Keep the Car Running (7/31)
Oct. 29th, 2014 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Keep the Car Running (7/31)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Adult
Characters - Arthur, Eames, Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Moriarty, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Dom Cobb
Spoilers - Through "His Last Vow" in the Sherlock universe. This takes place post-movie, so I guess spoilers for "Inception"? But just for the basic fact that it's about dream thieves, nothing in this story depends overly much on the movie's plot.
Disclaimer - I don't own any of them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - If Mycroft Holmes lived in a world where people could steal information from the subconsciouses of others, tell me he wouldn't be all over that when he had Moriarty in custody.
Chapter 7
Arthur should have expected the onslaught—it was all over Sherlock’s website, this bragging about his ability to know everything about someone at a glance—but truthfully he had thought most of it to be exaggeration or lies. He and Eames made a living out of hiding who they were, and Arthur hadn’t been worried at all. Then Sherlock had pegged correctly basically every single thing about him, right down to the deduction Arthur had cut off, which he was sure had been about the fact that he was in love with Eames. His most carefully protected secret, one which he thought he did such a good job of hiding, and Sherlock had seen it so immediately, so obviously, that Arthur was alarmed and wondering what the fuck had given him away.
And the closeness of the call made him furious, made him want to lean over and strangle this ridiculous, dramatic man who would have so casually brought Arthur’s carefully constructed look-what-good-friends-we-are! act down around his ears. And who had then followed it up by dredging up Eames’s unhappy childhood as if that had anything to do with anything.
Arthur said, suddenly, “I’ll make the coffee,” because if he spent another minute in that room he was going to end up killing their kidnapper’s little brother, which probably wouldn’t bode well for him or Eames.
“Hang on a minute,” said John Watson. “Sherlock, what are you talking about?”
“Arthur, you can’t go make coffee,” said Eames, sounding quizzical.
“I am perfectly capable of making coffee, Mr. Eames, I assure you,” Arthur snapped at him.
“You can’t go into this dream,” John told Sherlock, clearly not interested in the drama over the coffee.
Eames said, “I’m sure you are. I have no doubt it is one of the plethora of things at which you excel. But you can’t go make coffee in someone else’s kitchen.”
“Oh my God,” said Arthur, “you’ll lift an heirloom watch off a man’s wrist, but you won’t rummage in someone else’s kitchen? Your priorities are absurd.”
Eames was looking confused by him, which Arthur didn’t blame him for, because he knew he was reacting out of all proportion for what had just happened. Sherlock had said relatively minor things to him as compared to Eames. Eames had no idea how close Arthur had come to the revelation of the most monumental secret of his life, and also no idea that that secret was why Arthur reacted so personally to attacks against Eames.
John and Sherlock were engaged in a full-fledged disagreement over the dream thing, as if Arthur was ever going to let them make the decision anyway, and Arthur, feeling like he needed to get out his nervous energy, walked firmly into the apartment’s kitchen and drew to a halt. He stared at the chemistry equipment all over the table. And despite all the other turmoil his brain was in, the point man part of Arthur clicked into gear, tumbled into place.
This, he thought, was why he was the best at this.
Arthur turned and walked back into the living room, where John was saying scathingly, “You don’t know anything about dreamsharing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock retorted, “I researched it last night.”
Arthur walked over to where Eames was still standing, watching them, looking uncertain as to what he ought to do.
Eames glanced back at him. “Thought we’d just let them fight it out. Where’s your coffee?”
Arthur didn’t so much ignore him as decide he wasn’t as important as what Arthur had just discovered. “You’re a chemist,” he said to Sherlock.
Sherlock and John stopped in the middle of overlapping sentences. Sherlock gave him a disdainful look. “Yes. I thought you were supposed to be good at your job. Didn’t you look me up?”
“An actual chemist. Not just one in theory. You’ve got chemistry equipment.”
“Arthur,” said Eames slowly, clearly connecting the dots.
Arthur held up his hand to hold Eames off. “You’re what we need,” he said to Sherlock.
Sherlock looked torn between being irritated and gratified. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”
“Would you excuse us for a second?” Eames said abruptly and grabbed Arthur by the shoulder.
“No,” said Arthur. “I—”
“Very pressing developments with…butterflies that we have to discuss,” said Eames, propelling Arthur out of the room.
“Butterflies?” said Arthur. “Aren’t you supposed to be a good liar?”
“It’s a code word,” Eames said, now marching him down the stairs.
“A code word for what?”
“For ‘Arthur’s lost his bloody mind and needs Eames to help him find it,’” Eames bit out, now shoving Arthur out the door and onto the front stoop.
“That code word isn’t ‘butterflies,’” Arthur snarled at him, pulling his arm out of Eames’s grasp, annoyed at being pushed around.
“Trust you to have an actual code word for that,” grumbled Eames.
“I don’t,” Arthur admitted. “But I have a code word for ‘Eames is an obnoxious prick.’”
“What does that code word happen to be?” drawled Eames lazily.
“Fuck off,” Arthur informed him.
“Cunning. No one will ever guess what you mean by that code word, pet. Just so you know, my code word for ‘Eames is going to end up smothering Arthur with a pillow before all this is over’ is ‘marmalade.’”
“You are the worst code-word creator in the history of time!” Arthur shouted at him.
“It’s not my job!” Eames shouted back at him.
Arthur blinked suddenly. “What the hell are we arguing about?”
Eames reverted back to their original argument with ease. “You’re going to bring a civilian into this dream? Into this dream?”
“Yes,” Arthur said stubbornly, standing his ground. “I think it’s our only play.”
Eames regarded him for a moment, then said, “Give me a second, would you? I have to check my totem to make sure this is a dream and some truly terrible forger is pretending to be you.”
“He’s a chemist, Eames.”
“So what? There are a million bloody chemists in this city, studying at universities and whatnot. He’s not unique.”
“First of all, I don’t think there are a million chemists in this city; I think your estimate is high,” said Arthur.
“Marmalade,” Eames growled at him.
“Second of all, he’s clearly unique, Eames. We walked in there and he knew everything about us.”
“He’s got dossiers on us.”
“Do you think my dossier contains the vital intelligence that I don’t like my dimples?” Or that I’m in love with you, Arthur added silently.
Eames was silent for a moment, then said, “Do you really not like your dimples? Your dimples are lovely.”
“Beside the point,” Arthur said.
“I have no idea what your bloody point is,” Eames replied. “As far as I can tell, you think your point is that you’re going to let this madman in on our dreamshare when we could just about convince our mutual kidnapper to let us forge him, never mind pull him in for real.”
“He’s going to solve our two level problem.”
“Because you’re going to trust him to stay behind in the first level and hold things together?”
“No, I’ll take him with me.”
Eames snorted. “Alone? Like hell you will. It’d be a suicide mission.”
“Well, I’m not letting him go alone with you.”
“Then it turns out he solves exactly none of our problems, does he?”
Damn it. Arthur hadn’t thought it entirely through, which was unlike him, and he was furiously annoyed with Sherlock for throwing him off his game. And then realized. “But he’s a chemist. If we can get him to make us a mix that’ll get us a deep enough sedation to do this on one level—”
“You want to use a sedative? On a one-level dream?”
“I’ve been thinking that we have to use a sedative. Moriarty’s making people insane, Eames, through his dreams. We’ve got to do something to try to shut down his subconscious.”
“In that case, a sedative is a terrible idea, just makes his subconscious deeper. We need the opposite: the shallowest dream we can get. Keep his subconscious from getting too much control.”
Arthur blinked at him. “That’s…a good point. Huh.”
“God, I love that condescension so much. When I dream, I always hope that’s what I’ll dream about: you being condescending to me.”
“He’ll make it for us,” Arthur said.
Eames, as usual, immediately leaped right back onto the right conversational track. “How?”
“He’s a chemist. He’ll figure it out.”
“We don’t need him, Arthur. We know other chemists. Chemists who specialize in dreamsharing.”
“Which will be the problem. Which was my problem. They’ll be thinking about things the conventional way when this is anything but.”
“Yusuf is—”
Arthur shook his head impatiently. “You trust Yusuf? Who accepted Cobb’s share of the payment to not warn us about the fact that he was putting us into a dream environment that might send us to limbo? You trust anyone from that job except for me?”
“No,” said Eames, and looked almost pitying. “But trust is your problem, not mine. And Yusuf’s good at what he does—”
“Do you keep in touch with Yusuf?”
“Of course I do. I’m friends with Yusuf.”
Arthur closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of Yusuf withholding important information about their likelihood of making it out of the dream in exchange for a bit more money. Friends didn’t put friends in the position of possibly dying for a little extra cash. “Christ, Eames, your definition of ‘friend’ is so alarming.”
“I think I’ve had enough judgment today of the sorry state of my personal life,” Eames said sharply.
Which made Arthur open his eyes, remembering Sherlock’s assessment of Eames’s absent father, absent mother, abandonment issues... “I didn’t mean that.”
Eames looked harshly displeased and…withdrawn. Arthur had never realized until that moment how open Eames always was with him. Eames gave that impression to everyone, of course, it was part of his façade, but Arthur suddenly realized that it was different with him because now he was seeing the difference. “Doesn’t matter,” Eames said lightly but not the way he usually sounded at all.
Arthur inhaled deeply and glanced up and down the street and tried to think of what to say to make it better. Eames made him crazy, made him want to alternately kill him and kiss him, and Arthur was desperate not to have it any other way; Eames was the only person he’d ever met on the planet who made him feel always so forcefully alive.
Finally he decided there was nothing he could say to make it better. This was an area at which he decidedly did not excel. This was why he was hopelessly single and resigned to pining endlessly over some larger-than-life Casanova character. It was how he’d ended up helplessly following Cobb, a man who was having a nervous breakdown, with no idea what he could do to stop it or him or even himself. His interpersonal relationship skills were atrocious.
Arthur put his hands in his pockets and continued to look up and down the street, sure they were being watched and trying to spot the spies. He said, “Yusuf’s married now with a very pregnant wife. Do you want him to get involved?”
“I don’t want to get anyone involved in this, Arthur. I don’t even want to be involved.” Eames sounded tired now but not actively angry, which Arthur decided was an improvement.
“You could make a run for it,” Arthur suggested, still looking up and down the street.
“I wouldn’t get anywhere; we’re being watched right now and you know it. Besides, I wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize your family, and don’t insult me by suggesting it.”
Arthur looked at him for a moment and considered the fact that his family made him vulnerable and Eames hadn’t even blinked about it, Eames who could have got himself out of this so easily if it hadn’t been for protecting Arthur. Arthur said, “You’re right about letting him in the dream. That’s insanity. I should never have thought it.”
“Oh Christ, Arthur,” Eames half-snarled at him, clearly angry again, “don’t fucking apologize to me. I’m fine. It’s fine. I don’t actually need you to stroke my ego.”
Mistake, Arthur thought, being nice to him. “No, you do that pretty well on your own,” Arthur agreed, and suddenly had an idea and pulled out his notebook and started scribbling in it.
“What are you writing?” asked Eames suspiciously.
“What time is it?” Arthur asked calmly.
Eames glanced at his watch. “11:23. Why?”
“I’m making a note of the moment when you had a good idea,” said Arthur, and tucked the notebook back into his coat, determinedly being as breezily condescending as he could manage. In honesty, he never strove to be condescending. Apparently it just happened naturally. “Well done, Eames. I’m mildly impressed that you had a decent thought. Now you can spend the rest of the afternoon flirting with someone in an attempt to lure them off to a sordid room somewhere, and I’m going to take your good idea and make it really, really good and use the genius chemist we’ve been given.” Arthur looked at him sunnily and pulled open the door to the building.
Eames said, after a moment, “Has anyone ever told you how very lethal your charm is, darling? Truly, I am felled by it. Sprawled at your feet.”
He said it with his usual good humor, and Arthur, halfway through the door, looked back at him, relieved.
He must have smiled, because suddenly Eames’s thumb brushed up against what Arthur knew was his right dimple. It was there-and-gone, blink-and-you-missed-it, but Eames murmured, as he moved past him into the building, “The dimples are bloody lovely. You’re an idiot.”
Arthur’s breath stuttered in his chest, idiotically, all because Eames had for one flash of a second touched his face with those hands, and he said, so that he wouldn’t stand in the doorway all day staring into space reliving the moment, “Fuck off.”
Eames, already halfway up the stairs, laughed. “Marmalade,” he said, and paused on the landing and looked down at him. “Come along, love. I’m very much looking forward to finding out what happens next in this circus of a dreamshare we’re running here.”
Arthur thought he was smiling again as he made his way up the stairs, but decided not to bite it away until he got to the apartment. He seldom let himself smile, and sometimes it just felt so incredibly good.
***
Sherlock peered curiously out the window at the two criminals arguing outside their door and said, “What do you think they’re talking about?”
John suppressed his urge to hit Sherlock, the way he always suppressed that urge. Well. Almost always, he amended. “I think they’re talking about how you’re an idiot,” John informed him.
Sherlock gave him an offended look.
“You’re not going into a dream, Sherlock,” John said, and he knew his voice sounded very calm, because that was how his voice got when he was very angry. “I don’t even understand how that would be possible, but I know you’re not doing it.”
“It’s science, John,” Sherlock informed him crisply. “Chemistry. Access to the subconscious. You’re a doctor. Surely you’ve considered the power of dreams? How much you could achieve if you could access other people’s dreams?”
“Yeah, about as much as I could achieve if I just started breaking into everybody’s houses and stealing their most precious possessions.”
“We’re not talking about invading just anyone, John. We’re talking about Moriarty.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t want you involved. Good things do not happen when you’re involved with Moriarty. I get kidnapped and strapped to Semtex when you get involved with Moriarty.”
A flash of guilt flitted across Sherlock’s face, which John only noticed because he knew Sherlock so very well. Sherlock said, “But what we’re doing now is getting rid of him forever.”
John inhaled deeply to keep himself calm. “If Mycroft has him then Mycroft should just get rid of him. Why are we playing around with his head first?”
“Because don’t you want to know what he knows, John?” Sherlock asked eagerly.
“No,” John said. “I just want to be rid of him.”
“Look, I’m sure going into a dream isn’t difficult or dangerous. Those two manage to do it.” Sherlock swept his hand dismissively toward the street.
John said, “If it’s easy, why is it a secret?”
Sherlock shrugged. “The government keeps everything a secret. You know how Mycroft is. Shh, now, they’re coming back.”
John listened to the front door open and then close, steps on their staircase, and sighed. He wasn’t sure that he hadn’t preferred it when Sherlock had been bored out of his skull.
Eames walked in and beamed at them radiantly and said, “Arthur and I are in complete and utter disagreement.”
Arthur had a long-suffering look to him that John recognized perfectly well. He said, “Go pick out another cookie, Eames,” and walked toward John and Sherlock.
“They’re biscuits,” Eames corrected him.
Arthur said, “We need a chemist.”
“Excellent,” Sherlock said, and practically clapped his hands with glee. “When do we go into the dream?”
“You’re not going into the dream,” Arthur said.
Sherlock’s face fell. “What?”
“Good,” said John. “At least somebody here is behaving sensibly.”
“Look,” Eames said, around the biscuit he’d stuffed in his mouth, “your brother’s not the nicest bloke on the planet. He kidnapped us to get us to do this at all, and then Arthur had to be his very scariest to even get him to bring us here to talk to you. If we bring you into the dream with us, I suspect he will divest us of parts of our bodies we’re actually fond of.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “My brother kidnapped you?”
“He does that,” John said sympathetically.
“It was stupid of him,” Arthur said, having sat absently in Sherlock’s chair and scribbling in his notebook. “He could have just negotiated with us.”
“I don’t think the government negotiates with criminals,” remarked John.
Arthur gave him a narrow-eyed look and then wrote something down in his notebook.
“Anyway, negotiation would have been much too dull for Mycroft. Mycroft likes to do things as overdramatically as possible,” said Sherlock.
“Could never tell the two of you are brothers,” said Eames casually.
John almost loved Eames in that moment. His lips twitched of their own accord.
Sherlock gave Eames his why-can’t-I-kill-people-with-just-a-look look. Then he said to Arthur, “I’ll talk to Mycroft and go into the dream with you.”
“We don’t need you in the dream.” Arthur had leaned back in the seat now, was sitting with his ankle propped on his knee, looking very comfortable and at home. “We need that equipment in there.” Arthur pointed toward the kitchen.
Eames followed the direction he was pointing, poked his head in the kitchen.
Sherlock said, “For what?”
Eames said, “Interesting culinary approach. Think you could use it to make a bouillabaisse, Arthur?”
Arthur said, “Dreamsharing is based around a chemical compound known as Somnacin. But not just straight. Straight Somnacin will not achieve what you need it to achieve. Frequently dreamsharing chemists create custom mixes.”
Eames sat down in John’s chair, stretching his legs out to cross his ankles, and said, “The particular combination can affect the quality of the dream, the stability, how easily you can get kicked out of it.”
“Kicked out of it?” John echoed.
Eames looked at Arthur.
Arthur glowered at him briefly, then said, “We’ll demonstrate later.”
“So you want me to create some kind of custom blend,” Sherlock concluded.
“Moriarty’s a special case.”
John snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Arthur looked between them closely. “How much do you know about him?”
“Well, Sherlock plays delightful little games with him in which people get killed and I get bombs strapped to my chest.”
Sherlock heaved a dramatic sigh of disapproval.
After a moment of silence, Eames said, “I take it back. You lot are going to be right at home in dreamsharing.”
Arthur said, “Moriarty’s subconscious is driving people insane.”
“Is that something that happens?” asked Sherlock, with interest.
“No,” Arthur answered. “Never.”
“What’s he doing to make that happen?” asked Sherlock, still sounding so bloody intrigued.
John wanted to scream in frustration.
“We have no idea,” said Arthur.
“Interesting,” breathed Sherlock. “So that’s what you’re trying to find out?”
“No, we don’t give a fuck how he’s doing it,” said Eames. “We just want to find a way to make sure it doesn’t happen to us.”
“Eames and I don’t intend to go insane in Moriarty’s head, you see,” added Arthur.
“Moriarty’s head is insane,” said John. “You’re mad to be trying this, any of you. And for what? How many people has Mycroft sent in there already? Must be a lot for him to be kidnapping criminals. And who bloody cares about what insanity is in Moriarty’s head. Just leave it. Just lock him up and throw away the key.”
“I am delighted with that approach,” said Eames to Arthur. “Let’s make Dr. Watson the point man on this.”
“Mycroft seems very set on getting into his head,” said Arthur. “He claims there are matters of national security depending on the information locked away in there.”
“He’s right,” said Sherlock swiftly. “He’s absolutely right, John. This is a matter of Queen and country.”
“Bloody hell,” mumbled John, and pushed his hands through his hair, knowing both when he was being manipulated and when there was little he could do about it. The force of Sherlock and Mycroft being unexpectedly on the same side for once was too exhausting to contemplate.
Sherlock gave him the most alarmingly cherubic look.
Arthur said, “We want to keep Moriarty’s subconscious from grabbing hold too tightly. We need a shallow dream. It’s the opposite of what we’d usually try for, but Eames suggested it and I think he’s right.”
“It was one of the few times I’ve had a decent idea,” interjected Eames. “Arthur made a note of it. 11:23 a.m.”
John couldn’t quite tell if he was joking or not.
“So you want him to be asleep, but just barely,” said Sherlock thoughtfully, tilting his head.
“Exactly. You know those dreams you have where you feel like, actually, they weren’t dreams at all, you were living them, you don’t feel like you slept at all and can’t quite tell where reality ended and sleep began? We need that kind of dream.”
Sherlock said, after a moment, “I don’t dream.”
“Everyone dreams,” said Arthur evenly.
“Except for dreamsharers,” Eames added.
“John dreams,” Sherlock said. “We can test it on him.”
“No,” said John. “No. Sherlock—”
“Oh, fine,” Sherlock huffed. “Spoilsport.”
“Look, Eames and I will test it, we’re used to that, we’ll know when we have what we want.”
“And I’ll help,” said Sherlock.
“Sherlock,” John sighed.
“If you help,” remarked Eames mildly, “we’ll get to find out what it is you dream about.” Eames looked over at Sherlock evenly.
John looked at Sherlock curiously. He had to admit that a piece of him did see the appeal of trying to get into that particular subconscious. What was Sherlock thinking, in the recesses of his mind palace? John knew he gave the impression of saying whatever came into his head, and John also knew that decidedly wasn’t true.
“Can you get me some of this Somnacin?” asked Sherlock, after a moment.
“Your brother can get you some easier than we can,” Eames said, and stood, as if that was the end of the interview.
“You want me to talk to Mycroft?” demanded Sherlock, sounding alarmed.
“You think we’re going to be able to convince him that you’re our new chemist?” countered Eames.
Sherlock mumbled something under his breath and stalked into the kitchen.
Arthur and Eames both looked at John expectantly.
“This is going to be a bloody mess,” John told them brightly. “Hope you’re pleased with yourselves.”
“We excel with messes,” said Eames, “don’t we, petal?”
Arthur said, “It’s not going to be a mess. He’s a good chemist, isn’t he?”
“Moriarty’s a lunatic. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“I don’t half-ass my research, you know,” Arthur said shortly. “I don’t send a team into a dreamshare without knowing what I’m dealing with. If you want to talk Mycroft out of this, please, be our guest. Eames and I would be delighted. Until then, I’m making the best of a terrible situation, which is something I happen to be really fucking good at. I’m not going to let anything happen to anybody here. He’s going to mix a few chemicals together for us, and then Eames and I will handle the rest. And, though I would be flattered, I don’t think you really care overly much if Eames and I go insane while doing this. So relax. I’m going to take care of your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” said John.
“Oh,” said Arthur, after a moment. “Right.”
He made it sound as if he didn’t believe that for a second, and John frankly wondered why he still bothered denying it.
Eames said, “Well, regardless, Arthur will take excellent care of him. Arthur’s really a stellar mother hen.”
“Fuck off,” Arthur told him darkly.
“Marmalade, love,” Eames beamed at him.
Arthur stalked out of the flat.
“He adores me,” Eames informed John, and winked. “Thank you so much for the biscuits and the tea. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you soon.”
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Adult
Characters - Arthur, Eames, Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Moriarty, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Dom Cobb
Spoilers - Through "His Last Vow" in the Sherlock universe. This takes place post-movie, so I guess spoilers for "Inception"? But just for the basic fact that it's about dream thieves, nothing in this story depends overly much on the movie's plot.
Disclaimer - I don't own any of them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - If Mycroft Holmes lived in a world where people could steal information from the subconsciouses of others, tell me he wouldn't be all over that when he had Moriarty in custody.
Chapter 7
Arthur should have expected the onslaught—it was all over Sherlock’s website, this bragging about his ability to know everything about someone at a glance—but truthfully he had thought most of it to be exaggeration or lies. He and Eames made a living out of hiding who they were, and Arthur hadn’t been worried at all. Then Sherlock had pegged correctly basically every single thing about him, right down to the deduction Arthur had cut off, which he was sure had been about the fact that he was in love with Eames. His most carefully protected secret, one which he thought he did such a good job of hiding, and Sherlock had seen it so immediately, so obviously, that Arthur was alarmed and wondering what the fuck had given him away.
And the closeness of the call made him furious, made him want to lean over and strangle this ridiculous, dramatic man who would have so casually brought Arthur’s carefully constructed look-what-good-friends-we-are! act down around his ears. And who had then followed it up by dredging up Eames’s unhappy childhood as if that had anything to do with anything.
Arthur said, suddenly, “I’ll make the coffee,” because if he spent another minute in that room he was going to end up killing their kidnapper’s little brother, which probably wouldn’t bode well for him or Eames.
“Hang on a minute,” said John Watson. “Sherlock, what are you talking about?”
“Arthur, you can’t go make coffee,” said Eames, sounding quizzical.
“I am perfectly capable of making coffee, Mr. Eames, I assure you,” Arthur snapped at him.
“You can’t go into this dream,” John told Sherlock, clearly not interested in the drama over the coffee.
Eames said, “I’m sure you are. I have no doubt it is one of the plethora of things at which you excel. But you can’t go make coffee in someone else’s kitchen.”
“Oh my God,” said Arthur, “you’ll lift an heirloom watch off a man’s wrist, but you won’t rummage in someone else’s kitchen? Your priorities are absurd.”
Eames was looking confused by him, which Arthur didn’t blame him for, because he knew he was reacting out of all proportion for what had just happened. Sherlock had said relatively minor things to him as compared to Eames. Eames had no idea how close Arthur had come to the revelation of the most monumental secret of his life, and also no idea that that secret was why Arthur reacted so personally to attacks against Eames.
John and Sherlock were engaged in a full-fledged disagreement over the dream thing, as if Arthur was ever going to let them make the decision anyway, and Arthur, feeling like he needed to get out his nervous energy, walked firmly into the apartment’s kitchen and drew to a halt. He stared at the chemistry equipment all over the table. And despite all the other turmoil his brain was in, the point man part of Arthur clicked into gear, tumbled into place.
This, he thought, was why he was the best at this.
Arthur turned and walked back into the living room, where John was saying scathingly, “You don’t know anything about dreamsharing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock retorted, “I researched it last night.”
Arthur walked over to where Eames was still standing, watching them, looking uncertain as to what he ought to do.
Eames glanced back at him. “Thought we’d just let them fight it out. Where’s your coffee?”
Arthur didn’t so much ignore him as decide he wasn’t as important as what Arthur had just discovered. “You’re a chemist,” he said to Sherlock.
Sherlock and John stopped in the middle of overlapping sentences. Sherlock gave him a disdainful look. “Yes. I thought you were supposed to be good at your job. Didn’t you look me up?”
“An actual chemist. Not just one in theory. You’ve got chemistry equipment.”
“Arthur,” said Eames slowly, clearly connecting the dots.
Arthur held up his hand to hold Eames off. “You’re what we need,” he said to Sherlock.
Sherlock looked torn between being irritated and gratified. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”
“Would you excuse us for a second?” Eames said abruptly and grabbed Arthur by the shoulder.
“No,” said Arthur. “I—”
“Very pressing developments with…butterflies that we have to discuss,” said Eames, propelling Arthur out of the room.
“Butterflies?” said Arthur. “Aren’t you supposed to be a good liar?”
“It’s a code word,” Eames said, now marching him down the stairs.
“A code word for what?”
“For ‘Arthur’s lost his bloody mind and needs Eames to help him find it,’” Eames bit out, now shoving Arthur out the door and onto the front stoop.
“That code word isn’t ‘butterflies,’” Arthur snarled at him, pulling his arm out of Eames’s grasp, annoyed at being pushed around.
“Trust you to have an actual code word for that,” grumbled Eames.
“I don’t,” Arthur admitted. “But I have a code word for ‘Eames is an obnoxious prick.’”
“What does that code word happen to be?” drawled Eames lazily.
“Fuck off,” Arthur informed him.
“Cunning. No one will ever guess what you mean by that code word, pet. Just so you know, my code word for ‘Eames is going to end up smothering Arthur with a pillow before all this is over’ is ‘marmalade.’”
“You are the worst code-word creator in the history of time!” Arthur shouted at him.
“It’s not my job!” Eames shouted back at him.
Arthur blinked suddenly. “What the hell are we arguing about?”
Eames reverted back to their original argument with ease. “You’re going to bring a civilian into this dream? Into this dream?”
“Yes,” Arthur said stubbornly, standing his ground. “I think it’s our only play.”
Eames regarded him for a moment, then said, “Give me a second, would you? I have to check my totem to make sure this is a dream and some truly terrible forger is pretending to be you.”
“He’s a chemist, Eames.”
“So what? There are a million bloody chemists in this city, studying at universities and whatnot. He’s not unique.”
“First of all, I don’t think there are a million chemists in this city; I think your estimate is high,” said Arthur.
“Marmalade,” Eames growled at him.
“Second of all, he’s clearly unique, Eames. We walked in there and he knew everything about us.”
“He’s got dossiers on us.”
“Do you think my dossier contains the vital intelligence that I don’t like my dimples?” Or that I’m in love with you, Arthur added silently.
Eames was silent for a moment, then said, “Do you really not like your dimples? Your dimples are lovely.”
“Beside the point,” Arthur said.
“I have no idea what your bloody point is,” Eames replied. “As far as I can tell, you think your point is that you’re going to let this madman in on our dreamshare when we could just about convince our mutual kidnapper to let us forge him, never mind pull him in for real.”
“He’s going to solve our two level problem.”
“Because you’re going to trust him to stay behind in the first level and hold things together?”
“No, I’ll take him with me.”
Eames snorted. “Alone? Like hell you will. It’d be a suicide mission.”
“Well, I’m not letting him go alone with you.”
“Then it turns out he solves exactly none of our problems, does he?”
Damn it. Arthur hadn’t thought it entirely through, which was unlike him, and he was furiously annoyed with Sherlock for throwing him off his game. And then realized. “But he’s a chemist. If we can get him to make us a mix that’ll get us a deep enough sedation to do this on one level—”
“You want to use a sedative? On a one-level dream?”
“I’ve been thinking that we have to use a sedative. Moriarty’s making people insane, Eames, through his dreams. We’ve got to do something to try to shut down his subconscious.”
“In that case, a sedative is a terrible idea, just makes his subconscious deeper. We need the opposite: the shallowest dream we can get. Keep his subconscious from getting too much control.”
Arthur blinked at him. “That’s…a good point. Huh.”
“God, I love that condescension so much. When I dream, I always hope that’s what I’ll dream about: you being condescending to me.”
“He’ll make it for us,” Arthur said.
Eames, as usual, immediately leaped right back onto the right conversational track. “How?”
“He’s a chemist. He’ll figure it out.”
“We don’t need him, Arthur. We know other chemists. Chemists who specialize in dreamsharing.”
“Which will be the problem. Which was my problem. They’ll be thinking about things the conventional way when this is anything but.”
“Yusuf is—”
Arthur shook his head impatiently. “You trust Yusuf? Who accepted Cobb’s share of the payment to not warn us about the fact that he was putting us into a dream environment that might send us to limbo? You trust anyone from that job except for me?”
“No,” said Eames, and looked almost pitying. “But trust is your problem, not mine. And Yusuf’s good at what he does—”
“Do you keep in touch with Yusuf?”
“Of course I do. I’m friends with Yusuf.”
Arthur closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of Yusuf withholding important information about their likelihood of making it out of the dream in exchange for a bit more money. Friends didn’t put friends in the position of possibly dying for a little extra cash. “Christ, Eames, your definition of ‘friend’ is so alarming.”
“I think I’ve had enough judgment today of the sorry state of my personal life,” Eames said sharply.
Which made Arthur open his eyes, remembering Sherlock’s assessment of Eames’s absent father, absent mother, abandonment issues... “I didn’t mean that.”
Eames looked harshly displeased and…withdrawn. Arthur had never realized until that moment how open Eames always was with him. Eames gave that impression to everyone, of course, it was part of his façade, but Arthur suddenly realized that it was different with him because now he was seeing the difference. “Doesn’t matter,” Eames said lightly but not the way he usually sounded at all.
Arthur inhaled deeply and glanced up and down the street and tried to think of what to say to make it better. Eames made him crazy, made him want to alternately kill him and kiss him, and Arthur was desperate not to have it any other way; Eames was the only person he’d ever met on the planet who made him feel always so forcefully alive.
Finally he decided there was nothing he could say to make it better. This was an area at which he decidedly did not excel. This was why he was hopelessly single and resigned to pining endlessly over some larger-than-life Casanova character. It was how he’d ended up helplessly following Cobb, a man who was having a nervous breakdown, with no idea what he could do to stop it or him or even himself. His interpersonal relationship skills were atrocious.
Arthur put his hands in his pockets and continued to look up and down the street, sure they were being watched and trying to spot the spies. He said, “Yusuf’s married now with a very pregnant wife. Do you want him to get involved?”
“I don’t want to get anyone involved in this, Arthur. I don’t even want to be involved.” Eames sounded tired now but not actively angry, which Arthur decided was an improvement.
“You could make a run for it,” Arthur suggested, still looking up and down the street.
“I wouldn’t get anywhere; we’re being watched right now and you know it. Besides, I wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize your family, and don’t insult me by suggesting it.”
Arthur looked at him for a moment and considered the fact that his family made him vulnerable and Eames hadn’t even blinked about it, Eames who could have got himself out of this so easily if it hadn’t been for protecting Arthur. Arthur said, “You’re right about letting him in the dream. That’s insanity. I should never have thought it.”
“Oh Christ, Arthur,” Eames half-snarled at him, clearly angry again, “don’t fucking apologize to me. I’m fine. It’s fine. I don’t actually need you to stroke my ego.”
Mistake, Arthur thought, being nice to him. “No, you do that pretty well on your own,” Arthur agreed, and suddenly had an idea and pulled out his notebook and started scribbling in it.
“What are you writing?” asked Eames suspiciously.
“What time is it?” Arthur asked calmly.
Eames glanced at his watch. “11:23. Why?”
“I’m making a note of the moment when you had a good idea,” said Arthur, and tucked the notebook back into his coat, determinedly being as breezily condescending as he could manage. In honesty, he never strove to be condescending. Apparently it just happened naturally. “Well done, Eames. I’m mildly impressed that you had a decent thought. Now you can spend the rest of the afternoon flirting with someone in an attempt to lure them off to a sordid room somewhere, and I’m going to take your good idea and make it really, really good and use the genius chemist we’ve been given.” Arthur looked at him sunnily and pulled open the door to the building.
Eames said, after a moment, “Has anyone ever told you how very lethal your charm is, darling? Truly, I am felled by it. Sprawled at your feet.”
He said it with his usual good humor, and Arthur, halfway through the door, looked back at him, relieved.
He must have smiled, because suddenly Eames’s thumb brushed up against what Arthur knew was his right dimple. It was there-and-gone, blink-and-you-missed-it, but Eames murmured, as he moved past him into the building, “The dimples are bloody lovely. You’re an idiot.”
Arthur’s breath stuttered in his chest, idiotically, all because Eames had for one flash of a second touched his face with those hands, and he said, so that he wouldn’t stand in the doorway all day staring into space reliving the moment, “Fuck off.”
Eames, already halfway up the stairs, laughed. “Marmalade,” he said, and paused on the landing and looked down at him. “Come along, love. I’m very much looking forward to finding out what happens next in this circus of a dreamshare we’re running here.”
Arthur thought he was smiling again as he made his way up the stairs, but decided not to bite it away until he got to the apartment. He seldom let himself smile, and sometimes it just felt so incredibly good.
***
Sherlock peered curiously out the window at the two criminals arguing outside their door and said, “What do you think they’re talking about?”
John suppressed his urge to hit Sherlock, the way he always suppressed that urge. Well. Almost always, he amended. “I think they’re talking about how you’re an idiot,” John informed him.
Sherlock gave him an offended look.
“You’re not going into a dream, Sherlock,” John said, and he knew his voice sounded very calm, because that was how his voice got when he was very angry. “I don’t even understand how that would be possible, but I know you’re not doing it.”
“It’s science, John,” Sherlock informed him crisply. “Chemistry. Access to the subconscious. You’re a doctor. Surely you’ve considered the power of dreams? How much you could achieve if you could access other people’s dreams?”
“Yeah, about as much as I could achieve if I just started breaking into everybody’s houses and stealing their most precious possessions.”
“We’re not talking about invading just anyone, John. We’re talking about Moriarty.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t want you involved. Good things do not happen when you’re involved with Moriarty. I get kidnapped and strapped to Semtex when you get involved with Moriarty.”
A flash of guilt flitted across Sherlock’s face, which John only noticed because he knew Sherlock so very well. Sherlock said, “But what we’re doing now is getting rid of him forever.”
John inhaled deeply to keep himself calm. “If Mycroft has him then Mycroft should just get rid of him. Why are we playing around with his head first?”
“Because don’t you want to know what he knows, John?” Sherlock asked eagerly.
“No,” John said. “I just want to be rid of him.”
“Look, I’m sure going into a dream isn’t difficult or dangerous. Those two manage to do it.” Sherlock swept his hand dismissively toward the street.
John said, “If it’s easy, why is it a secret?”
Sherlock shrugged. “The government keeps everything a secret. You know how Mycroft is. Shh, now, they’re coming back.”
John listened to the front door open and then close, steps on their staircase, and sighed. He wasn’t sure that he hadn’t preferred it when Sherlock had been bored out of his skull.
Eames walked in and beamed at them radiantly and said, “Arthur and I are in complete and utter disagreement.”
Arthur had a long-suffering look to him that John recognized perfectly well. He said, “Go pick out another cookie, Eames,” and walked toward John and Sherlock.
“They’re biscuits,” Eames corrected him.
Arthur said, “We need a chemist.”
“Excellent,” Sherlock said, and practically clapped his hands with glee. “When do we go into the dream?”
“You’re not going into the dream,” Arthur said.
Sherlock’s face fell. “What?”
“Good,” said John. “At least somebody here is behaving sensibly.”
“Look,” Eames said, around the biscuit he’d stuffed in his mouth, “your brother’s not the nicest bloke on the planet. He kidnapped us to get us to do this at all, and then Arthur had to be his very scariest to even get him to bring us here to talk to you. If we bring you into the dream with us, I suspect he will divest us of parts of our bodies we’re actually fond of.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “My brother kidnapped you?”
“He does that,” John said sympathetically.
“It was stupid of him,” Arthur said, having sat absently in Sherlock’s chair and scribbling in his notebook. “He could have just negotiated with us.”
“I don’t think the government negotiates with criminals,” remarked John.
Arthur gave him a narrow-eyed look and then wrote something down in his notebook.
“Anyway, negotiation would have been much too dull for Mycroft. Mycroft likes to do things as overdramatically as possible,” said Sherlock.
“Could never tell the two of you are brothers,” said Eames casually.
John almost loved Eames in that moment. His lips twitched of their own accord.
Sherlock gave Eames his why-can’t-I-kill-people-with-just-a-look look. Then he said to Arthur, “I’ll talk to Mycroft and go into the dream with you.”
“We don’t need you in the dream.” Arthur had leaned back in the seat now, was sitting with his ankle propped on his knee, looking very comfortable and at home. “We need that equipment in there.” Arthur pointed toward the kitchen.
Eames followed the direction he was pointing, poked his head in the kitchen.
Sherlock said, “For what?”
Eames said, “Interesting culinary approach. Think you could use it to make a bouillabaisse, Arthur?”
Arthur said, “Dreamsharing is based around a chemical compound known as Somnacin. But not just straight. Straight Somnacin will not achieve what you need it to achieve. Frequently dreamsharing chemists create custom mixes.”
Eames sat down in John’s chair, stretching his legs out to cross his ankles, and said, “The particular combination can affect the quality of the dream, the stability, how easily you can get kicked out of it.”
“Kicked out of it?” John echoed.
Eames looked at Arthur.
Arthur glowered at him briefly, then said, “We’ll demonstrate later.”
“So you want me to create some kind of custom blend,” Sherlock concluded.
“Moriarty’s a special case.”
John snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Arthur looked between them closely. “How much do you know about him?”
“Well, Sherlock plays delightful little games with him in which people get killed and I get bombs strapped to my chest.”
Sherlock heaved a dramatic sigh of disapproval.
After a moment of silence, Eames said, “I take it back. You lot are going to be right at home in dreamsharing.”
Arthur said, “Moriarty’s subconscious is driving people insane.”
“Is that something that happens?” asked Sherlock, with interest.
“No,” Arthur answered. “Never.”
“What’s he doing to make that happen?” asked Sherlock, still sounding so bloody intrigued.
John wanted to scream in frustration.
“We have no idea,” said Arthur.
“Interesting,” breathed Sherlock. “So that’s what you’re trying to find out?”
“No, we don’t give a fuck how he’s doing it,” said Eames. “We just want to find a way to make sure it doesn’t happen to us.”
“Eames and I don’t intend to go insane in Moriarty’s head, you see,” added Arthur.
“Moriarty’s head is insane,” said John. “You’re mad to be trying this, any of you. And for what? How many people has Mycroft sent in there already? Must be a lot for him to be kidnapping criminals. And who bloody cares about what insanity is in Moriarty’s head. Just leave it. Just lock him up and throw away the key.”
“I am delighted with that approach,” said Eames to Arthur. “Let’s make Dr. Watson the point man on this.”
“Mycroft seems very set on getting into his head,” said Arthur. “He claims there are matters of national security depending on the information locked away in there.”
“He’s right,” said Sherlock swiftly. “He’s absolutely right, John. This is a matter of Queen and country.”
“Bloody hell,” mumbled John, and pushed his hands through his hair, knowing both when he was being manipulated and when there was little he could do about it. The force of Sherlock and Mycroft being unexpectedly on the same side for once was too exhausting to contemplate.
Sherlock gave him the most alarmingly cherubic look.
Arthur said, “We want to keep Moriarty’s subconscious from grabbing hold too tightly. We need a shallow dream. It’s the opposite of what we’d usually try for, but Eames suggested it and I think he’s right.”
“It was one of the few times I’ve had a decent idea,” interjected Eames. “Arthur made a note of it. 11:23 a.m.”
John couldn’t quite tell if he was joking or not.
“So you want him to be asleep, but just barely,” said Sherlock thoughtfully, tilting his head.
“Exactly. You know those dreams you have where you feel like, actually, they weren’t dreams at all, you were living them, you don’t feel like you slept at all and can’t quite tell where reality ended and sleep began? We need that kind of dream.”
Sherlock said, after a moment, “I don’t dream.”
“Everyone dreams,” said Arthur evenly.
“Except for dreamsharers,” Eames added.
“John dreams,” Sherlock said. “We can test it on him.”
“No,” said John. “No. Sherlock—”
“Oh, fine,” Sherlock huffed. “Spoilsport.”
“Look, Eames and I will test it, we’re used to that, we’ll know when we have what we want.”
“And I’ll help,” said Sherlock.
“Sherlock,” John sighed.
“If you help,” remarked Eames mildly, “we’ll get to find out what it is you dream about.” Eames looked over at Sherlock evenly.
John looked at Sherlock curiously. He had to admit that a piece of him did see the appeal of trying to get into that particular subconscious. What was Sherlock thinking, in the recesses of his mind palace? John knew he gave the impression of saying whatever came into his head, and John also knew that decidedly wasn’t true.
“Can you get me some of this Somnacin?” asked Sherlock, after a moment.
“Your brother can get you some easier than we can,” Eames said, and stood, as if that was the end of the interview.
“You want me to talk to Mycroft?” demanded Sherlock, sounding alarmed.
“You think we’re going to be able to convince him that you’re our new chemist?” countered Eames.
Sherlock mumbled something under his breath and stalked into the kitchen.
Arthur and Eames both looked at John expectantly.
“This is going to be a bloody mess,” John told them brightly. “Hope you’re pleased with yourselves.”
“We excel with messes,” said Eames, “don’t we, petal?”
Arthur said, “It’s not going to be a mess. He’s a good chemist, isn’t he?”
“Moriarty’s a lunatic. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“I don’t half-ass my research, you know,” Arthur said shortly. “I don’t send a team into a dreamshare without knowing what I’m dealing with. If you want to talk Mycroft out of this, please, be our guest. Eames and I would be delighted. Until then, I’m making the best of a terrible situation, which is something I happen to be really fucking good at. I’m not going to let anything happen to anybody here. He’s going to mix a few chemicals together for us, and then Eames and I will handle the rest. And, though I would be flattered, I don’t think you really care overly much if Eames and I go insane while doing this. So relax. I’m going to take care of your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” said John.
“Oh,” said Arthur, after a moment. “Right.”
He made it sound as if he didn’t believe that for a second, and John frankly wondered why he still bothered denying it.
Eames said, “Well, regardless, Arthur will take excellent care of him. Arthur’s really a stellar mother hen.”
“Fuck off,” Arthur told him darkly.
“Marmalade, love,” Eames beamed at him.
Arthur stalked out of the flat.
“He adores me,” Eames informed John, and winked. “Thank you so much for the biscuits and the tea. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you soon.”
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Date: 2014-10-31 10:23 am (UTC)Then again....maybe it's not something Moriarty does in his dreams that sends those dreamsharers insane. Maybe it's something else entirely, something that not even Moriarty can control. Now I'm wondering - does Moriarty even realize that Mycroft's attempting to use dreamsharing to get that information? Or is he completely unaware that anyone's been accessing his subconscious in any way at all? Because if it's the latter....I have to wonder if whatever's happening to make those people lose their minds is something that Moriarty doesn't even intend.
(And thus, Arthur's comment about how he doesn't care how they've gone insane is very, very foolhardy indeed. He should care, if for no other reason than if it is an actual coordinated attack on Moriarty's part, he can have some idea what the warnings signs of an attack would look like.)
Excellent chapter, can't wait for more. I still want to see what Moriarty's mind looks like on the inside!
no subject
Date: 2014-11-05 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-11-05 07:27 pm (UTC)