hc_bingo (Fic) take heart, sweetheart [Inception] (Eames/Arthur) (PG-13) (2/2)

[mizzy2k]

Part 1 and header information can be found here.



Eames sits up too quickly, his head pounding, and looks around the dull warehouse for a moment, swallowing down the instant of disorientation. He rips the needle from his arm and lets the wires swing, stalking forward, rubbing his temple where the imaginary bullet went in.

It will be seconds before the others wake up, and he just needs to get out of there. Even the large warehouse feels too small.

He gets to his feet and stumbles to the door, his fingers automatically feeling for his token in his right pocket. He's almost at the door when Arthur wakes. The others are still and immobile in their seats-he's gotten impatient too.

"Where are you going?" Arthur says, something indefinable in his voice that Eames doesn't care about. He doesn't.

"Why, don't you trust me?" Eames snaps the door open, and stalks out, feeling Arthur's confused gaze score down his back until the door slams closed.

He walks for he's not sure how long, just wanting to expel the energy. It was a mistake just taking off-Cobb won't be satisfied by just one apology-but Eames couldn't stay there. He'll compose himself, go back, do the damn job and then never work for them again.

The energy just doesn't go. Eames walks until he's dizzy with it, and ends up by a river he doesn't really recognise. Everything in his body is screaming at him, and his head is killing him and Arthur doesn't trust him and why the shit does that even matter?

It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. It can't matter, because- because-

Everything's a roar in his head, white noise, a jumbled cacophony of images that don't make sense, words that don't fit together. Eames just wants to take his hands, plough them into something, someone, anything. There's a rock on the riverbank that seems just about right. His fingers scrabble across its surface, latch on, pluck it out of the mud.

The next few minutes are an odd blur, and he only comes down from the rage spilling through his body when he finds himself standing over someone's car. The windows are all smashed in, and there's a woman screaming at him from her garden, and Eames looks down at the rock still in his hands. His hands are stinging, and his face feels warm. One of the windows in the car is still intact-there's a cut on Eames' cheek a good couple of inches long.

Apparently Eames' rage has manifested in him beating the shit out of a car. Eames laughs quietly to himself as a cop car comes screeching up.

"Did you-" the officer starts.

"I have the right to remain silent," Eames responds, holding out his hands and dropping the rock to the ground. He still wants to giggle. He feels lightheaded. The last time he felt like this was the day he found out his father had died, but what the fuck is he even grieving? "I understand that anything I say or do can and will be held against me in a court of law. I have the right to speak to an attorney. If I cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for me. I thoroughly understand these rights as they have been read to me."

The officer squints at him, entirely unimpressed. "Done this a lot?" he asks, in a tone which clearly states the question doesn't really require an answer.

"It depends," Eames says, walking over to the cop car unprompted. "Be escorted to jail in which case, this is the seventh physical time this quarter and eighth metaphysical time. It depends on if you count an imaginary dream jail as a jail. Or if you mean, smashing up a car because I'm apparently way too torn up over four words a complete imbecile of a colleague said to me, then no. This is my first time."

"Just a friendly hint," the officer says, bundling Eames into the back seat. "If you're smashing up someone else's property because a colleague's a complete imbecile, you might want to apply that description to yourself."

"You're completely right," Eames agrees, amicably. "Thank you for clearing that up for me."

The thing is, figures of authority take him at face value very easily, probably because once he's caught he doesn't start trying to protest his innocence. He's comfortable with his guilt.

After the usual processing, Ruth shows Eames-replete with blackened fingertips and flashing lights in his eyes from the side and portrait photographs - directly to his cell with little more than an eye roll.

"I'll sort out the paperwork so you can call your Arthur," she says, and shuts the door before Eames can protest that Arthur isn't his Arthur at all. That he's not even dating Arthur; that he couldn't date someone who didn't trust him.

And then his brain wakes up to the fact that he's thinking about the concept of dating Arthur like it's a vaguely sensible idea, and not the most lunatic possibility in the whole world.

Which is what it should be.

Because Eames is stupid, and sure, Arthur's attractive, Eames would have to be blind not to be warm for that form, but Arthur's personality is a minefield of hell, no.

One of the problems with jail is that it gives Eames way too much thinking time, and he's been thinking too much as it is. When Ruth allows him his phonecall, Eames' fingers are trembling a little, and he's so disoriented by it all that he doesn't even register the phone line connecting.

"Arthur-" Eames starts, but is cut off by a sigh.

"Find someone else," Arthur's voice comes from the other side, tired and low, and the dull disconnect tone rings in Eames' ear for a good ten seconds before he lowers the hand set in disbelief. When he puts the phone back in the cradle he must look wrecked, because Ruth gives him a rare empathetic look and asks if there's anyone they can try on his behalf.

Eames contemplates his options for a minute, leaning against the wall. Arthur, he wants Arthur there. It doesn't make sense.

"Lover's spat, huh?" Ruth says.

"No," Eames says, almost distracted. "He's not. We're not-" He can't find the right words. He rubs his forehead tiredly. "Maybe we had an argument." I'm not bailing you out again, Arthur's voice says in his memory, and they were words Eames hadn't really taken stock in, hadn't believed. But he believed I don't trust you so easily.

"Give him time," Ruth says, gesturing back at the cells. Eames follows her gesture dutifully. "He wouldn't have come for you the six times he did if you meant nothing to him. He's an idiot for it, but you don't do that sort of thing without feelings."

Eames shuts his own door, and steps back so Ruth can lock it again. "Negative feelings, maybe."

"A point of wisdom: don't argue with your captor," Ruth says. "I see pieces of crap like you daily, Mr. Eames. No one comes for them."

"You say the sweetest things."

Ruth bares her teeth at him. "Let me know who else I can contact so I can get you out of my jail."

Eames gives her Cobb's number, which is a ridiculously bad idea, because it's nearly 10pm when she finally gets through to him. Cobb lectures him more than Arthur ever has, and whines about having to wake Marie to look after James and Phillipa, and he whines about Eames leaving early because Arthur's been a bitch the whole time, and he makes Eames call his bank over the phone to get a bank transfer to pay his fine and the fee for the court appearance in December he has time to get out of, whereas Arthur automatically pays the fees because it's faster.

Cobb shouts at him the whole way to the cab about him being irresponsible, and he drops Eames back at the warehouse so he's there for the job in the morning, which he will attend on pain on death, and it's only when Eames wearily climbs out of the cab that Cobb notices that Eames looks like shit.

Cobb dismisses the cab and follows Eames into the warehouse. He obviously hadn't meant to, but he's gracious with it as he pushes Eames over to the corner with a sink and pulls out one of the first aid kits Arthur installed around the place neurotically when he bought the place.

"My idea of a good time," Cobb says as he cleans up the cut on Eames' cheek, "is not sitting here all night listening to your feelings. But you and Arthur are having some sort of weird fight, and it's going to affect the job. I need you to apologise to him and no-" Cobb pushes at Eames' jaw to stop him from trying to speak. "I don't give a shit if he started it or you started it. You're going to be the one to apologise."

"You're a very good dad," Eames says, startled into the compliment.

Cobb rolls his eyes but looks pleased regardless. He's packing away the kit, his back to Eames, which gives him the strength to ask the weird question bubbling through his head, more niggling than an incepted idea.

"When you and Mal argued... did you ever... listen more to some things she said than others?"

Cobb's frowning when he turns back around, but he doesn't look mad. Perhaps it isn't as inappropriate question or as bad timing as Eames feared it might be. "Sometimes. We'd have the most terrifically passionate arguments, you have no idea. But yeah, I suppose when they got really bad... we'd both cling onto the wrong part of the argument, so by the end we didn't really know what we were arguing about-" Cobb freezes at the end, and a horribly speculative look crosses his face. "Are you and Arthur-"

"No!" Eames shouts it out, and then sinks into the chair, pawing at the band-aid Cobb carefully stuck over his cut. Cobb slaps his fingers away. "I don't know what we are," he adds, in a muted tone, mulling the idea of that as he says it.

Cobb pats him on the shoulder companionably, brushing dust from his knees as he gets ready to take his leave. "You might want to think about that."

"Thanks," Eames says, dryly.

He stays in the same position until Cobb leaves the warehouse. It's cold but oddly well lit-all the windows let the moonlight wash the place out, leaving Eames feeling like he's walking through an industrial graveyard.

He didn't tell Cobb that he wants to leave. Because it's not true. He doesn't really want to never work with them again. But if Arthur's not going to trust him, then he can't work with him. It's as simple as that.

For something so simple, it's ridiculously confusing.

Eames finds himself pacing, back and forth, worrying the idea over in his mind again and again. Arthur had said he didn't trust him, and he had said he would never bail Eames out from jail again.

Obviously both were true, although Eames had only believed one of them. But if the never bailing him out thing was true, then both had to be true. Right?

Eames needs answers. He's never been this torn up before. This is why he doesn't form attachments. Attachments make you stupid, trip you up, leave you vulnerable to someone using the people you're attached to as leverage, and-

Is that where the sore feeling is coming from? Because he's somehow latched on to Cobb and Arthur and Ariadne and Yusuf, and Arthur's obviously not as attached to him? He couldn't be if he didn't trust Eames.

His thoughts are a maelstrom, and he won't be able to get answers from his brain, unless he asks it directly.

Oh, god, Eames is a moron. Of course he can ask himself. He's headed for the PASIV before the thought is fully formed, opening it up and turning the dials to set it for one occupant for five minutes.

He takes a moment to keep the layout from last time in his head, and pushes the needle into his arm.

Sleep, and the dream, takes him almost instantly.

He's back in Arthur's dream jail, but it's emptier than it was when it was populated by Ariadne's subconscious. There's no projections that Eames can even see; not that they would be harmful to him as he's the dreamer. He puts it off for the longest time, but eventually he finds his way to the individual cells where he found the version of himself yesterday.

Eames slides the viewer open and freezes.

It's Arthur sitting on his bench, legs extended elegantly, arms folded. He's Arthur perfectly recreated as Eames' favourite image of him; starch white shirt, half-Windsor knotted crimson silk tie, soft black sweater.

The fact that he has a favourite image of Arthur is enough to stop him in his tracks, and gives his projection of Arthur time to get the first word in.

"I don't trust you and I don't give a shit about you," dream Arthur says, unfolding his arms and spreading them on the bench, leaning back a little. His eyes are hooded as he stares at Eames, as if challenging him to say something.

"That's a lie," Eames says, not knowing it's something he believes until he's saying it. His own voice echoes back to him; his dream is soaking up the quality of the emptiness of the warehouse he's dreaming in.

"Okay, so I give a shit about you," dream Arthur says, bringing his knees together, leaning his elbows on them. "What does that even matter?"

"It doesn't matter."

Dream Arthur laughs delightedly, clapping his hands. "Denial. It's delightful, pet."

Eames' tone in Arthur's voice... It's enough to make Eames visibly shiver. "Okay, it matters."

"How? You want me to give a shit about you. But I don't trust you. So you're going to run off like a girl."

"What else can I do?" Eames shouts, grabbing the frames of the door and shaking at it like a caged animal testing its bonds for the first time. "When you lose trust-"

"It's a bitch to get it back. It's bloody hard work. But it can be done. If you stay. If you work at it." Dream Arthur stands up, and stares him in the eyes. "Since when have you been scared of a little hard work?"

Eames looks at dream Arthur blankly. "My whole life," he admits.

"Aren't I worth it?" Dream Arthur asks, tilting his head, eyes blank and expressionless.

Eames stares, and swallows hard. His dream logic fluctuates, ripples, and the door disappears. The jail disappears and he's standing in darkness, a single electric light fluttering above him, a dull buzz ringing in his ears.

Dream Arthur is still there, staring at him.

"Oh," Eames says, realizing. "Oh."

He remembers now bringing the rock down on the car, beating it down and down, and he screamed the whole time at the top of his lungs, and he was crying. He hadn't realized it at the time. He knew now who he was grieving.

Arthur.

"I'm a bloody idiot," Eames says, hopelessly, and his fingers reach out and tangle in that stupid half-Windsor knot that has so plagued him in the past. Dream Arthur smiles down at his hand indulgently.

"It won't be this easy in real life to woo me," dream Arthur says.

"I won't be-" Eames starts to deny automatically, and even he can feel the blush on his cheeks. "I don't want it to be easy."

Dream Arthur leans in closer, so close to Eames' ear his mind fills in the blanks and he can feel the warmth on his skin. "Don't make it too difficult, darling," he whispers, drawing back. "Ask Cobb later. The real hard stuff comes after the love starts."

"Then I guess the love must have already started," Eames says without really thinking about it.

Dream Arthur laughs again, delightedly bringing his hands together, like a prayer. "Bingo, Mr. Eames. Bingo."

Eames' eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to say something else, and he lets out a gasp into the cold, still air of the warehouse. Reality washes over him. He's in love with Arthur, and that's why I don't trust you had stung so badly. He's never been in love like this before, or perhaps he has, and he's been too stubborn to see it.

The dream is over. But that's okay, Eames thinks, as he pulls the needles clear and rubs his arm. Maybe now it's time for his real life to begin.

Arthur
(Jail experience: number 10)

Cobb calls Arthur's landline at 6am in the morning, not even sounding surprised when he picks up. Cobb tells him not to go looking for Eames like Arthur had mentioned last night was on his to-do list, because Cobb's already located him.

Meaning Cobb is the lucky soul Eames got to bail him out this time.

Arthur looks around his apartment uselessly for a moment, boxes up some of the example of his wrecked, broken brain and drops them by his neighbour at a lack of knowing what to do with it all.

Arthur forces himself to change and shower even though he never got ready for bed last night after Eames' phone call from jail. The water feels too hot. It won't wash his guilt away for not going to Eames, and it doesn't wash that odd feeling of regret away either.

He stops by his local coffee shop for a double espresso even though he has a perfectly functional coffee machine in his apartment, and takes his time to walk to the warehouse. Duberman will be there at nine o' clock for the extraction-Yusuf's on his way to pick him up in the van so Duberman won't know their location. Arthur has the time.

Normally he would be there at the warehouse before everyone. Arthur's comfortable enough with himself to know he's deliberately procrastinating. He knows Eames will be there because Eames never welches on a job.

After last night, Arthur doesn't want to face him, but he knows he has to, because at the least end of things Arthur doesn't run away from what he's scared of, and at the most end of things... Arthur has something to say, and sorry is probably just the start of it. He feels horrendously guilty for leaving Eames in jail when he had the time to get him out. Eames always pays him back promptly, so it's not always so inconvenient; Arthur was just being stubborn.

For reasons he can barely pin down.

Still, the fact is there-Arthur doesn't run from what he's scared of.

And it boils down to the fact that Eames is apparently what he's scared of at the moment.

Although Eames' expression when Arthur does skulk through the door-relief that washes away to a weird blend of worry and is that nervousness?-makes Arthur realize with an odd dizzy feeling in the pit of his stomach that maybe, maybe, maybe Eames is scared of him too.

It's probably Arthur projecting his ridiculousness onto Eames now, and that's not on. It's not professional. He can't go into a dream with this all hanging over his head, but there's no time to resolve anything.

A partial resolution, then. A firm decision. That'll have to do.

Arthur manages to catch Eames alone for a moment as Eames is untangling a couple of the wires in the PASIV that have gotten knotted.

"Eames, can I-" Eames looks at him with a blank expression. Arthur swallows down the weird bitter taste of guilt, and continues regardless. "Can I have a word with you after the job?"

Arthur's not imagining that there's something that needs clearing up between them, because Eames doesn't snark back. "I've got time," Eames says, in an odd tone. Except Arthur mustn't have been able to school his expression in time, and Eames adds, "Look, this is going to sound incredibly-"

"Incredibly what?" Arthur can't even think of an end to Eames' sentence, because there's nothing Eames can say that's worse than what Arthur can't manage to find words for at the moment.

"Rubbish," Eames admits, "and before you say that the majority of what I say is arbitrary rubbish, I'm well aware. I just can't do this job unless I know something. And it's okay if you say no."

It's a question about the job. Arthur's professionalism makes him straighten and say, "Fire away," without even having to think about it. It's his job to make things go smoothly, after all.

"Do you trust me?"

Arthur stares at Eames. The blank expression is gone from Eames' face and now he just looks horribly intent, like the answer to the question really matters. "Of course," Arthur says, shaking his head, completely lost. "I dreamshare with you."

Eames looks pained then, just for a second, and he looks away to the door where Yusuf is pulling the client in. Arthur's eyes immediately go over there. "Right," Eames breathes. "That's all, I-"

For a moment, all Arthur wants to do is clarify this. Make sure Eames knows. Eames will likely just mock him for his earnestness later.

Arthur thinks to what he spent all night doing instead of bailing Eames out, and thinks he deserves mocking.

"I wouldn't if I didn't," Arthur says. "I wouldn't dreamshare with someone I didn't trust."

"Right. No. Of course." Eames turns away, and the lack of banter cuts low somewhere in Arthur he hasn't felt in a long time.

He forgets completely that the client is here, that it's time to be professional; all that matters somehow is that Eames knows he means it. He's not sure why it's so important to him, but Arthur has the sneaking, sinking suspicion it's along the same lines as the reason why he kept bailing Eames out when he didn't have to.

"Eames." Arthur can hear the tone in his own voice now, a thin reedy thread of too-obvious desperation, but it's too late to pull it back into his mouth now, so he keeps going. "Half of the things I say to you are complete rubbish. You know it, I know it, the world knows it. But this isn't one of these things. I trust you."

Eames swallows, his eyes locked to Arthur's, his pupil's oddly dilated. And then there's the softest hint of a smile playing on his face and he says, in more of his own voice, "Only half?"

"Work now," Cobb interrupts, loudly and sounding way too cheerful, "flirt later, boys."

Ariadne hides a smirk behind her hands, the client flickers a sour look in Arthur's direction, Yusuf shrugs contemplatively, Eames just grins like a naughty school kid and Arthur is just hit by it.

Oh. That's what that is.

The thought washes over him, faster than he can blink, but it settles down in him like dawn light after a long hard night of work, and the world seems to make more sense. It's like Arthur can breathe again.

It also helps him be himself again-he's brisk and professional, and able to sink his mind fully into the job. Arthur takes the dream, forming the layout of the school that Larry Duberman is sure was the focal point of his company's destruction, and Arthur wanders the dark hallways of Duberman's school while the rest of the team interrogate Duberman's subconscious. The idea is if Arthur stays away from where the projections are mingling in the hall, his own-filtering around with blank, random faces-will feel less inclined to attack the interlopers. The idea's new, one that Arthur doesn't know is effective or not, but the silence and the long straight checkerboard halls and rows of blue lockers suit his odd mood completely.

Cobb comes to find him halfway through the run. It's scheduled tentatively as the first run of three in case this takes a while, but from Cobb's expression their client is taking to dreamshare very well.

"Has he found what he needs?" Arthur walks up to join Cobb at the doorway to the dance hall, and peers inside. There's merriment and dancing, and Arthur can see the client talking to himself, Eames hanging by his side, looking intently at the conversation.

"Have you?" Cobb says, arching an eyebrow.

Arthur looks at him blankly for a second. Cobb glances pointedly back at Eames, and then back at Arthur. Arthur wishes very, very hard and hopes the impulse to blush doesn't show up on his dream self.

"Still working on it," Arthur says, like he's just discussing an aspect of the plan.

"Good," Cobb says, and pats Arthur stiffly on the shoulder. Arthur raises an eyebrow, a definite are you serious? expression. Cobb shrugs back. "Is Eames that obnoxious every time you bail him out?"

"God, yes," Arthur says, sinking against the wall and shaking his head. "Every single time."

"And yet you still keep going back. You might like to think on why."

"Are you my fairy godmother or something?" Arthur snaps. "Seriously, Cobb."

"Yes?"

Arthur turns to see Cobb standing at the other end of the corridor, looking puzzled. Arthur turns back to see the Cobb he had been speaking too heading into the dance floor. When Arthur risks a glance back down the corridor to see who may apparently be the real Cobb, he looks back to the dance floor and the Cobb he was speaking to is nowhere to be seen.

"Sorry," Arthur says, as Cobb jogs up the dream corridor, and looks at him with concern. "I thought I was speaking to you."

Cobb's forehead wrinkles.

"Turns out I was just speaking to myself."

"That's a sign of madness, you know," Cobb says. "Yusuf's got a lead."

"Yusuf?" Arthur blinks. Yusuf had only come down in case plan B was necessary (the plan they hadn't discussed with the client-knock him out, put him under, and extract the information from his own subconscious and lie like fuck when they woke up.)

"Yeah. He recognised one of the party-goers. I've been following them around, and they've been acting shady. He's heard of the guy before-a Nathan Ford, or something like that-the guy's some kind of Robin Hood con artist on the East Coast. Our working theory now is that Duberman wasn't the Mark of a dream heist at all."

"But the Mark of a regular, physical heist," Arthur says, in realization. "So what are we going to do?"

"Knock him out and wake up," Cobb says. "Lie and tell him some people we already know are dead extracted the info, and charge him three times as much to militarize his subconscious sometime next week."

"Sounds like a plan," Arthur says.

Cobb works fast to put the plan into motion, and then that's it. The job's over. Everyone's waking up and Duberman's walking away with Cobb, making arrangements for the training.

Arthur feels like he's walking through water, because it all feels a little easy, but his dice feels like it should, and eventually everyone leaves the warehouse but him, and Eames. Eames is sat in one of their flimsy dreamshare chairs, and his eyes are closed, but he's not asleep. His breathing is too even, too deep for that. Eames is pretending to sleep, giving Arthur a chance of escape, and it's oddly... sweet.

"I can hear you thinking," Eames says, before Arthur's stepped three paces closer, so maybe Eames isn't granting him an opportunity to escape after all.

Arthur doesn't answer. He keeps moving, and pulls a chair up so it's next to Eames. The chair squeaks across the cold floor. Arthur sits down, but doesn't relax.

Now he's here, he doesn't know what to say. He can't find the right words. Are there any words for I'm crazy and is this-? that don't sound fractured and confused and leave them both bickering and tired all the time?

"I was going to leave after this job," Eames says, breaking the awkward silence.

Arthur's calm is damaged almost immediately. He's shaken by it, even though it's ridiculous to be shaken. "You leave randomly all the time."

"I meant for good," Eames says, almost just on a breath. His eyes snap open, but he doesn't look at Arthur. He looks across the length of their warehouse instead, eyes unfocussed and still. "I wasn't going to come back."

Arthur's chest feels tight. "Why?" he eventually manages.

Eames is being so ridiculously calm. It's too much for Arthur's burned out brain. And Eames just says, in an impossibly calm voice, "Because you said you didn't trust me."

Arthur's mouth moves silently. "I thought it might be because I didn't bail you out."

Eames smiles, tight. Humourless. "That was fair enough, love." There's none of the usual teasing in his tone. It's flat, and Arthur hates it. He wants to slap Eames, punch him, throw him around, and that feeling is a jumbling mess in his skull-he just knows he wants to do something, he has to do something, to erase this horrible note from Eames' voice. "I was pushing at you. Like I do everything in my life I'm not sure of. It was more than fair of you not to come."

Arthur, having inhaled to say something else, deflates like a balloon instead. He blinks several times, like he has to sometimes when coming out of the PASIV, the dream lingering in his mind like a retina burn. Arthur searches for a rational response, but apparently with Eames that's a lost cause. "I'm completely lost here, Eames. And you know me enough to know I'm a controlling bastard."

Eames actually laughs at that, his eyes flickering to Arthur's for just one moment. He looks away again. "I presume you'd control the Sun itself if you could."

"I'd make morning more convenient," Arthur says, wanting to hear that laugh again.

"I thought you didn't trust me," Eames says, sounding the words out as if they're foreign and he doesn't speak the language. Eames - confident, outgoing Eames - actually visibly sags in on himself, and Arthur can feel the weight of his totem against his hip. He doesn't have to touch it to know this is real life and real life is weird. "It might not sound like a big deal, but it is. I can't dreamshare with someone who doesn't trust me. And it's still a big deal. If you were lying to me earlier to get the job done, I'm okay. Just let me know so I can go."

"Go-" Arthur says the word like it hurts him, and it does. When did he say anything that would affect Eames like this? I don't trust you. The memory jabs him in the side of his ribs, and his breath hitches. "Eames, I was pissed off at you calling me every time you act like a tosser in public. I meant I don't trust you to think. Not-"

Arthur squints, unsure he's actually interpreting this whole thing correctly. Eames is silent, like he's waiting for the first time for Arthur to actually fully explain himself. The silence feels odd, awkward; Arthur tries to fill it with what he's meaning, but the words are difficult.

"I dreamshare with you," Arthur says, finally. "Of course I trust you. I think you have occasional periods of insanity, and I sure as hell wouldn't trust you with anything regarding fashion. Or, occasionally, thinking. But I trust you with my life every time we go under. How could you even think-" Arthur blinks again, because surely this has to be some sort of dream-related crazy, because he can't comprehend that Eames even thought something like that.

Eames looks at him then, a little wide-eyed, his fingers in his right pocket where Arthur knows his totem is. "Well," Eames says, softly, getting to his feet and pushing the chair back, "this is sort of embarrassing."

"Shit, Eames." Arthur gets out of his chair and steps closer, but Eames flinches. Arthur stills, tenses his jaw and lets it relax. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize I'd hurt you. I didn't," he realizes in a rush of awkward clarity, "I didn't even know I could."

Eames laughs through his teeth, half-wheeze, half self-directed irony. "That makes two of us, pet." His eyes slide to the exit, and Arthur's stomach twinges a little, like he doesn't want Eames to go. He doesn't want this odd conversation to end like this.

"You hurt me too," is what Arthur's brain manages instead of the more on-the-nose no, don't go.

Eames arches his eyebrows, in a you must be kidding move. It's a clear is this your attempt at pacifying a situation because you're shit at it, love expression.

Arthur feels heat creep along the back of his neck, and the sensation is odd, but oddly familiar. He feels it a lot when being around Eames. Warmth, and anger, and confusion - annoying feelings that get in the way of Arthur working and being professional and precise. "You can hurt me too, I mean. Oh, I-" He shuffles awkwardly, puts a hand behind his neck like he can push the heat down. Arthur's never one to back down to a challenge, and this is a challenge, whether he likes it or not, so he looks Eames directly in the eyes. "You bug me."

"Well, this has been a cheery conversation," Eames says. "Send me the minutes of it tomorrow, will you?"

Eames does turn to go at that, and Arthur's arm snaps out before he can stop himself. His hand closes around Eames' arm, and his fingers close around the exposed skin of his wrist before he even knows what he's doing. "If you don't leave," Arthur says, bitterly. "I will. You- you- irritate the hell out of me."

Eames tenses beneath his fingers, but Arthur was Special Ops-he'll let go if Eames dies before he's had his say, but only then. "You bug the crap out of me."

"Darling," Eames says, in an impatient tone.

"See, right there. There. Darling. Pet. Who the hell even uses those endearments anymore? Old British gay thespians? Flower! Love! I mean who says them-they're stupid as anything and I would fucking shoot the head off anyone else who even tried to use them on me, but here you are, using them and you're alive."

Arthur's aware his voice is rising, ragged and sharp in the air between them, but he doesn't care. His brain is on the right path, and his thoughts are firing like rockets in his brain, and he has a similar feeling to how he did in school, trying to figure out a complex maths problem, and being so close to figure it out, so close and not there yet, but if he pushes some more- maybe- maybe the answer will come. The understanding will follow like a burst.

Eames looks confused, but Arthur couldn't stop himself if he wanted to. He steps forwards again, Arthur's hand still curled around Eames' arm between them and Eames doesn't flinch this time.

"You infuriate and aggravate me even when you're not even here. I let Cobb keep hiring you, again and again, when I should be blacklisting you across the planet-and I could - because you're an exasperation. Four months ago, I found myself recommending you to someone. It was a low point of my career, I can tell you."
"If you're just going to stand there and insult me all morning," Eames says, "we can go under. I'm sure your busy schedule doesn't have an hour to include yelling at me."

"It does. When I work with you I have twenty minutes a day scheduled in as a buffer purely because I know you're going to annoy me at some point."

"Uh-" Eames starts. "Really? Are you that anal?"

"Apparently!" Arthur's voice pitches up in volume and he lets go of Eames' arm and gestures at the space around them. "I'm pedantic and I schedule time in my calendar because you irk me that much."

"Well, me bloody leaving should sort things out for both of us, then," Eames says, shaking his head, obviously bewildered. His hand shoots out to pick out his bag. Arthur watches him swing it on, and thinks this isn't it.

"You'd think so. But-"

The but makes Eames freeze. The bag drops down Eames' arm and thuds onto the floor, forgotten. "But," Eames prompts, an indefinable expression on his face that Arthur can sort of identify, and his chest feels a little odd for a moment, like maybe he's forgotten how to breathe; yet Arthur can hear himself inhaling and exhaling, almost harshly, like he's in the middle of a marathon.

"Do you know what I did while you were sat in jail?"

Eames shrugs a whole body shrug. "Got a pizza. Did some research. Go on a date. I don't know."

Something about the way Eames can't look at Arthur while he says Go on a date, and the way Eames' shoulders sag as he turns around at the end of his guess, gives Arthur an odd rush of courage, like a bubble of acid across his fingertips, and it gives Arthur the courage to step a little closer to Eames, and this time the forger does not back away. He doesn't turn around again, but it's enough. There's nothing left for Arthur to do now but speak the truth.

And if Eames still leaves, well. Arthur knows he tried his best. It'll suck in the long term, but this is something he has to say, something he has to take out of the subtext and into reality, however much the consequence of doing that sucks.

The word comes, then. And the world makes sense. Everything makes sense. Why Arthur's been so tired of the fighting. Why he keeps going back.

"I pined," Arthur says.

"What?" Eames says.

"I sat there," Arthur says, almost laughing through the words because it's ridiculous, but real. He pined. He really did. He was a pining idiot who pined. "I fucking pined. I missed bailing you out. I missed you. I had to sit on my god damned hands the whole time and when I couldn't stand it anymore I stress baked."
"What?" Eames says again, turning around. Arthur's heart flips clumsily in his chest, and he's panicking now he's realized what this moment is, and what it means, and how Eames could so easily still walk away, and Arthur's heart would be broken.

He's giddy. He hadn't even conceived that the notion was even possible. And all Arthur has is words. Words that just keep on coming. Arthur's spent so much of his life being terse this word diarrhoea is almost as much a surprise as the fact he's idiotically somehow fallen in love with Eames along the way.

"Cookies," Arthur explains, and he might be gesticulating wildly, he doesn't know. This isn't a situation he can control. It's all pretty much in Eames' hands now. "I made like, two hundred before I ran out of flour. Then I went to the 7-11 and bought more. I have five hundred cookies in my apartment right now, minus the three boxes I bundled off to my neighbour. Fuck knows what I'm going to do with them. I'm going to have to eat them. Huh. My girlish figure is not a big fan of yours for this. I haven't stress baked since college."

"Arthur," Eames says, "shut up." And it's in such a fond tone that Arthur does just that.

"I-" Arthur starts again, immediately feeling stupid and vulnerable and the urge to flee is hot in his belly, and-

"That's not shutting up," Eames says, and he's...

He's smiling. Wide. Not with that cynical smirk he uses when he's mocking Arthur, or when someone says something he can use, but something more genuine, something Arthur's caught glimpses of when Eames has pulled off a forgery he hasn't thought he could, or he's caught in the oddest moments, like when Ruth pulls the slide away on the jail door and Eames sees it's Arthur waiting for him.

"Oh," Arthur says.

"It's not one-sided, love," Eames says, and slides his fingers up to hold Arthur's jaw shut, two fingers pushing into the soft flesh just under his chin, and Arthur stares. Swallows slowly. The way Eames says love is just the same way he's been saying it all along, but maybe it's meant this much all along too.

Arthur smiles. Eames kisses him regardless, warm and insistent until Arthur opens up, and Arthur lets him in, and lets him in, and stays silent.

Not for too long, but Eames doesn't complain when he starts to be vocal again.

"I'm pretty sure," Ruth says, peering at Arthur over the tower of boxes in her arms, "that this is illegal. Bribery or something."

"It was this or throw them away," Eames says helpfully, from where he's stacking more boxes of cookies on Oscar's desk.

"So these are rubbish?" Ruth howls, narrowing her eyes at Eames. She throws a wink at Arthur-the dislike is entirely put on, but Arthur's not going to enlighten Eames to that fact. Arthur looks over as Eames starts arguing with Oscar about how's it okay for him to eat Toffee Cookies as he's not actually eating any of his cats, and his cheeks color a little. Maybe he'll tell Eames later.

"Oh, god," Ruth says, noticing the heightened color. "You are sleeping with him. You have terrible taste in men."

"I know," Arthur says, dolefully. "We shouldn't be back too much."

"Try and keep him away from vengeful vending machines and you might be okay," Ruth says, bumping his shoulder companionably. "And let me know if you ever need that alibi," she adds, extra loud, just in time for Eames to hear. Arthur grins at her.

"I will," Arthur promises her, solemnly.

"He likes me better than he likes you," Eames says, frowning at them both.

"Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart," Arthur says, dryly. He says a goodbye to Ruth, and waves at the other officers he never learned the names of. They're too busy chomping down on Arthur's cookies to tell him now. Arthur feels an odd pang until he realizes he doesn't need the excuse of bailing Eames out to see him outside of work now.

"If you miss her," Eames says as they leave the jail, this time without Eames' belongings in a paper bag, and without a horrendous fine lightening Arthur's wallet, "I'll fight a vending machine to give you an excuse to see her."

Arthur punches Eames' arm without heat. "C'mon. We've got to get dinner now or I won't get the research finished in time."

"In time for what?" Eames says, groaning at the word research.

Arthur arches an eyebrow and gives Eames his best are you dumb expression.

"Oh," Eames says, and maybe, Arthur reflects, maybe this is what their whole relationship is going to be like. Misunderstandings and delayed understanding.

But if Mal asked him again, that one question she asked him what feels like a million years ago, when they got drunk on bad tequila (is there any other kind, really) and maudlin and Arthur tried to explain why he liked control, and how much denial was necessary in a life like that, and Mal had just laughed and ruffled his hair and asked him a question that hadn't seemed important at the time.

Is it a happy life, my little serious Arthur?

Arthur looks across at Eames, who's tugging at him now, making him hurry up so they can get the fuck home already and thinks the answer, over and over, like a spell, or a prayer: Yes. Yes.

Yes.