Fic: When We Swam (1/3)
Title: When We Swam
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: R for violence
Summary: Cobb gets a lesson about Buddhist theology, Arthur always needs to be 17 moves ahead, and Eames doesn't know why.
Words: 11,186
Author's Notes: So once upon a time I put a up a thing at
and bookshop won my auction, and then she terrified me by letting me do whatever I wanted. So, like always, this isn't the fic I meant to write, but it is the fic I wrote, so. Uh. ::kicks dirt::: A billion thanks and a billion cakes to sorrynotsorry , who read this story so many times for me and helped me sew everything together. And thanks for not letting me name it "Oh Juanita." Also, thanks to the giant box of Buddhism-related books that my parents shipped me last year. This is probably not what they meant for me to do with them, though.
“First, there is a mountain.”
Arthur is making a low sound in his throat, and it’s one that Eames has never heard before. Maybe the sedative isn’t working, he thinks, if Arthur can make that sound, but Arthur’s eyes are blinking, awake, and glittering with tears. It’s a sob, a singular desperate cry, and Arthur has his face buried in his hands.
Eames doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t.
A minute passes and Arthur scrubs his hand over his face and finally notices Eames. His face is flushed, but Arthur doesn’t look ashamed, even as a few more tears leak out. His breathing is unnaturally regular, and Eames just looks at him. His shoulders are still, the chocolate waistcoat rumpled over a white collared shirt and dark slacks. Eames opens his mouth but the silence is too thick.
Cobb wakes up then, and pulls out his IV as he turns to Arthur, poised to speak, but Arthur beats him to it. Eames is expecting some sort of explosion, but.
“Jesus Christ, Cobb,” is in fact all he says, rolled up shirt sleeves and his eyes two angry sparks, before he storms out of the work room.
Cobb is too fucking broken for Eames to do any more than look at him, so he leaves.
-
Arthur is stalking away from their warehouse, cigarette in hand, and Eames can see the angry lines of his body.
“Arthur!” he calls out, and Arthur spins around sharply.
“Eames, this really isn’t the time.”
“Time for what?” and for a second he’s genuinely puzzled. Then he notices the lean of his own body, how he is slowly moving in towards Arthur.
“This isn’t really what I came out here to talk about,” he says, straightening.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” and the way Arthur spits out the word makes Eames pause.
“So what do you want to talk about?”
“You need to stop…this.” His hands flap a little at Eames. “The flirting is fine, but I already said no, we are not going out, so stop leaning and touching me all the goddamn time. It’s not very professional.”
“One, I’ve been trying. It just seems so natural, though.” Eames laughs. “Two, you said ‘not in this lifetime,’ and we’ve both died at least three times since then. And three, I need a better reason than haughty disdain. Can’t sleep with your colleagues?” Eames is trying to loom, leaning up against the brick wall of the warehouse and right over Arthur’s personal space, just like he’d been warned not to.
“I’m not against sleeping with co-workers,” Arthur counters, and Eames rolls his eyes.
“Sure. Just against sleeping with me, then?”
And Arthur shrugs, and there’s a dark heat in his brown eyes, and it’s something Eames has wanted to see up close for a long time. “We don’t fall in love,” he says, and then sucks deeply on his cigarette.
He exhales, smoke blowing right up over Eames’ face. “That’s a little presumptuous, even for you,” he says into the cloud.
“I’m a chess grand-fucking-master, Mr. Eames,” Arthur says, punctuating the air with the lit end of his cigarette. “Every move I make is planned for any number of possible responses. I know what’s going to happen. I know you. And I don’t do attachments.”
“I can do casual. I’d be more than happy to do casual with you, my lovely Arthur.”
“You don’t do casual,” he says, matter-of-fact, cigarette in hand, and he’s so nonchalant Eames is overwhelmed. Arthur often makes him feel out of his depth, as though he’s disrupted a perfectly still pool of water.
“I don’t usually. I can break my rule for some non-committal, no-strings-attached, incredibly filthy sex with you. Seems like no real hardship.”
Arthur breathes out smoke. “Fine.”
Eames is a little stunned by how easy that was, but he didn’t spend the last two weeks flirting with Arthur because he didn’t notice mutual attraction, after all. “That’s it?”
“That’s the one rule. We don’t fall in love.” Arthur drops the cigarette onto the asphalt and crushes it under $500 Italian red leather shoes. He walks back toward the door to the warehouse and then pauses.
“And this is my rule, not one of yours. You don’t get to break it.”
-
They’re in the Czech Republic working with some secret police against some other secret police, a routine extraction, and it’s autumn. The winds grow chilled quickly, and Cobb seems to be able to get it together enough that there aren’t any more incidents in the warehouse.
Arthur doesn’t bother to explain the one Eames has witnessed, and Eames knows better than to pry. He’d rather do his own reconnaissance, so he asks to go under with Cobb, to have him check out his progress in the forgeries so far. He wants a glimpse of whatever Arthur saw.
Arthur just shoots him a look that lets him know that the man is on to whatever he’s scheming.
Cobb’s mind is rather placid until Eames forges into Arthur as a warm up. His forge of Arthur looks perfect if he doesn’t move, but when he takes a step forward it’s all wrong.
“Eames,” Cobb says evenly. “What’re you doing right now?”
“Experimenting,” he says with a grin.
“Well,” says Cobb, “stop. You’re not going to discover anything like that.”
And Eames doesn’t.
-
On the question of why:
Cobb needed money. He needed so much money, to send James and Phillipa to school, to go into their college funds, to keep himself out of prison, to pay the lawyers.
Arthur worked. He was a pointman, he was Cobb’s pointman, and he was the best.
He’d once had everything he’d needed. And then Mal jumped.
Arthur worked because that was what he had left.
-
Arthur walks around in slim-fitting peacoats or deliciously soft knit scarves, and Eames spends his time studying for the task at hand and thinking about slowly peeling off Arthur’s outerwear. It takes two days from their talk, but Arthur strides over at the end of the day and says, ‘I’ve made us reservations for dinner.”
Eames isn’t sure what that means, but he rolls with it.
In the evening, they walk out of the bricked building, and Arthur’s pale skin goes pink in the wind.
“So, are we going on a date?”
“Yes. Is this a problem?” Arthur looks over at him and there’s a hint of a smile on his lips.
“I just didn’t think you were into romance, what with your rules and all.”
Arthur’s face breaks into a full smile then. “What do you mean? Is my rule ‘no dates?’”
Eames shakes his head, incredulous, and then grabs Arthur’s right hand in his left one. It’s cold and feels delicate, though he’s seen Arthur punch through wood in the real before.
Arthur keeps smiling, and he has dimples, and Eames wants to see more of them. Then he thinks, that’s a dangerous path to go down.
The dinner is pleasant, and Eames can’t help but feel relaxed, because he’s already won this game - there’s no need to seduce because he knows he’ll be getting what he wants at the end. It’s easy now, the fight has gone out of them both, for just a minute. It feels like a breath of fresh air, like somehow they are both just two men, out on a date, rather than internationally wanted mind criminals who were most definitely going to fuck in a matter of hours.
And back in the hotel, Arthur kisses him slowly, sensually by the door. His hands are precise, running across his chest, and thumbs ghosting over his hip bones under his pants.
He’s slow, and measured, and Eames is totally undone.
-
They wake up curled up together, Arthur’s back pressed against Eames’ chest, and when Eames stirs and stretches, he sees Arthur’s entire body go sharp; his arm curling under the pillow for what is probably his gun.
“You told me to stay,” Eames says, voice rough with sleep, and Arthur relaxes again. It’s fascinating to watch - Arthur so stripped, just wearing boxers - the ripple in his muscles. “Oh.”
“Yes, well,” Eames says, and swings his legs off the bed to put his trousers on. “It’s still quite early. I’m sure you could sneak in a few more hours.”
Arthur blinks at him but doesn’t move for a long moment, then his arm darts out for his totem.
“Oh, was last night that good?” Eames asks as he buttons up his shirt.
“Fuck you,” Arthur says, and he rolls over on his back.
“Maybe next time,” Eames says, and Arthur grins, apparently satisfied by the weight of the die in his hand.
“Yeah, maybe.”
-
What is the nature of suffering, you might ask, wondering:
Dukkha is the first Noble Truth, the truth of suffering. Dukkha tells us at all life is suffering, from birth to death, there will be suffering. This is a fact that Arthur accepts, wholeheartedly, early in his life, even before he ever read a Sutra or sat under a bodhi tree. It is a truth he feels he has known forever - that life will bring him suffering.
-
Nothing is awkward that day as they work, and Eames thinks maybe Arthur is as overcautious about sex as he is about everything else. He’s surprised that he didn’t have to hand over a full health report, get checked out for every STI known to man, maybe get a few vaccines, before Arthur let him get that close.
Arthur’s exactly the same as he always is, professional, slightly antagonistic. His sleeves are rolled up, his collar is undone, and he looks just the same as he always did.
Eames thinks he should be glad. But part of him wanted to watch the tips of Arthur’s ears to turn pink, for him to stutter that morning upon seeing Eames. He wants to see Arthur ruffled. He wants some acknowledgement, maybe, of the violence that inhabits their arms and the way it grows when they’re twined together.
-
The job takes time.
It’s been a month since Eames has slept alone, he realizes, when he wakes up with his chin hooked over Arthur’s shoulder, his arm slung over his waist. Arthur’s mouth is open just a little bit, and Eames can hear the heavy noises of his breathing and starts to count.
Arthur’s eyes snap open in seven seconds.
“Good morning, handsome,” Eames says into his ear and kisses the back of Arthur’s neck.
Arthur frowns. “We should try your room for a while,” he says. “Or maybe not stay together at night.”
He squirms but doesn’t free himself when Eames simply tightens his claim.
“What, can you also not cohabitate?”
“It’s not that I can’t. I only have the one rule.”
“Well, then what is it?”
“I like my apartment.”
“You don’t have to move into my flat! I could come to yours!”
“I like my apartment.”
“Ah.”
“The job is done in a couple days, anyway.”
“Tossing me out?”
Arthur shrugs, skin sliding over skin. “I just figured you’d have someplace to be.”
Eames takes what he thinks is a hint.
-
This is what Eames knows:
The job only went wrong once, working with Arthur, and it certainly wasn’t Arthur’s fault.
But the woman who walked straight through the dream had felt just like someone he’d known.
Eames knows, knew, is knowing, had the knowledge, that this was impossible.
And yet.
-
Eames leaves. He means to tell Arthur at the end of the job. He tries to explain in the airport, but Arthur’s shoulders just roll, smooth, in acceptance of whatever Eames will tell him. Somehow, that makes him the angriest.
It doesn’t last long - he takes a job, and he misses Arthur’s dossiers, his crisp e-mails, and his professionalism. No one on his team wears a suit, so Eames takes to wearing one, because someone has to be presentable enough to meet a client.
Within a month, he is missing Arthur’s long fingers and the way his lip would curl up when Eames would wrap his arms around him, a cross between a smile and a snarl.
He calls Arthur, once, before this team goes under, and Arthur answers and sounds incredibly far away.
“I think I’m headed your way soon,” Eames says.
“Okay,” says Arthur. “I look forward to it.” Eames takes what he can get.
-
The trouble with dream espionage, of course, is that it so fantastical that the small handful of people who practice it rise to fame incredibly quickly. There are always dangers to being an elite in any business, but when your business is already at the seam between illegal and magic, then you have to take extra precautions.
Love, or the facsimile of love, or the pretense of love, makes Eames soft where he doesn’t expect it.
He gets caught.
-
But, you ask, who are the actors here?
They met at a conference of university professors, scientists, conmen, and soldiers. It promised to be an uncomfortable three days in a hotel ballroom, and there was always a fight happening - the personalities all grated up against each other like metals.
The ballroom hosting the event is crammed with tables and booths hawking ideas, products, and personnel. Dangerous chemicals bubbled all around.
The convention was a secret, of course, which meant anyone who had ever dream-shared was there. The Cobbs, of course, were stars there, showing off their research in dream building. They had a table covered with maps, mazes, and scale models, and their booth was crowded with psychiatrists and a few generals.
And then there was Eames, standing in a small booth space with two folding chairs, a card table, and himself in an ill-fitting suit.
And then there was Arthur, stiff, brusque, in uniform, and Eames couldn’t help but call out and tease as he walked past without a second glance. The man’s face had a magnificent bone structure, and Eames liked, even then, to consider himself a connoisseur of the finer things.
“What is it that you like, then?” Eames had been born a salesman, and he was better at selling himself than he was at stealing (and his skill at stealing was considerable).
Arthur turned and looked at him, and the first thing Eames registered was how young the military man was. Then he noted how still his face was as he swept an appraising eye over Eames.
“Hot coffee,” Arthur said, “You got any of that in your booth?” He walked over, his moves measured and purposed.
Eames laughed. “No, no, that’s not what I’m selling at all.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’re selling much.” Arthur leaned on the rickety card table Eames had set up, elbows down, and he peered past Eames’ bulk. “Unless that PASIV is for sale. It looks like a version 2 model.” Arthur eyed him again. “I’m guessing the serial number for it is 965-248-1026.”
Eames stared, but he didn’t gape.
Arthur was relaxed as he stood up and there was a smile in the crinkle of his eyes. He extended a hand, “I’m Arthur.”
Eames took it. It might have been a monumental moment for both of them. “Eames. Just Arthur?”
The hand shake was firm, and Arthur’s hand was pleasantly cool and dry in the convention room. This detail Eames remembered.
“You can call me Lieutenant if you’d like. So, are demonstrations free?”
“For you, lovely? Of course.” Eames caught himself, and wondered why he was flirting at all with a man who could either easily kill him or have him arrested. Eames never squandered a good opportunity, however, and he wasn’t about to stop being reckless.
They went under together.
-
The job had gone well, but the team doesn’t sweep the room effectively, doesn’t do something right, because whatever they’d missed led straight to Eames.
They catch him on his way to customs in Los Angeles, and he can’t even shoot anyone because he’s in a fucking airport. The universe is a cruel place, he thinks, Arthur’s lecture about karmic balances playing out in the back of his brain as he’s shoved into the trunk of a car.
He can take a beating like a champ. He just doesn’t want to take it this time. He wants it to be over with, he wants to be sleeping next to Arthur in whatever kind of luxurious and expensive bed the man might own. He folds instantly, selling out his entire old team (because those fucks deserved it), and gets to sleep on a cot instead of being handcuffed to a pipe. The next day he’s confused, but realizes the thugs aren’t just working for his old mark.
“Who’s your pointman?” they ask.
Eventually, he tells them about Arthur. He wants them to stop. He needs those fingers. It’s not love.
-
“I talked,” Eames pants out when Arthur rips the tape off his mouth. The part of his brain that can still think rational thoughts is buzzing loudly with the need to apologize, but really, how could he. What would he even say?
Arthur shrugs and begins picking the handcuffs. “Did they ask about Cobb?”
“No.”
“Well, I shot everyone here. So it shouldn’t be a problem for me for a while.”
“All of them?” Eames is lying flat on his back and Arthur’s hands are slowly pressing him, checking for bones shattered. “There were at least twelve.”
“I would have burned the place down, Eames, if I thought it would have gotten you out.” Arthur shifts, crouched down.
“So is this why you can’t fall in love? It makes you weak, like me?”
“Jesus, Eames.”
“I don’t even know why you bothered coming after me.”
“You’re…you’re my friend, alright?”
“And this is what you do for friends, then? Kill a dozen people, try to burn down a sky scraper?” His voice has rocks in it, and it’s hard to hit the correct pitch for incredulity, but he scrapes toward it anyway.
“I don’t have very many friends,” Arthur says. It’s not a parry or a block, and he says it so bluntly that Eames shuts his mouth instead of sniping at him.
“I don’t think you’re bleeding anywhere internally,” Arthur says, standing up from his crouch. “What would you like to do?”
“I’d like to get pissed drunk and then fuck you stupid,” Eames says, and Arthur sighs, but he’s also smiling.
-
What Eames does instead is pass out for a full day, with Arthur checking on every few hours and making sure he hydrates. He’s ordered room service for both of them by the time Eames staggers into the couch area of their suite. He’d expected an apartment but a hotel would do just as well.
Arthur is reading the Wall Street Journal and looks up. “I got you a cheeseburger.”
Eames pulls the cover off his plate and settles down on the couch next to Arthur to shove food in his mouth.
Arthur keeps reading, glasses that Eames has never seen perched on the tip of his nose.
“When did you start using reading glasses?” Eames asks in between hurried bites.
“When was the last time you ate? Should I have gotten soup?” Arthur is still reading.
“What day is it?”
Arthur glances down at his watch. “Thursday the 26th.”
“Probably about three days. Nothing major.”
Arthur snorts lightly. “I’d slow down there then. Your stomach’s not going to be happy.”
Eames pops the last of his burger into his mouth and shrugs. “I’ll deal.”
And Arthur is sitting there, not looking at Eames, shimmering, back lit, and fuzzy in his peripheral vision like a ghost.
-
More on the nature of suffering:
The second Noble Truth explains suffering’s origin, of Dukkha Samudaya. Suffering comes from attachment, the want of things, yen for earthly pleasures and a craving for existence.
Though Arthur likes to think he lives in the higher of the ten worlds, perhaps in Knowledge, and that he is above the need for happiness, something base, it is always Dukkha Samudaya that knocks him on his ass. He always finds attachment, or something to want. It always slips out of his hands.
-
Arthur has good odds against six men when he’s unarmed, but not against ten. He’s been warned, but he didn’t anticipate a home invasion. He’ll never be that far from a gun again.
Eames hates unnecessary risks, so once he learns of Arthur’s abduction, he waits until the kidnappers leave.
“Is this why?” Eames asks as he gently unties the ropes around Arthur’s bony wrists, and Arthur spits blood out on the concrete floor.
“No.”
“So you told them everything, right?”
“No,” he says, but it comes out like a low moan.
Arthur slumps over onto himself and Eames carefully lifts him up from the armpits. Arthur puts his whole weight on him and groans.
“Eames, please,” Arthur whines out through gritted teeth, and for the second time in their professional partnership, Eames sees tears welling up in Arthur’s eyes.
He tries to set Arthur down carefully, but he doesn’t know what’s wrong and Arthur breathes in small pants through his mouth and makes a broken sound when he hits the floor again.
Eames isn’t a doctor.
“Why did they leave you alive?” he asks in an effort to keep Arthur awake, and Arthur’s smile is all blood smeared over teeth.
“Slowed down my heart when they took a break. Thought they killed me.”
“Arthur.”
“I need a hospital, I think.”
“Arthur. That’s not a thing you can do.”
If Arthur could shrug at him, he would have. Eames can see it glinting in the pain-tightened corners of his eyes. “I spent some time in Denver, with some monks. Learned more in Japan.” The words are hissed out.
“Did they hit you in the mouth or is that internal?”
Eames calls Cobb, even though Cobb isn’t a doctor either.
In the waiting room of the ER, Eames spends his time hating Arthur and Arthur’s rule and his stupid, stupid mouth that curved into a grin the second he had crept into that room. He’s sick of rooting out what keeps Arthur ensconced in a labyrinth, of trying to find him, of reaching dead ends.
Challenges are all well and good, but Arthur is right - he doesn’t do casual very well. He is really too selfish for it, really, too needful to own the whole of something. If it isn’t all his, then eventually, he doesn’t want it anymore.
That’s what he tells himself.
-
Here is the end of a story you haven’t heard yet:
The room was silent, and Arthur lurched out of his seat and toppled over immediately, right into an already-awake Cobb.
“Whoa there,” Cobb said. “It’s been. It’s been a couple weeks.”
Mal suddenly enveloped them both, a stream of French and a few tears and her arms everywhere surrounding them. Arthur sagged into them.
“We’re taking him home,” Mal snapped, and the major didn’t argue. Luiz watched and just nodded a greeting, which earned him a weary salute from Arthur.
“You can be Beatrice next time, if you want,” Arthur said into Cobb's neck, and Cobb smiled.
01 . 02 . 03
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: R for violence
Summary: Cobb gets a lesson about Buddhist theology, Arthur always needs to be 17 moves ahead, and Eames doesn't know why.
Words: 11,186
Author's Notes: So once upon a time I put a up a thing at
and bookshop won my auction, and then she terrified me by letting me do whatever I wanted. So, like always, this isn't the fic I meant to write, but it is the fic I wrote, so. Uh. ::kicks dirt::: A billion thanks and a billion cakes to sorrynotsorry , who read this story so many times for me and helped me sew everything together. And thanks for not letting me name it "Oh Juanita." Also, thanks to the giant box of Buddhism-related books that my parents shipped me last year. This is probably not what they meant for me to do with them, though.
“First, there is a mountain.”
Arthur is making a low sound in his throat, and it’s one that Eames has never heard before. Maybe the sedative isn’t working, he thinks, if Arthur can make that sound, but Arthur’s eyes are blinking, awake, and glittering with tears. It’s a sob, a singular desperate cry, and Arthur has his face buried in his hands.
Eames doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t.
A minute passes and Arthur scrubs his hand over his face and finally notices Eames. His face is flushed, but Arthur doesn’t look ashamed, even as a few more tears leak out. His breathing is unnaturally regular, and Eames just looks at him. His shoulders are still, the chocolate waistcoat rumpled over a white collared shirt and dark slacks. Eames opens his mouth but the silence is too thick.
Cobb wakes up then, and pulls out his IV as he turns to Arthur, poised to speak, but Arthur beats him to it. Eames is expecting some sort of explosion, but.
“Jesus Christ, Cobb,” is in fact all he says, rolled up shirt sleeves and his eyes two angry sparks, before he storms out of the work room.
Cobb is too fucking broken for Eames to do any more than look at him, so he leaves.
-
Arthur is stalking away from their warehouse, cigarette in hand, and Eames can see the angry lines of his body.
“Arthur!” he calls out, and Arthur spins around sharply.
“Eames, this really isn’t the time.”
“Time for what?” and for a second he’s genuinely puzzled. Then he notices the lean of his own body, how he is slowly moving in towards Arthur.
“This isn’t really what I came out here to talk about,” he says, straightening.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” and the way Arthur spits out the word makes Eames pause.
“So what do you want to talk about?”
“You need to stop…this.” His hands flap a little at Eames. “The flirting is fine, but I already said no, we are not going out, so stop leaning and touching me all the goddamn time. It’s not very professional.”
“One, I’ve been trying. It just seems so natural, though.” Eames laughs. “Two, you said ‘not in this lifetime,’ and we’ve both died at least three times since then. And three, I need a better reason than haughty disdain. Can’t sleep with your colleagues?” Eames is trying to loom, leaning up against the brick wall of the warehouse and right over Arthur’s personal space, just like he’d been warned not to.
“I’m not against sleeping with co-workers,” Arthur counters, and Eames rolls his eyes.
“Sure. Just against sleeping with me, then?”
And Arthur shrugs, and there’s a dark heat in his brown eyes, and it’s something Eames has wanted to see up close for a long time. “We don’t fall in love,” he says, and then sucks deeply on his cigarette.
He exhales, smoke blowing right up over Eames’ face. “That’s a little presumptuous, even for you,” he says into the cloud.
“I’m a chess grand-fucking-master, Mr. Eames,” Arthur says, punctuating the air with the lit end of his cigarette. “Every move I make is planned for any number of possible responses. I know what’s going to happen. I know you. And I don’t do attachments.”
“I can do casual. I’d be more than happy to do casual with you, my lovely Arthur.”
“You don’t do casual,” he says, matter-of-fact, cigarette in hand, and he’s so nonchalant Eames is overwhelmed. Arthur often makes him feel out of his depth, as though he’s disrupted a perfectly still pool of water.
“I don’t usually. I can break my rule for some non-committal, no-strings-attached, incredibly filthy sex with you. Seems like no real hardship.”
Arthur breathes out smoke. “Fine.”
Eames is a little stunned by how easy that was, but he didn’t spend the last two weeks flirting with Arthur because he didn’t notice mutual attraction, after all. “That’s it?”
“That’s the one rule. We don’t fall in love.” Arthur drops the cigarette onto the asphalt and crushes it under $500 Italian red leather shoes. He walks back toward the door to the warehouse and then pauses.
“And this is my rule, not one of yours. You don’t get to break it.”
-
They’re in the Czech Republic working with some secret police against some other secret police, a routine extraction, and it’s autumn. The winds grow chilled quickly, and Cobb seems to be able to get it together enough that there aren’t any more incidents in the warehouse.
Arthur doesn’t bother to explain the one Eames has witnessed, and Eames knows better than to pry. He’d rather do his own reconnaissance, so he asks to go under with Cobb, to have him check out his progress in the forgeries so far. He wants a glimpse of whatever Arthur saw.
Arthur just shoots him a look that lets him know that the man is on to whatever he’s scheming.
Cobb’s mind is rather placid until Eames forges into Arthur as a warm up. His forge of Arthur looks perfect if he doesn’t move, but when he takes a step forward it’s all wrong.
“Eames,” Cobb says evenly. “What’re you doing right now?”
“Experimenting,” he says with a grin.
“Well,” says Cobb, “stop. You’re not going to discover anything like that.”
And Eames doesn’t.
-
On the question of why:
Cobb needed money. He needed so much money, to send James and Phillipa to school, to go into their college funds, to keep himself out of prison, to pay the lawyers.
Arthur worked. He was a pointman, he was Cobb’s pointman, and he was the best.
He’d once had everything he’d needed. And then Mal jumped.
Arthur worked because that was what he had left.
-
Arthur walks around in slim-fitting peacoats or deliciously soft knit scarves, and Eames spends his time studying for the task at hand and thinking about slowly peeling off Arthur’s outerwear. It takes two days from their talk, but Arthur strides over at the end of the day and says, ‘I’ve made us reservations for dinner.”
Eames isn’t sure what that means, but he rolls with it.
In the evening, they walk out of the bricked building, and Arthur’s pale skin goes pink in the wind.
“So, are we going on a date?”
“Yes. Is this a problem?” Arthur looks over at him and there’s a hint of a smile on his lips.
“I just didn’t think you were into romance, what with your rules and all.”
Arthur’s face breaks into a full smile then. “What do you mean? Is my rule ‘no dates?’”
Eames shakes his head, incredulous, and then grabs Arthur’s right hand in his left one. It’s cold and feels delicate, though he’s seen Arthur punch through wood in the real before.
Arthur keeps smiling, and he has dimples, and Eames wants to see more of them. Then he thinks, that’s a dangerous path to go down.
The dinner is pleasant, and Eames can’t help but feel relaxed, because he’s already won this game - there’s no need to seduce because he knows he’ll be getting what he wants at the end. It’s easy now, the fight has gone out of them both, for just a minute. It feels like a breath of fresh air, like somehow they are both just two men, out on a date, rather than internationally wanted mind criminals who were most definitely going to fuck in a matter of hours.
And back in the hotel, Arthur kisses him slowly, sensually by the door. His hands are precise, running across his chest, and thumbs ghosting over his hip bones under his pants.
He’s slow, and measured, and Eames is totally undone.
-
They wake up curled up together, Arthur’s back pressed against Eames’ chest, and when Eames stirs and stretches, he sees Arthur’s entire body go sharp; his arm curling under the pillow for what is probably his gun.
“You told me to stay,” Eames says, voice rough with sleep, and Arthur relaxes again. It’s fascinating to watch - Arthur so stripped, just wearing boxers - the ripple in his muscles. “Oh.”
“Yes, well,” Eames says, and swings his legs off the bed to put his trousers on. “It’s still quite early. I’m sure you could sneak in a few more hours.”
Arthur blinks at him but doesn’t move for a long moment, then his arm darts out for his totem.
“Oh, was last night that good?” Eames asks as he buttons up his shirt.
“Fuck you,” Arthur says, and he rolls over on his back.
“Maybe next time,” Eames says, and Arthur grins, apparently satisfied by the weight of the die in his hand.
“Yeah, maybe.”
-
What is the nature of suffering, you might ask, wondering:
Dukkha is the first Noble Truth, the truth of suffering. Dukkha tells us at all life is suffering, from birth to death, there will be suffering. This is a fact that Arthur accepts, wholeheartedly, early in his life, even before he ever read a Sutra or sat under a bodhi tree. It is a truth he feels he has known forever - that life will bring him suffering.
-
Nothing is awkward that day as they work, and Eames thinks maybe Arthur is as overcautious about sex as he is about everything else. He’s surprised that he didn’t have to hand over a full health report, get checked out for every STI known to man, maybe get a few vaccines, before Arthur let him get that close.
Arthur’s exactly the same as he always is, professional, slightly antagonistic. His sleeves are rolled up, his collar is undone, and he looks just the same as he always did.
Eames thinks he should be glad. But part of him wanted to watch the tips of Arthur’s ears to turn pink, for him to stutter that morning upon seeing Eames. He wants to see Arthur ruffled. He wants some acknowledgement, maybe, of the violence that inhabits their arms and the way it grows when they’re twined together.
-
The job takes time.
It’s been a month since Eames has slept alone, he realizes, when he wakes up with his chin hooked over Arthur’s shoulder, his arm slung over his waist. Arthur’s mouth is open just a little bit, and Eames can hear the heavy noises of his breathing and starts to count.
Arthur’s eyes snap open in seven seconds.
“Good morning, handsome,” Eames says into his ear and kisses the back of Arthur’s neck.
Arthur frowns. “We should try your room for a while,” he says. “Or maybe not stay together at night.”
He squirms but doesn’t free himself when Eames simply tightens his claim.
“What, can you also not cohabitate?”
“It’s not that I can’t. I only have the one rule.”
“Well, then what is it?”
“I like my apartment.”
“You don’t have to move into my flat! I could come to yours!”
“I like my apartment.”
“Ah.”
“The job is done in a couple days, anyway.”
“Tossing me out?”
Arthur shrugs, skin sliding over skin. “I just figured you’d have someplace to be.”
Eames takes what he thinks is a hint.
-
This is what Eames knows:
The job only went wrong once, working with Arthur, and it certainly wasn’t Arthur’s fault.
But the woman who walked straight through the dream had felt just like someone he’d known.
Eames knows, knew, is knowing, had the knowledge, that this was impossible.
And yet.
-
Eames leaves. He means to tell Arthur at the end of the job. He tries to explain in the airport, but Arthur’s shoulders just roll, smooth, in acceptance of whatever Eames will tell him. Somehow, that makes him the angriest.
It doesn’t last long - he takes a job, and he misses Arthur’s dossiers, his crisp e-mails, and his professionalism. No one on his team wears a suit, so Eames takes to wearing one, because someone has to be presentable enough to meet a client.
Within a month, he is missing Arthur’s long fingers and the way his lip would curl up when Eames would wrap his arms around him, a cross between a smile and a snarl.
He calls Arthur, once, before this team goes under, and Arthur answers and sounds incredibly far away.
“I think I’m headed your way soon,” Eames says.
“Okay,” says Arthur. “I look forward to it.” Eames takes what he can get.
-
The trouble with dream espionage, of course, is that it so fantastical that the small handful of people who practice it rise to fame incredibly quickly. There are always dangers to being an elite in any business, but when your business is already at the seam between illegal and magic, then you have to take extra precautions.
Love, or the facsimile of love, or the pretense of love, makes Eames soft where he doesn’t expect it.
He gets caught.
-
But, you ask, who are the actors here?
They met at a conference of university professors, scientists, conmen, and soldiers. It promised to be an uncomfortable three days in a hotel ballroom, and there was always a fight happening - the personalities all grated up against each other like metals.
The ballroom hosting the event is crammed with tables and booths hawking ideas, products, and personnel. Dangerous chemicals bubbled all around.
The convention was a secret, of course, which meant anyone who had ever dream-shared was there. The Cobbs, of course, were stars there, showing off their research in dream building. They had a table covered with maps, mazes, and scale models, and their booth was crowded with psychiatrists and a few generals.
And then there was Eames, standing in a small booth space with two folding chairs, a card table, and himself in an ill-fitting suit.
And then there was Arthur, stiff, brusque, in uniform, and Eames couldn’t help but call out and tease as he walked past without a second glance. The man’s face had a magnificent bone structure, and Eames liked, even then, to consider himself a connoisseur of the finer things.
“What is it that you like, then?” Eames had been born a salesman, and he was better at selling himself than he was at stealing (and his skill at stealing was considerable).
Arthur turned and looked at him, and the first thing Eames registered was how young the military man was. Then he noted how still his face was as he swept an appraising eye over Eames.
“Hot coffee,” Arthur said, “You got any of that in your booth?” He walked over, his moves measured and purposed.
Eames laughed. “No, no, that’s not what I’m selling at all.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’re selling much.” Arthur leaned on the rickety card table Eames had set up, elbows down, and he peered past Eames’ bulk. “Unless that PASIV is for sale. It looks like a version 2 model.” Arthur eyed him again. “I’m guessing the serial number for it is 965-248-1026.”
Eames stared, but he didn’t gape.
Arthur was relaxed as he stood up and there was a smile in the crinkle of his eyes. He extended a hand, “I’m Arthur.”
Eames took it. It might have been a monumental moment for both of them. “Eames. Just Arthur?”
The hand shake was firm, and Arthur’s hand was pleasantly cool and dry in the convention room. This detail Eames remembered.
“You can call me Lieutenant if you’d like. So, are demonstrations free?”
“For you, lovely? Of course.” Eames caught himself, and wondered why he was flirting at all with a man who could either easily kill him or have him arrested. Eames never squandered a good opportunity, however, and he wasn’t about to stop being reckless.
They went under together.
-
The job had gone well, but the team doesn’t sweep the room effectively, doesn’t do something right, because whatever they’d missed led straight to Eames.
They catch him on his way to customs in Los Angeles, and he can’t even shoot anyone because he’s in a fucking airport. The universe is a cruel place, he thinks, Arthur’s lecture about karmic balances playing out in the back of his brain as he’s shoved into the trunk of a car.
He can take a beating like a champ. He just doesn’t want to take it this time. He wants it to be over with, he wants to be sleeping next to Arthur in whatever kind of luxurious and expensive bed the man might own. He folds instantly, selling out his entire old team (because those fucks deserved it), and gets to sleep on a cot instead of being handcuffed to a pipe. The next day he’s confused, but realizes the thugs aren’t just working for his old mark.
“Who’s your pointman?” they ask.
Eventually, he tells them about Arthur. He wants them to stop. He needs those fingers. It’s not love.
-
“I talked,” Eames pants out when Arthur rips the tape off his mouth. The part of his brain that can still think rational thoughts is buzzing loudly with the need to apologize, but really, how could he. What would he even say?
Arthur shrugs and begins picking the handcuffs. “Did they ask about Cobb?”
“No.”
“Well, I shot everyone here. So it shouldn’t be a problem for me for a while.”
“All of them?” Eames is lying flat on his back and Arthur’s hands are slowly pressing him, checking for bones shattered. “There were at least twelve.”
“I would have burned the place down, Eames, if I thought it would have gotten you out.” Arthur shifts, crouched down.
“So is this why you can’t fall in love? It makes you weak, like me?”
“Jesus, Eames.”
“I don’t even know why you bothered coming after me.”
“You’re…you’re my friend, alright?”
“And this is what you do for friends, then? Kill a dozen people, try to burn down a sky scraper?” His voice has rocks in it, and it’s hard to hit the correct pitch for incredulity, but he scrapes toward it anyway.
“I don’t have very many friends,” Arthur says. It’s not a parry or a block, and he says it so bluntly that Eames shuts his mouth instead of sniping at him.
“I don’t think you’re bleeding anywhere internally,” Arthur says, standing up from his crouch. “What would you like to do?”
“I’d like to get pissed drunk and then fuck you stupid,” Eames says, and Arthur sighs, but he’s also smiling.
-
What Eames does instead is pass out for a full day, with Arthur checking on every few hours and making sure he hydrates. He’s ordered room service for both of them by the time Eames staggers into the couch area of their suite. He’d expected an apartment but a hotel would do just as well.
Arthur is reading the Wall Street Journal and looks up. “I got you a cheeseburger.”
Eames pulls the cover off his plate and settles down on the couch next to Arthur to shove food in his mouth.
Arthur keeps reading, glasses that Eames has never seen perched on the tip of his nose.
“When did you start using reading glasses?” Eames asks in between hurried bites.
“When was the last time you ate? Should I have gotten soup?” Arthur is still reading.
“What day is it?”
Arthur glances down at his watch. “Thursday the 26th.”
“Probably about three days. Nothing major.”
Arthur snorts lightly. “I’d slow down there then. Your stomach’s not going to be happy.”
Eames pops the last of his burger into his mouth and shrugs. “I’ll deal.”
And Arthur is sitting there, not looking at Eames, shimmering, back lit, and fuzzy in his peripheral vision like a ghost.
-
More on the nature of suffering:
The second Noble Truth explains suffering’s origin, of Dukkha Samudaya. Suffering comes from attachment, the want of things, yen for earthly pleasures and a craving for existence.
Though Arthur likes to think he lives in the higher of the ten worlds, perhaps in Knowledge, and that he is above the need for happiness, something base, it is always Dukkha Samudaya that knocks him on his ass. He always finds attachment, or something to want. It always slips out of his hands.
-
Arthur has good odds against six men when he’s unarmed, but not against ten. He’s been warned, but he didn’t anticipate a home invasion. He’ll never be that far from a gun again.
Eames hates unnecessary risks, so once he learns of Arthur’s abduction, he waits until the kidnappers leave.
“Is this why?” Eames asks as he gently unties the ropes around Arthur’s bony wrists, and Arthur spits blood out on the concrete floor.
“No.”
“So you told them everything, right?”
“No,” he says, but it comes out like a low moan.
Arthur slumps over onto himself and Eames carefully lifts him up from the armpits. Arthur puts his whole weight on him and groans.
“Eames, please,” Arthur whines out through gritted teeth, and for the second time in their professional partnership, Eames sees tears welling up in Arthur’s eyes.
He tries to set Arthur down carefully, but he doesn’t know what’s wrong and Arthur breathes in small pants through his mouth and makes a broken sound when he hits the floor again.
Eames isn’t a doctor.
“Why did they leave you alive?” he asks in an effort to keep Arthur awake, and Arthur’s smile is all blood smeared over teeth.
“Slowed down my heart when they took a break. Thought they killed me.”
“Arthur.”
“I need a hospital, I think.”
“Arthur. That’s not a thing you can do.”
If Arthur could shrug at him, he would have. Eames can see it glinting in the pain-tightened corners of his eyes. “I spent some time in Denver, with some monks. Learned more in Japan.” The words are hissed out.
“Did they hit you in the mouth or is that internal?”
Eames calls Cobb, even though Cobb isn’t a doctor either.
In the waiting room of the ER, Eames spends his time hating Arthur and Arthur’s rule and his stupid, stupid mouth that curved into a grin the second he had crept into that room. He’s sick of rooting out what keeps Arthur ensconced in a labyrinth, of trying to find him, of reaching dead ends.
Challenges are all well and good, but Arthur is right - he doesn’t do casual very well. He is really too selfish for it, really, too needful to own the whole of something. If it isn’t all his, then eventually, he doesn’t want it anymore.
That’s what he tells himself.
-
Here is the end of a story you haven’t heard yet:
The room was silent, and Arthur lurched out of his seat and toppled over immediately, right into an already-awake Cobb.
“Whoa there,” Cobb said. “It’s been. It’s been a couple weeks.”
Mal suddenly enveloped them both, a stream of French and a few tears and her arms everywhere surrounding them. Arthur sagged into them.
“We’re taking him home,” Mal snapped, and the major didn’t argue. Luiz watched and just nodded a greeting, which earned him a weary salute from Arthur.
“You can be Beatrice next time, if you want,” Arthur said into Cobb's neck, and Cobb smiled.
01 . 02 . 03