Eames/Arthur
Title: conspirators in living [e side]
Summary: The story of how Eames always wanted to be someone different until Arthur gave him the means to do so.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~10800
Beta: No beta, oops? Tell me if I messed something up :)
A/N: After reading smallacts story conspirators in living Eames' side of the story came pouring out of me. GO READ HER VERSION FIRST. Also, its been pointed out that I do an awful lot of hand-waving when it comes to how healthcare works in the UK. :,D Sorry~
When other children are building sandcastles with their smiling mothers, Eames is learning the best way to shimmy down the drainpipe and away from the sad frown of his own. The time he spends in school is steeped in distractions and violence until his teachers decide its easier to turn a blind eye to the open window in the boys lavatory than deal with him in their classes. Every time he returns home his mother’s sad, searching eyes remind him why he left in the first place.
“You must know this kind of behaviour isn’t tolerated.” His guidance counselor implores in the exact same manner as the last.
“Why?” Eames spits, fueled by that righteousness that comes with being ten years old and underestimated by everyone. “Because I’m a kid? There’s lotsa behaviour that shouldn’t be tolerated and adults do it anyway.”
“While that may be true that doesn’t excuse your actions.” She drones on and Eames shuts her out, frustration building with every blocked syllable.
He fights to win. He fights to lose. It doesn’t seem to matter so long as he can force the world to understand how uncomfortable it is to be in his own skin.
“I heard y’mum’s a whore,” A man, no more than seventeen, in dirty work coveralls says one day while Eames is down at the docks. “Issit true? Is that why she’s got dirty bastards like you’s lots runnin unda foot?”
“Say that again.” Eames breathes, tasting the familiar rage at the back of his throat.
“Wha? The part where she’s a whore or,” He leers, confident that no harm will befall him from someone nearly half his age. “The part where yousa dirty bastard?”
He takes the insult personally every time and soon, he’s got quite the reputation around their little borough. The guidance counselors stop trying just as the teachers before them and he learns that if the bobbies don’t see his face they cant bring him in. He swears off his last name and after a while, no one remembers a time when he wasn’t just Eames.
He fights against the mother who holds him too tight because he looks so much like the man who couldn’t love her enough. He fights against the sister who insists there are other people inside of her. Eames fights against the knowledge that he’s trapped, tied to his own body and he’ll never break away from it no matter how hard he tries to escape. He fights to save his life because surely, if he stops for just one moment too long he’ll succumb to the tragedy of the suburban kid.
When he falls to the ground, all bloody knuckles and ragged breath, he imagines his body falling away from him piece by piece until he is nothing more than an idea. He imagines reforming himself from bits of other people, never more than a single feature from the same person until he is completely unrecognizable.
Eames imagines that he can rearrange the stars that shine so dimly over this sick town and that maybe, in the process, he can lose himself among them like so many pinpricks of light.
---
He buries his mother when he’s just shy of sixteen. It isn’t a terribly emotional affair for him. She had died several years earlier; fallen prey to a depression that had lurked in the crevices of downturned photographs and the shadows behind her eyes.
Sarah sits next to him, silent and stoic the entire time. Eames is glad and finds that, for once, its not because she embarrasses him by breaking into random hysterics or infuriates him with made up stories of what this voice or that has said to her today- he is glad because it feels like for once, she’s actually there with him.
Its only when the tired looking woman in the grey suit clacks up to him in her stubby heels and haphazard bun that Eames begins to realize how irreversibly his mother’s death will affect them.
“Are you, ah,” She peeks at a distressingly plain manila envelope. “The son? Eames W-“
“Yeah, I’m Eames.” He cuts her off and angles his body between the woman and his sister. “This is my sister, Sarah.”
She nods and tells them about the benefits of possible foster care when Eames lays a hand on hers and says, with a conjured sad smile, that she must have the wrong information. He lies seamlessly, blending a tale of a distraught loving father who is on a plane heading for ‘home’ as they speak.
Under the blank stare of his older sister he charms this unwitting blonde woman twice around the block and she leaves with a promise that he will contact her if there’s anything she can do. She pays her condolences and tells him what a charming young man he is.
Eames never forgets his first.
---
Lying and pick-pocketing come to him as easy as breathing and while he realizes it’s hardly reputable it helps him keep his fists to himself. He learns that being invisible is more important than being intimidating. Eames opens up an unremarkable bank account with a swiped ID and some well-placed charm and stows his ‘earnings’ there.
Eames swears he’ll take care of Sarah. He’ll be all the family they need and they wont take shit from anybody.
He’s sure he can do it, despite her outbursts and occasionally vacant eyes, until the day he comes home to find her lying in a bathtub so cold she’s nearly blue and shaking so violently she looks epileptic.
Wrapped in her tinfoil blanket she tells him of her voices and though she seems exhausted from the effort she is barely heard under the scream of the ambulance.
Eames is sick in the nearest bin, retching violently when he’s told to stay in the waiting room and fill out paper work until the hospital can contact his parents.
He flips all the paperwork over, looking for a blank backside and scribbles the only information he can think of before depositing it at the Nurses station. No one pays him the slightest attention as he walks out.
‘Lloyds TSB Bank, account # 8829100345
Please Help Her’
---
Sometimes Eames surprises himself by waking up at all. The concept of being alive seems so abstract with his face is pressed against the floor of some dingy hole he’d passed out in the night before, calmed into oblivion by drink and drug and an apathy that he dares not examine too closely. He wakes up with the guilt and shame of the inevitability of his actions and he wonders how those are the only things he feels any more.
Eames marvels at the simplicity of the human mind. How willing and eager people are to recreate him entirely; apparently he isn’t the only one. It’s so easy to play along, lure them into a sense of security that they weave of their own accord, fitting him with problems they can fix and desires that reflect their own because deep down they all just want to be understood. Eames lets them play with him while he plays them and leaves before they realize their wallet is a little lighter than it started.
He fills his life with words that mean nothing to him. People who are only people in so much as they are means to an end. He lets his conquests direct his movements and by the time he’s twenty he’s seen every shore England has to offer. Eames steals from anyone he can get close enough to and he doesn’t discriminate. What he steals, whom he steals from, how he steals it; if it looks like he can get a good price for it he takes it.
The majority of his earnings are routed to a bank account he sets up and ties to his sister’s care under the guise of a nonprofit organization that has taken a special interest in her. He keeps just enough to get him to his next fix.
“What’cha got there?” A young woman leans against the railing next to him, her bold red lipstick paired with the subdued gold chain around her neck tells Eames everything he needs to know.
He stares down at the two tickets he swiped from the lad in the dark brown trench, the gentle lapping of the Thames whispering all the things he should do to disarm her, charm her, get her back to his flat and unmindful of her stylish grey purse.
“Tickets my dear.” He says simply, smiling at her from under his eyelashes.
“To where?” She asks, taking the bait and leaning closer.
He checks the tickets and says with a smile, “New York, apparently.”
“Don’t you know where you’re going?” She laughs, obviously assuming his interest in her has him flustered and forgetful.
“Almost never.” He supplies and the honesty feels foreign on his tongue.
Its painfully clear she’s in London for a limited time and is looking for someone just like Eames. He’s been here too long. These people are no longer a challenge, one carbon copy of the same depressingly boring copy. He smiles and gives her ‘his’ number, which is actually the number to the mobile of a man who propositioned him two nights ago.
“See you later,” She winks, sauntering off in a way that he’s sure the other bloke will love.
Eames contemplates the tickets, one in either hand and he feels like the world moves on without him. For this moment he feels as if the Thames is enough to drown out the busy sounds of a London perpetually caught up in itself. He takes London in, feeling for all the world like the single point of calm in a clamoring sea of movement.
He presses a kiss to the ticket in his left hand, closing his eyes against the dreary grey London afternoon. A breeze stirs his hair and he thinks of Sarah as it pulls the ticket from his fingers.
Eames clutches the lifeline in his right hand.
---
The States thrill Eames in ways he isn’t sure anyone else can comprehend. The sheer amount of space is mindboggling and there are so many people, all of them new and interesting in ways he’s itching to memorize. Eames has never felt so gloriously lost in a crowd. He makes his way from New York to Buffalo, breezing easily over the border for a stay in Toronto, and conning nearly an entire day cruise on their way back to Michigan. He finds himself in Chicago before he knows it and something, the people, the city, the lights, keeps him there the longest. He never carries more than a couple suit cases on him and ends up with a fantastically wonky array of clothing- a tweed jacket here, a burnt orange paisley shirt there, a pair of loafers two sizes too big for him (where did those come from?) but Eames thrives on the simplicity of it all.
In this world Eames is exotic, a stranger that people notice for just a moment before dismissing him as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. He robs them blind, a sticky fingered shadow that sets the bumbling police department on edge. He’s hired for independent thefts and warned not to cross the wrong people but Eames just smiles and assures them that if he does, they’ll never know.
The ladies are nice and the gents are rough and Eames never bothers to remember their names because they’ll never know his. He lives out of hotel rooms and occasionally sublets a room above this delightfully unreputable Laundromat where he plays (read: cheats) at poker.
Most of his earnings go back to London however; Eames is most comfortable leading a very Spartan lifestyle. Obtaining Sarah’s medical information is difficult for him but with the right money slipped to the right people he gets the updates he needs.
They think Eames is another voice in her head.
He writes her letters that he never sends and takes photographs that stay etched on undeveloped film rolls, memories left behind on bedside tables that get thrown away like so much trash by the hotel staff when he disappears.
Eames learns a lot from the people he meets and somewhere along the way he picks up the handy ability to pick virtually any lock. Sitting high above the perpetual hustle of the city below, Eames looks up at the stars and feels closer to them than ever. He reaches for the stars and swears they just brush his fingertips, cool and smooth and barely out of his reach.
When he doesn’t spend all night atop some high rise, taking himself apart to the pulse of the stars above, Eames convinces himself that he feels complete, that he’s happy; that no one feels entirely whole at 4am.
---
Eames’ first thought on that fateful day Arthur walks into his life and subsequently right into his hole in the wall hotel room is ‘this dumb Yank picked the wrong bloke.’ Which is quickly followed by the fleeting but potent ‘the burglars here certainly know how to dress.’
To his credit, Arthur appears fearless even when on the wrong side of a loaded 9 mm handgun and that is probably the only reason Eames doesn’t shoot him right then.
They are both rather calm about the situation. Eames keeps his gun trained on Arthur who, halfway through his introduction, inclines his head in a patronizing manner and tells him to put it away. Eames surprises himself by complying. Arthur starts on about dreams and a job and how he values the morally grey areas while Eames appreciates the cut of his suit and wonders vaguely if he should believe the other when he says he knows how Eames ‘gets by.’
“What I’m looking for is a partner,” Arthur’s tone matches his suit: strict, clean, precise.
“This isn’t the red-light district sweetheart, though I’m flattered all the same.” Eames teases, acutely aware of the cold press of the gun against his lower back.
That it takes Arthur a moment to blush is endearing in its own right.
“Look,” Arthur’s face is no-nonsense, brushing Eames’ comment off as if even suggesting something of the sort is beneath him. “The easiest way to explain this to you is to show you. I have a PASIV dev-“
Eames’ gun is trained on Arthur the second he bends to retrieve the silver suitcase at his feet. The glare he receives sends him right back to primary school and he lowers his weapon marginally.
“In this suitcase is a PASIV device,” Arthur explains, clicking the suitcase open and showing Eames a complicated set of wires and vials before slowly straightening. “It was developed by the government and utilizes a combination of anesthetic and sedative hypnotics which allows us to share dreams when connected through the same device.”
“So you’re from the government?” Eames questions, watching as Arthur walks right up to his terribly squeaky bed and judges it in the most blatantly obvious way Eames has ever seen anyone scrutinize anything, ever.
“Hardly.” Arthur looks like he wants to ask if Eames has any plastic wrap but apparently gets over it enough to set the open suitcase on the bed and pull out two long wires.
“I am self employed and very good at what I do. I’ve only just recently-“ Arthur barely skips a beat but its particularly noticeable to Eames. “Found myself in need of a new partner.”
“If you have been following me,” Eames gives him a look that plainly says he highly doubts this but will entertain the outlandish idea for the moment. “Then you know I’ve no problem with drugs. Why are you so insistent to show me here, alone, in my room? Why not downstairs with my poker mates. Maybe one of them’ll like it even better than me; make a better partner.”
Arthur’s look says he doesn’t appreciate the lewd connotation Eames gives the word.
“If I wanted to kill you I’d have done it by now Mister Eames and I wouldn’t,” Arthur pauses to unfasten a single cufflink, laying it on the inside of the suitcase so as to not touch any more of the admittedly distasteful bedding and rolls his sleeve up to expose his wrist; the rush Eames feels is familiar and entirely inappropriate. “Connect myself first.”
Eames watches from across the tiny room as Arthur presses the wire to his wrist and clamps it there, looking up with an expectation in his eyes that Eames has never had directed at him before. Perhaps that’s why he gets up and joins Arthur on the bed; why he allows the other to turn his palm up and trace his wrist with delicate fingers until he finds an appropriate place to stick Eames.
“If you’re lying, I’ll kill you.” Eames warns with a grin, pulling the gun out of his pants and setting it on the bedside table; it’s only funny because if Arthur is lying, he may never wake up to fulfill that warning.
Arthur looks at him as if he cannot quite figure out how Eames finds this funny before he presses the clear button in the center of the suitcase.
“Go to sleep Mister Eames.”
---
Eames wakes from the dream gasping for breath, wild eyed and exhilarated.
He feels every part of him as if it is new, tingling and fresh and so very pliable in a way he’s never dared to wish. When Arthur unhooks him Eames is too caught up with his own excitement to notice the small, satisfied smile that barely turns his lips up.
“That was brilliant. Absofuckinlutely brilliant.” Eames feels more alive than he has in years; rejuvenated and hyperaware of his surroundings.
“You picked it up quickly.” Arthur agrees, busily coiling the wires back into their respective cubbies. “I’ve never seen someone change so many aspects of themselves on the first try.”
“How-“ Eames notices he missed the cufflink’s adornment. “How much can I change?”
“If you’re as good as I think you are?” Arthur smirks at him and it looks positively wicked on his face. “Everything.”
When this sharp dressed stranger smirks at him he feels invincible.
---
Arthur won’t tell him what his last name is and no one can find it. Eames has the sneaking suspicion that Arthur knows he’s been trying to investigate him through his own means and feels distinctly like he’s being laughed at when every source comes up empty.
On his eleventh day of training, always in Arthur’s mind, Eames shakes Arthur entirely by changing his clothing into a sharp business suit and becoming the antithesis of every aspect of himself. Lighter, narrower, African; he looks amazing, nothing like himself, and he has free reign among the people that populate Arthur’s mind- projections, he reminds himself.
Arthur has explained the basics of extraction and Eames, curious to a fault, wants to know what secrets Arthur is hiding.
“Excuse me Miss,” Eames ventures, his voice unnaturally low but still unmistakably British. He wants to try everything out at once and even after spending weeks in Arthur’s dreams he still gets caught up in the excitement; Arthur wont say it, but he knows it’s his only downfall.
“Yes?” She has a voice that warbles, like she’s borrowing someone’s interpretation of what a woman should sound like.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find some information could you?” He asks, all charm and gallantry- just how the ladies in the waking world like him.
“What kind of information?” Her voice is guarded, as if she’s unused to anyone speaking to her but her eyes dart to the unmarked skyscraper to Eames’ left just as her hand smoothes against her pocket.
“Darling, all kinds.” Eames grins, falling into the easy role of pursuer.
She looks scandalized and he feels the projections stirring, taking notice of him and he wonders where he went wrong. Eames quickly says goodbye and slips into the building, narrowly avoiding several agitated businessmen on his way there.
The first thing he notices is that this is not a building at all, but a hollow shell of a building with staircases that wind as far as the eye can see. Eames is sure that nothing like this could exist in the real world.
In the middle of the room is Arthur, leaning his hip against a lavish glass table and staring at Eames as if he’s been waiting there for ages.
“Fancy seeing you here.” Eames smiles and in his mind his teeth are brilliant and perfect and he knows that this is exactly what Arthur sees.
“I’m sure.” Arthur fiddles with an electronic device Eames has never seen Arthur with before and it makes the telltale noises of a PDA shutting down.
“How did you know?” He inquires; needing to know where he went wrong.
There is a pause as Arthur slips the PDA into his pocket.
“It isn’t hard to predict what you’d want to do if you slipped away from me.” Arthur sighs, pointing the now familiar end of a pistol at Eames’ head.
“I guess I’ll just have to use a little more imagination then.” Eames smirks and feels his projection flicker before it disappears entirely, leaving him in his own disappointing skin.
Eames wakes up from dying for the eleventh time and wonders what bothers him more, that Arthur shot him or that he actually woke up.
---
The amount of time Eames spends at Arthur’s apartment is enough to warrant his moving his meager necessities to said residence. The prim and proper Point Man has resolutely refused to step foot back in Eames’ current hotel which is fine with Eames as Arthur seems particularly fond of proper lighting and comfortable socks. He sleeps on the couch and barely registers Arthur’s footsteps through the apartment any more.
Mostly, its because he’s exhausted. Training is nothing more than drug induced sleep and yet, Eames wakes up exhausted, fighting to keep his eyes open. He stays down for days at a time, connected to Arthur for hours on end in the real world. Fighting, hiding, conning, stealing. He finds that Arthur’s projections detect him when he flirts with them and he learns that one must observe the projections as fastidiously as one observes the target.
When Arthur pulls the needle from his wrist Eames is always just a little disappointed. He needs more time out of his own skin. He’s been himself his entire life and now, in that little silver box, there is a world where he can be anyone.
Arthur has other obligations. Never at any exact hour, for he indulges Eames as often as Eames sees fit to ask, but he is never idle- always moving from one task to the next. He usually disappears after Eames has collapsed on the couch, which he has deemed his makeshift bed, from exhaustion and comes back to find Eames hooked up to the PASIV device again. Sometimes he joins him, sometimes he lets the machine run its course, and sometimes the tosser gives him a kick that sends Eames sprawling all over the living room floor.
“Nice to see you too Arthur.” Eames grumbles from his position on the floor, glad he didn’t fall a little more to the right and crack his head on the coffee table.
“Stop working so hard,” Arthur says, setting a bag of Chinese food on the table without so much as looking at Eames.
There seems to be enough for two.
They weren’t exactly in the habit of buying food for each other but it certainly seems, as Arthur plucks his own fork from the small kitchen area and tosses a pair of chopsticks to the other side of the square dining table, that this is a meal for two.
His stomach reminds him, with an acidic twist, that he can’t remember the last time he ate.
“Are you going to eat or did I buy this nasty shrimp chow mein for nothing?” Arthur plucks the carton out by the little metal holder and sets it next to the chopsticks, as if shrimp chow mein is the most morally offensive thing in the room.
“Yes, darling.” Eames takes his place at their table.
---
“I think we’ve exhausted the better job opportunities in the immediate area.” Arthur ventures one day.
“Yes, I’ve been getting bored here as well.” Eames agrees, surrounded by the gutted remains of the remote that has never worked properly.
“Well,” Arthur sounds pleasantly surprised, like he expected a bit more of a fuss from the Forger. “Good then.”
“So,” Eames examines a flat metal piece of remote innards. “Where does your heart yearn for?”
Arthur has gotten quite used to Eames’ inadvertent charming and doesn’t even bother sending him annoyed looks anymore.
“Its best to stick to big cities. Better clientele, better jobs, better pay.” Arthur rattles off, having thought about this for the past week.
“How do you feel about New York?” He asks, handing Eames a paperclip when asked.
“It’s nice.” Eames shrugs.
“You’ve been?” Arthur blinks, surprised at the information.
“Are you surprised darling?” Eames grins and it showcases the stubble framing his face.
“I’m just asking.” Arthur hedges, ignoring the grinning Brit.
For a moment the only sounds in the apartment are those of Eames shuffling bits of remote around on the table.
“LaGuardia Airport was my first impression of America.” Eames tells the double A battery between his fingers.
“Oh.” Arthur says, for lack of anything better to say.
They don’t spend a lot of time talking about each other. In fact, for the inordinate amount of time they do spend together, they rarely share personal information beyond what one’s food preferences are. This feels suspiciously like Personal Information and yet, Arthur finds he doesn’t mind it so much.
“Have you… been anywhere else?” He asks, going for offhandedly interested.
Eames’ fingers still on the remote, his eyes drifting up to catch Arthur’s; Arthur looks away first.
“Everywhere, darling.” He makes it sound like they aren’t talking about the same thing. “Stayed in Buffalo for a bit, had my fill of Toronto. Took a very prosperous cruise to Michigan. All very beautiful places.”
“So, you don’t want to go back to New York?” Arthur ventures, his mind already turning to Los Angeles.
“You’re putting words in my mouth again.” Eames tuts, turning back to the task at hand.
“I am not. You’re not giving me an opinion,” Arthur adds testily. “Again.”
“I did give you an opinion, I said it was nice.” Eames says simply.
He can tell Arthur is contemplating how much it would set their working relationship back if Arthur were to choke him.
“Alright, so we’re going to New York.” The finality in his voice makes Eames smile; Arthur has an unhealthy need to control and plan every little thing.
“If that’s what you like, then that is where we’ll go.” Eames supplies, simple as choosing what flavor of Arthur’s yogurt he wants to steal. “I’m sure the view will be astounding.”
There is a silence that stretches between them until Arthur cant seem to hold the question behind his lips anymore and asks, “What view?” Pointing out that you can’t see anything from a plane.
“You would want to fly?” Eames asks, as if this had never occurred to him.
“Yes.” Arthur frowns at the Forger. “How else would we get there?”
“The train, perhaps?” Eames points out. There had been a time where he’d almost hopped a line to travel cross-country; instead, life had taken him here. “I’d like to pass through Indiana and the like, just to see it.”
“Cows. Corn. Cars.” Arthur ticks off each word on a separate finger. “There, we just did Indiana in under five seconds. What else can I sum up for you?”
“Really darling, when are you ever going to stop and just enjoy the ride?” Eames sighs, screwing the last bit of the remote together and clicking the little plastic back piece into place.
When he clicks the power button, the television obediently turns on.
“I don’t need an extra five hours of travel time to ‘enjoy the ride’.” Arthur sounds impressed despite himself.
“Then we can take a plane if that’s what you really want. I only suggested it because,” Eames swipes at his nose, debating whether he should finish that sentence. “They remind me of home, is all.”
Arthur stays there for a couple minutes, silently watching Eames flip mindlessly through channels. When he closes himself into his bedroom Eames figures he’s gone to book the plane tickets. He passes the time watching trashy television and trying to fit his lips around the different accents he hears. Dinner rolls around and Eames makes soup because he’s honestly that unmotivated and Arthur emerges when the smell wafts through the apartment. He trades Eames a piece of paper for a bowl of soup and leaves him in the kitchen. Eames turns the paper right side up as Arthur changes the TV from Real Housewives of New York to the news.
It’s a train ticket receipt for two.
---
Arthur goes about finding an apartment in the most painful of possible ways. They spend nearly two weeks hotel jumping until Arthur finally decides on a small two-bedroom apartment with wide windows and a breakfast nook. He insists that strategically, it’s a good place to be but Eames can tell that Arthur enjoys something about the layout as much as he enjoys the location.
When Arthur effectively moves more of his stuff into the second bedroom than Eames has to his name Arthur looks disappointed, noting that they may need to find another place. Eames just shrugs and points out that he didn’t have a bed to fill it with anyway. He insists that he doesn’t mind giving up the room and honestly, he doesn’t. Working with Arthur is the easiest thing Eames has ever done.
This return trip to New York presents Eames with the perfect opportunity to see the sights he’d never taken advantage of before and so he spends several nights identifying the tallest building he can break into.
Being so close to the edge of a thirty-story drop off doesn’t calm him anymore. The vast expanse of sky offered up to his fingertips lacks the taunting quality it once held. As much as he might like to reach out and grab those stars; to hold them between his palms until they cool enough to take them apart piece by piece, Eames finds he enjoys them as much when they sparkle just out of reach.
They don’t go under for leisure anymore.
Arthur spends as much time in his workroom as Eames spends wandering the streets. Eames learns all the back alleys, catalogues which Mafia works which part of town, and identifies the best Laundromat this side of 40th and somehow, he feels like Arthur already knows all of this. He walks through the streets at 4am, tempting the early morning to bring on that familiar sense of doubt and listlessness, just to see if it will appear after so long, only to find his feet have taken him back to their apartment.
Eames tries not to think about the way Arthur tiptoes around when he thinks Eames is asleep. Tries not to think of the way they know who will cook that night not based on what night it is but by some intrinsic knowledge of who is least tired. He tries not to think about Arthur’s eyes on him when he sets up intricate card games against himself- especially not late at night when his heart races with wild ideas involving almond-shaped eyes and mussed hair.
So he focuses his energy on their jobs, perfecting his forgeries and managing some insight into their pre-extraction meetings. When he manages a flawless female forge, blonde and perfectly buxom, during a job they had agreed he would forge as a tall Asian businessman Eames not only fools the mark but also teases Arthur to within an inch of his life. After that Arthur, more often than not, lets him choose his own forges.
They fall into an easy routine and if Arthur notices that Eames buys groceries for the both of them, even the expensive deli cheese that Arthur nibbles on by the slice, he doesn’t say anything.
“You know,” Arthur picks up a radio that looks like its seen better days- about five years ago. “People throw this stuff out for a reason.”
Eames assures him he’s working on it over the crinkling of the grocery bag.
“We could just… buy a new one.” Arthur points out because he knows how much Eames gets paid and its fairly obvious that they could furnish the entire apartment with brand new furniture on his cut alone and not make too great a dent in his bank account.
“Or I can fix that one.” Eames plucks the radio off the nook and plops down on the couch he won off a poker game a few nights ago.
“But its garbage.” Arthur says, without a hint of apology.
“Darling,” Eames unscrews the back. “Not everything that’s broken is garbage.”
“But you could buy a new one.” Arthur presses, never one to be deterred.
“There are more important things to spend my money on.” Eames shrugs, taking it in stride.
He knows Arthur knows where his money goes. Arthur has never told him as much, but Eames values him enough to overestimate a little.
---
“When did you learn to cook?” Arthur asks as he rinses the dishes in the sink.
“I’m still learning, pet.” Eames says into his wine glass.
“I’m serious,” Arthur sighs and puts the dishes in the strainer. “That didn’t even taste like a vegetable.”
“One of these day’s we’ll take a vacation and I’ll make you fresh fish.” Eames swills the wine in his glass, watching the bend of Arthur’s exposed elbow. “There’s nothing like eating a fish you’ve caught.”
The look on Arthur’s face when he turns around says that ‘vacation’ is not the word he’d use to describe such an outing.
Eames evades the question, and any further looks, by wandering over to the couch.
“Let’s see what rubbish is on the television tonight,” Eames mumbles to himself, clicking the television on.
If he’s honest, he is more aware of Arthur slipping into the workroom than the channels he’s flipping past. Usually, after dinner, Arthur would come sit by him and wrestle the remote out of his hands, force them to watch the 11 o’clock news until Eames stole it back and flipped to something more entertaining but apparently, he has more pressing matters to attend to. Even after a dinner that Eames put admittedly, too much work into. Eames resolves not to pout.
Arthur calls from the other room, “What was that stupid movie you wanted to go see?”
“Why, darling? Are we actually going out tonight?” Eames calls over his shoulder in a very unpouty way.
Arthur comes out of the room juggling his laptop and several cables in one hand and his wine glass in the other, sporting his patented unamused Arthur face. His mocking laughter is interrupted by a fierce hiccup that surprises Arthur and causes Eames’ smile to spread like wildfire.
“Not a word, Eames.” Arthur warns, turning his back to the Forger and attempting to hook the wires up. “What was the movie?”
“The Losers.” Eames gets comfortable on the couch, admiring the fit of Arthur’s trousers. “That was two words, by the by.”
Satisfied with the wires, Arthur connects them to his laptop, perching on the edge of the couch and typing in something that makes the TV flicker blue and then go black. He dims the laptop screen and settles back into the couch as a movie begins to play.
“Arthur,” Eames looks at the other once he realizes what’s playing on their television. “This movie came out last Friday.”
An eyebrow is raised in his direction as Arthur asks, “Your point is?”
Eames has to admit, his point is entirely unimportant.
It starts around midnight, the gentle nodding of Arthur’s head, and the second time Eames has to press Arthur’s wine glass back into his fingers he decides its best to take the glass away entirely. He barely protests and Eames shushes him with a friendly arm slung around his shoulders and a false promise to give it back in a minute. As many times as Eames has tried this particular tactic Arthur has never let him get away with it until tonight.
Bodies pressed side by side, Arthur’s head lolling to rest on the swell of his shoulder, Eames swears the neighbors must hear his heartbeat; how can Arthur not?
When Arthur’s snide remarks subside to less than one per minute Eames rubs his thumb against Arthur’s shoulder to see if he’s awake. He barely acknowledges Eames’ movement.
“Are you tired?” Eames asks only because Arthur hates to be told what he is even if he is dozing against his partner’s shoulder.
He makes a negative sound before mumbling, “You wanted to watch the movie.”
“No, I wanted to take you out,” Eames points out.
Arthur mumbles, “Same thing,” and Eames licks his lips, debating whether he wants to get into this argument with Arthur. The silence settles around them, no space available to settle between, and Eames realizes he can’t remember the last twenty minutes of the film but can catalogue every derisive comment Arthur’s made. When Arthur falls quiet for a whole five minutes Eames’ mouth opens of its own accord.
“I should take you out kitten,” Eames smoothes his hand over the top of Arthur’s head. “You spend too much time cooped up in that room.”
“I don’t want to go out,” Arthur’s voice is slurred with sleep and the influence of the wine that got them in this position.
“You’d want to go out with me,” Eames insists and the fall of Arthur’s eyelashes against his flushed cheeks makes him bold enough to brush his lips over Arthur’s soft forehead. “I’d take you to a proper restaurant. Woo you with good conversation and fine wines- not that you need any more of that. We’d go to that show you’ve been eyeing.”
“Sp’derman,” Arthur supplies sleepily, indulging in a decidedly un-Arthur like urge to nuzzle against Eames’ stubbly jaw.
“Yes, that one.” He nods absently; the smile spreading across his face feels so much bigger than him.
Eames thinks maybe Arthur has fallen asleep until he mumbles a barely audible, “M’fine right here.”
Eames thinks, as they fall asleep on the couch, that Arthur may be right; other people would only get in the way.
---
The first time Arthur sleeps in Eames’ bed, otherwise known as the couch, is also the last time. It leaves him with a crick in his neck and he bitches Eames out for days for letting him fall asleep like that. Interestingly enough, he never raises one word of objection to the fact that Eames let him fall asleep in his arms.
The first time Eames sleeps in Arthur’s bed is the night they get caught in a miserable combination of rain and hail after nearly seventeen hours of gathering intel on the most boring woman on Earth. They sprint up the stairs to their apartment and Eames’ mind, previously only alert enough to want to nurse a bottle of vodka on his couch, catches up to the movements of the man in front of him, steadily stripping article after article of sopping clothing off before he’s even in the door. Arthur is babbling on about something Eames would like to care about but the sight of that simple, black tie draped across the arm of his couch, his bed, hits him with a pang of longing so intense he has no idea how to cope. He can hardly feel his fingers, his clothing plastered to him so as to leave nothing to the imagination, and he’s frozen in the foyer obsessing over a tie.
He can see Arthur lying naked in his arms, brilliant and misted with droplets of rain that Eames wants to kiss away one by one until Arthur knows how much Eames wants him every moment of every day.
“Come on,” Arthur growls impatiently, ripping Eames from his daydream and he can see him climb into bed from his spot in the foyer. He knows in that moment, that nothing could make him move faster.
Eames rips his clothes off with blue tinged fingers, shaking from the cold and a desire so intense it makes him trip over his own trousers. He slips under the covers and lies there, knees bent and fingertips a hair away from Arthur’s as they both catch their breath.
He’s hard. He’s so hard and Arthur is so close and Eames wants to touch him. Wants to press his shivering fingers to Arthur’s stomach and leech the warmth out of him so he can get to work warming every last inch of Arthur’s body with his own. He wants to touch him so much he’s paralyzed by it.
But Arthur is talking again, slow and subdued but perfectly professional in a way only Arthur could be while in his underwear with a similarly dressed Eames and he knows he’s lost his chance. Perhaps he never had a chance to begin with. He nods and tries to keep up with what Arthur is saying but they generate a heady warmth under the same blanket and soon he cant remember whole portions of what Arthur has said, just the rhythm of his voice and the way his fingers feel when entwined in his.
He falls asleep to the sound of Arthur’s voice and, when he wakes the next morning, Arthur curled intimately around him in a way that bespeaks activities that definitely did not occur, Eames wonders when he gave up being lonely and selfish for being happy.
---
Eames is saved the trouble of asking where he should sleep the next night when he passes by Arthur’s bedroom and spies his pillow on the left side of the bed. He checks the side of the couch for his blanket but it is nowhere to be found. Arthur doesn’t say anything about it and neither does Eames.
[Part ii]
Summary: The story of how Eames always wanted to be someone different until Arthur gave him the means to do so.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~10800
Beta: No beta, oops? Tell me if I messed something up :)
A/N: After reading smallacts story conspirators in living Eames' side of the story came pouring out of me. GO READ HER VERSION FIRST. Also, its been pointed out that I do an awful lot of hand-waving when it comes to how healthcare works in the UK. :,D Sorry~
When other children are building sandcastles with their smiling mothers, Eames is learning the best way to shimmy down the drainpipe and away from the sad frown of his own. The time he spends in school is steeped in distractions and violence until his teachers decide its easier to turn a blind eye to the open window in the boys lavatory than deal with him in their classes. Every time he returns home his mother’s sad, searching eyes remind him why he left in the first place.
“You must know this kind of behaviour isn’t tolerated.” His guidance counselor implores in the exact same manner as the last.
“Why?” Eames spits, fueled by that righteousness that comes with being ten years old and underestimated by everyone. “Because I’m a kid? There’s lotsa behaviour that shouldn’t be tolerated and adults do it anyway.”
“While that may be true that doesn’t excuse your actions.” She drones on and Eames shuts her out, frustration building with every blocked syllable.
He fights to win. He fights to lose. It doesn’t seem to matter so long as he can force the world to understand how uncomfortable it is to be in his own skin.
“I heard y’mum’s a whore,” A man, no more than seventeen, in dirty work coveralls says one day while Eames is down at the docks. “Issit true? Is that why she’s got dirty bastards like you’s lots runnin unda foot?”
“Say that again.” Eames breathes, tasting the familiar rage at the back of his throat.
“Wha? The part where she’s a whore or,” He leers, confident that no harm will befall him from someone nearly half his age. “The part where yousa dirty bastard?”
He takes the insult personally every time and soon, he’s got quite the reputation around their little borough. The guidance counselors stop trying just as the teachers before them and he learns that if the bobbies don’t see his face they cant bring him in. He swears off his last name and after a while, no one remembers a time when he wasn’t just Eames.
He fights against the mother who holds him too tight because he looks so much like the man who couldn’t love her enough. He fights against the sister who insists there are other people inside of her. Eames fights against the knowledge that he’s trapped, tied to his own body and he’ll never break away from it no matter how hard he tries to escape. He fights to save his life because surely, if he stops for just one moment too long he’ll succumb to the tragedy of the suburban kid.
When he falls to the ground, all bloody knuckles and ragged breath, he imagines his body falling away from him piece by piece until he is nothing more than an idea. He imagines reforming himself from bits of other people, never more than a single feature from the same person until he is completely unrecognizable.
Eames imagines that he can rearrange the stars that shine so dimly over this sick town and that maybe, in the process, he can lose himself among them like so many pinpricks of light.
---
He buries his mother when he’s just shy of sixteen. It isn’t a terribly emotional affair for him. She had died several years earlier; fallen prey to a depression that had lurked in the crevices of downturned photographs and the shadows behind her eyes.
Sarah sits next to him, silent and stoic the entire time. Eames is glad and finds that, for once, its not because she embarrasses him by breaking into random hysterics or infuriates him with made up stories of what this voice or that has said to her today- he is glad because it feels like for once, she’s actually there with him.
Its only when the tired looking woman in the grey suit clacks up to him in her stubby heels and haphazard bun that Eames begins to realize how irreversibly his mother’s death will affect them.
“Are you, ah,” She peeks at a distressingly plain manila envelope. “The son? Eames W-“
“Yeah, I’m Eames.” He cuts her off and angles his body between the woman and his sister. “This is my sister, Sarah.”
She nods and tells them about the benefits of possible foster care when Eames lays a hand on hers and says, with a conjured sad smile, that she must have the wrong information. He lies seamlessly, blending a tale of a distraught loving father who is on a plane heading for ‘home’ as they speak.
Under the blank stare of his older sister he charms this unwitting blonde woman twice around the block and she leaves with a promise that he will contact her if there’s anything she can do. She pays her condolences and tells him what a charming young man he is.
Eames never forgets his first.
---
Lying and pick-pocketing come to him as easy as breathing and while he realizes it’s hardly reputable it helps him keep his fists to himself. He learns that being invisible is more important than being intimidating. Eames opens up an unremarkable bank account with a swiped ID and some well-placed charm and stows his ‘earnings’ there.
Eames swears he’ll take care of Sarah. He’ll be all the family they need and they wont take shit from anybody.
He’s sure he can do it, despite her outbursts and occasionally vacant eyes, until the day he comes home to find her lying in a bathtub so cold she’s nearly blue and shaking so violently she looks epileptic.
Wrapped in her tinfoil blanket she tells him of her voices and though she seems exhausted from the effort she is barely heard under the scream of the ambulance.
Eames is sick in the nearest bin, retching violently when he’s told to stay in the waiting room and fill out paper work until the hospital can contact his parents.
He flips all the paperwork over, looking for a blank backside and scribbles the only information he can think of before depositing it at the Nurses station. No one pays him the slightest attention as he walks out.
‘Lloyds TSB Bank, account # 8829100345
Please Help Her’
---
Sometimes Eames surprises himself by waking up at all. The concept of being alive seems so abstract with his face is pressed against the floor of some dingy hole he’d passed out in the night before, calmed into oblivion by drink and drug and an apathy that he dares not examine too closely. He wakes up with the guilt and shame of the inevitability of his actions and he wonders how those are the only things he feels any more.
Eames marvels at the simplicity of the human mind. How willing and eager people are to recreate him entirely; apparently he isn’t the only one. It’s so easy to play along, lure them into a sense of security that they weave of their own accord, fitting him with problems they can fix and desires that reflect their own because deep down they all just want to be understood. Eames lets them play with him while he plays them and leaves before they realize their wallet is a little lighter than it started.
He fills his life with words that mean nothing to him. People who are only people in so much as they are means to an end. He lets his conquests direct his movements and by the time he’s twenty he’s seen every shore England has to offer. Eames steals from anyone he can get close enough to and he doesn’t discriminate. What he steals, whom he steals from, how he steals it; if it looks like he can get a good price for it he takes it.
The majority of his earnings are routed to a bank account he sets up and ties to his sister’s care under the guise of a nonprofit organization that has taken a special interest in her. He keeps just enough to get him to his next fix.
“What’cha got there?” A young woman leans against the railing next to him, her bold red lipstick paired with the subdued gold chain around her neck tells Eames everything he needs to know.
He stares down at the two tickets he swiped from the lad in the dark brown trench, the gentle lapping of the Thames whispering all the things he should do to disarm her, charm her, get her back to his flat and unmindful of her stylish grey purse.
“Tickets my dear.” He says simply, smiling at her from under his eyelashes.
“To where?” She asks, taking the bait and leaning closer.
He checks the tickets and says with a smile, “New York, apparently.”
“Don’t you know where you’re going?” She laughs, obviously assuming his interest in her has him flustered and forgetful.
“Almost never.” He supplies and the honesty feels foreign on his tongue.
Its painfully clear she’s in London for a limited time and is looking for someone just like Eames. He’s been here too long. These people are no longer a challenge, one carbon copy of the same depressingly boring copy. He smiles and gives her ‘his’ number, which is actually the number to the mobile of a man who propositioned him two nights ago.
“See you later,” She winks, sauntering off in a way that he’s sure the other bloke will love.
Eames contemplates the tickets, one in either hand and he feels like the world moves on without him. For this moment he feels as if the Thames is enough to drown out the busy sounds of a London perpetually caught up in itself. He takes London in, feeling for all the world like the single point of calm in a clamoring sea of movement.
He presses a kiss to the ticket in his left hand, closing his eyes against the dreary grey London afternoon. A breeze stirs his hair and he thinks of Sarah as it pulls the ticket from his fingers.
Eames clutches the lifeline in his right hand.
---
The States thrill Eames in ways he isn’t sure anyone else can comprehend. The sheer amount of space is mindboggling and there are so many people, all of them new and interesting in ways he’s itching to memorize. Eames has never felt so gloriously lost in a crowd. He makes his way from New York to Buffalo, breezing easily over the border for a stay in Toronto, and conning nearly an entire day cruise on their way back to Michigan. He finds himself in Chicago before he knows it and something, the people, the city, the lights, keeps him there the longest. He never carries more than a couple suit cases on him and ends up with a fantastically wonky array of clothing- a tweed jacket here, a burnt orange paisley shirt there, a pair of loafers two sizes too big for him (where did those come from?) but Eames thrives on the simplicity of it all.
In this world Eames is exotic, a stranger that people notice for just a moment before dismissing him as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. He robs them blind, a sticky fingered shadow that sets the bumbling police department on edge. He’s hired for independent thefts and warned not to cross the wrong people but Eames just smiles and assures them that if he does, they’ll never know.
The ladies are nice and the gents are rough and Eames never bothers to remember their names because they’ll never know his. He lives out of hotel rooms and occasionally sublets a room above this delightfully unreputable Laundromat where he plays (read: cheats) at poker.
Most of his earnings go back to London however; Eames is most comfortable leading a very Spartan lifestyle. Obtaining Sarah’s medical information is difficult for him but with the right money slipped to the right people he gets the updates he needs.
They think Eames is another voice in her head.
He writes her letters that he never sends and takes photographs that stay etched on undeveloped film rolls, memories left behind on bedside tables that get thrown away like so much trash by the hotel staff when he disappears.
Eames learns a lot from the people he meets and somewhere along the way he picks up the handy ability to pick virtually any lock. Sitting high above the perpetual hustle of the city below, Eames looks up at the stars and feels closer to them than ever. He reaches for the stars and swears they just brush his fingertips, cool and smooth and barely out of his reach.
When he doesn’t spend all night atop some high rise, taking himself apart to the pulse of the stars above, Eames convinces himself that he feels complete, that he’s happy; that no one feels entirely whole at 4am.
---
Eames’ first thought on that fateful day Arthur walks into his life and subsequently right into his hole in the wall hotel room is ‘this dumb Yank picked the wrong bloke.’ Which is quickly followed by the fleeting but potent ‘the burglars here certainly know how to dress.’
To his credit, Arthur appears fearless even when on the wrong side of a loaded 9 mm handgun and that is probably the only reason Eames doesn’t shoot him right then.
They are both rather calm about the situation. Eames keeps his gun trained on Arthur who, halfway through his introduction, inclines his head in a patronizing manner and tells him to put it away. Eames surprises himself by complying. Arthur starts on about dreams and a job and how he values the morally grey areas while Eames appreciates the cut of his suit and wonders vaguely if he should believe the other when he says he knows how Eames ‘gets by.’
“What I’m looking for is a partner,” Arthur’s tone matches his suit: strict, clean, precise.
“This isn’t the red-light district sweetheart, though I’m flattered all the same.” Eames teases, acutely aware of the cold press of the gun against his lower back.
That it takes Arthur a moment to blush is endearing in its own right.
“Look,” Arthur’s face is no-nonsense, brushing Eames’ comment off as if even suggesting something of the sort is beneath him. “The easiest way to explain this to you is to show you. I have a PASIV dev-“
Eames’ gun is trained on Arthur the second he bends to retrieve the silver suitcase at his feet. The glare he receives sends him right back to primary school and he lowers his weapon marginally.
“In this suitcase is a PASIV device,” Arthur explains, clicking the suitcase open and showing Eames a complicated set of wires and vials before slowly straightening. “It was developed by the government and utilizes a combination of anesthetic and sedative hypnotics which allows us to share dreams when connected through the same device.”
“So you’re from the government?” Eames questions, watching as Arthur walks right up to his terribly squeaky bed and judges it in the most blatantly obvious way Eames has ever seen anyone scrutinize anything, ever.
“Hardly.” Arthur looks like he wants to ask if Eames has any plastic wrap but apparently gets over it enough to set the open suitcase on the bed and pull out two long wires.
“I am self employed and very good at what I do. I’ve only just recently-“ Arthur barely skips a beat but its particularly noticeable to Eames. “Found myself in need of a new partner.”
“If you have been following me,” Eames gives him a look that plainly says he highly doubts this but will entertain the outlandish idea for the moment. “Then you know I’ve no problem with drugs. Why are you so insistent to show me here, alone, in my room? Why not downstairs with my poker mates. Maybe one of them’ll like it even better than me; make a better partner.”
Arthur’s look says he doesn’t appreciate the lewd connotation Eames gives the word.
“If I wanted to kill you I’d have done it by now Mister Eames and I wouldn’t,” Arthur pauses to unfasten a single cufflink, laying it on the inside of the suitcase so as to not touch any more of the admittedly distasteful bedding and rolls his sleeve up to expose his wrist; the rush Eames feels is familiar and entirely inappropriate. “Connect myself first.”
Eames watches from across the tiny room as Arthur presses the wire to his wrist and clamps it there, looking up with an expectation in his eyes that Eames has never had directed at him before. Perhaps that’s why he gets up and joins Arthur on the bed; why he allows the other to turn his palm up and trace his wrist with delicate fingers until he finds an appropriate place to stick Eames.
“If you’re lying, I’ll kill you.” Eames warns with a grin, pulling the gun out of his pants and setting it on the bedside table; it’s only funny because if Arthur is lying, he may never wake up to fulfill that warning.
Arthur looks at him as if he cannot quite figure out how Eames finds this funny before he presses the clear button in the center of the suitcase.
“Go to sleep Mister Eames.”
---
Eames wakes from the dream gasping for breath, wild eyed and exhilarated.
He feels every part of him as if it is new, tingling and fresh and so very pliable in a way he’s never dared to wish. When Arthur unhooks him Eames is too caught up with his own excitement to notice the small, satisfied smile that barely turns his lips up.
“That was brilliant. Absofuckinlutely brilliant.” Eames feels more alive than he has in years; rejuvenated and hyperaware of his surroundings.
“You picked it up quickly.” Arthur agrees, busily coiling the wires back into their respective cubbies. “I’ve never seen someone change so many aspects of themselves on the first try.”
“How-“ Eames notices he missed the cufflink’s adornment. “How much can I change?”
“If you’re as good as I think you are?” Arthur smirks at him and it looks positively wicked on his face. “Everything.”
When this sharp dressed stranger smirks at him he feels invincible.
---
Arthur won’t tell him what his last name is and no one can find it. Eames has the sneaking suspicion that Arthur knows he’s been trying to investigate him through his own means and feels distinctly like he’s being laughed at when every source comes up empty.
On his eleventh day of training, always in Arthur’s mind, Eames shakes Arthur entirely by changing his clothing into a sharp business suit and becoming the antithesis of every aspect of himself. Lighter, narrower, African; he looks amazing, nothing like himself, and he has free reign among the people that populate Arthur’s mind- projections, he reminds himself.
Arthur has explained the basics of extraction and Eames, curious to a fault, wants to know what secrets Arthur is hiding.
“Excuse me Miss,” Eames ventures, his voice unnaturally low but still unmistakably British. He wants to try everything out at once and even after spending weeks in Arthur’s dreams he still gets caught up in the excitement; Arthur wont say it, but he knows it’s his only downfall.
“Yes?” She has a voice that warbles, like she’s borrowing someone’s interpretation of what a woman should sound like.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find some information could you?” He asks, all charm and gallantry- just how the ladies in the waking world like him.
“What kind of information?” Her voice is guarded, as if she’s unused to anyone speaking to her but her eyes dart to the unmarked skyscraper to Eames’ left just as her hand smoothes against her pocket.
“Darling, all kinds.” Eames grins, falling into the easy role of pursuer.
She looks scandalized and he feels the projections stirring, taking notice of him and he wonders where he went wrong. Eames quickly says goodbye and slips into the building, narrowly avoiding several agitated businessmen on his way there.
The first thing he notices is that this is not a building at all, but a hollow shell of a building with staircases that wind as far as the eye can see. Eames is sure that nothing like this could exist in the real world.
In the middle of the room is Arthur, leaning his hip against a lavish glass table and staring at Eames as if he’s been waiting there for ages.
“Fancy seeing you here.” Eames smiles and in his mind his teeth are brilliant and perfect and he knows that this is exactly what Arthur sees.
“I’m sure.” Arthur fiddles with an electronic device Eames has never seen Arthur with before and it makes the telltale noises of a PDA shutting down.
“How did you know?” He inquires; needing to know where he went wrong.
There is a pause as Arthur slips the PDA into his pocket.
“It isn’t hard to predict what you’d want to do if you slipped away from me.” Arthur sighs, pointing the now familiar end of a pistol at Eames’ head.
“I guess I’ll just have to use a little more imagination then.” Eames smirks and feels his projection flicker before it disappears entirely, leaving him in his own disappointing skin.
Eames wakes up from dying for the eleventh time and wonders what bothers him more, that Arthur shot him or that he actually woke up.
---
The amount of time Eames spends at Arthur’s apartment is enough to warrant his moving his meager necessities to said residence. The prim and proper Point Man has resolutely refused to step foot back in Eames’ current hotel which is fine with Eames as Arthur seems particularly fond of proper lighting and comfortable socks. He sleeps on the couch and barely registers Arthur’s footsteps through the apartment any more.
Mostly, its because he’s exhausted. Training is nothing more than drug induced sleep and yet, Eames wakes up exhausted, fighting to keep his eyes open. He stays down for days at a time, connected to Arthur for hours on end in the real world. Fighting, hiding, conning, stealing. He finds that Arthur’s projections detect him when he flirts with them and he learns that one must observe the projections as fastidiously as one observes the target.
When Arthur pulls the needle from his wrist Eames is always just a little disappointed. He needs more time out of his own skin. He’s been himself his entire life and now, in that little silver box, there is a world where he can be anyone.
Arthur has other obligations. Never at any exact hour, for he indulges Eames as often as Eames sees fit to ask, but he is never idle- always moving from one task to the next. He usually disappears after Eames has collapsed on the couch, which he has deemed his makeshift bed, from exhaustion and comes back to find Eames hooked up to the PASIV device again. Sometimes he joins him, sometimes he lets the machine run its course, and sometimes the tosser gives him a kick that sends Eames sprawling all over the living room floor.
“Nice to see you too Arthur.” Eames grumbles from his position on the floor, glad he didn’t fall a little more to the right and crack his head on the coffee table.
“Stop working so hard,” Arthur says, setting a bag of Chinese food on the table without so much as looking at Eames.
There seems to be enough for two.
They weren’t exactly in the habit of buying food for each other but it certainly seems, as Arthur plucks his own fork from the small kitchen area and tosses a pair of chopsticks to the other side of the square dining table, that this is a meal for two.
His stomach reminds him, with an acidic twist, that he can’t remember the last time he ate.
“Are you going to eat or did I buy this nasty shrimp chow mein for nothing?” Arthur plucks the carton out by the little metal holder and sets it next to the chopsticks, as if shrimp chow mein is the most morally offensive thing in the room.
“Yes, darling.” Eames takes his place at their table.
---
“I think we’ve exhausted the better job opportunities in the immediate area.” Arthur ventures one day.
“Yes, I’ve been getting bored here as well.” Eames agrees, surrounded by the gutted remains of the remote that has never worked properly.
“Well,” Arthur sounds pleasantly surprised, like he expected a bit more of a fuss from the Forger. “Good then.”
“So,” Eames examines a flat metal piece of remote innards. “Where does your heart yearn for?”
Arthur has gotten quite used to Eames’ inadvertent charming and doesn’t even bother sending him annoyed looks anymore.
“Its best to stick to big cities. Better clientele, better jobs, better pay.” Arthur rattles off, having thought about this for the past week.
“How do you feel about New York?” He asks, handing Eames a paperclip when asked.
“It’s nice.” Eames shrugs.
“You’ve been?” Arthur blinks, surprised at the information.
“Are you surprised darling?” Eames grins and it showcases the stubble framing his face.
“I’m just asking.” Arthur hedges, ignoring the grinning Brit.
For a moment the only sounds in the apartment are those of Eames shuffling bits of remote around on the table.
“LaGuardia Airport was my first impression of America.” Eames tells the double A battery between his fingers.
“Oh.” Arthur says, for lack of anything better to say.
They don’t spend a lot of time talking about each other. In fact, for the inordinate amount of time they do spend together, they rarely share personal information beyond what one’s food preferences are. This feels suspiciously like Personal Information and yet, Arthur finds he doesn’t mind it so much.
“Have you… been anywhere else?” He asks, going for offhandedly interested.
Eames’ fingers still on the remote, his eyes drifting up to catch Arthur’s; Arthur looks away first.
“Everywhere, darling.” He makes it sound like they aren’t talking about the same thing. “Stayed in Buffalo for a bit, had my fill of Toronto. Took a very prosperous cruise to Michigan. All very beautiful places.”
“So, you don’t want to go back to New York?” Arthur ventures, his mind already turning to Los Angeles.
“You’re putting words in my mouth again.” Eames tuts, turning back to the task at hand.
“I am not. You’re not giving me an opinion,” Arthur adds testily. “Again.”
“I did give you an opinion, I said it was nice.” Eames says simply.
He can tell Arthur is contemplating how much it would set their working relationship back if Arthur were to choke him.
“Alright, so we’re going to New York.” The finality in his voice makes Eames smile; Arthur has an unhealthy need to control and plan every little thing.
“If that’s what you like, then that is where we’ll go.” Eames supplies, simple as choosing what flavor of Arthur’s yogurt he wants to steal. “I’m sure the view will be astounding.”
There is a silence that stretches between them until Arthur cant seem to hold the question behind his lips anymore and asks, “What view?” Pointing out that you can’t see anything from a plane.
“You would want to fly?” Eames asks, as if this had never occurred to him.
“Yes.” Arthur frowns at the Forger. “How else would we get there?”
“The train, perhaps?” Eames points out. There had been a time where he’d almost hopped a line to travel cross-country; instead, life had taken him here. “I’d like to pass through Indiana and the like, just to see it.”
“Cows. Corn. Cars.” Arthur ticks off each word on a separate finger. “There, we just did Indiana in under five seconds. What else can I sum up for you?”
“Really darling, when are you ever going to stop and just enjoy the ride?” Eames sighs, screwing the last bit of the remote together and clicking the little plastic back piece into place.
When he clicks the power button, the television obediently turns on.
“I don’t need an extra five hours of travel time to ‘enjoy the ride’.” Arthur sounds impressed despite himself.
“Then we can take a plane if that’s what you really want. I only suggested it because,” Eames swipes at his nose, debating whether he should finish that sentence. “They remind me of home, is all.”
Arthur stays there for a couple minutes, silently watching Eames flip mindlessly through channels. When he closes himself into his bedroom Eames figures he’s gone to book the plane tickets. He passes the time watching trashy television and trying to fit his lips around the different accents he hears. Dinner rolls around and Eames makes soup because he’s honestly that unmotivated and Arthur emerges when the smell wafts through the apartment. He trades Eames a piece of paper for a bowl of soup and leaves him in the kitchen. Eames turns the paper right side up as Arthur changes the TV from Real Housewives of New York to the news.
It’s a train ticket receipt for two.
---
Arthur goes about finding an apartment in the most painful of possible ways. They spend nearly two weeks hotel jumping until Arthur finally decides on a small two-bedroom apartment with wide windows and a breakfast nook. He insists that strategically, it’s a good place to be but Eames can tell that Arthur enjoys something about the layout as much as he enjoys the location.
When Arthur effectively moves more of his stuff into the second bedroom than Eames has to his name Arthur looks disappointed, noting that they may need to find another place. Eames just shrugs and points out that he didn’t have a bed to fill it with anyway. He insists that he doesn’t mind giving up the room and honestly, he doesn’t. Working with Arthur is the easiest thing Eames has ever done.
This return trip to New York presents Eames with the perfect opportunity to see the sights he’d never taken advantage of before and so he spends several nights identifying the tallest building he can break into.
Being so close to the edge of a thirty-story drop off doesn’t calm him anymore. The vast expanse of sky offered up to his fingertips lacks the taunting quality it once held. As much as he might like to reach out and grab those stars; to hold them between his palms until they cool enough to take them apart piece by piece, Eames finds he enjoys them as much when they sparkle just out of reach.
They don’t go under for leisure anymore.
Arthur spends as much time in his workroom as Eames spends wandering the streets. Eames learns all the back alleys, catalogues which Mafia works which part of town, and identifies the best Laundromat this side of 40th and somehow, he feels like Arthur already knows all of this. He walks through the streets at 4am, tempting the early morning to bring on that familiar sense of doubt and listlessness, just to see if it will appear after so long, only to find his feet have taken him back to their apartment.
Eames tries not to think about the way Arthur tiptoes around when he thinks Eames is asleep. Tries not to think of the way they know who will cook that night not based on what night it is but by some intrinsic knowledge of who is least tired. He tries not to think about Arthur’s eyes on him when he sets up intricate card games against himself- especially not late at night when his heart races with wild ideas involving almond-shaped eyes and mussed hair.
So he focuses his energy on their jobs, perfecting his forgeries and managing some insight into their pre-extraction meetings. When he manages a flawless female forge, blonde and perfectly buxom, during a job they had agreed he would forge as a tall Asian businessman Eames not only fools the mark but also teases Arthur to within an inch of his life. After that Arthur, more often than not, lets him choose his own forges.
They fall into an easy routine and if Arthur notices that Eames buys groceries for the both of them, even the expensive deli cheese that Arthur nibbles on by the slice, he doesn’t say anything.
“You know,” Arthur picks up a radio that looks like its seen better days- about five years ago. “People throw this stuff out for a reason.”
Eames assures him he’s working on it over the crinkling of the grocery bag.
“We could just… buy a new one.” Arthur points out because he knows how much Eames gets paid and its fairly obvious that they could furnish the entire apartment with brand new furniture on his cut alone and not make too great a dent in his bank account.
“Or I can fix that one.” Eames plucks the radio off the nook and plops down on the couch he won off a poker game a few nights ago.
“But its garbage.” Arthur says, without a hint of apology.
“Darling,” Eames unscrews the back. “Not everything that’s broken is garbage.”
“But you could buy a new one.” Arthur presses, never one to be deterred.
“There are more important things to spend my money on.” Eames shrugs, taking it in stride.
He knows Arthur knows where his money goes. Arthur has never told him as much, but Eames values him enough to overestimate a little.
---
“When did you learn to cook?” Arthur asks as he rinses the dishes in the sink.
“I’m still learning, pet.” Eames says into his wine glass.
“I’m serious,” Arthur sighs and puts the dishes in the strainer. “That didn’t even taste like a vegetable.”
“One of these day’s we’ll take a vacation and I’ll make you fresh fish.” Eames swills the wine in his glass, watching the bend of Arthur’s exposed elbow. “There’s nothing like eating a fish you’ve caught.”
The look on Arthur’s face when he turns around says that ‘vacation’ is not the word he’d use to describe such an outing.
Eames evades the question, and any further looks, by wandering over to the couch.
“Let’s see what rubbish is on the television tonight,” Eames mumbles to himself, clicking the television on.
If he’s honest, he is more aware of Arthur slipping into the workroom than the channels he’s flipping past. Usually, after dinner, Arthur would come sit by him and wrestle the remote out of his hands, force them to watch the 11 o’clock news until Eames stole it back and flipped to something more entertaining but apparently, he has more pressing matters to attend to. Even after a dinner that Eames put admittedly, too much work into. Eames resolves not to pout.
Arthur calls from the other room, “What was that stupid movie you wanted to go see?”
“Why, darling? Are we actually going out tonight?” Eames calls over his shoulder in a very unpouty way.
Arthur comes out of the room juggling his laptop and several cables in one hand and his wine glass in the other, sporting his patented unamused Arthur face. His mocking laughter is interrupted by a fierce hiccup that surprises Arthur and causes Eames’ smile to spread like wildfire.
“Not a word, Eames.” Arthur warns, turning his back to the Forger and attempting to hook the wires up. “What was the movie?”
“The Losers.” Eames gets comfortable on the couch, admiring the fit of Arthur’s trousers. “That was two words, by the by.”
Satisfied with the wires, Arthur connects them to his laptop, perching on the edge of the couch and typing in something that makes the TV flicker blue and then go black. He dims the laptop screen and settles back into the couch as a movie begins to play.
“Arthur,” Eames looks at the other once he realizes what’s playing on their television. “This movie came out last Friday.”
An eyebrow is raised in his direction as Arthur asks, “Your point is?”
Eames has to admit, his point is entirely unimportant.
It starts around midnight, the gentle nodding of Arthur’s head, and the second time Eames has to press Arthur’s wine glass back into his fingers he decides its best to take the glass away entirely. He barely protests and Eames shushes him with a friendly arm slung around his shoulders and a false promise to give it back in a minute. As many times as Eames has tried this particular tactic Arthur has never let him get away with it until tonight.
Bodies pressed side by side, Arthur’s head lolling to rest on the swell of his shoulder, Eames swears the neighbors must hear his heartbeat; how can Arthur not?
When Arthur’s snide remarks subside to less than one per minute Eames rubs his thumb against Arthur’s shoulder to see if he’s awake. He barely acknowledges Eames’ movement.
“Are you tired?” Eames asks only because Arthur hates to be told what he is even if he is dozing against his partner’s shoulder.
He makes a negative sound before mumbling, “You wanted to watch the movie.”
“No, I wanted to take you out,” Eames points out.
Arthur mumbles, “Same thing,” and Eames licks his lips, debating whether he wants to get into this argument with Arthur. The silence settles around them, no space available to settle between, and Eames realizes he can’t remember the last twenty minutes of the film but can catalogue every derisive comment Arthur’s made. When Arthur falls quiet for a whole five minutes Eames’ mouth opens of its own accord.
“I should take you out kitten,” Eames smoothes his hand over the top of Arthur’s head. “You spend too much time cooped up in that room.”
“I don’t want to go out,” Arthur’s voice is slurred with sleep and the influence of the wine that got them in this position.
“You’d want to go out with me,” Eames insists and the fall of Arthur’s eyelashes against his flushed cheeks makes him bold enough to brush his lips over Arthur’s soft forehead. “I’d take you to a proper restaurant. Woo you with good conversation and fine wines- not that you need any more of that. We’d go to that show you’ve been eyeing.”
“Sp’derman,” Arthur supplies sleepily, indulging in a decidedly un-Arthur like urge to nuzzle against Eames’ stubbly jaw.
“Yes, that one.” He nods absently; the smile spreading across his face feels so much bigger than him.
Eames thinks maybe Arthur has fallen asleep until he mumbles a barely audible, “M’fine right here.”
Eames thinks, as they fall asleep on the couch, that Arthur may be right; other people would only get in the way.
---
The first time Arthur sleeps in Eames’ bed, otherwise known as the couch, is also the last time. It leaves him with a crick in his neck and he bitches Eames out for days for letting him fall asleep like that. Interestingly enough, he never raises one word of objection to the fact that Eames let him fall asleep in his arms.
The first time Eames sleeps in Arthur’s bed is the night they get caught in a miserable combination of rain and hail after nearly seventeen hours of gathering intel on the most boring woman on Earth. They sprint up the stairs to their apartment and Eames’ mind, previously only alert enough to want to nurse a bottle of vodka on his couch, catches up to the movements of the man in front of him, steadily stripping article after article of sopping clothing off before he’s even in the door. Arthur is babbling on about something Eames would like to care about but the sight of that simple, black tie draped across the arm of his couch, his bed, hits him with a pang of longing so intense he has no idea how to cope. He can hardly feel his fingers, his clothing plastered to him so as to leave nothing to the imagination, and he’s frozen in the foyer obsessing over a tie.
He can see Arthur lying naked in his arms, brilliant and misted with droplets of rain that Eames wants to kiss away one by one until Arthur knows how much Eames wants him every moment of every day.
“Come on,” Arthur growls impatiently, ripping Eames from his daydream and he can see him climb into bed from his spot in the foyer. He knows in that moment, that nothing could make him move faster.
Eames rips his clothes off with blue tinged fingers, shaking from the cold and a desire so intense it makes him trip over his own trousers. He slips under the covers and lies there, knees bent and fingertips a hair away from Arthur’s as they both catch their breath.
He’s hard. He’s so hard and Arthur is so close and Eames wants to touch him. Wants to press his shivering fingers to Arthur’s stomach and leech the warmth out of him so he can get to work warming every last inch of Arthur’s body with his own. He wants to touch him so much he’s paralyzed by it.
But Arthur is talking again, slow and subdued but perfectly professional in a way only Arthur could be while in his underwear with a similarly dressed Eames and he knows he’s lost his chance. Perhaps he never had a chance to begin with. He nods and tries to keep up with what Arthur is saying but they generate a heady warmth under the same blanket and soon he cant remember whole portions of what Arthur has said, just the rhythm of his voice and the way his fingers feel when entwined in his.
He falls asleep to the sound of Arthur’s voice and, when he wakes the next morning, Arthur curled intimately around him in a way that bespeaks activities that definitely did not occur, Eames wonders when he gave up being lonely and selfish for being happy.
---
Eames is saved the trouble of asking where he should sleep the next night when he passes by Arthur’s bedroom and spies his pillow on the left side of the bed. He checks the side of the couch for his blanket but it is nowhere to be found. Arthur doesn’t say anything about it and neither does Eames.
[Part ii]