1. Riot on the streets, touch beneath the sheets
They fight over a girl. Well, that's not technically correct. They fight because of a girl, not really overher. The point is, Beatriz is Arthur's partner, of a sort. Not sexual partner, exactly, anymore. It's a complicated fucking situation (in every sense of the phrase), is the thing. And so when Arthur rounds a corner in Sao Paulo and sees this guy's tongue down her throat, this guy's hands on her ass, this guy's brawny tattooed arms wrapped around her, he kind of snaps a little.
The next thing he remembers is the guy's teeth bared through blood, and seeing the blood on his hand, and realizing idly that he's broken at least the scaphoid on his right hand if nothing else. He remembers Beatriz pulling them apart, shouting in his face and pushing the guy behind her, like,
"You think heneeds protection from me?" he shouts in his not-half-bad Portuguese. "Fuck off, Bea, he's twice my size!"
"Speak English, you wanker, I'll have your head if you're insulting her!" the guy says, and of course he's British, complete with "wanker" and dropped "h" sounds and Arthur is pissed.
"I'm insulting her? Me? Of the two of us," but he's forgotten, he's still in Portuguese, and he barely has time to duck as the guy lunges forward in a rugby tackle. Luckily for Arthur, he was small and skinny in school, too, and even without a gun in his hand he's one of the more deadly people on the planet.
There is a swift, silent movement, a loud crack, and a thud. The only sounds are noises from the parade two streets over, Beatriz muttering under her breath, and a high panicked sigh coming from the guy Arthur's got pinned and planted on the dirty ground in the alley.
Arthur switches to English, cringing only a tiny bit at the way his vowels still manage to sound cornfed. "Let's try this again. Who the fuck are you, what are you doing here, and do you know who we are?"
The guy's perfect British accent slips just a hair into a sort of muddled-Mid-Atlantic brogue, probably because half his face is smashed into the concrete. "Eames, I'm Eames, ask Bea, she knows me, I've no idea who the fuck you are but I'm not sure I want to if this is what it takes."
Arthur shoots a look at Beatriz, who rolls her eyes and says (in English, Arthur assumes for Eames's benefit), "He's a forger I know. Thought we could use him. Was hoping to introduce you two properly, but then you just had to play rough, didn't you, Arthur?"
If Arthur's knee hadn't been intimately acquainted with Eames's back, he wouldn't have felt the muscles tense, which means that he would not have had enough time to push off and away. As it is, Eames rears up and back, spins, and Arthur is grudgingly impressed — this guy is fuckingstrong, not just muscles for show. "Arthur? You're Arthur?"
"Yes, why, have we met?" Arthur's guarded, ready for anything, but Eames seems more interested in staring at him than jumping at him.
"No, not officially, you wrote that paper on kick synchronization, about using songs for the cues! Bloody hell, mate, that thing's saved my arse a dozen times." Eames grins then, and even through the blood and grit, Arthur can see that he's gorgeous.
"That paper was a classified report for—no, actually, thank you. I worked my ass off on it, so I'm glad it could save…yours…" And the blush was creeping its way up his face because now he's thinking about Eames's ass and, despite having literally just pulled him off of Beatriz, he could swear Eames looks…
"Interested?" Beatriz says, to Eames, and Arthur tries to pay better attention after that. Eames looks over at Arthur and winks before he says yes, well, the man probably has a concussion.
It turns out, sitting in the hotel bar a few hours later, that Eames probably does have a concussion. What he also has, though, are some fantastic ideas about dream forgery, ideas that if he ever bothered to write them down would either make him fabulously wealthy or wanted for questioning in half a dozen different countries. Or both. There was always both.
Arthur catches himself smiling at Eames as they over beers more and more, and when Beatriz leaves with an old flame, Eames doesn't even spare her a glance. His eyes — long lashes, a bit hazy from the beating and the booze — stay locked on Arthur.
"I'm usually not so forward, pet," Eames says, the barest hint of a slur on the "s" sounds, "but would you like to come upstairs with me?" When Arthur doesn't respond right away, Eames (apparently feeling that he wasn't clear enough) continues, "To fuck, I mean. Have sex, if you're averse to 'fuck.' Lots of it. I'm really quite talented."
Arthur bites the insides of his cheeks to keep from laughing. "I've no doubt, Mr. Eames, but you're concussed and drunk. I decline your generous offer for the moment." He signals a waitress and whispers in her ear, "Onde e o hospital?"
Arthur leaves a note by the unconscious Eames's head. It's in Portuguese, and a code after that, but what's the fun in doing it any other way? That it takes Eames less than twelve hours to find him is…interesting. He'd put the number solidly at thirty. But then, he was learning all the time to not underestimate this bulky Brit.
Eighteen hours later (his number was right, sort of, in the end) Arthur gets a call — riots in Mozambique, where Alvarez and the others had just — and he's gone. The cipher he leaves for Eames this time is much easier by dint of being rushed, but he still doesn't expect Eames to beat him to his hotel room.
"Team good?" Eames asks, his teeth buried in Arthur's neck.
Arthur makes a noise that Eames takes as assent, manages to scrape out, "Holed up in Chicualacuala, fine."
Eames pulls back, looks Arthur square in the face. "How the bloody buggering fuck did you get that name out of your mouth?"
Leering, Arthur replies, "It's not doing anything else at the moment."
2. The cops, they got the guns
Arthur really fucking hates cops. That is, in general he's fine with them (within certain narrow constraints including but not limited to them ignoring any crimes he may commit and focusing on finding lost kids and rescuing stranded kittens), but when he's working late and hungover and exhausted and still a little skittish from mixing Somnacin and poppers and whatever the fuck Joel had handed him just before that last stretch, well. He's not a fan of cops in that particular circumstance. The unmarked car that pulls him over doesn't even bother running the (fake) license, (even more fake) registration, or the (surprisingly enough, almost real) proof of insurance. They take one look at Arthur's haggard face and take him in.
It's almost a relief, aside from the cop thing (the vast majority of cops, for any other faults, are eerily polite to Arthur, which is something he should really figure out at some point to better exploit it), because Arthur is good at prison. Really good at prison, in fact. He's small and slender, so people underestimate him, but he's also terrifying in a brawl. A night in the drunk tank would be no big deal, and he might even manage to get some sleep for the first time in a week. When working with an insomniac architect like Joel, no one got to sleep and everyone walked away with new niggling little addictions and new scars they didn't quite remember getting and a new appreciation for a bed.
The bench in the drunk tank isn't quite a bed, but it was flat and horizontal and no one was using it and that all adds up to "bed" for Arthur. He is fast asleep before the door slams closed behind him.
He wakes to a masked figure looming over him, and what happens next is really not Arthur's fault, because who the fuck looms over someone in a black hockey mask and doesn't expect to be attacked? Eames, apparently. But that's for later.
The grapple is fast and difficult, and Arthur is at a distinct size disadvantage (see also: sleep deprivation, having just woken up, still being a tiny bit high), but he's ferocious anyway and the guy seems almost cowed.
The guy lands a good punch and Arthur hisses a little, and it's like the sound snaps them both out of it. "Look, mate," the masked man whispers, "I've no desire to hurt you, all right, I just need to find someone." He's British, slurring a bit, and Arthur is livid.
"Fuck you, masked man, fuck you," shit, he's still way more than a tiny bit high. "Um."
The man's eyes (which, now that the two men are locked in a hold and not actively fighting, are quite lovely) widen slightly. "Are you on drugs? That reacts poorly with Somnacin, you know. Poor form."
Arthur's head is spinning — from the sleep, from the poppers, from the fight — and he can only muster, "What?"
The man pulls off his mask to reveal dirty blonde hair, a strong face, and a filthy grin. "I'm Eames, you're Arthur, right? I'm here from a friend who'd prefer you didn't spend another moment in a drunk tank in South Carolina when he's got a much more lucrative offer for a job in New York." Eames keeps smiling. It's unnerving. "Regular hours, even."
"How long?"
"Three weeks." Eames slaps a broad hand over Arthur's mouth. "Bloody coppers," he mutters. "Just nod — yes or no?"
Arthur weighs his options, but the choice is already made. He nods, Eames grins, and they're out in three minutes, in a car Eames seems to forget isn't British. Arthur drives them to the state border, and Eames makes a few phone calls, and somehow they never seem to stop touching. Not that night, in the hotel; not the next, in the car, and not over the three weeks Arthur works the cushiest dream job he's ever run for a dying old man in a gorgeous penthouse. When the job's over, Eames turns to Arthur and asks, matter-of-fact like they haven't just fucked in a mirrored elevator because it was taking too long to get to their bedroom, "What next, love?"
Arthur has a job waiting in Morocco. Eames has one waiting in Toronto. They go to Thailand instead, and spend three weeks pretending they've never heard of Somnacin, of dreamwork, of kicks and totems and extraction. Arthur texts an old friend and calls his mom, Eames texts his mother and calls his grandfather. They swim, they fuck, they sleep. It's in all honesty the best three weeks of Arthur's life.
Then it's Istanbul, where Eames has a longstanding appointment with a team run by Maurice, an incompetent point man Arthur hates. So it's nothing, really, for Arthur to step in and take over, because that's what he does, is make sure the job gets done and no one dies. Maurice starts to pitch a fit, but Eames glares and Arthur smiles, and that combination is fucking terrifying when you've known them both as long as Maurice has.
And that's that, for the next four years: they work together or they don't work, end of story. If a team already has a forger but needs a point man, or vice versa, they're out of luck. It helps that Arthur and Eames are the best in their fields, otherwise no one would hire them. As it is, though, it all works wonderfully.
When Eames gets a gig in Kenya, though, Arthur bows out for a lot of reasons: the one he tells Eames, which is that he's burned all his aliases and needs to lay low, and the others, including but not limited to the increasingly panicked messages he's getting from an old friend about a woman he used to adore.
Eames doesn't know that, exactly, but he keeps up with the news of their world. Arthur knows that Eames will find out, but for the moment, he needs to handle this himself. That the moment stretches into two years was unexpected, and unpleasant. For both of them.
3. Moonlight on the beach, sweet amphetamines
The summer is blazing hot and disgustingly muggy, and Arthur would rather be almost anywhere else in the world at this moment. Even his mother's house in New Jersey is looking like paradise compared to the sweaty sticky mess that is his current (very much a secret) location. Arthur is turning twenty-five, and despite his insistence that it not happen ("Please, Mal, please, don't do this,"), he's at his birthday party. Well, specifically he's at his dreamwork birthday party, because his family birthday party is next week and he's not having his parents meet the criminals with whom he works, even if he is a criminal, too, because it's the principle of the thing and also his parents think he's an accountant, so.
It's really not bad, as birthday parties go. Beer and tequila and lights strung on the patio of Mal and Dom's seaside cabin, warm sand and salsa music blaring and a pig turning on a spit, just nearly ready. It's allegedly a luau theme, but Mal's grasp of Hawaiian culture turns out to be as shaky as her hold on American idioms and it's sort of a Cuban-Latin-Polynesian-North African thing. It's nice, though, the smell of pork and the burn of shots and the way the lights get fuzzy.
Arthur had thought, when Mal had done the invitations, that he'd be bringing someone. Barrett was a lawyer, a straight arrow, and abso-fucking-lutley gorgeous. Unfortunately for Arthur, it turned out that he was also married with three kids, so that ended that. Arthur had done his time in the closet, thank you very much, and had no desire to play boyfriend with people who weren't—
But his train of thought was interrupted by Mal storming over to him, kicking up sand around her bare feet, dragging a hulking mountain of a man behind her. "Arthur, mon cher, I brought you a present!" She's drunk, really drunk, and even more beautiful than normal. The guy looks sheepish, a little nervous, but also really fucking hot. "His name is Ru—"
The guy cuts in, "Eames. My name's Eames."
"Rupert!" Mal shouts, giggling hysterically and nearly falling. Arthur catches her and, with an apologetic nod in Rupert/Eames's direction, carries her over to a lounger, where she promptly falls asleep.
"Sorry about that," he hears behind him, too close. British accent, rough with booze and cigarettes. "I go by Eames, never that other name."
Arthur smiles into the guy's — Eames's — face. Maybe leers would be a better word, but he's rather drunk himself, and it's his birthday, after all. "It's my birthday."
Eames's gorgeous mouth stretches into a long, lazy grin. "Ah, I heard. Twenty-five, a glorious moment of youth."
"How old are you?" Arthur reaches out a hand to steady himself, and if it lands on Eames's hip, well, he's drunk and it's his birthday, he gets to have a little fun today.
"Thirty," Eames answers promptly, and puts both wide hands on Arthur's narrow hips, pulls him closer. It takes a moment, but Arthur eventually realizes,
"We're dancing." He grins. He hasn't danced with someone in a while. "Fucking Barrett would never go dancing, afraid he'd get caught."
"D'you know you said that out loud?" Eames doesn't look mad, though, and keeps swaying, keeps both hands on Arthur's hips, keeps being really, really, ridiculously good-looking like he doesn't even know he's doing it.
"Sorry, sorry, just, yeah." Arthur's head nods a bit.
"Have you eaten, duck?" When Arthur shakes his head no, Eames sways them off the dance floor and maneuvers Arthur into a seat at a picnic table. "Stay here, then, I'll be right back." And he fades into the darkness, because Arthur's eyes aren't so good at focusing right now.
Arthur's eyes must close, because when he opens them it's to Eames's face and near-silence, the party winding down and the sun peeking gray and pink over the horizon. Eames starts to talk, to say, "You fell asleep, Arthur," but it's muffled because Arthur pulls him down and their mouths meet and everything fades again.
They come up for air some time later, when the sun is milky yellow and nearly all the way over the ocean's line. Clothes are rearranged quietly — it's not an awkward silence, Arthur knows those. It's more that words don't really matter right at that exact moment.
"I'm just coming out of a bad relationship," Arthur blurts out, just as Eames says,
"I'm in the middle of a messy divorce."
They laugh, because of course that's how it is, of course. "Well," Arthur says, shaking the last bit of sand out of his cuffs, "I suppose I'll see you around?"
"Dreamwork's a small world, I'm certain we'll meet again." Eames kisses him, soft and fond on the corner of the mouth, and they walk in companionable quiet, not touching, to their cars.
Three years later, Arthur bumps into Eames on another beach, under another moon. Eames is not coming out of a divorce, Arthur is not still pissed at an ex. The sex is just as good, and the companionable silence after is even better. They sleep together for a few months, until work and a new warrant on Eames and a new hit on Arthur necessitate their splitting up. The last time they fuck is on a beach, a different beach from the previous two, under a different moon. It's never been different for them, though.
They never, ever work together if they can help it, because the last thing either of them needs is leverage, collateral, the potential for things to get really fucking bad like dreamwork can get sometimes if you let it. They never work together, and they fabricate a minor argument that gets picked up because, as Eames said that first time, dreamwork is a small world. It's almost too easy, to scowl on the rare occasions they work together, to argue and bicker and, later, to slip out to a broom closet or a hotel room or a secluded beach. It's almost too easy, afterwards, to amble back to their cars in a sweet, soft silence that carries over into the rest of the day.
4. Faith can keep you warm, but I'll teach you how to shake
"Happy holidays," the shopgirl says, her thick chav accent making it sound oddly sweet, and Arthur smiles, responds in kind, and walks away.
He's Jewish, nominally, because his mother is, and also because it wasn't enough to be skinny and small and have a terrible haircut and a massive vocabulary and a severe attitude problem in a small Iowa town, he needed to also be the person who personally killed Jesus, too. The one concession his mother had made to Arthur's quiet desperation, at the time, to be normal was Christmas, and so Arthur is here, in a shopping mall in Swindon (which, it pleases Arthur's architectural eye to note, was built in an old railway station), buying everyone both their large Christmas presents and their nine small Chanukah presents.
The sheer number of presents was starting to be a problem. There was his mother, his father, three sisters, a brother-in-law, a sister-in-law, and six nieces and nephews, plus his grandmother. That…was a lot of presents. Fourteen people minimum, and Arthur was drowning in bags and boxes.
He'd nearly made it out when he slammed into someone on the steps and watched, frozen in horror, as the one hundred and forty items (many of which were gift cards or small jewelry boxes, yes, but still) tumble down a flight of stairs and spread gracelessly on the shiny linoleum foyer. "Fuck."
It wasn't a shout, but the effect was enough anyway. A mother and daughter shot him an evil glare, a huge British guy hid a grin—oh, wait. "You bumped into me, dude." Arthur cringes as the word "dude" slips out of his mouth, but in his defense, he'd been thinking about his family, and wasn't his fault, and besides, the presents were in danger.
"That I did, mate, my apologies. Let me help you pick these up, then." They pick up the presents and, in the process, Arthur realizes that this peacoat-wearing, bulky blonde Brit is fuckinggorgeous, and also that he keeps looking at Arthur in a way that's hard to interpret.
"There we are," and the guy is holding half of Arthur's load. "Where to?"
Arthur's first impulse is to snarl and snatch his things back, but instead, "If you could just help me get them into a cab, I can take it from there, thanks."
The guy whistles through his teeth and it hurts, it's so loud, and loads the presents efficiently and neatly and still with that smile on his face. "There we are, duck, you're all set. Can I give you my card, in case you decide to buy another gross of gifts while you're here and would like a hand?"
Arthur nods, takes it, slips it in a pocket and has no intention of looking at it.
But see, the problem is that his mother insists on doing his laundry when he's home the next week. Not his nice bespoke suits, she knows better, but his jeans and things. Like the jeans he'd been wearing that day. And because she is a mom, and his mom in particular, she finds the card.
"Artie, honey, who's Eames?"
He's not really listening, because he's typing up a brief report on a mark for Dom, so the sound he makes isn't quite, "Huh?" but it is close.
"Eames, you had his card in your pants. Says he's an art dealer, honey, you thinkin' of buyin' some art for that new place of yours?"
She now has Arthur's full attention. "What, Ma? I don't know anyone—" but he stops, because he remembers now. "Oh, no, Ma, he just helped me carry some stuff and gave me his card." And oh, how he wishes he could take back those words, because her whole face lights up.
"Oh, honey, you met someone! That's so good, tell me all about him." She sits down on the couch, uncomfortably close, still clutching the white rectangle on which, as she said, is printed: Eames ~ Art Dealer and a Bristol phone number.
"I don't know anything about him, Ma, we barely said ten words to each other. He just bumped into me and made me drop all the presents, and helped me pick them up and put them in a cab."
"Pfeh, you with your practical streak. You've no romance in your heart! Was he handsome?"
He can't lie. "Yeah, Ma, I guess, but I really—"
"You should call him! Right now! Here, I'll go get the phone, Artie, you can use the cordless and take it in your room, I won't listen in."
Arthur is a grown man working in an illegal and highly dangerous field. He has shot more people than he went to high school with, he fights with men twice his size and wins without breathing hard, and a tiny Jewish woman who calls him Artie manages to bully him into his room, clutching a cordless phone and a business card. Sometimes his life doesn't make any sense.
He does the math: it's one in the morning in England, and oh god he's actually going to do it, isn't he? Arthur watches his thumb press in the numbers, watches his hand hold the phone up to his ear, and it's like there's nothing he can do.
"Hello?" Eames's voice sounds scratchier, and for a moment Arthur is paralyzed.
"Um." Arthur lets his neck relax until his forehead is resting against the bedroom door. "Hello, hi, sorry, I'm Arthur, we met at—you know, the mall, um, never mind, sorry to bother you, I'll just—"
"No, no, pet, hello! Sorry, my reception's shit at the moment, I'm driving."
"You're driving? This is your cell phone?"
"Yes, pet, is that a problem?"
"Fuck," and Arthur hangs up. Fucking idiot, calling a cell phone, what if someone had a trace on his home phone, fuck, he just said his name on an unsecured cell phone, fuck fuckity fuck.
Eames doesn't call back.
When they meet again, four years later, Arthur isn't sure if Eames can do the job. He's not sure if Eames has been in dreamwork the whole time or really was an art dealer when they met. He's not even sure if Eames remembers him. He soon finds out the answers (yes and splendidly, really was an art dealer, yes if the immediately-being-pulled-into-another-room-and-snogged-within-an-inch-of-his-life is any indication).
5. Bottles and the cans, the idiots go dance
Dreamwork is lucrative, insular, dangerous, and ridiculously stupid when you think about it. But the perks…well, for example, Arthur loves to dance. Loves it. Love isn't even the right word, it's like…it's like when you're a kid, and you really love something, and you tell someone, and they react in a weird way so that you stop telling people you love it. And maybe you even tell yourself you don't love it, and you become the type of person who doesn't love that thing, whatever it is, because it just isn't you. But you never stop loving it, and in fact you become even more into it specifically because it's this thing that's been a part of you and a secret and you can't stop won't stop, and for Arthur it's dancing.
Bespoke suits, slicked-back hair, hypercompetence, and deadly precision: those don't seem congruent with being a club kid, and so he just…leaves out the club kid part for most people, lets them see who they want to see, and uses his ample free time and plentiful cash to dance for days on end between jobs. People think he never sleeps, and they're pretty much right. Sleep is for people who aren't in tune with the rhythm, whose bodies don't perk and pitch and roll with the thump-thump-thump of a club beat, who don't work one hundred and thirty hours a week to earn the kind of cash to get into the best clubs in the world. Arthur can sleep on the job, when he's dead, or some combination of the two. Life is for work and dancing, and sometimes for fucking hot guys he meets in one of those situations.
Tonight, he's torn between the bartender and the bouncer. The bartender is, well. Gorgeous. Arthur doesn't go for anyone less, because he doesn't really have sex all that often and so when he does he wants it to be memorable. Ripped, that's important too, because Arthur is pure muscle under his suits and likes to wrestle a bit in bed. Dumb isn't a requirement, but he's found that it makes things easier (dumb guys don't act interested in his job, dumb guys accept the cover story without asking questions, dumb guys tend to be more fun to take down and take apart). The bartender has all three, and a sweet smile like a kid, and shaggy dark hair and big brown eyes and a wicked tiger tattoo Arthur wouldn't mind licking.
The bouncer, though. Well, first of all, he's not a bouncer, not really: Arthur has been in enough clubs to know that. He's there for a reason, playing a part (Arthur thinks maybe actor researching a role, or a thief casing the joint). Big, ripped, gorgeous, dirty blonde, and a mouth like nothing Arthur's ever seen. But he's smart, is the problem. Obvious, oozing with brains under that stupid facade, and if no one else notices that's not Arthur's fault, because the guy isn't hiding it well at all. And Arthur doesn't, generally, sleep with smart guys.
"Doin' anything later, hon?" Oh god, the bartender is Southern, and Arthur just melts because that's the one stupid thing he goes weak in the knees for. Not Southernness in particular, but accents that aren't his own, oh man. The decision is made, and as they slip out he doesn't quite make eye contact with the not-a-bouncer.
Three weeks later, at a different bar, Arthur picks up a short blonde retired Army man, and he's slipping out the door when a rough hand grabs him. Arthur doesn't think, just reacts, and the not-a-bouncer is (despite being twice Arthur's size and, presumably, much closer to sober) in a submission hold on the floor before the short blonde soldier even notices what's going on.
"Uh, dude, what's going on?" he says in a slow surfer drawl, and Arthur shoots the not-a-bouncer a glare as if to say, look what you are costing me.
"Nothing, don't worry about it, I'll take care of it. Next time, okay?" Arthur makes a face that was really supposed to be a grin, but judging by the blonde's blanching and fleeing, it wasn't very successful. "Thanks, buddy, you just cost me—"
"Buggering a moron through a mattress, yes, I know."
Arthur lets go before he can think twice, because oh, yes, please and thank you to that voice. The guy is just as gorgeous as he was, and Arthur wants in a way he usually doesn't. "I like morons," he says, brushing a speck of dirt off his vest, "they're easier to get rid of."
The big man steps closer, invading Arthur's space, and growls, "I bet they are, pet. Eames," and he holds out one huge, rough hand.
"Arthur," and the shake turns into a grapple.
Silent except for breathing and the occasional grunt of a well-landed punch, and Arthur hasn't had this much fun in years, not since leaving the army, and they get to a standstill but Arthur's not sure how long they've been fighting because he's lost in the heat and the smell and the sweat.
And then Eames's mouth, those filthy beautiful lips Arthur hasn't managed to get out of his head, is on him, and the kiss is better than the fight, even, and after that everything is sweat and grunting and gasps again, fading to black.
When they wake up (in a dingy hotel room neither of them remember renting), Arthur reaches immediately for a small red die in the pocket of the trousers crumpled on the floor. That Eames is checking something, too, doesn't escape his attention. Once they've both satisfied their fears of a dream, Arthur asks (in his best attempt at a casual tone), "Architect?"
"Forger, duck. You're a point man, am I right?" Eames is smiling, lounging on the (frankly disgusting) bed like all is right with the world.
"Forgers are fakes, generally, all promise and no product." Arthur grins back, baring his teeth a little more than necessary. "Show me what you've got."
"I don't have a PASIV on me, love, sad to say. You carry one with you?"
"No," Arthur says, slinking back onto the bed, "but I've got a job if you're interested."
Eames's eyes roam over Arthur's lean form. "Oh, you've no idea how interested I am."
- I'm just a call away
The thing is that Arthur is famous. Or, well, not famous but in the dreamwork world he is very sought after. And Eames isn't stupid, he knows that he needs help with this stupid project, this idiotic forge for a badly constructed dream with no clear objective.
So he calls in a favor or ten, gets an email address. That it's pretty clearly a disposable one, a random jumble of letters and numbers, should really make him hesitate just a bit. But he needs the help, so, what's the worst that could happen (he carefully doesn't think about things like Polish gangsters or police wiretaps or exes, because there's only so far his self-deception goes but fuck it, he's an optimist)?
Spends a few days playing with the wording — because the thing people don't know about forgers, or really one of the things people don't know about forgers is their attention to detail. They get the reputation, by and large, of being sloppy and nonspecific and emotional, because yes, a good forge is emotional and intuitive. But that means fuck-all if you get the eye color wrong, or the slang, or the way the forge wears her hair.
So there's a balance, see, that not everyone else has to hit. So to write the email the right way, Eames has to build on what he knows about Arthur by reputation, about point men in general, and on his own intuition. He goes for simple and direct, not a hint of flattery, because that's what he would want if the shoe was on the other foot.
He gets a response thirty-six hours later. It's terse and to-the-point, but it's also bloody helpful.
After the job (which, despite a shitty team and no sleep and only the roughest idea of what they're actually doing, goes off relatively well), Eames sends another note.
arthur - thanks for your advice. helped quite a bit. happy to return the favor if needed. cheers - e.
Thirty-six hours later:
Mr. Eames - Your offer of help, while much appreciated, won't be needed, since forgery is rarely useful in my opinion. - Arthur
arthur - what? forgery can do things there's no other way to do. want me to recite reinholdt to you? - e
Mr. Eames - Reinholdt was a romantic, but the human subconscious can fill in the gaps without the use of a forger. Dreamwork went fine before the forging started, and it'll go fine again once thieves stop trying to be more than they are. I mean no offense. - Arthur
arthur - insult my career but mean no offense, of course. silly of me. look, i'll grant you that some forgers are shite, but so are many point men, and we still use them, don't we? - e
Eames - Fair enough. "Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen," after all. - Arthur
The emails go on for six years.
Eames - What do you think about Matryoshka dolls? - Arthur
a - they're lovely. - e
Eames - You know what I mean. - Arthur
a - gotcha. see attached thoughts. - e
Eames - I'm with you, but the forger we've got is less than proficient. - Arthur
a - that's your fault for hiring Morris, i told you it was a bad fit, he's fine in his way but bloody useless otherwise - e
Eames - Not my choice, and please refrain from comments about my coworkers until such time as they are not my coworkers anymore, regardless of the truth. - Arthur
Eames sends Arthur an article about forging, or about new techniques, whatever he thinks might interest the point man. Sometimes Arthur responds with a detailed critique, sometimes a one-line dismissal, and sometimes not at all (in which case his silence says enough; Arthur is uniquely gifted at silence). Sometimes they flirt. Sometimes they argue. But they're rarely silent.
Eames - Eleven letters, fourth is a C, "cyclical political evolution." - Arthur
a - anacyclosis, i believe, pet - e
Eames - How do you know that? - Arthur
a- full of surprises, that's me - e
—-
a - what's a town in iowa one could conceivably be from? - e
Eames - Do you want to share the mark's hometown or not? - Arthur
a - not share, I think. he's from des moines. - e
Eames - I'd go with Coralville. See attached brief. - Arthur
a - your american cities all sound fake by the way. "coralville," honestly - e
—-
Eames - What do you know about the churches of Moldavia? - Arthur
a - everything. sending it your way. - e
Eames - Cocky. - Arthur
a - you have no idea - e
Eames - God, I didn't mean that. Thanks for the info. - Arthur
a - anything you need, anytime, any rating - e
Eames - Shut up. - Arthur
a - as you wish - e
Eames - I didn't mean, Eames, you know I meant…anyway. Which Bond should I start Pippa out on? - Arthur
a - connery, probably, although dalton's rather delicious and craig's a right bastard. connery's the classic though. - e
—-
a - you use a browning, yes? - e
Eames - Not exclusively, no. Generally I like a Glock. - Arthur
e - blast, i need the feel of a browning. know anyone? - e
Eames - Try Wolfgang, if you're in his area. Or Freida, she used to favor one before the baby, might still have some. - Arthur
—-
Eames - Know any good bars in Soho? - Arthur
a - not a one, pet. i know a good one in bangkok, though. - e
Eames - Stay where you are, I'll send someone. - Arthur
a - fuck, no, wait, sorry, i forgot. sorry. i'm fine. - e
Eames - What's the point of coming up with code words if you're just going to forget them? - Arthur
a - sorry, pet, sorry, drunk, forgot, sorry - e
—-
a - haven't heard from you in a week, everything all right? - e
a - pet, you're worrying me. - e
a - look, no one seems to know where you are. if i don't get an answer soon i'm coming to find you. talk to me - e
Eames - Running. Copacetic. Will talk later. - Arthur
—-
Eames - Hiding. - Arthur
a - M & D? - e
Eames - Yes. - Arthur
a - i'll run interference. On ne passe pas, love. - e
—-
a - C is looking for you. - e
Eames - You're there? - Arthur
a - keeping them off your back. - e
Eames - They will hunt us, hurt you. - Arthur
a - so i'll say μολὼν λαβέ - e
Eames - How do you know ancient Greek? - Arthur
a - tell you about it later. - e
—-
They meet for the first time in a warehouse.
They speak for the first time in a warehouse.
They fuck for the first time in a warehouse.
—
NOTES:
"Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen." = "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
On ne passe pas = "They shall not pass," General Robert Nivelle, WWI Battle of Verdun.
μολὼν λαβέ = "Come and take them," King Leonidas, Battle of Thermopylae