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Cobb paces the floor between lawn chairs, tense and furtive like a hunted man. “Where is Eames? What’s taking so long? Did anyone text him?”
Ariadne exchanges baffled glances with Yusuf. “He’s only been gone twenty minutes.”
Cobb hunches his shoulders and paces a tighter circle. “Too long,” he mutters. “Too long, too long.” He flicks a glance to the far end of the room and—well, it looks like he goes a little pale in the face.
But, really, it’s just them in the warehouse. Ariadne doesn’t understand what’s so upsetting that it has Cobb acting like this. Frankly, she wishes he would start making sense so she can stop wavering between feeling fearful and annoyed.
Of course, this is Cobb, after all. If she’s wanting sensible explanations, she’s looking in the wrong place.
She turns, already calling out. “Arth—”
“No!”
Cobb launches himself at her, plastering a sweaty palm over her mouth before she can finish the first syllable.
“Don’t draw his attention,” he hisses, casting worried looks over his shoulder while evading the slaps she aims at his face.
In her periphery, Ariadne detects Yusuf shuffling back and forth, clearly undecided about whether he wants to engage in whatever fuckery this is that’s happening right now. But she’s had quite enough of Cobb’s shenanigans and finally backs him off with a sharp jab to the throat.
The good news is, Cobb can’t resume his demented pacing while he’s coughing and gagging.
The bad news—because there always has to be bad news, doesn’t there—is that she now understands why disturbing Arthur was something they were supposed to avoid.
Arthur prowls out of the dark end of the warehouse, heavy strides and scowling face dragging a cloud of intensity with him. Instinctively, Ariadne gulps and takes a step back, stumbling into a table. The man closing the distance with alarming intent bears little resemblance to the boyish-faced, silk-clad Yoda/Mary Poppins marvel who answers all of Ariadne’s questions and replaces Yusuf’s tattered notepads with fresh supplies. This man is a force of nature, storming over them, and the chance of casualties looks high.
“What the fuck is going on,” he growls, that deep rumble of his always a shock to the system.
But what’s truly surprising is the candy bar clutched in his fist, wrapper torn like it’s been attacked by raccoons, strings of caramel drawing from the mangled end of chocolate to the back of Arthur’s hand.
Ariadne frowns. “Is that my—”
Cobb lurches upright, sucking in a breath. “Nothing to worry about,” he says in a rough voice. “We’re all just taking a break.”
The lines on Arthur’s forehead furrow deeper, if that’s even possible. Eyeing them all with blatant suspicion, he tears off a bite of candy bar with bared teeth, the way a wolf might rip into the belly of a downed elk. A half-chewed peanut falls to the floor at his feet and pitters away. He doesn’t notice, focused on cramming another bite into his mouth despite the bulging of his cheek.
“Wh’e’s ‘mes?” he askes around a knot of melted chocolate.
Eyes wide, Ariadne prods Cobb in the kidney, who spares a second to glare back.
“He, uh, he and Saito went to pick up lunch.”
Arthur grunts. In goes the rest of the candy bar. Smack-smack-smack, Arthur chews away, while the wrapper flutters off. Casualty number one.
“Good. Fuck’n starving.” Arthur sucks chocolate and caramel from his fingers, eyes already casting about for his next course.
“Yeah,” Cobb strains out in what’s probably supposed to be a soothing voice. “You’ve been putting in long hours. Working hard.”
Too long, is the implication Ariadne picks up from his expression. There’s a haunted fog in his eyes that speaks of past horrors seen and never forgotten. Suddenly, she thinks back on all the times she noticed Cobb nudging an energy bar into Arthur’s hands, only for it sit neglected next to Arthur’s empty coffee cup. And the many, many times Eames has left apples and little boxes of raisins in random places around the warehouse. She always assumed he was just sloppy.
With the clarity of hindsight, she realizes she’s never seen Arthur partake of any of the snacks his teammates have been foisting on him. Too busy, too preoccupied. There was always a reason why he couldn’t stop working at that moment.
Arthur just grunts again and, finding no other food sources within sight, begins to scope the three of them in a way that makes Ariadne’s blood chill. She assesses the room and potential egress routes, just like the guys taught her. She may be the smallest, easiest prey, but the others have far more meat on their bones. And she can be fast when motivated.
Just as she’s positioning herself to best use Yusuf as a decoy, the warehouse door bangs open.
“I’m here! I have it!” Eames rushes in, two large paper sacks brandished high.
Cobb sags in open relief. “Oh, thank god. Come on, then, hurry.”
Eames fumbles, trying to open one bag without dropping the other.
He needn’t bother. Nostrils flaring with deep, huffing sniffs, Arthur crowds into Eames’s personal space, grumbling low and incoherently. Eames freezes, cheeks flushing a sudden and vivid shade of red. It’s probably best that he’s apparently incapable of sudden movements because Arthur snatches one bag straight from his hands. Eames yelps and clenches his fingers around an obvious papercut, but he doesn’t fight or argue.
Prize in hand, Arthur drops down onto the end of one of the lawn chairs with his knees splayed carelessly wide and ferrets into the bag, not paying the rest of them the slightest bit of attention. He takes out a massive, foil-wrapped burrito—last week Ariadne had introduced the crew to Luther’s, the only decent Mexican restaurant on this side of the Seine—and barely pauses long enough to uncover the thing before he’s diving face-first into beans, rice, grilled chicken, and spicy cheese sauce.
It’s… it’s a lot.
Diced onions are flying everywhere. There’s cilantro in Arthur’s hair. But by all appearances, the normally fastidious man couldn’t give a fuck as he practically unhinges his jaw to take massive bites that should be humanly impossible.
The shuffle of soft footsteps captures Ariadne’s attention, making her realize how silent they all had fallen while standing around, watching Arthur devour his burrito. She looks over to find Saito coming into the warehouse far more sedately than Eames’s explosive entrance.
He observes the spectacle in the room with a concerned little frown.
“I have napkins here,” he says, lifting another paper bag in his hand. “But perhaps a bib would be… neater.”
Cobb shakes his head fatalistically. “We tried that once. But to get one around his neck, you would have to get too close to his teeth. It isn’t safe.”
“You exaggerate.”
“Had to give Nash stitches. He and Arthur butted heads ever since.”
Arthur gnaws at a corner of the burrito like it’s the juicy hindleg torn from a fresh kill. Off to the side, Eames makes a peculiar whining noise.
“Alright there, mate?” Yusuf doesn’t bother masking the amusement in his voice. Not that it matters. Eames only seems to have a handful of functioning braincells at the moment, and each of them are fixed on the snarling mess of a man ignoring them in favor of lapping refried beans off his chin.
“This is terrible,” Yusuf says, “but strangely impressive, also. I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.”
Cobb sighs in despair. “This is nothing. It’s about ten times worse with sushi.”
Saito gasps in horror.
“Philistines, all of you.” Eames tsks, having recovered from his stupor, and retrieves a tiny plastic cup of sour cream from his remaining bag. “No understanding of beauty in its most primal forms.”
“I’ll give you the primal part,” Yusuf hedges, “but you’re mad if you’re saying there’s anything beautiful about that.”
That being Arthur taking another monstrous bite out of his burrito, which releases a dribble of sauce onto his wrist. It drips down his forearm, oozing towards the cuffed sleeve of his eight-hundred dollar shirt, before Arthur catches the spill with his tongue. He licks the saucy trail all the way back up to the inside of his wrist before wrapping his mouth around the side of the burrito and sucking, loud and obscene.
Eames collapses to the floor, knees folding right out from under him as a broken whimper fills the room alongside the wet sounds of Arthur’s mouth.
Casualty number two.
“This just got embarrassing,” Ariadne murmurs to Saito.
“And yet,” he drawls back, “you continue to watch.”
She feels heat creep over her cheeks as she nods the point to him.
Yusuf scoffs, averting his eyes from the twitchy little back-and-forth shifting of Eames’s ass on the concrete floor. “Well, I find this appalling,” he claims, even as his gaze darts back down a few times.
Cobb shakes his head again. “Just make sure you stay out of reach. And remember, Arthur has crazy fast reflexes. Keep a safe distance.”
“Uh, what about him, then?” Ariadne gestures towards Eames, who has managed get to his knees and is shuffling toward the feeding beast, his little cup of sour cream held aloft like a sacrificial lamb.
Shrugging, Cobb turns away. “He’ll be fine,” he says, heavily implying that the rest of them wouldn’t be. “Call me when everyone’s ready to get back to work. I’m going to find a pizza.”
He’s gone quicker than she can blink, the warehouse door closing behind him with a thud of finality.
Casualty number three.
Ariadne swings her attention back to the main show, loathe to miss anything now that she’s fallen this far down the hole.
Eames has come within that perilous arm's-reach radius. Arthur watches him with a dark stare over the top of his burrito. He looks from Eames to the sour cream offering. Back to Eames. He doesn’t move at all save for the continuous roll of his jaw as he chews.
Ariadne can’t see Eames’s face from where she stands, but she can see the glint of sweat on the back of his neck and the rigid, too-controlled way he holds himself steady. His tension fills the room, washing over them. She can feel it in her own shoulders, the backs of her legs. The pressure in her lungs.
Maybe she should leave.
Still chewing, Arthur holds his burrito out the barest inch. That’s all the invitation Eames needs, apparently. He scrambles to pop the lid off the cup and shakes out a sparse little dollop of sour cream onto the remains of the burrito. He curses and scoops the rest out with a trembling finger.
“There. That’s all—”
Just as Cobb had warned, Arthur is fast. He snakes out with his non-burrito-holding hand, grabbing Eames by the wrist and pulling that cream-covered finger into his mouth.
Eames gives a full-body shudder.
Saito squeaks.
Yusuf spins on his heel and scurries away. A few seconds later, the door to the lone bathroom bangs shut.
Casualty number four.
Arthur slurps off of Eames’s finger and takes another bite of the burrito. Sour cream smears all over his lips, on his jaw. Eames inches closer, and it doesn’t take a brilliant mind to figure out where this is going to end.
Ariadne reaches over and slips the takeout bag from Saito’s limp hand. “So. There’s more in here for us, right?”
Saito shakes himself to attention, blinking away from the scene unfolding in the middle of the room. “Ah—” He clears his throat. “Tacos.”
She can’t help it. She laughs. One of those gross, embarrassing laughs that starts behind her nose and finishes with her braying into her hastily-raised palm.
“Why is that funny?”
She just shakes her head helplessly. “I’ll tell you later. Maybe.” A reedy moan breaks out from the direction of the lawn chairs, and she hastily pushes Saito towards the exit. “But we should probably go eat somewhere else.”