Inception- Heard You Were Sick

Heard You Were Sick

(Disclaimer: Inception and all related properties belong to Christopher Nolan.)

Something was off. That much was for sure. It took Eames a moment or two to realize just exactly what it was, and when he did, he felt silly for not noticing it immediately.

It was silent.

Eames was late for work, and no one had said a word.

"Where's Arthur?" he asked immediately, a smirk playing on his lips. Ariadne was the first to pay him any mind, and all she did was shrug. Was the stick-in-the-mud point man late for work? He hoped he was. To be able to mock his failed perfect attendance would be so sweet he was sure it would give him diabetes.

Yusuf strolled in then, carrying his daily cup of coffee. "Ah, morning, Eames," he greeted.

"Hey, Yusuf, do you know where Arthur is?" Ariadne piped up, apparently as curious as the forger.

"I think Cobb's on the phone with him right now, actually," Yusuf responded, sipping at the coffee before grimacing. It was sad how he was intelligent enough to make powerful sedatives that left inner ear function, and yet he had yet to master the coffee maker.

"Well, is he okay?" Ariadne asked.

Yusuf shrugged again before taking another drink of the coffee, which he ultimately regretted. "I imagine something must be wrong. Arthur is always the first one here."

Cobb entered before anyone could question further, snapping his phone shut with a quiet "Okay, bye."

"Was that Arthur?" Ariadne asked. Most of the time, Eames would be slightly agitated over the constant questioning (and Ariadne was among the best of the question askers), but this time he was just as curious.

"Yeah," Cobb replied, putting the phone into his shirt pocket. "He said he's feeling under the weather, so he's not coming in today."

And that was the end of the conversation. Everyone seemed satisfied with that answer, but Eames wanted to know more. As a forger, it was his business to 'get' other people, and deadpan Arthur had done a pretty good job eluding him so far. It was apparent from the first time he and Arthur had met that the point man was a clean freak, obsessed with order and balance and tidiness. For someone who was probably obsessive-compulsive enough to wash his hands about twelve times a day, the idea that a person like that could get sick… well, it was a bit mind-blowing, honestly. He wanted to know what ailed him, what could possibly get into that thick immune system he was surely building for himself with all kinds of vitamins and carefully planned meals. Maybe he was actually hung over. That would be hilarious, he thought, to witness, but it didn't seem likely… Arthur never allowed himself to lose control of anything, especially himself.

Eames's thought process danced along these lines for the entire day. He missed two great times to smart back to Yusuf, and he also completely missed the point of one of Cobb's tangents about what they were supposed to be doing. Sure, THAT time he managed to get in a witty comeback, but still…

So, it was no surprise at the end of the day that Eames caught Cobb by the elbow on the way out the door and asked him where Arthur's flat was.

"Why?" Cobb asked, masking the hesitancy in his voice only slightly.

"I need some information on the mark," Eames replied smoothly, already having prepared this response. "He was supposed to bring it in this morning, but of course…"

"Yeah, I know, but he told me not to tell you where his apartment is."

Oh, dear, Arthur… So like him to cover all of his bases. Eames nodded, yawning, acting out nonchalance with well-trained accuracy. "Yeah, I figured he'd say something like that, but I mean, I really need that information. We've only got so much time, after all."

Cobb seemed to contemplate this momentarily. It really seemed to be vexing him over what to do. Inevitably, he would tell Eames where he lived. The moment the mission was brought into the conversation, it became a choice between the job and Arthur. No matter how much Cobb cared about Arthur, no matter how loyal a friend he was, Cobb would not, could not choose Arthur over the job because that meant choosing Arthur over his children.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Cobb sighed, and Eames could see all over his face that he was regretting his decision. Arthur was sure to give him a stern talking to when they saw each other again.

Cobb wrote down the address anyway. He was curious how Arthur looked furious, considering Cobb decided against going with him, probably to avoid the expected lashing out. He didn't seem too threatening on his own, after all.

Eames left the building whistling.

Eames knocked on the door of apartment 706. There was a long moment of silence, and Eames bounced on his heels.

Finally, the door opened, only a crack. The chain was on. An eye peeked out. "Oh, God," the voice behind the door groaned, and the door actually shut for a moment before opening up again, chain off, but still just a crack. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Heard you were sick. Wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine," he responded grimly. "What do you really want?"

"It's about work. Aren't you going to let me in?"

"I really don't think that you should…" he grumbled. Eames just stood there expectantly, and Arthur sighed and opened the door all the way. "Fine. Come in."

Arthur's apartment was just as organized and boring as he expected. It had fine furniture, upholstered with plain earth tones. There were no pictures on the walls, as expected when it came to any worker in dreams, at least in the less legal areas where they worked. It was never good to have anything special in case a person were to have to pick up and run.

"Please take your shoes off," Arthur said, more begging than accommodating. Eames pulled off his left shoe with his right foot and his right with his left and set them by the door. As he did so, he finally got a look at Arthur.

He looked… bad. He really didn't look like Arthur, in fact. The man was dressed down more than he'd ever seen, only wearing a pair of dark gray sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt with the word YALE across the chest. His hair was hanging down in his eyes, a real mess that Arthur generally must have looked down upon. There was stubble on his chin and upper lip, and deep dark circles under his eyes… and dear lord, was he pale. He'd always been pale, but he was ghostly white.

Eames paused, debated whether it was worth it, and decided it was. "Oh, so sorry. I was looking for Arthur. Is he here?"

"I am Arthur," Arthur replied irritably.

Eames adored how Arthur played right into his fun. "So sorry. I thought you were his little brother. I had no idea you were really twelve, darling."

"What kind of twelve year old has stubble?" Arthur asked, logical as always. He did seem quite offended though.

"I did," Eames replied with a shrug. Of course, he was exaggerating Arthur's youthfulness, but it was still funny.

Arthur drug himself to the couch and sat down heavily before glaring at Eames. "So, what? Why are you here? What do you need?"

"I needed to see you," Eames teased, plopping down next to him, making sure he was in his personal space.

"I'm really not in the mood for your antics," Arthur mumbled, rubbing his temple. He seemed to be suffering from quite a headache.

"Such a shame, since I am in the mood," Eames replied with a grin, making sure Arthur heard the connotation he was making.

Arthur rolled his eyes, and Eames could have laughed with glee. "Seriously, what do you want?" Arthur moaned burying his face in his hands before sliding them through his hair. "I bet Cobb gave you the address. He's going to pay for this…"

"Oh, don't get mad at him, love," Eames laughed, patting Arthur on the shoulder, continuing to invade his space. "I lied and told him I needed some information from you."

He looked upset for a moment but sighed afterwards. "I wish I was more surprised. So your reasoning for being here is…"

"I didn't believe Cobb when he said you were not well. After all, you don't really seem like the type that gets sick."

"I'm not," Arthur replied, and he almost seemed to be gagging on his words.

"So, what are you just hung over, or-"

"I'm not the type that gets sick, but I am-" He stood before finishing his sentence and made a mad dash for his bedroom door.

Eames strolled in leisurely after him and found him in the bathroom with his head hovering over the toilet. He made some terrible retching sounds and hung there for another thirty seconds to make sure there wasn't another wave coming, dry heaved twice, and finally decided he was finished, slouching against the wall and taking in a few shuddered breaths.

"You really are sick," Eames said with surprise, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes. I can get sick like everyone else. You have your answer. Now go home." No sooner had he finished his sentence when another wave of nausea came over him, and he spilled what little he had in him into the toilet.

"Jesus, Arthur," Eames couldn't help but say. He'd expected if he was sick for him to be sick with a cold at most, not something like this.

Arthur rubbed his throat. "Stomach acid," he grumbled, and his voice was hoarse. He flushed and took his spot against the wall again.

"You haven't gone to the doctor or anything?"

"I figured it's just food poisoning or something. I've been doing this all day."

"Maybe if you'd eaten something literally poisonous," Eames replied, and his smile was gone. "I've never seen someone with food poisoning look like you. I've had bloody alcohol poisoning and still looked better than you."

"I appreciate the sentiment, Mr. Eames," Arthur replied sarcastically, but the bite he tried to put into the phrase was lost in the croak of his tired voice.

"You really think you have food poisoning." It was a statement, not a question, and a skeptical statement at that.

"I-" He didn't manage to say anything else when he realized that Eames had knelt down next to him and pressed the palm of his hand on Arthur's forehead. There was a flash of shock on the point man's features, but he did what he could to suppress it. "Wh-what are you doing?" He tried to squirm away from Eames's hand, but the forger wouldn't have it.

"You're warm," he said. "Hot, really, and I didn't mean that as a compliment."

"Maybe you're just cold," Arthur offered, sliding slightly on the floor to regain his personal space.

"You have a thermometer?"

Arthur shrugged a bit, shaking his head. "I don't remember… check behind the mirror." He seemed to think it was a waste of time. Apparently Arthur was on the same page as Eames when it came to him getting sick: it just didn't happen.

Eames dug around in the medicine chest for a moment, and he could practically feel Arthur getting bent out of shape over how he was disorganizing everything, but he found the thermometer.

"Ah, here we are," he said with a smile in Arthur's direction. Arthur just repressed a whimper. Eames knelt down next to him but Arthur shoved him away. "I'm just trying to assist."

"I don't need your help. I'm fine."

"Don't be a child."

"You're the child!" He clambered to his feet to get away from him but had to grab hold of the wall with one hand, and Eames's shoulder with the other. "Fuck…" he mumbled.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing… Just… dizzy…" he sighed.

Eames took this opportunity to get to his own feet and shove the thermometer into Arthur's mouth. "I could make a joke about this right now, you know."

Arthur couldn't speak with the thermometer between his lips, so instead he made some unintelligible grunts of disagreement. It beeped at last, and Arthur was ready to say everything he couldn't say while waiting, but Eames interrupted immediately. "Well, look at that. 38.6 degrees… Celsius, of course, darling."

"I know what Celsius is," He replied bitterly.

Eames shrugged. "I told you that you had a fever."

"So what?" Arthur mumbled, trudging by the forger back into his bedroom. Eames thought to remark about the hotel corners of his bed making but decided that he just looked too pitiful to bother. That must have been what was holding him back from bothering him before. Surely. "All right. I have a fever. I don't have food poisoning. You have your answer. Will you leave now?"

Arthur sat down on the trunk in front of his bed, arms folded over his stomach and trying so hard to repress his chills, and he just looked so terrible that Eames even felt sorry for him (and he rarely felt sorry for anyone). "You really think you should be here by yourself? What, with you honking up your intestines and frying your skull?"

Arthur looked about ready to be sick again from Eames's not so delicate phrasing, and Eames reached into the bathroom and handed Arthur the bin. It was empty, so there was no smell of garbage to make it worse.

"I… can handle myse-" He vomited stomach acid into the trashcan. "I can handle myself," he said again, voice cracking. "I don't need anyone to take care o-of me." He couldn't hide the tremors in his body now.

Eames leaned against the doorway of the bathroom, eyeing him skeptically. "Well, that's too bad, love, because as a gentleman, I can't leave you this way."

"Since when were you a ge-" He was cut off again by his own stomach, and he seemed to be growing quite annoyed that all of his witty comebacks were being stifled by his own illness. The worst part was that his body had been shaken so violently that he was too tired to finish the sentence, instead deciding to lean his forehead up against the cool plastic of the trash bin.

"You all right?"

"Stop asking me that…" His voice had lost all of its bite now. "I'm just… I need to sleep… but I can't stop fucking gagging."

"Poor baby," Eames replied, his smile half condescending, half genuine sympathy. He approached and slid the trash can out of Arthur's arms, and the point man very nearly leaned against his chest but stopped himself. "Why don't you lay down and let me stroke your hair?"

"Why don't you just leave me alone?" Arthur mumbled, forcing himself to his feet and pulling back the covers of his bed. It appeared that he even ironed his sheets. Eames was curious as to when he found the time to do so.

Eames just ignored that while Arthur collapsed into his bed and curled up in the fetal position. He'd only been half-joking when he offered to stroke his hair. His mother had done that for him as a child, and it always made him feel better.

"Do you at least want a glass of water or something?" Eames offered.

"I don't want your help. Don't help me!" Arthur complained, stubborn as always. It wasn't that surprising, considering how Eames in the past would use any moment of weakness to mock and tease and use to his advantage. It was very possible that he still would.

Eames shrugged again. "All right then." He'd already decided after all, that making Arthur ask him for help would be quite the fun game.

It took Arthur a moment before he realized that Eames had yet to leave the room. He lifted his face off of the pillow and looked around to find Eames digging through the things in his closet. "What the hell are you doing?" Arthur asked.

"Nothing. Bloody hell, Arthur, look at this travesty! It's browns, whites, blacks, grays, and Bob's your uncle! Do you not own one speck of color in your wardrobe? Not one Hawaiian shirt, nothing? I bet you don't even have another t-shirt besides that one your wearing."

"Brown is a color," Arthur replied, throwing an arm over his eyes. "Why are you going through my clothes?"

"Well, you won't let me help you, so I need something else to do."

"I don't need any help. Why don't you go back to your apartment, and find something to do?"

"Oh, come now, darling, you should feel relief that I'd be willing to help you. If it helps, you could think of me as your kindly British nanny," he chimed, still thumbing through the rack of plain suits.

"I certainly will not think of you as such!" Arthur barked.

Eames laughed jovially.

"If I had a British nanny, she certainly wouldn't be as agitating as you."

"To assume all nannies are women is very prejudiced of you."

Arthur turned his back to Eames and tried to go to sleep so that he could ignore him. His head was pounding so hard that arguing was getting too difficult to bear.

"Well, blow me!"

Arthur couldn't help but turn around. "Excuse me?"

Eames stared at him in confusion for a moment before breaking into a grin. "Oh. It's a slang term from my side of the pond, love. It doesn't mean what you think it means… though if you'd like to, I'd wait until you were a bit healthier."

Arthur pinched and massaged the bridge of his nose between his eyes and disregarded the end of the statement. "Right…" Then, he realized exactly why Eames had said what he did.

He'd removed a bright red button-down from the very back of the closet. "This is yours, isn't it? Or was this here when you moved in?"

Arthur sat up and tried to snatch the shirt from Eames but ended up falling onto the mattress on his stomach. His achy body didn't seem to agree with the movement either.

"Now, why don't you ever wear this? This is nice!"

"Red's really not my color."

"Sure it is. Anything would look better than the boring, perfectly-tailored suits you usually wear."

"We all have our own preferences, and I prefer not to wear that shirt."

"I don't understand. You've got to have a better reason for not wearing this than that you're boring. Why the bloody hell would you even have the shirt if you-"

"Mal gave it to me," Arthur finally admitted.

There were very few things that could make Eames shut up, but Arthur had just discovered one of them.

"She bought it for me for my birthday," Arthur said quietly, curling up on the bed to try to ease his abdominal pains. "She said that she thought of me when she saw it, thought I should wear some more stand out colors…"

"Well, you don't wear it," Eames said.

"I can't bring myself to, and all the same I can't bring myself to throw it out."

Eames studied the shirt, perfectly ironed and buttoned all the way up, just like everything else in the closet, and he had to admit that he thought it really did suit the point man. The red would go very nicely with his hair.

"Well, you know, it's more wasteful to not wear it," Eames told him with a half-smile. "She would want you to-"

"I just can't. I…" he curled up even more if it was possible, and all Eames could see was the top of his head.

And that was when it struck him like lightning. "Good Lord… you were in love with Cobb's wife!"

"What? No I wasn't!" Arthur replied defensively, giving Eames a look of disdain that would send weaker men crumbling.

"Yes, you were! That's why you kept the shirt!"

"I wasn't in love with Mal-"

"Just admit it, love, because we both know it's true."

"I wasn't in love with Mal!" Arthur shouted, and his voice was raw and exhausted and desperate.

"I wonder if Mr. Cobb knew this. I wonder if you two would be such good friends if he knew that you were trying to get into his wife's skirts back in the-"

"I wasn't in love with Mal, I was in love with Dom!" Arthur blared out over Eames's voice, and afterwards the room fell to complete silence. Arthur gave Eames such a strong look of horror that even the forger was frightened a little.

"Well… don't look at me like I said it," Eames finally managed to say when the silence had dragged on for far too long.

"Oh, God… Oh, God!" Arthur wailed, burying his face in his hands out of humiliation. "What did I just say? Oh, God…"

Eames put the shirt back on the rack, somewhere in the middle. "So, I wonder if she would have bought you the shirt if she thought-"

"DON'T. Say it. Don't say it."

Eames shrugged it off. "So. Is it true? Do you want to jump Mr. Cobb's bones?"

"No!" Arthur shouted, paused, and shook his head, though Eames wasn't sure if it was because of his headache or of his disagreement. "And do you have to say it like that? God, do you have any kind of tact?"

"Well, if it isn't true, then why did you say it?"

Arthur paused, genuinely thinking it over for a moment, and had he not been so ashen, he probably would have been blushing. Eames toyed with the image of Arthur blushing for a minute.

Arthur then sighed, collapsing onto the bed on his back. "I was in love with their lives… I wanted it, not them. I wanted so bad to have that kind of company, that kind of happiness. They were beautiful and beaming and perfect, and their kids were beautiful and beaming and perfect, and I just felt so… I don't know. I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts right now."

Leave it to Arthur to be weak, tired, burning with fever, and slightly delirious, and yet still able to use the word 'articulating'.

"Ah, well, I get it anyways," Eames replied, deciding that he could mess with Arthur about it when he was a little more up to the challenge. "You think wearing that shirt will cause your dear Cobb to become depressed over the late Mrs. Cobb."

Arthur was apparently done with the conversation because he padded across to the bathroom, gave Eames a long, unpleasant glower, and shut and locked the door. He took the trash bin with him.

Eames spent the next twenty minutes searching through Arthur's sock drawer for anything else interesting. All he found was a bunch of socks lined up by color. They were even ironed. Eames rolled his eyes. No disarray whatsoever, not one pair of rainbow toe socks, not even a porn stash. He was really beginning to wonder if Arthur was a robot.

But robots didn't get sick, and from the sounds he was hearing from the bathroom, Arthur was very much so.

The door opened again at last, and Arthur had to lean against the doorway to keep from toppling over. "Oh, you're still here… great…" he said flatly.

"Just keeping an eye on you, pet," Eames said, placing his hand against Arthur's bony shoulder. He could feel the heat emanating from his skin even through his shirt, but he wouldn't allow himself to admit that it worried him. Eames had come to discover in his life that if he decided there wasn't a problem, there usually wasn't.

"How many times must I tell you that I don't need your help?" Arthur asked, although he seemed to be conveniently overlooking the fact that Eames was practically leading him to his bed.

"Just one more," Eames replied as Arthur crawled into his covers. "I'll just be outside the door, if you change your mind." He placed his hand against Arthur's face, partly to invade that personal space but partly just out of kindness.

Arthur's eyes couldn't help but flutter closed. Normally, he didn't like to be touched, especially by hands he didn't know had been washed or not, but his palm was so cold, and it just felt so good… but of course, he wasn't about to admit it out loud. He knew the game Eames was playing, and he was so stubborn that he didn't intend to lose.

…regardless of how promising the idea…

When Arthur woke up again, it was four in the morning. His vision was hazy and too bright, and his head was pounding so hard that he couldn't hear anything but the blood pumping in his ears. He believed he felt worse than he had ever felt, although it was hard to remember feeling anything else in his current state. He wanted to vomit, but he knew there was nothing but stomach acid. Maybe he should have eaten something, but the idea of eating anything actually made his nausea worse. He ached all over, and he felt weak and sleepy, and he would have been quite satisfied with going back to sleep, but he was just in too much pain to do so.

He began to think this little battle with Eames was stupid, and that his help would have been much appreciated now, as he imagined the soothing feeling of his calloused and so wonderfully cold palm on his face. His stubbornness was fading into obscurity as all the horrible feelings took over the forefront of his thoughts. Maybe he could just let Eames win this one. Just this once. There would be other games in the future… that is if he didn't die from this fucking headache.

Arthur struggled when trying to get his body to unfold itself and climb out of bed, and waves of nausea and dizziness spilled over him as soon as he'd gotten to his feet. He was thankful at the realization that Eames had brought the trash bin back out and set it by his bedside, but he only had a second to be thankful before putting it to use.

There was no relief when he'd finished. His throat was sore, and if it was possible he felt worse. Staggering to his bedroom door, he hesitated, hoping that he wouldn't ultimately regret this moment of weakness, and opened it.

Eames had been sitting on the couch, flipping channels for a couple of hours. He'd already snooped through the rest of Arthur's things to find them as boring as everything else. He didn't even have good television (though there was seldom anything good on at four in the morning anyway). The sound of the television kept him company however, so he'd settled in and nearly fell asleep when Arthur's bedroom door opened.

"Hey, Eames…?" Arthur croaked.

"Yes, love?" Eames asked, smiling lazily, not turning his eyes away from the box.

WHUMP.

Eames turned.

"Bleeding Christ!" he shouted, dropping the remote when he discovered that Arthur had fainted, face pressed against the carpet. Eames bolted to the unconscious point man and pulled him up into his arms, smacking his face. "Arthur. Hey, Arthur! Wake up, you arse!"

He was burning up and unresponsive. "Shit," Eames hissed, lifting him off the floor and carrying him to the bathroom. He didn't have much time to act, so he tried to remember something he'd seen on the tele some time ago. He started running the bath full of cold water and stripped the lifeless man of his clothing. He was in such a hurry that he didn't even think of how Arthur would have reacted to the situation had he been conscious. All he was focused on at the moment was getting his fever down.

He set Arthur in the tub and hurried to the kitchen where he filled a Ziploc bag with ice and wrapped a wet towel around it. By the time he returned, the water was spilling over the side of the tub. He ignored it and pressed the make-shift ice pack against Arthur's forehead.

Eames was worried that this wasn't how to help the situation; he was no medical professional, after all… but he couldn't think of what else to do.

"Come on, Arthur. Time to rise and shine, darling," he whispered to him, trying to ignore his pounding heart. He felt like it was his fault for playing the game. He could have forced Arthur to let him help him, but he didn't… At the same time, he was happy that he stayed. He could have died, had Eames not been there.

Before Eames could dwell on the idea of him dying even still, Arthur made a low sound and began to stir. When his brown eyes fluttered open, Eames couldn't hold back the amount of relief that washed over his face. He felt the urge to cross himself, even though he hadn't in years.

"Eames?" Arthur questioned.

"All right, you wanker?" Eames asked.

Arthur looked around, seeming a bit lost. He was still as gray as he had been, but at least he was awake. He also had a bit of a nosebleed from where he hit the floor. "I… where… what happened?"

Eames realized that the legs of his pants were wet, and finally realized that the water had been pooling on the side of the tub. He turned it off and opened the drain. "Can you stand?" he asked.

Arthur nodded, but the motion seemed to hurt his head, so he just tried to instead. He managed it with Eames's help. "Wh- why am I…" he began.

"You fainted," Eames explained, handing Arthur a towel. "Your fever was too high." He wasn't sure if it was that or dehydration, but they probably ran hand in hand anyway.

Arthur wrapped the towel around his waist and wouldn't look at Eames out of embarrassment. Like Eames cared.

When trying to step out of the bath, he nearly collapsed again, but Eames caught him this time. "Let me help you, all right, mate?" he offered, and this time Arthur just nodded weakly.

Eames lifted Arthur into his arms, bridal style, which Arthur would have protested had he been in any shape to, and carried him out of the bathroom. He was still wet and shivering when he sat him on the trunk in front of his bed , so Eames retrieved another towel and wrapped it around him. "Stay here, love," He said, patting the side of his face.

He returned moments later with a glass of water. "Drink this. Don't guzzle it though, small sips."

After a few small sips, Arthur seemed to find his voice again, while Eames was looking for something else for Arthur to wear. "Eames…"

"Yes, darling?" he asked, expecting a snide remark.

"… Th-thank you…"

Eames gave him a pleasantly surprised look over the shoulder and teased, "Anything for you, my pet."

"I hate television," Arthur mumbled sleepily while Eames fumbled around in the kitchen.

"Of course you would," Eames replied, putting a large plastic spoon into the soup he had prepared. "You haven't got any good bloody channels."

"I prefer books," Arthur said. He'd dressed in a pair of black cotton boxers and an undershirt.

"I expected that." Eames scooped the Campbell's chicken noodle into a bowl. He carried it to Arthur with a small, spotless spoon and set it on the coffee table. "Eat this."

The smell of it made Arthur's insides swim. "N-no, I can't."

"You need to eat something. It'll help you get your strength back."

"I'll just puke it up."

"At least it won't be stomach acid. Try to keep it down at least."

He exhaled through his nostrils and picked up the bowl, sipping at it. He appeared a little green, but he managed to spoon a bite into his mouth. "God… damn it…" he swore. "I feel like shit…"

"You look worse," Eames said, taking a seat next to him and resuming the flipping of channels. "You've got one hell of a stomach virus."

Arthur nodded, setting down the bowl. "I… can't eat anymore of this right now."

"That's fine."

They sat in silence for a little while and watched the news.

"I have some movies, if you prefer," Arthur offered. "They're mostly foreign art films though."

"You like foreign art films?" Eames bit back a chuckle. "Nancy Boy."

"I don't particularly like them in general. There are a couple of good ones though."

Eames changed the channel. "Who needs Nancy Boy movies when we've got cartoons?"

"I expected that."

Somehow, over the next hour and a half, Arthur's head had found its way to Eames's knee, and Eames was stroking his hair. It really did make him feel better.

Eames hadn't been aware he'd fallen asleep, but when he opened his eyes, his head was tilted back on the couch and light was streaming in from the Arthur's bedroom windows. Arthur was snoring lightly against the forger's knee. He was practically drenched in sweat. Eames felt his head. It was cool.

Checking his watch, he discovered that it was eleven o' clock. He was late for work again.

Smiling, he shrugged, gathered the point man into his arms, and carried him back to his room where he laid him down and tucked him in.

His slacks, which he'd thrown over a chair after getting them wet had mostly dried. He checked his phone: 12 missed calls from miscellaneous members of the team. He left a note, and shut the door behind him.

The note read:

Darling, do eat somthing even if you dont want to. Drink lots of fluids to. Eames

By around three in the afternoon, Eames was heaving into a trash can.

"Maybe you should go home," Ariadne offered, keeping her distance.

"Perhaps," Eames said, giving her a glance before going back to emptying his stomach contents. "I didn't really think about Arthur being contagious."

"I didn't know you went to see Arthur."

"Just… needed some information is all…"

He regretted nothing.

The next morning, there was a knock on Eames's door. It took him awhile to get to it. "Yeah, what?" he mumbled, swinging the door open.

Arthur stood there before him, wearing a paper mask over his mouth, dressed to perfection as usual.

"What are you doing here?" Eames asked, trying to straighten up and look a little bit less like death.

"Heard you were sick. Wanted to make sure you were okay."

He was wearing a bright red shirt.

END.