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“Really? It had to be Eames?”
Arthur paces circles around Cobb as they wander through the warehouse, getting the space set up for the incoming group of experts. Cobb tries to dodge him, brushing him off, hoping Arthur will find something more pleasant to do with his time. No such luck.
“He’s good,” says Cobb. “The best. I talked with him in Mombasa, and while he didn’t exactly describe you as a delight to be around, he didn’t seem averse to working with you either. I’m trying to figure out where all the hostility is coming from, because it seems pretty love-hate to Eames.”
Arthur grimaces. “Tolerate-hate, maybe.”
“See? You’re so hostile.”
“I don’t hate Eames,” Arthur corrects. “I just don’t enjoy working with him. With someone… like him.”
Cobb moves a chair slightly to the left, a perfectionist as usual, and stares up at Arthur.
“You mean his personality, or his abilities?”
“I don’t like working with someone who can do what he does, and I don’t mean forgery. I mean the stuff he can do when we’re awake.”
Cobb rolls his eyes. “Get over it. It’s not like he’s hypnotizing you.”
“He might as well be.”
* * *
“It’s not natural,” says Arthur on Wednesday, before Eames arrives.
Yusuf and Ariadne glance up from their work stations. Cobb ignores the remark and continues fiddling with the PASIV, making sure everything is in place.
“What’s not natural?” asks Saito.
“Eames. I’ll admit it, because Cobb’s been pestering me. I don’t like that stuff he does. I don’t like working with someone who has that level of power.”
“Ah,” Yusuf makes a thoughtful noise. “You mean the empath.”
Arthur shakes his head. “Not technically empathy. It’s hypnosis. It’s manipulation.”
Yusuf thinks for a moment. “Empathy is the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling, but in this case it’s also grammatically correct, my friend. Empath is the term for Mr. Eames.”
“What are we talking about?” asked Ariadne, looking slightly dazed.
Yusuf continues.
“If you want to be scientific, Arthur,” says Yusuf, “ hyper-pathokinesis . That’s the big Greek word I was looking for. But most people shorten them to empaths, because it’s a term we recognize. And it’s not un-natural, because the have been over half a million described cases worldwide.” He pauses, smiling smugly. “That’s roughly the population of Suriname. Would you consider the country of Suriname to be un-natural?”
Arthur ignores him. “You’re missing the point. Doesn’t it bother you that he can just mess around with the chemicals in your head?”
“He doesn’t,” says Yusuf casually. “He’s a professional. He wouldn’t waste valuable energy making your life in particular a living hell, Arthur.”
“What can Eames do?” Ariadne continues, looking for answers as hard as she can.
“Eames,” Cobb explains, “Is an empath. Not in the sense that anyone can be, but in the sense that he’s one of the few who can voluntarily manipulate other people’s emotions. It’s a very valuable skill to have in this field of work, and we are very lucky to be able to work with him.”
The last part is emphasized, with a pointed look in Arthur’s direction.
“I don’t like it,” says Arthur plainly, indicating that he will argue no further.
* * *
Eames arrives to the warehouse as a normal person, dressed as a normal person, simply being himself with no indication that he is anything more or less. Eames is cordial and friendly and accommodating in his work, outlining the details of forgery for Cobb and Saito, and everything he will and won’t be able to do for the job.
Eames leans casually against a table, arms folding, eyes taking in the warehouse.
Arthur stands some ways behind him, listening to Cobb, always listening, but not truly paying attention. Arthur’s eyes are on Eames, as if somehow being watchful can prevent Eames from doing what he knows Eames can do.
Eames does his work without any indication of using those abilities. He doesn’t need them as he goes over plan outlines with Cobb and Saito. He’s perfectly amiable and ordinary, and eventually someone inquires. That someone is Ariadne, and in the late afternoon when all the important work is out of the way, she approaches him.
“Is it hard?”
Eames glances at her, smiling. “Not particularly.”
“I just… I find that so interesting. I’ve never actually met someone who can do it.” Ariadne blushes slightly, energized with curiosity.
Arthur catches the blush, the slight lean forward, and feels suddenly sick to his stomach.
Eames is a distraction.
“Would it be… I don’t want to bother you,” Ariadne stammers. “Could you just show me how it works?”
“You want a demonstration, love? Of course.”
Eames talks thoughtfully as he rolls up his sleeves. Not that rolling his sleeves has any effect on his abilities, but maybe seeing some physical action helps. “It’s easiest with very simple emotions. Think of it like a sort of inception, but an extremely basic form of it. That’s why empaths make such good extractors. We already have experience planting ideas in people’s minds.” He laughs softly, leaning back against the table. “The first part is essentially a psychic scan of sorts. I’m extremely in-tune and hypersensitive to people’s emotional states. I essentially have to pick up on a fragment of an emotion in the target’s mind, and then I intensify it to my will. This is why it’s easiest with calm targets. If someone’s really angry, it’s a lot harder to pick up on calm emotions in their mind.”
He focuses his gaze on Ariadne, and Arthur watches, wondering how she can be okay with it. But she stands willingly, waiting to feel him toying with her mind like it’s a recreational drug. Arthur shudders at the thought, but he’s curious.
He watches.
Eames grins, glancing away for a moment like he’s trying to conjure something in his mind, and then he closes his eyes, maybe to focus, maybe for the theatrics of it.
Ariadne grins deeply, seemingly overwhelmed all of a sudden with a sort of giddiness that makes her bounce on her heels slightly, giggling in a very uncharacteristic way. She shakes her hands at the wrists, riding out a wave of… something.
“Wow,” she breathes. “That was incredible! And you can do that anytime?”
“Anytime I want.” Eames smiles at her reaction.
“I haven’t felt that happy in a while. Like, not in a sad way. It’s just so much , you know? All at once like that?”
“It wasn’t very subtle,” Eames confesses. “If I were manipulating a mark, I’d be much more careful with my work. That was for your enjoyment only.”
Manipulating a mark. Those words hang over Arthur as he contemplates the scene. That’s what it all about anyway. With that, he can push away the slight pang he felt at seeing Ariadne so happy under Eames’ gentle guidance. It’s not a party drug. It’s a tool. A weapon. Eames can use it at any time, on any person. It’s manipulation.
“Arthur,” Ariadne calls. “You should try.”
“Pass,” says Arthur flatly, turning on his heel and leaving the room.
* * *
The proposition happens at the end of everything else, when Eames, perceptive to a fault, finds Arthur once again.
“Have you been sleeping, darling?”
Arthur frowns up at Eames from the chair he’s sitting in, partially because he doesn’t want to bothered so late in the evening—certainly not by Eames—and partially because he hasn’t. He hasn’t been sleeping, and only Eames could notice that.
Eames. Same as usual. Empathy.
“Not your concern.”
Eames smiles a little. Warmly. And Arthur feels the tiniest bit warmer. And then he’s certain that Eames is doing that thing he does best, and he rises from his chair.
“Leave me alone. I don’t want it.”
“Want what?” Eames looks confused.
“Whatever that is. That thing you did to Ariadne. I don’t need it.” Arthur glares.
“I haven’t done anything.”
Arthur is skeptical, stepping away, but some part of him wants to stay. He doesn’t want to talk to Eames, but maybe Eames is the only one who can help him…
Reluctantly, he swallows his pride.
“Eames.”
Eames hasn’t left him, undeterred by the disgust towards his craft. “Hmm?”
“The insomnia is… getting worse.”
“I know.”
Arthur glances up at him. “And stop… feeling me like that. Whatever you’re using your tricks for to scan me, it makes me uncomfortable.”
Eames shakes his head. “I’m not feeling you. I’m looking at you. You have dark circles under your eyes.” He stares deeply, too deeply for Arthur’s comfort. “Are you taking medication for it?”
“It never works.” Arthur looks at his shoes. “I need… I would prefer if you could help.”
He hates to say it, but he’d do anything to be useful for this job. His performance can’t lose to his pride.
“You want me to help you sleep?” Eames inquires curiously. “You mean…”
“With your powers.”
“ Abilities , darling. I’m not a witch.”
Eames stares at him a moment more, as if deciphering something about him. Analyzing.
“Is that how it works?” Arthur asks, feeling suddenly exposed and vulnerable. “Do you… can you increase sleep in my mind?”
“I can,” says Eames shrugging. “I charge fifty dollars an hour, though.”
Arthur presses his mouth into a thin line, staring at Eames, until he feels a playful shove on his shoulder.
“I’m teasing ,” Eames laughs. “Only teasing.”
* * *
Eames moves silently in the hotel room, glancing at shelves and Arthur’s belongings. He doesn’t look at Arthur as Arthur slips out of his shirt, glancing away awkwardly.
For a while, they say nothing. Arthur isn’t sure how to initiate what comes next. Something about it feels almost too intimate, which is a silly thought, he knows. But the insomnia isn’t worth his pride.
“How do you do it?” he asks Eames.
“You lie still and relax. Try to clear your mind.”
Arthur laughs nervously, sitting on the end of the bed. “If you knew my mind, you’d know just how difficult that kind of thing can be. You can’t just… overpower me?”
Eames makes an amused face.
“Overpower you?”
Arthur swallows, wondering if it’s too late to rephrase it.
“I don’t know if I can clear my mind, Eames.” He says.
“Then let me do it.”
He expects to feel a flood of energy as Eames twists whatever thoughts are in his mind to his will, leaving Arthur nothing but a vessel for his abilities like so many have been. But instead, Eames just starts talking.
“Did I ever tell you about the time in London when I tried this on that businessman at the bar?” he laughs softly. “There you go, just relax.”
“No.” Arthur lies back on the bed. “No, I… don’t think so.”
And Eames tells him, unraveling the story beautifully in the way only Eames can. He speaks in hushed tones, in the dark of the room, and Arthur lies down to listen. Occasionally, Eames interrupts his own story with soft praise. Arthur relaxes well. Arthur is doing a good job. Arthur shuts his eyes, waiting for the moment when his thoughts are no longer his own. Some curious part of his mind wants to know what it feels like, being toyed with. Being manipulated. He thinks about it, wondering how he will respond physiologically, psychologically… when he completely surrenders control to someone else. And that someone else is Eames.
His breath hitches.
“Everything alright?” Eames asks.
“Yeah… yeah I’m fine.”
“Good.”
He can’t pinpoint the exact moment it happens, the way he thought he would. He’s just suddenly aware of how tired he feels. Here, fully relaxed in the warm darkness, listening to Eames’ voice, he can feel the full effects. He feels heavy, and hates how subtle Eames can work. If he wasn’t anticipating it, he never would have noticed, and that fact annoys him. He’s no more clever than any other mark, and Eames is good. So, so good.
Arthur closes his eyes and feels a hand on his back, applying the gentlest pressure. He hates how well it works, amplifying the sensations of whatever Eames is doing to him. But the sleep comes so easy that Arthur can’t bring himself to be mad.
Sleep. Eames soothes.
And Arthur does.
* * *
Sleep.
It’s all Arthur can thinks about as he works silently with Yusuf the next morning, remarking at how good he feels. His head doesn’t ache, and neither do his muscles. Easily the best sleep he’s had in months, possibly in his life, and he can’t stop smiling.
Part of his mind rebels at it. Using Eames like a sleeping drug that he could easily get hooked on. Already he’s looking forward to his next chance to use Eames, to let Eames do whatever it is he does to him so well. He wonders why he never asked before.
“You seem in good spirits,” Yusuf points out as he adjusts a formula on paper.
“I slept for the first time in what feels like a year, Yusuf.”
“I saw you leave with Eames last night. Any connection?”
Arthur remembers the sensations. He remembers Eames’ voice flooding his loud, busy mind, washing away the stress of the day. He remembers Eames hand on his back, and the sleep that followed shortly after. Where did Eames go after that? When Arthur woke up, there was a blanket over his shoulders and fresh coffee in the kitchen.
“He helped.”
“Oh?” Yusuf raises his eyebrows over his reading glasses.
“With his abilities. He helped me sleep. I asked him to… I don’t know the specifics, but he amplified the sleep in my mind or something. It worked like a charm.”
Yusuf pauses his writing, glancing up at Arthur. “What did he do?”
“Same as the other emotions, only he did it with sleep.”
Yusuf considers this for a moment, and then shakes his head.
“That’s not possible, Arthur.”
Arthur frowns. “What? How is it not possible? I was there.”
“Maybe, but that’s not how empathic abilities work,” Yusuf chuckles. “Eames works in emotion, and sleep isn’t an emotion. It’s a physiological need, and you can’t manipulate that.”
“But I-”
“Hey, Eames!”
Eames is across the room at the drawing board, going over details with Cobb. He turns, and Yusuf beckons him.
“Eames, you can’t work with sleep,” says Yusuf. “Am I correct? Sleep isn’t an emotion.”
Eames smiles, and Arthur feels unexpectedly warm again, yet still so confused.
“Of course sleep isn’t an emotion,” says Eames.
Arthur blinks. “But you told me-”
“Right… well, I lied, darling. Sorry about that.”
“But it worked, Eames. It worked,” says Arthur, trying to make sense of it. “What did you do to me?”
But he never felt the sensations, other than the sleep that comes after total relaxation. There was Eames’ voice, Eames’ hands, and Eames himself. It was all Eames from the beginning.
“I helped,” says Eames, “the same as anyone can help anyone sleep.”
Arthur nods, and he understands.
“Are you upset, love?”
“Why… would I be upset?” Arthur laughs, and then laughs harder.
No manipulation. The emotions were his own, eased out of him by natural means, by Eames.
Arthur sighs, smiling. “I’m grateful. Really. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”