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Eames had been at the mansion long enough to have made friends. At least, in theory. The reality was that he wasn't really a social creature, he liked people well enough, but most other mutants had a problem with him. Namely: if they were within arm's reach of him, he shut down their powers, that was his own inherent power, he could nullify anyone within a certain radius.

Most of the other so-called 'students' steered clear of him for just that reason, though there were a few who didn't mind it enough to actively avoid him, of course, they also knew better than to actually touch him, at least not for long, he usually warned them away from that. He'd left more than one person a vegetable before he'd found Xavier's, and while he still couldn't touch people for long, he was at least learning to reposition the dead zone around himself.

Right at that particular moment he was perched on the back steps, leaning against the railing and enjoying a cigarette and a quiet moment, squinting out at the expanse of snow blanketing the back acreage, knowing that it would be torn up and muddied and stomped to slush before midafternoon.

True to her word, Ariadne had called as soon as she’d touched down, or close enough, she’d called from the cab on the way to the hotel where the conference was being held, she said she’d try and give them another call later, but not to count on it, since she knew it was going to be busy and she was going to be tired, but that she’d definitely call them when she was headed to the airport again, and even if she didn’t, they had her flight information and knew when to come get her.

Eames had all of this information, but even still he felt a little uneasy when there was no call again after that first one, none during the conference and none the day they were supposed to pick her up at the airport. Of course, they went anyway, waiting as close to her arrival gate as they could. He shifted his weight slightly as the passengers from her plane moved past them to the baggage claim and beyond, dispersing through the crowd already there, that slight unease just growing deeper as there was no sign of her even as the flight crew went past, “Arthur wait here in case she comes by.” Was all he said, making his way to the airline’s check-in counter, knowing that they could pull up the passenger records, it took a little pleading and a lot more truth than he usually gave people, but he got the information he needed, returning to Arthur’s side, looking grim and just a little stricken, “She never got on the plane.”

It had been a few weeks, and Arthur was definitely on the mend, stitches out, slowly but surely gaining back the weight he'd lost thanks to getting mostly-solid food again, even though the cocktail of pain medication they had him on made him sick most mornings.

Ariadne was sure that most of the hospital staff had it in for them, somehow, but she also wasn't going to let it bother her, ever the optimist, because they had Mary and they also had Doug who hadn't been there the day of the incident and hadn't believed a word of it when he'd been told. Two allies who weren't on Kurt's payroll were a boon as far as she was concerned.

That afternoon they were discussing just where it was they were going to go home too once Arthur was released. Eames shrugged, sitting back in his chair, "I still say Versailles is probably the best option just because it's the shortest trip."

Eames still wasn't entirely sure how he'd managed to convince Arthur that an apartment in Vienna was better for them than another hotel, but he had. He suspected it was mostly because they were planning on staying through the new year and that was still a few weeks off, and he suspected it was due in part to how he'd presented it, just an idle: "I've been thinking..." While they were on the train, giving Arthur a chance to veto the idea if he wanted.

Even still they'd been in a hotel for the first few days while they found a place. The listing had said 'fully furnished', and it was furnished, though a little spartan. At least it had working appliances, and a bed, and that was really all that mattered to Eames, the couch and chair and kitchen table were all just a plus to that.

At that particular moment, Eames was sitting at the small kitchen table, making a grocery list for the week, really quite pleased that this hadn't blown up in their faces yet, and hoping that it wasn't just a matter of time before it did.

They had lazed about for most of the day, mostly just because they could, and even when one or the other of them got up to use the bathroom or retrieve a book, they always came right back, as if somehow that bed held all the secrets of the universe. Come afternoon, Eames went to get his laptop, doing some research to find a restaurant for dinner, coming up with a few nearby and just deciding by what was closest, since he figured the walk would do them both good.
He even made a reservation, just to make sure they'd have a seat, even though as far as he could tell they were wide open as far as space.

"Are you ready, Arthur?" He called back towards the bedroom from where he was perched on the couch, having settled there after he'd gotten dressed, waiting for the other man to finish his shower, though the water had been off for a while.

It had been nearly a week in Germany and the weather hadn't ever let up. Sometimes there was less rain, but it didn't ever stop completely. It was fine with Eames, once he'd located everything they might need in close proximity to the hotel, and he'd thought once or twice that when they got tired of Germany and went to Verona instead, they should probably find an apartment somewhere instead of another hotel, but generally that thought trailed away again before he could actually think on it too hard.

He should have known, really, that there would be consequences for not sleeping regular hours for the past month or so, along with the traveling, and the current weather. But he didn't get sick, and so he was doing his best to ignore the first signs, just blaming it on inclement weather and fatigue, even though he wasn't really tired and he didn't spend more time in the rain than strictly necessary.

At that particular moment he was perched on one end of the couch, reading quietly and listening to the arrhythmic staccato of the rain outside, what he hadn't realized was that over the course of the last three chapters, he'd gone from sitting like a normal person, to being half curled up under the bedspread that inevitably followed him from bed to couch whenever he moved.

It had been almost three weeks since Eames had shown up on his mother's doorstep with an armful of Point man that needed to be patched back together, and he'd been healing well enough, if not fast enough for anyone involved.
Aside from Victoria, who knew almost down to the second how long these sorts of things took to heal.

The three of them had taken to playing board games after dinner, and sometimes beforehand, if they knew it was going to be a long game. Arthur never failed to trounce everyone at Monopoly, Victoria generally won at Risk, and Eames, to no one's surprise, invariably won at Scrabble.

But Arthur was up and about mostly under his own power at that point, and that was a huge step as far as Eames was concerned. He leaned around the door to Arthur's room, "I'm off to the grocery." He said, "Mum's got other projects to work on and I volunteered, is there anything you need?"

Eames finally blinked blearily awake when the sunlight got that far across the bed. It took him only a moment to sort out why he wasn't in his own bed, and mostly he sorted that out due to the fact that Arthur was still curled up against his side like some kind of lemur. Just another thing to add to the list of things he'd missed and hadn't realized how badly he'd missed them until he got them back.

He was realizing that he was somewhat relieved now that he wasn't the only one who knew why he'd gone AWOL, he hadn't thought it would be, and it was nice to know that while Arthur thought he was an idiot for it (which was a perfectly logical thing to think) he didn't hate him for it.

He shifted over, just slightly, doing his best not to disturb the other man, since he knew Arthur was liable to be hungover, and he was generally unpleasant at least until the headache eased. He pressed a gentle kiss to Arthur's temple, working on extracting his arm from underneath the other man, still trying not to wake him.

They were already growing in infamy as the Bonnie and Clyde of mindcrime, even though he was nearly ten years her senior and she hadn't even finished getting her degree in actual architecture, but they hardly minded, in fact, they quite liked the notoriety.

It was the successful inception of Robert Fischer a year and a half previously that started it, after that Eames had decided that he quite liked the finer things in life, thank you very much, and Ariadne had decided that she quite liked somewhat older and potentially dangerous men, and so they'd decided to make a go of it. Granted, this decision had come after a night of celebrating and probably more drinking than either of them had done in some time, but they made it work.

Occasionally pictures showed up of one or both the pair of them with their ill-gotten spoils, but by the time anyone could actually identify the location, they were long gone. Of course, they made themselves easy to contact, they were (they discovered) an incredible team, but they never made themselves easy to find, since that would run counter to their whole philosophy. Their services never came cheaply, or without risk, but that was the way it worked, and they liked it that way.

It was late one evening and they were between jobs, Eames was double-checking their current finances and moving funds around, while Ariadne was entertaining herself with a heist movie on late night cable, "We could do this, you know?" She finally commented idly, adding, "Not Vegas, at least, not to start. Start with some riverboat casino down in New Orleans, work our way up to Monte Carlo and then to Vegas."
Eames arched a brow over at her, "That's Hollywood, pet, it would never work." Though there was amusement in his tone. Ariadne laughed, tossing a pillow at him, "We could make it work though is what I'm saying. Of course, we'd need someone who's good with information. The best, even."

Eames knew exactly who she was talking about and he shook his head, closing the laptop he'd been working with, "He's a stick." Ariadne didn't let him finish before she cut him off with: "Yes, but he's our stick in the mud, and if we're going to pull this off, face it, we need him."
Eames shook his head again, "And who says we're even going to try pulling it off, dove?"
Ariadne turned Bambi eyes on him, chin resting on her stacked fists, stretched out on her stomach on the bed, "I do." Her smile went crooked then, "C'mon, you know it'll be fun." She already knew she'd won, and Eames sighed a moment later, shaking his head, but he was smiling all the same, "Fine, but you're calling him, he might actually talk to you."

Eames could have gone back to Mombasa, he knew he could have, and he could have gone right back to what he'd been doing when Cobb came to find him. But he'd decided not to, after all, it had been a while since he'd been stateside, and he didn't have anyone breathing down his neck (yet) and it had also been a while since he'd gone to visit his mum, so he figured he'd stick around for a while, do some sightseeing.

The first thing to do, after debarking, and being careful not to pay attention to any of his compatriots, at least not actively, and never with more than the faint, gentle recognition of people who'd just spent more time in a plane together than most people spent together at work in a day. He paged through his phone, checking his funds, not at all surprised to find that Saito was a man of his word, and they'd already been paid.

The next thing he did, while waiting for his checked baggage to come around on the carousel, was to check mid-range hotels in the area, looking for one that had a week's vacancy at such short notice, since that was the minimum he was going to need to wait for the world to settle again and start looking for another job. Booking didn't take long either, which he was pleasantly surprised by.

That evening he found himself in the restaurant down the block from the hotel, enjoying a celebratory steak dinner, and collecting details. The way that woman folded her hands, the way that man held his knife and fork, the way the bartender smiled at one of the waitresses. Each of these, and others, were stored away for later perusal, practice, and eventual use. He didn't always have to forge someone in particular, sometimes he just had to be a person other than who he was, background, security and observation and those little details could make or break a character.