just to prove the world was here (inception)
Title: just to prove the world was here
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: R
Wordcount: 9,941
Warnings: torture, violence, and swearing.
Summary: The end of the road is only the beginning of the trip.
Notes: This is a sequel to this is it boys, this is war, that Arthur/Eames ROAD TRIP fic. Let me just say that this never would have been written if not for the UNBELIEVABLE response I got for the first one. So many of you were asking if there would be more of this, and so this is for all of you. It's also for taconaco and avalonauggie for being the world's best critics and springboards for my ideas. So this is a labor of love for all you people who asked for more and as you can see... you got a LOT more. :) You get more massages, you get more action, and, of course, you get more Arthur/Eames.
And yes, the title is even more lyrics from 99 Red Balloons by Nena.
AND NOW THERE IS ART!!!, drawn by the masterful and wonderful and goddesslike innueneko. Go lavish her with praise.
just to prove the world was here
--
Eames
They each pay for their own hotel rooms, but Eames finds some reason to follow Arthur back to his.
"You're two doors down," Arthur informs him, sounding incredibly tired. The fact that he needs to swipe the key card twice also attributes to said exhaustion, which Eames feels partially responsible for. He could have offered to drive some of the way instead of sitting back and letting Arthur do all of it.
Then again, Arthur would have said no, and possibly would have stopped speaking to Eames, who in the silence and inanity of a long car ride cherished every one of his comments, however repetitive and 'shut up, shut up Eames' they were, like they were treasure.
So actually it isn't Eames' fault at all.
He feels much better about himself, and uses his newfound confidence to block the doorway with his arm, effectively trapping Arthur in the hallway. At least until he decides to duck under Eames' arm and slam the door in his face. But Eames can cross that bridge when he gets to it.
"Yes, but is there any way I can convince you to come and join me two doors down?" he asks, meaning it entirely seriously. In all seriousness, Arthur would never join him in his room, not when he had already spent money on a room of his own. Eames suspects that this is why he bought his own hotel room at all, and why he let Eames pay for his room first.
"Come on, Arthur. Don't be so--"
"What?" Arthur blinks as the door pops open. He's not exactly sure if Eames is coming onto him or if he was just hallucinating. He's practically asleep on his feet as it is, and wouldn't put it past his mind to get the wrong idea from the way that Eames is leaning against the door jamb in a way that passed suave when he decided to shift his weight to one foot and cross his ankles.
"So tired?" he continues, and he must really be tired if he's actually admitting to it, rather than suppress, suppress, suppress absolutely everything useful for Eames to pick up on. "Exhausted, really? Incredibly frustrated? What shouldn't I be?"
"You..." Eames trails off, taking a quick second to consider exactly what his motives are in this sort of situation. He decides to raise his arm slowly, like a drawbridge, so that Arthur can pass. He smirks. "You should probably lie down."
Even though Arthur narrows his heavily lidded eyes at him, Eames knows that it is only out of habit. He trusts that Arthur knows him well enough not to mistake his being concerned for a proposition. Eames would never proposition Arthur when every inch of him is trembling with the effort of standing up. Not in the hallway, anyway.
Squinty and sour looking, Arthur stumbles past him and into the suite. He leaves the door open behind him.
Eames could certainly take this as a tell that Arthur is actually too tired to remember to close his door, which is very likely, or that he thought it would swing shut on its own, and then Eames could be a good friend, close the door for him and retreat to his own hotel room to jerk off. Instead, he takes it, like absolutely everything else that Arthur has the oblivious misfortune of accidentally doing, as an invitation.
"Lovely room," he says, following Arthur inside. "I've got one just like it. Would you like to come and see?"
Arthur ignores him, shuffling off like a sleepwalker, bag in hand, into the bathroom. This door, he does close.
"I could give you the grand tour," Eames continues. "Although I'll have to ask you to refrain from taking pictures. Photography is strictly prohibited."
He trails off, feeling a little awkward propositioning a door instead of Arthur. It's also the first time in a whole day that he and Arthur have had a wall between them. A day spent in a tiny car, all the while sitting within reach of Arthur, makes Eames feel incredibly lonely to be suddenly alone in a room.
"I feel like there's a wall between us," he says, forcing a rough laugh. When Arthur still doesn't answer, Eames tiptoes over to the bathroom door. Then he bangs on it with his fist. "Are you alright in there? Do you need me to come in?"
"No," is Arthur's biting reply.
So Eames drums his fingers on the door for a little while, tapping out eclectic rhythms. He is reminded of a cartoon Alice growing too big to get out of a house, and the rabbit cheerfully singing about how we'll smoke the monster out.
His drumming doesn't light any fires under Arthur's ass; the man takes his sweet time in the bathroom. When he finally emerges, Eames has taken a comfortable seat on the couch, with his legs stretched out, dirty shoes on the coffee table. He makes no move to leave, or even get up, although he does raise an eyebrow at Arthur's grey sweatpants, black tee-shirt, bare feet and freshly washed and towel-dried hair.
"Did it ever occur to you that I could have needed the toilet?" he says.
"Needed the toilet," Arthur repeats, probably to make Eames aware of how stupid he sounds. At least that's how Eames feels, anyway, like Arthur is always pointing out something stupid he did. "Does your room not have one?"
"Not sure. Haven't seen it yet," Eames says smartly.
Arthur just stares at him with the blank expression of a man who has just run headfirst into a wall. Or a man who hasn't slept in probably three days, if Eames remembers correctly. "You might want to look into that," Arthur says.
"You're adorable," Eames breathes.
Arthur flinches like he's just heard someone drop something in the next room. Then he pads across the sickly blue carpet to the linoleum-tiled kitchen area. His hands blindly grope at the coffee maker.
"Hey there," Eames says, jumping up from the couch with sudden concern. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Can't sleep," Arthur mumbles.
"I don't think that's going to help you, love."
"No. I can't sleep," Arthur says, his voice rising in pitch."Do you think Jacques will just forget about us?"
"I was hoping he would," Eames says in earnest, not caring how naive he sounds for it.
"Well of course he's not," Arthur snaps, his fingers fumbling awkwardly with the coffee filters.
There are things that Arthur does well, like shooting, driving cars, organizing, and being incredibly clean and put together, and then there are things that Arthur does very well. Worrying is one of those things. Blowing things completely out of proportion, really. Eames thinks this might be a result of all the time he spends in other people's proportionately impaired dreams, building stupid staircases and tripping people up with how clever he is.
"Arthur," Eames says, and clucks his tongue.
"He's going to know we're here," Arthur says urgently. "He won't go back to Paris until he finds us. This is a mess. He was never supposed to know about us. We never should have... never--"
He cuts himself off abruptly, as he is rambling, and crumpling the coffee filters in his shaking hands. A quick look up at Eames say everything it needs to, and then there's that nagging guilt again because Arthur is exhausted and not thinking straight and Eames should have just manhandled him out of the driver's seat, tied him up and put him in the trunk so that he could have taken the wheel for a few hours.
"Easy," Eames says gently, holding up his hands like he's trying to talk a jumper down from a ledge. "Put down the coffee filters."
Arthur takes a deep, steadying breath, then crumples the filters a little more deliberately before tossing the ball across the room. "He's going to find us," he says with finality, sounding a little too manic for Eames to take him seriously.
"He's not," Eames says, moving closer. "Let's get you into bed. I've got something I think should help you sleep."
Arthur balks a little, but Eames and the kitchen counter have him surrounded. "Time and place, Eames," he says offhandedly, flinching again when Eames wraps an arm around his shoulder. "This is not them."
"Flattered as I am," Eames says, giving Arthur a little nudge, "my intentions are strictly moral this time."
"First time for everything," Arthur says, twisting out of Eames' grasp and stumbling halfway across the room.
"I've been known to give an excellent massage," Eames says. "You've had but a wee taste of my skills."
"I don't want to taste your skills," Arthur says sulkily.
"I'm afraid you already did. In the car. Remember?" Eames prompts him, because Arthur is basically drunk on sleeplessness and might have forgotten Eames' hand on the back of his neck, thumbing pressure points at the base of his skull.
There's a moment where Arthur just stares blankly at him like Eames is speaking Hebrew, and then he blinks and nods his head a few times, like he's only just remembering. "Right," he say distractedly.
"No one is coming for us," Eames stresses. "You're exhausted. You need to sleep. What else do I need to tell you to get you to go to sleep?"
"I can't sleep," Arthur says again, with a bit more bite this time.
"Obviously," says Eames. "You're wound tighter than a spring, love. Let me help you relax."
Arthur doesn't hesitate, even for a second: "Don't."
As adorable as Arthur is most of the time in all the different ways he rejects Eames, this time is really just troublesome. He's going to be an absolute nightmare in the morning, and no help at all if his delusional suspicions actually turn out to be true.
"Now is probably not the best time to indulge in that stubborn streak of yours."
"Absolutely not," Arthur says, deadly serious.
Then Eames plays a very dirty card. "Is it because of the kiss?"
Arthur does falter then, his mouth opening but saying nothing for a second, just drawing in a sharp breath and blinking a few times to get his head around this. "What?"
Taking advantage of the moment, of Arthur's brief distraction from denying absolutely everything, Eames closes the distance between them in two long, deliberate strides, hands closing around the hem of his shirt. Arthur's hands immediately clamp down on his wrists, trapping him.
"I don't want this," Arthur says abruptly, face so close that Eames can smell toothpaste on his breath.
"Don't want what, love?" But Eames lets go of his shirt.
"Nothing," Arthur says harshly. He seems incredibly confused, and he also doesn't let go of Eames right away. When he does, it's in a huff of anger, throwing his hands aside like they've burned him. Then, bristling like a cat, he takes a step back. "I can do it," he says, pulling his shirt over his head in one swift motion.
"I'm just talking about a massage, here," Eames says carefully, holding his hands palms-up and splaying out his fingers. "Magic touch, magic hands, what have you. Just to help you sleep," he adds, stressing the innocence of the thing.
Eyeing him suspiciously, Arthur balls his shirt up in his hands, twisting it around his fingers. It would be a crime right now for Eames to do anything about the fact that he is standing, shirtless and perfect, within reach, about to concede to letting Eames put his hands all over him.
So Eames jams his hands deep into his pockets and drags his gaze up to Arthur's face.
"Just a massage," Arthur warns him.
Eames smiles. "Of course."
So Arthur drapes his shirt over the back of a chair and lies face down on the bed's beige comforter. He makes a point not to look at Eames, just stretches out and shuts his eyes.
It is completely maddening. Eames takes a minute or so to compose himself before crawling onto the bed, swinging a leg over Arthur and basically straddling the man's hips. But because this is a massage, and not even an erotic one, he stands up on his knees and refuses to acknowledge the fact that just looking at the taut muscles of Arthur's back makes him hard.
Just a massage.
Except Arthur is sighing and moaning with every drag of Eames' thumbs down his spine, every time Eames twists the heels of his hands into hard, tight muscle. It feels very much like something erotic, like something that perhaps neither of them should be wearing pants for.
"Is this alright?" Eames says, his voice too loud. But he needs to diffuse the situation if only to keep from coming in his pants right there.
Arthur, damn him, just moans gratefully in response.
Eames gnaws on his lower lip, then knuckles down on a knot the size of a dime in Arthur's lower back.
The way Arthur draws in a sharp breath and clutches the comforter in his fists has Eames seriously considering unzipping his fly, dragging Arthur's sweatpants down his waist, and fucking the man until they're both exhausted and will sleep. It would be so easy. Eames is already straddling Arthur's ass as it is.
But then he remembers the instinctive way that Arthur said "don't," the fear in his eyes speaking volumes about how Eames could very easily overpower him. He thinks about how Arthur is now, pliant and trusting beneath him, his eyes shut, giving Eames free reign over his torso. And Eames thinks, no, he couldn't possibly do that to Arthur.
"I don't want this."
Just then, Eames hears what sounds like a quiet little snore, so soft that it could just be a breath. He freezes, hands poised over Arthur's shoulders, and then he hears it again, a soft rattling at the back of Arthur's throat.
"Oh thank god," Eames breathes, and climbs down from the bed, gently, so as not to wake Arthur. Slowly, and very carefully, he peeks out through the curtains to see a deserted street below. Then he tiptoes to the door, cracks it open and sticks his head out. The hallway is empty too.
Arthur is hardly ever wrong about things, and Eames doesn't want to be too quick to dismiss his paranoid worries about Jacques. He locks the door and then the chain.
Back on the bed, Arthur's snores have hit a steady rhythm. For a moment, Eames entertains the notion of taking advantage of Arthur's deep sleep and curling up next to him on the bed, slinging a leg just over Arthur's ass
Then he thinks better of it, and makes himself a bed on the couch.
--
Arthur
Arthur wakes up on his stomach, feeling incredibly relaxed, for which he has Eames to thank. Eames and his incredible hands. Incredible how Eames is the first thought in his head upon waking. Incredible in a way that completely screws with his head.
His body is so loose that it feels like he's been mildly sedated.
But then he blinks, and becomes aware of the fact that his nose is squashed uncomfortably against what feels like cement, and his face feels like it's rubbing over gravel and not a pillow at all as he shifts to try and see where exactly he is.
When he moves, the hard ground rubs against his chest. His bare chest, because for some reason he isn't wearing a shirt. He tries to blink the blurry sleep out of his eyes, but for some reason they won't focus, and his hands are apparently tied behind his back because they don't respond to his wanting to push himself up from the ground with them, and he remembers going to sleep without a shirt on because Eames had wanted so badly to get him in bed and rub his hands all over his back to make him tired.
Arthur comes to the conclusion that he must have actually been sedated. And not just mildly.
He doesn't feel relaxed anymore.
He wants to be angry, furious, to give into the rage already making his heart beat faster, making his skin feel a little tighter over his body, and blame it all on Eames. It is entirely his fault that Arthur's hands are tied behind his back, and he's wearing nothing but sweatpants, and lying face-down on a filthy floor.
But none of that will help. A job is something he can focus on, and so in this circumstance, he imagines that he has a job to do, and that is, first and foremost, to find out where he is.
Lifting his head and squinting against his blurred vision, Arthur can just barely make out the shape of an SUV a few feet away. There's light coming in through a long wall. The faint smell of fuel oil tickles the inside of Arthur's nose, and helps him come to the conclusion that he's in a garage. His cheek scrapes against the rough floor again as he sets his head back down.
Of course he would get kidnapped the one night he tells Eames that they might be kidnapped if they go to sleep and should probably stay awake to keep watch, and of course Eames would do everything in his power to make Arthur sleep through the one night he needed to stay awake if there was ever anything in his entire life to stay awake for, and damn it if Eames' hands weren't so warm on the bare skin of his back, his shoulders, wide palms and long fingers wrapping around his upper arms...
It really is not helping him right now, being angry.
Pressing his forehead into the ground, Arthur kicks and scrambles his bare feet until he can sit up. He takes a minute to let his head stop spinning before he tries standing. Something wet slides down his forehead.
A door opens somewhere behind him, and his failing vision doesn't stop him from knowing that four people have walked into the garage. He can hear four pairs of footsteps, and can then see four dark blurs when they move into the light.
"Good morning, Arthur. I assume you slept well?"
Even though Arthur can't see whoever just spoke, he turns his head to face him anyway. It makes sense to appear less vulnerable than he actually is. "Jacques," he says, recognizing the voice of the psychotic Frenchman with the militarized subconscious and perfect dream recall that forced Cobb to split up the team and send Eames and Arthur on a delightful road trip halfway across Europe.
"Very good," Jacques says in his smooth, accented baritone. "Fredrik, tell the boy what he's won."
One of the blurred shadows approaches, grabs Arthur by his bound wrists in a way that painfully twists his shoulders, and swings him into a chair.
"What do you want?" Arthur says, blinking furiously in an attempt to clear his eyes. It doesn't help, but the blurred shapes of the three men still standing in front of him get just a little bit sharper.
"So you're working for me now? I'm the boss? You do what I want?" Footsteps, and one of the men steps closer. "Is that how it is?"
Arthur says nothing, just jerks his shoulders against the arms that suddenly wrap themselves around him, hands clasped in one another digging painfully into his sternum.
"Let me tell you, Arthur, how it is," Jacques says, taking another step towards Arthur, then crouching down in front of where he's sitting. "You are going to tell me what you did to me. If you do not, I have some friends here who are going to force you to tell me. If you still do not, then I am going to kill you."
A fist connects with Arthur's cheek, sending his head flying in the opposite direction until his chin hits the arm holding him down. When the blinding lights behind his eyelids fade into black, Arthur opens his eyes to see the dark tan and twisted grin on Jacque's face, just inches away from him. He can taste the Frenchman's breath as he gasps to regain his own.
"That wasn't even for anything," Jacques says, and then gets up and backs away. "I just wanted to hit you. See if you'd scream."
"Sorry to disappoint you," Arthur says, keeping his voice calm and even, and steeling his mind for the inevitable fact that he is about to be tortured.
"What did you do to me?" Jacques stresses.
Arthur's vision continues to clear, albeit much slower to actually do any good. But he can see Jacques, and he doesn't look away when he says, "nothing."
"What did your team do to me, then?"
"Nothing," he repeats, because it is ultimately the truth. Cobb never reached the safe inside Jacques' mind. He got killed, along with Arthur, Eames and Ariadne, and then chased out of Brussels by some of Jacques' militarized men in reality. "Not a damn thing."
"But you are lying," Jacques says, sounding exasperated, and then raises his left hand up into the air. "Fredrik, please."
The hands at Arthur's sternum disappear, and as one of the arms holding Arthur against the chair wraps the whole way around his chest, the other is removed. A hand then wraps around his left pinky and, in one quick motion, breaks it.
Arthur clenches his teeth around a sharp gasp that threatens to burst out into a scream, squeezing his eyes shut until the feeling passes.
"Tell me what you did," Jacques says, calmer now.
"Nothing," Arthur says, still maintaining perfect control over his voice despite the burning pain radiating up from his hand.
"Fredrik," Jacques says again, and the man behind Arthur breaks his ring finger, like it's nothing.
"Tell me what you did! Tell me what you put into my head!"
"This thing in your head?" Arthur says, only when he's sure he's not going to shout or even whimper from the pain. "It's paranoia, and I didn't put it there."
Arthur hears the soft shh of a blade being drawn, sees the glint of metal for only a second before feeling very much like his stomach has just been sliced open. For a few moments, he feels nothing but incredible heat, a warm gush of blood. The pain hits him seconds later, and this time he does scream.
He tries to curl in on itself, his body acting on instinct even though he knows that Fredrik is holding down. So Arthur tosses his head back and connects with what feels like a nose. This new pain distracts him from the immediate burn in his stomach, to the point where he can feel, as he twists against Fredrik's arms, that the cut really isn't that deep.
The thought, although comforting, does nothing for the pain.
"For fuck's sake," Fredrik mumbles behind him.
"I didn't put anything in your head," Arthur says, ignoring the man whose nose he has hopefully just broken and focusing on looking where he thinks Jacques has retreated to, because a knife wound and a nose to the head has made it that much harder to see clearly.
"One more finger, please," Jacques says patiently.
Even though Arthur is ready for it this time, he can't hold back a scream as Fredrik breaks his middle finger.
But then there is Fredrik's voice in his ear, so soft that Arthur isn't even sure he's hearing it at first: "Just keep screaming for me, darling. I need to talk."
Fredrik sounds exactly like Eames.
Arthur screams obediently, even after the instinct to do so passes, even though the shock makes him not even want to scream anymore. "There's a car directly behind us," Eames whispers. "I think I have the key. On my word."
When he doesn't say anything else, Arthur stops screaming. It's quite ingenious, whispering while he's screaming in pain so that Jacques won't hear him, and Arthur would have commended him for such quick thinking if they were under less dire circumstances.
"How do you feel now?" Jacques says, cleaning Arthur's blood off his knife with the sleeve of his jacket. "Do you feel like telling me what you've done?"
Arthur keeps his mouth shut, tries to envision that there is a car behind him. He's only going to have a few seconds to get to it, and so he wants absolutely no room for mistakes.
Behind him, Eames speaks up. "You want I should stab him, boss?" Arthur hears the click of a switchblade, and even knowing that it is Eames behind him doesn't keep his stomach from rising up into his throat.
And did Eames just say he only thinks he has the key?
"Please," Jacques says, sounding quite pleased himself at the suggestion. "Be my guest."
"Right-o," Eames says cheerfully, and Arthur braces himself on instinct. But the blade never even touches him. Instead, it slices through the rope knotted around his wrists, and Eames unwinds them in one swift pull. Then he takes his arm off Arthur's chest, gives the back of his chair a nudge, and says, "go."
--
It's a miracle that they even make it into the car. Arthur's body gives out the moment he springs to his feet, legs crumpling beneath him. Because he's not wearing a shirt, Eames has to grab him by his hair to pull him out of the way of Jacques' knife, which only just misses his face.
At this point, Arthur is basically useless, in too much pain to do anything but make vain attempts to get up. His blood makes the floor slippery, and he falls back into the sticky warmth every single time. There are sounds of a struggle, sounds of a knife cutting through flesh, of fists connecting with skulls and ribcages, a foot slamming into a chest, grunts and screams of discomfort, pain and aggravation.
Hands eventually hook under Arthur's armpits, dragging him backwards, hefting him up and basically dumping him in a heap on the passenger's seat. Eames them follows him into the car, climbing over him to get to the driver's seat with about as much grace as a stampede.
The SUV has been backed into the garage, and so when whatever key Eames has on him actually starts the engine, it's a strait shot to the street. The jolt of crashing through the garage door is too much for Arthur, though, and he blacks out.
He's not unconscious for very long, because when he blinks awake to find his face squashed into the leather seat of a car, Eames is still breathing heavily, fresh from a fight, and they are speeding.
"Arthur?" Eames says, probably seeing him open his eyes. "You awake?"
"Right-o." Arthur says, incredulous. He stares for a good long time at what's right in front of his face until his brain kicks it up a notch and recognizes Eames' leg, a black shirt tucked into the waistband of his pants. "Your word was right-o."
"Well I didn't have time to write a bloody speech, did I? My apologies that it wasn't to your liking," Eames snaps, his voice strained and loud. He sounds incredibly high strung as it is, and then lets out a long, tortured moan. "God, that was painful."
Arthur just stares at him upside-down, because he knows trying to sit up would hurt too much. "You're in pain, then?" he remarks.
"It's not like you'd ever believe me, but I don't actually enjoy hurting you."
Arthur turns his head just a little so he can see the rest of Eames. He sees fingers clutching the steering wheel, shoulders tensed up to his ears, and Eames is gnawing on his bottom lip like it's food. "I'm sorry about your hand," he says eventually.
"You are driving on the right," Arthur says cautiously. It's not that he isn't grateful for Eames helping him escape, but Eames is not exactly a man to be trusted behind the wheel. What with being British and all. "Right?"
Wanting to drive on the right side of the road instead of the left is basically the only reason why Arthur drove the whole way to Toulouse himself, despite being exhausted from three days of not sleeping. Wanting to survive was a valid reason for not wanting to test Eames' skills behind the wheel when they were being chased across Europe by a Frenchman with bloodlust and an interest in knife play.
Except Arthur doesn't exactly have a choice now.
Eames sucks noisily on his lip, and then Arthur feels the car make a drastic shift to the right. Again, Arthur doesn't want to seem ungrateful, so he makes no comment.
Gradually, the urgency of the situation comes back to him, and he opens his eyes again after he realizes that they've fallen shut, and that he might possibly have passed out again. "How did you do that, back there? Fredrik?"
"Forged myself into the guard Jacques sent to deal with me," Eames says, like it's nothing. Because, for him, turning into other people is nothing.
But for Arthur, it feels like the car has just dropped out from under him, and that he's falling and crashing into the shocking realization that, "we're in a dream?"
"Yep," Eames says.
He's wearing the sweatpants he fell asleep in, which have no pockets. His die is hidden away in his wallet, on the nightstand, next to his cell phone. There is no way to check and see whether he's awake or not.
"Are you sure?" he says cautiously.
"I forged myself into my kidnapper," Eames says again, though he doesn't sound impatient or even frustrated. "What more is there to possibly know?"
Unfortunately, it isn't that simple for Arthur, who's trying to quell the blood flow from a gash in his stomach with the hand of his that doesn't have three broken fingers. Whether or not they're in reality could be the difference between life or death, and it is not a situation he feels comfortable about taking lightly.
"They also were using knives," Eames continues. "What kind of kidnappers use knives?"
"The kind that want to torture you," Arthur snaps testily, feeling the tiny bit of hope that had only just begun to send waves of warmth rippling through him slip away when he realizes that he just might die in a car, with Eames speeding down the left side of a highway.
"Exactly. The kind that want to put you through incredible pain without killing you."
Arthur blames it on the incredible pain he has been put through that he didn't figure it out right away. "Very clever," he says. Then, "help me up."
Eames offers an arm to help Arthur pull himself up to sitting, not admonishing him for not being careful because there will be no repercussions for this once they've woken up, and if Arthur wants to aggravate his injuries until then that's his choice.
"So," Arthur breathes, once he isn't clenching his teeth against the agony of moving. "Looking for a nice cliff to drive off?"
Eames shakes his head. "We might be sedated. Wouldn't be smart, love."
"Right." For all Arthur knows, they could just be in the same hotel room where they fell asleep (where Eames rubbed his back until he fell asleep). Sedation would have helped to keep them in a dream where the people who put them in there want to see them hurting.
Arthur doesn't thank Eames for saving him because they're only dreaming. He could thank him for not driving on the left side of the street, but that might sound a little too ungrateful. Because he is grateful. It just isn't the sort of thing to talk about.
--
When Arthur wakes up next, the car isn't moving. The passenger door is open and Eames is standing there, ready to help him out.
"You're not wearing a shirt," Arthur points out, finding himself face to face with Eames' well-muscled, liberally tattooed and completely bare chest.
"Glad to see that blood loss hasn't dulled your keen sense of observation," Eames says. He's holding his shirt in his hand, the black fabric crumpled up in his fist in ways that Arthur can't help but think are not very good for it. Even if it isn't real.
Even worse for the shirt, though, is when Eames presses it to Arthur's abdomen.
Arthur hisses in pain, his whole body going stiff against the sudden sting of it. But Eames keeps up the pressure. "Stay alive," he says, as serious as he's ever been. "Just until we wake up."
"What about Jacques," Arthur says, reaching up with his right hand to press the shirt to his wound.
"We'll deal with it," Eames says. It doesn't sound promising. Arthur can see it panning out in his head, waking up to a hotel room full of Jacques and his men, guns trained on him and Eames the second they open their eyes.
"Up you get," he continues, helping Arthur out of the car, supporting him with an arm around his waist, without which Arthur wouldn't be able to stand. It's an awkward situation, both of them shirtless, both of them hobbling across the loading dock where Eames has parked the car, both of them huddling close behind a crate.
They're so close to each other, so impossibly close, and Arthur feels dizzy and lightheaded, although it might be from blood loss. Still, it wouldn't have been the first time Eames had this affect on him.
Then Eames pulls a gun out the back of his pants. "Take it," he says, holding it in front of Arthur's face with one hand, and pressing the other hand to his now bloody shirt.
Arthur bats his hand away with the sticky fabric, then tries to snatch it back. "Get off," he snaps. "Let me do it."
"Just take the gun," Eames all but purrs in his ear, "and shoot anything that comes close." After all, Arthur only has one good hand, and it would be a shame to waste it on Eames' bloody shirt.
Arthur fails to suppress a groan, although he is quite lucky to have his abdomen sliced open because now Eames will think he's just in pain and not struggling with the least appropriate kind of frustration.
"Why can't you do it?" he says, so help him if he sounds as petulant as, well, Eames. But he's bleeding and has more important things to worry about than tone of voice.
Like the men in black leather coming towards them, projections of Jacques' subconscious. Definitely something to worry about.
Eames shrugs, looking out towards the incoming men, all wearing black suits, black shirts, black ties. White shoes. "Right now, I couldn't shoot straight if were jerking me off."
The visual makes Arthur flinch. "So inappropriate," he says in that way of his that Eames always misinterprets as condescending when really he just has no idea how else to respond.
Eames, Arthur notices, is trembling. Arthur has felt this shaking since Eames had taken his shirt off and held it out to him, but until then had mistaken it for his own body suffering from blood loss and incredible pain, going into possible shock as well.
For one fleeting moment, Arthur considers that this should worry, both about himself and about Eames. But then he decides that it would be no practicality in doing so. Yes, he could die, yes they could get blown up right where they are sitting, yes they could slip into limbo and lose their minds. But all Arthur can do about that is shoot.
Arthur sees that the gun is shaking as violently as the arm attached to it, as violently as the hand pressed against his stomach, the hand that is gently prying his bloody fingers off Eames' shirt and pressing against his wound with too much force.
The pain snaps Arthur back to reality, or to whatever it is they're in, and he takes the gun. He can think about Eames later, when they're not fighting for their minds, or their lives, or at the very least whatever sanity they have left.
He gets up on one knee, braces the gun with the palm of his otherwise useless left hand, takes aim at the oncoming projections, and fires.
part two
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: R
Wordcount: 9,941
Warnings: torture, violence, and swearing.
Summary: The end of the road is only the beginning of the trip.
Notes: This is a sequel to this is it boys, this is war, that Arthur/Eames ROAD TRIP fic. Let me just say that this never would have been written if not for the UNBELIEVABLE response I got for the first one. So many of you were asking if there would be more of this, and so this is for all of you. It's also for taconaco and avalonauggie for being the world's best critics and springboards for my ideas. So this is a labor of love for all you people who asked for more and as you can see... you got a LOT more. :) You get more massages, you get more action, and, of course, you get more Arthur/Eames.
And yes, the title is even more lyrics from 99 Red Balloons by Nena.
AND NOW THERE IS ART!!!, drawn by the masterful and wonderful and goddesslike innueneko. Go lavish her with praise.
just to prove the world was here
--
Eames
They each pay for their own hotel rooms, but Eames finds some reason to follow Arthur back to his.
"You're two doors down," Arthur informs him, sounding incredibly tired. The fact that he needs to swipe the key card twice also attributes to said exhaustion, which Eames feels partially responsible for. He could have offered to drive some of the way instead of sitting back and letting Arthur do all of it.
Then again, Arthur would have said no, and possibly would have stopped speaking to Eames, who in the silence and inanity of a long car ride cherished every one of his comments, however repetitive and 'shut up, shut up Eames' they were, like they were treasure.
So actually it isn't Eames' fault at all.
He feels much better about himself, and uses his newfound confidence to block the doorway with his arm, effectively trapping Arthur in the hallway. At least until he decides to duck under Eames' arm and slam the door in his face. But Eames can cross that bridge when he gets to it.
"Yes, but is there any way I can convince you to come and join me two doors down?" he asks, meaning it entirely seriously. In all seriousness, Arthur would never join him in his room, not when he had already spent money on a room of his own. Eames suspects that this is why he bought his own hotel room at all, and why he let Eames pay for his room first.
"Come on, Arthur. Don't be so--"
"What?" Arthur blinks as the door pops open. He's not exactly sure if Eames is coming onto him or if he was just hallucinating. He's practically asleep on his feet as it is, and wouldn't put it past his mind to get the wrong idea from the way that Eames is leaning against the door jamb in a way that passed suave when he decided to shift his weight to one foot and cross his ankles.
"So tired?" he continues, and he must really be tired if he's actually admitting to it, rather than suppress, suppress, suppress absolutely everything useful for Eames to pick up on. "Exhausted, really? Incredibly frustrated? What shouldn't I be?"
"You..." Eames trails off, taking a quick second to consider exactly what his motives are in this sort of situation. He decides to raise his arm slowly, like a drawbridge, so that Arthur can pass. He smirks. "You should probably lie down."
Even though Arthur narrows his heavily lidded eyes at him, Eames knows that it is only out of habit. He trusts that Arthur knows him well enough not to mistake his being concerned for a proposition. Eames would never proposition Arthur when every inch of him is trembling with the effort of standing up. Not in the hallway, anyway.
Squinty and sour looking, Arthur stumbles past him and into the suite. He leaves the door open behind him.
Eames could certainly take this as a tell that Arthur is actually too tired to remember to close his door, which is very likely, or that he thought it would swing shut on its own, and then Eames could be a good friend, close the door for him and retreat to his own hotel room to jerk off. Instead, he takes it, like absolutely everything else that Arthur has the oblivious misfortune of accidentally doing, as an invitation.
"Lovely room," he says, following Arthur inside. "I've got one just like it. Would you like to come and see?"
Arthur ignores him, shuffling off like a sleepwalker, bag in hand, into the bathroom. This door, he does close.
"I could give you the grand tour," Eames continues. "Although I'll have to ask you to refrain from taking pictures. Photography is strictly prohibited."
He trails off, feeling a little awkward propositioning a door instead of Arthur. It's also the first time in a whole day that he and Arthur have had a wall between them. A day spent in a tiny car, all the while sitting within reach of Arthur, makes Eames feel incredibly lonely to be suddenly alone in a room.
"I feel like there's a wall between us," he says, forcing a rough laugh. When Arthur still doesn't answer, Eames tiptoes over to the bathroom door. Then he bangs on it with his fist. "Are you alright in there? Do you need me to come in?"
"No," is Arthur's biting reply.
So Eames drums his fingers on the door for a little while, tapping out eclectic rhythms. He is reminded of a cartoon Alice growing too big to get out of a house, and the rabbit cheerfully singing about how we'll smoke the monster out.
His drumming doesn't light any fires under Arthur's ass; the man takes his sweet time in the bathroom. When he finally emerges, Eames has taken a comfortable seat on the couch, with his legs stretched out, dirty shoes on the coffee table. He makes no move to leave, or even get up, although he does raise an eyebrow at Arthur's grey sweatpants, black tee-shirt, bare feet and freshly washed and towel-dried hair.
"Did it ever occur to you that I could have needed the toilet?" he says.
"Needed the toilet," Arthur repeats, probably to make Eames aware of how stupid he sounds. At least that's how Eames feels, anyway, like Arthur is always pointing out something stupid he did. "Does your room not have one?"
"Not sure. Haven't seen it yet," Eames says smartly.
Arthur just stares at him with the blank expression of a man who has just run headfirst into a wall. Or a man who hasn't slept in probably three days, if Eames remembers correctly. "You might want to look into that," Arthur says.
"You're adorable," Eames breathes.
Arthur flinches like he's just heard someone drop something in the next room. Then he pads across the sickly blue carpet to the linoleum-tiled kitchen area. His hands blindly grope at the coffee maker.
"Hey there," Eames says, jumping up from the couch with sudden concern. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Can't sleep," Arthur mumbles.
"I don't think that's going to help you, love."
"No. I can't sleep," Arthur says, his voice rising in pitch."Do you think Jacques will just forget about us?"
"I was hoping he would," Eames says in earnest, not caring how naive he sounds for it.
"Well of course he's not," Arthur snaps, his fingers fumbling awkwardly with the coffee filters.
There are things that Arthur does well, like shooting, driving cars, organizing, and being incredibly clean and put together, and then there are things that Arthur does very well. Worrying is one of those things. Blowing things completely out of proportion, really. Eames thinks this might be a result of all the time he spends in other people's proportionately impaired dreams, building stupid staircases and tripping people up with how clever he is.
"Arthur," Eames says, and clucks his tongue.
"He's going to know we're here," Arthur says urgently. "He won't go back to Paris until he finds us. This is a mess. He was never supposed to know about us. We never should have... never--"
He cuts himself off abruptly, as he is rambling, and crumpling the coffee filters in his shaking hands. A quick look up at Eames say everything it needs to, and then there's that nagging guilt again because Arthur is exhausted and not thinking straight and Eames should have just manhandled him out of the driver's seat, tied him up and put him in the trunk so that he could have taken the wheel for a few hours.
"Easy," Eames says gently, holding up his hands like he's trying to talk a jumper down from a ledge. "Put down the coffee filters."
Arthur takes a deep, steadying breath, then crumples the filters a little more deliberately before tossing the ball across the room. "He's going to find us," he says with finality, sounding a little too manic for Eames to take him seriously.
"He's not," Eames says, moving closer. "Let's get you into bed. I've got something I think should help you sleep."
Arthur balks a little, but Eames and the kitchen counter have him surrounded. "Time and place, Eames," he says offhandedly, flinching again when Eames wraps an arm around his shoulder. "This is not them."
"Flattered as I am," Eames says, giving Arthur a little nudge, "my intentions are strictly moral this time."
"First time for everything," Arthur says, twisting out of Eames' grasp and stumbling halfway across the room.
"I've been known to give an excellent massage," Eames says. "You've had but a wee taste of my skills."
"I don't want to taste your skills," Arthur says sulkily.
"I'm afraid you already did. In the car. Remember?" Eames prompts him, because Arthur is basically drunk on sleeplessness and might have forgotten Eames' hand on the back of his neck, thumbing pressure points at the base of his skull.
There's a moment where Arthur just stares blankly at him like Eames is speaking Hebrew, and then he blinks and nods his head a few times, like he's only just remembering. "Right," he say distractedly.
"No one is coming for us," Eames stresses. "You're exhausted. You need to sleep. What else do I need to tell you to get you to go to sleep?"
"I can't sleep," Arthur says again, with a bit more bite this time.
"Obviously," says Eames. "You're wound tighter than a spring, love. Let me help you relax."
Arthur doesn't hesitate, even for a second: "Don't."
As adorable as Arthur is most of the time in all the different ways he rejects Eames, this time is really just troublesome. He's going to be an absolute nightmare in the morning, and no help at all if his delusional suspicions actually turn out to be true.
"Now is probably not the best time to indulge in that stubborn streak of yours."
"Absolutely not," Arthur says, deadly serious.
Then Eames plays a very dirty card. "Is it because of the kiss?"
Arthur does falter then, his mouth opening but saying nothing for a second, just drawing in a sharp breath and blinking a few times to get his head around this. "What?"
Taking advantage of the moment, of Arthur's brief distraction from denying absolutely everything, Eames closes the distance between them in two long, deliberate strides, hands closing around the hem of his shirt. Arthur's hands immediately clamp down on his wrists, trapping him.
"I don't want this," Arthur says abruptly, face so close that Eames can smell toothpaste on his breath.
"Don't want what, love?" But Eames lets go of his shirt.
"Nothing," Arthur says harshly. He seems incredibly confused, and he also doesn't let go of Eames right away. When he does, it's in a huff of anger, throwing his hands aside like they've burned him. Then, bristling like a cat, he takes a step back. "I can do it," he says, pulling his shirt over his head in one swift motion.
"I'm just talking about a massage, here," Eames says carefully, holding his hands palms-up and splaying out his fingers. "Magic touch, magic hands, what have you. Just to help you sleep," he adds, stressing the innocence of the thing.
Eyeing him suspiciously, Arthur balls his shirt up in his hands, twisting it around his fingers. It would be a crime right now for Eames to do anything about the fact that he is standing, shirtless and perfect, within reach, about to concede to letting Eames put his hands all over him.
So Eames jams his hands deep into his pockets and drags his gaze up to Arthur's face.
"Just a massage," Arthur warns him.
Eames smiles. "Of course."
So Arthur drapes his shirt over the back of a chair and lies face down on the bed's beige comforter. He makes a point not to look at Eames, just stretches out and shuts his eyes.
It is completely maddening. Eames takes a minute or so to compose himself before crawling onto the bed, swinging a leg over Arthur and basically straddling the man's hips. But because this is a massage, and not even an erotic one, he stands up on his knees and refuses to acknowledge the fact that just looking at the taut muscles of Arthur's back makes him hard.
Just a massage.
Except Arthur is sighing and moaning with every drag of Eames' thumbs down his spine, every time Eames twists the heels of his hands into hard, tight muscle. It feels very much like something erotic, like something that perhaps neither of them should be wearing pants for.
"Is this alright?" Eames says, his voice too loud. But he needs to diffuse the situation if only to keep from coming in his pants right there.
Arthur, damn him, just moans gratefully in response.
Eames gnaws on his lower lip, then knuckles down on a knot the size of a dime in Arthur's lower back.
The way Arthur draws in a sharp breath and clutches the comforter in his fists has Eames seriously considering unzipping his fly, dragging Arthur's sweatpants down his waist, and fucking the man until they're both exhausted and will sleep. It would be so easy. Eames is already straddling Arthur's ass as it is.
But then he remembers the instinctive way that Arthur said "don't," the fear in his eyes speaking volumes about how Eames could very easily overpower him. He thinks about how Arthur is now, pliant and trusting beneath him, his eyes shut, giving Eames free reign over his torso. And Eames thinks, no, he couldn't possibly do that to Arthur.
"I don't want this."
Just then, Eames hears what sounds like a quiet little snore, so soft that it could just be a breath. He freezes, hands poised over Arthur's shoulders, and then he hears it again, a soft rattling at the back of Arthur's throat.
"Oh thank god," Eames breathes, and climbs down from the bed, gently, so as not to wake Arthur. Slowly, and very carefully, he peeks out through the curtains to see a deserted street below. Then he tiptoes to the door, cracks it open and sticks his head out. The hallway is empty too.
Arthur is hardly ever wrong about things, and Eames doesn't want to be too quick to dismiss his paranoid worries about Jacques. He locks the door and then the chain.
Back on the bed, Arthur's snores have hit a steady rhythm. For a moment, Eames entertains the notion of taking advantage of Arthur's deep sleep and curling up next to him on the bed, slinging a leg just over Arthur's ass
Then he thinks better of it, and makes himself a bed on the couch.
--
Arthur
Arthur wakes up on his stomach, feeling incredibly relaxed, for which he has Eames to thank. Eames and his incredible hands. Incredible how Eames is the first thought in his head upon waking. Incredible in a way that completely screws with his head.
His body is so loose that it feels like he's been mildly sedated.
But then he blinks, and becomes aware of the fact that his nose is squashed uncomfortably against what feels like cement, and his face feels like it's rubbing over gravel and not a pillow at all as he shifts to try and see where exactly he is.
When he moves, the hard ground rubs against his chest. His bare chest, because for some reason he isn't wearing a shirt. He tries to blink the blurry sleep out of his eyes, but for some reason they won't focus, and his hands are apparently tied behind his back because they don't respond to his wanting to push himself up from the ground with them, and he remembers going to sleep without a shirt on because Eames had wanted so badly to get him in bed and rub his hands all over his back to make him tired.
Arthur comes to the conclusion that he must have actually been sedated. And not just mildly.
He doesn't feel relaxed anymore.
He wants to be angry, furious, to give into the rage already making his heart beat faster, making his skin feel a little tighter over his body, and blame it all on Eames. It is entirely his fault that Arthur's hands are tied behind his back, and he's wearing nothing but sweatpants, and lying face-down on a filthy floor.
But none of that will help. A job is something he can focus on, and so in this circumstance, he imagines that he has a job to do, and that is, first and foremost, to find out where he is.
Lifting his head and squinting against his blurred vision, Arthur can just barely make out the shape of an SUV a few feet away. There's light coming in through a long wall. The faint smell of fuel oil tickles the inside of Arthur's nose, and helps him come to the conclusion that he's in a garage. His cheek scrapes against the rough floor again as he sets his head back down.
Of course he would get kidnapped the one night he tells Eames that they might be kidnapped if they go to sleep and should probably stay awake to keep watch, and of course Eames would do everything in his power to make Arthur sleep through the one night he needed to stay awake if there was ever anything in his entire life to stay awake for, and damn it if Eames' hands weren't so warm on the bare skin of his back, his shoulders, wide palms and long fingers wrapping around his upper arms...
It really is not helping him right now, being angry.
Pressing his forehead into the ground, Arthur kicks and scrambles his bare feet until he can sit up. He takes a minute to let his head stop spinning before he tries standing. Something wet slides down his forehead.
A door opens somewhere behind him, and his failing vision doesn't stop him from knowing that four people have walked into the garage. He can hear four pairs of footsteps, and can then see four dark blurs when they move into the light.
"Good morning, Arthur. I assume you slept well?"
Even though Arthur can't see whoever just spoke, he turns his head to face him anyway. It makes sense to appear less vulnerable than he actually is. "Jacques," he says, recognizing the voice of the psychotic Frenchman with the militarized subconscious and perfect dream recall that forced Cobb to split up the team and send Eames and Arthur on a delightful road trip halfway across Europe.
"Very good," Jacques says in his smooth, accented baritone. "Fredrik, tell the boy what he's won."
One of the blurred shadows approaches, grabs Arthur by his bound wrists in a way that painfully twists his shoulders, and swings him into a chair.
"What do you want?" Arthur says, blinking furiously in an attempt to clear his eyes. It doesn't help, but the blurred shapes of the three men still standing in front of him get just a little bit sharper.
"So you're working for me now? I'm the boss? You do what I want?" Footsteps, and one of the men steps closer. "Is that how it is?"
Arthur says nothing, just jerks his shoulders against the arms that suddenly wrap themselves around him, hands clasped in one another digging painfully into his sternum.
"Let me tell you, Arthur, how it is," Jacques says, taking another step towards Arthur, then crouching down in front of where he's sitting. "You are going to tell me what you did to me. If you do not, I have some friends here who are going to force you to tell me. If you still do not, then I am going to kill you."
A fist connects with Arthur's cheek, sending his head flying in the opposite direction until his chin hits the arm holding him down. When the blinding lights behind his eyelids fade into black, Arthur opens his eyes to see the dark tan and twisted grin on Jacque's face, just inches away from him. He can taste the Frenchman's breath as he gasps to regain his own.
"That wasn't even for anything," Jacques says, and then gets up and backs away. "I just wanted to hit you. See if you'd scream."
"Sorry to disappoint you," Arthur says, keeping his voice calm and even, and steeling his mind for the inevitable fact that he is about to be tortured.
"What did you do to me?" Jacques stresses.
Arthur's vision continues to clear, albeit much slower to actually do any good. But he can see Jacques, and he doesn't look away when he says, "nothing."
"What did your team do to me, then?"
"Nothing," he repeats, because it is ultimately the truth. Cobb never reached the safe inside Jacques' mind. He got killed, along with Arthur, Eames and Ariadne, and then chased out of Brussels by some of Jacques' militarized men in reality. "Not a damn thing."
"But you are lying," Jacques says, sounding exasperated, and then raises his left hand up into the air. "Fredrik, please."
The hands at Arthur's sternum disappear, and as one of the arms holding Arthur against the chair wraps the whole way around his chest, the other is removed. A hand then wraps around his left pinky and, in one quick motion, breaks it.
Arthur clenches his teeth around a sharp gasp that threatens to burst out into a scream, squeezing his eyes shut until the feeling passes.
"Tell me what you did," Jacques says, calmer now.
"Nothing," Arthur says, still maintaining perfect control over his voice despite the burning pain radiating up from his hand.
"Fredrik," Jacques says again, and the man behind Arthur breaks his ring finger, like it's nothing.
"Tell me what you did! Tell me what you put into my head!"
"This thing in your head?" Arthur says, only when he's sure he's not going to shout or even whimper from the pain. "It's paranoia, and I didn't put it there."
Arthur hears the soft shh of a blade being drawn, sees the glint of metal for only a second before feeling very much like his stomach has just been sliced open. For a few moments, he feels nothing but incredible heat, a warm gush of blood. The pain hits him seconds later, and this time he does scream.
He tries to curl in on itself, his body acting on instinct even though he knows that Fredrik is holding down. So Arthur tosses his head back and connects with what feels like a nose. This new pain distracts him from the immediate burn in his stomach, to the point where he can feel, as he twists against Fredrik's arms, that the cut really isn't that deep.
The thought, although comforting, does nothing for the pain.
"For fuck's sake," Fredrik mumbles behind him.
"I didn't put anything in your head," Arthur says, ignoring the man whose nose he has hopefully just broken and focusing on looking where he thinks Jacques has retreated to, because a knife wound and a nose to the head has made it that much harder to see clearly.
"One more finger, please," Jacques says patiently.
Even though Arthur is ready for it this time, he can't hold back a scream as Fredrik breaks his middle finger.
But then there is Fredrik's voice in his ear, so soft that Arthur isn't even sure he's hearing it at first: "Just keep screaming for me, darling. I need to talk."
Fredrik sounds exactly like Eames.
Arthur screams obediently, even after the instinct to do so passes, even though the shock makes him not even want to scream anymore. "There's a car directly behind us," Eames whispers. "I think I have the key. On my word."
When he doesn't say anything else, Arthur stops screaming. It's quite ingenious, whispering while he's screaming in pain so that Jacques won't hear him, and Arthur would have commended him for such quick thinking if they were under less dire circumstances.
"How do you feel now?" Jacques says, cleaning Arthur's blood off his knife with the sleeve of his jacket. "Do you feel like telling me what you've done?"
Arthur keeps his mouth shut, tries to envision that there is a car behind him. He's only going to have a few seconds to get to it, and so he wants absolutely no room for mistakes.
Behind him, Eames speaks up. "You want I should stab him, boss?" Arthur hears the click of a switchblade, and even knowing that it is Eames behind him doesn't keep his stomach from rising up into his throat.
And did Eames just say he only thinks he has the key?
"Please," Jacques says, sounding quite pleased himself at the suggestion. "Be my guest."
"Right-o," Eames says cheerfully, and Arthur braces himself on instinct. But the blade never even touches him. Instead, it slices through the rope knotted around his wrists, and Eames unwinds them in one swift pull. Then he takes his arm off Arthur's chest, gives the back of his chair a nudge, and says, "go."
--
It's a miracle that they even make it into the car. Arthur's body gives out the moment he springs to his feet, legs crumpling beneath him. Because he's not wearing a shirt, Eames has to grab him by his hair to pull him out of the way of Jacques' knife, which only just misses his face.
At this point, Arthur is basically useless, in too much pain to do anything but make vain attempts to get up. His blood makes the floor slippery, and he falls back into the sticky warmth every single time. There are sounds of a struggle, sounds of a knife cutting through flesh, of fists connecting with skulls and ribcages, a foot slamming into a chest, grunts and screams of discomfort, pain and aggravation.
Hands eventually hook under Arthur's armpits, dragging him backwards, hefting him up and basically dumping him in a heap on the passenger's seat. Eames them follows him into the car, climbing over him to get to the driver's seat with about as much grace as a stampede.
The SUV has been backed into the garage, and so when whatever key Eames has on him actually starts the engine, it's a strait shot to the street. The jolt of crashing through the garage door is too much for Arthur, though, and he blacks out.
He's not unconscious for very long, because when he blinks awake to find his face squashed into the leather seat of a car, Eames is still breathing heavily, fresh from a fight, and they are speeding.
"Arthur?" Eames says, probably seeing him open his eyes. "You awake?"
"Right-o." Arthur says, incredulous. He stares for a good long time at what's right in front of his face until his brain kicks it up a notch and recognizes Eames' leg, a black shirt tucked into the waistband of his pants. "Your word was right-o."
"Well I didn't have time to write a bloody speech, did I? My apologies that it wasn't to your liking," Eames snaps, his voice strained and loud. He sounds incredibly high strung as it is, and then lets out a long, tortured moan. "God, that was painful."
Arthur just stares at him upside-down, because he knows trying to sit up would hurt too much. "You're in pain, then?" he remarks.
"It's not like you'd ever believe me, but I don't actually enjoy hurting you."
Arthur turns his head just a little so he can see the rest of Eames. He sees fingers clutching the steering wheel, shoulders tensed up to his ears, and Eames is gnawing on his bottom lip like it's food. "I'm sorry about your hand," he says eventually.
"You are driving on the right," Arthur says cautiously. It's not that he isn't grateful for Eames helping him escape, but Eames is not exactly a man to be trusted behind the wheel. What with being British and all. "Right?"
Wanting to drive on the right side of the road instead of the left is basically the only reason why Arthur drove the whole way to Toulouse himself, despite being exhausted from three days of not sleeping. Wanting to survive was a valid reason for not wanting to test Eames' skills behind the wheel when they were being chased across Europe by a Frenchman with bloodlust and an interest in knife play.
Except Arthur doesn't exactly have a choice now.
Eames sucks noisily on his lip, and then Arthur feels the car make a drastic shift to the right. Again, Arthur doesn't want to seem ungrateful, so he makes no comment.
Gradually, the urgency of the situation comes back to him, and he opens his eyes again after he realizes that they've fallen shut, and that he might possibly have passed out again. "How did you do that, back there? Fredrik?"
"Forged myself into the guard Jacques sent to deal with me," Eames says, like it's nothing. Because, for him, turning into other people is nothing.
But for Arthur, it feels like the car has just dropped out from under him, and that he's falling and crashing into the shocking realization that, "we're in a dream?"
"Yep," Eames says.
He's wearing the sweatpants he fell asleep in, which have no pockets. His die is hidden away in his wallet, on the nightstand, next to his cell phone. There is no way to check and see whether he's awake or not.
"Are you sure?" he says cautiously.
"I forged myself into my kidnapper," Eames says again, though he doesn't sound impatient or even frustrated. "What more is there to possibly know?"
Unfortunately, it isn't that simple for Arthur, who's trying to quell the blood flow from a gash in his stomach with the hand of his that doesn't have three broken fingers. Whether or not they're in reality could be the difference between life or death, and it is not a situation he feels comfortable about taking lightly.
"They also were using knives," Eames continues. "What kind of kidnappers use knives?"
"The kind that want to torture you," Arthur snaps testily, feeling the tiny bit of hope that had only just begun to send waves of warmth rippling through him slip away when he realizes that he just might die in a car, with Eames speeding down the left side of a highway.
"Exactly. The kind that want to put you through incredible pain without killing you."
Arthur blames it on the incredible pain he has been put through that he didn't figure it out right away. "Very clever," he says. Then, "help me up."
Eames offers an arm to help Arthur pull himself up to sitting, not admonishing him for not being careful because there will be no repercussions for this once they've woken up, and if Arthur wants to aggravate his injuries until then that's his choice.
"So," Arthur breathes, once he isn't clenching his teeth against the agony of moving. "Looking for a nice cliff to drive off?"
Eames shakes his head. "We might be sedated. Wouldn't be smart, love."
"Right." For all Arthur knows, they could just be in the same hotel room where they fell asleep (where Eames rubbed his back until he fell asleep). Sedation would have helped to keep them in a dream where the people who put them in there want to see them hurting.
Arthur doesn't thank Eames for saving him because they're only dreaming. He could thank him for not driving on the left side of the street, but that might sound a little too ungrateful. Because he is grateful. It just isn't the sort of thing to talk about.
--
When Arthur wakes up next, the car isn't moving. The passenger door is open and Eames is standing there, ready to help him out.
"You're not wearing a shirt," Arthur points out, finding himself face to face with Eames' well-muscled, liberally tattooed and completely bare chest.
"Glad to see that blood loss hasn't dulled your keen sense of observation," Eames says. He's holding his shirt in his hand, the black fabric crumpled up in his fist in ways that Arthur can't help but think are not very good for it. Even if it isn't real.
Even worse for the shirt, though, is when Eames presses it to Arthur's abdomen.
Arthur hisses in pain, his whole body going stiff against the sudden sting of it. But Eames keeps up the pressure. "Stay alive," he says, as serious as he's ever been. "Just until we wake up."
"What about Jacques," Arthur says, reaching up with his right hand to press the shirt to his wound.
"We'll deal with it," Eames says. It doesn't sound promising. Arthur can see it panning out in his head, waking up to a hotel room full of Jacques and his men, guns trained on him and Eames the second they open their eyes.
"Up you get," he continues, helping Arthur out of the car, supporting him with an arm around his waist, without which Arthur wouldn't be able to stand. It's an awkward situation, both of them shirtless, both of them hobbling across the loading dock where Eames has parked the car, both of them huddling close behind a crate.
They're so close to each other, so impossibly close, and Arthur feels dizzy and lightheaded, although it might be from blood loss. Still, it wouldn't have been the first time Eames had this affect on him.
Then Eames pulls a gun out the back of his pants. "Take it," he says, holding it in front of Arthur's face with one hand, and pressing the other hand to his now bloody shirt.
Arthur bats his hand away with the sticky fabric, then tries to snatch it back. "Get off," he snaps. "Let me do it."
"Just take the gun," Eames all but purrs in his ear, "and shoot anything that comes close." After all, Arthur only has one good hand, and it would be a shame to waste it on Eames' bloody shirt.
Arthur fails to suppress a groan, although he is quite lucky to have his abdomen sliced open because now Eames will think he's just in pain and not struggling with the least appropriate kind of frustration.
"Why can't you do it?" he says, so help him if he sounds as petulant as, well, Eames. But he's bleeding and has more important things to worry about than tone of voice.
Like the men in black leather coming towards them, projections of Jacques' subconscious. Definitely something to worry about.
Eames shrugs, looking out towards the incoming men, all wearing black suits, black shirts, black ties. White shoes. "Right now, I couldn't shoot straight if were jerking me off."
The visual makes Arthur flinch. "So inappropriate," he says in that way of his that Eames always misinterprets as condescending when really he just has no idea how else to respond.
Eames, Arthur notices, is trembling. Arthur has felt this shaking since Eames had taken his shirt off and held it out to him, but until then had mistaken it for his own body suffering from blood loss and incredible pain, going into possible shock as well.
For one fleeting moment, Arthur considers that this should worry, both about himself and about Eames. But then he decides that it would be no practicality in doing so. Yes, he could die, yes they could get blown up right where they are sitting, yes they could slip into limbo and lose their minds. But all Arthur can do about that is shoot.
Arthur sees that the gun is shaking as violently as the arm attached to it, as violently as the hand pressed against his stomach, the hand that is gently prying his bloody fingers off Eames' shirt and pressing against his wound with too much force.
The pain snaps Arthur back to reality, or to whatever it is they're in, and he takes the gun. He can think about Eames later, when they're not fighting for their minds, or their lives, or at the very least whatever sanity they have left.
He gets up on one knee, braces the gun with the palm of his otherwise useless left hand, takes aim at the oncoming projections, and fires.
part two