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Jan. 8th, 2015 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Keep the Car Running (17/31)
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.
Author's Notes - My beta and I had a huge debate about whether or not Arthur's shirt in this chapter would cost a thousand dollars, which was what I originally had written, and I bowed to her wisdom and changed it to five hundred dollars (although I still think Eames would obnoxiously round way up in the amount that Arthur would be spending on clothes), but in doing our research over this, we make the following observations:
(1) We bet Kanye West would have a thousand-dollar shirt, and now I want the fic where Arthur is friends with Kanye West.
(2) Maybe Arthur's shirt is made of dodo skin. You don't know, okay? IT COULD BE. YOU DON'T KNOW.
(3) There's a website that says this: "Looking to blow some really big money on a nice suit? It's not as easy as you might think! For obvious reasons, most designers and tailors try to keep their prices relatively earthbound because they know the market for suits with sky-high prices is extremely small." My beta: "That market is Kanye West and Arthur in fanfiction."
(4) Probably you need the really expensive suit to fit your enormous penis. <--analysis Eames agrees with
(5) According to the Internet, most people who buy really expensive suits are princes and Russian oligarchs. My beta: "And Arthur from Inception in fic."
(6) And I really want the fic where Eames tries to buy a suit at the prices he thinks Arthur pays for suits and he stalks princes and Russian oligarchs to see where they buy suits.
(7) Tom Ford calls his really expensive suits "statements."
(8) There is a t-shirt that reads "This t-shirt cost a thousand dollars," and I feel like Eames should buy that for Arthur.
(9) Vicuna fabric is considered very luxurious and comes from a type of llama in South America. Now I want the fic where Eames buys a vicuna farm for Arthur's suit.
(10) We decided most likely Arthur would pay $5,000 for a suit, which renders the thousand-dollar shirt unrealistic. (But the five-hundred-dollar shirt remains less pithy in the narrative.)
(And this is why normally my beta and I are not in the same place when I post. Normally we have to be separated into entirely different states. Preferably different time zones, if we can manage it.)
Chapter 17
The thing about Arthur was that he was everything all at once. Eames had not always thought that about him. As a young forger, on the first job in Rio, he had overestimated Arthur’s age and underestimated his sense of fun. He’d been an idiot on that job. He was a smarter forger by the time the Moscow job had rolled around, better at everything, and that time through he realized that Arthur was both younger than he should have been and also older than he should have been, that Arthur was all-work-and-no-play but covered a reluctant and delightfully sly sense of humor that Eames could coax out if he worked hard enough. Arthur didn’t trust you—to a relentless degree, questioning everything you did—until the moment when he put his life in your hands without blinking. Arthur planned everything down to each tiny, meticulous detail, and Arthur improvised with breathless brilliance. Arthur was everything.
So Arthur drank coffee but craved hot chocolate. Arthur wore traditional suits but with playful color combinations and creative patterns. Or else he wore contemporary cut suits in the most traditional gray tweed. He liked sleek, modern architecture, and he loved Paris, and he adored Renaissance art. He sniffed Eames’s neck and let Eames back him against a wall, and he also acted like absolutely nothing had happened afterwards. And he liked expensive wine, but he appreciated a good greasy dive.
So Eames took Arthur to a fish-and-chip shop that smelled as if it hadn’t been cleaned since the Blitz and delighted when Arthur didn’t blink, when Arthur merely rolled up the sleeves of his five-hundred-dollar shirt and said, deadpan, “What’s good here?”
Eames grinned and then Pete behind the counter said, “Kingsley, as I live and breathe!”
“Hello, Pete,” Eames responded pleasantly. “My friend here is looking for the best fish and chips in London.”
“Then you’d best take him somewhere else!” exclaimed Pete, and laughed heartily at his own joke. “Have a seat, I’ll bring them over to you.”
Eames led Arthur over to a barely-holding-it-together chair, and Arthur lifted his eyebrows at him.
“Not my real name,” Eames told him, as he sat.
“I know,” said Arthur. “Kingsley? You realize I could have a psychological field day with that?”
“Bugger off,” said Eames good-naturedly, “I didn’t choose it.”
“Then how’d you get it?”
“For my unparalleled ability to imitate the poshest of accents. Hence, like a king,” answered Eames, showing off smugly.
Arthur looked amused enough that shadows of dimples were lurking in his cheeks. “You would take me to the one place in London that considers you royalty.”
“Now, now, remember, to the Tate Modern I’m a viscount.”
Arthur made a skeptical sound and said, “So tell me about this place.”
“This is where I learned how to gamble,” Eames announced grandly.
“Oh, dear God,” said Arthur. “Is this what we have to blame for your terrible card-playing abilities?”
“They only seem terrible. I’ll have you know it’s all an act.”
“Best forge you’ve ever pulled off,” Arthur informed him drily, and Eames laughed because he couldn’t help it, for as much as he hated Arthur, he also just really loved Arthur.
Pete dropped two orders of fish and chips onto their table with no ceremony and said, “So how’s business, Kings?”
“Comes and goes,” responded Eames noncommittally.
“Got yourself a corporate mark, do you?” asked Pete, glancing at Arthur’s suit.
“Just a job with a dress code,” said Eames, with a flash of white teeth that said Stop asking questions.
Pete did, although Eames thought the death glare Arthur was shooting him had a lot to do with that. With an offended sniff, Pete went back behind the counter.
Eames said, “Here. Vinegar on your chips, and stop looking at my old mentor as if you’re going to cut his jugular with a plastic knife.”
“He’s nosey,” said Arthur.
“He’s friendly,” Eames corrected.
“This is why I don’t tell people what I do,” Arthur informed him, and took a huge bite of fish.
“It’s easier to just pretend to be a chef?”
Arthur gave him a look that said, Of course, you idiot.
“Is there anyone who knows what you do?”
“You,” Arthur said, brandishing a chip before stuffing it in his mouth.
Eames considered that. He didn’t have anyone who he thought would really miss him, but he did have a lot of people who knew a lot about him. For a person who spent his life pretending to be someone else, Eames thought there were quite a lot of people who harbored no illusions about the quality of life he led.
Which was possibly why no one would really miss him if he disappeared.
“So where did Eames come from?” Arthur asked, swallowing.
Eames looked at him blankly.
“As an alias,” Arthur clarified.
“Me,” Eames said gruffly, because he didn’t want to get into that. “So now that you have gorged yourself on art and fried foods, let’s go over what we learned today.”
Arthur allowed the subject change, still steadily shoveling food into his mouth. “What was in your warehouse?”
“Headless dolls, of course. And don’t think you’re getting out of buying me all the vodka in the world.”
Arthur gave him a look, then turned his attention back to his fish and chips.
Eames said, “It was a theater. Sarah Miller was dressed as a ballerina. Moriarty was making her spin on the stage.”
“Ballet,” said Arthur reflectively, tipping his chair back. Eames watched the back legs creak worryingly on their fifty years of hard living. “She was a ballerina, before she joined MI-6. She had a late growth spurt and never quite regained her dancer’s sense of balance, so she never really excelled as much as she did before that. She eventually gave up the dream of dancing professionally.”
Eames stared at him, holding a bite of fish halfway to his mouth. It plopped off the cheap plastic fork.
Arthur said wryly, “Eames, if you’re not careful, you’ll get grease on that beautiful shirt and never be able to wear it again, and how would any of us cope with that tragedy?”
Eames ignored him. He retrieved the bite of fish and said, “How do you know all that?”
Arthur sighed, long-suffering. “Because I read the fucking file, Eames, because I’m a fucking professional and it’s my fucking job.”
“Well,” Eames said, a bit stung, “I forged Moriarty after only looking at him for a few minutes, so…you know.”
“That was the stupidest idea you’ve ever had,” Arthur snapped at him.
“Got her away from you, didn’t it?”
“And then she pulled your eyeball out of your head.”
“Sorry you had to witness that, but trust me, petal, it was worse from my perspective.” Eames paused. “No pun intended. Was that even a pun?”
Arthur wasn’t paying attention to him. Arthur, still tipped precariously back on his chair, had his notebook out and was scribbling in it, his fish and chips forgotten.
“Arthur, love, finish your food,” Eames said, annoyed with himself for having distracted Arthur too soon.
“In a bit,” Arthur replied, clearly not paying attention to him. “They were both special memories to her. The most special memories. That’s what she was warehousing.”
“Sarah Miller cherishes ballet and nightclubs. I may have just missed out on meeting my soul mate.”
“It was where she met her husband.”
“What?”
“The nightclub: it was where she met her husband. She was trying to protect the memory. She wiped her entire subconscious clean—destroyed it—made it a desolation—except for her two most precious memories. She couldn’t bear to get rid of them.”
“And Moriarty colonized them. But this girl is trained, Arthur. She knows what to do in a dream.”
“She can’t push him out.”
“Why not?”
“Because he got in. She was supposed to get into his brain, and he got into hers instead. He said it to me: like every mark I’d ever targeted suddenly showing up inside of me.”
“Arthur, if that happened, you’d wake yourself up.”
Arthur looked at him. “And stay awake forever? John Watson’s right: some people don’t want to dream.”
Eames considered. “So what you’re saying is he basically inceptioned himself into her head? Just like that?” Eames snapped his fingers. “We bloody almost killed ourselves getting an inception done, and he does it first try? What the bloody hell, Arthur? We should have got Moriarty on the inception job.”
“Yes, what that job definitely needed was more loose cannons,” drawled Arthur, tapping his pen against his notebook, chair still tilted backward.
“Can you…not do that with that chair?” Eames asked.
Arthur looked surprised. “What?”
Eames felt like an idiot. “The legs are going to snap.”
Arthur lifted his eyebrows, and Eames knew he was mother-henning to a ridiculous degree, but he put his chair back on level ground. “I thought you welcomed the opportunity to watch me lose my balance and go sprawling.”
“Not when I haven’t caused it,” said Eames lightly.
“So he’s getting into their heads. He’s destroying everything that they cherish about themselves. He leaves them a wasteland in his wake.” Arthur looked out the window at the growing darkness. “How?”
***
Arthur, back at the hotel suite, babbled on about how maybe they ought to go into an earlier victim’s brain, about how maybe Moriarty wouldn’t have perfected his attack then, or maybe they ought to stop by Baker Street and tell Sherlock what they knew and see what insights he had. Arthur checked his email, still speculating out loud about what they ought to do next, and then said, “Yusuf says there are no scholarly studies about dreamsharing drugs. Doesn’t that seem like an oversight?”
“On the part of criminals who are constantly switching residences and identities? Dreadful oversight that we haven’t developed respectable scholarship. I was just lamenting the other day how we’ve no endowed library.”
“Just because we’re criminals doesn’t mean we can’t be professional,” Arthur sniffed.
“The government probably has studies,” Eames said, studying their minibar critically.
“Good point,” Arthur allowed. “I’ll make a note of the second time you’ve made a good point in our acquaintance.”
“Did you email Yusuf?” Eames asked, kneeling by the minibar and beginning to pick its lock expertly.
“Best chemist I know.”
“I thought you didn’t trust him.”
“I’m not going under with him, I’m just asking him a question.”
“Well, speaking of people you keep in touch with,” Eames remarked, as the door opened for him.
There was a moment of silence. Eames listened hard to it. Arthur said, “Is this going to be about Cobb?”
“You text him weekly?” Eames said, and retrieved the bottle of vodka.
“We’re friends,” Arthur said shortly.
“Christ, your definition of friend is so alarming,” mocked Eames, and grabbed two glasses for them.
Arthur said, after a moment, “There’s a lot of— It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to justify it to you.”
“No, you don’t,” Eames agreed evenly, carrying the vodka over to the coffee table and sitting on the opposite couch. “But you should email him. He’s been around, a lot, and if anyone will have heard of the situation we’re dealing with here, it will be him.”
“I didn’t really want to get him involved. He’s got kids and…”
Eames poured the vodka. “I don’t disagree, but it’s an email, and you got Yusuf involved and he’s got a kid on the way. I’m all for anything that keeps us from ending up like crazy Sarah Miller. I rather like my dreams, thanks very much.” Eames handed Arthur a tumbler of vodka.
“What’s this?” Arthur asked, even as he accepted it.
“It’s vodka, darling. It’s a colorless, odorless alcohol commonly associated with Russia—”
“Did you steal this from the minibar?”
“Of course I did.”
“You were supposed to buy us vodka. That was the bet.”
“I’d rather make Mycroft Holmes buy us the vodka.”
“It’s really the British taxpayers.”
“Good thing I don’t pay taxes here,” rejoined Eames.
“Do you pay taxes anywhere?”
“I pay taxes in many places under many identities on all of my casino winnings.”
“From cheating.”
“At least I pay the taxes on all of it.”
Arthur shook his head a bit, lifted his vodka glass, and said, “To your health,” in flawless Russian.
And that was how it started.
How it ended was with the minibar decimated, the two of them on the floor leaning back against their opposite couches, and Arthur slurring, “Never have I ever dog-sat for a neighbor.”
Eames knocked back his tequila and said, “Seriously, darling? Dog-sitting?”
“She’s a nice, little, old lady,” Arthur said, in his defense.
“Who lives next door to a psychopath.”
“Hey.” Arthur pointed with his glass. “I take offense to that characterization of me.”
“Noted. You’re nothing at all like a psychopath. You’re just a…frighteningly capable criminal.”
“I don’t just murder people,” Arthur said, sounding genuinely offended. “I don’t just…murder people. Never have I ever killed someone who didn’t deserve it.” Arthur knocked back his tequila.
Eames refrained from pointing out that that’s what a murderer would say. He refilled both of their glasses. “Never have I ever sent out Christmas cards,” he said.
Arthur didn’t drink. He regarded Eames.
Eames said, “Aren’t you going to ask me who I send Christmas cards to?”
“I fucking hate killing people,” Arthur said. “I really do, Eames. I hate it.”
Arthur’s hair was in his face, and his tie had been abandoned, and his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and he looked drawn and anguished and fretful, and Eames said honestly, feeling for him, “I know you do, love.”
“No, I do,” Arthur insisted, as if Eames had just been humoring him.
“I know,” Eames agreed again, but Arthur talked over him.
“I just…don’t know why…” Arthur tipped his head back against the couch. “Why does everyone hate me?”
Eames stared at him. “Who hates you?”
“Everyone. That’s why I have to kill people, because people are always trying to kill me, and I don’t get why. I try to be…” Arthur shifted his head on the couch so he could look at Eames. “Aren’t I fair?”
“You’re incredibly fair,” Eames told him gently, trying to pretend like he wasn’t experiencing all manner of irrational heartache here. “And that’s why people hate you.”
“I’ve never learned the trick,” Arthur said. “I wish you could teach me it. You make me so fucking jealous; I can’t stand you.”
“What trick?” Eames asked blankly.
“The trick of making people like you. I don’t know that trick.”
Eames looked at him for a moment and thought of all the words he longed to say but felt so permanently incapable of saying, so damn frozen in the face of how much he meant it, more than he’d ever meant anything in his life. Eames didn’t know how to say things that meant something, he only knew how to play the role. And Eames wanted to take Arthur and bundle him up and tell him that it didn’t matter, he liked him enough for all the people in the world, and this was Arthur, Arthur who would have been like trying to bundle up a snarling, rabid tiger.
Eames swallowed and said, “Okay. I think we’ve had enough,” and meant so much by that as he carefully took Arthur’s glass out of his hand.
“We didn’t finish the game,” Arthur protested.
“Yes, we did.” Eames stood and pulled Arthur up to standing.
“I was going to beat you,” said Arthur blurrily.
“You did,” Eames assured him, pulling him toward the bedroom.
“I didn’t,” Arthur complained. “I never do. I never… You always… Fuck you,” Arthur finished, and Eames nudged him easily backward onto the bed.
“Yes,” Eames agreed, pulling his shoes off. “That’s usually what it comes to between us, isn’t it?”
“But I don’t want it to,” Arthur said, sounding frustrated. “I don’t know why I…I just hate you so much sometimes.”
“That feeling is entirely mutual, love,” Eames remarked drily and leaned over him. “Listen to me. You’ve got to sleep this off, and you’re going to feel better about everything in the morning, yeah?”
“Did you get me drunk?” Arthur accused, with a flash of anger that was a shadow of what it would normally be.
“Not intentionally, but I don’t expect you to believe that. Go to sleep, love.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said suddenly.
“For what?” Eames asked, honestly perplexed.
“For being terrible to you.”
“You’re really not, darling. Stop talking now.”
“I am. You try to be so nice. You try to make me laugh. You call me ‘darling.’ You’re going to steal me a Titian.”
Eames stared down at Arthur, whose eyes were drifting closed, and he felt hot and cold and fully unable to breathe. Once, in a museum where he’d been stealing something, the guard had walked by unscheduled, and Eames had frozen into a dark corner, and this felt alarmingly like that. Eames said what he thought he shouldn’t say. He leaned down and said, “Arthur, I’m going to tell you a very important secret, only because you’re never going to remember any of this in the morning.”
Arthur made a soft, inquisitive noise that made Eames squeeze his eyes shut against the temptation to fall into bed with Arthur and kiss the words right into his mouth. “I think you’re delightful, and I like you quite a lot.”
Arthur’s eyes opened, focusing in lopsided drunkenness on Eames, and he grinned, wide and sloppy, full of dimples, and Eames thought he’d say it a million more times if it would provoke Arthur grinning at him like that. “I like you, too,” he said. “You’re nice.” Eames was decidedly not nice. Eames was the opposite of nice. Eames had no idea what to make of Arthur, of all people, thinking he was nice. And then Arthur closed his eyes and started snoring.
“Oh, darling,” Eames sighed. “You’re such a puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a very expensive, very attractive suit.” And then, figuring he’d never again get the opportunity, brushed Arthur’s tumbled curls back and kissed his forehead.
***
Arthur woke feeling like a truck had hit him. His totem came up four, twice, so apparently this was reality. Fuck reality, thought Arthur, and took the aspirin he found on the nightstand. Then he dragged himself out of the bed and into the living area, where he found Eames snoring loudly on a couch while surrounded by empty liquor bottles. And the thing about that was that it was entirely, incredibly revolting and yet Arthur wanted to crawl onto Eames’s fucking chest and go back to sleep on him, just for a little while.
Arthur took a shower instead. Well, he turned the shower on and then he crawled into the tub and curled into a ball and tried to think. Vodka, he thought. And then bourbon. And then tequila. And maybe rum. Oh, Christ, had there been rum, too? He was going to fucking kill Eames. He had no memory of how he’d gotten to bed, only the very foggiest memory of the tequila bottle being opened and then it all being a lost cause after that. Eames had apparently been smoking him in Never Have I Ever, because how else had Eames had enough wherewithal to open more alcohol? And whose fucking idea had it been to play a drinking game anyway? Like they were in fucking college?
“Fuck,” said Arthur, out loud, recalling that it had been his idea, and then he decided that he wanted to just stay in the shower for a thousand years.
He did something that resembled combing his hair, and then he contemplated his clothing, couldn’t handle dealing with any of it, and instead stole a pair of Eames’s sweatpants, topping it with one of his own plain white undershirts. The sweatpants were hopelessly too big, but he didn’t care because it was definitely that kind of fucking day.
Eames was awake when Arthur trailed into the living area, flipping steadily through the channels on their television.
“I hate you,” Arthur informed him, “with the magnitude of at least a thousand suns.”
“Arthur,” said Eames, and his voice sounded positively chocolate with glee. “What are you wearing?”
“Shut,” Arthur told him, curling onto the empty couch, “up.”
“This is the best day of my entire life,” Eames said reverently.
“I am going to shoot you so many times when I get my gun back,” Arthur told him, closing his eyes. “I am just going to pump bullets into your lifeless body.”
Eames was silent in an odd way Arthur didn’t like.
He opened his eyes again and looked at him. “What?”
“I’d never try to kill you,” Eames blurted out suddenly.
Arthur blinked, surprised. “What?”
“You know that, right? I mean, fuck all the rest of it, all of the other complications we keep adding to— I’d never try to kill you. I’m not one of those people you need to watch out for, Arthur.”
“Okay,” Arthur said, bewildered, because he’d always thought himself pretty confident of that. “I don’t… Okay.”
Eames nodded, as if satisfied, and turned back to the television.
Arthur wondered what odd exchange they’d just had and if he should close the circle. “And you know I’m not…serious when I say I’m going to shoot you.”
“Not outside of a dream,” Eames said, with a faint smile.
Arthur felt relieved to be back on more normal ground for them. “You frequently deserve it in a dream.”
“So what shall we do today, pet?” asked Eames.
“We’re going to Baker Street to consult with our chemist,” said Arthur.
“Are you going in my sweatpants?” inquired Eames, with delight.
“Of course not. I’m going to get up and get properly dressed.”
“Any minute now,” said Eames, with gentle mockery.
“Shut up,” Arthur told him again. Not exactly his most sparkling repartee but he couldn’t help it. “You cheated at Never Have I Ever.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“‘Never have I ever forged a ten-year-old girl.’ Seriously, Eames?”
“Well, you did ‘Never have I ever paid more than ten dollars for a shirt.’”
“How was I supposed to know you’d never spent more than ten dollars on a shirt?” protested Arthur.
“You see my shirts! You’re constantly complaining about my shirts!”
“I don’t understand why you’re so fucking cheap when you could make yourself all the counterfeit money in the world to buy nice shirts.”
“It’s not about the expense, Arthur, it’s about the thrill of the hunt. Finding the bargain.”
“Those shirts are not a bargain for those of us who have to look at them on you all the time.”
“If I walked around shirtless all the time, you’d be too distracted, love.”
Because that was true, Arthur changed the subject. “We weren’t even playing the game right,” Arthur informed him. “I think you’re supposed to drink if you have done it, not if you’ve never done it.”
There was a moment of silence. “If you have done the thing that the other person has never done?” Eames asked, to clarify.
Arthur honestly couldn’t fucking remember. “Tell me about this stupid Korean drama you’re watching,” he said, to change the subject.
“Oh, darling, I thought you’d never ask!” exclaimed Eames.
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.
Author's Notes - My beta and I had a huge debate about whether or not Arthur's shirt in this chapter would cost a thousand dollars, which was what I originally had written, and I bowed to her wisdom and changed it to five hundred dollars (although I still think Eames would obnoxiously round way up in the amount that Arthur would be spending on clothes), but in doing our research over this, we make the following observations:
(1) We bet Kanye West would have a thousand-dollar shirt, and now I want the fic where Arthur is friends with Kanye West.
(2) Maybe Arthur's shirt is made of dodo skin. You don't know, okay? IT COULD BE. YOU DON'T KNOW.
(3) There's a website that says this: "Looking to blow some really big money on a nice suit? It's not as easy as you might think! For obvious reasons, most designers and tailors try to keep their prices relatively earthbound because they know the market for suits with sky-high prices is extremely small." My beta: "That market is Kanye West and Arthur in fanfiction."
(4) Probably you need the really expensive suit to fit your enormous penis. <--analysis Eames agrees with
(5) According to the Internet, most people who buy really expensive suits are princes and Russian oligarchs. My beta: "And Arthur from Inception in fic."
(6) And I really want the fic where Eames tries to buy a suit at the prices he thinks Arthur pays for suits and he stalks princes and Russian oligarchs to see where they buy suits.
(7) Tom Ford calls his really expensive suits "statements."
(8) There is a t-shirt that reads "This t-shirt cost a thousand dollars," and I feel like Eames should buy that for Arthur.
(9) Vicuna fabric is considered very luxurious and comes from a type of llama in South America. Now I want the fic where Eames buys a vicuna farm for Arthur's suit.
(10) We decided most likely Arthur would pay $5,000 for a suit, which renders the thousand-dollar shirt unrealistic. (But the five-hundred-dollar shirt remains less pithy in the narrative.)
(And this is why normally my beta and I are not in the same place when I post. Normally we have to be separated into entirely different states. Preferably different time zones, if we can manage it.)
Chapter 17
The thing about Arthur was that he was everything all at once. Eames had not always thought that about him. As a young forger, on the first job in Rio, he had overestimated Arthur’s age and underestimated his sense of fun. He’d been an idiot on that job. He was a smarter forger by the time the Moscow job had rolled around, better at everything, and that time through he realized that Arthur was both younger than he should have been and also older than he should have been, that Arthur was all-work-and-no-play but covered a reluctant and delightfully sly sense of humor that Eames could coax out if he worked hard enough. Arthur didn’t trust you—to a relentless degree, questioning everything you did—until the moment when he put his life in your hands without blinking. Arthur planned everything down to each tiny, meticulous detail, and Arthur improvised with breathless brilliance. Arthur was everything.
So Arthur drank coffee but craved hot chocolate. Arthur wore traditional suits but with playful color combinations and creative patterns. Or else he wore contemporary cut suits in the most traditional gray tweed. He liked sleek, modern architecture, and he loved Paris, and he adored Renaissance art. He sniffed Eames’s neck and let Eames back him against a wall, and he also acted like absolutely nothing had happened afterwards. And he liked expensive wine, but he appreciated a good greasy dive.
So Eames took Arthur to a fish-and-chip shop that smelled as if it hadn’t been cleaned since the Blitz and delighted when Arthur didn’t blink, when Arthur merely rolled up the sleeves of his five-hundred-dollar shirt and said, deadpan, “What’s good here?”
Eames grinned and then Pete behind the counter said, “Kingsley, as I live and breathe!”
“Hello, Pete,” Eames responded pleasantly. “My friend here is looking for the best fish and chips in London.”
“Then you’d best take him somewhere else!” exclaimed Pete, and laughed heartily at his own joke. “Have a seat, I’ll bring them over to you.”
Eames led Arthur over to a barely-holding-it-together chair, and Arthur lifted his eyebrows at him.
“Not my real name,” Eames told him, as he sat.
“I know,” said Arthur. “Kingsley? You realize I could have a psychological field day with that?”
“Bugger off,” said Eames good-naturedly, “I didn’t choose it.”
“Then how’d you get it?”
“For my unparalleled ability to imitate the poshest of accents. Hence, like a king,” answered Eames, showing off smugly.
Arthur looked amused enough that shadows of dimples were lurking in his cheeks. “You would take me to the one place in London that considers you royalty.”
“Now, now, remember, to the Tate Modern I’m a viscount.”
Arthur made a skeptical sound and said, “So tell me about this place.”
“This is where I learned how to gamble,” Eames announced grandly.
“Oh, dear God,” said Arthur. “Is this what we have to blame for your terrible card-playing abilities?”
“They only seem terrible. I’ll have you know it’s all an act.”
“Best forge you’ve ever pulled off,” Arthur informed him drily, and Eames laughed because he couldn’t help it, for as much as he hated Arthur, he also just really loved Arthur.
Pete dropped two orders of fish and chips onto their table with no ceremony and said, “So how’s business, Kings?”
“Comes and goes,” responded Eames noncommittally.
“Got yourself a corporate mark, do you?” asked Pete, glancing at Arthur’s suit.
“Just a job with a dress code,” said Eames, with a flash of white teeth that said Stop asking questions.
Pete did, although Eames thought the death glare Arthur was shooting him had a lot to do with that. With an offended sniff, Pete went back behind the counter.
Eames said, “Here. Vinegar on your chips, and stop looking at my old mentor as if you’re going to cut his jugular with a plastic knife.”
“He’s nosey,” said Arthur.
“He’s friendly,” Eames corrected.
“This is why I don’t tell people what I do,” Arthur informed him, and took a huge bite of fish.
“It’s easier to just pretend to be a chef?”
Arthur gave him a look that said, Of course, you idiot.
“Is there anyone who knows what you do?”
“You,” Arthur said, brandishing a chip before stuffing it in his mouth.
Eames considered that. He didn’t have anyone who he thought would really miss him, but he did have a lot of people who knew a lot about him. For a person who spent his life pretending to be someone else, Eames thought there were quite a lot of people who harbored no illusions about the quality of life he led.
Which was possibly why no one would really miss him if he disappeared.
“So where did Eames come from?” Arthur asked, swallowing.
Eames looked at him blankly.
“As an alias,” Arthur clarified.
“Me,” Eames said gruffly, because he didn’t want to get into that. “So now that you have gorged yourself on art and fried foods, let’s go over what we learned today.”
Arthur allowed the subject change, still steadily shoveling food into his mouth. “What was in your warehouse?”
“Headless dolls, of course. And don’t think you’re getting out of buying me all the vodka in the world.”
Arthur gave him a look, then turned his attention back to his fish and chips.
Eames said, “It was a theater. Sarah Miller was dressed as a ballerina. Moriarty was making her spin on the stage.”
“Ballet,” said Arthur reflectively, tipping his chair back. Eames watched the back legs creak worryingly on their fifty years of hard living. “She was a ballerina, before she joined MI-6. She had a late growth spurt and never quite regained her dancer’s sense of balance, so she never really excelled as much as she did before that. She eventually gave up the dream of dancing professionally.”
Eames stared at him, holding a bite of fish halfway to his mouth. It plopped off the cheap plastic fork.
Arthur said wryly, “Eames, if you’re not careful, you’ll get grease on that beautiful shirt and never be able to wear it again, and how would any of us cope with that tragedy?”
Eames ignored him. He retrieved the bite of fish and said, “How do you know all that?”
Arthur sighed, long-suffering. “Because I read the fucking file, Eames, because I’m a fucking professional and it’s my fucking job.”
“Well,” Eames said, a bit stung, “I forged Moriarty after only looking at him for a few minutes, so…you know.”
“That was the stupidest idea you’ve ever had,” Arthur snapped at him.
“Got her away from you, didn’t it?”
“And then she pulled your eyeball out of your head.”
“Sorry you had to witness that, but trust me, petal, it was worse from my perspective.” Eames paused. “No pun intended. Was that even a pun?”
Arthur wasn’t paying attention to him. Arthur, still tipped precariously back on his chair, had his notebook out and was scribbling in it, his fish and chips forgotten.
“Arthur, love, finish your food,” Eames said, annoyed with himself for having distracted Arthur too soon.
“In a bit,” Arthur replied, clearly not paying attention to him. “They were both special memories to her. The most special memories. That’s what she was warehousing.”
“Sarah Miller cherishes ballet and nightclubs. I may have just missed out on meeting my soul mate.”
“It was where she met her husband.”
“What?”
“The nightclub: it was where she met her husband. She was trying to protect the memory. She wiped her entire subconscious clean—destroyed it—made it a desolation—except for her two most precious memories. She couldn’t bear to get rid of them.”
“And Moriarty colonized them. But this girl is trained, Arthur. She knows what to do in a dream.”
“She can’t push him out.”
“Why not?”
“Because he got in. She was supposed to get into his brain, and he got into hers instead. He said it to me: like every mark I’d ever targeted suddenly showing up inside of me.”
“Arthur, if that happened, you’d wake yourself up.”
Arthur looked at him. “And stay awake forever? John Watson’s right: some people don’t want to dream.”
Eames considered. “So what you’re saying is he basically inceptioned himself into her head? Just like that?” Eames snapped his fingers. “We bloody almost killed ourselves getting an inception done, and he does it first try? What the bloody hell, Arthur? We should have got Moriarty on the inception job.”
“Yes, what that job definitely needed was more loose cannons,” drawled Arthur, tapping his pen against his notebook, chair still tilted backward.
“Can you…not do that with that chair?” Eames asked.
Arthur looked surprised. “What?”
Eames felt like an idiot. “The legs are going to snap.”
Arthur lifted his eyebrows, and Eames knew he was mother-henning to a ridiculous degree, but he put his chair back on level ground. “I thought you welcomed the opportunity to watch me lose my balance and go sprawling.”
“Not when I haven’t caused it,” said Eames lightly.
“So he’s getting into their heads. He’s destroying everything that they cherish about themselves. He leaves them a wasteland in his wake.” Arthur looked out the window at the growing darkness. “How?”
***
Arthur, back at the hotel suite, babbled on about how maybe they ought to go into an earlier victim’s brain, about how maybe Moriarty wouldn’t have perfected his attack then, or maybe they ought to stop by Baker Street and tell Sherlock what they knew and see what insights he had. Arthur checked his email, still speculating out loud about what they ought to do next, and then said, “Yusuf says there are no scholarly studies about dreamsharing drugs. Doesn’t that seem like an oversight?”
“On the part of criminals who are constantly switching residences and identities? Dreadful oversight that we haven’t developed respectable scholarship. I was just lamenting the other day how we’ve no endowed library.”
“Just because we’re criminals doesn’t mean we can’t be professional,” Arthur sniffed.
“The government probably has studies,” Eames said, studying their minibar critically.
“Good point,” Arthur allowed. “I’ll make a note of the second time you’ve made a good point in our acquaintance.”
“Did you email Yusuf?” Eames asked, kneeling by the minibar and beginning to pick its lock expertly.
“Best chemist I know.”
“I thought you didn’t trust him.”
“I’m not going under with him, I’m just asking him a question.”
“Well, speaking of people you keep in touch with,” Eames remarked, as the door opened for him.
There was a moment of silence. Eames listened hard to it. Arthur said, “Is this going to be about Cobb?”
“You text him weekly?” Eames said, and retrieved the bottle of vodka.
“We’re friends,” Arthur said shortly.
“Christ, your definition of friend is so alarming,” mocked Eames, and grabbed two glasses for them.
Arthur said, after a moment, “There’s a lot of— It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to justify it to you.”
“No, you don’t,” Eames agreed evenly, carrying the vodka over to the coffee table and sitting on the opposite couch. “But you should email him. He’s been around, a lot, and if anyone will have heard of the situation we’re dealing with here, it will be him.”
“I didn’t really want to get him involved. He’s got kids and…”
Eames poured the vodka. “I don’t disagree, but it’s an email, and you got Yusuf involved and he’s got a kid on the way. I’m all for anything that keeps us from ending up like crazy Sarah Miller. I rather like my dreams, thanks very much.” Eames handed Arthur a tumbler of vodka.
“What’s this?” Arthur asked, even as he accepted it.
“It’s vodka, darling. It’s a colorless, odorless alcohol commonly associated with Russia—”
“Did you steal this from the minibar?”
“Of course I did.”
“You were supposed to buy us vodka. That was the bet.”
“I’d rather make Mycroft Holmes buy us the vodka.”
“It’s really the British taxpayers.”
“Good thing I don’t pay taxes here,” rejoined Eames.
“Do you pay taxes anywhere?”
“I pay taxes in many places under many identities on all of my casino winnings.”
“From cheating.”
“At least I pay the taxes on all of it.”
Arthur shook his head a bit, lifted his vodka glass, and said, “To your health,” in flawless Russian.
And that was how it started.
How it ended was with the minibar decimated, the two of them on the floor leaning back against their opposite couches, and Arthur slurring, “Never have I ever dog-sat for a neighbor.”
Eames knocked back his tequila and said, “Seriously, darling? Dog-sitting?”
“She’s a nice, little, old lady,” Arthur said, in his defense.
“Who lives next door to a psychopath.”
“Hey.” Arthur pointed with his glass. “I take offense to that characterization of me.”
“Noted. You’re nothing at all like a psychopath. You’re just a…frighteningly capable criminal.”
“I don’t just murder people,” Arthur said, sounding genuinely offended. “I don’t just…murder people. Never have I ever killed someone who didn’t deserve it.” Arthur knocked back his tequila.
Eames refrained from pointing out that that’s what a murderer would say. He refilled both of their glasses. “Never have I ever sent out Christmas cards,” he said.
Arthur didn’t drink. He regarded Eames.
Eames said, “Aren’t you going to ask me who I send Christmas cards to?”
“I fucking hate killing people,” Arthur said. “I really do, Eames. I hate it.”
Arthur’s hair was in his face, and his tie had been abandoned, and his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and he looked drawn and anguished and fretful, and Eames said honestly, feeling for him, “I know you do, love.”
“No, I do,” Arthur insisted, as if Eames had just been humoring him.
“I know,” Eames agreed again, but Arthur talked over him.
“I just…don’t know why…” Arthur tipped his head back against the couch. “Why does everyone hate me?”
Eames stared at him. “Who hates you?”
“Everyone. That’s why I have to kill people, because people are always trying to kill me, and I don’t get why. I try to be…” Arthur shifted his head on the couch so he could look at Eames. “Aren’t I fair?”
“You’re incredibly fair,” Eames told him gently, trying to pretend like he wasn’t experiencing all manner of irrational heartache here. “And that’s why people hate you.”
“I’ve never learned the trick,” Arthur said. “I wish you could teach me it. You make me so fucking jealous; I can’t stand you.”
“What trick?” Eames asked blankly.
“The trick of making people like you. I don’t know that trick.”
Eames looked at him for a moment and thought of all the words he longed to say but felt so permanently incapable of saying, so damn frozen in the face of how much he meant it, more than he’d ever meant anything in his life. Eames didn’t know how to say things that meant something, he only knew how to play the role. And Eames wanted to take Arthur and bundle him up and tell him that it didn’t matter, he liked him enough for all the people in the world, and this was Arthur, Arthur who would have been like trying to bundle up a snarling, rabid tiger.
Eames swallowed and said, “Okay. I think we’ve had enough,” and meant so much by that as he carefully took Arthur’s glass out of his hand.
“We didn’t finish the game,” Arthur protested.
“Yes, we did.” Eames stood and pulled Arthur up to standing.
“I was going to beat you,” said Arthur blurrily.
“You did,” Eames assured him, pulling him toward the bedroom.
“I didn’t,” Arthur complained. “I never do. I never… You always… Fuck you,” Arthur finished, and Eames nudged him easily backward onto the bed.
“Yes,” Eames agreed, pulling his shoes off. “That’s usually what it comes to between us, isn’t it?”
“But I don’t want it to,” Arthur said, sounding frustrated. “I don’t know why I…I just hate you so much sometimes.”
“That feeling is entirely mutual, love,” Eames remarked drily and leaned over him. “Listen to me. You’ve got to sleep this off, and you’re going to feel better about everything in the morning, yeah?”
“Did you get me drunk?” Arthur accused, with a flash of anger that was a shadow of what it would normally be.
“Not intentionally, but I don’t expect you to believe that. Go to sleep, love.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said suddenly.
“For what?” Eames asked, honestly perplexed.
“For being terrible to you.”
“You’re really not, darling. Stop talking now.”
“I am. You try to be so nice. You try to make me laugh. You call me ‘darling.’ You’re going to steal me a Titian.”
Eames stared down at Arthur, whose eyes were drifting closed, and he felt hot and cold and fully unable to breathe. Once, in a museum where he’d been stealing something, the guard had walked by unscheduled, and Eames had frozen into a dark corner, and this felt alarmingly like that. Eames said what he thought he shouldn’t say. He leaned down and said, “Arthur, I’m going to tell you a very important secret, only because you’re never going to remember any of this in the morning.”
Arthur made a soft, inquisitive noise that made Eames squeeze his eyes shut against the temptation to fall into bed with Arthur and kiss the words right into his mouth. “I think you’re delightful, and I like you quite a lot.”
Arthur’s eyes opened, focusing in lopsided drunkenness on Eames, and he grinned, wide and sloppy, full of dimples, and Eames thought he’d say it a million more times if it would provoke Arthur grinning at him like that. “I like you, too,” he said. “You’re nice.” Eames was decidedly not nice. Eames was the opposite of nice. Eames had no idea what to make of Arthur, of all people, thinking he was nice. And then Arthur closed his eyes and started snoring.
“Oh, darling,” Eames sighed. “You’re such a puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a very expensive, very attractive suit.” And then, figuring he’d never again get the opportunity, brushed Arthur’s tumbled curls back and kissed his forehead.
***
Arthur woke feeling like a truck had hit him. His totem came up four, twice, so apparently this was reality. Fuck reality, thought Arthur, and took the aspirin he found on the nightstand. Then he dragged himself out of the bed and into the living area, where he found Eames snoring loudly on a couch while surrounded by empty liquor bottles. And the thing about that was that it was entirely, incredibly revolting and yet Arthur wanted to crawl onto Eames’s fucking chest and go back to sleep on him, just for a little while.
Arthur took a shower instead. Well, he turned the shower on and then he crawled into the tub and curled into a ball and tried to think. Vodka, he thought. And then bourbon. And then tequila. And maybe rum. Oh, Christ, had there been rum, too? He was going to fucking kill Eames. He had no memory of how he’d gotten to bed, only the very foggiest memory of the tequila bottle being opened and then it all being a lost cause after that. Eames had apparently been smoking him in Never Have I Ever, because how else had Eames had enough wherewithal to open more alcohol? And whose fucking idea had it been to play a drinking game anyway? Like they were in fucking college?
“Fuck,” said Arthur, out loud, recalling that it had been his idea, and then he decided that he wanted to just stay in the shower for a thousand years.
He did something that resembled combing his hair, and then he contemplated his clothing, couldn’t handle dealing with any of it, and instead stole a pair of Eames’s sweatpants, topping it with one of his own plain white undershirts. The sweatpants were hopelessly too big, but he didn’t care because it was definitely that kind of fucking day.
Eames was awake when Arthur trailed into the living area, flipping steadily through the channels on their television.
“I hate you,” Arthur informed him, “with the magnitude of at least a thousand suns.”
“Arthur,” said Eames, and his voice sounded positively chocolate with glee. “What are you wearing?”
“Shut,” Arthur told him, curling onto the empty couch, “up.”
“This is the best day of my entire life,” Eames said reverently.
“I am going to shoot you so many times when I get my gun back,” Arthur told him, closing his eyes. “I am just going to pump bullets into your lifeless body.”
Eames was silent in an odd way Arthur didn’t like.
He opened his eyes again and looked at him. “What?”
“I’d never try to kill you,” Eames blurted out suddenly.
Arthur blinked, surprised. “What?”
“You know that, right? I mean, fuck all the rest of it, all of the other complications we keep adding to— I’d never try to kill you. I’m not one of those people you need to watch out for, Arthur.”
“Okay,” Arthur said, bewildered, because he’d always thought himself pretty confident of that. “I don’t… Okay.”
Eames nodded, as if satisfied, and turned back to the television.
Arthur wondered what odd exchange they’d just had and if he should close the circle. “And you know I’m not…serious when I say I’m going to shoot you.”
“Not outside of a dream,” Eames said, with a faint smile.
Arthur felt relieved to be back on more normal ground for them. “You frequently deserve it in a dream.”
“So what shall we do today, pet?” asked Eames.
“We’re going to Baker Street to consult with our chemist,” said Arthur.
“Are you going in my sweatpants?” inquired Eames, with delight.
“Of course not. I’m going to get up and get properly dressed.”
“Any minute now,” said Eames, with gentle mockery.
“Shut up,” Arthur told him again. Not exactly his most sparkling repartee but he couldn’t help it. “You cheated at Never Have I Ever.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“‘Never have I ever forged a ten-year-old girl.’ Seriously, Eames?”
“Well, you did ‘Never have I ever paid more than ten dollars for a shirt.’”
“How was I supposed to know you’d never spent more than ten dollars on a shirt?” protested Arthur.
“You see my shirts! You’re constantly complaining about my shirts!”
“I don’t understand why you’re so fucking cheap when you could make yourself all the counterfeit money in the world to buy nice shirts.”
“It’s not about the expense, Arthur, it’s about the thrill of the hunt. Finding the bargain.”
“Those shirts are not a bargain for those of us who have to look at them on you all the time.”
“If I walked around shirtless all the time, you’d be too distracted, love.”
Because that was true, Arthur changed the subject. “We weren’t even playing the game right,” Arthur informed him. “I think you’re supposed to drink if you have done it, not if you’ve never done it.”
There was a moment of silence. “If you have done the thing that the other person has never done?” Eames asked, to clarify.
Arthur honestly couldn’t fucking remember. “Tell me about this stupid Korean drama you’re watching,” he said, to change the subject.
“Oh, darling, I thought you’d never ask!” exclaimed Eames.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-01-09 11:18 am (UTC)Ha ha! I loved your exposition on the costs of shirts and suits - brilliant!
This was a great sort of 'bonding' scene; even if they were too drunk to know it - it's good to see Arthur finally relaxing (sort of!).
no subject
Date: 2015-01-20 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-11 10:59 pm (UTC)I don't know the drinking game, and I have no idea when they were supposed to drink, but since they both got plastered they were probably doing it right!
no subject
Date: 2015-01-20 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-16 10:33 pm (UTC)I... I can't imagine such a fic. This Universe would be too Alternative to me! :D
Probably you need the really expensive suit to fit your enormous penis. <--analysis Eames agrees with
But, given Eames's cheap suits, what does that say about his penis?
“As an alias,” Arthur clarified.
“Me,” Eames said gruffly, because he didn’t want to get into that.
You teaser! I suspect you'll tell us more about that later.
And Eames wanted to take Arthur and bundle him up and tell him that it didn’t matter, he liked him enough for all the people in the world
Aww.
“I am. You try to be so nice. You try to make me laugh. You call me ‘darling.’ You’re going to steal me a Titian.”
It's so cute that a part of Arthur's brain believes that Eames was serious about that and is really going to steal a Titian for him, and that that comes up again when he's drunk. Also, that shows that he trusts Eames inconditionally and thinks Eames can do anything. (At least that's how I see it. Please don't rain on my mushy parade.) Also, vulnerable-because-tipsy!Arthur is adorable.
“I think you’re delightful, and I like you quite a lot.”
[...]
“I like you, too,” he said. “You’re nice.”
That's a lovely, er, declaration of like. I can't wait to read the declaration of love!
no subject
Date: 2015-01-18 03:37 am (UTC)You are absolutely right about Arthur. His adoration of Eames is blinding, he does think he can do anything in the universe. When he's not drunk, that mostly manifests itself in Arthur's enormous trust in Eames when it comes to jobs, but when he's drunk, it's leaking out all over the place. Arthur desperately wants Eames to sweep him off his feet, Arthur's terribly romantic and wants to be romanced, and he wants that Titian very badly, underneath it all, in the lovesick part of himself that's most evident when he's drunk with his guard down.