Chapter Text
“I think this challenge is utterly pointless,” says Alec, as they’re waiting for Mal to herd them to the first contestant’s room.
Arthur had been making sure his tie is straight, but he glances over to Alec at that.
Alec is, of course, looking innocent, as if he is honestly going to pretend that he doesn’t know the challenge was put in the show for Arthur’s sake.
Arthur’s gaze shifts toward Eames, who’s leaning up against the wall and biting at a cuticle to hide the smirk he’s wearing. It doesn’t hide it very well.
Arthur doesn’t rise to the bait, because Arthur is not rising to the bait these days. He is a new man, a reformed man, a man who is Nice to Alec. Because he knows it drives Alec fucking insane.
Yusuf swings the camera toward Arthur and says, “What do you think about the challenge?”
Arthur says mildly, “Well, open houses are an enormous part of the work to which I have devoted my life, my energy, my soul, and my heart. But it is, of course, Alec’s prerogative to find them pointless. Much as it is my prerogative to find fedoras pointless.” He says it and then immediately wants to say, Oh, fuck, erase that, start over, I’m supposed to be being nice. He is really fucking terrible at being nice.
Eames tries to stifle a giggle by practically shoving a finger into his mouth. It shouldn’t be attractive.
Yusuf swings the camera to Eames. “What do you think of the challenge?”
“I think all challenges are good, Yusuf,” says Eames magnanimously. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that.”
Arthur, satisfied with his tie, lets himself look at Alec, who looks displeased. And Arthur would feel bad except that Alec is a prick who refuses to meet Arthur halfway on being, you know, a decent human being.
Arthur says, “How are you today, Alec? Did you enjoy the last couple of days off? Are you working on any design projects currently?” Perfect, Arthur thinks. That is definitely nice.
Alec snaps at him, “Go to hell.”
“Okay,” says Arthur sunnily, which he can see annoys Alec even more. And he really, really should feel bad about that. Except that he doesn’t.
Mal arrives and says, “Let’s get this show on the road or some idiom like that,” and throws open the door leading to the first contestant’s living room.
Arthur snags Eames’s hand before they walk through and tugs him closer so he can breathe into his ear, “Am I a terrible person?”
Eames breathes back, “When we get home I am going to fuck you until you scream.”
“Okay,” says Arthur. “I feel less terrible now.”
Eames winks at him and then they head into the first contestant’s space.
Arthur gave an interview, before the judging started, where he stated that this might be the most difficult of the challenges the designers have faced so far. The right blend of personality and blankness to equal a welcoming open house is extremely elusive. Arthur isn’t even sure Eames could do it. Eames is a fabulous designer but he’s a people person; he designs with the subject in mind. Designing in the abstract for everyone is, Arthur thinks, utilizing a different sort of talent altogether.
Mal starts them off with a bang because the first room is Misty Rainbow’s and it’s mirrored. Every square inch of it is mirrored. The floor is mirrored and the ceiling is mirrored and the walls are mirrored and the coffee table is mirrored and the fireplace is mirrored—even the inside of the fireplace is mirrored—and there are cushions on the mirrored frames of the couch and the chairs but even they are in a metallic fabric that strikes Arthur as being mirrored.
Arthur stands in the room and looks at the dizzying number of reflections and re-reflections of him and Eames and Alec.
And Misty Rainbow, who says, “Welcome.”
“Hi,” says Eames pleasantly, as if it is not totally creepily disconcerting to be standing in a room so mirrored that you realize you can see the back of your own head.
“This room,” says Alec. “I understand.”
Misty Rainbow blinks at him. “You do?”
“Yes,” says Alec without hesitation. “This room is about holding a mirror up to your very soul.”
“Yes,” says Misty Rainbow rapturously.
Arthur kind of thinks this room is a little too spot-on. Like, he likes his mirrors to be a little more metaphorical. “How would you ever keep it clean between showings?” Arthur asks practically.
“Exactly,” Misty Rainbow says to him. “Exactly.”
Arthur looks at her blankly. “Exactly…what?”
“It is the challenge that we all must confront: how do we keep ourselves clean. How indeed, Arthur? How indeed, Arthur?”
“Okay,” says Arthur, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“What if the people who buy this house don’t want to be holding a mirror up to their souls all the time?” asks Eames.
“Then they are misguided and their souls need help,” says Misty Rainbow solemnly.
“Eames has a point, though,” Arthur says.
Alec mumbles something that sounds like, “Of course you would think that.”
Arthur ignores him. “It seems like it would be a lot of money to redo this entire room.”
“And you’d have to break a lot of mirrors,” adds Eames. “That’s a hell of a lot of bad luck.”
“A good open house staging wouldn’t be so customized that it makes a buyer feel excluded from the home’s vision,” says Arthur.
“You are missing the point of the room,” Alec tells him hotly.
“No, I got the point,” says Arthur flatly. “It’s a mirror. You can’t miss that, Alec. The whole thing is literally one gigantic mirror. I’m worrying about what the mirror’s effect will be on the room as an open house, which was the point of the challenge.”
Alec gives him a look that’s almost sad. “And that is why you’ll always be a real estate agent and never a designer. You’re too grounded in practicalities. You don’t ever let yourself take flight. Real estate agents are suck sticks in the mud,” Alec confides to Misty Rainbow.
Eames starts to say something but Arthur cuts him off swiftly by saying to Alec, “I convince people to walk into a room like this and see themselves in it. And not literally, because that wouldn’t take ay effort at all, obviously. I convince them to look at a room designed for a totally different set of personalities and see it as their own. If pulling that off isn’t taking flight, I don’t know what is. Next room,” Arthur announces, determined to get the last word, and marches out of the mirrored room. His innumerable reflections follow him.