AN: Hello, everyone!

So, I didn't want to post this, but I was held up at gunpoint by Jason Bourne, who happens to be the image representing the militarization of my subconscious. He said if I didn't put this up, elephants all over the world would die.

Now, although the idea of dying elephants is quite disturbing (and see, you're thinking about them, aren't you?), I thought that maybe another quick Inception one-shot was all right. Other projects really need my attention more. But that, unfortunately, isn't how the Fanfiction Fairy works. With that said, I hope you enjoy it!

Oh, and P.S.: I would really like some feedback for this story. It's as close to drabble as I'll ever get, I think, and it's my first time writing pure fluff. :) Thank you!

Songs:

One Sweet Love by Sarah Bareilles .com/watch?v=rAq2VGnMX6Q (This would be more appropriate for an Araidne POV, but it fit the content of the story too well for my to pass it up. Not to mention it screams Inception.)

Inside Your Head by Eberg .com/watch?v=dCKay-g2d-0 (It's a little bizarre, but...so is the whole concept of dreams.)

On with the story!

Always A Surprise: An Inception Oneshot

Contrary to popular belief, Eames was no lover of drama.

No one-no one-had been more thrilled than him that the Fischer Fiasco had gone off well. He had been sweating for the whole ten hours, even in the dream world, where bodily functions really didn't mean anything. Ever since Cobb had made it abundantly clear that there was no backing out, Eames had been silently panicking.

Genuine tears of relief were all that had been missing to his reaction as the plane seat on which he reclined had faded back into his vision. He had been amazed, frankly, that his teammates had handled the idea of being stuck in their own subconscious for the rest of their lives with so little fuss. Arthur, especially, took it in stride, with only a dark glance at Cobb, a few choice words of rebuke, and a frown so stiff it appeared starched. That sort of calm was what unnerved Eames most about Arthur. He was always so dashed ready for anything. It was like the man couldn't be surprised.

Eames, however, loved surprises. And he received several on the team's Reunion Day.

They had all agreed, through subtle texting, that the three of them-Eames, Arthur, and Ariadne-would meet exactly six months after the Fischer case for dinner and some sightseeing around Paris. Eames was bored with the concept of touring a city he had seen what must have been eighty times already, not to mention in the dark, which made sightseeing all but impossible. But he didn't have the iron will to refuse Ariadne's emoticon-riddled pleas. One such text, the one bearing a smiley face with teeth so large he could count them individually, had especially gotten him: I just CAN'T WAIT to see you again, Eames.

Well, honestly. Who could full well resist that?

So he'd hopped on a train and crossed a couple borders (he'd been staying in Austria during a music festival) with the intent to be as punctual as an income tax form for their reunion dinner. Arthur had sent a smug text just the day before: So I'll be seeing you...oh, two days from now? We both know you'll never make it on time. I'll be sure and save you some Tarte Tatin. Eames had sworn to himself to be on time for dinner if he had to be rolled in on a stretcher and in a body bag.

As it happened, he was early. Impatience had soon replaced delight as he had checked his watch for the fifth time, smoothed his silk shirt out for the sixth, and clucked his tongue for the seventh. Eames had tapped his fingers against the fine white tablecloth, staring vacantly out at the other diners in the restaurant of Hotel Tatin. Where were they?

This was where the first surprise came to him, and it was rather a shock. First Arthur came on the scene, dressed to the nines, as usual, with that ultra-refined fashion sense that nauseated Eames. And then came Ariadne, just behind Arthur. The little architect had put extra effort into her appearance, too, for she was wearing an expensive and very short cocktail dress complete with glittering jewelry. Real diamonds, Eames knew, because he could always tell the difference.

It was odd that they had both come at the same time, and late, no less. Had they planned that out? Or had they come together? Eames wondered.

A moment later he saw Ariadne reach forward and take Arthur's hand. And, since Arthur didn't recoil in astonishment, but smiled instead, all became clear as Swarovski. Eames lifted an eyebrow as they approached the table. "Hallo." He let his eyes zero in on their joined hands. Perhaps he was being a bit obvious, but Arthur sometimes needed a hint to get the ball rolling.

"Eames!" Ariadne detached herself from The Other A and hugged her old colleague. "How are you?" she asked, her brown eyes shining with a socialite touch that Eames hadn't noticed before. "Sorry we were late, but I was having some directional issues."

"Three years in Paris, and she doesn't know where the Hotel Tatin is," Arthur said. His regular smirk, the one that irritated Eames to no end, had hidden itself somewhere tonight; Eames only saw a real smile, and it was directed at the petite woman between them.

"Hey, it's not like I ever had the funds to eat here before," Ariadne defended her lack of Parisian know-how with a laugh.

"Yeah, yeah," said Arthur, while proferring a hand for Eames to shake. "So, Eames, how long would you have waited for us to show up?"

"I'd have given you half an hour, like any decent Englishman," Eames replied with a sniff, concealing his surprise rather nicely. "But any time after that...not much of a point, is there? We'd all just be glaring daggers at each other. Of course, some of us always glare daggers at other people..."

They all took their seats at once, like some signal had been given to them off to the side of their table. Ariadne waited until Arthur pulled out her chair before taking her seat. Eames silently approved, but snorted quietly aloud. "So, when exactly were you going to tell me you'd gotten the girl, Arthur? When you sent round the wedding invitations?"

"We're not really to the wedding discussion stage yet," Arthur said, while Ariadne blushed.

"We've only been going out for a couple months, since Arthur got back from a job in Whales," Ariadne explained. "And we weren't sure you'd come if you thought you would break up our alone time."

Eames smiled at Ariadne's embarassment. A least one of them had a sense of protocol towards friends. "I'm not so sensitive as that, love. Not when there's food involved, at least."

Ariadne smiled timidly. "Sorry we didn't tell you."

"It's nothing to apologize for," Eames said, waving his hand in the perfect blase motion, although he was a little miffed that neither of them had mentioned the fact that he would be the only one without a companion for dinner. "But if you'd told me, I might have invited my aged aunt to dinner, as well-she's the only woman I could bring along who would put up with Arthur."

To Eames's relief, Ariadne laughed and poked Arthur in the side, who started. "Not every woman can appreciate him. Luckily, only one of us has to appreciate him at a time." Then she leaned over and pecked the point man on the cheek.

Arthur was about to retaliate to Eames's insult with some dull reply, no doubt, but the arrival of the waiter cut him off and they all began to order dinner.

Eames watched Ariadne order (in fluent French) with a mix of emotions. He listened and responded as she questioned him about his life after the Fischer job, all the time sawing away at her fillet mignon. This young lady was a sharp contrast to Cobb's Architect, a frumpy little artist; this woman was relaxed, comfortable with the posh surroundings of the restaurant, and belonged in the stylish dress she wore. He read every nuance of her body and caught every difference about her. This sort of observation was his job.

This was the second surprise: Ariadne had changed, and to his tender sensibilities, it was for the better. She was more collected now than she had been during the job. Maybe she acted like this when there weren't three thousand kilograms of pressure crushing her frail skull, Eames reasoned. Maybe her loose cardigans and distressed t-shirts were only for school days and workdays. She couldn't always wear Chanel cocktail dresses, of course. But the differences were more than her dress sense.

Eames wondered if the difference was Arthur.

Arthur himself, to all appearances, looked the same. Eames couldn't see any fundamental change, such as a desire to run about singing "I'd Do Anything for Love." Not all changes were so apparent as that, however, and as he pretended to be absorbed in his dinner, Eames watched the two former teammates interact.

Ariadne had a habit of glancing at Arthur for confirmation to some of her facts about their lives after the job. Arthur would nod, and Ariadne would continue on with her story. Arthur was content to let Ariadne do the talking, clearly, because he never interrupted her as she told Eames all about her studies, and how her venture into the world of dreams had expanded her vision. She told Arthur's story for him, too, embellishing the otherwise colorless life of the point man with comedic anecdotes.

Eames had to set his fork down once in fear of choking to death as he doubled over the tablecloth. "You honestly thought that would work, Arthur?" he gasped out, crying with mirth. "And you've been in this business how long?"

"It would have worked if the subject hadn't realized it wasn't a real bathtub," Arthur protested. "Cobb and I had theorized this kind of thing before, but we knew the possibility that even someone in a dream would realize that you couldn't balance a-"

But Eames had been laughing too hard to hear the rest. "Sounds like you two have been up to more than I'd given you credit for," he said.

Ariadne blushed. "It sounds like you have, too." She had deliberately ignored the possible innuendo in his sentence. Eames smiled at her persistent innocence. "How was Switzerland? I went there one time during a holiday."

They talked for over two hours, a pleasant circulation of generic table talk that Eames enjoyed more than he ever thought he could. Arthur came out of his shell enough to send a few embarrassing yarns back at Ariadne. Architecture school provided a good amount of humor for the three diners, filtered through the lens of the point man's singular, sardonic wit.

Although his humor didn't suffer for it, Arthur was kind in his fun. Eames saw numerous openings in Arthur's tales where he could have added potent barbs but didn't, an unheard of circumstance in Eames's experience with the man (of course, that was most likely because Eames never turned down an opportunity to showcase Arthur). Ariadne noticed, too, because she would smile and cut her eyes to her plate whenever a missed opportunity passed. That-his delicate tact in the face of delicious opportunity-must be part of Arthur's appeal to women, Eames concluded, and one that he himself distinctly lacked.

Fortunately, some ladies liked a burning sense of humor, and those were the ladies he preferred.

The renowned Tarte Tatin, a dessert Eames held close to his heart, lived up to his stringent expectations, and he ended up ordering a second serving for himself and the two lovebirds. With a sideways look of disbelief the waiter had taken their plates away, all three of them had argued over the bill, and Arthur had eventually won by the simple method of sliding the money to the waiter while Ariadne and Eames were still arguing. Sometimes, Arthur frightened Eames when he did things like that. The quiet, well-groomed ones were the ones you had to worry about...

They had left the restaurant and were strolling lazily down the streets, avoiding inebriated college students, when the third surprise pounced. Arthur had rambled ahead a few meters, leaving Ariadne and Eames to chat affably together about imagination and dreams. Ariadne stared out at the shimmering reflections of light on the Seine, and Eames periodically shifted his gaze out of habit. He was about to direct his eyes to the shadow to his right when he saw something small and laughing collide with Arthur's tall figure.

Instinct made Eames tighten up and reach for a gun that wasn't there-when something came into contact with a teammate, you shot it. Then his eyes adjusted to the contrast of light and dark, and he realized that it was just a little girl that had run into Arthur. And he remembered that he wasn't on the job, and the little girl was real, and people don't shoot little girls that are really little girls and not projections. He looked over to see Ariadne relaxing, too. The dream instinct had already gripped the youngest team member, as well.

Now, for the surprise.

As the little Parisian girl staggered back from Arthur's imposing form, the ice cream cone in her hand fell with a droll plop to the sidewalk. Eames wasn't generally a heartless person, but he almost laughed at the devastated look on the child's face as her treat dribbled slowly onto the cobblestones. Ariadne made a soft 'Ohhh' of sympathy from beside him. Sniffling, the little girl blinked out several fat, wet tears.

"Uh, oh," said Arthur, and sank immediately down to the little girl's level, his face expressing a level of dismay that Eames hadn't yet witnessed, not even on a botched job. "I'm sorry," Arthur apologized in French, "I can buy you another one, all right?" When the little girl didn't answer, but sniffled again, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, handing it to the child. "Hey, I'm sorry. It's okay."

Eames stopped on the street and watched the miniature melodrama unfold, his eyebrows raised. Arthur was kneeling on the sidewalk of Paris, one knee of his obsessive-compulsively-creased slacks smeared with vanilla ice cream, letting a little Parisian girl blow her nose on his vintage silk handkerchief. It looked like he could care less what ruined his pants and handkerchief, as long as he got the girl to smile. The point man's whole concentration was on consoling a child he'd never met before.

It was most peculiar, Eames thought. When had Arthur become such a pansy? Honestly...coming all to pieces over a spilled ice cream cone? He turned to make a snide comment to his companion, but was stopped short by the look on Ariadne's face.

Eames felt as if he had walked in on Ariadne throwing herself shamelessly at Arthur. Eyes wide and open, she was watching the same scene Eames had scoffed at with a tenderness that was too intimate for an outside party to witness. But Eames couldn't look away, no matter that he did try. He simply couldn't; his personality was that of an incurable meddler. And Ariadne wasn't watching him. In fact, she most likely had forgotten he was there. For a moment, all she could see was Arthur and that little girl.

Enter the fourth surprise, with a bang.

There was no 'maybe' or 'perhaps' about this one: Ariadne had been smitten by Cupid. Slain was a more apt term. Whether she could feel it or not, Eames now knew that the architect had fallen for the point man, and quite hoplessly, at that. Oh, it would take some time for them to make a clean breast of it, if he was any judge of character. Arthur would admit it first. And though Ariadne was the one to have fallen the deepest fastest, she would be the last to acknowledge it. Eames predicted that Arthur would have to coax it out of her through some romantic rubbish. Then they'd both be as happy as budgies together.

The little girl had been won over by Arthur's special charm, and she ran away to her mother with a few bills tucked into her fist and a smile on her face. Her young mother smiled at Arthur, too, thanking him for his consideration in a warm French alto. Eames didn't think she would be so grateful if she had seen, as Arthur returned the smile and stood, the briefly revealed grip of a handgun held discreetly in the point man's waistband.

"Do you always carry your Glock 17 to dinner?" muttered Eames, coming up next to his former teammate after girl and mother had gone.

"Saito said he would take care of Kobol's blood price on my head, but I'm not taking any chances until he's given the green light for us to come out of hiding," Arthur murmured back, checking to make sure no one had heard them or seen the gun at his back.

Kobol. Eames looked around, too, suddenly hot under the collar. Was meeting Arthur out here such a brilliant idea if he was still a wanted man? "I thought Cobb said they wouldn't come after you anymore?"

"Cobb doesn't have to worry. He's in America."

"Oh, splendid. I just had dinner with the target of an angry super-corporation."

"Eames," Ariadne said, a fretful look passing through her eyes.

Eames couldn't let the twinge of guilt at Ariadne's fear stop him. "I suppose they're still following you, too, hoping to get you alone?"

Arthur threw him an annoyed look. "You know me better than that. If I thought they were tailing me, I wouldn't have been at dinner. They haven't tracked me since the Fischer case. I'm just not convinced they'll stop their payback with the Architect." Arthur's eyes flickered automatically to Ariadne, and he reached out his arm and pulled her to him, tucking her into the relative security of his side.

Eames started walking again, conscious of several tourists' curious eyes (he hated tourists-they were projections he couldn't annihilate with an AK47). Ariadne put her hand on Arthur's arm, but her other hand gripped her purse with a grimness that didn't fit. It was just a handbag, after all. But then it clicked in his head, and Eames laughed. "I think you've got yourself a bodyguard, Arthur. She looks like she's got it in hand."

Arthur looked at Ariadne-now he was surprised. "You've got a gun?"

"Of course," Ariadne said, defensively, Eames thought. "I listened to the speech you gave me on my first day about how dangerous this business was."

"But...you bought a gun?"

"Oh, Arthur, really," Ariadne said, blushing and starting up their stride again down the street, "it's not that shocking. I mean, why should you have a gun if I don't? I think I'm just as entitled to protecting my boyfriend as you are."

Eames didn't think Arthur would wait to propose until after Ariadne finished school. From the way Arthur's face looked now, he would give it a healthy seven months or so.

While Eames was confident in his masculinity, he couldn't help but picture himself as an old lady who fancied herself a matchmaker. He grinned sheepishly, and whistled "Les Marseillaise" as he trailed behind the new Romeo and Juliet, admiring the way the Eiffel Tower eclipsed their silhouettes. The relaxed stroll was just for show-he was covertly scouting out every nook and cranny for crazed corporate hitmen waiting for a clear shot.

He'd be very surprised if the wedding wasn't in Paris.