[Fic] The Conceptual Vicious Circle 1/2
Title: The Conceptual Vicious Circle 1/2
Fandom: Inception
Pairing(s): Arthur/Eames
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Oh god. Underage (both Arthur and Eames), violence, mentions of suicide and attempted suicide, graphic torture and murder, killing small animals, sex... probably more, omg.
Summary: Eames won't know he's drowning until he's in too deep.
Notes: Omg, you guys. This started out as a little niggling in my head to write something weird and graphic and totally fucked up and I end up with this monstrosity. IN TWO PARTS, EVEN. I have a plan for how part 2 will go already. /sob
This is actually labeled This Shit is Fucked Up on my computer, so it's... well, it's fucked up. Arthur is a underage sociopath (since you can't be diagnosed as such until you're 18). So. Be warned. :|
I BLAME ALL THE DUBSTEP I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO.
Eames was afraid of him. Arthur could tell by the way his gaze kept flickering up from his mashed potatoes, from how tight his grip on the fork was. His fear wasn’t completely unfounded, though, Arthur thought as he pushed the still half-frozen peas around on his sectioned lunch tray. He let it go and said nothing; let Eames think he was watching him discreetly. What harm could it do?
“So. You’re new.”
Arthur glanced up and blinked a couple of times. He hadn’t expected Eames to actually speak to him, really. “Yeah.”
Eames was supposed to be showing him around, showing him the ‘ropes’, so to speak. He hadn’t been shown much so far and Eames had barely spoken a work to him. It was obvious that he didn’t do this whole ‘mentoring’ thing too often. But Arthur didn’t mind. He didn’t feel much like speaking anyways.
“It’s not so bad in here... once you get used to it,” Eames mumbled, trying for a smile, but it just made him look uncomfortable.
“Yeah.”
They fell into that awkward silence again and they both stared down at their trays. This was why Arthur hated meeting new people. He hated trying to fish for things to talk about. He wished that Eames wouldn’t try and they could continue the day in silence as Eames showed him the daily routine of the place.
“So,” Eames coughed, pushing his half-eaten lunch away, “how old are you, Arthur?”
“Fifteen.”
“I’m seventeen,” Eames hummed. He rested a hand on one of his hands and looked around the room, avoiding Arthur’s gaze. Arthur kept staring. “I’ve been here three years.”
“Why haven’t they let you out yet?”
“Haven’t learned the right things to say yet.” Eames grinned like he was sharing a dirty secret. “Because that’s all it takes, isn’t it? Some sweet words and some ‘I’m feeling better’s and soon enough, they’ll deem you completely sane.”
Arthur let himself smile. “That means you’re a bad liar, then.”
“In some ways, I suppose.” Eames shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know, for someone locked in a nuthouse, you seem pretty okay.”
“I’m good at hiding it most days.”
Eames raised an eyebrow and Arthur saw goosebumps move over his skin. Either he was cold or something Arthur had said had freaked him out a little. Arthur figured it was probably the latter. “Really. And what happens when you’re not so good at hiding it?”
“Well, that’s what got me sent here.”
Eames’s eyes narrowed and he leaned back a little. He was still afraid of Arthur, that was apparent. Arthur couldn’t figure out what he had said that would have freaked him out so much, though. He thought back on their exchange and couldn’t pick out anything unusual that he had said. Maybe Eames was just suspicious of everyone. Paranoid?
“What did you do to get you sent here, then?”
When Arthur was ten, he spent a day at the beach with his mother and sister.
He spent most of the day in the hot sun, playing around in the sand and the waves. He had his bucket and filled it full of things he found-mostly tiny little crabs. He loved to watch them run around inside and try and climb up the sides. He loved watching them claw at the other crabs he plopped in there.
He left the bucket in the hot sun next to his beach towel when his mother called him up for lunch.
When he came back, the crabs weren’t moving. He blinked down into the bucket, hot to the touch from the summer sun. He tipped it over and the stiff, unmoving creatures spilled out onto the sand. He frowned and poked them, thinking they were sleeping for a moment. They were laying with their soft underbellies exposed in surrender. Arthur could only stare when it hit him that they were dead.
He wanted to cry, but only found himself staring at them, completely fascinated.
“Oh, honey,” his mother was suddenly behind him, touching his back, “get away from there, those things are dead, don’t touch them.”
But he didn’t want to touch them. He just wanted to watch them. He wanted to ask how something alive could just roll over and die like that-how life was so easily taken from just a few hours in the sun. He stared at them until his mother was sighing behind him. She picked him up and carried him away from the dead creatures in the sand.
Eames wouldn’t leave him alone, Arthur discovered quickly. Even though there was an ever present wariness about him whenever he was around Arthur, he wouldn’t go away. He showed Arthur around still, even if there wasn’t all that much to see. Showed him where they could go to paint if they wanted to, or watch television, if he was lucky enough to gain control of the remote.
Arthur found himself not minding. It was surprisingly okay to have someone around-almost like a friend.
“This is Cobb,” Eames hummed, pointing to a blond man drawing a landscape of buildings and writing what seemed to be dimensions over them. Arthur raised an eyebrow. “He had a breakdown when his girlfriend jumped off a room right in front of him. Wanted him to join her. Says she was convinced they were living in a dream or some Matrix shit like that.”
“Fuck,” Arthur hummed, raising a hand to Cobb, who didn’t seem to notice.
“Ariadne’s mum went nuts and tried to drown her,” Eames whispered, breath ghosting over Arthur’s ear. “She has these violent, crazy nightmares about it now where she wakes up screaming and throwing stuff.” He pointed to the pretty little brunette seated next to Cobb, watching him draw.
Arthur just nodded and kept looking around the room. Everybody was either watching television or painting or talking and smiling and looking so fucking normal. It was... it was strange.
“Fischer,” Eames murmured, pointing to a sullen brown-haired boy reading a book. “His dad was the biggest asshole you’d ever meet, from the shit he’s told us. Manic depression, but I have a feeling there’s a lot more that’s messed up with that kid,” he snickered.
Arthur nodded and folded his arms over his chest. “So everybody that’s here,” he said slowly, “they’re here because they couldn’t control what happened to them.”
Eames blinked when he stared at Arthur. “Yeah... I mean, I guess so.” He shrugged. “Well, except for me, I suppose. I tried to off myself when I was fourteen by swallowing my mum’s sleeping pills. When that didn’t work, I tried to blow my head off with my dad’s pistol. Problem was that my folks found me ready to do it. A lot of crying and yelling happened and they sent me here to ‘fix’ me,” he snorted.
“Why did you want to kill yourself?”
“You know, even with all the pills they have me hopped up on, I still sort of want to.” He grinned wryly. “Life just seems like this bleak, black mass and I really don’t see the point.” He shrugged. “Why go about life filled with hope when all I’m going to get is a shitty nine-to-five gig trapped in a cubicle somewhere?”
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “And you figured that out when you were fourteen?”
“No,” Eames laughed. “I didn’t understand why I wanted to when I was fourteen. I just knew that I wanted to. I figured it out while I was trapped in here.”
“Interesting.”
“So, Arthur. Man of mystery. Could you control why you got sent here?”
Arthur hummed and stared directly at Eames. “I suppose it could have been avoided.”
When Arthur was eleven, he saw a story on the news about ten people dying in a six car pileup.
The gruesome pictures they showed on the news and the video of the police using the Jaws of Life to pull mangled bodies out of twisted metal made Arthur either want to throw up or see more. He chose to sit and watch, eyes wide, face pressed close to the glass of the television as if it would help him see better as they scrape up brain matter from the pavement.
They showed a photo of one motorcyclist whose head had been crushed inside his helmet between two cars and whose clothes and skin had been half-ripped off against the pavement. Arthur felt his mouth go dry as he watched, hands trembling.
His mother, sitting on the couch behind him, made a noise of disgust and pulled a face. “This is disgusting. It’s amazing what they’ll show on the news nowadays,” she sighed and quickly changed the channel.
Arthur felt a stab of disappointment, but sat back and watched whatever his mother had put on.
Riverside was a massive building. It took up a couple city blocks, at least, but most of it the patients weren’t allowed in. Most of it was rooms or doctor’s offices or rooms for group. The only rooms patients could really wander in were the rec room, the cafeteria and their rooms. They could go out into the tiny courtyard, too, but it was utterly depressing being out there, surrounded by trees beyond razor wire fences.
Arthur was starting to get cabin fever.
If he wasn’t eating in the cafeteria, he was in his room, pacing to the mantra I need to get out I need to get out I need to get out get me out get me out get me-
It was difficult to act sane when he was trapped inside a box. He couldn’t feel grounded when he was feeling like a caged animal. He couldn’t convince psychiatrists and doctors that he was doing better when all he could do was sink into his own mind and drown.
He was almost surprised when he looked over one day and saw Eames staring at him from his doorway, eyes slightly wider than normal. “Arthur... are you feeling alright?”
“No,” Arthur snapped, gritting his teeth. “No I’m not. It’s this place. It’s this room, it’s everything, Eames, I can’t stand it.”
Eames took a cautious step forward and placed a hand over Arthur’s balled fist. Arthur had to hold on tight to his self control to not beat him into a pulp. He was angry and stir crazy and pissed at how fucking calm Eames was. He wanted to hit him, he wanted him to get angry too-wanted him to yell and scream and try and fight back, wanted to break his fucking nose and watch him bleed.
But he held on, tried to breathe normally, stared at Eames as he held his shaking hand.
“Nobody wants to be here, Arthur,” Eames said lowly. “And I know you’re wanting to throw yourself against a wall and scream right now, but that’s not going to convince the suits that you’re doing much better,” he sighed. Arthur wanted to hit him again. “Come on, let’s go out to the courtyard.”
Arthur let out a breath and nodded stiffly, following Eames outside. He sat down on a bench and raked a hand through his hair. “They’re never going to let me out of here.”
Eames shrugged and picked lint off of his jeans. “Sure they will. You can leave when you turn eighteen if you want, too, you know.”
“Not me,” Arthur said darkly. “I did something stupid, Eames. They’re not going to let me out of here unless I learn to act like I’m not crazy. I can’t just walk out of here, not unless they deem me perfectly sane.”
“Arthur,” Eames breathed, and his hand was still on Arthur’s and Arthur couldn’t bring himself to care. “What did you do?”
Arthur pressed his lips into a thin line. He stared at the trees, swaying gently in the breeze just beyond the fence. He watched birds hop between them, felt the sun beat against his skin. “I got caught.”
When Arthur turned thirteen, he bought himself a scrapbook.
He was intending to fill it with pictures of himself, his friends and family vacations, but instead he opened the newspaper. There, on the front page, was an article about a father who murdered his wife and three children with a hacksaw. He tortured them beforehand, carefully sawing off each limb until they passed out and died of blood loss. Arthur’s hands were shaking as he clipped the article out of the paper and placed it into the scrapbook.
He hid it under his bed, a carefully hidden secret.
It fed a part of him, some deep, dark part of him that he couldn’t display in a public setting. It sated that part of him, seeing the stories about murders and car accidents and suicides, seeing the photos of police covering up bodies or pieces of bodies sometimes. He especially loved the stories where the murderer is never caught-it meant they were smart. Smarter than the city police forces, at least.
Every time he saw an article in the paper like that, he’d discreetly take the page once his mother finished reading it and place the article in his scrapbook. He’d flip through it every now and then, tracing his fingers over the pages and articles spouting about death and mangled corpses.
He came into his room one day, when the scrapbook was half-full with articles, and found his older sister flipping through it with a condescending grin on her face.
“Jeeze, Arthur, you’re even more fucked up than I thought,” she laughed.
“Give it back,” Arthur hissed, trying to keep calm, but felt his blood run hot through his veins. He felt a spike of terror pierce right through him. His hands were shaking; his heart was beating a mile a minute. He never wanted to show anyone the scrapbook. It was his secret, a locked away part of himself that he stored between its pages, only to be taken out when he wanted to. And now, here was his sister, flipping through it like it was nothing and it was like she was ripping him open.
“No way! I’ve got to show this to mom, she’ll ground you for a month for all the sick shit that’s in here, or send you to a psych ward or something,” she laughed, flicking long, brown hair away from her face.
“I said give it back!” Arthur snapped. He lunged forward, seeing red, losing control of his body. He tackled her and threaded those long brown strands through his fingers and tore. She screamed, the book dropped to the floor and Arthur clawed at her face with blunt nails, tore more of her hair, tried to rip her skin right off of her bones and-
“Arthur!”
He froze when he heard his mother’s voice.
“Oh my god, Arthur, get off of her!” she screeched, wrenching Arthur away from his sister. His sister was crying and holding her face. His mother went over and held her. Arthur stood there, motionless and staring at them both. When his mother looked up, it was as if she were looking at a stranger.
Arthur was glad when she looked away and turned back to his sister.
“How are you feeling today, Arthur?”
Arthur smiled easily and sat back in the chair. “Pretty good. I’ve been having a good week, actually.”
“Really? And what have you been doing? The orderlies tell me you’ve been interacting with more patients lately.”
“Yeah, I mean... just hanging out, mostly. Ariadne’s pretty alright, Cobb’s kind of quiet and pretty intense, but he’s smart and good to talk to.”
“What about Eames?”
Arthur paused momentarily and mentally cursed himself. “Eames? Yeah... I guess Eames is alright.”
The psychiatrist-Miles, he said to call him-smiled in that kind, grandfatherly kind of way. “That’s good. You’re doing much better than when you first came here.”
Arthur smiled again and nodded. “Yeah. I’m feeling a lot better too, you know? I think the pills are finally starting to work,” he laughed.
“Good.” Miles jotted something down. “So what do you think about when you’re not with your friends?”
Arthur’s brain short-circuited momentarily at the word friends. He fidgeted and wrung his hands together, trying not to act nervous and trying to come off as completely nonchalant. “I don’t know. Books, mostly. I started reading The Catcher in the Rye and have really been enjoying it.”
Miles smiled again. “I’m glad to see you’re taking an interest in literature. I think that’s all for today. Thank you, Arthur.”
“Thanks, Miles.” Arthur nodded and walked out of the room.
He figured his best chance to get out of there was to lie through his teeth. So far, it seemed to be working.
When Arthur was fourteen, he found a stray cat.
He didn’t name her. Just fed her when he saw her and scratched behind her ears. She was clean enough and affectionate and Arthur was rather fond of her. Once she even brought him a mouse with its neck torn wide open. Arthur had snapped a picture of it and placed it in his scrapbook.
Arthur liked the cat, he really did. That was why he slightly surprised when he ended up breaking her neck. If someone were to ask why, he wouldn’t be able to say. He had just taken a hold of her furry neck one day, stared into her eyes and twisted. He heard the crunch and crack of bone, heard her gurgling, pathetic little mewls-actually liked the sound, even. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that he hated the cat, of course. It was the rush of adrenaline that came with the fact that he could.
He could take her life if he wanted to. He had that sort of power over her.
And as he stared at her lifeless, cooling body, he couldn’t help but snap a picture. The bone was pressing against the skin; her eyes were wide open and glassy; her mouth was open, tongue lolling out.
He kept that photo on the first page, right next to the story of the father murdering his family.
When Eames kissed him, he honestly couldn’t say he was surprised.
It was the way Eames looked at him that tipped him off-with this warm sort of hesitant affection. Arthur couldn’t say he returned it, exactly, but Eames had these plush, kissable lips that felt so good against his own. Maybe he didn’t feel like Eames felt, but he couldn’t say that he didn’t enjoy the feeling of their lips being pressed together, sliding against each other, licking into his mouth.
Arthur liked that part.
Eames looked surprised as he pulled away, face flushed red. He smiled like he had just won the lottery, sort of dopey and blissed out. It fell quickly and he looked away. “So....”
Arthur blinked, running his tongue over his bottom lip, still tasting Eames there. “So?”
Eames said nothing and Arthur felt a little confused. Maybe Eames was regretting it, maybe he thought Arthur didn’t want him that way. He did, though-Eames was attractive. He was big and burly and looked like he could snap Arthur’s arm like a twig if he wanted. Arthur wanted to fuck him-wanted to watch him writhe and pant and beg, wanted to see all that muscle and girth surrender to him.
“Eames, honestly, do you want to fuck or not?” Arthur sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets, single eyebrow raised.
Eames’s eyes widened to the point where Arthur thought maybe they would pop out of his skull. “I... um.” He frowned and stared Arthur down like he was joking. “Yeah, of course, but... honestly, what if one of the orderlies catches us or something?”
Arthur rolled his eyes and took a step closer to Eames. He flattened his palms on that broad chest and stared at him through hooded eyes. “Eames,” he breathed, “if they catch us, we continue until they have to pry me off you.”
He heard Eames make this low sort of whine and he knew he had won.
Arthur was almost fifteen.
His scrapbook was nearly full. He started clipping out less articles and taking more pictures instead. He took pictures of road kill, at first, but then started seeking out animals on his own. He would trap them and hold them down and slit their throat until they bled out. He would then pull on a pair of latex gloves and carefully cut them out-dissect them.
He liked to empty their insides, line up their organs and then snap a picture. It was always interesting to see the different parts of them outside the body as opposed to in and functioning.
He liked to open them up quickly, sometimes while they were still alive, snap open the ribs and watch the heart beat. He liked to watch it slow and stutter as the animal died, liked to watch the blood squirt from the live arteries he had cut, liked to watch the blood pool around the animal, cake its fur or feathers or what-have-you. That part was his favourite part.
After he was done, he would cut the animal into pieces and bury them all in different places.
He also loved that part. He loved the fact that he could split something up so entirely that someone, upon finding a piece, wouldn’t be able to recognize the entire animal. If they found a single leg, how would they know it was from a cat or a dog or a pigeon? They could guess, but without the rest, they would never know.
And Arthur loved that. He never told anybody, never showed them what he did in his spare time, but he loved it. He acted normal in public, but the only thrill he ever felt was the power trip that rushed through him as he hacked away at those creatures.
He knew he was fucked up. He knew he was sick. But he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Arthur was lying on Eames’s chest one afternoon in Eames’s room. It was the same as his room, so he really didn’t care. He had grown accustomed to this sort of position over the weeks, lying curled around that broad chest, arms and legs carelessly tangled together. He was comfortable and he enjoyed the warmth Eames exuded.
Eames was crazy about him, though Arthur didn’t know why. He had never even told Eames anything about himself, only shown snippets and they had talked, of course, and been around each other, but Arthur was an empty void most days. He didn’t like talking about himself, preferred to listen more. It was good that Eames liked to talk once he got comfortable.
Another good thing about Eames was that he made Arthur look good. Hanging around Eames, talking with him, laughing with him, hanging around his friends-it made the orderlies think that Arthur was branching out, that he was getting better. Arthur liked that Eames gave them that impression, and that Eames made it easy. Listening to Eames talk wasn’t boring. In fact, it was even interesting some days. And he was growing rather fond of Eames, too.
He actually liked lying there, listening to Eames breathe, to his heart beat, have Eames press kisses into his hair. It was comfortable and made the days seem less bleak. It calmed him down; it made the walls less oppressive. He didn’t tell Eames this, but when he was alone in his room, staring at the ceiling, he had a lot of time to think. And when he really thought about it, he didn’t mind being around Eames.
“When I’m out of here,” Eames whispered into Arthur’s hair, “and when you get out, you’ll still see me, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Arthur murmured. Why not? If he ever did get out, Eames wouldn’t be a bad person to go and see.
“I’m turning eighteen soon,” he said softly. “I can leave after that. Go start an actual life, you know?” he hummed, smiling. “I’ll have everything set up for myself by the time you’re out.”
“Okay,” Arthur murmured, leaning up and trailing his mouth over Eames’s throat. “You’ll come visit, though.”
“Of course, you git,” Eames snickered, running his fingers through Arthur’s hair.
Arthur felt surprisingly calm thinking about Eames coming to see him-about living with Eames after he was released. About not seeing his mother and instead running away with a man he had met in an asylum, starting new lives for themselves. It all sounded so good and it sounded comfortable. He found himself not minding the idea at all.
The day dragged on, Arthur and Eames going to the cafeteria and to their respective meetings with their psychiatrists. They met back in Arthur’s room and jerked each other off quickly before the sun went down and the orderlies came to check in on them. Eames pressed a sloppy kiss to Arthur’s mouth before he darted out and Arthur found himself laying back and revelling in the afterglow. These days were good. He felt grounded and sane and his mind was quiet when he went to sleep. The walls didn’t close in on him, he wasn’t twitching restlessly. It was good.
He really didn’t want to think about what the days would be like after Eames left.
Arthur didn’t throw a party on his fifteenth birthday.
Instead, he followed his sister to one that she went to-some college party where he felt wholly out of place, but didn’t mind. He drank and looked around the room and sat in a corner just observing. He loved the feeling alcohol gave him-that spinning, tingling feeling at the back of his mind that seemed to infect his entire body. It felt good.
He liked just watching people mill about at parties; he liked the way some yelled and conversed with everyone, always that one awkward person standing against a wall, eyes darting around for someone to talk to. It was like was watching a herd of sheep in a field. Under the influence of alcohol or whatever, people were really like any animal out there-they wanted food and pleasure and that was it. And since nobody was particularly hungry at these sort of events, the only thing they were in search of was pleasure.
Some tall, drunk, blond girl approached him with a lecherous grin. She tugged at Arthur’s hair and giggled against his cheek. “You’re adorable,” she slurred. “Come upstairs, I want to show you something.”
He followed her, figuring it couldn’t hurt. When they walked-or in her case, stumbled-into the bedroom, she pulled him down on top of her, falling back onto the bed. “I bet you’re a virgin,” she purred. “I love virgins. They’re so cute.”
Arthur blinked and stared down at this girl. He didn’t even know her name and she was asking him to have sex with her. It was an odd situation, but Arthur found himself wanting to experience more of it. Feeling her body pressed against his, feeling her hands trailing down his back and cupping his crotch, feeling her let out quick little breaths-it was intoxicating.
“I’m going to do something you’re going to love.”
She rolled him onto his back and slid down onto her knees on the bed, grinning all the while. She pulled down his pants and boxers in one swift motion and swallowed his cock. Arthur felt himself tense up-he had never felt anything quite like this. He had jerked off before, sure, but this was different. It was like the times he flipped through his scrapbook and traced his fingers over the photos, but more intense. It was like reliving the moments where he stared at an animal’s exposed, beating heart-that power.
He groaned and fisted her hair, thrusting down into her throat. He pulled her on and off his cock in quick, brutal motions, feeling her whine around his dick but not stopping. She was breathing quickly and her hands were clenching and unclenching around his thighs. She was enthusiastic, trying to keep up with Arthur’s pace. He came into her mouth all too quickly, seeing stars and letting out a choked moan.
He laid back, panting and watching her wipe come from her lips.
“You take forever in the bathroom, you know that?” Eames sighed from outside the tiny bathroom in Arthur’s room.
Arthur snorted and continued to meticulously comb his hair, making sure no strand was out of place. Arthur liked to look good, that wasn’t a problem. He knew some might call him narcissistic, but it wasn’t wrong to want to look good. Everybody wanted to look good. So he combed his hair and washed his face, applied moisturizer where he could, all with extreme care. He took a long time in the bathroom, but Eames could wait. Besides, he liked it when Arthur’s skin was soft.
When he emerged, Eames sat straight up and rolled his eyes. “You’re a fucking princess,” he laughed. “It’s my last day here, you could at least forego your little bathroom ritual.”
“Shut up,” Arthur snorted. “Come on, we need to get breakfast.”
Eames sighed and followed Arthur down to the cafeteria. All throughout the day, Eames was looking at him with this faraway expression of longing. Arthur had no idea what it was about, but didn’t want to ask, so he kept quiet. They did what they did during any regular day-sat in the rec room with Ariadne and Cobb, watching Cobb sketch and Ariadne doing some of the same. Eames held Arthur’s hand, which was something he rarely did. Arthur didn’t mind, but it made his skin prickle in an odd sort of way.
They ate dinner in silence, Eames looking more and more forlorn as night time approached. It became unbearable-he looked kind of pathetic with that expression and Arthur hated it.
“For fuck’s sake Eames, what’s the matter?” he sighed as they made it back to his room.
Eames blinked a few times and seemingly tried to shake off the feeling. “Nothing,” he hummed, smiling in that tight, controlled sort of way that meant yes, something is the matter, but I don’t want to talk about it. Normally Arthur didn’t press it, but tonight was Eames’s last night there so he couldn’t just drop it.
“Eames,” he said flatly. “Don’t bullshit me, okay? What’s the matter with you?”
“I just...” he paused, hands wringing together and staring down at his feet as a he sat next to Arthur on the bed. “I’m really going to miss you,” he whispered. “I know that’s lame, but I’ve just been thinking about it all day and it’s going to suck when you’re gone and I’m off working and living on my own and waiting for you....”
“We’re going to see each other-”
“That’s not the point, though, Arthur. It’s that we can’t do... this, stuff like this, just hang out, just the two of us. Not until you get out. You know... you know that I’ve been thinking about... offing myself less lately, right? I told you that.”
“I remember, yeah. So? Isn’t that good?”
“Well yeah, of course it’s good, but...” Eames paused, hands tight together. “I don’t know. Never mind. It’s fucking stupid.”
Arthur let out a frustrated sigh and narrowed his eyes. “Eames, come on. You obviously want to tell me, so just tell me already.”
Eames pressed his lips together and turned towards Arthur. He couldn’t meet Arthur’s gaze, just stared at his chin and swallowed. “I... I think I’m in love with you.”
Arthur froze up. “Oh.”
“Fuck, see?” Eames groaned, pressing his face into his hands. “I shouldn’t... shit, I fucked up, didn’t I?”
Arthur felt a spike of terror pierce through him. He kept his face calm though and placed a hand on Eames’s shoulder. He knew he had to say something or else Eames would freak out and leave here an emotional wreck. He needed to be calm and cool if he was going to start something for himself, not dwelling on the fact that Arthur didn’t love him. Arthur wasn’t sure if he did, but he couldn’t just leave the conversation with ‘oh’.
“It’s okay,” he said lamely. “Eames. Really. I don’t mind.”
Eames looked up and stared at Arthur like he was even more confused and conflicted than before. “That’s such a fucking weird thing to say,” he mumbled. “You don’t mind? What does that mean, Arthur? You’re such a fucking enigma; I can never figure you out.”
Arthur blinked and narrowed his eyes. “I just... can’t we continue like we were? Sure, you love me, and that’s okay with me, but can’t we just....”
“So you just want to drop it, then? Forget about it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you meant.”
“Eames, I like you, alright? Isn’t that enough for now? I just turned sixteen for fuck’s sake, give me time to figure this out.”
He knew playing the age card would work. Eames’s expression softened immediately, like it just dawned on him that Arthur was still so young. Arthur was glad he still had that advantage and could dodge the subject until Eames decided he would bring it up.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Arthur said quickly, swallowing hard. This was why he didn’t get into relationships. He liked the quick, instant gratification that sex gave him, but once emotions became involved, he had no idea what to do. He didn’t care if he stepped on peoples’ feelings usually, but Eames was a ticket out of this place and out of his life. He could start something new with him once he was out. Hurting Eames would hurt his chances at that.
They sat in silence for a moment that seemed to drag on forever and Arthur started to fidget. “Look,” he mumbled, glancing over at Eames. “Just... I was going to do something for you tonight, so if you still want to, you should lay down.”
Eames snorted, but Arthur saw a hint of a smile on his face. “You’re so strange. Like you have to order me to have sex with you.”
“Shut up,” Arthur sneered. “This is going to be different, so stop talking and let me concentrate.”
He was going to let Eames fuck him this time. He had never done it before, had never felt the need. But watching the way Eames squirmed under him and begged for it every time made Arthur think there had to be something good about it, so he was going to try it.
He pulled off their clothes quickly as he ever did and grabbed a bottle of hand lotion from his bedside table. “You brought a condom right?”
“Of course, darling. Pants, where they always are.”
Arthur grumbled under his breath and fished around in Eames’s pants, placing the foil packet on the bed. “Where do you even get these in here?”
“Clinic has an entire bin of them for free.”
“No kidding.”
Arthur looked down at his hands and saw they were shaking. He was not nervous, he told himself. If it hurt, that was fine. Maybe that was part of the appeal. Pain wasn’t all bad.
He poured some lotion over his fingers and watched as Eames sat up on his elbows, licking his lips and spreading his legs a bit wider. Arthur grinned in a wicked kind of way and spread his own knees. Instead of pushing a finger into Eames, though, he reached behind himself and worked one into his own body.
He watched Eames’s jaw drop, grit his teeth at the uncomfortable feeling.
“Oh fuck. Arthur,” Eames choked out and the discomfort was worth it for Eames’s reaction.
He grunted and moved his hand, tried crooking his finger to make the burning sting subside a little. It didn’t really work and he was starting to get frustrated. This was what he did for Eames, so why wasn’t it working properly?
“Darling,” he heard Eames whisper and suddenly he was right up against his ear. “Stop, stop. Let me, please.”
“Eames, I am quite capable-”
“I know, Arthur,” Eames laughed and he sounded breathless. “But I want to. Please.”
Arthur growled in his throat, but withdrew his hand. “Fine. Go ahead.”
Eames grinned against his neck, pressed kisses to it and Arthur shivered. He pressed himself flush against Eames, tracing his fingers over the tattoos on his arms, lightly scratching at his shoulders until fuck there was a finger pushing inside of him and dug his nails right in.
“Fuck,” he ground out, trying not to tense up. “Hurry up,” he hissed. He wanted to get this part over with. He wanted to get to the part where he saw Eames fall apart and pant and writhe and beg for it. He wanted to feel good and this just felt fucking uncomfortable so far.
“If we rush it, it’s not going to feel good, Arthur.”
Arthur groaned, frustrated, and pressed his forehead against Eames’s shoulder. He felt that finger work itself around inside him, pulling in and out slowly. He felt the discomfort ebb away slowly, but it still wasn’t exactly pleasurable. It was better, though, but different. He ground back experimentally, hissing at the feeling.
Eames took that as his cue, apparently, to add another finger, and Arthur let out a choked sound. It wasn’t just uncomfortable. It kind of hurt. But he found himself not minding too much anymore-found the burn and the tight stretch and the ache deep inside of him almost good. It shot through him, hot and foreign and made him tingle, straight to his toes.
“Eames,” he groaned as those fingers thrust up and pulled open. He gasped and moved back again.
This was a new sensation altogether. It wasn’t a blowjob and it wasn’t that tight heat surrounding his dick-it was different, but good and left his head feeling sort of fuzzy. It was like he was being peeled out bit by bit by the inside, like someone was reaching inside him and tearing him inside out and it wasn’t bad. It was amazing.
The tight stretch intensified as Eames added a third finger and Arthur was seeing stars.
“Fuck, Eames...” he nearly whined. He felt like he was ten-years-old again and poking dead crabs on the beach. He felt like he was twelve and secretly watching America’s Most Wanted and revelling at the crime scene photos. He felt like he was thirteen and reading newspaper articles, like he was fourteen and cutting things open, like everything.
“Do it,” Arthur snapped, tossing his head back. “Come on, Eames, do it.”
He could feel Eames’s hands shake as he withdrew his hands and gripped Arthur’s hips. He pushed Arthur down onto his back, lined himself up and pushed.
Arthur let out a sound that was nothing short of animalistic. They moved quickly, harshly, Arthur feeling the burn deep inside of him. He clawed at Eames’s back and shoved himself backward and upward and grinding and fuck.
He came with a heavy groan, tugging at the hair at the back of Eames’s neck.
Arthur found a dead body soon after his fifteenth birthday.
It was fairly fresh, not even decomposing. The blood was cold and congealed and the murderer had no originality whatsoever-a single blow to the head looked like what did it. She was young and blond and pretty-prettier with blood matting her hair and head half-caved in. She was laying face down in a puddle, in some back alley in town.
Arthur felt like he should tell someone, the police maybe. That would have been the logical thing to do.
But instead, he stayed there and stared at the body. He imagined what she was like alive, how she came to be laying down, forgotten in a puddle with her skull bashed into her brain matter. He wondered what kind of person would have been stupid enough to dump her where anyone could find her, easily identify her and her background, finger the person who did it just from that.
Arthur sighed.
He came back later with a sharpened saw and several garbage bags.
He hacked her to pieces. He cut through the flesh and the bone with surgical precision, like he was born to do this and only this. He felt a sort of cutting thrill race through him as he severed her arms from her shoulders, gouged out her eyes, removed her teeth and ears and chopped at her hair. This was how people got away with murder-make the victim unidentifiable.
He may not have killed the girl, but he certainly made sure the person who did would never be caught.
He disposed of the bags of limbs, scattered with teeth in each, in dumpsters around town. He left the head face down in the puddle.
Arthur woke up with Eames curled around him.
“Morning,” he heard Eames mumble, voice heavy with sleep. Arthur shifted and turned around so they were face to face, smiling the tiniest bit.
“You know if someone catches us like this-”
“Arthur, the sun isn’t even up,” Eames groaned, kissing the top of Arthur’s head. “We have awhile until anyone is going to come looking.
Arthur huffed out a breath and stared at Eames for a moment. Today was his last day, and then he would be gone. He would be out until Arthur could join him. And Arthur would join him soon, because sanity was getting easier and easier to fake. It was becoming a second nature to interact with others like a normal teenager would, to talk to his psychiatrist about his days, about what he thinks about-edited, of course. Arthur had always been an amazing actor. He could pull off it off.
Then it would be him and Eames, together and living and it would be good.
“When do you have to go?”
“Mum’s coming to get me just before noon.”
“Okay,” Arthur mumbled. He didn’t want to move. It was too early and he was still tired, but he knew he had to kick Eames out of his room and back to his own eventually. But Eames was big and solid and warm and the air was cool because fuck it could only have been maybe four in the morning. “Don’t leave.”
Eames stayed quiet, and his arms were suddenly around Arthur, pulling him closer. Arthur let out a soft breath and pressed his face into Eames’s neck. “Arthur.”
“Mm?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Would you...” Eames paused, voice fading out suddenly. “I just... I want to know. I want to know what it is that you did to get you sent here that was so terrible,” he whispered. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but... I just want to know about you, you know?”
Arthur’s mouth went dry. He didn’t want to tell Eames. He had no intention of Eames ever knowing, because it might fucking scare him off and he would bolt and there would go Arthur’s chances of escaping to a new life. “Eames, that’s....”
“Please, Arthur,” he whispered, “I promise I’m not going to... hate you or whatever.”
Arthur snorted. “Fuck off,” he hissed, “it’s none of your business and I don’t see why you keep asking-”
He heard Eames sigh. He was starting to shift and sit up and shake his head. “Fuck. I knew it would be stupid,” he grumbled. “I knew you wouldn’t tell me.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Arthur narrowed his eyes.
“You don’t trust me,” Eames snapped, still keeping his voice low. “I trust you, Arthur. You know what I did. It was my own fault I got shipped here. Why can’t you say?”
“Because it’s stupid and I don’t want to say, so-”
“Arthur,” Eames said lowly, brushing his fingers over Arthur’s cheek and oh fuck, this guy really did love him. That touch said everything. “Please.”
Arthur bit his lip and looked down into his lap. By telling Eames, he was risking a lot. He was risking a huge chunk of his plans for the future. He was risking Eames leaving, but then again, maybe he wouldn’t. And he obviously wasn’t going to let the issue go. He had been asking since day one and was still asking. Eventually Arthur was going to have to tell him either way.
He let out a long breath and raised his eyes to look at Eames. “Alright.”
Fifteen and a half and Arthur couldn’t remember exactly how it started.
It was like he had slipped into a dream and woken up right in the middle of everything. But it was real, so real and he didn’t know exactly where to start.
He had his sister, older than him by three years, bound and gagged on the kitchen floor, trying to scream into the empty house. Arthur felt that thrill run through him, that white-hot burning sting through his veins, only more intense. He felt it blur his vision for a moment and steal his breath and make his knees go weak. This was like combining sex and bloodlust at the same time.
His sister. His own sister. And all he could think of was how amazing it would be to dig a knife into her palm and see how she screams; to watch her eyes roll back and screams grow weaker as he cut into her belly; to saw through her bones and watch her blood pool around her.
The thrill was like an adrenaline rush if you combined it with the rush that any drug gives you. It was something intense and dizzying and so indescribable. Arthur had never felt it like this before, watching his own sister squirm and try to bed as he rolled the knife in his hands, deciding where he should start. Might as well start small, he thought.
He traced the cold blade down he calf, letting the sharp tip graze the back of her knee. He watched her face, eyes wide and panicked and revelled in that. He let her fear waft over him and basked in it. He felt his lips quirk up at the corners and rested the blade of the knife against her Achilles tendon.
Her eyes flashed in terror and he pushed.
The knife slipped in so easily, like he was pushing through a steak. She screamed, muffled by the gag, and blood poured out over the tiled floor. Her body jerked and her eyes squeezed shut and Arthur kept pushing until the blade hit bone.
He grinned, high on the thrill that still pulsed through him with every beat of his heart. No alarm bells went off. No feelings of remorse were coursing through his adrenaline rush. It was just this, the knife and his hand and his sister’s body in pained spasms, begging words muffled, tears in her eyes. Nothing in his own mind was telling him to stop. It was telling him to keep going.
So he did.
He placed the knife gingerly beside himself and instead grabbed the hacksaw he had placed on the floor along with the butcher knife. He felt himself shiver and he traced a finger over the sharp, serrated blade. “Hold still,” he said coolly, holding his sister’s leg down and positioning the saw over her ankle. “A woman did this once,” he hummed. “I read it in the paper. She cut off her husband’s feet to keep him from leaving her.”
He dug the saw in, cutting through muscle and fat easily with a couple stroked. “Then she cut out his tongue. And three fingers from each hand.” He kept cutting, heard her screaming at the top of her lungs, trying to squirm to get away. There was blood everywhere, covering his hands and squirting him in the face. He felt himself pulse with excitement. “She only left the thumb and the ring finger.”
Finally, finally, he managed to saw through the bone and cut through the other side. Blood was gushing out of the leg. The foot was still hanging on by a thread of skin. Arthur tugged and it tore and his sister jerked with a pained sob.
“One down.”
He moved over to the other one. He pressed the saw down and cut with efficient motions, too concentrated on his work to hear his mother screaming from the doorway.
Eames looked pale. He looked like he might throw up. He looked like a lot of things that Arthur could only associate with the worse case scenarios playing out in his head.
“Jesus... Jesus fuck, Arthur.”
Arthur stared at him, levelling his gaze. He knew he should act like he regretted it, like he thought it was wrong. He knew he should act like a lot of things, but he didn’t. He looked at Eames with a blank expression, hands folded in his lap like he was in a business meeting.
“You’re fucking sick.”
“Why else would I be here?” Arthur hissed back, cool and measured.
“No. No, you’re not like me. You’re not like Cobb or Ariadne or... or anybody, you’re an entirely different category of sick. You’re fucked up, Arthur.” Eames was moving away from him. This is what Arthur did not want to happen. Things were spiralling out of control and Eames was going to leave and not come back and that fucked up all of Arthur’s plans.
“Eames.” He tried to reach out and grab Eames’s arm, but he jerked it away.
“Don’t-don’t touch me.”
“You said you loved me.”
Eames froze and his eyes went wide. He was shaking and all colour was gone from his face. “I just... I need some time to think.”
Eames bolted. He hurried back to his own room, leaving Arthur in the cold, pre-dawn darkness of his room. Arthur felt like shouting and yelling and throwing things. He had fucked up. He fucked everything up. He should have lied, should have told Eames his mother tried to feed him bleach or something, not that he tried to hack his sister to pieces and actually enjoyed it.
Eames was running from him. He wasn’t coming back. There would be no life together after this. All of Arthur’s plans crumbled and shattered around him.
He sat there, staring at the wall, mind still and numb. He didn’t know what he was going to do.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing(s): Arthur/Eames
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Oh god. Underage (both Arthur and Eames), violence, mentions of suicide and attempted suicide, graphic torture and murder, killing small animals, sex... probably more, omg.
Summary: Eames won't know he's drowning until he's in too deep.
Notes: Omg, you guys. This started out as a little niggling in my head to write something weird and graphic and totally fucked up and I end up with this monstrosity. IN TWO PARTS, EVEN. I have a plan for how part 2 will go already. /sob
This is actually labeled This Shit is Fucked Up on my computer, so it's... well, it's fucked up. Arthur is a underage sociopath (since you can't be diagnosed as such until you're 18). So. Be warned. :|
I BLAME ALL THE DUBSTEP I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO.
Eames was afraid of him. Arthur could tell by the way his gaze kept flickering up from his mashed potatoes, from how tight his grip on the fork was. His fear wasn’t completely unfounded, though, Arthur thought as he pushed the still half-frozen peas around on his sectioned lunch tray. He let it go and said nothing; let Eames think he was watching him discreetly. What harm could it do?
“So. You’re new.”
Arthur glanced up and blinked a couple of times. He hadn’t expected Eames to actually speak to him, really. “Yeah.”
Eames was supposed to be showing him around, showing him the ‘ropes’, so to speak. He hadn’t been shown much so far and Eames had barely spoken a work to him. It was obvious that he didn’t do this whole ‘mentoring’ thing too often. But Arthur didn’t mind. He didn’t feel much like speaking anyways.
“It’s not so bad in here... once you get used to it,” Eames mumbled, trying for a smile, but it just made him look uncomfortable.
“Yeah.”
They fell into that awkward silence again and they both stared down at their trays. This was why Arthur hated meeting new people. He hated trying to fish for things to talk about. He wished that Eames wouldn’t try and they could continue the day in silence as Eames showed him the daily routine of the place.
“So,” Eames coughed, pushing his half-eaten lunch away, “how old are you, Arthur?”
“Fifteen.”
“I’m seventeen,” Eames hummed. He rested a hand on one of his hands and looked around the room, avoiding Arthur’s gaze. Arthur kept staring. “I’ve been here three years.”
“Why haven’t they let you out yet?”
“Haven’t learned the right things to say yet.” Eames grinned like he was sharing a dirty secret. “Because that’s all it takes, isn’t it? Some sweet words and some ‘I’m feeling better’s and soon enough, they’ll deem you completely sane.”
Arthur let himself smile. “That means you’re a bad liar, then.”
“In some ways, I suppose.” Eames shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know, for someone locked in a nuthouse, you seem pretty okay.”
“I’m good at hiding it most days.”
Eames raised an eyebrow and Arthur saw goosebumps move over his skin. Either he was cold or something Arthur had said had freaked him out a little. Arthur figured it was probably the latter. “Really. And what happens when you’re not so good at hiding it?”
“Well, that’s what got me sent here.”
Eames’s eyes narrowed and he leaned back a little. He was still afraid of Arthur, that was apparent. Arthur couldn’t figure out what he had said that would have freaked him out so much, though. He thought back on their exchange and couldn’t pick out anything unusual that he had said. Maybe Eames was just suspicious of everyone. Paranoid?
“What did you do to get you sent here, then?”
When Arthur was ten, he spent a day at the beach with his mother and sister.
He spent most of the day in the hot sun, playing around in the sand and the waves. He had his bucket and filled it full of things he found-mostly tiny little crabs. He loved to watch them run around inside and try and climb up the sides. He loved watching them claw at the other crabs he plopped in there.
He left the bucket in the hot sun next to his beach towel when his mother called him up for lunch.
When he came back, the crabs weren’t moving. He blinked down into the bucket, hot to the touch from the summer sun. He tipped it over and the stiff, unmoving creatures spilled out onto the sand. He frowned and poked them, thinking they were sleeping for a moment. They were laying with their soft underbellies exposed in surrender. Arthur could only stare when it hit him that they were dead.
He wanted to cry, but only found himself staring at them, completely fascinated.
“Oh, honey,” his mother was suddenly behind him, touching his back, “get away from there, those things are dead, don’t touch them.”
But he didn’t want to touch them. He just wanted to watch them. He wanted to ask how something alive could just roll over and die like that-how life was so easily taken from just a few hours in the sun. He stared at them until his mother was sighing behind him. She picked him up and carried him away from the dead creatures in the sand.
Eames wouldn’t leave him alone, Arthur discovered quickly. Even though there was an ever present wariness about him whenever he was around Arthur, he wouldn’t go away. He showed Arthur around still, even if there wasn’t all that much to see. Showed him where they could go to paint if they wanted to, or watch television, if he was lucky enough to gain control of the remote.
Arthur found himself not minding. It was surprisingly okay to have someone around-almost like a friend.
“This is Cobb,” Eames hummed, pointing to a blond man drawing a landscape of buildings and writing what seemed to be dimensions over them. Arthur raised an eyebrow. “He had a breakdown when his girlfriend jumped off a room right in front of him. Wanted him to join her. Says she was convinced they were living in a dream or some Matrix shit like that.”
“Fuck,” Arthur hummed, raising a hand to Cobb, who didn’t seem to notice.
“Ariadne’s mum went nuts and tried to drown her,” Eames whispered, breath ghosting over Arthur’s ear. “She has these violent, crazy nightmares about it now where she wakes up screaming and throwing stuff.” He pointed to the pretty little brunette seated next to Cobb, watching him draw.
Arthur just nodded and kept looking around the room. Everybody was either watching television or painting or talking and smiling and looking so fucking normal. It was... it was strange.
“Fischer,” Eames murmured, pointing to a sullen brown-haired boy reading a book. “His dad was the biggest asshole you’d ever meet, from the shit he’s told us. Manic depression, but I have a feeling there’s a lot more that’s messed up with that kid,” he snickered.
Arthur nodded and folded his arms over his chest. “So everybody that’s here,” he said slowly, “they’re here because they couldn’t control what happened to them.”
Eames blinked when he stared at Arthur. “Yeah... I mean, I guess so.” He shrugged. “Well, except for me, I suppose. I tried to off myself when I was fourteen by swallowing my mum’s sleeping pills. When that didn’t work, I tried to blow my head off with my dad’s pistol. Problem was that my folks found me ready to do it. A lot of crying and yelling happened and they sent me here to ‘fix’ me,” he snorted.
“Why did you want to kill yourself?”
“You know, even with all the pills they have me hopped up on, I still sort of want to.” He grinned wryly. “Life just seems like this bleak, black mass and I really don’t see the point.” He shrugged. “Why go about life filled with hope when all I’m going to get is a shitty nine-to-five gig trapped in a cubicle somewhere?”
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “And you figured that out when you were fourteen?”
“No,” Eames laughed. “I didn’t understand why I wanted to when I was fourteen. I just knew that I wanted to. I figured it out while I was trapped in here.”
“Interesting.”
“So, Arthur. Man of mystery. Could you control why you got sent here?”
Arthur hummed and stared directly at Eames. “I suppose it could have been avoided.”
When Arthur was eleven, he saw a story on the news about ten people dying in a six car pileup.
The gruesome pictures they showed on the news and the video of the police using the Jaws of Life to pull mangled bodies out of twisted metal made Arthur either want to throw up or see more. He chose to sit and watch, eyes wide, face pressed close to the glass of the television as if it would help him see better as they scrape up brain matter from the pavement.
They showed a photo of one motorcyclist whose head had been crushed inside his helmet between two cars and whose clothes and skin had been half-ripped off against the pavement. Arthur felt his mouth go dry as he watched, hands trembling.
His mother, sitting on the couch behind him, made a noise of disgust and pulled a face. “This is disgusting. It’s amazing what they’ll show on the news nowadays,” she sighed and quickly changed the channel.
Arthur felt a stab of disappointment, but sat back and watched whatever his mother had put on.
Riverside was a massive building. It took up a couple city blocks, at least, but most of it the patients weren’t allowed in. Most of it was rooms or doctor’s offices or rooms for group. The only rooms patients could really wander in were the rec room, the cafeteria and their rooms. They could go out into the tiny courtyard, too, but it was utterly depressing being out there, surrounded by trees beyond razor wire fences.
Arthur was starting to get cabin fever.
If he wasn’t eating in the cafeteria, he was in his room, pacing to the mantra I need to get out I need to get out I need to get out get me out get me out get me-
It was difficult to act sane when he was trapped inside a box. He couldn’t feel grounded when he was feeling like a caged animal. He couldn’t convince psychiatrists and doctors that he was doing better when all he could do was sink into his own mind and drown.
He was almost surprised when he looked over one day and saw Eames staring at him from his doorway, eyes slightly wider than normal. “Arthur... are you feeling alright?”
“No,” Arthur snapped, gritting his teeth. “No I’m not. It’s this place. It’s this room, it’s everything, Eames, I can’t stand it.”
Eames took a cautious step forward and placed a hand over Arthur’s balled fist. Arthur had to hold on tight to his self control to not beat him into a pulp. He was angry and stir crazy and pissed at how fucking calm Eames was. He wanted to hit him, he wanted him to get angry too-wanted him to yell and scream and try and fight back, wanted to break his fucking nose and watch him bleed.
But he held on, tried to breathe normally, stared at Eames as he held his shaking hand.
“Nobody wants to be here, Arthur,” Eames said lowly. “And I know you’re wanting to throw yourself against a wall and scream right now, but that’s not going to convince the suits that you’re doing much better,” he sighed. Arthur wanted to hit him again. “Come on, let’s go out to the courtyard.”
Arthur let out a breath and nodded stiffly, following Eames outside. He sat down on a bench and raked a hand through his hair. “They’re never going to let me out of here.”
Eames shrugged and picked lint off of his jeans. “Sure they will. You can leave when you turn eighteen if you want, too, you know.”
“Not me,” Arthur said darkly. “I did something stupid, Eames. They’re not going to let me out of here unless I learn to act like I’m not crazy. I can’t just walk out of here, not unless they deem me perfectly sane.”
“Arthur,” Eames breathed, and his hand was still on Arthur’s and Arthur couldn’t bring himself to care. “What did you do?”
Arthur pressed his lips into a thin line. He stared at the trees, swaying gently in the breeze just beyond the fence. He watched birds hop between them, felt the sun beat against his skin. “I got caught.”
When Arthur turned thirteen, he bought himself a scrapbook.
He was intending to fill it with pictures of himself, his friends and family vacations, but instead he opened the newspaper. There, on the front page, was an article about a father who murdered his wife and three children with a hacksaw. He tortured them beforehand, carefully sawing off each limb until they passed out and died of blood loss. Arthur’s hands were shaking as he clipped the article out of the paper and placed it into the scrapbook.
He hid it under his bed, a carefully hidden secret.
It fed a part of him, some deep, dark part of him that he couldn’t display in a public setting. It sated that part of him, seeing the stories about murders and car accidents and suicides, seeing the photos of police covering up bodies or pieces of bodies sometimes. He especially loved the stories where the murderer is never caught-it meant they were smart. Smarter than the city police forces, at least.
Every time he saw an article in the paper like that, he’d discreetly take the page once his mother finished reading it and place the article in his scrapbook. He’d flip through it every now and then, tracing his fingers over the pages and articles spouting about death and mangled corpses.
He came into his room one day, when the scrapbook was half-full with articles, and found his older sister flipping through it with a condescending grin on her face.
“Jeeze, Arthur, you’re even more fucked up than I thought,” she laughed.
“Give it back,” Arthur hissed, trying to keep calm, but felt his blood run hot through his veins. He felt a spike of terror pierce right through him. His hands were shaking; his heart was beating a mile a minute. He never wanted to show anyone the scrapbook. It was his secret, a locked away part of himself that he stored between its pages, only to be taken out when he wanted to. And now, here was his sister, flipping through it like it was nothing and it was like she was ripping him open.
“No way! I’ve got to show this to mom, she’ll ground you for a month for all the sick shit that’s in here, or send you to a psych ward or something,” she laughed, flicking long, brown hair away from her face.
“I said give it back!” Arthur snapped. He lunged forward, seeing red, losing control of his body. He tackled her and threaded those long brown strands through his fingers and tore. She screamed, the book dropped to the floor and Arthur clawed at her face with blunt nails, tore more of her hair, tried to rip her skin right off of her bones and-
“Arthur!”
He froze when he heard his mother’s voice.
“Oh my god, Arthur, get off of her!” she screeched, wrenching Arthur away from his sister. His sister was crying and holding her face. His mother went over and held her. Arthur stood there, motionless and staring at them both. When his mother looked up, it was as if she were looking at a stranger.
Arthur was glad when she looked away and turned back to his sister.
“How are you feeling today, Arthur?”
Arthur smiled easily and sat back in the chair. “Pretty good. I’ve been having a good week, actually.”
“Really? And what have you been doing? The orderlies tell me you’ve been interacting with more patients lately.”
“Yeah, I mean... just hanging out, mostly. Ariadne’s pretty alright, Cobb’s kind of quiet and pretty intense, but he’s smart and good to talk to.”
“What about Eames?”
Arthur paused momentarily and mentally cursed himself. “Eames? Yeah... I guess Eames is alright.”
The psychiatrist-Miles, he said to call him-smiled in that kind, grandfatherly kind of way. “That’s good. You’re doing much better than when you first came here.”
Arthur smiled again and nodded. “Yeah. I’m feeling a lot better too, you know? I think the pills are finally starting to work,” he laughed.
“Good.” Miles jotted something down. “So what do you think about when you’re not with your friends?”
Arthur’s brain short-circuited momentarily at the word friends. He fidgeted and wrung his hands together, trying not to act nervous and trying to come off as completely nonchalant. “I don’t know. Books, mostly. I started reading The Catcher in the Rye and have really been enjoying it.”
Miles smiled again. “I’m glad to see you’re taking an interest in literature. I think that’s all for today. Thank you, Arthur.”
“Thanks, Miles.” Arthur nodded and walked out of the room.
He figured his best chance to get out of there was to lie through his teeth. So far, it seemed to be working.
When Arthur was fourteen, he found a stray cat.
He didn’t name her. Just fed her when he saw her and scratched behind her ears. She was clean enough and affectionate and Arthur was rather fond of her. Once she even brought him a mouse with its neck torn wide open. Arthur had snapped a picture of it and placed it in his scrapbook.
Arthur liked the cat, he really did. That was why he slightly surprised when he ended up breaking her neck. If someone were to ask why, he wouldn’t be able to say. He had just taken a hold of her furry neck one day, stared into her eyes and twisted. He heard the crunch and crack of bone, heard her gurgling, pathetic little mewls-actually liked the sound, even. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that he hated the cat, of course. It was the rush of adrenaline that came with the fact that he could.
He could take her life if he wanted to. He had that sort of power over her.
And as he stared at her lifeless, cooling body, he couldn’t help but snap a picture. The bone was pressing against the skin; her eyes were wide open and glassy; her mouth was open, tongue lolling out.
He kept that photo on the first page, right next to the story of the father murdering his family.
When Eames kissed him, he honestly couldn’t say he was surprised.
It was the way Eames looked at him that tipped him off-with this warm sort of hesitant affection. Arthur couldn’t say he returned it, exactly, but Eames had these plush, kissable lips that felt so good against his own. Maybe he didn’t feel like Eames felt, but he couldn’t say that he didn’t enjoy the feeling of their lips being pressed together, sliding against each other, licking into his mouth.
Arthur liked that part.
Eames looked surprised as he pulled away, face flushed red. He smiled like he had just won the lottery, sort of dopey and blissed out. It fell quickly and he looked away. “So....”
Arthur blinked, running his tongue over his bottom lip, still tasting Eames there. “So?”
Eames said nothing and Arthur felt a little confused. Maybe Eames was regretting it, maybe he thought Arthur didn’t want him that way. He did, though-Eames was attractive. He was big and burly and looked like he could snap Arthur’s arm like a twig if he wanted. Arthur wanted to fuck him-wanted to watch him writhe and pant and beg, wanted to see all that muscle and girth surrender to him.
“Eames, honestly, do you want to fuck or not?” Arthur sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets, single eyebrow raised.
Eames’s eyes widened to the point where Arthur thought maybe they would pop out of his skull. “I... um.” He frowned and stared Arthur down like he was joking. “Yeah, of course, but... honestly, what if one of the orderlies catches us or something?”
Arthur rolled his eyes and took a step closer to Eames. He flattened his palms on that broad chest and stared at him through hooded eyes. “Eames,” he breathed, “if they catch us, we continue until they have to pry me off you.”
He heard Eames make this low sort of whine and he knew he had won.
Arthur was almost fifteen.
His scrapbook was nearly full. He started clipping out less articles and taking more pictures instead. He took pictures of road kill, at first, but then started seeking out animals on his own. He would trap them and hold them down and slit their throat until they bled out. He would then pull on a pair of latex gloves and carefully cut them out-dissect them.
He liked to empty their insides, line up their organs and then snap a picture. It was always interesting to see the different parts of them outside the body as opposed to in and functioning.
He liked to open them up quickly, sometimes while they were still alive, snap open the ribs and watch the heart beat. He liked to watch it slow and stutter as the animal died, liked to watch the blood squirt from the live arteries he had cut, liked to watch the blood pool around the animal, cake its fur or feathers or what-have-you. That part was his favourite part.
After he was done, he would cut the animal into pieces and bury them all in different places.
He also loved that part. He loved the fact that he could split something up so entirely that someone, upon finding a piece, wouldn’t be able to recognize the entire animal. If they found a single leg, how would they know it was from a cat or a dog or a pigeon? They could guess, but without the rest, they would never know.
And Arthur loved that. He never told anybody, never showed them what he did in his spare time, but he loved it. He acted normal in public, but the only thrill he ever felt was the power trip that rushed through him as he hacked away at those creatures.
He knew he was fucked up. He knew he was sick. But he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Arthur was lying on Eames’s chest one afternoon in Eames’s room. It was the same as his room, so he really didn’t care. He had grown accustomed to this sort of position over the weeks, lying curled around that broad chest, arms and legs carelessly tangled together. He was comfortable and he enjoyed the warmth Eames exuded.
Eames was crazy about him, though Arthur didn’t know why. He had never even told Eames anything about himself, only shown snippets and they had talked, of course, and been around each other, but Arthur was an empty void most days. He didn’t like talking about himself, preferred to listen more. It was good that Eames liked to talk once he got comfortable.
Another good thing about Eames was that he made Arthur look good. Hanging around Eames, talking with him, laughing with him, hanging around his friends-it made the orderlies think that Arthur was branching out, that he was getting better. Arthur liked that Eames gave them that impression, and that Eames made it easy. Listening to Eames talk wasn’t boring. In fact, it was even interesting some days. And he was growing rather fond of Eames, too.
He actually liked lying there, listening to Eames breathe, to his heart beat, have Eames press kisses into his hair. It was comfortable and made the days seem less bleak. It calmed him down; it made the walls less oppressive. He didn’t tell Eames this, but when he was alone in his room, staring at the ceiling, he had a lot of time to think. And when he really thought about it, he didn’t mind being around Eames.
“When I’m out of here,” Eames whispered into Arthur’s hair, “and when you get out, you’ll still see me, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Arthur murmured. Why not? If he ever did get out, Eames wouldn’t be a bad person to go and see.
“I’m turning eighteen soon,” he said softly. “I can leave after that. Go start an actual life, you know?” he hummed, smiling. “I’ll have everything set up for myself by the time you’re out.”
“Okay,” Arthur murmured, leaning up and trailing his mouth over Eames’s throat. “You’ll come visit, though.”
“Of course, you git,” Eames snickered, running his fingers through Arthur’s hair.
Arthur felt surprisingly calm thinking about Eames coming to see him-about living with Eames after he was released. About not seeing his mother and instead running away with a man he had met in an asylum, starting new lives for themselves. It all sounded so good and it sounded comfortable. He found himself not minding the idea at all.
The day dragged on, Arthur and Eames going to the cafeteria and to their respective meetings with their psychiatrists. They met back in Arthur’s room and jerked each other off quickly before the sun went down and the orderlies came to check in on them. Eames pressed a sloppy kiss to Arthur’s mouth before he darted out and Arthur found himself laying back and revelling in the afterglow. These days were good. He felt grounded and sane and his mind was quiet when he went to sleep. The walls didn’t close in on him, he wasn’t twitching restlessly. It was good.
He really didn’t want to think about what the days would be like after Eames left.
Arthur didn’t throw a party on his fifteenth birthday.
Instead, he followed his sister to one that she went to-some college party where he felt wholly out of place, but didn’t mind. He drank and looked around the room and sat in a corner just observing. He loved the feeling alcohol gave him-that spinning, tingling feeling at the back of his mind that seemed to infect his entire body. It felt good.
He liked just watching people mill about at parties; he liked the way some yelled and conversed with everyone, always that one awkward person standing against a wall, eyes darting around for someone to talk to. It was like was watching a herd of sheep in a field. Under the influence of alcohol or whatever, people were really like any animal out there-they wanted food and pleasure and that was it. And since nobody was particularly hungry at these sort of events, the only thing they were in search of was pleasure.
Some tall, drunk, blond girl approached him with a lecherous grin. She tugged at Arthur’s hair and giggled against his cheek. “You’re adorable,” she slurred. “Come upstairs, I want to show you something.”
He followed her, figuring it couldn’t hurt. When they walked-or in her case, stumbled-into the bedroom, she pulled him down on top of her, falling back onto the bed. “I bet you’re a virgin,” she purred. “I love virgins. They’re so cute.”
Arthur blinked and stared down at this girl. He didn’t even know her name and she was asking him to have sex with her. It was an odd situation, but Arthur found himself wanting to experience more of it. Feeling her body pressed against his, feeling her hands trailing down his back and cupping his crotch, feeling her let out quick little breaths-it was intoxicating.
“I’m going to do something you’re going to love.”
She rolled him onto his back and slid down onto her knees on the bed, grinning all the while. She pulled down his pants and boxers in one swift motion and swallowed his cock. Arthur felt himself tense up-he had never felt anything quite like this. He had jerked off before, sure, but this was different. It was like the times he flipped through his scrapbook and traced his fingers over the photos, but more intense. It was like reliving the moments where he stared at an animal’s exposed, beating heart-that power.
He groaned and fisted her hair, thrusting down into her throat. He pulled her on and off his cock in quick, brutal motions, feeling her whine around his dick but not stopping. She was breathing quickly and her hands were clenching and unclenching around his thighs. She was enthusiastic, trying to keep up with Arthur’s pace. He came into her mouth all too quickly, seeing stars and letting out a choked moan.
He laid back, panting and watching her wipe come from her lips.
“You take forever in the bathroom, you know that?” Eames sighed from outside the tiny bathroom in Arthur’s room.
Arthur snorted and continued to meticulously comb his hair, making sure no strand was out of place. Arthur liked to look good, that wasn’t a problem. He knew some might call him narcissistic, but it wasn’t wrong to want to look good. Everybody wanted to look good. So he combed his hair and washed his face, applied moisturizer where he could, all with extreme care. He took a long time in the bathroom, but Eames could wait. Besides, he liked it when Arthur’s skin was soft.
When he emerged, Eames sat straight up and rolled his eyes. “You’re a fucking princess,” he laughed. “It’s my last day here, you could at least forego your little bathroom ritual.”
“Shut up,” Arthur snorted. “Come on, we need to get breakfast.”
Eames sighed and followed Arthur down to the cafeteria. All throughout the day, Eames was looking at him with this faraway expression of longing. Arthur had no idea what it was about, but didn’t want to ask, so he kept quiet. They did what they did during any regular day-sat in the rec room with Ariadne and Cobb, watching Cobb sketch and Ariadne doing some of the same. Eames held Arthur’s hand, which was something he rarely did. Arthur didn’t mind, but it made his skin prickle in an odd sort of way.
They ate dinner in silence, Eames looking more and more forlorn as night time approached. It became unbearable-he looked kind of pathetic with that expression and Arthur hated it.
“For fuck’s sake Eames, what’s the matter?” he sighed as they made it back to his room.
Eames blinked a few times and seemingly tried to shake off the feeling. “Nothing,” he hummed, smiling in that tight, controlled sort of way that meant yes, something is the matter, but I don’t want to talk about it. Normally Arthur didn’t press it, but tonight was Eames’s last night there so he couldn’t just drop it.
“Eames,” he said flatly. “Don’t bullshit me, okay? What’s the matter with you?”
“I just...” he paused, hands wringing together and staring down at his feet as a he sat next to Arthur on the bed. “I’m really going to miss you,” he whispered. “I know that’s lame, but I’ve just been thinking about it all day and it’s going to suck when you’re gone and I’m off working and living on my own and waiting for you....”
“We’re going to see each other-”
“That’s not the point, though, Arthur. It’s that we can’t do... this, stuff like this, just hang out, just the two of us. Not until you get out. You know... you know that I’ve been thinking about... offing myself less lately, right? I told you that.”
“I remember, yeah. So? Isn’t that good?”
“Well yeah, of course it’s good, but...” Eames paused, hands tight together. “I don’t know. Never mind. It’s fucking stupid.”
Arthur let out a frustrated sigh and narrowed his eyes. “Eames, come on. You obviously want to tell me, so just tell me already.”
Eames pressed his lips together and turned towards Arthur. He couldn’t meet Arthur’s gaze, just stared at his chin and swallowed. “I... I think I’m in love with you.”
Arthur froze up. “Oh.”
“Fuck, see?” Eames groaned, pressing his face into his hands. “I shouldn’t... shit, I fucked up, didn’t I?”
Arthur felt a spike of terror pierce through him. He kept his face calm though and placed a hand on Eames’s shoulder. He knew he had to say something or else Eames would freak out and leave here an emotional wreck. He needed to be calm and cool if he was going to start something for himself, not dwelling on the fact that Arthur didn’t love him. Arthur wasn’t sure if he did, but he couldn’t just leave the conversation with ‘oh’.
“It’s okay,” he said lamely. “Eames. Really. I don’t mind.”
Eames looked up and stared at Arthur like he was even more confused and conflicted than before. “That’s such a fucking weird thing to say,” he mumbled. “You don’t mind? What does that mean, Arthur? You’re such a fucking enigma; I can never figure you out.”
Arthur blinked and narrowed his eyes. “I just... can’t we continue like we were? Sure, you love me, and that’s okay with me, but can’t we just....”
“So you just want to drop it, then? Forget about it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you meant.”
“Eames, I like you, alright? Isn’t that enough for now? I just turned sixteen for fuck’s sake, give me time to figure this out.”
He knew playing the age card would work. Eames’s expression softened immediately, like it just dawned on him that Arthur was still so young. Arthur was glad he still had that advantage and could dodge the subject until Eames decided he would bring it up.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Arthur said quickly, swallowing hard. This was why he didn’t get into relationships. He liked the quick, instant gratification that sex gave him, but once emotions became involved, he had no idea what to do. He didn’t care if he stepped on peoples’ feelings usually, but Eames was a ticket out of this place and out of his life. He could start something new with him once he was out. Hurting Eames would hurt his chances at that.
They sat in silence for a moment that seemed to drag on forever and Arthur started to fidget. “Look,” he mumbled, glancing over at Eames. “Just... I was going to do something for you tonight, so if you still want to, you should lay down.”
Eames snorted, but Arthur saw a hint of a smile on his face. “You’re so strange. Like you have to order me to have sex with you.”
“Shut up,” Arthur sneered. “This is going to be different, so stop talking and let me concentrate.”
He was going to let Eames fuck him this time. He had never done it before, had never felt the need. But watching the way Eames squirmed under him and begged for it every time made Arthur think there had to be something good about it, so he was going to try it.
He pulled off their clothes quickly as he ever did and grabbed a bottle of hand lotion from his bedside table. “You brought a condom right?”
“Of course, darling. Pants, where they always are.”
Arthur grumbled under his breath and fished around in Eames’s pants, placing the foil packet on the bed. “Where do you even get these in here?”
“Clinic has an entire bin of them for free.”
“No kidding.”
Arthur looked down at his hands and saw they were shaking. He was not nervous, he told himself. If it hurt, that was fine. Maybe that was part of the appeal. Pain wasn’t all bad.
He poured some lotion over his fingers and watched as Eames sat up on his elbows, licking his lips and spreading his legs a bit wider. Arthur grinned in a wicked kind of way and spread his own knees. Instead of pushing a finger into Eames, though, he reached behind himself and worked one into his own body.
He watched Eames’s jaw drop, grit his teeth at the uncomfortable feeling.
“Oh fuck. Arthur,” Eames choked out and the discomfort was worth it for Eames’s reaction.
He grunted and moved his hand, tried crooking his finger to make the burning sting subside a little. It didn’t really work and he was starting to get frustrated. This was what he did for Eames, so why wasn’t it working properly?
“Darling,” he heard Eames whisper and suddenly he was right up against his ear. “Stop, stop. Let me, please.”
“Eames, I am quite capable-”
“I know, Arthur,” Eames laughed and he sounded breathless. “But I want to. Please.”
Arthur growled in his throat, but withdrew his hand. “Fine. Go ahead.”
Eames grinned against his neck, pressed kisses to it and Arthur shivered. He pressed himself flush against Eames, tracing his fingers over the tattoos on his arms, lightly scratching at his shoulders until fuck there was a finger pushing inside of him and dug his nails right in.
“Fuck,” he ground out, trying not to tense up. “Hurry up,” he hissed. He wanted to get this part over with. He wanted to get to the part where he saw Eames fall apart and pant and writhe and beg for it. He wanted to feel good and this just felt fucking uncomfortable so far.
“If we rush it, it’s not going to feel good, Arthur.”
Arthur groaned, frustrated, and pressed his forehead against Eames’s shoulder. He felt that finger work itself around inside him, pulling in and out slowly. He felt the discomfort ebb away slowly, but it still wasn’t exactly pleasurable. It was better, though, but different. He ground back experimentally, hissing at the feeling.
Eames took that as his cue, apparently, to add another finger, and Arthur let out a choked sound. It wasn’t just uncomfortable. It kind of hurt. But he found himself not minding too much anymore-found the burn and the tight stretch and the ache deep inside of him almost good. It shot through him, hot and foreign and made him tingle, straight to his toes.
“Eames,” he groaned as those fingers thrust up and pulled open. He gasped and moved back again.
This was a new sensation altogether. It wasn’t a blowjob and it wasn’t that tight heat surrounding his dick-it was different, but good and left his head feeling sort of fuzzy. It was like he was being peeled out bit by bit by the inside, like someone was reaching inside him and tearing him inside out and it wasn’t bad. It was amazing.
The tight stretch intensified as Eames added a third finger and Arthur was seeing stars.
“Fuck, Eames...” he nearly whined. He felt like he was ten-years-old again and poking dead crabs on the beach. He felt like he was twelve and secretly watching America’s Most Wanted and revelling at the crime scene photos. He felt like he was thirteen and reading newspaper articles, like he was fourteen and cutting things open, like everything.
“Do it,” Arthur snapped, tossing his head back. “Come on, Eames, do it.”
He could feel Eames’s hands shake as he withdrew his hands and gripped Arthur’s hips. He pushed Arthur down onto his back, lined himself up and pushed.
Arthur let out a sound that was nothing short of animalistic. They moved quickly, harshly, Arthur feeling the burn deep inside of him. He clawed at Eames’s back and shoved himself backward and upward and grinding and fuck.
He came with a heavy groan, tugging at the hair at the back of Eames’s neck.
Arthur found a dead body soon after his fifteenth birthday.
It was fairly fresh, not even decomposing. The blood was cold and congealed and the murderer had no originality whatsoever-a single blow to the head looked like what did it. She was young and blond and pretty-prettier with blood matting her hair and head half-caved in. She was laying face down in a puddle, in some back alley in town.
Arthur felt like he should tell someone, the police maybe. That would have been the logical thing to do.
But instead, he stayed there and stared at the body. He imagined what she was like alive, how she came to be laying down, forgotten in a puddle with her skull bashed into her brain matter. He wondered what kind of person would have been stupid enough to dump her where anyone could find her, easily identify her and her background, finger the person who did it just from that.
Arthur sighed.
He came back later with a sharpened saw and several garbage bags.
He hacked her to pieces. He cut through the flesh and the bone with surgical precision, like he was born to do this and only this. He felt a sort of cutting thrill race through him as he severed her arms from her shoulders, gouged out her eyes, removed her teeth and ears and chopped at her hair. This was how people got away with murder-make the victim unidentifiable.
He may not have killed the girl, but he certainly made sure the person who did would never be caught.
He disposed of the bags of limbs, scattered with teeth in each, in dumpsters around town. He left the head face down in the puddle.
Arthur woke up with Eames curled around him.
“Morning,” he heard Eames mumble, voice heavy with sleep. Arthur shifted and turned around so they were face to face, smiling the tiniest bit.
“You know if someone catches us like this-”
“Arthur, the sun isn’t even up,” Eames groaned, kissing the top of Arthur’s head. “We have awhile until anyone is going to come looking.
Arthur huffed out a breath and stared at Eames for a moment. Today was his last day, and then he would be gone. He would be out until Arthur could join him. And Arthur would join him soon, because sanity was getting easier and easier to fake. It was becoming a second nature to interact with others like a normal teenager would, to talk to his psychiatrist about his days, about what he thinks about-edited, of course. Arthur had always been an amazing actor. He could pull off it off.
Then it would be him and Eames, together and living and it would be good.
“When do you have to go?”
“Mum’s coming to get me just before noon.”
“Okay,” Arthur mumbled. He didn’t want to move. It was too early and he was still tired, but he knew he had to kick Eames out of his room and back to his own eventually. But Eames was big and solid and warm and the air was cool because fuck it could only have been maybe four in the morning. “Don’t leave.”
Eames stayed quiet, and his arms were suddenly around Arthur, pulling him closer. Arthur let out a soft breath and pressed his face into Eames’s neck. “Arthur.”
“Mm?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Would you...” Eames paused, voice fading out suddenly. “I just... I want to know. I want to know what it is that you did to get you sent here that was so terrible,” he whispered. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but... I just want to know about you, you know?”
Arthur’s mouth went dry. He didn’t want to tell Eames. He had no intention of Eames ever knowing, because it might fucking scare him off and he would bolt and there would go Arthur’s chances of escaping to a new life. “Eames, that’s....”
“Please, Arthur,” he whispered, “I promise I’m not going to... hate you or whatever.”
Arthur snorted. “Fuck off,” he hissed, “it’s none of your business and I don’t see why you keep asking-”
He heard Eames sigh. He was starting to shift and sit up and shake his head. “Fuck. I knew it would be stupid,” he grumbled. “I knew you wouldn’t tell me.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Arthur narrowed his eyes.
“You don’t trust me,” Eames snapped, still keeping his voice low. “I trust you, Arthur. You know what I did. It was my own fault I got shipped here. Why can’t you say?”
“Because it’s stupid and I don’t want to say, so-”
“Arthur,” Eames said lowly, brushing his fingers over Arthur’s cheek and oh fuck, this guy really did love him. That touch said everything. “Please.”
Arthur bit his lip and looked down into his lap. By telling Eames, he was risking a lot. He was risking a huge chunk of his plans for the future. He was risking Eames leaving, but then again, maybe he wouldn’t. And he obviously wasn’t going to let the issue go. He had been asking since day one and was still asking. Eventually Arthur was going to have to tell him either way.
He let out a long breath and raised his eyes to look at Eames. “Alright.”
Fifteen and a half and Arthur couldn’t remember exactly how it started.
It was like he had slipped into a dream and woken up right in the middle of everything. But it was real, so real and he didn’t know exactly where to start.
He had his sister, older than him by three years, bound and gagged on the kitchen floor, trying to scream into the empty house. Arthur felt that thrill run through him, that white-hot burning sting through his veins, only more intense. He felt it blur his vision for a moment and steal his breath and make his knees go weak. This was like combining sex and bloodlust at the same time.
His sister. His own sister. And all he could think of was how amazing it would be to dig a knife into her palm and see how she screams; to watch her eyes roll back and screams grow weaker as he cut into her belly; to saw through her bones and watch her blood pool around her.
The thrill was like an adrenaline rush if you combined it with the rush that any drug gives you. It was something intense and dizzying and so indescribable. Arthur had never felt it like this before, watching his own sister squirm and try to bed as he rolled the knife in his hands, deciding where he should start. Might as well start small, he thought.
He traced the cold blade down he calf, letting the sharp tip graze the back of her knee. He watched her face, eyes wide and panicked and revelled in that. He let her fear waft over him and basked in it. He felt his lips quirk up at the corners and rested the blade of the knife against her Achilles tendon.
Her eyes flashed in terror and he pushed.
The knife slipped in so easily, like he was pushing through a steak. She screamed, muffled by the gag, and blood poured out over the tiled floor. Her body jerked and her eyes squeezed shut and Arthur kept pushing until the blade hit bone.
He grinned, high on the thrill that still pulsed through him with every beat of his heart. No alarm bells went off. No feelings of remorse were coursing through his adrenaline rush. It was just this, the knife and his hand and his sister’s body in pained spasms, begging words muffled, tears in her eyes. Nothing in his own mind was telling him to stop. It was telling him to keep going.
So he did.
He placed the knife gingerly beside himself and instead grabbed the hacksaw he had placed on the floor along with the butcher knife. He felt himself shiver and he traced a finger over the sharp, serrated blade. “Hold still,” he said coolly, holding his sister’s leg down and positioning the saw over her ankle. “A woman did this once,” he hummed. “I read it in the paper. She cut off her husband’s feet to keep him from leaving her.”
He dug the saw in, cutting through muscle and fat easily with a couple stroked. “Then she cut out his tongue. And three fingers from each hand.” He kept cutting, heard her screaming at the top of her lungs, trying to squirm to get away. There was blood everywhere, covering his hands and squirting him in the face. He felt himself pulse with excitement. “She only left the thumb and the ring finger.”
Finally, finally, he managed to saw through the bone and cut through the other side. Blood was gushing out of the leg. The foot was still hanging on by a thread of skin. Arthur tugged and it tore and his sister jerked with a pained sob.
“One down.”
He moved over to the other one. He pressed the saw down and cut with efficient motions, too concentrated on his work to hear his mother screaming from the doorway.
Eames looked pale. He looked like he might throw up. He looked like a lot of things that Arthur could only associate with the worse case scenarios playing out in his head.
“Jesus... Jesus fuck, Arthur.”
Arthur stared at him, levelling his gaze. He knew he should act like he regretted it, like he thought it was wrong. He knew he should act like a lot of things, but he didn’t. He looked at Eames with a blank expression, hands folded in his lap like he was in a business meeting.
“You’re fucking sick.”
“Why else would I be here?” Arthur hissed back, cool and measured.
“No. No, you’re not like me. You’re not like Cobb or Ariadne or... or anybody, you’re an entirely different category of sick. You’re fucked up, Arthur.” Eames was moving away from him. This is what Arthur did not want to happen. Things were spiralling out of control and Eames was going to leave and not come back and that fucked up all of Arthur’s plans.
“Eames.” He tried to reach out and grab Eames’s arm, but he jerked it away.
“Don’t-don’t touch me.”
“You said you loved me.”
Eames froze and his eyes went wide. He was shaking and all colour was gone from his face. “I just... I need some time to think.”
Eames bolted. He hurried back to his own room, leaving Arthur in the cold, pre-dawn darkness of his room. Arthur felt like shouting and yelling and throwing things. He had fucked up. He fucked everything up. He should have lied, should have told Eames his mother tried to feed him bleach or something, not that he tried to hack his sister to pieces and actually enjoyed it.
Eames was running from him. He wasn’t coming back. There would be no life together after this. All of Arthur’s plans crumbled and shattered around him.
He sat there, staring at the wall, mind still and numb. He didn’t know what he was going to do.