(Untitled)

[paisleythief]

Eames is usually one to be asleep at this time. Its too damn late to be considered early and its too damn early to figure out if the reciprocal makes sense. For a moment he wonders if Mal is traipsing through dreams again, or if someone's meddling with the circadian rhythms of the house, but he doesn't hear anyone moving about upstairs and it doesn

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[byextension]

3 in the morning is not an unusual time to find Arthur awake. In fact, it's more unusual if one does not find him here in the miniature gym facility of this particular dormitory, or wandering the halls, or often as not with Mal and whispering conversations. Tonight Arthur is here, a weight strapped about his waist that makes each rep burn a little more, the rigid specificity of his arms cutting sharp lines when he lifts up and severe angles when he lowers. At night his mind is more awake than during the day - something he traces back through his years in the system, not trusting himself to fall asleep in most places for varying reasons. Not every foster care story is a sad one; Arthur's isn't, scars not being proof of sadness so much as an inadequacy, but it's not a decent one either

[paisleythief]

With a quirked brow, Eames wonders-- not for the first time, and surely not for the last-- if it's easier to understand Arthur with some kind of telepathic or empathic ability. Maybe that's why he gets along so well with Dom. He's always saying more than he means to with less words than necessary, and Eames had thought he'd been reading into things after he'd accepted Arthur's apparent lack of mutation (for the longest time Eames had thought Arthur was masking or otherwise hiding his ability-- those first few weeks were hell on the whole house) but that's not it either. Somewhere along the line, between learning to talk and learning to communicate, Arthur must have missed a step because Eames can't mimic him the way he moulds himself into the shape of others

[byextension]

Tilting his head from one side to the other, Arthur blinks back some tension, a strain running up his right shoulder that he hadn't noticed earlier.

"Why? Another boarder?" he asks, regarding the dreaming. He knows that sometimes it's just natural waking but that other times it's true that an errant telepathic thought can drive a sharp end to someone else's dormancy - usually a new one. Arthur could as soon call them students; that's what Dom calls them, and really it's more accurate in that they needn't pay for their stays here, but Arthur chooses this word because it entails the aspect of the experience that he thinks is more important - that they sleep and eat and dream here, live here.

Learning is the foremost reason to be here, but it's not the only one and it doesn't take looking at mutant-types to know that much. Taking a deeper breath, he considers his shirt before just slinging it over his shoulder, and pressing his lips thin, pulling at his hands absently as if to kick feeling back into them where they're a little numb

[paisleythief]

Eames shakes his head, eyeing the arc Arthur's shirt makes as he flicks it over his shoulder. If he were still trying to taunt the powers out of the other man, he'd make a comment or leer a bit more openly, but-- clad in his sleeveless white shirt and baggy old sweats, Eames figures now is hardly the time