The manila folder that the man slid across the table to Eames was thick, crammed to bursting with files and photographs and documents, and Eames took his time reviewing them, arranging them on the table neatly so that he could see the relevant information on every paper. The mark's name was Arthur Darling, and he couldn't help but smile at the surname emblazoned across every document. Granted, the organisation's information wasn't quite as good as it could have been, and the "Darling" could have been a substitute for an actual last name that they didn't have access to, but even Eames knew it couldn't be terribly hard to open a mark's letterbox and examine their credit card statements or whatnot.
And if this were the case, well, he'd have to say that it really was quite a fitting adjective. This particular Arthur was a perfectly lovely specimen of humanity who apparently enjoyed wearing well-tailored suits and vests and had a penchant for making sure his shirtsleeves were rolled up and creased neatly. He had an innocent brown curl that tumbled wayward across his forehead that no amount of gel could manage to keep restrained, and, all in all, he looked like a very unassuming, very unthreatening, very handsome person. Perfectly darling, as it were. Eames was of the opinion that the man was most likely a banker. Or a lawyer. Something of the sort. Perhaps a postman? He'd just started to envision Arthur in a well-fitted polo and matching cap, a messenger bag haphazardly slung over his shoulder, tossing out the daily newspaper, when the man across from him began to speak.
"As you may know, we have reason to believe that this...Mr. Darling has some information regarding the Tennyson operative," the man said, his fingers steepled in front of him. "We would like you to get it back, using whatever means possible. From his file, you may see that he isn't a particularly important person in the grand scale of things, just some junior partner at a law firm or something of the sort, so it most likely wouldn't be too horrible if you somehow...disposed of him, as it were. Owing to the sensitive nature of the information, we would like it if you completed this task as soon as possible, Mr. Eames."
"Right. Consider it done," Eames agreed, carefully taking note of an address on one of the documents before sliding the papers back into the manila folder and standing up.
Arthur thought that quite possibly he would expire in his swivel-back chair at Harvey, Kettering, and Mudd, Esq. Though having been assured that being made a junior partner in the law firm was a good thing, and that his salary would double, triple, possibly even quadruple from his days as a paralegal, he was inclined to believe that perhaps it wasn't worth it. His desk at present was a swamp of papers and legal textbooks that had seen better days, and had probably seen better owners as well (Arthur's cup of coffee enjoyed falling over and splashing black across the pages, in particular Roe v. Wade, the text for that particular entry had been blotted dry several hundred times over). Arthur often got there at seven in the morning and ended up leaving at approximately seven-thirty at night, always begging off Ariadne's attempts to take him out somewhere nice, and he usually headed home and dialed in an order for a curry.
It was a boring job, a boring life, and Arthur thought that perhaps the condoms he kept in his nightstand drawer were probably growing cobwebs by now. It was a rather sorry state of affairs.
In addition, there had recently been some fuss over a rather large and intensive set of contracts, written up by some M. Tennyson and which Arthur had had the misfortune of taking responsibility of. The thick file had been passed around the office at least three times before Arthur found it stuffed in his file cabinet, and when he turned around, the offending stack of papers in his hand, everyone had begged off and named some obscure case that they had to research for something; at this point, Andrew Kettering, one of the senior partners in the firm, had informed him that every other junior partner and every other paralegal was, in fact, busy with researching some obscure case or another, and that Arthur just had the luck to have finished tidying up his previous engagements. Arthur had opened his mouth to protest, but Kettering's fierce look had cowed him into submission, and as a result, he spent most of his time at work poring over the intensive legalese and trying to make sense of all of it.
In fact, today had been particularly bad.
He'd slammed his hand in his file cabinet at least three times, Ariadne had spent almost the entire day yapping about her new boyfriend (who, from the pictures, looked quite the decent fellow), and Roe v. Wade had seen the back of yet another black coffee. He'd found himself falling asleep at his desk trying to work through page 3 of the first contract, something involving subsidies and joint ventures and parent companies. When he finally walked through the door of his flat, loosening his tie and tossing it over the coat rack, he sank into his favourite armchair by the television, dialed his favourite curry shop, and found to his dismay that said place had just run out of curry, and would he be so kind as to try again tomorrow?
He found himself burying his face in his hands, tugging at his hair and wanting to cry. What kind of curry shop ran out of curry? But since he was Arthur Darling the Fourth, he did not cry. He had not wept since he was five (unless you counted that one incident when he was 12 and had nearly been trampled by a horse, or the time when he was 17 and had a sudden revelation while eating a sandwich that he actually was not physically attracted to girls).
And, of course, being Arthur Darling the Fourth, he took the situation into his own hands, and boiled water for an old Cup of Noodles he found in the back of his rather empty pantry. He wondered bleakly if the spiders spinning cobwebs around his nightstand condoms were possibly having feasts in his kitchen cupboards as well, because surely he'd had more food than this. His lackluster search of the fridge also turned up nothing spectacular: an onion, which was turning green on one side, a half-empty bottle of ketchup, and a loaf of bread that Arthur felt sure had probably been around since the start of the year.
After dinner, Arthur padded off to his bathroom for a shower, during which he rested his forehead against the salmon pink tiles and wondered what he was doing with his life.
He lay down in bed afterwards, enjoying the feel of the cool sheets against his bare skin, and stared up at the popcorn ceiling of his flat and contemplated the rusty grey water stain in the shape of California that had started spreading on the ceiling by the balcony window. The moon was shining all silvery into his bedroom, and it fell over him in a shaft of light, turning his skin pearly.
It was not even 11 PM yet, according to the red digital numbers on the clock on Arthur's nightstand, and he shrugged, supposing it was as good a time as any, before reaching down and wrapping a hand around himself.
Eames, in the meantime, had taken to lying on his stomach on the rooftop of the building opposite Arthur's. He hummed to himself as he peered through his rifle scope. The night vision adapter turned everything an eerie, neon shade of green, and Eames pulled away for a moment, rubbing at his eyes and taking another glance down at the photograph he'd taken out of the folder.
But my God, if he wasn't a gorgeous man, Eames thought to himself for the umpteenth time that night. He just wanted to dress him up in his fancy suits and press him against his apartment walls and probably try and nail him through the door, that would be excellent, and it was a shame that Mr. Darling here was wrapped up in all this Tennyson flimflammery.
He turned back to his rifle scope, peered through it at the windows in the building across the street. On the third floor, a young woman with her hair wrapped up in a towel was writing at her desk, pausing every few moments to pick up her pages and hold them up, as if checking to make sure the sentences looked all right from all angles. On the fourth floor a mother stood by the window, bouncing her baby in her arms and rubbing its back. Eames quickly scanned the other windows, most of which were dark and had curtains or blinds drawn, flicking past a seventh floor window in which a young man was lying down in bed and quite frankly having a rather energetic go at it -
Wait.
Eames flicked his scope back to said window, squinted through the sight past the vision of the man's hand bobbing up and down, examined his face thoughtfully. He pulled away, looked down at the photograph, looked into the scope again.
"My, my, Mr. Darling," Eames murmured to himself, making a mental note of the window's relative position. "Someone looks like they're having a lovely time..."
He held his fire, reasoning with himself that, if Mr. Darling were one to subscribe to the religious belief that one went to meet some higher being after death looking exactly as you had when you left life, it might be rather embarrassing to appear before said higher being with one's genitalia in hand. It was a bit low, really, to off someone while they were having a wank. And, if Eames were being truthful to himself, Arthur was quite a sight to watch.
He watched Arthur's hand stroking, pulling upwards, a little flick of the wrist to rub the flat of his palm over the head; watched the way Arthur bit at his bottom lip and clutched at the now-wrinkled linens with his other hand. Arthur stopped abruptly, and Eames let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, wondering why he'd paused. Arthur sat up for a moment, manoeuvred himself into a more comfortable position, and Eames had to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle his gasp (and, if he were being well and truly honest with himself, a moan) as he watched through the scope as Arthur pressed two spit slick fingers into himself, his back twisting and his other arm trembling as it braced itself against the headboard.
"Good Lord, Mr. Darling," Eames muttered, loosening his collar just a tad. "What a bloody gorgeous sight you are."
He watched as Arthur's pace picked up, as his hips began to judder forward erratically, and almost bit through his lip at the way Arthur's back arched into a deep bow as he came, leaving faint, barely there smudges on the headboard. Arthur slumped into the pillows for a few moments, and Eames wondered what it would be like to lick the sweat away from his skin, to worry pebbled nipples between his teeth, to nibble at skin drawn tight across the narrow hipbones that fit so deliciously in those tailored slacks Arthur was seen wearing in almost all of the pictures that he currently was in possession of -
Arthur rolled over to grab a tissue and wipe off his headboard, and Eames's gaze quickly focused on a small patch of skin on Arthur's lower back, where something was written in dark calligraphy that he couldn't quite read from this distance. Arthur crumpled the tissue onto the nightstand, heaved the quilt around himself, and curled up to face the window. With the moonlight dancing over Arthur's skin and turning him radiant, Eames wondered if it was blasphemy to say that he looked like Jesus. A particularly handsome Jesus. Surely Eames had earned himself a one-way ticket to Hell for that specific thought.
He sighed, watching as that same errant curl slowly crept its way across Arthur's forehead, and firmly palmed the bulge in the crotch of his pants.
"Mr. Darling," he murmured to himself as he slowly, gently set the rifle down and looked across to the building opposite, to the window where Arthur was, "what a mess we've gotten ourselves into."