[Inception fic] out of the blue
Title: out of the blue
Author: saintdogstreet
Disclaimer: Inception belongs to Christopher Nolan and his posse, not me.
Rating: R
Warnings: Discussion of suicide, unfettered angst. Arthur/Eames. Unbetaed.
Word Count: ~2300
Summary: "Is this the part," Eames says, "where I tell you not to jump?"
A/N: This fic is more or less (more) entirely plotless, but I wanted to get the writing juices flowing and post something. Please heed the warning. Title comes from Neil Young's song Hey, Hey, My, My, and he's probably sick of it being used in this kind of context.
**
It's either too fucking early or too fucking late for the phone to be ringing, and Eames is too tired to decide which. He thinks about just ignoring it and rolling back over into his dreamless sleep, but the siren shrill of the ringing just drones on and on in the little room until he finally snaps open his mobile with a growl.
"Eames," he huffs into the receiver, idly plotting whomever might be on the other end of the line's demise. Sharks, he thinks. A tank full of sharks. Or maybe something with fire. Electric sanders. Vats of molten iron. Those machines that make noodles.
"Hey," Arthur's voice is soft and tinny over the mobile receiver. "Did I wake you? Sorry."
Eames sighs roughly, twisting his face into his pillow and swallowing back some of his tiredness. He likes Arthur. Maybe he'll hold back on the sharks. "What's up?"
"It's nothing important," Arthur assures, which is nice, because Eames had already begun thinking of the best exit out of the country, but also makes him wonder why the hell Arthur's fucking calling. "We're still in the clear for all our latest jobs, as far as I know."
"Fantastic," Eames says, sitting up, sheets twisting around him. He pulls them back and swings his legs over to the floor, figuring sleep's a lost cause for the moment. Oh well. Nothing he's not used to. "Again, I ask. What's up?"
There's silence across the line for a moment, but Eames can still hear Arthur breathing, soft and maybe just a little uneven. Maybe that's just the connection.
"Eames?" Arthur says, and yes, that is his name, give the man a prize. "I'm sort of. . . well. . ."
"Hey," Eames asks, feeling a little worried now. "Are you okay?"
"Yes. Well, no. Not really." Arthur sounds strange.
"Arthur, what's wrong?" Eames says. In the dim light he scans the floor for some trousers. Where was Arthur? Prague, last he had heard. Some rich bloke who wanted to get into the girl of his dream's mind and plant the idea that she loved him. Arthur had spent one day observing both the bloke and the bird, and despite the figures on the check the man had waved around he'd still had to laugh and say it couldn't be done. "Are you hurt?"
"No," Arthur says, voice oddly faraway.
"Did something happen?" Eames prods when Arthur isn't any more forthcoming than just the one syllable.
"Not. . ." he hears Arthur swallow. "Not really. It's more like. . . something I was about to do. And I guess I just. . . I really wanted to talk to you, for a little bit."
Eames is half-naked in his bedroom and he feels cold.
"Arthur," he says slowly. "you're not about to do something stupid, are you?"
"No," Arthur says immediately.
"Your definition of stupid or mine?" Eames asks.
"Mine, probably," Arthur says, thinking it over. "You probably would think I was being stupid."
"I do," Eames assures, and then thinks that that's probably not the right thing to say. Fuck it. "Please tell me this isn't a 'goodbye, cruel world,' phone call."
Arthur pauses. Eames swears.
"Fuck, Arthur," Eames says. He tugs on some more-or-less (mostly less) clean trousers and pads out into his kitchen. In his head, he tries to figure out how quick he could make it to the Czech Republic.
Not quick enough.
"Yeah," Arthur sighs.
"Why the hell did you call me, of all people?" Eames demands, and then hurriedly backtracks. "I mean, not that I mind, always happy to hear from you, you know that. But surely you've got to have someone a little higher on your "people to call when I'm considering offing myself" list than me."
"Not really," Arthur says. Eames thinks about it for a minute.
"Yeah," he says finally. "Guess I get that."
God, they're pathetic. No wonder.
Arthur is quiet in Prague. Eames sighs, dragging a hand through his sleep-messy hair. Coffee. He needs coffee. No, wait. Tea. Situations like this call for proper tea.
He debates whether or not he can make tea in a Martini glass -- jesus, he needs to do some dishes, doesn't he? -- and asks Arthur, "Is this the part where I tell you not to jump?"
"I'm not going to jump," Arthur says. He sounds vaguely offended. "I wouldn't do that to Cobb."
Eames snorts. "I'm thinking this is already going to do more than enough to Cobb, aren't you?"
Eames starts up the kettle, gas stove clicking crankily before it bursts into pale blue flames, while Arthur says nothing.
"So what were you planning?" Eames asks after the quiet static drags on.
"I thought about it," Arthur says. "You know, how I thought it should go."
And of course Arthur bloody well plans his own suicide meticulously. Of fucking course. Probably had just the suit picked out and everything.
"Whether I'd slit my wrists in the bathtub," he continues, and Eames is thinking of how the red would billow out in the clear water and dilute it to orange, stain a ring around the bath, how Arthur's skin would slowly pale and his lips would turn blue. Colourful death. "or maybe rig the exhaust in a car. But I don't own a car, you know, and it didn't feel right to steal one from somebody. And once I got to thinking about it I couldn't decide what model I'd want to die in, something classic or something new and fast. I like Camaros, really. But I wasn't sure."
"The new Camaros are shit, anyway," Eames offers. He hops up onto his counter-top, granite cold on his arse through his tartan pants.
"Yeah," Arthur agrees. "And then I thought about maybe just something easy, like sleeping pills."
"Don't birds usually off themselves with pills?" Eames wonders, and he has no idea where he gets shit like this. "Always knew you were a girl."
"Oh, shut up," Arthur says. "I just didn't want to leave a mess, at first."
"At first?" Eames picks up. "Change your mind, did you?"
"Well," Arthur says. "I kind of wanted to leave my mark on the world, when I thought about it. Something loud. Something that says, "look, Arthur was here." Go out with a bang."
If Eames would close his eyes, if the kettle didn't start shrieking right then, he maybe could've imagined the sound of the gunshot, Arthur's brains spattering darkly on the wall. Instead he fishes out some pyramid bags and takes the kettle off the heat.
"'Better to burn out than fade away?'" Eames asks, pouring out the hot water.
"Yes, exactly." Arthur affirms. "Didn't know you were a Nirvana fan."
"Fuck Kurt Cobain," Eames says affably. "He stole it from Neil Young, anyway. You kids these days, you don't know nothing."
"'Load up on guns, bring your friends. It's fun to lose, and to pretend,'" Arthur quotes.
"You're getting maudlin on me, Arthur," Eames says. He tugs his teabag in his cup and the steam dampens his hand.
"Fuck you, I was in high school in the nineties. Cut me some slack. 'Least I wasn't quoting Iris."
Eames shakes his head to himself. "I just can't imagine you in flannel."
Arthur gives a short laugh, and something in the sound breaks and in that split-second it's almost a sob.
"So," Eames says, after a moment. "You have your gun with you?"
"I always have my gun with me, Eames," Arthur's voice is quiet.
Eames closes his eyes and doesn't bother to ask if it's loaded.
"You ever think about it?" Arthur asks. Eames sniffs the milk carton when he pulls it out of the fridge and shrugs.
"Once or twice," he says. "It's a tough job."
"Yeah, I know."
Eames finally finds the sugar, bins his teabag and finishes making his cup. The resolutely British part of him is still more or less (mostly more) entirely convinced that everything can be solved by a good cuppa, and he's a bit surprised when he takes a sip of PG Tips and Arthur doesn't immediately start bursting into song over the value of human life.
"Is this a cry-for-help kind of thing or the big one?" Eames inquires, taking another drink of tea. Still nothing.
"Pretty sure it's the real deal," Arthur says. "I thought, at first, you know, maybe my head's just been a little messed up lately. Depression, and all that. It's just the chemicals in my brain malfunctioning. So I had a few bars of chocolate and hooked myself up to the PASIV."
Eames figures he knows where this is going, and the handle of his cup digs into his fingers as he accidentally squeezes too hard.
"And I killed myself. And woke up. Then I went back under again. Over and over," Arthur says. "There's this river in South Carolina I used to go to summers when I was a kid. I drowned myself in it. Thought maybe Mal had the right idea all along and threw myself off a four-star hotel balcony in Chicago. Hanged myself with a sheet in my old army barracks at Fort Benning. Lit myself on fire in Ankara. Cut my femoral artery in that place in Palermo. Remember that place? I drank a bottle of bleach in--"
"Stop it," Eames says harshly, cutting him off. "Stop."
Arthur is quiet.
"Sorry," he says, eventually. And Eames shakes his head roughly, though Arthur can't see. He drags in a shaky breath and can't make his hands steady enough to finish his tea.
Eames fucked Arthur through the mattress in Palermo, so fuck him. Fuck him for calling Eames up to talk him down, fuck him for dragging Eames down into his sorry sodding pit of despair, fuck him for wanting to kill himself, for wanting to bloody ruin everything Eames--
Eames is breathing harshly and there's white-noise in his ears and after a minute he realizes Arthur's talking to him.
"Eames?" Arthur yells over the phone line. "Eames? Are you all right?"
Eames laughs, a trembling sound that hurts in his stomach. A part of him wants to tell Arthur to sod off, a part of him wants to just hang up the damn phone, but all he does is breathe, for a moment. His fingernails are scratching into the counter-top and his knuckles are bleached.
Eventually, he asks, voice steady as it's going to get, "I take it the dreams didn't work?"
"Yeah," Arthur says after a moment. "Yeah, no, they didn't."
Eames nods, like this all makes sense. "So what are you going to do now?"
"I don't know," Arthur says, and Eames figures that's better than a definite, given the circumstances.
"What do you want me to say here, Arthur?" Eames asks. "You called me. What did you want to hear?"
"I don't know that, either," Arthur says. His voice is wistful.
"Do you want me to tell you I love you?" Eames asks, and it almost hurts to talk. "Do you want me to tell you that you mean something to someone, to me? That I don't want you to die tonight? That I don't ever want you to leave me? That you're special and beautiful and you're so fucking. . . God. . ."
Arthur's breathing is a little hitched over the line, and Eames thinks he might be crying.
"Do you want me to say that you can't fucking do this to me?" Eames continues. He doesn't even know if he's lying. "That you don't deserve to die, and I don't deserve to lose you? That I don't want to have to go to your funeral? Do you just want me to say that everything's going to be all right?"
Arthur sobs.
Eames presses the mobile phone to his forehead, plastic warm from how he was clenching it, and grips the counter. After a second he gives up and sinks to his knees.
"Everything's going to be all right, Arthur," Eames says, throat dry. His eyes are smarting. "Everything's going to be okay. It might not seem like it right now, it might seem like everything's fucked and you're fucked and nothing's ever going to get better, but it will. It will, I promise."
"Eames," Arthur says a bit brokenly. "Eames, I. . ."
He trails off and in Eames' kitchen and in Prague for a few minutes there's nothing but silence, ragged breaths and muffled static. He sets his teacup down with a clink on the hardwood. Because right now he could throw it across the room, see it shatter on the wall and leave sharp dangerous shards of ceramic and ugly brown stains, but he doesn't want to deal with the mess.
Eames listens to Arthur cry from a thousand kilometres away until he quiets down.
"Eames, I was gonna do something stupid tonight," Arthur says finally, voice soft and unsure but almost steady, after a few lifetimes of Eames' knees hurting on the hardwood and his stomach aching have passed. "And I just wanted to hear your voice for a bit before I did."
"And I don't. . ." he continues and falters. He clears his throat. "I just wanted to talk to you, for a while. Maybe 'til morning came. . . Can we do that?"
"Yeah," Eames says, sitting back against the cabinets. He stretches his aching knees out in front of him and glances at the night sky behind his curtains. Dawn's only a few hours off, maybe. Waiting to turn the black sky blue. "We can do that."