warnings: post-movie (slightly AU?). light slash leanings. taking liberties with when/how the characters met and how long they've known each other. people who believe in squeezing every last drop of melodrama out of a minor argument (and people who find that annoying). OC: Tak Shibuya (not a Mary-Sue). language: g.

pairing: a little bit of Arthur/Eames.

timeline: several months post-movie; the day after Eames and Tak meet.

disclaimer: Chris Nolan owns Inception and its characters.

notes: 1) mentioning Mal's photo albums is a reference to The Student. 2) i don't know about you, but in any kind of interpersonal relationship (friendship, coworker, romantic, whatever) nothing really annoys me more than when the other person is clearly mad at you and refuses to say why. crap like "you know what you did" and "if you don't know, i won't tell you" and "why don't you just think about it a little longer" are the icing on that obnoxious cake. 3) "in among tigers" is a reference to an old proverb about being in hostile or uncertain surroundings (Arthur explained it in Apprentice). 4) "to get on" is British for "to get along."

Don't or Can't

Eames is very quiet. It sets Arthur's teeth on edge.

The entire hotel suite is silent, save for the hum of Arthur's laptop and the occasional hiss of the air conditioning.

He wonders why Eames came so early when he knows Tak isn't coming until four. (Yusuf won't be coming today, since the last mixture worked fine for Tak and Arthur will be staying out to monitor them.)

When he risks a look, Eames is sitting by the balcony door, late morning sunlight through diaphanous curtains casting his face in a pale glow while he turns a poker chip over and over in his fingers (it may be his totem; Arthur doesn't ask these things, and he's never seen Eames check it during or after an extraction).

Arthur thinks immediately of Mal's photo albums, of page after page of Dom's smile, Mal's smile, James' and Phillipa's and even Arthur's. Eames is there, of course (thief or not, he's been friends with the Cobbs too long to avoid Mal's camera lens), but never smiling.

Irrationally, absurdly, Arthur thinks that if Eames died today, no one would ever believe he'd smiled.

He puts his hand into his pocket and fingers his totem, checking the bumps and grooves and nicks, feeling for the exact balance, because the Eames sitting with him in the hotel suite looks like he stepped out of one of Mal's albums.

"Have you run out of smiles, Mr. Eames?" Arthur says without meaning to.

Pale eyes slide toward him lazily. "I'm in among tigers, aren't I?"

"I don't understand why you're upset," he confesses.

"Don't you?" Eames asks with venom, softly hissed words chased by a frosty and disdainful frown. Then he slowly closes his eyes. "No, I suppose you can't."

Arthur is offended by the implication: that he's lacking some grand life experience, that he's somehow emotionally stunted. He's not (he has perfectly normal relationships with his mother and his sister and his nephew), it's just Eames that he can never seem to read.

It's Eames, dammit, and his need to be unfathomable. Some stupid enigmatic forger thing that keeps him from saying what he means like a normal person. It's not Arthur's fault.

Arthur feels lost. He thumbs the center dot of the five.

Eames slumps to lean closer to the balcony door, and the sunlight casts part of his face into dim shadows eroded slightly by the warm light of the desk lamp. The clash of the two light sources obscures much of the passage of time. Eames looks young, and sad, and far-away. He purses his lips slightly. "I thought," he begins, warily. "I thought that perhaps we were getting on, you and I."

Arthur laughs a little, but feels it ring hollow. "When, in the whole of our acquaintance, have you known us to 'get on,' Mr. Eames?"

Dark brows draw together, pale eyes look down and away. "You're right, of course," Eames says dully.

He wants to take it back. He wants to explain that it was meant teasingly.

He wants to apologize…but he has a personal rule about apologizing to people over the age of ten, and it involves having made a mistake bad enough to endanger lives. So he drags his eyes back to his laptop and keeps up his preliminary research of potential jobs.

All through lunch and the hours after, Eames clings to his morose and chilly silence, until Arthur feels like shouting at him.

At exactly four o'clock (she's definitely Saito's niece), a card unlocks the door and Tak walks in. She dumps a bag of textbooks next to the coffee table and sits down in her chair, radiating excitement.

"So," she says. "Let's do it! Teach me all about forging."

Eames animates at last, though dourly. He gets up from his chair and rolls his right sleeve. "This will not be easy," he tells her. "I'll be looking much harder today, and you won't have Mr. Clarke helping you. And you certainly won't be let to copy someone you know that well. No Mr. Clarke, no Mr. Cobb, no Mr. Saito."

Arthur notices that Tak doesn't flinch when Eames says Saito's name…the T is crisp like hers, even if the O isn't quite perfect.

She shifts her knees a little and blinks. "Something happened after I left yesterday. Arthur, what did you do to poor Mr. Eames?"

"I've been trying to figure that out," Arthur admits glumly.

Stupid forgers. Stupid maudlin, melodramatic, 'I'm a suffering artist' forgers.

Eames opens the PASIV case and hooks up. "Never you mind that, you've got work to do."

The girl has a contemplative look on her face while she puts on her neck pillow and settles back to let Arthur put the twin needles in.

"Start us at ten minutes, if you will, Mr. Clarke," Eames says.

"You really think it'll take you that long to find me?" Tak asks.

"I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, my dear," he replies. "Try not to miss our collective wit too much, Mr. Clarke."

"Go to sleep, Mr. Eames," Arthur murmurs, and presses the button.

.End.