you know the first rule of combat?

Whatever approximation of flirting may or may not have been going on, the question comes as a surprise, and Eames smiles both for that fact alone and for what she's asking. It takes a lot to catch him off guard, with as good as he's become at reading people, and this isn't that, but it reads as something of a challenge, and a comfortable one at that. She's not quite predictable, and he likes that, craves some sort of change of pace when it's so often so dull around here. He'd walked over for finding her attractive — and, well, for the cards — but he's sticking around now for an entirely different reason.

"Dinner sometime it is," he says, genuinely pleased. "If that's the price of losing, I can't say I mind it much at all."