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There are no rooms left.
Arthur calls bullshit. This isn’t Jerusalem on the eve of Jesus’ birth; he is not going to sleep in a fucking barn. Of course there’s a room left.
No, the front desk girl says, there really isn’t. She looks hassled, and Arthur would feel bad for her, if he had any pity left over. As it is, all his pity is used on himself. Is she completely, absolutely, 100% positively certain that there’s not a single room left?
He isn’t exactly sure what his face looks like, but it’s enough to make her check again. Feel my despair, he projects. Now give me a room, because if you don’t, I will pull out my gun and fumble it and mess it up enough in my tired, sleep-deprived state that it will cause a freak explosion and turn us all into crispy bacon.
It turns out that there is one room left, would he like room 648?
Arthur checks in, feeling vaguely gleeful (it takes up too much energy to feel anything other than vaguely). There was one room left. He got it. Sucks to be the next sad, roomless bastard.
“I’ve never seen you make a face like that before,” Eames says when they’re on the elevator. “It was so full of disappointment that even I felt like I’d let you down somehow.”
Arthur doesn’t know how or why the fuck Eames is here, nor how he has the energy to chatter. Eames has a way of attaching himself to Arthur, like a burr. Or a parasitic male anglerfish. But that would make Arthur the female, and fuck, he really does need to sleep if his brain is concocting metaphors like that . Fucking Earth having fucking time zones and fucking humans with their fucking need to sleep.
“What makes you think you haven’t?” Arthur mumbles, leaning on the mirrored wall (which is probably terribly unhygienic, but who gives a fuck). If he’s not intelligible, sue him, he gets his point across. (His point , because he’s a point man, get it? Arthur is fucking hilarious. Or maybe he’s just hysterical from sleep deprivation.)
“Because I never disappoint,” Eames says, around a complimentary hotel mint, peppy as ever. However the fuck he can sound peppy, Arthur doesn’t know. Eames is some outlying freak of nature that defies all logic and common sense.
When the elevator dings on the 6th floor, Arthur peels himself off the wall and forces himself to toddle to the room. He’s too tired to get annoyed when Eames reveals that he had appropriated the keycard from Arthur’s pocket, just sags against the wall and waits for Eames to open the door. Ha. Eames gets to be the one to use more energy. His loss.
Eames pushes the door open and makes his way into the room, then pauses.
“Um?” he says.
The room can be a murder scene for all Arthur cares, as long as there is a clean bed. He shuffles past Eames, who is still standing there. If he wants to stay there, fine, Arthur doesn’t care. He walks into the room, and—
There is a bed . A beautiful, glorious, stunningly exquisite bed that is both blood- and corpse-free. Arthur would cry tears of joy if he had the energy.
He flops face-first onto the bed. Fuck his clothes. They’re tomorrow-Arthur’s problem. Let him cry over all the wrinkles. He’ll have enough sleep for it.
“Good night,” he says, to serve as proof that he is civilized and polite, but also to subtly indicate that he is going to be snoring in a few seconds and that he does not give greater than 0.0032 fucks about anything else.
“I hate to prevent you from sleeping,” Eames starts, but Arthur closes his ears. He refuses to accept any more audio input. Please try again later. Sleeping in 3.
In 2.
In—
Eames quite rudely shakes his arm. “Arthur!”
“What?” he snaps back, because he is tired and in a bed and why can’t he fucking sleep already, dammit.
Eames says something about numbers and beds, but Arthur doesn’t care. He gives a semi-grunt and hugs the pillow. “Amazing.”
“I’m impressed that you’re still able to talk, darling, but that really doesn’t help the problem of where I’m going to sleep.”
“I don’t care where you sleep,” Arthur mumbles into the pillow, “but I’m sleeping here. Good night .”
And he promptly blacks out, because Eames can do whatever the fuck he wants, but Arthur is going to sleep .
+++
When Arthur wakes, he is warm. He is also suffocating in the pillow.
He turns his head, gasping in air. Everything is dark, or maybe his eyes are still closed. It’s very warm. And squishy. Peak sleeping conditions, really. Arthur snuggles into the warmth with a sigh of contentment and promptly goes back to sleep.
+++
The second time Arthur wakes, he finds himself entangled with warmth and squishiness. His face is pressed to something with the consistency of extra-firm tofu. He blinks once, twice, thrice, to find that warm, extra-firm tofu has muscles. And arms. And hands. And eyes that are rather clearly open and staring at Arthur.
“Er,” extra-firm tofu says, British-accently.
“Um,” Arthur says, Arthurly, and proceeds to knee a few body parts and almost strangle himself in the sheets before managing to stagger out of bed and lock himself into the bathroom.
He stands there for a minute, bleary-eyed, still half-asleep and with a throbbing headache, before forcing himself to use the bathroom as a bathroom instead of a convenient hiding place (which it technically is, but still).
Fucking sleep inertia. Actually, fucking sleep in general. Arthur’s life seems to revolve around sleep. He has an infinite number of problems and all but one of them deal with sleep. The remaining one—well, now that he thinks about it, finding himself cuddl— being asleep in close proximity with Eames can be blamed on the lack of sleep, so technically it deals with sleep, too.
Arthur blinks at himself in the mirror a few times: wrinkled (his clothing is enough to make a lesser man weep in despair, but Arthur is a strong man, so he only sheds one (1) tear), eyes crusted with sleep, and with a squint that rivaled Cobb’s. It can’t—actually no yes it can get worse from here, don’t jinx it.
I am a strong man, he reminds himself, and throws the bathroom door open.
There is a thud and two screeches and an Eames on the ground, clutching his nose.
“Fucking fuck,” Arthur says, maybe just a tad shrill, because so many shocks to his system in a short period of time cannot be healthy. “What the fuck. My heart .”
“My nose,” Eames says from the ground.
“Don’t be overdramatic,” Arthur tells him. “Wait, shit, is that blood?”
He wavers over Eames uselessly. “Fuck, how do you stop a nosebleed?”
Eames gives him an incredulous look.
“Look, I can set broken bones, I can stitch wounds, I can jam a needle into your vein and pump your bloodstream full of unknown drugs,” Arthur says, defensive. “Stopping nosebleeds is less pressing of a skill to know.”
Eames’s nose drips blood, condescendingly.
+++
When they finally manage to stop Eames’ nosebleed, the room is cluttered with bloody tissues, Arthur’s medical skills have been thoroughly disparaged, and there is a bloody stain on the carpet.
“What kind of hotel has doors that open outwards? ” Eames complains, wiping the blood off his lip with a look of disgust.
“Well,” Arthur says, looking at the bloody tissues with even more disgust, “nothing would’ve happened if you weren’t creepily standing right outside the door.”
“I’m sorry for being concerned about your well-being,” Eames says. “You were in there for so long, I was worried you’d flushed yourself down the toilet.”
“You—what?” Arthur says. “Actually, don’t elaborate, I don’t want to know.”
A silence descends over them as they pick up the tissues. Arthur gingerly holds the edge of one between his index finger and his thumb and makes a mental note to wash his hands as soon as possible.
“So,” Eames finally says, when both the room and Arthur’s hands are as clean as they can be (excepting the stain, which is still in the carpet), and they’re just looking at each other, awkward. “About—”
“We are both mature, responsible adults,” Arthur cuts in. “And we will act like mature, responsible adults.”
“Oo-kay?” Eames hedges.
“And by that,” Arthur clarifies, “I mean we will never talk about it like the mature, responsible adults we are.”
“Okay,” Eames says, obviously relieved. “Yeah, that sounds like a mature, responsible plan.”
“Mature,” Arthur agrees.
“Responsible,” Eames says, nodding. Then, “But there’s still only one bed.”
“Ohmygodtherewasonlyonebed,” Arthur mutters.
“—what?”
“Nothing,” Arthur says, flapping his hand. “We can—get a new room?”
“We can.”
“But—”
“But they might not have any available rooms,” Eames says. “We did get the last room, after all.”
“What do you mean, we ,” Arthur says, indignant. “ I got the last room. You stole all the candy.”
“Not all of it. I left a mint that was already opened,” Eames says, like that was an accomplishment. He pauses, then says, “I guess we can—”
“We can,” Arthur repeats.
“—do nothing?”
“I mean, we can’t get another room.”
“Obviously not, until we can remove all of my DNA evidence from the carpet.”
“Obviously not,” Arthur agrees.
“So—”
“We do nothing and not talk about it.”
“That sounds—”
“Very mature?”
“And very responsible,” Eames agrees. “Good talk, let’s never have it again.”
“Not ‘again,’” Arthur says. “We never had a talk in the first place.”
“What talk?” Eames asks, blank.
“Exactly.”
+++
Later:
“How do you remove a bloodstain?”
“—bleach?”
“But that doesn’t destroy the DNA.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Not chlorine bleach, at least.”
“Really?”
“That’s what Google says.”
“Google? ”
“Your one-word responses are not helping, you know.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s two words.”
“You can count? I’m impressed.”
“Condescending as always, Arthur.”
“Why thank you, Mr. Eames.”
+++
Even later:
"Why is cleaning a bloodstain so hard?”
“It’s easier when the blood stays inside your body.”
“You’re the one who slammed the door in my face!”
“You’re the one who stood right outside the door!”
“I thought that all doors opened inward!”
“Didn’t you see me open it?”
“I’m sorry , but I was busy being in excruciating pain.”
“From?”
“Your knee .”
“Did I hit your—”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Sorry. I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Keep that up and I won’t even guess I’m sorry.”
+++
Even more later:
“Why do we have to remove the bloodstain again?”
“Because, darling, it has my DNA in it, and I’m not exactly what you would call an upstanding citizen.”
“But hair contains DNA too?”
“I really hate when you’re logical, you know.”
“Mature and responsible adult, Mr. Eames.”
+++
More than even more later:
“God, we’re really shitty criminals, aren’t we.”
“Be careful who you’re calling a shitty criminal .”
“But you can’t remove a bloodstain!”
“I can rip up the carpet.”
“—the hotel’s going to hate us.”
“Convenient, since I hate the hotel.”
+++
Even more than more than even more later:
“We’re not shitty criminals.”
“Of course we’re not.”
“Arthur. Did you just compliment me?”
“—no.”
“You did!”
“I did not. I complimented myself.”
“Darling, if ripping up hotel carpets is what it takes for you to compliment me, we can destroy the carpeting of every single hotel in existence.”
“Oh, shut up.”