Arthur let him talk. If he was running off at the mouth, it meant that he hurt just enough to feel it but not to die from it, and in that case, the little detour he had taken to shake their tail was most certainly less of a time-sensitive issue than he might have had to anticipate otherwise.
Unless those assholes decided to make it complicated.
By now, he was almost certain they had a tail. Not so much because he felt that there had been that particular shiny black Cadillac sniffing his trail all the way from Eames’ place to 155th Street. It was his gut––all tensed up and throbbing like he’d had a bad tuna sandwich for lunch but he hadn’t, he hadn’t even had lunch, and come to think of it, his stomach grumbled and––well, moral of the story, never distrust your gut feeling, not in a line of work that was built, quite literally, on the plains of your subconscious.
The car that pulled into the driveway of the Park-It garage wasn’t a fancy-ass Cadillac but a regular Hyundai something. Clean and with an E-ZPass transponder on the windscreen, it all but screamed rental at him. Arthur snapped the laptop shut and exchanged it for his G42.
Eames was still going on, yak-yak-yak, something about Bribe Em Or Fuck Em, and oh boy, Arthur could tell him stories about his slush fund but then he’d have to silence him forever, trusted colleague or no. “Shut up.” He didn’t really need him to; it just made his brain ache when he made the drop from Arthur into First LT Halperin, and yes, it felt like a drop, something physical and concrete in the way he held himself, all keen potency and tension. The way he moved. There was an Osprey 45 suppressor in the glove compartment. He got it out and mounted it.
Halfway out the car door, he hesitated, turned back. The small furrow in his brow, a little frown of consternation, almost broke the veneer of the soldier but the soldier, once ingested, was in the blood; and blood didn’t lie. “Stay there,” Arthur said, rather redundantly, and then left him there, to sit, to wait, to wonder.
There were no loud shots, obviously.
But when Arthur came back into the car barely a minute later, his hair was dishevelled, his face flushed, and he was breathing hard. “Alright, let’s go.” He didn’t bother taking the suppressor off the Glock, just shoved it into the glove compartment as it was. His eyes connected with Eames’ when he steered the car back out of the garage. “What?” You’re scary as shit, you know that, Eames had said a moment ago, and the recollection of it brought a faintly smug smile on Arthur’s lips. This is so illegal.
Well, nothing spells illegal quite like murder, does it?
He dropped the smile like a hot potato; the moment when the adrenaline waved him bye-bye made tangible. His heart hammered in his chest, no, his throat, then his head, oh, he had to grip the steering wheel with both hands to stop them from shaking. Which sucked because he had a call he needed to make. And by doing so, he realized, might actually be able to answer the question(s) he had been asked. He only belatedly wondered if Eames had really wanted to know or if the asking itself had been rhetorical.
He merged onto Henry Hudson Parkway, which bled seamlessly into 9A, and then on. Homewards. With Eames riding shotgun. For the first time since Eames had answered his phone call, he started to wonder what he was actually doing here. While his phone was once again thrumming silently in his hand, and every once in a while a ringback tone penetrated his ear, he really, really had to wonder.
He was bringing him home.
Why hadn’t he just kept him there in that shithole of an apartment and waited it out till that old army buddy of his showed up and then sayonara, see you next time?
Fuck. He could keep kidding himself but if he couldn’t do it convincing enough to fool himself, he might as well drop the act. At least a little bit. At least to himself.
“––uh, hey, what’s up.” The sudden answer to his call – on maybe the sixth, or seventh ringback, fucking typical – pulled him out of whatever panic his brain was riding out, and between talking and driving, he was relieved to shut anything that didn’t require immediate thinking or action into a brainbox for later.
“Yeah, that favor you owe me? I’m calling it in.” He swerved onto the second lane to pass by a truck. “Left a trail on 155th Street. The car place, you know? ––yeah. Yeah.” Back onto right lane. Straight road ahead. He slid his hand across the wheel to drum his fingers against the dashboard. Pressure from his wrist kept the wheel under control but the car had good enough tracking that he was certain he could have just taken his hand off entirely. Man, he loved that new Honda.
“Bosnian, and … yup. Yeah, man, might as well have done you a second favor there. Do me a solid and keep it under wraps, yeah?”
He blinked. The second guy, the lankier one, came at him from the side, fist raised ready to slam into Arthur’s cheekbone he pulled back out of the way but barely felt the impact whizz by him like someone’s breath and then the gun to the head and the body had gone down like a sack of flour–
“Yeah. Thanks.” He turned the display off and let his phone sink into the cup holder. And let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He hadn’t… he hadn’t done this outside of a dream in so long. Both hands back on the wheel.
Shit. He all but forgot. His head whipped around. “You okay?”
He knew he owed him questions – from now, from earlier. But they would get to them when they would.
Arthur took out his gun and said, “shut up.” Eames shut up.
He had a momentarily blinding flash of panic – not about the gun, or the way Arthur held it like he was planning on using it, or even the way he pulled out the suppressor and screwed it on, concise contained careful movements, precise, delicate: no, it was because Eames realised he hadn’t checked his totem in hours, and for a hideous moment he thought he was trapped in a dream.
The gun was tucked in the back of his jeans but he went for his pocket instead, and let out a faint huff of breath; the chip was in there, and the rough edging was familiar, tugging at the whorls of his thumb as he rubbed it around and around, three times through, swallowing hard. It hadn’t taken long, but the wave of relief was crushing. Eames shuddered a little. The only thing worse than waking up still in that basement in Sarajevo would be waking up in that basement in Sarajevo knowing that he’d betrayed Arthur, somehow, that it was Arthur’s projection his unconscious mind had chosen as his protector.
He wasn’t especially afraid or even surprised at Arthur sliding out of the car. It was only to be expected. Satisfied at the weight of his totem, Eames drew his own gun and laid it carefully across his lap, then settled back in his seat so he was out of sight of the window at first glance and nodded. Arthur’s eyebrows had furrowed, something like concern between them, and it made Eames smile, lopsided. He wouldn’t be much use, but he’d be able to get off some shots if they came for him. He was certainly not adverse to doing what he was told in situations in which not doing so would get him killed – he nodded. “Alright,” he said, quite calmly, quietly. Then he opened his mouth to say something else – he didn’t know what, be careful, watch yourself, check your blindspot – it didn’t matter, Arthur was gone.
Eames pressed his tongue against the inside of his teeth and drew in a breath, held it. There was a noise on the very edge of his peripheral, and without thinking he reached for the handle of the door with his left hand – the pain was so astonishing that he was rendered utterly mute, luckily for both him and Arthur, his eyes rolling back, and when Arthur slid back into the comfortable seat barely a minute later Eames was wordlessly swearing, the Glock completely forgotten, his uninjured hand clenched in a tight fist and pressed in his mouth, tight all over with it. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. He barely looked at Arthur, just tried to breath narrowly through it until it had all faded enough that he could open his eyes without seeing spots. They kept missing each other, that was the curse of it, Arthur saying, alright, let’s go and Eames barely hearing it over the roaring of his pulse. He actually laughed as Arthur steered the car out of the garage, no squeal of tires, smooth and careful as a suburban mum on the school run.
“Fuck,” he gasped, finally allowing himself to articulate it, and then he bit down hard on his lip, regretting it, and dragged his eyes from Arthur’s face. Saying anything about it aloud made the pain worse, apparently. He ran a hand down the length of his face; he’d broken out in a thin layer of sweat. They were both pale and clammy, now, and Eames’s teeth were chattering; Arthur had a bruise blossoming on his cheek, and Eames drew in a shaking, shuddering breath; Arthur’s knucles were white around the steering wheel, and Eames didn’t put his gun away. Much good it would’ve done him; if anyone had arrived at that car in the slender Arthur-less window of opportunity, when Eames was bent double over his hand, he would’ve begged for a bullet in the head.
Arthur propped the phone between his shoulder and his jaw and someone answered and Eames tasted blood inside his mouth and slowly detached his teeth from his tongue. He fixed his swimming, wavering gaze on Arthur’s hands; long-fingered, piano-player hands, sliding round the wheel, drumming on the dashboard, more nervous than all the rest of him put together. Hands don’t lie, Eames thought; Arthur’s having second thoughts. Arthur isn’t used to this life anymore, not really; he’s a white-collar criminal now, fuck. More comfortable in a board room, or a men’s club, than under fire. Arthur would’ve likely read that thought as a judgement; for Eames, it was desperately affectionate, all bundled up with his unarticulated, inexpressible, and unrelenting desire to come down in the morning to Arthur cooking breakfast in his kitchen, soft-faced and bare-foot. Arthur, never having to shoot anyone ever again: that was what Eames wanted.
He was still staring; Arthur suddenly looked at him, and caught him. Eames blinked and almost flinched, but managed to keep himself still.
It wasn’t a question he was used to, from Arthur, but the tone was familiar; he wanted to make a reference to Fischer, but his brain wasn’t moving fast enough. He wanted water, food, and sleep. He hadn’t eaten since the measly can of beans he’d had – and he didn’t even know how long ago that had been before he’d passed out on the floor of the apartment. Vodka was not sustenance; Brownlow would hit him, in a few weeks, maybe inside the ring, maybe outside of it, but he’d definitely be getting hit. How the fuck am I meant to do surgery when your blood pressure’s through the floor? he was going to say, but he’ll, hopefully, pull on his gloves anyway. Eames needed him too - because he needed the opiates.
Not in an addict way, though truth be told it was always at least a bit in an addict way and a large part of him was dreading it, as he always did, wondering if this would be the time, if he’d wake up from this operation, as he hadn’t done in years and years, and think, I need it again, I can’t stay away from it, I remember now, that’s what it’s like. But no, logically, he knew that was unlikely. For one, Brownlow wouldn’t be leaving anything behind him – certainly nothing prescription. He knew Eames too well. For another thing, his willpower was too precious to him, and based on too many layered determining factors, to be broken by anaesthetic. But God – God, his hand hurt. He thought longingly of the numbing powers of morphine as one might think of a long-lost lover. After Inception, he’d hardly been working - his veins were healthy, easy. Come through, Brownlow, mate, he thought, and would’ve laughed if he was alone, but he didn’t want Arthur to ask. He didn’t think Arthur would understand the complex, interwoven strands: pain, addiction, fear, desperation, longing.
Shit, hang on. Arthur had asked him a question. He’d left it too long, he said, really too honest, “hurts like shit, actually,” and then looked away, out the window. The hours of vulnerability were starting to weigh on him; if it was anyone other than Arthur, he might’ve even made an excuse and had himself dropped off somewhere, a five star hotel that wouldn’t ask any questions, somewhere he could be alone; he had the urge, like a street cat who’s lost a fight, to find a dark corner and lick his wounds alone. But Arthur was stubborn as fuck, and would just scoff; Eames didn’t suggest it, just swallowed hard on the sensation of being examined, judged, and found wanting, and blinked hard against the grit in his eyes. “No offense, mate,” he said, and his tone was a little more distant, “but how much longer is it? Fairly sure I’ve bled on your upholstery.”
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