You've Seen How I Live - 1/2 [Inception, for i_reversebang]
Title: You've Seen How I Live
Fandom: Inception
Characters/Pairings: Ms. Eames/Abby, Mal Cobb, Dom Cobb, OCs [Genderbent!Eames, Genderbent!Arthur]
Rating/Warnings: R, sex, violence, swearing, references to past drug abuse, withdrawal, and prostitution, out-of-pairing domestic abuse (between OCs). NSFW art behind the cut.
Written for: i_reversebang, for ap421's prompt. NSFW.
Word Count: 17,500 total
A/N: So, here we are. This has taken a lot of work, but I'm actually pretty damn proud of it. Title comes from Vienna Teng's "Eric's Song," which is thematically (if not tonally) perfect for this. Infinite, infinite thanks to ap421 for being so wonderful and for all of the incredible extra art that she drew; to heith_30, the other artist for this piece, for letting me flail at her and for her encouragement, and most of all to fae_boleyn, for again playing the last-minute beta and hero of the hour.
Eames has known Abby longer than she’s known almost anyone she still sees.
They are nothing remotely approaching friends, of course, but they move in the same circles, and Abby has the distinction of being the only other woman Eames has met in the business. Eames thinks that Abby tries to run cons like corporations run sales campaigns, and Abby says that Eames acts like she’s still a high-school kid vandalizing bridges, but they both do have to admit that each can get the job done.
Nonetheless, they don’t ever outright try to work together, so it’s a bit of a surprise when Eames picks up her cell and it’s Abby on the other end.
“I need to get a contact out of the States as fast as possible. He’s been legitimate up till now, other than some shady trading on the side, so no connections, and he’s wanted for first-degree. We’ll need false papers and help staying undercover. Can you do it?”
“Hello to you too, Abby,” Eames says, crossing her still-shod feet on the dingy hotel bedspread. “Well, let me see - I can probably do that, but it will take quite a bit of effort, and although naturally I could arrange a discount for your charming self, I’m not entirely sure -”
“Cut the crap, Eames,” Abby snaps. “Look, I’ve got money, I’ll get more if I need it, just, please, skip the bargaining and the sales pitch and name your fucking price. I already know what you can do, I just need it done.”
Eames blinks.
She can never for the life of her remember exactly what she says to that, but she gets a friend of hers to hide the guy, Cobb, for a bit, and three days later she’s meeting him and Abby in O’Hare. From there they’ll drive to JFK, and from there on to London. It’s inelegantly convoluted, but the best she could do on this notice.
Abby comes out of the gate with her arm around a man who looks like he hasn’t slept in months if not more, and Eames looks at the two of them and simply stays quiet. They slip away from the crowds as fast as humanly possible - there’s no luggage, just carryon - and Eames leads them to her battered old car. Abby slides the contact, Cobb into the back, whispers something that Eames doesn’t catch, and then drops into shotgun.
Eames typically cannot stand keeping her mouth shut, and it’s a steady itch at the back of her mind that sends her pushing the speed limit for all its worth, but she does have some sense of self-preservation, and she recognizes that she has absolutely no right to break this silence.
That honor goes to Abby, twenty minutes out of the city, who glances in the mirror and says, “I think he’s asleep.”
“This is good, I take it?”
“This is very good. I thought he was going to collapse.” Something about that make Eames look over at Abby, silhouetted against the setting sun, and it’s all she could do not to slam on the brakes and gape. The point woman is slumped in her seat, head tilted back and eyes half-closed; her hair has come loose at some point, hanging crumpled and slightly dirty around her face, and she has never looked so pale before. She’s been rubbing at her eyes - mascara smudges on her temples - and Eames recognizes the signs of cover-up wearing off over truly dramatic sleepless circles.
“Abby, have you been all right?” Eames feels as if she’s started forging by accident, but Abby looks crumpled, used up, like tissues do when left all over the house by someone too sick or miserable to restrain their slobbish habits.
“I’m fine,” she says, straightening up a bit in her seat, and the lie is so pathetic that it would be insulting under better circumstances. “A little tired, that’s all. Incidentally, I’ve been meaning to ask you what’s going on with the accent.”
“I’ve been using this accent for nearly a year,” Eames says blankly, “why the bloody hell didn’t you ask me about it on the Cohen job?”
“I assumed it was for professional purposes,” Abby says, combing her fingers through her hair, “but you’re still using it. It’s very good, but I know how you normally talk.”
“This is, as of nearly a year ago, how I normally talk,” Eames says, keeping it arch. “Any Jane Gatsby cracks had best be made immediately or forever hold your peace.”
“I fucking hate that book,” Abby says dully. “Why the identity switch?”
Eames gazes out at the twilit road and the nearby patches of neon billboards and listens to the dual breathing of the contact and the point woman, and says “Because I wasn’t going to be that cheap whore from Tennessee for the rest of my fucking life.”
She never hears Abby’s response to that, because it’s swallowed by a bone-shuddering yawn. “Sorry,” she mutters, smoothing back her hair again and straightening her crumpled shirt as if she can make the exhaustion go away by putting up a convincing enough façade, and that is not territory that Eames is going to allow her mind to cover.
“You do realize that the world won’t end if you let yourself fall asleep for a bit,” she says instead, infusing it with as much sardonic condescension as she can muster because pity is the last thing this needs. It works well enough; Abby’s breathing slows and evens out not long after, falling into a snuffling not-quite-snore that’s as unfamiliar as everything else about tonight; either the PASIV muffles it or she doesn’t do that when going under.
Eames doesn’t notice when she decides to be the only one to drive, but she does, and it requires a vast supply of cheap coffee and too-sweet soda and dishwater tea, and cigarettes so foul they almost make her want to kick the habit.
She stops just outside of Cleveland around one in the morning to restock on that last; it’s when she’s getting back in the car with her already-crumpled cardboard packs and a six-pack of soda that she really looks at Abby again. She’s slouching, head lolled sideways, with her winter-static hair spread out and clinging in strands to the battered seat, and the stark deathly pallor is even more apparent in the harsh fluorescence that floods the parking lot.
She’s frowning in her sleep, anxious and tight.
Eames shoves her stuff into the gap between the seats and goes to see if she’s still got a blanket in the trunk. Turns out she does.
She doesn’t wake her passengers up until they’re fifteen minutes from JFK. Once there, Abby ducks into the bathroom and comes out with a hat over her fresh-brushed hair and a new shirt, creased but not crumpled, pulled straight over the same pencil skirt. She looks like the up-and-coming point woman again, if a bit strained still. All three of them wait for the flight, in a stiff silence that puts Eames inexplicably in mind of morning-afters that involve a few more crumpled sheets; that doesn’t stop Eames from hovering in the airport until the plane takes off. At that point the escape is out of her hands; she finds the nearest hotel and collapses on the bed without even taking off her shoes. By the time she wakes up, the others are well out of American air, and the night in the car feels stranger and more distant than dreams ever do.
It becomes one of those things not discussed. Abby wires Eames her fee, and she never bothers to check whether it’s enough, and nothing is ever said to the effect of thanks or apologies or condolences.
They work together often in the next few years, all but twice with Cobb as well. Something shifts, in then; nothing Eames thinks about, but something she would corroborate if the question were raised. Abby hardens, locks down; there’s less room on the job for a momentary joke, for the adrenaline rush of a risk, for pushing at the boundaries of possibility or for the casual camaraderie of rolled eyes and loudly expressed exasperation. Her reputation shifts from dry to serious to cold.
Her reputation also shifts from respectable to solid to admirable to intimidating, and if Eames were pushed she would admit that this part is far more deserved. Somewhere between the anal-retention and the asinine levels of focus Abby becomes the best there is, and she’s got herself so closely linked to Dom Cobb that he gets towed to the top along with her.
Exactly once, in Amsterdam, Eames asks her if she’s in love with him. The point woman denies it, monosyllabic and cold, and then confirms the dyke rumors in the most clinical terms possible. Three weeks later, the job goes off-schedule and everything gets cocked up, and it ends in Eames’s fist twisted in the front of Abby’s tidy pinstriped blouse and heartless bitch scorching her tongue, Abby backed up against the table with one elbow through Cobb’s models as she snarls every obscenity on record into Eames’s face, worthless dirt-trash incompetent whore, and plenty else.
Eames stalks out without another word after their chemist, Mitch, pulls them apart. It’s way too late to stay silent, but she doesn’t hear a word from them until eight months later, when Cobb finds her in Mombasa. She doesn’t put too much effort into avoiding him - he was still under for the entire thing, and she already knows that he hasn’t heard the details - and then he dangles inception in front of her, of all the impossible things. What are the odds?
(One hundred percent, of course, if you take a serious attempt at inception as a given.)
Eames saunters on into the Paris warehouse with nausea sprawled in her stomach and her chin in the air, and Abby shakes her hand and welcomes her to the team with carbon-copy cordiality. Eames quickly finds that she can still crack that featureless professionalism, at least, but the faint tinges of amusement have been dropped from the equation. She isn’t even sure whether or not this is a recent development, but she tries not to think about it and instead takes a perverse pride in pissing Abby off. It isn’t like she’s ever been averse to schadenfreude.
Then they go into the last stage of the job, and the most intricately planned heist Eames has ever run turns into the most spectacular clusterfuck of her sporadically disastrous careers. Somewhere between the rain and the freight trains and the fight by the cars, the pieces of the last few years slot together and Eames realizes that this has been Abby’s life: planning things down to the millisecond and picking up the pieces when it all goes wrong.
She tries not to process that, but in the rain-soaked wait on the first level, her own thoughts are far harder to escape than Fischer’s now-quieted subconscious. Abby didn’t look at all surprised, screaming at Cobb in the warehouse - furious, yes, but not shocked, not surprised - and she followed along and pulled out a gun when he played the children card and beckoned. And right now, they’re all waiting, and Abby is always down by the shoreline, her shirt soaked through and flattened against her hunched shoulders.
Eames drifts down there once to smoke, during a pause in the rain when the week is almost over. She doesn’t plan on saying anything, but after about twenty minutes she says, “So you really cared a lot about the bastard, then.”
“We’ve been through this, Eames,” Abby says, a little too loud as if that will stop Eames from noticing how tired she sounds. “I’m not in love with him, I’m not fucking him, I never was. Not Mal, either, if that’s the current rumor.”
It isn’t, in fact, and Eames files the possibility away. “Did I say anything to contradict that?”
“It seemed to be the likeliest direction for this conversation.” The wind picks up a bit, and she shivers, but other than that she doesn’t move.
“There’s actually surprisingly few rumors about it, given that you two have been practically conjoined.”
“Well, I guess people are smarter than the evidence would suggest.”
Eames flicks some ash off the end of her cigarette, watching it fall into the water. “Why do you do it?” she asks quietly, remembering fourteen hours across the States and people too tired for anything but honesty. “What the hell’s the point in babysitting him?”
“He’s my friend, asshole,” she says.
“Really? Funny, last time I checked the definition, friends don’t risk each others’ lives without permission.”
“I have never intentionally -”
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
Abby stares at her, and this, this is what shocks her? “Fuck you, Eames,” she whispers at last, no venom, no strength, and she turns and walks away.
The job ends, and by a conglomeration of miracles they all make it out alive and not too hideously scarred. Eames spends three nights in an L.A. hotel remembering what natural sleep feels like on something other than the bloodstained backseat of a car, and then resolves to spend the next few months in the warmest, driest place she can find a comfortable bed.
Two months later, she’s made her way to a casino in the south of Italy, to get bored with roulette and loose spectacularly at every form of poker. It always irritates her, but at the same time, she doesn’t come to win. There’s something sharply alluring about the dim gold light and the expensive air, the reckless calculation and the smooth feel of the cards.
She glances down at the ace and the nine in her hand and says “All in.”
The pot ends up going to a bearded guy in a suit pricier than it’s worth; she sighs and shoves her chair back, grimacing, and heads for the bar to see if she can con a drink. Then she pauses.
There’s a suspiciously familiar woman leaning against the divider between the gambling section and the restaurant, bare elbows braced against the gleaming wood, dark hair twisted up into a schoolmarm’s bun.
“Hello, Ms. Eames,” Abby says calmly, and slides a cocktail along the divider. “Somehow I thought you’d be better at poker.”
“And whatever would have given you that idea?” Eames asks, taking the drink and inspecting it carefully.
“I know you can bluff.”
“That is not the problem,” Eames says, and decides that Abby plans too well to drug her here. She sips. “I almost never fold.”
“I can understand that,” Abby says, reaching for her own glass.
“My difficulties with cards aside, why the hell are you here?”
“Well, the other rumors about your location were Mombasa and Vegas. Yusuf debunked the first and I believe you swore to avoid the latter for the rest of your life after the Dana Ocean job.”
“I will be far less likely to shoot you if you never mention that lunatic to me again. The same goes for her ridiculously oversized crew, the summer of 2016, and in fact the entire state of Nevada, if possible. Why are you looking for me?”
“I need a good forger with a background in surface crime, and you’re my best option.”
“What, is it Cobb again, or did something go wrong with the Fischer job?”
Abby blinks. “Nothing, everything’s fine. More than fine, actually. Fischer’s going ahead just as planned, and he seems to be pretty healthy, which is a bonus. Saito’s had some trouble re-adjusting, but he’s doing all right now, and Cobb’s well out of all this.” She smiles, tiny but genuine, and completely unexpected. “I think he’s happy, actually.”
Eames takes another sip of her cocktail and looks the point woman over carefully, inch by inch. She looks different, and it isn’t just the smile. The sleeveless blouse is still far too corporate for a casino, but the October-sky blue is a bit unusual, and she’s wearing it half-buttoned; she has surprisingly nice collarbones. She’s gained a bit of weight, although she’s still quite skinny, and -
“I realize this is an odd question, but please, forger’s pride. Did you -”
“No, I didn’t have pierced ears the last time you saw me,” Abby says, reaching up to run a finger over the tiny pearl stud. “Also, if I find you’ve been forging me unnecessarily, I will shoot you.”
Eames shrugs and finishes off her cocktail. “Didn’t hurt much the last few times. Anyway, why do you need my particular skill set?”
“There’s a job in Berlin. Simple extraction but there’s a few tricky circumstances. I’m not explaining it in public, can we get out of here?”
The task is interesting enough - digging up the reasons for a particular hit woman’s retirement, whether it be age, guilt, or sufficient finances - and it’s a chance to work with a few new people. Eames takes the same flight as Abby to Berlin; the bickering starts with standards in alcohol and drifts through half a dozen subjects before becoming an in-depth debate on movies made before they were born. Abby actually concedes a couple of points, on the grounds that they’re movies she hasn’t seen in years, and one of Eames’s biting summaries wins a quick but genuine laugh. This trip is a veritable jackpot of useful information for any future forgeries that arise.
The trip also rapidly shows itself to be the only remotely bearable part of the job. It would probably be better if things would just go collectively to pieces; instead, every miniscule detail requires twice the time it should.
“When we hired you, we gave you some very specific parameters,” Abby snaps at their architect, detaching herself from the PASIV with a sharp jerk. “You told us you could meet them and be ready a month ago. I realize that there have been difficulties, but after that kind of wait I expect the desired results.”
“Yikes, can you cut the kid a break?” Albert asks, frowning at his chemicals as they turn milky yet again.
“The last architect I worked with was twenty and completely fresh to the business, and she built three dreamscapes in the same amount of time. I’m not accepting the kid excuse from someone on his seventh job running.” She glances from one mulish face to another and sighs. “Fix the layouts by Thursday, and Albert, keep working on those chemicals, contact someone for help if you need to. We’re not going to get anything else done tonight, so clear out, take your things.” She turns on one heel and exits by the back door, moving with such carefully studied calm that Eames nods to the others, grabs her overcoat, and follows the point woman.
Abby kneels delicately and inspects a loose chunk of concrete in the alley, weighing it in her hand as she stands. For a moment it’s a modernist tableau, the primly tidy lady in the twilit rubble. Then she plants her feet, heels skidding across the cement, and hurls the concrete down the alley like a missile. Somewhere past the building’s edge, a large piece of glass shatters; the pieces clatter musically to the ground in the wake of the crack.
Eames blinks.
“A bit frustrated, then, are we?”
Abby doesn’t quite manage to hide her cringe as she turns. “Eames. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“Somehow I gathered. Have we honestly driven you to petty vandalism?”
“That factory has been abandoned for a decade. It’s in such a wreck it hardly counts as vandalism anymore. I checked beforehand, believe me.”
Eames runs a quick analysis on that. “So I take it this is a common habit.”
“Well, this job hasn’t been exactly relaxing.”
“I would have thought it would be at least par for the course, really.”
“No, not at all. If it were pure incompetence, I could just fire them, but as it is there’s nothing to do but work out a fix for every little problem, which is cutting into my research time. Add that to the times when they do slip up, couple it with the difficulties of adjusting to other peoples’ methods, and…” She sighs and dusts off her hands. “Petty vandalism.”
“I find that getting laid works better, assuming you don’t want a hangover.”
Abby snorts, turning away and rubbing again at the tight lines of the back of her neck, disturbing a few bound wisps of hair. “I don’t exactly have time for a love life, Eames, and I’m keeping highly illegal technology in my hotel room.”
“Well,” Eames drawls, “I’m always available for the service.”
It echoes a bit off the walls, and she realizes that it’s wrong; this isn’t normal teasing, hasn’t been. Even so, she doesn’t expect Abby to pause and twist around, one hand still wrapped in her hair; she certainly doesn’t expect the point woman to look so distinctly… speculative.
Instinct takes over, and Eames trained herself into the brazen it out instinct long ago. She smirks.
Abby nods, quick and decisive, as if she’s signing off on something. “Well, since you offer. Can you come by around nine? I’m at the Hilton, room 249.”
“Nine works,” Eames says automatically, still a mile behind this conversation. Abby steps closer and back into the warehouse; she brushes against Eames’s outstretched arm as she passes, gentle but just a little too close. Eames stops breathing for a moment as her mind tries to catch up.
Abby’s gone in moments, only needing to pick up her things as she passes, and Eames leans back against the doorframe and closes her eyes.
“Dear God,” she mutters, “what did I just agree to?”
She could, of course, cancel; backing out wouldn’t be hard, standing Abby up would probably turn it all into an excellent facsimile of normal. Still, something about the idea bothers her, and besides…
She remembers those few wisps of hair at the base of Abby’s neck, soft against the smooth skin. Eames would be a truly dreadful forger if she hadn’t ever noticed that the point was a beautiful woman, but there’s a difference between cataloging the flex of her calves and imagining the muscle trembling against her palms. She wonders what Abby is like in bed - the same confident expertise as in everything else, perhaps? Or, well, there are jokes made about the uptight ones, and there’s been truth to it before. She can almost imagine Abby wild and hungry and desperate and loud; maybe even violent, which is a bit of a departure from Eames’s normal tastes, but nobody was ever hurt by a judicious application of teeth…
Dear God, she is actually thinking about this. And she’s curious. Dear God, this is actually going to happen.
“Well,” she says to the rust-speckled rafters, “I’d better go put on something that isn’t slush-colored, then.”
Nine o’clock arrives faster than she expected; it’s around five past when she knocks on Abby’s door. The point woman opens it almost immediately. She looks the same as before, plain white shirt and pencil skirt; she hasn’t even taken off her pumps. Her hair is loose and down, though, brushing in layered curls against her face and her throat.
“Well, I won’t have to deal with any questions about why you were visiting,” Abby says, eyeing Eames slowly from head to foot: clinging jeans, tilted heels, black top mostly a frame for her shoulders and collarbones and the skin of her ribs. Eames knows exactly what she looks like, and she shrugs.
“No point in hiding it,” she says, “unless you’re worried about your reputation.” Abby snorts.
“I really don’t think this is going to affect it,” she says. “Come on in.”
Eames does, running a finger quickly along the ends of Abby’s hair as she passes. The point woman starts slightly, eyes widening, but the barest hint of a smile flickers across her lips.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asks, crossing to the mini-bar while Eames drops onto the couch; Abby’s room is really a small suite, all dark neutrals and square furniture.
“Not really a necessity,” Eames drawls, “I’m already here.”
“Forgive me for remembering the rules of basic hospitality,” Abby says, handing Eames a martini. She settles onto the couch, plucking a half-drunk cocktail from the end table and taking a sip edging a bit more towards a gulp.
“The rules of basic hospitality, ah, are those the ones that call for insulting people who are about to sleep with you?” Eames doesn’t actually care, but giving Abby a hard time is a thoroughly ingrained habit.
“I wasn’t trying to insult you, Eames. You look… very nice.” She gulps at her cocktail again and quickly sets it down, the clunk echoing slightly.
The fridge in the mini-bar drones loudly into the silence.
“Right,” Eames says abruptly, “this is stupid,” and she puts her martini down. Abby glances up, face crumpling into an unfamiliar weary disappointment; Eames presses two fingers to her jaw, tilts her face close, and kisses her.
Abby’s lips are bone-dry under a slightly waxy lipstick, and for just a moment she is utterly motionless; then she settles one hand against Eames’s bare arm and kisses back steadily. Eames licks a little bit along her lower lip and hooks her fingers into the edge of her skirt, tugging it up and up, trailing her thumb across Abby’s thigh. She catches a bit of unexpected lace, slips her finger under the edge of the strap discovered just above, and breaks the kiss to chuckle.
“Not quite what I expected you to wear, Abby,” she murmurs, deep and throaty, still toying with the garter. “Are you always this lasciviously dressed under all that stiffness?”
“No,” Abby whispers roughly, breath hot against Eames’s skin. “Someone made me buy these years ago, and I almost never wear them. Not usually practical.”
“Just for me, then?” Eames laughs. “I have to say, I’m flattered.” She kisses her again, sliding her free hand against Abby’s waist and tracing circles against the first edge of bare skin on her leg, soft and almost silky.
“We are not doing this on the couch,” Abby hisses, clenching her fingers into Eames’s shoulder. Eames shrugs.
“All right then,” she whispers, shifting her hands to cup Abby’s hips, and starts sliding the two of them onto the floor. She takes care, almost cradling the point woman in spite of how physically indestructible she is, but they still thump clumsily down the last inch to the carpet, and Eames stifles a laugh that quickly fades when faced with Abby laid out with her hair spread against the rug and her skirt now all around her waist. It takes her only a few moments to manage the buttons on her shirt; she presses a damp kiss to her breast over the fine black lace. Abby gasps, arches back and twists her face away, cringing into the carpet; Eames shifts her weight and inches up to whisper in her ear.
“Tell me, love,” she whispers, feeling power collect in her stomach and her hands, “are you enjoying this?”
“Don’t tell me you need validation,” Abby murmurs, breathless now, Eames grins.
“Maybe I just want to hear you say it,” she says, and dips her head to trace abstract patterns of kisses against the other woman’s throat. “Having fun?” She slips a hand under the edge of her bra, and Abby gasps.
“Yes,” she chokes, head thrown back, “but, honestly - ridiculous - I mean, there’s a bed right there-”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Eames asks, focusing hard to form the words. “For fuck’s sake, stop worrying. Just relax.” She runs her hand delicately downwards, presses two fingers very carefully against the soaked black silk between Abby’s legs, and makes sure that she doesn’t have any breath left for talking.
Afterwards, they collapse against the rug, tangled together and struggling to catch their breath. Abby’s a half-smiling wreck, lipstick smudged and clothes all askew and crumpled; Eames is a little better off, still mostly dressed but with her shirt hiked up over her ribs and her jeans unzipped and half falling off her hips.
“Well,” Abby says at last, eyes opening, “that was…”
“Fantastic?” Eames offers; the cockiness dissolves somewhere between her mind and her air-starved mouth, leaving nothing but a level of honesty entirely inappropriate for their lives. Abby doesn’t seem to notice.
“You fuck,” she says, “exactly the same as you do everything else.”
“And you, it turns out, can actually do something without acting like you’re about to write a report on it.”
Abby rolls her head sideways and tries to piece a frown together. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Eames shrugs as best she can while mostly horizontal. “Well, if you were thinking clearly already I’d obviously have done something wrong.”
Abby snorts, closing her eyes again, and the quiet dissolves into their shared ragged respiration. They rhythm of it slows, drifting towards half-asleep, and as perversely pleasant as it might feel to be sticky and sweaty and scented with sex, that will be a truly dreadful way to wake up, and even worse when they have to beat it to the warehouse. Eames drags herself to semi-seated, shirt flopping downwards as she does.
“My cue to leave, I think,” she says, fixing her jeans. “Take a shower, or you’ll feel absolutely disgusting in the morning.”
“Yeah, I know,” Abby says, sitting as well and awkwardly tugging herself back together, wrapping her shirt around herself and pulling her skirt back over her hips. “Do I owe you anything for this?”
“I haven’t taken money for a fuck since I was nineteen,” Eames snaps, yanking her fingers through her hair.
“Not what I meant,” Abby says; her leg taps against Eames’s knee, but she’s unbound enough that it might be accidental. “I meant more along the lines of a favor.”
Eames shrugs, fiddling with the ends of her hair because it’s the only thing to hand. “Not really. Buy me dinner next time we have a free evening and we’ll call it even.”
“Done,” Abby says, handing Eames her shoes, which migrated under the couch at some point Eames doesn’t remember. “Good night, and thank you.”
The cab ride home is one long struggle to stay awake, and she has to spend five minutes arguing with the doorman before he lets her in; still, as she sinks clean and thoroughly worn out into her own bed, she thinks the entire thing was worth it.
The next morning things carry on as normal, except for Abby’s occasional yawn; three days later they have to run the job slap-dash and half ready. They find their answers - the hit woman wrenched an already bad knee on the job and decided attempting assassination was just plain stupid when it hurt that much to walk, a ridiculously simple and rational thing for so much effort - but it’s a near thing, and all four end up taking the next flights out without regard for destinations more specific than ‘far away.’
Eames, who never develops plans when on the run, winds up in fucking Manchester, which is really the last touch on the entire mess that is the Berlin job. This is the fourth time she’s been to Manchester, and the fourth time she’s decided that this is the last time she will ever go to Manchester. The best part is that a source warns her not to travel for a while; an old enemy is poking around for her.
There are some advantages, though. A month later, by a combination of luck and a great deal of time spent at the Pipe Dreams bar, which has that name for a reason, she finds a job. More accurately, she finds Juan Mochizuki, an extractor she worked with in Argentina.
“You’re a fucking godsend,” he says shamelessly, braiding a strand of hemp pinned to his knee. “I’ve got a line on a guy who wants me to dig up some kind of secret on this mid-level politician, but nothing specific, just anything that we could turn into a scandal, but he has to be at least a little bit ashamed of it personally. Some kind of revenge gig, I don’t care what the logic is, but I’m not sure how to do it. I figured you could, though.”
“Shame isn’t that hard to trigger,” she says, taking another swig of her beer on the grounds that he’s paying. “What have you got for a crew?”
“I’ve got all the compounds we need,” he says, “and I think I’ve got the architecture covered personally, but I don’t have a point yet, and I can’t find anyone I trust. Can you get me anybody decent?”
“Well,” Eames says, smirking, “I can probably get you Abby Whittemore, how’s that?”
It’s a risky claim for her to make, but she lucks out, and Abby’s in the city within the week. They base the job out of Juan’s living room, and plan out a three-pronged attack amid stacks of greasy wrappers. Abby grumbles about the mess, moves books into stacks when she needs a clear surface and kicks Styrofoam boxes under the couch, but Eames sinks into the comfortable messiness like a beanbag chair.
This job, at least, goes smoothly (“A lot more smoothly than the last one,” Abby says with the same rueful half-smile she uses to reference half a dozen other disasters, and no one Eames has ever known could guess she slept with anyone.) The only problem is someone to watch them on the surface, and Juan bribes his friend Mike into it. They’re ready to run in just a few weeks.
“All set, folks?” Mike asks, fiddling with his chauffeur’s cap. “I have to say, your kind of crime means much nicer clothes,” he adds, checking himself in the mirror.
“It does at that,” Abby says, lifting the PASIV into the back of the limo. The mark, Willingham, is passed out cold already; spiked drink. “Eames, make his excuses.”
“On it,” she says, already dialing the cell phone. Juan glances from one to the other, shrugs, and leans forward to whisper something to his friend, while Eames imitates Willingham’s secretary’s voice and explains that he’ll be a few minutes late for his meeting.
“All as planned?” Abby asks, setting out the PASIV.
“Didn’t even raise an eyebrow, as far as I can tell,” Eames reports, sprawling gracelessly out on the limo seat.
“Juan, here’s your line, swab your wrist first,” Abby says, handing it to him. “Mike, you know the drill, keep us in motion and under the speed limit, get us away from anyone investigating, and if we’re not awake in ten minutes, detach us - carefully.”
“Yes, Cap’n!” he says, grinning, and twists around to start the car.
Abby takes Eames’s wrist and dabs at it with the alcohol swab, ignoring Eames’s rolled eyes. Her fingers are cold but gentle as she slides the cannula in.
“Good luck, Ms. Eames,” she says, corner of her mouth crooking conspiratorially. She’s just grabbing for her line as Eames’s eyes slide closed.
She comes to in a sun-flooded white hallway, staring at a set of abstract prints. It’s a pleasant dreamscape, amber glass accents in the open windows and a vase of bright red lilies right next to the mirror; not a reproduction of the mark’s house, but distinctly suggestive of it. If everything is going as planned, Eames is right outside Willingham’s study. She shifts into his wife - piled-up auburn hair, painfully pale skin just slightly sunburned, teal sundress and wedding ring - and pushes the door open.
He’s at his desk, exactly as planned; she whispers an apology for disturbing him, eliciting nothing but a shrug, and searches casually through the bookshelves. It’s all going exactly as planned until her hand brushes against the diary.
“Hey!” Willingham snaps, shoving his chair back. “Put that down!”
“I’m just looking,” she says mildly, flipping through the soft ivory pages. It’s a beautiful piece of bookbinding, but it’s got nothing useful, just the minutiae of his days.
“Well, I don’t want you to look,” he says; his cane clunks against the floor as he moves closer. Promising, promising.
“I’m not hurting anything, I promise,” she says, skipping a chunk. Still nothing useful, dammit -
The head of his cane smashes into the wall in front of her face.
It’s astonishingly loud, although nothing whatsoever like a gunshot. The cane is metal-headed, which she knew, and the gleaming wood is almost perfectly on a level with her eyes. He isn’t a projection, isn’t militarized, doesn’t think this is a dream.
The diary drops to the floor with a clunk, pages crumpling against the carpet.
“I’m sorry,” Eames whispers, scrabbling to stay in character, and fuck, it seems she only half-knows who that character is and this is not part of the half she knows. “I’m sorry.”
Every piece of the dreamscape hovers, it feels like, as she takes in his furious, frantic eyes and the pale lines of his knuckles halfway down the cane’s smooth black line and the hair standing up on the back of her neck. It takes every ounce of self-control not to dream the weight of a gun against her hip or a polished switchblade pressed against her hand.
The silence is split by the doorbell, melodious for the first few seconds and then just loud. Juan, almost doubtless, in position already.
“Should I answer that?” Eames asks, barely moving her lips.
The cane slips away from the wall - it’s left a dent - and Willingham taps it back against the floor. “No,” he says, “I’ll get it.”
Eames doesn’t so much as blink until the door closes behind him; then she shudders, once, twice, wrapping her arms around herself. Inhale, exhale. She looks up.
The pictures behind the desk are different, now: half a dozen shots of her current face, mouth bloodied, cheek scratched, eyes teary pink or swollen black, sickly green bruises running along the cheekbone and the throat.
Fuck.
She finds Abby in the hallway, slipping through the window with a baton in her hand.
“Find anything?” the point woman asks, straightening her cap and shoving open the study door. “Juan will be coming in soon, probably.”
“Well,” Eames says, swallowing hard, “for a start, he beats his wife.”
Abby’s fingers clench on the study doorframe as she glances in and back. “Drop the forge.”
“Is that really -”
“We’ve got enough to get paid. We’ll finish the plan just in case there’s anything else, but the safety of the team takes precedence over backup.”
Eames nods and convulses once, soaking her mind in the knowledge of her own muscles and her own stance, her expertise and skills and the incontrovertible fact that the mark is essentially helpless, that she is the one in power here.
They don’t stay under for much longer; a few steady questions, a check of the safe and a cursory search of the study, and then they blow the house to kingdom come; keeping the sedative separate from the PASIV means that the mark stays under regardless. Mike drops them on the sidewalk at different points - Abby takes the PASIV, concealed neatly in a wheeled suitcase - and Eames expects that to be the last she sees of them for some time to come, as long as there are no problems with the payments.
Instead, it’s barely two hours later when Abby calls. Even stranger, nothing is wrong, and they work through a few moments of exchanged ‘fine’ before she finally reaches the point.
“I still owe you dinner,” she says at last, with that crisp briskness that means business, and it’s absolutely the last thing Eames expected.
“Er, what?”
“From Berlin,” Abby says, sounding oddly guarded.
“Ber - oh. Right, I did say dinner.” She hadn’t ever actually intended to collect, but she’s hardly going to turn down food, either. (Some habits die hard.) “Did you have anywhere in mind?”
“A few ideas, but I wasn’t sure what you’d prefer. In the mood for anything in particular?”
“Hot and salty,” Eames says honestly, then snorts. “Ignore my total lack of class.”
“Not a problem. I’ll pick you up in around twenty minutes, then, if that works.”
It does, and twenty-nine minutes later the two of them are settled into a corner table at a neon-and-chrome place, digging into hamburgers and massive heaps of fries. Eames’s fingers will be practically shining with grease soon, she has a soda that is sweating water all over the table, she’s sticking slightly to the seat, and it is perfect.
Talking with Abby starts out a bit awkward - it feels more than a little strange to snipe at her when she’s buying Eames dinner, for a start - but they trade notes on old associates and favorite bits of former jobs. Abby swears on her life that one set of projections tried human sacrifice on the incoming extractors; Eames demands details, and by the time that story is over, her plate is half-empty and she’s in badly-concealed stitches.
“The worst part is, that is not the most ridiculous thing that’s ever happened,” Abby says, smiling, as she slices a chip through her pool of ketchup. She isn’t eating fast, but her hands are either still or darting across the plate, all just a quick flick of the wrist. It’s something Eames hasn’t seen her do before, and she wonders where it comes from.
“Eames?”
Ah, shit. “Er, sorry, what?” she asks, glancing up. She’s more tired than she thought.
Abby lays the chip down on her plate. “Eames, are you all right?”
Eames blinks. “What?”
“You’re not usually like this. I’d assume it was from the thing with Willingham, but you’ve seemed slightly off this whole job. What’s the problem?”
She shrugs, carefully casual. “Nonexistent, beyond being stuck here. I hate Manchester.”
“Really? It seems like exactly your kind of place. Big, busy, plenty of places to gamble…”
“Bad memories, that’s all.”
“What? I hadn’t heard about anything happening here.”
“It is entirely possible that you can’t look up my entire life story.” Abby winces, which Eames chooses to ignore. “The first time I came here was right after I’d run three jobs with that chemist Bezrukov, which made everything delightful.”
“Bezru - oh. That asshole with the addictive Somnacin?”
“Yes, him. So, I mean, withdrawal was fun enough the first time, but I thought I was clean, and of course the rest of the team would cut me loose if they found out. And no one else in the city knew me from Eve, so…”
“I understand your aversion, then,” Abby says, reaching for her food again. Eames mumbles something noncommittal into her burger, swallows, and then turns the conversation to former teammates. This is far safer, and the rest of the meal vanishes as they gleefully savage the incompetent and the sadistic and celebrate the successes of the few they both like.
After the grease on their empty plates has been cool for at least twenty minutes, Eames makes her excuses and stands; Abby grabs her arm, slightly sticky fingers gentle against the underside of her wrist.
“Are you going to be all right tonight?” she asks quietly. “Between the city and Willingham -”
Eames snorts. “What, do you need someone new to baby now that Cobb’s retired? I’m a big girl, Abby, I’ll be fine.” She overdoes the scorn a bit; too hasty. It doesn’t stop her from ripping free of Abby’s hands, shaking her arm slightly as she does, but she does drawl, “Dinner was delicious, thank you,” before she saunters - a bit fast to technically qualify as such - out the door.
A quick check around the Net reveals that someone wants a forger for a job in Bangkok. It’s not especially interesting, the most basic industrial espionage, but the extractor is supposed to be one to watch.
She regrets taking it almost immediately; a basic distraction and safe raid, the kind of thing she’s been running since before the rest of the team ever heard of shared dreaming. They don’t even need a forger, just think they do. She’s tempted to give them a quick lecture on the exact definition of small fry, and then clear out, but the chemist has potential without the courage to ditch her friends. (The architect should go home to his mother, the point is going to be nabbed the second legal looks for him if he doesn’t learn not to leave electronic bulldozer tracks, and the extractor is a loudmouthed windbag who crumples like tissue paper when you push against the talk on which he runs. Eames, who has always felt a sort of solidarity with the few other women in mind crime, hopes the chemist grows a spine in time.)
It takes two months to finish up; someone is tracking their progress, because less than a week after the run, she gets an offer for a job in Cincinnati.
“Mob rivalries,” she repeats into the cell phone, gazing out her bedroom window at the glowing nightscape. “I’m assuming you’re joking.”
“Nope, not my style. It’s not as tricky as it sounds. The way these people work, revenge jobs go for your employer, not the pawns. And they pay well.”
“So do a lot of other people, Mister…”
“Now, Ms. Eames, are names such light currency?”
“Well, you have one of mine,” she says lightly, tracing her fingers along the window’s filthy glass. “You could give me a role, at any rate. Extractor, architect? And should I be presuming Mister?”
“Liaison,” he says, the smooth polish designed to slip an answer out of reach. “And Mister is fine. I’m contacting a number of other people for the actual work. Incidentally, one of them has worked with you before.”
“Really?” That doesn’t narrow it down at all. “I’ll assume this is a no-name basis across the board.”
“Until you’re in.”
“If I decide I want to be in.”
“Well, yes. See, the one you know, she said to tell you that it’ll be interesting. The mark is - well, the closest term we have is militarized, but it’s a rather more complicated setup than that.”
“Well, if Abby Whittemore calls it interesting, there must be something to it,” she says, and drops her opinion of him a bit at the consternated hiss. There aren’t a lot of women among her former colleagues, even fewer who’d send that message along. “I’ll let you know in a week.”
She snaps the phone closed without waiting for a reply and taps it against her cheek, thinking. The buzz goes straight through her jaw, and she jumps out of her skin and scrambles to answer. “Forget something?” she asks.
“Eames? Take the Cincinnati job, dammit.” It’s Abby.
“Er, what?”
“You just got offered a job in Cincinnati, right? Take it.”
Eames lifts the phone from her ear and squints at it, then sighs and moves it back to a useful position. “As flattering as your devotion is, darling…”
Abby snorts, causing a rush of static. “I’d hang up right now, but I need someone who can plan.”
“I’m not the only candidate for that position.”
“Well, we only have one role unfilled, and I can’t change lineups here. Name me one other forger who can work out a way to get past a freakish militarized menagerie, and I’ll give them a call.”
“Get past a what?” Eames demands, sitting bolt upright.
“I assume I’ll see you in Cincinnati, then.”
“There are more than a few people out for my head in that city, you know.”
“Eames,” Abby inquires, absolutely deadpan, “how does this distinguish it from any other city?”
Five days later, Eames strides into the back room of a Cincinnati bar, drops her coat on the back of the nearest chair, and glances around the room; either the team relies on the barman for security or they’re used to drop-in visits from Mr. Liaison, because no-one has challenged her yet. That would be worrying, except Abby is deep in argument with someone Eames assumes is the extractor: a young white guy with strange greenish hair, probably the result of a bad bleach job. There’s a middle-aged guy, brown-skinned and in desperate need of a shave, leaning against the wall with a book in his hand and a compass behind his ear; nobody else is present.
“I believe someone was looking for me?” Eames asks, once it becomes clear that no-one is going to notice her without prompting. Abby glances up.
“Eames! Perfect timing, now explain to Harris that militarized projections can and will go after forgers regardless of what they’ve forged.”
“He doesn’t know that?” Eames asks disdainfully, folding her hands and thinking that this could be either a disaster or enormously entertaining.
Disappointingly, the job goes spectacularly south without ever getting near the mark. An attempt to grab some background information from a local business gets unexpectedly complicated, but Eames improvises and they mistake all for well.
That lasts for a week, until they slip into the back room on a Thursday afternoon - when the bar is empty - and find a three-man greeting committee waiting, guns gleaming in their hands. Eames only has time to think honestly, only three? as she goes for her gun before one of them grabs her wrist; a sharp twist makes her drop the weapon, he blocks her chop at his windpipe, and then it slams into her faking an all-out fistfight of the kind she loves in dreamscape while she’s actually pulling out her knife and manipulating herself close enough to actually use it - okay, weapon out, fuck but she wishes she could dream it. She takes a risk and twists sideways so he can grab her, and he’s just smart enough to take it, arm around her throat; she holds her breath and drives the knife back into his stomach, hitting pay dirt, then twists it out and hacks at the already-slackening arm cutting off her air. He stumbles backwards, dropping her; she twists and goes for the heart, slamming her knife into the muscle with everything she has.
She’s backing up and scanning by the time he falls, but the rest is done. One man is on the floor, bullet to the head - probably Abby - while the other is vanishing out the back, doubled over. Outside a car roars to a start; Eames moves to follow, but Harris slams the door. Fucking stupid decision, but she can hear the car leaving, and he at least has the sense to check the window. Abby checks the bar, yells “All clear!” and runs for the architect, who - fuck - is bleeding, slumped against the wall. Eames is moving towards him too, knife dropped, when Harris yells her name. She glances towards him -
Fuck. No, really, fuck.
He’s far too close, gun pointed straight at her.
Her own gun is on the floor; between everything, it’s now a good five feet away.
Okay, not good.
Fuck fuck fuck, she should have known better than to drop the knife. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Every quantifiable level of bad call. It’s been way too long since she fought outside of dreamspace; she isn’t used to needing to keep track of weapons.
“All right, calm down,” she says as nonchalantly as she can, inching backwards; he advances, faster, furious.
“You sold us out, you bitch!” he snarls.
“What? No!” It’s actually true, too; simpler not to double-cross as a general rule. She’s at the wall, pressing cold and sticky against her back; misjudged the distance. He doesn’t stop
“They knew to come here!” he snaps, spittle flying; he’s tearing up, she observes distantly, and then the barrel of the gun is pressing into her stomach and she doesn’t need to check her totem to know that she isn’t dreaming. She could rip the gun away, but his finger is already on the trigger, and she’s seen him practice, she knows he’s fast enough to pull it, and that’s all it takes when he’s this close.
“I didn’t tell them,” she says, cursing everything she knows. Really, she couldn’t have gone down lying? Really? This is not the way she wanted to go, gut wounds are a nasty drawn-out way to die and one of the advantages of this life is supposed to be that you don’t die slowly, and all of this is really avoiding the major fact that she doesn’t want to die because of her own mistrained miscalculation and a stupid panicked pissed-off kid and in fact she would really prefer not to die at all -
That’s the point when Abby says, “All right, that’s enough.”
Her heels click slightly on the floor as she adjusts her stance; her gun is most definitely still loaded and pointed straight at Harrison’s head. He swallows.
“You too? What is this, a double -”
“Nobody betrayed anyone,” Abby says calmly, “or at least, I very much doubt it.”
“Well, then, how the hell did they find us?”
“There’s a number of possibilities. Any of us could have been followed -”
“Last week,” Eames says, eyes still trained on Harris’s trigger finger. “Did we show up on camera?”
“It’s possible,” Abby says slowly. “Likely, actually.”
“Well, there you go, then. They followed us here.”
“Why here? How did they know to follow us?” Harris demands. “We didn’t do anything that would get us followed for no reason.”
“If they saw me,” Eames says, wincing, “that would be enough to raise heads, and if they tracked me, this would be the only place they’d turn up. I’ve been switching hotels.”
“So this is your -”
“Hardly,” Abby interjects, stepping closer; the tip of her gun kisses Harris’s temple. “For one thing, if not for your blatant incompetence, she wouldn’t have been caught on camera in the first place.” Eames swallows twice; it isn’t that she’d rather be shot, but having someone else defend her sits in her stomach like disease. “Now, back up, and put the gun away. Right now.”
He does, slowly but without hesitating. Eames inhales, slumping away from the wall, and crosses the floor to collect her own weapons. “Well, what do we do now?” she asks.
“You need to clear out,” Abby says, holstering her gun. “Harris, your friend needs a hospital or an equivalent, can you get him that?”
“I - yeah, I know someone who can get him treated and keep things off the record, I -”
“Good, call them. We’re splitting now, the job is off. I’ll let the client know. Eames, can you get out of here?”
“Sure, I’ll grab a train south,” she says, pulling her coat straight; the gun goes back into its holster under that, and she slides the knife easily into the hidden pocket of her skirt. “I’ll have to call the car rental and let them know it’s at the station, though.”
“That’s fine,” Abby says, handing the wall phone to Harris. “I’ll come with you to the car, in case anyone’s waiting out there.”
Outside, no one gives them a second glance. Abby braces one hand against the roof of the car and watches as Eames runs a quick check for any kind of traps. “Where are you headed next?” she asks with her head under the glove box, mostly to break the silence.
“I’ll probably go to ground here for a week or so,” Abby says, “and after that I have business in Baltimore.” She coughs. “Incidentally, if I find out you did betray us, I will be very annoyed.”
Eames snorts. “There you are, thank God. I was getting a little worried.” Abby blinks. “I wasn’t exactly expecting you to trust me. I’m glad neither of us is losing our touch.”
“Oh, well,” Abby says, shrugging. “You’re a lot harder to replace than a two-bit extractor, for a start.” She glances away; Eames tenses, but she doesn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. “For the record,” she says, “I don’t trust you completely, but more than I trust most.”
“Oh,” Eames says, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Well then.”
“Don’t take advantage of it, I won’t hesitate to shoot you if I turn out to be wrong.”
“Noted,” Eames says, twisting the key in the ignition. She hesitates, drumming her fingers on the wheel. “I owe you for this, I know.”
Abby shrugs, straightening, and steps clear. “Buy me dinner and we’ll call it even,” she says, half-smiling.
Eames is halfway to the train station when she remembers, and she bites back a laugh, but the whole thing feels uncomfortably like charity. Surely the lack of metal in her stomach lining is worth more than a good fuck.
Part II
Fandom: Inception
Characters/Pairings: Ms. Eames/Abby, Mal Cobb, Dom Cobb, OCs [Genderbent!Eames, Genderbent!Arthur]
Rating/Warnings: R, sex, violence, swearing, references to past drug abuse, withdrawal, and prostitution, out-of-pairing domestic abuse (between OCs). NSFW art behind the cut.
Written for: i_reversebang, for ap421's prompt. NSFW.
Word Count: 17,500 total
A/N: So, here we are. This has taken a lot of work, but I'm actually pretty damn proud of it. Title comes from Vienna Teng's "Eric's Song," which is thematically (if not tonally) perfect for this. Infinite, infinite thanks to ap421 for being so wonderful and for all of the incredible extra art that she drew; to heith_30, the other artist for this piece, for letting me flail at her and for her encouragement, and most of all to fae_boleyn, for again playing the last-minute beta and hero of the hour.
Eames has known Abby longer than she’s known almost anyone she still sees.
They are nothing remotely approaching friends, of course, but they move in the same circles, and Abby has the distinction of being the only other woman Eames has met in the business. Eames thinks that Abby tries to run cons like corporations run sales campaigns, and Abby says that Eames acts like she’s still a high-school kid vandalizing bridges, but they both do have to admit that each can get the job done.
Nonetheless, they don’t ever outright try to work together, so it’s a bit of a surprise when Eames picks up her cell and it’s Abby on the other end.
“I need to get a contact out of the States as fast as possible. He’s been legitimate up till now, other than some shady trading on the side, so no connections, and he’s wanted for first-degree. We’ll need false papers and help staying undercover. Can you do it?”
“Hello to you too, Abby,” Eames says, crossing her still-shod feet on the dingy hotel bedspread. “Well, let me see - I can probably do that, but it will take quite a bit of effort, and although naturally I could arrange a discount for your charming self, I’m not entirely sure -”
“Cut the crap, Eames,” Abby snaps. “Look, I’ve got money, I’ll get more if I need it, just, please, skip the bargaining and the sales pitch and name your fucking price. I already know what you can do, I just need it done.”
Eames blinks.
She can never for the life of her remember exactly what she says to that, but she gets a friend of hers to hide the guy, Cobb, for a bit, and three days later she’s meeting him and Abby in O’Hare. From there they’ll drive to JFK, and from there on to London. It’s inelegantly convoluted, but the best she could do on this notice.
Abby comes out of the gate with her arm around a man who looks like he hasn’t slept in months if not more, and Eames looks at the two of them and simply stays quiet. They slip away from the crowds as fast as humanly possible - there’s no luggage, just carryon - and Eames leads them to her battered old car. Abby slides the contact, Cobb into the back, whispers something that Eames doesn’t catch, and then drops into shotgun.
Eames typically cannot stand keeping her mouth shut, and it’s a steady itch at the back of her mind that sends her pushing the speed limit for all its worth, but she does have some sense of self-preservation, and she recognizes that she has absolutely no right to break this silence.
That honor goes to Abby, twenty minutes out of the city, who glances in the mirror and says, “I think he’s asleep.”
“This is good, I take it?”
“This is very good. I thought he was going to collapse.” Something about that make Eames look over at Abby, silhouetted against the setting sun, and it’s all she could do not to slam on the brakes and gape. The point woman is slumped in her seat, head tilted back and eyes half-closed; her hair has come loose at some point, hanging crumpled and slightly dirty around her face, and she has never looked so pale before. She’s been rubbing at her eyes - mascara smudges on her temples - and Eames recognizes the signs of cover-up wearing off over truly dramatic sleepless circles.
“Abby, have you been all right?” Eames feels as if she’s started forging by accident, but Abby looks crumpled, used up, like tissues do when left all over the house by someone too sick or miserable to restrain their slobbish habits.
“I’m fine,” she says, straightening up a bit in her seat, and the lie is so pathetic that it would be insulting under better circumstances. “A little tired, that’s all. Incidentally, I’ve been meaning to ask you what’s going on with the accent.”
“I’ve been using this accent for nearly a year,” Eames says blankly, “why the bloody hell didn’t you ask me about it on the Cohen job?”
“I assumed it was for professional purposes,” Abby says, combing her fingers through her hair, “but you’re still using it. It’s very good, but I know how you normally talk.”
“This is, as of nearly a year ago, how I normally talk,” Eames says, keeping it arch. “Any Jane Gatsby cracks had best be made immediately or forever hold your peace.”
“I fucking hate that book,” Abby says dully. “Why the identity switch?”
Eames gazes out at the twilit road and the nearby patches of neon billboards and listens to the dual breathing of the contact and the point woman, and says “Because I wasn’t going to be that cheap whore from Tennessee for the rest of my fucking life.”
She never hears Abby’s response to that, because it’s swallowed by a bone-shuddering yawn. “Sorry,” she mutters, smoothing back her hair again and straightening her crumpled shirt as if she can make the exhaustion go away by putting up a convincing enough façade, and that is not territory that Eames is going to allow her mind to cover.
“You do realize that the world won’t end if you let yourself fall asleep for a bit,” she says instead, infusing it with as much sardonic condescension as she can muster because pity is the last thing this needs. It works well enough; Abby’s breathing slows and evens out not long after, falling into a snuffling not-quite-snore that’s as unfamiliar as everything else about tonight; either the PASIV muffles it or she doesn’t do that when going under.
Eames doesn’t notice when she decides to be the only one to drive, but she does, and it requires a vast supply of cheap coffee and too-sweet soda and dishwater tea, and cigarettes so foul they almost make her want to kick the habit.
She stops just outside of Cleveland around one in the morning to restock on that last; it’s when she’s getting back in the car with her already-crumpled cardboard packs and a six-pack of soda that she really looks at Abby again. She’s slouching, head lolled sideways, with her winter-static hair spread out and clinging in strands to the battered seat, and the stark deathly pallor is even more apparent in the harsh fluorescence that floods the parking lot.
She’s frowning in her sleep, anxious and tight.
Eames shoves her stuff into the gap between the seats and goes to see if she’s still got a blanket in the trunk. Turns out she does.
She doesn’t wake her passengers up until they’re fifteen minutes from JFK. Once there, Abby ducks into the bathroom and comes out with a hat over her fresh-brushed hair and a new shirt, creased but not crumpled, pulled straight over the same pencil skirt. She looks like the up-and-coming point woman again, if a bit strained still. All three of them wait for the flight, in a stiff silence that puts Eames inexplicably in mind of morning-afters that involve a few more crumpled sheets; that doesn’t stop Eames from hovering in the airport until the plane takes off. At that point the escape is out of her hands; she finds the nearest hotel and collapses on the bed without even taking off her shoes. By the time she wakes up, the others are well out of American air, and the night in the car feels stranger and more distant than dreams ever do.
It becomes one of those things not discussed. Abby wires Eames her fee, and she never bothers to check whether it’s enough, and nothing is ever said to the effect of thanks or apologies or condolences.
They work together often in the next few years, all but twice with Cobb as well. Something shifts, in then; nothing Eames thinks about, but something she would corroborate if the question were raised. Abby hardens, locks down; there’s less room on the job for a momentary joke, for the adrenaline rush of a risk, for pushing at the boundaries of possibility or for the casual camaraderie of rolled eyes and loudly expressed exasperation. Her reputation shifts from dry to serious to cold.
Her reputation also shifts from respectable to solid to admirable to intimidating, and if Eames were pushed she would admit that this part is far more deserved. Somewhere between the anal-retention and the asinine levels of focus Abby becomes the best there is, and she’s got herself so closely linked to Dom Cobb that he gets towed to the top along with her.
Exactly once, in Amsterdam, Eames asks her if she’s in love with him. The point woman denies it, monosyllabic and cold, and then confirms the dyke rumors in the most clinical terms possible. Three weeks later, the job goes off-schedule and everything gets cocked up, and it ends in Eames’s fist twisted in the front of Abby’s tidy pinstriped blouse and heartless bitch scorching her tongue, Abby backed up against the table with one elbow through Cobb’s models as she snarls every obscenity on record into Eames’s face, worthless dirt-trash incompetent whore, and plenty else.
Eames stalks out without another word after their chemist, Mitch, pulls them apart. It’s way too late to stay silent, but she doesn’t hear a word from them until eight months later, when Cobb finds her in Mombasa. She doesn’t put too much effort into avoiding him - he was still under for the entire thing, and she already knows that he hasn’t heard the details - and then he dangles inception in front of her, of all the impossible things. What are the odds?
(One hundred percent, of course, if you take a serious attempt at inception as a given.)
Eames saunters on into the Paris warehouse with nausea sprawled in her stomach and her chin in the air, and Abby shakes her hand and welcomes her to the team with carbon-copy cordiality. Eames quickly finds that she can still crack that featureless professionalism, at least, but the faint tinges of amusement have been dropped from the equation. She isn’t even sure whether or not this is a recent development, but she tries not to think about it and instead takes a perverse pride in pissing Abby off. It isn’t like she’s ever been averse to schadenfreude.
Then they go into the last stage of the job, and the most intricately planned heist Eames has ever run turns into the most spectacular clusterfuck of her sporadically disastrous careers. Somewhere between the rain and the freight trains and the fight by the cars, the pieces of the last few years slot together and Eames realizes that this has been Abby’s life: planning things down to the millisecond and picking up the pieces when it all goes wrong.
She tries not to process that, but in the rain-soaked wait on the first level, her own thoughts are far harder to escape than Fischer’s now-quieted subconscious. Abby didn’t look at all surprised, screaming at Cobb in the warehouse - furious, yes, but not shocked, not surprised - and she followed along and pulled out a gun when he played the children card and beckoned. And right now, they’re all waiting, and Abby is always down by the shoreline, her shirt soaked through and flattened against her hunched shoulders.
Eames drifts down there once to smoke, during a pause in the rain when the week is almost over. She doesn’t plan on saying anything, but after about twenty minutes she says, “So you really cared a lot about the bastard, then.”
“We’ve been through this, Eames,” Abby says, a little too loud as if that will stop Eames from noticing how tired she sounds. “I’m not in love with him, I’m not fucking him, I never was. Not Mal, either, if that’s the current rumor.”
It isn’t, in fact, and Eames files the possibility away. “Did I say anything to contradict that?”
“It seemed to be the likeliest direction for this conversation.” The wind picks up a bit, and she shivers, but other than that she doesn’t move.
“There’s actually surprisingly few rumors about it, given that you two have been practically conjoined.”
“Well, I guess people are smarter than the evidence would suggest.”
Eames flicks some ash off the end of her cigarette, watching it fall into the water. “Why do you do it?” she asks quietly, remembering fourteen hours across the States and people too tired for anything but honesty. “What the hell’s the point in babysitting him?”
“He’s my friend, asshole,” she says.
“Really? Funny, last time I checked the definition, friends don’t risk each others’ lives without permission.”
“I have never intentionally -”
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
Abby stares at her, and this, this is what shocks her? “Fuck you, Eames,” she whispers at last, no venom, no strength, and she turns and walks away.
The job ends, and by a conglomeration of miracles they all make it out alive and not too hideously scarred. Eames spends three nights in an L.A. hotel remembering what natural sleep feels like on something other than the bloodstained backseat of a car, and then resolves to spend the next few months in the warmest, driest place she can find a comfortable bed.
Two months later, she’s made her way to a casino in the south of Italy, to get bored with roulette and loose spectacularly at every form of poker. It always irritates her, but at the same time, she doesn’t come to win. There’s something sharply alluring about the dim gold light and the expensive air, the reckless calculation and the smooth feel of the cards.
She glances down at the ace and the nine in her hand and says “All in.”
The pot ends up going to a bearded guy in a suit pricier than it’s worth; she sighs and shoves her chair back, grimacing, and heads for the bar to see if she can con a drink. Then she pauses.
There’s a suspiciously familiar woman leaning against the divider between the gambling section and the restaurant, bare elbows braced against the gleaming wood, dark hair twisted up into a schoolmarm’s bun.
“Hello, Ms. Eames,” Abby says calmly, and slides a cocktail along the divider. “Somehow I thought you’d be better at poker.”
“And whatever would have given you that idea?” Eames asks, taking the drink and inspecting it carefully.
“I know you can bluff.”
“That is not the problem,” Eames says, and decides that Abby plans too well to drug her here. She sips. “I almost never fold.”
“I can understand that,” Abby says, reaching for her own glass.
“My difficulties with cards aside, why the hell are you here?”
“Well, the other rumors about your location were Mombasa and Vegas. Yusuf debunked the first and I believe you swore to avoid the latter for the rest of your life after the Dana Ocean job.”
“I will be far less likely to shoot you if you never mention that lunatic to me again. The same goes for her ridiculously oversized crew, the summer of 2016, and in fact the entire state of Nevada, if possible. Why are you looking for me?”
“I need a good forger with a background in surface crime, and you’re my best option.”
“What, is it Cobb again, or did something go wrong with the Fischer job?”
Abby blinks. “Nothing, everything’s fine. More than fine, actually. Fischer’s going ahead just as planned, and he seems to be pretty healthy, which is a bonus. Saito’s had some trouble re-adjusting, but he’s doing all right now, and Cobb’s well out of all this.” She smiles, tiny but genuine, and completely unexpected. “I think he’s happy, actually.”
Eames takes another sip of her cocktail and looks the point woman over carefully, inch by inch. She looks different, and it isn’t just the smile. The sleeveless blouse is still far too corporate for a casino, but the October-sky blue is a bit unusual, and she’s wearing it half-buttoned; she has surprisingly nice collarbones. She’s gained a bit of weight, although she’s still quite skinny, and -
“I realize this is an odd question, but please, forger’s pride. Did you -”
“No, I didn’t have pierced ears the last time you saw me,” Abby says, reaching up to run a finger over the tiny pearl stud. “Also, if I find you’ve been forging me unnecessarily, I will shoot you.”
Eames shrugs and finishes off her cocktail. “Didn’t hurt much the last few times. Anyway, why do you need my particular skill set?”
“There’s a job in Berlin. Simple extraction but there’s a few tricky circumstances. I’m not explaining it in public, can we get out of here?”
The task is interesting enough - digging up the reasons for a particular hit woman’s retirement, whether it be age, guilt, or sufficient finances - and it’s a chance to work with a few new people. Eames takes the same flight as Abby to Berlin; the bickering starts with standards in alcohol and drifts through half a dozen subjects before becoming an in-depth debate on movies made before they were born. Abby actually concedes a couple of points, on the grounds that they’re movies she hasn’t seen in years, and one of Eames’s biting summaries wins a quick but genuine laugh. This trip is a veritable jackpot of useful information for any future forgeries that arise.
The trip also rapidly shows itself to be the only remotely bearable part of the job. It would probably be better if things would just go collectively to pieces; instead, every miniscule detail requires twice the time it should.
“When we hired you, we gave you some very specific parameters,” Abby snaps at their architect, detaching herself from the PASIV with a sharp jerk. “You told us you could meet them and be ready a month ago. I realize that there have been difficulties, but after that kind of wait I expect the desired results.”
“Yikes, can you cut the kid a break?” Albert asks, frowning at his chemicals as they turn milky yet again.
“The last architect I worked with was twenty and completely fresh to the business, and she built three dreamscapes in the same amount of time. I’m not accepting the kid excuse from someone on his seventh job running.” She glances from one mulish face to another and sighs. “Fix the layouts by Thursday, and Albert, keep working on those chemicals, contact someone for help if you need to. We’re not going to get anything else done tonight, so clear out, take your things.” She turns on one heel and exits by the back door, moving with such carefully studied calm that Eames nods to the others, grabs her overcoat, and follows the point woman.
Abby kneels delicately and inspects a loose chunk of concrete in the alley, weighing it in her hand as she stands. For a moment it’s a modernist tableau, the primly tidy lady in the twilit rubble. Then she plants her feet, heels skidding across the cement, and hurls the concrete down the alley like a missile. Somewhere past the building’s edge, a large piece of glass shatters; the pieces clatter musically to the ground in the wake of the crack.
Eames blinks.
“A bit frustrated, then, are we?”
Abby doesn’t quite manage to hide her cringe as she turns. “Eames. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“Somehow I gathered. Have we honestly driven you to petty vandalism?”
“That factory has been abandoned for a decade. It’s in such a wreck it hardly counts as vandalism anymore. I checked beforehand, believe me.”
Eames runs a quick analysis on that. “So I take it this is a common habit.”
“Well, this job hasn’t been exactly relaxing.”
“I would have thought it would be at least par for the course, really.”
“No, not at all. If it were pure incompetence, I could just fire them, but as it is there’s nothing to do but work out a fix for every little problem, which is cutting into my research time. Add that to the times when they do slip up, couple it with the difficulties of adjusting to other peoples’ methods, and…” She sighs and dusts off her hands. “Petty vandalism.”
“I find that getting laid works better, assuming you don’t want a hangover.”
Abby snorts, turning away and rubbing again at the tight lines of the back of her neck, disturbing a few bound wisps of hair. “I don’t exactly have time for a love life, Eames, and I’m keeping highly illegal technology in my hotel room.”
“Well,” Eames drawls, “I’m always available for the service.”
It echoes a bit off the walls, and she realizes that it’s wrong; this isn’t normal teasing, hasn’t been. Even so, she doesn’t expect Abby to pause and twist around, one hand still wrapped in her hair; she certainly doesn’t expect the point woman to look so distinctly… speculative.
Instinct takes over, and Eames trained herself into the brazen it out instinct long ago. She smirks.
Abby nods, quick and decisive, as if she’s signing off on something. “Well, since you offer. Can you come by around nine? I’m at the Hilton, room 249.”
“Nine works,” Eames says automatically, still a mile behind this conversation. Abby steps closer and back into the warehouse; she brushes against Eames’s outstretched arm as she passes, gentle but just a little too close. Eames stops breathing for a moment as her mind tries to catch up.
Abby’s gone in moments, only needing to pick up her things as she passes, and Eames leans back against the doorframe and closes her eyes.
“Dear God,” she mutters, “what did I just agree to?”
She could, of course, cancel; backing out wouldn’t be hard, standing Abby up would probably turn it all into an excellent facsimile of normal. Still, something about the idea bothers her, and besides…
She remembers those few wisps of hair at the base of Abby’s neck, soft against the smooth skin. Eames would be a truly dreadful forger if she hadn’t ever noticed that the point was a beautiful woman, but there’s a difference between cataloging the flex of her calves and imagining the muscle trembling against her palms. She wonders what Abby is like in bed - the same confident expertise as in everything else, perhaps? Or, well, there are jokes made about the uptight ones, and there’s been truth to it before. She can almost imagine Abby wild and hungry and desperate and loud; maybe even violent, which is a bit of a departure from Eames’s normal tastes, but nobody was ever hurt by a judicious application of teeth…
Dear God, she is actually thinking about this. And she’s curious. Dear God, this is actually going to happen.
“Well,” she says to the rust-speckled rafters, “I’d better go put on something that isn’t slush-colored, then.”
Nine o’clock arrives faster than she expected; it’s around five past when she knocks on Abby’s door. The point woman opens it almost immediately. She looks the same as before, plain white shirt and pencil skirt; she hasn’t even taken off her pumps. Her hair is loose and down, though, brushing in layered curls against her face and her throat.
“Well, I won’t have to deal with any questions about why you were visiting,” Abby says, eyeing Eames slowly from head to foot: clinging jeans, tilted heels, black top mostly a frame for her shoulders and collarbones and the skin of her ribs. Eames knows exactly what she looks like, and she shrugs.
“No point in hiding it,” she says, “unless you’re worried about your reputation.” Abby snorts.
“I really don’t think this is going to affect it,” she says. “Come on in.”
Eames does, running a finger quickly along the ends of Abby’s hair as she passes. The point woman starts slightly, eyes widening, but the barest hint of a smile flickers across her lips.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asks, crossing to the mini-bar while Eames drops onto the couch; Abby’s room is really a small suite, all dark neutrals and square furniture.
“Not really a necessity,” Eames drawls, “I’m already here.”
“Forgive me for remembering the rules of basic hospitality,” Abby says, handing Eames a martini. She settles onto the couch, plucking a half-drunk cocktail from the end table and taking a sip edging a bit more towards a gulp.
“The rules of basic hospitality, ah, are those the ones that call for insulting people who are about to sleep with you?” Eames doesn’t actually care, but giving Abby a hard time is a thoroughly ingrained habit.
“I wasn’t trying to insult you, Eames. You look… very nice.” She gulps at her cocktail again and quickly sets it down, the clunk echoing slightly.
The fridge in the mini-bar drones loudly into the silence.
“Right,” Eames says abruptly, “this is stupid,” and she puts her martini down. Abby glances up, face crumpling into an unfamiliar weary disappointment; Eames presses two fingers to her jaw, tilts her face close, and kisses her.
Abby’s lips are bone-dry under a slightly waxy lipstick, and for just a moment she is utterly motionless; then she settles one hand against Eames’s bare arm and kisses back steadily. Eames licks a little bit along her lower lip and hooks her fingers into the edge of her skirt, tugging it up and up, trailing her thumb across Abby’s thigh. She catches a bit of unexpected lace, slips her finger under the edge of the strap discovered just above, and breaks the kiss to chuckle.
“Not quite what I expected you to wear, Abby,” she murmurs, deep and throaty, still toying with the garter. “Are you always this lasciviously dressed under all that stiffness?”
“No,” Abby whispers roughly, breath hot against Eames’s skin. “Someone made me buy these years ago, and I almost never wear them. Not usually practical.”
“Just for me, then?” Eames laughs. “I have to say, I’m flattered.” She kisses her again, sliding her free hand against Abby’s waist and tracing circles against the first edge of bare skin on her leg, soft and almost silky.
“We are not doing this on the couch,” Abby hisses, clenching her fingers into Eames’s shoulder. Eames shrugs.
“All right then,” she whispers, shifting her hands to cup Abby’s hips, and starts sliding the two of them onto the floor. She takes care, almost cradling the point woman in spite of how physically indestructible she is, but they still thump clumsily down the last inch to the carpet, and Eames stifles a laugh that quickly fades when faced with Abby laid out with her hair spread against the rug and her skirt now all around her waist. It takes her only a few moments to manage the buttons on her shirt; she presses a damp kiss to her breast over the fine black lace. Abby gasps, arches back and twists her face away, cringing into the carpet; Eames shifts her weight and inches up to whisper in her ear.
“Tell me, love,” she whispers, feeling power collect in her stomach and her hands, “are you enjoying this?”
“Don’t tell me you need validation,” Abby murmurs, breathless now, Eames grins.
“Maybe I just want to hear you say it,” she says, and dips her head to trace abstract patterns of kisses against the other woman’s throat. “Having fun?” She slips a hand under the edge of her bra, and Abby gasps.
“Yes,” she chokes, head thrown back, “but, honestly - ridiculous - I mean, there’s a bed right there-”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Eames asks, focusing hard to form the words. “For fuck’s sake, stop worrying. Just relax.” She runs her hand delicately downwards, presses two fingers very carefully against the soaked black silk between Abby’s legs, and makes sure that she doesn’t have any breath left for talking.
Afterwards, they collapse against the rug, tangled together and struggling to catch their breath. Abby’s a half-smiling wreck, lipstick smudged and clothes all askew and crumpled; Eames is a little better off, still mostly dressed but with her shirt hiked up over her ribs and her jeans unzipped and half falling off her hips.
“Well,” Abby says at last, eyes opening, “that was…”
“Fantastic?” Eames offers; the cockiness dissolves somewhere between her mind and her air-starved mouth, leaving nothing but a level of honesty entirely inappropriate for their lives. Abby doesn’t seem to notice.
“You fuck,” she says, “exactly the same as you do everything else.”
“And you, it turns out, can actually do something without acting like you’re about to write a report on it.”
Abby rolls her head sideways and tries to piece a frown together. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Eames shrugs as best she can while mostly horizontal. “Well, if you were thinking clearly already I’d obviously have done something wrong.”
Abby snorts, closing her eyes again, and the quiet dissolves into their shared ragged respiration. They rhythm of it slows, drifting towards half-asleep, and as perversely pleasant as it might feel to be sticky and sweaty and scented with sex, that will be a truly dreadful way to wake up, and even worse when they have to beat it to the warehouse. Eames drags herself to semi-seated, shirt flopping downwards as she does.
“My cue to leave, I think,” she says, fixing her jeans. “Take a shower, or you’ll feel absolutely disgusting in the morning.”
“Yeah, I know,” Abby says, sitting as well and awkwardly tugging herself back together, wrapping her shirt around herself and pulling her skirt back over her hips. “Do I owe you anything for this?”
“I haven’t taken money for a fuck since I was nineteen,” Eames snaps, yanking her fingers through her hair.
“Not what I meant,” Abby says; her leg taps against Eames’s knee, but she’s unbound enough that it might be accidental. “I meant more along the lines of a favor.”
Eames shrugs, fiddling with the ends of her hair because it’s the only thing to hand. “Not really. Buy me dinner next time we have a free evening and we’ll call it even.”
“Done,” Abby says, handing Eames her shoes, which migrated under the couch at some point Eames doesn’t remember. “Good night, and thank you.”
The cab ride home is one long struggle to stay awake, and she has to spend five minutes arguing with the doorman before he lets her in; still, as she sinks clean and thoroughly worn out into her own bed, she thinks the entire thing was worth it.
The next morning things carry on as normal, except for Abby’s occasional yawn; three days later they have to run the job slap-dash and half ready. They find their answers - the hit woman wrenched an already bad knee on the job and decided attempting assassination was just plain stupid when it hurt that much to walk, a ridiculously simple and rational thing for so much effort - but it’s a near thing, and all four end up taking the next flights out without regard for destinations more specific than ‘far away.’
Eames, who never develops plans when on the run, winds up in fucking Manchester, which is really the last touch on the entire mess that is the Berlin job. This is the fourth time she’s been to Manchester, and the fourth time she’s decided that this is the last time she will ever go to Manchester. The best part is that a source warns her not to travel for a while; an old enemy is poking around for her.
There are some advantages, though. A month later, by a combination of luck and a great deal of time spent at the Pipe Dreams bar, which has that name for a reason, she finds a job. More accurately, she finds Juan Mochizuki, an extractor she worked with in Argentina.
“You’re a fucking godsend,” he says shamelessly, braiding a strand of hemp pinned to his knee. “I’ve got a line on a guy who wants me to dig up some kind of secret on this mid-level politician, but nothing specific, just anything that we could turn into a scandal, but he has to be at least a little bit ashamed of it personally. Some kind of revenge gig, I don’t care what the logic is, but I’m not sure how to do it. I figured you could, though.”
“Shame isn’t that hard to trigger,” she says, taking another swig of her beer on the grounds that he’s paying. “What have you got for a crew?”
“I’ve got all the compounds we need,” he says, “and I think I’ve got the architecture covered personally, but I don’t have a point yet, and I can’t find anyone I trust. Can you get me anybody decent?”
“Well,” Eames says, smirking, “I can probably get you Abby Whittemore, how’s that?”
It’s a risky claim for her to make, but she lucks out, and Abby’s in the city within the week. They base the job out of Juan’s living room, and plan out a three-pronged attack amid stacks of greasy wrappers. Abby grumbles about the mess, moves books into stacks when she needs a clear surface and kicks Styrofoam boxes under the couch, but Eames sinks into the comfortable messiness like a beanbag chair.
This job, at least, goes smoothly (“A lot more smoothly than the last one,” Abby says with the same rueful half-smile she uses to reference half a dozen other disasters, and no one Eames has ever known could guess she slept with anyone.) The only problem is someone to watch them on the surface, and Juan bribes his friend Mike into it. They’re ready to run in just a few weeks.
“All set, folks?” Mike asks, fiddling with his chauffeur’s cap. “I have to say, your kind of crime means much nicer clothes,” he adds, checking himself in the mirror.
“It does at that,” Abby says, lifting the PASIV into the back of the limo. The mark, Willingham, is passed out cold already; spiked drink. “Eames, make his excuses.”
“On it,” she says, already dialing the cell phone. Juan glances from one to the other, shrugs, and leans forward to whisper something to his friend, while Eames imitates Willingham’s secretary’s voice and explains that he’ll be a few minutes late for his meeting.
“All as planned?” Abby asks, setting out the PASIV.
“Didn’t even raise an eyebrow, as far as I can tell,” Eames reports, sprawling gracelessly out on the limo seat.
“Juan, here’s your line, swab your wrist first,” Abby says, handing it to him. “Mike, you know the drill, keep us in motion and under the speed limit, get us away from anyone investigating, and if we’re not awake in ten minutes, detach us - carefully.”
“Yes, Cap’n!” he says, grinning, and twists around to start the car.
Abby takes Eames’s wrist and dabs at it with the alcohol swab, ignoring Eames’s rolled eyes. Her fingers are cold but gentle as she slides the cannula in.
“Good luck, Ms. Eames,” she says, corner of her mouth crooking conspiratorially. She’s just grabbing for her line as Eames’s eyes slide closed.
She comes to in a sun-flooded white hallway, staring at a set of abstract prints. It’s a pleasant dreamscape, amber glass accents in the open windows and a vase of bright red lilies right next to the mirror; not a reproduction of the mark’s house, but distinctly suggestive of it. If everything is going as planned, Eames is right outside Willingham’s study. She shifts into his wife - piled-up auburn hair, painfully pale skin just slightly sunburned, teal sundress and wedding ring - and pushes the door open.
He’s at his desk, exactly as planned; she whispers an apology for disturbing him, eliciting nothing but a shrug, and searches casually through the bookshelves. It’s all going exactly as planned until her hand brushes against the diary.
“Hey!” Willingham snaps, shoving his chair back. “Put that down!”
“I’m just looking,” she says mildly, flipping through the soft ivory pages. It’s a beautiful piece of bookbinding, but it’s got nothing useful, just the minutiae of his days.
“Well, I don’t want you to look,” he says; his cane clunks against the floor as he moves closer. Promising, promising.
“I’m not hurting anything, I promise,” she says, skipping a chunk. Still nothing useful, dammit -
The head of his cane smashes into the wall in front of her face.
It’s astonishingly loud, although nothing whatsoever like a gunshot. The cane is metal-headed, which she knew, and the gleaming wood is almost perfectly on a level with her eyes. He isn’t a projection, isn’t militarized, doesn’t think this is a dream.
The diary drops to the floor with a clunk, pages crumpling against the carpet.
“I’m sorry,” Eames whispers, scrabbling to stay in character, and fuck, it seems she only half-knows who that character is and this is not part of the half she knows. “I’m sorry.”
Every piece of the dreamscape hovers, it feels like, as she takes in his furious, frantic eyes and the pale lines of his knuckles halfway down the cane’s smooth black line and the hair standing up on the back of her neck. It takes every ounce of self-control not to dream the weight of a gun against her hip or a polished switchblade pressed against her hand.
The silence is split by the doorbell, melodious for the first few seconds and then just loud. Juan, almost doubtless, in position already.
“Should I answer that?” Eames asks, barely moving her lips.
The cane slips away from the wall - it’s left a dent - and Willingham taps it back against the floor. “No,” he says, “I’ll get it.”
Eames doesn’t so much as blink until the door closes behind him; then she shudders, once, twice, wrapping her arms around herself. Inhale, exhale. She looks up.
The pictures behind the desk are different, now: half a dozen shots of her current face, mouth bloodied, cheek scratched, eyes teary pink or swollen black, sickly green bruises running along the cheekbone and the throat.
Fuck.
She finds Abby in the hallway, slipping through the window with a baton in her hand.
“Find anything?” the point woman asks, straightening her cap and shoving open the study door. “Juan will be coming in soon, probably.”
“Well,” Eames says, swallowing hard, “for a start, he beats his wife.”
Abby’s fingers clench on the study doorframe as she glances in and back. “Drop the forge.”
“Is that really -”
“We’ve got enough to get paid. We’ll finish the plan just in case there’s anything else, but the safety of the team takes precedence over backup.”
Eames nods and convulses once, soaking her mind in the knowledge of her own muscles and her own stance, her expertise and skills and the incontrovertible fact that the mark is essentially helpless, that she is the one in power here.
They don’t stay under for much longer; a few steady questions, a check of the safe and a cursory search of the study, and then they blow the house to kingdom come; keeping the sedative separate from the PASIV means that the mark stays under regardless. Mike drops them on the sidewalk at different points - Abby takes the PASIV, concealed neatly in a wheeled suitcase - and Eames expects that to be the last she sees of them for some time to come, as long as there are no problems with the payments.
Instead, it’s barely two hours later when Abby calls. Even stranger, nothing is wrong, and they work through a few moments of exchanged ‘fine’ before she finally reaches the point.
“I still owe you dinner,” she says at last, with that crisp briskness that means business, and it’s absolutely the last thing Eames expected.
“Er, what?”
“From Berlin,” Abby says, sounding oddly guarded.
“Ber - oh. Right, I did say dinner.” She hadn’t ever actually intended to collect, but she’s hardly going to turn down food, either. (Some habits die hard.) “Did you have anywhere in mind?”
“A few ideas, but I wasn’t sure what you’d prefer. In the mood for anything in particular?”
“Hot and salty,” Eames says honestly, then snorts. “Ignore my total lack of class.”
“Not a problem. I’ll pick you up in around twenty minutes, then, if that works.”
It does, and twenty-nine minutes later the two of them are settled into a corner table at a neon-and-chrome place, digging into hamburgers and massive heaps of fries. Eames’s fingers will be practically shining with grease soon, she has a soda that is sweating water all over the table, she’s sticking slightly to the seat, and it is perfect.
Talking with Abby starts out a bit awkward - it feels more than a little strange to snipe at her when she’s buying Eames dinner, for a start - but they trade notes on old associates and favorite bits of former jobs. Abby swears on her life that one set of projections tried human sacrifice on the incoming extractors; Eames demands details, and by the time that story is over, her plate is half-empty and she’s in badly-concealed stitches.
“The worst part is, that is not the most ridiculous thing that’s ever happened,” Abby says, smiling, as she slices a chip through her pool of ketchup. She isn’t eating fast, but her hands are either still or darting across the plate, all just a quick flick of the wrist. It’s something Eames hasn’t seen her do before, and she wonders where it comes from.
“Eames?”
Ah, shit. “Er, sorry, what?” she asks, glancing up. She’s more tired than she thought.
Abby lays the chip down on her plate. “Eames, are you all right?”
Eames blinks. “What?”
“You’re not usually like this. I’d assume it was from the thing with Willingham, but you’ve seemed slightly off this whole job. What’s the problem?”
She shrugs, carefully casual. “Nonexistent, beyond being stuck here. I hate Manchester.”
“Really? It seems like exactly your kind of place. Big, busy, plenty of places to gamble…”
“Bad memories, that’s all.”
“What? I hadn’t heard about anything happening here.”
“It is entirely possible that you can’t look up my entire life story.” Abby winces, which Eames chooses to ignore. “The first time I came here was right after I’d run three jobs with that chemist Bezrukov, which made everything delightful.”
“Bezru - oh. That asshole with the addictive Somnacin?”
“Yes, him. So, I mean, withdrawal was fun enough the first time, but I thought I was clean, and of course the rest of the team would cut me loose if they found out. And no one else in the city knew me from Eve, so…”
“I understand your aversion, then,” Abby says, reaching for her food again. Eames mumbles something noncommittal into her burger, swallows, and then turns the conversation to former teammates. This is far safer, and the rest of the meal vanishes as they gleefully savage the incompetent and the sadistic and celebrate the successes of the few they both like.
After the grease on their empty plates has been cool for at least twenty minutes, Eames makes her excuses and stands; Abby grabs her arm, slightly sticky fingers gentle against the underside of her wrist.
“Are you going to be all right tonight?” she asks quietly. “Between the city and Willingham -”
Eames snorts. “What, do you need someone new to baby now that Cobb’s retired? I’m a big girl, Abby, I’ll be fine.” She overdoes the scorn a bit; too hasty. It doesn’t stop her from ripping free of Abby’s hands, shaking her arm slightly as she does, but she does drawl, “Dinner was delicious, thank you,” before she saunters - a bit fast to technically qualify as such - out the door.
A quick check around the Net reveals that someone wants a forger for a job in Bangkok. It’s not especially interesting, the most basic industrial espionage, but the extractor is supposed to be one to watch.
She regrets taking it almost immediately; a basic distraction and safe raid, the kind of thing she’s been running since before the rest of the team ever heard of shared dreaming. They don’t even need a forger, just think they do. She’s tempted to give them a quick lecture on the exact definition of small fry, and then clear out, but the chemist has potential without the courage to ditch her friends. (The architect should go home to his mother, the point is going to be nabbed the second legal looks for him if he doesn’t learn not to leave electronic bulldozer tracks, and the extractor is a loudmouthed windbag who crumples like tissue paper when you push against the talk on which he runs. Eames, who has always felt a sort of solidarity with the few other women in mind crime, hopes the chemist grows a spine in time.)
It takes two months to finish up; someone is tracking their progress, because less than a week after the run, she gets an offer for a job in Cincinnati.
“Mob rivalries,” she repeats into the cell phone, gazing out her bedroom window at the glowing nightscape. “I’m assuming you’re joking.”
“Nope, not my style. It’s not as tricky as it sounds. The way these people work, revenge jobs go for your employer, not the pawns. And they pay well.”
“So do a lot of other people, Mister…”
“Now, Ms. Eames, are names such light currency?”
“Well, you have one of mine,” she says lightly, tracing her fingers along the window’s filthy glass. “You could give me a role, at any rate. Extractor, architect? And should I be presuming Mister?”
“Liaison,” he says, the smooth polish designed to slip an answer out of reach. “And Mister is fine. I’m contacting a number of other people for the actual work. Incidentally, one of them has worked with you before.”
“Really?” That doesn’t narrow it down at all. “I’ll assume this is a no-name basis across the board.”
“Until you’re in.”
“If I decide I want to be in.”
“Well, yes. See, the one you know, she said to tell you that it’ll be interesting. The mark is - well, the closest term we have is militarized, but it’s a rather more complicated setup than that.”
“Well, if Abby Whittemore calls it interesting, there must be something to it,” she says, and drops her opinion of him a bit at the consternated hiss. There aren’t a lot of women among her former colleagues, even fewer who’d send that message along. “I’ll let you know in a week.”
She snaps the phone closed without waiting for a reply and taps it against her cheek, thinking. The buzz goes straight through her jaw, and she jumps out of her skin and scrambles to answer. “Forget something?” she asks.
“Eames? Take the Cincinnati job, dammit.” It’s Abby.
“Er, what?”
“You just got offered a job in Cincinnati, right? Take it.”
Eames lifts the phone from her ear and squints at it, then sighs and moves it back to a useful position. “As flattering as your devotion is, darling…”
Abby snorts, causing a rush of static. “I’d hang up right now, but I need someone who can plan.”
“I’m not the only candidate for that position.”
“Well, we only have one role unfilled, and I can’t change lineups here. Name me one other forger who can work out a way to get past a freakish militarized menagerie, and I’ll give them a call.”
“Get past a what?” Eames demands, sitting bolt upright.
“I assume I’ll see you in Cincinnati, then.”
“There are more than a few people out for my head in that city, you know.”
“Eames,” Abby inquires, absolutely deadpan, “how does this distinguish it from any other city?”
Five days later, Eames strides into the back room of a Cincinnati bar, drops her coat on the back of the nearest chair, and glances around the room; either the team relies on the barman for security or they’re used to drop-in visits from Mr. Liaison, because no-one has challenged her yet. That would be worrying, except Abby is deep in argument with someone Eames assumes is the extractor: a young white guy with strange greenish hair, probably the result of a bad bleach job. There’s a middle-aged guy, brown-skinned and in desperate need of a shave, leaning against the wall with a book in his hand and a compass behind his ear; nobody else is present.
“I believe someone was looking for me?” Eames asks, once it becomes clear that no-one is going to notice her without prompting. Abby glances up.
“Eames! Perfect timing, now explain to Harris that militarized projections can and will go after forgers regardless of what they’ve forged.”
“He doesn’t know that?” Eames asks disdainfully, folding her hands and thinking that this could be either a disaster or enormously entertaining.
Disappointingly, the job goes spectacularly south without ever getting near the mark. An attempt to grab some background information from a local business gets unexpectedly complicated, but Eames improvises and they mistake all for well.
That lasts for a week, until they slip into the back room on a Thursday afternoon - when the bar is empty - and find a three-man greeting committee waiting, guns gleaming in their hands. Eames only has time to think honestly, only three? as she goes for her gun before one of them grabs her wrist; a sharp twist makes her drop the weapon, he blocks her chop at his windpipe, and then it slams into her faking an all-out fistfight of the kind she loves in dreamscape while she’s actually pulling out her knife and manipulating herself close enough to actually use it - okay, weapon out, fuck but she wishes she could dream it. She takes a risk and twists sideways so he can grab her, and he’s just smart enough to take it, arm around her throat; she holds her breath and drives the knife back into his stomach, hitting pay dirt, then twists it out and hacks at the already-slackening arm cutting off her air. He stumbles backwards, dropping her; she twists and goes for the heart, slamming her knife into the muscle with everything she has.
She’s backing up and scanning by the time he falls, but the rest is done. One man is on the floor, bullet to the head - probably Abby - while the other is vanishing out the back, doubled over. Outside a car roars to a start; Eames moves to follow, but Harris slams the door. Fucking stupid decision, but she can hear the car leaving, and he at least has the sense to check the window. Abby checks the bar, yells “All clear!” and runs for the architect, who - fuck - is bleeding, slumped against the wall. Eames is moving towards him too, knife dropped, when Harris yells her name. She glances towards him -
Fuck. No, really, fuck.
He’s far too close, gun pointed straight at her.
Her own gun is on the floor; between everything, it’s now a good five feet away.
Okay, not good.
Fuck fuck fuck, she should have known better than to drop the knife. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Every quantifiable level of bad call. It’s been way too long since she fought outside of dreamspace; she isn’t used to needing to keep track of weapons.
“All right, calm down,” she says as nonchalantly as she can, inching backwards; he advances, faster, furious.
“You sold us out, you bitch!” he snarls.
“What? No!” It’s actually true, too; simpler not to double-cross as a general rule. She’s at the wall, pressing cold and sticky against her back; misjudged the distance. He doesn’t stop
“They knew to come here!” he snaps, spittle flying; he’s tearing up, she observes distantly, and then the barrel of the gun is pressing into her stomach and she doesn’t need to check her totem to know that she isn’t dreaming. She could rip the gun away, but his finger is already on the trigger, and she’s seen him practice, she knows he’s fast enough to pull it, and that’s all it takes when he’s this close.
“I didn’t tell them,” she says, cursing everything she knows. Really, she couldn’t have gone down lying? Really? This is not the way she wanted to go, gut wounds are a nasty drawn-out way to die and one of the advantages of this life is supposed to be that you don’t die slowly, and all of this is really avoiding the major fact that she doesn’t want to die because of her own mistrained miscalculation and a stupid panicked pissed-off kid and in fact she would really prefer not to die at all -
That’s the point when Abby says, “All right, that’s enough.”
Her heels click slightly on the floor as she adjusts her stance; her gun is most definitely still loaded and pointed straight at Harrison’s head. He swallows.
“You too? What is this, a double -”
“Nobody betrayed anyone,” Abby says calmly, “or at least, I very much doubt it.”
“Well, then, how the hell did they find us?”
“There’s a number of possibilities. Any of us could have been followed -”
“Last week,” Eames says, eyes still trained on Harris’s trigger finger. “Did we show up on camera?”
“It’s possible,” Abby says slowly. “Likely, actually.”
“Well, there you go, then. They followed us here.”
“Why here? How did they know to follow us?” Harris demands. “We didn’t do anything that would get us followed for no reason.”
“If they saw me,” Eames says, wincing, “that would be enough to raise heads, and if they tracked me, this would be the only place they’d turn up. I’ve been switching hotels.”
“So this is your -”
“Hardly,” Abby interjects, stepping closer; the tip of her gun kisses Harris’s temple. “For one thing, if not for your blatant incompetence, she wouldn’t have been caught on camera in the first place.” Eames swallows twice; it isn’t that she’d rather be shot, but having someone else defend her sits in her stomach like disease. “Now, back up, and put the gun away. Right now.”
He does, slowly but without hesitating. Eames inhales, slumping away from the wall, and crosses the floor to collect her own weapons. “Well, what do we do now?” she asks.
“You need to clear out,” Abby says, holstering her gun. “Harris, your friend needs a hospital or an equivalent, can you get him that?”
“I - yeah, I know someone who can get him treated and keep things off the record, I -”
“Good, call them. We’re splitting now, the job is off. I’ll let the client know. Eames, can you get out of here?”
“Sure, I’ll grab a train south,” she says, pulling her coat straight; the gun goes back into its holster under that, and she slides the knife easily into the hidden pocket of her skirt. “I’ll have to call the car rental and let them know it’s at the station, though.”
“That’s fine,” Abby says, handing the wall phone to Harris. “I’ll come with you to the car, in case anyone’s waiting out there.”
Outside, no one gives them a second glance. Abby braces one hand against the roof of the car and watches as Eames runs a quick check for any kind of traps. “Where are you headed next?” she asks with her head under the glove box, mostly to break the silence.
“I’ll probably go to ground here for a week or so,” Abby says, “and after that I have business in Baltimore.” She coughs. “Incidentally, if I find out you did betray us, I will be very annoyed.”
Eames snorts. “There you are, thank God. I was getting a little worried.” Abby blinks. “I wasn’t exactly expecting you to trust me. I’m glad neither of us is losing our touch.”
“Oh, well,” Abby says, shrugging. “You’re a lot harder to replace than a two-bit extractor, for a start.” She glances away; Eames tenses, but she doesn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. “For the record,” she says, “I don’t trust you completely, but more than I trust most.”
“Oh,” Eames says, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Well then.”
“Don’t take advantage of it, I won’t hesitate to shoot you if I turn out to be wrong.”
“Noted,” Eames says, twisting the key in the ignition. She hesitates, drumming her fingers on the wheel. “I owe you for this, I know.”
Abby shrugs, straightening, and steps clear. “Buy me dinner and we’ll call it even,” she says, half-smiling.
Eames is halfway to the train station when she remembers, and she bites back a laugh, but the whole thing feels uncomfortably like charity. Surely the lack of metal in her stomach lining is worth more than a good fuck.
Part II