Fic: Sticks and Stones [Inception]
Title: Sticks and Stones
Character/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Team
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warning: Um...possible rambling?
Summary: They all have their own ways of dealing - Cobb has his children; Ariadne, her studies; Yusuf with his compounds; and Arthur, his bruises.
Author's Notes: Written to fulfill the prompt "bruises" for hc_bingo and for this prompt on inception_kink : Give me a fic about what sorts of psychic scars being killed or injured over and over in the dreamworld leaves.
They all have their own ways of dealing - or not dealing with it: the unwelcome parting gifts from Morpheus's realm, unbidden mementoes of the land of dreams.
Every time Cobb goes back home after a job (now that he has a home to go back to), it's to the welcome of James and Phillipa rushing to climb all over him, not caring what he does for a living or how many times he's died so long as he's there for them. He's their hero - one part Byronic, one part gothic, part Promethean - but all Daddy , always there to chase away the monsters at night, never mind that he more than once takes upon himself the role of the boogeyman in the dreams and nightmares of others. After dinner and bubble baths and a story time filled with dragons and princesses and handsome princes who save the day, Cobb holds his children close and there's nothing else left from the day or the job or the past to haunt him. Not anymore.
No matter how many times Ariadne comes back, unable to stay away once she's gotten a taste of the vast and the amazing in the unknown, at the end of the day, she has a life outside this game they play with and inside the minds of others. She has a steady boyfriend (Arthur ran a complete background check on the poor boy at the first burgeoning signs of attraction between the two: he's five foot nine with blonde hair, green eyes, and low blood pressure; born in Texas and raised Baptist; double majoring in Behavioral Psychology and Criminology. Cobb grudgingly approved.), friends with whom she can gossip and chat about the latest sale at the mall or the intricacies of Brunelleschi's dome for the Duomo of Florence. More than that though she's young and wide-eyed and curious, not jaded like the rest of them and sometimes Arthur finds himself wondering if there'll ever come a day when Ariadne will not hesitate to touch the smooth barrel of a gun to her own lips and pull the trigger (up until now, under Cobb's watchful eye, she's only died when absolutely necessary and in the easiest ways possible).
Even Yusuf has his comforts into which he delves; the familiar borders of acids and bases and oxidation, time spent alone holed up somewhere and tinkering with chemicals of this nature and that. As for Eames...well, no one can quite guess what Eames does, because that man has as many secrets as he does faces both in dreams and out, and it's really a don't ask, don't tell policy but he always shows up for the next job just as suave and cheerful and charming as ever.
And Arthur?
Arthur sees bruises on his body that aren't there.
- * - * -
It curves up and around his ribs, livid and angry, a deep molted purple-black around the edges - ugly against his pale skin, painful to the touch, and completely invisible because it's only in his mind.
He's standing in front of the three-way mirror in his closet, dressed in nothing but a pair of black silk pajama bottoms, bandages in one hand and delicately probing at the tender area with careful fingers, hissing in a sharp breath at the flash of pain that sears across his vision. It's the largest one this month, and by far not the first or the last.
Dreams aren't supposed to leave anything behind, but they've made themselves known on Arthur's body, and that's just about as real and as permanent as it gets. They're drawn across his skin like Ariadne's blueprints, sprawling metropolises of varying colors ranging from purple to black to a pale, sickly yellow. Although no one else can see them, Arthur knows they're there, maps them out with all the precision of a cartographer charting the course of a new world, a new and very ugly world indeed. His skin is the canvas for a tie-dye pattern of bruises that he can't ever smoke or drink or fuck away, imprints of countless deaths in a world of dreaming and nightmares, waking up to the slash of a blade across the jugular, a massive club to the brain, a leap off a building, a bullet to the heart.
Being a point man is more than just researching and organizing intel, no matter what those of lesser intelligence or expertise may claim - and Arthur is incontestably the best at what he does. He's Dom's right hand man in sleek black pinstripes, the soldier on the front lines with a gun and steady aim, the sacrificial lamb who charges forth heedlessly, always the first to go when the going gets tough. Almost always the first to be set up for the slaughter.
Arthur knows this. He accepts it. He deals. And so he bruises.
A pair of arms encircle him from behind; fingers gently pluck the roll of unused and forgotten bandages from his hand and tosses it aside, intertwining with his and Arthur allows himself a small smile, closing his eyes against the unsightly patchwork of memories of dying again, and again, and again only he can see.
"Come back to bed, dearest," Eames murmurs, voice gentle and lips soft against his ear, and Arthur doesn't protest.
- * - * -
They all have their own ways of dealing - Cobb has his children; Ariadne, her studies; Yusuf with his compounds; and Arthur, his bruises.
Eames? Eames has Arthur.
Character/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Team
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warning: Um...possible rambling?
Summary: They all have their own ways of dealing - Cobb has his children; Ariadne, her studies; Yusuf with his compounds; and Arthur, his bruises.
Author's Notes: Written to fulfill the prompt "bruises" for hc_bingo and for this prompt on inception_kink : Give me a fic about what sorts of psychic scars being killed or injured over and over in the dreamworld leaves.
They all have their own ways of dealing - or not dealing with it: the unwelcome parting gifts from Morpheus's realm, unbidden mementoes of the land of dreams.
Every time Cobb goes back home after a job (now that he has a home to go back to), it's to the welcome of James and Phillipa rushing to climb all over him, not caring what he does for a living or how many times he's died so long as he's there for them. He's their hero - one part Byronic, one part gothic, part Promethean - but all Daddy , always there to chase away the monsters at night, never mind that he more than once takes upon himself the role of the boogeyman in the dreams and nightmares of others. After dinner and bubble baths and a story time filled with dragons and princesses and handsome princes who save the day, Cobb holds his children close and there's nothing else left from the day or the job or the past to haunt him. Not anymore.
No matter how many times Ariadne comes back, unable to stay away once she's gotten a taste of the vast and the amazing in the unknown, at the end of the day, she has a life outside this game they play with and inside the minds of others. She has a steady boyfriend (Arthur ran a complete background check on the poor boy at the first burgeoning signs of attraction between the two: he's five foot nine with blonde hair, green eyes, and low blood pressure; born in Texas and raised Baptist; double majoring in Behavioral Psychology and Criminology. Cobb grudgingly approved.), friends with whom she can gossip and chat about the latest sale at the mall or the intricacies of Brunelleschi's dome for the Duomo of Florence. More than that though she's young and wide-eyed and curious, not jaded like the rest of them and sometimes Arthur finds himself wondering if there'll ever come a day when Ariadne will not hesitate to touch the smooth barrel of a gun to her own lips and pull the trigger (up until now, under Cobb's watchful eye, she's only died when absolutely necessary and in the easiest ways possible).
Even Yusuf has his comforts into which he delves; the familiar borders of acids and bases and oxidation, time spent alone holed up somewhere and tinkering with chemicals of this nature and that. As for Eames...well, no one can quite guess what Eames does, because that man has as many secrets as he does faces both in dreams and out, and it's really a don't ask, don't tell policy but he always shows up for the next job just as suave and cheerful and charming as ever.
And Arthur?
Arthur sees bruises on his body that aren't there.
- * - * -
It curves up and around his ribs, livid and angry, a deep molted purple-black around the edges - ugly against his pale skin, painful to the touch, and completely invisible because it's only in his mind.
He's standing in front of the three-way mirror in his closet, dressed in nothing but a pair of black silk pajama bottoms, bandages in one hand and delicately probing at the tender area with careful fingers, hissing in a sharp breath at the flash of pain that sears across his vision. It's the largest one this month, and by far not the first or the last.
Dreams aren't supposed to leave anything behind, but they've made themselves known on Arthur's body, and that's just about as real and as permanent as it gets. They're drawn across his skin like Ariadne's blueprints, sprawling metropolises of varying colors ranging from purple to black to a pale, sickly yellow. Although no one else can see them, Arthur knows they're there, maps them out with all the precision of a cartographer charting the course of a new world, a new and very ugly world indeed. His skin is the canvas for a tie-dye pattern of bruises that he can't ever smoke or drink or fuck away, imprints of countless deaths in a world of dreaming and nightmares, waking up to the slash of a blade across the jugular, a massive club to the brain, a leap off a building, a bullet to the heart.
Being a point man is more than just researching and organizing intel, no matter what those of lesser intelligence or expertise may claim - and Arthur is incontestably the best at what he does. He's Dom's right hand man in sleek black pinstripes, the soldier on the front lines with a gun and steady aim, the sacrificial lamb who charges forth heedlessly, always the first to go when the going gets tough. Almost always the first to be set up for the slaughter.
Arthur knows this. He accepts it. He deals. And so he bruises.
A pair of arms encircle him from behind; fingers gently pluck the roll of unused and forgotten bandages from his hand and tosses it aside, intertwining with his and Arthur allows himself a small smile, closing his eyes against the unsightly patchwork of memories of dying again, and again, and again only he can see.
"Come back to bed, dearest," Eames murmurs, voice gentle and lips soft against his ear, and Arthur doesn't protest.
- * - * -
They all have their own ways of dealing - Cobb has his children; Ariadne, her studies; Yusuf with his compounds; and Arthur, his bruises.
Eames? Eames has Arthur.