Black Water

At the second level, with Dom screaming right into his face, something inside Arthur goes calm and still as he thinks, I don't have to do shit for you. (Or, How Arthur Got His Groove Back, While Eames Never Lost His.)

Notes:

For cherryvanilla.

I've received epic amounts of help for this - beta'ing from viva_gloria, anatsuno, agenttrojie and sirona_gs, all of whom were absolutely amazing and helped me coax this thing into some semblance of coherence. Praise also goes to photoclerk, unvarnished_tale and onthecount, who all held my hand when I needed it and talked plot and worldbuilding with me.
And of course, to Sarah, whose story this is, even if it strayed very far from her prompt, for her endless patience and cheer. I hope you'll enjoy this, bb. <3

Work Text:

Sometime during the Inception job, a switch flips itself in Arthur's head.

At the second level, with Dom screaming right into his face, something inside Arthur goes calm and still as he thinks, I don't have to do shit for you.

Because, when it comes right down to it – what does it mean, really, pulling off a job? A millionaire gets richer, another gets poorer. Big fucking deal. Arthur's not exactly lacking for money himself. Why the fuck does he even bother? Why does he do any of this?

Even so, Arthur does his job. He gets them out of the dream, makes the kick work because he's been taught to finish what he started. He's not going to just let them all rot.

But when it's done, when they're out of the dream and out of the contract, Arthur sits on a plane and stares out of the window thinking, huh.

He can do anything he wants now. Anything, or nothing at all.

Eames knows better than to take the next offer he gets unexamined. He has a complete working protocol, actually, for dealing with the aftermath of a job gone pear-shaped, and the Fischer job, for all its merits and its eventual success, was quite honestly one fuck-up after another.

The procedure goes like this: First, Eames will spend a week boozing, gambling, and making drunken vows to never touch a PASIV again for as long as he lives. Shortly thereafter, he'll relocate to one of his safe houses to sulk – not the one in Mombasa, sadly, that one's compromised, which really isn't helping at all with the bitterness.

Then, he'll get bored by degrees, take up some inane hobby, and – finally, when a sufficiently promising job presents itself – take it, with an appropriate amount of pronounced disaffection. Once that goes well, he'll cautiously allow his optimism to build up, until he's floating on a high of achievement and complacency that drives him to take chances again.

However, the first stage of this is cut short when Eames finds a message on his cellphone. Philadelphia, two weeks from now. You'll like it. It's unsigned, which is bloody presumptuous of whoever it is. Which in turn means Eames has a good idea of who sent it.

But then Eames shows up for the job to find that Arthur's not even there.

"You can get him, right?" Melanie says. Melanie is twenty-three and has disgustingly effective puppy eyes. It makes for a damned potent extraction technique, though.

"I suppose so," Eames says, already regretting this thoroughly.

Arthur spends a lot of time not taking any calls.

Ideally, he supposes, he'd be sitting on a tropical beach somewhere, soaking in the rays and sipping a fruity drink. Except he's allergic to most fruits, and he detests beaches, actually. So he does the next best thing, which for him means renting a place somewhere quiet and catching up on his reading. Arthur has a lot of reading to catch up on.

There's an odd pleasure in letting the phone ring away. Arthur changes all his ringtones to Lady Gaga songs and hums along until whoever it is despairs and goes away.

Dom calls seventeen times. Each tinny rendition of Telephone fills Arthur with malicious glee.

Arthur checks his calls religiously, since seeing the 'X unanswered calls' message makes him anxious at something like a cellular level. And each fucking time there's a sense of relief. I don't have to take it. I don't have to call back. Fuck every one of those bastards, anyway.

Then one day Bad Romance plays, and Arthur sits up in his chair and stares at the phone fixedly.

Fuck. Arthur's getting kind of attached to his I'm not here, I don't exist anymore, fuck off stance. If he answers, then it's a tacit admission that he's not, in fact, fallen off the face of the earth.

On the other hand, it's Eames calling.

Well, even so. If Eames is calling, it's because he wants Arthur to take a job. Arthur's not at all convinced he wants to take one just now. In fact, he's fairly certain he would rather walk over poisonous snakes made of broken glass than take a job. (He found an e-card along those lines somewhere, and spent most of an evening with his mouse pointer hovering over the 'send' button before he decided Cobb wasn't worth the fucking effort.)

So he doesn't pick up. Eames will give it up, people always do eventually, and Arthur will be left a free man.

The call goes to voicemail. Arthur has about five seconds to sigh in relief before it starts ringing again. Say what you will about Eames, the man's fucking determined.

And the worst is, the absolute worst is that with each ring Arthur feels his mouth stretching into a widening grin. There doesn't seem to be anything he can do about it. He ends up picking up out of sheer concern for the state of his face.

"Hello?"

"I'm sorry," Eames says, and Arthur's smile stretches even wider before he gets a grip on his expression. "Did I just hear you humming Lady Gaga?"

"I'm not accountable for what you heard." Thank god Arthur has a better grasp on his voice than he does on his expression. His mouth is still twitching at the edges. "Did you want something?"

"I did, actually," Eames says. "So there's a job."

At which point Arthur's smile disappears entirely. Well, of course there's a job, was he expecting anything different? "There usually is."

"And we'd quite like to have you on it."

"We, Eames?" Arthur's developing a headache. This he did not miss.

Eames is quiet for a moment. Then he says, "I suppose I can't blame you for not wanting to work just yet."

Goddamnit, it's not fair. It's not like the effect Eames' voice has on him isn't potent enough in and of itself. Eames has to sound like he fucking cares on top of it all. "So what is it already," Arthur says, because that has to be better than letting Eames be sympathetic at him.

Even through the phone, he can hear Eames grin. "Let me tell you all about it," he says, and Arthur settles in a chair and lets his smile slide back into place as Eames' voice washes all over him.

Melanie has her intel in bits and pieces, varying enormously in accuracy and usability.

"It's a wonder you got to me at all," Eames says, shaking his head at the utter mess that is her address book.

"I tried all the numbers," she says, shrugging. "Most didn't work. Yours did."

Eames ought to be peeved at this, except that he's hard-pressed to give a fuck anyway. So this job will go spectacularly, beautifully wrong; Eames doesn't give a damn. He'll take the client's money, buy Melanie coffee and tell her about early Greco-Roman art and wait for Arthur to show up for sheer amusement value.

And indeed, when Arthur shows up, it's nearly all worth it just for the look on Arthur's face, the sheer horror at what Melanie's done with her data.

"You do realize at least four fifths of this is wrong," Arthur says. By the tension in his hand, he's holding himself back from throwing it all in the air, all the paper scraps Melanie uses for a combination organizer/phonebook/crude computer. "And the rest of it is probably missing crucial context."

She smiles at Arthur. It's a good extractor's smile, that, and it's half of what kept Eames from walking away immediately. Kid's got potential. "I know," she says. "That's what I got you for."

When Arthur walks next to him, Eames snags his arm, pushes him into a chair. It doesn't do to let Arthur get too settled. Makes him bloody unbearable. Eames prefers him like this, with a thin layer of confusion softening his sharp edges.

"What do you say, darling?" The pet name throws Arthur off, too. Eames knows the weapons at his disposal, and wields them carefully.

"Fine," Arthur says. "Points to her for good management strategy."

The thing is, Arthur says things like that and he must be joking. He simply has to be. But Eames can't tell, can't see a bloody thing through Arthur's armor. Even when Arthur's flustered and distraught, his deadpan is perfect.

"How lovely for her," Eames says, and he can't seem to keep the sour note entirely out of his voice. If Arthur even noticed it, he gives no sign.

"So what do we know about the mark?" Arthur looks at Melanie. This isn't a briefing. This is a test, of sorts.

"Ellen Birkham," she says, tapping her fingernails against the table. "Shipping magnate, kinda oddball."

Arthur doesn't smile. "Oddball how?"

"Fear and fascination with deep water." The things that make people choose their lines of work. Arthur wonders about that, sometimes.

"And what are we going to do about it?" He doesn't sit down but he does halt, standing in front of a whiteboard, directing his gaze at Melanie.

Melanie hesitates. She raises her head, looking up at the ceiling. It's too transparent a tell, but there's something to be said for calculated innocence, too. At last she looks back at Arthur and says, "A ship. Obviously. Hide the secret in the lowest level. The ship is sinking, and you have to get it out before it drowns."

At this Arthur almost does smile, more from expectation than from pleasure. He turns to look at Eames. "Mr. Eames, your opinion?"

Eames looks like he wants to snort, and is only holding back out of politeness. "Tell me what's wrong with that scenario, Melanie. I'll even give you a hint. It's something you said yourself."

Melanie wrinkles her nose and blinks, and Arthur can almost see it, the way she's replaying the conversation in her mind. A good memory is crucial to an extractor. "It's obvious," she says, after a minute or two. "All right. So, less obvious. Should we go for another angle entirely?"

"No, it's a good start," Eames says, and the warm encouragement in his voice isn't meant for Arthur, so Arthur probably should tamp down on the smile that wants to emerge. "Go on."

"Sea. We're going with that." She clicks her pen. Tells and tells again. Arthur should ask Eames to educate her. "So we could go for something more everyday-ish. Maybe connect it like a normal dream, associatively – she's in a business meeting about a specific line, she finds herself on a ship of that line, zip her back and forth until she's confused."

"Not bad," Eames says, with a small curve to the corner of his mouth, and Arthur has to step in.

"Only problem is," he says dryly, "it's likely to be just as confusing for us, if not more so."

"Not if we keep to different parts of the dream," Melanie argues, and Eames raises his hand.

"Possible, I'll grant you," he says, "but there’s not enough of us to pull off something like that at all well. Beside, it's over-complicated. Arthur's right."

Arthur tries to ignore the warm glow those words light inside him. "Better idea, Eames?" he says instead, to Eames' sharpening smile.

This, Arthur would feel bad about, except Eames rolls out a paper sheet and starts sketching, and Arthur can't be unhappy when he's watching Eames at work. He's just not capable.

Eames' ideas are just that, ideas. He's well aware he's no architect, thank you, Arthur, but he thinks he does passably enough for a first draft.

Not that you'd know it by anything Arthur says or does. Melanie oohs and aahs at his designs, pointing out places that she finds particularly well-made, and Arthur –

Well, Arthur's physically incapable of seeing anything Eames does without unleashing a volley of criticism.

"This tunnel." Arthur's eyes narrow. "Is it supposed to be an escape route?"

"Why, no, Arthur," Eames says with all the fake pleasantness he can muster, "I just thought it added to the atmosphere. Of course it's a bloody escape route, what does it look like?"

"But if you have even the slightest tremors in the dream," Arthur's long fingers trace some of the lower level supports, "then these will collapse, and so will your escape route."

"Well, maybe that's because I'm not a bloody architect," Eames says, and pushes away, irritable. But he adds the changes in anyway.

Arthur chooses their architect, Finley, for his lack of imagination more than anything else. He needs someone reliable. Creativity is all very well, but put too many people who think they're creative in one room and what you get is a fucking mess. Arthur can't take another job like the Fischer job right now.

What this means is that Eames feels the need to interject his own opinions into the design process. Arthur should probably show more disapproval of this than he does.

"I suppose you could populate the city entirely with fish people," Eames says, in a sweet voice that makes Arthur think of poison. "Except then the mark will likely snap out of the dream from sheer terror." He slaps a hand down on the desk. "Give us some domes, would you?"

"Do you have any – fine," Finley says, disconnecting the line abruptly. Arthur can sympathize.

"Manners," Eames grumbles. "Fucking extinct concept, nowadays."

"You wouldn't like it much better if someone was telling you how to do your job," Arthur says.

"Oh?" Eames bats his eyelashes at him, which is far more appealing than it has any right to be. "Then one must wonder why I still take jobs with you, Arthur dear."

Arthur does wonder, at times. But he says, "Because you like working with the best," because it's a good out. Eames will mock and Arthur will parry and all will be well.

Except that Eames cocks his head and says, thoughtfully, "I suppose that might account for it, yes," and Arthur has to leave the room before he fucking blushes or something similarly horrifying.

Eames wouldn't call Finley inept, precisely. Certainly he's very conscientious, does thorough work, blah blah fucking blah. But the point remains that Finley isn't there.

"Which is why," Eames says, struggling to keep a serene expression, "we have to start working on the other facets of the job."

"But you're not working on the other facets of the job," Arthur says. "You're working on the architecture." Arthur doesn't add Which you can't do, but Eames can hear it plainly enough.

At this, Eames loses the final remnants of patience. "It's only a few buggering concept sketches, Arthur, but since they're so offensive to you –" Eames rips up his sketch of the dreamscape. "There. Satisfied?"

Arthur goes very still. He doesn't answer Eames, only looks at the torn paper, as though its very existence troubles him. Well, to hell with Arthur. It's not like Eames pines for his good opinion.

But even as he gets up, he knows himself for a liar. He knows he'll go to perfect his forgeries, the various attempts at chinks in Birkham's armor. Because he may personally care not at all for Arthur's opinion, but the fact remains that Arthur's judgment is as close to a standardized rating system as exists in their line of work. Eames will create the forgery, and he'll do anything in his power to get Arthur to love it, because Arthur knows good from excellent.

In spite of everything else, Arthur pulls the best out of people he works with. He's earned the right to his bloody-mindedness.

When Eames glances back, Arthur's picking up the torn pieces of drafting paper Eames left to lie on the floor. Eames grits his teeth and leaves him to it. He has, as Arthur so charmingly reminded him, a job to do.

Alone in his office, Arthur stares at Finley's base plans bleakly. He's still holding the torn bits of Eames' sketch. He opens his fingers and lets them drop to litter the floor.

He's letting Eames take up too much space on this job. It's not Eames' fault; it's in his nature to expand, to take up all available room in a given area. Eames' design is an intricate swirl of tunnels encircling a domed city. It's not the most practical thing – Eames knows it, Arthur knows it, and certainly Finley will know it and tell Arthur about it in angry detail in his next email. Fuck. Arthur doesn't want to deal with this.

Instead he opens his laptop and starts going through his scheduled alerts, trying to find a new angle into the case, preferably one Eames hasn't found already.

As far as they know, Birkham isn't militarized. Then again, ‘as far as they know’ isn't much. Arthur goes over his lists again, trying to find a crack, something he's missed. The best way to find out if someone's been militarized is, honestly, to be lucky enough to stumble over it while looking for something else, but so far nothing has turned up.

Arthur checks his list of sent mail (to people he owes favors to, to people who may just choose to answer for whatever reason). He's covered all the ones likely to answer. Most of them will lie, but Arthur can cross-correlate them with each other and his own gathered data to see who's lying. It's not absolutely reliable – see the Fischer job – but it's definitely better than nothing.

Nobody's answered so far, though.

He looks at Finley's design again. It's is an old standby, based on what's known as the daisy-chain method; lull the mark into a false sense of security, convince them to reveal one secret and let everything else unravel from that. It takes a good extractor, but Arthur's reasonably certain that between Eames and Melanie they can pull it off.

Except that he looks at the plans, and his mind is blank.

Technically this isn't even Arthur's job. Arthur should make sure the intel is reliable and take care of problems as they pop up. Melanie called the job, it should be up to her to decide on the strategy. But Melanie's been in the business for less than a year, and the only thing that lets Arthur have any faith in her whatsoever is that she had the brains to ask someone more experienced for help.

If Arthur won't do it and Melanie can't, Eames will take over the planning entirely. But Eames is already doing too much, and they haven't even decided on his forgery target yet.

There's a dread rising in Arthur, recursive and unrelenting. I'm not doing this right, he thinks, closing tabs one by one and opening new ones. He looks into databases and places secret traces on bank accounts and GPS trackers. And with every stroke of the keys he thinks, There's something else I should be doing.

When he finally gives up and shuts the laptop, two hours have passed. Arthur has accomplished absolutely nothing.

He doesn't give in to the urge to bury his head in his hands. When in doubt, split the problem up, break it into component pieces. He knows this shit cold. He could be doing this in his sleep.

Right. Daisy chain. Get her thinking about secrets, snatch them away. Easy as fuck. Arthur straightens in his chair and takes a deep breath. He can do this.

He looks at Finley's plans again, tracing the edges like he's been doing intermittently for the last two hours, and his breath gets knocked out of him in a rush.

Who the fuck am I even trying to kid?

Suddenly Arthur misses Mal, a pang of longing that pierces through him and doesn't pass. Smart, tough, capable Mal, who held entire jobs in her fingers with the same easy grace she held her cigarettes, the same sense of ownership. Arthur's good, knows he's good. Mal was magnificent.

Mal's not here, he thinks, and scrawls ugly commentary on the edge of Finley's plans, pen biting into the paper hard enough to rip. He'll have to throw it away later, re-print and start over. The plans are shit. Arthur's shit. He can't even tell the difference anymore.

He curses and throws down his pen, and manages to hit his head on the corner of the table while bending to retrieve it.

For a moment Arthur stays crouched, teeth gritted, because what the fuck would getting up even accomplish at this point?

He lets his head drop, lets his eyes go half-closed. His thoughts feel jumbled, scrambled. Finley's design. Birkham's regular trips to the seaside. The new ports that should open for Birkham shipping, possible Mafia connections, the relative value of labor and materials. It's all just numbers and figures and Arthur can't make sense of it at all anymore.

Then he thinks, spirals, and at first he has no idea why. Then he realizes he's looking at Eames' sketches, his underwater city that's nothing like Finley's dignified submarine hotel. It's rough and lacking in details, but Eames is good. Arthur can make out the paths. The currents, rather, ways in and out that corkscrew around the edges of the domes. Around, hopefully, the mark's protection.

Arthur slowly gets up. He puts the sketch on his desk, places the pieces so their edges overlap. He can't see it like this, exactly, but it makes sense, comes together in his head. The missing elements are as clear as the ones Eames drew. Arthur traces a finger over it and thinks, This is where we go in.

He sees the great unfilled area in the corner, neatly boxed in bold lines, and thinks, This is where the secrets are.

He hunts down some scotch tape and puts Eames' sketch back together. Finley will just have to fucking deal.

Arthur's expression is growing steadily blanker by the minute.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, I see. I think – yes, all right, I got it." He's quiet for a while, pacing the room. Eames is watching him from the relative safety of their kitchenette; he doubts Arthur even noticed his presence.

"How late?" Arthur says, and he must be very irked. His voice almost conveys emotion. Whatever it is he hears from the other end transforms his blankness into a scowl of epic proportions.

Arthur hangs up unceremoniously. "Did you want something, Eames?"

Of course Arthur noticed. Eames doesn't know why he ever bothers to think otherwise. "Have something to show you."

Arthur nods. "Do you need me to get a PASIV?"

"Not yet." Eames has no idea why his palms are clammy all of a sudden. He slides a couple of pages at Arthur. "Look at these. Tell me what you think."

Arthur looks at the top one, a small crease forming between his eyebrows. "Hm," he says. He goes through the rest of the pile without further comment. "We should show these to Melanie, too," he says. "I want her opinion."

Eames does his best not to sigh. He summons Melanie instead, and when she comes down they all sit together around the kitchen table.

"Eames, would you explain these to us?" Arthur says. So very formal, all the time. Eames can't decide whether he loves it or detests it.

"There are three basic designs," Eames says. "I may end up using any of them or none at all, depending on the tactic we decide to take. Now." He puts his hand on the top drawing, pushes it at Melanie. "This is...?"

She stares at it for a second. Eames tsks and she looks up, irritated. "I know who it is. Give me a minute." She scrunches her nose in concentration. "That's the friend, right? The one who died."

Diana Chelsea, Birkham's best friend who died when they were both teenagers. Struck by lightning, of all the bizarre ways to go. "Well enough," Eames says. He pushes over the second drawing.

Melanie bends to look at it and recoils slightly. "That's... detailed."

"Not your everyday mermaid," Eames says, amused. He darts a glance at Arthur, whose dark eyes are inscrutable as he examines the image.

"She looks like the friend," Arthur says, and the mermaid does, up to a point. He blinks and says, "So, what, carrot and stick? Tempt her with her friend, use the mermaid to frighten her?"

"Not necessarily frighten," Eames says, and pushes forward the third drawing. Arthur bows his head for a closer look, as does Melanie.

Melanie looks up at him, then, her eyes wide. "What is this, choose your own adventure?"

Eames huffs a surprised laugh. "Something like," he says. "Hasn't anyone taught you, darling, that the best way to cheat someone is to let them do it to themselves?"

"A dream she won't want to wake up from." A small furrow appears in Arthur's forehead. "Eames, isn't this a little overkill?"

"It's not as deep as that," Eames says. He traces his fingers over the lines of the mermaid's scales, careful not to smudge. "But it's as good a distraction as you'll find."

Melanie picks up his drawing of Diana. "You can forge dead people?"

"No one can," Arthur says, before Eames can open his mouth.

Eames grits his teeth and says, "Not accurately. But given that the mark herself hasn't seen her since childhood, I can fake it well enough."

Arthur tilts his head, raises an eyebrow. Enough?

"Well enough for government work," Eames says, and smiles mirthlessly at Arthur.

Of course, after that, Eames has no choice but to make her magnificent.

He seethes with it all the while, poring over references to poor Diana, learning her body language from old videos on the website her parents built as a memorial and which Birkham pays to maintain. The hardest part, strangely enough, isn't putting together someone from a shoddy bunch of references.

In the blank dreamscape he'd put together for himself, Eames conjures three mirrors and exhales.

From each mirror, the static image of a different projection stares at him. Diana as she was, the light shadow, and the dark. Eames assumes each of them in turn, with the easy mindlessness that comes with familiar work, but he has to shift back to himself between forgeries.

Clearly, this is unacceptable.

He works them in quick succession, until the faces in the mirrors flicker and waver out of true form, blurring into one another. That can be good, actually, but it's not going right. Eames can't put them together and they're coming out wrong.

He comes back into himself, breathing hard and glaring at the mirrors. Fuck this. He'll just have to make do, on the job. And if Arthur disapproves, then fuck him, too.

Then he looks up. Shuts his eyes tight for a moment, until there are sparks floating behind his eyelids.

He starts over.

Diana Chelsea's skin is pockmarked, the unfortunate remnant of chickenpox gone untreated. She wears it comfortably – or Eames does, at any rate, though Arthur has to remind himself of that. She picks at her fingernails idly, but her gaze remains locked on Arthur, frank and curious.

"Hiya," she says, and he nods. Arthur was never particularly at home around teenage girls. "Wanna see a trick?"

Arthur inclines his head, and she smiles at him.

Her teeth lengthen visibly, coming out in needle-pointed edges. Her skin greys and her eyes shift in color from muddy brown to greenish yellow. Something about her proportions twists, until her arms are too long and bend in the wrong places.

The dreamscape's shifting around them, too, the air growing warmer and thicker until it's not air at all anymore. The light filters through it oddly. Diana flutters up around Arthur, still with the same curious look, rendered inscrutable on an alien face. When she smiles, her jaw gapes so wide that her chin's pressing against her throat.

Then, without so much as a flicker of movement, she's different. Her eyes are still inhuman, but they seem warm, and the baring of her teeth seems affectionate more than threatening.

Arthur blinks; the water grows cold around them, and they’re standing in dryness again.

"What do you think?" Eames says, shifting back into himself. "She'll do for the job?"

She'll more than do. She's utterly fantastic, in fact. "She's excellent," Arthur says. "Well done, Eames."

Eames' eyes narrow. "All right," he says. "What's wrong with her?"

"What – " Arthur blinks. "Nothing." He's just said that she's excellent, hasn't he?

It's a dangerous smile Eames wears. With his own mouth, full and lush-lipped as it is, Eames can tear a man to shreds easier than with the mermaid's needle-like teeth. "All right," he says, with a sweetness to his tone that Arthur's learned the hard way to be wary of. "I, of course, wouldn't dream of using a forgery that didn't conform to your exacting specifications."

Eames shoots himself out of the dream, leaving Arthur to collect himself. He reviews his words, thinking them over carefully, frowning. It was something in his tone, possibly, or maybe in his choice of words. Excellent. Well done.

Arthur's been told he's condescending. He's been told that by co-workers, past girlfriends and boyfriends, by every single commanding officer under whom he's ever served. The same words, whispered if not outright spat. "You think you're so great, don't you? You think you're better than anyone else?"

And the sad part, in a way, is that a lot of them were right. Arthur does think he's better than most people. His point system is no joke. Most people reach about fifty points. Arthur will not work with anyone who earned less than a hundred and fifteen. His own score hovers at around two hundred.

But Eames keeps reaching the five-hundred mark, even though Arthur deducts points for some of his fashion choices.

There seems to be nothing to do about it. The point system is result-based, productivity-driven, and even when Eames saunters into the (warehouse, office, cottage: delete whichever does not apply) three hours late and to all appearances hung over, Arthur knows full well that Eames can allow himself to do that because he already did half his share of the work before he even boarded a plane.

All Arthur wants to do is show respect to a capable colleague. That's all there is to it.

Because Arthur would never use it to try and distract himself from the way his own point count is slowly declining. That's not like him at all.

They're in a bare landscape, because – as Eames would be the first to admit – he's fine with pencil and paper, but he can't actually construct a dreamscape that behaves. They're in Arthur's mind, because he's the best at holding the scenery together, especially since it's using one of his favorite tricks.

It's not like Eames to pander – no, that's a filthy lie, it's utterly like Eames. It isn't, however, like him to try to appeal to the design aesthetics of certain bloody-minded point men. Eames has no idea why he bothered with it in the first place, given that Arthur's done nothing but look blank and unmoved since they came into the dream.

(Not that Eames cares overmuch, anyway. Although possibly Arthur's condescension wouldn't have stung quite so hard if the man weren't so bloody attractive as he manifested it.)

"Look at the edge, love," Eames says to Melanie. She's no Dom Cobb – then again, few people are, and thank goodness for small mercies. "You see the place where it blurs? That's our escape hatch."

Arthur's watching him, waiting for Eames to screw up, because apparently it gives Arthur pleasure to point out Eames' every misstep. True, Eames doesn't fancy himself an architect, but he can't help that Finley is late. Melanie needs to hear this.

"Like wraparound space?" Melanie asks. So she's been taught something after all, there's a relief.

"Almost," Eames says. "But not quite." He conjures a small, 3-D scale model of the dreamscape they're in, consciously removing themselves from it. On a whim, though, he leaves a tiny Arthur-figure to wander through it, scowling. "See," he says, pushing the Arthur-figure gently toward the edge, "you go in and – "

A few meters away, Arthur lets out an undignified squawk. He's been carried to the horizon by an invisible hand, a sweet piece of sympathetic magic that Eames hadn't intended but wholly approves of.

Eames snatches the Arthur-figure away at the last moment, aiming him so he comes at the horizon at an angle. Arthur dives into it and vanishes in a twinkle of light.

"Uh," Melanie says, discomfited. "This will send us out of the dream?"

"No," Arthur says, directly behind them. Melanie jumps. "It can send us anywhere inside the dream. The vector at which we enter the edge translates to the coordinates of our new location in the dream."

Bloody arsehole hasn't even the decency to look dismayed. He looks at Eames with the same expression he always wears, thoughtful and a little blank, like if only he tried a little harder Eames would begin to make sense to him.

Slim chance there, darling, Eames thinks, forcing a smile onto his face.

"Go on, Eames," Arthur says, "tell Melanie what this is called."

Eames doesn’t enjoy being talked to as though he’s a precocious toddler. He finds his goodwill towards Arthur, rather in short supply as it is, abruptly gone. "A Cartesian well," he says, and stalks away even as Melanie giggles behind him.

There really are exits built into the dream – that's standard form these days, a door out, camouflaged as something else. Shooting oneself in the head is beautifully dramatic, but it tends to give one an upsetting view of mortality, one way or another. Eames knows he made his way to the nearest one.

And yet, when Eames comes awake, Arthur's already staring at him, sleeve rolled down, as if he's beyond such human indignities as, say, bedhead.

Eames has a few choice words to say to him, but none that are truly worth risking Arthur's professional ire, so he swallows them and smiles at Arthur pleasantly instead. "Something you wanted, darling?"

The word might as well have been a whip, the way Eames wielded it; by the look on Arthur's face, it struck true. Eames might have said something else to ameliorate it, but by the time he thinks of it Arthur's already stalking off.

Arthur thinks he may have lost his mind. He's lost something, that's for certain, and he can't find whatever the fuck it is.

For one thing, he can't find half of the information he needs.

The worst of it is that Arthur knows, cerebrally, that this job isn't so difficult. All he has to do is figure out, within a reasonable margin of error, whether Birkham is militarized; plan for either eventuality, with emphasis shifting based on what he finds.

But he can't find anything, and if Arthur's completely honest with himself it's because he's not looking.

Oh, he does the obvious things, one after the other. Textbook approach, if there was such a thing as a textbook for point men. But all he finds is contradicting psych evaluations for Birkham, who apparently got herself tested for possible militarization, but it's unclear whether she ever completed the process.

He can’t find the final report forms, because the dream-therapy clinic’s server is too well-secured. Arthur could probably break it, but the enhanced dictionary attacks failed and he doesn’t have time to brute-force it. So he has to make do with scribbled therapist reports and PASIV log files. Arthur’s okay with the technological part – whatever else she may have, Birkham doesn’t have any averse physical reactions to shared dreaming – but the psych parts don’t even begin to make sense.

The whole concept is a little after Arthur's time; when he got himself secured, there wasn't a lot of choice involved in the matter, short of arrest for insubordination. If the militarization could end up ripping your mind apart when it was activated, well, tough cookies.

Arthur knows a thing or two about that type of –

“Any progress?” Eames asks from the doorway, and it’s only thanks to very good reflex control that Arthur doesn’t jump and spill coffee all over himself.

“I’ll let you know,” Arthur says, staring fixedly at his screen. Eames doesn’t need to look over his shoulder, because Eames really doesn’t need to know that Arthur’s playing Bejeweled Blitz when he’s supposed to be working.

He’s thinking, damn it, and his fingers need something to do while he does. And if his thoughts are going in circles, well, Eames doesn’t need to know that, either.

For a tense moment Arthur worries Eames will come to stand behind him, might look at what Arthur’s (not) doing. But all Eames does is nod from the doorway and go back to his own work.

Right. Arthur glares at his screen, opens a new tab and closes the current one. Productivity begins now.

Two hours later, he’s no further along on the question of Birkham’s militarization. On the other hand, he finally broke his record on the Minesweeper advanced level.

Arthur straightens in his chair. Breathes deep. He needs to get something done. Needs to have something to show to the client tomorrow. Never mind that they’re not seeing the client until the delivery date, that the only person who’s showed even a cursory interest in Arthur’s work is Eames.

Come to think about it, there’s something odd there. The client hasn’t shown any interest at all in the job so far. She probably holds back to protect her anonymity. Although that cat is long out of the bag, found out by one of Melanie’s contacts: Their client is Genevieve Banks, vice-president of a minor shipping company. Which only makes it odder –

“Any luck?” Eames says from the door, and this time Arthur does spill his coffee.

“Fuck,” Arthur says, mopping himself in place of answering, not looking at Eames.

But Eames refuses to look away or be diverted, keeping his eyes on Arthur. Arthur doesn’t flush under the weight of his gaze because generally his skin doesn’t do that, but the back of his neck prickles.

“No,” Arthur says. He’s looking at the floor, because he needs to find where his cup went, because he can’t stand to look at Eames’ face right now. “I’ll tell you if anything comes up, okay? Let me work.”

Eames takes a long time to answer. Arthur supposes he can blame no one but himself. “Very well.” He closes the door behind him quietly. It sounds like an accusation.

At first, Eames thinks Arthur might be testing him. He only holds back from snapping because he doesn’t want to give Arthur the satisfaction.

But when Melanie comes to him with the pitifully small folder Arthur compiled for her, Eames is seriously considering getting angry.

He corners Arthur late that evening, after Melanie and Finley have left.

Eames has enough control not to shove the folder in Arthur’s face, but only just. “What do you want Melanie to do with this, hm?”

For a brief moment he thinks Arthur may say her job, or something that would likewise force Eames to punch him in the mouth. But Arthur looks at Eames, looks at him for a long moment until Eames stops feeling angry and reaches somewhere between bafflement and worry.

“I don’t know,” Arthur says, at last. His hands clench. “I don’t fucking know, Eames. Fuck.” Arthur lands on one of their lounge chairs, hands fisting in his hair. “I don’t – “ His voice doesn’t crack or break, it just stops, and all right, now Eames is worried.

He kneels so he’s of a height with Arthur. Doesn’t put a hand on him, doesn’t quite dare to, but looks him in the eye. “You don’t?”

Arthur looks blank. Except for how he doesn’t, except for the tiniest tells Eames can fish out. Whiteness around the eyes, darkness under them – has Arthur not slept? Some movement in the lips that could be called a quiver on a lesser person.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.” Arthur’s voice is low, rough, and there’s a twitch in his hands as he says it, knuckles whitening from the strength of that clench.

There’s a place for sympathy, Eames knows, and this isn’t it. “What were you doing, then?”

“Nothing. Fuck. I don’t know.” If Arthur goes on like this he’ll grow prematurely bald, and that would be a shame.

“All right,” Eames says, strictly out of concern for the state of Arthur’s scalp. “What needs doing, then? Give me the list, Arthur, I know you have one.”

For a bare moment Eames thinks Arthur might not, actually, have composed in his mind a list of tasks to accomplish; but as that might be a sign of the apocalypse, he’s quite relieved when Arthur blinks and rattles them off.

“All right. You’ve been working on the militarization all week, then?”

Arthur grimaces. “I can’t even stand to think that word anymore.” His hands have let go, though, so Eames calls it success.

“Then go on to what’s next in the queue.” Which is how they might grab Birkham, but Arthur’s shaking his head.

“I have to prepare the materials for Melanie,” he says, and all right, that’s a fair point. “Except I need to do that, too, if we want time to go over it. Which we do.” His hands are going up again in little abortive motions, and before Eames can think better of it he takes them in his own, holding Arthur still.

“One thing at a time,” Eames says.

“But we need the plans.” Arthur twitches in his hold, but doesn’t try to actually break it. In fact, Eames isn’t sure Arthur noticed his confinement at all. “And Melanie needs her materials. And. Fuck.”

There’s something wild in Arthur’s eyes. Eames presses harder and repeats, “One thing at a time. Choose one, Arthur.”

“Fine.” Arthur swallows, closes his eyes for a moment. “We need the things for Melanie. And then, we need Birkham’s routine.”

“Lovely.” With one last squeeze, Eames lets go.

Arthur gets to his feet, dusting his trousers with a fussy little gesture that Eames files away in the manner he does. “Okay,” he says. “Going to work now.”

When Eames follows him, Arthur darts a sharp glance at him, but doesn’t say anything.

The mocking will begin any minute now.

Arthur’s tense under Eames’ gaze. It’s not even that Eames is waiting for him to fuck up; Arthur already has fucked up. Only question is whether he can still make up for it.

The weirdest thing is, it seems like that’s actually a possibility.

For the first time in weeks, Arthur looks at the data and doesn’t turn away, doesn’t look elsewhere as soon as the first difficulty pops up.

It doesn’t come easily, at first; he opens the stolen record of Birkham’s travel expenses only to close it after a glance.

“Well?” Eames says, with a little frown.

“There’s nothing there,” Arthur says, but even as he does he knows he’s lying. Eames just keeps looking at him until he opens it again, until he goes over the lines with enough thoroughness to mathematically prove that Birkham never travelled more than twenty miles over land if she could help it.

It isn’t much, but it’s a start. As with all secrets, once you find one out the others come more swiftly out of it, links in a chain.

Still hard to do, though. It’s like pulling teeth, actually, and Arthur doesn’t know why he’s like this, what’s wrong with him. This isn't like him at all.

He may say something along these lines to Eames, when it’s three AM and he’s only found half the things Melanie needed from him.

“What’re you like, then?” Eames should sound mocking, but he doesn’t. Only curious.

“Better than this,” Arthur says, and looks back at the document. Maybe if he looks at it hard enough, the time and date for that arms shipment will just pop out at him and render this entire fucking job moot.

At least it can keep him from thinking of other things, like the heat of Eames’ proximity, how for a brief insane moment Arthur wished Eames would put his hand on the back of Arthur’s neck and hold.

“You are.” Arthur glares at him for this, but Eames looks thoughtful. “I’ve never seen you like this,” he says. He doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer, though, so Arthur drags his eyes back to the screen.

At four AM, he gives in to the urge to pillow his head on his arms, just for a moment.

“Darling?” For once, the word has no bite in it. Maybe Eames didn’t even notice he said it. It is late, after all.

“I’ll never get this done,” Arthur says, because he’s exhausted and it’s too much of an effort to lie.

Eames should laugh at him. Arthur deserves to be laughed at. But Eames just says, “You will,” like that’s just fact. Before Arthur can embarrass himself too much, Eames adds, “Give me the list again.”

The list. Right. Eames has made Arthur give it to him every half-hour or so since they started this. Even in Arthur’s current haziness, it comes to him easily.

“Check Birkham’s standard real-world security procedures. Pick a time and location for grabbing her. Re-check the militarization, see if anything comes up.” Arthur halts, uncertain. The list was longer than that. He’s forgetting something.

He raises his head to look at Eames, who arches an eyebrow at him. “And the diaries,” he says, after a moment where Arthur gapes at him in silence.

“Right, the diaries,” Arthur says, feeling like an idiot. Then again that was his state for most of the last week, so why the hell not. “I need to.” Fuck. He can’t even remember where they got the diaries from in the first place, what they need out of them.

“The diaries that I summarized to get a feel for my forgery,” Eames says, and fuck, Arthur just wishes the ground would fucking swallow him right now.

He could snap at Eames, ask why he didn’t say so sooner. But Eames has been going above and beyond, picking up Arthur’s slack when Arthur wasn’t doing much of anything at all.

Eames could’ve been in bed right now, Arthur thinks, and he looks at Eames, who’s very pointedly not yawning. Arthur should be telling him to go to sleep.

When he tries, though, something happens to his voice and what comes out isn’t even words. Arthur shuts his mouth, but not fast enough to prevent Eames from giving him a sharp look.

Arthur’s second attempt is better. “I just need,” he says, faltering for a moment, but then The List realigns itself in his mind. “The security,” he says, half to himself, and his fingers fly on the keyboard like they know something he doesn’t. Arthur kind of hopes so, by now.

It’s dawn by the time Arthur drags out the last item, formatting everything neatly for Melanie. It’s a habit, ingrained from his days with Dom who needed everything in bullet points or he’d just skim it.

“All right,” Arthur says. There’s something else he needs to do. What is it. He’ll remember in a moment. Before he can quite think, he closes his laptop and rises, swaying slightly.

But no. That isn’t what he should do. He sits down again with a sigh.

Eames squints at him, bleary-eyed. “That’s everything done, wasn’t it?”

Well. Yes. But there was something. Arthur closes his eyes, tries to grab at the stray thought. Grab. Right. “The details, of.” He needs to make words come out of his mouth. That shouldn’t be hard. “Of the grab. When we’re taking Birkham.”

“Arthur.” Eames’ voice is gentle and Arthur hates it, detests how he wants to lean into it and listen. “You’ve done that already. It’s in the file for Melanie. We have it.”

Right. They do. Arthur just put it there.

“Come on.” Eames’ hand rests warm and solid on his shoulder, now, steering him towards his own office, where there’s a cot Arthur’s napped on a couple of times. The blanket is scratchy, but right now just lying down feels like heaven.

But the moment Arthur’s head touches the mattress, he jerks up. “I need.” He can’t formulate what’s missing, can’t even remember what it is. “I should.”

“Sleep,” Eames says. His hand is heavy, pinning Arthur down, and Arthur thinks he should probably struggle against it, but he’s asleep before he can remember how to do that.

"I'm not doing any more revisions," Finley says. Arthur may or may not be losing his professional shit, but he can tell when someone's close to snapping.

Eames, who does not know when to fucking stop, says, "We need a focal point, Finley. Something to make everything come together. A place for the secret to be kept."

"I made you a fucking safe already." Finley's hands are clenching into tight fists. "What the fuck do you even want?"

"A safe doesn't fit," Melanie says, and Arthur's frankly grateful she's the one to say it. "It's a fantasy world. Modern technology's too incongruous."

"All right, Miss Fluttershine," Finley says, and the unmasked contempt in his voice makes Arthur want to punch him. "What should we put in place of a safe, then?"

Melanie doesn't seem to be fazed, however. "What would you expect to find in the middle of a city?" It's not rhetorical. Arthur can tell by her glancing at Eames, by the tapping of her fingers.

"City hall?" Arthur suggests. "Postal office?" That could work, actually, but Arthur doesn't see it fitting in with the theme any better than Finley’s safe.

“A church,” Eames says, and Melanie nods enthusiastically. “Or some kind of religious center, anyway. Darling, have we anything on Birkham’s beliefs?”

Eames has been calling him that more often. He doesn’t even appear to notice he’s doing it. Arthur grits his teeth and answers. “Atheist, as far as I can tell. With some fondness for new-age stuff.” It’s the oddest collection of crap, too. Arthur’s spent far too long browsing purchases she made on Etsy, tribal earrings and tiny amulets shaped like lizards and weird-ass calendars.

Eames waves this off. “So make it non-denominational. Unitarian, or what-have-you.”

“I think I already said what I think about this,” Finley says through gritted teeth.

So he has. But still. “Melanie and Eames are right,” Arthur says. Melanie beams at him. He’s very careful not to look at Eames’ expression. “The safe doesn’t work.” To Finley’s tight expression, Arthur says, “Last minute changes happen. Deal with it.”

“I’m not a fucking amateur,” Finley snaps, but he goes to make another draft, as much as he grumbles about it.

Arthur goes back to his own work. Even if he has the time and location for the job he needs to keep an eye on things, make sure that nothing’s changed. At the very least, he needs a distraction. Some way to pretend he can’t feel Eames’ eyes on him.

The grab goes without a hitch. Eames doesn't quite know why he thought it might go tits-up, but then he looks at Arthur, securing Birkham’s unconscious form, and his mouth draws into a tight line.

And yet, for all that Arthur's woefully off his form, this job is still looking better than several Eames has pulled off. Possibly this says more about Eames' standards than anything else, but he doesn't think so.

Arthur stands up. "All right. Finley?"

"Yeah, yeah." Their architect is looking woefully sour. Eames supposes he can't blame him. "Hook up, go in. I'll watch."

"See that you do," Melanie says before lying down.

When Eames comes under, it takes a minute for the world to resolve itself. Their end compromise was something between Eames' original idea and Finley's, with concessions made for stability's sake; the breathable water, for one thing. When asked about it, Finley gave a thirty minutes long lecture about gills vs. lungs and pressure and surface tension, which nobody except Melanie really listened to.

But what it comes down to is that the domes of Eames' design, while still present, are more decorative than otherwise, and that Eames is floating in what is basically water-textured air.

He takes a moment to appreciate his surroundings. The narrow twisting passageways that comprise the city's surface, the buildings growing in curves and spirals not unlike a coral reef. The breathable water is grey-green around Eames, and the quality of the light is like that of a crisp autumn afternoon. Here and there, spots of bioluminescence flare up. Pretty, but they serve a purpose, too; the city's designed to be easy to lose one's way in. The lights should help them keep themselves oriented.

And in the center, looming deep, the cathedral.

Eames grins to himself as he shifts, going by feel rather than by sight. So what if the job's likely to go to hell? Eames has been resigned to that from the start.

He breathes the water in deep, and dives.

Melanie's two steps in front of Arthur – two hand-strokes, maybe. Arthur doesn't know. They're in the tunnels twisting under the city.

They pause at the exit. The tunnels only open at the city's edges, but they're positioned so that swimming through them brings the swimmer to the dream's horizon at the appropriate angle to reach the intended destination.

"This'll bring you close to the cathedral," Arthur says. Needlessly, if the way Melanie rolls her eyes is any indication. "You know what to do?"

"Yes, because it's not like we didn’t go over that five times already." She smiles, puts a hand on his shoulder. Arthur doesn't shake it off. "It'll be fine."

"Sure," Arthur says. He watches her dive away.

From there on, Arthur shouldn't really have anything to do but go around the perimeter of the city and wait for something to go wrong. So if their planning so far has gone well, Arthur won’t have anything to do until the dream ends.

Arthur sighs and adjusts his taser. It's probably going to get busy soon.

Birkham looks younger in the dream. Eames supposes that's par for the course.

"Hey," he says from behind her, in Diana's voice. "Ellen?"

Ellen's slow to turn. Just as well, since Eames is wavering between forms, not certain which to show her. Bugger it, he'll go for whatever settles first and call it artistic integrity.

Eames isn't sure what he'd expected at this point – heartfelt hugs, perhaps, or shrewd calculated chill. The pure joy in Birkham's smile isn't a surprise, exactly, but it wouldn't have been Eames' first guess. The form Eames has settled in is an amalgamation of the happy mermaid, as he's called her, and of Diana's actual form, leaning heavily towards the latter.

"You made it." Ellen's voice is low. Eames thinks that maybe if they weren't submerged, he would've seen wetness in the corners of her eyes. "Are we – " she frowns. "This doesn't look like the Higher Realms."

"Yeah, they've let me do some redecorating," Eames says. Thankfully, that makes Ellen crack into laughter. Eames laughs too, happy and relieved.

"You've passed the vortex." Ellen reaches for him, and Eames takes her hands in his. "We're here. Finally. How did I – did I drown?"

Eames affects an elaborate shrug. "They don't tell me these things." It makes Ellen's eyes widen – what is she thinking, Eames would quite like to know. "I'm just a messenger."

"God, I'm glad to see you," Ellen says. She kisses Eames on the cheek, which he didn't expect, but he rolls with it. "Where now? What's next?"

Eames holds back a relieved sigh. "Come with me," he says, and the city glides beneath them as they go.

The water grows steadily darker as Arthur swims through tunnels closer to the heart of the city. The design won't take him directly to the cathedral, that's what the Cartesian horizon is for. But he can feel it when he gets closer, a noticeable drop in the water temperature.

It makes him cautious. And good thing, too, considering the thing that tries to snap at him out of the darkness.

Arthur curses and twists in the water. He can feel the thing better than he can see it, in the shifting of currents and the undefined dread that comes from having something large and deadly watch you. Swimming won't help him, that thing's likely to be faster than he is, and the taser's a last resort, as likely to hurt Arthur as it is to damage projections or malevolent dreamscapes.

The next exit is bare minutes away... Minutes Arthur doesn't have.

He grabs hold of the tunnel wall – cold and slick as it is, slimy under his fingers, he still finds a jutting rock to grip; he twists and moves to kick the thing in the jaw. A double set of needle-sharp teeth nearly close on his ankle. Arthur curls back, tensing, and kicks off from the wall.

With the added momentum, plus swimming as hard as he can, he gets just barely ahead. In the lightening water he can see a little of what's chasing him, a long sinuous body mottled an ugly green-grey. Arthur thinks, a little ludicrously, that the coloring matches Eames' mermaid form, before he sees an opening ahead and ducks through it.

The moray gets stuck in the tunnel's opening. Arthur hovers for a bare moment just outside the reach of its teeth, and then it opens its mouth and a second set of teeth come shooting, nearly closing on Arthur's hand. Fortunately, that's the same hand holding the taser. Even more fortunately, the charge goes into the moray rather than up Arthur’s arm.

Arthur turns away and tries to orient himself. He's in a part of the city they haven't paid much attention to during the design process. There isn't a lot of traffic, only a few schools of fish showing a desultory interest in the moray's gently roasted flesh. Arthur flexes his toes and kicks up.

He swims looking up, deep in concentration. He'll see where he is, see if Eames or Melanie triggered the distress signals.

It turns out, they haven't. They don't need to.

Arthur watches as the heart of the city turns black, as the water around it grows thick and slimy-looking, eating down the walls of the houses, swallowing back the people in the street.

"Hurry," Eames snaps at Ellen, then winces when she looks wounded. "Things are going bad. I can tell."

It doesn't feel like any sort of militarization that Eames knows, but there's always something new, isn't it? Just their bloody luck to run into it, here and now. Eames has no idea where Arthur is, but Melanie should be in the cathedral, waiting for them. Eames herds Ellen in that direction.

"Will we be safe in there?" Ellen says, but her tone is testing. It's not reassurance she's after.

"Nowhere's safe," Eames says, distracted. "But it's where we should be." By the way Ellen draws closer, it must've been the right thing to say. Right now, though, Eames is frankly more concerned with where the door to the blasted cathedral is.

It's odd, though. Eames has a good spatial memory, and he's certain the cathedral was meant to be smaller than this. He vaguely remembers stairs, but only two or three flat ones leading to the entrance, not the endless terraces that they've been climbing for the last half-hour.

Finally he finds something like a door and goes in, pulling it shut behind them. Ellen's looking a bit unsteady. "What's wrong?" he says, framing her face in his hands.

She runs a finger down his cheek. There's a wondering look in her eye. "You've changed," she says.

"Had to." He leaves it at that, and she seems to accept it. She kisses him again, on his mouth this time. There's no heat in it, but it's nothing like chaste, deep and wet as the dream itself. "More than you think," he says, softly, and shifts, glad of the time he took to perfect the forgery.

Ellen watches, wide-eyed, as Eames slips through Diana, through both mermaids, into something unpracticed and raw-feeling. He has no idea what he looks like, although he catches a glimpse of it in Ellen's eyes. She doesn't turn away, though Eames thinks he might have, in her place.

“You’re lovely,” Ellen says, her face grave. She touches Eames’ cheek. “What are you, now?”

This really isn't the reaction Eames was expecting. Since he has no clue how to answer the question, he pulls away. "The inner sanctum," he says, "we have to," thankful for an excuse for the breathlessness, something that will let him get away with not finishing his sentences.

The corridor they're in is long and narrow and dark, but there's another door, and Ellen follows Eames through it.

Things don't look much prettier on the street level.

Arthur uses his taser on a few projections, who are terrified rather than hostile. Arthur has a sneaking suspicion he knows what this is. He desperately hopes he's wrong, but if he isn't, everyone needs to leave the dream right the fuck now.

Melanie has already made her way into the cathedral. Arthur can't spot Eames and Birkham, so hopefully, they've done the same. Arthur needs to get back into the tunnels if he wants to make a clean break to the center, but the water is growing thick and dark around him, behind him.

The only way out is through, Arthur thinks, an unwelcome echo of Dom's voice.

He breathes deep, if it can be called that, squares his shoulders and swims into the corrupted parts of the city. Even Dom has to be right every now and then.

By the time they reach the center room, Eames is absolutely certain that this isn't their design.

He thought, at first, that perhaps it was Finley taking petty vengeance, heaping additions to the changes they forced him to make at the last minute. But that doesn't make any sense – Finley isn't even down here with them. Arthur's the dreamer; Finley would have had to teach all this to him, and Arthur surely wouldn't have left Eames in the dark.

So to speak, Eames thinks, frowning at the icy water currents brushing his shoulder, his back, the delicate fins on his arms. It's definitely getting harder to see, too.

Ellen stops when they come into the room. "We're almost out of time," she says, strangled. "Oh, Diana, this is so messed up."

Eames can't help but agree. There's a man – or what once was a man, anyway – lying on an altar in the middle of the room. His chest is split open, and there are embers smoldering in the wound.

"We're almost out of time," Ellen repeats under her breath, and turns to Eames. "Is this why you brought me here?"

Not really, no, not at all. But Eames can hardly say that. While he's struggling to find what he can say, she kisses him again.

"I couldn't hurt you," she says, earnest, and Eames dearly wishes he could say he has no idea what she wants from him, but he's bloody good at what he does.

"Then don't make me wield the knife," Eames says, and lies down beside the corpse.

The things he does to make jobs run smoothly. Arthur's going to owe him big time for this.

Time behaves oddly approaching the center of the dream. It takes bare moments for Arthur to reach the ground – bottom? – but it seems to slow as he walks onwards. He concentrates on putting one foot ahead of the other and not even considering the possibility of limbo. It takes forever. Maybe it's just because he's afraid.

The substance around him doesn't feel like water any more, nor like air. It clings to his skin, sticks to his face like it wants to crawl inside his mouth. Arthur doesn't shake it off; no point. He's tried.

This is what it feels like when dreams rot, he thinks, and tries to forget the thought as soon as it's formed. If this is what he thinks it is, then the dreamscape – for lack of a better word – will react to him, trying to find form in the closest pattern of thought because it's lost its own.

Militarization does that to some people, destabilizes their minds so that when they’re invaded, everything falls apart. It leaves the target a vegetable (scrambled egg, Arthur thinks in Eames’ voice, and puts the thought aside because now isn’t the fucking time), and the people who've broken into their brain not much better off. Arthur's pretty sure he should be getting the fuck out right now, except he's starting to develop a niggling worry that outside might not even exist anymore.

The fog pulls at his feet like reluctance. Arthur trudges on grimly.

He should have known this would happen. Maybe not this exact scenario, but something like it. Mistakes pile up, Arthur knows, and the way he was carrying on, it was only a matter of time before everything came crashing down around him.

Something goes thud in the darkness to his side, some obscure shape crumbling. Arthur does not appreciate the irony.

He could probably turn the taser on himself now, come awake in the real world and sort this out from the outside. But what good would that do, with Eames and Melanie trapped under the surface?

Arthur shakes off the fog as well as he can. It's not much. He goes on, because that's all he knows how to do at this point.

The first bite of the knife into Eames' chest makes him gasp. Ellen watches him with tear-washed eyes, but her hand is steady.

"I'll trade with you," she says, staying her hand. "You just have to say the words."

Through the pain, Eames has to reach for Diana's word usage. "You greedy jerk," he says, trying hard for a smile. "You just want my place in heaven."

It makes Ellen smile, too, but it's a fragile one. "Promise me you'll be happy," she says.

"You idiot." It comes easier to Eames now. He doesn't know why. "Like I can promise that? Could you?"

Ellen's silent for a moment, and there's nothing but the awful sound of a blade sawing through flesh. "I can't. I wasn't."

"I know," Eames says, and the tenderness comes even without trying for it. It's broken by the wet rasp of his breath. He irritably wishes he could turn that off somehow. It's almost worse than the pain, which for all its intensity is abstract and somehow distant. Pain is in the mind, and while Eames has been stabbed and shot on more than one opportunity, he'd never had his heart carved out with a sharp knife.

"Stay still," Ellen says. Tears roll down her cheeks, unheeded. "Stay still or – " She freezes.

"What?" Eames can barely speak now, can barely keep his eyes open.

"We could just. Not." Ellen's bent down to whisper right into Eames' ear. "We could both stay here until the end. Fuck everyone else. We've already done enough for them."

Eames has no bloody clue what's going on in here. He has no idea what Ellen is doing or why, he has no idea why the water outside has turned into murky sludge.

But he knows his character, and he knows his lines. "No," he says, "there has to be a purpose, or what's the point? Don't stop. We need to pull through."

Ellen gives him a weak smile. She says something about a new sun, but Eames loses consciousness before he can make out what, exactly, it is.

Arthur finds Melanie at the bottom of the stepped pyramid, clinging to a terrace and keeping her eyes resolutely shut. Clever of her. Arthur takes her hand, and once she's ascertained he's not a threat she follows him down.

The door isn't where it should be, but if there's something Arthur's intimately familiar with it's fuck-ups in dreamsharing. There's always a pattern, and working in the field long enough gives you a feeling for it. The door isn't where they put it, but it's not too far off.

"We should abort," Melanie whispers. He doesn't know why she bothers. There's nothing in the dimness that can hear them.

"We need to get Eames," he says. "You can go up if you'd rather."

"Not if you're staying." She sticks close behind him and doesn't ask any more questions after that. Arthur appreciates it.

Corridors in dreams, at the very core, are misleading fuckers in that the actual direction doesn't matter. What matters is the intent. Go in with the wrong kind of thoughts and you can stay stuck in the same three feet of corridor until the kick comes around. Arthur's got intent down cold.

Unfortunately, it's not the only thing getting cold. They closed the fog out, coming in, but it's creeping after them nevertheless, snuffing out the tiny glows of bioluminescent fungi embedded in the walls.

They're running out of time. Arthur pulls Melanie up. If she gets lost and he has to hunt for her...

The next turn brings them to the inner chamber. Easy, easier than it should be. Arthur walks slow and cautious, close to the walls, quiet. Melanie follows suit.

They needn't have bothered. Birkham's sitting in the center of the room with her back turned to them. She's holding something Arthur can't make out. A weapon? He scans the room for Eames and sees nothing.

The room's steadily going colder and darker. Fuck. He needs to find Eames before the inevitable happens. There's a beat at the back of Arthur's head saying This is all your fault. It's correct, if not particularly helpful.

Then Birkham moves, and it turns out it's a lighter she's holding up. In the sudden glow of the flame Arthur discerns a grey-green arm, flung across Birkham's lap.

For a moment Arthur's frozen, unsure. It's only a dream, he tells himself, but it doesn't fucking matter, and nobody knows that better than Arthur. The pain Eames must be feeling is real enough, and it's Arthur's fault.

Then the fire flares, and Arthur sees nothing but whiteness.

Eames feels out of himself, seeing and unseeing at the same time. He knows he can open his eyes, if he wants to. It's just that he can't quite bring himself to want.

He feels heat, dimly, on the edges of his skin. There's a fire burning, he knows, but he can't feel it. No nerve endings in there, he thinks, dimly. He's floating. It hurts, but the pain is far away, not important. Ellen's hand is cool on his shoulder. Through his closed eyelids, the world turns brighter.

"It's done." Ellen's voice is shaky. "The new sun is lit. Wake up, Diana."

Eames rather thinks he should, but he can't remember how one does that, exactly. It's all he can do to hold on to this shape, to this body, wounded and barely alive. It's crucial that he keep holding it, he remembers that, even if the why of it has slipped his mind just at the moment.

Then he hears another voice, familiar though he can't quite place it. "She needs time," says someone, a woman, just beyond Ellen. "Come with me. We have preparations to make."

Ellen moves away, and Eames would reach for her if he could. She's not really his friend, not for any value of the word, but she's present and, even in a dream, nobody wants to die alone.

He's not alone for long, though. Soon enough there's a presence by his side, a hand slipping into his.

"Eames?" Arthur says, and Eames opens his eyes for that.

Arthur looks as he always does, only a few strands of decaying dream-material caught in his hair. It's vanishing, though, even as Eames looks, melting in the warmth of the fire.

Eames doesn't want to think about that. The shipment, he tries to say, but his voice won't work. Arthur frowns momentarily, then stands up. Eames' hand tightens reflexively around his, but Arthur doesn't let go, only looking over Eames, a small distance. He emits a quiet, satisfied, "Hah," and bends over Eames, heedless of the flames licking at his tie.

"It's in the ashes," Arthur says, and the next thing Eames feels is the cold touch of a knife at his throat. He's exceedingly grateful for it.

Eames shudders once before going still and leaving the dream. Arthur looks away. He can’t afford to lose focus now.

Arthur puts the knife down and goes to inspect the corpse next to him. It's very clear that Birkham doesn't, in her day-to-day life, deal with dead bodies often: it's waxen, plastic-like. What could've been disgusting is rendered almost funny, like bad special effects in a horror movie.

It makes things a lot easier for Arthur, since what he next has to do is look closely at the ashes in the corpse' chest. There's writing there, finger-scrawled. A jumble of letters and numbers, and Arthur tries to parse it in a few ways before giving up and committing it to memory as-is. Even if it's not what they came for, it's useful and it's better than nothing.

Hopefully, Melanie will also be able to pull something out of Birkham. Together they might make this into – if not a success, at least less of a spectacular failure.

Eames' body – the body he inhabited, that of his forgery – is still burning up. Arthur would wonder that it doesn't vanish, but the flames seem to be doing something important to the dream. For one thing, the clingy shadows are all gone from the room, leaving only the ordinary kind.

"Well, that was a fuck up," Eames mutters on waking up, detaching himself from the PASIV with disgust.

"Hah," Finley says. "Called it."

"You shut your mouth," Eames says, albeit without heat. Finley's not wrong to complain. Then again, Finley can take some abuse. "You'll get your share."

Finley looks like he's about to say something when Arthur and Melanie stir. Arthur looks like Eames feels, but Melanie appears decidedly cheerful.

"Got it?" Eames asks her, and she shakes her head but keeps smiling.

"Got something," Melanie says, but won't tell him anything further. "I need to check it out." She grabs Arthur's hand and scribbles something on it. "You look into it too, okay?"

Arthur looks down. Under other circumstances, Eames would find the way he frowns amusing, but not right now.

He waylays Arthur after Finley and Melanie have disappeared, as they make their way out of the office building. Arthur doesn't shake him off, but he looks like he wants to. "You're drawing attention," Arthur says in a low voice, eyes looking forward.

"Nonsense," Eames says lightly. Nobody’s looking at them, everyone in the building minding their own business. He takes Arthur's arm, as though they're the best of friends. Arthur twitches but doesn't pull away.

Eames finds them a bar, just enough above the seediness line that no one will look twice at their neat suits. He buys a whiskey for Arthur and gin for himself, and drags him to sit in a booth next to the speakers. They shouldn't be overheard, here.

"I have no idea what Melanie's talking about," Arthur says before he even sits all the way down. He gives Eames a crooked half-smile, cynical and old. It's unlike him, but then again so is this entire episode.

"I know." Eames could add something cutting here, but what good would that do? The thought of that just conjures Cobb, red-faced and shouting. That hadn't been any help, either.

Come to think of it, Arthur's situation makes more sense than Eames might have thought. "Tell me," he says. "How long have you been in the business?"

Arthur frowns at him; ah, there's the Arthur Eames knows and admires. "Seven years."

Eames first worked with Cobb about five years ago, when he was a relative newcomer to the business, and it's well known that during Cobb's time in the field he, Mal and Arthur had an exclusive partnership. So that accounts for some things. "Have you ever taken a vacation?"

Arthur twitches. "I. What?" He takes a sip of his drink, breathes. "I mean, sure. Between jobs."

"Not like that," Eames says, patient. "I'm talking a good long couple of months where you don't have to worry." About jobs, or money, or keeping your half-insane architect in check. Surely elaborating would only make Arthur bristle.

"That?" Arthur drinks again. Stalling. "I was having one." His voice is a little slower, thicker. "When you called me."

Ah. In retrospect, possibly Eames shouldn't have done that.

He leans forward, puts a comforting hand – he hopes it's comforting, at any rate – on Arthur's shoulder. "There's your trouble," Eames says. "You've gone and burned yourself out, love."

Arthur's stiff under his hands, muscles tense. "What are you trying to say?" His voice is a warning – which is to say, it's entirely blank, which Eames knows to be wary of.

"Nothing at all. But you've admitted you’re not at the top of your game." At that, Arthur flinches visibly. Eames tries for a gentle tone. "It's true. Take a rest, Arthur. You've plenty of money. Right now you're only putting the jobs at risk." And not just the jobs; that, too, is better left unsaid.

Arthur stays silent.

Eames holds his gaze for a moment and nods. "Right." He gets up. Shakes Arthur's shoulder a little. "Make it a good one, yeah? Somewhere in the tropics. Sleep in a hammock, get sunburned. "

He pays for their drinks and leaves Arthur to think about it.

Arthur sits staring at that drink for a long time. He's never been the type to drown his sorrows, but now looks like it might be a good time to start.

"Fuck Eames," he says, quietly, experimentally. "Fuck Eames." It doesn't seem to improve anything.

Because no matter how Arthur examines it, how he comes to it, Eames is right. Arthur's turned useless – worse than useless, because people know Arthur by reputation. They trust him to do his job; trust him with their lives and their sanity, given the kind of work he does.

Arthur cannot afford to fuck that up, yet he can't seem to do anything else recently. Conclusion: Arthur needs to get himself the fuck away from the working field and find something else to do with himself. Take up carpentry or something.

A vacation. Right.

Arthur downs the rest of the glass and gets the hell out. He needs to get good and drunk, but he's not going to do that in public. He's still got that much dignity left.

Eames briefly considers taking his own advice and getting some time off, but frankly there’s no use trying to get into a relaxing state of mind while still strung up from the job. He asks around, making calls while lounging into his train seat and staring absent-mindedly through the window.

"Right," he says to Irden, a point man of his acquaintance. "So next Tuesday?"

He can't quite make out Irden's answer, sadly, due to the fact that someone snatches his phone away and flings it out of the window.

Eames turns his head and smiles levelly at the black-clad fellow standing behind him. "Now," he says, "was that really necessary?"

"Sorry," the man says, and lunges for Eames. Eames, however, saw this coming, and within a heartbeat there’s a knife planted in his assailant's forearm.

"Right," Eames says, with some well-merited cheer. "Now let's discuss this like human beings, hm?"

Perhaps it's this line, and the hubris therein, that is Eames' downfall; because he's too busy indulging in petty victory to see that the expression on the thug's face is not a grimace, but a smile.

"Sorry," says another voice from behind Eames – or rather, that's what Eames thinks it says. He is already losing consciousness, courtesy of the needle plunged into his neck.

It has often occurred to Arthur that people's flaws and virtues tend to coincide. Eames' laziness is both the result and cause of his specific genius; Melanie's untrained earnestness is both compelling and a risk. Dom's cleverness was the reason he'd gotten himself into half the shit that Arthur had to drag him out of later.

As for Arthur, his secretive tendencies are both an extremely useful trait and a failure. It honestly never occurred to him to do anything else about his recent difficulties than push on regardless. Asking for help might have made all the difference in this last job – and if he's honest with himself, in several ones before, too.

On the other hand, it means that when Melanie calls, she doesn't have a clue that Arthur's bitchin' drunk.

"I think the missing piece is a password," she shouts above the background din. Where the fuck is she calling from, a monster truck derby? "Some kind of textual key, anyway. I couldn't – " Something that sounds like an angry wasp cuts her off. An albatross-sized wasp.

"What?" Arthur says. He's clicking lazily on his keyboard, just dicking about with things, nothing important – wikipedia articles he keeps track of, network stats for his own computer, composing a scathing comment to an article about web security and the dangers of sniffers. "I can't hear you."

The noise intensifies, then abruptly stops. "Okay now?" Melanie asks. She doesn't give him a chance to answer before saying, "Right. So I got something out of her, except I can't make sense of it. Also some raw data – she had things written in the decorations once I poked her into thinking about work." She sounds displeased, despite that. Arthur doesn't inquire. They all know the job could've ended better. "I'm emailing you with everything."

It arrives with a small ping!. Arthur opens it in another tab, re-reading the wikipedia entry for Hunt the Wumpus. "So did you figure out the date for the shipment?" His tone is a bit on the pointed side, but nobody's getting paid until they get the data to the client.

"No," Melanie says, "or else I wouldn't be sending you everything." It's good procedure to do that after a job in any case, actually, but Arthur doesn't correct her. "I wanted to talk to Eames about it, but he's not answering his phone."

Arthur blinks and sits up straight in the chair. "Isn't he?" He might be blocking Melanie. Wouldn't be the first time Eames did that to a person after a less-than-satisfactory job. He did it to Dom and Arthur, too, after the disastrous first time they worked together. "Hang on." He puts Melanie ruthlessly on hold, because Eames may tune out further offers from them, but he never, ever cuts contact before his pay comes in.

The phone on the other hand rings twice before segueing into a mechanic client unavailable message. Arthur hits redial twice before going back to Melanie. "All right," he says. "So what do you think?" He tabs over to the email she's sent – a word and a few bare sketches.

"I think we asked the wrong questions and got answers accordingly," Melanie says bluntly. "I don't think we're going to get the shipment date out of what we got."

Arthur hears a but in there. He scrolls through the images she's sent – most just look like variations on the Birkham Shipping logo, if it were spiky and had hugely grinning square heads incorporated into it. But there's something, a heavily stylized hourglass, that looks familiar.

"She talked a lot about her friend." Melanie's voice turns thoughtful. "Maybe this has to do with her. With her death, or whatever."

"I don't see how that's going to be helpful." That image, the one that looks familiar, Arthur saves aside. But there's another one down the list that stands out, so Arthur goes to hunt for that. "Hang on." He puts on his headset, puts the phone down. He'll need his hands to type. Or draw, as the case may be.

Arthur doesn't usually work with a tablet, but he has one for when he needs it, like now. He calls on his graphic search program and scribbles the basic lines of the image into it. The search program works in fits and starts – Arthur keeps having to go into the code to fuck with it so it talks to the search engines properly.

He doesn't have to make any adjustments this time, though. The image comes out immediately, drawn out of the cache memory. The logo to Triscom, a company that Birkham owned until recently, which now belongs to... Rex Daly, Arthur remembers after a moment, but he's already typed it out, so it's black-on-white in front of him. "Melanie, what do we know about Birkham's husband?"

"Which one?" There are faint beeping noises coming from the other end. Sounds like Melanie's doing some fact-checking herself.

"The most recent one." Birkham's only gotten divorced from Daly a few months ago. And, yes, it looks like he got Triscom in the settlement. Something's bugging Arthur, something isn't sitting right in this. He tilts his head and squints at the screen, trying to think.

“Hey,” Melanie says, derailing his train of thought. “I’ve been trying to figure out what that weird fog was, and - “

"Oh, that? I know what that was,” Arthur says. “It was her militarization. Or its side effects, to be accurate.”

“Wait, I thought militarization meant you had projections shooting at you?” He can imagine Melanie miming pulling a trigger.

“Not necessarily. Probably that’s what was supposed to happen, though, yeah.” Arthur swivels his chair around and calls up the hourglass image again. “What we saw was pretty much textbook for militarization backfire. Think you’re trying to inoculate someone, and they end up developing an autoimmune disorder.”

“Ouch,” Melanie says, but Arthur’s not really listening, staring at his screen instead.

He goes to the website for the Untime Mental Safety Institution, where he's greeted by a grinning hourglass.

Untime is supposedly an upscale mental therapy clinic, the place where rich people go to get rid of nightmares. Unofficially, it's the biggest supplier of legal dreamsharing treatments on the east coast. Arthur went to this site during the research stages of the job. He already knows they treated Birkham, and apparently militarized her as well. Which means she must have passed their stability tests somehow.

He enters the word Melanie sent him and the password he found. Birkham's history is two clicks away, but when it comes up it's a lot shorter than he expected.

"So, about Rex Daly," Melanie says. "Apparently he's trying to build Triscom into a rival shipping company. Which is kind of clueless of him, I think." She’s right. Triscom has its niche, and it’s doing well there.

Arthur grunts into the phone and looks over Birkham's assessment, which is the only thing on her page. He reads it – has read through it earlier, in their preparations. So the documentation wasn't fake. Birkham was judged by Untime to be incapable of sustaining militarization. Rightfully so, given that the only reason any of them made it out of the dream, Birkham included, is because of – whatever it was Eames did.

"Also he really likes lawsuits. He's tried to get Birkham Shipping away from Ms. Birkham like three times now. Twice with fraud accusations that turned out completely bogus and once by trying to have her declared medically unfit. That was when they were still married, by the way."

"Charmer," Arthur mutters, re-reading the assessment. So Untime didn't militarize Birkham, and she knew that it's a bad fucking idea to get militarized. And did it anyway, illegally. So there must be something else she's keeping, more secret than that fucking arms shipment, which, as far as Arthur can tell, may well have been entirely fictional.

Entirely –

Arthur stares dumbly at the screen for a moment. Melanie's saying something but he can't hear her, too busy typing, too focused. Their client is Genevieve Banks, who is vice-president of EleCo, which is –

Which was recently purchased by Triscom, through many hidden, confusing channels, which Arthur would have found out before the job if he wasn't an idiot.

"Arthur?" Melanie asks. "Arthur!"

"Melanie." His voice sounds distant to his own ears, not quite like himself. "You should probably hide. They came after Eames, and they're probably coming after you."

There's a moment of perplexed silence from the other end, before Melanie takes a deep breath and says, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Arthur gives her a brief summary his discovery. "Daly was behind this. So I'm betting there was no shipment at all. He wanted us in her brain, triggering her self-destruct mechanism so he could take control of her company."

Melanie makes a doubting noise. "But how do you know they're the ones that got Eames? How do you know anyone has him? Maybe he just forgot to pay his phone bill."

"Maybe," Arthur says, but he's calling up the most recent actions of Eames' last known credit card as he's talking, and there he sees a train ticket and a plane ticket for yesterday. The latter hasn't been used. Maybe it's just a misdirection. Arthur pings the GPS tracer in Eames' cellphone. The coordinates are just beside a rail line. As though someone dumped it there from a passing train.

It could've been Eames. But Arthur really, really doesn't think so. "Don't bet on it," Arthur says. "Lie low for a while. I don't think we're getting paid for this job, anyway."

"Fuck my life," Melanie grumbles and the connection cuts. Arthur hopes she has the sense to listen to him, but he can't really focus on that right now. He's got other things to do.

First on the list, see if there's any place close to the rail line that's the property of Triscom or one of its subsidiaries. Arthur doesn't have a lot of hopes on that one, but it's a start; while he's got his search running for that, he'll start searching other possible purchases in the near area. Rental cars. Train tickets, which are obvious, but a little needle-in-haystack for the current situation. Hotel rooms.

Too much fucking data, but too much information is where Arthur lives. There are lists, and lists of lists, and Arthur sorts through everything, weighing and considering, tossing away.

Eames' location is in there somewhere. All Arthur has to do is look.

Eames tries to swallow. It's difficult, considering all the moisture in his mouth has fucked off elsewhere.

There's a man sitting in front of him, looking at Eames evenly. Eames doesn't ask him what he wants, since, well, since his mouth seems to have stopped working completely. But also because it seems completely futile.

"I've been led to expect better from you," the man says. His voice is even, too, but there's something about his posture that sets alarm bells somewhere within Eames' mind.

It's not the first time that Eames has had to deal with an irate client, especially since complaints in his line of work tend to take the form of broken limbs rather than a polite letter to the management. Eames opens his eyes wide and tries his best to look charming and helpful.

“It was a simple extraction job.” The man rises to his feet and paces around Eames, who wishes he wouldn’t. It’s making him dizzy enough as it is. “All you had to do was get in her mind. You didn’t even have to take anything out of it. It was just. That. Simple.” Each of these words is accompanied with a backhanded slap to Eames’ face. Eames grunts and stays in place because he really doesn’t have much choice about it.

“Did you cut a deal with her?” The man grabs Eames by the hair, which is just fucking undignified. Eames debates spitting blood in his face, but that’s likelier to hinder than help. “How much did she pay you, huh? Didn’t anyone tell you double-dealing doesn’t pay?”

Numerous people have, in fact, told Eames that. It’s just that they were blatantly wrong. Eames swallows, convulsive, and croaks out, “How can we prove that - “

The man backhands him again. “I know you didn’t. Don’t even try.”

After that, Eames tunes him out. If the man wants to rant, it’s his time. Eames waits, still and not putting up resistance, until the man runs out of steam and leaves the room with a promise to return later. There’s a variety of unpleasant sharp things placed strategically where Eames can see them. Supposedly this is meant to be a threat, except that Eames is mostly thinking of how he’ll use them on the man’s face once he’s out of this chair.

He’s got forger’s hands, Eames does. What’s a little bit of rope between him and freedom?

So Triscom owns a building just two miles away from the station nearest to Eames’ cellphone’s location. Arthur is pretty certain that’s a trap, or else completely unrelated, because come on. Nobody who gets to be a CEO is this stupid.

Arthur still buys a train ticket. He can go on working on the way. He’s got a cellular modem.

The train pulls into the station, and Arthur puts his bag and his mind in order. He’s got knives in his boots and his Glock in a shoulder holster. He’s got all the confirmations he could print in advance in his back pocket. He knows the layout of the building, and that it’s lightly guarded.

He leaves the train and rents a car. They may need to get away in a hurry.

The rope’s almost loose when the man comes back into the room. During that time, Eames managed to put a name to the face. Daly, the ex-husband. How boringly dramatic.

“Had time to think it over?” Daly crouches, looking Eames in the face. He has the kind of expression that could look friendly if it wasn’t attached to a psychopath.

“What do you want me to say?” Eames is honestly curious.

“It wasn’t exactly talking that I had in mind,” Daly says, and his grin turns really bloody ugly at that.

It’s a quick drive. There are two guards at the entry to the building and one in the parking lot. Nothing that Arthur wouldn’t have expected. He leaves the car and flashes the first guard a card. “I’m from the sanitation bureau. Piping inspection.”

It’s stupidly easy to fake being a government employee: generally, all you need is a printer, a laminating machine, a suit and a bored expression. The main problem Arthur has in this regard is a taste for over-expensive suits.

He passes muster. None of the guards even look at him twice. Shit, this must really be the wrong place. Never mind, Arthur will check it – even if they don’t have Eames here, there could be valuable information.

Once inside the building, Arthur takes a deep breath and recalls the building plan. They’d need a room, not necessarily anywhere too large. The important thing is to be somewhere out of the way, where the cleaners won’t stumble on anything and no suspicious noises would be heard.

There’s a maintenance chamber in the basement. Arthur thinks he’ll start from there.

Eames debates a cheeky reply versus begging for mercy. Pride is overrated - Eames can take pain, but he’d really rather not.

Daly’s grin widens. He lifts up something that looks like a scalpel. “Maybe she just cut a deal with you. She always liked them pretty.”

Honestly, the cliche of it all pains Eames worse than the throb in his cheek. Mind, a scalpel’s going to hurt worse than that. Eames considers trying to tip his chair back and kicking when the door bursts open and someone brains Daly with a spanner.

Arthur breathes fast. The spanner drops to the floor with a clang.

Eames in front of him is slightly bruised with a split lip, but he looks all right other than that. “Nearly had it,” Eames mumbles, sounding like he tried for irritable and failed.

“Yeah, sure you did.” Arthur goes to get his hands. “I’ve got spare clothes for you in my bag - you should change the shirt at least, you’ll stick out too much. Did he get you in here without anyone noticing?”

“Can’t recall,” Eames says, “on account of being unconscious.”

“That’ll do it, yeah.” Eames did a number on the ropes. Arthur curses as he saws through them. “Did you actually want to get your wrists rubbed raw?” Eames fails to answer. Arthur hauls him up. “Can you stand?”

“Well enough.” Eames’ voice is soft, a huff of breath in Arthur’s ear. Arthur shakes his head to distract himself from the odd itch that settles in the base of his spine at that.

“Come on. Change shirts and let’s get the fuck out.”

Arthur rented a hotel room for them ahead of time. Good thing, too, considering that Eames is apparently still groggy from the sedation they used on him.

He calls Melanie the minute they're back. "Yeah, it was Daly," he says without preamble. "I've disabled him and got Eames the fuck out. Daly's a fucking amateur, it shouldn't be too hard for you to avoid him. I'll give you some numbers to call if you need help." He can do that much for her.

"Thanks," she says. Still somewhere noisy; Arthur can't decide whether he's annoyed at that or glad she's somewhere crowded, where if someone tries to grab her it would be noticed. "So what was the deal with all that? Did you get anything new?"

Only as much as he'd been able to get out of Eames before he passed out on the bed. "I'm pretty sure he just hired us to mess Birkham up," Arthur says. "Getting messed up ourselves, along the way. It's pretty much a miracle we weren't."

Melanie snorts. "But why did she get militarized to begin with, if it was so dangerous? What was she trying to hide?"

Even though she can't see him, Arthur shrugs. "People do." Some of them just don't like the idea that their minds can be invaded, at all. Others are just baselessly paranoid.

"Maybe you're right." She sounds doubtful.

"I was right about Eames, wasn't I?" Arthur says, but it's bugging him too, a frayed bit of thought, a loose end. "Look, if you have any ideas call me. Or, better, email me, I may have to get rid of this phone soon."

"Will do," Melanie says. "Same goes to you. Take care." She hangs up.

Eames wakes up with his head pounding and Arthur in his bed. Eames' first thought is, Did we get fantastically drunk and have sex?

His face hurts, too, tender when he touches it. Eames blinks, and suddenly all of yesterday comes rushing back at him. Pity; he liked the first notion better.

A closer inspection reveals that Arthur isn't even naked, dressed in a t-shirt and – Eames lifts the covers to investigate – boxers. Which doesn't necessarily rule out sex, as it is, but Eames recalls collapsing on the bed in a haze of narcotics and Arthur is really too much of a gentleman to take advantage.

Eames sits up, but the blinding surge of pain that follows convinces him to lie back down. Fucking drug hangovers, worse than the alcohol-induced kind.

He must have made a noise because Arthur stirs, then turns over to look at him. He has an alert look already, for which Eames resents him. "How are you?"

"Awful," Eames says, sinking back down into the bed. "My head feels like it's full of buzzing things. That sting."

"They're generally called bees, I think." Arthur gets up and comes back bearing water and two Advils.

Eames actually needs the delay of taking the pills to come up with a retort. "Could be wasps." And a fairly weak retort, at that. "You can't know what's in my mind."

"I never do," Arthur says. He sits on the bed cross-legged, facing Eames. "Are you properly awake? I'm going to repeat to you what you told me last night, and I want to see if there's anything you forgot or that I got wrong."

Possibly it's just Eames' sight, still wonky from the drugs and unsound sleep, but something seems off about Arthur, like seeing through the eyes of a near-sighted forgery. No, the other way around, like putting on glasses when one doesn't need them.

Eames tries to blink it away and concentrate on what Arthur actually said. "Yesterday. Right." His tongue feels thick in his mouth. He needs to drink. And possibly more water, as well. "Do tell. I'm listening."

Eames confirms Arthur's memories of yesterday and has nothing to add, so Arthur compiles what he has into a file. He considers calling Melanie again, but no, she probably needs to get away. She has her own things to do.

Which leaves Arthur staring at a blinking cursor, hands motionless on the keyboard. He's pretty sure he had an idea what to do next just a moment ago, but it's like it melted or just plain evaporated out of his reach.

Eames is on the bed, eyes closed, but Arthur can tell he's not sleeping. It's reaffirmed, however, when Eames says, "What are you working on?" without opening his eyes.

Arthur sighs. "Nothing."

For a moment, he's almost blinded by a wish to emulate Eames, to drop on the bed and close his eyes and just wait for everything to go away. Maybe go even further, pull Eames over him and drag him into a kiss just for the sake of distraction.

But it won't, things don't work like that. Arthur has to get himself together, figure this out, work things through.

I've needed to do that for a while now, he thinks, with a brief clarity. There's something – a moment of thought, a state of mind – that's crucial to Arthur when he works, and he thinks he sees a glimpse of it just then.

But the second he tries to grab for it, it's gone. Fucking typical.

"Come and do it on the bed, then," Eames says, and Arthur sees no reason to do otherwise.

From the sound of his breath – Eames can't be arsed to open his eyes and see – Arthur's tired. He's quiet, climbing on the bed beside Eames, only the feeling of his weight settling on the mattress giving his position away.

That and the warmth of his skin. Unless that's only in Eames' mind. Comforting, though.

"I can't think," Arthur says, words tumbling out slow and awkward, like he has to force them out.

Eames hums. "Did well enough thinking of a way to get me out, didn't you?"

Arthur's silent. When Eames opens his eyes, Arthur's staring at him.

"Yeah." Arthur sounds almost surprised. There's something a little soft about him, like he's not holding on to his own shape quite as hard. Eames thinks he likes it.

"There you have it." He stretches for effect, doesn't miss Arthur's eyes darting to look at him. So there's a reciprocated interest there; isn't that lovely to know. "You've found your new calling in rescuing recalcitrant forgers. Good luck and godspeed."

Arthur doesn't answer. He's trying to look away, but Eames doesn't think that's quite the right reaction. He takes Arthur's chin in his hand and forces Arthur's attention back on him. "Well, what do you think?" Eames says, still a little dizzy on the after effects of drugs and violence and, all right, maybe proximity as well.

Arthur's eyes turn dark and he wrenches out of Eames' grip. Eames lets him, lazy and curious to see what Arthur will do next.

He really doesn't expect Arthur getting off the bed only to go to his knees on the carpet, but there you have it. Eames is hardly going to turn Arthur away.

Arthur's heart is hammering in his chest, his cheeks burning bright red. He doesn't know where to look. He doesn't dare close his eyes.

Eames is smiling above him, his hand light on Arthur's cheek. "Oh?" he says. "What's this, darling?" The word lacks the bite it usually has.

Don't make me say it, Arthur thinks, not least because he’s not sure how to answer. All he knows is that he’s been circling an ever-tightening orbit around Eames ever since the job started, and it looks like gravity finally got to him.

But the question seems largely rhetorical. Eames' thumb slides across Arthur's lip. Arthur opens his mouth and lets it in.

"Yeah," Eames says, but Arthur can barely hear it, spoken too softly for Arthur to hear above the rush of blood in his ears. The noise in his brain grows louder, buzzing like those stupid bees of Eames' from earlier, until it's not noise anymore, it's just. Everything.

Arthur can't explain it, can't quite reach for words, but that's okay. He can't speak anyway. Got something in his mouth.

Then Eames unbuttons his pants with one hand, and Arthur closes his eyes.

There was something he'd reached for, earlier, for months on end, and he never found anything. Maybe it's better to do this, to go on his knees and just say fuck off to everything else. Not to have to think, not to have to try. It's better. Maybe it says something about Arthur, but that's the beauty of the situation: Arthur doesn't have to think about that now.

Eames’ hands are on his head, Eames’ cock heavy in his mouth, the floor bruisingly hard under his knees. He feels himself growing hard, but it’s distant, unimportant compared with the reality of Eames, in him and over him and all around. Arthur sucks deep and breathes in through his nose, comforted by the way Eames smells.

Then Eames’ hands tighten and Arthur doesn’t even need to move, never mind think, only close his eyes and take it. He thinks he may have come in his pants, just then, at the first bite of Eames’ fingers into his jaw.

Eames doesn’t stop, just goes on until Arthur’s aching everywhere, his jaw and his throat and his knees. But that’s okay. It’s all right. Eames is holding him. Eames can have whatever he wants.

Since Eames, apparently, wants to come down Arthur’s throat, they’re both just fine with that. Just absolutely fine.

Arthur's oddly quiet, after. Even odder is how pliant he is, letting Eames basically pull him into the bed.

Eames puts his head between Arthur's shoulder blades. It's still hurting, and the skin contact makes it feel better, makes him feel better.

Arthur twitches once in his grasp. Eames tightens it before he can think better of it, and wonder of wonders, Arthur relaxes.

They sleep.

It's fully dark when Arthur wakes up, and hushed. Eames doesn't snore, mercifully. Arthur feels weird, too light, like someone pulled him out of his skin and put him back in the wrong way around.

His laptop is still open on the table. Arthur goes to sit, grimacing at the discomfort of his sticky underwear. He'll get a shower once he's checked his emails.

Nothing from Melanie. Arthur looks at his document from earlier, the one with what they have so far. It's largely incoherent, but good enough for him. Conclusions, for now: Daly is a world-class asshole, Birkham is mentally unstable and possibly has a big secret that she doesn't want known, they're not getting paid for this but they'd better make certain nobody will come after them with guns blazing, either. Arthur sends an email to Finley, too. No reason to leave him blindsided.

With this, Arthur sets to work. Their mistake, it occurs to him, was that they tried to get a professional secret by personal means; which is Eames all over, really. He plays to his strengths, which means he tends to come across shining, but for all of Eames' capability there's a reason he rarely leads a team. His confidence lets him overtake people, and it's not always in everyone's best interest that he does. Not even best for Eames, really.

You liked it well enough, whispers a voice in the corner of Arthur's mind. Arthur ignores it. He's got work to do.

Eames opens his eyes to an empty bed, and his first thought is that Arthur did a runner. Which wouldn't surprise Eames, given what he knows of Arthur and what happened.

He feels a rush of sudden affection for Arthur. Poor Arthur, overworked and underworked simultaneously. He'd needed something to take him out of himself for quite some time, if Eames is any judge.

The door opens not a moment later, and in comes Arthur bearing coffee and donuts. Eames licks his lips. "Excellent timing," he says, brushing a kiss to Arthur's shoulder as he walks to the desk to grab some. If Arthur's sticking around, no reason for Eames to deprive himself.

Arthur's maintained some of that odd pliancy of last night, neither turning toward Eames nor away. But perhaps he just needs coffee. Eames can understand that.

"So I did some work last night," Arthur says. "And then Melanie emailed me. She got in contact with some people who worked for Daly – anyway, I sort of broke into his email account."

Eames grins wide. "And what did you find there, pray tell?" He bites into his donut. It's fresh, and tastes unaccountably good.

"Guy's nuts. But we knew that already." Arthur sips his coffee. "Got entire exchanges between him and his lawyer. His latest obsession – before deciding if his wife wasn't mentally unstable, he'll make her unstable – was that she was having an affair."

"Possible," Eames says. "Certainly she didn't love Daly." Not as far as any of his research indicated, anyway, and Eames had his own suspicions. They involved a long-dead best friend and an inability to recover from love lost.

"He didn't call the police after we left, which is promising," Arthur says. "I have some people I know monitoring him for us, anyway. We'll know it if he makes a move."

"Lovely work," Eames says, and means it. Arthur positively beams at him before he blinks and his face is blank again. Eames sighs internally. And it seemed so very promising. "Shame we'll never see a penny off it."

"I don't know," Arthur says, looking thoughtful. "I mean, I also broke into Daly's bank account, since he was enough of an idiot to mail himself the password. Your share of the pay should be in already."

Eames can't help himself at this: he gets up and kisses Arthur thoroughly, tangling a hand in his hair. Arthur's mouth opens under his, soft and wet-warm, and Eames decides to make a concentrated effort to get Arthur to do this with him for the rest of the day.

But it’s too soft, somehow. Arthur’s kissing him back, but there’s something about it that’s not quite right. It’s in the position of Arthur’s body, how his head is tipped back and his muscles have all gone loose.

It should be relaxation, but it isn’t. It feels like resignation, and Eames doesn’t want any of it.

“Oi,” he says, taking a step back. “This is meant to be sex, not a bloody funeral. What are you so despondent about?”

Arthur’s blank look, the bane of Eames’ existence, has never been quite so infuriating. Eames wants to shake him. But he doesn’t, keeps his distance and keeps Arthur pinned with his eyes.

“I’m not,” Arthur says, reaching for Eames, but the gesture lacks purpose. He looks like he’s moving in his sleep.

Eames sits next to Arthur and pushes him down on the bed, careful. Arthur doesn’t resist. Of course he doesn’t. Eames feels a little bitter at this.

He lies with his head on Arthur’s shoulder, runs his hand down Arthur’s side. “What are you trying to do?” he asks again, and this time waits for an answer. Arthur’s quiet for a while, but that’s fine. They have nowhere important to be except here.

“I don’t know,” Arthur says at last. “I just want to have sex with you, is that such a huge problem?”

“But why?” And that’s the main question, isn’t it? Arthur’s attracted to him, that’s plain enough, but he’s never shown signs of wanting to act on it before.

The noise Arthur makes has Eames’ face snapping up, because it sounds like he’s in physical pain. “Because it’s better than being useless,” Arthur says at last, and Eames blinks at him, his bruised cheek throbbing as though he’s been slapped again.

“Not like that,” Arthur says, catching Eames’ expression. “But I don’t know if you’ve noticed, the only time I’ve been productive for the last two months was when you sat on me and made me do it. Directly or by proxy. I don’t know how but you help. Okay? I’m sorry, but it works.”

Eames ought to scoff at it, but he looks over the last few months and Arthur’s right. Eames can’t fault his logic. Perhaps Eames ought to feel used, but it’s next to impossible with Arthur lying under him looking like he’s lost every battle and the war as well.

So Eames crawls up and touches his forehead to Arthur’s. “Or perhaps you’ve been looking at everything wrong,” he says. “Perhaps you only needed a bloody distraction, could that be it?”

It’s hardly more flattering, to be thought of as a distraction, but Eames is willing to bite that bullet. Because Arthur, at the top of his form, is brilliant and lovely to behold; because an Arthur who’s given up makes something in Eames’ insides clench. It just feels wrong.

Arthur’s eyes are wide open, and Eames can feel his breath is slowing, calming. “It helps,” Arthur says. “But that’s not it.” He breathes out and in, his heart beating under Eames’ hands. “It’s you. You make me want to – I don’t know. Try harder. You make me give a fuck, Eames.”

Eames stays quiet at that, his nose touching Arthur’s, their mouths just brushing each other. He slides a hand under Arthur’s shirt for the warm comfort of skin. “And you need to care,” Eames says, like it’s a revelation. “You need to know what you do matters.”

“There’s no reason it should.” Arthur speaks very quietly, so that Eames has to strain to catch it. “I’m a criminal. There’s no value to what I do.”

And Eames thinks about the job, about underwater cities and trajectories made into coordinates, about skill and quickness salvaging an impossible situation. “Isn’t it enough that it’s beautiful?” Eames says.

“Is it?”

Eames raises himself, puts a little distance between them so he can see Arthur, all the tangled complications of him coming into coherence. “It is to me,” Eames says, and holds himself up until Arthur reaches for him like he’s drowning.

The ceiling has a crack in it. Hotel ceilings often do. Arthur wonders if that's a piping thing, or a construction code thing.

Maybe he should ask Eames. "Eames," Arthur says, nudging him with an elbow. Eames stirs and grumbles. "Have you noticed that hotel ceilings have cracks in them? I mean, more often than you'd expect."

"Bloody morning people," Eames mutters, even though it's really more like early afternoon. He gets up from the bed to drink the last of his coffee, which is probably cold and disgusting by now, but it doesn't seem to bother Eames. He sits down on the side of the bed, looking at Arthur expectantly.

"What?" Arthur says, self-conscious.

"Just wondering what you had planned next," Eames says. "Are you taking that vacation we talked about?"

Fuck, that stings worse than Arthur expected. Okay, yeah, Arthur fucked up. But considering he fixed everything, too, is a little leniency really too much to expect?

Arthur realizes two things over the next minute. The first of which is that yes, it is too much to expect. One mistake could have gotten them all killed. That kind of shit matters, even if they somehow pulled through.

But the second is that Eames only looks curious, not judging. His expression is open, his hand inching closer to Arthur's ankle. "I don't know," Arthur says. "I'm on top of things now, but." The moment the adrenaline rush was gone, so was Arthur's focus. "Maybe I should take one, maybe you're right. I don't know."

Eames scoots up the bed, coming to sit next to him. “I think you need someone to show you,” he says, and Arthur tenses. Eames backs off, just the tiniest distance between them, brows arched in surprise. “How to have a proper vacation, Arthur, that’s all I was about to say. Someone should show you how to relax.”

“Oh.” Eames is the first fucking choice for that, evidently, since all the tension leaves Arthur’s body when Eames’ hand rests heavy on the back of his neck. “Yeah, okay,” Arthur says.

Eames smirks. Arthur struggles for words. “But then,” he says, faltering for a moment when Eames’ thumb rubs the soft spot behind his ear, “then, work.”

“Work.” Eames sounds disgusted. “Honestly, would it kill you to take a month or two without thinking about it? Our next job can wait a little, Arthur, the dreamsharing community won’t collapse in our absence.” Eames’ index finger has taken to rubbing behind Arthur’s other ear – Eames’ hand is spanning the whole back of his neck, fuck, how is Arthur supposed to think like that?

He manages, though, because he needs to mentally re-run what Eames just said. “Our next job,” Arthur says. “Ours?”

“Unless you’d rather work with somebody else?” Eames whispers in his ear, and his voice is dark and silky, a threat and a promise.

Arthur closes his eyes and finds composure, the still bright place inside him. “I do enjoy your professionalism,” Arthur says, in his most calm, correct voice, and Eames’ laughter rings out over him.

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