paisleythief | (no subject)

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Eames is usually one to be asleep at this time. Its too damn late to be considered early and its too damn early to figure out if the reciprocal makes sense. For a moment he wonders if Mal is traipsing through dreams again, or if someone's meddling with the circadian rhythms of the house, but he doesn't hear anyone moving about upstairs and it doesn't feel like a power-induced wakefulness.

Nope. This is just that buggering kind of wakefulness that occurs when your brain has decided it needs to kick you out of a perfectly content slumber in lieu of a stroll around the house.

Throwing the covers off, Eames pads barefoot out of his room and down the stairs, no real destination in mind. He feels rumpled and a little too far on the side of too warm, so he makes a stop in the kitchen to grab a glass of water. In the distorted reflection of the stainless steel pots and pans hanging from the rack above the island, Eames can tell that rumpled is precisely what his hair looks like, but he's not about to impress anyone at-

2:54am

Christ have mercy.

Before he has a chance to throw himself a mental pity party and scamper back up to bed with his hopes of catching a few more hours of sleep, the distinct if not muffled sound of metal meeting metal catches his attention. Glass in hand, Eames pokes his head out and looks around, not seeing any lights on in the living room, nor down the hall that leads to the back of the house, nor-

So Arthur was awake, again.

Arthur is the only one ever actively awake at this time-- Mal doesn't count because she drifts where Arthur strides, and honestly they shouldn't be doing either action at 3 am but the point stands. Making his way down the hall on quiet footsteps, Eames pushes open the door to find his suspicions to be true. The lights are on and the television is off in the Cobb's little make-shift gym, Arthur working away at the dip stand with the precise movements of someone paying attention to the number of reps they're performing.

Eames is fine with waiting to be noticed. Taking a sip of his water he can't help but think, he's got a pretty good view.

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3 in the morning is not an unusual time to find Arthur awake. In fact, it's more unusual if one does not find him here in the miniature gym facility of this particular dormitory, or wandering the halls, or often as not with Mal and whispering conversations. Tonight Arthur is here, a weight strapped about his waist that makes each rep burn a little more, the rigid specificity of his arms cutting sharp lines when he lifts up and severe angles when he lowers. At night his mind is more awake than during the day - something he traces back through his years in the system, not trusting himself to fall asleep in most places for varying reasons. Not every foster care story is a sad one; Arthur's isn't, scars not being proof of sadness so much as an inadequacy, but it's not a decent one either.

Anyway, he has gotten used to keeping his own company in the early, early morning because most sane people - mutants and non alike - tend to be asleep. His shirt discarded on the floor to the side, his grip reradjusting just barely on the way back down, he doesn't spare Eames a glance even though he knows that he is there. This too happens a fair amount of the time - Arthur awake, wherever, and Eames will suddenly be there right alongside him for reasons beyond his understanding. If he's honest, Arthur has to admit that he doesn't mind the company, that on certain days he would go as far as admitting he likes it - not because it's Eames but because Arthur isn't the vehement loner people think him to be.

Before coming here, Arthur was a loner because he had to be. Here at the Academy he's often alone because he doesn't actively seek anyone out, and he doesn't take any of the classes - understandable, as he has no ability to speak of himself - so the usual basis of camaraderie is unfounded, absent. He's not lonely but it gives him a great deal of time to himself by default, so when there is someone else to converse with or just be around, he's not averse to it. He knows that some (not most, just some) view his presence here as odd and almost unwanted - because, in a bizarre turnabout of opinion, he's not like them. That's fine; no one has to like him. The way it happened, the truth is that Dom and Mal will probably always be enough for him.

But recently there has been Aristos and recently even more so there has been Eames. Arthur, as of yet, isn't sure what to make of it, whether or not he ought to chalk it up to coincidence because it's true that he can't figure what would be interesting about himself to someone with a mutation, someone who is more than human - especially not Eames whose particular ability opens so many doors that Arthur mostly doesn't look too deep into it.

It's not lost on him that his hours spent working out or in martial arts assembly has been, in his own quiet but self-centered way, an effort not to settle for just being as is - to endeavor for something optimal even if it isn't impressive. The sweat trickling down the back of his neck slips crooked down his back, slips sideways across his spine. He's thin naturally of frame, so the regiment he has for himself means what he does have is almost all muscle - small comfort, some would say, in a place where he could be as soon set on fire or rendered paralyzed with a thought but it's not about the mutants for Arthur. This is just about himself, a quiet, deep rooted whip reaction to having time: keeping himself up to speed because part of him still expects to be dodging off to somewhere else in the night.

Finishing up, he drops from the stand, the weight a distinct heft that he finally unslings from around his waist (and drops on the floor, bending to grab his shirt), still not looking at Eames whose eyes he's noticed seem to shift colors in different light - gray, blue, green, and back again.

"What're you doing up?" he asks simply and means what are you doing here, means hi, and finally glances over, his gaze steady and inquiring all at once.

With a quirked brow, Eames wonders-- not for the first time, and surely not for the last-- if it's easier to understand Arthur with some kind of telepathic or empathic ability. Maybe that's why he gets along so well with Dom. He's always saying more than he means to with less words than necessary, and Eames had thought he'd been reading into things after he'd accepted Arthur's apparent lack of mutation (for the longest time Eames had thought Arthur was masking or otherwise hiding his ability-- those first few weeks were hell on the whole house) but that's not it either. Somewhere along the line, between learning to talk and learning to communicate, Arthur must have missed a step because Eames can't mimic him the way he moulds himself into the shape of others.

Usually its easy enough. Watch a person long enough and they become predictable-- people are always trying to make it easier for others to get in. They just never know how close Eames can fit; tight under their skin, a mimicry down to the vacant nod of a daydream that sets Mal's eyes alight to the mundane way they scratch their nose. Some powers are more difficult to wrap his mind around and those are the ones that give him the most trouble. Manipulating the elements is easy enough-- everyone knows the mold of a clod of dirt or the singed hair on a forearm held too close to a flame-- but how does one relate to precognition or physical regeneration?

The process is slow, and oftentimes painful when Dom gets that glint in his eye (Try once more, lets see if you can get it this time.) but since staying at the Cobb's home-cum-boarding-school Eames has picked up skills he'd never imagined possible. He isn't averse to the sweat and blood required to gain them, nor the people he meets in the process; one never knows when certain contacts will come in handy, especially when the inevitable unveiling occurs. Though Arthur has never shown an ability, beyond a super-human level of tolerance, Eames finds himself thinking that perhaps Arthur's presence on one's side isn't about the benefits so much as the assurance that he'll stay once convinced to.

If asked, Eames could come up with any number of reasons to explain his presence in the Cobb's sprawling estate. He was invited, he was practically tracked down, he enjoys a free meal as much as anyone else-- but those are just excuses and Dom is a proficient enough telepath even with the constant strain his wife puts on him, to see through to the reality of the situation. The invitation could always be declined. Observing someone for long enough, Eames could turn invisible to even the most powerful of telepaths; not to mention physically invisible as well. Hospitality isn't so terribly difficult to find when you know the right words to say, the right people to target-- the right face to wear.

All that doesn't make up for the truth; Eames isn't needed anywhere else.

Not bothering to avert his eyes from the way Arthur blots his chest down with his shirt, "Something kicked me out of my dreams; needed to stretch my legs I guess." Eames gestures to their surroundings with the glass of water in his right hand. "Asking you the same would no doubt get me an obvious answer, so I'll refrain."

Tilting his head from one side to the other, Arthur blinks back some tension, a strain running up his right shoulder that he hadn't noticed earlier.

"Why? Another boarder?" he asks, regarding the dreaming. He knows that sometimes it's just natural waking but that other times it's true that an errant telepathic thought can drive a sharp end to someone else's dormancy - usually a new one. Arthur could as soon call them students; that's what Dom calls them, and really it's more accurate in that they needn't pay for their stays here, but Arthur chooses this word because it entails the aspect of the experience that he thinks is more important - that they sleep and eat and dream here, live here.

Learning is the foremost reason to be here, but it's not the only one and it doesn't take looking at mutant-types to know that much. Taking a deeper breath, he considers his shirt before just slinging it over his shoulder, and pressing his lips thin, pulling at his hands absently as if to kick feeling back into them where they're a little numb from gripping the equipment too tightly.

Eames shakes his head, eyeing the arc Arthur's shirt makes as he flicks it over his shoulder. If he were still trying to taunt the powers out of the other man, he'd make a comment or leer a bit more openly, but-- clad in his sleeveless white shirt and baggy old sweats, Eames figures now is hardly the time.

"Not that I can tell. Or if it is," Eames clarifies, because Arthur has a way of desiring the infuriatingly specific. "They certainly didn't leave that impression. I'm sure Dom would be stomping around the grounds in that terrycloth robe of his if there were someone new approaching."

Noting the distinct lack of another presence moving about in the house (the cold stairs, the stillness of the kitchen-- the little signs of life a body leaves behind when its passed through a place) Eames glances around the gym. It seems to be just the two of them, which answers one question but brings to mind a more pertinent one. "Am I to assume our dearest Mallorie has finally drifted off into dreams of her own?"

The way he says it makes it clear he doesn't believe this to be the case.

Mention of Dom makes Arthur smile briefly, his mouth quirking upward at both sides with the flash of dimples that say he's genuinely amused at the mental picture. The terrycloth robe really is awful, Arthur thinks and a little ridiculous - very fatherly looking he supposes and then backs away from that parallel as quickly as he comes to it. He shouldn't make that kind of connection where it doesn't belong. Mention of Mallorie is enough to distract and it's easy to shift his focus, though this one comes with the flattening of his mouth - neutralizing again, more severe as he ducks his head as though looking at something on the floor; he's not.

"No, but," he barely keeps himself from outright frowning - the discipline of learning how to not really show anything, especially when one determines it's the easiest way to not be noticed. "No," he repeats. "She's not."

But sometimes she wants to be on her own, even like this, Arthur thinks and it's not personal; he knows she cares about him, but it's true he tries to come here and work - to keep moving - so that he doesn't have to think about it - about Mal, sitting alone and half haunted by everyone else's thoughts because tonight is one of those windows where Dom sleeps to keep himself sane rather than staying up so as to help Mal sleep. It makes sense and they understand each other and the arrangement but Arthur sometimes wonders if there isn't something else to be done for it.

Not that he knows enough about it to make those kinds of suggestions.

He lives here but he's never really been a part of it, save for his sometimes-dabbling in the technology labs, tinkering with someday-mechanisms that might not even work. He's good with machines, not very good with people, and a question mark every time Eames is in the vicinity. Eames unnerves him and he doesn't know why but Eames also impresses him - as do all mutants. And though he'd never admit it - consciously even to himself - sometimes Arthur wishes he was one.

Just to fit that much better in this place.

Absently, one of his hands keeps kneading the end of his shirt over the front of his torso, like he's trying to work the moisture out of it for no apparent reason, or drying his hand. He's not. It's a nervous tic even if he doesn't know that he's doing it.

Where the Cobb's get the funding required to run such an expansive facility is anyone's guess. Eames has seen several people pass through the halls with that dewy look of nostalgia usually reserved for alumni and homesick, would-be adults. From his conversations with the other man, Eames figures they must have made a pretty penny from their academic pursuits-- before Mallorie's power spiked and put her in a dangerous spot. The humanitarian in Dom had left Stanford to help his darling wife and, somewhere along the way, gathered this rag tag little family together.

It was hard not to feel included when in the Cobb's presence. How they included you could vary on a wide spectrum-- Mallorie with those eyes of hers and Cobb, the fire of a man with a passion for knowledge and little else-- but perhaps that's why they worked together so well. Otherwise known, in Eames' book, as why people came back with checkbooks and eager pens. It wasn't Dom's cooking, that much was certain.

Arthur, usually a study in subtlety, is somehow sharper in the quiet of the night. During the day he's... not so much dulled as he is simply tuned down a notch, more withdrawn, curled up inside his own head as if he could ignore the body attached. Dom's never said as much, but he knows the other man finds something fascinating about the boy-- he's not a bleeding heart, and he wouldn't take the other in if he didn't see a payoff for the action in the foreseeable future. Or, if someone with a more reliable insight into the matter hadn't tipped him off to that bit of information. Eames can see from Dom's stance- Arthur has fixed countless things and seems to have a real knack with those hands of his- but Eames' interest in the boy comes from a different angle.

Much the same angle his neck takes when he ducks his head, searching the floor for answers or words-- neither of which he will find.

"You worry about her." Eames points out, mostly because its true, but also because he's still learning Arthur's reactions to these statements. The ones that anyone should be able to take in stride but seem to pull response after response from the other.

"A lot of people do," he deflects and not subtly; he knows he's no good at this, but it's true that more than a few people make moon eyes about and concerning Mal, all of them harmless, all of them concerned for her. No reason for Arthur to be different except for that whole part where he is; she favors him and everyone knows that too even if no one - including Arthur - knows why. Vaguely he recalls once being told that he had a shut-off way about him that either made people want to discard him right away or try to fix him, and that these were the only parts of him that stood out. He's not certain he agrees. Neither of those qualities seems like it would stick out to begin with, in his opinion, and Mal doesn't seem the kind of person to want to fix things so much as explore and push them - which reminds him again of Dom and perhaps why he and Mal are so integral with each other. Arthur can't understand it but he can see it, and that's enough.

Dom helps and loves Mal. Mal inspires and drives Dom. They synthesize.

Sometimes Arthur looks into Dom's eyes and sees Mal's, and vice-versa. It's strange, disconcerting, and heartening all at once in ways he could never identify or explain - given one life time or ten.

His cheeks hollow out with another breath as he turns himself, bracing his hand absently on the handle of the cycle nearest to him to finish the torquing of his back, the audible cracks running in a popping fashion through the air more gratifying than the feel of it. Then he looks over at Eames again, pausing as if he might say something before looking away, walking past him. He's close enough that given a millimeter of angle their arms would brush; they don't, and when he gets to the doorway leading back into the hall he stops.

"You staying?" he prompts, hand on the light-switch, the line of his shoulders stiff. It's not quite an invitation to follow...but it's not not one either. Eames unsettles him, yes, but because Arthur can't pinpoint why he decides it's unreasonable. If he's going to be awake, it's not a terrible thing to have company; it's just that Arthur knows he doesn't make very good company himself, so he rarely leaves that option open. It probably says something - subconsciously - that he leaves it open regarding Eames.

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