Like Spinning Plates, Pt. 1/2d
***Inception***
Arthur doesn’t remember how he got home that night.
He just comes to his room, past his father, drunk at the dining table, takes off his clothes and lies in his bed.
Two days later, Stuart is considered missing. His mom and dad go to school, both sobbing, and the principal orders to hang around hundreds of Stuart’s photos with his features under them.
Two weeks later, Stuart’s body is found somewhere deep in the forest, or more exactly, the remains of his body.
The boy was disemboweled, the police says to the parents.
It must be that Utah psychopath-pedophile, they say.
Arthur knows better.
After the night in the forest Edward only comes a couple of times, always silent, just staring at Arthur from under the fringe.
The morning after That Night, when Arthur is picking up his clothes from the floor, he sees a tiny red blood spot on the collar of his shirt, the one he had worn to the bus station to meet with Stuart.
Arthur doesn’t let himself think about that.
Only a month later he notices, Edward has not been coming to him for a while. He doesn’t know when it stopped, just, suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore.
Still, Arthur thinks he feels Edward’s cold stare all the time, watching him silently, judging him.
He doesn’t think about that, either, pushing these thoughts away, like he’s used to with everything else, repressing the desire to see Edward again, repressing every thought about Stuart and what had really happened that night.
He doesn’t think about the fact he’s actually ill, mentally ill. He knows he can’t go anywhere about this, because he’s sure once he’s with a shrink, they will be able to figure what’s wrong with them, and ten they’ll start to dig and find out what happened.
Arthur might be sick, but that doesn’t make him less smart, and he knows he’ll have to be responsible for Stuart even if he hasn’t done anything.
Though, this he isn’t absolutely sure of, anymore.
***Inception***
Edward comes again when Arthur is sixteen, and he’s feeling lonely and depressed. Edward is just suddenly in the room with him, still looking twenty-five, not having changed a bit, making Arthur feel small and helpless against him.
“How have you been, my boy?” He says, smiling coldly.
“Stop calling me that!” Arthur yells, and it’s nothing like it used to be between them - warm and friendly. Now it just feels… torturous. “What are you doing here?! Get the fuck away from me!”
“What, aren’t you glad to see your first and only friend? We’ve been together for a lot of years, Arthur, dear.”
“I don’t care!” Arthur says through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to see you ever again, you sick fuck!”
“Now that was rude” Edward hisses and a jolt of pain goes through Arthur’s head. He falls on his knees. “I get angry, when I’m treated rudely. Do you want me to get angry?”
Arthur doesn’t say anything, writhing on the floor, his head killing him.
“Do you want me to get angry, Arthur?”
“NO!” Arthur shouts, and the pain eases. Slowly, clumsily, he gets to his feet.
“Why don’t you want to see me anymore?” Edward asks, pure innocence. Arthur doesn’t buy this shit.
“You are not real, Edward! So stop ruining my life!”
“Ruining your life?! So that’s what I’m doing know?”
“No, no, I’m sorry” Arthur says hastily, before Edward gets mad, “of course you’re not”
Edward keeps staring at, his eyes covered with his fringe.
“Why are you here, Edward?” He asks wearily.
“Because you need me, like you always have”
“No I don’t! I don’t” he states, doing his best to remain self-controlled. “I don’t and I haven’t for almost four years now, so please do understand that your assistance is not required. Not anymore” And that is true. He’s been very good so far at ignoring all the memories of Edward and That Night. He doesn’t need this to be ruined by Edward now.
“Ah, I see” Edward smirks, tilting his head to the side. “But I wouldn’t be so sure of that, taking into consideration the other night last week when you were crying into your pillow for hours like you are six, not sixteen.”
His eyes go wide. “You -”
“Of course I was watching you, Arthur! I’ve told you so many times already that I’m always with you, I’m always watching you even though you don’t see me”
He shuts his eyes with a pained expression. “Alright, now please go”
And then the voice sounds right in his head: “Are you afraid of me now, my boy?”
He shudders, hearing the endearment and wishing he wouldn’t hear it ever again. His heart is beating painfully in his chest and his throat is dry but he can’t not answer, or Edward will be mad.
“No”
“Don’t you dare lie to me, Arthur!” Edward hisses and the echo of his voice sounds in Arthur’s ears painfully, accompanied with feverish whispering and he suddenly feels like crying. “Don’t you dare do that, or may be you want to see me angry?!”
He doesn’t answer, his eyes hurt as he shuts them so tightly.
“Do you?!”
“NO, I DON’T! Yes, I’m afraid of you, yes, who wouldn’t be, considering what you’ve done to Stuart!?”
And he sobs hard, his whole body shaking with fear, hurt, anger, confusion, grief. The memories he’s been trying so hard to ignore all these years, they are forcefully taken out of him, being shoved into his face, the wounds that he thought had already healed are now torn open again and Edward sticks his fingers into them, making it hurt even more.
Arthur knows at first hand what it is like when Edward is angry and for the life of him he doesn’t want to ever experience it again.
He still feels too guilty to visit Stuart’s grave after all this time.
So, he takes a deep breath and repeats firmly: “Go away, Edward”
“But why?”
And all over again it starts.
***Inception***
Edward disappears again one day, just like that - Arthur gets home and goes to bed. Edward hasn’t been around the whole day, not in school, not at home. The next day goes by and Edward - he’s just not there anymore.
He’s happy, ecstatic even, but the thought, rooted deeply in his mind - won’t leave him, no matter how hard he tried, eating at him.
One day, Edward will come back.
***Inception***
So Arthur keeps living his life, making friends, communicating, though he never feels really comfortable around them. He just waits, for a day to end, for a month to pass, for school to finish.
As soon as he graduates, he goes to military, never really missing the friends he’d made at school.
He finds he’s good at following orders, he’s good at doing whatever he’s being ordered to, because this way he’s not responsible for his actions.
He joins the Project Somnacin, when he’s twenty-three, and he finds he’s good at that, either. He can build a dreamworld worth something, he can kill projections like nobody’s business, and most importantly - he’s very good at cleaning his mind, at controlling his subconscious.
He’s the best.
He’s so good, that one day, a guy, named Dom Cobb comes and asks Arthur to join him and his wife with their experiments at dream-sharing, and Arthur goes, partly because he’s good at it, partly because he enjoys it, but mostly because he has nothing to do with his life.
He likes Cobb, and likes Mal, so he goes along with it, in the process, somehow, managing to make his first real friends.
When he’s twenty-five, he moves to Los-Angeles, so he’s closer with Dom and Mal.
This year, he receives a call, informing him that his father is dead.
He feels nothing.
***Inception***
When he’s twenty-six, he meets Eames for the first time.
Eames is loud and playful and broad and handsome, and he reminds Arthur of somebody, somebody that he doesn’t remember, but is supposed to, somebody that makes his head hurt.
He calls Arthur stupid pet names, that remind him of something wrong and bad and scary, and Arthur doesn’t like feeling those, but Eames never stops.
He doesn’t like Eames instantly.
After every job with the man, Arthur is left feeling things he’s sure he isn’t supposed to feel, and it makes him helpless and angry, and it makes him hate Eames even more.
After the fourth job with Eames, Arthur figures he wants the man.
He wants that fucking bastard with thousand faces, who keeps poking Arthur and provoking him, who is handsome and charming, who flirts with him and never really means it, who probably doesn’t care about anything but himself.
He’s hard every time Eames so much as licks his lips, and that, more than anything, makes Arthur feel mad and pathetic, and the wave of disgust for himself is so huge, Arthur can’t even look at himself in the mirror.
Eames, fuck him, has this thing about liking to be underestimated. He jokes and acts like he doesn’t know the meaning of the long words and the names of famous books and movies, like he sometimes doesn’t know what everybody is talking about, but Arthur sees right trough this bullshit. He knows Eames is far cleverer than people give him credit for.
Actually, Eames is one of the smartest people Arthur knows, including Cobb. He is smart and calculating, always three steps ahead of everyone else, and he is all by himself, like a lone wolf, and he always sees the benefit for himself in absolutely anything.
Eames is perfect at controlling his emotions, something Arthur had used to be good at, too, before he met the fucking forger.
After the fifth job with Eames, the Big Headaches start. Arthur does his best to ignore them.
After the seventh job with Eames he starts feeling sick. He doesn’t let himself worry about that, either.
After the tenth job with Eames, the incident with the black mist happened, the one Arthur pushed to the back of his mind.
After the twelfth job with Eames, Edward comes back, so here he is now.
***Inception***
***Inception***
Arthur tells Eames almost all of this, one huge fucked-up biography, but it feels great, it feels absolutely amazing to fucking finally open up and spill this shit he’s felt and suppressed for years to somebody who’s fucking real.
Eames is silent for a long time, long enough for Arthur to start thinking he’s made a huge mistake telling Eames this, but then Eames just closes the space between them and pulls Arthur in a bone-crashing hug, his hands meeting on Arthur’s back.
It’s been such a long time since anybody touched him like that, and Arthur is confused and shocked, when Eames’ nose presses to the skin between Arthur’s neck and shoulder, and he feels Eames’ hot breath on his clavicles, and without thinking he hugs Eames back.
“Arthur, Arthur, oh god, darling, oh god” He hears Eames whispering like mantra, and the next moment Eames’ soft warm lips are pressing to his temple, his forehead, his cheek, nose, eyelids, before tentatively meeting with Arthur’s own.
It is wonderful, amazing, fabulous, better than anything Arthur has ever tried in his entire life, and he goes for it, kissing Eames in response, with a kind of desperation and greediness that he’s felt for so long.
Near the window, Edward stands, leaning against the wall, arms crossed and he says: Remember you are mine, darling
He says: This Eames better let you go now that he knows what you’re capable of, my boy
And then: Have you forgotten what I’ve done for you? What we came through together?
And: I think you need a reminder.
***Inception***
Part 2/2