Today was the day.
He sometimes thought he saw it, between looks of condescension, between barbed taunts and glares and eyerolling. A flash of amusement, a moment of genuine admiration, a twinkle of fondness. And so he hoped.
Eames remembered the first time they had met, how Arthur had blown him away (not literally, thank you very much - one had to have specificity when it came to such things in dreamshare). Cobb had introduced them, meeting downside as was standard in the practice at that time, in a fledgling illicit business where your identity was your life. Arthur had taken one look at the woman Eames was forging and had simply said, "Mr. Eames. Interesting to meet you face to face at last." Eames had been taken aback - no one had ever seen through that forgery before, not on the first try. Much less identify the forger behind it.
Cobb had laughed at the look on Eames' face, turned to Arthur, and asked "So, what do you think?"
"Adequate. He'll do for this job, anyway," Arthur had replied.
Eames had been smitten ever since.
And today was the day. This long, tedious job was almost done. He knew for a FACT that Arthur had no jobs lined up after this one (and hadn't finding THAT out been a bitch. Arthur's personal contacts and dealings were not easily broken into.) Eames had it all planned - after the extraction, he would coax the handsome point man to join him for a drink, and then produce two tickets to Lisbon. Arthur had made a comment months ago about how he'd never had the opportunity to go there with a particularly wistful look in his eye, and Eames had seen his chance.
The extraction would be the easy part, it was all the lead up that was the issue. The mark was a businessman, known to be embezzling from his company, and the employer wanted to know where their money was going before confronting him, for ease of recovery. Because of the numerous medications that the mark was on, Yusuf had needed to create an entirely new mix of Somnacin and had been testing it on the individual members of the team for weeks now. Unusually, he'd be joining them at the beginning of the dream, to double check that the mark did not have any poor reactions to the drug that appeared in his subconscious. Arthur had been buried in details of the man's work and his ever-changing schedule, to try and find some sort of opportunity to get him alone for an extended period of time. Ariadne and Cobb had been working together closely to construct a dream setting that would sufficiently awe the man. And Eames had been trailing the mark's priest, to prepare his forgery. Once in the dream, they would play on the man's Catholic guilt to find where the money had been transferred. Eames would be playing duel roles, as he was both the dreamer and receiving the mans confession.
And after it was all over, in the rush of celebration, he would finally - finally - convince Arthur to give him a shot.