Darling,

They go into Dom’s head today and he brings projections in because it’s an exercise, a test. They all know it’s a dream, but it’s seeing if they can decipher who is a projection and who is Eames, it’s seeing if Eames can fool them into thinking he’s just a figment of Dom’s subconscious.

They’re in a smoky bar, the sounds of jazzy music floating through the air. Dom is leaning against the far wall, Mal is sipping a fruity cocktail while sitting at a table looking bored, and Arthur is sitting by the bar. A cute brunette bartender with a confident smile approaches him.

“Care for a drink?” she asks.

Arthur nods once. “Scotch on the rocks,” he says.

The bartender goes to get his drink and returns a moment later, sliding it over to him. Arthur absently thanks her and holds it in his hand but doesn’t drink it. He casts his gaze around, half-heartedly trying to find the source of the music, which he knows he won’t find (it’s all just ambient sound to fill the space).

Dom catches Arthur’s eye from across the room, and Arthur can tell that Dom hasn’t found Eames yet, though he’s been trying. Mal hasn’t either, from the looks of it. She’s doing a very good impression of looking utterly disinterested in everything, though. When they find Eames, Dom will stop leaning against the wall to walk around and Mal will look more awake and aware of her surroundings and Arthur will stop just staring aimlessly around the room and actually drink his drink. They’ve got this subtlety thing down to a dime.

The projections in the room all chatter to each other, creating a din of white noise, background conversation that Arthur doesn’t care to listen to. It’s all meaningless anyways. He idles for a while and traces his finger around the top of his glass. He scans the room again and again, and his eyes finally land on the brunette bartender, who is standing not too far away, chatting it up with a projection sitting at the bar. Arthur narrows his eyes at her.

She must feel Arthur’s gaze on her, because she turns around suddenly and looks Arthur straight in the eye in that piercing way projections have a tendency to do, but Arthur still has his doubts. The bartender smiles at him, and Arthur sees it, that haughty confidence, that smugness that he remembers so clearly from a photo in a red folder, slight, very, very slight but definitely still there.

“Can I help you?” she asks politely, but with the air of someone who’d really like to be getting back to what they were doing before an unwanted interruption.

Arthur smiles politely back and shakes his head once. He lifts his glass up to his lips and takes a sip of his drink, and almost instantaneously, he sees Dom and Mal moving, subtly of course, always subtly. Dom strolls over at a leisurely pace and slides himself onto a stool by Arthur. Mal comes over and asks the brunette bartender for another drink.

When the bartender hands Mal another ridiculously colored cocktail and Mal goes to take a sip, Arthur finally speaks, but not to Mal or Dom.

“I hope we can trust you didn’t put anything funny in these drinks,” Arthur says, and he’s staring right at the brunette bartender who looks over at him in surprise. Arthur’s mouth curves up into a half smile, “We can, can’t we, Mr. Eames?”

The brunette’s expression of shock grows more pronounced, and Mal lets out a soft “oh!” The brunette quickly recovers from her surprise and in the blink of an eye, she’s not there anymore, and instead it’s Eames, wearing a fine suit and a smirk on his lips (and since this is a dream and not real life, his tie is tied correctly now).

“You’re very sharp,” Eames says to Arthur, who just shrugs and takes another sip of his drink.

Mal looks over at Arthur. “How could you tell?” she wants to know.

Again Arthur just shrugs, completely nonchalant. He feels a sudden pull in his gut and knows that their hour down here is up, and it’s just as well, because he doesn’t quite know how he knew that the shapely, ultra-feminine bartender and the self-assured, broad-shouldered Brit were the same person. He just did.

They wake up in the warehouse, and Dom commends Eames on a very believable disguise, never mind that Arthur was able to see through it. Arthur has always been something of an anomaly anyways.

Dom looks to Arthur, asking him to give Eames a briefing on the job. Arthur nods and grabs a folder off his worktable to hand to Eames. He goes over the basics of the job, and Eames flips through the profile of Reeves, their mark. He pauses at a picture and holds it up for Arthur to see once Arthur finishes speaking.

“His dead wife?” Eames asks.

Arthur says yes. Eames flips the picture back around and looks at it. He purses his lips and looks to Dom.

“Can you put me in touch with her mother?” Eames asks.

“Of course,” Dom nods and goes to give Margaret Truitt a call. He comes back a few minutes later and gives Eames an address. “She’ll be expecting you, so just tell her you’re with me.”

Eames grins and says, “Will do.” And then he slips his jacket back on and bids them all goodbye with a promise to be back in a week at the most. He leaves the warehouse, and almost right away, it feels quieter, calmer, less filled to complete capacity. Arthur turns quietly back to his papers and starts meticulously combing through them again.

-

Eames is gone for the whole week, and when he comes back, he’s whistling easily to himself, hands in his pockets. When he comes back, Mal and Dom are under so Mal can make sure the dream space she’s planned out is looking alright. She’s decided upon a cityscape, with streets that wind back on themselves, bridges that shouldn’t be able to exist, a complete labyrinth of buildings. When Eames comes back, there are still three minutes on the PASIV timer.

Arthur glances up briefly from his work as Eames walks in and nods a silent hello to him. Eames nods back and continues whistling tunelessly. He walks over to Arthur and peers over Arthur’s shoulder at the neatly organized stacks of papers and color-coded folders on the table in front of him. He hovers for a moment or two and hums, making a rather impressed sound.

Arthur raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t look up from the paper in front of him. “What?” he asks Eames.

“How old are you, Arthur?” Eames asks, settling himself down in a chair to wait for Mal and Dom to wake.

“Twenty-one,” Arthur says, eyes still scanning over his papers. He reaches over and grabs his laptop, flipping it open.

Eames makes a contemplative sound and leans back in his chair. “Crazy work you do,” Eames comments. “I’d never have the patience to do something like that.”

The corner of Arthur’s mouth curves up into a sort of half-smirk, half-smile, and finally looks up at Eames. Eames is dressed in a suit that could fit him better but looks decent enough, and the pale grey color brings out the blue in his eyes. His tie is rather sloppily tied again and Arthur’s fingers twitch. He presses his lips together into a thin line and simply stares at Eames for a moment before his obsessive-compulsive tendencies get the better of him.

He stands and takes two long strides over to Eames, and Eames looks at him expectantly, amusedly and a little confusedly as to what Arthur is doing. Arthur stands in front of Eames and reaches out to undo Eames’ tie.

“If you wanted me to undress, you could’ve just asked,” Eames says with a teasing lilt to his voice.

Arthur doesn’t even blink. He swiftly and expertly reties Eames’ tie into a perfect double-Windsor. He then turns and goes back to his laptop, beginning to type away furiously again. Eames chuckles but doesn’t say anything more, his fingers toying with the end of his tie. Mal and Dom wake up just a minute later and then they start talking strategy and no one has a chance to say anything about Arthur’s behavior right then. Actually, Eames doesn’t ever say anything about it, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten. In fact, though he’ll never admit it, as time goes on, he purposefully starts dressing sloppier just to see how Arthur will react.

(And he will get quite a splendid reaction the first few times; Arthur will fuss and fret and retie Eames’ ties for him and straighten out his shirts simply because the disarray of Eames’ outfits makes his OCD go nuts – and then a few times after that, Arthur will just give up, deciding it’s simply not worth it, there’s no use trying to fix Eames because Eames refuses to be fixed)

But for now, Eames just sits back and discusses civilly with Arthur and Dom and Mal how they’re planning on going about this Extraction.