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Eames is sitting on the rooftop, sighting down a rifle, in the cold weather of late November—and, yes, it is little statements like this that make people pause, double take, and reevaluate their lives in general. Firstly, because Eames is doing this with the full intention of shooting a person, through the skull if he can manage it, and ending a life with one clean shot; and, secondly, because rooftops are bloody cold even when it's not nearly winter, and Eames aimed for nondescript when he woke up this morning rather than insulated.
He shuffles slightly to get more comfortable, rough brick of the rooftop digging into his stomach, and takes a deep, controlled breath, filling his lungs. Then he lets the air out, partially, watching his fingers until they've achieved the deadly sort of stillness he requires of them, and lines up his shot.
“You're going to fuck it up,” a low, familiar voice informs him, and Eames nearly squeezes the trigger just out of sheer surprise.
“Fuck me,” he says, breathy, not deigning to look up. He ignores the snort that follows, and the retort that sounds a lot like, not in this dream. “Your timing is awful.” With one hand, he gestures to the scene below; his mark, who will be sitting still for exactly ten more minutes and not a second longer, the potential for a misfired shot to take out an innocent, and the trigger his finger was just pressed against.
He can almost hear the frown as it happens. “My timing is excellent,” the voice protests, and then the owner of the voice lowers himself down next to Eames, and he has no choice but to see him. Arthur. Very much Arthur, from the slicked back hair to the suit jacket lazily open over a crisp buttoned shirt, looking every bit the sophisticated businessman and not at all the sort of person one would expect to see lurking on rooftops holding rifles. “You were going to mess it up.” One pale, thin-fingered hand gestures expressively at the air between Eames and his mark. “You're not compensating for the windspeed properly, Eames.”
Eames rolls his eyes, and steadies his grip on the rifle once again. “Are you my spotter now?” he asks, sarcastically, because this is not Arthur, it can't be Arthur because Eames knows from the weight in his pocket that he's dreaming, and Arthur did not go under in this particular dream. This Arthur, the one who would get down beside him on rooftops, or even willingly come close enough that Eames could touch him at all, is nothing more than the makings of his own subconscious: a projection. And of course his own subconscious is contrary enough so as to correct him on his assassination techniques. “Don't be a pest, darling,” he says, draws in a deep breath, exhales partially, and fires.
When the bullet goes wide, hitting the park bench beside the mark rather than the mark himself, wood splinters flying everywhere and the mark immediately looking upwards in the direction the bullet came from—towards Eames, that is—Eames simply says, “Shit.”
Arthur, who is not the picture of maturity in real life and certainly is not any such thing in Eames' dreams, rolls his eyes and says, “I told you so.” He also has the door to the stairs open by the time Eames reaches it, though, and helps him hotwire a car on the street below, so that's alright, in the end.
…
“So tell me,” Arthur asks, curled up against Eames' side, one arm draped over Eames' bare chest, “why have you never told Arthur about this ridiculous infatuation of yours, again?”
Eames very successfully resists the urge to press a kiss to Arthur's hair, which is now sweat slicked rather than gel slicked, and charmingly disarrayed. He's sweaty, and a little too warm given that Arthur is one step short of clinging to him and hot as a space heater, but he can't quite bring himself to mind. This, after all, is the sort of dream where Arthur does fuck him, and he does fuck Arthur, and somewhere in the midst of afterglow they sleep until Eames wakes, alone, with the timer on his PASIV flashing 00:00 in obnoxious red light.
“Shut up,” he instructs his projection tiredly, voice husky and fucked out. His fingers trace Arthur's skin, memorizing it as though this will somehow make things more real, and as though he hasn't done the same thing a million times. “God, only my own subconscious would object to spooning, what sort of twisted fuck am I?”
“We're cuddling,” Arthur corrects, and intently keeps right on doing that. The projection, with none of Eames' qualms about reality and ridiculous gestures to be gifting to parts of one's own subconscious, presses a lazy kiss to Eames' shoulder as if to punctuate the words. “And that doesn't address the question.”
“Because he could kill me in a number of increasingly inventive ways,” Eames lies, because this? This is really not the time to be getting into the issue of Arthur.
His projection taps a finger on his chest reproachfully. “You're trying to lie to me, and I'm part of your own subconscious,” he informs Eames, finger now tracing the swirls of one of Eames' tattoos in a way that's dreadfully distracting. “How stupid do you think you are?”
“Extremely stupid, as I am currently keeping myself awake after an absurdly good fuck with inane questions,” he replies, proud of himself for even stringing that many words together in this state of mind. “Come to sleep, pet.”
Arthur, his projection predictable in the way his real self has never seemed to be, softens at that particular endearment, as he always has and always will. “Alright,” he says, “alright, Eames. But we are going to talk about this later.”
Eames chuckles, giving in to the urge to bury his head against Arthur's hair. “My subconscious thinks threats of serious conversation count as pillow talk,” he informs his projection, yawning through the phrase.
Arthur chuckes, low and maybe somewhat fond. “Good night, Mr. Eames,” he says.