hc_bingo (Fic) take heart, sweetheart [Inception] (Eames/Arthur) (PG-13) (1/2)
take heart, sweetheart (or I will take it from you)
mizzy2k
Summary: Eames/Arthur. Arthur's tired of bailing Eames out from jail, but he keeps coming back and he has no idea why. Eames thinks Arthur doesn't trust him. It's a litany of misunderstandings... but maybe understanding will come eventually.
For my hc_bingo square Trust issues.
Fandom: Inception
Wordcount: ~15,000
Genre: Romance, hurt/comfort.
Disclaimer: Inception doesn't belong to me.
Rating: PG-13
Notes: This fic shouldn't be this long, but I needed to explore whose POV I liked to write in best for inception_bang reasons, and this is what came out. This is my first un-anonymous Inception fic. Eek, scary.
Arthur
( Jail rescues: 3, 4, 5 and 6)
Arthur is sitting across from someone who may, he thinks, be even more socially ridiculous than Eames. His date is talking, and Arthur should be listening. Instead he's playing with the tines of his fork under the table, wondering whether the legal ramifications will be less if he stabs himself or his date, or - if he can wait until tomorrow - Ariadne.
The latter he can potentially arrange to happen accidentally in the dreamscape, and it would keep him out of the reach of the law, which is a comfortable space to be in Arthur's opinion.
His date's attractive enough in an arbitrary way but not Arthur's preferred type. Ariadne apparently just thinks gay is Arthur's type, which is ridiculous; that's more Eames' type, as Eames doesn't discriminate. Actually, breathing is more Eames' type, or perhaps Arthur's being too generous even on that front.
Arthur's picky when it comes to the other people in his life. It's not the worst flaw a person can have. But if he's going to date someone, then he wants (someone who can fight back, who doesn't take his shit, who makes the hairs stand up on the back of his neck just by walking into the room, someone who makes him pause just hearing their name)- He just wants something else. Is that a bad thing?
He doesn't want the moron sitting in front of him who doesn't know the difference between Louis and Albert Kahn. Who thinks chewing with his mouth open is reasonable behaviour. Who thinks a donkey bray is an acceptable laughter substitute. Whose mouth is too thin, and physique is too lean, and whose accent is ill-defined, flitting between a heavy Brooklyn tang and a put-on Manhattan terseness.
He's a laundry list of fails, and Arthur's thinking stabbing himself might actually be the best option. There's got to be some legal way of getting back at Ariadne. Perhaps he could casually drop a link to her livejournal account into Cobb's inbox...
When Arthur's cellphone buzzes he nearly cries in relief, even though the local police station's number crawls across the screen. "I have to take this," Arthur says, hitting the connect key. "It's a work emergency."
"So I'm a work emergency, huh?" Eames' voice is tinny through the weak connection, and Arthur feels the usual annoyance curl down his spine. This is a better option than his date, but it's not a huge step up.
"You're in administration, how can there be an emergency?" Arthur's date squawks indignantly.
"Who is that? You sound like you're in a restaurant. Are you on a date?" Eames demands, sounding incredulous. "He sounds like a real winner."
"He is," Arthur says. "Michael's a lawyer."
"My name's Martin," the date squeaks. Arthur throws him the same look he gives people shooting at him, and Michael- Martin- whatever- freezes and grabs for his wine glass.
Eames, damn him, is chuckling. "Well, I'm sorry to divert you from such a scintillating experience, but I've gotten into a spot of bother, and I could use some of your... extraction expertise."
Arthur always knows the right question to get past Eames' bullshit. "What did you do?"
Eames pauses, and Arthur can hear a long drawn huff. "There was an altercation," Eames starts, uncertainly.
"Ahuh," Arthur says, flatly. "Did someone call you a bitch again?"
"That man last time thought I was a woman. How was I supposed to react?"
"Professionally. And not involving the law. Seriously, Eames-I give you one rule on this job whenever you work with us, and that's to stay out of trouble. If I can't trust you enough to even do that-"
"I try my best. Arthur. Come on. Please. This female officer looks like she wants to eat me alive, and while I might enjoy it, I think she would enjoy it too much." Eames voice slips into a wheedling tone. "I'm more fun than your date and you know it."
"You're not," Arthur lies, and smirks a little at the look of panic on his date's face. "Not at the moment anyway," he amends.
"I'll see what I can do about later, darling," Eames says, and Arthur finds himself smiling before he can stop himself. He has to remind himself once again that it's just Eames being Eames, and that's... been getting more and more difficult. Eames is just being himself and can't help it, and this stupid smiling is just the remnants of a stupid, old crush that Arthur's always known would go nowhere.
It's why he's been trying to get out and date. Arthur's not dated in a while, so long that Eames' casual friendliness had a crazy effect on Arthur's brain for a little while, culminating in a couple of weeks of crazy crushing-Arthur took a rare vacation to get it all out, and he got pissed in Malaga, lying the whole time with cocktails on the beach, and he didn't think of Eames once-and it's been easier since that.
But sometimes, Eames will call him darling and the stupid thing will raise its head again, and Arthur has to do something to beat it down with a stick.
"I'll come bail you out," Arthur tells Eames loudly before hanging up, just to make his date splutter and start to wave down the waiter for the bill. "There's been an incident with paperclips," he says, shrugging his jacket back on. "Blood everywhere," he adds, just to make the guy turn a shade paler.
But he doesn't. He just looks at Arthur a little sadly. "I wouldn't have come if I'd known you were involved with someone already."
Arthur frowns. "I'm not."
Martin looks at him sadly. "Keep telling yourself that, love. Tell Ariadne I said hi."
Arthur spends a moment resisting the urge to punch Martin, because it's only Eames that can get away with calling him stupid shit. He lets Martin pay the whole bill instead. It's less likely to get him incarcerated alongside Eames, for a start, and less likely to get him to stop still and identifying his feelings.
He's quite happy to be in denial. It's a much easier life.
Is it a happy life, my little serious Arthur? a voice says in the back of his mind, a voice that sounds too disturbingly like Mal. He tells her voice to fuck off. She's dead and has no rights to be in his head, saying things.
Even if what she's saying is right.
Arthur walks to the police station, stuffing his hands in his pockets and keeping his head down. The rain stings his cheeks but he's too busy being angry with himself to get the cab. The date might have been becoming a bust with no external help from Eames, but Arthur has no intention of not emphasising to Eames just how much he's screwed up this time. This is the third time this week, for goodness' sake.
"Oh," says the officer when Arthur finally gets to the front of the queue, wallet already in hand, ready to pay whatever fine Eames has managed to land himself this time, "you're here for him. A real sweetheart, that one."
Arthur settles his mouth into a hard line and nods along to the sympathetic look the next officer gives him as she escorts him to the cells. "Back again?" is all she says in a pitying voice. Arthur flicks a look through the paper bag of Eames' belongings as he follows her, pushing the receipt in for the fine amongst the random items and punching a reminder into his Blackberry so he knows to hassle Eames regularly until he pays it back.
There's the usual detritus in the bag-a lighter that doesn't work, his wallet which feels empty, his ID, his fake ID which somehow the cops have thankfully missed, a pack of Marlboro half smoked, a pack of Lucky Strikes unopened, some random phone numbers, and Eames' ten year old cellphone which doesn't hold charge longer than five minutes and Arthur keeps trying to replace every time they work with him - but the ones Arthur give him always end up mysteriously bursting into flames or being dropped down a toilet.
No blackmail material, but then Arthur's never been very lucky.
The cells in this jail are the kind with small windows in the door with a sliding flap. The officer leading Arthur knocks on the door and pushes the flap to one side. Arthur clears his throat, but Eames doesn't come to the window. Arthur rolls his eyes and moves closer, peering in through the window.
As expected, Eames is sprawled out on the narrow bench like he's sunbathing on the beach, except his clothes are all wrong for that scenario - his sandy-colored slacks are muddy from below the knee, his grey t-shirt has what looks like blood or tomato ketchup splashed across it, and what probably used to be a jacket was hanging from his shoulders, leaving some of his tattoos poking out - the edge of a tribal band, the corner of a leprechaun.
He's definitely been in some sort of fight, and Arthur tenses himself, waiting for the explanation.
"He got in a public altercation with a vending machine in the Sanding Mall," the female officer standing next to Arthur says.
Arthur considers the logistics and the likelihood of it, and can't quite imagine it; if he voices that, he'll get yet another dry comment from Eames about his lack of imagination. So he brings up his Blackberry again and types in another reminder.
"Sequester the CCTV footage," the female officer sounds out slowly, peering over Arthur's shoulder, and Eames' right eye snaps open to glare at him.
"Planning a felony in front of a lawmaker," Eames says, sounding halfway between impressed and sarcastic, "I'd give you tips except my gorgeous jail keep might refuse to let me go so I think we need to skedaddle on out of here. I think she's planning to ravish me in this very cell."
The female officer possibly throws up in her mouth which might be the best part of Arthur's night.
"I could be a DA," Arthur says, stepping back as the officer swung the door open. Eames strides out of the cell, hands in his pockets, chin tilted as if he's just walking out of a club, not a jail cell. "The officer doesn't know. I could own the mall. There are a thousand different reasons I could have legal access to that footage."
"He isn't and he doesn't," Eames informs the officer, leaning close in to her with a smirk. She looks appalled, and Eames just shrugs, like rejection doesn't sting him at all; Arthur smothers down the fizzle of jealousy in his gut.
It's not the first time he's felt envious of Eames' ability to not give a shit. Arthur's just not built that way. He doesn't remember when growing up aiming to be any particular type of person; he just grew almost inevitably into the person he is now.
Someone who bails someone out on a Saturday night, instead of sticking with a date which might have improved.
Someone who doesn't even like the person he's bailing out again (Arthur's ridiculous crush aside, even he recognises he doesn't have to like someone to want to map their tattoos with his tongue and fingertips.)
Arthur smiles at the officer. It's a bit fixed as he's busy keeping his stupid brain under control. "Like you believe felons."
"Innocent until proven guilty," Eames interrupts immediately.
"Bad people, then. He's bad."
"Evidence," Eames sing-songs.
"He called me in while I was in the middle of a date."
The officer creases her mouth, all her sympathy in Arthur's direction.
"Must have been going well," Eames says, leaning against the wall, ruined jacket fluttering out behind him like a demented cape, "since you ran right here to my rescue."
"I didn't run," Arthur argues, "I walked. Briskly. Because it was raining."
"This way to fill out the rest of the paperwork," the officer says tiredly, gesturing at the door.
The paperwork takes half an hour for Eames to fill out. It's longer every time. This is the third time the two of them have been through this routine on American soil and that's just including this week; Arthur doesn't want to recall the epic shit of bailing Eames out of a Thai jail cell before the police put his mug shot through to be processed by Interpol. Something Arthur's learned while doing such illegal work as extraction is to be squeaky clean, to avoid the lesser law breaks in order to get away with the bigger ones.
Eames doesn't seem to have this life philosophy, which makes sense, as Eames doesn't seem to live life to any particular rule. Arthur can't imagine that either. Life is too confusing without rules to follow, even if they're only self-imposed. It's why Arthur thinks religions have been such a success throughout history. Frameworks are everything. Without ritual, without routine, there's only limbo; there's only forgetting.
Arthur's the best Point Man in the game for this reason. He never forgets it's work. He never lets himself be seduced by the dream. He's the only extractor he's heard of that still has the capacity to dream without the somnacin.
He flickers a furtive glance at Eames as he scrawls over the page, haphazardly missing lines and misspelling everything, up to and including his own name. Maybe that's part of why Arthur's come to bail Eames out each and every time he asks. Because Eames is on a downwards path to loss, and Cobb keeps pulling Eames into their work, and Arthur doesn't want to be dragged down with him.
Arthur bundles Eames out of there as quickly as he can, wanting to put distance between them and the building; he hates the bridling idea that lurks beneath his skin, that extraction is illegal, that someone will be able to look at his face and see the guilt shining back.
Eames is still drunk. It must have been a hell of a bender, because Eames had been in the jail for at least six hours. It's on his breath when Arthur pauses at a crossroads, looking across the street to the hotel that usually has taxis, but contemplating whether walking home might be worth it in the light drizzle of rain, and Eames leans in, one hand on a lamppost, his face unnervingly close to Arthur's.
"Thank you for rescuing me," Eames says, directing a breath wave of what smells like a weird combination of whiskey and punch. "I could repay you, you know."
"You are," Arthur informs him. "$700 plus $40 for forcing me to skip the dessert course. I was in the mood for cheesecake and you have seriously damaged my mood."
"You really were on a date?" Eames freezes a little, that usual brimming confidence skipping for a microsecond.
"Yes," Arthur snaps, and refuses to apologise for snapping because in the circumstances it's really kind of understandable.
"I sort of assumed you were being a- what's the appropriate American vernacular for that hypothetical situation-I know how you enjoy your specificity?" Eames swings back on his heels a second. "Oh, yes. I've got it now - an ass."
Arthur feels the surge of anger like heartburn. "Well, I do enjoy living up to my reputation," Arthur says, and promptly tips the contents of Eames' paper bag all over the wet sidewalk. He balls up the bag and throws it at Eames' face. "Good night, Mr. Eames."
He doesn't look back to see Eames scrape through the rain to retrieve his belongings, and walks quickly, double backing on himself and slipping down a main street, because Eames will expect him to drop down a back alley or three.
Eames doesn't follow him, and Arthur doesn't feel an odd pang at that, he doesn't. The only thing he allows that he's feeling is anger, and he vows this is it. He's never bailing Eames from jail again.
(The fourth time is a slip that's allowed, because they're on a job, and if Eames isn't out and walking around, they won't have a forger and without a forger, Arthur will probably get shot in the head again, and that's never Arthur's idea of a good time.
Still, at least Arthur takes the time to get to know the officers in the station. The woman who refuses Eames' charms-making her incredibly sane in Arthur's opinion-is called Ruth, and she had experience of dreamshare when she was a marine. Arthur's careful to be bland with his own experiences of it, because if he really says how he feels about dreamshare-the excitement, the adrenaline-he's scared he'll open himself wide and show all his sins.
The fifth time is just a plain mistake. It happens to Arthur, with less frequency than it seems to for other people, so he can brush them aside easily enough. Arthur's so surprised when the jail just calls him directly instead of waiting for Eames to make his phone call that he goes automatically. He blames the military side of him for jumping to attention when authority calls. He gets them to promise to let Eames do it himself in future so Arthur can shovel the shit personally.
The officer on the maindesk on the night shift is called Oscar, and he has fourteen cats, all named Mr. Toffee "for ease."
Arthur swills bad jail coffee and wonders how his life came down to this.)
The sixth time, Arthur knows who it is before he picks up-he programmed the jail with its own ringtone on his public cellphone-and he says, rather impassionedly, without listening to who's on the other end, "Eames, goddammit, I am not coming to bail your ass out, this makes it six times in two months and I'm not that fond of you-"
"Um," Cobb says, uncertainly, from the other end of the phone call. "Hi?"
Arthur's still blushing when he storms into the jail, and Oscar sombrely pushes over four sets of forms. Arthur blames the wind for the color in his cheeks. Oscar raises one eyebrow and stares out of the glass doors into the still night behind.
"I'd get better friends, mate," Oscar says.
Arthur nods, uncaps his favorite pen and starts filling in Cobb's details. He doesn't even have to think about any of it-he's been faking Cobb's personal details for nearly a decade now. Then he pauses. "Wait, four?"
When the paperwork's done, Ruth takes him down to the cells. Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf and Eames are all sat in the same cell, like kindergarten kids sat on the naughty bench.
"How is this my life," Arthur demands under his breath.
Ruth pats him on the back. "You need better friends, honey," she says.
Of course this time, it's different-Eames having company and all-and Cobb, damn him, when Eames fills in his paperwork in about five minutes with Arthur tutting in the corner, says out loud, "So, you and Eames do this a lot, huh, Arthur?"
Ariadne giggles, the first positive emotion she's apparently shown since getting arrested.
"It's cheaper than couple's therapy," Eames then says, winking across at Arthur.
"I'm going to find a way to legally shoot you," Arthur tells him in return as Ariadne keeps giggling.
"Accidental discharge while you're cleaning your registered weapon," Ruth pipes up helpfully from where she's taking Yusuf's fingerprints (Arthur already has a worm in place to erase them as soon as they are digitised; he's the best Point Man in the world for a reason.) "I'd be happy to be your alibi."
Eames throws her a disgruntled look. "You can go off people, you know, pet. I can't believe you're in cahoots with him. He irons his underwear."
"I do not," Arthur tells Ruth, but she's looking at him a little oddly now.
Arthur sighs. "You're the worst thing in my life," he tells Eames instead of denying the underwear thing again. It would be a mistake. He does iron his underwear sometimes when he wants his favorite pair when he's too impatient to wait for it to dry naturally, and he's part of a team that are professional secret stealers. It's not an awesome profession when you have secrets that actually should remain secrets.
Like how Arthur sometimes, sometimes, thinks there's nothing wrong with Eames at all; that he is, in fact, rather magnificent. That's a secret he's taking to the grave.
"Your life's not too bad. I'll take it as a compliment," Eames says.
"You're the worst thing in my life," Ruth interjects, "and I have fourteen siblings."
Eames blanches and Arthur suppresses the giggle that wants to come out. He's a professional, dammit, even if Eames seems to want to do everything in the world to prove otherwise.
When they get out, Arthur walks at the back, feeling oddly like a shepherd leading home his miscreant sheep. He's tired of feeling like the only adult in the group, but he supposes that's the role of a point man. To be the parent, so the children can play, and dream, and imagine things he can't.
He's in the mood to mope-their current job is a bitch job from hell-and he has a pile of research to be doing, he doesn't have the time to waste babysitting them all.
"Maybe we should find another jail for me to harass."
Eames' words startle Arthur out of his moping, and Arthur likes him a little for that, and immediately hates it all at once.
"Maybe you should stop getting arrested."
"Trust me, I've thought about it," Eames says, moving to Arthur's left hand side.
Arthur finds himself matching his step to Eames' unhurried gait, and it snaps something inside him. He shouldn't be so comfortable with this. This is all skating too close to the edge of his rules, and the rules are what keeps him safe, and that helps him keep them all safe. He can't keep brushing so close to the law on a regular basis like this. He can't.
It's probably this mire of feeling and helplessness that makes him irritably snipe, "I don't trust you."
In an ideal world it's not the insult he'd make, but he's tired and indisposed and feels humiliated. I don't trust your ability to think would be closer, but l'esprit descalier just makes him feel wearier.
It's just Eames. It's not like he takes these things to heart.
Except Eames graces Arthur with just a terse nod and grunt in response, so maybe he's just tired too. Arthur watches as Eames easily loops his arms around Ariadne and Yusuf, careless with his personal space, so easily social with anyone and everyone, and he hates it.
Jealousy never sits right with Arthur. He swallows it down with resolve. Eames brings out the absolute worst in him, makes him want things he cannot have, makes him stall his personal life for no good reason at all, and it has to stop.
Arthur's heart can't take it.
The next time Eames is in jail, Arthur's not coming to rescue him.
Eames
(Jail experiences 7, 8, 9.)
The seventh time that Arthur finds Eames in jail it's going to be in a dream, and it's not even Eames' dream.
Arthur's reacting as if it's Eames' fault regardless.
From the stupid shit Eames has been pulling over the last eight weeks, he supposes that he doesn't have the best record to draw from. He can't help it. He's been deathly bored. The last three jobs Eames has pulled with Cobb's team have been dull, dull extractions. Eames has barely had to create a decent forge all year. Maybe it was pulling inception. It made going back to pure extraction work like going back to your regular dreams once you'd tried the PASIV.
Possible, but tedious.
They're not in the jail scenario yet. Just in the planning stages. Eames wasn't even the person to suggest it, but Arthur threw this daggered expression in Eames' direction when Cobb suggested it as a training ground for Ariadne, and Eames hadn't been able to find a witty response in time.
He just sits, and thinks about why it even bothers him.
It doesn't.
Arthur's continued disdain shouldn't bother him, because Arthur keeps coming to rescue him, so it's not pure hate. Eames isn't the kind of person to need validation from his peers. Arthur may be the best point man in the dreamsharing community at the moment, but he's hardly the brightest spark either; his lack of imagination means he's solid, dependable, reliable-all the worst traits Eames could imagine possessing himself.
Reliability means routine. Routine gets a man killed when he's on the wrong side of the law. It's why Eames has made sure his life is unpredictable. It's why he works for long stretches with Cobb's team-changing teams every job could become a routine.
Eames rubs his temples, slowly considering his entertainment options for the night. Despite Arthur's best sarcastic jibes, Eames doesn't intend on inhabiting a jail cell for any length of time. It just happens. He could get himself out without a problem, but for some reason it's... funnier to call Arthur.
Or... easier.
But it's not easy. Arthur never makes it easy. He bitches and snarks and grouches and adds interest onto what Eames pays him back, the sneaky bastard. He insults Eames the whole time, and complains, and Eames' esteem is strong, but even he feels a bit weakened by the time he's spent three hours with Arthur in the room sniping at him the whole time. That much negativity is enough to get anyone down.
Still, he keeps calling Arthur as his one phone call. Maybe he's just exploiting that reliable nature. Or maybe-
Maybe he's testing Arthur. Maybe he's waiting to see how far he can push before even reliable, steady Arthur drops him.
Or maybe this is simply just down to the fact that Arthur doesn't trust him.
"If I can't trust you enough to even do that-" from the other day.
"Trust me, I've thought about it," Eames had said later, meaning it jovially, a moment of dark sarcasm untempered by the giddiness of freedom.
"I don't trust you." Eames had put it down to Arthur's natural bitchiness, his perpetual bad mood, but there was something about the tone of his voice when he said it, the curl of loathing, that has made the simple snarky interchange the soundtrack to Eames' life.
Arthur doesn't trust Eames.
This fact is slowly, somehow, driving Eames mad.
Not that madness wasn't the eventual destination for his life that Eames had in mind - he had surrendered to the concept a long time ago. It's why he can afford to be so cavalier. Why take care of the long-term, when all the long-term holds for him is a tiny white padded room and a bucket to catch the drool? And that's only if he can keep ahead of the several high profile figures who seem intent on believing they are owed his head on a stick.
Eames might have assisted them in coming to this conclusion, but he's never done anything untrustworthy around Cobb and Arthur. So the constant digs Arthur makes, the sour expression when Cobb gives Eames another responsibility on the job they're working on, or the pause between the moment Cobb gets offered the job and the moment Cobb calls Eames to hire him where Eames knows the pause is Arthur dragging his heels... it used to just be irritating. Now it's... something else.
Something Eames doesn't have a word for.
Arthur might have a word for it, he thinks. Eames is scratching doodles in the margin of his notepad as Yusuf prattles on about some new somnacin compound, and earning an unimpressed side-glance from Arthur when he notices Eames isn't making useful notes. It's probably something with a lot of syllables. Eames supposes it must be necessary to have words to define concepts when you can't just imagine what the answer to a question should be.
Still, for someone who uses words like Arthur does-carefully, precisely, and like a weapon-Arthur won't just come out and say that he doesn't trust Eames to his face, say it like it's truth and not a snide comment in a disgruntled moment, and that's the part of it that's driving him insane. Eames wants it said, so they can resolve the issue and move on already.
Eames taps his pen against his leg, and hates that he's even thinking about this, but Arthur's making it pretty difficult for him to think about anything else.
It's a reason. It's not a great reason, but it makes sense in Eames' head. He's getting arrested and calling Arthur purely to wind him up. Purely to push him so far to the edge that he spills his secrets to Eames in a whirl of anger, so he actually says the words again, with no margin of doubt: I don't trust you. Arthur's too prim, too reserved; Eames can't work forever with someone he can't fully decipher. With that out in the air, properly, whole, so they can discuss it, Eames might feel less crazy.
Maybe.
Eames transfers his rage for a while to the knot of Arthur's tie. It's a half-Windsor knot, looping the crimson silk around itself in a symmetrical, rigid fashion, and Eames wants to shred it, or burn it, or yank Arthur up and dangle him mid-air from it, but then Arthur shoots him a really annoyed glance, so Eames supposes he must have been glaring.
Eames pulls one of those childish, tongue poking expressions that Arthur always despises, and he smiles widely as he settles back in his chair, wrapping his mouth around his pen lid and winking at Ariadne. Predictably she crosses her eyes in his direction before subtly pointing at Cobb, who is watching both Arthur and Eames like a displeased headmaster. Eames keeps smiling, seeing Arthur shuffle embarrassedly next to him out of the corner of his eye.
It's the small victories, after all.
Arthur is extra frosty to Eames during their practice run of the Dubertech job.
"Try not to get arrested by Ariadne's officers down there," Arthur snipes as they move the chairs into position around the PASIV. "I've made a vow never to bail you out again. You could be stuck in Ariadne's brain forever."
"There are more terrifying brains to be stuck in," Eames replies immediately, eyeballing Arthur with intent.
"I can imagine."
"...really?"
Arthur sneers. "Maybe not up to your so very professional standards. But to a level where I may not sleep for a week in the terror of it."
"Children," Cobb snaps. "Concentrate on the job."
The job. Right. Larry Duberman of Dubertech swears blind he must have had an extraction team in his head, and wants them to quiz his own subconscious because he thinks he saw something that led to his company going so spectacularly bust.
To practice, because they've never done an extraction quite like this with the subject so aware, they're quizzing Ariadne's subconscious to see if she ever cheated on a test, and it's hilarious.
Arthur dreams them up a police headquarters, dull and symmetrical, and nothing like what Eames is disturbingly thinking too often as their jail. Eames would be dismissive of the whole thing if he didn't get to dress up-he does look dashing in uniform. As it is, he rather enjoys it, winking lasciviously at Ariadne as she blushes during the inquisitions, and giggling helplessly when Ariadne's subconscious projects them all as potential subjects to investigate.
Cobb's projection has a big bushy mustache, and for some reason keeps insisting his name is Luke and he didn't steal anything and it's not his fault he's homeless, and Ariadne turns bright red as Arthur tries valiantly to interrogate 'Luke' and mutters something about being brought up on Growing Pains and doesn't Cobb look remarkably like-
She withers and doesn't finish the sentence. It's rather hilarious.
Especially when Arthur helpfully comments that actually, he's rather thought Cobb looked like the actor from Titanic that spent the whole film emoting and throwing puppy eyes at Kate Winslett. Eames wants to laugh at the imagery, but the laugh chokes in his throat instead and he swallows it down. It tastes like guilt in the back of his mouth, and Eames knows, this job is his last with Cobb for a very long time.
Eames doesn't do guilt. He runs away from guilt. He puts continents between himself and guilt. And right now, guilt is dressed like a police administration officer, with his hair slicked back with Brylcreem, a distinct lack of imagination, and a thin lot of patience when it came to dealing with Eames.
Next Ariadne tries to interrogate the dream version of Eames' guilt, although she thinks it's just her dream projection of Arthur. Dream Arthur sits rigidly still and frowns the whole time, and responds in single words, looking blank and expressionless. Eames finds himself watching the whole time through the glass, his hands curled into fists in the material of his dreamed up police jacket, on edge for a reason he can't elucidate. When Eames risks a glance to his left, Arthur has joined him, and is looking a little pained.
Pained is normally how Arthur feels when encountering Eames in a jail cell, Eames can read his discomfort well enough by now, but he never outwardly looks it until they're a block away from the jail cell and Arthur's lecturing him for the thousandth time on propriety and professionalism. It makes something inside Eames lurch-he wants to wipe that expression away, because he's not the one that put that expression there.
"I meant to tell you before," Arthur says, stiff and cold. "This morning? That was the last time I'm ever going to bail you out of jail."
Eames shrugs. He's heard it before.
"I mean it," Arthur says, in a strained voice.
Eames understands the strain-it can't be easy for Arthur seeing himself sitting opposite Ariadne with such a chillingly blank expression. "You should relax ," Eames says awkwardly, the only civil words he's managed to Arthur since the sixth arrest, "this isn't how she really sees you."
The interrogation room glass is reflective, and Eames can see enough of the real Arthur's expression to see it tighten, the sides of his mouth levelling out, until he matches the expression of the fake Arthur within the small room.
"Sometimes, when you talk to me, I'm lost between if you're trying in your own special way to actually help, or if you're yet again trying to actively find some new way to insult me," Arthur mutters, and there it is again, that weird sensation, like the hairs on the back of Eames' neck are standing up.
"I find insulting you comes naturally. Little effort required." Eames stretches, leans against the glass and smirks. He feels the stretch of his smirk like déjà vu, it's almost defensive, and that definitely makes his heckles rise. "You do make a sublimely opportune target."
"This time, Mr. Eames, your condescension is noted." Arthur prods at the glass disapprovingly, and flinches at the fingerprint he leaves behind, but lets it stay. It's not like there's any real police around to gather the fake dream evidence, but the impulse to clean up after oneself at a crime scene is a hard one to shake. "She must have, at least once," Arthur finishes, in this odd detached tone, almost under his breath.
The impulse is difficult to shake for both of them, as Eames finds himself rubbing the fingerprint away with his sleeve cuff as Arthur stalks off stiffly, hands planting by his side like he's dreamed them there, ostensibly to talk to the receptionist who reminds Eames of the clerk at the 7-11 nearest their workspace. It was the factory they had hired for the inception job; Arthur, thorough as always, or perhaps taking lessons from Saito, had seen it prudent to buy the entire space, and no one thought it worthwhile to waste money working elsewhere when they had this perfectly serviceable space. It doesn't seem to matter to any of them anymore that they can dream safely anywhere-this place is an anchor for them, as much of a totem as the small weighted objects they all carry.
Eames watches Arthur for a while, noting the tension across his back, running down his neck, and he stares for so long he draws Arthur's attention. Eames has a variety of responses for the times he's caught staring, and most of them seem to piss Arthur off, so Eames plumps for one of his favourites and winks.
It serves to irritate Arthur enough into rolling his eyes and turning back to the receptionist, and Eames can't help it-the feeling is back, and long enough for him to define it, and Eames turns from Arthur in horror to find himself staring at Ariadne's projection of Arthur.
He's wrong.
The feeling's not guilt.
It's pain.
He's hurt.
Arthur doesn't trust him, and it hurts.
Eames has spent so long dodging real deep emotions of any kind, and suffering all kinds of physical pain in real life and in the space of a dream, that it comes almost as a physical blow to his gut. He has to put one arm up against the nearest wall to steady himself, and his fingertips stutter over the surface. He can feel each indent in each brick, rough and cold beneath the pads of his fingers, because Arthur's dreams are always so solid and detail-oriented and firm.
The idea lodges into the back of his skull, and it's not insistent and it doesn't stop him doing his job. He just worries over the idea instead, distant and disconnected from himself in a way that usually only happens when someone is torturing him, and he knows if they stay down too long then he'll lose control over his own subconscious and start populating it with his own ridiculous concerns.
It's not normally something he has to worry about.
Being hurt because Arthur doesn't trust him shouldn't even occur. But it's there, fluttering somewhere inside him, aching like new dental work that still feels odd to the tongue.
Eames has always known in life the best time to retreat. He needs them to get out now. He knows the best person to ask. Himself, of course.
Perhaps Arthur's dream had conjured a cell with Eames' name on it, or maybe Ariadne's flashbacking to their shared jail experience, but Eames finds the Ariadne-projected-Eames in a single cell.
Eames looks through the small sliding door through to himself. Ariadne's dream has gotten him right down to every detail; Eames had been wearing that outfit last night, so his project his last night's projection.
He smirks. It hadn't entirely been his fault, last night's arrest. It had been coincidence to find the Dibley brothers at the club Eames suggested they went to-if anything, it was Cobb's fault it ended in jail. A job with Cobb and the brothers had gone South a few months back. The Dibley brothers were a little inebriated and decided to take it out on Cobb's hide. Eames' fist got in the way. Repeatedly. And Ariadne was a hell of a bar fighter. The way she wielded the chair was delightful. And Yusuf carried some interesting things in his pockets; the spray thing was inspired. And Cobb's always been a great fighter...
Eames can't reminisce too much. The still weird, lingering pain of Arthur not trusting him is almost pulsating in his skull now. There's nothing he can do but finish this job and run, or keep pushing Arthur until there's nothing left to push. It's his only two options.
He can't outright ask. Arthur would assume he was messing around. He can't apologise and start acting trustworthy all the time, because broken trust followed dreamers around like a bad smell. Besides, Eames is trustworthy all the time. He's never sold them out, not once, even though he's had plenty of opportunities. Sure he's a thief, and a forger, but he's never turned on any of his crews. He's joked about it, sure. He could have sold Cobb to Cobol for a thousand times more money than they even made on the Saito job.
Eames is trustworthy, he really is, and Arthur not thinking so... well, how could he ever work with him again? Not being trusted is like being insulted right in the heart of what it is they do.
He can't outright ask Arthur, but the PASIV allows things Freud would have shit bricks over; he can outright ask himself.
"Oi, sexy." Eames raps on the door to get Ariadne's projection of Eames to look at him. "Arthur doesn't trust you. What do you think of that?"
Projection!Eames rolls his shoulders. "Couldn't give a donkey's willy, mate. Arthur's a fuddy duddy with a stick lodged so far up his arse that even a good colon cleansing couldn't dislodge it."
Eames stares. His projection is witty, that's for sure. But Ariadne seems to have the wrong idea about him. Sure he insults Arthur, but never more than an odd "stick up the arse" jibe behind his back-he saves his insults for Arthur to give them to his face. That's part of trust, too. Eames is open with him at all times, even if Arthur doesn't think so.
"Not that I wouldn't give Arthur a good colon cleansing," projection Eames continues, without Eames to interrupt him.
"Good God," Eames mutters, "shut up. I'm not that lewd."
"Aren't we, darling?" Projection Eames grabs at his cock through his pants and winks at him. Eames blanches. "See, this is why Ariadne's a good architect, but she'd be a shit forger. She sees people tick. She doesn't understand why people tick. 's why I'm such a shallow projection of you, see."
Eames resists the urge to blink because he knows never to show weakness, but he's always terrified when projections show self-awareness. He supposes if anyone's projection would be self-aware, it would be his. It's a dangerous sign, though. The dream might collapse to pieces any minute.
"Because she can't get into my head," Eames says. "She can't step in my shoes."
"They're really shit shoes, you have to admit," Projection Eames says, lifting up his feet and prodding at the tatty sneakers.
"Don't 'spose you want to tell me if Ariadne's ever cheated on a test?"
"That's be cheating, my man." Projection Eames hitches his pants up from where the waistband is loose. "So of course I will. Maths exam. Grade six. She looked over at Paul Groban's paper for the last answer and scrawled it in."
"Thanks," Eames says, his hand going for the slot to cover up this weird version of himself.
"Oh, she also shagged her Spanish TA," Projection Eames adds. "She doesn't think that counts because she's already fluent in Spanish so her grades would have been awesome if she gave him a blowie or not."
Eames thanks himself for the TMI, and heads back to where Ariadne's trying to interrogate a projection of Miles that seems to be dressed like...
"Is he dressed like Scrooge from Christmas Carol?" Eames asks Cobb, who's watching it all through the two-way glass with a barely repressed smirk.
"Maybe we ought to cut this short before the Muppets come in singing," Cobb says. Eames looks away from Scrooge!Miles, and at Cobb, mustering his best WTF expression. Cobb winces. "Too much time watching kids films, I'm afraid. Hazard of the job."
"You love it," Eames says, shoving his shoulder into Cobb's in a friendly manner.
"I really sort of do," Cobb admits, a shy turn to his grin. This new Cobb, this free Cobb is more of a delight to work with than grim, determined, grieving Cobb. It's not like working with him when Mal was around, nothing will match the feeling of that ever, but it's fun and reassuring and Eames...
Eames is going to miss working with him terribly. Because cutting out Arthur, who can't trust him, means cutting out Cobb too-they're attached at the heels. Cobb never works without Arthur, and Eames can't work with someone that doesn't trust him.
There must be something on his face, something he can't hide quick enough, because Cobb's staring at him, not at Ariadne's futile attempts to wring information from a now- Is the projection of Scrooge!Miles singing? Oh, god. Eames shudders. That's a new one.
"Eames-" Cobb starts.
"Fundamental error in this scenario," Eames says, changing the subject before Cobb can even broach it, carefully schooling his expression into something more neutral. "Why are we letting Ariadne interrogate herself? Isn't she going to want to hide the information?"
"I was helping. But this is weird. Besides, I think she's just psychoanalysing herself at this point." Cobb shrugs.
"I got the information out of myself. She cheated in Grade 6, in a maths test." Eames scratches his nose, and misses out the information about her Spanish TA, trying to be gracious.
"Oh, thank god for that," Ariadne breathes, pushing out of the room. "I thought I was going to have to do a duet with him for a minute there."
"Miles does that in real life too," Cobb says, almost apologetically. "Eames found out about your cheating."
"Of course he did," Arthur says, sounding a little peeved.
"Meaning what?" Eames demands, feeling a little raw and oddly vulnerable.
"Meaning her kind of cheating is right up your alley," Arthur says, barely sparing a glance in Eames' direction.
Because he doesn't trust him. Of course. "How is Maths-" Eames starts, weirdly offended.
Arthur ignores him, of course, and raises one eyebrow at Ariadne. "You slept with your Spanish TA?"
Ariadne colors. "It's-"
"-not cheating, she's fluent in Spanish anyway," Eames breaks in, in a hard voice that he almost feels like he should apologise for, but he's getting a headache-probably in real life by the way it's rattling his skull-and he's had enough. He just wants to be out of there. "She cheated on her Grade 6 Math exam and copied off Paul Groban." Eames turns to Cobb. "Can we go now?"
"The somnacin should wear off in a few minutes," Cobb says.
"Fuck that," Eames says, and pulls out his gun.
Part 2
mizzy2k
Summary: Eames/Arthur. Arthur's tired of bailing Eames out from jail, but he keeps coming back and he has no idea why. Eames thinks Arthur doesn't trust him. It's a litany of misunderstandings... but maybe understanding will come eventually.
For my hc_bingo square Trust issues.
Fandom: Inception
Wordcount: ~15,000
Genre: Romance, hurt/comfort.
Disclaimer: Inception doesn't belong to me.
Rating: PG-13
Notes: This fic shouldn't be this long, but I needed to explore whose POV I liked to write in best for inception_bang reasons, and this is what came out. This is my first un-anonymous Inception fic. Eek, scary.
Arthur
( Jail rescues: 3, 4, 5 and 6)
Arthur is sitting across from someone who may, he thinks, be even more socially ridiculous than Eames. His date is talking, and Arthur should be listening. Instead he's playing with the tines of his fork under the table, wondering whether the legal ramifications will be less if he stabs himself or his date, or - if he can wait until tomorrow - Ariadne.
The latter he can potentially arrange to happen accidentally in the dreamscape, and it would keep him out of the reach of the law, which is a comfortable space to be in Arthur's opinion.
His date's attractive enough in an arbitrary way but not Arthur's preferred type. Ariadne apparently just thinks gay is Arthur's type, which is ridiculous; that's more Eames' type, as Eames doesn't discriminate. Actually, breathing is more Eames' type, or perhaps Arthur's being too generous even on that front.
Arthur's picky when it comes to the other people in his life. It's not the worst flaw a person can have. But if he's going to date someone, then he wants (someone who can fight back, who doesn't take his shit, who makes the hairs stand up on the back of his neck just by walking into the room, someone who makes him pause just hearing their name)- He just wants something else. Is that a bad thing?
He doesn't want the moron sitting in front of him who doesn't know the difference between Louis and Albert Kahn. Who thinks chewing with his mouth open is reasonable behaviour. Who thinks a donkey bray is an acceptable laughter substitute. Whose mouth is too thin, and physique is too lean, and whose accent is ill-defined, flitting between a heavy Brooklyn tang and a put-on Manhattan terseness.
He's a laundry list of fails, and Arthur's thinking stabbing himself might actually be the best option. There's got to be some legal way of getting back at Ariadne. Perhaps he could casually drop a link to her livejournal account into Cobb's inbox...
When Arthur's cellphone buzzes he nearly cries in relief, even though the local police station's number crawls across the screen. "I have to take this," Arthur says, hitting the connect key. "It's a work emergency."
"So I'm a work emergency, huh?" Eames' voice is tinny through the weak connection, and Arthur feels the usual annoyance curl down his spine. This is a better option than his date, but it's not a huge step up.
"You're in administration, how can there be an emergency?" Arthur's date squawks indignantly.
"Who is that? You sound like you're in a restaurant. Are you on a date?" Eames demands, sounding incredulous. "He sounds like a real winner."
"He is," Arthur says. "Michael's a lawyer."
"My name's Martin," the date squeaks. Arthur throws him the same look he gives people shooting at him, and Michael- Martin- whatever- freezes and grabs for his wine glass.
Eames, damn him, is chuckling. "Well, I'm sorry to divert you from such a scintillating experience, but I've gotten into a spot of bother, and I could use some of your... extraction expertise."
Arthur always knows the right question to get past Eames' bullshit. "What did you do?"
Eames pauses, and Arthur can hear a long drawn huff. "There was an altercation," Eames starts, uncertainly.
"Ahuh," Arthur says, flatly. "Did someone call you a bitch again?"
"That man last time thought I was a woman. How was I supposed to react?"
"Professionally. And not involving the law. Seriously, Eames-I give you one rule on this job whenever you work with us, and that's to stay out of trouble. If I can't trust you enough to even do that-"
"I try my best. Arthur. Come on. Please. This female officer looks like she wants to eat me alive, and while I might enjoy it, I think she would enjoy it too much." Eames voice slips into a wheedling tone. "I'm more fun than your date and you know it."
"You're not," Arthur lies, and smirks a little at the look of panic on his date's face. "Not at the moment anyway," he amends.
"I'll see what I can do about later, darling," Eames says, and Arthur finds himself smiling before he can stop himself. He has to remind himself once again that it's just Eames being Eames, and that's... been getting more and more difficult. Eames is just being himself and can't help it, and this stupid smiling is just the remnants of a stupid, old crush that Arthur's always known would go nowhere.
It's why he's been trying to get out and date. Arthur's not dated in a while, so long that Eames' casual friendliness had a crazy effect on Arthur's brain for a little while, culminating in a couple of weeks of crazy crushing-Arthur took a rare vacation to get it all out, and he got pissed in Malaga, lying the whole time with cocktails on the beach, and he didn't think of Eames once-and it's been easier since that.
But sometimes, Eames will call him darling and the stupid thing will raise its head again, and Arthur has to do something to beat it down with a stick.
"I'll come bail you out," Arthur tells Eames loudly before hanging up, just to make his date splutter and start to wave down the waiter for the bill. "There's been an incident with paperclips," he says, shrugging his jacket back on. "Blood everywhere," he adds, just to make the guy turn a shade paler.
But he doesn't. He just looks at Arthur a little sadly. "I wouldn't have come if I'd known you were involved with someone already."
Arthur frowns. "I'm not."
Martin looks at him sadly. "Keep telling yourself that, love. Tell Ariadne I said hi."
Arthur spends a moment resisting the urge to punch Martin, because it's only Eames that can get away with calling him stupid shit. He lets Martin pay the whole bill instead. It's less likely to get him incarcerated alongside Eames, for a start, and less likely to get him to stop still and identifying his feelings.
He's quite happy to be in denial. It's a much easier life.
Is it a happy life, my little serious Arthur? a voice says in the back of his mind, a voice that sounds too disturbingly like Mal. He tells her voice to fuck off. She's dead and has no rights to be in his head, saying things.
Even if what she's saying is right.
Arthur walks to the police station, stuffing his hands in his pockets and keeping his head down. The rain stings his cheeks but he's too busy being angry with himself to get the cab. The date might have been becoming a bust with no external help from Eames, but Arthur has no intention of not emphasising to Eames just how much he's screwed up this time. This is the third time this week, for goodness' sake.
"Oh," says the officer when Arthur finally gets to the front of the queue, wallet already in hand, ready to pay whatever fine Eames has managed to land himself this time, "you're here for him. A real sweetheart, that one."
Arthur settles his mouth into a hard line and nods along to the sympathetic look the next officer gives him as she escorts him to the cells. "Back again?" is all she says in a pitying voice. Arthur flicks a look through the paper bag of Eames' belongings as he follows her, pushing the receipt in for the fine amongst the random items and punching a reminder into his Blackberry so he knows to hassle Eames regularly until he pays it back.
There's the usual detritus in the bag-a lighter that doesn't work, his wallet which feels empty, his ID, his fake ID which somehow the cops have thankfully missed, a pack of Marlboro half smoked, a pack of Lucky Strikes unopened, some random phone numbers, and Eames' ten year old cellphone which doesn't hold charge longer than five minutes and Arthur keeps trying to replace every time they work with him - but the ones Arthur give him always end up mysteriously bursting into flames or being dropped down a toilet.
No blackmail material, but then Arthur's never been very lucky.
The cells in this jail are the kind with small windows in the door with a sliding flap. The officer leading Arthur knocks on the door and pushes the flap to one side. Arthur clears his throat, but Eames doesn't come to the window. Arthur rolls his eyes and moves closer, peering in through the window.
As expected, Eames is sprawled out on the narrow bench like he's sunbathing on the beach, except his clothes are all wrong for that scenario - his sandy-colored slacks are muddy from below the knee, his grey t-shirt has what looks like blood or tomato ketchup splashed across it, and what probably used to be a jacket was hanging from his shoulders, leaving some of his tattoos poking out - the edge of a tribal band, the corner of a leprechaun.
He's definitely been in some sort of fight, and Arthur tenses himself, waiting for the explanation.
"He got in a public altercation with a vending machine in the Sanding Mall," the female officer standing next to Arthur says.
Arthur considers the logistics and the likelihood of it, and can't quite imagine it; if he voices that, he'll get yet another dry comment from Eames about his lack of imagination. So he brings up his Blackberry again and types in another reminder.
"Sequester the CCTV footage," the female officer sounds out slowly, peering over Arthur's shoulder, and Eames' right eye snaps open to glare at him.
"Planning a felony in front of a lawmaker," Eames says, sounding halfway between impressed and sarcastic, "I'd give you tips except my gorgeous jail keep might refuse to let me go so I think we need to skedaddle on out of here. I think she's planning to ravish me in this very cell."
The female officer possibly throws up in her mouth which might be the best part of Arthur's night.
"I could be a DA," Arthur says, stepping back as the officer swung the door open. Eames strides out of the cell, hands in his pockets, chin tilted as if he's just walking out of a club, not a jail cell. "The officer doesn't know. I could own the mall. There are a thousand different reasons I could have legal access to that footage."
"He isn't and he doesn't," Eames informs the officer, leaning close in to her with a smirk. She looks appalled, and Eames just shrugs, like rejection doesn't sting him at all; Arthur smothers down the fizzle of jealousy in his gut.
It's not the first time he's felt envious of Eames' ability to not give a shit. Arthur's just not built that way. He doesn't remember when growing up aiming to be any particular type of person; he just grew almost inevitably into the person he is now.
Someone who bails someone out on a Saturday night, instead of sticking with a date which might have improved.
Someone who doesn't even like the person he's bailing out again (Arthur's ridiculous crush aside, even he recognises he doesn't have to like someone to want to map their tattoos with his tongue and fingertips.)
Arthur smiles at the officer. It's a bit fixed as he's busy keeping his stupid brain under control. "Like you believe felons."
"Innocent until proven guilty," Eames interrupts immediately.
"Bad people, then. He's bad."
"Evidence," Eames sing-songs.
"He called me in while I was in the middle of a date."
The officer creases her mouth, all her sympathy in Arthur's direction.
"Must have been going well," Eames says, leaning against the wall, ruined jacket fluttering out behind him like a demented cape, "since you ran right here to my rescue."
"I didn't run," Arthur argues, "I walked. Briskly. Because it was raining."
"This way to fill out the rest of the paperwork," the officer says tiredly, gesturing at the door.
The paperwork takes half an hour for Eames to fill out. It's longer every time. This is the third time the two of them have been through this routine on American soil and that's just including this week; Arthur doesn't want to recall the epic shit of bailing Eames out of a Thai jail cell before the police put his mug shot through to be processed by Interpol. Something Arthur's learned while doing such illegal work as extraction is to be squeaky clean, to avoid the lesser law breaks in order to get away with the bigger ones.
Eames doesn't seem to have this life philosophy, which makes sense, as Eames doesn't seem to live life to any particular rule. Arthur can't imagine that either. Life is too confusing without rules to follow, even if they're only self-imposed. It's why Arthur thinks religions have been such a success throughout history. Frameworks are everything. Without ritual, without routine, there's only limbo; there's only forgetting.
Arthur's the best Point Man in the game for this reason. He never forgets it's work. He never lets himself be seduced by the dream. He's the only extractor he's heard of that still has the capacity to dream without the somnacin.
He flickers a furtive glance at Eames as he scrawls over the page, haphazardly missing lines and misspelling everything, up to and including his own name. Maybe that's part of why Arthur's come to bail Eames out each and every time he asks. Because Eames is on a downwards path to loss, and Cobb keeps pulling Eames into their work, and Arthur doesn't want to be dragged down with him.
Arthur bundles Eames out of there as quickly as he can, wanting to put distance between them and the building; he hates the bridling idea that lurks beneath his skin, that extraction is illegal, that someone will be able to look at his face and see the guilt shining back.
Eames is still drunk. It must have been a hell of a bender, because Eames had been in the jail for at least six hours. It's on his breath when Arthur pauses at a crossroads, looking across the street to the hotel that usually has taxis, but contemplating whether walking home might be worth it in the light drizzle of rain, and Eames leans in, one hand on a lamppost, his face unnervingly close to Arthur's.
"Thank you for rescuing me," Eames says, directing a breath wave of what smells like a weird combination of whiskey and punch. "I could repay you, you know."
"You are," Arthur informs him. "$700 plus $40 for forcing me to skip the dessert course. I was in the mood for cheesecake and you have seriously damaged my mood."
"You really were on a date?" Eames freezes a little, that usual brimming confidence skipping for a microsecond.
"Yes," Arthur snaps, and refuses to apologise for snapping because in the circumstances it's really kind of understandable.
"I sort of assumed you were being a- what's the appropriate American vernacular for that hypothetical situation-I know how you enjoy your specificity?" Eames swings back on his heels a second. "Oh, yes. I've got it now - an ass."
Arthur feels the surge of anger like heartburn. "Well, I do enjoy living up to my reputation," Arthur says, and promptly tips the contents of Eames' paper bag all over the wet sidewalk. He balls up the bag and throws it at Eames' face. "Good night, Mr. Eames."
He doesn't look back to see Eames scrape through the rain to retrieve his belongings, and walks quickly, double backing on himself and slipping down a main street, because Eames will expect him to drop down a back alley or three.
Eames doesn't follow him, and Arthur doesn't feel an odd pang at that, he doesn't. The only thing he allows that he's feeling is anger, and he vows this is it. He's never bailing Eames from jail again.
(The fourth time is a slip that's allowed, because they're on a job, and if Eames isn't out and walking around, they won't have a forger and without a forger, Arthur will probably get shot in the head again, and that's never Arthur's idea of a good time.
Still, at least Arthur takes the time to get to know the officers in the station. The woman who refuses Eames' charms-making her incredibly sane in Arthur's opinion-is called Ruth, and she had experience of dreamshare when she was a marine. Arthur's careful to be bland with his own experiences of it, because if he really says how he feels about dreamshare-the excitement, the adrenaline-he's scared he'll open himself wide and show all his sins.
The fifth time is just a plain mistake. It happens to Arthur, with less frequency than it seems to for other people, so he can brush them aside easily enough. Arthur's so surprised when the jail just calls him directly instead of waiting for Eames to make his phone call that he goes automatically. He blames the military side of him for jumping to attention when authority calls. He gets them to promise to let Eames do it himself in future so Arthur can shovel the shit personally.
The officer on the maindesk on the night shift is called Oscar, and he has fourteen cats, all named Mr. Toffee "for ease."
Arthur swills bad jail coffee and wonders how his life came down to this.)
The sixth time, Arthur knows who it is before he picks up-he programmed the jail with its own ringtone on his public cellphone-and he says, rather impassionedly, without listening to who's on the other end, "Eames, goddammit, I am not coming to bail your ass out, this makes it six times in two months and I'm not that fond of you-"
"Um," Cobb says, uncertainly, from the other end of the phone call. "Hi?"
Arthur's still blushing when he storms into the jail, and Oscar sombrely pushes over four sets of forms. Arthur blames the wind for the color in his cheeks. Oscar raises one eyebrow and stares out of the glass doors into the still night behind.
"I'd get better friends, mate," Oscar says.
Arthur nods, uncaps his favorite pen and starts filling in Cobb's details. He doesn't even have to think about any of it-he's been faking Cobb's personal details for nearly a decade now. Then he pauses. "Wait, four?"
When the paperwork's done, Ruth takes him down to the cells. Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf and Eames are all sat in the same cell, like kindergarten kids sat on the naughty bench.
"How is this my life," Arthur demands under his breath.
Ruth pats him on the back. "You need better friends, honey," she says.
Of course this time, it's different-Eames having company and all-and Cobb, damn him, when Eames fills in his paperwork in about five minutes with Arthur tutting in the corner, says out loud, "So, you and Eames do this a lot, huh, Arthur?"
Ariadne giggles, the first positive emotion she's apparently shown since getting arrested.
"It's cheaper than couple's therapy," Eames then says, winking across at Arthur.
"I'm going to find a way to legally shoot you," Arthur tells him in return as Ariadne keeps giggling.
"Accidental discharge while you're cleaning your registered weapon," Ruth pipes up helpfully from where she's taking Yusuf's fingerprints (Arthur already has a worm in place to erase them as soon as they are digitised; he's the best Point Man in the world for a reason.) "I'd be happy to be your alibi."
Eames throws her a disgruntled look. "You can go off people, you know, pet. I can't believe you're in cahoots with him. He irons his underwear."
"I do not," Arthur tells Ruth, but she's looking at him a little oddly now.
Arthur sighs. "You're the worst thing in my life," he tells Eames instead of denying the underwear thing again. It would be a mistake. He does iron his underwear sometimes when he wants his favorite pair when he's too impatient to wait for it to dry naturally, and he's part of a team that are professional secret stealers. It's not an awesome profession when you have secrets that actually should remain secrets.
Like how Arthur sometimes, sometimes, thinks there's nothing wrong with Eames at all; that he is, in fact, rather magnificent. That's a secret he's taking to the grave.
"Your life's not too bad. I'll take it as a compliment," Eames says.
"You're the worst thing in my life," Ruth interjects, "and I have fourteen siblings."
Eames blanches and Arthur suppresses the giggle that wants to come out. He's a professional, dammit, even if Eames seems to want to do everything in the world to prove otherwise.
When they get out, Arthur walks at the back, feeling oddly like a shepherd leading home his miscreant sheep. He's tired of feeling like the only adult in the group, but he supposes that's the role of a point man. To be the parent, so the children can play, and dream, and imagine things he can't.
He's in the mood to mope-their current job is a bitch job from hell-and he has a pile of research to be doing, he doesn't have the time to waste babysitting them all.
"Maybe we should find another jail for me to harass."
Eames' words startle Arthur out of his moping, and Arthur likes him a little for that, and immediately hates it all at once.
"Maybe you should stop getting arrested."
"Trust me, I've thought about it," Eames says, moving to Arthur's left hand side.
Arthur finds himself matching his step to Eames' unhurried gait, and it snaps something inside him. He shouldn't be so comfortable with this. This is all skating too close to the edge of his rules, and the rules are what keeps him safe, and that helps him keep them all safe. He can't keep brushing so close to the law on a regular basis like this. He can't.
It's probably this mire of feeling and helplessness that makes him irritably snipe, "I don't trust you."
In an ideal world it's not the insult he'd make, but he's tired and indisposed and feels humiliated. I don't trust your ability to think would be closer, but l'esprit descalier just makes him feel wearier.
It's just Eames. It's not like he takes these things to heart.
Except Eames graces Arthur with just a terse nod and grunt in response, so maybe he's just tired too. Arthur watches as Eames easily loops his arms around Ariadne and Yusuf, careless with his personal space, so easily social with anyone and everyone, and he hates it.
Jealousy never sits right with Arthur. He swallows it down with resolve. Eames brings out the absolute worst in him, makes him want things he cannot have, makes him stall his personal life for no good reason at all, and it has to stop.
Arthur's heart can't take it.
The next time Eames is in jail, Arthur's not coming to rescue him.
Eames
(Jail experiences 7, 8, 9.)
The seventh time that Arthur finds Eames in jail it's going to be in a dream, and it's not even Eames' dream.
Arthur's reacting as if it's Eames' fault regardless.
From the stupid shit Eames has been pulling over the last eight weeks, he supposes that he doesn't have the best record to draw from. He can't help it. He's been deathly bored. The last three jobs Eames has pulled with Cobb's team have been dull, dull extractions. Eames has barely had to create a decent forge all year. Maybe it was pulling inception. It made going back to pure extraction work like going back to your regular dreams once you'd tried the PASIV.
Possible, but tedious.
They're not in the jail scenario yet. Just in the planning stages. Eames wasn't even the person to suggest it, but Arthur threw this daggered expression in Eames' direction when Cobb suggested it as a training ground for Ariadne, and Eames hadn't been able to find a witty response in time.
He just sits, and thinks about why it even bothers him.
It doesn't.
Arthur's continued disdain shouldn't bother him, because Arthur keeps coming to rescue him, so it's not pure hate. Eames isn't the kind of person to need validation from his peers. Arthur may be the best point man in the dreamsharing community at the moment, but he's hardly the brightest spark either; his lack of imagination means he's solid, dependable, reliable-all the worst traits Eames could imagine possessing himself.
Reliability means routine. Routine gets a man killed when he's on the wrong side of the law. It's why Eames has made sure his life is unpredictable. It's why he works for long stretches with Cobb's team-changing teams every job could become a routine.
Eames rubs his temples, slowly considering his entertainment options for the night. Despite Arthur's best sarcastic jibes, Eames doesn't intend on inhabiting a jail cell for any length of time. It just happens. He could get himself out without a problem, but for some reason it's... funnier to call Arthur.
Or... easier.
But it's not easy. Arthur never makes it easy. He bitches and snarks and grouches and adds interest onto what Eames pays him back, the sneaky bastard. He insults Eames the whole time, and complains, and Eames' esteem is strong, but even he feels a bit weakened by the time he's spent three hours with Arthur in the room sniping at him the whole time. That much negativity is enough to get anyone down.
Still, he keeps calling Arthur as his one phone call. Maybe he's just exploiting that reliable nature. Or maybe-
Maybe he's testing Arthur. Maybe he's waiting to see how far he can push before even reliable, steady Arthur drops him.
Or maybe this is simply just down to the fact that Arthur doesn't trust him.
"If I can't trust you enough to even do that-" from the other day.
"Trust me, I've thought about it," Eames had said later, meaning it jovially, a moment of dark sarcasm untempered by the giddiness of freedom.
"I don't trust you." Eames had put it down to Arthur's natural bitchiness, his perpetual bad mood, but there was something about the tone of his voice when he said it, the curl of loathing, that has made the simple snarky interchange the soundtrack to Eames' life.
Arthur doesn't trust Eames.
This fact is slowly, somehow, driving Eames mad.
Not that madness wasn't the eventual destination for his life that Eames had in mind - he had surrendered to the concept a long time ago. It's why he can afford to be so cavalier. Why take care of the long-term, when all the long-term holds for him is a tiny white padded room and a bucket to catch the drool? And that's only if he can keep ahead of the several high profile figures who seem intent on believing they are owed his head on a stick.
Eames might have assisted them in coming to this conclusion, but he's never done anything untrustworthy around Cobb and Arthur. So the constant digs Arthur makes, the sour expression when Cobb gives Eames another responsibility on the job they're working on, or the pause between the moment Cobb gets offered the job and the moment Cobb calls Eames to hire him where Eames knows the pause is Arthur dragging his heels... it used to just be irritating. Now it's... something else.
Something Eames doesn't have a word for.
Arthur might have a word for it, he thinks. Eames is scratching doodles in the margin of his notepad as Yusuf prattles on about some new somnacin compound, and earning an unimpressed side-glance from Arthur when he notices Eames isn't making useful notes. It's probably something with a lot of syllables. Eames supposes it must be necessary to have words to define concepts when you can't just imagine what the answer to a question should be.
Still, for someone who uses words like Arthur does-carefully, precisely, and like a weapon-Arthur won't just come out and say that he doesn't trust Eames to his face, say it like it's truth and not a snide comment in a disgruntled moment, and that's the part of it that's driving him insane. Eames wants it said, so they can resolve the issue and move on already.
Eames taps his pen against his leg, and hates that he's even thinking about this, but Arthur's making it pretty difficult for him to think about anything else.
It's a reason. It's not a great reason, but it makes sense in Eames' head. He's getting arrested and calling Arthur purely to wind him up. Purely to push him so far to the edge that he spills his secrets to Eames in a whirl of anger, so he actually says the words again, with no margin of doubt: I don't trust you. Arthur's too prim, too reserved; Eames can't work forever with someone he can't fully decipher. With that out in the air, properly, whole, so they can discuss it, Eames might feel less crazy.
Maybe.
Eames transfers his rage for a while to the knot of Arthur's tie. It's a half-Windsor knot, looping the crimson silk around itself in a symmetrical, rigid fashion, and Eames wants to shred it, or burn it, or yank Arthur up and dangle him mid-air from it, but then Arthur shoots him a really annoyed glance, so Eames supposes he must have been glaring.
Eames pulls one of those childish, tongue poking expressions that Arthur always despises, and he smiles widely as he settles back in his chair, wrapping his mouth around his pen lid and winking at Ariadne. Predictably she crosses her eyes in his direction before subtly pointing at Cobb, who is watching both Arthur and Eames like a displeased headmaster. Eames keeps smiling, seeing Arthur shuffle embarrassedly next to him out of the corner of his eye.
It's the small victories, after all.
Arthur is extra frosty to Eames during their practice run of the Dubertech job.
"Try not to get arrested by Ariadne's officers down there," Arthur snipes as they move the chairs into position around the PASIV. "I've made a vow never to bail you out again. You could be stuck in Ariadne's brain forever."
"There are more terrifying brains to be stuck in," Eames replies immediately, eyeballing Arthur with intent.
"I can imagine."
"...really?"
Arthur sneers. "Maybe not up to your so very professional standards. But to a level where I may not sleep for a week in the terror of it."
"Children," Cobb snaps. "Concentrate on the job."
The job. Right. Larry Duberman of Dubertech swears blind he must have had an extraction team in his head, and wants them to quiz his own subconscious because he thinks he saw something that led to his company going so spectacularly bust.
To practice, because they've never done an extraction quite like this with the subject so aware, they're quizzing Ariadne's subconscious to see if she ever cheated on a test, and it's hilarious.
Arthur dreams them up a police headquarters, dull and symmetrical, and nothing like what Eames is disturbingly thinking too often as their jail. Eames would be dismissive of the whole thing if he didn't get to dress up-he does look dashing in uniform. As it is, he rather enjoys it, winking lasciviously at Ariadne as she blushes during the inquisitions, and giggling helplessly when Ariadne's subconscious projects them all as potential subjects to investigate.
Cobb's projection has a big bushy mustache, and for some reason keeps insisting his name is Luke and he didn't steal anything and it's not his fault he's homeless, and Ariadne turns bright red as Arthur tries valiantly to interrogate 'Luke' and mutters something about being brought up on Growing Pains and doesn't Cobb look remarkably like-
She withers and doesn't finish the sentence. It's rather hilarious.
Especially when Arthur helpfully comments that actually, he's rather thought Cobb looked like the actor from Titanic that spent the whole film emoting and throwing puppy eyes at Kate Winslett. Eames wants to laugh at the imagery, but the laugh chokes in his throat instead and he swallows it down. It tastes like guilt in the back of his mouth, and Eames knows, this job is his last with Cobb for a very long time.
Eames doesn't do guilt. He runs away from guilt. He puts continents between himself and guilt. And right now, guilt is dressed like a police administration officer, with his hair slicked back with Brylcreem, a distinct lack of imagination, and a thin lot of patience when it came to dealing with Eames.
Next Ariadne tries to interrogate the dream version of Eames' guilt, although she thinks it's just her dream projection of Arthur. Dream Arthur sits rigidly still and frowns the whole time, and responds in single words, looking blank and expressionless. Eames finds himself watching the whole time through the glass, his hands curled into fists in the material of his dreamed up police jacket, on edge for a reason he can't elucidate. When Eames risks a glance to his left, Arthur has joined him, and is looking a little pained.
Pained is normally how Arthur feels when encountering Eames in a jail cell, Eames can read his discomfort well enough by now, but he never outwardly looks it until they're a block away from the jail cell and Arthur's lecturing him for the thousandth time on propriety and professionalism. It makes something inside Eames lurch-he wants to wipe that expression away, because he's not the one that put that expression there.
"I meant to tell you before," Arthur says, stiff and cold. "This morning? That was the last time I'm ever going to bail you out of jail."
Eames shrugs. He's heard it before.
"I mean it," Arthur says, in a strained voice.
Eames understands the strain-it can't be easy for Arthur seeing himself sitting opposite Ariadne with such a chillingly blank expression. "You should relax ," Eames says awkwardly, the only civil words he's managed to Arthur since the sixth arrest, "this isn't how she really sees you."
The interrogation room glass is reflective, and Eames can see enough of the real Arthur's expression to see it tighten, the sides of his mouth levelling out, until he matches the expression of the fake Arthur within the small room.
"Sometimes, when you talk to me, I'm lost between if you're trying in your own special way to actually help, or if you're yet again trying to actively find some new way to insult me," Arthur mutters, and there it is again, that weird sensation, like the hairs on the back of Eames' neck are standing up.
"I find insulting you comes naturally. Little effort required." Eames stretches, leans against the glass and smirks. He feels the stretch of his smirk like déjà vu, it's almost defensive, and that definitely makes his heckles rise. "You do make a sublimely opportune target."
"This time, Mr. Eames, your condescension is noted." Arthur prods at the glass disapprovingly, and flinches at the fingerprint he leaves behind, but lets it stay. It's not like there's any real police around to gather the fake dream evidence, but the impulse to clean up after oneself at a crime scene is a hard one to shake. "She must have, at least once," Arthur finishes, in this odd detached tone, almost under his breath.
The impulse is difficult to shake for both of them, as Eames finds himself rubbing the fingerprint away with his sleeve cuff as Arthur stalks off stiffly, hands planting by his side like he's dreamed them there, ostensibly to talk to the receptionist who reminds Eames of the clerk at the 7-11 nearest their workspace. It was the factory they had hired for the inception job; Arthur, thorough as always, or perhaps taking lessons from Saito, had seen it prudent to buy the entire space, and no one thought it worthwhile to waste money working elsewhere when they had this perfectly serviceable space. It doesn't seem to matter to any of them anymore that they can dream safely anywhere-this place is an anchor for them, as much of a totem as the small weighted objects they all carry.
Eames watches Arthur for a while, noting the tension across his back, running down his neck, and he stares for so long he draws Arthur's attention. Eames has a variety of responses for the times he's caught staring, and most of them seem to piss Arthur off, so Eames plumps for one of his favourites and winks.
It serves to irritate Arthur enough into rolling his eyes and turning back to the receptionist, and Eames can't help it-the feeling is back, and long enough for him to define it, and Eames turns from Arthur in horror to find himself staring at Ariadne's projection of Arthur.
He's wrong.
The feeling's not guilt.
It's pain.
He's hurt.
Arthur doesn't trust him, and it hurts.
Eames has spent so long dodging real deep emotions of any kind, and suffering all kinds of physical pain in real life and in the space of a dream, that it comes almost as a physical blow to his gut. He has to put one arm up against the nearest wall to steady himself, and his fingertips stutter over the surface. He can feel each indent in each brick, rough and cold beneath the pads of his fingers, because Arthur's dreams are always so solid and detail-oriented and firm.
The idea lodges into the back of his skull, and it's not insistent and it doesn't stop him doing his job. He just worries over the idea instead, distant and disconnected from himself in a way that usually only happens when someone is torturing him, and he knows if they stay down too long then he'll lose control over his own subconscious and start populating it with his own ridiculous concerns.
It's not normally something he has to worry about.
Being hurt because Arthur doesn't trust him shouldn't even occur. But it's there, fluttering somewhere inside him, aching like new dental work that still feels odd to the tongue.
Eames has always known in life the best time to retreat. He needs them to get out now. He knows the best person to ask. Himself, of course.
Perhaps Arthur's dream had conjured a cell with Eames' name on it, or maybe Ariadne's flashbacking to their shared jail experience, but Eames finds the Ariadne-projected-Eames in a single cell.
Eames looks through the small sliding door through to himself. Ariadne's dream has gotten him right down to every detail; Eames had been wearing that outfit last night, so his project his last night's projection.
He smirks. It hadn't entirely been his fault, last night's arrest. It had been coincidence to find the Dibley brothers at the club Eames suggested they went to-if anything, it was Cobb's fault it ended in jail. A job with Cobb and the brothers had gone South a few months back. The Dibley brothers were a little inebriated and decided to take it out on Cobb's hide. Eames' fist got in the way. Repeatedly. And Ariadne was a hell of a bar fighter. The way she wielded the chair was delightful. And Yusuf carried some interesting things in his pockets; the spray thing was inspired. And Cobb's always been a great fighter...
Eames can't reminisce too much. The still weird, lingering pain of Arthur not trusting him is almost pulsating in his skull now. There's nothing he can do but finish this job and run, or keep pushing Arthur until there's nothing left to push. It's his only two options.
He can't outright ask. Arthur would assume he was messing around. He can't apologise and start acting trustworthy all the time, because broken trust followed dreamers around like a bad smell. Besides, Eames is trustworthy all the time. He's never sold them out, not once, even though he's had plenty of opportunities. Sure he's a thief, and a forger, but he's never turned on any of his crews. He's joked about it, sure. He could have sold Cobb to Cobol for a thousand times more money than they even made on the Saito job.
Eames is trustworthy, he really is, and Arthur not thinking so... well, how could he ever work with him again? Not being trusted is like being insulted right in the heart of what it is they do.
He can't outright ask Arthur, but the PASIV allows things Freud would have shit bricks over; he can outright ask himself.
"Oi, sexy." Eames raps on the door to get Ariadne's projection of Eames to look at him. "Arthur doesn't trust you. What do you think of that?"
Projection!Eames rolls his shoulders. "Couldn't give a donkey's willy, mate. Arthur's a fuddy duddy with a stick lodged so far up his arse that even a good colon cleansing couldn't dislodge it."
Eames stares. His projection is witty, that's for sure. But Ariadne seems to have the wrong idea about him. Sure he insults Arthur, but never more than an odd "stick up the arse" jibe behind his back-he saves his insults for Arthur to give them to his face. That's part of trust, too. Eames is open with him at all times, even if Arthur doesn't think so.
"Not that I wouldn't give Arthur a good colon cleansing," projection Eames continues, without Eames to interrupt him.
"Good God," Eames mutters, "shut up. I'm not that lewd."
"Aren't we, darling?" Projection Eames grabs at his cock through his pants and winks at him. Eames blanches. "See, this is why Ariadne's a good architect, but she'd be a shit forger. She sees people tick. She doesn't understand why people tick. 's why I'm such a shallow projection of you, see."
Eames resists the urge to blink because he knows never to show weakness, but he's always terrified when projections show self-awareness. He supposes if anyone's projection would be self-aware, it would be his. It's a dangerous sign, though. The dream might collapse to pieces any minute.
"Because she can't get into my head," Eames says. "She can't step in my shoes."
"They're really shit shoes, you have to admit," Projection Eames says, lifting up his feet and prodding at the tatty sneakers.
"Don't 'spose you want to tell me if Ariadne's ever cheated on a test?"
"That's be cheating, my man." Projection Eames hitches his pants up from where the waistband is loose. "So of course I will. Maths exam. Grade six. She looked over at Paul Groban's paper for the last answer and scrawled it in."
"Thanks," Eames says, his hand going for the slot to cover up this weird version of himself.
"Oh, she also shagged her Spanish TA," Projection Eames adds. "She doesn't think that counts because she's already fluent in Spanish so her grades would have been awesome if she gave him a blowie or not."
Eames thanks himself for the TMI, and heads back to where Ariadne's trying to interrogate a projection of Miles that seems to be dressed like...
"Is he dressed like Scrooge from Christmas Carol?" Eames asks Cobb, who's watching it all through the two-way glass with a barely repressed smirk.
"Maybe we ought to cut this short before the Muppets come in singing," Cobb says. Eames looks away from Scrooge!Miles, and at Cobb, mustering his best WTF expression. Cobb winces. "Too much time watching kids films, I'm afraid. Hazard of the job."
"You love it," Eames says, shoving his shoulder into Cobb's in a friendly manner.
"I really sort of do," Cobb admits, a shy turn to his grin. This new Cobb, this free Cobb is more of a delight to work with than grim, determined, grieving Cobb. It's not like working with him when Mal was around, nothing will match the feeling of that ever, but it's fun and reassuring and Eames...
Eames is going to miss working with him terribly. Because cutting out Arthur, who can't trust him, means cutting out Cobb too-they're attached at the heels. Cobb never works without Arthur, and Eames can't work with someone that doesn't trust him.
There must be something on his face, something he can't hide quick enough, because Cobb's staring at him, not at Ariadne's futile attempts to wring information from a now- Is the projection of Scrooge!Miles singing? Oh, god. Eames shudders. That's a new one.
"Eames-" Cobb starts.
"Fundamental error in this scenario," Eames says, changing the subject before Cobb can even broach it, carefully schooling his expression into something more neutral. "Why are we letting Ariadne interrogate herself? Isn't she going to want to hide the information?"
"I was helping. But this is weird. Besides, I think she's just psychoanalysing herself at this point." Cobb shrugs.
"I got the information out of myself. She cheated in Grade 6, in a maths test." Eames scratches his nose, and misses out the information about her Spanish TA, trying to be gracious.
"Oh, thank god for that," Ariadne breathes, pushing out of the room. "I thought I was going to have to do a duet with him for a minute there."
"Miles does that in real life too," Cobb says, almost apologetically. "Eames found out about your cheating."
"Of course he did," Arthur says, sounding a little peeved.
"Meaning what?" Eames demands, feeling a little raw and oddly vulnerable.
"Meaning her kind of cheating is right up your alley," Arthur says, barely sparing a glance in Eames' direction.
Because he doesn't trust him. Of course. "How is Maths-" Eames starts, weirdly offended.
Arthur ignores him, of course, and raises one eyebrow at Ariadne. "You slept with your Spanish TA?"
Ariadne colors. "It's-"
"-not cheating, she's fluent in Spanish anyway," Eames breaks in, in a hard voice that he almost feels like he should apologise for, but he's getting a headache-probably in real life by the way it's rattling his skull-and he's had enough. He just wants to be out of there. "She cheated on her Grade 6 Math exam and copied off Paul Groban." Eames turns to Cobb. "Can we go now?"
"The somnacin should wear off in a few minutes," Cobb says.
"Fuck that," Eames says, and pulls out his gun.
Part 2