Inception - Whistle for the Choir

[osaki_nana_707]

Title: Whistle for the Choir (1/1)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Word count: ~4,500~
Pairings/Characters: ArthurxEames, Cobb, Mal
Rating: PG
Warnings: mentions of violence, small bit of language
Summary: Most people assumed Arthur had always been the three C's his whole life. Calm, collected, confident. This was not the case.

In which rookie Arthur meets Eames.



Whistle for the Choir

(If you're crazy, I don't care-you amaze me.)

Most people assumed Arthur had always been the three C's his whole life.

Calm, collected, confident.

This was not the case… but most people who knew him when he wasn't were no longer in his life for various different reasons, disapproval or death being the majority.

At twenty, a deserter from the US Army and on his very first job in dreamsharing, he was not any of the three C's. In fact, he was a nervous mess, overdressed to look as professional as possible, hands shaking from inside the pockets of his trousers. He was only hired on because of his recent friendship with Dominic Cobb and his fiancée, Mallorie, since he lacked experience, and he'd stayed up the entire night before researching and researching the man who hired them and their mark only for Cobb to tell him that he shouldn't have because they had plenty of time to gather information.

Arthur had apologized in a squeaky voice about seven times before Mal had run her hand over his buzzed hair and kissed his eyebrow, telling him to calm down.

Three days in, Arthur still hadn't slept because he was a nervous wreck. He was under the impression that every tiny piece of information was absolutely vital, and he was terrified that something might go wrong and end up causing Cobb and/or Mal's destruction…

…or you know, at least being kicked out of the dreamsharing business altogether and having to go back to his boring, everyday life. That would have been unbearable for a perfectionist like himself.

Mal had told him his perfectionism is what would make him a good pointman. Arthur was afraid it would be his destruction. Most of the information he'd found was absolutely meaningless.

On the fourth day, he was barely conscious when he walked into the warehouse they were working out of to find another man there, singing to the walls as he paced, flipping pages in a folder.

"Well it's a big, big city and it's always the same, could never be to pretty, tell me your name, is it out of line if I was to be bold and said, would you be mine?" he crooned in a thick accent.

Arthur cocked his head to the side and stared in the way his mother always smacked the back of his head for doing when he was little.

"Because I may be a beggar and you may be the queen, and though I may be on a downer, I'm still ready to dream-"

The man stopped then, as if sensing Arthur's presence, and glanced in his direction. "Oh, hello," he greeted.

Arthur shrank back from his gaze, fumbling for his gun before pointing it at the stranger.

The man held up his hands and looked all around amused that he was being threatened. "Nice to meet you too," he said, and grinned a full row of crooked front teeth at him, crinkling skin around the corners of his eyes.

"Are you here to kill us or just steal our information?" Arthur asked, hoping to God that his voice wasn't shaking. "How did you get inside? What have you done with my friends?"

The man slowly moved his hand to drop his handful of papers onto a nearby desk and returned it to its place hovering by one of his ears. "You're full of questions, you look about fourteen, and your hands are shaking. You must be Arthur, right?"

Arthur's hands dipped just slightly, but he steadied the gun again on the man, biting down on his bottom lip. "How do you know my name?"

The man snorted and dropped his hands, apparently no longer willing to pretend to be threatened. He strolled towards Arthur, placing his palm on the top of Arthur's gun and pushing it down until it was at his side. "Can I take a guess?" the man asked.

"A guess-A guess at what?" Arthur asked, leaning backwards out of instinct.

The man pursed his lips, looking around at the ceiling before making eye contact. "You're… uh-late teens, early twenties. You grew up in a posh little neighborhood in the suburbs and got bored with the upper-middle-class life so went looking for adventure and ended up in the military. You weren't cut out for the military though…" the man paused and took Arthur's gun, "…because you couldn't bring yourself to shoot anyone."

Arthur squeaked.

Eames shoved Arthur's gun into the front of Arthur's pants and then extended it to him. "I'm Eames, Ms. Mal's forger."

Arthur slowly took the man's hand, still stunned, fingers curling around his hot palm. All he could do was stare, open-mouthed, at the man before him.

Eames was broad shouldered, but not tall, with high cheekbones on a freshly shaven face. His lips were full and plump over his crooked teeth, eyes glimmering with mischievousness that Arthur didn't trust. He was wearing a pale blue shirt with rolled up sleeves, white suspenders and tan trousers, and a pink tie. His pale brown hair was parted on the left side but not gelled and looked like he had cut it himself if the slightly uneven sideburns were any indication. He had a somewhat tacky gold watch hooked onto his left wrist.

"Is it my good looks distracting you or my charming accent?" Eames asked, and Arthur realized he'd been staring for quite some time.

"What's a forger?" Arthur managed to say.

"If you'd like to come under with me, I'll show you."

"Why should I trust you? How do I know Mal actually hired you? Where is she? Where's Cobb?"

"They went out to get breakfast. Some biscuits and tea, I hope, being that we're in London and all."

Arthur was about to proclaim that Eames could very well be lying again, but at that exact moment Cobb and Mal entered, carrying tea and biscuits as if they knew.

"Ah, Arthur," Mal said, smiling as she removed her sunglasses and slipped them up onto the top of her head. "I see you've met Mr. Eames, our forger."

Arthur's shoulders sunk, and Eames just laughed.

An hour later, Arthur found out what forging was.

Cobb had narrowed a glare at Eames over breakfast, questioning his abilities, and Eames had assured him that he was the best with the same confident smile he'd had from the get-go. Arthur had huffed and sipped at his tea, rolling his eyes. Then Eames had turned his eyes on him again and mentioned that Arthur didn't even know what forging was. Cobb had then explained to Eames that Arthur was brand new to the dreaming business (damn it, Cobb!) and taken then all under to test Eames's technique.

Cobb had built a beautiful city reminiscent of New York, though Arthur preferred the Paris city Mal had been practicing out of. Eames had a tan jacket on down below, and his hair was neater. Arthur watched with curiosity.

"So, what can you do?" Cobb asked in the vague way he usually did, gesturing pointlessly.

"Voices," Eames shrugged, "clothes, ages, full forms. Whatever you like. With the right amount of tailing, information, and focus, I can be anyone."

"Anyone?" Cobb asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Celebrities, politicians, male, female, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children, adults, teenagers, tall, short, Asian, Black, Hispanic-you name it, I can do it. I even did a fairly successful forgery of a hound dog once… though I was sniffing arses and chasing birds for a few hours after I woke up."

"How long have you been in the business, Mr. Eames?" Mal asked, clearly impressed if the smile on her lips was any indication.

Eames scrubbed his mouth with the palm of the same warm hand Arthur had taken earlier, "about four, five years."

"So, you're telling us," Cobb said, pointing with his whole hand the way he tended to do when skeptical, "that you've mastered the next to impossible art of forgery in five years."

Eames chuckled. "Mastered? Oh, no. No, no, Mr. Cobb. Forgery is an art, Cobb, and an art is never mastered. The moment you believe you've mastered an art, you've become a sellout and a complete failure. I am, however, one of the best in the field because I've taken quite a shine to it. Keep in mind, Mr. Cobb, that five years is a lot longer in dream time."

"Show me," Cobb said, spreading his arms out. Arthur felt a twinge of jealousy over how Mal's eyes sparkled with excitement.

Eames nodded, taking a step back and digging a small compact mirror out of his pocket. He popped it open with a small click and looked into it.

A second later, Arthur found himself staring not at Eames but at Cobb… at Cobb and Mal and Cobb.

"How's this?" Eames said in Cobb's voice, spreading his arms out in the same fashion Cobb had.

"Wonderful," Mal said, clapping, and Arthur pouted a little.

"Why thank you," Eames said, and suddenly he was Mal and speaking in Mal's voice, "Mademoiselle."

He turned to Arthur then, shifting back into his own form with a quick glance in the mirror. "Would you like for me to do you as well, Arthur?"

"You think you can forge me?" Arthur asked defensively, taking a small step back.

"That's not what I meant," Eames replied, and for a moment Arthur wondered in horror if he was teasing or being serious.

…and then he was staring himself in the face.

"Darling, you're the easiest forge I've done all day," Eames replied in Arthur's voice. "If you want to make it in this business, you're going to have to be a little more mysterious."

Arthur's nostrils flared, and Eames mockingly imitated the expression.

Eames reached out with his hand and ran a finger down the tip of Arthur's nose. "Don't look so confused, pet," he continued, still in Arthur's voice. "It's not that bizarre. I'm sure you touch yourself all the time, right?"

Arthur punched him in the nose.

When Eames scrambled to his knees from the ground, he was himself again, and he had blood pouring from both nostrils.

"I hate you!" Arthur shouted and marched away to hide until the time ran out on the PASIV.

Just to piss him off, Arthur was sure, Eames shouted after him, "Your exit would have been more dramatic if you'd just shot yourself out!"

Evening arrived and Cobb and Mal headed back to their hotel rooms to pretend they weren't going to end up in the same room, and Arthur stayed hunched at his desk reading information. Cobb had given him a stern talking to (as if he were a fucking child!) when they'd all woken up, claiming that punching Eames had been incredibly unprofessional, dream or not.

Arthur had spent the rest of the day pouting at his desk. Eames was the one who had been unprofessional, not Arthur. He was saying crude, inappropriate things (in Arthur's voice no less!), and Arthur had responded suitably. He didn't care that he'd broken Eames's nose. He didn't care that he missed out on Eames forging Al Capone, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Manson, the Queen of England, Kennedy, Steve Martin, Benicio Del Toro, Will Smith, the angel Gabriel, a centaur, Harry Potter, and Captain Hook.

He was not impressed. He didn't see why he should be.

"See you tomorrow, Arthur!" Eames called out from across the warehouse as he strolled out, and then he was singing again, slightly off key, "Well it's a big, big city and the lights are all out, but it's as much as I can do, you know, to figure you out-"

The door shut before Arthur could hear anymore.

About a half hour after Eames left, Arthur got up from his computer, spread himself out on a lounge chair, hooked himself up to the PASIV, and sent himself under, building a hazy version of his hotel room.

Seriously, how hard could forging be?

If someone like Eames could do it, surely Arthur could do it. Arthur had always been a fast learner, after all.

Haha, he'd learn to forge in just one night, and then Mal would be so impressed that she'd fire Eames and never look back.

There was just one problem.

Forging was hard.

Arthur couldn't even change the color of his eyes, he discovered after glaring intensely into a mirror for about twenty minutes. "Oh, come on!" Arthur complained, pressing his forehead to the looking glass.

The door knob jiggled, and Arthur looked at it curiously before the door suddenly gave way, allowing Eames inside.

"Slacking off?" Eames asked with a smile.

"What are you doing here?" Arthur asked, pressing his back against the wall and glaring with as much intensity he could muster.

"Forgot my jacket," Eames replied with a shrug. "I saw you were napping, so I came to see what you were up to. Am I interrupting some sort of romantic encounter with a projection?"

"No, I was just-" Trying to be better than you and failing. Miserably. "I was just taking a break."

"Were you?" Eames said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Carry on then. Don't mind me."

"No… N-Leave me alone. Go away."

"Why? So you can keep trying to forge?" Eames asked, lounging on the mattress with his hands behind his head.

Arthur was speechless.

"I told you that you were readable, darling."

"Don't call me that."

"-but you are darling, darling," Eames chuckled.

Asshole.

Arthur turned away, grumbling, "It shouldn't be that hard to do…"

"Actually, it's quite difficult," Eames said.

"I wasn't talking to you."

"Completely letting go of the person you are is nearly impossible. Nearly."

Arthur turned his head back towards Eames, vexed. "Letting go of-What do you mean?"

Eames hopped to his feet then, clasping his hands together in front of his waist. "The key to forgery is to completely give yourself over to the person you become. That requires momentarily forgetting who you are, and considering you've had however many years you've been alive to focus mainly on the person that you are, it's bloody difficult to ignore."

Arthur cocked his head to the side.

"You," Eames said, shoving his index finger against Arthur's chest, "are far too concerned over what people think of you. You're far too concerned with yourself. You will never be able to forge with that kind of attitude."

"Don't insult me-"

Eames interrupted. "Oh, no, you misunderstood. It's not an insult."

Now Arthur was extremely confused. "It's-"

Eames shook his head. "It's not an insult, Arthur. The person you are is definitely important. You're still young and wet behind the ears. You're a rookie, really. These things are not insults, only facts."

"They sure sound like insults."

"That's because you're a perfectionist. Being new to something is not something you enjoy. Here's the thing though, Arthur," he paused to take hold of Arthur's shoulders then, "to be able to do anything well, practice is involved. Training. Hours and hours and hours of work. Just because you want to be perfect at something doesn't mean you automatically will be, and here's the best part… That's perfectly okay." He grinned.

Eames turned Arthur then and forced him to look at the wall which was now nothing but a mirror. "I can read you easily because you keep all of yourself on the surface. Lock it away. Try to."

"How do I do that?" Arthur asked, and he was surprised by the quietness in his voice.

"Don't bottle it up. Just let it slide off of you. Imagine yourself a blank canvas. It's said that to be able to be the person we want to be, we have to change things about ourselves, so allow yourself to be painted on. You can be anyone."

Arthur blinked slowly, Eames's voice washing over him like hypnotism, and he no longer noticed Eames's hands which had slipped from his shoulders to his biceps, chin resting on his shoulder.

"You're not Arthur. You're not a pointman. You're not a deserter. You're not anyone," Eames said. "You're everyone."

Arthur stared into his own eyes, and by God, he didn't recognize them. For a split second, he truthfully didn't remember what color they were supposed to be.

Eames must have felt him tense because he whispered in his ear, "Don't panic. Everything's all right. What's your favorite color?"

"Blue," Arthur replied, and suddenly the eyes staring back at him were blue.

"Do you have blue eyes?" Eames asked.

"Yes," Arthur said because he did at that moment, at least.

"What about topside?"

Arthur tried to remember. It took some time. "They're… they're brown…" and his eyes were brown again. "Boring, old brown."

"Blimey, you might just have it in you after all," Eames said. "With some practice, you could be an adequate forger. It will definitely keep people from reading you so easily topside."

"Why do I have to be unreadable topside?" Arthur asked, managing to ignore the fact that Eames was breathing on his neck.

Eames laughed against Arthur's skin, and Arthur swore he felt his heart skip a beat. A tiny one. Just one. Tiny one.

"You're a bloody criminal, Arthur. If your enemies can read you, they'll figure out your plans before you can set them into action. You'll be killed."

Arthur glared at the two of them in the mirror. "I'm not that readable."

Eames moved away from Arthur, tugging on both of his ears, and Arthur pretended he didn't miss the heat of Eames pressed against him. "You really are, love. You need to toughen that outer shell of yours. Don't worry about it. It'll come in time."

"How do I do that?" Arthur asked.

Eames trailed his hand along the glass of the mirror, humming a little. "Simple. Figure out who you are and put all the pieces in the proper places. Reveal them only when you need to, and trust me, you'll know when you need to reveal what pieces if you know yourself well enough."

"I know myself."

"You know some things about yourself," Eames corrected. "You know your name, your age, your occupation… hair color, eye color, favorite things… stuff like that… but there are definitely things you aren't aware of."

"Like what?"

"Your handwriting is sharper when you're angry. Your ears flush when you're embarrassed. You tilt your head when you're curious. You quirk your eyebrows when you're impressed. You chew on pen tops when you're focused, you suck on your bottom lip when you're confused or disgruntled, you fidget when you're uncomfortable… Your pinky finger on your right hand is just a little crooked, and you have a freckle on your neck, and you're secretly self-conscious about your ears. You're terrified of change but even more afraid of things staying the same."

"There could be a billion things in that list," Arthur said, eyebrows drooping in annoyance.

"Exactly," Eames replied, pacing back towards Arthur. "You'll never know everything. That's why you can't perfect it, savvy? Knowing yourself is an art. Forging is similar in execution."

"So if I think I know everything about myself, then I'm a sellout and a failure?"

"Anyone who thinks they know everything about anything is a sellout and a failure."

"This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to fix the problem?"

"Just keep putting the pieces together. You may not know yourself completely, but you'll get to the point where you'll know you better than everyone else does. See, the key to being unreadable is not revealing nothing about yourself. You get to know yourself well enough, and you'll be able to read everyone else with ease, thus being able to give the proper response every time. It's forgery. You are what people want you to be."

"-but you said that forgery is about letting yourself go completely."

"Yes," Eames agreed, "but you have to know what it is you're losing, or else you won't be able to get it back."

"…Oh."

Eames was wiser than he let on, apparently. Arthur was speechless again.

…and he couldn't even be mad at Eames for it.

Eames grinned his top row of crooked teeth at him.

Well, his smile was still annoying.

"Go away," Arthur commanded.

"You'll have to shoot me out if you want me to leave."

Arthur formed a gun in his hand and pointed it at Eames but found his finger shaking on the trigger.

"Shoot me," Eames said.

Arthur bit down on his bottom lip and shifted from foot to foot, but he just couldn't bring himself to fire.

"You're crazy," Arthur whispered.

"You're stronger than you give yourself credit for, Arthur," Eames replied. "This is a dream. If you shoot me, I'll just wake up."

"…but what about if I shoot someone up above? They won't just wake up…"

"You don't have to shoot anyone topside," Eames replied simply. "That's a choice you can make, but whether you choose to do it or not, you need to have the strength to make the choice. You can't stand there with a gun in your hand, afraid to decide. Projections down here and wankers topside aren't going to let you think about it."

"-but…"

"Do whatever you need to do, Arthur. You owe yourself that."

"I hate violence," Arthur said and shot Eames in the head.

When Arthur awoke, Eames was leaning over him, pulling the needle out of his arm. "Nicely done," Eames said.

Arthur sat up and stared into Eames's eyes… and immediately started to cry.

"What's wrong?" Eames asked.

"I ran away from the Army…" Arthur sniffed, pressing a hand over his eyes, "because they wanted me to kill this kid… He was only sixteen. He was only four years younger than me… and I couldn't do it because he was so scared and so young and… when I didn't do it, my superior blew his brains out right in front of me, and… and I still see his eyes, that split second before, so full of fear, so blue… and I see them in my dreams, and I think that I should have tried to save him. I should have done something… but I just stood there."

Eames took hold of Arthur's elbow and pulled him to his feet. "Don't let it paralyze you," Eames said simply. "Your own survival is the most important thing. Yours and your team. That's what being a pointman's for. If you didn't want a little violence in your life, then you've been picking the wrong occupations… but, for the record, anything worth having is going to involve a little pain."

Arthur wiped at his eyes. Eames handed him his pink pocket square handkerchief. "Keep it."

"Do you think that I was wrong to not shoot him? He was a terrorist."

"It was your choice. Right or wrong, it was yours."

Arthur blew his nose.

"I wouldn't have done it," Eames said, turning away.

"Are you saying that because it's true, or because you think it's what I want you to say?"

"Guess you'll have to figure that out on your own," Eames replied over his shoulder with that damned grin. "You'll be okay, Arthur. You will. I mean that."

Arthur smiled a little.

"See you tomorrow, Arthur," Eames said, eyes softening, and Arthur thought that for a moment he could read Eames clearly as he walked out the door, singing to himself. "So if you're crazy, I don't care-you amaze me, but you're a stupid girl; Oh me, oh my, you talk, I die; you smile, you laugh, I cry, and only a girl like you could be lonely, and it's a crying shame if you would think the same; a boy like me's just irresistible…"

"Look out for wankers," Arthur said quietly.

"I will lead them on a merry chase," Eames replied coolly.

"Just... Just be back tomorrow..."

"Go to sleep, Arthur."

Reading Eames?

Nah, that had to have been his imagination.