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He's turning into Cobb. It's not a good thing. It's not acquiring the boundless creativity and subtlety of construction that the man strives for in dreams and extraction. It's not the ability to love something and fight for it so fully that onlookers can only wonder how he hasn't collapsed. No. It's none of that.

It's the shades in his mind and the doubting, darting glances that he's barely controlling. It's the questions, the roll of the loaded die and the increasing worry when it lands again, and again, on the same number. It's the assurance that he's part of reality now, even though this hotel can't be. The hotel is too strange and circuitous and maybe there are no closed loops or tricks of vision, but Arthur can't believe this is real. Real life doesn't just allow for the opening of the door to lead to an entirely new world.

Every single part of it is becoming a puzzle that he is increasingly more desperate to solve.

Soon. Too soon, Arthur thinks. Soon he's going to exactly like Cobb, sitting at the coffee table of a hotel room, watching his totem fall with a loaded pistol in hand. His totem will call the shot.

Today, Arthur hasn't gone that far, not yet thank God. He's gotten as far as a bar with a gold-brown glass of bourbon warming his insides and making all of this seem at least a tiny bit more possible.

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"You're looking at that glass like you're thinking you'll find answers in it," Nick said as he settled beside him.

"Doesn't everyone, from time to time?" Arthur asks.

"A lot of people," Nick nodded. "As far as I know, all anyone's ever found in there are more problems and I'm speaking as a guy who grew up surrounded by bars and barflys. So what's got you searching for tea leaves in your scotch?"

"Speaking from experience then." Arthur swirls the glass in his hand, admiring the way that it all catches the light.

"I'm still trying to decide my reality."

Nick's eyebrow raised. "And you have that kind of ability?"

Arthur shakes his head, slightly wistful. "If I did, I wouldn't be trying to find it at the bottom of this bourbon."

"Then what are you trying to decide about it?" Nick asked, brows knitting together.

If he's awake, then maybe he'll find answers. If he's dreaming, then none of their conversation will really matter.

"If I'm dreaming."

That had Nick's mouth opening but he closed it again a second later. "That adds a degree of difficulty. Because if I say I'm real and not something you're dreaming, it doesn't mean much of anything, does it?"

"It does, in a way." But not enough to affirm his reality.

"So there's that. I'd offer to hit you," he continued with a smirk, "see if the pain was enough that it'd wake you if you were sleeping? But something tells me that's not such a good idea."

Not the least of which being that his demon would enjoy it too much.

"The body remembers pain," Arthur explains. "It's not enough to wake you up."

"Then I could always look into your mind and check," Nick said with a shrug. "But you'd have to lose the brick wall you have around it first."

Arthur smiles at the offer, wondering how much browsing Nick feels he would need, but shakes his head. "That would only fracture it more."

"Then I'm fresh out of ideas," Nick sighed, shrugging. "All I can tell you is that I don't usually turn up in people's dreams. I'm more of a nightmare-type."

Another smile, this time as Arthur ponders where he might qualify on such a spectrum. He generally prefers to think of himself as an unseen quality in dreamsharing.

"I don't show up. I arrive and leave with careful planning."

"Wait. You can go into dreams?"

He looked at Arthur again, sharpening all of his senses without touching his mind. He was human, as human as his mother had been. Unless...well, the gods were fucked up and got bored easily.

"Are you Oneiroi?"

Arthur frowns now, shaking his head at the word. He knows it's Greek and relates to dreams, but any more than that and he can't say. Nick treats it as something unusual and powerful.

"I don't think so."

"You'd know if you were since they're gods," Nick said, still trying to make sense of what he was hearing. "They're just the only beings I know capable of entering others dreams. Can you shape them, or just observe?"

"There are many things that can be done via dreamsharing," Arthur says. His mind begins to tick over what he's willing to admit. "It started as military technology. A therapeutic technique."

"Score another one for good intentions," Nick smirked. "I'm guessing it took another form once those truly exceptional at wielding this therapeutic tool were found?"

While his voice was even, the demon within him was perking right the hell up in sudden interest.

Arthur nods, keeping his expression purely academic. "They're called extractors. They can go in and steal information from the mind. It's a high-paying form of corporate espionage."

"And this skill. You have it? Can you teach it to others?"

It took everything Nick had to not clap a hand over his mouth because that hadn't been what he'd intended to say. His demon side had pushed itself forward enough to speak, entirely too interested.

"It's something that can be learned." It's a careful, measured response. One that clings to plausible deniability.

"And I don't have the equipment here."

Nick could see the red haze fall over his vision and knew he was losing a battle with his demon side and rapidly. The demon was too interested in the feast he could make for himself if he was able to dance through dreams and instill even more of the dark emotions that fed him.

He knew his eyes were changing, the red haze told him that clear enough. He just wasn't sure if they'd gone flat black or yellow. Either was bad news.

"But such things can be recreated? Or doors can be opened to lead to places where the machinery is available?"

There's an edge to Nick's question that makes Arthur cautious. It's the same edge that he's seen in Cobb, right before Mal shows up to shoot him in the patella. It's not something he trusts.

It's a relief to say, with full honesty, "I don't know right now. I'm not a chemist."

Edited 2013-09-25 16:56 (UTC)

The glass in his hand suddenly shattered and shards of it dug into his palm. The shattering had been from the demon's frustration, but Nick used the pain to give him an almighty shove back into the recesses of his mind.

Idly, he started to pick the pieces out of his hand. "Sorry about that."

Arthur doesn't acknowledge the flinch that jerks his spine, acting as if it's nothing more than cool air.

"I didn't know it would prompt the reaction."

"It's not your fault. I'm out of practice with my control over him and what you can apparently do had him all but frothing at the mouth in glee. The more opportunity to torture people, the happier he is."

Nick wrapped the broken glass in a napkin and tossed it into the trash can behind the bar, his hand free of any sign that it had been playing pin cushion to glass tumbler not three minutes ago.

"Him?" Arthur repeats. He wears a face of bland confusion but inside his mind ticks, searches for a place to file away that information. He's not sure he likes whatever this implies, given what he's just witnessed.

"Yeah," Nick confirmed with a simple nod. "I'm not entirely human. And the part of me that isn't human wants control of the rest. Birth defect," he said with a snort. "Only happens when your mother is human and your sperm donor is the last of an ancient demon race."

"I can't say I know the dilemma." Arthur still plays it cool and unsurprised, if only because showing panic gives leverage to a potential threat.

"As far as I know, both my parents are reform Jewish. Non-practicing."

"I was born and raised Catholic," Nick snorted. "Talk about a dilemma. Usually I've got better control over the impulses and keep him pretty well locked down, but I'm out of practice. Just...probably a good idea to find somewhere else to be if my eyes ever go black, or yellow."

He'd mention the skin changes, the wings, and the horns, but if Arthur ever saw him like that it would most likely be too late.

"From what I understand, both types of parents are cornering the market on guilt," Arthur offers, by way of humor.

He looks Nick in the eyes, then down to the tattoo, and then glances back into his eyes. "I'll remember that."

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