Warning: brief discussion of suicide.
Ack, I was supposed to be updating faster than this! Do not be afraid to poke me, if necessary. (Other feedback is, of course, not required but indescribably lovely.)
III.
The Oxford job wears them all out. The next one, which lands them in Boston, is another personal affair: a solar tycoon wants them to find out if his son is gay.
"Couldn't he just ask him?" Eames asks, frowning at the dossier. "I mean, what are we, his personal paparazzi?"
Arthur sighs. "I agree, it's ridiculous. But the man just made a fortune, he's trying to spend it however he can, and this will get us an excellent payoff with almost no chance of getting shot. In the real world, at least, and probably not in dream-time either."
"How do we extract that one?" Ariadne asks, tapping a pen against her moleskin. "It's kind of an odd thing to keep in a safe."
"Well, we've got several options. Most likely, we bring him into the dream and try to get him to pick someone up, and we infer from there. If that fails, his father said he used to hide things under the bed and at the back of the closet, which is remarkably fitting in other ways, and he might have similar information on his phone. We can also see what the subconscious does. It won't be completely reliable unless he flat-out tells one of us or we overhear him coming out to a projection, but we're getting paid in advance."
"Okay. So, does a city sound about right? I'm thinking kind of, you know, romantic-looking, all old-fashioned Hollywood –"
"Lonely might be better," Eames suggests. "More versatile. It'll fit anything from the start of an epic love story to a quickie behind the bar, depending on what he's looking for."
She shrugs; she hasn't been looking for either since she was nineteen. "Okay, a lonely city. Huge, then. So, once we get there…"
The city she builds is all towering glass and rusted steel and grime-coated concrete. It's late December, with slush on the streets and minuscule flecks of snow swirling through the bitter wind.
"You couldn't dream me up in a hat?" Eames asks from behind her, pulling a fleece-lined aviator out of his pocket. Arthur is behind him, glancing around the abandoned little park.
"Weren't we supposed to start in the intersection?" he asks, frowning. Ariadne winces.
"I'm sorry. I was worrying about whether the park had the right proportions to the rest of the city, since it's meant to be sort of pseudo-Central Park. I guess that got us here by accident instead."
"I see," Arthur says, pursing his lips. "Well, it's all right, he needs time to settle in to the apartment anyway. It's that way, correct?"
"Yes."
"Just as a matter of interest, why does he get a hat?" Eames asked, tying on his own.
"Because I think he'd remember to wear hats, I guess."
"So does Eames, actually," Arthur says over his shoulder. Ariadne scowls – she hates misjudging people – and runs to catch up, skidding slightly in the slush, while Eames saunters along behind them.
They're halfway to the hotel, crossing a little footbridge, when Arthur stops.
"Ariadne, what are those?"
"What?" She peeks over the edge to find a cluster of scraggly brown birds staring reproachfully up at her. "Oh. Ducks. I always did wonder where the literal ones went."
"Er, what?" Arthur sounds strangely suspicious.
"Ducks. I mean, Holden kept talking about where they went in the winter, and I know it was symbolic and all, but I always thought it was a good question. I'm pretty sure they migrate in real life, but I guess I stuck them in here by mistake."
Eames cackled. "Holden? Ducks? Oh God, Ariadne, did you base this off of Catcher in the Rye?"
She blinks at him. "Uh, yeah? I mean, it's kind of the ultimate lonely city, and it's worked really well when I've built from books before. I didn't lift anything specific except for the one bar, but I read it a lot when I was looking for ideas and to get a sense of the general aesthetic." Eames is still snickering. "I thought I mentioned it," she lies.
"Dear God," Arthur sighs, leaning against the rail.
"Is something a problem? I didn't actually build any sections of New York, I'm not that stupid."
"Arthur hates that book," Eames explains gleefully. "Absolutely hates it."
"I do," Arthur admits.
"It reminds him too much of the drunken escapades in his youth," Eames says, smirking.
"You had drunken escapades?"
Eames bursts out laughing again; Arthur grimaces. "Sadly, yes, although I didn't actually get drunk that often. There's something off-putting about waking up hung over in the backseat of a tiny Jetta. But I did run away for a month or so when I was seventeen."
Araidne frowns at him. "Weird. I mean, I didn't take you for a delinquent."
He shrugs. "I wasn't, really. Besides, it was a long time ago. I've grown up a bit since."
"How old are you, anyway?"
"Thirty-one."
"Practically an old man," Eames interjects.
"And yet you're older than me, and you still manage to act younger than Ariadne," Arthur points out, sounding more amused than annoyed.
"You wound me, darling," Eames drawls, pressing a hand to his chest.
"At long last," Arthur says with a smile, which makes Eames break character long enough to snort. Arthur pushes himself off the bridge's handrail. "Ariadne, does the worthlessness of this particular world extend to the coffee, or is there some decent stuff to be found?"
"There's a pretty good café two blocks out of the park," Ariadne says, blinking. "You couldn't have had any at the hotel?"
"I'm not entirely sure what they were serving, but it was certainly not coffee." He sets off again, but Ariadne lingers for a moment next to Eames.
"Arthur's seemed a lot more… relaxed lately," she says, lowering her voice for no easily justifiable reason. She's astonished when Eames stops in his tracks.
"You know, sometimes I forget we met you less than a year ago."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demands, forcing her fingers out of the fist they've spontaneously formed.
"Just that of course, you're comparing him to how he was on the Fischer job. He's much more bearable when he isn't trying to redefine possibility and constantly wondering if he's going to have to pull Dom Cobb off a window ledge again."
"Again?"
"Eleven times," he murmurs. "Mostly in the first year after Mal, but…"
"Jesus," she whispers, wanting to shoot her past self in the face.
"Yeah. There are reasons he's so impossible." The wryness of the words doesn't quite match the bitterness-edged fondness of the smile he sends after the point man. To her surprise, Eames doesn't slip a mask back on when Arthur turns around.
"Are you two coming?" he asks mildly, one eyebrow raised. Ariadne forces herself to grin and run to catch up again. At least this time Eames hurries too.