Fic: Lasso

[foxxcub]

Lasso
Arthur/Eames | R | 8000 words

There’s nothing at all unusual about the place where Eames pretends to live a normal, everyday life, until the morning Eames steps outside to grab the paper and finds a lovely Golden Retriever sitting on his front porch, which isn’t strange in and of itself. There are plenty of dogs in the area.

It’s the rumpled Armani suit the Retriever’s sitting on that gives Eames pause.


Written for i_reversebang and based on the wonderful johanaire's fantastic art. Thank you SO much, hon, for making this such a great experience and co-creation process!! Without her, this would've been your standard fluffy "Eames and a dog" story. Go comment and shower her with praise and sparkles! Many thanks as well to five_ht for giving me a much-needed late-night pep talk, and to knowmydark for the much-needed beta.

PSA: NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FIC.



There’s nothing unusual about the house in which Eames is laying low.

It’s a standard suburban home: three bedrooms, two baths, a little breakfast nook just off the kitchen, and a two car garage. The neighborhood is quiet, the paper gets delivered every morning promptly at six o’clock, and no one seems to think twice about a single man in his early thirties living alone in a house too large for him.

Eames likes this neighborhood because, for once, he’s not constantly looking over his shoulder with the prickle of paranoia and anticipation. He keeps his gun tucked away neatly in his nightstand, and there is only one lock on the front door.

There’s nothing at all unusual about the place where Eames pretends to live a normal, everyday life, until the morning Eames steps outside to grab the paper and finds a lovely Golden Retriever sitting on his front porch, which isn’t strange in and of itself. There are plenty of dogs in the area.

It’s the rumpled Armani suit the Retriever’s sitting on that gives Eames pause.

He crouches down in front of the dog, looking for signs of a collar, tags, anything to show the identity of its owner. But the dog is collarless.

“Where did you come from, ol’ boy?” Eames asks. He runs his fingers over one cuff of the suit sticking out from under the Retriever’s front paw.

The dog thumps his tail once, wuffles quietly. Eames smiles at him. He’s always loved animals, but hasn’t had a pet in years, not since long before his time in the military.

“I’d say your master is sorely missing this,” he says ruefully, tugging on the suit. The dog immediately gets up, and Eames gets a full view of it: slate gray, bespoke, the pants slim, the jacket European. It’s terribly familiar, and suddenly Eames thinks, Arthur owns a suit just like this.





He looks back at the dog, who watches him with clear brown eyes.

Eames sighs. “Well, I suppose you’re hungry, yeah?”

The dog wuffles again, then butts his head against Eames’ leg.

“I’m afraid I’m lacking in the dog food department, but I think I can dig something up.” He folds the suit awkwardly in his hands, not sure what to do with the thing. He figures he’ll just get it dry cleaned and maybe Arthur can—

No, never mind. Arthur won’t do anything with it, because Arthur’s no longer speaking to him.

Eames had more or less made that decision for him. He’d made that decision for them both.

“C’mon inside, let’s get some breakfast,” he says, and holds the door open. The Retriever trots inside, giving Eames a broad smile, tongue hanging to one side.

Suddenly, the house doesn’t feel quite so empty anymore.

~

The job had ended badly.

Not as catastrophic as some, but still bad. They’d gotten paid and walked away with minimum bullet wounds, only to flee the country (in this case, Bulgaria) with the knowledge that hired assassins were hot on their trail. The architect, Wellsley, had said, “Use the money to buy yourselves some anonymity. Namely in Fiji.”

The extractor didn’t say a word to Eames, which was fitting, since the extractor was Arthur. The last Eames had seen of him before he’d ducked into the cab was a look of intense focus, like he was desperate to tell Eames something, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Eames had broken their three week silence with, “Don’t worry, love, I don’t plan to darken your doorstep again.”

Arthur’s face had twitched slightly, almost like a wince, but Eames turned and got into the cab without looking back.

That had been six months ago.

Not that Eames is counting.

~

The dog comes to a stop in front of Eames’ fridge, and it occurs to him that the Retriever looks very familiar to him. Then Eames remembers why: he’d owned a Golden all through his adolescent years. The dog’s name had been Tango, and Eames had left him behind to go off to uni. A few months later, Tango had been struck by an oncoming car and had died instantly.

Eames hasn’t thought of Tango in years.

But this dog isn’t Tango, of course. He’s sleek like Eames’ childhood dog, glossy yellow coat and alert eyes and a tail that only wags when he’s anticipating something, but this dog is...different. For one thing, he came with an Armani suit.

Eames lays the suit on the kitchen table and the dog cocks his head to one side.

“I’ll get it dry cleaned,” Eames says with a laugh, and the dog barks, like he’s pleased.

And that, somehow, reminds Eames of Arthur. He shakes his head.

“How do you feel about leftovers?” he asks, pulling out the grilled chicken from the night before. The dog sits primly on the floor, tail swooshing back and forth against the tiles.

He cuts the chicken into small pieces, sets them in a bowl and fills another dish full of water. Eames has every intention of letting the dog eat in the kitchen while he eats at the table, but in the end, Eames has his bowl of cereal at the counter, the Retriever munching contentedly at his feet. His tail knocks against the back of Eames’ legs every few moments, a slow rhythm.

Eames thinks about calling Arthur.

~

It didn’t happen overnight; Eames can admit that much to himself now. It happened the way a lot of mistakes do—quickly and without much thought.

Two-man jobs raised the risk factor, tested limits of trust, and meant that at any moment, one half of your team could be gone in an instant. Eames had avoided such jobs for these exact reasons, but somehow, when Arthur had rung him late one night and said in a quiet voice, “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I had any other choice,” Eames found himself running point for Arthur—and Arthur, alone—in Toronto.

Digging around in a former CIA agent’s brain was one thing, but the fact that the man had a long history of being tortured in Middle-Eastern countries was quite another. There were precautionary measures to be taken when dealing with a potentially unstable subconscious, and Eames had sensed a trap from the moment he read the mark’s file.

“Whom did you say contracted you for this job?” Eames asked.

“A corporation out of Berlin. They paid upfront.” Arthur hadn’t quite met his eyes.

“And a nameless corporation, paying in advance, for the extraction from a former POW CIA agent—that doesn’t strike you as rather dubious?”

Arthur huffed, gripping his pen tighter as he’d scribbled out notes in his Moleskine. “We’ve taken work on a lot less.”

“Yes, but those instances never involved the broken mind of a—”

“We don’t know his mind’s broken, Eames.”

He drummed his fingers against his knee. “No,” Eames said. “But you know I’m right. And that’s why I’m here, isn’t it—no one else would work this one with you.”

Arthur put his pen down. “What do you want me to say, huh? That I didn’t think this one through? I checked into this guy, and he’s only had two psych consultations in the last five years. He’s never suffered from depression, and hasn’t done drugs since college. If I should be feeling uneasy about anything, it’s the fact that I’m aiding in the distribution of government secrets and possibly committing treason. But patriotism has never been an issue for me, or for you, so can we please drop it and get back to doing some fucking research?”

“That still doesn’t answer the question of why I’m the only one here.”

“Because,” Arthur snapped, going back to his tight scribbling, “you were my last resort.”

Eames hadn’t argued with him after that, but Arthur’s words had stung in a very disconcerting, irritating way. After the Fischer job, he’d thought Arthur trusted him more.

Three weeks later, the dream collapsed spectacularly, and they had both woken to loud pounding on their hotel room door, voices identifying themselves as the police.

They left the mark unconscious on the bed and crawled out the second floor window, barely making it down to solid ground in one piece.

There wasn’t enough time for yelling, but Eames didn’t give a shit. He shoved Arthur against the wall of the hotel and hissed, “They set us up. I fucking told you so.”

Arthur shoved back, eyes dark with anger and adrenaline. “I got the info, it doesn’t matter. I just made you rich again.”

“You didn’t do anything but put our heads on another chopping block, you ignorant self-righteous prick. I don’t want the sodding money. I don’t want anything from you.” Sirens blared around the corner, and Eames swore under his breath.

Arthur said in a rush, “We’ll meet in St. Paul, I’ll text you—”

“No,” Eames said, “you won’t. We’re done here.” He let go of Arthur and turned away, slipping as easily as he could into the dark.

He didn’t see Arthur again until three months later, when Eames showed up for the job in Bulgaria and learned for the first time that Arthur would be the extractor.

They barely looked at one another.

Neither one apologized.

~

The dog must belong to someone in the neighborhood. He’s far too friendly and laid-back to be a simple stray off the streets, and his coat is shiny, his belly well-fed. Eames thinks he’s a pure-bred, and such a gorgeous animal would surely be missed by a family somewhere, hopefully close by.

Eames regrets not getting to know his neighbors better, but still manages to make his way to every house on the block, knocking politely on each door to ask if anyone knew about a missing Golden Retriever.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” the woman two houses down—a Mrs. Rafferty, who always likes to comment on Eames’ “lack of a good wife”—says. “But he’s such a well-behaved boy, isn’t he?”

Eames smiles crookedly at the dog sitting primly at his side, tail thumping against the front steps. He’s not on a lead; all Eames had to do was ask, and the dog followed him willingly. “Yeah, he’s very sweet. He arrived at my door with an Armani suit, if you can believe that.”

Mrs. Rafferty frowns. “That’s very strange. Maybe someone dropped him off?”

Again, Eames thinks of Arthur. He shakes his head, gives a rueful laugh. “No, not possible.” Arthur doesn’t even know where Eames is hiding out. No one does.

They make their way down the whole block, but not a single person seems to recognize the dog. On the walk back home, Eames sighs and says, “I should call you something besides ‘dog.’ It’s rather tiresome.”

The dog barks, once, cocking his head to one side. It almost looks as if he’s smirking at Eames, and for some reason, this makes Eames laugh.

“Maybe I could tell Mrs. Rafferty that I’ve finally found a suitable substitute for a wife, eh?”

Another bark, this time with an added tail thump against the back of his thigh.

“No, you’re right. I wouldn’t inflict such a thing on you, anyway, Tango boy.” The name just slips out without any conscious thought, even though Eames hasn’t said the name out loud in years. He pauses, then kneels down in front of the dog, whispering the name again.

The dog—Tango—wuffles quietly.

“I know that’s not your name, but do you mind my using it in the interim?”

Tango pants at him, pawing at Eames’ hand.

“All right, then. Now we’ve finally been properly introduced.”

~

He’s tried calling Arthur twice since moving into his suburban hideout. For a long time it seemed that everywhere Eames turned there was a gun pointed at his head, and the thought of calling anyone had been far from his mind.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Eames is always thinking about Arthur, in some form or another, and how the job in Toronto could’ve run much more smoothly if he’d just leveled with Arthur instead of wallowing in some adolescent pout. So what if he was never going to be Arthur’s first choice? Better to get out of the job alive and unscathed than worry over the trivial things.

So Eames had called Arthur twice, but both times the number had come back out of service. It was to be expected, of course; they rarely kept their mobiles for long.

But it’s been six months, and Eames has yet to hear from anyone. Normally he starts to get a trickle of random emails or vague text messages with hints about possible job sites. Arthur may be off the grid, but the entire dreamshare community is not.

That evening, Eames sits out on his back deck with a beer and his laptop, and scrolls through his contact list. Tango follows him and sits at his feet, head propped up on Eames’ ankles.

Eames sends Yusuf an email, only to receive an undeliverable message a minute later. He does the same for Ariadne, but Gmail tells him the address he’s typed does not exist.

“Wonder if I’ve just got a shoddy connection,” he mumbles to himself, digging his mobile out of his pocket. Eames sends a text to another fellow forger who’s been taking an extended holiday in Bali; Ambrose always answers his text messages these days, since the only people with access to his mobile number are other criminals like himself.





Tango grumbles at Eames, gazing up at him with wide, intelligent brown eyes.

“You just ate,” Eames says affectionately. “If your stomach’s protesting already, then maybe you should learn to hunt like your ancestors.”

Tango doesn’t seem impressed. He butts his head against Eames’ leg.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, I’m afraid.” Eames reaches down, scratches Tango under his chin just as his phone beeps with a text message.

It’s from Ambrose’s number. The text reads: Who is this?

Eames rolls his eyes. Eames, you drunken sod. U still alive?

A good five minutes go by before he gets a response. You have the wrong number.

Something unsettled twitches in Eames’ chest. Stop fucking around, mate.

He doesn’t get another reply.

Eames stays out on the deck well after sunset, his beer long gone. Tango stays curled against his legs, barely moving at all.

For once, Eames feels a bit lost.

~

Just after the Fischer job, there was a stretch of hours in an LAX bar when Eames didn’t think about his next move, or flights across the world. He didn’t think about anything but the way Arthur held his glass with long, elegant fingers and smiled at Eames like he meant it, like the weight of everything they’d been through had bled away and left him with contentment, relief. Arthur smiled at Eames like there was nowhere else he’d rather be than seated beside him with their thighs barely touching, Eames telling stories about Mombasa and not caring if they made sense or not.

They’d parted ways that night, a little drunk and utterly exhausted, and Eames had ghosted his fingers briefly over Arthur’s forearm. He’d wanted to kiss him, could taste it on his tongue, and Arthur was watching him with dark eyes as he slowly licked his mouth...





A cab had pulled up. Eames blinked, pulled his hand away, and said, “Sorry,” even though he didn’t mean it. He wanted to say, Come back with me, even though he didn’t know where “back” was.

Arthur had cleared his throat, nodded stiffly. Eames climbed into the cab alone.

The next time he saw Arthur was in Toronto.

~

Tango sleeps on the bed with Eames, tucked against his back. He’s a warm, heavy weight, and in the middle of the night Eames wakes with Tango’s head on his pillow. He doesn’t make him move.

In the morning, they go for a run together through the neighborhood. Tango keeps pace with Eames, right at his side without the aid of a leash, for over eight miles.

“Your owners take you for jogs, do they?” Eames asks with a breathless laugh once they’re back home. He sets some water out for Tango, who drinks it greedily.

The rest of the day is spent sprawled out on the couch, Eames reading the paper while Tango lies across Eames’ legs.

The Armani suit still lays folded on the dining room table. Eames mostly ignores it, until he finds Tango rooting around inside the jacket later that afternoon, ears perked and tail wagging.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” Eames asks. He tries to nudge Tango away from the suit, but he suddenly goes stiff and barks at Eames.

“Have we grown attached to this suit now? Maybe you really are Arthur.” Eames says it as a joke, of course, and yet somehow Tango seems to frown at him before barking again, louder this time. He noses at the jacket, pushing the thing toward Eames, and that’s when he notices the small lump inside the front pocket.

Eames thinks it must be a wallet, maybe some identification belonging to the suit’s owner. His hand closes around soft leather, and yes, it’s definitely a wallet. Strange, though, that Eames never found it until now.

Stranger, still, that the wallet happens to hold a forged copy of a Maryland state driver’s license...and the license has Eames’ picture.

He drops the wallet. “What the bloody fuck,” Eames breathes, because he’s never made a Maryland driver’s license before, and even if he had, what the hell is it doing inside a suit pocket that isn’t his?

Upon closer inspection, he also sees that the wallet itself is identical to the one Eames carries.

Tango sits at his feet, still and quiet. He doesn’t bark, doesn’t move at all.

Eames swallows. “What’s going on here, ol’ boy? Are you trying to tell me something?”

Tango tilts his head to one side, then leans down and picks the ID up off the floor with his mouth. He holds the license out to Eames.

Eames takes it, heart thudding hard in his chest. Something’s very wrong.

He goes to the bedroom, takes out his gun from the nightstand, checks the chamber for bullets. He hasn’t looked at the thing in weeks.

The rest of the night Eames spends sitting in the leather armchair facing the front door, gun in one hand and the other clutched, absently possessive, in the soft fur of Tango’s neck.

“If they’ve found me,” Eames whispers, “we’ll have to think of a new plan.”

Tango nuzzles his face against Eames’ knee and doesn’t leave his side.

No one comes that night. Eames falls asleep in the chair, and when he wakes in the morning, Tango is still alert and watching the door.

“Good boy,” Eames says groggily, rubbing a hand over his eyes, and Tango thumps his tail once.

~

During the night, Eames begins to have dreams. He hasn’t dreamed in months, not outside of a job.

He dreams he’s in a hotel room, slowly stripping out of his shirt, but his heart is pounding and his shoulders ache, like he’s survived a hard fight. He can feel the edge of adrenaline still pulsing through his blood, making his hands shake, his mouth run dry. Eames shrugs the shirt down his arms and hisses sharply.

Hands come out of nowhere and slide over his shoulder blades as a familiar voice whispers, “Hey, easy, I told you there were probably bruised ribs involved, but you never listen.”

Eames gives a rueful laugh without turning around. “I’m fine—just need a bit of sleep, that’s all.”

“You’re not going in. Foster can handle it from here, especially now that we’ve changed venues.”

“You honestly think I’m going to let all my hard work go to waste? I’m still on the job, and I’m going in.”

“The guy made you in real life, Eames, there’s no way his subconscious is going to—”

“I’ve got this.” Finally he turns, and Arthur stands behind him, in nothing but a pair of plain grey boxers. His hair is wet, like he just climbed out of the shower, and there’s a bruise beneath his right eye. It doesn’t feel strange for Eames to reach up and skim his thumb over the purple skin.

Arthur sighs and leans into the touch. “You’re gonna make me say, aren’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Arthur huffs, kisses the inside of Eames’ palm. He says, very, very quietly, “I worry about you.” His eyes are closed, and he winces around the words, as if it hurts to say them out loud.

“Don’t,” Eames whispers back, his palm cupping the warm curve of Arthur’s waist, pulling him close so that he can mouth at Arthur’s jaw. Arthur gasps softly, and Eames feels something shift between them when Arthur turns his face and their mouths slide into a careful kiss.

He pushes Arthur down onto the bed, Arthur biting back a gorgeous little moan, hands desperate and tight against Eames’ shoulders, his body yielding to Eames, wanting him—

Eames wakes up, fully hard and still sitting upright in his living room chair.

~

At first, Eames doesn’t think much of the dream. Images of Arthur spread out underneath him, naked and flushed, flash in and out of his mind throughout the day, but it’s nothing new. He fantasizes about Arthur a lot these days, brought on by boredom and guilt and a nagging sense of unfinished business Eames just can’t seem to shake.

He keeps coming back to the wallet, though, and the forged driver’s license that isn’t his. Eames begins to wonder if it’s a message of some sort; someone out there knows Eames is hiding out and doesn’t want to draw attention to him. But why would it involve a dog and an Armani suit?

And why does he keep circling back to his dream as he turns the license over and over again in his hands?

Tango lies on the floor beside him, ever watchful. He sees Eames pick up the wallet and flip through the contents for the dozenth time; a Blockbuster card, ticket stub, discount card to the local grocery. None of them have a name printed anywhere, much to Eames’ frustration.

“It’s just so bloody random,” Eames sighs, tossing the wallet on the kitchen counter. It lands with a loud slap against the granite, and then, suddenly, a yellow folded slip of paper Eames has never seen before flutters out.

Eames unfolds it, biting his lip as an anxious shiver curls through his belly. The writing there is strangely familiar, small block letters in two neat rows.

Remember Baltimore. Remember what you told me.

- Arthur

Eames sucks in a breath, takes a step back from the counter.

Tango barks, but this time it’s not an affectionate sound. It’s urgent, sharp, and his tail doesn’t move.

“What is this?” Eames says, sinking down onto one of the bar stools. Tango jumps up, paws against Eames’ thighs. He butts his head into Eames’ hands, making him drop the note.

Eames has never been to Baltimore. He’s never seen Arthur there—fuck, he hasn’t spoken to Arthur in goddamn months, and the last words he’d said weren’t exactly inspiring.

Unbidden, memories of last night’s dream flicker through his head, of Eames telling Arthur not to worry about him as he kissed his way down Arthur’s bare throat...

But it was nothing but a dream. In reality, he’s barely touched Arthur in a way that was more than professional, let alone kissed him.

He stares at the note lying on the floor, one hand stroking over the top of Tango’s head.

“It’s got to mean something,” Eames whispers, then looks into Tango’s clear brown eyes. “You have to know something, right?”

Tango lowers all four paws to the ground and rests his head on Eames’ knee. He whimpers softly.

Eames isn’t sure if that’s an answer or not.

~

He tries calling Arthur again, every conceivable number he can think of. It’s the same as always, more disconnected messages and dead lines.

Eames is just about to throw the bloody phone across the room when Tango wanders up with the day’s paper in his mouth. Eames had forgotten to retrieve it from the front stoop that morning.

He takes the paper with a sigh, spreads it out on the counter as Tango weaves between his legs like a cat. “More crime and corrupt politicians, Tango boy,” Eames drawls, scanning over the headlines. “Nothing terribly exciting today, sadly.”

And then his eyes land on the headline gracing the bottom of the front page: Massive black-out paralyzes greater Baltimore area.

Eames pauses. Slowly, carefully, he glances at the top of the paper.

It’s The Baltimore Sun.

He jerks back from the counter, newspaper pages scattering everywhere.

“What the fuck?” he cries, heart hammering in his chest.

Tango is completely calm, but he’s watching Eames intently.

“Where did this fucking thing come from, boy? Did someone give it to you on a lark?” He looks frantically around the room for a possible bug, a hidden camera, anything. “We can’t stay here any more, I don’t care if a single shot hasn’t been fired, I’m not staying around to—”

The sports section is laying face-up on the floor at his feet. Scrawled in familiar neat handwriting above an article on the latest Orioles’ game are the words Remember this, Eames. This is real.

Eames snatches the paper up, holds it with shaking hands. He traces two fingertips over the writing; it was done with a fountain pen in black ink, the “s” in his name slightly smudged.

He’s hit with a stab of longing so intense, he gasps.

Eames has never been to Baltimore, but he has an image in his head of sitting in a ballpark on a cloudless spring evening—Camden Yards, he thinks suddenly—and there’s a beer in his hand, and the other is barely brushing against someone else’s. There’s a homerun hit, and he laughs, not because the home team is winning, but because the person beside him leaps to his feet and whoops with boyish glee, and eventually Eames tugs him back down into his seat, letting his fingers linger over sun-warmed denim before the other person smiles crookedly at him and knocks their knees together.

The other person is Arthur.

And the image isn’t simply an image—it’s a memory.

He sort of crumples to the ground, the sports page still clutched in his hand, his cheeks flushing in that hysteric way in between fear and frustrated confusion. Tango comes to his side, nuzzles his wet nose against Eames’ temple.

“I may have finally lost it, ol’ boy,” Eames whispers.

Tango wuffles and presses tight to Eames’ side.

~

The Baltimore Sun comes every morning for the next three days. Tango brings the paper to Eames like it’s expected of him, and he lies at Eames’ feet as Eames flips through the pages in search of more notes. He doesn’t find any.

In the meantime, Eames has had more dreams. Two nights ago he was with Arthur standing outside a diner with a lukewarm cup of coffee in his hands, saying, “About Toronto, I—,” but Arthur interrupted him, said, “I know, I—I’m sorry, it won’t...” His words had trailed off as he’d ducked his head, grimacing. A sharp breeze played with his hair, tousled it around his forehead in dark swirls.

Arthur had swallowed and added, “You know I didn’t mean it.”

Eames shook his head, though his heart beat a little faster. “What?”

“You’re never my last resort.”

Warmth bloomed in his stomach, happy and relieved and perhaps somewhat terrified. “I should hope not. I’m the best there is, after all.”

It had earned him a quiet laugh and an abrupt, devastatingly endearing hint of dimples. “Exactly.” Arthur switched his coffee cup to his left hand and held the other out to Eames. The look in his eyes was tentative. Eames had never seen tentative on Arthur before, and it made something softly shatter inside him.

“Truce?” Arthur asked.

Eames took a deep breath before closing his hand around Arthur’s. “All right,” he said.

He woke up later with his hand curled in Tango’s golden coat.

~

Eames decides Arthur must be in some kind of trouble. Given Eames’ current situation, any similar problems on Arthur’s end would logically lead to cryptic messages sent via a random city newspaper. They can’t risk using their phones.

It doesn’t explain the sudden onset of inconsistent memories, but Eames will worry about that later.

He goes out on the deck with a notebook and a pen and starts writing up a plan. The house is no longer safe, so Eames’ first course of action will have to be acquiring new digs. He’ll need a new passport, plane tickets, his large stash of American money converted into Euros. Once he’s out of the country, he can get in touch with his European contacts and track down Arthur’s whereabouts.

Within an hour, Eames has six pages full of notes, front to back, all in his scribbly handwriting. He figures Arthur would be proud.

Tango wanders outside, and Eames looks up and smiles at him. “We’ve got a new agenda,” Eames says, smoothing his hand between Tango’s ears. “I don’t suppose you’ve flown inter-continental before, have you?” He writes down buy Tango a kennel for travel. Fuck it, no one has come to claim him—Eames has long since started thinking of Tango as his. He’s not about to leave him behind.

Tango’s reaction to Eames’ news is to growl.

Eames frowns. “Are you frightened of heights?” he asks with a confused laugh.

Tango growls louder, then runs back into the house. Seconds later, he returns with the wallet in his mouth, dropping it unceremoniously at Eames’ feet.

The Maryland driver’s license falls out.

“I...don’t understand,” Eames says, ignoring the uneasy twinge in the back of his mind.

His dog just stares at him, and this time his eyes aren’t wide and innocent. They’re hard, searching, intense, much like...

Eames blinks, shakes himself. “Tango boy, this is why we’re going—Arthur’s trying to tell me something, and I believe he’s gotten himself into some kind of bind he can’t get out of, so we’re going to leave here and—”

Tango barks, loudly. If he were human, Eames would think he sounded angry. Upset.

He reaches out, scratches gently under Tango’s chin. “It’ll be all right, I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re staying with me. I’ll be all right, and so will you.”

The words stick in his throat for some reason. He hears Arthur’s voice in his head, Remember what you told me.

Tango jerks away from him, disappears into the house once more. Eames stays outside, continues to make notes until the sun fades into the horizon.

He stands and stretches, feeling oddly accomplished as he goes inside and calls, “Hey, Tango boy, let’s have some dinner, yeah?”

There’s no response. The house is completely quiet.

Eames sighs and tosses the notebook on the dining room table. Tango sometimes likes to crawl under Eames’ bed and take naps—although he normally does this when Eames is in the next room, close by...

He checks the bedroom, both guest rooms, and all the closets. The front door is still locked, and the back deck is empty.

Tango is nowhere to be found.

The Armani suit, which has been hanging in the linen closet, is also gone.

Eames leans against the hallway wall and closes his eyes, wondering if this was meant to happen all along.

He finally goes back into the kitchen, boots up his laptop, and buys a one-way ticket to Paris.

That night, Eames sleeps alone for the first time in weeks.

~

He dreams about being caught in a thunderstorm, lightning flashing in the distance. The sky opens up, and Eames is soaked within minutes, his suit plastered to his skin.

Beside him, Arthur says, “There really ought to be rules against drinking before a job.” His tone is completely void of inflection, but he’s smiling, his wet hair hanging in his eyes, clinging to his lashes. He looks all of eighteen, even with the gun in his hand.

“Not only does Foster get us bloody lost in this god-forsaken level, he tries to drown us. How thoughtful.” Eames can’t help smiling back, feeling oddly light and contented as the rain pounds against them. He wants to reach up and push the hair out of Arthur’s eyes, see if his skin feels soft and slick beneath Eames’ fingers.

“He makes one hell of a storm, I’ll give him that.” Arthur’s voice rises above the rumbling of thunder, the roar of water.

“Too bad it’s not even the fucking point.”

“We’ve got another ten minutes. I’ll have a chat with him after we wake up.”

Eames’ smile curves into a smirk. “I’m sure you will.”

Arthur blinks slowly, something flickering in his eyes that has nothing to do with the rain sliding down his face. He hesitates for a moment, and Eames instinctively holds his breath. Arthur never hesitates.

“There’s a game tonight at Camden Yards, against Chicago. I’d like to go.”

He’s fairly certain Arthur’s talking about baseball, which Eames knows next to nothing about. “You don’t need me to validate your schedule, Arthur.”

“Come with me,” Arthur says, voice suddenly low, quiet, and if he were a different person all together, Eames would say he sounded nervous.

They stare at one another through the rain, no longer smiling. Arthur’s jaw is tight, and Eames has an overwhelming, ridiculous urge to kiss him.

“Is this the Cubs, or the White Sox?” Eames asks, because he knows that much.

The corner of Arthur’s lips twitches. “White Sox. I’m old school.”

Eames flicks the rain out of his eyes, looks up at the dark sky to keep from looking to intently at Arthur’s mouth. “All right,” he finally says.

Arthur nods, and then the rain abruptly stops.

Eames wakes up.

~

The house was bought under a false identity, so Eames isn’t worried about leaving it. The utilities, cable—everything will be billed to a Jeffery Dumas. There is no mortgage, and Eames plans to take his stolen Mercedes E550 with him and leave it at the airport.

He can disappear and no one will ever know he existed.

With his single carry-on bag in hand, Eames turns all the lights off and opens the front door, only sitting on his front steps like he never left is Tango.

Eames drops to his knees, carry-on bag momentarily forgotten. He shoves both hands into Tango’s fur, his throat suddenly too tight.

“Bloody hell,” he breathes, kissing the top of Tango’s head. “Give me some warning next time you run off, yeah?”

Tango doesn’t thump his tail or pant at him. He is oddly quiet, but his brown eyes are as watchful as ever.

It’s when Eames pulls away that he sees the note pinned to Tango’s collar.

Eames, it’s me. The words are written in hasty, familiar handwriting on a sheet of cream-colored, unlined paper, the exact size of—

—of a Moleskine page.

His hand clenches around the note, looking around frantically for a discreetly parked car, or a shadow in the trees. If Arthur’s here, if he found Eames, why the message in a bottle? Why not show himself?

“Arthur’s with you, isn’t he?” Eames asks Tango.

His dog tips his chin up, but doesn’t make a sound.

“Go find him, boy. Tell him—tell him I’m coming. Tell him I’m on my way.” Eames doesn’t know what he’s saying, too distracted by the flood of panic rushing through him.

He looks back down at the note, desperate for more clues.

And then the note changes before his eyes.

No, Eames. I’m right here. The last word is underlined.

He sucks in a breath and looks up.

Tango flickers in and out of focus for a second, like a hologram struggling to take shape. Wide brown eyes shimmer, shift, and just like seeing a forger turn back into his original self, Eames watches his dog change into a man.

Eames slumps against the door frame. “It’s not possible,” he whispers as Arthur kneels before him, dressed in the same Armani suit.

Arthur reaches a hand out, lays it carefully on Eames’ shoulder as if afraid he’ll shatter into pieces. “You have to listen to me,” he says softly. “Please, Eames, just trust me.”

“What the bloody fuck is going on?” Eames yells, jerking away and staggering to his feet. He tries to run back into the house, slam the door in the face of the hallucination his mind has somehow conjured up. God, maybe the prolonged exposure to Somnacin has finally wrecked his subconsciousness, and now he’s lucid dreaming, imagining things he wants but can’t have—

“Eames!” the hallucination yells after him. He shoves the door open with his shoulder, but Eames pushes back. “Goddamn it—just let me talk!”

“You’re not real!” Eames says. “I’m fucking, I don’t know, having some sort of stress-related meltdown, and you’re not here, my dog did not just change into you, and I’m not letting you into this fucking house.” He throws his weight against the door, but the hallucination catches him off-guard, jamming his foot into the doorway and knocking Eames back. Eames stumbles into the couch, breathing hard and refusing to meet the hallucination’s eyes.

“Eames, god, please—”

“No!” He holds up both hands, like Arthur is the sun, blinding him in midday. “Whatever this is, whatever you are, please leave me alone. I’m not staying here, and if I’ve somehow become mental, I’ll worry about it later.”

“You’re not crazy, I—fuck.” The hallucination scrubs a hand over his face, shoulders sagging. Eames sneaks a quick glance at his face; this Arthur looks ragged, exhausted, worn to the bone despite his immaculate hair and pristine suit.

“I want you to trust me,” Arthur says. Eames doesn’t look away fast enough, and he’s caught by a pair of brown eyes so devastatingly familiar and real that all the air rushes from his lungs.

“I trust the real Arthur. But then, the real Arthur would never ask me such a thing.”

The hallucination’s brow pinches as if hurt, and then he sighs heavily. “You and I are the only real things here,” he finally replies.

Eames shakes his head. “Bullshit. I know how I got here.”

“Yeah? Tell me.”

“I—after Bulgaria, we parted ways. But they kept following me, everywhere I went, so I came here, bought this house.” He swallows hard, narrows his eyes at the fake Arthur. “I bloody well know I’m not in a dream, and you’re not going to trick me. Just—just give me back my dog. Just leave me be.”

Arthur looks stricken, his face crumpling for a split second before he shuts his eyes, mouth in a tight line. “Who’s ‘they,’ Eames?” he asks softly.

“The ones trying to kill me, the—the men who...we were sold out to them, they—” His heart stutters in his chest. He knows this, he does, but the words don’t come. Eames swears under his breath. “It doesn’t matter. I hid here, and no one has said a goddamn word to me since. The real Arthur is off the grid, anyway, and I know he’s in trouble.”

The fake Arthur takes a step closer. “Where are you? Tell me what city this is, the name of your suburb.”

Eames rakes a hand through his hair, growling in frustration. “It’s—I don’t—it doesn’t matter—”

“It does matter. Tell me.”

He knows the name. It’s on the tip of his tongue, just out of reach, yet like the identity of the men hunting him down, Eames can’t say it. He can’t remember.

His back hits the edge of the couch and he slides to the floor, cupping his face in his hands. “I don’t understand,” Eames whispers. “I don’t understand...”

Strong, warm fingers suddenly curl around his wrists, gently pulling, and Eames finds himself gazing up into intense, searching eyes. The hallucination is on his knees in front of him, his suit jacket hanging in impeccable lines at his sides.

God, I miss you, Eames thinks with a burst of melancholy.

“Please listen to me,” Arthur says. “None of this is real. You’ve been trapped in a dream for over a week now.”

Eames looks away. “I don’t believe you.”

“You have to, I—you don’t even know how hard I’ve—we’ve been trying to get you out. You had a bad reaction to a new variation of Somnacin, and—”

“Why would I have been taking Somnacin when I wasn’t even working a job!”

“You were, though, Eames—in Baltimore. There was a job in Baltimore, after Bulgaria. I asked you onto the team, remember? I was running point again.” His voice grows softer, soothing.

Eames tries to pull out of Arthur’s grasp. “You wouldn’t...not after Toronto.”

“No, fuck, Toronto was my fault, and Bulgaria wasn’t any better. Baltimore was my way of making it up to you. And then this happened.” He laughs sheepishly, wincing.

Flashes of every dream from the past several nights run through Eames’ head. Baltimore.

“They’re only dreams,” he murmurs, tugging half-heartedly against Arthur’s hold.

He gasps when Arthur presses close and leans his forehead against Eames’. “You were remembering, weren’t you? I should never have let you go under after Mercer tried to kill you in reality, I should’ve been more careful about the drugs—”

“Drugs,” Eames repeats. He can’t think with Arthur’s—not Arthur, it’s not—heat surrounding him, sinking into his skin. He’s losing his resistance. “What drugs were they?”

“Experimental Somnacin, makes the mark more grounded in the dream and their projections more stable, less likely to go on the defensive. The chemists just didn’t realize that if you’re killed in the dream, you simply wake back up in it.” Arthur’s thumb sweeps over the veins running down Eames’ wrist, adds quietly, “And when you wake back up, you start to forget reality.”

Eames looks down at Arthur’s fingers curled around him. “I dreamed—I had bruises, we were in a hotel room—you said—”

“That I worried about you,” Arthur finishes, squeezing Eames’ hand. “And then you kissed me.”

He pulls air into his tight lungs, the last little warnings of not real not real fading into the background. Eames may be a fool, but he’s starving for touch. “But...why the dog?”

Arthur moves closer still, until he’s nearly curled around Eames, one hand sliding up to wrap around Eames’ shoulders. “When you were shot and killed, I couldn’t find you. The team and I looked everywhere, and when we finally found you, you refused to believe we weren’t out to kill you. You fought us at every step. The only thing I could think to do was forge someone you trusted implicitly, someone who could get the message to you.”

A quiet, hysterical little laugh bubbles up in Eames’ chest. “I’ve never seen you forge. You have a knack for animals.”

“Not just any animal—you told me about Tango, that night in...in the hotel room in Baltimore. You said that dog had meant everything to you.” Arthur sighs, nudges his nose against Eames’ temple. “Out of everyone on the team, I wanted to believe it was me you trusted the most, so I took a shot.”

“And the suit?”

Arthur shrugs. “I didn’t start out subtle.”

Eames finally gives in completely, lets himself sag against Arthur, melt into the sound of his voice, the solid realness of his body. And he knows what that body feels like, under his hands; he closes his eyes and slowly, bit by bit, he can remember the taste of Arthur’s skin, the broken sounds he made, the way he’d arched into Eames’ touch like he was made for it.

“You have a scar on your left thigh,” Eames whispers.

He can feel Arthur shift against him, nodding.

“You—you never like to kiss just before you come. You like to keep your eyes open and watch me.”

Arthur sighs again, roughly. “Yeah.”

Eames licks his lips. “I never told you I was sorry for Toronto.”

“Yes, but you didn’t have to.” Arthur says the words into Eames’ cheek, kisses him gently, and adds, “Come back with me. Come back to the real world.”

“But if you kill me, I’ll just wake up here again.”

“No, that’s the thing—you have to be able to acknowledge you’re in the dream to wake up. But getting you to that point, after you’ve forgotten everything—that’s the hard part. That’s what Tango was for.”

Eames thinks of Tango (Arthur) curled up on the bed at his side, always watching him, always close. Somehow, it all starts to make sense.

“Okay,” Eames breathes, “wake me up.”

Arthur’s shoulders sag in relief as he slides his gun out of his jacket pocket and presses the muzzle carefully to Eames’ temple.

~

He opens his eyes, feeling as if he’s been asleep for a million years. There are people standing over him, and gradually their names materialize in Eames’ mind: Foster, the young architect; Brady, the extractor; Carlos, their chemist from Barcelona; and Arthur.

“Jesus, it worked,” Foster says with a great deal of relief. “I was beginning to think he’d—”

“We got him back, that’s all that matters,” Arthur says, never taking his eyes off Eames.

Eames swallows a few times, and when he finally speaks his voice sounds absolutely shredded. “Are we...still in Maryland?”

To his left, Brady says, “Yeah, Baltimore. We didn’t go anywhere.” She pats his hand softly, like he’s an old man suffering from dementia.

Eames looks back at Arthur. His head is pounding and his body feels beaten and bruised, but he doesn’t care. “I’d like to—to see Camden Yards.”

Brady frowns at him, while Foster ogles him like Eames has just asked to be made Prince of Wales.

Carlos pipes up, says, “If it’s all right, I’d like to ask Eames a few questions so that I may alter the dosage in the future—”

“That can wait,” Arthur replies sharply. “Eames needs to get some air, anyway.” He’s not quite smiling at him, but he does hold his hand out, pulling Eames to his feet.

“Better?” he whispers close to Eames’ ear, and the shiver that slides easily down Eames’ spine is not a new sensation. It’s wonderfully familiar.

“Perfect,” Eames whispers back. “And let’s get some dinner, yeah?”

“I missed eating at a real table with you,” Arthur says with a private smirk, and while the others look on, he walks Eames slowly out of the room, one hand splayed protectively at the small of Eames’ back.

It’s not until they’re out in the hotel hallway, alone, that Arthur presses Eames gingerly into the wall and kisses as if he’ll never get the chance again. It’s slow, deep, almost painfully tentative, and Eames starts to shake before he’s barely remembering the feel of it all.

“I’m sorry I made you worry,” Eames gasps, clinging tightly to Arthur’s shoulders.

He loves that Arthur is equally breathless. “Now we’re even,” he replies, dragging a finger down Eames’ jaw before claiming his mouth all over again.

They never make it to Camden Yards, but Eames decides later, laying naked and fucked out with Arthur’s solid, warm body tucked against his, that Arthur’s hotel room is just as good.

It beats a lonely suburban home any day.




end.