Keep the Car Running (11/31)
Nov. 26th, 2014 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Keep the Car Running (11/31)
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 11
Arthur woke when their breakfast was delivered. He reached for his gun reflexively, sighed when he remembered that he didn’t have a gun, and peeked over the top of the sofa at the tray of croissants. Fucking croissants. He was heartily sick of croissants.
Arthur dropped back onto the couch and glanced over at Eames, who had fallen asleep on the other couch, mostly, Arthur suspected, because it had saved them a discussion about who ought to sleep in the bed. Arthur hadn’t wanted to get into any sort of possibility of them sharing the bed. But Eames had avoided it by working as late as Arthur, until they had finally both just fallen asleep where they were, Eames with the laptop he’d been researching Sherlock on still resting precariously on his chest.
Arthur pushed his scattered notes off of himself and sat up and yawned. He should take a shower and get ready for the day. He shouldn’t sit and watch Eames sleep. It was creepy and, anyway, he watched Eames sleep all the time. Granted, normally when he was watching Eames sleep, it was on a job, with a gun in his hand because he thought they might be killed any second. This was a different situation; the threat of death was at least slightly delayed for the moment.
Eames had mentioned neither dream last night. Just a jovial And that’s how you dream for fun, and that had been the end of it. So Arthur hadn’t had to come up with a further explanation for why he’d woken from his dream so disoriented and out-of-sorts, and they didn’t have to address anything that had happened in Eames’s dream. Arthur wondered if Eames always so easily dismissed everything that happened in dreams. If that was the case, he should have crawled under that café table and challenged Eames’s commitment to that motto. Nothing counts in a dream, huh? he should have said, batting his eyelashes a little and then unzipping Eames’s fly with his teeth. (It had been a dream. He would have been allowed to be coy and smooth and flirtatious in that way he couldn’t be in real life without being incredibly awkward.)
Arthur sighed and told himself firmly to stop dreaming, because this was helping nothing. Instead, he stood and went to ease the laptop out of Eames’s grasp to a safer perch.
He found himself flat on his back before he knew quite what had happened, and then, reflexively, flipped Eames off of him with a knee to his groin that Eames mostly deflected but still gave Arthur an opening for an elbow to his throat. Which was when Arthur’s reflexes stopped controlling everything and Arthur let go of Eames and rolled away.
“Jesus Christ,” Eames wheezed. “Overkill, Arthur.”
“You started it,” Arthur accused.
“I knocked you off your feet. You have wounded me,” said Eames pathetically.
“Oh, you’re fine. You deflected most of it.” Arthur said it breezily, because otherwise he’d feel guilty and apologize profusely, and Eames would take wicked advantage of that, and Arthur would never hear the end of it. So Arthur picked himself up and offered Eames a hand and said, “Surely you are used to finding the least painful way to lose a fight.”
“Marmalade,” Eames pouted, and gave Arthur a little shove of annoyance, before moving past him toward the promise of coffee in the elevator lobby.
“I’m taking a shower,” Arthur announced, and then wondered why he felt the need to announce it.
“I’m drinking a lot of coffee and then I’m filling your notebook with all of the ways I’ve thought of to kill you in the course of our acquaintance,” said Eames sourly.
Arthur hesitated by the bedroom door, then turned back fully. “You’re not really hurt, right? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you; you caught me by surprise.”
“Why is murder always your default reaction to being surprised?” asked Eames.
“Because I like not dying,” Arthur told him. “And, anyway, you started it, so don’t pretend I’m the only one used to sleeping with a finger on the trigger.”
Eames allowed the point by swallowing a sip of coffee and saying nothing. His eyes were steady on Arthur, and Arthur couldn’t read them but he didn’t think he could ever read Eames’s eyes accurately. He didn’t think anybody could. It was what made Eames such a good forger: no one ever, ever, ever knew what Eames was thinking. No one ever, ever, ever knew who Eames was. No one except Eames. Everyone else just got Eames’s most practiced and targeted seduction scene.
So Arthur left Eames in the elevator lobby and took a shower. Eames knocked on the bathroom door when Arthur was just finishing up shaving and said loudly, “Do you think you could take me?”
Arthur regarded his reflection quizzically. “Take you where?”
“In a fight. You think you could take me, don’t you? Do you know how many stone I have on you?”
Arthur began pulling on his suit, still not sure what they were talking about. “We’re fighting with stones?”
“No, I’m saying I’m bigger than you.”
Which was obvious to anyone who looked at the two of them. Which was just fact. “Okay,” Arthur agreed, bewildered, and picked up the die on the bathroom counter and tossed it twice to make sure it came up four both times. Then he slipped it into his pocket. “You’re bigger than me weight-wise. You’re not taller than me.”
There was a pause. Arthur pulled on his shirt. Eames said, “Well, you’re not taller than me.”
Arthur sighed and finished buttoning his shirt as he opened the door. Eames, leaning against the wall outside it, looked alarmed to suddenly be confronted by Arthur. “We’re the same height, Eames, and it isn’t actually a competition. Now what the hell are you talking about?”
Eames’s eyes were on Arthur’s hands doing up the buttons of his shirt. Arthur was suddenly self-conscious, fumbling as he went to deal with his cuffs, so he gave up and just rolled the sleeves up as if that had been his intention all along.
“Are you going to let me watch you put your tie on?” asked Eames. “Because I always thought that was like sausages.”
Arthur, slipping the tie around his popped collar, said, “You think my ties are like sausages?”
“Not allowed to be seen.”
“It’s not that sausages aren’t allowed to be seen, it’s that they’re unpleasant to be seen being made.”
“Oh, then I haven’t got that metaphor right at all,” said Eames, in all seriousness, now watching Arthur’s hands at his tie, so that Arthur could not for the life of him get it to knot correctly. He’d done this almost every single day of his adult life, and now because Eames was watching him he could not remember how to knot his tie.
Arthur was just about to announce that he’d decided against wearing a tie when Eames batted his hands away and took the tie in his own hands. Arthur had a wild moment of thinking that Eames was going to use the tie to pull him in for a kiss, because it was possible that Arthur had had a couple of fantasies that had gone that way, but instead Eames just commenced to knotting the tie himself.
“You know how to knot a tie?” Arthur couldn’t help but ask, surprised.
“You’ve seen me wear ties.”
“But…other people’s ties?”
“I’m a con artist, Arthur,” Eames said calmly. “I know how to knot someone else’s tie and how to lace someone else’s corset and how to mix someone else’s martini and how to pluck someone else’s eyebrows and how to shave someone else’s dog. Not a euphemism. Although euphemistically as well.”
Arthur knew he should have something to say in response to that, but Eames’s proximity was making him dizzy. In his memory, he was pressed against the wall of his childhood bedroom, Eames swooping in for a kiss. Stupid fucking dream, he thought, and closed his eyes.
“There,” Eames said, and turned down Arthur’s collar, and Arthur forced himself to take a full step back and say something. Anything.
“Why do you know how to lace a corset?”
Anything but that, he thought, annoyed with his stupid brain.
“A story for another day,” replied Eames. “Because what I wanted to talk about was this: You think you could take me in a fight.”
Arthur sighed. “Is this about that?” He waved vaguely toward the suite’s living area.
“You couldn’t, you know.”
“All right,” Arthur agreed indulgently. “I couldn’t.” He walked out of the bedroom, toward the breakfast in the elevator lobby.
“You’re just saying that,” Eames accused, following him.
“Eames. Of course I’m just saying that. Of course I could take you.”
“Why do you think that?” Eames sounded almost petulant.
Arthur just looked at him as he made his coffee carefully, carefully not thinking of hot chocolate in Aix-en-Provence with Eames flirting with him across the table.
“I don’t think it’d be as easy for you as all that,” Eames protested.
“Eames, what does it matter? We’re on the same side. We don’t have to fight each other, so who cares who would win? Unless you’re planning on betraying me, and then we both know I’d hunt you down and carve out your liver, yes?” Arthur was aware of his reputation. He’d never actually done half of the things the dreamsharing community murmured he did, but he’d done enough to give people the fear that he might have done all the rest of it, and that worked well enough for Arthur.
“I have tricks up my sleeve, you know,” said Eames. “I am not entirely as I seem.”
“God help anyone who takes you at face value.”
“Exactly. So you agree.”
Arthur sighed, realizing Eames wasn’t going to drop the subject. “In a dream,” he said honestly, “I think you might eventually be able to take me. It’d be a fair fight, but you’re better in a dream than I am, which I’m sure is what you wanted to hear me admit, so I think, if you really pressed that advantage, you’d probably eventually win.” Arthur hoped that would be the end of it. He tore into a croissant and watched Eames mull this over.
“You think I’m better in a dream than you?” he said finally, quizzically, as if he would have disagreed.
“You’re more at home in dreams than I am. You’re a natural in a dreamscape. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so comfortable there.”
“You don’t seem uncomfortable in a dream.”
“I’m not. But you’re more comfortable. You’re a born improviser, and I am the opposite, and improvisers do better in dreams, ultimately. So, eventually, in a dream you’d probably win.”
Unfortunately, the flattery did not distract Eames quite enough. “But you think you’d beat me topside.”
Arthur said, after a moment, “I know I would.” Eames’s improvisation would give him an edge in a dream, but dreams were worlds you could mold to exactly how you wanted them. Eames’s lack of strategic planning would harm him topside, and Arthur excelled at fighting that way. Arthur wasn’t creative enough to invent a way to win, but he was creative enough to find the way to win that already existed, and that was a different kind of creativity. Arthur didn’t think much about going up against Eames—Arthur was well aware he would have probably twisted himself into a pretzel to stay on Eames’s side in any fight—but he had thought about their complementary skill sets, about the fact that, of the two of them, Arthur would let Eames take the lead in a dream if it all went to hell, but he would refuse to relinquish the lead topside.
“Well, aren’t you smug?” said Eames, sounding vaguely offended.
Only Eames would want Arthur to flatter him all the time. “Eames, it’s possible that you’ve forgotten that my job description is to know everything. Smugness is one of the first traits I have listed on my resume.”
“You have a fucking resume?” said Eames in disbelief.
“Oh my God, it was a joke,” said Arthur.
Eames didn’t look like he was in a joking mood. “Shaving cream,” he said.
Arthur looked over at him thoughtfully. “You make me question my reality more than any other person I’ve ever met. Seriously, I’ve been checking my totem all morning. Why can’t you just make sense?”
“We’re going to shoot each other with shaving cream.” Eames disappeared into the bedroom.
“Why?” Arthur called after him in exasperation and reached for another croissant.
“Because I bloody hate it when you’re so bloody smug,” Eames complained, reappearing and tossing Arthur his own shaving cream.
Arthur caught it instinctively, dropping his croissant to do so, and then turned it toward Eames to shoot him with it and be done. Except that Eames had already disappeared into the bedroom. Eames was apparently taking this whole thing very seriously.
Arthur sighed and dove behind the couch just as Eames took his first shot at him.
***
Sherlock quickly realized that he couldn’t actually do much in the abstract. He devoured everything there was to know about dream chemistry and studied the chemical composition of Somnacin and combined it with a number of different substances that he thought might dilute some of its effects while maintaining others that they would need, but without someone to test it on it was impossible to determine if it was working. In fact, without any clear familiarity with how Somnacin worked before fussing with it, Sherlock felt as if he were just taking stabs in the dark. His scientific method was falling to pieces, which he did not approve of. It was no way to plan a massive attack on Moriarty.
He said as much to John, when John finally decided to stop wasting his time sleeping.
“I hope that isn’t your way of suggesting that I allow you to test it on me,” said John, still looking bleary-eyed, as he leaned against the counter and waited for the kettle to boil.
“Well, if I don’t test it on you, who can I test it on?” Surely John could see the difficult position he was putting Sherlock in. “I’m not sure Mrs. Hudson would be—”
“Not Mrs. Hudson,” John said. “You’re not testing it on anyone. I’m still not entirely sure that thing isn’t fatal.”
Sherlock waved a hand at him. “Arthur and Eames use it all the time.”
“That doesn’t actually make me feel better,” said John, as the kettle clicked.
Sherlock tapped a finger on the table and frowned at his microscope. John made him tea and put it in front of him, but Sherlock didn’t acknowledge it. He was irritated by the difficulty of not being able to test the chemical on John. But John had been upset about Baskerville, and Sherlock felt that Baskerville had been a narrow escape for him on the drugging-John-without-his-permission front, so Sherlock wasn’t inclined to test that ultimatum just yet. John wasn’t happy about anything that was going on, so Sherlock thought he was testing John quite enough just by having the Somnacin in the flat in the first place.
Which meant there was nothing for it, he decided, and with a heavy sigh picked up his phone and texted Mycroft. Must test the chemical. Find me a test subject. –SH
Mycroft, predictably, rang him back.
Sherlock sighed heavily again and considered not answering but he really needed a test subject. Actually, he really needed a lot of dreamsharing-related things.
So he answered, glaring at John as he did it because John was driving him to this. John was doing something inexplicable at the sink. Probably washing dishes. John was obsessed with washing dishes. “Who can I use?” Sherlock snapped into the phone.
“We’ll use Arthur or Eames, of course,” Mycroft responded, unperturbed by the abrupt greeting, because he was Mycroft and annoying. “Shall we pay them a visit?”
John insisted on coming along, which meant they had to wait whilst John got ready. Sherlock spent the time complaining about how boring everything John was doing was.
“You can go down and wait in the car your brother sent,” John remarked.
The black car had been idling in front of Baker Street since almost immediately after Sherlock had ended the call with Mycroft. Sherlock had been ignoring it because the only thing worse than having to wait for John would have been waiting for John in one of Mycroft’s cars. So Sherlock ignored John’s suggestion and kept complaining.
Mycroft turned out to be in the car, making notes in a file.
“Pretending to be important?” Sherlock sneered at him.
“You should have come up to the flat,” John said, because John periodically said idiotic things like that.
“I had work to do.” Mycroft flickered a glance at Sherlock. “Did you bring the chemicals for your test?”
Sherlock glowered at him, refusing to otherwise acknowledge such a stupid question.
They eventually pulled up in front of a generically posh London hotel.
John said, “Really? I thought you’d be keeping them in some kind of secret prison.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, John,” Mycroft told him dismissively.
“You could at least spring for the full English,” commented Sherlock as they got in the lift. “They’re both not overly fond of croissants.”
“They just spent a ridiculous amount of money on two bottles of Nebbiolo,” Mycroft responded drily. “They’re lucky they’re getting croissants.”
“Are the criminals costing you a lot of money, Mycroft?” remarked John. “Fancy that!”
Mycroft gave John a look, and Sherlock’s lips twitched because one of his favorite John traits was how John annoyed Mycroft. It was #11 on Sherlock’s List of Reasons to Kiss John Watson.
Then the lift doors opened and the first thing they saw was Eames, sprawled on his stomach, in the process of crawling behind the sofa. He looked at them in surprise, and then half-sat up, saying, “Oh. Hi. We—”
Which was when Arthur suddenly launched himself from the dining area of the suite, spraying what was obviously shaving cream directly in Eames’s face before darting away.
Mycroft sighed heavily, as if he’d been expecting something like this. John just blinked. Sherlock watched because someone had to observe these things.
Eames swore and swiped at his face and growled, “Bastard. Clearly there was a timeout in effect.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in timeouts in your sport of choice,” said Arthur pleasantly, and then turned to the knot of them. “Sorry,” he said, fixing his tie. “I was just proving a point.”
“We weren’t playing bloody football rules, Arthur,” complained Eames. “You’re so fucking competitive. And you got it in my eye.”
Arthur said, “I didn’t get it in your eye.” And then, “Don’t rub it in, you’ll make it worse.” And then, “I’m sure you’re fine.” And then, predictably, “Let me see it.”
Sherlock saw it coming from a mile away. Arthur would have if it had been any person other than Eames, but Eames was obviously Arthur’s weakness—even Mycroft had been clever enough to exploit that—so Arthur did what foolish people did and allowed himself to be concerned, just as Eames had expected him to do, because Eames had clearly grown used to being Arthur’s weakness, even if he didn’t seem to see it exactly that way. Eames used such a ploy with Arthur as if Arthur were the sort of person who would fall for such a ploy, not as if Arthur were the sort of person who would only fall for such a ploy coming from Eames.
So Arthur leaned forward toward Eames, and Eames shot shaving cream into his face.
John said, “What the hell?” in alarm, taking a step back.
Mycroft said, “We don’t have time for this. Stop it.”
Arthur said, sputtering at the shaving cream now covering his face, “You fucking—marmalade.”
Eames said, “That’s not how that code word works.”
Sherlock said, “I’ve got your compound for you.”
Arthur and Eames looked up at him, and Sherlock smiled.
***
The suite had blasts of shaving cream all over it. Arthur wiped some up off of one of the dining room chairs and said apologetically, “Eames has terrible aim.”
“With shaving cream. I have good aim with deadly things.” Eames said it sulkily, as if his reputation was being harmed.
John watched them and wondered if it was his lot in life to be surrounded by grown men who behaved like toddlers.
“In a dream you do,” said Arthur, pulling a chair over to the living area to make sure there was enough room for them all to sit. “Less so topside. As was the point of this entire exercise.”
“Marmalade,” said Eames. “And that’s how that code word works.”
“I really do expect a little more professionalism,” said Mycroft testily, eyeing Arthur with some distaste.
“I tend to reserve my professionalism for jobs in which I haven’t been kidnapped,” replied Arthur, sitting in the chair he’d just dragged over.
“Arthur, love, we haven’t been kidnapped, we’ve been lured into government service.” Eames, still sounding sulky, only now over being kidnapped (which John allowed was probably justifiable), collapsed onto one of the couches.
“Ah, yes, how could I forget? The line between government service and crime is so very…”
“Flexible?” Eames finished for him.
“Open to interpretation.”
“Arthur prefers specificity,” Eames told Mycroft.
Mycroft frowned at all of them, and John contemplated how badly Mycroft must want what was in Moriarty’s head to put up with any of this. And how uniquely good at their jobs Arthur and Eames must be.
“Anyways, darling, time to be professional.” Eames clapped his hands together in some imitation of enthusiasm.
Arthur was already pulling out his notebook and readying his pen. “Tell us about the compound you’ve created, Sherlock.”
Sherlock sat on the back of the living area’s armchair. John, with little choice otherwise, sat next to Mycroft on the other couch, while Sherlock rattled off a long list of chemical compounds.
Arthur copied all of them out, glanced over it, and then nodded sharply. “Yes.” He looked at Eames. “You should be fine, too.”
Eames peered over his shoulder and nodded. “Yes. That’s fine.”
“Good.” Arthur closed his notebook and stood. “Did you bring it then? Might as well test it.”
“I’d like to test it, too,” Sherlock announced.
Because of course he would. John wished he’d thought to bring along a flask, so he could play a drinking game of taking a shot every time Sherlock tried to wheedle his way into a dream. Except that John was worried he wouldn’t have to drink for very long before Sherlock got his way. Because that was how Sherlock was.
“Sherlock—” Mycroft began.
“No.” Arthur answered immediately, and John decided that maybe he liked Arthur.
Sherlock pouted. “Why not?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“But you’re going to use it.”
“Because I use a lot of drugs and I know my toxicology reports by heart, and I shouldn’t have some kind of deadly allergic reaction to the combination of drugs you put together. Can you say the same?”
Sherlock glared at him. “I’m not an idiot. I know what’s going to kill me and what’s not.”
“You’re not using it. Not even Eames is using it. I’m using it because this is my job, and if I don’t die, maybe you’ll get to use it eventually someday.”
“Arthur, do have a care, you’re making dreamsharing sound like such whimsical fun,” said Eames.
Arthur waggled his finger at Sherlock.
Sherlock regarded him, then said, “If it doesn’t kill you, you’ll let me use it.”
“Sherlock, you’re not—” began Mycroft.
Except that Arthur said, “Yes, fine. After you get bloodwork done to make sure you’re not allergic to any of the stuff you put in this.”
“I’m not—” Sherlock began furiously.
“Don’t argue with him,” said Eames, “he’s the stubbornest person I’ve ever met.”
“Not actually a word,” Arthur told him.
“Marmalade, darling,” said Eames.
“I don’t want Sherlock doing any—” Mycroft began again, furiously.
“He’s going to need to know a lot more about dreamsharing if he’s going to help us,” Arthur pointed out reasonably, accepting the test tube Sherlock smugly handed across.
“He was never supposed to be helping you,” Mycroft bit out.
Arthur was busying himself with a silver briefcase, setting things up, expertly slipping a needle into his own vein. “You commandeered me to run point on this job, so sit back and let me run point. I’m doing two minutes. It should be enough time.” Arthur glanced at Eames, who nodded, and then Arthur settled on the couch next to him and looked at him. “You ready?”
“Arthur, if this compound Sherlock’s created kills you and this is the last thing we ever get to say to each other, can I inherit your cufflink collection?”
Arthur leaned forward and pressed a button on the PASIV.
“Also, I am a better fencer than you, topside or dreamscape,” Eames blurted out quickly.
“Going to sleep now, Mr. Eames,” murmured Arthur, and then he was.
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 11
Arthur woke when their breakfast was delivered. He reached for his gun reflexively, sighed when he remembered that he didn’t have a gun, and peeked over the top of the sofa at the tray of croissants. Fucking croissants. He was heartily sick of croissants.
Arthur dropped back onto the couch and glanced over at Eames, who had fallen asleep on the other couch, mostly, Arthur suspected, because it had saved them a discussion about who ought to sleep in the bed. Arthur hadn’t wanted to get into any sort of possibility of them sharing the bed. But Eames had avoided it by working as late as Arthur, until they had finally both just fallen asleep where they were, Eames with the laptop he’d been researching Sherlock on still resting precariously on his chest.
Arthur pushed his scattered notes off of himself and sat up and yawned. He should take a shower and get ready for the day. He shouldn’t sit and watch Eames sleep. It was creepy and, anyway, he watched Eames sleep all the time. Granted, normally when he was watching Eames sleep, it was on a job, with a gun in his hand because he thought they might be killed any second. This was a different situation; the threat of death was at least slightly delayed for the moment.
Eames had mentioned neither dream last night. Just a jovial And that’s how you dream for fun, and that had been the end of it. So Arthur hadn’t had to come up with a further explanation for why he’d woken from his dream so disoriented and out-of-sorts, and they didn’t have to address anything that had happened in Eames’s dream. Arthur wondered if Eames always so easily dismissed everything that happened in dreams. If that was the case, he should have crawled under that café table and challenged Eames’s commitment to that motto. Nothing counts in a dream, huh? he should have said, batting his eyelashes a little and then unzipping Eames’s fly with his teeth. (It had been a dream. He would have been allowed to be coy and smooth and flirtatious in that way he couldn’t be in real life without being incredibly awkward.)
Arthur sighed and told himself firmly to stop dreaming, because this was helping nothing. Instead, he stood and went to ease the laptop out of Eames’s grasp to a safer perch.
He found himself flat on his back before he knew quite what had happened, and then, reflexively, flipped Eames off of him with a knee to his groin that Eames mostly deflected but still gave Arthur an opening for an elbow to his throat. Which was when Arthur’s reflexes stopped controlling everything and Arthur let go of Eames and rolled away.
“Jesus Christ,” Eames wheezed. “Overkill, Arthur.”
“You started it,” Arthur accused.
“I knocked you off your feet. You have wounded me,” said Eames pathetically.
“Oh, you’re fine. You deflected most of it.” Arthur said it breezily, because otherwise he’d feel guilty and apologize profusely, and Eames would take wicked advantage of that, and Arthur would never hear the end of it. So Arthur picked himself up and offered Eames a hand and said, “Surely you are used to finding the least painful way to lose a fight.”
“Marmalade,” Eames pouted, and gave Arthur a little shove of annoyance, before moving past him toward the promise of coffee in the elevator lobby.
“I’m taking a shower,” Arthur announced, and then wondered why he felt the need to announce it.
“I’m drinking a lot of coffee and then I’m filling your notebook with all of the ways I’ve thought of to kill you in the course of our acquaintance,” said Eames sourly.
Arthur hesitated by the bedroom door, then turned back fully. “You’re not really hurt, right? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you; you caught me by surprise.”
“Why is murder always your default reaction to being surprised?” asked Eames.
“Because I like not dying,” Arthur told him. “And, anyway, you started it, so don’t pretend I’m the only one used to sleeping with a finger on the trigger.”
Eames allowed the point by swallowing a sip of coffee and saying nothing. His eyes were steady on Arthur, and Arthur couldn’t read them but he didn’t think he could ever read Eames’s eyes accurately. He didn’t think anybody could. It was what made Eames such a good forger: no one ever, ever, ever knew what Eames was thinking. No one ever, ever, ever knew who Eames was. No one except Eames. Everyone else just got Eames’s most practiced and targeted seduction scene.
So Arthur left Eames in the elevator lobby and took a shower. Eames knocked on the bathroom door when Arthur was just finishing up shaving and said loudly, “Do you think you could take me?”
Arthur regarded his reflection quizzically. “Take you where?”
“In a fight. You think you could take me, don’t you? Do you know how many stone I have on you?”
Arthur began pulling on his suit, still not sure what they were talking about. “We’re fighting with stones?”
“No, I’m saying I’m bigger than you.”
Which was obvious to anyone who looked at the two of them. Which was just fact. “Okay,” Arthur agreed, bewildered, and picked up the die on the bathroom counter and tossed it twice to make sure it came up four both times. Then he slipped it into his pocket. “You’re bigger than me weight-wise. You’re not taller than me.”
There was a pause. Arthur pulled on his shirt. Eames said, “Well, you’re not taller than me.”
Arthur sighed and finished buttoning his shirt as he opened the door. Eames, leaning against the wall outside it, looked alarmed to suddenly be confronted by Arthur. “We’re the same height, Eames, and it isn’t actually a competition. Now what the hell are you talking about?”
Eames’s eyes were on Arthur’s hands doing up the buttons of his shirt. Arthur was suddenly self-conscious, fumbling as he went to deal with his cuffs, so he gave up and just rolled the sleeves up as if that had been his intention all along.
“Are you going to let me watch you put your tie on?” asked Eames. “Because I always thought that was like sausages.”
Arthur, slipping the tie around his popped collar, said, “You think my ties are like sausages?”
“Not allowed to be seen.”
“It’s not that sausages aren’t allowed to be seen, it’s that they’re unpleasant to be seen being made.”
“Oh, then I haven’t got that metaphor right at all,” said Eames, in all seriousness, now watching Arthur’s hands at his tie, so that Arthur could not for the life of him get it to knot correctly. He’d done this almost every single day of his adult life, and now because Eames was watching him he could not remember how to knot his tie.
Arthur was just about to announce that he’d decided against wearing a tie when Eames batted his hands away and took the tie in his own hands. Arthur had a wild moment of thinking that Eames was going to use the tie to pull him in for a kiss, because it was possible that Arthur had had a couple of fantasies that had gone that way, but instead Eames just commenced to knotting the tie himself.
“You know how to knot a tie?” Arthur couldn’t help but ask, surprised.
“You’ve seen me wear ties.”
“But…other people’s ties?”
“I’m a con artist, Arthur,” Eames said calmly. “I know how to knot someone else’s tie and how to lace someone else’s corset and how to mix someone else’s martini and how to pluck someone else’s eyebrows and how to shave someone else’s dog. Not a euphemism. Although euphemistically as well.”
Arthur knew he should have something to say in response to that, but Eames’s proximity was making him dizzy. In his memory, he was pressed against the wall of his childhood bedroom, Eames swooping in for a kiss. Stupid fucking dream, he thought, and closed his eyes.
“There,” Eames said, and turned down Arthur’s collar, and Arthur forced himself to take a full step back and say something. Anything.
“Why do you know how to lace a corset?”
Anything but that, he thought, annoyed with his stupid brain.
“A story for another day,” replied Eames. “Because what I wanted to talk about was this: You think you could take me in a fight.”
Arthur sighed. “Is this about that?” He waved vaguely toward the suite’s living area.
“You couldn’t, you know.”
“All right,” Arthur agreed indulgently. “I couldn’t.” He walked out of the bedroom, toward the breakfast in the elevator lobby.
“You’re just saying that,” Eames accused, following him.
“Eames. Of course I’m just saying that. Of course I could take you.”
“Why do you think that?” Eames sounded almost petulant.
Arthur just looked at him as he made his coffee carefully, carefully not thinking of hot chocolate in Aix-en-Provence with Eames flirting with him across the table.
“I don’t think it’d be as easy for you as all that,” Eames protested.
“Eames, what does it matter? We’re on the same side. We don’t have to fight each other, so who cares who would win? Unless you’re planning on betraying me, and then we both know I’d hunt you down and carve out your liver, yes?” Arthur was aware of his reputation. He’d never actually done half of the things the dreamsharing community murmured he did, but he’d done enough to give people the fear that he might have done all the rest of it, and that worked well enough for Arthur.
“I have tricks up my sleeve, you know,” said Eames. “I am not entirely as I seem.”
“God help anyone who takes you at face value.”
“Exactly. So you agree.”
Arthur sighed, realizing Eames wasn’t going to drop the subject. “In a dream,” he said honestly, “I think you might eventually be able to take me. It’d be a fair fight, but you’re better in a dream than I am, which I’m sure is what you wanted to hear me admit, so I think, if you really pressed that advantage, you’d probably eventually win.” Arthur hoped that would be the end of it. He tore into a croissant and watched Eames mull this over.
“You think I’m better in a dream than you?” he said finally, quizzically, as if he would have disagreed.
“You’re more at home in dreams than I am. You’re a natural in a dreamscape. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so comfortable there.”
“You don’t seem uncomfortable in a dream.”
“I’m not. But you’re more comfortable. You’re a born improviser, and I am the opposite, and improvisers do better in dreams, ultimately. So, eventually, in a dream you’d probably win.”
Unfortunately, the flattery did not distract Eames quite enough. “But you think you’d beat me topside.”
Arthur said, after a moment, “I know I would.” Eames’s improvisation would give him an edge in a dream, but dreams were worlds you could mold to exactly how you wanted them. Eames’s lack of strategic planning would harm him topside, and Arthur excelled at fighting that way. Arthur wasn’t creative enough to invent a way to win, but he was creative enough to find the way to win that already existed, and that was a different kind of creativity. Arthur didn’t think much about going up against Eames—Arthur was well aware he would have probably twisted himself into a pretzel to stay on Eames’s side in any fight—but he had thought about their complementary skill sets, about the fact that, of the two of them, Arthur would let Eames take the lead in a dream if it all went to hell, but he would refuse to relinquish the lead topside.
“Well, aren’t you smug?” said Eames, sounding vaguely offended.
Only Eames would want Arthur to flatter him all the time. “Eames, it’s possible that you’ve forgotten that my job description is to know everything. Smugness is one of the first traits I have listed on my resume.”
“You have a fucking resume?” said Eames in disbelief.
“Oh my God, it was a joke,” said Arthur.
Eames didn’t look like he was in a joking mood. “Shaving cream,” he said.
Arthur looked over at him thoughtfully. “You make me question my reality more than any other person I’ve ever met. Seriously, I’ve been checking my totem all morning. Why can’t you just make sense?”
“We’re going to shoot each other with shaving cream.” Eames disappeared into the bedroom.
“Why?” Arthur called after him in exasperation and reached for another croissant.
“Because I bloody hate it when you’re so bloody smug,” Eames complained, reappearing and tossing Arthur his own shaving cream.
Arthur caught it instinctively, dropping his croissant to do so, and then turned it toward Eames to shoot him with it and be done. Except that Eames had already disappeared into the bedroom. Eames was apparently taking this whole thing very seriously.
Arthur sighed and dove behind the couch just as Eames took his first shot at him.
***
Sherlock quickly realized that he couldn’t actually do much in the abstract. He devoured everything there was to know about dream chemistry and studied the chemical composition of Somnacin and combined it with a number of different substances that he thought might dilute some of its effects while maintaining others that they would need, but without someone to test it on it was impossible to determine if it was working. In fact, without any clear familiarity with how Somnacin worked before fussing with it, Sherlock felt as if he were just taking stabs in the dark. His scientific method was falling to pieces, which he did not approve of. It was no way to plan a massive attack on Moriarty.
He said as much to John, when John finally decided to stop wasting his time sleeping.
“I hope that isn’t your way of suggesting that I allow you to test it on me,” said John, still looking bleary-eyed, as he leaned against the counter and waited for the kettle to boil.
“Well, if I don’t test it on you, who can I test it on?” Surely John could see the difficult position he was putting Sherlock in. “I’m not sure Mrs. Hudson would be—”
“Not Mrs. Hudson,” John said. “You’re not testing it on anyone. I’m still not entirely sure that thing isn’t fatal.”
Sherlock waved a hand at him. “Arthur and Eames use it all the time.”
“That doesn’t actually make me feel better,” said John, as the kettle clicked.
Sherlock tapped a finger on the table and frowned at his microscope. John made him tea and put it in front of him, but Sherlock didn’t acknowledge it. He was irritated by the difficulty of not being able to test the chemical on John. But John had been upset about Baskerville, and Sherlock felt that Baskerville had been a narrow escape for him on the drugging-John-without-his-permission front, so Sherlock wasn’t inclined to test that ultimatum just yet. John wasn’t happy about anything that was going on, so Sherlock thought he was testing John quite enough just by having the Somnacin in the flat in the first place.
Which meant there was nothing for it, he decided, and with a heavy sigh picked up his phone and texted Mycroft. Must test the chemical. Find me a test subject. –SH
Mycroft, predictably, rang him back.
Sherlock sighed heavily again and considered not answering but he really needed a test subject. Actually, he really needed a lot of dreamsharing-related things.
So he answered, glaring at John as he did it because John was driving him to this. John was doing something inexplicable at the sink. Probably washing dishes. John was obsessed with washing dishes. “Who can I use?” Sherlock snapped into the phone.
“We’ll use Arthur or Eames, of course,” Mycroft responded, unperturbed by the abrupt greeting, because he was Mycroft and annoying. “Shall we pay them a visit?”
John insisted on coming along, which meant they had to wait whilst John got ready. Sherlock spent the time complaining about how boring everything John was doing was.
“You can go down and wait in the car your brother sent,” John remarked.
The black car had been idling in front of Baker Street since almost immediately after Sherlock had ended the call with Mycroft. Sherlock had been ignoring it because the only thing worse than having to wait for John would have been waiting for John in one of Mycroft’s cars. So Sherlock ignored John’s suggestion and kept complaining.
Mycroft turned out to be in the car, making notes in a file.
“Pretending to be important?” Sherlock sneered at him.
“You should have come up to the flat,” John said, because John periodically said idiotic things like that.
“I had work to do.” Mycroft flickered a glance at Sherlock. “Did you bring the chemicals for your test?”
Sherlock glowered at him, refusing to otherwise acknowledge such a stupid question.
They eventually pulled up in front of a generically posh London hotel.
John said, “Really? I thought you’d be keeping them in some kind of secret prison.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, John,” Mycroft told him dismissively.
“You could at least spring for the full English,” commented Sherlock as they got in the lift. “They’re both not overly fond of croissants.”
“They just spent a ridiculous amount of money on two bottles of Nebbiolo,” Mycroft responded drily. “They’re lucky they’re getting croissants.”
“Are the criminals costing you a lot of money, Mycroft?” remarked John. “Fancy that!”
Mycroft gave John a look, and Sherlock’s lips twitched because one of his favorite John traits was how John annoyed Mycroft. It was #11 on Sherlock’s List of Reasons to Kiss John Watson.
Then the lift doors opened and the first thing they saw was Eames, sprawled on his stomach, in the process of crawling behind the sofa. He looked at them in surprise, and then half-sat up, saying, “Oh. Hi. We—”
Which was when Arthur suddenly launched himself from the dining area of the suite, spraying what was obviously shaving cream directly in Eames’s face before darting away.
Mycroft sighed heavily, as if he’d been expecting something like this. John just blinked. Sherlock watched because someone had to observe these things.
Eames swore and swiped at his face and growled, “Bastard. Clearly there was a timeout in effect.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in timeouts in your sport of choice,” said Arthur pleasantly, and then turned to the knot of them. “Sorry,” he said, fixing his tie. “I was just proving a point.”
“We weren’t playing bloody football rules, Arthur,” complained Eames. “You’re so fucking competitive. And you got it in my eye.”
Arthur said, “I didn’t get it in your eye.” And then, “Don’t rub it in, you’ll make it worse.” And then, “I’m sure you’re fine.” And then, predictably, “Let me see it.”
Sherlock saw it coming from a mile away. Arthur would have if it had been any person other than Eames, but Eames was obviously Arthur’s weakness—even Mycroft had been clever enough to exploit that—so Arthur did what foolish people did and allowed himself to be concerned, just as Eames had expected him to do, because Eames had clearly grown used to being Arthur’s weakness, even if he didn’t seem to see it exactly that way. Eames used such a ploy with Arthur as if Arthur were the sort of person who would fall for such a ploy, not as if Arthur were the sort of person who would only fall for such a ploy coming from Eames.
So Arthur leaned forward toward Eames, and Eames shot shaving cream into his face.
John said, “What the hell?” in alarm, taking a step back.
Mycroft said, “We don’t have time for this. Stop it.”
Arthur said, sputtering at the shaving cream now covering his face, “You fucking—marmalade.”
Eames said, “That’s not how that code word works.”
Sherlock said, “I’ve got your compound for you.”
Arthur and Eames looked up at him, and Sherlock smiled.
***
The suite had blasts of shaving cream all over it. Arthur wiped some up off of one of the dining room chairs and said apologetically, “Eames has terrible aim.”
“With shaving cream. I have good aim with deadly things.” Eames said it sulkily, as if his reputation was being harmed.
John watched them and wondered if it was his lot in life to be surrounded by grown men who behaved like toddlers.
“In a dream you do,” said Arthur, pulling a chair over to the living area to make sure there was enough room for them all to sit. “Less so topside. As was the point of this entire exercise.”
“Marmalade,” said Eames. “And that’s how that code word works.”
“I really do expect a little more professionalism,” said Mycroft testily, eyeing Arthur with some distaste.
“I tend to reserve my professionalism for jobs in which I haven’t been kidnapped,” replied Arthur, sitting in the chair he’d just dragged over.
“Arthur, love, we haven’t been kidnapped, we’ve been lured into government service.” Eames, still sounding sulky, only now over being kidnapped (which John allowed was probably justifiable), collapsed onto one of the couches.
“Ah, yes, how could I forget? The line between government service and crime is so very…”
“Flexible?” Eames finished for him.
“Open to interpretation.”
“Arthur prefers specificity,” Eames told Mycroft.
Mycroft frowned at all of them, and John contemplated how badly Mycroft must want what was in Moriarty’s head to put up with any of this. And how uniquely good at their jobs Arthur and Eames must be.
“Anyways, darling, time to be professional.” Eames clapped his hands together in some imitation of enthusiasm.
Arthur was already pulling out his notebook and readying his pen. “Tell us about the compound you’ve created, Sherlock.”
Sherlock sat on the back of the living area’s armchair. John, with little choice otherwise, sat next to Mycroft on the other couch, while Sherlock rattled off a long list of chemical compounds.
Arthur copied all of them out, glanced over it, and then nodded sharply. “Yes.” He looked at Eames. “You should be fine, too.”
Eames peered over his shoulder and nodded. “Yes. That’s fine.”
“Good.” Arthur closed his notebook and stood. “Did you bring it then? Might as well test it.”
“I’d like to test it, too,” Sherlock announced.
Because of course he would. John wished he’d thought to bring along a flask, so he could play a drinking game of taking a shot every time Sherlock tried to wheedle his way into a dream. Except that John was worried he wouldn’t have to drink for very long before Sherlock got his way. Because that was how Sherlock was.
“Sherlock—” Mycroft began.
“No.” Arthur answered immediately, and John decided that maybe he liked Arthur.
Sherlock pouted. “Why not?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“But you’re going to use it.”
“Because I use a lot of drugs and I know my toxicology reports by heart, and I shouldn’t have some kind of deadly allergic reaction to the combination of drugs you put together. Can you say the same?”
Sherlock glared at him. “I’m not an idiot. I know what’s going to kill me and what’s not.”
“You’re not using it. Not even Eames is using it. I’m using it because this is my job, and if I don’t die, maybe you’ll get to use it eventually someday.”
“Arthur, do have a care, you’re making dreamsharing sound like such whimsical fun,” said Eames.
Arthur waggled his finger at Sherlock.
Sherlock regarded him, then said, “If it doesn’t kill you, you’ll let me use it.”
“Sherlock, you’re not—” began Mycroft.
Except that Arthur said, “Yes, fine. After you get bloodwork done to make sure you’re not allergic to any of the stuff you put in this.”
“I’m not—” Sherlock began furiously.
“Don’t argue with him,” said Eames, “he’s the stubbornest person I’ve ever met.”
“Not actually a word,” Arthur told him.
“Marmalade, darling,” said Eames.
“I don’t want Sherlock doing any—” Mycroft began again, furiously.
“He’s going to need to know a lot more about dreamsharing if he’s going to help us,” Arthur pointed out reasonably, accepting the test tube Sherlock smugly handed across.
“He was never supposed to be helping you,” Mycroft bit out.
Arthur was busying himself with a silver briefcase, setting things up, expertly slipping a needle into his own vein. “You commandeered me to run point on this job, so sit back and let me run point. I’m doing two minutes. It should be enough time.” Arthur glanced at Eames, who nodded, and then Arthur settled on the couch next to him and looked at him. “You ready?”
“Arthur, if this compound Sherlock’s created kills you and this is the last thing we ever get to say to each other, can I inherit your cufflink collection?”
Arthur leaned forward and pressed a button on the PASIV.
“Also, I am a better fencer than you, topside or dreamscape,” Eames blurted out quickly.
“Going to sleep now, Mr. Eames,” murmured Arthur, and then he was.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2014-11-27 08:09 pm (UTC)But the character stuff is so fun, including the characters that I only know through this story!
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Date: 2014-12-03 04:33 am (UTC)But I'm glad you're still enjoying it! :-)
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Date: 2014-11-29 10:03 pm (UTC)Well, all very useful things, I'd say . . .!! *grin*
I loved this chapter - lots of silly bickering which always puts a smile on my face.
"It was #11 on Sherlock’s List of Reasons to Kiss John Watson."
You tease!! Now we need to find what the other 10 are . . . *wink*
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Date: 2014-12-02 04:37 am (UTC)And Eames is a useful guy to have around.
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Date: 2014-12-01 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 04:15 am (UTC)