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At Home in The Sea, part 2
Part 1
*
V.
One annoying characteristic of Dom's is that he tends to be correct on most fronts. It's merely the delivery of his wisdom that makes him come off as a complete prick.
An idea is the most resilient parasite, indeed. And knowing how to successfully plant one is a fucking all-consuming monster.
Eames goes to Las Vegas and stays up nights at the slots, listlessly hitting buttons over and over again. Otherwise he mingles around the sports betting area, eyes flicking from screen to screen, using the pencil tucked behind his ear to bet on anything from hockey to NASCAR. This kind of downswing in mood is nothing unfamiliar to him -- he simply needs to ride it out, to readjust within the confines of the waking world. Hiding out is a boring but safe option. During any kind of post-job lull, he has a track record of taking on more risky jobs, or jobs that are just plain bad ideas. The inception came together beautifully, against every odd, which leaves him all the more reckless in the time afterward.
That's why when Tom Feduccia sits down at the slot machine beside him and inserts a voucher coupon like any other insomniac in the place, Eames doesn't immediately get up and leave like he should.
A long, chiming melody rings in from the penny slots, along with a roar of cheers. "It seems your tracking skills have improved somewhat," Eames says.
"Maybe you just weren't that important to find, before," says Tom. He pulls the lever with aplomb but none of the reels match up. "Who was your supplier?"
"Piss off," Eames says, tired, but still, he doesn't leave.
Tom shrugs. "Okay, doesn't matter. I'm sure there are a dozen more chemists who can cook up that stuff. Science is dependable that way. Molecules are molecules are molecules, you know?"
Eames scratches at his beard in response.
"Alright, here's the deal." Tom swings his chair around so he can hook his feet over Eames's footrest. "As much as it pains me to compliment anything Cobb was ever involved with, that inception was a work of art. I'm putting together a team to try it out, but it'll go a hell of a lot smoother if I hired someone who actually knows how to do it successfully."
Eames bets the maximum and gets ten credits in return. "How much is the payout?" he grunts.
"Much more than whoever the fuck funded the Fischer project."
Self-awareness is the first step, Eames decides. At least he knows what he's about to do is stupid.
Tom correctly interprets Eames's silence. He swings his chair back around and says, "Great. I'm trying to get a 50/50 balance going here, if I can. You think anyone else would be interested?"
Eames makes a show of looking around the casino before turning his gaze back to Feduccia, who laughs. "Point taken," he says. He pulls the lever and adds, "Though, now that you're on board, I think you'll be surprised with who might take the bait."
*
When Eames arrives, he's resolutely unsurprised to see Arthur there, but only because he's determined not to prove Tom right.
Seeing him feels like wriggling back into a mold, surrounded by something airy and familiar, but it's merely a flash. The context is too off; Arthur doesn't take these jobs, at least not now that Cobb is safely squared away and there's no larger end to justify the means.
"Never thought I'd see you slumming it like this," Eames says as he kicks his suitcase into the corner. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm trying to expand my horizons," Arthur intones.
"Loosen up, Arthur. You look like you're about to go to a funeral," Johan teases.
Which is exactly what Eames was thinking, but the way Johan says it is all wrong. Judging by the cold look that Arthur bestows upon Johan, Eames isn't the only one who feels that way.
Johan nods at Arthur, a dismissive gesture. "I thought you two were tight?" he asks Eames. He walks away without waiting for a reply, whistling and continuing on until he's well out of earshot.
"You do know how to pick them," Arthur says, chin propped on his hand as he taps a pen against his desk, but Eames isn't so easily fooled anymore: this is Arthur being tense.
"Interesting choice of job for you as well. But good to see you again, as always," Eames replies, just a bit too genial.
Arthur keeps tapping his pen.
*
It doesn't take long for the problems to pile up. Even with a cursory examination of the research, it's obvious that details have been glossed over, only a few contingency plans made. Johan has come up with a Somnacin formula that has a similar molecular structure to Yusuf's version, but a practice run reveals it to have an unshakeable drag, making the dream far too sedate, like they're moving through water.
When they wake up, Tom simply removes his line and winds it back into the PASIV with even movements. Johan runs his hands through his hair, seemingly serious for the first time. "I'll fix it," he promises. "Soon."
"I sure hope so," Tom says affably, which means he's feeling nothing of the sort.
Johan starts rambling on about dilutions and another round of vehicle testing. Eames tunes him out and slips through the exit instead. It's nearly nine o'clock, but there's a cafe not too far away and he's going to need several espresso shots to keep alert for the shit-storm that's likely to head in their direction, if this first day is any indication.
By the time he gets back, Arthur is the only one left in the warehouse, looking small and insignificant in such a large space. Eames heads closer without pausing, wary of the layer of tension between them, a vaguely familiar sentiment that's been warped into something that settles at the bottom of his spine and sprouts up through his shoulders, twisting discomfort into every cell.
"I've been waiting all day for you to expound on how horrible an idea this job is," Eames says lightly, hitching his hip so that he can lean against Arthur's desk.
"I'm aware that you're aware of it," Arthur says, squinting down at a grainy photograph, "so there wouldn't be any point. I'd just be wasting my voice."
"Saving up to make it count," Eames says. "You're right, I'm sure there will be many opportunities to lecture me in the near future."
Arthur looks up just then, and something about the uneven set of his mouth, or maybe the lamp light softening the angles of his face, makes him seem young and vulnerable. Tricks of the environment, Eames decides. Tries to convince himself, more like; he finds it difficult to move on to thinking about anything productive, with that image of Arthur lingering in his mind.
"You're angry," Eames states, but it sounds like a guess to his own ears.
"No," Arthur answers. He looks back down at the pile of papers, twirling a pen around his thumb knuckle in neat swipes. "Jesus. I wouldn't be here if I was mad."
"Then what is it?"
"I need you on the Traiger job next month. It's not going to be very conducive if you get waylaid by one of the many people gunning for Tom's head on a plate," says Arthur. "Do you know how many times his team has been ambushed in the past year?"
Leading questions are Arthur's specialty. Eames tilts his head. "So you're keeping an eye on me," he states.
"I need you for that job," Arthur repeats. "The answer was three out of seven times, by the way. And I'm hearing that Doug Rossetti is in town, which will most likely raise that to an even four out of eight."
"I'm willing to give Tom the benefit of the doubt that he went through the trouble of covering up any tracks," Eames counters, though that's a lie and he's got a gun in his desk with a full chamber and extra ammunition in his bag just in case.
Neither of them budge from the stalemate, and they eventually sink into a weighty silence as Eames heads back to his own desk and starts to pick apart everything that has the potential to go wrong with their current plan.
There are no clocks in the warehouse, and though Arthur is bound to have five different clocks set to five different international time zones on his computer, Eames isn't about to break the quiet with such a hackneyed question. He may as well get up to look for himself, because irritating Arthur in the usual ways seems like a lighthouse at this point, returning him to a safe, recognizable place.
Scraping his chair back results in a loud screeching noise that jars him, helps get himself back into his own skin. A large bay window, divided up into about thirty separate panes, highlights the ocean of concrete that Eames has to cross before coming close to Arthur's workspace. He's concentrating on the calcifying white along the edges, just so he has something to look at, when an abrupt pain zips through his arm.
The force of it twists his body around, rendering him off-balance enough to fall awkwardly. He blinks at the feet of Arthur's desk, which are now horizontal and right in front of his face.
Arthur swears, "Shit," and Eames hears the chair roll away. Within half a second, the lights shut off and Eames is left lying there, breathing rapid in the dark, reeling from the suddenness of it all. Four more bullets crack through the window, each accompanied by a blast of light from the rooftop of the building across the street. Arthur calls, "Eames?"
"Three of them," Eames calls back. He clears his throat, tries to concentrate on the feeling of cold concrete instead of the pain. What were the odds of Arthur being right, he wonders. Probably higher than Eames wants to admit.
Arthur has gone quiet, reduced to a silhouette against the wall, but when he moves it's with pinpoint accuracy. He spins on his knees to face the window and fires off six shots before ducking back. Another pause. More answering noise, and yet another pause, though Eames interprets it as one on Arthur's end, like he's waiting.
"One more," Eames says loudly.
All he sees is Arthur's hand flicking up with the recoil. After that, there's no response, only the both of them staring out the shattered window, waiting and watching for any sign of backup, but soon enough it's evident that no more shots are going to be fired. They sit there panting in silence anyway, unable to shake the anticipation for something worse.
"I think we're good," Eames finally says in a strained voice. His arm is throbbing but it's reached a peak, nothing worse than any other semi-serious injury he's sustained so far. "But the timing of it all leads me to believe you've been colluding with whoever-the-hell that was."
"Rossetti," Arthur says in a hard voice, obviously in no mood for jokes.
Tiny lightning bolts stab through Eames's vision when the lights turn back on. Facing an injury is never pleasant; Eames is about to suck it up and check, but the look on Arthur's face makes him pause.
Then he starts to panic.
Human bodies are unfortunately prone to going into shock, or letting loose with a cavalry of signal-scrambling proteins that make it difficult to accurately assess an injury. That's why Eames always appreciates having someone else there to do it for him, especially when he's woozy off endorphins. Going off Arthur's expression and the speed with which he comes to kneel at Eames's side, Eames should be requesting his last rites and heading into the light fairly soon.
"Eames, fuck -- you're hit," Arthur breathes.
"Yes, I thought you -- you knew," Eames fumbles with his words. "Christ, what, is it the brachial artery? What is it?"
He writhes around in order to try and prod at the injury with his good hand. Arthur is busy with his own attempt at gauging the severity of the wound and their hands get awkwardly tangled. At best, he's hoping for some hospital-grade injury that will heal fine if he somehow makes it to a doctor in time. At worst, Eames is expecting to find a pool of blood, a gushing wound that can't be stopped.
Instead, all he touches is a mild puddle and a ruined sleeve.
"What -- "
He feels around a bit more before propping himself up on his good elbow and looking behind him to double check. There's some blood. Not much. Most of it is soaking through his shirt.
"It's just a graze," he mutters, craning his neck to eye the wound. "It's just -- fuck. It's just a graze. Right?"
"Yeah," Arthur finally says, staring. Perhaps he has an aversion to blood, though Eames never noticed any signs before. "Yeah, it is."
"Yeah," Eames breathes out, trying to reacquaint himself with the blissful knowledge that he's not going to die anytime soon. A huge, draining rush of energy leaves him feeling like a deflated balloon. "Yeah. Bollocks. That was -- what was that?"
"I guess I misjudged," Arthur says a bit stiffly.
"I'm not criticizing at all, I'm only," Eames pokes at the wound again to make sure, "a bit shocked, is all. It was an overreaction on both our parts."
Arthur runs a palm over his face.
"Are you alright?" Eames asks after a pause, like he's not the one who was a few inches away from bleeding out in a grotty warehouse.
"I'm fine. Get in the bathroom, let me clean you up."
"There wouldn’t’ve been anyone else I’d rather," he says as he obeys, which doesn’t even make sense at all, but the sentiment is there. The adrenaline is pumping straight through his brain, leaving him with an uncomfortable giddy feeling. "We should call someone. Tell them to move shop in case Rossetti decides to come back."
"I'll do it," Arthur assures, guiding Eames into the bathroom.
He has one hand curled around Eames's elbow. With his free hand, he reaches up to steady the light, which is still swinging around from their hasty entrance, and makes quick work of getting Eames wrapped up and into a cab back to the hotel.
A small handle of vodka and a blank prescription bottle of Vicodin tabs have found their way into Eames's bag, but once he arrives back at the hotel, he roots through his things and downs six ibuprofen instead. On the scale of injuries, this one doesn't even register; the more serious painkillers would probably best be saved for something that warrants it.
Eames turns on the light and the water in the bathroom, intending to take a very careful shower, but instead he sits on the edge of the bed and tosses his phone around with one hand. Trying to process the past day feels like running his thoughts through a strainer and having nothing catch. By the time he actually gets up, the water has run cold.
He changes his mind -- takes a Vicodin, washes it down with a swig of the vodka, and goes to bed.
*
The sound of the phone ringing pulls him out of sleep. With the curtains drawn, it could be anywhere between 3am to 3pm. Eames blinks, disoriented, and finally manages to fumble the phone open before it goes to voicemail.
"Yeah," he says, gruff.
Johan's voice says, "I don't think that was very smart, Eames."
Eames frowns into his pillow and tries to wake up fully, but his mind is clinging to the vestiges of deep sleep.
"Eames."
"Yeah."
"Bad idea."
"What's this about?"
"We got the word that you canceled."
"Canceled," Eames repeats. He opens both eyes and tries to adjust to the darkness in the room. Something is wrong, he's aware of that much. "I'm sorry, you're going to have to catch me up on this one."
"I mean, Arthur called us and said both of you were gone, out of the country. Got scared straight by what happened." Johan snorts. "Bad move, man."
Eames sits up, suddenly alert. "That's absolute rubbish. I haven't a clue where Arthur's gone, or if he's gone at all, but I'm still on board, I wouldn't leave Tom or Francesco hanging like this. Just what the hell did he say, exactly?"
"Regardless of what he said." On the other end, Eames hears a long exhale. He can practically smell the cigarette smoke. "I'm wondering whether or not I should believe you."
"Because I have such a long history of skipping out on jobs? Because I'm so eager to get on Tom's bad side?" Eames bites out, sarcastic.
"Point," Johan agrees. He pauses, then says, "They had no reason not to believe him, and you know how gullible they can get about this kind of stuff. Their motto is usually 'better safe than sorry'."
"Yes, I do know, and I think the more appropriate phrase is perhaps 'let's preemptively attack people due to paranoia'," Eames bites back. "Fuck. Fuck. Alright. I'm coming down there right now to clear this up."
"Whoa," Johan laughs. "I wouldn't do that, actually. They're not here, anyway, and I doubt you'd be a welcome face at this point. I know it's out of character for you, sure, which is why I called in the first place, but. You know."
"Johan," Eames begins, but Johan cuts in: "It's not a good idea, Eames," he says, and there's no trace of laughter this time.
"Right," Eames says, clipped. "Well, thanks."
He hangs up and sits there, drumming his feet on the carpet. Johan's supposed kindness is mostly bullshit, since he's the type who utilizes any kind of upper hand to worm in a favor for the future. The past thirty-six hours have been absolute shit, and the cherry on top is that now Eames has pissed a few people off through no fault of his own. The best plan of action would be to check out of the hotel and take the next flight out, chalk this off as a bunged up job and not look back.
Instead he goes to the minibar and drains a few small bottles. A good start, he decides.
The next step is to call Arthur's room. No answer. Dialing his mobile only gets him the familiar annoying triad of notes and an automated voice telling him to please try again. As he rings the room a second, third, seventh time, he methodically finishes off the rest of the liquor. There's not much, considering. Each time he rings and Arthur doesn't answer, the coil of anger in his gut expands like a smoke bomb.
While the liquor settles, he throws on a wrinkled shirt and trousers and grabs the room key before heading out. The stoic lights in the hallway give no clues regarding the time; Eames finally checks his phone in the elevator and finds that it's not quite 4:00 a.m. Thankfully, the bar downstairs is still serving and he gets steadily drunk on well vodka and horrible whiskey before the hour is over.
When Arthur finds him, Eames is two sheets to the wind, but he doesn’t show it one bit. He never has.
"What the hell, Eames," is Arthur's opening. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough, I suppose." Eames smiles. He doesn’t take his eyes off Arthur as Arthur studies him, trying to translate his reply into a quantifiable number, either in hours or drinks. By the frustration that seeps through his tightened jaw, he can’t figure it out. This is satisfying, in a completely childish way.
"I've been looking for you," Arthur say, terse, "everywhere. I thought -- "
"You thought what?" Eames asks pleasantly. "Come on, have a seat, then."
"Your arm is bleeding through," Arthur points out instead.
Eames touches the gauze and his fingers come away red. "Shit," he says, but Arthur is already handing over a napkin procured from his pocket.
"Go wash up," he instructs. Then, as if sensing the state that Eames is in, he amends it to, "At least go to the bathroom and rotate the gauze a little bit, okay?"
"Sure, fine, yes." Eames somehow gets all the way to the restroom and is about to toss out the napkin when he sees a logo in the center, for a bar that had been advertised in the hotel binder. One of the corners is still wet. When he sniffs it, the smell of whiskey is fresh.
Eames looks at the mirror and smirks. The expression looks easy but it feels all wrong. He keeps it on anyway as he cleans up and fiddles with the gauze before strolling back out to the bar, where Arthur is still waiting. Now that Eames knows what to look for, he sees the whiskey manifesting itself in the pinched corners of Arthur's eyes, the slightly unsteady way he's leaning against the counter.
"Eames," Arthur says, staring at some spot on the bar. His hand closes into a fist before it unfurls again, renewed, to slide over Eames's hand and turn it over so that his palm is facing up.
It's an unexpected move. Checking if he's competent enough to keep himself whole, probably. Eames thinks his hand will shake, but it holds steady.
"You're usually so good at asking for what you need," Eames says. "But, I suppose, that's different from what you want."
It's shameless goading, same as always, but the words are coming out all wrong, too leering and mean and sarcastic, coated with something cheap, and Arthur looks pale. He isn't touching Eames anymore.
"And what is it, exactly, that you want, Arthur?" Eames says. He backs up, tries another approach.
Arthur doesn't budge.
Finally, Eames drops all pretense. "So, you called Tom," he says flatly, a low burn of leftover anger fueling him.
"Yes," Arthur confirms.
"As some cruel joke to keep me on my toes? Or perhaps you didn't want something blemishing your track record, because having a team member killed under your watch would be a personal insult, wouldn't it?" Eames bangs the counter with faux-excitement. "Or, hold on, did you think you were doing me a favor?"
"Eames, that was supposed to be my -- " Arthur begins, but Eames cuts him off.
"Because god forbid I make my own decisions. After all this time, do you really still think of me as incapable?"
"God, can you just stop for second?" Arthur tries. "You know that's not what this was about."
Eames barrels right on. "I don't, actually. Christ. What is it with -- you always need to be stepping in, or in charge of everything. Sometimes it doesn't work like that. I don't need you to -- I don't need you, alright. Full stop."
"Right," Arthur says after a pause. "Right, yeah. You don't need anyone to stop you from being stupid and reckless. You don't need anyone to reel you back when you get too far in the wrong direction. As much as it pains me, I'm invested in your well-being. As much as you don't need someone looking out, I am. Blame it on instinct if it makes you feel better. Believe me, sticking my neck out for you isn't a particularly enjoyable activity."
"Yes, because staging a coup in someone else's life is always the best and only way to go about looking out for me, as you say," Eames mocks. "Christ. I've had enough of you, with your 'mother knows best' bullshit."
By now, he's inches away from Arthur, waiting for him to snap, like touching fire to propane. At his most cruel and relentless, fighting with Arthur can be like picking a fight with a tank that deflects everything you've got and retaliates with a crushing blow.
So he can’t say that he’s not expecting the punch. The volume of pain is unanticipated, however; it’s not the first time that Arthur has hit him and nor will it be the last, but it is the first time that he hasn’t tempered it, held back a bit. A jolt of sobriety hits Eames like a lightning bolt, but fades away just as quickly.
"You're being an overdramatic asshole," Arthur spits out. "I hope you swallowed a fucking tooth."
"And you're overstepping your bounds as, what, as a friend? Or my superior?" Eames sneers past the tightness in his jaw. "You seem to be mistaking me for someone you have possession of. Like you own me. Do you realize that at all?"
Arthur stares at him, unblinking, and Eames knows he's hit a nerve.
When he gingerly presses his tongue to his lower lip, there's a fresh spark of pain. He wipes away the blood with the heel of his palm, then locks eyes with Arthur again and says, "Let me be honest, alright? Next time you feel the need to martyr yourself for my cause: don't. It would be much easier on you if you'd stop confusing whatever we have for anything more than a business transaction."
By the time he finishes speaking, they're inches away from each other. Just before it devolves into a staring contest, Arthur shoves Eames off and walks away, each footstep connecting hard against the floor.
Eames pauses long enough to process the obvious: that Arthur is walking away instead of fighting back. That there is a line and he just crossed it. One of the few mistakes he's made more than once is realizing he's created a mess only in retrospect, and it seems he's done it again.
He jogs after him, hurries past the revolving door and follows him outside. "Arthur," he calls, suddenly at a loss. "Arthur, hold on."
"You're right, and I'm sorry. I see now that I was overstepping my bounds," Arthur says without looking back.
"Don't pull that robotic act," Eames says, exasperated.
"Fine," Arthur almost yells. He stops and turns. "Fine, okay. For what it's worth, I am sorry for making you lose out on your big payday." He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "And no, you are right, I didn't even realize what I -- it wasn't my place. I guess..."
When he trails off, Eames wants to grab him by the collar, shake him into action like he would a malfunctioning toy. This isn't how it was supposed to go. Arthur should be fury and hellfire right now, not this deflated slump that won't even look up.
They're at the corner of an intersection. The traffic light hanging overhead blinks yellow and red to an empty street, and an uneasy hush washes over them, as if something impossibility fragile is about to crack open.
"You guess what," Eames prompts softly, all the anger suddenly wiped clean.
"I guess -- somewhere along the way, I made the mistake of caring about you more than I should."
"What does that mean?"
Arthur rubs his forehead tiredly. "Jesus, Eames. What do you think it means?"
Eames stares at him, mind still working sluggishly through the alcohol. Even while drunk -- or perhaps especially while drunk --, he puts a lot of stock into intuition and gut instinct despite the fact that logic may dictate another conclusion. Right now, Arthur's face is pale, ashen; his eyes are bright under the streetlamps. He shakes his head again with an ugly noise that Eames barely recognizes as a laugh. This image is surprising, not because Arthur is inscrutable or an enigma, but because Eames has never noticed before now, just how honest Arthur's expressions can be.
Eames watches him and tries to tell himself that he's thinking it through wrong, but the idea has already lodged itself into his mind like a decoder, reconstructing every single interaction they've had until it's impossible to avoid the conclusion. By the time he spells it out for himself, by the time a horrible sense of regret starts sliding down his spine, Arthur has turned the corner and is long gone.
*
VI.
Eames looks for him, of course, and even entertains the idea that Arthur has been captured and is chained down to some underground bunker, but he knows he would have heard news if that were the case. He sends out messages for lack of anything better to do, suspecting they're going to be lost in the ether but knowing he'd regret it if he just sat on his hands. The notes range anywhere from plaintive to goading to vague, but the last one boils down to a simple, i'm sorry.
Of course, the progression in tone of all these messages has been carefully planned since before the first one even goes out. Eames figures this specific order would convey his sincerity the best. Then again, Arthur probably sees right through it, considering the lack of response. His fortress of self-preservation, once breached, apparently mends itself with an even stronger wall.
Or so Eames thought. But three weeks and seven countries later, he goes back to England for wont of anything else to do, and the first step he takes into his flat is right onto a folded scrap of paper: Buenos Aires, 8/8, in Arthur's undisguised print.
He hangs up his coat, then purchases a plane ticket.
*
The notes continue to make appearances all around the perimeter of his flat, as if Arthur's taking care not to cross that physical line. Eames always goes to the written destinations without question, and is always met with a team that doesn't include Arthur in any way or form. Gaps in between the jobs are filled with small-time heists, stakeouts, and standing in as muscle for easy money. He smokes a lot of cigarettes and starts building a pyramid with all the empty gin bottles that he inadvertently starts collecting, and generally takes horrible care of himself which isn't abnormal but this time it's almost like he's waiting for someone to come pull him out of it.
Buenos Aires had been quick and dirty, and he was out of the country within thirty-six hours of landing. Next was Ann Arbor, Michigan -- a bit more difficult, that one, considering no one on the team could convincingly pull off their cover as academics. The third and fourth are compound jobs that keep him grounded for the better part of a month, living above a bar on the outskirts of Shenzhen. All of them are the kind of jobs that Eames has come to relish, ones with the right mix of challenge and ease, ones where they build something from the bottom up; ones with an improbability of success as they work to eventually tip the balances in their favor.
The fifth note leads him to Santiago, and surprisingly enough, he's there to guide someone through a forgery, a new person named Ben. Though Eames hasn't been in a position to teach in years, the situation seems familiar enough that he spends the whole time wondering, in the back of his mind, whether or not it's some kind of test.
Afterward, Ben offers him a job in Chicago, something he's designing the architecture for. He's a jack-of-all-trades type, apparently, and hasn't done anything worthy of Eames's trust -- but, he hasn't done anything worthy of Eames's distrust, and keeping himself occupied is a priority these days. He accepts it without second thought.
*
Chicago welcomes him with temperatures well below zero and freezing winds that knife at his face with each gust. At least Kara is renting a bungalow with excellent insulation and central heating, which provides a blissful, sauna-worthy blast of heat once Eames fumbles the front door open. Whitney Lee's house is across the street and two doors down; Eames glances over his shoulder and sees that it's lit in a similarly cozy way.
Showing up mid-dream becomes a running habit for Ben, but Kara says she only hired him for part-time work and Eames has never been a stickler for punctuality himself. The job is an innocuous information check, hired to gauge intelligence leaks before a planned merger, and while she and Eames slog through the technicalities during the daytime, Roland, the chemist, keeps an eye on Lee and Ben has classes to attend or teach. A doctoral candidate in Russian history, he tends to make buildings reminiscent of baroque churches, looming and ominous, almost seeming to swallow Eames up with its shadows.
Getting to Lee is easy enough. The latch on the back door has been loose ever since Eames jimmied it on the first night, and they slip in just as the sun begins to rise.
"Where the hell is Ben?" Eames hisses as they lie down on the carpet, eye level with some horrible lace monstrosity of a bed-skirt.
"He'll be here soon, don't worry about it," Kara hisses back, right when the back door audibly opens and closes. "See? Just trust me. Set the timer."
Inside the dream, Kara has set up a nondescript office floor, about twenty stories up judging by the view out the windows. The dreamscape is a bastardized version of Barcelona -- the Sagrada Familia is visible, as are more churches that Ben purposely designed to blend in to each other. The only church with enough detailing to resemble a real structure is the one they're supposed to lure the mark into.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly, which puts Eames on alert because it's never that easy anymore. This means that he's not surprised when the entire structure begins to shake before they even find the mark.
"Great. It hasn't even been five minutes. Is it an earthquake?" Kara asks, gripping onto a nailed-down desk for support.
"Too subtle," Eames says absently. He glances around at the ceiling panels, the bulletin boards, the desk supplies -- everything is vibrating at a low but constant level.
The idea is still dawning on Eames when Ben says, "Cortical activity," under his breath, almost to himself.
Kara still has her gun pointed out. "What?"
"The sedative isn't strong enough," Eames explains after a quick glance at Ben. "Her brain is processing sounds from topside, incorporating them into the dream. The dream is changing by itself to make sense of the noises."
Outside the window, they can see ever-widening cracks in the sidewalk as the streets roil up like waves. "There's construction on Lee's cross-street," Ben calls suddenly. "Did you see the orange cones on the corner of that four-way stop? It's probably a jackhammer."
Kara curses. "Well, let's hope that Roland can figure it out and adjust the dose. Are there any outward signs that this is happening?"
"It should echo a REM cycle. Lots of movement with the eyes, etcetera," Eames tells her. "If he's any good, he'll be able to figure it out."
Then he's forced to grab onto a filing cabinet for balance as the entire building suddenly buckles to one side. "Too late, I'm guessing," Kara groans. "I can't believe it's going to hell already, god."
"There might still be time. If you find her, go for the apocalyptic angle, last rites sort of thing," Eames advises quickly. "It's salvageable, don't panic just yet."
"Okay, first, there are parachute packs by the secretarial office. Pop out one of the south side windows, that should drop us right on the main street," Ben instructs, and the confidence is unusual enough for Eames to take notice as they all jog over to claim a parachute.
"Be sure you pull the cord right away," Eames informs them. He helps Kara and falters a bit when he finds Ben finishing up the straps already. "We're barely high enough to pull this off," he directs to Kara before turning to Ben and saying, "You can't be arsed to show up on time but suddenly you're a bloody Air Scout?"
A few well-placed shots shatters the window and Kara, never one for hesitation, disappears off the edge almost immediately afterward. Ben walks backward and says, "Getting a doctorate is hard work, Mr. Eames. I trust you were getting along just fine without me," before he turns and jumps as well, Eames on his heels.
The scene on the ground is absolute chaos. Playing off the apocalyptic angle seems to be the best option, seeing as how most of the projections are already taking that idea and running with it, trying their best to create a war-torn city. Kara is already sprinting toward Lee, who's wandering around in a bright white dress. Meanwhile, by the time Eames extricates himself from the parachute, Ben has somehow gotten a hold of a firearm for each hand and is stalking forward at a steady pace without a hitch in gunfire. He's tunnel-visioning though, which means that the pop of a grenade pin goes unnoticed.
Eames almost gets a bullet in the shoulder when he jumps out and tackles Ben to the side, rolling them behind a pillar. The abrupt change in momentum trajectory has them landing awkwardly and Eames's face bounces off Ben's skull before he can roll away.
"What the hell are you -- " Ben spits, but the rest of it's drowned out by the thunderous explosion of the grenade.
"An early exit is very dull," Eames yells over the buzzing in his ears. "No one ever wanted to be the first one out of a schoolyard game, did they?"
Ben huffs out a laugh that Eames senses more than he hears. It triggers something in Eames's mind but he fumbles to produce a concrete reason, like gears struggling to catch.
"What about Kara?" Ben is asking.
"She went after Lee. They're in the church," Eames answers. He watches several projections run by without taking notice of the two of them. "Hopefully the dream has adjusted itself, at least."
Ben snorts. "Never would have pegged you as an optimist."
"I like to experiment with different philosophies every now and then," says Eames. "It's difficult to cull my adventurous tendencies."
He can't pinpoint exactly when he knows. One minute he's checking out the dreamscape, squinting through the smoke and pattering of shadowy footsteps, and the next minute there's a bone-deep familiarity setting in out of nowhere. The dream fades to a dull roar and all he can do is look down at Ben and stutter out a couple of false starts. As much as this moment has been mulled over and subject to constant re-imaginings, he's wildly unprepared for the logistics of the actual conversation.
Eames says, "It's a bit strange -- I don't think I've ever seen you topside this entire time."
Which is the truth, and it's only now dawning on him. Ben's belongings are everywhere -- a backpack and a messenger bag slumped against the desk, a stray sweatshirt draped over the mobile corkboard. They go a long way to mask his absence.
"You do know what part-time means, right?" Ben asks.
Eames smiles to himself and shakes his head. "There was once a time when it wouldn't have taken me so long to figure it out. Or perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit."
Ben gives him a probing expression. Finally, he says, "Don't be so hard on yourself. It took me a lot longer with you that first time. And anyway, it's kind of impossible to really expect the unexpected."
"You always do come out of nowhere," Eames agrees, and Arthur cracks a smile at that.
"This is embarrassing, huh? And here I thought I was being so slick," he says, still smiling, and Eames knows it's genuine. Despite all appearances, Arthur always likes being exposed or found out, at least a little.
It's a perfect forgery. From this close, Eames can see the faded scars of mistreated acne, the slight unevenness in the folds of his eyes, the soft, faded gray irises. He wonders where Arthur's been, where he learned to do this; he wonders if it was for this express purpose, to work this job, or if he's changed fields in the time they've been out of touch. During his lessons, they'd worked on aging down to an adolescent -- did Arthur know all that already?
"Perhaps this isn't the most opportune moment to address any questions," says Eames, "but -- where the hell have you been?"
"Around," Arthur says vaguely. "You could have hunted me down," he adds.
Eames raises his eyebrows. "You didn't want to be hunted down."
"You sound so sure of that."
"Of course," Eames says, because he is. "I know you."
Arthur's gaze remains steady, though his mouth tenses into something like reluctant appraisal. He'd been worried, Eames realizes, though worried might be the wrong word. Uncertain, perhaps.
"Tell me what I can do," says Eames, the words tumbling out awkwardly like he's sitting on a confessional, speaking to a faceless, unfamiliar person about his wrongdoings.
"What do you mean?" Arthur asks. He amends it to, "What do you want? Forgiveness? Because you already have that. I'm not really one to hold grudges over some stupid drunken fight, which you know. Absolution, maybe?"
Eames thinks, You. Though I have an extremely poor way of showing it. He thinks, How do I fix this? "Where's the fun in that?" he asks instead.
The corner of Arthur's mouth crooks up. Before Eames can take it back, he's reaching out and rubbing his thumb over the ghost of a dimple that doesn't actually exist in the dream, on this forge.
"And you, Arthur?" Eames asks, heart pounding. "What do you want?"
Arthur looks at him with Ben's green eyes and ski-jump nose. "I wanted you to figure it out," he begins, and at the exact moment it dawns on Eames that Arthur probably built a fail-safe timer for himself, he blinks out of the dream.
Eames curses, scrambling upright and considering throwing himself out of the dream as well, but someone puts a hand on his elbow and he stops. It's Kara.
"Our timer's almost out. I know you're a 'give an inch, take a mile'-type, but just wait a second," she says. She sounds much more calm. As the smoke clears, it's easy to see that most of the projections have made their way into the churches, leaving only stragglers behind on the streets.
Eames exhales through his nose, hard. "I'd appreciate an explanation, if you wouldn't mind."
"He gave me an extra percentage not to police his time and to lie to you." Kara shrugs. "Figured it was easy and harmless, so I said yes. We paid off some grad student for the sketches."
"How much extra did he offer you?"
Kara curls her mouth into a moue. "Maybe something like one hundred percent extra."
"His entire cut?" Eames echoes, though he's not very surprised.
"He must have really not wanted to see you in the flesh," Kara says. "Or then again, maybe not, because he's the one who hired you and also, he could have quit any time. Are you really that good?"
"Not especially, no. Compartmentalizing has just always been a specialty of his," says Eames.
Kara pauses, then says, carefully, "Not bad for a first time forger, though, huh? You gotta give him that much."
At this, Eames smiles. "It wasn't his first, but it wasn't bad. You're right."
By the time they blink awake, Roland has packed away most of the supplies and it's only the four of them left, including Lee. Eames shifts and pauses when he feels something creased over his fingers -- a blank Post-it, folded into fourths.
As they leave, he puts it into his trouser pocket.
*
On the way back home, Eames thinks about grand gestures, and every possible way of making one. Then he thinks about all these years of knowing Arthur, the steady phone calls and jobs and communication, and how they've slowly became strung together to form something much larger and complex than Eames ever anticipated.
He thinks about grand gestures and they seem all wrong in the context.
*
VII.
There are bad days on public transportation, and then there are worse ones. Eames flies in to SFO from Montreal after a short consulting job. Flight time is six hours, and it takes him another two to arrive at his flat, socks soaked through and the shoulders of his new coat dyed into a rain-splattered stone color.
He tracks water all through the shotgun hallway, pausing only to toss his duffel against the refrigerator. Payment for the job had been in the form of several aliquots of undiluted Somnacin derivative; he's toeing off his shoes and absently thinking about anyone who might happen to own a -80C freezer when the phone rings.
Eames pauses. The number is fairly new, but it could be anyone -- wrong number, a mistaken identity. After all, phone companies recycle numbers fairly often.
But somehow he knows that's not it.
He presses the button and says, "Yes?"
"Where are you?" Arthur’s voice comes through tinny. If it sounds a bit warbled and slurred as well, Eames blames it on the connection.
"Eames," Arthur prompts, and Eames says, "I'm having a napalm-colored drink on a nude beach."
"A nude beach where?"
"Southeast Asia."
Eames rubs his nose when Arthur pauses, then repeats, "Where are you?"
"In my flat."
"Just name a city, would you."
"San Francisco," Eames finally admits.
It takes him a minute to realize that the responding click had been Arthur hanging up. The phone display is still flashing the call time at him as he stares at it for a few seconds before getting up and opening the front door on instinct.
When Arthur stumbles into view at the end of the hallway, nervous relief washes over Eames like white noise. His hair is shorter, torso more filled out, and there's an unfamiliar five o'clock shadow scraping over his jawline. He looks wrung out and just this side of horrible. He's the best thing that Eames has seen in months.
Belatedly, Eames realizes that Arthur is wearing a dark sweater that shines strangely under the hallway lighting. It takes him another beat to figure it out.
"Jesus," Eames says, the elation wiped clean away by seeing exactly how pale Arthur is. Arthur keeps walking until their chests bump. Eames catches him before he falls.
"Bad -- depth perception," Arthur breathes. "Sorry."
"You exhaled right into my eye," Eames tells him.
"Sorry," Arthur says again. "Hey, it's good to see you, though. Outside of a dream, I mean."
Despite going almost dead weight, getting him into the flat is far too easy, mostly because he doesn't fight. There’s a stash of Fentanyl in the medicine cabinet, from a doctor who owes Eames several favors. He drags Arthur over to the bed, then grabs a pack and shoves one of the films inside his mouth. Arthur puckers his lips in response, as if Eames force fed him a lemon.
"Don’t you dare, that is precious commodity," Eames warns, even going so far as to pinch Arthur’s lips together, making them bleed white. His knuckles are pressing up against Arthur’s nose, and an annoyed huff of breath hits his skin. "It’ll make you feel better," he promises.
Soon afterward, Arthur is blinking more slowly, fighting the haze of painkillers. Eames finally releases the tension on his fingers, running his thumb over Arthur’s lips in an absent gesture that even he doesn’t register until it happens.
"How do you feel now?"
Arthur smacks his tongue loudly. "Better."
Still, he hisses with every stitch that Eames puts in, despite the added lidocaine. Seven stitches total, and for the last three Eames has to pause and splay his hand over Arthur's stomach to calm him down. He has to dodge some wayward fists as he wraps gauze around Arthur's middle, but it's nothing too bad.
Afterward, Eames fills the tub about a quarter of the way with cold water before gathering up the soiled clothing and dropping them in to soak. Almost immediately, red tendrils begin curling through the water in ribbons. He watches the color bleed through for a few minutes, biting the inside of his lip and thinking about nothing -- or trying to, anyway -- and only snaps back to attention when he hears Arthur’s voice.
"At your beck and call," he states, leaning against the doorframe.
Arthur raises himself up, resting back on his elbows. "Come here for a second."
Eames finds himself obeying, as if some residual effect of the drugs is somehow seeping into his own system. "I'm sorry," he says baldly. "Truly. I've been wanting to say that for ages."
"I know. I got your messages. All seventeen of them," Arthur says.
"There were eight," Eames corrects. "Let's not exaggerate the extent of my desperation."
He watches Arthur for a bit, there on the edge of the bed, palm planted on the mattress to support his weight. "I'm sorry," he says again, quieter this time. "I've missed you terribly."
"Don't. I mean, I know," Arthur repeats. "I'm sorry, too. It was a misunderstanding, that's all. I was a presumptuous asshole. That thing with Tom, it's just -- something I did. Something I would have done. And something I would do over again, if I had to, despite the fact that I was going about it all wrong. It got you out of there, in the end."
He takes a deep breath. "Anyway. We can stop the apology circle-jerk now."
There's a pause, as if they're both trying to convince themselves of it, struggling to climb out of the quicksand pit of their last face-to-face.
"I thought you were dead," Eames starts again. He figures it's a good time to be persistent, considering Arthur's glazed eyes and how he's been resting the back of his knuckles against Eames's thigh without second thought.
"No, you didn't." Arthur smiles faintly. "You knew I was just licking my wounds."
"I hoped that's what it was," Eames corrects. "Though part of me hoped I'd miraculously run into you by accident. It was all very confusing, you see -- I'd only ever seen you chase after something, not the other way around."
"I dig in deep," Arthur says. "And I was still chasing something, if you think about it. You went on those jobs."
The change in subject is abrupt, but Eames cottons on. "I did," he confirms.
"I'm glad," is all Arthur says.
"Maybe you should try to sleep a bit," Eames hedges. Arthur touches Eames's jaw and says, "Did you know, you grind your teeth to all hell."
"That’s not true," Eames immediately says.
"I shared a room with you for nearly a month," Arthur says. "I’m pretty sure you have TMJ. Did you also know," he adds abruptly, "that I couldn’t sleep for a while, after. After Paris."
The weight of this admission presses in on Eames and makes his chest feel strange, as if his lungs aren’t working quite right. Arthur referred to it not as inception, or the Fischer job, or anything related to Cobb -- he referred to it as Paris, as if that place holds some other significance for him.
For a minute it almost feels like Eames is back in that warehouse, at some impossible hour, lying there in the dark half-drunk on exhaustion and listening to Arthur's deep breaths.
"Because the guilt was weighing on you too heavily? Or were you drunk on the godlike power of mind crime?" he finally asks. He watches Arthur smile, eyes still closed.
"You’re such an ass."
"And you’re drugged to your ears," Eames murmurs back. "You have absolutely no idea what's happening right now."
"How is it," Arthur mumbles, "that someone can feel so safe and so dangerous at the same time. So open and so closed off."
"Because I’m actually a character from a romance novel, according to your current assessments." Eames can’t help but touch Arthur’s cheek again, just because he’s able to. "God, you really are out of it, aren’t you?"
"Stop deflecting, for once."
"As much as I'd love to take advantage of your sluggish, weakened state, with your horrible vocabulary -- " Eames catches Arthur's fingers, stopping them from where they've started spidering up along his sternum. "That was a joke," he says.
"This isn't a joke," Arthur counters, and it's clear he's talking about something else entirely. "I'm not a joke."
"No," Eames says, sobering. "No, of course you're not."
Arthur examines him blearily. "I never know with you."
"Well, that's the whole point, isn't it?" Eames tries to keep his voice light. "Slippery like an eel, and all that."
But Arthur isn't deterred. "Depends on what you want," he says slowly, voice overlaid with static gravel.
Arthur's hand against his thigh is like a trigger on a heat map, burning bright in Eames's awareness. Eames physically has to count to ten in his head before he can move away and off the bed before he does something he's going to regret.
"Go to sleep. I'll be here," he says from a safe distance.
Arthur blinks once, twice, a third time before his eyes stay closed.
Eames goes out to the balcony and smokes three cigarettes in a row, resolutely not thinking of Arthur on the other side of the wall, sleeping in a pile of blankets like he belongs there. A few minutes later, the cold gets to be too much. He goes back inside and aimlessly flips through channels, finally settles on one that's playing something grainy and black and white, setting the volume low enough so that it's a pleasant fuzzy undertone of un-mastered audio. He doesn't sleep, because strangely enough, Arthur wakes up unnaturally quick after being dosed with any kind of painkiller.
After a cold cup of coffee and about halfway through a re-showing of the movie, Eames gets up and stands again at the doorframe to the bedroom, straining to hear the rhythm of Arthur's breathing. The light filtering through the curtains is a mixture of streetlamps and the minutes before sunrise, veiling everything in a layer of navy and grey shadows.
"Hey," says Arthur, in the dark.
"Christ," Eames exhales.
The lamp flicks on but neither of them move. Eames takes him in -- the knobbly knees, hair wavy and unwashed against the pillow, day-old scruff standing stark against his face. The contrast makes him look sharper. More dangerous. Eames swallows; he doesn't look away.
"How are the stitches settling?" he asks.
Arthur taps the gauze, fingers curled like he's playing piano. "A little tender. Feels okay, though."
"I'll rewrap it if you'd like a shower -- after. You could use some antibiotic, maybe some more topical painkillers."
Arthur simply says, "Yeah?"
"Barring any kind of unusual pain or infection, you should be feeling well enough to head elsewhere in a day or two. If that was your plan," Eames adds. "You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."
"Okay."
"Okay," Eames echoes.
"I'm a little in love with you," Arthur says, natural as anything, "if you haven't picked up on that. Might as well get that out."
Notable moments in Eames's life are most always overshadowed by mundane, inconsequential details. In Belarus, when he was pulled into an unmarked van, the prevailing worry was about not being able to return his prepaid phone in time. In Switzerland, when he was a passenger in a downing helicopter, he was distracted by how the sun was beating down on his face, unhindered and much too bright.
Now, he finds himself staring at the shell of Arthur's ear, pale in the pre-dawn light. Is his hair long enough to cover it, he wonders. Arthur is smiling absently, picking at the medical tape stretched over his skin.
So this is how it's happening. Eames finds himself with an energy akin to the seconds before plunging off a building without knowing if his parachute will deploy correctly.
"Don't feel so brave and special there," he finally says. "It may in fact be a shared sentiment."
"It may," Arthur repeats slowly.
"Is in fact," Eames corrects, and it's easier than he would have imagined, to say it aloud like that.
Arthur's t-shirt is rucked up a bit, the hem wrinkled over itself to reveal a sliver of skin stretched over the peak of his hip. A few years ago, Eames didn't even know Arthur, had no inkling of the person that would come to be woven into Eames's existence, regardless of whether he was physically present or not.
Abruptly, Arthur is getting out of bed and stripping off the t-shirt, saying, "I've got to take a shower," voice muffled through the cotton. His gait is marred with a slight slouch and a hobble. Eames sits quietly and watches him move from the bed and toward the bathroom.
When the door closes, Eames blankly walks to the kitchen. He bangs around in there for a bit without really processing what he's doing, shoves a few spoonfuls of coffee into a filter, then leaves it on the counter to head right back to the bedroom, where he hammers at the bathroom door until Arthur opens it.
"What did I ever do for you?" is all Eames says.
"This isn't some competition," Arthur answers, with no indication of being taken off-guard by the question. "You don't need to match or one-up me."
"Yes, but equal footing does have its benefits, does it not?"
Arthur turns to face him. He's got shaving cream smeared over his jaw. "Eames, we've been on equal footing since I found you in Shanghai. Or every time you pick up the phone when I call you. And anyway, that's not the point."
Eames mulls this over. "What is it, then?"
"What?"
"What is the point, then?" Eames demands. "You wanted me to figure it out. I did, finally. But that can't have been the point."
Arthur simply stands there, silent. "I was gauging my odds, I guess," he finally says. "It sounds stupid, but -- "
He turns away and tilts his chin up, rests his fingers at the base of his throat like he's pulling the skin taut, and starts shaving with slow, careful scrapes. "When I first met you, you looked like you owned the world, and also like you wouldn’t care at all if you lost it. I guess that’s how it started," he says evenly, like he's had this prepared for a while.
The water in the sink blooms white when Arthur rinses the razor. Eames touches his thumb to his lip, says, "Huh."
"Huh," Arthur repeats. "Can I shave in peace now?"
His voice shakes the slightest bit, a ripple in a body of water that expands outward until he can't meet Eames's eyes and concentrates on his reflection instead.
Eames makes an executive decision. He cradles the jack-rabbit feeling in his chest for a moment, relishing that pocket of adrenaline, before moving into Arthur's space and kissing him neatly. How their winding, convoluted road led to this moment -- he has half a mind to sit down and try to map it out later, but then again, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll forgo everything else as lost time and wash his hands of it. The important part now is this, here: Arthur in his flat, Arthur with one hand resting against Eames's chest, Arthur kissing him back like it's the thousandth time, not the first. Eames even manages to avoid most of the shaving cream.
If he thinks about it, it's strange that, considering how long Arthur has been in his life, it should culminate to this moment that feels like both an apex and an anti-climax, an everyday thing.
Arthur blinks when he finally backs away. "Eames," he begins.
"Don't let me interrupt you," Eames says, gesturing to Arthur's face.
Arthur stares at him. The jack-rabbit feeling returns. "Asshole," Arthur finally says. He meets Eames's gaze through the mirror, and Eames feels the buoyant lightness of possibility filling him up, finally bringing him across the threshold to where Arthur is standing, waiting, smiling.
*
Arthur leaves four days later, leaving behind a memo in the top drawer of the dresser. Belize, 11/18.
Eames sends him one of those Groucho Marx disguises, with the plastic glasses, nose, and mustache. The attached note says, See you soon.
He hails a cab to the airport.
Part 1
*
V.
One annoying characteristic of Dom's is that he tends to be correct on most fronts. It's merely the delivery of his wisdom that makes him come off as a complete prick.
An idea is the most resilient parasite, indeed. And knowing how to successfully plant one is a fucking all-consuming monster.
Eames goes to Las Vegas and stays up nights at the slots, listlessly hitting buttons over and over again. Otherwise he mingles around the sports betting area, eyes flicking from screen to screen, using the pencil tucked behind his ear to bet on anything from hockey to NASCAR. This kind of downswing in mood is nothing unfamiliar to him -- he simply needs to ride it out, to readjust within the confines of the waking world. Hiding out is a boring but safe option. During any kind of post-job lull, he has a track record of taking on more risky jobs, or jobs that are just plain bad ideas. The inception came together beautifully, against every odd, which leaves him all the more reckless in the time afterward.
That's why when Tom Feduccia sits down at the slot machine beside him and inserts a voucher coupon like any other insomniac in the place, Eames doesn't immediately get up and leave like he should.
A long, chiming melody rings in from the penny slots, along with a roar of cheers. "It seems your tracking skills have improved somewhat," Eames says.
"Maybe you just weren't that important to find, before," says Tom. He pulls the lever with aplomb but none of the reels match up. "Who was your supplier?"
"Piss off," Eames says, tired, but still, he doesn't leave.
Tom shrugs. "Okay, doesn't matter. I'm sure there are a dozen more chemists who can cook up that stuff. Science is dependable that way. Molecules are molecules are molecules, you know?"
Eames scratches at his beard in response.
"Alright, here's the deal." Tom swings his chair around so he can hook his feet over Eames's footrest. "As much as it pains me to compliment anything Cobb was ever involved with, that inception was a work of art. I'm putting together a team to try it out, but it'll go a hell of a lot smoother if I hired someone who actually knows how to do it successfully."
Eames bets the maximum and gets ten credits in return. "How much is the payout?" he grunts.
"Much more than whoever the fuck funded the Fischer project."
Self-awareness is the first step, Eames decides. At least he knows what he's about to do is stupid.
Tom correctly interprets Eames's silence. He swings his chair back around and says, "Great. I'm trying to get a 50/50 balance going here, if I can. You think anyone else would be interested?"
Eames makes a show of looking around the casino before turning his gaze back to Feduccia, who laughs. "Point taken," he says. He pulls the lever and adds, "Though, now that you're on board, I think you'll be surprised with who might take the bait."
*
When Eames arrives, he's resolutely unsurprised to see Arthur there, but only because he's determined not to prove Tom right.
Seeing him feels like wriggling back into a mold, surrounded by something airy and familiar, but it's merely a flash. The context is too off; Arthur doesn't take these jobs, at least not now that Cobb is safely squared away and there's no larger end to justify the means.
"Never thought I'd see you slumming it like this," Eames says as he kicks his suitcase into the corner. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm trying to expand my horizons," Arthur intones.
"Loosen up, Arthur. You look like you're about to go to a funeral," Johan teases.
Which is exactly what Eames was thinking, but the way Johan says it is all wrong. Judging by the cold look that Arthur bestows upon Johan, Eames isn't the only one who feels that way.
Johan nods at Arthur, a dismissive gesture. "I thought you two were tight?" he asks Eames. He walks away without waiting for a reply, whistling and continuing on until he's well out of earshot.
"You do know how to pick them," Arthur says, chin propped on his hand as he taps a pen against his desk, but Eames isn't so easily fooled anymore: this is Arthur being tense.
"Interesting choice of job for you as well. But good to see you again, as always," Eames replies, just a bit too genial.
Arthur keeps tapping his pen.
*
It doesn't take long for the problems to pile up. Even with a cursory examination of the research, it's obvious that details have been glossed over, only a few contingency plans made. Johan has come up with a Somnacin formula that has a similar molecular structure to Yusuf's version, but a practice run reveals it to have an unshakeable drag, making the dream far too sedate, like they're moving through water.
When they wake up, Tom simply removes his line and winds it back into the PASIV with even movements. Johan runs his hands through his hair, seemingly serious for the first time. "I'll fix it," he promises. "Soon."
"I sure hope so," Tom says affably, which means he's feeling nothing of the sort.
Johan starts rambling on about dilutions and another round of vehicle testing. Eames tunes him out and slips through the exit instead. It's nearly nine o'clock, but there's a cafe not too far away and he's going to need several espresso shots to keep alert for the shit-storm that's likely to head in their direction, if this first day is any indication.
By the time he gets back, Arthur is the only one left in the warehouse, looking small and insignificant in such a large space. Eames heads closer without pausing, wary of the layer of tension between them, a vaguely familiar sentiment that's been warped into something that settles at the bottom of his spine and sprouts up through his shoulders, twisting discomfort into every cell.
"I've been waiting all day for you to expound on how horrible an idea this job is," Eames says lightly, hitching his hip so that he can lean against Arthur's desk.
"I'm aware that you're aware of it," Arthur says, squinting down at a grainy photograph, "so there wouldn't be any point. I'd just be wasting my voice."
"Saving up to make it count," Eames says. "You're right, I'm sure there will be many opportunities to lecture me in the near future."
Arthur looks up just then, and something about the uneven set of his mouth, or maybe the lamp light softening the angles of his face, makes him seem young and vulnerable. Tricks of the environment, Eames decides. Tries to convince himself, more like; he finds it difficult to move on to thinking about anything productive, with that image of Arthur lingering in his mind.
"You're angry," Eames states, but it sounds like a guess to his own ears.
"No," Arthur answers. He looks back down at the pile of papers, twirling a pen around his thumb knuckle in neat swipes. "Jesus. I wouldn't be here if I was mad."
"Then what is it?"
"I need you on the Traiger job next month. It's not going to be very conducive if you get waylaid by one of the many people gunning for Tom's head on a plate," says Arthur. "Do you know how many times his team has been ambushed in the past year?"
Leading questions are Arthur's specialty. Eames tilts his head. "So you're keeping an eye on me," he states.
"I need you for that job," Arthur repeats. "The answer was three out of seven times, by the way. And I'm hearing that Doug Rossetti is in town, which will most likely raise that to an even four out of eight."
"I'm willing to give Tom the benefit of the doubt that he went through the trouble of covering up any tracks," Eames counters, though that's a lie and he's got a gun in his desk with a full chamber and extra ammunition in his bag just in case.
Neither of them budge from the stalemate, and they eventually sink into a weighty silence as Eames heads back to his own desk and starts to pick apart everything that has the potential to go wrong with their current plan.
There are no clocks in the warehouse, and though Arthur is bound to have five different clocks set to five different international time zones on his computer, Eames isn't about to break the quiet with such a hackneyed question. He may as well get up to look for himself, because irritating Arthur in the usual ways seems like a lighthouse at this point, returning him to a safe, recognizable place.
Scraping his chair back results in a loud screeching noise that jars him, helps get himself back into his own skin. A large bay window, divided up into about thirty separate panes, highlights the ocean of concrete that Eames has to cross before coming close to Arthur's workspace. He's concentrating on the calcifying white along the edges, just so he has something to look at, when an abrupt pain zips through his arm.
The force of it twists his body around, rendering him off-balance enough to fall awkwardly. He blinks at the feet of Arthur's desk, which are now horizontal and right in front of his face.
Arthur swears, "Shit," and Eames hears the chair roll away. Within half a second, the lights shut off and Eames is left lying there, breathing rapid in the dark, reeling from the suddenness of it all. Four more bullets crack through the window, each accompanied by a blast of light from the rooftop of the building across the street. Arthur calls, "Eames?"
"Three of them," Eames calls back. He clears his throat, tries to concentrate on the feeling of cold concrete instead of the pain. What were the odds of Arthur being right, he wonders. Probably higher than Eames wants to admit.
Arthur has gone quiet, reduced to a silhouette against the wall, but when he moves it's with pinpoint accuracy. He spins on his knees to face the window and fires off six shots before ducking back. Another pause. More answering noise, and yet another pause, though Eames interprets it as one on Arthur's end, like he's waiting.
"One more," Eames says loudly.
All he sees is Arthur's hand flicking up with the recoil. After that, there's no response, only the both of them staring out the shattered window, waiting and watching for any sign of backup, but soon enough it's evident that no more shots are going to be fired. They sit there panting in silence anyway, unable to shake the anticipation for something worse.
"I think we're good," Eames finally says in a strained voice. His arm is throbbing but it's reached a peak, nothing worse than any other semi-serious injury he's sustained so far. "But the timing of it all leads me to believe you've been colluding with whoever-the-hell that was."
"Rossetti," Arthur says in a hard voice, obviously in no mood for jokes.
Tiny lightning bolts stab through Eames's vision when the lights turn back on. Facing an injury is never pleasant; Eames is about to suck it up and check, but the look on Arthur's face makes him pause.
Then he starts to panic.
Human bodies are unfortunately prone to going into shock, or letting loose with a cavalry of signal-scrambling proteins that make it difficult to accurately assess an injury. That's why Eames always appreciates having someone else there to do it for him, especially when he's woozy off endorphins. Going off Arthur's expression and the speed with which he comes to kneel at Eames's side, Eames should be requesting his last rites and heading into the light fairly soon.
"Eames, fuck -- you're hit," Arthur breathes.
"Yes, I thought you -- you knew," Eames fumbles with his words. "Christ, what, is it the brachial artery? What is it?"
He writhes around in order to try and prod at the injury with his good hand. Arthur is busy with his own attempt at gauging the severity of the wound and their hands get awkwardly tangled. At best, he's hoping for some hospital-grade injury that will heal fine if he somehow makes it to a doctor in time. At worst, Eames is expecting to find a pool of blood, a gushing wound that can't be stopped.
Instead, all he touches is a mild puddle and a ruined sleeve.
"What -- "
He feels around a bit more before propping himself up on his good elbow and looking behind him to double check. There's some blood. Not much. Most of it is soaking through his shirt.
"It's just a graze," he mutters, craning his neck to eye the wound. "It's just -- fuck. It's just a graze. Right?"
"Yeah," Arthur finally says, staring. Perhaps he has an aversion to blood, though Eames never noticed any signs before. "Yeah, it is."
"Yeah," Eames breathes out, trying to reacquaint himself with the blissful knowledge that he's not going to die anytime soon. A huge, draining rush of energy leaves him feeling like a deflated balloon. "Yeah. Bollocks. That was -- what was that?"
"I guess I misjudged," Arthur says a bit stiffly.
"I'm not criticizing at all, I'm only," Eames pokes at the wound again to make sure, "a bit shocked, is all. It was an overreaction on both our parts."
Arthur runs a palm over his face.
"Are you alright?" Eames asks after a pause, like he's not the one who was a few inches away from bleeding out in a grotty warehouse.
"I'm fine. Get in the bathroom, let me clean you up."
"There wouldn’t’ve been anyone else I’d rather," he says as he obeys, which doesn’t even make sense at all, but the sentiment is there. The adrenaline is pumping straight through his brain, leaving him with an uncomfortable giddy feeling. "We should call someone. Tell them to move shop in case Rossetti decides to come back."
"I'll do it," Arthur assures, guiding Eames into the bathroom.
He has one hand curled around Eames's elbow. With his free hand, he reaches up to steady the light, which is still swinging around from their hasty entrance, and makes quick work of getting Eames wrapped up and into a cab back to the hotel.
A small handle of vodka and a blank prescription bottle of Vicodin tabs have found their way into Eames's bag, but once he arrives back at the hotel, he roots through his things and downs six ibuprofen instead. On the scale of injuries, this one doesn't even register; the more serious painkillers would probably best be saved for something that warrants it.
Eames turns on the light and the water in the bathroom, intending to take a very careful shower, but instead he sits on the edge of the bed and tosses his phone around with one hand. Trying to process the past day feels like running his thoughts through a strainer and having nothing catch. By the time he actually gets up, the water has run cold.
He changes his mind -- takes a Vicodin, washes it down with a swig of the vodka, and goes to bed.
*
The sound of the phone ringing pulls him out of sleep. With the curtains drawn, it could be anywhere between 3am to 3pm. Eames blinks, disoriented, and finally manages to fumble the phone open before it goes to voicemail.
"Yeah," he says, gruff.
Johan's voice says, "I don't think that was very smart, Eames."
Eames frowns into his pillow and tries to wake up fully, but his mind is clinging to the vestiges of deep sleep.
"Eames."
"Yeah."
"Bad idea."
"What's this about?"
"We got the word that you canceled."
"Canceled," Eames repeats. He opens both eyes and tries to adjust to the darkness in the room. Something is wrong, he's aware of that much. "I'm sorry, you're going to have to catch me up on this one."
"I mean, Arthur called us and said both of you were gone, out of the country. Got scared straight by what happened." Johan snorts. "Bad move, man."
Eames sits up, suddenly alert. "That's absolute rubbish. I haven't a clue where Arthur's gone, or if he's gone at all, but I'm still on board, I wouldn't leave Tom or Francesco hanging like this. Just what the hell did he say, exactly?"
"Regardless of what he said." On the other end, Eames hears a long exhale. He can practically smell the cigarette smoke. "I'm wondering whether or not I should believe you."
"Because I have such a long history of skipping out on jobs? Because I'm so eager to get on Tom's bad side?" Eames bites out, sarcastic.
"Point," Johan agrees. He pauses, then says, "They had no reason not to believe him, and you know how gullible they can get about this kind of stuff. Their motto is usually 'better safe than sorry'."
"Yes, I do know, and I think the more appropriate phrase is perhaps 'let's preemptively attack people due to paranoia'," Eames bites back. "Fuck. Fuck. Alright. I'm coming down there right now to clear this up."
"Whoa," Johan laughs. "I wouldn't do that, actually. They're not here, anyway, and I doubt you'd be a welcome face at this point. I know it's out of character for you, sure, which is why I called in the first place, but. You know."
"Johan," Eames begins, but Johan cuts in: "It's not a good idea, Eames," he says, and there's no trace of laughter this time.
"Right," Eames says, clipped. "Well, thanks."
He hangs up and sits there, drumming his feet on the carpet. Johan's supposed kindness is mostly bullshit, since he's the type who utilizes any kind of upper hand to worm in a favor for the future. The past thirty-six hours have been absolute shit, and the cherry on top is that now Eames has pissed a few people off through no fault of his own. The best plan of action would be to check out of the hotel and take the next flight out, chalk this off as a bunged up job and not look back.
Instead he goes to the minibar and drains a few small bottles. A good start, he decides.
The next step is to call Arthur's room. No answer. Dialing his mobile only gets him the familiar annoying triad of notes and an automated voice telling him to please try again. As he rings the room a second, third, seventh time, he methodically finishes off the rest of the liquor. There's not much, considering. Each time he rings and Arthur doesn't answer, the coil of anger in his gut expands like a smoke bomb.
While the liquor settles, he throws on a wrinkled shirt and trousers and grabs the room key before heading out. The stoic lights in the hallway give no clues regarding the time; Eames finally checks his phone in the elevator and finds that it's not quite 4:00 a.m. Thankfully, the bar downstairs is still serving and he gets steadily drunk on well vodka and horrible whiskey before the hour is over.
When Arthur finds him, Eames is two sheets to the wind, but he doesn’t show it one bit. He never has.
"What the hell, Eames," is Arthur's opening. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough, I suppose." Eames smiles. He doesn’t take his eyes off Arthur as Arthur studies him, trying to translate his reply into a quantifiable number, either in hours or drinks. By the frustration that seeps through his tightened jaw, he can’t figure it out. This is satisfying, in a completely childish way.
"I've been looking for you," Arthur say, terse, "everywhere. I thought -- "
"You thought what?" Eames asks pleasantly. "Come on, have a seat, then."
"Your arm is bleeding through," Arthur points out instead.
Eames touches the gauze and his fingers come away red. "Shit," he says, but Arthur is already handing over a napkin procured from his pocket.
"Go wash up," he instructs. Then, as if sensing the state that Eames is in, he amends it to, "At least go to the bathroom and rotate the gauze a little bit, okay?"
"Sure, fine, yes." Eames somehow gets all the way to the restroom and is about to toss out the napkin when he sees a logo in the center, for a bar that had been advertised in the hotel binder. One of the corners is still wet. When he sniffs it, the smell of whiskey is fresh.
Eames looks at the mirror and smirks. The expression looks easy but it feels all wrong. He keeps it on anyway as he cleans up and fiddles with the gauze before strolling back out to the bar, where Arthur is still waiting. Now that Eames knows what to look for, he sees the whiskey manifesting itself in the pinched corners of Arthur's eyes, the slightly unsteady way he's leaning against the counter.
"Eames," Arthur says, staring at some spot on the bar. His hand closes into a fist before it unfurls again, renewed, to slide over Eames's hand and turn it over so that his palm is facing up.
It's an unexpected move. Checking if he's competent enough to keep himself whole, probably. Eames thinks his hand will shake, but it holds steady.
"You're usually so good at asking for what you need," Eames says. "But, I suppose, that's different from what you want."
It's shameless goading, same as always, but the words are coming out all wrong, too leering and mean and sarcastic, coated with something cheap, and Arthur looks pale. He isn't touching Eames anymore.
"And what is it, exactly, that you want, Arthur?" Eames says. He backs up, tries another approach.
Arthur doesn't budge.
Finally, Eames drops all pretense. "So, you called Tom," he says flatly, a low burn of leftover anger fueling him.
"Yes," Arthur confirms.
"As some cruel joke to keep me on my toes? Or perhaps you didn't want something blemishing your track record, because having a team member killed under your watch would be a personal insult, wouldn't it?" Eames bangs the counter with faux-excitement. "Or, hold on, did you think you were doing me a favor?"
"Eames, that was supposed to be my -- " Arthur begins, but Eames cuts him off.
"Because god forbid I make my own decisions. After all this time, do you really still think of me as incapable?"
"God, can you just stop for second?" Arthur tries. "You know that's not what this was about."
Eames barrels right on. "I don't, actually. Christ. What is it with -- you always need to be stepping in, or in charge of everything. Sometimes it doesn't work like that. I don't need you to -- I don't need you, alright. Full stop."
"Right," Arthur says after a pause. "Right, yeah. You don't need anyone to stop you from being stupid and reckless. You don't need anyone to reel you back when you get too far in the wrong direction. As much as it pains me, I'm invested in your well-being. As much as you don't need someone looking out, I am. Blame it on instinct if it makes you feel better. Believe me, sticking my neck out for you isn't a particularly enjoyable activity."
"Yes, because staging a coup in someone else's life is always the best and only way to go about looking out for me, as you say," Eames mocks. "Christ. I've had enough of you, with your 'mother knows best' bullshit."
By now, he's inches away from Arthur, waiting for him to snap, like touching fire to propane. At his most cruel and relentless, fighting with Arthur can be like picking a fight with a tank that deflects everything you've got and retaliates with a crushing blow.
So he can’t say that he’s not expecting the punch. The volume of pain is unanticipated, however; it’s not the first time that Arthur has hit him and nor will it be the last, but it is the first time that he hasn’t tempered it, held back a bit. A jolt of sobriety hits Eames like a lightning bolt, but fades away just as quickly.
"You're being an overdramatic asshole," Arthur spits out. "I hope you swallowed a fucking tooth."
"And you're overstepping your bounds as, what, as a friend? Or my superior?" Eames sneers past the tightness in his jaw. "You seem to be mistaking me for someone you have possession of. Like you own me. Do you realize that at all?"
Arthur stares at him, unblinking, and Eames knows he's hit a nerve.
When he gingerly presses his tongue to his lower lip, there's a fresh spark of pain. He wipes away the blood with the heel of his palm, then locks eyes with Arthur again and says, "Let me be honest, alright? Next time you feel the need to martyr yourself for my cause: don't. It would be much easier on you if you'd stop confusing whatever we have for anything more than a business transaction."
By the time he finishes speaking, they're inches away from each other. Just before it devolves into a staring contest, Arthur shoves Eames off and walks away, each footstep connecting hard against the floor.
Eames pauses long enough to process the obvious: that Arthur is walking away instead of fighting back. That there is a line and he just crossed it. One of the few mistakes he's made more than once is realizing he's created a mess only in retrospect, and it seems he's done it again.
He jogs after him, hurries past the revolving door and follows him outside. "Arthur," he calls, suddenly at a loss. "Arthur, hold on."
"You're right, and I'm sorry. I see now that I was overstepping my bounds," Arthur says without looking back.
"Don't pull that robotic act," Eames says, exasperated.
"Fine," Arthur almost yells. He stops and turns. "Fine, okay. For what it's worth, I am sorry for making you lose out on your big payday." He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "And no, you are right, I didn't even realize what I -- it wasn't my place. I guess..."
When he trails off, Eames wants to grab him by the collar, shake him into action like he would a malfunctioning toy. This isn't how it was supposed to go. Arthur should be fury and hellfire right now, not this deflated slump that won't even look up.
They're at the corner of an intersection. The traffic light hanging overhead blinks yellow and red to an empty street, and an uneasy hush washes over them, as if something impossibility fragile is about to crack open.
"You guess what," Eames prompts softly, all the anger suddenly wiped clean.
"I guess -- somewhere along the way, I made the mistake of caring about you more than I should."
"What does that mean?"
Arthur rubs his forehead tiredly. "Jesus, Eames. What do you think it means?"
Eames stares at him, mind still working sluggishly through the alcohol. Even while drunk -- or perhaps especially while drunk --, he puts a lot of stock into intuition and gut instinct despite the fact that logic may dictate another conclusion. Right now, Arthur's face is pale, ashen; his eyes are bright under the streetlamps. He shakes his head again with an ugly noise that Eames barely recognizes as a laugh. This image is surprising, not because Arthur is inscrutable or an enigma, but because Eames has never noticed before now, just how honest Arthur's expressions can be.
Eames watches him and tries to tell himself that he's thinking it through wrong, but the idea has already lodged itself into his mind like a decoder, reconstructing every single interaction they've had until it's impossible to avoid the conclusion. By the time he spells it out for himself, by the time a horrible sense of regret starts sliding down his spine, Arthur has turned the corner and is long gone.
*
VI.
Eames looks for him, of course, and even entertains the idea that Arthur has been captured and is chained down to some underground bunker, but he knows he would have heard news if that were the case. He sends out messages for lack of anything better to do, suspecting they're going to be lost in the ether but knowing he'd regret it if he just sat on his hands. The notes range anywhere from plaintive to goading to vague, but the last one boils down to a simple, i'm sorry.
Of course, the progression in tone of all these messages has been carefully planned since before the first one even goes out. Eames figures this specific order would convey his sincerity the best. Then again, Arthur probably sees right through it, considering the lack of response. His fortress of self-preservation, once breached, apparently mends itself with an even stronger wall.
Or so Eames thought. But three weeks and seven countries later, he goes back to England for wont of anything else to do, and the first step he takes into his flat is right onto a folded scrap of paper: Buenos Aires, 8/8, in Arthur's undisguised print.
He hangs up his coat, then purchases a plane ticket.
*
The notes continue to make appearances all around the perimeter of his flat, as if Arthur's taking care not to cross that physical line. Eames always goes to the written destinations without question, and is always met with a team that doesn't include Arthur in any way or form. Gaps in between the jobs are filled with small-time heists, stakeouts, and standing in as muscle for easy money. He smokes a lot of cigarettes and starts building a pyramid with all the empty gin bottles that he inadvertently starts collecting, and generally takes horrible care of himself which isn't abnormal but this time it's almost like he's waiting for someone to come pull him out of it.
Buenos Aires had been quick and dirty, and he was out of the country within thirty-six hours of landing. Next was Ann Arbor, Michigan -- a bit more difficult, that one, considering no one on the team could convincingly pull off their cover as academics. The third and fourth are compound jobs that keep him grounded for the better part of a month, living above a bar on the outskirts of Shenzhen. All of them are the kind of jobs that Eames has come to relish, ones with the right mix of challenge and ease, ones where they build something from the bottom up; ones with an improbability of success as they work to eventually tip the balances in their favor.
The fifth note leads him to Santiago, and surprisingly enough, he's there to guide someone through a forgery, a new person named Ben. Though Eames hasn't been in a position to teach in years, the situation seems familiar enough that he spends the whole time wondering, in the back of his mind, whether or not it's some kind of test.
Afterward, Ben offers him a job in Chicago, something he's designing the architecture for. He's a jack-of-all-trades type, apparently, and hasn't done anything worthy of Eames's trust -- but, he hasn't done anything worthy of Eames's distrust, and keeping himself occupied is a priority these days. He accepts it without second thought.
*
Chicago welcomes him with temperatures well below zero and freezing winds that knife at his face with each gust. At least Kara is renting a bungalow with excellent insulation and central heating, which provides a blissful, sauna-worthy blast of heat once Eames fumbles the front door open. Whitney Lee's house is across the street and two doors down; Eames glances over his shoulder and sees that it's lit in a similarly cozy way.
Showing up mid-dream becomes a running habit for Ben, but Kara says she only hired him for part-time work and Eames has never been a stickler for punctuality himself. The job is an innocuous information check, hired to gauge intelligence leaks before a planned merger, and while she and Eames slog through the technicalities during the daytime, Roland, the chemist, keeps an eye on Lee and Ben has classes to attend or teach. A doctoral candidate in Russian history, he tends to make buildings reminiscent of baroque churches, looming and ominous, almost seeming to swallow Eames up with its shadows.
Getting to Lee is easy enough. The latch on the back door has been loose ever since Eames jimmied it on the first night, and they slip in just as the sun begins to rise.
"Where the hell is Ben?" Eames hisses as they lie down on the carpet, eye level with some horrible lace monstrosity of a bed-skirt.
"He'll be here soon, don't worry about it," Kara hisses back, right when the back door audibly opens and closes. "See? Just trust me. Set the timer."
Inside the dream, Kara has set up a nondescript office floor, about twenty stories up judging by the view out the windows. The dreamscape is a bastardized version of Barcelona -- the Sagrada Familia is visible, as are more churches that Ben purposely designed to blend in to each other. The only church with enough detailing to resemble a real structure is the one they're supposed to lure the mark into.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly, which puts Eames on alert because it's never that easy anymore. This means that he's not surprised when the entire structure begins to shake before they even find the mark.
"Great. It hasn't even been five minutes. Is it an earthquake?" Kara asks, gripping onto a nailed-down desk for support.
"Too subtle," Eames says absently. He glances around at the ceiling panels, the bulletin boards, the desk supplies -- everything is vibrating at a low but constant level.
The idea is still dawning on Eames when Ben says, "Cortical activity," under his breath, almost to himself.
Kara still has her gun pointed out. "What?"
"The sedative isn't strong enough," Eames explains after a quick glance at Ben. "Her brain is processing sounds from topside, incorporating them into the dream. The dream is changing by itself to make sense of the noises."
Outside the window, they can see ever-widening cracks in the sidewalk as the streets roil up like waves. "There's construction on Lee's cross-street," Ben calls suddenly. "Did you see the orange cones on the corner of that four-way stop? It's probably a jackhammer."
Kara curses. "Well, let's hope that Roland can figure it out and adjust the dose. Are there any outward signs that this is happening?"
"It should echo a REM cycle. Lots of movement with the eyes, etcetera," Eames tells her. "If he's any good, he'll be able to figure it out."
Then he's forced to grab onto a filing cabinet for balance as the entire building suddenly buckles to one side. "Too late, I'm guessing," Kara groans. "I can't believe it's going to hell already, god."
"There might still be time. If you find her, go for the apocalyptic angle, last rites sort of thing," Eames advises quickly. "It's salvageable, don't panic just yet."
"Okay, first, there are parachute packs by the secretarial office. Pop out one of the south side windows, that should drop us right on the main street," Ben instructs, and the confidence is unusual enough for Eames to take notice as they all jog over to claim a parachute.
"Be sure you pull the cord right away," Eames informs them. He helps Kara and falters a bit when he finds Ben finishing up the straps already. "We're barely high enough to pull this off," he directs to Kara before turning to Ben and saying, "You can't be arsed to show up on time but suddenly you're a bloody Air Scout?"
A few well-placed shots shatters the window and Kara, never one for hesitation, disappears off the edge almost immediately afterward. Ben walks backward and says, "Getting a doctorate is hard work, Mr. Eames. I trust you were getting along just fine without me," before he turns and jumps as well, Eames on his heels.
The scene on the ground is absolute chaos. Playing off the apocalyptic angle seems to be the best option, seeing as how most of the projections are already taking that idea and running with it, trying their best to create a war-torn city. Kara is already sprinting toward Lee, who's wandering around in a bright white dress. Meanwhile, by the time Eames extricates himself from the parachute, Ben has somehow gotten a hold of a firearm for each hand and is stalking forward at a steady pace without a hitch in gunfire. He's tunnel-visioning though, which means that the pop of a grenade pin goes unnoticed.
Eames almost gets a bullet in the shoulder when he jumps out and tackles Ben to the side, rolling them behind a pillar. The abrupt change in momentum trajectory has them landing awkwardly and Eames's face bounces off Ben's skull before he can roll away.
"What the hell are you -- " Ben spits, but the rest of it's drowned out by the thunderous explosion of the grenade.
"An early exit is very dull," Eames yells over the buzzing in his ears. "No one ever wanted to be the first one out of a schoolyard game, did they?"
Ben huffs out a laugh that Eames senses more than he hears. It triggers something in Eames's mind but he fumbles to produce a concrete reason, like gears struggling to catch.
"What about Kara?" Ben is asking.
"She went after Lee. They're in the church," Eames answers. He watches several projections run by without taking notice of the two of them. "Hopefully the dream has adjusted itself, at least."
Ben snorts. "Never would have pegged you as an optimist."
"I like to experiment with different philosophies every now and then," says Eames. "It's difficult to cull my adventurous tendencies."
He can't pinpoint exactly when he knows. One minute he's checking out the dreamscape, squinting through the smoke and pattering of shadowy footsteps, and the next minute there's a bone-deep familiarity setting in out of nowhere. The dream fades to a dull roar and all he can do is look down at Ben and stutter out a couple of false starts. As much as this moment has been mulled over and subject to constant re-imaginings, he's wildly unprepared for the logistics of the actual conversation.
Eames says, "It's a bit strange -- I don't think I've ever seen you topside this entire time."
Which is the truth, and it's only now dawning on him. Ben's belongings are everywhere -- a backpack and a messenger bag slumped against the desk, a stray sweatshirt draped over the mobile corkboard. They go a long way to mask his absence.
"You do know what part-time means, right?" Ben asks.
Eames smiles to himself and shakes his head. "There was once a time when it wouldn't have taken me so long to figure it out. Or perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit."
Ben gives him a probing expression. Finally, he says, "Don't be so hard on yourself. It took me a lot longer with you that first time. And anyway, it's kind of impossible to really expect the unexpected."
"You always do come out of nowhere," Eames agrees, and Arthur cracks a smile at that.
"This is embarrassing, huh? And here I thought I was being so slick," he says, still smiling, and Eames knows it's genuine. Despite all appearances, Arthur always likes being exposed or found out, at least a little.
It's a perfect forgery. From this close, Eames can see the faded scars of mistreated acne, the slight unevenness in the folds of his eyes, the soft, faded gray irises. He wonders where Arthur's been, where he learned to do this; he wonders if it was for this express purpose, to work this job, or if he's changed fields in the time they've been out of touch. During his lessons, they'd worked on aging down to an adolescent -- did Arthur know all that already?
"Perhaps this isn't the most opportune moment to address any questions," says Eames, "but -- where the hell have you been?"
"Around," Arthur says vaguely. "You could have hunted me down," he adds.
Eames raises his eyebrows. "You didn't want to be hunted down."
"You sound so sure of that."
"Of course," Eames says, because he is. "I know you."
Arthur's gaze remains steady, though his mouth tenses into something like reluctant appraisal. He'd been worried, Eames realizes, though worried might be the wrong word. Uncertain, perhaps.
"Tell me what I can do," says Eames, the words tumbling out awkwardly like he's sitting on a confessional, speaking to a faceless, unfamiliar person about his wrongdoings.
"What do you mean?" Arthur asks. He amends it to, "What do you want? Forgiveness? Because you already have that. I'm not really one to hold grudges over some stupid drunken fight, which you know. Absolution, maybe?"
Eames thinks, You. Though I have an extremely poor way of showing it. He thinks, How do I fix this? "Where's the fun in that?" he asks instead.
The corner of Arthur's mouth crooks up. Before Eames can take it back, he's reaching out and rubbing his thumb over the ghost of a dimple that doesn't actually exist in the dream, on this forge.
"And you, Arthur?" Eames asks, heart pounding. "What do you want?"
Arthur looks at him with Ben's green eyes and ski-jump nose. "I wanted you to figure it out," he begins, and at the exact moment it dawns on Eames that Arthur probably built a fail-safe timer for himself, he blinks out of the dream.
Eames curses, scrambling upright and considering throwing himself out of the dream as well, but someone puts a hand on his elbow and he stops. It's Kara.
"Our timer's almost out. I know you're a 'give an inch, take a mile'-type, but just wait a second," she says. She sounds much more calm. As the smoke clears, it's easy to see that most of the projections have made their way into the churches, leaving only stragglers behind on the streets.
Eames exhales through his nose, hard. "I'd appreciate an explanation, if you wouldn't mind."
"He gave me an extra percentage not to police his time and to lie to you." Kara shrugs. "Figured it was easy and harmless, so I said yes. We paid off some grad student for the sketches."
"How much extra did he offer you?"
Kara curls her mouth into a moue. "Maybe something like one hundred percent extra."
"His entire cut?" Eames echoes, though he's not very surprised.
"He must have really not wanted to see you in the flesh," Kara says. "Or then again, maybe not, because he's the one who hired you and also, he could have quit any time. Are you really that good?"
"Not especially, no. Compartmentalizing has just always been a specialty of his," says Eames.
Kara pauses, then says, carefully, "Not bad for a first time forger, though, huh? You gotta give him that much."
At this, Eames smiles. "It wasn't his first, but it wasn't bad. You're right."
By the time they blink awake, Roland has packed away most of the supplies and it's only the four of them left, including Lee. Eames shifts and pauses when he feels something creased over his fingers -- a blank Post-it, folded into fourths.
As they leave, he puts it into his trouser pocket.
*
On the way back home, Eames thinks about grand gestures, and every possible way of making one. Then he thinks about all these years of knowing Arthur, the steady phone calls and jobs and communication, and how they've slowly became strung together to form something much larger and complex than Eames ever anticipated.
He thinks about grand gestures and they seem all wrong in the context.
*
VII.
There are bad days on public transportation, and then there are worse ones. Eames flies in to SFO from Montreal after a short consulting job. Flight time is six hours, and it takes him another two to arrive at his flat, socks soaked through and the shoulders of his new coat dyed into a rain-splattered stone color.
He tracks water all through the shotgun hallway, pausing only to toss his duffel against the refrigerator. Payment for the job had been in the form of several aliquots of undiluted Somnacin derivative; he's toeing off his shoes and absently thinking about anyone who might happen to own a -80C freezer when the phone rings.
Eames pauses. The number is fairly new, but it could be anyone -- wrong number, a mistaken identity. After all, phone companies recycle numbers fairly often.
But somehow he knows that's not it.
He presses the button and says, "Yes?"
"Where are you?" Arthur’s voice comes through tinny. If it sounds a bit warbled and slurred as well, Eames blames it on the connection.
"Eames," Arthur prompts, and Eames says, "I'm having a napalm-colored drink on a nude beach."
"A nude beach where?"
"Southeast Asia."
Eames rubs his nose when Arthur pauses, then repeats, "Where are you?"
"In my flat."
"Just name a city, would you."
"San Francisco," Eames finally admits.
It takes him a minute to realize that the responding click had been Arthur hanging up. The phone display is still flashing the call time at him as he stares at it for a few seconds before getting up and opening the front door on instinct.
When Arthur stumbles into view at the end of the hallway, nervous relief washes over Eames like white noise. His hair is shorter, torso more filled out, and there's an unfamiliar five o'clock shadow scraping over his jawline. He looks wrung out and just this side of horrible. He's the best thing that Eames has seen in months.
Belatedly, Eames realizes that Arthur is wearing a dark sweater that shines strangely under the hallway lighting. It takes him another beat to figure it out.
"Jesus," Eames says, the elation wiped clean away by seeing exactly how pale Arthur is. Arthur keeps walking until their chests bump. Eames catches him before he falls.
"Bad -- depth perception," Arthur breathes. "Sorry."
"You exhaled right into my eye," Eames tells him.
"Sorry," Arthur says again. "Hey, it's good to see you, though. Outside of a dream, I mean."
Despite going almost dead weight, getting him into the flat is far too easy, mostly because he doesn't fight. There’s a stash of Fentanyl in the medicine cabinet, from a doctor who owes Eames several favors. He drags Arthur over to the bed, then grabs a pack and shoves one of the films inside his mouth. Arthur puckers his lips in response, as if Eames force fed him a lemon.
"Don’t you dare, that is precious commodity," Eames warns, even going so far as to pinch Arthur’s lips together, making them bleed white. His knuckles are pressing up against Arthur’s nose, and an annoyed huff of breath hits his skin. "It’ll make you feel better," he promises.
Soon afterward, Arthur is blinking more slowly, fighting the haze of painkillers. Eames finally releases the tension on his fingers, running his thumb over Arthur’s lips in an absent gesture that even he doesn’t register until it happens.
"How do you feel now?"
Arthur smacks his tongue loudly. "Better."
Still, he hisses with every stitch that Eames puts in, despite the added lidocaine. Seven stitches total, and for the last three Eames has to pause and splay his hand over Arthur's stomach to calm him down. He has to dodge some wayward fists as he wraps gauze around Arthur's middle, but it's nothing too bad.
Afterward, Eames fills the tub about a quarter of the way with cold water before gathering up the soiled clothing and dropping them in to soak. Almost immediately, red tendrils begin curling through the water in ribbons. He watches the color bleed through for a few minutes, biting the inside of his lip and thinking about nothing -- or trying to, anyway -- and only snaps back to attention when he hears Arthur’s voice.
"At your beck and call," he states, leaning against the doorframe.
Arthur raises himself up, resting back on his elbows. "Come here for a second."
Eames finds himself obeying, as if some residual effect of the drugs is somehow seeping into his own system. "I'm sorry," he says baldly. "Truly. I've been wanting to say that for ages."
"I know. I got your messages. All seventeen of them," Arthur says.
"There were eight," Eames corrects. "Let's not exaggerate the extent of my desperation."
He watches Arthur for a bit, there on the edge of the bed, palm planted on the mattress to support his weight. "I'm sorry," he says again, quieter this time. "I've missed you terribly."
"Don't. I mean, I know," Arthur repeats. "I'm sorry, too. It was a misunderstanding, that's all. I was a presumptuous asshole. That thing with Tom, it's just -- something I did. Something I would have done. And something I would do over again, if I had to, despite the fact that I was going about it all wrong. It got you out of there, in the end."
He takes a deep breath. "Anyway. We can stop the apology circle-jerk now."
There's a pause, as if they're both trying to convince themselves of it, struggling to climb out of the quicksand pit of their last face-to-face.
"I thought you were dead," Eames starts again. He figures it's a good time to be persistent, considering Arthur's glazed eyes and how he's been resting the back of his knuckles against Eames's thigh without second thought.
"No, you didn't." Arthur smiles faintly. "You knew I was just licking my wounds."
"I hoped that's what it was," Eames corrects. "Though part of me hoped I'd miraculously run into you by accident. It was all very confusing, you see -- I'd only ever seen you chase after something, not the other way around."
"I dig in deep," Arthur says. "And I was still chasing something, if you think about it. You went on those jobs."
The change in subject is abrupt, but Eames cottons on. "I did," he confirms.
"I'm glad," is all Arthur says.
"Maybe you should try to sleep a bit," Eames hedges. Arthur touches Eames's jaw and says, "Did you know, you grind your teeth to all hell."
"That’s not true," Eames immediately says.
"I shared a room with you for nearly a month," Arthur says. "I’m pretty sure you have TMJ. Did you also know," he adds abruptly, "that I couldn’t sleep for a while, after. After Paris."
The weight of this admission presses in on Eames and makes his chest feel strange, as if his lungs aren’t working quite right. Arthur referred to it not as inception, or the Fischer job, or anything related to Cobb -- he referred to it as Paris, as if that place holds some other significance for him.
For a minute it almost feels like Eames is back in that warehouse, at some impossible hour, lying there in the dark half-drunk on exhaustion and listening to Arthur's deep breaths.
"Because the guilt was weighing on you too heavily? Or were you drunk on the godlike power of mind crime?" he finally asks. He watches Arthur smile, eyes still closed.
"You’re such an ass."
"And you’re drugged to your ears," Eames murmurs back. "You have absolutely no idea what's happening right now."
"How is it," Arthur mumbles, "that someone can feel so safe and so dangerous at the same time. So open and so closed off."
"Because I’m actually a character from a romance novel, according to your current assessments." Eames can’t help but touch Arthur’s cheek again, just because he’s able to. "God, you really are out of it, aren’t you?"
"Stop deflecting, for once."
"As much as I'd love to take advantage of your sluggish, weakened state, with your horrible vocabulary -- " Eames catches Arthur's fingers, stopping them from where they've started spidering up along his sternum. "That was a joke," he says.
"This isn't a joke," Arthur counters, and it's clear he's talking about something else entirely. "I'm not a joke."
"No," Eames says, sobering. "No, of course you're not."
Arthur examines him blearily. "I never know with you."
"Well, that's the whole point, isn't it?" Eames tries to keep his voice light. "Slippery like an eel, and all that."
But Arthur isn't deterred. "Depends on what you want," he says slowly, voice overlaid with static gravel.
Arthur's hand against his thigh is like a trigger on a heat map, burning bright in Eames's awareness. Eames physically has to count to ten in his head before he can move away and off the bed before he does something he's going to regret.
"Go to sleep. I'll be here," he says from a safe distance.
Arthur blinks once, twice, a third time before his eyes stay closed.
Eames goes out to the balcony and smokes three cigarettes in a row, resolutely not thinking of Arthur on the other side of the wall, sleeping in a pile of blankets like he belongs there. A few minutes later, the cold gets to be too much. He goes back inside and aimlessly flips through channels, finally settles on one that's playing something grainy and black and white, setting the volume low enough so that it's a pleasant fuzzy undertone of un-mastered audio. He doesn't sleep, because strangely enough, Arthur wakes up unnaturally quick after being dosed with any kind of painkiller.
After a cold cup of coffee and about halfway through a re-showing of the movie, Eames gets up and stands again at the doorframe to the bedroom, straining to hear the rhythm of Arthur's breathing. The light filtering through the curtains is a mixture of streetlamps and the minutes before sunrise, veiling everything in a layer of navy and grey shadows.
"Hey," says Arthur, in the dark.
"Christ," Eames exhales.
The lamp flicks on but neither of them move. Eames takes him in -- the knobbly knees, hair wavy and unwashed against the pillow, day-old scruff standing stark against his face. The contrast makes him look sharper. More dangerous. Eames swallows; he doesn't look away.
"How are the stitches settling?" he asks.
Arthur taps the gauze, fingers curled like he's playing piano. "A little tender. Feels okay, though."
"I'll rewrap it if you'd like a shower -- after. You could use some antibiotic, maybe some more topical painkillers."
Arthur simply says, "Yeah?"
"Barring any kind of unusual pain or infection, you should be feeling well enough to head elsewhere in a day or two. If that was your plan," Eames adds. "You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."
"Okay."
"Okay," Eames echoes.
"I'm a little in love with you," Arthur says, natural as anything, "if you haven't picked up on that. Might as well get that out."
Notable moments in Eames's life are most always overshadowed by mundane, inconsequential details. In Belarus, when he was pulled into an unmarked van, the prevailing worry was about not being able to return his prepaid phone in time. In Switzerland, when he was a passenger in a downing helicopter, he was distracted by how the sun was beating down on his face, unhindered and much too bright.
Now, he finds himself staring at the shell of Arthur's ear, pale in the pre-dawn light. Is his hair long enough to cover it, he wonders. Arthur is smiling absently, picking at the medical tape stretched over his skin.
So this is how it's happening. Eames finds himself with an energy akin to the seconds before plunging off a building without knowing if his parachute will deploy correctly.
"Don't feel so brave and special there," he finally says. "It may in fact be a shared sentiment."
"It may," Arthur repeats slowly.
"Is in fact," Eames corrects, and it's easier than he would have imagined, to say it aloud like that.
Arthur's t-shirt is rucked up a bit, the hem wrinkled over itself to reveal a sliver of skin stretched over the peak of his hip. A few years ago, Eames didn't even know Arthur, had no inkling of the person that would come to be woven into Eames's existence, regardless of whether he was physically present or not.
Abruptly, Arthur is getting out of bed and stripping off the t-shirt, saying, "I've got to take a shower," voice muffled through the cotton. His gait is marred with a slight slouch and a hobble. Eames sits quietly and watches him move from the bed and toward the bathroom.
When the door closes, Eames blankly walks to the kitchen. He bangs around in there for a bit without really processing what he's doing, shoves a few spoonfuls of coffee into a filter, then leaves it on the counter to head right back to the bedroom, where he hammers at the bathroom door until Arthur opens it.
"What did I ever do for you?" is all Eames says.
"This isn't some competition," Arthur answers, with no indication of being taken off-guard by the question. "You don't need to match or one-up me."
"Yes, but equal footing does have its benefits, does it not?"
Arthur turns to face him. He's got shaving cream smeared over his jaw. "Eames, we've been on equal footing since I found you in Shanghai. Or every time you pick up the phone when I call you. And anyway, that's not the point."
Eames mulls this over. "What is it, then?"
"What?"
"What is the point, then?" Eames demands. "You wanted me to figure it out. I did, finally. But that can't have been the point."
Arthur simply stands there, silent. "I was gauging my odds, I guess," he finally says. "It sounds stupid, but -- "
He turns away and tilts his chin up, rests his fingers at the base of his throat like he's pulling the skin taut, and starts shaving with slow, careful scrapes. "When I first met you, you looked like you owned the world, and also like you wouldn’t care at all if you lost it. I guess that’s how it started," he says evenly, like he's had this prepared for a while.
The water in the sink blooms white when Arthur rinses the razor. Eames touches his thumb to his lip, says, "Huh."
"Huh," Arthur repeats. "Can I shave in peace now?"
His voice shakes the slightest bit, a ripple in a body of water that expands outward until he can't meet Eames's eyes and concentrates on his reflection instead.
Eames makes an executive decision. He cradles the jack-rabbit feeling in his chest for a moment, relishing that pocket of adrenaline, before moving into Arthur's space and kissing him neatly. How their winding, convoluted road led to this moment -- he has half a mind to sit down and try to map it out later, but then again, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll forgo everything else as lost time and wash his hands of it. The important part now is this, here: Arthur in his flat, Arthur with one hand resting against Eames's chest, Arthur kissing him back like it's the thousandth time, not the first. Eames even manages to avoid most of the shaving cream.
If he thinks about it, it's strange that, considering how long Arthur has been in his life, it should culminate to this moment that feels like both an apex and an anti-climax, an everyday thing.
Arthur blinks when he finally backs away. "Eames," he begins.
"Don't let me interrupt you," Eames says, gesturing to Arthur's face.
Arthur stares at him. The jack-rabbit feeling returns. "Asshole," Arthur finally says. He meets Eames's gaze through the mirror, and Eames feels the buoyant lightness of possibility filling him up, finally bringing him across the threshold to where Arthur is standing, waiting, smiling.
*
Arthur leaves four days later, leaving behind a memo in the top drawer of the dresser. Belize, 11/18.
Eames sends him one of those Groucho Marx disguises, with the plastic glasses, nose, and mustache. The attached note says, See you soon.
He hails a cab to the airport.