A Bad Dream, pt. six
Title: A Bad Dream
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~9000
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: Language, noncon, sexing
Author's Note: Ohmygod I'm so sorry this part is so long. But watch carefully! This is where I start to tape their hearts back together!
part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part seven, part eight, part nine.
+
Useless, Eames thought bleakly of himself, staring out a cracked window at the building opposite. It was already dark out. Utterly fucking useless.
Arthur and Cobb were arguing on the other side of the room. JJ had already hurried off to discuss things with McAvoy. Ariadne was sitting in a chair, small and innocent and young and scared, absorbing it all.
“We're not fucking profilers, Cobb, and even profiles are never perfect! Eames and I looked at every possible angle, he had the forgery perfect, there's no way we could have anticipated this--”
“I don't understand,” said Cobb, loud and angry, “we already took her into his dream once before and the projections didn't react like that--”
“Because we were running around and hiding from his security before, I don't know, we were in plain sight this time with his normal projections, that's why they only noticed now--”
Eames heard a violent scrape of chair legs against the floor as Cobb dropped into the chair at his desk and buried his face in his hands.
“You're sure,” he said wearily. “Are you absolutely sure of what happened.”
“It was eerie, Cobb.” Eames' own voice was hoarse. “I've never seen anything quite like it.”
“What if that's all the proof we need, then?” Ariadne spoke up suddenly. “I mean ... they wouldn't react like that if he wasn't ...”
She trailed off.
“Well, Arthur.” The chair creaked as Cobb turned to his point man. “You're the one who has to put the bullet in him. Is that proof enough for you?”
Arthur's lips thinned, and his eyes snapped to Eames' for a fleeting instant. And Eames didn't know, either. Ariadne resembled Ford's slain girlfriend. Grief had done stranger things to projections. Cobb was a perfect example of that.
It was Eames who broke the silence.
“We have to call this job off. I ... Arthur was right from the start. It isn't our business.”
“Exactly,” said Arthur. “We're in way over our fucking heads here and we have been from the start. We have to stop this, Cobb.”
They were both staring hard at Cobb, who was looking more and more uncomfortable. It would have warmed Eames to be back on Arthur's side -- except that the point man had put all his armour back on, taking Eames' false inception attempt to heart. He was just as closed off and unreachable as he had been the day before, no trace that anything had happened between them but a second IV line abandoned on the floor when Eames woke up. And Eames was glad, in the very base of his stomach where he still allowed himself to feel anything for Arthur.
“Hey,” said Ariadne unexpectedly, hesitantly. “Doesn't my opinion count?”
“Go ahead,” Cobb told her.
“I want to do this.” Her lips were trembling but her voice was firm. “These girls got killed, and -- I want to help.”
“Out of the question,” said Arthur sharply. Her cheeks flushed an angry red.
“If Eames can do it, so can I. You guys wanted bait, well -- here I am.”
“I can't stop Eames from doing what he wants no matter how idiotic he's being. Whatever I think, he's done this before and he knows how to handle himself in a dream. You don't.”
“I can handle myself just fine!” she argued. “I'm an adult, Arthur. If Eames gets to decide he wants to do this, I should be able to, too!”
“You can forge her,” said Cobb, looking past Ariadne at Eames. “Can't you?”
“No!” Arthur shouted. “Why are we even still discussing this!”
“Because neither of you can forge, and neither of you look like me,” said Ariadne shakily, still angry. “Eames and I are the only two who can do this job, and that just drives you crazy because you don't think we could ever handle it. Cobb,” she entreated the extractor. “Tell him. Tell him he has no right to stop me if I want to do this.”
Cobb pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger, squeezing his eyes shut. He looked just like a concerned father as he said, “She's right, Arthur.”
Arthur strode straight up to the desk and planted his hands on it, staring Cobb in the eyes.
“I would do anything for you,” he said emphatically. “You know this.”
“I know.”
“And you trust me, don't you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why haven't you listened to a single word I've said since we agreed to take this job,” Arthur ground out between his clenched teeth. “Cobb, if you trust my judgement at all -- let us walk away from this.”
Cobb got to his feet so abruptly that his chair was sent skidding out behind him.
“You listen to me, Arthur,” he growled, and the effect was admittedly impressive: he seemed to tower over Arthur, and Eames hadn't seen too many men stand up to the brunt of Cobb's temper when he lost it. Not even the point man. “You think my judgement's skewed? Take a good look at yourself. Fourteen months ago there was no job you wouldn't take. You've become so obsessed with concern for Eames that you won't even consider the possibility of danger. You've completely lost sight of the fact that there are seven teenaged girls dead right now, and we're the only people that can prevent an eighth. This is my team and my call. Back off.”
It was like watching two hackling wolves in a display of dominance posturing. For a few moments Arthur stared back at him inscrutably, eyes narrowed. But, at last, he dropped his gaze to the floor and let himself take a step back from the table, plainly defeated.
“Ariadne, it's your choice,” said Cobb, allowing some of the stiffness to leave his shoulders. “You know the risks.”
“I don't agree with this,” Eames broke back into the conversation. Cobb flicked a brief glance at him.
“You didn't care when it was you on the line.”
“Yes, well,” said Eames tersely, “we've seen the type of thing I can come back from. If something goes wrong, there's no saying what he'll do to Ari.”
“I'm sick of this manly bullshit,” said Ariadne suddenly. “And I don't need it. I don't care what Arthur says, I can hold my own in a dream. Even if it goes wrong. Even though I'm a girl. I can do this, and I will.”
“I know you can,” said Cobb softly, and it struck Eames that he knew what Cobb was thinking -- what he and Arthur were thinking, too. All at once it was the three of them trying to talk Mal out of some dangerous scheme, but the fire in her eyes would not be quenched and when they inevitably gave in to her and Mal went to work, there was no stopping her. She navigated the dreamworld like an artist, a dancer, a poet; like a dreamer; so full of passion that they were all at least a little in love with her.
Eames could see a little of her in Ariadne now, in the angry set of her jaw and the brightness of her eyes. He knew Arthur could too, because neither of them had any protest left in them, and for a second, their eyes met. He wondered if they were thinking the same thing. Arthur's eyes widened slightly, and he began to shake his head minutely. Eames looked away again.
Ariadne grabbed up her bag off a nearby table and started to walk away. “I'll be back for work tomorrow, and I'll start working on my defensive dreaming. I hope I'll see all three of you here, too.”
She left. Arthur packed up the PASIV in silence and followed suit.
“I'll never forgive you if she gets hurt, Cobb,” Eames vowed. Cobb chuckled humourlessly and didn't meet his eyes.
“I'm still having trouble forgiving myself for letting you get hurt.”
Eames walked out. At the base of the building, outside the door, Arthur was waiting there.
“I love you,” he said, when Eames stepped outside. There was an urgent, unreadable look in his eyes. “You know that, don't you?”
Eames could almost see the gaping chasm that yawned between them. It was insurmountable. They would never be able to reach all the way across it. Every fibre of him ached and yearned for Arthur, and he would never again be able to just reach out and touch him. Why, he thought brokenly, couldn't you have just said that a year ago.
He'd spent roughly five years in that terrible dream and this, here, now, felt like hell. He tried to imagine spending one more night like this -- one more day in which Arthur moved just outside his reach, and Eames let him get further and further away -- and he couldn't. He was so exhausted.
“Don't do this to me, Arthur,” he managed to force out jaggedly, and walked into the street to flag a taxi. Arthur just stood there and watched as he got inside and it pulled away.
+
Eames had three things in the bed with him: a notepad, a pen, and a gun.
He'd written, Dear Arthur, but he didn't like that. It sounded too impersonal. He scratched it out impatiently, tore off the paper and tried again:
Arthur
It seemed like a good start, but he had no idea how to go on. He'd never had to write anything like this before, nor had he ever expected he would. “Sorry for blowing my brains out, hope you're well”?
“Really pathetic,” he told himself fervently, and suddenly, he felt embarrassed. He tore off the new sheet and crumpled it up, too, with a great sigh. He wondered, shame lapping at him, what Mal would think of him, undoubtedly because he'd been thinking of her earlier. Promptly he remembered that that was no good because Mal had gone and bloody killed herself, too, after all.
So he thought instead of what a bleeding emotional wreck Arthur had allowed himself to be, just for a day or two, after the funeral was over and Mal was in the ground and gone for good, for ever. It was the first time Eames had ever seen him lose control before. And then the point man had pulled it together, wrapped up his grief with all the edges tucked in and put it away because Cobb needed him in Milan, and Eames never saw him like that again.
Eames had ached so powerfully for the young man then.
He sighed and put down the pen and paper. He probably couldn't do this to Arthur. Try and compartmentalize something this big again and the point man just might explode. He couldn't have any room on that shelf inside him, where he kept all his emotions for him to take out at his leisure, for more grief.
Eames tossed the gun away. He hadn't really been that motivated anyway. He tried to start telling himself that things would get better than this, that it always looked darkest just before dawn, that he'd feel differently when the sun came up, various optimistic platitudes, et cetera, et cetera. He wasn't feeling any of them, though.
All he really wanted was to get some sleep.
He chucked the pen and paper at the wall, heard them hit with two satisfying smacks, and shut his eyes. He just needed to sleep. He would feel better, if he could only manage to get some fucking sleep.
To his astonishment, he did.
This time, he remembered his dream.
+++
Immediately after being violated with the probe and summarily beaten by the man in the white suit, Eames woke up sprawled on the floor of the casino. He was still in Charlie's skin, in the frayed clothes he adorned Charlie in when he had occasion to, and he was alone. He'd never been so glad to see that fucking casino and hear the whirring slot machines.
Seven days in, he was nearly out of his mind. This dream wasn't designed to be occupied by only one person. There was nothing for him to do. He'd had respites like this before, but that was before he'd gotten so entrenched in the mire of this place. He had no idea what to do with himself anymore.
One day he came quite unexpectedly upon the room he'd secretly left for himself. He opened the door and Arthur's scent hit him like a tidal wave, awash with memories. He shut the door and curled up on the bed, and for the first time in many months, he had a long, restful sleep.
It was nearly two weeks before another person appeared, not a projection, and handed him a stack of new identities to forge, and he remembered how he was much better off alone after all.
The new flood of clients to paw at and fuck him was ceaseless, and he started losing time again, and consequently, when, several months later, Eames had to slip into Charlie's skin like a worn, faded old hoodie and was met on the steps outside the hotel by the man in the white suit, he experienced an odd, unfamiliar strangled feeling in his throat.
“Did you miss me?” the man asked.
Eames started to nod and the man caught his chin.
“I want you to answer me when I ask you a question, now.”
“Yes,” said Eames. “I missed you.”
The man inhaled and exhaled slowly, studying him.
“You're so good, Charlie,” he murmured, and that strangled feeling in Eames' throat became a burgeoning in his chest. This was somebody with whom he knew the rules: be good and get rewarded. Do wrong and suffer fit punishment. It was so blessedly simple he could weep. This wasn't somebody who would look for excuses to beat him or attack him. Their last encounter wouldn't have happened like that if he had only been able to keep his fucking head together and his mouth shut.
He was glad to see the man in the white suit. It was impossible, unbelievable, but Eames was happy he was there.
“Close your eyes.”
He did, and the bullet that tore through his skull and yanked him away from that dream was like a benediction.
As soon as he found himself in the seaside apartment, he started tugging at his clothes, fumbling nervously to pull them off. He knew the rules. The man joined him and tossed a bottle of lubricant onto the bed before starting to gracefully shed his own clothing. Dropping onto the bed, Eames slicked a couple of his fingers and reached down to prepare himself. The other man caught him by the wrist, stopping him, and poured some lube over his own fingers. He slipped one, thick and blunt, into Eames without preamble and Eames had to bite his lip and force himself not to move away from the dull scrape of nails when a second finger was added.
“Do you want me to fuck you?”
He was starting to remember the pain, the cramps, the bleeding.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
He knew the rules.
“I want you to fuck me.”
The man unexpectedly shoved him flat on his back on the bed, hitched up both his legs under the knees and thrust into him in one steady push, opening him before he was ready for it, not giving him any time to adjust. Eames bit his tongue and copper-sweet blood filled his mouth, nearly making him gag. He'd almost forgotten this, the brutal girth of him, the stretch and burn of his muscles, how every experience was a test of Eames' endurance, how long he could grit his teeth and sweat through it before he started trying to escape into his mind and ended up blinking out.
“Say it again.”
“I want you to f-fuck me.” His breath hitched and made the word nearly a sob.
“You're so good, Charlie,” the man purred, his stubbled cheek rasping the side of Eames' face. He started to move in Eames and Eames clawed fistfuls of the bedspread, wheezing for breath already. He was ready for this to be over and it had barely started yet.
The man fucked him.
“Spread your legs.”
He did, until the muscles seared.
“You're a fucking slut for me, aren't you?”
“Yes,” he choked.
The man wrapped heavy arms around him, a hot, breathing steel cage. Eames could feel the roll and flex of his every muscle. He was sinking into a rhythm, breath puffing against Eames' neck with every smooth, hard drive of his hips. And though Eames could still barely accommodate him, body stretched around a too-thick cock, he was starting to go numb, beginning to find it easier to just lie there without moving or whimpering. He was doing this and surviving and not blanking out. He concentrated on his breathing, so that the next time the man spoke -- “You like it like this, don't you?” -- he was able to force out, “Yes,” not in a whine or a wail.
He wasn't going to fuck up again. He'd learnt too hard a lesson for that.
But still it felt like a betrayal every time he let the word yes pass his lips.
The man was folding him in half -- his thighs ached -- he could barely breathe, he was being crushed -- and he realized, belatedly, that he was hard, as the man pulled one arm around and wrapped a hand around him. This realization had long ago ceased to bother him, since he knew it was all adrenaline, and not fuelled by any warped parody of pleasure. But the feel of that rough, confident hand on his cock made his entire body jerk and the breath catch in his lungs. He bit back the word no, the instant before it could escape him.
“Don't you like that?”
And he grated out, “Yes,” but his whole body screamed and pleaded stop, stop, stop.
He twisted his head aside and panted harshly into the coverlet, his eyes screwed shut, torn between the impossible agony of bone-jarring thrusts and the gentling of the hand on his cock. He honestly wasn't sure which was worse. He could feel the stress flooding his brain, panic buttons and flashing red lights, and clamped down on that, refusing to be overwhelmed. He found himself moving his hips, as best he could, into the rhythm the man had picked up, the sooner to bring himself off, and that felt like betrayal, too.
It was over blessedly soon; he came over the man's hand and his own stomach, biting his lip and sucking in heavy breaths he couldn't quite catch. And to his surprise, the other man was coming too, hilting himself inside Eames one last time and spilling himself in him for what felt like an eternity. That was the troubling thing about this man; he lasted too long, came too long; the only thing that didn't take too long was his refractory time, which could be seconds or minutes if Eames was lucky.
He was lucky this time. The man was pulling out -- Eames felt stretched-out, uncomfortably aware of the loss, and unclean -- and leaning away, finally affording Eames the chance to breathe. He just watched while Eames unclenched his muscles and relaxed a little, reminding himself once again that he'd been hurt but had survived. He didn't even think he was bleeding. That was a first. He caught his breath slowly.
His eyes flew open when the man wrapped a hand around his cock, soft and spent, again. He shook his head mutely, frantically.
Don't.
“You can do it,” the other murmured. “Relax. I'm going to make you feel good.”
Don't don't don't--
He felt ridiculously vulnerable. He was lying here, on his back, with the man who'd just fucked him, who was bigger and stronger than him, who surely intended to fuck him again, and all these things, Eames was almost used to. It was the hand stroking him, thumb rubbing repeatedly over the oversensitized head of his cock, that drove him out of his mind. He flashed to the way the man had gripped him punishingly tightly with that probe still obscenely buried in his cock, and broke out in a cold sweat, trying to squirm away. He was shaking, not ready for this, and not strong enough to fight back.
He was half hard again already. That hand was persistent. In silence he begged the man, begged himself, before at last resigning himself to it:
He was going to come again. And it was going to hurt.
His breath started to leave him in hissing gasps and when the man slid two fingers inside him again, dragging them over his prostate, he arched off the bed with a strangled keening sound. He clawed futilely at the sheets. That hand was moving faster, deft and precise, and he couldn't escape it, and at last Eames came with a cracked sob.
He was still sobbing when the man moved away, gulping for air, and he didn't care anymore. This man had already claimed every part of Eames' body, piece by piece. He may as well have Eames' tears, too.
“Charlie.” The man wiped off his hands on the sheets and returned, stroking his hair soothingly, pushing damp strands out of his eyes. “It's almost like you didn't enjoy that. You did, didn't you?”
“Yes,” Eames huffed out shakily, an obedient pet.
“You want me to fuck you again, don't you?”
“Yes.” He didn't even have to think about it. He knew what his role here was. “I want you to fuck me.”
That time, he bled.
He was so glad to be out of that other dream, the pain was like coming home.
+
He felt like he'd crossed some terrible boundary. It had been easier to think of this as rape, before, even though he'd been compliant and hadn't resisted, because in spite of that, his mind was still not willing. At least he'd had that.
This had turned into some gross parody of consensual sex. And he didn't even have the energy to feel angry anymore.
Every single time, it was the same: “Do you want me to fuck you?”
And Eames answered, over and over again: “Yes.”
If he didn't, the consequences were brutal. He only did that once; then it was yes every time. There was nothing else to say. He was broken, body and mind. Every response was automatic, almost unconscious. He lived in a sort of constant stupour. All the disgust, anger, self-hatred, hatred for the man in the white suit, had been buried so deep in him that he couldn't even reach it anymore.
He lived in the moment, all his feelings only skin-deep and superficial. When the man stroked his face and told him he'd done good, it felt like a small warmth in his chest. So he kept striving for that, tried to make himself perfect. He began to live for those tiny rewards and didn't even realize how pathetic that was. He had nothing else to live for but those moments. And the man noticed, and would reward him; sometimes a kiss on the forehead, a gentle hand on his scalp. Sometimes, he would run a hot bath and sit on the toilet seat and watch Eames soak away all the blood and dried semen and the ache in his muscles, dragging it out till the water was going cold. It had been years now and this was as good as it could possibly get for Eames, and he was aware of this, even when it hurt (and it hurt), even when he still felt like something huge was missing and wasn't sure he could spend another minute doing this.
Months went by. And then Eames was lying on the bed, recouping, and the man was slowly pulling his clothes back on, white suit impeccable as always, and he said, “Tell me about you.”
It wasn't phrased as a question and therefore didn't stimulate an automatic response. Eames just stirred, looking across at him.
“Talk to me about yourself.” Now it was an order, which demanded a response. “Where are you from?”
Eames already had an answer. “Newark, New Jersey.”
“Did you grow up there?”
“Yes.” He knew Charlie inside and out. He was still a forger -- whatever that meant now.
“Where did you go to school?”
“Rutgers.”
“And what were you studying?”
“Art history.”
“Tell me about that.”
Eames started to talk.
As he talked, he began to remember: he knew all of this. He knew art history. Not as well as he knew other things, but it was like holding a possession for the first time in years, something that belonged to him and was all his. And it suddenly felt very important for him to talk about it, every detail of what he knew. He wasn't stalling, because he knew that more sex was inevitable. He talked because when he talked about it, he could almost let himself get wrapped up in that world, so far away now, where he'd once upon a time imitated people not for sex, and he'd watched a painter for several days and memorized the way he walked and talked and looked and then set about learning everything he could about his trade. He remembered Arthur's dark eyes and the look of quickly-stifled surprise and delight in them when Eames drew political parallels between Goya's The Third of May 1808 and Picasso's modernist masterpiece Guernica. They'd sat on either side of a table outside a café in France and talked art and the normally guarded expression slowly faded from Arthur's face, and Eames had wanted to brush the croissant crumbs off his lower lip.
He talked about his favourite artists (Rembrandt, for the things he told and showed in his paintings, and Monet, for the things he didn't; the work of Kandinsky, on the other hand, he found unnecessarily loud and gaudy, more flamboyant decoration than representative of any of the ideas or emotions the artist tried to convey). He talked about the evolution of culture in art, the art of forging paintings, the imaginary thesis he'd been working on about Chagall as a pioneer of modernism. He talked about Van Gogh and Picasso, Raphael and da Vinci, and his love affair with each.
He talked until his voice was hoarse and cracking and he ran out of things to say. It was more than he'd spoken in years. He felt out of breath and satisfied in a strange, visceral way.
The man, dressed once again in his white suit, had listened in silence with his head slightly tilted, sometimes wandering around the room a little. Now he went into the bathroom. He returned with a glass of water. Eames took it and drank all of it, gratefully, feeling his throat relax.
“New Jersey, huh?” was all the man said, speculatively.
Eames nodded, licking his lips.
“Then why are you talking to me with an English accent?”
The bottom dropped out of Eames' stomach.
He'd fucked up. A fucking toddler wouldn't have made this mistake.
I am such a fool.
He opened his mouth to apologize, lie, explain, beg if he had to, but the man raised a hand. The words died in Eames' throat. There was ice in his veins.
The man stared at him hard for a long minute. Eames thought his heart might stop.
The words the man finally said were the last he expected to hear.
“Poor Charlie,” he sighed softly. “You have to be a lot of different people, don't you?”
It was the first time anyone had acknowledged that this was any kind of fantasy; that Eames was not solely theirs, that he'd been claimed by other people before they'd arrived and would be again after they were gone. He didn't know what else to do except nod slowly.
“I know.” The man's voice was sympathetic. He stroked a hand through Eames' hair, pushing stray strands off his face. “That's why I want to buy you.”
“Buy me?”
The man was nodding, smiling. “I'd just need another week up above to finalize it. Then I could take you home, Charlie. You'd be mine, nobody else's, ever again. Would you like that?”
The automatic yes was actually on Eames' tongue when another thought pushed itself unbidden into his mind, forceful and angry and almost unfamiliar.
If he was this man's and nobody else's, how would Arthur ever find him and rescue him?
He hesitated for too long. The man straightened up and let his hand drop back down to his side, turning away.
“I'm leaving.”
“Wait. No,” Eames blurted out when he started to walk to the dresser, where the gun was. He could not go back to the hotel. He knew how much he hated it here, but his fear of the hotel was so much worse; he'd rather the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty any day. “Yes! I'd like that.” Terror galloped through him -- the man was still walking away, fuck! “I want that. I want you-- Fuck me,” he said, and the words left him in a juddering rush.
The man stopped and half-turned, eyeing him inscrutably. Eames licked his lips again, scooted back and spread his thighs.
“Fuck me. I want you to.”
It was the first time he'd said it without being prompted. The words felt like broken glass in his throat. The man just stood and watched him and didn't move.
“Fuck me,” Eames pleaded, almost sobbing. “Please.”
The man crossed the room swiftly; before Eames could move he was being crushed to the bed, the breath squeezed out of his ribcage, knees bracketing his hips. The man kissed him hard enough to hurt, a crush of lips against lips, fumbling with his own belt and trousers and yanking them down just far enough to free his cock. He shoved Eames roughly onto his stomach and thrust in so hard that Eames yelped and he'd gotten what he wanted, so why was he still so terrified?
“You're so good,” the man growled into his neck, and Eames clamped his eyes shut and muffled his groans of pain in the mattress. “Such a good boy for me.”
There was no part of Eames' body that didn't hurt by the time the man saw fit to finish with him. His hips and thighs and arms and wrists were bruised, bite marks covered his shoulders and neck, blood trickled freely down his legs, and he couldn't say if it was tears or sweat making his cheeks so wet. Probably both. His traitorous mind had not let him leave, this time. For once, he wished it had.
The man stroked a hand down his back to the base of his spine. Eames flinched.
He'd served one purpose, at least. He was too wrung out now, mentally and physically, to be scared of going back to the hotel.
“I'll be back soon, Charlie,” the man told him. “Then you'll be mine. Don't worry.”
He was gone. Eames opened his eyes on the floor of the casino. Tilting his head stiffly, he could still see blood staining the inseam of Charlie's denim jeans.
+++
Eames' entire dream was a blurred jumble, fleeting sensations of pain and guilt and nausea, nothing like lucid dreaming. But when his eyes snapped open, he felt all of that melt away.
Jesus Christ.
He had to look around, look at the gun and pen and notepad on the floor, touch his totem over and over again to reassure himself that he was really awake. He knew he was, though. He'd brought something back with him.
What was it Cobb was always saying?
What is the most resilient parasite?
An idea. Resilient ... highly contagious.
It wasn't inception. Not quite. But someone had taken Eames dream-layers-deep and conditioned him to believe that all he had to do to get a positive reaction was ask to be fucked.
+
He started pacing.
He thought of how he felt about Arthur, and surmised that the part of him that lusted for the point man was, indeed, real; he was a human being and he still had a sex drive, that hadn't been taken away from him. But he thought about all the times he'd crawled over Arthur and begged for it, his heart leaping with fear and his mouth bone-dry all the while, wanting it and not wanting it with equal passion. And now it made sense.
He had never wanted Arthur to fuck him. His brain had told him as much, planting triggers like minefields, screaming back off when it got too far and driving him away. He just hadn't listened -- because deep down, some part of him was still terrified that Arthur would get tired of him and walk away if he didn't ask for it.
He fled the room.
In the hall he punched the down button for the elevator, but it was taking too long to get there, so he took the stairs, bounding down them two steps at a time. He reached the second floor and went straight to Arthur's door, knocking on it insistently. Nobody answered. He broke in.
Arthur, too, was obviously having trouble sleeping, but his solution was more elegant than Eames' gun. Eames found him in the bathroom, soaking in the jacuzzi tub, which was full of bubbles, with a glass of wine. Bubble baths were always Arthur's personal, secret cure for insomnia. He looked nearly ready to doze off, too, but his eyes snapped open when Eames appeared in the doorway.
“Eames,” he said sharply, startled.
“I know. Wait. Let me,” said Eames, out of breath, raising his hands placatingly. He crossed the room quickly and dropped to his knees at the side of the tub. “I have to tell you something.”
Arthur eyed him doubtfully. “You should go--”
“Wait,” said Eames again. “It's important, okay? Right. Listen.”
Arthur was looking more uncomfortable by the second, but he didn't move to throw Eames out, so Eames took a deep breath and went on:
“I've figured something out. And I know I've been a bastard to you, the past few days, and you don't have to forgive me if you don't want to, but I wanted to tell you anyway. See, I never wanted you to fuck me.”
“I know,” said Arthur quietly, eyes narrowing, sinking back into the water slightly.
“Yes,” said Eames emphatically, “you knew. You knew. I didn't know. And I tried to tell myself, and I even got pretty good at it, but something -- something here, I don't know, maybe just being in a hotel room again, for the first time--” Or fucking JJ, he thought, and forced that thought away, steering himself back to the present, here, now, with Arthur. He took another deep breath. “I thought I wanted that. I thought it because, when I was in that dream, that was the only way I could -- if I -- asked for it. That was the only way I could make things easier. Protect myself. I was just scared, all those times -- thought you'd leave me, or something. So I -- had to.”
There, he'd forced it out. Arthur knew how terribly he'd let himself down, now. Arthur didn't say anything; he just listened, his gaze fixed on Eames' face, his eyes dark and unreadable and intense.
“And I can't let you fuck me,” Eames went on in one breath. “I'm sorry, I'm not ready and I don't think I will be, maybe ever. But I still want you, Arthur. I have since I met you, and that's never changed. It's not you I don't trust. It's myself, because I'm just full of these -- these irrational behaviours, and it's not your fault, I just can't control it--”
“Eames,” said Arthur softly, cutting off his babbling.
“And I love you,” Eames said, gripping the side of the tub. “And I want another go at this. If you'll let me. Because I don't know what I can and can't do, Arthur, and I thought, well, if I have to learn all that, why don't I let you learn with me? How else will we know?”
“Eames.”
“You can say no. I know, it's an awful lot of baggage, and it isn't fair to make you shoulder it, but I just keep thinking how unfair it is that I want so badly to have sex with you, and I can't, because of what other people did, and if I don't start making new, better memories with you, I don't know that I ever will, because you're the only person I want. Arthur--”
He was out of breath. Arthur just studied him intently for a long moment. It had seemed very important to blurt all of this out before Arthur had the chance to stop him or tell him to leave, but now, in the silence that followed his declaration, he was starting to feel foolish.
“I'll go,” he said finally, sheepish, “if you want--”
“Eames,” Arthur said, and he was shifting around, reaching with a dripping hand for Eames' face, and their lips connected over the edge of the tub, both of them leaning into it. Arthur's other hand came up to his face, wet and firm, cradling him, and Eames licked his mouth open in a dizzying headlong rush, loving the way Arthur kissed him, like he'd never been gone at all.
Arthur's hands were at his shirt, tugging, and before Eames knew it he was clambering, sliding clumsily into the bathtub with a splash to kneel over him. The water sloshed violently up the sides of the tub and spilled onto the floor and Eames didn't care, didn't care that he was fully clothed and soaked now, because he was kissing Arthur and it was glorious.
“Eames,” Arthur breathed against his lips when they paused for breath, fingers curling into the front of Eames' shirt, “why didn't you ever just ask to fuck me?”
Such a simple solution, it took his breath away. Eames could hardly believe it. It was surely too good to be true.
But when he looked down into Arthur's blown pupils, tiny reflections of himself in each, he found himself nodding stupidly.
“Let's try that,” he managed to whisper hoarsely.
Then they were kissing again, Arthur's mouth yielding easily under his tongue, and he chased away the taste of white wine and searched for that flavour that was Arthur. With his hands he touched Arthur's face, his hair, utterly intoxicated by him, and felt he could have quite happily spent the rest of his life just kissing him like this.
It was at least five minutes before Arthur started squirming under his hips, murmuring something against his mouth. It took Eames a few seconds to notice.
“What?”
“--the bed, Eames, we can't do this in the bath--”
“Oh,” said Eames foolishly, “right.”
He stopped and pulled back with an effort, and if he'd thought Arthur was adorable when he was annoyed, it was nothing on Arthur when he looked like this, soggy and mussed and flushed, licking his swollen lips. Eames caught his chin gently and pressed one last kiss to his lips, then sat back.
“Now you may leave the tub.”
“Not with you sitting on me,” Arthur said, giving him a shove. Eames grinned and got up, water spilling off him noisily. His shirt and jeans clung to him wetly as he stepped out of the tub.
“These shoes are definitely ruined,” he remarked ruefully, feeling the unpleasant squish of them under his heel. Arthur held out his hand for a towel and Eames gave it to him, arching an eyebrow. “Modesty, darling? After bathtub make-outs?”
Arthur snorted and got up, dragging the towel over his head to get rid of the dampness of his hair, leaving him looking even more deliciously rumpled than he had before. The rest of his body only got a customary swipe of the towel, just to take off most of the moisture, and Arthur wasn't careful about how he positioned it. Eames took him in, fully, eyes falling of their own accord from Arthur's chest to his slim waist, finally to his cock -- already half hard. Eames' mouth went dry and it struck him: he was going to do this with another man.
But when Arthur climbed gracefully out of the tub and kissed him again, he melted into it needily and let the point man chase all his reservations out of his head with a skillful tongue. He dragged both his hands through Arthur's hair, leaving it a damp, tousled mess all over again.
“Come on,” said Arthur, wrapping the towel around his waist -- probably for Eames' sake more than his own -- and backed out of the bathroom. Eames hastily slipped off his wet shoes and socks and followed him, entranced by the straight lines of Arthur's body and the calm expression on his face and his easy confidence. Eames followed him almost to the bed, but stopped short.
“I -- I don't have condoms or lube,” he stammered.
For the first time Arthur let consternation flit over his features.
“Are you--”
“Clean, I'm clean, I tested twice,” Eames told him hurriedly, needing Arthur to know this, because the dreamscape was where he'd been tormented, but he had still spent four months unconscious in the real world, held captive by people who thought it perfectly acceptable to whore him out and stick needles in him, and he couldn't know what had been done to his real, physical body, if anything.
“Okay.” Arthur seemed to think for a moment, then he vanished back into the bathroom. Eames heard the clatter of plastic bottles and when Arthur re-emerged, he tossed one at Eames. “Complimentary lotion. That should do it.”
“You're amazing,” said Eames, when he managed to stop gaping. The corner of Arthur's mouth pulled up wryly.
“It's been said before.”
He settled back onto the bed, the towel loosening slightly around his hips. Eames crawled onto the bed, too, stopping about a foot away. Arthur leaned over, and Eames thought that they were going to kiss again, but Arthur slipped away from his lips and pressed a kiss to his earlobe instead.
“This is the part where you take off your clothes, too.”
“Right,” said Eames thickly. He hesitated, then started to work at the buttons of his shirt. Arthur didn't help him, just watched, until Eames was sitting in his boxers and the rest of his clothes were making the carpet wet, instead of the bed.
He had to stop again, taking deep breaths. It shouldn't have been a big deal. Arthur had seen him in nothing but his boxers nearly every night for the past ten months. But for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to take them off. His own shyness was embarrassing and dumbfounding, because he knew it wasn't a big deal, and in fact Arthur had seen him naked before, right after rescuing him; he'd had to help Eames bathe, and Eames had been far beyond caring, then. Plus he'd never been one for modesty, anyway.
But now the thought of Arthur's eyes on his body made him feel weirdly -- ashamed.
“Are you okay?” Arthur asked.
“I'm,” Eames said quietly, staring down at himself, a thumb hooked uncertainly under the waistband of the boxers. He couldn't think what to say.
“We can stop. You just have to tell me. I won't push you.”
“No,” said Eames, shaking his head, “I'm just--”
Arthur turned away from him. He crawled up the bed, reached up and switched off the lamp that hung from the wall. Then he moved to the other side of the bed and switched that lamp off, too.
The room was suddenly dark. There was only the glow of the city around the curtains over the window, and the light neither of them had turned off in the bathroom, giving them just enough to see each other by.
“Better?” Arthur asked, returning.
In response Eames kissed him breathlessly. Arthur hummed contentedly and Eames gripped him tighter, not wanting to ever let him go. He started to push Arthur down, but the point man wriggled adroitly out of his grasp anyway and pulled the covers over himself. Eames followed him blindly, needing the warmth of him. Almost as an afterthought, he took off the boxers and cast them aside. He was still slightly glad for the towel that separated them, but at the same time, starting to crave more.
They had to stop again, when they were kissing, and Arthur reached up to run a hand through Eames' hair, his fingers tightening slightly. Eames shook himself out of Arthur's grip at once, rearing back, and Arthur seemed to understand at once, because he didn't do that again, just waited for Eames to eventually sink back down into the kiss, wary. Neither of them apologized. Eames could tell that Arthur was mentally caching the knowledge, silently making a catalogue of things Eames didn't like.
It happened again when Arthur started to reach down between them like he couldn't quite help himself, and a chill shot down Eames' spine. He broke away and struck Arthur's hand aside. Hard.
There was a silence, Eames sitting up and Arthur still lying there, dishevelled, and the only sound to be heard was their breathing, Eames' much harsher and louder.
“Don't,” he said finally, the blood pounding in his ears.
He expected Arthur to pull away, call it off, tell Eames he obviously wasn't ready. Instead, Arthur raised both his hands disarmingly where he could see them. Then he arched off the bed, slid his hands below his back, and settled back down, pinning his own arms.
In the dim light Eames could see the way Arthur raised an eyebrow at him in a silent query: a self-superior sort of, Well?
That was the moment Eames committed to doing this. He sank back down to recapture Arthur's lips, because he couldn't possibly not, and the point man hummed again, as though amused. When he'd worked up his confidence again, he tugged at the towel -- Arthur shimmied his hips a little without freeing his hands -- and worked it free, tossing it away. There. Now there was nothing between them but the air under the covers.
“Can I--?” Eames asked, and Arthur just nodded, eyes half-closed lazily. Eames reached down, wrapped a hand around him and squeezed, careful and slow, and felt the breath that Arthur huffed out against his face.
He experienced a moment of surreality because he couldn't believe this was happening -- that beautiful, brilliant, trusting Arthur was lying here, pinning his own arms behind his back, making himself vulnerable, letting Eames do this to him.
“I love you,” said Eames hoarsely, thinking already that he'd said it enough, but he couldn't seem to contain it. Arthur's breath huffed against his face again, a short laugh.
“Prove it,” he said.
It was a wry challenge. Eames could hear him smiling. So Eames kissed him again, hard, and tightened his grip just a little and twisted his thumb, and Arthur groaned into his mouth. And that, along with his previous thought, was enough to open the floodgates and send all the blood rushing to his groin. Yes. Maybe he could do this, after all. He wanted it too badly not to at least try.
“Lotion,” Arthur gasped out.
Eames sat back, rooted around in the sheets until he found it. He poured some out over his hand and, not giving himself time to think about it, slicked his cock in a couple of swift, jerky pulls. He hadn't touched himself in over a year, since before his capture, and had to bite his lip. It felt, somehow, like ill-gotten pleasure. He would have to adjust to that. For the time being, though, he decided that was good enough and leaned over Arthur.
His hand faltered. How was he supposed to do this without it hurting? It had always hurt when it was done to him.
Arthur sighed, reading his mind once again, and freed one of his hands. He took Eames by the wrist, delicately, and hiked both his knees up, planting his heels in the mattress.
“That's it,” he breathed, guiding Eames' hand between his thighs. Eames let him take over, gladly, and when his hand found Arthur's opening, he pushed a finger in slowly, not allowing himself to think about it.
Arthur's hand trembled and he let out a shaky breath. Eames froze.
“Keep going,” Arthur urged him.
Cautiously, he pushed his finger deeper and stroked. Arthur was tight, and Eames was caught between a hot coil of lust in his belly that had everything to do with the way Arthur's body gripped him, and a wariness at the intimacy of the motions, because he couldn't stop putting himself in Arthur's place. He frowned.
“You're thinking too much.” Arthur's voice was husky, wonderfully so. “Add another.”
Eames almost thought he'd misunderstood. Tentatively, he pressed a second finger in alongside the first, and his gaze snapped automatically to Arthur's face to gauge his reaction. Arthur had let his head fall back onto the pillows, his eyes half closed again, lips parted. He tightened his grip on Eames' wrist and made him push in, even deeper now, again and once more until Eames understood the rhythm Arthur wanted him to set and kept going even when Arthur took his hand away. In the dark it was too hard to read the point man's face, even for Eames, but he needed no translation when Arthur started to push back against him with a little twist of his hips, fucking himself on Eames' fingers, and groaned.
Electricity skittered all the way down Eames' spine. Suddenly he knew beyond a doubt that he could do this. He took some more time to stretch Arthur open and then took his hand away, near trembling with want.
“Can I?”
“If you don't, I might just kill you, Mr. Eames,” Arthur warned darkly.
Eames grinned and crawled back up his body. He'd done this in the dream, too -- had women requesting movie stars; men seeking a dom. But all of that, at long last, had been burned right out of his mind by the heat of Arthur's skin against his. This was not comparable to that. This was something else entirely. The relief, when the backdrop of memories faded to be replaced by the intensity of Arthur's stare, was amazing. He eased his way into Arthur's body, and managed to let himself go for the first time in ten months.
+
Later, Eames wouldn't remember it as being perfect. It wasn't entirely awkward, either (though it was, a little), and it wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn't perfect, though, nor was it magic; it did not ease all his hurts and make everything better, just like that, because that was the kind of thing that only happened in storybooks.
It certainly helped, though.
Mostly he would try not to remember the clumsiness on his part, the struggle to find a good rhythm, and the stutter of his faltering hips every time he had to make certain and ask compulsively, Am I hurting you?; Is this okay?, even though Arthur had a white-knuckled grip on the bedsheets to keep himself from touching Eames and just kept repeating, Yes yes yes, it's fine, Eames--
He would remember burying his face in the long slope of Arthur's bare neck and inhaling, the scent of soap and bubble bath and sweat and the intoxicating smell of him all mingling and giving Eames a powerful high, like a drug rush. Arthur's lazy smile when Eames kissed him again, mumbling nonsensical endearments against his lips, and the way his expression twisted involuntarily when Eames angled his hips just right. The sounds he made, little hisses and moans and gasps. When he slipped a hand between them to wrap a fist around his cock and Eames, embarrassed that he'd nearly forgotten, placed his hand over Arthur's and set a pace for him, mouthing at his neck and breathing That's it, darling, that's it, I've got you, I've got you, come for me--
And Arthur did, and Eames fucked him through it steadily, kissing his fluttering eyelids, and followed not a minute later--
That was what he hung onto, the first new memory of his fresh start, and it was a good one.
+
When they lay on their sides afterward, their faces just brushing, catching their breath together, Arthur said abruptly, “I don't like elevators.”
“What?” said Eames, his brain far too fuzzy to make any sense of that. Arthur was breathless.
“You said you feel like you don't know the first thing about me. Well. I don't like elevators. They scare me, a little. I've never told anyone before. Only you.”
“Elevators,” Eames echoed.
“Yes.”
“Elevators,” Eames said again, and he started laughing, pressing his lips blindly to Arthur's face.
“It's not funny,” Arthur said, but he was starting to grin, too. Eames just cupped his cheek in one hand and kissed him, laughing like he just might never stop.
+
Later, when they were both nearly asleep, insomnia chased far away for the time being, Eames had an arm wrapped around Arthur's chest and he nosed under Arthur's ear, sighing softly.
“We can't let Ari do this job, Arthur,” he whispered.
Arthur shifted, all the tension gone from his wiry frame, for now.
“I know,” he mumbled, exhausted, resigned. “I know.”
next
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~9000
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: Language, noncon, sexing
Author's Note: Ohmygod I'm so sorry this part is so long. But watch carefully! This is where I start to tape their hearts back together!
part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part seven, part eight, part nine.
+
Useless, Eames thought bleakly of himself, staring out a cracked window at the building opposite. It was already dark out. Utterly fucking useless.
Arthur and Cobb were arguing on the other side of the room. JJ had already hurried off to discuss things with McAvoy. Ariadne was sitting in a chair, small and innocent and young and scared, absorbing it all.
“We're not fucking profilers, Cobb, and even profiles are never perfect! Eames and I looked at every possible angle, he had the forgery perfect, there's no way we could have anticipated this--”
“I don't understand,” said Cobb, loud and angry, “we already took her into his dream once before and the projections didn't react like that--”
“Because we were running around and hiding from his security before, I don't know, we were in plain sight this time with his normal projections, that's why they only noticed now--”
Eames heard a violent scrape of chair legs against the floor as Cobb dropped into the chair at his desk and buried his face in his hands.
“You're sure,” he said wearily. “Are you absolutely sure of what happened.”
“It was eerie, Cobb.” Eames' own voice was hoarse. “I've never seen anything quite like it.”
“What if that's all the proof we need, then?” Ariadne spoke up suddenly. “I mean ... they wouldn't react like that if he wasn't ...”
She trailed off.
“Well, Arthur.” The chair creaked as Cobb turned to his point man. “You're the one who has to put the bullet in him. Is that proof enough for you?”
Arthur's lips thinned, and his eyes snapped to Eames' for a fleeting instant. And Eames didn't know, either. Ariadne resembled Ford's slain girlfriend. Grief had done stranger things to projections. Cobb was a perfect example of that.
It was Eames who broke the silence.
“We have to call this job off. I ... Arthur was right from the start. It isn't our business.”
“Exactly,” said Arthur. “We're in way over our fucking heads here and we have been from the start. We have to stop this, Cobb.”
They were both staring hard at Cobb, who was looking more and more uncomfortable. It would have warmed Eames to be back on Arthur's side -- except that the point man had put all his armour back on, taking Eames' false inception attempt to heart. He was just as closed off and unreachable as he had been the day before, no trace that anything had happened between them but a second IV line abandoned on the floor when Eames woke up. And Eames was glad, in the very base of his stomach where he still allowed himself to feel anything for Arthur.
“Hey,” said Ariadne unexpectedly, hesitantly. “Doesn't my opinion count?”
“Go ahead,” Cobb told her.
“I want to do this.” Her lips were trembling but her voice was firm. “These girls got killed, and -- I want to help.”
“Out of the question,” said Arthur sharply. Her cheeks flushed an angry red.
“If Eames can do it, so can I. You guys wanted bait, well -- here I am.”
“I can't stop Eames from doing what he wants no matter how idiotic he's being. Whatever I think, he's done this before and he knows how to handle himself in a dream. You don't.”
“I can handle myself just fine!” she argued. “I'm an adult, Arthur. If Eames gets to decide he wants to do this, I should be able to, too!”
“You can forge her,” said Cobb, looking past Ariadne at Eames. “Can't you?”
“No!” Arthur shouted. “Why are we even still discussing this!”
“Because neither of you can forge, and neither of you look like me,” said Ariadne shakily, still angry. “Eames and I are the only two who can do this job, and that just drives you crazy because you don't think we could ever handle it. Cobb,” she entreated the extractor. “Tell him. Tell him he has no right to stop me if I want to do this.”
Cobb pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger, squeezing his eyes shut. He looked just like a concerned father as he said, “She's right, Arthur.”
Arthur strode straight up to the desk and planted his hands on it, staring Cobb in the eyes.
“I would do anything for you,” he said emphatically. “You know this.”
“I know.”
“And you trust me, don't you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why haven't you listened to a single word I've said since we agreed to take this job,” Arthur ground out between his clenched teeth. “Cobb, if you trust my judgement at all -- let us walk away from this.”
Cobb got to his feet so abruptly that his chair was sent skidding out behind him.
“You listen to me, Arthur,” he growled, and the effect was admittedly impressive: he seemed to tower over Arthur, and Eames hadn't seen too many men stand up to the brunt of Cobb's temper when he lost it. Not even the point man. “You think my judgement's skewed? Take a good look at yourself. Fourteen months ago there was no job you wouldn't take. You've become so obsessed with concern for Eames that you won't even consider the possibility of danger. You've completely lost sight of the fact that there are seven teenaged girls dead right now, and we're the only people that can prevent an eighth. This is my team and my call. Back off.”
It was like watching two hackling wolves in a display of dominance posturing. For a few moments Arthur stared back at him inscrutably, eyes narrowed. But, at last, he dropped his gaze to the floor and let himself take a step back from the table, plainly defeated.
“Ariadne, it's your choice,” said Cobb, allowing some of the stiffness to leave his shoulders. “You know the risks.”
“I don't agree with this,” Eames broke back into the conversation. Cobb flicked a brief glance at him.
“You didn't care when it was you on the line.”
“Yes, well,” said Eames tersely, “we've seen the type of thing I can come back from. If something goes wrong, there's no saying what he'll do to Ari.”
“I'm sick of this manly bullshit,” said Ariadne suddenly. “And I don't need it. I don't care what Arthur says, I can hold my own in a dream. Even if it goes wrong. Even though I'm a girl. I can do this, and I will.”
“I know you can,” said Cobb softly, and it struck Eames that he knew what Cobb was thinking -- what he and Arthur were thinking, too. All at once it was the three of them trying to talk Mal out of some dangerous scheme, but the fire in her eyes would not be quenched and when they inevitably gave in to her and Mal went to work, there was no stopping her. She navigated the dreamworld like an artist, a dancer, a poet; like a dreamer; so full of passion that they were all at least a little in love with her.
Eames could see a little of her in Ariadne now, in the angry set of her jaw and the brightness of her eyes. He knew Arthur could too, because neither of them had any protest left in them, and for a second, their eyes met. He wondered if they were thinking the same thing. Arthur's eyes widened slightly, and he began to shake his head minutely. Eames looked away again.
Ariadne grabbed up her bag off a nearby table and started to walk away. “I'll be back for work tomorrow, and I'll start working on my defensive dreaming. I hope I'll see all three of you here, too.”
She left. Arthur packed up the PASIV in silence and followed suit.
“I'll never forgive you if she gets hurt, Cobb,” Eames vowed. Cobb chuckled humourlessly and didn't meet his eyes.
“I'm still having trouble forgiving myself for letting you get hurt.”
Eames walked out. At the base of the building, outside the door, Arthur was waiting there.
“I love you,” he said, when Eames stepped outside. There was an urgent, unreadable look in his eyes. “You know that, don't you?”
Eames could almost see the gaping chasm that yawned between them. It was insurmountable. They would never be able to reach all the way across it. Every fibre of him ached and yearned for Arthur, and he would never again be able to just reach out and touch him. Why, he thought brokenly, couldn't you have just said that a year ago.
He'd spent roughly five years in that terrible dream and this, here, now, felt like hell. He tried to imagine spending one more night like this -- one more day in which Arthur moved just outside his reach, and Eames let him get further and further away -- and he couldn't. He was so exhausted.
“Don't do this to me, Arthur,” he managed to force out jaggedly, and walked into the street to flag a taxi. Arthur just stood there and watched as he got inside and it pulled away.
+
Eames had three things in the bed with him: a notepad, a pen, and a gun.
He'd written, Dear Arthur, but he didn't like that. It sounded too impersonal. He scratched it out impatiently, tore off the paper and tried again:
Arthur
It seemed like a good start, but he had no idea how to go on. He'd never had to write anything like this before, nor had he ever expected he would. “Sorry for blowing my brains out, hope you're well”?
“Really pathetic,” he told himself fervently, and suddenly, he felt embarrassed. He tore off the new sheet and crumpled it up, too, with a great sigh. He wondered, shame lapping at him, what Mal would think of him, undoubtedly because he'd been thinking of her earlier. Promptly he remembered that that was no good because Mal had gone and bloody killed herself, too, after all.
So he thought instead of what a bleeding emotional wreck Arthur had allowed himself to be, just for a day or two, after the funeral was over and Mal was in the ground and gone for good, for ever. It was the first time Eames had ever seen him lose control before. And then the point man had pulled it together, wrapped up his grief with all the edges tucked in and put it away because Cobb needed him in Milan, and Eames never saw him like that again.
Eames had ached so powerfully for the young man then.
He sighed and put down the pen and paper. He probably couldn't do this to Arthur. Try and compartmentalize something this big again and the point man just might explode. He couldn't have any room on that shelf inside him, where he kept all his emotions for him to take out at his leisure, for more grief.
Eames tossed the gun away. He hadn't really been that motivated anyway. He tried to start telling himself that things would get better than this, that it always looked darkest just before dawn, that he'd feel differently when the sun came up, various optimistic platitudes, et cetera, et cetera. He wasn't feeling any of them, though.
All he really wanted was to get some sleep.
He chucked the pen and paper at the wall, heard them hit with two satisfying smacks, and shut his eyes. He just needed to sleep. He would feel better, if he could only manage to get some fucking sleep.
To his astonishment, he did.
This time, he remembered his dream.
+++
Immediately after being violated with the probe and summarily beaten by the man in the white suit, Eames woke up sprawled on the floor of the casino. He was still in Charlie's skin, in the frayed clothes he adorned Charlie in when he had occasion to, and he was alone. He'd never been so glad to see that fucking casino and hear the whirring slot machines.
Seven days in, he was nearly out of his mind. This dream wasn't designed to be occupied by only one person. There was nothing for him to do. He'd had respites like this before, but that was before he'd gotten so entrenched in the mire of this place. He had no idea what to do with himself anymore.
One day he came quite unexpectedly upon the room he'd secretly left for himself. He opened the door and Arthur's scent hit him like a tidal wave, awash with memories. He shut the door and curled up on the bed, and for the first time in many months, he had a long, restful sleep.
It was nearly two weeks before another person appeared, not a projection, and handed him a stack of new identities to forge, and he remembered how he was much better off alone after all.
The new flood of clients to paw at and fuck him was ceaseless, and he started losing time again, and consequently, when, several months later, Eames had to slip into Charlie's skin like a worn, faded old hoodie and was met on the steps outside the hotel by the man in the white suit, he experienced an odd, unfamiliar strangled feeling in his throat.
“Did you miss me?” the man asked.
Eames started to nod and the man caught his chin.
“I want you to answer me when I ask you a question, now.”
“Yes,” said Eames. “I missed you.”
The man inhaled and exhaled slowly, studying him.
“You're so good, Charlie,” he murmured, and that strangled feeling in Eames' throat became a burgeoning in his chest. This was somebody with whom he knew the rules: be good and get rewarded. Do wrong and suffer fit punishment. It was so blessedly simple he could weep. This wasn't somebody who would look for excuses to beat him or attack him. Their last encounter wouldn't have happened like that if he had only been able to keep his fucking head together and his mouth shut.
He was glad to see the man in the white suit. It was impossible, unbelievable, but Eames was happy he was there.
“Close your eyes.”
He did, and the bullet that tore through his skull and yanked him away from that dream was like a benediction.
As soon as he found himself in the seaside apartment, he started tugging at his clothes, fumbling nervously to pull them off. He knew the rules. The man joined him and tossed a bottle of lubricant onto the bed before starting to gracefully shed his own clothing. Dropping onto the bed, Eames slicked a couple of his fingers and reached down to prepare himself. The other man caught him by the wrist, stopping him, and poured some lube over his own fingers. He slipped one, thick and blunt, into Eames without preamble and Eames had to bite his lip and force himself not to move away from the dull scrape of nails when a second finger was added.
“Do you want me to fuck you?”
He was starting to remember the pain, the cramps, the bleeding.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
He knew the rules.
“I want you to fuck me.”
The man unexpectedly shoved him flat on his back on the bed, hitched up both his legs under the knees and thrust into him in one steady push, opening him before he was ready for it, not giving him any time to adjust. Eames bit his tongue and copper-sweet blood filled his mouth, nearly making him gag. He'd almost forgotten this, the brutal girth of him, the stretch and burn of his muscles, how every experience was a test of Eames' endurance, how long he could grit his teeth and sweat through it before he started trying to escape into his mind and ended up blinking out.
“Say it again.”
“I want you to f-fuck me.” His breath hitched and made the word nearly a sob.
“You're so good, Charlie,” the man purred, his stubbled cheek rasping the side of Eames' face. He started to move in Eames and Eames clawed fistfuls of the bedspread, wheezing for breath already. He was ready for this to be over and it had barely started yet.
The man fucked him.
“Spread your legs.”
He did, until the muscles seared.
“You're a fucking slut for me, aren't you?”
“Yes,” he choked.
The man wrapped heavy arms around him, a hot, breathing steel cage. Eames could feel the roll and flex of his every muscle. He was sinking into a rhythm, breath puffing against Eames' neck with every smooth, hard drive of his hips. And though Eames could still barely accommodate him, body stretched around a too-thick cock, he was starting to go numb, beginning to find it easier to just lie there without moving or whimpering. He was doing this and surviving and not blanking out. He concentrated on his breathing, so that the next time the man spoke -- “You like it like this, don't you?” -- he was able to force out, “Yes,” not in a whine or a wail.
He wasn't going to fuck up again. He'd learnt too hard a lesson for that.
But still it felt like a betrayal every time he let the word yes pass his lips.
The man was folding him in half -- his thighs ached -- he could barely breathe, he was being crushed -- and he realized, belatedly, that he was hard, as the man pulled one arm around and wrapped a hand around him. This realization had long ago ceased to bother him, since he knew it was all adrenaline, and not fuelled by any warped parody of pleasure. But the feel of that rough, confident hand on his cock made his entire body jerk and the breath catch in his lungs. He bit back the word no, the instant before it could escape him.
“Don't you like that?”
And he grated out, “Yes,” but his whole body screamed and pleaded stop, stop, stop.
He twisted his head aside and panted harshly into the coverlet, his eyes screwed shut, torn between the impossible agony of bone-jarring thrusts and the gentling of the hand on his cock. He honestly wasn't sure which was worse. He could feel the stress flooding his brain, panic buttons and flashing red lights, and clamped down on that, refusing to be overwhelmed. He found himself moving his hips, as best he could, into the rhythm the man had picked up, the sooner to bring himself off, and that felt like betrayal, too.
It was over blessedly soon; he came over the man's hand and his own stomach, biting his lip and sucking in heavy breaths he couldn't quite catch. And to his surprise, the other man was coming too, hilting himself inside Eames one last time and spilling himself in him for what felt like an eternity. That was the troubling thing about this man; he lasted too long, came too long; the only thing that didn't take too long was his refractory time, which could be seconds or minutes if Eames was lucky.
He was lucky this time. The man was pulling out -- Eames felt stretched-out, uncomfortably aware of the loss, and unclean -- and leaning away, finally affording Eames the chance to breathe. He just watched while Eames unclenched his muscles and relaxed a little, reminding himself once again that he'd been hurt but had survived. He didn't even think he was bleeding. That was a first. He caught his breath slowly.
His eyes flew open when the man wrapped a hand around his cock, soft and spent, again. He shook his head mutely, frantically.
Don't.
“You can do it,” the other murmured. “Relax. I'm going to make you feel good.”
Don't don't don't--
He felt ridiculously vulnerable. He was lying here, on his back, with the man who'd just fucked him, who was bigger and stronger than him, who surely intended to fuck him again, and all these things, Eames was almost used to. It was the hand stroking him, thumb rubbing repeatedly over the oversensitized head of his cock, that drove him out of his mind. He flashed to the way the man had gripped him punishingly tightly with that probe still obscenely buried in his cock, and broke out in a cold sweat, trying to squirm away. He was shaking, not ready for this, and not strong enough to fight back.
He was half hard again already. That hand was persistent. In silence he begged the man, begged himself, before at last resigning himself to it:
He was going to come again. And it was going to hurt.
His breath started to leave him in hissing gasps and when the man slid two fingers inside him again, dragging them over his prostate, he arched off the bed with a strangled keening sound. He clawed futilely at the sheets. That hand was moving faster, deft and precise, and he couldn't escape it, and at last Eames came with a cracked sob.
He was still sobbing when the man moved away, gulping for air, and he didn't care anymore. This man had already claimed every part of Eames' body, piece by piece. He may as well have Eames' tears, too.
“Charlie.” The man wiped off his hands on the sheets and returned, stroking his hair soothingly, pushing damp strands out of his eyes. “It's almost like you didn't enjoy that. You did, didn't you?”
“Yes,” Eames huffed out shakily, an obedient pet.
“You want me to fuck you again, don't you?”
“Yes.” He didn't even have to think about it. He knew what his role here was. “I want you to fuck me.”
That time, he bled.
He was so glad to be out of that other dream, the pain was like coming home.
+
He felt like he'd crossed some terrible boundary. It had been easier to think of this as rape, before, even though he'd been compliant and hadn't resisted, because in spite of that, his mind was still not willing. At least he'd had that.
This had turned into some gross parody of consensual sex. And he didn't even have the energy to feel angry anymore.
Every single time, it was the same: “Do you want me to fuck you?”
And Eames answered, over and over again: “Yes.”
If he didn't, the consequences were brutal. He only did that once; then it was yes every time. There was nothing else to say. He was broken, body and mind. Every response was automatic, almost unconscious. He lived in a sort of constant stupour. All the disgust, anger, self-hatred, hatred for the man in the white suit, had been buried so deep in him that he couldn't even reach it anymore.
He lived in the moment, all his feelings only skin-deep and superficial. When the man stroked his face and told him he'd done good, it felt like a small warmth in his chest. So he kept striving for that, tried to make himself perfect. He began to live for those tiny rewards and didn't even realize how pathetic that was. He had nothing else to live for but those moments. And the man noticed, and would reward him; sometimes a kiss on the forehead, a gentle hand on his scalp. Sometimes, he would run a hot bath and sit on the toilet seat and watch Eames soak away all the blood and dried semen and the ache in his muscles, dragging it out till the water was going cold. It had been years now and this was as good as it could possibly get for Eames, and he was aware of this, even when it hurt (and it hurt), even when he still felt like something huge was missing and wasn't sure he could spend another minute doing this.
Months went by. And then Eames was lying on the bed, recouping, and the man was slowly pulling his clothes back on, white suit impeccable as always, and he said, “Tell me about you.”
It wasn't phrased as a question and therefore didn't stimulate an automatic response. Eames just stirred, looking across at him.
“Talk to me about yourself.” Now it was an order, which demanded a response. “Where are you from?”
Eames already had an answer. “Newark, New Jersey.”
“Did you grow up there?”
“Yes.” He knew Charlie inside and out. He was still a forger -- whatever that meant now.
“Where did you go to school?”
“Rutgers.”
“And what were you studying?”
“Art history.”
“Tell me about that.”
Eames started to talk.
As he talked, he began to remember: he knew all of this. He knew art history. Not as well as he knew other things, but it was like holding a possession for the first time in years, something that belonged to him and was all his. And it suddenly felt very important for him to talk about it, every detail of what he knew. He wasn't stalling, because he knew that more sex was inevitable. He talked because when he talked about it, he could almost let himself get wrapped up in that world, so far away now, where he'd once upon a time imitated people not for sex, and he'd watched a painter for several days and memorized the way he walked and talked and looked and then set about learning everything he could about his trade. He remembered Arthur's dark eyes and the look of quickly-stifled surprise and delight in them when Eames drew political parallels between Goya's The Third of May 1808 and Picasso's modernist masterpiece Guernica. They'd sat on either side of a table outside a café in France and talked art and the normally guarded expression slowly faded from Arthur's face, and Eames had wanted to brush the croissant crumbs off his lower lip.
He talked about his favourite artists (Rembrandt, for the things he told and showed in his paintings, and Monet, for the things he didn't; the work of Kandinsky, on the other hand, he found unnecessarily loud and gaudy, more flamboyant decoration than representative of any of the ideas or emotions the artist tried to convey). He talked about the evolution of culture in art, the art of forging paintings, the imaginary thesis he'd been working on about Chagall as a pioneer of modernism. He talked about Van Gogh and Picasso, Raphael and da Vinci, and his love affair with each.
He talked until his voice was hoarse and cracking and he ran out of things to say. It was more than he'd spoken in years. He felt out of breath and satisfied in a strange, visceral way.
The man, dressed once again in his white suit, had listened in silence with his head slightly tilted, sometimes wandering around the room a little. Now he went into the bathroom. He returned with a glass of water. Eames took it and drank all of it, gratefully, feeling his throat relax.
“New Jersey, huh?” was all the man said, speculatively.
Eames nodded, licking his lips.
“Then why are you talking to me with an English accent?”
The bottom dropped out of Eames' stomach.
He'd fucked up. A fucking toddler wouldn't have made this mistake.
I am such a fool.
He opened his mouth to apologize, lie, explain, beg if he had to, but the man raised a hand. The words died in Eames' throat. There was ice in his veins.
The man stared at him hard for a long minute. Eames thought his heart might stop.
The words the man finally said were the last he expected to hear.
“Poor Charlie,” he sighed softly. “You have to be a lot of different people, don't you?”
It was the first time anyone had acknowledged that this was any kind of fantasy; that Eames was not solely theirs, that he'd been claimed by other people before they'd arrived and would be again after they were gone. He didn't know what else to do except nod slowly.
“I know.” The man's voice was sympathetic. He stroked a hand through Eames' hair, pushing stray strands off his face. “That's why I want to buy you.”
“Buy me?”
The man was nodding, smiling. “I'd just need another week up above to finalize it. Then I could take you home, Charlie. You'd be mine, nobody else's, ever again. Would you like that?”
The automatic yes was actually on Eames' tongue when another thought pushed itself unbidden into his mind, forceful and angry and almost unfamiliar.
If he was this man's and nobody else's, how would Arthur ever find him and rescue him?
He hesitated for too long. The man straightened up and let his hand drop back down to his side, turning away.
“I'm leaving.”
“Wait. No,” Eames blurted out when he started to walk to the dresser, where the gun was. He could not go back to the hotel. He knew how much he hated it here, but his fear of the hotel was so much worse; he'd rather the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty any day. “Yes! I'd like that.” Terror galloped through him -- the man was still walking away, fuck! “I want that. I want you-- Fuck me,” he said, and the words left him in a juddering rush.
The man stopped and half-turned, eyeing him inscrutably. Eames licked his lips again, scooted back and spread his thighs.
“Fuck me. I want you to.”
It was the first time he'd said it without being prompted. The words felt like broken glass in his throat. The man just stood and watched him and didn't move.
“Fuck me,” Eames pleaded, almost sobbing. “Please.”
The man crossed the room swiftly; before Eames could move he was being crushed to the bed, the breath squeezed out of his ribcage, knees bracketing his hips. The man kissed him hard enough to hurt, a crush of lips against lips, fumbling with his own belt and trousers and yanking them down just far enough to free his cock. He shoved Eames roughly onto his stomach and thrust in so hard that Eames yelped and he'd gotten what he wanted, so why was he still so terrified?
“You're so good,” the man growled into his neck, and Eames clamped his eyes shut and muffled his groans of pain in the mattress. “Such a good boy for me.”
There was no part of Eames' body that didn't hurt by the time the man saw fit to finish with him. His hips and thighs and arms and wrists were bruised, bite marks covered his shoulders and neck, blood trickled freely down his legs, and he couldn't say if it was tears or sweat making his cheeks so wet. Probably both. His traitorous mind had not let him leave, this time. For once, he wished it had.
The man stroked a hand down his back to the base of his spine. Eames flinched.
He'd served one purpose, at least. He was too wrung out now, mentally and physically, to be scared of going back to the hotel.
“I'll be back soon, Charlie,” the man told him. “Then you'll be mine. Don't worry.”
He was gone. Eames opened his eyes on the floor of the casino. Tilting his head stiffly, he could still see blood staining the inseam of Charlie's denim jeans.
+++
Eames' entire dream was a blurred jumble, fleeting sensations of pain and guilt and nausea, nothing like lucid dreaming. But when his eyes snapped open, he felt all of that melt away.
Jesus Christ.
He had to look around, look at the gun and pen and notepad on the floor, touch his totem over and over again to reassure himself that he was really awake. He knew he was, though. He'd brought something back with him.
What was it Cobb was always saying?
What is the most resilient parasite?
An idea. Resilient ... highly contagious.
It wasn't inception. Not quite. But someone had taken Eames dream-layers-deep and conditioned him to believe that all he had to do to get a positive reaction was ask to be fucked.
+
He started pacing.
He thought of how he felt about Arthur, and surmised that the part of him that lusted for the point man was, indeed, real; he was a human being and he still had a sex drive, that hadn't been taken away from him. But he thought about all the times he'd crawled over Arthur and begged for it, his heart leaping with fear and his mouth bone-dry all the while, wanting it and not wanting it with equal passion. And now it made sense.
He had never wanted Arthur to fuck him. His brain had told him as much, planting triggers like minefields, screaming back off when it got too far and driving him away. He just hadn't listened -- because deep down, some part of him was still terrified that Arthur would get tired of him and walk away if he didn't ask for it.
He fled the room.
In the hall he punched the down button for the elevator, but it was taking too long to get there, so he took the stairs, bounding down them two steps at a time. He reached the second floor and went straight to Arthur's door, knocking on it insistently. Nobody answered. He broke in.
Arthur, too, was obviously having trouble sleeping, but his solution was more elegant than Eames' gun. Eames found him in the bathroom, soaking in the jacuzzi tub, which was full of bubbles, with a glass of wine. Bubble baths were always Arthur's personal, secret cure for insomnia. He looked nearly ready to doze off, too, but his eyes snapped open when Eames appeared in the doorway.
“Eames,” he said sharply, startled.
“I know. Wait. Let me,” said Eames, out of breath, raising his hands placatingly. He crossed the room quickly and dropped to his knees at the side of the tub. “I have to tell you something.”
Arthur eyed him doubtfully. “You should go--”
“Wait,” said Eames again. “It's important, okay? Right. Listen.”
Arthur was looking more uncomfortable by the second, but he didn't move to throw Eames out, so Eames took a deep breath and went on:
“I've figured something out. And I know I've been a bastard to you, the past few days, and you don't have to forgive me if you don't want to, but I wanted to tell you anyway. See, I never wanted you to fuck me.”
“I know,” said Arthur quietly, eyes narrowing, sinking back into the water slightly.
“Yes,” said Eames emphatically, “you knew. You knew. I didn't know. And I tried to tell myself, and I even got pretty good at it, but something -- something here, I don't know, maybe just being in a hotel room again, for the first time--” Or fucking JJ, he thought, and forced that thought away, steering himself back to the present, here, now, with Arthur. He took another deep breath. “I thought I wanted that. I thought it because, when I was in that dream, that was the only way I could -- if I -- asked for it. That was the only way I could make things easier. Protect myself. I was just scared, all those times -- thought you'd leave me, or something. So I -- had to.”
There, he'd forced it out. Arthur knew how terribly he'd let himself down, now. Arthur didn't say anything; he just listened, his gaze fixed on Eames' face, his eyes dark and unreadable and intense.
“And I can't let you fuck me,” Eames went on in one breath. “I'm sorry, I'm not ready and I don't think I will be, maybe ever. But I still want you, Arthur. I have since I met you, and that's never changed. It's not you I don't trust. It's myself, because I'm just full of these -- these irrational behaviours, and it's not your fault, I just can't control it--”
“Eames,” said Arthur softly, cutting off his babbling.
“And I love you,” Eames said, gripping the side of the tub. “And I want another go at this. If you'll let me. Because I don't know what I can and can't do, Arthur, and I thought, well, if I have to learn all that, why don't I let you learn with me? How else will we know?”
“Eames.”
“You can say no. I know, it's an awful lot of baggage, and it isn't fair to make you shoulder it, but I just keep thinking how unfair it is that I want so badly to have sex with you, and I can't, because of what other people did, and if I don't start making new, better memories with you, I don't know that I ever will, because you're the only person I want. Arthur--”
He was out of breath. Arthur just studied him intently for a long moment. It had seemed very important to blurt all of this out before Arthur had the chance to stop him or tell him to leave, but now, in the silence that followed his declaration, he was starting to feel foolish.
“I'll go,” he said finally, sheepish, “if you want--”
“Eames,” Arthur said, and he was shifting around, reaching with a dripping hand for Eames' face, and their lips connected over the edge of the tub, both of them leaning into it. Arthur's other hand came up to his face, wet and firm, cradling him, and Eames licked his mouth open in a dizzying headlong rush, loving the way Arthur kissed him, like he'd never been gone at all.
Arthur's hands were at his shirt, tugging, and before Eames knew it he was clambering, sliding clumsily into the bathtub with a splash to kneel over him. The water sloshed violently up the sides of the tub and spilled onto the floor and Eames didn't care, didn't care that he was fully clothed and soaked now, because he was kissing Arthur and it was glorious.
“Eames,” Arthur breathed against his lips when they paused for breath, fingers curling into the front of Eames' shirt, “why didn't you ever just ask to fuck me?”
Such a simple solution, it took his breath away. Eames could hardly believe it. It was surely too good to be true.
But when he looked down into Arthur's blown pupils, tiny reflections of himself in each, he found himself nodding stupidly.
“Let's try that,” he managed to whisper hoarsely.
Then they were kissing again, Arthur's mouth yielding easily under his tongue, and he chased away the taste of white wine and searched for that flavour that was Arthur. With his hands he touched Arthur's face, his hair, utterly intoxicated by him, and felt he could have quite happily spent the rest of his life just kissing him like this.
It was at least five minutes before Arthur started squirming under his hips, murmuring something against his mouth. It took Eames a few seconds to notice.
“What?”
“--the bed, Eames, we can't do this in the bath--”
“Oh,” said Eames foolishly, “right.”
He stopped and pulled back with an effort, and if he'd thought Arthur was adorable when he was annoyed, it was nothing on Arthur when he looked like this, soggy and mussed and flushed, licking his swollen lips. Eames caught his chin gently and pressed one last kiss to his lips, then sat back.
“Now you may leave the tub.”
“Not with you sitting on me,” Arthur said, giving him a shove. Eames grinned and got up, water spilling off him noisily. His shirt and jeans clung to him wetly as he stepped out of the tub.
“These shoes are definitely ruined,” he remarked ruefully, feeling the unpleasant squish of them under his heel. Arthur held out his hand for a towel and Eames gave it to him, arching an eyebrow. “Modesty, darling? After bathtub make-outs?”
Arthur snorted and got up, dragging the towel over his head to get rid of the dampness of his hair, leaving him looking even more deliciously rumpled than he had before. The rest of his body only got a customary swipe of the towel, just to take off most of the moisture, and Arthur wasn't careful about how he positioned it. Eames took him in, fully, eyes falling of their own accord from Arthur's chest to his slim waist, finally to his cock -- already half hard. Eames' mouth went dry and it struck him: he was going to do this with another man.
But when Arthur climbed gracefully out of the tub and kissed him again, he melted into it needily and let the point man chase all his reservations out of his head with a skillful tongue. He dragged both his hands through Arthur's hair, leaving it a damp, tousled mess all over again.
“Come on,” said Arthur, wrapping the towel around his waist -- probably for Eames' sake more than his own -- and backed out of the bathroom. Eames hastily slipped off his wet shoes and socks and followed him, entranced by the straight lines of Arthur's body and the calm expression on his face and his easy confidence. Eames followed him almost to the bed, but stopped short.
“I -- I don't have condoms or lube,” he stammered.
For the first time Arthur let consternation flit over his features.
“Are you--”
“Clean, I'm clean, I tested twice,” Eames told him hurriedly, needing Arthur to know this, because the dreamscape was where he'd been tormented, but he had still spent four months unconscious in the real world, held captive by people who thought it perfectly acceptable to whore him out and stick needles in him, and he couldn't know what had been done to his real, physical body, if anything.
“Okay.” Arthur seemed to think for a moment, then he vanished back into the bathroom. Eames heard the clatter of plastic bottles and when Arthur re-emerged, he tossed one at Eames. “Complimentary lotion. That should do it.”
“You're amazing,” said Eames, when he managed to stop gaping. The corner of Arthur's mouth pulled up wryly.
“It's been said before.”
He settled back onto the bed, the towel loosening slightly around his hips. Eames crawled onto the bed, too, stopping about a foot away. Arthur leaned over, and Eames thought that they were going to kiss again, but Arthur slipped away from his lips and pressed a kiss to his earlobe instead.
“This is the part where you take off your clothes, too.”
“Right,” said Eames thickly. He hesitated, then started to work at the buttons of his shirt. Arthur didn't help him, just watched, until Eames was sitting in his boxers and the rest of his clothes were making the carpet wet, instead of the bed.
He had to stop again, taking deep breaths. It shouldn't have been a big deal. Arthur had seen him in nothing but his boxers nearly every night for the past ten months. But for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to take them off. His own shyness was embarrassing and dumbfounding, because he knew it wasn't a big deal, and in fact Arthur had seen him naked before, right after rescuing him; he'd had to help Eames bathe, and Eames had been far beyond caring, then. Plus he'd never been one for modesty, anyway.
But now the thought of Arthur's eyes on his body made him feel weirdly -- ashamed.
“Are you okay?” Arthur asked.
“I'm,” Eames said quietly, staring down at himself, a thumb hooked uncertainly under the waistband of the boxers. He couldn't think what to say.
“We can stop. You just have to tell me. I won't push you.”
“No,” said Eames, shaking his head, “I'm just--”
Arthur turned away from him. He crawled up the bed, reached up and switched off the lamp that hung from the wall. Then he moved to the other side of the bed and switched that lamp off, too.
The room was suddenly dark. There was only the glow of the city around the curtains over the window, and the light neither of them had turned off in the bathroom, giving them just enough to see each other by.
“Better?” Arthur asked, returning.
In response Eames kissed him breathlessly. Arthur hummed contentedly and Eames gripped him tighter, not wanting to ever let him go. He started to push Arthur down, but the point man wriggled adroitly out of his grasp anyway and pulled the covers over himself. Eames followed him blindly, needing the warmth of him. Almost as an afterthought, he took off the boxers and cast them aside. He was still slightly glad for the towel that separated them, but at the same time, starting to crave more.
They had to stop again, when they were kissing, and Arthur reached up to run a hand through Eames' hair, his fingers tightening slightly. Eames shook himself out of Arthur's grip at once, rearing back, and Arthur seemed to understand at once, because he didn't do that again, just waited for Eames to eventually sink back down into the kiss, wary. Neither of them apologized. Eames could tell that Arthur was mentally caching the knowledge, silently making a catalogue of things Eames didn't like.
It happened again when Arthur started to reach down between them like he couldn't quite help himself, and a chill shot down Eames' spine. He broke away and struck Arthur's hand aside. Hard.
There was a silence, Eames sitting up and Arthur still lying there, dishevelled, and the only sound to be heard was their breathing, Eames' much harsher and louder.
“Don't,” he said finally, the blood pounding in his ears.
He expected Arthur to pull away, call it off, tell Eames he obviously wasn't ready. Instead, Arthur raised both his hands disarmingly where he could see them. Then he arched off the bed, slid his hands below his back, and settled back down, pinning his own arms.
In the dim light Eames could see the way Arthur raised an eyebrow at him in a silent query: a self-superior sort of, Well?
That was the moment Eames committed to doing this. He sank back down to recapture Arthur's lips, because he couldn't possibly not, and the point man hummed again, as though amused. When he'd worked up his confidence again, he tugged at the towel -- Arthur shimmied his hips a little without freeing his hands -- and worked it free, tossing it away. There. Now there was nothing between them but the air under the covers.
“Can I--?” Eames asked, and Arthur just nodded, eyes half-closed lazily. Eames reached down, wrapped a hand around him and squeezed, careful and slow, and felt the breath that Arthur huffed out against his face.
He experienced a moment of surreality because he couldn't believe this was happening -- that beautiful, brilliant, trusting Arthur was lying here, pinning his own arms behind his back, making himself vulnerable, letting Eames do this to him.
“I love you,” said Eames hoarsely, thinking already that he'd said it enough, but he couldn't seem to contain it. Arthur's breath huffed against his face again, a short laugh.
“Prove it,” he said.
It was a wry challenge. Eames could hear him smiling. So Eames kissed him again, hard, and tightened his grip just a little and twisted his thumb, and Arthur groaned into his mouth. And that, along with his previous thought, was enough to open the floodgates and send all the blood rushing to his groin. Yes. Maybe he could do this, after all. He wanted it too badly not to at least try.
“Lotion,” Arthur gasped out.
Eames sat back, rooted around in the sheets until he found it. He poured some out over his hand and, not giving himself time to think about it, slicked his cock in a couple of swift, jerky pulls. He hadn't touched himself in over a year, since before his capture, and had to bite his lip. It felt, somehow, like ill-gotten pleasure. He would have to adjust to that. For the time being, though, he decided that was good enough and leaned over Arthur.
His hand faltered. How was he supposed to do this without it hurting? It had always hurt when it was done to him.
Arthur sighed, reading his mind once again, and freed one of his hands. He took Eames by the wrist, delicately, and hiked both his knees up, planting his heels in the mattress.
“That's it,” he breathed, guiding Eames' hand between his thighs. Eames let him take over, gladly, and when his hand found Arthur's opening, he pushed a finger in slowly, not allowing himself to think about it.
Arthur's hand trembled and he let out a shaky breath. Eames froze.
“Keep going,” Arthur urged him.
Cautiously, he pushed his finger deeper and stroked. Arthur was tight, and Eames was caught between a hot coil of lust in his belly that had everything to do with the way Arthur's body gripped him, and a wariness at the intimacy of the motions, because he couldn't stop putting himself in Arthur's place. He frowned.
“You're thinking too much.” Arthur's voice was husky, wonderfully so. “Add another.”
Eames almost thought he'd misunderstood. Tentatively, he pressed a second finger in alongside the first, and his gaze snapped automatically to Arthur's face to gauge his reaction. Arthur had let his head fall back onto the pillows, his eyes half closed again, lips parted. He tightened his grip on Eames' wrist and made him push in, even deeper now, again and once more until Eames understood the rhythm Arthur wanted him to set and kept going even when Arthur took his hand away. In the dark it was too hard to read the point man's face, even for Eames, but he needed no translation when Arthur started to push back against him with a little twist of his hips, fucking himself on Eames' fingers, and groaned.
Electricity skittered all the way down Eames' spine. Suddenly he knew beyond a doubt that he could do this. He took some more time to stretch Arthur open and then took his hand away, near trembling with want.
“Can I?”
“If you don't, I might just kill you, Mr. Eames,” Arthur warned darkly.
Eames grinned and crawled back up his body. He'd done this in the dream, too -- had women requesting movie stars; men seeking a dom. But all of that, at long last, had been burned right out of his mind by the heat of Arthur's skin against his. This was not comparable to that. This was something else entirely. The relief, when the backdrop of memories faded to be replaced by the intensity of Arthur's stare, was amazing. He eased his way into Arthur's body, and managed to let himself go for the first time in ten months.
+
Later, Eames wouldn't remember it as being perfect. It wasn't entirely awkward, either (though it was, a little), and it wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn't perfect, though, nor was it magic; it did not ease all his hurts and make everything better, just like that, because that was the kind of thing that only happened in storybooks.
It certainly helped, though.
Mostly he would try not to remember the clumsiness on his part, the struggle to find a good rhythm, and the stutter of his faltering hips every time he had to make certain and ask compulsively, Am I hurting you?; Is this okay?, even though Arthur had a white-knuckled grip on the bedsheets to keep himself from touching Eames and just kept repeating, Yes yes yes, it's fine, Eames--
He would remember burying his face in the long slope of Arthur's bare neck and inhaling, the scent of soap and bubble bath and sweat and the intoxicating smell of him all mingling and giving Eames a powerful high, like a drug rush. Arthur's lazy smile when Eames kissed him again, mumbling nonsensical endearments against his lips, and the way his expression twisted involuntarily when Eames angled his hips just right. The sounds he made, little hisses and moans and gasps. When he slipped a hand between them to wrap a fist around his cock and Eames, embarrassed that he'd nearly forgotten, placed his hand over Arthur's and set a pace for him, mouthing at his neck and breathing That's it, darling, that's it, I've got you, I've got you, come for me--
And Arthur did, and Eames fucked him through it steadily, kissing his fluttering eyelids, and followed not a minute later--
That was what he hung onto, the first new memory of his fresh start, and it was a good one.
+
When they lay on their sides afterward, their faces just brushing, catching their breath together, Arthur said abruptly, “I don't like elevators.”
“What?” said Eames, his brain far too fuzzy to make any sense of that. Arthur was breathless.
“You said you feel like you don't know the first thing about me. Well. I don't like elevators. They scare me, a little. I've never told anyone before. Only you.”
“Elevators,” Eames echoed.
“Yes.”
“Elevators,” Eames said again, and he started laughing, pressing his lips blindly to Arthur's face.
“It's not funny,” Arthur said, but he was starting to grin, too. Eames just cupped his cheek in one hand and kissed him, laughing like he just might never stop.
+
Later, when they were both nearly asleep, insomnia chased far away for the time being, Eames had an arm wrapped around Arthur's chest and he nosed under Arthur's ear, sighing softly.
“We can't let Ari do this job, Arthur,” he whispered.
Arthur shifted, all the tension gone from his wiry frame, for now.
“I know,” he mumbled, exhausted, resigned. “I know.”
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