I. They'll Name a City After Us
It's not the vibration itself but the sharp, incessant rattling of the bedside table that wakes him. He gropes for his mobile and paws at it stupidly, wincing against the sudden glow when the screen finally responds.
He doesn't recognize the number.
Sunday was the 8 month anniversary of when you shot me in the face...just an FYI.
A few minutes pass. Eames lies in bed, staring at the ceiling.
The phone buzzes again.
The second time.
"Open up," he says.
Arthur gives him an impassive look. Eames honestly isn't sure if he understands the request or not, so he nudges at Arthur's lower lip with the muzzle of his pistol.
"Between the eyes," says Arthur. It's not a request.
Eames shrugs and complies, pressing the cold metal into Arthur's forehead, hard. Too hard. "Suit yourself. It hurts less my way."
Arthur's eyes flutter closed and he waits.
It's not often that a dream needs to be ended this way. Usually the timer runs out, or the kick works. But when all other possibilities are eliminated, whatever remains, however horrible, must be done. Arthur prefers to take care of it himself. He likes to know that he can. But he is weak already from loss of blood, too dizzy and lightheaded to conjure up a weapon for himself. And Eames is, for all his teasing, a consummate professional.
The first job they do together, Cobb lays down the ground rules of his particular brand of extraction. His last rule is "don't be a hero."
Arthur quips, "I don't think you need to worry about that."
Eames gives him a jaunty salute.
Arthur is a top-level man.
For simple assignments he doesn't even enter the dream. For second-level jobs, for dreaming within a dream, he goes into the first level but no deeper. Arthur the point man. Arthur the slobbering guard dog. Arthur, Cobb's most trusted, watching his sleeping flock, all for the hope of scraps from his table.
These are all things Eames could say, if he wanted to make fun of him. Eames has a talent for putting a negative spin on absolutely anything if he wants to. But he never does.
Instead, always, and from the very first time they work together, he tells Arthur to watch his back. The last thing he says before he goes under is a warning, a reminder. At first Arthur thinks he's being condescending but after a while he understand the sincerity behind him. He really, honestly doesn't want Arthur to get hurt.
After Mal slips away into the reality she loved so much, Arthur knows that Eames can see the grief radiating from him. He feels gutted out and raw, empty and dirty, guilty for missing someone that never belonged to him. And he feels Eames' eyes on him, and sometimes he wonders how much Eames sees.
The first time Arthur ends up in the hospital, it's not Cobb who is by his side.
It's understandable, Cobb having only just fled the country on borrowed time as the law nips at his heels. Arthur is supposed to follow as soon as it was safe. Instead, he goes out walking too late at night, still steeping in borrowed grief, not knowing that a former mark of theirs had been trailing him for weeks. Luckily the mark is a terrible shot; unluckily, a bullet to the kneecap is fucking painful.
The first few days are hell, the haze of grief and morphine, never more unsure of reality in his life. He fumbles blindly for his totem in the pockets that aren't there. For a while he is alone. Then suddenly there is Eames.
He first sees him framed in early morning sunlight in the garden, the tired droop of Eames' shoulders so unlike him. Arthur swallows and looks down at his hideous slip-on hospital shoes, looking like someone else's feet on the metal rests of the wheelchair.
"They told me you were outside," Eames says, not looking at him.
"I am," says Arthur slowly. He hasn't really spoken to anyone in a long time and his voice is rough with disuse.
Eames has something folded over his arm and he extends it to Arthur, who recognizes his jacket. The jacket he was wearing...
He snatches it away and grabs the die from the pocket, clutching it hard, deep in his fist. The jacket lies forgotten in his lap.
"Thank you," he says.
"Yeah," says Eames, scuffing the damp ground with the toe of his Italian loafers. "Well."
When the projection of Mal takes up a habit of shooting Arthur in the knee, the familiar phantom pain wrenching a scream from deep in his gut, Arthur knows this is Cobb's way of saying he feels guilty for not being there. He explains this to Eames over drinks one night.
"Classic," says Eames, gesturing for another gin and tonic.
It's only when Arthur gets drunk, really drunk, that he begins to notice things. Things that happen, things that exist, between him and Eames. Things that don't exist between most ex-rivals, co-workers, friends. Eames touches him in ways he doesn't touch other people. When Arthur is sober he convinces himself that it's not true, that Eames touches everyone. But when he's drunk he feels the electricity, the intent behind the bump of Eames' elbow, the brush of his fingers, the warm grasp of his hand.
When he is really, completely drunk, sometimes, Arthur wonders what's going to come of it all.
They meet when they are both military intelligence prodigies, entrusted with far more responsibility than they deserve - something they prove to be true when they turn their assignment into a pissing contest. Their superiors finally find them halfway across the world from where they are meant to be, half-naked, bareknuckle boxing in a dive bar as patrons throw them fistfulls of dirty cash. It seems like a good idea at the time.
Their punishment fits the crime.
They will be guinea pigs for something new, something questionable, something that will almost certainly warp their minds forever. And it will happen in a whitewashed, anonymous room, across the street from the CIA headquarters.
"What's that?" is the only thing Arthur can think of to say. It looks a cross between a Samsonite and a souped-up Simon game.
Eames favors him with a twisted smile. "That, my dear boy, is a PASIV."
"You broke your hand on my face."
Arthur is smiling. After all these years he still thinks it's funny.
"Huh," Eames says. "Did I?"
He always pretends like he doesn't remember.
"So what do you think?" Arthur's eyes are lingering on the paperwork that's still spread over the desk in their headquarters, one floor of a condemned office building in the 13th arrondissement. The floorboards creak dangerously under his feet as he paces across the room to the rusted filing cabinet where they keep their liquor.
Eames shrugs. "How bad can it be?"
Arthur returns with a bottle of scotch and two glasses. Arranging them on the table, he says, "I guess we'll find out."
"Excited to go under?"
Unlike their usual sordid affairs, this job will take place safely within the confines of a mental hospital, with doctors and security guards overseeing. Cobb's decided that since they won't need Arthur up top, and they could use all the bodies they can get in the dream, Arthur's finally cleared for active duty.
He flexes his fingers. "Yeah," he says. "Sure."
Eames fastens his eyes on Arthur's and smiles over the rim of the glass. Arthur clears his throat and looks back at the papers.
"Nash is afraid," Eames says unnecessarily. "Can't you smell it on him?"
Arthur nods shortly. "He's still new. Give him time."
"You don't think it's too much too soon?"
Arthur shrugs. It means, what other choice do we have? But he doesn't have to say it out loud, not with Eames. Nash is terrified, even though he won't even be in the dream. He keeps referring to the mark as a "serial killer," and Arthur has to keep reminding him that two murders, no matter how horrific, do not a serial killer make.
"Hannibal Lecter," says Eames, out of absolutely fucking nowhere. "Now there was a serial killer."
"Not a real person," Arthur reminds him. "Although...I suppose if you're going to murder people, it might as well be the impolite."
Eames smiles, a fierce grin. "You would think that, wouldn't you."
It is worse, so much worse, than anyone imagined.
"Close your eyes," says Eames.
Arthur spits out a mouthful of deep red blood and swipes his ruined sleeve across his mouth. His hands are cold and stiff.
NOT YET, Cobb is yelling, so loud Arthur can hear his voice chirping out of Eames' earpiece. NOT YET.
"Fuck," says Eames. "Jesus. Hurry."
Arthur is shivering.
"I'm cold," he says.
"Close your eyes," Eames says again.
Arthur tries to cough but he can't. He tries to breathe in deeply, to calm himself, but he can't. He reaches up, grasping at nothing, and his hands come to rest on the hood of the truck that is pinning him to the wall.
Eames kneels down, gun forgotten, and begins wiping away blood from Arthur's mouth with a dirty handkerchief. He is breathing heavily, his voice thick as he tells Arthur over and over again to please close his eyes, it would be over soon. Arthur knows he is still cold but it doesn't bother him anymore; his body feels numb, as if he is very close to falling asleep. He knows he should be panicking about the fact that his lower body is mostly severed under a truck and he's only still awake, still dreaming for all of them, because he is artifically pinned together, melded with the twisted metal.
IT'S DONE, Cobb shouts.
With a massive rush of breath, Eames hauls himself back onto his feet, raises his gun, and fires. And Arthur, his vision blurring as his body is convinced he's dying, almost doesn't see Eames' lips move just as he pulls the trigger. He almost doesn't see it, but he does. No sound comes out, there is no sound but the roaring in his ears as he slips back into the first level of the dream, but he sees the words as clearly as if they were written across Eames' face with a thick black pen.
He wakes.
The job was hard on all of them, so no one is surprised when a morning comes around and Eames simply isn't there. They will find another assistant thief. Another forger. Nash, bent over his sketchbook, hardly seems to notice the abscence. Cobb is stoic. Cobb is always stoic. And Eames is not there.
Only Arthur knows why.
Months pass. Four, five, six. A job offer comes. Mr. Saito will consider hiring them - hiring Cobb - to train his mind. He only wants them to prove they're capable, first.
Is inception possible? Arthur knows it's not. The human mind is too complex, too self-sabotaging. Give someone an idea that will save them, and they'll turn it into poison.
Cobb wants Eames back. There are plenty of good thieves; Cobb knows this, and Arthur knows that he knows this. He is expressing his displeasure at bringing Eames back into their lives, even if he is the best forger in the business.
The six months might as well have been six years. Eames looks like a different person, but he is still Eames, still unmistakable. He wears silk now, silk and fine cotton, his hair in a severe left-hand part, in Italian loafers that cost more than everything else in his closet. He looks like a secret agent in semi-retirement, like a character in a John le Carré novel. Arthur can't stop staring at him.
That night, that first night after they haven't seen each other in half a year, Arthur dreams.
He doesn't dream often, but when he does, it is startlingly vivid. He is back in the bar with Eames, but Eames looking like he does now, thicker and stronger, four day's growth on his face, scrabbling for a hold while the people jeer and shout. Arthur is smaller and slippery with sweat but Eames is an unstoppable force in his own right, furious and snarling, fighting dirty. He gets a headlock. His face is close to Arthur's and Arthur can feel every hot breath, raising goosebumps on his neck. Eames' teeth close mercilessly on his ear and Arthur screams.
He wakes up stuck to the bed and stubbornly decides he won't read too much into that.
"Security's going to run you down hard."
"And I will lead them on a merry chase."
"Just be back before the kick."
"Go to sleep, Mr. Eames."
II. Inceptors are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other
Sunday was the 8 month anniversary of when you shot me in the face...just an FYI.
Eames is still lying in bed, motionless, holding the phone inches from his face. His heart is pounding. There are so many possible responses to this, none of them good.
He wants to type: nothing's changed. But he's not sure if that's true (yes he is). He doesn't know if that's what Arthur wants to hear (he hopes it is). He wants to type: do you know what time it is? (Arthur does.) He wants to type: come over.
He types all of these things, and then deletes them, letter by letter.
Then he decides on: i know that. just fyi
A few minutes pass. Eames stares at the ceiling.
Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt.
I'll be first to admit I could have handled that better.
Eames snorts. No shit.
no shit.
Well, you didn't exactly come chasing after me to explain yourself.
wots to explain?
So many things.
name 1
Your horrible timing.
says the man who just txtd me @ 2 in the morn
We were all at the ends of our ropes after that job. I didn't take you seriously.
Eames doesn't know what to say to that, so he just lays there with the phone on his stomach until it buzzes again.
And I'm sorry.
His phone goes off again. This time it's ringing. He stares at it until it's gone to voicemail, then lets his head thump back down on the pillow. The second time, he answers.
"I mean it," says Arthur, sounding tired. "I'm sorry."
Eames considers this, and clears his throat.
"All right," he says.
"But I stand by what I said. You could have explained yourself."
"And I stand by what I said. There's nothing to explain."
"You just woke up one day and decided you were in love with me?"
"That's how it happens, generally, yeah."
"And you thought it would be a good idea to tell me during...that job? What were you thinking?"
"I wasn't." Eames' tone sounds flat to his own ears. "Clearly."
Arthur sighs frustratedly into the phone. "I'm sorry. I know you weren't thinking. None of us were at that point."
"I didn't mean to scare you off."
"I didn't mean to scare you off."
They're silent for a while, just breathing, and Eames can picture Arthur laying in bed, probably still in his dress shirt and slacks, squeezing that ridiculous little hand exerciser he keeps by his bed with one hand while he holds the phone with the other.
Arthur speaks.
"I just realized something."
Eames waits a moment, then prompts him. "What's that?"
"I don't know. I don't know how to word it." This is, for Arthur, a supreme admission of defeat. Arthur is good with words. Great, even. Not that Eames isn't, he just doesn't see the need for so many different words that mean exactly the same thing.
"Try," says Eames, his throat suddenly tight.
"You've always been here," he says, hesitantly. "No. That's not...see, I fucked it up already. That's not what I meant to say. That doesn't even make sense."
"It's okay," says Eames, dumbly.
"What I mean is that you're always...I'm always...it's always you. Oh, Eames would laugh at this. Eames would make fun of me for that. Eames would say that was stupid. Eames wouldn't like this. Eames would do it this way. Ever since we met I think that way about you, even when you're not around. Like you're always in the back of my mind."
"That's..." says Eames, then trails off. He doesn't know what that is. He thinks it might be good but he's not sure, because Arthur himself is discovering it for the first time and sounds like he doesn't know what to make of it either.
"Like you're the Id to my Ego," Arthur says.
Eames' face breaks into a smile.
"I'm not saying I can't live without you," Arthur goes on. "I'm just saying I'd rather not."
Some part of Eames has evaluated, coldly, logically, why he is in love with Arthur. How could he not be? They've walked the landscapes of each other's minds over and over and over again. For such a long time it was them, only them, every day, together, hooked into the PASIV in that plain white room. They were inseperable, bound together by an IV and a sedative.
But no. It was like that before. From the very beginning, from the moment they met, their focus was never on the job. It was always on each other - with a tinge of hostility, yes, the challenge, yes, the need to impress each other. To show off. To display their feathers.
Eames laughs, suddenly, hysterically. He realizes a moment later how horribly inappropriate it is, but it's too late. Arthur's breaths are still even and quiet into the phone.
"I'm not laughing at you," Eames says quickly. "I just...I had a funny thought."
"Okay," says Arthur. "Now we're even."
"Come over," says Eames.
"Are you insane? I can't get a cab at this time of night."
"How do you not own a car in L.A.?"
"Same reason you don't, I imagine."
Eames sits up. "I miss you," he says. "Whenever you're gone."
He hadn't actually realized it until this moment, because he and Arthur spend so much time apart. He'd never thought of it in those terms before, either. "Spent so much time apart." As if they are meant to be together. As if "apart" is unnatural.
"I know," says Arthur. "I mean, me too."
There's a pause.
"I had a dream about you," he goes on. "Right after you came back from Mombassa and I saw you again for the first time in ages."
Eames bites his lip, worrying it between his teeth. "Oh yeah?"
"We fought," he says. "Like the first time." He exhales. "And then I guess I came."
Eames has to repress another hysterical laugh, because only Arthur would describe a wet dream like that. He has to get caught up on semantics for a moment, because the weight of what Arthur is actually telling him is too much to process at two-thirty in the morning.
"Okay," he says, as his heart yo-yos in his chest. Outside the rain is coming down heavy, and Eames knows Arthur could call a cab if he really wanted to. Either of them could. But this is too fragile, and if either one of them had to look the other in the face it might collapse.
"Yeah," says Arthur. "So, there's that."
"I don't have wet dreams anymore," Eames confesses. "But if I did..."
He fancies he can hear Arthur smile. "I don't usually."
"I stopped having them when I started masturbating," he says, casually, knowing that the clinical term will put Arthur more at ease than something like wanking or the wonderfully American jerking off. "Twenty years ago." He exhales. "Jesus. Has it really been twenty years?"
Arthur laughs, low in his throat. "You're making me feel like such a baby. I didn't start jerking off until I was sixteen."
Okay, so maybe he was wrong about the terminology. "That's all right," he says. "We all know you're as pure as the driven slush."
Arthur laughs again. "You don't know that. You might hope that."
"Ah yes," says Eames. "The sadder but wiser girl for me, please."
"Or guy."
"Whatever," Eames agrees. The image of Arthur...jerking off is one that's occured to him before, but with the backing of Arthur's words it's so much more vivid, so detailed in his mind's eye. His dick twitches beneath the sheets. He sees Arthur, in a shirt and tie and chocolate brown cardigan, his khaki trousers undone, arching desperately into his own hand.
"How do you do it?"
The question startles Eames out of his fantasy. He considers for a moment, ignoring the fact that his heartbeat has relocated itself to his cock. "...the usual way?" he says, unsure of the purpose of the question.
"Oh my God," says Arthur, chuckling. "That is...not at all what I meant."
"I'm sorry," says Eames, feeling stupid, tired, miserable, and aroused. "I don't..."
"I mean, tell me about it." Arthur sighs. It's not a frustrated sigh. "Describe it. To me."
Oh.
Oh.
Arthur sighs again and Eames realizes what it means, and he says: "I wait a little bit," he says. "I get hard thinking about something, or looking at something, but I don't touch myself right away."
"Mmhmm," Arthur says. Eames likes to imagine he can hear the slap of skin in the background even though he knows he can't. He is ridiculously hard under the sheets, aching, but his free hand lies still at his side.
"Like right now," he says. "I'm..." He hesitates.
Arthur hisses impatiently. "Yes?"
"I'm so hard. Jesus. Arthur. I can't stop thinking about what you're doing." The words come out in a rush and a surge of pleasure runs straight through him when Arthur exhales heavily.
"What's hard?" Arthur needles.
Oh, right. Specificity. "My cock," says Eames. Arthur makes a noise.
Eames' fingers are digging into the sheets. "I had this thought, a long time ago, that someday you'd let me watch you do things. You'd let me watch you while you strip down, stroke your cock, fuck yourself on a dildo, but you wouldn't let me touch myself. You'd just tie me to a chair and make me watch. So I always pretend I'm doing that."
There it is: his private, dirty little fantasy, laid bare for Arthur's pleasure.
"I might do that." Arthur's words come out breathless, halting. "But if you're gonna be tied up anyway I don't think I could stop myself from fucking your mouth into next week."
Leave it to Arthur to bring a temporal impossibility into the bedroom.
"It might be a little more comfortable if you just tied me to the bed," Eames suggests, ignoring the space-time paradox for the moment.
Arthur lets out a little huff of laughter. "You want me to sit on your face?"
"No, I was thinking you would-" Eames considers this. "Actually, yeah, I do."
"We can arrange that, if it'll shut you up."
"It might," Eames growls. "But if you turn around I can promise I'll make you scream."
At first he's not sure if Arthur gets it, and actually considers uttering the word "rimjob" before he hears Arthur moan his name.
Arthur.
Moan his name.
Eames is done for.
He grabs his cock and strokes furiously, and his body's already beginning to tense, surging with the pleasure of it. Arthur says: "Oh. Jesus. Fuck" and lets out a small strangled noise as he comes, and Eames kicks the covers away, sprawled out on the bed, gnawing on his lip, pressing the phone hard to his ear.
"I fucking love you, Eames" Arthur pants, and Eames falls apart.
"Eames," Arthur says again. "I fucking love you. Are you listening to me?"
Eames is a sticky, quivering mess of himself. But he manages to say: "Arthur, I always listen."
For a while there is no sound but the rain outside, and the faint static over the line. Eames feels warm and content, even as his mind drifts aimlessly over the memories of every time he and Arthur have hurt each other, accidentally or on purpose. It no longer seems relevant, the finer points and the jagged edges of their shared past, because it makes sense in the context of the whole. They have always needed each other.
"Mr. Eames," says Arthur, his voice warm and quiet. "What are you doing with yourself tomorrow?"
Eames exhales, still feeling shaky in his chest. "I don't have any plans," he says.
Eames can hear the slight grunt, the exhale, as Arthur sits up in bed. "I thought we could go for breakfast," he says. "If you want."
So this is it.
This is where ten years of rivalry and friendship and loyalty and respect and disrespect and tension and trust have brought them. Breakfast. Probably at that greasy spoon that Arthur inexplicably loves, down the street from the flower shop where Joe DiMaggio had something sent to Marilyn Monroe's grave every day until he died.
"Okay," says Eames. "Yeah, all right."
Breakfast.
It's a start.