The sun is light today; bright and waking as it fades slowly through the windows, over the hump of window-ledge, as the sun rises over the city-ridged horizon. They could be dreaming, the scene is like a renaissance picture; paint so soft on the canvas the sunrise covers every edge of colour like butter-light. Covering Arthur's face like a veil; covering the sheets pulled down around his chest, twisted and rolled in the night into disorder, the disorder of unintended relaxation. Upon waking, he will be unaware of the creases and the rolls of white fabric until this moment, this auspicious moment, has passed. The day wakes like a new-born baby and greets every man like its mother; tired, relieved, content. Snug will worm the day into every man's arms until the necessity of reality pulls them apart, so that the mother may get dressed and the babe may be cleaned, but it's not the mess that bothers man, no, never. He sees the birth of the day and knows it for the light that lives inside himself; he would not touch it or do it wrong; how could he? They are one and the same and Arthur will be still in the rustling sheets until he has fully woken.
Curtain-edge grasps a breath of air and follows it into the room. They are in a hotel, that cannot be called a hotel. A house somewhere far in the country. These are the good days, the best days. He shall remember them always: Arthur sleeping, nature outside waking, everything being; anything only just becoming. They have been sleeping here for maybe two days, maybe only the one. It is long before their time will shrink to a penny and their days together will turn into nights together and then weeks and weeks apart. They are together now, in the half-light, and nothing but outlandish fantasies of natural disasters rushing them together in the wave, then rushing them apart, are ever considered by either of them. Nothing can break what they have, nothing but what can stop a country.
He can take the time (although it isn't taking time; time is all theirs to enjoy and pleasure themselves in, like ducks frolicking in the water) to watch the delicate way the sun-veil lifts, then settles, over Arthur's skin like a gold dust. Specks of gold nestle in his eyelashes, just the tips, and fall in a cavalcade over his forehead. There is warmth with the sun: the slow heat of day only just beginning. Sun will warm anything, he thinks, Sun is a contentedness of being. That is why we name our child Son, so as to bring him happiness and the soft radiance of sunlight all his long morning life.
They do not have a child together. Sometimes he wonders whether they could have, one day, though they are both old and there are always difficulties; barriers; technicalities that he knows would work against himself. Arthur is the only one of them who might break his way through them and let him in by the side door, but he resists asking because who knows whether Arthur would want something like that so much that he would be willing to knock down walls and break through buildings.
His love is something like that. It is strength - strength that starts from the ground, from the earth, and builds up through his blood and sweat: all details that make up a human being: start with sweat for courage, fear, lust, endurance; end with blood for surrender, fearlessness, value, life. He dreams of giving; while Arthur sleeps, he awake-dreams of fighting his way back to his side, of challenging all contenders, of knowing exactly when to give and exactly when to push. In reality, of course, he knows nothing of these things, but he thinks he knows. He daydreams often.
The dark is coming, now. The red light of the horizon is expanding into white - less colour, more brightness, as if some ancient guardian were turning up the Earth's capacity for light. Soon, the day will have grown. They will be in times where to rest is unacceptable and the world will be moving. Though it is some slow day of the week, or so far as he knows, he will lose Arthur this morning. It is too much; too much to hope for that they will spend another day out of the city, walking, walking; just walking. Among soft green grass you can roll between your fingers and curl around your thumb; through fields carved out of lumped soil and buried in heather; over hills and next to trees where he sometimes pulls Arthur in and buries them together. They will throw themselves back into real life, and time will start to drag again. He dreams mainly to be asleep, or to be concentrating. When he doesn't have a job to be working on, the tedium - the waiting - is unbearable. Sometimes, when the pain is at its greatest, he gambles. Easier to throw unnoticed cash away than time; time is more fickle - the less you want it around the closer it gets, clocks ever ticking, watches stopping, the stolid movement of people around you: time dragging you down by the lapels. He hardly ever wears a suit. Arthur does it far too well.
One solitary shard of light slips through the curtain, flickering over the sheets, occasionally over arms tussled in the fabric. It won't be long now. He has perhaps a few more moments at hand, a little while longer where he can pretend that they will be enough for each other forever; where he can watch the minute tightenings and un-tightenings of Arthur's fingers where they rest, as if he's grasping something in a dream; where he can pass the pads of his fingers over the covering of hair across Arthur's arm, marveling, going with the direction of growth; where he can sit in the armchair he's been in since the sun got up, feet planted at odds on the carpet, elbows slotted into knees, hands drifting in the cool sheets like water.
He reverses the direction on the arm he dares to touch, going against the grain. It is enough.
Arthur stirs.
Why are you telling me this?
Because you said to start at the beginning. So that's what I'm doing, pet. I'm starting at the beginning.
It is late spring and outside is too tempting to ignore. He is waiting indoors, staring at his hands, the dust, the floor. Shoe-printed mud lines the paved stone every now and then, in long winding paths of someone else's life, going to meet a friend, or a lover, or to work, smiling in the early heat. They are to meet in the country again, next to an old rock-hewn cottage with a counter selling half-hearted tourist guides of events in the area, one of local birds (the feathered kind); one showing the bright flash of guitars, a local band; one steadily folding over and over in the darkest corner of the room.
There are few places of darkness here. It is one of the reasons why he likes the countryside so much, where he can be free and easy without worry, without rush. Cities always require you to be moving, nervous, hurried. Easier to be familiar with them by spending time in the cities most do not know they live in. There is less of a rush there; the rush happens in your own head, and he is not interested in that.
Arthur will be here, soon. He asked him, will you come to the country? There's a little town I know just off a river. A babbling brook; haven't you always wanted to see a babbling brook? He was joking, of course. Here there are no brooks but there could be a river sluicing its way unexpectedly through a field - watch where you put your feet, you have a choice of water, grass, or cow dung on your moccasins.
He has asked him out here because this feeling is golden and he wants to give more of what he feels himself to Arthur. How could you not smile or wonder at such a creation of natural nature? When you were confronted with your origins, how could you not stare, and worship, and cower, and quake?
Precise footfalls on the cobbled path outside. Shadow cuts through the shaft of light haloing a particularly worn cut of stone; bright becomes shade. It is he, it is Arthur, he has come, and there is nothing but the claw of his heart out of the confines of his chest to kiss him, joined by the bubble in his throat that wraps tiny limbs around Arthur's own and pleads with him, implores him to stay, and all are pushed aside by his arms which make a u-turn in the air and come to fall in the guise of a single hand, on Arthur's shoulder.
"You made it."
It is a daft thing to say, but then, he's not quite sure his throat has climbed back in yet or his heart resumed its steady clunk of beating, so without much air to keep him from stating what is obvious, but also what is ultimately amazing, he speaks, and then forgets what it was that he said in the very next raw, hewn breath.
Arthur does not speak. His heart behaves in the face of his own. Sophisticated domestication waiting patiently behind its master, unlike the uncontrollable wildness of what assaults him. How can Arthur be so content? It is not something he has wondered for the first time. How can he be so calm and with sense when I am beside myself and watching what fever grips my skin as if from the outside, unable to stop, unable to help, merely acting?
He takes his strength from Arthur in the necessity of contact, and steadies.
"Come back outside."
This place is familiar to him, but not to the man he has brought here, so he shows him everything. The nettles that grow adamantly in the most frequented places; the dark red of leaves even in the springtime; the tree still standing after a bolt of lightning cleaved one into two; the tiny shoots of new grass, sown over turned soil. He explains how to tell those shoots from what he calls wheat-grass, edible or not, he always eats them; dock leaves blooming next to their tough-stalked enemies; how to vault a gate without slipping on the mud of many swung-over boots; what a tarmac road feels like when you press your hand against it; and why wherever you choose to sit, there will always be an ant's nest. This place is his flesh and Arthur is his blood, he keeps him moving and flitting from one wonder to another; and he is trying to explain how these are more than the seven wonders of the world but it only comes out like nostalgia and bias in the proud, halting way he tells it. Without humour, he will always stumble and Arthur looks at him often, as if wondering why his feet trip him so or maybe why he's choosing to leave the laces untied so that they may breathe better. It's because he wants him to see it. He wants him to see this all the way he first knew it, from a child's eyes, yet unclaimed, always gathering, like the tiny dark berries he continues to offer and when he laughs, his eyes refract the sun and his tongue is purple.
Do you see? Will you taste the berries? Will you give yourself over to nature like she gave herself over to you, will you? There are clouds but when he makes them sit down on the smooth wood of an old fallen tree, they can see each other's faces in the sky, and watch them slowly drift, fade, fall together; there is not a great deal of cloud today. There is plastic and humanity all around them, but he leaves the black bags slowly billowing out and back against a fence - they are for dogs, he says; mine always hated them. There is a tarmac road that stretches out beyond the clusters of horizon - Roman - rough with tiny pebbles that lie scattered like tadpoles strung out in the water. Do you see it? Do you see that?
"See what, Mr. Eames? It's midday; there's nothing I can'tsee."
He aches to point out the illogic of this statement, like Arthur would in his stead, always keen to retort as much as he teased, but the resolve disappears as he realises he is happy; oh, he is so happy.
The fire crackles quietly; a single flame dancing in the brass neck of the lamp on the table next to him - turned off - and warming the dark velvet armchair he rests in. There is no constant but the flickering shadows, drawn in and in the same breath dispersed.
There is the faintest outline of a frame on the wall. He cannot see the painting from here, through the darkness of the room, but he knows that he wouldn't understand what he was seeing if he could. Abstract, haphazard, mazes of colour, inviting the viewer to create their own opinion on what the level of light and shade is supposed to mean: modern art is half tall-talking and all bullshit to him.
It sounds good.
It sounds good because it was. Because it is.
Why did you say was?
Ah.
Summer kicks the leaves around his feet, stirring them up into a mid-air whirlpool before they fall out, curl, rustle back down, holding hands with each other and resting on top or against one another, like the best example of tolerance and naked acceptance the world knows; that rare bird humanity will never see.
It is not autumn yet. It is late in the season, or so he always feels, when the hours turn around and begin to fade again, starting with midsummer, the true Night's Dream, and slowly dragging them back down to cold nights and rough air. He spends little time outside, lately. Seems like all the extra hours he thought he had in the spring and in early May disappeared over the horizon with the pollen, and even the cities, stuffed and destructive as they were, needed time to be given direction. He hates the cities, but he will stay in them if he needs to, and today is one of those times.
He has compromised by walking to the hotel they are to meet at, disregarding the choke and buzz of congruent taxis, marzipanned into their lines along the chock-full streets. The bus service, equally, he disdains. There are many open-top buses now, but the reward for higher air is a closer view of the traffic lanes, several months' worth of lung cancer and a ticket worth more than twenty pairs of shoes - the shoes that hebuys, anyhow.
It has been many hours since they last met. Many days. He is not used to having to wait - he never will be - waiting is just another form of torture for him, maybe even the worst. After all, waiting means you are not where you want to be and right then there is no way for you to change that. The gloomy, uncertain weather seems to want to agree with him- waiting for autumn to validate its mood, unable to rest in a state where all that needs to be is change.
Inside the lobby, there is little to be seen. Polite automatic doors; the bellhop outside smoking, who gives him a look and a grin, too infused with irony and wariness for it to look welcoming, before stubbing the end out with his heel; the desk clerk inside who takes his name and hands over a key - they booked this room under the names of Barker and Corbett, which he thought was quite clever, before he realized Arthur would probably not get the reference - the key takes him up an elevator and onto the fourth floor.
It would both amuse and unnerve him to find his room in the 490s, but the rooms here only go up to four hundred and fifty before they stop, inexplicably, and, he has no doubt, continue again on the fifth floor with five hundred. His key unlocks door 427, and then he is coming inside, entering the domain of the bureaucratic, the sure, and really he had given all that up the minute he turned onto the motorway, but it is Arthur who continues to remind him that not all businessmen glitter with fake gold.
There is a suit jacket with its shoulders tucked neatly into a hanger on the spread of the not-cheap-but-not-ridiculous bed, easily outshining every other item in the room. Briefly, he wonders how much it cost, but quickly pushes the thought away. As if his experience with tailors would in any way help with the calculation. The second thought - the one he was already acting on - is that Arthur must be somewhere in here, and he already has his hand on the door to the bathroom, tempted by swift-rushing fire in his torso and around the soft, vulnerable parts of his middle. He wants to open the door, but he has done this before: there are rules around Arthur that must be respected; there are boundaries that cut off abruptly and early. He does not want to break, stumbling, through them now.
Still, the thought that why would he shower if he knew who was coming, if he were not expecting this moment to arrivecircles closer and clutches something tight in his core. He still has his hand on the door, waiting, knowing and not knowing that it will be locked anyway, that this effort is futile at best. He stands there for not long at all, but in the second that his mind overpowers his will, the water stops, and he pauses - caught - with the handle pushed an inch down.
Droplets on the floor. Arthur will be wrapped in a towel, what is usually so immaculate in disarray; he knows, he knows.The temptation is too great to bear, so he eases down the rest of the handle and opens. The door curves inwards.
Arthur's back is to him, curled over so that the indentation of his spine ridges upwards in a perfect example of anatomy, passing the ruts of his shoulder blades which arc and move under his skin as he catches handfuls of water and splashes them onto his face. He has not seen this ritual before, and so interrupts, running the heel of his left hand over the train-track of spine and onto his shoulder, with the other encircling his waist to rest splayed over Arthur stomach, feeling the hot beat of his blood there, beneath the outside.
"What are you doing?"
He asks against his ear, breathing through his mouth, taking little nips of skin between his teeth and teasing outwards, before letting them snap back into perfection. Arthur does not answer with words, but has stilled, like a cobra with his neck raised high, ready to strike, but in doing so he bares his neck, reacting to the animalistic presence at his back like he's unsure whether to fight or surrender.
In a way, the question floats right back at him.
(What are you doing?)
"I'm saying hello to you,Arthur. You've kept this suite immaculate, as always."
It's not true. The mirror before them is fogged with shower steam; water pools in unusual places; Arthur is wonderfully deliciously unkempt, and he buries himself in him before he can say no, hoisting them flush together and biting down in the gap between neck and shoulder.
The next moment, he's on the floor, sprawled awkwardly and vaguely painfully on the cold tiles. Did he slip? No, Arthur; Arthur pushed him. Arthur shoved him away. He realises at some point that he's gaping up at the man before him in utter surprise, and slowly closes his mouth. Then opens it again; then closes without a word. From here, he can see the expression on Arthur's face, and immediately looks away. It is not an expression you can describe, or even attempt to; all he knows is that something is very wrong, and whydid he open that door.
"Arthur?" he asks, with no trace of a teasing tone.
Those eyes look at him, stareat him, or into himself; accusing. He can almost see the throttles of emotion ripping right through him, coming out in waves of blistering heat, burns and icicles, storms and waterfalls, all pounding down or around the figure of Eames lying prone on the ground.
In the next moment, they are gone. Arthur steps out of the room.
He can't hear him moving around the suite, it's as if he's turned into a ghost, one that he doesn't recognize anymore. Someone else's lover; someone else's friend. But he does know that he needs to be out there, right now.
Aching, he pushes himself up from the floor, one palm on the side of the bath until that elbow reminds him he hit it on the way down. As soon as he is somewhat upright, he moves back into the room, searching. The jacket has gone from the bed: it is on Arthur's back as he ties the laces of his shoes. Carefully, he enters forward, out of range. "What are you-?"
The snap of the suitcase interrupts him and Arthur doesn't seem at all apologetic, moving efficiently towards the door, suitcase already in hand, but Eames is in the way, and puts out an arm as if to stop him.
"Listen. We can talk about this."
It never connects. Arthur moves brusquely past and never spares him a glance, or the creased, untidy hotel room, or the hand that almost brushes his shoulder. Something that might be a mutter races out of him, in the tone of one of his automatic corrections.
"Hey-"
But he is going and already gone in the most part, followed by the growl of his suitcase, running against the floor. Eames is left once again with his mouth half-open and his throat stuffed with words that won't form into sentences.
"Arthur?"
No answer.
He cannot- he does not understand. He can't put his thoughts together in enough time to pull him back to where they need to be, where they should have been tonight. Never enough day, he thinks, irrationally, and half-starts out of the room, but Arthur has not stopped. A bundle of words come out of him and his throat cracks on the last note.
"What did I-? Arthur!"
Their one-way conversation has carried down the corridor, but he doesn't care, doesn't care in the least. All he can hear is the silence and the weight of nothing at all.
When he turns back to the empty room and rests his forehead against the wall, the half-heard murmur comes back to him, completed in the time his thoughts had to process it when he'd had no time to listen.
"Listen. We can talk about this."
And Arthur, with the briefest look of irritation and somethingelse, had corrected him instinctively; like he had so many times before.
"We can't."
A man-shaped silhouette rises from the darkness. Eames watches him go.
Nothing is said for a moment, and he finds himself half-wondering whether the man is studying the painting, or admiring the timbre of the fire from the far end of the room, anything but staring straight at the wall like he knows he will be.
And then, marvelously, miraculously, he is proved wrong.
Light - pale light - very faint, but very beautiful. There is a window next to the silhouetted figure, whose hands are rolling up the blinds. He had not noticed it upon entering; perhaps his subject had not known it was there, either. No matter.
Eames sits up in the chair to see out of the window, not rising, not daring to, but as always, curious. The man's hands still when there is enough to look out of, and fall, hesitant, to the window-ledge. He is staring out, utterly absorbed in either the view or his thoughts, Eames cannot tell, and he is content either way, it does not matter. He has gotten him to think.
I watched Arthur for the next two weeks.
You did what?
I needed to know.
The grey too-early morning light lingers, filling in the silence like fog.
Couldn't you have left it alone? You always had to go too far.
It's a tough call when I've no idea what too far is.
So that justifies it? Eames-
The man turns to him, palms up, a gesture of supplication.
I'm trying to understand, Eames hears.
I don't understand, the man says.
He won't reply. Eames just looks at him until the shadow meets his eyes.
Tell me what you found.
The daydreams won't help him now. Not when it is Arthur he is fighting to protect and Arthur he has to contend with. He no longer knows when to push and when to take and instead just leaps blindly forward, hoping, desperate, for an embrace of arms to catch him. He knows there won't be.
The other times, he is as breakable as a lamb scouting the edge of the territory of a lion. Extending only the barest of fingertips towards him, in dreams - they have not seen each other since - although any suggestion of physical intimacy is null. His hands stay dead at his side. Void. Illegal. He doesn't fight against it, he just lets it happen. It is worth many sacrifices to be with Arthur; he will be whoever Arthur wants him to be; perfect for him.
For a forger, he sure was bad at his job. He took Arthur at face value, and yes, he loved to tease him, loved to play on his weaknesses and receive the same treatment back - it was one of the things that attracted him to the man in the first place - but as for actually knowingArthur, he had failed. There was a whole other man he had missed utterly. How could he have been so blind? He has known of this for a while; he has known but he had not guessed at how bad. He had not known the consequences, only that there were rules and these should not be broken; he has always seen such walls as challenges.
So now he has the chance - one chance - to be good at his job, to use his skills for something worthwhile; not money, not fame, just the simple art of understanding. He takes it with both hands, strong and true.
Will I be ready for what I find?
The next few weeks pass in a blur. They begin in the parking lot of a supermarket, where Arthur's car is parked in a stream of polished metal; black, immaculate. Even the interior. This Eames knows only from the occasional glance inside. He was never invited into the car; just another part of Arthur's life he has never been privy to.
He follows the staircase back to above-ground, and enters the supermarket.
Arthur has his items in a brittle metal basket that he holds out to one side by its handle. There is printer ink, coffee and two large bottles of water. Evian. Specific. Arthur moves - where 'moves' isn't the right word - he marches,almost, through the aisles; steady, with purpose, always going somewhere.
Like a forger, or a thief, he follows. He is watching, waiting, and learning. Looking in where he was always looking out, right by Arthur's side. Too close to the subject to see the picture, or maybe never wanting to believe what he subconsciously took in and brushed off as the contraband creations of his own mind.
Where - for example - the items in Arthur's basket are functional, for a purpose, never recreational. He is not a man who buys magazines or cigarettes at the counter, woe-betide a half-assed buyer of lottery tickets on the odd occasion he remembers it's Saturday. He is careful, where Eames is all over the place. They really are opposite ends of - perhaps not even the same stick. Maybe Arthur had always really been a snake and he had been too blind to see the difference. Does that work? Sticks are blind.
In following this train of thought, he loses sight of his target, and pulls into the nearest cover of an aisle, quietly cursing. A child stares at him from the walkway he stepped off, serious, not understanding and in the same instant seeming to understand. Funny how alike they suddenly seem - this man and a stranger's child - compared to he and Arthur, and he had never really noticed. Not really.
He exits the place in as unobtrusive manner as possible, using the self-checkout to take out a six pack and a box of paracetamol, before walking back to his car and paying for the privilege of parking there. When Arthur returns, he gives him a healthy lead before shifting his car into gear and beginning the journey home.
So the days pass from one week into the next. He picks up the trail at Arthur's house, or one of the areas he frequents. Whether careful or not, a man of routine is easier to track, especially one that he knows - or thought he knew - intimately. Then, once he has his subject in sight, he watches him. Picks up jobs his employers didn't know they had, in the places they have visited often together, just to keep an eye out. In two weeks, Eames is a window cleaner, a kitchen assistant, a street-sweeper, a park official, and a shelf stocker. It is important that Arthur doesn't see him. While mute and angry, his eyes will still work fine. But less than seeing him, it's noticinghim that Eames has to avoid. He isn't known for being a forger for nothing; he is an expert at studying people enough to impersonate them without drawing their attention as an observer. With Arthur, it is slightly more important that he not be recognized, but he picks jobs with uniforms that hide or disguise his features, breaking out the kits he owns from the hotel room he's now staying at in Hammersmith. With enough distance in the way, or anonymity, not even a point man will see him.
After two weeks, he no longer has anything to gain from the way Arthur walks, the places he visits, his manner and dress, most of which he knows already. He's drawn home; home where Arthur is, as much as they draw away from each other now, to find what he cannot see even at this angle. He is holding on to any ledges he can find in this waterfall, seeking caves, anything to climb still higher without being swept away by the tide. So, halfway to his hotel one day, he cuts across the traffic and swerves to the right, cutting off the crossway. Heading home, hisrealhome.
The same way Arthur knew he would be in Mombasa, he knows Arthur will be in his house. Small, functional, created for a purpose and used as much, just on the fringes of the centre of London. They can all afford to run a few such places on the salaries they benefit from. He tends to spend his all at once, or sporadically, with his whims. Arthur puts his into stocks and shares, and moves the rest towards keeping everything in his life running smoothly; efficient, effective Arthur.
He turns into the familiar road, half-expecting the streamlined car to be in the drive, but of course if Arthur bought a house he would make sure there was a garage. The car is nowhere to be seen. He parks on the curb, expertly blocking the driveway of the house at the far end of the street, and idles in first, tapping his fingers on the wheel. What to do. What to do.
Are you going to do what you promised? Are you going to do it like you said you would?
Five minutes go past, then ten. When nothing moves in the house, no shadows in the windows, he concedes that Arthur may know he's following him. May even be waiting for him. Arthur knows Eames, as much as he may not know the man. Could be sitting in his immaculate kitchen with a knife in one hand and a stiff drink in the other. His heart flutters, but he doubts it. More likely, he'll be in his study working on some project for the future, or Cobb, or a different employer.
He needs to know how Arthur speaks, how he reacts, what riles and what amuses him. The last time he knew seems so long ago. It's simple, really: they need to talk. He has to know what made him angry; what made him cast Eames away like an unwanted, disappointing dog. So, it is with trepidation racing through the coils of his intestines and a light airy feeling in his head that he kills the engine and steps out of the car, crossing to the pavement on the other side of the road and walking steadily over to what used to be Home. It is late afternoon.
Arthur is not there when he opens the door with the key he made all those months ago. He is not upstairs or down. His car is not in the garage.
Eames is no computer expert, he prefers to have something tangible in his hands, so he's not terribly enthusiastic about an attempt to hack in. He shifts the mouse, and pauses, surprised. The screen has come up without any request for a password, and he is already on Arthur's desktop. Files yawn at him as he clicks disbelieving through the folders. This is not like Arthur.
His mind slowly performs a U-turn, turning back to the sight that had greeted him when he stepped through the door. No alarm beeping quietly on the wall; dead.
The remains of a coffee cup sitting mostly untouched in the hall, next to a mobile phone. Papers overflowing from a printer just next to the door of the room he's in now. Little things that would mean nothing out of the usual for anyone else but Arthur. Something is wrong.
He turns away from the computer and takes the papers choking in the printer, scanning them for any information that might explain why Arthur had left in such a hurry, with such a disregard for everything that made him who he usually was, and where he might have gone.
Nothing in the papers, nothing, and then he's down the stairs, still flipping through them, into the hall to pick up the mobile; thankfully, one of many, but this one is dying. Forsaking the pile of information, he flicks through the phone - contacts, recent calls… Dom.Slightly relieved to be calling a familiar number, Eames hits redial, and waits impatiently for the man to pick up, scanning the hall as if he might have missed something.
"Hello?"
"I'm at Arthur's. You wouldn't happen to know where he is, would you?"
Silence on the other end of the line. Then, what he least wanted to hear.
"He should be right there."
Eames slams the phone into the palm of his hand, striding into the kitchen. "That is notwhat I want to hear, Cobb. You know where he is." He takes a breath, exhaling thoroughly, and considers pouring himself a glass of water. "Look, will you tell me the truth before it's too late, this time? Just tell me he's not on another one of your sedated jobs."
"Take a breather for a second. He's not here and he should be."
"Where?" Eames asks distractedly, reaching into the cupboard for a glass, and turning the tap on in the silence before Cobb replies.
"With me. The point is- it doesn't really matter. He hasn't showed."
"Stop being so bloody cryptic."
"Does it matter, Eames? He hasn't showed. We were meant to go through research, nothing else. He could be held up, but you know him. He wouldn't let someone down without a word."
It matters, but he has no time to puzzle it over now. He tilts the glass into the water, cutting off the flow into the sink for a few seconds, and it is then that the small red cube catches his eye.
"Eames?"
"Eames?"
"Has he exhibited any, ah, difference in behaviour lately? Any strange habits that can't be explained away?" His tone is strangled, attempting to be as light-hearted as he imagined he had been a moment ago, and Cobb replies succinctly, as if understanding the instant this conversation turned serious.
"No. He's been exactly the same. Regular Arthur."
As disappoint as that is, it's what he would expect. No change in demeanor, even among friends. No sign of anything below the surface. Well, in that case, it wasn't anything out of Arthur's own control. Wouldn't he know if Arthur had been exhibiting any strange behavior, after all? But that was just it. Arthur had been followed for the past two weeks. If he could hide well enough in private as he did in public, Eames couldn't afford to be careful anymore.
You've got to understand that people have boundaries that not even youshould look past.
Eames jerks back to the present, surprised out of his story by the sudden voice. The man is silhouetted against the bright early light shining in through the window; dangerous light, like the cloud hadn't quite made up its mind on whether it would choose to be sun or a storm today.
He glances down at his shirtsleeves, where one wayward thread is beginning to lengthen. Like a surgeon, with unusual precision, he draws it out, considering his reply.
Well-
He looks up, squinting slightly in the bright light.
In that case, why didn't you tell me?
I tried. In case you didn't notice, I tried.
You did nothing of the sort, or I wasn't listening.
Eames can almost see the weak smile.
I should've known you'd get it out of me before long. You're a good forger, Eames. Better than you think. You're meant to study people; I guess.. I always thought that would mean otherpeople.
Well if you don't want to be painted, don't marry a painter, right?
This time there's a huffed chuckle, and the man shifts against the window ledge.
Candid as always.
Eames lets the quiet settle for a beat, before he steeples his fingers, leaning either elbow on the arm of the chair as he makes a bridge over his stomach.
Look. There's a lot I don't know. Plenty more I don't understand; but most of it can wait. What I need to know is.. why didn't you tell me?
Silence reigns again. A shift in body language, subtle, but the light brings it out.
And for a moment, he's sure he won't get a reply.
Arthur surprises him, like he has always surprised him, as the white of the light burns down into a smooth yellow yolk.
You didn't need to know.
There is always a time, around midday or early morning, when Eames loses sight of him. It is like he drops off the map, infuriating and a little amusing, to Eames who spends most of his time immersed in wry humor. He makes an effort every time, but he always knows, when Arthur leaves and he can't find him, that he would be better off spending time tying up the loose ends his odd jobs have left behind and writing new references for the coming week than attempting to sniff out a trail.
This is not one of those times. Short of kidnap, which he rules out until later in favour of a more reasonable explanation, Arthur has not disappeared comfortably this time. For one, it is the end of the day and the sun is setting.
The die goes in his pocket to join the mobile phone, and he returns to the hallway to take a closer look at the papers. They had not seemed important then; maybe now they would make more sense.
He sifts through the pile with the light on, studying each page before flipping it over to join its companions at the back. Only the last two hold any relevance for him; one is a printout of a list of names with the top half torn off, the very first piece of paper; one shows directions to an address that seems far too familiar. It's his own house, or one of them anyway, the place he first brought Arthur too - and yes, hadn't he driven them that first time? Things had been different then.
So why are they now in this group of fine-print articles on various individuals he can only assume are clients or, more likely, subjects? There is no definitive link between the names he can see at this level of study - no picture of himself, he checked - so to have the two printed so simultaneously seems odd. Was Arthur planning on visiting him? He checks his phone but there is nothing; no missed calls; no texts; nothing.
On a feeling, he calls Arthur, first from his own and then from the mobile he found here. No answer on either, just the anonymous voice of the answering machine. Simple double purrs on the line while he waits; Arthur hasn't left the country, then. Just has his mobile on silent, or where he can't hear it, probably.
Probably.
He stares at the directions, the little block-coloured map with accurate squiggles of road. He could have sworn Arthur had a sat-nav in his car, but maybe he didn't know the exact location. Wheels turn and things click in his mind.
Slowly, like a reduction in speed could slow down whatever had set itself in motion, whatever it meant to have Arthur's totem in his pocket right now, nestled right up against his own, he exits the house, one hand clutching the two pieces of paper, and returns to his car. He doesn't bother with the house alarm, simply locking the door and leaving it as it was found. Besides, he doesn't know the combination. Doesn't matter now.
There's a moment where he sits still, leaning forward with his forearms resting on the wheel. Part of him is yelling at him to run, but the other, for now stronger, part, is telling him to wait. Breathe.
There you go. Now, be ready.
Only then does he pull away from the curb and rev his car up into something barely legal, tires screeching and burning against the road.
You didn't want me to find you. You didn't want me to see who you'd really been. You misjudged me.
Each accusation is a knife through the air, the only attack Eames will allow himself from his submissive position on the chair.
The Arthur who came out of nowhere in that hotel room. That's why you ran. I get that, now.
He closes his hand over the die, and passes the fist over his eyes.
There's an old story that we tell every newcomer. I think you told it to me.
In our world, you turn your back for a moment - one single moment; that's all it takes - and you make yourself vulnerable. They turn you mad, or make it look like suicide, and mostly, it is. In the end, youchoose that ledge. You choose to leap. You choose to take the fall.
And here he shifts, adding and molding that story from his own knowledge and experience.
It's like Inception.
You have an idea. Someone else will come along, shortly, and help you realise that idea. It'll feel great - superb, even - but soon, inevitably something will happen to make you lose sight of your original inspiration. A mis-direction, in effect. While you're busy trying to find your way back onto your feet, that person changesyour idea. They make it impossible for you to separate truth from falsity, and then they ingrain this, as deep, if not even deeper than the idea you originally thought of. It becomes your life. You know this.
Eames pauses, and when he speaks again, his tone is closer, like a different kind of teacher; one willing to share their own experiences and relate them to the world, a true teacher; a sharer.
Have you ever thought that could be applied to people? You said once Cobb was all about going deeper, pushing further, but it's all the same thing, really. You've got to know when to stop.
The silence he receives in reply only serves to encourage him.
Where? When you're taking it all. Arthur- buddy- no one takes it all. In a good, healthy relationship people share, people talk.
He pushes his hands in a fan out from behind his head, running his hair in-between the width of his fingers.
They don't put it all on themselves. Arthur- you of all people, I can't... I don't want you to do that. Not for me.
He leaps out of the car with the keys still in the engine, leaving the door wide open in his run up to the front door. His house. Eames' house. Not his home.
The metal jumps in his hand when he realises the door is unlocked anyway - of course it is, he was in a hurry here too - and Eames pushes inside, tossing the bundle down on the nearest surface. He knows, if Arthur is anywhere, he knows where he will be. Blood pounds in his head, almost loud enough to drown out the noise his feet make on the wooden stairs, up to the room that looks out over the fields - dark fields now.
It's empty.
Eames sits down on the bed with all the weight of the world buckling his knees, finally allowing himself to unravel. His palms press against the sockets of his eyes, not clutching and gripping but just holding him there.
Where is he? Where is he where is he where is he?
It feels like there's something he's been missing here. Something he walked straight past even when he was trying to stop wearing blinkers. Paper crackles underneath him as he shifts, and, wait- paper.
There's a letter tucked just under the bed, fallen, like it had been disturbed and not left properly. He picks it up, and tears through the folded edge with his index finger. Unlike the majority of today, the writing looks calm, from what he can see as he draws it out. Unhurried. Perhaps it had been written beforehand; perhaps he will never know. The writing will tell him. Carefully, he unfolds it.
Dear Eames...
If you're reading this letter, it means that by now I will already be under and I may not wake up again. There is a man you and I both know. Robert Fischer. He has been tracking us for over than a year. More specifically, you, Eames. He's after you.
I can't tell you why you're the only dreamer his subconscious locked onto, or how he managed to remember the details, let alone the actual job, but I will say this: he is tenacious. With all that wealth and power at his disposal, the network is nothing short of a war zone. He has turned them into bounty hunters, and the prize they're hunting for is you.
There is so much I haven't spoken about, but you have to understand it's because I can't let you handle this one. You're a lucky man, you gamble, but this time luck won't be enough to save you, no matter what faith you put in her.
I have found Fischer. Today, I will deal with him. He won't be a problem, but there is someone else working for him. If you're reading this, I have found her. I will destroy her.
All this time, I have just been trying to protect you. I am sorry that we never talked about this, but if we had, you would have insisted we face them together, or more likely, you would have gone after them before me. I can almost see you shaking your head, but you know it's true.
Cobb doesn't know. None of them know, and they shouldn't have to. The problem should be fixed by now, even if it means my mind is lost in the process. It's a necessary risk.
I never wanted to hurt you.
I fear I have done just that.
Arthur
His knuckles are white and his wrists stiff where he is gripping the paper between his fingers. All that time- all that time he had dreamed about saving Arthur, he had never imagined that Arthur would be fighting for him.
If you're reading this letter, it means that by now I will already be under and I may not wake up again.
His phone rings, startling him.
"Eames?"
"Yes?" He finds his voice, solemn and small.
"St. Mary's. Right now."
There is so much more for you out in the world where you're not burdened by what I, or Cobb, or even James and Philippa, whoever else, whatever we want. You have to think about you.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on either side of the armchair, eyebrows raised in the dark.
I'd love to do that for you. Love.. Well. It doesn't matter what Iwant.
Why not?
Out of nowhere, just like that. Why does he dothat? Another surprise; the only sound from the silhouetted man.
Eames pauses for a moment before answering, still leaning in, like he's been taking Arthur into his confidence, but really he just wants Arthur to listen.
Because you're the only one who can do that. Just you. No one else can make you happy, or want to do something marvelous with your life. All we can do is smile, and hope you smile back.
He sets his palms on his knees, like that's that.
It's the greatest secret of the universe, love, and amazingly, it's not what's in your pants. Although that was a very good night.
Arthur turns to half look out of the window, and in the softer morning light Eames can begin to see him smiling, really smiling.
Good.
The hospital lights flash and glare in his eyes, as Eames flies down the corridor, looking in every room, every window. At the end, on the left, he's finally rewarded. Arthur on his back, eyes shut, Cobb sitting with him.
He unlatches the door and pushes it open, exposing himself to the scent of antiseptic and harsh mouth-watering chemicals that make up a hospital. The first things he notices are the machines; a hiss, a clunk, and the constant beep of every Holby City episode.
"He's unconscious."
Eames turns to Dom, who looks exhausted, his posture almost mirroring that of Eames a moment ago, back home. He sighs, moving forward into the room to rest his hands on the railing at the end of the bed. "I know." If there could be a sight so cruel he would be unable to tear his eyes from it, it would be this. It's not that he can't stand to look at Dom for so long, only that his gaze always wanders back to the figure who could be sleeping but for the haze of perspiration on his forehead, the slight incline of the eyebrows, the hair in a mess of disarray. "He told me."
Cobb shifts his position in the edge of Eames' vision, moving forearms onto thighs and locking his hands together. "Did he tell you why?" he asks, in a tone that suggests resignation, a curiosity nonetheless overpowered by the sense of hopelessness.
He is about to say Robert Fischer, but in that moment something stops him. Like maybe the way Arthur was always looking out for him, keeping an eye focused right on Eames' blind spot, sacrificing moments for the sake of safety, for movement, and suddenly he doesn't want to burden Cobb with something that ultimately is not his fault; not for him to hoard in the depths of his heart for the rest of his life, should this go wrong.
"No," he says.
It's a necessary risk.
"I have to bring him back."
"You'll die in there," Cobb says, shortly.
"I might. I might not."
They consider each other, for a moment. Dominic Cobb: the man who entered limbo, faced his shade and lived. John Eames: the man who takes chances for a living, but has never tied himself down so that luck cannot sweep him away.
Perhaps Cobb sees something in his eyes that Eames wasn't even sure heknew, because he nods, once, then reaches under his chair and draws out a briefcase. Eames takes the handle as he sets it on the bed, but a hand halts his progress, making him wait just a little longer.
He thinks Cobb is about to say something else, but at last, the man only exhales, and pushes the briefcase across towards him. Eames busies himself with the wires, coming around to the other side of Arthur and drawing up another chair, linking their wrists with IVs, checking the settings on the machine.
The blinds on the hospital windows are drawn, blocking out the corridor, but when Cobb moves to do the same to the one with the view of the nearest block of flats and the darkness looming in, reminding him of the hour, Eames holds up his hand. "No- not that."
He receives a nod in reply, and the man makes his way to the door. "There's no kick with this one. You'll have to judge it for yourself."
"Alright. Thank you."
He expects a 'good luck' or perhaps some last wisdom, but as his eyes fall closed the only thing Eames sees is Cobb standing at the door, one hand on the latch, peering sideways through the blinds as if he cannot look at the two of them, would rather close his mind to the event and slot himself into a role he's more familiar with than watch the two of them sleep, wondering who they're going to be if or when they ever wake up.
"Arthur, it's time."
They are in a dark room together, and Eames stands in the shadow of the doorway. He can barely make out the other man in the absence of light, the depth of the gloom. Oppressing - repressing? - utter darkness.
The figure straightens, then moves forward, then sinks down onto the floor. A single spark jumps from nowhere, instantly lighting up Arthur's hands, a box of matches, and the wooden fireplace over which it arcs for the merest of seconds.
Another spark leaps, then another. There is newspaper twirled into rough tubes on top of the wood, in an imitation of the boy-scouts construction Eames had built for years, and this where the fire finally catches, dazzling in its intensity, flickering madly to be alive.
Eames can see him now, but not his expression. The glow of the flame only reaches up to the collar of his shirt, falling away to his shoes as Arthur gets to his feet again.
He stares into the fire, or at least, that's what Eames assumes from the stillness in him, watching the newspaper edges curl and blacken into print.
Am I dead?
Following the lead of the words, Eames steps cautiously into the room, closing the door behind him. "No. You're not." Arthur doesn't seem inclined to move, so he stops there; barely out, barely in. "Don't you remember?"
The look he receives in reply is startling: confused, strained, frightened, even. Like a deer surprised by the snap of a twig, or a businessman told all of his investments have folded. He knows this much, even if he can't quite make it out. He can see it in the flash of firelight reflected once in Arthur's eye.
I don't remember you.
In the half-light, it's impossible to tell whether he wholly believes it or not.
So Eames settles for the latter.
"Well, if you sit down, I'll show you."
Arthur appears to cringe, looking sharply off into the dark.
Don't show. Tell it to me. Tell me everything.
Eames will gladly do anything he asks; he moves off to the right where the growing fire is lighting up the fabric of a chair, taking his own seat first to give Arthur a natural sense of control and authority.
"Of course, love. Where would you like me to start?"
For a beat, Arthur just looks at him, the way - he's sure - he always used to look at him; eternally curious of what made Eames Eames, why in one moment, he could be firing off the wittiest comments in the world, and in the next tripping over his own feet. Why, in effect, Arthur affected Eames the way he did. Sometimes it felt like they understood each other just fine, in their own way.
He moves away from the fireplace, coming to rest in a chair that encouraged the sitter to remain as upright and alert as possible.
Right at the beginning.
Arthur turns to back to him, after a lifetime.
Then, the corners of his mouth turn up in a smile that reaches right up to his eyes, the way only Arthur can smile.
"We discussed the possibility of reliving memories in a dream," he says, levelly.
Eames slowly returns the smile, like the breaking of a day. "Yes. Yes, we did."
His fingers skip over the back of the chair, like reading braille, or perhaps memories in old objects long lost. "I remember this place." Arthur turns back to the window, though not completely, as if recalling the space at his side that Eames always used to fill. "It's your home, isn't it?"
Ever so easily, steadily, Eames makes his way over to where he has always belonged, joining Arthur looking at the view, where the light is golden now and the fields ripple away from them as far as the eye can see. On a whim, he reaches up and unlatches the window, with a hinge that creaks and complains with stiffness.
Warm air blows in, filling the room with the braying of far-off cows and the smell of freshly cut grass. It is marvelous and unmistakable. There is no need to reply.