Keep the Car Running (10/31)
Nov. 19th, 2014 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Keep the Car Running (10/31)
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 10
They were in a city. But not really. They were in every city in the world. At least, that was how it seemed to Arthur. There were sleek, brand-new skyscrapers, and there were older, 1970s skyscrapers, and there were brownstones, and there were cute little Victorian gingerbread houses, and that was just what Arthur could see from where he was standing.
“Eames,” Arthur breathed, and he knew he sounded shocked and awed but he was feeling dream-hazy and this dream was amazing. “You did all this?” He looked at him in wonder. “I thought you said you couldn’t build.”
Eames was looking pleased. “I can, a bit. Most of this is from memory, and the vast majority of it was built by others. Whenever I met a good architect, I’d beat them at poker and make them build me another little piece of it. It’s an endless work in progress.”
“When you say you beat them at poker, do you mean that you cheated?”
“Arthur, darling, you shouldn’t accuse me of things in my very own dream; it’s so rude.”
Arthur looked to his left, which was all rocky cliffs dropping down to a stormy sea. On his right was a sun-drenched beach. He smiled. “Is that Rio?”
“There’s a little bit of everything here. You should go explore.”
“Okay,” Arthur said, because he wanted to see the rest of it. He waited for Eames to lead the way.
Eames just looked back at him.
“Well, go on,” Arthur said, and made a nudging motion with his hand.
Eames shook his head. “Nope. You go wander by yourself. It’s what you need, a little alone time. So go on. I’ll find you before the hour’s up so you’re not jarred out again.”
“I’ll pay attention this time,” Arthur said, and indeed, there was a watch on his wrist this time around for him to glance at. “But I can’t just wander through your dream without you.”
“Yes, you can. Do whatever you want. Dream up an ice cream cart and buy some ice cream. Dream up a carousel and ride it for a bit.”
“Eames, your subconscious will know I’m intruding and—”
“They won’t bother you, Arthur.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I know: They won’t bother you.”
Arthur was skeptical, thinking of how wildly out-of-control his Eames projection had gotten. “You’re that good at controlling your projections?”
“I’m decent. But, more importantly, you’re you.” Eames, his hands in his pockets, started walking away.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Arthur called after him.
Eames turned, walking backward now, and grinned at him. “Go have fun, darling. Don’t overthink it for once.”
Arthur, after a moment spent watching Eames walk off down the boardwalk along the beach, decided to take him at his word. He started in front of him, in a portion of the city that reminded him of Bangkok.
Arthur crawled all over Eames’s city. He poked his head into alleys and wandered through buildings and browsed through shops, astonished by the level of detail. Eames must have spent forever putting this together. There were places where the cities had been patched together imperfectly, cobblestones not quite meeting up with smooth pavement, forcing him to take a step up, or windows wavering because the seams were off. Multiple architects, Arthur thought, being blasé about working with the previous designs. Arthur eventually started smoothing them over for Eames, buoyed by the fact that Eames’s projections not only seemed unbothered by him but actually welcoming. They smiled sunnily at him as he passed by them, called out to ask if they could be of assistance when he browsed through their shops, invited him in for tea if he happened to stumble into their living rooms. Arthur had never seen anything like it. Was Eames just that naturally friendly a person that even his subconscious welcomed visitors?
There was a prison in the city, a ridiculous pinkish-stone affair that looked like the prison in Monaco. Arthur spent a little while regarding it and wondering what was inside it. The projections didn’t seem alarmed, continued to smile at him as they passed by him, and Arthur wondered if somehow Eames knew that Arthur was never going to break into his prison when he’d been so generously invited into this dream in the first place.
So Arthur left the prison behind him and kept moving. He bought himself a terrible fedora, mostly because he thought it would amuse Eames, and kept one eye on the time. He still had twenty minutes left when he stumbled upon Eames sitting at a sidewalk café in a little plaza with a fountain that seemed familiar, although Arthur couldn’t place it. Eames spotted him and stayed still as he approached, and then he said, “Where did you get that terrible hat?”
Arthur took it off and dropped it on Eames’s head before sitting opposite him. “Came from your subconscious.”
Eames shook his head, taking the hat off and studying it critically. “Absolutely not. You must have smuggled it in on your person.”
“Where are we?” Arthur asked, as the water danced in the fountain and other people moved through the plaza. He tried to place the buzz of conversation, thought it might be French.
“Aix-en-Provence,” said Eames, putting the hat back on. Shade-dappled sun draped over it and he looked like a perfect scene from some sort of elegant old movie.
“Monsieur?” inquired someone at Arthur’s elbow, startling him.
A waiter. “Oh,” Arthur said, “Um. Un café Americano, s’il vous plait.”
“Arthur,” said Eames, sounding maddeningly patient. “You don’t like coffee, and you are in a dream. Order whatever you want.”
Arthur hesitated, looking back at the expectant waiter. “Un chocolat chaud,” he ordered, and the waiter just nodded and moved away.
Eames didn’t comment on it, which relieved Arthur. What Eames said, the eagerness dripping into his tone, was, “Did you like it?”
Arthur smiled, aware that Eames was looking for a compliment here but also aware that he deserved the compliment. So he said, genuinely, “Eames, this place is amazing. How long have you been working on this?”
Eames lifted one shoulder in what Arthur was sure he meant to be a casual shrug, although he wasn’t doing an especially good job of hiding how pleased he was by Arthur’s words. “Pretty much since the beginning. The people I worked with at the beginning, they would go down below for fun pretty frequently, so I got the idea from them. I thought it would be a good way to practice building at first, but what it really ended up proving to me was that I don’t like building, so I got other people to do it for me.” Eames shrugged again, and then he lit a cigarette.
Arthur lifted his eyebrows.
“No lung cancer in a dream,” Eames pointed out, and blew some smoke out toward the fountain. “Do you want one?”
Arthur shook his head.
“Not even in a dream, Arthur,” Eames mocked gently and shook his head a bit.
Which made Arthur think of Eames’s projection in his own dream, mocking gently over Arthur not letting himself have Eames even in a dream. This was why, thought Arthur, watching Eames’s lips close around the cigarette. This was exactly why.
The waiter arrived with the drinks, which was a welcome distraction from Eames’s ridiculously lush mouth. Arthur looked at the whipped cream piled high atop his hot chocolate, like it was a fucking ice cream sundae, and gave Eames a look.
“Seriously?” he said.
Eames shrugged and took another drag on his cigarette, his eyes twinkling across at Arthur. Arthur hated that he thought things about Eames like that his eyes twinkled, but there you had it.
“That’s just how they make hot chocolate here,” he said innocently.
“In your dream.”
“Arthur, calories don’t count in a dream. Drink up, love.”
“I’m not worried about the calories,” grumbled Arthur, dipping his spoon into the mound of whipped cream.
“Arthur, darling, settle back because I’m going to give you a lecture,” announced Eames, leaning back in his chair, a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
“How did you know that a lecture from you is exactly what I look for in a dream environment?” Arthur drawled at him.
“Most people dream about me in some way, shape, or form,” Eames rejoined pleasantly. “I thought your ideal dream about me would be me lecturing you like a responsible adult person.”
That was not his ideal dream about Eames, as he knew, and he hated Eames passionately and concentrated on his whipped cream so as not to give anything away.
“What I am going to lecture you about,” Eames continued grandly, “is how to be irresponsible, petal. We’re in a dream. We’re in my dream. It’s perfectly safe and under control and nothing’s going to happen, so you don’t need that gun in your holster there, and you don’t need to worry about what I’m going to think when you order hot chocolate instead of coffee because honestly, darling, nothing counts in a dream.”
Arthur swirled at his hot chocolate and thought of Eames in his dream pressing him down into the bed and how it totally and utterly counted because of the fact that it had happened in a dream and not his life. “Dreams count,” he said. “And I have the gun because I’m in your subconscious and you shouldn’t underestimate the violence of other people’s projections.”
“I told you not to worry about that.”
Arthur gave him a look.
Eames sighed and tapped ash off his cigarette. “Did you have a gun in your own dream?”
“I did not,” Arthur said truthfully, although he hadn’t realized it until just that moment.
“Good. At least you did that right,” said Eames.
Arthur sat away from his hot chocolate, finally annoyed. “There isn’t a right way to dream as opposed to a wrong way to dream.”
“What were you wearing in your dream?” asked Eames, as if Arthur hadn’t spoken at all.
“Assless chaps,” Arthur told him.
Eames blinked at him, looking uncertain.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Arthur said. “We’re not going to sit here while you rate my dream.”
“I just want to make sure you weren’t wearing a three-piece suit.”
“I like my suits. I don’t care what Sherlock said. I like to wear nice clothes. I like to look presentable. I know that makes me boring or stuck-up or whatever it is that you say about me but…whatever.” Could have finished that stronger, Arthur, he told himself, and sipped his hot chocolate to cover, thinking it would be a more effective cover if he weren’t sipping a child’s drink.
Eames, after a moment of silence, said, “Well, good, because you look delightful in your clothes.”
Arthur didn’t say anything, because as flirtations from Eames went, it was a half-hearted one at best. Eames flirted with people automatically, thought Arthur sourly. Eames flirted without even knowing he was flirting. And Arthur fell for every single line, the way everyone else Eames met did.
Then a mime arrived at their table, presenting Arthur with a red balloon with a ridiculous flourish and then embarking on a routine.
Arthur, having accepted the balloon reflexively, looked from it to the mime to Eames. “Seriously?” he said.
“Red balloons are cheerful,” said Eames, and blew a perfect smoke ring in Arthur’s direction.
“What is with your brain, anyway?” asked Arthur.
“Glad you asked,” said Eames. “It’s quite a complicated and impressive organ, let me tell you. The left side of my brain is—”
“Why are your projections the way they are?” Arthur interrupted him.
Eames looked at the mime still miming away and said, “Talented?”
“Friendly,” said Arthur, exasperated. “You have the most annoyingly friendly projections I’ve ever seen.”
“Did you think my subconscious wouldn’t be like the rest of me: gregarious and charming?”
Arthur built Notre Dame across the plaza from them. A hymn sung by a choir drifted out of it toward them.
Eames glanced at it and said, “A bit touristy, Arthur. Was that the best you could do for Paris?”
Arthur ignored him, keeping his gaze on the mime as he changed the soundtrack from Notre Dame to a jarring heavy metal beat, completely out-of-place. Any minute now, Eames’s projections would surely start to react to the mess Arthur was making of their dream. But the mime just kept miming.
“I am now enjoying imagining that you went through a heavy metal phase in your youth,” said Eames, as unperturbed as the mime was. “Please tell me you did. You had a poster of some terrifying, long-haired, leather-clad guitar player over your bed, didn’t you? Or a drummer. Was it a drummer?”
Arthur deposited the Statue of Liberty in front of his rollicking Notre Dame Cathedral.
Eames looked at it and said, “What, no accompanying bald eagles?”
And the fucking mime just kept miming.
“That’s not normal,” Arthur said, jabbing a finger at the mime.
“No, you’re right, he’s an exceptionally good mime,” Eames agreed.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Look at what I just did to your dream. And your projections haven’t even flinched. How do you control them so perfectly? Do you know how valuable that is in dreamsharing?”
“No, Arthur, please do explain to me the desirable attributes one should possess in the career I’ve excelled in for many years now. That would, indeed, be Arthurian condescension at its finest.”
Arthur scowled at him. “It’s just annoying.”
“What is?”
Arthur wished he hadn’t said anything at all. He wished he hadn’t come into this dream. He wished he’d never met Eames on that fateful day in Rio, the tips of his ears red from the sun and sunglasses obscuring his eyes and the breeze off the ocean ruffling at his hair. Eames had flashed that white smile at him and said nothing more thrilling than hello, and Arthur had lost his fucking mind over it for no very good reason.
“You’re some kind of dreamsharing prodigy,” Arthur pointed out, hearing the huffiness of his tone.
“I’m just a humble forger, Arthur.” Eames sounded amused.
“Oh, yes. Right. Absolutely. Who can’t build, even though this dream is one of the most ridiculously detailed dreamscapes I’ve ever seen. Who can get his projections to not only welcome intruders, but to sell them hats.”
“Arthur. Darling.” Eames sounded almost gentle, and Arthur sulked at his stupid red balloon and wondered when this dream was going to end and if he could go drown himself in the fountain to get out of it. “It’s because it’s you.”
Arthur glared at him. “I already told you, the hat was here—”
“No. Arthur. It’s you. The projections don’t mind you because you’re you. Because I trust you. Put the Statue of Liberty wherever you like, darling. It doesn’t matter. I trust you. My projections aren’t like this for everyone.”
Arthur looked across at Eames and realized that he had no idea whether or not to believe him. Arthur didn’t let people into his dreams, and Arthur had never been in a dream where he had been trusted so implicitly. He didn’t know what to make of it. It made him feel a little dizzy.
“And I don’t think you’re stuck-up,” Eames continued, shaking ash off of his cigarette. “And I especially don’t think you’re boring.”
“You give a very good impression otherwise,” Arthur heard himself say, and blamed this dream and his previous dream for why he was behaving like such an incredible idiot.
“Well, for one thing, I am a professional liar. And, for another thing, shut up. You know perfectly well that I find you and your suits and your notebook and your condescension not boring. They have, on many an occasion, provided the only interesting thing to mock in a hundred-mile radius.”
It was a nice thing to say, Arthur thought. It was possibly the nicest thing Eames had ever said to him. On their scale of nice things. So when Arthur said, “Fuck you,” he said it without heat and really meant thanks, that was nice of you to say.
Eames smiled, which Arthur thought might be Eames’s way of saying don’t mention it, and said, “Now have some more whipped cream, darling, I think it’ll put you in a better mood.”
Arthur said, “Do you really not smoke topside because you’re worried about lung cancer?”
“Those little surgeon general’s warnings on the side of every pack, they really scare me off.”
“You’re the only person I know who can worry about getting cancer in a few decades while several international crime syndicates would like nothing better than to know your name and whereabouts.”
“Thank you, Arthur. I do pride myself on being unique. Although I notice you don’t smoke, either. Not even in a dream.”
“It smells vile,” Arthur pointed out.
Eames said, “Our time’s almost up.” Then he picked the hat up off his head and threw it like a Frisbee at Arthur’s Statue of Liberty, where he dreamed it into being the perfect size for it and sitting comfortably on its head.
“Dream a little bigger, Mr. Eames,” Arthur told him, and bedazzled the hat with pink sequins.
“You can call me ‘darling,’ you know, that’s allowed,” said Eames, making no comment on the pink sequins.
“Allowed?” echoed Arthur. “As if you know things about rules?”
“I know that rule. It’s Rule #1: Arthur is allowed to call Eames ‘darling.’”
“What’s Rule #2?” asked Arthur.
Eames grinned at him across the café table in a dreamscape of Aix-en-Provence, while a heavy metal band played in Notre Dame Cathedral. “Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?”
And then they woke up.
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 10
They were in a city. But not really. They were in every city in the world. At least, that was how it seemed to Arthur. There were sleek, brand-new skyscrapers, and there were older, 1970s skyscrapers, and there were brownstones, and there were cute little Victorian gingerbread houses, and that was just what Arthur could see from where he was standing.
“Eames,” Arthur breathed, and he knew he sounded shocked and awed but he was feeling dream-hazy and this dream was amazing. “You did all this?” He looked at him in wonder. “I thought you said you couldn’t build.”
Eames was looking pleased. “I can, a bit. Most of this is from memory, and the vast majority of it was built by others. Whenever I met a good architect, I’d beat them at poker and make them build me another little piece of it. It’s an endless work in progress.”
“When you say you beat them at poker, do you mean that you cheated?”
“Arthur, darling, you shouldn’t accuse me of things in my very own dream; it’s so rude.”
Arthur looked to his left, which was all rocky cliffs dropping down to a stormy sea. On his right was a sun-drenched beach. He smiled. “Is that Rio?”
“There’s a little bit of everything here. You should go explore.”
“Okay,” Arthur said, because he wanted to see the rest of it. He waited for Eames to lead the way.
Eames just looked back at him.
“Well, go on,” Arthur said, and made a nudging motion with his hand.
Eames shook his head. “Nope. You go wander by yourself. It’s what you need, a little alone time. So go on. I’ll find you before the hour’s up so you’re not jarred out again.”
“I’ll pay attention this time,” Arthur said, and indeed, there was a watch on his wrist this time around for him to glance at. “But I can’t just wander through your dream without you.”
“Yes, you can. Do whatever you want. Dream up an ice cream cart and buy some ice cream. Dream up a carousel and ride it for a bit.”
“Eames, your subconscious will know I’m intruding and—”
“They won’t bother you, Arthur.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I know: They won’t bother you.”
Arthur was skeptical, thinking of how wildly out-of-control his Eames projection had gotten. “You’re that good at controlling your projections?”
“I’m decent. But, more importantly, you’re you.” Eames, his hands in his pockets, started walking away.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Arthur called after him.
Eames turned, walking backward now, and grinned at him. “Go have fun, darling. Don’t overthink it for once.”
Arthur, after a moment spent watching Eames walk off down the boardwalk along the beach, decided to take him at his word. He started in front of him, in a portion of the city that reminded him of Bangkok.
Arthur crawled all over Eames’s city. He poked his head into alleys and wandered through buildings and browsed through shops, astonished by the level of detail. Eames must have spent forever putting this together. There were places where the cities had been patched together imperfectly, cobblestones not quite meeting up with smooth pavement, forcing him to take a step up, or windows wavering because the seams were off. Multiple architects, Arthur thought, being blasé about working with the previous designs. Arthur eventually started smoothing them over for Eames, buoyed by the fact that Eames’s projections not only seemed unbothered by him but actually welcoming. They smiled sunnily at him as he passed by them, called out to ask if they could be of assistance when he browsed through their shops, invited him in for tea if he happened to stumble into their living rooms. Arthur had never seen anything like it. Was Eames just that naturally friendly a person that even his subconscious welcomed visitors?
There was a prison in the city, a ridiculous pinkish-stone affair that looked like the prison in Monaco. Arthur spent a little while regarding it and wondering what was inside it. The projections didn’t seem alarmed, continued to smile at him as they passed by him, and Arthur wondered if somehow Eames knew that Arthur was never going to break into his prison when he’d been so generously invited into this dream in the first place.
So Arthur left the prison behind him and kept moving. He bought himself a terrible fedora, mostly because he thought it would amuse Eames, and kept one eye on the time. He still had twenty minutes left when he stumbled upon Eames sitting at a sidewalk café in a little plaza with a fountain that seemed familiar, although Arthur couldn’t place it. Eames spotted him and stayed still as he approached, and then he said, “Where did you get that terrible hat?”
Arthur took it off and dropped it on Eames’s head before sitting opposite him. “Came from your subconscious.”
Eames shook his head, taking the hat off and studying it critically. “Absolutely not. You must have smuggled it in on your person.”
“Where are we?” Arthur asked, as the water danced in the fountain and other people moved through the plaza. He tried to place the buzz of conversation, thought it might be French.
“Aix-en-Provence,” said Eames, putting the hat back on. Shade-dappled sun draped over it and he looked like a perfect scene from some sort of elegant old movie.
“Monsieur?” inquired someone at Arthur’s elbow, startling him.
A waiter. “Oh,” Arthur said, “Um. Un café Americano, s’il vous plait.”
“Arthur,” said Eames, sounding maddeningly patient. “You don’t like coffee, and you are in a dream. Order whatever you want.”
Arthur hesitated, looking back at the expectant waiter. “Un chocolat chaud,” he ordered, and the waiter just nodded and moved away.
Eames didn’t comment on it, which relieved Arthur. What Eames said, the eagerness dripping into his tone, was, “Did you like it?”
Arthur smiled, aware that Eames was looking for a compliment here but also aware that he deserved the compliment. So he said, genuinely, “Eames, this place is amazing. How long have you been working on this?”
Eames lifted one shoulder in what Arthur was sure he meant to be a casual shrug, although he wasn’t doing an especially good job of hiding how pleased he was by Arthur’s words. “Pretty much since the beginning. The people I worked with at the beginning, they would go down below for fun pretty frequently, so I got the idea from them. I thought it would be a good way to practice building at first, but what it really ended up proving to me was that I don’t like building, so I got other people to do it for me.” Eames shrugged again, and then he lit a cigarette.
Arthur lifted his eyebrows.
“No lung cancer in a dream,” Eames pointed out, and blew some smoke out toward the fountain. “Do you want one?”
Arthur shook his head.
“Not even in a dream, Arthur,” Eames mocked gently and shook his head a bit.
Which made Arthur think of Eames’s projection in his own dream, mocking gently over Arthur not letting himself have Eames even in a dream. This was why, thought Arthur, watching Eames’s lips close around the cigarette. This was exactly why.
The waiter arrived with the drinks, which was a welcome distraction from Eames’s ridiculously lush mouth. Arthur looked at the whipped cream piled high atop his hot chocolate, like it was a fucking ice cream sundae, and gave Eames a look.
“Seriously?” he said.
Eames shrugged and took another drag on his cigarette, his eyes twinkling across at Arthur. Arthur hated that he thought things about Eames like that his eyes twinkled, but there you had it.
“That’s just how they make hot chocolate here,” he said innocently.
“In your dream.”
“Arthur, calories don’t count in a dream. Drink up, love.”
“I’m not worried about the calories,” grumbled Arthur, dipping his spoon into the mound of whipped cream.
“Arthur, darling, settle back because I’m going to give you a lecture,” announced Eames, leaning back in his chair, a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
“How did you know that a lecture from you is exactly what I look for in a dream environment?” Arthur drawled at him.
“Most people dream about me in some way, shape, or form,” Eames rejoined pleasantly. “I thought your ideal dream about me would be me lecturing you like a responsible adult person.”
That was not his ideal dream about Eames, as he knew, and he hated Eames passionately and concentrated on his whipped cream so as not to give anything away.
“What I am going to lecture you about,” Eames continued grandly, “is how to be irresponsible, petal. We’re in a dream. We’re in my dream. It’s perfectly safe and under control and nothing’s going to happen, so you don’t need that gun in your holster there, and you don’t need to worry about what I’m going to think when you order hot chocolate instead of coffee because honestly, darling, nothing counts in a dream.”
Arthur swirled at his hot chocolate and thought of Eames in his dream pressing him down into the bed and how it totally and utterly counted because of the fact that it had happened in a dream and not his life. “Dreams count,” he said. “And I have the gun because I’m in your subconscious and you shouldn’t underestimate the violence of other people’s projections.”
“I told you not to worry about that.”
Arthur gave him a look.
Eames sighed and tapped ash off his cigarette. “Did you have a gun in your own dream?”
“I did not,” Arthur said truthfully, although he hadn’t realized it until just that moment.
“Good. At least you did that right,” said Eames.
Arthur sat away from his hot chocolate, finally annoyed. “There isn’t a right way to dream as opposed to a wrong way to dream.”
“What were you wearing in your dream?” asked Eames, as if Arthur hadn’t spoken at all.
“Assless chaps,” Arthur told him.
Eames blinked at him, looking uncertain.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Arthur said. “We’re not going to sit here while you rate my dream.”
“I just want to make sure you weren’t wearing a three-piece suit.”
“I like my suits. I don’t care what Sherlock said. I like to wear nice clothes. I like to look presentable. I know that makes me boring or stuck-up or whatever it is that you say about me but…whatever.” Could have finished that stronger, Arthur, he told himself, and sipped his hot chocolate to cover, thinking it would be a more effective cover if he weren’t sipping a child’s drink.
Eames, after a moment of silence, said, “Well, good, because you look delightful in your clothes.”
Arthur didn’t say anything, because as flirtations from Eames went, it was a half-hearted one at best. Eames flirted with people automatically, thought Arthur sourly. Eames flirted without even knowing he was flirting. And Arthur fell for every single line, the way everyone else Eames met did.
Then a mime arrived at their table, presenting Arthur with a red balloon with a ridiculous flourish and then embarking on a routine.
Arthur, having accepted the balloon reflexively, looked from it to the mime to Eames. “Seriously?” he said.
“Red balloons are cheerful,” said Eames, and blew a perfect smoke ring in Arthur’s direction.
“What is with your brain, anyway?” asked Arthur.
“Glad you asked,” said Eames. “It’s quite a complicated and impressive organ, let me tell you. The left side of my brain is—”
“Why are your projections the way they are?” Arthur interrupted him.
Eames looked at the mime still miming away and said, “Talented?”
“Friendly,” said Arthur, exasperated. “You have the most annoyingly friendly projections I’ve ever seen.”
“Did you think my subconscious wouldn’t be like the rest of me: gregarious and charming?”
Arthur built Notre Dame across the plaza from them. A hymn sung by a choir drifted out of it toward them.
Eames glanced at it and said, “A bit touristy, Arthur. Was that the best you could do for Paris?”
Arthur ignored him, keeping his gaze on the mime as he changed the soundtrack from Notre Dame to a jarring heavy metal beat, completely out-of-place. Any minute now, Eames’s projections would surely start to react to the mess Arthur was making of their dream. But the mime just kept miming.
“I am now enjoying imagining that you went through a heavy metal phase in your youth,” said Eames, as unperturbed as the mime was. “Please tell me you did. You had a poster of some terrifying, long-haired, leather-clad guitar player over your bed, didn’t you? Or a drummer. Was it a drummer?”
Arthur deposited the Statue of Liberty in front of his rollicking Notre Dame Cathedral.
Eames looked at it and said, “What, no accompanying bald eagles?”
And the fucking mime just kept miming.
“That’s not normal,” Arthur said, jabbing a finger at the mime.
“No, you’re right, he’s an exceptionally good mime,” Eames agreed.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Look at what I just did to your dream. And your projections haven’t even flinched. How do you control them so perfectly? Do you know how valuable that is in dreamsharing?”
“No, Arthur, please do explain to me the desirable attributes one should possess in the career I’ve excelled in for many years now. That would, indeed, be Arthurian condescension at its finest.”
Arthur scowled at him. “It’s just annoying.”
“What is?”
Arthur wished he hadn’t said anything at all. He wished he hadn’t come into this dream. He wished he’d never met Eames on that fateful day in Rio, the tips of his ears red from the sun and sunglasses obscuring his eyes and the breeze off the ocean ruffling at his hair. Eames had flashed that white smile at him and said nothing more thrilling than hello, and Arthur had lost his fucking mind over it for no very good reason.
“You’re some kind of dreamsharing prodigy,” Arthur pointed out, hearing the huffiness of his tone.
“I’m just a humble forger, Arthur.” Eames sounded amused.
“Oh, yes. Right. Absolutely. Who can’t build, even though this dream is one of the most ridiculously detailed dreamscapes I’ve ever seen. Who can get his projections to not only welcome intruders, but to sell them hats.”
“Arthur. Darling.” Eames sounded almost gentle, and Arthur sulked at his stupid red balloon and wondered when this dream was going to end and if he could go drown himself in the fountain to get out of it. “It’s because it’s you.”
Arthur glared at him. “I already told you, the hat was here—”
“No. Arthur. It’s you. The projections don’t mind you because you’re you. Because I trust you. Put the Statue of Liberty wherever you like, darling. It doesn’t matter. I trust you. My projections aren’t like this for everyone.”
Arthur looked across at Eames and realized that he had no idea whether or not to believe him. Arthur didn’t let people into his dreams, and Arthur had never been in a dream where he had been trusted so implicitly. He didn’t know what to make of it. It made him feel a little dizzy.
“And I don’t think you’re stuck-up,” Eames continued, shaking ash off of his cigarette. “And I especially don’t think you’re boring.”
“You give a very good impression otherwise,” Arthur heard himself say, and blamed this dream and his previous dream for why he was behaving like such an incredible idiot.
“Well, for one thing, I am a professional liar. And, for another thing, shut up. You know perfectly well that I find you and your suits and your notebook and your condescension not boring. They have, on many an occasion, provided the only interesting thing to mock in a hundred-mile radius.”
It was a nice thing to say, Arthur thought. It was possibly the nicest thing Eames had ever said to him. On their scale of nice things. So when Arthur said, “Fuck you,” he said it without heat and really meant thanks, that was nice of you to say.
Eames smiled, which Arthur thought might be Eames’s way of saying don’t mention it, and said, “Now have some more whipped cream, darling, I think it’ll put you in a better mood.”
Arthur said, “Do you really not smoke topside because you’re worried about lung cancer?”
“Those little surgeon general’s warnings on the side of every pack, they really scare me off.”
“You’re the only person I know who can worry about getting cancer in a few decades while several international crime syndicates would like nothing better than to know your name and whereabouts.”
“Thank you, Arthur. I do pride myself on being unique. Although I notice you don’t smoke, either. Not even in a dream.”
“It smells vile,” Arthur pointed out.
Eames said, “Our time’s almost up.” Then he picked the hat up off his head and threw it like a Frisbee at Arthur’s Statue of Liberty, where he dreamed it into being the perfect size for it and sitting comfortably on its head.
“Dream a little bigger, Mr. Eames,” Arthur told him, and bedazzled the hat with pink sequins.
“You can call me ‘darling,’ you know, that’s allowed,” said Eames, making no comment on the pink sequins.
“Allowed?” echoed Arthur. “As if you know things about rules?”
“I know that rule. It’s Rule #1: Arthur is allowed to call Eames ‘darling.’”
“What’s Rule #2?” asked Arthur.
Eames grinned at him across the café table in a dreamscape of Aix-en-Provence, while a heavy metal band played in Notre Dame Cathedral. “Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?”
And then they woke up.
