Fic: A Stranger Stuck in My Skin
Title: A Stranger Stuck in My Skin
Genre: er... angst? romance?
Rating: T
Warning: Oh... I've looked at definitions for autosexuality, egosexuality and erotic narcissism, and none seem to quite apply. Attraction to self.
Disclaimer: If I owned it, the gay would be way more obvious.
Summary: Normal people don't feel a quickening of the pulse at the sight of their own reflections.
Note: Two songs were used pretty heavily for this one: Mirror in the Bathroom, by The Beat/The English Beat and A Dream within a Dream (from which I got the title), by Action Action.
A Stranger Stuck in My Skin
Eames likes forging. He likes the thrill of slipping into the skin of another, likes the satisfaction of a mark who buys the deception. But what he likes most is the end, when he stares into the mirror and watches himself slip back into... well, into himself.
Actually, to be honest, he likes it, and he hates it, and he hates it because he likes it, because Eames, though he keeps it dearly secret, has a problem. It has to be a problem, because normal people don't feel a quickening of the pulse at the sight of their own reflections.
Normal people aren't attracted to themselves.
Eames has learned to hide it over the years. He goes through one meaningless relationship after another, and Arthur has asked him more than once why he keeps doing it, pointed out time and again that he's just as capable of having a real relationship as any, but even though he trusts the point man like few others, Eames just can't explain it. How do you explain that the one man you want is inside your skin, in your veins, in every atom of your being, and yet impossible to touch, a mirror away?
Some days Eames is okay. Some days he just manages to pretend he doesn't linger at the mirror, staring at his own eyes, hair, jaw, lips, tells himself he's turned on by that woman across the street, or the man two bar stools down, or Arthur, or Cobb, or anybody, and those days are the good ones. He can handle those days. Other days, though, every second inside his own skin is agony, because he's unbearably close, and if only he were someone else, if only he could stop being Eames, he could have Eames.
So he forges, loses himself in his illusions, because what does it matter if a tall blonde woman with perky tits wants Eames? She's perfectly entitled to that attraction. And who cares if a young man with dreadlocks and a crooked tooth can't stop thinking about the lips of another man? That's fine, understandable. Who wouldn't think about lips like those?
But of course in the end he has to drop the illusion. He has to look in the mirror and see himself, want himself, despise himself, live with himself. He's unnatural and narcissistic and filthy and wrong.
Who would want someone like him?
Genre: er... angst? romance?
Rating: T
Warning: Oh... I've looked at definitions for autosexuality, egosexuality and erotic narcissism, and none seem to quite apply. Attraction to self.
Disclaimer: If I owned it, the gay would be way more obvious.
Summary: Normal people don't feel a quickening of the pulse at the sight of their own reflections.
Note: Two songs were used pretty heavily for this one: Mirror in the Bathroom, by The Beat/The English Beat and A Dream within a Dream (from which I got the title), by Action Action.
A Stranger Stuck in My Skin
Eames likes forging. He likes the thrill of slipping into the skin of another, likes the satisfaction of a mark who buys the deception. But what he likes most is the end, when he stares into the mirror and watches himself slip back into... well, into himself.
Actually, to be honest, he likes it, and he hates it, and he hates it because he likes it, because Eames, though he keeps it dearly secret, has a problem. It has to be a problem, because normal people don't feel a quickening of the pulse at the sight of their own reflections.
Normal people aren't attracted to themselves.
Eames has learned to hide it over the years. He goes through one meaningless relationship after another, and Arthur has asked him more than once why he keeps doing it, pointed out time and again that he's just as capable of having a real relationship as any, but even though he trusts the point man like few others, Eames just can't explain it. How do you explain that the one man you want is inside your skin, in your veins, in every atom of your being, and yet impossible to touch, a mirror away?
Some days Eames is okay. Some days he just manages to pretend he doesn't linger at the mirror, staring at his own eyes, hair, jaw, lips, tells himself he's turned on by that woman across the street, or the man two bar stools down, or Arthur, or Cobb, or anybody, and those days are the good ones. He can handle those days. Other days, though, every second inside his own skin is agony, because he's unbearably close, and if only he were someone else, if only he could stop being Eames, he could have Eames.
So he forges, loses himself in his illusions, because what does it matter if a tall blonde woman with perky tits wants Eames? She's perfectly entitled to that attraction. And who cares if a young man with dreadlocks and a crooked tooth can't stop thinking about the lips of another man? That's fine, understandable. Who wouldn't think about lips like those?
But of course in the end he has to drop the illusion. He has to look in the mirror and see himself, want himself, despise himself, live with himself. He's unnatural and narcissistic and filthy and wrong.
Who would want someone like him?