i give myself very good advice

2013 goals

wayoffbase — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 10:05:06 GMT

goals for 2013

writing

- actually finish the fanfiction i start
- enter at least five short story competitions
- write a novel

sport/exercise

- use my gym membership three times a week
- get the Wii off my parents
- go back to yoga
- go back to ballroom

music

- save up for a keyboard
- try busking
- record some videos

misc

- read more books
- play games
- experiment with make-up, hair cut and colour, clothes and get new glasses/prescription sunglasses and contacts

goals for 2013

wayoffbase — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 07:41:14 GMT

So I just realised today that LJ apparently ate my goals post for the year (thanks, LJ, you're a star), so let's try this again, shall we?

writing

- write a novel
- get something published
- enter at least five short story competitions
- finish the fanfiction i start

music

- start music lessons again (voice and keyboard?)
- save up for a keyboard
- try busking

sport

- go back to dancing
- carry on with yoga and the gym
- try pole-dancing classes

beauty

- try a new look
- experiment with hair and make-up
- new glasses and contacts

wayoffbase — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 09:20:28 GMT

I wonder what it says about me as a person that I watch the latest episode of Glee, read some fic (Glee fic, why you such a terrifying rabbit hole), and then immediately think 'why is there not a Gossip Girl AU where Sebastian is Serena and Blaine is Blair?'.

I'm just sayin'. I'm just putting that out there.

ETA: Although that would make Kurt who, exactly? Chuck Bass? Dan Humphrey?

wayoffbase — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:38:34 GMT

the ultimate dilemma: write porn or write essay?

mix and mash: the great NZ remix and mash-up competition

wayoffbase — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:32:24 GMT

title: at the top or at the end of the world
author: fiona shaw
word count: 372 words
works remixed: Pip Adams - The Anzac Centenary Bridge, Cheryl Bernstein - This is about earthquakes, Lynn Jenner - She used to ask me, what is it like up there?
for the mix and mash challenge: literature remix 2011.

The world shook for seven days and nights. The whole world, shaking and shaking. Trees and eggs and houses and churches all fell down. The world must be ending, I told my Mummy. But I wasn’t scared.

We travelled after that. For another seven days and nights. Up and up and up we went. That was where they told us to go. Everyone we met on the road and everyone we had known before the quakes. Go up and up, they said. Get away from this place. In every town they said it, so in every town we headed upward. We had to hurry.

Over the land, there was dust. Liquid brown rivers, and dust. There were bridges over the rivers, and they were empty, the bridges. Over the bridges, before they rusted or fell down (or they were washed away, but that came later), the animals roamed wild across the land.

There was a bird on the mountain. The last one in the world it seemed. We drove up and past it, until our car ran out of gas. It watched us. ‘Is it real?’ we asked each other. I suppose all the rest had flown away.

She used to ask me what it was like up there. After the mountain, after we came down. Long after the world shook, and the birds returned again (or were they different birds, and were our birds still gone?). In the city, I told her, we were like ants and we would get squashed (almost squashed) but up on the mountain, I said, we were safe.

I used to write stories about the shaking. I wrote about how the city must be all deserted now, and how the animals from the zoo would escape and set out across the land. I called this book ‘Earthquakes and the Zoo’, and I still have it. On A4 paper, in green crayon.

“Everything falls down,” it says, “and then we run away to the mountain and the safe place. Mummy comes with us but not Daddy, and Tommy the cat has to stay behind as well. But they will be okay. Mummy says so. Mummy says so.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License

Writer's Block: Everybody hurts

wayoffbase — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:11:39 GMT

Day two of this whole thing. Here we go.

It didn’t take much. Just one little push, and suddenly he was flying. All the way across the yard he flew, and then with a crash he met the edge of the slide, the big red one. Crashsmashbash the bully went.

After him, Tommy shouted, “You’re a big bully! Don’t ever come near my friend again!” And then he stomped his foot for good measure. The ground shook underneath him.

It didn’t take long for the teachers to come running. Tommy knew they would scold him – they always did. But he had to protect Golly.

Tommy and Golly, that was how it had always been. Ever since they were born, or so mummy said. Inseparable. They weren’t real brothers (Tommy had a real brother, though, and he didn’t like him much, so maybe that wasn’t so bad), but they might as well have been. So it made sense that, when the time came, Tommy and Golly went to the same school.

Tommy loved school. He wanted to go there forever. But Golly hated it. He never wanted to go, always stayed home sick. And it was all Davey’s fault.

Davey was a big bully. Tommy knew about bullies, because they had been taught about them on the first day of school. The teacher had taught them to say “stop it, I don’t like it” whenever a bully tried to hurt them. Golly hadn’t started til the next week, and he hadn’t heard that talk. Maybe that was why he didn’t know how to stand up to Davey. So Tommy tried to do it for him.

He quickly found that “stop it, I don’t like it” didn’t really work. Yelling at Davey to go away sometimes did, but then Davey made friends, and they egged him on.

Like what had happened today, at recess. Davey had a new friend, a really rich one who had just come to the school. They had corned Golly, and had been throwing stones at him.

Tommy had been late coming out of class because he had helped the teacher clean up. But he had come out just in time to see Golly being corner, and the first rock being thrown. It hit Golly in the forehead, and made him bleed.

Tommy had gone storming over. “Pick on somebody your own size!” he had yelled. That was another good phrase for bullying, although Tommy had learned that one from TV, and not from the teachers. It didn’t really work either, but it did make Davey and his friends look around at Tommy. Golly took the opportunity to run. Most of Davey’s friends did too. But Davey stood there, so Tommy pushed him hard. Really hard. Tommy was big, and he had a lot of power, and Davey flew. And then the teachers came running.

One teacher picked Davey up, and the other escorted Golly (who was hiding in a bush) over to where Tommy was standing.

“But Davey was being mean,” Tommy protested before the teacher could get a word in. “He started it.” Golly nodded solemnly.

“I did not!” Davey yelled.

The teacher glared down at them. “Regardless,” she said, “violence is never the answer.”

She made them apologise to each other, and then they had detention. Golly went to the sick bay, and then he went home. In detention, Davey threw pencils at Tommy. Tommy threw them back, hard. He had to make Davey learn. He had to protect Golly.

Writer's Block: The state of perception

wayoffbase — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:16:21 GMT

So I'm going to try this thing where I answer each Writer's Block with a short drabble. So here we go. These are completely unbeta'd - they are just writing exercises.

Kelly used to be able to see them, out of the corner of her eye. That was the only way you could see them, you know. She knew. There were others that knew too. But only a few.

She would walk to work. In those days, Kelly worked in a clothing store – she was a shop assistant. It was only part time, just enough to pay the rent. She liked it well enough. Chatting to customers, dressing them up like Barbie dolls, selling them all the pretty things and watching the money pass through her hands. So much money, sometimes.

But it was the walk to work she really liked. Out of her tiny flat, down the hill, around the corner, and then up the stairs. After that, a long stroll down the cherry blossom walk, maybe ten minutes long, and then through the rose gardens. In the spring there were birds singing, and butterflies fluttering. In the winter there was snow, and little ice crystals sparkling in the trees. She used to breathe on them, and watch them melt.

In the early days, when she first walked through the gardens, she couldn’t see them. Or she could, she supposes, but she mistook them for dust. Dust in her eyes. She would blink furiously.

There used to be someone else who walked through the gardens – a young boy, maybe fourteen. He wore a school uniform for a school Kelly knows is not far from her flat. An all boys school, a Catholic one. He used to sneeze a lot when he walked, and scratch at his nose. She remembers him mainly for the bright red peg on his nose.

She used to see him every day. He would walk just in front of her. But she hasn’t seen him in a long time. She isn’t sure how long.

It was after he disappeared that she really started to see them. Out of the corner of her eye. She tried to look at them dead on, but she could never ever catch them. She couldn’t grab them, or smell them, or hear them.

For a while there was another girl who walked that way. Kelly sometimes forgets about her, because she only saw her a few times. This was right back when she first moved to the area. This girl used to wear huge earmuffs, even in 30 degree heat. She used to walk the opposite way to Kelly, until she apparently found another route.

When Kelly was alone in the gardens she saw them more often. She’d liked the company, those other people who walked through. They distracted her. But when she was alone, they were everywhere.

They crowded the corner of her vision. Thousands of tiny sparkling lights, in every conceivable colour. So bright, they were. And every day there were more. And more and more and more.

She cried. Begged for them to stop, just please stop. On these days she was pleased not to see anyone in the gardens. They would only think her crazy, she knew.

She would try closing her eyes. Squeezing them tight. But the instinct to open them, to use sight when you have it, was pretty strong. And she knew they were there, anyway. Even through dark glasses she could see them.

She got migraines. She took medical leave from work. Her mother brought her flowers. From that walk in the gardens you like so much dear, she said. She was only trying to help.

Kelly could see them, out of the corner of her eye. They glittered in the flowers. The flowers rotted, and the lights grew stronger. Kelly lay in bed with her eyes closed. The lights were so bright she could see them through her eyelids. She pressed her hands into her face, piled pillows over her head.

It was six days later when she tossed the flowers. She got up out of bed, and made herself ready. She went to the rose garden, through the cherry blossom walk. She tore down all the cherry blossoms. Ripped them up by the roots. She stared straight ahead, but she knew they were there, in the corner of her eyes. They were glowing so bright she almost couldn’t see. Her hands were all scratched up. She could still see that.

So she took the scissors, the ones from her sewing kit, and carved out her eyes.

Research Please Please Answer?

wayoffbase — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:59:32 GMT

I have some questions.

I've been talking to friends of mine lately about the state of the NZ publishing industry and NZ Literature, and I am now wondering:

Non-NZ: Have you ever read a book by a NZ author?

If yes, who was it by, and how did you hear about them? Did you enjoy it? Where did you get it - bought, a gift, library etc? Would you buy more books by NZ authors? How would you prefer to get hold of them? How much would you be willing to pay?

If no, would you want to read one? What would you like to read about? How much would you pay for it?

NZ: Have you ever read a book by an NZ author? Why/why not? Who? How did you hear about it/them? Would you want to, if you have not read one? Why/why not? What would you want to read? How much would you pay? How would you want to access it?

Our general perception is that NZ Literature is not popular locally or overseas. In terms of overseas, I am curious to know whether people can't access NZ Lit but want to, haven't heard of it, or have and don't like it, or some other option. I am also curious to know what locals (NZ and potentially Australia) who generally have access, think of NZ Lit. Access is probably less of an issue here, but is there some other issue? Do people read books by locals? Why/why not?

If any of you are willing, I'd be really grateful if you could pass this on to your f-lists too.

wayoffbase — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:39:05 GMT

Sometimes I think my mind is pretty awesome.

I finally got around to watching the season finale of Merlin Season 3 (both parts), and then I went to bed and pretty much dreamed the whole episode verbatim, except all the Arthur/Gwen bits were Merlin/Arthur. It was awesome. Now I need fic.

Janus Masterpost

wayoffbase — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:55:51 GMT

title janus author wayoffbase fandom inception pairing arthur/eames rating r art johanirae

One Two Three Four Five Six Art

Fic: Janus, Inception, Arthur/Eames, R - Part 1

wayoffbase — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:52:30 GMT

Janus.

In Roman mythology, Janus is the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, endings, and time. He was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another.

Eames is four years old, and his mother is leaving him.

Not that she’s going far. Nor is she going for very long, only “a few hours, darling, and I’ll be right back, I promise”. And she’s left him before, so he’s used to it. He likes the nanny, anyway, so it’s not all bad. She lets him stay up past his bedtime sometimes, and eat ice-cream for breakfast. He has fun. And she’s nice, and pretty, like a princess (a fairy tale princess, not a real one. Eames has met real princesses, and he has to say he was less than impressed. Although they did have pretty dresses, and sparkly jewellery). Eames likes pretty things. It’s why he’s hiding in his mother’s closet (which is a whole room, really, full of dresses and shoes and coats and skirts and every imaginable kind of women’s clothing) watching her get ready to leave.

She looks lovely. At four, Eames is young enough to still think his mother the prettiest woman in the world, but even if he weren’t biased, he would still probably be right. She is young, still, and blonde, with dark brown eyes and flawless pale skin. He doesn’t know this now, but he’ll know later how rare she is, all natural still.

She’s still deciding what to wear. Eames supposes they are going to a ball, because in his mind, that’s what you do when you dress up this way. His father is getting impatient, tapping his watch and poking his head through the door, muttering about how they’re going to be late, but his mother just laughs him off. They’ll get there with plenty of time to spare, she assures him.

She eventually decides on a blue dress, long and sweeping and shiny, edged in lace. It’s an older one, but still beautiful. She slides it on over her slip, zips it up under her arm. She sweeps her hair up into a French roll, and it’s so natural and easy, like she just knows instinctively how to be beautiful. A few touches of make-up, except on her lips, painted a bright red (the barest hint, just enough to enhance, and this is something Eames learns – the value of a few hints of perfectly placed blush, a light trace of lipstick, subtle touches with an overt centrepiece, to draw attention and conceal at the same time), and diamond drops in her ears (a gift from his father) and she is complete. She collects a shawl and clutch, and sweeps out the door. She leaves the light on, careless as always, and he can hear her laughter as she disappears down the hallway. Far away, he hears the slam of the front door.

He creeps out of the closet. He’s always liked to hide in there – it’s huge and dark and nobody will find him for hours if he places himself right. But right now he’s more interested in what his mother has left on her dressing table.

Careless in this aspect as well (although of course Eames doesn’t think of her in these terms, not now, not yet), his mother has left make-up spilling across the table, lipsticks and blush and mascara scattered all over. And he doesn’t know the names for these things, not yet, but he will learn them, and for now he knows where they go and what they do.

He also knows what to do with the dresses, discarded across the bed and floor, and the shoes, piled in the centre of the bed. The maid will pick them up before his parents return in the morning, but for now they remain in easy reach.

They are huge in Eames’ mind, endless amounts of soft and beautiful fabric, high arching heels, leather and silk and satin and lace. But still he crawls inside one, a dark green ball gown, sleeveless, with a huge flaring skirt.

It’s dark inside, and it’s comforting. The fabric is soft, and Eames touches it, carefully, fascinated. He wants to know everything about how these clothes work, clothes infinitely more fascinating than anything he is allowed to wear.

So he crawls up further, inside the bodice of the dress. He barely fits, and he has to wiggle and squeeze until his head pops out of the top part of the dress. He slides his arms through the correct holes, and stretches out. And the dress is miles too big for him, but he still likes it. It feels right, being in here.

He falls asleep and wakes, in the morning, still curled inside the dress, warm and sleepy, just in time to hear the maid apologising, and for his mother to forgive her, still laughing, but tired now. And then he hears his father approach, enter the room. He doesn’t say anything, just sniffs once, and leaves again.

His mother carries him to bed, still clutching the dress.

*

When Eames is seven, he has a friend called Charlotte. She is tiny, small for her age, delicate. Blonde with green eyes. She takes dance lessons at the ballet school near their London home, where Eames and his parents spend winter and Christmas. For his parents, his mother especially, it’s an excuse to go to hundreds of parties, but for Eames it’s his favourite time of year, the three months he gets to be in the city, and sneak out and watch the dancers. It’s how he meets Charlotte, actually.

Eames is hanging around the school, peering in through the window and watching a group of little girls clutch at a bar on the wall, each girl focussing intently on her feet, her arms, face scrunched up tight in concentration. All except one girl, a tiny blonde who is easily the best in the class. She is staring straight ahead, with the exception of a few subtle glances at herself in the mirror. She is very graceful. He looks at her, and he wants to be her.

He probably would have met her eventually anyway, because if she dances at this school chances are she lives in the area. But as it is, as she’s the only one whose paying attention, it’s that little girl who sees him through the window, who points and yells and says “There’s a boy looking at us!”

The girls all scream, and the teacher hurriedly tries to calm them, shepherd them back into formation. But they won’t go, and then their parents begin to arrive, and the teacher lets them go with a sigh. And Eames stands there, and watches, and wonders why, when that girl called him ‘boy’ it didn’t quite seem to fit.

The little blonde girl comes outside alone. Eames knows he probably should have run off by now, but he hasn’t, and so she comes up to him, and boldly and without preamble, asks him “What are you doing here?”

And she looks tough, despite the typically delicate features (like she might hit him if he lies, Eames thinks) and so he says “I want to learn how to dance.”

The girl looks at him funny. “Only girls learn to dance,” she tells him.

“Why?” Eames asks her, honestly puzzled. He doesn’t see at all why that should be the case. And then, because he thinks he should, and because it’s the only way he knows to express what he is feeling, he says, “What if I am a girl?”

“Because,” the girl says, and then, doubtfully, “I suppose you could be,” and then, “I’m Charlotte, by the way.”

“Jamie,” he tells her, although really, it’s James – that’s what his father calls him, what he insists everyone else calls him too, although they (especially the nanny and the servants) usually don’t listen when his father (also called James) isn’t around.

“That’s a girl’s name, I guess,” she says, still looking doubtful, but maybe more convinced. And then, as if it doesn’t matter anyway, “Well, Jamie,” she says, with that authority in her voice that Eames will come to know so well, “seeing as you’re already here, you can walk me home.”

He doesn’t ask her where her parents are, because it doesn’t occur to him. Of course she would walk herself home – he would have to, if he could go here. And so he walks her back to her apartment, barely three blocks away. He leaves her in the lobby, but before he goes she tells him, “You know, I like you. We should be friends.”

Eames hesitates, because he hasn’t really had friends before. He doesn’t really know how that should go. But then she says, “I’ll teach you how to dance,” and that’s all he really wants at the moment, really, and so he says yes.

*

So she teaches him how to dance (at least until he has to leave to go to school, back to one of their many other homes). But he and Charlotte still keep in touch. His parents think it’s adorable that he has a friend, and they discuss quietly (and his mother teases him openly) about his first apparent crush. And Eames supposes he does like Charlotte – she’s nice and pretty and fun to hang out with – but he doesn’t think it’s a crush, not really. He knows other boys at his school, has seen how they act around (mostly) girls that they like, and it isn’t at all the same as how he is around Charlotte. But he doesn’t really know how to say otherwise, and so he just stays quiet. Charlotte comes to stay in the summer, or he goes to visit her, and they stay friends. Mostly he visits her, now. It’s better that way.

Eames doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows it isn’t good. Around him his parents act normally, but they don’t act the same around each other anymore. And he hears them, sometimes, after they think he’s asleep, whispering heatedly in their room, in the hallways, all over the house. They get louder and louder and louder every time, until they’re screaming at each other, and there are slamming doors and loud noises and usually the sound of a car driving away. Then his mother will creep upstairs, and check in on him, and he’ll pretend to be asleep. So she’ll go away, although he doesn’t really see how she can believe him to be alright. And then, in the morning, his mother will suggest that maybe he should visit Charlotte that day, and so he does.

And then, one day, he goes over to Charlotte’s house, and she has another friend over. Another girl, and they are playing dress up.

They’ve got hold of some of Charlotte’s mother’s make-up and jewellery, and some of her old shoes and gowns. The shoes and gowns are Charlotte’s now, Eames knows, and she is allowed to play with them, because he’s seen them in her closet before (although Charlotte’s never brought them out with him around). But the make-up and the jewellery look new and expensive, and now, with all the bad things going on in his house, Eames instinctively shies away from causing trouble.

Charlotte and her friend (who, she tells him, is called Rosie) don’t seem to care, though. They are having fun, trying on the dresses and shoes and jewellery, playing with the make-up, trying on different colours and seeing how it looks. And Eames wants nothing more than to join them. So he does, and they dress him up too, and it’s fun, exploring the clothes and trying things out and pretending to be someone else, a movie star or a princess or a ballet dancer. A girl. Somebody who is not him.

This becomes a habit, that summer (and a summer in the city is odd enough, and should have been enough of a clue to stay away from home, despite the fighting). His parents will fight, his father will leave, his mother will check on him, and then, in the morning, suggest he go to Charlotte’s house. And he does, and Rosie is usually there too, and they play make-believe. He tries on every dress, every shoe, all the jewellery. And Charlotte and Rosie love it – it’s much more interesting than dressing up themselves, in the clothes they wear every day, and could wear whenever they wanted (and probably will, when they grow up and fit into them). They try everything, and when he looks in the mirror, he likes what he sees. This is part of how he should look, he knows. But the bigger part is the comfort of pretending, of escaping from his everyday life. At Charlotte’s house, nothing bad happens.

And then his father comes over one day to pick Eames up. He’s earlier than he should be, and Eames hasn’t had a chance to change into his clothes yet (because he knows that he’ll get in trouble if his parents, especially his father, see him like this, and so he usually changes back before they can see. Charlotte’s mum thinks it’s adorable). And he sees Eames, in the green dress with lipstick all over his mouth, and his mouth goes tight, and he goes dead quiet, and he stands there, quiet and still and furious, as Eames changes back into his clothes. And then he leaves, and Eames follows, quietly, and they drive back home in complete silence. And then Eames is sent to his room, and downstairs, there is more yelling. Eames doesn’t know what he has done wrong.

*

When Eames is twelve, something snaps. Or breaks, he supposes, because a snap is loud, sudden, makes everyone flinch. This is more like the final parting of two threads, who have been gradually and inevitably separating from each other, and now have finally split.

It’s just after he’s come home again for the summer, after another year at boarding school. An eventful year, although not one he plans on telling his parents about. Ever. He plans on telling Charlotte, though, as soon as he sees her. She won’t be back for another week yet, having gone via Majorca with her parents and Rosie, but when she is he plans to tell her everything. About the boy in his English class, who lived in his dorm, and who gave him his first real kiss. About how he likes dark hair on pale skin, he’s decided, and how he especially likes this boy. About how he hopes they’ll see each other again, next year.

And then he arrives at their house, Chauffeur driven from the train station (not unusual, not really, but even if it were Eames wouldn’t have noticed, too wrapped up in creating a story for Charlotte) just in time to see the front door close, quietly (and this is odd enough, because Eames can’t remember the last time he heard a door close without slamming) behind his father. He’s carrying a few bags, and a few of the staff are carrying others. There’s a taxi (and how pedestrian, how out of the ordinary, for his father to have a taxi), and as Eames watches the staff and his father load the bags into the boot and the backseat of the taxi. And then, just like that, his father gets in the front seat, and the taxi drives away.

Eames watches him go, for a minute. Thinks maybe I should follow him. And then, he gets out of the car, and crosses the road to the house. The staff will get his things, he knows, because they always do. He uses his key to get in the front door (because his father locked it before he left, of course he did, he was always angry and paranoid about those sorts of things, always worried their things would get stolen, as if the security system weren’t enough, as if the staff couldn’t take whatever they wanted (although they never, ever did)), and the whole time, the staff, the servants as his father always insisted on calling them, the hired help watching him go. And Eames, because he is twelve and thus entitled to behave as such once in a while (although less often than he really wants to), slams the door as hard as he can, and it shudders in its frame, the stained glass shivering and the walls and floor around it shaking. And then he storms upstairs, and his mother comes out of the sitting room to watch him go, and she doesn’t even try to say anything.

And Eames doesn’t know why he’s so angry, not really. Doesn’t know why he’s so upset. Because he hated his father, he really did. He was awful, and he had no idea how to be a parent, made no effort to even try and understand his son, and Eames has been angry at him for a long time, and he should probably be feeling relief, nothing more than relief, because he’s finally gone, and maybe this will mean an end to the cold anger and the silence around him, and the furious fights and yelling he hears, still, in the middle of the night. Maybe life will be better now. Financially, at least, Eames knows not a lot will change. His mother is wealthy in her own right, always has been, and her side of the family have always supported her no matter what. Eames might spend more time moving around, splitting his time between twice the usual amount of homes, all depending on the custody arrangements (Eames knows his father won’t really want to see him, but he might want to spite his mother or keep up appearances – Eames is his only son, after all), but other than that, his life will stay much the same. He never saw all that much of his father to begin with. But still. He was his father, and this isn’t supposed to happen, and mostly Eames is angry at himself (and blaming himself) because he should have known better than to expect any different, really. And that was something his father always said to him you should have known better, James and yes, Eames thinks, he really should have.

He spends a lot of time in his room that week, coming out only to eat or to shower (the first more than the second) or to occasionally sneak off, to anywhere – the park, the nearby shops, anywhere that isn’t this house. Because it’s still too quiet, nothing moving, no voices louder than a whisper. His mother has apparently retreated to her room with orders not to be disturbed, not unless her lawyer calls or she’s gone more than eight hours without food or tea. And her lawyer has called, and Eames has listened to every word, covering the mouthpiece and breathing as quietly as possible through the kitchen extension phone. And the staff know what he’s doing, obviously, but they don’t say a word. They don’t say anything, at least not around him, although he knows they must talk about it amongst themselves. It’s the biggest and newest and most exciting thing to happen in this house in years.

It takes less than three days for them to draw up the divorce papers. And then they go, off to France, apparently, which is where his father has run off to. Paris. And how ironic, that he should run off to the supposed city of love. Eames decides, then, that he hates Paris. And he hates his father, and he knows he should blame his parents, but it’s so much easier to blame Paris. Paris can’t fight back. And so he goes on, developing an intense hate for a city he’s only ever been to twice, but a city that nevertheless has stolen his father away. And then, four days again after that, the same day that Charlotte comes back (and he remembers, vaguely, being so excited to tell her something, but it hardly seems important, now), he finds something else to blame.

His name is Lisle, and he is Eames’ mother’s divorce attorney. Eames hates him on sight, because he looks like a wanker, all smooth suits and slicked back hair and a very serious expression on his face. And then he hates him some more, when he realises that this man is in love with his mother.

He doesn’t think she returns his feelings. Not yet, anyway. She is polite and attentive and courteous, but Eames knows what his mother looks like when she is in love (because he still remembers, despite how long ago it was, how his parents used to look when they were in love) and this is not it. But she could grow to love this man, because despite his appearance, he is actually wonderful. This man could replace his father.

And his mother seems to realise that, on some level. The first time he comes over, she is a mess. She looks, well, she looks like a woman whose marriage is falling apart. But the next day, when he comes back, she has cleaned herself up, put on make-up and done her hair, and put on a nice dress. A sober dress, dove-grey and proper enough, but, like all her clothes, perfectly fitted to her shape. She looks beautiful. And she also looks (almost) happy. Like she could be happy, anyway. And Eames wants that, more than anything, and aside from the fact that this man is facilitating his parents’ divorce, he seems nice enough. Eames could live with him, he thinks. And when this man, Lisle, sees his mother dressed up properly (something he must have seen before, having been her lawyer for a while, although then she would have been married, and off limits), the look on his face changes, and he goes from already clearly besotted (partially feelings from before that he’d repressed, and partially protective feelings towards this poor, distraught, broken hearted woman) to a look that Eames, although he can’t quite place it at the time, will come to recognise later as lust. Because his mother looks good, now, now that she’s cleaned up and dressed herself properly. And all Eames can think about was that time when he was nine, that summer when he dressed in Charlotte’s mother’s clothes, and he wonders if anyone would look at him like that, if he wore that dove-grey dress, with the pearls and the pale stockings and the dark grey heels, the subtle touches of make-up, meant to enhance and not smother. The sort of subtle outfit that broadcasts interest, but at the same time makes very clear not yet, not yet, just wait and be patient. Eames sees the power in her clothes and appearance, the value of what exactly your clothes say about you, about the power of that dress, those heels, to say exactly what she wants them to say, to at the same time draw this man in and tell him to wait. And he wants someone to look at him like that, like he’s the only girl in the world and they can’t take their eyes off him. And then he takes off, down the road to Charlotte’s house.

Charlotte meets him at the door, opening it for him before he even has the chance to knock. She’s obviously been watching out the window, probably since yesterday. Everyone will know what’s going on by now, or at least everyone who matters. Her family’s staff would have come down early to open up the house, and they would have inevitably talked to those from Eames’ house. So she probably knows everything. She might even know more than Eames.

Eames is aware he probably looks fairly awful. He hasn’t really been sleeping, too busy eavesdropping and worrying or trying to forget about what’s happening. He hasn’t been showering as much as he should have been, and he’s been eating more than he should. He played rugby during the year, but he hasn’t been doing anything over summer (he long ago gave up on the dance lessons Charlotte gave him, far too embarrassed about being the only boy who knew (and liked) ballet). But he wasn’t aware he looked awful enough for Charlotte to pull him inside, pull him into a hug, and whisper fiercely “are you alright?”

And he wasn’t aware that he wasn’t, not really. He’d thought that he could handle it, but apparently not, and for the first time since he was very little, Eames cries in front of someone else. He buries his face in her neck, wraps his arms tightly around her torso, and just sobs.

Charlotte just takes it in stride. She bundles him up the stairs, keeping his face out of sight, and into her room. She shuts the door and locks it, and pulls the curtains shut. She has two very good reasons for this – it’s sunny, very bright, and the darkness is far more soothing (and far less embarrassing, because she can’t see him crying) and, while it’s not like Eames is royalty, his parents are interesting enough for their divorce to warrant some media attention, and the reporters have been harassing them all lately. She does all this never letting go of Eames, and Eames has always known she was amazing, really. And then they sit down on the floor, leaning against the bed, and she waits while he cries himself out. She doesn’t say a word.

It’s Eames who speaks first, in the end, and he says “I kissed a boy this year.”

*

Eames spends most of that summer at Charlotte’s house. This is, of course, no different than almost any other summer. Although this time around, there is no teasing. No mockery over how he has a crush on Charlotte, about how they are in love and how his mother thinks it’s adorable. His mother is too busy wrapped up in divorce proceedings and avoiding reporters, and she’s happy enough to leave him to his own devices. It’s one less thing she has to worry about. And Eames doesn’t want to get in her way, not really, just like he didn’t want to cause trouble every time his parents screamed at each other over the years. So he goes to Charlotte’s place, and she gives him all the attention he isn’t getting at home.

They spend hours talking. Eames tells her everything, from the boy from school to Lisle to the divorce, anything he can think of. He’ll talk himself hoarse, and then they’ll sleep, or drink more tea, or eat, or take a walk. They dance, a bit, and Eames is surprised by both how rusty he’s become, how unfit and inflexible, and by how much he enjoys it, still. Charlotte still attends classes at the same place down the road, and she’s getting really good. She could probably dance professionally, if she wanted. Eames is nowhere near as good, and probably never will be – his body is wrong for it, or it will be, once he gains all the muscle he’s likely to gain, being his father’s son (at least in body). But it’s fun, anyway. And more than that, while he’s dancing, while he’s at Charlotte’s place, he feels like himself, properly, for the first time in a long, long time. He feels like he can be himself, and like he can work out who that actually is. That he loves rugby, that dark haired boys really do it for him, that dancing is fun, and that Charlotte looks beautiful in her tutu’s. That he is jealous of her, being able to do and wear what she wants, just a little bit. And that also his mother might have been right, just slightly – he is in love with Charlotte, just a little bit. And he thinks she might be in love with him, too. He hopes so.

And so the summer goes. They dance around each other, both literally and metaphorically. They spend all their time together. When Eames does go home, it’s quiet, for once. It’s probably the happiest Eames has been in a long time.

And then, about three weeks before they’re due to return to school, two things happen simultaneously. And Eames has always heard that things happen in threes, but in his experience they’ve always happened in pairs.

Firstly, at the beginning of August, his parents, tired of arguing over every inch of property, finally come to an agreement. They sign the divorce papers, and that’s it. It’s officially over. Eames will be spending Christmas with his father in Paris, summer with his mother, other breaks to be negotiated. Their shared assets will be split equally, with part of each going into a trust fund for Eames. The end.

The second thing is, after Eames discovers that the divorce is final, he runs over to Charlotte’s place to tell her. And Charlotte isn’t there, she’s just popped out to the shops to find something, and so Eames goes upstairs, intending to wait in her room.

Charlotte’s room is a mess. It always has been, and probably always will be. Her bed is made, of course, but only because the maid would have made it that morning. The covers are still rumpled, however, and it’s clear Charlotte has been lying on them. Her clothes are spread from closet to bed, discarded in an effort to find something to wear. And her wardrobe door is ajar, and, peeking out from what looks to be an old suitcase, is a swath of deep green fabric.

Eames hasn’t thought about it in years, not really. He hadn’t allowed himself to, not after that summer, not after how his father had reacted. But seeing it there (and it might not even be the same dress, but it’s still the same colour, the same fabric that he remembers) brings everything back in an abrupt and sudden rush. He remembers how good it had felt, and how right, even though that dress hadn’t fitted him properly, not like his mother’s dove-grey dress fits her. But he thinks it might fit him now, grown taller and a little wider. It might still be a little too long, but Charlotte’s mother is a tiny woman, so it shouldn’t be too bad. And so, before he can think too hard about it, Eames tugs the dress out of the suitcase (carefully, so as not to snag or ruin it). He strips quickly out of his clothes (first shutting the door) and then pulls the gown on over his head.

And he was right, it does fit him better now. The skirt is slightly too long, the sleeves a little too wide, but other than that it fits like a glove. And the colour looks just as good on him as he remembers, bringing out his eyes and the blonde in his hair. He tugs it a little to settle it, and then goes in search of some shoes.

The ones he finds are old and battered, missing beads and with scratches on the heels. But they match the dress, and they don’t pinch too badly. And they make him taller, tall enough that the dress is the right length. And he still looks a little like a boy in his mother’s old dress, because these clothes are still made for adults, but it’s good enough for now. Besides, wearing something so removed from what he would ever wear in real life makes it easier to pretend, to be both himself and someone else at the same time. And he doesn’t even think about it, not really.

And then he hears footsteps on the stairs. But he doesn’t falter or scramble to change, doesn’t try to hide what he’s been doing. He isn’t doing anything wrong, he knows instinctively. This is what girls do, how they dress sometimes. And then, at other times, he’ll wear pants. Wear a rugby uniform. That’s just how it is.
And then Charlotte comes in. She looks a little startled, for a minute, but more in a I’m surprised to see you here than in a what are you doing in that dress kind of a way. She falters for a minute, but then she gathers herself, eyeing him critically.

“Green really is your colour, isn’t it?” She says, and then “But we need to do something about your hair.”

*

Over the last three weeks of that summer, they try almost everything. They try all the old dresses, jewellery, and shoes. They try some of Charlotte’s mother’s newer things, and some of Charlotte’s things, so Eames can get a feel for what clothes are available for twelve year old girls. They try every conceivable combination of colours, with hundreds of different styles of make-up. And then, at Eames’ request, they try on her father’s things, both old and new. They don’t fit as well, and the things they find that do fit are older, and not nearly as nice or as well looked after. But it’s still a chance to experiment, to discover his own style. Eames spends just as much time at Charlotte’s as he did before the divorce papers came through, only this time he’s happier, completely happy, and having fun.

Eventually they have to go back to school, though. And they go to different schools, on nearly opposite sides of the country. Charlotte attends a school in London, close to her ballet school, while Eames attends one miles away. But it doesn’t make any difference, not really. Eames comes to London whenever he can, and they exchange mail constantly. Charlotte sends him all the fashion catalogues she can find. Eames becomes very popular at his school, on account of all the lingerie catalogues. Which is fine by him, and besides, no one needs to know (because he isn’t really ready to say anything, and they probably wouldn’t understand) that he enjoys both the models and the lingerie they wear.

He continues to see that boy, the dark haired one from the year before. The boy is hurt, at first, by Eames’ apparent interest in female lingerie models, until he decides that Eames must be bisexual, clearly interested in both the models and in him. Eames supposes that term will do for now. So he goes with it. He turns thirteen. Charlotte sends him a finely tailored suit, fitted perfectly to his measurements, and, tucked into the corners of the box, a red lacy slip and matching panties. Eames’ father flies up to take him out to dinner for his birthday, and Eames takes great delight in wearing the suit and, underneath it, the red knickers. He lets the dark haired boy (whose name is Connor, incidentally, Eames still remembers that) take the suit off him, later, as compensation for not being able to celebrate his birthday with him. Connor sees the panties, and he doesn’t even blink. His eyes go dark, though, and the next day Eames receives a box, ostensibly full of borrowed books but really packed with more underwear. Eames doesn’t ask where he got it, just wears it.

The year goes on. Summer comes around again. And Eames feels less like he’s living for the summers, now, not after this year has been so decent, but he still looks forward to going home, back to London, and seeing Charlotte.

That summer goes much the same as the last one. The only difference is now his mother is dating Lisle, and Lisle is spending all his time at their house. Eames puts up with him, makes an effort to get along with him, but, as soon as he can, escapes to Charlotte’s place, where they spend their days much as they did the previous summer – dressing up, dancing, talking. Charlotte buys him things under the guise of buying them for herself, and her mother, although slightly mystified by her daughter’s sudden extreme spending (and sudden interest in clothes that are slightly too big), goes along with it. And so Eames creates a wardrobe that fits him properly, although it stays at Charlotte’s house. It stays there all through the school year, too, although Eames does smuggle a few pieces back with him. Both Connor and Charlotte buy him more things, and he adds those to his collection. He decides he hates black, much prefers colour and patterns, and even if he has to wear black, or anything else plain, he always adds something to it. His teachers begin to get annoyed at his slight alterations to the uniform. But he isn’t really doing anything too wrong, or if he is it’s all relative, compared to some of the behaviour. Besides, he’s paying enough that he can get away with it.

And then he turns fourteen, and gets his first proper growth spurt. None of his clothes fit anymore. And it’s harder and harder to find clothes now – his body isn’t exactly that of a fourteen year old girl’s, and people (namely the school, and his father, who controls his finances) would notice and ask questions if he started ordering and wearing custom made girls clothes. Charlotte does what she can, but she can’t do everything. Connor buys him underwear, at least, but he hasn’t told him everything, and so he can’t do much, either. And the only viable solution anyone offers (anyone being Charlotte, because Connor would never offer this as a solution – he’s still sensitive about not being able to meet Eames’ parents properly) is for him to pretend he’s suddenly got a girlfriend, which would be problematic for two reasons. Firstly because there is really nowhere to meet girls out here in the middle of nowhere (except maybe teachers, and that would only make the situation worse), least of all appropriate girls (that is, rich, upper class ones), and second of all, buying them clothes and then apparently hoarding them until summer is extremely strange behaviour. So he wears his old things for a while, even though they don’t fit right, and he endures until summer. Charlotte says she has something to show him, anyway, although she won’t say what it is. So he waits, and again lives a little for the summertime.

And then he goes back to London, and his mother meets him at the door. This is odd enough on its own – since his father left and Lisle came into the picture (and moved in officially, halfway through the year), his mother has been spending most of her time on her own or with Lisle. And then she shows him her left hand, with the huge sparkling diamond (bigger than the one his father gave her, Eames remembers, but just as nice, just as classy), and gushes at him about her wedding plans. And he smiles, and is happy for her, and says all the right things, and then leaves his things in his room and goes, again, like always, to Charlotte’s house.

And she must have been watching out the door, again, because she opens it before he can even get through the gate, running out to meet him (and her mother must not be here, because she’s gone on this kick recently of turning Charlotte into a proper young lady, and she would never let Charlotte do anything like run outside, or open the door herself). And she practically throws herself at him, and then lets go, backing off until she’s just grasping his wrist, dragging him back inside. And up they go, up the familiar pathway to her room.

It looks different now. It’s tidier, and the decorations have shifted, from pre-teen girl to near fifteen year old. She’s got posters up, bands and pop-stars and actors, and all the drapery, the duvet cover, the couch cushions, are all purple. It looks good. It suits Charlotte, too, who has dyed her hair dark, nearly black, and is wearing mostly dark colours. Her mother must hate her, at the moment. She looks like every typical teenager ever, nothing at all like a young lady of means should. Eames loves it.

But her drastic sartorial choices are obviously not what she wants to show him, although the baggy style she’s sporting now would probably fit him well - the colours wouldn’t suit him at all, though. Instead, she pulls open her closet door, and pulls out that now familiar suitcase. The dresses in there long ago stopped fitting Eames properly, and they’ll fit him even less now that he’s grown, but when she opens it, most of those dresses are gone. Most of his other things, the clothes he and Charlotte and Connor have collected over the years, are gone too, except for a few of the baggier pieces which will still fit and still look good. Instead, what’s now packed into the suitcase is a series of boxes; the thin distinctive cardboard and clear plastic of high end department stores, but with the tags that indicate made to fit orders. They look like something he would wear, something he’d like, rather than the guesses Charlotte’s made or whatever they’ve been able to scrape together before. And they’re made to fit dresses, no less, and jeans and singlets and floaty girls clothes. Suits he has, the ones Charlotte’s bought him among them, but he’s never had anything like this. It must have cost a fortune. And she’s gone all out, this time, with full outfits and make-up and shoes and underwear.

“Try them on,” she says.

So he does. But first he showers (because he came straight from school, and he smells like train and car and travel), and then Charlotte shows him how to shave (because he needs to now, although he leaves his legs, shaving only his underarms, because he’s going to wear men’s shorts at some point, and bare legs will rouse some suspicion), and then she shows him the perfume she bought. And he’s let his hair grow out a little, because that’s the fashion, so there’s plenty there for Charlotte to work with, to style into something amazing. So they work together, to style his hair and put on make-up, something neutral that will go with most of what Charlotte’s bought for him. And she has stockings, too, which more than make up for the lack of shaving. Plain stockings to make his legs look smooth. And the clothes she’s picked show some hints of her taste, but they’re closer to what Eames has seen in fashion catalogues, things he’s mentioned to Charlotte and some things he hasn’t. In the end, he’s wearing heels, stockings, a short skirt and fitted blazer, with a loose silk shirt underneath. His hair is swept back from his face. The scarf around his neck hides his Adam’s apple. He looks good.

And then he takes a few steps, and promptly falls over. Charlotte laughs at him, secure in her keds, her wardrobe full of flats. But he rights himself, eventually, and takes a few steps, slightly shaky but more confident now. He puts a little sway into his hips, like he’s seen his mother do, especially around Lisle, around his father, back in the day. And he knows he looks good, now. He looks how his mother looked, back in the kitchen that day, in her dove-grey dress. And he really does, actually, when he looks in the mirror. People have always said he looks like his father (although he has his mother’s colouring), but right now, in these clothes, with his hair and make-up done, and with the wide mouth he inherited from his mother, he really looks like her. His mother’s daughter. And then he sees Charlotte over his shoulder, standing behind him and pulling out a camera. And he knows it’s a bad idea, but he still turns around, spinning on his heels, to face Charlotte and her camera. And she laughs as he strikes a pose, and snaps away with her camera. And then they take some shots in some of his other outfits, and then in the old green dress (which, miraculously, still fits – just) just for old times sake. And then her film runs out, and she digs out an old Polaroid camera (which miraculously still works), and starts snapping away. Photographs of him, of her, of them both together.

And then, of course, Charlotte pulls out the final, crowning glory – a tight red party dress with matching heels and bag, and a choker of diamonds (or something similar, and that kills him a little, that he’ll always have to wear chokers or scarves or something if he wants to look biologically female) with matching earrings and bracelet. And then, of course, comes the real reason she dragged him over here, the real reason she spent all this money.

There’s a new club opening this weekend, and Charlotte wants to go. And from the way she talks she’s been planning this for a while – maybe not this club specifically, but the idea in general. She wants to go out, to go dancing and drinking. She wants him to go out in the clothes she bought him, and, she says, she wants to accompany him. On a real date. And she knows how he likes dark haired boys, and so she’s bought herself a suit, perfectly fitted, and after tomorrow, she says, she’ll have much shorter hair. It’ll be a bonus for her, too, because it’ll annoy her mother to no end. And when Eames points out that, of course, her mother won’t let her leave the house, that she’ll be grounded, that this’ll be the last straw, Charlotte pays him no mind. She’s set her mind on this (just like she sets her mind on everything she wants). She knows a guy (of course she does) who’ll do them fake IDs, as long as they can get him the pictures they want by tomorrow night. He’ll develop the film and everything, apparently. And Eames doesn’t ask, but he can see that Charlotte’s got this guy wrapped around her finger, that he’s probably doing this for free, or at least getting his rewards in a non-monetary manner. And again, he sees the power that her figure (even at this age) can bring her, and he wants that, wants to try it out. So he foolishly agrees, despite his reservations.

And then he takes off, so he can freak out a little. Both over the illegality, the dressing up, and the, well, the date. And she’d thrown that out there so casually, and Eames doesn’t know whether to believe her or not, but he’d like it to be a real date, actually. He’d like to go out with someone who knows him and likes him for who he is (and isn’t that all anyone ever wants, really).

So he goes back to Charlotte’s the next day, like he always does (and was always going to do). And she has the pictures, the IDs, and incredibly short hair (shorter than his, even). She looks quite boyish, although there’s still a hint of something else there, just like there is for him. And they try on the clothes, her suit and his dress, and he helps her with her look. And he’s worried, a little, that they still look too young, even though Charlotte told him that she waited this long so as they could look old enough, could pass (even just) for eighteen. He’s going to just have to trust her, in the end. And they do look like their photographs, at least, and the fakes are really good. And then Eames sees the way Charlotte is looking at him, all dressed up and made up and dolled up, and he thinks that maybe this could be a real date (hopefully, with luck). And so he looks back, a little, because she looks good in her suit, with the short hair – just as she looked good with long hair, in her skirts. But nothing else happens, not then. Not yet.

And Eames worries, a bit, about how they’ll carry this off, but in the end, it turns out to be easier than they’d expected. Charlotte’s mother retires early, apparently just exhausted by her daughter and the world in general. The hardest part turns out to be getting ready, quietly, with as little light as possible. It takes Eames three tries to get his eyeliner right. And then, sneaking out, barefoot so as not to make a sound (Charlotte’s shoes probably wouldn’t be a problem, but Eames’ stilettoes most definitely would be), tiptoeing out the backdoor, creeping around, ducking under the windows and easing the side gate open, hoping it won’t creak. And then they’re free, although they stay so quiet until they’re a block away, heading towards the nearest main street. And it’s a little uncomfortable, walking this far dressed like this (Eames has a lot of respect for girls who go about like this regularly), and the stuffing Charlotte insisted he put into his bra (just a little, enough to give a hint of cleavage) keeps shifting around, just enough to be uncomfortable. But he looks good, he knows he does, and so does Charlotte.

The cab driver obviously thinks so too. He makes no effort to be subtle, pulling up beside them on the footpath. He looks them up and down, and he’s obviously interested (and he’s looking at Eames, too), and so they get in, and Charlotte tells him where they need to go.

It isn’t far. The streets are busy, packed with people, a lot of them apparently headed for this club. They’re all dressed up, and Eames thinks that maybe they’ll fit in just fine. The busy-ness probably helps, in the end, because the bouncer is far too busy trying to corral the crowds to even check their IDs beyond a brief glance, with which he seems satisfied. And so they get in. And Eames keeps expecting something to go wrong, because it usually always does, and if this were a movie (or maybe a music video, which seems more likely) they’d all wake up right about now, to discover that this was all a dream (a very elaborate dream, but a dream nevertheless). And Eames is pretty sure he’s thinking (and possibly talking) nonsense right about now, but sneaking the occasional mouthful from your mother’s (or Charlotte’s mother’s) liquor cabinet does not an experienced drinker make, and three glasses of whatever it is Charlotte’s decided she wants to force-feed (force-drink?) him is more than enough to get him tipsy. It’s also enough to remove many of his inhibitions (and most of his co-ordination), which is why, when Charlotte disappears (to the bathroom this time, and Eames would be interested to see how she’s going to work that one out, if he was less drunk) and a pair of hands appear on his hips, he doesn’t fight it. In fact, because it seems like a good idea at the time, Eames just grinds back into the body behind him, puts his hands over the mysterious hands (and they’re tanned, that’s all Eames can see from this angle, and male (and there’s other evidence for this person being male, and Eames can feel that pressed up against his lower back, which is a little awkward, really, but also kind of flattering)). And he’s having fun, dancing and drinking and grinding up against this anonymous body, someone he’ll probably never see again (and isn’t even really seeing now, partly due to drunken blindness, and partly because, well, he’s got his back to this guy), and then the guy starts sucking on his neck, nipping and biting and that’s going to leave a mark, but it feels good enough that Eames doesn’t care, and his anonymous dance partner’s hands are moving off his hips, and down his thighs, fingers dancing under the edge of his skirt, and if he gets any closer, if his hands get any further up, Eames is going to assume he’s going to get a very unpleasant surprise, and so he’s just about to grab his hands, maybe move them somewhere else, but still keep dancing, when Charlotte comes back.

“We need to leave,” she says. And she’s deepened her voice, a little, but she still sounds young, and that, coupled with her slender frame, leaves her with very little authority in this situation.

Eames feels his dance partner shift, and then, predictably, he says “Who’s this?” and “we were just dancing, chill out, just having a little bit of fun.” And now this really feels like a movie.

Eames pulls away, a little. Trusting in Charlotte’s judgment has in fact gotten him safely this far, and (aside from the fact he’s enjoying himself) he sees no reason not to trust her again. So he disentangles himself, apologizes, and then makes his way outside with Charlotte.

They make their way through the people milling about outside the door, still a large crowd even after several hours. And then they break free, finally, and Charlotte drags him down a nearby alley.

He thinks about making some sort of quip, a joke to lighten the suddenly serious atmosphere and get rid of that sombre expression on Charlotte’s face. But then she turns around, suddenly, and whatever it is, Eames doesn’t really want to be having this conversation in a dark alley to the soundtrack of the couple in the far corner, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to be given much choice.

As it turns out, though, Charlotte doesn’t want to talk.

Instead, she pushes him up against the wall, and Eames has just enough time to think I hope this doesn’t ruin the dress before Charlotte’s leg is between his thighs, her body pressed along his, and her mouth on his mouth.

Next

Fic: Janus, Inception, Arthur/Eames, R - Part 2

wayoffbase — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:27:29 GMT

After it’s over, Charlotte takes off.

Eames has no idea how he makes it home, but he does. He even manages to make it inside, upstairs, through a shower, and into bed. There’s no one around. And then he sleeps, for over twelve hours. And then he sits through another six hours of ignored (obviously ignored) phone calls before giving up and going back to bed again.

He doesn’t see her before they go back to school. She takes off a week later, not far (just to the other side of the city) but far enough. He doesn’t try to see her, worried that it will only make things worse. And then she goes to France, with Rosie. She writes to him a few times, and he replies, but. Their letters trail off, during the year.

Eames goes back to Connor, despite the guilt churning in his stomach. And it must be palpable, the guilt and the confusion, and Eames knows Connor can see it, can tell something is up, but he doesn’t ask, and for that Eames is grateful. He doesn’t really want to talk about it. But then, it turns out, they don’t talk at all, and Eames knows Connor wants a proper relationship, and he’s never really been able to give him that, and probably never will be able to. And it hasn’t been a problem until now, they’ve made their way along just fine, but Eames isn’t surprised when he comes back to his room one day to find Connor waiting, saying we need to talk.

So they break up. Eames isn’t sad, really, or surprised. Connor deserves to be happy, and he’ll find that with someone else. The only thing Eames regrets, really, at this point, is that he can’t tell Charlotte about it.

He even tries writing to Rosie. And they’ve never been close, but he’s getting desperate. All she can tell him, though, is that you guys had sex and, I dunno, you were drunk and she regrets it? And Eames has never hated the English language more (what do you mean? She regretted being drunk or the sex or both), but Rosie won’t say anything else, and he guesses Charlotte told her not to. So he waits, in silence, for the summer to come around again. Maybe once they’re in the same city again they can talk properly.

It doesn’t happen, at least not right away. Charlotte goes to France again, first, with Rosie, and then to Manchester, of all places, to visit another school friend. She doesn’t come back until the beginning of August, and by that point Eames has had enough time, both at home and away from her, to move from confused to guilty, to seriously fucking angry. And it’s not like she’s even coming back for him, not really. His mother is getting married again, finally, after all the planning, and Charlotte is coming back to be a bridesmaid.

He doesn’t see her until the wedding day (which is in London, after all, but in a different church than the one his parents got married in). Well, he sees her, but they don’t talk. She comes to the rehearsal dinner, and then spends the whole night avoiding him (an impressive feat, considering they had to stand opposite each other, and then sit at the same table for hours on end). And then comes the wedding, and she tries the same tricks again (and she must be seriously distracted, to think she can play the same tricks twice), and Eames is so sick of this, and so he finally corners her, in the coat room of all places.

And then he yells at her, and she yells back, and then they have sex on a pile of coats.

Overall, Eames feels that went rather well.

And it does solve their problems, in the end, once they’ve recovered enough to talk rather than yell. And this probably isn’t a good idea, but at the moment, post coital on a pile of coats, Eames doesn’t really care. The sex is great, and it’s nice to know all those years of staring weren’t all in his mind. And, as he tells Charlotte, several times, he is a girl, sort of. In many ways that count (although not all of them, obviously). And she seems to be okay with that. Sexually, at least, it works out okay.

They go back to the club, again, in the meat packing district. They dance, and drink, and have fun, although this time, Charlotte goes as a girl. They don’t go back to the alley, instead using some of Charlotte’s generous allowance from her father to book hotel rooms. It’s a great summer, and this time, Eames is sure it’ll continue to be a great year.

And it is. It’s a wonderful year. They go back to separate schools, of course, but all it means is that Eames spends all his free time, all his holidays, back in London. Charlotte visits whenever she can, too, and everyone loves her (partially because she’s a girl). It isn’t ideal, but it suits them well enough. It’s a lot better than not talking at all. It also means that, when she visits, she brings him clothes, and no one thinks it strange (she’s a girl, of course she’d have suitcases full of clothes). She brings her suit, sometimes, because they’ve found that works for them.

Summer that year isn’t really that big of a change. They spend it much as they spent the year, only instead of being miles it’s mere minutes between them. And then they go back to school, their final year, and continue on in the same manner. And it’s still good, it’s still going well, when they graduate and head into another summer.

It’s going to be different, after this summer, but for the better. Both of them are headed for Oxford, and they’ll be together all the time. It’s going to be perfect. Everything is going just as it should.

Which is, of course, when everything picks to go completely wrong.

Charlotte is headed for France, again, as she nearly always is. She has a grandmother there, apparently, who, like all grandmother’s, wants to see her favourite granddaughter on a regular basis. She’s only supposed to be gone for a week.

And then, at the end of that week, Eames gets a phone call.

Apparently, France is so lovely this time of year that Charlotte has decided to stay. But she misses him, and she wants to talk to him (and there’s an ominous phrase if there ever was one), and so she says she’ll send tickets, and he can come visit her in Paris.

And Eames hates Paris. A lot. He’s never really been able to let go of that distaste he developed for it, all those years ago when his father left him to go there. He hasn’t been back since, and he doesn’t really want to. And Charlotte knows this, so she must have a good reason for inviting him. Besides, it’s silly. Paris is a lovely city, and Eames is being irrational. Although he can’t quite help but think that something is still wrong.

So he goes to Paris. And he’s right, of course. It is lovely. Crowded, because it’s tourist season, but still. Lovely.

Charlotte’s grandmother is lovely too. Her home is beautiful, and she is nothing less than perfectly welcoming. She even lets them sleep in the same room (and in fact it’s Charlotte who hesitates at this, waiting a moment, flinching a little, before agreeing). But other than that, everything is fine.

Eames is set to stay for three weeks. After that, Charlotte will stay on for a week longer, and then they’ll meet up in London, where they will, presumably, continue on as they had been, as they always have in previous summers. And then, they’ll go to Oxford in the autumn, and they’ll have all the freedom to be together they’ve never had before.

This is the plan Eames has in his head.

This is not what ends up happening.

It takes Eames a week and a half to realise this. Before that point he’d been worried, but ultimately too happy about seeing Charlotte to mind. But then, ten days into his visit, Eames meets Sophie.

Sophie is a friend of Charlotte’s from when they were young. She lives next door to her grandmother, and they’ve played together every summer since Charlotte began visiting. Eames wonders why he’s never heard about her before.

It doesn’t take him long to figure it out. In fact, it happens about the same time that Charlotte tells him she isn’t going to Oxford, that she’s going to study ballet in Paris, become a dancer. And then, when he goes for a walk, just to process, to figure out how this will work, fit in with their original plans, he comes back (as he was inevitably wont to do) and sees them, Charlotte and Sophie, together in the garden.

And it’s not – they’re not really doing anything, not really. But they’re sitting, pressed together on a garden bench, hands entwined. Charlotte is resting her head on Sophie’s shoulder, and Sophie’s arms are wrapped around her. It’s perfectly innocent, not necessarily sexual at all. But Eames knows that look on Charlotte’s face and, although he doesn’t know Sophie, can’t read her as well as his best friend, he can guess what her expression means. There might not be something going on, not yet, but there will be.

Eames doesn’t leave, doesn’t run back to London. He stays, for the next week and a half, just as he was supposed to. He and Charlotte talk about it, and they agree to part ways. She is his friend, and Eames just wants her to be happy. Wants her to have everything she’s ever wanted (wants that to be him). They say they’ll stay in contact, stay friends, but Eames isn’t sure that they will. They certainly won’t be as close as they were before.

The night before he leaves, Eames has the strangest dream.

Eames has never been one for dreams before, not really. Most of his creativity (in dance, in his recently discovered love for art – and that’s one thing Eames does love about Paris, is the art) takes place in the waking world, and he knows it’s odd, that he should be so creative and yet not dream (or not remember them, at least, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have a personality disorder), but that’s how it’s always been. He has dreams that he does remember, but not often. Usually after times of stress or high amounts of activity.

This dream, though, is different.

He’s in a hotel room. It isn’t one he’s seen before – it’s nice, though, a sort of amalgamation of hotel rooms he remembers and features he’s never seen. There are some features of his home in London, his old school, Charlotte’s bedroom. And he knows this is a dream. It feels perfectly real, but just the same, he knows it isn’t.

There are several clues, of course, but the major one is this; when he is awake, he isn’t biologically female. In this dream, he is.

And he’s had dreams before, where he’s been someone else – it’s common enough. But in this dream, when he goes over to the mirror that has appeared on the wall, he can see that he isn’t just any woman. He’s Sophie. Tiny and freckled and blonde, with great curves. He hasn’t the foggiest clue what she looks like under her clothes (and he is nude, mostly, in this dream, except for a pair of knickers and a bra Eames recognises, not as Sophie’s but as Charlotte’s), but he’s surprised to realise that he’s observed her enough to know that when she laughs, she always uses her left hand to cover her mouth. When her fringe falls in her face, she always tosses her head to get rid of it. Her left shoulder is higher than her right, and her right leg slightly shorter than her left, just enough to be noticeable. And he knows this is right, that he’s got her exactly right. But clinically so, in the way he, as Eames, sees her. As a rival, with exaggerated flaws.

And, as if that thought triggers it, her appearance begins to change. He is still Sophie, but there is something subtly different about her now. Her features are slightly blurred, softened. She’s lit up, just a little. Her features are the same, and yet at the same time they are better, her hair brighter, her eyes bluer. And he realises that this is how Charlotte would see her (and he, of course, can’t know that, can’t get inside Charlotte’s mind, but he knows how he would want Charlotte to see him, how he wants to look in her eyes, and this is it).

And then, he wonders. He knows how Charlotte would want to see him, but what would she want to see?

He thinks of everything she’s ever liked. She likes blonde hair, he knows that. Longer hair, too, with a slight wave, so she could grab at it, get her fingers tangled in it (as she’d told him one night, when they were drunk, and Eames had never wanted anything more than to be able to grow his hair long, to please her). She likes dyeing her hair, so Eames makes himself bleach blonde (it’d give them something to talk about). He thinks of the posters on her walls, of the girls and guys she’s admitted to liking, of the clothes she’s bought him, over the years. Hints she’s dropped, and he’s surprised he remembers all this, in the end. He alters every aspect of himself, until there’s nothing left – no Eames, no Jamie. Some Sophie. And he’s crying, by the end of it, but it looks good on this face, this tall, willowy blonde with delicate features. Eames is sure Charlotte would like it. And then he thinks, why couldn’t I just eat some ice cream, watch some girly movies, what the hell is this? And that thought isn’t his, not really, but it is something this blonde would think.

He decides to call her Emily. And there is something of him in her, in the end. She is part of him, anyway. She’s everything he wants to be at this moment (although not forever). She’s what he would have to be, he thinks, bitterly and stupidly, if Charlotte were to want him at all.

And then, out of curiosity, he changes into Charlotte. And he only glances at her, briefly, for no more than a second, and all the mirrors (and he’s collected quite a few, can see himself from every angle) shatter, and he wakes up, gasping, shaking in their shared room. Charlotte is nowhere to be seen.

Eames goes back to London without ever seeing her again. And he keeps tabs on her, and they talk once in a while, but it’s never the same. He watches her success in the dance world, goes to see some of her performances.

And, instead of going to Oxford, Eames joins the army.

He knows exactly why, although he doesn’t care to examine his motives too closely. But if he can’t be one thing, he decides, it’s time to completely reinvent himself, change completely, be something new. So he joins the army.

Much to his surprise, he absolutely loves it. He’d love it more if his instructors could take a joke, of course, but other than that it’s surprisingly perfect. Besides, giving up Oxford couldn’t have been a more perfect way to give his father a coronary. But it’s the best thing he could have done, the best way to reinvent himself. He gets fitter than he’s ever been in his life, he makes friends, he feels like every advert for the army experience ever.

And when he’s asked to try out for the SAS, despite his lack of Air Force background and thus slimmer chances of getting in, he does. And he goes through the training, the interrogation, everything. He excels. Out of four hundred, Eames is one of twenty nine who make it through every stage.

And then, when he comes out of interrogation, there is a beautiful woman waiting for him.

“James Eames,” she says, and she’s French, of course she is, and knowing Eames luck she’s Parisian, and she’s going to ruin his life, “how do you feel about dreams?”

*

The beautiful French woman’s name is Mallorie Miles. She is a scientist, a chemist, and a researcher at The University of Notre Dame. She works with her father, a Professor Miles, and Dominic Cobb, an architecture PhD student. They are, as fantastic and impossible as it sounds, researching dreams. And, well, that doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary, just like ordinary psychology, but the involvement of an architect, a Professor of Architecture, and a chemist (and no psychologists) does. But what they are doing, more specifically, is researching shared dreaming, lucid dreaming, the ability to enter someone else’s dreams, and what they can do there. Their focus is perhaps more on this technology’s use in medicine, for the recovery of lost memories, and potentially in the court system for evidence. And, apparently some combination of his test scores, psych profile, and some sort of quality intrinsic to him means they want him to join them. In Paris. Fucking Paris.

He says yes, for some odd reason. Although it isn’t odd, really, in the end. He might run in to Charlotte, might hate Paris again, something might go wrong. But it’s dreams, and dreams are fascinating, and he has this idea, in his head. Something he remembers from two years ago, from the last time he was in Paris. Something about dreams that he wants to try.

So he goes to Paris. He isn’t the only one. Out of the twenty nine successful SAS candidates, he and one other, a female air force pilot called Elizabeth Hart, go with Mallorie Miles to Paris. They’re also accompanied by a contingent of people from the upper echelons of the SAS, presumably to keep an eye on them both (especially Eames, apparently – his superior officer takes him aside before they leave, tells him “You might be right for this job, might’ve done perfectly well on the tests, but there’s something not quite right about you, Eames. I’ll be keeping an eye on you”). And Eames isn’t an idiot, he wouldn’t have got this far (in life, to Oxford, in the SAS) if he was, and he can see why the army would want to be involved in this project. What he can’t see is why the Miles family would let them, why they would have contacted the army (or, he supposes, the government). He knows what they’ll want to do with this research, can see its application both to the SAS and to the wider army. The interrogation he went through would be improved a hundred times by the ability to invade people’s dreams, and what better way to train soldiers for the army than in dreams, where they can stay for as long as they need (or until they have to eat, until their physical body starts making demands on them), go anywhere in the world, try things that aren’t possible in the waking world amongst the confines of gravity and physics and reality. He can see that this might be used in the court system, eventually, but it probably won’t reach the medical arena for years yet. It’ll stay within the army, top secret. They won’t have much control over their research, not now that the secret services (from Britain, France, most of the UN, and this is going to be a jurisdictional nightmare) are involved.

He shouldn’t have underestimated Mallorie Miles (or Mal, as she insists he call her), as it turns out.

While it is true that the government, the United Nations, several armies, secret services, and other numerous initialled organizations are involved, largely due to Notre Dame’s need for government funding, Mallorie has found equally as many ways to avoid these groups.

She gives them what they need, is perfectly helpful. She gives them exactly what they need.
And then she uses her considerable charm and French beauty to con the military out of one of their three PASIVs, takes it back to her apartment in Paris, and does as she pleases.

This is where they make all their major discoveries, out from under the eye of the military, the strict discipline and solemn and constant realization that, whatever they do, it’s going to be used for purposes that it never should, that they never intended it for. And Eames’ loyalty is to the military (or at least it should be), but he doesn’t agree with what they are doing – he probably never will. So he goes with Mal, when she leaves, and him and Dom and her sit in her living room, and hook up to the PASIV, and explore.

This is how they discover the levels, dreams within dreams. This is how they figure out how to get information out of people, how to look for clues, how to ask the projections for help. This is how they figure out how to hide things, too, how safes and guards and locked doors can both protect and point to information. How they can militarize (and its Eames who comes up with this term, hilariously and ironically) their subconscious.

This is not when they discover limbo. That comes later, much later, and Eames is not involved. They won’t go any deeper than two levels, because despite Dom’s pleading, Mal’s wide-eyed enthusiasm, Eames won’t let them. He’ll shoot them out of the dream if he has to (and he’s an excellent shot). And he does, a few times. And they are angry, always, but in the end they always move on, to something new and exciting. Eames is terrified to think of what will happen to them when he isn’t around anymore, when the military get bored of research and move back to a military base.

This is where Eames tries out his idea for the first time.

He’s been thinking about it, on and off, since the first time anyone mentioned lucid dreaming to him. And he knows it could be useful, that the military could use it, would use it in so many ways, but he doesn’t want to show them. Doesn’t want to have to fill out one of those reports, the ones that document every stage of their discoveries. Besides, he doesn’t even know if it will work, if he can actually be anyone else, or, if he can, if he can become anyone other than women. Other than Sophie, than Charlotte. And he doesn’t want to become them, not in dreams, not anymore. He doesn’t know what would happen, and he doesn’t want to find out.

But Mal and Dom, they won’t judge him. They try everything, can try anything, and if it fails they’ll understand, and if it works, if he can show them, he knows they’ll understand (he hopes) too.

So they go under, after a bad day, a day of being shot and killed and torn apart. They’ve shared all their discoveries with the military, they have to, and they’ve been involved with the simulations, monitoring them and creating new things, developing their ideas. They’ve watched their ideas twisted into something awful. And Eames can’t say anything, or he won’t, because they have been watching him closely, just like they said they would. And he’s supposed to be in support of this, supposed to follow orders. He’s in the military, SAS. It’s what he does. And Mal, at least, has learned that there’s no point in protesting, and although she has her own private rebellions, her passive aggressive resistance campaign, she can’t do anything else. Sometimes that’s enough. But mostly it isn’t. And Dom, Dom will try to reason with them, give them intellectual arguments, try to present things in such a way that they can’t be used for military purposes, that their only sensible use is as whatever Dom or Mal or Miles or sometimes even Eames has originally suggested they be used for. And Miles tries this tack, sometimes, but he’s more realistic than the three of them, a lot older and less idealistic. Although Eames knows he isn’t completely passive, and that whatever he decides to do to get these men out of his university will work, eventually, even if it takes time. And that patience seems to carry him through, because he never joins them at the end of the day in Mal’s apartment. If he has coping mechanisms, they are not the same, and no one has any idea about what they are.

But for Eames, at least, and for Mal (Dom, Eames suspects, is there because Mal is, because he would follow her wherever she went, and she would do the same for him, and although he does try to defend their ideas, he is fascinated enough by the ideas they are exploring, in the end, for his love of discovery to overcome his fear and his need for an escape) going under at the end of the day, revelling in pure creation, pure exploration, is what they have to do. When they are in the dreamscape, they can do anything. Eames’ love of art gives him endless inspiration, and Mal’s upbringing in Paris means she has plenty to bring to the table also. It is in these dreams that Eames first forges anything, the classic Birth of Venus by Botticelli (in the same dream where he will forge a real woman, lucidly, for the first time). The birth of a woman seems an oddly appropriate subject for this dream, for what he really wants to become within them, and the mythical topic seems perfect for this environment, mythological and make-believe in its own right. It’s a painting he knows well, has loved for a long time, and it seems like nothing to imitate the brush-strokes, pull the painting out of thin air piece by piece, just as if he were creating it in real time, in the real world. And, he thinks, that could be another application – lucid dreaming as a learning tool. The amount of time you have in a dream is exponentially greater than what you have in the outside world, and so the amount to be learned, in such a short time, could be phenomenal. And he makes a note of this, to remember it once he wakes up, but for now, the forgery of the painting is complete, and he needs to move on to what he really wants to show Dom and Mal, before he loses his nerve.

Both of them are distracted, busy inspecting their environs, the confines of the dream. Mal has been waiting anxiously to see what he’s making on his canvas, alternating between hovering over Dom and hovering behind Eames. He’s been foiling her, though – every time she looks at the canvas, it becomes blurred. It probably helps that Mal hates Botticelli, and thus is not very familiar with the painting, or at least not enough to be able to pick out every detail before Eames is done with it. But he’s finished now, and they can look if they choose, but he’d rather show them something else.

Sure enough, Mal looks over, always aware of those around her (Dom most of all, and her father, but Eames now, too, to a certain extent. And she’s better in dreams, too, able to sense people from anywhere, no matter what they are doing), and sees that he’s completed whatever he was working on. So she comes over to look, curious as always. And he’s partially hidden behind the canvas, and the nature of dreams means he can create a mirror in his painting, which he suspects will help him out. It did last time, in that dream in Paris the last time. But he doesn’t want to destroy this painting, so he creates a mirror in front of the painting. It hovers in the air, originally, but he knows that anything too odd will draw the attention of the projections, and Mal’s (for that’s whose dream they are in) projections are just like her, clever and subtle and vicious if they don’t like something, and they won’t like a floating mirror, especially not one like this, a hideous mix of genres and decades. So he gives it a stand, at least, and adjusts it so it at least is plain, anonymous about its identity – it’ll be less of a distraction that way, easier for him to focus on the complexities of forging an entire person. And then he watches himself, in the mirror, and feels around for that slip, that shift that he felt, even in an ordinary dream. He feels it to a lesser extent in pulling paintings out of nowhere, that initial moment where he first catches the essence of the thing, and that final moment where he realises he’s got it, he’s achieved what he set out to do. But it’s going to be different, becoming someone else, forging (and he supposes that’s what it is, really, it’s forging, just like the painting) another person. And he hasn’t got a lot of time, just the time it’ll take Mal to cross the room, and so he searches around for someone he knows well, but not Charlotte, not Sophie, not someone he have an awful emotional response to. It’ll be easier to get it right if he knows them, though. And so, as Mal approaches, he shifts, adjusts not only his appearance but his mind set, his movements, everything about him.

When Mal rounds the painting, coming at him from the other side, she screams.

He can understand her reaction. Because he thinks he’s done a good job. His hair is longer, darker, curly. His eyes are dark, too. He’s tall and slender and curvy and female. He looks like a twenty something beautiful French woman. He looks like Mal. Perfectly put together and flawless.

But he waits for her to notice. He is Mal, but he knows, he can see that there’s not something quite right about her, at least not in his eyes. This is Mal, but not his Mal. Not Mal’s Mal, either. This is Dom’s Mal. Beautiful and put together and gorgeous all the time. Slightly too perfect. And she’s starting to notice now, looking at him with her head tilted to the side, curious as she always is, a little confused. He tilts his head, mirroring her, and she can see it more, now, how slightly odd this version of her is. And then she reaches out, and touches his/her face, and Dom choses that moment to reach them, circle around the painting. And then he stops, sucks in a breath. And the two of them turn to face him, almost identical expressions on their faces (because he can guess exactly how Mal’s face would look, now, amused and still a little confused). And Dom just stares at them both, silent.

It is, as always, Mal who speaks first. “Explain, please,” she says, her voice accented as always, stronger now that she is a little lost.

“It’s not about forging you, about forging a person,” he tells her, “it’s about how you see a person, or what you want to see.” And then he says to Dom “This is how you see Mal. It is not how she sees herself.”

They are both fascinated. They ask him every question they can think of, every question he’s ever had. He can’t answer them all, can’t even answer most of them. He shows them a few other people, Dom and Miles and some of the army personnel. Some of them are better than others – Dom, in particular (or the way first Mal, and then Miles, see him, which is an eye opening experience for both of them, hilariously so), Miles slightly less so. He doesn’t know his fellow army colleagues as well, but he can do a fair impression of Elizabeth Hart. He mostly falls back on how he sees them, or how Mal or Dom see them. His one attempt at anything else ends in spectacular failure, and he spends a terrifying minute stuck between too people, unable to focus on anything or become anything else until, with a sudden snap, he finds his way back to himself.

And he should have known (and he did know, in the end) that they would react this way, Mal’s scientific background and natural curiosity, and Dom’s continual desire to push the boundaries of this new world of theirs would allow them to be open minded (and they are open minded, anyway, literally, having been inside each other’s heads) and accept anything he has to show them, even something as admittedly odd as becoming a woman in a dream. And he’s going to have to show the SAS, the military, the government, and so on, of course. They’ll leap all over this discovery. The possibilities are nearly endless. But there’s more to it for him, obviously, and he won’t be showing anyone else that part, because it’s private and they wouldn’t understand. He only hopes it won’t show through when he gives a demonstration, that he’s a good enough liar that he can fabricate an origin story for this discovery, can avoid telling them the real story. But he knows Dom and Mal, now, he trusts them, they trust him (Mal more than Dom, instinctively), and so he feels he can tell them the real story, and show them the other part to this. Show them Emily.

He hasn’t even tried to become her again, not even when he’s been apparently alone in a dream world. He knows the dreamer will remember, or the subject will, and he doesn’t want that. He hasn’t even been her in a natural dream, which he still has, although with even less frequency than he did before. But he could forge her again, easily.

However, when he raises the subject, tells Mal and Dom he has something more to show them, he finds it rather more difficult than he had expected. He can see how she looked, and feel her in his mind, but he can’t quite grab the shift.

And it’s frustrating, and Mal and Dom look confused, and maybe a little worried, when nothing happens. But if the military has taught him anything, it’s how to wait, how to be patient. So he reaches out, searches around for the feeling. If it isn’t going to come with Emily (which is possible, she was part of a different time, and he felt differently, far more angry, far more discontent, than he does now), he’ll have to find it somewhere else. And he’s found that feeling is important to a forgery – the spirit of it, rather than the actuality. So he thinks about what he wants to achieve, how he feels about that, tries to recapture the feelings he used to have, back when he was happy, ensconced in heels and dresses and Charlotte’s bedroom.

He feels the shift that time, feels his features slip and slide just slightly, just shift the tiniest bit. And he doesn’t change much, leaves his essential features alone except for a slight softening, an increase to the curve of his jaw. He recalls all those days spent in front of the mirror, carefully shading in his eyes, lining his lips, highlighting his cheekbones. He remembers this one billboard he saw, an advert for Gucci, and pulls that woman’s hair, long and wavy and honey blonde, into the dream. He keeps his height, but creates curves, probably more extreme than a real woman would have, but this is what feels right, what he’s inspired to do. He keeps the shirt and jeans (grey t-shirt, blue jeans - civilian clothes only, once he leaves the University, once he’s outside the watch of the SAS) he was wearing before, but adjusts them to fit his frame. In a fit of whimsy, he adds a pair of black heels (classic Prada pumps) he’s seen Mal wear before, a pair of black wire framed glasses, sweeps his hair up into a bun. And then he looks in the mirror.

This girl is him, just as Emily was. But she is him as he is now, not as he was then. She looks just like him, just how he would have, perhaps, had he been born female.

And Mal looks at him differently, then, and he feels uncomfortable for a moment, as she watches him. And then she smiles, and her face changes, and she looks as though she understands, without him having to say a word. But Mal has always been perceptive, in that way and every way, both in the real world and this world.

Dom takes a little longer. He can obviously grasp that this is some sort of female version of Eames, and the sexual part of him is obviously enjoying Eames’s brand new curves. But it isn’t until he goes to speak, and Mal stops him, explains quietly what she understands to be the situation (and, as always, she is correct) that he fully seems to grasp everything. And then he looks a little uncomfortable, briefly, until Mal whispers something fiercely in French (which Eames does not understand, but he can grasp the general tone) and he relaxes. He still stares, a little, though.

Which is fine, actually. This body is beautiful, and Eames feels comfortable in it, has adjusted instantly to the new weight distribution, the bones in different places, the weight of his hair on his head. He likes the glasses, too, although he doesn’t think he’ll wear them all the time. This is him, as surely as his body in the waking world was him, and it’s a relief to be able to actualise all those years of wearing dresses and heels, of stuffing his gifted lingerie. This is better than anything, because in here, he can be whatever he wants to be, can be what he is, more to the point.

He doesn’t even realise how perfectly he fits into this body until hours later, when he realises, without even having to concentrate (as he often has to, with forgeries) he’s managed to hold this form, to move within it. And he guesses part of that is that he didn’t change much, but it’s also that this is his actual body, really. And Mal and Dom seem to see that, in the end, because they adjust to him like this quite quickly, they don’t even blink after mere minutes.

And then, when they go back up, he doesn’t realise, doesn’t notice entirely for at least quarter of an hour, when he goes to brush away hair that just isn’t there, adjust glasses that he no longer has. And Dom and Mal don’t notice, either, although they do double takes sometimes, turning to him and obviously expecting a female body where they are finding none. But he can tell the difference, now – they might be looking for someone biologically female, but they certainly aren’t looking for and not finding a lady. Which is almost irritating, in many ways. It’s nice to be seen as he is by those he loves (something he hasn’t experience in years, now), but apparently Dom’s ideas on how to treat a lady come from probably a combination of dating Mal, who is inordinately fond of chivalric traditions, and the fact that he apparently grew up in the nineteenth century. In the end, it takes something as utterly trivial and inane as the three of them falling asleep on the living room floor, happy and a little drunk, and waking up slumped together, the proximity making Eames’ biological sex very clear. And then, when they head back in to the University, and Eames, dressed in SAS uniform, goes to document his discovery, the way he moves in this environment, this uniform, seems to snap Dom out of it, and he does his best to return to normal.

And then they have to go under, and Eames has to give a practical demonstration of his new discovery. And he’s already made up some bullshit origin story for it, something about dreaming about being somebody else being a common experience, and so it stood to reason that in a lucid dream, one should be able to become someone else, and it’s no trouble to go on lying, to forge some inane forgeries, to be Dom, some of the military personnel, Miles. He shows them their perceptions of these people, never his own, although he of course tells them about this aspect (he puts in it to his report). And they all seem suitably impressed, ask a lot of the same questions Mal and Dom asked, watch him as he moves around, speaks, performs the roles. They get a few of the other researchers to try out some of the forgeries, but none of them seem to have quite the same grasp on the practice as he does. There is one girl, though, a psychology major and member of the French military, who is quite skilled, which stands to reason, in the end. But none of them are as good as Eames.

They spend hours under, hours in both the real and dream world, that day. Eames shows them every aspect of forging in the dream, both in terms of people and of specific objects. And this is something more people can do, but again, not very many of them can hold the level of detail required, especially not in a large dream, and they mostly end in collapse. But Mal can do this, is good at this part of forgery in a way she is not at forging people. Dom is not so talented. And it is this that leaves Dom at the University late into the night while Mal and Eames return to Mal’s apartment, and go under again.

They don’t go straight back, of course. Sleeping as a profession has many dangerous side effects, not including a screwed up sleep schedule. The danger of muscle atrophy (or even just general unfitness) from lying prone eighty per cent of the time, and the even higher danger of not realising how much danger you are in, on account of moving about in the dreamscape, is extremely high. Most of them have got into the habit of walking to and from the University, but Eames, both out of concern and out of a need to be fitter than usual on account of being military, has joined a local gym. Mal goes with him, most nights. They fight, often. Mal is fierce, and she often wins, despite his superior bulk. Or they run together. It’s some of the most fun Eames has had in ages.

After the gym, they eat. And this is another danger of staying under too long – they might eat in the dreams, might forget to eat in reality, might not eat for a very long time. And they aren’t getting any real nutrition in the dream. So when they can, they eat well. What they’re doing is certainly not the healthiest choice.

And then they go back to Mal’s apartment, take up their usual positions on the living room floor – Mal, propped against the sofa and Eames, probably because she finds it infinitely amusing, leaning back against an Eames chair. They go through the usual procedure, and then they go under.

This is Mal’s dream. This works for both of them, because Mal loves creating places (she should have been an architect, but she has no talent for drawing in the real world), and Eames needs to focus if he wants to forge anyone. And he knows this is why she wanted to come alone, was glad Dom wanted to stay behind, would have made some excuse even if Dom had wanted to come with them (and he would have acquiesced, as always). She wants to know more about this girl, about the side of him she’s never seen before. Curiosity. Eames knows there’s very little point in repeating the adage – besides, it would be hypocritical of him. Curiosity and willingness to explore is a large part of how he got here in the first place.

Mal has built them the shopping district near the University, the expensive one that Eames has always wanted to frequent, but never had the chance (or the money). She’s very good with detail, has advanced enough in the world of building dreams that she can hold such detail. Although, as always, her dream blurs at little at the edges, only just noticeable out of the corner of your eye (and only if you know what to look for). Eames knows that if he headed for those blurred edges, he’d walk and walk and eventually come out at the other end of the shopping district, looped around infinitely. And it wouldn’t seem strange, because he is asleep. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, he just can’t leave. And he feels that’s appropriate, even for an outdoor shopping district. Mal has managed to capture the essence of a shopping centre and its architecture (no windows, the particular quality of light, no clocks) that makes people stay for hours, lose track of time. The two states of mind are quite similar, dreamlike, and the movement of time in a dream is quite the same – it passes before you know it.

Not that it matters, for now. They can get as lost as they like, and when the Somnacin runs out, they’ll just wake up.

Mal seems to want to look at what appears, at first glance, to be a Prada store. But first she turns to look at him (because from what he can tell, Mal has made the unique alteration of populating the area with only female clothing stores), obviously waiting for him to change back into his female form.

As much to his surprise as hers, he already has. The slip is so natural, already, that he’d just adjusted to the dream environment, and, in part, to what Mal, as the dreamer, was looking for. Also, what he’d been looking for, been wanting. Now that he’s got a taste of what he can have in the dream world, he wants to experience it as much as he can. And that’s dangerous, he knows, wanting something he can only have in dreams, but he knows himself well enough to know that he’ll regain a balance eventually. He’ll still want this, still enjoy it, still go under regularly, but he isn’t unhappy enough with his lot in the real world (because that’s still him, in the end) to want to stay here, like this, forever. He likes reality. He isn’t so certain about Mal, or about Dom, for different reasons, but there’s nothing to worry about as yet. He suspects they worry, especially Mal, about losing their grasp on reality, which is why they rarely dream together on their own.

But for now, Mal does not appear concerned, at least not with issues of reality. She does seem to be concerned with the store front, which is displaying a rather lovely range of evening gowns, what looks to be all the latest fashions – which is something Mal would know about, and Eames wishes he had more time to learn about. So he goes to join her in front of the Prada store, and then they go inside.

They spend hours shopping, trying on endless amounts of high fashion clothes, exploring every store Mal has dreamed up. They have coffee at a tiny café that Eames swears is nowhere near the University, and which Mal tells him is in fact in Nice. And then Mal creates the University, and they head towards it, loaded down with bags, because they want to see how the rest of Mal’s world reacts. They cross the same bridge they cross every day, and they stop, for a moment, at the edge, staring down at the water. They know they’re nearing the ending of their dreaming time, and so they take a seat, waiting out the last few minutes until the sedative wears off. It’s been one of the more wonderful dream experiences they’ve ever shared.

They wake up to the phone ringing.

Next

Fic: Janus, Inception, Arthur/Eames, R - Part 3

wayoffbase — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:22:35 GMT

Mal answers it, still sleepy, and grumbles a little. And then she goes quiet, and becomes instantly alert.

Mere seconds later, Eames’ cell begins to chime. And he answers and, like Mal, becomes instantly aware of his surroundings, instantly tuned in to what’s happening.

Mal’s call is a courtesy notification of next of kin. In case of injury or death, each member on the base has both actual family and someone in the immediate vicinity listed as an emergency contact. Mal, of course, is listed for her father. She is also listed for Dom.

Mal slips into French when she is upset, and this is no exception. So, while his superior officer is trying to brief him, Eames can hear Mal’s frantic French in the background. Fortunately, it seems, whoever has called her understands French, and can keep up.

About the time Eames and Mal were exploring the shopping complex just down the road from the university, trying on expensive gowns and having the time of their lives, Elizabeth Hart woke up, and didn’t realise she was awake. She shot and killed three people, injured another four (Dom included in this count, and not seriously, thank God, Miles not included at all), before shooting herself. They need help with clean up, and with soothing distraught researchers.

Eames is up and moving in a second. Mal, still in shock, is taking a little longer, so Eames helps her to her feet, directs her towards the door, finds her some shoes, a coat. He drives her to the University hospital, where they’ve sent the wounded (and the dead), drops her off, and then heads for the research headquarters.

They are in chaos. Everyone is upset, shocked, or angry, or some combination of the three. A few people are trying to instil some sense of order, but it isn’t working.

Miles spots Eames through the chaos, approaches him. He alone is calm, although he does look slightly shaken, worried for Dom. He explains, quietly, what has happened.

Meanwhile, the noise in the room only gets louder. It increases and increases, getting louder and louder, until this little bit, a tiny brunette American (and the only reason Eames knows this is because of the uniform), clambers up onto a table, and yells, voice carrying clear and strong across the room, “Everybody, shut the fuck up!”

They do. And this kid is no one, is clearly brand new to the army, but his voice has power and authority. He is also extremely attractive. Eames notes this in an abstract kind of way – it really isn’t the time, and he’s been focussed on female beauty for most of his evening, so this is a slight adjustment.

His superior officers do not seem amused with this upstart little shit taking control, but they can’t deny that it’s working. And the kid notices this, and he steps back, allows the others to take over. And they can, now, now that everyone is quiet.

They begin the work of shepherding out everyone who has already been briefed and questioned, letting them go home. They separate the civilians from the military – most of that part of the project are at home anyway, and will be briefed in the morning, and those who are here already know what happened. And then, it’s just the military left, and it gets louder, again, briefly, before Miles steps up onto a table and clears his throat.

And it’s just as effective as the yelling, because Miles is respected here, by everybody. Although the yelling had probably paved his way somewhat.

He explains to everyone what they know now. About how Hart and Dom were under, forging, monitored by a collection of civilians and military. About how they’d woken before the timer had gone off, about how Hart’s forgery had triggered Dom’s projections, tearing them to pieces and throwing them out of the dream. About how they’d both been using real places to shape their environment and forging real people, and about how they’d also been experimenting with levels in the dream, and how forgeries worked on different levels. And it’s just like Dom, really, to push like this, and Eames knows that Dom was the instigator, because he always is, and he always knew that one day something would go wrong. He’d just never thought it would be this. None of them had expected this. Because it’s easy, or it should be, to tell reality from a dream, especially when you’ve been forging. And Eames has always had no trouble telling levels apart, either. Most people don’t. Except Elizabeth, who for some reason believed her world was not real, and now people are dead. Or at least they can assume this to be the cause, judging by Elizabeth’s ramblings, although it turns out that her attempt to ‘shoot herself out of the dream’ failed, her gun having run out of bullets, and she is currently sedated in a private room at the hospital. Nobody knows what to do with her. Nobody really knows what to do about anything, anymore.

The program goes in to shut down for a few days, enough time to notify next of kin, organize funeral arrangements, and clean up. One more person dies of their injuries, and a fresh wave of grief sweeps the base. Elizabeth, after repeated attempts to reason with her, gets hold of a scalpel (and no one wants to know how, no one will look too closely) and commits suicide, convinced to the end that this is not reality. And that shakes a fair few people up. They have several resignations, requests for transfers, dropouts in that week. The whole university exists under a halo of held breath.

The one bright spot, at least for Eames, Mal, and Miles, is Dom’s release from the hospital. His injuries were minor, and he’s going to be just fine. And the one positive thing about sleeping for a profession is that is doesn’t involve moving, which would only aggravate Dom’s gunshot wounds. It means that Dom can go back to work, which he wants more than anything, and Mal can refrain from having a coronary about this.

She instead throws herself into work, and, in the end, it’s her who comes up with the idea, with the safety procedure that just might save their lives in the future.

She calls them totems. It doesn’t exactly describe what they are, but Mal likes it, and it seems appropriate. She decides, after experimenting, that the best way to tell reality from a dream is to have something that behaves differently in reality than in the dream. And it works, quite successfully, although Eames is uncertain – the mind can make anything happen in a dream, could fool you into thinking your totem was working and showing reality. He floats the idea of more than one totem, just in case. Also, they can’t become too dependent on an object. But no one else seems to be concerned with this. Everyone takes to carrying totems. And they can’t tell each other how they work, either, because then someone could manipulate them. And on a research project already full of secrets, this only heightens the tension.

It is under this atmosphere that Eames first meets Arthur (Cadet Arthur Gordon) properly for the first time.

They don’t really talk much the first few times. A lot of it is simply them being too busy. Eames is busy dealing with the fallout from Elizabeth Hart’s wake-up, and trying to come up with a solution, testing totems and the like, while Arthur, being brand new to the military and the dream share program (but so so talented and promising) is busy learning the ropes, all the basic procedures and techniques everyone has to learn when they enter the program. He’s come over with the American contingent, who have of course decided at this late date that they wish to be involved in the program, once all the kinks have been worked out and it’s no longer particularly dangerous. They are reaping all the benefits, and also, to be fair, contributing a lot of money to the cause. However, they do have to learn lucid dreaming from the beginning, and as a result have a lot to do with Mal (for the chemistry and sedation aspect, and about totem theory), Dom (for the architecture aspect), and Eames (to learn forgery). And they are usually involved in the simulations and test runs, although the civilians are becoming less and less involved with the military simulations.

Arthur, on the other hand, is involved in almost every simulation. As is Eames, both because he’s SAS and because he’s one of the best and oldest members of the project. However, being shot at and killed, interrogated within an inch of your life (and so on) doesn’t leave much time for talking. They work well together, though, when they get the chance.

This is the only time they associate with each other, however. Arthur is usually working with his fellow Americans, and even when he isn’t, he’s never working with Eames, because he has absolutely zero talent for forgery. He spends most of his time with Dom, because despite an apparent lack of imagination in other areas, he is quite talented when it comes to architecture, especially dream architecture. He’s apparently an engineering student in real life, the military paying for his training. So he builds a lot of dreams for them, his clean, practical lines being suitable for military dreams, which need low levels of distraction from the environment. Sometimes, of course, they want something complicated and elaborate, and for that they get Mal, but Arthur apparently has a wicked sense of humour, and a predilection for paradoxes not able to be created in real life, creating deceptively complicated dreams. As a result, he also spends a lot of time with Mal, creating increasingly complicated and frustrating dream environments.

Mal loves him. He’s polite, and attractive, and he speaks French. He has a wicked streak running beneath the surface. He has an endless thirst for knowledge. In many ways, he’s a lot like Mal.

Dom seems to notice this, too, and this causes him equal amounts of delight and confusion. He spends nearly even amounts of time with each of them, and Eames can see the desperate, devoted feelings he has for Mal swaying and stretching a little towards Arthur. Eames can understand the urge. Arthur is fairly wonderful, from what Eames has gathered, what he’s seen, what he knows. And Mal is absolutely and constantly loveable, and someone who is like her is obviously going to be attractive to Dom. Eames wants Arthur too, but for different reasons. He wants him for the intensity he sees in dreams, the way he works perfectly with Eames, with others. His beauty is definitely a plus, too. But as absolutely cliché as it is, there’s something about him that Eames doesn’t think Dom can see or appreciate.

But Arthur and Dom spend more and more time together. Dom is something of a mentor for Arthur, and they become an incredible team. Arthur develops an extraordinary talent for research, and he spends less and less time in dreams as a result, researching and leaving the dreaming to others.

He never seems to associate with anyone outside of work, however. Not even Mal or Dom. At least, not until one night, when Eames stays late, working with one of the new Americans, a promising woman named, of all things, Emily, and Dom stays, working on architecture with Miles, developing larger dream environments that are also stable. As far as Eames knows, Arthur goes home alone each night. He often takes a PASIV with him, although nobody knows what he does with it. But that one night, when he’s been working late with Emily, he decides to head for Mal’s place afterward. He needs to relax, maybe do some shopping in Paris or Milan. Also, something he’s been finding, is that he dreams naturally less and less now that he works in dreaming, and he needs the PASIV to get a full night’s sleep. And the sorts of dreams they have during the day are not remotely soothing or restful. So he goes to Mal’s, despite the fact that it’s after midnight by now. She’ll probably still be up, fucked up sleep schedule that they all have, or she’ll be hooked up to the PASIV, in which case he can just plug in to the PASIV and go under with her.

When he gets there, however, Mal is under, but she is not alone. Arthur is here with her, and they are both dreaming. And Eames doesn’t appreciate it when he’s under at work, because people are constantly monitoring everything he does while he’s under, and when he’s here, he’s usually under, and Mal and Dom can usually distract him. But now, watching these two, perhaps the people he loves most in the world, under alone, he realises just how dangerous it is, and how worrying. His not so sudden and unexpected worry for the two of them wars with his desire to know just what the two of them are up to, whether this is the first time they’ve been under together, just what exactly they’ve been doing. In the end, curiosity wins out, and he’s just glad he isn’t a cat, because he doesn’t know what he’ll find.

So he goes under, plugs himself in, and turns up somewhere that smacks of Mal, is obviously Mal’s dream. It’s a hotel, and it has something of one of the old hotels near the University, and something of the Parisian buildings Mal loves to create. Eames is in an upper corridor, a dimly lit baroque style hallway, stretching out in either direction. One way blurs into nothing, and the other leads to a set of stairs. Eames takes the stairs.

About halfway down the stairs switch seamlessly into wide ballroom stairs, just after turning an abrupt corner. Eames walks around the corner first, blindly, and gets a perfect view of a massive ballroom, packed with people in elegant high fashion. At the centre are Mal and Arthur, waltzing gracefully around the floor to the strains of something classical. They both look amazing, beautiful and elegant, Mal in a full length black gown, Arthur in a flawlessly fitted black and white tuxedo. Arthur has longer hair in this dream, slicked back, and he looks older now than he does in real life. Mal’s hair is swept back off her face into a French roll. They haven’t spotted him yet, and the projections haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Eames decides to try something.

He goes back around the corner, back into the ordinary stairwell. He debates on changing there, but then decides to go back upstairs, into one of the hotel rooms. Knowing Mal, there’ll be full length mirrors in there he can use.

Sure enough, there are. The rooms are beautiful, in the same style as the hallway. In reflection of the style of the dream, they’re more like dressing rooms than hotel rooms, classy. There is a dresser, a closet, a mirror, some chairs, and a mini bar.

Eames goes to the closet, wondering. He opens it, and inside are rows of dresses. But not in the style Mal would wear. They’re definitely something Eames would wear. And he has to laugh, because of course Mal, observant Mal, noticed his presence and altered things accordingly, guessing what he would want to do.

So he goes right ahead. He picks out a green dress, with a plunging neckline and halter neck, because it’s his signature, really. It looks a lot like one he’d purchased in a previous dream, and he has to admire Mal’s efforts at continuity. And then he fits himself into that female body, although this time he leaves the glasses behind. He makes his hair long and curly, but still the same. He creates a face full of make-up, and this is one thing the dream world will always have over the real world – the ability to create this look without help, without the endless curling tongs and mascara wands and bags full of make-up and dry cleaning and shaving and the list goes on and on, everything Mal has around her house, that he’s ever seen her use. As she is so fond of telling him, beauty is pain, and she follows that adage to the letter. In this world, however, it doesn’t matter. It’s also a lot less time consuming. Within a matter of minutes, he’s ready.

And he knows Mal will recognise him right away, because she’s already seen this form before and because that’s just how she is, but he wonders how Arthur will react. He’ll figure it out eventually, no doubt, because he’s no idiot – he wouldn’t be here if he was. But his reaction should be interesting.

He descends the stairs again, and Mal, because she obviously thinks she’s hilarious, has altered them so they match his dress, so they highlight his appearance. The lights draw attention to him as he descends.

Arthur hasn’t noticed his appearance yet, both in the sense of noticing his literal presence and his change in appearance. He has no reason to, really, no reason to think anyone would be joining them, or at least to think perhaps Dom would join them, but not Eames, and not like this. And he’s never seen Eames like this; no one has, except Dom and Mal. They’ve seen him forge women before, but they’ve been impressions of other people in the project, or of made up amalgamations of people, never this. He wouldn’t show this to just anybody. And Mal will know what it means, that he’s showed up like this, even if Arthur won’t, at least not immediately. He might not even recognise him.

He slips through the crowd, heading towards Arthur and Mal. He’ll cut in, and confuse everybody. It helps that the projections don’t react to him, that he can approach quietly and unnoticed. His forgeries have gotten so good that he can move amongst anyone’s projections without making a ripple. Nobody else has reached that stage yet, although some of the more promising students will soon. There’s a certain unique approach to forging that most people have had to learn, but that comes naturally to Eames.

He comes up behind Arthur, so that Mal can see him, but of course Arthur cannot. And then he says, keeping his voice the same, only moving it into a higher register and adding a hint of huskiness, “Can I cut in?”

Mal has the wickedest smile on her face, and Eames is sure that, for now, Arthur will think this is one of Mal’s projections, that she is just being saucy. And so he takes her place as Mal moves away, sliding into Arthur’s arms. And he knows it’s a little bit cruel, playing him like this, but it’s also so enjoyable. Besides, Arthur is, much to Eames’ surprise, a hell of a dancer, at least in the dream scape.

Arthur just goes with it, barely blinking, adjusting to his new partner. And Mal’s projection of Dom comes up and takes her into his arms, giving her a partner, and so Arthur turns his attention to the woman currently in his arms. And then he starts to look confused. He’s looking intently at Eames, now, obviously recognising something in him, but not quite sure exactly what it is.

And he’s stopped moving now, although the music is continuing around them. And the rest of the projections are still dancing, soothed by Mal’s non-reaction to the two of them. They’re still holding each other, and the music is still playing, and Arthur just keeps watching him. And Eames can see it, see how close he is to figuring it all out, and then see the moment when it clicks. He’s been able to predict his reaction, every bit of it, right down to this moment. What happens after that, however, he wasn’t expecting.

After one final probing stare, Arthur seems to dismiss his discovery. He doesn’t say anything, and his face returns to normal, just as it had looked when he first came upon Mal and Arthur dancing. And then, Arthur adjusts his grip, waits for a beat, and then begins to move with the music again. Eames, startled and a little unsure, is a moment behind, but he soon catches up, and falls in to step with Arthur. And Arthur is a fantastic dancer, and Eames, who of course was trained for this (although probably with the expectation that he would lead), finds it so easy to fall into step with him. Arthur leads, and Eames follows, and they never once fall out of step.

They move into some more complicated manoeuvres after a while, and those go just as smoothly. The dress Eames has chosen is perfect, flaring around his legs as Arthur spins him, setting gently when they come back together. Eames loses track of how long they dance for, although he does notice that Mal has disappeared, at one point. He wonders if that projection of Dom was perhaps the real thing, or if she’s gone off with the projection (because that seems the most likely course of action) but it isn’t his place to question their arrangement. Mal and Dom are deliriously happy, after all, and whatever they’ve got going clearly works for them. So he keeps dancing, comfortable where he is.

And he’d thought this would be a joke, an amusing trick to play on the army grunt from America, that he would be offended, appalled, and they would laugh, and count on him not to say anything (not that it would matter if he did, both because of his low ranking and Eames generally known talent at forging and character). He never thought it would turn out like this.

The music changes, then, from classical ballroom to something slow, with faint French lyrics. It’s seductive and smooth, and Eames wonders whether it’s spilling over from Mal’s current activities, or whether she’s trying to either play a trick on them or tell them something. Either way, neither of them falter, moving easily into the new style of dance, finding the beat. They move closer together, because it’s appropriate for the song, really. Eames arms slip around Arthur’s neck (and they are the same height, here, with Eames in heels, although by rights he should be taller), and Arthur’s slide around his waist, resting low on his hips. They are both breathing a little quicker now. And then, just faintly, Eames feels the press of lips (Arthur’s lips) just faintly on the side of his neck.

He doesn’t react, doesn’t move for a moment. And then the pressure is back, firmer this time, and then it is repeated, over and over, inching its way up Eames’ neck. And then he reaches the underside of Eames’ jaw, and sucks on it, just lightly.

Eames goes weak in the knees. That’s something he’s always liked, and even though it feels different in the dream, it still feels good. Arthur holds him tighter, holds him up, and then tilts his head ever so slightly, ever so slowly, and presses his lips to Eames’. Again, it’s just a light, soft kiss, and then he pulls away.

They haven’t stopped moving, not through all this. But they’re very close now, looking into each other’s eyes, like every romantic cliché ever, and so it seems only natural that Eames’ should lean up, press his lips to Arthur’s and kiss him back. And then he deepens the kiss, tilting his head a little more and swiping his tongue across the seam of Arthur’s lips, encouraging him to open his mouth. And he does, and they kiss, deeper now, for long moments.

And then one of Arthur’s hands moves, slides up his body, resting just under one of Eames’ breasts. And he can feel it there, is so aware of it, but more than that, he is aware that he is a woman. And this can’t go anywhere good, because Eames’ isn’t like this, not in real life. And the confusion that results from anger, something Arthur will inevitably experience once they wake up, once he realises he was in fact embracing another man, is something neither of them needs.

So Eames breaks away. He runs off, in fact, darting through the other dancers. He runs back up the stairs, because it seems to be the only exit. On the way, he loses a shoe, because he can’t quite help it, can’t quite hope that maybe, despite this, Arthur will still come after him, and that they can work this out in the real world. And Arthur has come after him, is trying to make his way through the press of people, and the shoe is just the distraction Eames needs. Arthur stops to pick it up, just briefly, and it’s enough for Eames to run up the stairs, to choose a door and a room and a balcony to throw himself off.

By the time Arthur wakes up, Eames is long gone.

*

Because it’s just how the universe works, Eames runs straight into Arthur first thing the next morning.

And it’s literally, too, because of course the universe wouldn’t be satisfied with run of the mill awkwardness, and instead has to go for full on humiliation.

Arthur is carrying coffee. Two cups, even, and actually, one smells suspiciously like tea. He drops one, the coffee cup of course, and it splatters everywhere. Most of it gets on the ground, luckily, but both of them walk into the project office with faint splatters of coffee over both their clothes. The tea is just fine, only a tiny bit spilled. And as he’s looking horrified, a bit, Arthur looks up from surveying the damage, mouth open as if to say something. And then he sees the expression on Eames’ face, and whatever he reads into it, it makes him shut up fairly quickly. His mouth snaps closed, and he darts ahead of Eames, slipping through the doors to their building and disappearing up the stairs (because of course he would never take the elevator), presumably to Dom’s office, as he always does. He tosses the tea in the rubbish bin next to the elevators, though, on his way past, and Eames’ can’t help but think what a terrible waste.

Eames doesn’t see him for the rest of the day, which is slightly odd but not unusual. That is, until Eames goes to find Mal, to see if she doesn’t want to take a lunch break with him. He goes up to her office, and Arthur is there.

They (or rather Arthur) is talking quietly and apparently fiercely, gesturing at Mal frantically. She is obviously trying to calm him, to provide an explanation, but it doesn’t seem to be working, and Arthur looks nothing if not frustrated and upset. And then he sees Eames, approaching the door of Mal’s office. Abruptly he stops talking, appears to make his excuses or mumble some sort of hasty goodbye, and high tails it out of Mal’s (and Eames’, more likely) presence.

He approaches Mal cautiously, because she is looking most put out. Eames knows, because he can just tell with these things, that she is looking that way because of him, and not Arthur. He wonders just what Arthur was saying to her.

Mal is not forthcoming. Instead, she merely looks up, and when she sees that it is him, she tells him, “Eames, you are an idiot.” She refuses to elaborate any further, despite Eames’ subtle (and not so subtle) probing and pushing throughout the rest of the day. She does deign to have lunch with him, however.

And then, at the end of the day, Arthur corners him. And Eames had been hoping to avoid this, hoping they could just let it slide, forget about it until the awkwardness passed, but of course not. It wouldn’t be at all like Arthur to let something go.

Of course, as seems to constantly be the case when it comes to Arthur, Eames has severely underestimated him.

Eames is heading down one of the back corridors, making his way to one of the more remote dream labs to run one final simulation before he leaves, when Arthur honest to God appears out of nowhere, coming out of a doorway Eames didn’t even know was there, and dragging him into a tiny broom closet masquerading as a room.

“What was that?” he asks. And he doesn’t even sound accusing, not really, he mostly just sounds confused.

And Eames decides to play it dumb (although not too dumb), even though it probably isn’t the best idea, “I believe they call it a forgery, Arthur, darling” (and this is the first time he calls him darling) he says.

Arthur looks completely unimpressed. He doesn’t even say anything, just waits, and finally Eames relents, “That was a particular forgery of mine that’s quite personal,” he says, still hedging a little.

“It was you,” Arthur says. Eames nods. There’s no point in trying to deny it, Arthur’s observational skills are some of the best. “And what exactly were you doing with that particular forgery?” He isn’t giving anything away.

Eames debates his answer, briefly, and then he tells him. Explains everything, properly and fully. He even explains his avoidance of Arthur, although he’d thought that self-evident.

Arthur still looks a little puzzled. “Why run off?” he says.

And Eames explains, again. And Arthur is still looking at him like he’s speaking another language, but there’s something else there, under that expression. And it takes Eames a little while to click, to understand, because he never said that observation was his strong point (except when it is, when he needs to, but it’s always different showing how you see somebody, or how they see somebody else, than seeing how somebody sees you), but he’s seen that look before, but not in years, and not directed at him like this. It’s lust. Desire. And Dom gets it, sometimes, when Eames is a woman in dreams, and Charlotte used to look at him like that, but again, usually when he was in a dress. Not like this. And nobody has ever looked at him like this consistently. And it’s a seriously bad idea, and it probably always will be, Eames can see it always being a bad idea with Arthur. But being wanted just exactly as you are is quite a strong lure, and so Eames kisses him, just lightly. They can’t do this here, though.

It’s at that point the projections break down the door, sweeping in and sweeping them up, and Eames feels them pull him apart, and then he wakes up, abruptly, panting. Being torn apart is awful. And he’s angry now, so angry, because of course it was a dream, he should have realised, that door doesn’t exist and he couldn’t remember how he got there and then he looks around and blinks, and there is Mal and Arthur, and even waking up Arthur looks terrible. Mal doesn’t though. She just looks unrepentant as always. “You needed to talk,” she says, “I hope you have worked everything out.” And then she leaves, the cow, just leaves them there, lying on the floor of her living room, still trying to wake up fully. And it’s still hard at this point, when they’re still messing about with sedatives, trying to find the one that works best, and Mal is a chemist, and who knows what she might’ve mixed up. And it’s a good thing Eames loves her so much, because she can be fairly morally bankrupt sometimes, if she thinks it will help get her what she wants more easily. And, in this case, of course what she wants is for her friends to be happy, and so Eames can’t be angry at her, not really. She can get away with a lot.

And Arthur is looking at him again, and he still looks as he did, in the dream. He’s still got that look behind his eyes, that interested look. He looks annoyed, too, and vaguely guilty, but mostly, his eyes look both a little soft, with caring, and a little hard, sharp with desire. And even though he’s army, his face is still expressive, and he’ll grow out of it, later, start showing people only what he wants them to see, but Eames will always, always be able to see through him, see exactly what he feels, especially how he feels about Eames. And Arthur will always be able to do the same, even though his strength lies in research, there will always be those people who he’ll be able to read, and Eames will always be at the top of that list.

And of course there’s something else Eames has to show him. Because that couldn’t be all, they couldn’t just go with this, because they will, even though it’s a colossally bad idea. Because in the limited free time they’ve had, Eames and Mal have been doing some shopping in the real world. Mal has quite a bit of money behind her, and she’s been enjoying the feminine company. She’s bought Eames a lot of things, beautiful clothes for both male and female. Because even though he has the dream world, that isn’t real, and he has to be himself in the real world, too. So he has the clothes. And it’s one thing to be a woman in dreams, because that could be curiosity or kinkiness, because you get all sorts in dreams, but Eames needs to be sure (although he doesn’t think it will be a problem, not really), he has to know that Arthur really knows what he’s getting into.

So he helps Arthur up off the floor, and takes him in to the spare bedroom. And they go in, and Arthur looks to the bed, and Eames wants that, of course he does, but first there’s the other thing. The closet in here is stuffed full of clothes. Some are Mal’s, old ones that she doesn’t wear but is too fond of to let go of, and some are Dom’s, overflow from the things he’s left in Mal’s room. But most of them are Eames’. There are a range of things here, clothes for both male and female, mostly high fashion, expensive things that Mal has bought for him, or the few things Eames has been able to afford on his own from his limited salary. The dresses are exactly fitted to his size, and they’re styled in such a way that they hide the broad shoulders he’s developed from the military, emphasising his good features. There’s a wide range here, suits and dresses and skirts and jeans, underwear and shoes. And the shoes were the worst part, because women’s shoes are not meant to hold men’s weight. But they sourced some, from a place in England, and they work well enough.

When Eames opens the doors, several things fall out. Some of them are men’s clothes, obviously Eames’ size and style (easy enough to tell, even when he spends most of his time in military uniform). The other few things consist of one stiletto, huge, obviously too big for most women, and some lingerie and a skirt, half of a business suit for a woman. And it’s just like Mal to have a closet like this, stuffed full of clothes, haphazard even with her treatment of hideously expensive designer clothes, that for a moment Arthur just looks confused, doesn’t click. And then he picks up the shoe, and looks closely at it. Eames can see the exact moment he understands. But, as always, as has been the theme of their interactions, Arthur looks at first surprised, then confused, but always, behind his eyes, the hint of lust. He goes rummaging around in the closet, still holding the one stiletto, until he finds another one, the matching one, and pulls them both out.

They’re blood red pumps, simple and classic, made of satin, lined with leather. They’re one of the more comfortable, practical pairs. Arthur holds them out, considering, and then he hands them to Eames, diving back into the pile of clothes, searching through them. He comes back out with a lacy red shift and matching panties, the same colour as the shoes. And the look on his face now is of unmistakable lust, as he holds out the clothes to Eames. Eames takes the hint, and takes them from him, going in to the adjacent bathroom to change.

He takes his time. He puts on the clothes, the shoes, and then he pulls out the make-up kit from under the sink, applies some light touches. He considers some of the other things in here – a few pieces of jewellery, a few wigs that Mal bought him out of interest, but ultimately discards them, choosing to stay as he is for now.

When he emerges, Arthur is perched on the edge of the bed. He is still fully dressed, but he’s taken off his jacket, and he looks less militaristic. Eames appreciates the effort.

Eames leans in the doorway, cocks his hip a little. The movement is enough to draw Arthur’s eye. He looks up, and then he breathes in really deeply. Eames walks over to him, swaying his hips a little, enjoying the feeling, both of the clothes and Arthur’s eyes on him. Arthur reaches up, rests his hands on Eames’ hips. He tugs a little, and Eames goes down, perching just lightly on Arthur’s lap. Arthur runs his hands up Eames’ sides, resting them on his waist. And it’s nice, because Arthur looks tiny, but he’s military, he can hold Eames’ weight without trouble. And then he leans up slightly, presses his lips gently to Eames’. Eames deepens the kiss, tilts his head. He presses his torso against Arthur’s, and they fall back against the bed.

*

When he wakes up, later, it’s well after dark. The curtains are still open, and the moonlight is shining in. It’s nice though, not blinding. Arthur is standing by the window, looking out at Mal’s tiny back yard garden. He’s wearing pants, but nothing else. They’re Eames’ pants, actually, a really old pair of sweat pants that he’s had since he was a teenager, which don’t really fit him anymore, but are the perfect size for Arthur. And it’s really something, to see Arthur in his clothes.

Eames’ clothes, both the things he was wearing before and the lingerie, are scattered across the floor. One of the shoes has made its way almost to the door. Even the covers are scattered everywhere, except one of the sheets, which is tangled around Eames’ legs, and one of the pillows, which Eames is lying half off, his arm curled around it loosely.

Eames doesn’t make a sound, just watches Arthur from the bed. He looks very young in the moonlight. He must know Eames is awake, would have sensed his movement when he initially woke, despite his efforts to keep quiet since then, but he doesn’t move, just keeps looking out the window. Eames gets up, wraps the sheet around his waist, and goes over to him. He waits just behind him, uncertain as to what Arthur will do, unsure even now about whether he’ll stick around, freak out, be okay with all this. It’s getting a bit late for denial and excuses at this stage, but Eames has to go through everything, just to make sure.

Arthur is standing a little stiffly, but he’s mostly relaxed. The alert posture is probably just army residue, Eames supposes. Arthur doesn’t actually appear to be concerned that Eames in particular is behind him. So he moves closer, slides his arms loosely around Arthur’s waist. And, after a moment, Arthur relaxes into his hold, leaning back against his chest. Eames holds him a little tighter. They don’t say anything. Eventually Eames draws him away from the window, and they go back to bed, first collecting all the covers, drawing them back up and putting them in some semblance of order. Eames doesn’t usually sleep here, he has his own place (and they’ll notice if he doesn’t come back, because it’s controlled by the SAS, lots of apartments all in one building in an effort to both protect and, in Eames’ case, keep an eye on them, but he’s never been missed before and right now he doesn’t really care all that much) but Mal won’t mind, not this once, not when this was what she was angling for in the first place. And Mal or Dom will wake them, when they have to head in. Nobody will be any the wiser.

So they go back to the bed, and they, after a moments awkward shuffling, curl around each other, Eames on his back and Arthur resting on his chest, arms around each other. And the bed isn’t particularly comfortable, is still Mal’s spare bed in a room she never uses, a place she never really has guests, but it’s big enough for the two of them, and it has covers and pillows and all the essentials. It’ll do. So they drift off, and there’s still that doubt, of course, when your standard is the only other girl you’ve ever dated, but for now, everything is going right. Eames isn’t going to jinx it, or obsess over what could go wrong. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s comfortable and sleepy, and Arthur has proven himself more than trustworthy. So they’ll sleep for now, and see how things are in the morning. Besides, if one or the other of them fucks up, Mal will just shoot them in the kneecaps, and possibly not in a dream, which should be deterrent enough.

When Eames wakes up again, it’s morning. Early morning, by the looks of it, the sun just beginning to shine through the window. It’s about the time Eames would usually get up, maybe slightly later, having been trained into it, of course, by years with the army. And Arthur is awake, too, with the same training, and he looks alert, which could mean he’s been awake for a while. There’s a difference between that instinctive alertness when you just wake up, and the calm alertness and awareness of your surroundings achieved after having been awake and having surveyed your surroundings sufficiently. Arthur has the second look about him, and Eames has to do the same, instinctively, survey the room, even though he’s sure it’s fine. He’s more occupied with the fact that Arthur is clearly awake, has been so for a decent amount of time, and he hasn’t moved or gone anywhere or even looks like he wants to. And he might have had a little trouble moving, because they’ve only moved a little in the night, and they’re lying down, now, fully, curled up face to face, and Eames probably would have felt him move, but he could have done it, could have moved or left, and even if Eames had noticed he wouldn’t have stopped him, would have let him leave. And then Arthur would have realised, of course, and it would have made things horrendously awkward, but they would have had to deal with it. Maybe shot each other in the kneecaps a few times, in the dreamscape of course. Or Mal would have dealt with them, either at work or when either of them tried to leave, because she’s determined like that, even to the point of irritation and frustration. But it’s all irrelevant, at least for now, because neither of them have left, they’re both still here, although they will have to get up soon. Go in to the project, the University, and pretend like nothing happened, because it’s unprofessional and Arthur is a member of the American military, who would frown on their behaviour, even more so if they knew the exact details of what they’d been doing. Although they will be able to spend time together, maybe find out if there really are any deserted tiny rooms in the back corridors, because they are colleagues and everyone knows how beautiful French Mal has adopted the tiny, efficient American grunt and how Eames and Mal are friends, too. It won’t be suspicious if they all spend time together, and it could in fact be for the good if they see Arthur and Eames trying to get along better.

And this is what happens, in the end. The two of them get up, shower, get dressed. They emerge into the kitchen to find a sleepy but smug Mal (because she of course would have heard everything) and a completely exhausted looking Dom standing about, sipping half-heartedly at coffee and watching them come through the door. Dom glares, a little, and Eames feels a little sorry for him, because he’s always been a light sleeper, awakened by the slightest noise, and although Eames doesn’t think he was there initially, his late arrival home would have meant he was getting to sleep just as they were waking up for the first time, and his tossing and turning would have woken Mal, who would have smugly filled him in on every detail, and then he would have been kept awake by thinking about it all and not slept very well, in the end. Arthur’s problems can often be attributed to a limited imagination, but Dom’s can almost always be attributed to having too much imagination, and for thinking things over too much. That’s partly Mal’s influence, making him think more, but because it’s Dom, he always has to take her advice completely to heart and to every extreme.

But Dom doesn’t say anything to them, and Mal just smiles smugly and hands them each a cup of coffee, which is one of the few things Mal is very, very good at in the kitchen. A lot of the rest of the time, they don’t have the time to spend in the kitchen, so they either don’t develop the skills necessary or simply don’t get the chance to practice them. Eames takes the opportunity to cook whenever he can, though, because he of course was not allowed to, growing up, and he still can’t quite help but feel the vaguest hint of satisfaction at this rebellion against his parents. Even though of course neither of them have any idea about it at all, and Eames hasn’t spoken to either of them except through a few brief emails since he joined the army. They just aren’t a big part of his life anymore. His father doesn’t need to be, now that he’s eighteen, and doesn’t really want to be, not since he remarried two years ago and gained a far more, in his opinion, suitable son from his new wife’s first marriage. His mother has just faded out. She has another child now, too, a baby girl called Anna. Eames has never met her. She probably won’t be allowed to cook either.

They certainly won’t have time to cook this morning. They very rarely do, which is why breakfast these days is usually coffee and whatever they can grab that’s quick and filling. They try to eat, because they rarely get the chance (or they forget) during the day. And although it’s rushed, although they have to leave soon, and they’ll have to split up, not arrive together, this is still nice, could still become an easy morning ritual. And it’s comfortable, for a while, and then they have to leave, and go back to the project, to the University.

They split up (well, Eames and Arthur split off from the group, and then from each other), just a few blocks away from Mal’s place. Several people from the dream research project live around here, because it’s relatively close to the University, and they don’t want to be spotted, even by civilians. So they split up.

Before they do, though, before they switch into work mode, Eames, taking a risk, pulls Arthur into a tiny side street, letting Mal and Dom go on ahead. And Arthur just smiles at him, unguarded at this moment, and sometimes it really just is this easy. So Eames, who’d pulled him aside just to say goodbye, kisses him. It’s a bad idea, he knows it’s a bad idea, but for once, all those little doubtful nagging voices that so often sound like Charlotte are silenced, and he just kisses Arthur, just softly, gently. And Arthur gives, relaxes into the kiss and then returns it, the brief press of lips against lips, the faint smacking noise of lips parting. And then they split up.

Next

Fic: Janus, Inception, Arthur/Eames, R - Part 4

wayoffbase — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:43:47 GMT

The day goes fine. It’s a little dull, now that the new discoveries have dried up, and because Eames wants to be anywhere else, preferably somewhere with Arthur. But they do well enough, and then, when they can finally leave for the day, Mal, who is staying behind with Dom to run some simulations, slips Arthur a spare key (because they’ve been working with him all day, because they can, because they are his friends and they are civilians and it’s easy for them). Eames already knows all their security codes, because Mal trusts him (well, he knows Mal’s and, in effect, Dom’s, because although he has his own place he is rarely there), and because she can be slightly careless, anyway, and made no attempt to hide them from him, which is sweet and somewhat adorable but also not a particularly helpful characteristic for someone working on a top secret military project. And so they can use her apartment as an escape. This time, though, they should probably return home at some point, so as to avoid rousing suspicion. But they have time.

Arthur returns the key the next morning, slipping it to Mal when they meet for coffee at midday. And she invites Eames, and they stage a getting to know you less antagonistically show for the benefit of everyone else. They part at a stage of polite camaraderie, although it’s impossible to resist a slight smile and a casual brush of hands. And they leave separately at the end of the day, of course, although this time they smile politely at each other and nod. Eames’ superior officer congratulates him on attempting to work better with the Americans. Eames just smiles. And then he goes to Mal’s, where Arthur will be waiting.

He arrives to see Arthur holding a key and looking confused. On the surface, it looks like Mal’s key, but there are subtle differences. And then there’s the note she’s left them, with an address.

It’s clearly Mal’s handwriting, and they have no real reason to be suspicious (aside from years in the military) so they follow her directions to a small house, quaint and a little run down. Eames has never been here before, Mal has never mentioned anything. But the address matches, and the key fits the door.

Once they get inside, there are further instructions. Apparently, Mal has rented them a house. And she is independently wealthy, can do what she likes with her money, but this must be costing her a lot. It isn’t furnished beyond the basics, but it has a bed and some chairs and food in the cupboards (according to her extremely detailed note). All Eames’ things, at least the ones he kept at Mal’s, are here, and some of Arthur’s are too, and Eames does not want to know how she got those. Arthur obviously didn’t give them to her, because he looks just as surprised as Eames, although he has moved on to exploring the house properly.

Eames goes upstairs. Sure enough, there is a bed, and it looks exactly to Mal’s taste, old style French. It’s tastefully decorated in blues and greys, and the covers are already drawn back. Mal is not subtle, except when she wants to be.

Eames can hear Arthur moving about downstairs, but he just waits, standing in the middle of the room, until he hears Arthur come up the stairs. Then he moves towards the wardrobe. Sure enough, just as Mal said, all his things are here, everything they’ve bought together. The red slip he wore the other evening is hanging up, still slightly creased. Everything is in some semblance of order, for now, most of it packed into various boxes. Mal has hung a few things up, and Eames notices with amusement that they are all things, both male and female clothing, shoes, and the like (but mostly underwear, and mostly the more high end or skimpy items) that will match with the bed clothes in some manner. After some consideration, he selects a steel grey set of silk boxers and a matching lace edged singlet. They’re fairly androgynous, but judging by the tag (and, of course, the subtle lace edging) they are intended for women. They suit his mood, at the moment.

Eames hears Arthur come into the room, sense him shift as he relaxes into the atmosphere. He stays in the doorway, though, and watches Eames change. Eames goes slowly, gives him a bit of a show, and he hears Arthur laugh, softly. And then he comes over, when Eames is dressed, and draws him back to the bed. And if Arthur was ever interested in women, he would have made the perfect boyfriend, because he knows exactly how to treat a lady.

They sleep (sort of, for the most part) that night. And then they go back in to the project the next day, mostly happy and rested and serene.

They continue in this way for most of that year. Mal continues to pay their rent, and they spend most of their time at the house. They buy more and more things, furniture and clothes and the like, making it their own and personalising it. They put furniture in all the rooms, eventually, and keep food in the cupboards. Eames cooks for them more than once, and he’s always the one who cooks, because Arthur, despite his very best efforts, can make little more than toast and the occasional boiled egg. Eames teaches him to make a few more advanced things, but, simply due to innate talent and creativity, and years of practice, Eames is far better, and so he usually does most of the cooking. Arthur, in exchange, does most of the cleaning, his attention to detail giving him plenty of talent in this area.

Due to some sneaky manoeuvring on Miles’ behalf, mainly, the University convinces the military to give everyone the two weeks over Christmas and New Years off. Those who don’t celebrate those particular holidays, or celebrate them at a different time, are given the option of taking the time off to go home or relax, or of working over the Christmas period (because they want some people to stay around and run simulations, keep things going anyway) and going home over another major holiday. Mal and Dom, whose only family is each other and Miles, elect to stay in Paris and go in to work part time, although they take Christmas Day off. Arthur and Eames, who both have family in other countries but who, as a general rule, wouldn’t want to see them over Christmas or at any time, and who will have a far more relaxing time in Paris than they would anywhere else, also elect to stay.

They keep a similar schedule to Mal and Dom, and the four of them spend time Christmas shopping, relaxing, and enjoying Paris at Christmas. On Christmas Day they celebrate at Arthur and Eames’ house, just the four of them, and, for a brief time over lunch, Miles joins them. They exchange presents, first the more public ones in front of Miles and then, later on in private, the more personal ones that only the four of them should see. And Eames has to laugh, because Arthur and Dom clearly went shopping together for moral support, because their gifts (both boxes of expensive lingerie) show both none of Mal’s influence and a desperate effort to please and frantically select something they hope their significant other will enjoy. They end the evening curled in front of the fire, watching snow fall outside the windows, lazily half drinking the bottle of brandy and several glasses of the egg nog Mal dug up, picking at the leftovers from lunch, despite their insistence that they couldn’t possibly eat anymore, really. And then they fall asleep there, the four of them piled together in front of the fire, watching it slowly die down. Eames wakes briefly in the middle of the night to Arthur tucking a blanket around Mal and Dom, and grasping his hand to lead him up to bed.

When they wake up in the morning, the snow has completely covered everything. Mal makes the executive decision that they’ll all stay home, because although they could make the effort to go in to the University, none of them really want to. So they stay at Arthur and Eames’, and eat the last of the leftovers, and drink too much wine. They receive a few calls, work and personal, and they do achieve some things, but they still don’t leave. Mal and Dom sleep there again. And that’s something else they’ve collected, over time, is a spare bed, and tonight Mal and Dom actually make it there.

Eames wakes early the next morning to see that the snow, for the most part, has cleared, and that the sun is shining. The air is still freezing, and the fire has died down in the night. The sun is just rising. Eames slips out of bed, trying not to disturb Arthur. He makes it to the door, slipping on a dressing gown before he goes downstairs to relight the fire. Arthur stirs, briefly, before rolling back over and going back to sleep. And it’s so nice to see him so relaxed, to know that he can just sleep here and not wake up at the slightest noise, that he’s so comfortable. Eames leaves him to it. They don’t have to be anywhere for a few hours yet, but they should go in to the offices today, so Eames decides to start breakfast. He’s just adding eggs to the pan when Dom comes in to the kitchen.

Dom is still a little wary of Eames. He clearly respects him and admires his abilities, and can work with him just fine in a professional capacity, but it’s completely obvious that he just doesn’t understand Eames and his ‘lifestyle’ choices. He tries, obviously, mostly for Mal’s sake, and because he does like Eames and they do get along generally quite well. But for all his attitude, Eames doesn’t like to make people too uncomfortable, which is why he’s wearing a robe over the things Arthur bought him for Christmas. Also, they are a bit skimpy.

Dom looks concerned. And he always looks quite sombre, and when he smiles it’s usually due to Mal and something she has done, and occasionally when Arthur does something impressive in the dreamscape (although that’s more of a proud parent smile, and when Mal and Dom have kids, as they inevitably will, Dom is going to be both the most overbearing and the most proud parent in the world), but this is a far more concerned than usual look. He’s holding his cell phone, and the call has been disconnected on the other end, but Dom clearly hasn’t gained the presence of mind to shut off the call on this end. So Eames takes the phone, shuts off the call. Directs Dom to a chair and sits him down, hands him a cup of coffee. Dom goes to drink it, and Eames has to stop him from drinking it, straight and boiling hot. He adds milk, adds sugar, hands it back. Dom stares at it like he has no idea what to do with it anymore.

It transpires that, over the Christmas break, some reshuffling has gone on. Several of the higher ups have been moved around, new people have been hired. The head of the SAS died in a car accident on the snowy roads. The University has lost a lot of power over the project, and they’ve decided to move the research facility onto a nearby military base. They’ll still be keeping on most of their civilian contractors, Mal, Dom, and Miles included, although Miles’ work at the University will mean he’ll be spending less time on the dream share project itself. He will be working on a teaching program for it, however. And they’ll be doing security tests. They wouldn’t give Miles any specific details, and so he called Dom with what he knew, knowing they would all appreciate the warning. But they’ve significantly developed the ability to steal things from people’s minds, they now know what to look for, and so they’ll be searching people’s minds, those who’ve been working on the project the longest, working on the most top secret aspects. They’ll get to see how those techniques they’ve been working on so painstakingly work on their own minds. The new head of the project, a man called Alan Halswell, wants to know every aspect of his co-workers minds, ostensibly to discover any potential security risks. There’s plenty of unanswered questions here, of course, like why now, but Eames knows they won’t get any answers. The military will, though. Extraction is Dom’s particular speciality, and he’s very good at what he does. He comes up with the best techniques, and then he teaches them to other people. And even if he’s chosen to perform Eames’ security test, he won’t be able to do Mal’s or Arthur’s, because people know they are friends, and they’ve got just as much to hide as Eames. It’s nothing that will be a security risk, of course, but things like Eames predilection for high fashion are things that the army are not fond of, as general rule. And they could make his life very unpleasant.

And Dom obviously has realised this, but this is apparently not the worst of it, or at least it would be from Mal’s perspective. Because (and they should have guessed, really) Dom has been taking work on the side, his insatiable curiosity and desire to spend as much time in the dream world as possible leading him to take jobs outside the University, some of which are not strictly legal. And of course he’ll get in trouble, he’ll get kicked off the project, get in trouble, go to prison. He’ll lose everything. And Mal will lose everything.

And then Eames turns around, warned by the changing expression on Dom’s face and the shift of the floorboards, and sees Arthur standing in the doorway. He’s obviously been there for a while, seen and heard enough to piece together what’s going on. And he’s got that look that he gets on his face, that determined, focussed, single minded look. The one that means he’s decided on a single course of action, and he’s going to stick to it, and nothing is going to change his mind. And he’s looking partly at Dom, partly at Eames, and he looks sorry, when he looks at Eames, and determined when he looks at Dom. And Eames can see it, can see exactly what he’s going to do. And he sees the future stretching ahead, sees Arthur taking the fall for Dom, not letting him take responsibility, helping him run away, over and over and over, and he can’t stand it.

And he isn’t going to hit Dom, because that won’t solve anything, and Arthur won’t speak to him. But he dearly wants to, even more so now that he can see in Dom’s face that he’s going to let Arthur do it. And Eames doesn’t know how they’ll do it, but he expects that Dom has the talent to switch the information into Arthur’s mind, somehow. And then Arthur will go to prison, and he won’t want to, but he will, because he doesn’t know how to get out of things like this, not really. He might think he knows, might think he has the time to do enough research to find a way out, but he doesn’t. And Eames won’t let him take this fall.

(He finds out later that Mal is pregnant, and that Dom can’t go anywhere, doesn’t know what to do, needs to give her stability, but it doesn’t make a difference in the end, by that point, and it wouldn’t have mattered at the time. They would have found another way.)

So he steals Dom’s phone. Not his work phone, but his private phone. It’s incredibly simple – Dom is still in shock, still worried, although slightly less so now that Arthur has apparently agreed to take the fall. But he is still out of it enough that he doesn’t notice Eames slipping his phone into his pocket instead of handing it back after disconnecting Miles’ call. Eames makes quiet excuses, leaves Dom and Arthur in the kitchen to concoct whatever plan they’re thinking of creating between them. It won’t matter, in the end. And he knows this might not work, that he might not be able to get Arthur out of here, that Arthur might hate him for betraying Dom, but he can’t think about that now.

He goes to see Mal. She’s just waking up, still sleepy and bleary eyed. She must have heard Dom leave, and woken, but she’s always been slow to wake. She likes to sleep. And he knows he’ll need her on his side for this, and he shouldn’t be manipulating people like this, but, and it surprises him (although it doesn’t, really) that he’d do anything for Arthur. And he knows Mal will understand, because she’d do anything for Dom, she’d do this for him. She wouldn’t let anyone who didn’t deserve it take the fall, however, because she’s a good person, at heart. So he tells her what’s happening, and what he intends to do. And then he leaves, goes into the bathroom, and starts making calls.

Dom is not subtle. His ‘criminal contacts’ are listed under obviously suspicious names, and if he wants Arthur to take the fall, they’re going to have to do a lot of work, because Arthur would never be this sloppy or stupid. Dom’s system is ridiculously easy to infiltrate and learn. He wouldn’t ever make a decent real criminal. But he’ll probably have Arthur’s help, unless Eames does something. So he sets up some meetings. And he knows how this goes, has never dealt with French criminals specifically, but he knew people that sound a lot like these people, back in his clubbing days with Charlotte in London. And he’s always been very good at improvising. He’ll figure something out. And if not, he is armed, and he knows how to fight his way out. So he sets up some meetings, contacting everyone likely sounding on Dom’s contact list.

Many of them don’t reply, apparently being more suspicious than Dom gave them credit for. But he gets a few hits, and he goes to meet with them. And he’s going to have to get out of here, too, because what he’s doing here, on top of what he’s already got to hide, is going to make him even more wanted than Dom will be.

He goes to leave the house later, making excuses about errands he has to run before heading in to the office. Arthur looks focussed, although he does spare Eames a brief, slightly confused and suspicious look before he leaves with the others. Which is why, when Eames is about three blocks away from the house, he isn’t surprised to see Arthur coming out of an alleyway ahead of him. And Eames doesn’t even try to pretend he was running errands or doing anything productive or helpful, he just stops, and waits for Arthur to approach him.

“Funny place to be running errands,” Arthur says.

And it is, really. This is the slightly dodgier area of town, and if he’d wanted to do any of the errands he’d said he was going to do, he would have headed in the other direction, to a small, upmarket collection of stalls. There isn’t much in the way of useful household items in this area of town, at least not anything they might need or that isn’t on its fifth or sixth owner. So Eames doesn’t try to argue with Arthur, just falls into step beside him. Arthur walks with him, although he does ask, “Where are we going?”

“Trust me,” Eames says, and Arthur looks at him. Just looks, and of course Eames should have known better than to say anything like that. So instead he tells him, “I’m not going to let you take the fall for Dom.”

Arthur looks furious. And Eames can see the whole speech forming, can hear it exactly, accusations of being overbearing and how Eames can’t make these decisions for him and so on and so forth. So he stops, grabs Arthur’s shirt collar, and pulls him in to a fierce kiss. And Arthur melts into it, instantly, stops fighting and arguing and Eames doesn’t have to say it, but he does anyway, pulls away and tells him “I love you, you complete idiot,” and Arthur is rendered speechless. It’s convenient that he reacted in such a manner, because Eames knows that now, he’ll listen, won’t have time to gather his thoughts before Eames makes his point.

And Eames has thought about this, in the time between setting up those meetings and coming here. And he knows he can’t stop Arthur, and it’s probably too late now. But he can get him out afterwards, can get them both out and away.

He tells Arthur this, tells him about how he’s free to fulfil his whole heroic complex thing, but Eames is not letting him go to prison, and that he has a plan to get them out of there. Eames feels a little bad, because despite their close relationship, Arthur obviously had no idea about Dom’s criminal activities. He doesn’t look like he had much idea about Eames’ skills in the area either, although he really should have.

It doesn’t take them long to reach their first meeting point, although it’s enough time for Eames to give Arthur the basics. He’ll just have to improvise or go along with Eames at this point, perhaps more of the latter than the former. Eames is uncertain about Arthur’s ability to successfully improvise on the spot. And there’s a lot Eames doesn’t know, like what exactly Dom has been offering these people.

What limited information he has, however, turns out to be right. This man is a rich business man, who frequently travels from London to Paris and back again on business. He isn’t involved in anything illegal, at least not outside the use of dream share technology. He just gets lonely on his business trips, and doesn’t have the time for a real relationship. So Dom had been creating a virtual reality for him, where he could have a regular girlfriend in Paris. It made him happy, gave Dom the chance to explore, and make some money. Eames only hopes Dom wasn’t actually trying to forge anybody, because his forging ability is abysmal, and that would have also been fairly wrong, as Dom is practically a married man, and probably shouldn’t be going about pretending to be other men’s girlfriends, even in a lucid dream. When they go under to look, however (and this man really should know better than to trust apparent criminals and Arthur, who is partially dressed in his army uniform. He’ll learn), it turns out Dom has been manipulating one of the man’s projections, an image of a girl he found attractive in a magazine once or some such thing. And it’s brilliant, really, and it only proves that of course Dom is one of the best, to have come up with this and God knows what else to replace talents he does not possess. Arthur seems impressed, wandering about the dream environment.

Eames is less so. For one, Dom apparently left a PASIV with this man (although it would have been easier than constantly trying to sneak one out of the University, Eames will give him that). Also, he was involved in criminal activity. Although at least he wasn’t performing extraction for this man. Eames hopes this will be the case with the others he’s arranged to meet with, because Dom couldn’t possibly be that bloody stupid. Eames really hopes he couldn’t be. He wants to believe better of him, he really does.

Fortunately, that does turn out to be the case. Most of the people Dom has contact with appear to be wealthy business men who want some sort of fantasy or another. He doesn’t appear to have gotten involved with anything seriously, seriously illegal, thank fuck. Just morally ambiguous and likely to get him arrested by the military. It is also, however, an excellent way to make money.

The prices Dom has been charging are fairly cheap, considering the risks. Eames plans to charge more, but then, he and Arthur are better at this than Dom, except in terms of performing extraction, and there are two of them besides. They can make a living this way. It’s the only way they can, now.

Neither of them will be able to leave this world behind, and they wouldn’t want to anyway, not now, not yet. Besides, neither of them have the skills to do much else, and they don’t have many options left to them. They’ll have even less once Arthur and Dom enact their plan. And Eames would be more than happy to leave now, to run (because they would have had to leave anyway, no doubt, and especially after what they’re doing) and screw Dom and the consequences, but he couldn’t do it, not really.

They leave their details with these men, along with a promise to show them something better than their best dreams. They give them a teaser, before they go. Arthur will build them a dream, and Eames will forge their deepest desires. He won’t let them touch him though, not yet. He won’t ever – he’ll just convince them he has. The mind is very susceptible in the dream scape, and they can convince people of very many things. Either that, or they can convince them it was a particularly frustrating and unsatisfying dream, and only a dream. And then get away with the money. Eames finds it surprisingly easy to let go of any previous scruples he might have had when it comes to protecting and providing a living for Arthur.

And then they return to their house. No one is waiting for them there, no one has noticed them missing yet. And they won’t, probably, not for a few days yet. Eames goes inside to pack up some things, personal items neither of them could bring themselves to leave behind. Arthur goes in to the University, to enact his and Dom’s plan, and to presumably give some excuse for their absence. He won’t tell Eames what exactly the plan is, just in case something goes wrong. Which Eames thinks is sweet, really, because it won’t matter anyway – Eames will get in trouble for everything else they’ll find in his mind, and anyway, he would find a way to get Arthur out of there or they’d both go down together. There’s no other option, in Eames’ mind.

It’s the work of mere minutes for Eames to pack up their things. He doesn’t take much, because they can’t afford to. He leaves their cell phones, laptops, anything they could be traced by. He wipes all the data, after putting anything important onto a USB, which he then hangs around his neck. Most other things they can buy on their way, or they won’t need when they’re on the run. Things like photographs, of which they’ve developed an extensive collection, they won’t be able to take with them, and probably won’t ever see again. Dom and Mal might be able to rescue some of them, keep them for a time when they might be able to come back, when it might be safer in Paris and maybe they’ll have a use for photographs again. But Eames doesn’t want to risk contacting them about it, so he hopes they think of it themselves and come by.

He also hopes Mal grabs some of his lovelier and more expensive clothes, and also some of Arthur’s. Because that’s something else she’d done, was buy clothes for Arthur, equally expensive things to match Eames’ things. And then they’d gone out for dinner, the four of them, two men and two women on a double date. It had been wonderful. Eames wonders, amused, who Mal will spend all her money on now. But they won’t need much of that where they’re going, although Eames does take a few key items – a couple of expensive suits for initial meetings, because they’ll make a good impression. They can, again, hopefully and if all goes well, buy more afterwards. If all does not go well, they’ll probably be dead in a ditch or in prison anyway, so they really won’t need expensive suits. He doesn’t take any of his dresses or anything, because he can’t. He just leaves, goes downstairs, goes outside. Says goodbye to their life here as he goes. And then he locks up, hides the key under the eaves, where Mal or Dom will be able to find it, and then goes to find Arthur. If, and again if, if, if, if, if everything has gone according to plan, Dom will be free with no more than a serious scolding and a week of the silent treatment to endure from Mal, Arthur will be flagged as suspicious but not have been detained yet, at which point he will take a PASIV and run, thus cementing his status as suspicious and a security breach, and taking the heat off everyone else. Eames will of course be suspected as his partner in crime, but hopefully they won’t get caught. They will then meet at their prearranged meeting point on the edge of the city, after which they will proceed to lead any trails on a wild goose chase out into the country. They will then reconvene in another tiny apartment in the city, and start working. They’ll move around a lot.

They meet under a bridge not far from their house. It isn’t in and of itself a suspicious location – it’s actually quite scenic, and it’s a common meeting spot for locals who know and love the area, especially for lovers. And their neighbours know, or have guessed, what they are to each other, because they make no effort to hide it when they’re alone at their house, but they’d be in trouble, of course, if the military caught them here, even just with the implications of the place. However, being exposed as lovers is probably the least of their worries right now.

But nobody finds them there, and nobody follows them. Arthur has successfully taken one of the PASIVs, and the Somnacin to go along with it. They’ll run out eventually, but it isn’t a particularly hard substance to make, as long as you have access to the components and have a basic knowledge of chemistry. This isn’t something either of them has in abundance, but it won’t be too hard to find a chemist that does, and who won’t ask questions or who can be paid off. He’s also grabbed some of the research, the most easily accessed files, on a USB, which could come in handy, either for improving their careers or as leeway if they get caught.

For now, they should be safe. They won’t be missed properly yet, and so far everything is going according to plan. They don’t even appear to have been followed. But they’ll need to be careful, just in case. And it makes Eames feel so paranoid, thinking like this, and he doesn’t want to live like this, but right now he doesn’t see that he has any other choice.

They stop briefly to get food and other basic supplies. Then they split up again, and leave the city by a series of roundabout routes. They agree to meet at Versailles, because it’ll be full of Christmas tourists, and an easy place to get lost. Either that, or the snow will be so bad that only the really dedicated will be able to follow them out there. And that’s one problem, the snow – it makes it very easy to track someone. So they’ll have to stick to the main roads and places that have already been cleared, in order to not leave obvious tracks. They’ll have to steal a car, too, because neither of them own cars, and there aren’t many ways to make it to Versailles on foot. They could take a cab, but they can be unreliable in this weather, and there’s also the risk of a cab driver recognising them and reporting them, or simply driving them straight to the police. If they steal a car, the theft could go unreported, and, if they manage it unseen, they’ll probably never get caught, because the police simply won’t have the time to track down get another stolen car. This is a discussion they’ve had many times, both in theory as an intellectual exercise over their months together, and in the practical sense over the last few hours.

They make it to Versailles, in the end, again without mishap. And Eames is starting to get suspicious, can’t believe their luck, and he’s just starting to think, to hope that this isn’t a dream. Because it could be, they could already have been caught, and in the rush he’s put his totem somewhere odd, and even then he’s never put much stock in totems. And he hasn’t had the time to try a forgery, and it hadn’t even occurred to him until now, which shows how stressed out he is, how panicked despite the calm front he’s desperately trying to portray. So he tries, tries to feel around for that shift, and he can’t grasp it, can’t forge anybody, which is a good sign. At least, in the sense that they aren’t in a dream against their will. Eames would give almost anything for this to not actually be their reality right now (or ever).

They spend the next few hours driving aimlessly around the countryside. They collect a tail (or at least it looks and acts like a tail) at one point, but they manage to lose them and then switch cars. They find a mini-van in black, fairly non-descript, and park it on a side road. They spend the night there.

The next day, they head into Paris. They avoid their old neighbourhood, and any of the neighbourhoods around the University. But they have an appointment, their first one, with one of the men they met with yesterday.

And Eames has moments, several times that day, and in the following years (because they never really stop or go away, even though they get few and far between) where it surprises him how easy this is. How easy he’s found it, they’ve both found it, to slip into the criminal world. For now they aren’t doing anything particularly illegal, at least only in the technical sense, and it’s all towards protecting themselves and their friends, so Eames feels that, for now, they have the moral high ground. But there’s a line, and it’ll be so easy to cross it, one thing after another, and they’ll move on from fantasies, once they’ve got a taste for this life, and into things more dangerous and illegal. Eames has seen it before, saw it in the men and women he met with Charlotte, sneaking out on the town every summer. They had a look about them, like they were constantly screwed up and exhausted and in danger, but also constantly excited and thrilled, like they couldn’t imagine being anywhere else doing anything else. And Eames knows himself well, knows he can get obsessed with things too easily, and the dream world and all its aspects are thrilling enough already, and he knows he’ll always be able to hold on to reality, that won’t ever be a problem, but he also has a feeling that, no matter what he might say or do, he won’t ever be able to let this go. One thing or another, or Arthur, will keep him in the game. And then they’ll cross that line. They’ll want to, or someone will inevitably find out about the other aspects of dream sharing, and they’ll have to do what they have to do in order to avoid getting left behind. But they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it, so to speak. They’ll work it out. Eames has to believe that. He has no idea what Arthur is thinking, really, which worries him a little.

So they take one step at a time. They go to the meeting, with a man called “Charles Monteblain, but just call me Monty, really” a “real friendly bloke” who, despite his name, is from Australia, oddly enough. His family is French, and wealthy, and as their only son and heir, no matter how disgraceful and Australian he might be, they still need him, and still pay for him to come on regular visits to Paris in the hopes of instilling some culture in him. It hasn’t worked, so far. He mostly uses the trips, and the money associated with them, to buy high class prostitutes, and, when he got sick of that, he started using the money to buy Dom. His tastes are also quite unusual, and in the end, it apparently works out cheaper to pay for a dream that it ever does to pay for a girl or guy to do what ‘Monty’ wants them to do. And it was Dom who contacted him, in the end, and Eames has to admire his initiative and the research he apparently did, tracking down people who would use or want his services, who would be able to pay for them, and who wouldn’t sell him out. It’s even more impressive that he managed to do all this without Arthur finding out a thing, because Arthur’s research skills are unparalleled. Although he does have something of a blind spot when it comes to Dom, built of affection and a desire to trust, which explains some of it.

Eames isn’t so sure he wants this man anywhere near a lucid dream with him and Arthur, but the amount of money he’s offering is huge, more than huge, and so it’ll be worth it. They’re only going one layer deep, anyway, because they don’t plan on letting anyone know about multiple layered dreams, not now and not ever, not until the word gets out and they no longer have any choice. They can just shoot themselves out of a dream, anyway. As long as Charles isn’t too unbalanced (and he can’t be, otherwise it would have been physically impossible for Dom to build a stable dream for him), they should be just fine. He seems to be okay, just a run-of-the-mill sadist.

They build him a high class hotel. And when they go under, he looks so impressed, comments “Cobb never built anything this good”. And then he goes to explore. He’ll meet a girl, because the language they’ve been using and the suggestive aspects built into the environment (because it’s a deceptively easy trick, once they figured out how to do it) will convince his mind to create a girl for him in a room upstairs, just at the point where he’s started to get frustrated. And then he can have his fun, and get off, and then Eames and Arthur will disappear with the other half of the money he’s holding back until the dream is over. Meanwhile, Arthur and Eames will wait downstairs in the hotel, make sure the dream stays stable and nothing goes wrong.

And the dream goes perfectly, although it gets the most horrible feel to it, when he finally finds the girl and starts in on what he wants to do to her. And they’re there for hours, feeling that slimy feeling across their skin, and it’s the first time it’s really been like that, and they have to fight to keep under their own influence, and not succumb to this. And it’s probably because they’ve only ever worked with people who understand this technology intimately, who have perfect control over themselves in a dream environment, and who’ve never really been pushed like this, or really excited in any way except perhaps intellectually in a dream, but neither of them are used to this feeling, to the subject’s feelings invading the dream.

They appear to be in the dream for several hours, but in reality it’s perhaps ten minutes. They’re set up in a hotel room they’ve rented for the occasion, because it’s never a good idea to place complete trust in the client and any location they might pick. It’s a hotel they’ve been in before, in which they booked a suite once, in order to have a bit of a holiday, and they can trust them to be discreet. If you pay enough money (or the client does) they won’t ask you any questions, and they won’t disturb you or let anyone else disturb you.

Unless, of course, they can’t stop them. Like, for instance, when they are armed.

Which is why, when Charles is finished in his dream, and the sedative wears off, they wake up surrounded.

They don’t look like military, but of course appearances can be deceiving. Also, they’re dressed in civilian clothing, non-descript browns and greys, smart and tidy and unnoticeable. They’ve had similar training to Eames, in the SAS, but they aren’t anyone Eames knows. They could just as easily be private contractors. They could be nearly anyone. Arthur doesn’t look like he recognises them either.

Charles, on the other hand, looks halfway between terrified and smug. It’s a look common to his particular brand of snot nosed kid, something Eames has been expecting to pop up at some point or another. Because Charles is quite young, is probably younger than Arthur, although he wouldn’t want them to think so. But his facial expressions, his body language, is what gives him away in the end. The only thing left to discover is why, exactly, he’s wearing this particular facial expression. It could be bravado, false and foolish cocky confidence in the face of danger – and, actually, in fact, that’s exactly what it is. The only question is, who, exactly, is the danger. Because it wouldn’t surprise Eames if the little shit had decided to try and double cross them, just for fun, not for profit or any moral reasons, objections to criminal activity. It could even be bribery, blackmail just in case they decide to go to the police with what they know about him.

And then it turns out that’s exactly what he’s done. He’s decided to set them up, but just for fun. He knows they can’t do anything to him, not with this much firepower behind him, and not in the waking world, not if they want to get out of here alive and without a criminal record. And this man is more psychotic than they’d thought, and Dom is bloody lucky he never came up against this, never saw this side of the client. But what he doesn’t know, what they didn’t tell him, is that, despite what they told him, they’ve put another layer into this dream. This isn’t reality. And those are just projections, his subconscious giving away his plans in the waking world, giving them advance warning, so they’ll be prepared when they wake up. And he’s looking cocky as fuck, now, most of the terror gone.

And then Eames pulls out his gun and shoots him in the face. He shoots Arthur first, just to give them someone in the waking world. Then he shoots Charles, because the little shit deserves it. And then he shoots himself, and wakes up in the real hotel room.

Arthur is already up and moving. Despite the extra time they built into the dream, they don’t have much time. Charles is already waking up, although he should be groggy and disoriented for a while. Also, he hopefully won’t remember the exact details of the dream, or he’ll explain it away. Dreams are notoriously hard to remember, unless you’re trained to do so. Luckily, both of them now possess the ability to wake up quickly and the ability to remember. So they pack up, quickly and quietly, and leave. A helpful staff member points them to a back entrance, signalling the presence of men with guns in the foyer. They tip him generously with the cash they helped themselves to out of Charles’ bag, everything he had on him, probably more than they’d agreed on as the price. And then they slip away.

The next day, Charles books another appointment. He also wires them a bonus, into a Swiss account he’s set up. They move the money, of course, through a series of banks, before taking out the cash and moving it elsewhere. And it seems Arthur’s had some back up plans in place for a while, really basic ones, mostly involving money, because he has the ability to do all this. Eames doesn’t ask, but Arthur explains anyway, about his family and growing up with a mix of Wall Street business men and mob criminals and thus the ability to be both paranoid, efficient, and have really good taste in expensive things. And they accept the appointment. What choice do they have? It means Charles calls off the hit, anyway.

Charles also introduces them to a series of other clients, many more depraved than he is, but several less depraved. Some are fairly vanilla. They work out a charging scheme for each of them, first a basic hourly rate (an hour in the dream, not in the real world), and then they charge for specific things on top of that. It becomes quite efficient, quite specific. And it becomes all about sex. It’s all anyone wants, in the end. Most anything else, they can get in real life, but the specific fulfilment of their sexual fantasies, that is left to the dream world. They do get the occasional client who wants to, say, pretend to be Indiana Jones, but in the end it almost always comes back to sex. Even Indiana Jones gets the girl in the end.

None of their jobs come quite as close to the wire as the first job they did for Charles. They have to test a few of the other clients, just to make sure, but most of them don’t react quite as extremely. Usually, if they get anything on the first level, it’s a fear about a wife or a girlfriend discovering them, and either leaving them because technically, this is cheating, or finding out how truly odd their significant other’s sexual preferences really are. But nothing else goes wrong, really, ever. They make their way.

They have a few close shaves with the law and the military. They’re seriously wanted by the authorities by now, both because of their original apparent offences and because of what they’ve been doing now. But they’ve made enough money and contacts to either control people or disappear, and they maintain a low profile.

Besides, they’ve discovered that they can just make people forget them, or at least not quite remember exactly what they looked like. They can always remember a phone number, or some contact detail, should they need to contact them again. Some of those details, unfortunately, lead the authorities at least close to them. But they always manage to escape in time. Besides, they’ve managed to set up quite the successful business in Paris, and they’d prefer not to leave if they don’t have to.

They also have a close shave of a different kind.

Eames is walking back to their temporary base after having deposited some money in one of their numerous bank accounts. They mix up their methods of doing so, but every so often they do things in person. If anything, it makes them look less suspicious, because nobody suspects the ordinary person who deposits money into an account in an old woman’s name every so often. Eames also makes a detour to the shops, because they are out of milk. A life of crime is incredibly exciting.

He is just exiting the small supermarket, armed with milk and a few other essentials, when he sees her. Charlotte.

And he knew she was here, in Paris, has known all along, hasn’t been able to forget. But he hasn’t seen her before, hasn’t had any reason to cross paths with her. Even if he had, he would have avoided her.

She doesn’t see him. He probably looks quite different now, anyway, and besides, she’s used to him in women’s clothes. And he doesn’t regret leaving her behind, not anymore, because what he’s got now is so much better, but seeing her still sets off a wave of nostalgia. Because she looks exactly the same as she always has.

And he’s kept track of her, a little. And she’s become quite successful in the ballet world, dancing lead roles. She still appears to be with Sophie. She looks happy.

And then she turns around, just briefly, and spots him. And a vague flash of recognition appears in her eyes, but Eames, coward that he is, ducks down an alleyway, and walks quickly away, not once looking behind him. It shakes him up, though.

And either Arthur knows him well, or he just isn’t good at hiding his emotions, even now, when it comes to Charlotte (Eames suspects a bit of both), because when he returns, Arthur is waiting for him, and almost instantly, he becomes alarmed. And he asks him all these questions, like whether he was followed and are they in danger and do they need to move, and Eames shakes his head, and takes a seat. Seeing that it isn’t anything likely to put them in immediate danger, Arthur sits beside him, and waits.

And they’ve talked about Charlotte before, briefly. They had the whole ‘ex-partners’ conversation when they first got together and then, later, a more specific one about Charlotte and her influence. So Arthur knows the story, and although it was so hard to articulate, he has some idea of how much it fucked Eames up. So he doesn’t have to say much, in the end.

But then Arthur surprises him. And Eames shouldn’t be surprised, not really, and he did notice, when they first went to buy supplies, that Arthur had slipped something in to the pile, something he didn’t want Eames to notice or know about. So Eames had ignored it. And he does it most times they go out and go shopping – slips something or other into the basket and then insists on paying, or won’t let Eames come with him when they have to run errands. And he hasn’t bothered lately, any more, to hide things from Eames, so he knows that Eames knows he’s been up to something. He just doesn’t know what exactly it is.

Evidently, Arthur is about to show him.

He pulls out a non-descript (because this is what their life is about now, being non-descript) brown paper bag, that looks like something you might get from a drugstore. It isn’t very large, so whatever he’s got in there can’t be too bulky. He wouldn’t have been able to hide the purchase of anything too large or expensive, anyway, because it would have shown up both in the real world and in their finances. Eames would have found out. And he could have, really, anyway, if he’d tried. He didn’t, of course.

And then Arthur opens the bag, and pulls out a black container. He pulls out a few other items, and they do look fairly pricey, overall, but nothing horrendously pricey that would have shown up as suspicious or obvious. The packaging is classy but discreet.

Arthur hands Eames the boxes and containers. Eames opens the largest one first, and he thinks, amused, that that’s something ingrained in us from childhood, the desire to open the biggest and most expensive thing first.

Inside is an almost complete set of make-up. It has all the basics – lipstick, lip gloss, foundation, blush, eyeliner, eye shadow, mascara. All in colours Eames likes or that look good on him or both. Arthur knows him well by now, and he knows what Eames will like, what will suit him. He also knows how much Eames has missed expressing himself, and although they have the PASIV, and Eames can go under and become a woman whenever he wants, it isn’t the same, can never be fully satisfying, especially not for long periods of time, because it just isn’t real. And it won’t ever be real. And Eames is okay with that, has learned to accept what he has. But it helps when he has this, when he can change reality, just that little bit.

“I thought,” Arthur says, “I thought maybe we could,” and he pauses, even though he has no reason to be ashamed, can ask whatever he likes, and Eames will at least discuss it with him. Eames watches him, smiles and nods a little, encourages him to go on. “I brought a lot of this when we first left,” Arthur says, “I thought we could use it as a way to settle after a job. But then I forgot about it, or we were too busy running, or I felt it wasn’t complete enough.” He stops there, but Eames knows what he was trying to say, and so he takes out the foundation, and hands it to Arthur. And then he moves closer, shuffles their bodies together on the couch, turns so they’re facing each other.

And they’ve done this before, it’s so familiar, they used to do this occasionally after a bad day at the office, or sometimes just for fun or relaxation. Which is why Arthur knows exactly how to apply Eames’ make-up, knows that first, they’re going to need cleanser, to get rid of some of the dirt from today. And he’s already holding it, is already prepared, and he leans in and slowly wipes the cotton buds, soaked in cleanser, across Eames’ face. And it’s soothing, so soothing, this process, relaxing. And the familiarity of it, the comfort inherent in this action, is soothing Eames already. And this is something Charlotte never did for him, not really, and if she did, it was in the habit of a teacher, rather than a lover and comforter, so that makes it even better. And it’s the stupidest comparison ever, but it almost feels as though Arthur is washing away whatever residue seeing her today left on him. But it feels right, no matter how silly it is, although he won’t be mentioning it to Arthur. Besides, sometimes it’s not worth it. Sometimes there are no words.

Eames hands Arthur the foundation he’s been holding, one that he likes, a brand he’s always been fond of. And Arthur is reaching for it all ready, and Eames is always so amazed about how in sync they can be, sometimes.

And this is the liquid kind of foundation, the type with a powder finish, because it’s quicker, in the end, and sometimes patience is a virtue, but they don’t often care to apply it. Besides, this sort of activity usually leads to sex, and some anticipation and drawing out of the suspense is nice, but not too much. Arthur, in reaction, has become rather quick and efficient at this, just as he is at almost everything else (and with things he is neither quick nor efficient at, and at which he will never become quick or efficient, he often becomes very frustrated). Which is why it’s the work of minutes to efficiently apply and blend the foundation, creating an even and smooth base. And Eames loves the way his skin looks like this, and Arthur knows this, so he holds up the small mirror that comes with one of the foundation compacts so Eames can see. And then he sets it at such an angle on his lap that Eames can watch what Arthur is doing at all stages if he so choses. And this is how they used to do things, back at their house. Back when they had a full length mirror, and it was easier, and the process also involved choosing an outfit. And Arthur doesn’t appear to have collected any clothes, yet, which is fair enough, because they have enough things to transport as it is. But he looks like he regrets it, which is enough. Whatever he does is always enough.

Next he picks up the blush, a dusky rose colour, and pulls out a brush. And he’s really gone all out with this collection, buying almost everything that Eames and Mal and Arthur had collected between them over the years. It’s nowhere near as expensive, of course, because while they might have the kind of money Mal had, they are far more careful about how they spend it. But it’s there. And it’s just enough that they have a wide range to play with, but not so much that it’ll be hard to transport about. But even if they didn’t have much, Arthur would still have a wide range to play with, still have plenty to do, because he’s become very good at this.

Eames can see how confident he is, how sure in his movements. How he knows exactly where to put make up, where to leave bare. He’s highlighting Eames’ cheekbones now, because he knows both what will look good on Eames and what will make him look and feel more feminine, which is after all the reason why he wears make up. And then he takes out some bronzer, and starts highlighting some more. And he’s gotten so good at this, and Eames looks amazing.

Arthur hands him the lip balm next, because it’s seriously difficult to apply lip balm on someone else – it’s much easier to get them to do it themselves. So Eames does, and then he hands it back. And Arthur leaves it for now, gives it time to soak in, before he puts on lipstick.

And this whole time, Arthur is gently touching him, his face, his neck, his torso. He isn’t going too far down, or touching him for too long, because these aren’t sexual touches, not yet. They’re just supposed to be comforting. And Eames isn’t touching him back, because that isn’t how this works – the touching, that part, that is for Arthur. The makeup is for Eames. It’s something for both of them.

Arthur moves on to the eye makeup. And he doesn’t apply much, not this time. Just a few coats of dark mascara, not quite black, and a hint of bronze shadow. He dabs a little white shimmery eye shadow in the corners of Eames’ eyes, because that’s one trick Eames has learned from Mal that has never failed for him. Arthur then observes him for a moment, before applying a line of liquid eyeliner along the top eye lid. And Arthur might not be that creative or imaginative, but in this area, he does well. Besides, clean lines (which Arthur is so good at, especially in the dream scape and in anything else creative) often work well in makeup, and they certainly suit Eames. It’s only a pity that he can’t incorporate paradoxes in some way into his makeup, because that would be nearly perfect.

It wouldn’t surprise Eames in the slightest to find out that Arthur has been planning this for a while now, has been planning this exact look and thinking about it and wanting to do it for as long as he’s been creating and buying this new collection of makeup. But Eames doesn’t mind. Arthur’s intensive planning almost always churns out amazing results, and more than makes up for any lack of imagination and spontaneity.

And then Arthur turns Eames towards the mirror, so he can see.

Next

Fic: Janus, Inception, Arthur/Eames, R - Part 5

wayoffbase — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:27:14 GMT

And Eames looks perfect, still like himself, anybody could tell that it was him, but still feminine and womanly (still like himself, just the more private part, the part he doesn’t share with everyone, only those who he trusts). And it’s a contrast, such a contrast, between his head and face and the rest of him, still in male civilians clothes, slacks and a shirt and a blazer. He really looks something. And it is him, it’s him so perfectly. And then Arthur pulls him around again, having seen Eames smile and the look in his eyes that shows he approves, he really does, and then he kisses him, softly at first and then more firmly, with intent. And that’s so typical of Arthur, just like him, and Eames knows him so well now, knows exactly what he’ll do, and it’s reassuring and it works for them, working through things, going along like this. Eames has never been happier. And then Arthur pulls him close, and Eames goes with it, goes with him, gives in to him, because Arthur has some interesting ideas about gender roles, and he often wants to be in control like this, and to completely give in and give up all control at other times, when Eames appears to be male. And it’s not perfect, and they should probably talk about it, but it works for them for now, at least. It’s just fine. So Eames lets Arthur pull him into his lap, slowly and carefully, and waits until they’ve both settled. And then they kiss, slowly at first, slowly and gently and then faster, and faster, and then Arthur breaks away, and starts sucking on Eames neck, just below the makeup line, and it’s always been a particular quirk of his, that he can’t stand the feeling of make up on his tongue, and so he has to work himself up to tasting it, and is so careful around Eames’ mouth. He’s fine with lipstick, a lot of the time, and that comes off easily anyway, smearing everywhere and becoming tasteless and useless very fast, but he can’t stand the powdery feeling of foundation or blush or bronzer on his tongue. It’s so odd, because he loves applying it, loves the way it looks, and is good at applying it too, but when Eames offered to forgo wearing it, in order to save Arthur’s taste buds, he refused vehemently, wouldn’t even hear of it. So instead he kisses around the makeup, at least until he loses his inhibitions, through alcohol (although not this time, because they don’t have any, either right at this current moment in this current place or at all, in this flat, because it isn’t safe to drink on the job, not really. Not when they are on the run, when they need their wits about them at all times. And they don’t not really, not when they are together like this, so they’ve been forgoing alcohol instead) or just lots of sex (an infinitely more likely possibility. Eames gives him a few minutes before he’s so distracted he just doesn’t care anymore). Either that, or Eames will sweat enough of it off that it doesn’t matter.

Eames drives his hips down, now, pushing their pelvises together. Arthur gasps into the skin of his neck, biting down slightly. This is going to leave a mark, Eames knows, but in dreams when they are working it doesn’t matter, and in real life, well, Eames has make up and can wear it. Both of them know how to skilfully apply concealer. They often have to cover a lot more than a hickey, in order to make Eames look as feminine as he wants to look. They’ve gotten good at what they do, in every aspect.

This particular aspect, what they’re doing right now, Eames has always been good at. People always laugh, because he just looks like one of those guys who would be good at this, would be talented in bed, and, stereotypically, he is. He’s even better in dreams, of course, but then again, so is everybody else. Everything is better in dreams, closer to fantasy than reality. And fantasies are always better, at least until you wake up and realise that it wasn’t real, that it’s all an illusion, in the end, and that illusions never measure up unless you’re inside them. Eames much prefers reality, this reality, no matter how unsatisfactory it might be sometimes. At least it’s real.

It’s real, and it’s here and now, and so Eames drives his hips down again, no too hard, with just enough pressure, or maybe just slightly too lightly, teasing. Arthur squeezes his hips, tightly, warning and yet amused. And this is one of those things Eames can tell, now, can tell what it means when Arthur squeezes his hips just so, when he moves just like that. It’s one of the things Eames loves about this, about being with someone in general. But more about being with Arthur specifically. Because, as cliché as it is, as it sounds, it wasn’t like this with Charlotte, and with all the other people he’s been with, casually, because there was something that just didn’t click with Charlotte, and she or everyone else never stuck around long enough to make it click, to make it work. But with Arthur it’s worked from the start, they’ve always worked, even when they didn’t want to, didn’t like each other at all. They could just click.

So Eames kisses him again, harder, bites his lip, sucks on it slowly. And then he slips his hands under Arthur’s shirt, eases it up and over his head. And his arms get tangled in the sleeves, in the jacket and the shirt, and he struggles for a bit, but Eames doesn’t help him. He likes him like this, likes watching him struggle a little, but only because he knows Arthur will escape eventually, knows he’ll fight his way out. So he pushes him back on the couch, shifts them around until he’s pressing Arthur down, pressing him in to the cushions. Kissing him softly, gently, lightly. And he can feel Arthur moving, working his way out of the restraints, but slowly. Carefully. They know how this works, how they want it to go. Eames takes the opportunity, now, to slip out of his shirt, carefully and slowly, button by button. And then he slides it off his shoulders. And this is something he isn’t quite used to, not yet – the precise intricacies of civilian clothing, to not being trapped in military uniform, trying to get out. It’s easier, this way. They have more freedom, more fun.

And Arthur’s free now, and he grabs Eames, flips them neatly. And Eames doesn’t hate everything about their military training, in the end. He doesn’t hate this.

Arthur proceeds to attack his clothes. And Eames just laughs, because Arthur hates his clothes, he really does. Eames, as he always has, has again begun dressing in rather obnoxious patterns and colours, bright and fun. Arthur, as could probably have been predicted, is a rather, not boring exactly, but classic dresser. And even though, with the money they’ve been making, most of what they’re wearing now is fairly high quality, mostly designer, Arthur still hates Eames’ things. But Eames has no problem with him tearing them off, really. They haven’t had these things long enough for them to truly become Eames’ clothing, and they can always buy more. His real clothes, his real things, are all still back at the apartment (although he hopes Mal saved some of them).

He snuck back, once, to look at their old house. And they’d only been gone three weeks, then, almost, but it already looked abandoned and sad and old. It was still all locked up, but there were signs that someone had been there. The spare key isn’t that hard to find – anyone could have found it, really, anyone could have been there. Eames hasn’t heard from Dom or Mal, even though they have Dom’s phone and thus can be contacted (although it probably isn’t safe), so he has no way of knowing if it was them. It probably wasn’t though, because they have enough military sense to know they’d be followed, and they wouldn’t be able to shake a tail, not easily. So Eames’ things are probably still there, and the military has probably found them by now, and they probably know. He doesn’t know what they’d do with them, though. He doesn’t like to think about it.

So he’ll stick with what they’ve got now, clothes both designer and close to, stylish and fashionable but not theirs yet. And he’ll let Arthur tear them away. And he knows Arthur knows what he’s doing, what’s going on. But he doesn’t say anything, just does what he needs to do. And Arthur, in the end, has something against truly destroying clothes, so he pulls them off roughly instead, and then smoothes his hands up Eames’ legs, slowly. His mouth follows, licking and sucking and biting.

He crawls into Eames’s lap, again. And Eames takes the hint, unbuttons and unzips his pants, slides them over his hips. And Arthur lifts up, and then he kicks them off, and this part is always more glamorous in dreams and movies, but here it’s awkward and sweet and Eames grins at him.

And they’re both naked now, and moving together, and Eames knows Arthur is prepared, is always prepared, but he seems content to move together like this for a while, just enjoying the friction. And so they move together, and they kiss and pant and gasp, and then Eames licks his palm, wraps his hand around both of them, brings them both off.

And it’s still cold now (this room is cold, this part of the city, even though it’s moving into the warmer seasons now), and they begin to feel it, after a while. But they won’t move, don’t want to move, but they have to, soon. They have a new client, one who is willing to pay whatever it takes to employ their services as soon as he gets into the country.

So they lie there, together, getting cold, feeling sticky and sleepy, and then they move, together, into the shower and out on to the street.

The man they’re meeting is called Jones. He didn’t give a first name, just an address and a phone number. So of course Arthur immediately went on to find out everything about him. He could just be cocky, but often, in this world, this line of work, people test them, even when all they want is a threesome with blonde Swedish twins. They want to make sure they’re the best. This guy seems like the type, but even if he isn’t, it’s always good to be prepared. They have to know these people to know what they want. Because Jones hasn’t given them any clue, just said he’d tell them when he met them. But they’ll know, if they need to, before they get there.

And they might be getting cocky, too, but this guy has given them no reason not to be (aside from the fact that it’s stupid and foolish to get cocky, even now, after months and months of success). He’ll want some sort of fantasy, they always do. They always have. It seems an odd phrase to apply to the dream world, but people have no imagination, not really. All they want is sex, one way or another. No one even seems to have considered the other implications of this technology, despite the sort of things they were getting up to at the University. Which is good, it means there isn’t a security breach (no matter the money some of these people possess, it’s a relief to know they haven’t yet found the right price to get past security, if they even know where this technology originated, yet, because it’s all been kept tightly under wraps, no publication or anything, not yet), and if Dom is stupid enough to have continued with his work, he at least isn’t telling people anything he shouldn’t. So people stick to thinking about what they always think about – how can this new invention best get me off?

So Arthur researches this man. And he seems like a typical business man at first, just like all the others – plenty of money, companies all over the world, bored and full of free time as CEO with money to burn and burn and burn. Jones is his real name, surprisingly. He has no family, although he does have a dead ex-wife. No suspicious circumstances, but that doesn’t mean anything. He benefited from her will, in the end. Inherited a good portion of her company, because she had no one else to give it to, and apparently she still trusted him, even though the marriage didn’t work out. She had a son with another man, though, who she apparently also trusted, because he holds majority shares in her company. Which won’t be helpful, most likely, if this man wants a fantasy, but it’s still good to know.

They meet him at a high class hotel near the river. And Eames hates these places, usually, because they’re so incredibly, completely stuck up, and they remind him of his childhood. And the clients don’t usually favour them, either, because being rich tends to cultivate an inherent distrust of other rich people. Also, they seem to feel more badass (and like they know what they’re doing, criminal wise) meeting in dodgy places, which is fine for Arthur and Eames, because it usually gives them the upper hand. But now, with this guy, they’re meeting here, which, judging by his finances, means he’s very sure of himself. He knows exactly what he wants, and they won’t be able to play him like they can most of the others. That won’t make the job harder (it might even be easier), it’ll just be different. Eames is glad that they’re dressed in designer, today. They fit in. They look the part – impressive.

Eames feels a little like a high class hooker, though. Dressed to the nines, striding past the reception desk like they know where they’re going, stepping in to the elevator and coolly pressing the button for the top floor. Their client wants to meet in the penthouse (of course) but they have to get out and then take a separate elevator in order to get there. And it requires a key.

This turns out not to be a problem, because as soon as they reach the top floor, a bellhop slides them one, subtly. Arthur tips him generously. And Eames will admit there are some advantages (although it could just as easily be a disadvantage, and Eames is not letting go of that key) to working in places like this, like privacy and good service and a slim-to-none chance of being disturbed. It also feels very movie-esque, which is somewhat fun if also a little terrifying. People who think they can bend reality this way are often a little difficult to deal with.

When they get into the penthouse, most of the lights are off. The only light is by the window, next to a figure sitting in a chair. And this is getting more Hollywood by the second.

And then something happens that would never happen in a Hollywood movie, or won’t, not yet.

Jones turns around in his chair. And this is fairly ordinary, but then he says, “Tell me about extraction.”

*

They don’t have to take the job.

Eames knows this. They both know this. They could walk away, right now. Nobody else has access to this technology except the researchers, not yet, despite several attempts by other criminals (who obviously had some idea of the other uses of this technology, or else just wanted some of the cash they were earning) to steal the PASIV. Jones would have to give up, or wait until other people got hold of the technology. But there is always the question of how he even heard about extraction, and about what else he might be able to get hold of, with his money and access to information. It would only be a few more, relatively easy steps until he got access to the research project. The only reason they don’t have a security leak at the project yet is because no one has approached them about buying the information or their services. They haven’t had to, because they’ve had Arthur and Eames working outside, and because they were very careful not to let anyone know where they got their technology or training. But the instant someone approached them, a good portion of the workers would sell out straight away, just for the money and the chance to apply some of their work. And then they’d be eaten alive.

And Eames would much prefer to keep an eye on this sort of work, even if he’s not involved. But because there’s no one else, and because Eames doesn’t want anyone else to get involved, he knows they do, in the end, have to take the job.

He can see Arthur, out of the corner of his eye, coming to the same conclusions. He’s probably going through a similar thought process, even. And he can see Jones watching them, can see he knows just what’s going on, knows how this will end. And this really feels like a Hollywood movie, now.

So they turn to Jones, and they say, Arthur says, Eames leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, casual as you please, “We’ll take the job.”

Jones doesn’t smile. But he is happy, he is.

He begins to lay out his plans.

*

As it happens, their extensive research on Jones’ ex-wife and son comes in very handy. And it seems fairly likely that Jones wanted them to find this information, and Eames has never been manipulated in quite this way, like a puppet on a string. He can’t say he likes the feeling all that much. Jones has no humanity, really. But they can’t help it.

Jones, of course, wants to extract his ex-wife’s son’s business secrets. He then wants to blackmail him with something into giving up his shares, so that Jones holds the majority. And Jones doesn’t want the shares, or at least not all of them. He just wants this boy to sell his shares, so he holds no power anymore.

It’s going to be a long term project, and they tell Jones as much. Neither of them has done this before (although they of course don’t tell Jones that, although he probably already knows), and they need to do research, plan and build a dream, set up a time to go under with the target. He doesn’t seem too upset, just tells them to take as long as they need. And that patience worries Eames, because this man has waited a long time, and to still have that kind of patience takes a certain kind of mind set.

But they take him at his word. They have all the time they need, which they cautiously project will be a few months or so. Three months, they tell Jones initially.

Jones sets them up in a warehouse on the outskirts of town. He initially offers them a place near the University, and then another in a nearby neighbourhood, but they express a preference for somewhere a little further away (and not in those particular neighbourhoods, although they don’t tell Jones that), and he accommodates them. Chances are, this was just another test, probably double checking just how sensible they are. It probably also confirmed information Jones has procured on them. He’s obviously done his own research (although they can’t prove anything, because it becomes almost immediately obvious that Jones is only letting them see the information he wants them to see, and his research activities (which they can, at least, tell are happening) are not part of that), and they probably aren’t too difficult to find basic information on, especially now the military is out for their blood.

They haven’t been caught yet. Which might be surprising, but Paris is a big city. And they have friends in the research group, still, who wouldn’t ever sell them out, even if they did see them. They avoid their old, regular haunts for the most part. But the military isn’t really searching in the city, anyway. Despite information they’ve no doubt received on the use of the PASIV in Paris, they seem to think Arthur and Eames have fled the country, and are either coming back occasionally for work, or spreading rumours that they are in Paris in order to throw off the trail. Nobody would actually be so stupid as to stay in the one city they’d be the least safe. It’s a surprisingly effective ruse.

Besides, the last time the military saw them, they looked, well, like military. People would have to look twice, now, in order to see the men they once were.

Which works well, for their purposes. They can’t be easily found, and they look, if not trustworthy, exactly, like the sort of people who are very good at what they do. At being criminals. And at getting along with the rich.

Jones likes them, a lot, insofar as someone like him can like anybody. He gives them more and more access as time goes on, or they learn how to get past his guard. Probably a bit of both. Either way, they get what they need, research wise. They find their way into his ex-wife’s son’s (called David, apparently) life, finding out everything they can about him. They’ve decided to create a dream scenario in which David is confronted with the exposure of his deepest secret. In real life, it seems, he doesn’t have any. He has a lovely wife and a child, a little girl. He doesn’t appear to be a cheater, or to have embezzled any finances, or any such thing. But he does have a liking for privacy, and a fear of secrets being exposed. His security is extreme, and they spend several weeks just trying to get through to anything useful. But they do, eventually. And they find hints, here and there, of a past that, while not sordid or particularly career destroying, is obviously embarrassing to David, or else he wouldn’t have hidden it. And he hides things so well, won’t tell anyone a thing, that anything he has hidden (like his business secrets) will have to be forced out of him through a trade-off between something he wants to be exposed even less. And it’s far too messy to do anything like that in real life, and much easier for Jones to be implicated, so the dream world it is. And, even though they could probably pull it off in the real world (or someone could), it’s up to Jones, in the end. Besides, nightmares are always worse than anything in the real world.

They find out that, when he was fifteen, David had a rather sordid affair. With someone who was not only older, but was also one of his teachers. And David sold him out, so he didn’t lose his scholarship position at the school. And David thinks he knows his wife won’t approve, and is worried about what she will do. Arthur can’t find anything to suggest his wife would care enough to leave him, but that’s only another reason to do this in the dream world. There, it only matters what David believes.

Eames opts to forge the wife. She won’t play a key part, but her constant presence while Arthur is feeding David with hints of just what might be exposed about him will reinforce the link between his fears and his wife. And then he’ll see Arthur and Eames-as-his-wife talking, and he’ll get scared, and spill whatever they want to know. Which is, in this case, all his business plans. That way, Jones can counter them all, and then, when David is completely fucked over, will offer to buy his shares and sort everything out for him. The company board will back him, of course. And this isn’t about the company, not really, despite what Jones might have told them. Jones doesn’t need this company. He just wants to humiliate the boy who took any chance he might have had at gaining more power.

So they make a plan, dream wise. They still haven’t yet figured out exactly how they’re going to isolate David and put him under, but they still have a month and a half to think of something.

And then, Mal shows up.

She is heavily pregnant now, due any day. And Eames hadn’t even known she was pregnant, but she was, apparently. It’s a girl. And she and Dom are getting married. Because Mal is traditional at heart, and she wants her baby’s parents to be married. So she’ll have the baby, first, because she also wants to look thin in the wedding photos, and then, in three months, they’ll get married.

Eames is mad at her, a bit. He wants to know how she found them, why she came (although it’s obvious that she just wanted to see them, catch them up on her life) when it’s so dangerous.

Also, apparently, the University and the army are sending them to America to expand on their research. They’ll be out of the country, soon. The day after their wedding, in fact.

Mal tells them, in her usual way, that they are expected at the wedding, and at the birth. The wedding, of course, has a set date. It’s going to be a small affair, just their friends from the University and Miles. They have no other family, and top secret research tends to make you lose contact with the outside world. They tell her they’ll try to make it. The birth, of course, does not have a set date. The little girl (who they are apparently calling Phillipa), is due in a month or so. But she could arrive any time. Mal says she’ll contact them. Eames has no doubt she will.

And then she disappears, with remarkable skill for someone so heavily pregnant. She has a look about her now, like she knows about things like that, knows how to disappear. She looks older, and for the first time Eames thinks about what it must have been like for them, for Mal, especially, trying to deal with pregnancy and marriage and the disappearance of her friends. And she’s worried about them, it’s clear. She also seems furious at Dom, still, because she must know the complete story by now. She would have demanded it. But she loves him, and they’re having a baby together, which means she’s forgiving him a lot. She always will. Everyone always will.

Jones arrives at that moment, conveniently, drawing Eames out of his reverie. And he looks like the cat that got the canary, which is (or will be) a disturbingly accurate comparison, once they complete this job. Because despite their insistence, despite their usual methods of working, Jones has insisted on being involved in every aspect of this job. He won’t be going under with them, because he can’t afford to be seen in the dream and possibly ruin it or associate himself with the crime, but other than that he’s been heavily involved. And he is paying them, he can do whatever he wants, really.

Like find a way to isolate David, and put him under. They’ll need maybe a few weeks in the dream, and ideally a long flight or a surgery, or just a long period alone, in his home or abroad on business would work.

Conveniently, again (and Eames is beginning to think Jones is a god or something (he certainly has the power of one)), David is, in fact, coming to Paris in three weeks’ time. He will be staying for a week. It is a pleasure trip, a long awaited break from home and business, and he will be alone. He will also not have any commitments, so if he doesn’t leave his hotel room for some time, no one will know. They might get a little suspicious, but that’s what the Do Not Disturb sign is for. They won’t be around long enough to rouse suspicion. A few hours, tops.

He will also be staying in a hotel that the company owns, which will make accessing it a lot easier. And this job is going so well, almost too well, but that way lies paranoia, and this job is bad enough in that regard already.

And they both know that Mal could be having her baby any moment, could be giving birth at that time, but of course they have to do the job.

So they do the job. And it goes well. Jones gets what he wants. They get their money, and their sense of being utterly morally bankrupt. They wake up to ten messages on their cell phones.

All of them are from Mal or Dom, all in various stages of panic, Dom more than Mal, as always. And it feels like they live in movies, sometimes, because isn’t this like every cliché ever, the calm expectant mother, and the hysterical first time father, hysterical for nothing, in the end, because, as the last vaguely annoyed message tells them, Mal and the baby are just fine, resting in the hospital. They will be home tomorrow, Dom tells them, and they should try and visit if they can.

Mal and Dom live in a small house in the same district they lived in (that Mal’s apartment was in) before she got pregnant. It isn’t the house they’ve always dreamed of, but it’s lovely just the same. It’s only a rental property, Dom tells them as he lets them inside, because of the imminent move to America.

Mal is upstairs in bed. And she looks radiant, as they’d always imagined she would. A complete mess, exhausted still, but smiling and serene. She is holding her baby in her arms, and she beckons them closer, hands the little girl, Phillipa, over to Eames to hold.

Dom is hovering in the corner, anxious. And Eames has never held a baby before, but he thinks he’s doing okay. And then Mal looks up, her attention mostly focussed on her baby, but still always aware of Dom, and sees him.

“Go downstairs,” she tells him. It’s an order, but she’s still smiling. “Eames and I will be just fine.”

And he goes, and, taking the hint, Arthur follows him downstairs. Arthur has always been fairly good at dealing with Dom’s meltdowns, anyway. And for all that’s happened, Mal and Eames were friends first.

Mal pats the bed next to her, and Eames sits down. He hands Phillipa back to her mother. For a while they just sit there, Eames doesn’t know how long for, and just watch each other. Mal is looking for something. She seems to find it, in the end.

“You look good,” she tells him, “better than I was expecting.”

Eames has to laugh. Both at her comment, at the fact that it’s such a Mal thing to say, the fact that he doesn’t feel good, not really, about what they’re doing, most of the time, and the fact that he looks ridiculous, in the plain, unfitted clothes and loose brown wig Arthur found him. They’d decided to wear some sort of disguise, in the end, so as to avoid getting caught. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem as though Mal and Dom are being closely watched.

“So do you,” he tells her, “you look wonderful.”

And he still feels rattled, having come straight off a job (almost) to here, still slightly disconnected, but Mal’s presence is soothing. And she does look wonderful.

And then she laughs, soft and delighted, and leans forward. She is careful, of course, but she still reaches out, rubbing her thumb along his lower lash line. It comes away black. And he thought he’d got most of it, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s Mal, of course.

She rubs her fingers together, smearing the eyeliner together.

“It’s good to see Arthur is taking care of you,” she tells him.

They don’t really say anything more.

Eventually, they have to leave, so as to avoid suspicion. It’s still light outside, so they still look like perfectly respectable visitors, and nobody catches them. And this luck has to run out someday.

They take a few small jobs, here and there, in the months before Mal and Dom’s wedding. They promise not to take anything bigger, and they wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway. Mal’s wrath at their missing her wedding is not something Arthur or Eames ever wants to see. And they don’t have the time to get into anything bigger, anyway. Mal, because she is apparently insane, has decided they will marry, in a small ceremony in a tiny church she found, in eight weeks time. And because Mal is just one of those people, she still looks fairly amazing even after giving birth, so she shouldn’t have any problems. They’ve already planned most of it, anyway. It’s just final fittings to go.

And they’d asked Arthur and Eames if they’d like to participate in the wedding, but both Mal and Dom had known, really, that it wouldn’t be possible. So they’ll slip in the back, watch from the shadows. And it isn’t the wedding they’d have wanted, but this is how it is, now.

The wedding is beautiful. It’s in a tiny church, and hardly anyone is there. Mal looks radiant, Dom looks scared out of his mind and also like he can’t believe his luck. They exchange vows in a short ceremony, and then they leave.

Later, Arthur and Eames sneak over to their apartment, and they have dinner together, the four of them, one last time.

It’s only later when they find out how true this statement is.

And then Mal and Dom leave, pack up all their things and move to California. It’s quite sudden, in the end. Everyone just leaves. The whole program packs up and disappears. There’s no doubt they’re still wanted, that people are still looking for them. But as far as the official project is concerned, only the military is involved now, and America, as the government contributing the most money to the project (amongst other things) gets to host them all in the USA.

All this will mean, in the end, is that Eames and Arthur will lose their monopoly. Someone in the project will sell out, decide there’s better money in doing things illegally (which there is), and the USA is too far away for them do to anything about it. Following the project there would be suicide.

So they stay in Paris. They work. They keep an eye on the situation in the USA, courtesy of Dom and Mal. Sure enough, they hear whispers of a developing extraction business. And their clients report to them too, with their experiences. Apparently no one is as good as they are. Eames doesn’t tell them that the only person better is Dominic Cobb. He doesn’t need the temptation, or the ego boost, should he find out. So for now, they are the best.

And then, maybe a year, eighteen months (it’s hard to tell, to keep track of time in the real world) after Mal and Dom move stateside, Jones comes back to them. Tracks them down to their current location, which is more than a little worrisome.

“Gentlemen,” he tells them, still like every movie villain ever, “I have a proposal for you.”

Eames has often wondered if Jones acts like this with other people, but they haven’t been able to find any evidence either way. He has always been a good client, though.

“Go on,” Arthur says, slowly. Because they’re still wary, even now.

Jones brings a man forth, “This is Peter,” he tells them, “He requires your help.”

The job is fairly simple. Peter has business rivals, and he wants Arthur and Eames to extract their secrets. It’s nothing they haven’t done before. So they agree to take the job, and Jones and Peter leave.

“I don’t like this,” says Arthur, watching them leave, walk away down the street.

Eames doesn’t like it either. Neither man was acting particularly suspicious, but there was still something.

“There’s something they’re not telling us,” Arthur goes on to say. He’s already at the laptop, searching for something. Eames goes over to join him.

“Peter doesn’t act like a business man,” Eames says.

Arthur turns away from the laptop, so Eames can see the screen. There he is, Peter Poste, business man. Apparently.

“There’s nothing here,” Arthur tells him, clearly frustrated. And there really isn’t. Further research turns up absolutely nothing either.

So they go ahead with the job. And it is simple, and, whatever they might feel, remains simple. It’s almost too easy. But they have no proof.

And then they get to the job. Everything goes smoothly, perfectly. They grab the man they need to grab, put him under, go under with him. It’s the easiest job they’ve ever done.

Eames takes one look at the dreamscape, and shoots them both out of there.

They wake up just in time.

“Shit,” Arthur says.

Next

Fic: Janus, Inception, Arthur/Eames, R - Part 6

wayoffbase — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:14:38 GMT

They go back to their current apartment (a different one from where Jones tracked them down to, because they’re not stupid). But even that won’t give them much time. They should have enough time, though, just enough to grab a few necessities and destroy all trace of their presence.

“It was a set up,” Arthur hisses. He’s on the verge of yelling, but they both know they need to keep quiet.

Eames doesn’t bother to reply. He knows it was, just as well as Arthur does. Peter had been waiting for them, in the dream. He’d been with the subject, and Eames doesn’t know what they were planning, but he can guess. The only people who’d know their way around the dream scape like that would be other extractors.

“…other extractors,” Arthur is saying. And Eames has to laugh, because they’re still so in sync. They probably always will be.

“We can’t help being popular, darling,” Eames tells him. And Arthur looks surprised, and a little angry, that he’s being so flippant at a time like this, but then he looks at Eames properly. Sees how worried he is. And Arthur stops then, comes over and presses a brief kiss to Eames’ lips.

But that’s what it is, Eames suspects. They are the best, and they are competition. Other extractors are going to want to take them out, and many of their clients would be willing to help, just for the fun of it (like Jones, Eames thinks), or out of paranoia, now that Eames and Arthur know so many of their secrets. He tells Arthur as much.

“We’re going to have to split up,” Arthur says. He’s gone back to packing, now, throwing his last few belongings into a bag, wiping down surfaces, destroying anything they can’t take with them (which isn’t much – they’ve gotten used to having to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice). “I’ll lead them off,” he continues, “you just get out of the city.”

It’s at that point that the first gun-shot flies through the wall, and Eames doesn’t even have time to argue before they’re running, again, out the back entrance. The gun fire was coming from the other direction, so they should have time to get away. And it would be safer, if they split up. They’ll be harder to track. He knows Arthur’s right.

So he pulls him in to an alleyway, a small side street, and isn’t this just like them. Arthur is still in flight mode, looking about anxiously. He was always far more military than Eames.

“I’ll call you,” Eames says, still smiling. It’s not a situation in which he ever expected to use that phrase.
Arthur stops, then. It’s quiet, where they are. No one is following for the moment. They’ve got a few minutes, maybe.

There isn’t really anything more to say. They’ll meet up again, when they can. When the heat is off them. Jones will lose interest, no doubt. If they go underground for a while, maybe Peter will too. Maybe.

There’s the sound of footsteps approaching. Arthur is alert again, they’re both alert now. Eames kisses him, and then they pull away. The footsteps, running now, are coming ever closer.

“I love you,” Arthur says. And then he disappears into the darkness.

*

Eames doesn’t see him again for six months. Even then, it’s brief, too brief. It’s always too brief. And they go on that way, spending time apart, always apart, barely seeing each other for months on end.

In that time, Eames mostly stays in Paris. He takes a few jobs here and there, mostly simple ones. He could do far more complicated jobs on his own, if he wanted to, but it doesn’t feel right. So he sticks to the basics. He works the jobs he wants to work on his own, and he becomes so boring and unthreatening that he mostly gets left alone. He also, in an apparent fit of collective paranoia, gets bribed copious amounts by several of his clients not to sell them out. He takes the money, and then he takes more money from the people looking to buy said secrets. He feels fairly morally bankrupt, but he also doesn’t care all that much, really, in the end. He uses the money to take extended breaks all over Europe, lying low and just exploring.

He contacts Arthur a few times, and they exchange brief messages. But they can’t say much, out of caution. Most of what Eames finds out about Arthur during that period is from other sources. He keeps one hand in the extraction business, and keeps an eye on Arthur, who is still working. In America, apparently. He hasn’t been to see Mal and Dom, as far as Eames can tell. But he is still working, extracting for various people. It’s dangerous. Eames worries.

He goes back to their apartment, once or twice. It’s still locked up, still abandoned. They still haven’t risked going back there, not properly. But as far as Eames can tell, it’s still safe. Waiting for something.

When they’d first split up, Arthur had taken the make-up kit. He’d obviously though, as had Eames (perhaps foolishly) that they would be together again soon. Besides, it’s almost become their ritual, in a way. So Eames waits. He buys some of the more easily transported things, uses some of the money he’s accumulating. Life goes on as usual.

And then, one day, all the things Arthur had taken, the things that belonged to Eames, show up in the mail.

Eames throws them away. Arthur’s message couldn’t be clearer.

They don’t really communicate again after that. Eames takes off again, around Europe, Asia. He works a few jobs in Australia. He works his way back into the rapidly growing extraction business, making a name for himself again as a forger. The only person more infamous now, in the dream share world, is Arthur.

He stays away for almost three years. And then he comes back to Paris. And, for no reason that he can discern, decides to stay.

Eames takes up residence close to their old house. Now that the project has left the University, and he isn’t so high profile as he used to be in the dream world, he can afford to do so. It’s nice to be back in their old neighbourhood. It’s quiet.

Which is why the sound of sirens in the middle of the night is so unusual.

They’re close by, too, which is enough for Eames to worry. They pass by Eames’ apartment, three in a row. Fire engines. No ambulance or police, though. Eames watches them go. They’re heading towards the area in which their old house was, and Eames knows what’s happened. If he doesn’t go out there, though, then maybe he can avoid reality for a few more hours, pretend like most of his life hasn’t disappeared.

And then Arthur shows up on his doorstep.

He looks awful, from an impartial point of view. He’s sweating, he has a scrape across one cheek, and his eyes are red rimmed, as if from crying (and maybe a little from smoke). He’s a mess.

Eames doesn’t think twice before pulling him inside. And he’s babbling already, “I’m so fucking sorry, Jamie, Christ, they followed me and I had to find you and I didn’t know where to start looking and –“ Eames covers his mouth with his hand, pulls him upstairs by one arm. And Arthur tries to keep talking, through the barrier, until Eames tells him “Don’t want to wake the neighbours,” and he subsides, a little.

They get upstairs, eventually, and inside Eames’ flat. And he lets go of Arthur, then, and sits back to watch him pace.

There is silence for maybe ten minutes, before Arthur tells him, “Mal’s dead.”

Eames has never been in an earthquake, never lived anywhere remotely unsafe, but he imagines this is what it feels like to have the floor fall out from underneath him.

And he should have known something awful had happened, because Arthur is never this careless, never, but God, he’d never thought it would be this.

“When’s the funeral?” he says. He can hear the note of hysteria in his voice.

“Last Tuesday,” Arthur says, and then, “They think Dom did it.”

“Did he?” Eames asks.

Arthur won’t even look at him anymore. “I don’t think so,” he says.

And that’s really all there is to it.

*

Except when it isn’t.

Mal and Dom have two kids, now. Had. Mal had them, because she’s gone now. And Dom might go to prison for a crime he (probably) didn’t commit. And Eames always knew it would be like this, in the end.

Arthur doesn’t say “I’m going back to the States”. He doesn’t say “I’m going to help Dom” or “we’re going in to business together” (still talking in code after all this time). He doesn’t say much at all.

Eames says, “We had a good run, didn’t we?”

Arthur leaves. And that’s the end.

*

Except when it isn’t.

No one knows this, no one notices, and Eames will never tell. But he follows Arthur back to the States. It’s harder than it’s ever been, because whatever work Arthur has been doing has made him extremely good at losing tails. Eames, of course, has become very good at tailing, so it cancels out a little in the end. He even catches the same flight.

Arthur flies in to New York. He then makes his way, through a series of flights, across the country. Eames follows him for a while, then, when he’s sure Arthur is going to California to meet Dom, he takes a direct flight from New Orleans. He arrives ahead of Arthur, and watches him as he comes out of the airport.

He is met by a man in a suit. Eames isn’t close enough to overhear them, and they are of course angled in such a way that Eames can’t read their lips. But he looks like a lawyer, to Eames.

The pair disappear together. Eames doesn’t bother following them for now. Instead, he goes to the ticket desk, and books two tickets to Vienna. Arthur mentioned liking Vienna, once. Then he tracks down the law firm representing Dominic Cobb.

It isn’t hard. Mal’s murder has been quite the sensation, apparently. Everyone who is everyone knows everything. About how her husband was threatening her, about how he pushed her out a window. About how they were mixed up in something top secret, something to do with the government.

From that, Eames gathers her death had something to do with dreams. Any more than that, he suspects, only Arthur, Dom, or Mal would know.

Eames goes to the law firm. Sure enough, Arthur and the lawyer are there. Eames leaves the tickets at the front desk, along with contact details for several people he knows in Vienna. He’s sure Arthur will be able to get them out of L.A.

He sticks around, though, just to make sure. He watches, from the street, as the lawyer goes into the Cobb house (a beautiful piece of modern architecture, so perfectly them), as Cobb comes out, looks both ways, and then leaves.

Arthur meets him at the airport, and they get on a plane. Eames watches them go, waits until the plane has taken off. And then he goes back to Paris.

He doesn’t stay long. He just goes to the apartment. Looks at the ruins, the half burned down walls. Everything is gone. All their things.

The only thing left standing is the low garden wall. So Eames steps over it, goes inside.

It’s obvious the fire was set. And carefully, too. These people took their time. They haven’t left anything un-burnt.

Except one thing. Most of what Eames owned is gone. But one Christmas, the one Christmas they had before everything went wrong, Mal and Arthur had bought him a necklace, with earrings to match. It was obviously old, an antique, and very expensive. And beautiful. And how ironic, that it should be one earring from that set that survives. It’s covered in ashes, a little, but it’s otherwise fine. Eames picks it up, dusts it off. Pockets it. And then he leaves.

He stands in Charles de Gaulle. And then he books a flight to Mombasa. Arthur never liked Africa. Eames has never been.

*

He makes the decision not to keep track of Arthur. But he hears, anyway. Hears about Dominic Cobb, who is a crazy motherfucker, but is the best extractor in the business. Hears about his shadow.

He also hears rumours, around Mombasa. He’s heard them before, but he’s never been in the region, and so has never been in the position to investigate their truthfulness.

The rumours talked about a chemist, out here in Mombasa. Yusuf, his name is. Apparently, he’s the best.
Eames tracks him down to a lab on the south side of the city.

From the outside, it looks deserted. This whole area is quiet, for Mombasa. A few people wander past every so often, but not many.

Eames goes around to the back of the building. There he finds a door. It is unlocked, and open, so Eames goes inside.

Almost immediately, he comes up against a staircase. Upstairs sounds reasonably quiet, and so Eames goes downstairs.

He enters a room full of sleeping people, mostly older men. And he knows what this place must be, has heard about them but never seen one. It’s one of the many uses the initial dream share project imagined for their work, that it would be used in therapy, to help these old men.

There is a man standing in the middle of the room, checking on the PASIV. When he turns and sees Eames, he doesn’t startle. He just smiles, and says, “Hello.”

Eames knows they’re going to get along just fine.

*

There’s a designer knock off store just down the road from Eames’ apartment. It sells men’s clothes, but, as most clothing stores do, it prominently displays women’s clothing in the window. Eames walks past it every day, even more now that he’s working with Yusuf on a regular basis, and it’s the quickest way to get out of his neighbourhood. He changes up the rest of the route, just out of habit (for safety), but he always walks past this store. A few weeks after he moves to Mombasa, they have a green dress in the window.

Eames never goes inside, and it feels like the end, really, of him and Arthur. Of him and Mal.

In the dreamscape, though, he changes his totem. When he’s dreaming, everyone notices, he always carries a pair of diamond earrings, in pristine condition. And in real life, he carries just one, all broken.

Yusuf sees that. He sees Eames walk past the store, and deliberately not look. But he doesn’t ask questions. Eames suspects it’s because he probably doesn’t need to. He seems to be fairly good at anticipating Eames’ behaviour.

They go into a dream together. Yusuf doesn’t go out into the field, but he knows how dreams work, and how to navigate them. He has to, in order to do his job, and it’s this understanding, along with a willingness to try anything, that makes him so good. It was what made Mal so good.

And he hasn’t thought about Mal in years, hasn’t allowed himself to. Which is probably why, when he enters the dreamscape, he appears as a dark haired woman.

He doesn’t look exactly like her. He’s heard rumours, about what happens when you build directly from memory, and so he makes every effort not to. But he captures the essence of her. And it isn’t even on purpose, he just knew her so well, it just happens.

Yusuf doesn’t even appear to notice. And it’s not that he doesn’t notice the Mal-ness of Eames, because he never met her, and he’s never worked with Dom before. It’s that he doesn’t even notice that Eames is in a woman’s body.

Eames doesn’t ask him about it, though. He just observes Yusuf, in every dream they go in to. And he never notices. He does react a little differently, when Eames, out of interest, forges the woman he perceives himself to be, but it isn’t much of a difference. There’s just a slight hint of familiarity that isn’t there with his other forgeries. At first, Eames thinks Yusuf has just seen everything, but then he realises it isn’t that at all. It’s that Yusuf genuinely hasn’t noticed.

(It isn’t until later, during the Fischer job, that someone finally vocalises it. And even then, it’s Ariadne, in a test dream the two of them are in. And she tells him, “It’s just that you’re so clearly you, anyway,” she says, “you’re you when you’re in a woman’s body, and you’re you when you’re in your real body. It doesn’t really make a difference”. It’s perhaps one of the best things anyone has ever said to him.)

*

They go on in this way for almost a year. They do a few jobs together, nothing spectacular. And then they hear wilder rumours, whispers of something called inception. The dream share world is like the world’s largest and most vague grapevine, but from what they can gather, it involves planting an idea, rather than taking one.

They are approached almost immediately by someone wanting them to try it. Yusuf, of course, won’t go in to the field with them, won’t even have anything to do with the project other than supplying the chemicals. But he helps Eames find a team.

Who they try to incept, what they try to plant in his mind, isn’t important. What is important is that it fails, spectacularly. Nothing too dramatic happens. It just doesn’t take. Life goes on as normal, in Mombasa.
Nothing of note happens.

And then, one day, a voice from behind him says, “I see your spelling hasn’t improved.”

*

Eames was never really going to say no. Not to Dom, he couldn’t care less about what Dom wants (it surprises him, how much he still hates him, even after all these years). But to see Arthur again. And it’s utterly pathetic.

So he suggests Yusuf should come with them. He knows, if he’s being an idiot, Yusuf will tell him.

So they go to Paris. And Arthur and he, they work together. And they’ve always been like this, this is how they always interacted, but there’s an edge to it now. And there’s no one to stop them. Dom doesn’t notice, he’s too wrapped up in his own head. Ariadne is new, and she won’t interfere, and she’s too wrapped up with Dom. Eames remembers a couple, from back on the project. They’d been together for years, had even been engaged. And then it ended. Eames doesn’t know what happened, but for a long time afterward, they were awful. They couldn’t quite let go of their relationship, couldn’t quite adjust, and yet they couldn’t get along. Everything had an edge of nastiness to it. And him and Arthur, they’re on that same knife edge, but they can’t get out of it now.

And then they’re in Fischer’s mind, they’re in the taxi, and it’s just like old times. Not that they’ve ever been in this situation specifically, but they can still work together, even after everything. Eames can trust that Arthur will get them out of there, and it’s clear Arthur doesn’t even think twice, just drives, just trusts Eames to have his back. When it comes down to it, they can do this.

And then it’s, “Eames!” and then, louder, “Eames!” and it’s going to be a huge distraction, if Eames keeps analysing everything Arthur does, but he can’t help but think that it’s nice to hear he still cares.

“I’m fine, I’m okay, Fischer’s fine too, unless he gets carsick,” Eames tells him. And Arthur gives him that look he used to give, like stop being so flippant Jamie, for fuck’s sake, and this could be years ago, they could be their young selves again, and then Saito is bleeding, and the moment is gone.

But then they make it to the warehouse, and Dom reveals exactly how crazy he is, and then Eames watches as Arthur storms off, after Dom yells at him. Eames goes after him.

And he knows better than to say anything, because Arthur is clearly not in the mood, and Eames can still tell. So he just watches him, for a while, watches him protect them still/shoot someone other than Dom, which would not be productive. And Eames inner fifteen year old is delighted to see that all is not right between them, because he’d blamed Dom, mostly, for a while. But he keeps that to himself, because Arthur will be able to tell. And then Arthur gives him this look, because he can tell, and Eames can’t resist ribbing him a little back.

“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling,” Eames says.

He looks back as he walks away. Arthur meets his eyes, and Eames can’t help but laugh at him, a little. Arthur shakes his head.

And for all he’s said, about waiting here, pulling out, in the end, he’s going to go down with Arthur. So he makes the offer, to forge a blonde he worked on with Yusuf. And then he watches Arthur watching him as he sashays past. It’s all still there.

It’s still there, later, in the hotel room. And they’ve never been good with words, either of them, so Eames just says, “Security’s going to run you down hard,” and hopes Arthur knows that means he worries.

And he overheard Ariadne say something, to Yusuf, and she’s right, they are emotionally stunted, but they can work it out. And the look on Arthur’s face, as he says, “Go to sleep, Mr. Eames”, and then his thumb, rubbing lightly across his wrist, is enough for them. It’s enough to know they’re going to try this again.

*

They succeed, in the end. And it’s awful, it’s the worst and most immoral thing any of them have ever done, but they can all admit they’re high on the power, on the success, except Ariadne, who won’t realise the real world consequences, not yet. If it takes.

Eames waits for Arthur in the baggage claim. And it’s ridiculous, because they can really read people’s minds, but the ability to really know what someone is thinking is still as much of a mystery as ever. But he thinks he’s got this one right.

He has to wait, for a while. He has to watch Arthur watch Dom leave, and for a moment, Eames thinks Arthur might still follow him. But he doesn’t. And it isn’t a good idea, to look like they know each other, but Arthur still walks over, brushes past him. Eames takes the hint, and follows him out.

They go to a small apartment in Silver Lake. And it is an apartment, in that Arthur owns it, or has at least rented it for a long period of time. It’s not just a temporary crash pad.

It has all the marks of Arthur, too. The tiny security camera outside the door, the locks. But it’s beautiful, too. It reminds Eames of something, although he can’t quite put his finger on what.

It takes them a while to get inside. There are the locks, of course, but then there are also several key pads. Arthur lets Eames see the codes.

And then he leads him through the flat. But Eames doesn’t need any help, could do it with his eyes closed, because he knows this flat. He knows what it reminds him of, now. It’s like their old flat. Different, but the layout is similar. Things are in the same places. And it’s like coming home.

Arthur stops at the entrance to the bedroom. The only bedroom. He seems nervous, now. Which is so odd, something the old Arthur might have done, but nothing Eames recognises from this new person.

“I’ve got something for you,” Arthur says.

And he opens the wardrobe. And Eames can’t believe his eyes.

Half the wardrobe consists of Arthur’s clothes, mostly neatly hung suits and the like. The other half is stuffed full of dresses.

Eames walks over to investigate. And they are his dresses, the ones from the Paris house. Not all of them, and none of his other clothes, but a decent selection.

He runs his hands through them, and then he picks out a few. A green one, a red one, and the underwear Arthur got him that Christmas. He brings them over to the bed.

Arthur has been rummaging in the chest of drawers. He pulls out a hardback make-up case, and he looks so hopeful, although he’s trying to hide it.

“I saved them,” Arthur says, “and we could…” he trails off.

Eames drops the dresses on the bed, discards them. Not that he doesn’t want them anymore, just. Maybe later.

“You know we can’t go back,” Eames says.

“Eames,” Arthur says, and then “Jamie.”

Eames grins, and says, “I know something we can do that doesn’t involve any clothing.”

And Eames backs him up against the wall, and Arthur lets him. And then he pushes him down, on their old bed, amongst their old clothes, in their new apartment in a new city with new people. And they are home.

Masterpost

new fandoms make the babies cry

wayoffbase — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:01:15 GMT

argh inception so many good fics so little time gibber gibber gibber this is not relaxing.

Writer's Block: Do you remember?

wayoffbase — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:46:40 GMT

so apparently when i answer one of these for the first time, i can't just write an answer or a memory like a normal person. i have to write a story. so here it is.

the persistence of memory
pg original fic 539 words
polly can't remember her first memory

polly can’t remember her first memory.

and that’s a paradox, she knows, and it’s not that she can’t remember, exactly, it’s just that she can’t remember which one goes first. they’re all fits and starts and flashes of colour and the pink geraniums on the front porch of her old house in auckland. little things, tiny things. not grand things.

she also has things she thinks she remembers, but she isn’t sure. she can see them, and they’re just as blurry and nonsensical and incomplete as her regular memories, but she’s also heard stories of them, over and over and over. what she sees might just be a story, a fiction. she’s visited her first house in christchurch from when she was small, just born, barely six weeks old before they moved. those memories have the same hazy quality, but she can't possibly remember anything from when she was that small. she knows it isn’t plausible.

she also remembers things no one else does. she remembers a birthday cake from when she was small, and it had little bo [eep or some such thing on it. it had green icing, she thinks. she might be confusing it with the witch cake, the one that went green and mouldy when it stayed in the fridge for half the year.

she sometimes frightens herself, thinking of all the things she’s forgotten. and that’s another rubbish sentence, it’s nonsense, because she can’t remember all the things she’s forgotten, can she, that’s rubbish.

she can remember the plot of the hobbit, when she read it once when she was barely ten. she remembers wanting to be dorothy from the wizard of oz because she liked the red shoes. she remembers santa giving her presents at kindergarten, and how she thought he was rubbish too, and then she remembers the year she found out he wasn’t real, and her parents wrote nonsense senders all over her christmas presents. she remembers so many things, bits and pieces. singing along to grease on the radio, feeling hot and sweaty and stupid around her first crush. she can’t remember moving house, or the cat they have now being with them in auckland. she can’t remember a good portion of the layout of their house back then, but she remembers the tree with poisonous berries in the backyard.

it’s all jumbled up in there, mumbled, and bumbled, and crumbled up in her head. she’ll never know which bits are real and which aren’t, what’s memory and what isn’t, or why she can’t remember half those people’s names. but it’s all there, and as far as she knows, it all happened just the way she thinks it did. and who else can tell her differently. as long as she thinks she’s right, she is. she is. and other people can be right too. because it isn’t what happened, what really happened, that affects her in the long run. it’s what she thinks happened. what she remembers.

and so her first memory is this: when she was very young, very little, maybe two, she wandered outside, and there they were. pink geraniums, on the porch. the porch was brown. it’s funny what stays with you, in the long run.

Your Twice Yearly Service Announcement...

wayoffbase — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:33:39 GMT

Victoria University Exam Results, Semester One 2010.

CLAS209: Bronze Age Aegean Art and Archaeology: A-
ENGL209: The Novel: B+
HIST239: History of the German Speaking Peoples: A-

Not too bad :D

venting

wayoffbase — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:02:05 GMT

so apparently when i really need to vent, i do it in verse

here goes, then

friends
we used to be friends
used to
cast off like an old winter coat
(but its winter now, and
i’d like to see you get by
without us)
spring is far away and
lonely without company because
alice is wrong
the flowers won’t talk
it’s like
if the coat could feel
maybe it would leave anyway
(if it could)
(i wish it could)
(cut those apron strings and ties please like the others did – it was easier in some ways)
its sick of being worn this way, treated like its
just a coat when
what would you do without it
you might not realise
but where would you be without it
that scarf might keep you warm
but its
just a scarf
just growing
it needs help
the coat would help
it doesn’t need much
certainly not the promise of new buttons, new thread, new hems and then none
just a few mothballs to keep us whole, maybe
just a little bit of something
we can shoulder the winter but
not neglect and loneliness
do you even care
sad in the junk shop
the sally army bin
do you even care
like all those coats before
its all the same
well i just want to say
“fuck you/good riddance/i hope you die of cold”
just like i’ve wanted to say before
and never will
except in verse
god, i just want friendship back
when did it get so bad
why don’t i like you anymore
well, at least there are others
who still want the coat
who treat it well
wear it well
know how to wear it well
keep it well
and i’ve got my coats too
i don’t need yours anymore
maybe you won’t even notice its gone
the coat i mean
i’m noticing
i wish you would
i miss it
miss you
sad, lonely, disappointed, angry
we used to be friends
what happened?

wayoffbase — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 10:07:42 GMT

DOCTOR WHO YOU GUYS.

OMG IT WAS AMAZING I AM SO PSYCHED FOR THE REST OF THIS SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wayoffbase — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:15:44 GMT

why no, i didn't just write 1200 words of an SPN anastasia!AU. that was some other wayoffbase. yeah.

what am i doing?

teenagers (or the one where david wears girls knickers), american idol, cook/archuleta, pg-13

wayoffbase — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:20:23 GMT

teenagers (or the one where david wears girls knickers)
american idol david cook/david archuleta 800 words pg-13
wayoffbase

umm, i don't even know ok? i think it says a lot about me as a person and ai fandom as a whole that this is the first fic i've finished in it so far. also, i think this was a prompt on the kink meme awhile ago, so consider this your fill if you like, i guess :). oh, and this was only roughly edited, so sorry if there are any horrendous grammatical errors within.

Okay, David gets that like, his father is apparently evil and manipulative and all that, but the thing is. He kind of isn’t. He’s really the best Dad anyone could have.

David’s heard about other people’s Dads, and they sound a lot worse. Honestly, his family is awesome. He’s never more certain of this than during Idol, especially when his Dad opens his drawers and finds all the ladies underwear he’s been keeping in there.

It does take him awhile to talk to David about it, though. And David can understand this – he probably thought he was having, like, illicit affairs or something, gosh, which he totally isn’t by the way. But when he does, when David says “oh, gosh, um, Dad no, I was just, just wearing them!” he isn’t at all surprised when his Dad is totally understanding and doesn’t care at all. His Mom doesn’t care either, or his sisters. So those people who were saying horrible things about his Dad can just stuff off.

He understands how other people might find it weird though. He’s not dumb, obviously, he gets that some people will think he’s strange and all, but his family doesn’t care (his sisters and his Mom even get together and, like, buy him heaps of stuff and it’s totally cool), so that’s all that matters. He kind of thought that his housemates would be pretty cool with it too (at least in a ‘it’s by far the least weird thing about David’ kind of a way) but, um, he guesses that maybe Cook has a problem with it (which David thinks is so unfair, gosh, Cook like swears and worked in a bar and all this other stuff that David doesn’t exactly approve of but David hasn’t said anything) because he’s currently standing there, in front of David’s drawers (having gone searching for who knows what) holding the green pair David bought with last year’s birthday money and staring at them like – well David doesn’t quite know what he’s staring at them like, actually.

But then he thinks, okay, maybe Cook is thinking the same thing his Dad thought, about the girls and how Idol is obviously a bad influence, David, is this really where you should be etc. and so he says “Ummm, you don’t need to worry about girls or anything, those are-“ and then Cook turns to stare at him, and he has this totally weird look on his face, but David gulps and continues “those are mine. I wear them,” and Cook is still staring at him in this totally weird way so David says, defensively “and if you have a problem with that you can just, just stuff off because it’s none of your business.”

Cook turns to face him properly, and he’s still holding the green pair (and he better not do anything to them, because David really likes that pair, okay), and he says, still with that weird expression on his face “These are yours?”

“Um, yes” David says, because what else is there to say.

“And you’re wearing,“ Cook seems to lose the ability to speak for a moment, “you’re wearing some now?”

“Um, yes” David says again, because, well, he is (they’re red ones, though, not green – he only has one green pair).

Cook’s face sort of goes white then red then white, and then his eyes go really dark, and then he’s striding across the room and pushing David up against the wall and David is fully prepared to yell for help and use some of that self defence his Dad taught him but then Cook, like, squashes him against the wall and sort of attacks him with his mouth and David’s actually never been kissed before and Cook is really good at it (well, David assumes so, anyway, he might be awful and David just has nothing to compare it to) and it’s all very nice until Cook’s hands start wandering, gosh, and then David just has to say “Just because I wear women’s underwear doesn’t mean I’ll sleep with you! Sex is for marriage, Cook, honestly” and then Cook laughs at him (but in, like, a nice way, so it’s okay).

But then it looks like Cook might stop, and, um, David still wants to keep kissing him so he says “That doesn’t mean you have to stop,” and so Cook doesn’t and they’re all like, kissing and maybe some touching and they’ve sort of moved to the bed (but it isn’t going anywhere like that, honestly) and then. His Dad walks in.

And it turns out maybe he isn’t the coolest Dad after all, because they were only kissing, gosh, David’s not stupid or anything, but his Dad goes white then red then white and then sort of green, which doesn’t look so healthy, and then he makes this sort of choking noise and strides out of the room. And he leaves the door open. Gosh.

It is so embarrassing.

Quick Question

wayoffbase — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:35:41 GMT

Has anyone ever seen a challenge community based on novels? That is, like a reel challenge, only with books? Not including Harlequin novel challenges, of course. If so, what fandom/when/etc.? If not, IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?

REC TIME

wayoffbase — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:42:23 GMT

Check it out.

I CBS doing a fancy link, so here:

Burning Man by katzb101
ADAM/MISHA (THIS IS THE KEY PART OK)
http://stageira.livejournal.com/580276.html?thread=1652660#t1652660

So guess who my favourite person is right now? :P