#he knows in his core Eames has his back

[mister-eames]

I love and worship the beloved “mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger darling” but ALSO can we please talk about the moment leading up to it? how right after “do it faster!” Comment (a misplaced anger) by Arthur to eames, When eveyone is hating each other and themselves, and eames who really didn’t have to help Arthur (mr-i-missed-the-part-about-fischers-militarized-mind-so-i-have-to-take-all-of-them-down-myself), stayed behind to help him?, I haven’t seen anyone talk/write about this part quite as much as the beloved “darling” comment, cause eames KNEW his idiot husband is blaming himself and just went there to help him and show that he’s not alone? Can we please??

You are correct, nonnie. I suppose I never really noticed Arthur taking it upon himself to deal with the combative projections all on his own in that warehouse, as if compelled to do so. They didn't really need to take them on (or any of them out really) - yes, they were getting 'boxed in' but the rooftop snipers weren't really a threat tbh. They'd be hoofing it outta there in that van in a matter of minutes, regardless.

A: How are we going to reconcile them if they're so estranged?

E: Well I'm working on that, aren't I?

A: Do it faster.

Arthur says 'do it faster' and then goes to take on snipers all by himself. Arthur, who can't just sit around and twiddle his thumbs while they're loading Saito up in the car. Arthur, who may have cocked up this whole job and Cobbs chances off ever getting home by missing the militarisation. Arthur, who must not only must he be blaming himself for this, but he must also be absolutely terrified and cannot, will not show it. Before, the job was a long shot. Now it's a gunshot between him and limbo and whatever horror Arthur perceives limbo to be. It's one gunshot between everyone else and limbo (purgatory? hell?) and them never coming back - or worse, coming back wrong.

Maybe Eames was being cocky and trying to get a rise out of Arthur. Maybe he was trying to distract him. Maybe it's all of the above and Eames knew Arthur enough to know he was kicking himself. What Eames did was he took a bit of the load off Arthur's shoulders with a size joke masqueraded as (valid) advice and a 'darling' and a big ol' explosion - and I think that is one of the reasons why dreamhusbands is so powerful. Because we love the 'darling' line, god knows I do, but what we really love is all the text and subtext that came before it - 'darling' didn't create the Arthur/Eames fandom - it's just another ingredient in the stew.

Eames says 'darling' and we hear 'darling' (supportive), 'darling' (derogatory), 'darling' (affectionate), 'darling' (cautionary). Their entire relationship throughout the film is laden with loaded words and unspoken words that speak to their history. And that really is the thing - Eames didn't need to be there. He didn't need to tell Arthur to 'dream bigger' in that moment. Eames, who is trying to juggle a severely shortened timeline and has as much pressure on him than anyone else, if not more, to try and play therapist to Fischer, still didn't let Arthur's snappish finger-clicking get a rise out of him. Still saw in Arthur what Arthur was feeling. And Arthur, who says 'do it faster', welcomes Eames helping him out - in fact, when he sees Eames approach, his whole body relaxes like his strings were cut. It's fucking teamwork.

[heliads]

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.

inception tag list: empty for now!

all tags list: @wordsarelife

[bullet-prooflove]

For Bobby?

“'Cause you're beautiful and smart, fuckin' talented”

Bobby doesn’t mean to fall in love with you, it’s just something that happens throughout the duration of your partnership. You’re meant to be a maternity cover, someone to pick up Eame’s caseload while she’s away as a surrogate for her sister.

When you first appear, he hates your sunny disposition. Eames is sensible, practical, it’s a good balance to his eccentric qualities. You’re too bright, too vibrant, it hurts to even look at you. The worst part is you don’t even try to reign him in.

“You’re an adult. You’re smart enough to know when you’re going too far.” You tell him when he confronts you about it. “You’re just pissed off because you’re missing your partner.”

He pauses then because honestly, he never dreamed that you’d call him out like that. He hadn’t thought it was in your nature. He starts to see you in a different light then, because underneath all of the sunshine and rainbows, there’s a core of steel.

He sees it during interrogations, when you go toe to toe with suspects. You have a way of getting under people’s skin, of deducing their secrets. He has a forensic mind but you, you’re emotionally intelligent. You get people.

“How’s she working out?” Captain Deakins him one night after you’ve gone home.

“We had a rocky start.” He tells his captain, his palm rubbing across his mouth as he stares at your desk with the brightly coloured pens and post its. You’re a visual person, you work best colour coding information, it was infuriating in the beginning but now he kind of likes it. It adds a little something to his day. “But she’s growing on me.”

It’s a Tuesday when he realises that everything has changed. You look up from a report you’re reading, and you give him that smile, the one that makes his heart beat a little faster in his chest. He finds the edges of his mouth tilting up as his gaze lowers back to the paper in front of him.

Yea, you’re definitely growing on him.

Love Bobby? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

@id1ehands @darqchilddaydreamz @words-and-seeds @malindacath @malevolent-muse @trublu2u

[hecatemoon87]

ABCs of Smut with Tom Hardy Characters

It starts off smutty - no minors allowed.

Part II

Angry sex with Alfie

"Now, what did I tell you about being a needy brat, eh? You come in my office, straddle my knee and grind that perfect cunt on me thigh? I'm in a fucking bad mood, luv. And I'm going to take it out on your poor cunny."

Bondage sex with Bane

You wiggle with anticipation as Bane wraps a black silk cord around your wrists. His muscles bulge as he settles in front of you. "So it's the darkness in me you wish to see, hmmm? Well, I'm going to give you a taste of it. Now open your mouth like a good girl. Let's see how much darkness you can swallow."

Erradic sex with Eddie

"I'm sorry, I just gotta have you again." He whines gruffly against your ear. He is behind you, his strong arms holding you against his chest, his pant covered erection grinding over your bottom. You two are rival journalists. You should be competing, not fucking. But, god, you want and need him too, don't you? So go ahead, relax and let Eddie’s thick cock glide up your cunt as he sets you on top of your desk. You were after all, supposed to have a meeting.

Fertility sex with Forrest

Forrest doesn't like to fool around. He wants to settle down and have a family. He's traditional, no sex before marriage. But as soon as you become his wife, he's your sugar bear between your legs. "You're beautiful, baby girl. Mind if I fill your sweetness up? I'll be gentle. You'll be such a good mama."

Freaky sex with Freddie

"Bloody hell, baby. I knew you'd look sexy as fuck wearing that." Freddie gazes upon you with lust as you walk into the bedroom dressed in a French maid outfit. He likes to fuck you in every position he can think of, and that outfit just adds to his kink. He's all about domination with a touch of humiliation. But that's just fine, because you enjoy everything he has to offer. "Why don't you spread those gorgeous legs for daddy, you little slut."

Hedonistic sex with Heathcliff

This man has utter disregard for society. He likes to push boundaries and the limits of other people. It means he does the same in the bedroom. He likes to indulge in kinky sex on occasion, but mostly, he enjoys teasing your clit and nipples until you're a trembling mess. Your cunt will be aching and your honey will be coating your thighs. You will beg him for cock, and you'll have it...when he's good and ready. "That's right, darling. Beg you little slut. You've reached your limit, haven't you? Good, let's push you some more."

Intimate sex with Ian Eames

No doubt this man can deliver some delectable intense sex. But he's a bit of a stickler for the intimate side. He likes thrusting at a slow pace as he gazes down into your needy eyes. You think he does this to tease you. As you badly desire him to rail you. But the slow burn, the build-up of his lovemaking has always delivered some explosive orgasms. So just lay back and enjoy his cock between your legs and his tongue inside your hungry mouth.

Jesuitical sex with James

James doesn't often speak. He is a thinker, a man of action. When he does something, it needs to have a purpose. You have a purpose, a use for him. You weren't exactly certain what that was until he has you naked in his bed, covering your quivering body with hot, wet kisses. "You are part of my soul," he whispers as he enters your tight little core.

Lazy weekend sex with Leo

Leo works hard during the week. When the weekend comes, he wants nothing more than to stay in bed with you. His agenda is to spend time with you, especially between your legs. "Please, malyshka, say it again." He moans as his cock is planted firmly in your cunt. You tell him what he wants to hear, "I love you, my lion."

Tantric sex with Tommy

Tommy is a bit naive when it comes to experimenting with sex. He knows how to do it the good old-fashioned way, but when you tell him about tantric sex he wrinkles his nose. "That some sort of new age stuff?" You laugh, then proceed to show him how it's done. Through sensual kissing, touching, stroking, and petting, you are successful in getting Tommy hard as a rock. "When can I be inside you?" he almost whimpers. "You don't," you whisper against his ear and kiss his temple sweetly. "What?" He is very frustrated. "It's all about our aura and sensual contact, baby boy." He stares at you in disbelief, causing you to laugh again. "Just kidding!" "Oh, I'm so gonna give your bratty pussy a good pounding." He says.

[imbricare]

Arthur frowns, nods his chin at the bottle of Maker’s Mark. “For that?” He scoffs, perfectly measured and calm, like they aren’t standing in his kitchen discussing the quality of the mid-shelf hooch he hides on the Useless Gifts shelf in his liquor cabinet. He probably got it from his brother-in-law who had a knack for gifting things that collected dust more often than brownie points. “Don’t worry about it.”

But it’s Eames, isn’t it, and whatever slippery ground they’re on – You show me yours, I’ll show you mine – cracks under Arthur’s offhandedness, a trait he’s all too aware doesn’t earn him a lot of favors but that’s served him in good stead in other ways over the years. You don’t keep yourself alive by caring too much, or too deeply, or too quickly. 

(Even if the fact remains that he does, he does, he does.)

He watches Eames the way he always does: eyes pinched at the corners, that look that perpetually hovers between disaffected and all business, like Eames is a bullet point entry on a list that Arthur hasn’t figured out yet how to prioritize. 

What’s the square root of a business problem that has somehow gotten personal? He doesn’t know and that makes him uncomfortable as fuck because he never lets things become personal. Not since Mal, anyway. 

“I wasn’t stateside when I got the baptism.” The baptism alone takes him back, that slang of the early days for what it felt like: that cold dive under, the world rocking in and out of motion and back in again. It’s different these days, Arthur finds, even though he struggled to describe it to Ariadne when she asked: Like the river comes up to meet you instead of the other way around was the best he could manage, and then a couple hours later, Yusuf had driven a van down a bridge and they all woke up submerged and drowning and none of it had mattered anyway, like it never did, not in the thick of things.

Shit, he has been on sabbatical for too long, hasn’t he?

He files away the knowledge of six years of sobriety and he vaguely has to wonder if Eames wasn’t so out of it that he didn’t realize Arthur was right there, yesterday, when his medic buddy had finally set to work.

“Hold him down, yeah?” “Why don’t you wait for the sedative to kick in?” “What? The amount of sedatives he’d need to be fully out of it, I’d need him in an OR and hooked up to the big shit.” “Wait, he’s gonna feel this?” “Nah, he’s out enough for most of it. Just a little, maybe.”

Every childhood contains a lesson about doctors saying This will hurt just a little, and Arthur’s had been no different – so he grit his teeth and rolled up his sleeves and got on with it, and after that, Brownlow hadn’t been a man of many words, hadn’t hung around longer than it took to down a coffee while it was still steaming hot, and get into an Uber to take him back to Newark. By that time, Eames was already sleeping the sleep of the dead (not quite) and Arthur had his apartment back to himself, with the uncanny knowledge that his snarky British co-worker was currently occupying the room his ten-year-old nephew usually stayed in. 

“Kandahar,” he says, finally, and if there’s a trace of surprise in his voice it’s because he really thought Eames would have known. The fact that the Army contracted Mal for Operation Dreamshare wasn’t a secret between them, who had made up Mal’s core team for the years to come – the precious few that were left to her – and Arthur had always assumed that the fact Eames didn’t ask was either down to him already knowing or him not caring. Not that anything changed, really. “So yeah, I know what it was like at the start. To be honest, I…” 

Arthur reconsiders. He reaches into the drawer to his left, finds a pack of Tylenol between DayQuil and antacids, and drops it on the counter in front of Eames. His eyebrow quirks. “Knock yourself out,” he adds mid-sentence. “I’ve mostly stuck with routine jobs since inception.” That’s a white lie: Yeah, he dabbles in the scene here and there, comes in for recommendations and the occasional on-site support gig, but he hasn’t gone under since, either. 

The opportunity hasn’t presented itself is on the tip of his tongue but that wouldn’t even be white lie anymore, that’d just be a blatant lie. Truth is, he hasn’t trusted himself enough to-

To not end up like Cobb? To not end up like Eames, with that monkey on his back for the rest of his life?

“Haven’t dreamed since, actually,” it slips out the same moment Eames says Thanks and Arthur blinks, whether in surprise about himself or about Eames, he doesn’t know. Alright. He clears his throat. “Want something to eat?”

Arthur’s expression barely flickered. Eames wasn’t sure if that was flattering or insulting.

The guilt made his palms sweat. It didn’t matter how firmly he told himself that this was sensible, actually; that he was choosing the right option, and that he was doing it for the right reasons, his internal monitor was blaring, so loudly that it felt like a pounding in his head. Or maybe his head was actually pounding; it was hard to tell. Probably both; he still felt dehydrated, and he helped himself to a second bottle of water and poured the hot water into the tea, grimacing. A stove kettle. Liptons. Well, it was better than a microwave, and the sugar would help more than anything. The ritual, too, the pouring and letting it steep, and the smell of the steam coming off the top as the water darkened, reminding him of his mother and how she never took milk with anything. Ruins the flavour, she’d say, even when drinking instant coffee. His lips were cracked and dry and he was thinking of his mother. Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t that he didn’t drink. God, he drank. But this tasted different to him; it tasted of temptation and panic. He focused on his breathing as he sat back at the counter, keeping it slow and steady, sipping at the tea too soon so he burned his tongue; the sensation helped ground him. He nodded at Arthur in thanks and uncapped the bottle, barely taking in the expensive weight of the glass and the slender, elegant label, sloshing a healthy measure into his cup. He might’ve offered it to Arthur as a half-joke, but he was feeling a little too fragile to acknowledge the whiskey more than he had to, so he just screwed the cap back on one handed and pushed it away. It made a satisfying swish on the countertop. This time when he took a sip, it burned in a different way, and he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingertips, exhaling heavily. It would help, he told himself. It would help more than telling Arthur he was heading off, spending five minutes rifling through his drawers, and walking to the nearest park to spend whatever cash he found on a handful of oxy and a hotel room.

At Arthur’s question his head shot up. He regretted it instantly; pain burst in front of his eyelids, like the worst hangover in the world. The kitchen lights were too bright and everything felt too sharp, Arthur’s face most of all; too beautiful, really, the lines too clean. But his words were perfect; they cut through the haze, and made Eames laugh. That was all Arthur: seeking knowledge above all things. He was probably seeking to fill in a blank, a empty category in his little filing cabinet in his mind named Eames: Weaknesses; subsection - substances. God, but it felt good to be direct. It felt good to be honest. Eames finished the tea, though it was too warm, really, to drink so fast, and pulled the heavy glass bottle back towards himself, giving up on all pretence. His eyebrow flickered as he uncapped it and poured another helping into the bottom of his cup. “I’ll pay you back,” he said, meaning: for the Bourbon. For the bed. For the surgery and the vomiting and whatever the hell else you had to do to keep me alive these past few days. But mostly for the Bourbon.

After the second measure, Eames felt steadier. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then wiped his forehead and grimaced at the cold sweat there. “Honestly, it never hit me that way. Not as an addiction, anyway. I’d been on other shit before dreamsharing even came into it - it was everywhere in Musayyib, you know, and the shit they gave me for this,” he gestured to his thigh, where the bullet had been dug out in more sanitary conditions than Arthur’s house, but still left a deep depression in the skin like a thumb print, “was something else.” He whistled long and slow. “Mate. I’d give up - fuck, what, six years of sobriety? - for some of that stuff right this second.” He waved the bottle of Bourbon, as if to say, this is enough, and his expression turned serious again. “No, the somnacin was - well, you know what it was like at the start, and I bet you guys had better stuff over here than we did. When it was at its most addictive, right at the beginning, when they had Cobb building cellars and handcuffs, we weren’t having pleasant dreams; all any of us wanted was to wake up again. So I was lucky, in that sense.” When he grinned it came back in a rush of memory, the taste of blood etched around his teeth. “Now? Well.” He poured again, then capped the bottle, a deliberate gesture, enough. The pain was fading; the light hurt his eyes less. “I don’t use it enough to know. This was my first time under since…”

Eames stopped himself. Somehow, even here, saying the word inception felt too risky. Instead he tried to roll his injured shoulder back to loosen the tendons and stifled a groan, but the whiskey had relaxed him enough that he was able to move it, little by little. He imagined his joints grinding together and giving off sparks. The word came unbidden, no space between thinking and speaking: “thanks.”

[cinebration]

Promise to Keep (Eames x Reader) [Request]

Hiya! Could you do Eames x reader drabble? The reader was the team's architect before Ariadne, and Eames has always had feelings for her but he's genuinely a dick so she never knew. She comes back briefly to teach Ariadne the ropes and Eames tries desperately to get her to stay. Something cute, but also annoying bc he really is a beautifully arrogant man. Love your work!!! — Requested by anon

Warnings: none

Gif Source: dicapriho

Eames returned to Cobbs’s base of operations after a long night of shadowing Browning to find the place dark but for one well-lit corner. Voices drifted across the space. One belonged to Ariadne, the newest addition to the team.

The other stopped him cold in his tracks.

“You have to have your own secrets and tricks that are unique to you,” the voice said.

He couldn’t believe it. Approaching as quietly as possible, he rounded the corner to see Ariadne seated in a chair, notebook balanced on one knee…

And you, perched on the edge of the table, for a moment carefree, engaged in your craft with a smile on your face that made Eames’s heart skip painfully.

Then you saw him, and the smile slipped, your shoulders squaring and your feet touching the ground. “Eames.”

He couldn’t even breathe your name for fear it was a dream. How long had it been since you had left?

“You two know each other?” Ariadne asked.

“Sure,” you said. “We used to work together.”

Clearing his throat, Eames smiled, only the corners of it shaky. “That we did. Cobbs hired her on for nickels and dimes.”

Your lips pressed into a thin line. “Whereas Eames came begging for work to get out of debt.”

Eames feigned a wince. “I see your tongue is still scathing.”

“And yours no less silver.”

Ariadne glanced between you both, slowly closed her notebook. “Maybe I should leave.”

“I have nothing much left to teach you anyway,” you said. “Arthur can teach you the rest.”

“Thank you, again.”

“Of course.”

Waving timidly at Eames, Ariadne hurried from the building, leaving you and Eames alone. Eames perched himself on the edge of the table, facing you. Your arms folded across your chest.

“How long have you been teaching her?” he asked.

“Two weeks.”

Eames’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Cobb never told me.”

“Why would he? It wasn’t relevant.”

“You and I have different ideas of what constitutes relevant.”

You snorted, shook your head. As you looked away, Eames took in your profile. It hadn’t much changed in the years since you had left, except for maybe a tinge of sadness and a stiffness in the neck he didn’t understand.

Fidgeting in the silence, you said, “You know why Cobb brought me on, right?”

“Enlighten me.”

“he can’t trust himself.”

A mild twinge of alarm courses through him. “Is that your professional opinion?”

Trying not to snort, you continued, “He can’t teach Ariadne everything, because he’ll know the secrets. But he can’t use me because he knows most of mine.”

“If he had asked you to do this, would you have accepted?”

You hesitated. “Perhaps. But inception? I don’t know.”

“You don’t think it’s possible?”

“I don’t think it’s prudent.”

His eyebrows arched again. “You’re a far cry from the woman I knew.”

“I’ve been offering security consulting,” you answered in clipped tones.

“Ah.”

“Not all of us find it fulfilling to waste our time and luck in gambling dens.”

He grinned. “Oh, how I’ve missed this.”

“I haven’t,” you lied.

But he could see right through it, could see you fighting against an answering smirk on your lips.

“For all you know,” you continued, trying to conceal it, “I may have trained your client.”

“Did you?”

“I’m afraid that is privileged information.”

He chuckled in that low, sultry tone of his. “Alright, then. Have it your way. It’s more fun that way.”

“It’s always about fun with you, isn’t it?”

“What’s the point of life if you don’t find the humor in it?”

You nodded, but the tightness had returned to your mouth. Chest constricting, Eames kicked himself inwardly. He groped for something to say.

“Well,” you said in the silence, pushing yourself off the table, “I’d better be going.”

“So soon? We’ve hardly had a reunion.”

“Do we need one?”

The question cut him to the core. He covered it with a wry smile. “Why not? Surely Arthur would appreciate your droll company.”

“Droll? How flattering.”

It is to me, he thought. He watched you pack up an attaché case you had brought, secreting notebooks inside.

“What I’m hearing,” he said, desperate to slow your progress, “is you don’t build anymore.”

“I do.”

“But not for anything fun.”

“Fun again,” you mumbled. “No, I suppose not. But I enjoy the work.”

“I can’t imagine wasting my talent and energy on consulting. No imagination involved.”

You turned to him, one eyebrow arched. “Oh, really! You don’t think it’s exciting to look into the minds of some of the richest and influential people on the planet?”

His lips pulled into a genuine grin. There was the woman he knew, unable to resist the inner secrets of those whose dreams you hijacked.

You nearly matched the smile, then caught yourself. Clearing your throat, you nodded as though to yourself and clasped the case shut.

Anxiety spiked again in Eames’s chest. He stood suddenly, circling around you to block your path. “Cobb says Ariadne is the best Architect he’s seen.”

Hurt flickered across your face. “Yes, she is talented.”

“Yet he’ll have Arthur crush her creativity.”

“I doubt he’ll be capable of that. She is a creative force.”

“But only as an Architect.”

You frowned. “What are you getting at, Eames?”

How he loved the sound of his name on your lips. “Are you sure Cobb didn’t ask you back because he knows you? Or because your skill is lacking?”

You drew back, your jaw clenching. “Scathing as ever, you are.”

“Scathing? Never.”

You tried to step past him. He let you walk a few steps before stepping in front of you again, walking backward so as not to break your pace.

“All I’m saying is that you aren’t merely an Architect.”

“No, I’m a consultant.”

“Then consult.” He stopped, making you stop as well. “Arthur could use some help in the creativity department.”

Your tone bit. “Well, between you and Ariadne, he’ll have plenty of help in spades.”

“She’s too fresh, and he doesn’t much appreciate my advice—nor my methods.”

“Unless Cobb asks, I won’t offer my services.”

“Why not? There is such a lack of creativity on this team, I can’t be expected to shoulder it alone.”

You shook your head, chuckling dryly to yourself. For a moment, Eames held his breath, hoping he had succeeded in convincing you to stay.

Then you frowned, peering up at him with a gaze so intense he nearly fell to his knees. “I left, Eames. I’m not needed here.”

You pushed past him, concealing your own hurt. You didn’t see the pain in Eames’s face, too concerned about escaping the base of operations and returning to your life of safety.

“Stay.”

Your steps faltered. Turning back to him, you stared at his silhouette, the light behind him. He stepped forward slowly, shifting until the light fell across his face. He had spoken the word with such seriousness that you wondered if it was a trick, an actor’s trick. But he remained quiet, his eyes boring into yours.

No trick.

Your heart stuttering in your chest, you asked, “You really think you can incept this client?”

“Absolutely.”

You spoke slowly, choosing your words with care. “If you do incept him—successfully—then I will come back.”

Eames’s full lips parted, a faint hint of surprise and relief on his face. You smiled weakly at him, shaken by his naked emotion, and left him standing there in the semi-dark.

~~

Eames stood at the door to the vault, watched Robert Fischer reach into the safe as the dream crumbled around them both. Eames’s heart beat furiously.

Robert tilted up the pinwheel. Tears coursed down his cheeks.

The faintest of smiles twitched at Eames’s lips.

You had a promise to keep.

[theaurorfileshq]

Below you will find a conclusion to the various main events of season two. If you have any questions regarding any of these events and how they may have impacted your characters please let me know. 

The Fate of Judith Eames and the Vice Presidency 

Several weeks passed since Judith Eames and her husband vanished along with all of their worldly possessions from their Vermont estate. As time wore on, and MACUSA continued to investigate the disappearances through the Bureau of Covert Vigilance, many assumed the Vice President fled of her own accord, wishing to run away as the scandal surrounding her and the doomed Scotland mission grew after her son’s testimony against her. 

The many questions surrounding just why Judith did what she did, would never be completely answered- however, the mystery as to where she may have gone would be some weeks later.... 

Central Squad aurors Abel Montero and Ignatius Yaxley were assigned to work a homicide out of Kentucky. The victims were that of two sasquatches, who’d been found in the woods deceased- both appearing to have been murdered by a killing curse. After further inspection of the bodies, Beast Medical Examiner Imelda Hawthorne would make the astonishing discovery that the two sasquatches weren’t sasquatches at all, but rather the bodies of Judith Eames and her husband. 

The case would quickly be taken out of Montero and Yaxley’s hands and handed over to the Bureau of Covert Vigilance for further investigation. The Bureau would then spend the next two years chasing down lead after lead, each one only resulting in a dead end. Just who murdered Judith Eames and her husband remains a mystery to this day, and the case file on their deaths now gathers dust on the Cold Case Floor. 

House Speaker, Francis Harbird, would eventually take Judith Eames’s seat as Vice President. Harbird would later make what would become a rather unsuccessful run for president himself, after Ortega’s final term ended. The campaign, plagued by a sex scandal after several of Harbird’s mistresses came forward, would end before it nearly began. The Harbird name would not completely vanish from MACUSA after Francis’s failed campaign, however. Francis’s son, Daniel Harbird, was beginning to make a name for himself in the Auror Department. Two decades later, Daniel would find himself serving as one half of the Pacific Squad’s administration team, serving under Chief Victoria Lin as her Deputy Chief. 

The New Blood Order Attacks Port Steward

The New Blood Order was at its infancy in early 1998, with many aurors either not having heard of them- or had simply wrote them off as the ravings of a handful of criminals. This would no longer be the case though after the spring of 1998. In the early morning hours of April 11th, a series of packages would be mailed out across Port Steward, all finding their way to the windowsills and doormats of 50 muggleborns across the city. These muggleborns were the 50 refugees Port Steward had taken in from the United Kingdom, during the height of the second Wizarding War- and would include Central Squad’s own Miranda Amaro-Bott. 

Inside these packages were infant basilisks, too young to kill their victims, but old enough to petrify any who dare gaze into the eyes of the young serpents. Mountain Squad auror, Tobias Whitney, would open Miranda’s box, and become instantly petrified at the sight. Thirty-two other muggleborns would suffer the same fate before the alarm was raised and soon aurors were dispatched to collect the remaining packages. Upon further examination of the mysterious packages, aurors would discover each contained a note, all reading- 

“Consider this a warning, and your final one. A new dawn is coming, blood will cleanse blood, and order will be restored.”      

After the 1998 attack on Port Steward the New Blood Order would soon become known nationwide, and therein cause a resurgence in blood prejudice in the country. This blood prejudice would take a somewhat different form than what had once gripped America though. For centuries it was halfbloods, born out of the result of a pureblood and no-maj, that’d faced scrutiny. The New Blood Order, however, has branded both no-maj halfbloods and muggleborns as “unequals” compared to their pureblood counterparts. 

Over twenty years later, The New Blood Order has transformed from a small group of renegade blood purists to a terrorist organization. The 1998 attack on Port Steward would only be the first in a series, and sadly the attacks would only grow more brutal and deadlier as the years wore on. 

The origins of the 1998 attack would eventually be linked to a case that the Central Squad worked on- that of the Petrification of Peacemaker Fallow. The basilisks that were used in the attack had been stored in an abandoned mine near a Quaker community outside Iowa City. After a string of petrifications, and catching the attention of the Central Squad, the basilisks would be removed before aurors could find them. The wix suspected of the attack is Raymond “Rune” Vance, and is still considered an at large and still a very much active member of The New Blood Order. 

Allen Snow’s Warning from the Grave

In the midst of everything that was happening in Season Two, an investigation was quietly underway headed by aurors Marleigh McMahon and Baron Snow. This investigation, centered on the mysterious organization known as “Appius”, would eventually lead Baron Snow to try to communicate with her long dead grandfather- a former Appius member himself. 

With the help of Cypress Crow, Baron would be able to successfully reach her grandfather. When the line of communication was successfully established, Baron would finally be given the chance to ask what questions she could to the man who was the former Chief of the Eastern Squad in 1954, and died by his own hand after being discovered at the center of an extensive corrupt plot at the time. 

When the subject of Appius was brought up, Allen Snow delivered a swift warning to his granddaughter- that Appius was more far reaching than she’d ever imagine, and to never underestimate them. When asked why Allen was a member of the group, he explained that he (like most Appius members) was first seduced by the idea of what he could achieve with the group behind him. It wasn’t until it would be too late, would Allen discover the true lengths his “deal with the devil” would truly take. 

Before the conversation ended, Allen did give Baron one additional warning. He explained to her that all Appius members take an Unbreakable Vow when they are sworn in- himself included. The spell binding together the Unbreakable Vow included the inductee to swear to keep the group’s identity a secret, swearing on their own life to do so. Allen explained that his death was the result of him having to carry out his vow, and that should Baron believe she’s discovered an Appius member she should use extreme caution. If she were to corner that member and try to force them into divulging any of Appius’s secrets, then that member’s life would be in danger. 

The Second Appius Member

A week would pass after Baron’s conversation with her long deceased grandfather, when Marleigh McMahon would finally hear from Commissioner Moira Henshawe about a new lead. The message from Henshawe was brief, simply asking McMahon to go to Wand Specialist Romero’s office, with little more explanation than that. 

When McMahon followed the Commissioner’s instruction, they would find a much more solemn Romero, quietly sitting at his desk. The usually charismatic and personable wand specialist had clearly been disturbed by some news, and the grim expression he wore only worsened when his eyes fell on Marleigh McMahon. 

When asked what was the reason for the meeting, Romero would explain that Moira had been having him examine the training dummy used on the Scotland Mission. The same training dummy that someone first charmed as a portkey then had sabotaged quickly after twelve of the Central Squad aurors used it to get to Scotland. 

Romero would go on to explain that it took him several days to figure out just what kind of wand was used on the dummy. Once he was able to determine the wand’s wood and core, he then went to the wand permit office and began searching for MACUSA employees who both carried that specific kind of wand, and would have had access to the Auror Department. 

After a long sigh, Romero revealed that he found there was only one person who both carried a wand that matched that of the one used on the training dummy, and would have had access to the auror’s training facility- 

Abigail Langer. 

With this newfound information there was little left to do but to confront the Acting-Chief herself. Allen Snow’s warning would prove to be a difficult blockade to navigate around though. Should Marleigh and Baron directly ask Langer anything about Appius, then she would no doubt meet the same fate Allen Snow did all those years ago, in his own office back in the Central Squad. If they were going to confront Langer they would have to do so, but with an amount of tact that would likely not get them all the information they wanted, should they want to prevent their Acting-Chief’s death. 

When Marleigh and Baron did go to Langer’s office, three things became clear from the distraught and guilt-consumed look on the wix’s face. The first, was that she clearly knew what they were there for, and had likely been anticipating the conversation for some time based on how haggard she looked. The second, was that it was indeed Abigail who was the Appius member that met with Marleigh a couple weeks prior, wearing Margot Brendanawicz’s face, hoping to warn Marleigh before they too became another victim of Appius’s endless stratagems. And then, the last thing that became clear the moment their eyes laid on Abigail, was that her wand may have damned them in Scotland, but it was not her hand that used it. 

Abigail Langer was far from the looming monster in the shadows Appius seemed to be, but rather another one of its countless victims. Someone who walked into the lion’s den as a twenty-four year old, hopeful the group could help her one day become Commissioner, and give her the power she needed to make the changes the department desperately needed in order to fulfill its sworn duties. And while Appius certainly had helped her on that path she- like so many other of the young naive hopefuls Appius grasps onto, didn’t realize the true extent to the bargain she’d just made. 

None of this though Abigail could communicate with Baron or Marleigh, no matter how much she wanted to. She desperately wished that she could tell them that she didn’t know what her wand was going to be used for. That she was simply given an order to leave it in her desk and drop the security wards on the training facility. She wanted to tell them how if she’d known any of Judith Eames’s plot she would have prevented the Scotland Mission from happening, rather than unknowingly start the chain of events that’d leave the aurors stranded- her aurors. 

Instead, she could say very little, without risking the Unbreakable Vow she took to claim her own life. She could say very little at all, even with the clear amount of tact Baron was using to get her to reveal anything- something. When all was said and done, and after Marleigh stormed out of the office in a storm of curses and their resignation, all Abigail could do was leave as well, abandoning the position she’d only recently taken up. 

After that day Abigail Langer would not be found again in the Aurors Department, although she’d never fully disappear from MACUSA. The next work day the aurors would be greeted with the news that Abigail Langer had been transferred over to the Federal Bureau of Covert Vigilance, where she remains to this day. 

Season’s Close

At the conclusion of the season, the Central Squad for the third time that year, found themselves welcoming a new chief. This time, that chief would be a wix by the name of Claudine Roy, Claudine was a former member of the Central Squad who’d left ten years prior to work for the MACUSA Surveillance and Wizarding Resources Department. Roy’s acceptance of the position was welcomed by some of the older aurors within the squad, who remembered Roy from the auror’s time as a Captain. 

For the next couple weeks following Langer’s abrupt departure, newly appointed Chief Roy worked on reestablishing a normal routine within the squad. They began holding weekly staff meetings within the bullpen to go over some of that week’s cases, and major events going on in the country. These meetings proved especially useful as The New Blood Order began to emerge as an increasing threat for the nation. 

It was during Roy’s third week on the job when they began to start seeking out a Deputy Chief within the squad to fill the empty position. Day after day, Roy would call in some of the squad’s most high ranking aurors, interviewing each one as a means to both get to know their new squad better, and see who would fit well as their second in command. 

It was on the fourth day when Roy called in the squad’s youngest inspector, Baron Snow. The interview would carry on just like all the other’s before it, the questions weren’t anything out of the ordinary, although it was clear Roy was impressed by Baron Snow’s dedication and ambition. When the interview concluded, and Snow turned to head back to the squad’s bullpen, Roy spoke up, the twang in their southern accent a little thicker than usual-

“Hey, darlin’,” they say, and they can’t help but grin as they see the young auror pause. Their voice may sound different now, but they’re certain Baron recognized it all the same. Opening their desk drawer, they retrieve a cigar out of the box that sat inside, and hold it up so that the inspector could see it. 

“You don’t happen to like cigars, do you?” 

Their smirk is a knowing one, but not malicious. They may be on two different sides to this quiet war that’s been brewing in MACUSA since Appius took its first breath in 1887, but they have developed a sort of fondness for Allen Snow’s granddaughter since they first met in that hotel room all those weeks ago. Baron Snow was meant for greater things within MACUSA, and while she may not have pledged her loyalty to Appius, Roy felt compelled to give her this first small step towards greatness regardless. 

“Congratulations, Deputy Chief Snow.” 

[sorrelchestnut]

So I ADORE your Bryony Baggins fics so here I go: The Reincartation fic, the Coffee Shop AU, the Daemon fic, and the Leverage AU

For Fic Author Never Have I Ever, still taking prompts if anyone wants to play!

Reincarnation AU: I have not!  Reincarnation isn’t usually my jam, but Hobbit fandom definitely has a pretty solid setup for one, for obvious reasons.  Hmm.  I think if I did it, I’d definitely do it sort of stealth: keep the story short, and have it look mostly like any other modern AU at first.  Maybe a couple of quick references, or a slipped name here and there in the middle of a paragraph, just enough to make the reader go “wait, was that a typo, or...?” and then maybe have something at the veeeery tail end to make it clear.  Plus, a little bit of stealth reincarnation really helps smooth the way for the “meet-cute, fall head over heels” romance trope, which normally I struggle with, but that sort of nudges away the worst of the problems with that.  It could be interesting!

Coffee shop AU: Answered here.

Daemon fic: Literally every fandom is ripe for Daemon fic, that’s the beauty of daemon fic.  It’s truly the little black dress of fusion fics because it goes everywhere.  Only not into my fic, because I haven’t written any - I don’t think I even have anything floating around in a drafts folder, weirdly enough.  The thing I struggle with when it comes to trying to write daemon fic is that the conceit itself isn’t enough of a hook for me.  With AUs I really need to have an endpoint for it: is it about how this character is different with a new backstory or gender or occupation?  Is it about how the relationship changes?  Does it change the course of the story because of this one crucial difference?  The problem for me with daemon stuff is that the main function of it is to reveal some aspect of the characters, finding an animal that matches up with the most important part of their self, and that’s... well, that’s usually something I focus on in my writing anyway?  So I really struggle with the idea of writing it.  Like, I could sit there and come up with awesome daemons for characters all day, but then I don’t know what to DO with them.

Leverage AU: I have never done a Leverage AU, but I did actually start a White Collar AU one time, which isn’t too terribly far off.  Playing Cops and Robbers, an Inception fic where Eames is an art thief and Arthur is the FBI agent on his tail and Ariadne is his architect wife, though unfortunately I never got past the prologue chapter.  Alas!

If I was going to do a Leverage AU, though...  I feel like out of my current fandoms, most are either ill-suited or are already a little too on-the-nose as it is (Killjoys, anyone?).  Hobbit, though... I could make something work for Hobbit.  The problem would be picking five out of the whole group to be the core team.  Like, is it too on-the-nose to have Bilbo (or Bella) be the thief?  Team dynamics mean that Thorin should probably be the mastermind but AHAHAHAHA no.  Dwalin’s definitely the hitter, no question there.  Oh, or maybe Thorin’s the client that brings them together?  Sending them against Smaug Industries or whatever?  GANDALF COULD BE THE MASTERMIND, fucking obviously.  Fili and Kili could be the hackers?  I could make that work.  God, who would be the grifter, though?  None of them can lie their way out of a goddamn paper bag.  Except Bilbo/Bella, I guess, from the various riddle games?  But if they’re the grifter, who’s the thief?

Okay, no, wait, I got this.  Thorin Oakenshield, who lost his company to the unscrupulous takeover of Smaug Industries, turned to criminal contacts of his father’s to keep his family fed.  Years later, he runs a moderately successful enterprise as a middleman and occasional mercenary, but his relatively peaceful life is upended when he’s approached by Interpol’s best recovery agent with a plan he can’t refuse: a heist, to steal back his company, and remove Smaug as a threat on the international stage.  Thorin puts together a crew consisting of Dwalin, his childhood best friend-turned-mercenary, his hacker nephews, and his sister Dis, the best grifter this side of the Atlantic.  But to succeed, they’ll need one really good thief: Belladonna Baggins, retired burglar of some renown, and, coincidentally, the owner of the diner where the family has been having their weekly brunch/planning session for the last six years.  (Haha, see what I did there?)  Nobody’s more surprised than them at the unexpected revelation, but Bella’s seen worse reasons to come out of retirement than the collective hope of her favorite Sunday regulars and a pair of intense blue eyes.  Maybe it’s time for another bit of adventure?

(The rest of the Company would make cameo appearances, obviously.  Bofur is the tinker who makes their gadgets.  Ori is the art student who forges art on the side to pay for classes.  Nori’s a pickpocket on one of Thorin’s crews.  Legolas and Tauriel are FBI partners who get tipped off onto the Oakenshields by Smaug until Kili can prove to Tauriel that their cause is just.  etc, etc.)

[timhosslerdesign]

An Introduction to a Future Monograph

In the famous 1969 interview of Charles Eames by Madame L’Amic conducted in conjunction with a design exhibit at the Louvre, she begins with the following question:

“What is your definition of design?”

Eames resonds: " A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose."

Eames’s unromanticized, simple response is the core of what I learned about design first hand, from my friend Tim.  The idea of designer as editor and curator was new to me and resonated in that I knew I had a capacity for design without necessarily being a gifted illustrator. While the conductor of an orchestra must have a fundamental understanding of each instrument, it is not a requirement that he be able to replace any musician at any given moment. Tim’s gift at arranging, and his fluency in visual literacy are what make him such an excellent conductor and arranger of elements. And for me, it was this lead through design practice, that allowed me to believe that an art director or creative director didn’t necessarily have to come up through a specific, prescribed trench. This was a comfort being that before heading back to graduate school for design, I was a carpenter.

Tim and I met at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2003. We were assigned adjacent studios and bonded over the fact that both of our wives were on the cusp of delivering our respective first children during that initial fall semester. Tim arrived at Cranbrook from NYC with a deep resume of design experiences. His quiet demeanor, focused work ethic, and general gravitas underscored a sense of professionalism that his peers respected. While I was initially spellbound by a lot of the hipster vernacular coming from the younger designers (having just prior lived for several years in rural Vermont), it didn’t take long before I recognized that what I could gain from absorbing Tim’s work offered me a lot more than the glimmer of trendy iconography that made up the commercial design zeitgeist at the time. Tim’s work was timeless.

My professional development, helped through many conversations with Tim, went hand in hand with our growing friendship, and experiences as young parents. While our cultural backgrounds couldn’t have been much more different (he being the son of a Minister from middle America and me a Jew from the liberal East Coast) we shared in a special place and time that is the Cranbrook milieu, a catalyst that has helped fostered friendships and collaboration for nearly a century. Now, 6 years from graduation, our friendship has continued to grow both professionally and personally, highlighted by a recent shared interest in ultra-running. Over the past year --he in Miami, me in Cleveland-- we’ve become virtual training partners and participated in our first 100 mile trail race in July of 2010.

What stayed with me most from the two years I studied alongside Tim, and what is continually reinforced when he shares his work with me now, is that some nugget of design classicism is always revealed when looking at Tim's work. While always infused with his fluent understanding of design culture, history, and an impeccable sense of visual literacy, it invariably contains a resolve that makes the “what you see, is what you get experience” supremely nourishing and not so fundamentally obvious as the adage implies.

As craft continues to resurge with increased vigor, there is a new emphasis on expertise and precision and the the prior ego-driven emphasis on cleverness and novelty of the last decade is pleasantly receding to one that foregrounds the craft itself, and the art, over the artist. In simply continuing to do what he’s always done, with great humility, Tim is poised to be a design leader in this new era.  

Eames, as much as I admire him, went on to answer all of the questions equally tersely and the interview began to feel a little less pure and a little more like schtick. Tim on the other hand always operates entirely schtick-less, continuing to arrange elements and clearly accomplish his particular purpose with great mastery. While I know I’ll continue to admire his work, the value of his friendship and the bond of our respective families is the true foundation that gives our design discourse perspective and meaning.

Mark Moskovitz

December 2010

[indigo-night-wisp]

@jaclcfrost i hope it’s okay to tag you. it’s not leo/black because i do not know what that is (sorry), and it’s late for your birthday, i think? but i wrote this in literally an hour after i saw your post about it being your birthday and so. uh. happy birthday. 

you like Greed, right?

“Maybe,” says Martel, “you should think about the outcomes of things like this before they happen to you.” She bends down to look Greed right in the eye. “Just saying.”

Greed would love to object to her tone and also to the suggestion that he is anything but in perfect control of the situation, but he can’t because a) Martel takes whatever tone she pleases and always has, and b) he cannot breathe.

C) She may have a point.

He shifts, Shield sliding over his skin (Too thin, too easily broken, poor design, he’s gonna have to give it a 2 out of 5. Well, maybe 3 because even if it is breakable, it’s also frickin’ flawless. His pores are so open he can probably receive radio signals.) and giving him the room to get a breath. “Move,” he commands. Martel obeys and he stands up, pushing the rubble off like it isn’t an entire roof.

“We’re going to have to replace that,” Martel observes. Greed eyes the mess of broken beams and slate and silently agrees. There’s no way they can just… shove it all back up there and pretend it is working. Besides, Greed does not believe in living under a shoddy roof.

“I’ll get Roa and Dolcetto to find an alchemist,” he says. Martel snorts.

“Boss,” she says, “you think you’re going to find a construction alchemist who’s willing to come down here at this time of night to fix the roof of the Devil’s Nest?”

Greed smiles. His teeth are too sharp for happiness but they are perfect for menace. “I never said anything about finding someone willing,” he says. The noise Martel makes is probably a hiss, considering, but it sort of sounds like a laugh. Greed looks around in disgust.

“Get Bido,” he tells Martel. “We’re spending the night somewhere else.”

“Where, Boss?” she asks, already moving for the telephone, miraculously still attached to the wall.

“Somewhere,” he says, “with a roof.”

Martel makes the call and Greed happily pulverizes what’s left of the roof so that the alchemist will have some raw material.

Wait, that sounded sort of altruistic. Better back up.

Greed happily pulverizes what’s left of the roof because he enjoys punching things, okay, and when Greed enjoys something he doesn’t consider other people’s feelings about it, he just does it.

There, much better.

“Ready?” he barks at Martel. She hangs up the phone and nods shortly.

“The boys are meeting us up the street at that hotel you like.”

The one with all the drinks and the sheets and the pretty people who will come give you massages deep enough to penetrate the flimsy layer of skin stretched over the hard core of Avarice that makes up –for lack of a better word –his soul.

“Martel,” he purrs. “You’re spoiling me.”

The look she gives him is drier than the martini he’d been drinking when the roof fell on him. “You’d have taken us there anyway,” she says. “And this way we won’t have to listen to you complain about being uncomfortable while you figure out which one of the people you’ve pissed off this week decided to collapse our roof.”

“This is not my fault,” Greed insists. Martel walks out the door.

“You need better enemies,” she calls over her shoulder.

The implications of the statement don’t catch up to him until he’s caught up to her. “Hey! My enemies are the best,” he pouts, following her down the street. Everything he has is the best. That’s sort of the point.

She gives him a look. “You’ve already figured out who it was, haven’t you?”

He has. Carson Eames is going to have a very bad day tomorrow. But he sees Martel’s point now. If his enemies were really the best, exacting revenge would be a lot more difficult than it’s going to be.

Crap. He has to get some new enemies.

The hotel appears at the end of the street. Three incredibly suspicious figures are loitering by the lobby doors.

“Do they know they can wait inside?” Greed asks Martel. She looks up at him, shaking her head.

“Boss, you know none of us would set foot inside that fancy-schmancy place without you, right?”

Now that, Greed thinks, is just sad. Honestly, how did they all live before he came along? (Actually, he knows the answer to that, but it makes him angry and upset to think about, so he shoves it back into the Revenge (Someday) box and moves on.)

“Well then,” he says out loud, “it’s a good thing you all have me.”

Martel doesn’t even sound sarcastic when she says, “Yeah, Boss. It is.” Greed accepts the delightful buzz he gets when she says it as his due and doesn’t examine it too closely.

It’s a good feeling, after all, and good feelings are what Greed is all about.

#

[oopshidaisyy]

June Fic Recs

baby, i’d victoria your secret anytime by ghostsoldier Peter’s known Wade for a while now, so he can maybe see how this makes sense -- like, maybe Wade has a thing about going commando and just happened to have an old girlfriend’s panties lying around, one thing led to another…but… “And the bra?” Peter croaks. Peter/Wade (comicsverse), 4k, E

Perfecting by thingswithwings "Let me take care of you," Cecil murmured, quietly, wetly, words passed into Carlos's mouth like shared water. Carlos/Cecil, 7k, E Note: yall ever remember how cecilos is one of the best love stories ever written?? anyway, here’s some p*rn with emotions

tell all the truth (but tell it slant) by susiecarter It takes a while for Batman and Superman to work things out, once Clark comes back from the dead. Pretending to date each other in order to explain why Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are in the same place so often? Doesn't help as much as you might think. Clark/Bruce, 33k, M Note: when i tell you the sn*der cut could never have anything on this......

i could be the thing you reach for in the middle of the night by gyzym Eames had always thought Arthur would be a morning person. Arthur/Eames, 5k, E

I Just Called to Say by thehoyden Aziraphale held out on having a telephone installed in the bookshop until 1921, mostly because Crowley kept badgering her about it, and Aziraphale was still feeling miffed about the fact that Crowley had slept through the telephone’s invention and a great many other things, as well. Aziraphale/Crowley, 4k, E Note: ineffable wives!!!!

thanks to the full moon in scorpio by firstaudrina No one was paying any attention at all to Alec, so Alec kept paying attention to Magnus. Magnus/Alec, 6k, M

first encounter with the enemy by thingswithwings "Look at you, all riled up," she breathes, jerking her chin towards Amy. "I shoulda known. You always get like this when you get competitive." Rosa/Amy, 2k, T

apotropaic by arriviste Enjolras claims France for his mother and for his lover and for his bride, but on this one night, perhaps, Grantaire sees Death at his shoulder: it is Death Enjolras is in love with, Death who whispers in his ear. Grantaire, 1k, G

The Genetic Soap Opera (or, One of the Less Dignified Royal Weddings) by waketosleep Turns out Jim Kirk's more than meets the eye, genetically speaking. There are a lot of consequences, mostly for Spock and his sanity. Kirk/Spock, 6k, M

let us pray that hell may not separate us by postcardmystery “Pure empathy,” says Hannibal Lecter, and it will be some time before he realises his mistake. “Pure empathy,” lies Will Graham, in careful agreement, and knows that it’s only a matter of time before he’s found out. “That must be quite a burden to bear,” says Hannibal, and Will meets his eyes, sips his tea, and knows, for once in his life, that he is not the only liar in the room. Hannibal/Will, 3k, E

You, Soft and Only by thehoyden He hadn’t expected a sudden lapful of angel. “Very sorry about this,” Aziraphale said, and kissed him. Aziraphale/Crowley, 9k, E

Sound and Vision by yeats Arthur and Curt in Berlin, December 1989. Arthur/Curt, 2k, E Note: the fact that velvet goldmine fanfiction exists.......effervescent

Years Since It’s Been Clear by lady_ragnell Grantaire really doesn't expect Enjolras to force him to move in with him when he hears how shitty Grantaire's apartment is. And he definitely doesn't expect Enjolras to want him to stay, or how easy it turns out to be, or the way Enjolras has a habit of doing his studying in the sunshine on the living room floor... Yeah, he may be in some trouble. Enjolras/Grantaire, 10k, E

in all and any of your skins by theappleppielifestyle Steve has a thing for Tony. Steve has a thing for Iron Man. This is a problem, until it really isn't. Steve/Tony, 1k, M Note: identity! porn!

A New Weird by corantus Kids in the Horde are probably super touch-starved Adora/Catra, 2k, G

World Tour by cherryfeather When his anklet finally comes off, Neal needs to see the world again. Peter and Elizabeth amass a collection of very interesting postcards and artifacts. Elizabeth/Peter/Neal, 7k, T

the long slide from kingdom to kingdom by gyzym They want you to love the whole damn world but you won't, you want it all narrowed down to one fleshy man in the bath, who knows what to do with his body, with his hands. -Richard Siken, Driving, Not Washing. Steve/Bucky, 6k, G

Black AmEx by copperbadge Bruce isn't sure he wants to use a credit card Tony gave him. Steve isn't sure he even knows how. Bruce Banner, 4k, G

I Relied Upon the Moon by mnemosyne tumblr prompt: How about the amazing trope of "you will recognize your soulmate by the first words they say to you (as it is tattooed on your skin)" but as finn was in the stormtrooper program his was removed. Finn/Poe, 2k, G Note: i just love alternative takes on soulmate aus!

Sooner or Later in Life by pineapplecrushface “Can I buy you a drink?” the idiot asked. “To make up for hip checking you into the core of the Earth?” Eddie opened his mouth to say no, of course not, he was on his lunch break. But the end of his lunch break had already come and gone, hadn’t it? He wasn’t so much out for lunch as he was out for the afternoon, or maybe forever. He just hadn’t told anyone yet. For the first time in his entire life, Eddie Kaspbrak was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, and he found he sort of liked it. In fact, he wanted to do more of it. He wanted this idiot to buy him a drink. Richie/Eddie, 10k, E

Long-Term by idiopathicsmile Take, for instance, the couple she’s consulting with this afternoon, for their upcoming October ceremony. Seemingly mismatched in every respect. The plump, fair-haired one looks like a parody of an absent-minded professor, as sketched by someone who didn’t bother to do much actual research; his clothes are so outdated it teeters on costume. He’s wearing a bow tie, and not in that reinvented hipster way. This is a bow tie unacquainted with the cycles of fashion, a bow tie that has never heard the word irony. His partner is a rangy, black-clad ginger in snakeskin boots. He has the look of a hungover rocker about him, and would somehow, even without the sunglasses he has fully committed to wearing indoors on a cloudy afternoon. He’s sprawled almost defiantly in his chair and keeps throwing dubious glances around Dr. Blackwell’s office, as though expecting a lightning bolt to strike him down for merely daring to be within spitting distance of a church. Aziraphale/Crowley, 1k, G

Off-Script by Fuhadeza Every time Adora sees Catra in the months that follow, it’s like standing on a stage. Like every play, theirs has an intermission. In another world, it might be the moment when the masks come off and the actors remember that, at the end of the day, they are merely friends. In this world, it is the moment Adora remembers the exact opposite. Adora/Catra, 11k, T

so you wanna be a hero, kid by pavonine The Waitress' new boyfriend is a real hero-type. With Frank's help, Charlie decides to prove that he can be a hero too. Charlie & The Waitress, 5k, G Note: there’s a bit in this fic where the gang all choose tom cruise-related codenames and it appeals to be on a very spiritual level

[mister-eames]

1/? If you wrote a thesis on Arthur and Eames I would literally carry it around in my pocket & read it daily, so I’m begging you!! Please don’t spare your 5k essay on why you think Arthur thinks he doesn’t have a chance with Eames!! I Wanna know your thoughts on this!! Because I think it’s a combination of elements. Firstly I think initially Arthur truly believes Eames doesn’t like him. They’re too different. Arthur is everything Eames isn’t & vice versa. & even tho the saying goes “opposites

2/? attract”.. sometimes you just clash & that’s that.. I think at first he also mistakes Eames playfulness, his snark, quips & attempts at riling Arthur up as genuine condescension & disdain. I also read once in a fic where Arthur made a comment about how nobody likes the pointman cos at the end of the day it’s his job to pick apart everybody else’s work & point out the weaknesses. So the idea that a guy like Eames, who as a forger has one of the most creative/artistic roles in dreamshare. --- 3/3 would be interested in a guy whose role often involves probably telling people to tone it down... yeah. Not gonna happen. & then I think there’s that fear of mixing business with pleasure. The idea of ruining such a great working partnership by bringing something as messy as FEELINGS into it? I think that’s something that would make Arthur not even entertain the idea of ever having anything more with Eames because how could he ever risk losing Eames as a work partner?

---

Aha, are you ready? Obvs these are all just my headcanons, and that the beauty of inception is that the characters can be who we want them to be, all interpretations are valid, etc etc...

So, with Arthur and why I think he thinks doesn't have a chance with Eames. You're right that it's a combination of elements:

I think, at his core, Arthur like, all of us, carries some kind of emotional bruising when it comes to loving and being loved. And like, all of us, Arthur does not think he's perfect. He has self-perceived flaws. Every single one of us, as human beings, has insecurities - even Arthur. I think he uses all of the surface, logical, 'rational' arguments like not wanting to mix business and pleasure to justify not actually addressing these hurts and insecurities.

You know my personal headcanon for Arthur, generally speaking canonically, is that he did not come from money. He grew up poor with a parent that wasn't, say, well enough to be there for him the way a child would need. That he was the caretaker in the household most of the time.

And, bear with me here, on Arthur caring about his looks - Arthur is buttoned up to all hell not because of vanity, but because of how he will be perceived--- he wears his suits less like armour and more like a weapon. Arthur, to me, is scrappy, not defensive.

But despite how he presents himself, deep down Arthur still is that fourteen year old version of himself, the one that lashed out everyone Eventually, he learned to control that anger, the one that showed everyone else where he was wounded -- but he never addressed the ways he was hurt, or the parts of him that has always been deeply lonely. As an adult he isn't keen on loving anyone else because it's always been a one-way transaction. He does not know how to interpret loving someone and being loved in return. For him, what does that even look like? Arthur doesn't want to love anyone because he's never received the same output of love he gives out. And maybe he thinks something is wrong with him, for feeling affection the way he does and never truly getting it back in kind - platonic, familial or romantic.

So he wears his weaponry to keep people from getting too close to touch, figuratively speaking. And maybe Eames takes him on face value for a beat too long.

While I don't really consider Arthur and Eames to be opposites, I do think they are flip sides of the same coin. They share a basic foundation, beliefs, ethics - but can also clash where they combine. It's like when you just... get someone on a basic level, like you share a frequency without needing years of getting to know them. Like when you meet someone and you just know you must have known each other in a past life. Arthur thinks that this weird, antagonistic thing he has with Eames is something different, isn't it? Except, it isn't. It's just love, baby.

Arthur feels it, with Eames. That 'something'. Over time it develops into a feeling that is both thrum and quiet. Like his whole body is vibrating but also completely still just by being near him, thinking about him.

But, at least initially, Arthur is just too... wary to place his money on it, that feeling. It's never provided dividends before.

Which isn't to say that Eames is the one to show Arthur he is 'worth loving', or anything like that. I believe that Arthur comes to that realisation all by himself - realistically, they're both still young and young enough to be insecure at the time of the film. Late 20's, 30s? Babies, in the grand scheme of adulthood. They are only just consolidating out who they are, really. But Arthur, at some point, realizes its okay to put his sword down and be loved in a different way from those who'd said they'd loved him before. To have someone take care of him, to run point for him. He gets better at reading love languages.

And I think, to address Arthurs own insecurities -- we all also have that kind of rose-tinted view of the ones we love while thinking we are plain and unremarkable - we look at them and go fuck, you are amazing, you are incredible, you can do anything and you don't even know it, how do you not know how powerful you are?? --- that's part of it too. Maybe he looks at Eames, Cobb and Mal and thinks just that. Maybe he wonders in what world would Eames ever look at him the same way? Maybe he does underestimate his own power and he takes it all too seriously and to heart when he's not perfect. Maybe he can't look past his own fuck ups in life and in work that it truly clouds his perception of himself and his compatibility with others.

That, I think, are the basic fears Arthur has. It's like inception, right, these 'simplest version of ideas' manifest in more convoluted ones. Those fears get translated and articulated into very simple 'reasonable' arguments he hoodwinks himself with so he never has to face his own vulnerability: it would never work out. I don't like the way he does x, y, z. He is so annoying. He doesn't even like me like that. It'd be bad for business. It's not worth the risk. We're here to work.

So I think Arthur leaves his attraction to Eames like a mailbox slowly accumulating with more and more junk mail. He'll clean it out some day, pushed aside in his own mind, left unattended by him for a long time without realizing the pile is growing. On this, some of my fave fics are the ones where Arthur has this sort of... comically misbehaving subconscious because of his ignored affection for Eames. The ones where there are errant projections who fawn over Eames, or the ones where his subconscious is literally incapable of hurting him. I think Arthur is not.. repressed... as an individual, but the feelings he has for Eames are so large and encompassing and that he's tried to fit it into too small of a box, and that box is spilling out at the sides. What he feels cannot be contained or disposed of. He would be that kind of hot mess.

But, Arthur, you darling fool. The feeling is mutual.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 361: Planet’s Edge (1992)

Note that the game’s title screen does not technically exclude the possibility of returning from this point.

          Planet’s Edge

United States

New World Computing (developer and publisher)

Released 1991 for DOS, 1993 for FM Towns and PC-98

Date Started: 5 March 2020             Because it took me so long to get Planet’s Edge up and running, I had time to do more background research first–the kind of thing that I usually save for the “Summary and Rating” entry. I learned from Wikipedia that the game grew out of a desire to merge the boardgame Star Fleet Battles with an RPG. I learned from an RPG Codex interview that the developers wanted to put “Might and Magic in space.” Nowhere did the authors report a direct influence from any other game, so it was a surprise when I fired it up and found myself looking at . . . Starflight. It has the same type of base where you enter different buildings to accomplish similar tasks, the same type of ship with commands arranged by “station,” the same approach to galactic exploration, the same variety of weird alien races to meet, and the same take on combat. Sure, it does some things differently, but the core of the game was clearly cribbed from Starflight. Was it so hard for the developers just to admit “we wanted our own version of Starflight“?      There is some confusion about a couple of elements in the header. First, the title. My policy is that a game’s “official” title is the best two out of three on the manual cover, box cover, and in-game title screen. If all three conflict, I go with the in-game title screen. In the case of Planet’s Edge, the box includes a subtitle (The Point of No Return) that both the manual and in-game screen lack. Second, a while back, commenter shankao made a case for the game being released in 1992 instead of the official copyright date (and MobyGames date) of 1991. His argument is based on the fact that no reviews appeared for the game until comparatively late in 1992. I didn’t find any conclusive evidence, but I decided to accept shankao’s argument and move the game to 1992.                  

Judging by the animate intro, the backstory is “some guy escapes a cruiser by shooting a guard and stealing a ship.”

               Planet’s Edge is set in 2045. Humanity has colonized the Moon and has seeded Earth’s orbit with various space stations, satellites, and other craft. The denizens of these orbiting habitats become humanity’s only survivors when the rest of the planet is sucked into a “space-time warp.” The warp is the result of an electro-magnetic burst fired from an extraterrestrial craft, although it is unknown whether it was accidental or deliberate (a Chinese space station had disobeyed U.N. orders and fired missiles at the craft just before the event). Either way, Earth’s gravitational influence somehow remains, keeping the Moon and satellites in orbit.              

The Luna Base commander gives orders.

             Commander Mason Polk of Luna Base takes charge of humanity’s remnant. Without Earth’s resources, the base will run out of food and life support within a few years, so time is crucial. From the crashed alien spaceship, scientists recover the device that caused the disaster. They call it the “Centauri Device” and identify eight parts that they need to reconstruct it and possibly reverse its effects: a N.I.C.T.U. (but no K.L.A.A.T.U. or B.A.R.A.D.A.), an Algocam, a K-Beam, a Harmonic Resonator, a Mass Converter, a Gravitic Compressor, Krupp Shields, and Algiebian Crystals. How they came up with these names is left a bit vague. A ship dubbed the Ulysses is commissioned to scour the galaxy for these items and otherwise try to find out why the extraterrestrial ship visited and destroyed Earth. It’s a little unclear how we suddenly have the ability to travel outside our solar system, or given that we have said ability, why there’s a time limit on survival at Luna Base.            

I wonder if K-beams glitter in the dark.

          Gameplay begins at Luna Base, where the player can visit the shipyards (build and modify ships), the warehouse (offload cargo), the crew quarters (view and clone crewmembers), the research lab (check on progress with the Centauri Device), and the launchpad (head out into the universe). The items that you can build for your ship or characters depend on the resources that you bring back from other places–resources such as organics, heavy metals, alien isotopes, and rare elements.            

Luna Base and its various buildings.

          The crew consists of four fixed characters. The pilot is William Robert Dean from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Osai Lin Tsakafuchi from Tokyo is the ship’s physician and chief scientist. Engineering duties are handled by Nelson T. Ngatadatu of Babaishanda, New Gwelo (a fictional place, but “Gwelo” is a place name in Zimbabwe). The combat specialist (both ground and flight) is Katya A. Mershova from Muntenia, Romania. Each character occupies one of the ship’s four stations, some doing double duty if anyone dies. Each character has fixed attributes in body, intelligence, agility, and luck, as well as fixed skills like “Leadership,” “Light Weapons,” “First Aid,” and “Computers.” I don’t know whether these attributes or skills are capable of developing, but I don’t see any sign that they are.               

Attributes for my engineer.

          Each character has a personal inventory, drawn from the supplies on Luna Base or found in the galaxy. The first thing I did was give them all flak jackets and weapons.

I found the ship modification process confusing enough that I decided to save it for later and just blasted off in the default ship. Once in space, commands are organized among four “consoles”: navigation, weapons, engineering, and science. For instance, to communicate with another ship, you select the “Weapons” console (counterintuitively) and then “Communicate.” To heal crewmembers, you select “Science” and then “Heal Crew.” There are far less than 26 commands, so I don’t understand why each couldn’t have its own key. However, Planet’s Edge does a little better than previous games using this structure by at least allowing you to hit single keys on the submenus rather than arrowing through them. Also, a few very common commands like Navigation | Starmap and Navigation | Enter Orbit can be called from the main view with individual keys, without having to go into the stations first.            

I couldn’t make heads or tails of this screen.

            Moving around is a combination of elements seen in Starflight and Star Control II. As you fly away from a planet, the map’s scale changes to show a larger area. As you enter a star system, it changes to show a smaller area. When you’ve locked onto a planet, you O)rbit it, at which point you can S)can it for information or B)eam down if it’s appropriate. (There’s no landing craft, just a transporter.) Making things a little difficult is that the planets continually whiz around their stars, unrealistically fast, so it’s tough to identify which ones you’ve already approached.           

Note how the navigator turns and looks at me while waiting for my order.

        I guess the player is kind of an invisible “fifth” crewmember. I base this on the fact that, according to his mission directives, he’s expressly forbidden to beam down with the rest of the crew. Also, when you’re activating the consoles in the ship, each of the crewmembers turns and looks at you, as if you’re sitting in a central chair. Despite this, you don’t get to name yourself or anything.

A map accompanying the game shows Earth’s solar system (“Sol”) at the center of a galaxy occupying coordinates from -64 to 64 on two axes. Sol is the point of convergence of eight “sectors” which grow outwards from the center like irregular pie wedges: Alnasl, Ankaq, Zaurak, Alhena, Algieba, Caroli, Izar, and Kornephoros. (Most of these are actual stars). There are a handful of systems at the fringes of the map that occupy no sector. It’s not really clear at the outset of the game whether the sector designations are geographic or political. Either way, note that the names of the missing parts suggest that we’ll find one part per sector.

I had a few false starts as I got used to navigation. Alpha Centauri is so close that it’s easy to blow past it on your way out of the solar system. I got killed three times in a row by hostile aliens who either attacked immediately or demanded cargo I didn’t have. I haven’t even begun to figure out ship combat. Since you can’t save in space, I kept restarting on Luna Base and having to try again.             

Meanwhile, my crew is saying, “Oh my god! It’s an alien!”

            On the fourth try, I took things more slowly and explored the solar system before leaving it, although it appears you cannot land on any of its planets (which makes sense).        

Mars can be scanned but not visited.

         I then carefully made my way to Centauri. The first planet, Centauri Prime, was too inhospitable to land. The second wasn’t a planet but an “alien outpost.” When I scanned it for information, the computer called it the “Omegan Outpost” and said that it was a “contact point for observers who were assisting with the failed Centauri Drive experiment.” I guess we know all these things because of data recovered from the crashed alien ship.             

Orbiting Centauri Prime. It’s a nice looking planet, but we can’t do anything there. I was hoping we’d meet Londo.

         The four expendable crewmembers beamed down and were immediately attacked by robots firing laser guns. Combat in the game is turn-based and like nothing that New World has developed before. It is perhaps most like Ultima VI, occurring within the main exploration window and using a targeting cursor to attack particular enemies. In fact, once combat was over, I found that regular exploration was also a lot like Ultima VI. As the leader moves, the other characters kind of organize themselves around him or her. You can switch between lead characters with the number keys (although there’s no “solo mode”) and do other common things like L)ook, T)alk to NPCs, and do a variety of things with inventory items. You can’t manipulate the environment to the same extent as Ultima VI, and (annoyingly) you can’t move on the diagonal, but nonetheless, by including this level of ground exploration and combat, New World has definitely gone a step beyond Starflight and Star Control II, even if the rest of the game seems similar.           

Combat with robots in the outpost.

               A door led from the surface of the planet to the interior of the “welcome station,” where a friendly message invited us to browse various newscasts. As we moved from room to room, we faced several more combats, and I had to use medpacks (which we found strewn around the area) several times. We also found some better armor than we were wearing (kevlar) and some extra weapons.            

A character inventory.

          We ran into an android who somewhat explained the situation: the station had been attacked by unknown aggressors who stole “various tactical data about the sectors.” Another android offered that the disappearance of Earth was “a tragic accident” and he encouraged us to continue our quest to find the various pieces of the Centauri Device. He specifically recommended going to Algieba Sector since “there’s a part that is named after one of that sector’s stars, after all.”              

But . . . Earth scientists named that part! They don’t know where it really comes from!

             Beneath a plaque labeled “Sector Izar,” we saw an image of a spacecraft that looks a lot like the extraterrestrial ship that visited Earth. A recorded message was saying that “something is malfunctioning with the drive” and “the experiment may have been sabotaged.” The overwhelming suggestion is that Earth’s disappearance was an accident, but we still don’t know what the aliens were trying to accomplish.

There were a couple of alien newscasts to watch. One suggested some kind of war developing in Sector Caroli. Another reported on a “white hole”–a kind of space volcano–forming in Sector Zaurak. Unforutnately, they were just text; they didn’t show anything, so we couldn’t see what type of alien they were talking about.      I was happy to find that you can save while on “away missions” and that you can turn off the relentless soundtrack with ALT-M. The rest of the sound effects are okay, except that when you view inventory, there’s an annoying and unnecessary “ding” as you move from one inventory item to another. Scrolling through a lot of them sounds like you’re demanding a bride and groom to kiss. On the positive side, every item seems to have a unique description, which I always think is cool.             

I confess I don’t understand this, though. Wouldn’t the adjustment have to be on every cartridge?

         In the final room we explored, an android gave us a key that would unlock the various “android heads” strewn around the base. There were eight heads, each offering information on one or more of the galaxy’s eight sectors. Some of them were explicit about the technology and military level of these sectors, I guess suggesting a rough order of exploration. From lowest to highest, these are:                

Sector Algieba, where the Algiebian Empire has a low level of technology. This is the second explicit suggestion to go there first.

Sector Zaurak, ruled by the “Rana Collective,” which controls the resources and means of production and thus has kept development at a minimum.

Sector Kornephoros, settled by refugees fleeing oppressive governments in Sectors Izar and Ankaq. Their technology is mostly good, but inconsistent because it is based on scavenging.

Sector Caroli. The android says that at the end of something called the Grand Survey, Sector Caroli was reserved for “recreation and housing for lower tech societies.” There, I’ll find Oortizam Labs and the Life Gallery. The only native species is the Eldarin.

Sector Alhena has no government. Two races called the Evian and the Scroe are in a war for its resources, while a race called the Dhoven tries to negotiate. It is a mix of mid- and high-tech ships and weapons.

Sector Ankaq, ruled by a planet called Shadowside, has a high level of technology.

           The android head’s rundown on Ankaq.

         Sector Izar is where Centauri and the station itself are located. The android warns against penetrating further into the sector because the OMEGA (unsure whether this is the race or the name of an organization) is capable of easily destroying everyone but the Ominar.

Sector Alnasl, ruled by the Ominar. Lately, they have been reporting bouts of insanity and mass violence, and other races are advised to keep away. “These developments,” the head noted, “may well be connected to the disaster of the Sol Experiment.”

             If this really is an exploration order, it’s too bad that the developers included it instead of encouraging the more open-exploration approach of both Starflight and Star Control II, not to mention previous New World games. Thus, I decided to defy it by heading direclty for Alnasl, one of the farthest stars in Sector Alnasl. I made it there with no problem, but when I arrived, a scaled alien told me that I was in violation of some “space conducts mandate” and refused to allow me to contact the single space station orbiting the star. I never figured out how this resolved because I had to take a break to reconcile my bank statement with Quicken, and Quicken decided it needed to update and took over my screen with its request for administrative rights, and whatever I did to make my DOSBox sessions survive such screen changes was undone when I restored the default configuration to play Planet’s Edge. (In its default configuration, DOSBox always crashes for me any time anything causes a major screen change, including unplugging or plugging in an extra monitor, opening or clsoing the laptop, and getting a demand for administrative privileges.) Thus, when I reloaded, I was back on the Centauri outpost. I guess this is a good place to end for now.         

If I’m “irrelevant,” why don’t you let me land?

          So far, it’s a decent game that evokes the best of Starflight and Star Control II, although I suspect the alien interactions are going to be less interesting and I worry that the blatantly suggeted exploration order will be essentially required. I also think it’s too bad that New World, which has a lot of experience in more traditional RPGs, didn’t bring more of their mechanics to character development and space combat. But it’s early. We’ll see how it goes.

*****

Time so far: 3 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-361-planets-edge-1992/

[zarafoodrecipe]

Love, loss and architecture: The rise of Rachel Neeson

Neeson at her home in Bronte in Sydneys east, where she lives with her two children and architect partner Stephen Neille. Photo: Nic Walker Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size Rachel Neeson takes precise martinet steps as she crosses the street with a phone to her ear. Her slight frame is engulfed by a royal blue cape with a sharp mid-century cut, her russet hair drawn back from a straight fringe and clasped into a ponytail. Her features look drawn even careworn. But this image of one of the country's most exciting architects, caught through a window of her award-winning Juanita Nielsen Community Centre in inner Sydney's Woolloomooloo, is fleeting. The moment she steps inside a switch is flicked: the cares seem to melt and a smile spreads across her slightly angular face. She suggests we find a table on the mezzanine. "I doubt there'll be anyone about," she adds as we take the beach-gold stairs. "It should be quiet." Neeson, who turned 50 this month, heads a small Sydney practice with a big reputation and a dramatic backstory of love, tragedy and, finally, triumph. I'd expected a bundle of nerves, given her protestations in an email exchange about time poverty. With less than 24 hours before leaving for the Venice Biennale of Architecture with her children, Alice, 11, and Otto, 8, and partner Stephen Neille also an architect Neeson is in a crunch with books to balance, a young family to corral, and last-minute travel arrangements to make. The Juanita Nielsen Centre, winner of the profession's 2017 national awards for both heritage and public architecture, is light-filled and vibrant. The handrail is encased in leather, the kitchen is a glossy vermilion, while the tactile internal concrete walls have a gentle corrugation. "This came out of thinking about the play of light on a fluted surface we asked ourselves, 'How do you give this concrete core a sense that it's been touched by hand, and thought about?'" Neeson explains. The centre is named after Juanita Nielsen, an urban activist who disappeared in 1975, aged 38, her body never found. In Neeson's work the act of remembering Nielsen is delicately handled: more celebratory wake than funereal dirge. I ask about the jaunty black-and-white diagonally striped awnings outside. "Maybe we went overboard there," Neeson laughs. "We came to think of it as the Juanita stripe. She had a fondness for stripes. And it's there in the pattern on the ceiling." With work the subject, her gestures are so fluidly expressive to illustrate a point, both hands caress the air in a hula-like move that I remark on them. Dance, she says, was her first artistic love: "I would have been a dancer if I could have been." Advertisement There's a joyful quality to the centre that architecture critic Laura Harding sees as a defining characteristic of Neeson's work. One of her best-known houses, at Whale Beach, twists and turns over three levels on a steeply sloping hillside, each room designed to capture a new facet of the ocean and headland view. It was co-designed with her late husband Nick Murcutt, a rising star in his own right and the son of Glenn, the only Australian to win architecture's equivalent of the Nobel, the Pritzker Prize. Nick was Neeson's partner in life, love and architecture until his death seven years ago from cancer, at 46. That she emerged from grief with her delight in form, space and texture intact is a wonder and a gift. The redesigned Prince Alfred Park Pool in inner Sydney, known as Redfern Beach. Photo: Brett Boardman The same playful quality, almost a tone, is there in the Kempsey-Crescent Head Surf Life Saving Club on the NSW mid-north coast, which Neeson overhauled in 2015. Its opaline glazed brick surface was inspired by a handful of pipi shells. The building's bold heft and equally expressive wide-screen views help to place it firmly in its coastal setting. And it's there in Neeson's upgrade of the Prince Alfred Park Pool, referred to by inner-Sydneysiders as "Redfern Beach": a reimagining replete with yellow umbrellas, timber surfaces and sky-blue stripes of a fenced recreation space that had previously looked like a grim cell block. The sweet-sad memory of Nick Murcutt threads through Neeson's reflections on the Juanita Nielsen building. "You know, this was the first public tender we won" she uses "we" when referring to the practice "after Nick's death." She pauses to make a quick calculation. "It was, I think, 15 months later." Surveying an exposed-brick wall, she raises her eyes to the herringbone patterned roof beams as one looks fondly into the face of a friend. Neeson's story of love and architecture and love through architecture is a common enough tale in a profession perfectly suited, almost designed, for partners in love and work: Finns Alvar and Aino Aalto, Americans Charles and "Ray" Eames, and honorary Australians Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin. A variation on the theme looms closer to home. Glenn Murcutt and his architect wife Wendy Lewin weave in and out of collaboration like partners in a waltz. They jointly designed an education centre at Bundanon in a bend of the Shoalhaven River that inspired many of Arthur Boyd's later works, and, more recently, a museum at the Australian Opal Centre in Lightning Ridge, both in NSW. The collaborative principle that is so evident in Neeson and Nick's work flows through her four-year relationship with Neille, who has joined her as co-director from his base in Perth. The practice may in reality these days be Neeson Neille, but it still bears the name Neeson Murcutt Architects, in honour of its legacy. Earlier this month, Neeson and Neille found themselves sharing the winners' podium at the annual Houses magazine awards in Sydney, when they picked up a gong for their first project together their own home, on a busy street close to Bronte beach. At the same ceremony Neeson accepted an award for the last project that she and Nick designed together, a robust concrete house set in an exotic coastal Sydney garden. "It was like seeing the arc of time distilled into a moment," says one architect at the ceremony. Advertisement The Juanita Nielsen Community Centre. Photo: Brett Boardman Neeson's childhood, much of it spent on the move in Europe, was by any measure unconventional. The daughter of an electrician father and nurse mother who decided they wanted to travel the world, she didn't live in a standard suburban home until she was a 19-year-old university student. Before that it had been a procession of transient digs. She and her younger sister and brother would find themselves in class one day, on a flight from England to Spain the next. "I learnt how to make friends in a caravan park within 20 minutes," she laughs. Did her sense of place as an architect develop from a placeless childhood? "On the contrary," she shoots back. "It was place-rich." She remembers the precise day in 1988 that she met Nick. A second-year architecture student at Sydney University, she joined a student panel to help select the new chair of architecture for a department open to student input. Nick, then a fifth-year student, was also on the panel. He was Australian architecture aristocracy the dauphin. She had no architectural pedigree at all. But what she did have was smarts Neeson would win the architecture medal with first-class honours upon graduation a dancer's poise and a girl-most-likely air. Their relationship began in 1995, after which the collaborative immersion was all-embracing. In 2004 they formalised it with the creation of Neeson Murcutt Architects, and began to reel in prestigious awards for subtle, place-sensitive homes that never seemed the product of an existing school or design dogma. Architect Camilla Block co-designed the sinuous corner building in Sydney's Potts Point, with its crackled skin and irregular splay of windows (dubbed "Barcelona" by fellow architects) that houses both her own studio, Durbach Block Jaggers, and that of Neeson Murcutt. She worked with Nick from 1994 the firm was then Durbach Block Murcutt and still remembers the spirit of collegiate play he brought to the office. "Nick was interested in everything," she says. "He was not a head-down-bum-up type. He was in essence a pleasure seeker; he'd rather be at a restaurant than at his desk." When he talked about work, his ideas and conjectures would fire from one another, like architectural improv or bebop. In partnership with such a breezy extemporising hedonist, Neeson retreated to a role that suited, but at the same time constrained her. She became the kite holder. At the end of the string, weaving and darting, was her partner. It took all her strength and guile just to tether him and bring him back to earth. Advertisement On March 17, 2011, the couple were married. They had been together 16 years and the celebration was to have been a grand international architecture shebang in a paddock at Murcutt pre's farm at Kempsey. But Nick was at the tail-end of a nine-month battle with lung cancer. With his health rapidly failing, the wedding was pared down to a spare essence, the ceremony held at his bedside. The following day, he died at home in Bondi. It was a black moment for Australia's intensely competitive yet curiously clannish architecture profession. The funeral, held at the Church of St Canice in Sydney's Elizabeth Bay, was packed to overflowing as architects from the country and the city, men and women, old and young, drew together. "It was unutterably sad," recalls a figure in the architecture world, who declines to be named. "Glenn couldn't speak. He was crushed. Nick's mother spoke, though, and brought alive the boy and young man Nick had been." Neeson, never less than lithe, was almost skeletal. Some were concerned for her and her young family. Others were struck by the fortitude that shone through her physical frailty. For Philip Vivian, director of storied architecture firm Bates Smart, it was the first time he had registered her "incredible inner strength". None were aware of the full extent of the catastrophe, though they would soon enough. Neeson was reeling not only from the death of her lover, business partner and the father of her two children; she was also facing the imminent crash of their flourishing architectural practice. "I had significant personal debt, a one-year-old, a four-year-old, and nine staff," she recalls. In a stoical tone, one hand kneading the other, she says she and her children moved from the small Bondi place she'd shared with Nick to a rambling home with her parents in Sydney's inner west. It was here that she began to repair. Rachel Neeson and Nick Murcutt in 2009 at the Whale Beach property they designed. Photo: Steven Siewert The first year was the worst. Nick was not so much a memory as a spectral presence, and Neeson would often find herself conjuring his large and sunny spirit. "I would have these discussions with Nick in my head," she says. "Or I would try to." The couple had been so deeply immersed in collaboration that not even death, it seemed, could silence their duet. She retains a memento of the architectural conversation that anchored their love in a concept drawing of a house in Castlecrag for which the couple won the 2011 Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture. Perched above Sydney Harbour, tucked in behind a sandstone outcrop and nestled in an angophora forest, it features bold gestures of brick, stone, concrete and wood. "One of us had blue pen, one of us had black pen, and you can see the lines weaving together as we designed with that special site in mind," she says. By the time the house was completed, Nick's health was deteriorating. The couple spent a few summer nights there by the water, with the clients' permission, before the clients moved in. "Friends would drop around. It was beautiful." Advertisement Collaboration had given their young practice an undergirding, and creative dynamism. But it also left it vulnerable. Nick had been the business manager, even though business was not his strength. They'd not thought to take out life insurance, and the debt from medical bills by the time of his death was frightening. Neeson's first step was to hire a new accountant, one who didn't make her feel "stupid" when she asked financial questions. The second required deeper reserves of character. If the practice was to survive the death of its most visible partner she would need to grow, to reclaim dimensions of herself she'd ceded to her freewheeling, charismatic soulmate. "For Nick, architecture was a much more intuitive thing," she says. "We were complementary in that sense. I think he enjoyed that the addition of what the other can bring. We both enjoyed it." A tentative smile spreads across her face and her hands unclasp. "Some time after he died, I started to draw on my own intuition more deeply. It takes confidence to trust one's intuition, and perhaps my confidence has grown in the years since Nick's death, because it has had to." If she had failed, after his death, to deepen her own intuitive capacity she would not be the architect she is now: celebrated by her profession's highest honours, widely respected for both her courage and talent. Recalls Bates Smart's Philip Vivian: "Rachel set about completing buildings begun with Nick such as the Prince Alfred Park Pool upgrade, which is a stunning piece of work, as well as her own projects such as the Kempsey surf club at Crescent Head. It must have taken immense fortitude to continue on with the practice." Vivian would later put Neeson's name forward for a large project at Newmarket Green in eastern Sydney's Randwick, a puzzle of low- and high-density housing, parks, new streets and remodelled heritage buildings. Neeson's team chipped in with a three-storey apartment building characterised by crisp lines, spacious lobbies and varicoloured brickwork. A story Vivian tells of the pitch for that project highlights Neeson's realisation of the need to project in person the vibrancy that is so much part of her work. "The developer was worried about Neeson Murcutt, as they were a small practice," he recalls. "We set up a meeting for their head of residential development to meet Rachel at a coffee shop. It was meant to be an informal chat, but somehow, when it came to selling the work of Neeson Murcutt, Rachel had an odd moment, and couldn't promote herself." Another architect, who was at that meeting, confirms the story. "She totally fluffed it," he recalls. The story offers an insight into the difficulties faced by a reserved, cerebral woman heading a small practice in the masculine world of building development, where it's all about the pitch. "That was a real learning experience," Neeson tells me. After the meeting, she berated herself: "This was a meeting with a developer and he just needed to know how good I am! Instead I gave him the typical female under-sell. I really needed to put my best foot forward and to make sure everyone could see that foot that it wasn't hidden beneath a skirt." Pipi shells inspired Neeson's design for the outside of the Kempsey-Crescent Head SLSC, which she overhauled in 2015. Photo: Brett Boardman Advertisement The position of women within a profession dominated by heroic male architects is slowly changing. Neeson's success reflects that change. Men are potent figures in her story but it was Neeson who kept the practice alive in the dark days; who learnt how to work without her partner; how to pass those lessons to her staff. She has evolved her own distinctive aesthetic; rigorous yet playful, with a touch of intrigue, married to a minimalism not of form but of ego. She makes a point of drawing professional women into her working life. Her go-to landscape designer is Sue Barnsley, and Iranian-born designer and academic Maryam Gusheh has recently joined as a part-time critical adviser. "There is a strong movement right now in gender equity which I think is particularly important in larger architecture practices, which have forever been male-heavy at the top," Neeson says. After this interview, she is expecting a visit from the famed Barcelona-based architect Carme Pins: the women met while Neeson was completing a master's degree in the Spanish city. Roughly the same number of women and men graduate each year with architecture degrees in Australia, but noticeably fewer women enjoy the rewards that come with partnership in a big firm. Fewer still have steered their own firms as Iraqi-British architect and Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid did. So concerned is the profession about gender equity at the moment that a group, with the somewhat cheerleaderish title Architect Male Champions of Change, has formed to advance the cause. SJB Sydney director Adam Haddow, along with fellow member Philip Vivian, is convinced that a more evenly balanced profession would make for a better built environment. "I think in Rachel's work we're able to see how delightful our cities could be," he tells me. "From my perspective, there is an understanding of 'local essence' or a hyper sense of 'knowledge of place' in the work of Neeson Murcutt but at the same time there is nothing familiar or preconceived. It is as if with every project, Rachel and the Neeson Murcutt team are able to take you somewhere you didn't even know existed the work is refreshing and delightful. I always walk away from it with a feeling of 'I wish I'd done that.'" The husband-wife pattern is so pronounced in architecture that female architects, until relatively recently, were usually known through collaboration with their famous husbands. A 2001 survey of American architects found that one-fifth had a "spouse or significant other" who was an architect. "Women as architecture leaders in their own right have been less visible," Neeson agrees, adding that her generation "is the first where this has changed". That change is evident in the names of those talked about with excitement in Australian design circles these days. Neeson and Camilla Block work a similar seam to Clare Cousins, Kerstin Thompson and Hannah Tribe, Amelia Holliday and Isabelle Toland; all head their own small firms or work in partnership with one other architect. Others, such as Abbie Galvin, principal of the Australian-based international firm BVN; Emma Williamson, director of COX; and Olivia Hyde, the NSW Government's director of design excellence, hold leadership roles in large firms. Of this group Cousins is the most prominent dual-tasker: she is head of her own Melbourne-based practice and national president of the Australian Institute of Architects. Whether they specialise in the architectural versions of solo or orchestral parts, none of these women play second fiddle to anyone. Neeson with Stephen Neille. Photo: Erieta Attali Neeson met Stephen Neille at Sydney University before she met Nick Murcutt. It was her first year, and Neille's fifth. "Stephen and I were both participating in a national student competition," she recalls (she came second). "We became friends and remained so over all those years." The couple fell in love in 2014 and he moved to Sydney a year later from Perth, where he'd been in partnership with Simon Pendal. Her move to, in a sense, corporatise the relationship with Neille, as she and Nick had done in 2004, was never desired or planned. "It was our intention that once Stephen moved to Sydney, he would keep working with Simon," she explains. "But he and Simon just found working apart on opposite sides of the country too difficult." Neeson's talent and tenacity helped to stabilise the practice, but it has not been a smooth, steadily upward trajectory. "A few years ago, when every architectural practice in Sydney was going gangbusters, I realised we had no new work," she says. Her instinctive response was to put out feelers, as she had done in the year after Nick's death. "I started to quietly let my colleagues know," she offers. "I would ask if they had any projects to spare." She may have been nettled by her former accountant's response to her financial queries, but she is fearless about quizzing colleagues on big- and small-picture architectural issues. An architect at a commercially successful Sydney firm recalls Neeson buttonholing him at a function on the subject of big project management. Her willingness to reach out to colleagues contributes to an impression of modesty, even vulnerability, which is rare in a profession with a fondness for uncompromising individualists. "A friend asked me around the time of Nick's death what my goals were," Neeson says. "I aimed to break even. I never thought we would grow." But the firm is growing. There are now 13 staff, including three students, 10 "active" projects and a number of entries in public competitions. When Neeson Murcutt began, high-end homes were Neeson's metier. But as her practice has matured, her focus has turned increasingly towards sophisticated projects of public interest that synthesise landscape, heritage and culture. The Kamay Botany Bay National Park, on the site where James Cook took his first steps on the eastern seaboard, is the latest. "It is the most important site in Australia," she says. "It has such a story. The people here were the earliest displaced people in our country." In the process of developing a plan for the park, she has learnt that the blooming of the wattle heralds the northerly migration of whales along this stretch of coast. "Doesn't everyone want to know that?" she asks with an unbridled flash of joy. "I want to know that!" Rachel Neeson at her home in Bronte, for which she and Stephen Neille won a design award. Photo: Nic Walker We catch up for a second time after Neeson's return from Italy, at a Kings Cross cafe in a laneway close to her practice. I expect her to regale me about the architectural splendours of Rome, where the family holidayed after the biennale. But she's keen to talk instead about her observations of the way children respond to architecture their "beautiful strength", sense of "wonder" and innate "spatial" intelligence. She and Neille had taken Alice and Otto into the dome of St Peter's Basilica. They laboured to the top, as Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg famously did in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, along a progressively narrowing stairway between Michelangelo's inner and outer domes. The experience brought home to her, in a direct and immediate way, the "bodily" sensation of space, which in this case bordered on claustrophobia. At the top, with Rome spread out below, contained space gave way to infinite space, and she could breathe again. Michelangelo's dome was not so much a revelation as a reminder of what she does with architecture. "I really try to imagine the human activity the building will host and understand it not just from a functional perspective, but from an active feeling perspective," she says. When Camilla Block casts her mind back to the friend she knew in the days before architecture and life got serious, she sees a woman striving to keep her partner at his desk. "He would much rather drift away for a chat," she recalls. "Or go out to lunch." Neeson didn't need to channel Nick's more expansive talents after his death, she observes, as she had them all along. "They've always been there. We just take on certain roles in a relationship. Rachel was always capable of being who she is." Hair and make-up by David Grainger. To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age. https://www.smh.com.au/national/love-loss-and-architecture-the-rise-of-rachel-neeson-20180822-p4zyyd.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

[hellovisualculture-blog]

INCEPTION

Visionary filmmaker Christopher Nolan writes and directs “Inception” (2010), this “contemporary psychological sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind”deep plot designed to make one reflect on psycho-philosophical concepts like memory, lucid dreaming, the contagion of ideas, relationships as worlds onto themselves, the power of perception etc. It’s a dark, multilayered odyssey through the human mind that defies description, and must be experienced to be properly understood. It works on every conceivable level – as an explosive action movie, a psychological drama, an innovative science fiction film, and a tragic romance.

The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. We can never even be quite sure what the relationship between dream time and real time is. The hero explains that you can never remember the beginning of a dream, and that dreams that seem to cover hours may only last a short time. Inception can change the way you think of reality by positing that dreams can be just as real as "real life.” But the story is truly the heart and soul of “Inception.” It’s an intricate metaphysical labyrinth that requires some serious mental effort on the part of the viewer to understand. As the plot progresses, countless mysteries and subplots unfold – including some disturbing revelations about Cobb and his past discoveries in the dreamworlds. Other worldview or religious elements are pretty much absent. This movie is focused on minds, not souls (possibly to reflect a secular humanist view of mankind, but more likely, to appeal to a broader demographic.)

I decided to write about this movie because the concept and the theory behind it is interesting and can relate to anyone. Several times in the movie is repeated a phrase when you want to make it clear to a character who is in a dream: "Do you remember how you got here?" "Where you been before now?". I think this is the key of the whole movie. At the end, we really know how we got to read these lines? Let us not stop today or last week, we try to go back, further and further back in time ... In fact, none of us know why and how he got to be right in place and in a situation where he is, why he is just born here and right now. For all we know the entire universe can be completely unreal and just a projection of someone's mind. This movie questions our understanding of reality – a philosophical turn that certainly lends itself to worldview analysis. For the most part, “Inception” steers clear of addressing faith issues, instead preferring to concentrate on secular psychology. Inception is therefore a metaphor of this uncertainty that governs our lives, everything we do can be a dream and we just try to cling to shreds of reality checking of tops spinning and living with people who reassure us and allow us to convince ourselves that we live and we are real.

In Inception, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) doesn't steal things, he steals ideas. By projecting himself deep into the subconscious of his targets, he can glean information that even the best computer hackers can't get to. Leonardo DiCaprio’s using a totem – the object he uses to tell if he’s still in a dream state, or back in reality. Basically, if the top keeps spinning, Leo’s character is still dreaming. If it falls, he is awake. Soon enough, Cobb (who's s estranged from his kids) is asked by a businessman named Saito to take on his biggest job yet: instead of stealing information, he's going to implant (Incept) it. Should he and his team of specialists succeed, they will have discovered a new frontier in the art of psychic espionage. They've planned everything to perfection, and they have all the tools to get the job done. Their mission is complicated, by the sudden appearance of a malevolent foe that seems to know exactly what they're up to, and precisely how to stop them. First Cobb gets Ariadne, an architect from a French university, whose job is to build the dreams. Then he meets with a forger (who impersonates people) named Eames. Eames introduces Cobb to a chemist to apply the necessary sedation. Why does Cobb need an architect to create spaces in dreams? He explains to her. Dreams have a shifting architecture, as we all know; where we seem to be has a way of shifting. Cobb's assignment is the "inception" (or birth, or wellspring) of a new idea in the mind of another young billionaire, Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), heir to his father's empire. Saito wants him to initiate ideas that will lead to the surrender of his rival's corporation. Cobb needs Ariadne to create a deceptive maze-space in Fischer's dreams so that (I think) new thoughts can slip in unperceived. Nolan helps us with an emotional thread. The reason Cobb is motivated to risk the dangers of inception is because of grief and guilt involving his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), and their two children. Cotillard beautifully embodies the wife in an idealized way. But she makes Mal function as an emotional magnet, and the love between the two provides an emotional constant in Cobb's world, which is otherwise ceaselessly shifting.

The film Inception offers a number of instances of devices we would call literary devices. Each of these can also be construed as a cinematic narrative device used in the film's story-telling. First, there is the symbolism surrounding each character’s “totem”. The totem represents something emotional and historical for each character, while also gaining thematic significance at the end of the film as the protagonist’s totem, a top, teeters between conclusions. This symbol is given a very specific surface meaning, but can also be interpreted as a having a deeper meaning related to the theme of “uncertain reality” which is at the core of the film. Inception also utilizes a series of “frames” or “frame narratives”. This is a literary device commonly used to open and close stories. Some other cinematic elements: voice over; slow motion; color choice to distinguish time settings.

Nolan brilliantly combines elements of setting and sound design, with inimitable cinematography and editing styles to project the dream world on a film medium, narrating a story that reveals the blurred line between fantasy and reality. The setting of Inception is idiosyncratic for it divides each section of its dream world into distinct sceneries to help the audience differentiate location and tone. Cinematographer Wally Pfister designed the film’s location with diverse color hues and modern decor. Each dream level portrays an exclusive appearance from cool blue mountain peaks to warmly lit hotel floors. The dreamscapes are not affected by an individual’s underlying moral values, but only by thoughts, emotions, and memories. This separates the worlds allowing the audience to appreciate each setting in its entirety. Likewise, these settings provide insight into the tone of the narrative structure. The film exhibits expansive, sleek dream environments to contrast with angular, warmly lit locations paralleling a contemporary psychological thriller with science-fiction. The pressure for Cobb to complete his mission progresses from the tonality of each setting in varying degrees of color and location scale. All together, these hue differences supplement the narration by distinguishing the dreams which continue to reoccur in the story. Moreover, the film’s settings are realistic instead of stylized. The line between reality and fantasy is blurred expressing a major theme of the film that perhaps the dream world is unrecognizable from reality.

It was hard not to notice that the only female member of the team, played by Ellen Page, is also the one who is the most emotionally-attuned, and charged with holding the lead male, played by Leo DeCaprio, responsible for his subconscious desires and emotional recklessness. The rest of the male ensemble, though way more experienced with the sort of subconscious travel that they are engaged in, plus apparently sharing a history with DeCaprio’s character, appear largely oblivious.

It’s also hard not to notice that the wife in the film, played by Marion Cotillard, is a sort of prototypical hysteria figure…the wife who drives herself to madness because of her fragile disposition and vulnerability (spoiler alert) to be manipulated by her husband. Cotillard’s character is sort of a stand-in for the manipulated female lover, who can’t locate her own grasp on what is real and what is fake, what is her own legitimate worldview and what is male-constructed dream state. Ultimately, she tries to turn the table by manipulating the man herself, not a legitimate seize for power, but a desperate, clawing attempt at not being left alone.

If it was all a dream at the end, then we don't know when the dream started, whose dream it was and if there were any other “real people” or merely projections, and if projections then whose projections? If the whole movie were a dream, the brilliant concept behind the levels of dreams and kicks would all go waste. So, given that we are shown a spinning top with an unclear mention of whether Cobb is still in a dream or not, it would simply make the movie a better one to choose that the entire movie was not a dream.

[t-baba]

Finding Your Path to UX Leadership

Where do you see yourself in the next five or ten years? Leading a multidisciplinary in-house UX team? Presenting on stage at your favourite UX conference? Hosting a UX meetup?

These are all ways you can take on a leadership role in UX.

Last week, we looked at the essential qualities of UX leaders. This week, our UXperts share their advice on overcoming barriers and practical tips to steer your career in the right direction.

If you aspire to be a leader in UX, read on for advice on how you can make your mark in the UX community. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be a unicorn to make it!

  Cory Lebson

Cory Lebson (@corylebson), author of The UX Careers Handbook (CRC Press, 2016), has been a user experience consultant for over 20 years. He is the Principal and Owner of Lebsontech LLC, a successful user experience consulting firm he established in 1997. Lebsontech is focused on user research and evaluation, user experience strategy, UX training, and mentoring. Cory also speaks frequently on topics related to UX career development, user experience, user research, information architecture, and accessibility.

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

I think that one of the primary barriers to people being great UX leaders is the assumption that leadership needs to take the form of workplace team leadership when there are so many additional ways to be a leader.

Not everyone has the inclination towards workplace leadership. In fact, while workplace leadership can certainly be valuable on a resume, other forms of leadership actually offer far more exposure within and outside of the UX community. In addition to a solid resume of UX experience, that exposure is just as critical (if not, perhaps, more critical) to UX professionals whenever they are considering looking for a new job. Really, though, UX professionals need to practice these other forms of leadership all the time, not just when job seeking. This helps build their personal UX brand – a critical piece of any UX job search.

Who are your role models in the industry?

It’s all those UX leaders who help build UX community – local community, national community and global community, by creating events, activities, conferences, blog posts, articles, and podcasts. It’s all those UX leaders who strive to help others grow and learn. UX is a career field about people – about people helping people – and that extends beyond what we get paid to do. We’re in a field where this kind of leadership is so common and so appreciated by so many.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Get out there! People should go beyond their workplace and build community, build ideas, and inspire others. Find out what is missing or could be better in a given local UX community, for example, and help create it! Yes, there is enough time in the day and it’s well worth it – to the community, to the individuals within the community, and to the leaders who get to feel good about what they created while simultaneously building a name for themselves beyond what they may do on the job.

Jodie Moule

Jodie Moule is Co-founder & CEO of Symplicit, a Customer Led Innovation firm based in Australia that has focused on research, strategy and design services since 2003. Following a Design Thinking philosophy that was grounded in the psychology and industrial design backgrounds of the founders; Jodie believes that understanding human behaviour allows you to change the customer experience, and that change happens through great design. Follow Jodie: @jodiemoule @thecookapp @symplicit

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

I guess it comes down to each individual and your tenacity. Opportunity always presents itself, it’s just whether or not you are a ‘grab the bull by the horns’ kinda person, or ‘the world owes me’ type. In my experience, it’s the opportunistic types that get shit done, don’t make a fuss, and therefore, ultimately get the gig. Proactive, persistent, and high energy wins every time in my book. In that sense, the barrier is attitude. Your attitude. 

Who are your role models in the industry?

How do I not sound like a wanker and say I don’t have any? I tended to be profoundly impacted by everyday people that I observed from my life when I was younger, and then strived to be like them in some way.  

Growing up, I was lucky to be surrounded by strong independent women who I admired. My Grandmother was fiercely independent. She supported her whole family through the war times, and was one of the first female lifesavers in Australia – which was a major coup, given women weren’t allowed to wear swimsuits and do that stuff back then. Shows how strong she was fighting the machine back in the day. Same with my Aunty – she was a high-flying airline consultant who lived, what I thought, was an incredibly glamorous lifestyle that I aspired toward. Even my Dad was a world champion Hot Air Balloonist in his spare time. These were the people I was surrounded by growing up, and they were the people I admired, and was heavily influenced by.

I also tend to admire people that do things I’m really bad at – or who have achieved something in a unique way that I think is clever or cool. For example, I walked into ‘Victor Churchill’ the other day – a crazy high-end butcher in Sydney. What that guy has done for butchery is something really different and amazing. What a vision! You can learn from that, no matter what industry you’re in.

When I got into this space, we were too busy making our own way to think about role models. I certainly read what others had to say and formed my own views, but ultimately I just got on with it. I think that was good on reflection. It’s best not to be too distracted by others, and pave your own way.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Work hard, don’t give up, and focus on your career, because it will have to come first to everything. No really, give up on the idea of work/life balance for a long while. I have found the harder that I work, the more I focused, the less distracted by other things I was – the more successful I got. There is no point being half-assed about it all. Success comes to those who work bloody hard to make it so.  Start building a profile and personal brand. Get yourself into positions where you are doing the things that leaders do – like have a voice in

There is no point being half-assed about it all. Success comes to those who work bloody hard to make it so. Start building a profile and personal brand.  Get yourself into positions where you are doing the things that leaders do – like have a voice in industry, write articles, present at conferences, do great work, be excited and engaged. And of course – take every opportunity you get – work hard and just fit it all in. Those who snooze lose.

James Noble

James has helped re-define, create and evolve user experiences for over two decades. Founding one of Asia Pacific’s most innovative experience agencies Carter Digital. An active UX industry advisor, mentor, radio presenter, public speaker and serves on a number creative juries globally including Australia’s first UX & Digital Craft representative for Cannes Lion in 2016. Follow James on LinkedIn, Medium, or Twitter.  

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

Ability, knowledge, people

Some things take time to learn, evolve and perfect. Staying positive, understanding limitations helps you be honest with the team and yourself. Don’t be afraid to say ‘I don’t know’, own it. We never have all the ux suite of tools in our bag, have insight and the ability to know ‘how’ and ‘where’ to find a solution to a problem.

Some barriers are universal and difficult to shake. This is a team, leverage each member’s core skills to each task and trust they can achieve the right result. Share your knowledge and trust your team, massively reduces people who are prone to micro-managing. Leading from the front and focus on the bigger picture, adding value to your leadership, and help others feel a sense of empowerment, ownership and satisfaction. Make sure the right people are in the right seats, the right person in the wrong seat can hinder the entire team you are trying to lead. A strong leader will make the hard choices for the greater good and know when to make those tough decisions.

UX leaders are from all areas of industry, businesses and departments. Being siloed within your own comfort zone or organisation can happen to everyone. Look outside your environment and look for similarities with what you do to others. Something as simple as switching from Apple iOS to Android for a few weeks you’ll see how it affects interactions with the interface, environment and mood while you use it, help you break routine and spark new approaches to problem-solving.

Who are your role models in the industry?

This seems like an easy question, it isn’t. UX is part of a much bigger picture, and you have to look outside your comfort zone to find answer.

Staying within the standard comfort zone it would be Luke Wroblewski for his forward thinking and research articles on mobile first, Tina Roth Eisenberg (aka Swiss Miss) helping make UX mainstream and contributions to Creative Mornings, Mike Monteiro for saying what everyone is thinking and of course, the mighty Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak combo for kickstarting the personal and digital revolution.

If I was honest, in my drive and motivations, my mind turns more towards Charles and Ray Eames, for understand and thinking outside the norm, Erik Spiekermann creating a typeface the world never knew we couldn’t live without, Wes Anderson for his beautiful understanding of the left vs. right human psyche and application of symmetry and of course NASA, without them we probably wouldn’t have Elon Musk trying to save the world, who also has a masterful plan b: MARS.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Consuming information in all its forms, regardless to the likelihood of remember it. Learning is more than the user experience industry, startups can be a constant source of information and inspiration. Never stop learning.

Improve communication skills, and know public speaking comes with the territory as exposure grows within the ux community.

Voice your opinion if you have one and try to write articles on these observations, a difficult ask (I know). Don’t be afraid to be wrong, you can’t be, it’s an opinion right?

Create what makes you happy, the rest will take care of itself.

  Dan Szuc

Dan (@dszuc) is a Principal Consultant at Apogee, as well as the co-founder of the UX Hong Kong conference. He has been involved in the UX field for 25 years, and has been based in Hong Kong for 20 years. Dan has lectured about usability, user-centred design, and user experience globally. He co-wrote The Usability Kit, an implementation guide providing best practices and guidelines for usability teams, and he holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Management from Melbourne University in Australia.

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

The barriers to great humanistic leadership are the very systems that people work in that promote toxicity and lack of care. Where rewards systems are given priority and where people are incentivised to show a continuous lack of respect. Where people are treated like numbers and speed is considered the constant routine at the detriment and degradation of work itself.

So in order to consider the barriers to being a great leader, we in fact need to consider the barriers that get in the way of answering – how do we make meaningful work? One major barrier to this is that people do not have a common space, language, process, toolset and practices in order to make meaningful work. So people end up clawing at each other to gain access to the top of the summit that is a myth to begin with.

Who are your role models in the industry?

My role models primarily come from diversity of publications we read as we seek a holistic and diverse understanding of what drives behaviour and this also helps us seek clarity on themes and patterns that influence thinking.

If we could describe the characteristics of our roles models it would include: openness, connectedness, a willingness to challenge own bias and assumptions, one that is not driven primarily by digital or technological solutions for all that ails society, a yearning to understand people more deeply to better understand their needs and issues and dreams and people who encourage a more respectful, considered and reflective discussion and debate as grounded in evidence and a willingness to challenge that for an enlightened plateau as we all learn together.

The role models would be too big a list to share here but they are easy enough to find and reach out to as we are lucky to be part of a community we generically call UX that encourages people who do care about the well-being of other people and who get disappointed when they do not see as much progress as we should be seeing in this instance of futures.

What can people who aspire to be leaders do now to move their career in the right direction?

Consider the skill sets needed to be a leader and consider that not everyone who thinks they are a leader, is a leader, and that people who may not think they are a leader are in fact good leadership material.

Think about the leadership style that suits your personality. If leadership is about helping others be successful in order to have a greater sense of success for teams, business and community, under what circumstances have you exhibited those traits and what are those traits?

Fundamentally, an important part of any leadership role is clear communication and the ability to express where you would like to take people and why. This implies the need for a vision and the openness to iterate on that story or narrative to get you there. It also means you need to learn from people and see how those learnings assist the iteration of your direction.

The question also implies the notion of a career and consider a view down the path. Break this down into 2-3 year chunks and then think about the why you do what you do in the first place and then consider the implications on your direction. It also helps to have more experienced and diverse views around you to help shed light on that direction.

    David Travis

Dr David Travis (@userfocus) holds a BSc and a PhD in Psychology and he is a Chartered Psychologist. He has worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience since 1989 and has published two books on usability. David helps both large firms and start ups connect with their customers and bring business ideas to market.

What are the barriers that prevent people from becoming great UX leaders?

I think there are two main barriers. The first is that many organisations still don’t get what user experience is about. For example, there’s a common belief that it’s only about visual design or making products that look cool. As a consequence, the people assigned to a leadership role may not have the right technical skills. Although those skills aren’t enough on their own to create a great UX leader, it will be very difficult to lead a team effectively without them.

The second barrier is having senior management support for some of the tough decisions that need to be made. Everyone loves user experience when it doesn’t impact delivery schedules or drain too much of the development budget. But when the user research shows that the product is a dog and needs to be redesigned from the ground up, our UX leader needs a supportive chain of command. If user experience doesn’t have a voice in the boardroom, the best UX leader in the business won’t be able to have an impact.

Who are your role models in the industry?

My role models in the industry are Jared Spool and Jakob Nielsen. They are both fine examples of UX leadership and both of them spend serious time growing the industry as a whole.

What can people who aspire to be leaders start doing now to move their career in the right direction?

You should certainly ensure you have the foundation level, technical knowledge that I’ve described in the previous post. You can develop those skills through training courses (such as on my course on Udemy) and through day-to-day practice on projects. But to become a UX leader, you also need to develop yourselves in two other spheres of practice.

I call the first sphere of practice “process skills”: these are the activities a practitioner uses when managing stakeholders and managing projects. This includes:

Active listening: really seeking to understand the design problem and providing a solution that will fix it.

Helping the organisation implement change: in many user experience activities, the real work begins when the activity (such as a usability test) has finished.

Making appropriate ethical choices: in some organisations, the pressure to do your research a particular way can be overwhelming.

Project management: good leaders know how to manage their time, manage the work of the team, and manage the projects that they work on.

The second sphere of practice is marketing. Typical marketing activities that user experience leaders need to master include:

Explaining the cost-benefit of usability activities. A good user experience leader will be able to ground the main benefits of user experience in the organisation’s domain.

Formulating a proposal and a research plan for the work you will carry out.

Generating new work. As a leader, you need to keep your team busy and you need to identify the next big enterprise project, ensuring that the user experience flag gets flown.

Leaving a legacy. Great UX leaders will grow their team, their company and the industry as a whole.

Catch up on part 1 of our leadership series: The Essential Qualities of a UX Leader.

What do you think makes for excellent leadership in UX? Let us know in the forums or leave a comment.

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