"That price on my head, was it dead or alive?"
"Don't remember. See if he starts shooting."
Cobb and Eames, Inception.

Eames is one of those men who's so perfectly suited to his job that he defines his work in the exact same way it defines him -- and Eames, by profession, is a liar.

A very talented liar, at that, and in every possible way, from lying to running cons to forgery and his personal specialty of impersonation and identity theft. He doesn't think of himself as amoral or unethical, so much as someone who just happens to have talents that apply to industries that others might find distasteful, and who's to blame him, really, to using them to his advantage? He's not a bad person, but he's far from the hero of the story, either, and he's perfectly fucking okay with that. He'll be exactly whoever he needs to be at any particular moment, nothing more and nothing less, and he'd become anyone you need him to be, too -- for the right price, of course.

He's by nature manipulative, constantly on the lookout for anything he can exploit and filing it all away for future reference. By trade, he's essentially a thief, and the kind who'd shake your hand with a smile and be your best friend, if that's what it took, until one day you woke up with all your valuables gone without a single lead to follow and the creeping realization that the man already fencing off all your things probably never even told you his real name. He'd do it all without a second thought, either, because this is business, and there's no room for sentiment when it comes to business. No matter how much of a charmer he might be, the pleasant conversationalist with a sharp tongue and a curiosity to match, he's capable of being absolutely ruthless. There's nothing personal about it -- you just have to be, when it comes to this kind of shit. It's not so much that he doesn't care about people, not at all that he can't -- he can, and he does. It's just that he'd barely even hesitate to drop all of it, if he had to.

Eames is fiercely independent, yet not adverse to working in a team -- his work is impossible to do alone, really, and Eames is nothing if not professional, as capable of a follower as he is a leader. He's not about to pretend that the team is anything but a task force put together to get a specific job done, though, there's no bonding, no friendship, just a group of business partners. He thrives with that sort of unspoken agreement, that they're all in this together for now, sure, and they'll look out for each other as long as work requires it, but in the end it's every fucking man for himself, and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably going to end up dead, sooner or later. It's important to realize that there's a difference between being unafraid to leave people in the dirt behind him and actually doing it -- when he enters a contract, when he joins a team on a job, his focus is on getting the fucking job done, not on selling out everyone around him. It's also important to realize that doesn't mean he's trustworthy, because while taking a bribe to fuck over his team may not be his focus, but it's always, always an option.

Still, he's warm and personable, even if it might just be because he's a cunning little bitch who likes digging his fingers into other people's business and it's much easier to pull that off when you're sociable. He does actually like people and is genuinely curious about them, and when it comes to his co-workers, especially, when he has no need to pretend to be anyone but his own cheerfully manipulative self, and he probably spends a little too much time teasing them and pushing at their buttons just to see how they react to them, and because he can. Mostly because it's funny, though.

For all his playfulness and cheek, Eames is sharp, intelligent, and surprisingly focused when it comes to his work -- and very, very resourceful. He genuinely loves what he does, and he'll spend weeks and months getting to know every last detail about his mark. It's an art, and Eames knows it well enough that he doesn't just read people like open books; he reads them like open books, then reads between the lines, rips out all the subtext and hidden little secrets they weren't even sure of themselves and then pockets all the information for later. Everything gives something away, from the way they talk to the way they move and the way they react to everything around them, and Eames has trained himself to see and interpret every little detail. He's not a miracle worker and it still takes weeks, probably months of careful observation before he can really be sure of everything in a target's mind, but he's still able to make quick, spot-on analyses far more accurate than the ordinary person's first impression would be. While he prefers to stick to his specialties when it comes to a job, he's resourceful, creative, and capable of coming up with the kind of solutions to problems that people have difficulty deciding whether or not to label "brilliant" or "completely fucking ridiculous". It's usually some measure of both.

Eames' main weakness is probably, well, his pride. And it's not that he's too egotistical to ever consider that he might not ever be anything but the best at his job or something, but it's more that he just doesn't like being bested. Being lied to, manipulated, and otherwise stabbed in the back is something of an everyday reality in his work, something that you can take for granted, but as someone who very rightly considers himself an expert in reading people and their intentions, Eames is usually pretty damn good at telling when he's being played. No matter how good he is, no one is perfect, sometimes something slips up -- Cobb and his little three-layers-deep gamble, for example. Cobb and Arthur are other extractors who are the best in their respective fields, and Eames has works with them many times, developed a rapport with them and a certain amount of trust, enough that Eames was completely blindsided by Cobb's betrayal. His trust in Arthur remains, since it was extremely apparent that Cobb had lied to him as well, but he's unlikely to get over that grudge against Cobb any time soon, and the sting to his pride from being successfully tricked into the whole thing is probably going to stay for a while, too.

He's also one of those guys who relies on talent and instinct, and tends to skip over the technical details in the process. He has more than enough talent that this is never really much of a problem, but it's still a failing, of his -- he probably couldn't tell you much about the technicalities of dream-sharing, not because he's too dumb to understand it or something, but simply because he never found the need to. He's very aware of his shortcomings, at least -- it's one of the reasons why he works on a team, where specialists are specialists and left to focus on their specific task, and he has boring nerds like Arthur around to pick up his slack in details and specifics.

As frighteningly capable as all these people are, in dreams, their wealth of time and experience in the dream world leaves them at least a little doubtful as to where to draw the line of reality, and at worst, completely incapable of telling dreams from the real world. That's why they have to rely on little tokens, on totems, and Eames, with his poker chip, isn't an exception. He's pretty grounded when it comes to the whole reality thing, and definitely doesn't spend too much time agonizing about whether or not he needs to wake up and be somewhere else, but it's impossible to get rid of the nagging little doubt at the back of his mind. He trusts himself and his totem to be right, because he has to, because he knows that if he starts doubting that, everything falls apart -- but in a situation where his judgment and his totem are compromised, he's going to be left kind of stranded.

All in all, as long as you don't get in his way or happen to have a very nice pricetag on some valuable information in your head, Eames is a pretty nice guy. He'll have coffee with you and even do you a favor, if he likes you enough -- but don't ever fool yourself into thinking that he won't ever put a bullet through your skull if he had to, because he would. And he wouldn't regret it in the slightest, because business is business, and honestly?

You should never have trusted him, anyway.