that. “America it is, then,” he agrees, so after Lyon they pack their bags and dive back into dreaming.
Cobb has assembled a good team. The architect is an American, Ayuko Oyame, fresh out of graduate school. She’s ostensibly there as Cobb’s apprentice, but it’s obvious within the first few days that she’s handling the brunt of the architectural design work, allowing Cobb to focus on extraction. She’s comfortable with dream-sharing in a way that even Eames has never been, confident of the technology and her own subconscious, refusing to put limitations on what they can achieve.
She and Arthur hit it off immediately. After around the seventh time Eames and Cobb end up in the middle of a serious - and largely theoretical - discussion of the human psyche and awareness of the subconscious, they make a silent pact never to go near the south end of the office space when Ayuko and Arthur have those looks on their faces.
The chemist is Iranian, and introduces herself as Khazar, no surname. Having set similar boundaries on his own personal information, Eames respects her choice to keep that confidential. Arthur, he suspects, has no such regard for privacy and has compiled a full personnel file within the first twenty-four hours of meeting her, but at least he’s discreet about it.
It’s been a few months since Eames has worked with a full team. He’s mildly surprised by how much of an extra wheel he feels sometimes, when he looks around and absolutely no one has need of him for anything.
A partnership tends to mean working in very close quarters, at a rather high level of dependency. Arthur still comes to him here when he needs something, but it’s a rare occasion. Ayuko hardly every thinks to ask, unless she’s simply testing out her theories on someone and needs to say them out loud, and then most of the time she goes to Cobb or Arthur. He volunteers as a test subject for Khazar when she needs one, but he’s completely out of his depth when it comes to chemistry, so he can’t do much else.
Cobb, he thinks, is probably in a similar position, but then Cobb is married and going home every night to his lovely, heavily-pregnant wife.
“Ready to get back into it?” Cobb asks him, when they’re a day away from running the first job and everyone has settled into their unique pre-heist rituals.
“As ever,” Eames replies easily.
Two months, he thinks. Three jobs. And then he and Arthur can get back to the lucrative business of white collar crime.
* * *
“Fitzpatrick just called for a limo to the airport, let’s move,” Cobb’s voice rings out across the office space. Eames drops the magazine he’s been reading and gets to his feet.
He doesn’t have much else to do, luckily. They’ve all been prepared for Fitzpatrick to make that call at a moment’s notice, so Eames estimates three minutes at the most before they’re ready to go. Khazar has already grabbed her case with the sedative vials stowed safely away, Cobb has the PASIV, and Arthur…
Eames turns around and chokes.
Arthur is standing in the middle of the office, in full view of everyone, changing into his limousine driver’s uniform. At another time, Eames would be biting his tongue trying to determine the best cheeky remark about office attire. Any other time.
Right now he can only stare.
The late afternoon sun sets Arthur’s wings on fire, highlighting reds and oranges into flickering tongues of flame. When he bends over to pull on his shoes, they fan out over his back in sweeping arcs, etching a pattern of blood-red veins and tangerine streaks across Arthur’s bare skin.
No one else has seen yet. No one else has noticed.
“Arthur,” Eames strangles out, and it must be sharp enough to make Arthur’s head snap up, tense and ready for whatever disaster Eames has just foreseen. Eames can’t explain, though, not with everyone here (and now they’re all looking at him as well), can’t very well say, ‘Arthur, you might want to put a shirt on, your wings are glowing,’ so he just stands mute.
Arthur finally seems to understand, once he recognizes Eames’ line of sight and whatever expression is on his face. He shakes his head minutely, but pulls the shirt on all the same, buttoning it up the front with practiced dexterity.
Eames exhales slowly, already mourning the loss, itching to have those vivid, living colours at his fingertips. He can remember the warmth of them, the way they flicker and dance when Arthur moves in rhythm with him, and he wants to touch.
Arthur waits until he’s tugged the ridiculous driving cap onto his head before coming over to where Eames still stands, caught out and aching.
“Not everyone can see what you see,” Arthur says quietly, for Eames’ ears alone. “No one else in this room can.”
Eames stares at him again, but Arthur just gives him one last look and moves off, meeting Cobb at the door to the elevator. When Eames glances around, he sees that Arthur is evidently telling the truth. No one else appears disturbed in the least. The only strange look is directed at him, by Khazar as she passes. No one looks twice at Arthur.
Eventually Eames pulls himself together and joins them, his mind swimming with questions. Who else could see? Why? What were the criteria? Since not everyone had them, were those the only people who could see them? Christ, did that mean Eames had them?
Well, no. Clearly he would have noticed that.
By the time they reach the rendezvous point where Arthur is scheduled to drop off everyone but Ayuko, Eames can’t think about anything besides the glorious spread of Arthur’s wings colouring his skin. He hasn’t seen them like that in weeks, unfettered and splendid.
If they finish the job on schedule, they’ll be out and gone before nightfall.
Questions, he thinks, can wait.
He leans over and puts his hand on Arthur’s wrist. “Come to my room tonight,” he murmurs, low enough that Ayuko won’t hear.
Arthur holds his eyes for one, two seconds, and then nods.
Eames squeezes his wrist, lightly, and gets out of the car. There’s still plenty of time before sunset.
* * *
“Do you need me for the job in Sarajevo?”
Eames raises his eyebrows. The question is rather apropos of nothing, which Arthur is rarely inclined to be. “Not looking forward to experiencing the wonders of the Ars Aevi?” he asks mildly in turn, because he’s not sure what it is Arthur’s angling for.
“Do you need me?” Arthur asks again.
Eames frowns. “No, I suppose not,” he answers. “Why?”
Arthur finishes cleaning his gun - and Eames’ gun, as he’d been doing it anyway and Eames knows the trick of being charming in order to acquire small favours - and slides it back into the holster, checking the safety one last time as he does.
“Cobb’s asked me to stick around, do some work with him here,” Arthur answers finally. “He needs a point man.”
The fact that Cobb had Arthur first is a bone that never fails to stick in Eames’ throat. “I suppose I’ve gotten used to having you around,” Eames says cautiously.
Arthur hands over Eames’ gun. “Cobb needs me more,” he says, perfectly even, and Eames wonders if he knows how close to the target he’s struck that particular blow.
“Well, by all means, if Cobb whistles,” Eames says pleasantly.
Arthur’s eyes narrow, but he refuses to rise to the bait; which is frustrating, because Eames is currently spoiling for a fight.
“And if I need you again?” Eames asks, an ugly note in his voice that he hadn’t meant to let slip.
“Then you know where to find me.”
It hasn’t escaped Eames’ notice that Arthur had waited until after their last contracted job with Cobb to spring this on him, when they’re meant to be in Sarajevo in a week’s time. Eames likes to think he’s enough of a professional that he wouldn’t walk out on a job purely out of spite, but he is irritated with Arthur for not giving him the option.
Eames holsters his gun with quick, peeved efficiency. “I’m sure I’ll manage somehow,” he says. “As you said, it’s not as if I really have need of you.”
He takes longer than necessary to stand up, collect his newspaper from the table and button up his jacket. He lingers in the hope that Arthur will say his name, will apologize, will explain that of course he’s staying with Eames, he hadn’t been seriously considering Cobb’s offer and wasn’t planning to accept it.
Arthur watches him and doesn’t say anything.
Eames books a flight out in the morning. He doesn’t bother saying goodbye when he leaves.
* * *
Strictly speaking, Eames doesn’t need Arthur. He’d worked alone for years before Arthur came along, and it hasn’t been so long that he’s lost his edge.
He can admit to himself that he has grown used to having Arthur there with him, watching his back and producing entire file cabinets full of useful information. More than that, he’s become addicted to the sort of high-risk, monumental-undertaking jobs at which he and Arthur as a team had excelled. The inherent challenge of those jobs multiplies exponentially when it’s one person alone.
Even when he knows Mal must be about due and Cobb can’t be working, which undoubtedly puts Arthur at loose ends, he doesn’t call. It’s a matter of pride now. Anything he could do with Arthur, he can do alone.
He makes it through three jobs before he finds himself buried in a pile of outdated tax returns, trying to make sense of the endless columns of numbers by using a highlighter and a calculator.
“Bugger this,” he decides succinctly, and finds himself a new partner.
McKenzie is the daughter of two of Eames’ oldest friends and once-rivals, although they were out of his league at the time and are now comfortably retired. She comes highly recommended from other sources as well, so Eames gives her a call and asks, rather charmingly, if she’d like to see the world with him.
She’s not Arthur, but then no one is. She’s still competent, and while her strong suits are not necessarily perfectly complementary to Eames’ own shortcomings, they manage well enough when they put their heads together.
Having someone else around on his jobs goes against most of what Eames was taught, and what he’s learned the hard way after a considerable amount of backstabbing, double-crossing and open betrayal. Arthur hadn’t factored into that somehow, perhaps because Eames had been inside his mind and already trusted him as much as he trusted anyone.
He’s very aware of the dangers with McKenzie, even though she’s just getting started and has little to gain by selling him out. Others have done it for less. He keeps his contacts to himself, gives her only the barest, necessary details about their assignments, and does all of the job screening himself. It means doing more work, but he’d prefer a few headaches over ending up in a South American prison cell.
Eames buys plane tickets and meals for both of them, claiming it’s all part of the arrangement. Really he’s just doing it so that when Arthur checks up on him - as he undoubtedly will - he’ll see the receipts. It’s petty, perhaps, but still satisfying.
Thinking of Cobb and his pet architect, he takes on training McKenzie as best he can, teaching her from his experience what she hasn’t already learned from her parents and her own budding career.
They get along well, and he enjoys having her around. Together they pull jobs no one else will touch, and make a truly obscene amount of money doing them. McKenzie has a wicked sense of humor, a quirky fashion sense, and she understands all of his cultural references. Eames doesn’t miss having Arthur around at all.
Then Cobb, damn him to hell, calls and tells Eames he needs a forger.
* * *
Eames had known, intellectually, that Mal must have had the baby by now. Somehow that doesn’t fully connect for him until he shows up at the Cobb residence and Mal greets him at the door, with her hair cut short above her shoulders and an infant wrapped in a blanket in her arms.
“Eames,” she says, lovely as always even though she looks like she could use a week’s worth of sleep. She gives him kisses on both cheeks, both of them mindful of the baby, and ushers him in. “You made it. Come in, please.”
“Motherhood seems to suit you,” he says, and she warms at the compliment, introducing him to tiny Phillipa and passing him the bundle of blanket so that he can cradle and fuss over her. “To think, your parents will just hand you over to any staggeringly-attractive international criminal who walks through their door,” he tells Phillipa, rubbing his finger over her cheek as she gurgles spit bubbles at him.
Mal laughs, touching his arm to steer him through the house. “The boys are out back in the yard. Does Arthur know you’re here?” she asks, glancing at him.
“Not unless he heard the bell,” Eames guesses, and then re-evaluates that question cautiously. “Did Cobb not tell him I’d been invited?”
“Dom wasn’t sure you would come,” Mal explains; which isn’t an explanation at all, really. Since when, Eames thinks, does Arthur not have full control over hiring on every team he works with?
Perhaps a better question is why Cobb thinks it necessary to hide Eames’ involvement from Arthur until the last possible minute. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, certainly, but Eames doesn’t like to hold a grudge. They weren’t indebted to each other. Arthur can do as he bloody well wishes.
Phillipa screws up her tiny red face when Mal opens the back door and sets a wind chime to softly tinkling, prompting Eames to return her before she can really work herself up into a proper strop. “She wouldn’t go down earlier,” Mal says, bouncing Phillipa gently. “She always gets excited when Arthur’s here. Right out back,” she tells him, indicating the door, so Eames pushes his hands into his pockets and walks out onto the patio.
Whatever he’d been expecting, it isn’t Arthur and Cobb bare-chested and barefoot in the bright California sun, moving slowly through a martial arts drill. Capoeira, Eames thinks, or something very similar. It’s obviously Arthur’s fighting style and not Cobb’s; Cobb’s movements aren’t as fluid, and whenever he fumbles, Arthur pauses while he corrects.
In the bright midday sunlight, Arthur’s wings are nearly transparent, but Eames can still see them. He can hardly notice anything else. He’s seen them in motion before, but never like this, never spread out to their fullest extent and dancing wildly as Arthur steps through the drill.
He barely notices Mal coming up next to him, but when he does register her presence, the first thing he realizes is that she’s not watching Cobb and Arthur. She’s watching him.
He looks at her, studies her face. “You can see them, can’t you?” he asks quietly.
She smiles. “I thought you could. I saw you reach out for them, when you had been shot. That was the first time I had ever seen, and when I saw him with you I thought, for a moment, that I was still dreaming.” She touches a pocket in her shirt, and rubs something through the fabric. “That was when I found a way to always be sure.”
Eames is briefly chilled. It hadn’t occurred to him once that seeing Arthur with wings made of fractured light might mean he was dreaming. He doesn’t know why he’s never thought of it. He ought to have questioned his reality every time he caught a glimpse of something so fantastical. Perhaps it’s that there’s something about Arthur that has always felt irrefutably real.
“Cobb can’t see them,” Eames says, testing.
Mal shakes her head. “I asked him what he saw, when he looked at Arthur. He said a fine man.” She smiles again, in a way that shares the secret and the joke between the two of them. “He is not cunning enough to lie to me.”
Eames weighs his words carefully. “You’ve never wondered,” he asks, “why you could see them when others couldn’t?”
In the yard, Arthur drops to the grass. His legs whip around in a move that would have swept Cobb’s feet out from under him if they’d been actually sparring rather than merely drilling. His wings flare out as if to help him balance, dancing in the sunlight like light from a prism.
Mal watches him with such fondness that at any other time, Eames would have mistaken the target of her glance.
“Perhaps,” she says, “I have simply always believed that Arthur is extraordinary.”
When Arthur finally stops devoting his full attention to the martial arts lesson a moment later and notices them, there’s a brief, silent argument with Cobb. Like nearly all of their fights, this one involves a lot of Arthur glaring stonily and Cobb squinting, and is largely incomprehensible to anyone else around them.
Arthur finally picks up his t-shirt from the grass and uses it to wipe the sweat from his face. “I take it you have a plan for the Balkirk job, then,” he says to Cobb.
“I might. We can talk about it over dinner, now that Eames is here.” Cobb comes up and kisses Mal’s temple, squeezing her shoulders as if he can’t be this close without touching her, before he extends a hand to Eames in greeting. “Welcome back to the states. I’m glad you made it.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it.”
It’s true, although Cobb may not realize his sincerity. Eames never turns down a dream-forging job unless there are pressing reasons to do so. He loves all of his work, bond forgery and art theft and confidence schemes alike, but becoming someone else, playing a role so convincingly that you can fool a sibling, a parent, a lover…that’s a rush like no other.
“Dinner will be in a couple of hours, if you’d like to stick around,” Cobb says. “Make yourself at home.”
He and Mal go inside, almost certainly a deliberate move to give Eames and Arthur some privacy. Eames wonders which they’re expecting, a shouting match or fisticuffs. He doesn’t feel particularly inclined to either.
Arthur comes to the edge of the patio and stops there, two steps down, looking up at Eames with his wings spread wide as if in challenge. He doesn’t make any move to put his shirt on, just stands and waits.
“I could offer you a hot shower and fresh towels, if you’d like to come by my hotel after dinner,” Eames offers, before he’s even thought it through. “We could get drinks and catch up.”
Arthur’s gaze remains unreadable. “We should probably go before dinner, or we won’t beat the sunset,” he says. “Or were you planning on me staying the night and being there in the morning?”
Eames stares at him, speechless.
Arthur takes the two steps up to the patio to meet Eames on his level, slow and measured, until they’re face to face. His voice is remarkably calm. “You think I can’t recognize one of your cons when I’m on the other side of it?”
The perfectly even tone doesn’t make the words any less of a slap in the face. “If you weren’t enjoying it, you could have said something before now,” Eames responds finally, stung. He may have done a lot of things in his time, but foregoing consent has never been one of them. It’s not an accusation he appreciates.
“I didn’t say that,” Arthur says. “I just thought we should be honest with each other.”
“Did you?” Eames inquires, silk-smooth. “Does that include the reason you decided to run back to Cobb? Or should I have figured that one out already on my own?”
Arthur doesn’t say anything.
Eames suspects that if he doesn’t leave now, he’ll likely do something to offend the Cobbs’ hospitality. He leans into Arthur’s personal space, coldly furious, daring him to flinch. “A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”
Arthur’s lips press together in a thin line. Eames stalks back into the house, none too gentle about the back door banging shut behind him.
“Eames,” he hears Arthur call after him, under the jangle of the wind chime.
Eames makes his excuses to Mal, kisses Phillipa goodbye on her soft, round cheek, and leaves before either of them can say anything truly unforgiveable.
* * *
Arthur shows up at his hotel room.
Eames takes a second to be truly annoyed at the scope of Arthur’s resources before steeling himself for another fight. “If you’ve come to call me a monster again, I’m not in the mood.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Arthur says quietly.
Eames waits for a full ten seconds before growing irritated with patience. “Well then?”
“Can I come in?” Arthur asks, and Eames might still be supremely hacked off, but he also wants an explanation. He steps back and makes an exaggerated gesture for Arthur to enter, not bothering to step aside to make more room.
Arthur does a single, efficient visual sweep of the hotel room before turning around, and the fact that he hadn’t gone so far as to check the exits and the bathroom tucked out of sight around the corner is in itself a demonstration of trust. It’s unfortunately one Eames isn’t particularly inclined to appreciate.
“If I hadn’t wanted anything, I would have stopped you,” Arthur says. “I wanted it.”
“I know,” Eames replies, exercising considerable control by not shutting the door with more force than strictly necessary. “I was there.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur says. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
Eames studies him. Arthur is wearing his emotions on his sleeve again, offering up his own vulnerability as reparation. Eames doesn’t know how far he can trust that, even if he wants to.
“And what did you mean, precisely?”
Arthur moves forward slowly, carefully, and knowing that he’s being maneuvered into a corner with a respectful amount of caution doesn’t make Eames any more pleased about it.
“Eames,” Arthur says quietly.
“I’m fucking furious with you,” Eames warns him, allowing Arthur’s approach only because he knows his back is to the wall and there’s nowhere to retreat.
“I know,” Arthur says, and pulls his shirt off over his head.
Eames inhales sharply. Arthur has picked his battleground well; the sun is just starting to sink low on the horizon, and the light flooding through the window means Arthur is spectacularly backlit, the sun’s rays picking out every touch of colour haloing his silhouette.
Arthur holds his eyes as he sinks to his knees, and Eames’ legs feel weak even before he feels Arthur’s hands at his belt.
“Christ,” Eames whispers, and drops his head back against the wall when Arthur starts sucking him, the pull of his mouth soft and strong. He doesn’t close his eyes for long, because opening them means seeing Arthur in front of him, bobbing steadily on his cock, saliva already sliding down to coat the shaft and glistening on Arthur’s open mouth. His wings rise up from between his shoulder blades, stretching close enough for Eames to touch.
Eames reaches out to run his fingers through streaks of emerald shading into azure, and Arthur’s rhythm stutters, his throat working. “Fuck,” Eames says, dragging his hand through pink, purple, teal. Arthur makes a noise in his throat, just enough that Eames can feel it vibrate under his skin.
“Fuck,” he says again, spreading his legs slightly wider, gaining enough leverage that he can set the rhythm, pushing forward into the hand Arthur wraps around the base of his cock, now slippery with spit.
The sun begins to set while Arthur still has Eames’ cock down his throat, and when the orange glow from the window hits the rainbow dazzle of Arthur’s wings, the entire world catches fire.
* * *
Eames gets married on a Tuesday in July.
He’s been splitting his time between taking jobs with McKenzie and working dream-extractions with Cobb and Arthur, but there have been enough difficulties for McKenzie during his absences to make marriage an expedient solution for immigration and the tax bureau alike. He spends thirty-five minutes with McKenzie in front of the registrar, and signs all of the necessary paperwork an hour before catching his flight back to America.
“In case you hadn’t heard, congratulations are in order,” he announces when he walks into the warehouse Cobb’s team has been using as a base. He has his jacket slung over one shoulder at the perfect angle for his new wedding band to catch the light, a rakish grin on his face. “I’ll bet you never thought you’d see the day someone made an honest man of me.”
He’s watching for Cobb’s reaction, primarily, but it’s not what he’d been expecting. He’d anticipated shock, followed by suspicion, and finally a demand to be let in on the joke. When he gets instead is surprise and something like guilt, visibly set aside within a moment and replaced by a false expression of support.
Eames’ smile freezes. Halting, he catalogues every reaction in the room: Khazar looking away, her customary sobriety tinged with discomfort; Ayuko openly dismayed and not making much of an attempt to hide it; Mal still and graceful as a statue, every line of her face etched in unhappiness. Every one of them glancing at Arthur, and just as swiftly away again, studiously not looking at him in a way that’s even more obvious than if they had.
And Arthur, looking straight at Eames, with an expression so blank Eames almost can’t believe it.
Eames isn’t a fool. Everyone in this room has telegraphed clearly that they think he’s just broken Arthur’s heart, and Eames isn’t caught off-guard by much, but he’d be lying if he said he’d ever seen this coming.
His entire job is reading people. Ruthlessly, his mind starts sorting through the details.
He’d have known if Arthur had developed feelings for him. He knows Arthur inside and out, and has since before they’d even partnered together. Even when they’d started fucking and Eames had been half-looking for it, nothing had changed. Arthur’s behavior hadn’t altered in the slightest.
Arthur is expressive about his feelings to the point that it sometimes causes Eames physical pain. He’s obvious, transparent. He treats Eames now the same way he always has, with sarcasm and aggravation and dry humor, getting under his skin and making up for it with small, meaningful gestures. He’s exactly the same.
Which means that if everyone else in this room is right, Arthur has been hiding this from him since before Eames knew him well enough to tell. Since before Eames even had Arthur mapped out in his head, before he’d paid attention enough to notice. Arthur has been hiding this for years.
Eames had been wrong about which secrets Arthur has been keeping.
Somehow, in the middle of that maelstrom, he finds his voice. “Arthur, a word,” he requests, and doesn’t look at anyone else when they leave the room.
The mask has dropped by the time they get outside. Arthur looks weary, and uncharacteristically raw. If Eames had doubted before, he doesn’t now.
“You never said anything,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound accusing, but he’s off-balance. It feels rather as though the world has shifted two feet to the left.
“What would you have said?” Arthur replies, in a tone that suggests the question is entirely rhetorical.
“I -,” Eames begins, and pauses. He doesn’t know, is the problem. It’s not that he’s never considered this might happen; it’s just that he’d dismissed those thoughts as soon as they’d occurred.
“I already know how you feel, Eames,” Arthur says quietly. “I’ve always known. That’s why.”
Even taking that into account, even acknowledging that Arthur has been keeping this to himself for the entirety of their relationship, professional and otherwise, there’s something else that doesn’t factor in.
“Everyone else knows,” Eames says.
Arthur colours. Eames watches with distracted fascination as a pink flush spills over the bridge of his nose. “I know,” he says, looking away. “Apparently I’m not very good at hiding it.”
Eames wants to argue the point, since Arthur is evidently very good at hiding it from him, but he suspects that if his baseline values hadn’t been wrong, he would have seen it, too. If he’d been looking for it in the right way, he still might have.
He thinks he owes Arthur an apology, but he isn’t sure quite what to apologize for. “The marriage is to McKenzie,” he says, which seems like the next best thing. “It’s a business arrangement.”
Arthur’s mouth quirks like he’s going to laugh, and he drags a hand over his face. Eames approaches him cautiously, too conscious of being more than likely to make the wrong move.
“If I’d known,” he says carefully.
Arthur does laugh then, a soft huff of breath. “You’re not even that attracted to me,” he says.
“I’m flexible,” Eames replies automatically.
“You’re five percent flexible,” Arthur returns. “Ninety-five percent red-blooded heterosexual.”
“Arthur,” Eames says, because he thinks it will make Arthur stop, and he doesn’t know what else to do right now.
“It’s fine,” Arthur says, straightening. “I told you. I already knew.”
“Arthur,” Eames says again. He’d get closer if Arthur would let him, but Arthur is holding himself carefully apart, every line of him warning Eames to keep his distance.
He takes a step anyway, and ignores the way Arthur tenses in response.
“Give me some time,” he says finally.
Arthur nods without looking at him, and Eames lets him go.
* * *
When Mal gets pregnant for a second time, Eames jumps on his window of opportunity and leans on Arthur so hard that he thinks Arthur might be arranging a hit just to get Eames to leave him alone.
“Be reasonable,” Eames coaxes, from a phone booth halfway around the world. “I’ve already made the arrangements. You’ll get fifty percent of everything. I’ll even buy you coffee.”
“Do you know what time it is in L.A. right now?” Arthur replies dourly.
“I got into a fistfight with Cobb over you,” Eames tells him. “It’s all agreed upon. You’re mine until the spring.”
“You did what?”
“We settled it like men,” Eames replies. “Forget about that. Come to Iceland.”
Arthur grumbles something unflattering that ends up mostly muffled by his pillow and the poor phone reception, but he gets on the plane.
They celebrate the renewal of their partnership with a crime wave that hits thirteen countries in just over six months, and earns both of them enough money that they have to open new investment accounts just to spread it out.
Eames is painstakingly considerate and Arthur is suspicious, but they fall back into old patterns and things feel right in a way they haven’t for a while, everything smooth and easy. After a while, Arthur stops narrowing his eyes every time Eames turns up with fresh coffee, and the enormous metaphorical elephant in the room gives them some room to breathe.
The truth of the matter is, Eames wants to figure out how he feels about things, and he can’t do that when Arthur is three continents away and in an entirely different hemisphere. He needs to be close, studying Arthur, examining the way they fit together from all possible angles.
It finally clicks when they’re pulling a dream-sharing job in Helsinki, just the two of them, militarizing the subconscious of a CEO who has at least two teams of extractors already hired to crack her open.
Perhaps less fortunately, it clicks while they’re getting the shit kicked out of them by the subconscious they’ve just successfully militarized.
“Arthur,” Eames shouts across the kitchen to where Arthur is pinned down behind an industrial-size oven. “What would you say if I told you I’d had an epiphany?”
“I’d say I’m bleeding,” Arthur answers, his right arm pinned tight against his chest with a dark stain soaking through his shirt, “and that now is not a good time.”
“Yes, but what if I told you -”
Regrettably, this is when the projections get tired of using automatic weapons and throwing stars, and come up with concussion grenades.
Eames jerks awake to see Arthur clutching his skull, falling half-out of his chair. The migraine must already be setting in. Arthur’s gotten them after every dream this week, every time he’s been killed. Their working theory is that it has something to do with Arthur having been the one to militarize the dreamer, so in a way it’s his own mind turning on him, both inside the dream and out. It’s still only a hypothesis, but it’s the best they’ve come up with.
“Don’t,” Arthur says sharply when Eames reaches out toward him, so Eames lets him stagger off to the bathroom and takes care of their mark. Their client. He still hasn’t quite gotten used to that.
When he goes looking fifteen minutes later, he finds Arthur still in the bathroom, his hair damp and both hands covering his eyes.
“I should probably apologize,” Eames says, careful to keep his voice down. “I think they learned to upgrade like that from me.”
“It’s fine,” Arthur answers tiredly. “They would have gotten us anyway. I’m the one who taught her how to create back doors into cul-de-sacs.”
Arthur probably would have bled out eventually anyway, from the knife wound that had ripped apart his arm. His shirt had been half-shredded, and all that had been visibly left of his three-piece suit was the tie knotted around his elbow. Eames wishes he could say Arthur looks a great deal better now.
Arthur looks up at him for a second before wincing away from the fluorescent lights. “You had an epiphany?”
It seems slightly less immediate here in the real world, where Arthur may have concussion grenades still going off inside his skull but his shirt is still pristine, with no trace of bloodstains. “Not here,” Eames decides. “Let me take you home.”
They’ve reached a compromise when it comes to the migraines, which is that Eames is allowed to be as solicitous as he bloody well wants to, so long as it’s never mentioned again once Arthur has recovered. Mainly this arrangement exists because when he’s laid out flat and presumably wishing for death, it’s more of an effort for Arthur to make Eames go away than it’s worth.
“I got a tip from Fletcher,” Eames comments on the way into their hotel. “We have another two clients, if we decide to move ahead with the plan.”
The Helsinki job, in this case, isn’t so much a job as it is part of a much larger con. Between them, Arthur and Eames know a good percentage of the dreaming community, and they generally hear about extraction contracts earlier than most. Early enough, for example, for them to meet with the mark and offer their skills at subconscious militarization.
And if there are only a handful of people out there who can successfully navigate a militarized subconscious in order to get an extraction job done, well. Who are they to turn down more work?
The entire plan, however, depends on Arthur being able to function after the extraction portion of their scheme, which is currently heavily in question. If his reaction to their mark here isn’t an isolated case, continuing on is foolhardy.
“We’ll never know until we try,” Arthur says quietly. “Take the first one, at least. Take both; then we’ll have a better idea of whether this one is a fluke.”
“You’re incredibly bloody-minded when you choose to be,” Eames says admiringly. He herds Arthur up the stairs, because they learned the hard way that Arthur can’t stomach the elevator in this state, and makes sure that they’ve dropped the blackout curtains and left all the lights off inside before letting Arthur in.
After he gets the shower running, he retreats to the kitchenette to make some tea, because migraine or no, if Eames offered to help him with the actual showering, Arthur would find something horrible to stab him with.
He drinks his tea and reads what information is available on the two marks Fletcher had named, and after an appropriate post-shower grace period, he pokes his head into the bedroom to check on Arthur.
Arthur is face-down on top of the bedcovers, a towel wrapped modestly around his hips and the rest of him still damp, beads of moisture drying on his back and calves. Eames clucks disapproval, tries not to be too horrified that he’s turning into his mother, and goes to sit gently on the edge of the bed.
“You’ll catch a chill,” he says, quietly in case Arthur has fallen asleep, because if he’s going to turn into his mother, he may as well go all the way.
“It’s fine,” Arthur replies, or something to that effect. Eames only catches the bits of it not swallowed by the pillow.
Eames reaches out and traces the pale skin between Arthur’s shoulder blades. He’s familiar enough by now with the narrow expanse of Arthur’s bare skin to recognize where the wings would begin, if they had the curtains open. He draws twin lines parallel to Arthur’s spine, and Arthur shivers slightly but doesn’t protest.
“Would you like to hear about my epiphany now?” Eames asks lightly.
Arthur makes a noise that could mean either ‘yes,’ or ‘fuck off’. Eames chooses to interpret it as the former.
He strokes the lines down Arthur’s back again, making a path through the water droplets still stubbornly clinging to Arthur’s skin. After a moment, he says, “You never told me why I could see them when others can’t.”
He expects Arthur to tense up, but Arthur is either too incapacitated to cause himself the extra pain, or he genuinely doesn’t have an answer to that question and has nothing to hide. He turns his head to the side, facing Eames but with his eyes still closed, and they remain there for a few minutes, breathing quietly.
“I think you choose who sees them,” Eames tells him at last, running his fingers through the slightly-warm air above Arthur’s back, through invisible strands of light. “I think the only time anyone can see them is when you’re willing to let that person see all of you.”
Arthur’s eyes open to slits. Eames runs his fingers through the air again, and Arthur’s eyes slide slowly closed, his muscles relaxing gradually as he exhales.
“It’s just like the sight of you in ripped jeans,” Eames continues. “Or the stories about what your sister told you when you were children. It’s another aspect of you that not everyone is permitted to see. You have to want them to see it.”
Peeling his eyes open again clearly requires effort, but Arthur does so, studying him in the near-darkness. “I can’t control it,” he says finally. “I never have.”
“You don’t control anything else you give away, either,” Eames informs him, unable to repress a slight smile. “You may think you do, but you’re bollocks at it.”
“I know,” Arthur says, exhaling again. Eames traces the lines on his back again, one and then the other.
“Can you blame me,” he asks quietly, “for being so blinded by the extraordinary that I failed to appreciate everything hidden beneath it?”
The bedclothes rustle as Arthur gathers himself, employing extreme effort in rolling onto his side so that they can better see one another. Eames holds Arthur’s gaze, sitting very still and waiting for whatever judgment Arthur decides to pass.
“What does that mean?” Arthur asks finally.
It means, Eames thinks, that when he sees Arthur in a dream ruthlessly garroting projections with kitchen appliances, he still wants. It means there isn’t anything missing from Arthur right now, even though the blinds are closed. It means Arthur had been revealing himself piece by piece, and Eames had gotten caught up on one fragment of the whole.
“It means,” he answers, “that five percent isn’t so insignificant, statistically speaking.” His lips twitch in a smile. “And that everything means something.”
Arthur is still for a moment, and then tips his chin up just slightly. “Eames,” he says quietly.
Eames takes the invitation, leaning forward to meet him, running his tongue lightly along Arthur’s lip instead of deepening the kiss because he can tell Arthur is trying not to move more than he has to.
“Don’t be wrong about this,” Arthur says, a soft warning Eames knows better than to ignore. He reaches out to slide his hand along Arthur’s waist, but Arthur catches his wrist and holds him off. “If you try to touch me right now, I’m going to throw up,” he says, the tightness around his eyes evidence of the truth of that claim.
“You do know how to give a compliment,” Eames tells him, but he takes the hint, backing off and relinquishing his claim on Arthur’s personal space.
“You have the worst timing,” Arthur counters, his eyes already shutting, body sinking into the embrace of the bedcovers. He’ll be out for an hour or more, Eames knows from experience, before he’s up to facing the world again.
Eames chuckles. “Get some rest,” he advises. “I’ll be in the other room if you need anything.”
He’s almost through the bedroom door when Arthur calls softly, “Eames.”
Eames turns around, hand poised on the doorknob, eyebrows raised.
“You’re right,” Arthur tells him. “I did want you to see.”
Eames allows himself a smile and says, “Then I’m glad I finally did.”