Title: Images of the Wandering Eye
Title: Images of the Wandering Eye
Author: louie x
Rating: R
Series: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Word Count: 2050
Disclaimer: Not mine, not in anyway mine. Were it so, I would be as awesome as Christopher Nolan.
Summary: Arthur only got lost in limbo once.
Arthur only got lost in limbo once.
The jobs become more complicated after the Fischer inception. It becomes less of dream espionage with a bit of thievery and evolved into downright mind-control. Two levels no longer is any challenge, three and then four are par for the course.
Dom stays out of it for a while, wanting to focus on every fleeting moment of the present with his children. No one can blame him that, no one denies him that, and he's usually willing to take calls for consulting.
Arthur gets shot, bleeding out much too fast for him to properly focus. His hands are slippery and he can't work the combination on the safe in front of him. Built into the wall, it's the final piece to this layered puzzle of a corrupt politician's secrets.
Of all people to be his backup, to stay on this lowest level with him, Arthur is almost grateful that Eames stops him from cracking his head against the floor when he falls. Breathing is hard enough to do, the hiss and escape of air through a hole in his lungs from just one of the several bullets that had whizzed through him.
The further down into a person's mind they go, the more virulent and horrifying the security gets. Even those without training. Fischer had military training; they could handle that, sure. Four levels down, Arthur is reminded of terrible zombie movies where hoards of ravenous monsters that were once people are intent on devouring you in the most painful but skilled way. They would prolong the death, they would prolong the pain; Arthur is deliriously glad to die in Eames' arms rather than watching his entrails slip past the lips of something that used to be facets of a person.
He tells Eames the combination, tells him to finish the job. The door behind them is barricaded; they're trapped but able to escape if Eames just flips the switch in his hand. An explosive jump to kick them back up but Arthur knows he won't make it, kick or no, blood loss is starting to send him into shock. Eames is talking, saying something that probably would either annoy Arthur or make him wish he could fight the smile the man conjures in him.
He's died in dreams before. Usually it just means he wakes up. This time, he crashes into water and rock, battering him along with the flow of the current. Washing up on a beach is new, but he remembers what Ariadne had said of limbo: how it bore the old, tattered remains of the passion of the Cobbs.
Arthur gets bored in limbo easily. Too clinical, too aware, he's restless and so he tears down most of the buildings that were only moments from collapse. He leaves the small town, the collection of homes that Dom and Mal cherished, and closes off that bit of the endless city almost like a museum exhibit. Sitting in a home he'd been in, a place that he last saw Mal smile within, Arthur puts down his die on the dining room table.
Photos on the walls boast of a happy family, a family of dreamers with children whose smiles could light up a room. Arthur doesn't remember the last time he really dreamed without the machine's help. He can't remember the last time he stayed in a country for longer than a fortnight.
Arthur leaves the apartment home, taking the elevator down and exiting the gleaming lobby. His totem will gather dust, left in that place because Arthur just wants to breathe for a few minutes, just a few minutes.
He populates limbo with traces of Paris, Morocco, and some peculiar bastard child of Prague and London. There is old Louisiana style plantation architecture in the suburbs, with huge glass skyscrapers in the city. A woman bumps into him as he's staring at a building that reminds him of that horrid Gherkin building in the business district of London.
They're married within a year’s time and Arthur is a father of twin sons. She is the first of three wives that Arthur will take. He adores her, he does, but there's a strange doubt in his stomach when he lies beside her at night. As if he's forgotten something important. But usually the children would cry, or something else would require his attention.
He builds when he recalls he can.
At the firm age of fifty-seven, Arthur is staring up a new building. The last brick slides into place and sometimes he swears he can feel it. Like working a crick out of his neck, there's a moment of exhalation and ease. It's just another pull of a distant muscle that fills it with people, bustling about and making the world a safer, sounder place. The building is partially powered by friction; the slide of large metal orbs upon stone and steel columns move with a specially made combination of potential and kinetic energy. Up and down they slid, magnets pushing away from the apex and lowest most point of the structures.
"A bit flashy, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised," a man next to him says. He flashes a grin but stands with a sort of military structure that makes it easier for Arthur to return his smile. "They generate an impressive amount of energy," Arthur replies. "At the end of the day, the power is funneled into batteries to use for the next day."
The man hums a bit, interested but strangely distracted. His eyes take a lazy course over Arthur's face and his crisp, charcoal suit. Arthur wants to smack the man, to shake him and demand to know where he comes from because he sets Arthur on edge with the same ease that he stands shoulder-to-shoulder without even asking permission.
Arthur exhales and the man reaches out, an arm around his shoulders as his mind reels. "Eames," he murmurs, laughing in spite of the situation. "I.. I almost forgot you." The other man makes a put-upon gasp, an overly theatrical gesture while turning Arthur to walk with him down the lush avenue. Shops and restaurants pass on either side of them, but Arthur allows Eames to steer their feet, his eyes upon the man's face.
"You forgot a bit more than that, darling."
The words, the sound of his laughter; of all things to hold onto, Arthur feels the slippery temptation of madness. "Are you real?" he asks. He only asks because it's a shock to his system to consider not making projections of these people he once knew. How he'd not created a Mal or Dom to come visit his children, to have coffee with Ariadne and discuss architectural theory, or even an Eames to play cards with (the man had an infuriatingly strong poker face and usually emptied Arthur's pockets).
Eames takes a half step away and the distance allows him to shift his hold -amusingly possessive- from draping over Arthur's shoulders to calmly take his hand. They walk to the edge of the street, where touches of California's shorelines have left cliff edges that are sheer lines cutting the waves of one's mind away from his carefully sculpted city.
The sun is setting. Night is falling. Eames sits on the metal railing, his legs dangling over on the ocean side but he's still holding onto Arthur's hand. Arthur feels his stomach twist, his panic and fear clawing at his throat like vomit trying to escape from his stomach. There are thoughts of wife number three, of the children he's watched grow and the potential grandchildren that will come with the first snowfall at the end of the year.
He wants to tell Eames no, he wants to tell him to fuck off and leave him here because this place is-
"I'm the only real thing here." That careful London lilt, the not quite South London cockney but not the careful musical tones of Essex or the odd phrasing of the North. Just this peculiar way that only Eames would talk. Arthur feels his hands begin to shake. The other man's fingers flex, holding onto him tighter.
Arthur's vision becomes obscured. Tears of shameful defeat at not just doing this himself decades ago and Arthur breathes as if for the first time. God, he thinks, decades ago. Eames just smiles and nods toward the railing. Climbing up beside him, they watch the sun set together in a quiet, respectful silence.
A paisley handkerchief is handed to him and Arthur scoffs before using it. He doesn't want to know what he looks like, an older man with lines on his face and gray in his hair. He knows that he's not that thin, lithe body that his team used to count on as wife number two was Italian and Arthur ate like a king when they were happy together.
Eames doesn't give him warning. He tips forward, using his larger body weight to drag Arthur over the edge. The jerk sends Arthur's stomach up into his head and his mind spiraling out into a pitiful lack of vocabulary other than swears or prayers. He closes his eyes, expecting the brick-wall crash of the water's surface against his bones.
Instead he opens his eyes in a quiet, sweltering hotel room. He coughs, breathes, and automatically sits up. Ariadne, bless her, stops him from getting onto his feet and pulls out the PASIV feed from his wrist. On the other side of the room is a chemist, someone Yusef vouched for, who goes from wringing his thin hands with worry to clapping them and jumping in the air.
Quieter, softer, is the gloating from Eames. Sitting in a chair beside the bed, he stretches his arms and legs before getting to his feet. Arthur has no idea what to say to him, a mumble of thanks escapes first, but he has no chance to reiterate his gratitude. Eames grabs hold of his clothes, fisting the edge of his waistcoat and enough of his tie to jerk Arthur forward. He kisses his way into Arthur's mouth. It's not a sweeping, romantic kiss, it's not an insult, but its decades worth of something writ into the way that Eames bites his lower lip. Once he stops, Arthur looks through his lashes, down the line of his nose, and lets Eames just breathe the very air out his lungs before the man moves away.
Ariadne's face is flushed and Arthur doesn't even know how he must look. Rumpled and exhausted, mouth lush and lips still parted, he nevertheless smiles.
Four confident rolls of his die later and Arthur relaxes. Reality moves slowly around him, filled with aspects of randomness that his mind could never truly measure or expect. Eames kisses him again when the others leave, then threatens Arthur with a real, permanent death if he dares to slide into limbo again.
His hand is tight around Arthur's own closed fist, the die biting into his palm and the folds of his fingers. Arthur looks away, gazing out the window where beyond the flimsy curtain a city lurks, nightlife just aching for drinks and dinner to be gifted to their harried team. He shakes his head a bit and smiles, looking at Eames with his brows raised in what he hopes is read as a non-hostile gesture.
They stay in bed, texting the others to put the meal on the room's tab. Arthur isn't looking for sex -the silent dangling 'yet' is the only thing that stops Eames from playfully complaining- but rather savors the weight of the man against his side as an anchor. He rolls the die around in his palm, not bothering with the numbers but remembering the shift and slide of the mercury within it, closing his eyes to focus on the infinitesimally small details of reality. Hypnotic and imperfect, Arthur inhales them with every breath.
Eames somewhat ruins the stillness of the moment by commenting upon the crap artwork that's on the other side of the room. Arthur just laughs as Eames starts in on another -of many- tirades on why he finds Rococo artwork so tedious. "Damned leaves and oddly sexy cherubs aside, of course," he mentions.
"Of course," Arthur replies, mouth against Eames' jaw.
Author: louie x
Rating: R
Series: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Word Count: 2050
Disclaimer: Not mine, not in anyway mine. Were it so, I would be as awesome as Christopher Nolan.
Summary: Arthur only got lost in limbo once.
Arthur only got lost in limbo once.
The jobs become more complicated after the Fischer inception. It becomes less of dream espionage with a bit of thievery and evolved into downright mind-control. Two levels no longer is any challenge, three and then four are par for the course.
Dom stays out of it for a while, wanting to focus on every fleeting moment of the present with his children. No one can blame him that, no one denies him that, and he's usually willing to take calls for consulting.
Arthur gets shot, bleeding out much too fast for him to properly focus. His hands are slippery and he can't work the combination on the safe in front of him. Built into the wall, it's the final piece to this layered puzzle of a corrupt politician's secrets.
Of all people to be his backup, to stay on this lowest level with him, Arthur is almost grateful that Eames stops him from cracking his head against the floor when he falls. Breathing is hard enough to do, the hiss and escape of air through a hole in his lungs from just one of the several bullets that had whizzed through him.
The further down into a person's mind they go, the more virulent and horrifying the security gets. Even those without training. Fischer had military training; they could handle that, sure. Four levels down, Arthur is reminded of terrible zombie movies where hoards of ravenous monsters that were once people are intent on devouring you in the most painful but skilled way. They would prolong the death, they would prolong the pain; Arthur is deliriously glad to die in Eames' arms rather than watching his entrails slip past the lips of something that used to be facets of a person.
He tells Eames the combination, tells him to finish the job. The door behind them is barricaded; they're trapped but able to escape if Eames just flips the switch in his hand. An explosive jump to kick them back up but Arthur knows he won't make it, kick or no, blood loss is starting to send him into shock. Eames is talking, saying something that probably would either annoy Arthur or make him wish he could fight the smile the man conjures in him.
He's died in dreams before. Usually it just means he wakes up. This time, he crashes into water and rock, battering him along with the flow of the current. Washing up on a beach is new, but he remembers what Ariadne had said of limbo: how it bore the old, tattered remains of the passion of the Cobbs.
Arthur gets bored in limbo easily. Too clinical, too aware, he's restless and so he tears down most of the buildings that were only moments from collapse. He leaves the small town, the collection of homes that Dom and Mal cherished, and closes off that bit of the endless city almost like a museum exhibit. Sitting in a home he'd been in, a place that he last saw Mal smile within, Arthur puts down his die on the dining room table.
Photos on the walls boast of a happy family, a family of dreamers with children whose smiles could light up a room. Arthur doesn't remember the last time he really dreamed without the machine's help. He can't remember the last time he stayed in a country for longer than a fortnight.
Arthur leaves the apartment home, taking the elevator down and exiting the gleaming lobby. His totem will gather dust, left in that place because Arthur just wants to breathe for a few minutes, just a few minutes.
He populates limbo with traces of Paris, Morocco, and some peculiar bastard child of Prague and London. There is old Louisiana style plantation architecture in the suburbs, with huge glass skyscrapers in the city. A woman bumps into him as he's staring at a building that reminds him of that horrid Gherkin building in the business district of London.
They're married within a year’s time and Arthur is a father of twin sons. She is the first of three wives that Arthur will take. He adores her, he does, but there's a strange doubt in his stomach when he lies beside her at night. As if he's forgotten something important. But usually the children would cry, or something else would require his attention.
He builds when he recalls he can.
At the firm age of fifty-seven, Arthur is staring up a new building. The last brick slides into place and sometimes he swears he can feel it. Like working a crick out of his neck, there's a moment of exhalation and ease. It's just another pull of a distant muscle that fills it with people, bustling about and making the world a safer, sounder place. The building is partially powered by friction; the slide of large metal orbs upon stone and steel columns move with a specially made combination of potential and kinetic energy. Up and down they slid, magnets pushing away from the apex and lowest most point of the structures.
"A bit flashy, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised," a man next to him says. He flashes a grin but stands with a sort of military structure that makes it easier for Arthur to return his smile. "They generate an impressive amount of energy," Arthur replies. "At the end of the day, the power is funneled into batteries to use for the next day."
The man hums a bit, interested but strangely distracted. His eyes take a lazy course over Arthur's face and his crisp, charcoal suit. Arthur wants to smack the man, to shake him and demand to know where he comes from because he sets Arthur on edge with the same ease that he stands shoulder-to-shoulder without even asking permission.
Arthur exhales and the man reaches out, an arm around his shoulders as his mind reels. "Eames," he murmurs, laughing in spite of the situation. "I.. I almost forgot you." The other man makes a put-upon gasp, an overly theatrical gesture while turning Arthur to walk with him down the lush avenue. Shops and restaurants pass on either side of them, but Arthur allows Eames to steer their feet, his eyes upon the man's face.
"You forgot a bit more than that, darling."
The words, the sound of his laughter; of all things to hold onto, Arthur feels the slippery temptation of madness. "Are you real?" he asks. He only asks because it's a shock to his system to consider not making projections of these people he once knew. How he'd not created a Mal or Dom to come visit his children, to have coffee with Ariadne and discuss architectural theory, or even an Eames to play cards with (the man had an infuriatingly strong poker face and usually emptied Arthur's pockets).
Eames takes a half step away and the distance allows him to shift his hold -amusingly possessive- from draping over Arthur's shoulders to calmly take his hand. They walk to the edge of the street, where touches of California's shorelines have left cliff edges that are sheer lines cutting the waves of one's mind away from his carefully sculpted city.
The sun is setting. Night is falling. Eames sits on the metal railing, his legs dangling over on the ocean side but he's still holding onto Arthur's hand. Arthur feels his stomach twist, his panic and fear clawing at his throat like vomit trying to escape from his stomach. There are thoughts of wife number three, of the children he's watched grow and the potential grandchildren that will come with the first snowfall at the end of the year.
He wants to tell Eames no, he wants to tell him to fuck off and leave him here because this place is-
"I'm the only real thing here." That careful London lilt, the not quite South London cockney but not the careful musical tones of Essex or the odd phrasing of the North. Just this peculiar way that only Eames would talk. Arthur feels his hands begin to shake. The other man's fingers flex, holding onto him tighter.
Arthur's vision becomes obscured. Tears of shameful defeat at not just doing this himself decades ago and Arthur breathes as if for the first time. God, he thinks, decades ago. Eames just smiles and nods toward the railing. Climbing up beside him, they watch the sun set together in a quiet, respectful silence.
A paisley handkerchief is handed to him and Arthur scoffs before using it. He doesn't want to know what he looks like, an older man with lines on his face and gray in his hair. He knows that he's not that thin, lithe body that his team used to count on as wife number two was Italian and Arthur ate like a king when they were happy together.
Eames doesn't give him warning. He tips forward, using his larger body weight to drag Arthur over the edge. The jerk sends Arthur's stomach up into his head and his mind spiraling out into a pitiful lack of vocabulary other than swears or prayers. He closes his eyes, expecting the brick-wall crash of the water's surface against his bones.
Instead he opens his eyes in a quiet, sweltering hotel room. He coughs, breathes, and automatically sits up. Ariadne, bless her, stops him from getting onto his feet and pulls out the PASIV feed from his wrist. On the other side of the room is a chemist, someone Yusef vouched for, who goes from wringing his thin hands with worry to clapping them and jumping in the air.
Quieter, softer, is the gloating from Eames. Sitting in a chair beside the bed, he stretches his arms and legs before getting to his feet. Arthur has no idea what to say to him, a mumble of thanks escapes first, but he has no chance to reiterate his gratitude. Eames grabs hold of his clothes, fisting the edge of his waistcoat and enough of his tie to jerk Arthur forward. He kisses his way into Arthur's mouth. It's not a sweeping, romantic kiss, it's not an insult, but its decades worth of something writ into the way that Eames bites his lower lip. Once he stops, Arthur looks through his lashes, down the line of his nose, and lets Eames just breathe the very air out his lungs before the man moves away.
Ariadne's face is flushed and Arthur doesn't even know how he must look. Rumpled and exhausted, mouth lush and lips still parted, he nevertheless smiles.
Four confident rolls of his die later and Arthur relaxes. Reality moves slowly around him, filled with aspects of randomness that his mind could never truly measure or expect. Eames kisses him again when the others leave, then threatens Arthur with a real, permanent death if he dares to slide into limbo again.
His hand is tight around Arthur's own closed fist, the die biting into his palm and the folds of his fingers. Arthur looks away, gazing out the window where beyond the flimsy curtain a city lurks, nightlife just aching for drinks and dinner to be gifted to their harried team. He shakes his head a bit and smiles, looking at Eames with his brows raised in what he hopes is read as a non-hostile gesture.
They stay in bed, texting the others to put the meal on the room's tab. Arthur isn't looking for sex -the silent dangling 'yet' is the only thing that stops Eames from playfully complaining- but rather savors the weight of the man against his side as an anchor. He rolls the die around in his palm, not bothering with the numbers but remembering the shift and slide of the mercury within it, closing his eyes to focus on the infinitesimally small details of reality. Hypnotic and imperfect, Arthur inhales them with every breath.
Eames somewhat ruins the stillness of the moment by commenting upon the crap artwork that's on the other side of the room. Arthur just laughs as Eames starts in on another -of many- tirades on why he finds Rococo artwork so tedious. "Damned leaves and oddly sexy cherubs aside, of course," he mentions.
"Of course," Arthur replies, mouth against Eames' jaw.