Chapter Text
The first time Arthur succumbed to Eames's dubious charms--except it wasn't succumbing, it was a conscious leap from his narrow bridge of sanity into the wine-dark seas of, well, Eames--the first time was about six weeks after the Fischer job.
Arthur was in Chicago, drifting through the lives of some old friends, walking the Mile, drinking late cocktails at the Green Mill, and thinking about an apartment. He had money. He liked snow and architecture. When he was stateside he often ended up in Chicago, and he was thinking maybe an apartment wouldn't be a bad investment, and examining his reflection in the Bean, when he noticed someone walking up behind him. The Bean made the other man wavery, evasive, elongated--but even before he turned around he knew who it was.
"Hello," said Eames, smiling. He was wearing something that looked like a camel hair coat, the collar turned up and a thick scarf stuffed inside. His lips were chapped and his cheeks were pink. "There's a coincidence."
Arthur inclined his head coolly, but secretly he was startled and pleased. Eames, of course, knew it.
"I'm dying for a decent dish of marrow," he said. "You know anywhere that serves it?"
They went to Gilt. Eames had marrow, Arthur had mussels.
"You've got a flat?" Eames asked, not subtly at all, as he picked up the bill.
"It's not mine. It's temporary." He'd got it off Craigslist; it belonged to professor at the Art Institute, and was full of giant photographs of vaginas. The thought made him waver, momentarily--he'd accepted where this was heading, he was loose enough after half a bottle of wine to be looking forward to it, even, but those photos... "It's not mine." Eames gave him a double look.
When they were tangled up together on the big leather couch, necking furiously in the faint, eternal light of the city night sky, Eames reached out to drop his watch on the end table and caught sight of one of the pictures--a giant vulva, glistening like a cavern. "Jesus Christ."
"It's not mine," Arthur said again, sliding his hand up beneath Eames's shirt, feeling his warm skin, the solid muscle and wiry hair and the soft perturbation of his nipple. "I told you."
"You're an odd kitten, Arthur."
"Not. Mine."
"I like odd." He sank back down, his full weight shoving Arthur into the leather with a creak, pressing the breath out of him.
The second time was two months after that. Arthur was working again, running experimental extractions with a new partner. Cobb was a father now, Cobb was out. The new guy was named Mitford--or at least, he said that was his name. From what Arthur had dug up, he'd only existed as Mitford for about eleven months; he'd emerged fully-formed from the ether, trailing cloudy wisps of ex-special-forces. Mitford had a square head and a square jaw and eyes carved out of ice, but he was scary smart and he never, ever fucked up.
The experiments weren't going so well, through no fault of Mitford or Arthur. They were testing a new compound, something Mitford's chemist had churned up, claiming it enhanced the dream, made a superman out of the conscious dreamer. It did that, to a point. Mainly it transformed Mitford into a monstrous roaring death machine, who kept turning on Arthur and beating him into tomato paste without warning. Innate human aggression, or something.
The beating on this day was pretty brutal, even by Arthur's new standards. He'd been throttled, impaled, and bludgeoned more times in his three weeks with Mitford than in his whole prior career. He was getting used to it, almost. But this particular mix amped everything up to eleven—his own panic and pain responses as well as Mitford's crazy caveman rage—and when they woke up on their sweat-soaked cots in the basement shop, there was nothing but the sound of their breathing for almost a minute.
Not for the first time, Arthur wondered why he still did this kind of thing.
"Sorry," Mitford said at last, and he really did sound sorry. Arthur swung his legs out of the cot, gave it a second, then stood up. It was a relief to know his legs would hold him.
"It's okay." He reached for his jacket. "I'm out. For the night."
Mitford, still disconnecting his line, nodded. He looked troubled. The chemist, Arthur knew, would be hearing about this.
They were in Amsterdam, home of all experimental chemists. Arthur's room was at the Eden. He walked along the Leidsekade with his hands in his pockets, his chin sunk to his chest. It was dusk. The river smelled dirty and stale. He was thinking of where to go next, whether he should find Yusuf and try something different for a while, maybe somewhere sunny.
In the lobby of the hotel, someone fell in beside him, too close. He turned--and it was Eames in a dark shirt and dark trousers, his hair slicked back, tan and unshaven and disreputable.
"Hello," he said, and then his smile dropped. "You look terrible."
"Mr. Eames." For some reason, Arthur felt embarrassed. It made him formal. "To...to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Is it a pleasure?" Eames was studying him, clicking away, figuring out what Arthur had been up to, working odd jobs, picking the wrong people to work them with. Arthur felt himself bristle, draw up--then took a breath and tried to relax. He smiled, knowing it was artificial but going for the appearance, at least.
"Sure." They were standing by the hotel restaurant. He half-turned, raising his eyebrows. "Have you--?"
"I'm starving," said Eames, companionably enough. Whatever he was thinking, he was willing to let it go. And that, Arthur remembered, was one of the things he liked about Eames.
After dinner they went up to Arthur's room and had a pleasant-enough drink in the armchairs by the window, except Arthur was exhausted and he could feel his eyelids dropping, his mind drifting. It was embarrassing, especially when he reflected that Eames had probably made the trip to Amsterdam especially on his behalf, an international booty call or maybe whatever passed for a mad romantic gesture in his mind. The latter option didn't bear considering, but whatever, Eames was sitting across from him holding a half-glass of cognac that he didn't really seem to want, watching with a tolerant smile while Arthur pulled his head up and blinked, pretending he hadn't been fading.
"I'm sorry," Arthur said. "I've been working late."
Eames dipped his head, a gentleman's nod. "I can go."
"No." Arthur paused, realizing he honestly didn't have much to offer; this was not going to be a night of sweaty biting under a giant vulva shot. "I can meet you tomorrow. If you're going to be here." It came out sounding pathetic, high-schoolish. He felt himself flush.
Eames was changeable--there were times when Arthur glanced over at him and thought he looked ten years younger than he was. Usually when he was pissed off about something, or worried. Other times, when he was complacent, he looked older, heavier, appealingly oily. It was unsettling. At the moment, he was watching Arthur with a kind of highly focused fondness. As if he were cataloging this moment for addition to some inner dossier. The moment of Arthur being too tired for sex, and embarrassed about it.
Feeling stripped, Arthur looked back into his glass and cleared his throat. Eames crossed his legs.
"I'm fairly knackered myself," he said. "Mind if I stay?"
Arthur had a quick flash of that--Eames spending the night, brushing his teeth with the spare hotel toothbrush, reading the back of Arthur's paperback copy of Ways of Seeing while Arthur brushed his teeth, being there in the bed when Arthur came out of the bathroom in his boxer briefs and T-shirt, the two of them lying down together like a married couple and clicking out the light to, what, spoon? Without meaning to, he let out a single short bark of laughter. Eames raised his eyebrows.
"Sorry," Arthur said. He set his glass down on the table. "I think I'm tireder than I thought."
"Reason is," Eames went on, as if Arthur hadn't said anything, "I'm on a short layover and I didn't bother to get a room. And there's this conference in town."
"What conference," Arthur said flatly.
"International stopcock menders' association."
"Is that a dig?"
"They've got all the decent rooms. I can't stay at a Sheraton. I'm a rich man now, my slumming days are over."
Arthur closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, then shrugged. "Sure. Whatever." Part of him was frantic at the idea, another part of him was too tired to care. Eames in his bed, all night. What the hell would that be like? Weird. "What time's your flight?"
"Early." Eames looked around, spotted the television remote, and got up to retrieve it. "Don't mind me, I'll just watch a little telly to wind down."
"Fine." Feeling strangely outmaneuvered, Arthur got up and went into the bathroom. He stared at himself in the mirror while he brushed his teeth. International stopcock menders' association. His eyes were narrow and slitted the way they always were when he was exhausted. He looked like he'd been punched in the face. He hated that he had such a visible tell.
He pulled off his tie and vest, unbuttoned his shirt, and, after a moment of internal struggle, rolled his die. Three. Outside the door, the television was playing softly. He folded his vest over his arm and went out.
Eames, watching television in his armchair, didn't look up while Arthur hung up his clothes, tossing his shirt into the hotel dry cleaning bag. The lights were all out now and the television cast a flickering blue glow over Eames's face. He looked young again, earnestly interested in the Dutch-language news report. Arthur tried to remember if Dutch was one of Eames's languages. Probably not.
Feeling stupidly naked, nerdish and exposed, he got into bed and rolled onto his side, facing away from Eames. He couldn't remember why he'd agreed to this. Maybe Eames would have second thoughts too, just get up and go and spare both of them the ridiculousness of whatever this was supposed to be. Or maybe Eames was planning on trying for sex in a little while, when Arthur's resistance was lowered.
Good fucking luck, Arthur thought, feeling deep weariness start to spread through his body.
He only woke up because it was so foreign, feeling another body in bed beside him--it sparked a safety in his brain and made him flip over like a startled cat. There was a little light, just enough to see Eames's broad bare back and tattooed shoulder. Arthur hadn't spent a lot of time examining those tattoos, but he knew them. They were terrible. He relaxed, let his head fall back onto the pillow, and felt his eyelids start to lower. The clock on the night table read 2:30. Eames had left the bathroom light on and the door cracked--probably exactly because he knew Arthur would wake up like this.
Sometime later, he woke up again with Eames's arm around him, Eames's leg alongside his, Eames's cheek on his shoulder. Not quite spooning, but close. Arthur lay there, fighting it and then not fighting it. Thinking: fuck it. He turned his face to Eames's and breathed in. Eames smelled good.
Arthur's arm was dead, so he rescued it from beneath his body and shoved Eames over, rolling with him so he could lie behind. He felt Eames wake up, momentarily, and waited for a comment about spooning. None came. He fell asleep with his forehead against Eames's warm back, his arm tingling painfully as it came back to life.
The next morning Eames slipped out of bed first, and closed the bathroom door behind him. Arthur pretended to sleep while the shower ran. It was just past six when Eames came out, leaned over the bed, and kissed the side of Arthur's head. Arthur kept his eyes closed, and after a moment, Eames left.
After Chicago, Arthur had cycled through a series of emotions. He'd been mildly surprised that Eames was actually gay, or gay enough, to follow up on all his ridiculous flirtation; more serious surprise that Eames had actually followed up with Arthur, of all people; satisfaction that things had gone okay, no major fuck-ups; and something that he defined as curiosity over whether Eames might turn up again. After Amsterdam, Arthur didn't cycle through anything. Amsterdam was just embarrassing.
For several days after Eames left, Arthur let Moffitt pummel him to cat food in the dreams. When Moffitt wanted to stop, he insisted they keep going. Every night when they quit he walked quickly home along the river, his head sunk low and his shoulders up, afraid someone was going to fall in step beside him. No one did.
The third time Arthur succumbed to Eames was, in retrospect, miraculous. For several reasons.
First, Arthur had been taking some pains to make sure Eames didn't drop in on him again. Not anytime soon, at least. Not until the weirdness and awkwardness of four-a.m. spooning had subsided and could safely be considered a non-thing, something that had never happened. He'd been working steadily, expanding his network of professional connections, keeping careful track of his many alter egos and making sure he didn't leave behind anything that could be considered an invitation. No open doors, no hints. If Eames really wanted to find him, he could. But Arthur's porch light was off, figuratively. And for four months, Eames took the hint.
Second, Arthur was doing his flip-flop thing again, the one he'd done since junior high, the one he'd never been able to stop doing. He liked women. More importantly, he liked how he felt with women. Normal, simple, stable. So every so often he told himself to cut this shit out, straighten up and fly right, and be a goddamn heterosexual. He wasn't a kid anymore. Nineteen year-olds could do stupid shit at the command of their gonads. Twenty-seven year-olds with high six-figure bank accounts had to think more long-term.
So when he took the job running point for Caldwell, he was in a thing with a woman named Eden. She was a ceramicist from Texas, with strong square hands and white teeth, and shoulders that made him crazy. Father an oncologist, mother a patents lawyer, a big family house in Austin and a littler place in Marfa, combined family income close to two million, summa cum laude from Rutgers and MFA from RISD. Younger sister, Lauren; older brother Michael, deceased. A single DUI in college, lesson learned.
They met at the Art Institute in Chicago, studying the cases of ancient Mesoamerican figurines. She asked for his number, and the next day when she called, he ran her background. Then they went on a date.
The Caldwell job was a milk run, just teasing a few key names and numbers out of a senior accountant at a major pharmaceutical company. Standard corporate knowledge mining, zero risk, and it was in New York, where Eden had friends and work and the keys to a friend's Greenwich Village tax shelter. Without telling her exactly what he had to do--his story so far had been corporate investment consulting--Arthur suggested they take a week in the city. The flight was easy, and they necked a little in the back of the car from the airport.
The next morning Arthur took the A train out to Rockaway Beach. When they left JFK the car was almost empty, and as they rattled over the long low bridge across the bay, he felt his eyelids start to fall, lulled by the flat grey water. Then the car jolted, and someone sat down on the bench seat next to his. He looked over. It was Eames.
"Hello." Eames was unwrapping a stick of gum, popping it into his mouth. He'd put on a few pounds, and he was wearing a shirt with a wrinkled collar and a small floral pattern, under a brown suit jacket. He chewed and smiled. "There's a coincidence."
Arthur took a moment to compose himself. "You're on this job?"
"Hope so. Or else I'm taking a long train ride to look at some birds."
"That wasn't in the briefing."
Eames shrugged. "Change of plans. What can you do?"
Arthur said nothing. He felt strangely hostile. It was because he was surprised, he told himself. He hated surprises.
Eames looked out the window. After a minute or so he said, "You've been busy."
"I've been working."
"Doesn't hurt to take a break now and then, though."
"This is a break." Arthur tilted his head in the direction the train was headed. "Why are you even here? This is small-time."
"I might ask the same of you." Eames smiled charmingly, and Arthur closed his mouth and sat back. He wasn't going to say, I'm doing it because it's the kind of job I can take while my girlfriend's visiting PS1. He stared out the dirty train window and watched from the corner of his eye while Eames folded his gum wrapper into a square, unfolded it, folded it again, all with a pleasant nonchalant look on his face. Finally they were at Beach and 98th, and when the doors slid open Eames stood up, hitched his trousers in his irritating way, and waited, smiling, for Arthur to go out ahead of him.
Caldwell was set up in a tiny Pepto-pink seaside shack with crushed oyster shells in the front yard. He opened the door himself, and led them through the empty shell of the house to the garage, which had been gutted except for a couple of bare, glaring light bulbs. In the middle of the concrete floor was a table with a PASIV already set up--and on a lawn chair beside it was the accountant, Goodwin, already out. Arthur glanced at Caldwell.
"Just sedated. He hasn't seen any faces, and he's not going to."
"I need to talk to you." He walked back through the house to the front room, and Caldwell followed. "When did Eames join?"
"Couple of days ago." Caldwell frowned. "I told you I'd get a forger. We need the wife for this to work."
"You didn't tell me who you got."
"I didn't think I needed to." Caldwell was looking worried now. "What's wrong with Eames?"
"Nothing." Arthur looked toward the back of the house, wondering how much of this Eames could hear. "Did you find him, or did he find you?"
"I found him." Caldwell's answer was immediate. "He's on Cobb's list. Just like you." He was studying Arthur closely. "You don't like him."
"No. It's not that. Just...I'm supposed to know everyone on the job. Before they show up for work."
"Okay." Caldwell tried for a smile. "Sorry, it's a pretty basic grab. I guess I didn't follow all the protocols."
"Anything else you want to tell me?"
"No."
Arthur stared at him a moment longer, then shook his head and shrugged it off. It wasn't that weird, Eames turning up. Of course Caldwell used Cobb as a reference, and of course Cobb recommended Eames. It wouldn't have been weird at all except for Arthur's own bad judgment calls.
"I don't like surprises," he reminded Caldwell, starting back through the house. "Let's just get this done." He said it walking through the door into the garage, where Eames was leaning against the wall, scrolling through his phone.
"Lovely," said Eames, putting the phone away and rolling up his sleeve. "Let's get in there, shall we?"
"Fifteen minutes," Caldwell said to Arthur. "You've got a watch?"
Arthur just looked at him.
He sat on the concrete steps from the kitchen into the garage, watching them sleep. He would have taken a chair but there wasn't a fourth one--something else Caldwell had messed up. Caldwell didn't usually make mistakes; if he did, Arthur wouldn't have taken the job. He sat watching the three motionless bodies aligned in their white chaise lounges, and wondered what was bugging him so much.
After five minutes, he got up and walked over to check the PASIV. It was running fine. The accountant, Goodwin, slept with his mouth open and his eyelids fluttering. Caldwell slept like a stone. Eames...Arthur took a moment to stand over him. Eames slept neatly, with his hands laced over his stomach and his ankles crossed, his face composed. Arthur watched him for a moment, not expecting any revelation and not getting any.
He went back to Caldwell. Something was still bothering him. It was a routine job, so why all the mistakes? On an impulse, he crouched and patted Caldwell down. A Glock in a holster under his arm--but that wasn't remarkable, that didn't mean anything. His cell phone, locked. Arthur sat holding it, staring at Caldwell's face in profile, thinking. Fifteen minutes. That was three hours in dream time.
They needed the time, Caldwell had said, because the mark was a deeply suspicious, introverted, almost paranoid character. Not a complicated guy, not anyone they had to worry about. A low-level pencil pusher, but all the personality tests from his hiring record showed him hanging way off the edge of the persecution spectrum, clinging by his fingernails to the very fringes of normal. Caldwell was going to be the company courier and Eames was going to be every bit the trusted wife, but even that was going to take a while, and a lot of careful handling, if it was going to go right.
Still. Three hours was a long time.
Arthur put the cell phone back in Caldwell's pocket, checked the time again, then went to his own jacket and took, from an inner pocket, the kit in which he kept an extra length of tubing and a needle. He checked the PASIV, hooked himself up, and lay down on the concrete floor between Eames and Goodwin. He set his own timer for three minutes, topside. Just enough time to see what was what.
As he lay there, staring at the ceiling and waiting for the drug to kick in, he remembered to reach into his jacket and rest his hand on the butt of his gun. Since the Fischer job, he'd been going into jobs that way. It was second nature by now.
He was in a hotel room, alone. That was fine, that made sense. Goodwin was supposed to think he was in a hotel, that he and his wife were spending the night before their tenth wedding anniversary there, that they were taking a plane to La Paz the next day. He was doing some last-minute work for the company, and then they were going to have a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant, and the wife--Eames--was going to lead the conversation around to work, remind Goodwin about the important documents he had in the hotel safe. He wasn't to forget to take them out for the company courier, the nice man in the crisp grey suit. The documents listed certain key names and dates related to a large financial transaction. They were very important.
Once the seed was planted--the documents in the envelope--then Caldwell just had to show up in his suit, knock twice, flash an ID, and accept the briefcase Goodwin willingly passed to him. Time-consuming, but simple.
The room was empty. That probably meant Eames and Goodwin were down in the restaurant, having dinner. It had been five minutes since they'd started the dream, about an hour down here. So, everything was going according to plan. There was no reason for Arthur to be here, no reason for him to have broken protocol and left the sleepers unattended, which was a stupid thing to do. Clearly, the best thing for him to do at this point was shoot himself in the head with the gun he had in his dreamed-up shoulder holster, get up off Caldwell's garage floor, and never mention this to anyone.
He went to the door, listened, then opened it carefully. Outside, the hallway was standard mid-range hotel: a red-and-gold carpet, a line of other doors leading down to an elevator lobby. Arthur left the door ajar and started down the hall. About halfway down he heard something--voices. He stopped, his hand finding the pistol under his jacket. Both male, but too quiet for him to make out the words. He started forward again. Ahead, one of the hotel doors was ajar. He edged up and peered around the frame.
There were people in the room--he couldn't see them, but he could hear movement inside, something slow and rhythmic. Bedsprings. Someone moaned. Eames. Fucking Eames, moaning in his own voice. It was fucking Eames in there, making sounds Arthur had heard him make before, sounds that made blood rush to Arthur's face, that made him instantly furious. Fucking Eames was having sex in a fucking dream hotel room, on the job--on the fucking job. With Caldwell? Not possible. Who, then? Goodwin?
He was an instant away from stepping into the room without a knock or a word, just to blast this pathetic, ruinous excuse for a job into smithereens, when he heard another voice.
"You should come back to Chicago with me. Come see my place."
It was his voice. His own voice. A little breathless, a little rough, and he was smiling--he could hear the smile in the words. Someone was in the room using his voice.
Then the bed creaked, and he moaned--the voice in the room, his voice, moaned--and Eames laughed.
"Is that an invitation?"
"Jesus." The Arthur voice sounded raw, surprised, a little disoriented.
"Aren't you pretty."
"Fuck...you."
Eames laughed again, and Arthur heard kissing, definite kissing. He reached into the holster and drew his gun. He inched forward into the room, checking to make sure he didn't show in the mirror. Eames was, what, fucking a projection? His own make-believe Arthur toy? It had never occurred to Arthur that Eames would do that kind of thing, that he would stoop that low, that he would ever need to stoop at all. It wasn't as if he hadn't already had Arthur in the flesh, in reality. Why the hell would he bother fucking around in a dream, on a job? None of it made sense.
"Where are you working next?" Arthur's voice asked, still kissing. "I'll come find you."
"You'll come and find me." Eames sounded jocular, not even pretending to believe the idea. "But you hate hot climates. It's so hard to stay properly starched."
"I don't care. Fuck, I have to go in a minute. I shouldn't even be down here. Just tell me where you're going."
"Don't go yet. Just let me finish this--"
Arthur's voice moaned again, louder, and he felt a rush of humiliation and thought, fuck it. He stepped into the room, the gun drawn but held down, pointing at the floor.
Eames was sprawled backward on the hotel bed, wearing the same clothes he was in topside, as if this encounter had surprised him back into his natural plumage. His ugly shirt was pulled up and his trousers were unzipped, showing his bare belly, the olive skin and the dark hair that thickened as it led down to his groin. His dick was out, pointing due north. His hands had fallen back onto the bedspread beside his head, palms up, the fingers curled loosely.
On top of him, straddling his hips, his suit jacket tossed aside, his vest unbuttoned and his tie pulled loose, his face flushed, his hair falling forward in slicked strands, his spread legs straining the fabric of his neat grey trousers, his shoulder holster still secured around his shoulders--was Arthur.
Eames sat halfway up, his face a perfect rictus of surprise. The second Arthur turned partway, saw Arthur, and reached for his gun.
That was when it hit Arthur--not a projection.
The other Arthur was still drawing his gun when Arthur shot him through the shoulder, knocking him half off Eames and, incidentally, hitting Eames and the bed with a spray of blood. Eames was scrabbling to sit up, to find his own gun, and while he did it, Arthur charged the bed, got a foot on the other Arthur's shoulder, and shoved him to the floor. He pinned him under one heel, pressing the gun to his head.
"Who are you?"
"What the fuck--" Eames was sitting up, wiping blood from his face. Arthur spared him a cursory glance, then turned back to the other Arthur, who was writhing in pain and scrabbling at his holster. Arthur put the barrel of the gun to his hip.
"Caldwell?" The other Arthur ground his teeth and clawed at the carpet. Arthur pushed the gun harder against the bone. "What the hell is going on?"
"Arthur, Christ." Eames slid off the bed and stood, keeping a wary distance. His gun, Arthur noticed, was finally in his hand.
"Eames," coughed the other Arthur, from the floor. "Jesus--help me!"
"Shut up," said Arthur, and shot him again, in the foot. The other Arthur screamed and doubled over, and Arthur took the opportunity to roll him, pluck the gun from his holster, and throw it onto the bed.
"What the hell," Eames yelled, "is going on?"
"First," Arthur said, "you were fucking around on the job. Second, this isn't me. This is a forge." He knelt beside the sobbing, writhing body, and patted it down for more weapons. None he could feel. "Third, we both need to wake up. As soon as I find out what's going on."
Eames stared at him, then looked down at the blood-soaked body at his knees. He was taking it in, Arthur could see that. But there was still some doubt there, some worry that maybe the wrong man was talking to him.
"Eames," the forge coughed. "For fuck's sake, Eames—"
Arthur grabbed the forge's hand, pinned it to the floor, and placed the muzzle of the gun against the palm. "Eames, go watch the door." He glanced back; Eames was staring at him, starting to shake his head. "Fine." He didn't think about it. He just raised the gun and put a bullet through Eames's forehead. It made an even bigger mess on the bedspread, and on the carpet where the body fell.
When he turned back, the forge's face had changed. It was Goodwin--or the man who'd played Goodwin's part, whoever he was. He lay there in Arthur's gory, ragged clothes, staring up at Arthur with a look of rage and contempt.
"You're dead," he said. "You're dead and he's in the bag. It doesn't matter what you do to me down here, up there you're the one that's screwed, ponyboy."
"Who are you working--" Arthur said, and then the world tilted.
And he was awake, one sharp hypnic jerk on the garage floor and he was being dragged to his feet, reeling and off-balance, a bright pain inside his elbow where the needle still dangled.
"Come on," Eames whispered. "Come on, get up."
He caught the glare of the overhead light bulb, the bare concrete floor, and remembered--Far Rockaway. Caldwell's little pink house. The back door led into a fenced yard, he remembered not liking that but Caldwell had insisted it was all right. Why had he let Caldwell insist? It was a milk run, it was a vacation job. He'd been sloppy.
"Arthur," Eames said quietly, holding him around the arm in a hot grip. "Are you awake?"
"Yeah." He pulled his arm free and yanked the IV from it. "Yeah. The back yard's fenced."
"Fuck." Eames was flushed, looking around the bare garage. His eyes fell on Caldwell and Goodwin, still plugged in. "What the fuck is going on here?"
Arthur shook his head. "I don't know. It was Goodwin, in the hotel. He said they were going to kill us."
There was a sound at the front door. Not a crash, not a battering ram--just someone very quietly turning a key in the lock. If he hadn't been on edge, if he hadn't been listening for it, Arthur was sure he wouldn't have heard it. He looked at Eames and saw he'd heard it too. In silence, they separated and went to stand on opposite sides of the garage door, their guns drawn.
One of Arthur's talents was the ability to think very quickly, and without emotion, under pressure. Right now he was thinking extremely fast. Whoever was running this, so far they had no way of knowing that the job had gone wrong. They had no reason to know, they didn't have a pipe into the dream. They were just on a schedule--someone was supposed to come into the house, shoot Arthur, then wait for the dreamers to wake up. While Arthur was congealing on the garage floor, Goodwin would be down in the dream, pillow-talking with Eames. That was what they wanted—Eames's next job. That's what the whole thing was about.
Very quietly, footsteps advanced through the house. Through the living room and into the kitchen.
Arthur spared a glance for Caldwell and Goodwin, wishing Eames had left him in there long enough to tie the guy up. All Goodwin had to do was make it up onto the bed, get his gun, shoot himself--and they'd have a whole new mess to deal with up here. For fuck's sake, he hadn't even had a chance to get Caldwell's gun off him topside. It was starting to look like the smart thing would be to shoot both of them before they even woke up.
Eames was trying to get his attention, he realized. Not moving, but glaring. Arthur followed his gaze, and saw the little plastic box on the wall beside his shoulder. The garage door opener. Okay. He nodded to Eames. Gunman first, then garage door. And hope there wasn't a carload more of them waiting in the driveway.
The footsteps came through the kitchen and softly, almost inaudibly, down the hall to the garage. A man, a professional. Arthur knew that without even seeing him. He relaxed his grip on his gun, took a deep breath, and caught Eames's eye. Eames was sweating. He nodded. Arthur stepped into the doorway, saw the man in the black stocking cap at the same moment as he saw the Glock in the man's hand. At the same moment as he fired his own gun into the man's head. A single shot, squeezed not snapped, and then he stepped back into the weak shelter of the door frame, the gun still raised, waiting.
It had only taken a couple of seconds. There was a thump, a gurgle, a thudding sound. Then silence. Arthur signaled Eames, and jerked his head at Caldwell. Eames checked the hall, then turned and went back to the lounge chairs. In less than half a minute he had Caldwell's gun out of its holster, and was frisking Goodwin. Arthur checked the hallway himself, saw the body slumped against the baseboard, and went up the stairs carefully, his finger on the trigger. The man was dead. His gun had a silencer, he carried no ID. His face, when Arthur raised the mask, was a mess. Head shots did that. But he could see it wasn't anybody he recognized, at least.
"Nothing," Eames said, in a loud whisper. He was stuffing one gun down his pants, flashing another in his hand. "Couple of pieces, nothing else. Not even a driver's license."
"Get Caldwell's phone."
Arthur tried to think of anything else that would be useful, anything they were overlooking--but short of tying Caldwell and Goodwin to their chairs and interrogating them, he couldn't. There wasn't time for that, even if he'd had the stomach for it. There could be a dozen more gunmen waiting outside. Or none. Either way, it was time to go.
"Any more?" Eames meant the hallway; Arthur shook his head, but as soon as he did it he heard someone at the front door. Someone was coming in fast, not bothering to be as quiet as the first guy. Arthur's heart jumped, and he hit the garage door opener with his elbow. It whirred to life, and the door started to creak open. At the same moment he saw Caldwell lifting his head groggily, and Goodwin starting to stir.
"Fuck--" Eames handed him the extra gun and waved him toward the garage door. As he crossed the open doorway a shot splintered the wall behind him; he ducked and covered the rest of the floor to the opening door at a crouch. Eames fired a couple of shots into the hallway, then flattened himself back against the wall. A pause, then another couple of shots hammered the far wall, behind Caldwell and Goodwin.
"Jesus--" Caldwell rolled off his chair and crawled behind the PASIV.
Goodwin was just waking up. Arthur didn't wait to see what he'd do; he had his gun at shin level, and was staying low, ready to fire into the driveway if he had to. Amazingly, the driveway looked empty. They had about three feet of clearance now, enough to scuttle through, so he scraped under and jerked to his feet, the gun in both hands, ready to fire at the snap of a twig. Nothing in sight. Inside, Eames fired again, twice and then once more. The sound was deafening, the sound of total professional disaster. They were in a fucking neighborhood, for God's sake. Arthur crouched, trying to see what was going on in there while keeping an eye on the street.
"Eames!" he yelled, and then something hit him in the middle of his back, knocking him face-first into the driveway. His head and his gun hand hit the pavement, the gun went flying. On a second's delay, a rusty hook of pain dug into the side of his face where it was ground into the driveway. There was something in his back, something huge and heavy, grinding through his spine. Someone was kneeling on him, pinning him. The extra gun was in his trousers, underneath his body. He tried to turn, tried to reach it. He couldn't breathe. His eyes were starting to go black. He felt something cold and hard press against his skull, just behind his ear.
Then he was hit from the side, hard enough to flip him like an egg, and he gasped, tasting wet blood down the back of his throat. He heard a rapid scuffling, then a muffled whumping sound, and looked over to see Eames kneeling on top of a guy in a black bomber jacket. A dark red pool was spreading out beneath the guy's torso. There was a silenced Glock on the driveway beside him.
Eames's face was fixed, taut, a little insane. He stayed where he was, staring down at the guy for a moment longer. Long enough to make sure. Then turned to look at Arthur.
"All right?"
Arthur nodded, peeling himself up off the concrete. His face was badly fucked up, he could feel it--he was bleeding hard, his cheek and forehead felt hot and raw, skinless. He grabbed his gun, checked the clip, and staggered to his feet. Behind them, the garage door was still rising, revealing more and more of the bullet-riddled walls and the shining silver dream box and the three dead men sprawled over the floor amid the blood-spattered lawn furniture. He took a single step back, headed for the PASIV.
There was a squeal of tires at the end of the block. Eames grabbed Arthur's arm and took off running in the opposite direction.
They dodged through back alleys until they reached a main street with a few restaurants, some bodegas and cafés. Arthur waited by a Dumpster while Eames went inside a tiny store and came out carrying a plastic bag, then followed his phone to a park with a public bathroom. The men's room was filthy but it had a door that closed. Eames blocked it with the trash can, handed the bag to Arthur, and went to wash his hands. Inside the bag was a bottle of water, a three-pack of clean white socks, and a fifth of vodka.
"You're going to drink." Arthur stood with his hand pressed to the seeping, bloody mess of his forehead, and considered shooting Eames in the back.
"It's not for me." Eames shook water off his hands--there were no paper towels--and rolled up his sleeves. "We need to get back to the city, we need a cab. And a cab won't take you if you're covered in blood."
"So you got socks?"
"I'm improvising." Eames tore open the socks, doused one in vodka, and pressed it to Arthur's head. Arthur jerked back, swearing. Eames looked at him. Arthur grabbed the sock and held it to his own skin. It felt like a pitchy brand was being shoved into his skull.
"Jesus Christ. What the fuck happened back there?"
Eames shook his head. "I don't know."
"This was supposed to be a milk run. It was a milk run, until you showed up. Who were those guys?"
"I don't know."
"And what the fuck were you doing in the dream? What was that, exactly? Your own little porn show while the rest of us are at work?"
"I didn't know, all right?"
"You didn't know what? That it wasn't a good idea to fuck around in the middle of a job?"
Eames said nothing. He wrenched the cap off the water bottle and doused another sock. "Here. Clean that out, it's full of grit."
Arthur grabbed the sock, infuriated and humiliated. "You thought I'd just stop being point for a while so I could come down there and fuck you?"
"You did drop in."
"Not to fuck you." Arthur swapped socks, noticing with disgust that the first one was blood-soaked, and wincing as the second one went on. "I didn't realize it needed saying, but I will never stop doing my job so I can snatch a quickie with you, or anyone else for that matter. Because that's fucking stupid and it's how you get killed--"
"Okay. Okay, I've got it." Eames was pissed--his face was red and he was glaring, sloshing water over another sock. "It was stupid, I apologize. Right now we need to get back to civilization and find out what the hell this is all about."
It was on the tip of Arthur's tongue to say, I don't need to do anything. This is your problem, not mine. But it wasn't true--those guys had been shooting at him too, it was his problem now too. He turned and whipped the bloody, booze-soaked sock hard against the wall of the bathroom, where it left a red splotch the size of a grapefruit.
It took almost half an hour for his head to stop bleeding, time that he spent holding a sock to his head and pacing while Eames worked on Caldwell's phone. When Eames finally said, "Ah--" in a tone that meant he'd gotten something, Arthur spun around so fast he almost fell over.
"What?"
"Hm." Eames was scrolling through calls--somehow he'd broken Caldwell's password. "Lots of international numbers. Nothing definite."
"What does that mean?"
Eames glanced up. "That means I don't recognize any of the numbers, Arthur. Maybe you'd like to try."
“If somebody got to Caldwell, chances are good that some of those numbers are important.”
“Yes, that was my thought as well.” Eames was sounding mild and upper-class, which meant he was pissed off. He slipped Caldwell's phone into his pocket and swigged from the water bottle he'd been using to soak the socks. "I think it's time we found our ride."
It was on the tip of Arthur's tongue to say, fuck you, to throw a wet sock in Eames's face and walk out on his own--but that was stupid. He couldn't afford to be stupid now. They needed a cab, they needed to get back to the city, they needed to get in touch with some people they could trust, who could shed some light. Now was not the time to split up, not yet. He swallowed his anger, threw the last sock away, and touched his forehead carefully with his fingertips.
Eames, watching, gave a sympathetic wince. "Nice bit of road rash."
"Am I going to scare off our cabbie?"
"Not with my handsome smile backing you up." Eames gave him the handsome smile automatically, his eyes remote. He cracked the door with his hand on the revolver in the back of his trousers, looked out, then nodded. "Okay."
They went out through the park, and through some miracle, Eames actually hailed a cab and talked the guy into taking them back to the city. They rode in incense-scented silence, staring out opposite windows at the ocean flashing by. Halfway there, Arthur's phone buzzed. It was Eden. He put it back in his pocket without answering, conscious of Eames's gaze.
At Washington Square Park Eames paid in cash, handing a wad of bills through the driver's window while Arthur lingered by the trunk, trying to look inconspicuous. There was dried blood all over his shirt front and his face was starting to swell. He was beyond pissed off, so far beyond it that he'd come back around to his strong suit, careful planning.
"We split up," he told Eames, as soon as the cab was gone. "I'll make some calls and get in touch."
Eames nodded. "You're here with someone?"
Arthur said nothing, which was as good as saying yes.
"You'll need another place then," Eames said. "Unless you're dating someone in the business."
"I don't date people in the business."
There was just the slightest pause before Eames answered--just enough to point out that Arthur's scruples weren't really all that high. "So then you'll need another place."
"I'm not coming back to your hotel."
"I'm not suggesting it. Get your own room. Somewhere unobtrusive."
"Thank you, Eames. I know what to do in a situation like this."
"Oh, good. When you've got it all ironed out, ring me up and tell me. Because I have no fucking clue what to do in this situation." He turned and walked away across the park.