multiversallogs | it's funny how a theme recalls a favorite dream

Who: Arthur and Eames
What: serious business, not-so-serious business, general shenanigans
Where: dream bros HQ (an apartment in Flyside)
When: now! right now!!!
Notes: brrrmmmmmm
Warnings: none at this time

So the living room is, as usual, kind of a mess, in the way any workplace inevitably becomes a mess when its occupants are forced to deal with a lack of proper storage and more or less fundamentally incompatible working techniques. Either Arthur or Eames is a fan of making piles, and it's not Arthur. Just saying. All this will finally come to an end, he hopes, once this shelf is in place. This shelf, which he is currently assembling. This tall-ass, heavy shelf, which he should probably not be putting together alone, but he's the only one here right now and by god it must be done.

Sleeves rolled up, on his knees in a pair of jeans, bare-footed and looking very serious, our friend pauses with the screwdriver in his hand and leans across his project in a vaguely uncomfortable, twisting way, to double-check the instructions. It's not quite IKEA-easy, this thing, but Arthur is by no means helpless when faced with the usage of tools, so he's managing. It would help if they'd numbered the pieces, though. At all.

The gramophone-looking vinyl player, which Arthur bought because it was both cheap and amazing, is playing classic wartime big band at a reasonable volume (currently this). There's a half-empty cup of coffee on one of the end tables, now cold. Arthur chews on the lining of his cheek and reads. And reads. And reaches awkwardly to turn the page.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When Eames comes through the door, it's preceded by a thump, a jangling of keys, and a fair amount of rustling before he manages to balance whatever he's carrying well enough to turn the knob and push the door open. What he's carrying is, it turns out, several paper bags filled to the brim with some manner of yellow tentacled....fruit? What is that, even. (This is why he isn't allowed to do the grocery shopping.)

"Aha, so you have been studying contortionism without me," he comments without missing a beat once he's inside. If he's spared a thought to the apparent bizarreness of his purchases, it doesn't show; instead he's strolling up to peer over Arthur's project, completely unhelpful and without much regard for personal space. Like you do.

Arthur's reply is as blithe as they come. "It's yoga, not a circus act." Clearly this has been an issue before. It may be noted also that he's paying more attention to the instruction sheets than to whatever Eames is doing over there, noise included. When over there becomes over here, however, he settles back on his heels and looks up at the looming form of his one and only teammate. (Theirs is a modest team, but a mighty one nonetheless.)

Before said teammate can make any further comment, Arthur points at him with the screwdriver. "Not a word. If the instructions were in English, this would be done by now. Why...did you bring home a shitload of space fruit." Note how one sentence blends so gracefully into the next. You could dance to this conversational rhythm, really.

Eames gives him a look, unconvinced. He knows your circus-y ways, sir.

"It's for a thing." Yes, of course, a thing, which he is apparently not in any hurry to start on, as he's shoving one bag off onto the nearest flat surface. This is much more entertaining. "What, haven't you perfected your Tsath-yo yet? Let me see." He steps precariously over a piece of bookshelf, finding a space to crouch and poke at the instructions.

Yes. Well. The topic of that thing shall be revisited momentarily, if Arthur's fleeting expression is any indication—and it's only fleeting because Eames is suddenly getting all up in his business over here. He's not going to hand over the instructions, but won't keep them from the guy, either.

"It's not like this is an indecipherable puzzle. A shelf's a shelf. I just don't wanna end up missing a step and having to disassemble the whole thing to go back and fix it." He's being so careful about this shelf, you don't even know. "And I hope you're not planning on turning those into food." See, back to the thing—and back to turning screws, too, as he kneels forward again.

Well, what did you expect, sitting there with everything all out in the open for Eames to meddle in. He's perfectly capable of turning the instructions around himself, it seems. Chances that he can actually read any of it are slim, but that won't stop him from trying.

"No, no, no– well, only partly," he says in answer to the question, knitting his eyebrows and tilting his head at the diagram. "You've got that bit on backwards, I think."

"Yeah, that's what I thought." He is so serious about this shelf... and is already in the process of removing just the piece Eames has indicated. What a team. "If this thing doesn't completely blow my mind when it's all put together, I'm burning it." Threats.

And now an enforced topic change, lest this conversation become any more domestic: "You pick up anything else?" Something outside the realm of produce, perhaps.

It's just as likely Eames would have said that just to say it, versus because something is actually on backwards, but it's lucky that there was, in this case. He tilts his head and tilts the instructions the opposite direction. "It's a shelf, darling, not a Noguchi coffee table." There are limits to how mind-blowing it will be.

Anyway. "I just got the usual, you know, linseed oil, gum arabic." How that is 'the usual' is anyone's guess. (The usual for whatever it is he's doing with it, maybe?) "Oh, and far too much baba ghanoush, if you're hungry when you're done menacing the furniture." See, real food.

"I was actually just lamenting my sad lack of garlic breath. However did you guess?" He'll eat the hell out of that stuff once this is done.

...Or possibly before then, as he's just finished staring blankly at this somewhat-assembled shelf and is now standing up, fully abandoning it there on the floor. This shelf. Abandoned. He cares not for its sundry pieces any longer. Stepping away from the mess (for now) (and it's barely even a mess by any standards), he saunters to yon kitchen sink to wash his hands, quiet in his barefootedness. Barefootedness is now a word, by the way.

"That trade fell through," he says, and turns off the tap, dripping from the wrists as he turns to grab a dry dish towel. "This closed-system shit is driving me up the wall. There's too much competition right now—it's getting harder to establish a decent foothold anywhere and not be butted out." He manages, sure, but it is frustrating nonetheless.

Eames follows his good buddy's movements with his eyes and a raised eyebrow. He is shocked (shocked, sir) that Arthur would abandon anything partially finished. (Well, no, but he does notice, that among other things, shall we say.) After a beat, he shrugs and gets up to follow along after, depositing the appropriate bag on the counter.

"Or caught," he agrees. It is frustrating, and save the occasional underpaid and unimaginative job from the Broad Arrow, he hasn't found much of a solution himself. His response is just the natural progression of that thought, but he pauses after it, one hip braced on the counter, and– well, he hadn't been thinking of bringing up anything in particular, but since the opportunity exists...

He starts unloading the fruit from the bag – the real food being, of course, at the very bottom – and asks, casual as anything, "Had you considered when you might tell me how you actually ended up on the Militia's favourite persons list, by the way?"

He's just curious.

"I had," he says, and though it may seem at first that he's not going to elaborate, once he's tossed that small towel over the edge of the sink, he too leans on the edge of a counter, arms folded across his chest, in the traditional About To Discuss A Thing In The Kitchen pose. We've all seen it many times before, surely.

"It was a miscalculation." Obviously, but Arthur doesn't seem able to let this one go. "You know how it usually works in the dream, how it sort of...shows you what you need to do. Sometimes it's more subtle, but if you know what you're looking for, it's hard to miss." He shifts his weight, gazing at no point in particular along the floor. "Well, I took the wrong cue."

He so loves being a fuck-up.

While Arthur settles himself, Eames is happy enough to keep unloading this here bag, pausing with a package of pitas in hand when the actual explanation begins. He understands his friend's thinking, certainly, but.

"That's an awfully big miscalculation." Someday Eames will learn not to casually rub these things in Arthur's face, but today is not that day. "I assume it was something they didn't appreciate?"

Actually, they loved it. That's why they threw me in a hole. For gratitude. PS, you're a shithead.

He doesn't say this, of course, but the glance that comes next may communicate something along these lines.

"Not much, no. I'd advise against making any attempt to form any sort of mutually beneficial relationship with the Militia. It seems they don't take kindly to it." To say the least. "And they're not the reach-around type, either." Well gosh, Arthur.

it's funny how a theme recalls a favorite dream

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject