Back To the Beginning (Eames: All The Plans We've Made, Part 2)

[fae_boleyn]

Series: Three Is More Than Just Company, AMTBR
Title: Back To The Beginning
Fandom: Inception, mild/moderate Whoniverse
Pairings: Arthur/Eames, pre-Ariadne/Arthur/Eames
Rating: R, for language and implied sexuality
Story Summary: "You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. To get to the heart of the story, you need to go back to the beginning." (The Tudors, Opening Narration). We all have stories. Who we were, what we've been through, defines who we are.
Chapter Summary: Eames was born a dirty little secret, and that stayed with him. He joined the military to prove himself, but soon ended up in a world with secrets that no one would share. Leaving it all behind for a life of crime, what he really wants is unknown or out of reach. The best-laid plans, and all. But he's always up for taking a chance.
Author's Note: Some of this clashes directly with previous backstory references. Those have been edited; this is the real story - for my universe at least.

There's so many wars we fought

There's so many things we're not

But with what we have

I promise you that

We're marchin' on

We're marchin' on

We're marchin' on

 

For all of the plans we've made

There isn't a flag I'd wave
Don't care if we bend

I'd sink us to swim
We're marchin' on
We're marchin' on
We're marchin' on – Marchin' On, OneRepublic

When Shepard splits them up into teams, Eames shows up at the lab he was told to go to and finds only one person there. It's the shy brunet DESI agent with wire frame glasses named Jason Maxwell – and he always introduces himself that way, his full name and a weak handshake. The only time Eames has ever seen the young man confident is when he's designing a dream layout. Caleb Carnahan ambles in a minute later, his habitual half-smirk on his face. Eames likes Carnahan well enough; he's a former Marine with an easy sense of humor, but he feels like a man with a secret. Eames won't worry unless it affects the job, but part of him is still curious.

 

The last person to walk in – and it's a surprise to Eames, because who knew this particular man had it in him to be late – is Arthur. Arthur probably has a last name too, but much like how Eames uses only his surname, somewhere along the way Arthur has decided to use just his first name. Eames smirks, and can't resist the jibe. “So, they've stuck us with the unimaginative one. I should have known.” Sadly, the only reaction he gets is an eye roll.

 

Of course, Eames takes that as a personal challenge. He's thought it since the second time he saw Arthur – no, not the forging lesson, but by chance, when Arthur and Shepard were working on something and the man just seemed so very composed – because riling up someone who tries to hard to never react to anything is amusing as hell. He tries everything he can think of, tipping Arthur's chair when he's sitting with it tilted back on two legs, making comments about the suits or Arthur's slicked-back hair, whatever he can think of.

 

He has the best success with pet names. Darling is the one he uses most often, and he is always rewarded with – at least – a slight twitching. Occasionally he even gets death glares. After a while, Arthur starts snapping back, and then it really is great fun. Verbal sparring is even better than getting a rise out of someone, or at least Eames has always thought so.

 

Of course, there's a slight problem, one that Eames didn't exactly see coming but probably should have. Arthur's attractive, that much he had noticed from the beginning. But he is at his most tempting when he is either being particularly distant – for the challenge of it – or when he snaps, because then Eames has to wonder how he'd be with a different sort of control being swept away. Highly inconvenient, really, being attracted to your partner. And they are partners, honestly, because while Carnahan keeps up with them most of the time, Arthur and Eames work together almost fluidly in dreamscape despite the needling outside of it. But he's a good enough actor that he's sure no one has noticed, and it's not a major problem anyway. Just a minor concern.

 

~ ~ ~

 

In later years, Eames will gain a reputation as the best forger in the business. There are those who will assume that he actually invented the art. Of course, he didn't – that was the lovely Agent Shepard, and Eames knows that because she taught him – but he was the one who figured out what worked, and what only worked for a little while.

 

The first one is Katherine Shaw. She's a DESI agent, mid-thirties, especially good at forging people from the States' Deep South, male or female. She herself has no trace of a regional accent, just that flat American one that Eames can never decide if he finds annoying or endearing, but even in reality she has quite a good grasp on the Southern drawl.

 

That's probably why they don't immediately realize what's happening to her. Not until she comes out of the dream not only mimicking a Southern accent, but specifically mimicking a male Southern accent.

 

“OK, Kitty,” Shepard says with the sort of shaky laugh people use when they want to believe something's a joke but really they know it's not. “That's enough, quit the games.”

 

“I'm sorry, Ma'am, my name's Tommy, why are you calling me a girl's name?”

 

They do snap Kitty out of it eventually, and at first she claims to be fine. But then it happens twice more, and the last time Kitty does not snap out of it. Shepard goes very pale and makes some calls, and three weeks later she tells them that Kitty's recovered but has been taken out of the Dreamscape program entirely.

 

They leave it at that. But it happens again, this time with another SAS officer, a man named Becker. Eames has spent some good times with Becker, the only other soldier – of either British or American variety – in the forging part of this little operation. So among other things, they've talked about forging. Eames does it like pulling on a mask, like a first-rate actor. He will mimic behaviors, tone of voice, everything, for as much time as he can manage before he forges. But he never forgets that it is a mask, and that he is still himself underneath.

 

Becker, on the other hand, is convinced that the only way to forge properly is to immerse yourself in it, to make yourself believe you are who you pretend to be, not just the target. When they have this discussion, Eames brushes it off as just a difference in strategy, but with everyone still getting to the same place. But now he's starting to wonder.

 

Becker gets pulled as well, after he forgot he wasn't really a Spaniard from Madrid. Eames doesn't know how Kitty or Becker was made to recover after what were really psychological breakdowns of a sort, but no matter how much he pesters Shepard, she won't say. Finally, he tries Arthur, who as Shepard's second knows exactly what is happening in the forgery department.

 

“Remember the Torchwood-DESI liaison?”

 

“Ravenwood?”

 

“Yeah. She's a... Well, she's a therapist of sorts, with a trick most of them don't have. I think Alex is sending them to her. And of course, Dr. Trevaine takes copious notes. Neurologist, you know; Paula's a shrink so it works rather well, the two of them.”

 

“And Shepard couldn't tell me this because...?” Eames is more than a little annoyed now, because it seemed like such a big secret, but apparently it's not. And yet... How the fuck can simple therapy fix this so easily? Assuming it does and Shepard isn't lying through her teeth, of course.

 

“Well, Eames, I'm pretty sure Alex didn't say anything because Paula has... unorthodox methods. And, incidentally, they're classified above your clearance, so I can't tell you anything more about it either.”

 

With that scotched – because he knows Arthur well enough now to know he's not getting anything else out of the DESI agent, and he has no other leads – Eames turns his attention to the actual problem. Because there were only six of them in the forgery section to begin with, and now two of them have gone 'round the bend. He knows that lucid dreaming can cause that, but there have only been three people messed up enough in the entire program to have to leave. Two of them are forgers, and he does not like those odds. Never mind that he himself has never been confused about who he is. Becker and Kitty didn't seem to have a problem either, until it became obvious.

 

When Abby starts slipping up a little with her accents, Eames pulls her aside and asks her how she forges. Her answer changes everything, because her method is the same as Becker's. And she tells him it was Kitty who suggested it to her, when she couldn't forge immediately. Something clicks in Eames' brain, and he practically sprints to Shepard's office, almost putting a hole through the door, he knocks so hard.

 

“Christ, Lieutenant,” she says when she pulls open the door, green eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What the hell is this about?”

 

“I know why Kitty and Becker went nuts, and why Abby's slipping.”

 

She lets him in, waves him to a chair, and then sits behind her desk, fixing him with a piercing expression that reminds him, inexplicably, of his primary school headmistress. “All right, so what's going on then?”

 

Instead of simply outlining things, he takes a different approach. It will be more convincing if she figures it out herself, after he lays it out for her. “How do you forge?”

 

“I'm sorry?”

 

“When you forge. Do you make yourself believe you're the person you're pretending to be, or just work to convince everyone else?”

 

“Everyone else, obviously. Trying to convince yourself is... is...” She stops dead. “You do it the same way I do. And Becker, and Kitty, they...”

 

“Becker mentioned it ages ago, we had a nice little debate over which way was better. And Abby's starting to lose it, if you've not noticed, and she says Kitty told her the best way to forge is to convince yourself first. See a pattern here, Agent Shepard?”

 

“I... Fuck. Why did I not realize this?”

 

“Maybe because you started this by accident. You didn't even think about it. The rest of us had to work it out. I'm just lucky I landed on the strategy that won't drive me insane.”

 

Shepard smiles wryly. “That, or maybe you just understand this better than I do. Like you said, I stumbled into it; that's not exactly conducive to really getting it.”

 

And what she's not saying is that Eames does get it, in a way that maybe she doesn't and never will. Because Shepard did it by accident, she can do it but for her it's automatic. It doesn't mean anything. For Eames it's a craft, it's a skill, even a vocation. Which is why he already knows that if he's not the best now, he will be. Because he's pretty sure the only one who could beat him is the one who invented it, and she's thrown in the towel already.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Eames really hates clearance levels. This is something that has driven him half mad since he started on this project, how all of the agents know things that the soldiers don't, but won't talk about them. He doesn't even have any idea on how to find them out, and the things he does pick up don't make sense. For example, Carnahan's projections can throw fire or move shit with their minds, and Arthur barely blinks, while Eames is wondering just what the fuck Carnahan reads or watches on TV to come up with this.

 

“What the hell is with your security, Carnahan?” Eames finally snaps after one job in which he was fucking electrocuted by a projection (admittedly, he thinks that one could have Star Wars inspiration, so at least it's not entirely inane).

 

“I thought you liked people with imagination,” Carnahan quips. Arthur gives the other man – and they're both ex-Marines too, putting Eames on the wrong side of that motto of theirs – a shut-up glare, but there's a smirk on his lips as well. Clearly there is some joke here that he doesn't get.

 

“Keep calm and carry on, Lieutenant,” Arthur says, and that just makes things worse.

 

This, Eames thinks mutinously, is why so few of the soldiers get along with the special agents. From day one, there's been this feeling that there is a hell of a lot more to DESI and Torchwood than dreamshare, but no one's talking. It's mostly little things, comments that don't make sense or stories quickly cut off. There are secrets in this place, and Eames doesn't like that he doesn't have a clue what they are. He doesn't understand the only true civilians here, Mr. and Mrs. Cobb, who don't seem bothered by it at all.

 

He might not know what's wrong, then, at the very end of it all, but he knows there's something when they're in the middle of a run-through and Shepard shows up at the lab room door. “Arthur. I need you, now.”

 

“What's going on?” Arthur asks.

 

“Hartman's dead, along with the better part of T-1. Hasling was there, and he's dead as well. I need to go to D.C., and you have to keep an eye on things for me. Shut down everything, just freeze all the projects, because I don't know what's going to happen now.”

 

“T-1? Isn't that the – ” Jacob starts to ask.

 

“Shut up, Maxwell,” says Carnahan, and the only reason he'd say that is because of Eames, the only person in the room not cleared for shit. Carnahan's not-quite-hidden glance at him only confirms that.

 

“Oh fuck this shit,” he mutters, standing up. “Well, if we're not doing anything else, I'll be off. You lot just enjoy your little secrets like whispering kids, all right?” He walks out, and no one says a word.

 

Later, Eames regrets it, a little. That was childish as hell, and he's better than that. However, he is also sick and tired of the bullshit. There's probably some logical reason why the agents keep things so close to the chest, but they're so obvious about it, most of them, that it's just pathetic. Becker used to suggest that they were so used to their top-secret little bases that now they've been invaded by outsiders they can't take it. Eames thinks that the man might have been on to something with that theory.

 

News trickles in, of course. The upshot of what Eames manages to piece together is this: Torchwood London was doing some kind of experiment that got out of hand, and killed most of the personnel because it blew up the building. Both the director of Torchwood and the director of DESI, who was visiting, were among the dead. Neither of their replacements liked Dreamscape, so the program was being shut down. All Torchwood agents and SAS were to report home as soon as possible.

 

He's not sure why he goes back to his team's lab room one last time before his plane leaves, he does it for the hell of it. But when he sees Arthur packing stuff up, he's glad he did. He hasn't seen the other man since the day Shepard showed up at their door, and this is probably the last time their paths will cross.

 

“So this is it then,” Eames says.

 

“I guess it is, Lieutenant Eames. Was there something you wanted?”

 

“No, not really, darling, I just thought I should say good-bye.” He can't resist one last use of the pet name, though since Arthur's not looking at him, he doesn't see the reaction. “We have been in and out of each other's heads for almost two years now, surely you can spare five minutes to bid me farewell?”

 

He moves closer until he's right behind Arthur, close enough to... Well. He's invaded Arthur's space before, it's a surefire way to get an exasperated reaction from the point man, but this time he's not really thinking about that except out of habit. Arthur turns around, and the lack of space between them is suddenly that much more obvious. The American shakes his head. “You really don't have much concept of personal space, do you?”

 

“Never saw the point really, no.”

 

“People might get the wrong idea.”

 

“Or the right one.” Eames isn't sure where that came from. Because there's no right or wrong idea, just now.

 

Arthur starts to say something else, but Eames is no longer listening. He's leaving, he and Arthur are likely never going to see each other again, so... Fuck it. He has done almost everything he's ever considered to get a reaction from the point man, he may as well go for broke now. So he kisses him. He kisses him for the hell of it, and because he wants to, and honestly, he is not expecting Arthur to kiss him back.

 

But Arthur does, and it's like something snaps in Eames' head, and he pushes Arthur back against the table, the kiss turning rough and into something he wasn't planning, something he doesn't know how to –

 

“Oh, fuck, sorry, I didn't realize... I mean... Shit, I'll just... go.” Jason practically falls over himself to flee the room. Arthur is much more graceful about it, and much quicker, so that Eames almost doesn't realize he's gone until he's out of sight. Almost. But not quite, and so he does see Arthur slip through the door and out of there. It doesn't mean a damn thing, and Eames knows that, but... Something just shifted. He doesn't know what yet, but definitely something. And if he ever sees Arthur again, he knows things won't be the same. Whether that will be good or bad, he doesn't know.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Dreamscape may be finished, but that doesn't stop Ravenwood and Trevaine, as it happens. They seem to have made some kind of deal with Torchwood's new director, Jack Harkness, to continue some of the experiments that Dreamscape had been working on. It turns out that, while Paula didn't know a thing when Eames spoke to her back when all this started, she does now. Micah – because he calls them Paula and Micah now – was going over a lot of the research, and he dragged Paula in, and... Well.

 

He still isn't entirely sure how they got him out of the military, but he's not complaining. They do mostly research now, he and Micah and the handful of others from the British half of Dreamscape who didn't want to leave. Paula never goes under, for reasons she won't talk about. It's implied that she did and doesn't like it, and for once Eames leaves things alone.

 

It's terribly boring, what they do, at least compared to what Eames did in the old program. Still, it's dreaming, and he can forge, and he gets even better at it, until he's absolutely sure that he is the best. But it's not enough anymore, it's not a challenge now. So he starts with other things. If he can forge an identity, why not a signature? Or identification? He starts with the handwriting of his coworkers, and with the simplest forms of ID.

 

That's when he meets Stephen again.

 

Stephen, as it happens, has taken their boyhood games and turned them into a career. But he still has that same sly smile. And while it doesn't quite have the effect on Eames that it had once – it comes too easily, getting Stephen to flash that grin is too simple and for some reason that bothers him – it's still rather potent. And really, it's a win/win situation. Eames is looking for a new challenge, Stephen's looking for a new partner.

 

Running cons, cheating casinos, forging documents... It's a slightly hollow thrill, but it is a thrill. Paula and Micah don't need him all of the time, so when not working with them he's off flagrantly breaking laws. Sometimes he's with Stephen and sometimes he isn't but they run their most complicated cons together. Until the day Stephen leaves him behind to take the fall for one of their games, played on a prominent German politician, and Eames barely makes it out of Berlin.

 

It doesn't surprise him, really. After all, he'd been the only one to get caught that one time. Stephen had vanished. So he's angry, but he's not surprised. And hell, he got out of it, so everything's fine. Except for the fact that he will never work with Stephen again, because there's not chance he's taking that kind of risk again. He might enjoy risks, but he's not stupid.

 

He is, however, shocked beyond belief three weeks later, when he is laying low at a hostel in Brussels and wakes up to someone shaking him. He reaches for the gun under his pillow automatically, but a hand closes around his wrist, and the light is turned on.

 

“Paula, what the fuck? How did you get in here? How did you know I was here?”

 

“I have my ways, Eames. Look, the research, it's over. Done.”

 

He sits up. There is something oddly brittle in Paula's voice. “What? Why?”

 

“It was Micah's thing, really, not mine, and he's left. So. I'm done.”

 

This is a surprise, because the two of them had been rather sickeningly in love. But Eames, again, doesn't ask, because this feels like the kind of thing he doesn't want to know. “I imagine most people would say 'I'm sorry' right about now...”

 

“Don't worry about it. I knew it was always in his nature.” Odd thing to say, that, but any curiosity Eames might feel about it is wiped away when Paula sets a silver briefcase on his bed. “You were the only one who loved it,” she says bluntly. “I could tell. The others were intrigued, but you... Anyway, I thought you should take it.”

 

“What do you think I'm going to do with it?”

 

“I don't know, maybe get into some new kind of thievery. Your new occupation wasn't quite as secret as you'd have liked, but at this point I couldn't care less. Take the fucking thing, do whatever you like with it. See you around, Eames.”

 

Paula walks out of the door, leaving a very confused – and slightly sympathetic – Eames behind her. Years later, he will hear that she is in charge of DESI's inter-agency relations and that her last name is now Ravenwood-Turner, so she must have married someone. But for tonight, he just wonders what exactly happened to those two, and what uses he can come up with for a PASIV that are a hell of a lot more interesting than what he's been doing.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Sometimes, some things are just inevitable. Eames goes into the illegal side of dreamshare, where forgers are in high demand because there's only two or three of them. The first contact he makes is Yusuf, a chemist with a penchant for experimentation. Eames meets him in Mombasa, and gets into the chemist's good books by being his guinea pig for a round of sedatives that leave him dizzy for a week. But Yusuf repays him with contacts, and they strike up a friendship. Yusuf's an odd mix of the sort of academic that Dreamscape had so many of and a laid-back kid with his first chemistry set, which makes him easy to get along with.

 

He's not been in the business long when he starts hearing the rumors. One of the pioneers of the legal side's dead, and her partner, her husband, has fallen into their way of life with his other partner. It doesn't take long for him to find out that the dead woman is Mal Cobb, and even less time after that to hear about Cobb the brilliant extractor and his frighteningly precise point man, Arthur. The thought of the pair of them on this side of things is odd, to say the least, but Eames is certain of one thing. They will end up working together one of these days, because they will need a forger. It sounds as though Cobb and Arthur are the best – no surprises there – so they'll want the best.

 

It's Cobb who tracks him down. “Well, this is odd,” the former researcher says, giving Eames an awkward smile, squinting a little in that way of his.

 

“Not too strange, Cobb; ever since I heard you and Arthur were in this part of dreamshare now I expected to run into you eventually.”

 

“It is a small circle, I guess. So, I want to hire you for a job. You in?”

 

Eames considers this. Cobb was always good, the times they did runs together before the official teams were set up, and working with Arthur again is something he can look forward to. Of course, he is also a criminal, so he's not just going to agree. “What's my cut?”

 

It is hilariously funny when he arrives at the warehouse they're working out of to hear Arthur going off on Cobb for hiring someone the point man hasn't personally vetted. He wonders if Arthur is aware that he sounds like Cobb's mother. “Dom, you can't just pull a stranger in on this. I need a name, I need to vet this guy and make sure he's – ”

 

“Now, now, darling, I think we're past all that, aren't we?”

 

Arthur actually makes a choking sound as whatever he was going to say is swallowed in shock, and he spins around, blinking as he looks at Eames. Of course, when he finally does come up with something to say, it's as wonderfully snarky as ever. “Did you steal that jacket from a dead man?”

 

Eames is secretly gleeful – there was some part of him concerned that how they left things would mean they weren't going to fall back into their pattern of verbal sparring, and he would have missed that – but letting it show would be rather beside the point. “I don't see you in nearly three years, and that's all you can say? Really, Arthur, I'm hurt.”

 

“All right, you two. Flirt on your own time, we have work to do.” Now it's Cobb sounding like a mother, or perhaps an overworked schoolteacher.

 

It is not flirting, what he and Arthur do. It is arguing, banter, whatever, but it is not flirting. Except perhaps in a twisted, almost hostile way, it is. This is a slightly awkward revelation, but Eames doesn't let it bother him. Instead, he starts testing the waters, standing too close, ramping up the innuendo, that sort of thing. Because he still remembers a kiss that was meant more as a joke than anything, and he wants to see if he can get a reaction like that from Arthur again.

 

When he sneaks up behind the other man at the end of the job, Eames is not expecting to be pushed against the wall and snogged to within an inch of his life, but he's not complaining either. He's not complaining to the extent that he's the one who gets Arthur on the floor with every intent to shag him to within an inch of his life.

 

The sex is good, so they keep having it. When they're working together, sometimes when they're not. They'll meet in hotel rooms, or sometimes in bars, and then they fuck. It's good, and their professional relationship doesn't change in the slightest, so no one gives a damn, and most people probably don't even know. Eames thinks Cobb does, or suspects at least, but who cares? He and Arthur are both adults, they're both willing, so there's no problem.

 

Eames' totem is a poker chip because he likes games of chance, he likes to take risks. But he also likes knowing he can take charge of a situation, control it – like counting cards. This thing with Arthur was a risk, one he thought he could control. But as it turns out, he can't. He'd never really thought about how it might go, because what was the point of taking a risk if you analyzed everything? But if he had, maybe he would have remembered the seamless way he and Arthur worked together despite their clashing in the waking world. He would have thought of that, and considered what the combination of that and the fact that Arthur is a constant challenge would do to him.

 

He actually doesn't realize it until Guadalajara, even as their relationship starts being less about fucking and more about... something else. Eames doesn't realize a thing until he's half-asleep in the room they've taken for the night, dazed with exhaustion, afterglow, and tequila, and Arthur whispers something in the dark. He wants to ask what it was – he thinks it's Hebrew but he doesn't speak a word of that except “Shalom” – but he falls asleep first.

 

He doesn't realize he could have loved Arthur until he wakes up to find the other man gone.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Eames ends up making Mombasa his... Well, if not home, it's his base for now. He likes it there, likes the pace of the city and the mesh of cultures. It's easy enough to vanish there, easy to pick up all kinds of mannerisms, accents, the little details both con men and forgers need. It's also easier than he might have expected, all things considered, to find someone who speaks enough Hebrew to tell him what Arthur said that night. Haswari, like Eames a man who uses only his surname, is half Israeli and half Arab, which had to fucking suck when he was growing up. But now he's an arms dealer in Kenya and he doesn't seem to care. He does, however, say, “ 'Ani ovev otcha'? So you had a man tell you he loved you in Hebrew? Interesting choice, since you do not speak it.” At Eames' raised eyebrow – because he never mentioned how he'd heard the phrase – Haswari explains that there are four ways to say I love you in Hebrew, and that one is from one man to another. The arms dealer's smirk becomes too infuriating to stand at this point, and Eames walks out.

 

It bothers him, though he doesn't say anything about it to anyone. Why would Arthur tell him he loved him – never mind the question of whether or not he meant it – and then vanish?

 

“I knew it was always in his nature.”

 

Paula's words about Micah stick in his head these days, an explanation for someone else entirely but the closest he can get. Yusuf doesn't know anything except the things Eames sometimes lets slip when he drinks, and he has no advice since he's never been in this particular situation before. Eames doesn't dwell on it too much, or he tries not to, at least. When Cobb shows up to hire him yet again, he makes a crack about Arthur being a stick-in-the-mud and lacking imagination (both of which are not true and he knows it) because he can't help it. There is a bitter edge to his voice when he says it, but Cobb doesn't notice. That's unsettling – the old Cobb would have – and it makes him wonder about the wisdom of taking a job with this man, who seems so unlike his usual self. But it's inception, the ultimate challenge, and Eames has always wanted a second chance at that one. It hurt his pride to get it wrong the first time.

 

Perhaps his banter with Arthur is less good-natured, more hostile, than it was before, but that's to be expected. Yusuf, who recognizes the name, finds it all very fascinating, but says nothing after the first day, when Eames shuts him up with a death glare. Cobb should notice, but again, he's not as sharp as he was. Something's not right there. Arthur, damn him, seems as unaffected as ever.

 

And then there's the new girl. Ariadne. She looks like an innocent, but Eames suspects she's not, or she wouldn't be here. She'd have turned and run long before now. Her enthusiasm is refreshing, though, among the men who have all been at this long enough for it to be routine – except for Saito, and his being involved is yet another bad idea, but the money's good at least. She works with him on his level, the snow fortress/hospital, and he finds himself charmed in a way he hasn't been in some time. Not since a different pair of dark eyes locked on his while their owner fired sardonic comments at him.

 

Ariadne's not a challenge in the same way, but there is something about her that is undeniable. He thinks she could be great one day – she's amazing already, but practice helps even those with natural talent – and on a personal level, he likes her company. She's not flustered when he flirts, and in fact seems to find it amusing. Which makes him realize that in her own way, Ariadne is a challenge too. Just a different sort. And between her and Arthur – who is still on his mind, and probably always will be – and the fact that this job is inception, things are certainly very interesting in Paris just now.

 

~ ~ ~

 

After the job is over – and that was just a cock-up from the beginning, he should have realized Cobb was fucking insane now and as for Yusuf, they will be having words later – Eames finds himself next to Arthur at the luggage carousel. And he's not sure where it comes from – it wasn't some plan he'd had – but he says, “So, I've been thinking about putting a permanent team together.”

 

Dark eyes meet his, Arthur raising one eyebrow. “OK. And?”

 

“Cobb's retiring. Do you have any plans?”

 

“No, not really.”

 

“Well then. Join my team. You, me, and Ariadne if she agrees; seems like a good start, don't you think?” He wants the other man to say yes, for it to be the three of them. The idea may have come from nowhere, but now it just seems so obvious, so very nearly perfect. Also, he knows Arthur has some interest in Ariadne; he saw that kiss. Part of him is bothered by it; another part... He doesn't feel like thinking about that just now.

 

Arthur's eyes go distant, and not for the first time Eames wishes the other man was easy to read. But he's not and never has been, so Eames just waits. Finally, Arthur nods. “All right. Sure. Why not?”

 

Something shifted once in Eames' life, in a lab in this very same city, when a kiss meant as a joke turned into the prelude to something else. Now, as Eames gets into a taxi with Arthur and Ariadne, who has agreed at least to lunch with them, he has that feeling again. Something is changing right here, right now. He has no way of knowing exactly what it is, which makes it one hell of a risk. But then again, that's what keeps life interesting.

Link to the next section: fae-boleyn.livejournal.com/11213.html

 

Comments

[sho-no-tabi.livejournal.com]

This is so fantastic; I want to thank you for linking me to your fic. Your Arthur and Eames are exactly as I see them in my head-cannon. :D This is a relationship dynamic I really enjoy when it comes to them.

Aside from that, your writing itself is so nice and smooth - such a fast read! I had to put this fic down to go to a class tonight and I really didn't want to!

I am loving this so far! ^_^

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

Wow... That means a lot, considering how much I enjoy your stuff. :D They get fluffier later on, but that's with the addition of a third party, which I seem to require to write them without terrible levels of angst and/or miscommunication issues.

Since I linked you in the middle, I should probably mention that Arthur's section is the two entries right before the Eames section; Ariadne (if you're interested) follows Eames.