ishafel

Sorry, guys, these drabbles are not going as quickly (or briefly) as I'd hoped. I'm just going to post them as I finish. This is for

pushdragon, who requested Eames' reaction to Cobb's betrayal. I'm guessing this is not exactly what you had in mind!

Summary: There are some people you don't mess around with.

Before he called Eames the first time, back when Cobb and Mal were first doing extractions-- before he left France, even-- he did the due diligence. The dream-sharing world was so small then that he only had to talk to a handful of people, but all of them agreed: Eames was a very, very good forger, and a very, very bad man to cross. Once he'd worked with Eames a few times, Cobb decided that was an exaggeration. Not Eames' talent, which was prodigious, but his temper. Eames was easy, laid-back, generous to a fault.

Arthur, Cobb would have understood. Arthur was the type to salt the earth after he'd burned down your house with you in it. But Eames-- no one ever claimed to have been a victim, or perhaps there were no survivors-- but the rumors followed him even as dream-sharing expanded. “I heard someone double-crossed him, this Italian politician, and he slept with the guy's wife and teenage son,” an architect in South Africa told Cobb. “Supposedly he had the whole thing videoed and the guy had to pay through the nose to get the video.”

It sounded like Eames. So did replacing a woman's jewels with paste replicas and making sure her friends found out. “He'll rob you blind,” Michelle said, when Cobb asked. “He does it to all his exes, wipes their bank accounts and disappears. The Italian guy? It wasn't his wife, it was his eighteen-year old son and daughter, and he knocked the girl up and she kept the baby.”

Cobb didn't have a wife, and his daughter was only nine, and his assets probably weren't worth Eames' time. But he spent six weeks after the inception waiting for the sword to fall. And then, when he'd just about relaxed, he woke up one morning to find he had nineteen thousand emails, most of them badly spelled Viagra advertisements. The next day he got twenty six phone calls for male escorts.

The worst part was the inconsistency. A week of nothing, and someone let the air out of all of his tires in the middle of the afternoon. Three days, and his credit cards stopped working. He was suddenly on the No- Fly list. His expensive, full-page photo ad in Architectural Digest came out with an inexplicable smudge like a Hitler mustache over his picture. His electricity went off at nine p.m. every night for a week. Someone canceled his newspaper subscription, his AAA account, his cable, his landline. He was audited by the I.R.S. His in-laws were investigated by the I.N.S.

It might not have Eames. It might not all have Eames. The termites, the flooded basement, the kids getting chicken pox, the ice cream truck that constantly circled the block, the locusts. Still, Cobb was tired of it. But all of Eames' old numbers were disconnected. His e-mail addresses didn't work. When Cobb called around, everyone said, “Eames doesn't want to talk to you. Eames said not to give you his number.” And, once, “Now you see what happen when you screw Eames over. I told you he was dangerous.

He lived with it for a year, in a constant state of siege. And then he called Arthur. “Find Eams for me,” he begged. “Tell him, anything he wants. Just so long as it stops.”

“If I talk to him, I'll pass that on,” Arthur said. He was almost certainly laughing.

The building that housed Cobb's office was hit by lightning, shorting out all the electrical equipment. James said a bad word in kindergarten, and his teacher wanted a conference. Someone subscribed Cobb to Busty Asian Beauties and his mother-in-law opened the first issue.

And then Arthur came to visit. They were still on the porch when Cobb demanded, “What did Eames say? Tell me you talked to him--.”
“About that,” Arthur said, looking embarrassed. Phil was leaning against him on one side, James on the other. He smiled down at them. “That wasn't Eames, actually, that was me. But I'll stop. I have stopped. Eames--.” He sighed. “Eames sent presents for the kids. They're in the car. He said to tell you you're lucky he likes you.”

Cobb followed Arthur silently when he went out to the Explorer. His legs were numb, his hands shaking. Arthur opened the backseat, revealing a Newfoundland puppy, curled up on a towel. “This little guy is for Phil,” he said. She was already ecstatic. Arthur opened the hatch, revealing a gigantic drum set. “And this is for James,” he said.

Cobb leaned on the car. “No,” he protested. “This isn't fair.”

“Oh. The puppy's not housebroken,” Arthur added. “I'll just help you set up the amplifier before I go. And, Dom? It might take the Jehovah's Witnesses a few days to get the message.”