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“No.”
Eames quickly arranges his features into what experience has taught him is a difficult expression to say “no” to. It’s about three-parts imploring, two-parts mischievous and one part lecherous. Works nine times out of ten.
Cobb just laughs at him. “No, Eames. I will not help you seduce Arthur.”
Eames sighs. For dramatic effect, mind you.
Cobb is unmoved by Eames’ efforts.
“Why not? Surely we can agree he could use a good... seducing.” Eames decides “fucking” might not be the best phraseology to use here. Cobb is sort of like a father-figure to Arthur, after all. Or perhaps more accurately a gloomy, over-protective older brother-figure who doesn’t want Arthur to have any fun. Particularly not with Eames.
Eames might hate Cobb. Or it could be the alcohol. And the sexual frustration.
In either case, Cobb waves him off, muttering, “He could definitely use it,” which makes Eames suddenly much more disposed towards him, until he adds, “but still. No.”
“Oh come on, you bastard,” Eames huffs. “Don’t make me beg.”
Even as he’s considering doing just that, Eames isn’t entirely sure why. It was just a whim, wasn’t it? He’d only even bothered to bring it up in an effort to get Cobb to think of something other than his lovely, but definitely dead, wife.
Hadn’t he?
Arthur was certainly appealing, anyone with eyes could tell that much. Likewise anyone with ears and half a brain could tell that Arthur was brilliant, possibly even fascinatingly so. Definitely a puzzle, almost certainly one worth Eames’ time, but really. He could take it or leave it.
Couldn’t he?
He tunes into Cobb again, who seems to be wrapping up his “back-off” speech, although Eames is decidedly startled by the grand finale.
“You’re the closest thing Arthur has to a friend.”
Eames constructs an expression he can only hope conveys the appropriate amount of skepticism this statement warrants.
It’s a lot.
But apparently Cobb is serious, not even drunk at a bar serious. Actually serious.
Eames just looks at him, shifting his expression just enough to imply, “but he has you.”
Cobb shrugs. “Arthur loves me.”
Eames is mildly surprised by the frankness of the admission, but then, flinching away from emotions has never really been Cobb’s problem. He’s always been a little trickier than that. It’s why Eames likes him.
Not as much as he likes Arthur, or could, anyway. Hypothetically. If he ever bothered to stick around long enough to find out.
At any rate, Cobb is still talking. “He loves me, but that’s work, loyalty for what I taught him to do, and maybe something like family, although I’ve done a lot to disappoint him, the last couple years.” He takes a long drink of his beer, looking away for a moment. “Arthur doesn’t handle disappointment well.”
Eames chuckles darkly. “No, I shouldn’t imagine he does.”
Cobb scrubs his face, and Eames briefly wonders how long it’s been since he slept. Really slept, without the help of a machine.
But that’s a problem for another day. Tonight, the topic is still Arthur. Who is apparently Eames’... friend? He’s always considered them more in the category of friendly rivals with just enough sexual tension and hostility between them to make it interesting.
“Can’t I be his friend who gives him blow-jobs? Because Cobb, truly. He needs one.”
Cobb just laughs again, either at Eames’ philosophy on friendship or his oral skills; Eames isn’t going to try to figure out which.
“Just try being his actual friend first, huh? I think it’s been a long time since he’s had one.”
Again, Eames is surprised by Cobb’s honesty, his willingness to reveal Arthur’s secrets. Eames can’t tell if it’s an endorsement, a credit to what Cobb actually thinks of him, or something else. Maybe Cobb is just recognizing his own limits, trying to get Arthur out from under him, because Cobb knows he can’t be much help to Arthur in the state he’s currently in.
“What’s in it for me?” Eames asks, because that’s the question. That’s always the question.
Cobb shrugs. “Maybe Arthur.”
Eames considers this.
He must admit, the idea is surprisingly motivating.
---
He’s still thinking this conversation over a few days later, when he finds himself on Arthur’s doorstep.
He’s carrying Cambodian take-away and a case of Tsingtao, which he remembers Arthur liking from the night they both got drunk off it after they wrapped up the Stein job.
He’s not invited, and he’s only 30% sure he knows what he’s doing here.
He knocks anyway.
There’s no rustling, no padding of socked feet against creaky floor boards. No sign that Arthur is inside, or that he’s heard, or cares, if he is.
Eames waits, and in a little over three minutes, his patience is rewarded.
Arthur opens the door and it’s even better than Eames expected.
He’s wearing a t-shirt. His feet are bare. There’s a hole in his pants, just above the knee.
“Are you wearing sweatpants right now, Arthur? Or am I dreaming?”
Miraculously, Arthur actually steps aside, and lets him in.
Eames is suddenly considering this friendship gambit a lot more seriously than before. How long would it really take him to shift them from proper friends to friends with, as the Americans liked to say, benefits?
“You’re not dreaming, but you can feel free to check your totem anyway,” Arthur says, tossing Eames a slightly mocking smile over his shoulder.
“I brought food,” Eames reminds him, because food is the way to a man’s heart. Everyone knows that.
And if he has to get to the heart first in order to get to the bedroom, what’s the real harm in that?
He follows Arthur into his living room, where even more delightful secrets of Arthur’s leisure-time are revealed. That he actually has leisure time, for one. But it gets better. His apartment is a mess. There are dishes in a precarious tower on the table beside the couch, newspapers scattered on the floor and boxes piled high against the wall, like Arthur is only half moved in, even though Eames knows he’s owned the apartment in Berlin for at least three years.
Eames also appears to have interrupted Arthur in the middle of watching Jeopardy.
“Are you a real person?” Eames asks gleefully, plunking himself down beside Arthur on the couch.
Arthur just grunts and shifts over, giving Eames more room and then relieving him of his take-away.
“There are more chopsticks in the kitchen, if you break these,” Arthur says, handing Eames a pair from the bag along with his pad thai.
Eames isn’t surprised Arthur knows his part of the order. Eames was right about Arthur wanting the golden chicken, after all. And Arthur is every bit as addicted to collecting details as Eames. He just doesn’t seem to care so much about whether the details are about people or not, whereas Eames can’t make himself care about anything else.
They eat in strangely companionable silence, and Eames is amused to discover that Arthur laughs when contestants get answers wrong.
“Arthur!” he exclaims, after Arthur’s cuttingly sarcastic remark about the school teacher from Indiana’s attempt at answering “Civil War general Tecumseh.” “You’re terrible.” He doesn’t bother to conceal the fact that he’s delighted by this fact.
He’s sure Arthur would be able to tell, anyway. Even if he did.
“She’s terrible,” Arthur corrects, unrepentant.
When Eames looks back at him in the commercial break, he realizes Arthur is still fighting back a smirk, his eyes twinkling.
Maybe Cobb really was onto something.
Who would have thought?
---
The next day, in the warehouse, Arthur treats him exactly the same as always. Mostly this means he ignores Eames, although he spares some time from his otherwise busy schedule to shoot down Eames’ ideas and occasionally offer up a compliment dripping in condescension.
Eames has always enjoyed these little moments they have together, cataloging Arthur’s insults as meticulously as his much rarer smiles, but it suddenly all seems rather... playful, which is another surprise, at least on Arthur’s side. Up till recently, Eames had been fairly certain he was the one having most of the fun in the course of their daily interactions.
But watching Arthur saunter around the warehouse like he owns the place, and maybe he does, Eames is starting to realize maybe he’s been quite wrong. Possibly about a lot of things.
He’d taken Cobb seriously enough to show up unannounced at Arthur’s door, after all, and that hadn’t blown up in his face. Quite the contrary, they’d shared an evening that was both perfectly platonic and also unsettlingly pleasant, and now Arthur’s mockery is tinted with the image of him sitting on his couch, his face full of self-satisfied laughter, bathed in the blue light of the TV screen.
Even thinking about it makes something warm and almost the tiniest bit painful happen in Eames chest. He ignores this, and focuses on what looking at Arthur does to other areas of his body.
“Your arse looks wonderful in those pants, darling,” he leers, leaning over his desk to admire the way Arthur is currently positioned on the edge of it.
Arthur says nothing, handing him the files he was in the middle of delivering before Eames interrupted him with some friendly sexual-harassment.
As Arthur’s leaving, Eames shouts, “Not as wonderful as it looked last night, mind!”
Arthur doesn’t even miss a step, but once he’s back at his own desk, he pauses, just for a second, to smile at Eames before returning to his work.
---
They’re working, of course. It’s always business with Arthur and Cobb. At least it always starts there.
Mal’s been dead for over a year and Eames has known them for a little longer, having the rather unfortunate experience of working with them on the very last job she was alive and then still being around for some of the fallout after she wasn’t.
He likes working with them because they’re both the best at what they do, and because they appreciate, even Arthur, that Eames is the best at what he does. There’s a certain amount of smug elitism about being the undisputed best at something in the entire world, which is really the appeal of extraction and dream-sharing in the first place, if you ask Eames.
Why do something that other people are equally excellent at when you can risk life, limb, and all mental stability to be the very best instead?
Personally, Eames is just grateful to the thieves who came before him who made it possible to do this work without having the slightest bit to do with the U.S military.
That would have been rubbish.
---
The preparation for job takes two weeks to complete, most of which Eames spends tailing the mark’s ex-wife in order to perfect his forgery of her. The plan, at least before it entirely falls apart, is for Eames to go in as the mark’s ex and engage her in a happy reunion that would have, ideally, led to her spilling her case’s secrets over their post-coitus pillow talk. Eames is calling it “coitus” even now, because it’s the word Arthur used, and because that will always be hilarious.
What is less hilarious, admittedly, is how Eames fails to obtain the desired information, and reveals his forgery when he doesn’t know exactly how the mark likes her oral sex.
It’s not his proudest moment, on any level, professional or otherwise, when her projections come crashing through the hotel room Arthur designed and rip Eames limb from limb.
When this violent end awakens him, Eames doesn’t find Arthur’s look, which is more genuinely disappointed than anything else, particularly hilarious either.
---
Perhaps this is why he follows Arthur home, grateful they’re working in a city where at least some of them have actual homes instead of hotel rooms, for once.
Well, technically Eames has a hotel room, but he hasn’t been spending much time in it, lately.
Whatever his motivations, Eames is less and less inclined to examine them where Arthur is concerned, so he turns up at Arthur’s flat, roughly 15 minutes after he watches Arthur let himself in, carrying another arm full of take-away. He’s splurged for wine, this time. A Shiraz he’s seen Arthur request at restaurants on more than one team-building dinner. Cobb really needs to remember he isn’t a future leader of Corporate America anymore.
Once again, Eames is pleased but more than a little surprised when Arthur lets him in without a fight.
In fact, this time, Arthur seems almost glad to see Eames. But Eames is sure it would just as easily have a trick of light that made Arthur’s face look like that, so he chooses to dismiss the observation.
“What’s on?” he asks, already helping himself to Arthur’s dishes and pouring them each a generous glass of wine.
“What’s for dinner?” Arthur counters, holding the remote up like a reward.
“Curry,” Eames announces with flourish, handing Arthur his glass and then dumping the take-away boxes onto the coffee table in front of him.
Arthur makes an approving noise and absently tosses Eames the remote as he digs into the food with relish.
“Hungry, were you?” Eames asks, mostly to hear himself talk, since Arthur is all but lost to the world, his eyes closed, shoulders slouched forward in pleasure around a particularly delectable mouthful of curry.
The look of unfettered pleasure on Arthur’s face is more than Eames can take, and he looks away, feeling distinctly like a preteen with a crush. This isn’t how his seductions generally tend to go.
Arthur eats while Eames channel surfs to give himself something other than Arthur to look at. He eventually settles on The Godfather I, which is about half over.
Arthur makes another approving noise, this time related to Eames’ television selection instead of his dietary one, and shocks Eames all over again by proceeding to put his feet up on the table. Right beside what’s left of the food.
“You’re scandalous,” Eames informs him, shaking his head. “Look at all that exposed ankle.”
Arthur doesn’t look at him, but Eames can see the corners of his mouth curling up in a smile.
---
Eames wakes up on Arthur’s couch. He remembers exactly how he got there, but he can’t for the life of him figure how why he’s still there. It’s morning, or nearly there, given the way the first bits of sun are intruding upon his eyes.
Eames is lying mostly face down on the couch, and he considers burrowing his face in deeper to avoid the light, but after a few moments of debate, he hears Arthur moving about in the kitchen. At this, Eames rights himself, first sitting up as straight as his aching back will allow and then getting up entirely to walk into the kitchen.
Instead of looking horrified that Eames is still in his home, Arthur nods a casual hello to Eames and asks, “How strong do you take your coffee? I tend to make it like lighter fluid in first thing the mornings.”
Maybe if the coffee is strong enough, Eames will actually be able to figure how what the bloody hell is going on.
“That’s fine, darling,” he mutters, hoping a little light flirting will ground him a bit, but Arthur doesn’t even bristle at the pet name.
He just continues making his coffee in his snooty little french press like it’s perfectly normal for Eames to be standing around in his kitchen in yesterday’s clothes.
Eames gives up and opens the fridge, foraging for breakfast supplies to go with the coffee. The results are disappointing, to say the least.
“No wonder you let me in. You’d never eat if it wasn’t for me.”
“I’m perfectly capable of ordering my own dinner, thank you,” Arthur replies mildly, still not even bothering to look at Eames has he navigates the kitchen with two steaming mugs of coffee.
He hands one to Eames, who accepts it warily, eyeing the contents of the cup with faint suspicion.
“The rest of my kitchen may be for show, but I assure you, Mr. Eames, I make an excellent cup of coffee.”
On anyone else, Eames would be sure he was the one being flirted with right now. But Eames thinks this might just be Arthur being Arthur.
Something he’s possibly quite new to experiencing, despite his previous confidence that he already had Arthur at least mostly figured out.
“You’re a mirage, aren’t you?” he murmurs, more about Arthur than to him.
Arthur ignores the comment anyway, and takes a sip of his coffee, as if to affirm its quality. After another brief pause, Eames takes a drink.
Best cup of coffee he’s ever had.
---
After that, Eames starts watching Arthur all over again, as if he’s meeting him for the first time. He works quickly through all the details he’s amassed before. Arthur’s impeccable sartorial sense, at least while on the job. His perfectionism, sometimes, ironically, warring with his professionalism. His practicality and awareness that sometimes, a job needs to be done more than it needs to be done right. None of this tells Eames anything he didn’t already know, except that now he knows these facets of Arthur’s personality aren’t absolute, that they don’t bleed into his private life to define him as fully as they do in his public life (such as it is when one’s business is the sharing of dreams).
Eames looks for clues in Arthur’s relationship with Cobb, but it’s the same mix of loyalty and exasperation as has always been there, at least since Mal’s death. Arthur won’t abandon Cobb to the wolves, won’t stop minimizing the risks Cobb takes with his steadying hand and calm, calculating mind, but Eames knew that much already. What is surprising is the anger Arthur’s eyes fill with, sometimes, when he’s looking at Cobb, now that Eames is paying close enough attention to see it. He’s starting to realize that the irritation behind Arthur’s words to Cobb is often more genuine than the hostility he directs towards Eames.
But then, he and Arthur don’t have the history Cobb and Arthur do. Maybe with genuine affection comes genuine hostility. Maybe, to earn anything real from Arthur, one first has to prove worthy of his time and energy. That sounds plausible, but Eames is more careful with his conclusions now that he knows how much he’s been wrong about so far.
---
They still have the job to finish, and they need a new, plan given that the first one was ruined rather spectacularly by Eames. Not that Eames is particularly interested in harping on that last point.
Arthur is less inclined to let it go, but that’s to be expected.
“It wasn’t just the details you got wrong,” he says, in a tone that almost sounds forgiving, or at least implies he’s not assigning Eames with all the blame.
Cobb and Eames are sitting in fold-out chairs, and Arthur is pacing back and forth in front of them. Eames wonders if he’s the only one mesmerized by the rise and fall of Arthur’s shoulders as he breathes.
“I think it was the whole setup,” Arthur continues, not looking at them for input. Eames has seen him this way plenty, and he’s still relatively certain this is the stage where Arthur is thinking aloud, rather than talking to either of them.
He and Cobb both lean in, listening attentively, all the same. This, too, Eames is familiar with. Arthur just has that effect on people.
“Schmidt is a lawyer, a highly successful one. She may yearn for reconciliation with her ex-wife, but it’s not happiness that’s going to make her reveal her secrets.”
“Oh no? Why didn’t you mention this objection before I went down on her, then?” Eames demands, feeling like he has the right to be a tad disgruntled.
Arthur rolls his eyes. “That part was your doing. You were supposed to be going for emotional intimacy, not fucking. But as I said, that wasn’t the real problem. I hoped it would work, but it didn’t, and I’m not surprised. What she wants is an equal - someone who compels her intellectually as well as physically, that’s why the relationship with the ex fell apart, they weren’t compatible, even though they were in love.” He raises his eyebrows at Eames expectantly. “That’s what your research showed, isn’t it?”
Eames swallows, his throat suddenly feeling very dry. “That’s right, darling. Very accurate.”
Arthur nods in satisfaction before continuing. “So we tried to make the ex into something familiar while still plausibly appealing, with the night classes and everything, and it was worth a shot, but now I think we need to go deeper, appeal to her competitive side first, and let the attraction build from there.”
“How are we going to do that?” Cobb asks, but he sounds like he’s on board, looking for clarification rather than a reconceptualization of the problem.
Arthur shrugs, and Eames thinks he may be the only person in the world who can actually do such a thing so elegantly. Perhaps Arthur and the Dame Judy Dench. Eames would put nothing past that woman.
“We have to give her something entirely new, someone new. A professional challenge, at first, and then a romantic one. That way, when we get far enough, the idea of sharing strategies and client information will already be associated with the forgery, because that’s how they’ll meet.”
“You’re talking like I’m going to be under with her for awhile,” Eames points out.
“Weeks, maybe more,” Arthur agrees.
Eames restrains a real sigh, and then expends an exaggerated one. “Lovely.”
“It could work, though,” Cobb says, surprising no one.
Eames supposes he should just be glad this plan won’t involve Cobb coming in until the end, if at all. Eames prefers jobs where he has to see as little of the late Mrs. Cobb as possible.
“With all the legwork we’ve already done, Eames should be able to put together a composite of her past lovers, or at the very least think up something new that’s compelling for the forgery without too much trouble.”
“Your confidence is overwhelming,” Eames mutters, softening it with a smile he didn’t even realize was on his face until Arthur smiles back.
“We’ll need a new architect, though, if we’re going to move outside of the controlled environment of a hotel room. For this we’ll need her entire office, her apartment, the routes she takes to work and all the other details of her daily routine. Some of that we have, but I think this calls for another round of surveillance before we try anything in the dreamscape. Cobb, can you see about finding an architect?”
Arthur is perfectly capable of doing this himself, of course, but final hiring approval, especially when it comes to architects, is always left to Cobb.
Cobb nods, already getting up to see about his end of things, leaving Arthur looming over Eames, hands on his hips, his shirt rolled up to the elbows. He’s wearing a v-neck sweater today instead of his more typical waistcoat, but all Eames can think about is the threadbare t-shirt he’d been wearing the night before.
“Eames,” Arthur says impatiently, suddenly much closer, snapping his fingers in front of Eames’ face.
“What, Arthur?” he blinks, trying to adjust to Arthur’s sudden proximity.
Arthur just smirks. “Go bring the car around, we’re getting lunch and then tailing Schmidt home from work.”
“Oh we are, are we?”
Whatever Eames is going for in his tone, and he’s not even entirely sure himself, it’s lost on Arthur, who just smiles thinly, the smile of a man who knows he’s getting exactly what he wants without a fight, and so sees no need to engage in one.
“We are. And I’m driving.”
Eames doesn’t even dignify that one with a response. He hates driving in America anyway.
---
Surveillance with Arthur is about as much fun as it sounds. He refuses to let them listen to the radio, he won’t allow food in the car, and after ten minutes of not participating in any of Eames’ knock-knock jokes, Arthur actually punches him in the thigh hard enough to shut Eames up.
To Eames’ credit, there’s a promise of a smile on Arthur’s lips, if only Eames can do the next thing right. He has no idea what that might be, however, so he settles for slouching more comfortably in the passenger seat and pretending his leg doesn’t still hurt.
A few minutes later, he makes his hands into fake binoculars, peering through them out the window.
Arthur laughs.
---
All they learn from spending their afternoon and evening cramped into Arthur’s Chrysler 300 is that Monika Schmidt is the workaholic that her dossier already says she is.
Eames also has a leg he hasn’t been able to quite wake up for the last hour and a headache.
“This is a waste of time, she’ll be in there until at least 11, we know it. She won’t take any personal calls between now and then, and she won’t do anything on her way home but stop at the gym for an hour and then go to sleep.”
Arthur hums his reluctant agreement, surprising Eames by already shifting the car into gear.
“You’re probably right, we’ll stake out her apartment tomorrow morning, start fresh and get her full day down.” He scratches his jaw absently, and Eames notices the slight scattering of stubble starting to appear there.
He looks away, but not before Arthur catches him staring. He doesn’t say anything about it, or anything at all, for that matter, until they’ve been inching through rush-hour traffic for at least half an hour.
“I was thinking Mexican, tonight,” is all Arthur says, so casually Eames is relatively certain he actually is. Casual. At ease.
Eames stomach makes a somewhat embarrassing gurgle, and Arthur smirks.
“Mexican it is.”
---
They spend the next week following Schmidt, and in that time, she never deviates from her routine.
Neither do Arthur and Eames.
Eames wakes up every morning with a crick in his neck and an impression of Arthur’s couch on his face, and every morning when he stumbles into the kitchen, Arthur is already there, making the coffee. After the second time this happened in a row, Eames insisted they pick up some groceries on the way home from their surveillance detail, which Cobb now relieves them of promptly at 5:30 everyday. After handing the reins over to Cobb, they return to the warehouse and spend 15 minutes under, or three hours, learning about the dream from the architect, Nash. And every night they go back to Arthur’s apartment, and sit on the couch and watch television and discuss the job over take-away, until Eames eventually passes out on the couch and then wakes up to do it all over again.
As campaigns of seduction go, Eames can admit it isn’t his most efficient job, but Arthur is smiling more when they’re awake, and his subconscious seems decidedly less interested in killing everything in sight when they’re hooked up to the PASIV, so really. It’s not all bad.
---
Once Arthur is satisfied they’ve done enough surveillance, Eames starts working on the forgery, going into simple dreamscapes and trying on different faces and body shapes. He eventually settles into a tall and sleek brunette, which Eames knows himself well enough to admit is at least slightly an homage to Arthur, or at least what Arthur might be, if he wasn’t already. Well. No need to think about that too much, either.
The forgery is one of his best, and even Arthur acknowledges this, without his usual sarcasm.
“Impressive, Eames,” he says, nodding at the stranger Eames is currently projecting all around himself.
He flexes his hand, now small and smooth, perfectly manicured, and says, “Thank you, Arthur. Your lack of condescension is much appreciated.”
Arthur smiles, and says, “It’s time for us to wake up.”
---
That night, Arthur drops Eames off at his hotel, instead of wordlessly driving them both back to Arthur’s flat.
Eames doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if this change is meant to be discussed, or ignored, so he takes the path of least resistance, and simply gets out of the car, shutting the door behind him without a word, and walking away without a backwards glance.
He heads straight for the bar. This, at least, should come as a surprise to no one.
---
He’s three drinks in, and no closer to gaining clarity on the Arthur Dilemma, when he feels a hand on his shoulder.
It’s Cobb. Eames wishes he was surprised that it’s not Arthur.
“I’m off the clock,” he says, not feeling particularly welcoming.
Cobb just nods, and motions the bartender for a drink. “I’ll have what he’s having.”
Eames chuckles. “I’m having single malt whiskey, and lots of it.”
Cobb smiles grimly. “So am I.”
Cobb downs his first drink in one go, which Eames is admittedly a little impressed by.
“I thought you were saving every dollar to spend on legal fees,” he remarks, taking a sip of his own 12 dollar glass of scotch.
“Not every dollar,” is all Cobb says, effectively shutting down that topic of conversation. Which is just fine by Eames, really. He’s never been a big fan on delving into Cobb’s tortured not-so-distant past.
“What are you doing here?” Eames asks, getting to the point. He’s never been a big fan of waiting, either.
“I’m here to check in on my investment.”
“Your investment?”
“That’s right. I invested a whole bottle of Lagavulin and some very closely guarded secrets into your burgeoning friendship with Arthur. Now I want to see what you’ve been doing with the insights I so generously offered you.”
The only thing Eames knows for certain, in that moment, is that the more he thinks he knows about Cobb and Arthur’s relationship, the less he understands about either of them.
---
Cobb follows him out of the hotel, which isn’t unexpected, but is less than ideal. Particularly because Eames had plans to urinate somewhere, preferably in a nearby alley, preferably alone. But if that was a deal-breaker, he would have just stayed at the hotel.
Cobb doesn’t seem to mind talking to Eames while he has his dick in his hand, anyway. Eames should congratulate him on this triumph over his obviously Catholic upbringing.
“Listen, I only told you those things about Arthur so you would realize what you were doing and take things a little more seriously with him. I didn’t tell you so you could exploit that information to get him to sleep with you.”
Eames smiles, all teeth, and zips himself up. “Well then you probably shouldn’t have told me, should you’ve?”
Cobb doesn’t follow him after that.
---
The second time around, the job goes off without a hitch. Schmidt takes to Eames’ forgery immediately, and it only takes him a week and a half of being under for her to reveal the details of her upcoming case for them to sell to their client for a very sizable fee.
Eames leaves her asleep in her real apartment, calling Arthur to let him know the job is done.
Nash is already gone when Eames arrives back in the warehouse, but Arthur and Cobb are still tying up loose ends.
“Your cut has been wired,” Cobb assures him, his parting words before he pats Eames on the back and leaves, glancing behind him once to smile a little sadly at Arthur.
Eames doesn’t know what to make of any of it.
Especially not when he looks at Arthur and sees him smiling at Eames the same way.
“What’s gotten into you two?”
Arthur’s smile changes, and Eames can see him trying to shake the tension out of his shoulders.
“It’s nothing. Do you want to go back to my place?”
Eames is thrown off what was left of his game by this question. Now that the job is done, he’d been assuming he wasn’t going to be invited back. What’s equally surprising is that he’s being invited at all. It’s a staggering formality given the routine they’ve so accidentally fallen into.
But maybe that’s just another part of all this where Eames has been quite wrong. He’s not fond of it, but he can certainly admit when it happens.
“And what shall we do when we get there?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows, expecting a scoff at worst, a grudging half-smile at best.
What he gets is an almost imperceptible flinch, and then Arthur saying, “That’s up to you,” his voice suddenly louder, infused with false confidence,
Eames can’t even help how high he raises his eyebrows this time, it’s entirely involuntary. He almost never loses control of his expressions. That in itself is enough to set off alarm bells.
As if the way Arthur was oozing towards him wasn’t cause for concern on its own.
“I got what I wanted, Mr. Eames. Now it’s your turn.”
Arthur is right there, looking into Eames’ eyes, saying these things, and it’s not how Eames imagined it, but it certainly seems like Arthur means it.
What he should say is, “Lead the way, darling.” What he does say is, “And what was it you wanted?”
Arthur looks down, and for a second the confident seduction motif is thrown off by the troubled, wistful look on his face, but then it’s gone, replaced by a sly smile.
“I’m more interested in what you want, right now,” and again, underneath everything else, he sounds genuine, even while he sounds nothing like himself.
Eames is confused by how much he’s striving to hear that part, to reassure himself, when by all rights it shouldn’t even matter. Arthur is offering himself up to Eames on a golden platter. Why on earth should he care about why?
“Did Cobb put you up to this?”
Arthur fights to maintain control, Eames watches it happen, but he loses the battle, releasing a strangled yell and turning away from Eames, stalking a few feet away and glaring off into space.
“Are we doing this, or not?” Arthur demands, sounding downright petulant, a few minutes later.
Eames has no idea.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need a little more to go on about what exactly we’d be doing before I agree, darling.”
No matter what his dick is telling him, Eames’ mouth really isn’t getting with a program.
Arthur sighs impatiently. It’s more adorable than it has any right to be.
“Sex, Eames.”
Eames can’t help but laugh, loud and long, at the offended way in which Arthur says these words. As though he’s appalled he’s been forced to lower himself to something so prosaic and uncouth.
“Yes, but why now, you insufferable creature! Is it because I was so marvelous today? Because we can all agree I was marvelous, but that’s no reason for you to take one for the--”
Arthur cuts him off with a look.
Wrong again, apparently.
“I told you already. I got what I wanted. Now it’s your turn.” Arthur repeats slowly, as he’s really hoping it’s a simple miscommunication, not something far more serious.
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand what it is you got out of the deal, Arthur. Or why you seem to think we have a deal at all.” Eames doesn’t tend to involve the other party in his seduction plans. It tends to take the mystery out of the proceedings.
But Arthur just waves his hand dismissively. “I know you talked to Cobb. I know what he told you.”
“What did he tell me?”
Arthur glares, his shoulders deflating a little more, but he soldiers on. “That I... I don’t know. Liked you. That I enjoyed spending time with you. And I also know you were only asking because you wanted to sleep with me. So when you came over I figured we were going to make it easy on each other. You’d give me what I wanted, for the length of the job, and then when we finished, I’d give you what you wanted. Every one’s happy.”
“It was a con?” Eames demands, a mix of horrified and impressed.
Arthur makes a face. “I prefer to think of it as a mutually beneficial transaction.”
“Just with take-away and orgasms, is that it?”
For a second, Eames almost thinks Arthur is going to smile. He doesn’t, but Eames is certain it was a close thing.
He likes knowing that for certain, now. Likes how much less he has to guess about Arthur, even as he finds he’s still misunderstood him so completely.
For example, the way Arthur is staring at him now, with something thoughtful and almost hopeful transpiring in his eyes, makes Eames brave enough to take a few steps closer to him, just close enough that they’re not touching, but that, if either of them wanted to, they could reach out and close the remaining gap between them with ease.
“What if I told you that what I wanted was more take-away, and to continue falling asleep on your couch while you verbally brutalize game show contestants for not being as smart as you?”
Arthur doesn’t respond, but the threat of a smile has returned to his lips, so Eames continues, leaning just a fraction closer.
“What if I told you, dear Arthur, that I didn’t just want orgasms? What if I said I wanted us to be... friends?” Eames isn’t sure what surprises him more. That he says this, or that he means it.
Arthur blinks, first from genuine surprise, and then more slowly, almost like he’s batting his eye lashes. Eames surrenders completely at this. He’s never going to figure Arthur out if he’s secretly a man who seduces his colleagues through bad television and bedroom-eyes.
“I suppose that would be acceptable,” Arthur murmurs.
And then, just as suddenly as they fell together, Arthur flashes him the smallest smile before turning sharply on his heel and walking away.
Eames stands there, as flummoxed as ever, and doesn’t realize Arthur means for him to follow until he tosses over his shoulder, “Just as long as we can be the kind of friends who give each other blow jobs.”
Eames can live with that.