specification | Where do we go from here?

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Where do we go from here? - for ingeniously

The job was done.

Inception was done and fuck -- from what he could tell, it had gone successfully.

So far.

Cobb had gone through customs with not so much as a blink and left with his father-in-law to his kids. Fischer Jr had left a little after that and Ariadne was heading back to Paris to return to her classes and studies. Arthur loaded the PASIV onto his luggage cart and looked around, spotting Eames standing near a pillar.

Throughout the planning stages of the job, they had been snarky, condescending (to a certain degree), and on just this side of antagonistic. It was after he found out that there was a very real possibility that they could be shot down to limbo that Arthur mentally backtracked for a split second and thought about Eames -- thought about that night and thought about what they haven't discussed yet. When Eames called him 'darling' down in the first level in what he was sure was a condescending manner, Arthur found himself wanting to say something. But, he didn't. Eames was striding away after he took his shot.

When they were on the second level and everyone was hooking themselves in, who he should have helped was Ariadne but Arthur found himself kneeling down next to Eames and helping him with his lead, giving him a quirk of his lips. Everything could be shot to hell in a matter of seconds/minutes/hours and he could feel himself wanting that lasting touch, just in case.

They couldn't risk talking in public no matter if Robert and Cobb had gone, still -- he felt ready to talk to the other man about what happened months ago. About where this left them -- if it left them anywhere.

Eames had mated with him. Well...to be fair, his wolf had mated with him and that meant something according to his research. Something that couldn't exactly be ignored. As he made his way out of the airport with his luggage, Arthur pulled out his phone and sent a quick text to Eames.

If you're not heading anywhere quick, meet me at the Renaissance hotel nearby? We can talk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's a warning I give to all the workers I like," Eames said airily. He'd seen too many people take the same jobs, never tackle new challenges, and become useless when the business evolved.

He gaped theatrically. "Arthur, did you just admit that I'm good at my job?"

Arthur wasn't really surprised that Eames said he liked him (least, that's what he took away from that statement), they got on amicably enough when they weren't at each other's throats (literally and figuratively). "Do you think I"m the sort to stay stagnant," he asked, curiously. He too had seen people take on jobs that offered no challenge time after time.

In this business, much like many others, it was always evolving and changing. People were starting to use the PASIV and dream share for more than extraction and using it for recreational purposes, much like Saito had. It offered new venues, new techniques and new methods to obtain information. To be honest, the continual challenge and evolution of dream share was the reason he stayed with it. It wasn't about the money (or at least, not only about the money), it was about the challenge and interest.

Arthur smirked. "Don't get used to it," he said dryly but there wasn't any heat to it and was teasing, almost.

"I think," Eames said carefully, "You don't want to, but you have a habit of staying loyal - and that can turn into stagnation if you're not careful."

Dreamshare was not like what it had started as and it was evolving, Eames knew. It was what pushed him to stay the best forger, to make sure no one took that title from him.

"I'll try not to. I don't think my heart could take it," he mockingly bemoaned.

He stayed silent for a moment as he considered the man before him, tilting his head. "I work with some of the same people," he agreed. "But, despite popular belief I do enjoy a challenge."

Inception hadn't been your typical challenge and for the last two years, he hadn't been able to fully take whatever job he wanted to take because of a sense of obligation toward Cobb. But that was going to change and he was going to take what he wanted to take. He was going to remain the best pointman if he had anything to say about it.

Arthur smirked and motioned the bartender over to refill the glass. "No?"

"No no, I know that. I'm just saying that working with the same old can get dangerous," he replied.

He watched the bartender come over to refill Arthur's glass, and the light flush on the point man's cheeks. "No, I don't. I am forty, after all, getting up there in age..."

Only he had been feeling better since becoming a wolf. Forty-one wasn't old by any means, but some of the older aches he associated with old wounds had faded after being - infected, he called it. Changed.

Arthur took a drink from the glass and nodded. "It can," he agreed. He wouldn't deny that. He felt his shoulders loosen up after a moment.

"You look good for forty," Arthur said before he thought better then froze. Oh. He cleared his throat and took another drink. It was only after he swallowed it that he came to the realization that because of the alcohol, he let something like that slip. Arthur knew Eames was older than him, he just hadn't realized by how much.

He sat down the glass before he leaned heavily against the side of the booth. "How long have you been a --," he let it hang there between them. It was both a method to change the subject (and quickly he hoped) and to gain a little more information about the forger.

Eames raised his eyebrows high when Arthur said that, surprised he would say that even whilst drunk. He wanted to examine it, to pick at it and Arthur.

Instead he took the obvious subject change gracefully.

"A year, and some change of months. Not very long," he admitted with a shake of his head. "What happened was... an accident, or maybe it was intentional. I was attacked by what I thought a dog in an alleeyway. But the next month... I knew."

Arthur tried desperately to not meet Eames' gaze for a long minute and fully expected the next words out of his mouth being something to antagonize Arthur with. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when Eames didn't and changed the subject as Arthur had hoped he would.

He nodded and lifted his gaze to Eames and nodded. "Must have been a surprising," he said. "Where were you?"

"Mombasa," he said, turning his drink around his hands, gaze still on Arthur intently. "It was how I met Yusuf - why I thought he wouldn't sell us out."

If he could help Eames, why not inception? But then again, if he kept Eames' secret so well, why not Cobb's too? It had been a double edged sword and they had fallen on the wrong blade.

He nodded silently and allowed his lips to curl up in a rueful smile. "And still, you enjoy living there," he said.

Inception was a job that, as far as Arthur saw it, they were lucky to have made it out alive from at all. To have had Yusuf cross them and keep that secret away from them was something he hadn't fully expected but perhaps probably should have. At the very least, he should have trusted that healthy dose of paranoia that he counted on.

"Mombasa's a good place. Full of tourists, full of locals, good energy," He said, looking at Eames. "Good for someone like me."

Both as a thief, and as what he was, a werewolf.

Arthur nodded. Mombasa was the perfect place for a man like Eames to blend in and live as he wanted. He had plenty of room to run and not be intercepted by humans unless a certain nosy point man followed him. He couldn't find any fault in that. "Plenty of room," Arthur agreed and picked up his glass and took a drink from it, looking at the man across from him.

"Yes, plenty of room too," Eames said dryly, watching Arthur as he drank. The point man had had two glasses and was nursing his third, but the speed of the first two would surely catch up to him.

He took a sip of his drink, contemplating.

If you had asked Arthur which drink he was on, he'd probably say somewhere around the fourth or fifth. Specifically the fourth but he didn't necessarily care either. He knew it would catch up to him soon enough, you didn't drink that much alcohol, that fast with hardly any food in your stomach and not have it affect you. He gave Eames a grin. He was really starting to feel loose and at ease - nursing this one had been a good idea. A very good idea. He felt really good.

"You stopped drinking," he asked, arching an eyebrow as though he was only now realizing that Eames had switched to beer. It showed just how much he had been paying attention to the preceding events.

"Just slowed down," Eames said, raising his glass slightly. "Haven't had a good pint in a while. Still haven't, in fact," he said wryly of the drink.

The grin on Arthur's face wasn't terribly surprising, but it was nice, in a way, to see it directed at himself.

Arthur chuckled and rested an elbow on the table, looking at him. "What, isn't up to your standards?" His tone was mostly teasing though. He couldn't find it in himself, after three drinks, to really pack much heat behind his words. Not that he wanted to but still, it was something that they were known to do in their relationship/friendship.

"Your American piss? No, it isn't," Eames sniffed, looking at Arthur from down his nose but amused by the whole situation - amused at teasing Arthur, at watching him rest on the table and smile like that.

"It's a hotel bar, they have imports where you can probably get your fancy special brews," Arthur said, not able to hold back his laugh. He was, surprisingly, enjoying himself - whether that had more to do with the alcohol or the company was anyone's guess.

"You think that's the real stuff, flown or shipped over?" Eames smirked, taking another sip of his drink and chasing the taste on his lips. He didn't hate the drink so much as he was pretending, enjoying how Arthur reacted to him.

"Course it isn't," Arthur said, shaking his head with a grin. He'd had plenty of beer in lots of places and there wasn't anything like having it on tap. He noticed the way Eames' lips, and they were really nice lips, twisted up into that smirk and the way his tongue darted out to lick at his lips. Arthur perhaps looked a little too long before he picked up his glass and took a sip from it. "You know," he said after setting the glass down. "I probably should have eaten a little bit before I started to drink." He was grinning as he said it though as though, at this exact moment in time, Arthur had no regrets about his decisions. And he didn't. Not really anyway.

"Well," Eames drawled, lips curving up in a plush smile, "I can always buy you a dinner and hope the effects even out," He offered with a tight grin, all teeth on display for Arthur.

"At this point -- it probably won't," Arthur chuckled and sat back heavily against the back of the booth and looked at Eames with a tilt of his head. "Though food wouldn't go unwanted." To be honest, he probably hadn't eaten since earlier they had boarded the airplane for Los Angeles.

"Have you eaten? 'Cause I think we should eat."

"Should we," Eames murmurs. "I wonder what the fare is like at the bar. They advertised a full restaurant, after all," Eames wonders aloud.

"Your typical bar food is my assumption," Arthur said and looked around to see if he could grab a menu from a nearby table or anything. It was only going on early evening so grabbing a bite to eat wouldn't be out of the question. At this point, he hardly cared if it was good or not. Just if it was something to counter the alcohol. "Our friend the bartender probably has a menu or two."

There was a little stack of menus the next table over, but Eames stood to retrieve it, being of a soundly more steady mind.

"Let's not bother him again quite yet, hm?" He said as he returned, handing one to Arthur. The fare was short, but simple, and came in full meals if desired.

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