Archive of Our Own

What Arthur remembers most about his first run with a PASIV is the baking, unrelenting heat.

They were training for Kandahar, walking in fine, corrugated desert in boots too heavy for the task. The wind a vicious whip. Occasionally, Arthur would hear a pop or two from a distant rifle: soldiers picking each other off from the shadowed sides of dunes. By hour five, Arthur’s skin had blistered. His breath had turned from humid to parched behind the scarf over his mouth, and he was trying not to wheeze too audibly. The M16 in his hand was almost too hot to hold, literally and figuratively. It was a thousand degrees; he’d shot fourteen men with it.

Rest had become essential at hour six, and so Arthur had sat, promising himself half an hour of respite at most. He’d closed his eyes for a minute. Just a minute. Nothing more than a micro sleep. When he opened them again, he found himself looking at a conga line of safari animals arriving at a lush watering hole. They were ostentatiously dressed: hippos wearing fezzes; giraffes with stacks of gold rings around their necks; elephants with colourful carpets on their backs. One of the…Arthur remembers blinking, telling himself he was seeing things. Because — and he can still remember the crawling sense of unease so clearly — for a second he’d thought he’d seen a cigar hanging from beneath an elephant trunk.

And then that voice, sotto voce, from behind him, the voice he wouldn’t hear again for another six years: “What on earth is the point of all this if we can’t use a bit of imagination, darling? I mean, really. What is the fucking point?”

March, 2011.

Professionally speaking, Arthur considers himself an accommodating man.

Flexibility is a good trait for a point man to have; essential, in fact, when working with people like Dom Cobb. Some people might say being flexible is Arthur’s job — the only job he’s ever had, aside from talking Cobb down from the lofty heights of his gargantuan intellect.

But there’s being flexible and then there’s being insulted. 

“That’s a laughable offer.”  

The extractor sitting across the table from Arthur — Townsend — twitches. He’s new to the extraction game, full of hubris and fear in equal measure. Arthur’s a more gracious man than most. He’s here because everyone deserves a first chance at something, but he’s got no desire to babysit Townsend for less than the cost of the coffee supply it would take to stay sane.

“Take it or leave it,” says Townsend.

“Fine. I’ll leave it.” 

Accommodating, Arthur reminds himself. Professional. He has a reputation. So, instead of telling Townsend to give up on his dreams, he goes for a walk instead.

At the entrance to the Jardin des Tuileries, his shoes crunch on the sandy gravel. Hawkers yell out as he passes, shaking rings of rainbow Eiffel Tower keyrings at him. Soon after he’s made it past, a police car rolls up and the sellers hurry to bundle up their blankets filled with shitty trinkets and knock-off handbags. He heads for the Grand Couvert, feeling pissed off at the whole city. In his pocket, his phone buzzes – Townsend calling with a better offer, probably. Arthur lets it ring out.

It’s an overcast night, late and still light, and the garden’s green chairs are only sparsely inhabited. He stops beside one – not one of the recliners; Arthur prefers to control his own inclines – and watches the reflection of the clouds roll over the pond.

Three chairs down, a homeless guy shifts in a reclining chair. He’s got a beaten up fedora lying over his face. The man shifts again, and Arthur watches him carefully, suddenly unwilling to avert his eyes. There’s something off about the guy. The shoes, maybe, or his bulk. His traps are enormous, like a pillow under his head. Not often you see muscle like that living on the streets. No, that’s the kind of body you get with three regular meals a day and access to a weight rack.

Arthur steels himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s acquired a tail after a negotiation gone sour, but it would be the first time someone’s been bold enough to start something in a place so public. Townsend’s not smart, but Arthur didn’t think he was this much of a moron.

A ray of dying sun breaks through the clouds, hitting the man’s watch, and the world narrows to those big gold gangster links. Arthur knows that watch. He knows the arm attached to it, too. The longer Arthur looks the surer he is. The cut of the man’s pants, the offensively coloured shirt, crumpled and stained, the—God—the fucked up pinky finger on his right hand.

“Eames?”

He lifts the hat from Eames’ face. If he hadn’t been sure before, the mouth would have done it. No one else in the world has a mouth like that; Arthur wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he found it on a different face.

For all the gunshot wounds and exhaustion Arthur’s seen Eames fall victim to, he’s never seen him looking this run-down. Eames doesn’t do hangovers. He’s a cheat, a liar and a thief, but he’s never anything less than professional. Arthur considers if it’s a cover. If it is, it’s a good one. Bohemian chic. Down and out. The kind of tramp people aren’t too scared of, the kind that exists less in real life than in dust bowl novels and Orwell’s essays.

Eames groans. “Christ, put that back. And lower your voice.”

Arthur does neither, pointing out the hypocrisy of demanding quiet when there’s a group of teenagers on the other side of the pond blasting the worst Europe has to offer in rap.

“If you’re here because Townsend sent you,” offers Arthur, “I’d be insulted. I’d be really insulted, Eames. That job’s not worth the trip from here to the next metro station.”

Eames rallies, sits up. “Townsend? The chemist?”

“He’s extracting now.”

“Oh, for—” Eames lets out a pained groan. “He’s a boffin.”

“Yeah, well, seems like he’s not the only one play acting.” Arthur nods to Eames’ dishevelled clothes. “If you’re not here for Townsend, what are you doing?”

Eames doesn’t answer right away. That’s fine. Arthur’s going to wait exactly twenty seconds before he prompts again. Eames knows the power of silence as an interrogation technique as well as any military man, but he’s not exactly the finest version of himself right now, so maybe Arthur will catch a break here and—

“Nothing terribly important.”

“What, you came all the way to Paris to lift some bankers’ wallets? I gotta say, that’s beneath you.”

Eames smiles thinly. “Would that I had the energy.”

Arthur frowns. “How much did you drink last night?”

“Not one measure. I’ve got a migraine.”

“Then why the hell are you out here?”

“I was on my way to a hotel,” Eames replies, loftily, like Arthur’s the fucking idiot for asking.

Just for that, Arthur watches Eames struggle to get out of his chair for ten long seconds before he offers a hand to help. He isn’t sure the migraine story is true, but there’s obviously something wrong with Eames. Whatever it is, it’s internal. He’s not dripping blood. He’s got all his limbs, and all of them move the way they usually do, even at a snail’s pace.

“If you’re kidnapping me,” says Eames, his hand clammy and cold on Arthur’s arm, “I hope you’re putting a bloody enormous price on my head.”

“Please. Like you need the ego boost.”

They draw more than a few looks on the way to Arthur’s hotel. Eames is uncharacteristically slow. He looks filthy, rough trade to Arthur’s smooth and expensive suit, but it’s still Paris they’re in. For the dozen people who stop to look there are hundreds more who don’t consider it their business. Chacun sa vie.

Check-in is awkward, though, and the elevator ride is worse. They pile in with a load of German tourists who do their best to press themselves into any corner of the elevator Eames isn’t, but Eames only spreads larger into every inch of space he’s given. Even sick, he’s made for provocation. It’s a relief for everyone when they get to the fifth floor and step out.

When Arthur turns on the main light of the hotel room, Eames winces.

“Have you ever had a migraine, Arthur? I’m starting to suspect you haven’t, good as you are at causing them.”

Right. Bright lights are a no go. Arthur flicks the switch again.

Eames climbs neatly into bed, not even bothering to ask whether he can stay. He lets out a relieved sigh from beneath the comforter, and fuck, Arthur was really looking forward to that bed, and now it has Eames all over it. He looks like he hasn’t showered in forever. He’s probably been in that same crumpled, sweaty psychedelic nightmare of a shirt since his last job went sour and sent him packing to Paris.

“Jesus.”

“Just Eames will do.”

Eames’ eyes are closed before Arthur can stick the landing on a comeback.

With Eames in his room (a room Arthur paid good money for) and fatigue settling on him like a fog, Arthur’s choices are clear to him:

One: he can shove Eames over and sleep in the bed. He’s shared closer, more uncomfortable quarters with men he doesn’t like half as much as he likes Eames, which is saying something. He doesn’t even like Eames most of the time.

Two: he can get another room for the night and leave Eames to it. Put this episode away in the pile of things that confuse him about Eames, and never speak of it again.

Three: he can take the couch.

Arthur sighs.

The spare blanket in the room has been wrapped up in dry cleaner plastic so long that it’s looped back around to smelling musty. Arthur pulls it over himself on the couch, huffing with annoyance.

Maybe there’s a fourth option. The one where he bullies Eames into switching places.

The light from the room’s internet router flickers. On the wall, the clock ticks. Outside, someone yells after a woman named Marie. Arthur misses home. Vaguely, he thinks of his neighbours. About how the cat two doors down is doing and if the couple above him have made up after their beef in the elevator last week. He thinks and thinks until he falls asleep to the sound of Eames’ pained grunts and sighs.

Arthur doesn’t dream any normal dreams. He’s long past those.

In the morning, Arthur wakes to the smell of coffee, a promising-looking paper bag from a bakery, and Eames’ gaze fixed on the sunrise outside.

“That bag had better contain some good fucking pastries.”

Eames turns. “As you like: good fucking pastries.”

He hands over a bag, along with a coffee. The coffee is black and strong; no fuss, just how Arthur likes it. The pastry is an overstuffed almond croissant. Insane, but Arthur is so hungry he can’t bring himself to harangue Eames for not guessing his usual breakfast order.

It's too early for that argument. It's too early for everything. The clock reads 06:27.

“Thanks.”

“I should be the one thanking you,” says Eames.

Arthur blinks. It’s possible he’s still processing the amount of sugar in his hand.

“I flew in from Shanghai yesterday. Do you know how long that flight is?”

“No idea.” Eames leans back, at home in the stiff hotel armchair. “Twelve hours or so?”

“Thirteen hours, which I had to spend in coach.”

“Oh dear.”

“Behind a screaming baby.”

“My condolences.”

“And then you show up after the worst offer I’ve had in years, looking like someone dragged you here from Mombasa.”

“Never let it be said you don’t flatter me, darling.”

“Fucking—stop calling me that. Remember how I asked you to stop calling me that?”

Eames hums. Takes a bite of his own breakfast. He’s sprung for a glossy, pillowy brioche and Arthur’s envy knows no bounds.

“You,” says Arthur, through the film of icing sugar on his teeth, “are the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Cheers Arthur. I’m feeling much better now.”

It might be a joke but he does look a lot better. Better than Arthur feels, anyway, after sleeping on the room’s overstuffed couch.

“You weren’t lying about the migraine, then.”

“When have I ever lied to you?”

Arthur gives him a look. “So no pissed off Russians coming for your head? Because I could handle that, Eames, but you’d need to tell me.”

“No Russians.”

“No cops?”

“If anyone kicks the door down, Arthur, it certainly won’t be on my account.”

“You really had a migraine.”

“I really had a migraine. Bad mix on that last job.”

“Right.”

Eames’ lip curls up into one of those fake smiles Arthur hates. “This won’t happen again. I know you value your privacy.”

Arthur takes a sip of coffee, then another, just to make sure he isn’t mixing up sympathy with sleep deprivation. A police car’s siren wails by the window. That’s probably an omen; one Arthur is about to ignore.

“Take the couch next time,” he says.

Eames smiles in earnest, and Arthur’s insides grumble.

He blames it on the sugar.

After Eames leaves, Arthur hangs around in Paris, indulging in a bit of well-deserved downtime.

He reads, mostly, working through a small stack of non-fiction paperbacks. Occasionally, he goes to galleries, looks at a lot of great art and ten times more average art. He goes to the theatre and the cabaret bars, too; sees a few shows that back home would be considered off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway, and then, as his pièce de résistance, he buys out an entire box at the Opéra Bastille just so he can get quietly, devastatingly drunk and remember Mal singing The Habanera the night before she married Cobb.

For the three weeks after that, he doesn’t put on a waistcoat or a tie. On one hot-as-hell Thursday, he goes on a (bad) movie date with a man, then ends the night at a wine bar with a woman who likes his glasses enough to let him buy her a drink. He proofreads Ariadne’s thesis the morning after. Not once does he ever give away his real phone number.

It’s about as close to happy as Arthur gets.

The day he rallies himself enough to put on a tie, he indulges in the curiosity that’s been nagging him since Eames left. He calls Yusuf and asks if he’s been making up any new compounds lately. Anything that might leave behind a migraine as a thanks for shooting it up.

Yusuf greets Arthur like he’s a doctor about to deliver news about terminal cancer, which…whatever. Arthur wasn't the one who nearly sold everyone to limbo for Cobb's money. Arthur hopes he’s enjoying it. He hears Yusuf’s got cats. They must have their own real estate portfolio by now.

But depressingly, whatever lesson Yusuf’s learned in the wake of the Fischer job has stuck. The only thing Arthur manages to get out of him is confirmation that the cats do actually have more money than god.

Without any concrete answers, Arthur takes to just watching Eames on jobs. He figures Eames will show at least some signs of discomfort, but he figures wrong. Eames is as at ease with himself as he ever is. For six months, Arthur sees nothing of Eames outside the job, and when they work together, Eames picks on Arthur with the air of a man who owes him no favours. His head is very much in the game. If Eames is really dealing with allergies to compounds or some kind of neurological condition, he’s found some good meds to cope with them.

Either that, or Arthur hallucinated the whole thing.

August, 2011.

Arthur hasn’t hallucinated the whole thing.

London is hot and claustrophobic in the summer. Though the same could be said for a lot of places Arthur spends his time, the worst thing about London is that for all its supposed modernity, the Brits still have no idea what air conditioning is.

Arthur wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the money. He really wouldn’t. But the money is so good it’s almost suspicious.

It’s not the only suspicious part of the job.

The warehouse they’re working in is damp and humid. It smells like the Thames: reeking and alive with things Arthur would rather not encounter. When he walks in, already tired from the oppressive heat, he finds a member of their team missing.

“Where’s Eames?”

Sara, their architect, answers him without looking up from her sketchpad.

“Out sick. Migraine. He’s starting tomorrow.”

There should be a word — not schadenfreude; it’s not pleasure Arthur’s feeling — for the deep sense of validation he feels at Eames’ pain. All this time, he’d been waiting for things to go pear-shaped again, and now they have.

Arthur wanders over to the vials lying neatly on a table. They’re filled with stolen brand Somnacin. He picks up the tiny, neat information pamphlet next to them and reads everything he’s never had the cause or will to read properly in years.

If you experience any of the following side effects or symptoms, stop taking Somnacin and immediately consult a medical health professional.

Common: Nausea, dizziness, lack of appetite, mood swings, dry mouth.

Rare: Vomiting, muscle cramps.

Very rare: Insomnia, shortness of breath, low mood and depression.

Arthur checks the pamphlet again for a mention of migraines. He even looks up the digital version so he can do a CTRL+F. No joy.

He turns to Sara. She’s still buried in her sketches.

“You ever seen Somnacin give someone a migraine?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But it’s not beyond believability, right?”

She shrugs. “I guess not. Messing around in people’s heads is probably giving us all cancer.” She looks up like she’s registering the conversation for the first time. “But I didn’t think Eames had been under yet.”

Their chemist for this job is a man called Kepler. It’s a stroke of luck that Arthur’s never worked with him before, because it means all Kepler knows about Arthur comes from the toxic grapevine of gossip Dreamshare runs on. It makes him easy to intimidate.

“Honest,” promises Kepler. “He never mentioned migraines. He hasn’t even been under on this job yet.”

“If I find out—”

“I'm not lying!”

"Oh, yeah. Interrupt me. I love that."

Kepler pales, but it turns out he isn’t lying. Eames hasn't even seen the warehouse.

There’s only one place to turn after that.

Eames loves and loathes his hometown as much as anyone loves and loathes the place they came from. Once upon a time, he owned a house here, or at least inherited one, but he sold it off to pay his oldest and most persistent gambling debts. Arthur knows that because Eames once let it slip in what he called one of the few remaining honest pubs in the city. Over pints of Belgian wheat beer, he said he wanted his hands scrubbed of the place. So he scrubbed them. Thoroughly. And Arthur doesn’t have an address.

But there are still clues. Arthur’s known Eames a long time, long enough to know what he likes, and so he knows Eames is probably staying in one of those grand old hotels still clinging to its colonial heyday — that is, if the sight of the London Eye hasn’t prompted a backward slide into old habits and bankrupted him into staying with a friend. Arthur doesn’t have to investigate for long. Five minutes into his research, Sara sidles up and tells him Eames is at the Savoy.

“He said you’d probably want to know.”

Arthur frowns. “Thanks.”

“Actually, he called you an incurable snoop.”

“Wouldn’t be a point man if I wasn’t.”

He approaches Eames’ hotel suite like he’d approach a room full of mercenaries, which is to say, very fucking cautiously. Even sick, Eames presents a formidable opponent. He knows plenty of Arthur’s weak spots. More than Arthur knows of his, even here in London, a city crawling with Eames’ vulnerabilities.

The suite is quiet. Someone has sneezed Arthur’s grandmother’s decor all over it, but it’s dark, cool and free of threats. Eames seems out for the count, but as soon as Arthur sits on the unoccupied side of the bed, a hand shoots out to grab his arm. Eames' thumb digs painfully into Arthur’s elbow, buckling it. As Arthur tries to steady himself, Eames squints one eye open.

He looks like shit.

“‘thur?”

“Yeah. Ease up, will you?”

Eames’ arm flops back down to the bed.

He’s sweating profusely, pale-faced and clammy to the touch. When he asks what Arthur is doing in his room, his voice is rusty with disuse.

Arthur brandishes a bag with essentials. “I brought meds.”

“Taken some.”

“Take more.”

“Can’t.”

“Then at least drink some water.”

Eames manages to get down a few mouthfuls. His hand slips on the condensing bottle, so Arthur holds it steady at his bottom lip, frowning as Eames’ hand quakes over his own.

There was a time in a dream, once, where Eames got himself shot in the stomach and nearly bled out onto the banks of a muddy river. It’s the only other time Arthur can recall him trembling like this.

Arthur clears his throat. “Must have been one hell of a mix. Anything I need to tell Kepler about?”

Eames shakes his head and sinks back down to his pillow.

“You sure?”

“’s alright. The proper stuff is fine.”

“Jesus. What kind of black market shit have you been injecting?”

Eames doesn’t answer.

Technically, none of this is Arthur’s business. They’re not…they aren’t—friends, by most metrics, is both too kind and too inadequate a descriptor for what they are to each other. No one has friendships in Dreamshare, not really. There are only enemies, allies and the people you form fucked up trauma bonds with after losing a million or two.

Gun to his head, Arthur would put Eames in the latter category, probably call him an ally. Only one person ever referred to them as friends, and she was so unstable at the time that she threw herself out of a hotel window.

Anyway, Arthur isn’t Eames’ mother. He’s not even the person Eames sees most often. At the moment, Arthur owes Eames nothing, even if that hasn’t always been the case. He would be well within his rights to leave Eames some meds and some water and get back to work. Or to get out of here and enjoy himself. See the natural history museum. Visit a distillery.

As if he’s reading Arthur’s mind, Eames starts muttering about Arthur’s boring plans, but his insults don’t have their usual bite.

“Don’t let me keep you,” Eames insists. “I was only trying to save you some hours on that precious computer of yours, telling you I was here.”

Arthur eyes up the couch in the other room. It looks like it should be cradling a few uncomfortable royal asses at the Palace, but it's long enough for a grown man to recline on. If he shuts the door, he could easily set up for some research.

Arthur forgets all about his nascent afternoon plans. He likes natural history, but it’s nowhere near as fun as running up a bar tab on Eames’ credit card.

When Eames is asleep again — properly asleep, courtesy of another round of the fucking horse pills he’s taking — Arthur goes snooping.

To call Eames a less orderly man than Arthur would be accurate, but not by much. His suitcase is bulging at the seams, but it’s packed neatly. The clothes are ironed, and ironed well. Slipped in between silk paisley shirts and linen trousers, Arthur finds a random assortment of essentials, including:

deodorant

aftershave

a passport

condoms (regular, non-latex)

lube (silicon-based)

a child’s crayon drawing of a—well, some kind of animal

ID discs

a hard drive

playing cards (well-used)

a fountain pen

a notebook

blank poker chips and

a crumpled black thong.

No compounds. No paperwork. No cash or checks. Other than a dog-eared page of betting tips, the notebook is blank.

“Ugh.”

He throws the thong back in the case, then washes and sanitises his hands twice.

Eames is sitting on the arm of the couch in the morning. He’s back to himself: Brylcreem-ed hair, loud shirt, eyebrows laughing at Arthur over the rim of his teacup.

“Find what you were looking for in my suitcase?”

“More than.” Arthur’s yawns. “Feeling better?”

“Much, ta.”

They nearly fucked once.

Arthur met Eames when he was twenty-one, plucked fresh out of Dubya’s military and still high off his ability to shoot straight. There was no way he was keeping his dick out of the equation. Not after he saw that SAS-issued t-shirt stretching across Eames’ overinflated tits.

(Those were Eames’ words, not his.)

A night of heavy drinking felt necessary after that first run with a PASIV, which was as traumatising as it was infuriating. Eames bested him too many times. The memories are mostly a blur to Arthur these days, but he can recall Eames’ brazen, cocksure smile, his hand on Arthur’s thigh, and the attempt Eames made to psychoanalyse him over the pounding beat of a nightclub speaker.

“Christ, I feel like a cradle robber.”

“But you haven’t robbed any cradles yet, Mr Eames.”

Eames laughs. “I bet those Army officers loved you.”

“Hey, come on. Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

It’s only a joke, but Eames’ hand grips tighter over his trousers. He leans in to play with the tags around Arthur’s neck; those tags Arthur hates wearing, but that he’ll continue to wear doggedly for a year or two anyway.

“Arthur.”

“Don’t.” Arthur shoves Eames and his pity away. “I’m serious.”

“As am I.”

Arthur had been so young then. Eames, too. Young, dumb and full of come, but that’s not how Arthur feels now. It’s not how Eames looks, either, hooked up to a line in Yusuf’s insane dreaming dungeon, wearing his own tags from a lifetime ago.

A hand hits him in the chest, and it’s only then that Arthur realises he’s moved to get Eames unhooked.

“Let go, Yusuf.”

“Arthur, he needs this.”

“No, he doesn’t. No one needs this. Junkies need this.”

Yusuf’s friendly face hardens. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t cast stones in here.”

Eames is sprawled back in his deck chair on the world’s most fucked up holiday. He’s a relaxed dreamer, always looks as if he should be holding a cocktail in one hand and a trashy airport book in the other. But now his face is the same as all the other faces down here: gaunt and unhappy. Greasy with the heat of the city.

Arthur drags a chair over to Eames’ side. This time, Yusuf doesn’t stop him.

The needle in Eames’ arm looks huge and grotesque, even though it’s no different to any other needle on any other job. Arthur’s attached Eames’ line a dozen times, slid the tip in and watched a pinprick of Eames’ blood bloom under his thumb. It’s nothing. Jesus, it’s—

“Why is he here?” asks Arthur.

Yusuf sighs pompously. Arthur flexes his fist. “I don’t ask my patients why they need to dream. I only provide the service.”

“Yeah, you’re a real healer.”

Yusuf must sense a losing battle. He leaves Arthur to it, maybe expecting him to stay for a while. He could. He could pitch up in this full house of the living dead with one of the books on his e-reader. He could read about Kurosawa or the CIA’s experiments with LSD. He could stay just to put the boot up Eames’ ass when he surfaces.

Because this? This is a problem.

Eames’ gambling? Arthur can handle that. Has handled that. Eames’ sticky fingers? He can handle that, too. But a man in Dreamshare can’t afford to get high on his own supply. Or on his friend’s supplies. On any supply at all.

There are nearly two hours left on Eames’ clock. Arthur manages to flip through maybe three pages of his Kurosawa biography. For a long time, he stares at a passage about a toad in a mirrored box, sweating, creating the cure for—Arthur doesn’t know what. It doesn’t go in. Nothing gets past the white noise in his head. When he gives up on reading, there are thirty-seven minutes left on the clock. Eames dreams on, eyelids twitching, sniffing every now and then, smacking his lips occasionally (and Arthur can’t help appreciating, with this much prolonged exposure, that they are as overinflated as his tits).

It’s the biggest waste of an hour Arthur’s managed in a long time. He knows that, and yet he can’t tear himself away.

When he looks at the clock again, there are thirteen minutes left.

Arthur snaps his book shut, gets up from his chair, stretches out his folded-up muscles and leaves the way he came.

November, 2011.

Once upon a time, Arthur liked Prague.

To Arthur’s twenty-year-old mind, it had looked like something out of a fairy tale. It took him forty-eight hours to find the grit underneath all the tourist distractions, and when he found it, Arthur liked Prague even more. He liked that he could watch the sunrise over the cobblestones in the morning, enjoy a bit of shopping at lunch, then jerk someone off in a back alley when he was seeing stars from too much absinthe. He liked the €1 beers most of all.

These days, Prague has a little less charm, courtesy of the relentless march of tour buses and throngs of English meatheads. There are fewer opportunities for risky one-night stands, too, not that that’s Prague’s fault. Arthur’s not who he was at twenty, even twenty-five. Past a certain age, club bathroom hookups are just a cry for help.

He still likes the city, though. He likes it right up until Eames calls him, strung out, from a basement apartment in the Old Town.

The place smells sharply of vomit, and Eames hasn’t bothered to turn the heating on. Arthur finds him on the couch, covered in a cold sweat. There are stains on his shirt and strands of drool on the throw pillow beneath his head.

He throws out a greeting at Arthur, sounding worse than ever.

They get into an argument of whispers — no less nasty for its lack of volume — about Arthur being here at all. Eames says he only called to keep him updated, and that he should leave well enough alone. In Eames’ delirious, insane opinion, Arthur should be worrying more about the research for the job.

“If you think we’re starting the job with you like this,” Arthur snaps, "you’re out of your mind.”

On cue, Arthur’s phone pings. It’s their extractor, threatening to find a new forger. Arthur reminds him of what happened last time they tried to use a second-rate forger, then tells him he’s not doing the job without Eames.

On the first day, Arthur is arrogant enough to think he knows what to expect. With no small amount of effort, he relocates Eames to better, warmer accommodation around the corner from the Dancing House. It’s got a water heater installed in the last decade, plenty of softly-lit lamps and a hardwood floor that’s much easier to clean up vomit from.

Arthur sets up in the smaller bedroom, where he keeps track of Eames’s meds, handles a few preliminaries for the job and occasionally tells their extractor to hold his fucking horses. It’s all routine. Fine. Except that Eames can’t keep any water or food down. He barfs it up every time Arthur tries to give him more than a mouthful, and by ten o’clock at night, he’s holding Arthur’s various nutritional offerings at bay.

“I can't,” he rasps. “M’ throat.”

Arthur finds his throat isn’t doing so well itself.

“Okay. Hey. It’s okay. Just…try to sleep.”

In the morning, Arthur is expecting to wake up to a coffee and that pinched smile Eames gives him when he knows he owes Arthur something.

Instead, he wakes to a loud, wet sob. As an alarm clock, it’s pretty effective.

Eames is still in bed, trying to force his fists into his eyes.

“Shit, Eames.”

“I need—”

“Yeah.” Arthur goes into the bedside drawer and starts digging. He’ll need to source more meds soon and run to the nearest grocery store while he’s at it. “Here.”

Eames eyes the pills in Arthur’s hand. “Any chance of a lobotomy? I’d do anything, Arthur, I really would.”

“If there was, I would have done it years ago, before you tried to talk me into that vampire fantasy job in New Orleans.”

“Oh, hell. Don't make me laugh."

Then, promptly, Eames leans over to the side of the bed and pukes into his bucket.

For the first time since this started — this being the insane turn of Arthur’s life into role-playing a goddamn nurse — he experiences a real flicker of fear.

He’s seen Eames injured before. They’ve been tortured a thousand ways in dreams. They’ve died in almost every way possible for a man to die. He’s blown Eames’ head off his shoulders himself. Topside, he’s seen Eames take a bullet to the stomach, a knife to the arm, a punch to the head. They’ve broken bones together. He’s seen the bloody remains of Eames’ hands after he’s had a couple of his fingernails removed, courtesy of a few I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-The-IRA douchebags.

But all of that heals. It’s finite pain. A tunnel; close and claustrophobic and awful, but it’s got light at the end of it. Arthur can force the light through if he has to. He can apply disinfectant and put pressure on a wound and splint a limb, and he can clean Eames’ blood off any surface known to man. He’s the point man, the cleanup guy. That’s his job. Bleach works wonders. So does Vicodin.

But he can’t reach inside Eames’ head and make this better. There’s no bandaging this. He can’t hold Eames’ brain in his hands and keep it from inflicting more damage until the meds finally kick in for a few hours.

It’s a nightmare.

Still, a bad dream has never stopped Arthur from doing his job.

Research leaves him a thousand answers for his questions, and he works his way through them slowly. Eames spends a few hours with construction-proof earplugs stuffed into his ears until he confesses that he’d rather be able to hear trouble coming, even if trouble is only Arthur. When he surfaces from a nap just after lunch, Arthur rolls his sleeves up and holds a cold compress to Eames’ head. The freezer becomes home to a rotating supply of them; the next one ready to go as the last starts dripping uncomfortably. Arthur gets used to the cold moisture of Eames’ forehead, the wet, gelled grease of his hair under his fingers.

Later, Arthur puts a chair in the shower and pointedly doesn’t listen by the door as Eames sits down and washes himself in the dark.

And Prague becomes the first place in his life Arthur ever buys something as fruity and domestic as a bottle of essential oil. His Czech is poor and the bottles are tiny, and it takes ten minutes for Arthur to give up his pride and let the shopkeeper intervene.

“Lavender.” She hands him a bottle. “It will help with your stress.”

“Good for, uh…” he gestures at his temples. “Headaches?’

She nods . He buys the bottle and a burner and, mercifully, the bedroom starts to smell of things other than puke.

Then, on day three, they find out how easy it is to wave away the most awkward ideas in a crisis. Eames has the look of a man who would saw off his own arm with a rusty teaspoon to stop the pain in his head. It’s terrifying what that does to Arthur.

“Here,” Arthur whispers, crawling onto the bed. He lays Eames’ head in his lap. “Can I—tell me if I hurt you.”

He grabs a small section of Eames’ hair and pulls.

“Mm—oh, fuck me. Do that again.”

Arthur laughs quietly. He pulls and pulls at Eames’ hair until he looks like he’s been put in an electric chair, and the whole time, Eames makes the most insane sounds — sounds Arthur’s only ever really heard through flimsy hotel walls.

“You’ve been holding out on me,” grunts Eames.

“Yeah. Sorry. Reddit’s been holding out on me.”

Arthur pulls again, and Eames writhes with pain and release in Arthur’s lap.

There are certain rules Arthur’s set for himself about Eames that have lasted nearly a decade. If they’d fucked back when they nearly fucked, it would have been fine. They barely knew each other then. But it’s different, sleeping with someone who you’ve known a day and expect never to see again, than fucking a guy you work job after job with, year after year. The rules aren’t just about Eames. In general, Arthur tries never to stick his dick inside people whose heads he has to run around in. That kind of thing gets messy.

Eames isn’t worth getting messy over. He’s hot—God, he’s destructively hot—and he’s smart, but there are other hot, smart people in the world who aren’t half as much of a cryptic asshole as Eames.

Right now, though, all of Arthur’s rules threaten to come to ruin. There’s a slow burn happening between his legs. The male body is a one-track sack of shit sometimes, Arthur’s especially. Thankfully, Eames doesn’t seem to notice. He just sighs hotly into Arthur’s thigh, then drifts to sleep again.

Arthur doesn’t move. If he moves, this insane plan might have all been for nothing. And it’s not like he’s keen on Eames catching him at half-mast.

The migraine lasts for four days, and Arthur is so keyed up by the end of it that he’s considering taking Eames to an actual, bona fide hospital. Day five, he promises himself. If the migraine’s still around by day five, it’s time to burn through some fake passports.

But just after three am, Arthur wakes up to Eames sitting down on the bed with a glass of water in hand. That’s a surprise, but it’s even more of a surprise that he’s in Eames’ bed to feel it. He can’t remember falling asleep.

“I coulda got that,” yawns Arthur.

“’s alright. Nice to be out of bed.”

“Wait." Arthur blinks. "It’s over?”

“Mm.” Eames takes a long drink of water and smiles a pale smile. A drop of water escapes down his chin and Arthur's heart beats a funny rhythm.

He doesn’t go back to sleep.

Instead, he stares at the shadowy, ornate patterns in the ceiling while Eames climbs back under the covers. His breath is heavy and uneven, loud in his water glass. Arthur listens to it, relieved. In. Out. In. In. Out.

An endless stretch of time later, there’s a touch to his stomach. He jumps.

“What—”

Eames shushes him. He shuffles down beneath the duvet, down to where Arthur’s thought of him too many times. His forehead rests against Arthur’s stomach, greasy.

“Fuck. What? Eames—”

But then there are lips against Arthur’s ribs, his navel. A rough hand pushing his shirt up. A tongue over his nipple. And Arthur’s going to have to do some serious thinking about his response later because he should probably be kneeing Eames in the nuts or something but—

“Tell me to stop if you like,” says Eames.

Arthur looks down to the lump of Eames’ head beneath the duvet.

He almost gets to more objections. Almost. He manages a sound like he’s being choked before Eames gets his mouth around the head of his dick, and then Arthur can’t speak at all.

Eames is a robe guy.

Arthur realizes this when he emerges from the bathroom, suited up, to see Eames slouched around a notebook, inhaling a mug of coffee, dressed in the garish red thing that’s been hanging behind the bathroom door. He could probably live in a robe, and maybe he does in whatever bohemian mancave he’s carved out for himself in Mombasa. 

Arthur’s a boxers and t-shirt guy. Everything else is too stifling.

He wanders towards the Nespresso machine. Reaches for a little green capsule and starts a coffee. He watches the snow fall outside the window, then turns around to see Eames’ robe coming undone. Arthur looks, obviously. He’d have to be dead not to. Eames meets his gaze head-on until Arthur averts his eyes. There are things he has to ask Eames first.

He's never been great at morning afters.

“Hey, so your last chemist. Who was he?”

Eames slides his notebook into the sagging pocket of his robe. “There was no job. You needn’t avenge me, unless you have a plan for my mother’s terrible genes.”

It’s funny, sometimes, being around Eames. He has the ability to make Arthur feel dumber than any person on Earth, which he does often and intentionally just to be a dick. Still, even when they’re arguing over strategy and blueprints, Arthur’s mostly happy to sit back and watch Eames being incomprehensibly good at his job. He used to miss a lot of things, but years of watching have helped. He’s catching things about Eames these days. Tells. The things he doesn’t say.

The second the coffee machine stops, Arthur knows he’s being lied to. And he knows that Eames knows he knows.

Incredulously, Arthur laughs. 

On his phone, there are twenty messages from the extractor of the job they’re meant to be on — a job Arthur’s barely thought about in seventy-two hours — saying he’s going to find another forger by tomorrow. The first one came an hour into finding Eames, and since then, Arthur’s done nothing but try to keep Eames out of pain and in on a six-figure payout.

And in return, Eames has given him what he always gives everyone: a fat lot of nothing. But maybe Arthur’s lucky. He got a nice little don’t ask don’t tell blowjob out of it.

“Come on. The least you could do is not lie to me, Eames. I just spent four days playing nurse.”

“And I’m very grateful for that, Arthur, I really am.” Eames tightens his robe again. “But I never once asked you to.”

Arthur downs his coffee. It’s terrible. Burnt. It tastes of metal. He’s always hated those pod machines. Fuck if he knows why—

“Okay,” he manages to say. “Okay. You’re right. Next time, I won’t bother.”

Next time, Eames can have his own groceries delivered. He can try and remind himself to keep a jug of water and a glass by the bed. He can track the hours — minutes, even — between pills. He can make his own cold compresses and his own meals and his own fucking tea. He can pull his own goddamn hair. He can suck off a paramedic in gratitude. Eat out a nurse. Whatever.

“See you at the warehouse, Eames.”

January, 2012.

Two months later, Arthur’s seen some of the world. He’s sure he has. His passports have the stamps to prove it, even if all he can remember from each country is the smooth, industrial guts of various warehouses.

At least on this job he’ll get to look at some nature. The patio of the house they’re renting in Medellín looks over a long garden. There’s a plant in the corner with red, ripe tomatoes for the taking; greens in the ground; herbs sprouting wild from allotment boxes. Arthur takes a long, luxurious breath of early morning air. The hills around them are misted in fog and there’s a slight chill raising goosebumps on his arms.

Behind him, Donnelly arrives, prompting a round of cheerful hellos. Arthur grins.

Donnelly’s a big, burly beast of an extractor who intimidates the shit out of people. That’s until the second he opens his mouth and reveals himself to be the most upbeat motherfucker on the planet. His Englishness exists in diametric opposition to Eames’ Englishness — even American Arthur, as Mal used to call him, understands enough about the differences between Surrey and Sunderland to know Eames and Donnelly took very different roads into dream sharing. It’s pretty hilarious to watch when they end up on the same job. Their vocabularies are extensive in all senses — high-brow and low-brow — and they approach every conversation like a new battle in a never-ending class war. The best three hours Arthur ever spent on a job in a dream involved watching Eames teaching Donnelly how to forge.

Opposites must really attract, because they get along well enough to ask after each other whenever Arthur turns up to a job with only one of them on the payroll.

And there’s only one of them on the payroll for this job. Arthur’s made sure of it.

“Nice view out here,” says Donnelly, slapping Arthur on the shoulder.

“Makes a change, huh?”

“Aye, and no neighbors.” Donnelly throws his bag down and changes the subject. “Seen Eames about lately? I hear he’s taken a turn. Hope it’s nothing terminal.”

“It’s not.” Arthur fixes his eyes on a trellis that’s bulging with tomatoes.

Donnelly clears his throat. “Listen, if it’s them headaches again—”

“Headaches?”

“Yeah. Used to get ‘em every week when Her Majesty’s finest were turning his brains to soup.”

Her Majesty’s finest.

It’s not like Arthur doesn’t know from whence Eames came. It’s the same place all men like them spring from: the wasteland of a lonely childhood. It’s just that there’s gaps in Arthur’s knowledge; things he’s never known about Eames and never wanted to ask. Contrary to belief, Arthur doesn’t mind secrets. He really doesn’t — you can’t trust a man who says he has nothing to hide — but there are secrets and secrets, and when those secrets start to screw up jobs, that’s when Arthur starts minding.

He learned that the hard way from Cobb.

Years after the Dreamshare programme wrapped, Eames dropped off Arthur’s radar, and it was years before Arthur finally found him again in an old walk-up in Zaragoza, a very different man to the one Arthur remembered. He’d been almost unrecognizable. Hair longer, face scruffier, shoulders bigger (shoulders crazy). Arthur had been carrying around the image of him freshly out of the special forces, tall and cocky and quick to smile, but there was a hunch to him in Spain, an easy slouch only a civilian could cultivate, and there were frown lines on his forehead. Both raised the question of what, exactly, Eames had been getting up to for over half a decade.

Eames has never said, but Arthur knows it was nothing in a regiment.

Beside Arthur, Donnelly has moved on from talking about his and Eames’ old glory days. He’s rolling a cigarette and complaining about not being able to smoke on planes anymore. Arthur finds it amazing that anyone who’s done more than basic training can sustain a smoking habit.

“Listen, about the headache thing,” says Donnelly, eventually. “There’s an old geezer in Sheffield who might be able to help. Berty. Mad as a bag of cats, like, but his pills are mint. Let Eames know, yeah?”

“You could tell him yourself.”

Donnelly slips his freshly-rolled cigarette behind his ear. “Can’t get through to ‘im.”

The clouds hang low for the rest of the day, and they burst open in the afternoon. They’re all stuck inside together: Arthur and Donnelly and Townsend, who’s finally given up on his extracting dreams, thank fuck. It’s humid. Close. Arthur sweats a lot.

The job is going down on a boat, which means they need a new compound that can stand things getting choppy, and that means a rough few days for Arthur because he’s the point man, which means he’s the resident guinea pig on every job from here to retirement or death.

“We can take turns,” suggests Donnelly. Arthur shakes his head. He never lets any team member take a drug he hasn’t tested himself.

They dive into research surrounded by the stench of tobacco and coffee, and Arthur only thinks about Eames half a dozen times, almost all of them when he wakes up from testing the compound flat on the floor and there’s no quiet laughter nearby. No red, hot splotch on his cheek from the firm slap of Eames’ hand.

Arthur doesn’t hit the floor once. Donnelly pushes instead of slapping, and he makes sure to stop Arthur’s chair before it hits the ground. But even with all that mollycoddling, when they successfully wrap up the job, Arthur is flattened. Defeated by humidity and experimental drugs.

He has exactly enough energy to send one text: D says Berty in Sheffield can help your head.

Then, without waiting for a reply, he snaps the SIM card in half and throws his phone into a river.

February, 2012.

He arrives home to LA feeling like a zombie.

It’s the kind of exhaustion a man only gives into on home soil, when there’s no more planes and cabs and check ins to deal with and he knows he’s got his own bed to retreat to.

All of Arthur’s houseplants look how he feels. Most of them are dead or dying, except for the Chinese money plant, which still has a burst of persistent green coins clinging to it. He waters it before he even takes his coat off. It occurs to him he might be sleepwalking.

Actual sleep, though, doesn’t come easy. The jet lag of a year catches up with him all at once. His body’s too awake when his brain’s asleep, and when his brain kicks into gear, his body gives up.

At two am, he’s slumped on his couch with a Brooklyn lager dangling between his fingers. The shopping channel flickers at him. A woman with wrinkling hands and a thick salon nail job tries to sell him a tanzanite necklace. A man with veneers raves about the Swiss Army Knife of vegetable slicers. A perky woman with blonde hair and a vicious zeal for cleaning nearly has him picking up the phone to buy a steam cleaner.

With his hand halfway to his brand new phone, he stops and laughs. Who the hell would he be cleaning for?

Along with being an accommodating man, Arthur prides himself on his practicality. It goes hand-in-hand with his orderliness. When he bought his house he bought it because it had two bedrooms—one he could sleep in and one he could turn into an office. His is not a life for sharing. His parents will not meander into town. He has no friends he would, in his right mind, beg to stay over. It’s a rare one-night-stand that ends in his bedroom, and he always makes sure the person is gone by the morning.

A well-timed brunch invitation can cover a lot of sins.

So Arthur doesn’t need an extra room or a pullout bed. Pullout beds are for college students, share houses, and people who do not share Arthur’s belief in the notion that a thing should do a single job very well. It’s why he doesn’t use combined shampoo/conditioners or washer/dryers, and, of course, it’s also why he doesn’t own a shitty piece of furniture that is bad at being both a bed and a couch, two of the things it’s advertised to be.

He doesn’t need a steam cleaner, either. Who’s even here to spill things on the floor? He’s not even here half the time.

The beer in his hand slips. He manages to catch it on the way down, and the timing of it makes him laugh harder. The way it could have ended up like one of the overblown, contrived accidents the shopping channel’s been cycling through…that sends him into a delirious, exhausted fit. There are real, actual tears welling in his eyes when there’s a knock at the door.

Arthur stops laughing.

He straightens up, puts his beer down and grabs the gun from the shelf under his coffee table. Bad time for a knock, two am, especially when no one knows Arthur’s here.

No one except for Eames, apparently.

Eames who’s unshaven, pale, and ten pounds lighter than he was in that Prague apartment. Arthur thought he looked like shit last time they saw each other, but this is taking the cake. He’s sweating. Oily, like he’s come down with something. Possibly he’s drunk.

And his manners have gotten worse.

“I called you,” says Eames, in lieu of a normal hello. “I must have called you a hundred times.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Arthur puts his gun down on the hallway table. “Lost my phone.”

“Oh, that’s rot, Arthur.”

He pushes up off the doorjamb and wavers, wobbles like he’s going to fall. Arthur shoots out a hand to keep him steady, but Eames takes it the wrong way.

An arm is shoving into Arthur’s throat. His head’s against the wall. Eames smells pungent and stale, and Arthur’s return strike lands on clammy skin. He grabs at Eames’ shoulder, feels all that ropey muscle shift beneath his fingers, and then drives his knee into Eames’ bad hip. They both stumble. Eames goes down to the floor with a blustery breath, jerking his knees, hips, elbows—all the parts of him that do damage. Arthur avoids a fist to the groin, but catches a ruthless elbow to the jaw. His teeth snap together, loud. It fucking hurts.

“Stop,” he commands. Breathing heavily, he pins Eames’ arms behind his back. Sits on his thighs. “Stop, Eames. I don’t want to fight you.”

Eames is terrifying to fight. He’s big, yeah, even when he’s a little lighter than usual, but the scarier thing is how efficient he is. So Arthur won’t — can’t — let go until every last shred of the fight vanishes. He presses Eames’ arms into his back. A long few seconds tick by. Eames heaves out some ugly breaths, leaving spit on Arthur’s floors where his face is resting. His torso rises and falls. Fast, at first, then slow and deep.

“I don’t want to fight,” repeats Arthur, calmer than he feels. He puts a hand on the nape of Eames’ neck. “Why the fuck would I want to fight you in my own house?”

“Let me up,” says Eames. Arthur would be an idiot not to expect deception. He tightens his hold on Eames’s arms. Eames winces. “Let me up, Arthur.”

“Yeah? You done?”

“I’m done. I’m done, alright?”

Arthur breathes once, twice and stands. He retrieves his room temperature beer and downs it, not bothering to help Eames off the floor. If Eames had the energy to come at him swinging, he can at least sit up himself.

The fridge whirrs like it’s been the one fighting when Arthur grabs a second beer. He doesn’t really want it; the last one’s still sitting heavy in his stomach. Still, he opens it for something to do. The head surges up and overflows the bottle, and that’s when Arthur realizes his hands are shaking.

Eames nods to the wet bottle in his hand. “Can I have that?”

“No. Tell me how you found me.”

“I followed you.”

“From where?”

“The airport. Saw your three hour flight delay. You must be almost as dead on your feet as I am.”

“But no one knows—” Wait. Shit. “Cobb.”

Eames hums. “He was very quick to tell me how fond you are of your house in LA. I underestimated him. He can be rather warm hearted, given the right sob story.”

There’s something in his voice, that hint of the old Eames who would—Jesus Christ. ”He thinks we’re fucking.”

Eames makes a noncommittal noise. “I think he’s under the impression I’m here to make amends.”

“Are you?”

Eames’ mouth presses into a thin line. As thin as it’s capable of making, anyway.

He hauls himself up off the floor, and while Arthur’s still getting his head together, the beer gets stolen right out of his hand. Eames downs half of it, wincing, and follows up his theft with a half-hearted joke about American piss.

Arthur’s too exhausted to be annoyed. His day hits him all at once. He sits on his couch and dangles his arms between his knees. His hands are dry from the flight, cuticles ripped.

They spend a few minutes watching the shopping channel — Oh, gosh, look at those pink floral on this dress! So vintage! Doesn’t it make you want to go to a tea party? — before Arthur nearly loses the will to live and mutes it.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen in our line of work?” Eames asks. “No, don’t tell me. just think about it.”

Arthur’s brain snags on a memory of sand sweeping over his face, barrelling into his eyes, sharp and itchy. A serrated combat knife missing its mark and cutting along his thigh. The screams of the other men in his unit. Blowing a hole through someone’s chest with a grenade, then waking up to see them smiling two chairs over. He hears the snap of his own neck reverberating in his ears. The horrific things some men got up to with women and children during surplus dream time. Eating breakfast, lunch and dinner across from those men, ignoring them when they called him—no, fuck that. Arthur’s not thinking about that. Arthur doesn’t want to think about any of it. All that time Cobb’s shade of Mal spent torturing him in dreams never held a candle to the Army.

“The job I’m doing,” says Eames. “It’s bloody difficult. I’m not sure I…” It’s the first time Arthur’s ever heard him unsure about anything. “I was deep cover, years ago. They promised me I’d be out for good when it was done. I should have known they’d never let me go entirely.”

“They got something on you?”

Eames shakes his head. “Only that everyone has a line somewhere. I’m sorry to say that they found mine.”

Arthur leans forward. “Even thieves have a line, huh?”

“Especially thieves.”

Truthfully, there was a time when Arthur might have disagreed. When a man crosses the threshold into people’s minds to steal things, throwing stones makes him a hypocrite.

It took the shitstorm of following Cobb around to change his mind. There were days, too many by the end, where Arthur tossed sleeplessly, weighing and weighing the choices he was making until he fell asleep to the ugliest thoughts. And though he’d tried to remind himself there was a happy future for Phillipa and James at the end of it — kids, just fucking kids — Arthur can’t say he’s proud of every single thing he’s done.

His lines are coming through clearer these days. He rammed up against one on the Fischer job, when Cobb risked all their necks for a chance at redemption. And he found another one in Prague after hearing Eames sobbing through the night. After watching Eames, in pain, looking at his gun for too long. Eames with his fist in his eye. Eames groaning with release. Eames sighing a hot, relieved breath into Arthur’s sternum. Thank you. Thank you, Arthur. Christ, that was fucking awful.

“Hey,” says Arthur. He’s sick of thinking about it all. Sick of thinking about lines. “You should stay. Get some sleep.”

But Eames isn’t listening. He’s too busy falling to the floor, seizing horrifically, to give Arthur’s hospitality the time of day.

Arthur’s been to this hospital before. That was a much happier occasion: he’d carried flowers into the room where Mal was beaming over James’ crinkled, ugly-sweet newborn face. Dom was by her side, looking like he’d been hit over the head with a brick or three.

Now, it’s just him and Eames, and Eames is asleep, so it’s really just Arthur. Arthur and the doctor, who’s not making any fucking sense.

“Wait, hang on,” Arthur closes his eyes. “You said speed?”

“Chiefly, yes. Among a cocktail of other substances. Does he have a long history with psychostimulants?”

Arthur opens and shuts his mouth. The rest of the conversation may as well happen in Klingon for all Arthur gets out of it.

After coming across as the worst partner alive — the lies he tells for access are insane — he finds five minutes respite in the bathroom. The mirror does him no favours, and neither do the lights. He’s damp; sweaty from stress and too far into the night for his pomade to look anything but greasy. Normally, he carries a change of clothes wherever he goes, but he didn’t have time to pack back at the house when Eames was—

In the accessible bathroom near Eames’ room, Arthur alternates between splashing his face with water and swallowing tepid, unsatisfying mouthfuls of it. Someone knocks. It’s a person in a wheelchair with a carer, and god, Arthur knows he’s an asshole but he’s reached new fucking lows today. With an apologetic grimace, he leaves. Shakes himself off.

He calls Yusuf and doesn’t bother with small talk.

“You got a pen?” Arthur asks. “I need you to tell me if you’ve ever heard of this compound, and the ingredient list is the length of War and Peace.”

When Yusuf’s fetched himself a pen and Arthur’s read out every last substance, the only answer he gets for a while is a long, thin whistle.

“How long did you say he’s been taking this?” asks Yusuf.

“First I heard of it was almost a year ago.”

“Then he’s bloody mad.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Not this precise mix. But some of it looks…back in your regimental days, did you ever work with Go Pills?”

Arthur stays silent.

“At least, you know what they’re intended for?”

“Get to the point, Yusuf.”

“I can’t be absolutely certain, but theoretically, I’d say he’s been trying to modify his alertness in the dream. To stay up for longer.”

“Up?”

“Energetic, I mean. On.”

“But you don’t get tired in a dream.”

“Ah, but you are affected by your body’s limits. If you’re sick with a cold, you might experience sound distortion or vibrations. If you’ve been dreaming a lot but not sleeping, the dream might feel slow.”

Arthur hums. “If you need to take a leak, it rains.”

Yusuf clears his throat. “Yes. We dream as we are, but to dream with this…I’m not surprised he’s suffering from migraines. I’m amazed he’s not dead.”

There’s a long pause.

“Where is Eames, Arthur?”

“He’s fine.”

“And he is fine in some specific geographical place, yes?”

“A hospital. He’s fine. They’ve flushed the drugs, it’s—he’s fine. You didn’t think to check his blood work before he came for a visit last time?”

“No,” says Yusuf, quietly. “No, I trusted him. If he keeps taking this compound, Arthur…”

“Yeah. I know.”

Arthur turns to look through the window of Eames’ hospital room door. Even skin as tan as Eames’ pales under those lights. Even a man as broad and sure is shrunk in a bed like that. It’s not natural. Eames can take up a whole room. There’s not a single room in the world that’s managed to contain him. 

“Arthur?”

“Thanks, Yusuf.”

He hangs up. And then the anger hits.

He’s angry. He’s so fucking angry that it’s become cleansing. If he was at a shooting range right now, he’d hit his paper target right in the heart every time. That’s how Eames finds him when he wakes up: scowling by his hospital bed, a head full of deep background research on Eames.

“You’ve such a lovely bedside manner, Arthur,” croaks Eames. “It’s a wonder you never became a nurse.”

“The uniform didn’t suit me.”

Eames grins, a little loopy, and Arthur’s heart pounds in his chest. He’s horrified to feel his eyes going hot, his throat closing.

“It’s going to kill you one day,” he gets out. “This shit you’re taking.”

“It won’t come to that,” Eames replies. He sounds so sure about it, the way he’s always so sure about everything, even when everyone else is wavering.

“I called Yusuf. He seemed pretty clear about it.”

The last of Eames’ smile peters out. “Some things are worth a bit of sacrifice. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”

Arthur blinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How’s Cobb doing these days? The little whelps happy at school?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No, perhaps not. Your lost cause was only a man.”

Arthur takes a deep breath, and tries not to let Eames get to him. “And yours is—what, you’ve got all that defence funding and you can’t shoot the heads off a couple of terrorist leaders?”

“You Americans. Always assuming everything can be solved with a gun.” Eames shifts and winces. “I assume you’ve swept the room.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“Good. Then the problem — as you must know, having quite happily followed your government and its bloated military-industrial complex into battle—is that it’s very easy to cut the head off a hydra, but it’s very hard to stop it from growing back.”

“Get to the point, Eames.”

Eames rubs a hand over his face. The IV tugs, ugly, at the vein on the back of his hand.

“Have you ever met a child soldier?” he asks.

“What?”

“A child soldier, Arthur. Keep up."

“I—yeah. Once. It’s not something I love thinking about.”

“Well, imagine him, if you would.” Eames shifts. “Imagine that instead of being handed a gun by his militant father at twelve, or what have you, that it’s even worse. That he’s made to dream, as soon as he can dream, that he’s part of an army. Being trained in violence before he can even say the word. Wading through that gargantuan, endless bog of shit you and I waded through, except we signed up for it, and he has no choice at all, having been signed up to hold a gun since the minute he was born.”

Eames is out of breath, almost.

“My old employer approached me about a de-radicalisation program, something that would attempt to undo a lifetime of violence and indoctrination. Would have been a hell of a thing if we got it wrong, of course. Dicking about in children’s heads, potentially leaving them worse off than we found them. It turned out it couldn’t get much worse. I lasted a minute the first time I went under.”

“Topside?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

Eames smiles ruefully. “Might you now understand the need for some medicinal assistance?”

“Assistance that’s killing you.”

“Arthur.”

“They seriously can’t find another way?”

"My employer knows what they have, is the thing. I'm good at being other people. That’s a very useful skill to have if I’m to sit inside a child's head without breaking it."

“Yeah, and fuck your head, right?”

"Ah. Well, my head,” Eames sighs, “would have been even more of a mess if I never tried."

Arthur’s sure there are many things he could say. So many arguments he could make. So many ways he could yell at Eames or plead with him or reason with him. But for all the thoughts whirling around Arthur’s head, he comes up blank, except for:

“I don’t know if I can do another Prague.”

Eames collapses down to his pillow, heavy. “Then you’re hereby resolved of a duty you never had in the first place.” He stares at the ceiling. “Forgive me. It’s been a trying day. Might I have my room back now?”

God, Arthur wants to give it back. Getting up, getting changed and getting absolutely trashed are extremely high ticket items on Arthur’s priority list, but unfortunately they’re just not as high as making sure Eames doesn’t go and die because he’s too impatient to wait for a discharge plan.

Arthur pulls the curtain shut around the bed, ignoring Eames’ sulk.

“Just get some sleep.”

He pulls out a book: the Kurosawa autobiography he’s been struggling to find the time to read for nearly a year. It’s not long before his eyes are drooping. 

Half the reason Arthur’s never been good at morning afters is because he has a tendency to give himself away in the middle of the night. He’s a different man when he’s on the edge of natural sleep.

Eames moves in his bed, rousing Arthur from a doze at ass-o’clock. The hospital is hushed except for the steady beep of the monitors. For the first time since Arthur got back home, he can’t hear any traffic.

In the his faux-leather armchair, he battles with himself about whether to look in on Eames. He doesn’t need to. The nurse has come by already (resolutely ignoring Arthur), and Eames’ chart wasn’t impenetrable gibberish to her the way it is to him. If Eames needs to be checked up on by anyone, it definitely isn’t the guy who can’t read a medical chart.

He gets up and moves the curtain a fraction. Eames’ chest is rising and falling and his hand on his sternum rises and falls with it. He has one of those clips on the end of his finger that Arthur can never remember the name of, and it twitches with each breath.

He inhales sharply and opens his eyes. “Arthur.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Arthur executes a swift tactical retreat. He returns to his chair and picks up his book, and he sits like he was taught to in the Army until Eames pulls back the curtain and calls his name again softly.

Arthur rubs a hand over his face. Looks up. God. Why does Eames have to be so—

“You’re upset,” says Eames.

“Yeah, I’m upset.”

“Because you think I’ve been on a suicide mission.”

Arthur shakes his head. It’s been hours now, and Arthur’s had time to think it over. He gets it, why Eames wanted to try. Why he wanted to buy into this insane experimental program and risk his neck for a bunch of kids who must still have heavy prices on their heads, even now, Arthur gets it. It’s just.

“I’m really tired of seeing you in pain.”

Eames swallows, throat clicking. “You’ve seen me in pain plenty.”

“Not like this. Not like.”

It’s fucking embarrassing, is what it is, crying in the middle of night.

Eames shifts over, pulls back the blanket. Arthur ignores the million reasons it’s a terrible idea and climbs in, resting his head on Eames’ big tree-trunk arm. He falls asleep to the sound of the monitor’s beep.

Arthur’s returning from the retrieval of a truly terrible hospital coffee when he finds Donnelly outside Eames’ room. He’s twisting a flatcap between his hands, sending a troubled look through the window in the door. The sun is high in the sky and the hospital walls are bright. Everyone’s walking around squinting.

“You can go in,” Arthur tells him. “He’s asleep, not contagious.”

Donnelly gives him a thin smile, but he doesn’t open the door. “He looks a right mess.”

“That’s because he is.” Arthur takes a sip of coffee. “How did you find us?”

“He texted me. Said he wouldn’t be able to make a job. That’s the second time he’s gone limp on me in a month, so I thought I’d do some digging.”

“You’re here alone, right? Because if you’ve told anyone else, Donnelly—”

“What do you take me for? A fucking idiot?” Fucking comes out with two ‘o’s. Donnelly’s deep in his accent, which means he’s furious. “He’s a mate, Arthur. I’ve known him longer than you have.”

“Okay. Okay, calm down.”

“You calm down, you officious prick.” But his eyes are back on Eames, and there’s no real heat in his voice. That’s Donnelly; quick to anger and quick to forgive. “Only seen him like this once.”

“Right. Back when Her Majesty was making soup out of your brains?”

"Aye. Signed off on the orders herself. Dunno if she knew what she was reading, to be fair.”

“Did you get them? The headaches?”

Donnelly shakes his head. “Nah. Eames was unlucky.”

He taps his fingers against his hat. Looks at Arthur, looks back at Eames. A few people have accused Arthur of being impatient, and that’s because he is, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to wait someone out. He’s done his share of interrogations.

“I’m thinking,” says Donnelly, slowly. “That I might want to be home a bit more often.”

Arthur knows that’s horseshit. Donnelly left England when he got his teenage girlfriend pregnant and her father nearly beat him to death. He hasn’t looked back since. But along with knowing how to wait someone out, Arthur knows how to read the lines in a conversation.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The main door to the wards opens. Two men step through, dressed in the kind of boring suits only government stooges wear. Arthur knows exactly who they are. He’s met their type before. Handlers. Rule followers. Whips.

Donnelly knows too.

“Dressed nice, aren’t they?” he says, casually. “Reckon they might know about a job opening? I could use some stability.”

“They might.”

“Right then.” Donnelly jams his hat back on his head. “Duty calls.”

When Arthur heads back in, hours later, Eames pulls him into the bed. “It’s over, yeah?” he whispers into Arthur’s hair. “It’s over, Arthur. No more, alright?”

Arthur buries his face in Eames’ armpit and breathes.

March, 2012.

The thing with breaking a rule is that you can’t just break one.

It sneaks up on him, occasionally, the memory of Eames’ mouth around his dick. Arthur’s not a complete horndog. He can think about things other than sex. It’s just that when he doesn’t have to think about saving Eames from his own head and they’re working regular jobs again, Arthur can’t shake it. Eames’ mouth looks different, maybe. He smiles easier at Arthur.

They’re in Mombasa because Arthur — for many reasons involving Eames’ continued health and well being — would prefer to have Yusuf closer than not, but they’re designing for a dream in Sydney. It’s just the two of them working from a disused warehouse that smells of petrol and burning rubber. Arthur always thought he’d kill Eames if they didn’t have a mediator, but things go smoother than they ever have. They fall into a rhythm — Arthur likes focus, and for all the joking around he does on other jobs, Eames prefers quiet for his work, too.

Every morning, Arthur arrives to a perfectly-made, piping-hot coffee on his desk. It’s one of the better jobs he’s worked.

“Hey,” says Arthur, two weeks in. “Got a few minutes? I’m nearly done with the build and I could use some help.”

Eames hums, extracting his pen from his mouth. “Big of you, admitting you need any help, let alone mine.”

Arthur shrugs. “It’s kind of lacking in verisimilitude. And you lived there while you were working for Browning.”

Eames wanders around like a big, lax gorilla when they go under, nodding and sniffing and shrugging; broadcasting his opinion without offering anything helpful. That is until he squints at the corner of Park and Pitt street, turns ninety degrees and back again and says, “There should be a Starbucks on that corner.”

“Really?”

“In the list of pranks I’d be delighted to play on you, Arthur, cocking up the job over a lack of verisimilitude doesn’t rank, does it?”

Arthur knows he’s being made fun of. That’s okay. If he wanted to turn the tables, he’d just ask Eames to spell it out.

“I guess not.”

“They were putting up the branding while I was there. It should be well-populated by your swill-drinking compatriots by now.”

Eames smiles, rare and wide, as Arthur begrudgingly turns the empty corner of an office building into a corporate hospitality nightmare. They meander through Hyde Park after that, Eames seeking the sun and Arthur seeking to look at anything except another office building. Eames slips a five dollar note into the pocket of a homeless sleeping projection then perches himself on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the park. Water peacocks out behind him.

He unholsters his gun. “Shall we?”

“You’re seriously that ready to get away from me?”

It must surprise even Eames that his first reaction, these days, to surplus time in a dream is to blow his own brains out. He reholsters the gun.

“How long did you say you needed?”

“I figured we would argue more, so I put ten minutes on the clock.” Arthur takes off his jacket. He’s starting to sweat. January summer heat, all that humidity. He remembers enough of Sydney to remember that. “We could—the harbour’s looking pretty good. Wanna head down? Take a break?”

They walk slowly, picking up gelato at Circular Quay and making their way through the well-heeled throngs of people heading into the Opera House. The sun is setting. Wine glasses are starting to clink in the restaurants. None of Arthur’s projections take a second look at Eames.

Eames notices.

“Trusting, aren’t they?”

“Not really.”

“Just for me, then.” He’s smug. Maybe he should be. “After all this time. Are you warming to me, Arthur?”

Arthur leans against the railing and looks over at the Harbour Bridge, up at the tiny little ant-like people climbing it. If Cobb were standing where Eames is right now, they’d be sniping down at him. Instead, they let Eames sidle up behind Arthur, put his face in the crook where Arthur’s shoulder meets his neck.

“I think I could take you to pieces,” Eames murmurs. “Right here, for all the city to see. And they wouldn’t look twice.”

“Uh.” There’s a circuit shorting in Arthur’s brain. “They, uh—they might look.”

A hand, big and broad, tugs Arthur’s shirt out of his pants. “Shall we let them?”

Arthur can’t hide a smile. “Yeah. Fuck it. Why not?”

The long, gold afternoon light drenches everything, and when Arthur comes, he’s looking right into the sun.

The Fischer job taught Arthur a lot. It taught him he could still make mistakes. It taught him how to fix those mistakes even when he was floating around in zero gravity. It taught him even a guy he thought he could trust through and through would lie to him if the price was right. Everyone’s got a price.

Or, as Eames would say, everyone’s got a line.

Arthur arrives at Yusuf’s to pick up the loads for the job at noon. It’s hot. The breeze from the Indian Ocean never reaches Yusuf’s hovel. Arthur’s already taken off his tie and jacket, and he’s regretting his choice of suit. Yusuf isn’t in his office, so Arthur takes the stairs down to the dreaming den. All its chairs are taken, and Arthur blames the heat for not noticing who’s in them straight away.

Boys. Teenagers. Fucking kids.

“Arthur,” Yusuf greets him with a smile.

The smile leaves his face as soon as he sees Arthur’s face. Arthur walks him backwards up against a wall.

“Tell me you didn’t know, Yusuf. Tell me you didn’t lie to me about that fucking compound.”

His fist balls at his side. He’s about to land it right into Yusuf’s doughy cheek when Eames’ shoves himself in the middle them.

“It’s alright, Arthur. Leave Yusuf be.”

There’s a beat where the only sound in the room is the whirring of fans and the sound of Arthur’s breath in his ears. And then he finds himself laughing, though nothing is funny.

“Jesus Christ.”

Eames calls out after him as he leaves.

Arthur doesn't know where he's going. He knows he's walking. He knows he has to keep moving because if he stops he'll have to think beyond the one sentence playing on a loop in his head: He lied to me. He got me into bed and fucking lied to me.

It's over, yeah? It's over, Arthur. No more, alright?

Eames whispering in that hospital was supposed to be the most honest he’d ever been. IV in his hand, his face in Arthur's hair, cards on the table.

Arthur’s such a fucking sucker.

Arthur turns a corner and nearly runs into a woman carrying her own weight in shopping. He can't find the language to apologise, so he lets her swear at him until he turns another corner and escapes her wrath.

Of course it was a con. A white lie to Arthur for the greater good. They recruited Donnelly. Fine. But what’s one man when two could save twice as many souls?

A horn blares at Arthur in the middle of a road. He veers to the footpath.

His shirt soaks through with sweat. He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking, but the smell in the air is changing, getting saltier. When he comes around the next building, the ocean is right there, flat and huge and just an unbelievable blue. Arthur stops walking. There's nowhere else to walk, and it’s a really nice view.

He takes off his shoes. The sand is hot enough that he has to keep moving to the wet line of the tide. He wanders past the resort umbrellas, past a fisherman mending a net, past a kid with a kite that stays grounded—there isn’t enough wind for it to fly. He sits down on the sand and breathes.

His neck is getting hot when he feels someone sit down beside him.

“Fuck off, Eames.”

Eames doesn’t fuck off.

"The hard work was done a year ago with this group,” he explains, though Arthur didn’t ask. “I haven't—it's consolidation, what's happening in there now. Fun, even. They don’t need me up to my eyeballs for that.” He spends a minute catching Arthur’s eye. “I told you in the hospital I'd stop and I’ve stopped."

"Then why is Yusuf playing babysitter?”

“They hired him. A sort of therapist for the boys through the worst of it. I didn’t even know, not until he asked me to build a dream so they could see a familiar face.”

The breeze picks up and down the beach, the kid’s kite climbs higher and higher.

“Come down with me and see the dream,” Eames offers. “I'd like you to.”

Arthur gathers the courage to look at Eames. He looks awful. His eyes are red around the edges and his shirt is half untucked, like he came out of Yusuf's in a hurry.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I knew what you'd say." He clears his throat. “Or potentially, that you’d like to help.”

“And you don’t want that?"

"No. I didn’t want you involved."

"Why?"

Eames leans back. His collar stretches at his shoulders. Arthur can see his tattoos peeking out; he can’t help but look.

"Certain people, from both sides of a very nasty political fence, were very interested in how Cobb's old point man had ended up at my bedside. I told them you knew nothing. I’ve continued telling them that, but the best way I can assure them of it is by making sure you don't."

"That's not your call." Arthur digs his heels into the wet sand.

"I’m aware of that, Arthur. Trust me when I tell you I weighed up the options, hm? If I made you furious with me, better that than…”

He trails off to chew on his lip. Arthur can’t leave him hanging. 

"Do you know why I’m here, Eames?” 

"What, on the beach?"

"In Mombasa. On your job."

Eames opens his mouth and shuts it again. He’s smart enough not to guess the pay, which is neither the best nor the worst Arthur’s ever been offered.

"I think you do,” Arthur goes on. “It would be really nice if you stopped pretending like you don’t. Like you haven’t known forever."

He’s not going to spell it out. He’s hurled the hand grenade out clearly enough. Eames stares at Arthur, his face warm and rosy and worried.

"I’d wondered when we'd get round to this."

Arthur huffs a laugh. “This.”

“Talking about it, I mean.”

“I don’t want to fucking talk, Eames, I—”

“Darling.”

Eames slides a hand closer. Involuntarily, Arthur’s fingers twitch. He buries them in the sand. They can’t, out here. All the things Arthur wants to do right now would get him sent to prison or thrown in the sea.

He exhales. He's worn out. He wants to lie down on this beach and not get up for a week. He wants Eames to put a hand on his neck, on his face, on his—everywhere. He wants Eames everywhere.

"Show me the dream," he says, instead. "I want to see it.”

"Now?"

"Right now."

Looking a little lighter, and warmed by the sun, Eames gets up. He puts a hand out and helps Arthur off the sand.

Arthur arrives in the dream next to an acacia. It’s habit to try and check for the exits first, but he’s in a flat desert, next to an oasis. Nowhere to run but the horizon. There’s a giraffe nibbling at its low-hanging leaves. It takes no notice of him, but then Arthur isn’t the one causing a commotion.

They’re at a watering hole somewhere, maybe in the Serengeti, and Eames has built an enormous water slide for the kids to haul themselves down. They do, with shrill excitement, and not a single animal around complains about the noise. The submerged hippos welcome each splash of water with a benign blink; the zebras twitch their ears. Arthur makes his way over to the water’s edge.

There's a kid sitting on the bank, maybe nine or ten, drawing circles in the wet sand with his finger. Arthur crouches a few feet away, careful not to spook him.

"Any crocodiles?"

The kid nods without looking up. "Lots."

"You’re not scared of them?"

"No." The kid finally looks at him. He’s so fucking young. "They're friendly here."

A few minutes later, Arthur sees his first crocodile emerging out onto the sand. It aims a pale yellow eye at him and winks.

He’s so used to the hostility of extraction, the polished, clear realism of paradoxes and the gritty realness of simulations. But not here. Here, there are no projections to be wary of. Arthur feels the sun beat down on his face, and feels the sand underneath his feet that should be scorching hot, but isn’t. Dream logic. He hears the happy splash of kids in the water, and he watches the acacia’s leaves sway and rustle. It’s lovely. It’s magnificent. It’s exactly what a good dream should be.

From a long time ago, he remembers: What on earth is the point of all this if we can’t use a bit of imagination, darling?

Across the watering hole, an elephant walks by with a huge Davidoff cigar under its trunk. Beside it, there’s Eames in his garish linen shirt and safari pants.

He’s so—God, he’s just—Arthur’s feet walk without thinking. They walk him around the edge of the water, past the hippos, past a zebra that bows its head as he goes by. The kids are still laughing down the slide. The sun is probably turning the back of his neck pink.

"Alright?" asks Eames, when Arthur reaches him. He’s shelling a handful of peanuts. One for him, one for the elephant.

“Yeah.” Arthur shakes his head. “Yeah. This is—it’s really something, Eames.”

”It is, isn’t it?”

Proud and accomplished, the way he always is when he carries off a job so competently, Eames looks around and nods. He does a double take over his shoulder, waving at a boy who’s calling to him. Then, he turns back to Arthur with a small, sincere smile and offers him a peanut.