With Regard to the Shadowboxers [2/2]
[ previous part]
Two months later, he's hurtling down an alleyway in Salzburg, his shoes slapping against the rain-slick cobblestones. The harsh heave of his own breathing rings off the walls. The echo makes it sound like they're closing in on him from all directions, footsteps and indistinct shouts hemming him in at every turn. They probably are closing in on him from all directions. Shit, he thinks, his sides aching like they're about to split apart. Fuck, I'm well and truly fucked.
It's fallout from the Harbin job. He's not exactly surprised -- some amount of payback is to be expected when you double-cross your client and leave them stranded on a container ship on the Sea of Okhotsk -- but regardless, he is very, very distressed. His opinion is that there needs to be a statute of limitations on revenge, and that it should be illegal for disgruntled enemies to make attempts on his life more than a year after he had it coming to him.
He scans the buildings desperately, wondering if there's a way he can scale something. If he climbed up onto the lamppost and then jumped to the water pipe (fuck, is that them rounding the corner, no, thank god, false alarm), and used it as a handhold to pull himself up to the ledge of the window-- ten years ago, he would have made it easy, but in time he's traded in agility for more heft behind his punches, so it's a gamble at best--
His phone rings, piercing the night air. He curses, flattening himself against the wall, fumbling in his pocket to turn it off. But when he yanks it out, the screen tells him that Arthur is on the other end. (When did he transfer Arthur's number to his new cell? Did he do it that night he was drunk in Mumbai?) They haven't spoken since Eames stopped chasing him. Eames doesn't know why he's calling. And he doesn't even know what he's hoping for, but he takes the call anyway, straws to a drowning man.
"Eames," says Arthur, his voice clipped, urgent. "I know where you are."
"I'm knee-deep in shit," hisses Eames. "Don't know if I can really talk right now."
"Just keep moving," says Arthur. "Listen-- I've got you covered. I'm tracking your location, and I've got charges set up for at least half a mile around you. I can detonate them selectively, once you follow my directions and seclude yourself in a safe zone. I can get you out."
"You can't blow up Salzburg," says Eames in outrage. "It's a cultural heritage site!"
"Sure, okay, if you want to die," says Arthur.
"I promise to donate so much money to UNESCO," says Eames, faintly. "What do you want me to do?"
"Well, first," says Arthur, "you should admit that you lost."
"What?" asks Eames.
"Because you neglected to respond to my previous challenge," says Arthur. "You forfeited, Eames. You lost. I'll save your sorry ass if you can admit that."
"Now hold on a moment," says Eames, because it's one thing to choose defeat but another thing altogether to grovel before Arthur, and also because he doesn't bloody have time for this, not when the sound of pursuit keeps homing in closer.
"You're already a loser," says Arthur. "Be a loser with a sense of sportsmanship, at least."
Eames has stilled to a stop, his hand wandering into his pocket in search of his totem, something to fiddle with as he mulls over the proposition. But as soon as his fingertips brush the edge of the chip, Arthur barks at him.
"Are you still moving?" he says, sharp. "Come on, Eames!"
At the snap of his reprimand, Eames jerks his hand out of his pocket. But just as he's about to start running, a sneaking suspicion flits across the back of his mind. He pauses, slowly reaching inside his pocket again, waiting for Arthur's reaction.
"Do you want my help or not?" There it is, Arthur's impatient question, just when Eames makes as though to pull out the chip. "If you get shot because you were standing around waiting for them to get to you--"
"They're not coming, are they?" asks Eames. "They're not getting any closer."
"What?" asks Arthur. "Of course they are, what the fuck are you--"
"Arthur," says Eames, "why don't you want me to touch my totem?"
The weight of the chip in his hand is all wrong, naturally. The utter preposterous oddity of it all. He doesn't have Arthur's number saved, because he hasn't carried around a cell phone since he tossed his last one. His pursuants ever drawing impossibly closer. Arthur's offer to blow up Salzburg for him. The alleyways like a labyrinth, and how the hell did he end up in Salzburg, anyhow?
"Oh, well," says Arthur, "fuck."
There's a tremendous, deafening rumble that shakes the ground. When Eames regains his balance and looks up, chunks of stone and concrete are bursting free from the buildings, popped like kernels of corn, clouded in the dust of debris-- suspended in midair for a long heartbeat before they come crashing down over him.
+
He wakes up strapped to a chair in a dingy warehouse somewhere. Wincing, he shakes out his head, trying to rid himself of the disconcerting sensation of being crushed. At least it was mercifully quick, this time. (Trujillo: a whole hour of suffocation and hypovolemia.) He would flex his shoulders, but his arms are bound tight behind him.
"Not as bad as Trujillo," says Eames, as conversationally as he can manage with the wrong end of a dozen guns pointed at him.
Arthur's hired backup is a mob of ragtag disguises, their faces shadowed with balaclavas, neckerchiefs drawn up over their noses. Like a guerrilla army mustered at a hasty summons. But their hands are steady and Eames is almost laughably outnumbered, surrounded with the bright glare of the lightbulb overhead blinding him.
"Trujillo was bad for you," says Arthur, as the circle parts to let him through. "Though, you know, it would have been much worse if I hadn't been there to put you out of your misery."
He lets his IV line spool to the floor, onto the PASIV case lying between them. When he steps into the pool of light, Eames cranes his neck up to look at him-- but Arthur passes him by, crouching down behind his chair, fingertips smooth and cool across his wrist.
"Must have underestimated you again," continues Arthur, drawing the cannula out of him. The wet dab of alcohol. "I thought that maybe you'd be stubborn about the surrender, but I didn't really count on you seeing straight through the dream level. Was it really that obvious?"
"Well, in the end I was crushed to death by Salzburg," says Eames, "so I guess the joke was on me."
"What about now?" asks Arthur. "Still unwilling to admit defeat? Even with all this artillery in your face?"
"Honestly, Arthur," says Eames. "You'd screw me over a thousand different ways, but you wouldn't shoot me outside a dream."
Arthur gets to his feet, hauling himself up by Eames's arm, thumb pressing the cotton gauze hard into his skin. He lowers his mouth to Eames's ear, lips only barely brushing the shell of it as he speaks.
"I could just lightly maim you," says Arthur, very earnestly. "I'd do that."
"You probably would," agrees Eames, trying to focus on the ground at his feet, the skid marks on concrete. "But is that what you wanted out of this? Would you really be satisfied with a victory like that, wrenching it out of me? Is that any better than forced testimony?"
Arthur's breath ghosts across his cheek. Eames still can't see much of him, just the dark blur of his hair, the curve of his throat sloping down past his collar. He wonders if Arthur has changed. (Is his hair overgrown? Are there new scars across his skin?)
"If you wanted me to play fair," says Arthur, "shouldn't you have shown me the same courtesy?"
"What are you talking about," says Eames, "I didn't--"
"You gave that up the moment you dropped out," says Arthur, pulling back a little, drawing into himself with a tightness that Eames recognizes as anger. "And you had to be a complete ass about it, didn't you? Couldn't even deign to let me know what you meant by it-- when all you had to do was tell me you were bored, that you were sick of it. If only you'd told me that I was getting in your way, and you wanted me to just fucking keep to myself, I would have done it, you know that?"
"Arthur," says Eames in a rush of air, the blood suddenly hot in him, "you don't have any idea why I--"
A faint sound of music interrupts him. No, not music, it's the hungry growl of thunder. Or-- maybe it's music after all, the tune garbled and indistinct, but music in the distance. Outside the window, perhaps, some other part of the building, a deep grape-cluster of notes strung together, almost like a--
(But isn't it much too low for that, much too slow?)
They're not touching, not exactly, but Arthur is close enough that Eames can feel him tense up. And the moment that Eames realizes what that music is, he knows that Arthur can feel it in him, the flood of understanding washing over him.
The thirty-six bells of the belfry, he remembers. Béthune. My body's in Béthune.
It's fast. Arthur jerks up out of reach just as Eames throws all his weight toward him, rolling with the chair. Eames nearly has him, his outstretched foot almost hooking around Arthur's ankle, but Arthur doesn't trip, only catches himself from the brief stagger and darts past the ring of hired guns (projections, just projections, god fucking dammit), disappearing into the dark spaces beyond the flare of the lightbulb.
"Oh, fuck no," groans Eames, as the ceiling begins to crack. "Why can't you just--"
+
"--shoot me out or something," he gasps, "Arthur, you bastard."
He plunges a hand inside his jacket, whipping out his gun. Arthur is halfway to the door already, but he freezes at the sound of Eames going still, the silence of the aim.
The bells of the Béthune belfry are still chiming the hour, their peal sharp and silver all across the town square. This, he remembers. His room. The flour-scented landlady knitting downstairs. He remembers the flight to Lille Airport (window seat, honeymooners behind him, no longer in love) and he remembers the drive to Béthune (rental car, leather seat squeaking). Besides, that's two layers already, and he knows what almost happened the last time they tried to fit three into a single dream (scrambled egg). He keeps his hands level.
"You'd screw me over a thousand different ways," says Arthur, "but you wouldn't--"
"Turn around," says Eames.
Arthur does, slowly. And it's probably stupid, but -- even lying halfway on his stomach -- Eames is damn near swept off his feet by a surge of relief, because Arthur hasn't changed at all. It's him. In one of his off-duty uniforms, two buttons undone, cream and charcoal. The fine, dark print of his eyes written in languages Eames can't puzzle out.
Still the same Arthur he knows. Still sleek and beautiful as brushed metal. (What was that just now, Eames?)
"So," says Arthur, "I guess the joke's on me after all."
"Back to the wall," says Eames, and lowers one foot onto the floor, unhooking himself from the PASIV.
Arthur moves backwards in measured steps, their eyes still locked together. Or nowhere so stiff and brittle as that, more a long strand of gossamer, something gentler. Something hotter and slower, a trickle of honey. There's a smudge of blood on his forearm where he must have been hasty with the tubing.
"What're you going to do now," asks Arthur when he comes to rest against the wall, and Eames almost laughs, because isn't that a heavy question to ask.
"I don't know," says Eames. "Force you at gunpoint to promise to leave me alone, maybe."
"Aren't you going to finish telling me why you want me to?" asks Arthur. "Before, in the dream, weren't you about to tell me why you suddenly stopped sabotaging me?"
"Yeah, no, never mind that," says Eames. "I didn't know what I was saying, what with the face full of gun barrels and you breathing down my neck. It was quite a lot of psychological duress. But I mean, you already know why, don't you? You do know why I stopped?"
"Do I?" asks Arthur.
"Well, obviously, there was that assault on my hard-earned savings," says Eames. "And if that's not reason enough for you, there's always the part where you snatched my very potentially rewarding job right out from under me. Hopefully I won't need to tell the story about the tear gas all over again, because by the time I finish that one, there isn't a dry eye in the house, ha ha."
"If you say so." Arthur shrugs with one quick shoulder. "All right, let's say that's fair, but to be frank I don't like the thought of ending it like this. There's something very unresolved about it, you know?"
"Feel free to offer suggestions," says Eames. He's got Arthur cornered, feet apart between him and the door, two hands on the gun trained firm on his shoulder. Arthur doesn't much seem to be threatened by it, crossing his arms and rocking back onto his heels as he thinks.
"Here's something," says Arthur. "You come at me one last time, and then we'll call it even. Do that and I'll stop bothering you, I promise. Honor among thieves."
"All right," says Eames. "That's a deal."
"It's as much your word as it is mine," says Arthur. "Remember that you need to keep it, no matter what happens between now and then."
"Of course," says Eames. "There's no need to--"
"But you see," says Arthur, "the joke's still on you, Eames."
"What?" asks Eames, frowning. "Why is the joke on me, again?"
"Because," says Arthur, "you won't be able to stop thinking about this."
"What are you--" begins Eames, but then in a flash Arthur ducks under his line of fire, disappearing from sight. Before Eames can think to react, Arthur pops back up right in front of him, inside the tight circle of his arms, totally and completely invading his personal space-- and before he can step away, before he can even make out much of Arthur's face beyond the flutter of his lashes sliding closed, Arthur kisses him.
Arthur's lips are warm and soft on his, but it's just a brief press, more flirtation than abandon. A light peck like teasing, like saying hello. And still-- still, everything wipes blank. Fizzles out into white noise and an electric hum. Eames feels his own breath hitch in his chest.
It must only last a split second, but Eames finds himself turned into stone with his hands at his sides, gun fallen from his nerveless grasp. (Bad form, very bad form.) He starts back into motion when Arthur pushes away from him, and their arms shoot out, both reaching for his gun on the floor, but Arthur is closer--
"See you," says Arthur, half turning as he puts the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger.
+
He's nothing if not adaptive, but between what and god, oh god and I'm in Béthune and three levels, how, Eames doesn't manage to recover in time to chase Arthur up out of the dream. In a moment when Arthur's body flickers away and his totem confirms that he's been fucking had, Eames calms enough to shoot himself out; but by then Arthur has long since left.
Eames sits on his bed, running the poker chip over his knuckles. His room is exactly the way Arthur dreamed it on the first layer, of course, always with a meticulous eye for detail. Salzburg, the warehouse, and a pitch-perfect replica of Béthune. Three levels.
The paramount importance of never building from memory becomes clear to Eames with each passing minute, though he tries to stay until check-out the following morning just to convince himself that he's not thrown. It's not so much the sight of Arthur blowing his own brains out-- no, he's seen worse. (Kinshasa, Bowie knife, "The carotid artery is deeper than that, Eames, you f--")
It's the feel of Arthur's mouth against his. Darting his eyes toward the wall where Arthur stood, his heart starting to thump in his ribcage despite his measured pleas for it to stop being quite so excitable, please. Eames catches himself running his fingers over his lips. Several times.
Why Arthur did it, he hasn't the faintest clue. If by some force of blunt head trauma Arthur is actually interested in him, if Arthur wants him, then why'd he run out on him like that? What sort of a courtship is this, anyhow? And if Arthur's just a massive arsehole fucking with him for laughs, then what were those wistful moments over the phone, when Arthur had nothing but his own honesty driving him?
Eames could really do without Arthur's mixed messages, seeing as how he's at enough of a loss just trying to figure himself out. He stares at the far corner of the room and broods magnificently. The corner where Arthur leaned away from him, slender fingers splayed out over the pounding in Eames's chest, and Arthur's lips were slick and kiss-flushed as he reached for the gun, his eyes a little wet with want--
Only that's not how it was at all, even though Eames is more and more unsure with every inch the sun sinks lower. As dusk takes the town, he starts hearing the little sigh Arthur lets out into his mouth, the hot delicate curl of his tongue. All of it right there in the far corner of the room. Only that's not how it was at all (he thinks, he guesses, he assumes). That just about settles it, and Eames packs his bags and stomps downstairs to check out and never return to Béthune ever again.
All he has to do is stick it out for long enough to get Arthur back, one last time. And then the quiet and peaceful life of an international mindheist thief once more, no longer plagued with questions that stump him, no longer forced to admit with a jagged reluctance that he doesn't even know what he wants. A welcome end to the turmoil.
Eames starts digging. The first thing he needs to figure out is what brilliant twat finally came up with a compound that could hold three layers of dreaming, and then decided to hand it over to Arthur to be used in a sprawling game of cat and mouse. What a waste of talent. But when after weeks of bribery and coercion and wheedling he ends up with an I hear he is fond of the east coast of Africa, Eames is so unsurprised that he has to consciously work his way up to indignation.
"You know what they say about treachery and the ninth circle of Hell," Eames tells Yusuf, having eventually succeeded at achieving indignation. "Don't hang up, or I will send you there myself."
"I won't end up there anyway," says Yusuf. "It's a very Christian Hell."
"Why'd you do it?" asks Eames. "What did he give you?"
"Invaluable support, Eames," says Yusuf. "He helped me get my dream den franchise started. Do you know how much preposterous string-pulling that involves? My business is almost legitimate now, or at least it could pass for legitimate, if you don't look at it very closely. I've got an outpost each in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam already, and we're expanding to Addis Ab--"
"What in god's name do you need a franchise for," demands Eames.
"You think science grows on trees?" asks Yusuf. "Results require investment, and I can't dip into my own pockets indefinitely. I'm a good man, but I'm not a philanthropist."
Yusuf is nowhere close to being a good man by any stretch of the imagination. Eames informs him thusly, hangs up, and continues digging. A couple days later, Yusuf forwards him an invitation to the banquet celebrating the launch of his Addis Ababa location, but Eames is ornery and in Riga so he reports the e-mail as spam.
+
Eames honestly did mean to keep the location of Whittinger's tropical hideaway a secret, but he needs a favor from Margery Whittinger. Besides, Margery only asked for the information because she wanted to see her wayward bastard of a father for Thanksgiving, and Eames figures that's a noble enough reason to break a pact for.
"I'm going to brain him with a turkey when I see him," says Margery.
"Right," says Eames, "I'm going to assume that's a Whittinger expression of affection."
It's a hassle conducting business while constantly on the move, without a cell phone, trying to prevent Arthur from tracking him down and sniffing out what he's up to. Eames manages somehow, between pay phones and Internet cafes.
Margery's a godsend, an asset management consultant who has a furtive fondness for deep web research like most people have a sweet tooth. She cracks databases like most people scarf down a bar of chocolate. At Eames's request, she and her boys hunt down every barest hint of Arthur's trail, records of the purchases and contracts he handled while setting up Yusuf's franchise, security camera footage from major airports and banks.
"Are 'your boys' just a fond way of referring to your scripts?" asks Eames. "Or are they an actual band of twelve-year-old boys you collected on a forum somewhere? Do you have a following?"
"Whatever, Eames," says Margery. "They get the job done."
Eames sends out some feelers of his own, sidling back into the grind of the rumor mill. What's the hottest new tech in dreamshare? (What's Arthur got his eye on right now?) What's the most interesting job up for grabs in the next few months? (Where's Arthur likely to be?) Have I been slandered lately? (Has Arthur been talking about me?)
The general response to the last question is disappointing at best. His reputation has suffered no particularly significant setbacks, and what subterranean grumbling there is regarding "Eames's selfish, results-driven, cover-your-own-ass approach to dreamshare" leads nowhere. Mostly because it's admittedly too accurate to even qualify as slander.
A week into their search, Margery sends him a cryptic email.
Do you have people besides me looking into this? she writes.
"What do you mean?" asks Eames. "Are you saying that I should?"
"Well, it's just that I've been turning up recent data access history wherever I look," says Margery. "Not just once or twice, mind you. It's too consistent to be coincidence."
"It's definitely not my doing," he says. "I've only talked to you about this."
"If it's not you, Eames," she says, "then there's someone else looking for Arthur."
"I don't know who, or for what," he says, "but-- is it really so odd? Maybe he has an exasperated daughter who wants to spend Thanksgiving with him. So what if some other people want to talk to him, that's got nothing to do with us, right? Why would it?"
"Call me neurotic, but I'd rather make sure," she says. "I'm going to pry into this tangent a little bit, if that's all right. I'll get back on track as soon as I've confirmed that it's just background noise."
In the meantime Eames flies from city to city, rolls his suitcase across the vinyl floors of half a dozen airports. He sends Yusuf a postcard from somewhere. Might start a franchise of my own here, just to give you some healthy competition in return for your betrayal.
Yusuf replies by e-mail: Don't be daft. Your mind is phenomenally unsuited for business. Eames is in Reykjavík by the time he reads it. He finds a postcard with a picture of Eyjafjallajökull in mid-eruption, with the caption, Wherever you are, wish I were there. He has a good laugh and thinks of Arthur (sure, like he ever stopped). He would send it, but obviously, he can't.
Margery's next e-mail update is even stranger. What do you know about the Brotherhood of the Broken Wing? Far as I can tell, they're pretty unsavory, but that's all I've got.
Eames mulls over the question, then contacts the most unsavory person he knows. Given Eames's range of acquaintances, this is no small feat to accomplish, and Mad Dog Banzini is flattered by the designation. But the instant Eames mentions the reason behind his call, Banzini starts backing out.
"No, man, forget about it," he tells Eames. "There's shit even I don't get involved in, all right? What're you going after the Brotherhood for? Keep me out of this, ask the fucking Feds or something."
So Eames does.
"Where did you hear about the Brotherhood?" asks Morimoto.
"Never mind that," says Eames. "So you know who they are?"
"Not the individual members," says Morimoto, "and our understanding of the organization itself is very nebulous at this point. Did you get tied up with them, because if you did, I have a proposition for you--"
"I'm not going undercover for the FBI," says Eames. "What a terrible idea. Though, if you give me what you have on them, in return I'll share any specific dirt I manage to unearth. My contacts are better than yours, you know that."
"I'll take that, sure," says Morimoto. "What we know so far about the Brotherhood is precious little. Only that they've dabbled in your business, though they're mostly a real-world crime syndicate of sorts. They've only come to our attention very recently, so we're still just collecting information, at this stage."
"That's a whole lot of nothing," Margery tells Eames when he relays it to her. "Maybe the bit about their involvement in dreamshare, that could be a lead, we'll see. At any rate I think it would be best if you flew back here as soon as possible, Eames. I'm going to have more information for you in the next few days-- stay close, stay put, and stay in touch."
"Will do," says Eames. "So what do you think, are they after him?"
"Arthur's criminal activities are almost exclusively confined to mindheist," says Margery. "Since the Brotherhood's ties to that are tenuous at best, I don't know why they'd have any real animosity for him, but I'm not ruling anything out."
"I'll let you know when I get there," says Eames.
The Brotherhood of the Broken Wing. He repeats it to himself and wonders what he's got himself into now. Isn't that just like Arthur, leaving bogs of trouble in his wake. Isn't it just like Eames to get mired down in them, in him, even after he's sworn not to have anything to do with him.
+
"How bad does it look?" asks Eames, as soon as he lands in JFK.
"Even that's hard to tell," says Margery. "But the less buzz there is around a syndicate, the more wary you ought to be of them, as a general rule. And there's almost nothing on the Brotherhood at all."
"Christ," he says, and buries his face in one hand. "What's next, then?"
"I know I'll have something definite for you by tomorrow," says Margery. "But I also think we should probably stop discussing this over the phone."
"You think--" he starts, "are they reverse-tracking you?"
"I'm trying to figure that out," she says. "The best course of action would be for us to meet in person. I'm going to pencil you in for an open consultation appointment tomorrow morning, that way we'll have a clean block of time to go over my intel without waiting until I get out from work. Can you make tomorrow? I'll sweep my office for bugs in the meanwhile."
"I can make it," says Eames. "What time?"
"How about ten," says Margery. "You know the kind of clients we get, so don't draw any suspicion, please. Come in looking rich. Ask for Associate Whittinger."
"Yes, I know how to fit in," says Eames. "I do it for a living, Margery."
He hardly sleeps, that night. It occurs to him that he's straying further and further from where he meant to end up; this was supposed to be his last farewell blow to Arthur, wasn't it? The final shadowbox swing to end this play-fighting. (This love-tapping.)
But instead, he's lying awake with his eyes throbbing in the dark, wondering if he knows what Arthur doesn't. Should he call Arthur-- but no, that would be jumping the gun. Margery's still looking. Arthur can take care of himself, Arthur should take care of himself. Eames never volunteered to watch his back, anyway.
He wanders into a fitful sort of doze for an hour or two, drifting in and out of sleep until he sees the sun creep over the horizon. He's wide-awake in the bright exhaustion that comes by way of nerves. But what does he have to be nervous about?
Something about being unsettled makes him slow, and it's almost time for Margery's appointment when he's ready to leave. He grabs his wallet and turns toward the door, but then on second thought, he decides to call Morimoto before he heads out.
"Anything new on the Brotherhood?" asks Eames.
"I don't know if you'd be interested in it," says Morimoto. "Remember that mass murderer case from a while back? The consultation work that your friend Mangrove took up after you turned it down?"
"Yes, I remember," says Eames. "What about it?"
"The accomplice we nabbed," says Morimoto. "He was involved with the Brotherhood."
Eames hesitates with his hand hovering over the receiver of the hotel phone, but in the end, he doesn't call Margery. He's already late for the meeting, and he's about to talk to her in just half an hour or so. Just half an hour, and she'll know if it's threat enough to alert Arthur.
He drums his fingers against the cab seat, trying to distract himself with the traffic outside. It's started to rain. The restlessness in him is fraying into a gnawing anxiety. All of his mind is a clutter, and every time he tries to quiet the storm with reason, Nothing's for certain, you don't know that they're after him, a flood of worry throws him back. Arthur bruised and broken, screaming through a mouthful of blood. The sickening bent angle of his limbs.
I should have called him, he thinks, dazed. He screwed them over and now they're looking for him, what did I think they were going to do, award him with a medal? It could have been-- I was going to take that job, but this stupid fucking game-- god, why didn't I call him? Where is he? Is he all right?
The raindrops beat against the window, faster than the tapping of his fingers, misting up the windshield. Well, he has an umbrella, that's not the problem-- but that it's another muddle he can't peer through, can't make any sense of. It's another thing holding him back (on his way to Margery, no, on his way to Arthur).
The cab lurches to a stop and he swings his umbrella open, stepping out into the roar of the rain and traffic. It's hard to hear anything beneath that clamor, and he doesn't realize Margery is there outside her building, waiting for him, calling his name, until she runs up to him and grips his arm.
"Where's your cell phone?" she's yelling, shaking him. "Why didn't you pick up?"
"I don't have--" says Eames, "because I didn't want Arthur to--"
"Eames," says Margery, "they've got him."
The panic turns solid, choking him up, until the pounding of his blood drowns out the rain, the cars, Margery shouting at him through the din, They're going to put him under alone, extremely volatile compound, leave him there until it destabilizes his brain-- like it was an accident, like he was some sort of junkie that stumbled across the wrong high--
"Where is he," demands Eames, "where the fuck is he?"
"His room at the Carlyle," says Margery, "they got there ten minutes ago, hurry, I've written down--"
He nearly rips the paper out of Margery's hand, and fuck, of course his cab has driven away, but he's running down the street before she can finish her sentence, flagging down anything that'll stop for him, rainwater seeping into his shoes, his umbrella straining against the wind. He gets to the corner of the block but the cabs speed past him, full in the bad weather, someone warm and safe and oblivious already ensconced in the back seat, and Eames wants to scream, What the fuck do you need that cab for? Where the fuck do you have to be, ten minutes ago? But car after car just races past him, and finally Eames walks out into the road in front of some yuppie fuck's BMW, and he yanks the door to the passenger seat open, and the driver shuts up immediately when Eames pulls out his gun.
"Get me to the Carlyle," he says. "Drive like a motherfucker."
+
Draw a tree diagram. Label the branches. The door to Arthur's room can be one of two things; open or closed. The Brotherhood can also be one of two things; present or gone. Open-present, no problem, fucking shoot them down. Open-gone, no problem, if he's not too late. (Is he too late?) Closed-present or closed-gone, Eames will have to break in somehow -- if whoever's inside doesn't open at the sound of his pounding -- so is it a physical key or a card key? If he needs to bash in the door or shoot out the card key reader, he'll do it, but should he pick the lock, otherwise? Of course he has his lock picks with him, he hasn't forgotten his roots, he makes it a point to carry them around. (Does he have them with him? He does, right? Where are they, where did he put-- oh, they're in his jacket, he has them, only he doesn't know what kind of key the door takes, if it's a card key, and if there's no one inside, or if they don't open at the sound of his pounding, or if he's not too late, if he's too late, if he's too fucking late--)
His hand is shaking so badly he needs to bring up the other one to keep his aim steady. The driver jumps at the movement, casts a wary glance at the gun.
"I'm, I'm trying," stutters the driver, speeding through another red light, leaving the angry blare of car horns behind them. "I'm really trying."
So am I, thinks Eames, hold on, Arthur, but he doesn't trust himself to speak. Absurdly, he nods when they pull up in front of the hotel, like acknowledging a service well performed. Absurdly, the driver nods back before he races away. Eames's mouth is sandpaper-dry, his tongue thick and cumbersome. (Arthur crumpled on the bathroom floor, eyes like smoked glass, the IV line snaking across the tiles.)
All his vision shrinks down to a pinpoint tunnel, dark at the edges with dread. He hardly knows what he's pushing past, who starts out of his way, how he gets to Arthur's floor and how the thudding in his chest hasn't brought down the entire building. The corridor is door after door of wood and endless brocade, and it's like he isn't even getting anywhere, though he's running as fast as he can, past door after door that Arthur isn't behind. Please hold on, I'm almost there-- just, he thinks, just a little longer. Just one minute more.
He should slow down, creep up toward Arthur's door on silent tiptoes, but his blood is churning too fast for him to stop. He snaps the safety off as he goes, thundering down the hallway. Anyone could hear him from miles away, but he can't be arsed to give a shit, only knows that he'll fucking raze down a thousand Brotherhood fucks in his way, wring their necks with his bare hands if he has to.
And then, Arthur's room-- that's the one, he's there, oh god. The carpet's jammed between the door and its frame, probably twisted underfoot in a haphazard getaway. It's a minuscule relief, at least he won't waste time fiddling with locks, so Eames levels the gun before him, takes one big lungful of breath, and bursts in.
The room is quiet, empty and (Arthur, out on the bed, fuck, but first) Eames throws the closets open, skids to the bathroom, checks and finds every corner empty. He rushes back to the door and shoves it closed, drawing all the latches before he turns around and allows himself to look--
God, he thinks, frozen for one terrifying moment, his heart leaping up into his mouth before it plunges down, heavy in the pit of his stomach. Am I--
He scrambles onto the bed, trekking dirty rainwater all over the sheets. They must have caught Arthur as he was getting ready to head out, and he's only half dressed, spread out limp on the bed, his skin a pale, still stretch beneath the open front of his shirt. Eames hardly dares to breathe as he reaches out, pressing two unsteady fingers to the hollow beneath Arthur's jaw (please, please, please)--
--and then the flutter of a pulse, the warm, strong rhythm of it running through him like a current. Eames exhales, torrential. You're still here.
But that's the least of it. That's only a sign of life, no assurance as to what the compound might have done to Arthur's higher levels of cognition, his hold on sanity. Forcefully ejecting him out of the dream by shutting down the PASIV, that's always risky, even with the standard cocktail. He'll have to rule that out.
A kick would only work in the case of little to no sedative inclusion-- and if this compound resembles limbo at all, that would also be inadvisable. Eames has heard of greenhorns being hasty, administering kicks to lost teammates instead of going down to get them. Stories of that sort never ended well, usually involving irreversible oneiroid catatonia.
That leaves just one option; plugging himself in and fetching Arthur back. I can do it, thinks Eames. If he's still down there, I can get him out. He brushes a thumb across the bit of surgical tape anchoring the IV line to Arthur's arm. Wait for me, he thinks, and maybe as something to tide him over for the trip, something to hold onto, he looks up at Arthur's face.
He meets one opened eye peering at him.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he yells, jerking away so fast he nearly tumbles off the bed. "Oh my fucking god, what the fuck, Arthur!"
Arthur blinks open his other eye, and his smirk grows a little wider, cheeks dimpling beatifically.
"I knew you'd come," he whispers, conspiratory.
"You little shit," yells Eames. "Are you all right? No, I mean-- I was about to go down after you!"
"I'm touched," says Arthur, his smile so immeasurably sweet, so perfectly delighted. "I knew you would, though. Of course."
"What the bloody fuck is going on?" demands Eames, watching Arthur peel the surgical tape off of his arm, spool the IV line back into tight loops, the tubing dry and unused. "Is that PASIV even on, for heaven's sake?"
"It isn't," says Arthur. "But you didn't notice, did you?"
"What about the--" Eames makes a vague, baffled gesture. "What did you do with them?"
"Eames," says Arthur, "there is no them."
"But--" starts Eames.
"The killdeer variant on the third-act misdirection," says Arthur. "Think about it. The Brotherhood of the Broken Wing-- it was always only paratrepsis."
Paratrepsis. The broken wing of the killdeer. Ah, thinks Eames, distantly, like judging a playback of his own poor performance, that's what it was.
"No one was after me," continues Arthur. "All I did was buy off a few people, circulate a little misinformation. And generally, you shouldn't threaten a man at gunpoint if you don't want his daughter as your enemy."
Eames kicks his shoes off the bed, sheds his jacket, numb and stiff. Arthur props himself up on the headboard behind him, searching his expression. Eames can hardly take the scrutiny, so he flops down onto the mattress, burying his face in the pillows.
How did he let it pass him by? How did he ponder it all without the warning bells sounding in his head? As though he's ever used those words, broken wing, without referring to a diversionary tactic. Faking injury to draw attention, the killdeer way.
That's just the tip of the iceberg; the carpet jammed in the doorway, Margery telling him he's ten minutes late, and how possibly did Arthur just happen to be in a hotel room half an hour away from him? All of it too ridiculous to be chance, one suspicious circumstance after another, and somehow he believed every moment of it.
"I must be dreaming," says Eames, muffled, and rummages in his trouser pocket.
"No, sorry," says Arthur, "you're wide awake," and Eames's totem proves him right.
"Fine, you've made your point," groans Eames. "I'm a gullible sap and you've run circles around me. I've lost, you've won, I never stood a chance. Gloat as you see fit."
"Is that what you think my point is?" asks Arthur, abruptly, drained of all laughter. "You think I brought you here just to mock you?"
Something in his gut twists at the tone of Arthur's voice. Eames looks carefully away from him, unsure of what he'll find there, rolling over onto his back in a show of frustrated bravado. He fixes his eyes on the ceiling.
"Then why don't you tell me what you want," says Eames, chest tight. "Because I sure as hell don't know, Arthur. What have we been doing all this while, pretending we had nothing else on our minds but screwing each other over? What do you want from me?"
Arthur is quiet for a long moment. And then, with a sigh, he slides down onto the bed. The two of them end up lying there side by side, like they're out on a meadow at night counting the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Eames can trace the loose sprawl of Arthur's body, the unguarded relaxation in his limbs.
"In America we have a saying," says Arthur, at last, "that you can't step in the same river twice."
"Arthur," says Eames, "that's Heraclitus."
"Gesundheit," says Arthur.
"Thank you," says Eames, helpless.
"When I fucked up the job you were running in Florida," says Arthur, "I was bored out of my mind, but you know that already. I thought it would amuse me to sabotage you. It turns out I was right-- it was a great deal of fun, breaking your bank. Didn't you have fun, when you sent out that manifesto?"
"Well," admits Eames, "yes. I suppose."
"And some days, that's all I want," says Arthur. "I want to annoy you just to see you bluff like it's rolling right off you, smooth as water off a duck. When all the while you're itching to react, but you give it all you've got to keep that facade on, like you're too easygoing to let it bother you. Some days, I just want to piss you off, you know."
"You have a promising future in that," says Eames. "You're very talented."
"Some days, I want to work with you," continues Arthur. "I think we'd do well together. You're a much better forger than you are an extractor, but give me two months, I could make you the best of the best. I wouldn't work with any less. We could be a team, I think, take the entire dreamshare world by storm. We'd be unstoppable."
He shifts, curling up onto his side. Eames can feel himself about to twitch, instinctively straining to turn toward Arthur, if he isn't careful.
"And some days," says Arthur, softly, "I just want you to fuck me straight through the bed."
Eames does twitch, this time, the tell of his left ring finger spasming against the sheets. It takes him a herculean effort to keep still, with the blood in him coursing like molten lava, shooting down so fast below his belt that it leaves him dizzy. (Arthur, arching up beneath him, gasping through his parted lips, a fine sheen of sweat in the dip of his collarbone.)
"Remember that time you kissed me, in Béthune?" asks Arthur. "I tried to push you off, but you wouldn't let me. You were holding my wrists against the wall, and you stuck your tongue down my throat until I was moaning into your mouth--"
"What, no," exclaims Eames, "that's not how it happened!"
"Memory is a deceptive thing," says Arthur, shrugging. "Some days, that kiss is all I can think about."
Eames swallows, and the sound echoes through the room, around the Carlyle, over across the East River.
"God only knows what I'll want tomorrow," says Arthur. "Maybe I'll want to annoy you, or work with you, or ride you blind. But always, no matter what, I want you to be looking at me."
Eames tries to level it out, but when Arthur's fingers close in around his chin, the breath that leaves him is a shaky, ragged thing.
"It's you," says Arthur, "no matter what, it's always you," all of him lit up like it's the greatest, grandest declaration there is.
And the thing is, honestly-- it really might be. Because this is what the children know; that when you pull someone's pigtails it's because you want them to turn around, and even in the heat of their irritation, it's enough that they've only got eyes for you. And no one really knows what happens after they turn, but whoever plans that far ahead? If you want something badly enough, why would you let uncertainty still your hand?
What he didn't realize until now was that yes, he does want this, whatever it may be. Whatever it's going to become, whatever name they'll give it. What he didn't recognize was that Arthur is the only one who can throw him that far off his balance, get his heart racing quite that fast, in fear or in fervor. And neither of them have any one thing they know to ask from each other, but isn't that all right? Isn't the best way out of quicksand to let someone else pull you to the shore?
What does he want the two of them to be to each other-- important, is the only right answer there is. The only answer he needs. What he wants from Arthur is Arthur, just that. Just him. Both of them much too spoiled to have to choose.
"This wouldn't have worked at all," says Arthur. "You never would have fallen for it, if I didn't mean as much to you as I do."
"God, you're shameless," says Eames, starting to laugh in spite of himself. "Stop it. People will talk."
"Well, let them," says Arthur. "You do know, though, the fact still remains that I won this round? The battle and the entire war, if you will."
"Debatable," says Eames, and runs a careful finger across Arthur's lower lip. "I get to fuck you through the bed now, so who's the winner here?"
Arthur hoods his eyes, tongue flicking wet against Eames's fingertip when he speaks.
"Threaten me with something I don't want," he says.
Eames pretends to give it a moment's thought. Then he gets back up onto his knees, nonchalant, and makes as though to hop off the bed and leave.
"All right, all right," says Arthur, darting up, yanking Eames back down by his braces. "Fine, no one loses. That's great. I'm a pacifist."
He really, really isn't. There isn't much else in the world that Arthur is less of than a pacifist. But the objection gets caught in Eames's throat when he looks at Arthur, at the slow, steady burn in his eyes.
This is what he wants. Arthur is.
So instead of protesting, Eames can only ask, "This means you're going to stop running from me, right?"
"Eames," says Arthur, "I ran all this while just to get you here."
And when Arthur smirks, the tilt of his mouth a wicked curve, Eames thinks-- he would do anything for him. He would do a lot worse than blow up an entire cultural heritage site, a lot worse than carjack some yuppie's BMW just to drive uptown. He'd go down deeper than limbo to get him back. For Arthur, he thinks, he'd do a lot more than that.
(Eames doesn't know it yet, but he will.)
Two months later, he's hurtling down an alleyway in Salzburg, his shoes slapping against the rain-slick cobblestones. The harsh heave of his own breathing rings off the walls. The echo makes it sound like they're closing in on him from all directions, footsteps and indistinct shouts hemming him in at every turn. They probably are closing in on him from all directions. Shit, he thinks, his sides aching like they're about to split apart. Fuck, I'm well and truly fucked.
It's fallout from the Harbin job. He's not exactly surprised -- some amount of payback is to be expected when you double-cross your client and leave them stranded on a container ship on the Sea of Okhotsk -- but regardless, he is very, very distressed. His opinion is that there needs to be a statute of limitations on revenge, and that it should be illegal for disgruntled enemies to make attempts on his life more than a year after he had it coming to him.
He scans the buildings desperately, wondering if there's a way he can scale something. If he climbed up onto the lamppost and then jumped to the water pipe (fuck, is that them rounding the corner, no, thank god, false alarm), and used it as a handhold to pull himself up to the ledge of the window-- ten years ago, he would have made it easy, but in time he's traded in agility for more heft behind his punches, so it's a gamble at best--
His phone rings, piercing the night air. He curses, flattening himself against the wall, fumbling in his pocket to turn it off. But when he yanks it out, the screen tells him that Arthur is on the other end. (When did he transfer Arthur's number to his new cell? Did he do it that night he was drunk in Mumbai?) They haven't spoken since Eames stopped chasing him. Eames doesn't know why he's calling. And he doesn't even know what he's hoping for, but he takes the call anyway, straws to a drowning man.
"Eames," says Arthur, his voice clipped, urgent. "I know where you are."
"I'm knee-deep in shit," hisses Eames. "Don't know if I can really talk right now."
"Just keep moving," says Arthur. "Listen-- I've got you covered. I'm tracking your location, and I've got charges set up for at least half a mile around you. I can detonate them selectively, once you follow my directions and seclude yourself in a safe zone. I can get you out."
"You can't blow up Salzburg," says Eames in outrage. "It's a cultural heritage site!"
"Sure, okay, if you want to die," says Arthur.
"I promise to donate so much money to UNESCO," says Eames, faintly. "What do you want me to do?"
"Well, first," says Arthur, "you should admit that you lost."
"What?" asks Eames.
"Because you neglected to respond to my previous challenge," says Arthur. "You forfeited, Eames. You lost. I'll save your sorry ass if you can admit that."
"Now hold on a moment," says Eames, because it's one thing to choose defeat but another thing altogether to grovel before Arthur, and also because he doesn't bloody have time for this, not when the sound of pursuit keeps homing in closer.
"You're already a loser," says Arthur. "Be a loser with a sense of sportsmanship, at least."
Eames has stilled to a stop, his hand wandering into his pocket in search of his totem, something to fiddle with as he mulls over the proposition. But as soon as his fingertips brush the edge of the chip, Arthur barks at him.
"Are you still moving?" he says, sharp. "Come on, Eames!"
At the snap of his reprimand, Eames jerks his hand out of his pocket. But just as he's about to start running, a sneaking suspicion flits across the back of his mind. He pauses, slowly reaching inside his pocket again, waiting for Arthur's reaction.
"Do you want my help or not?" There it is, Arthur's impatient question, just when Eames makes as though to pull out the chip. "If you get shot because you were standing around waiting for them to get to you--"
"They're not coming, are they?" asks Eames. "They're not getting any closer."
"What?" asks Arthur. "Of course they are, what the fuck are you--"
"Arthur," says Eames, "why don't you want me to touch my totem?"
The weight of the chip in his hand is all wrong, naturally. The utter preposterous oddity of it all. He doesn't have Arthur's number saved, because he hasn't carried around a cell phone since he tossed his last one. His pursuants ever drawing impossibly closer. Arthur's offer to blow up Salzburg for him. The alleyways like a labyrinth, and how the hell did he end up in Salzburg, anyhow?
"Oh, well," says Arthur, "fuck."
There's a tremendous, deafening rumble that shakes the ground. When Eames regains his balance and looks up, chunks of stone and concrete are bursting free from the buildings, popped like kernels of corn, clouded in the dust of debris-- suspended in midair for a long heartbeat before they come crashing down over him.
+
He wakes up strapped to a chair in a dingy warehouse somewhere. Wincing, he shakes out his head, trying to rid himself of the disconcerting sensation of being crushed. At least it was mercifully quick, this time. (Trujillo: a whole hour of suffocation and hypovolemia.) He would flex his shoulders, but his arms are bound tight behind him.
"Not as bad as Trujillo," says Eames, as conversationally as he can manage with the wrong end of a dozen guns pointed at him.
Arthur's hired backup is a mob of ragtag disguises, their faces shadowed with balaclavas, neckerchiefs drawn up over their noses. Like a guerrilla army mustered at a hasty summons. But their hands are steady and Eames is almost laughably outnumbered, surrounded with the bright glare of the lightbulb overhead blinding him.
"Trujillo was bad for you," says Arthur, as the circle parts to let him through. "Though, you know, it would have been much worse if I hadn't been there to put you out of your misery."
He lets his IV line spool to the floor, onto the PASIV case lying between them. When he steps into the pool of light, Eames cranes his neck up to look at him-- but Arthur passes him by, crouching down behind his chair, fingertips smooth and cool across his wrist.
"Must have underestimated you again," continues Arthur, drawing the cannula out of him. The wet dab of alcohol. "I thought that maybe you'd be stubborn about the surrender, but I didn't really count on you seeing straight through the dream level. Was it really that obvious?"
"Well, in the end I was crushed to death by Salzburg," says Eames, "so I guess the joke was on me."
"What about now?" asks Arthur. "Still unwilling to admit defeat? Even with all this artillery in your face?"
"Honestly, Arthur," says Eames. "You'd screw me over a thousand different ways, but you wouldn't shoot me outside a dream."
Arthur gets to his feet, hauling himself up by Eames's arm, thumb pressing the cotton gauze hard into his skin. He lowers his mouth to Eames's ear, lips only barely brushing the shell of it as he speaks.
"I could just lightly maim you," says Arthur, very earnestly. "I'd do that."
"You probably would," agrees Eames, trying to focus on the ground at his feet, the skid marks on concrete. "But is that what you wanted out of this? Would you really be satisfied with a victory like that, wrenching it out of me? Is that any better than forced testimony?"
Arthur's breath ghosts across his cheek. Eames still can't see much of him, just the dark blur of his hair, the curve of his throat sloping down past his collar. He wonders if Arthur has changed. (Is his hair overgrown? Are there new scars across his skin?)
"If you wanted me to play fair," says Arthur, "shouldn't you have shown me the same courtesy?"
"What are you talking about," says Eames, "I didn't--"
"You gave that up the moment you dropped out," says Arthur, pulling back a little, drawing into himself with a tightness that Eames recognizes as anger. "And you had to be a complete ass about it, didn't you? Couldn't even deign to let me know what you meant by it-- when all you had to do was tell me you were bored, that you were sick of it. If only you'd told me that I was getting in your way, and you wanted me to just fucking keep to myself, I would have done it, you know that?"
"Arthur," says Eames in a rush of air, the blood suddenly hot in him, "you don't have any idea why I--"
A faint sound of music interrupts him. No, not music, it's the hungry growl of thunder. Or-- maybe it's music after all, the tune garbled and indistinct, but music in the distance. Outside the window, perhaps, some other part of the building, a deep grape-cluster of notes strung together, almost like a--
(But isn't it much too low for that, much too slow?)
They're not touching, not exactly, but Arthur is close enough that Eames can feel him tense up. And the moment that Eames realizes what that music is, he knows that Arthur can feel it in him, the flood of understanding washing over him.
The thirty-six bells of the belfry, he remembers. Béthune. My body's in Béthune.
It's fast. Arthur jerks up out of reach just as Eames throws all his weight toward him, rolling with the chair. Eames nearly has him, his outstretched foot almost hooking around Arthur's ankle, but Arthur doesn't trip, only catches himself from the brief stagger and darts past the ring of hired guns (projections, just projections, god fucking dammit), disappearing into the dark spaces beyond the flare of the lightbulb.
"Oh, fuck no," groans Eames, as the ceiling begins to crack. "Why can't you just--"
+
"--shoot me out or something," he gasps, "Arthur, you bastard."
He plunges a hand inside his jacket, whipping out his gun. Arthur is halfway to the door already, but he freezes at the sound of Eames going still, the silence of the aim.
The bells of the Béthune belfry are still chiming the hour, their peal sharp and silver all across the town square. This, he remembers. His room. The flour-scented landlady knitting downstairs. He remembers the flight to Lille Airport (window seat, honeymooners behind him, no longer in love) and he remembers the drive to Béthune (rental car, leather seat squeaking). Besides, that's two layers already, and he knows what almost happened the last time they tried to fit three into a single dream (scrambled egg). He keeps his hands level.
"You'd screw me over a thousand different ways," says Arthur, "but you wouldn't--"
"Turn around," says Eames.
Arthur does, slowly. And it's probably stupid, but -- even lying halfway on his stomach -- Eames is damn near swept off his feet by a surge of relief, because Arthur hasn't changed at all. It's him. In one of his off-duty uniforms, two buttons undone, cream and charcoal. The fine, dark print of his eyes written in languages Eames can't puzzle out.
Still the same Arthur he knows. Still sleek and beautiful as brushed metal. (What was that just now, Eames?)
"So," says Arthur, "I guess the joke's on me after all."
"Back to the wall," says Eames, and lowers one foot onto the floor, unhooking himself from the PASIV.
Arthur moves backwards in measured steps, their eyes still locked together. Or nowhere so stiff and brittle as that, more a long strand of gossamer, something gentler. Something hotter and slower, a trickle of honey. There's a smudge of blood on his forearm where he must have been hasty with the tubing.
"What're you going to do now," asks Arthur when he comes to rest against the wall, and Eames almost laughs, because isn't that a heavy question to ask.
"I don't know," says Eames. "Force you at gunpoint to promise to leave me alone, maybe."
"Aren't you going to finish telling me why you want me to?" asks Arthur. "Before, in the dream, weren't you about to tell me why you suddenly stopped sabotaging me?"
"Yeah, no, never mind that," says Eames. "I didn't know what I was saying, what with the face full of gun barrels and you breathing down my neck. It was quite a lot of psychological duress. But I mean, you already know why, don't you? You do know why I stopped?"
"Do I?" asks Arthur.
"Well, obviously, there was that assault on my hard-earned savings," says Eames. "And if that's not reason enough for you, there's always the part where you snatched my very potentially rewarding job right out from under me. Hopefully I won't need to tell the story about the tear gas all over again, because by the time I finish that one, there isn't a dry eye in the house, ha ha."
"If you say so." Arthur shrugs with one quick shoulder. "All right, let's say that's fair, but to be frank I don't like the thought of ending it like this. There's something very unresolved about it, you know?"
"Feel free to offer suggestions," says Eames. He's got Arthur cornered, feet apart between him and the door, two hands on the gun trained firm on his shoulder. Arthur doesn't much seem to be threatened by it, crossing his arms and rocking back onto his heels as he thinks.
"Here's something," says Arthur. "You come at me one last time, and then we'll call it even. Do that and I'll stop bothering you, I promise. Honor among thieves."
"All right," says Eames. "That's a deal."
"It's as much your word as it is mine," says Arthur. "Remember that you need to keep it, no matter what happens between now and then."
"Of course," says Eames. "There's no need to--"
"But you see," says Arthur, "the joke's still on you, Eames."
"What?" asks Eames, frowning. "Why is the joke on me, again?"
"Because," says Arthur, "you won't be able to stop thinking about this."
"What are you--" begins Eames, but then in a flash Arthur ducks under his line of fire, disappearing from sight. Before Eames can think to react, Arthur pops back up right in front of him, inside the tight circle of his arms, totally and completely invading his personal space-- and before he can step away, before he can even make out much of Arthur's face beyond the flutter of his lashes sliding closed, Arthur kisses him.
Arthur's lips are warm and soft on his, but it's just a brief press, more flirtation than abandon. A light peck like teasing, like saying hello. And still-- still, everything wipes blank. Fizzles out into white noise and an electric hum. Eames feels his own breath hitch in his chest.
It must only last a split second, but Eames finds himself turned into stone with his hands at his sides, gun fallen from his nerveless grasp. (Bad form, very bad form.) He starts back into motion when Arthur pushes away from him, and their arms shoot out, both reaching for his gun on the floor, but Arthur is closer--
"See you," says Arthur, half turning as he puts the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger.
+
He's nothing if not adaptive, but between what and god, oh god and I'm in Béthune and three levels, how, Eames doesn't manage to recover in time to chase Arthur up out of the dream. In a moment when Arthur's body flickers away and his totem confirms that he's been fucking had, Eames calms enough to shoot himself out; but by then Arthur has long since left.
Eames sits on his bed, running the poker chip over his knuckles. His room is exactly the way Arthur dreamed it on the first layer, of course, always with a meticulous eye for detail. Salzburg, the warehouse, and a pitch-perfect replica of Béthune. Three levels.
The paramount importance of never building from memory becomes clear to Eames with each passing minute, though he tries to stay until check-out the following morning just to convince himself that he's not thrown. It's not so much the sight of Arthur blowing his own brains out-- no, he's seen worse. (Kinshasa, Bowie knife, "The carotid artery is deeper than that, Eames, you f--")
It's the feel of Arthur's mouth against his. Darting his eyes toward the wall where Arthur stood, his heart starting to thump in his ribcage despite his measured pleas for it to stop being quite so excitable, please. Eames catches himself running his fingers over his lips. Several times.
Why Arthur did it, he hasn't the faintest clue. If by some force of blunt head trauma Arthur is actually interested in him, if Arthur wants him, then why'd he run out on him like that? What sort of a courtship is this, anyhow? And if Arthur's just a massive arsehole fucking with him for laughs, then what were those wistful moments over the phone, when Arthur had nothing but his own honesty driving him?
Eames could really do without Arthur's mixed messages, seeing as how he's at enough of a loss just trying to figure himself out. He stares at the far corner of the room and broods magnificently. The corner where Arthur leaned away from him, slender fingers splayed out over the pounding in Eames's chest, and Arthur's lips were slick and kiss-flushed as he reached for the gun, his eyes a little wet with want--
Only that's not how it was at all, even though Eames is more and more unsure with every inch the sun sinks lower. As dusk takes the town, he starts hearing the little sigh Arthur lets out into his mouth, the hot delicate curl of his tongue. All of it right there in the far corner of the room. Only that's not how it was at all (he thinks, he guesses, he assumes). That just about settles it, and Eames packs his bags and stomps downstairs to check out and never return to Béthune ever again.
All he has to do is stick it out for long enough to get Arthur back, one last time. And then the quiet and peaceful life of an international mindheist thief once more, no longer plagued with questions that stump him, no longer forced to admit with a jagged reluctance that he doesn't even know what he wants. A welcome end to the turmoil.
Eames starts digging. The first thing he needs to figure out is what brilliant twat finally came up with a compound that could hold three layers of dreaming, and then decided to hand it over to Arthur to be used in a sprawling game of cat and mouse. What a waste of talent. But when after weeks of bribery and coercion and wheedling he ends up with an I hear he is fond of the east coast of Africa, Eames is so unsurprised that he has to consciously work his way up to indignation.
"You know what they say about treachery and the ninth circle of Hell," Eames tells Yusuf, having eventually succeeded at achieving indignation. "Don't hang up, or I will send you there myself."
"I won't end up there anyway," says Yusuf. "It's a very Christian Hell."
"Why'd you do it?" asks Eames. "What did he give you?"
"Invaluable support, Eames," says Yusuf. "He helped me get my dream den franchise started. Do you know how much preposterous string-pulling that involves? My business is almost legitimate now, or at least it could pass for legitimate, if you don't look at it very closely. I've got an outpost each in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam already, and we're expanding to Addis Ab--"
"What in god's name do you need a franchise for," demands Eames.
"You think science grows on trees?" asks Yusuf. "Results require investment, and I can't dip into my own pockets indefinitely. I'm a good man, but I'm not a philanthropist."
Yusuf is nowhere close to being a good man by any stretch of the imagination. Eames informs him thusly, hangs up, and continues digging. A couple days later, Yusuf forwards him an invitation to the banquet celebrating the launch of his Addis Ababa location, but Eames is ornery and in Riga so he reports the e-mail as spam.
+
Eames honestly did mean to keep the location of Whittinger's tropical hideaway a secret, but he needs a favor from Margery Whittinger. Besides, Margery only asked for the information because she wanted to see her wayward bastard of a father for Thanksgiving, and Eames figures that's a noble enough reason to break a pact for.
"I'm going to brain him with a turkey when I see him," says Margery.
"Right," says Eames, "I'm going to assume that's a Whittinger expression of affection."
It's a hassle conducting business while constantly on the move, without a cell phone, trying to prevent Arthur from tracking him down and sniffing out what he's up to. Eames manages somehow, between pay phones and Internet cafes.
Margery's a godsend, an asset management consultant who has a furtive fondness for deep web research like most people have a sweet tooth. She cracks databases like most people scarf down a bar of chocolate. At Eames's request, she and her boys hunt down every barest hint of Arthur's trail, records of the purchases and contracts he handled while setting up Yusuf's franchise, security camera footage from major airports and banks.
"Are 'your boys' just a fond way of referring to your scripts?" asks Eames. "Or are they an actual band of twelve-year-old boys you collected on a forum somewhere? Do you have a following?"
"Whatever, Eames," says Margery. "They get the job done."
Eames sends out some feelers of his own, sidling back into the grind of the rumor mill. What's the hottest new tech in dreamshare? (What's Arthur got his eye on right now?) What's the most interesting job up for grabs in the next few months? (Where's Arthur likely to be?) Have I been slandered lately? (Has Arthur been talking about me?)
The general response to the last question is disappointing at best. His reputation has suffered no particularly significant setbacks, and what subterranean grumbling there is regarding "Eames's selfish, results-driven, cover-your-own-ass approach to dreamshare" leads nowhere. Mostly because it's admittedly too accurate to even qualify as slander.
A week into their search, Margery sends him a cryptic email.
Do you have people besides me looking into this? she writes.
"What do you mean?" asks Eames. "Are you saying that I should?"
"Well, it's just that I've been turning up recent data access history wherever I look," says Margery. "Not just once or twice, mind you. It's too consistent to be coincidence."
"It's definitely not my doing," he says. "I've only talked to you about this."
"If it's not you, Eames," she says, "then there's someone else looking for Arthur."
"I don't know who, or for what," he says, "but-- is it really so odd? Maybe he has an exasperated daughter who wants to spend Thanksgiving with him. So what if some other people want to talk to him, that's got nothing to do with us, right? Why would it?"
"Call me neurotic, but I'd rather make sure," she says. "I'm going to pry into this tangent a little bit, if that's all right. I'll get back on track as soon as I've confirmed that it's just background noise."
In the meantime Eames flies from city to city, rolls his suitcase across the vinyl floors of half a dozen airports. He sends Yusuf a postcard from somewhere. Might start a franchise of my own here, just to give you some healthy competition in return for your betrayal.
Yusuf replies by e-mail: Don't be daft. Your mind is phenomenally unsuited for business. Eames is in Reykjavík by the time he reads it. He finds a postcard with a picture of Eyjafjallajökull in mid-eruption, with the caption, Wherever you are, wish I were there. He has a good laugh and thinks of Arthur (sure, like he ever stopped). He would send it, but obviously, he can't.
Margery's next e-mail update is even stranger. What do you know about the Brotherhood of the Broken Wing? Far as I can tell, they're pretty unsavory, but that's all I've got.
Eames mulls over the question, then contacts the most unsavory person he knows. Given Eames's range of acquaintances, this is no small feat to accomplish, and Mad Dog Banzini is flattered by the designation. But the instant Eames mentions the reason behind his call, Banzini starts backing out.
"No, man, forget about it," he tells Eames. "There's shit even I don't get involved in, all right? What're you going after the Brotherhood for? Keep me out of this, ask the fucking Feds or something."
So Eames does.
"Where did you hear about the Brotherhood?" asks Morimoto.
"Never mind that," says Eames. "So you know who they are?"
"Not the individual members," says Morimoto, "and our understanding of the organization itself is very nebulous at this point. Did you get tied up with them, because if you did, I have a proposition for you--"
"I'm not going undercover for the FBI," says Eames. "What a terrible idea. Though, if you give me what you have on them, in return I'll share any specific dirt I manage to unearth. My contacts are better than yours, you know that."
"I'll take that, sure," says Morimoto. "What we know so far about the Brotherhood is precious little. Only that they've dabbled in your business, though they're mostly a real-world crime syndicate of sorts. They've only come to our attention very recently, so we're still just collecting information, at this stage."
"That's a whole lot of nothing," Margery tells Eames when he relays it to her. "Maybe the bit about their involvement in dreamshare, that could be a lead, we'll see. At any rate I think it would be best if you flew back here as soon as possible, Eames. I'm going to have more information for you in the next few days-- stay close, stay put, and stay in touch."
"Will do," says Eames. "So what do you think, are they after him?"
"Arthur's criminal activities are almost exclusively confined to mindheist," says Margery. "Since the Brotherhood's ties to that are tenuous at best, I don't know why they'd have any real animosity for him, but I'm not ruling anything out."
"I'll let you know when I get there," says Eames.
The Brotherhood of the Broken Wing. He repeats it to himself and wonders what he's got himself into now. Isn't that just like Arthur, leaving bogs of trouble in his wake. Isn't it just like Eames to get mired down in them, in him, even after he's sworn not to have anything to do with him.
+
"How bad does it look?" asks Eames, as soon as he lands in JFK.
"Even that's hard to tell," says Margery. "But the less buzz there is around a syndicate, the more wary you ought to be of them, as a general rule. And there's almost nothing on the Brotherhood at all."
"Christ," he says, and buries his face in one hand. "What's next, then?"
"I know I'll have something definite for you by tomorrow," says Margery. "But I also think we should probably stop discussing this over the phone."
"You think--" he starts, "are they reverse-tracking you?"
"I'm trying to figure that out," she says. "The best course of action would be for us to meet in person. I'm going to pencil you in for an open consultation appointment tomorrow morning, that way we'll have a clean block of time to go over my intel without waiting until I get out from work. Can you make tomorrow? I'll sweep my office for bugs in the meanwhile."
"I can make it," says Eames. "What time?"
"How about ten," says Margery. "You know the kind of clients we get, so don't draw any suspicion, please. Come in looking rich. Ask for Associate Whittinger."
"Yes, I know how to fit in," says Eames. "I do it for a living, Margery."
He hardly sleeps, that night. It occurs to him that he's straying further and further from where he meant to end up; this was supposed to be his last farewell blow to Arthur, wasn't it? The final shadowbox swing to end this play-fighting. (This love-tapping.)
But instead, he's lying awake with his eyes throbbing in the dark, wondering if he knows what Arthur doesn't. Should he call Arthur-- but no, that would be jumping the gun. Margery's still looking. Arthur can take care of himself, Arthur should take care of himself. Eames never volunteered to watch his back, anyway.
He wanders into a fitful sort of doze for an hour or two, drifting in and out of sleep until he sees the sun creep over the horizon. He's wide-awake in the bright exhaustion that comes by way of nerves. But what does he have to be nervous about?
Something about being unsettled makes him slow, and it's almost time for Margery's appointment when he's ready to leave. He grabs his wallet and turns toward the door, but then on second thought, he decides to call Morimoto before he heads out.
"Anything new on the Brotherhood?" asks Eames.
"I don't know if you'd be interested in it," says Morimoto. "Remember that mass murderer case from a while back? The consultation work that your friend Mangrove took up after you turned it down?"
"Yes, I remember," says Eames. "What about it?"
"The accomplice we nabbed," says Morimoto. "He was involved with the Brotherhood."
Eames hesitates with his hand hovering over the receiver of the hotel phone, but in the end, he doesn't call Margery. He's already late for the meeting, and he's about to talk to her in just half an hour or so. Just half an hour, and she'll know if it's threat enough to alert Arthur.
He drums his fingers against the cab seat, trying to distract himself with the traffic outside. It's started to rain. The restlessness in him is fraying into a gnawing anxiety. All of his mind is a clutter, and every time he tries to quiet the storm with reason, Nothing's for certain, you don't know that they're after him, a flood of worry throws him back. Arthur bruised and broken, screaming through a mouthful of blood. The sickening bent angle of his limbs.
I should have called him, he thinks, dazed. He screwed them over and now they're looking for him, what did I think they were going to do, award him with a medal? It could have been-- I was going to take that job, but this stupid fucking game-- god, why didn't I call him? Where is he? Is he all right?
The raindrops beat against the window, faster than the tapping of his fingers, misting up the windshield. Well, he has an umbrella, that's not the problem-- but that it's another muddle he can't peer through, can't make any sense of. It's another thing holding him back (on his way to Margery, no, on his way to Arthur).
The cab lurches to a stop and he swings his umbrella open, stepping out into the roar of the rain and traffic. It's hard to hear anything beneath that clamor, and he doesn't realize Margery is there outside her building, waiting for him, calling his name, until she runs up to him and grips his arm.
"Where's your cell phone?" she's yelling, shaking him. "Why didn't you pick up?"
"I don't have--" says Eames, "because I didn't want Arthur to--"
"Eames," says Margery, "they've got him."
The panic turns solid, choking him up, until the pounding of his blood drowns out the rain, the cars, Margery shouting at him through the din, They're going to put him under alone, extremely volatile compound, leave him there until it destabilizes his brain-- like it was an accident, like he was some sort of junkie that stumbled across the wrong high--
"Where is he," demands Eames, "where the fuck is he?"
"His room at the Carlyle," says Margery, "they got there ten minutes ago, hurry, I've written down--"
He nearly rips the paper out of Margery's hand, and fuck, of course his cab has driven away, but he's running down the street before she can finish her sentence, flagging down anything that'll stop for him, rainwater seeping into his shoes, his umbrella straining against the wind. He gets to the corner of the block but the cabs speed past him, full in the bad weather, someone warm and safe and oblivious already ensconced in the back seat, and Eames wants to scream, What the fuck do you need that cab for? Where the fuck do you have to be, ten minutes ago? But car after car just races past him, and finally Eames walks out into the road in front of some yuppie fuck's BMW, and he yanks the door to the passenger seat open, and the driver shuts up immediately when Eames pulls out his gun.
"Get me to the Carlyle," he says. "Drive like a motherfucker."
+
Draw a tree diagram. Label the branches. The door to Arthur's room can be one of two things; open or closed. The Brotherhood can also be one of two things; present or gone. Open-present, no problem, fucking shoot them down. Open-gone, no problem, if he's not too late. (Is he too late?) Closed-present or closed-gone, Eames will have to break in somehow -- if whoever's inside doesn't open at the sound of his pounding -- so is it a physical key or a card key? If he needs to bash in the door or shoot out the card key reader, he'll do it, but should he pick the lock, otherwise? Of course he has his lock picks with him, he hasn't forgotten his roots, he makes it a point to carry them around. (Does he have them with him? He does, right? Where are they, where did he put-- oh, they're in his jacket, he has them, only he doesn't know what kind of key the door takes, if it's a card key, and if there's no one inside, or if they don't open at the sound of his pounding, or if he's not too late, if he's too late, if he's too fucking late--)
His hand is shaking so badly he needs to bring up the other one to keep his aim steady. The driver jumps at the movement, casts a wary glance at the gun.
"I'm, I'm trying," stutters the driver, speeding through another red light, leaving the angry blare of car horns behind them. "I'm really trying."
So am I, thinks Eames, hold on, Arthur, but he doesn't trust himself to speak. Absurdly, he nods when they pull up in front of the hotel, like acknowledging a service well performed. Absurdly, the driver nods back before he races away. Eames's mouth is sandpaper-dry, his tongue thick and cumbersome. (Arthur crumpled on the bathroom floor, eyes like smoked glass, the IV line snaking across the tiles.)
All his vision shrinks down to a pinpoint tunnel, dark at the edges with dread. He hardly knows what he's pushing past, who starts out of his way, how he gets to Arthur's floor and how the thudding in his chest hasn't brought down the entire building. The corridor is door after door of wood and endless brocade, and it's like he isn't even getting anywhere, though he's running as fast as he can, past door after door that Arthur isn't behind. Please hold on, I'm almost there-- just, he thinks, just a little longer. Just one minute more.
He should slow down, creep up toward Arthur's door on silent tiptoes, but his blood is churning too fast for him to stop. He snaps the safety off as he goes, thundering down the hallway. Anyone could hear him from miles away, but he can't be arsed to give a shit, only knows that he'll fucking raze down a thousand Brotherhood fucks in his way, wring their necks with his bare hands if he has to.
And then, Arthur's room-- that's the one, he's there, oh god. The carpet's jammed between the door and its frame, probably twisted underfoot in a haphazard getaway. It's a minuscule relief, at least he won't waste time fiddling with locks, so Eames levels the gun before him, takes one big lungful of breath, and bursts in.
The room is quiet, empty and (Arthur, out on the bed, fuck, but first) Eames throws the closets open, skids to the bathroom, checks and finds every corner empty. He rushes back to the door and shoves it closed, drawing all the latches before he turns around and allows himself to look--
God, he thinks, frozen for one terrifying moment, his heart leaping up into his mouth before it plunges down, heavy in the pit of his stomach. Am I--
He scrambles onto the bed, trekking dirty rainwater all over the sheets. They must have caught Arthur as he was getting ready to head out, and he's only half dressed, spread out limp on the bed, his skin a pale, still stretch beneath the open front of his shirt. Eames hardly dares to breathe as he reaches out, pressing two unsteady fingers to the hollow beneath Arthur's jaw (please, please, please)--
--and then the flutter of a pulse, the warm, strong rhythm of it running through him like a current. Eames exhales, torrential. You're still here.
But that's the least of it. That's only a sign of life, no assurance as to what the compound might have done to Arthur's higher levels of cognition, his hold on sanity. Forcefully ejecting him out of the dream by shutting down the PASIV, that's always risky, even with the standard cocktail. He'll have to rule that out.
A kick would only work in the case of little to no sedative inclusion-- and if this compound resembles limbo at all, that would also be inadvisable. Eames has heard of greenhorns being hasty, administering kicks to lost teammates instead of going down to get them. Stories of that sort never ended well, usually involving irreversible oneiroid catatonia.
That leaves just one option; plugging himself in and fetching Arthur back. I can do it, thinks Eames. If he's still down there, I can get him out. He brushes a thumb across the bit of surgical tape anchoring the IV line to Arthur's arm. Wait for me, he thinks, and maybe as something to tide him over for the trip, something to hold onto, he looks up at Arthur's face.
He meets one opened eye peering at him.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he yells, jerking away so fast he nearly tumbles off the bed. "Oh my fucking god, what the fuck, Arthur!"
Arthur blinks open his other eye, and his smirk grows a little wider, cheeks dimpling beatifically.
"I knew you'd come," he whispers, conspiratory.
"You little shit," yells Eames. "Are you all right? No, I mean-- I was about to go down after you!"
"I'm touched," says Arthur, his smile so immeasurably sweet, so perfectly delighted. "I knew you would, though. Of course."
"What the bloody fuck is going on?" demands Eames, watching Arthur peel the surgical tape off of his arm, spool the IV line back into tight loops, the tubing dry and unused. "Is that PASIV even on, for heaven's sake?"
"It isn't," says Arthur. "But you didn't notice, did you?"
"What about the--" Eames makes a vague, baffled gesture. "What did you do with them?"
"Eames," says Arthur, "there is no them."
"But--" starts Eames.
"The killdeer variant on the third-act misdirection," says Arthur. "Think about it. The Brotherhood of the Broken Wing-- it was always only paratrepsis."
Paratrepsis. The broken wing of the killdeer. Ah, thinks Eames, distantly, like judging a playback of his own poor performance, that's what it was.
"No one was after me," continues Arthur. "All I did was buy off a few people, circulate a little misinformation. And generally, you shouldn't threaten a man at gunpoint if you don't want his daughter as your enemy."
Eames kicks his shoes off the bed, sheds his jacket, numb and stiff. Arthur props himself up on the headboard behind him, searching his expression. Eames can hardly take the scrutiny, so he flops down onto the mattress, burying his face in the pillows.
How did he let it pass him by? How did he ponder it all without the warning bells sounding in his head? As though he's ever used those words, broken wing, without referring to a diversionary tactic. Faking injury to draw attention, the killdeer way.
That's just the tip of the iceberg; the carpet jammed in the doorway, Margery telling him he's ten minutes late, and how possibly did Arthur just happen to be in a hotel room half an hour away from him? All of it too ridiculous to be chance, one suspicious circumstance after another, and somehow he believed every moment of it.
"I must be dreaming," says Eames, muffled, and rummages in his trouser pocket.
"No, sorry," says Arthur, "you're wide awake," and Eames's totem proves him right.
"Fine, you've made your point," groans Eames. "I'm a gullible sap and you've run circles around me. I've lost, you've won, I never stood a chance. Gloat as you see fit."
"Is that what you think my point is?" asks Arthur, abruptly, drained of all laughter. "You think I brought you here just to mock you?"
Something in his gut twists at the tone of Arthur's voice. Eames looks carefully away from him, unsure of what he'll find there, rolling over onto his back in a show of frustrated bravado. He fixes his eyes on the ceiling.
"Then why don't you tell me what you want," says Eames, chest tight. "Because I sure as hell don't know, Arthur. What have we been doing all this while, pretending we had nothing else on our minds but screwing each other over? What do you want from me?"
Arthur is quiet for a long moment. And then, with a sigh, he slides down onto the bed. The two of them end up lying there side by side, like they're out on a meadow at night counting the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Eames can trace the loose sprawl of Arthur's body, the unguarded relaxation in his limbs.
"In America we have a saying," says Arthur, at last, "that you can't step in the same river twice."
"Arthur," says Eames, "that's Heraclitus."
"Gesundheit," says Arthur.
"Thank you," says Eames, helpless.
"When I fucked up the job you were running in Florida," says Arthur, "I was bored out of my mind, but you know that already. I thought it would amuse me to sabotage you. It turns out I was right-- it was a great deal of fun, breaking your bank. Didn't you have fun, when you sent out that manifesto?"
"Well," admits Eames, "yes. I suppose."
"And some days, that's all I want," says Arthur. "I want to annoy you just to see you bluff like it's rolling right off you, smooth as water off a duck. When all the while you're itching to react, but you give it all you've got to keep that facade on, like you're too easygoing to let it bother you. Some days, I just want to piss you off, you know."
"You have a promising future in that," says Eames. "You're very talented."
"Some days, I want to work with you," continues Arthur. "I think we'd do well together. You're a much better forger than you are an extractor, but give me two months, I could make you the best of the best. I wouldn't work with any less. We could be a team, I think, take the entire dreamshare world by storm. We'd be unstoppable."
He shifts, curling up onto his side. Eames can feel himself about to twitch, instinctively straining to turn toward Arthur, if he isn't careful.
"And some days," says Arthur, softly, "I just want you to fuck me straight through the bed."
Eames does twitch, this time, the tell of his left ring finger spasming against the sheets. It takes him a herculean effort to keep still, with the blood in him coursing like molten lava, shooting down so fast below his belt that it leaves him dizzy. (Arthur, arching up beneath him, gasping through his parted lips, a fine sheen of sweat in the dip of his collarbone.)
"Remember that time you kissed me, in Béthune?" asks Arthur. "I tried to push you off, but you wouldn't let me. You were holding my wrists against the wall, and you stuck your tongue down my throat until I was moaning into your mouth--"
"What, no," exclaims Eames, "that's not how it happened!"
"Memory is a deceptive thing," says Arthur, shrugging. "Some days, that kiss is all I can think about."
Eames swallows, and the sound echoes through the room, around the Carlyle, over across the East River.
"God only knows what I'll want tomorrow," says Arthur. "Maybe I'll want to annoy you, or work with you, or ride you blind. But always, no matter what, I want you to be looking at me."
Eames tries to level it out, but when Arthur's fingers close in around his chin, the breath that leaves him is a shaky, ragged thing.
"It's you," says Arthur, "no matter what, it's always you," all of him lit up like it's the greatest, grandest declaration there is.
And the thing is, honestly-- it really might be. Because this is what the children know; that when you pull someone's pigtails it's because you want them to turn around, and even in the heat of their irritation, it's enough that they've only got eyes for you. And no one really knows what happens after they turn, but whoever plans that far ahead? If you want something badly enough, why would you let uncertainty still your hand?
What he didn't realize until now was that yes, he does want this, whatever it may be. Whatever it's going to become, whatever name they'll give it. What he didn't recognize was that Arthur is the only one who can throw him that far off his balance, get his heart racing quite that fast, in fear or in fervor. And neither of them have any one thing they know to ask from each other, but isn't that all right? Isn't the best way out of quicksand to let someone else pull you to the shore?
What does he want the two of them to be to each other-- important, is the only right answer there is. The only answer he needs. What he wants from Arthur is Arthur, just that. Just him. Both of them much too spoiled to have to choose.
"This wouldn't have worked at all," says Arthur. "You never would have fallen for it, if I didn't mean as much to you as I do."
"God, you're shameless," says Eames, starting to laugh in spite of himself. "Stop it. People will talk."
"Well, let them," says Arthur. "You do know, though, the fact still remains that I won this round? The battle and the entire war, if you will."
"Debatable," says Eames, and runs a careful finger across Arthur's lower lip. "I get to fuck you through the bed now, so who's the winner here?"
Arthur hoods his eyes, tongue flicking wet against Eames's fingertip when he speaks.
"Threaten me with something I don't want," he says.
Eames pretends to give it a moment's thought. Then he gets back up onto his knees, nonchalant, and makes as though to hop off the bed and leave.
"All right, all right," says Arthur, darting up, yanking Eames back down by his braces. "Fine, no one loses. That's great. I'm a pacifist."
He really, really isn't. There isn't much else in the world that Arthur is less of than a pacifist. But the objection gets caught in Eames's throat when he looks at Arthur, at the slow, steady burn in his eyes.
This is what he wants. Arthur is.
So instead of protesting, Eames can only ask, "This means you're going to stop running from me, right?"
"Eames," says Arthur, "I ran all this while just to get you here."
And when Arthur smirks, the tilt of his mouth a wicked curve, Eames thinks-- he would do anything for him. He would do a lot worse than blow up an entire cultural heritage site, a lot worse than carjack some yuppie's BMW just to drive uptown. He'd go down deeper than limbo to get him back. For Arthur, he thinks, he'd do a lot more than that.
(Eames doesn't know it yet, but he will.)