homesick
So I was supposed to be working on at least two other things, and also my taxes, and then I read this prompt, and it made me cry tears of joy and piss my pants with glee and set everything aside and write this thing, which I'm not entirely sure what to make of. Some day soon I will go back to writing silly AUs.
.homesick
arthur is from everywhere and nowhere at all, and he doesn't know where he's going. originally written for this prompt.
notes: this now has a sequel.
r . 6999 words
The level Ariadne has created is a highway system, twisting under and over itself in serpentine loops. The landscape around the road is close to irrelevant; blank plains and cornfields stretching off over the horizon.
Arthur is driving, and he takes an exit that turns back and merges onto a piece of highway he’s already driven, and it doesn’t matter, because everything looks the same.
“This level is fucking depressing,” Eames says from the backseat.
Ariadne, who is riding shotgun, just shrugs.
“No, seriously,” Eames says. “We’ve been under for fifteen minutes, and I already want to kill myself.”
“Go ahead,” Arthur says. “No one’s stopping you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be asking if we’re there yet?” Ariadne asks.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” Eames says.
“Of course we are,” Arthur says, and pulls off at a rest area. Streetlights flicker above them.
“Did you name your fake McDonald’s after Cobb?” Eames asks, looking at the blue and yellow building.
“Because he couldn’t be with for the job,” Ariadne says. “Don’t order the Cobburger. It’s made of corn.”
McCobb’s backs up to an expanse of corn fields, which serve as a second layer of labyrinths, in case the mark chooses to abandon the highways. The corn is dry and golden, like late fall, and Arthur looks across the flat expanse and turns to Ariadne.
“Where are you from?” he asks, and she laughs.
“Everywhere. Nowhere. Indiana,” she says.
They exit their van and walk into the cornfield. Ariadne’s projections stop to look at them occasionally, but mostly the three of them pass through the whispering stalks unnoticed. The wind carries the slightest whiff of salt.
“It looks good,” Arthur says, and Ariadne nods.
When they wake up, they’re in Norway, in a warehouse by the sea. They’ve been working there for three weeks.
“Indiana, huh?” Eames says, rolling over to face Ariadne.
“Where are you from?” she asks.
“Leeds,” he says, with half a smile. “And our dear Arthur is from Hawaii.”
“Stop gossiping,” Arthur says. “I’m not from anywhere.”
“He was a military brat,” Eames whispers. “He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Like you talk about Leeds all the time,” Arthur grumbles.
“Hawaii?” Ariadne repeats, looking at him.
“Not really,” Arthur says. “But I lived there, once.”
“I just don’t really see you as the beach type,” she says.
Arthur shrugs.
“Seriously, did you go to the beach, or did you just sit inside air conditioned buildings all the time?”
“I went to the beach,” Arthur says. “Not that it’s anyone’s business. But I’m not from Hawaii.”
“Okay,” Ariadne says, and they leave it there. Eames just shakes his head.
They’re running an extraction on an ex-pat, a novelist renowned for imbuing his work with Americana, who had up and moved to Kristiansand ten months ago and stopped writing. His publisher wants to know why, and where the unfinished manuscript is.
“It’s like the Lost Generation,” Ariadne had said, when they first started discussing the job. “Writing about America and then leaving.”
“Yes,” Eames said dryly. “Because Hemingway was so clearly only interested in America.”
“I was thinking more about Fitzgerald, you know, and Gatsby,” Ariadne had said. “The green light at the end of the dock and the American dream.”
Arthur snorted, and they both turned to look at him.
“What?” Ariadne asked, and Arthur shrugged.
“I hate that book.”
“Don’t believe in the self-made man?” Eames said, looking at Arthur assessingly. “Or do you?”
“There’s a David Byrne song,” Ariadne mused. She hummed a few bars. “It fits, actually. Aren’t we the most beautiful, most intelligent criminals you’ve ever seen?”
Eames had barked out a laugh, and Arthur had changed the subject.
Arthur thinks about that conversation, when he lies in bed the night after they test Ariadne’s level. He curls into himself and falls asleep.
“I’m going to forge the mark,” Eames tells them the next morning, and they both turn to look at him.
“What?” Ariadne says.
“I’m going to pretend to be his subconscious,” Eames tells them.
“Are you sure that isn’t superfluous?” Arthur asks.
“Arthur, darling,” Eames says. “Trust me on this. He’s a novelist. We’ll get more information out of him if he thinks he’s gaining insight into his own poor, abused soul.”
Arthur is skeptical, and it must show on his face, because Eames exhales slowly.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “Trust me.”
“Forgive me if I don’t,” Arthur says, and Ariadne glances between the two of them.
“I knew I should’ve insisted we get an actual extractor for this job,” she says.
“Who needs one?” Eames shrugs.
“I do,” she says. “If you two can’t agree.”
“We can agree,” Eames says, looking at Arthur.
“Explain why you need to forge the mark, Eames,” Arthur says.
“Despite practical evidence to the contrary, you’re not from Hawaii,” Eames tells him. “I’m not from Leeds. Ariadne isn’t from Indiana. The mark isn’t from--”
“Oklahoma,” Ariadne interjects.
“The mark isn’t from Oklahoma,” Eames repeats. “And we need to figure out why.”
Arthur stares at him.
“Okay,” he says, waving a hand in what he imagines is an airy fashion. “Forge the mark.”
“I think I missed something,” Ariadne says, and Eames pats her on the back.
“That, darling,” he says. “Is because you don’t yet understand the delicate psyche of the homeless.”
“Eames was right,” Arthur says. “If he plays it right, the mark will talk to himself about himself more than he would to anyone else. It’s masturbatory, but effective.”
“Masturbatory, but effective,” Eames repeats. “I like that.”
“I need to make some calls,” Arthur says, and leaves the other two alone.
He doesn’t really need to make any calls.
“Cobb,” he says, when Cobb picks up. “How’s California?”
“The Santa Anas are acting up,” Cobb says. “It makes James cry, so we don’t go outside.”
“Oh,” Arthur says.
“What is it, Arthur?” Cobb asks, and his voice is fritzy over the bad cell phone connection.
“What’s it like, sitting still?” Arthur asks, and he almost hear Cobb shaking his head over the phone line.
“You wouldn’t like it, Arthur,” he says.
“Do you?”
“The kids are like anchors,” is all Cobb will say. “Get back to your job.”
Arthur’s reading all of the mark’s novels. He goes back to his books, and reads about Osage County, Oklahoma, and cattle ranches, and soil types (niotaze-bigheart-rock-outcrop complex, very stony).
Arthur’s never been to Oklahoma.
“Where do you live?” Ariadne asks, catching him by surprise.
“Nowhere,” Arthur says, and goes back to his book.
“No, really,” Ariadne says.
“Go back to your models,” Arthur tells her.
Arthur can feel Ariadne watching him, but she goes back to her models.
It’s fall in Norway, and cold, and it gets dark early. Arthur finishes the book he’s reading, and goes out for a walk. There are swans on the water, groups of them, gracious and white. There’s a child throwing rocks at them.
“The swans,” someone says, coming up beside him. “They’re pests.”
Arthur wonders how this stranger knew to speak English, but when he turns it’s Eames.
“Did you follow me?” Arthur asks, and Eames shrugs.
“Ariadne is worried about you,” he says.
“She doesn’t have to be,” Arthur says. “You don’t need to be, either.”
“I know better,” Eames says, with half a smile.
Arthur laughs too loudly, and the child throwing rocks stops to look at them.
“You used to be so much more interesting, darling,” Eames whispers in his ear, catching him with an arm about the waist.
Arthur ignores Eames’ breath on his ear, and shakes loose.
“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else,” he says.
Ariadne is there, when they get back. They go to a cafe wedged in a triangular intersection of roads, and get open-faced prawn sandwiches with squiggles of mayonnaise.
“I love these,” Ariadne says. “The best thing about this job is different food.”
Arthur wants to eat macaroni and cheese from the blue box.
“Get the kjøttkaker, next time,” Eames says, gesturing towards the meatballs in brown gravy. They look like they’ve been sitting there all day, the gravy thick and muddy around them, but they also look like something Arthur might have eaten when he was a child. He nods.
The mark’s second novel is about a child born in a motel room bathroom along Route 66. It seems more like the plot of a country song than a novel, to Arthur, but he reads it all anyway.
“Hey,” Ariadne says him when he puts down the book. “Want to come look over the architecture?”
The architecture is good, and Arthur tells Ariadne as much.
“I never would’ve gotten to Norway if I wasn’t doing this,” she tells him.
“You could have,” he says. “There are other ways.”
“I’m from Indiana,” she says.
“But Cobb found you in Paris,” Arthur says, and Ariadne shakes her head.
“Yeah,” she says. “I know. I was trying to get out.”
Arthur understands the inclination.
Then the job happens.
Ariadne and Arthur are driving down the highway in their van, and the intent is that they’ll get to the information locked in the cab of the mark’s vintage Ford F100 Ranger while Eames performs another sort of extraction and distracts the mark. It’s simple enough. Ariadne’s put “A Self-Made Man” on the radio in their van, on loop, somehow wedging her will into the mark’s dream. She’s singing along, badly. It’s not even a song you can really sing along to.
“I’ll trade you everything that I got,” she’s whispering with David Byrne as Arthur drives. “For the chance to be someone else.”
“Remember what you told me, when you came back for the inception job?” Arthur asks. “Pure creation.”
Ariadne grins at him, and turns off the radio.
“Yeah,” she says, and points out the window. “Ford F100, starboard side.”
“Red is what we’re looking for?” he asks.
“Like Ariadne’s thread.”
Once they have the information they came for, they lay down in the bed of the pick-up truck and look up at the sky.
“Feels like high school,” Ariadne says.
“That was an easy job,” Arthur says.
“Sho’ ‘nough,” Ariadne says.
When they wake up, they confer with Eames and send the information along to their client, and split up. Arthur has a flight out of Oslo, and Eames and Ariadne are taking the ferry to Newcastle.
When Arthur gets on the plane, he falls asleep with his cheek pressed against the window, and feels more at home than he has in a long time. He’s flying to Moscow, and from there he’ll take the Trans-Siberian to his next job in Omsk, and when he wakes up and the flight attendant gives him a sandwich with smoked salmon on it that he’ll be tasting for days, he finds he’s smiling.
Arthur doesn’t like to admit it, but he forgets things, sometimes, until they catch up with him. And it’s not until he’s on the plane and then the train, until he’s moving, that he remembers how happy motion makes him.
He was in Norway for too long. He shouldn’t let himself sit still like that.
He eats borscht and drinks vodka when he gets to Omsk, and doesn’t miss macaroni and cheese at all.
Evelyn is the extractor for this job, a skinny girl from Brooklyn whose parents were immigrants and named her an outdated name. Arthur’s always liked her, but maybe only because he’d spent a lot of time wondering where in his parents’ heads the name “Arthur” had come from.
“Arthur,” she says when she meets him at the station. “Finally.”
He understands why she said that when he meets the rest of the team, because Carl James is their architect. Carl James is also the rest of the team.
“It’s an easy job,” she says, when Arthur catches her eye.
Arthur is kind of sick of easy jobs, actually, so if James fucks this up maybe it’ll be fun.
Carl James does fuck it up, rather spectacularly, despite Arthur’s best efforts. It turns out not to be fun; the job was easy, but the stakes were high, and Arthur leaves Omsk and then Russia in the trunk of a Moskvich 408. It smells like the afghans in his grandmother’s house.
Okay, so it’s kind of wonderful, except he has cramps in his back and his knees.
He calls Cobb from Kazakhstan.
“Arthur,” says Cobb. “I was asleep.”
“I’m in Kazakhstan,” Arthur informs him.
“I was seriously asleep,” Cobb says.
“I just thought you might like to know,” Arthur says, and Cobb groans.
“I have kids, Arthur. I’m a single parent. I’m not getting back in the business.”
“I didn’t want you to,” Arthur says, but wonders if maybe he did. He’s sick of working with shitty extractors, or without extractors at all.
“Okay, bye,” Arthur says, but Cobb has already hung up the phone.
Arthur wanders around Astana for a couple days, goes to the Bayterek, which is one half cool and one half indistinguishable from any giant phallic symbol anywhere, before he calls Eames.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “How’s Kazakhstan this time of year?”
“Eames,” Arthur says, and waits.
“There’s a job,” Eames says. “It’s in Auckland. Carl James isn’t the architect.”
“I’ll be on the next flight from Astana,” Arthur says.
He has to transfer in Kiev and Dubai, and he ends up sleeping stretched across a row of airport chairs one night, but he’s had worse flights. And it’s better than the trunk of a car.
Ariadne is the architect, it turns out, and they’re working without an extractor again.
“We should form a team,” Ariadne says. “So Arthur doesn’t have to go on the lam after every other job.”
“It’s not every other job,” Arthur says. “It’s every two or three.”
“You’ve got to stop it, or people are going to start thinking you like traveling in car boots,” Eames says.
“What’s the job?” Arthur asks.
“Seriously,” Eames continues. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for working with crap extractors and making narrow escapes? Ariadne’s supposed to be pulling that shit.”
“And I’m not,” Ariadne interjects.
“I’m not old,” Arthur says. “And Evelyn isn’t crap.”
“That job should’ve been a cakewalk, and then she went and got Carl James involved,” Eames says flatly. “She may not be crap, but she has no common sense.”
“What’s the job?” Arthur repeats, waving Eames off.
“Two-level extraction,” Ariadne tells him.
“Bloke who works at the uni,” Eames picks up. “Some asshole wants to make him the next Alfred Russel Wallace.”
“What?” Arthur asks.
“There’s a corporation stateside who thinks this fellow’s developing the same formulas as them for some cancer drug, and they want to make sure they get it before he does. So we need to figure out how far he’s gotten,” Eames says.
“Charming,” Arthur says dryly.
“Isn’t it just?” Ariadne says with a laugh. “The guy’s name is Edward Johanneson. Biochemist, unsurprisingly.”
They end up renting a flat by the university, because it’s cheapest. Ariadne gets her own room, and Arthur and Eames share. It’s the most domestic thing Arthur has done in a long time.
“It’s like being back in college,” Ariadne says one morning, when Eames comes out in his boxers scratching his armpit.
“You’re disgusting,” Arthur says to Eames, then goes back to sipping his coffee and reading The New Zealand Herald. Eames just blinks at them both and skulks over to the bathroom.
Ariadne’s attending Johanneson’s lectures and recording them for Arthur and Eames, because Arthur and Eames decided she looked the most like a student, so all three of them watch the recordings at night.
“I can’t believe I have to listen to him twice every day,” Ariadne says, slumping lower on the couch.
“He’s actually quite a good lecturer,” Eames says. “You could go make us dinner.”
“I am not making you guys dinner.”
“I’ll make dinner,” Arthur interjects, and the other two groan.
“Please no,” Ariadne says, and Arthur grins.
“If you don’t want me to make dinner,” he says. “Don’t complain about it, then.”
“You walked into that one,” Eames says to Ariadne. “I’ll pick something up at the takeaway.”
“Just watch the video,” Ariadne says. “Goddamnit.”
Eames grins across Ariadne at Arthur. When the recording ends Eames is suddenly standing behind Arthur, and he leans forward so their faces are side by side.
“Happiness looks good on you,” he whispers, and Arthur frowns. Then Eames goes out to pick up dinner, and Ariadne and Arthur are left sitting on the couch.
“You and Eames?” she asks, turning and swinging her legs across the couch so they fit neatly behind Arthur’s back.
“No,” he says.
“Tell me about it,” she presses, and Arthur looks at her.
“There’s nothing to tell,” he says.
“Remember Cobb and Mal, during the inception job?” she asks. “I can dig shit up.”
“Not when there’s no shit to dig,” Arthur tells her, but he turns and to face Ariadne, pulling his legs up on the couch parallel to hers.
“What were you doing while I was in Russia?” he asks.
“Went back to Paris. Dusted everything in my apartment,” Ariadne shrugs. “Do you ever think you’ll get tired of moving around?”
“I don’t think I can stop,” Arthur says. “Do you ever think you’ll go back to Indiana?”
“I don’t think I can. But I miss it.”
“I miss everywhere,” Arthur says, because it’s the truth.
“Do you really live nowhere?” Ariadne asks, and Arthur nods.
“Yeah,” he says, then repeats himself. “Yeah.”
Ariadne nods, and they’ve reached an understanding. When Eames gets back, they’re still sitting like that, legs parallel on the couch. Eames looks between them, and plops a paper bag down on the table.
“Dinner is served,” he says, and they gather around and draw out the paper-wrapped packets of fish and chips.
“You and Ariadne, huh?” Eames asks after Ariadne goes to lecture the next day.
“What?” Arthur says. “No.”
“Whatever,” Eames says, and goes out to tail a potential forge.
Arthur spends most of the day pacing their flat, expanding their collection of information on Doctor Johanneson. He makes phone calls, and hacks the University of Auckland network. He makes some more phone calls. There are times when running point doesn’t seem far off from what Arthur imagines an ordinary office job would be, except he’s in the flat he shares with Ariadne and Eames, overlooking the city of Auckland, and Eames has left his socks on the kitchen counter.
“Don’t do that,” Arthur says, pointing to the socks, when Eames gets back.
“What? Afraid to touch them?” Eames asks, and goes to pick them up. Only instead he chucks them at Arthur’s face.
Arthur ducks, and dives for Eames’ legs on instinct, and they both end up in a jumble on the floor on top of one of the kitchen chairs, Arthur’s arms wrapped around Eames’ leg.
“Arthur,” Eames says, looking down to where Arthur’s face is pressed just below his crotch. “Socks can’t kill you.”
“Habit,” Arthur says, and then Ariadne comes in.
“Am I interrupting something?” she asks, looking between the two of them.
“Sock fight,” Eames says, and Arthur scoops the balled socks from the floor as he stands, and chucks them at her. She catches them easily, but doesn’t look entirely convinced.
“Whatever,” she says, and then holds up a grocery bag. “I actually am going to make dinner tonight.”
She makes them spanakopita, and when Arthur raises his eyebrows as she layers the phyllo and spinach, she just grins.
“What?” she says. “I’m Greek. My last name is Panagopoulos.”
“You shouldn’t tell him that, pet,” Eames calls from where he’s sitting on the couch. “Now he can kill your family if you cross him.”
“It is not,” Arthur says. “It’s Rouge.”
“Half Greek,” Ariadne says. “From my mother’s side.”
“Does that mean you know my first name?” Eames asks, turning to Arthur.
“Of course,” Arthur says. “It’s my job. But I won’t tell.”
“What?” Ariadne says. “Tell.”
“Don’t,” Eames says, coming over to the kitchen table to sit down.
“No dinner if you don’t tell,” Ariadne says.
“Socks on the table if you do,” Eames offers.
“You know the socks will show up regardless,” Ariadne points out. Which is true.
“You know she’s bluffing,” Eames says. Which is also true.
Arthur just shakes his head, and keeps his clapped mouth shut. Eames crows.
“Harold,” Arthur says, because Eames is acting like he somehow won. “Harold Eames.”
“Aw,” says Ariadne. “Harold’s not that bad.”
Eames just scowls.
They’ve been living in Auckland for two weeks when Arthur realizes he isn’t sick of it yet, and usually he would be. He doesn’t have anyone to tell, and he considers renting a car and driving down to the Coromandel peninsula or something, just to prove to himself that he’s still himself. Instead he watches a movie with Ariadne, and they fall asleep on the couch. He wakes up to the smell of coffee, and Eames in the kitchen pouring coffee into mugs.
“Good morning,” Eames says, and Arthur yawns and stretches and wonders what’s happening to him.
“Good morning,” Arthur says, and takes the mug of coffee Eames offers him, then sits down at the table.
“Almost ready to run this thing?” Eames says quietly, and Arthur shrugs.
“I’m very nearly ready. Don’t know where the architecture’s at.”
“I think I might stick around New Zealand after we’re done,” Eames says. “What do you think?”
“If you want to. I highly doubt anyone’ll catch us on this one.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me we can never be too careful?”
“We can never be too careful,” Arthur says dutifully, and Eames laughs. Ariadne wakes up and peers over the armrest of the couch at them.
“Did you finish the movie?” she asks Arthur.
“No,” he says.
“We’ll have to watch the end tonight.”
“Sure,” he says, though he doesn’t really care what happens.
“What questionable job are you picking up next?” Eames asks, and Arthur shrugs.
“I don’t have anything lined up,” he says.
“Guys,” Ariadne calls, rolling over on the couch. “I’m not sure if I want to do this one.”
Eames and Arthur both stare at her.
“Ariadne,” Eames says. “Fuck.”
“I like Professor Johanneson,” she says.
“Arthur,” Eames hisses. “Tell Ariadne to get her shit together.”
“Eames wants you to get your shit together, Ariadne,” Arthur calls over to her.
Eames glares at him, and Ariadne frowns as she gets up.
“Just a sec,” she says. “Going to the bathroom.”
“She’s a kid, Arthur,” Eames says when she’s gone. “We can’t just let her do whatever she wants.”
“It’s a sleazy job, Eames,” Arthur says. “Remember when you had a problem with sleazy jobs?”
“But it’s a job. And we’re professionals.”
“We’re mercenaries,” Arthur says with a sigh. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Mercenaries,” Eames mutters. “What the fuck.”
Ariadne comes out of the bathroom, and Eames pours her a cup of coffee, and then Eames leaves, and Arthur sits across from her.
“We can’t pull out,” he says. “That’s not the way it works.”
“We can pull out,” Ariadne says. “You just don’t want to.”
“Why did you take the job?” Arthur asks, and Ariadne shrugs.
“Because Eames asked me.”
“We aren’t hired to make ethical judgments,” he says. “We aren’t, Ariadne. If you want to make those sorts of judgments, do them before you take the job or not at all. And not at all is better.”
“How does Eames do it?” she asks. “How does he constantly tail people, and not care about them?”
“Ask Eames,” Arthur says, because he’s wondered the same thing himself.
“I have to go to class,” Ariadne says. “I still don’t want to do it.”
“Maybe we won’t find anything,” Arthur says, and she looks at him like she hadn’t thought of that.
“Maybe,” she says.
Arthur goes for a walk, goes to Albert Park and sits on a bench.
Eames shows up.
“I told her that maybe we wouldn’t find anything,” Arthur says, when Eames sits down next to him.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “You’re the point man.”
“I’m not the point man without a fucking extractor.”
“So if everything falls apart it’s not your fault, then?” Eames says, and his words are coming faster and harder, like hail. “It’s my fault for not being Cobb?”
“This has nothing to do with Cobb.”
“This has everything to do with Cobb. Goddamnit, Arthur.”
Arthur gets up to leave, and Eames follows him.
“Arthur,” he says. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what, Eames?” Arthur asks, wheeling around. “Because I really don’t see how I’m doing anything different.”
“Avoiding everything,” Eames says. “Taking shit jobs like you want to get yourself killed. Getting depressed when you sit still.”
“I’m not,” Arthur says, but his words have no meaning, because everything Eames has said is true.
“I’m not,” he repeats, anyway.
“Why are you doing it, Arthur?” Eames asks, and now his voice is quiet.
“It’s none of your business,” Arthur says, finally. “We’ll finish the job.”
After that, New Zealand feels like Norway.
“Ariadne,” Arthur says when she gets back from lecture. “Finish the architecture. We’re running this in two days.”
Ariadne looks at him.
“You don’t need to go to class any more,” he says.
“Fuck you, Arthur,” Ariadne says, but there are blueprints for the levels on the kitchen table the next morning. Arthur tries not to look smug when Eames sees them.
The extraction goes perfectly, because Arthur works best when he’s angry. It turns out Professor Johanneson's research is in another direction entirely, and Arthur thinks that their clients are dumbasses, and also Ariadne might cry from relief.
The night after the job, Arthur leaves the relevent files on the kitchen table, and catches a bus to the airport while the others are still asleep. He goes to Australia and buys a cheap car, then drives along the shore and goes to beaches, one after another, indiscriminately. He snorkels in the Great Barrier Reef. He buys a surfboard and straps it to the roof of his car, and follows the waves. He doesn’t answer his phone.
Whenever he starts to feel anything, he gets in his car and drives, and thinks about the road and the land whipping by.
He’s sleeping in his car in Bells Beach when he dreams about himself. He’s in the apartment in Auckland, sitting at the kitchen table, and himself comes and sits down across from him.
“Arthur,” says himself. “We need to talk.”
“Fuck you, Eames,” Arthur says. “You can’t pull this one on me.”
“I’m not Eames,” says himself. “I’m a projection.”
“I don’t have any projections of myself,” Arthur says. “And if you were my projection you would know that. And, also, I can’t believe you followed me here. What the fuck, Eames?”
Himself just sits there, watching.
“You think I’m going to tell you all my innermost feelings because you’re a projection of my subconscious,” Arthur continues. “What bullshit. So what if it worked on the guy in Norway. You have to know I’m better than that. And it’s not any of your business, anyway, Eames. The jobs I take--all of it. None of it is your business. And like you’re such a shining beacon, pulling Ariadne into a corporate job that’s nothing but sleaze. Like you ever go back to Leeds, either.”
Arthur stops, now, and just sits there for a moment. Himself is watching, still silent. Arthur goes to the sink to pour a glass of water.
“You know water in dreams usually means you have to pee?” he says. “Or at least that’s what my mother told me. Does it mean anything if you’re lucid dreaming? Does anything?”
Another himself comes in the door.
“Probably,” says the third version of himself, and sits down at the table.
“Fuck,” Arthur says, looking between the two of them. “Eames, if you taught Ariadne how to fucking forge, just to fuck with me, I’ll break your neck.”
“You’re pretty paranoid,” says the newest himself.
“I have to agree,” says the other one.
“Fuck you both,” Arthur says, and downs his glass of water. “I want to wake up.”
“You could just talk to us.”
Arthur looks between the two of them.
“I’ll talk,” he says. “If you change back.”
“We aren’t forges,” says the one on the left. “We can’t.”
“Even if you were projections, you could,” Arthur says, exasperated. “But you aren’t.”
The forges just sit there, and Arthur gets up and paces around them, looking for inconsistencies. They watch him, stay seated.
“Am I the dreamer?” Arthur asks. “Of course I am. God, I’m such a dumbass.”
He conjures a pistol, and shoots both versions of himself and then himself.
When he wakes up, he’s alone in the backseat of his car, and he has to pee.
“Fuck,” he says to himself, and then goes outside to piss on the sand.
Then he feels his totem through his pocket, and it’s off.
“Fuck,” he says again, and he’s pulling up his pants when himself comes walking up across the beach.
“Go away, whoever you are,” he says. “I’ll shoot you again.”
“Just tell me, Arthur,” himself says.
“You can’t perform an extraction on me, Eames,” Arthur says. “Go away. And if you’re someone else trying to perform a fucking extraction on me, I will find you when I wake up.”
“But if I’m Eames, it’s okay?” asks himself, and Arthur glares.
“If you’re Eames, you’re an asshole,” Arthur says. “But I probably won’t kill you.”
“Lovely, darling,” says himself, and begins to shift and sit down on the sand simultaneously.
“Now you change back?” Arthur asks. “Where’s Ariadne?”
And then he gets it.
“Fuck,” he says. “You are not.”
He shoots Eames, and then himself, again.
When he wakes up he’s lying on the ground, wired into a PASIV, and Eames is watching him. Arthur tears the needle out of his arm, and feels for his totem in his pocket with his other hand.
“What the fuck, Eames,” he hisses. “This is--this is so many invasions of privacy it’s not even--”
“We were just--”
“Don’t even,” Arthur says. “Do not even. My brain is not your business. Stealing from my head is not helping, no matter how you twist it. And I’m not even--Why would you even do this?”
Ariadne shifts in her sleep, and then she’s awake, too, blinking up at them and then staring.
“How could you even think this would be a good idea?” Arthur says, looking between the two of them. “It’s a terrible fucking idea.”
Arthur thinks he hears Eames claim the idea as his, but it doesn’t make any fucking difference. It would be Eames’ idea.
He turns around, and walks back to his car. The slim jim they’d used on the lock is still there, and the door is open, and he snaps the slim jim and slams the door. If Ariadne and Eames have followed him, he doesn’t hear them. He gets in the car and reels out of the parking lot, burning rubber, and he doesn’t look in the rear view at all.
He calls Cobb when the sun rises. On the first try, he gets an interminable voicemail message Phillipa and James have recorded, and he hangs up.
“Did you know about this,” he says when Cobb picks up on the next try an hour later.
“What?” Cobb asks, and Arthur can see him in his mind’s eye, squinting.
“Did. You. Know. About. This,” Arthur bites out again.
“Did I know about what?” Cobb says, and he sounds genuinely bewildered.
“Eames and Ariadne tried to perform an extraction on me.”
“They were only trying to--”
“You knew about this!” Arthur screams, and practically swerves off the road. “Performing an extraction on me is not going to help.”
Arthur hangs up, and when his phone rings, he turns it off.
He drives to Melbourne, ditches the car and keeps the board, and catches the next flight through Sydney to Honolulu. When he gets there a woman loops a lei around his neck as he disembarks, and he goes back to the airport and gets a flight to Los Angeles, instead. It’s not like there’s anything for him in Hawaii. He was only there for high school.
He shows up at Cobb’s door in the morning, carrying a surfboard and a suitcase.
“Arthur,” says Cobb.
“I heard your kids could use an uncle,” Arthur says.
Arthur stays with Cobb for a week, and neither of them talk about Eames or Ariadne. Phillipa and James love him. They spend a lot of time at the beach.
Ariadne is the first one to show up. Cobb brings her in one day when he’s coming home from work, and she trails through the door and looks at Arthur sitting on the floor with Phillipa and James, playing with Matchbox cars.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” Arthur says, and he can feel Phillipa moving closer to him.
“Phillipa, James,” Cobb says. “This is Ariadne. Uncle Arthur and Ariadne need to be alone.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Phillipa asks.
“No,” Arthur says, his eyes still on Ariadne. Phillipa and James pick up Matchbox cars and drift after Cobb, and Ariadne comes into the living room and sits down behind him on the couch.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she says.
“It was a terrible idea,” he says, not turning around.
“Eames just--”
“Don’t apologize for Eames,” Arthur says. “He can do that himself, if he wants to.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Ariadne says.
“You could’ve asked,” Arthur says. “Or something. Anything but that.”
“You ran, Arthur,” Ariadne says.
“That’s not even--” Arthur sighs.
“Eames asked,” Ariadne interjects. “He would’ve asked you every day if he thought it would help, but he didn’t.”
“Why do you follow him?” Arthur asks, and he can hear Ariadne behind him going through the motion of a shrug.
“Because I don’t know what else to do, yet,” she says. “Because he lets me.”
“Do you trust him?” Arthur asks.
“Yes,” Ariadne says, before the question is hardly finished. “With my life.”
“Do you trust me?” Arthur asks.
“The same.”
“Why?”
“I can’t do anything else,” she says. “I trusted Cobb. I trusted Yusuf, and even Saito. I couldn’t do this otherwise.”
She stands up, behind him, and moves towards the door as if to leave.
“I don’t trust anyone,” Arthur says, looking up at her.
She bends down and kisses him on the crown of his head, then goes out the door.
“I know,” she says.
Arthur isn’t sure if he forgives her. He sits there on the floor for awhile, trying to figure it out.
Arthur stays with Cobb for two more days, and then he books a flight to Mombasa.
Cobb and Phillipa and James go with him to the airport. Arthur thinks Phillipa is crying, but he can’t tell for sure because his eyes are a little bleary. No one’s gone with him to the airport since he was a teen.
On the flight, he thinks about that level Ariadne made for the extraction in Norway, about the ways the highway would loop back onto itself, never going anywhere. He wonders if that’s what his life has been, thus far.
He finds Eames by instinct, by going to the places he expects Eames to be until Eames is in one of them; a dim noisy bar.
“Eames,” he says, and Eames twists around and looks at him like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
“We need to talk,” Arthur says.
Eames guffaws, but he waves to the bartender and pulls Arthur out into the street, and then to an apartment on some side alley, full of bright colors and unwashed dishes.
“Why’d you do it?” Arthur asks.
“Why’d you run?” Eames asks him.
“I--don’t know,” Arthur says, after a moment’s pause.
“That’s why,” Eames says. “Because you don’t know.”
“And you couldn’t have told me that? You couldn’t have asked?”
“I’m a criminal, darling,” Eames says with a shrug. “A mercenary.”
“No one paid you for this.”
“No,” Eames says. “But I needed to do it.”
Arthur sits down on the chair Eames hadn’t offered to him, and rests his elbows on his knees.
“Maybe there’s nothing to know,” he says. “Maybe there’s no good reason, just an itch I can’t scratch.”
“Nothing to do with Cobb?” Eames presses.
“I don’t know, Eames.”
“So let me do the extraction,” Eames says. He is looking at Arthur intently, now, and Arthur looks at the floor.
“Why do you want this so badly?”
Eames just looks at him, and Arthur shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
“You can’t.”
“I just need to find the lockbox, right?”
“You can’t extract information from yourself,” Eames says, gaping.
“Sure I can,” Arthur says. “Where’s your PASIV?”
“Arthur, no,” Eames says.
“If I can make Penrose steps in a dream,” Arthur says. “I can extract information from my fucking self. Are you coming with?”
It goes pretty much as Arthur expects, except when they get to the lockbox, it’s empty.
“I told you,” Eames says, and Arthur shoots him in the face just because he can.
“Ugh,” Eames says when they wake up, wiping his face. “I hate it when you do that.”
“I know,” Arthur says. “Why didn’t it work?”
“Because you knew what was happening and so your subconscious didn’t put anything there,” Eames says. “Dumbass.”
“It wouldn’t have worked even if you had done it, then,” Arthur says.
“Yeah,” Eames says.
“That’s why you did what you did at Bells Beach.”
They’re lying side by side on Eames’ bed, and Arthur rolls on his side to look at him.
“Yeah,” Eames says again, softer now.
“It’s like scaring someone out of the hiccups,” Arthur says. “But you can’t just keep trying until you surprise me again.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay,” Arthur says, and then he decides to try a new piece of road. “I trust you.”
Eames nods, and they lay there for a little while more.
When Arthur wakes up, Eames is gone, and someone’s put a sheet over his back. He goes back to sleep.
When he wakes up the next time, he goes out into the kitchen, where Eames is reading a book.
“Someone had jet lag,” Eames says, looking up.
“Yeah,” Arthur says, stretching until his back cracks. “What are you reading?”
It’s weird, talking with Eames about books. Arthur thinks they’ve only ever talked about jobs, about the sharp angles of guns and the gentle intricacy of dreams. He’s surprised to find Eames can make intelligent comments on other things, but maybe he shouldn’t be.
“Don’t look so surprised, darling,” Eames says. “I can read, same as the rest of you.”
Arthur tries to school his face into something other than surprise, but he doesn’t think he does very well.
“Any jobs, coming up?” Arthur asks, and Eames gives him an opaque look.
“No,” he says.
Arthur spends most of the day in Eames’ apartment, going through his books. He and Eames share the bed again, but only because it’s big, and Eames has no guest room.
“There’s surfing in the Mombasa channel,” Eames tells Arthur the next morning.
“I left my board with Cobb,” Arthur says.
Arthur calls Ariadne, in the afternoon.
“It’s okay,” he says.
“Are you with Eames?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “Why?”
“That’s good,” she says. “Remember Auckland? That was nice.”
“It was,” Arthur says. “Sorry about how things ended.”
“It’s okay,” she says.
“Was that Ariadne?” Eames asks, when Arthur hangs up.
“Yes,” he says. “We had some unfinished business.”
Eames nods, throws some vegetables in a pan and calls it lunch.
“In Norway you told me I used to be more interesting,” Arthur says. “Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Eames says. “I changed my mind. You’re much more interesting now.”
Arthur eats his lunch.
“You used to seem so competent,” Eames continues. “You still do, of course, but--”
“But after Cobb left you saw me without an anchor,” Arthur says. “I’m a point man, Eames. I exist in reference to someone. Without someone to run point for--” Arthur shrugs.
“So, what, you loved Cobb?” Eames asks, and Arthur laughs.
“No.” Arthur says. “Yes. I loved working with Cobb. It made sense. And I love him like a brother.”
“And working with Ariadne and I didn’t make sense?” Eames asks.
“Not the same way.”
Eames is pushing his food around on his plate, so Arthur continues.
“I’ve never lived anywhere, Eames. Not since I started dreamsharing. Working with Cobb was the only steady thing.”
“You could find something else.”
“What?” Arthur asks.
“Me,” Eames says. “I would be your partner.”
It’s like seeing Eames for the first time, then, because Eames could already have been his partner, if Arthur ever let him.
“Eames,” Arthur says, and Eames shushes him.
“We’re all ex-pats,” he says.
“But the rest of you have places.”
“We made them,” Eames says, and he’s not sitting at the table anymore. “We made them new, from scratch, like lucid dreams.”
“Okay,” Arthur says. “Okay.”
“Think you can learn to sit still?” Eames asks.
“Maybe,” Arthur says, standing up. “Given the right incentive.”
“Or maybe you don’t need to,” Eames says, leaning closer. His mouth is next to Arthur’s ear, now, and he’s whispering.
“There’s a job in Mongolia. I need a point man.”
“I love yurts,” Arthur says, and kisses him.
“There’s a job in my pants, too,” Eames says. “That we could work on.”
“You’re disgusting,” Arthur says, and kisses him again.
It makes sense. He’d just never noticed before.
.homesick
arthur is from everywhere and nowhere at all, and he doesn't know where he's going. originally written for this prompt.
notes: this now has a sequel.
r . 6999 words
The level Ariadne has created is a highway system, twisting under and over itself in serpentine loops. The landscape around the road is close to irrelevant; blank plains and cornfields stretching off over the horizon.
Arthur is driving, and he takes an exit that turns back and merges onto a piece of highway he’s already driven, and it doesn’t matter, because everything looks the same.
“This level is fucking depressing,” Eames says from the backseat.
Ariadne, who is riding shotgun, just shrugs.
“No, seriously,” Eames says. “We’ve been under for fifteen minutes, and I already want to kill myself.”
“Go ahead,” Arthur says. “No one’s stopping you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be asking if we’re there yet?” Ariadne asks.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” Eames says.
“Of course we are,” Arthur says, and pulls off at a rest area. Streetlights flicker above them.
“Did you name your fake McDonald’s after Cobb?” Eames asks, looking at the blue and yellow building.
“Because he couldn’t be with for the job,” Ariadne says. “Don’t order the Cobburger. It’s made of corn.”
McCobb’s backs up to an expanse of corn fields, which serve as a second layer of labyrinths, in case the mark chooses to abandon the highways. The corn is dry and golden, like late fall, and Arthur looks across the flat expanse and turns to Ariadne.
“Where are you from?” he asks, and she laughs.
“Everywhere. Nowhere. Indiana,” she says.
They exit their van and walk into the cornfield. Ariadne’s projections stop to look at them occasionally, but mostly the three of them pass through the whispering stalks unnoticed. The wind carries the slightest whiff of salt.
“It looks good,” Arthur says, and Ariadne nods.
When they wake up, they’re in Norway, in a warehouse by the sea. They’ve been working there for three weeks.
“Indiana, huh?” Eames says, rolling over to face Ariadne.
“Where are you from?” she asks.
“Leeds,” he says, with half a smile. “And our dear Arthur is from Hawaii.”
“Stop gossiping,” Arthur says. “I’m not from anywhere.”
“He was a military brat,” Eames whispers. “He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Like you talk about Leeds all the time,” Arthur grumbles.
“Hawaii?” Ariadne repeats, looking at him.
“Not really,” Arthur says. “But I lived there, once.”
“I just don’t really see you as the beach type,” she says.
Arthur shrugs.
“Seriously, did you go to the beach, or did you just sit inside air conditioned buildings all the time?”
“I went to the beach,” Arthur says. “Not that it’s anyone’s business. But I’m not from Hawaii.”
“Okay,” Ariadne says, and they leave it there. Eames just shakes his head.
They’re running an extraction on an ex-pat, a novelist renowned for imbuing his work with Americana, who had up and moved to Kristiansand ten months ago and stopped writing. His publisher wants to know why, and where the unfinished manuscript is.
“It’s like the Lost Generation,” Ariadne had said, when they first started discussing the job. “Writing about America and then leaving.”
“Yes,” Eames said dryly. “Because Hemingway was so clearly only interested in America.”
“I was thinking more about Fitzgerald, you know, and Gatsby,” Ariadne had said. “The green light at the end of the dock and the American dream.”
Arthur snorted, and they both turned to look at him.
“What?” Ariadne asked, and Arthur shrugged.
“I hate that book.”
“Don’t believe in the self-made man?” Eames said, looking at Arthur assessingly. “Or do you?”
“There’s a David Byrne song,” Ariadne mused. She hummed a few bars. “It fits, actually. Aren’t we the most beautiful, most intelligent criminals you’ve ever seen?”
Eames had barked out a laugh, and Arthur had changed the subject.
Arthur thinks about that conversation, when he lies in bed the night after they test Ariadne’s level. He curls into himself and falls asleep.
“I’m going to forge the mark,” Eames tells them the next morning, and they both turn to look at him.
“What?” Ariadne says.
“I’m going to pretend to be his subconscious,” Eames tells them.
“Are you sure that isn’t superfluous?” Arthur asks.
“Arthur, darling,” Eames says. “Trust me on this. He’s a novelist. We’ll get more information out of him if he thinks he’s gaining insight into his own poor, abused soul.”
Arthur is skeptical, and it must show on his face, because Eames exhales slowly.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “Trust me.”
“Forgive me if I don’t,” Arthur says, and Ariadne glances between the two of them.
“I knew I should’ve insisted we get an actual extractor for this job,” she says.
“Who needs one?” Eames shrugs.
“I do,” she says. “If you two can’t agree.”
“We can agree,” Eames says, looking at Arthur.
“Explain why you need to forge the mark, Eames,” Arthur says.
“Despite practical evidence to the contrary, you’re not from Hawaii,” Eames tells him. “I’m not from Leeds. Ariadne isn’t from Indiana. The mark isn’t from--”
“Oklahoma,” Ariadne interjects.
“The mark isn’t from Oklahoma,” Eames repeats. “And we need to figure out why.”
Arthur stares at him.
“Okay,” he says, waving a hand in what he imagines is an airy fashion. “Forge the mark.”
“I think I missed something,” Ariadne says, and Eames pats her on the back.
“That, darling,” he says. “Is because you don’t yet understand the delicate psyche of the homeless.”
“Eames was right,” Arthur says. “If he plays it right, the mark will talk to himself about himself more than he would to anyone else. It’s masturbatory, but effective.”
“Masturbatory, but effective,” Eames repeats. “I like that.”
“I need to make some calls,” Arthur says, and leaves the other two alone.
He doesn’t really need to make any calls.
“Cobb,” he says, when Cobb picks up. “How’s California?”
“The Santa Anas are acting up,” Cobb says. “It makes James cry, so we don’t go outside.”
“Oh,” Arthur says.
“What is it, Arthur?” Cobb asks, and his voice is fritzy over the bad cell phone connection.
“What’s it like, sitting still?” Arthur asks, and he almost hear Cobb shaking his head over the phone line.
“You wouldn’t like it, Arthur,” he says.
“Do you?”
“The kids are like anchors,” is all Cobb will say. “Get back to your job.”
Arthur’s reading all of the mark’s novels. He goes back to his books, and reads about Osage County, Oklahoma, and cattle ranches, and soil types (niotaze-bigheart-rock-outcrop complex, very stony).
Arthur’s never been to Oklahoma.
“Where do you live?” Ariadne asks, catching him by surprise.
“Nowhere,” Arthur says, and goes back to his book.
“No, really,” Ariadne says.
“Go back to your models,” Arthur tells her.
Arthur can feel Ariadne watching him, but she goes back to her models.
It’s fall in Norway, and cold, and it gets dark early. Arthur finishes the book he’s reading, and goes out for a walk. There are swans on the water, groups of them, gracious and white. There’s a child throwing rocks at them.
“The swans,” someone says, coming up beside him. “They’re pests.”
Arthur wonders how this stranger knew to speak English, but when he turns it’s Eames.
“Did you follow me?” Arthur asks, and Eames shrugs.
“Ariadne is worried about you,” he says.
“She doesn’t have to be,” Arthur says. “You don’t need to be, either.”
“I know better,” Eames says, with half a smile.
Arthur laughs too loudly, and the child throwing rocks stops to look at them.
“You used to be so much more interesting, darling,” Eames whispers in his ear, catching him with an arm about the waist.
Arthur ignores Eames’ breath on his ear, and shakes loose.
“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else,” he says.
Ariadne is there, when they get back. They go to a cafe wedged in a triangular intersection of roads, and get open-faced prawn sandwiches with squiggles of mayonnaise.
“I love these,” Ariadne says. “The best thing about this job is different food.”
Arthur wants to eat macaroni and cheese from the blue box.
“Get the kjøttkaker, next time,” Eames says, gesturing towards the meatballs in brown gravy. They look like they’ve been sitting there all day, the gravy thick and muddy around them, but they also look like something Arthur might have eaten when he was a child. He nods.
The mark’s second novel is about a child born in a motel room bathroom along Route 66. It seems more like the plot of a country song than a novel, to Arthur, but he reads it all anyway.
“Hey,” Ariadne says him when he puts down the book. “Want to come look over the architecture?”
The architecture is good, and Arthur tells Ariadne as much.
“I never would’ve gotten to Norway if I wasn’t doing this,” she tells him.
“You could have,” he says. “There are other ways.”
“I’m from Indiana,” she says.
“But Cobb found you in Paris,” Arthur says, and Ariadne shakes her head.
“Yeah,” she says. “I know. I was trying to get out.”
Arthur understands the inclination.
Then the job happens.
Ariadne and Arthur are driving down the highway in their van, and the intent is that they’ll get to the information locked in the cab of the mark’s vintage Ford F100 Ranger while Eames performs another sort of extraction and distracts the mark. It’s simple enough. Ariadne’s put “A Self-Made Man” on the radio in their van, on loop, somehow wedging her will into the mark’s dream. She’s singing along, badly. It’s not even a song you can really sing along to.
“I’ll trade you everything that I got,” she’s whispering with David Byrne as Arthur drives. “For the chance to be someone else.”
“Remember what you told me, when you came back for the inception job?” Arthur asks. “Pure creation.”
Ariadne grins at him, and turns off the radio.
“Yeah,” she says, and points out the window. “Ford F100, starboard side.”
“Red is what we’re looking for?” he asks.
“Like Ariadne’s thread.”
Once they have the information they came for, they lay down in the bed of the pick-up truck and look up at the sky.
“Feels like high school,” Ariadne says.
“That was an easy job,” Arthur says.
“Sho’ ‘nough,” Ariadne says.
When they wake up, they confer with Eames and send the information along to their client, and split up. Arthur has a flight out of Oslo, and Eames and Ariadne are taking the ferry to Newcastle.
When Arthur gets on the plane, he falls asleep with his cheek pressed against the window, and feels more at home than he has in a long time. He’s flying to Moscow, and from there he’ll take the Trans-Siberian to his next job in Omsk, and when he wakes up and the flight attendant gives him a sandwich with smoked salmon on it that he’ll be tasting for days, he finds he’s smiling.
Arthur doesn’t like to admit it, but he forgets things, sometimes, until they catch up with him. And it’s not until he’s on the plane and then the train, until he’s moving, that he remembers how happy motion makes him.
He was in Norway for too long. He shouldn’t let himself sit still like that.
He eats borscht and drinks vodka when he gets to Omsk, and doesn’t miss macaroni and cheese at all.
Evelyn is the extractor for this job, a skinny girl from Brooklyn whose parents were immigrants and named her an outdated name. Arthur’s always liked her, but maybe only because he’d spent a lot of time wondering where in his parents’ heads the name “Arthur” had come from.
“Arthur,” she says when she meets him at the station. “Finally.”
He understands why she said that when he meets the rest of the team, because Carl James is their architect. Carl James is also the rest of the team.
“It’s an easy job,” she says, when Arthur catches her eye.
Arthur is kind of sick of easy jobs, actually, so if James fucks this up maybe it’ll be fun.
Carl James does fuck it up, rather spectacularly, despite Arthur’s best efforts. It turns out not to be fun; the job was easy, but the stakes were high, and Arthur leaves Omsk and then Russia in the trunk of a Moskvich 408. It smells like the afghans in his grandmother’s house.
Okay, so it’s kind of wonderful, except he has cramps in his back and his knees.
He calls Cobb from Kazakhstan.
“Arthur,” says Cobb. “I was asleep.”
“I’m in Kazakhstan,” Arthur informs him.
“I was seriously asleep,” Cobb says.
“I just thought you might like to know,” Arthur says, and Cobb groans.
“I have kids, Arthur. I’m a single parent. I’m not getting back in the business.”
“I didn’t want you to,” Arthur says, but wonders if maybe he did. He’s sick of working with shitty extractors, or without extractors at all.
“Okay, bye,” Arthur says, but Cobb has already hung up the phone.
Arthur wanders around Astana for a couple days, goes to the Bayterek, which is one half cool and one half indistinguishable from any giant phallic symbol anywhere, before he calls Eames.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “How’s Kazakhstan this time of year?”
“Eames,” Arthur says, and waits.
“There’s a job,” Eames says. “It’s in Auckland. Carl James isn’t the architect.”
“I’ll be on the next flight from Astana,” Arthur says.
He has to transfer in Kiev and Dubai, and he ends up sleeping stretched across a row of airport chairs one night, but he’s had worse flights. And it’s better than the trunk of a car.
Ariadne is the architect, it turns out, and they’re working without an extractor again.
“We should form a team,” Ariadne says. “So Arthur doesn’t have to go on the lam after every other job.”
“It’s not every other job,” Arthur says. “It’s every two or three.”
“You’ve got to stop it, or people are going to start thinking you like traveling in car boots,” Eames says.
“What’s the job?” Arthur asks.
“Seriously,” Eames continues. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for working with crap extractors and making narrow escapes? Ariadne’s supposed to be pulling that shit.”
“And I’m not,” Ariadne interjects.
“I’m not old,” Arthur says. “And Evelyn isn’t crap.”
“That job should’ve been a cakewalk, and then she went and got Carl James involved,” Eames says flatly. “She may not be crap, but she has no common sense.”
“What’s the job?” Arthur repeats, waving Eames off.
“Two-level extraction,” Ariadne tells him.
“Bloke who works at the uni,” Eames picks up. “Some asshole wants to make him the next Alfred Russel Wallace.”
“What?” Arthur asks.
“There’s a corporation stateside who thinks this fellow’s developing the same formulas as them for some cancer drug, and they want to make sure they get it before he does. So we need to figure out how far he’s gotten,” Eames says.
“Charming,” Arthur says dryly.
“Isn’t it just?” Ariadne says with a laugh. “The guy’s name is Edward Johanneson. Biochemist, unsurprisingly.”
They end up renting a flat by the university, because it’s cheapest. Ariadne gets her own room, and Arthur and Eames share. It’s the most domestic thing Arthur has done in a long time.
“It’s like being back in college,” Ariadne says one morning, when Eames comes out in his boxers scratching his armpit.
“You’re disgusting,” Arthur says to Eames, then goes back to sipping his coffee and reading The New Zealand Herald. Eames just blinks at them both and skulks over to the bathroom.
Ariadne’s attending Johanneson’s lectures and recording them for Arthur and Eames, because Arthur and Eames decided she looked the most like a student, so all three of them watch the recordings at night.
“I can’t believe I have to listen to him twice every day,” Ariadne says, slumping lower on the couch.
“He’s actually quite a good lecturer,” Eames says. “You could go make us dinner.”
“I am not making you guys dinner.”
“I’ll make dinner,” Arthur interjects, and the other two groan.
“Please no,” Ariadne says, and Arthur grins.
“If you don’t want me to make dinner,” he says. “Don’t complain about it, then.”
“You walked into that one,” Eames says to Ariadne. “I’ll pick something up at the takeaway.”
“Just watch the video,” Ariadne says. “Goddamnit.”
Eames grins across Ariadne at Arthur. When the recording ends Eames is suddenly standing behind Arthur, and he leans forward so their faces are side by side.
“Happiness looks good on you,” he whispers, and Arthur frowns. Then Eames goes out to pick up dinner, and Ariadne and Arthur are left sitting on the couch.
“You and Eames?” she asks, turning and swinging her legs across the couch so they fit neatly behind Arthur’s back.
“No,” he says.
“Tell me about it,” she presses, and Arthur looks at her.
“There’s nothing to tell,” he says.
“Remember Cobb and Mal, during the inception job?” she asks. “I can dig shit up.”
“Not when there’s no shit to dig,” Arthur tells her, but he turns and to face Ariadne, pulling his legs up on the couch parallel to hers.
“What were you doing while I was in Russia?” he asks.
“Went back to Paris. Dusted everything in my apartment,” Ariadne shrugs. “Do you ever think you’ll get tired of moving around?”
“I don’t think I can stop,” Arthur says. “Do you ever think you’ll go back to Indiana?”
“I don’t think I can. But I miss it.”
“I miss everywhere,” Arthur says, because it’s the truth.
“Do you really live nowhere?” Ariadne asks, and Arthur nods.
“Yeah,” he says, then repeats himself. “Yeah.”
Ariadne nods, and they’ve reached an understanding. When Eames gets back, they’re still sitting like that, legs parallel on the couch. Eames looks between them, and plops a paper bag down on the table.
“Dinner is served,” he says, and they gather around and draw out the paper-wrapped packets of fish and chips.
“You and Ariadne, huh?” Eames asks after Ariadne goes to lecture the next day.
“What?” Arthur says. “No.”
“Whatever,” Eames says, and goes out to tail a potential forge.
Arthur spends most of the day pacing their flat, expanding their collection of information on Doctor Johanneson. He makes phone calls, and hacks the University of Auckland network. He makes some more phone calls. There are times when running point doesn’t seem far off from what Arthur imagines an ordinary office job would be, except he’s in the flat he shares with Ariadne and Eames, overlooking the city of Auckland, and Eames has left his socks on the kitchen counter.
“Don’t do that,” Arthur says, pointing to the socks, when Eames gets back.
“What? Afraid to touch them?” Eames asks, and goes to pick them up. Only instead he chucks them at Arthur’s face.
Arthur ducks, and dives for Eames’ legs on instinct, and they both end up in a jumble on the floor on top of one of the kitchen chairs, Arthur’s arms wrapped around Eames’ leg.
“Arthur,” Eames says, looking down to where Arthur’s face is pressed just below his crotch. “Socks can’t kill you.”
“Habit,” Arthur says, and then Ariadne comes in.
“Am I interrupting something?” she asks, looking between the two of them.
“Sock fight,” Eames says, and Arthur scoops the balled socks from the floor as he stands, and chucks them at her. She catches them easily, but doesn’t look entirely convinced.
“Whatever,” she says, and then holds up a grocery bag. “I actually am going to make dinner tonight.”
She makes them spanakopita, and when Arthur raises his eyebrows as she layers the phyllo and spinach, she just grins.
“What?” she says. “I’m Greek. My last name is Panagopoulos.”
“You shouldn’t tell him that, pet,” Eames calls from where he’s sitting on the couch. “Now he can kill your family if you cross him.”
“It is not,” Arthur says. “It’s Rouge.”
“Half Greek,” Ariadne says. “From my mother’s side.”
“Does that mean you know my first name?” Eames asks, turning to Arthur.
“Of course,” Arthur says. “It’s my job. But I won’t tell.”
“What?” Ariadne says. “Tell.”
“Don’t,” Eames says, coming over to the kitchen table to sit down.
“No dinner if you don’t tell,” Ariadne says.
“Socks on the table if you do,” Eames offers.
“You know the socks will show up regardless,” Ariadne points out. Which is true.
“You know she’s bluffing,” Eames says. Which is also true.
Arthur just shakes his head, and keeps his clapped mouth shut. Eames crows.
“Harold,” Arthur says, because Eames is acting like he somehow won. “Harold Eames.”
“Aw,” says Ariadne. “Harold’s not that bad.”
Eames just scowls.
They’ve been living in Auckland for two weeks when Arthur realizes he isn’t sick of it yet, and usually he would be. He doesn’t have anyone to tell, and he considers renting a car and driving down to the Coromandel peninsula or something, just to prove to himself that he’s still himself. Instead he watches a movie with Ariadne, and they fall asleep on the couch. He wakes up to the smell of coffee, and Eames in the kitchen pouring coffee into mugs.
“Good morning,” Eames says, and Arthur yawns and stretches and wonders what’s happening to him.
“Good morning,” Arthur says, and takes the mug of coffee Eames offers him, then sits down at the table.
“Almost ready to run this thing?” Eames says quietly, and Arthur shrugs.
“I’m very nearly ready. Don’t know where the architecture’s at.”
“I think I might stick around New Zealand after we’re done,” Eames says. “What do you think?”
“If you want to. I highly doubt anyone’ll catch us on this one.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me we can never be too careful?”
“We can never be too careful,” Arthur says dutifully, and Eames laughs. Ariadne wakes up and peers over the armrest of the couch at them.
“Did you finish the movie?” she asks Arthur.
“No,” he says.
“We’ll have to watch the end tonight.”
“Sure,” he says, though he doesn’t really care what happens.
“What questionable job are you picking up next?” Eames asks, and Arthur shrugs.
“I don’t have anything lined up,” he says.
“Guys,” Ariadne calls, rolling over on the couch. “I’m not sure if I want to do this one.”
Eames and Arthur both stare at her.
“Ariadne,” Eames says. “Fuck.”
“I like Professor Johanneson,” she says.
“Arthur,” Eames hisses. “Tell Ariadne to get her shit together.”
“Eames wants you to get your shit together, Ariadne,” Arthur calls over to her.
Eames glares at him, and Ariadne frowns as she gets up.
“Just a sec,” she says. “Going to the bathroom.”
“She’s a kid, Arthur,” Eames says when she’s gone. “We can’t just let her do whatever she wants.”
“It’s a sleazy job, Eames,” Arthur says. “Remember when you had a problem with sleazy jobs?”
“But it’s a job. And we’re professionals.”
“We’re mercenaries,” Arthur says with a sigh. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Mercenaries,” Eames mutters. “What the fuck.”
Ariadne comes out of the bathroom, and Eames pours her a cup of coffee, and then Eames leaves, and Arthur sits across from her.
“We can’t pull out,” he says. “That’s not the way it works.”
“We can pull out,” Ariadne says. “You just don’t want to.”
“Why did you take the job?” Arthur asks, and Ariadne shrugs.
“Because Eames asked me.”
“We aren’t hired to make ethical judgments,” he says. “We aren’t, Ariadne. If you want to make those sorts of judgments, do them before you take the job or not at all. And not at all is better.”
“How does Eames do it?” she asks. “How does he constantly tail people, and not care about them?”
“Ask Eames,” Arthur says, because he’s wondered the same thing himself.
“I have to go to class,” Ariadne says. “I still don’t want to do it.”
“Maybe we won’t find anything,” Arthur says, and she looks at him like she hadn’t thought of that.
“Maybe,” she says.
Arthur goes for a walk, goes to Albert Park and sits on a bench.
Eames shows up.
“I told her that maybe we wouldn’t find anything,” Arthur says, when Eames sits down next to him.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “You’re the point man.”
“I’m not the point man without a fucking extractor.”
“So if everything falls apart it’s not your fault, then?” Eames says, and his words are coming faster and harder, like hail. “It’s my fault for not being Cobb?”
“This has nothing to do with Cobb.”
“This has everything to do with Cobb. Goddamnit, Arthur.”
Arthur gets up to leave, and Eames follows him.
“Arthur,” he says. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what, Eames?” Arthur asks, wheeling around. “Because I really don’t see how I’m doing anything different.”
“Avoiding everything,” Eames says. “Taking shit jobs like you want to get yourself killed. Getting depressed when you sit still.”
“I’m not,” Arthur says, but his words have no meaning, because everything Eames has said is true.
“I’m not,” he repeats, anyway.
“Why are you doing it, Arthur?” Eames asks, and now his voice is quiet.
“It’s none of your business,” Arthur says, finally. “We’ll finish the job.”
After that, New Zealand feels like Norway.
“Ariadne,” Arthur says when she gets back from lecture. “Finish the architecture. We’re running this in two days.”
Ariadne looks at him.
“You don’t need to go to class any more,” he says.
“Fuck you, Arthur,” Ariadne says, but there are blueprints for the levels on the kitchen table the next morning. Arthur tries not to look smug when Eames sees them.
The extraction goes perfectly, because Arthur works best when he’s angry. It turns out Professor Johanneson's research is in another direction entirely, and Arthur thinks that their clients are dumbasses, and also Ariadne might cry from relief.
The night after the job, Arthur leaves the relevent files on the kitchen table, and catches a bus to the airport while the others are still asleep. He goes to Australia and buys a cheap car, then drives along the shore and goes to beaches, one after another, indiscriminately. He snorkels in the Great Barrier Reef. He buys a surfboard and straps it to the roof of his car, and follows the waves. He doesn’t answer his phone.
Whenever he starts to feel anything, he gets in his car and drives, and thinks about the road and the land whipping by.
He’s sleeping in his car in Bells Beach when he dreams about himself. He’s in the apartment in Auckland, sitting at the kitchen table, and himself comes and sits down across from him.
“Arthur,” says himself. “We need to talk.”
“Fuck you, Eames,” Arthur says. “You can’t pull this one on me.”
“I’m not Eames,” says himself. “I’m a projection.”
“I don’t have any projections of myself,” Arthur says. “And if you were my projection you would know that. And, also, I can’t believe you followed me here. What the fuck, Eames?”
Himself just sits there, watching.
“You think I’m going to tell you all my innermost feelings because you’re a projection of my subconscious,” Arthur continues. “What bullshit. So what if it worked on the guy in Norway. You have to know I’m better than that. And it’s not any of your business, anyway, Eames. The jobs I take--all of it. None of it is your business. And like you’re such a shining beacon, pulling Ariadne into a corporate job that’s nothing but sleaze. Like you ever go back to Leeds, either.”
Arthur stops, now, and just sits there for a moment. Himself is watching, still silent. Arthur goes to the sink to pour a glass of water.
“You know water in dreams usually means you have to pee?” he says. “Or at least that’s what my mother told me. Does it mean anything if you’re lucid dreaming? Does anything?”
Another himself comes in the door.
“Probably,” says the third version of himself, and sits down at the table.
“Fuck,” Arthur says, looking between the two of them. “Eames, if you taught Ariadne how to fucking forge, just to fuck with me, I’ll break your neck.”
“You’re pretty paranoid,” says the newest himself.
“I have to agree,” says the other one.
“Fuck you both,” Arthur says, and downs his glass of water. “I want to wake up.”
“You could just talk to us.”
Arthur looks between the two of them.
“I’ll talk,” he says. “If you change back.”
“We aren’t forges,” says the one on the left. “We can’t.”
“Even if you were projections, you could,” Arthur says, exasperated. “But you aren’t.”
The forges just sit there, and Arthur gets up and paces around them, looking for inconsistencies. They watch him, stay seated.
“Am I the dreamer?” Arthur asks. “Of course I am. God, I’m such a dumbass.”
He conjures a pistol, and shoots both versions of himself and then himself.
When he wakes up, he’s alone in the backseat of his car, and he has to pee.
“Fuck,” he says to himself, and then goes outside to piss on the sand.
Then he feels his totem through his pocket, and it’s off.
“Fuck,” he says again, and he’s pulling up his pants when himself comes walking up across the beach.
“Go away, whoever you are,” he says. “I’ll shoot you again.”
“Just tell me, Arthur,” himself says.
“You can’t perform an extraction on me, Eames,” Arthur says. “Go away. And if you’re someone else trying to perform a fucking extraction on me, I will find you when I wake up.”
“But if I’m Eames, it’s okay?” asks himself, and Arthur glares.
“If you’re Eames, you’re an asshole,” Arthur says. “But I probably won’t kill you.”
“Lovely, darling,” says himself, and begins to shift and sit down on the sand simultaneously.
“Now you change back?” Arthur asks. “Where’s Ariadne?”
And then he gets it.
“Fuck,” he says. “You are not.”
He shoots Eames, and then himself, again.
When he wakes up he’s lying on the ground, wired into a PASIV, and Eames is watching him. Arthur tears the needle out of his arm, and feels for his totem in his pocket with his other hand.
“What the fuck, Eames,” he hisses. “This is--this is so many invasions of privacy it’s not even--”
“We were just--”
“Don’t even,” Arthur says. “Do not even. My brain is not your business. Stealing from my head is not helping, no matter how you twist it. And I’m not even--Why would you even do this?”
Ariadne shifts in her sleep, and then she’s awake, too, blinking up at them and then staring.
“How could you even think this would be a good idea?” Arthur says, looking between the two of them. “It’s a terrible fucking idea.”
Arthur thinks he hears Eames claim the idea as his, but it doesn’t make any fucking difference. It would be Eames’ idea.
He turns around, and walks back to his car. The slim jim they’d used on the lock is still there, and the door is open, and he snaps the slim jim and slams the door. If Ariadne and Eames have followed him, he doesn’t hear them. He gets in the car and reels out of the parking lot, burning rubber, and he doesn’t look in the rear view at all.
He calls Cobb when the sun rises. On the first try, he gets an interminable voicemail message Phillipa and James have recorded, and he hangs up.
“Did you know about this,” he says when Cobb picks up on the next try an hour later.
“What?” Cobb asks, and Arthur can see him in his mind’s eye, squinting.
“Did. You. Know. About. This,” Arthur bites out again.
“Did I know about what?” Cobb says, and he sounds genuinely bewildered.
“Eames and Ariadne tried to perform an extraction on me.”
“They were only trying to--”
“You knew about this!” Arthur screams, and practically swerves off the road. “Performing an extraction on me is not going to help.”
Arthur hangs up, and when his phone rings, he turns it off.
He drives to Melbourne, ditches the car and keeps the board, and catches the next flight through Sydney to Honolulu. When he gets there a woman loops a lei around his neck as he disembarks, and he goes back to the airport and gets a flight to Los Angeles, instead. It’s not like there’s anything for him in Hawaii. He was only there for high school.
He shows up at Cobb’s door in the morning, carrying a surfboard and a suitcase.
“Arthur,” says Cobb.
“I heard your kids could use an uncle,” Arthur says.
Arthur stays with Cobb for a week, and neither of them talk about Eames or Ariadne. Phillipa and James love him. They spend a lot of time at the beach.
Ariadne is the first one to show up. Cobb brings her in one day when he’s coming home from work, and she trails through the door and looks at Arthur sitting on the floor with Phillipa and James, playing with Matchbox cars.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” Arthur says, and he can feel Phillipa moving closer to him.
“Phillipa, James,” Cobb says. “This is Ariadne. Uncle Arthur and Ariadne need to be alone.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Phillipa asks.
“No,” Arthur says, his eyes still on Ariadne. Phillipa and James pick up Matchbox cars and drift after Cobb, and Ariadne comes into the living room and sits down behind him on the couch.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she says.
“It was a terrible idea,” he says, not turning around.
“Eames just--”
“Don’t apologize for Eames,” Arthur says. “He can do that himself, if he wants to.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Ariadne says.
“You could’ve asked,” Arthur says. “Or something. Anything but that.”
“You ran, Arthur,” Ariadne says.
“That’s not even--” Arthur sighs.
“Eames asked,” Ariadne interjects. “He would’ve asked you every day if he thought it would help, but he didn’t.”
“Why do you follow him?” Arthur asks, and he can hear Ariadne behind him going through the motion of a shrug.
“Because I don’t know what else to do, yet,” she says. “Because he lets me.”
“Do you trust him?” Arthur asks.
“Yes,” Ariadne says, before the question is hardly finished. “With my life.”
“Do you trust me?” Arthur asks.
“The same.”
“Why?”
“I can’t do anything else,” she says. “I trusted Cobb. I trusted Yusuf, and even Saito. I couldn’t do this otherwise.”
She stands up, behind him, and moves towards the door as if to leave.
“I don’t trust anyone,” Arthur says, looking up at her.
She bends down and kisses him on the crown of his head, then goes out the door.
“I know,” she says.
Arthur isn’t sure if he forgives her. He sits there on the floor for awhile, trying to figure it out.
Arthur stays with Cobb for two more days, and then he books a flight to Mombasa.
Cobb and Phillipa and James go with him to the airport. Arthur thinks Phillipa is crying, but he can’t tell for sure because his eyes are a little bleary. No one’s gone with him to the airport since he was a teen.
On the flight, he thinks about that level Ariadne made for the extraction in Norway, about the ways the highway would loop back onto itself, never going anywhere. He wonders if that’s what his life has been, thus far.
He finds Eames by instinct, by going to the places he expects Eames to be until Eames is in one of them; a dim noisy bar.
“Eames,” he says, and Eames twists around and looks at him like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
“We need to talk,” Arthur says.
Eames guffaws, but he waves to the bartender and pulls Arthur out into the street, and then to an apartment on some side alley, full of bright colors and unwashed dishes.
“Why’d you do it?” Arthur asks.
“Why’d you run?” Eames asks him.
“I--don’t know,” Arthur says, after a moment’s pause.
“That’s why,” Eames says. “Because you don’t know.”
“And you couldn’t have told me that? You couldn’t have asked?”
“I’m a criminal, darling,” Eames says with a shrug. “A mercenary.”
“No one paid you for this.”
“No,” Eames says. “But I needed to do it.”
Arthur sits down on the chair Eames hadn’t offered to him, and rests his elbows on his knees.
“Maybe there’s nothing to know,” he says. “Maybe there’s no good reason, just an itch I can’t scratch.”
“Nothing to do with Cobb?” Eames presses.
“I don’t know, Eames.”
“So let me do the extraction,” Eames says. He is looking at Arthur intently, now, and Arthur looks at the floor.
“Why do you want this so badly?”
Eames just looks at him, and Arthur shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
“You can’t.”
“I just need to find the lockbox, right?”
“You can’t extract information from yourself,” Eames says, gaping.
“Sure I can,” Arthur says. “Where’s your PASIV?”
“Arthur, no,” Eames says.
“If I can make Penrose steps in a dream,” Arthur says. “I can extract information from my fucking self. Are you coming with?”
It goes pretty much as Arthur expects, except when they get to the lockbox, it’s empty.
“I told you,” Eames says, and Arthur shoots him in the face just because he can.
“Ugh,” Eames says when they wake up, wiping his face. “I hate it when you do that.”
“I know,” Arthur says. “Why didn’t it work?”
“Because you knew what was happening and so your subconscious didn’t put anything there,” Eames says. “Dumbass.”
“It wouldn’t have worked even if you had done it, then,” Arthur says.
“Yeah,” Eames says.
“That’s why you did what you did at Bells Beach.”
They’re lying side by side on Eames’ bed, and Arthur rolls on his side to look at him.
“Yeah,” Eames says again, softer now.
“It’s like scaring someone out of the hiccups,” Arthur says. “But you can’t just keep trying until you surprise me again.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay,” Arthur says, and then he decides to try a new piece of road. “I trust you.”
Eames nods, and they lay there for a little while more.
When Arthur wakes up, Eames is gone, and someone’s put a sheet over his back. He goes back to sleep.
When he wakes up the next time, he goes out into the kitchen, where Eames is reading a book.
“Someone had jet lag,” Eames says, looking up.
“Yeah,” Arthur says, stretching until his back cracks. “What are you reading?”
It’s weird, talking with Eames about books. Arthur thinks they’ve only ever talked about jobs, about the sharp angles of guns and the gentle intricacy of dreams. He’s surprised to find Eames can make intelligent comments on other things, but maybe he shouldn’t be.
“Don’t look so surprised, darling,” Eames says. “I can read, same as the rest of you.”
Arthur tries to school his face into something other than surprise, but he doesn’t think he does very well.
“Any jobs, coming up?” Arthur asks, and Eames gives him an opaque look.
“No,” he says.
Arthur spends most of the day in Eames’ apartment, going through his books. He and Eames share the bed again, but only because it’s big, and Eames has no guest room.
“There’s surfing in the Mombasa channel,” Eames tells Arthur the next morning.
“I left my board with Cobb,” Arthur says.
Arthur calls Ariadne, in the afternoon.
“It’s okay,” he says.
“Are you with Eames?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “Why?”
“That’s good,” she says. “Remember Auckland? That was nice.”
“It was,” Arthur says. “Sorry about how things ended.”
“It’s okay,” she says.
“Was that Ariadne?” Eames asks, when Arthur hangs up.
“Yes,” he says. “We had some unfinished business.”
Eames nods, throws some vegetables in a pan and calls it lunch.
“In Norway you told me I used to be more interesting,” Arthur says. “Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Eames says. “I changed my mind. You’re much more interesting now.”
Arthur eats his lunch.
“You used to seem so competent,” Eames continues. “You still do, of course, but--”
“But after Cobb left you saw me without an anchor,” Arthur says. “I’m a point man, Eames. I exist in reference to someone. Without someone to run point for--” Arthur shrugs.
“So, what, you loved Cobb?” Eames asks, and Arthur laughs.
“No.” Arthur says. “Yes. I loved working with Cobb. It made sense. And I love him like a brother.”
“And working with Ariadne and I didn’t make sense?” Eames asks.
“Not the same way.”
Eames is pushing his food around on his plate, so Arthur continues.
“I’ve never lived anywhere, Eames. Not since I started dreamsharing. Working with Cobb was the only steady thing.”
“You could find something else.”
“What?” Arthur asks.
“Me,” Eames says. “I would be your partner.”
It’s like seeing Eames for the first time, then, because Eames could already have been his partner, if Arthur ever let him.
“Eames,” Arthur says, and Eames shushes him.
“We’re all ex-pats,” he says.
“But the rest of you have places.”
“We made them,” Eames says, and he’s not sitting at the table anymore. “We made them new, from scratch, like lucid dreams.”
“Okay,” Arthur says. “Okay.”
“Think you can learn to sit still?” Eames asks.
“Maybe,” Arthur says, standing up. “Given the right incentive.”
“Or maybe you don’t need to,” Eames says, leaning closer. His mouth is next to Arthur’s ear, now, and he’s whispering.
“There’s a job in Mongolia. I need a point man.”
“I love yurts,” Arthur says, and kisses him.
“There’s a job in my pants, too,” Eames says. “That we could work on.”
“You’re disgusting,” Arthur says, and kisses him again.
It makes sense. He’d just never noticed before.