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heliads · 2 months ago

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wish i could drag you back down - arthur x eames

Arthur wakes up in a time loop. It's not a dream. If he can't make his reality go back to normal, then he might as well find something to pass the time, and no one knows how to entertain like Eames.

tw: suicide mentions (trying to wake up from dreams)

masterlist

The first time the day repeats, Arthur doesn’t even realize it. Nothing stands out as particularly wrong. He does get a particularly strong surge of deja vu every now and then, but Arthur brushes it off as sleep deprivation and nothing more. He’s been going to bed later and rising earlier for a while now. It wouldn’t exactly be a surprise if his circadian rhythms were so off-kilter that he started doubting himself more than usual.

The second time the day repeats, Arthur assumes it’s a dream. Cobb has been branching out a lot lately; being with his family is good for his heart but frustrating for his mind. If you train a lab rat to escape labyrinths, and you give it trial after trial for years, what happens to the creature when you let it go free? Does it run through the tall, waving grass of its new home in the meadow in search of high maze walls to escape again? Does it chase the sound of plastic clickers, or thrust itself into danger time after time in the hopes of being rewarded with a treat of constant mass and type?

Cobb went home. It was good for him. Six months went by before Arthur started getting texts again. Harebrained ideas built around a core of truth. Suicide missions coupled with a baseless guarantee that they’d all walk out alive. His mind was restless. Eventually, Cobb gave up on the ruse and admitted that he wanted back in again. Saito was more than happy to finance him, knowing he’d get the bigger pot in the end. They’re all better when they have a task to complete.

This could be a dream, then. Maybe Arthur is the test subject this time around. Maybe he’s supposed to be doing something in this endless repeat. If the goal was to determine how many times a day could repeat without the subject realizing it, they’ve fucked that part up pretty well. Unless this isn’t the second time Arthur has been through this day. Unless he’s done this many times already. Maybe he’ll only remember when he gets out of the dream.

The third time the day repeats, Arthur starts killing himself. It’s the only guaranteed way to wake yourself up, isn’t it? He throws himself from the roof, but wakes up in the same day again, not the familiar workshop as expected with the rest of the crew surrounding him. Fine, then. Maybe Cobb put him a layer deep. The next day, he drowns himself. The day after that, he jumps off of a bridge into the ocean, just to be extra sure.

The sixth time the day repeats, Arthur realizes that this isn’t a dream at all. Cobb isn’t capable of putting a man more than three levels deep without them going into Limbo. If he really wracked his brain, maybe he could find a way, but it would be dangerous, and he would never do that to Arthur. And nobody else could do it except Cobb, so this shouldn’t be happening.

Which means– Arthur isn’t sure. He had assumed this was a dream. There was no other logical explanation. He hadn’t yet tried his totem, so confident was he that this was not his true reality. A rookie mistake, maybe, but not in a case like this. Using the totem is for when it is impossible to distinguish real life from a false dream. In real life, days do not repeat. What else could this be?

On the morning of the sixth day, Arthur pulls a red six-sided die out of his jacket pocket. He sits down in a chair in front of his table, stares at the die, holds it until the sides grow warm, then convinces himself to roll it. He does not want to roll the die. He has no other choice but to roll the die.

The moment the totem leaves his hand, Arthur wishes he had kept it with him for good. If it had stayed forever atop his palm, cushioned by his fingers, it never would have hit the wood surface of the coffee table he only bought because the workman had no customers and looked at Arthur like a child whose parents didn’t make an appearance at the talent show. If he had kept holding that red die, it wouldn’t have skittered across the table, it wouldn’t have spun twice, and it wouldn’t have come to a stop with a specific number atop it, the white dots winking up at him mockingly.

Arthur snatches the die off the table like it personally offended him, then rolls it again. He doesn’t have to. Arthur knew from the moment he removed it from his pocket that it was a trick die, the very same one he made the first time a man named Dominic Cobb came knocking with a very strange job offer in hand. He knows what the outcome means. He knows that he is not dreaming.

This is the very worst outcome of them all. Arthur can wake up from a dream. If he’s in a dream, someone put him in there, or someone can pull him out. Or, someone can watch him from the other side, and keep him safe until they find a way to get him back to his desired reality. If this is reality, then Arthur has absolutely nothing tethering him to safety. He is floating in the middle of a vast and unknowable sea, worse than Limbo and absolutely unescapable.

Arthur is immediately terrified.

Arthur does not like being afraid.

Who does? Certainly not someone involved in the complexities of dreaming. Arthur’s control over what he does in a dream is mathematical. He plans out every detail. He ensures that nothing goes wrong. Right now, Arthur has no control. It is worse than dying. At least dying has a guaranteed end. Arthur cannot even use the cheat card of pulling a trigger to get himself out of this loop.

The answer, then, must lie somewhere within this day. Arthur is a reasonable man. Days do not repeat for no reason. If there is a question, there has to be an answer. Life would not look at him and decide to drive him mad forever without a just cause. If Arthur could just do something right, maybe save a life or solve a puzzle, if he can prove himself to be good again, maybe some force out there will take pity on him and put him back in the natural flow of time again. He just has to be good. That– that, he can do.

He even stops killing himself. Puts the gun away and stays far from heights. Checks the street three times before crossing. He heads into the warehouse they’ve been using as headquarters and sits down in front of Cobb, who’s eyeing Yusuf’s latest sedatives like he wants nothing more than to dive headfirst into unconsciousness again.

��So,” Arthur says as an abrupt preamble, “What are you doing to me?”

Cobb cocks his head to the side. “Pardon?”

Arthur just keeps staring him dead in the eyes. “I remember you sending me under, and now the day is repeating. What did you do to me? What were we testing?”

Cobb shakes his head slowly, looking at Arthur like he’s mad. Maybe he is. It’s only been seven days, but seven days of the same thing already feels like too many. “We’re not testing anything, Arthur. It’s just another day.”

“No, it’s not,” Arthur insists forcefully. “I’ve been here seven times now. You’re doing something, I know it.”

“Why me?” Cobb asks, genuinely confused. “You’re my friend. Why would I do anything to you?”

“You’re the only one who would,” Arthur says. It sounds terrible, so he adds on hastily, “You’re the one in charge of jobs. We all follow you. If anyone decided to send me under for something, it would be you. Just tell me what it is so I can get out of it.”

Cobb frowns. “You think you’re dreaming. Have you tried your totem?”

“Yes, I’ve tried my totem, and no, I’m not dreaming. The totem rolls true. It’s something else. I think we did a test run that’s messing with my mind.” Arthur says. He can feel his temper rising, but he tries to shove it back down again. He has always been in control. He won’t lose that tenuous thread of self preservation after only one week.

Cobb, by contrast, just looks the same as he always has. “We haven’t done anything to you in ages, Arthur. The effects would have worn off a long time ago. And besides, you’ve never had side effects from any runs other than initial surprise. You’re my best point man for a reason. You never have a problem, no matter what happens in the dream.”

Arthur starts to open his mouth, then closes it again. The problem is, Cobb’s assurance isn’t actually true. Arthur has been having problems. Ever since he started in this line of work, actually. He can’t stand to be underwater in real life, too certain that it’s just a means to wake him up from a dream. No more early morning lap swims for him, obviously, and one time he visited his family’s house by the lake and nearly threw up from the sound of all that rushing, pouring, revitalizing water.

More, too. His foot still has phantom aches from where Mal had shot it in a dream long ago. He looks for tells of a dream wherever he goes, even when he’s awake. Arthur has awful nightmares sometimes, where he’s being hunted by the dreaming for what he does to people’s minds while they’re asleep. He wakes up screaming, his throat raw. Cobb doesn’t know any of it, but of course he doesn’t. Cobb is hardly stable by himself. It takes Arthur to keep him together, and that won’t happen if Arthur permits himself to fall apart. So he stays solid. He stays good, and no one knows.

Arthur exhales slowly. Cobb trusts him implicitly. If there were anything, any experiment, any job, that could have had even the smallest of impacts on Arthur, Cobb would have said it by now. So, he forces another deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth, and shrugs it off. “Alright, then. Guess I need to get more sleep.”

“Take care of yourself,” Cobb says absentmindedly. Arthur bites back a growl of frustration. That’s Cobb, always has been– greeting-card sympathies paired with life-or-death scenarios. It’s not enough to keep a group alive, but that’s why Arthur is there, to patch the cracks in the wall before it crumbles down on all of them.

Arthur stands, heading to the door. The movement goes unnoticed by Cobb, who is already turning back to peer obsessively at the sedative. Arthur is certain that if he checks in later, he’ll find his friend passed out on the cot he keeps hidden in here, deep in a dream Arthur will never ask about.

Arthur strides out into the center of the warehouse. His whole body feels tense with worry, yet his feet carry him aimlessly past his friends, who have already started to trickle in for the morning. Cobb was his best bet at understanding this, but if he doesn’t have any idea, who would?

A foot lightly kicks Arthur’s ankle as he walks, and he nearly jumps out of his own skin. He whips around to see Eames sitting idly in a lawn chair, monitoring an unconscious Ariadne by his side. His face, usually disconcertingly casual, takes on a note of curiosity at Arthur’s obvious reaction.

“Everything alright there, Arthur?” He asks. “Someone’s twitchy today.”

“It’s nothing,” Arthur says impatiently.

Eames scoffs. “That’s an awfully interesting sort of nothing if it can get your heart racing like that. Tell me about it sometime, I’d love to hear you brush it off.”

Arthur mumbles something involving just where Eames can stick his leftover syringe, which earns him an unbothered, shameless smirk. He has to force himself to walk away before he can let Eames get to him any more than usual. It’s startling, sometimes, how easy it is for Eames to get under his skin. One would think he would develop a stronger wall against the barbs after all this time, yet even years after their first contact, he’s still rolling his eyes and biting back insults like a high schooler. Frustrating. Yet reliable.

Arthur tries to keep his eyes open the whole day, waiting for signs of why this day of all days had to repeat, but he turns up with nothing. It truly is just another day. They’re about a few weeks away from their next job, so the stress is picking up but not majorly. Crunch time won’t come until later, provided that Arthur can manage to get himself out of this time loop long enough to make it there.

The eighth day, Arthur makes himself turn up to the warehouse earlier than usual. Yusuf usually works the graveyard shift, preferring the nights so he can make his sedatives without interference, but also to keep an eye on Cobb, who’s more sleepless than any of them combined. Dreamers’ sleep schedules are always haphazard, but Cobb is the worst of them all.

Yusuf is just packing up when Arthur arrives, bleary-eyed and clutching a coffee. “Didn’t expect to see you here,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

Arthur waves the concern away. “Nothing better to do. Tell me, have you ever found yourself stuck in the same day?”

“The same day?” Yusuf asks, confused. “Yeah, some days are similar, but, you know. Time passes.”

“It hasn’t been passing for me,” Arthur confides grimly. “I’ve been repeating this same day for more than a week now. I’m not dreaming, either. I’ve tested with my totem.”

Yusuf pauses, his hand idling on the handle of his luggage. When he leans his weight back into the balls of his feet, Arthur can hear the ghostly clinking of dozens of little bottles inside. More sedatives for more days, more jobs. They’ll disappear from that bag at some point tonight, and Yusuf will unknowingly remake them in the morning, again and again until Arthur can extricate himself from this living nightmare.

“I’m not familiar with anything outside of a dream,” Yusuf admits. “You’re certain you’re not asleep?”

Arthur sighs, running a hand through his hair. “The totem says I’m not, but truthfully, I have no idea. Killing myself resets the loop. Living through the day resets the loop. I just thought, I don’t know, maybe you’d heard of someone with this problem.”

Yusuf’s gaze turns sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Arthur, but you’re on your own on this one. You’ve talked to Cobb about it, I presume?”

“Cobb can’t help,” Arthur says. “All the same, thank you for trying.”

Yusuf nods. “I’ll try and look into this. Maybe I can turn something up.”

Arthur inclines his head, knowing even now that nothing will come of it. He’s already tried researching the problem to no avail. “Just make sure you get back to me by midnight tonight.”

Yusuf looks at him searchingly, then wishes him the best of luck before leaving. Arthur watches him go and wonders what the hell he’s supposed to do with himself now. The only option is to continue testing the limits of the loop, seeing what he can and cannot do.

He ends up leaving the warehouse, getting into his car and driving out. Away. As far as he can go. He heads out of town and the next one, too, out of the state. He has to stop by a diner for lunch, unable to push off the growls of hunger from his stomach any longer. While waiting for his order to come in, Arthur realizes that there are several missed calls from Cobb and Ariadne. He hadn’t heard them come in, too feverishly fixated on the horizon always out of his reach.

He decides to call Cobb back, sliding down the seat of his booth towards the wall and keeping his voice quiet to avoid disturbing the other eaters.

“Arthur,” Cobb says in a rush of static the second he picks up. “Where are you?”

“Out,” Arthur answers vaguely. “What’s wrong?”

Oddly enough, he finds himself almost hoping for danger. Today and all of the todays before it have been exceedingly boring. If something did go wrong, it means there would be a break in the loop, and maybe he would get out after all.

“You tell me,” Cobb says. “Ariadne came to me in a panic about an hour ago, said you weren’t answering your phone. I’ve left you five voicemails, we were starting to get worried.”

Arthur’s gut twists with disappointment, and he finds himself replying with a little more bitterness than is strictly necessary. “What, a guy forgets to answer his cell for an hour or two and all hell breaks loose?”

Cobb sighs, gusty across the speaker of the phone. “You know that’s not what I mean. I’m just concerned, that’s all. Yusuf told me you were acting a bit strange today.”

Arthur snorts. Instead of helping him, Yusuf had gone to Cobb. Figures. “I’m fine. Just taking some time to myself. That isn’t illegal, is it?”

His order arrives, ferried over by a waitress so young she should probably be in school. Arthur thanks her, then tunes back into the call just in time to hear Cobb chastising for flaking on them. “You know I trust you, Arthur, but the sudden disappearance isn’t like you. The deadline is closing in. I can’t have people vanishing out of nowhere. It’s not good for the team.”

“Yeah, well, a lot happens with us that isn’t exactly good for the team,” Arthur mutters. His food is getting cold and he really just wants to hang up, feeling like a kid scolded for staying out past curfew. “I’m sure we’ll survive my day trip.”

He can hear Cobb’s voice over the phone. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Arthur’s lip curls. “How about you tell me? You and Mal?”

“That’s not fair, you know that,” Cobb breaks in. A pause. “Something really is wrong, isn’t it?”

Already, Arthur is sick of it, the tone settling into Cobb’s words like Arthur is some breakable thing, a recluse that requires special care when handled. “I’m fine, Cobb. Goodbye.”

Cobb starts to protest, but Arthur is already hanging up. Immediately, another call rings in through the line, but he shoves the cell deep down in his pocket until he can’t even feel the vibrations and digs into his food.

After that, he hits the road with a little more urgency, suddenly terrified that Cobb would do something stupid like send someone after him. Even a quick stop for gas has Arthur checking over his shoulder, certain he’ll see one of Saito’s cars pulling in one pump over.

Night falls and Arthur is far away, far enough that he can start letting his guard down. He’s several states over by this point. Arthur isn’t even sure where he is anymore, only able to tell by the frequency of certain license plates. Still he doesn’t stop driving, even when his eyelids feel heavy. It’s close to midnight now, but the white and yellow lines are still drawing him on, haunting him. Just a little further, and then maybe this day will let him go. He can sort out the drama with Cobb later. Forgiveness is always easier. They do it like breathing.

Arthur shifts in his seat. This much time spent behind the wheel has left him drained. He reaches without looking for the coffee he’d bought at the last gas station. It tastes sort of terrible, but it keeps him awake, which is what matters the most. His fingers are almost brushing the lid, and then something strange happens. He blinks, or he loses focus for just a moment, and then he’s not in the car at all, but waking up in his own bed again, back in his apartment, back where he’d started. The beginning of the loop, the day repeated once more.

Arthur screams, a guttural, frustrated sound. He can’t out-drive it, then. He reaches for the phone and books a flight, ends up literally on the opposite side of the earth by the time evening comes crashing down around him, but even on a different continent, Arthur wakes up the next day in the same place, the same bed. He can’t outrun it, no matter how far he goes.

So, he stays. Tries to talk to Cobb, who only gets worried. Tries to talk to Ariadne, who’s even worse. Eventually, he slumps to rock bottom and figures out there’s only one person left who might not get insufferably concerned about the prospect of Arthur’s rapidly deteriorating sanity.

He lets his feet spin off to a room on the side, where a certain incredibly difficult man is seated at a long table, scribbling notes and occasionally glancing at an open laptop. Eames looks up, startled, when Arthur takes a seat opposite him.

“Thought you were supposed to be helping Cobb,” Eames notes.

Arthur shrugs elaborately. “I’m always helping Cobb.”

Eames chuckles. “Fair enough. Now, have you come to ferry me a message, or are you just here to bother me and call it a check-in?”

“Depends on if you’re doing any work or just looking like it,” Arthur mutters, stung for no reason. “What are you doing anyway, online shopping?”

“Better,” Eames says, satisfied. “Cobb wants a few new forgeries. A few pretty faces to help us in the next job. Say, since you’ve obviously got nothing better to do, I’d love some help. What’s your type, Arthur? Librarians? Maybe a nun or two?”

“Bothersome but beautiful.” It rolls off the tongue before he can stop himself. Arthur will chalk that up to the mental strain of yet another week of repeated days and not read anymore into it, unlike Eames, who looks positively beatific as a slow grin spreads from ear to ear.

“Wonderfully put,” Eames says, savoring the words. “Now, I’ve got a few candidates. A or B?” He asks, turning two photos of women towards Arthur.

Arthur doesn’t even bother to look at them. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to recognize them. God forbid I ruin the element of surprise in our dream.”

No small amount of bitterness enters his voice as he says it, making Eames tear his eyes away from the women and towards Arthur. “Careful,” he says, tone uncomfortably light, “Do I hear complaining from my paragon of patience?”

Arthur snorts, staring at the floor. One of the table legs has undergone severe mutilation, probably from being recklessly collapsed over the years of having to run from one warehouse to another, all in the name of Cobb’s great game.

“I have plenty of patience,” he spits out. “What I’m starting to miss is motivation to keep going.”

Eames clears his throat pointedly. “Pretty sure those are the same thing.”

“Not actually,” Arthur muses. “Plenty of small differences to separate them. Only problem is, no one really cares about the details in the end. What matters is the big picture. And when you get bored of the big picture, Eames, there’s nothing left for you at all.”

This time, Eames really does look concerned. “What happened to you? Get up on the wrong side of the bed? Forget to buy your favorite type of hair gel and have to settle for a store brand?”

Arthur doesn’t even bother to laugh. He’s pretty sure he heard that joke two days ago, and maybe even last week, too. All said the same way. All the damn same, anyway. “What do you care? You’ll forget this conversation even happened tomorrow morning.”

He’s mostly talking to himself at this point, but Eames still reacts as if– well, as if they’d only been talking to each other, because they’re the only ones in the room. “You know, the others have been whispering about you all day. They’re saying something’s up with you, and I think I get it now.”

Arthur stretches out his legs. “The others. How specific.”

“You want specific? Cobb’s getting worried,” Eames tells him.

Arthur scoffs, an ugly sound. “Cobb’s getting– Cobb only worries when he remembers to think about us at all. He’s here for the mission, not the men.”

Eames rears back like Arthur had slapped him instead of just saying what he’s pretty goddamn sure is the truth. “Fuck you. Cobb is the only guy in this business to prioritize the safety of his guys.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Fuck you, you know I’m right. If he really cared, he wouldn’t have come back after he was reunited with his kids. Cobb cares about Cobb and you know it. Doesn’t it piss you off sometimes? Everything else does, I don’t know why you’d draw the line at this. You know,” Arthur says, drawing out the words, “It always bothered me. Him lying about Mal during the whole Fischer job. He knew she was a problem but he put us all in trouble by not saying a word. And hasn’t it started to rub you the wrong way, everything about her? He can’t stand to hurt her, not even her ghosts in his memory, but he could shoot me in a second, every time we went under. We’re expendable, Eames. We’re all expendable.”

Eames is heaving deep breaths like he’s been sprinting, but instead of getting violent, he keeps the madness tucked under, all that pent up aggression trapped in deep contractions of lungs and hidden from antagonizers in dress shirts sitting opposite him. “What’s gotten into you, Arthur? What did you see?”

Arthur snorts. “What the hell haven’t I seen? The job before Fischer, Mal’s apparition shot me in the foot and he wouldn’t even apologize. Cobb wouldn’t save us from himself, let alone anything big.”

But Eames just shakes his head. “That’s old news. You’ve kept that buried for months. Why bring it up now? You must have just dreamed with him. God, Arthur, what did you see?”

Arthur’s eyes flutter shut with hopelessness. “Nothing I didn’t already know,” he announces to the unforgiving darkness behind his eyelids, “Nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times before.”

Silence. At last, Eames’ voice breaks through the heavy weight of the room, cracked and uncertain in a way Arthur didn’t even know was possible, “I don’t know how to fix that, Arthur. I don’t know what to say.”

Arthur lets his eyes open slowly. He’s shifted back in his chair, so he’s staring up at the dingy warehouse ceiling. He wonders if killing himself again would do anything. Maybe it would just end the day a little earlier. “That’s a first.”

“Fuck you, Arthur,” Eames says, but there’s no heat to it.

“Fuck you too,” Arthur says, forcing a bit of cheer into the words. “Now, come on. Your supermodel forgeries aren’t going to get any younger. Run them by me again.”

Eames starts to protest, but Arthur is already sitting up and discussing the options for their next job, so the other man has no option but to take what Arthur is willing to give. He does keep sending worried glances Arthur’s way, which start to get under his skin. When the day resets again, Arthur will have to remind himself to stop complaining to other people. Eames, surprisingly enough, takes things a little too seriously. Never something he thought he’d say about the forger. But if there’s anything Arthur has learned while in a hellish cycle of this one same day, it’s that nothing is impossible.

He should put the whole conversation out of his mind, really, but even despite the expletives, Arthur realizes with a sinking feeling that he’d enjoyed that exchange with Eames more than any of the other ways he’d tried to fill his day. He’s got more time on his hands than he could possibly imagine. He might as well entertain himself, right?

The next day, Eames looks up, startled, when Arthur takes a seat opposite him.

“Thought you were supposed to be helping Cobb,” he notes.

Arthur shrugs elaborately. “I’m always helping Cobb.”

Eames chuckles. “Fair enough. Now, have you come to ferry me a message, or are you just here to bother me and call it a check-in?”

Arthur is less bothered this time around. “I’m here to ask a question.”

Eames arches a brow. “Didn’t realize you valued my advice so much. I’m touched, Arthur. Deeply.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “If you had all the time in the world and no consequences, what would you do?”

Eames blinks at him. “You mean, in general? How would I pass my time?”

Arthur nods. “Imagine you could do anything you wanted, and there would be absolutely no repercussions. What would you do?”

Eames blows out a long breath, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head. “That’s a good question. If there were really no consequences, I’d probably have some fun.”

“Fun,” Arthur repeats emptily. “Specifically?”

“Please tell me you know what fun is,” Eames deadpans. “Of course, for you, that might look like organizing a filing cabinet or two. You’re right, I should have specified.”

Despite this promise, Eames drifts off into silence. Arthur gestures impatiently with a free hand. “And?”

“I’m thinking,” Eames protests. “You like it when I do that, don’t you? Shoot, I’d do everything. Go gambling in Mombasa again. Take a joyride in a Ferrari that costs more than this city. Rent out an entire beach except for the pretty girls who want to sunbathe. Maybe even attempt a jewel heist. Who can say? But this question seems pointless, Arthur. Whatever I wanted, I could just do in a dream.”

“It wouldn’t mean anything,” Arthur says dismissively. “You’d know it was a dream, and when you woke up, you wouldn’t have done anything at all. Doing that stuff in real life, that’s more impressive.”

Eames snorts. “From the way you talk, I’d think you found a way. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten Saito-style rich on me. Help a brother out, would you? I could use someone buying me a round or two.”

“No wealth,” Arthur muses. “Just time.”

Eames looks thoroughly confused. “Not sure I follow, old friend. What have you done?”

There’s a low rush in Arthur’s lungs like someone is using his trachea to roll dice. On a whim, he decides to go with a gamble, and he starts telling the truth. “I’m stuck in a time loop. Not a dream, real life. The day repeats every night. Everything I do gets undone.”

Eames makes an incredulous sound in the back of his throat. “That’s absurd, Arthur. Been hitting the happy hours a little hard, have you?”

“It’s not a dream, and I’m not drunk,” Arthur says, kind of amused were it not for the fact that he’s boiling over with frustration. He’s not sure why he thought Eames of all people would believe him, but it’s even worse to know it didn’t work. “This is real.”

“I’m sure it is,” Eames starts to say soothingly, but he’s interrupted by Arthur thrusting his hand into his pocket and pulling out a cheap-looking six-sided die and rolling it on the table.

Immediately, Eames throws a hand over his eyes. “Shit, Arthur, what are you doing? None of us are supposed to see what happens to your totem except you.”

Arthur leans across the table, pulling Eames’ hand away. “I’m showing you to prove it doesn’t matter. Look, it’s on the right number. Not a dream. And I don’t care that you now know, you’ll forget when the day resets tomorrow.” He’s breathing heavily by this point, Eames staring at him with naked shock. “Do I seem crazy, Eames? Am I lying about this?”

Eames takes a shaky breath, licking his lips before he speaks. “I have to be honest, you do seem a little more like a madman than usual, but that does, uh, seem real. Alright, then. You’re in a time loop. Sure. Why not?”

Arthur blinks. “You believe me?”

Eames raises his hands in a universal gesture for what-the-fuck. “Why not?”

Arthur pauses. Something almost like relief slides over him. “I can’t keep having this conversation every day. Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows. That way, I can use it as proof instead of having to risk my totem every time.”

Eames frowns. “I don’t know, I like believing that you’d risk your dream stability for me.” At Arthur’s beleaguered sigh, he gives in. “Fine, fine. Um, a secret? I’m a really bad gambler. I’m there all the time because I think it lends a good ambience, but I rarely win.”

Arthur smirks. “Something we don’t already know, Eames. I’ve seen you run from casinos enough to know that you aren’t on a constant winning streak.”

“Fuck you,” Eames remarks absentmindedly. “Ok, you want something juicier. How about this– when I’m dreaming by myself, I always pick Adele for a song to wake me up.”

Arthur gapes at him. “You’re joking. Adele?”

Eames drags a hand over his face. “I regret this already. Yes, you heard me. Adele. She’s a wonderful singer, alright? I’m asleep practicing forgeries so often that I needed to pick a musician I wouldn’t despise after a dozen trial runs, and Adele has held up. Her songs are stuck in my head constantly, but that isn’t a bad problem, is it?”

Arthur leans back in his seat, chuckling delightedly. “Adele. I'll remember this forever.”

“Oh, shut it,” Eames mutters. “I’m sure you pick something ridiculous, too.”

“You’ll never know until you get stuck in a time loop, too,” Arthur informs him. “And for my sake, I hope that day never comes.”

Eames looks positively devious at this point, so Arthur quickly changes the topic. “So, I’m stuck in a time loop and I’m bored. What would you do?”

Eames seems affronted at the question. “Get out of here, obviously. Don’t tell me you’ve been staying in the warehouse this whole time? No wonder you look like you’re going mental.”

“I have left,” Arthur protests, “Two different days. I got a car and tried to get as far away as I could, then did the same thing with a plane the next day when it didn’t work. I’m not totally helpless.”

“That’s practically the same as staying,” Eames jeers. “God, you do need me. I bet you didn’t do a damn thing both times, just kept moving. You’re like a worker bee. Cobb may appreciate the devotion, but at this point, it’s downright pitiful.”

He stands up abruptly, making Arthur startle. “What are you doing?”

“Breaking you out of jail, if you won’t do it yourself. Come on, we’ve still got plenty of time left in the day.” Eames says, striding around the table and out the door, leaving Arthur to hurriedly follow after him.

“Where are we going?” Arthur asks.

Eames’ lip twists, thinking. “Well, I would want Mombasa, but I’m not wasting the time on a plane. There’s a casino a few streets down, it’ll do.”

“I’m not a gambler,” Arthur reminds him. “Not with cards, at least.”

“Then do it with dice,” Eames says briskly. “Or go back to work. Whatever floats your morally superior boat.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, but tags along anyway. He does his best to play along, feigning interest when Eames immediately gets lost in a round of cards, but he can’t pretend that his attention doesn’t flag not long after they arrive. It’s late enough into the day that Arthur has no shame in meandering over to the bar and ordering himself a drink. He assumes Eames will be lost in his bets and losses for a while, but he’s hardly received his drink before the other man materializes out of the crowd by his side, not quite able to disguise a pout.

“You vanished rather quickly,” Eames remarks.

Arthur barely suppresses another eye roll, opting instead to take a sip of his drink. “I told you, Eames. Casinos and I aren’t the best of friends.”

Eames pulls a face, but instead of going back to his tables, orders a drink as well and takes a seat next to Arthur at the bar. “I’ll have to work to cure you of that habit, my friend. There’s a lot to love if you just give it a chance.”

“What, like debt and drunks?” Arthur asks dubiously.

“Try camaraderie with your fellow man and maybe, even, a bit of fun,” Eames retorts. “You have your fun and I have mine. Give my world a shot every now and then, it wouldn’t kill you.”

Something in his voice strikes a chord. He falls silent, and Eames takes the opportunity to settle their bill. Arthur waits until the bartender is busy ringing up the card, then asks lowly, “Don’t tell me you’ve already finished drinking, Eames. You’ve only had one.”

“Not for me, for you,” Eames says seriously. “I don’t want you drinking heavily today. Not with the way you’ve been talking.”

Arthur’s chest suddenly feels tight, as if his ribs have clenched down on nothing. “You’re worried about me, then?” He asks, trying to keep his voice artificially light.

“Maybe I am,” Eames replies. “Now, don’t distract me, I’m trying to calculate the tip.”

Arthur watches as he closes his eyes for the mental math, then scrawls a number far higher than 20% on the bill. “Feeling generous, I see. You know it’ll just be erased tomorrow, right?”

Eames shrugs, one easy movement. “The bartender, she’ll be happy today. So will I. It’s a win-win. She’s pretty enough to deserve a good day, don’t you think?”

Arthur snorts. “That’s what this is about, then? You’re trying to sleep with the bartender?” It wouldn’t be the first time Arthur has witnessed Eames’ seemingly irresistible flirting in action. It also wouldn’t be the first time he’s felt like he has a knife lodged between his ribs.

Eames grins wolfishly, then stands, adjusting his shirt collar. “Not tonight. The only one I’m preoccupied with is you, darling.”

Arthur scoffs, shoving him absentmindedly. “Oh, shut up.”

“Never,” Eames says happily, and proceeds to tease him the whole rest of the afternoon. Arthur doesn’t mind it much. There’s a small bloom of warmth down his sternum that keeps the joking barbs from landing.

It’s this odd feeling of victory that makes Arthur wake up the next morning and take the same steps towards Eames’ place in their warehouse. Cobb attempts to call out to him, wanting Arthur’s input on their new job– dream prosthesis won’t come easy unless we make it work– but he’s already breezing past. No sleep lost on that.

Eames looks up, startled, when Arthur takes a seat opposite him.

“Thought you were supposed to be helping Cobb,” he notes.

Arthur looks him in the eyes. “I’m in a time loop. I want you on my side again.”

Eames blinks. “Pardon?”

“Time loop,” Arthur says. “I’m stuck in this day. I can prove it, too. You listen to Adele when you dream by yourself. You love her music.”

Eames’ jaw actually drops. “How on earth could you possibly know that?”

“Like I said,” Arthur says, standing again. “Time loop.”

Eames looks mightily perplexed. “If this is your idea of a joke, Arthur–”

Arthur allows himself a rare smile. “I think the real joke is that you can listen to Adele a thousand times and never get sick of it.”

Eames glares at him. “It’s–”

“Not a bad problem, I know,” Arthur interrupts. “Now, I need you to do me a favor. Cobb will come in at some point, see me missing, and raise a fuss, maybe ring my cell half a dozen times a minute until I answer. You get the drill. I need you to tell him that I’m off on important business so he won’t pester me.”

Eames arches a brow. “What important business?”

Arthur shrugs. “Haven’t decided yet.”

Eames heaves a dramatic sigh. “All the time in the world, and you don’t put a single ounce of thought into it. Tragic. Well, I’m not going to abandon you to your own lack of imagination. Come on, we should hit the road before traffic comes.”

Arthur lets out a quick, curious breath. “I haven’t invited you anywhere.”

“Yes, but I’ve invited myself,” Eames says. “That’s why you told me about the loop, wasn’t it? Don’t tell me it was just because you wanted an excuse for me to call you in sick for the day, that’s boring. If this day doesn’t count for anything, there is no damn chance I’m working.”

Arthur searches for a reason to protest this and comes up short. They did have some fun the previous day, why not seize that moment again? “Alright. Your car or mine?”

“Mine, obviously,” Eames says. “Is it even a question?”

Arthur snorts as they head into the parking lot. “You know I can drive, right?”

“Maybe you can, but the greater question is if you should. You’d go the speed limit, I fear.” Eames tells him, unlocking the door and sliding behind the wheel.

“That’s the point of the limit,” Arthur points out. “And where are we going, exactly?” A beat later, he remembers the previous day. “No gambling. None.”

Eames hums under his breath, thinking. “You’re no fun. You know what, since I’m nice, I’ll do something for you. We’re going to a museum.”

“A museum,” Arthur says dryly. “And people ask me if I’m acting strangely.”

Eames pretends to be offended. “No need to disparage me, Arthur. I, too, am interested in the sciences.”

Arthur snorts. “Name one science.”

“Anatomy,” Eames answers, wiggling his brows. “Hands-on, preferably.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “I regret asking. Tomorrow, I’ll tell someone else about the loop. Someone reasonable.”

“Rude,” Eames hums, pulling onto the thoroughfare. “Besides, I doubt that. The fact that you went to the trouble of memorizing a secret tells me you’ve been through this before. I’m your best option, darling. No one else is better than me.”

Again, Arthur tries to argue but can’t, so he pretends the sentence is too stupid for words instead of dead on the money. Eames can’t read his mind, but he’s grinning like he can, anyway.

True to his word, Eames does take them to a museum. Natural sciences. He seems to have a purpose as they wend through security and the various school groups scattered throughout the exhibits. It gets busy the further they head into the core of the museum. For a brief moment, Arthur loses sight of Eames in the crowd. Heart in his throat, he spins around, but sees nothing but the churning masses of strangers. Alone again, he is, and the day hasn’t even started yet. Something like a scream starts bubbling up in his throat, but then Eames is in front of him again, having doubled back to find him.

“Try and stay with me next time, huh?” He asks, one brow raised, and grabs Arthur by the hand when he starts moving again into a wing curving behind the main stairwell. Everything around them is dark, shifting shadows of coats and boots and displays, except for the bright point of contact where their two hands meet.

Arthur stares at it instead of where they’re going, lets Eames pull him whichever way the wind blows. Their hands seem to fit together perfectly. Dream-made. He swears he can feel his pulse thundering through his fingers, certain Eames must feel it too. Or maybe this is the rhythm of Eames’ heartbeat he feels in the whorls of his fingerprints, one divine pattern rippling through them both. Ba-dum, ba-dum. Two steps forward. A thousand miles cleared.

At last, they escape the main crowd and duck down a narrow passage. Vaguely, Arthur glances around and realizes they’re in the gemstones exhibit. Even with fewer people around, Eames doesn’t drop his hand, so Arthur doesn’t either. He is reminded of a contest with his school friends when he was just a boy. He was never the first to break, never the one to back down. Two men playing on a railway, the engine rattling towards them. He won’t go if Eames won’t.

Eames stops walking at last, and Arthur is consequently jerked to a stop beside him. “Look,” Eames says in a hushed whisper, pulling Arthur close by the arm so he can whisper in his ear. “That’s the biggest diamond this side of the coast.”

Eames’ voice is awestruck. Arthur drinks in the sight of him, illuminated only by the glow of the display lights around the glass case. His eyes are alight with mischief, but Arthur doesn’t recognize the usual drop in his stomach when the other man gets up to trouble until it’s far too late.

He should say something, he thinks. Arthur hasn’t even looked at the diamond yet. It simply doesn’t matter. “You came here to sightsee a rock?”

Eames sighs, a tortured soul with no one around to share his vision. “Think of the value. And it’s right there.”

“Surrounded by a case,” Arthur points out. “It looks solid.”

“You wouldn’t know unless you tried it,” Eames whispers.

Arthur’s eyes widen as he realizes what Eames is talking about. “No. Be serious.”

Eames grins brilliantly. “You said this was a loop, didn’t you? The day resets? No consequences? You have to take advantage of that at least once, surely. Look, it’s right there in front of you. All you have to do is reach out and take it.”

Arthur’s entire body is thrumming with adrenaline. “We’d be caught in moments.”

“You don’t know unless you try it. If it doesn’t work, you can yell at me tomorrow. If it does,” Eames laughs, quietly raucous and a hair’s breadth from the shell of Arthur’s ear, “you’ve got the best story in the world.”

Slowly, Arthur turns his head to stare at the diamond. It catches the light magnificently, he will admit. He can’t deny that the idea is tempting. “You’re crazy.”

“No,” Eames says with satisfaction. “You’re crazy for listening.”

Fuck. “Get ready to run.”

A caught breath by his ear; Eames, genuinely startled. Arthur doesn’t have time to be stung that Eames didn’t actually think he would do it, because he’s already taking two massive steps forward until he’s a hair’s breadth from the glass. He reaches into his pocket for something heavy and comes up with his cell. The metal breaks the case on the first go, stinging his knuckles as the skin comes in contact with the broken glass. Instantly, alarms wail through the display, security guards startled into action.

Arthur grabs the diamond and runs. He doesn’t even bother to look for Eames, trusting the other man to follow him. Sure enough, as he whips through the twisting, dark halls, there’s a disbelieving laugh by his side.

An arm wraps around Arthur when they break into the main room, forcing him to a stop. “I thought you said to run,” Arthur says, nervous.

“Only back there. We need to blend in,” Eames tells him. He doesn’t remove the arm. They keep walking.

Arthur shoves his bleeding hand, the one with the diamond, into his pocket. He can feel the cool weight of it warming against his palm, the facets true.

Eames ducks his face into the space under Arthur’s ear as they walk, appearing to all the world as two people sharing a good secret. “I can’t believe you actually did it.”

“You asked,” Arthur says petulantly.

Eames’ grin is electric. “If I knew you would do everything I wanted, Arthur, I would have asked for a lot more.”

Something swoops in the pit of Arthur’s stomach, something that makes his next step a little wobbly. They’re about halfway through the main gallery when the shouting draws close, security guards on them again. Arthur almost hopes that their charade will work until one of them starts pointing at them. Swearing, he breaks into a run again, Eames at his side. He feels weightless, sprinting towards the security doors. Everything seems in slow motion– the chaos of the tourists, the dark shadows of the guards as they chase towards the pair– and then something heavy knocks Arthur’s legs out from under him, taking him down.

He rears up, ready to fight, but he’s surrounded by guards who cuff him in moments, a gun to his head while they pull the diamond from his pocket. Eames is arrested next to him, both of them dragged from the museum into waiting cop cars.

Arthur glances over his shoulder, unable to hide a grin. “We had a good run,” he calls over.

Eames laughs broadly. “Remember this one, Arthur.”

Then Arthur is shoved into a separate car, and the only sign that Eames was there at all is that laugh from down the road, mad and loud and goddamn addictive. He hears it tumbling in his ears all through the drive to the local police station, even when they try to question him, even when they lock him up. He simply has to wait out the hours until nightfall, and lets himself be entertained by the rush of adrenaline still coursing through him. Arthur has done crazy things before, but they’d only ever been in dreams. This was insanity, and better still, it was real. He feels like he’s been drowning all his life and only now come up for air. He wants it forever.

Arthur wakes up in his own bed, wrists uncuffed, hands uncut. The memory of that madman’s laugh is echoing through his ears, tumbling in his mind and making him mad enough to reach for his cell, smile, and dial someone.

Eames sounds very confused over the phone. “Arthur? Why are you calling me? I’m maybe ten minutes from the warehouse. Surely whatever has gone wrong can wait until I get there.”

“I’m in a time loop and you love Adele,” Arthur informs him. “You know what, I’ve come around to it. She’s not bad.”

“I appreciate that,” Eames says, then, “What? How did you know?”

“You never listen when I say time loop,” Arthur chastises him. “You’re still in your apartment, aren’t you? I’ll pick you up. Bring swim trunks.”

“I think I like it when you’re bossy,” Eames remarks absentmindedly. “I assume you’ve cleared our absence with Cobb?”

“Cobb can shove it up his ass,” Arthur remarks, and smiles when he hears Eames choking on his coffee.

“I don’t know what you’ve done with Arthur, but I quite like the change,” Eames says when he opens the passenger door to Arthur’s car. “And, speaking of which, what the hell have you done with Arthur?”

“I’m still me,” Arthur informs him breezily as he cuts across traffic.

Eames immediately fastens his seatbelt, swearing under his breath when Arthur takes erratic turns. “Why the hell are you carting around like you’re a getaway driver? Really, what has gotten into you?”

“I want a vacation,” Arthur says. “Let’s go somewhere fun. And sunny.”

For a long, frightening moment, Eames looks like he’s going to say something stupid like turn the car around, and then he just grins, shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s doing. “Whoever gave you a lobotomy overnight, darling, I’d like to shake their hand.”

“Fuck off,” Arthur grins as he exits onto the freeway.

“Fuck you too,” Eames says fondly.

They exchange idle chatter as they drive off. Eames rolls his window down, lets the wind course through the car and thoroughly mess up both of their hair. Briefly, Arthur feels a spit of annoyance rise up in him like a flare, an old habit that wants him to shut the windows and comb his hair until it lies straight again.

The anger is gone just as quickly, though, when he steals a glance to the side and sees Eames right there, skipping out on his day just because Arthur asked, and looking more free than Arthur has seen him in a very long time. It occurs to Arthur that he is not the only one who has been spiraling as of late, and even if Eames isn’t in a time loop, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been subject to stress. There are dark circles under his eyes, heavy as stone, and a tension in his shoulders that only starts to release once they’re half an hour from the city.

This is good for both of them. Arthur shakes his head slightly, raising a hand to at least somewhat soothe the errant pieces of hair back into place. He doesn’t even think he bothered to gel it today. Why bother, after all? Eames tracks the movement like a dog hunting prey, his eyes wide. His mouth opens as if he’d like to say something, but his tongue darts out to lick his lips and he stops himself before a single syllable comes out.

“You wanted a day at the coast?” Eames asks, squinting at the bright sun, when Arthur finally stops driving.

It’s early enough that it’s easy to find a place to park in the sandy asphalt lot. Arthur nods, rolling his shoulders experimentally to try and release the pinch that’s settled between his bones. “When’s the last time you were at the beach, Eames? Outside of a job, I mean.”

Eames whistles. “Not sure. Then again, my memory’s been bad anyway.”

Arthur ducks his head. “I know what you mean.”

They all do. With the amount of times they’ve been sent into dreams, it’s easy to blur the lines between sleep and waking hours. Arthur has a pool of memories that he swears are real, just not enough to say for sure. Maybe he was here yesterday. Maybe he’s never been here at all. His mind would not know the difference.

It’s too fine a day for desperate musing, though, so Arthur forces a chuckle and says, “I can tell you’ve been stuck in that office too long. Your tan could use some work.”

Eames feigns outrage. “Pot and kettle, mate. You look like you were born in a filing cabinet.”

Arthur snorts, then heads away from the car towards the sand. He can’t help a deep breath of salt air– joke as he might, he truly forgot something could smell that fresh– and feels himself relax. Warm already, he strips his shirt off, letting the heat spread over his skin in rippling waves of summer.

A slight choking sound to his side, so quiet Arthur almost doesn’t notice it until he glances to his left. Eames has followed him like a good dog, and he’s watching Arthur, again with those wide eyes from back in the car. It’s like he’s never seen Arthur out of a dress shirt, some sort of teenage schoolboy bullshit. Arthur is certain it must have happened at some point, that Eames would have seen him shirtless, but maybe not. Eames would be capable of handling it, though. They’re not five.

Still, it does seem to take Eames an unnaturally long time to drag his eyes from the shadows of Arthur’s ribs, the swell of skin and flesh and bone towards his waist. Arthur won’t be troubling himself with what Eames may or may not find there, though. He’s already walking farther, sinking into a stray deckchair left behind by an absentminded beachgoer.

Truthfully, he isn’t entirely sure why he made Eames come with him at all. The beach isn’t an activity that requires another person, and Arthur could probably find more of his ill-gotten peace without a second soul around. Still, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind this morning that he wouldn’t call Eames, that he wouldn’t need him there, too. Another half of the whole.

Maybe it’s because, with Eames there, no one will call him from the home base and start asking questions about why he didn’t check into work that day. Yes, that must be it. It hadn’t happened the previous day, which means that Eames must be assuring Cobb and the others that he’s with Arthur. This is about security, obviously. About not being bothered. Eames can do whatever the hell he wants. Arthur is simply going to be here and be fine.

A shadow passes over Arthur’s form, and then a glass clinks onto the arm of the chair next to him. Arthur cracks open his eyes and sees that Eames has returned with two drinks, one for each.

“Where the hell did you find that?” Arthur asks, bemused.

Eames grins broadly. “I picked the lock on a minibar on a nearby dock. And don’t say a damn thing about it being too early to drink, I won’t hear sermons when you’re the one who came up with this whole idea.”

Arthur shakes his head, but laughs anyway, quiet under his breath in a way that makes certain only Eames will hear it. “You’re a fascinating man.”

“I could say the same thing about you,” Eames says, dragging over a chair so they can sit side by side. “All this time I’ve known you, and you rarely exhibit symptoms of spontaneity.”

Something rotten curls in Arthur’s stomach. “It’s not spontaneous, this. Let’s just say I’ve had plenty of time to think it through.”

“Right, right,” Eames says. “The time loop. You mentioned it on the phone.”

Arthur arches a brow. “You were paying attention?”

“You caught my attention with a certain secret I know for a fact I’ve never told a soul. Plus, I’ve never known you to make things up. If you say time loop, then shoot. Time loop.” Eames says, taking a long swallow of his drink, then makes a face. “Ugh. Practically lukewarm.”

Arthur stares at him. “You know, that’s still a wonder to me. You believe me every time.”

Eames meets his eyes steadily. “Like I said, you’re not the lying type. Besides, in our line of work, I’ve learned to stop thinking things are too crazy to ever happen. Usually, I’m proven wrong.”

Arthur shakes his head. “I’m not lying, and it’s not a dream.”

“So you’re just repeating the day?” Eames asks. “Shoot, I’d fuck around, too.” He leans forward eagerly. “How many times have you done this? Don’t tell me you got Cobb out here, that I won’t believe. The man wouldn’t go a day without a sedative if he could help it.”

Arthur can’t look at him anymore. “I haven’t shared a day with a single person but you. Nothing outside of conversations, I mean.”

Eames is oddly quiet, and when Arthur dares to steal a peek at him, he’s sitting perfectly straight. Gone is the usual slouch, the avant-garde curl of his spine. Arthur would say he’s never seen him so ill at ease, but Eames doesn’t look uncomfortable. Just– surprised, maybe. But not necessarily in a bad way.

“So I’m your top choice for road trips,” Eames says, each syllable trapped in this forced carefree voice that makes Arthur want to run. “Good, good. People have said I’m wonderful to be around, so this makes perfect sense to me. And how– how many times have we done this? Gone out and had a good time?”

Arthur, too, feels the need to keep his spirits light. They’re paper dolls under a magnifying glass, any wrong move would expose this moment to be as fragile as it feels. “Only a few. I– I didn’t want to ask at first.”

“Why not?” Eames asks, and Arthur might be lying but he swears there’s an undercurrent of actual hurt in his voice. “We know each other, don’t we?”

Arthur takes a sip of his drink to buy time to think of an answer that won’t make Eames look at him like that anymore. Down and out, like a kicked puppy. All big eyes and lips tugged low. “I thought you didn’t like me. You do have a fondness for making fun of me.”

“Bullshit,” Eames says, startling in his earnestness. “We’re not– we aren’t enemies, Arthur, we’re us. Fuck, is this why you made Cobb go get me in Mombasa for the Saito job? You thought I wouldn’t want to see you?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Arthur asks desperately. “Besides, I would have stuck out like a sore thumb in your little den of gamblers and you know it.”

Eames snorts. “That’s not far from wrong. None of my friends iron their pocket squares.” At Arthur’s sour look, he laughs for real but quiets down again. “And no, I wouldn’t have been mad to see you. I would have been happy about it.”

“Happy,” Arthur repeats on instinct. Hearing the word makes him respond like a marionette with tugged strings. So good to have a purpose without even being forced to think about it. He doesn’t believe he could think right now, not at all.

“Yeah,” Eames says, staring at the sky. “I would have been happy.”

They go quiet for a while. The sun rises. By the time noon comes upon them, the prolonged warmth has made Arthur feel limp and boneless, the world sweet with sleepiness. If he looked in the mirror, Arthur thinks he wouldn’t see a single furrow in his brow, not one crease around his eyes. All the troubles in the world have been smoothed over by one good morning in good company.

Eames rises, stretches, and looks over at Arthur fondly. “We should get out of the sun. Burns would ruin today. Plus, getting something to eat would be for the best.”

Arthur groans at the thought of moving. “Go catch me a fish or something.”

Eames laughs, a full-chested that makes his eyes as warm as the sun. “I have many skills, Arthur, but I lack that one. Come on, now. Get your arse out of that chair.”

Arthur glares at him dourly, but forces himself to his feet. He raises his hand to rub circles on the opposite shoulder where the joint has gone stiff, and Eames watches his fingers with perfect precision, hungry as he’d mentioned.

They beat a slow, ambling retreat back to the car. There’s a diner not far, and within half an hour, they’re munching down on sandwiches and drinking cold ice water. Arthur has entertained fine business luncheons with many courses crafted by expert chefs, yet he swears this simple meal tastes better than anything before. Once they’re done eating, they waste a few hours on the boardwalk, peeking in shops and making fun of the contrived boutiques that have sprung up out of nowhere.

All too soon, Arthur’s sun-started lethargy starts to catch up with him. Eames teases him for the way his eyelids keep drooping, but tells Arthur that he should get some rest anyway. There’s a local hotel nearby offering early check-in; Arthur suggests that they book a room. That way, they won’t have to drive back in the evening. It won’t matter that they won’t be home, this day will just reset anyway and all this good will be erased like their footsteps in the sand.

Arthur hardly remembers stumbling from the car into the hotel and asking for a room. The memories come in snatches– talking to the receptionist, taking the key in his hand, unlocking the door and just managing to get his shoes off before promptly passing out on the bed. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t remember even being able to crawl under the covers, but when he wakes an hour or so later, there’s a blanket tucked around him.

Eames can’t even make fun of him, because he’s sprawled out on the couch, the TV remote dangling loosely from his fingers. Arthur takes a moment to savor this moment– the dark eyelashes fluttering with every breath, the even keel of his chest, the way that, for once, his eyes aren’t darting around the room like he expects to be ambushed at every moment– and then gives the rest up to fate, pulling himself out of the bed and onto the ground.

He keeps the movements soft and quiet, but Eames still startles awake, eyes flashing open. Arthur can see the moment he realizes that it’s only Arthur making noise, how he sags against the sofa again.

“Sorry to wake you,” Arthur says, his voice prickly from sleep.

Eames shakes his head, dragging a tired hand over his face. “Didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep at all. I’m not usually the type to nod off, you’d better not tell a soul about this.”

He’s joking, but Arthur can’t quite find it within him to laugh along. “Don’t worry,” he says, lip curling slightly, “you’ll forget anything happened tomorrow morning.”

Eames’ face tenses. He stands up, walks over to Arthur, really looks at him. Arthur can’t fathom what he sees. “It is getting to you, isn’t it?” He asks gently, one hand reaching out to rest on Arthur’s shoulder. It feels like an anchor in the longest night, the deepest ocean, of Arthur’s entire life. “Repeating every day, I mean. No one remembering but you.”

“How could it not?” Arthur can’t hide the bitterness in his voice. “Nothing we do today matters. It’ll all be erased tomorrow.”

“It will matter to you,” Eames says. “That’s enough, I think.”

His voice is earnest, and Arthur realizes that he truly believes in what he’s saying. That even if the world only goes on for Arthur, it’s still worth it. It is enough.

Arthur’s throat feels uncomfortably hot. He wonders if Eames can feel the heat prickling down to his shoulder, where the hand remains. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I do,” Eames says simply. Oh.

They pass the rest of the day quietly, meandering in and out of shops, being reckless with their money but mostly with their hours. At the end of the day, when evening tumbles over the beachfront town, they return to the hotel, and it is only now that Arthur realizes that their room only has a single bed. Eames doesn’t seem affected in the slightest, except for a slight flush in his cheeks. It surprises Arthur, how easy the whole thing is. Easy to climb into bed with a friend. Easy to hear the quiet rhythm of his breath in the dark. Easy to lean over until Arthur’s shoulder is pressing against the warm solidity of Eames’ chest. Arthur wants to tell himself to stay awake forever, to not fall asleep so he make every moment of this last as long as he can, the two of them so close, but Arthur is not always in control, and his eyes still remember the weight of the day, and soon, exhaustingly, he sleeps.

Arthur wakes up alone and cold. His hands reach out on instinct for a man who is not there, and it takes him aback how disappointed he feels. He only had Eames in his bed for a few hours, and already, it feels like his whole world has been ripped away.

Arthur sits up slowly, rubbing at his eyes. Not for the first time, he is struck by how exhausting his world has become. The thought of getting up, of trying at all, of going through the trouble of existing just for all that progress to be undone again like cheap thread pulling out of threadbare clothes, makes him want to throw up. Eames, across the city, has no memory of a sunlit beach, a shared bed, and that makes Arthur want to die. The whole world feels microwave-reheated, dull and barren and utterly without interest.

So, for the first time, Arthur doesn’t try at all. He lies still and silent in his bed. He tries to sleep but can’t, so he stares at the ceiling and pretends he’s a corpse. That might be the only way he escapes the loop, packed in a coffin for good. His phone vibrates on his nightstand and Arthur ignores it. This goes on for a while, until Arthur loses patience and surges out of bed long enough to sweep the phone into a nightstand drawer and permanently silence the thing.

He assumes that’ll be the end of it, until he hears a loud knocking on his door about an hour later. Checking the clock, Arthur realizes it’s about early noon. Whatever. He closes his eyes again. Whoever’s there will go away soon enough.

Only, they don’t. The knocking continues, and then a voice starts to call out his name, muffled by the door and distance from his bed. Arthur still doesn’t answer. It doesn’t matter if his caller is upset, they’ll forget tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. There’s a metallic scratching at the door, and then, confusingly enough, someone’s in his bedroom.

A soft voice. “What the fuck are you doing, Arthur?”

Arthur slots open his eyes to see Eames standing over him. Genuine bewilderment fills him. “Why the hell are you here?” Arthur asks incredulously. “You don’t even remember yesterday, what the fuck.”

Eames squints. “Obviously I remember yesterday. You were normal yesterday. Not today. What happened, you got dumped?”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Nothing happened. I’ve come to terms with reality. Go back to work, Eames. Tell Cobb I’m fine.”

“I’m not here for Cobb,” Eames says, and sounds so sincerely stung that Arthur actually bothers to open his eyes all the way this time. “I’m your friend, you arse, and I don’t take kindly when you disappear then don’t answer my phone calls. Or when I knock.”

“You knocked a lot,” Arthur comments.

“Yeah, and you didn’t answer any of them,” Eames mutters. He looks like he wants to use far harsher words, then sighs and sits down on the corner of Arthur’s bed. “I’ve never seen you like this. What happened? If this is about the job– look, Arthur, I’ve got my qualms too, but you could talk to us first.”

“The job,” Arthur muses. It’s been a while since he actually bothered to think about work. “What don’t you like about the job, again?”

Eames cuts him a sharp glance. “Don’t ask me that. As if there aren’t a hundred reasons to dislike what Cobb has planned. Is that it, then? You think this is a step too far?”

Arthur laughs. “This has nothing to do with the job.”

“This has everything to do with the job,” Eames explodes. “It’s fucked and we all know that. But you talk to me first about it before you give up, Arthur. You talk to any one of us. You don’t disappear out of nowhere. You don’t.”

Arthur honestly expects to see blood welling up from all the places his own words have struck flesh and bone. “Why do anything?” He echoes tonelessly. “You won’t remember this tomorrow. I could say anything in the world and you’d forget it. You hate me today but you’ll go back to normal tonight.”

And it’s true. Arthur could cut him to the quick, say a hundred terrible things and ruin this man forever. He thinks he’s seen enough of him to know the precise knives to launch, the ones that would make Eames despise him. He could burn this bridge for good, and then the next morning, he would be knocking on Arthur’s door again like clockwork. There are no impacts. No effects. Yet Arthur holds his tongue anyway.

Eames’ eyes hold pain without anything to hurt them. “I wish I knew what you were talking about, Art, but you’re going to have to tell me. I can’t read that mind.”

Arthur moves his gaze away from Eames, which aches, to the ceiling, which does nothing at all. “I’m in a time loop. Every day repeats and I’m the only one who remembers.”

“Alright,” Eames says steadily. “What day is this? How many times have you done it?”

Arthur jerks upright. His hair must be a mess, still sleep-mussed, but he doesn’t care. “You believe me? But I haven’t even told you the secret. The one only you know.”

“I don’t need a secret,” Eames says simply. “I’ve never known you to make things up. If you say time loop, then shoot. Time loop.”

“You said that yesterday,” Arthur whispers. Maybe before, too. He can’t remember. All the days blend together, a watercolor portrait descending into unintelligible, colorful soup.

“I’ll say it tomorrow,” Eames insists. “And the day after, too. However long it takes.”

“I don’t get it,” Arthur says. Both of them sitting on the bed, he’s close enough to study Eames’ face like a museum exhibit, searching for signs of reason in the middle of all this mess. “You’re so nice to me now, but we haven’t even done anything yet. I haven’t earned it yet.”

“You don’t have to earn anything. We’re friends, darling. I look out for you and you look out for me,” Eames says reproachfully.

Arthur nods thickly. The expression on his face must be truly tragic, because Eames clicks his tongue and reaches out, taking Arthur in his arms. Arthur chokes on air and wraps himself around Eames, breathing in the scent of his cologne, the fabric of his shirt. One of his hands fists in the material, his own personal way of guaranteeing that Eames won’t slip away into another turn of the loop.

“I’m not going away,” Eames says calmly. “Not even in the loop. I’ll come find you tomorrow, every day until you wake up. You aren’t losing me.”

“I always do,” Arthur gasps, his voice muffled into the crook of Eames’ neck. “No matter what I say, no matter what we do, you’re gone. Nothing matters.”

“Everything matters,” Eames contradicts. “Just come talk to me. Catch me up on what we’ve done. I’m still me, Arthur. We’ll pick up where we left off.”

His thumb rubs comforting circles onto the small of Arthur’s back. “I don’t deserve this,” Arthur says thickly.

“And why the hell would you believe that?” Eames asks, thoroughly nonplussed. “You aren’t the type to wallow, Arthur. You know your worth, but if you’ve spent too much time in this damn loop and you can’t remember, I’ll remind you. Over and over again, because you’ve saved my life so many times I’ve lost count, and it’s time for me to repay the favor. It’s you and me, Arthur. It’s you and me.”

“You and me,” Arthur repeats brokenly.

“That’s right,” Eames whispers. “Now, what do you want to do today? We can go out, or–”

“Can we stay here?” Arthur asks quietly. He’s had fun on every last tangent, but today, he just wants to sit, pressed up against the warmth of Eames’ chest, and remember how to put the pieces back together in a way that makes sense. For once, the burden of time doesn’t weigh on him. In fact, the possibility of another day like this, with Arthur peaceful and wanted, calls to him like a drug.

“That sounds good to me.” Still, Eames doesn’t move away quite yet. Arthur breathes in the peace of the morning, and at last, he starts to think. About Eames, mainly. About every bend in the road that has led them here.

He’s had many years of knowing the other man, but he hasn’t used them, not really. Always reverting back to the familiar pattern of bickering, even when he senses that there could be more. Refusing to allow himself the privilege of being close. Not believing that maybe, just maybe, Eames could want him in the way that Arthur wants Eames.

And how is that? At last, blessed with the relief of time, Arthur realizes it. Eames is everything. The angel on his shoulder, the demon in his ear. Urging him in a dark museum to steal a diamond. Telling him that the whole world can go to hell so long as Arthur comes out standing. This isn’t just a friendship, not to him. Maybe it hasn’t been for a while. Maybe it never should be again.

“I love you,” Arthur says, or he tries to. The words don’t come out quite right for reasons he cannot explain. “I love you,” he tries again, but something strange is going on. The words are distorted, like he’s underwater.

The feeling persists, pressure building on his temples. Arthur’s lungs expand and contract without getting him any air. It’s like drowning, the world fading to nothingness, and then he wakes up. Not in his own bed, but on a cot in a gray room. After a moment, the world comes into focus. Arthur is propped up on a makeshift bed in the warehouse they’ve been using to plan this job. Yusuf is idly checking the time with a stopwatch in his hand, and Cobb is starting to peer over at him.

“There you are,” Cobb says. “Now, how was it? Tell us everything. There are always kinks to be worked out with the first trial, but we really did have high hopes for this one–”

Arthur cuts him off, choking on nothing. “It was a dream?”

Cobb frowns, perplexed. “Yes, Arthur, it was a dream. You knew that when we sent you in.”

“No,” Arthur says. Everything is wrong. He’s in the clothes he was before, but the air feels different than it had. He’s out of the loop, that is certain, but this isn’t right, either. It can’t be right. “No, I wasn’t in a dream. I tried my totem so many times and it told me I was in real life.”

He paws feverishly at the needle in his arm, yanking it out and rushing off the cot like it might burn him. He stares around at the warehouse, head snapping from corner to corner like a caged animal.

“Yes,” Cobb replies, somehow still calm, “That was the point, remember? Dream prosthesis. A way of supplanting reality such that there is no way to recall that the patient is in a dream. Totems will fail to register that the user is in a dream.”

Arthur stares at him, chest heaving, and at last, he starts to remember. The loop– it was a dream after all. That was the point. He and Cobb, they’d designed it together. With the concept of finding victims while they were asleep rising in notoriety, targets are trained to recognize a dream when they were in it. The only solution, then, was to convince the target that they weren’t in a dream, even when they tried to wake themselves up, just like Arthur had so many times.

Cobb had pitched it and Arthur had been horrified, but he’d also been a little bit fascinated. The idea was impossible, and impossibilities were alluring. He had just wanted to see if he could do it. And then, when the tech worked, Arthur volunteered to be the first to test it. He would go under and they would see what would happen. They would pull him out before brain damage set in, but Arthur would be able to mess around as much as he wanted. Targets would only be able to wake once they had discovered an all-important message. In this case, a secret more important than any other. There would be a failsafe in place, but it hadn’t worked. Instead, Arthur was forced to live through loop after loop, unable to escape, driven into madness and desperation and at last, at long last, the desired secret.

Arthur feels sick to his stomach. “Could you see what happened? Did you see what I did in the dream?”

Cobb shakes his head. “No one was down there with you, Arthur. That’s why I need you to tell me what happened–”

A voice cuts him off, footsteps approaching behind Arthur. “Cobb, shut it. The bloke looks ready to vomit. Work can wait.”

Arthur turns, and there he is, Eames at last, real and out of Arthur’s head. He has no idea about any of this, Arthur realizes. All this work for nothing. He probably doesn’t even care. A figment of Arthur’s imagination wanted to believe that Eames could love him too, just so Arthur could confess, but the real Eames won’t want this. He isn’t a dream. None of this is.

Bile rises in the back of his throat. This time, Arthur thinks he might actually throw up. Sweat sparking on his brow, he starts to move for the door, kicking into a run once he’s out of sight. It doesn’t matter what they think, he needs to get out of here now, before he vomits or does something worse, like start to weep. There is no Eames in this world who would knock on his door when he disappeared. No Eames next to him on the sunkissed beach, wanting him first. No one laughing one jail cell down, no one buying him drinks and pledging to make his loop worth living for.

He makes it out of the warehouse and down the alley behind it, out of view from the windows. Arthur gets his back to a brick wall and sinks down it, heedless of the dirt no doubt building up on his dress shirt. None of it was real. All of Eames’ promises, no more than figments of his imagination. A thousand ways to delude himself until he could admit that he loved Eames more than himself, and now he has nothing to show for it at all.

At least no one else had known. Once he collects himself, he can force himself back in there and put out the fires, maybe even tell Cobb what he wants to know. He won’t ever move on, but he can make the others believe he did. That, at least, should count for something.

Only, there’s one member of the crew who won’t be that open to ignorance. A pair of fine dress shoes appear before Arthur’s crouched form. He knows them immediately. He shouldn’t look, shouldn’t poison himself like this with the tantalizing idea of the man before him, but Arthur, like always, cannot resist Eames when he’s right there within reach.

Arthur looks up slowly, forcing himself to stand. It takes considerable effort to meet Eames’ gaze, which is worried like it had been this false morning in the dream of Arthur’s apartment. The expression is perfectly the same, even down to the minute details of every last furrow in his brow.

“What happened in there?” Eames asks quietly.

“I woke up,” Arthur says tersely. “Tell Cobb his plan needs fine-tuning. It works a little too well.”

“I won’t tell him shit until I know you’re okay,” Eames says, suddenly wrathful. “We all knew this plan was a fool’s errand, and then he had to go and put you in there– He should have been the one to go under first, and I fucking told him so, but he’s a coward. It shouldn’t have been you, Arthur. It shouldn’t have been you.”

One of Eames’ hands flies up to Arthur’s forehead to check his temperature. They both look equally surprised at the gesture, and Eames immediately snatches his hand away. “I’m fine,” Arthur croaks, obviously not fine. He still feels like he might throw up if he thinks about the loop for more than a few seconds.

Eames snorts. “I’ve heard five-year-olds lie more convincingly.” Then: “I’ll kill him, I swear to God. Look at you.”

“That’s not great for my ego,” Arthur chokes out. “At least tell me you think I’m handsome before you use my looks as a reason this job should get scrapped.”

Arthur waits for Eames to laugh or tell him to fuck off, but instead he just sighs, deep and bone-rattling. “Let’s go home,” he says suddenly. “I don’t want you to have to be here anymore.”

Arthur’s brow creases. “Don’t I have to talk to Cobb again? He’ll be wanting details on the program.”

A sudden, violent rage pierces Eames’ eyes. “If Cobb asks for a damn thing from you in the next week, I’ll push him out of the window. Putting you through that– I’ll bet the failsafe didn’t work either, did it? He knew the coding was shaky. God, I’ll kill him. I will.”

Arthur reaches out on instinct, leftover residue from the loop, and slips his hand into Eames’. “Forget about him. I like the idea of going back to my place. If you don’t mind driving–”

Eames startles when Arthur takes his hand, but he doesn’t drop it, either. “Of course I’ll drive. I don’t think you’re capable of staying on the road, let alone between the lines.”

Arthur wants to protest this, but his head is still fuzzy from waking up, so he stays quiet and lets Eames lead him back to the parking lot, into the car. The ignition starts. Arthur watches it absentmindedly, feeling as if he could be a thousand miles away and seeing the whole thing through the screen of a TV. Eames keeps stealing anxious glances his way, and doesn’t even take the opportunity to needle Arthur about his driving or the state of his clothes. He must really be out of sorts, then. He feels it, too.

He blinks and they’re in his apartment. Eames is grabbing him a glass of water and telling him to sit down. Arthur slumps in one of his kitchen chairs, and hardly even notices the water when it’s deposited in front of him. “It felt so real,” he says quietly. “I know that was the point, but still. It was real to me.”

“What happened?” Eames asks. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“Not physically,” Arthur admits. Already, the whole thing seems ridiculous. A big mess out of nothing. “It was a time loop. The same day repeated over and over again until I realized something. I thought I was in there forever.”

Eames sucks in a breath. “Were you alone?”

“No, no. Everyone was there, but no one knew about the loop. I was the only one who remembered. No matter what I did, it reset the next day and no one remembered it.” Arthur recalls the water at last and takes a deep swallow. Anything to buy him time, to distract him from the slow horror dawning over Eames’ face.

“You said you only got out once you realized something,” Eames says carefully.

“I did,” Arthur replies. He doesn’t want to say it, God, but if Eames asks– he’d do anything, to keep him talking. To take this last moment of Eames caring about him and never let it go.

“Was it bad?” Eames asks.

Arthur lets his head hang low from his neck, examining the grain of the table. “You’d think so.”

Eames reaches over, pushing the heel of his hand into Arthur’s shoulder. It’s comforting, but it aches so far inside him that Arthur wants to die. “I’ve seen a lot of you, Arthur. Nothing there could make me hate you.”

“This will,” Arthur informs the table.

Out of his peripheral vision, Arthur can see Eames close his eyes briefly, as if begging for patience. “Try me.”

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t.

“I’m in love with you,” Arthur announces to no one in particular. Certainly not to Eames, who sits stock-still in his seat as if he were the one who had just woken up from many months of time loop days. As if he were the one who could not tell if he was dreaming or not, who was lost in deception just like Arthur himself.

For a moment, there is peace in Arthur’s kitchen. Dust motes hang suspended in the air, illuminated by the light through the window. Both of them sit so still they could be statues. A new addition to the museum they’d robbed in Arthur’s dream: Mistakes made by man.

Then Eames surges forward, moving his hand from Arthur’s shoulder to his cheek, forcing Arthur’s head to raise just enough so Eames can kiss him. Immediately, Arthur kisses him back. Instinct again. An act so utterly right he would swear it’s coded in his DNA, a response written in him from the moment he was born. There is no part of Arthur that has not been waiting for Eames all his life.

“You idiot,” Eames murmurs against his lips, “I’m in love with you, too. Have been for years.”

“But–” Arthur can’t think of any argument, so he stops trying to fight and starts trying to kiss Eames again. It’s real, this time. Not a dream, not even a loop. Or maybe he still is dreaming after all, maybe this is another one of Cobb’s sick games to mess with his head until he stops believing in anything at all. It would make about as much sense as Eames breathing him in, telling Arthur whispered nothings about how he’s wanted him since they first met, how it drives him mad whenever Arthur so much as talks to someone else.

“I’m dreaming,” Arthur informs him.

Eames laughs against his lips. “You’re awake, or we’re both dreaming. Either way it doesn’t matter.”

And it doesn’t. What they have now is time, distant and constantly shifting. Tonight, Arthur will go to sleep, and he will wake up in a new day, one that won’t repeat or give him grief. He’ll come into himself again. He’ll remember how to live with consequences. And, better yet, he won’t do it alone. He could wake up tomorrow in someone else’s arms, not alone at last. Maybe he will. After all, he has endless days to change things around.

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