Every Dream I Have| Eames/Fischer| PG-13
Title: Every Dream I Have
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Eames/Robert Fischer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mention of domestic abuse and violence.
Note: Thanks tocroik for doing such a wonderful beta job for me. :)
Word Count: 5,353
If Eames was being completely honest, he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.
Unusual, considering Eames was never without a plan. He liked knowing what was going to happen well before it did, and to be caught in such a situation, with no idea of where he was going or what might occur next, made him uneasy.
It had been so innocent at first. He had meant to casually check in on Robert, see if the old noggin had imploded, find out how stable he was, and then he’d be gone. He had never intended to get so close to the man so quickly, or to actually care whether what they had done had disrupted his life.
One dinner, Eames had thought, when he had asked Robert out rather spur of the moment, One night. It won’t make a difference.
Unfortunately, one dinner turned into two, and two turned into four, and four turned into a steamy half-clothed fuck in the backseat of Robert’s limo while the chauffeur pretended not to notice.
After that, Eames found the idea of walking away from Fischer extremely unappealing. What good would that do, after all? He’d be sitting around thinking of the way Robert smelled and tasted and the way he looked early in the morning when the sun was barely up and his hair was still tangled. Those weren’t things Eames was comfortable simply filing away to memory and pulling out on nights when he was just drunk enough to not give a wit where his mind wandered.
One month turned into two, two became three. Before Eames was even aware of what was happening, he was living with Robert in his expensive condo and making love with him on silk sheets. He was falling in love with him, and five months was turning into six.
Eames thought quite often of what they had done. At first, it was far easier to make the whole thing seem noble, or at least less monstrous. We were doing a job, Eames thought, That’s all. It became increasingly more difficult to swallow that lie when he took Robert to bed, or when he watched Robert curled up on the couch reading, or particularly when he watched Robert sleeping, naked and vulnerable and completely unaware of how deeply and viciously he’d been violated.
The job had been a human being. No matter what Cobb had said, no matter what justifications Eames tried to make, that simple truth could not be ignored. They had invaded Robert in a way that was improper, immoral, and inhumane.
Ariadne had asked, “What happens if he remembers?”
Cobb had answered simply, “He won’t.”
Ariadne, bless her soul, had been the only one of them to feel a pang of conscience. Cobb had been desperate to get the job done, desperate to get back home to his kids. Arthur had wanted only to make sure the job was done well, and to make sure Cobb didn’t end up killing himself. And Eames, well, he had wanted nothing more than to prove it could be done.
He had felt no more emotional attachment to Fischer than a scientist would to a lab rat. Until the vault, that was. Until Eames had been forced to see Robert Fischer not as a job that needed doing, but as a vulnerable, shattered man trying to cling to a tender thing that had always eluded him: his father’s love.
That was why the job had ended for the others, but not for Eames. He had not had the luxury of looking away, of pretending Robert was best left to his own devices. Someone that fragile and hurt couldn’t be better off on their own. So, Eames had gone to him, after the rest had returned to their homes and their jobs and their families. I just want to see, Eames had thought, I just want to see him. Then I’ll leave. No problem.
It was a huge problem, because Eames couldn’t leave Robert. Every night Eames lay beside Robert and told himself that it would be simple. He could slide out of bed, gather his clothes, and disappear into the night; he had certainly done it with enough of his lovers over the years. But every night, Eames would stay where he was, watching Robert sleep, listening to the steady sound of his breathing, and he would fall asleep curled up against him.
Eames knew he was in trouble the moment he went to bed with Robert and was perfectly content to just lie there with him and feel the shape of his body against his own. He knew there was no going back the moment he kissed his way from Robert’s temple to the bridge of his nose and told him he loved him.
He had seen things about Robert that Robert would never tell. He had seen some things that Robert was not even aware of about himself, at least consciously. Robert acted like a man who knew just what he wanted and how he would get it, but Eames knew it was nothing but an act. Deep down, underneath all of the false bravado, there was a little boy waiting for his father to love him. Sometimes the thought of that hurt Eames so much he couldn’t stand it.
But Robert, with his pale eyes and fragile smile, had changed everything. Eames had looked at him and realized that everything he had done before didn’t matter, and that everything he would go on to do didn’t matter either. What had mattered was that moment in that vault when he had seen Robert Fischer tear away every last pretense and decoration and expose himself. He had been naked for Eames in there, terribly vulnerable.
Eames had done what anyone would; he had watched Robert kneel in the pieces of his broken innocence, and he had done nothing to help him.
“Every dream I have is about you,” Robert said. He sounded amused, and Eames knew he expected him to find it amusing as well. Eames didn't, but he smiled and chuckled all the same. They were in bed together. Eames had his arm tucked over his eyes to block out the damn light Robert kept on while he read. Why the man didn’t own one of those fancy e-readers or whatever they were called Eames didn’t know, but some nights he wanted to beat Robert over the head with that damn lamp.
The words had a dreadful weight to them. Most likely Robert didn’t notice, and if he did, it wasn’t so terrible that he thought to mention it. For Eames, the words came as a shock, but then, why should he be shocked? He’d been expecting it since he’d come to Robert.
“What happens if he remembers?” Ariadne had asked. At the time, Eames had found her question superfluous. Who cared if Fischer remembered? Who cared if he was driven crazy by the thought of people digging through his mind and changing his perception of the world and his place within it? It was a job. He had thought Ariadne had shown promise, if she could manage to put a bandage on that bleeding heart of hers.
Lying in bed with Robert, Eames felt ashamed of himself. It wasn’t something he was used to feeling. Before Robert, everything had been about the job. Get in, get out, don’t make too big of a mess. It had been simple.
Except now he was invested in Robert, he was tangled up in him. Everything was bloody messy, and bloody difficult to unweave himself from. A part of him - a small, inconsequential part - wanted to tell Robert the truth. Despite how selfish Eames was, he might have done that if it had meant Robert would feel more in control, or more at peace with the fragmented memories that bled into his dreams. But that wasn’t the case, and Eames knew it. Robert had been violated, and there was nothing that could make it right.
So he bit his tongue when Robert stared at him with a crease in his forehead and swore that he knew him from some time before they had met. And he bit his tongue when Robert thrashed and cried in the middle of the night as he dreamed of something that, for all he knew, had been nothing but another dream.
There was no point in telling Robert the truth. All it would produce would be a shitstorm, with Eames on the receiving end. He would be thrown out, and Robert would continue to struggle with his own peace of mind. What good could come out of Eames being left out in the cold? What point was there in having a clean conscience and no warm body to curl up against at night?
So why, then, did Eames sit Robert down one night and tell him everything?
“You deserve to know,” Eames said. He didn’t want to look at Robert while he told him, but he guessed it was the honorable thing to do. Shit, he had never cared about honorable things before Fischer had come along. Eames looked up at Robert uncertainly. They were sitting together on the sofa and Eames was holding Robert’s hands. It was supposed to set Robert at ease, but he appeared to be more nervous by the tender way Eames held him. “Everything that I… I mean, you deserve to know everything that we… Goddammit, you deserve to know-“
“Eames,” Robert said. He leaned closer and curled his fingers under Eames’ jaw. “Whatever you need to tell me… You can. I want you to be honest with me. And I want to be honest with you. I- I love you, Eames.”
Well, fuck, that didn’t make things any easier.
How did you go about telling a man that the biggest decision of his life hadn’t been his own? How did you start a conversation that would reveal to someone that the most tender and loving moment with their father had been fabricated? How did you love someone so much and still intend on not only breaking their heart but possibly tearing apart their sanity?
Because I love you, Eames thought, I can’t lie to you anymore.
Eames began, somewhat ineloquently, “There’s this thing called inception…”
***
It was a painstaking process. A few times Robert stood and paced the floor with his hands shifting between shoving through his hair and pulling at his jacket. He stopped Eames a few times with shouts -- words that until that moment, Eames hadn’t known were even in Robert’s vocabulary. He threw things at him, mostly things that couldn’t injure Eames, but once it was a coffee mug and it nearly shattered against his temple.
Eames tried his best to calm Robert. He spoke in slow, dulcet tones and kept his eyes on Robert no matter how much he wanted to look away. He spoke of dreamshare and Robert relaxed, only because it was something he was acquainted with, but whenever he used the term ‘inception’ Robert became agitated, swearing and pacing and pulling at his hair.
When it was over - or at least when Eames was through explaining (or confessing) what he had done - there was a heavy, oppressive silence. He kept waiting for Robert to throw him out, to tell him that he was a perverse, immoral monster and he wanted nothing to do with him. But Robert looked exhausted, and entirely hollowed out. His eyes, which had earlier been ablaze with indignation and disgust, looked at Eames impassively.
He didn’t want to be the first one to break that silence. It felt like a minefield. One misstep, one breath, and everything would explode in his face. But Eames couldn’t stand the silence, and he couldn’t stand the blank way Robert looked at him.
“Say something,” Eames said, “Anything.”
More silence.
Eames became frantic. He begged Robert to speak. He begged him to throw more coffee mugs at his head. He begged Robert to punch him, to knock him around the room, to toss him out into the street and call him every dirty name in the book. When that seemed to have no effect on Robert, Eames shifted gears. He tried to explain himself, to make Robert understand why he had done it.
“There was… I told you about Saito… And how Cobb… Robert, we thought, we all thought that what we were doing… I didn’t know I’d end up here. I---“
“Stop,” Robert whispered.
Eames looked at him helplessly. He had never felt such a strong desire to kick his own ass before. He was behaving childishly, and stupidly, and trying to strong arm Robert into forgiving him. Robert didn’t have to forgive him. Robert didn’t have to look at him or speak to him or try to understand whatever petty motivations had been behind his involvement in inception. Robert was the one who had been wrong, the one who had been violated and manipulated. Robert was the one who decided who he forgave, how he forgave, and if he forgave.
Robert took up a pad and pencil and wrote something down. His hands were trembling, but he seemed to trust his hands more than his mouth. Eames could tell he was on the verge of crying, something he had seen Robert do only a few times, and he wanted Eames to be long gone before the dam burst.
He tore off the paper and handed it to Eames.
Get out.
Eames felt desperate words crawling up his throat, and he swallowed them. No, he wouldn’t beg Robert to rethink things. No, he wouldn’t tell Robert he was making a mistake. The only mistake Robert Fischer had ever made was trusting Eames.
Maybe there were a million things to say. Maybe there was so much that Robert needed to hear; maybe there was more that Robert needed to tell him. But those things didn’t matter. Robert had told him goodbye, in no uncertain terms, and no flowery language. Robert loved him, but Robert wanted him gone.
Like most things in Eames’ life, it wasn’t complicated.
***
Robert sat there for most of the night. Outwardly, he appeared perfectly fine, content even. He poured himself a glass of Merlot and filled his living room with the imperfectly perfect voice of Maria Callas. He hummed along with the music.
Inside, he was nearing the edge of something dark and dangerous. There was an abyss somewhere inside of him, and to feel it, to know that it existed, terrified Robert. He knew that if he thought too much of what Eames had told him, that if he allowed himself to seize upon the idea that his thoughts had, at one time, not been his own, he would fall into that darkness and there would be no bottom.
If he accepted that his thoughts hadn’t been his own then, what would stop him from wondering if they ever had been at all? What would keep him from wondering -- from obsessing over -- whether everything around him and within him was nothing but smoke and mirrors?
How could someone live with the thought that they were nothing more than a minor character in someone’s fevered dream? Or even their own fevered dream?
In the shadow of something so oppressively heavy and inexorably profound, the thought of Eames should have been miniscule. But of course he thought of Eames, and of course he felt tightness in his chest and sinking coldness in his stomach.
He loved him. It wasn’t anything complicated or deserving of a lot of attention. He loved Eames, he wanted him, but he couldn’t be with him. It wasn’t as though Eames had run around behind his back; he had violated Robert in ways that were unimaginable and inexcusable.
There were reasons for everything. There were excuses that could reduce the most barbarous actions to mere lapses in etiquette. But there was nothing that would ever justify what Eames had done, and what the rest of them had done. Eames was by far the worst, though. While the others had been content to manipulate him and treat his brain like their personal plaything, they had not followed Robert. They hadn’t made love to him and kissed him and held him.
Robert felt suddenly sick. He bolted from the sofa and ran into the bathroom, dropping his glass of wine as he went. He heard it shatter, but everything was becoming distant. He could hear himself panting, he could feel his heart pounding and his blood rushing through him. Colors lost their vibrancy and faded to gray. Robert collapsed against the toilet and retched. Nothing came.
He laid his face down against the porcelain. It was cold on his flushed skin and brought some of the world back into focus.
The son of Maurice Fischer was kneeling in the bathroom with his face pressed against the toilet. He was crying, his face wet with tears and snot. This was what Eames had done to him, what they all had done. He was broken now.
He gets to walk away, Robert thought. He gets to keep doing what he’s been doing. He doesn’t have to live this way. He doesn’t have to believe everything he’s even known or ever will know is nothing but some crazy, vivid dream. He doesn’t have to feel this black hole inside of him…
Robert could feel himself tipping slowly over that edge, down into that bottomless pit where he could never be sane or whole again. He closed his eyes. He tried to remember what he knew were solid and safe. His memories of his father helped some. They were bitter memories, but they were his.
The only sweet memory he had of his father had been nothing but a lie.
Eames had been watching, like some kind of predator, as Robert had exposed himself and kneeled there emotionally naked. Robert had never been a vulnerable man; he had always kept his emotions well hidden, as he’d been taught by his father. But Eames had seen everything. And what had he done with what he’d learned of Robert’s frailness? He’d come along and pounced on him, preyed on him like a weak animal.
He had responded to Eames’ easy smile and warm brown eyes. Robert had found himself captivated by him, spellbound by his lack of concern for what other people might be thinking about him. All of his life Robert had been painfully aware of everyone around him. What would they think if he dressed a certain way? What would they whisper about him if he spent his time with certain people?
Eames had swept all of those frivolous concerns by the wayside. When Robert kissed him, he didn’t care who saw, he didn’t care who whispered. He only wanted to kiss Eames, to be close to him, to feel that rush of emotion when Eames took him in his arms and the whole world melted away.
Everything had been a lie.
Robert slowly pulled himself to his feet. He switched on the light and looked at his face in the mirror. To his own eyes, he appeared to have aged ten years in less than an hour. He felt only the dullest of self-pity; against the knowledge that he might be nothing more than a figment of his, or someone else’s imagination, aesthetics weren’t that important.
“You were stupid,” Robert said to his reflection. “You were so stupid.”
It wasn’t fair of him to blame himself. It wasn’t fair that he had been mistreated, deceived and manipulated, yet he still believed he was responsible for every bit of it. Robert was nothing if not his father’s son. He was the choices he made, and the things he decided to believe. No matter who had lied to him, no matter how sweet those lies had been or how soft the voice had been against his ear, Robert had chosen to believe.
It was shitty and unfair and wrong, but Robert couldn’t stop himself. He looked at his reflection and he hated who he saw.
***
Typically when a relationship ended bitterly, Eames found comfort in one of two places: at the bottom of a glass of whisky, and between the sheets with some a random, sweaty body. After leaving Robert’s apartment - their apartment, though Eames doubted Robert would want him adding his name to the lease now - he decided against drinking his misery away.
Finding someone to take to bed wouldn’t help matters any either. They wouldn’t be Robert Fischer, so there was no way they could please him.
He found himself in a convenience store of all places, rooting through their greeting cards. Eames thought Hallmark made a card for every occasion, he was fairly sure he had seen everything from the more traditional ‘Happy Birthday’ to the more esoteric, ‘Sorry I ran over you with my minivan.’
Apparently there was no card explaining to your boyfriend how sorry you were that you’d stalked through his unconscious mind and engineered his thoughts and heavily influenced one of the most important decisions of his life.
Well, they were certainly missing out on a demographic: namely, Eames.
Eames got himself a motel room and ordered in Chinese food. He stared at his dinner, poking it every now and again to at least give the illusion that he meant to eat it. He wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to move. He wanted Robert, but he didn’t know what to say or how to say it.
Every dream worth having is about you, Eames thought. Yes, he should have said that. It sounded like poetry. It sounded like something that might have convinced Robert to give him a second chance. But Eames knew he was only kidding himself. This wasn’t some minor infraction like calling too late or buying the wrong brand of ice cream; what he had done was tantamount to brain-washing.
He worried about Robert. What would he do now that he knew the truth? Would he handle it well enough because of his militarization and his familiarity with dreamshare? Eames doubted that very much. No matter what Robert had learned, nothing could prepare him for what had happened to him.
An idea is a dangerous thing.
Eames pressed his palms against his eyes and waited for the ground to swallow him up. When that didn’t happen, he settled on waiting for daylight.
***
The dream was familiar.
Robert knew the minute he saw the cab waiting by the curb he had been there before. It was pouring down rain, the kind of rain that should make a warm day cooler, but only makes it more stifling. Robert pulled his jacket up around his head and ran for the cab.
Don’t, a little voice whispered from the back of Robert’s mind, don’t do that. He’ll be waiting for you. He’ll be waiting to take you down with him.
But it was too late; Robert was already climbing into the cab, grateful for the warmth and dryness. A stranger got in beside him, and Robert turned to rebuke him. His words died in his throat when he saw the man’s face. Honestly, Robert wasn’t sure why he was surprised, or who he had been expecting.
“This isn’t your dream,” Eames said.
“What?” Robert asked.
“I wanted to show you something,” Eames said.
Robert didn’t understand how Eames was there, or what he was talking about. He assumed outside of this dream he and Eames were both hooked up to the PASIV, both of them asleep, connected to the machine, connected to each other. Robert might have found that thought romantic if not for the fact that Eames had broken into his home, pumped drugs into his veins and invaded his mind all over again.
“No,” Robert said, “No. I don’t want to do this anymore, Eames. I’m sick of being your… Your little obsession.”
“That’s not what this is about,” Eames said, and, to the driver, “Corner of 45th, please.”
“What is this about, then?” Robert asked. He sounded tired to his own ears. He rested his forehead against the window and watched the rain splashing up from under the tires. He wanted to know, but then, he didn’t. Nothing Eames said would ever make things right. Nothing Eames showed him would ever erase what he’d done. Robert could no longer tell dreams from reality. That was not something Eames could ever hope to change.
“Setting things right,” Eames said. “Tit for tat, you know. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Robert sighed.
“You’ll see, love,” Eames said. “And I won’t bother you again. Scout’s honor, and all that.”
***
Robert thought he could still hear the rain, but it was hard to tell. They were inside some kind of apartment building. The paint was chipped from the walls; the carpet was pulled up at the corners. Certainly not an apartment from Robert’s own memories, he had never lived in such a dilapidated place.
Eames seemed to know the floor plan like the back of his hand. He wandered from room to room, running his hand along the peeled paint, almost admiring the dingy carpet under his shoes. Robert saw what looked to be a bloody handprint on the wall, just over the light switch. He swallowed, wished it was red paint, and looked away from it.
“Everyone has a sad story,” Eames said. “Everyone has that one sob story they tell when they’re feeling particularly self-loathing, or in need of some sympathy. I’ve never been the type to tell my sob story, love. I’d prefer people think I’m an unfeeling arse than to have them know just how deep some cuts go. There’s no healing for some wounds, is there? There’s just a lot of pain and a lot of regret and a lot of waiting around.”
Stop, Robert meant to say, I don’t want to hear anymore. I don’t want to see whatever you brought me here to see.
“And you know, before all of this, I was just Eames. Just a con-man working out of a flat in London the size of your shoe. Before that?”
Eames gestured at the room they stood in.
“Before that, I was here.”
***
There was a woman lying in the bed, her face hidden by her hair. A little boy knelt beside her, dabbing her neck and forehead with a damp cloth. He whispered to her, and the woman responded with raspy laughter. The boy drew the cloth away, and Robert saw it was covered with blood. The water the boy dunked the cloth into turned pink instantly. Robert shivered and looked away.
“My pop was a mean drunk,” Eames said. “He liked to work my mum over with his fists. Not so much as you’d notice most of the time. Nothing that a cheap pair of sunglasses and a long-sleeved shirt wouldn’t hide. When he wasn’t drunk, he was tolerable, sometimes even enjoyable. That didn’t stop me from killing him, though. Summer I turned fifteen. He hurt my mum so bad she could hardly walk. So I went into his room and I found the .38 he kept hidden in his sock drawer and I blew his brains out.”
Robert couldn’t be sure if that were true or not. But it didn’t matter. Eames had knocked the breath out of him anyway. Looking into his eyes - which turned from Robert the second they were found - he knew that it was true. Whatever had happened after that didn’t matter, Eames had shown the dirtiest, bloodiest, most vulnerable part of himself.
Tit for tat.
Robert felt sick.
“There’s something else though,” Eames said. He reached out and took Robert’s hand. His eyes looked old, centuries old. Robert dropped his stare to his shoes. “I want you to have something.”
***
The pinwheel turned. Its bright colors were strong enough to sting Robert’s eyes. There wasn’t a breath of wind but it still turned, and Robert looked up into Eames’ face.
“The only thing I ever gave you was a reason to doubt everything,” Eames said. “This will tell you what you need to know, though.”
“I don’t understand,” Robert said.
“You will,” Eames said.
***
Robert woke up with the dull beginnings of a migraine pulsing behind his eyes and at his temples. He laid there with no clear inclination of where he was or why he felt so miserable. Then Eames was beside him, talking to him in a low, easing tone. “There we go love,” Eames said. There was a slight pinch at the crook of his elbow, most likely where he’d been hooked up to the PASIV.
Robert sighed. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t disappointed, he was - blissfully, he supposed - numb to everything.
He looked down and saw the pinwheel. It wasn’t turning and its color seemed dull and flat. This will tell you what you need to know, Eames had said. Robert understood, and he supposed he should have known from the start what Eames meant. It was a totem, something that would prove to Robert that he was not dreaming, that the world he existed in was the only reality.
“There must have been a better way to get your point across,” Robert said.
“Hallmark didn’t have the right card,” Eames said. He waited for Robert to laugh, and when he didn’t, he smiled a little sadly. “I’m sorry,” Eames whispered.
Robert remained silent.
For some reason, Robert thought of his father. He had lived his life surrounded by a thousand acquaintances, but with no friends, with few lovers, with little meaningful human contact. He had died a stubborn old man, and he had died with the inability to forgive. Robert imagined that nothing as horrendous had been done to his father as what had been done to him, but on principle, it amounted to the same.
He would either live and die as his father had, or he would allow himself to become better, to become stronger.
Robert didn’t think it could ever be like it was, and that hurt. He loved Eames, he wanted a life with him, but there was forgiveness and there was blindness; Robert had never been one to shut his eyes against the truth.
He reached out and touched Eames’ face. For a moment, everything was the same. He felt Eames’ heavy stubble against his palm, and he smiled as he caressed his jaw. Eames moved his face against Robert’s palm, but he refused to look at him, he refused to admit that everything had changed and had to come to an end.
***
“Did your mother know what you did?” Robert asked.
“No,” Eames said. “I mean, yes. But she thought it was self-defense.” Eames laughed, bitterly, and lightly traced his thumb across Robert’s knuckles. “That bastard got what he deserved. I’m not sorry for him, or for myself.” Finally, Eames managed to raise his eyes to Robert’s. “I’m sorry for you. For what I did to you. I never… No, I was going to say I never meant to hurt you, but the truth is, I didn’t care. Not at first.”
No, of course he hadn’t. At first, Robert had been nothing more than a job. A pretty little rich boy the likes of which Eames had seen a hundred or a thousand times before. Like most rash judgments, Eames had been proven wrong about who Robert Fischer was, but of course, it had been too late by that point.
I died down there, Robert thought, Or I almost did. I remember a lot of darkness, and falling. And then I remember you. Just you, looking down at me. And I remember I thought, if I’m going to die, let it be here, let it be now. At least the view will be nice.
There was no going back, but there was going forward.
Robert kissed Eames goodbye.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Eames/Robert Fischer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mention of domestic abuse and violence.
Note: Thanks tocroik for doing such a wonderful beta job for me. :)
Word Count: 5,353
If Eames was being completely honest, he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.
Unusual, considering Eames was never without a plan. He liked knowing what was going to happen well before it did, and to be caught in such a situation, with no idea of where he was going or what might occur next, made him uneasy.
It had been so innocent at first. He had meant to casually check in on Robert, see if the old noggin had imploded, find out how stable he was, and then he’d be gone. He had never intended to get so close to the man so quickly, or to actually care whether what they had done had disrupted his life.
One dinner, Eames had thought, when he had asked Robert out rather spur of the moment, One night. It won’t make a difference.
Unfortunately, one dinner turned into two, and two turned into four, and four turned into a steamy half-clothed fuck in the backseat of Robert’s limo while the chauffeur pretended not to notice.
After that, Eames found the idea of walking away from Fischer extremely unappealing. What good would that do, after all? He’d be sitting around thinking of the way Robert smelled and tasted and the way he looked early in the morning when the sun was barely up and his hair was still tangled. Those weren’t things Eames was comfortable simply filing away to memory and pulling out on nights when he was just drunk enough to not give a wit where his mind wandered.
One month turned into two, two became three. Before Eames was even aware of what was happening, he was living with Robert in his expensive condo and making love with him on silk sheets. He was falling in love with him, and five months was turning into six.
Eames thought quite often of what they had done. At first, it was far easier to make the whole thing seem noble, or at least less monstrous. We were doing a job, Eames thought, That’s all. It became increasingly more difficult to swallow that lie when he took Robert to bed, or when he watched Robert curled up on the couch reading, or particularly when he watched Robert sleeping, naked and vulnerable and completely unaware of how deeply and viciously he’d been violated.
The job had been a human being. No matter what Cobb had said, no matter what justifications Eames tried to make, that simple truth could not be ignored. They had invaded Robert in a way that was improper, immoral, and inhumane.
Ariadne had asked, “What happens if he remembers?”
Cobb had answered simply, “He won’t.”
Ariadne, bless her soul, had been the only one of them to feel a pang of conscience. Cobb had been desperate to get the job done, desperate to get back home to his kids. Arthur had wanted only to make sure the job was done well, and to make sure Cobb didn’t end up killing himself. And Eames, well, he had wanted nothing more than to prove it could be done.
He had felt no more emotional attachment to Fischer than a scientist would to a lab rat. Until the vault, that was. Until Eames had been forced to see Robert Fischer not as a job that needed doing, but as a vulnerable, shattered man trying to cling to a tender thing that had always eluded him: his father’s love.
That was why the job had ended for the others, but not for Eames. He had not had the luxury of looking away, of pretending Robert was best left to his own devices. Someone that fragile and hurt couldn’t be better off on their own. So, Eames had gone to him, after the rest had returned to their homes and their jobs and their families. I just want to see, Eames had thought, I just want to see him. Then I’ll leave. No problem.
It was a huge problem, because Eames couldn’t leave Robert. Every night Eames lay beside Robert and told himself that it would be simple. He could slide out of bed, gather his clothes, and disappear into the night; he had certainly done it with enough of his lovers over the years. But every night, Eames would stay where he was, watching Robert sleep, listening to the steady sound of his breathing, and he would fall asleep curled up against him.
Eames knew he was in trouble the moment he went to bed with Robert and was perfectly content to just lie there with him and feel the shape of his body against his own. He knew there was no going back the moment he kissed his way from Robert’s temple to the bridge of his nose and told him he loved him.
He had seen things about Robert that Robert would never tell. He had seen some things that Robert was not even aware of about himself, at least consciously. Robert acted like a man who knew just what he wanted and how he would get it, but Eames knew it was nothing but an act. Deep down, underneath all of the false bravado, there was a little boy waiting for his father to love him. Sometimes the thought of that hurt Eames so much he couldn’t stand it.
But Robert, with his pale eyes and fragile smile, had changed everything. Eames had looked at him and realized that everything he had done before didn’t matter, and that everything he would go on to do didn’t matter either. What had mattered was that moment in that vault when he had seen Robert Fischer tear away every last pretense and decoration and expose himself. He had been naked for Eames in there, terribly vulnerable.
Eames had done what anyone would; he had watched Robert kneel in the pieces of his broken innocence, and he had done nothing to help him.
“Every dream I have is about you,” Robert said. He sounded amused, and Eames knew he expected him to find it amusing as well. Eames didn't, but he smiled and chuckled all the same. They were in bed together. Eames had his arm tucked over his eyes to block out the damn light Robert kept on while he read. Why the man didn’t own one of those fancy e-readers or whatever they were called Eames didn’t know, but some nights he wanted to beat Robert over the head with that damn lamp.
The words had a dreadful weight to them. Most likely Robert didn’t notice, and if he did, it wasn’t so terrible that he thought to mention it. For Eames, the words came as a shock, but then, why should he be shocked? He’d been expecting it since he’d come to Robert.
“What happens if he remembers?” Ariadne had asked. At the time, Eames had found her question superfluous. Who cared if Fischer remembered? Who cared if he was driven crazy by the thought of people digging through his mind and changing his perception of the world and his place within it? It was a job. He had thought Ariadne had shown promise, if she could manage to put a bandage on that bleeding heart of hers.
Lying in bed with Robert, Eames felt ashamed of himself. It wasn’t something he was used to feeling. Before Robert, everything had been about the job. Get in, get out, don’t make too big of a mess. It had been simple.
Except now he was invested in Robert, he was tangled up in him. Everything was bloody messy, and bloody difficult to unweave himself from. A part of him - a small, inconsequential part - wanted to tell Robert the truth. Despite how selfish Eames was, he might have done that if it had meant Robert would feel more in control, or more at peace with the fragmented memories that bled into his dreams. But that wasn’t the case, and Eames knew it. Robert had been violated, and there was nothing that could make it right.
So he bit his tongue when Robert stared at him with a crease in his forehead and swore that he knew him from some time before they had met. And he bit his tongue when Robert thrashed and cried in the middle of the night as he dreamed of something that, for all he knew, had been nothing but another dream.
There was no point in telling Robert the truth. All it would produce would be a shitstorm, with Eames on the receiving end. He would be thrown out, and Robert would continue to struggle with his own peace of mind. What good could come out of Eames being left out in the cold? What point was there in having a clean conscience and no warm body to curl up against at night?
So why, then, did Eames sit Robert down one night and tell him everything?
“You deserve to know,” Eames said. He didn’t want to look at Robert while he told him, but he guessed it was the honorable thing to do. Shit, he had never cared about honorable things before Fischer had come along. Eames looked up at Robert uncertainly. They were sitting together on the sofa and Eames was holding Robert’s hands. It was supposed to set Robert at ease, but he appeared to be more nervous by the tender way Eames held him. “Everything that I… I mean, you deserve to know everything that we… Goddammit, you deserve to know-“
“Eames,” Robert said. He leaned closer and curled his fingers under Eames’ jaw. “Whatever you need to tell me… You can. I want you to be honest with me. And I want to be honest with you. I- I love you, Eames.”
Well, fuck, that didn’t make things any easier.
How did you go about telling a man that the biggest decision of his life hadn’t been his own? How did you start a conversation that would reveal to someone that the most tender and loving moment with their father had been fabricated? How did you love someone so much and still intend on not only breaking their heart but possibly tearing apart their sanity?
Because I love you, Eames thought, I can’t lie to you anymore.
Eames began, somewhat ineloquently, “There’s this thing called inception…”
***
It was a painstaking process. A few times Robert stood and paced the floor with his hands shifting between shoving through his hair and pulling at his jacket. He stopped Eames a few times with shouts -- words that until that moment, Eames hadn’t known were even in Robert’s vocabulary. He threw things at him, mostly things that couldn’t injure Eames, but once it was a coffee mug and it nearly shattered against his temple.
Eames tried his best to calm Robert. He spoke in slow, dulcet tones and kept his eyes on Robert no matter how much he wanted to look away. He spoke of dreamshare and Robert relaxed, only because it was something he was acquainted with, but whenever he used the term ‘inception’ Robert became agitated, swearing and pacing and pulling at his hair.
When it was over - or at least when Eames was through explaining (or confessing) what he had done - there was a heavy, oppressive silence. He kept waiting for Robert to throw him out, to tell him that he was a perverse, immoral monster and he wanted nothing to do with him. But Robert looked exhausted, and entirely hollowed out. His eyes, which had earlier been ablaze with indignation and disgust, looked at Eames impassively.
He didn’t want to be the first one to break that silence. It felt like a minefield. One misstep, one breath, and everything would explode in his face. But Eames couldn’t stand the silence, and he couldn’t stand the blank way Robert looked at him.
“Say something,” Eames said, “Anything.”
More silence.
Eames became frantic. He begged Robert to speak. He begged him to throw more coffee mugs at his head. He begged Robert to punch him, to knock him around the room, to toss him out into the street and call him every dirty name in the book. When that seemed to have no effect on Robert, Eames shifted gears. He tried to explain himself, to make Robert understand why he had done it.
“There was… I told you about Saito… And how Cobb… Robert, we thought, we all thought that what we were doing… I didn’t know I’d end up here. I---“
“Stop,” Robert whispered.
Eames looked at him helplessly. He had never felt such a strong desire to kick his own ass before. He was behaving childishly, and stupidly, and trying to strong arm Robert into forgiving him. Robert didn’t have to forgive him. Robert didn’t have to look at him or speak to him or try to understand whatever petty motivations had been behind his involvement in inception. Robert was the one who had been wrong, the one who had been violated and manipulated. Robert was the one who decided who he forgave, how he forgave, and if he forgave.
Robert took up a pad and pencil and wrote something down. His hands were trembling, but he seemed to trust his hands more than his mouth. Eames could tell he was on the verge of crying, something he had seen Robert do only a few times, and he wanted Eames to be long gone before the dam burst.
He tore off the paper and handed it to Eames.
Get out.
Eames felt desperate words crawling up his throat, and he swallowed them. No, he wouldn’t beg Robert to rethink things. No, he wouldn’t tell Robert he was making a mistake. The only mistake Robert Fischer had ever made was trusting Eames.
Maybe there were a million things to say. Maybe there was so much that Robert needed to hear; maybe there was more that Robert needed to tell him. But those things didn’t matter. Robert had told him goodbye, in no uncertain terms, and no flowery language. Robert loved him, but Robert wanted him gone.
Like most things in Eames’ life, it wasn’t complicated.
***
Robert sat there for most of the night. Outwardly, he appeared perfectly fine, content even. He poured himself a glass of Merlot and filled his living room with the imperfectly perfect voice of Maria Callas. He hummed along with the music.
Inside, he was nearing the edge of something dark and dangerous. There was an abyss somewhere inside of him, and to feel it, to know that it existed, terrified Robert. He knew that if he thought too much of what Eames had told him, that if he allowed himself to seize upon the idea that his thoughts had, at one time, not been his own, he would fall into that darkness and there would be no bottom.
If he accepted that his thoughts hadn’t been his own then, what would stop him from wondering if they ever had been at all? What would keep him from wondering -- from obsessing over -- whether everything around him and within him was nothing but smoke and mirrors?
How could someone live with the thought that they were nothing more than a minor character in someone’s fevered dream? Or even their own fevered dream?
In the shadow of something so oppressively heavy and inexorably profound, the thought of Eames should have been miniscule. But of course he thought of Eames, and of course he felt tightness in his chest and sinking coldness in his stomach.
He loved him. It wasn’t anything complicated or deserving of a lot of attention. He loved Eames, he wanted him, but he couldn’t be with him. It wasn’t as though Eames had run around behind his back; he had violated Robert in ways that were unimaginable and inexcusable.
There were reasons for everything. There were excuses that could reduce the most barbarous actions to mere lapses in etiquette. But there was nothing that would ever justify what Eames had done, and what the rest of them had done. Eames was by far the worst, though. While the others had been content to manipulate him and treat his brain like their personal plaything, they had not followed Robert. They hadn’t made love to him and kissed him and held him.
Robert felt suddenly sick. He bolted from the sofa and ran into the bathroom, dropping his glass of wine as he went. He heard it shatter, but everything was becoming distant. He could hear himself panting, he could feel his heart pounding and his blood rushing through him. Colors lost their vibrancy and faded to gray. Robert collapsed against the toilet and retched. Nothing came.
He laid his face down against the porcelain. It was cold on his flushed skin and brought some of the world back into focus.
The son of Maurice Fischer was kneeling in the bathroom with his face pressed against the toilet. He was crying, his face wet with tears and snot. This was what Eames had done to him, what they all had done. He was broken now.
He gets to walk away, Robert thought. He gets to keep doing what he’s been doing. He doesn’t have to live this way. He doesn’t have to believe everything he’s even known or ever will know is nothing but some crazy, vivid dream. He doesn’t have to feel this black hole inside of him…
Robert could feel himself tipping slowly over that edge, down into that bottomless pit where he could never be sane or whole again. He closed his eyes. He tried to remember what he knew were solid and safe. His memories of his father helped some. They were bitter memories, but they were his.
The only sweet memory he had of his father had been nothing but a lie.
Eames had been watching, like some kind of predator, as Robert had exposed himself and kneeled there emotionally naked. Robert had never been a vulnerable man; he had always kept his emotions well hidden, as he’d been taught by his father. But Eames had seen everything. And what had he done with what he’d learned of Robert’s frailness? He’d come along and pounced on him, preyed on him like a weak animal.
He had responded to Eames’ easy smile and warm brown eyes. Robert had found himself captivated by him, spellbound by his lack of concern for what other people might be thinking about him. All of his life Robert had been painfully aware of everyone around him. What would they think if he dressed a certain way? What would they whisper about him if he spent his time with certain people?
Eames had swept all of those frivolous concerns by the wayside. When Robert kissed him, he didn’t care who saw, he didn’t care who whispered. He only wanted to kiss Eames, to be close to him, to feel that rush of emotion when Eames took him in his arms and the whole world melted away.
Everything had been a lie.
Robert slowly pulled himself to his feet. He switched on the light and looked at his face in the mirror. To his own eyes, he appeared to have aged ten years in less than an hour. He felt only the dullest of self-pity; against the knowledge that he might be nothing more than a figment of his, or someone else’s imagination, aesthetics weren’t that important.
“You were stupid,” Robert said to his reflection. “You were so stupid.”
It wasn’t fair of him to blame himself. It wasn’t fair that he had been mistreated, deceived and manipulated, yet he still believed he was responsible for every bit of it. Robert was nothing if not his father’s son. He was the choices he made, and the things he decided to believe. No matter who had lied to him, no matter how sweet those lies had been or how soft the voice had been against his ear, Robert had chosen to believe.
It was shitty and unfair and wrong, but Robert couldn’t stop himself. He looked at his reflection and he hated who he saw.
***
Typically when a relationship ended bitterly, Eames found comfort in one of two places: at the bottom of a glass of whisky, and between the sheets with some a random, sweaty body. After leaving Robert’s apartment - their apartment, though Eames doubted Robert would want him adding his name to the lease now - he decided against drinking his misery away.
Finding someone to take to bed wouldn’t help matters any either. They wouldn’t be Robert Fischer, so there was no way they could please him.
He found himself in a convenience store of all places, rooting through their greeting cards. Eames thought Hallmark made a card for every occasion, he was fairly sure he had seen everything from the more traditional ‘Happy Birthday’ to the more esoteric, ‘Sorry I ran over you with my minivan.’
Apparently there was no card explaining to your boyfriend how sorry you were that you’d stalked through his unconscious mind and engineered his thoughts and heavily influenced one of the most important decisions of his life.
Well, they were certainly missing out on a demographic: namely, Eames.
Eames got himself a motel room and ordered in Chinese food. He stared at his dinner, poking it every now and again to at least give the illusion that he meant to eat it. He wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to move. He wanted Robert, but he didn’t know what to say or how to say it.
Every dream worth having is about you, Eames thought. Yes, he should have said that. It sounded like poetry. It sounded like something that might have convinced Robert to give him a second chance. But Eames knew he was only kidding himself. This wasn’t some minor infraction like calling too late or buying the wrong brand of ice cream; what he had done was tantamount to brain-washing.
He worried about Robert. What would he do now that he knew the truth? Would he handle it well enough because of his militarization and his familiarity with dreamshare? Eames doubted that very much. No matter what Robert had learned, nothing could prepare him for what had happened to him.
An idea is a dangerous thing.
Eames pressed his palms against his eyes and waited for the ground to swallow him up. When that didn’t happen, he settled on waiting for daylight.
***
The dream was familiar.
Robert knew the minute he saw the cab waiting by the curb he had been there before. It was pouring down rain, the kind of rain that should make a warm day cooler, but only makes it more stifling. Robert pulled his jacket up around his head and ran for the cab.
Don’t, a little voice whispered from the back of Robert’s mind, don’t do that. He’ll be waiting for you. He’ll be waiting to take you down with him.
But it was too late; Robert was already climbing into the cab, grateful for the warmth and dryness. A stranger got in beside him, and Robert turned to rebuke him. His words died in his throat when he saw the man’s face. Honestly, Robert wasn’t sure why he was surprised, or who he had been expecting.
“This isn’t your dream,” Eames said.
“What?” Robert asked.
“I wanted to show you something,” Eames said.
Robert didn’t understand how Eames was there, or what he was talking about. He assumed outside of this dream he and Eames were both hooked up to the PASIV, both of them asleep, connected to the machine, connected to each other. Robert might have found that thought romantic if not for the fact that Eames had broken into his home, pumped drugs into his veins and invaded his mind all over again.
“No,” Robert said, “No. I don’t want to do this anymore, Eames. I’m sick of being your… Your little obsession.”
“That’s not what this is about,” Eames said, and, to the driver, “Corner of 45th, please.”
“What is this about, then?” Robert asked. He sounded tired to his own ears. He rested his forehead against the window and watched the rain splashing up from under the tires. He wanted to know, but then, he didn’t. Nothing Eames said would ever make things right. Nothing Eames showed him would ever erase what he’d done. Robert could no longer tell dreams from reality. That was not something Eames could ever hope to change.
“Setting things right,” Eames said. “Tit for tat, you know. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Robert sighed.
“You’ll see, love,” Eames said. “And I won’t bother you again. Scout’s honor, and all that.”
***
Robert thought he could still hear the rain, but it was hard to tell. They were inside some kind of apartment building. The paint was chipped from the walls; the carpet was pulled up at the corners. Certainly not an apartment from Robert’s own memories, he had never lived in such a dilapidated place.
Eames seemed to know the floor plan like the back of his hand. He wandered from room to room, running his hand along the peeled paint, almost admiring the dingy carpet under his shoes. Robert saw what looked to be a bloody handprint on the wall, just over the light switch. He swallowed, wished it was red paint, and looked away from it.
“Everyone has a sad story,” Eames said. “Everyone has that one sob story they tell when they’re feeling particularly self-loathing, or in need of some sympathy. I’ve never been the type to tell my sob story, love. I’d prefer people think I’m an unfeeling arse than to have them know just how deep some cuts go. There’s no healing for some wounds, is there? There’s just a lot of pain and a lot of regret and a lot of waiting around.”
Stop, Robert meant to say, I don’t want to hear anymore. I don’t want to see whatever you brought me here to see.
“And you know, before all of this, I was just Eames. Just a con-man working out of a flat in London the size of your shoe. Before that?”
Eames gestured at the room they stood in.
“Before that, I was here.”
***
There was a woman lying in the bed, her face hidden by her hair. A little boy knelt beside her, dabbing her neck and forehead with a damp cloth. He whispered to her, and the woman responded with raspy laughter. The boy drew the cloth away, and Robert saw it was covered with blood. The water the boy dunked the cloth into turned pink instantly. Robert shivered and looked away.
“My pop was a mean drunk,” Eames said. “He liked to work my mum over with his fists. Not so much as you’d notice most of the time. Nothing that a cheap pair of sunglasses and a long-sleeved shirt wouldn’t hide. When he wasn’t drunk, he was tolerable, sometimes even enjoyable. That didn’t stop me from killing him, though. Summer I turned fifteen. He hurt my mum so bad she could hardly walk. So I went into his room and I found the .38 he kept hidden in his sock drawer and I blew his brains out.”
Robert couldn’t be sure if that were true or not. But it didn’t matter. Eames had knocked the breath out of him anyway. Looking into his eyes - which turned from Robert the second they were found - he knew that it was true. Whatever had happened after that didn’t matter, Eames had shown the dirtiest, bloodiest, most vulnerable part of himself.
Tit for tat.
Robert felt sick.
“There’s something else though,” Eames said. He reached out and took Robert’s hand. His eyes looked old, centuries old. Robert dropped his stare to his shoes. “I want you to have something.”
***
The pinwheel turned. Its bright colors were strong enough to sting Robert’s eyes. There wasn’t a breath of wind but it still turned, and Robert looked up into Eames’ face.
“The only thing I ever gave you was a reason to doubt everything,” Eames said. “This will tell you what you need to know, though.”
“I don’t understand,” Robert said.
“You will,” Eames said.
***
Robert woke up with the dull beginnings of a migraine pulsing behind his eyes and at his temples. He laid there with no clear inclination of where he was or why he felt so miserable. Then Eames was beside him, talking to him in a low, easing tone. “There we go love,” Eames said. There was a slight pinch at the crook of his elbow, most likely where he’d been hooked up to the PASIV.
Robert sighed. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t disappointed, he was - blissfully, he supposed - numb to everything.
He looked down and saw the pinwheel. It wasn’t turning and its color seemed dull and flat. This will tell you what you need to know, Eames had said. Robert understood, and he supposed he should have known from the start what Eames meant. It was a totem, something that would prove to Robert that he was not dreaming, that the world he existed in was the only reality.
“There must have been a better way to get your point across,” Robert said.
“Hallmark didn’t have the right card,” Eames said. He waited for Robert to laugh, and when he didn’t, he smiled a little sadly. “I’m sorry,” Eames whispered.
Robert remained silent.
For some reason, Robert thought of his father. He had lived his life surrounded by a thousand acquaintances, but with no friends, with few lovers, with little meaningful human contact. He had died a stubborn old man, and he had died with the inability to forgive. Robert imagined that nothing as horrendous had been done to his father as what had been done to him, but on principle, it amounted to the same.
He would either live and die as his father had, or he would allow himself to become better, to become stronger.
Robert didn’t think it could ever be like it was, and that hurt. He loved Eames, he wanted a life with him, but there was forgiveness and there was blindness; Robert had never been one to shut his eyes against the truth.
He reached out and touched Eames’ face. For a moment, everything was the same. He felt Eames’ heavy stubble against his palm, and he smiled as he caressed his jaw. Eames moved his face against Robert’s palm, but he refused to look at him, he refused to admit that everything had changed and had to come to an end.
***
“Did your mother know what you did?” Robert asked.
“No,” Eames said. “I mean, yes. But she thought it was self-defense.” Eames laughed, bitterly, and lightly traced his thumb across Robert’s knuckles. “That bastard got what he deserved. I’m not sorry for him, or for myself.” Finally, Eames managed to raise his eyes to Robert’s. “I’m sorry for you. For what I did to you. I never… No, I was going to say I never meant to hurt you, but the truth is, I didn’t care. Not at first.”
No, of course he hadn’t. At first, Robert had been nothing more than a job. A pretty little rich boy the likes of which Eames had seen a hundred or a thousand times before. Like most rash judgments, Eames had been proven wrong about who Robert Fischer was, but of course, it had been too late by that point.
I died down there, Robert thought, Or I almost did. I remember a lot of darkness, and falling. And then I remember you. Just you, looking down at me. And I remember I thought, if I’m going to die, let it be here, let it be now. At least the view will be nice.
There was no going back, but there was going forward.
Robert kissed Eames goodbye.