Sinful.

“And he just left, just like that?”

Ariadne speaks facing the computer she’s currently clicking away at (it’s Eames’ computer, actually), but she’s talking to Eames, who is lying back on his bed, his head hanging off the edge, watching Ariadne upside down, feet propped up against the wall his bed is pushed up against. Ariadne is sitting backwards on the swivel chair in front of Eames’ desk, and Eames sighs.

“Yeah,” he makes a face. “Do you think that’s a bad sign?”

Ariadne doesn’t say anything. She clicks something on the computer and stares intently at the screen. Eames pouts, feeling ignored.

“Ari,” Eames whines, only half-serious. “You’re ignoring me! I feel so hurt. Maybe I should just crawl into a hole and disappear.”

Ariadne rolls her eyes but spins around in the chair to face Eames anyways. “You’re so dramatic,” she comments. “Maybe you should be an actor instead of an artist.”

Eames flashes a wide, cheesy grin. “I considered it,” he says. “Those theater kids didn’t quite enjoy my company.”

Ariadne smirks teasingly. “That’s because every time you auditioned for anything, you made a huge joke out of it,” she reminds him. “Dressing in drag?”

“I’ll have you know that was not a joke,” Eames defends himself, only half-heartedly though, for really, he knows that Ariadne is right. “I was getting in character. That director simply had no sense of humor.”

Ariadne laughs, light and airy, and shakes her head at Eames. He chuckles softly as well at the memory and Ariadne says, directing their conversation back to the previous topic of Arthur, “He’s kind of… mysterious, isn’t he?”

Eames considers that for a moment. Mysterious. Yes, he thinks, that’s a good word to describe Arthur, because really, he knows next to nothing about this well-dressed, poised man. All that he knows about Arthur is so on-the-surface, superficial, things anyone could figure out; he knows that Arthur is going into his fourth and final year of college, majoring in French literature, that he has a strangely high standard for dressing himself, likes black coffee in the morning, and stands somewhere around five-foot-ten (not that Eames has been keeping track or anything).

“I suppose so,” Eames says. “I mean, there’s only so much you can learn about a person from art class.”

Ariadne nods, but a smile tugs at her lips. “Well, he took the drawing, right?” she points out. “That’s good. It means he liked it.”

“Or that he didn’t want to make me feel bad by not taking it,” Eames counters, but in his mind, he’s remembering the slightest smile that had graced Arthur’s features in the moment before he took the drawing. Ariadne is right, Eames realizes, because he somehow gets the feeling that Arthur doesn’t smile for just anyone. She’s always right, that brilliant girl.

“Do you just enjoy contradicting everything I say?” Ariadne asks, feigning exasperation as she turns back to face the computer on Eames’ desk.

Eames rolls off the bed and goes over to her, spinning her chair around so she’s facing him again. “Perhaps,” he says around a cheeky smile.

Ariadne rolls her eyes (something she does quite often around Eames) and smiles fondly at him. “Why am I even friends with you?” she asks, and Eames laughs too, pushing her playfully aside so he can use his computer, which Ariadne protests against, only half-serious.

Arthur arrives back at his apartment around the same time Eames arrives home from an afternoon spent at the art studio. Arthur, unlike Eames, spent his afternoon with the only two people he considers himself to be good friends with. He has other people he knows and talks to, of course, but they’re more like acquaintances than anything. Mal and Dom, they’re the only ones Arthur really trusts.

Mal is a slender woman who speaks with a lilting French accent, something that makes her extremely attractive to almost every man she happens to meet, including Arthur, when they first ran into each other at the library. She’s sweet and insightful and occasionally enjoys teasing Arthur whenever Arthur actually has something of a social life, which isn’t all that often (Arthur’s too much of a bookworm to put much effort into being social most of the time).

Dom is strong, bold, opinionated. He’s very sharp, comes up with ideas other people wouldn’t even dare think of, and Arthur just knows that Dom will go far (Dom often says the same about Arthur as well; actually, almost everyone says that about Arthur, a compliment Arthur always accepts with a brief nod of acknowledgement and no smile). Dom angers easily at times and can get protective, but he is possibly one of the best friends Arthur has ever had. He’s not sorry to have met Dom.

It’s been almost three years since Mal and Dom first began dating. It’s been more than four years since Arthur’s been in anything close to a real relationship and at least six months since he’s actually been out on a date.

Arthur arrives back home perhaps around four or four-thirty in the afternoon and kicks off his shoes, wondering what he’s going to have for dinner. He’s not much of a cook at all, which is a shame since his loft has such a lovely kitchen. He stares at the contents of his mostly empty refrigerator for a good ten minutes before deciding it’s not worth it to attempt to cook. Takeout sounds like a good idea tonight. He makes a mental note to buy more groceries soon for his future cooking endeavors.

Arthur goes over to retrieve his messenger bag, which he’d deposited by the counter that sections off his kitchen from the rest of his loft in a neat little alcove. He rifles through his bag for the book he’d been reading today (Candide, ou l'Optimisme, a delightful, witty little French satire that never ceases to amuse him) and his hand brushes against a slip of paper. Arthur hisses softly and draws his hand back, eyeing the thin cut accusingly. He shakes his hand to get rid of the slight stinging sensation that always accompanies paper cuts and looks back into his bag, suddenly curious as to what cut him.

A feeling of recognition washes over him and he reaches into his bag to fish out a thick, solid feeling piece of paper, a little crinkled but completely intact. It’s Eames’ drawing, carefully stowed away, pressed between two books to ensure that only minimal damage gets to it. He studies it again, more carefully than he’d been able to this morning. It’s astonishing, actually, how well Eames had been able to capture his form. It doesn’t really look exactly like Arthur, strictly speaking (a quick sketch would never do him justice) but the posture, the stance, it’s so very much him that Arthur is a little surprised.

Sinful is what he’d said about it earlier today, that it makes him look sinful. Thinking back, Arthur isn’t quite sure why he’d said it. He doesn’t know if he meant it at all; it just kind of slipped out. Maybe, he considers, maybe it had just been to get a reaction anyways, to see how Eames would respond to such a comment. He recalls the pleasantly surprised expression on Eames’ face, the twinkle in his eye, the smirk pulling at his lips (oh god, those lips) and thinks yes, that must’ve been it. A reaction, a satisfying one, was all he’d been hoping for.

Arthur takes the drawing and walks over to his bed, situated against the wall opposite the kitchen nook. He hops up on his bed with some tape and Eames’ drawing in hand and sticks the drawing up with the enormous collage of papers he has pinned up all over his wall – pictures of places he wants to go, some photos he once took with a disposable camera he’d found lying around (Mal says they’re artsy; Arthur just likes the dim, grainy quality of them), interesting articles he’s found in newspapers and magazines, a photo or two of Mal and Dom, and even some favorite sketches from back when he’d briefly entertained the idea of becoming an architect.

Eames’ drawing gets nestled comfortably between a panoramic view of the Seine and a newspaper article about a rare birth defect that makes the afflicted unable to feel pain.

Arthur sets the roll of tape aside and thinks about ordering Chinese for dinner.