Work Text:
If skipping class just a few times meant Arthur could walk in dreams, he’d take it.
Dom Cobb, Mal’s husband, was the one who had approached him. Promised a local job. Good pay and not too much work for someone as meticulous as Arthur, who was keeping As in all his masters-level classes.
So, at 8 PM on that first Monday, Arthur turns away from the road that would take him to his photography professor, and towards the old factory at the edge of town.
Cobb’s not there when he arrives, but Eames is. An artist with a quick quip on his tongue and a penchant for not taking things too seriously.
Eames winks at Arthur when they first meet, and tells him he’d taken all his classes pass/fail before he got into dreamshare. “‘Course, I failed them all,” Eames says matter-of-factly, with a little amusement in his eyes. It’s years before Arthur realizes Eames hadn’t even been in school during his entry into dreamshare, but he laughs on that first night.
“I need a career after all this,” Arthur tells him. Eames waves his hand flippantly and doesn’t say anything else, until the end of the job.
They’re packing up the remains of their work in the factory, Cobb talking quietly to Mal on the other side of the room, when Eames approaches with a solemnity Arthur finds unfamiliar. He had learned, through the course of this, that Eames acting unserious never meant he actually was. In fact, he’d probably taken this more seriously than any of them. But now it reflects on his face, and he stands in front of Arthur and says, “You should drop out.”
“What,” Arthur responds. It’s not clever. Eames cracks a smile anyways.
“You’ve got a career waiting for you, right here.”
Arthur laughs him off.
Six months later, after Cobb and Mal have moved away to focus on kids and research, he gets a call.
A job offer, about two hours drive away from him. “Good pay,” Eames says. His voice is crackly and soft on the phone. “Bit harder than the last one.”
Arthur hangs up, but changes his classes to pass/fail that night.
At the end of the semester, thinking of Eames’s smile, he drops out.