Re: Sam/Eames: art class
Nightmares were difficult. They were as determinedly sticky as spiders' webs, the enveloping of the sub-conscious in shades of red and black and gray and purple, the depths of someone's mind tossing about like a sea at war with the wind. Eames didn't slide into nightmares as neatly as a hot knife into butter. He went in gingerly by inches. That was the ordinary sort of nightmare, darling. The nightmare in which he'd found a demon was entirely by the by.
"Popular with who, darling?" There were, Eames supposed, people who found liking grounded in other people liking the same thing. It had made diamonds valuable, and gold worthy of trade in the past. A pastiche of other people's taste suited a proportion of the public, some of whom purchased it on late-night television. Eames didn't watch television. And he didn't care for other people's taste. 'Gauguin, darling. To go with your Degas."
Sam wore how she felt on her sleeve. Exasperation, laughter, even that flash of teeth behind bubble-gum sweet outward appearance. Eames admired it for a moment with the vague interest of what it must be like to live that way but it did make it easier, darling, to mimicry. There were parts of a person you made a little more vivid than others in order to give an impression in a dream. "My eyeball isn't terribly vain by the look of it, it's old," he pointed out, looking for all the world vaguely put out.
Ah, confidence. "Some thou? Do I look impoverished? Is it the cut of the trousers," Eames wanted to know, or at least, he sounded as if he did. "F Eames. Yes, darling, that's me. I doubt there's another Eames," he smiled a little sleepily, "At least, not as good as the real thing. What are you going to do with Murphy?"