Fic: We Used to Wait [3/3]
2015-03-06
MEMO: Gargoyle Project
A few months into this study, we regret to report a new emergence of an old problem. The memory loss has been prominent in Subject 0012, but exhibited among all of the subjects to some degree.
Subject 0012 has been experiencing sudden and serious memory issues, mostly with long term emotional memories. Not enough tests have been run to determine how much damage there has been to basic procedural and muscle memories.
This was also noted in Subject 003 before she became stuck in a memory loop, requiring manual restart. Subject 003 now has no outside memory to lose, but I am concerned that even the memories she has made inside this project will disappear if she is kept plugged in for too long. It is to be noted that her device is one of the earlier models, but the incredible rise and drop in dopamine production caused by extended time utilizing the device is similar among all subjects. More monitoring will occur to determine if this is a complete dump of the so-called “feel good” brain chemicals upon each use or if it something that can be dealt with more easily.
-
Cobb stops by next, and Eames is sitting up in bed, reading. Arthur’s head is nestled in the curve of his abdomen, arm slung over Eames’ chest. Arthur’s body twitches, jerking occasionally, but Eames doesn’t seem very worried.
“What are you doing here, Eames?” Cobb asks from the doorway, posture stiff.
Eames doesn’t look up, and turns a page. “I think the real question here is, why weren’t you there?”
Cobb blinks. “Arthur’s a grown man. He doesn’t need my protection anymore, obviously.”
“They asked about you, you know,” Eames continues.
“I’m not in the mood for lectures.”
“Well I think it’s time you got one anyway,” Eames says, the lightness dropping out of his voice completely as he puts the book down. “What do you think you’re playing at here?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I think you sold him out. Him or you, if it comes down to it, you always pick you. And he’ll always pick you.”
“That’s why he’s the pointman.”
“He’s not a dog, Cobb, you can’t simply send him away when you think he’s done being useful.”
“I never, Eames. He left.”
Eames picks his book back up.
-
Arthur eats like he’s never seen food before, the sounds of him slurping soup making Phillipa giggle and clap her baby hands together. Eames isn’t much better, though he can keep down toast. 72 hours have passed since their arrival at the Cobb house.
Arthur’s hands shake so much that he drops his spoon four different times.
“Are you alright?” Dom asks, feeding Phillipa.
Arthur smiles tightly. “Was never gonna be a surgeon, Cobb.”
“It’s a shame about your violin career, though,” says Eames, who sounds less haggard and more like the man Cobb remembers.
Mal glides into the dining room to refill their bowls. She looks down at the men seated and sighs. “We’re going to have to take you under soon, mon petit Arthur,” she says, sounding sad.
Arthur blinks. “I figured. They’re using your number six, by the way.”
Cobb is mostly struck by how casual the admission is, after a visit shrouded in secrecy.
“For training? That sedative is far too powerful.” Mal’s frowning, worry wrinkling her forehead.
Arthur shakes his head and swallows more broth. “No, they’re only using three for that. Six they used for me.”
“What did they extract?” Cobb says, because he doesn’t want to speak in riddles anymore.
Arthur’s teeth become visible as his lip curls in disgust. “Nothing, Dom. They got nothing.”
Dom pretends not to notice how Eames’ hand squeezes Arthur’s thigh under the table in solidarity, looking instead at his wife’s trouble eyes.
-
Mal takes him under. It feel eerily familiar, the four of them in Cobb’s upstairs living room, the curtains drawn. Eames insists on going and gets in Cobb’s face about it until Mal agrees. The Cobbs are to watch from above.
She takes them down for five minutes in real time, and when they wake up Arthur just sort of yanks the wire out of his arms, letting blood well up, and staggers from the chair to the bathroom.
Cobb can hear retching and watches Eames follow him.
“I wonder what they left behind in him,” he murmurs to Mal. Her mouth is a thin line of concern.
-
[Withdrawal is going to be a bitch.
If you have this book in your hands though, it means I trust you enough to see me this low. I think the instructions here should be sufficient to keep me from dying, so if you’re at all invested in that, please take care to follow them exactly.]
-
Mal’s first trip down with Arthur is devoid of expectations on either side.
“We had a lovely time,” she tells Dom over coffee. “He showed me how to make fish in a pond.” Her eyes are shining and Dom suddenly feels very far away, farther away from her than he’s felt in a long time. Arthur is familiar but is making everything feel possible again. He’d stopped thinking that, when Phillipa came.
“I want to try your new sedative,” is what he says back, abrupt.
She smiles broadly. “Wonderful! Arthur can -“ but he cuts her off.
“Just the two of us. Let’s go exploring, like we used to.”
“Oh!” Her red lips curve up. “Of course. Of course.”
-
Cobb studies the passports as they prepare to leave. “Still Arthur, then?”
Arthur smiles the half grin that he’s developed over the past two weeks in recovery. “I can never remember an alias.”
Cobb knows that’s a lie, but doesn’t press, mostly because of Eames’ intimidating, muscular presence. Arthur’s not bad himself, Cobb notes, some of his muscle wasted but his form is coiled, not thin like it used to be. But the bruises under his eyes make him look as young as ever, shrinking him against the other man’s bulk.
Mal sighs at them, and fusses with Arthur’s hair, and insists on giving them snacks for their trip.
---
2018-06-19
Memo: Serotonin dumping
Further brain monitoring shows that the utilization of the network connection leads to a complete serotonin and dopamine dump in the brains of our Subjects. This explains the initial bonding that happened between the original doctors and subjects on this project, and the enthusiasm to which our subjects have responded to long-term tests.
The side effects, however, are leading to worse and worse withdrawal states, and several of the Subjects have had trouble replenishing their natural stores of serotonin and dopamine. L-dopa is being examined as a potential treatment. However, I fear that the subjects’ dependency on the utilization of their gargoyle devices in order to feel happiness and closeness to others will lead to an unhealthy long-term dependency. The chemical deficiency will eventually lead them to have trouble forming legitimate relationships with others, rather than those fueled by an artificially increased empathy.
I’ve put the subjects on a strict schedule that should limit their long term exposure to being hooked to a network, and allow their brains enough time to begin to replenish serotonin and dopamine stores. The anxiety the subjects exhibit when their caretakers are changed or are off shift, however, points to these being lasting effects.
- Dr. M
---
2026 AD
Running is harder and easier than they expected. Arthur is officially dead, killed in battle and awarded a Bronze Star for his troubles. Arthur is a bit wistful in a way Eames didn’t expect - he says he’ll miss his squadron.
Eames hasn’t been with him in a long time, but they fall into bed easily. He notices that Arthur doesn’t flinch when people brush against him at the airport anymore, that he doesn’t fidget when they wait for documents to dry or for money to exchange hands.
He’s still mysterious with his music player, though, and won’t let Eames use his laptop, and likes to fall asleep with Eames pressed up against his back. He takes his coffee black and still smokes terrible American Spirits, which he has a knack for procuring in any country.
Eames is sure he’s changed himself, but Arthur never mentions it. Never ever says, “remember that time -“
They handle each other with more casual roughness, too, but Eames can’t say he minds that Arthur bites now, is tongue and teeth and nails. He’s sleek and dangerous in a way that is hidden in the lining of the suits he buys. Before, he radiated enough otherness to be a threat the minute he walked through a door.
Affection, though. They’re worse at that now.
“I like your new tattoo,” is as close as Arthur gets to giving him a compliment, but Eames doesn’t think he’d be very nice if he was brought up by criminals and scientists either. And besides, Eames only ever says thank you with his hands.
-
They pull a string of two man jobs through Eurasia, and start building a small reputation for themselves. Arthur thinks it’s unwise, but he doesn’t shy away when he’s asked by a potential client if he’s really that Arthur, if that’s really the Eames.
And really, notoriety only gets them more people willing to help, because they know Arthur and Eames are good for it - good for bribes and great for favors.
-
Arthur flips his phone shut and sighs.
They’re in Japan, only managing to squeak in due to well placed money and exceptionally forged paperwork, and they’re there for a job that might get Eames off Interpol’s list for at least the time being.
And Arthur has to leave.
“Who was that, Arthur dear?” Eames asks when he returns from smoking on their balcony. The luxury of the hotel just underlines bad idea, bad idea, bad fucking idea in Arthur’s brain, and has from the start. He hates high stakes, but Eames lives for them.
“I have to leave, Eames. I’ve done most of the background work for you, and we’ve done the maze. It shouldn’t be hard to get someone from a university to fill in just this once.”
Eames yanks the phone out of his hands. “What does the great Dominick Cobb need, then?” He doesn’t bother to hide his sneer.
“I.” Arthur says, than stops. Cobb didn’t tell him to keep it a secret but he sure as shit doesn’t want to say anything out loud. “He just needs me.”
Eames’ eyes narrow. “Cobb calls you and somehow needs you more than I’m going to need you to bust into the head of one of Japan’s most high profile ministers.” He huffs. “I’m taking the villa.”
“We don’t have a villa, Eames.”
“I was going to build one for you. But now I’m building it for myself and a harem of young strapping lads.”
“Would you take me seriously for once?” Arthur would run his hands through his hair except he’s worked hard to stop fidgeting.
“Oh, I am taking you very seriously right now. What I’m realizing is how casually you’ve been taking us.”
“It’s not you. It’s Mal.” Arthur blurts, suddenly exhausted. “They went too deep.”
It doesn’t mollify Eames. “What is that supposed to mean, exactly?
“She fucking found it, Eames, they got to Limbo, and it was there, just like she thought it would be.”
“So you just up and leave because Mal Cobb has a great paper to write? You the only one who can format the citations correctly, then?”
“God, fuck off, Eames. No. She doesn’t know she’s awake.”
“She’s in a coma?” Eames is backing off now, unsure. Arthur can hear it in his voice.
“No, she’s awake. She just thinks she’s still dreaming.”
Eames is silent.
“Dom saved my life, once.”
“I saved your life once,” says Eames, and Arthur looks up at him, tired and weighted and maybe too young to be so serious.
“I know that. Jesus.” Arthur’s eyes dart down.
“Then go.”
“I love you,” he says, not looking, words unsteady, maybe a question.
And Eames stares at him, eyes hard, glaring. “Don’t you dare, Arthur.”
So Arthur doesn’t.
He does surge up when he’s done packing, pushing into Eames’ space, meeting lips with lips in a hard press.
Eames sighs, rubs the back of his neck and watches Arthur leave without looking back.
Always cautious, ever calculating.
---
[2026-??-??
If I don’t recognize you, don’t panic, because you’re stored somewhere on my backup drive.
Fuck, sometimes I think this is the stupidest thing I could be doing, writing any of this down. Think of it like a letter. You remember the ones we used to send each other? I miss those a lot here.
I miss you. Eames I ]
---
It is Mal, or something like Mal, that opens the door when Arthur arrives. Her dull stare bores into him and they stand, motionless, on either side of the doorway, and then she breaks in a smile and becomes familiar. He can’t bring himself to smile back, but he relaxes when she pulls him into a hug.
“Oh Arthur. Of course you would be here eventually. He always did need you,” she says as she leads him into the house.
Phillipa only barely knows him, and James is a mystery who hides behind Dom’s legs and stares up with wide blue eyes. Arthur waves, and deposits his things near the couch.
Dom pulls him into a fierce hug and holds on for a little too long; his face looks like he’s drowning.
“Thank you for coming, Arthur.”
Arthur shrugs. “Eames sends his best.”
Dom snorts. “I hope he isn’t too mad.”
Arthur doesn’t say.
Mal comes into the room holding a tray with a teapot and two cups. “Oh Arthur, I’m so happy to see you again,” she croons, and Dom looks startled.
“I called him here for you, Mal,” Dom says, and she shakes her head.
“He is such a good friend. I am sure you are thinking of ways to get us both out of here, right?” She smiles and leaves, and Dom just stares at the tea.
“I wouldn’t drink that,” he says, so Arthur doesn’t.
“How long?”
“I tried, Arthur, I really did,” Dom says, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s been two months and she still thinks. She still wants me to. You know.”
Arthur nods, swallowing hard. “So if this is a side effect of limbo, how did you shake it?”
He doesn’t miss how Dom flinches away from his gaze but doesn’t push. “I didn’t want to forget. She did.”
-
Arthur plays with the children, and keeps an eye on Mal while Dom goes back to the university. She’s on a leave of absence, and he’s filling in for her. She moves like a ghost and watches him just as intently, but her eyes are filled with sadness.
“It is a shame he will not listen to either of us, non?” she asks him one day as he makes the children sandwiches. Eames would have a fit, he thinks, if he knew Arthur had left to be a glorified nanny for two children and a wraith.
“I mean, you knew Phillipa. You know those aren’t mine.” She says this last part in a whisper and Arthur sends the kids away.
“I have missed you so, Arthur,” she says and runs her hands over his face and he tries not to flinch.
Some days she acts out the motions, making cookies with the children and getting the kitchen covered in powdered sugar. Phillipa grins shyly as she presents him a cookie iced with a tie and a collared shirt.
“It’s an Uncle Arthur cookie,” she says and smiles and he ruffles her hair and thinks maybe today, maybe Mal will snap out of it today.
Figure 07
Mal begins cleaning up and Arthur comes in to help, rolling up his sleeves and leaving his cookie-visage on the plate with the other members of the family.
“Sometimes this is easier, right Arthur? Playing the right role?”
Arthur wonders how Dom has spent two months with this crushing weight on his chest.
-
Mal tries to escape, to flee, to wake up.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, but the desperate violence is new and always a shock.
Cobb used to call her their tourist when she would come out of her lab and into the field with them, and even then, she had never killed herself with such vigor, such purpose.
So it’s still startling when Cobb finds Arthur in the kitchen, pulling a knife out of her hand at 5 am in the morning. He’s frozen, staring at the tableau of his best friend, maybe, just wearing boxers and holding his wife, who’s sobbing, crying unselfconsciously, heaving air in and out like she’d been drowning. Her hands are reaching, clawing at the arm he’s got around her, drawing blood.
Arthur’s holding the knife out of her reach and he meets Dom’s eyes. “A little help?” It’s not wry, it’s desperate. And he’s filled back in, more muscled and lean than Cobb remembers. He looks like he’s on shore leave, and there’s an Operation Enduring Freedom tattoo on his rounded bicep. His skin is tan.
It takes Cobb a little too long to move, to soothe his wife who is yelling at him, telling him it’s not real, that nothing around them is real.
For Cobb to understand that it is.
-
Arthur calls Eames once a night, around eleven pm when he slides into the guest room. It’s the only time he shuts the door totally - he sleeps with it cracked, so he can hear Mal stumble in the house in the dark. The Cobbs have enveloped him, but he feels stifled instead of protected like he used to, gangly and mostly alone.
Eames only answered once, and it didn’t go well.
“Eames,” Arthur breathed into the phone, leaning his head against the wood of his bedframe. “Eames.”
It was a soft plea, and Arthur hoped he’d waited long enough to call. “How are you?” he asked, because there was no answer besides breathing.
“Why are you calling?”
“I-“ he started, and then faltered. “I miss you.”
Eames snorted. “Right.”
“I just wanted you to know. I meant what I said, before I left. And I’ve been thinking about you - that’s allowed, right?”
“You can think what you like, but there’s no way to know you mean it.”
“What?” Arthur asked, because this wasn’t a familiar argument at all.
“I’ve been doing a bit of research. On you, on that thing that ticks in your brain. Found some notes.”
“I still don’t -“
“You really don’t know, do you? Everything you feel could just be a by-product of that thing in your brain?”
Arthur didn’t really have an answer for that, and Eames didn’t wait for one.
He calls anyway, every night, and leaves voicemails that start with, “Mr. Eames,” like their letters used to. Each call is short, a little update.
“Phillipa helped make dinner today.” “Cobb took the kids out and left me with Mal, who tried to hit me with a heated iron.” Anything.
Says things like “I haven’t jacked in for weeks,” but doesn’t say “because I don’t think I can help her now.”
Arthur isn’t quite sure what compels him, because Eames doesn’t call back, never responds. No texts or emails or letters.
Eames doesn’t disconnect the line, either.
-
Arthur is the one who has to stop suicide attempts 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, and 17 alone. Dom is there for 10, 11, and 13, but.
It’s at seventeen, when Arthur knocks the pills out of her hands and bear hugs her from behind that she says, “Mon petit,” sadly. That is what she calls him when she’s not sure it’s him. “Mon petit,” she says, “I’m beginning to think you’re not on my side here.”
“You can’t,” Arthur huffs, squeezing until she stops struggling. “Not without Dom.”
She smiles beautifully at him. “Oh Arthur, I knew you were here to help,” she says, then twists, kisses him soundly.
The children watch as he picks up each pill, their mother as distant to them as Mongolia. “Hi,” he says. “Sorry I haven’t been very fun lately.”
Phillipa shrugs. “It’s ‘kay. Momma says she’s gonna go to doctor soon.”
---
Dom is ecstatic to hear the news that Mal’s decided to see a psychologist and a psychiatrist.
“Well, dear Arthur convinced me that I ought to try things your way,” she says to him, winking at Arthur as he tries to fight the growing horror in his stomach.
When they’re alone, Arthur tries to explain, “Dom, I never said anything like that.”
Dom waves his hand, then grabs Arthur’s. “I think we might get through this! I think she wants to get better. We couldn’t have gotten here without your help.”
And Arthur can feel himself being dismissed.
“I hope Eames isn’t too mad at me for calling you away from what it is you do.”
“You don’t know what we do, Dom. You never asked.”
Dom shifts uncomfortably. “Would you have told me?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur says honestly. “I owe you everything, Dom, you know that.”
Dom doesn’t want it to be true, but he thinks it is.
---
[Sometimes I’m going to forget things.
Everyone does, you might think, but this means something different for me. I looked up those kids you knew, the gargoyles. The littlest one, who didn’t know anything at the end. It happens like that.
The trick is to restart, to make me remember something. To make it real. The hard drive should do the rest, should unstick. They told me in physical therapy that the body holds all these traumatic experiences in it, and I think, after a few close calls already, that it’s a good first step.]
---
2028 AD
When Arthur lets himself into Eames’ flat in Surrey, he’s hoping desperately that it’ll be empty. He’s got a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag and he carefully locks the door behind him.
Eames is pointing a gun at him from the kitchen and Arthur just holds out the wine.
“I didn’t mean what I said, on the phone, that night.”
Arthur shrugs. “You did.” It’s not combative, but Arthur isn’t trying to start an argument. He doesn’t lie very well, regardless.
Eames breaks eye contact at that, runs a hand through his hair. “I guess I did. I’m still sorry.”
“You could be right, you know. Maybe it’s all manufactured.”
“Then why are you here?”
Arthur shrugs again. “Where else would I go?” He’s smiling. “Besides, I left some of my books here.”
-
Eames lets Arthur stay at his flat and Arthur makes himself unobtrusive, tries to keep things clean and cooks dinner. He has enough money to get his own place anywhere in the world, but he wasn’t lying to Eames. The solitary nature of his existence hadn’t been nearly this obtrusive when he was in California with the Cobbs, or even when he and Eames had been working. There were jobs, and co-workers, and each other.
Now he’s not sure what to think of Eames. They’re not quite strangers but Arthur doesn’t know what he’s allowed to touch. Sometimes they stumble into each other. Eames keeps strange hours, slipping in and out of the flat, but he pulls Arthur into bed only four days after he’d arrived.
“I always sleep better with you around,” Eames mumbles into his shoulder as his breathing evened out into sleep.
Arthur kisses him, almost shyly, the next morning.
“This seems easier than talking it out,” he says and Eames laughs.
“Best thinker in the business, you are,” Eames says, smiling. “You know how much I hate talking.”
They spend the rest of the day in bed.
-
“I got a call about a job,” Eames says one night as Arthur pulls salmon filets out of the oven.
“Oh?” Arthur grabs some plates and looks over. He pauses. “Were you. Were you on hiatus when I was at the Cobbs’?”
“It wasn’t like I formally announced to the world that I was being a sulking berk, no.” Eames almost looks sheepish. “But Javier seemed relieved that my ‘boyfriend had finally come back.’”
Arthur laughs as he sits down to dinner, and then glances over at him. “How did he know I was back?”
“He just assumed, since I said I’d think about it. Don’t worry, love,” Eames says.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think we’re out of the woods there, no one’s sent me a threatening letter in at least a year.”
“Good to hear.”
“Did Javier really call me your ‘boyfriend’?” Arthur asks, not able to keep a ridiculous dimpled grin off his face. “It seems so…”
“Juvenile, I know.”
“I was going to say official,” Arthur says, still grinning as Eames rolls his eyes. “Where’s the job?”
“It’s in Cairo.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit Egypt; I hear the restorations there have been going really well.”
“Well, it just so happens that Egypt is one of the places I’ve always wanted to take you to,” Eames says, and Arthur would blush if he was a bit more prone to showing emotions.
“There’s a list, isn’t there?”
“Well. There’s not one written out,” Eames says, looking a little sheepish. “Rule one of being a secret agent - never write anything down.”
-
The night Mal jumps, Arthur and Eames are celebrating a successful job by buying an entire bottle of champagne and watching the sunset from the top level of the Tour Eiffel in Paris. It’s too many Euros, and they’re surrounded by too many tourists, but they clink plastic glasses together and kiss.
They’re working with a trim Vietnamese woman as the extractor, and her partner, a man from Niger who stands taller than everyone around them. They’re all grinning, and it feels like they can’t stop.
Figure 09
The morning after Mal jumps, Arthur is jerked into waking by a phone call from Cobb, who sounds far away and shattered.
Then Miles calls.
Eames finds Arthur on his knees, dry-heaving in the bathroom of their hotel room, and he puts a heavy hand on the back of Arthur’s neck and rubs in what he hopes is a comforting way.
That night they fuck and it’s slow, Arthur pushing him on his back and kissing him all over as though it’s their last time together. Eames hates the finality and tries to make it frantic, but Arthur won’t let him. He’s all hands and lips, slipping across his skin until Eames has to just let him, groans into his mouth.
Arthur slides into him, gentle, and they fuck in a way they normally don’t have the patience for - intimate, with open mouth kisses and small groans. Arthur sucks at his collarbone and whimpers in his ear, whispering Eames like a lifeline when he comes.
Eames rubs the spot on his clavicle long after the bruise fades.
-
The fight isn’t unexpected, so Eames throws the opening punch.
“Why are you packing the laptop?”
Arthur looks up sharply.
“Because I still have a sense of self preservation.”
“Promise me, Arthur-
“I won’t. I can’t. We’re adults, Eames, it’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Eames’ mouth is twisted in disgust. “You’re better than that thing, Arthur. It makes you crazy, you don’t know where we are sometimes - and yes, that’s how I always know you’re using it. What’s worth that?”
And at that Arthur is suddenly tense and bow-tight with fury that collects at the edges of his eyes. “I can’t change what I am, Eames. Stop asking for that. Stop asking me for that.”
Eames wants to hit something. He leaves first, instead.
-
Working with Cobb is exhausting because he’s constantly putting out fires. Cobb is careless with his hires, with his chemists, with his life, and Arthur just has to keep making sure it’s not going to cost them everything.
Miles is also a presence that looms over them, constantly checking in. Cobb tells him in that broken voice, “Don’t worry, Arthur, he’s safe. He knows I didn’t. He knows you’re with me.”
But Miles pushes and pushes, job after job after job and Arthur knows they’re on the verge of fucking up, of falling over the edge of something that’s going to end with their mangled bodies in a ditch. He thinks Miles planned it this way, sending terse texts to Arthur. Each one is a warning shot and Arthur doesn’t know how to run from that.
“I just need the research to be perfect, Arthur, and you always make sure it is,” Cobb says, on job five in the span of three months. Arthur’s head hasn’t stopped hurting for four weeks straight, and the skin behind his ear is rubbed raw and sore. He wasn’t sure how to answer his phone that morning, and when Cobb gets melancholy it rubs off so much that Arthur wants to sleep for years. But he knows what the consequences to that are, knows how easy it is to slip into something wrong.
He doesn’t know how to run from Cobb, but eventually he tries.
-
Eames looks through the peephole and sees Arthur, rolling suitcase in hand, looking disheveled in his normal suit. He swings the door open and is hit with how desperately unwell Arthur looks, his face-marble pale with sweat curling his hair at the temples. There are hollows under his eyes, and there’s a bruise adorning one cheek. His body is moving in tiny involuntary jerks and he’s shifting his weight from on foot to another nervously.
“You fucking junkie,” Eames says, pulling back. “You told me you wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t say anything like that.” Arthur clenches his eyes shut for a second and opens them. “I had to,” he says, and Eames notices his lips are chapped, chewed raw.
“What, for Dom? You’re jacking in to help Cobb avoid being arrested?”
Arthur nods and Eames moves to shut the door in his face. “Wait!” Arthur says, his voice cracking a little. “We…we have to get the jobs done fast, but. He’s not the only reason I had to use it.”
“So it’s not Dom?” Eames folds his arms over his chest and stands waiting.
“It’s not Dom,” Arthur says. “It’s for Miles.” His left eye is twitching which means he hasn’t jacked in for at least a day, maybe out of some kind of misguided courtesy to Eames. Or it means that his system needs Somnacin soon.
Eames watches his body tremble, assessing.
“Miles?” Eames asks and still doesn’t invite Arthur in, which makes his head tilt strangely. He looks young, moves like he did before the Special Forces trained it out of him.
“Stephen Miles. Father of Mallorie Cobb nee Miles. Secret dream director for the US Army. Supervisor for Project Gargoyle.” And Arthur’s fingers are skittering over the raw skin behind his ear.
“And Dom?”
Arthur twitches again. “I work with Dom because I like working with Dom,” and the steel that runs down Arthur’s spine is audible again. “He’s my friend, I had to help him.” His foot stomps a little as he says it. Eames smiles, despite his best effort not to. He doesn’t say, “because I promised Mal,” because he doesn’t have to.
“Of course.”
There’s a long pause as Eames runs his eyes up and down Arthur’s body. It’s still fit and lean, but his right arm is covered in track marks, and the twitching doesn’t diminish from the illusion of heroin addict.
“I slept with Mal once,” Arthur blurts suddenly and then trains his constantly moving eyes onto Eames’ loafers. “Maybe more than once.”
“I think someone’s going to kill me soon,” he continues, quietly, his lips barely moving, and suddenly his whole body stills. “Cobb…I can help him work, but we can’t stay together or he’ll probably get killed too, now that she’s gone.”
A single tremor runs through Arthur’s body and ends with his knees clacking together when he raises his head to stare into Eames’ eyes. The line of his jaw is defiant. Then he says, “I threw away that phone.”
Eames lets him in.
-
When Arthur starts to detox, Eames realizes it’s the longest the man’s stayed in one place since Mal’s death. He starts digging around, and it may be dangerous, but he can’t help it. Some of the biggest hits in the extraction world are Dom and Arthur jobs. He can’t say he’s surprised, or unimpressed. He can see why the tension lives in Arthur’s shoulders - notoriety carries more than enough perils for normal dream sharers, let alone escaped government projects.
Arthur spends most of the time sweating it out in Eames bed, because Eames wants him as near to the bathroom as possible. Eames wraps him in blankets and Arthur shivers and shivers and on day three breaks out in hives and tries to keep them a secret.
Day four leads Eames into Arthur’s room because of the loud whirr of a laptop fan and he’s furious when he swings the door open.
Arthur’s not plugged in, but he looks like hell.
“You can’t even feel any more, can you? You’re running yourself all hot for Cobb, for his kids, huh?” Eames’ voice is rough and he is moving toward Arthur without thinking about it.
Arthur’s shaking, gym shorts sticking to his thighs and his chest covered in a patina of sweat. He looks like he’s hitting the worst point of withdrawal and his eyes go wide with panic. His pupils are blown.
Eames tells all this from one glance because he can’t keep up eye contact.
“Eames?” Arthur says, voice rough.
Eames sighs, his arms crossed across his chest, and then he just folds. His shoulders tip down and his spine curls and he slowly turns to face Arthur, whose legs are twisted up in the sheets and hands are rattling his laptop.
“Are you in my head right now?” Arthur is slowly closing his laptop and staring so intently Eames feels drastically exposed. “Is this a dream?”
“Arthur.”
“I wouldn’t mind, you know, if you were,” Arthur says, tugging on his ear. He grins shyly up at Eames and his cheeks are flushed.
Eames carefully takes the laptop from Arthur’s trembling fingers and places it away from the bed.
“I mean, I missed you.” Arthur’s hands are all over him, pulling him closer. “Touch me.”
So Eames complies, sitting on the bed and running his fingers through Arthur’s hair and watching him close his eyes in delight.
The kiss catches him off guard, though he knows it shouldn’t. He’s known junkies. He knows Arthur.
“Arthur, no, we can’t -“ and then Arthur swallows up his protests with a hungry mouth and a probing tongue.
Arthur’s not hard, he realizes, when he crawls into Eames’ lap, hands on the sides of his face and so hot, blistering heat pouring out of his skin.
“Darling,” he says as he runs one finger along the elastic of his shorts, his knuckles rubbing along the small of Arthur’s back. Familiar.
Arthur sighs and squirms. “Don’t worry about it,” he pants out.
“It’s okay,” he says right into Eames’ mouth. “I could blow you.” Arthur’s hand drops to palm Eames’ cock, which is stirring despite his reservations. “Or you could fuck me.”
Arthur is a pile of limbs, sticky and hot in Eames’ lap, and his clever fingers have already started to unbutton his trousers.
“Arthur,” Eames breathes, because it’s all he can think. His hands are full of Arthur; he’s breathing him in, that sick-smell and his hot mouth and his fast fucking hands.
Arthur slides off his lap like a puddle, hitting his knees on the ground indelicately, and licks his cock, already freed.
“Jesus fuck,” Eames says, because Arthur’s mouth is hot like furnace, wet around him. He uses a hand to pump him at the base, and Eames watches the flush rise over his cheeks, slide down his neck.
It’s probably one of the sloppiest blowjobs Eames has ever gotten, truth be told, but Arthur’s moaning, squirming like there’s nothing he’d rather be doing that laving Eames’ cock with his tongue. Eames finally just grabs his head and thrusts, hard and unkindly, shooting come down his throat.
Arthur gags and pulls back, coughing and resting his head on Eames’ thigh. He’s panting hard and just looking up at Eames, and then he smiles. It’s empty, lightheaded, and Eames pulls him up easily, rolls him onto the bed.
Arthur sprawls out, lead-limbed and still acting high as shit, licking the last bit of come off his lips.
Eames turns on his side and traces patterns on his stomach.
He feels vindictive in the afterglow.
“So is this how Dom would have you then, all strung out like this?”
Arthur stiffens but Eames doesn’t stop touching, keeping him close.
“Cobb and I. We never. He didn’t,” and that last sentence comes out as a whine.
“Somehow I doubt that.” Eames palms the flat muscle of Arthur’s stomach and watches his eyelids flutter, the stretch of his body.
“I would remember that, wouldn’t I?” Arthur says, and his voice sounds tight. Eames thinks it might sound afraid.
He switches gears. “Do you think about sleeping with Cobb?”
Arthur’s body relaxes a little “Oh, yeah. All the time, used to be.”
“Used to be?”
Arthur lets out a little sigh. “Now I think about this guy named Eames.”
It doesn’t sound like a joke, though.
Eames’ body takes over and pulls away from Arthur, rolls off the bed, before his brain even has a chance to process. “What. What was that you said, Arthur?” he asks, staring down at him.
Arthur doesn’t move, just sighs a little and wriggles his shoulders into the bed. He’s not really looking at Eames, his eyes half-lidded and unfocused. “Eames. He’s this forger Mal brought in. I don’t think Cobb likes him.”
Eames grabs his right hand and holds it, “I’m Eames, Arthur. I’m Eames. You’re in my house.”
Arthur doesn’t say anything for a moment, he just smiles up at him, and Eames is full of a dull, cold terror.
“I think I have something for you. In one of my bags. If you’re Eames.” He gets up, sliding off the bed, all naked grace and sinew again, and Eames doesn’t know who he is.
-
There’s a notebook in Arthur’s hands when he comes out of the bathroom and he hands it over, looking docile.
“What’s this, pet?” Eames asks, his voice still hushed with uncertainty.
“It has a note on the front.”
The post-it reads, in Arthur’s handwriting: ‘Arthur, if you don’t know where you are, give this book to a man named Eames.’
“What is it, though?”
“Well, that’s my handwriting, isn’t it? And you said your name was Eames.”
Eames pauses. It looks like Arthur’s, and each page has carefully printed instructions for various situations - what to do if Arthur stopped eating, what to do if it seems like he’s overdosed, how to force him to sleep. Where he wants to be buried.
“Oh, you are thorough,” Eames mutters to himself, but he wants to sob.
Triggering my memory has a prim little section that looks a little bit shakier than the others.
Eames sits down to read and Arthur just climbs into back into bed next to him, curling around him and resting his head on his thigh.
-
He starts that night, after feeding Arthur some pizza and a beer to help him relax. Arthur was slowly keying up, getting more and more flustered by the fact that he didn’t seem to know anything. He kept grabbing onto Eames’ arms in passing, grip tight.
Eames puts on some fresh sheets and tells Arthur to lie down, and he does, but his face is full of worry.
“It’s not going to be bad, okay?” he says, and Arthur nods once. He drops a hand to Arthur’s right leg, right over the keloided scarring.
“What’s this from?” Eames asks, and Arthur isn’t asleep but he doesn’t seem to be able to answer. He just shakes his head, mouth opening and shutting.
“You don’t remember how you got this?” Eames says, running a thumb over the scar that wraps from Arthur’s thigh to the side of his right knee. He traces it to the side of Arthur’s patella, right in the joint, and presses down, slowly increasing the pressure. He lets his other hand press and move up the meat of his thigh.
Figure 10
Arthur’s eyes narrow, brows knitted in confusion. “What are you doing? Eames, that’s starting to hurt -“
His eyes slam shut. “Oh.”
Eames waits, pressing and tracing and pressing. He can feel the sinew and bones and tendons shift under his hands, the tightness of the joint, and the way Arthur shudders.
“That was a big one to start with,” Arthur finally whispers, and Eames slowly eases up, removes his hands.
Eames shrugs. “Yes, well.”
He leans over and kisses him, long and deep, and Arthur moans. He keeps the pace slow for as long as he can before giving in and cupping his hands over Arthur’s ass.
“Oh god, I don’t think I wrote down fucking as a way to help me reorient,” he says.
“I like to improvise, darling,” Eames says, and grins, rutting against Arthur’s thigh.
Arthur groans again when his fingers slip down his cleft, when he bites gently against his neck. Eames is hoping, desperately, that Arthur’ll get hard soon, that maybe things will be normal. Maybe this worked.
He pushes him up instead and looks wide-eyed, panicked. “Eames,” he says, voice breathy, “Eames, how did we meet?”
Eames is braced on his arms, and Arthur’s hands are on his shoulders, gripping tight. “How do I know you?”
“Fuck,” Eames says. “We met in Santiago. Mal introduced us on a job.”
Arthur’s eyes are darting back and forth, looking for all the world like REM in the waking world, searching his face for something.
“Shit. How old was I? I’m 27 now, right? 28?”
“I don’t think I actually know when your real birthday is,” Eames admits, and the tension eases for just a moment because Arthur laughs, full and bright.
“I don’t know either, you know.”
“Mal once got you a huge cake on a random day then,” Eames says thoughtfully, remembering.
Arthur smiles, and his death grip on Eames’ shoulders starts to ease. Eames takes this cue to roll to the side, wrapping an arm under Arthur’s neck and pulling him close. “She always celebrated it on a different day every year. Said it was a better surprise that way.”
Eames thinks, imagines, he can hear the whirr of the computer in Arthur’s brain. “You being 28 makes me feel better about myself as a young man, also.”
Arthur’s eyes shut but he smiles right before his face contorts into a grimace.
“Fuck, oh jesus fuck Eames.” His eyes are clenched tight and his body is rolling into itself, a protective ball.
“Harddrive kick in?”
Arthur just groans.
“You’re getting everything back all at once then?”
Arthur is silent for a moment, the only sound his heavy breathing.
“Sometimes I lose things,” he says quietly. “There are gaps. Like my dad’s face, or how I ended up in LA. I know how Cobb and I met, but I’m not sure if it’s what really happened.”
“What else? How do you know?”
“There are holes,” he says, “where I should know something and it’s just there at the peripheral. Who I lost my virginity to. Why I like a certain band. Where the scar on my left elbow came from.”
It’s not news, really, to Eames, but hearing it makes his chest tight.
“What if I lost Mal?” Arthur asks, “What if I…” He trails off and Eames kisses his temple.
“You won’t,” he says, and waits until Arthur falls asleep to leave.
-
Eames tries to avoid his room from then on, just brings him water and toast and rubs his back when he throws it up again. It’s too much, he thinks, to wonder what Arthur can remember, what he’s lost over the years. How many things Eames found important that cease to exist.
On day six, he can eat, even says he feels hungry.
Arthur cleans when Eames goes grocery shopping to celebrate Arthur’s new ability to hold down solid food. Eames enters the apartment and hears the incessant strum of guitars, of Arthur’s shot voice keeping pace with a woman who’s yelling and singing at once.
The floor is swept and mopped, the sofa cover is washed along with all the bedding that Arthur’s sweat through, and all of Eames' clothes are ironed and put away neatly.
Eames finds him in the bathroom scrubbing grout when he finishes putting away the groceries.
“Oh, Arthur,” he says, voice wistful, and Arthur looks up, mouth snapping shut.
“Your apartment’s a mess,” Arthur says finally, and his body shivers once. He’s wearing mesh athletic shorts and a t-shirt that might have had a band name on it, but is now just a faded smear of peeling white letters over dull black.
Eames just stares.
“I.” Arthur stops then and then goes back to scrubbing.
Eames leaves him to it.
-
Arthur’s eyes are bright and shiny with dreams, with Somnacin, when Eames tips over his chair. His face is flushed red and his hair is sweaty and he’s just arms and legs, really, in a heap on the floor, snarling “What the fuck, Eames?”
Eames tilts his head to the side and stares until Arthur’s anger recedes and he’s just trembling again, trapped back into the cage of whatever brain chemicals the machinery in his skull creates.
“I don’t think you should be dreaming when you’re like this,” he says, propping the chair back up with his foot.
Arthur’s glassy eyes meet his own. “I don’t think I’m going to last much longer if I don’t jack in and don’t hit the Somnacin. Chronic dreamlessness kills, rule 16 from the fieldbook.” The curl of his lip is suddenly so welcomingly familiar that Eames offers a hand to pull him up with.
Arthur ignores it, arranging his legs so he can push himself off the floor with the help of the chair next to ‘him. His legs are bony and knock together once with the strain of moving.
“If I’m not jacking in regularly I have to do this, or I’m going to die of exhaustion.”
“Do you normally keep a PASIV around in between jobs?”
He nods. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got to dream eventually.”
Eames thinks of the boy he was once introduced to. Arthur with shaggy hair, who would smile lazily and who snored quietly in shitty hotel rooms, the one that Cobb watched like a hawk. The one that always woke up when Eames kissed him on the bare shoulder.
“I thought they would come back,” Eames says finally. “The dreams. Since you’re detoxing everything else.”
Arthur shakes his head. “I’ve actually had to up my Somnacin dose,” he says, a little quietly. “A normal one won’t take me deep enough.” He shrugs. “I’ll get loops though. Memories. Haven’t had natural dreams for decades.” He shrugs. “But you knew that.”
Eames shrugs and asks, “When do you get your dick back?”
Arthur barks out a laugh and looks him over. “You can’t possibly want to fuck with me like this.”
“I just figured, since, you know, you’ve already gotten your memories back.”
Arthur sleeps that night wrapped around Eames’ chest
-
Eames wakes up to Arthur’s ringtone and he can tell by the way his entire body tenses and jerks that it’s Cobb.
“Fuck,” he hisses and they both tighten around each other. “I don’t -“ he says, then stops.
“Then don’t,” Eames says, reaching over to silence his phone.
Arthur curls into him tighter. “I think I’ll have to, soon. He texted earlier.”
“Have you been getting secret transmissions from Cobb this whole time?”
“He got a tip from Miles,” Arthur continues, ignoring the question entirely, “Cobol Engineering has a job.”
“I wouldn’t take a contract with them; they’re ruthless thugs at the best of times.”
Arthur sighs. “I know. But I’d rather risk them than Miles.”
“Does Cobb know about all this?”
He shrugs.
-
The last night Arthur spends in his flat is somber, maybe, though they both try to keep it light through a nice dinner out. They fail miserably and end up drinking far too much expensive wine and stumbling back into the flat, where Eames shoves him against a wall and presses their lips together.
Arthur’s receptive, clever tongue sliding into his mouth and hands going to untuck his shirt. “Bedroom,” he pants.
It’s a rush to strip, and there’s no care in the way Eames pushes Arthur onto the bed with his oxford still on, unbuttoned and wrinkled. The rest of him is bare, and Eames is nude, and Arthurs moving on him again, hands everywhere.
“I want to fuck you,” Eames says into his throat and Arthur groans, arching up and grinding against his thigh.
“Yeah,” he says, and Eames snaps into the realization that he’s missed everything about Arthur for the entirety of his absence, from the wrinkles in his forehead to the nonsense syllables in bed.
He grabs lube and a condom from the bedside table and Arthur just is smiling at him, red cheeked and sex-mussed.
“How do you want me?” he asks, voice rough, and Eames moves Arthur’s hands to his own thighs.
Eames preps him in a way he doesn’t always need to, but he likes the hot and silken clutch of Arthur’s muscles as he slides wet fingers inside. Arthur’s hard, his cock red and pearling at the tip and Eames can’t help but duck down, taking it into his mouth. Arthur jerks, head falling back and groaning. His hands slip a little, his legs spread wide.
“Fuck, Eames, I won’t last if you keep on,” he grits out, so Eames laves on last lick onto his cock and then slides the condom on himself.
He pushes in and Arthur’s ready, bending backwards to hook ankles around his shoulders. It’s good, and it’s always good with Arthur, the push in and press back in tandem.
Eames can’t hold back, won’t. Wants Arthur to feel it on the plane the next day, the places inside him that Eames owns, and he slams into him.
“You won’t forget this,” Eames growls into his ear, and he expects Arthur to laugh or at least to grin at him.
Instead Arthur just nods, frantic and breathless from being bent in half. “I wouldn’t,” he says, angling to kiss him. “I wouldn’t forget you.”
Neither lasts much longer after that.
-
The next morning is quiet over breakfast, which consists of mugs of coffee and tea.
“You could come with me,” Arthur says, almost hesitantly.
“I could,” Eames says, and it’s true. Part of him wants to. “But I’m headed to Kenya. Seeing a man about some Somnacin blends. Hear he’s a real brilliant chemist.”
Arthur nods. “Ah.”
“I can ask him about your.” Eames waves his hand. “Your you know.”
He gets a little smile for that. “Yeah, maybe. A second opinion couldn’t hurt.”
“You could come with me, you know.”
“You know I couldn’t,” Arthur says with a little sigh. “Cobb’s probably worried to death already.”
“What, did you not tell him you were leaving?”
Arthur shakes his head. “Just not where.”
“Tell me you won’t take the laptop.”
“Eames, Jesus Christ. I can’t do this with you anymore.”
And that’s when Eames steps closer, runs his thumb over the raised skin behind Arthur’s left ear. Arthur jerks, face shuttering into an honest-to-God grimace with the flinch, and for one brief moment he’s twenty years old. Arthur’s twenty years old and Eames is twenty-five and Mal is introducing them. Arthur can’t meet his eyes, won’t look him in the face and it makes Eames angry, so angry that he vows immediately to crack the kid open to see what the clockwork looks like.
And then Arthur opens his eyes, and it’s gone. Arthur’s face has tiny worry lines and Eames is thirty-four and already needs a new knee.
He brings his mouth close, rubs over the shell of Arthur’s ear and then back over the scarring again. “I worry about you.”
Arthur’s eyes are bright when he says, “I know.”
---
2030 AD
Email isn’t really Arthur’s thing. Certainly he was more than competent with computers, but Eames and Arthur always had a more personalized correspondence. When Eames' Blackberry beeps at him one morning, it’s not what he expects. He’s surprised, really, that he even heard it over the busy street hustle of Mombasa on a Friday. The email just reads:
E -
Cobb’s coming to visit. Got a job.
- A
-
He isn’t sure what to make of Cobb, who’s as off-putting as ever when he materializes in one of Eames’ favorite gambling spots. He’s equal parts insulting and flattering, and Eames gets the feeling that neither of them really know how to talk to each other without Arthur there to manage them.
-
Eames is 34 the first time he sees Arthur, just Arthur, in a print shop in Paris, and Arthur is 29.
Arthur’s holding a Moleskine and writing with the short stub of a pencil, biting his lip as he looks over the rough model of a maze.
“Taking notes by hand, Arthur?” he asks.
“I left my laptop at home,” Arthur says, quiet, but he doesn’t look up.
Eames glances around the print shop, the half built mazes and the partially assembled lab and Cobb, who is half-crazed and half-brilliant. It doesn’t promise to be boring.
He thinks he can wait, just this one time.
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