Fic: Adrenaline
Title: Adrenaline
Author: abysmal_seraph
Team: Angst
Prompt: Silence, Fear, Overwhelmed, Blood
Word count: 3375
Rating: R
Chapter/Part Warnings: Graphic violence, drunkenness, kidnapping, disturbing imagery, horrible familial relationships, trauma, cursing, my sad attempt at action.
Series Warnings: Addictive personalities, graphic violence, unhealthy relationships, the darker end of morally gray, probably more that I can't think of right now. This does end happily...well, happy for two very messed up men, anyway.
Note: Eames is 24 in this. Don't recall if that's ever stated. Also nothing's really mentioned about his tour of duty aside from the length, but flippant comments are made that can be seen as offensive.
Summary: Eames return home from his tour of duty doesn't go as expected.
Previous Parts: Write My Name Somewhere Safe | The Bones of You
Got this part in just under the wire. Would have had it out sooner but it kept wanting to be rewritten. Fast beta'd by my dear mildly_neurotic. I plan on finishing this, just not sure where to post. Maybe eames_arthur with nicer, tighter edits.
Sometimes, Eames really wished he could crush the manners drilled deep into his brain during childhood. If he could, he wouldn't be currently grinding his teeth to dust under the thin air of civility. He glared down at his cup and wished there was something to spike it with.
“Well, it's good that you're home, William,” his mother said after taking a sip from her own cup. Tea, of course, because some stereotypes existed for good reason. Arthur would find it amusing but Arthur...
A muscle in Eames' jaw twitched but he managed a polite smile. “Quite.”
“Sight bit cooler than where you just came from.” The beginning a smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth and she lifted an eyebrow. Her eyes were sharp, calculating, and the same shade as his own.
“The weather's actually quite nice in the desert after it stops trying to kill you. Wouldn't mind going back, actually,” Eames said with false pleasantry just to make her twitch.
It was a game they played with each other, starting up just after he had taken one look at his Bachelor's degree and joined the Army instead of getting a job. The rules were simple: don't shout, don't curse, don't do anything that made it obvious that a fight was taking place. The goal-frustrate each other to the point that one had to leave to avoid a murder conviction. It had taken less than a day of his returning to get back into the swing of things.
“Not to mention the way flying bullets add to the scenery,” she shot back, voice playful but eyes cold.
They paused to access each other, to rediscover all the ways they could poke and prod and cut each other to the quick. Eames wished they could have a proper fight, something snarling and ugly and full of the things they really wanted to say. Instead, they stared each other down and flashed smiles like knives.
“Such a dangerous environment must have made you think about the future,” his mother finally said. She toyed with her cup, dropping her gaze to stare thoughtfully at the table. “Perhaps about settling down and starting a family.”
Eames suppressed a snort. She'd didn't want a daughter-in-law and had badly masked her horror when she learned how close Lauren had come to filling the role. His mother was still too busy wondering where she had gone wrong with him to care about weddings and births. What she wanted was for him to be safe, have a nice house and a successful job that would make her proud.
And it wasn't that what she wanted was unreasonable; it certainly wasn't. But Eames had seen his future the night he had accepted his degree. He would have a lovely wife-not Lauren, never her-and a beautiful, expensive house. His job would be something important and his salary sizable because he could be charming, oh so charming, when he wanted and knew all the best ways to lie. He would be envied and admired and bored out of his bloody skull while he waited for Arthur's infrequent calls to inject a little excitement into his well-tailored life.
These were things he could tell her. Instead, he said, “I fear for your choice of daughters-in-law with me looking like this.”
“Yes, you do look like a thug, don't you?” his mother agreed, radiating disapproval. His parents had been shocked when they had come to greet him at the base with the other families. They hadn't even recognized him until they'd seen his face. They had still been looking for their slim, pale boy and what they had found was hard muscle and browned skin.
How are you going to get a nice job looking like that? his mother's eyes said. Why can't you let yourself be safe?
Eames wanted to tell her that expensive cars and ridiculous amounts of money wouldn't make him any less of a target, that flashy houses were broken into more often than army barracks, and that if someone was eventually going to point a gun at him, he appreciated his life not being completely miserable before that moment.
Instead he sipped his tea and waited for the guilt to pass.
***
Frantically working his way towards blind drunk probably wasn't the best way to deal with feeling like an asshole, but Eames really didn't feel like being reasonable at the moment. His head already ached, and the throbbing of the music did nothing to help, but he wanted the noise and the aggressive, sexual smack of it. He wanted to drink until his thoughts ground to a halt, until all the observations and analysis fell silent and let him, finally, relax.
There was a brunette eying him further down the bar. She was his age or a little younger and pretty in a way that felt natural instead of maintained. Eames considered the sensual curve of her lips and the interest in her eyes and admitted he was tempted.
He hadn't dated since Lauren had dumped him before graduation, when she could no longer take the tension and the anger that came over her every time a phone rang. Arthur hadn't called since Eames' sixteen month tour of duty started, though he had sent two very long letters. The pages were dog-eared and frail by now from how often Eames had read the small, crammed words, craving a low, calm voice instead.
He was lonely, but a one night stand wasn't going to fix that so the smile he sent back was friendly but in no way flirtatious. Though if she waited a few more drinks, Eames might be ready to do something monumentally stupid.
In the end, he stumbled out of the bar alone and caught a cab. He got out fifteen minutes from his parents' home because he was pretty sure he was going to be sick and the cool air might sober him enough to avoid disappointed glares in the morning.
No one was moving about when he finally managed to unlock the door. He considered himself accomplished for remaining upright instead of crawling up the four, relatively shallow steps in front of the house. Sneaking to his room like an errant child felt silly, but he still clung to the walls and winced at every noise he made. He breathed out a sigh of relief when he finally made it to his old bedroom, still ready to receive him until he returned to the barracks. Then he pushed open the door and nearly had a heart attack.
There was someone sitting in his unlit room, perched on his bed as if they had a right to be there. Eames assumed the person was a man based solely on the clothing-a suit, maybe-and what he could make out of the silhouette.
The lamp beside the bed was abruptly cut on, startling Eames into grabbing for a gun he didn't have. Familiar, calculating eyes regarded him in a way that made him twitch.
“I'm hallucinatin'.”
“You're drunk,” Arthur shot back. He looked torn between frowning and laughing.
“'at too,” Eames agreed with a sage nod before kicking the door shut. The effort nearly sent him tumbling. “An' you're a creeper. What you doing, crawling into people's rooms like that?”
Arthur shook his head. His lips twitched into a slight smile. “You know you're happy to see me.”
Eames stared at the other man for a moment. Yes, he was happy, but he was still trying to wrap his mind around the sight before him. He wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting but he suspected slicked back hair and fine cut suits wasn't it. His sketches certainly hadn't lived up to reality. The features had been right, but he'd failed to capture the lean strength of the man, the aura of calm efficiency and complete control. There was something faintly predatory about him that set Eames on edge and burned away at the alcohol muddling his thoughts.
“Funny time for a visit,” he said, heart thumping in his ears and his gaze never leaving Arthur as he shrugged out of his leather jacket. He didn't understand why the other man was making him so nervous; Arthur had never scared him before, even when his friend dropped vague hints that he had killed people.
Arthur scowled and his expression said that he thought Eames was an idiot. There was nothing friendly to be found there, nothing fond.
Eames frowned and leaned against the wall. His mind was clear enough to pick out tiny details, turning them this way and that to discover all their secrets before filing them away for later use. The features were correct, as was the voice, but something bothered Eames. He had not seen Arthur since they had begun speaking again years ago and then there was silence during his tour, but something about the man before him screamed 'wrong' loud enough to make Eames want a weapon.
Instead he tugged his shirt over his head and carelessly draped it on the chair in front of his old desk. “Ever read Hamlet?” he asked, wide eyes watching Arthur's rove over his naked chest but not linger on the words peeking out of his pants.
“Hasn't everyone, Will?” Arthur shot back, sounding annoyed and edging on hostile. Eames blinked and nodded and scrambled out of the room as fast as he could manage.
There was a second where he thought he might have been overreacting, that maybe the instinct screaming for him to run was some twitchy thing left over from the desert. Then his head barely avoided a collision with a bullet, and he dropped that happy train of thought for one involving him getting out alive.
Gunfire followed him down the hall as he ran. He hesitated for a moment in the living room, torn between getting to his parents or running for his life. He hopped in frustration, hands on his head and nails digging into his scalp. There was no sound in the house aside from his harsh breathing and the low snarl of a voice that didn't sound like Arthur at all. No frantic screams of surprise or desperation, nothing to say his parents were still alive. And if they were...
He let out a curse and ran for the front door. All he could think was, Follow me, you fucker, come on! and slow down just enough to make himself a better target. It was easier than trying to figure out why Arthur would do this or why everything seemed so eerily quiet and sinister. The house seemed to stretch on forever before he finally reached the door.
He spilled onto the dark street, tripping down the stairs but coming up running in a move only adrenaline could accomplish. Bullets cracked against the pavement and the side of the house when he stumbled behind it for cover. There was no life on the street and no lights in the houses. The street lamps provided only tiny patches of dull illumination. The entire area was dead save for him and Arthur.
“Come back here, you little shit!” echoed down the street, bouncing off the houses before dying with a loud ring.
Eames stilled, confused, then slipped passed the neighbors' house as quietly as possible. That wasn't Arthur's voice. It was too old and gruff, the heavy rasp of a smoker instead of the sharp clarity of a young man.
And now that he thought about it, he should have been dead several times over before making it outside. Either the man was a horrible shot that tended to get distressingly close, or Eames was being toyed with. Neither possibility was a good. Everyone got lucky at least once, and eventually the shooter would get tired of playing.
“We're doing it because of him, you know,” the man taunted; he sounded distant but Eames no longer placed complete trust in his senses. “Your scrawny-ass boyfriend, he fucked with the wrong people this time, kid, and you're the one that's going to pay for it.”
Eames sucked in a breath and kept going. He knew better than to stop or let his location be known. He was in the bloody SAS. The bastard was going to have to work for his kill.
Footsteps clacked loud against the pavement. They still sounded distant but Eames turned towards them anyway. Only one man from the sound of it but Eames wasn't sure what to trust. His eyes and ears had already been deceived despite the situation seeming impossible. Instinct seemed to still be on his side though, and while he felt the prickle of being hunted, he had yet to feel run to ground.
“We'll send you to him in a bodybag, let him sort out the pieces. We'll teach him fuckin' good.”
Wonderful, talkative and unimaginative. I can work with that.
Sending up a prayer, Eames bent down to pick something that caught his eye then kicked over a flowerpot. He slipped back into the shadows, wincing at the clatter of broken pottery. The footsteps changed directions, going softer as they went, but this man clearly was not used to being stealthy. Eames, on the other hand, made not a sound as he began circling around the building. He slowed when he heard the man draw closer, allowing the footsteps to move ahead of him some distance before silently stalking behind the gunman.
It was a cheap ploy and honestly one that shouldn't have worked but the other man-little more than a tall shadow in the dim light-was too confident to be overly cautious. A shiver went down Eames spine. Was the bastard simply being too full of himself or did he know something Eames didn't? Did he know the way out? Was there a way out?
“I could rip you apart in a second, kid, or have this whole place crashing down on your head,” the man assured as though he had read Eames' mind. His voice was grating up close, rattling Eames' nerves so badly he had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering.
Just as he was about to make his move, the man turned. The dim light revealed him to be middle aged with a craggy, pitted face. The smile on his face was chilling.
Eames flinched then froze, body half turned and coiling to spring.
“Think you're clever, kid? Army teach you to be a real tough guy?” The man laughed and the gun danced a little in the air.
Eames bolted forward, knocking aside the gun when the older man straightened it to shoot. The bullet lodged in Eames' shoulder just as he stabbed a pair of clippers into the vulnerable curve of the gunman's neck.
“Fuck!” Eames hissed and made an aborted grab at the wound. He scrambled to grab the gun the other man had dropped in favor of clawing at his neck before collapsing to the ground. The threat of the gun was probably unnecessary now but Eames kept it pointed at the lolling, twitching body until everything went still.
“Fuck,” he said again, looking down at himself and seeing blood everywhere. The taste of adrenaline was sour on his tongue. He whined softly at the hot, sticky feel of it on his skin then shook his head hard. He needed to stay calm and if that meant resolutely ignoring the way the body had just disappeared, so be it.
“How am I going to get out of here?” There were no cars and the pay phone that was supposed to be near his parents' house had wandered off somewhere.
His parents...God. If he went back into the house, would he find it empty or would they be there, dead and discarded on the floor?
He was working up the courage to look, dimly wishing he was still drunk so everything would be numb, when the world began to tilt. He stumbled, tried to stay upright but the street buckled and creaked beneath him as it shifted to form a steep vertical slope. His nails bit into the ground as he tried to keep hold then broke as gravity yanked him downward into blackness.
***
Eames woke tied to a chair in a bright room full of corpses. The scent of blood clogged his nostrils and the back of his throat. He nearly gagged on it and the sick feeling of disorientation that muddled his thoughts. There was a needle in his arm connected to a tube that went god knew where, and the man he had killed on the street lay on a nearby couch. At least Eames assumed that was him. He hadn't had that huge hole in his head the last time Eames had seen him.
Arthur stood a short distance away, a body at his feet and blood staining his suit. He looked much like the Arthur from before, the one that had shot at Eames, but the suit was different. He was calm, so alarmingly calm as he looked around the room before finally meeting Eames' glazed stare.
“Are you going to kill me?” Eames asked, voice breaking.
Arthur's expression crumbled. “I should have killed them slower,” he muttered then shook his head. He looked miserable when he met Eames' eyes again.
“No, Eames, I'm not going to kill you,” he assured, approaching carefully as if not wanting to startle the bound man. Eames just stared at him, dazed and confused and waiting. “I'm so sorry about this. I don't know how they found you. I was so careful.”
“Who are 'they',” Eames asked after taking a swallow his dry throat didn't appreciate. He did not tense when Arthur came over, flicked a knife out of his pocket with a soft apology, and started cutting through the ropes securing Eames. This Arthur seemed alright, more apologetic than violent towards him. He have might even been the real thing.
“People I've worked with.” Arthur paused as he cut through the last of the rope. “I think this is all of them but I'll find anyone left over. They'll never hurt you again.”
Eames closed his eyes, let the anger and protectiveness wash over him, and remembered how safe Arthur made him feel. “Can't promise things like that.”
Arthur put the knife away then reach as if to stroke Eames' hair. He hesitated when the younger man flinched and shivered, doubt asserting itself at the last minute. What if this was just a better fake? What if Eames didn't see the lie until it was too late?
But how could he doubt when Arthur looked so horribly lost?
“I'm real. I promise I'm real. I don't know how to prove that but it's true,” Arthur said, his tone a plea to be believed. Eames tried to find the faults, all the tiny tells, but all he saw was Arthur.
“Christ, this wasn't how I wanted your first time to be.” He carefully touched Eames face, nervous butterfly touches that grew a little bolder when Eames didn't flinch again.
“Arthur,” a male voice called. Eames weakly lurched in the chair, trying to find cover, but was gently subdued.
Arthur muttered soothing nonsense at him for a moment before answering the voice. “I'm in here, Dom. I've got him.” He gave Eames a frail smile and brushed fingers that smelt of cordite along his cheek. “It's okay. Dom's my friend. He won't hurt you.”
Eames shook his head and tugged at Arthur until he moved closer. He didn't want or care about Dom. He just wanted Arthur to be real, to never again experience whatever had just happened and all the doubt.
Just had to think safe was boring, he thought without humor but he knew he that wouldn't change that despite how frightened he currently felt. It would pass; it always did, eventually.
Sighing, he pressed his face into Arthur's hip and waited for the world to make sense again.
Author: abysmal_seraph
Team: Angst
Prompt: Silence, Fear, Overwhelmed, Blood
Word count: 3375
Rating: R
Chapter/Part Warnings: Graphic violence, drunkenness, kidnapping, disturbing imagery, horrible familial relationships, trauma, cursing, my sad attempt at action.
Series Warnings: Addictive personalities, graphic violence, unhealthy relationships, the darker end of morally gray, probably more that I can't think of right now. This does end happily...well, happy for two very messed up men, anyway.
Note: Eames is 24 in this. Don't recall if that's ever stated. Also nothing's really mentioned about his tour of duty aside from the length, but flippant comments are made that can be seen as offensive.
Summary: Eames return home from his tour of duty doesn't go as expected.
Previous Parts: Write My Name Somewhere Safe | The Bones of You
Got this part in just under the wire. Would have had it out sooner but it kept wanting to be rewritten. Fast beta'd by my dear mildly_neurotic. I plan on finishing this, just not sure where to post. Maybe eames_arthur with nicer, tighter edits.
Sometimes, Eames really wished he could crush the manners drilled deep into his brain during childhood. If he could, he wouldn't be currently grinding his teeth to dust under the thin air of civility. He glared down at his cup and wished there was something to spike it with.
“Well, it's good that you're home, William,” his mother said after taking a sip from her own cup. Tea, of course, because some stereotypes existed for good reason. Arthur would find it amusing but Arthur...
A muscle in Eames' jaw twitched but he managed a polite smile. “Quite.”
“Sight bit cooler than where you just came from.” The beginning a smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth and she lifted an eyebrow. Her eyes were sharp, calculating, and the same shade as his own.
“The weather's actually quite nice in the desert after it stops trying to kill you. Wouldn't mind going back, actually,” Eames said with false pleasantry just to make her twitch.
It was a game they played with each other, starting up just after he had taken one look at his Bachelor's degree and joined the Army instead of getting a job. The rules were simple: don't shout, don't curse, don't do anything that made it obvious that a fight was taking place. The goal-frustrate each other to the point that one had to leave to avoid a murder conviction. It had taken less than a day of his returning to get back into the swing of things.
“Not to mention the way flying bullets add to the scenery,” she shot back, voice playful but eyes cold.
They paused to access each other, to rediscover all the ways they could poke and prod and cut each other to the quick. Eames wished they could have a proper fight, something snarling and ugly and full of the things they really wanted to say. Instead, they stared each other down and flashed smiles like knives.
“Such a dangerous environment must have made you think about the future,” his mother finally said. She toyed with her cup, dropping her gaze to stare thoughtfully at the table. “Perhaps about settling down and starting a family.”
Eames suppressed a snort. She'd didn't want a daughter-in-law and had badly masked her horror when she learned how close Lauren had come to filling the role. His mother was still too busy wondering where she had gone wrong with him to care about weddings and births. What she wanted was for him to be safe, have a nice house and a successful job that would make her proud.
And it wasn't that what she wanted was unreasonable; it certainly wasn't. But Eames had seen his future the night he had accepted his degree. He would have a lovely wife-not Lauren, never her-and a beautiful, expensive house. His job would be something important and his salary sizable because he could be charming, oh so charming, when he wanted and knew all the best ways to lie. He would be envied and admired and bored out of his bloody skull while he waited for Arthur's infrequent calls to inject a little excitement into his well-tailored life.
These were things he could tell her. Instead, he said, “I fear for your choice of daughters-in-law with me looking like this.”
“Yes, you do look like a thug, don't you?” his mother agreed, radiating disapproval. His parents had been shocked when they had come to greet him at the base with the other families. They hadn't even recognized him until they'd seen his face. They had still been looking for their slim, pale boy and what they had found was hard muscle and browned skin.
How are you going to get a nice job looking like that? his mother's eyes said. Why can't you let yourself be safe?
Eames wanted to tell her that expensive cars and ridiculous amounts of money wouldn't make him any less of a target, that flashy houses were broken into more often than army barracks, and that if someone was eventually going to point a gun at him, he appreciated his life not being completely miserable before that moment.
Instead he sipped his tea and waited for the guilt to pass.
***
Frantically working his way towards blind drunk probably wasn't the best way to deal with feeling like an asshole, but Eames really didn't feel like being reasonable at the moment. His head already ached, and the throbbing of the music did nothing to help, but he wanted the noise and the aggressive, sexual smack of it. He wanted to drink until his thoughts ground to a halt, until all the observations and analysis fell silent and let him, finally, relax.
There was a brunette eying him further down the bar. She was his age or a little younger and pretty in a way that felt natural instead of maintained. Eames considered the sensual curve of her lips and the interest in her eyes and admitted he was tempted.
He hadn't dated since Lauren had dumped him before graduation, when she could no longer take the tension and the anger that came over her every time a phone rang. Arthur hadn't called since Eames' sixteen month tour of duty started, though he had sent two very long letters. The pages were dog-eared and frail by now from how often Eames had read the small, crammed words, craving a low, calm voice instead.
He was lonely, but a one night stand wasn't going to fix that so the smile he sent back was friendly but in no way flirtatious. Though if she waited a few more drinks, Eames might be ready to do something monumentally stupid.
In the end, he stumbled out of the bar alone and caught a cab. He got out fifteen minutes from his parents' home because he was pretty sure he was going to be sick and the cool air might sober him enough to avoid disappointed glares in the morning.
No one was moving about when he finally managed to unlock the door. He considered himself accomplished for remaining upright instead of crawling up the four, relatively shallow steps in front of the house. Sneaking to his room like an errant child felt silly, but he still clung to the walls and winced at every noise he made. He breathed out a sigh of relief when he finally made it to his old bedroom, still ready to receive him until he returned to the barracks. Then he pushed open the door and nearly had a heart attack.
There was someone sitting in his unlit room, perched on his bed as if they had a right to be there. Eames assumed the person was a man based solely on the clothing-a suit, maybe-and what he could make out of the silhouette.
The lamp beside the bed was abruptly cut on, startling Eames into grabbing for a gun he didn't have. Familiar, calculating eyes regarded him in a way that made him twitch.
“I'm hallucinatin'.”
“You're drunk,” Arthur shot back. He looked torn between frowning and laughing.
“'at too,” Eames agreed with a sage nod before kicking the door shut. The effort nearly sent him tumbling. “An' you're a creeper. What you doing, crawling into people's rooms like that?”
Arthur shook his head. His lips twitched into a slight smile. “You know you're happy to see me.”
Eames stared at the other man for a moment. Yes, he was happy, but he was still trying to wrap his mind around the sight before him. He wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting but he suspected slicked back hair and fine cut suits wasn't it. His sketches certainly hadn't lived up to reality. The features had been right, but he'd failed to capture the lean strength of the man, the aura of calm efficiency and complete control. There was something faintly predatory about him that set Eames on edge and burned away at the alcohol muddling his thoughts.
“Funny time for a visit,” he said, heart thumping in his ears and his gaze never leaving Arthur as he shrugged out of his leather jacket. He didn't understand why the other man was making him so nervous; Arthur had never scared him before, even when his friend dropped vague hints that he had killed people.
Arthur scowled and his expression said that he thought Eames was an idiot. There was nothing friendly to be found there, nothing fond.
Eames frowned and leaned against the wall. His mind was clear enough to pick out tiny details, turning them this way and that to discover all their secrets before filing them away for later use. The features were correct, as was the voice, but something bothered Eames. He had not seen Arthur since they had begun speaking again years ago and then there was silence during his tour, but something about the man before him screamed 'wrong' loud enough to make Eames want a weapon.
Instead he tugged his shirt over his head and carelessly draped it on the chair in front of his old desk. “Ever read Hamlet?” he asked, wide eyes watching Arthur's rove over his naked chest but not linger on the words peeking out of his pants.
“Hasn't everyone, Will?” Arthur shot back, sounding annoyed and edging on hostile. Eames blinked and nodded and scrambled out of the room as fast as he could manage.
There was a second where he thought he might have been overreacting, that maybe the instinct screaming for him to run was some twitchy thing left over from the desert. Then his head barely avoided a collision with a bullet, and he dropped that happy train of thought for one involving him getting out alive.
Gunfire followed him down the hall as he ran. He hesitated for a moment in the living room, torn between getting to his parents or running for his life. He hopped in frustration, hands on his head and nails digging into his scalp. There was no sound in the house aside from his harsh breathing and the low snarl of a voice that didn't sound like Arthur at all. No frantic screams of surprise or desperation, nothing to say his parents were still alive. And if they were...
He let out a curse and ran for the front door. All he could think was, Follow me, you fucker, come on! and slow down just enough to make himself a better target. It was easier than trying to figure out why Arthur would do this or why everything seemed so eerily quiet and sinister. The house seemed to stretch on forever before he finally reached the door.
He spilled onto the dark street, tripping down the stairs but coming up running in a move only adrenaline could accomplish. Bullets cracked against the pavement and the side of the house when he stumbled behind it for cover. There was no life on the street and no lights in the houses. The street lamps provided only tiny patches of dull illumination. The entire area was dead save for him and Arthur.
“Come back here, you little shit!” echoed down the street, bouncing off the houses before dying with a loud ring.
Eames stilled, confused, then slipped passed the neighbors' house as quietly as possible. That wasn't Arthur's voice. It was too old and gruff, the heavy rasp of a smoker instead of the sharp clarity of a young man.
And now that he thought about it, he should have been dead several times over before making it outside. Either the man was a horrible shot that tended to get distressingly close, or Eames was being toyed with. Neither possibility was a good. Everyone got lucky at least once, and eventually the shooter would get tired of playing.
“We're doing it because of him, you know,” the man taunted; he sounded distant but Eames no longer placed complete trust in his senses. “Your scrawny-ass boyfriend, he fucked with the wrong people this time, kid, and you're the one that's going to pay for it.”
Eames sucked in a breath and kept going. He knew better than to stop or let his location be known. He was in the bloody SAS. The bastard was going to have to work for his kill.
Footsteps clacked loud against the pavement. They still sounded distant but Eames turned towards them anyway. Only one man from the sound of it but Eames wasn't sure what to trust. His eyes and ears had already been deceived despite the situation seeming impossible. Instinct seemed to still be on his side though, and while he felt the prickle of being hunted, he had yet to feel run to ground.
“We'll send you to him in a bodybag, let him sort out the pieces. We'll teach him fuckin' good.”
Wonderful, talkative and unimaginative. I can work with that.
Sending up a prayer, Eames bent down to pick something that caught his eye then kicked over a flowerpot. He slipped back into the shadows, wincing at the clatter of broken pottery. The footsteps changed directions, going softer as they went, but this man clearly was not used to being stealthy. Eames, on the other hand, made not a sound as he began circling around the building. He slowed when he heard the man draw closer, allowing the footsteps to move ahead of him some distance before silently stalking behind the gunman.
It was a cheap ploy and honestly one that shouldn't have worked but the other man-little more than a tall shadow in the dim light-was too confident to be overly cautious. A shiver went down Eames spine. Was the bastard simply being too full of himself or did he know something Eames didn't? Did he know the way out? Was there a way out?
“I could rip you apart in a second, kid, or have this whole place crashing down on your head,” the man assured as though he had read Eames' mind. His voice was grating up close, rattling Eames' nerves so badly he had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering.
Just as he was about to make his move, the man turned. The dim light revealed him to be middle aged with a craggy, pitted face. The smile on his face was chilling.
Eames flinched then froze, body half turned and coiling to spring.
“Think you're clever, kid? Army teach you to be a real tough guy?” The man laughed and the gun danced a little in the air.
Eames bolted forward, knocking aside the gun when the older man straightened it to shoot. The bullet lodged in Eames' shoulder just as he stabbed a pair of clippers into the vulnerable curve of the gunman's neck.
“Fuck!” Eames hissed and made an aborted grab at the wound. He scrambled to grab the gun the other man had dropped in favor of clawing at his neck before collapsing to the ground. The threat of the gun was probably unnecessary now but Eames kept it pointed at the lolling, twitching body until everything went still.
“Fuck,” he said again, looking down at himself and seeing blood everywhere. The taste of adrenaline was sour on his tongue. He whined softly at the hot, sticky feel of it on his skin then shook his head hard. He needed to stay calm and if that meant resolutely ignoring the way the body had just disappeared, so be it.
“How am I going to get out of here?” There were no cars and the pay phone that was supposed to be near his parents' house had wandered off somewhere.
His parents...God. If he went back into the house, would he find it empty or would they be there, dead and discarded on the floor?
He was working up the courage to look, dimly wishing he was still drunk so everything would be numb, when the world began to tilt. He stumbled, tried to stay upright but the street buckled and creaked beneath him as it shifted to form a steep vertical slope. His nails bit into the ground as he tried to keep hold then broke as gravity yanked him downward into blackness.
***
Eames woke tied to a chair in a bright room full of corpses. The scent of blood clogged his nostrils and the back of his throat. He nearly gagged on it and the sick feeling of disorientation that muddled his thoughts. There was a needle in his arm connected to a tube that went god knew where, and the man he had killed on the street lay on a nearby couch. At least Eames assumed that was him. He hadn't had that huge hole in his head the last time Eames had seen him.
Arthur stood a short distance away, a body at his feet and blood staining his suit. He looked much like the Arthur from before, the one that had shot at Eames, but the suit was different. He was calm, so alarmingly calm as he looked around the room before finally meeting Eames' glazed stare.
“Are you going to kill me?” Eames asked, voice breaking.
Arthur's expression crumbled. “I should have killed them slower,” he muttered then shook his head. He looked miserable when he met Eames' eyes again.
“No, Eames, I'm not going to kill you,” he assured, approaching carefully as if not wanting to startle the bound man. Eames just stared at him, dazed and confused and waiting. “I'm so sorry about this. I don't know how they found you. I was so careful.”
“Who are 'they',” Eames asked after taking a swallow his dry throat didn't appreciate. He did not tense when Arthur came over, flicked a knife out of his pocket with a soft apology, and started cutting through the ropes securing Eames. This Arthur seemed alright, more apologetic than violent towards him. He have might even been the real thing.
“People I've worked with.” Arthur paused as he cut through the last of the rope. “I think this is all of them but I'll find anyone left over. They'll never hurt you again.”
Eames closed his eyes, let the anger and protectiveness wash over him, and remembered how safe Arthur made him feel. “Can't promise things like that.”
Arthur put the knife away then reach as if to stroke Eames' hair. He hesitated when the younger man flinched and shivered, doubt asserting itself at the last minute. What if this was just a better fake? What if Eames didn't see the lie until it was too late?
But how could he doubt when Arthur looked so horribly lost?
“I'm real. I promise I'm real. I don't know how to prove that but it's true,” Arthur said, his tone a plea to be believed. Eames tried to find the faults, all the tiny tells, but all he saw was Arthur.
“Christ, this wasn't how I wanted your first time to be.” He carefully touched Eames face, nervous butterfly touches that grew a little bolder when Eames didn't flinch again.
“Arthur,” a male voice called. Eames weakly lurched in the chair, trying to find cover, but was gently subdued.
Arthur muttered soothing nonsense at him for a moment before answering the voice. “I'm in here, Dom. I've got him.” He gave Eames a frail smile and brushed fingers that smelt of cordite along his cheek. “It's okay. Dom's my friend. He won't hurt you.”
Eames shook his head and tugged at Arthur until he moved closer. He didn't want or care about Dom. He just wanted Arthur to be real, to never again experience whatever had just happened and all the doubt.
Just had to think safe was boring, he thought without humor but he knew he that wouldn't change that despite how frightened he currently felt. It would pass; it always did, eventually.
Sighing, he pressed his face into Arthur's hip and waited for the world to make sense again.