Who: Eames and Arthur What: Australia, Part 3 Where: Benalla, Inception door When: Recently Warnings/Rating: None
Eames had expected Arthur to wake immediately after him. In fact, he sat there in his reclined chair, and he watched the other man for minutes longer than he should have, still expecting that gasp of deathful wakefulness that was so familiar in their business. But Arthur didn't wake, and Eames' immediate movement to rip the IV from the other man's arm was stopped by the beefy arms of the attendant monitoring their dream.
It resulted in a commotion, a fight, really, in which Eames threw more punches than the attendant, and in which additional help was called in. During the altercation, Eames threw one of the men into the curtain that concealed the dreamer, but there was no one there. It was surprising enough to make Eames stop, to make him look entirely bloody lost for a moment. If there was no dreamer... He turned to look at the chemist, who merely shrugged. Paid off, the bloody bastard, and Eames shook off the hands that held him and stormed out of the tent to wait.
Arthur was wasting his bloody time in there, Eames knew, because he knew Arthur well enough to know that non-logical responses would never occur to him. He was a brilliant point man, yes, but the man was a complete fucking failure when it came to thinking outside the box. Arthur wouldn't figure out he was the dreamer, not without help. Eames would have figured it out, but Eames had blown his bloody brains out, hadn't he?
Eames stormed away from the tent, and he made his way to the larger tent to the side, where alcohol flowed entirely too readily for a desert environment. Two beers and a cigar later, Eames was finally calm enough to sit his arse down and wait.
Arthur woke up to a tent in tatters, the sun shining through a broad tear in the side of the canvas, like a proverbial rip in the fabric of space. The chemist was missing, the architect was sulking, and apparently Eames was now banned from further contests by the same group that made this one. (The contest was temporarily on hold to mend broken bones.) Arthur ignored the staring eyes as he slid the needle out of his skin, concentrating on the set up of the tent and the obvious lack of a chair for the subject. Arthur looked thoughtful, but not composed. There was something in sharp pieces embedded into his expression as he checked for his totem, his notebook, and his sunglasses.
He went straight back to Eames’ tent. The majority of people were gone, having competed and lost the way he had, no doubt, but perhaps not with the same revelations. Arthur didn’t plan on sharing the experience, and he was glad Eames had not been there. He slid into the empty space surrounding the tent, thought about it, and then finally went inside. The clothing alone set him out, the red of his shirt unnaturally bright amongst all that khakhi, and he kept the sunglasses on because almost everything made his sore, sandy eyes hurt.
Arthur followed the trail of cigar smoke and sat down, leaning back into his chair, tired. “...That was pretty brilliant, you have to admit,” he ventured, after a moment.
Board shorts and a shirt that was carelessly open, and Eames managed to make it look rather an uptight outfit just then, his tenseness overpowering the ensemble entirely. He didn't greet Arthur immediately. He watched him instead, looking him over for injuries he knew would not be there. He sat up when Arthur sat down, sitting forward and resting his elbows on his knees, the cigar held loosely between his fingers. "Did you figure it out, Arthur?" he asked, though he knew the answer already. They all had their strengths and their weakness, Arthur included, and there was little doubt in Eames' mind that Arthur had lost the gambit. "How far did you manage?" he asked, as if responding to the prior question was entirely unnecessary.
When you got down to brass tacks, that was a very personal question. Only Eames would have thrown it out so casually. Arthur rubbed two fingers along the bridge of his nose under the bridge of the glasses, knocking them slightly askew. If possible, he looked paler than usual, his eyes smaller. He reached out and took Eames’ beer from where it was sitting on the table between them, and summarily took a swig. He made a face. Cheap beer was not Arthur’s drink of choice. “I had it in my hands. But I thought the projections and the architecture was just--” he coughed, readjusted, “---very versatile.”
Despite it all, that response made Eames chuckle. "Of course you did. It's rather like you to blame it all on the brilliance of the architect," he said, and there was a fond hint to his voice, something that he expected to no more (and no less) of the man making that face at the taste of the beer. "It's not a fine wine, darling, but we're in the desert, be glad it's something wet."
Arthur shrugged. He was not a sore loser. “Some architects are that good... and a lot of them look like total assholes.” Arthur took an idle, narrow-eyed sweep of the room. He turned his head so the glasses did nothing to hide it. No one met his gaze. He took another swig without giving the bottle back, still making a face after he lowered it and pushed it away. “It tastes disgusting.” He lowered his voice slightly. “Did you figure it out? That’s why you left?”
"No. There's nothing about looking at myself that would frighten me, darling," Eames said honestly. "I'd have figured it out with time," he added, because he would have. His role in dreams was rather specific - becoming someone the dreamer trusted enough to give information to, to allow information to sink in. He worked directly with the dreamers, and there was no bollocksing that up without encountering projections and constructs. "I did it because I didn't want to bloody fight with you anymore. You seemed determined we couldn't work together, Arthur, and so I simply made it so we wouldn't be." He took another sip of the beer (which admittedly did taste of swill), and then he sat back as he puffed on the cigar.
Arthur made a very soft, neutral sound that was not quite acquiescence but probably could have been acknowledgment. He hadn’t meant that Eames had avoided facing himself, he had assumed Eames wouldn’t want to face Arthur--the other Arthur, that is. He probably shouldn’t presume. He looked away off over the heads of those present, most of them waiting for the cool to come so they could go home. Abruptly he looked back. “I wasn’t determined. That’s just the way it was.”
Eames set the beer aside, and he took his time stubbing the cigar out on the rickety table at his elbow. "Arthur, darling, you've never been that bloody passive. It wasn't just the way it was," he repeated, sounding terribly American about it. "It was the way you made it. I was fine working with you. You were in a bloody snit in there, and I've no idea why." And the frustration came across there, because he'd honestly no idea why this was so terribly hard for Arthur. Eames had worked with countless lovers in the past, and he'd no issues with any of them, not on the job.
Arthur rotated a full three-quarter turn to stare at Eames. “You’ve no idea why?” he demanded, several notches above his usual irritation and into something like astounded dismay. He got his voice down again into reasonable territory. “Because I don’t just rewind and restart again. I am not fine, working or otherwise. When I storm out of a country it’s usually for a good reason. How nice for you that you can turn it on and off.” The sarcasm was a bit much, but Arthur was exhausted and his temper was short.
"Work is work, Arthur. Or it was, and I'll remind you I didn't cause this bloody fight you're insisting on having with me," Eames said, and he very rarely lost his temper to the extent that he was about to. "If you've the desire to have a strop over your own actions then, do, by all means, do so. But don't do it here, and don't do it while we're working." And that, as far as Eames was concerned, was that. This was precisely why relationships were a terrible idea. He pushed away from the chair, standing and wishing for Mombasa, where the air conditioning at least partially worked. "I'm off home. You're free to do as you like."
Arthur looked up from where he was sitting in the chair. “You’re going to storm off? Again?” Arthur could not believe how this whole thing had turned out. If you told him that his whatever-it-is relationship with Eames was going to end with the man cutting him off every second he got emotional--he, Arthur, being emotional, and he, Eames, focusing on the work--Arthur would have said pigs would fly first. “I’m not messed up about what I did, unless it was letting you get in my head with all this bullshit about me not measuring up to your standards.” Arthur considered throwing the bottle at Eames’ head, but decided not to at the last moment.
Eames was halfway to the tent flap when Arthur began speaking, and he tried to will himself through the door in silence. But it was a losing battle, and he returned to Arthur's chair with tense shoulders and an approach that could only be considered storming. He reached down, grabbed Arthur's ridiculous shirt, and he hauled the smaller man to his feet. "You're acting like a bloody teenager, Arthur," he near-yelled, getting entirely in Arthur's face. "You went on endlessly about your moral superiority to me, and now you're being a bloody child. Work is work, and relationships require one to act like a grown up. And you're the one who bloody left the last time round, not me."
Arthur sputtered. He automatically reached for a gun or knife at the small of his back that he most certainly wasn’t wearing, stopped himself halfway, and turned white under the sunglasses. He was much, much smaller than Eames, but eighty percent of the people that Arthur went up against were bigger, and there was nothing about him dangling by his shirt front that implied weakness. “Moral superiority--I pointed out that you sleep around, which you do! And what the fuck would you know about relationships, Eames? You are always so careful to avoid those. You’re not getting ripped up. You can work, and be mad if you feel like it without a reason, and be FINE, but I’m still the one that’s going to get left with it, and you can at least leave me with my fucking clothes intact.”
Eames didn't care about the bloody gun or knife, or the lack of one. "I didn't sleep around on you, darling," he pointed out, his tone entirely cool (too cool, possibly). "And you've no idea what you're getting bloody left with, or not left with, as I've not done a bloody thing for you to be arsed at me about. You're being a tit, Arthur, and I've no clue as to why. And when I ask, you keep spouting rubbish about things I might do in the future, which does a fuck lot of good in explaining why you're acting like a prat now." And, ah, yes, that was all rather loudly yelled, and it came with a sharp shove toward the tent flap, because they were drawing too much attention, and Eames always kept one eye on the threats in the room.
Arthur turned and exhaled so the shove rolled off one shoulder, refusing to be thrown out like the trash. He had to sacrifice the sunglasses to do it, angular three-hundred dollar American-made tortoiseshell, but it was an acceptable sacrifice. He was so pale that the rings around his eyes made him look like a small ferret, and the red shirt was a bad choice to hide it. He noticed all the eyes following them because he was too much of a professional not to, and the rumors were going to be horrific.
Arthur stepped outside. He felt exposed without the glasses and without the tall buildings he liked so well. He didn’t want to tell Eames how he felt, absolutely sure the man would only stare without comprehension or, worse, find somewhere else to be. Yet it felt inevitable. There wasn’t another way for this to end, and “this” hadn’t really even been much, not what he’d secretly been hoping for. He tried to calm his voice and it shook as he did so. “You’ve just got two standards,” he informed Eames. “One for you, and one for me. You haven’t slept around this time, but you don’t want a relationship, and if you don’t want a relationship, then why do you fucking care if I do or not?”
The pale, ringed eyes made Eames take a step back, and it made him almost sorry he'd spoken his mind. But no, Eames wasn't the kind of man to hold back his truths for anyone, not even Arthur. "We've gone over this, Arthur. I don't like labels. You don't bloody listen to anything I say. You've your own ideas of what's going to come out of my mouth, and you don't believe what I actually tell you, so why bother? Is that what you want, darling? All your self-fulfilling prophecies? Because we've discussed this. Is a bloody label the only reason not to be with another person? I don't feel it is. Label or not, if I'm only interested in you, then I'll only be with you. Stop making such a fucking deal about some fear you've in your head that hasn't been realized. You're going to bring the damn thing around if you keep this up. We fight more than we do anything else, and I'm growing rather tired of it, Arthur." He pointed at the tent. "And now you can't even manage a job without falling apart on me."
Arthur inhaled dry air that seemed to have been suddenly laden with powdered glass, little sharp edges that cut on the way down and every time he tried to breathe again. His expression of hurt and desperation and loss was extremely clear, the line of his mouth loose and his eyes up rather than straight or focused. “It’s only a matter of time before you find someone else, just like you always do. It’s not a prophecy, it’s a pattern. That’s what you do. You don’t like labels because then it’s easier to leave.” He inhaled another painful gulp, tasted that horrific beer on the back of his tongue, and almost gagged. “I knew this would happen, I tried--” He worked his shoulders into the wrinkled shirt. One of the buttons had gone the way of the sunglasses. He got angry again, sudden, angry that Eames had not just taken away his unlabeled relationship (which Arthur had expected) but the ability to have anyone else. It was abruptly hard to see. “This is your fault,” he said, stabbing a finger at Eames. “I should have known I wouldn’t be able to turn it off again afterwards, you bastard.”
"You daft idiot," Eames growled, and he grabbed a fistful of that wrinkled shirt and hauled Arthur up against him. "I'm not asking you to turn it the fuck off. I'm asking you to quit bloody sabotaging because you're so fucking scared you're like to piss yourself."
With his arm trapped against Eames’ chest, Arthur had a harder time poking him in the sternum to punctuate the blame. “I’m not scared,” he said, angrily, glaring up into Eames’ face. “I knew what I was getting into. And after Old Paris, so did you!” He blinked hard several times.
"You're bloody terrified," was Eames reply, and it came with a tightening of his hand in Arthur's shirt, somehow pulling him closer, though it seemed impossible. "Just fucking admit it, so we can get the fuck past this, Arthur," he growled, all his frustration in the guttural words.
Arthur dropped his forehead down to rest it on Eames’ chest, taking some of the weight off his shirt and wishing that he didn’t need the support. “Only for it to just happen and get it over with. Better than dreading it all the time,” he said, through clenched teeth.
"You're sabotaging, Arthur." The growl had subsided, though Eames' voice was no less firm. "You've got to get over this if we're to be anything at all to one another," he finished, a sigh, tone going kinder, but more resigned - never a good sign. "Go to Paris, darling. Sleep off the desert. We'll talk once you've settled."
Without warning Arthur hauled back on the grip to his shirt, barely catching himself before he went over backward, his face such a rage of conflicting emotions he didn’t even look like himself. “I am not sabotaging. This is who you are, you admitted it, and you can’t tell me you won’t get tired of me so don’t act like I’m making it up!” He shouted the last three words. People departing the tent and the immediate surroundings stared.
"Listen to yourself," Eames said, and the growl was just there, just at the edge of the words. He almost grabbed Arthur's shirt again, but he forced his hands into fists at his sides. "I can't change your fears, Arthur, and if you don't bloody trust me, if you're too scared of this, then why the bloody fuck did you start it?" he demanded.
“I’ve been avoiding it for years, you started it,” Arthur said, appalled that Eames might think he was doing this on purpose. “And no, I don’t trust you. Why should I? The first time you kissed me you’d just gotten rid of a lap full of French whores.”
"Fine. Then we're done, are we? I've a tent to pack," Eames managed, after a full five seconds of disbelief and staring. He couldn't believe this bloody fucking bloody fuck. He turned on his heel, and he stormed away, annoyed that he only actually had a few feet to storm, because storming felt marginally better. "I can't change the fucking past, and he's the one that had someone sucking his cock in an alley," he muttered, and when a passerby gave him a look he just growled. No words, just growling as he shoved the tent flap aside.
Arthur followed after another few seconds pause, at somewhat of a distance. He was aware of what he’d done, but angry enough that he would not take back what he’d said. It was true, wasn’t it? How was he meant to know Eames would give a damn about Evan? Arthur just let it all stew there in his mind, still feeling sick and somewhat drunk--from the fatigue, not two mouthfuls of beer. After he’d first left he driven back to Melbourne, and he hadn’t slept more than one or two hours--at one point it had just been Cory dozing in the Passages hallway. Then he’d come straight back here, and the dream had been anything but restful.
Arthur ducked into the tent. All his weapons were here, locked carefully in a bag with mesh netting since he wasn’t allowed to bring them in. He didn’t try to say anything, he just sat heavily on the nearest cot, watching dully as Eames moved around the tent.
Eames shoved things in bags with haphazardness that was only partially born of anger. He wasn't about folding things, even on a good day, and today certainly wasn't a good day. He very pointedly did not look at Arthur, though he suspected the other man was in a strop on his cot. He wanted to yell, because Eames rather liked yelling, but he wasn't sure what he couldn't bloody say to make anything better. He shoved his last garish shirt into a bag, and he tugged the zipper up with an appropriate amount of anger.
"Are you going to stay there?" Eames finally asked, turning to look at Arthur. His expression softened marginally when he saw the exhaustion on Arthur's features, but he was too wound up to bend. "Darling, go home and sleep," he repeated, but there was hurt and anger in the words.
His arms over his thighs and his knuckles dangling a few inches off the dirt ground, Arthur just gave a tired shake of his head. “Better not. I’m too tired. Cory doesn’t want to go home. I’ll send you the tent?” he offered. The idea of Arthur trying to pack up the tent on his own, getting some pristine suit all dusty in the attempt, was ludicrous, right up until one remembered that Arthur had been in too many dreams military in nature not to know how to pack up a tent of almost any size. It was still an unpleasant prospect, but not so unpleasant that he was going to try driving this tired. Arthur swallowed, and blinked very slowly, just once. “I’m sorry you lost because of me.”
"Wonderful," Eames said, his frustration showing. He wanted to tear the bloody tent down and return to Mombasa, but he wasn't a cruel enough bastard to leave Arthur there in his current shape. Sending the other man to Paris was one thing, but leaving him here was quite another, and now Cory didn't want to return to Las Vegas, either. Well, fuck that. "I'll open a door to Passages, and you can turn right around into Paris. I'm not leaving you here, Arthur," he insisted, and he bloody well meant it. He'd lose the tent for all he bloody cared. He'd spent nearly a week in this blasted desert, and he'd no intention of staying a moment longer.
Arthur rubbed his face. "Most people are gone. One night isn't going to hurt me." He looked around at the tent, an excuse, really, to avoid looking into Eames' eyes when his apology had no effect. "I've been in worse places, believe it or not." He didn't bother to try to smile because he wouldn't have pulled it off. He tipped sideways on the cot, trying not to think about anything, but definitely not able to watch Eames leave. Storming out was always easier.
"I said no, Arthur," Eames insisted, and he wondered where the nearest bloody door was, because he was fairly certain the tents wouldn't count, and he wasn't looking forward to a jeep ride back to the city. But if they'd no choice, they'd no choice. He hoisted his bag over his shoulder, and he reached for Arthur's arm to haul him to his feet. "I'm driving. You can bloody sleep."
Arthur already had his eyes halfway shut, and when he was hauled up into standing, he made vague sounds of irritated protest. “I can sleep on my own,” he muttered, but he was too tired to fight Eames anymore. He could shout at him some more if it would make him feel better. The jerk. “I hate the desert. You picked this place just to torture me,” he complained, blindly swiping to pick up the locked bag with his weapons in it. It was not unlike the one he’d had on the beach in the dream, just darker and with locked military grade mesh.
Eames took the bag from Arthur, and perhaps it was an indication of fondness, but he didn't stop to think on it too much. He slung the bag over his own shoulder, and he slipped his arm around Arthur's waist to haul the smaller man out of the tent. They could get another bloody tent, he decided impractically. "I did," he admitted of the desert choice, though it wasn't entirely true. He hadn't chosen the location of the gauntlet, after all, but he had rather appreciated that it was somewhere Arthur would inherently hate. "Life is messy, Arthur, like the sand in the desert. It's a good lesson for you to learn."
Arthur wished that he was not so tired. He had planned storming, one or the other of them was meant to be storming. Predictably, Arthur tried to twist into Eames’ arm and shoulder to look back at the way they had come. “But what about the tent?” Arthur knew very well Eames wasn’t behind the event, the man didn’t have the patience to set something like this up, even if he did have the imagination. “Life doesn’t have to be messy,” he added, sounding sulky about it. “You can make sense out of it if you try.”
"I don't care about the bloody tent," Eames informed Arthur mid-twist, and he propelled Arthur forward and toward the waiting jeep. He didn't ask for Arthur's keys, rather opting to shove a hand in the other man's pocket in search of them himself. "Life is unpredictable, and anything unpredictable has the potential to be messy, Arthur. It's not a dream you can architect, darling, and the more you try to neatly control the bloody thing, the more you're going to fight with it. Just live and stop labeling every last thing you come into contact with, you bloody fool."
If Eames didn’t care about his tent, then fine, Arthur wouldn’t either. Yet he looked back, imagining it sitting out here in the desert all alone after everyone had gone, going to waste in the heat and the sand. Irritated still further, Arthur stood still in front of the jeep. He’d hitched a ride with someone else’s vehicle and he could send someone to get it later, when he was capable of coherent thought. “Hey,” he said, lamely, when Eames went looking for the key without asking. Arthur was distracted a moment because he had to remind himself not to get turned on by stupid things. “I need to label things so I know what they are,” Arthur insisted. “I need to know what to expect. If it doesn’t work, fine, but I need to now.”
Fingers closing around the keys, Eames took Arthur by the shoulders and turned him around. Face to face with the smaller man, Eames opted for one, last ditch effort. "Fine. What bloody label do you want?" he asked, voice surprisingly calm for the subject of the question.
Arthur’s expression went totally slack with dumb surprised. He stared at Eames as if he’d grown another head. “Wait--really?”
"Answer the bloody question, Arthur."
Arthur never expected to be presented with this question, so he blinked and looked over Eames’ head as he tried to think of something. “I...” He tried to force his brain into something like working order. “I don’t know. Something that says we’re together.” He tipped his head up in an expression born from the time when he had a great deal of hair over his forehead and eyes to hide behind. “If we’re together...?” With rather blatant hope, really.
"You're the one who involved yourself with someone else, Arthur, not me," was Eames' entirely confused response. "You require words, and I require bloody actions, Arthur. Fine. We're in a relationship. Does that change anything? Because the words change nothing for me. Your actions define this, and my actions define this. What we decide to call it does nothing of the sort," he near-growled, and before Arthur could reply he let go of the other man's shoulders, and he began storming toward the driver's side of the jeep. See? Storming.
All of Arthur’s fatigue was shoved away in a sudden rush of panicked desperation. The adrenaline made his ears rattle, and in one movement he braced sideways and hauled Eames back by the arm, just an inch above the elbow. He used one foot behind Eames’ heel to keep him off balance, exactly the kind of thing a small man would learn to leverage speed when strength wouldn’t work. He shoved an elbow forward and slammed the other man against the hood of the jeep. He wouldn’t be able to keep him there long, but he didn’t need long. “I’ve been messed up about you a long time, and in all that time I’ve been with plenty of men who were friends to me. You didn’t take it personally then because you didn’t notice. That’s fine, but now you’re taking this as a kind of personal insult, but it’s not. You want me to take a vow for you, fine. If I thought you were actually serious about this, then maybe almost getting killed in some dream wouldn’t matter and neither would anyone else.” Arthur ran out of steam and let his arm go lax.
Eames was visibly surprised, enough that he didn't immediately fight the press that kept him against the hood of the car. His brows dipped in, confusion on his features, but that confusion disappeared with Arthur's words. "We weren't involved then, Arthur. I don't care what you bloody did when I wasn't with you, and what I did before this shouldn't count against me either. I don't want a bloody vow. I want you to stop pointing the finger at me when I haven't done anything to you yet. You're just waiting for me to do what you did, and we're fighting about it without it ever happening. You've got to quit this," he said, grabbing Arthur's upper arm when it went lax. "Do you understand, darling?" he asked, hazel gaze intense.
“If you’re with me, then I will if you will.” Arthur said it as a challenge, not fighting the arm and taking a breath against Eames’ chest.
Eames gave him a look that said he wasn't entirely sure Arthur could actually do what he claimed. "I've been with you since I touched you, you entirely moronic idiot," he snarled, and he pushed past Arthur to climb into the jeep. "Get in."
Arthur stepped back, feeling the Australian desert grinding under his shoes, and tried not to feel too elated about that. It took some time to process, but he didn’t want to get too happy just in case it didn’t last. Maybe that was the problem. All the same, he was smiling as he circled to his side and climbed up into the seat for a jostling doze into town.