[Fic&Art collab] free-fall
title: free-fall
author: words by ilovetakahana + art by pearljamz
team: romance
prompt: smile
word count: 518
rating: PG
warnings: a dream within a dream, mild violence.
When he wakes up his feet are moving. A world of low light and all-too-familiar colors. The carpet is plush beneath his shoes. Fleeting impression of a door, and he looks up and Arthur is sitting at the foot of the bed. “Hey, Stuart.”
Eames smiles, kisses Arthur’s forehead, sits down on the bed next to him. Pressed together despite the expanse of the bed, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. “Of course you’d recreate this place,” he says. Arthur’s hand is wrapping around his. “That memorable, yes?”
“More of a useful learning experience.” Arthur squints around the room. “I mean, up until the Fischer job I’d never even been in any three- and four-level dreams.”
“We always used to do such safe, mundane jobs,” Eames mocks, and that gets him an amused snort. “One and two levels, and even dreams in which you were the architect.”
“And then this happened.”
And that is, of course, all the warning he gets, before the world jolts around him, hard enough to throw them both off the bed. Spinning toward the far wall, bracing for impact. Arthur’s hands are hard on his shoulders, and tense, but not the tense that Eames knows from a situation that can only be best described as cross our fingers and hope for the best.
The knock against the wall is nothing bad and when he opens his eyes, he’s looking into Arthur’s amused grin. No, wait, it’s not just the grin - it’s what’s missing. The pinch in his eyebrows, the stretch of his skin over his bones, the hard set of his shoulders.
What he’s actually looking at right now is a loose-limbed, happy, excited Arthur. A smile that makes him want to laugh back, to maybe blow things up. To poke fun: “Are you certain I shouldn’t be quite jealous of this dream right now?”
Arthur laughs and does a slow spin in the gravity-less room.
Eames thinks about action and reaction, pushes off the wall just a little, and he’s free-falling, along with everything else in the room. The telephone suspended from its cord and the faint buzz of the busy signal. A glass from the tray next to the flatscreen telly. Pen and paper and a deck of cards.
A strong grip around his wrist, and Arthur is reeling him in. “Look,” is all he says, and he points at the mirror.
It shimmers, once, and then:
A flash of his own paisley shirt, the wires from his headset to the music player. Arthur in his shirt and his waistcoat closing the door. The world spinning and Arthur flying/falling/fighting Fischer’s subconscious security.
“Really, Arthur, running up and down the walls and the ceiling, like something out of comic books,” Eames says admiringly.
“There’s more,” and there is, when the gun comes into play and for a brief flashing instant it’s the dream or the reality, and then - double-tap, and it’s over.
He’s actually speechless when the mirror fades back, and he can see his own expression, and Arthur smiling, slinging an arm around his shoulders and pulling him in close.