What Happens in Saratoga
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Stick a fork in it, it’s finally done!
I can honestly say: Labor of Love, this one. Fun and exciting for me, and hopefully for the rest of you too.
Title: What Happens in Saratoga
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur, Eames
Words: 9400
Rating: NC-17 like whoa. The sex, the violence, the violent sex, I mean really Tarantino should have directed this fic, long conversations and all. Also, if you like intercrural sex, you might like this story.
Warnings: Consensual violence, both sexual and not, some of which is graphic, and nearly all of which is negotiated. Or tries to be.
This fic follows: the events of Four Corners, A Well-Defined Function, and In Violation of Coypright, though it doesn’t depend on them, and you don’t have to read them first.
Summary: ...stays in Saratoga. And then doesn’t.
In which Eames and Arthur learn some mutual trust by beating the crap out of each other.
What Happens in Saratoga
inception
“I’m only saying that I know where you go, after.” Eames traces lines in the condensation on his water glass and smirks, at it, at Arthur. Arthur stares. “How quaintly therapeutic.”
“Wonderful,” Arthur tells him, and Eames would have to be an innocent to see any honestly in that. “The secret’s out. You read pop horror, I lose myself in a crowd. Alert the media.”
“About this? Certainly not. All I’m saying is I’m prepared to offer you better.”
“Better,” Arthur repeats, dubious as the odds of Eames’ longshot horse winning this particular race.
Saratoga’s all well and good, but Arthur would rather be at Ascot. The noise is different here, more raucous, and the tablecloths are checkered red and white. At least, from the deck, Arthur doesn’t have to strain out of his seat to see the track. Arthur knows Eames bet on Lucheni, who is currently neck-in-neck with the leader Ends Well (much to the announcer’s evident glee). Arthur’s placed his bets on No New Taxes, currently running a nose behind third, with a quarter to go.
“Better.”
“How?”
“Come now, haven’t you been wanting to hit me since Saitoh flew me in?”
“Longer, if you mean literally.”
“I do.”
The cheering for the winning horse-No New Taxes, and Arthur’s pleased with that-dies down, enough. Arthur doesn’t know whether to laugh or give Eames what he evidently wants right now. In the end, he does neither.
Eames drains his drink, then leans in, levels himself with Arthur, close enough that if Arthur wanted to (and he doesn’t) he could count the places Eames’ stubble doesn’t conform to facial symmetry. “I don’t know what you do on your levels, up there all alone, the ghost in all our figurative machines. I won’t ask. I imagine you’re entirely equipped to handle that yourself, Darling, that’s what you are. But afterward? That’s our business,” he says, and settles back into his chair. Arthur listens to it creak. The sound cuts through the entire racetrack, it seems, announcers and horses and all. “I’m just concerned for your mental health.”
“If you’re trying to make me want to hit you less, you’re failing miserably.”
Eames smiles, and there’s breath on it, pushing past his teeth. “Arthur, I’m giving you permission to hit me.”
-
Which, interestingly enough, doesn’t lead to them setting up Arthur’s PASIV in Eames’ room at the Saratoga Hilton, no matter how much Arthur thinks about it from his own room at a nearby bed and breakfast.
Some of the things Eames said have persistent echoes in Arthur’s mind. Yes, they’ve hurt each other in dreams, sometimes considerably. Arthur’s killed Eames a pleasantly grand total of thirty-eight times, most of them in cold blood, which is a perfectly respectable number among serial killers-a stray thought which leads to a twinge of disgust on Arthur’s part, when he considers the number. But the acts of harm, the fighting, they both enjoyed it, and it has led to sex, imagined first and real sometime after. And Eames might not have to have said it as smugly as he did but it’s true, Arthur likes the challenge that Eames poses in particular. Arthur knows he fascinates Eames, not that Eames admits it, and not that Arthur admits that the frustration is entirely mutual.
But, rationally, the last thing Arthur wants after tearing Eames (and Cobb, and Ariadne, and Yusuf, and whatever subjects they come by) to somewhat literal shreds is more deliberate violence, more calculated slaughter.
Rationally, anyway.
There’s a lot about Eames that makes the rational parts of Arthur’s life seem foreign, cancerous, caustic.
-
“Ground rules,” Arthur says, a few weeks later, on the job in Austin, Texas, and he’ll be surprised if Saratoga is the first thing on Eames’ mind.
“About what?” It isn’t. Good, there are some things in this world that continue to make sense.
“Fighting you,” Arthur says, because any attempt to couch it in euphemism sounds ridiculous in his head.
Eames closes his laptop’s lid-the person he’s forging for this job, conveniently, has a youtube account and fancies himself a film critic-and plucks out his earbuds. The way he raises his eyebrows, Arthur’s expecting something lewd out of him, but he gets a “What brought this on?” instead.
“That’s one of the ground rules,” Arthur says. “You don’t ask me, I don’t ask you.”
“Fair enough.” Eames pushes out of his chair. “I’m assuming you mean now?”
Arthur hadn’t, but he knows if he waits, the urge will peter out into a niggling reminder and flare up inconveniently like a goddamned migraine.
Eames doesn’t wait for an answer.
“So,” Arthur says, once they’re sitting on the chaises, the PASIV between them, awkward as the images still burnt into Arthur’s eyes, “the rest of the rules.”
“I’d expect as much,” Eames agrees, swabbing the back of his hand. He throws Arthur a towlette packet once he’s done, and Arthur catches it easily and rips it open.
“One. Well, two. We do this until one of us dies, or both of us get off.”
Eames laughs, once, brusque. “Emending a few lines from the military book, are you.”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “Three. Mercy kills have to be consensual.”
“And if they can’t be?”
“Then it’s at the discretion of the person still standing.” Arthur’s satisfied with the cleanliness of his hand, now, and sets about finding a vein.
“You mean you’d like to watch me squirm,” Eames says, setting the timer. “Ten minutes?”
“Should be enough-Yusuf’s blend, or regular Somnacin?”
Eames checks. “Yusuf’s. The new one. No sedative.”
“Fine.”
“And your dream?”
“Yes,” Arthur says. “Unless you’ve got something in mind.”
“I’ll lay a ground rule of my own,” Eames says, settling the needle in his hand and swinging his legs up onto the chaise. “You ask, you dream.”
Arthur nods. The vein in the back of his hand is dancing, even after he stabs at it.
-
The first time they fought like this, it was an invasion. It was Eames superseding Arthur’s projections, realigning his gravities, asserting his control over the space until Arthur broke and tried to kick him out of it. Well, the invasion’s gone but the control’s the same. Arthur builds a parking garage, sloped concrete floors and improvised weapons always at hand-this job’s gotten to him, more than he’ll consciously admit, but a subconscious admission’s to be expected, as sick as it makes him.
Eames laughs. “Car,” he warns, just as one drives by, nearly catching the tip of Arthur’s shoe. So his projections are already out for blood, are they? Wonderful. And Eames, observant as ever, additionally has the gall to ask, “Mixing work and play?”
“Can’t help what’s on my mind,” Arthur says.
“Sure you can. That’s the point of lucid dreaming.”
“You’re an ass.”
Eames grins. “I believe that’s also the point of this exercise.”
As clichéd as it is, Arthur’s first impulse is to complete the literality of this all by socking Eames in the jaw. The concrete floor is inclined and Arthur’s higher than Eames on it, for now, which gives him an advantage when he makes it look like he’s doing just that. Eames wouldn’t-and doesn’t-expect a knee in the sternum instead. Eames doubles over but doesn’t buckle, wraps his arms around Arthur’s waist and drags him to the floor.
They roll down the concrete incline, tearing into each other-Eames comes out on top, swerves, grabs Arthur by the hair and slams him into the rear fender of a parked car. Arthur blinks back stars, wrangles his fists together and hammers them into Eames’ nose. It’s enough to break it.
Then the car starts.
The exhaust heats, shaking and warm and then hot right by Arthur’s back. Arthur doesn’t scream, but does hurl himself at Eames with everything he has, disadvantaged position or none. Eames is big, it’s easy to forget that, more stony muscle than he probably deserves and Arthur would snarl about that if he could spare the breath. But that’s the choice that gets Arthur moving before the car, that sends Eames skidding on his ass and Arthur staggering to his feet, running out and up before the car kicks into gear. He knows that car is going to be chasing him. “You’re cheating.”
“Can’t help my subconscious,” Eames says, though the blood-drenched hand over his mouth and nose muffles that a fair bit.
“Of course you can,” Arthur flings right back at him, “that’s the point of luc-”
It’s not that car that hits Arthur. It’s another, coming down the incline. Arthur registers that it’s an atrocious shade of lavender and as square as a classic Cadillac before the impact drops him. It doesn’t kick him out of the dream-shatters his hip, that he knows, in the part of him that can still think-and he’s not so much clinging to the hood as being clung to by it, and dumped to the curb at the bottom once the car turns.
Arthur knows that only adrenaline and the logic of dreams are allowing him to see straight. It still feels like Eames is an island, descending the incline slowly, the blood from his broken nose blotting out the pattern of his shirt. He’s not smiling. Arthur’s a bit confused, Eames isn’t smiling....
He kneels, one knee on either side of Arthur’s mangled hip. The reek of his blood is terrifying, familiar. “So? Did I win?”
Eames still isn’t smiling.
Arthur draws his gun and shoots Eames in the throat, right under the chin. He’d ask to see the exit wound, but at this range, that probably consists of most of Eames’ neck.
-
When Arthur bleeds out and wakes up, Eames is already on top of him, pinning him to the chaise. He’s not smiling in reality either, and that really shouldn’t be the first thought that comes to Arthur’s mind given what they’ve just done. Arthur isn’t hard, he can’t quite feel his legs, and if Eames wanted to hurt him and have it leave scars he could.
“Take out your IV,” Eames says.
Arthur reaches between their bodies, and does. He applies a little extra pressure to the wound, to make sure he feels it. And he thinks, belatedly, that Yusuf will be annoyed at them both for leaving the sharps dangling and the drip on but the thought’s just that, belated. Stifled. Suppressed.
Eames stares at him. Arthur thinks, as loudly as he can, smile, damn you, so I can wipe it off your face. Eames doesn’t, but what he does do isn’t half bad at all; namely, card his nails through Arthur’s hair, grab him, and bare his throat.
His mouth goes to work at Arthur’s jugular, all teeth and heat, and Arthur lets him do it, stretches himself out, offers more. He still isn’t hard, doesn’t think he will be with the numbness still lingering below the waist, but the feel of Eames moving atop him, the sight or it, that sets Arthur’s brain firing even if nothing else cooperates. And then Eames is kissing him, and Arthur has to try and remember if they’ve ever kissed before, despite the years of on-again-off-again-everything-else. Eames doesn’t kiss the way he fights, doesn’t kiss any of the ways they fuck, it’s desperate but not assured. Arthur wonders if the fact that he’s kissing back is supposed to assure Eames of anything.
Minutes pass. They kiss, they settle, they align with each other. Eames holds Arthur by the hair, pulls on it, and Arthur drives his nails and knuckles into Eames’ back. The timer runs out, but this is the real world, and they don’t wake up from, or to, anything at all.
Eames bites Arthur’s lip, bruises it, marks it. “Well,” he says. “That went better than I expected.”
“Get off,” Arthur says, “I can’t feel my legs.”
-
“Clearly,” Eames says, when the issue arises again several weeks later in Helsinki, “we need more rules.”
The bell tolls, the crowd applauds, and the boxers in the ring are separated, given their minute of rest. Arthur rolls his eyes. “Oh? What gave you that idea?”
“Let’s say someone incepted me,” Eames says. He smiles, and sits back down, and Arthur follows that, despite the lummox standing in front of him and blocking his view of the boxing ring. “Honestly, Arthur. You can’t possibly have enjoyed not being able to stand for half an hour.”
“Twenty minutes,” Arthur corrects, and wonders if there’s a polite way to imply and the first time you fucked me I still couldn’t walk the next day, there’s precious little difference. But that’s not the kind of thing you say in a boxing arena, even if most of the people around you speak Finnish. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about this.”
“The environment provides its own reminders.” Back up there in the ring, one of the middleweight competitors-the one Arthur’s lain his bets on-is having a somewhat nasty shiner looked at, then iced, as his coach kneads his shoulders. Fair enough. “But I’m right. You can’t have enjoyed that part.”
“No,” Arthur admits. “But I don’t mind it.”
Eames looks at him levelly, smirk slack on his jaw but eyes strangely heavy. “What, because it’s temporary? Because it’s psychosomatic? Or because it’s pain?”
“Because it’s acceptable in the wake of what we’d just done,” Arthur says, but the announcer is saying something at the same time, and then the crowd is welling up with applause as the next round begins. Eames seems to let it go, at least in the face of watching the fight.
Arthur loses a thousand dollars that night on a knockout two rounds later.
-
This time he dreams of ice, of ground that cracks beneath their heels and sticks punishingly to their skin. Arthur may have designed it, but the hostile environment is all Eames, from the red sky to the lightning to hailstones the size of BBs stinging the cuts on Arthur’s face. Eames has won this time, doubtlessly and thoroughly, with Arthur’s right arm broken in at least three places, one of them on the joint, and his left pinned securely between their hips while Eames ruts against it, cock scalding against the cold. The frozen ground sucks down Arthur’s lower back but he thrusts all the same, still clothed and confined and in slow, terrifying pain. It was a good fight. It is a good fight. Whatever else it’s become, it’s still a fight, and red heat swells and flashes behind Arthur’s eyes as Eames threads his fingers through Arthur’s hair, claims an earned victory.
He comes, and the sky sears just as white. Then he breaks Arthur’s neck.
-
Arthur barely has time in the real world to touch one hand to the other (psychosomatically broken arms are damned clumsy, and it’s his dominant arm that’s frozen at the elbow and burning everywhere else, all in his mind and yet real and awake) when Eames jolts up on the other side of the bed. Arthur can’t get his IV out. Eames does it for him, disposes of the sharps this time, winds up the PASIV and turns it off and does all of that straddling Arthur’s hips, hazy and hard.
He tells Arthur to look at him. Arthur does more than look, he glowers, lets his eyes make abundantly clear what he thinks of Eames’ patronizing concern. He props himself up on his elbows-well, on his left elbow, the right’s not bending any time soon-and is about to say something along the lines of you don’t see me trying to look you over. He doesn’t get that far; the pain in his arm lances up and then down, straight to his groin. Eames takes him by the tie-knot. Arthur’s still the first to kiss him.
And this-this, god yes, this is more like the kind of fucking that Arthur’s gotten used to with Eames through the years. A hasty and incomplete removal of clothes, decisive and powerful hands, more grappling than grinding, more teeth than tongue, Eames laughing into the crook of Arthur’s shoulder as he yanks Arthur up and throws him over onto his knees; that. Arthur wants all of it. His slacks wrinkle harshly and bite into his shins. His belt’s still in the loops, dragging them down over his ass, but Eames’ hands are holding that pressed to Arthur’s thighs as if he doesn’t want them to peel any more down at all. He’s brutally hard against the raw small of Arthur’s back and Arthur writhes, snarls, grabs for Eames’ hands to put them where they belong.
“Got a rule about this, love?” Eames pants, teeth bared on Arthur’s collar, fingertips close but not there, not yet, damn it, tapping at Arthur’s inner thighs but just as much a taunt as his cock in the cleft.
“Yeah,” Arthur tells him, pulling him closer as hard as he can. “Don’t be an ass.”
Eames huffs out a laugh, then slams Arthur down onto the bed. Pain surges down from Arthur’s shoulder through the rest of his arm but Eames keeps holding that, steady, there, and he drapes himself over Arthur’s back and whispers, “Then hold your legs together.”
Apparently the combined efforts of the command, the thought, and the action have Arthur so hard, so fast, that he forgets his right arm still doesn’t work. He grabs for himself and fails, choking at the pain, but Eames’ hand is already there and that drives all the blood in Arthur’s body to that one place, that one touch. His skin is slick, enough that his shirttails are clinging to him, enough that the sounds of Eames lining his erection up between Arthur’s thighs and thrusting in are wet and obscene.
Arthur lurches forward, braces himself on the headboard-wrong arm, wrong arm, the pain that races up him forces a scream out of his throat-but Eames pulls him back, wraps his hand over Arthur’s chest and traps him, up on his knees. There’s nothing for Arthur to hold on to, nothing he can hold on to, nothing to do but keep his thighs tight together and balance and pray as Eames sets the pace. And that pace is brutal, Eames’ fist working Arthur’s cock fast enough to dry the sweat of his palm. Intercrural sex is slow going but vicious, slow and unsteady retreats but powerful thrusts, and as tight as Eames is holding on Arthur can only move with him. His head falls back onto Eames’ shoulder and his eyes flood red; the back of his eyelids or blood or the sky in a hailstorm, Arthur doesn’t care. Dimly, somewhere, he can hear Eames backhandedly praising him, calling him strong and lethal and god damn it I remember you nearly crushed my neck with those thighs, what the hell am I thinking putting my dick in there, but Arthur remembers and it’s that image that sends him over the edge.
Eames doesn’t stop, doesn’t stop goading him, using him, jerking him off, never mind that Arthur’s come completely apart. “Liked that, did you,” he says, not between thrusts but on them, like the words need release as much as his cock. “Is that what gets you off? Getting me at your mercy? If that’s it, you have it now, Arthur-”
And it’s not.
But that Eames has it wrong is almost as satisfying as the sex.
-
Arthur keeps score.
The job after Helsinki is in Buenos Aires. It means a new Architect, a simple job, nonlethal kicks, and no requests.
From Buenos Aires to Chicago, and Chicago means Cobb, and both the perks and pitfalls of Cobb’s renewed ability to design and entirely understandable refusal to participate in the actual heist. Whether the job would have gone better if Cobb had gone under with them, Arthur can’t know, but either way, when they make it out by the skin of their teeth, Arthur asks. Eames wins.
After Chicago, Nagasaki. Saitoh pays well but asks too much. Eames asks. Arthur wins.
After Nagasaki, Seoul. Arthur remembers why he hates the Mr. Charles gambit. Eames asks. Arthur wins, barely, and neither of them can turn doorknobs or type the next day.
After Seoul, Los Angeles. The team they’re working at crosspurposes with has Ariadne for an Architect. Arthur and Eames fail so spectacularly that Arthur liquidizes many of his stateside assets. No one asks but it happens anyway.
-
It ends with Arthur taking the kind of gut wound that bleeds black instead of red.
Arthur’s never felt anything like that before. He’d try to compare but his brain isn’t firing anything but wonder and adrenaline and a distant, stinging sort of pain. Eames is standing over him, blocking out the sun, still armed. Arthur could laugh. He might. Or those muscles might just be jumping on their own.
“Arthur,” Eames says. There’s something humorous about it. “Arthur, Darling, you have a rule that comes into play here.” There’s something patronizing about it, but Arthur still wants to laugh. That’s the adrenaline, it has to be. “Arthur. Your rule. About mercy. I need your consent.”
If Eames had a face Arthur would spit in it. He doesn’t, though, he’s a silhouette against the sun. Arthur starts plotting the trajectory, the necessary force. He doesn’t get very far. The numbers are starting to go away. He feels betrayed. It’s still humorous.
“Arthur,” Eames says again. It’s annoyed. Annoying. “Arthur. Consent.”
-no, no, some of the numbers have come back. Eames is how many feet tall? Or is that meters? Wind allowance. Viscosity. Quarter equals one hundred. Ninety-five. Red.
“Fuck your rules,” Eames says. He kneels right in Arthur’s black blood and takes Arthur by the hair, puts the muzzle of his gun to Arthur’s head. Arthur could still win, he thinks, get the gun, take it for himself, but that’s wrong, something’s wrong, the numbers are going or gone, there’s a word for that or maybe just another number and oh, there’s Eames’ face. “Time to wake up, Arthur,” he says. Smiling.
Arthur wonders what’s so funny.
-
He wakes up staring at the ceiling. It isn’t even a particularly nice ceiling. There are cracks in the plaster, spackled over half a dozen times. For a moment Arthur can see every edge clearly, every imperfection, and wants to reach up and smooth them over like clay or flesh or hospital corners.
Then they start spinning.
Arthur pitches over the edge of the bed and cradles his head in his hands. The IV tugs at his flesh and he pinches it out, forcing his hands to remain steady. He manages that, but when he goes for the biohazard box it and the lights of the timer, still running, 04:32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 25 52 25 52 24 h2 24 E2
“Arthur.”
Arthur shivers.
Eames’ hands clamp onto Arthur’s upper arms, like they’re catching the shudder to put it in a jar. He pulls Arthur to his feet. “Off with the jacket,” he says, and Arthur lets that happen, lets it slide down his arms as Eames leads him around the edge of the bed to the bathroom. They almost trip over the PASIV. Arthur thinks he might kick it. He’s coordinated enough, even now, he bets, even with his stomach threatening to eat the rest of his digestive organs.
Eames reaches into the bathroom and turns on the light, then lets off Arthur’s arms and jostles him in. He even shuts the door.
It occurs to Arthur, somewhere between his second and third attempts to externalize the source of his somewhat literal internal discomfort, that Eames has probably dealt with psychosomatic abdominal wounds before. Arthur’s thankful. And he’ll probably admit that, aloud, when his stomach stops dictating the priorities of his lungs.
After that, and washing his hands and mouth and face, he settles his hand over his pants pocket but doesn’t take the totem out. Oh, this is real. This is extremely real.
Eames knocks. “I assume you know where we are?”
“Vladivostok,” Arthur answers, twice because the first one comes out as a cough.
“And how we got here?”
“LAX to Narita. Saitoh was wearing a grey suit with a lavender shirt and you asked if he’d been dreaming since 1986. Narita to Vladivostok. Cab to the Versailles Hotel. I speak better Russian than you but we’re both pretty awful. Room 419.”
Eames laughs. The door muffles precious little of it.
Arthur rolls up his sleeves, wets his hair, and takes another moment to stare at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t look as awful as he feels. Honestly that’s more disconcerting than the part where he actually does feel like approximately five levels of hell.
When Arthur leaves the bathroom, Eames is sitting on the bed by the window. He throws Arthur a bottle of water, probably more so that Arthur can prove he’s capable of catching it. Which he is. Off-handed. And if he can’t open it and walk at the same time right this very second, well, that ability should come back once he actually drinks the water.
“Thanks,” Arthur says, before he gets too caught up in whatever this is to give credit where credit is due.
Eames nods at him. Arthur sits on his own bed, next to the PASIV. He opens it, makes sure all the tubes are coiled and in order. It feels like a parody of sanity.
“Arthur,” Eames says, “I think it’s obvious that I’m not exactly comfortable with this arrangement.”
“Specificity, Eames.”
“Darling, believe me when I tell you that I am perfectly content to shoot you in cold blood when we’re on a job and the alternatives are risking your actual life or using a teaspoon. Sometimes I’ll even admit to enjoying it,” he says, but nothing south of his eyes shows any pleasure at all. “But it should be abundantly clear that I didn’t enjoy that at all.”
“This was your idea.”
“No. Fighting me was my idea. You’re the one who brought mortal peril into it. And again; if I had a pound for every time I wanted to wring your pretty neck I’d bankroll the Motherland back into an Empire, Falkland Islands and all.”
“And I’m sure you’d have enough left to buy your very own sheep.”
“Ungulates come cheap, Arthur.” Eames sighs and shakes his head, and if the smirk resurfacing on his jaw is supposed to be reassuring, it falls flat. “My point, if you’d be so generous as to actually let me make one, is that I have as many qualms about violently killing you as you’d expect anyone in this profession to have. But I never want to see you reduced to that again, and like hell I’ll be the one to cause it.”
Arthur screws the cap back onto his water, and glares. “Reduced,” he says, like he needs to get it out from between his teeth.
“It was pathetic, Arthur. Dying like that is pathetic. You were pathetic.”
The only reason Arthur doesn’t attempt to kill him with the water bottle is that he’s still running through precisely how many ways he could.
“Darling,” Eames says, and the mattress of his bed creaks something awful, “we should bring this into the real world.”
“One minute you’re telling me I’m pathetic and the next you’re telling me you want me.”
“Oh, I know. None of this is particularly sane.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Eames, but no shit.”
“Arthur, how many times have you killed me?”
“Eames-”
“It’s a bloody number, Arthur. I want it.”
“Fifty-one.”
“More than they’ve accounted for the Chessboard Killer, I hope you know that.”
“Eames, I’m not-”
“And that’s just me. Fifty-one. Well. One shy of a full deck. I imagine I’m on the higher end of your list but how many times have you killed Ariadne? Are you up to a full chess rank for her? What about Cobb? That has to be an impressive number, through the years. What about yourself, Arthur? How many times have you died? And how many times has it been entirely your fault?”
Eames must have been expecting to get hit for that. He can’t not have been, he’s not stupid, insufferable yes but unintelligent no and he knows exactly what he’s saying, doing, being, making Arthur want. But when Arthur shoves off the bed and slugs him in the jaw, Eames doesn’t flinch.
It surprises Arthur, enough that he doesn’t take another swing.
Eames doesn’t counter, but he does rub his jaw and curse, and reach to the floor to take what’s left of Arthur’s bottled water.
“It’s a job,” Arthur says. “It’s like war. I’m not a cold-blooded killer.”
Eames laughs, and gulps the rest of the water down, sloshing it around in his mouth. He must be bleeding. “Then you shouldn’t expect the same of me, love.”
Arthur has just enough self-control left to prevent himself from saying aloud, But you do expect it of me. You and everyone else.
“So,” Eames says, and wipes a bit of blood from the corner of his mouth. “I think we should do this. No PASIV. No dreams.” The no killing is implied but understood.
Arthur tells him, “Fine.”
-
It takes them until Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg means far too much time on the Trans-Siberian Railway (and if Arthur ever wants to somehow get past Cobb’s inability to dream and give him genuine nightmares, oh will he ever bring up the Trans-Siberian Railway, especially the part where Arthur and Eames were in a stalled train car full of somewhat unperturbed Mongolian pastoralists, all of whom were drinking vodka and would not share), and also the part where they went without using the PASIV for all six days of the trip. Arthur is convinced that he’s consumed his body’s weight in vodka over the course of a week. He hates vodka. Next time he won’t let Eames purchase the alcohol.
“We should have split up,” Arthur says.
“I respectfully disagree,” Eames says, and he’s drunker than Arthur, probably because he actually likes the vodka. “We have to bet on the same team, otherwise it’s a waste.”
“I meant back in L.A.,” Arthur says. The spectators cheer. It makes Arthur’s head ache. At least they picked the right team to bet on. What the hell kind of sport is Bandy anyway? It’s like soccer on ice.
“We’d have a heap of other problems if we had.” Eames drinks more vodka, and joins in the people cheering for the end of a particular player’s penalty. “Though for the life of me I can’t remember what they are.”
“No, I meant-” Arthur coughs. “I meant back in L.A. the first time. We did. Split up. Fuck, I’m drunk.”
Eames snickers, and the crowd keeps cheering in jubilant Russian, and Arthur wants to rip the whorls out of his own inner ears and go back to their sorry excuse for a hotel and shower and sleep and fumigate this outfit and probably jerk off but not in that order, but he has to be here to collect his winnings. If he has winnings. And Eames is insufferable.
Somewhere on the ice, a player’s blood is bouncing. That must be why everyone’s cheering.
Eames isn’t laughing anymore. The bruise on his jaw is weak enough that his stubble hides it, except for the part where he cut himself trying to shave on the train.
“Fucking train,” Arthur says.
“Say it in Russian.”
Arthur thinks about it a moment, and then says, “Это поезд, это пиздец.”
Eames laughs again. “Clearly you’re not as drunk as you think you are.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“As drunk as you think you are.”
Eames tells Arthur, in awful Russian, when we win this I will check us in to a better hotel and fuck you until you bleed. But it’s not awful enough Russian, because the spectators standing beside them stop cheering at the game, and gasp and laugh and point and one of them toasts.
“You’re trying to make me want to hit you,” Arthur says, in English.
“Tell me how this is any different than usual.”
Arthur doesn’t have to.
-
It is a better hotel.
Arthur is several thousand rubles richer, a sweater and scarf warmer, and considerably less drunk. He locks the door without any trouble, turns to hang up his coat and parcels without a twinge of dizziness at all.
Eames is standing on the other side of the room.
It is possible that they have both been standing exactly where they are for two silent minutes.
“So, should I insult your mother?” Eames asks.
“My mother’s dead,” Arthur says.
“Well, that’s a cliché.”
“You could have started by insulting my imagination.”
“Yes, but you never consider that an insult.”
Arthur sighs and shuts the closet door.
They both continue to stand where they are. Eames fidgets with the curtains. Arthur takes out his wallet and reorders the cash. Twice, actually, if you count just grabbing all the American currency and shoving it from the front to the back.
“So,” Eames says. “So what, if insulting your mother and your imagination don’t work, what, should I come up and try to strangle you with that scarf?”
Arthur shuts his eyes and exhales.
“Right,” Eames says, and stays on his side of the room. “This is buggered, isn’t it.”
“This isn’t Fight Club, Eames.”
“Right, you’re not nearly as plain as Edward Norton.”
“And I should be glad you don’t think you’re Tyler.”
“I am Arthur’s buggered head,” Eames says experimentally. “I am Arthur’s rancid hypocrisy.”
Arthur opens the closet door again and takes out his coat. “This isn’t working.”
“Arthur-”
“I can’t plan it, Eames, I don’t want to plan it, I don’t want to schedule it or take precautions or have to hold back. That’s not the point.”
“You could have told me what the point was when you started wrapping it in rules.”
“I’m telling you now, isn’t that enough?”
“It’s revelatory, yes, but no it’s not enough.”
“Well what were you after when you asked me to fight you, Eames?”
“Back in Saratoga? Your fucking sanity, Arthur. Obviously I didn’t achieve my objective.”
Arthur finishes buttoning his coat, and takes his suitcase out of the closet.
“You want sanity?” Arthur asks, throwing the suitcase onto the bed, opening it, folding his garment bag in half to shove it in with the rest. “We should have split up in L.A. I’d say we shouldn’t have started this, whatever this is, at all, but there’s no saying no to you, is there?”
“Don’t go making me out to be the one who started this, Arthur-”
“I call it like it is, Eames. You offered. You asked as much as I did. Hell, the first time it happened at all was because you hijacked my fucking dream, and if that’s not starting it I’d better take myself to court.” He shuts the suitcase. “I have hated you for years, Eames. Years. You made me respect you. You made me want you. You made me attempt to trust you, which I’m somewhat relieved to know is impossible, even if your timing makes it inconvenient.”
“That’s an awful lot of power to attribute to me, love. Careful, it’ll go to my head.”
Arthur refuses to look at him, takes his PASIV and his suitcase, and heads for the door.
“Before you go,” Eames says, quiet but still enunciated, cutting through the cold air. “Is this you getting another hotel room, or you getting another profession?”
“You can’t make it impossible for me to work again, Mr. Eames.”
“No,” Eames says. “Not nearly as thoroughly as you can.”
-
From Yekaterinburg to Moscow, of course, but Arthur is perfectly content to tell the Trans-Siberian Railway to fuck itself, and spends more than he would have liked to on a plane ticket. His paperwork is forged well enough that, alone, he makes it through without any trouble. (There are benefits to keeping his ties to Cobb-he has more ways to pretend that the PASIV is his legally, for equally legal uses. It does, however, make things awkward when they offer him the registered medical professional’s seat on the plane.)
After Moscow, Vilnius, and only for a day, though he wishes he could stay longer.
After Vilnius, Berlin, and work, a simple extraction for a client who underpays, but pays on time, and that’s enough. Working alone is alien, chafes like an unlined glove. Working alone means fewer test-runs, less consultation, less expenditure. It’s almost nice. Working alone is something Arthur hasn’t done since Cobb reclaimed him. Working alone means days that Arthur comes back to his sublet and realizes he hasn’t said a single word since he thanked the waitress at the cafe twelve hours ago.
After Berlin, Ankara, to meet a chemist and replenish his supply of somnacin. The first dose doesn’t even work, it’s so weak compared to Yusuf’s.
After Ankara, Tel-Aviv, which is initially a mistake, at least as far as extradition policies are concerned. It proves to be less and less of a mistake the deeper the tangle goes, and worth it in the end. The client pays Arthur out of her own personal weapons cache for Arthur’s covert service to the state. In thanks, Arthur introduces her to Saitoh.
After Tel-Aviv, Sofia. There are bounty hunters in Sofia. Subsequently, Bratislava, Munich, Cologne, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Arthur doesn’t sleep until Brussels.
He’s safe, in Amsterdam, as safe as he ever is. They haven’t found his place there, yet.
-
Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh? Donald O’Connor asks, prancing around the television set in reasonably high definition. My grandpa said, go out and tell ‘em a joke-but give it plenty of hope!
Arthur gets up and tries to remember where he put the stroopwafels. He didn’t; the entire box is next to his laptop. He dips one in his after-dinner coffee, bites it, and resumes composing an e-mail to a prospective new chemist who, apparently, works for Miles. He claims to have devised something nearly as potent as Yusuf’s-eighteen times brain function, better than twelve-and Arthur’s willing to test it for him if it means he can actually sleep. He leaves that qualifier out of the e-mail.
On the television, Donald O’Connor rearranges his own face. Arthur spares him a glance, and sends the e-mail.
The next one he cares to answer is from Cobb, who of course knows of Arthur’s predicament as far as America goes and says that Ariadne had no idea it would have come to this, but that she isn’t sorry. Arthur’s proud of her. He tells Cobb so.
Once that e-mail is sent, Arthur actually turns back to Singin’ in the Rain and watches the bit with the mannequin. He remembers how betrayed he felt when he first saw that there had been a cut in the scene and O’Connor hadn’t done it all straight through like he would have on stage. It’s still really amazing to watch.
Arthur deletes a few more e-mails before O’Connor gets to the Running Up the Wall bit. Make ‘em laugh, he chants, and charges for the plank-
-and that is definitely the sound of a submachine gun shattering windows.
At this point Arthur’s reaction to that sound is instinctual. His Glock is stowed in the desk drawer in the bedroom, so Arthur immediately and fluidly shuts the laptop and heads right that way. The laptop goes into its sleeve and then into his suitcase, along with the PASIV briefcase and one suit, still in its garment bag. First he shuts the suitcase, then he gets the gun and slings the holster over his shoulder. He counts fifty seconds. Getting to the window takes another eight, and he takes descent cover staying close to the bookshelf beside it.
There’s no longer gunfire out there, despite what all the shouting civilians would have you believe. Three floors up it’s difficult to see the sidewalk without opening the window (and it’s far too cold to do that anyway) but Arthur can count seven, and then six, armed thugs in dark suits, and even if the windows were shot out next door it’s this building they’re after.
(On the television, Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen are arguing about the plot.)
There’s better cover behind the couch. Arthur takes it, listens for feet pounding up the townhouse stairs, louder and louder as they go. Arthur isn’t surprised when something kicks in his door.
He is surprised when it’s Eames. He shouldn’t be.
The door collapses inward and Eames tumbles across it, crashes into the sidetable but recovers enough to get his-is that a Walther MP?-trained on the door just after the first thug tries to barge in. Arthur’s faster, Arthur’s the one to drop him, two shots, the second slower than he would have liked.
They probably have two seconds before the next comes in. Arthur spares half of that to glance over Eames, taking cover by the television, and make sure he’s not wounded. He’s not, not visibly, just filthy, and blood would definitely show up on that awful tan trenchcoat. “Is that gun yours?”
Eames cocks his head at the stiff in the doorway. “It’s his.”
“Good,” Arthur says.
The next round of gunfire cuts Jean Hagen off when a shot intended for Eames destroys the television’s LCD screen, but the soundtrack keeps playing. Eames gets himself around the side, lays some cover fire on where the door used to be-there goes Arthur’s security deposit-and Arthur gets in three shots, one of which connects but doesn’t drop the thug in the door. Arthur counts bullets, assumes the worst, thinks it might be a better idea to double back to the bedroom anyway but not yet-another salvo, this thug is new, isn’t the one Arthur wounded, Eames fires a burst and takes care of that-no, the answer is to get their guns, keep them in the hallway, god damn it where does Eames get the nerve to lead his own tails to Arthur’s safehouse?
Arthur can ask later. Right now, he raises his Glock, indicates he’ll cover, and Eames nods and skulks out from behind the television. The sound’s still going even if the screen is a liquid, spiderwebbed mess. Eames curls his lip and turns it off as he passes.
Arthur moves into position, taking cover by the kitchenette-Eames lances out an arm and pries the first downed thug’s gun out of his trembling fingers, and slides it back into the room. He takes the time out to shoot down the hall-Arthur hears a shout and a groan by the stairs-and gets the thug’s sidearm as well, and the spare magazine in his holster. He slides those to Arthur.
The next hail of gunfire rings through the hall, and Eames scrambles gracelessly back into the apartment, tripping over the fallen door. Arthur jumps up and covers him, counts one round left in his Glock and decides to keep it that way. The thug’s handgun is a SIG, lighter than Arthur is used to, but he’ll take what he can get.
The next man to charge through the door makes a stupid mistake, runs right into Eames’ path and collapses against the doorframe, which trips up the thug behind him and lets Arthur get two clear shots, the second of which connects at the thug’s right shoulder. He doesn’t go down but he does drop his gun, though the bodies piled around it make it pointless to consider. Arthur ducks down and crawls to the couch, sees if he can get a good line of sight to their legs-can’t-but Eames is up and emptying the Walther out the door.
“How many?” Arthur asks him.
“Twelve when I got here,” Eames says. “Eight now, I suppose.”
Arthur would sigh if he could spare the breath. “Cover me, I’m getting something out of the bedroom.”
Eames nods, and puts down the one Walther in favor of the other with more ammunition. “Go.”
Arthur makes a bolt for it, slides on the hardwood floor. He can hear the shots winging by, only three of them in his direction, and the shattering glass of his window, the chipping plaster of his wall. The firing doesn’t stop, but Arthur just hits the floor and pulls a second briefcase out from under the bed. The Galil AR’s only partially assembled, but it takes Arthur a minute and forty-five seconds to get the rest of it in order.
He fires the first shot from the bedroom door, out into the hall. There’s one more body in the doorway, but Eames, crouched by the couch instead of the television now, seems more impressed with Arthur than himself. “Is that gun yours?” he asks, more amused than he has any right to be.
“Yes,” Arthur tells him.
“Well, well, so the rumors are true-”
“Shut up.”
It’s excruciating, slow work to make it out into the hallway. Eames takes point, Arthur covers him whenever he appropriates the thugs’ weapons. The screaming outside has stopped but there aren’t sirens yet. By the time Arthur makes it to the stairs the thugs are in something closer to chaos, and Arthur wishes he’d brought the bipod. By the time he and Eames get to the stairwell they’re only up against four-six men down, two unaccounted for, and Arthur and Eames at least have the better position. Eames pulls one long strafe through the entire second floor, and an exploding vase takes out one of the thugs’ eyes; Arthur lines up a headshot on that one, and then there were three-two, when Eames doubles back on his strafe and a man who thought he was safe winds up smeared all over the second-floor tenant’s door. (They’re on holiday in England, Arthur knows. Lucky them.) One of the others shoots out the lighting fixture over Eames’ head and it rains shards down onto his trenchcoat. Arthur gets rid of that one somewhere between two bursts.
Of course the one man left does something stupid and barrels up the stairs toward Eames, close enough that it throws Arthur off. Eames too, if the fact that he leaps over the railing instead of shooting is any indication.
Which leaves it to Arthur to shove the muzzle of the Galil right up against the thug’s chest, and fire.
He’s fairly certain that this is not the first time this particular rifle has been used at that range. There’s no time to think about it. He doesn’t have to ask if Eames is all right, he can already see, hear, feel him brushing the glass off his coat and kneeling to check the corpses. Arthur turns his back and heads right back to his apartment, telling Eames, “I’ll see if I can get the other two.”
“I’ll be right up,” Eames says, as if there’s nothing wrong at all.
The apartment’s a fright, but at least the windows that are already shot out are at just the right height. Arthur lines up against one, and finds two armed men under the street lamps on the sidewalk-the one he wounded in the shoulder earlier, and one holding his cell phone in one hand and a Walther MP in the other. By the way the man with the phone is tapping his foot, he’s not talking. Yet.
Arthur takes that one out first. The wounded man is easier, a matter of breath and seconds later.
Arthur is still by the window, the Galil against his shoulder, when Eames starts dragging the corpses out into the hall. “Arthur-”
“Put the door back on the hinges,” Arthur growls.
Eames is blessedly silent as he complies. There’s nothing but the thud of dead flesh and the slight grunting exhales as Eames follows through. No sirens, no cars on the street. It’s been minutes, and Arthur chose this house on this street because he knows that even in an emergency it’s far enough from the precinct for a few extra minutes of grace. There’s time, and quiet, and night.
Arthur turns around, carries the Galil across his chest, watches Eames put the door back into place. “There,” Eames says, dusts his hands off, and turns around to face Arthur, smiling, “now, we should-”
Arthur lifts the rifle, and beats Eames in the solar plexus with the stock.
Eames appears to be trying to form something with his mouth, probably Arthur’s name, but that’s not going to work if he’s struggling to breathe, is it?
“You led a dozen armed tails to my safehouse,” Arthur seethes. “You didn’t even know I was here, did you.”
“L-lucky you were,” Eames tries to say, pathetic, which only makes Arthur angrier.
So Arthur backhands him across the jaw. “What, you wanted me to finish you? Is that it?”
Eames goes for Arthur’s throat instead of answering.
The Galil hits the floor a moment before Arthur does, with all of Eames’ weight on top of him. Not for long. Not for long at all. Arthur tears into him, throws him over, shoves him against the back of the couch and lands every punch he can. Eames’ hands are still on Arthur’s neck and the world’s going red at the edges but Arthur’s too angry to stop. He uses his knees, gets one loped over Eames’ forearm and clamps down, buys seconds to breathe and get out of this tangle. He gets to his feet first, kicks Eames while he’s down. Twice. Same place. Eames grabs him by the ankle and Arthur can’t throw him off, is thrown, doesn’t even know or care where he lands-
It’s this.
He needs this. Now.
“Rules,” he chokes out, “ rules-”
“Anything sharp stays away from my dick,” Eames says, getting to his feet, coughing. “You?”
“Nothing above the neck.” That’s all Arthur gets out before Eames closes the gap between them and lands a punch right in Arthur’s gut, the kind that makes him taste more coffee than blood.
Arthur doesn’t even know what he’s hitting anymore, just that it’s Eames. The flesh that bruises around his knuckles might be his own. But Eames is hitting back, grabbing Arthur by the holster and throwing him into the wall facefirst. Arthur elbows backward, feels Eames gasp and seize against him-on the same side, Arthur slams his fist into Eames’ chin, again and again until Eames grabs him by the forearms and holds him pinned. Arthur arches, throws back his head and slams his skull into Eames’ nose, then twists and gets on his knees, still between Eames and the wall.
It’s still a fight. It’s still a fight, when Arthur gets Eames’ belt and fly undone and mouths Eames through his shorts, sucks up the sweat and the heat-still a fight when he grabs Eames by the ass and the thigh and traps him (let’s see how he likes it, we both already know he likes it), still a fight when the panels of Eames’ trenchcoat black out Arthur’s sight so there’s nothing but the tastes of rough cotton and salt. Still a fight, when Eames’ hand gets in the way and starts tugging down his boxers, interferes with Arthur’s work.
Arthur lifts Eames’ cock out of the way and bites, high on Eames’ inner thigh.
The way Eames screams is extremely gratifying. It cuts through the silence, and his fingernails cut through Arthur’s scalp. Arthur is almost laughing when Eames rears back and pummels him right in the eye. That’s fine, that’s fine, it hurts but it’s fine, they’ve both told the rules where to stick it.
Eames is laughing too.
Arthur ducks between Eames’ legs and comes out on the other side, whipping around and socking him in the shoulder from behind. A few more quick blows and Eames is the one pinned, pants down and trenchcoat shoved out of the way and arms braced on the wall. Arthur kicks him in the heels so he’ll put his legs together. Eames doesn’t, snickers and struggles until Arthur grabs him by the throat and the cock and snarls, plain in his ear, “Tell me if you knew I was here.”
“What do you care?” The shape of the words swell Eames’ throat, push against Arthur’s palm. Arthur lets him go, drops that hand and brings it around to get his own pants undone.
“More than you think,” Arthur says. He bares his nails around Eames’ balls, lets the threat stand. “Did you know I was here?”
Eames doesn’t answer, but the way he’s pushing himself against Arthur’s hips makes nothing else matter.
It’s a struggle the whole way through, to hold Eames down, to hold him together, with fists and threats and fucking. Arthur buries his face in the crook of Eames’ shoulder, thrusts between Eames’ thighs in time with the pulse ringing around his eye. He loses himself in it, in want, in anger-lets it blind him-lets it burn through all the counting and control and calculation and bring him down to this, and Arthur stops caring at all.
It surprises him when Eames is the first to come. Eames swerves in his grasp and shudders and kisses him, twists himself and chokes but it doesn’t stop Arthur, doesn’t even slow him down, he can feel everything inside himself racing and surging and he holds on to Eames, keeps him where he wants him, tight and together and here, here, here.-
-
“Oh god, no, of course not, officer!” Eames says into his cell phone, in French, and affecting the voice of a dear old lady. “These men, they came in and tore the place up, I cannot for the life of me understand it-they are chasing after the dear boy who lives on the third floor, he was always so polite-no, officer, I couldn’t possibly-what? Oh, no, he may have fallen in with a bad crowd, but he seemed like such a nice boy-”
Arthur elbows him pointedly in the ribs.
“-No, no, I don’t mind at all, I think he has run off-they were speaking in American English, I could not understand them so well, you see, but there was one other man alive and when they came down the stairs he said something about laying low in Russia-yes, he did say again-well I suppose the other man may have been English-no, please, let me come in and talk to you at the precinct, I do not want to stay at the house-I am with my neighbor next door right now-yes-yes, officer, thank you so much.”
Eames shuts off his cell phone and sinks into the remains of the couch. Arthur, on the other side of it, continues holding the cold steak against his left eye. He holds out his other hand toward Eames for the cell phone. Eames drops it dutifully into Arthur’s palm.
The suitcases are packed, except for Arthur’s laptop; the guns are disassembled, as much evidence undone as planted. Eames knows someone in Den Haag who can get them across the English Channel. With the hand not holding the steak, Arthur brings up a clip from The Band Wagon on youtube, the one where Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dance in Central Park. Once it’s a few minutes in, Arthur calls up a moving company in England, makes sure his storage locker outside London is still up to date.
While he waits for the call to connect, Arthur feels Eames’ fingers, nudging against his hand. He lets the steak drop-Eames catches it, and turns it around, replacing the colder side of the meat over Arthur’s eye. It’s-tender, Arthur decides. The gesture, as well as the flesh.
Eames watches the youtube clip, screws his face up in confusion that isn’t quite disgust. “Fred Astaire,” he says, tilting his head, “carriages in the park. White suits. Slow-dancing. Really, Arthur, I wouldn’t have bet on it.”
“Sure you would have,” Arthur says. “But you’d have lost.”
“Oh?”
The phone connects to the moving company before Arthur can tell him: It’s the sound of horses.
But there’s time, if Eames wants to try and figure that out.
-
---
-
.
Stick a fork in it, it’s finally done!
I can honestly say: Labor of Love, this one. Fun and exciting for me, and hopefully for the rest of you too.
Title: What Happens in Saratoga
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur, Eames
Words: 9400
Rating: NC-17 like whoa. The sex, the violence, the violent sex, I mean really Tarantino should have directed this fic, long conversations and all. Also, if you like intercrural sex, you might like this story.
Warnings: Consensual violence, both sexual and not, some of which is graphic, and nearly all of which is negotiated. Or tries to be.
This fic follows: the events of Four Corners, A Well-Defined Function, and In Violation of Coypright, though it doesn’t depend on them, and you don’t have to read them first.
Summary: ...stays in Saratoga. And then doesn’t.
In which Eames and Arthur learn some mutual trust by beating the crap out of each other.
What Happens in Saratoga
inception
“I’m only saying that I know where you go, after.” Eames traces lines in the condensation on his water glass and smirks, at it, at Arthur. Arthur stares. “How quaintly therapeutic.”
“Wonderful,” Arthur tells him, and Eames would have to be an innocent to see any honestly in that. “The secret’s out. You read pop horror, I lose myself in a crowd. Alert the media.”
“About this? Certainly not. All I’m saying is I’m prepared to offer you better.”
“Better,” Arthur repeats, dubious as the odds of Eames’ longshot horse winning this particular race.
Saratoga’s all well and good, but Arthur would rather be at Ascot. The noise is different here, more raucous, and the tablecloths are checkered red and white. At least, from the deck, Arthur doesn’t have to strain out of his seat to see the track. Arthur knows Eames bet on Lucheni, who is currently neck-in-neck with the leader Ends Well (much to the announcer’s evident glee). Arthur’s placed his bets on No New Taxes, currently running a nose behind third, with a quarter to go.
“Better.”
“How?”
“Come now, haven’t you been wanting to hit me since Saitoh flew me in?”
“Longer, if you mean literally.”
“I do.”
The cheering for the winning horse-No New Taxes, and Arthur’s pleased with that-dies down, enough. Arthur doesn’t know whether to laugh or give Eames what he evidently wants right now. In the end, he does neither.
Eames drains his drink, then leans in, levels himself with Arthur, close enough that if Arthur wanted to (and he doesn’t) he could count the places Eames’ stubble doesn’t conform to facial symmetry. “I don’t know what you do on your levels, up there all alone, the ghost in all our figurative machines. I won’t ask. I imagine you’re entirely equipped to handle that yourself, Darling, that’s what you are. But afterward? That’s our business,” he says, and settles back into his chair. Arthur listens to it creak. The sound cuts through the entire racetrack, it seems, announcers and horses and all. “I’m just concerned for your mental health.”
“If you’re trying to make me want to hit you less, you’re failing miserably.”
Eames smiles, and there’s breath on it, pushing past his teeth. “Arthur, I’m giving you permission to hit me.”
-
Which, interestingly enough, doesn’t lead to them setting up Arthur’s PASIV in Eames’ room at the Saratoga Hilton, no matter how much Arthur thinks about it from his own room at a nearby bed and breakfast.
Some of the things Eames said have persistent echoes in Arthur’s mind. Yes, they’ve hurt each other in dreams, sometimes considerably. Arthur’s killed Eames a pleasantly grand total of thirty-eight times, most of them in cold blood, which is a perfectly respectable number among serial killers-a stray thought which leads to a twinge of disgust on Arthur’s part, when he considers the number. But the acts of harm, the fighting, they both enjoyed it, and it has led to sex, imagined first and real sometime after. And Eames might not have to have said it as smugly as he did but it’s true, Arthur likes the challenge that Eames poses in particular. Arthur knows he fascinates Eames, not that Eames admits it, and not that Arthur admits that the frustration is entirely mutual.
But, rationally, the last thing Arthur wants after tearing Eames (and Cobb, and Ariadne, and Yusuf, and whatever subjects they come by) to somewhat literal shreds is more deliberate violence, more calculated slaughter.
Rationally, anyway.
There’s a lot about Eames that makes the rational parts of Arthur’s life seem foreign, cancerous, caustic.
-
“Ground rules,” Arthur says, a few weeks later, on the job in Austin, Texas, and he’ll be surprised if Saratoga is the first thing on Eames’ mind.
“About what?” It isn’t. Good, there are some things in this world that continue to make sense.
“Fighting you,” Arthur says, because any attempt to couch it in euphemism sounds ridiculous in his head.
Eames closes his laptop’s lid-the person he’s forging for this job, conveniently, has a youtube account and fancies himself a film critic-and plucks out his earbuds. The way he raises his eyebrows, Arthur’s expecting something lewd out of him, but he gets a “What brought this on?” instead.
“That’s one of the ground rules,” Arthur says. “You don’t ask me, I don’t ask you.”
“Fair enough.” Eames pushes out of his chair. “I’m assuming you mean now?”
Arthur hadn’t, but he knows if he waits, the urge will peter out into a niggling reminder and flare up inconveniently like a goddamned migraine.
Eames doesn’t wait for an answer.
“So,” Arthur says, once they’re sitting on the chaises, the PASIV between them, awkward as the images still burnt into Arthur’s eyes, “the rest of the rules.”
“I’d expect as much,” Eames agrees, swabbing the back of his hand. He throws Arthur a towlette packet once he’s done, and Arthur catches it easily and rips it open.
“One. Well, two. We do this until one of us dies, or both of us get off.”
Eames laughs, once, brusque. “Emending a few lines from the military book, are you.”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “Three. Mercy kills have to be consensual.”
“And if they can’t be?”
“Then it’s at the discretion of the person still standing.” Arthur’s satisfied with the cleanliness of his hand, now, and sets about finding a vein.
“You mean you’d like to watch me squirm,” Eames says, setting the timer. “Ten minutes?”
“Should be enough-Yusuf’s blend, or regular Somnacin?”
Eames checks. “Yusuf’s. The new one. No sedative.”
“Fine.”
“And your dream?”
“Yes,” Arthur says. “Unless you’ve got something in mind.”
“I’ll lay a ground rule of my own,” Eames says, settling the needle in his hand and swinging his legs up onto the chaise. “You ask, you dream.”
Arthur nods. The vein in the back of his hand is dancing, even after he stabs at it.
-
The first time they fought like this, it was an invasion. It was Eames superseding Arthur’s projections, realigning his gravities, asserting his control over the space until Arthur broke and tried to kick him out of it. Well, the invasion’s gone but the control’s the same. Arthur builds a parking garage, sloped concrete floors and improvised weapons always at hand-this job’s gotten to him, more than he’ll consciously admit, but a subconscious admission’s to be expected, as sick as it makes him.
Eames laughs. “Car,” he warns, just as one drives by, nearly catching the tip of Arthur’s shoe. So his projections are already out for blood, are they? Wonderful. And Eames, observant as ever, additionally has the gall to ask, “Mixing work and play?”
“Can’t help what’s on my mind,” Arthur says.
“Sure you can. That’s the point of lucid dreaming.”
“You’re an ass.”
Eames grins. “I believe that’s also the point of this exercise.”
As clichéd as it is, Arthur’s first impulse is to complete the literality of this all by socking Eames in the jaw. The concrete floor is inclined and Arthur’s higher than Eames on it, for now, which gives him an advantage when he makes it look like he’s doing just that. Eames wouldn’t-and doesn’t-expect a knee in the sternum instead. Eames doubles over but doesn’t buckle, wraps his arms around Arthur’s waist and drags him to the floor.
They roll down the concrete incline, tearing into each other-Eames comes out on top, swerves, grabs Arthur by the hair and slams him into the rear fender of a parked car. Arthur blinks back stars, wrangles his fists together and hammers them into Eames’ nose. It’s enough to break it.
Then the car starts.
The exhaust heats, shaking and warm and then hot right by Arthur’s back. Arthur doesn’t scream, but does hurl himself at Eames with everything he has, disadvantaged position or none. Eames is big, it’s easy to forget that, more stony muscle than he probably deserves and Arthur would snarl about that if he could spare the breath. But that’s the choice that gets Arthur moving before the car, that sends Eames skidding on his ass and Arthur staggering to his feet, running out and up before the car kicks into gear. He knows that car is going to be chasing him. “You’re cheating.”
“Can’t help my subconscious,” Eames says, though the blood-drenched hand over his mouth and nose muffles that a fair bit.
“Of course you can,” Arthur flings right back at him, “that’s the point of luc-”
It’s not that car that hits Arthur. It’s another, coming down the incline. Arthur registers that it’s an atrocious shade of lavender and as square as a classic Cadillac before the impact drops him. It doesn’t kick him out of the dream-shatters his hip, that he knows, in the part of him that can still think-and he’s not so much clinging to the hood as being clung to by it, and dumped to the curb at the bottom once the car turns.
Arthur knows that only adrenaline and the logic of dreams are allowing him to see straight. It still feels like Eames is an island, descending the incline slowly, the blood from his broken nose blotting out the pattern of his shirt. He’s not smiling. Arthur’s a bit confused, Eames isn’t smiling....
He kneels, one knee on either side of Arthur’s mangled hip. The reek of his blood is terrifying, familiar. “So? Did I win?”
Eames still isn’t smiling.
Arthur draws his gun and shoots Eames in the throat, right under the chin. He’d ask to see the exit wound, but at this range, that probably consists of most of Eames’ neck.
-
When Arthur bleeds out and wakes up, Eames is already on top of him, pinning him to the chaise. He’s not smiling in reality either, and that really shouldn’t be the first thought that comes to Arthur’s mind given what they’ve just done. Arthur isn’t hard, he can’t quite feel his legs, and if Eames wanted to hurt him and have it leave scars he could.
“Take out your IV,” Eames says.
Arthur reaches between their bodies, and does. He applies a little extra pressure to the wound, to make sure he feels it. And he thinks, belatedly, that Yusuf will be annoyed at them both for leaving the sharps dangling and the drip on but the thought’s just that, belated. Stifled. Suppressed.
Eames stares at him. Arthur thinks, as loudly as he can, smile, damn you, so I can wipe it off your face. Eames doesn’t, but what he does do isn’t half bad at all; namely, card his nails through Arthur’s hair, grab him, and bare his throat.
His mouth goes to work at Arthur’s jugular, all teeth and heat, and Arthur lets him do it, stretches himself out, offers more. He still isn’t hard, doesn’t think he will be with the numbness still lingering below the waist, but the feel of Eames moving atop him, the sight or it, that sets Arthur’s brain firing even if nothing else cooperates. And then Eames is kissing him, and Arthur has to try and remember if they’ve ever kissed before, despite the years of on-again-off-again-everything-else. Eames doesn’t kiss the way he fights, doesn’t kiss any of the ways they fuck, it’s desperate but not assured. Arthur wonders if the fact that he’s kissing back is supposed to assure Eames of anything.
Minutes pass. They kiss, they settle, they align with each other. Eames holds Arthur by the hair, pulls on it, and Arthur drives his nails and knuckles into Eames’ back. The timer runs out, but this is the real world, and they don’t wake up from, or to, anything at all.
Eames bites Arthur’s lip, bruises it, marks it. “Well,” he says. “That went better than I expected.”
“Get off,” Arthur says, “I can’t feel my legs.”
-
“Clearly,” Eames says, when the issue arises again several weeks later in Helsinki, “we need more rules.”
The bell tolls, the crowd applauds, and the boxers in the ring are separated, given their minute of rest. Arthur rolls his eyes. “Oh? What gave you that idea?”
“Let’s say someone incepted me,” Eames says. He smiles, and sits back down, and Arthur follows that, despite the lummox standing in front of him and blocking his view of the boxing ring. “Honestly, Arthur. You can’t possibly have enjoyed not being able to stand for half an hour.”
“Twenty minutes,” Arthur corrects, and wonders if there’s a polite way to imply and the first time you fucked me I still couldn’t walk the next day, there’s precious little difference. But that’s not the kind of thing you say in a boxing arena, even if most of the people around you speak Finnish. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about this.”
“The environment provides its own reminders.” Back up there in the ring, one of the middleweight competitors-the one Arthur’s lain his bets on-is having a somewhat nasty shiner looked at, then iced, as his coach kneads his shoulders. Fair enough. “But I’m right. You can’t have enjoyed that part.”
“No,” Arthur admits. “But I don’t mind it.”
Eames looks at him levelly, smirk slack on his jaw but eyes strangely heavy. “What, because it’s temporary? Because it’s psychosomatic? Or because it’s pain?”
“Because it’s acceptable in the wake of what we’d just done,” Arthur says, but the announcer is saying something at the same time, and then the crowd is welling up with applause as the next round begins. Eames seems to let it go, at least in the face of watching the fight.
Arthur loses a thousand dollars that night on a knockout two rounds later.
-
This time he dreams of ice, of ground that cracks beneath their heels and sticks punishingly to their skin. Arthur may have designed it, but the hostile environment is all Eames, from the red sky to the lightning to hailstones the size of BBs stinging the cuts on Arthur’s face. Eames has won this time, doubtlessly and thoroughly, with Arthur’s right arm broken in at least three places, one of them on the joint, and his left pinned securely between their hips while Eames ruts against it, cock scalding against the cold. The frozen ground sucks down Arthur’s lower back but he thrusts all the same, still clothed and confined and in slow, terrifying pain. It was a good fight. It is a good fight. Whatever else it’s become, it’s still a fight, and red heat swells and flashes behind Arthur’s eyes as Eames threads his fingers through Arthur’s hair, claims an earned victory.
He comes, and the sky sears just as white. Then he breaks Arthur’s neck.
-
Arthur barely has time in the real world to touch one hand to the other (psychosomatically broken arms are damned clumsy, and it’s his dominant arm that’s frozen at the elbow and burning everywhere else, all in his mind and yet real and awake) when Eames jolts up on the other side of the bed. Arthur can’t get his IV out. Eames does it for him, disposes of the sharps this time, winds up the PASIV and turns it off and does all of that straddling Arthur’s hips, hazy and hard.
He tells Arthur to look at him. Arthur does more than look, he glowers, lets his eyes make abundantly clear what he thinks of Eames’ patronizing concern. He props himself up on his elbows-well, on his left elbow, the right’s not bending any time soon-and is about to say something along the lines of you don’t see me trying to look you over. He doesn’t get that far; the pain in his arm lances up and then down, straight to his groin. Eames takes him by the tie-knot. Arthur’s still the first to kiss him.
And this-this, god yes, this is more like the kind of fucking that Arthur’s gotten used to with Eames through the years. A hasty and incomplete removal of clothes, decisive and powerful hands, more grappling than grinding, more teeth than tongue, Eames laughing into the crook of Arthur’s shoulder as he yanks Arthur up and throws him over onto his knees; that. Arthur wants all of it. His slacks wrinkle harshly and bite into his shins. His belt’s still in the loops, dragging them down over his ass, but Eames’ hands are holding that pressed to Arthur’s thighs as if he doesn’t want them to peel any more down at all. He’s brutally hard against the raw small of Arthur’s back and Arthur writhes, snarls, grabs for Eames’ hands to put them where they belong.
“Got a rule about this, love?” Eames pants, teeth bared on Arthur’s collar, fingertips close but not there, not yet, damn it, tapping at Arthur’s inner thighs but just as much a taunt as his cock in the cleft.
“Yeah,” Arthur tells him, pulling him closer as hard as he can. “Don’t be an ass.”
Eames huffs out a laugh, then slams Arthur down onto the bed. Pain surges down from Arthur’s shoulder through the rest of his arm but Eames keeps holding that, steady, there, and he drapes himself over Arthur’s back and whispers, “Then hold your legs together.”
Apparently the combined efforts of the command, the thought, and the action have Arthur so hard, so fast, that he forgets his right arm still doesn’t work. He grabs for himself and fails, choking at the pain, but Eames’ hand is already there and that drives all the blood in Arthur’s body to that one place, that one touch. His skin is slick, enough that his shirttails are clinging to him, enough that the sounds of Eames lining his erection up between Arthur’s thighs and thrusting in are wet and obscene.
Arthur lurches forward, braces himself on the headboard-wrong arm, wrong arm, the pain that races up him forces a scream out of his throat-but Eames pulls him back, wraps his hand over Arthur’s chest and traps him, up on his knees. There’s nothing for Arthur to hold on to, nothing he can hold on to, nothing to do but keep his thighs tight together and balance and pray as Eames sets the pace. And that pace is brutal, Eames’ fist working Arthur’s cock fast enough to dry the sweat of his palm. Intercrural sex is slow going but vicious, slow and unsteady retreats but powerful thrusts, and as tight as Eames is holding on Arthur can only move with him. His head falls back onto Eames’ shoulder and his eyes flood red; the back of his eyelids or blood or the sky in a hailstorm, Arthur doesn’t care. Dimly, somewhere, he can hear Eames backhandedly praising him, calling him strong and lethal and god damn it I remember you nearly crushed my neck with those thighs, what the hell am I thinking putting my dick in there, but Arthur remembers and it’s that image that sends him over the edge.
Eames doesn’t stop, doesn’t stop goading him, using him, jerking him off, never mind that Arthur’s come completely apart. “Liked that, did you,” he says, not between thrusts but on them, like the words need release as much as his cock. “Is that what gets you off? Getting me at your mercy? If that’s it, you have it now, Arthur-”
And it’s not.
But that Eames has it wrong is almost as satisfying as the sex.
-
Arthur keeps score.
The job after Helsinki is in Buenos Aires. It means a new Architect, a simple job, nonlethal kicks, and no requests.
From Buenos Aires to Chicago, and Chicago means Cobb, and both the perks and pitfalls of Cobb’s renewed ability to design and entirely understandable refusal to participate in the actual heist. Whether the job would have gone better if Cobb had gone under with them, Arthur can’t know, but either way, when they make it out by the skin of their teeth, Arthur asks. Eames wins.
After Chicago, Nagasaki. Saitoh pays well but asks too much. Eames asks. Arthur wins.
After Nagasaki, Seoul. Arthur remembers why he hates the Mr. Charles gambit. Eames asks. Arthur wins, barely, and neither of them can turn doorknobs or type the next day.
After Seoul, Los Angeles. The team they’re working at crosspurposes with has Ariadne for an Architect. Arthur and Eames fail so spectacularly that Arthur liquidizes many of his stateside assets. No one asks but it happens anyway.
-
It ends with Arthur taking the kind of gut wound that bleeds black instead of red.
Arthur’s never felt anything like that before. He’d try to compare but his brain isn’t firing anything but wonder and adrenaline and a distant, stinging sort of pain. Eames is standing over him, blocking out the sun, still armed. Arthur could laugh. He might. Or those muscles might just be jumping on their own.
“Arthur,” Eames says. There’s something humorous about it. “Arthur, Darling, you have a rule that comes into play here.” There’s something patronizing about it, but Arthur still wants to laugh. That’s the adrenaline, it has to be. “Arthur. Your rule. About mercy. I need your consent.”
If Eames had a face Arthur would spit in it. He doesn’t, though, he’s a silhouette against the sun. Arthur starts plotting the trajectory, the necessary force. He doesn’t get very far. The numbers are starting to go away. He feels betrayed. It’s still humorous.
“Arthur,” Eames says again. It’s annoyed. Annoying. “Arthur. Consent.”
-no, no, some of the numbers have come back. Eames is how many feet tall? Or is that meters? Wind allowance. Viscosity. Quarter equals one hundred. Ninety-five. Red.
“Fuck your rules,” Eames says. He kneels right in Arthur’s black blood and takes Arthur by the hair, puts the muzzle of his gun to Arthur’s head. Arthur could still win, he thinks, get the gun, take it for himself, but that’s wrong, something’s wrong, the numbers are going or gone, there’s a word for that or maybe just another number and oh, there’s Eames’ face. “Time to wake up, Arthur,” he says. Smiling.
Arthur wonders what’s so funny.
-
He wakes up staring at the ceiling. It isn’t even a particularly nice ceiling. There are cracks in the plaster, spackled over half a dozen times. For a moment Arthur can see every edge clearly, every imperfection, and wants to reach up and smooth them over like clay or flesh or hospital corners.
Then they start spinning.
Arthur pitches over the edge of the bed and cradles his head in his hands. The IV tugs at his flesh and he pinches it out, forcing his hands to remain steady. He manages that, but when he goes for the biohazard box it and the lights of the timer, still running, 04:32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 25 52 25 52 24 h2 24 E2
“Arthur.”
Arthur shivers.
Eames’ hands clamp onto Arthur’s upper arms, like they’re catching the shudder to put it in a jar. He pulls Arthur to his feet. “Off with the jacket,” he says, and Arthur lets that happen, lets it slide down his arms as Eames leads him around the edge of the bed to the bathroom. They almost trip over the PASIV. Arthur thinks he might kick it. He’s coordinated enough, even now, he bets, even with his stomach threatening to eat the rest of his digestive organs.
Eames reaches into the bathroom and turns on the light, then lets off Arthur’s arms and jostles him in. He even shuts the door.
It occurs to Arthur, somewhere between his second and third attempts to externalize the source of his somewhat literal internal discomfort, that Eames has probably dealt with psychosomatic abdominal wounds before. Arthur’s thankful. And he’ll probably admit that, aloud, when his stomach stops dictating the priorities of his lungs.
After that, and washing his hands and mouth and face, he settles his hand over his pants pocket but doesn’t take the totem out. Oh, this is real. This is extremely real.
Eames knocks. “I assume you know where we are?”
“Vladivostok,” Arthur answers, twice because the first one comes out as a cough.
“And how we got here?”
“LAX to Narita. Saitoh was wearing a grey suit with a lavender shirt and you asked if he’d been dreaming since 1986. Narita to Vladivostok. Cab to the Versailles Hotel. I speak better Russian than you but we’re both pretty awful. Room 419.”
Eames laughs. The door muffles precious little of it.
Arthur rolls up his sleeves, wets his hair, and takes another moment to stare at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t look as awful as he feels. Honestly that’s more disconcerting than the part where he actually does feel like approximately five levels of hell.
When Arthur leaves the bathroom, Eames is sitting on the bed by the window. He throws Arthur a bottle of water, probably more so that Arthur can prove he’s capable of catching it. Which he is. Off-handed. And if he can’t open it and walk at the same time right this very second, well, that ability should come back once he actually drinks the water.
“Thanks,” Arthur says, before he gets too caught up in whatever this is to give credit where credit is due.
Eames nods at him. Arthur sits on his own bed, next to the PASIV. He opens it, makes sure all the tubes are coiled and in order. It feels like a parody of sanity.
“Arthur,” Eames says, “I think it’s obvious that I’m not exactly comfortable with this arrangement.”
“Specificity, Eames.”
“Darling, believe me when I tell you that I am perfectly content to shoot you in cold blood when we’re on a job and the alternatives are risking your actual life or using a teaspoon. Sometimes I’ll even admit to enjoying it,” he says, but nothing south of his eyes shows any pleasure at all. “But it should be abundantly clear that I didn’t enjoy that at all.”
“This was your idea.”
“No. Fighting me was my idea. You’re the one who brought mortal peril into it. And again; if I had a pound for every time I wanted to wring your pretty neck I’d bankroll the Motherland back into an Empire, Falkland Islands and all.”
“And I’m sure you’d have enough left to buy your very own sheep.”
“Ungulates come cheap, Arthur.” Eames sighs and shakes his head, and if the smirk resurfacing on his jaw is supposed to be reassuring, it falls flat. “My point, if you’d be so generous as to actually let me make one, is that I have as many qualms about violently killing you as you’d expect anyone in this profession to have. But I never want to see you reduced to that again, and like hell I’ll be the one to cause it.”
Arthur screws the cap back onto his water, and glares. “Reduced,” he says, like he needs to get it out from between his teeth.
“It was pathetic, Arthur. Dying like that is pathetic. You were pathetic.”
The only reason Arthur doesn’t attempt to kill him with the water bottle is that he’s still running through precisely how many ways he could.
“Darling,” Eames says, and the mattress of his bed creaks something awful, “we should bring this into the real world.”
“One minute you’re telling me I’m pathetic and the next you’re telling me you want me.”
“Oh, I know. None of this is particularly sane.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Eames, but no shit.”
“Arthur, how many times have you killed me?”
“Eames-”
“It’s a bloody number, Arthur. I want it.”
“Fifty-one.”
“More than they’ve accounted for the Chessboard Killer, I hope you know that.”
“Eames, I’m not-”
“And that’s just me. Fifty-one. Well. One shy of a full deck. I imagine I’m on the higher end of your list but how many times have you killed Ariadne? Are you up to a full chess rank for her? What about Cobb? That has to be an impressive number, through the years. What about yourself, Arthur? How many times have you died? And how many times has it been entirely your fault?”
Eames must have been expecting to get hit for that. He can’t not have been, he’s not stupid, insufferable yes but unintelligent no and he knows exactly what he’s saying, doing, being, making Arthur want. But when Arthur shoves off the bed and slugs him in the jaw, Eames doesn’t flinch.
It surprises Arthur, enough that he doesn’t take another swing.
Eames doesn’t counter, but he does rub his jaw and curse, and reach to the floor to take what’s left of Arthur’s bottled water.
“It’s a job,” Arthur says. “It’s like war. I’m not a cold-blooded killer.”
Eames laughs, and gulps the rest of the water down, sloshing it around in his mouth. He must be bleeding. “Then you shouldn’t expect the same of me, love.”
Arthur has just enough self-control left to prevent himself from saying aloud, But you do expect it of me. You and everyone else.
“So,” Eames says, and wipes a bit of blood from the corner of his mouth. “I think we should do this. No PASIV. No dreams.” The no killing is implied but understood.
Arthur tells him, “Fine.”
-
It takes them until Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg means far too much time on the Trans-Siberian Railway (and if Arthur ever wants to somehow get past Cobb’s inability to dream and give him genuine nightmares, oh will he ever bring up the Trans-Siberian Railway, especially the part where Arthur and Eames were in a stalled train car full of somewhat unperturbed Mongolian pastoralists, all of whom were drinking vodka and would not share), and also the part where they went without using the PASIV for all six days of the trip. Arthur is convinced that he’s consumed his body’s weight in vodka over the course of a week. He hates vodka. Next time he won’t let Eames purchase the alcohol.
“We should have split up,” Arthur says.
“I respectfully disagree,” Eames says, and he’s drunker than Arthur, probably because he actually likes the vodka. “We have to bet on the same team, otherwise it’s a waste.”
“I meant back in L.A.,” Arthur says. The spectators cheer. It makes Arthur’s head ache. At least they picked the right team to bet on. What the hell kind of sport is Bandy anyway? It’s like soccer on ice.
“We’d have a heap of other problems if we had.” Eames drinks more vodka, and joins in the people cheering for the end of a particular player’s penalty. “Though for the life of me I can’t remember what they are.”
“No, I meant-” Arthur coughs. “I meant back in L.A. the first time. We did. Split up. Fuck, I’m drunk.”
Eames snickers, and the crowd keeps cheering in jubilant Russian, and Arthur wants to rip the whorls out of his own inner ears and go back to their sorry excuse for a hotel and shower and sleep and fumigate this outfit and probably jerk off but not in that order, but he has to be here to collect his winnings. If he has winnings. And Eames is insufferable.
Somewhere on the ice, a player’s blood is bouncing. That must be why everyone’s cheering.
Eames isn’t laughing anymore. The bruise on his jaw is weak enough that his stubble hides it, except for the part where he cut himself trying to shave on the train.
“Fucking train,” Arthur says.
“Say it in Russian.”
Arthur thinks about it a moment, and then says, “Это поезд, это пиздец.”
Eames laughs again. “Clearly you’re not as drunk as you think you are.”
“Are you?”
“What?”
“As drunk as you think you are.”
Eames tells Arthur, in awful Russian, when we win this I will check us in to a better hotel and fuck you until you bleed. But it’s not awful enough Russian, because the spectators standing beside them stop cheering at the game, and gasp and laugh and point and one of them toasts.
“You’re trying to make me want to hit you,” Arthur says, in English.
“Tell me how this is any different than usual.”
Arthur doesn’t have to.
-
It is a better hotel.
Arthur is several thousand rubles richer, a sweater and scarf warmer, and considerably less drunk. He locks the door without any trouble, turns to hang up his coat and parcels without a twinge of dizziness at all.
Eames is standing on the other side of the room.
It is possible that they have both been standing exactly where they are for two silent minutes.
“So, should I insult your mother?” Eames asks.
“My mother’s dead,” Arthur says.
“Well, that’s a cliché.”
“You could have started by insulting my imagination.”
“Yes, but you never consider that an insult.”
Arthur sighs and shuts the closet door.
They both continue to stand where they are. Eames fidgets with the curtains. Arthur takes out his wallet and reorders the cash. Twice, actually, if you count just grabbing all the American currency and shoving it from the front to the back.
“So,” Eames says. “So what, if insulting your mother and your imagination don’t work, what, should I come up and try to strangle you with that scarf?”
Arthur shuts his eyes and exhales.
“Right,” Eames says, and stays on his side of the room. “This is buggered, isn’t it.”
“This isn’t Fight Club, Eames.”
“Right, you’re not nearly as plain as Edward Norton.”
“And I should be glad you don’t think you’re Tyler.”
“I am Arthur’s buggered head,” Eames says experimentally. “I am Arthur’s rancid hypocrisy.”
Arthur opens the closet door again and takes out his coat. “This isn’t working.”
“Arthur-”
“I can’t plan it, Eames, I don’t want to plan it, I don’t want to schedule it or take precautions or have to hold back. That’s not the point.”
“You could have told me what the point was when you started wrapping it in rules.”
“I’m telling you now, isn’t that enough?”
“It’s revelatory, yes, but no it’s not enough.”
“Well what were you after when you asked me to fight you, Eames?”
“Back in Saratoga? Your fucking sanity, Arthur. Obviously I didn’t achieve my objective.”
Arthur finishes buttoning his coat, and takes his suitcase out of the closet.
“You want sanity?” Arthur asks, throwing the suitcase onto the bed, opening it, folding his garment bag in half to shove it in with the rest. “We should have split up in L.A. I’d say we shouldn’t have started this, whatever this is, at all, but there’s no saying no to you, is there?”
“Don’t go making me out to be the one who started this, Arthur-”
“I call it like it is, Eames. You offered. You asked as much as I did. Hell, the first time it happened at all was because you hijacked my fucking dream, and if that’s not starting it I’d better take myself to court.” He shuts the suitcase. “I have hated you for years, Eames. Years. You made me respect you. You made me want you. You made me attempt to trust you, which I’m somewhat relieved to know is impossible, even if your timing makes it inconvenient.”
“That’s an awful lot of power to attribute to me, love. Careful, it’ll go to my head.”
Arthur refuses to look at him, takes his PASIV and his suitcase, and heads for the door.
“Before you go,” Eames says, quiet but still enunciated, cutting through the cold air. “Is this you getting another hotel room, or you getting another profession?”
“You can’t make it impossible for me to work again, Mr. Eames.”
“No,” Eames says. “Not nearly as thoroughly as you can.”
-
From Yekaterinburg to Moscow, of course, but Arthur is perfectly content to tell the Trans-Siberian Railway to fuck itself, and spends more than he would have liked to on a plane ticket. His paperwork is forged well enough that, alone, he makes it through without any trouble. (There are benefits to keeping his ties to Cobb-he has more ways to pretend that the PASIV is his legally, for equally legal uses. It does, however, make things awkward when they offer him the registered medical professional’s seat on the plane.)
After Moscow, Vilnius, and only for a day, though he wishes he could stay longer.
After Vilnius, Berlin, and work, a simple extraction for a client who underpays, but pays on time, and that’s enough. Working alone is alien, chafes like an unlined glove. Working alone means fewer test-runs, less consultation, less expenditure. It’s almost nice. Working alone is something Arthur hasn’t done since Cobb reclaimed him. Working alone means days that Arthur comes back to his sublet and realizes he hasn’t said a single word since he thanked the waitress at the cafe twelve hours ago.
After Berlin, Ankara, to meet a chemist and replenish his supply of somnacin. The first dose doesn’t even work, it’s so weak compared to Yusuf’s.
After Ankara, Tel-Aviv, which is initially a mistake, at least as far as extradition policies are concerned. It proves to be less and less of a mistake the deeper the tangle goes, and worth it in the end. The client pays Arthur out of her own personal weapons cache for Arthur’s covert service to the state. In thanks, Arthur introduces her to Saitoh.
After Tel-Aviv, Sofia. There are bounty hunters in Sofia. Subsequently, Bratislava, Munich, Cologne, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Arthur doesn’t sleep until Brussels.
He’s safe, in Amsterdam, as safe as he ever is. They haven’t found his place there, yet.
-
Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh? Donald O’Connor asks, prancing around the television set in reasonably high definition. My grandpa said, go out and tell ‘em a joke-but give it plenty of hope!
Arthur gets up and tries to remember where he put the stroopwafels. He didn’t; the entire box is next to his laptop. He dips one in his after-dinner coffee, bites it, and resumes composing an e-mail to a prospective new chemist who, apparently, works for Miles. He claims to have devised something nearly as potent as Yusuf’s-eighteen times brain function, better than twelve-and Arthur’s willing to test it for him if it means he can actually sleep. He leaves that qualifier out of the e-mail.
On the television, Donald O’Connor rearranges his own face. Arthur spares him a glance, and sends the e-mail.
The next one he cares to answer is from Cobb, who of course knows of Arthur’s predicament as far as America goes and says that Ariadne had no idea it would have come to this, but that she isn’t sorry. Arthur’s proud of her. He tells Cobb so.
Once that e-mail is sent, Arthur actually turns back to Singin’ in the Rain and watches the bit with the mannequin. He remembers how betrayed he felt when he first saw that there had been a cut in the scene and O’Connor hadn’t done it all straight through like he would have on stage. It’s still really amazing to watch.
Arthur deletes a few more e-mails before O’Connor gets to the Running Up the Wall bit. Make ‘em laugh, he chants, and charges for the plank-
-and that is definitely the sound of a submachine gun shattering windows.
At this point Arthur’s reaction to that sound is instinctual. His Glock is stowed in the desk drawer in the bedroom, so Arthur immediately and fluidly shuts the laptop and heads right that way. The laptop goes into its sleeve and then into his suitcase, along with the PASIV briefcase and one suit, still in its garment bag. First he shuts the suitcase, then he gets the gun and slings the holster over his shoulder. He counts fifty seconds. Getting to the window takes another eight, and he takes descent cover staying close to the bookshelf beside it.
There’s no longer gunfire out there, despite what all the shouting civilians would have you believe. Three floors up it’s difficult to see the sidewalk without opening the window (and it’s far too cold to do that anyway) but Arthur can count seven, and then six, armed thugs in dark suits, and even if the windows were shot out next door it’s this building they’re after.
(On the television, Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen are arguing about the plot.)
There’s better cover behind the couch. Arthur takes it, listens for feet pounding up the townhouse stairs, louder and louder as they go. Arthur isn’t surprised when something kicks in his door.
He is surprised when it’s Eames. He shouldn’t be.
The door collapses inward and Eames tumbles across it, crashes into the sidetable but recovers enough to get his-is that a Walther MP?-trained on the door just after the first thug tries to barge in. Arthur’s faster, Arthur’s the one to drop him, two shots, the second slower than he would have liked.
They probably have two seconds before the next comes in. Arthur spares half of that to glance over Eames, taking cover by the television, and make sure he’s not wounded. He’s not, not visibly, just filthy, and blood would definitely show up on that awful tan trenchcoat. “Is that gun yours?”
Eames cocks his head at the stiff in the doorway. “It’s his.”
“Good,” Arthur says.
The next round of gunfire cuts Jean Hagen off when a shot intended for Eames destroys the television’s LCD screen, but the soundtrack keeps playing. Eames gets himself around the side, lays some cover fire on where the door used to be-there goes Arthur’s security deposit-and Arthur gets in three shots, one of which connects but doesn’t drop the thug in the door. Arthur counts bullets, assumes the worst, thinks it might be a better idea to double back to the bedroom anyway but not yet-another salvo, this thug is new, isn’t the one Arthur wounded, Eames fires a burst and takes care of that-no, the answer is to get their guns, keep them in the hallway, god damn it where does Eames get the nerve to lead his own tails to Arthur’s safehouse?
Arthur can ask later. Right now, he raises his Glock, indicates he’ll cover, and Eames nods and skulks out from behind the television. The sound’s still going even if the screen is a liquid, spiderwebbed mess. Eames curls his lip and turns it off as he passes.
Arthur moves into position, taking cover by the kitchenette-Eames lances out an arm and pries the first downed thug’s gun out of his trembling fingers, and slides it back into the room. He takes the time out to shoot down the hall-Arthur hears a shout and a groan by the stairs-and gets the thug’s sidearm as well, and the spare magazine in his holster. He slides those to Arthur.
The next hail of gunfire rings through the hall, and Eames scrambles gracelessly back into the apartment, tripping over the fallen door. Arthur jumps up and covers him, counts one round left in his Glock and decides to keep it that way. The thug’s handgun is a SIG, lighter than Arthur is used to, but he’ll take what he can get.
The next man to charge through the door makes a stupid mistake, runs right into Eames’ path and collapses against the doorframe, which trips up the thug behind him and lets Arthur get two clear shots, the second of which connects at the thug’s right shoulder. He doesn’t go down but he does drop his gun, though the bodies piled around it make it pointless to consider. Arthur ducks down and crawls to the couch, sees if he can get a good line of sight to their legs-can’t-but Eames is up and emptying the Walther out the door.
“How many?” Arthur asks him.
“Twelve when I got here,” Eames says. “Eight now, I suppose.”
Arthur would sigh if he could spare the breath. “Cover me, I’m getting something out of the bedroom.”
Eames nods, and puts down the one Walther in favor of the other with more ammunition. “Go.”
Arthur makes a bolt for it, slides on the hardwood floor. He can hear the shots winging by, only three of them in his direction, and the shattering glass of his window, the chipping plaster of his wall. The firing doesn’t stop, but Arthur just hits the floor and pulls a second briefcase out from under the bed. The Galil AR’s only partially assembled, but it takes Arthur a minute and forty-five seconds to get the rest of it in order.
He fires the first shot from the bedroom door, out into the hall. There’s one more body in the doorway, but Eames, crouched by the couch instead of the television now, seems more impressed with Arthur than himself. “Is that gun yours?” he asks, more amused than he has any right to be.
“Yes,” Arthur tells him.
“Well, well, so the rumors are true-”
“Shut up.”
It’s excruciating, slow work to make it out into the hallway. Eames takes point, Arthur covers him whenever he appropriates the thugs’ weapons. The screaming outside has stopped but there aren’t sirens yet. By the time Arthur makes it to the stairs the thugs are in something closer to chaos, and Arthur wishes he’d brought the bipod. By the time he and Eames get to the stairwell they’re only up against four-six men down, two unaccounted for, and Arthur and Eames at least have the better position. Eames pulls one long strafe through the entire second floor, and an exploding vase takes out one of the thugs’ eyes; Arthur lines up a headshot on that one, and then there were three-two, when Eames doubles back on his strafe and a man who thought he was safe winds up smeared all over the second-floor tenant’s door. (They’re on holiday in England, Arthur knows. Lucky them.) One of the others shoots out the lighting fixture over Eames’ head and it rains shards down onto his trenchcoat. Arthur gets rid of that one somewhere between two bursts.
Of course the one man left does something stupid and barrels up the stairs toward Eames, close enough that it throws Arthur off. Eames too, if the fact that he leaps over the railing instead of shooting is any indication.
Which leaves it to Arthur to shove the muzzle of the Galil right up against the thug’s chest, and fire.
He’s fairly certain that this is not the first time this particular rifle has been used at that range. There’s no time to think about it. He doesn’t have to ask if Eames is all right, he can already see, hear, feel him brushing the glass off his coat and kneeling to check the corpses. Arthur turns his back and heads right back to his apartment, telling Eames, “I’ll see if I can get the other two.”
“I’ll be right up,” Eames says, as if there’s nothing wrong at all.
The apartment’s a fright, but at least the windows that are already shot out are at just the right height. Arthur lines up against one, and finds two armed men under the street lamps on the sidewalk-the one he wounded in the shoulder earlier, and one holding his cell phone in one hand and a Walther MP in the other. By the way the man with the phone is tapping his foot, he’s not talking. Yet.
Arthur takes that one out first. The wounded man is easier, a matter of breath and seconds later.
Arthur is still by the window, the Galil against his shoulder, when Eames starts dragging the corpses out into the hall. “Arthur-”
“Put the door back on the hinges,” Arthur growls.
Eames is blessedly silent as he complies. There’s nothing but the thud of dead flesh and the slight grunting exhales as Eames follows through. No sirens, no cars on the street. It’s been minutes, and Arthur chose this house on this street because he knows that even in an emergency it’s far enough from the precinct for a few extra minutes of grace. There’s time, and quiet, and night.
Arthur turns around, carries the Galil across his chest, watches Eames put the door back into place. “There,” Eames says, dusts his hands off, and turns around to face Arthur, smiling, “now, we should-”
Arthur lifts the rifle, and beats Eames in the solar plexus with the stock.
Eames appears to be trying to form something with his mouth, probably Arthur’s name, but that’s not going to work if he’s struggling to breathe, is it?
“You led a dozen armed tails to my safehouse,” Arthur seethes. “You didn’t even know I was here, did you.”
“L-lucky you were,” Eames tries to say, pathetic, which only makes Arthur angrier.
So Arthur backhands him across the jaw. “What, you wanted me to finish you? Is that it?”
Eames goes for Arthur’s throat instead of answering.
The Galil hits the floor a moment before Arthur does, with all of Eames’ weight on top of him. Not for long. Not for long at all. Arthur tears into him, throws him over, shoves him against the back of the couch and lands every punch he can. Eames’ hands are still on Arthur’s neck and the world’s going red at the edges but Arthur’s too angry to stop. He uses his knees, gets one loped over Eames’ forearm and clamps down, buys seconds to breathe and get out of this tangle. He gets to his feet first, kicks Eames while he’s down. Twice. Same place. Eames grabs him by the ankle and Arthur can’t throw him off, is thrown, doesn’t even know or care where he lands-
It’s this.
He needs this. Now.
“Rules,” he chokes out, “ rules-”
“Anything sharp stays away from my dick,” Eames says, getting to his feet, coughing. “You?”
“Nothing above the neck.” That’s all Arthur gets out before Eames closes the gap between them and lands a punch right in Arthur’s gut, the kind that makes him taste more coffee than blood.
Arthur doesn’t even know what he’s hitting anymore, just that it’s Eames. The flesh that bruises around his knuckles might be his own. But Eames is hitting back, grabbing Arthur by the holster and throwing him into the wall facefirst. Arthur elbows backward, feels Eames gasp and seize against him-on the same side, Arthur slams his fist into Eames’ chin, again and again until Eames grabs him by the forearms and holds him pinned. Arthur arches, throws back his head and slams his skull into Eames’ nose, then twists and gets on his knees, still between Eames and the wall.
It’s still a fight. It’s still a fight, when Arthur gets Eames’ belt and fly undone and mouths Eames through his shorts, sucks up the sweat and the heat-still a fight when he grabs Eames by the ass and the thigh and traps him (let’s see how he likes it, we both already know he likes it), still a fight when the panels of Eames’ trenchcoat black out Arthur’s sight so there’s nothing but the tastes of rough cotton and salt. Still a fight, when Eames’ hand gets in the way and starts tugging down his boxers, interferes with Arthur’s work.
Arthur lifts Eames’ cock out of the way and bites, high on Eames’ inner thigh.
The way Eames screams is extremely gratifying. It cuts through the silence, and his fingernails cut through Arthur’s scalp. Arthur is almost laughing when Eames rears back and pummels him right in the eye. That’s fine, that’s fine, it hurts but it’s fine, they’ve both told the rules where to stick it.
Eames is laughing too.
Arthur ducks between Eames’ legs and comes out on the other side, whipping around and socking him in the shoulder from behind. A few more quick blows and Eames is the one pinned, pants down and trenchcoat shoved out of the way and arms braced on the wall. Arthur kicks him in the heels so he’ll put his legs together. Eames doesn’t, snickers and struggles until Arthur grabs him by the throat and the cock and snarls, plain in his ear, “Tell me if you knew I was here.”
“What do you care?” The shape of the words swell Eames’ throat, push against Arthur’s palm. Arthur lets him go, drops that hand and brings it around to get his own pants undone.
“More than you think,” Arthur says. He bares his nails around Eames’ balls, lets the threat stand. “Did you know I was here?”
Eames doesn’t answer, but the way he’s pushing himself against Arthur’s hips makes nothing else matter.
It’s a struggle the whole way through, to hold Eames down, to hold him together, with fists and threats and fucking. Arthur buries his face in the crook of Eames’ shoulder, thrusts between Eames’ thighs in time with the pulse ringing around his eye. He loses himself in it, in want, in anger-lets it blind him-lets it burn through all the counting and control and calculation and bring him down to this, and Arthur stops caring at all.
It surprises him when Eames is the first to come. Eames swerves in his grasp and shudders and kisses him, twists himself and chokes but it doesn’t stop Arthur, doesn’t even slow him down, he can feel everything inside himself racing and surging and he holds on to Eames, keeps him where he wants him, tight and together and here, here, here.-
-
“Oh god, no, of course not, officer!” Eames says into his cell phone, in French, and affecting the voice of a dear old lady. “These men, they came in and tore the place up, I cannot for the life of me understand it-they are chasing after the dear boy who lives on the third floor, he was always so polite-no, officer, I couldn’t possibly-what? Oh, no, he may have fallen in with a bad crowd, but he seemed like such a nice boy-”
Arthur elbows him pointedly in the ribs.
“-No, no, I don’t mind at all, I think he has run off-they were speaking in American English, I could not understand them so well, you see, but there was one other man alive and when they came down the stairs he said something about laying low in Russia-yes, he did say again-well I suppose the other man may have been English-no, please, let me come in and talk to you at the precinct, I do not want to stay at the house-I am with my neighbor next door right now-yes-yes, officer, thank you so much.”
Eames shuts off his cell phone and sinks into the remains of the couch. Arthur, on the other side of it, continues holding the cold steak against his left eye. He holds out his other hand toward Eames for the cell phone. Eames drops it dutifully into Arthur’s palm.
The suitcases are packed, except for Arthur’s laptop; the guns are disassembled, as much evidence undone as planted. Eames knows someone in Den Haag who can get them across the English Channel. With the hand not holding the steak, Arthur brings up a clip from The Band Wagon on youtube, the one where Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dance in Central Park. Once it’s a few minutes in, Arthur calls up a moving company in England, makes sure his storage locker outside London is still up to date.
While he waits for the call to connect, Arthur feels Eames’ fingers, nudging against his hand. He lets the steak drop-Eames catches it, and turns it around, replacing the colder side of the meat over Arthur’s eye. It’s-tender, Arthur decides. The gesture, as well as the flesh.
Eames watches the youtube clip, screws his face up in confusion that isn’t quite disgust. “Fred Astaire,” he says, tilting his head, “carriages in the park. White suits. Slow-dancing. Really, Arthur, I wouldn’t have bet on it.”
“Sure you would have,” Arthur says. “But you’d have lost.”
“Oh?”
The phone connects to the moving company before Arthur can tell him: It’s the sound of horses.
But there’s time, if Eames wants to try and figure that out.
-
---
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.