Work Text:
"Darling, I'm impressed. Not by the house, as such, but you make up for it with the hedonistically enormous bathtub." Eames beams down at Arthur from the top of Arthur's stairs. Arthur glowers up at him from the front doorway.
"Eames. Why are you in my house?"
And Eames is about to embark upon a delightfully mendacious explanation when he notices a black and white, child-sized shape at Arthur's side.
"Darling," Eames says, "is that a penguin?"
*
The penguin's name is Elizabeth.
"I need her for a job," Arthur says. "It's complicated."
"I imagine so." Eames thinks about the last animal-related, complicated job Arthur was involved with. "Please reassure me that you're not going to try plugging her into the PASIV. You do remember what happened with Bunny the sheepdog, don't you?"
Arthur looks a little queasy, which means he probably does remember. "I'm not going to try plugging her into the PASIV," he says. "Feel reassured."
"I do," Eames says. (He does.)
"And now you tell me why you're here, whether I should expect unfriendly company, and if so, how unfriendly."
"Ah.Well," Eames says. He decides to smile charmingly. "You see, the thing is, I did a little extraction on Vladimir Putin. I did lose the KG-- FS-- the whatever they call themselves these days, but I would quite like to lie low for a little while. And I thought, well, who more likely to be willing to help me out than dear old Arthur?"
Arthur looks sceptical. Perhaps he knows that Eames hasn't been anywhere near Russia in the last five years.
"It is very unlikely that anyone armed and uncongenial will show up at your door," Eames says. "Aside from yourself, of course."
"Strangely, that sounds honest." Arthur throws Eames a spare set of keys from the hallway table. "You can have the spare room if you'll penguin-sit Elizabeth on weekdays. And show me how you got through my security."
*
"So how does a penguin figure into a mindheist," says Eames. "Assuming you haven't simply branched out into zoo-based thievery."
Arthur winces.
"You--" Eames begins.
"Yeah. I stole her from a zoo." Arthur looks to where Elizabeth is currently pressing herself to his open freezer, and looks faintly guilty. "You can't buy penguins on eBay."
"But you need her for the job. She's not the job." Eames toys briefly with the idea that Arthur has embraced a bizarre new career change.
"She's just for me to observe," Arthur says. He looks as though he's trying to work out how much more to add, given that Eames already knows he's living with a penguin. "This kind of animal seems to count as architecture, not projections." He gives that standard professional reaction to the weirdness of dreamsharing: an expression of wry, carefully-nurtured mostly-acceptance that the human brain is far more of a mess than is nice to think about. He says, "I'm learning how to recreate natural penguin behaviour."
They both look again at Elizabeth and the freezer.
"I suppose it never occurred to you to simply watch the penguins at the zoo," Eames says.
"Too suspicious, hanging around in the same place all the time," Arthur says, apparently thoroughly convinced that penguin-watching is a well-known sign of a dangerous man.
Eames shakes his head for lack of words to explain how hopeless a person he finds Arthur to be.
Arthur shrugs and goes to the fridge, which turns out to be full of packages of raw fish. He takes a few out and feeds them to Elizabeth, who makes happy penguin noises.
"I suppose in a way she's your ideal pet," Eames muses as he watches them. "Comes with own formal clothing."
*
There is one small corner of Arthur's fridge that does not contain fish. Instead, it is neatly stacked with takeaway containers, all carefully labelled with dish, date and ethnicity in Arthur's neat and angry-looking capitals. There is also a single small carton of milk. It has a picture of a cow on it.
Arthur gestures to this small colony when Eames asks what there is to eat. "Help yourself. I'm guessing you can't cook."
Eames can't, it's true. "I have far, far too much money to need to."
"Yeah. Same." Arthur pulls out a couple of the containers for himself and leaves Eames to look through the rest.
Eames takes them out in their stacks and disarranges them on the table, weighing up probable flavour against relative age. "By the way, you wouldn't happen to have any tea about the place, would you?"
"Only coffee." But Arthur demagnets what appears to be a shopping list from the fridge door (it reads, in order, FISH FOR E, PADDLING POOL (?), MILK, BANANAS, SOAP) and adds TEA FOR E2.
Eames can't decide whether to feel irrationally pleased that Arthur feels hospitable enough to buy him tea or irrationally annoyed that a penguin has become the primary E in Arthur's life.
*
Eames decides to try out Arthur's bath. It is a sort of triangular shape and really is almost indecently huge, taking up half the bathroom, with a seat in one corner, highly decorative knobs and even an ornate overspill plate. But Eames has barely got the water running lukewarm when Arthur is in the room and switching it off again.
"The bath is for Elizabeth," Arthur says.
"Does she like a long, hot soak then?" Eames says. He watches sadly as the small beginnings of his would-be bath flow away down the plughole. He feels hard done by. "She didn't seem the type."
"She likes a long, cold soak. It's when she preens herself." Arthur puts the plug back in again and switches on the cold tap.
"When I was fleeing CIA assassins across three continents and dreaming of the haven that awaited me if I could only make it to your home and your protection," Eames tells him, "this is not what I envisaged."
Arthur looks unconcerned. "Are you sure this is the best place to hide from the CIA?"
"It's the best place to hide, I am right under their noses."
"That's always seemed like an odd strategy to me. But I guess at least they'll shield you from the FSB." Arthur dips his hand into the bath water, presumably to check that it's definitely freezing cold and not nice and warm and lovely. "Hey, keep an eye on this, okay? I want to go over my current penguin intel. Call me when it it's getting full."
*
The next day, being a Wednesday, is Eames' first day of penguin-sitting. Arthur leaves early, presumably to plot Antarctic-themed extraction with whoever he's working with, probably in an atmospheric disused-warehouse location. He leaves Eames with detailed notes on the care and feeding of stolen spheniscidae.
The notes are very, very detailed. Arthur has even included what amounts to a small encyclopaedia of penguin illnesses, complete with indices by symptom, treatment and date first observed in penguins. Eames concludes that a terrible fate awaits him if Arthur gets back and Elizabeth has even a single weird, waterproof penguin feather out of place.
"I can see he's got quite attached to you," Eames tells Elizabeth. He shows her the notes.
Elizabeth bends her head down and prods herself in the side with her bill several times. Since this behaviour does not appear on the index of penguin illness symptoms, Eames assumes it's normal and leaves her to it.
*
He spends an hour or so in the morning poking about and looking through Arthur's things. But -- Arthur being Arthur, and Arthur having allowed Eames to stay here -- it's not much of a surprise when nothing of interest turns up.
He has a look at the room Arthur's using as a home gym -- probably originally the dining room, it is smartly-wallpapered and scented with sweat, with short stacks of weights standing here and there upon the deep-blue carpet. At the centre of the room is a weight-training bench, and there's a pull-up bar in the doorway. It's a decent enough setup, Eames thinks. He can make it work for himself.
He spends the rest of the time until lunch using Arthur's internet connection as a means of prying into Arthur's business, and puts out a few feelers for information. And then he goes downstairs to find Elizabeth waddling idly in the lounge, wings spread as if for balance. She comes to a halt, looks all around her, and gives her head a brisk shake.
"Erm. Come on. Feeding time!" Eames claps a few times and walks pointedly into the kitchen.
Elizabeth does not follow.
"Fuck," says Eames.
*
The first thing he tries is holding a fish in the kitchen doorway and waggling it temptingly. Elizabeth doesn't so much as look at him, so he tries holding the fish in the kitchen doorway, waggling it temptingly and whistling in what he hopes is a come-hither-penguin kind of way. This, too, elicits no response.
After a number of minutes more of vain fish waggling, Eames decides that he's trying too hard. To Elizabeth, he realises, he and the fish probably look needy and a bit desperate, when what he wants is for her to think they look interesting and (in the fish's case) exceptionally tasty. He leaves the fish on a plate on the kitchen floor, heats up a two-day-old curry and goes to eat it upstairs -- so that the curry smell won't interfere with the presumably-tempting-to-penguins fish smell, so that the fish smell won't interfere with Eames' appetite, and so that Eames can avoid anxiously looking between the fish and Elizabeth like a sad, needy, desperate bastard.
He gives her fifteen minutes. When he goes downstairs again, Elizabeth is still in the lounge, the fish is undisturbed on its plate and the fish smell is noticeably stronger.
*
Unwilling to admit defeat, Eames formulates a new plan and checks very carefully about the room for any kind of hidden camera system he might have missed earlier. (This is Arthur's house: you never know.) He spends a few minutes watching Elizabeth to remind himself of her penguin mannerisms. And then he goes quite near to her and does what he prides himself is about as good a penguin imitation as a human being can attain to, and waddle-headpoke-flaps his way into the kitchen.
Elizabeth does not follow.
She does at least look up at him briefly when he looks back to her from the kitchen. And then she spreads her wings very wide and stretches her neck back so that her bill points directly at the ceiling.
Eames wonders whether this is penguin body-language for, "I am so far out of your league I'd need a space telescope just to see you, you pathetic sad bastard."
*
Eventually, it seems to come down to a choice between carrying Elizabeth bodily into the kitchen or feeding her in the lounge. Or allowing her to starve and finding out exactly how accurately Eames judged the threat implicit within Arthur's penguin care notes.
Eames feels unexpectedly squeamish about the thought of carrying a penguin. He thinks it might be something to do with the tail, or the wrinkly, pinkish penguin feet, or the way Elizabeth's narrow head points forwards when she waddles. Or the fact that she's waterproof. Or the fact that she's very, very alien and strangely incredibly humanlike all at once.
Or perhaps Eames has some kind of repressed traumatic penguin memory, buried deep in his subconscious, currently rendering him unable to manhandle Elizabeth, soon to lead to evil penguin projection armies interfering with his work.
At any rate, Eames doesn't want to carry her. Which leaves bringing the fish into the lounge. It seems like the obvious solution, but Arthur has made it quite clear that Elizabeth's meals are a kitchen-only activity. Eames supposes that getting fish scales out of carpet is the sort of unpleasant domestic activity Arthur would usually hire other people to do, except that other people are liable to ask difficult questions (such as, "where did you get this penguin?") and lack the proper scruples about reporting criminals to the police.
Still, Eames can live with a fishy carpet for a few weeks and Arthur probably can too. And Arthur obviously doesn't care as much about his furnishings as he does Elizabeth. The furnishings haven't merited notes.
Eames goes into the kitchen to get the fish.
Elizabeth follows him.
*
Arthur gets in in the evening with a pile of steaming takeaway containers, nods at Eames and disappears down the hallway. (Eames himself is at the top of the stairs with his gun out, feeling deeply unused to sharing someone's living space.) A few minutes later Arthur reappears with Elizabeth in his arms, pressed to his chest and his probably-expensive shirt, and hauls her up to the bathroom, where he starts the bath running on cold. Today he lets her stand in the bath while it fills, and she splashes in the shallow water and flaps her wings and stretches her neck in different directions.
"Hey, keep an eye on her a minute," Arthur tells Eames, who is watching, fascinated, from the doorway.
"What kind of takeaway did you get?" Eames asks as Arthur heads back down the stairs.
"Lebanese."
"Bring some up for me?" Eames shouts.
Arthur does, along with plenty for himself and forks and spoons. He eats in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with the lid down and looking on as Elizabeth takes her bath. Eames has always hated eating alone if he doesn't have to, so he drags in a chair from the office and settles down next to the shower.
Elizabeth preens herself. This mainly involves floating about in the water whilst rubbing her body quite violently with her wings and prodding herself with her bill. Arthur leans forward, intent, dipping his sleeve in his food.
"You're in love with a penguin," Eames comments.
"I'm not in love with a penguin," Arthur says.
Eames chews his lamb kebab. He wheels his chair backwards and forwards on the bathroom tiles. He rests his feet up on the side of the bath.
"Hey," Arthur says. "Don't do that. You're disturbing her."
Elizabeth is still preening and doesn't look at all disturbed to Eames, or even aware of his existence, but he obediently sets his feet back on the floor. Then he turns to Arthur, raises his brows and smirks.
"I'm studying her behaviour," Arthur says.
"Of course," Eames tells him soothingly. "Of course you are."
*
Eames doesn't manage to find out much about Arthur's job, possibly because Arthur very quickly finds out that Eames is trying to.
"Well, what d'you expect of me?" Eames says, when Arthur raises the subject (after he's shut down all Eames' lines of enquiry and done something that's made several potentially well-informed, talkative people turn suddenly quiet and uncommunicative).
"This," Arthur says. "But you could always have surprised me."
"You're on a job that requires you to cohabit with a penguin," Eames points out. "I had to be curious. If I hadn't been you would have died of shock."
"Ah. Thoughtful of you."
"Yes. I had your best interests at heart. Now, come on, I tell you what. If you tell me why you're working with a penguin, I'll tell you why I'm on the run from Mossad. Don't think I've missed how desperate you are to know."
Arthur shakes his head. "Of course I am. So tell me, Eames, why are you on the run from Mossad?"
"Ill advised joke in the company of one of their higher-ups," Eames replies promptly. "The one about the two Jews on the desert island. Though it was probably worth it for the look on his face."
To his gratification, Arthur bursts out laughing. Arthur's cheeks dimple, his eyes go bright, and he shakes his head, trying to compose himself. He is really damnably attractive, Eames thinks, and shakes his own head.
"Your turn then," Eames says, as Arthur takes deep breaths.
"Hm?" says Arthur.
"Why the penguin? I know you love her, of course, but I don't think you knew that you did until you had her living with you."
"Oh," says Arthur. He hesitates, and then his expression turns deadly serious. "We're running an extraction on Santa Claus."
"How fascinating," Eames says, rather blandly, taken aback that Arthur might share anything of his penchant for tall stories. "Wrong hemisphere, though. Penguins are at the South Pole, Father Christmas at the North."
"A clever ruse." Arthur smiles the small, self-satisfied smile he generally uses when he thinks he knows more and better than anyone else in the room. "I have very good information to the effect that he is in fact Antarctic-based. We're going to extract the secret of chimney climbing for a fee of three billion candy canes. And the location of his secret toy factory so that I can steal all the toys."
Eames nods in acceptance. "Well. That explains it, then."
He puts on the kettle to make himself a mug of the (cheap, nasty, wonderful) tea Arthur has bought for him. He opens the fridge, encounters the fish smell, and gets out the milk. And then, finally, he gives in and lays his head down in his hands on Arthur's clean and bare kitchen counter and laughs and laughs as the kettle gurgles to a boil.
*
It is not until Saturday that Eames truly masters the fine art of penguin feeding. Or rather, at least, it is on Saturday that he finally accepts that Elizabeth's lunch happens on her terms, when she's ready, and not a moment before, and all Eames can do is sit in the kitchen and await her arrival.
When she waddles in at five minutes past one, he breathes a sigh of relief, shuts his computer, gets a fish from the fridge and lets her gobble it down. She waddles out again shortly after, and Eames washes his hands of fish bits and fish smell (as much as is possible) at the kitchen sink. And then registers, out of the corner of his eye, a slight change in Arthur's expression.
Arthur is sat at the kitchen table, leaning back, chair balanced on its back two legs. He is looking straight at Eames, his eyes narrow and amused and just slightly condescending, over the top of the FT.
"I did wonder why you'd come down here," Arthur says.
"Glad to hear that my own behaviour, as well as the lovely Elizabeth's, is a source of interest to you," Eames says. And then he says, "Oh. Oh fuck."
Arthur continues to look at him. Arthur's eyes glint.
"It's Saturday," Eames says.
"It is," Arthur agrees.
"You only asked me to look after her on weekdays."
"I did." Arthur turns a page of his newspaper. "But I'm perfectly happy for you to look after her on weekends as well if you'd like. If you're getting attached."
*
Eames spends a lot of the rest of the weekend out of the house, getting fresh air and frequenting public places, and meeting people who aren't Arthur or penguins. He's not here, he reminds himself, to fret over the welfare of anyone's pet, no matter how strange or illegal. (He is in fact here for a good, work-related reason. And, admittedly, for a gorgeously frivolous co-reason -- he's always been far too curious about other people's homes.)
He goes to the gym. He goes to the cinema. He goes for a walk in the park and watches the dog owners and agrees with one or two that it's quite mild weather for December. He goes to the gym again. He goes to a bar and flirts with and buys drinks for a woman whose interest in him abruptly ceases to exist when she decides she's hit her limit for the night.
He goes to the gym again. He sits in a coffee shop and reads a novel and listens to a couple of students discuss the relative merits of three different ironic alternative Christmas albums by artists Eames has never heard of -- but whose names he notes down, because there's always the chance he might end up having to forge a hipster. He goes to a bookshop and wanders into and swiftly out of the natural history section.
*
Eames is beginning to suspect that he might be getting attached to Arthur's penguin.
He didn't feel particularly antipathetic towards her to begin with. He will admit to having thought she was quite a nice penguin and that it was a sad thing for her to be trapped in a house with Arthur. He really felt quite bad for her when he discovered that, before Eames' arrival, Arthur was taking Elizabeth with him to work and keeping her in a small toddler pen he'd bought from Toys R Us.
But that was a relatively impersonal kind of bad. Like the kind of bad Eames feels when he's about to con, defraud, extract from or otherwise behave ill by someone who may not entirely deserve it: enough to prove that he has a warm, beating heart and is capable of empathy towards his fellow creatures, but not enough to have much effect on his behaviour.
The kind of bad Eames feels on Monday afternoon, when he goes to check on Elizabeth and finds her looking like an unhappy penguin, is of a different order altogether.
Elizabeth has her head bent low, her back arched, her wings hanging loosely towards the floor. Every so often she waddles to a new position in the room, and then resumes her unhappy penguin pose.
"Stop being so passive aggressive," Eames tells her. He tries to ignore the wrenching feeling in his chest.
Elizabeth ignores him in favour of further despondent waddling. She encounters the footstool, which she seems to stare at as though it contains the secret of her penguinly sorrows, before she takes a great hop onto the top of it (Eames heart leaps in synchrony and floods with warmth), looks about her, makes a few weak flaps, and then bends her head down and looks miserable (the wrenching feeling resumes).
Eames sighs. "If you want the freezer or more fish, follow me into the kitchen."
Ten minutes later, Elizabeth has not followed Eames into the kitchen, and so he goes back to her in the lounge. She is still on the footstool, or has returned to it, and is entirely still: sad penguin on plinth.
"I'm now going to leave you there and get back to work," Eames tells her. And he really does leave her. Briefly.
*
When Arthur gets in (unconscionably quietly), Eames is knelt on the floor, showing Elizabeth clips of Pingu on YouTube. He's already tried real penguins, both in zoos and at the Antarctic, with no effect but a lingering concern on Eames' own part that he was making Elizabeth homesick. They've also checked three different online weather forecasts together to see what chance there is of snow (relatively slim).
Robby the Seal lands a snowball in the centre of Pingu's head. The clip ends. Eames leans forwards to select another, and Elizabeth takes the opportunity to wander away towards a shape in the lounge doorway. The shape, when Eames looks up, turns out to be Arthur, who is leaning against the door frame with a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He kneels down to Elizabeth and says,
"Bath time? Okay." And he scoops her up and carries her up the stairs.
*
"So," says Arthur to Eames, later, over newly-ordered chicken vindaloo. "Penguin cartoons."
"Stop-motion penguin claymation, in fact," Eames says. He eats a spoonful of raita and watches Arthur for signs of overexposure to unaccustomed spiciness. "A piece of my childhood. Or of my little sister's childhood, in any case." She even had Pingu pyjamas. Eames ripped them apart and hung their remains from an apple tree one day when he was particularly furious with her -- he forgets why -- and she was distraught for days.
Arthur chews on a mouthful of curry, apparently unaffected by its five-chilli rating. "Elizabeth having another bad day?"
"Er. Yes, in fact. Not her first?"
"She seemed, uh--" Arthur gestures with his fork "--unhappy yesterday. I'd hoped it might wear off."
Eames frowns from a sense of reasonless guilt that he was out at the time. He feels far too troubled by the whole of this. And a little like his mouth is on fire.
"I know this isn't her ideal environment," Arthur says.
"That's putting it lightly."
"Yeah, maybe," Arthur says.
"How much longer do you plan to keep her here?" Eames asks and hears an awful softness in his voice.
"I don't know. A few weeks, at least. My dream penguins still need a lot of work." Arthur stares seriously down at his food. He eats some more. He's not even flushed.
Eames goes to the sink, trying to take his mind away from penguins, and pours a couple of glasses of water. He deposits one in front of Arthur at the table. "Drink?"
"No thanks," Arthur says. "Makes the burn worse, just spreads the capsaicin around." Damn him. "Maybe the paddling pool will cheer her up."
"You actually ordered one?" Eames sits himself back down.
"Yeah. Should arrive this week. Thanks for choosing this, by the way," Arthur adds, as he forks his last piece of chicken to his mouth.
"You like it?" Eames says, eyes prickling, container of raita now sadly empty.
Arthur nods. "It's hot but good. Cleansing, I guess. Like setting a nuke off inside your system."
"More a small grenade, from the look of you," Eames says generously.
"Maybe," Arthur says. "But you look as though it was a nuke."
*
The paddling pool arrives on Wednesday. It is blueish, translucent and inflatable, and is decorated with cartoon pictures of smiling sealife. They set it up in Arthur's garage because Arthur worries that his neighbours will realise that he is a professional international criminal if they see him with a penguin. (Eames wonders and wonders how Arthur used to get Elizabeth between his front door and his car when he was taking her to work with him.)
Eames finds a sunlounger between a stack of cardboard boxes and a bicycle, and lounges. Arthur comes in and out with buckets of water.
"Is all this stuff yours," Eames asks, gesturing about him, somewhere around bucket #9, "or is it just stuff you've bought and roughed up a bit in the service of greater suburban authenticity?"
"It'd all be mine in either case," Arthur points out, and Eames has to admit that this is true.
It takes eighteen buckets for Arthur to fill the pool. Then he leads Elizabeth into the garage, and she jumps, unprompted, over the edge of the pool and into the water. Arthur steps back and watches with an air of hopeful expectancy, and, as always, a notebook. Elizabeth splashes around for a while. She seems, to Eames' eye, disappointed that the water isn't deep enough for her to swim in. Arthur takes notes.
"I'm not sure that this has been a success," Eames says, after a while. Elizabeth is now a little to one side of the centre of the pool, and is splashing only gently.
Arthur's expression is somewhat glum.
*
On Friday, around lunchtime, Eames has a fit of inspiration. He takes his computer down to the kitchen and does a little research whilst he eats his lunch. When Elizabeth makes her appearance, he feeds her her fish and then kneels down in front of her, counts to ten, and overcomes his uneasiness about carrying her.
She feels rather strange against his chest. She also knocks her bill against his shoulder, which he's sure he's never seen her do to Arthur.
He takes her out to his car, counting on the quiet time of day in combination with natural human unobservantness (with a dash of cultural human unlikeliness to believe that suburban householders might kidnap penguins) to preserve the secret of Elizabeth's existence. He opens up the car, tries settling Elizabeth into the passenger seat, sees that he has no way of making her secure there, and curses himself for not thinking this part through.
He eventually resettles her in the footwell behind the passenger seat, having made adjustments to ensure that there is a neatly Elizabeth-sized space. He drives very carefully.
*
The lake, when they arrive, turns out to be slightly less glassy and endless than it appeared in the photos, its beach less idyllically sandy, but it will do, Eames thinks. The air is cool, which seems penguin-suitable. The beach itself is quiet but not entirely deserted, but Eames reckons it doesn't matter if total strangers see him with a penguin, a considerable distance from Arthur's house.
He opens the back door of his car and lifts Elizabeth out. When he sets her down on the sand she immediately sets off at a brisk strut towards the water, appearing thankfully unharmed. He follows, tugging his coat tight about him.
Elizabeth reaches the lake's edge and plunges in, vanishing into the water.
Eames stands on the shore and reminds himself that this is more or less what he expected, and that she is more or less likely to come back. Probably. He wonders what Arthur will do to him if he loses Arthur's penguin. He curses his vivid imagination.
A small child wanders up to Eames.
"Was that a penguin?" the small child asks. It is encased in a thickly padded coat, tiny, sturdy boots, knitted mittens and a thick, knitted hat, topped off with knitted pompoms. Its gender is entirely unknowable.
Eames has always prided himself on reversing a little-acknowledged social norm by lying to adults and telling the truth to children, and so he says, "Yes."
"Wow," the small child says. Its eyes shine with childish wonder. "Is it your penguin?"
"No," Eames says, and feels grateful that the truth, in this case, is entirely convenient. "It belongs to the zoo."
"Wowww," the small child says. Its eyes shine brighter still. "So did you steal it?"
"No," Eames says, strictly and scrupulously honest. "I didn't."
"Nat!" someone calls. "Nat, Na-- Oh, there you are." A man of around Eames' age but with parent written all over him bustles up to them. He addresses the child. "Now what have I told you about talking to strangers?" And then, having elicited a quiet and apparently acceptably contrite response, he turns his attention to Eames. "I'm sorry, I hope she wasn't bothering you."
"Oh, no, not at all," Eames says. "Just talking about penguins."
"Yeah, she's obsessed." The man grimaces, his face full of tender exasperation. "She wants us to buy her one for Christmas."
"Good luck with that," Eames says.
"Yeah, I think we'll compromise on a life-sized plushie. And hope she's moved on to something else by the time it's her birthday."
Eames smiles and smiles down at the child, and wishes her and her father a good afternoon. They go off to their car and drive away. Eames turns back to the lake and watches an Elizabeth-like shape near its centre. He thinks, she'll probably come back.
*
Eames' phone rings.
"Eames?" Arthur's voice sounds urgent, with notes of anger, concern and budding homicide. "Where are you? Where's Elizabeth?"
"Hello Arthur," Eames replies, with notes of hearty friendliness and good cheer.
"If you were telling the truth about Mossad, I'll fucking kill you," Arthur says.
Eames wonders what might happen to the balance of power in the Middle East if he allows Arthur to believe that Israeli intelligence services have made off with his beloved pet.
"Eames," Arthur says.
"We're at the beach," Eames tells him. He holds out his phone to pick up the sounds of ducks quacking and geese honking, possibly in surprised response to the sight of Elizabeth, who has come back and is currently paddling in the shallows where the lake water laps gently against the shore. "Erm, lake-beach, not beach-beach," Eames says, returning the phone to himself.
Arthur makes an annoyed-relieved groaning sound. "You penguin-napping fucking motherfucker," he says.
"Elizabeth seems to like it here. Elizabeth!" Eames shouts across to her. "Your boyfriend's calling!"
Elizabeth flaps her wings.
Arthur says horrible, unrepeatable things about Eames.
"Bit early for you to be back at the house, isn't it?" Eames says.
"Fucking extractor broke things up early to do Christmas shopping."
"Mm-hm. Elcin, right? What's she like? Live up to her reputation?"
Arthur, impressively, doesn't even hesitate. "Never worked with her."
"Of course not, my mistake." Eames smiles against his phone.
"Hanging up now. Get Elizabeth back by six," Arthur says. "Or I'll hurt you."
*
Three minutes later, Eames gets a text.
Change of plan, it reads. Stay where you are.
*
Some while later, Arthur arrives, complete with notebook and, since it is now getting dark, a powerful torch.
"Thought I might get some good observations," he says. He looks out to where Elizabeth is now preening herself in the water. His expression is complicated.
"I think she's cheered up a bit," Eames says.
"You shouldn't have brought her here. Too risky."
Eames sighs. "If I've attracted police attention to you for suspected penguin-theft, I'll deal with it. You know that I can."
"Yeah, probably. Still best not to have to." Arthur shines the torch steadily on Elizabeth. He's not taking notes.
Eames watches where Arthur shines the light. He says, "I think I care far too much about your penguin."
A long silence follows. And then:
"You have sand on your ass," Arthur says.
"Nothing but sand to sit upon," Eames says.
Arthur looks up and down the beach, as if to verify this. "I think I'll stay on my feet. Point the torch for me."
Eames takes it and sits himself down. He relocates Elizabeth.
Arthur opens his notebook and uncaps his pen and begins to write, standing awkwardly.
*
At the weekend, Arthur puts up a Christmas tree in the lounge near the front window. He covers it in fairy lights and puts them on a timer to come on at five in the evening and switch off at nine. They are multi-coloured and cycle through twelve different patterns of festive twinkling.
"Fits in with the rest of the neighbourhood," Arthur says.
He also finds out that most of his neighbours have bought wreaths from a particular local shop, and gets one for himself and nails it to the front door. It's quite pretty, Eames supposes, in an overfinished, American sort of way.
Eames and Elizabeth watch Arthur watching his tree on Sunday evening when the fairy lights come on. Arthur switches off the main light and watches the tree sparkle for a while in the dark. He goes outside and watches it through the window. Elizabeth loses interest and waddles to the kitchen. Arthur comes back inside and watches the tree for a while longer again. The lights change from twinkling pattern #7 (which Eames has nicknamed Sufferers of Epilepsy Beware) to twinkling pattern #8 (Always Check Carefully Which Version of Somnacin Yusuf Is Giving You).
Arthur nods to himself, goes to the kitchen and feeds Elizabeth. He ceases to pay his new decorations much further heed.
*
It so happens that, several weeks ago, Eames was given a large quantity of money and promised the same again upon the successful extraction of corporate secrets from the CEO at a certain manufacturer of whiteware and related electrical goods. It was a particularly large sum of money, as the mark was known to be militarised: the job would, the client understood perfectly, require a full team of professional dreamers. The client left it to Eames' discretion to assemble his team.
Eames did not assemble a team. Instead, he contacted Ariadne and asked her to design a single, relatively simple layer for him, which he has been memorising in between penguin-watching, snooping around in Arthur's affairs and other miscellaneous, criminality-related and mostly net-based activities.
The fact is that not only is the job one that requires a full team: it is one that has already required a full team, for a different client and with, as Eames understands it, complete success, about ten days before he finalised his own little deal.
The extractor from this team goes by the name Jackson. He is smart, tough, charming the way all extractors are charming, rarely careless and somewhat handsome. He also loves his mum and dad very much and visits them for Christmas every year, in their lovely detached suburban house, which happens to be a convenient fifty-five minutes or so from Arthur's own little place.
Most importantly of all, Jackson and Eames had a three-night stand about three months ago. It wavered between satisfactory and disappointing, and in the end they decided it wasn't worth the fuss. But at around the most satisfactory point (or a little after), in the middle of the second night, whilst Jackson was satedly slumbering, Eames took the opportunity to touch Jackson's totem.
On the Tuesday after Eames' trip to the beach, Jackson enters the US. And Eames asks Arthur for Thursday off penguin-sitting.
"Sick aunt," Eames says. "Terribly sorry, can't be helped."
"Cobb has a good story about you having a sick aunt," Arthur says, expression mild in the way that means he's secretly amused.
"Oh yes?" says Eames.
"Yeah. It ends with you two continents away and the British Museum short a few bits and pieces."
"Tell him the BM should be glad it wasn't my grandma."
Arthur nods. "Yusuf has a story about that."
"I'm very attached to my dear old gran." Eames grins. "Tell Elizabeth she needn't worry. I won't be leaving the continent."
"She wouldn't worry. You're nothing but a source of fish to her."
Eames lets his face flood with mournful sorrow. "Never give your heart to a spheniscida," he intones.
*
Jackson's parents' neighbours have taken a two-week holiday to warmer climes, and so Eames sets up the PASIV in their garage. Then he waits until Jackson's parents send him out to do bending and stooping tasks in the garden and sedates him by the rosebush.
Things go exceptionally smoothly. Eames gets back to Arthur's in the mid-afternoon, data extracted, client informed, and his bank balance all set to gain a digit. The sun is still shining, pale but bright in the winter sky.
*
Arthur gets in in the evening with Elizabeth in his arms, wrapped up in a child's raincoat -- a disguise that can only possibly work from a distance.
"How's Jackson?" he asks.
"Oh, well enough," Eames says, feeling far too pleased with himself to bother with deceit. And then, because there are lovely opportunities for finding things out when you go inside someone's mind: "Did you know, his full name is Jackson Jackson?"
"Yep," says Arthur, but even this only deflates Eames slightly.
"It's terrible, really. It's like his parents couldn't be bothered to come up with a new name for him or think of him as a real individual. I don't know why he visits them. And the security there is shite, you know."
"I don't think he realised anyone knew about his family," Arthur says. He pushes off his coat and hangs it by the door, and then kneels and de-raincoats Elizabeth. "It's still better than your name."
Eames' blood runs cold. "You--"
"Yep." Arthur smirks. He picks Elizabeth up again and carries her upstairs to the bathroom. Eames follows him.
"No one knows," Eames says.
"I do," says Arthur.
"You can't," Eames insists.
"But I do." Arthur's voice is calm and certain.
"Oh, fuck me," Eames says. "You do."
"Yep," Arthur says.
*
They eat heated up beef stir-fry and cold pizza while Elizabeth bathes and preens herself. Eames takes the toilet lid this time, and Arthur wheels in an office chair. Eames still puts his feet up on the edge of the bathtub. Arthur has given up objecting. Elizabeth, however, seems to have worked out how to preen herself in such a way that she splashes Eames' socks with maximum frequency.
"So," Arthur says, when they run out of food. "I guess that's you done here."
"That's the job all done," Eames says. "No actual dangerous pursuers to hide from, alas."
"Yeah," Arthur says, eyebrows twitching. "Alas."
"So I expect I'll head off tomorrow and maybe see you in six or eight months," Eames says.
Arthur nods. He wheels his chair towards the bath and leans forwards, arm on the bath edge, to watch Elizabeth more closely. This puts his elbow near to Eames' left foot, and so Eames moves his foot to give Arthur a little touch, just for the hell of it.
Arthur wheels his chair back and looks at Eames, and then at Elizabeth again. "It's a shame," he says. "I still need a penguin-sitter. She doesn't like it at the warehouse."
"She doesn't like it much here," Eames points out, and Arthur half shakes his head and frowns.
Eames looks at Arthur, still and always unconscionably attractive, and feels like trying to calculate incalculable things. And so Eames turns his attention away instead to his wet socks, which he removes. He stands and stretches.
"Do you have anything else lined up for the next few weeks?" Arthur says.
"Nope," Eames says. "Nothing that can't wait. What do you pay for penguin-sitting, now that I don't need room and board?"
"Room and board," Arthur says, and Eames accepts.
*
Arthur follows Eames into the guest room that night when Eames is going to bed. Arthur closes the door and turns about slowly, with a kind of deliberateness, and stands poised like he's waiting for something to happen or not-happen for a moment before he speaks.
"So you're staying," he says.
"So it seems." Eames closes the curtains and leans back, arms behind him on the windowsill.
"So," Arthur says, "it would be good to know if I've misread you."
"Oh, often, I expect," Eames says.
Arthur glowers.
"Wanna fuck?" Eames says.
*
Somewhat later, Arthur says, as he sets his die down upon the dresser, "By the way, if you touch that, I'll kill you."
Eames drags Arthur back to him and mouths his way along Arthur's jaw. "I know you better than that." He smiles so Arthur can feel it against his skin. "That's not your real totem."
Arthur curses and shoves him towards the bed.
*
Eames wakes when Arthur wakes, because they're in the same bed. Since he's awake, he goes down to breakfast with Arthur. Arthur feeds Elizabeth her breakfast fish and Eames puts the kettle on.
"You've been eating the not-branflakes for breakfast, right?" says Arthur.
"Right." Eames shovels coffee into Arthur's one-person cafetière. The kettle boils. Arthur gets spoons from the cutlery drawer and the milk from the fridge. Elizabeth waddles from one side of the room to the other, flapping gently.
There is a clunk-thunk as the paper is pushed through the letterbox.
"So," Eames says. "This feels strange."
Arthur peers at him. His expression still has an unfinished, early-morning quality, his hair messy, eyes narrow and mostly shut. Eames feels like he doesn't know half the things that he feels.
"Erm," Eames says. "You know, the thing is, I do maybe definitely maybe erm." He gestures with the kettle, water sloshing about inside. "But are we really going to sit down and eat breakfast together like the co-heads of a charmingly quirky modern family of three?"
Arthur shrugs. He eases the kettle out of Eames' hand and pours hot water on his coffee and then, after a thoughtful pause, on Eames' tea.
"Thank you," Eames says. Because it's that kind of tea, he counts to twenty and then fishes the teabag out.
"You're the one who followed me downstairs," says Arthur.
"I know, that's true," says Eames.
Arthur goes into the hall and fetches the paper. He spreads it out at the table and sits down, coffee brewing, and pours milk on his not-branflakes.
"Just don't do that if you don't want to," Arthur says.
"Good plan," Eames says.
He sits down opposite Arthur, eats his cereal and drinks his tea. He reads the news upside-down.
*
Elizabeth doesn't come into the kitchen for lunch that day. Eames finds her eventually in the gym, hidden in the shadows at one corner of the room, by a particularly tall pile of weights. He crouches down near to her.
"You needn't feel at all supplanted, you know," he says. "If that's what it is. You must have seen the way he looked at you when he fed you today."
Elizabeth prods herself with her bill.
"I'd take you back to the lake, but it probably really isn't the best of ideas," Eames says.
Elizabeth prods herself again and then stills, leaving her bill pressing slightly into her stomach. Or what Eames thinks of as her stomach, in any case.
"I don't think you'll have to stay here much longer," Eames says. "Then you can go home. And, meanwhile, I suppose, your fish will be waiting for you, when you want it."
Elizabeth's home. Eames thinks about that. He brings his laptop down to the kitchen and sets about some research, neglecting his own work in favour of chillier, spheniscidaean subjects. It's half-past three when Elizabeth finally wanders in, but at least she does. Eames feeds her a squid, for variety, because she must get bored with all the fish.
*
The next day is both Saturday and Christmas. Eames wakes when Arthur wakes, lets him go, turns over into the warm place where Arthur was and falls back to sleep.
Eames wakes again to the sweet strains of Remember the Name blasting directly below him in the gym, accompanied by occasional groans and curses. Arthur has clearly embarked upon his Saturday morning workout. Eames supposes it's better than anything that plays on the radio on Christmas Day.
He finds his phone and answers the three Merry Christmas texts he has received: two with affectionate obscenities, one with a simple Merry Christmas back, because convention is an awful relief amidst the complications that come with being on speaking terms with a blood relation.
*
"We're a couple of sad bastards," Eames lets Arthur know after lunch, at the kitchen table, skimming through one of his email accounts whilst Arthur, opposite him, plays internet poker. Elizabeth has already waddled in for her lunch and waddled off again to somewhere behind the sofa.
"Because it's Christmas?" Arthur shrugs, frowns at his screen, and touches his trackpad. "I'm not religious."
"Well, no, nor am I, but I grew up in a heavily Protestant-influenced culture. I've been conditioned to believe, unshakably, that I'm a sad bastard if I have nothing to do on Christmas."
"Huh." Arthur clicks a few times, and then, round apparently over, looks up. "So what do you usually do?" he says.
"Crash in on Yusuf and tell him we're a couple of sad bastards," Eames admits.
"And what does he say?"
"That he's not religious."
Arthur huffs out a laugh. "Glad to help you keep to your tradition."
"And then he usually fucks me over the kitchen table," Eames says. He checks the clock. "At around a quarter past two on Christmas afternoon." He closes his laptop.
"I thought Yusuf was straight," Arthur says.
"He makes an exception."
Arthur raises his eyebrows. He looks consideringly at the kitchen table. He looks at Eames.
"I think the office table'd be a better height," Arthur eventually says. And: "Is your Boxing Day tradition that you return the favour?"
Eames agrees that it may well be.
*
In the evening when they come downstairs, the Christmas lights are on, colours chasing each other round and around Arthur's tree. Eames watches them until his head begins to ache.
"When I was a kid," he says, "we had these horrible, big, sad, icicle-shaped lights. They were red and blue and purple, I think, and they blinked on and off."
"We just had little white ones," Arthur says. "Maybe yours were a British thing."
Eames thinks about it. "No, I think it was just us."
*
Boxing Day is colder than Christmas. Eames looks outside to see frost on the grass. In the afternoon it snows, just a little, and in the dark of evening Arthur takes Elizabeth out into the garden to experience the few remaining flakes. He doesn't bother with his notebook.
It snows again on the Monday and settles thickly. Arthur gets in in the evening with a bag full of steaming takeaway containers, having somehow managed to find a restaurant open on the 27th December. He takes them through to the kitchen, sets them down on the table, opens the back door and lets Elizabeth outside.
Eames puts on a coat and boots and follows them. He closes the door and kisses Arthur three paces outside of it, slipping his hands inside Arthur's coat. Arthur, caught off-guard, kisses back clumsily. After a while they draw apart and Eames leans back against a bare patch of wall, between door and windows.
There's a large garden light above the back door, but Arthur hasn't switched it on, probably because he's worried about making Elizabeth too visible. Light shines weakly from inside the house, from the neighbours' windows and more distantly from rows and rows of street lights. The night sky is clear and black, but only a few bright stars are winning the fight against the light pollution. Eames is all right with that. He's been in dreamsharing long enough to have seen an awful lot of spectacular starry nights.
Arthur's garden is medium-sized and neat, with what are, to Eames, mostly unidentifiable but right-looking plants in the beds around the borders. A rectangular patch of lawn takes up the central space. Arthur doesn't look after all this himself, Eames has discovered: he hires a gardener. (Eames wouldn't be surprised to find that it's whichever gardener is used by the most householders in the local neighbourhood.)
Elizabeth waddles to the centre of the lawn and beats at the snow with her wings. She leaves an odd trail behind her. She doesn't look wildly exuberant, but she's moving about and showing an interest in the world.
Arthur slips inside and returns with a fish, which Elizabeth snaps up energetically. Eames shakes his head against the glowy, warm feeling in his chest.
"Ruthless little creatures really," he tells Arthur.
Arthur is bent a little towards Elizabeth, his suit trousers damp up to his shins from the snow. "Penguins?" he says.
"Yep. You know, when the spring comes in the Antarctic and they're all ready to go into the sea for fish, all starving hungry after the long winter, but also rather afraid because there might be predators in the water -- well, they all gather near the edge of the ice, and they wait, and they wait, and eventually one of them gets too hungry, too desperate, goes that little bit nearer to the place where the ice ends, and, well. They push him in." Eames may have been reading up on penguins in his spare time. "Have to admire their pragmatism, really," he says.
Arthur turns his head to watch as Elizabeth waddles away from him and towards one of his bushier garden plants. "I know about that," he says, but he sounds as though he might be a little gruffly regretful that he does.
There are times when Eames thinks that Arthur might, at heart, be a bit of an idealist, only trapped in the self-image of someone far more cold-blooded. "Poor old Arthur," he says.
Arthur straightens himself. "Poor old me?" he says.
"Poor old you," says Eames, and heads towards him.
*
"The mark is an ex-zookeeper," Eames says later. They are eating their evening meal with the kitchen light switched off and the lounge light on and coming in through a crack in the door, so that they can see (just about) what they're doing and still see Elizabeth through the window, still out in the snow. Eames twirls his fork around and hopes he's picking up noodles.
"She used to work with penguins: she likes them and she knows a lot about them. So you need to get them right, but you think they're worth the risk to put her subconscious at ease." Eames smiles, enjoying showing off the results of his snooping. "She left the zoo, oddly enough, to work for a software company. Your client thinks they're developing some kind of animal simulator. Maybe realistic virtual penguin pets, something like that. Of everyone at the firm, your zookeeper is your best bet for definite involvement in such a project. And you're going in for basic information -- existence of the project, funding, number of employees, stage of development, chances of success, likeness of the simulations to real penguins--"
Arthur interrupts. "You're guessing."
"In places," Eames admits. He wishes he could properly make out Arthur's expression. "I'm mostly right."
"You're just guessing," Arthur says.
"Don't worry," Eames says, "I haven't compromised any of your team. Who are, in full, Elcin -- you have to tell me what she's like -- Z, who I already know is as ridiculous as you'd expect for someone who goes by Z, and Guo, who's pretty good. Oh, and I also didn't follow you to work," he forestalls.
"So you're definitely guessing."
"Oh, I do have good information where it matters. Don't be bitter, you found out about Jackson."
"Everyone knows you two slept together, I know about his parents, I also knew what his last job was and I know you wouldn't usually take a job so simple it only needed one person." Arthur shrugs -- Eames can see his shoulders move in the semi-darkness. "It was obvious."
"Another time, I'll try to be more mysterious," Eames says. He tries to eat a forkful of noodles and discovers that, while he's been talking, they've fallen off his fork. He twirls it around again, watching Elizabeth, who has crissed and crossed the garden with tracks. "I also suspect," he says, "that your job is nearing an end." He eats -- successfully this time. "Will you take her back to the zoo?"
"Yeah," Arthur says. "I will."
"There is another option. I know a man-- well, a woman, actually," Eames says. He starts again: "I know a person who knows a person who knows a person. Who's involved in a programme reintroducing penguins to the wild in the Antarctic." Eames shrugs. He's watched videos of penguins at the zoo and they seemed fine, happy, even, and safe, but there was still something so wrong about the idea of Elizabeth in a zoo. Reasonlessly, emotionally, the place she came from now seems unsuited to her dignity. And, Eames supposes, it suits his own image of himself much better for them to send her back to the wild. It's romantic. It looks good, even if there's no one but himself and Arthur to see.
"She'd be taught to fish," he adds. "And -- I don't know. Do whatever it is wild penguins need to do."
Arthur is silent for a while. And then he says, "Let me think about it," and then, "How much?"
Eames shakes his head, unwilling to share the cost of this. "I'm owed a few favours."
*
Arthur decides quickly, within the same evening.
"How soon can your contact pick her up?" he says and kneels to set Elizabeth gently upon the kitchen floor, having brought her in from the garden.
Eames shuts the door behind them. "I'll find out," he says.
A small puddle of water forms about Elizabeth's feet from the snow that melts off her strange little body.
She'll be all right. After so much time around him and Arthur, Eames thinks, she's unlikely to be the first penguin into the water. If anything, she's more likely to be the one that does the pushing.
*
The collection point is a carpark, about forty minutes from Arthur's house. The day is Thursday. The time is unpleasantly early in the morning -- early enough that it's still dark, the carpark lit by street lights. They've used Eames' car, and he parks it in the spot furthest from the shopping complex to which the carpark is attached.
Elizabeth, in her nook behind the passenger seat, looks bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Perhaps she's excited to be going home.
"I don't think she'll miss you at all," Eames says to Arthur.
"Not so long as she has fish," Arthur agrees.
"She'll miss me, of course."
"Why?" Arthur opens the back door and lifts Elizabeth out, wrapped in a bright red raincoat. "What will she miss about you?"
"Oh, not anything specific," Eames says. "She'll just miss me."
"I don't think she will," Arthur tells him.
They are met by the person whom Eames' person's person knows: a woman called Shirin Hopkins, which is actually her real name. She has a van. The back appears to be specially adapted for penguins, and is distinctly unlike the back of Eames' car. He tries not to feel too much like a practitioner of animal cruelty.
Shirin removes Elizabeth's raincoat and returns it to Arthur. "I have very little idea of who you are and how you came by this penguin," she says, "and I suspect I'm happier that way. I hope you don't mind my saying that I expect she'll be much better off with me than she has been with you."
Neither Eames nor Arthur contradicts her.
"Okay then," Shirin says. "I guess that's it. We'll be leaving for the Antarctic in a few days, I'll keep you updated. It's been a pleasure doing business, and your, uh, generous donation is much appreciated."
Arthur looks sharply at Eames, who keeps his expression warm and friendly and shakes Shirin's hand, only wincing on the inside. "A pleasure," he says.
"Yeah," Arthur says. He too shakes Shirin's hand. "Thank you." He glances at Elizabeth, his forehead creased.
"I don't suppose you could let him feed her one last fish," Eames says to Shirin and grins the right way to draw out a laugh, but Arthur just looks again at Elizabeth -- strutting inquisitively in the back of Shirin's van -- and looks rather as if he might like that.
"Uh," Shirin says, after an awkward silence. "I'm sorry, I--"
Arthur shakes his head. "Thanks again." He heads back to the car.
"We appreciate it," Eames says. "Keep in touch, all right? Let me know how she's getting on." He shakes Shirin's hand again and heartily between his two, and then follows after Arthur.
*
They sit in the front of the car and watch Shirin's van drive away.
"I guess that's it," Arthur says.
"Trouble with penguins is they never call," says Eames. "Total utter shite at long-distance relationships, as a species."
"They don't have phones." Arthur drums his fingers on the dashboard as though he's waiting for something.
"Don't be literal," Eames tells him.
"Start the car," Arthur says.
Eames blinks at the steering wheel in front of him. "Oh," he says.
*
"You know, the thought occurs, you don't really need a penguin-sitter any more," Eames says, about a third of the way into the drive back.
"That's true," Arthur says. "I don't."
"I think I'll hang around a few more days anyway," Eames says.
A couple of minutes go by before Arthur replies, "We're doing the job pretty soon. And then I've got something lined up."
"All right then," Eames says.
"Yeah," says Arthur. "Okay, stay a few more days. No more than three."
Eames checks the clock. "So I'll be out of your house by eight minutes past seven in the morning, on the second of January. Right ho. I'd better remember to pack the evening before."
*
Eames spends most of the day out of the house, doing nothing in particular whilst Arthur is at his warehouse, enviably doing something. Eames gets back after Arthur and discovers that both of them have bought takeaway. Eames swaps his Chinese for Arthur's Moroccan, and they put the leftovers in the fridge, which looks very bare when Eames opens it. The fish are entirely gone, but the human food still only occupies the one corner, as though someone is leaving room for something big. The smell of fish remains and is only slightly less pungent.
*
Arthur's team are doing something together on New Year's Eve, so Eames spends the evening sitting in Arthur's lounge, watching a film. At eight to midnight he goes and checks Arthur's kitchen cupboards and confirms for himself that no, there really is no wine. He could have bought some, he supposes. He gets a bottle of vodka from the freezer and pours himself a decent measure into a wine glass. And then he goes back into the lounge, restarts the film, doesn't check the time, and drinks his drink. There are booms, bangs and whistles as a number of fireworks go off outside. Eames thinks, Elizabeth probably wouldn't've liked that.
The film is pretty good. Funny where it intends to be funny, tense where it intends to be tense, not all that touching where it intends to be touching, but Eames is used to that.
Arthur gets in a little after one, smelling of pizza and cocktails, which Eames can only imagine he must have drunk for the sake of team-building. He looks at Eames with intent.
"Are you going to be able to keep it up?" Eames asks.
Arthur looks significantly at Eames' glass. "Are you?" he says.
"Yes," says Eames, because he is.
"Then come on," Arthur says, and heads up the stairs.
*
New Year's Day is quiet. Arthur plays a lot of internet poker. Eames considers doing the same, but for him, half the fun of gambling is the atmosphere, the heat, sweat and desperation. He'd rather lose surrounded by a hundred other desperate fucking losers than win against a screen.
He hangs around after lunch and watches Arthur play.
"You didn't do this yesterday too, did you?" Arthur says. "Hang around waiting."
"Nope," Eames lies. "And it was you who fed her on weekends."
*
That evening, because he hasn't yet, and because it is now the evening before he leaves, Eames runs himself a bath. He gets the water lovely and warm. He pours in half a bottle of shower gel, in the absence of bath-anything, to ensure a plentiful quantity of bubbles. He fills the bath very full. He undresses, slides into the water, and sighs. The world, he is for this moment convinced, is a wonderful place.
Arthur wanders in a little later. He puts the lid down on the toilet, sits down, leans back against the cistern, shuts his eyes, and puts his feet up on the edge of the bath.
"Oi," Eames says.
Arthur smiles.
*
Eames considers what to do with Arthur on their last night together. He could pin Arthur down and spend hours trying to learn him entirely. Eames doesn't actually believe in the possibility of learning everything about a person, even bodily -- bodies, he has found, are complicated, and subject to constant change -- but it could be fun to try. The Sisyphean element could add an extra frisson. Or he could simply try to make the sex continue for an unprecedented duration. Or he could try something wildly inventive -- Eames has done a fair bit of wildly inventive, in his time.
In the end, he gives Arthur a blowjob. Eames gives excellent head (or so he's been told). And there's something very easy about competence, once you have it.
Arthur seems to appreciate Eames' skill. Eames appreciates Arthur's appreciation. He works himself off swiftly after Arthur comes.
"I could've--" Arthur mumbles, still pleasingly hazy, pushing himself up on one elbow and blinking at Eames' softening dick.
"You can owe me," Eames says, and lets Arthur look at him for a good long while. And then he gets up, cleans up quickly and puts his pyjamas on (it's a cold night). He gets into bed and tries to work out if Arthur has fallen asleep or not. It's hard to be certain, but Eames thinks so. He hopes Arthur doesn't actually expect him to leave by eight past seven in the morning. For one thing, in spite of some relatively good intentions, Eames didn't remember to pack.
*
He is woken in the morning by Arthur leaning over him, his hand on Eames' shoulder. Arthur is already dressed and his hair is slicked back and professional.
"I'm going in to work," Arthur says, and yes, that's like Arthur. Both to put in part of his weekend near the deadline of a job and, probably, to avoid an awkward goodbye -- although on the latter count Eames has never had occasion to know before now.
"It's seven thirty," Arthur adds, and then pauses, and then kisses Eames softly. And then he turns and leaves the room. His footfalls sound on the stairs and, shortly after, Eames hears the front door open and close.
Eames goes downstairs and thinks to himself that he now, in fact, has most of the day to sort himself out and go. He puts the kettle on and makes and eats his breakfast, and he listens to the refrigerator, which is humming quietly.
He tells it, "I came here for a bit of a laugh, you know."
It continues to hum.
"Just thought it'd be interesting. See Arthur's little suburban setup, nose around in his things. Annoy him a bit. And, yes, attraction, I've been attracted to him for years, but what's attraction? Bloody everyone in this business is bloody attractive."
He tries to clear his mind, and considers his breakfast things. There is a single, soggy not-branflake clinging about half-way up the inside edge of his bowl. He eats it and drinks down the rest of his tea, and goes to the sink to do the washing up.
"The thing is," he says, now addressing the running water, he supposes, since he's no longer facing the fridge. "The thing is, I was tired of hotels. You would've been too, you know. And I thought, well, why not? Just for the hell of it. He might've shot me, of course, but it didn't seem that likely." Eames sets his bowl, washed and rinsed, upon the drainer. "And he didn't," he says to the tap, and turns it off.
A few drops of water drip down from the tap head to the base of the sink, pat-pat-pat.
"Funny the way things end up," Eames says, and a fourth drop gradually swells before it falls.
*
Eames leaves around midday and heads for the airport. He has a job lined up in Cape Town. He doesn't leave a note, but he thinks about sending Arthur a text, on and off, as he waits in the departures lounge. When his flight is called he still hasn't come up with anything, and so he leaves it.
He thinks about Elizabeth, soon to be transported to the Antarctic. He wonders what she's doing in the meantime. He wonders whether she really might miss him, or at least Arthur, and whether penguins can really distinguish at all between one human and another.
*
He and Arthur keep in touch. Eames passes on Shirin's updates about Elizabeth and Elizabeth's progress in matters of fishing and other wild penguinly skills. He shares occasional scraps of dreamshare-related gossip, where they don't give to much away about the job he's on. Rather vainly, as it turns out: Arthur, in his replies, asks how Eames is enjoying the South African sun, comments on the competence of Eames' extractor, and expresses mild interest in the difficulties of forging an adolescent boy whose voice is on the precise pinnacle of breaking. Eames reciprocates by finding out as much as he can about the job Arthur has moved on to, which turns out to be in Beijing and involve finance.
Boring and disgustingly predictable, Eames tells Arthur by text.
Just like my last job, Arthur replies.
*
Arthur also sends Eames a cheque for exactly half the amount Eames paid for Elizabeth's passage, made out to one Archibald Slug.
Eames hasn't had a single account in that name since he was twenty-three. He burns the cheque thoroughly, and sends Arthur a few threatening messages.
It's not such a bad name, Arthur texts back.
Can you think of a worse? replies Eames.
Not immediately, but there must be plenty.
There aren't.
It's pretty subjective.
You still haven't told me a worse, Eames points out. He sends another message in quick succession: By the way, what do I have to do to make sure you never use it again? I'd prefer a solution other than your death, though quite willing to take that step if necessary.
There follows a break of about half an hour during which Eames receives no reply and can only suppose that Arthur is coming up with some tortuous, humiliating and/or sexual act to ask Eames to perform in return for Arthur's silence.
When Arthur finally texts simply, I won't use it again, Eames is a little infuriated. It's very Arthurlike to let Eames stew in his own dark imaginings and not bother to come up with any actual sadism. Still, Eames supposes, the important point has been gained.
Thank you, he texts back.
*
Around the end of February, Arthur contacts Eames about a job. It's in Sydney, beginning in April, fitting in nicely after Eames' current job wraps up. It'll require a full team, but Arthur doesn't mention anyone, which means he's coming to Eames first with this.
Eames looks through the details thoroughly, and does a little checking up and research of his own, because he's a professional and because no matter how good Arthur might be, Eames always makes sure that he personally has found out as much as he can about a job before he takes it on. Then he opens up Arthur's email, hits reply, and accepts.
Looks interesting, he writes. And: Been a while since I last worked with you.
The phone call comes a little while later.
"Look, about the job, before you accept," Arthur says.
"I already have accepted," Eames tells him.
"Yeah, I know, about that," Arthur says. "I just want things to be clear."
Eames very, very carefully ignores the part of him that takes that last sentence, spoken roughly and awkwardly, and runs with it straight to wild, terrified, humiliating panic-land.
"I-- Look, we're doing this, right?" Arthur says. "I realised maybe this was the wrong way of doing this."
"Um," Eames says, thoughts wavering. "This?"
"You and me," Arthur says, as if that's obvious.
Eames says something colourfully obscene on the subject of Arthur's communication skills.
When Eames is done, Arthur says, "Okay. Is that a yes?" And Eames thinks he can feel Arthur's smile down the phone.
Eames sighs. "You do still owe me a blowjob."
"Okay, good," Arthur says. "Great, good. It's good that that's-- okay. I'll see you in Sydney."
*
Eames checks into his hotel a few days before the job is due to get started, to give himself time to get over his jetlag and settle in and get to know the city, which has changed since he last spent time there and been muddled together in his memory with a hundred other cities, both real and dreamed. There are places that are new that look familiar, which could be a trick of the mind or could be thanks to the bad habits of architects, as always, stealing a bit too much from reality.
The early autumn weather suits him well, and is nicely in sequence after his South African summer. His Northern Hemisphere December feels longer ago than it was.
On his second evening, he gets in after dinner to find Arthur sat on his bed, propped up against the headboard, watching a film on the big-screen TV. It's still over a day to Arthur's supposed arrival time, but Eames himself has always lied about his flights.
Arthur hits pause and says, "Hi."
"Evening," Eames says.
"Nice room," says Arthur. "Nice bed."
"Shame about the security?"
Arthur shrugs. "It's not so bad. We'll keep the important stuff elsewhere. By the way," he adds, and indicates with his head towards one corner of the room. "Eames. Is that a penguin?"
"Penguin?" says Eames, and looks round to the life-sized soft toy penguin in the corner of his room. "Oh! Oh, that. Came with the room," he lies, "funnily enough."
Arthur regards it with a critical air. "It doesn't even look like Elizabeth," he says. "The posture's all wrong."
"Well it's not as though I thought I could replace her. It just--"
"Came with the room?" Arthur raises his brows, but glances back at the soft toy a little wistfully.
They could always go to see Elizabeth in Antarctica, Eames supposes. They've got a while yet before she's finally, completely let go. They'd only be able to watch at a distance, though, and Eames is aware, uncomfortably, that he probably wouldn't be able to tell her apart from all the other ex-zoo penguins, at least without help. And he doesn't want to go on a bittersweet goodbye trip to see someone who isn't even really a someone. He's sure he's not that kind of person.
*
He and Arthur make use of the nice bed. Arthur delivers the owed blowjob.
"You could've stayed in my debt a little longer," Eames tells him, muzzily and uncommittedly regretful.
Arthur hmphs and comes neatly into a pair of boxers, scrunched in his hand -- Eames thinks they're his own.
Eames finds a pillow shoved up against the headboard, folds it over to make it fatter, lays his head down, and discovers that he has created what feels, in this moment, like the softest pillow in all the world. He wonders about the covers, but he's not particularly cold. He feels Arthur's fingers skim over his hip, and then up Eames' stomach to his chest, which Arthur taps softly and arrhythmically, reason unknown.
"Been a while," Eames says.
"Mm," Arthur says. tap tap-tap-tap-tap tap tap tap-tap.
"Never thought," Eames begins. And then he loses himself and drifts off to sleep.