Inception - Grace Under Pressure (4/10)

[osaki_nana_707]

Title: Grace Under Pressure (4/10)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Word count: ~4,200
Pairings/Characters: ArthurxEames
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of underage, language, mentions of past drug abuse, currently un-betaed
Summary: AU. Sequel to Bite Hard. Arthur reunites with Eames. By the next day, they're living together. Still, with the two of them, there's always the opportunity for things to get complicated.



Part Four

The first hour of the drive consisted of delighted conversations followed by short stretches of companionable silence and singing. He learned a lot about Arthur as a child before Olivia's drinking got bad. Arthur didn't seem to mind the slightly embarrassing stories, and Eames could tell it was because he could appreciate the sense of normalcy that the stories brought with them. Eames was delighted to listen about how Arthur had wandered off when he was younger and been missing for an entire afternoon only to be found at his friend Kayla's house.

"Kayla was my first real friend, and then she moved away," Arthur said, sighing.

"She used to beat you up," Olivia laughed.

Arthur blushed when Eames laughed too and explained, "She was bigger than me! Girls mature faster than boys, you know…" but really it was a terrible explanation that just made it funnier.

"Ooh, I love this song!" Olivia exclaimed, turning up the radio as Mariah Carey's voice started in on "All I Want for Christmas is You."

Yes, Eames was delighted because Arthur was delighted. Arthur wasn't some miserable boy hiding in the shadow of his father's piles of money but a regular guy with a single mom who was a blast to hang out with. Clearly, Arthur had gotten over any sort of grudge the two of them had had because they were tight knit, like best friends. Eames was envious of that kind of relationship with his family, but he hadn't spoken to either parent since they cut him off all those years ago.

That brought down his mood a little, thinking of that. Those thoughts inevitably led back to Roxanne. He no longer had feelings for Roxanne, not even a little, not when he had Arthur, but she was still a part of him. Eames was disgusted with himself for ever falling under her spell when she had clearly been using him from the beginning. She'd nearly ruined him with the drugs and hatred. Even now, she was still ruining him with it-

That… wasn't what he meant.

He wasn't ruined by anything now. Things were different now.

He shot up way more often back then… didn't he?

He honestly couldn't remember how often he'd done it back then.

…and then he was thinking about the heroin, and that immediately started to make him crave it.

He did his best to ignore it and laughed while Olivia sang very off-key to the high notes of the song.

"You're embarrassing me!" Arthur explained, but his eyes were watering because he was holding back so much laughter.

"Babe, the only one being embarrassed here is me," she replied, "if I wanted to embarrass you, I'd start telling Mr. Thomas Reginald Eames here stories about your ass."

"I already know all about Arthur's arse," Eames replied, and clearly the attempt to humiliate had been achieved.

"Me too," she exclaimed and high-fived Eames.

Arthur buried his face in his hands in mortification, ears glowing red, and Eames rubbed his shoulder affectionately.

"You're really playing off as my friend, Eames, really," Arthur mumbled sarcastically.

In response Eames hooked the same hand he'd rubbed his shoulder with around the back of Arthur's neck and pulled him into a deep and sudden kiss. Arthur was left stammering when it was over while his mother howled out in excitement. Eames sighed as if he had just taken a swallow of a refreshing drink.

"Eames," Arthur squealed, so Eames ruffled his hair.

"Oh, Arthur, hush," Olivia chuckled. "It was just a little kiss. He didn't even use tongue."

"Mom!"

If anything, Arthur's voice had raised another half-octave.

On the second hour of the drive, conversation had died out in favor of staring at the scenery.

Eames preferred to look down into his lap, trying to bore holes into his knees. Without anything to say or respond to, he'd been left with his thoughts, and his craving had intensified tenfold.

The radio station had died out, not even allowing him a song to distract him.

He smoked the last two of his cigarettes and tried to focus on his breathing.

"Everyone doing okay?" Olivia asked entirely too cheerfully for Eames's taste. "Anyone need to get out and stretch their legs soon?"

"I think I can manage a little longer," Arthur said, aiming his camera and clicking away at the passing scenery. Eames was grateful that Arthur was so distracted by the snowy grasslands so he didn't notice how Eames's arms had broken out in goosebumps and how his hands had started to tremble. He didn't want Arthur to realize that he was starting to feel like absolute shit, that he was feeling clogged up and feverish and miserable.

You can handle this, he told himself, ringing his hands. You're not an addict. You don't need it.

That argument wasn't really helping.

"Mr. Eames?" Olivia asked, smiling at him over her shoulder for a moment. He looked out the window in the hopes that she couldn't tell he wasn't well.

"I need to use the toilet," Eames said. It came out more agitated than he'd intended.

"No problem," she said with a fading smile, turning her eyes back to the road. "Can you hold it for a half hour? We'll reach civilization then."

Eames figured that he would have to.

He felt like the only warm spot in his entire body was on his chest, where the pouch of heroin sat hidden inside his pocket. He shoved his hand into one of the side pockets and fiddled with the zipper of his nail kit.

I can handle this. Just thirty more minutes.

Thirty minutes turned into an hour and a half.

There was a semi-truck wrecked on the road. He'd apparently driven too quickly over some ice and spun out of control. Some cars had slammed into him but surprisingly everyone had come out unscathed.

Still, traffic had backed up for miles, leaving them stuck still amongst the sounds of car horns sounding uselessly.

The horns were really starting to grate on Eames's nerves.

He sat there with his arms folded across his chest, grinding his teeth, bouncing his leg, and he thought he might be sick. His whole body ached, and his eyes were watering, and had broken out in a cold sweat.

"Ugh…" Olivia groaned for about the sixth time, banging her hand on the steering wheel as if that would make any difference. "Jesus, can't they just move the damned thing already? This is fucking ridiculous."

Arthur was sifting through radio stations, trying to find out more information, and the static was really starting to piss Eames off.

Calm down, you're fine, he told himself, but his little pep-talks were no longer helping.

Everything was starting to set him off.

He couldn't hold it back anymore.

"God-bloody-damn it, this is such bollocks!" he shouted, pounding his fist on the seat cushion. "How much fucking longer are we going to have to bloody sit here? They need to stop pissing around and get the bleeding job done-bloody thick as shit, they are… Fuck!"

Arthur turned around in the seat and Eames sank back in his, biting his lip and looking at the floor. "Would you calm down?" Arthur said in exasperation. "We're all annoyed, but we're not all blowing a gasket."

"Sod off," Eames grumbled.

"Jeez, Eames, what's wrong with you?" Arthur complained. "You don't have to be such a jackass."

Eames bit back a rather obscene insult, but from the look on Arthur's face, the message had still been received. "Nothing," he said tersely, "nothing is wrong with me. I'm just bloody tired of sitting here."

"Boys," Olivia warned quietly.

"Then take a nap or draw in your sketchbook or something," Arthur griped, turning back around. His anger lacked strength. He didn't want to fight.

Eames knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, so instead he drew hard-lined, screaming faces all over one page of his sketchbook and filled another one in completely with graphite scribble.

They finally started to move.

Eames spent the rest of the drive to civilization with a hand pressed over his eyes, trying to quell his nausea.

When they reached a gas station, Eames couldn't get out of the car fast enough. He locked himself in the bathroom and immediately set to work, burning a spoonful of heroin with his lighter. He was sweating bullets while impatiently waiting for it, whimpering low in his throat as he tied off the tourniquet, syringe clutched between his teeth. He smacked at his arm until he found a vein, leveled the needle there, and injected.

He was so relieved that he shed a few tears and just sat there in the floor for a long time, just breathing.

"Is he okay?" Olivia asked.

Arthur was a short distance away from her while she pumped gas, smoking a cigarette to relax him. "I'm sure he just gets antsy on long trips. We were all getting a little agitated. Maybe he's just not as patient as we are. He did have to piss after all." He said it all far too quickly, and even he didn't completely believe it.

Actually, Arthur was deeply, deeply concerned.

He'd never seen Eames act that way before. Sure, he'd been yelled at by Eames. He remembered that quite vividly even still, five years later, and it still made his chest ache a little when he thought about it, but he'd put that behind him. His anger back then might not have been justified, but it had been motivated. The sudden flash of anger that he'd expressed in the car didn't seem to have any reason or direction.

He was just being irritable for the sake of being irritable. Sure, the traffic had ruffled Arthur's feathers as much as anyone else, but Eames had definitely overreacted. There had been no need for him to act so hateful. In need of a bathroom or not, it was too much.

It worried him.

"I'm sorry," he said then, suddenly, and looked at his mother in shame as if it had been his fault that Eames had acted so out of line. "He's normally not like this. I don't know what his problem is."

"It's fine, Arthur, really," she assured, replacing the pump to its proper place and closing the gas cap. "We all have our tics, you know. You don't have to worry about impressing me."

Arthur blinked. "Wha-"

She approached, combing a hand through his hair, smiling, and said, "The suits and the first names and the nervous little smiles… I know that you two were trying to be respectful and all that. You two went out of your way to try to impress me."

Arthur blushed. "So, you caught on then that we're…"

"You couldn't have been more obvious if you tried, honey," she said. He looked down at the ground, ashamed. "You could have just told me, you know," she continued. "I'm really happy to see you have someone in your life. You always seemed so lonely."

Arthur swallowed hard and nodded weakly, blinking back tears. "He's normally not so bad. I don't know what's wrong… Do you think he's just nervous or something? He's usually so nice to me, but-" He squeezed his eyes shut, working his jaw to try to stop the tears because he hated crying in front of his mother. They fell anyway.

"Oh, baby," she said sadly, taking him into her arms. "It's okay. I'm sure it's just the nerves. He's been perfectly delightful most of the time. It just got to him. Don't take it personally, okay?"

Arthur didn't take it personally though. He was just scared over the sudden change and the look on his face… he'd had this disgusted, vile, ugly, savage look that Arthur had never seen on him before, not even when they'd had that horrible fight all those years ago. There had been absolutely no love in his eyes then, and Eames had never looked upon Arthur without some sort of love.

It made his heart ache, and it made it hard to stop the tears, but he managed to stop them before Eames came back.

When Eames did come back, fumbling with a new pack of cigarettes, Arthur and his mother were already waiting for him in the car.

"Sorry about that," he said lightly as he crawled into the back seat.

"We weren't waiting that long," Arthur said quietly, flicking his lighter over and over and watching the flame appear and reappear.

"Actually…" Eames admitted shyly, "I was talking about earlier… I was a bit out of line."

Arthur huffed in response.

"Okay, a lot out of line. I'm apologizing here. At least give me a little credit, would you?"

Arthur finally ventured a glance at Eames, and with that apologetic smile on his face, it was hard for Arthur to stay mad at him.

"Okay, fine, I forgive you," Arthur mumbled. "Just don't act like that anymore."

"I'll do my best," Eames replied, followed by a moment of long, awkward silence.

"Oh, just kiss and make up already," Olivia snickered.

Arthur pouted a little but did anyways.

It didn't make him feel much better, but he did his best to ignore that.

Arthur read while Eames slept in the back seat, but he honestly couldn't tell anyone what he was reading about. The too-soft breathing coming from Eames made his heart rate speed just a little faster, a nervous feeling rolling around in his gut.

It's normal, he told himself. Everything's fine.

…and that was true, he supposed. He was surely worrying over nothing. Arthur was just freaking out over nothing because being in a serious relationship with Eames was more of an adjustment than he realized. Eames wasn't some perfect specimen of man who never got angry and did regrettable things. He wasn't some wonderful Disney-esque prince ready to sweep Arthur off of his feet and just love and adore him forever and always. They were going to bicker and fight and slam doors on each other. They were going to pout in corners and eventually forgive one another and have great make-up sex. There was going to be misunderstandings and shouting and tears. Eames was going to have things about him that Arthur disliked, and Arthur was going to have things about himself that Eames disliked. It would have been stupid to think otherwise.

Still… he couldn't stop worrying, and he wondered if his obsessive-compulsive need to worry about such ridiculous things was something Eames would find agitating about him.

Eames was impatient and insufferable when crammed into a small space and forced to wait. Arthur was a worry-wart.

No big deal.

…but something was wrong, Arthur kept thinking. Despite his effort to banish the thought, it stayed, burrowing deep into his brain and festering there. It wormed its way through his skull like a parasite with Robert's words as its tail.

Don't come crying to me when he fucks you over.

What the fuck did Robert know?

Robert had barely been introduced to Eames, and he was claiming that Eames was trouble, and that was just ridiculous. Arthur had known Eames much longer than Robert ever had, and he knew that Eames was perfectly safe. He may have had some problems in the past, but that was before Arthur had met him, and from the beginning of their whirlwind relationship Arthur had thought they fit just splendidly together, like peanut butter and bananas (jelly was so overrated).

Something was wrong.

The idea itched there under his skin, Robert's blue eyes looking condescendingly at Arthur like Arthur didn't know anything… like Arthur couldn't see like Robert could see because Robert was so goddamned smart and Arthur was so blinded by love.

Robert had thought love was a foolish emotion and didn't believe in it. It was part of what made him un-dateable from the time the two of them had met. Arthur was sure the bitterness came from the loveless marriage Robert's parents had endured and the way his father had seemed to despise him from the day of his birth, but Arthur hadn't given up on the feeling despite a similar situation. It was just one of the many things that made them different, one of the many things that made Arthur fight with him quite often…

…but Arthur had never tried to make Robert believe in love. He'd never told him that he should take a chance on one of the boys he slept with because it would ultimately make him a happier, less bitchy human being in the future, and yet Robert had gone out of his way to put it in Arthur's head that what he and Eames had was ultimately destined for failure. That wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair because Arthur loved Eames. He really and truly loved him. He knew that because he didn't feel that way about anybody else, ever… and just because he believed in love, and he had the ability to feel it unlike the ice queen Robert was-just because of that, Robert thought he was stupid and blind. He wasn't. He wasn't. He knew that Eames didn't look just great, but Robert didn't know that Eames had been living on the streets. Of course Eames would be thinner and a paler and look a little sick.

Okay, so maybe he still looked kind of bad considering he'd been living with Arthur for over a month. So what? Arthur was sure it was just taking Eames some time to adjust. It was a big change, living with someone… and besides, Eames didn't care that much about his appearance because he was more focused on his craft and Arthur could understand that, more or less.

…and yeah, maybe he hadn't painted that much since he'd moved in, at least not as much as he had five years ago, and maybe some of the paintings he had done were a little… unsettling… but that didn't mean that Eames was screwed up. He was just in a rough patch.

Arthur was not just making excuses out of love.

He wasn't.

…was he?

"-thur."

Arthur blinked, shaking himself out of his stupor to see his mom glancing at him out of her peripheral vision. "Huh… what?" he asked blearily.

"Must be a pretty intense page in the book there, since you've been looking at it for about an hour. What's on your mind?"

"Oh… it's… it's nothing. I'm just tired."

She was clearly skeptical, so he looked out the window to avoid eye contact.

"You sure you're okay?" she asked.

"Yeah… yeah, I'm fine."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, nothing but the wind blowing by the windows to occupy the space. Arthur stared at the gray, gray scenery dotted with snow and wished he felt better… because he was just being stupid about all the worrying after all… at least, he really hoped-No, no, he was. He was.

"Oh, for God's sake, could you check on him, please? He's so quiet it's starting to scare me," Olivia said in frustration.

"I'm sure he's fine," Arthur mumbled, but he was unbuckling his seatbelt already, "he's just a quiet sleeper."

He leaned over Eames, touching his face gently. He was clammy but still breathing for sure. "Eames… hey, Eames," he said quietly.

Eames stirred a little and opened his eyes like he was staring into a bright light…

…and inside his eyes was nothing.

It was like Eames wasn't even in there.

Arthur felt his heart leap into his throat.

"Are we there?" Eames asked, and it was like he'd never left, and everything was fine. Arthur had been worrying for no reason, really.

"No," Arthur admitted. "We're uh… we'll probably stop soon and get something to eat. Is there anything in particular you want?"

"Not particularly hungry right now," Eames replied, sniffing and wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "You can pick where we go."

"You're not hungry?... but you haven't eaten since this morning-"

"Oh, don't act so panicked. I think I might be coming down with a bit of the lurgy is all. No need to make such a fuss."

"I don't know what lurgy means," Arthur said, finding his voice.

"I'm just a little ill is all, darling," Eames replied, sitting up and rolling his head around on his neck. "The flu maybe? I get it every year. I do tend to get nauseous in the car sometimes too."

"Oh… Oh. Oh, you're just a little… okay… all right, well, we can pick up some medicine or something and-yeah, that makes sense, okay…" Arthur turned back to his mother as if looking for her confirmation. "He's a little sick is all. That's all."

Arthur was worrying for no reason.

Really.

Eames didn't eat when they stopped, preferring to go to the bathroom and then sit on the hood of the car outside and work his way through the pack of cigarettes he'd bought at their last stop.

Arthur sat inside with his mother, picking at his roast beef sandwich. He just couldn't seem to find his appetite.

"It's Eames that's bothering you, isn't it," his mother said before taking a sip of her drink.

"It's just me fretting over nothing," Arthur said, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He was exhausted from the trip and from the carrying the weight of his thoughts. "I can't help it."

"Is he always like this?" she asked, looking out the window at his figure in the flurry as if he might hear what they were saying.

"No. He's just… sick, I guess… but he really shouldn't be out in the snow if he's coming down with the flu. He's not the smartest guy I know."

"I hope he doesn't get too sick, or he won't have any fun on the trip. You shouldn't kiss him anymore either, or you might catch it."

"Most of the time, he kisses me. I don't exactly see it coming, but I'll tell him to lay off of it for a while… at least until he feels better…"

He looked out at Eames's figure, his profile that was still the same one he had a photograph of stashed away, and yet it was so much thinner, and the eyes were so much more tired…

"You don't think he…" Arthur started and trailed off, shaking his head.

"Think he what?" Olivia asked, leaning over the table, expression unreadable.

"Nothing," Arthur said, shaking his head again. "It's nothing… I… I forgot what I was going to say."

They both knew that was a lie, but she didn't call him on it, and Arthur didn't admit to it.