Who: Arthur and Eames What: In Part I, we have dishonest intrigue, art criticism, gunfire, the unfortunate destruction of invaluable yet imaginary documents, kisses, and Extraction. Where: Evan's hospital, and the "museum archive" dream. When: Two days after this. Warnings/Rating: Casual violence. Possibly some swearing, and steamy kisses.
Arthur had prepared himself for a serious bout of persuasion when he started a plan to gain access to Evan (and by extension, Eames), but he found Cory to be only a degree from total indifference. Cory cared for absolutely nothing, and had Arthur not been distracted with his own concerns, he would have been worried. Cory’s father had yelled at him for nearly three quarters of an hour when he had found out about Cory’s termination from the casino, and his mother had read him a disappointed speech, but neither had sunk in at all. Cory had distracted himself with strange daydreams of Becky coming to talk to him, or his latest video game, and he did that almost every moment he wasn’t chewing on alien worry for the patient he and Louis had left at the hospital two days before. Arthur didn’t know what to make of it, but as Cory did not pry into his life, he paid him the same respect, and kept his concern to himself.
Arthur wasn’t a point-man for nothing. Within hours of speaking to Eames he had the layout of the hospital and security, the names, diagnoses, and situations of every patient on Evan’s floor plus the profiles of any staff that would be important in the time period he was aiming for. It was too short a prep period to infiltrate as a hospital employee, so that meant Arthur posed as a family visitor to a patient down the hall that didn’t know left from right, much less familiar from unfamiliar. After a visit during the first day, in which he went straight to the poor man’s room and sat there watching him drool for a measured hour-and-ten before leaving, Arthur smuggled the PASIV device in on a custodial supply shipment from the sparsely guarded non-pharmaceutical loading bay.
The following day, the day of the appointed night, Arthur made sure that half the staff on duty was exhausted or distracted--because of unexpected plumbing problems, malfunctioning car alarms, and a set of “contest winner” smartphones and tablets. Security remembered him from his visit the day before, subjected him to only cursory checks, and allowed him to the appropriate floor, where he easily picked the lock of a supply closet, retrieved a box labeled bathroom tissue, and slid flawlessly into Evan’s dark room while the security cameras were subjected to a fortuitous flicker of coverage.
Evan was largely sedated, something which had happened in the late hours of the evening before when he’d taken a turn for the worse. It had involved an incident with Becky, and the insistence that she was sitting in the corner of his hospital room. The nurse on staff had no training with psych ward patients, and she had insisted no one was there. Evan’s brain, still trying to adjust to a new and lower medical dosage from his attending doctor, couldn’t handle it. He’d torn out his IVs, and he’d paced the room like a caged thing that had no method of escape. Nothing but the window, which was large and uncovered in this standard room.
The incident had resulted in broken glass, a wrapped hand and multiple orderlies pinning Evan to the floor. Even now, sedated as he was and in a corner room without a window, he was secured to the bed by straps over his chest and thighs, wrists and ankles secured to the bed’s metal rails. His hand was bandaged, and he looked wan, but he was sleeping quietly, no jerking or shaking or nightmares.
The nurses didn’t like going into Evan’s room, frightened by the incidents of the night before and without any specialized training in patients like Evan. And so, it was quiet, and the machines beeped in the relative darkness.
Cory was watching with a kind of lethargic attention. He was vaguely impressed by Arthur, also faintly afraid of him, realizing that the man was fully capable of taking down anything from private weapons facilities to highly-guarded corporate vaults, but that wasn’t why he was watching. Arthur had to stand still in the middle of the room for several minutes, keeping from making a sound or moving as Cory expressed disbelief and horror that Evan would need to be restrained for any reason. Arthur withstood demands that he take Evan out of that place, which was clearly ruled by psychotic tyrants with medical degrees. Machines beeped and Evan slept while Arthur patiently calmed Cory’s rage and repeated Eames’ opinion that Evan was safer where he was. He recited Evan’s diagnosis from memory, explained what he knew about it, and drew Cory’s attention to the newly-bandaged hand. Eventually Cory grudgingly withdrew, and Arthur sagged a little as he took his knees out of the locked upright position.
After a deep breath, Arthur drew nearer the bed. He didn’t want to wake Evan, nor frighten him, but he was an expert at hooking people into the PASIV without them realizing what was happening. He drew all the way to the head of the bed, out of Evan’s range of sight and movement if he opened his eyes, and very gently turned his arm over. After a few moments to see if Evan stirred, Arthur slipped in the IV, set the timer, and stretched out on the cold hospital floor. The PASIV hissed. The dream began.
The museum was massive. The interior structure was soft, warm wood cut with bizarrely modern steel beams. It was a mixture of the Louvre, with creaking paneled floors exactly like those in the Paris apartment, and London’s Tate Modern, with vaulted ceilings strung up by cords and swirls of statuary. The place was without windows, the light glistening from wall sconces designed from blown glass, and everywhere there was the low, respectful murmur of visiting crowds. Professors lectured softly into microphones to wide-eyed groups wearing cheap headphones, art students sketched on low benches, and brightly-dressed tourists alternated between open-mouthed staring and hurrying walks to famous works on opposite sides of the building.
“Still sure it’s not a dream?” Arthur was saying, leaning forward onto his knees, the green silk scarf nearly reaching the ground as it slid over his lapels.
It took Eames less than a moment to acclimate, too accustomed to this to lose even a step as he reached forward and held a hand out to help Arthur stand. “Why must you always choose places that remind me of hospitals?” he asked, looking about the austere museum with an eye that said he was rather expecting this sort of thing from Arthur. He knew, too, that Arthur would know precisely what to expect from one of his settings. It didn’t change his opinion of Arthur’s choice, and he knew there would be elevated music and modern art around every corner; it was simply Arthur’s terribly frustrating way.
“One of these days, darling, you must surprise me with a field, or the ocean or something less manufactured.” Eames said manufactured as if it were an insult, and yet he managed to grin throughout it, that infuriating grin that was so at home on his lips. Despite Evan’s condition, he felt rather better than he had in a long while, and he took that to be a good sign. “This is a dream, Arthur. There is no way anyone could pull off that life out there as a dream. Only in limbo, and we certainly aren’t there.”
Eames brushed at his gray suit pants, and he tugged at the white shirt with flowers on the collar (truly hideous), and he turned and walked, expecting Arthur to follow.
Eames had never made a secret of his opinion of Arthur’s constructs, which everyone said were austere and without warmth, if they said anything at all. Secretly, very secretly, down somewhere in the vault of his mind, Arthur didn’t understand why they thought so. He felt there must be some lack in his ability to properly render the beauty he imagined to exist in his settings, and while he was not so clever, so flawless, or so intensely creative as a true architect, he still put effort forth, and made his settings from the heart. Arthur hesitated but took the hand up even if he didn’t need it. His expression didn’t change beyond a gentle arch of brow at Eames’ assessment, but as the other man turned away, Arthur threw a glance up at his steely ceilings and glowing lamplight. It didn’t seem like a hospital to him. Disappointed yet accustomed to the feeling, he turned too, and trailed after.
In the past, Arthur had avoided checking Eames out regularly, especially when he was walking, worried that he would be caught and relentlessly teased about it, but he found he didn’t care that much today. He watched the movement of the gray pants, and even put his annoyance with the little collar flowers away long enough to wonder what kind of buttons kept them there. He caught up before too long and moved around Eames’ constructs that drifted the other way. Eames had just as much training as Arthur, though of a different kind, and Arthur was careful not to draw any undue attention to himself as they moved along. No, this wasn’t limbo.
Eames was unworried about the constructs. Not because he felt certain Arthur would not draw attention but, rather, because he thought Arthur could either avoid their notice or, barring that, draw their attention away. It was in the ease of Eames’ step, the unhurried pace, the hands that were loosely tucked into the pockets of the gray pants, his ease. He stopped down a hall, glanced at a particularly boring painting of colored boxes, and then continued onward, with only a terribly unimpressed glance in Arthur’s direction.
It seemed that Eames was mindlessly wandering, which perhaps he was, silent and unimpressed perusals of art, and a stop here and there to intentionally let his gaze fall on an attractive construct, somewhat impressed with his own psyche. He stopped without warning in the middle of a hall, turned and looked at Arthur in her perfect attire, not a hair out of place, not an emotion on his face, and Eames quirked a brow. “Are we going to do this all day?” he asked, somewhere between annoyed and entertained. He wondered, truly, what it would take to shake Arthur of all this monotonous metal and wood. Perhaps they would find out. And, there was the danger. Eames felt rather trapped in Evan’s body at present and, despite the ridiculous flowers at his collar, he was not some harmless dandy in a modern art museum.
Arthur kept his hands out of his pockets, because he was not as easy as Eames was. He’d never been easy around Eames, and he didn’t anticipate that would change. He stayed a step behind, never treading on Eames’ feet because he was always more aware of the man than the art. He watched Eames give a disgusted .3 second glance at a magnificent Rothko, but when Eames looked back to communicate his disdain, Arthur was staring at the painting with a look of combined awe and concentration, not understanding why Eames couldn’t see what he saw. As they moved on, Eames’ side glances at members of the crowd only made Arthur’s expression more distant, and he was visibly surprised when Eames came to an abrupt halt. He didn’t run into him, he stopped on a dime, distributed his weight, and brought his neck a centimeter to one side. “...We don’t have to. If you really hate it I can come up with something else.” He could tell Eames hated it, and glanced immediately away in case it showed in his eyes, and then back.
“You think I’m asking because of the setting?” Eames asked, the surprise as plain as the nose on his face, earnest and open in that moment. “Honestly, darling, you think I pay more attention to walls than I do.” The original skid, turn and stopped had drawn attention, and too many constructs were staring at Arthur throughout the exchange; Eames continued on, nonplussed. “I meant to ask if you weren’t even going to try.” There was challenge in the statement, no, the question, really. Eames didn’t think Arthur would require clarification, though he would be glad to give it if the other man did. He paused, stepped back and walked up to one of the pieces of art on the wall. He looked at moment, seeing swatches of red and little else. “I don’t hate it,” he admitted, because hate was a terribly strong word, “I simply don’t find anything in it. It doesn’t speak to me. There’s no emotion to it. It feels calculated, too much thought and logic and not enough of the things that truly matter.” For Eames, it was quite the soliloquy.
Arthur had a flare of irritation at his trip up with the setting, but he registered the abrupt attention of the people around him only as a certain degree of danger, like a thermostat rising, and not a real disconcerting effect, as it had happened too many times. All his attention was on Eames. The man was ridiculously complex even if he did write his history on his skin, and he continually confounded Arthur at every turn. The smaller man blinked in confusion, watched him walk to the painting, and then, belatedly, joined him in front of it, a Prada-scented presence without movement. After a moment, Arthur said, “It speaks to me. It looks like anger taking over everything else, like a red... a red passion clutching at the corners.” He took his palm forward in the air and brought it down in the air in front of the painting, trying to illustrate what he meant, even if the words were plain. “Everything here speaks to me.” It was a confession he would have preferred to keep in the vault. “What do you want me to try?” he asked, finally.
“No, that’s you speaking for it, darling,” Eames said of the painting, which couldn’t be expressing anything nearly as complex as Arthur believed it was. It made him look over at the man in surprise; he never expected feelings of any sort to come from Arthur’s mouth. Well, no, that was not precisely true; he expected displeasure and annoyance to come from Arthur’s mouth, but nothing like passion. Anger, that he could believe, because Arthur was perpetually wound tight, and only anger could do that to a man. So yes, anger, but not passion - not that Arthur acknowledged, anyway. He reached a hand out to Arthur’s shoulder and, with a grin that was all knowledge and smug certainty, he poked it. “You, Arthur, not the painting.” He looked around as he finished the sentence, noticing the staring constructs and looking past them, as if they didn’t matter at all. “No, I never said I wanted you to find anything,” he corrected, stepping back, “I asked if you intended to.” There was a difference, you see.
Arthur didn’t think he was speaking for the painting at all, but he didn’t want to explain the idea of modern art to Eames just then, the refusal of the artist to interpret... Arthur gave himself a shake. The look of surprise Eames gave him made him feel vulnerable, and his first reaction was to clam up, even begin to move away, but he stopped himself. His eyes slid down Eames’ jaw, over a thick shoulder, down his arm, and to the poking finger as it conflicted with the trim threads of his cashmere sweater. “Find something,” Arthur repeated. He understood, but he didn’t believe it. After an incredulous second and a glance at the staring constructs, Arthur took himself an inch closer to try to close the distance between himself and Eames, a genuinely protective gesture. “I don’t want to find into your secrets. I’d...” Oh, Christ. Arthur looked at the ceiling. “Rather you told me, if you didn’t mind me knowing.” He said the last phrase very fast, and followed it up quickly with a, “Maybe we should go,” and another half step nearer.
“Ah,” Eames said, not moving away when Arthur neared, “you see there. I braved an entirely militarized mind in an attempt to learn your secrets.” The corner of his mouth tipped up, and there was smugness in the squint of his eyes. It wasn’t that his own mind wasn’t able and trained in self-defense (it was), but nothing compared to Arthur’s obsessively methodical security work. In comparison, Eames’ mind was much more forgiving. But Eames also spent quite a bit of time doing things in dreams he shouldn’t; he always had. He knew men like Yosef for a reason, knew places like the one Yosef created the formula for, for a reason. Eames was not as careful as Arthur, not about anything; it defined him. And this moment, it wasn’t any different. “Running away, darling?” he asked when Arthur suggested going, but he’d no intention of going anywhere, not yet. Going back into Evan’s sedated mind was nothing he wanted to do, and the door was not an option.
Eames was so good at irritating Arthur, and he had a guaranteed effect if he brought up the little vault incident. Arthur’s mouth soured, but he also got close enough that physical contact was unavoidable. He turned so they were elbow to elbow, and took a deep breath. “No.” He hooked an arm through Eames’ elbow, above the joint to get him to move, and pulled so he would walk in the direction Arthur wanted to go. “I don’t run away. And you and I both know you only broke in because you were bored and curious. You weren’t really interested in my secrets until you thought they might be about you.” There was accusation, and a good amount of the familiar, angry Arthur that Eames was used to.
Eames moved, but only because he chose to, not because he was led or forced or couldn’t resist Arthur’s lesser size and strength. He was broad enough that it was nothing to crowd Arthur as he moved alongside him, very close to the other man, with no true concept of personal space between them. “No, Arthur, this is running away,” he corrected, because it was, whether Arthur admitted it or not. Oh, Eames didn’t actually think Arthur would like the deepest recesses of his subconscious mind but he, Eames, would always try to break into such a place, if given the opportunity; especially if he was interested in the person. And, he believed, that Arthur was interested, in his own way. He also felt certain Arthur didn’t understand him (Eames) at all. No better way to remedy that, was there? “I’m always interested in secrets about me, darling. They’re the best kind,” he added, a conspiratorial growl against Arthur’s ear.
A muscle in Arthur’s jaw twitched, and he shot Eames a furious look. Arthur didn’t understand Eames that well, but Eames didn’t know that reaction was usually better than a blush, and that Arthur always ran toward danger, unless he was drawing it away from something else. “You’re only interested in secrets about you,” Arthur corrected, his dark eyes very dark indeed. He continued to move, turning down hallways and even opening a door just past a painting that looked exactly like the one they’d passed in three previous hallways. The corridor smelled like mold, and preceding Eames through the door, Arthur ran right into a guard built like an action movie reject. The man was in museum security uniform, but he put a hand the size of a frying pan around Arthur’s neck and lifted him off the ground before Arthur could do more than make a faint, surprised sound.
“Not only,” Eames disagreed. “Sometimes others’ secrets are worth money; I am very interested in those. Sometimes others’ secrets are things I wish to learn, regardless of who they’re about.” He didn’t add that, perhaps, Arthur fell into that category. He considered it, but he was glancing at the repeated painting and smiling. “Didn’t intend for us to go this far afield?” he asked, and he wasn’t surprised when the unexpected guard appeared, not after the repeated artwork had triggered his subconscious’ knowledge that this wasn’t real. Sloppy work, and he wondered at it, before he pulled a gun from the back of his gray trousers and walked directly up to the guard . He put the muzzle to the side of the construct’s head, and he pulled the trigger. Likely not the best solution, but the man crumbled as the bullet exited the other side of his skull. Eames was appropriately nonplussed by all of it, and there existed the reality that he would just as willingly do that to a living person, as to a dream construct. “Alright, darling?” he asked a moment later, reaching for Arthur’s arm. “Must move now.”
Arthur would probably have hesitated if the man had consciousness, but that was a moral debate for another day. He landed on his feet, tipped his chin to either side, working some of the red tension out of it, and seemed no more troubled than if he would have tripped. “Nice, Eames,” he said, looking down at the dead man. “There’s not usually guards in this hallway...” So perhaps Arthur’s movements had been a little more deliberate than they seemed, and the paintings perhaps more deliberately placed. “But of course your damn mind is going to have them everywhere.” Arthur pulled up one pant leg and retrieved a neat black handgun, raising an eyebrow as Eames took his arm. “You can come along, of course. It’s always nice if the subject helps. Does this look like a good direction?” He didn’t wait for a reply, because it was either go toward the screams in the direction that they had come, or down the sparsely-lit hallway Arthur had specifically built to make things difficult.
Eames chuckled, and maybe it was indicative of the men they were that they didn’t blink when someone attacked them. He wondered, as he did sometimes when sleep evaded him, if the real world had lost some of its reality as well. He never slept much without the PASIV these days. Arthur did, he suspected; too good to become addicted to anything but his own obsession with orderliness. It was the one good thing about life with Evan - sleeping somewhat normally. “Thank you for the invitation,” he said, watching as Arthur pulled the gun out. Arthur always did keep it entirely practical. Eames’ gun was much more elaborate, bigger than necessary and semi-automatic with a silencer and enough accessories to make it rather less semi and more automatic. “You tell me, darling,” he said of the direction, the fact that this was a maze constructed for a purpose jumping out at him. He moved forward. “Would you like to tell me what you’ve constructed here? Or shall I guess?”
Arthur got six-to-eight hours unless something was bothering him or he was working, yes, but it was rarely restful. He was either training, building, distracting himself, or waiting for something else to start. He would have enjoyed Cory’s natural dreams if most of them hadn’t included a dead girl bleeding her guts out on a highway. He gave Eames’ gun a look of utter amusement, and then he started moving down the hallway with confidence--he kicked over something leaning against the wall and it fell neatly against the door they had come through.”I’d love to hear your guesses,” he said, stopping at a corner and looking ahead to more light, startled voices. He caught an angle, turned a corner and shot out a camera. He smiled at Eames, a small, almost soporific smile, sleepy and calm.
“Nice placement,” Eames said of the conveniently kicked item. Eames slowed as Arthur lifted the gun, entirely willing to let the man shoot out the cameras he’d erected himself, a grin on his lips. A game? Interesting, as he’d never taken Arthur for a man who liked to play them. Unless- He chuckled and he shook his head. “A maze, one from a logic puzzle? Is that what you’ve done? Why bother with the museum, or is it merely a trick, four sides and back around to the beginning again?” It would be appropriate, of course, but the thought only brought more recognition into his subconscious, and four constructs rushed them just feet from the corner. Eames wasn’t paying attention, really, not immediately. Because he was fairly certain he had never seen that smile before, not on the other man’s lips; he quite liked it. It reminded him of mornings after, and Eames normally had no interest in those. Apparently his opinion on such things was changing.
Oh, Arthur knew where all the cameras were. He knew the hallways and the doors, he knew the places it was logical for security to manifest itself. That was why this place had been built, and he’d had a little bit of help from more gifted architects than he. Well. Just the one, really. It wasn’t like Arthur worked as well with other people as he did with Cobb.
Arthur would have preferred to take this particular path quietly, but apparently that wasn’t on the menu. He shot the first man in the chest, and a second in the head with a flawless shot as he presented a nearer target. He let the next one past as he went for Eames, and took the last out with a three-part move that started against the guy’s knee and ended with the back of his neck. Arthur glanced back. “I like museums. There’s lots to look at. People get lost in real ones all the time. Besides.” Arthur’s smile deepened and then vanished as he turned his attention to his job. “It has pretty things.”
Eames had never actually watched Arthur work. Oh, he trusted the man; he bloody well had better, seeing as he put his life in Arthur’s hands on a regular basis. He’d known the other man to fail, but not terribly often. It happened so seldom that Eames could remember every instance; a fact which he used quite often to give Arthur shit. But he’d never been in a situation where it was perfectly safe to simply watch the other man fight. Now, it was his own mind, and the worst that could come of it was waking up, so he didn’t raise his gun as he normally would (Eames’ version of fighting these days); he merely watched.
Rather not bad, Eames decided, and he followed the other man with a somewhat impressed look on his face. It was, in truth, a rather predatory impressed look, should Arthur care to stop talking about museums and pretty things long enough to notice. He stepped over bodies and moved on, simply lifting his gun and shooting a line of bullets into the next group of approaching men. Arthur did always short-change himself on weaponry in dreams; Eames never did. He had weapons created precisely for this sort of thing, not feeling Arthur’s need to adhere to real-life physics and limits. “I’ve never been lost in a museum,” was what he said after all that. “And if I did become lost in one, I would hope there would be someone there to entertain me.” He raised his arm and fired at someone coming from the right, without even stopping.
Arthur might have only brought two guns, but he felt one plus a back up should be plenty. It was ammunition he had a plethora of, reloading from things hidden under his sweater, in his belt, and in all sorts of places that he didn’t bother with until there wasn’t a handy fallen guard to borrow from. Arthur followed physics to some extent, but he had a tendency to pull confusing tricks with light, vision, and gravity. Steel archival shelves with glass windows would stoutly hold up walls while Arthur moved over them, and then seconds later the books in them would abruptly betray anyone else to gravity. Arthur could make light seem like doors because it was “coming” from different places, and it took two men running into solid walls for the next group to get it. They left a trail of bodies and smoking shells behind them, not to mention collapsed shelving and a maze of document-lined corridors, and Arthur wasn’t yet out of breath. He was starting to enjoy himself. “Museums are the best places to get lost, especially if the idea of someone watching makes company more interesting,” he said, without thinking. He shot at a hanging dish with a light bulb, setting it swinging and using the circle of light to confuse the next group of attackers as he moved in and out of it, disarming and discharging with abandon. “Your subconscious has a tendency to run in half-cocked,” he noticed.
“Not terribly surprising,” Eames said, and he’d largely kept his gun down for the last few groups, preferring to watch Arthur handle them. He thought, and perhaps he was mistaken, that the other man might be enjoying himself. It would be a new facet of Arthur’s personality, one Eames had never noticed, but then they were normally stressed when doing this sort of thing. It was rather peaceful, this change of pace. The comment about the library and people watching, now that earned a chuckle that was all Eames. “Really? Do you mean to tell me you’ve done this, darling? Sullied the books and artifacts with sweat and moans?” He didn’t believe it, of course, and - maybe - he didn’t like it either. When the next turn led them to a fortified case at a dead end, Eames felt perfectly inclined to riddle the four men guarding it with bullets, but that didn’t account for the ones overhead. But no matter, he shoved Arthur out of the way, grabbed the men’s legs (when they came into range) and dragged them down off their wires with sheer, animal-brute force. Once they were on the floor, he riddled them with holes too, leaving the fortified case locked with a combination lock, but unguarded.
Arthur, in his groove, as it were, forgot that Eames was an active presence temporarily, and he wasn’t expecting the shove. He went over backwards and didn’t recover in time to assist with any of the dropping guards. He got to his feet, dusted off his neat slacks, and then straightened his sweater. “Yeah, well. Félix had a thing.” He wasn’t smug about it, it was just a piece of information, part of the oddly honest conversation they were having. “Like you don’t use the PASIV for personal stuff, anyway,” Arthur said, defensively, moving past him toward the combination lock and the door. He eyeballed it. “It’s not always a combination, sometimes it’s a voice code or...” he trailed off, frowning.
“I’m not the one trying to break into it, Arthur,” Eames said, in case Arthur was expecting help from him. He leaned against the case, elbow against the surface and an unconcerned look on his face. He’d no idea what was there, of course, but it could hardly be that important, he reasoned, and he concentrated on the more important matter at hand. Félix. “So you didn’t really do anything in a library. You merely pretended.” That was an important distinction in Eames’ opinion and, perhaps, his dislike of Félix came through in the statement. “Tell me, darling, why will you let him fuck you, and you won’t let me do the same?” he asked, blatant and blunt and completely unapologetic.
Arthur didn’t bring explosives or excessive weaponry into this maze. That was one of the things about it; it only allowed so much, because museums had security. However, once he got to this level, the maze provided. Arthur examined the combination, the make of it, trying to understand what it required, letters, numbers, six, ten? He knelt by one of the four that had dropped from the ceiling and stripped him of some handy grenades. He’d need to direct the force and from the sound of it, reinforcements were on the way. He had to concentrate, and it wasn’t on the topic Eames was talking about. He glanced back at him, expression empty except for with that warm, uncertain vulnerability he had wore in old Paris. He didn’t answer, and looked back at the combination. He prodded at it experimentally.
There were certainly reinforcements coming, though the experimental prodding didn’t rush them into a frenzy. Eames just watched, legs crossed at the ankles and attention on the man in front of him. “No answer? Shall I tell you what I think?” he asked, tone just a hint of something not casual at all. “I think you didn’t give a bloody damn about Félix,” he said, watching Arthur’s face as he said the words. He spared little attention for the lock, though a glance told Eames precisely what the code was. Two sets of sets of letters, four each. He felt quite certain, smugly so, that Arthur didn’t know his past well enough to suss it out on his own. He’d certainly never mentioned his military history to the other man, not the legal one, at any rate. And if Arthur did manage to pull “Iron Fist” out of his arse as the division he’d been in? Well, that would be just as telling for Arthur as for himself, Eames thought. “Does Félix know you feel this way?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just focused on the combination for a few long moments.
Arthur’s hands were disassembling some seriously dangerous explosive devices while his eyes were on the combination pad. He seemed to be able to do both at once, and he stopped what he was doing every now and then to punch in certain codes. He knew Eames’ birthdate; the names of his parents; and he had two or three guesses for the person he’d lost his virginity to, though none of them were quite right; he had the date he mustered out; he had ID numbers he had no business having; he put things in as they came to him, as he thought. He came very close to getting the right code, close enough that he factored in things old, not new, but he never quite hit on it. He set the explosives, used the task to drop his chin and hide his expression. “Félix found a nice boyfriend he likes,” Arthur said.
“And you don’t care, because you’ve no actual interest in Félix,” Eames said, looking up as the infantry neared. “Also, you’re about to fight a bloody mob for nothing.” He pushed himself away from the case, but he made no attempt to offer Arthur anything, no information, no help. He crossed his arms over his very broad chest, and he simply regarded the other man. He was disappointed, though he knew there was no reason to be, and Eames didn’t like that, didn’t like what it hinted at. Vanity, Eames decided at the last moment - his own hurt pride; nothing more. “Once they kill us, once you awaken,” he added, because Evan certainly wasn’t going anywhere, “you have to assure me you won’t go thinking it’s all a dream, no matter what Evan said.” That seemed important, if time was running out.
Arthur took his heels down and rose up off his knees. He caught his weight evenly and only glanced at the infantry, which were closing with caution, and focused again on Eames. “I do care about Félix,” he said, watching the other man’s expression through his lashes. “Just not the way he wanted. And I can imagine being in his position. Pretty well, actually.” Arthur’s right hand held the gun as it dangled down his side, and he stepped up to take his left out against the slight curve of Eames’ back to move them both out of the way of the explosion. He lifted his arm almost lazily and fired twice to keep the infantry hesitating for a few more crucial seconds. He set his lips together. “I wouldn’t leave you. Even a dream.”
“Dedication, darling, or something more?” Eames asked, and it did border on the seductive, the way he said it, something he might say to lure someone into a dark corner. But there was something else there, if Arthur looked, and Eames slid a hand behind Arthur’s elbow and tugged him forward. “Or simply trying to make Cobb proud?” That was a push, an intentionally annoying nudge, and he wanted to see if he got a flare of Arthur’s ire from it. He took the explosives from between Arthur’s fingers, pried them away, really, and then he lobbed them with a kind of experience that only came from the military. Another yank to Arthur’s arm, and then it was Arthur protected from the explosion, from the debris and flame and bodies and hiss. Eames was larger, after all, and he reasoned it only made sense, covering the smaller man.
Arthur had time to have a flash of total confusion: what did Cobb have to do with it? Then there was a boom, and he was moving, and that feeling, the one of being protected, took over the rest. The confusion strengthened and then dissipated, as the pressure on his arm wasn’t really pain, and the warmth in his chest wasn’t really hurt. “Are you trying to distract me from what’s in that case?” Arthur said, before his ears even stopped ringing. He tipped his head up to look through the dust-spattered few inches between their faces, and then, because he spent way too much time around things exploding, he turned to press one hip against Eames’ body in just such a way.
“You aren’t getting into the case,” Eames reminded him, also uncaring about the explosion now that neither of them had been impaled with any debris. It slowed down the guards, which bought them time, and that was all that truly mattered in dreams. “You haven’t made any progress on the code,” he reminded the other man, just before that press of hip. Now, if Eames was another type of man he might have left it at that, but he wasn’t another type of man. Eames saw invitations where others saw possibilities, and he slid a hand down to Arthur’s hip, the one that wasn’t pressed against his own body, and he tugged. He pulled until Arthur was entirely flush against him, smaller, slighter, but undeniably there. “Is this what you were going for, Arthur?” he asked, smug and oh, so helpful.
Arthur allowed the hand, even appeared to enjoy it, as he hardly resisted the movement, and the flush press of bodies immediately became not just contact but unmistakable intimacy. Arthur rose up on the soles of his feet, lifted his chin and stretched his neck up. His lips went along Eames’ cheek and toward his ear. “I put explosives on the case, Eames.”
Eames just grinned. “You’ll destroy what’s inside.” It was a possibility, not a certainty, but you’d never know it from the sound of Eames voice. “Plus, darling, it’s cheating. You should be able to figure it out. I’ve never seen you step down from a challenge.” And maybe that was cheating, because the taunt was a growled thing at Arthur’s temple, a rumble against Arthur’s chest, and Eames hands never left the other man’s hips, save to curl around them, gun-calloused fingers at the small of Arthur’s back.
“You know I’m too good for that. I get to the point.” It was soft, almost lost in the shouts in the distance, the stamp of boots approaching from not far off. “Ten seconds. Give or take.” Arthur pushed back against Eames, not really caring if there was anything behind him, not really caring about much at all, really. He made a sound in the back of his throat, closing his mouth so it came out as vibration through his lips at the base of Eames’ neck against the stupid flowers on his collar. “Nine. Better make them count.” Now that was a challenge.
Eames did know that, but his grin didn’t falter. “It’s still cheating, darling.” Eames didn’t care about cheating. Eames’ entire life was one long con, and he made a noise that was the definition of masculine approval at the vibration of Arthur’s lips at the base of his neck. “You know as well as I do that the code is as telling as what’s inside the case,” he told the other man, a wicked grin in it, one that said he remembered perfectly what Arthur’s code to his vault had been. But nine seconds? That wasn’t a challenge he would walk away from. He jerked Arthur’s chin up with rough fingers, no delicacy in it, the fact that Arthur was male certainly not lost on him. Rough fingers, and he gripped Arthur’s jaw tightly enough that the other man couldn’t pull or turn away. “You’ll tell me how I do?” he asked, wasting a precious second on the smug question. Then he slanted his lips over Arthur’s and turned the tables, shoving the other man against the case that was set to detonate. The kiss was all teeth, a rough lick at the seam of Arthur’s lips, a demand.
Arthur did better at this kiss than their last one, or at least he felt better about it. There was more thinking, and with more thinking, Arthur felt like he was less apt to make a mistake, and there was nothing like near death to make the whole thing a little more permissible to him in the wide scheme of things. It was just a dream, just a kiss, and it didn't have to mean anything if he didn't want it to, right? Right. He'd pushed for it and even the slam against the thick glass and the rattle of the steel case against the back of his head didn't bother him. His eyes were a quick black starshine before he could answer the question (not that he had anything to say) and he answered the demand with a soft appeal of open lips and a scrape against the angry bite of the other man's teeth. Arthur's kisses tended to yield, flicking contact to draw more, far more tentative than everything else he did.
Seven--now six seconds, and Arthur slid his hands over the give of warm muscle under Eames shirt just to one side of his spine. There was a warning in the sudden baring of incisors against Eames' tongue, but no more than that. Arthur kicked out a foot behind Eames' left ankle and shoved against his chest at the same time. As the man went over backward, Arthur hooked the belt he'd just been fondling with one of the cables hanging still from the guards that had come from overhead. Five seconds, and Arthur stepped on the mechanism the unconscious guard nearest had in his head. The cable went taut and hauled Eames upward, out of the way of the coming blast.
Arthur stepped over the next guard and wound an arm around another cable, but he didn't pull himself up yet. He was looking at the combination pad and taking the opportunity to try another combination or two. Three seconds.
The tentative yielding was not what Eames expected from the ever-capable Arthur. Had Evan been able to offer input just then, he would have laughed. Because how stupid could this guy be? But there was no voice in the back of Eames’ mind, and only the sweet yield of Arthur’s lips against his. Eames was not tentative, and he was not yielding. He kissed like he fucked, rough and graceless, all emotion and feeling and nothing neat or romantic. His tongue was coarse insistence as it licked into the other man’s mouth, the stubble along his jaw scratched without care or concern, and his body pinned Arthur’s to the case without any consideration for the explosion to come. Eames, he didn’t think, and he’d forgotten about the bloody explosives.
The hands, Arthur’s hands, made the split-second warning between the sting of teeth unnoticable to Eames, and he had just started yanking Arthur’s perfect shirt from designer trousers when the kick came. “What the the bloody fu-” he began, just as he was hauled upward. “You’re going to pay for that, darling,” he yelled; Eames didn’t like behind off his feet, and he certainly didn’t like watching Arthur hit paydirt on the lock, not from overhead where he couldn’t grab the other man and distract him from whatever was inside the case.
There was just enough time before the blast - three seconds now - for a bevy of sounds to reach Arthur’s ears. Explosions, artillery fire, someone screaming in agony, and Eames (much younger) cursing up a storm in a voice that cracked and was thick with emotion. One second - and the case held one item, along with the sound memory - a dishonorable discharge.