Archive of Our Own ^beta

I.

Eames's freelancing terms are as follows: Will only accept jobs from Dom Cobb or jobs that come through Dom Cobb. Team maximum is four. Pay 100% upfront. Everyone must already be under before he'll hook in. He gets to back out at any time if he sees fit to do so.

The list of demands is ridiculous, of course, and he acknowledges that. Hell, he might as well ask for seventeen mermaid companions and a comb made out of Satan's teeth. More than a handful of people have told him to fuck off. But the fun part -- for Eames, at least -- is that he has all the negotiating power. More than a handful of people have told him to fuck off before coming back and accepting the terms, like the world's most begrudging boomerangs. He likes to think he's passing on the hard-earned wisdom of the physical boundaries of dreaming, but the truth is that he mostly likes the paycheck.

Of course, there's always the nagging fear that he's orchestrating his own coup, but considering the low percentage of successful forgeries, at this point, it's like he's getting paid to train people how to fail. He couldn't think of any better arrangement.

Probably the single factor that eases the sting of such an unfair transaction is that Cobb is a well-known public figure in dreamshare, in as much as dreamshare has public figures. People trust him, and he trusts Eames. If Cobb weren't such an earnest bastard, then Eames would give him a hefty cut. As it is, Cobb is quite the earnest bastard, and Eames has only offered once.

He drops into the dream as a tall, almost willowy man about ten years his senior, with silvery hair and eyes to match. The narrow face borders on severe. He's made enough mistakes from when he was first becoming acquainted with less-than-legal activities and now, for the moment, anonymity is something he relishes. People don't know what's coming if they don't know what to look for.

The dream is in the exact same closet of a storage room everyone is sleeping in topside, save for the rolled-up curtain door and the sunlight that streams in. "Is this it?" he asks, unbuttoning the double-breasted jacket and shaking out his cuffs. The words come out several semitones higher than normal, but he doesn't bother to drop the accent.

"Yeah," says Cobb, staring hard at Eames with his chin tilted up. It looks like appraisal, but mostly he's trying not to laugh. "Yeah, hey, nice to see you," he picks up again as he walks toward Eames. "Been a while, hasn't it?"

They shake hands. Eames even briefly clasps his free hand around Cobb's forearm, for show. When they release, he looks around at the rest of the group: a dark haired woman slouching in a desk chair, legs crossed. A bald man in cargo shorts up against the wall behind her, and another man in slacks, with a straight back and hands in his pockets.

"So." Eames opens his arms. "Welcome to a crash course in dream forgery."

*

There's Payal, the chemist. Patrick, the architect. Arthur, the point man. All of them speak with a faintly formal air, deferring to Eames's apparent age. In all the sessions that Eames has led, no one ever even suspected that Eames wasn't actually who he looked like. The mind takes things at face-value far too often, even while being aware of all the fantastic possibilities of dreaming. Sometimes it simply isn't wired to bridge certain gaps.

Cobb stands around and chaperones as Eames begins to walk everyone through the basics. Boring, routine stuff, and the only stand out in the bunch is Arthur, simply because his ratio of effort-to-results is comically high.

"Shit," Arthur says with his own mouth, but his eyes are two different colors and the brow ridge is heavy enough to belong to australopithecus.

Payal has to lean against the wall and laugh herself hoarse. "He said 'blue eyes', not 'half-blind caveman'," she finally gasps, but her attempts at blonde hair go just as badly, and then it's the troubleshooting portion of the session. Equally as boring and routine, but at least people find unique ways to muck it all up.

"You're expecting to see your own hair, is the problem. Not consciously, of course, I know you're not doing it on purpose," Eames adds when Payal opens her mouth to deny it. "But on some root level, you know what you really look like. Try to let go of that, however briefly."

Payal catches it for about five seconds, hair like sunburned flaxseeds. "Cool," she says, beaming. Eames gives her a reserved smile in return.

"Any other nuggets of wisdom?" Arthur butts in, still looking like a gussied up swamp creature with a face full of bee stings, and a disgruntled one at that.

Eames doesn’t tell Arthur about the first time he forged, how none of his fingers matched, how his hair resembled a patchwork quilt of varying colors. The thing that no one wants to hear is that their first few dozen forgeries will look cheap, like Halloween costumes, and they'll probably be used just as often.

Instead he smirks at him and says, "Practice makes perfect. If all else fails, you could always slap on one of those charming Groucho Marx disguises."

"Forging is hardly worth the trouble, don't you think?" says Patrick. He hastily adds, "No offense intended. I'm just wondering how often you get a chance to use your skills -- I imagine they would have taken you a long time to perfect."

Surprisingly, Arthur is the one who cuts in: "Forgery is either superfluous or vital to extraction," he recites, as if reading from a textbook. "You want a simple smash-and-grab, you want a minimum number of people. But our mark grew up in a town with a population of 400, and she had her honeymoon at a hotel within city limits. That narrows projections and familiar faces down to a very small scope."

"Which means that the dream manipulation needs to be more tightly woven," Cobb picks up smoothly. "And that's why Boone is here."

Boone is apparently Cobb's made-up name for Eames. Eames fears for his future children. "No offense taken, Patrick," Eames says breezily. "And you're correct. I could have chosen another masochistic hobby that's much less time-consuming."

He lifts his shoulders in a subtle, dignified shrug. "Then again, every standard deck of cards has a joker or two, and they tend to come in handy every once in a while."

*

Arthur keeps flicking him these short glances for the rest of the week, almost like he can't help himself. By the last day before the job is scheduled, Payal and Patrick can cobble together a passable imitation of a couple that the mark met years ago on her honeymoon, while Arthur can cobble together a passable imitation of a human face that's not his own.

"But just barely," Eames says to Cobb. "Make sure he's in the background. The far background. Or perhaps you could mold the dream to him, some kind of mythical theme where the presence of a cyclops would be unremarkable."

Cobb raises his eyebrows. "Sure," is all he says before changing the subject. "So, how would you rate your teaching success? Do you think I'll have to come up with backup plans?"

Maybe Eames should cut ties with him, if he knows him well enough to correctly interpret his insults as something other than. "Most likely no need," he answers. "It'll be a three-minute conversation at most. And the honeymoon was over a decade ago, her subconscious should attribute natural aging to any discrepancies in their appearance."

Cobb nods. "You're right. Yeah, I guess that's all, then. Thanks for doing this on short notice."

Eames shakes out his cuffs and smooths a hand over his hair. "Any time, dear boy," he says.

"Maybe I will take that cut you offered me," Cobb says.

"Offer's off the table," Eames says over his shoulder as he strolls out toward the sun.

"Boone," Arthur calls, and Eames waits until he catches up. The accompanying smile is small, not quite conspiratorial but not quite overly chummy, either. It's Arthur encapsulated into a single expression, going by what Eames has gleaned over the past week.

"So you're not going to show us?" Arthur asks.

Eames blinks. "I'm sorry?"

Arthur studies him carefully. Finally, he says, "I figured your forgery would slip at some point, but it hasn't. So. Now I'm asking."

"Oh, you think -- " Eames lets his hand float halfway up to his face, an absent-minded gesture to fight the inexplicable urge to smile. "I'm flattered, but I'm afraid you're letting your imagination get the best of you." He pretends to rethink his words. "Or perhaps it's paranoia? One of the undocumented side effects of extended Somnacin use, you know."

"Side effects that only occurred in people who had their names on a hit list before any kind of Somnacin exposure," Arthur parries. But he nods and says, "Alright. Just thought I'd ask anyway."

If he was wheedling and coy about it, maybe it'd be a different story. As it is, Eames says, "I'm horribly scarred. Childhood accident," which is as good a confirmation as any. "Do refrain from trying to uncover the mystery. Think of it as a masked ball, if that helps," he says brightly. "Maybe you could pop out for a bit and purchase the Groucho Marx disguise I suggested."

Arthur smiles again, and this time it's the kind that could easily make someone forget about the circumstances -- namely that he's a mind criminal of high caliber and could probably twist Eames's fingers into pretzels. While the job of a forger is to read people, the job of a point man is to know people and to have the capability to take them apart. Most point men Eames knows have risen from the ashes of some behind-the-scenes person, the puppetmaster behind the curtain. (Though, he once knew a point man who was a former accountant. He didn't last very long.)

Arthur's curiosity is understandable, though. Hiding anything in a dream -- appearances and otherwise -- for a lengthy amount of time is nearly impossible. In most cases.

"He doesn't have that much to hide, anyway. Don't waste your energy," Cobb advises just as music begins floating through at a soft volume.

"And that's my cue. It's been a pleasure." Eames nods to everyone. The last thing he sees before he wakes up is Arthur's small smile and slightly narrowed eyes, the stance of someone who's just accepted a challenge.

*

Even in the dead of winter, Nash looks like he's freshly emerged from a sauna soak of steam and aerated amphetamines. His eyes are constantly flitting around the bar, and the ends of his hair curl damply as he swallows a beer down. Second-hand anxiety usually drags through Eames whenever he's around, but Nash has connections and is one of the few people in dreamshare whom Eames meets with on a semi-regular basis.

He tells Eames about the vague talk regarding counteractive measures for extraction, something about training projections to keep intruders out; a crude, spray-and-pray kind of deal that should be effective nonetheless. Eames mostly saves 'crude' for last minute escapes and patch-up jobs in real life. He doesn't appreciate it in dreams, simply because he doesn't like to leave a trail, let alone blaze a warpath across someone's consciousness.

"You're breaking into minds, Eames, I really don't think that leaves room for scruples," Nash laughs.

Eames waves him off. "That's too black and white. Try to think outside of the box every once in a while, yeah?"

Nash pretends to swing his beer bottle at Eames. "So hey, where've you been?" he asks. "I got in a couple days ago and you weren't around."

"Tokyo," Eames says vaguely. "Short stint, you couldn't have missed me for long."

"Shibuya?" Nash presses, and it's either a miraculous guess or --

Eames leans a fraction closer. "Do tell, Nash."

"Nah," Nash says a bit incongruously. He shrugs. "I mean, someone might be looking for you. People've been asking where you are. I figured it had something to do with Cobb, but then I also figured that he'd call you himself if that was the case." He shrugs again. "I thought maybe you should know."

Details have never been Nash's strong suit, but information comes as readily as ice melting into water, and just as helplessly, too.

"You think it's something bad?" Nash asks in an oddly innocent tone. "Because if it's something bad, man, then maybe you shouldn't be hanging out here for too long, you know?"

"Cheers," Eames eventually says after he finishes off his drink in one long pull. "I owe you one."

"You owe me a lot," Nash corrects. "Several a lots."

"We'll discuss the specifics later." Eames claps him on the shoulder and maneuvers out of the bar.

Shanghai is seeing the day's peak in foot traffic, which means that Eames blends in as one of millions of commuters rushing across sidewalks and through subway stations. Making a stop at the flat is risky, but he doesn't have anything on him except for 300 yuan and a tiny package for a tiny diorama that he purchased out of sheer curiosity. It's hardly any money and he doubts he can fashion a weapon out of minuscule pieces of cardboard, and so he bangs into the flat to collect a small rucksack of essentials.

When he opens the door again, Arthur is standing in the hallway as if having materialized solely from the intensity of Eames's dread.

"Hi," says Arthur. Arthur with that flat American accent and almost incongruously deep voice, Arthur with those sure hands, Arthur who had been so curious.

"Hello. Who are you looking for?" Eames asks with a bland pleasantness. He doesn't expect to deter Arthur so easily, but figures it's worth a try.

"I can't say you were easy to find, Mr. Eames," says Arthur. "You're very good at this, I'll give you that much."

"Excuse me?" is all Eames says.

"Cut the shit."

Eames smiles politely. "I'm sorry, but if you continue you to be belligerent, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Or else I'll be forced to call the authorities."

He moves away from the door slowly, but slams it shut the last few centimeters. Or, he tries to; it glances off Arthur's shoe instead.

"Ow," he yells. Eames fervently hopes he broke a toe or two.

When Arthur pushes the door open again, Eames grabs a small vase from the adjacent shelf and swings it at Arthur, who manages to block it with a well-placed elbow. As it shatters, his other hand connects with Eames's jaw with the sharp sound of bones against skin. Eames stumbles to the side, then bears his weight on that leg and swing-kicks Arthur back out and into the opposite wall of the hallway.

Arthur is fast, though -- Eames barely has time to straighten up before Arthur's coming at him again, jabbing at Eames's nose with two upward snaps of his arm. He makes contact both times, tempering the force just short of breaking it.

"Bugger this," Eames announces stuffily, before leaning down a little and driving his shoulder against Arthur's chest. The aim is a bit off, seeing as how his center of gravity is still freewheeling, but he hears a satisfying breath being punched out anyway.

Then he wraps his arms around Arthur's waist, lifts him bodily, and drops him onto the ground, back first. "Now," Eames pants, "who are you looking for?"

"Some paranoid asshole who beats up people trying to offer him a job," Arthur wheezes. He continues to struggle.

"Submit," Eames pushes.

"Fight back," Arthur counters. "Christ, I can't breathe, get off me."

For some reason, Eames's body shifts before he even realizes it. A millisecond later, he curses silently as he hears something he'd recognize anywhere. When he directs his gaze downward, Arthur is, as expected, pointing a gun right at Eames's crotch with the safety off.

"Ah," says Eames.

"Yeah," Arthur agrees. He's wheezing a lot less now, the little shit, and his eyes are clear while he very obviously sizes Eames up. Probably reconstructing whatever he had thought of Eames in the first place, and committing his real facial features to memory alongside a handful of derogatory commentary.

"Mr. Eames," Arthur says, and Eames flinches when the gun prods at him. "Would you like this job or not?"

"Well, I had to make you work for it somehow," Eames declares. When blood from his lip drips onto Arthur's hand, Eames wipes it off with the heel of his palm. As confessions go, it's a neat one, succinct.

Judging by the fleeting smile, Arthur appreciates this.

*

The next time his phone rings with a freelancing offer, it's not Cobb on the other end. It's Arthur.

*

II.

Eames is in a horrible sports bar, hands wrapped around a hoagie and dutifully facing the hanging flat-screen like the rest of the patrons, when his phone starts ringing and he gets grease all over his trousers trying to fish it out.

"Yeah," Eames says loudly, shoving the phone between his shoulder and ear while reclaiming custody of the hoagie.

"Hey. It's Cobb."

"How did you get this number?" Eames asks with his mouth full, mostly because Cobb hates people chewing with their mouth open.

"Arthur," says Cobb.

"How irksome."

"Because you'll have to change the number again?"

"Because by now I'm realizing that Arthur sticks to you worse than a bad case of the clap," Eames proclaims. "Alright, what is it this time?"

Cobb starts going off about something or other, hatching a plan mostly by talking out loud to himself, and Eames finds his thoughts drifting back to Arthur. Arthur keeping tabs on him isn't new, but it's the first time he's given such information to anyone else. This implication of something resembling partnership is a surprise, because drawing out any kind of identifiable loyalty from Arthur is like coaxing music out of a violin. Press too hard and you kill the sound; play too lightly and nothing but horrible whispers come out.

But what does Eames know. He played violin for a few months in primary school, then bleeted at the trombone for a while until it stood in as a weapon during an unexpected fist fight and he tried to strangle the other boy with the loop.

He drinks two more pints and leaves this story in voicemail form on Arthur's phone, because Cobb is strangely kneadable sometimes and spills Arthur's number after only a few passive-aggressive hints.

*

Arthur always finds him, is the thing. Even that month where Eames's main residence was on a fairly disreputable cruise liner that docked in the dreariest of ports, Arthur fucking found him. Maybe the 'disreputable' part had tipped him off.

He's like a thorny arse ache that Eames has to bear. When Eames agrees to jobs with most other extractors, he comes out uninjured, sane, and with enough money to purchase said disreputable cruise liner. When he agrees to jobs with Arthur, he more often than not gets killed within the dream, burns through an intense flood of adrenaline that can't be healthy, and lies awake at night as architectural paradoxes parade around in his head on loop. If he were any other greedy criminal with an overinflated sense of self-preservation, he'd be living on his own island by now, guilt-free. But, as it is, he's a greedy criminal with an overinflated sense of self-preservation who also gets bored very, very easily. He might even look forward to that thrilling, almost crazed feeling of pulling off a successful job; to Arthur giving him that wide, unencumbered smile that seems novel every time Eames sees it.

Arthur says things like, "Listen, you little asshole," and, "Thanks, have a good one," and, "But if we can somehow take a shortcut -- not that this isn't a solid idea, because it is -- but with a shortcut that goes here, then maybe -- ", and, "Bless you," no matter how many times anyone sneezes.

To Eames, Arthur says things like, "I'm glad it's bleeding, that was for cutting and running with my contact," and, "Three extra packets of hot sauce, how are your taste buds still working," and, "Not to be rude, but that's pretty stupid," and, "Are you sure you've thought this through?"

"Just because I lack your educational pedigree doesn't mean I'm a caveman," Eames says after that last one, despite having no idea about Arthur's education. "I can even count to ten. Listen: one, two, three -- "

Then, after he's underestimated the fierceness of a placid octogenarian's subconscious and they've been ripped out of the dream by a tornado, Eames says, "Alright, that doesn't count."

"I told you she grew up in Tornado Alley. Why do you always mess up the easy ones?" Arthur huffs as they jog down the hallway and out of the building, but both of them know that it was just shit luck that caught them in its grip, nothing more, nothing less.

For some reason Arthur seems very reluctant to trust him without compunction, despite Eames having given no indication of falling short. No serious indication, in any case -- Eames may cross Arthur every now and again, but part of his skill set includes being able to char bridges without burning them completely.

Eames doesn't take it personally, though, because Arthur doesn't trust anyone completely. Even Cobb. He'll stand up for people, protect them, inform them, converse with them, make them laugh, but he rarely lets anyone give anything back. Eames suspects that it's his one loose thread to hang on to, a defense mechanism for if and when he gets burned.

In any case, Eames doesn't protest, and even encourages it a little -- masks such instances as flaws that he's at fault for and acts accordingly. This is what he gives Arthur, though he suspects it's a bit like trying to shove a square block into a 5-sided hole, all with a misguided eagerness that often seems bumbling rather than helpful.

If he's being honest, Arthur is still a bit of a blind spot, really; a scotoma in Eames's vision, and there's just something he isn't seeing, hanging around his periphery and dodging out of the way whenever Eames tries to grab at it.

*

He bounces around for a while. Passes a birthday blackout drunk, gets punched in the left kidney particularly hard, ends up at a strange winter solstice celebration, loses a toenail, grows it back, loses a pinkie nail, mourns its pitifully malformed replacement, and siphons money from a sloppy laundering scheme out of a corporation based out of Belgrade for the better part of a year before they even notice anything.

Because Arthur has impeccable timing, he calls just as Eames is reheating a television dinner and wondering where to go next.

"I need help," Arthur grumps.

"Go on," says Eames, no longer fazed by such a demanding greeting.

"I need to tranq someone from an unseen location, probably about a hundred yards away," Arthur clarifies. "Unless I can find a way into the building, in which case I'll need a sedative and a way out as well."

"Wouldn't do to get trapped once you're in," Eames agrees. "And what will you do with the hefty baggage?"

"It's a delayed release. He has three bodyguards everywhere he goes; if we want to go in undetected, it has to be timed for when he gets home. Can you help or not?"

Eames shovels a congealed chunk of mac and cheese into his mouth. "I'll be there with bells on, darling. Lose the tranq, we'll live on the wild side for this one."

They agree to catch the first flight out of their respective cities before hanging up. Naturally, when the phone rings again not ten minutes later, it's Corbitt, asking for some help in lifting a prototype of some drug or other.

"Can't, I'm afraid," Eames says. "I've just agreed to lend my expertise to another person in need."

"Who?" Corbitt demands, because he's the type to take a simple first-come-first-serve policy as a personal affront.

"Arthur."

"Arthur," Corbitt repeats. "Arthur asked for help."

"Yes?" Eames confirms as he starts rooting around the flat for his wallet and passport.

"Arthur asked you for help." Corbitt snorts. "Either he's pulling one over on you, or it's part of a plan to lure you to a place where you definitely don't want to be. You piss him off lately?"

Wallet's on top of the telly. Passport is somewhere not in plain sight. "Not that I can recall," Eames replies, distracted.

"Either way, it's your dumb risk. Call me if you change your mind."

Corbitt hangs up right as Eames locates the passport in one of his trouser pockets. He tosses the phone onto the bed and flips through the stamped pages to make sure there's nothing amiss. It's only afterward that he is able to rehash the conversation with full attention, but then he's running late for his flight and doesn't give it further thought.

*

Russia is horribly, stereotypically cold, like the whole country’s been dipped into a tank of liquid nitrogen. The address manifests itself as a lonely two-storey building made of unpainted concrete which, from the looks of it, has served as a punching bag of defacement for the general populace. There are scorch marks spiking up the walls, spray paint graffiti marring the windows, and holes left behind by bullet spray. It's all quite depressing. Eames glances at it pityingly through bare tree branches that cut up the view like a broken mirror.

"Corbitt thought it was quite amusing," Eames says, squinting and pulling his beanie down more snugly.

Arthur doesn't look up. "You have this horrible habit of starting out in the middle of a story, I don't know if you're aware of that."

"I live to make things difficult for everyone," Eames says. "You just happen to be included."

"Too bad your work is actually respectable. Otherwise I wouldn't associate with you at all," Arthur says. Jet-lag sends his personality down the toilet. "So. Corbitt thought it was amusing -- ?"

Eames watches carefully for any other reaction, but Arthur keeps sharpening his knife with long strokes instead.

"He thought it was amusing, that you'd asked for help," Eames says, then adds, "from me."

"Corbitt is a dumbass," Arthur says without looking at Eames. He puts the knife away and starts army-crawling toward the chain link fence, and that's the end of that, apparently.

They successfully sneak in and dose the target with a delayed release sedative in his coffee. However, they then get cornered by an unexpected guard change and the only possible exit is illuminated with a spotlight so enormous that it could double as Broadway stage.

"Really," Arthur says in a wooden voice, staring at the spotlight as if he'll be able to extinguish it with the power of an intense glare.

"Improvise," Eames says. "Come on, get in here."

He pulls Arthur into one of the many empty rooms lining the hallway. By the looks of it, it's a security control center -- lots of video feeds from inside the compound, as well as some exterior shots. They make quick work of it, with Arthur leaning over him to tap his finger against the monitors.

"East and south wings are off limits," Arthur says. "So is the second floor -- "

" -- unless you feel alright about jumping out a window," Eames interrupts.

"I'd rather avoid any potential broken bones, but it's an option," Arthur relents. And this is what Eames likes about working with Arthur: their ability to build off each other, skipping up a scaffolding of ideas and just as quickly knocking down whatever won't work.

They've narrowed it down to two possibilities when heavy footfalls start coming closer at a steady clip. Eames looks at Arthur, arms tensed for a fight, but Arthur touches his elbow in a silent message and he relaxes them instead. Not a second later, Arthur is flicking his eyes up to the large, utilitarian air duct running overhead.

Arthur, having the slight height advantage, wordlessly hops up onto the monitors, pops out the single panel with cross-hatching, and motions for Eames to get up. He has to briefly hug Arthur for balance, but Arthur laces his hands together and hoists him up into the vent like it's nothing. Eames scoots a little ways down before looking back and seeing only light shining into empty space.

"Arthur," he whispers, breaking the silence.

Then the panel gets tossed in, and Arthur is pulling himself up with ease. He somehow folds himself up to get the panel latched again. Eames holds his breath as Arthur moves in beside him, praying that the vent won't collapse; they align their hips onto a row of rivets to hopefully hold the weight better.

And they wait.

Someone enters the room and starts fiddling around with the computers. There's a flash of static from a walkie-talkie, as well as some muted Russian. Some banging, and then an extended conversation over the walkies. When two more sets of footsteps enter the room, Eames starts cursing up a storm in his head. If he tries to crane his neck up, the back of his skull presses against metal. If he tries to look down, Arthur's nose gets mashed against his forehead.

Uncharacteristically, it's Arthur who shifts abruptly, something akin to a hypnic jerk. Eames snaps his head back up and tries to silently communicate the threat of disembowelment if Arthur makes any kind of noise, but Arthur looks almost nauseated, like he's on the verge of some kind of panic attack.

Alarm bells start clanging in Eames's head. Without thinking, he takes Arthur's hand and squeezes it so hard that he almost feel Arthur's knuckles pressing together. Arthur makes a tiny noise, but he doesn't move.

Three more walkie conversations and a long series of beeps later, Arthur still hasn't moved and Eames's legs have long since fallen asleep. He can't even feel where Arthur's knees are digging against his own anymore. There is sweat beading all over Arthur’s forehead; Eames stares at the largest one until it slides down, curving into the corner of Arthur's eye. Arthur blinks rapidly, breathing in a strangely shallow rhythm that makes Eames nervous to listen to.

He's been in closer quarters with people before -- hell, he's been buried alive with someone before, and good thing she had a thigh holster with multiple weapons -- and it's never triggered anything more than a deep annoyance and a step-by-step plan of precisely how he's going to exact his revenge. But now he's practically humming with suppressed adrenaline, every sensory point on his skin flickering to life like lights on a city grid.

There's a series of rustling noises, and then the sound of a chair rolling a short distance. Eames holds his breath as he listens to whoever it is walk around. Unmistakably, a door creaks open and the footsteps continue on.

Eames holds up two fingers. Arthur opens his eyes and nods.

The remaining two men leave within the next minute. Even after the noises fade, they still wait, just to make sure. It’s only when Eames finally relaxes the tiniest bit that he realizes how cramped his body is, strung tight from toes to fingers. Arthur now has his eyes closed again -- Eames can see it through the thin haze of light that filters through the cross-hatched panel. His lips are a straight, pale line, and he looks like he’s barely breathing.

Instinctively, Eames touches his fingers to Arthur's chest. The only reaction is that Arthur’s eyelids tremble the tiniest bit.

"Breathe," Eames tells him, in a hush of air. When Arthur squeezes his hand, he squeezes back out of instinct.

"How much longer do you think," Eames murmurs, and in the absence of immediate danger, his body is slowly processing the physics of their current situation, and how closely they're stretched out beside each other. He imagines his breath condensing on the skin of Arthur’s cheek.

Eames actually hears Arthur’s throat working. "Few more minutes," Arthur whispers back. "Just to be safe."

Eames counts, slowly. When he gets to 250, he wordlessly straightens his leg and kicks out the paneling. Arthur doesn't even startle, just rolls out and onto the ground, landing on his feet but ending up on his hands and knees.

"Jesus Christ," Eames says. He goes to the door and scans both sides of the hallway to make sure they're clear.

When he turns back, Arthur is pale, still breathing shallowly, but on his feet. His lashes stand out against the pallor of his skin. Eames finds himself reaching out about halfway in an aborted movement.

"Steady there," Eames says instead. "What is it? Oxygen deprivation?"

"I’m claustrophobic," Arthur replies, as if he hasn’t spent the better part of an hour crammed into a metal coffin.

Suddenly, irrationally, Eames finds himself angry. He wants to shout at Arthur -- and for what, he has no idea, because it’s not like there had been any other options. Instead, he rubs at his mouth.

"You’re looking at me doubtfully," Arthur points out.

"You’re forgetting that I was recently crammed inside an air duct for who knows how long," Eames says. "I think this is simply the way my head tilts, now."

"Permanently inquisitive," Arthur reiterates.

"And how," Eames agrees.

The spike in emotion is still riding high. He can’t even look at Arthur, but at least now he can acknowledge that he’s angry because he’s worried. He’s fucking worried, for Christ’s sake. For this bastard who he’s seen die hundreds of deaths, who saved his life many times over but cocks a trigger and kills him without hesitation.

He concentrates on the monitors and finds their first choice escape route has now been vacated by the guard. "The garbage chute is open for business," he says shortly, and takes off through the hallway with Arthur on his heels.

Eames doesn't look back, and is about to swing himself into the chute when Arthur says, "We just pulled off a job despite incredibly shitty circumstances, and you’re, what, worried about me being claustrophobic? You almost got killed about twelve times in a span of two hours, and you’re pissed because I didn’t tell you about my aversion to small spaces? Really?"

His tone isn’t condescending. In fact, judging by the upturned corner of his mouth, he finds the whole thing endearing.

"Glad you're getting your wind back," Eames tells him, using sarcasm to hide anything else that may show through in his voice. "Now piss off. I'm trying to make a dashing escape here."

As Eames is swinging his legs in, Arthur catches him by the sleeve. "Eames," he says, a half-smile tugging at his lips, and his tone is such a strange mix of self-deprecating and hopeful that Eames finds himself wanting to smile back, wanting to reach out and rub his thumb along the shape of Arthur's mouth until it gives way. The desire is sharp, concentrated -- panic floods him for a brief moment, but at least that's something he's good at controlling.

"Arthur," he replies simply, but Arthur doesn't continue and they end up looking at each other as if playing a game to see who will blink first.

Eames folds his arms over his chest and falls down into the darkness, effectively forfeiting.

He realizes later that he was waiting for something in that moment. Maybe Arthur was, too.

*

III.

While Eames is in Mombasa, Arthur pays him a single, unexpected visit, announced only by the creak of the bedroom door. Once Eames has been very rudely kicked out of bed, Arthur stares down at him and says, "You stole it."

"Stole what?" Eames croaks, half his face still covered by the thin, woolly blanket. He's half-convinced this is a dream, but that warm bloom of recognition in his chest at the sight of Arthur, despite his glower, is all too real.

"The security codes. The security codes that took me two months to get, and you know it took that long because you were there the entire time."

"You're behaving as if you don't have ten backups. Now we can share the knowledge between each other," Eames says. "It'll bring us closer together. I feel more intimate with you already. May I brush my teeth before continuing this conversation?"

"It's not a conversation," Arthur counters. "It's me reaming you out for once again being a completely thoughtless jackass."

Eames reaches out of his blanket cocoon to scratch his nose. "That's not true. If I were completely thoughtless, I wouldn't have left enough evidence for you to instantly know that the codes being stolen was my doing. And then you'd be on a warpath with no one to direct the anger toward."

Finally, he sits up and squints at Arthur. "Aren't you glad, now?"

A second later, he's sprawled on the floor again with some unholy pain running through the right side of his body. Studying pressure points and unconventional methods of pain is one of Arthur's hobbies. Luckily Eames gives him many opportunities to put the theoretical study into practice.

"Fuck you," Arthur says. "What the hell did you do with them anyway? Who do I need to find and strangle? If you sold duplicates as well, I'll shoot out your good knee."

"Nothing. No one," Eames chokes out.

"What do you mean, 'nothing?'" Arthur asks after a pause. "What?"

The pain is beginning to subside and he sits up once more to find that Arthur is giving him a funny look. Then he mentally backtracks.

Arthur's right to be confused. Eames only ever steals things for personal gain, but this time he'd taken the codes to indulge some strange instinct to disrupt the product of Arthur's careful, time-consuming focus, to topple over his house of cards. If he's being completely honest, he doesn't think he was ever going to do anything with them at all.

Eames is now wide awake.

"Yet," he amends. Talking his way out of this corner is far more favorable than dwelling on why, exactly, he hadn't sold the codes. "Nothing yet. I was shopping around, as you do." He rubs his eyes. "Second drawer on the left. Bin is in the corner."

Arthur heads over to the roll-top desk and retrieves the codes. "You know," he says conversationally, procuring a fancy butane lighter out of his pocket and licking the flame along the edges of the envelope, "sometimes I wonder if it'd be easier to cut all ties and hand you over to the highest bidder."

"Well, of course it'd be easier, but it would also render life terribly dull," Eames says. "To wit: if you really did travel all this way to cause me bodily harm? You could have hired someone to do that."

"I could have gotten someone to pay me for the chance to cause you bodily harm," Arthur corrects. He drops the smoldering envelope into the bin and turns around. "That better be the only copy."

"When have I ever made backups of anything?"

"You make backups all the time," Arthur says, but he walks out into the hallway as Eames stands up, leaving the blanket as a puddle on the floor.

He peeks out the doorframe as he puts on a shirt. "Feel free to stay a while," he calls, and pauses when he notices something strange.

There's a duffel sitting on the floor next to the tiny nook of a kitchen. Upon closer inspection, it remains a duffel and not an illusion. Two things are evident: his sarcasm is also prescient, and this is going to be more than a day trip.

"I hope your sofa bed works," Arthur says from where he's standing by the window, peeking past the edge of the heavy linen curtain. He doesn't meet Eames's eyes, and this is about as awkward as Arthur ever gets. Dodging an explicit request for permission is probably as much for Eames's sake as Arthur's -- he has a feeling that this visit has some significance attached to it, but he's not sure if he's ready to delve into the reasons why.

"It's passable," Eames says carefully. "Though I take no responsibility for any slipped discs or sciatica."

Arthur lets the curtain fall back into place. He nods.

*

In New York, Arthur takes the subway, always standing, always with his right hand curled up around the overhanging bar; in Rome, Arthur zips about on a scooter, feet planted flat and neatly parallel. And in Mombasa, as it turns out, Arthur rides around on a bike. The one he procures has a seat that's peeling in patches of black, but the heels of his oxfords catch easily on the rusted pedals. Most of the time he heads out early and returns, with a damp shirt and disheveled hair, when the sun is tilting through the westerly window. Occasionally, there will be two canvas bags full of multicolored fruit hanging from the handlebars.

It's not so bad, really. In general, being in the same space as Arthur takes less effort and results in less psychosis than Eames had previously imagined -- though, when he first began to entertain such thoughts at all is a mystery.

They eat at irregular times, four to five meals a day. At night, Eames does pull-ups from the doorframe until cramps make it impossible. Then he holds his arms up into a cross and lets Arthur’s feet slap against his palms in an arrhythmic beat. He'd heard a story a few months back, about Arthur pulling off some ludicrous stunt involving a motorbike and a hairpin curve, his left kneecap being the only casualty. The injured leg is still slow, but it’s flexible enough.

"How about a challenge," Eames says one day, holding a hand high above his head. In response, Arthur drops down and does a neat leg sweep instead, leaving Eames on the carpet, blinking up at the ceiling.

Sometimes it still surprises him, the ways they’re alike.

A couple weeks after Arthur's sudden appearance -- Eames's best estimate, since keeping time in constant sweltering weather and no real routine proves to be difficult --, Arthur hears from Cobb, who's emerged from some shady black market dealings that Arthur would rather not even know about, judging by his end of the conversation.

"As sorry as I am to see you leave, this is the last time my flat will be offered up as a hotel," Eames calls out as Arthur packs his things.

He's sprawled on the sofa, absently reading an article about neurological diseases. Yusuf had sent it to him, complete with annotations and loads of underlined passages. Eames barely has a working knowledge of science, but considering that most of the people in Yusuf's life are effectively dead to the world, he feels a sympathetic obligation to take a stab at sharing his interests.

"No skin off my back," Arthur says, passing by with a stack of photos. "You're probably the worst host ever."

Eames idly listens to him rustle around some more, the sounds of his comings and goings familiar by now, and is snapped out of his reading only when something jostles his feet against each other.

"Hey," Arthur says, hand still curled into a loose fist. "Thanks."

"Cheers," says Eames.

The door clicks shut and he's left alone, face titled up toward the lazy ceiling fan. It spins silently.

One moment he's reading about anosognosia, and the next he's staring over the top of the paper again as he finds that he can't recall Arthur ever giving a reason for the visit. His assumption was that Arthur had gotten tangled up in something potentially dangerous and needed to wait for it to blow over, but upon second thought, doesn't remember him saying anything of the sort.

Falling for such a simple method of evasion should be embarrassing, but Eames spends a moment basking in that wry, begrudging respect that only Arthur can coax from him.

*

A month later, Cobb comes to find him.

"Inception," Cobb starts, and Eames thinks, Arthur.

*

IV.

To Eames, there are attainable goals, and there are pursuits best left abandoned. Jobs are usually easy to categorize, but this second go around at inception is straddling the line between the two. Eames fittingly feels as if he's stuck in purgatory, spending day after day mired in the planning stages.

Everyone raises their voices at least four times a day, Cobb throws a lot of things, and Ariadne makes it a point to storm out of the warehouse often enough for it to become commonplace. It should seem like a comedy, a farce, but all the pockets of time in between the extravagant gestures is what grounds it in reality -- Yusuf staring out a window while a solution thaws, Ariadne sitting small and quiet in a dark corner as she carves out the nuances in her totem, Arthur coming and going through the night, smelling like fresh cigarette smoke every time.

As far as housing goes, the warehouse gets a bit drafty at night, but the walls soak up heat from the summer sun, simmering under a slow burn that extends well into dark. Though they do have rooms at various bed-and-breakfasts about town, only Ariadne and Saito choose to spend nights elsewhere. Yusuf and Cobb are usually up til the wee hours, testing his new version of Somnacin, while Arthur and Eames use the time to tighten up whatever plan they've laid so far.

Eames gets used to blinking his eyes open only to realize that he's fallen asleep. He gets used to rolling over and seeing Arthur stretched out on his side, legs slightly bent at the knees.

*

Having confirmed -- and reconfirmed, and then reconfirmed again, much to Eames's delight -- Yusuf's assurance that the new variation of Somnacin would leave inner ear function intact, he sends them all in to a dream to make sure that the sedative will hold steady for three levels. On the first level, they leave Yusuf, who paces around the warehouse, and Ariadne, who is waving around a dremel tool.

"I think the physics check out," Yusuf announces. "Nothing seems sluggish or out of sorts."

"Yeah," Ariadne agrees. "This dremel tool still sucks. Mirrors real life pretty well."

On the second level, they leave Cobb moving around the now-empty warehouse in his own world, as he so often does these days.

"Looks good," he says simply, hands in his pockets. He glances up at the ceilings.

"Shall I replicate it a third time?" Eames asks.

Cobb gives him a faint smile. "Nah, have fun with it."

Arthur looks wary, but Eames dreams up a quiet, sunny beach. They each walk in opposite directions and end up right back where they started, which was the plan. One of the projections holds Arthur up, however; Eames stands at a distance and watches carefully, only exhaling when Arthur starts making his way toward Eames once more.

"Who was that?" Eames prods.

"A projection," Arthur answers. He curls his toes in the sand.

"How illuminating. Was he any more forthcoming than normal, or was he speaking in tongues? Anything out of the ordinary?" Eames doesn't realize that he's fishing until after it's already done.

"I don't know, you tell me. He was saying that he thought you felt bad about leaving him alone that morning in Tampa, and told me to reassure you that he didn't mind at all." Arthur pauses and looks up. "Residual guilt, or abnormally forthcoming?"

"Probably the former," Eames concludes. "Anyone would be sad to see me go."

"I'm sure," Arthur says dryly, but his eyes relax into a smile.

Music comes tearing through the idyllic scene. Some Yngwie Malmsteen monstrosity courtesy of Yusuf. Eames shifts his gaze to the bluffs overlooking the ocean.

"Ready for a small hike?" Arthur asks. He offers Eames another small smile before turning to lead the way.

*

The flight is due to leave in twelve hours. All of them have cleaned the warehouse out, kicking aside things that can be passed off as scraps and bagging everything else up to toss later on. The whole place reeks of bleach or carbolic acid and Eames's right hand is permanently molded into the shape of a scrubber handle.

He cracks his knuckles again and tries to relax. Twelve more hours.

"Third level," Arthur prompts.

"Third level," Eames repeats, staring up at the waterlogged ceiling. He cradles the back of his head with one hand, shifting around a bit to get more comfortable. They're coming up on thirty hours no sleep. "Third level, third level. Funny, that -- you're not even going to be on the third level."

"I still need to know what's going on," Arthur says, "and, more importantly, I need you to know what's going on. It's going to be kind of pointless if the dreamer has to stop and ask for directions."

"No need to get snippy," Eames says. "You honestly can't be that torn up about the fact that you'll be sitting cozy in a hotel while the rest of us parade around in snow suits and try not to get killed by avalanches."

"It'll be unstable," Arthur says for the millionth time. "Avalanches are actually a very real possibility."

Eames turns his head, but Arthur's face is obscured by his arms. He's been carrying on this entire conversation while holding steady in a full plank on his elbows. Then he peeks past his shoulder, hair falling over his eyes, and Eames can see that he's smiling.

"A joke," Eames crows. "That was a joke. Bravo."

"Just in case everything goes to shit tomorrow, I want to let you know," Arthur says, "that I won't hold it against you."

"Your generosity never ceases to surprise me. It brings a tear to my eye, honestly," says Eames.

"Well, you pretty much single-handedly came up with the plan, so who better to blame?" Arthur shrugs as best he can.

Eames suddenly realizes that he's smiling -- that he's been smiling as he stares up at the ceiling again, sprawled and relaxed on his lumpy excuse for a mattress. "I see," he says. "Your lack of contribution was a conscious decision to avoid blame, should anything happen to go wrong."

"Yes, of course," Arthur agrees. "It took you that long to put two and two together?"

Eames huffs out another laugh. If he looks out of the corner of his eye, he can see the straight planes of Arthur's back, cast into light and shadow by the single overhanging light directly above the door.

Eames is someone who passes time by examining the fine muscle control of strangers -- the slip of their thumbs while maneuvering chopsticks, how their insteps ripple and change with their gait. It's all the same bone-to-muscle connections, sparked into movement by the same physical circuitry. Theoretically, there should be nothing significant about Arthur, or the way his body moves.

Arthur remains still, head hanging down so that his forehead nudges against his thumb knuckle. His stomach is trembling. Eames drums his fingers on his own stomach and pretends not to look.

*

Half an hour after Dom blinks his eyes open and everyone looks away in relief, they dutifully file off the plane. Down at baggage claim, Eames ducks into the bathroom and only washes his hands before reemerging. His heart beats audibly with almost every footstep, as if it's spurring on the paranoia that this is still a dream, that all the travelers around him will suddenly snap their attention to him and converge en masse.

He keeps walking. Nobody pays attention to him.

At such a fast pace, he eventually passes Arthur up. The sight of Arthur's brisk walk falls away from his periphery, but Eames can still see it in his mind, clear as anything. He could slow down, wait until Arthur falls into step beside him. He could turn around, make eye contact.

He could offer. Propose a drink.

Last time he did such a thing, however, was when he was arse over heels drunk and propositioned an off-duty policeman, who then almost arrested him for soliciting. The time before that was with someone who took offense at trying to be pulled by a man, and the two times before that turned out to be a trap to get him alone and vulnerable. There have been no other times.

Nothing memorable came from any of these instances, but they did leave a bad taste and a lingering reluctance to assume or put himself on the line for anything of the sort.

In the end, they split off after exiting through the Lufthansa Airlines doors. Arthur gets into a shuttle and Eames slips into the line for taxis, and that's that.

*

V.

One annoying characteristic of Dom's is that he tends to be correct on most fronts. It's merely the delivery of his wisdom that makes him come off as a complete prick.

An idea is the most resilient parasite, indeed. And knowing how to successfully plant one is a fucking all-consuming monster.

Eames goes to Las Vegas and stays up nights at the slots, listlessly hitting buttons over and over again. Otherwise he mingles around the sports betting area, eyes flicking from screen to screen, using the pencil tucked behind his ear to bet on anything from hockey to NASCAR. This kind of downswing in mood is nothing unfamiliar to him -- he simply needs to ride it out, to readjust within the confines of the waking world. Hiding out is a boring but safe option. During any kind of post-job lull, he has a track record of taking on more risky jobs, or jobs that are just plain bad ideas. The inception came together beautifully, against every odd, which leaves him all the more reckless in the time afterward.

That's why when Tom Feduccia sits down at the slot machine beside him and inserts a voucher coupon like any other insomniac in the place, Eames doesn't immediately get up and leave like he should.

A long, chiming melody rings in from the penny slots, along with a roar of cheers. "It seems your tracking skills have improved somewhat," Eames says.

"Maybe you just weren't that important to find, before," says Tom. He pulls the lever with aplomb but none of the reels match up. "Who was your supplier?"

"Piss off," Eames says, tired, but still, he doesn't leave.

Tom shrugs. "Okay, doesn't matter. I'm sure there are a dozen more chemists who can cook up that stuff. Science is dependable that way. Molecules are molecules are molecules, you know?"

Eames scratches at his beard in response.

"Alright, here's the deal." Tom swings his chair around so he can hook his feet over Eames's footrest. "As much as it pains me to compliment anything Cobb was ever involved with, that inception was a work of art. I'm putting together a team to try it out, but it'll go a hell of a lot smoother if I hired someone who actually knows how to do it successfully."

Eames bets the maximum and gets ten credits in return. "How much is the payout?" he grunts.

"Much more than whoever the fuck funded the Fischer project."

Self-awareness is the first step, Eames decides. At least he knows what he's about to do is stupid.

Tom correctly interprets Eames's silence. He swings his chair back around and says, "Great. I'm trying to get a 50/50 balance going here, if I can. You think anyone else would be interested?"

Eames makes a show of looking around the casino before turning his gaze back to Feduccia, who laughs. "Point taken," he says. He pulls the lever and adds, "Though, now that you're on board, I think you'll be surprised with who might take the bait."

*

When Eames arrives, he's resolutely unsurprised to see Arthur there, but only because he's determined not to prove Tom right.

Seeing him feels like wriggling back into a mold, surrounded by something airy and familiar, but it's merely a flash. The context is too off; Arthur doesn't take these jobs, at least not now that Cobb is safely squared away and there's no larger end to justify the means.

"Never thought I'd see you slumming it like this," Eames says as he kicks his suitcase into the corner. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm trying to expand my horizons," Arthur intones.

"Loosen up, Arthur. You look like you're about to go to a funeral," Johan teases.

Which is exactly what Eames was thinking, but the way Johan says it is all wrong. Judging by the cold look that Arthur bestows upon Johan, Eames isn't the only one who feels that way.

Johan nods at Arthur, a dismissive gesture. "I thought you two were tight?" he asks Eames. He walks away without waiting for a reply, whistling and continuing on until he's well out of earshot.

"You do know how to pick them," Arthur says, chin propped on his hand as he taps a pen against his desk, but Eames isn't so easily fooled anymore: this is Arthur being tense.

"Interesting choice of job for you as well. But good to see you again, as always," Eames replies, just a bit too genial.

Arthur keeps tapping his pen.

*

It doesn't take long for the problems to pile up. Even with a cursory examination of the research, it's obvious that details have been glossed over, only a few contingency plans made. Johan has come up with a Somnacin formula that has a similar molecular structure to Yusuf's version, but a practice run reveals it to have an unshakeable drag, making the dream far too sedate, like they're moving through water.

When they wake up, Tom simply removes his line and winds it back into the PASIV with even movements. Johan runs his hands through his hair, seemingly serious for the first time. "I'll fix it," he promises. "Soon."

"I sure hope so," Tom says affably, which means he's feeling nothing of the sort.

Johan starts rambling on about dilutions and another round of vehicle testing. Eames tunes him out and slips through the exit instead. It's nearly nine o'clock, but there's a cafe not too far away and he's going to need several espresso shots to keep alert for the shit-storm that's likely to head in their direction, if this first day is any indication.

By the time he gets back, Arthur is the only one left in the warehouse, looking small and insignificant in such a large space. Eames heads closer without pausing, wary of the layer of tension between them, a vaguely familiar sentiment that's been warped into something that settles at the bottom of his spine and sprouts up through his shoulders, twisting discomfort into every cell.

"I've been waiting all day for you to expound on how horrible an idea this job is," Eames says lightly, hitching his hip so that he can lean against Arthur's desk.

"I'm aware that you're aware of it," Arthur says, squinting down at a grainy photograph, "so there wouldn't be any point. I'd just be wasting my voice."

"Saving up to make it count," Eames says. "You're right, I'm sure there will be many opportunities to lecture me in the near future."

Arthur looks up just then, and something about the uneven set of his mouth, or maybe the lamp light softening the angles of his face, makes him seem young and vulnerable. Tricks of the environment, Eames decides. Tries to convince himself, more like; he finds it difficult to move on to thinking about anything productive, with that image of Arthur lingering in his mind.

"You're angry," Eames states, but it sounds like a guess to his own ears.

"No," Arthur answers. He looks back down at the pile of papers, twirling a pen around his thumb knuckle in neat swipes. "Jesus. I wouldn't be here if I was mad."

"Then what is it?"

"I need you on the Traiger job next month. It's not going to be very conducive if you get waylaid by one of the many people gunning for Tom's head on a plate," says Arthur. "Do you know how many times his team has been ambushed in the past year?"

Leading questions are Arthur's specialty. Eames tilts his head. "So you're keeping an eye on me," he states.

"I need you for that job," Arthur repeats. "The answer was three out of seven times, by the way. And I'm hearing that Doug Rossetti is in town, which will most likely raise that to an even four out of eight."

"I'm willing to give Tom the benefit of the doubt that he went through the trouble of covering up any tracks," Eames counters, though that's a lie and he's got a gun in his desk with a full chamber and extra ammunition in his bag just in case.

Neither of them budge from the stalemate, and they eventually sink into a weighty silence as Eames heads back to his own desk and starts to pick apart everything that has the potential to go wrong with their current plan.

There are no clocks in the warehouse, and though Arthur is bound to have five different clocks set to five different international time zones on his computer, Eames isn't about to break the quiet with such a hackneyed question. He may as well get up to look for himself, because irritating Arthur in the usual ways seems like a lighthouse at this point, returning him to a safe, recognizable place.

Scraping his chair back results in a loud screeching noise that jars him, helps get himself back into his own skin. A large bay window, divided up into about thirty separate panes, highlights the ocean of concrete that Eames has to cross before coming close to Arthur's workspace. He's concentrating on the calcifying white along the edges, just so he has something to look at, when an abrupt pain zips through his arm.

The force of it twists his body around, rendering him off-balance enough to fall awkwardly. He blinks at the feet of Arthur's desk, which are now horizontal and right in front of his face.

Arthur swears, "Shit," and Eames hears the chair roll away. Within half a second, the lights shut off and Eames is left lying there, breathing rapid in the dark, reeling from the suddenness of it all. Four more bullets crack through the window, each accompanied by a blast of light from the rooftop of the building across the street. Arthur calls, "Eames?"

"Three of them," Eames calls back. He clears his throat, tries to concentrate on the feeling of cold concrete instead of the pain. What were the odds of Arthur being right, he wonders. Probably higher than Eames wants to admit.

Arthur has gone quiet, reduced to a silhouette against the wall, but when he moves it's with pinpoint accuracy. He spins on his knees to face the window and fires off six shots before ducking back. Another pause. More answering noise, and yet another pause, though Eames interprets it as one on Arthur's end, like he's waiting.

"One more," Eames says loudly.

All he sees is Arthur's hand flicking up with the recoil. After that, there's no response, only the both of them staring out the shattered window, waiting and watching for any sign of backup, but soon enough it's evident that no more shots are going to be fired. They sit there panting in silence anyway, unable to shake the anticipation for something worse.

"I think we're good," Eames finally says in a strained voice. His arm is throbbing but it's reached a peak, nothing worse than any other semi-serious injury he's sustained so far. "But the timing of it all leads me to believe you've been colluding with whoever-the-hell that was."

"Rossetti," Arthur says in a hard voice, obviously in no mood for jokes.

Tiny lightning bolts stab through Eames's vision when the lights turn back on. Facing an injury is never pleasant; Eames is about to suck it up and check, but the look on Arthur's face makes him pause.

Then he starts to panic.

Human bodies are unfortunately prone to going into shock, or letting loose with a cavalry of signal-scrambling proteins that make it difficult to accurately assess an injury. That's why Eames always appreciates having someone else there to do it for him, especially when he's woozy off endorphins. Going off Arthur's expression and the speed with which he comes to kneel at Eames's side, Eames should be requesting his last rites and heading into the light fairly soon.

"Eames, fuck -- you're hit," Arthur breathes.

"Yes, I thought you -- you knew," Eames fumbles with his words. "Christ, what, is it the brachial artery? What is it?"

He writhes around in order to try and prod at the injury with his good hand. Arthur is busy with his own attempt at gauging the severity of the wound and their hands get awkwardly tangled. At best, he's hoping for some hospital-grade injury that will heal fine if he somehow makes it to a doctor in time. At worst, Eames is expecting to find a pool of blood, a gushing wound that can't be stopped.

Instead, all he touches is a mild puddle and a ruined sleeve.

"What -- "

He feels around a bit more before propping himself up on his good elbow and looking behind him to double check. There's some blood. Not much. Most of it is soaking through his shirt.

"It's just a graze," he mutters, craning his neck to eye the wound. "It's just -- fuck. It's just a graze. Right?"

"Yeah," Arthur finally says, staring. Perhaps he has an aversion to blood, though Eames never noticed any signs before. "Yeah, it is."

"Yeah," Eames breathes out, trying to reacquaint himself with the blissful knowledge that he's not going to die anytime soon. A huge, draining rush of energy leaves him feeling like a deflated balloon. "Yeah. Bollocks. That was -- what was that?"

"I guess I misjudged," Arthur says a bit stiffly.

"I'm not criticizing at all, I'm only," Eames pokes at the wound again to make sure, "a bit shocked, is all. It was an overreaction on both our parts."

Arthur runs a palm over his face.

"Are you alright?" Eames asks after a pause, like he's not the one who was a few inches away from bleeding out in a grotty warehouse.

"I'm fine. Get in the bathroom, let me clean you up."

"There wouldn’t’ve been anyone else I’d rather," he says as he obeys, which doesn’t even make sense at all, but the sentiment is there. The adrenaline is pumping straight through his brain, leaving him with an uncomfortable giddy feeling. "We should call someone. Tell them to move shop in case Rossetti decides to come back."

"I'll do it," Arthur assures, guiding Eames into the bathroom.

He has one hand curled around Eames's elbow. With his free hand, he reaches up to steady the light, which is still swinging around from their hasty entrance, and makes quick work of getting Eames wrapped up and into a cab back to the hotel.

A small handle of vodka and a blank prescription bottle of Vicodin tabs have found their way into Eames's bag, but once he arrives back at the hotel, he roots through his things and downs six ibuprofen instead. On the scale of injuries, this one doesn't even register; the more serious painkillers would probably best be saved for something that warrants it.

Eames turns on the light and the water in the bathroom, intending to take a very careful shower, but instead he sits on the edge of the bed and tosses his phone around with one hand. Trying to process the past day feels like running his thoughts through a strainer and having nothing catch. By the time he actually gets up, the water has run cold.

He changes his mind -- takes a Vicodin, washes it down with a swig of the vodka, and goes to bed.

*

The sound of the phone ringing pulls him out of sleep. With the curtains drawn, it could be anywhere between 3am to 3pm. Eames blinks, disoriented, and finally manages to fumble the phone open before it goes to voicemail.

"Yeah," he says, gruff.

Johan's voice says, "I don't think that was very smart, Eames."

Eames frowns into his pillow and tries to wake up fully, but his mind is clinging to the vestiges of deep sleep.

"Eames."

"Yeah."

"Bad idea."

"What's this about?"

"We got the word that you canceled."

"Canceled," Eames repeats. He opens both eyes and tries to adjust to the darkness in the room. Something is wrong, he's aware of that much. "I'm sorry, you're going to have to catch me up on this one."

"I mean, Arthur called us and said both of you were gone, out of the country. Got scared straight by what happened." Johan snorts. "Bad move, man."

Eames sits up, suddenly alert. "That's absolute rubbish. I haven't a clue where Arthur's gone, or if he's gone at all, but I'm still on board, I wouldn't leave Tom or Francesco hanging like this. Just what the hell did he say, exactly?"

"Regardless of what he said." On the other end, Eames hears a long exhale. He can practically smell the cigarette smoke. "I'm wondering whether or not I should believe you."

"Because I have such a long history of skipping out on jobs? Because I'm so eager to get on Tom's bad side?" Eames bites out, sarcastic.

"Point," Johan agrees. He pauses, then says, "They had no reason not to believe him, and you know how gullible they can get about this kind of stuff. Their motto is usually 'better safe than sorry'."

"Yes, I do know, and I think the more appropriate phrase is perhaps 'let's preemptively attack people due to paranoia'," Eames bites back. "Fuck. Fuck. Alright. I'm coming down there right now to clear this up."

"Whoa," Johan laughs. "I wouldn't do that, actually. They're not here, anyway, and I doubt you'd be a welcome face at this point. I know it's out of character for you, sure, which is why I called in the first place, but. You know."

"Johan," Eames begins, but Johan cuts in: "It's not a good idea, Eames," he says, and there's no trace of laughter this time.

"Right," Eames says, clipped. "Well, thanks."

He hangs up and sits there, drumming his feet on the carpet. Johan's supposed kindness is mostly bullshit, since he's the type who utilizes any kind of upper hand to worm in a favor for the future. The past thirty-six hours have been absolute shit, and the cherry on top is that now Eames has pissed a few people off through no fault of his own. The best plan of action would be to check out of the hotel and take the next flight out, chalk this off as a bunged up job and not look back.

Instead he goes to the minibar and drains a few small bottles. A good start, he decides.

The next step is to call Arthur's room. No answer. Dialing his mobile only gets him the familiar annoying triad of notes and an automated voice telling him to please try again. As he rings the room a second, third, seventh time, he methodically finishes off the rest of the liquor. There's not much, considering. Each time he rings and Arthur doesn't answer, the coil of anger in his gut expands like a smoke bomb.

While the liquor settles, he throws on a wrinkled shirt and trousers and grabs the room key before heading out. The stoic lights in the hallway give no clues regarding the time; Eames finally checks his phone in the elevator and finds that it's not quite 4:00 a.m. Thankfully, the bar downstairs is still serving and he gets steadily drunk on well vodka and horrible whiskey before the hour is over.

When Arthur finds him, Eames is two sheets to the wind, but he doesn’t show it one bit. He never has.

"What the hell, Eames," is Arthur's opening. "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough, I suppose." Eames smiles. He doesn’t take his eyes off Arthur as Arthur studies him, trying to translate his reply into a quantifiable number, either in hours or drinks. By the frustration that seeps through his tightened jaw, he can’t figure it out. This is satisfying, in a completely childish way.

"I've been looking for you," Arthur say, terse, "everywhere. I thought -- "

"You thought what?" Eames asks pleasantly. "Come on, have a seat, then."

"Your arm is bleeding through," Arthur points out instead.

Eames touches the gauze and his fingers come away red. "Shit," he says, but Arthur is already handing over a napkin procured from his pocket.

"Go wash up," he instructs. Then, as if sensing the state that Eames is in, he amends it to, "At least go to the bathroom and rotate the gauze a little bit, okay?"

"Sure, fine, yes." Eames somehow gets all the way to the restroom and is about to toss out the napkin when he sees a logo in the center, for a bar that had been advertised in the hotel binder. One of the corners is still wet. When he sniffs it, the smell of whiskey is fresh.

Eames looks at the mirror and smirks. The expression looks easy but it feels all wrong. He keeps it on anyway as he cleans up and fiddles with the gauze before strolling back out to the bar, where Arthur is still waiting. Now that Eames knows what to look for, he sees the whiskey manifesting itself in the pinched corners of Arthur's eyes, the slightly unsteady way he's leaning against the counter.

"Eames," Arthur says, staring at some spot on the bar. His hand closes into a fist before it unfurls again, renewed, to slide over Eames's hand and turn it over so that his palm is facing up.

It's an unexpected move. Checking if he's competent enough to keep himself whole, probably. Eames thinks his hand will shake, but it holds steady.

"You're usually so good at asking for what you need," Eames says. "But, I suppose, that's different from what you want."

It's shameless goading, same as always, but the words are coming out all wrong, too leering and mean and sarcastic, coated with something cheap, and Arthur looks pale. He isn't touching Eames anymore.

"And what is it, exactly, that you want, Arthur?" Eames says. He backs up, tries another approach.

Arthur doesn't budge.

Finally, Eames drops all pretense. "So, you called Tom," he says flatly, a low burn of leftover anger fueling him.

"Yes," Arthur confirms.

"As some cruel joke to keep me on my toes? Or perhaps you didn't want something blemishing your track record, because having a team member killed under your watch would be a personal insult, wouldn't it?" Eames bangs the counter with faux-excitement. "Or, hold on, did you think you were doing me a favor?"

"Eames, that was supposed to be my -- " Arthur begins, but Eames cuts him off.

"Because god forbid I make my own decisions. After all this time, do you really still think of me as incapable?"

"God, can you just stop for second?" Arthur tries. "You know that's not what this was about."

Eames barrels right on. "I don't, actually. Christ. What is it with -- you always need to be stepping in, or in charge of everything. Sometimes it doesn't work like that. I don't need you to -- I don't need you, alright. Full stop."

"Right," Arthur says after a pause. "Right, yeah. You don't need anyone to stop you from being stupid and reckless. You don't need anyone to reel you back when you get too far in the wrong direction. As much as it pains me, I'm invested in your well-being. As much as you don't need someone looking out, I am. Blame it on instinct if it makes you feel better. Believe me, sticking my neck out for you isn't a particularly enjoyable activity."

"Yes, because staging a coup in someone else's life is always the best and only way to go about looking out for me, as you say," Eames mocks. "Christ. I've had enough of you, with your 'mother knows best' bullshit."

By now, he's inches away from Arthur, waiting for him to snap, like touching fire to propane. At his most cruel and relentless, fighting with Arthur can be like picking a fight with a tank that deflects everything you've got and retaliates with a crushing blow.

So he can’t say that he’s not expecting the punch. The volume of pain is unanticipated, however; it’s not the first time that Arthur has hit him and nor will it be the last, but it is the first time that he hasn’t tempered it, held back a bit. A jolt of sobriety hits Eames like a lightning bolt, but fades away just as quickly.

"You're being an overdramatic asshole," Arthur spits out. "I hope you swallowed a fucking tooth."

"And you're overstepping your bounds as, what, as a friend? Or my superior?" Eames sneers past the tightness in his jaw. "You seem to be mistaking me for someone you have possession of. Like you own me. Do you realize that at all?"

Arthur stares at him, unblinking, and Eames knows he's hit a nerve.

When he gingerly presses his tongue to his lower lip, there's a fresh spark of pain. He wipes away the blood with the heel of his palm, then locks eyes with Arthur again and says, "Let me be honest, alright? Next time you feel the need to martyr yourself for my cause: don't. It would be much easier on you if you'd stop confusing whatever we have for anything more than a business transaction."

By the time he finishes speaking, they're inches away from each other. Just before it devolves into a staring contest, Arthur shoves Eames off and walks away, each footstep connecting hard against the floor.

Eames pauses long enough to process the obvious: that Arthur is walking away instead of fighting back. That there is a line and he just crossed it. One of the few mistakes he's made more than once is realizing he's created a mess only in retrospect, and it seems he's done it again.

He jogs after him, hurries past the revolving door and follows him outside. "Arthur," he calls, suddenly at a loss. "Arthur, hold on."

"You're right, and I'm sorry. I see now that I was overstepping my bounds," Arthur says without looking back.

"Don't pull that robotic act," Eames says, exasperated.

"Fine," Arthur almost yells. He stops and turns. "Fine, okay. For what it's worth, I am sorry for making you lose out on your big payday." He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "And no, you are right, I didn't even realize what I -- it wasn't my place. I guess..."

When he trails off, Eames wants to grab him by the collar, shake him into action like he would a malfunctioning toy. This isn't how it was supposed to go. Arthur should be fury and hellfire right now, not this deflated slump that won't even look up.

They're at the corner of an intersection. The traffic light hanging overhead blinks yellow and red to an empty street, and an uneasy hush washes over them, as if something impossibility fragile is about to crack open.

"You guess what," Eames prompts softly, all the anger suddenly wiped clean.

"I guess -- somewhere along the way, I made the mistake of caring about you more than I should."

"What does that mean?"

Arthur rubs his forehead tiredly. "Jesus, Eames. What do you think it means?"

Eames stares at him, mind still working sluggishly through the alcohol. Even while drunk -- or perhaps especially while drunk --, he puts a lot of stock into intuition and gut instinct despite the fact that logic may dictate another conclusion. Right now, Arthur's face is pale, ashen; his eyes are bright under the streetlamps. He shakes his head again with an ugly noise that Eames barely recognizes as a laugh. This image is surprising, not because Arthur is inscrutable or an enigma, but because Eames has never noticed before now, just how honest Arthur's expressions can be.

Eames watches him and tries to tell himself that he's thinking it through wrong, but the idea has already lodged itself into his mind like a decoder, reconstructing every single interaction they've had until it's impossible to avoid the conclusion. By the time he spells it out for himself, by the time a horrible sense of regret starts sliding down his spine, Arthur has turned the corner and is long gone.

*

VI.

Eames looks for him, of course, and even entertains the idea that Arthur has been captured and is chained down to some underground bunker, but he knows he would have heard news if that were the case. He sends out messages for lack of anything better to do, suspecting they're going to be lost in the ether but knowing he'd regret it if he just sat on his hands. The notes range anywhere from plaintive to goading to vague, but the last one boils down to a simple, i'm sorry.

Of course, the progression in tone of all these messages has been carefully planned since before the first one even goes out. Eames figures this specific order would convey his sincerity the best. Then again, Arthur probably sees right through it, considering the lack of response. His fortress of self-preservation, once breached, apparently mends itself with an even stronger wall.

Or so Eames thought. But three weeks and seven countries later, he goes back to England for wont of anything else to do, and the first step he takes into his flat is right onto a folded scrap of paper: Buenos Aires, 8/8, in Arthur's undisguised print.

He hangs up his coat, then purchases a plane ticket.

*

The notes continue to make appearances all around the perimeter of his flat, as if Arthur's taking care not to cross that physical line. Eames always goes to the written destinations without question, and is always met with a team that doesn't include Arthur in any way or form. Gaps in between the jobs are filled with small-time heists, stakeouts, and standing in as muscle for easy money. He smokes a lot of cigarettes and starts building a pyramid with all the empty gin bottles that he inadvertently starts collecting, and generally takes horrible care of himself which isn't abnormal but this time it's almost like he's waiting for someone to come pull him out of it.

Buenos Aires had been quick and dirty, and he was out of the country within thirty-six hours of landing. Next was Ann Arbor, Michigan -- a bit more difficult, that one, considering no one on the team could convincingly pull off their cover as academics. The third and fourth are compound jobs that keep him grounded for the better part of a month, living above a bar on the outskirts of Shenzhen. All of them are the kind of jobs that Eames has come to relish, ones with the right mix of challenge and ease, ones where they build something from the bottom up; ones with an improbability of success as they work to eventually tip the balances in their favor.

The fifth note leads him to Santiago, and surprisingly enough, he's there to guide someone through a forgery, a new person named Ben. Though Eames hasn't been in a position to teach in years, the situation seems familiar enough that he spends the whole time wondering, in the back of his mind, whether or not it's some kind of test.

Afterward, Ben offers him a job in Chicago, something he's designing the architecture for. He's a jack-of-all-trades type, apparently, and hasn't done anything worthy of Eames's trust -- but, he hasn't done anything worthy of Eames's distrust, and keeping himself occupied is a priority these days. He accepts it without second thought.

*

Chicago welcomes him with temperatures well below zero and freezing winds that knife at his face with each gust. At least Kara is renting a bungalow with excellent insulation and central heating, which provides a blissful, sauna-worthy blast of heat once Eames fumbles the front door open. Whitney Lee's house is across the street and two doors down; Eames glances over his shoulder and sees that it's lit in a similarly cozy way.

Showing up mid-dream becomes a running habit for Ben, but Kara says she only hired him for part-time work and Eames has never been a stickler for punctuality himself. The job is an innocuous information check, hired to gauge intelligence leaks before a planned merger, and while she and Eames slog through the technicalities during the daytime, Roland, the chemist, keeps an eye on Lee and Ben has classes to attend or teach. A doctoral candidate in Russian history, he tends to make buildings reminiscent of baroque churches, looming and ominous, almost seeming to swallow Eames up with its shadows.

Getting to Lee is easy enough. The latch on the back door has been loose ever since Eames jimmied it on the first night, and they slip in just as the sun begins to rise.

"Where the hell is Ben?" Eames hisses as they lie down on the carpet, eye level with some horrible lace monstrosity of a bed-skirt.

"He'll be here soon, don't worry about it," Kara hisses back, right when the back door audibly opens and closes. "See? Just trust me. Set the timer."

Inside the dream, Kara has set up a nondescript office floor, about twenty stories up judging by the view out the windows. The dreamscape is a bastardized version of Barcelona -- the Sagrada Familia is visible, as are more churches that Ben purposely designed to blend in to each other. The only church with enough detailing to resemble a real structure is the one they're supposed to lure the mark into.

Everything seems to be going swimmingly, which puts Eames on alert because it's never that easy anymore. This means that he's not surprised when the entire structure begins to shake before they even find the mark.

"Great. It hasn't even been five minutes. Is it an earthquake?" Kara asks, gripping onto a nailed-down desk for support.

"Too subtle," Eames says absently. He glances around at the ceiling panels, the bulletin boards, the desk supplies -- everything is vibrating at a low but constant level.

The idea is still dawning on Eames when Ben says, "Cortical activity," under his breath, almost to himself.

Kara still has her gun pointed out. "What?"

"The sedative isn't strong enough," Eames explains after a quick glance at Ben. "Her brain is processing sounds from topside, incorporating them into the dream. The dream is changing by itself to make sense of the noises."

Outside the window, they can see ever-widening cracks in the sidewalk as the streets roil up like waves. "There's construction on Lee's cross-street," Ben calls suddenly. "Did you see the orange cones on the corner of that four-way stop? It's probably a jackhammer."

Kara curses. "Well, let's hope that Roland can figure it out and adjust the dose. Are there any outward signs that this is happening?"

"It should echo a REM cycle. Lots of movement with the eyes, etcetera," Eames tells her. "If he's any good, he'll be able to figure it out."

Then he's forced to grab onto a filing cabinet for balance as the entire building suddenly buckles to one side. "Too late, I'm guessing," Kara groans. "I can't believe it's going to hell already, god."

"There might still be time. If you find her, go for the apocalyptic angle, last rites sort of thing," Eames advises quickly. "It's salvageable, don't panic just yet."

"Okay, first, there are parachute packs by the secretarial office. Pop out one of the south side windows, that should drop us right on the main street," Ben instructs, and the confidence is unusual enough for Eames to take notice as they all jog over to claim a parachute.

"Be sure you pull the cord right away," Eames informs them. He helps Kara and falters a bit when he finds Ben finishing up the straps already. "We're barely high enough to pull this off," he directs to Kara before turning to Ben and saying, "You can't be arsed to show up on time but suddenly you're a bloody Air Scout?"

A few well-placed shots shatters the window and Kara, never one for hesitation, disappears off the edge almost immediately afterward. Ben walks backward and says, "Getting a doctorate is hard work, Mr. Eames. I trust you were getting along just fine without me," before he turns and jumps as well, Eames on his heels.

The scene on the ground is absolute chaos. Playing off the apocalyptic angle seems to be the best option, seeing as how most of the projections are already taking that idea and running with it, trying their best to create a war-torn city. Kara is already sprinting toward Lee, who's wandering around in a bright white dress. Meanwhile, by the time Eames extricates himself from the parachute, Ben has somehow gotten a hold of a firearm for each hand and is stalking forward at a steady pace without a hitch in gunfire. He's tunnel-visioning though, which means that the pop of a grenade pin goes unnoticed.

Eames almost gets a bullet in the shoulder when he jumps out and tackles Ben to the side, rolling them behind a pillar. The abrupt change in momentum trajectory has them landing awkwardly and Eames's face bounces off Ben's skull before he can roll away.

"What the hell are you -- " Ben spits, but the rest of it's drowned out by the thunderous explosion of the grenade.

"An early exit is very dull," Eames yells over the buzzing in his ears. "No one ever wanted to be the first one out of a schoolyard game, did they?"

Ben huffs out a laugh that Eames senses more than he hears. It triggers something in Eames's mind but he fumbles to produce a concrete reason, like gears struggling to catch.

"What about Kara?" Ben is asking.

"She went after Lee. They're in the church," Eames answers. He watches several projections run by without taking notice of the two of them. "Hopefully the dream has adjusted itself, at least."

Ben snorts. "Never would have pegged you as an optimist."

"I like to experiment with different philosophies every now and then," says Eames. "It's difficult to cull my adventurous tendencies."

He can't pinpoint exactly when he knows. One minute he's checking out the dreamscape, squinting through the smoke and pattering of shadowy footsteps, and the next minute there's a bone-deep familiarity setting in out of nowhere. The dream fades to a dull roar and all he can do is look down at Ben and stutter out a couple of false starts. As much as this moment has been mulled over and subject to constant re-imaginings, he's wildly unprepared for the logistics of the actual conversation.

Eames says, "It's a bit strange -- I don't think I've ever seen you topside this entire time."

Which is the truth, and it's only now dawning on him. Ben's belongings are everywhere -- a backpack and a messenger bag slumped against the desk, a stray sweatshirt draped over the mobile corkboard. They go a long way to mask his absence.

"You do know what part-time means, right?" Ben asks.

Eames smiles to himself and shakes his head. "There was once a time when it wouldn't have taken me so long to figure it out. Or perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit."

Ben gives him a probing expression. Finally, he says, "Don't be so hard on yourself. It took me a lot longer with you that first time. And anyway, it's kind of impossible to really expect the unexpected."

"You always do come out of nowhere," Eames agrees, and Arthur cracks a smile at that.

"This is embarrassing, huh? And here I thought I was being so slick," he says, still smiling, and Eames knows it's genuine. Despite all appearances, Arthur always likes being exposed or found out, at least a little.

It's a perfect forgery. From this close, Eames can see the faded scars of mistreated acne, the slight unevenness in the folds of his eyes, the soft, faded gray irises. He wonders where Arthur's been, where he learned to do this; he wonders if it was for this express purpose, to work this job, or if he's changed fields in the time they've been out of touch. During his lessons, they'd worked on aging down to an adolescent -- did Arthur know all that already?

"Perhaps this isn't the most opportune moment to address any questions," says Eames, "but -- where the hell have you been?"

"Around," Arthur says vaguely. "You could have hunted me down," he adds.

Eames raises his eyebrows. "You didn't want to be hunted down."

"You sound so sure of that."

"Of course," Eames says, because he is. "I know you."

Arthur's gaze remains steady, though his mouth tenses into something like reluctant appraisal. He'd been worried, Eames realizes, though worried might be the wrong word. Uncertain, perhaps.

"Tell me what I can do," says Eames, the words tumbling out awkwardly like he's sitting on a confessional, speaking to a faceless, unfamiliar person about his wrongdoings.

"What do you mean?" Arthur asks. He amends it to, "What do you want? Forgiveness? Because you already have that. I'm not really one to hold grudges over some stupid drunken fight, which you know. Absolution, maybe?"

Eames thinks, You. Though I have an extremely poor way of showing it. He thinks, How do I fix this? "Where's the fun in that?" he asks instead.

The corner of Arthur's mouth crooks up. Before Eames can take it back, he's reaching out and rubbing his thumb over the ghost of a dimple that doesn't actually exist in the dream, on this forge.

"And you, Arthur?" Eames asks, heart pounding. "What do you want?"

Arthur looks at him with Ben's green eyes and ski-jump nose. "I wanted you to figure it out," he begins, and at the exact moment it dawns on Eames that Arthur probably built a fail-safe timer for himself, he blinks out of the dream.

Eames curses, scrambling upright and considering throwing himself out of the dream as well, but someone puts a hand on his elbow and he stops. It's Kara.

"Our timer's almost out. I know you're a 'give an inch, take a mile'-type, but just wait a second," she says. She sounds much more calm. As the smoke clears, it's easy to see that most of the projections have made their way into the churches, leaving only stragglers behind on the streets.

Eames exhales through his nose, hard. "I'd appreciate an explanation, if you wouldn't mind."

"He gave me an extra percentage not to police his time and to lie to you." Kara shrugs. "Figured it was easy and harmless, so I said yes. We paid off some grad student for the sketches."

"How much extra did he offer you?"

Kara curls her mouth into a moue. "Maybe something like one hundred percent extra."

"His entire cut?" Eames echoes, though he's not very surprised.

"He must have really not wanted to see you in the flesh," Kara says. "Or then again, maybe not, because he's the one who hired you and also, he could have quit any time. Are you really that good?"

"Not especially, no. Compartmentalizing has just always been a specialty of his," says Eames.

Kara pauses, then says, carefully, "Not bad for a first time forger, though, huh? You gotta give him that much."

At this, Eames smiles. "It wasn't his first, but it wasn't bad. You're right."

By the time they blink awake, Roland has packed away most of the supplies and it's only the four of them left, including Lee. Eames shifts and pauses when he feels something creased over his fingers -- a blank Post-it, folded into fourths.

As they leave, he puts it into his trouser pocket.

*

On the way back home, Eames thinks about grand gestures, and every possible way of making one. Then he thinks about all these years of knowing Arthur, the steady phone calls and jobs and communication, and how they've slowly became strung together to form something much larger and complex than Eames ever anticipated.

He thinks about grand gestures and they seem all wrong in the context.

*

VII.

There are bad days on public transportation, and then there are worse ones. Eames flies in to SFO from Montreal after a short consulting job. Flight time is six hours, and it takes him another two to arrive at his flat, socks soaked through and the shoulders of his new coat dyed into a rain-splattered stone color.

He tracks water all through the shotgun hallway, pausing only to toss his duffel against the refrigerator. Payment for the job had been in the form of several aliquots of undiluted Somnacin derivative; he's toeing off his shoes and absently thinking about anyone who might happen to own a -80C freezer when the phone rings.

Eames pauses. The number is fairly new, but it could be anyone -- wrong number, a mistaken identity. After all, phone companies recycle numbers fairly often.

But somehow he knows that's not it.

He presses the button and says, "Yes?"

"Where are you?" Arthur’s voice comes through tinny. If it sounds a bit warbled and slurred as well, Eames blames it on the connection.

"Eames," Arthur prompts, and Eames says, "I'm having a napalm-colored drink on a nude beach."

"A nude beach where?"

"Southeast Asia."

Eames rubs his nose when Arthur pauses, then repeats, "Where are you?"

"In my flat."

"Just name a city, would you."

"San Francisco," Eames finally admits.

It takes him a minute to realize that the responding click had been Arthur hanging up. The phone display is still flashing the call time at him as he stares at it for a few seconds before getting up and opening the front door on instinct.

When Arthur stumbles into view at the end of the hallway, nervous relief washes over Eames like white noise. His hair is shorter, torso more filled out, and there's an unfamiliar five o'clock shadow scraping over his jawline. He looks wrung out and just this side of horrible. He's the best thing that Eames has seen in months.

Belatedly, Eames realizes that Arthur is wearing a dark sweater that shines strangely under the hallway lighting. It takes him another beat to figure it out.

"Jesus," Eames says, the elation wiped clean away by seeing exactly how pale Arthur is. Arthur keeps walking until their chests bump. Eames catches him before he falls.

"Bad -- depth perception," Arthur breathes. "Sorry."

"You exhaled right into my eye," Eames tells him.

"Sorry," Arthur says again. "Hey, it's good to see you, though. Outside of a dream, I mean."

Despite going almost dead weight, getting him into the flat is far too easy, mostly because he doesn't fight. There’s a stash of painkillers in the medicine cabinet, from a doctor who owes Eames several favors. He drags Arthur over to the bed, then grabs a pack and shoves one of the films inside his mouth. Arthur puckers his lips in response, as if Eames force fed him a lemon.

"Don’t you dare, that is precious commodity," Eames warns, even going so far as to pinch Arthur’s lips together, making them bleed white. His knuckles are pressing up against Arthur’s nose, and an annoyed huff of breath hits his skin. "It’ll make you feel better," he promises.

Soon afterward, Arthur is blinking more slowly, fighting the medication haze. Eames finally releases the tension on his fingers, running his thumb over Arthur’s lips in an absent gesture that even he doesn’t register until it happens.

"How do you feel now?"

Arthur smacks his tongue loudly. "Better."

Still, he hisses with every stitch that Eames puts in, despite the added lidocaine. Seven stitches total, and for the last three Eames has to pause and splay his hand over Arthur's stomach to calm him down. He has to dodge some wayward fists as he wraps gauze around Arthur's middle, but it's nothing too bad.

Afterward, Eames fills the tub about a quarter of the way with cold water before gathering up the soiled clothing and dropping them in to soak. Almost immediately, red tendrils begin curling through the water in ribbons. He watches the color bleed through for a few minutes, biting the inside of his lip and thinking about nothing -- or trying to, anyway -- and only snaps back to attention when he hears Arthur’s voice.

"At your beck and call," he states, leaning against the doorframe.

Arthur raises himself up, resting back on his elbows. "Come here for a second."

Eames finds himself obeying, as if some residual effect of the drugs is somehow seeping into his own system. "I'm sorry," he says baldly. "Truly. I've been wanting to say that for ages."

"I know. I got your messages. All seventeen of them," Arthur says.

"There were eight," Eames corrects. "Let's not exaggerate the extent of my desperation."

He watches Arthur for a bit, there on the edge of the bed, palm planted on the mattress to support his weight. "I'm sorry," he says again, quieter this time. "I've missed you terribly."

"Don't. I mean, I know," Arthur repeats. "I'm sorry, too. It was a misunderstanding, that's all. I was a presumptuous asshole. That thing with Tom, it's just -- something I did. Something I would have done. And something I would do over again, if I had to, despite the fact that I was going about it all wrong. It got you out of there, in the end."

He takes a deep breath. "Anyway. We can stop the apology circle-jerk now."

There's a pause, as if they're both trying to convince themselves of it, struggling to climb out of the quicksand pit of their last face-to-face.

"I thought you were dead," Eames starts again. He figures it's a good time to be persistent, considering Arthur's glazed eyes and how he's been resting the back of his knuckles against Eames's thigh without second thought.

"No, you didn't." Arthur smiles faintly. "You knew I was just licking my wounds."

"I hoped that's what it was," Eames corrects. "Though part of me hoped I'd miraculously run into you by accident. It was all very confusing, you see -- I'd only ever seen you chase after something, not the other way around."

"I dig in deep," Arthur says. "And I was still chasing something, if you think about it. You went on those jobs."

The change in subject is abrupt, but Eames cottons on. "I did," he confirms.

"I'm glad," is all Arthur says.

"Maybe you should try to sleep a bit," Eames hedges. Arthur touches Eames's jaw and says, "Did you know, you grind your teeth to all hell."

"That’s not true," Eames immediately says.

"I shared a room with you for nearly a month," Arthur says. "I’m pretty sure you have TMJ. Did you also know," he adds abruptly, "that I couldn’t sleep for a while, after. After Paris."

The weight of this admission presses in on Eames and makes his chest feel strange, as if his lungs aren’t working quite right. Arthur referred to it not as inception, or the Fischer job, or anything related to Cobb -- he referred to it as Paris, as if that place holds some other significance for him.

For a minute it almost feels like Eames is back in that warehouse, at some impossible hour, lying there in the dark half-drunk on exhaustion and listening to Arthur's deep breaths.

"Because the guilt was weighing on you too heavily? Or were you drunk on the godlike power of mind crime?" he finally asks. He watches Arthur smile, eyes still closed.

"You’re such an ass."

"And you’re drugged to your ears," Eames murmurs back. "You have absolutely no idea what's happening right now."

"How is it," Arthur mumbles, "that someone can feel so safe and so dangerous at the same time. So open and so closed off."

"Because I’m actually a character from a romance novel, according to your current assessments." Eames can’t help but touch Arthur’s cheek again, just because he’s able to. "God, you really are out of it, aren’t you?"

"Stop deflecting, for once."

"As much as I'd love to take advantage of your sluggish, weakened state, with your horrible vocabulary -- " Eames catches Arthur's fingers, stopping them from where they've started spidering up along his sternum. "That was a joke," he says.

"This isn't a joke," Arthur counters, and it's clear he's talking about something else entirely. "I'm not a joke."

"No," Eames says, sobering. "No, of course you're not."

Arthur examines him blearily. "I never know with you."

"Well, that's the whole point, isn't it?" Eames tries to keep his voice light. "Slippery like an eel, and all that."

But Arthur isn't deterred. "Depends on what you want," he says slowly, voice overlaid with static gravel.

Arthur's hand against his thigh is like a trigger on a heat map, burning bright in Eames's awareness. Eames physically has to count to ten in his head before he can move away and off the bed before he does something he's going to regret.

"Go to sleep. I'll be here," he says from a safe distance.

Arthur blinks once, twice, a third time before his eyes stay closed.

Eames goes out to the balcony and smokes three cigarettes in a row, resolutely not thinking of Arthur on the other side of the wall, sleeping in a pile of blankets like he belongs there. A few minutes later, the cold gets to be too much. He goes back inside and aimlessly flips through channels, finally settles on one that's playing something grainy and black and white, setting the volume low enough so that it's a pleasant fuzzy undertone of un-mastered audio. He doesn't sleep, because strangely enough, Arthur wakes up unnaturally quick after being dosed with any kind of painkiller.

After a cold cup of coffee and about halfway through a re-showing of the movie, Eames gets up and stands again at the doorframe to the bedroom, straining to hear the rhythm of Arthur's breathing. The light filtering through the curtains is a mixture of streetlamps and the minutes before sunrise, veiling everything in a layer of navy and grey shadows.

"Hey," says Arthur, in the dark.

"Christ," Eames exhales.

The lamp flicks on but neither of them move. Eames takes him in -- the knobbly knees, hair wavy and unwashed against the pillow, day-old scruff standing stark against his face. The contrast makes him look sharper. More dangerous. Eames swallows; he doesn't look away.

"How are the stitches settling?" he asks.

Arthur taps the gauze, fingers curled like he's playing piano. "A little tender. Feels okay, though."

"I'll rewrap it if you'd like a shower -- after. You could use some antibiotic, maybe some more topical painkillers."

Arthur simply says, "Yeah?"

"Barring any kind of unusual pain or infection, you should be feeling well enough to head elsewhere in a day or two. If that was your plan," Eames adds. "You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."

"Okay."

"Okay," Eames echoes.

"I'm a little in love with you," Arthur says, natural as anything, "if you haven't picked up on that. Might as well get that out."

Notable moments in Eames's life are most always overshadowed by mundane, inconsequential details. In Belarus, when he was pulled into an unmarked van, the prevailing worry was about not being able to return his prepaid phone in time. In Switzerland, when he was a passenger in a downing helicopter, he was distracted by how the sun was beating down on his face, unhindered and much too bright.

Now, he finds himself staring at the shell of Arthur's ear, pale in the pre-dawn light. Is his hair long enough to cover it, he wonders. Arthur is smiling absently, picking at the medical tape stretched over his skin.

So this is how it's happening. Eames finds himself with an energy akin to the seconds before plunging off a building without knowing if his parachute will deploy correctly.

"Don't feel so brave and special there," he finally says. "It may in fact be a shared sentiment."

"It may," Arthur repeats slowly.

"Is in fact," Eames corrects, and it's easier than he would have imagined, to say it aloud like that.

Arthur's t-shirt is rucked up a bit, the hem wrinkled over itself to reveal a sliver of skin stretched over the peak of his hip. A few years ago, Eames didn't even know Arthur, had no inkling of the person that would come to be woven into Eames's existence, regardless of whether he was physically present or not.

Abruptly, Arthur is getting out of bed and stripping off the t-shirt, saying, "I've got to take a shower," voice muffled through the cotton. His gait is marred with a slight slouch and a hobble.

When the door closes, Eames blankly walks to the kitchen. He bangs around in there for a bit without really processing what he's doing, shoves a few spoonfuls of coffee into a filter, then leaves it on the counter to head right back to the bedroom, where he hammers at the bathroom door until Arthur opens it.

"What did I ever do for you?" is all Eames says.

"This isn't some competition," Arthur answers, with no indication of being taken off-guard by the question. "You don't need to match or one-up me."

"Yes, but equal footing does have its benefits, does it not?"

Arthur turns to face him. He's got shaving cream smeared over his jaw. "Eames, we've been on equal footing since I found you in Shanghai. Or every time you pick up the phone when I call you. And anyway, that's not the point."

Eames mulls this over. "What is it, then?"

"What?"

"What is the point, then?" Eames demands. "You wanted me to figure it out. I did, finally. But that can't have been the point."

Arthur simply stands there, silent. "I was gauging my odds, I guess," he finally says. "It sounds stupid, but -- "

He turns away and tilts his chin up, rests his fingers at the base of his throat like he's pulling the skin taut, and starts shaving with slow, careful scrapes. "When I first met you, you looked like you owned the world, and also like you wouldn’t care at all if you lost it. I guess that’s how it started," he says evenly, like he's had this prepared for a while.

The water in the sink blooms white when Arthur rinses the razor. Eames touches his thumb to his lip, says, "Huh."

"Huh," Arthur repeats. "Can I shave in peace now?"

His voice shakes the slightest bit, a ripple in a body of water that expands outward until he can't meet Eames's eyes and concentrates on his reflection instead.

Eames makes an executive decision. He cradles the jack-rabbit feeling in his chest for a moment, relishing that pocket of adrenaline, before moving into Arthur's space and kissing him neatly. How their winding, convoluted road led to this moment -- he has half a mind to sit down and try to map it out later, but then again, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll forgo everything else as lost time and wash his hands of it. The important part now is this, here: Arthur in his flat, Arthur with one hand resting against Eames's chest, Arthur kissing him back like it's the thousandth time, not the first. Eames even manages to avoid most of the shaving cream.

If he thinks about it, it's strange that, considering how long Arthur has been in his life, it should culminate to this moment that feels like both an apex and an anti-climax, an everyday thing.

Arthur blinks when he finally backs away. "Eames," he begins.

"Don't let me interrupt you," Eames says, gesturing to Arthur's face.

Arthur stares at him. The jack-rabbit feeling returns. "Asshole," Arthur finally says. He meets Eames's gaze through the mirror, and Eames feels the buoyant lightness of possibility filling him up, finally bringing him across the threshold to where Arthur is standing, waiting, smiling.

*

Arthur leaves four days later, leaving behind a memo in the top drawer of the dresser. Belize, 11/18.

Eames sends him one of those Groucho Marx disguises, with the plastic glasses, nose, and mustache. The attached note says, See you soon.

He hails a cab to the airport.