Everything That Is Real (Comes Around)

Part Ten

            Arthur stood by the door to his hotel room and listened as Ariadne called him a 'bastard', which he did not disagree with, before the sound of her leaving left everything silent save the hum of his laptop. There was something about her that made every logical thought he had fly out the window. He could not have her, he never could, because he could not be what she needed. He needed to get her out of his head forever. So when the logical part of his mind figured out that they were kissing, that he had her pinned against the wall, Arthur knew he had to get her out of the room before he did something stupid. It was a low thing to do but there was no way he was going to be able to stop himself if they got anywhere near the bed. If she told Eames or Cobb what had happened, one of them, probably Eames, would punch him again. He was okay with that. He was sinking to a new low, and if that was what it took to ease this transition for Ariadne he could deal with a few bruises.

            Arthur pushed her out of his mind and sat back down on his bed. He looked over papers and documents before going back to his computer. It was proving harder to find information on Susana's bodyguard than it had been to find information on her. He was being paid cash because there was no record of any transactions to anyone for that kind of service. That made sense, he decided, since that was the kind of job one did not exactly want to advertize. That did not make it any more irritating for him because specifics about this man was the thing that they needed. It took some looking around but Arthur finally managed to find a name: Dave Matthews. The face matched the only real record of this man that he was able to find: his mug shot. Susana's bodyguard was the kind of person one did not want to meet in a dark alley but perfect for the kind of work she needed. His track record was varied, unlike Walter's, but it looked like he was a former mob soldier with various charges against him, including armed burglary, assault with a deadly weapon and various different drug charges. His name came up in a few cold case murder investigations but nothing that stood out.

            “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. Now they not only had a paranoid and potentially dangerous mark but now they also had to deal with her more dangerous bodyguard. Arthur almost wanted to call Fischer and tell him that there was no way they were doing this mission. The dream itself was going to be bad but what Susana or Dave would do if they found out about the extraction just made things worse. And things with Walter were settled for now but that would not last forever. One of his famous headaches returned and Arthur rubbed his temples, trying to clear his head. There was always a way to make things work and he was going to find it. For now they just had to get some sense of Susana's schedule so they could find a way to follow her. That also meant spending lots of time alone with Eames and that was enough to push the headache into a full blown migraine.

            Arthur turned off the light next to his bed and closed his eyes, trying to shut out all sound and block out all light. He still had a bit of sedative left from Yusuf and he contemplated using it to get some sleep. It was across the room though and the pain in his skull was bad enough that he did not want to move. His thoughts faded to the last time he had had one this bad. It was during a job about six months ago. The mark was someone who had something like four different identities and Arthur had been trying to work on a way to see which one, if any, was the real one with no luck. He had pulled the drapes to his hotel room in Prague closed and turned off anything that made any noise. When the door opened, he had groaned. The next thing he knew someone was moving his head to their lap and Arthur had opened his eyes. Ariadne was sitting with him, stroking his hair, and staying completely silent. Normally she left him alone when things were like this, but this time she had just sat with him for the entire duration of the migraine. When the pain had subsided to the point of being tolerable, he had sat up and asked her why she had come to sit with him, and she had just smiled and said 'sometimes a little company is enough.' After that he had taken her into his arms, his research scattered, and it had not bothered him at all.

            There was a knock on his door and Arthur really did not want to deal with any of this right now. He almost told whoever was at the door to bugger off and come back when light and sounds were not the worst things in the universe. Instead he pushed himself to his feet and opened the door. The light from the hallway was so bad that he had to cover his eyes.

            “What's wrong with you?” Eames asked and it sounded like he was screaming.

            “Eames, I swear to god if you don't whisper, I'm going to be the one throwing punches this time,” Arthur warned. “What do you want?”

            “When are we going to get started on the bodyguard?” he asked and dear god was Arthur ever relieved that he lowered his voice.

            “I have information but now is really not the time,” he replied and the forger cocked an eyebrow. “I have a migraine.”

            “Then we'll sit in the dark,” Eames replied and Arthur really did not want to fight him on the matter. He opened his door and Eames walked in. He really hoped that this 'sit in the dark' thing was a promise because he was not sure if he could handle Eames' voice in his state at all; he had enough trouble dealing with it when he was not in blinding pain.

            “So you know when people ask 'how could things get any worse?'” Arthur asked as he gathered his papers and Eames nodded. “Well they just got worse.”

            “Oh this is just brilliant,” Eames said as he looked over the papers. “I'm starting to think the dream world is going to be safer than the real world.” Arthur agreed and leaned against the headboard of his bed. He felt the bed move and he knew Eames had sat down. “So you have another one of those migraines you get when you can't figure something out?”

            “Yes, I do, so silence would be appreciated,” Arthur said and he heard a scoff. “And I know silence from you is like asking for a flat out miracle so just say what you need to say so I can get some peace.”

            “We've known each other for a while now, right? We've worked together plenty of times and we were essentially partners two years ago when Cobb had to completely vanish for a while,” Eames said after some silence. “So I'd like to think I get the way you do things to an extent.” Arthur knew exactly where this was going.

            “I don't know how she feels about it, but I don't like people bringing up my personal life whenever they see fit just because it's with someone they know personally.” Arthur opened his eyes to see Eames wearing his poker face. “So forget what I said earlier, you can keep whatever you want to say to yourself, but you can still leave.” The forger stood up and stretched before giving him a dark look. “If you want to beat me up this would be a perfect time, otherwise I might throw a punch back.”

            “I'm not going to beat you up, Arthur, we're not children. Point of fact, you're doing a great job beating yourself up. Let me know when the migraine fades and we can get to work.” Eames strolled out of the room and closed the door louder than needed. The clock on the end table read nearly four in the morning. It was just like Eames to pick the perfect time to bother him when his body was screaming with exhaustion. Arthur lay down, closed his eyes, and did not bother to move any of his work.

            Even with the very late night his internal clock woke him up bright and early at seven. His head felt fine now but Arthur was nevertheless unhappy when he found out he had slept in his clothes. Peeling off the last pieces of suit he climbed into the shower and stood there for a long time. The water was hot, too hot, but he could not be bothered to change it. It seemed like a good reminder that this was reality, that everything he had done and said was real, and that was something he wished he could wake up from. Arthur knew he was never much of an overly emotional person but this seemed like an extreme even for him. It did not feel natural, like he was trying to make the emptiness he was projecting reality.. It was a bit of a depressing realization but that hardly mattered. He could not change what he had said or what he had done, and when someone did unforgivable things, they had to deal with the consequences whether they liked them or not.

            Arthur stepped out of the shower and pulled on another one of his suits. The rest were going in a bag to be cleaned, dried, and pressed by the hotel despite how little he trusted them. The irony did not escape him. He slicked his hair back and relaxed a bit because everything was in order. Arthur clenched his die in his pocket before he rolled it. The answer was exactly what he knew it would be and not what he wanted. He put his research in order before he gathered his laptop and closed the hotel door behind him. When he got to Eames' room he knocked loud enough that he knew he must have woken the forger. When Eames answered the door in nothing but boxer shorts Arthur raised an eyebrow.

            “We have work to do,” he said and Eames stared at him like he was insane.

            “It's barely eight, we were up until a least four, and you want to work now?”.

            “Drink coffee,” was all he said and Eames heaved a sigh before opening the door and vanishing into the bathroom. The room was exactly how he had expected it to be: chaotic.

            “I know you're standing out there judging me, Arthur, but could you slide my bag into the bathroom along with your condescension?” Eames said from the bathroom and for some reason it made him smile. Arthur picked up one of the bags, dropped it inside the bathroom, and waited in silence. A good ten minutes later Eames emerged, running his hands through his hair to dry it out. “Well, what's your plan?”

            “Coffee for you so you won't complain,” Arthur said and he walked out of the room. Eames grabbed a few things and followed, closing the door behind him.

            “I'm assuming you're not just inviting me out to coffee.” Arthur glared at him. “So what's the plan after that?”

            “We need to find out what this woman's schedule is. The better we know where she likes to go, the better chance we have of getting there to watch her and that bodyguard of hers. How long do you need to create a decent replica?” Arthur said as he walked toward his car.

            “Yours is too flashy; we're taking mine,” Eames said and walked toward his modest car. Arthur was not in the mood to argue. He knew that despite the fact that they were taking Eames' car, he would be the one to pay for the coffee, the inevitable meals, and probably the gas as well. They drove off and pretty soon they were both nursing hot coffees from some terrible drive in cafe because neither of them wanted to sit down anywhere. Instead they parked the car down the street and sat in the same park while they watched the building. The silence was nice but Arthur knew it would not last. “I'm going to ask you something and you have to answer truthfully.”

            “How will you know if I'm lying?” Although, they were having a conversation, they did not look at each other.

            “Oh it's what I do and you know that. No one reads people better than me,” Eames said and Arthur knew that he was smirking without having to look. “We both know that this entire thing with Ariadne stems from you not trusting her for some arbitrary reason. What I want to know is if you’ve ever trusted anyone.” It was an odd question and Arthur had to think about it for a moment. The closest thing to a family he could remember having was Cobb, Mal and the kids. They had almost seemed to take him in, to an extent, because he really had nowhere else to go. He had been out of college, paid for by scholarships, because there had not been anyone to help pay for it. He did not remember his parents but he remembered the aunt he had lived with for a while. There was something about her that had always set him on edge, and somewhere along the line, he had just stopped trusting people. In school all he could see was the backstabbing and the dirty lies told by people that their friends had “trusted” and he just did not understand why they would follow someone so blindly. When Mal had asked why he did not trust them, he really had had no answer because they had given him absolutely no reason not to.

            “No, I haven't,” he said after a long silence and he saw Eames move, studying his features. Arthur glanced over and the forger just stared some more before leaning back against the bench. He drank more of his coffee and tossed it into a can next to the bench. What he had seen when Arthur made his confession, he did not say. Instead he went oddly quiet and they continued to watch the building. Susana emerged at ten almost on the dot with Dave right behind her. As she walked toward her car, Arthur and Eames made their way to their own car. When Arthur slid into the driver’s seat, he was surprised that Eames did not protest. They stayed at least three cars behind her for the rest of the day. Arthur made a mental note of every single place she went and what time she went there. By the time that she was eating dinner, the exhaustion of less than four hours of sleeping was beginning to take its toll.

            “Let me drive,” Eames said after several hours of stilted conversation. “What, don't trust me?”

            “As a matter of fact, I don't, but me falling asleep at the wheel is probably not a good thing,” Arthur said before he climbed out of the car and they switched places. He finally wrote down everything he had witnessed over the course of the day, but as soon as that was done his eyelids felt heavy. Susana was going to be out for at least another hour before she went home because she loved to flirt and carry on at her table.

            “Arthur.” His name was almost a kick that pulled him out of his own head. “You're tired, obviously, so just close your eyes and take a nap. I've watched you sleep before, hundreds of times. I'm not going to make your chair fall over or anything.”

            “We're in a car,” Arthur said and Eames glared at him. “Fine but you better wake me up when she leaves.”

            “Yes, yes of course. Maybe you'll be in a better mood after a nap,” Eames said and Arthur did not give the forger the satisfaction of a response. He let his head rest against the cool window and let his mind wander a bit. Work was really the only thing that kept him from thinking too much. He did not want to think about Ariadne or how she was affecting him despite how reluctant he was to admit it. He really was not a cold person, he really did feel bad for hurting her, but it had been either that or lie to her. He respected her too much to lie so he had used the truth. He did not, however, feel bad lying to them about Walter. Twas a lingering notion in the back of his mind that there was a good chance after this job that he might vanish off the grid. Cobb, Eames and the others would know what had happened but there was no way they would be able to prove it. Someone like Walter left no trace, something Arthur had thought he did but apparently not, because that was the point man's job.

            Eames saying his name jerked Arthur from a sleep that he did not remember. He blinked a few times to try and clear his head as the car started to move. He checked his watch and wrote down what time she had left. It seemed about the same as the last time he had watched her. Susana went up to her apartment and that was all they could do for now.

            “Well, I'll tell you what I’ve gathered. In one sense she reminds me a lot of you,” Eames said and Arthur stared at him, narrowing his eyes. “She seems like she's someone who likes order. It's probably part of her paranoia. If things are the same, then you notice when something is different. Also, I think she's sleeping with the bodyguard.” That was something that had not shown in the research.

            “What makes you think that?” he asked and Eames shrugged.

            “Body language; you can always tell when two people have slept together. How do you think I knew about you and Ariadne long before you made it obvious?” Arthur did not like the idea that he could give something like that away without intending to but he let that slide. He could not decide if that complicated the matter or not.

            “Does that complicate things?” he asked after he was unable to come up with an answer.

            “I'm not sure. If they're invested, it might, but if it's just a physical thing then it shouldn't. I'll watch some more and we'll see what I can figure out,” Eames said before rolling his shoulders. “Okay, time for dinner, and you're paying.”

            “Color me surprised,” Arthur grumbled and Eames laughed loudly as they drove away from the apartment building.