you know i'd still take you home

[the_empiricist]

title: You Know I'd Still Take You Home
author: beanarie
pairing: Arthur/Eames/Ariadne, and every permutation therein
word-count: ~7,800
rating: R
warning: Includes lots of things I don't endorse, like misogynistic language, violence, drug use, hints of child abuse and underage sex-work. Also slight futzing with canon/actors' ages (Ariadne is in her late twenties, though she's the type that still looks twelve. *points Vanna White-style at Joseph Gordon-Levitt* Eames is thirty.).

author's note: This directly follows the events of My Bruise and takes place primarily during the film. This is the third story in my Bummed Cigarettes AU, where Arthur, Eames, and Ariadne met as kids and ran scams together before Ariadne ran away and the boys were separated by the law. The title is from an Arctic Monkeys song. Special thanks to my beta night_reveals, who was just ridiculously helpful and generous with her time and energy. Love that girl.

summary: Eames goes to Australia for ten days and comes back an asshole. A story about relationships. The one Arthur has with Eames. What they each had with Ariadne. There are other people who matter, but none who will ever matter more.

-Paris, France-

Such is Arthur's lot in life. The man he has loved and depended on for half his time on Earth is also the one he would most often like to punt off the top floor of a very tall building. He actually did do that, once. But Eames is an adrenaline addict with a high threshold for pain. Since Arthur pushed him, he's jumped at every available opportunity.

Maniac.

"How many ways do I have to tell you," Arthur asks, slamming Eames against the bathroom wall. "I don't. Have time. For your bullshit?"

Eames rolls with the blow, impacting against the tile with a smack, even though he doesn't have to. Lately he's been all about taking on mass, continuing the trend with this latest trip, and at this point he makes about one and a half Arthurs, which a single Arthur can't compete with straight-on.

Now Eames is supposed to say something along the lines of, 'Clearly, someone doesn't want the jar of Vegemite I bought for him in a characteristic fit of thoughtfulness.' He doesn't utter a word, though. Funny, considering that in the seventy two hours since his return from Australia, he's had no trouble speaking up. To call Arthur condescending. To make fun of him for using a word with more than two syllables. To show Ariadne how much more he knows about this business she just stumbled into. A certain amount of irreverence is to be expected with Eames, but this is sharper. And it isn't mutual. Eames should know--he does know--that Arthur doesn't have the resources left for his verbal ping-pong sessions. Cobb's entire future depends on them pulling off this job.

Arthur thinks about the nonsense Ariadne spouted about having done Eames a favor when she left. And all the moments he used to ignore when they were three instead of two gain painful relevance. "Never could handle us being alone together, could you? Nothing's changed. Jesus."

There's a squeak of hinges as the door opens, letting in the man who's been dumping Arthur on his ass all day.

"Um, hm," Yusuf says. "Sorry, I didn't realize this was... occupied."

Eames's infuriatingly placid expression twists into something ugly. "Following us across the street, you nosy cunt? You can fuck off and all, Hashem. What are even you doing here? Go back to your work."

Yusuf holds up his hands, his smirk strangely indulgent. "Leaving," he promises. Within seconds, he's done just that, disappearing as though he were never there.

Arthur presses his lips together and stares as the door swings shut. Eames is upset. Arthur knew this already; he's spent enough time with the man to have a generally accurate idea of what goes on in the tangled rosebush he calls a brain. Eames is thinking that the seven years since Arthur tracked him down in a London pub that smelled of spilled beer and clinical depression, the time they've had together, have been a vacation. A short prelude to the two car garage life Arthur has always been meant for. And so, Eames has been acting like an attention-seeking ten year old, because that's what he sometimes does when he feels threatened and circumstances don't allow gunfire.

Arthur didn't, however, expect Eames to lose his temper, broadcasting his actual emotions to the world like a normal person. Or to Yusuf, who looked like he wanted to pat him on the head.

Arthur considers, rejects, and then reconsiders the possibility that they fucked. Not that it would matter. Monogamy hadn't been practical for them as kids. As adults, Arthur had considered the concept, and the mere thought had been as ill-fitting as a sweater left in the dryer too long. Sex is... sex. It may not be the same with other people, but he refuses to go without every time he and Eames find themselves separated by several thousand miles.

"You don't need me for this, I think," Eames says.

Barring the time he told Arthur his mother back in England had died, it could be the least funny thing Eames has ever said. "You've been doing legwork on three different continents for weeks. So you'll just write that off as a loss." Arthur crosses his arms over his chest. "You'll let Mal's kids go on without a father." Arthur doesn't have the slightest idea how Dom's problem even can be fixed, but when someone with Saito's money and influence says he can make something go away, believing him is just good sense.

The look on Eames's face is almost pitying and Arthur is certain that this is going to hurt even before he opens his mouth to say, "You're that certain he didn't do it."

Through a red haze, Arthur counts to twenty. Then thirty. Eames likes Cobb. He always has; it's impossible not to. He's the man who made Mal think she was not only beating him at chess, but kicking his ass. For three months of Saturdays, he woke up early to drive Arthur to his eight o'clock Statistics class and would say things along the way like, 'Take out your flashcards. I'll quiz you before your exam.'

Cobb doesn't look people in the eye anymore unless he needs something from them. And Mal is a wraith who glows from the inside when she's causing pain. Thoughts of what his life has turned into make Arthur want to crawl into bed and stay there for a year.

"I'm only being realistic, Arthur."

"I'm not biting, Eames." Arthur stays where he is, his forearm pushing against Eames's collarbone. "Don't get me wrong; you are pissing me off. But that was so obvious it's like you weren't even trying. So, apologies, but I won't give you an excuse to walk out on the rest of us."

Eames throws Arthur off, using just enough force to make him back off a step. "There's something off about this job," he says, meeting Arthur's eyes and sounding halfway sincere. "Bad smell somewhere. I can't put my finger on it."

"Oh, you can't, huh?" Arthur pushes right back into Eames's space. "Seems pretty clear to me." He catches Eames's earlobe with his teeth. "Stupidest fucking smart person I've ever met," he says. "I came looking for you. I found you. Doesn't that mean anything?" He lets out a soft chuckle. "Or maybe it's just your memory starting to go, huh?" The ten months difference between them never meant very much until Eames turned thirty and Arthur didn't.

Eames laughs, but his eyes are hard and Arthur looks out the window so he doesn't have to see it. Eames is never supposed to do that to him, yet it's been going on for days. "Keeping you up at night, visions of me and her playing house?" he continues, unable to hold back the hint of anger putting a layer of frost on his words. "Having identical twin girls? Playing Pictionary with the goddamn neighbors every weekend?" Arthur shoves at Eames's chest. "It's almost funny, how you don't know me at all."

Eames winds his finger around the chain at Arthur's neck. Though he had to remove the dog-tags, he never stopped wearing it. It's all he has left of that time, and it makes him think of Mal, with her hair long and her ring finger bare, and the first thing he ever tried to build, an Eiffel Tower that was too small and in the wrong section of the city entirely.

"Arthur, you can't tell me you never wanted to be normal."

"What?" Before Arthur can decide on a suitably scathing response, Eames drops his forehead onto Arthur's shoulder, his arms sliding around the middle of Arthur's back. It's harder be furious with him after that.

Arthur gives out a silent sigh. He hadn't meant what he said about the sleepless nights, but Eames's eyes are set slightly deeper than usual. His head fell a bit quicker than it should have. It's not a surprise that Eames and rationality are not on speaking terms. "Pretty much everyone's called it a day," Arthur says, rubbing the back of Eames's head. Everyone meaning Ariadne and Saito, since he and Eames are still sort of on the clock and Yusuf is likely frowning over a Bunsen burner across the street. Cobb doesn't count. He's always the last to leave. "Come on. We'll see if my hotel bed still remembers you."

Eames raises his head, and releases his hold, and they just watch each other over a distance of a few inches.

"I'll stick with my own accommodations, thanks," he says finally.

Arthur grits his teeth, inhaling deeply through his nose. "Great. Fuck you, too, then."

After Eames slips away, Arthur throws water on his face and remembers a college-age girl with houndstooth patterned press-on nails. Drunk, possibly high, she'd gotten into a tit-punching slap-fight with Ariadne that had lasted for what had seemed like hours before getting broken up by security. Eames had been so turned on, he hadn't been able to keep his hands off of Ariadne or Arthur. Next door there had been a gas station. He'd pushed them both into the bathroom and they hadn't left the grotty little space for a good twenty minutes.

There was another bathroom, a few years later. That had been just Arthur and Eames. Except not Eames. Not really. But that fit because it hadn't been a bathroom, not really. After stumbling onto the scene ("Oh, Arthur. Arthur. Don't fuck a projection in my dream. That makes me your pimp."), Mal had talked, slightly drunkenly, about how love needed a basis in reality. She'd told Arthur that he needed to move on. Arthur had said that he didn't think that would be possible. And he was right. God help him.

When he gets out of the bathroom, Yusuf is standing there, looking wary.

"I wanted to make certain you were coming back," he says. "Just one more trial, and we should have it. No more falls after this, I promise. ...Hopefully."

"I thought you'd settled on the formula," Arthur says, for clarification's sake.

"My perfectionist streak may be in overdrive," Yusuf admits, as they walk through the shop and start back across the street. "Potential issues keep making themselves known and I can't ignore them. Three levels is quite an undertaking. Close to unprecedented. The compound has to fit an extensive list of criteria in order to be right for this."

Arthur steps through the door to the warehouse. "Well, I can't fault you for that line of thinking."

At Arthur's back, Yusuf gives out a quiet sigh of relief. Arthur must have thrown him by not protesting, but this is part of his job. He'll do it until it's done, without complaint, unless he thinks he's being messed with.

Upon entering, he can't help but notice that Eames has taken his things and left for the night.

"No audience for this round?" Yusuf asks, looking around. "Huh. Well. Maybe he's chosen to do something productive for a change."

How the hell do you know each other? Arthur wants to ask. "One can only hope," he says, rolling up his right sleeve.

-level three of the dream-

It takes days to happen. For nearly a week, Eames and Ariadne spend snatches of time together topside and otherwise, building the third layer of the dream, and the whole time Eames is incredibly, massively, unbelievably professional. If he were talking to Arthur, the other man would have been impressed fucking speechless.

She looks at him sometimes while they work. Stares, actually, would be a better word, and he ignores it. He lets it pass without comment, because all they have to do is get through this, and then she's gone, or he is; doesn't matter to him either way.

He watches her sometimes, too. But he never lets it go on long enough for her to call him on it.

Yusuf seems to find it all highly amusing. There are days when Eames regrets bringing in that man, and others when he really doesn't. All he'd known at the time was that Cobb--unhinged, on the run from a ruthless South African energy conglomerate as well as the entire American criminal justice system Cobb--was proposing a job that had never been pulled off successfully before, and he'd just reeked of desperation. That was the sort of combination that got someone shot. And Arthur, with his fundamental incapability of turning his back on someone he loves, would be right in the line of fire.

Eames's only thought had been to fill the ranks with people he could trust. But trust is a double-edged thing. Having shared a prison cell with Eames for longer than either of them would have liked, Yusuf knows him too well. He can see that Eames is going off the rails, even if the others don't, Cobb too caught up in his black hole of a life and Saito too much of a stranger to know his tells. When Eames snaps at him, all Yusuf does is get this sparkle in his eyes, as if to say, Remember the time I smashed your face into the wall when you were nineteen? Your nose never looked quite the same after that, did it?

Too many threads of history tied to this job. It gives him a headache. But he does so well at hiding it, from her at least. For nearly a week, at least. Then she touches his hair when he bends down to attach his skis, and it snaps the rubber band holding him together inside.

Before he can do anything, she gives a wistful sigh. "I kind of miss your old hair."

He's so distracted by her nerve he can't work up a decent amount of fury. "It was wretched," he mutters, aiming for dismissive rather than confused. Shaved in the back and sprouting up top. A person would have to be high on meth to find that attractive.

"I liked the wretchedness of it," she says.

He finishes checking that his skis are firmly attached to his boots and uncurls his frame. "There should be some way for us to cut through the labyrinth," he says, squinting into the distance. "Projections come at us en masse and we're up a creek. There's a good chance we'll miss the kick without ever having reached Fischer's hospital. We need a cheat. See about expanding the air-duct system. Make it run from the compound, underground, and have it come out just..." He points. "There."

She nods, and her eyes lose focus as they look off in the direction he indicated. Something that looks like an enormous drainage pipe rises from the ground. The near-silence of the process is always a bit unnerving. It's the quiet that brings home the surreal nature of the dream, moreso than even the structures appearing to move and change by themselves.

She lifts her hand, palm up toward him. "Tell me if that works," she says.

Glad to be out of her physical space, he takes off toward the entrance while she continues on to the compound above ground. Leaving his skis outside, he climbs inside, lets his eyes slide over the new surroundings.

"Couldn't have done it better myself," he declares over the radio, bland as dry toast.

He isn't surprised, though, when that isn't the end of it. He makes a valiant attempt for it to be, but that one exchange sticks and repeats and a long period of walking through dank corridors later, he can't help himself. "You couldn't have liked it that much."

"What?" she says. And then, "Jesus. How... how can you not grasp that it wasn't you I was running from?"

"Just a happy side effect, then."

"Tell me," she says, and his first instinct is to ignore her outright as if she hadn't spoken, but he's too thrown by the second part of the request. "How did Arthur get the tracheotomy scar?" He imagines her tapping the base of her throat with the tip of her finger, the same spot where Arthur has an irregular circle of scar tissue.

"Oh, well, it's a very sordid story. A medical professional made a small incision in his throat to create an alternate airway." Eames never asked, for the same reason he didn't ask about the high-priced wardrobe, or the phantom dog-tags.

She'd do better to ask Cobb, actually. During his first shared dream, with Arthur stuck in reality minding him and the Cobbs, Eames had faced the couple, thinking, 'They'd like me if I were more like Arthur.' He learned long ago that being who the other person wants is the best way to turn things to his advantage. Then he remembered a recurring dream he'd had as a kid, where he was looking out of Olivia Newton-John's eyes and roller-skating, and he realized. You can be someone else in a dream.

Eames's first forge was, oddly, his easiest. He didn't know anyone in the world as well as he knew Arthur.

After Cobb's eyebrows fell back to their normal level, this was his reaction: 'Passable. You forgot...' and he touched his throat the same way Ariadne probably did. Then Mal approached, linking her arm through Cobb's elbow, and asked Eames a series of questions that would have indicated curiosity, if it weren't clearly intended to put him on another subject.

Some months later, while parting at end of the day, she clutched at Arthur as though she knew what it looked like for him to vanish before her eyes. Arthur was puzzled, until he caught sight of a calendar. And Eames was on the sidelines, wondering about all of it, but silently. The five years they were separated barely exist, as far as he is concerned.

"The life we had," Ariadne says, thinking that she's made her point, misinterpreting his reason for avoiding the question. "It... Do you really hate me for needing to get out?"

"I don't hate you," he says, making a command decision to double back to the entrance. They were supposed to meet at the compound on the other end, but this is the only way to delay looking her in the eye. He can't kill himself. It's his dream; she'd know. "I don't anything you. You place far too much importance on yourself."

"Do I?" she asks. "I don't think I do."

Half distracted by thoughts of suicide, Eames wishes for a nice skyscraper. Shooting involves nothing but pain, but jumping is... different. It's electrifying. "The history you're bringing up. It's buried, sweetheart. It's fossilized."

"That's a load of bullshit," she says. "Look, I'm just going to say it. You think you were my consolation prize or... whatever. That what we had was secondary." Her voice grows subtly louder with each word, as if she's willing him to believe her. "It never was. I thought about you every day."

He removes a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, slams it against his wrist eight times, and removes a single cigarette. Dreams are the only place he lights up any more. Somewhere along the line, he discovered that he wouldn't get sick nearly as often if he stopped destroying his lungs by degrees. Smoking down here is unwise, good for nothing but maintaining his psychological addiction, but times like this he doesn't care.

She takes in a long breath like she's gearing up for something. "The part that really blows my mind is you think you were that for him, too."

His smoke ring falters, its potential wasted as it becomes just another unremarkable, untidy puff of gray. "You talk about things that you really know nothing of." He doesn't bother telling her that she needs to stop. That would only convince her to keep going. "How long were you around? Six months? A year? It was so many years ago I can't even remember."

"Yet I still miss you."

"Another thing for you two to bond over," he says, with a laugh that sounds nasty even to his own ears. "Right now he doesn't get to have me, either."

When he climbs out of the entrance of the air-duct system, she is standing there, looking down her nose at him.

"God, you're still such a craven piece of shit, Tink."

The next thing he knows, her mouth is pressing against his. They're both kneeling on the cold ground, snow hardening and becoming impacted under their combined weight.

"I'll always be sorry I had to leave you behind," she says, her forehead nearly touching his. "But then, you let me go. I saw it. I know you were awake the night I left. Are you saying you regret that?"

He waits until they're both standing again to open his mouth, still unsure of what he's even going to say. A loud crack precedes the bloom of red that spreads through her midsection, ruining her pristine white coat. He's still staring when a second shot goes straight through her heart.

It's so bewildering she's down before he can think to help her to the ground. "Well, that was certainly-" And he has to stop because truly, there are no words to describe what just happened.

Crouched on a snowdrift some distance away, curled over a hunting rifle, is another slim brunette. This one is younger. Forever frozen at twenty, and his mind will never see her any other way. The glare from the snow reflects off of the round glasses perched on her nose.

"Gemma," he breathes, huffing out a shaky laugh and biting his fist. She waves at him and he smiles back. She isn't like Mal. She's only looking out for her little brother.

"All right, toerag?" he thinks he hears her say. The howling wind makes it hard to know for certain.

He glances at his watch and pulls at the woolen cap on his head, calculating how much time he has before someone asks Ariadne what happened and she tells them. "Shit." With the cliffs miles away, there are few choices here. His arms raised, he gestures at Gemma. "Well, go on, then! One last solid." It's a testament to the life he's led that the sight of her pointing a rifle at him, taking careful aim for a kill shot, does not faze him at all.

Dream time being what it is, he makes it back while Ariadne is still taking her first, unsteady breaths in the conscious world. Before anyone else can come over, he makes short work of removing his IV and leaning toward her.

"We're done here," he says, casual as anything. Then he gets to his feet. Happily, the third level is completed, so the statement works in more ways than one.

Arthur is entering just as he is walking out and Eames gives him a cheery waggle of the fingers, thinking, Somehow this is all your fault. Bastard.

Then he goes back to Amrita's flat (Lovely girl, Amrita. She's a runway model slowly beginning to age out of her chosen career. It makes her incredibly eager to please.) and he nails her against the wall.

When Amrita gasps, she sounds remarkably like Ariadne, waking up from that last dream.

The next evening, he's at a Uni library researching Fischer-Morrow when he gets a text from Arthur. You have 30 minutes to get back here before I come after you. For a split second he thinks he knows what it's about, the certainty disappearing when he follows the attached link to an Associated Press blurb.

Maurice Fischer has just died in Sydney.

-Couer d'Alene, Idaho- (two days before Arthur left home)

Every family he'd ever lived with had called him "Artie". Though he didn't remember much from living with his mother, apart from flashes of slipping on an empty wine bottle and breaking his wrist when he was six, he assumed she had called him that as well. He didn't like it, always feeling like people were speaking to someone standing just next to him, but he never saw the point in telling anyone.

Because Artie was the first one home, Kitkat, the Weimaraner-Akita mix, whined at him the second he got in the door. Throwing her a rawhide chew-toy from a drawer in the kitchen, he punched the blinking play button on the phone. Either Owen or Maddie, the other kids in the house, would walk her when they arrive from middle school in half an hour.

"Hello, this is Crystal Brewster, Artie's case worker? Hope everyone's doing good over there! I'm calling to move up the date of our bimonthly mee-"

"I'm surprised you came home on time, considering what happened at school today."

Stopping the message, he turned around to favor Inez with a slight shrug. "Yeah, well, I didn't actually do it, so..." Her expression didn't so much as flicker. She didn't believe him. That was, well, he wouldn't call it okay. Expected, more like. He added, "I'm not so hard up for money I'd write papers for Ryan Schlitz. That kid is a cuntrag."

Inez took a long, displeased breath, and that was his only reward. She started walking back down the hall. "Just come on," she said, sounding tired, sounding done. Except it wasn't even tangentially his fault. As long as he'd known her, she'd never sounded any other way.

Still, there was something different this afternoon, some small lightening of the tension she carried in her shoulders. He thought about the message from Crystal, quickly running through reasons why his worker would need to change their routine. "Is Nick coming back?" he asked.

She let out a soft sound of surprise. "There was some issue at the oil rig and they had to shut down," she admitted as they stopped in front of the closet and she opened the door. "Don't know the exact details, but his flight gets in on Tuesday. I've already notified your social worker about the change in household. She probably called because she wants to speak with you about it."

For Inez, this sort of thing was an obligation. She punished him because that was what she did for the other twelve kids they'd been responsible for, including Owen and even Maddie, the only one who was there because of blood and not a placement from the state. For Inez's husband, though, this was almost fun. The whole process seemed to give him energy. The man was more content when pissed off. It was weird.

These past six weeks without Nick in the house had made Artie complacent. Two of them to deal with was just one too many. Two too many, if he were to be honest.

"It's now three o'clock," she was saying. "I'll let you out at six. Then we'll talk about which chores you'll be taking over for the next month."

He didn't look at her. His eyes were trained on the three square feet surrounding his sneakers as she closed the closet door, turning his world mostly black.

As he squatted down to sit, he heard a snuffling sound. Kitkat poked her brown muzzle through the space where the closet door had lost a bit of wood at the corner.

His fingertips brushed against her damp nose. "You, I'll actually miss," he whispered.

-Ellensburg, Washington- (three hours before Eames left home)

When Hugo told people that he and his mother spent most of their conversations talking about the weather, they assumed that was code for not having anything to say to each other. Though that couldn't have been further from the truth, he never corrected them.

"How many times did it rain this week?" she asked.

"Um, twice. Monday and Thursday. Yesterday, I felt a few drops, but it hardly counted."

"And it's expected to rain again next week?"

"Dunno. Probably."

"Do you like the new camera we sent? It's digital. Instant. Quite innovative."

"It's fantastic. Yeah." It was possible that he, accidentally, gave it to a kid in his homeroom in exchange for certain goods and services. That had happened after he realized how much of a waste it would be to--accidentally--chuck the thing out the window.

"You're to use it to snap photos of yourself wearing your Wellingtons every time it rains. Then you can email them to me every week. All right?"

"I'm not doing that, Mum."

"Sweetheart, don't be intimidated by the technology. The chap at the shop called it very user-friendly."

He picked at the ragged skin around his cuticles, rehearsing the lines in his head. You know that this isn't appropriate. You know this. You do. Please just listen to yourself.

"Was that a cough?" she asked.

His blunt fingernails made little crescent shapes in the heel of his hand. "I didn't cough. Static on the line maybe."

"I'm concerned about the radiator. Does Aunt Jeanette keep it warm enough in there?"

"'Course," he said, his throat tight, his eyes burning. "She's old, isn't she? Old people get cold easier. If anything it's too warm."

"Go to the thermostat panel and tell me the temperature, darling."

"Mum. No."

Her breath hitched. She said, "But-" and her voice broke and grew thick with distress. Muffled words were exchanged on the other side. The next sounds he heard were of someone else taking over the line.

"For God's sake, Hugo," his father said. "You can't humor her for thirty minutes a week? You can't just give her what she wants for that short amount of time?"

There was a time when just knowing that he'd upset them, either of them, was enough to make him back off. But that felt far away in a past that belonged to someone else. "What, is that what the doctors advise? Because they've done so much to help her so far."

"It's not like an antibiotic shot, son. I don't know what to tell you."

He leaned his forehead against the wall. "Jesus Christ. That's such crap."

"These days, she actually does seem better, sometimes. If you were here, she wouldn't be able to focus on anything else. You know that."

"How great for us all," he said flatly.

"Come on. It can't be all bad. What about your friends there?"

"Friends?" He wasn't about to tell his dad that everyone in school, from the captains of the basketball team to the closeted arseholes in the theater department, called him Tinkerbell. Or that he allowed it, because fuck them, it was true. He liked messing around with boys, and he wasn't ashamed of it. He just wasn't going to come out to his parents over a transatlantic telephone call during his bloody exile. "I've been expecting you to tell me my plane ticket is in the post every Saturday for almost five months. What the hell kind of friends should I have?"

"Now, boy, that isn't f-"

Hanging up on him felt equal parts amazing and horrible.

"Shouldn't use such language, lad." As he passed by the living room, Aunt Jeanette tutted and looped yarn around her finger, her disapproval accompanied by the click-click of her knitting needles. "Especially knowing how much your parents have suffered. Losing a child that way. It's not right."

His wooden footsteps came to a halt in front of her floating cabinet of porcelain cottages. What was it with old people and their useless shit? It took about five seconds to rip the thing off the wall.

"I'm the fucking one who saw it," he growled. And just like that, he heard the gunshots. He saw Gemma's left foot lose purchase on the ground as she fell. And the sounds of Aunt Jeanette freaking out over the cabinet washed right over him.

He went upstairs to his room and climbed out onto the roof. Laying his head back, he dug into his pocket and took out a piece of paper the size of a postage stamp with a picture of a palm tree on one side and LSD on the other.

The tiles on the roof changed colors for a while. One tree grew several feet above the others before shrinking out of sight. A sea gull landed near his right hand. Its yellow beak opened, letting out a voice that sounded like his sister's. "You know it's a lost cause, yeah?"

"I'm never going home," he agreed, his voice small and sad.

The bird flew away when he tried to pet its feathers.

-Joliet, Illinois- (seventeen days before Ariadne left home)

Ariadne and her brother did the same thing Wednesday night as they had Tuesday and Monday. Pajamas, yogurt-covered raisins, Jeopardy, and bed. This time she remembered to do prayers before it was over.

"God bless my teacher Miss Rochelle," Cass said, yawning, "and God bless my big sister. Amen."

"And Dad," Ariadne said, nudging him.

"Sorry," he told the ceiling. "Sorry, I'm not done yet. Please bless Daddy, too. Thank you. Amen."

"Okay, little man. Get into bed."

She pulled the covers over him and leaned over to ruffle his hair. "Good night, nobody."

"Good night, mush," he replied.

She kissed his face. "Love you."

She was only a few steps from the door when he asked, "Ari? Ari?"

Her sneakers made a tiny squeak on the hardwood floor as she turned toward him. "Yeah, Cass."

"My Batman has really tiny elbows."

Backtracking, she got in close, nudging their noses together. "This I've gotta see." She poked his side and he giggled.

"Can I show you his knees and his horns, too?"

"Those aren't really horns, I don't think. They're ears. But yeah. Sure. Quickly, though. It's time for Batman to be sleeping. We don't want him being all grumpy in the morning."

After putting together two lunches, one in a brown bag, the other in a Barney lunchbox, she settled in the den and took out her Chem textbook and a battered paperback of The Great Gatsby. As she had on Tuesday and Monday before that, she eventually passed out right there, with bits of homework covering the coffee table and the tv on at normal volume.

Always a light sleeper, she woke up when the couch dipped under the weight of a second person.

"Hum," she said, blinking and pushing hair out of her face. She looked at her father, then at the clock, confused. Even taking into account his 8:40 Intro To Ancient History course, he should have gotten home hours ago. "Late night, Professor. You have a date or something? You're supposed to tell me when you have those, so I can make sure you don't leave the house looking like... that."

"Sorry, kiddo." He laid his hand on her arm. "Didn't mean to wake you. Though I can't fathom how--or why--you always manage to sleep with the tv on."

She yawned, resisting the temptation to just stick her face back in the throw pillow. "If Cass wakes up from a nightmare, he hears the voices and he knows he isn't alone." She pulled herself up so that her head rested against the arm of the couch. "He's less likely to cry out or try to crawl into bed with me." The odd look on his face made her add, "Or, you know, you."

He took a deep breath, and his hand tightened around her arm.

"Whoa," she said, sitting up fully. "What? What?"

"I didn't tell you. I thought she'd have given up long before now." He hunched forward, his words little clipped bits of tension and misery. "I canceled all my classes today. And yesterday. And last Wednesday."

"Why."

"Court." He pushed against his knee with one closed fist. "Family court." The term made so little sense to her she didn't know what to say. "Your mother..."

Her exhale sounded like the beginning of a laugh. "What mother?" A bubble of disquiet grew in her stomach, begun by abrupt thoughts of the third day of fifth grade, when she'd opened the door to a house empty except for Cass, testing the limits of his infant lungs upstairs.

"She's taking him. The judge decided to let Castor go to Delaware with her and that man she married a couple of years ago."

"Yeah, I remember that wedding we weren't invited to." She shrugged off his hand. "Delaware? Are you kidding me right now?"

"I wish I were," he breathed, turning away to face the tv, squeezing the back of his head with his hands. "I really, really do. Cannot tell you how much."

"She's sent me, like, a birthday card in four years. She doesn't get to be our mother now." Despite the pronoun use, she knew that she herself wasn't part of the bargain. Too close to grown, she supposed. "Dad, tell me you didn't just lay down and let it happen. You're fighting this. Right? Was the judge drunk or something? Did she bribe him? I don't understand."

He let his chin fall to his chest.

"Oh my God. What is wrong with you?"

"Ari," he began haltingly.

"Spit it out."

"He- He's not actually mine. Biologically, I mean. I don't... Your mom, she..."

"My mom what."

"There were other men long before she left."

It struck her as strange, this determination that she not know about her mother's affairs. He knew that it wouldn't have affected her relationship with Cass. It wasn't like she cared where he came from. He was theirs. "How long?" she asked.

He didn't answer. Or, really, he did, by saying nothing.

"Dad?" she asked, hating how unsure and wary she sounded. "Am I yours?"

Rising from the couch, he picked up the remote and turned off the tv. "You should go to bed. Your bus will be here in five hours."

"Dad," she called. All she heard was the door to his bedroom closing behind him.

-LAX-

Quick, he'd said. Give me a kiss.

And then, when it changed nothing, It was worth a shot.

The little smirk on his face had told her everything she needed to know.

Things had always been so simple with Arthur. She hadn't expected that to continue. He wasn't supposed to forgive her. He definitely wasn't supposed to show that the space she used to occupy in his life was still in need of filling.

The space she used to occupy in Eames's life, the status of that is still a mystery.

She finds the man in question sitting on a metal chair in the seating area of one of those airport Bar & Grill's that charge too much for New York strip steak and brag about having ten or so beers on tap.

As soon as she sits down, he gets to his feet and walks away from the table. She remains where she is, unconcerned, sipping her beer, because he wouldn't have left his jacket behind if he weren't planning on coming back.

A dozen feet from the men's room, he bumps into a white-haired man in a navy blazer. Both men heap apologies on one another. Eames continues to the bathroom, while the stranger goes on to the other side of the terminal.

Ninety seconds later, Eames reclaims the seat next to hers. She tries her best to hold back a grin, but assumes she isn't very successful because the look on his face says, Fucking hell. Why did I do that?

"Nice," she says. "I taught you well."

"You did not," he protests, nonsensically.

The smile dips only slightly as she takes a sip from her beer. "What'd you get?"

Letting out a tiny, aborted sigh, he drops an iPhone on the table.

She scoops it up, happily, playing with the buttons and exploring the apps as though it's her own. "So where are you headed?" she asks. "He said you'd be out before the dust got a chance to settle."

"Phuket," he says, looking and sounding like he's too tired to lie. "Went once and I quite liked it there."

"How do you spell that?" she asks with a wink.

His responding smirk fades when she starts punching numbers into the phone. "What the fuck are you doing?" he says, as if he knows and wants her to give him another answer.

"Telling him where to meet us."

He downs the remainder of his drink. "Fucking presumptuous little-"

"Don't be so selfish," she hisses. "Have you looked at him even once this whole time? He could use an island getaway." Eames's lips press together. He knows that she's right. He even looks like he's feeling a flicker of shame, which convinces her to keep pushing. "I assumed you were taking care of him. You know he can't do it himself if there's someone else who needs him more."

Eames stands. "I have a plane to catch. This has been an unadulterated pleasure, really. Let's definitely do it again in two thousand twenty-something."

Clearing her throat loudly, she scribbles on a napkin and quickly slides it over to him.Corporal Arthur C. Strand
honorable discharge 20__, moves in with Dominic Cobb and Mal Miles
daughter of Stephen Miles, professor of Architecture at Universite ____
Eames falls back into his seat, his expression the type that has people warning about gathering flies.

She shrugs. "He was easier to track than you."

"Naturally," he says hoarsely.

"You never told me your last name." Or his first, actually, and for a moment she ruminates over how very wrong it is to still be infatuated with him. "I actually thought you might be dead, until you showed up in the warehouse. Wonderfully conflicted moment for me, I have to say. You were being such a prick and all I wanted to do was jump you. ...That's pretty close to normal for us, though."

"How much did you kn-" He shakes his head. "You orchestrated how much of this?"

"Ha." She takes the napkin back, carefully folding it in quarters and placing it in her back pocket to ensure that it doesn't get left behind or thrown out. "The degree you're thinking would have been impossible. Like I could install myself in a professor's class and become his favorite student in order for him to refer me to his son-in-law. I'm not God. No, I just... I was sitting in my dad's living room two years ago. There was the report in front of me from the private investigator, and I was already in the middle of picking a grad school and it was... a connection, however tenuous. It just felt right. I didn't move to Paris knowing any of this would happen. I didn't expect to bump into him. Or you, of course."

He stares at his fingers, drumming against the edge of the table. "Just a happy accident then," he murmurs.

She groans. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to not fucking kill you sometimes?"

"It's possible this isn't the first time I've been told such a thing," he says. It feels a lot like surrender.

She reaches out to still his hand, running her finger over the bumps of his knuckles. He doesn't flinch away.

He thinks he's changed so much, that he's beyond recognition, but he's wrong. He's still the most brilliant person in any room. He still deals with tension by stealing shit. He still distances himself when he's wounded, like an animal. And he still makes her feel like her stomach is on fire.

She kisses him, lightly rather than with the insistence from before. This is a promise of more to come. As she pulls away, he's dragging his eyes back open. "I'm going to go buy a plane ticket," she says, holding his gaze.

"Yeah," he replies, his voice soft and thick as if he just woke up. "Yeah, all right. You do that."

epilogue: Phuket, Thailand

Eames is struck by how plainly he can see the burden Arthur's been carrying, now that it's gone. Dressed in discount denim and a plain white t-shirt, he looks young, new. And rather like he bought traveling clothes at the nearest convenience store because he couldn't be arsed to unpack.

Arthur chooses a deck chair and leans toward Eames, forearms resting on his thighs, unconcerned about getting sand on his knockoff Converse. "Hey."

"Hi." Eames takes off his sunglasses. "The concierge must have been so confused when he saw your bags. I am willing to bet a very large sum of money that he initially thought you were there to beg for a handout."

"No bags." Arthur looks out at the water. "Tired of lugging shit around."

"Are you now?"

He smiles slightly. A quick flash of one dimple. "I left my suitcases at Dom's, but I can't remember whether he's storing them for me, or if I bequeathed my wardrobe to the kids."

"After a marathon session at the tailor, they'll be the most au courant attendees at their pre-school."

It wasn't all that funny and Arthur looks like he wasn't even listening, but he grins, his eyes ridiculously fond. "Goddamn, I love you."

Eames stares. "Jet-lag does the most interesting things to people."

"Shut up, Eames." Then he points. "Dom told me a little about the third level. Sometime soon, you're going to tell me every awesome thing you did down there."

"On that note, exactly how long was it for you in zero gravity?"

"A while," Arthur says, looking pleased with himself. Yes. Definitely a story there.

Ariadne follows the tide back out to shore and grabs a towel at Eames's feet before unceremoniously sitting on his lower half. The backs of her thighs drip water on his right shin while her sopping wet board shorts take care of his left.

"Shrew," he says, without rancor. She winds her hair into a rope around one hand, dropping a pool onto his bare stomach.

"So long," Arthur murmurs. "Have you thought about cutting it?"

"Nope," she says brightly. Hopes dashed, he appears to sink a little. Eames keeps his mouth shut. He prefers it long.

The waves crash against the sand, over and over. It really is the most amazing sound.

"So what do we do now?" someone says.

They sound nothing alike, but with his eyes closed and the ocean roaring in his ears, Eames can't tell who spoke. Nor does he care. "Lunch?" he suggests.