“We’ll be fine,” Eames once again tried to reassure Arthur. It might have helped if it wasn’t so blatantly inaccurate. They were stranded in the middle of the forest in Alaska, at least another day's hike to Anchorage where Arthur had stashed his backup bag with money, passports, and clothes. He had an extra passport for Eames, one that he had found tucked into his briefcase that Eames had borrowed while tailing a mark for a forge. Arthur had never examined why it was that he’d kept it in his emergency bag but he was glad now that he had.
“Not if we don’t stop and make camp,” Arthur said, eyeballing the quickly setting sun. It was late fall, and there was no snow but the ground was frozen and every morning there had been a thick frost on the ground. With the jackets they had, they would probably still make it through the night if they set up a camp, they'd need fire and something to block the wind.
“Making camp will only leave a trail,” Eames argued. “And smoke will lead them right to us.”
Arthur turned around on Eames, snapping, “We don’t have a choice. It’s either this or we die. We can’t keep going without stopping, we’ve been going since five this morning. Collapsing from exhaustion is the worse choice because we don’t know where it will happen. We’re going to stop, make camp, and split this last protein bar I have in my jacket.”
“Better plan: we find a rock to hide behind to break the wind, I’ll take first watch while you rest a few hours,” Eames explained, voice tight the way it got whenever he was arguing with a particularly thick-headed extractor. It was unsettling, usually, he had a bit more humor in his voice when he argued with Arthur.
“That doesn’t solve the freezing-to-death problem,” Arthur pointed out.
“In the fifteen years we’ve been working together have I ever let you down when it mattered?” Eames snapped, grabbing Arthur’s arms and holding him in place when he tried to walk away.
Arthur was taken aback. He was right. Arthur and Eames had been working together for a long time and he was right, Eames always came through when it mattered, he was the one who’d woken Arthur up at five this morning because he’d found out about the double cross from their Architect. And ever since the Fischer job it had only become more clear what a good team they were. So Arthur could give him a little trust. “Okay. Let’s find this rock.”
“Already spotted one through the trees that way,” Eames said with a wink, pointing about a hundred feet west of where they were.
Arthur glared at him just for good form which made Eames smile at him.
The rock wasn’t exactly perfect, it was actually two rocks that had a large gap in it from the direction of the wind, but Arthur grabbed a few fallen branches he found, stuffed them between and it seemed to do an okay job.
Arthur sat next to Eames and split the partially crushed protein bar with Eames, eating silently.
“Sleep,” Eames said as soon as Arthur finished his.
“Wake me in four hours,” Arthur said as he laid down, with his back to the rock but not touching.
“Of course, I would like to sleep tonight,” he said, sitting directly in front of Arthur with his back to him and watching the forest.
Arthur had barely shut his eyes before he fell asleep.
Arthur woke slowly, the morning sunlight streaming through the trees and directly into his eyes, somehow almost warm even though he remembered clearly where he was. He opened his eyes and saw bright white fur close enough to his face that his breath ruffled it. Immediately, adrenaline flooded through his system though he kept his body completely still. There was a wolf’s head just inches from his face, its eyes closed. He had no idea how he was going to get out of this, and just as he started to panic the wolf’s eyes opened. Immediately it jumped back, and stared at him, somehow looking like it was the one panicking.
Arthur sat up a little and looked around for Eames, only then realizing that Arthur’s head had been resting on a pile of Eames’s clothes while he’d been sleeping. Where the fuck was Eames and why was he naked? Luckily, just within arm's reach was Arthur’s gun. He didn’t think he was faster than a wolf but it didn’t seem to be an option.
Just as he dove for the gun, so did the beast and it was faster, knocking the gun away with a giant paw. Then slowly the animal came closer, its head bowed and tail tucked between its legs, whining loudly. Arthur didn’t spend a lot of time around wild wolves but he was pretty sure this wasn’t normal.
It carefully grabbed Eames’s jacket, which Arthur realized was next to him like it had been laid across his legs while he’d been sleeping, and curled up in as small of a ball as its huge body would allow, and then pulled it over him. By that point, if Arthur had been sure the movement wouldn’t get him mauled he’d have checked his totem, yet it got weirder.
Slowly, and then all at once in a revolting twisting of flesh and fur and a sickening crack of bones the wolf transformed itself into Eames. “What the fuck?” Arthur asked, eyes wide as Eames stood with his jacket wrapped around his waist.
“Can I have the rest of my clothes before my bollocks permanently go inside my body, it’s bloody cold out here,” Eames said, motioning with one hand to the pile of clothes.
Arthur ignored him and took another dive for the gun, but again Eames beat him, his bare foot which was already bright red from the cold stepping on top of the gun.
“You’re not dreaming, check your totem, try to build a building, whatever you have to do, but it’s not a dream,” Eames said slowly, seriously.
“Eames, I don’t need to check because you just came out of a forge!”
“I will explain if you promise not to shoot yourself while I get dressed. I’d love to have my toes at the end of this little adventure of ours,” Eamse said, just as exasperated as ever with Arthur. Which was unfair because Arthur was clearly right. They were in a dream, they had to be.
“Fine,” Arthur said, handing over the rest of Eames’s clothes.
Eames got dressed quickly, clearly still freezing even wrapped up in his new layers. Arthur wondered if he’d been warmer as a wolf, but shook off the thought. They’ll be getting out of this dream soon enough. “Much better,” Eames said as he tied his boots. “Did you check your totem?”
“I don’t need to,” Arthur argued.
“Yes, you do,” Eames said, a slight panic in his eyes. “Mal was certain, she didn’t trust her totem, please just check.”
Arthur glared at him for the low blow but rolled his die. Unforntaully it told him that this was reality, which was impossible. Arthur took a deep breath and focused on the ground next to Eames and tried to grow a tree, certain that he was in his own dream. Nothing happened.
“Do you trust me now?” Eames asked.
“Trust has nothing to do with this,” Arthur countered.
“I know,” Eames said with a sigh. “Come on, I’ll explain while we walk.”
Slowly, Arthur stood and followed Eames as they started heading North again.
“So,” Arthur said when Eames didn’t start talking.
“Magic is real, which shouldn’t be surprising considering what we do,” Eames said, probably thinking he was heading off an argument early.
“The PASIV is science,” Arthur said sternly.
“With a dash of magic,” Eames said. “Even you have never made a working replica of the one you stole from the government.”
Arthur glared at him because he was right. Arthur had tried quite a few times to recreate the device, always wanting a backup in case things broke bad but it never worked. He could lucid dream but he couldn’t bring anyone else in.
“Excellent, now that we’ve established that I can explain what you saw,” Eames said in his normal cheery voice. “You know that I come from a tiny little island off the coast of England, barely five hundred people on the whole thing. Few hundred years ago, sometime during the Black Death, there was a witch hunt, problem was that the person that was killed was an actual witch and not just a woman murdered to advance some economic plots or over land rights. She, rightly so, what quite angry with my ancestors who had sentenced her to execution, so she cursed them so that the world would always see us for what we were, wild animals. Now all their descendants turn into wolves.”
Arthur let the story wash over him, unsure if he even believed it. Though he was getting more certain he wasn’t in a dream, the weight of the die was right in his hand and no matter how hard he focused he couldn’t change anything about the world around him. “You’re a werewolf,” Arthur finally said.
“Not the way you’re thinking. We can change at will, and we just turn into a normal wolf, nothing so monstrous as American Werewolf In London would lead you to believe,” Eames explained. “The only rule is that we have to do it often or it stops being quite so voluntary. If we go too long without changing it’ll start to hurt.”
“Is that why it’s so easy for you to forge?” Arthur asked.
Eames shrugged. “Maybe why it’s easy. Not why I’m so good.”
Arthur rolled his eyes.
“Does it scare you?” Eames asked after a while of silence.
Arthur shook his head. “No. You’ve always been dangerous, Eames, but you’ve never given me a reason to be afraid.”
Eames smiled at him, bright and without a trace of any wolflike danger.
“But now that I know…do you mind changing back to a wolf and scouting until we get closer to a city? Then they’ll see a person and a wolf’s tracks and think it's less likely that it's us, or even that we survived being tracked by a wolf,” Arthur explained, unsure of if he was being rude.
Somehow, Eames’s smile got brighter. “Of course, but you have to carry my clothes and the PASIV all day.”
“I think I can handle it. You made me carry it the majority of yesterday anyway.”
Eames shook his head and started to strip, handing his clothes to Arthur who carefully created a bindle out of Eames’s outermost jacket to make it easier to carry. Then there was a large white wolf smiling up at Arthur before taking off to sniff around, doubling back behind him before sprinting forward to search for threats. After a while, he came trotting back, walking next to Arthur with a little spring in his step, or running into Arthur’s legs in an attempt to trip him. Arthur just pushed back against him which made the wolf stumble a little before running around in a circle around him.
Arthur certainly had more questions, and he’d want them answered at some point, but for now this was good. After all, he trusted Eames to pull through when it was important, and he always did.
Arthur tried to be the kind of person who didn’t think about his coworkers outside of work, and for most of his coworkers, he accomplished it. Dom was different, Arthur was the godfather of his children so he was perfectly warranted in his worrying after the man and the kids. Ariadne was different too, just because he felt the overwhelming feeling of responsibility for everything that happened to her while she was in dreamshare. Eames…he had no excuse for why he thought about Eames so much, though he cut himself a little slack when he caught himself wondering about shapeshifting abilities. It was only reasonable
Eames, of course, was no different after their little disaster in Alaska and having to reveal the truth about himself to Arthur. He still smiled and flirted and was a general ass, though now the number of comments about Arthur being compared to some kind of pitbull had increased exponentially, accompanied by a wink every time.
It was their first job together since Arthur had found out the truth about Eames, their team using a vacation rental as their base of operations in Cancun while the businessman they were after wiled away his winter vacation on a resort there. It was a small team, just the two of them and an architect who had already left for her own rental half an hour ago.
“What do you do in cities?” Arthur asked suddenly, unable to help himself in the quiet of the room.
Eames looked up at him from where he was reading the long list of behavioral problems the mark’s kid had in school with a smirk. “What everyone else does in cities; eat, drink, and be merry.”
Arthur fixed him with a flat look. “I mean with your… condition.”
“My condition?” Eames asked, he looked amused but also a little offended.
“You said you have to shift often to maintain the ability to control it. How can you in a crowded city? People would notice a wolf walking down the streets of Mombasa I’m sure,” Arthur said, trying not to be defensive. It wasn’t really any of his business.
Eames shrugged. “I usually just lock my door and sleep on the bed in my other form to pass the time. Sometimes I watch TV.”
“Aren’t wolves pack animals?”
“So are humans,” Eames countered.
Arthur nodded. They fell into silence for a while. “Should I pretend that I don’t know about it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t advertise that you think I can shapeshift into a wolf,” Eames said with a laugh.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to tell other people. I mean, would you prefer it if I didn’t mention it again?”
Eames looked down at the papers in front of him and shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t mind you knowing, you’re the only person outside of people born on the isle that knows about me. It’s almost nice to have someone know.”
“So that I don’t come knocking on your door in the middle of the night?” Arthur asked with a smirk.
“Let’s not be hasty, my door is always open to you, especially in the middle of the night.”
Arthur rolled his eyes and got back to work.