Keep the Car Running (24/31)
Feb. 25th, 2015 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Keep the Car Running (24/31)
Author - 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 24
They ate in bed. This was Eames’s idea, because Eames was terrified that Arthur might come to his senses if Eames let him out of bed. Eames wanted to delay Arthur coming to his senses for as long as he possibly could. He was going to attempt to keep Arthur naked and in bed for the foreseeable future. If he thought he could do it for the rest of their lives, he would. And so far Arthur was complying. Arthur muttered something like, “This is ridiculous,” but Arthur also propped up his pillow and settled his plate of omelet on his lap, cutting it primly into pieces.
Eames watched him and mopped up yolk with a piece of toast and tried to come up with something witty to say, something that would distract Arthur, keep him from saying, Well, this was fun, but we should get to work, shouldn’t we?
Arthur said, concentrating on his omelet, “How’d you know about the engineering?”
Eames had no idea what he was talking about. “Sorry?”
“The engineering.” Arthur glanced at him before taking a bite. “How’d you know?”
“I…don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eames admitted.
“Before, you said that I was, you know, attractive when I was engineering.”
“Attractive?” Eames cocked an eyebrow at him, amused at the red tips of his ears. “I believe I said you were—”
“I paraphrased,” Arthur informed him.
Eames grinned. “You were doing the little engineering bit right in front of me, fiddling around with that wire. It was hot.”
Arthur looked at him steadily enough that Eames said, confused, “What?”
“You really don’t know. You just happened to choose that word.”
“Arthur, darling, I love a bit of mystery as much as the next person, but I don’t know—”
“You said I was engineering. So I thought you knew. That I was going to be an engineer.”
Eames was stunned momentarily speechless by this unprecedented tidbit of personal information. It shimmered in the air between them, crystalline and delicate. Eames swallowed and tried to think how to respond so as not to scare Arthur out of this sharing mood. “Oh,” he said, and then thought sarcastically, Yeah, brilliant response, glad you came up with that.
Arthur smiled at him, a small smile, just a hint of dimples.
Eames struggled to say something halfway intelligent. “What kind of engineer?”
Arthur answered, “I never decided between mechanical and electrical.”
“Why didn’t you ever decide?”
“Because I dropped out of college before I had to decide.”
“Why did you drop out of college?” Eames felt like he was pushing his luck with the number of questions he was asking, but he also felt greedy, wanted as much of Arthur as Arthur was willing to give him.
“Because I got involved in dreamsharing,” Arthur answered simply, focused on his omelet.
Eames considered, then went for broke. “How?” He’d discovered over the years that no one really knew how Arthur had got involved in dreamsharing. Arthur’s origin stories were the stuff of legend. Eames had laughed himself silly over many an outlandish tale.
Arthur said, “I had a job in a coffee shop,” and Eames had definitely never heard this one before. “The best coffee shop in Iowa City.”
“Lot of competition for that title in Iowa City, is there?” Eames couldn’t resist asking.
“Have you ever been to Iowa City?”
“That one’s still on my bucket list.”
“Then you have no valid opinions on Iowa City.”
“All this time, I thought you were this true romantic in love with Paris, when in fact it’s Iowa City with its teeth in your heart.”
“Do you want to hear this story or not?” Arthur asked, sounding fondly exasperated (although maybe that was in Eames’s head).
“I want to hear the story. Tell me. Coffee shop, Iowa City, you. See, Iowa City’s already sounding better.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, and Eames loved so much when Arthur did that that he had to bite his tongue to keep himself from rolling onto Arthur and devouring him. “Mal came in one day. She had a job nearby. You know Mal. She was Mal. She was like nothing else in Iowa City. She was French. She was so exotic I couldn’t stand it. She came in almost every day and I made her all of these ridiculous coffee drinks to try to impress her and by the end of the week she said, ‘Arthur. You are bored here, no? You are made for bigger things, brighter lights, places where the laws of physics are mere suggestions and you can design all the logic you wish.’” Arthur fell silent, looking a little wistful, clearly seeing a time and a place so far away that the primary occupant—Mal—was no longer around to remember it with him.
After a second, Eames ventured carefully, “Is that a paraphrase?”
Arthur shook himself out of his introspection and refocused on Eames, smiling a little. “No, that was a direct quote. I will never forget that because it changed my life.”
“Christ, she knew you, didn’t she? After one week. You’ve got to be the only person ever seduced into dreamsharing with the promise of logic.”
“Mal read people well.” Arthur put his finished plate on the nightstand and slid down, propping himself onto his elbow. He looked as if he was settling into position on his half of the bed, and Eames was pleased at that. “She thought you two were kindred spirits, you know. She was the one always pushing for you in the early days. Dom and I would moan and complain about you, and Mal would wax poetic about your artistic temperament and your commitment to the role. It was all nonsense.”
“Clearly she just had a good eye,” sniffed Eames, around his flash of regret. Because he had known Mal professionally but he had never been close to her, not the way he had known Arthur was even before he had known this background bit, and now he was sorry that he would never get the chance, had never known that she had even liked him.
Arthur smiled at him, which derailed all of Eames’s thoughts for a second.
“So she said, ‘Come with me, we’ll do great things together,’ and you went?” said Eames eventually.
Arthur was silent for a second. He rolled onto his back and thought. And just as Eames was starting to worry he wouldn’t answer, he said, simply, “Yes.” There was another long silence, and Eames was just about to shift the conversational topic when Arthur said, “I wanted out so badly. All my life, I’d wanted out. And I think I was just finally tired of feeling guilty about it. She was from Paris. The Paris of my dreams. I took it as a sign. I did my first dreamshare and I was fucking useless, but it was like opening a door and finding your favorite chair already sitting in the living room. Mal took me to Paris that very night.”
Eames looked at Arthur, smiling up at the ceiling at the recollection, clearly lost in that time when Mal had still been Mal and not a dream-twisted version of herself. He said, “So you knew Mal first.” Because he’d never heard an origin story get that right.
Arthur nodded. “I was Mal’s friend. Mal knew Dom, and I met Dom through her. Mal was totally smitten with Dom. It was love at first sight for those two. I can’t tell you how much time I spent listening to her swoon over Dom Cobb.”
“So you ran off with an exotic French woman you barely knew in order to become a criminal and you told your family you’d become a chef?”
“Now you know why I can’t have accountant as a cover story. At least, not a cover story attached to my real name. I never graduated from college.”
“I could forge you a diploma,” Eames offered.
Arthur’s dimples flashed. “Thanks, but then I’d get hell for not inviting them to the graduation. ‘Chef’ was easier.”
“You’re a good enough cook to get them to believe that?” asked Eames, intrigued. He’d never had fantasies about Arthur cooking for him, but now he was. A lot.
“I’ve always been a decent cook, and I have parents who are willing to always believe the best of me, unfortunately for them. It was a good cover story to excuse away my lack of interest in finishing college, in a way few other careers I could pretend at would be. I said I was a private chef working for wealthy patrons, so they didn’t get suspicious while I traveled the world. And I send them postcards and souvenirs and hope that I don’t get killed and leave my family with never another word from me, with them never knowing what happened to me, totally convinced I’m just a golden child making his name in the world. So yeah, basically I’m the world’s worst son.” Arthur said it lightly, but he was staring up at the ceiling and he looked displeased.
Eames said, “You’re not just good at being a point man. You’re the best. You are literally the acknowledged best at what you do, even by your enemies. You’re not the world’s worst anything. You’re just who you are. And you’re definitely not the world’s worst son. I’ve met bad sons. You’re not even close.”
Arthur shook his head a little. “I didn’t mean to turn this into…this.”
Eames ignored him and said, “You promised Mal you’d take care of Dom.” The realization came so suddenly that Eames almost felt like he’d always known it. Of course, now Arthur’s behavior made perfect sense.
Arthur nodded. “Ages ago. By then Mal had had the kids, and she was taking fewer jobs, and Dom and I had realized that we worked well together.”
“Or Dom realized Mal had dropped a gem in his lap and decided to tie you close to him,” said Eames, possibly a little bitterly, but his views on Dom were…complicated.
“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t anything planned. It just happened. We were a good team, no more, no less.”
Eames privately had another opinion on that, but he kept his face expressionless and Arthur, as he’d hoped, went on.
“So Mal told me to look out for him. I’m sure she asked the same thing of Dom when it came to me.”
And Eames had an opinion on that, too, but bit his tongue. Instead he said, “You believed Dom’s story?”
Arthur turned his head and looked at Eames evenly. His eyes were unreadable and his face was expressionless as he said, “Did you think he killed her, when you heard?”
And Eames had the impression that this question was a test he had to carefully pass, but he had no idea what to say to achieve that. So he told the truth. “I didn’t know what the hell to think. The rumors coming out in those days about the Cobbs were all over the place. But you stuck by him, and I knew you wouldn’t have if he’d killed her, so I followed your lead on that.”
“I could have been in on it,” Arthur suggested, still flat and inscrutable.
“Arthur,” said Eames, and wrapped his name in fondness, swamped it with affection, because he couldn’t help it. “You don’t kill people like that, love. I know you pretend to, but you don’t. She’d never crossed you. In fact, from everything I’d ever heard, she adored you and trusted you and you never betray that, ever.”
Arthur blinked, his eyes dark, and still Eames had no clue what was going on in that head.
Eames added, “Plus, you wouldn’t have left that crime scene a mess; you would have cleaned it up.”
Arthur smiled, just a little bit, too sad for dimples, but at least it was a reaction. Eames decided he didn’t want Arthur expressionless, ever. It was how Arthur was professionally, even-keeled and reactionless, and now that Eames had ruffled him as much as he had, he was addicted to the rush of it, to the Arthurness of the Arthur that had emerged from all of it, this Arthur sharing confessions naked in bed with him.
Arthur said, not really looking at Eames as he said it, “Mal had been…deteriorating…for a while. We were trying to get to her, all of us. She just…thought we were making everything up. She thought she’d dreamed me. You’d think that’d be incredibly flattering. ‘Oh, Arthur, you’re just my ideal gay best friend.’ As if I were that perfect. Because in the end the perfect fucking gay best friend couldn’t stop any of it, and it was so disconcerting, so fucking awful, to just be told you’re a dream, to be dismissed as…I fucking hate the idea of dreams come true, Eames, they’re terrifying.”
Eames didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say to that.
Arthur said, on a sigh, “So no, I never thought, even for a second, that Dom had killed Mal. Because I knew the headspace Mal had been in. And all I could remember was that I’d promised her—when she knew I was a real person and not a dream—that I would take care of Dom for her. And I liked Dom, anyway. It wasn’t like it was all obligation. We were friends, and he went to pieces, and I know you don’t like him but he would have done the same for me. And I know he went crazy on that inception job, but, I don’t know, he was trying to get his kids back and they’re great kids, so, I don’t know.”
Eames looked at Arthur and felt the weight of the million secrets Arthur had just shared with him. Arthur wasn’t looking at him. Arthur was looking everywhere but at him. He looked uncharacteristically uncertain, like he didn’t know how any of what he’d just said was going to be received.
And Eames heard himself say, “I have no idea who my father is.”
Arthur looked at him then, surprise evident on his face.
Eames continued in an unthinking rush. “I know dreamsharing thinks it’s this big secret I’m keeping to myself, but the truth is I have no idea who he is. I never met him. I’m not even sure my mother knew who he was.”
Arthur said, “You don’t have to—”
But it seemed suddenly the absolute right thing to do. Arthur had gone for broke with him just now, and there was no way Eames wasn’t going to respond to that. And, anyway, Eames wanted to. All of the myths and legends of a forger’s life, and Eames just wanted one person to know all of it. “I have no idea why she even bothered to have me, I really don’t. And I have no idea how I survived my infancy.”
“You were cunning,” said Arthur, after a moment. “I bet you were a cunning infant. I bet you came out of the womb with some kind of con already in place. You probably pickpocketed the nurse who delivered you.”
Eames chuckled, because he appreciated Arthur’s effort. “She died when I was eight, and then I took to the streets, and I know this all sounds like something out of bloody Oliver Twist.”
“I hate Dickens,” Arthur said with feeling.
“That’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me, pet,” Eames informed him.
Arthur smiled at him, then said, “You don’t have to tell me all this.”
“Because you already know?” Because Eames suspected Arthur did.
Arthur shook his head. “Because it doesn’t matter.”
“Why did you tell me about Mal and the coffee shop in Iowa City?”
“Because no one knows about that anymore, and I wanted someone to.”
It was so similar to what Eames had been thinking, with telling Arthur his background, that for a second Eames couldn’t think of what to say next. And then he said, “When I was a kid, one of my marks was into modern furniture, and I thought his flat was amazing: I’d never seen anything like it. The way you dreamed about Paris? I dreamed of a flat like that. Of making it like that. Of being grown up and rich and not worrying about anything. It was…the pinnacle. And he had this chair, I was basically in love with this chair, the way you fall in love with the first brush of luxury as a child. And I remember him saying to me—looking at me and saying to me, ‘That’s an Eames lounge. Don’t fucking go near it because it’s worth more than your life.’ A chair. It was a bloody fucking chair and he said it was worth more than my entire life. An Eames lounge.”
There was a moment of silence. Eames wondered wildly why he’d told that story. He’d chosen his name so long ago, and he’d never told anyone why he’d chosen it, had allowed all the swirl of speculation about it, because he didn’t want to say that he’d chosen it because an unfeeling mark had hurt his adolescent feelings.
“What happened to the mark?” asked Arthur.
“I cleaned out his savings.”
“Good,” said Arthur.
“And then I went and learned everything I could about art and found the love of my life, so it all worked out.”
“The love of your life?” Arthur asked it with satisfying swiftness.
“Art,” Eames told him, carefully not smiling.
“Ah,” said Arthur. “Yes. I could see that. And that’s how you got into art forgery?”
“I was always good at mimicry, which was useful for pulling a con, and I also liked drawing, so it wasn’t much of a leap. I turned out to be good at it, plus I really loved art, so that encouraged some very brilliant old masters of the whole thing to give me lessons.” Eames tried to be casual about it, tried not to make it sound like a big deal, even though the discovery of his love of art had been the beginning of his leap from petty crime to the point where he ended up seeing the world with a ton of money hidden in various bank accounts. “And from them I developed a reputation, and so for a little while I was just a forger of great art, and then it was only after that that someone asked me if I’d ever tried dream forgery, and then that was how that whole thing happened.” Eames paused. “And then, many years later, I bought myself my own Eames lounge.”
“Good for you.” Arthur sounded pleased, and also like he somehow understood that Eames had made it sound like it had been nothing when it had been an entire lifetime’s worth of difference that had led to him meeting Arthur in the first place. After a silent moment, Arthur said, “How old were you, with that mark with the Eames lounge?”
“Christ, I don’t even know.” Eames tried to recall. “Twelve? Thirteen?”
“So he told a thirteen-year-old kid that his chair was worth more? Do you remember his name?”
Eames grinned at him around the odd, ridiculous tightness in his chest that was probably the start of a heart attack. “Arthur, darling, you’ve got that look in your eye.”
“What look?”
“That ‘I must right a wrong in the universe, go and fetch me a gun’ look.”
“Well,” said Arthur, and tried to shrug.
“I love that look,” said Eames, still grinning, and rolled on top of him because he couldn’t maintain the distance anymore, he wanted to press Arthur to every part of him. If he could have opened his chest and tucked Arthur inside, he would have, just to ease the ache there. “You’re ridiculously hot when you’re feeling vengeful.”
“Is that why you try to provoke me so much?”
Eames couldn’t help the delight that flooded him, because he just loved it when Arthur bantered like this, loved it when he teased and Arthur teased back. He had always loved it but he loved it more when Arthur did it in bed, with a hand wandering down Eames’s bare back, with a softness around his eyes that Eames never usually saw there. He just bloody loved Arthur, he knew, and he wasn’t going to stop, he wasn’t going to hit bottom, he was just going to keep falling, for the rest of his life. He pressed his face against Arthur’s neck so Arthur wouldn’t see his expression and said, “I love to vex you,” and if it came out a bit rougher than was necessary, then Eames tried to cover it with a swipe of his tongue along Arthur’s skin.
“I’ve noticed.”
“You’re so delicious when you’re vexed,” Eames informed him, and bit down on his collarbone. “I secretly love it when things go all pear-shaped and you get vexed and have to wave your gun around.” Eames lifted his head and looked down at him. “Not a euphemism,” he clarified.
Arthur flipped them, and Eames let him because it was hardly a hardship to let Arthur stretch out solidly on top of him. And Arthur said sheepishly, “I own an Eames lounge, too.”
Eames blinked up at him in astonishment. “Don’t tease me,” he managed.
“I’m not.” Arthur was blushing, that delightful blush Eames was never going to get enough of. “I don’t own it because of you. I own it because I like it.”
“Oh my God, you bought my chair,” said Eames gleefully.
“No, I didn’t. Not like that.”
“Tell me, what naughty things do you get up to in your Eames lounge?”
“I don’t know how you ever get anybody to sleep with you; you have the worst fucking lines.”
“I have good fucking other things,” said Eames.
“My verdict’s still out,” said Arthur primly.
“Let me make another argument,” Eames said. “I don’t think you’ve seen my best closing yet.”
Arthur groaned, but he did it directly into Eames’s shoulder, so Eames was totally okay with that groan. “You have never met a metaphor you didn’t want to beat to death, have you?”
“Gentleman of the jury,” said Eames, enjoying himself. “Order in the court.”
“Just because you say them lasciviously doesn’t make them clever double entendres, you know.”
“‘Lasciviously,’” repeated Eames. “Say that again.”
“Shut up,” said Arthur, lifting his head up.
“Is this where I say ‘make me’?”
“This is where you shut up,” said Arthur, “Christ,” and kissed him hard, and Eames messed up Arthur’s hair even more than it already was and adjusted his hold on him, enjoying the sensation of arousal clicking its way into place, the thickening of blood and the springing of sweat and the harshness of breath.
Arthur said breathlessly, as he closed his teeth into Eames’s neck and Eames hissed out a swear, “It suits you.”
“What?” gasped Eames, no longer following the thread of conversation.
“Your name.” Arthur panted it into Eames’s mouth. “Eames. It suits you. It was a good choice.”
And Eames heard himself say, utterly compliant, he would have said anything at that moment, this was the danger of Arthur, this had always been the danger of Arthur, “My actual name is—”
And Arthur swallowed his name into a kiss, and when he pulled back he murmured, “That I already know.”
“Show-off,” said Eames.
“All rise,” said Arthur, and then, “That’s another court double entendre, get it?”
Bloody Christ, thought Eames, staring up in astonishment at the sight of Arthur, disheveled and grinning and making terrible jokes at him. Arthur was going to be the absolute death of him. “Shut the bloody hell up,” growled Eames, because he couldn’t stand it.
“Kettle,” said Arthur, and smiled into the kiss.
***
Arthur woke up from a doze to Eames sprawled half on top of him, face mashed into Arthur’s shoulder. It should have been incredibly uncomfortable—and it actually was—but Arthur was love-addled enough to just find it charming. Eames could have woken up and said, Arthur, love, while you were sleeping I cleaned out every hidden bank account you have and turned you in to the police, and Arthur would have found it charming. Arthur found himself frankly sickening.
He brushed Eames’s tumbled hair out of his face anyway.
He really wanted to pause and rain kisses onto every bit of Eames’s skin he could reach. Not with intent—Arthur felt a bit like he couldn’t handle another orgasm at the moment—but chastely, possessively, just so he could say that he’d kissed every bit of Eames’s skin, just so he could cherish it as a personal achievement. But if he did that, Eames would wake up and ask him what he was doing, and it was fine to think that Arthur was up for a bit of fun and even okay to think that Arthur was in the habit of sharing post-coital confessions, but Arthur couldn’t abide the idea of Eames realizing how hopelessly, stupidly, ridiculously in love Arthur was with him. He could envision Eames’s expression shifting into pity and it made him shudder with horror.
So he lay there for a bit and let Eames half-suffocate him and let himself be sickeningly smitten with the entire situation.
And then, eventually, he sighed and tried to wriggle his way out.
Eames made a protesting noise that sounded like it could have come from a six-year-old and immediately pulled Arthur back in. “Where are you going?” he mumbled into Arthur’s skin, using a sloppy, sleepy, half-hearted kiss to his shoulder as punctuation.
“I’m taking a shower,” Arthur informed him. “I’m totally disgusting.”
“No, you’re not,” Eames denied.
“Yes, I am.”
“Okay, fine,” Eames allowed. “But if you clean yourself up, then I’ll have to clean myself up, too.”
“That’s the general idea,” Arthur agreed dryly.
There was a very long moment of silence, and then Eames said, “You can have the first shower,” and moved entirely off of Arthur and then even shifted position on the bed to sprawl with his back facing him.
For a second, Arthur looked at the broad (and tattooed) expanse of Eames’s back and hesitated. Was Eames mad? But about what? It made no sense.
Arthur gave up ever trying to understand Eames and got out of bed and studied his clothing options. He chose the suit with care, partly because he always chose his clothing with care and partly because he wanted to find something Eames would like, because Arthur had lost his mind.
He stood in the shower and washed Eames off of him and had a moment of sudden, blinding panic where he actually breathed aloud, “What are you doing?”
Because he’d woken up in bed with Eames. He’d had Eames. And Eames was going to walk away soon enough and why the fuck was Arthur helping him do it? Why wasn’t Arthur doing everything in his power to keep him there as long as he could manage, before he had to lose it all again?
Arthur donned the three-piece suit, tied his tie in a careful, perfect knot, slicked back his hair, and regarded the outcome in the mirror. He looked exactly the way he always looked. You would never know he’d just finally gotten the love of his life into bed.
The bedroom was empty when Arthur got out of the bathroom, so he walked into the living area, where Eames was sprawled on one of the couches, watching television. He’d pulled on clothing sloppily: sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt that Arthur would have thrown out rather than ever consider wearable. And he’d combed his hair a bit; it was in less disarray.
He said, “My turn?” without looking at Arthur.
Arthur retrieved his notebook and turned back to Eames, who had now stood and was heading toward the bedroom. “Eames,” Arthur said.
Eames glanced over his shoulder, registered the notebook. “I understand that we just wasted a bunch of time, but can you at least wait until after I shower before we jump back in?”
Arthur shook his head and walked over to Eames. “I want you to draw.”
Eames took the notebook Arthur handed out in an automatic gesture, looking honestly quizzical. “Draw what?”
“Me.”
Eames was plainly startled. “You?”
“You’re good at it. I’ve seen your sketch of Mycroft. It was an uncanny likeness.”
“Yes,” Eames agreed, sounding confused. “That’s what I do. I do likenesses. But I don’t—”
“I want you to draw me.” Arthur wasn’t entirely sure where this driving desire of his was coming from, just that he badly wanted to see what he looked like through Eames’s eyes. “I want you to draw me, and then I want you to unwrap me like a present, and then I want you to fuck me until I forget who I am, until all I can remember is you.”
Eames’s eyes went dark, pupils blowing wide, and Arthur marveled over the fact that he now knew exactly what Eames looked like in the millisecond before he pounced on you. “That can be arranged,” said Eames, clearly trying for casual and getting nowhere near it, his voice low and husky and Arthur could have shivered from Eames’s voice alone, it was the equivalent of a caress to him.
Eames went to reach for him and Arthur drew on reserves of strength—who would have ever predicted that he would be able to stop Eames from reaching for him?—and lifted his hand and blocked him and said, “Draw me first.”
Author - 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 24
They ate in bed. This was Eames’s idea, because Eames was terrified that Arthur might come to his senses if Eames let him out of bed. Eames wanted to delay Arthur coming to his senses for as long as he possibly could. He was going to attempt to keep Arthur naked and in bed for the foreseeable future. If he thought he could do it for the rest of their lives, he would. And so far Arthur was complying. Arthur muttered something like, “This is ridiculous,” but Arthur also propped up his pillow and settled his plate of omelet on his lap, cutting it primly into pieces.
Eames watched him and mopped up yolk with a piece of toast and tried to come up with something witty to say, something that would distract Arthur, keep him from saying, Well, this was fun, but we should get to work, shouldn’t we?
Arthur said, concentrating on his omelet, “How’d you know about the engineering?”
Eames had no idea what he was talking about. “Sorry?”
“The engineering.” Arthur glanced at him before taking a bite. “How’d you know?”
“I…don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eames admitted.
“Before, you said that I was, you know, attractive when I was engineering.”
“Attractive?” Eames cocked an eyebrow at him, amused at the red tips of his ears. “I believe I said you were—”
“I paraphrased,” Arthur informed him.
Eames grinned. “You were doing the little engineering bit right in front of me, fiddling around with that wire. It was hot.”
Arthur looked at him steadily enough that Eames said, confused, “What?”
“You really don’t know. You just happened to choose that word.”
“Arthur, darling, I love a bit of mystery as much as the next person, but I don’t know—”
“You said I was engineering. So I thought you knew. That I was going to be an engineer.”
Eames was stunned momentarily speechless by this unprecedented tidbit of personal information. It shimmered in the air between them, crystalline and delicate. Eames swallowed and tried to think how to respond so as not to scare Arthur out of this sharing mood. “Oh,” he said, and then thought sarcastically, Yeah, brilliant response, glad you came up with that.
Arthur smiled at him, a small smile, just a hint of dimples.
Eames struggled to say something halfway intelligent. “What kind of engineer?”
Arthur answered, “I never decided between mechanical and electrical.”
“Why didn’t you ever decide?”
“Because I dropped out of college before I had to decide.”
“Why did you drop out of college?” Eames felt like he was pushing his luck with the number of questions he was asking, but he also felt greedy, wanted as much of Arthur as Arthur was willing to give him.
“Because I got involved in dreamsharing,” Arthur answered simply, focused on his omelet.
Eames considered, then went for broke. “How?” He’d discovered over the years that no one really knew how Arthur had got involved in dreamsharing. Arthur’s origin stories were the stuff of legend. Eames had laughed himself silly over many an outlandish tale.
Arthur said, “I had a job in a coffee shop,” and Eames had definitely never heard this one before. “The best coffee shop in Iowa City.”
“Lot of competition for that title in Iowa City, is there?” Eames couldn’t resist asking.
“Have you ever been to Iowa City?”
“That one’s still on my bucket list.”
“Then you have no valid opinions on Iowa City.”
“All this time, I thought you were this true romantic in love with Paris, when in fact it’s Iowa City with its teeth in your heart.”
“Do you want to hear this story or not?” Arthur asked, sounding fondly exasperated (although maybe that was in Eames’s head).
“I want to hear the story. Tell me. Coffee shop, Iowa City, you. See, Iowa City’s already sounding better.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, and Eames loved so much when Arthur did that that he had to bite his tongue to keep himself from rolling onto Arthur and devouring him. “Mal came in one day. She had a job nearby. You know Mal. She was Mal. She was like nothing else in Iowa City. She was French. She was so exotic I couldn’t stand it. She came in almost every day and I made her all of these ridiculous coffee drinks to try to impress her and by the end of the week she said, ‘Arthur. You are bored here, no? You are made for bigger things, brighter lights, places where the laws of physics are mere suggestions and you can design all the logic you wish.’” Arthur fell silent, looking a little wistful, clearly seeing a time and a place so far away that the primary occupant—Mal—was no longer around to remember it with him.
After a second, Eames ventured carefully, “Is that a paraphrase?”
Arthur shook himself out of his introspection and refocused on Eames, smiling a little. “No, that was a direct quote. I will never forget that because it changed my life.”
“Christ, she knew you, didn’t she? After one week. You’ve got to be the only person ever seduced into dreamsharing with the promise of logic.”
“Mal read people well.” Arthur put his finished plate on the nightstand and slid down, propping himself onto his elbow. He looked as if he was settling into position on his half of the bed, and Eames was pleased at that. “She thought you two were kindred spirits, you know. She was the one always pushing for you in the early days. Dom and I would moan and complain about you, and Mal would wax poetic about your artistic temperament and your commitment to the role. It was all nonsense.”
“Clearly she just had a good eye,” sniffed Eames, around his flash of regret. Because he had known Mal professionally but he had never been close to her, not the way he had known Arthur was even before he had known this background bit, and now he was sorry that he would never get the chance, had never known that she had even liked him.
Arthur smiled at him, which derailed all of Eames’s thoughts for a second.
“So she said, ‘Come with me, we’ll do great things together,’ and you went?” said Eames eventually.
Arthur was silent for a second. He rolled onto his back and thought. And just as Eames was starting to worry he wouldn’t answer, he said, simply, “Yes.” There was another long silence, and Eames was just about to shift the conversational topic when Arthur said, “I wanted out so badly. All my life, I’d wanted out. And I think I was just finally tired of feeling guilty about it. She was from Paris. The Paris of my dreams. I took it as a sign. I did my first dreamshare and I was fucking useless, but it was like opening a door and finding your favorite chair already sitting in the living room. Mal took me to Paris that very night.”
Eames looked at Arthur, smiling up at the ceiling at the recollection, clearly lost in that time when Mal had still been Mal and not a dream-twisted version of herself. He said, “So you knew Mal first.” Because he’d never heard an origin story get that right.
Arthur nodded. “I was Mal’s friend. Mal knew Dom, and I met Dom through her. Mal was totally smitten with Dom. It was love at first sight for those two. I can’t tell you how much time I spent listening to her swoon over Dom Cobb.”
“So you ran off with an exotic French woman you barely knew in order to become a criminal and you told your family you’d become a chef?”
“Now you know why I can’t have accountant as a cover story. At least, not a cover story attached to my real name. I never graduated from college.”
“I could forge you a diploma,” Eames offered.
Arthur’s dimples flashed. “Thanks, but then I’d get hell for not inviting them to the graduation. ‘Chef’ was easier.”
“You’re a good enough cook to get them to believe that?” asked Eames, intrigued. He’d never had fantasies about Arthur cooking for him, but now he was. A lot.
“I’ve always been a decent cook, and I have parents who are willing to always believe the best of me, unfortunately for them. It was a good cover story to excuse away my lack of interest in finishing college, in a way few other careers I could pretend at would be. I said I was a private chef working for wealthy patrons, so they didn’t get suspicious while I traveled the world. And I send them postcards and souvenirs and hope that I don’t get killed and leave my family with never another word from me, with them never knowing what happened to me, totally convinced I’m just a golden child making his name in the world. So yeah, basically I’m the world’s worst son.” Arthur said it lightly, but he was staring up at the ceiling and he looked displeased.
Eames said, “You’re not just good at being a point man. You’re the best. You are literally the acknowledged best at what you do, even by your enemies. You’re not the world’s worst anything. You’re just who you are. And you’re definitely not the world’s worst son. I’ve met bad sons. You’re not even close.”
Arthur shook his head a little. “I didn’t mean to turn this into…this.”
Eames ignored him and said, “You promised Mal you’d take care of Dom.” The realization came so suddenly that Eames almost felt like he’d always known it. Of course, now Arthur’s behavior made perfect sense.
Arthur nodded. “Ages ago. By then Mal had had the kids, and she was taking fewer jobs, and Dom and I had realized that we worked well together.”
“Or Dom realized Mal had dropped a gem in his lap and decided to tie you close to him,” said Eames, possibly a little bitterly, but his views on Dom were…complicated.
“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t anything planned. It just happened. We were a good team, no more, no less.”
Eames privately had another opinion on that, but he kept his face expressionless and Arthur, as he’d hoped, went on.
“So Mal told me to look out for him. I’m sure she asked the same thing of Dom when it came to me.”
And Eames had an opinion on that, too, but bit his tongue. Instead he said, “You believed Dom’s story?”
Arthur turned his head and looked at Eames evenly. His eyes were unreadable and his face was expressionless as he said, “Did you think he killed her, when you heard?”
And Eames had the impression that this question was a test he had to carefully pass, but he had no idea what to say to achieve that. So he told the truth. “I didn’t know what the hell to think. The rumors coming out in those days about the Cobbs were all over the place. But you stuck by him, and I knew you wouldn’t have if he’d killed her, so I followed your lead on that.”
“I could have been in on it,” Arthur suggested, still flat and inscrutable.
“Arthur,” said Eames, and wrapped his name in fondness, swamped it with affection, because he couldn’t help it. “You don’t kill people like that, love. I know you pretend to, but you don’t. She’d never crossed you. In fact, from everything I’d ever heard, she adored you and trusted you and you never betray that, ever.”
Arthur blinked, his eyes dark, and still Eames had no clue what was going on in that head.
Eames added, “Plus, you wouldn’t have left that crime scene a mess; you would have cleaned it up.”
Arthur smiled, just a little bit, too sad for dimples, but at least it was a reaction. Eames decided he didn’t want Arthur expressionless, ever. It was how Arthur was professionally, even-keeled and reactionless, and now that Eames had ruffled him as much as he had, he was addicted to the rush of it, to the Arthurness of the Arthur that had emerged from all of it, this Arthur sharing confessions naked in bed with him.
Arthur said, not really looking at Eames as he said it, “Mal had been…deteriorating…for a while. We were trying to get to her, all of us. She just…thought we were making everything up. She thought she’d dreamed me. You’d think that’d be incredibly flattering. ‘Oh, Arthur, you’re just my ideal gay best friend.’ As if I were that perfect. Because in the end the perfect fucking gay best friend couldn’t stop any of it, and it was so disconcerting, so fucking awful, to just be told you’re a dream, to be dismissed as…I fucking hate the idea of dreams come true, Eames, they’re terrifying.”
Eames didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say to that.
Arthur said, on a sigh, “So no, I never thought, even for a second, that Dom had killed Mal. Because I knew the headspace Mal had been in. And all I could remember was that I’d promised her—when she knew I was a real person and not a dream—that I would take care of Dom for her. And I liked Dom, anyway. It wasn’t like it was all obligation. We were friends, and he went to pieces, and I know you don’t like him but he would have done the same for me. And I know he went crazy on that inception job, but, I don’t know, he was trying to get his kids back and they’re great kids, so, I don’t know.”
Eames looked at Arthur and felt the weight of the million secrets Arthur had just shared with him. Arthur wasn’t looking at him. Arthur was looking everywhere but at him. He looked uncharacteristically uncertain, like he didn’t know how any of what he’d just said was going to be received.
And Eames heard himself say, “I have no idea who my father is.”
Arthur looked at him then, surprise evident on his face.
Eames continued in an unthinking rush. “I know dreamsharing thinks it’s this big secret I’m keeping to myself, but the truth is I have no idea who he is. I never met him. I’m not even sure my mother knew who he was.”
Arthur said, “You don’t have to—”
But it seemed suddenly the absolute right thing to do. Arthur had gone for broke with him just now, and there was no way Eames wasn’t going to respond to that. And, anyway, Eames wanted to. All of the myths and legends of a forger’s life, and Eames just wanted one person to know all of it. “I have no idea why she even bothered to have me, I really don’t. And I have no idea how I survived my infancy.”
“You were cunning,” said Arthur, after a moment. “I bet you were a cunning infant. I bet you came out of the womb with some kind of con already in place. You probably pickpocketed the nurse who delivered you.”
Eames chuckled, because he appreciated Arthur’s effort. “She died when I was eight, and then I took to the streets, and I know this all sounds like something out of bloody Oliver Twist.”
“I hate Dickens,” Arthur said with feeling.
“That’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me, pet,” Eames informed him.
Arthur smiled at him, then said, “You don’t have to tell me all this.”
“Because you already know?” Because Eames suspected Arthur did.
Arthur shook his head. “Because it doesn’t matter.”
“Why did you tell me about Mal and the coffee shop in Iowa City?”
“Because no one knows about that anymore, and I wanted someone to.”
It was so similar to what Eames had been thinking, with telling Arthur his background, that for a second Eames couldn’t think of what to say next. And then he said, “When I was a kid, one of my marks was into modern furniture, and I thought his flat was amazing: I’d never seen anything like it. The way you dreamed about Paris? I dreamed of a flat like that. Of making it like that. Of being grown up and rich and not worrying about anything. It was…the pinnacle. And he had this chair, I was basically in love with this chair, the way you fall in love with the first brush of luxury as a child. And I remember him saying to me—looking at me and saying to me, ‘That’s an Eames lounge. Don’t fucking go near it because it’s worth more than your life.’ A chair. It was a bloody fucking chair and he said it was worth more than my entire life. An Eames lounge.”
There was a moment of silence. Eames wondered wildly why he’d told that story. He’d chosen his name so long ago, and he’d never told anyone why he’d chosen it, had allowed all the swirl of speculation about it, because he didn’t want to say that he’d chosen it because an unfeeling mark had hurt his adolescent feelings.
“What happened to the mark?” asked Arthur.
“I cleaned out his savings.”
“Good,” said Arthur.
“And then I went and learned everything I could about art and found the love of my life, so it all worked out.”
“The love of your life?” Arthur asked it with satisfying swiftness.
“Art,” Eames told him, carefully not smiling.
“Ah,” said Arthur. “Yes. I could see that. And that’s how you got into art forgery?”
“I was always good at mimicry, which was useful for pulling a con, and I also liked drawing, so it wasn’t much of a leap. I turned out to be good at it, plus I really loved art, so that encouraged some very brilliant old masters of the whole thing to give me lessons.” Eames tried to be casual about it, tried not to make it sound like a big deal, even though the discovery of his love of art had been the beginning of his leap from petty crime to the point where he ended up seeing the world with a ton of money hidden in various bank accounts. “And from them I developed a reputation, and so for a little while I was just a forger of great art, and then it was only after that that someone asked me if I’d ever tried dream forgery, and then that was how that whole thing happened.” Eames paused. “And then, many years later, I bought myself my own Eames lounge.”
“Good for you.” Arthur sounded pleased, and also like he somehow understood that Eames had made it sound like it had been nothing when it had been an entire lifetime’s worth of difference that had led to him meeting Arthur in the first place. After a silent moment, Arthur said, “How old were you, with that mark with the Eames lounge?”
“Christ, I don’t even know.” Eames tried to recall. “Twelve? Thirteen?”
“So he told a thirteen-year-old kid that his chair was worth more? Do you remember his name?”
Eames grinned at him around the odd, ridiculous tightness in his chest that was probably the start of a heart attack. “Arthur, darling, you’ve got that look in your eye.”
“What look?”
“That ‘I must right a wrong in the universe, go and fetch me a gun’ look.”
“Well,” said Arthur, and tried to shrug.
“I love that look,” said Eames, still grinning, and rolled on top of him because he couldn’t maintain the distance anymore, he wanted to press Arthur to every part of him. If he could have opened his chest and tucked Arthur inside, he would have, just to ease the ache there. “You’re ridiculously hot when you’re feeling vengeful.”
“Is that why you try to provoke me so much?”
Eames couldn’t help the delight that flooded him, because he just loved it when Arthur bantered like this, loved it when he teased and Arthur teased back. He had always loved it but he loved it more when Arthur did it in bed, with a hand wandering down Eames’s bare back, with a softness around his eyes that Eames never usually saw there. He just bloody loved Arthur, he knew, and he wasn’t going to stop, he wasn’t going to hit bottom, he was just going to keep falling, for the rest of his life. He pressed his face against Arthur’s neck so Arthur wouldn’t see his expression and said, “I love to vex you,” and if it came out a bit rougher than was necessary, then Eames tried to cover it with a swipe of his tongue along Arthur’s skin.
“I’ve noticed.”
“You’re so delicious when you’re vexed,” Eames informed him, and bit down on his collarbone. “I secretly love it when things go all pear-shaped and you get vexed and have to wave your gun around.” Eames lifted his head and looked down at him. “Not a euphemism,” he clarified.
Arthur flipped them, and Eames let him because it was hardly a hardship to let Arthur stretch out solidly on top of him. And Arthur said sheepishly, “I own an Eames lounge, too.”
Eames blinked up at him in astonishment. “Don’t tease me,” he managed.
“I’m not.” Arthur was blushing, that delightful blush Eames was never going to get enough of. “I don’t own it because of you. I own it because I like it.”
“Oh my God, you bought my chair,” said Eames gleefully.
“No, I didn’t. Not like that.”
“Tell me, what naughty things do you get up to in your Eames lounge?”
“I don’t know how you ever get anybody to sleep with you; you have the worst fucking lines.”
“I have good fucking other things,” said Eames.
“My verdict’s still out,” said Arthur primly.
“Let me make another argument,” Eames said. “I don’t think you’ve seen my best closing yet.”
Arthur groaned, but he did it directly into Eames’s shoulder, so Eames was totally okay with that groan. “You have never met a metaphor you didn’t want to beat to death, have you?”
“Gentleman of the jury,” said Eames, enjoying himself. “Order in the court.”
“Just because you say them lasciviously doesn’t make them clever double entendres, you know.”
“‘Lasciviously,’” repeated Eames. “Say that again.”
“Shut up,” said Arthur, lifting his head up.
“Is this where I say ‘make me’?”
“This is where you shut up,” said Arthur, “Christ,” and kissed him hard, and Eames messed up Arthur’s hair even more than it already was and adjusted his hold on him, enjoying the sensation of arousal clicking its way into place, the thickening of blood and the springing of sweat and the harshness of breath.
Arthur said breathlessly, as he closed his teeth into Eames’s neck and Eames hissed out a swear, “It suits you.”
“What?” gasped Eames, no longer following the thread of conversation.
“Your name.” Arthur panted it into Eames’s mouth. “Eames. It suits you. It was a good choice.”
And Eames heard himself say, utterly compliant, he would have said anything at that moment, this was the danger of Arthur, this had always been the danger of Arthur, “My actual name is—”
And Arthur swallowed his name into a kiss, and when he pulled back he murmured, “That I already know.”
“Show-off,” said Eames.
“All rise,” said Arthur, and then, “That’s another court double entendre, get it?”
Bloody Christ, thought Eames, staring up in astonishment at the sight of Arthur, disheveled and grinning and making terrible jokes at him. Arthur was going to be the absolute death of him. “Shut the bloody hell up,” growled Eames, because he couldn’t stand it.
“Kettle,” said Arthur, and smiled into the kiss.
***
Arthur woke up from a doze to Eames sprawled half on top of him, face mashed into Arthur’s shoulder. It should have been incredibly uncomfortable—and it actually was—but Arthur was love-addled enough to just find it charming. Eames could have woken up and said, Arthur, love, while you were sleeping I cleaned out every hidden bank account you have and turned you in to the police, and Arthur would have found it charming. Arthur found himself frankly sickening.
He brushed Eames’s tumbled hair out of his face anyway.
He really wanted to pause and rain kisses onto every bit of Eames’s skin he could reach. Not with intent—Arthur felt a bit like he couldn’t handle another orgasm at the moment—but chastely, possessively, just so he could say that he’d kissed every bit of Eames’s skin, just so he could cherish it as a personal achievement. But if he did that, Eames would wake up and ask him what he was doing, and it was fine to think that Arthur was up for a bit of fun and even okay to think that Arthur was in the habit of sharing post-coital confessions, but Arthur couldn’t abide the idea of Eames realizing how hopelessly, stupidly, ridiculously in love Arthur was with him. He could envision Eames’s expression shifting into pity and it made him shudder with horror.
So he lay there for a bit and let Eames half-suffocate him and let himself be sickeningly smitten with the entire situation.
And then, eventually, he sighed and tried to wriggle his way out.
Eames made a protesting noise that sounded like it could have come from a six-year-old and immediately pulled Arthur back in. “Where are you going?” he mumbled into Arthur’s skin, using a sloppy, sleepy, half-hearted kiss to his shoulder as punctuation.
“I’m taking a shower,” Arthur informed him. “I’m totally disgusting.”
“No, you’re not,” Eames denied.
“Yes, I am.”
“Okay, fine,” Eames allowed. “But if you clean yourself up, then I’ll have to clean myself up, too.”
“That’s the general idea,” Arthur agreed dryly.
There was a very long moment of silence, and then Eames said, “You can have the first shower,” and moved entirely off of Arthur and then even shifted position on the bed to sprawl with his back facing him.
For a second, Arthur looked at the broad (and tattooed) expanse of Eames’s back and hesitated. Was Eames mad? But about what? It made no sense.
Arthur gave up ever trying to understand Eames and got out of bed and studied his clothing options. He chose the suit with care, partly because he always chose his clothing with care and partly because he wanted to find something Eames would like, because Arthur had lost his mind.
He stood in the shower and washed Eames off of him and had a moment of sudden, blinding panic where he actually breathed aloud, “What are you doing?”
Because he’d woken up in bed with Eames. He’d had Eames. And Eames was going to walk away soon enough and why the fuck was Arthur helping him do it? Why wasn’t Arthur doing everything in his power to keep him there as long as he could manage, before he had to lose it all again?
Arthur donned the three-piece suit, tied his tie in a careful, perfect knot, slicked back his hair, and regarded the outcome in the mirror. He looked exactly the way he always looked. You would never know he’d just finally gotten the love of his life into bed.
The bedroom was empty when Arthur got out of the bathroom, so he walked into the living area, where Eames was sprawled on one of the couches, watching television. He’d pulled on clothing sloppily: sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt that Arthur would have thrown out rather than ever consider wearable. And he’d combed his hair a bit; it was in less disarray.
He said, “My turn?” without looking at Arthur.
Arthur retrieved his notebook and turned back to Eames, who had now stood and was heading toward the bedroom. “Eames,” Arthur said.
Eames glanced over his shoulder, registered the notebook. “I understand that we just wasted a bunch of time, but can you at least wait until after I shower before we jump back in?”
Arthur shook his head and walked over to Eames. “I want you to draw.”
Eames took the notebook Arthur handed out in an automatic gesture, looking honestly quizzical. “Draw what?”
“Me.”
Eames was plainly startled. “You?”
“You’re good at it. I’ve seen your sketch of Mycroft. It was an uncanny likeness.”
“Yes,” Eames agreed, sounding confused. “That’s what I do. I do likenesses. But I don’t—”
“I want you to draw me.” Arthur wasn’t entirely sure where this driving desire of his was coming from, just that he badly wanted to see what he looked like through Eames’s eyes. “I want you to draw me, and then I want you to unwrap me like a present, and then I want you to fuck me until I forget who I am, until all I can remember is you.”
Eames’s eyes went dark, pupils blowing wide, and Arthur marveled over the fact that he now knew exactly what Eames looked like in the millisecond before he pounced on you. “That can be arranged,” said Eames, clearly trying for casual and getting nowhere near it, his voice low and husky and Arthur could have shivered from Eames’s voice alone, it was the equivalent of a caress to him.
Eames went to reach for him and Arthur drew on reserves of strength—who would have ever predicted that he would be able to stop Eames from reaching for him?—and lifted his hand and blocked him and said, “Draw me first.”
