A Bad Dream, pt. one
Title: A Bad Dream
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~8300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sometimes, the recovery can be just as hard to cope with as the trauma. Arthur and Eames learn this the hard way.
Warnings: Noncon, dubcon, language, violence
Author's Note: Hurrah! The sequel to Broken Toy! Sorry for the delay in posting. I found myself disappointed at the small amount of Arthur in this part, so I tried to whip together the second part so I could post both at once, since I'll be without Internet access for the next two weeks and obviously can't update for awhile. But it was going slowly so I decided to just post this part and hopefully will be able to finish part two by tonight!
I wish I could say definitively that this story is darker than, or lighter than, Broken Toy, but all I can really say is that I'm going for real more than anything else.
part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine.
Eames shut the bedroom door with a bang and was just about to sprint out of the flat when he was brought to a skidding halt in the middle of the living room. Oh. Not fair.
“Stop staring,” Arthur murmured when he felt Eames' gaze on him, not bothering to look up from his book.
“You really shouldn't spring these things on me when I have plans, you know, darling,” Eames told him, trying not to whine. “It isn't fair.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” Arthur idly flipped a page. “And after ten months of living together one would think you'd be used to seeing me on the couch with a book by now.”
His tone convinced Eames all the more that he was doing this on purpose. Because, after all, almost ten whole months now and Eames really wasn't used to all the little tics and habits that nobody else ever got close enough to know about him. Like, for instance, the fact that Arthur might have been neurotic about his work performance, but outside the warehouse, where he had no Cobb to please, he might actually leave a thing or two lying around, not in its place, and the world wouldn't end. It made Eames happy that Arthur was able to be an actual human being sometimes -- introduce a little organized chaos into his life now and then (which could have been why he tolerated Eames fairly well, not that Eames was a total slob; just that he wasn't as concerned about leaving rings on the coffee table by forgetting to use a coaster).
Another astonishing thing he'd learned about Arthur: On his days off, sometimes he would forego a suit completely, and would curl up on the couch with his feet tucked under him, wearing, say, jeans and a burgundy hoodie.
Designer jeans. But still.
Arthur, like Eames, preferred an ample amount of warning before being touched, but Eames couldn't resist and besides, there was something decidedly un-manly about having to say, out loud, “Can I cuddle you?”. Dropping onto the couch, he wrapped both arms around Arthur and hauled him in against his chest. Arthur made a brief, token effort at struggling and then gave in graciously.
“You were just leaving?”
“In a minute.” The hoodie was so soft in comparison to the suits and the collared shirts Arthur usually favoured. Eames ran his hands over it, loving how loosely it hung on Arthur's lean frame, and leaned in so he could press his face to Arthur's shoulder and inhale. Arthur tolerated this with good humour.
“Where were you going in such a hurry, anyway?”
“Lunch date with Ariadne,” Eames answered. He pressed a kiss behind Arthur's ear and loved the involuntary shiver he got in response. “Try not to be too jealous, darling.”
“I'll be too busy enjoying a nice quiet, empty apartment for that.”
“Oh. I get it. It's funny because you think you're not as co-dependent as I am. Cute.”
Arthur made a face and started to shove Eames' arm off. Eames squeezed him tighter and Arthur gave in again, allowing Eames to cuddle him while he attempted to go back to reading.
“Ari won't mind if I'm a minute late,” Eames said hopefully. He kissed Arthur's neck, up to his jawline. “A few minutes. Thirty, say.”
Arthur smiled but just like that the moment was gone, he was getting up and sliding out of Eames' arms and quietly gathering up the coffee mug he'd left on the coffee table. “Give Ariadne my regards.”
Eames squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his hands and counted backward from five. Slowly. He could hear Arthur clattering around in the kitchenette behind him.
“But I want to,” he said finally, his teeth gritted.
“I'll see you later, Eames,” Arthur answered firmly. Eames got up and left without looking at him.
+
“You're going to say I shouldn't be cross with him just for being a gentleman, but there's a fine line and he's starting to edge from gentleman to treating me like a leper and I really can't say I appreciate it.” Eames dunked a piece of bread into his soup vehemently, causing drops to fly onto the tablecloth. “I don't know how he can stand it; we sleep in the same bloody bed every night. And I know we tried it once and, yes, it was a bit of a fiasco but honestly, that must've been something like two years ago now. He ought to get over it.”
“It was six months ago, firstly,” said Ariadne, “and secondly, do you really think it appropriate for us to be discussing you and Arthur's sex life?”
“Sex life?” Eames echoed incredulously. “What sex life? Haven't you been listening?”
“Well, really. You might not be afraid of him, but I am.” Ariadne smiled as she played with the bread in her hands, shredding it into bite-sized pieces and popping them in her mouth. “How are the nightmares?”
He grunted. “I'd know if I could actually get some sleep.”
“It's bad again, huh?”
Eames nodded. “I'll be glad for this job. I think half the problem right now is that I have nothing to tire myself out with. Arthur's closed off that delightful avenue, the cooking classes are over now and I've about exhausted my repertoire twice over, and I finished going through my book collection in about a month after it shipped.”
“Must be a pretty small collection,” said Ariadne.
“On the contrary, my dear,” said Eames, arching an eyebrow. “It is a very impressive collection. It filled a small library at home. Various political, religious, sociological, psychological literature. Forging isn't all about studying a photo and creating a new face for yourself, you know. You have to be able to relate to every mark and know how to talk to them and make them trust you. You have to know not only what your subject thinks, but also how they think it. Essentially, you need to talk the talk and walk the walk.” He raised both eyebrows at her. “I am extremely good at my craft, Ariadne. It isn't just a lark for me, you know.”
Ariadne's cheeks had gone quite pink. She stared at him. “I had no idea.”
“Poor spelling and no college degree do not indicate stupidity or illiteracy, Miss Ariadne,” Eames chided. “Shame on you for judging.”
She flushed red. “Oh, I didn't mean that! I just never thought -- you put so much thought into it.”
“Neither did Arthur,” said Eames. “I think being introduced to my collection was the closest he's come to jumping my bones in six months.” He smiled, already fiddling with a napkin, his fingers itching for something to play with. “It does make me restless though. I don't know how I'm supposed to get any better if I'm sitting on my tail in Arthur's flat all the time, alone with my thoughts. I should be out there, researching for a job, training in the PASIV, something I can sink my teeth into.”
“Hopefully everything goes well with Cobb next week, then,” she said, smiling reassuringly. “And I don't see why it won't.”
“Yes, well. I might just lose my mind if I don't get to do this job, Ari. I mean it.”
At that moment a handsomely-dressed waiter appeared next to their table with a bottle of champagne and two glass flutes. Ariadne exchanged a few words with him in French and Eames watched, mystified, as the man uncorked the bottle and poured them two fizzing drinks.
“What's the occasion?” he inquired, when the man handed him one of the champagne flutes.
“Well, you.” Ariadne grinned sheepishly. “It's been ten months since you woke up, you know. I thought we should celebrate your progress. You really have made a lot of it.”
It was sappy and unnecessary and Eames kind of liked it, because at least someone was keeping track of how far he'd come, that wasn't him, and who knew something about what he'd struggled through over the past year. In some ways, sometimes, the recovery could be harder to fight through than the actual trauma. So he drank to Ariadne's toast, and threw in one of his own -- “To sanity” -- feeling self-indulgent but slightly warmed all the same.
“I just have to freshen up.” Ariadne slid away from the table. “Back in a minute, alright?”
He nodded and she disappeared. In a minute he'd drained the champagne flute and poured another drink, peering into the bubbly liquid as though it were holding some delicious secret. He missed drinking. Copious amounts of alcohol, that was. Arthur had put a stop to the self-destructive drinking benders before Eames could really sink into a state of alcholism. He'd also slammed the door shut on online poker, as soon as he found out that Eames had been spending all his sleepless hours playing into the night and growing steadily addicted. (Funnily enough, Eames was finding it very difficult to enter anything resembling a casino these days.) To occupy him, Arthur signed Eames up for French courses (which didn't really take) and cooking classes (which, absurdly, did), and bought him a gym membership.
Arthur was a good babysitter. He was an even better boyfriend, staying up at night with Eames or giving him back massages when he was stressed, and when he had to fly to Chicago for two weeks to do some legal dream work for a change, he wore the same shirt for two days so that it smelled like him and left it on Eames' pillow; and called him every night.
If only he would forget the chastity belt he seemed to have figuratively strapped to himself, Eames mused, twirling the stem of the flute idly in his hand. Then Eames could really reciprocate, show Arthur what being a good boyfriend was all about...
With no warning, a broad hand gripped him by the back of the neck and threw him hard into the table. Eames had barely a second to shove his hands out in front of him so that he didn't land face-first in the cutlery; the heel of his left hand hit the plate so hard it shattered and just like that he was bleeding from a long, stinging cut in his palm.
The smooth voice in his ear raked down his spine like glass. “Hello, Charlie.”
No.
He braced to do something, leap up and throw a punch or maybe just fling himself aside, but things happened too quickly for his frozen brain to keep up. The chair was kicked out from under him and he hit the ground painfully hard, grimacing when he unthinkingly grabbed out with his bleeding hand. Catching movement from the corner of his eye, he rolled in time to avoid another dish that shattered on the floor where he'd been sprawled and spattered his jacket with soup.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Charlie,” the man positively purred, immaculate in a white suit. “I missed you.”
And then the square toe of his polished Oxford landed in the soft spot just beneath Eames' ribcage, and he crumpled up around it on the floor, his ability to breathe instantly extinguished. Fuck, fuck, he was supposed to do something, he was supposed to, something -- look up, but he'd rolled partway under the table and couldn't see and he couldn't breathe and for at least ten harrowing seconds he thought he might actually die there, suffocating on the floor. And he could feel it happen, Christ, no, he was scrambling to keep hold of his own skin, he couldn't change now; if he changed now, he lost. And his hold was slipping, his fingers sliding off that slippery precarious knife-edge of control.
FUCK--
His gun was digging into his spine, tucked in the waistband of his slacks. He reached for it and was forced to abort the attempt and roll aside again to avoid another smashing plate. And then hands were around his throat, those same impossibly strong, broad hands, hauling him up off the floor and shoving him against a table so that he was forced to bend backwards, hands scrabbling for purchase. All the other restaurant patrons were either eyeing the scene with bored disinterest or carrying on their conversations like Eames wasn't fighting for his life, here; like a shard of porcelain hadn't been buried under his jaw so that a trickle of blood was rolling down his throat, and he was Eames, he was Eames, not twenty-one, not American, not Charlie--
Lookuplookuplookuplookuplookup--
He looked up. The shard bit even deeper but it didn't matter because he saw himself in the mirrored ceiling, made eye contact with his reflection and felt himself land squarely back in his own skin with a rush of sudden confidence. Grabbing the arm that held the porcelain shard to his throat, he twisted brutally and, when the man slipped sideways, he spun away and fluidly planted an elbow in his solar plexus. The man doubled over and Eames grabbed a handful of his hair and used his momentum to send him smashing into the table. There was a sickening crunch of breaking cartilege and Eames felt a hot, savage pleasure in his gut as he reached for his gun. The man rounded on him with a snarl, spitting out, “Slut,” and grabbed his arm just as he began to raise the gun, and three rounds were fired in rapid succession, each bullet smashing a hole through the ceiling.
The struggle was brief. Hanging over them like a cracked shell that encased the soft innards of the dream, the mirror overhead began to splinter and break away. In one sudden rush, it crumbled inward with an immense crash of breaking glass and Eames felt a blinding pain--
He woke up with his heart bounding frantically in his chest, hands already searching his pockets until he found it: his totem. He closed his eyes and ran his thumb over the surface of the chip again and again, feeling its way along the 6 that had been gingerly carved into the plastic, his chest heaving for breath. Each time he stroked it, the number under his finger stayed the same. Six. Six. Oh, Christ. Six.
“Eames!”
Ariadne was already awake, and tearing off the IV taped to her arm, she bounded out of the armchair she'd curled herself in. He opened his mouth to apologize, but all at once she was at his chair and her arms were around his neck. He was momentarily bewildered, but he didn't push her away. He didn't hug her back, either. This wanton display of pity was unprecedented and unwelcome. He stiffened.
Until she pulled away, and he realized, with even more bewilderment, that she was beaming.
“You did it!” she was saying. “You did everything, you remembered the mirrors, you didn't even change!”
And at her delight, slowly, even though he felt roughly like he'd been dragged behind a car for a mile over broken glass, Eames found the corners of his lips tugging upward, too. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.
“That was great!” she cheered, and for one happy second, Eames let her glee in and claimed this small, twisted victory for his own, and felt what it was like to celebrate with somebody who knew just what a milestone this was for him. Even though it had been harder than swimming through tar. He'd done it.
Then the adrenaline started to leave him, and his hands were trembling.
“You should feel really proud of yourself, Eames,” Ariadne told him. “You couldn't have taken back control of the dream like that, even a few months ago.”
“It's not good enough yet, though,” he said quietly. “He shouldn't have been there at all.”
“It's the same guy, isn't it? He's the only one that keeps appearing now.”
“Yeah, he was ...” Eames glanced aside, out the window of her flat. “He was something of a regular, I suppose you could say.”
“I'm sorry he left such an impression on you.”
She was, too, which was really why Eames chose to share these dreams with her, and not anybody else. She understood more things than he necessarily gave her credit for. He hadn't had much of a reason to like her, before, but she was the one who'd seen his nightmare. Only a glimpse -- but enough that she'd been worried, seriously worried, for a long time afterward. Ariadne was nothing if not persistent.
He let her in because he didn't see that she gave him much choice in the matter, but more importantly, because she genuinely cared, and did not lie to him or create false hopes, and because, he'd soon realized, she did not flinch away from his memories and fears when he described them, or make him feel like he was less of a person. Ariadne was a female and as such could almost comprehend the things Eames felt when he woke up in the middle of the night, which was more than Arthur could ever give him.
That didn't make it a good idea for him to say, impulsively, “Look, Ari, there's something you should probably know about that one--”
“What?” she said at once, and he could have kicked himself. He hadn't meant for that to slip out; he'd just gotten caught up in the caring and sharing of the moment. He didn't know how to put words to what he'd wanted to say. It would be too much and try and describe the relationship with that particular client and how badly it had broken him inside. He was so glad she'd never gotten close enough to hear the man call him Charlie.
What he went with, eventually, was not an untruth: “I think he works in extraction.”
He didn't expect for her eyes to widen or the words that immediately burst out of her mouth: “I bet Cobb knows who he is!”
Eames blinked. That was not what he'd been driving at, not at all. “I think poor Cobb's had enough of my self-pitying malarkey,” he joked lightly.
“Don't be stupid, Eames, he'd be on a plane tomorrow if he thought he could help you with this. Cobb's probably worked with almost everyone in the business.” And God bless her, she was actually pulling out her cell phone and searching for Cobb's number. Eames reached out and gently folded the phone shut in her hand.
“That's not what I'm trying to say,” he said patiently. “What I mean is, I don't know who that man is, only that he's comfortable in the dreamscape. He could be an extractor. Or a forger. Or an architect.”
He could see her considering that, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth slightly. She slowly replaced the cell phone in her pocket.
“He might look different in reality,” she said.
“And he can change the dreams, more importantly,” Eames added quietly.
“Well,” said Ariadne, drawing herself up self-importantly, “it's a good thing you'll be working with me and Arthur, then. Because he won't even get a chance to change anything.”
Eames smiled, for her sake more than his. “Thanks.”
“Don't worry about it. Seriously -- take the week off from dreaming. It's going to go fine with Cobb, you just have to not worry.”
“Right.” He helped her pack up the PASIV before gathering up his coat. “See you next week, then.”
“Sure. And hey, Eames?” Her voice followed him from her living room to the door. “Good luck with Arthur.”
+
Eames spent a long time chain-smoking on the balcony that night. Arthur's repeated summons, muted behind the glass door, fell on deaf ears. At his back, the bedroom light came on as Arthur prepared for bed, switched off as he attempted to sleep, and switched on again twenty minutes later when he evidently could no longer stand it. The balcony door opened.
“Are you planning on coming to bed tonight?”
“You took off your hoodie,” Eames observed sadly. That earned him a rare smile.
“You can cuddle it if it'll help you sleep. Like a teddy bear.”
“Well,” said Eames demurely, throwing down his cigarette and crushing it under the toe of his shoe. “When you put it that way.”
Arthur drew back, relieved, but Eames hesitated on the balcony and raised an arm. He beckoned Arthur with a tilt of his head. Arthur sighed at the plaintive request, but not with any real conviction. He stepped onto the balcony and allowed Eames to fold him into a tight hug, his own arms wrapping around the forger's waist. Eames closed his eyes, his chin resting on Arthur's shoulder, and breathed deep. Arthur had showered. Ungelled, his hair was soft and chocolate-brown and it curled around his ears, and it smelled fantastically good, and Eames stood there for at least a minute just drinking in the scent of him.
Arthur had teased Eames for practically fetishizing his scent, but the truth was that it was as much a totem for Eames as the poker chip in his pocket, and he was pretty sure they both knew that. And anyway, it wasn't always something sexual. Eames' libido came and went like the tide. Earlier, Arthur looking this damp and mussed and wearing just a t-shirt and pyjama pants might have undone him. Now there was nothing Eames wanted less in the world than sex. He was never sure which extreme was the more embarrassing.
“How was lunch?” Arthur asked conversationally into his shoulder.
“It was good.” Eames' nose burrowed deeper into the warmth of Arthur's neck. “You smell very good, darling.”
“I try.” Arthur pulled away, took Eames by the hand and led him into the bedroom so that he could shut and lock the balcony door. Eames thumbed the poker chip in his pocket compulsively before he started to peel off his clothes, stripping to just his boxers while Arthur crawled back into bed and switched the lamp off. Eames laid his chip on the bedside table before joining him, numbered-side down, so that Arthur wouldn't accidentally see the two notches Eames had scratched crudely into the smooth groove of the 6. Just in case. In one of Arthur's dreams, the chip would only bear the number. Eames knew he was in reality when he felt those two tiny notches under his thumb.
Or in his own dream. But he couldn't go down that road, not again.
He went through all the motions of a person preparing to fall asleep. He stretched out, he made himself comfy, he rolled onto his stomach and pulled one of Arthur's pillows over his folded arms so that he could bury his face in it and breathe the scent of it all night. He closed his eyes.
It was just--
Sometimes. All he saw imprinted on the back of his eyelids were the brilliant lights of a vibrant casino.
“Oh.” Arthur was shifting around, getting up and moving around in the dark. Something soft hit Eames in the head with a dull thud. “There you go.”
Eames grunted, then grabbed the mystery bundle and pawed it open. He squinted. The burgundy hoodie.
“I don't really need it,” he said, suddenly feeling stupid.
“Just in case,” said Arthur, already slipping back under the covers with a stifled yawn.
Eames made a non-committal sound and moved to toss the hoodie aside, but at the last moment, when he was sure Arthur's eyes were closed, he tucked it under his pillow. Just in case.
+
The first time they tried anything resembling sex, it had happened like this: Eames was still relearning everything about being himself -- his real self, not the self who flinched from harsh words and dropped to his knees in supplication. He had good weeks, where the world seemed to make sense and he seemed to make sense, and he wanted to go out and get busy learning how to be a normal, proactive member of society again. And he had bad weeks, where all of reality seemed to have tipped itself upside down and he couldn't figure out what was meant by anything Arthur said and he sometimes thought he was still dreaming, and panicked. That was before his brain seemed to have built up an immunity to Arthur's scent, like bacteria with an antibiotic, so he could sleep, but when he slept he dreamt, and when he dreamt it was always lucid and vivid, hi-def with surround sound, and it scared him nightly.
He'd been wavering somewhere in the middle of these two poles when it actually happened -- scared to death but so fucking desperate to prove to himself -- to prove to Arthur -- that he was okay.
Arthur, for his part, had been a perfect gentleman from day one, not so much as touching Eames without first stating his intentions or asking his permission. He'd taught Eames to do the same thing, to avoid miscommunications. He not only suffered the nightly panic attacks but talked Eames through them without a word of complaint. He didn't so much as blink when Eames started using him as a personal soft toy, cuddling up to him in sleep.
And he made no sexual advances. None at all. Not even when Eames begged.
Which was why, when Eames snapped, he didn't beg. He climbed on top of Arthur and swallowed his protests with deep, desperate kisses. He slipped a hand into Arthur's boxers and stroked him to hardness and then slid down the bed and swallowed Arthur's cock down, and Arthur could barely form a coherent argument by that point. It was cheating and Eames knew it and he didn't care, because he thought he needed it, even if Arthur didn't.
Eames would argue that he had always been a champion cocksucker, which was fairly true, but five years of spending nearly every day on his knees certainly hadn't hurt his technique, either. That part wasn't when things went wrong. That part, judging by the choked variations of his name that Arthur managed to pant out, went quite well.
It was what came after. What he remembered was Arthur's hips bucking involuntarily the instant before he came, so that the head of his cock touched the back of Eames' throat without warning. And then he was on the bathroom floor, hunched against the side of the bathtub with the heels of his palms pressed painfully hard against his eyes to try and quell the traitorous tears that stung them, while Arthur sat on the other side of the locked bathroom door and didn't say anything. His vomit had made a humiliating, disgusting mess of the carpet next to Arthur's bed. He was done, he'd ruined this, ruined everything with Arthur. He understood then why Arthur never wanted to touch him: because he was dirty, stained, because he couldn't go to bed without bringing with him the memory of the hundreds of people who'd been there first.
In that moment, he could have died.
But he was getting better now. He would get better. They had stolen five years' worth of sanity from him but they were not going to take this from him and Arthur, too. He would make Arthur want him again.
+
The week passed by in a hazy blur of sleeplessness, and then Arthur was wearing a collared shirt and waistcoat one morning and Eames groaned because he knew what that meant.
Cobb took a taxi from the airport to his hotel, where Arthur and Eames picked him up and met Ariadne at a restaurant where they had reservations. Eames was too exhausted to remember much about the meal -- he ordered whatever looked easiest to pronounce on the menu and listened with half an ear to Cobb's stories about James and Phillipa. After dinner, while they waited for the valet to bring Arthur's car around, Cobb took Eames aside and asked quietly, “How are you doing?”
Eames couldn't suppress a sigh. That was exactly the kind of lame question Ariadne didn't ask, which was, all things considered, why she was the only one he talked to about these things.
“Just dandy,” he said.
Cobb's expression was inscrutable. “Really,” he said.
“Really,” Eames said stubbornly.
“Look,” said Cobb. “There's a job. And we could use you, if you want to take it. Maybe you and I could do a quick training run in the PASIV, when we get back to Arthur's place? See if you're up to it?”
Ariadne had, of course, warned him that Cobb would do this, and he'd spent the past few weeks preparing for it, so it wasn't exactly a pop quiz. But it made his stomach knot all the same. Cobb was testing him.
“Absolutely,” he said, looking Cobb straight in the eyes. At least it was sleep.
Arthur dug the PD out of his closet at home and set it up in the bedroom for them.
“Don't get too possessive now, darling,” Eames purred, seated on the edge of the bed, when Arthur handed him an IV line. “Us being left alone together in the bedroom and all.”
The point man rolled his eyes and took the other line over to Cobb, who was sitting in a chair next to the balcony.
“Go easy on him,” Arthur cautioned before he left the room.
“Hey,” Eames snapped, rankled. He wasn't some delicate little flower. Arthur rolled his eyes, again.
“I was talking to you,” he said patiently, and shut the bedroom door.
“Ready?” Cobb asked.
“As I'll ever be,” Eames replied carelessly, and he pressed the button in the PASIV at his feet. In the next moment, he felt his back hit the mattress and then he was out.
+
Cobb had, of course, had previous opportunity to peruse Eames' dreamscape, when it had still been -- that place. Eames knew that if anything, any detail at all, reminded Cobb of that unhealthy dreamscape, his chances of getting back to work would be nil. What made Cobb such a good extractor was what made him a bloody nuisance now, poking around in Eames' subconscious with that eidetic memory of his. Eames followed him without speaking as Cobb navigated a faintly Venetian city, half grumpy at this arrangement, and half terrified he was going to ruin this by introducing something else to his dream somehow. Almost everything had been wiped clean from his dreamscape; he'd painstakingly deconstructed that monument to his torment and started fresh, with Ariadne's help.
As far as Cobb knew, this was his first time going under in ten months, and the extractor took his time soaking everything in. Cafés, canals, cobblestone. And projections, bustling about in colourful clothes. No fountains, and definitely no big bridges. Still, Eames' heart thudded in his ears every time Cobb stopped to look at something more closely. If he lost control of this dream like he had last week...
A flash of white in the corner of his eye made his mouth go dry. His head snapped round quick enough to catch a glimpse of the man in the white suit, just as he melted back into the crowd, going in the opposite direction. Eames found that he could breathe again.
“This is good,” Cobb said, turning to face him. “I'm impressed.”
“Thank you,” said Eames cordially.
“You've come a really long way, Eames.” Cobb dug a handgun out from under his jacket. “I don't mind cutting this short, if you want.”
Relieved, Eames took the gun, pressed the muzzle to his temple and squeezed the trigger. Cobb followed him quickly, before the dream could collapse.
“I noticed the mirrors,” Cobb said, as Eames was woozily tugging the IV out of his arm and sitting up on the bed. “A good idea. They're subtle.”
“Ariadne's idea,” Eames confessed. “Once I'm actually forging I won't need them, I'm sure.”
“It's smart.” Cobb was still sitting in the chair. Eames turned around to face him while he went on, “I appreciate the effort you've put in to regain control of your subconscious. I'm sure it wasn't easy.”
The last few words became fuzzy as the heartbeat in Eames' ears swelled to a thick, loud pulse. Distantly, he heard himself say, “What's that?”
“What's what?” Cobb twisted around to look out through the balcony door, but Eames didn't need Cobb to tell him. He'd recognized it the instant he'd laid eyes on it. Tower Bridge.
It was like somebody had gripped his lungs in an iron vice and plunged them into freezing cold water. The tips of his fingers were going numb. He wondered if he was about to faint.
“Cobb,” Eames said hoarsely. He'd been about to say something to the effect of we need to get out of here, but had suddenly realized that he couldn't move. Not an inch. Very faintly, he could hear the cheery jangling of slot machines below his feet.
“Eames, breathe.”
Oh, no. No. It had happened, he had been waiting for this to happen, he'd been hiding here all along and making up his own dream and now he was back, he was back here, in this place, he was back...
“Take a deep breath,” Cobb told him sharply, but Eames couldn't do it; he only seemed to be breathing in. He tried to stagger upright, shaking, and didn't understand why the room tilted steeply until he hit the floor. So he just curled up there, tight, arms over his face.
“Fuck.” The word had to be squeezed out of his throat. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Please, no--”
Cobb was kneeling next to him suddenly, resting a hand on his shoulder, and Eames jerked violently away from him. Couldn't be touched. Not in this room. He was supposed to be safe here, he was supposed to be safe -- the noise from the casino below was rising and he was gasping in such shallow breaths he felt lightheaded. His head was resting on the carpet and he was scared to open his eyes, terrified of what he might see, afraid he would completely lose control and fly apart and not ever be able to put himself back together.
“Deep breaths,” Cobb urged him. Eames could barely hear him, but some faint note made it through the stupour. Deep breaths. He took one.
Then he lunged to his feet and launched himself at the bed, like he had only seconds before the floor opened up beneath him. Cobb shouted, “Wait!” but Eames' hand had already closed around the gun under Arthur's pillow and, yanking it out, he shoved the muzzle into his mouth--
And woke up, on the bed, his heart racing fitfully.
He twisted over. There, through the balcony door, he could see the lit-up Parisian cityscape. No bridges. The floor below theirs was silent. He could hear the TV, muffled, in the next room, some French news report. He rolled over and buried his face in one of the pillows, while one hand shot down to his pocket to check his totem. Both his hands were shaking.
He could hear Cobb waking and then packing the PASIV up calmly. Eames waited till he'd wrestled his breathing back under control, then rolled over and got up.
“Eames,” Cobb started, and was cut off when Eames hit him across the face as hard as he could.
“Fuck you,” he grated raggedly. He was still panting lightly. Now his hand hurt. “Fuck you, Cobb.”
“Eames,” Cobb tried again, rubbing his jaw.
“You did that. You put that fucking bridge there, and -- and the casino. What the fuck were you playing at?”
“Actually, I only did the bridge,” said Cobb quietly, not looking him in the eyes. “The casino was you.”
Eames grabbed him by the front of his jacket and slammed him hard up against the wall. “I could kill you, Dominic Cobb,” he seethed through his teeth.
The door opened and Arthur was there in an instant, grabbing Eames by the arm. “Eames! What are you doing?”
“Why?” Eames shouted at Cobb. “Did you think it would be a laugh? What?”
Cobb grabbed his wrists in a flash and shoved hard. As strong as Eames was, Cobb was stronger. He stumbled backward, shouldering Arthur on his way.
“I thought it would tell me what I needed to know,” Cobb said, too calm and not apologetic enough. “Give us another minute, Arthur.”
Arthur was still hovering at Eames' shoulder, watching him as though there might be visible damage, and Eames didn't know if he was being protective or waiting to figure out what was going on so he could undoubtedly side with Cobb. At last, reluctantly, Arthur started to leave the room.
The gaze he fixed Cobb in before closing the door was filled with so much vehemence it was almost breathtaking.
“Don't put him back under,” he warned, his voice quiet and deadly sincere.
Then he was gone. Eames stared after him. Protective. He somehow hadn't expected. It made his chest tighten in a strange way.
“Eames,” said Cobb, straightening out his jacket. “I have to know that you'll be able to do this.”
“That was a foul thing to pull on me, Cobb,” Eames growled in a low voice. “The nice, bridge-less dream wasn't good enough for you?”
“You're not going to be designing the dreams for this job, Eames. You're going to be navigating a dream filled with whatever Ariadne or the mark puts in it. When you meet a trigger, I need to know you won't blow the whole job for us.”
“I really don't foresee Tower Bridge posing a significant threat, funnily,” Eames snarled, his blood pressure rising dangerously. Cobb met his gaze levelly.
“We need a forger for this job because we need a specific type of young woman that can make herself vulnerable to our male mark. It could be a little too familiar for you.” He let Eames chew on that for a few seconds before continuing, “I have to be one-hundred percent sure that you've got both feet in reality before I let you do this job. For your sake, but also because this job's too important to mess up.”
“So you think it's alright to fool around in my head like that,” Eames snapped. “What if you'd messed me up, Cobb? What if I completely regressed because of you?”
“I didn't think for a second that you would,” said Cobb evenly.
Eames couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he just paced angrily back and forth for a minute or two. If he were a cat his tail would have been lashing.
“So that was a, what, a test?” he demanded loudly at length. “Didn't pass it, though, did I?”
“Actually, you did exactly what I hoped you would. You went for the gun. You removed yourself from the dream. You knew you had to wake yourself up, even if it wasn't a conscious thought at the time. You didn't let yourself get trapped in there.”
Eames hunched his shoulders, faced the wall, dug a cigarette out of his pocket and lit up. Arthur would complain about the smell later but he didn't particularly care right then.
“If you just want somebody to fuck around with, then get yourself another forger, Cobb. I'm not putting up with this.”
Cobb sighed. When he spoke, there was an apologetic note in his voice for the first time. “I want you back at work, Eames. We all do. You know you're more than just a forger. The Fischer job was supposed to be impossible, and you formulated and carried out almost every step. You're the one who thinks of all the consequences and makes back-up plans for our back-up plans. In a lot of ways, you're even smarter than Arthur.”
“Flattery will get you only so far, you know,” Eames sniffed, even if he kind of liked hearing it.
“We can't do this job without you. But ask yourself and answer honestly if you feel a hundred percent ready to return to dreaming. If there's any doubt at all in your mind, tell me and we can walk away from this one.”
Eames turned around grudgingly. “What do you think?”
“Well, Arthur and I have been talking--”
“Yeah? What does Arthur say?” Eames interrupted.
Cobb shrugged. “Doesn't matter. I think you're ready.”
“Well, I am,” said Eames, more confrontationally than he intended.
“I'm glad to hear it.” Cobb dug a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a plane ticket. “Here. Your ticket to New York. Plane leaves in two days.”
“Courtesy of Air Saito, I'm guessing?” Eames took the ticket and examined it. “Not Newark, is it?”
“JFK,” said Cobb, giving him a strange look.
“That's alright then.” Eames stuffed the ticket into his own pocket. He eyed Cobb narrowly. “I'll do this job. But you're not pulling any more shit like that on me. Trust goes both ways, Cobb. You go on testing me like that, and I will walk away.”
“That's fair.” Cobb offered his hand. It was a long moment before Eames shook it.
In bed that night, after Cobb had left and the PD had been packed up and put away, Arthur surprised Eames by shifting up behind him and wrapping an arm cautiously around his chest. His breath tickled Eames' ear.
“If he's pushing you, or it's too soon, tell me. Okay? You don't have to do this.”
“I'll be fine, darling.” Eames took him by the wrist and wrapped Arthur's arm more snugly around himself. “Don't you worry about me.”
“I do, you know.” He could practically hear Arthur frowning. “I don't know what's in there, in your subconscious. Sometimes I wish I did.”
“Do you?” Eames asked quietly.
He could tell Arthur was stuck for words. Eventually the point man just seemed to give up, because he ended up not saying anything, and they were silent for the rest of the night.
+++
Charlie was not Eames.
Charlie was a twenty-one-year-old art history student who thought Chagall was a visionary whose work managed to transcend religious influence while still retaining an indelibly hasidic spirit and brought the metaphor back to French formalism. Charlie was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, and had never set foot in England in his life.
Charlie was not Eames.
He was somebody Eames threw together in about five minutes, and it wasn't like him to be so last-minute, but he didn't think it would matter very much at the time. He received all requests beforehand -- else what was the point? -- and this one momentarily stymied him. He was used to specifics, right down to photographs and voices if they could be brought to his dream.
This one said: blond, m, 21.
Awhile ago Eames might have had fun with this, savoured the opportunity to flex his forging skills. Any forger could mimic a real person (to varying degrees of accuracy): it was crafting an entirely new, believable person that was the hard part. But he thought about it for a moment and then whipped together a disguise that he knew he'd be able to hold for some degree of time. Young, lean and fit, casually windswept blond hair, blue eyes.
Eames had never done anything to deserve what he suffered down there. Charlie probably had. Maybe he'd killed a dog or raped someone in another life. Somehow it helped to think that: Charlie deserved this.
The client was suprisingly attractive, with brown eyes and a disarming smile and a crisp white suit.
“Do you have a name?” he'd asked.
Eames thought about that for a moment. “You tell me.”
“You look like a Charlie,” the man said.
And Eames said, “Okay.”
+
People like Arthur and Cobb fought until fighting seemed stupid, and then fought harder. And when they fought, they fought tooth and claw, with everything they had and then some, neither wavering nor submitting. It was what had made it so hard for Cobb to run away from his children, and then he'd scoured the world for the job that would take him home, no matter how impossible a task it seemed, because that was the only way he could keep fighting.
Eames was a survivor and a gambler. Yes, he had fought, damn hard. He'd clawed up the walls of the dream like a rat trying to escape, at first. But fighting had been proven to him, brutally and repeatedly, not to work. So he fell back on what he knew how to do: he adapted. He improvised. And he survived.
He wished he'd just kept fighting.
+
The first time the man fucked him, something tore, deep inside. His cock was thick enough to make Eames feel with every hard thrust like he was being split in half, and he didn't pull out after he came; his erection didn't even flag. By the second go around Eames was bleeding freely and sometime during the third and fourth he bit the inside of his cheek so hard that it started bleeding, too. He started to panic that this man would never be done with him, would never be sated. He almost wept when the man fucked him a fifth time, it hurt like broken glass, and then finally he was drawing away and getting up and Eames let his rubbery limbs give way and dropped belly-down onto the bed, shaking like a leaf. He couldn't remember ever having felt that fucked-out before, which was saying something, considering the nature of his role down there. He felt disgusting, which was always a given, but more disgusting than he had for a long time. His thighs were dripping liberally with blood and semen all the way down to his knees, staining the bed.
“Roll over,” the man said. Eames obeyed numbly. What else could he do?
The man was dressed again and there was no trace of breathlessness, not a hair out of place. He tilted his head.
“You didn't enjoy that, Charlie?”
Eames was too far beyond exhausted and in pain to come up with a response for that. The man approached the bed and the mattress dipped when he placed a knee on it and leaned over. Eames shut his eyes and braced himself for whatever was about to come next.
He did not anticipate a warm hand wrapping around his soft, neglected cock. He hissed sharply through his teeth, surprised. Had not expected that at all.
“Let's see if we can't cheer you up.”
He pushed three fingers deep inside Eames, making him arch off the bed with a choked sound of pain, lubricated them with come and his blood, Christ, and Eames's fingers dug tight into the bed when that hand returned to his cock, because he didn't know what was going on. He was expecting at any moment for the man's grip to turn painfully tight, to hurt him; he didn't expect smooth, gentling strokes and a murmuring voice. It was like repeatedly going for a step that wasn't there, that same pitch in his stomach. His confusion was making his head throb. He hurt, so exquisitely, everything in him cramping like a burn up to the base of his stomach, and yet wanted to lean blindly forward into this unfamiliar touch. He was embarrassingly hard within seconds and his hips were pushing off the bed of their own volition, rocking him into the man's fist needily.
It took him about two minutes to come with a sound like a sob, biting his lip and letting his head fall back and hit the pillow. He felt like he'd been run over by a truck.
“That's better.” The man leaned down and pressed cool lips to his forehead -- Eames clamped his eyes shut. He felt the mattress spring back into place and heard the man walk across the room and open the door. “I'm sure I'll see you soon, Charlie.”
And Eames lay there for at least forty minutes out of the blessed hour he had to himself between clients, and even once he shakily managed to get up and clean himself off and forge himself a new body, he could still feel that searing burn all the way up his spine, along with the low thrumming in his stomach that had lingered since his orgasm.
That was the moment he could pinpoint every time he looked into Arthur's eyes and could swear he saw nothing but disdain and disgust there. This wouldn't have happened to Arthur. Eames tried telling himself that it hadn't happened to him, it had happened to Charlie, and all the other countless identities he'd forged; but whenever he thought about it, he disgusted himself, too. All things considered, he probably did not deserve for Arthur to touch him in the ways he wanted. He barely deserved to sleep in the same bed with him.
This was the thought that haunted him at night when he couldn't sleep. Fucking disgusting.
next
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~8300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sometimes, the recovery can be just as hard to cope with as the trauma. Arthur and Eames learn this the hard way.
Warnings: Noncon, dubcon, language, violence
Author's Note: Hurrah! The sequel to Broken Toy! Sorry for the delay in posting. I found myself disappointed at the small amount of Arthur in this part, so I tried to whip together the second part so I could post both at once, since I'll be without Internet access for the next two weeks and obviously can't update for awhile. But it was going slowly so I decided to just post this part and hopefully will be able to finish part two by tonight!
I wish I could say definitively that this story is darker than, or lighter than, Broken Toy, but all I can really say is that I'm going for real more than anything else.
part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine.
Eames shut the bedroom door with a bang and was just about to sprint out of the flat when he was brought to a skidding halt in the middle of the living room. Oh. Not fair.
“Stop staring,” Arthur murmured when he felt Eames' gaze on him, not bothering to look up from his book.
“You really shouldn't spring these things on me when I have plans, you know, darling,” Eames told him, trying not to whine. “It isn't fair.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” Arthur idly flipped a page. “And after ten months of living together one would think you'd be used to seeing me on the couch with a book by now.”
His tone convinced Eames all the more that he was doing this on purpose. Because, after all, almost ten whole months now and Eames really wasn't used to all the little tics and habits that nobody else ever got close enough to know about him. Like, for instance, the fact that Arthur might have been neurotic about his work performance, but outside the warehouse, where he had no Cobb to please, he might actually leave a thing or two lying around, not in its place, and the world wouldn't end. It made Eames happy that Arthur was able to be an actual human being sometimes -- introduce a little organized chaos into his life now and then (which could have been why he tolerated Eames fairly well, not that Eames was a total slob; just that he wasn't as concerned about leaving rings on the coffee table by forgetting to use a coaster).
Another astonishing thing he'd learned about Arthur: On his days off, sometimes he would forego a suit completely, and would curl up on the couch with his feet tucked under him, wearing, say, jeans and a burgundy hoodie.
Designer jeans. But still.
Arthur, like Eames, preferred an ample amount of warning before being touched, but Eames couldn't resist and besides, there was something decidedly un-manly about having to say, out loud, “Can I cuddle you?”. Dropping onto the couch, he wrapped both arms around Arthur and hauled him in against his chest. Arthur made a brief, token effort at struggling and then gave in graciously.
“You were just leaving?”
“In a minute.” The hoodie was so soft in comparison to the suits and the collared shirts Arthur usually favoured. Eames ran his hands over it, loving how loosely it hung on Arthur's lean frame, and leaned in so he could press his face to Arthur's shoulder and inhale. Arthur tolerated this with good humour.
“Where were you going in such a hurry, anyway?”
“Lunch date with Ariadne,” Eames answered. He pressed a kiss behind Arthur's ear and loved the involuntary shiver he got in response. “Try not to be too jealous, darling.”
“I'll be too busy enjoying a nice quiet, empty apartment for that.”
“Oh. I get it. It's funny because you think you're not as co-dependent as I am. Cute.”
Arthur made a face and started to shove Eames' arm off. Eames squeezed him tighter and Arthur gave in again, allowing Eames to cuddle him while he attempted to go back to reading.
“Ari won't mind if I'm a minute late,” Eames said hopefully. He kissed Arthur's neck, up to his jawline. “A few minutes. Thirty, say.”
Arthur smiled but just like that the moment was gone, he was getting up and sliding out of Eames' arms and quietly gathering up the coffee mug he'd left on the coffee table. “Give Ariadne my regards.”
Eames squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his hands and counted backward from five. Slowly. He could hear Arthur clattering around in the kitchenette behind him.
“But I want to,” he said finally, his teeth gritted.
“I'll see you later, Eames,” Arthur answered firmly. Eames got up and left without looking at him.
+
“You're going to say I shouldn't be cross with him just for being a gentleman, but there's a fine line and he's starting to edge from gentleman to treating me like a leper and I really can't say I appreciate it.” Eames dunked a piece of bread into his soup vehemently, causing drops to fly onto the tablecloth. “I don't know how he can stand it; we sleep in the same bloody bed every night. And I know we tried it once and, yes, it was a bit of a fiasco but honestly, that must've been something like two years ago now. He ought to get over it.”
“It was six months ago, firstly,” said Ariadne, “and secondly, do you really think it appropriate for us to be discussing you and Arthur's sex life?”
“Sex life?” Eames echoed incredulously. “What sex life? Haven't you been listening?”
“Well, really. You might not be afraid of him, but I am.” Ariadne smiled as she played with the bread in her hands, shredding it into bite-sized pieces and popping them in her mouth. “How are the nightmares?”
He grunted. “I'd know if I could actually get some sleep.”
“It's bad again, huh?”
Eames nodded. “I'll be glad for this job. I think half the problem right now is that I have nothing to tire myself out with. Arthur's closed off that delightful avenue, the cooking classes are over now and I've about exhausted my repertoire twice over, and I finished going through my book collection in about a month after it shipped.”
“Must be a pretty small collection,” said Ariadne.
“On the contrary, my dear,” said Eames, arching an eyebrow. “It is a very impressive collection. It filled a small library at home. Various political, religious, sociological, psychological literature. Forging isn't all about studying a photo and creating a new face for yourself, you know. You have to be able to relate to every mark and know how to talk to them and make them trust you. You have to know not only what your subject thinks, but also how they think it. Essentially, you need to talk the talk and walk the walk.” He raised both eyebrows at her. “I am extremely good at my craft, Ariadne. It isn't just a lark for me, you know.”
Ariadne's cheeks had gone quite pink. She stared at him. “I had no idea.”
“Poor spelling and no college degree do not indicate stupidity or illiteracy, Miss Ariadne,” Eames chided. “Shame on you for judging.”
She flushed red. “Oh, I didn't mean that! I just never thought -- you put so much thought into it.”
“Neither did Arthur,” said Eames. “I think being introduced to my collection was the closest he's come to jumping my bones in six months.” He smiled, already fiddling with a napkin, his fingers itching for something to play with. “It does make me restless though. I don't know how I'm supposed to get any better if I'm sitting on my tail in Arthur's flat all the time, alone with my thoughts. I should be out there, researching for a job, training in the PASIV, something I can sink my teeth into.”
“Hopefully everything goes well with Cobb next week, then,” she said, smiling reassuringly. “And I don't see why it won't.”
“Yes, well. I might just lose my mind if I don't get to do this job, Ari. I mean it.”
At that moment a handsomely-dressed waiter appeared next to their table with a bottle of champagne and two glass flutes. Ariadne exchanged a few words with him in French and Eames watched, mystified, as the man uncorked the bottle and poured them two fizzing drinks.
“What's the occasion?” he inquired, when the man handed him one of the champagne flutes.
“Well, you.” Ariadne grinned sheepishly. “It's been ten months since you woke up, you know. I thought we should celebrate your progress. You really have made a lot of it.”
It was sappy and unnecessary and Eames kind of liked it, because at least someone was keeping track of how far he'd come, that wasn't him, and who knew something about what he'd struggled through over the past year. In some ways, sometimes, the recovery could be harder to fight through than the actual trauma. So he drank to Ariadne's toast, and threw in one of his own -- “To sanity” -- feeling self-indulgent but slightly warmed all the same.
“I just have to freshen up.” Ariadne slid away from the table. “Back in a minute, alright?”
He nodded and she disappeared. In a minute he'd drained the champagne flute and poured another drink, peering into the bubbly liquid as though it were holding some delicious secret. He missed drinking. Copious amounts of alcohol, that was. Arthur had put a stop to the self-destructive drinking benders before Eames could really sink into a state of alcholism. He'd also slammed the door shut on online poker, as soon as he found out that Eames had been spending all his sleepless hours playing into the night and growing steadily addicted. (Funnily enough, Eames was finding it very difficult to enter anything resembling a casino these days.) To occupy him, Arthur signed Eames up for French courses (which didn't really take) and cooking classes (which, absurdly, did), and bought him a gym membership.
Arthur was a good babysitter. He was an even better boyfriend, staying up at night with Eames or giving him back massages when he was stressed, and when he had to fly to Chicago for two weeks to do some legal dream work for a change, he wore the same shirt for two days so that it smelled like him and left it on Eames' pillow; and called him every night.
If only he would forget the chastity belt he seemed to have figuratively strapped to himself, Eames mused, twirling the stem of the flute idly in his hand. Then Eames could really reciprocate, show Arthur what being a good boyfriend was all about...
With no warning, a broad hand gripped him by the back of the neck and threw him hard into the table. Eames had barely a second to shove his hands out in front of him so that he didn't land face-first in the cutlery; the heel of his left hand hit the plate so hard it shattered and just like that he was bleeding from a long, stinging cut in his palm.
The smooth voice in his ear raked down his spine like glass. “Hello, Charlie.”
No.
He braced to do something, leap up and throw a punch or maybe just fling himself aside, but things happened too quickly for his frozen brain to keep up. The chair was kicked out from under him and he hit the ground painfully hard, grimacing when he unthinkingly grabbed out with his bleeding hand. Catching movement from the corner of his eye, he rolled in time to avoid another dish that shattered on the floor where he'd been sprawled and spattered his jacket with soup.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Charlie,” the man positively purred, immaculate in a white suit. “I missed you.”
And then the square toe of his polished Oxford landed in the soft spot just beneath Eames' ribcage, and he crumpled up around it on the floor, his ability to breathe instantly extinguished. Fuck, fuck, he was supposed to do something, he was supposed to, something -- look up, but he'd rolled partway under the table and couldn't see and he couldn't breathe and for at least ten harrowing seconds he thought he might actually die there, suffocating on the floor. And he could feel it happen, Christ, no, he was scrambling to keep hold of his own skin, he couldn't change now; if he changed now, he lost. And his hold was slipping, his fingers sliding off that slippery precarious knife-edge of control.
FUCK--
His gun was digging into his spine, tucked in the waistband of his slacks. He reached for it and was forced to abort the attempt and roll aside again to avoid another smashing plate. And then hands were around his throat, those same impossibly strong, broad hands, hauling him up off the floor and shoving him against a table so that he was forced to bend backwards, hands scrabbling for purchase. All the other restaurant patrons were either eyeing the scene with bored disinterest or carrying on their conversations like Eames wasn't fighting for his life, here; like a shard of porcelain hadn't been buried under his jaw so that a trickle of blood was rolling down his throat, and he was Eames, he was Eames, not twenty-one, not American, not Charlie--
Lookuplookuplookuplookuplookup--
He looked up. The shard bit even deeper but it didn't matter because he saw himself in the mirrored ceiling, made eye contact with his reflection and felt himself land squarely back in his own skin with a rush of sudden confidence. Grabbing the arm that held the porcelain shard to his throat, he twisted brutally and, when the man slipped sideways, he spun away and fluidly planted an elbow in his solar plexus. The man doubled over and Eames grabbed a handful of his hair and used his momentum to send him smashing into the table. There was a sickening crunch of breaking cartilege and Eames felt a hot, savage pleasure in his gut as he reached for his gun. The man rounded on him with a snarl, spitting out, “Slut,” and grabbed his arm just as he began to raise the gun, and three rounds were fired in rapid succession, each bullet smashing a hole through the ceiling.
The struggle was brief. Hanging over them like a cracked shell that encased the soft innards of the dream, the mirror overhead began to splinter and break away. In one sudden rush, it crumbled inward with an immense crash of breaking glass and Eames felt a blinding pain--
He woke up with his heart bounding frantically in his chest, hands already searching his pockets until he found it: his totem. He closed his eyes and ran his thumb over the surface of the chip again and again, feeling its way along the 6 that had been gingerly carved into the plastic, his chest heaving for breath. Each time he stroked it, the number under his finger stayed the same. Six. Six. Oh, Christ. Six.
“Eames!”
Ariadne was already awake, and tearing off the IV taped to her arm, she bounded out of the armchair she'd curled herself in. He opened his mouth to apologize, but all at once she was at his chair and her arms were around his neck. He was momentarily bewildered, but he didn't push her away. He didn't hug her back, either. This wanton display of pity was unprecedented and unwelcome. He stiffened.
Until she pulled away, and he realized, with even more bewilderment, that she was beaming.
“You did it!” she was saying. “You did everything, you remembered the mirrors, you didn't even change!”
And at her delight, slowly, even though he felt roughly like he'd been dragged behind a car for a mile over broken glass, Eames found the corners of his lips tugging upward, too. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.
“That was great!” she cheered, and for one happy second, Eames let her glee in and claimed this small, twisted victory for his own, and felt what it was like to celebrate with somebody who knew just what a milestone this was for him. Even though it had been harder than swimming through tar. He'd done it.
Then the adrenaline started to leave him, and his hands were trembling.
“You should feel really proud of yourself, Eames,” Ariadne told him. “You couldn't have taken back control of the dream like that, even a few months ago.”
“It's not good enough yet, though,” he said quietly. “He shouldn't have been there at all.”
“It's the same guy, isn't it? He's the only one that keeps appearing now.”
“Yeah, he was ...” Eames glanced aside, out the window of her flat. “He was something of a regular, I suppose you could say.”
“I'm sorry he left such an impression on you.”
She was, too, which was really why Eames chose to share these dreams with her, and not anybody else. She understood more things than he necessarily gave her credit for. He hadn't had much of a reason to like her, before, but she was the one who'd seen his nightmare. Only a glimpse -- but enough that she'd been worried, seriously worried, for a long time afterward. Ariadne was nothing if not persistent.
He let her in because he didn't see that she gave him much choice in the matter, but more importantly, because she genuinely cared, and did not lie to him or create false hopes, and because, he'd soon realized, she did not flinch away from his memories and fears when he described them, or make him feel like he was less of a person. Ariadne was a female and as such could almost comprehend the things Eames felt when he woke up in the middle of the night, which was more than Arthur could ever give him.
That didn't make it a good idea for him to say, impulsively, “Look, Ari, there's something you should probably know about that one--”
“What?” she said at once, and he could have kicked himself. He hadn't meant for that to slip out; he'd just gotten caught up in the caring and sharing of the moment. He didn't know how to put words to what he'd wanted to say. It would be too much and try and describe the relationship with that particular client and how badly it had broken him inside. He was so glad she'd never gotten close enough to hear the man call him Charlie.
What he went with, eventually, was not an untruth: “I think he works in extraction.”
He didn't expect for her eyes to widen or the words that immediately burst out of her mouth: “I bet Cobb knows who he is!”
Eames blinked. That was not what he'd been driving at, not at all. “I think poor Cobb's had enough of my self-pitying malarkey,” he joked lightly.
“Don't be stupid, Eames, he'd be on a plane tomorrow if he thought he could help you with this. Cobb's probably worked with almost everyone in the business.” And God bless her, she was actually pulling out her cell phone and searching for Cobb's number. Eames reached out and gently folded the phone shut in her hand.
“That's not what I'm trying to say,” he said patiently. “What I mean is, I don't know who that man is, only that he's comfortable in the dreamscape. He could be an extractor. Or a forger. Or an architect.”
He could see her considering that, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth slightly. She slowly replaced the cell phone in her pocket.
“He might look different in reality,” she said.
“And he can change the dreams, more importantly,” Eames added quietly.
“Well,” said Ariadne, drawing herself up self-importantly, “it's a good thing you'll be working with me and Arthur, then. Because he won't even get a chance to change anything.”
Eames smiled, for her sake more than his. “Thanks.”
“Don't worry about it. Seriously -- take the week off from dreaming. It's going to go fine with Cobb, you just have to not worry.”
“Right.” He helped her pack up the PASIV before gathering up his coat. “See you next week, then.”
“Sure. And hey, Eames?” Her voice followed him from her living room to the door. “Good luck with Arthur.”
+
Eames spent a long time chain-smoking on the balcony that night. Arthur's repeated summons, muted behind the glass door, fell on deaf ears. At his back, the bedroom light came on as Arthur prepared for bed, switched off as he attempted to sleep, and switched on again twenty minutes later when he evidently could no longer stand it. The balcony door opened.
“Are you planning on coming to bed tonight?”
“You took off your hoodie,” Eames observed sadly. That earned him a rare smile.
“You can cuddle it if it'll help you sleep. Like a teddy bear.”
“Well,” said Eames demurely, throwing down his cigarette and crushing it under the toe of his shoe. “When you put it that way.”
Arthur drew back, relieved, but Eames hesitated on the balcony and raised an arm. He beckoned Arthur with a tilt of his head. Arthur sighed at the plaintive request, but not with any real conviction. He stepped onto the balcony and allowed Eames to fold him into a tight hug, his own arms wrapping around the forger's waist. Eames closed his eyes, his chin resting on Arthur's shoulder, and breathed deep. Arthur had showered. Ungelled, his hair was soft and chocolate-brown and it curled around his ears, and it smelled fantastically good, and Eames stood there for at least a minute just drinking in the scent of him.
Arthur had teased Eames for practically fetishizing his scent, but the truth was that it was as much a totem for Eames as the poker chip in his pocket, and he was pretty sure they both knew that. And anyway, it wasn't always something sexual. Eames' libido came and went like the tide. Earlier, Arthur looking this damp and mussed and wearing just a t-shirt and pyjama pants might have undone him. Now there was nothing Eames wanted less in the world than sex. He was never sure which extreme was the more embarrassing.
“How was lunch?” Arthur asked conversationally into his shoulder.
“It was good.” Eames' nose burrowed deeper into the warmth of Arthur's neck. “You smell very good, darling.”
“I try.” Arthur pulled away, took Eames by the hand and led him into the bedroom so that he could shut and lock the balcony door. Eames thumbed the poker chip in his pocket compulsively before he started to peel off his clothes, stripping to just his boxers while Arthur crawled back into bed and switched the lamp off. Eames laid his chip on the bedside table before joining him, numbered-side down, so that Arthur wouldn't accidentally see the two notches Eames had scratched crudely into the smooth groove of the 6. Just in case. In one of Arthur's dreams, the chip would only bear the number. Eames knew he was in reality when he felt those two tiny notches under his thumb.
Or in his own dream. But he couldn't go down that road, not again.
He went through all the motions of a person preparing to fall asleep. He stretched out, he made himself comfy, he rolled onto his stomach and pulled one of Arthur's pillows over his folded arms so that he could bury his face in it and breathe the scent of it all night. He closed his eyes.
It was just--
Sometimes. All he saw imprinted on the back of his eyelids were the brilliant lights of a vibrant casino.
“Oh.” Arthur was shifting around, getting up and moving around in the dark. Something soft hit Eames in the head with a dull thud. “There you go.”
Eames grunted, then grabbed the mystery bundle and pawed it open. He squinted. The burgundy hoodie.
“I don't really need it,” he said, suddenly feeling stupid.
“Just in case,” said Arthur, already slipping back under the covers with a stifled yawn.
Eames made a non-committal sound and moved to toss the hoodie aside, but at the last moment, when he was sure Arthur's eyes were closed, he tucked it under his pillow. Just in case.
+
The first time they tried anything resembling sex, it had happened like this: Eames was still relearning everything about being himself -- his real self, not the self who flinched from harsh words and dropped to his knees in supplication. He had good weeks, where the world seemed to make sense and he seemed to make sense, and he wanted to go out and get busy learning how to be a normal, proactive member of society again. And he had bad weeks, where all of reality seemed to have tipped itself upside down and he couldn't figure out what was meant by anything Arthur said and he sometimes thought he was still dreaming, and panicked. That was before his brain seemed to have built up an immunity to Arthur's scent, like bacteria with an antibiotic, so he could sleep, but when he slept he dreamt, and when he dreamt it was always lucid and vivid, hi-def with surround sound, and it scared him nightly.
He'd been wavering somewhere in the middle of these two poles when it actually happened -- scared to death but so fucking desperate to prove to himself -- to prove to Arthur -- that he was okay.
Arthur, for his part, had been a perfect gentleman from day one, not so much as touching Eames without first stating his intentions or asking his permission. He'd taught Eames to do the same thing, to avoid miscommunications. He not only suffered the nightly panic attacks but talked Eames through them without a word of complaint. He didn't so much as blink when Eames started using him as a personal soft toy, cuddling up to him in sleep.
And he made no sexual advances. None at all. Not even when Eames begged.
Which was why, when Eames snapped, he didn't beg. He climbed on top of Arthur and swallowed his protests with deep, desperate kisses. He slipped a hand into Arthur's boxers and stroked him to hardness and then slid down the bed and swallowed Arthur's cock down, and Arthur could barely form a coherent argument by that point. It was cheating and Eames knew it and he didn't care, because he thought he needed it, even if Arthur didn't.
Eames would argue that he had always been a champion cocksucker, which was fairly true, but five years of spending nearly every day on his knees certainly hadn't hurt his technique, either. That part wasn't when things went wrong. That part, judging by the choked variations of his name that Arthur managed to pant out, went quite well.
It was what came after. What he remembered was Arthur's hips bucking involuntarily the instant before he came, so that the head of his cock touched the back of Eames' throat without warning. And then he was on the bathroom floor, hunched against the side of the bathtub with the heels of his palms pressed painfully hard against his eyes to try and quell the traitorous tears that stung them, while Arthur sat on the other side of the locked bathroom door and didn't say anything. His vomit had made a humiliating, disgusting mess of the carpet next to Arthur's bed. He was done, he'd ruined this, ruined everything with Arthur. He understood then why Arthur never wanted to touch him: because he was dirty, stained, because he couldn't go to bed without bringing with him the memory of the hundreds of people who'd been there first.
In that moment, he could have died.
But he was getting better now. He would get better. They had stolen five years' worth of sanity from him but they were not going to take this from him and Arthur, too. He would make Arthur want him again.
+
The week passed by in a hazy blur of sleeplessness, and then Arthur was wearing a collared shirt and waistcoat one morning and Eames groaned because he knew what that meant.
Cobb took a taxi from the airport to his hotel, where Arthur and Eames picked him up and met Ariadne at a restaurant where they had reservations. Eames was too exhausted to remember much about the meal -- he ordered whatever looked easiest to pronounce on the menu and listened with half an ear to Cobb's stories about James and Phillipa. After dinner, while they waited for the valet to bring Arthur's car around, Cobb took Eames aside and asked quietly, “How are you doing?”
Eames couldn't suppress a sigh. That was exactly the kind of lame question Ariadne didn't ask, which was, all things considered, why she was the only one he talked to about these things.
“Just dandy,” he said.
Cobb's expression was inscrutable. “Really,” he said.
“Really,” Eames said stubbornly.
“Look,” said Cobb. “There's a job. And we could use you, if you want to take it. Maybe you and I could do a quick training run in the PASIV, when we get back to Arthur's place? See if you're up to it?”
Ariadne had, of course, warned him that Cobb would do this, and he'd spent the past few weeks preparing for it, so it wasn't exactly a pop quiz. But it made his stomach knot all the same. Cobb was testing him.
“Absolutely,” he said, looking Cobb straight in the eyes. At least it was sleep.
Arthur dug the PD out of his closet at home and set it up in the bedroom for them.
“Don't get too possessive now, darling,” Eames purred, seated on the edge of the bed, when Arthur handed him an IV line. “Us being left alone together in the bedroom and all.”
The point man rolled his eyes and took the other line over to Cobb, who was sitting in a chair next to the balcony.
“Go easy on him,” Arthur cautioned before he left the room.
“Hey,” Eames snapped, rankled. He wasn't some delicate little flower. Arthur rolled his eyes, again.
“I was talking to you,” he said patiently, and shut the bedroom door.
“Ready?” Cobb asked.
“As I'll ever be,” Eames replied carelessly, and he pressed the button in the PASIV at his feet. In the next moment, he felt his back hit the mattress and then he was out.
+
Cobb had, of course, had previous opportunity to peruse Eames' dreamscape, when it had still been -- that place. Eames knew that if anything, any detail at all, reminded Cobb of that unhealthy dreamscape, his chances of getting back to work would be nil. What made Cobb such a good extractor was what made him a bloody nuisance now, poking around in Eames' subconscious with that eidetic memory of his. Eames followed him without speaking as Cobb navigated a faintly Venetian city, half grumpy at this arrangement, and half terrified he was going to ruin this by introducing something else to his dream somehow. Almost everything had been wiped clean from his dreamscape; he'd painstakingly deconstructed that monument to his torment and started fresh, with Ariadne's help.
As far as Cobb knew, this was his first time going under in ten months, and the extractor took his time soaking everything in. Cafés, canals, cobblestone. And projections, bustling about in colourful clothes. No fountains, and definitely no big bridges. Still, Eames' heart thudded in his ears every time Cobb stopped to look at something more closely. If he lost control of this dream like he had last week...
A flash of white in the corner of his eye made his mouth go dry. His head snapped round quick enough to catch a glimpse of the man in the white suit, just as he melted back into the crowd, going in the opposite direction. Eames found that he could breathe again.
“This is good,” Cobb said, turning to face him. “I'm impressed.”
“Thank you,” said Eames cordially.
“You've come a really long way, Eames.” Cobb dug a handgun out from under his jacket. “I don't mind cutting this short, if you want.”
Relieved, Eames took the gun, pressed the muzzle to his temple and squeezed the trigger. Cobb followed him quickly, before the dream could collapse.
“I noticed the mirrors,” Cobb said, as Eames was woozily tugging the IV out of his arm and sitting up on the bed. “A good idea. They're subtle.”
“Ariadne's idea,” Eames confessed. “Once I'm actually forging I won't need them, I'm sure.”
“It's smart.” Cobb was still sitting in the chair. Eames turned around to face him while he went on, “I appreciate the effort you've put in to regain control of your subconscious. I'm sure it wasn't easy.”
The last few words became fuzzy as the heartbeat in Eames' ears swelled to a thick, loud pulse. Distantly, he heard himself say, “What's that?”
“What's what?” Cobb twisted around to look out through the balcony door, but Eames didn't need Cobb to tell him. He'd recognized it the instant he'd laid eyes on it. Tower Bridge.
It was like somebody had gripped his lungs in an iron vice and plunged them into freezing cold water. The tips of his fingers were going numb. He wondered if he was about to faint.
“Cobb,” Eames said hoarsely. He'd been about to say something to the effect of we need to get out of here, but had suddenly realized that he couldn't move. Not an inch. Very faintly, he could hear the cheery jangling of slot machines below his feet.
“Eames, breathe.”
Oh, no. No. It had happened, he had been waiting for this to happen, he'd been hiding here all along and making up his own dream and now he was back, he was back here, in this place, he was back...
“Take a deep breath,” Cobb told him sharply, but Eames couldn't do it; he only seemed to be breathing in. He tried to stagger upright, shaking, and didn't understand why the room tilted steeply until he hit the floor. So he just curled up there, tight, arms over his face.
“Fuck.” The word had to be squeezed out of his throat. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Please, no--”
Cobb was kneeling next to him suddenly, resting a hand on his shoulder, and Eames jerked violently away from him. Couldn't be touched. Not in this room. He was supposed to be safe here, he was supposed to be safe -- the noise from the casino below was rising and he was gasping in such shallow breaths he felt lightheaded. His head was resting on the carpet and he was scared to open his eyes, terrified of what he might see, afraid he would completely lose control and fly apart and not ever be able to put himself back together.
“Deep breaths,” Cobb urged him. Eames could barely hear him, but some faint note made it through the stupour. Deep breaths. He took one.
Then he lunged to his feet and launched himself at the bed, like he had only seconds before the floor opened up beneath him. Cobb shouted, “Wait!” but Eames' hand had already closed around the gun under Arthur's pillow and, yanking it out, he shoved the muzzle into his mouth--
And woke up, on the bed, his heart racing fitfully.
He twisted over. There, through the balcony door, he could see the lit-up Parisian cityscape. No bridges. The floor below theirs was silent. He could hear the TV, muffled, in the next room, some French news report. He rolled over and buried his face in one of the pillows, while one hand shot down to his pocket to check his totem. Both his hands were shaking.
He could hear Cobb waking and then packing the PASIV up calmly. Eames waited till he'd wrestled his breathing back under control, then rolled over and got up.
“Eames,” Cobb started, and was cut off when Eames hit him across the face as hard as he could.
“Fuck you,” he grated raggedly. He was still panting lightly. Now his hand hurt. “Fuck you, Cobb.”
“Eames,” Cobb tried again, rubbing his jaw.
“You did that. You put that fucking bridge there, and -- and the casino. What the fuck were you playing at?”
“Actually, I only did the bridge,” said Cobb quietly, not looking him in the eyes. “The casino was you.”
Eames grabbed him by the front of his jacket and slammed him hard up against the wall. “I could kill you, Dominic Cobb,” he seethed through his teeth.
The door opened and Arthur was there in an instant, grabbing Eames by the arm. “Eames! What are you doing?”
“Why?” Eames shouted at Cobb. “Did you think it would be a laugh? What?”
Cobb grabbed his wrists in a flash and shoved hard. As strong as Eames was, Cobb was stronger. He stumbled backward, shouldering Arthur on his way.
“I thought it would tell me what I needed to know,” Cobb said, too calm and not apologetic enough. “Give us another minute, Arthur.”
Arthur was still hovering at Eames' shoulder, watching him as though there might be visible damage, and Eames didn't know if he was being protective or waiting to figure out what was going on so he could undoubtedly side with Cobb. At last, reluctantly, Arthur started to leave the room.
The gaze he fixed Cobb in before closing the door was filled with so much vehemence it was almost breathtaking.
“Don't put him back under,” he warned, his voice quiet and deadly sincere.
Then he was gone. Eames stared after him. Protective. He somehow hadn't expected. It made his chest tighten in a strange way.
“Eames,” said Cobb, straightening out his jacket. “I have to know that you'll be able to do this.”
“That was a foul thing to pull on me, Cobb,” Eames growled in a low voice. “The nice, bridge-less dream wasn't good enough for you?”
“You're not going to be designing the dreams for this job, Eames. You're going to be navigating a dream filled with whatever Ariadne or the mark puts in it. When you meet a trigger, I need to know you won't blow the whole job for us.”
“I really don't foresee Tower Bridge posing a significant threat, funnily,” Eames snarled, his blood pressure rising dangerously. Cobb met his gaze levelly.
“We need a forger for this job because we need a specific type of young woman that can make herself vulnerable to our male mark. It could be a little too familiar for you.” He let Eames chew on that for a few seconds before continuing, “I have to be one-hundred percent sure that you've got both feet in reality before I let you do this job. For your sake, but also because this job's too important to mess up.”
“So you think it's alright to fool around in my head like that,” Eames snapped. “What if you'd messed me up, Cobb? What if I completely regressed because of you?”
“I didn't think for a second that you would,” said Cobb evenly.
Eames couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he just paced angrily back and forth for a minute or two. If he were a cat his tail would have been lashing.
“So that was a, what, a test?” he demanded loudly at length. “Didn't pass it, though, did I?”
“Actually, you did exactly what I hoped you would. You went for the gun. You removed yourself from the dream. You knew you had to wake yourself up, even if it wasn't a conscious thought at the time. You didn't let yourself get trapped in there.”
Eames hunched his shoulders, faced the wall, dug a cigarette out of his pocket and lit up. Arthur would complain about the smell later but he didn't particularly care right then.
“If you just want somebody to fuck around with, then get yourself another forger, Cobb. I'm not putting up with this.”
Cobb sighed. When he spoke, there was an apologetic note in his voice for the first time. “I want you back at work, Eames. We all do. You know you're more than just a forger. The Fischer job was supposed to be impossible, and you formulated and carried out almost every step. You're the one who thinks of all the consequences and makes back-up plans for our back-up plans. In a lot of ways, you're even smarter than Arthur.”
“Flattery will get you only so far, you know,” Eames sniffed, even if he kind of liked hearing it.
“We can't do this job without you. But ask yourself and answer honestly if you feel a hundred percent ready to return to dreaming. If there's any doubt at all in your mind, tell me and we can walk away from this one.”
Eames turned around grudgingly. “What do you think?”
“Well, Arthur and I have been talking--”
“Yeah? What does Arthur say?” Eames interrupted.
Cobb shrugged. “Doesn't matter. I think you're ready.”
“Well, I am,” said Eames, more confrontationally than he intended.
“I'm glad to hear it.” Cobb dug a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a plane ticket. “Here. Your ticket to New York. Plane leaves in two days.”
“Courtesy of Air Saito, I'm guessing?” Eames took the ticket and examined it. “Not Newark, is it?”
“JFK,” said Cobb, giving him a strange look.
“That's alright then.” Eames stuffed the ticket into his own pocket. He eyed Cobb narrowly. “I'll do this job. But you're not pulling any more shit like that on me. Trust goes both ways, Cobb. You go on testing me like that, and I will walk away.”
“That's fair.” Cobb offered his hand. It was a long moment before Eames shook it.
In bed that night, after Cobb had left and the PD had been packed up and put away, Arthur surprised Eames by shifting up behind him and wrapping an arm cautiously around his chest. His breath tickled Eames' ear.
“If he's pushing you, or it's too soon, tell me. Okay? You don't have to do this.”
“I'll be fine, darling.” Eames took him by the wrist and wrapped Arthur's arm more snugly around himself. “Don't you worry about me.”
“I do, you know.” He could practically hear Arthur frowning. “I don't know what's in there, in your subconscious. Sometimes I wish I did.”
“Do you?” Eames asked quietly.
He could tell Arthur was stuck for words. Eventually the point man just seemed to give up, because he ended up not saying anything, and they were silent for the rest of the night.
+++
Charlie was not Eames.
Charlie was a twenty-one-year-old art history student who thought Chagall was a visionary whose work managed to transcend religious influence while still retaining an indelibly hasidic spirit and brought the metaphor back to French formalism. Charlie was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, and had never set foot in England in his life.
Charlie was not Eames.
He was somebody Eames threw together in about five minutes, and it wasn't like him to be so last-minute, but he didn't think it would matter very much at the time. He received all requests beforehand -- else what was the point? -- and this one momentarily stymied him. He was used to specifics, right down to photographs and voices if they could be brought to his dream.
This one said: blond, m, 21.
Awhile ago Eames might have had fun with this, savoured the opportunity to flex his forging skills. Any forger could mimic a real person (to varying degrees of accuracy): it was crafting an entirely new, believable person that was the hard part. But he thought about it for a moment and then whipped together a disguise that he knew he'd be able to hold for some degree of time. Young, lean and fit, casually windswept blond hair, blue eyes.
Eames had never done anything to deserve what he suffered down there. Charlie probably had. Maybe he'd killed a dog or raped someone in another life. Somehow it helped to think that: Charlie deserved this.
The client was suprisingly attractive, with brown eyes and a disarming smile and a crisp white suit.
“Do you have a name?” he'd asked.
Eames thought about that for a moment. “You tell me.”
“You look like a Charlie,” the man said.
And Eames said, “Okay.”
+
People like Arthur and Cobb fought until fighting seemed stupid, and then fought harder. And when they fought, they fought tooth and claw, with everything they had and then some, neither wavering nor submitting. It was what had made it so hard for Cobb to run away from his children, and then he'd scoured the world for the job that would take him home, no matter how impossible a task it seemed, because that was the only way he could keep fighting.
Eames was a survivor and a gambler. Yes, he had fought, damn hard. He'd clawed up the walls of the dream like a rat trying to escape, at first. But fighting had been proven to him, brutally and repeatedly, not to work. So he fell back on what he knew how to do: he adapted. He improvised. And he survived.
He wished he'd just kept fighting.
+
The first time the man fucked him, something tore, deep inside. His cock was thick enough to make Eames feel with every hard thrust like he was being split in half, and he didn't pull out after he came; his erection didn't even flag. By the second go around Eames was bleeding freely and sometime during the third and fourth he bit the inside of his cheek so hard that it started bleeding, too. He started to panic that this man would never be done with him, would never be sated. He almost wept when the man fucked him a fifth time, it hurt like broken glass, and then finally he was drawing away and getting up and Eames let his rubbery limbs give way and dropped belly-down onto the bed, shaking like a leaf. He couldn't remember ever having felt that fucked-out before, which was saying something, considering the nature of his role down there. He felt disgusting, which was always a given, but more disgusting than he had for a long time. His thighs were dripping liberally with blood and semen all the way down to his knees, staining the bed.
“Roll over,” the man said. Eames obeyed numbly. What else could he do?
The man was dressed again and there was no trace of breathlessness, not a hair out of place. He tilted his head.
“You didn't enjoy that, Charlie?”
Eames was too far beyond exhausted and in pain to come up with a response for that. The man approached the bed and the mattress dipped when he placed a knee on it and leaned over. Eames shut his eyes and braced himself for whatever was about to come next.
He did not anticipate a warm hand wrapping around his soft, neglected cock. He hissed sharply through his teeth, surprised. Had not expected that at all.
“Let's see if we can't cheer you up.”
He pushed three fingers deep inside Eames, making him arch off the bed with a choked sound of pain, lubricated them with come and his blood, Christ, and Eames's fingers dug tight into the bed when that hand returned to his cock, because he didn't know what was going on. He was expecting at any moment for the man's grip to turn painfully tight, to hurt him; he didn't expect smooth, gentling strokes and a murmuring voice. It was like repeatedly going for a step that wasn't there, that same pitch in his stomach. His confusion was making his head throb. He hurt, so exquisitely, everything in him cramping like a burn up to the base of his stomach, and yet wanted to lean blindly forward into this unfamiliar touch. He was embarrassingly hard within seconds and his hips were pushing off the bed of their own volition, rocking him into the man's fist needily.
It took him about two minutes to come with a sound like a sob, biting his lip and letting his head fall back and hit the pillow. He felt like he'd been run over by a truck.
“That's better.” The man leaned down and pressed cool lips to his forehead -- Eames clamped his eyes shut. He felt the mattress spring back into place and heard the man walk across the room and open the door. “I'm sure I'll see you soon, Charlie.”
And Eames lay there for at least forty minutes out of the blessed hour he had to himself between clients, and even once he shakily managed to get up and clean himself off and forge himself a new body, he could still feel that searing burn all the way up his spine, along with the low thrumming in his stomach that had lingered since his orgasm.
That was the moment he could pinpoint every time he looked into Arthur's eyes and could swear he saw nothing but disdain and disgust there. This wouldn't have happened to Arthur. Eames tried telling himself that it hadn't happened to him, it had happened to Charlie, and all the other countless identities he'd forged; but whenever he thought about it, he disgusted himself, too. All things considered, he probably did not deserve for Arthur to touch him in the ways he wanted. He barely deserved to sleep in the same bed with him.
This was the thought that haunted him at night when he couldn't sleep. Fucking disgusting.
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