A Bad Dream, pt. three
I'm back after two weeks without Internet access! Obviously I wasn't able to read and respond to everybody's comments on the last part, and it seems weird to reply to them all now, so I just wanted to say: You guys are AWESOME and I love you all. This journal is my first foray in writing fanfiction, let alone Inception fic, and all your nice comments are so overwhelming to a fandom newb like me. In short, you guys make me really happy in my pants! :D; Thank you!
As a reward for waiting 13 days for this part, you get all 8650-odd words of it!! Hooray!! OH MY GOD WHY DID I WRITE SO MUCH AS;DJED;OIJ;FJ.
Title: A Bad Dream
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~8600
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, violence, various things in that vein
Author's Note: I'm actually apprehensive about this part because it is just all over the place and it ended up in a REALLY dark and weird place. But you know. It's gotta get worse before it gets better! Or something. Right? Do I even have a plan? idk :D
Annnnnd can you tell how much I love exploring team dynamics? (A lot!)
part one, part two, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine.
+++
The flight -- once they finally boarded and took off -- was uneventful. It was a direct flight from Paris to JFK and it took almost seven hours exactly, and Arthur and Eames were the only ones who didn't sleep on the plane. On his last trip to the lavatory, Eames studied himself in the mirror and saw how glassy and bloodshot his eyes were. He frowned, wishing for the eyedrops that were stowed in his suitcase. At least Arthur, sitting across the aisle from him, hadn't been hassling him to try and get some sleep, like he normally did at home. He'd surely noticed the exhaustion in Eames' features by now, but perhaps understood that Eames could never have allowed himself to enter such a vulnerable state as sleep when surrounded by so many strangers.
“Really pathetic, my friend,” he told his reflection jauntily, and returned to his seat just before the fasten seatbelts sign lit up and the plane nosed into a descent.
Once on the ground, they took two cabs between them into the heart of Manhattan, and then it was a short stop at the hotel to drop off their sparse luggage and freshen up before they had to cab it back downtown to meet with the client, at Cobb's insistence. They were already late, he reminded them.
Arthur seemed peculiarly stone-faced on the ride to the address they'd been given. More stone-faced than usual, anyway.
“Is everything alright?” Eames asked him, not expecting a response. Sure enough, Arthur simply frowned at the window.
After a pause, though, he said in a clipped way, “I don't like this job. It's not our style.”
Eames waited for it. It was nearly four minutes before it came:
“We could walk away from this.”
“Except that we can't,” said Eames patiently, covering Arthur's hand with his own. Arthur twitched.
“We're made men after the Fischer job. We don't need this money, and we don't need to get ourselves involved in this.”
Eames said nothing. If he didn't say anything, he couldn't give Arthur opportunity to start fretting and mothering him. Arthur took his hand away and glared at Manhattan out the window, as though he wished fiery death upon the entire population of New York.
He'd been like a caged animal since Cobb had left their apartment in Paris, pacing and frowning and hardly sleeping. He barely said a word to Eames about it, but Eames knew. Arthur was worried about him.
And it pissed him off more than anything. Cobb had given him the all-clear. He was going back to work. Life was resuming some semblance of normality. And Arthur still thought he was supposed to be Eames' baby-sitter.
This mark did not scare Eames. On the contrary, Eames hadn't felt so confident about returning to dreaming in over a year. He didn't care what his role was because one crucial element remained that he held to him like a light-bearing torch: now he was in control. If he had to seduce one more man -- so be it. This time he would be serving his own ends. It gave him a vicious pleasure to think about. He'd reclaimed reality as his own: it was finally time to start really taking back the dream world, bit by bit. Eames was determined to reclaim everything that had been taken away from him. This would be as good a start as any.
+
He was confident until he actually stepped into their designated workspace; that was the moment that everything started sliding apart.
Cobb and Ariadne's cab had gotten to the building first, but they'd waited, so that the four of them could enter together. It was a dilapidated-looking apartment building and Eames' first thought was that nobody could possibly live in there, but it smelled enough like cat piss that somebody might. Either way, it was certainly the type of place one would go if they wanted to escape notice. Nobody outside would look twice at this building, and nobody inside would care.
Inside was a tiny, narrow flight of stairs with one or two doors on each floor. When they reached the top floor, Cobb pulled out a key and opened the single door to reveal a surprisingly polished-looking studio apartment. The space was wide and open, with light barely managing to filter through the cracked and grimy windows but giving the place a cheery air nonetheless. It was sparsely furnished with various chairs and a couple couches and tables, most of it covered with white sheets.
There were three men already in the apartment: two seated in chairs opposite each other and talking in low voices. The third was lying across a covered couch, hooked up to various IVs and catheters, for all intents and purposes dead to the world.
Eames felt a cold, coiling sensation in the base of his stomach. There was something too familiar about the set-up, that was all.
The other two men stood up, the older of them looking over the team appraisingly.
“Mr. Cobb, I presume,” he said. “McAvoy.”
Cobb moved forward and shook his hand. “My team,” he said, nodding toward the three of them. “This is Arthur, Eames, and Ariadne.”
“A pleasure to meet you all. Though I wonder, Mr. Cobb, if you don't waste our time by bringing a child with you to do this job.”
He was looking at Ariadne, who shifted self-consciously. Eames could feel Arthur stiffening defensively at his side.
“I assure you,” said Cobb, before Arthur could say anything. His tone hadn't changed. “Ariadne is more than capable of doing this job. Don't be fooled by her youth. She's one of the most talented architects in the field and she's every bit as competent as my fellow colleagues and I.”
“Sometimes more so,” Eames chipped in helpfully. Arthur stepped on his foot, surreptitiously. McAvoy's expression hadn't changed.
“It's a delicate job,” he said.
“We respect that. We'll handle it delicately.”
McAvoy seemed to accept that, because he nodded and didn't say anything more on the subject. That was to set the tone for the rest of their dealings with him.
“JJ can fill you in on the details,” he said dismissively. “I really need to be leaving now.”
He brushed past them. Eames felt a distinct dislike. Ariadne was blushing -- whether at McAvoy's words or Cobb's support, he didn't know.
“Thanks,” she said to Cobb.
He shrugged it aside, and gestured to the remaining man. “This is JJ. He's the extractor who got us this job.”
“Gentlemen -- and, of course, lady.” The man stepped forward, smiling. Eames was just in time to catch his head from snapping round. Instead, he looked over their colleague swiftly, and as inconspicuously as possible.
Surely not.
“Your reputations precede you,” he went on, shaking Cobb's hand and then Arthur's. “I'm looking forward to working with you.”
Eames nearly recoiled when he found JJ standing in front of him, still smiling blithely. He was tall, and nearly as broad-shouldered as Cobb. With a great effort, Eames extended his hand and let the man shake it. His hands were big, the fingers thick and blunt. His eyes were brown and he was surprisingly attractive.
He released Eames' hand. Eames felt dizzy. His palm tingled and he looked down at his hand faintly.
Then he'd breezed on past to Ariadne, grinning. “Of course, I haven't heard much about you. But I anticipate great things.”
She laughed nervously, the flattery not lost on her. Eames continued to stare. Where there had been a cold sensation in his stomach there was now a hot nausea. He was slightly older. The features were slightly off. But there was no mistaking that voice. That smooth fucking purr of a voice.
Hello, Charlie.
The only thing that kept him from fleeing the room right then and there was that his muscles had decided to lock up unexpectedly.
“I suppose I'd better take you under, anyway,” JJ said, turning away and clapping his hands together, “let you get a feel for what you're dealing with.” He was approaching the sleeping man. “Mr. McAvoy wants this dealt with as quickly as possible, but I doubt anyone will be looking for him, anyway. We left a suitable cover-up. Bags packed and the like.”
“You kidnapped the mark?” said Arthur.
“We had the resources. There didn't seem to be a cleaner way to do it. We can't let him get away until we've sorted this out.”
Arthur frowned. “And if he's innocent?”
JJ shrugged. “Then we let him go with virtually no memory of any of this, no harm done. It's almost certain he's guilty, though.”
Already he was pulling out a PASIV device from under a dusty covered chair. Cobb and Arthur exchanged a glance that Eames couldn't decipher; the extractor shrugged his shoulders and Arthur's expression became neutral again. Nobody else cared that this mark was being held hostage by drugs, his mind to be invaded at will.
Why should they? He was most likely a rapist and a murderer. Why should they care, except that Eames had been held the same way?
He didn't realize he was still rooted to the spot until JJ was offering him an IV line. The others had already pulled up chairs and there was a line now attached to the slumbering mark's wrist.
“I think I'll enjoy working with you,” the man said. He was still smiling. “I've heard good things.”
Eames experienced a wild impulse to reach for a gun and shoot himself before this dream could get out of hand. He actually might have, too, had a gun been readily available. His hand slid almost imperceptibly into his pocket and he thumbed the poker chip, and he realized JJ was waiting for a response -- his teammates were waiting for him -- and suddenly the ability to think straight returned to him.
He smiled, waving the IV away. “'Fraid you'll have to wait for another day, mate. I'll just be coordinating this run. Watching the timer and the settings.”
Ariadne was subtle enough to glance in his direction; both Cobb and Arthur turned to face him.
“Are you sure you don't want to join us?” Cobb asked carefully after a second's uncomfortable silence. Eames heard what he wasn't saying: Can you do this, or not?
He shrugged, schooling his expression into something blank. “If you really feel you need me, I'll go down with you, but I don't see that I'll be needed just yet.” Translation: I'll go if you make me, but I'd rather not, thanks.
“Alright.” Cobb's expression was unreadable, and so was Arthur's, but the latter's stare was very intense. “Put seven minutes on the clock, then.”
Eames set up the PASIV for them and, when they were ready, he depressed the trigger button. When the room lapsed into silence he could hear his own heartbeat. He got up and approached JJ. Waved a hand in front of his face a couple times.
Then he fucking ran for it.
+
All of Eames' little breakdowns were like quiet implosions. A collapsing in on himself. Small and contained.
He didn't know how to deal with what he was feeling now. He wanted to start running and never stop. He wanted to scream. All his blood was burning in him and something huge and explosive was trying to claw its way out of his chest. He bit his sleeve to keep from shouting, and ended up laughing like a maniac instead, helplessly. Then, suddenly furious, he whirled round and slammed his hand against the brick wall, as hard as he could, so that it stung all the way up to his shoulder. He kicked over a trash can for good measure, then kicked it again, and again, and again.
Finally, the wild energy dissipating from him, he sank down the wall to a crouching position and curled up with his face in his arms. He was out of breath.
He checked his watch. Four minutes had passed. He hadn't gone far, only to the little alley between their building and its neighbour. He needed fresh air. It was a tall order in this neighbourhood, but he did feel better. Marginally.
He rallied his thoughts. He had three minutes before he either had to go in there or hail a taxi and go back to the hotel. Or back to the airport. Back to Paris. Back to Mombasa. Somewhere. Somewhere not here.
Think.
He considered the things that he knew already.
Firstly. JJ and the man who haunted his dreams, the man in the white suit, were almost certainly one and the same. He was a forger, albeit an inept one. He was the man who'd-- Eames squeezed his eyes shut until it hurt and dragged his hands up and down his face, taking deep breaths.
The alternative was that his mind had noticed a couple similarities and instantly made a connection that wasn't there, like déja vu, though he somehow didn't think that was the case.
Secondly. Arthur and Cobb could never know. That meant, by extension, that neither could Ariadne, because of course she would tell them. With the best intentions, most likely, but if that were to happen, well -- Eames would never be allowed near the world of extracting again. Arthur would never stop seeing him as a victim that needed to be sheltered from the world.
Goddamnit. He'd told them he could do this.
Thirdly. Thirdly. Fuck.
Right. Thirdly. Ariadne hadn't recognized the man. Nor, he suspected, would she. The man in the white suit only pounced when Eames was alone. She'd started leaving him alone, watching from the sidelines in their shared dreams for a few minutes at a time, just to see if he could keep the man out or, if he did show up, reclaim control of the dream without her help. The recent ordeal had been his only success so far. The main thing was that she'd never gotten close to the man to know his voice or distinguish his features from a crowd even if he weren't a disguise. Eames was glad for that.
All these things he knew. What was he supposed to do now?
He knew that, too. He resigned himself to it. But he had a fourth thought:
It was possible that JJ didn't know him. After all, Eames had been locked up in a room where no clients were supposed to see him. He was never allowed to show his real face in front of them. They came there for a fantasy, not for anything real. It might be that JJ, in fact, had no idea who he was. There had been no recognition in his face when they'd met.
Eames clung to that hope.
And he returned to his fifth thought, the only conclusion he could possibly draw from this grim scenario: He would have to finish the job. Just finish it, and get the hell away.
He got up, brushed off his clothing and went back inside.
He'd only been gone for six minutes out of the seven, but they were waking up anyway: Ariadne with a startle, blinking; Arthur making the transition seamlessly, half opening his eyes. As soon as he was awake, Cobb was tugging the line out of his arm and rounding on JJ.
“Is this a joke?” he said incredulously. “That's the security you couldn't deal with?”
Pursing his lips, JJ said, “They aren't militarized, but they're still dangerous.”
“We gave them the run-around for an hour before they caught up.” Cobb was frowning, obviously displeased. “Arthur and I could probably have done this job ourselves.”
“Why don't we?” said Arthur, and privately, Eames thought, Please do.
“No. We could do it, but it'll go faster if we're able to just stick to the plan. It won't be as hard as I thought, either way, at least. Eames, a word.”
Eames was on the floor, quietly busying himself reeling in the lines, discarding the used needles and packing up the PASIV. He stopped.
“I'll join you,” said Arthur quickly.
“No, I want to talk to him alone. Eames.”
Eames got up with the resignation of a man about to face a firing squad. Arthur looked as though he was about to jump in again; Ariadne just gave him a helpless sort of good luck shrug. JJ wasn't even watching.
He followed Cobb out the door, and all the way down the stairs till they stepped outside into the side alley where Eames had just been sitting. Cobb frowned at the dented, tipped-over trash can, but must have decided to chalk it up to a rough neighbourhood, because he didn't comment.
“Look,” he said, and Eames hunched his shoulders, bracing for some form of dressing-down or twisted pep-talk. But Cobb seemed uncertain how to go on for a minute.
Eames broke the silence. “I just choked. It won't happen again.”
Cobb studied him. “Eames,” he said finally. He took a slow breath through his nose and looked down. “I don't want to give you the wrong impression.”
“What impression's that?”
“You're one of my oldest friends,” said Cobb. “I don't want you to think that this job is more important to me than you.”
Eames was astounded. Until now he would never have thought Cobb capable of stringing together those words in that order. Cobb turned slightly, squinted sidelong at him. He was obviously uncomfortable having this heart-to-heart.
“I brought you along because I honestly thought you could do this. But if you don't think you can -- even if you have any doubts -- just tell me. I can't and I won't make you do this. If you want to stop, say so. We can try again later, with a different job. I won't fire you from the team just because you have trouble with this one. Just so you understand.”
Eames digested all of this slowly. He really didn't think Cobb was being dishonest. In fact, Cobb was being honest, which must have been unfamiliar ground for him. Eames wasn't altogether sure what to make of it. In the end, he decided to go for honesty, too: that special brand of roundabout honesty he was so good at.
“Cobb,” he said, looking his employer in the eye. “You ought to know about me that I will do anything -- anything -- to get one more rapist shit off the streets. You know,” he said. “Just so that we understand each other.”
The corner of Cobb's lip quirked up slightly. He clapped Eames on the back bracingly, maybe to restore some of the manliness to this conversation, and went back inside.
Eames, however, chose to pull out a cigarette and wait outside until Arthur appeared. Very manly indeed.
+
They picked up take-away for supper. There was a brief squabble over which ethnicity of food to order and it was very domestic and sweet because Arthur was so adorable when he let his forehead get all scrunched up with annoyance, and they both ended up settling on Chinese food. Once they were actually back at their hotel room, sitting in uncomfortable square armchairs on either side of a table that was probably meant to be decorative, Eames found that he actually wasn't hungry at all.
They lapsed naturally into silence and both of them pushed food around with their forks for awhile. They were both fully capable of handling chopsticks, but it seemed unnecessary to do so when they were in New York City. Arthur was frowning into his bowl of lo mein, chin propped pensively on one hand.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Eames offered, after a long silence.
Arthur shook his head and sighed, blinking like he was waking up from a dream. “I hate this city.”
“Do you?” said Eames, surprised.
“It's so ... crowded and polluted and busy all the time.”
“Has anybody ever given you a real tour?” Eames asked. “I don't mean Empire State and the Statue of Liberty, I mean has anybody ever taken you to Greenwich Village or Magnolia Bakery or to a show on Broadway?”
Arthur's frown returned and he shook his head again.
“Then give New York a chance. You're so addicted to your job, Arthur. You experience cities out of airport terminals and dirty warehouses and cheap hotels. Live a little.”
“Right.” Arthur looked back down at his food.
They didn't speak again for about ten minutes. Arthur ate a little. Then he put down his fork.
“Did Cobb fire you when he pulled you aside today?”
“No,” said Eames. And, suddenly belligerant: “Why would he?”
Arthur looked at him narrowly. “You couldn't even go under.”
“I could have. I chose not to.”
“Right,” said Arthur, with mild scepticism.
“I choked a little. It was a one-off,” said Eames.
There was a loaded silence during which neither of them broke eye contact. It was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Room service,” Arthur mumbled, extricating himself from the armchair. “I ordered wine.”
There was no romance to the gesture when Eames knew full well that Arthur was only hoping it might help get him to sleep. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He resolved not to drink any.
He filched Arthur's wallet when the point man brushed past him, because it was easy and he was feeling spontaneous, wanting to do something to rattle Arthur's cage a little. Piss him off, even. Arthur opened the door and went to pay and had to search his pockets, finally turning to face a smiling Eames, who was waving Arthur's money in the air. Arthur strode over and snatched a few crumpled bills without saying anything, his jaw set firmly. He paid while Eames rifled through his various ID cards.
Just as the door shut Eames found one that made him whoop with laughter. “Arthur Cobb! That's your name when you're in the States?”
Arthur ground his teeth visibly and went to snatch the card, but Eames pulled it away.
“Did you two turn around and get married while I was in Mombasa? Is that what you did? Because I think you could do better, Arthur, I don't think he's your type--”
“Give it to me,” said Arthur, in his flat, ice-cold, serious-point-man voice. A hot flush had risen in his cheeks.
“Alright, you can have it,” said Eames, holding up the card carelessly. He was still grinning. “It's not as though I'll forget or stop tormenting you till the end of time for this. Arthur Cobb! What in God's name made you choose that?”
Arthur was breathing harder and Eames noticed something funny. It wasn't just that he was making Arthur angry. He was making Arthur -- embarrassed. Arthur grabbed back his wallet and started to stuff the card back inside, his hand trembling slightly like it would rather be hitting Eames in the face.
“It's my real name, okay?” he said in a low voice. “It's the closest thing I've got to one, anyway. I changed it.”
“But why on earth--?”
“I changed it because Cobb and Mal took me in when I was sixteen and I didn't want to keep my old name anymore. So. Cobb. There you go. It's hilarious, I know.”
Eames soaked in this new piece of information with interest. He sat back in his chair and considered.
“You know,” he mused thoughtfully, when it appeared that Arthur was ready to move on and spare him the recriminations, “we've known each other for years now. We've been sharing a living space for nearly a year and you've seen me at my utter worst, and yet I feel I still don't know the first thing about you.”
Arthur was settling himself back into his chair. His lips thinned. “Do you need to?”
Eames considered again and shook his head. “No. Keep your secrets if you'd like. At least one of us ought to have some.”
Arthur looked relieved -- until Eames went on, “You're quite close to Cobb, aren't you?”
“He's like a brother to me,” said Arthur tersely, refusing to look up. “I owe a lot to him.”
“You'd do about anything for him, wouldn't you?”
“About anything, yes.”
Arthur squinted up at him guardedly. Eames said, “Did he tell you not to forewarn me that he was going to put me in a dream designed to trigger me, or did you decide that on your own?”
Arthur's face became shuttered. “Eames.”
“Just for curiosity's sake.”
“I didn't know ...”
“Ariadne told me. She didn't know he was setting me up, but she at least told me.”
“Right.” Arthur scrunched up his napkin and threw it into his bowl of lo mein, and glared at him. “She told me something, too, a little while ago. She said all your lunch dates were shared dreaming sessions to help you get back on track.”
“I'm sorry, pet, this annoys you somehow ...?”
“Let me ask you something,” Arthur said in a hard tone. “And I want you to be honest with me, Eames. No skipping around the question. Don't try to bullshit me. Honest.”
Eames leaned forward. “Fire away.”
“When you backed out today. Was it because you didn't want to go under with me?”
Eames had frozen up until the very end of that sentence. Every muscle loosened and he sat back, both eyebrows raised, hiding his relief.
“You're absurd,” he said curtly. “Absurd and self-centered.”
“You'll share dreams with Ariadne every week. You'll do it with Cobb just because he asks. But not me.”
“You never asked,” Eames pointed out.
“I just,” said Arthur, with mounting frustration. “I don't understand why you went to her. You know what, McAvoy's right. She's practically a kid and this is fucked-up stuff we're getting into. She hasn't even been doing this for that long. And you asked her for help.” If Eames didn't know better, he'd start to swear that Arthur sounded hurt. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. Arthur looked down again and said, “You asked her, and not me.”
“Maybe,” said Eames quietly, “I don't care what she thinks of me.” He tilted his head. “You are jealous, aren't you? You actually are. And she isn't even the one I trust enough to share a bed with every night. Although maybe,” he added lewdly, “she should've been from the start.”
He knew by the way Arthur's gaze snapped to the floor and his expression clouded over that his comment had found its mark. “That's not what we're talking about.”
“Alright. Fine. My backing out today had nothing to do with you, you petty thing. Are you satisfied?”
“Somehow, no.” Arthur frowned. Now Eames knew he was hurt. He ducked his head. “I just wish you didn't feel like you have to hide things from me.”
“You're the one person I don't hide anything from. Arthur--” He was reaching across the table and Arthur leaned into his touch, let Eames cradle his face in one hand before he seemed to know what he was doing. His eyelids fluttered and Eames stroked a thumb over his cheek, holding him there. “We don't talk about this, do we?”
“No,” Arthur whispered. “Would it help?”
“No.”
Arthur looked relieved. Eames shut his eyes, pulled his hand away.
“You still have nightmares,” Arthur said. Eames laughed bitterly.
“There'll always be nightmares.”
Arthur looked bleakly down at their food, which was turning cold and congealing. “You should eat.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“I don't think you can do this job.”
It was an unexpected slap in the face.
Eames let the words hang in the air between them for a moment. He considered them. Then he shoved his armchair away from the table and got up.
“Fuck you, darling,” he said lightly, and disappeared into the bathroom. It was the last word they exchanged that evening.
+
Eames woke up.
It was momentarily disorienting. He shoved at the sheets in alarm.
“Stop it. You're doing it again,” Arthur complained softly in the dark. Eames felt Arthur's hands press his arm down, reassuringly warm. He stilled and relaxed. “Crawling all over me, you're worse than a cat,” Arthur chided him gently.
Eames turned his head so that he could feel Arthur's breath tickling his nose, and let himself be comforted. He couldn't remember what he'd been dreaming about and that in itself was scary. Eames was trained to remember every detail. He never forgot a dream. His agitation returned. He pulled away from Arthur and searched for his totem, fumbling in the dark. On the other side of the bed, Arthur switched a lamp on and Eames found the poker chip on the bedside table. He grabbed it and ran his thumb over it, still not entirely convinced he wasn't dreaming. It could be his own dream. He gulped for breath.
“Here.” Arthur was suddenly at his side, pressing something into his hand. The die.
Eames rolled it on the surface of the table. Six up. Reality.
“Thanks.”
Arthur retrieved the die and returned to his own side of the bed. He switched off the lamp. “Come here.”
Eames moved closer and Arthur wrapped a loose arm around him. He didn't seem angry after their exchange. All those things that happened during the day were forgotten in the face of Eames' night terrors. Eames inhaled the smell of him and wanted to drown in it.
“Do you want anything?” Arthur asked him.
Eames couldn't say why all of his insides suddenly seemed to be tying themselves in knots.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. He shut his eyes tightly. “I want you to fuck me.”
Arthur didn't say anything right away. He started to slide his arm away. Eames grabbed him by the wrist.
“Please,” he said.
“We've been over this,” said Arthur quietly. “I'm not going to.”
He tried to move back to his side of the bed. Eames gripped his wrist tighter and pulled him closer.
“You have to want this too,” he said. His eyes were starting to adjust to the dark. Arthur was so close that their lips were almost brushing. Eames leaned in and let his lips just graze Arthur's ear as he growled softly, “Tell me it isn't driving you mental, too, Arthur, because I know it is. I know.”
He heard Arthur swallow. His own stomach was churning.
“Please,” Eames whispered, starting to push Arthur onto his back so that he could move over him. “Don't feel guilty, Arthur. We're two adults in our right minds. I'm asking you to fuck me.” His mouth was so dry. Something was wrong. “Don't make me beg.”
“Eames. Get off me.”
But he wasn't fighting back. Eames slid a knee over Arthur's leg and settled it between his thighs.
“I need this.”
“I don't. I want you to get off me,” said Arthur steadily.
“No you don't,” Eames breathed against his lips. “You want this, Arthur, you've wanted it for a very long time. I want to feel you inside me, I want you to fuck me until I pass out. That's all I want.”
Arthur jerked away from him without warning. He managed to slip out of Eames' hold and retreat to his own side of the bed.
“You have to stop,” he said, and the low quaver in his voice told Eames that he was scared. Arthur, scared.
Good. That made two of them.
He felt possessed -- he didn't know what was compelling him to crawl across the bed and reach out to lay a hand on Arthur like he'd die if they weren't touching. The heat of Arthur's body sent sparks through the nerve endings in his fingertips. He had Arthur crowded up against the edge of the bed now and he could feel Arthur shiver wherever Eames touched him; he could hear Arthur's breathing coming fast.
“I want you.” He was gripping Arthur's arm tight enough to bruise it. He wanted to stop; he wanted this never to end. “I want you. So fucking bad, Arthur, it hurts--”
“Eames, stop, please--”
Arthur's breath hitched sharply as Eames began to settle between his legs again and his very hard, very obvious erection brushed Eames' thigh.
Eames' lips curled into a sad smile.
“Well.”
“Get off,” Arthur gritted out. He raised an arm to try and shove Eames away but Eames caught his hand easily and pinned it to the bed; then leaned down and pressed his lips to Arthur's. They were kissing now -- Arthur was trying to stay still and quiet but he made a startled sound when Eames bit his lower lip, trying to entice him into it. Eames pressed his thigh down and ground it steadily over Arthur's groin, and Arthur's hips twitched upward of their own accord. Eames was simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the response Arthur's body was having to him.
“Stop,” Arthur repeated weakly, trying to turn away, repulsed.
“You want this, Arthur. You want me. Look at yourself.”
At these words, something in Arthur seemed to steel itself. Eames shifted his weight and Arthur seized the opportunity to wrest free, throw him over and straddle him in the same fluid motion. He moved like chain lightning; Eames didn't know what had hit him.
“This is what you want, Eames?” Arthur hissed, reaching a hand between Eames' legs to grip him through his boxers. “Really?”
Eames remembered two things distinctly about the second or two that followed:
The brightness of Arthur's eyes, so close in the dark, and how they widened fractionally when he touched Eames and found no erection there, no hardness, no trace of arousal at all. And then the cracking sound of Eames' fist connecting with Arthur's face.
Then he was in the corner.
There was nothing in between to connect the two things, he was simply facing the corner all of a sudden. He was on his knees, each knee touching a wall, his head bowed like a child in time-out.
He heard rustling sounds behind him, the bedsheets as Arthur reorganized. And Arthur's voice:
“Shit.”
A long pause, and an even quieter, “Shit.”
Mattress springs creaked. Arthur seemed to be at a loss.
He said, “Shit.” And: “I'm so sorry. Eames. I'm so sorry.”
Eames stayed in the corner with his eyes shut, retreating on himself.
“Eames.”
He heard Arthur leave the bed and then silence.
“Fuck,” he said. “Please say something.”
If he didn't move he could almost fall right through the wall.
“I don't know what just happened. I'm sorry. Eames ...”
Eames heard all these things without really hearing them; he was already gone. Arthur could have grabbed and shaken him and probably even thrown him down and fucked him then and there on the floor if he really wanted to and Eames wouldn't care because he would just be gone.
Arthur paced around him, like a yo-yo, moving as close as he dared and then withdrawing, no way of knowing if Eames' eyes were open or if he was even still breathing.
Finally he left. The tiny, frail part of Eames' mind that was still there accepted that he would be back, but most of Eames was just gone away because that was the only thing that could make his body continue to breathe and let his fractured mind survive this scene intact.
+++
It should have been physically impossible, but Eames knew it wasn't, because he was doing it. If anyone had bothered asking his opinion before now (why would anyone ever ask his opinion?) whether he thought he could deep-throat the man in the white suit he'd have said no. But nobody ever asked him anyway and people continued to surprise him with the situations they dreamed up for him.
That it was Charlie's blond hair the man was gripping viciously tight and Charlie's eyes streaming water was semantics, because it was still Eames' throat he was fucking without respite and it was Eames who could scarcely breathe. Eames who was kneeling on the floor of the casino and whose projections were milling about or watching with open disgust because they were long past the point of trying to defend his subconscious anymore. Even he'd given up on himself.
The man grunted and came in long, hot spurts and Eames had to swallow all of it. And then -- finally -- finally -- he was drawing away, zipping up his pants, and leaving Eames gasping noisily for breath and dry heaving, not daring to vomit because if he did he'd have to eat it off the floor. His projections lost interest and wandered away.
When he'd managed to start breathing normally again -- it hurt, everything hurt -- he began to numbly wipe the saliva from his chin and the come from the corners of his mouth, and the tears from his cheeks. They were just part of the gag reflex, but Eames didn't like the man seeing them anyway.
“Good, Charlie.” That hateful broad hand was sweeping down the side of his face, cupping his chin. “That was good.”
Eames concentrated on breathing and tried to tell himself that this was happening to somebody else. It was never successful.
“I like to reward good things.” He used both hands to tilt Eames' face up toward him. “Would you like me to take you away from here? You'd like to go someplace else, wouldn't you?”
Eames' heart constricted and he nodded pleadingly. Yes, yes. He wanted to leave this hotel. He wanted that more than anything. But he wasn't allowed to speak. That was something the man had impressed upon him the first time he'd revisited Eames. That was the rule.
Not, apparently, this time.
“Say it,” the man said. “I want to hear you say it.”
Oh. It was cruel. There was no possible way Eames could coax his bruised and swollen throat into forming words, no physical way.
“Say it,” the man urged him. “Do you want it?”
“Yes,” he rasped. He had to force his throat to work. It hurt terribly.
The man waited.
“Please.” Eames' voice cracked.
The man stroked a hand soothingly through his hair. “Close your eyes,” he said. Eames did. “Open your mouth.”
He did that too. He saw no alternative.
“Good, Charlie.”
Then the gun slotted itself inside his mouth and went off.
+
He should have woken up but he didn't. He never did, no matter how many times he died in the dreams. He'd given up trying to keep track of them. Maybe it was like riding an elevator, down each level till he got to the third and then back up again. Or maybe all of it was limbo, and he was just waking up over and over again in the exact same dream.
The difference this time was that he wasn't in his own dream anymore.
He'd never seen this hotel room before. It was big enough to be someone's small apartment and two of the walls had big windows wrapping around them, almost floor-to-ceiling, facing a beach and a blue ocean. The room was full of light. He could hear the waves and practically smell the salt water from here.
He feasted upon the vision. It was simple. It didn't even have doors, not even for the attached bathroom. But it was new.
And his throat hurt a little less. That was nice.
“You like it, don't you?” his companion said. Eames nodded, and the man patiently let him explore the whole room with childlike curiosity before shoving him down on the bed.
+
After the fourth week or so the novelty of a new setting had long worn off and by the eighth, he hated that room more than any of the ones back at his own dreamscape. It was a cage. Now and then the man disappeared and Eames couldn't tell if that was worse or better.
Sometime around the twelfth week he managed to get his hands on the man's gun and he pushed it, shaking, into his stomach, but he hesitated too long, and just then the man came awake and gently took the weapon from his hands and pulled him down and kissed him on the forehead like Eames meant something to him. Even though he meant nothing, nothing at all.
+
After maybe sixteen weeks, while the man was in the bathroom, briefly, Eames tried to drop his disguise. Just for a second. He hated Charlie's skin. Disgusting.
He couldn't do it.
He didn't know what was happening to him. He was breaking like an old toy. He didn't even know who he was anymore.
The cramps in his abdomen were constant, as was the blood that seeped from his rectum.
+
There was no way for him to keep track of the days anymore. He might have been down there six months or twelve, though it was probably much closer to the former. It was hard to tell because he spent so little time sleeping, except when the man was gone, and because he'd started noticing a pattern: For some time now, usually in the middle of some painful sex act, he'd started removing himself mentally, retreating to whatever last hiding place he had left in his muddled consciousness. Now, it was like he would blink and suddenly be some other place in the room, doing something else.
He was losing time in greater and greater chunks.
He thought it was something wrong with the dream, at first. Maybe the drugs. But his companion never seemed to notice, and Eames began to realize: it was him. He was so overwhelmed that when some familiar panic triggered him, he would literally shut down. It was the last thing his abused mind could do for him.
It terrified him.
He didn't want to be awake during the rapes, remembering all the details like he was trained to do, but he didn't want to be completely absent and at his tormentor's mercy either. He knew he couldn't be falling comatose -- the man in the white suit would have had something to say about that -- but he couldn't imagine what he was doing, every time he lost another period of time. Just lying there, pliant and submissive, obeying all orders like a good boy? It was, somehow, even worse to think about than him being conscious and allowing it to happen anyway.
He was scared his mind would leave for good one day and he wouldn't even exist except as a shell for people to fuck.
The man in white kissed him, once, on the lips, and he thought, impossibly, of Arthur. He tried to picture what Arthur's lips looked like and how they'd feel against his. What had once been a frequent fantasy was just a hazy memory now. He couldn't remember. Sometimes, in snatches, he'd remember the shade of Arthur's hair, or the colour of his eyes, or the precise deftness that was his hands. But he could never quite piece them all together to form a solid picture. Still, he clung on ferociously. He was losing himself. He couldn't lose Arthur, too, not even when he forgot why it was so important to remember.
+
“You've been a little distant lately, Charlie.”
That was all the warning Eames got before his hands were bound to the bed and he was blindfolded, and the man's heavy weight was pinning his legs firmly to the bed. He was clothed; Eames wasn't.
“The restraints and blindfold are only for your safety,” the man told him. “I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself.”
Eames' heart raced like a rabbit trying to escape from his chest. He didn't try to dislodge the blindfold or struggle. He knew that wouldn't work. It was easiest to just go quiet and let them do what they needed to do and then leave. Only heroes in storybooks can fight forever.
He braced himself for great pain, but instead, the man wrapped his hand around Eames' cock and gave a gentle tug. He jacked Eames slowly, gently, and it took some time now, but before long he was hard and leaking. Eames was breathing hard, waiting for him to finish playing his games.
“Don't move, now.”
The hand went away. Something else stroked up the side of his cock, teasingly. It was cold. Eames twitched.
“I said don't move.”
It trailed up to the tip of his cock and dragged over the slit. The shackles scraped and clattered against the bed with a compulsive shudder when Eames felt it probe inside him.
“Charlie.” A warning.
Now would be a good time to blank out, he thought wildly.
The probe slid into his cock. With his eyes covered everything felt five times worse. It felt too wide. Too long. Did not belong there. It was cold and alien and his body couldn't stand it being there and there was nothing, nothing he could do.
The man gave it a little twist and dragged it up a little and Eames nearly bit his lip through to keep from howling. Instead he let an agonized groan escape him. All his nerves felt traitorously hypersensitive, magnifying every slide and pull of the probe. It was not pleasurable. It wasn't meant to be. Even if it were, this was something Eames doubted he'd consider doing even with a partner he trusted, if such a thing existed--
And at that thought, for half a second, his mind flickered inexplicably to that memory called Arthur--
He was shivering, breaking out in a freezing cold sweat. The man wrapped a hand tightly around his cock to feel the rigidness of the probe in there and, forgetting himself, Eames choked out, “S-stop--”
“No talking, Charlie.”
His voice was sharper. The probe slid deeper, deeper than Eames would have imagined was possible. His body was clenched so tensely it was painful. Only long, long practise held him in place, but he couldn't stop gasping for breath, trying to turn his head and muffle the sound in his shoulder. He thought he'd be sick. He hadn't felt so horrifyingly awake in weeks. Eames had suffered many things down here, but he'd never been violated for violation's sake. He could scarcely wrap his head around it.
The probe went even deeper, slip-sliding like it was fucking him where no one was meant to fuck him, and it sent a bolt of agony through every nerve in Eames' body.
“Stop,” he pleaded, the word falling out involuntarily.
The man hit him. Then he twisted the probe brutally and yanked Eames' cock in an iron grip--
Eames' vision went black, wiping out the traces of light he could see through the blindfold. When he came back to himself a few seconds later he was still covered in sweat, still shivering feverishly, and it was over, he'd survived, the probe was gone and his wrists were being released. The blindfold came off last.
Eames had never seen so much of his own blood at once.
“You moved,” the man told him, with flat disappointment.
He vomited. He couldn't help it. The man struck him, close-fisted this time, hard enough to knock him right off the bed. He followed Eames onto the floor with a vicious kick and finally, recognizing a threat, Eames' brain shut off and turned perfectly static.
He didn't like anybody touching him there anymore. He hated it.
But nobody paid any attention to his boundaries anyway.
Including, as it turned out, Arthur.
That hurt worse than anything.
+++
When he came back Arthur was in the room again. The lights were on. He felt stiff. He blinked and pulled his head back from the wall.
“Eames,” said Arthur, sounding half relieved, half scared.
He sat back and took stock, quietly.
“Drink some water,” said Arthur. “Next to you,” he added.
Eames looked down and saw a glass of water on the carpet within arm's length of him. It had small, melted ice cubes in it and condensation all over the glass. He touched it, picked it up and drank to rid himself of the taste in his mouth.
“Eames, I ... I don't know what to say to you. I don't know what happened. I'm so sorry. I never meant for ...” Arthur's voice became small and tired. “I didn't mean to scare you.”
“Yes, you did.” Eames swallowed an ice cube. He felt it burn all the way down his throat. “That's exactly what you meant to do.”
“No,” Arthur protested, exhausted.
“Yes.”
Eames turned on his knees to face him. Arthur was sitting in one of the uncomfortable armchairs, hunched over, his hands knotted in his lap, far away from Eames' personal space but not blocking the exit because Arthur knew him better than anyone.
“You wanted to scare me because you wanted to prove a point.”
“I ... no, I ... no,” said Arthur weakly. “No. That's not it at all ...” But his conviction was dwindling.
“And I'm glad you did it, Arthur.” Something sharp as flint was creeping into Eames' tone. So many emotions were warring inside him, fury and hurt and humiliation, he couldn't tell which one stood out most strongly. The words came out thickly. “You proved it. You were right all along. I'm not ready to have sex with you, I never was, and -- I don't think I ever will be. I don't know why I thought I was ready for it. I'm just not.”
His voice broke.
“I don't think I can be with you, Arthur.”
“I don't care,” Arthur whispered. He was pale. “I don't care about sex, Eames, I don't.”
“I want you to be my partner,” said Eames. “Not my baby-sitter. But you're never going to be that.” He swallowed hard. “And I don't trust you.”
Arthur looked like Eames had hit him in the gut. Shock skated across his features and it was followed by unmistakeable devastation.
Eames had to look away, because he'd never seen such candid emotion on Arthur's face before and it made him uncomfortable. He drained the last of the water, then stood up and found his clothing from the day before, which he'd tossed to the carpet as usual because he knew Arthur would be compelled to fold it up and put it back in his suitcase in the morning, except not this morning. He got dressed. Arthur didn't say anything.
“I'm sorry I pushed you to that,” said Eames, when he was fully clothed again. He paused. “I'm leaving.”
“You can't.”
“I can, and I'm going to.”
He was almost at the door when Arthur scrambled to his feet and said, “Wait!”
The stark desperation in the word made Eames stop. He waited without turning around.
And after a long, silent struggle for words, all Arthur could come up with to make him stay was a soft, “Please.”
“I'll collect my things sometime tomorrow. I'm going to do this job because I told Cobb I would, and then I'm going to book the next flight to Mombasa and go home. Don't feel badly because I pushed you, Arthur. You knew this was going to happen eventually. I'm too dependant on you and I can't be, anymore. It isn't healthy. For either one of us.”
“I don't care,” said Arthur helplessly.
“Yes, you do, because you care about me.”
Eames opened the door. He hesitated, and bowed his head against the doorframe, closing his eyes tiredly.
“I love you, whatever that's worth now,” he said, and left.
He hoped it hurt like hell.
next
As a reward for waiting 13 days for this part, you get all 8650-odd words of it!! Hooray!! OH MY GOD WHY DID I WRITE SO MUCH AS;DJED;OIJ;FJ.
Title: A Bad Dream
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~8600
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, violence, various things in that vein
Author's Note: I'm actually apprehensive about this part because it is just all over the place and it ended up in a REALLY dark and weird place. But you know. It's gotta get worse before it gets better! Or something. Right? Do I even have a plan? idk :D
Annnnnd can you tell how much I love exploring team dynamics? (A lot!)
part one, part two, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine.
+++
The flight -- once they finally boarded and took off -- was uneventful. It was a direct flight from Paris to JFK and it took almost seven hours exactly, and Arthur and Eames were the only ones who didn't sleep on the plane. On his last trip to the lavatory, Eames studied himself in the mirror and saw how glassy and bloodshot his eyes were. He frowned, wishing for the eyedrops that were stowed in his suitcase. At least Arthur, sitting across the aisle from him, hadn't been hassling him to try and get some sleep, like he normally did at home. He'd surely noticed the exhaustion in Eames' features by now, but perhaps understood that Eames could never have allowed himself to enter such a vulnerable state as sleep when surrounded by so many strangers.
“Really pathetic, my friend,” he told his reflection jauntily, and returned to his seat just before the fasten seatbelts sign lit up and the plane nosed into a descent.
Once on the ground, they took two cabs between them into the heart of Manhattan, and then it was a short stop at the hotel to drop off their sparse luggage and freshen up before they had to cab it back downtown to meet with the client, at Cobb's insistence. They were already late, he reminded them.
Arthur seemed peculiarly stone-faced on the ride to the address they'd been given. More stone-faced than usual, anyway.
“Is everything alright?” Eames asked him, not expecting a response. Sure enough, Arthur simply frowned at the window.
After a pause, though, he said in a clipped way, “I don't like this job. It's not our style.”
Eames waited for it. It was nearly four minutes before it came:
“We could walk away from this.”
“Except that we can't,” said Eames patiently, covering Arthur's hand with his own. Arthur twitched.
“We're made men after the Fischer job. We don't need this money, and we don't need to get ourselves involved in this.”
Eames said nothing. If he didn't say anything, he couldn't give Arthur opportunity to start fretting and mothering him. Arthur took his hand away and glared at Manhattan out the window, as though he wished fiery death upon the entire population of New York.
He'd been like a caged animal since Cobb had left their apartment in Paris, pacing and frowning and hardly sleeping. He barely said a word to Eames about it, but Eames knew. Arthur was worried about him.
And it pissed him off more than anything. Cobb had given him the all-clear. He was going back to work. Life was resuming some semblance of normality. And Arthur still thought he was supposed to be Eames' baby-sitter.
This mark did not scare Eames. On the contrary, Eames hadn't felt so confident about returning to dreaming in over a year. He didn't care what his role was because one crucial element remained that he held to him like a light-bearing torch: now he was in control. If he had to seduce one more man -- so be it. This time he would be serving his own ends. It gave him a vicious pleasure to think about. He'd reclaimed reality as his own: it was finally time to start really taking back the dream world, bit by bit. Eames was determined to reclaim everything that had been taken away from him. This would be as good a start as any.
+
He was confident until he actually stepped into their designated workspace; that was the moment that everything started sliding apart.
Cobb and Ariadne's cab had gotten to the building first, but they'd waited, so that the four of them could enter together. It was a dilapidated-looking apartment building and Eames' first thought was that nobody could possibly live in there, but it smelled enough like cat piss that somebody might. Either way, it was certainly the type of place one would go if they wanted to escape notice. Nobody outside would look twice at this building, and nobody inside would care.
Inside was a tiny, narrow flight of stairs with one or two doors on each floor. When they reached the top floor, Cobb pulled out a key and opened the single door to reveal a surprisingly polished-looking studio apartment. The space was wide and open, with light barely managing to filter through the cracked and grimy windows but giving the place a cheery air nonetheless. It was sparsely furnished with various chairs and a couple couches and tables, most of it covered with white sheets.
There were three men already in the apartment: two seated in chairs opposite each other and talking in low voices. The third was lying across a covered couch, hooked up to various IVs and catheters, for all intents and purposes dead to the world.
Eames felt a cold, coiling sensation in the base of his stomach. There was something too familiar about the set-up, that was all.
The other two men stood up, the older of them looking over the team appraisingly.
“Mr. Cobb, I presume,” he said. “McAvoy.”
Cobb moved forward and shook his hand. “My team,” he said, nodding toward the three of them. “This is Arthur, Eames, and Ariadne.”
“A pleasure to meet you all. Though I wonder, Mr. Cobb, if you don't waste our time by bringing a child with you to do this job.”
He was looking at Ariadne, who shifted self-consciously. Eames could feel Arthur stiffening defensively at his side.
“I assure you,” said Cobb, before Arthur could say anything. His tone hadn't changed. “Ariadne is more than capable of doing this job. Don't be fooled by her youth. She's one of the most talented architects in the field and she's every bit as competent as my fellow colleagues and I.”
“Sometimes more so,” Eames chipped in helpfully. Arthur stepped on his foot, surreptitiously. McAvoy's expression hadn't changed.
“It's a delicate job,” he said.
“We respect that. We'll handle it delicately.”
McAvoy seemed to accept that, because he nodded and didn't say anything more on the subject. That was to set the tone for the rest of their dealings with him.
“JJ can fill you in on the details,” he said dismissively. “I really need to be leaving now.”
He brushed past them. Eames felt a distinct dislike. Ariadne was blushing -- whether at McAvoy's words or Cobb's support, he didn't know.
“Thanks,” she said to Cobb.
He shrugged it aside, and gestured to the remaining man. “This is JJ. He's the extractor who got us this job.”
“Gentlemen -- and, of course, lady.” The man stepped forward, smiling. Eames was just in time to catch his head from snapping round. Instead, he looked over their colleague swiftly, and as inconspicuously as possible.
Surely not.
“Your reputations precede you,” he went on, shaking Cobb's hand and then Arthur's. “I'm looking forward to working with you.”
Eames nearly recoiled when he found JJ standing in front of him, still smiling blithely. He was tall, and nearly as broad-shouldered as Cobb. With a great effort, Eames extended his hand and let the man shake it. His hands were big, the fingers thick and blunt. His eyes were brown and he was surprisingly attractive.
He released Eames' hand. Eames felt dizzy. His palm tingled and he looked down at his hand faintly.
Then he'd breezed on past to Ariadne, grinning. “Of course, I haven't heard much about you. But I anticipate great things.”
She laughed nervously, the flattery not lost on her. Eames continued to stare. Where there had been a cold sensation in his stomach there was now a hot nausea. He was slightly older. The features were slightly off. But there was no mistaking that voice. That smooth fucking purr of a voice.
Hello, Charlie.
The only thing that kept him from fleeing the room right then and there was that his muscles had decided to lock up unexpectedly.
“I suppose I'd better take you under, anyway,” JJ said, turning away and clapping his hands together, “let you get a feel for what you're dealing with.” He was approaching the sleeping man. “Mr. McAvoy wants this dealt with as quickly as possible, but I doubt anyone will be looking for him, anyway. We left a suitable cover-up. Bags packed and the like.”
“You kidnapped the mark?” said Arthur.
“We had the resources. There didn't seem to be a cleaner way to do it. We can't let him get away until we've sorted this out.”
Arthur frowned. “And if he's innocent?”
JJ shrugged. “Then we let him go with virtually no memory of any of this, no harm done. It's almost certain he's guilty, though.”
Already he was pulling out a PASIV device from under a dusty covered chair. Cobb and Arthur exchanged a glance that Eames couldn't decipher; the extractor shrugged his shoulders and Arthur's expression became neutral again. Nobody else cared that this mark was being held hostage by drugs, his mind to be invaded at will.
Why should they? He was most likely a rapist and a murderer. Why should they care, except that Eames had been held the same way?
He didn't realize he was still rooted to the spot until JJ was offering him an IV line. The others had already pulled up chairs and there was a line now attached to the slumbering mark's wrist.
“I think I'll enjoy working with you,” the man said. He was still smiling. “I've heard good things.”
Eames experienced a wild impulse to reach for a gun and shoot himself before this dream could get out of hand. He actually might have, too, had a gun been readily available. His hand slid almost imperceptibly into his pocket and he thumbed the poker chip, and he realized JJ was waiting for a response -- his teammates were waiting for him -- and suddenly the ability to think straight returned to him.
He smiled, waving the IV away. “'Fraid you'll have to wait for another day, mate. I'll just be coordinating this run. Watching the timer and the settings.”
Ariadne was subtle enough to glance in his direction; both Cobb and Arthur turned to face him.
“Are you sure you don't want to join us?” Cobb asked carefully after a second's uncomfortable silence. Eames heard what he wasn't saying: Can you do this, or not?
He shrugged, schooling his expression into something blank. “If you really feel you need me, I'll go down with you, but I don't see that I'll be needed just yet.” Translation: I'll go if you make me, but I'd rather not, thanks.
“Alright.” Cobb's expression was unreadable, and so was Arthur's, but the latter's stare was very intense. “Put seven minutes on the clock, then.”
Eames set up the PASIV for them and, when they were ready, he depressed the trigger button. When the room lapsed into silence he could hear his own heartbeat. He got up and approached JJ. Waved a hand in front of his face a couple times.
Then he fucking ran for it.
+
All of Eames' little breakdowns were like quiet implosions. A collapsing in on himself. Small and contained.
He didn't know how to deal with what he was feeling now. He wanted to start running and never stop. He wanted to scream. All his blood was burning in him and something huge and explosive was trying to claw its way out of his chest. He bit his sleeve to keep from shouting, and ended up laughing like a maniac instead, helplessly. Then, suddenly furious, he whirled round and slammed his hand against the brick wall, as hard as he could, so that it stung all the way up to his shoulder. He kicked over a trash can for good measure, then kicked it again, and again, and again.
Finally, the wild energy dissipating from him, he sank down the wall to a crouching position and curled up with his face in his arms. He was out of breath.
He checked his watch. Four minutes had passed. He hadn't gone far, only to the little alley between their building and its neighbour. He needed fresh air. It was a tall order in this neighbourhood, but he did feel better. Marginally.
He rallied his thoughts. He had three minutes before he either had to go in there or hail a taxi and go back to the hotel. Or back to the airport. Back to Paris. Back to Mombasa. Somewhere. Somewhere not here.
Think.
He considered the things that he knew already.
Firstly. JJ and the man who haunted his dreams, the man in the white suit, were almost certainly one and the same. He was a forger, albeit an inept one. He was the man who'd-- Eames squeezed his eyes shut until it hurt and dragged his hands up and down his face, taking deep breaths.
The alternative was that his mind had noticed a couple similarities and instantly made a connection that wasn't there, like déja vu, though he somehow didn't think that was the case.
Secondly. Arthur and Cobb could never know. That meant, by extension, that neither could Ariadne, because of course she would tell them. With the best intentions, most likely, but if that were to happen, well -- Eames would never be allowed near the world of extracting again. Arthur would never stop seeing him as a victim that needed to be sheltered from the world.
Goddamnit. He'd told them he could do this.
Thirdly. Thirdly. Fuck.
Right. Thirdly. Ariadne hadn't recognized the man. Nor, he suspected, would she. The man in the white suit only pounced when Eames was alone. She'd started leaving him alone, watching from the sidelines in their shared dreams for a few minutes at a time, just to see if he could keep the man out or, if he did show up, reclaim control of the dream without her help. The recent ordeal had been his only success so far. The main thing was that she'd never gotten close to the man to know his voice or distinguish his features from a crowd even if he weren't a disguise. Eames was glad for that.
All these things he knew. What was he supposed to do now?
He knew that, too. He resigned himself to it. But he had a fourth thought:
It was possible that JJ didn't know him. After all, Eames had been locked up in a room where no clients were supposed to see him. He was never allowed to show his real face in front of them. They came there for a fantasy, not for anything real. It might be that JJ, in fact, had no idea who he was. There had been no recognition in his face when they'd met.
Eames clung to that hope.
And he returned to his fifth thought, the only conclusion he could possibly draw from this grim scenario: He would have to finish the job. Just finish it, and get the hell away.
He got up, brushed off his clothing and went back inside.
He'd only been gone for six minutes out of the seven, but they were waking up anyway: Ariadne with a startle, blinking; Arthur making the transition seamlessly, half opening his eyes. As soon as he was awake, Cobb was tugging the line out of his arm and rounding on JJ.
“Is this a joke?” he said incredulously. “That's the security you couldn't deal with?”
Pursing his lips, JJ said, “They aren't militarized, but they're still dangerous.”
“We gave them the run-around for an hour before they caught up.” Cobb was frowning, obviously displeased. “Arthur and I could probably have done this job ourselves.”
“Why don't we?” said Arthur, and privately, Eames thought, Please do.
“No. We could do it, but it'll go faster if we're able to just stick to the plan. It won't be as hard as I thought, either way, at least. Eames, a word.”
Eames was on the floor, quietly busying himself reeling in the lines, discarding the used needles and packing up the PASIV. He stopped.
“I'll join you,” said Arthur quickly.
“No, I want to talk to him alone. Eames.”
Eames got up with the resignation of a man about to face a firing squad. Arthur looked as though he was about to jump in again; Ariadne just gave him a helpless sort of good luck shrug. JJ wasn't even watching.
He followed Cobb out the door, and all the way down the stairs till they stepped outside into the side alley where Eames had just been sitting. Cobb frowned at the dented, tipped-over trash can, but must have decided to chalk it up to a rough neighbourhood, because he didn't comment.
“Look,” he said, and Eames hunched his shoulders, bracing for some form of dressing-down or twisted pep-talk. But Cobb seemed uncertain how to go on for a minute.
Eames broke the silence. “I just choked. It won't happen again.”
Cobb studied him. “Eames,” he said finally. He took a slow breath through his nose and looked down. “I don't want to give you the wrong impression.”
“What impression's that?”
“You're one of my oldest friends,” said Cobb. “I don't want you to think that this job is more important to me than you.”
Eames was astounded. Until now he would never have thought Cobb capable of stringing together those words in that order. Cobb turned slightly, squinted sidelong at him. He was obviously uncomfortable having this heart-to-heart.
“I brought you along because I honestly thought you could do this. But if you don't think you can -- even if you have any doubts -- just tell me. I can't and I won't make you do this. If you want to stop, say so. We can try again later, with a different job. I won't fire you from the team just because you have trouble with this one. Just so you understand.”
Eames digested all of this slowly. He really didn't think Cobb was being dishonest. In fact, Cobb was being honest, which must have been unfamiliar ground for him. Eames wasn't altogether sure what to make of it. In the end, he decided to go for honesty, too: that special brand of roundabout honesty he was so good at.
“Cobb,” he said, looking his employer in the eye. “You ought to know about me that I will do anything -- anything -- to get one more rapist shit off the streets. You know,” he said. “Just so that we understand each other.”
The corner of Cobb's lip quirked up slightly. He clapped Eames on the back bracingly, maybe to restore some of the manliness to this conversation, and went back inside.
Eames, however, chose to pull out a cigarette and wait outside until Arthur appeared. Very manly indeed.
+
They picked up take-away for supper. There was a brief squabble over which ethnicity of food to order and it was very domestic and sweet because Arthur was so adorable when he let his forehead get all scrunched up with annoyance, and they both ended up settling on Chinese food. Once they were actually back at their hotel room, sitting in uncomfortable square armchairs on either side of a table that was probably meant to be decorative, Eames found that he actually wasn't hungry at all.
They lapsed naturally into silence and both of them pushed food around with their forks for awhile. They were both fully capable of handling chopsticks, but it seemed unnecessary to do so when they were in New York City. Arthur was frowning into his bowl of lo mein, chin propped pensively on one hand.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Eames offered, after a long silence.
Arthur shook his head and sighed, blinking like he was waking up from a dream. “I hate this city.”
“Do you?” said Eames, surprised.
“It's so ... crowded and polluted and busy all the time.”
“Has anybody ever given you a real tour?” Eames asked. “I don't mean Empire State and the Statue of Liberty, I mean has anybody ever taken you to Greenwich Village or Magnolia Bakery or to a show on Broadway?”
Arthur's frown returned and he shook his head again.
“Then give New York a chance. You're so addicted to your job, Arthur. You experience cities out of airport terminals and dirty warehouses and cheap hotels. Live a little.”
“Right.” Arthur looked back down at his food.
They didn't speak again for about ten minutes. Arthur ate a little. Then he put down his fork.
“Did Cobb fire you when he pulled you aside today?”
“No,” said Eames. And, suddenly belligerant: “Why would he?”
Arthur looked at him narrowly. “You couldn't even go under.”
“I could have. I chose not to.”
“Right,” said Arthur, with mild scepticism.
“I choked a little. It was a one-off,” said Eames.
There was a loaded silence during which neither of them broke eye contact. It was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Room service,” Arthur mumbled, extricating himself from the armchair. “I ordered wine.”
There was no romance to the gesture when Eames knew full well that Arthur was only hoping it might help get him to sleep. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He resolved not to drink any.
He filched Arthur's wallet when the point man brushed past him, because it was easy and he was feeling spontaneous, wanting to do something to rattle Arthur's cage a little. Piss him off, even. Arthur opened the door and went to pay and had to search his pockets, finally turning to face a smiling Eames, who was waving Arthur's money in the air. Arthur strode over and snatched a few crumpled bills without saying anything, his jaw set firmly. He paid while Eames rifled through his various ID cards.
Just as the door shut Eames found one that made him whoop with laughter. “Arthur Cobb! That's your name when you're in the States?”
Arthur ground his teeth visibly and went to snatch the card, but Eames pulled it away.
“Did you two turn around and get married while I was in Mombasa? Is that what you did? Because I think you could do better, Arthur, I don't think he's your type--”
“Give it to me,” said Arthur, in his flat, ice-cold, serious-point-man voice. A hot flush had risen in his cheeks.
“Alright, you can have it,” said Eames, holding up the card carelessly. He was still grinning. “It's not as though I'll forget or stop tormenting you till the end of time for this. Arthur Cobb! What in God's name made you choose that?”
Arthur was breathing harder and Eames noticed something funny. It wasn't just that he was making Arthur angry. He was making Arthur -- embarrassed. Arthur grabbed back his wallet and started to stuff the card back inside, his hand trembling slightly like it would rather be hitting Eames in the face.
“It's my real name, okay?” he said in a low voice. “It's the closest thing I've got to one, anyway. I changed it.”
“But why on earth--?”
“I changed it because Cobb and Mal took me in when I was sixteen and I didn't want to keep my old name anymore. So. Cobb. There you go. It's hilarious, I know.”
Eames soaked in this new piece of information with interest. He sat back in his chair and considered.
“You know,” he mused thoughtfully, when it appeared that Arthur was ready to move on and spare him the recriminations, “we've known each other for years now. We've been sharing a living space for nearly a year and you've seen me at my utter worst, and yet I feel I still don't know the first thing about you.”
Arthur was settling himself back into his chair. His lips thinned. “Do you need to?”
Eames considered again and shook his head. “No. Keep your secrets if you'd like. At least one of us ought to have some.”
Arthur looked relieved -- until Eames went on, “You're quite close to Cobb, aren't you?”
“He's like a brother to me,” said Arthur tersely, refusing to look up. “I owe a lot to him.”
“You'd do about anything for him, wouldn't you?”
“About anything, yes.”
Arthur squinted up at him guardedly. Eames said, “Did he tell you not to forewarn me that he was going to put me in a dream designed to trigger me, or did you decide that on your own?”
Arthur's face became shuttered. “Eames.”
“Just for curiosity's sake.”
“I didn't know ...”
“Ariadne told me. She didn't know he was setting me up, but she at least told me.”
“Right.” Arthur scrunched up his napkin and threw it into his bowl of lo mein, and glared at him. “She told me something, too, a little while ago. She said all your lunch dates were shared dreaming sessions to help you get back on track.”
“I'm sorry, pet, this annoys you somehow ...?”
“Let me ask you something,” Arthur said in a hard tone. “And I want you to be honest with me, Eames. No skipping around the question. Don't try to bullshit me. Honest.”
Eames leaned forward. “Fire away.”
“When you backed out today. Was it because you didn't want to go under with me?”
Eames had frozen up until the very end of that sentence. Every muscle loosened and he sat back, both eyebrows raised, hiding his relief.
“You're absurd,” he said curtly. “Absurd and self-centered.”
“You'll share dreams with Ariadne every week. You'll do it with Cobb just because he asks. But not me.”
“You never asked,” Eames pointed out.
“I just,” said Arthur, with mounting frustration. “I don't understand why you went to her. You know what, McAvoy's right. She's practically a kid and this is fucked-up stuff we're getting into. She hasn't even been doing this for that long. And you asked her for help.” If Eames didn't know better, he'd start to swear that Arthur sounded hurt. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. Arthur looked down again and said, “You asked her, and not me.”
“Maybe,” said Eames quietly, “I don't care what she thinks of me.” He tilted his head. “You are jealous, aren't you? You actually are. And she isn't even the one I trust enough to share a bed with every night. Although maybe,” he added lewdly, “she should've been from the start.”
He knew by the way Arthur's gaze snapped to the floor and his expression clouded over that his comment had found its mark. “That's not what we're talking about.”
“Alright. Fine. My backing out today had nothing to do with you, you petty thing. Are you satisfied?”
“Somehow, no.” Arthur frowned. Now Eames knew he was hurt. He ducked his head. “I just wish you didn't feel like you have to hide things from me.”
“You're the one person I don't hide anything from. Arthur--” He was reaching across the table and Arthur leaned into his touch, let Eames cradle his face in one hand before he seemed to know what he was doing. His eyelids fluttered and Eames stroked a thumb over his cheek, holding him there. “We don't talk about this, do we?”
“No,” Arthur whispered. “Would it help?”
“No.”
Arthur looked relieved. Eames shut his eyes, pulled his hand away.
“You still have nightmares,” Arthur said. Eames laughed bitterly.
“There'll always be nightmares.”
Arthur looked bleakly down at their food, which was turning cold and congealing. “You should eat.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“I don't think you can do this job.”
It was an unexpected slap in the face.
Eames let the words hang in the air between them for a moment. He considered them. Then he shoved his armchair away from the table and got up.
“Fuck you, darling,” he said lightly, and disappeared into the bathroom. It was the last word they exchanged that evening.
+
Eames woke up.
It was momentarily disorienting. He shoved at the sheets in alarm.
“Stop it. You're doing it again,” Arthur complained softly in the dark. Eames felt Arthur's hands press his arm down, reassuringly warm. He stilled and relaxed. “Crawling all over me, you're worse than a cat,” Arthur chided him gently.
Eames turned his head so that he could feel Arthur's breath tickling his nose, and let himself be comforted. He couldn't remember what he'd been dreaming about and that in itself was scary. Eames was trained to remember every detail. He never forgot a dream. His agitation returned. He pulled away from Arthur and searched for his totem, fumbling in the dark. On the other side of the bed, Arthur switched a lamp on and Eames found the poker chip on the bedside table. He grabbed it and ran his thumb over it, still not entirely convinced he wasn't dreaming. It could be his own dream. He gulped for breath.
“Here.” Arthur was suddenly at his side, pressing something into his hand. The die.
Eames rolled it on the surface of the table. Six up. Reality.
“Thanks.”
Arthur retrieved the die and returned to his own side of the bed. He switched off the lamp. “Come here.”
Eames moved closer and Arthur wrapped a loose arm around him. He didn't seem angry after their exchange. All those things that happened during the day were forgotten in the face of Eames' night terrors. Eames inhaled the smell of him and wanted to drown in it.
“Do you want anything?” Arthur asked him.
Eames couldn't say why all of his insides suddenly seemed to be tying themselves in knots.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. He shut his eyes tightly. “I want you to fuck me.”
Arthur didn't say anything right away. He started to slide his arm away. Eames grabbed him by the wrist.
“Please,” he said.
“We've been over this,” said Arthur quietly. “I'm not going to.”
He tried to move back to his side of the bed. Eames gripped his wrist tighter and pulled him closer.
“You have to want this too,” he said. His eyes were starting to adjust to the dark. Arthur was so close that their lips were almost brushing. Eames leaned in and let his lips just graze Arthur's ear as he growled softly, “Tell me it isn't driving you mental, too, Arthur, because I know it is. I know.”
He heard Arthur swallow. His own stomach was churning.
“Please,” Eames whispered, starting to push Arthur onto his back so that he could move over him. “Don't feel guilty, Arthur. We're two adults in our right minds. I'm asking you to fuck me.” His mouth was so dry. Something was wrong. “Don't make me beg.”
“Eames. Get off me.”
But he wasn't fighting back. Eames slid a knee over Arthur's leg and settled it between his thighs.
“I need this.”
“I don't. I want you to get off me,” said Arthur steadily.
“No you don't,” Eames breathed against his lips. “You want this, Arthur, you've wanted it for a very long time. I want to feel you inside me, I want you to fuck me until I pass out. That's all I want.”
Arthur jerked away from him without warning. He managed to slip out of Eames' hold and retreat to his own side of the bed.
“You have to stop,” he said, and the low quaver in his voice told Eames that he was scared. Arthur, scared.
Good. That made two of them.
He felt possessed -- he didn't know what was compelling him to crawl across the bed and reach out to lay a hand on Arthur like he'd die if they weren't touching. The heat of Arthur's body sent sparks through the nerve endings in his fingertips. He had Arthur crowded up against the edge of the bed now and he could feel Arthur shiver wherever Eames touched him; he could hear Arthur's breathing coming fast.
“I want you.” He was gripping Arthur's arm tight enough to bruise it. He wanted to stop; he wanted this never to end. “I want you. So fucking bad, Arthur, it hurts--”
“Eames, stop, please--”
Arthur's breath hitched sharply as Eames began to settle between his legs again and his very hard, very obvious erection brushed Eames' thigh.
Eames' lips curled into a sad smile.
“Well.”
“Get off,” Arthur gritted out. He raised an arm to try and shove Eames away but Eames caught his hand easily and pinned it to the bed; then leaned down and pressed his lips to Arthur's. They were kissing now -- Arthur was trying to stay still and quiet but he made a startled sound when Eames bit his lower lip, trying to entice him into it. Eames pressed his thigh down and ground it steadily over Arthur's groin, and Arthur's hips twitched upward of their own accord. Eames was simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the response Arthur's body was having to him.
“Stop,” Arthur repeated weakly, trying to turn away, repulsed.
“You want this, Arthur. You want me. Look at yourself.”
At these words, something in Arthur seemed to steel itself. Eames shifted his weight and Arthur seized the opportunity to wrest free, throw him over and straddle him in the same fluid motion. He moved like chain lightning; Eames didn't know what had hit him.
“This is what you want, Eames?” Arthur hissed, reaching a hand between Eames' legs to grip him through his boxers. “Really?”
Eames remembered two things distinctly about the second or two that followed:
The brightness of Arthur's eyes, so close in the dark, and how they widened fractionally when he touched Eames and found no erection there, no hardness, no trace of arousal at all. And then the cracking sound of Eames' fist connecting with Arthur's face.
Then he was in the corner.
There was nothing in between to connect the two things, he was simply facing the corner all of a sudden. He was on his knees, each knee touching a wall, his head bowed like a child in time-out.
He heard rustling sounds behind him, the bedsheets as Arthur reorganized. And Arthur's voice:
“Shit.”
A long pause, and an even quieter, “Shit.”
Mattress springs creaked. Arthur seemed to be at a loss.
He said, “Shit.” And: “I'm so sorry. Eames. I'm so sorry.”
Eames stayed in the corner with his eyes shut, retreating on himself.
“Eames.”
He heard Arthur leave the bed and then silence.
“Fuck,” he said. “Please say something.”
If he didn't move he could almost fall right through the wall.
“I don't know what just happened. I'm sorry. Eames ...”
Eames heard all these things without really hearing them; he was already gone. Arthur could have grabbed and shaken him and probably even thrown him down and fucked him then and there on the floor if he really wanted to and Eames wouldn't care because he would just be gone.
Arthur paced around him, like a yo-yo, moving as close as he dared and then withdrawing, no way of knowing if Eames' eyes were open or if he was even still breathing.
Finally he left. The tiny, frail part of Eames' mind that was still there accepted that he would be back, but most of Eames was just gone away because that was the only thing that could make his body continue to breathe and let his fractured mind survive this scene intact.
+++
It should have been physically impossible, but Eames knew it wasn't, because he was doing it. If anyone had bothered asking his opinion before now (why would anyone ever ask his opinion?) whether he thought he could deep-throat the man in the white suit he'd have said no. But nobody ever asked him anyway and people continued to surprise him with the situations they dreamed up for him.
That it was Charlie's blond hair the man was gripping viciously tight and Charlie's eyes streaming water was semantics, because it was still Eames' throat he was fucking without respite and it was Eames who could scarcely breathe. Eames who was kneeling on the floor of the casino and whose projections were milling about or watching with open disgust because they were long past the point of trying to defend his subconscious anymore. Even he'd given up on himself.
The man grunted and came in long, hot spurts and Eames had to swallow all of it. And then -- finally -- finally -- he was drawing away, zipping up his pants, and leaving Eames gasping noisily for breath and dry heaving, not daring to vomit because if he did he'd have to eat it off the floor. His projections lost interest and wandered away.
When he'd managed to start breathing normally again -- it hurt, everything hurt -- he began to numbly wipe the saliva from his chin and the come from the corners of his mouth, and the tears from his cheeks. They were just part of the gag reflex, but Eames didn't like the man seeing them anyway.
“Good, Charlie.” That hateful broad hand was sweeping down the side of his face, cupping his chin. “That was good.”
Eames concentrated on breathing and tried to tell himself that this was happening to somebody else. It was never successful.
“I like to reward good things.” He used both hands to tilt Eames' face up toward him. “Would you like me to take you away from here? You'd like to go someplace else, wouldn't you?”
Eames' heart constricted and he nodded pleadingly. Yes, yes. He wanted to leave this hotel. He wanted that more than anything. But he wasn't allowed to speak. That was something the man had impressed upon him the first time he'd revisited Eames. That was the rule.
Not, apparently, this time.
“Say it,” the man said. “I want to hear you say it.”
Oh. It was cruel. There was no possible way Eames could coax his bruised and swollen throat into forming words, no physical way.
“Say it,” the man urged him. “Do you want it?”
“Yes,” he rasped. He had to force his throat to work. It hurt terribly.
The man waited.
“Please.” Eames' voice cracked.
The man stroked a hand soothingly through his hair. “Close your eyes,” he said. Eames did. “Open your mouth.”
He did that too. He saw no alternative.
“Good, Charlie.”
Then the gun slotted itself inside his mouth and went off.
+
He should have woken up but he didn't. He never did, no matter how many times he died in the dreams. He'd given up trying to keep track of them. Maybe it was like riding an elevator, down each level till he got to the third and then back up again. Or maybe all of it was limbo, and he was just waking up over and over again in the exact same dream.
The difference this time was that he wasn't in his own dream anymore.
He'd never seen this hotel room before. It was big enough to be someone's small apartment and two of the walls had big windows wrapping around them, almost floor-to-ceiling, facing a beach and a blue ocean. The room was full of light. He could hear the waves and practically smell the salt water from here.
He feasted upon the vision. It was simple. It didn't even have doors, not even for the attached bathroom. But it was new.
And his throat hurt a little less. That was nice.
“You like it, don't you?” his companion said. Eames nodded, and the man patiently let him explore the whole room with childlike curiosity before shoving him down on the bed.
+
After the fourth week or so the novelty of a new setting had long worn off and by the eighth, he hated that room more than any of the ones back at his own dreamscape. It was a cage. Now and then the man disappeared and Eames couldn't tell if that was worse or better.
Sometime around the twelfth week he managed to get his hands on the man's gun and he pushed it, shaking, into his stomach, but he hesitated too long, and just then the man came awake and gently took the weapon from his hands and pulled him down and kissed him on the forehead like Eames meant something to him. Even though he meant nothing, nothing at all.
+
After maybe sixteen weeks, while the man was in the bathroom, briefly, Eames tried to drop his disguise. Just for a second. He hated Charlie's skin. Disgusting.
He couldn't do it.
He didn't know what was happening to him. He was breaking like an old toy. He didn't even know who he was anymore.
The cramps in his abdomen were constant, as was the blood that seeped from his rectum.
+
There was no way for him to keep track of the days anymore. He might have been down there six months or twelve, though it was probably much closer to the former. It was hard to tell because he spent so little time sleeping, except when the man was gone, and because he'd started noticing a pattern: For some time now, usually in the middle of some painful sex act, he'd started removing himself mentally, retreating to whatever last hiding place he had left in his muddled consciousness. Now, it was like he would blink and suddenly be some other place in the room, doing something else.
He was losing time in greater and greater chunks.
He thought it was something wrong with the dream, at first. Maybe the drugs. But his companion never seemed to notice, and Eames began to realize: it was him. He was so overwhelmed that when some familiar panic triggered him, he would literally shut down. It was the last thing his abused mind could do for him.
It terrified him.
He didn't want to be awake during the rapes, remembering all the details like he was trained to do, but he didn't want to be completely absent and at his tormentor's mercy either. He knew he couldn't be falling comatose -- the man in the white suit would have had something to say about that -- but he couldn't imagine what he was doing, every time he lost another period of time. Just lying there, pliant and submissive, obeying all orders like a good boy? It was, somehow, even worse to think about than him being conscious and allowing it to happen anyway.
He was scared his mind would leave for good one day and he wouldn't even exist except as a shell for people to fuck.
The man in white kissed him, once, on the lips, and he thought, impossibly, of Arthur. He tried to picture what Arthur's lips looked like and how they'd feel against his. What had once been a frequent fantasy was just a hazy memory now. He couldn't remember. Sometimes, in snatches, he'd remember the shade of Arthur's hair, or the colour of his eyes, or the precise deftness that was his hands. But he could never quite piece them all together to form a solid picture. Still, he clung on ferociously. He was losing himself. He couldn't lose Arthur, too, not even when he forgot why it was so important to remember.
+
“You've been a little distant lately, Charlie.”
That was all the warning Eames got before his hands were bound to the bed and he was blindfolded, and the man's heavy weight was pinning his legs firmly to the bed. He was clothed; Eames wasn't.
“The restraints and blindfold are only for your safety,” the man told him. “I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself.”
Eames' heart raced like a rabbit trying to escape from his chest. He didn't try to dislodge the blindfold or struggle. He knew that wouldn't work. It was easiest to just go quiet and let them do what they needed to do and then leave. Only heroes in storybooks can fight forever.
He braced himself for great pain, but instead, the man wrapped his hand around Eames' cock and gave a gentle tug. He jacked Eames slowly, gently, and it took some time now, but before long he was hard and leaking. Eames was breathing hard, waiting for him to finish playing his games.
“Don't move, now.”
The hand went away. Something else stroked up the side of his cock, teasingly. It was cold. Eames twitched.
“I said don't move.”
It trailed up to the tip of his cock and dragged over the slit. The shackles scraped and clattered against the bed with a compulsive shudder when Eames felt it probe inside him.
“Charlie.” A warning.
Now would be a good time to blank out, he thought wildly.
The probe slid into his cock. With his eyes covered everything felt five times worse. It felt too wide. Too long. Did not belong there. It was cold and alien and his body couldn't stand it being there and there was nothing, nothing he could do.
The man gave it a little twist and dragged it up a little and Eames nearly bit his lip through to keep from howling. Instead he let an agonized groan escape him. All his nerves felt traitorously hypersensitive, magnifying every slide and pull of the probe. It was not pleasurable. It wasn't meant to be. Even if it were, this was something Eames doubted he'd consider doing even with a partner he trusted, if such a thing existed--
And at that thought, for half a second, his mind flickered inexplicably to that memory called Arthur--
He was shivering, breaking out in a freezing cold sweat. The man wrapped a hand tightly around his cock to feel the rigidness of the probe in there and, forgetting himself, Eames choked out, “S-stop--”
“No talking, Charlie.”
His voice was sharper. The probe slid deeper, deeper than Eames would have imagined was possible. His body was clenched so tensely it was painful. Only long, long practise held him in place, but he couldn't stop gasping for breath, trying to turn his head and muffle the sound in his shoulder. He thought he'd be sick. He hadn't felt so horrifyingly awake in weeks. Eames had suffered many things down here, but he'd never been violated for violation's sake. He could scarcely wrap his head around it.
The probe went even deeper, slip-sliding like it was fucking him where no one was meant to fuck him, and it sent a bolt of agony through every nerve in Eames' body.
“Stop,” he pleaded, the word falling out involuntarily.
The man hit him. Then he twisted the probe brutally and yanked Eames' cock in an iron grip--
Eames' vision went black, wiping out the traces of light he could see through the blindfold. When he came back to himself a few seconds later he was still covered in sweat, still shivering feverishly, and it was over, he'd survived, the probe was gone and his wrists were being released. The blindfold came off last.
Eames had never seen so much of his own blood at once.
“You moved,” the man told him, with flat disappointment.
He vomited. He couldn't help it. The man struck him, close-fisted this time, hard enough to knock him right off the bed. He followed Eames onto the floor with a vicious kick and finally, recognizing a threat, Eames' brain shut off and turned perfectly static.
He didn't like anybody touching him there anymore. He hated it.
But nobody paid any attention to his boundaries anyway.
Including, as it turned out, Arthur.
That hurt worse than anything.
+++
When he came back Arthur was in the room again. The lights were on. He felt stiff. He blinked and pulled his head back from the wall.
“Eames,” said Arthur, sounding half relieved, half scared.
He sat back and took stock, quietly.
“Drink some water,” said Arthur. “Next to you,” he added.
Eames looked down and saw a glass of water on the carpet within arm's length of him. It had small, melted ice cubes in it and condensation all over the glass. He touched it, picked it up and drank to rid himself of the taste in his mouth.
“Eames, I ... I don't know what to say to you. I don't know what happened. I'm so sorry. I never meant for ...” Arthur's voice became small and tired. “I didn't mean to scare you.”
“Yes, you did.” Eames swallowed an ice cube. He felt it burn all the way down his throat. “That's exactly what you meant to do.”
“No,” Arthur protested, exhausted.
“Yes.”
Eames turned on his knees to face him. Arthur was sitting in one of the uncomfortable armchairs, hunched over, his hands knotted in his lap, far away from Eames' personal space but not blocking the exit because Arthur knew him better than anyone.
“You wanted to scare me because you wanted to prove a point.”
“I ... no, I ... no,” said Arthur weakly. “No. That's not it at all ...” But his conviction was dwindling.
“And I'm glad you did it, Arthur.” Something sharp as flint was creeping into Eames' tone. So many emotions were warring inside him, fury and hurt and humiliation, he couldn't tell which one stood out most strongly. The words came out thickly. “You proved it. You were right all along. I'm not ready to have sex with you, I never was, and -- I don't think I ever will be. I don't know why I thought I was ready for it. I'm just not.”
His voice broke.
“I don't think I can be with you, Arthur.”
“I don't care,” Arthur whispered. He was pale. “I don't care about sex, Eames, I don't.”
“I want you to be my partner,” said Eames. “Not my baby-sitter. But you're never going to be that.” He swallowed hard. “And I don't trust you.”
Arthur looked like Eames had hit him in the gut. Shock skated across his features and it was followed by unmistakeable devastation.
Eames had to look away, because he'd never seen such candid emotion on Arthur's face before and it made him uncomfortable. He drained the last of the water, then stood up and found his clothing from the day before, which he'd tossed to the carpet as usual because he knew Arthur would be compelled to fold it up and put it back in his suitcase in the morning, except not this morning. He got dressed. Arthur didn't say anything.
“I'm sorry I pushed you to that,” said Eames, when he was fully clothed again. He paused. “I'm leaving.”
“You can't.”
“I can, and I'm going to.”
He was almost at the door when Arthur scrambled to his feet and said, “Wait!”
The stark desperation in the word made Eames stop. He waited without turning around.
And after a long, silent struggle for words, all Arthur could come up with to make him stay was a soft, “Please.”
“I'll collect my things sometime tomorrow. I'm going to do this job because I told Cobb I would, and then I'm going to book the next flight to Mombasa and go home. Don't feel badly because I pushed you, Arthur. You knew this was going to happen eventually. I'm too dependant on you and I can't be, anymore. It isn't healthy. For either one of us.”
“I don't care,” said Arthur helplessly.
“Yes, you do, because you care about me.”
Eames opened the door. He hesitated, and bowed his head against the doorframe, closing his eyes tiredly.
“I love you, whatever that's worth now,” he said, and left.
He hoped it hurt like hell.
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