(fic) tomorrow comes today
tomorrow comes today, Arthur/Eames. ~3, 600 words. mindtheft, rainy London, confused man feelings, bossy women and maybe just a little bit of smoking.
I have never written Eames before. This terrifies me only slightly.
Eames wipes the grease from his fish and chips off onto a napkin before picking up his pint to take another sip. He's been in thousands of pubs just like this all over the world, all trying to recreate some mythical British quality, but they never get it quite right, they always come across as trying just a little too hard. He thinks, reluctantly, that there are some benefits to finally returning home. It’s been years since he lived here full time, making a name for himself in dreamsharing when the business was still so small and unsure of itself. No matter how long he stays away, he still knows all the tricks. It's Saturday - match day - and the pub is so filled with rowdy fans that it won't be hard to have a private conversation go unheard.
A man in pressed trousers and a pin-striped Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up settles in across from him, before motioning to the bartender for a pint of his own.
"Your ability to find anyone no matter where they are is unnerving, I hope you know that."
Arthur smiles thinly. "Hello, Eames."
"What's this job that you called me in for? I find it hard to believe that you couldn't find a forger a little closer by than Bangkok."
"Gene Williams. MI5 suspects him of selling state secrets, matters of national security, to the highest bidder," Arthur says, and Eames would bet good money that he already has a thick folder prepared filled with Williams's entire life-story. Arthur idly takes a sip from his pint, a good show at looking indifferent.
"I was under the impression that MI5 had its own extraction team."
"Williams is MI5. They need to keep this one on the outside to avoid raising suspicion. The woman that called me asked for you by name, actually,” Arthur says, jaw clenching slightly in an expression that Eames has come to recognize as an attempt to hide annoyance.
"Hannah Evans, was it?"
"Old friend of yours?"
Eames smiles fondly. "Yeah, we were in uni together. Clearly we went in very different directions with our lives but luckily, she doesn't hold it against me. Who else did you bring in on this?"
"Ariadne arrives in from Paris tomorrow morning and Yusuf will drop in for a few days to tailor the compound."
"You need me to play extractor and forger, then?"
"Yes," Arthur says, the sly look in his eyes belying his carefully blank face. "Unless you don't think you're up to it."
Eames scoffs and drains his glass.
Arthur digs a slip of paper out of his pocket before passing it over. "I've rented a house in Hampstead for us to work out of. We're meeting early. Try to be on time for once."
Arthur nods shortly before getting up to leave, leaving his pint mostly untouched.
Eames shakes his head before picking it up and moving closer to the nearest television screen.
+
The house that they'll be working out of is quaint, although mostly lacking in furniture. It's the sort of unassuming yet comfortable place that his quiet, family-oriented brother James would have loved to live in, had he chosen to stay in the London area.
Only two bedrooms and a futon are made up, presumably for Arthur, Ariadne and Yusuf. Every other surface is covered with manila folders, the little post-it notes that Arthur had always been entirely too fond of, and coffee cups.
The front door slams open and Ariadne strides in, dropping her luggage onto the floor with a tired, harried look on her face. "This job better be great because I was supposed to meet my girlfriend's parents this week and she's pretty pissed off that I'm bailing on her."
Arthur goes to pour Ariadne a cup of coffee. "You could have said no," he says, amused.
"What and leave you two idiots to stumble along with a sub-par architect?"
Eames remembers when Arthur had first been showing Ariadne the ropes, back when she used to look at Arthur like he held all the secrets of the universe. Time and familiarity have clearly stripped her of these notions. It’s good for Arthur, being around people who don’t take him seriously.
"Your compliments are heart-warming, truly," Eames says. "I can really tell that you missed us a lot."
"I did, actually," Ariadne says, the coffee already returning her calm. "There's only so long that I can sit around and listen to college students whine about how long their dissertation is taking them before I feel like breaking into the nearest museum just for the sake of injecting a little excitement into my hum-drum life. So, the job?"
"The mark is fifty-five years old. He's been working for the government for most of his adult life. The usual story, a workaholic who let his marriage fall by the wayside. One daughter named Annie, she's in her second year at UCL. They appear to be estranged but if his call records in the past few years are anything to go by, that's her choice not his. He's had an otherwise exemplary record," Arthur says, pulling another folder from his stack of files.
"Until now," Eames says.
"What evidence do they have that he's selling secrets?" Ariadne asks.
"He's been acting off for about a year now. Meetings and dates that didn't quite add up right, trips that he only gave vague details about. An IT guy noticed that files had been tampered with and traced it back to the office that Williams works out of. It's all circumstantial though, that's what they need us for."
"I'll be designing two layers for this, then? There's no way that this guy won't be paranoid as fuck, one layer won't do it."
"Right, and he'll definitely be militarized. You're going to have to go all out with your mazes, they need to be as complex as possible. I'll be planning this one carefully to keep the projections from - "
"Shooting me in the head?" Eames finishes. He knows that Arthur, who never makes the same mistake twice, would never let this happen. It feels good, though, seeing Arthur cast his classic annoyed look his way.
Ariadne pours herself another cup of coffee, a giddy look on her face. "Let's get started."
+
Once all the facts are laid out, it's a surprisingly easy job to plan.
"The second layer needs to be the daughter, the emotional connection will be the best way to drag this out of him. We can have her talking about how she's scared, she's been watching the news and she doesn't feel safe anymore, Eames says, flipping through the file. “How am I going to get close to her to create the forge?"
"It's going to be a lot simpler than I expected," Arthur says. "It turns out that Annie has been taking art classes at night and they're looking for someone to fill in this week. A lesson on impressionist style painting, think you can manage that?"
"Monet has always been a specialty of mine."
Ariadne drags over the sketching table with her designs on it. "I was thinking at first that they should meet in an open space, something that feels comfortable and believable as a meeting place. Maybe something that looks like Hyde Park but that's too vulnerable, too open for someone as paranoid as Williams will be. A building would be better so I've chosen a design that resembles a university building, a building that Annie could be taking classes in."
It’s remarkable how quickly Ariadne has adapted to their life of crime - it makes him feel proud in a strange way. Eames nods, "That should do the trick. In the first level, we should get him thinking about his daughter. Maybe not directly, but her safety should come to his mind."
Arthur makes the face that means he’s trying very hard not to look impressed.
"He could be talking with a co-worker about business, have the co-worker bring up the risk to the population if certain information got out. Your friend, Hannah, would probably be best since she's his partner. It shouldn't be any trouble forging her since you already know her," Arthur suggests.
"Christ, this bastard is Hannah's partner?"
"Yeah. On the phone, she said he had been something like a mentor to her."
Eames can feel a pounding headache coming on as he rubs the bridge of his nose. "Well now I feel like a crap friend for not calling her yet, cheers for that."
Arthur stares at him thoughtfully, pen stilled from where he had been taking notes only moments before. He had been doing that more and more over the course of the past week.
The Fisher job had been so fast-paced, so high-pressure, that they rarely had time together outside of the occasional condescending comment. This job sees them stuck in a house together with no one but Ariadne as a buffer, and she spends much of her time absorbed in her blueprints. It’s been more unnerving than Eames would like to admit to anyone, let alone himself, bearing the burden of so much of Arthur’s attention. When the pressure of his gaze gets to be too much, Eames looks away and makes his excuses about stepping outside for a cigarette.
It had been a lie when he said it but as his hand shakes turning the knob to the front door, he finds himself wishing that he actually did have a pack of cigarettes on him.
+
It's drizzling slightly as Eames sits down on the doorstep and he winces, thinking he should have thought this one through a bit more. Already he can feel the dampness seeping through his trousers. It would be just his fucking luck that Arthur would follow him out, fishing a lighter and two cigarettes out of his back pocket.
"Were you by any chance a Boy Scout as a child?"
"As much as this might surprise you, Eames, I was actually terrible at following orders when I was younger. No Boy Scouts for me."
"And yet you joined the Army. You are an enigma."
It’s rare that Arthur would volunteer information like that, a childhood tidbit. Or at least rare for Eames, as it’s been a very long time since they’ve spoken like this. He wonders who else got to sit in his place and he hear about the life that Arthur keeps so close to the vest. The thought of it makes his chest ache in a way that he doesn’t want to examine.
Arthur smiles that rare smile that shows his dimples as he sits down. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Arthur hands over one of the cigarettes and lights it for him, his hands brushing against Eames's. Eames finds, suddenly, that they are sitting closer than is strictly necessary. He can see where the light rain is starting to loosen and curl Arthur's neat hair, as it starts to fall across his forehead.
They sit there, smoking for several minutes, before Eames breaks the silence. "May I remind you, Arthur," he says lowly, "that you were the one that ran off."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know," Arthur says, his voice mild. He stubs out his cigarette on the step before heading back inside. "We should get back to work."
Eames laughs softly because isn’t that just fucking typical.
+
The thing of it was, they had been circling each other for what felt like ages. Arthur's extracurricular activities had stepped into the illegal side of things long before Cobb's did and they had met again, not as military recruits but as international criminals.
They still drove each other as batshit insane as they always had. But over time it became something else entirely. The banter had lost its edge, replaced by fond undertones. Hours were whiled away over drinks in a seedy bar after a job and witty voicemails were left as they took off to different countries across the world. It had seemed inevitable, their coming together.
And then it stopped. Just like that, Arthur went cold.
A month later, Mallorie Cobb took a swan dive off of a hotel building, Dom Cobb went on the run and Arthur with him. It wasn't until Cobb showed up in Mombasa with a job offer and a haunted look in his eyes that Arthur dropped back into his life.
When it happened, Eames had said to himself, "well then, that's that." Perhaps it was easier this way, after all. Less complicated. There was no use dwelling on it, he told himself, because you can't miss what you never had.
+
Yusuf stays for all of two days, spreading his things all over the futon. It is there that he sits with Ariadne, sharing a box of take-away curry, when she nods at Arthur and Eames bickering in the next room.
"Do you suppose they'll sort themselves out some time this century?"
Yusuf snorts as he reaches for the take-away bag. "I wouldn't hold my breath for it."
Ariadne laughs and then punches Yusuf in the arm. "Eat the last samosa and die, my friend."
+
The job is all but done, with nothing left to do except wait for the right opportunity to present itself. Eames begs off for a day with the excuse that there's no use him dragging himself from his London flat all the way out to Hampstead when there's nothing left to do but go over the details obsessively. He'll leave that to Arthur, thank you very much. Details had never been his strong suit.
He needs a day to himself so he's not burnt out for the job itself, he tells himself.
He needs a day to himself where he's not surrounded by Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, in such an all consuming way.
Eames wanders along Portobello Market, taking in the bustle of tourists and locals alike, with no real purpose in mind. It's not until he finds himself standing in front of a cashmere shop, thinking how much Arthur would love that scarf in the window, that he realizes how well and truly screwed he is.
"Well, fuck."
+
"I think I'm in love with him," Eames blurts.
"Well, hello to you too, Eames. How are you? How have you been feeling? These are all acceptable conversation starters, you know." Hannah blows her fly-away red hair out of her face as she sits down on the park bench, handing over one of the cups of coffee in her hand.
"Oh you know me. I've never cared for what any normal person considers acceptable."
Hannah laughs. "It's good to know that some things never change. The 'he' in question would be that point man that you've been pining after for years, I take it."
"I have not been pining."
"You have, actually. It's really been very pathetic."
"I don't think you're doing the sympathetic friend bit right here."
"Well, to be fair," Hannah says, "neither are you."
Eames winces. "Right, that. I heard about Williams. That you were close to him."
"I trusted him. I thought he would always have my back. But on the bright side, I can always look back on this moment and remind you of that time you were whining about your love life when you were supposed to be thinking of matters of state security," Hannah says.
Eames snorts. "I should introduce you to my friend Ariadne, I think you would get along splendidly."
"Does she think you're a stubborn arse?"
"Well, she's never actually said the words, but I do suspect as much."
"Then we'll get on like a house on fire." Hannah reaches into her bag, pulling out a folder. "Why I really wanted to see you is to tell you that we've set up a faux intel meeting for Williams in Paris next week, he'll be taking the Eurostar. It should be easy enough for you to slip him something and pull the job. Your crew better be ready."
"We are."
"Well, then. Good luck."
Eames forgets sometimes that Hannah had been there before Arthur, that she knew all of his secrets and could call him on his bullshit faster than anyone else. He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
+
It goes to shit rather quickly. Mindtheft, Eames has always thought, is a bit like putting on a play. You can practice and practice and practice some more, but there's still going to be a few fuck ups. Militarized projections are already tricky bastards to deal with but these guys might as well be Royal Marines. Arthur puts a bullet through the eye of a projection twice his size and Eames tries to tell himself that he absolutely does not find that attractive.
"We're going to have to do this as fast as possible. Williams should be through that door, try to make it quick without raising any suspicion."
Eames blinks and draws upon his forge of Hannah. "Do try not to get yourself killed in the mean time."
Arthur smiles a crooked grin. "You know me, I always manage to find a way."
Williams is tapping his fingers nervously on his desk, the first level a perfect reproduction of his office. From there, it's going through the motions and hoping that Arthur can stave off the projections. The other man is noticeably on edge through their entire conversation but that's a good thing - the stronger the emotions, the more likely it'll be that he'll give up the information. Before he knows it, Eames is stabbing a needle through Williams's arm and watching him collapse in sleep.
Eames drops the forge and opens the door. "Arthur?"
"Yeah. Fuck, yeah, I'm here." Arthur comes into sight, hair mussed and a slight bruise starting to form on his temple. "All clear for now."
They set up the PASIV and hook up Williams. Arthur grabs the needle and hooks up Eames carefully, and it is so much like the Fisher job--the look in Arthur's eyes. How the fuck did he miss that. "Good luck down there."
Eames drops down.
+
Williams sleeps on as they pack up their equipment quickly, fleeing to another compartment far away from him.
"Did he do it, then?"
"Yeah," Eames huffs a sigh as he lifts his bag up onto the luggage rack. "Full confession and everything. He even started crying on my shoulder."
Arthur starts to dig out his Blackberry. "I'll let MI5 know immediately."
"Wait, Arthur," Eames grabs Arthur’s arm but his mind goes blank, and all of the words that he meant to say are focused down to just one simple question. "Why?"
Why did you just stop, why didn’t you have the balls to give me an explanation, why did you run away. These are the questions that go unsaid but from the look on Arthur’s face, Eames knows he understands.
Arthur stills, shifting slightly. A pained look crosses his face, a sure sign that he had very much hoped to avoid this conversation entirely.
But Eames gives him an expecting look because after all these years, all he wants is a fucking explanation, even if he gets nothing else in return.
Arthur fiddles with his cuffs nervously. "I knew that if we started, I would never be able to stop. I wasn't ready for it, not then."
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Eames wants to say, because none of us are ever really ready for anything that life throws our way. But Arthur has always refused this notion, hasn’t he, Arthur the man who is always prepared. Arthur who never makes the same mistake twice.
Arthur who is standing there, meeting Eames’s gaze head on, as ready as he’ll ever be.
Eames nods, the tension in his shoulders lessening as he realizes that sometimes you just get there when you get there. "It occurs to me that we're on a train to Paris. It also occurs to me that you happen to have an apartment in Paris."
Arthur smiles, hooking a finger into one of Eames's belt loops and drawing them closer. "I always knew you were a smart one, Mr. Eames."
a/n;
+ this fic was in many ways inspired by conversations that I've had with tourdefierce and so I choose to blame many things on her. at the same time, I would like to thank her and offer her Ariadne as a token of my appreciation. Emily, thank you for being such a picky beta because you dragged some things out of me that I didn’t think I could do. You da best.
+ football is everywhere in my life, all day, every day.
+ so is coffee. they say the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
+ what is it with me and belt loops, I will never know.
I have never written Eames before. This terrifies me only slightly.
Eames wipes the grease from his fish and chips off onto a napkin before picking up his pint to take another sip. He's been in thousands of pubs just like this all over the world, all trying to recreate some mythical British quality, but they never get it quite right, they always come across as trying just a little too hard. He thinks, reluctantly, that there are some benefits to finally returning home. It’s been years since he lived here full time, making a name for himself in dreamsharing when the business was still so small and unsure of itself. No matter how long he stays away, he still knows all the tricks. It's Saturday - match day - and the pub is so filled with rowdy fans that it won't be hard to have a private conversation go unheard.
A man in pressed trousers and a pin-striped Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up settles in across from him, before motioning to the bartender for a pint of his own.
"Your ability to find anyone no matter where they are is unnerving, I hope you know that."
Arthur smiles thinly. "Hello, Eames."
"What's this job that you called me in for? I find it hard to believe that you couldn't find a forger a little closer by than Bangkok."
"Gene Williams. MI5 suspects him of selling state secrets, matters of national security, to the highest bidder," Arthur says, and Eames would bet good money that he already has a thick folder prepared filled with Williams's entire life-story. Arthur idly takes a sip from his pint, a good show at looking indifferent.
"I was under the impression that MI5 had its own extraction team."
"Williams is MI5. They need to keep this one on the outside to avoid raising suspicion. The woman that called me asked for you by name, actually,” Arthur says, jaw clenching slightly in an expression that Eames has come to recognize as an attempt to hide annoyance.
"Hannah Evans, was it?"
"Old friend of yours?"
Eames smiles fondly. "Yeah, we were in uni together. Clearly we went in very different directions with our lives but luckily, she doesn't hold it against me. Who else did you bring in on this?"
"Ariadne arrives in from Paris tomorrow morning and Yusuf will drop in for a few days to tailor the compound."
"You need me to play extractor and forger, then?"
"Yes," Arthur says, the sly look in his eyes belying his carefully blank face. "Unless you don't think you're up to it."
Eames scoffs and drains his glass.
Arthur digs a slip of paper out of his pocket before passing it over. "I've rented a house in Hampstead for us to work out of. We're meeting early. Try to be on time for once."
Arthur nods shortly before getting up to leave, leaving his pint mostly untouched.
Eames shakes his head before picking it up and moving closer to the nearest television screen.
+
The house that they'll be working out of is quaint, although mostly lacking in furniture. It's the sort of unassuming yet comfortable place that his quiet, family-oriented brother James would have loved to live in, had he chosen to stay in the London area.
Only two bedrooms and a futon are made up, presumably for Arthur, Ariadne and Yusuf. Every other surface is covered with manila folders, the little post-it notes that Arthur had always been entirely too fond of, and coffee cups.
The front door slams open and Ariadne strides in, dropping her luggage onto the floor with a tired, harried look on her face. "This job better be great because I was supposed to meet my girlfriend's parents this week and she's pretty pissed off that I'm bailing on her."
Arthur goes to pour Ariadne a cup of coffee. "You could have said no," he says, amused.
"What and leave you two idiots to stumble along with a sub-par architect?"
Eames remembers when Arthur had first been showing Ariadne the ropes, back when she used to look at Arthur like he held all the secrets of the universe. Time and familiarity have clearly stripped her of these notions. It’s good for Arthur, being around people who don’t take him seriously.
"Your compliments are heart-warming, truly," Eames says. "I can really tell that you missed us a lot."
"I did, actually," Ariadne says, the coffee already returning her calm. "There's only so long that I can sit around and listen to college students whine about how long their dissertation is taking them before I feel like breaking into the nearest museum just for the sake of injecting a little excitement into my hum-drum life. So, the job?"
"The mark is fifty-five years old. He's been working for the government for most of his adult life. The usual story, a workaholic who let his marriage fall by the wayside. One daughter named Annie, she's in her second year at UCL. They appear to be estranged but if his call records in the past few years are anything to go by, that's her choice not his. He's had an otherwise exemplary record," Arthur says, pulling another folder from his stack of files.
"Until now," Eames says.
"What evidence do they have that he's selling secrets?" Ariadne asks.
"He's been acting off for about a year now. Meetings and dates that didn't quite add up right, trips that he only gave vague details about. An IT guy noticed that files had been tampered with and traced it back to the office that Williams works out of. It's all circumstantial though, that's what they need us for."
"I'll be designing two layers for this, then? There's no way that this guy won't be paranoid as fuck, one layer won't do it."
"Right, and he'll definitely be militarized. You're going to have to go all out with your mazes, they need to be as complex as possible. I'll be planning this one carefully to keep the projections from - "
"Shooting me in the head?" Eames finishes. He knows that Arthur, who never makes the same mistake twice, would never let this happen. It feels good, though, seeing Arthur cast his classic annoyed look his way.
Ariadne pours herself another cup of coffee, a giddy look on her face. "Let's get started."
+
Once all the facts are laid out, it's a surprisingly easy job to plan.
"The second layer needs to be the daughter, the emotional connection will be the best way to drag this out of him. We can have her talking about how she's scared, she's been watching the news and she doesn't feel safe anymore, Eames says, flipping through the file. “How am I going to get close to her to create the forge?"
"It's going to be a lot simpler than I expected," Arthur says. "It turns out that Annie has been taking art classes at night and they're looking for someone to fill in this week. A lesson on impressionist style painting, think you can manage that?"
"Monet has always been a specialty of mine."
Ariadne drags over the sketching table with her designs on it. "I was thinking at first that they should meet in an open space, something that feels comfortable and believable as a meeting place. Maybe something that looks like Hyde Park but that's too vulnerable, too open for someone as paranoid as Williams will be. A building would be better so I've chosen a design that resembles a university building, a building that Annie could be taking classes in."
It’s remarkable how quickly Ariadne has adapted to their life of crime - it makes him feel proud in a strange way. Eames nods, "That should do the trick. In the first level, we should get him thinking about his daughter. Maybe not directly, but her safety should come to his mind."
Arthur makes the face that means he’s trying very hard not to look impressed.
"He could be talking with a co-worker about business, have the co-worker bring up the risk to the population if certain information got out. Your friend, Hannah, would probably be best since she's his partner. It shouldn't be any trouble forging her since you already know her," Arthur suggests.
"Christ, this bastard is Hannah's partner?"
"Yeah. On the phone, she said he had been something like a mentor to her."
Eames can feel a pounding headache coming on as he rubs the bridge of his nose. "Well now I feel like a crap friend for not calling her yet, cheers for that."
Arthur stares at him thoughtfully, pen stilled from where he had been taking notes only moments before. He had been doing that more and more over the course of the past week.
The Fisher job had been so fast-paced, so high-pressure, that they rarely had time together outside of the occasional condescending comment. This job sees them stuck in a house together with no one but Ariadne as a buffer, and she spends much of her time absorbed in her blueprints. It’s been more unnerving than Eames would like to admit to anyone, let alone himself, bearing the burden of so much of Arthur’s attention. When the pressure of his gaze gets to be too much, Eames looks away and makes his excuses about stepping outside for a cigarette.
It had been a lie when he said it but as his hand shakes turning the knob to the front door, he finds himself wishing that he actually did have a pack of cigarettes on him.
+
It's drizzling slightly as Eames sits down on the doorstep and he winces, thinking he should have thought this one through a bit more. Already he can feel the dampness seeping through his trousers. It would be just his fucking luck that Arthur would follow him out, fishing a lighter and two cigarettes out of his back pocket.
"Were you by any chance a Boy Scout as a child?"
"As much as this might surprise you, Eames, I was actually terrible at following orders when I was younger. No Boy Scouts for me."
"And yet you joined the Army. You are an enigma."
It’s rare that Arthur would volunteer information like that, a childhood tidbit. Or at least rare for Eames, as it’s been a very long time since they’ve spoken like this. He wonders who else got to sit in his place and he hear about the life that Arthur keeps so close to the vest. The thought of it makes his chest ache in a way that he doesn’t want to examine.
Arthur smiles that rare smile that shows his dimples as he sits down. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Arthur hands over one of the cigarettes and lights it for him, his hands brushing against Eames's. Eames finds, suddenly, that they are sitting closer than is strictly necessary. He can see where the light rain is starting to loosen and curl Arthur's neat hair, as it starts to fall across his forehead.
They sit there, smoking for several minutes, before Eames breaks the silence. "May I remind you, Arthur," he says lowly, "that you were the one that ran off."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know," Arthur says, his voice mild. He stubs out his cigarette on the step before heading back inside. "We should get back to work."
Eames laughs softly because isn’t that just fucking typical.
+
The thing of it was, they had been circling each other for what felt like ages. Arthur's extracurricular activities had stepped into the illegal side of things long before Cobb's did and they had met again, not as military recruits but as international criminals.
They still drove each other as batshit insane as they always had. But over time it became something else entirely. The banter had lost its edge, replaced by fond undertones. Hours were whiled away over drinks in a seedy bar after a job and witty voicemails were left as they took off to different countries across the world. It had seemed inevitable, their coming together.
And then it stopped. Just like that, Arthur went cold.
A month later, Mallorie Cobb took a swan dive off of a hotel building, Dom Cobb went on the run and Arthur with him. It wasn't until Cobb showed up in Mombasa with a job offer and a haunted look in his eyes that Arthur dropped back into his life.
When it happened, Eames had said to himself, "well then, that's that." Perhaps it was easier this way, after all. Less complicated. There was no use dwelling on it, he told himself, because you can't miss what you never had.
+
Yusuf stays for all of two days, spreading his things all over the futon. It is there that he sits with Ariadne, sharing a box of take-away curry, when she nods at Arthur and Eames bickering in the next room.
"Do you suppose they'll sort themselves out some time this century?"
Yusuf snorts as he reaches for the take-away bag. "I wouldn't hold my breath for it."
Ariadne laughs and then punches Yusuf in the arm. "Eat the last samosa and die, my friend."
+
The job is all but done, with nothing left to do except wait for the right opportunity to present itself. Eames begs off for a day with the excuse that there's no use him dragging himself from his London flat all the way out to Hampstead when there's nothing left to do but go over the details obsessively. He'll leave that to Arthur, thank you very much. Details had never been his strong suit.
He needs a day to himself so he's not burnt out for the job itself, he tells himself.
He needs a day to himself where he's not surrounded by Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, in such an all consuming way.
Eames wanders along Portobello Market, taking in the bustle of tourists and locals alike, with no real purpose in mind. It's not until he finds himself standing in front of a cashmere shop, thinking how much Arthur would love that scarf in the window, that he realizes how well and truly screwed he is.
"Well, fuck."
+
"I think I'm in love with him," Eames blurts.
"Well, hello to you too, Eames. How are you? How have you been feeling? These are all acceptable conversation starters, you know." Hannah blows her fly-away red hair out of her face as she sits down on the park bench, handing over one of the cups of coffee in her hand.
"Oh you know me. I've never cared for what any normal person considers acceptable."
Hannah laughs. "It's good to know that some things never change. The 'he' in question would be that point man that you've been pining after for years, I take it."
"I have not been pining."
"You have, actually. It's really been very pathetic."
"I don't think you're doing the sympathetic friend bit right here."
"Well, to be fair," Hannah says, "neither are you."
Eames winces. "Right, that. I heard about Williams. That you were close to him."
"I trusted him. I thought he would always have my back. But on the bright side, I can always look back on this moment and remind you of that time you were whining about your love life when you were supposed to be thinking of matters of state security," Hannah says.
Eames snorts. "I should introduce you to my friend Ariadne, I think you would get along splendidly."
"Does she think you're a stubborn arse?"
"Well, she's never actually said the words, but I do suspect as much."
"Then we'll get on like a house on fire." Hannah reaches into her bag, pulling out a folder. "Why I really wanted to see you is to tell you that we've set up a faux intel meeting for Williams in Paris next week, he'll be taking the Eurostar. It should be easy enough for you to slip him something and pull the job. Your crew better be ready."
"We are."
"Well, then. Good luck."
Eames forgets sometimes that Hannah had been there before Arthur, that she knew all of his secrets and could call him on his bullshit faster than anyone else. He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
+
It goes to shit rather quickly. Mindtheft, Eames has always thought, is a bit like putting on a play. You can practice and practice and practice some more, but there's still going to be a few fuck ups. Militarized projections are already tricky bastards to deal with but these guys might as well be Royal Marines. Arthur puts a bullet through the eye of a projection twice his size and Eames tries to tell himself that he absolutely does not find that attractive.
"We're going to have to do this as fast as possible. Williams should be through that door, try to make it quick without raising any suspicion."
Eames blinks and draws upon his forge of Hannah. "Do try not to get yourself killed in the mean time."
Arthur smiles a crooked grin. "You know me, I always manage to find a way."
Williams is tapping his fingers nervously on his desk, the first level a perfect reproduction of his office. From there, it's going through the motions and hoping that Arthur can stave off the projections. The other man is noticeably on edge through their entire conversation but that's a good thing - the stronger the emotions, the more likely it'll be that he'll give up the information. Before he knows it, Eames is stabbing a needle through Williams's arm and watching him collapse in sleep.
Eames drops the forge and opens the door. "Arthur?"
"Yeah. Fuck, yeah, I'm here." Arthur comes into sight, hair mussed and a slight bruise starting to form on his temple. "All clear for now."
They set up the PASIV and hook up Williams. Arthur grabs the needle and hooks up Eames carefully, and it is so much like the Fisher job--the look in Arthur's eyes. How the fuck did he miss that. "Good luck down there."
Eames drops down.
+
Williams sleeps on as they pack up their equipment quickly, fleeing to another compartment far away from him.
"Did he do it, then?"
"Yeah," Eames huffs a sigh as he lifts his bag up onto the luggage rack. "Full confession and everything. He even started crying on my shoulder."
Arthur starts to dig out his Blackberry. "I'll let MI5 know immediately."
"Wait, Arthur," Eames grabs Arthur’s arm but his mind goes blank, and all of the words that he meant to say are focused down to just one simple question. "Why?"
Why did you just stop, why didn’t you have the balls to give me an explanation, why did you run away. These are the questions that go unsaid but from the look on Arthur’s face, Eames knows he understands.
Arthur stills, shifting slightly. A pained look crosses his face, a sure sign that he had very much hoped to avoid this conversation entirely.
But Eames gives him an expecting look because after all these years, all he wants is a fucking explanation, even if he gets nothing else in return.
Arthur fiddles with his cuffs nervously. "I knew that if we started, I would never be able to stop. I wasn't ready for it, not then."
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Eames wants to say, because none of us are ever really ready for anything that life throws our way. But Arthur has always refused this notion, hasn’t he, Arthur the man who is always prepared. Arthur who never makes the same mistake twice.
Arthur who is standing there, meeting Eames’s gaze head on, as ready as he’ll ever be.
Eames nods, the tension in his shoulders lessening as he realizes that sometimes you just get there when you get there. "It occurs to me that we're on a train to Paris. It also occurs to me that you happen to have an apartment in Paris."
Arthur smiles, hooking a finger into one of Eames's belt loops and drawing them closer. "I always knew you were a smart one, Mr. Eames."
a/n;
+ this fic was in many ways inspired by conversations that I've had with tourdefierce and so I choose to blame many things on her. at the same time, I would like to thank her and offer her Ariadne as a token of my appreciation. Emily, thank you for being such a picky beta because you dragged some things out of me that I didn’t think I could do. You da best.
+ football is everywhere in my life, all day, every day.
+ so is coffee. they say the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
+ what is it with me and belt loops, I will never know.