Inception/Mysterious Skin - Every Me and Every You (21/30)
Title: Every Me and Every You (21/30)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,279
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
New York was bleeding through Mal's Parisian-themed streets almost as soon as Neil opened his eyes, but thankfully it wasn't enough to look entirely too bizarre. None of Bell's projections seemed to take notice of it anyway, so he figured it was a victory so far.
Neil settled into a seat on a park bench right across the street from where Eames would be meeting Mr. Bell. His plan was to play the part of a confidante in the hopes that Bell would tell him the location of the hideout or at least hint at the location of his secrets. Eames had told Neil that secrets were usually locked away in places like safes or prisons or banks, places where personal information could go. Originally they had planned to just go hunting down these places and digging through them, but with Neil's wobbly subconscious holding up the world, the direct approach seemed more pertinent to their time. He hated that they had to shift their plans that drastically because of him.
At least nothing terrible had happened so far.
He watched as Eames walked into the building where he was meeting Bell. Eames was dressed down and looked a bit seedy to match Bell and somehow also gave off the air that he was easily manipulated and a little incompetent too. Neil wondered why Eames had never quite made it as an actor, but then he thought that his craft probably hadn't been perfected until he started actually forging himself as other people. If Eames ever got out of the mind crime business, Neil was pretty sure the man could make it onto the stage or into movies no problem. He doubted however that Eames would ever go back to that life.
Once Eames was inside, Neil got up and started walking, blending into the crowds of projections seamlessly. Eames was going to have Bell lead the way, but in the meantime he had wanted Sasha and Neil to be looking for anyplace suspicious, just in case Bell's mind wasn't quite as open to sharing as Eames suspected. Mal had constructed a bank at the center of town in the hopes that the mark would fill it with his secrets, so Neil figured he might as well start there.
Neil had adjusted the maze here and there from Mal's original design, but it was burned into his brain by this point. Weaving his way through the streets and the crowd was easy, and Neil found himself at the center of town before he knew it.
…but there was a problem.
Of course there would be a problem.
Instead of the bank sitting pretty in the center of the square, Neil's eyes fell upon the prison he'd designed weeks ago on a napkin back at the sub shop. The walls were endlessly high and topped off with barbed wire, and there didn't seem to be doors on it anywhere. There were snipers in the guard towers, nothing more than silhouettes with guns.
Neil frowned, stepping back a few feet to observe the prison at a longer distance. He tried to change the physics of it to resemble at least something close to the bank Mal had wanted, but the design wouldn't budge. It was too prominent in Neil's mind, and he couldn't erase it… and there was no getting into that building either, considering that even if he tried to scale the side of it the snipers would probably take him out and cause the dream to collapse.
It was a risk to change the physics of the place even a little because Bell's projections were likely paranoid and a bit vicious, but Neil looked towards one of the unimportant, faceless buildings that was just filling the space and let it slowly morph into the bank. The projections all turned their eyes on him, but they didn't stop moving, so Neil figured he was safe for the moment. He just hung back for a while, playing it casual, and when the landscape didn't shift again, the projections slowly relaxed.
Someone grabbed Neil by the arm, and he very nearly panicked, thinking there was going to be more whispers in his ears and concussions via baseball bats, but it was only Sasha. "What is that thing?" she asked him, pointing towards the prison. She didn't look happy.
"Don't worry about it," Neil said softly. "Yeah, it got through from my subconscious but just ignore it and let's go. I moved the bank over here." He moved forward, leading the way towards the building. "Eames should be talking to him by now, so his secrets should be filling themselves up in the safe.
"Arthur, if you brought in that whole building, what else has burst through from your mind?" Sasha asked uncomfortably. Neil suppressed a shiver as they passed the side of the prison and he heard the sound of scratching and whining on the other side. "Eames and Mal wouldn't give me any details as to the state of your subconscious, just uncomfortable mumblings. What exactly have we gotten ourselves into here?"
Neil rounded on her and very promptly said, "Everything is fine," and let that be the end of it.
They climbed the steps and went through the glass front doors of the bank to find, as expected, a couple of people milling about desks, some tellers assisting customers, a line of other customers waiting. Neil looked at Sasha for a moment and then fell into line behind her.
"Which door leads to the safe?" she whispered to Neil.
He turned his nose towards the one next to the tellers' desk, the paint flat and gray and the door looking rather heavy. "Through there," he said. "I'll talk to the teller and you go through and wait for them to open the safe.
"Sounds like a plan," Sasha agreed and broke off from the line. She was dressed like the other bank workers by then so no one made a move to stop her from going inside. Neil shoved his hands in his pockets and waited his turn in line. The projections never gave him a passing glance.
Okay, he thought. So far, so good. Only one little hiccup.
He hoped that Eames was doing okay and that Bell was being at least a little receptive to the act. Seymour was a bit violent after all. Sure, Eames could handle himself just fine in a fight (dream or otherwise), and even if he was to be killed he would just wake up back in the back room of the coffee shop, but Neil was pretty sure that Eames didn't want to rely on the hope that Sasha and he might get the information. He was going to need better than a might.
Neil stepped up to the counter when he was called over and said, "I'd like to see information on the Seymour Bell account, please." He passed over identification and bank numbers, all of them meaningless except to keep the projections at bay. The teller nodded, looking bored, and disappeared into the next room, the room Sasha was waiting in. Neil bounced on his heels a little, craving a cigarette, and looked around.
This bank sort of resembled the one from back in New York, with the odd decoration from the Hutchinson House of Commerce from all places. It smelled like coffee though, as did most of the city. He was pretty happy with it overall, since the layout was at least still the same as Mal's. He wondered if she was up there in reality, watching him, touching his hand gently to spread some sort of hope that everything went well down below.
He let his eyes fall to the other bank tellers, and his blood went cold.
Coach was working behind the desk, his fingers, his mustache, and his eyes- every little detail as perfect and pristine as Neil's memory of him. He even had a nametag on the front of his shirt that just said Coach Heider, as if that was his entire name. Neil had never realized before that he didn't know the man's first name, but now that he did, he realized that he didn't exactly know Eames's either (or even if Eames was his real name to start with). He didn't like the fact that he'd made even one connection between Eames and Coach, even though he was sure that inevitably there would be some. It made him feel like he was going to vomit.
Coach turned his gaze on Neil, and Neil felt like he was frozen in place, like he couldn't look away. It was as though the man had hypnotized him and was now holding him there by invisible strings. Neil opened his mouth but not a word or a sound came out of it.
The man reached out over the counter and touched Neil's face, the familiar thumb pressing against his bottom lip. With him leaned over in such a way, Neil could see over his shoulder where a young Brian sat hunched in the corner, nose bleeding, eyes dead.
It was enough to bring Neil to his senses and jolt back away from the man's hand. Coach didn't look offended at all as he lowered his arm back to his side and continued to look into Neil's eyes with an unsettling sort of affection that Neil had at one time thought was love.
"I like you, Neil. I like you so much," he said.
Neil just kept looking at Brian who stared back at him, the silent accuser.
"You liked it."
Rain started pattering against the window panes, but it sounded as though it was falling against porcelain instead. Neil closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying only to focus on the task at hand.
Seymour Bell.
Secret hideout.
The maze.
The rain stopped, and Coach moved away from Neil, but he was still there and so was Brian. Neil turned his eyes away, unable to bear the unending stare from the little boy any longer. He checked his watch and discovered they were still going to be down here for another half an hour in dream time. That was bad… he had it more or less under some sort of control right now, but he didn't know how long he could hold it like this. He really wished everyone would get a fucking move on.
As if on cue, Eames entered the bank with Seymour Bell, mumbling about needing a little cash if they were going to be driving out of town. That was a good sign that Eames already had an idea as to where the hideout was located. Neil barely gave him a glance as they stepped up to the counter, even though he could feel Eames tense up a little at the sight of Coach there.
At least Brian had disappeared. Neil didn't know what he would have done if Eames had seen him sitting there.
Eames and Seymour were led through the door Sasha had gone through earlier, Eames only sparing Neil a glance that said is everything all right?
Neil looked away, not sure if things were okay or not.
Once they had disappeared behind the heavy door, Neil moved away from the tellers' desk. Eames and Sasha would be getting the job done, so at this point Neil felt like the best thing for him to do was get as far away from them as possible. These shades of Neil's past were only after him, and if he could keep them away from the others then they might manage to pull this heist off. It wasn't like Eames or Sasha needed him there now anyway.
He walked down the steps, the prison still looming before him like a giant eye sore. The people in the towers watched the city suspiciously, as if waiting for one of the projections (or Neil) to attempt a break out. Neil thought that if Wendy were here she'd be coming up with stories and plans they'd never actually go through with to break into the prison just to see if they could. She always had romanticized the criminal lifestyle in that way.
He actually was really wishing Wendy was there. She always had a way of making him feel better, maybe because he could undoubtedly trust her.
He made it as far as the prison walls before it started to rain again, sending his hair out of its coif and cascading into his face while simultaneously soaking his suit. He turned around to look at the projections milling about, half expecting them to be glaring him down, but they just pulled out umbrellas or kept walking unperturbed.
Neil exhaled slowly and pushed his hair back off of his face again, the water holding it there for the moment. Still, over the sounds of the (literal) shower of rain, he could hear the scratching on the walls, the whimpering from inside, begging to be let out. Neil wanted to scream at the little boy inside to shut up, but he didn't. He turned away and found that one of the buildings in the square had shifted from a faceless space-filler to the apartment complex of Brighton Beach john. Despite the sunshine (even through the cloudless rain), the building appeared shrouded in darkness-the only way Neil could remember it.
Neil felt panic slowly climbing up his spine as he realized his subconscious was continuing to break through and force its way into Bell's dream. Neil was pretty sure he wasn't calling the shots anymore, and not entirely sure if anybody was doing so in his absence. He backed away from the apartment as best as he could, but it only took a few steps before his back was meeting the wall of the prison.
Shockingly, it crumbled behind him. Neil toppled backwards into the yard, finding Coach's house sitting there in the middle with the guard tower jutting out from its roof.
Apparently, the walls he'd built weren't all that strong, no matter how tall they were. The first place he looked was to his right where he'd heard the scratching, but there was no one there, just the word BRIAN in blue graffiti. Neil approached it slowly and just barely pressed his fingertips over the paint, and he watched as more of the wall crumbled away.
The crying resumed, this time from inside the house. Neil definitely wasn't going in there, so he ran, flinging himself through the hole in the wall and back onto the street. By then the rain had been joined by a hailstorm of fruit loops, and all of Bell's projections were staring at Neil.
"Come on, Eames… please get the job done and do it fast…" Neil whispered softly to himself, standing stock still as the crowd gathered around him. They were all nameless, blurry faces of people Neil had never met except for the crystal clear projection of Brian with his bloody nose and baseball bat, pushing his way through with intent.
"Shit, shit, shit," Neil stammered, stumbling as Brian burst through the crowd and took a swing, just barely missing Neil as he dodged out of the way.
"Everything I've ever been, everything I've ever done-it feels like it was all based upon that night!" Brian shouted, continuing to take swing after swing at Neil. The bat slammed into the side of the prison and bricks toppled on top of each other as they fell. "That fucking night has come to define everything, and you don't know how it fucking feels because you liked it!"
The aluminum came crashing down on Neil's shoulder, and he instantly heard it as it popped out of place. His arm hanging limp at his side and radiating pain, Neil turned and ran. Cereal crunched beneath his feet as he bolted back towards the bank. He didn't care that he was being followed and that the job could be in danger. He wanted someone to protect him from this mess.
As he started up the steps, he saw Eames and Sasha running out, looking shaken. Eames had a bullet hole in his shoulder. Apparently things had gone badly, but then again, how could Bell not notice the kind of shit happening in this dream world? Neil had nowhere to go but into Eames's arms, and the man barely had a second to grab him and shout over the roaring wind, "What's going on?"
Brian burst through the crowd and made it up the steps in less than a second, and even Eames didn't have the reflexes to stop the boy before he bashed Neil's head in. The last thing Neil remembered was crying out and hearing Eames shout his name, the taste of blood in his mouth, and the wishing it could all be over, just like that night in Brighton Beach.
Brian shouted at him, "SLUT!"
Neil jerked awake, flinging himself forward and immediately yanking the needle out of his arm. Mal was at his side instantly, and the only way he knew he was shaking was because of the stillness of her hands on his arm. "It's too soon!" Mal said.
"I know," Neil replied, doing everything he could to play the part of Arthur that he'd been perfecting-calm, competent Arthur. "The dream is collapsing… I think it went wrong before that. It just went so wrong, Mal. Fuck, we've got to keep Bell asleep so we can get out of here. Start wiping things down."
He immediately leaned over Seymour and administered another sedative, pressing the needle directly into the man's jugular. It wasn't strong, but hopefully it would be enough to keep him out for a couple more minutes.
Eames and Sasha awoke in time with one another, and the next thing Neil knew was that his face was being cupped in Eames's hands. Eames was making hurried commands to the others, but he couldn't take his eyes off of Neil. It was as though he had to be absolutely positive that he wasn't dead, even though Eames of all people knew how dying in a dream worked.
"Bleeding Christ," Eames said, shoving Neil towards the door. "What the fuck was that?"
"Did you find out what you needed to find out?" Neil asked instead as they scattered when they hit the street.
"You'd better hope so because he shot me after I got the information out of him, so now I'm wondering if he didn't know all along."
Eames hadn't let go of Neil's arm, dragging him along until they were a few blocks down and then slipping inside a bar. Eames made a beeline to to the very back table in the corner, Neil in tow. Neil's heart was still racing, and it continued to do so long after Eames pulled him into his arms and breathed shakily into his ear.
"I've seen people shot and blown up and stabbed, but never have I seen a projection beat someone so brutally…" Eames whispered, and Neil instantly understood why the man was so shaken.
"I only felt the first blow… well, the second one," Neil said softly. His shoulder still ached with phantom pain from the bat.
As an afterthought, Neil added, barely above a whisper, "I'm sorry… I ruined it."
"That's not necessarily true. Sasha was looking at the paperwork before we got there. She might have the answers, but we'll need to regroup after we're sure he doesn't come after us."
Neil sank into Eames's arms, suddenly feeling woozy, and Eames had him sit down, and when Neil laid his head down on the table, that was the last thing he remembered.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,279
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
New York was bleeding through Mal's Parisian-themed streets almost as soon as Neil opened his eyes, but thankfully it wasn't enough to look entirely too bizarre. None of Bell's projections seemed to take notice of it anyway, so he figured it was a victory so far.
Neil settled into a seat on a park bench right across the street from where Eames would be meeting Mr. Bell. His plan was to play the part of a confidante in the hopes that Bell would tell him the location of the hideout or at least hint at the location of his secrets. Eames had told Neil that secrets were usually locked away in places like safes or prisons or banks, places where personal information could go. Originally they had planned to just go hunting down these places and digging through them, but with Neil's wobbly subconscious holding up the world, the direct approach seemed more pertinent to their time. He hated that they had to shift their plans that drastically because of him.
At least nothing terrible had happened so far.
He watched as Eames walked into the building where he was meeting Bell. Eames was dressed down and looked a bit seedy to match Bell and somehow also gave off the air that he was easily manipulated and a little incompetent too. Neil wondered why Eames had never quite made it as an actor, but then he thought that his craft probably hadn't been perfected until he started actually forging himself as other people. If Eames ever got out of the mind crime business, Neil was pretty sure the man could make it onto the stage or into movies no problem. He doubted however that Eames would ever go back to that life.
Once Eames was inside, Neil got up and started walking, blending into the crowds of projections seamlessly. Eames was going to have Bell lead the way, but in the meantime he had wanted Sasha and Neil to be looking for anyplace suspicious, just in case Bell's mind wasn't quite as open to sharing as Eames suspected. Mal had constructed a bank at the center of town in the hopes that the mark would fill it with his secrets, so Neil figured he might as well start there.
Neil had adjusted the maze here and there from Mal's original design, but it was burned into his brain by this point. Weaving his way through the streets and the crowd was easy, and Neil found himself at the center of town before he knew it.
…but there was a problem.
Of course there would be a problem.
Instead of the bank sitting pretty in the center of the square, Neil's eyes fell upon the prison he'd designed weeks ago on a napkin back at the sub shop. The walls were endlessly high and topped off with barbed wire, and there didn't seem to be doors on it anywhere. There were snipers in the guard towers, nothing more than silhouettes with guns.
Neil frowned, stepping back a few feet to observe the prison at a longer distance. He tried to change the physics of it to resemble at least something close to the bank Mal had wanted, but the design wouldn't budge. It was too prominent in Neil's mind, and he couldn't erase it… and there was no getting into that building either, considering that even if he tried to scale the side of it the snipers would probably take him out and cause the dream to collapse.
It was a risk to change the physics of the place even a little because Bell's projections were likely paranoid and a bit vicious, but Neil looked towards one of the unimportant, faceless buildings that was just filling the space and let it slowly morph into the bank. The projections all turned their eyes on him, but they didn't stop moving, so Neil figured he was safe for the moment. He just hung back for a while, playing it casual, and when the landscape didn't shift again, the projections slowly relaxed.
Someone grabbed Neil by the arm, and he very nearly panicked, thinking there was going to be more whispers in his ears and concussions via baseball bats, but it was only Sasha. "What is that thing?" she asked him, pointing towards the prison. She didn't look happy.
"Don't worry about it," Neil said softly. "Yeah, it got through from my subconscious but just ignore it and let's go. I moved the bank over here." He moved forward, leading the way towards the building. "Eames should be talking to him by now, so his secrets should be filling themselves up in the safe.
"Arthur, if you brought in that whole building, what else has burst through from your mind?" Sasha asked uncomfortably. Neil suppressed a shiver as they passed the side of the prison and he heard the sound of scratching and whining on the other side. "Eames and Mal wouldn't give me any details as to the state of your subconscious, just uncomfortable mumblings. What exactly have we gotten ourselves into here?"
Neil rounded on her and very promptly said, "Everything is fine," and let that be the end of it.
They climbed the steps and went through the glass front doors of the bank to find, as expected, a couple of people milling about desks, some tellers assisting customers, a line of other customers waiting. Neil looked at Sasha for a moment and then fell into line behind her.
"Which door leads to the safe?" she whispered to Neil.
He turned his nose towards the one next to the tellers' desk, the paint flat and gray and the door looking rather heavy. "Through there," he said. "I'll talk to the teller and you go through and wait for them to open the safe.
"Sounds like a plan," Sasha agreed and broke off from the line. She was dressed like the other bank workers by then so no one made a move to stop her from going inside. Neil shoved his hands in his pockets and waited his turn in line. The projections never gave him a passing glance.
Okay, he thought. So far, so good. Only one little hiccup.
He hoped that Eames was doing okay and that Bell was being at least a little receptive to the act. Seymour was a bit violent after all. Sure, Eames could handle himself just fine in a fight (dream or otherwise), and even if he was to be killed he would just wake up back in the back room of the coffee shop, but Neil was pretty sure that Eames didn't want to rely on the hope that Sasha and he might get the information. He was going to need better than a might.
Neil stepped up to the counter when he was called over and said, "I'd like to see information on the Seymour Bell account, please." He passed over identification and bank numbers, all of them meaningless except to keep the projections at bay. The teller nodded, looking bored, and disappeared into the next room, the room Sasha was waiting in. Neil bounced on his heels a little, craving a cigarette, and looked around.
This bank sort of resembled the one from back in New York, with the odd decoration from the Hutchinson House of Commerce from all places. It smelled like coffee though, as did most of the city. He was pretty happy with it overall, since the layout was at least still the same as Mal's. He wondered if she was up there in reality, watching him, touching his hand gently to spread some sort of hope that everything went well down below.
He let his eyes fall to the other bank tellers, and his blood went cold.
Coach was working behind the desk, his fingers, his mustache, and his eyes- every little detail as perfect and pristine as Neil's memory of him. He even had a nametag on the front of his shirt that just said Coach Heider, as if that was his entire name. Neil had never realized before that he didn't know the man's first name, but now that he did, he realized that he didn't exactly know Eames's either (or even if Eames was his real name to start with). He didn't like the fact that he'd made even one connection between Eames and Coach, even though he was sure that inevitably there would be some. It made him feel like he was going to vomit.
Coach turned his gaze on Neil, and Neil felt like he was frozen in place, like he couldn't look away. It was as though the man had hypnotized him and was now holding him there by invisible strings. Neil opened his mouth but not a word or a sound came out of it.
The man reached out over the counter and touched Neil's face, the familiar thumb pressing against his bottom lip. With him leaned over in such a way, Neil could see over his shoulder where a young Brian sat hunched in the corner, nose bleeding, eyes dead.
It was enough to bring Neil to his senses and jolt back away from the man's hand. Coach didn't look offended at all as he lowered his arm back to his side and continued to look into Neil's eyes with an unsettling sort of affection that Neil had at one time thought was love.
"I like you, Neil. I like you so much," he said.
Neil just kept looking at Brian who stared back at him, the silent accuser.
"You liked it."
Rain started pattering against the window panes, but it sounded as though it was falling against porcelain instead. Neil closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying only to focus on the task at hand.
Seymour Bell.
Secret hideout.
The maze.
The rain stopped, and Coach moved away from Neil, but he was still there and so was Brian. Neil turned his eyes away, unable to bear the unending stare from the little boy any longer. He checked his watch and discovered they were still going to be down here for another half an hour in dream time. That was bad… he had it more or less under some sort of control right now, but he didn't know how long he could hold it like this. He really wished everyone would get a fucking move on.
As if on cue, Eames entered the bank with Seymour Bell, mumbling about needing a little cash if they were going to be driving out of town. That was a good sign that Eames already had an idea as to where the hideout was located. Neil barely gave him a glance as they stepped up to the counter, even though he could feel Eames tense up a little at the sight of Coach there.
At least Brian had disappeared. Neil didn't know what he would have done if Eames had seen him sitting there.
Eames and Seymour were led through the door Sasha had gone through earlier, Eames only sparing Neil a glance that said is everything all right?
Neil looked away, not sure if things were okay or not.
Once they had disappeared behind the heavy door, Neil moved away from the tellers' desk. Eames and Sasha would be getting the job done, so at this point Neil felt like the best thing for him to do was get as far away from them as possible. These shades of Neil's past were only after him, and if he could keep them away from the others then they might manage to pull this heist off. It wasn't like Eames or Sasha needed him there now anyway.
He walked down the steps, the prison still looming before him like a giant eye sore. The people in the towers watched the city suspiciously, as if waiting for one of the projections (or Neil) to attempt a break out. Neil thought that if Wendy were here she'd be coming up with stories and plans they'd never actually go through with to break into the prison just to see if they could. She always had romanticized the criminal lifestyle in that way.
He actually was really wishing Wendy was there. She always had a way of making him feel better, maybe because he could undoubtedly trust her.
He made it as far as the prison walls before it started to rain again, sending his hair out of its coif and cascading into his face while simultaneously soaking his suit. He turned around to look at the projections milling about, half expecting them to be glaring him down, but they just pulled out umbrellas or kept walking unperturbed.
Neil exhaled slowly and pushed his hair back off of his face again, the water holding it there for the moment. Still, over the sounds of the (literal) shower of rain, he could hear the scratching on the walls, the whimpering from inside, begging to be let out. Neil wanted to scream at the little boy inside to shut up, but he didn't. He turned away and found that one of the buildings in the square had shifted from a faceless space-filler to the apartment complex of Brighton Beach john. Despite the sunshine (even through the cloudless rain), the building appeared shrouded in darkness-the only way Neil could remember it.
Neil felt panic slowly climbing up his spine as he realized his subconscious was continuing to break through and force its way into Bell's dream. Neil was pretty sure he wasn't calling the shots anymore, and not entirely sure if anybody was doing so in his absence. He backed away from the apartment as best as he could, but it only took a few steps before his back was meeting the wall of the prison.
Shockingly, it crumbled behind him. Neil toppled backwards into the yard, finding Coach's house sitting there in the middle with the guard tower jutting out from its roof.
Apparently, the walls he'd built weren't all that strong, no matter how tall they were. The first place he looked was to his right where he'd heard the scratching, but there was no one there, just the word BRIAN in blue graffiti. Neil approached it slowly and just barely pressed his fingertips over the paint, and he watched as more of the wall crumbled away.
The crying resumed, this time from inside the house. Neil definitely wasn't going in there, so he ran, flinging himself through the hole in the wall and back onto the street. By then the rain had been joined by a hailstorm of fruit loops, and all of Bell's projections were staring at Neil.
"Come on, Eames… please get the job done and do it fast…" Neil whispered softly to himself, standing stock still as the crowd gathered around him. They were all nameless, blurry faces of people Neil had never met except for the crystal clear projection of Brian with his bloody nose and baseball bat, pushing his way through with intent.
"Shit, shit, shit," Neil stammered, stumbling as Brian burst through the crowd and took a swing, just barely missing Neil as he dodged out of the way.
"Everything I've ever been, everything I've ever done-it feels like it was all based upon that night!" Brian shouted, continuing to take swing after swing at Neil. The bat slammed into the side of the prison and bricks toppled on top of each other as they fell. "That fucking night has come to define everything, and you don't know how it fucking feels because you liked it!"
The aluminum came crashing down on Neil's shoulder, and he instantly heard it as it popped out of place. His arm hanging limp at his side and radiating pain, Neil turned and ran. Cereal crunched beneath his feet as he bolted back towards the bank. He didn't care that he was being followed and that the job could be in danger. He wanted someone to protect him from this mess.
As he started up the steps, he saw Eames and Sasha running out, looking shaken. Eames had a bullet hole in his shoulder. Apparently things had gone badly, but then again, how could Bell not notice the kind of shit happening in this dream world? Neil had nowhere to go but into Eames's arms, and the man barely had a second to grab him and shout over the roaring wind, "What's going on?"
Brian burst through the crowd and made it up the steps in less than a second, and even Eames didn't have the reflexes to stop the boy before he bashed Neil's head in. The last thing Neil remembered was crying out and hearing Eames shout his name, the taste of blood in his mouth, and the wishing it could all be over, just like that night in Brighton Beach.
Brian shouted at him, "SLUT!"
Neil jerked awake, flinging himself forward and immediately yanking the needle out of his arm. Mal was at his side instantly, and the only way he knew he was shaking was because of the stillness of her hands on his arm. "It's too soon!" Mal said.
"I know," Neil replied, doing everything he could to play the part of Arthur that he'd been perfecting-calm, competent Arthur. "The dream is collapsing… I think it went wrong before that. It just went so wrong, Mal. Fuck, we've got to keep Bell asleep so we can get out of here. Start wiping things down."
He immediately leaned over Seymour and administered another sedative, pressing the needle directly into the man's jugular. It wasn't strong, but hopefully it would be enough to keep him out for a couple more minutes.
Eames and Sasha awoke in time with one another, and the next thing Neil knew was that his face was being cupped in Eames's hands. Eames was making hurried commands to the others, but he couldn't take his eyes off of Neil. It was as though he had to be absolutely positive that he wasn't dead, even though Eames of all people knew how dying in a dream worked.
"Bleeding Christ," Eames said, shoving Neil towards the door. "What the fuck was that?"
"Did you find out what you needed to find out?" Neil asked instead as they scattered when they hit the street.
"You'd better hope so because he shot me after I got the information out of him, so now I'm wondering if he didn't know all along."
Eames hadn't let go of Neil's arm, dragging him along until they were a few blocks down and then slipping inside a bar. Eames made a beeline to to the very back table in the corner, Neil in tow. Neil's heart was still racing, and it continued to do so long after Eames pulled him into his arms and breathed shakily into his ear.
"I've seen people shot and blown up and stabbed, but never have I seen a projection beat someone so brutally…" Eames whispered, and Neil instantly understood why the man was so shaken.
"I only felt the first blow… well, the second one," Neil said softly. His shoulder still ached with phantom pain from the bat.
As an afterthought, Neil added, barely above a whisper, "I'm sorry… I ruined it."
"That's not necessarily true. Sasha was looking at the paperwork before we got there. She might have the answers, but we'll need to regroup after we're sure he doesn't come after us."
Neil sank into Eames's arms, suddenly feeling woozy, and Eames had him sit down, and when Neil laid his head down on the table, that was the last thing he remembered.