Prompt Post No. 16
Welcome to Round 16 of the Inception Kink Meme.
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When he wakes up in the morning to the same day, he doesn't stop checking it.
Arthur wonders if totems can lie. If they go bad when you rely on them for too long. Arthur thinks about Mal killing herself. Arthur thinks about deja vu. In the end, Arthur does his best to shrug it off again.
When he wakes up a third time, to the same damn day, he doesn't care what his totem says. It's a dream.
Arthur presses the gun to his temple, steels himself-- a process that no longer takes much time or effort, and he wonders if that's a good thing or a bad one-- and pulls the trigger.
When he opens his eyes, he's not in a warehouse or a hotel room. He's in the same temporary apartment, in the same pair of boxers he'd woken up in three times in a row already, and the same bird going past his window. He counts to three and a second follows it. This time he doesn't even bother steeling himself, he doesn't have to. He grabs the gun from his nightstand and pulls the trigger out of sheer frustration.
When that lands him in the exact same space, he gets up, showers, and gets dressed. If there are answers, they lie outside.
He keeps the gun on him anyway.
~*~*~
Arthur goes to different places, since his first trip through the day obviously didn't do him any good, and this time he runs into Eames.
"Rough day, Arthur?" Eames greets him.
"You have no idea." Arthur says, but he doesn't elaborate. What could he say?
Eames sticks with him, which makes investigating impossible, but then Arthur reasons, he has no idea what to investigate. Eames does an only slightly inadequate job of hiding his concern, which in itself means Arthur is doing an inadequate job of looking like a man who needs none.
The next-- same-- day, Arthur doesn't go to the coffee shop where he'd met Eames, but he meets him later in the day at a diner across town.
"Rough day, Arthur?" Eames greets him, just as bright and insouciant as the last time.
"You have no idea." Only this time Arthur is too tired to try and be humorous about his response.
"... Seriously, Arthur, is something up? You're not in trouble already, are you?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"Let me buy you a drink."
"It's *noon*."
"Yeah, well, you look like you need one."
Arthur refuses, but he allows the company. Enjoys it, even.
~tbc
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Arthur does let Eames buy him a drink when evening rolls around. He lets Eames buy a whole bottle and they get drunk in Eames' hotel room, where Arthur tries to explain his situation, and Eames tries very hard not to laugh.
When Arthur wakes up to the same morning again, he shoots a hole in the wall first, then puts one in himself. He opens his eyes to an unblemished wall and swears until he's shaking.
This time he seeks Eames out. He gives up the pretense of an ordinary day early on.
"Eames, can we... can we be somewhere alone?"
Lascivious joy wars with bitter experience for a moment on Eames' face. "As you like, Darling. Your place or mine?"
"You're closer." Arthur says, and Eames doesn't ask him how he knows. Arthur wishes he would, but apparently Eames just accepts the fact that Arthur knows things.
"I want you to shoot me." He says, as soon as they're alone behind a locked door.
"That's a terrible come-on." Eames says flatly.
"No, I-- I need you to. I tried-- I don't even know how many times now, I tried. But I keep waking up here, it all starts over. It's not like any dream I've ever been in, but I know it's not real, it can't be."
If Eames had looked mildly concerned the first time they spent the day together, he now looked ready to call the men in white coats. Or possibly Dom. Arthur wasn't sure which would be worse.
"Arthur, you're not dreaming. I'm flattered if you routinely dream of me, of course, but I can assure you, I am me and very real. I can only assume the rest of the world is as well, but if it would make you feel better, I'll check my totem-- Arthur,"
"I've checked mine. It's wrong." He shook his head.
"But, the entire point-- and forgive me if I have this wrong, but I'm fairly certain I *don't*-- of the totems, is that they're not wrong. They're the one constant we have."
"Mine's not. It's stopped working. Everything has, for me. I've shot myself already and that doesn't work, either."
"You're worrying me, love."
"Every morning I wake up and it's the same day, I thought it was a dream, but I can't get out of it!"
Eames frowned. "What, like... Groundhog Day?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Have you met Andie McDowell yet? Because I think that fixes it."
"Eames, I need you to stop being cute and just shoot me!"
"I'm sorry, Arthur, I can't." Eames reached over to pat Arthur down. "And as much as I'd like to be feeling you up in my hotel room under happier circumstances, consider yourself on suicide watch. I will not have your insanity-fueled death on my hands."
"What are you going to do about it?" Arthur let Eames take his gun, though he could have easily kept it. He could have easily killed himself in the time it took Eames to disarm him, but what would the point in that be?
"Keep you here, I guess. Figure something out."
Arthur shrugged and took up residence on the tiny, hard-cushioned sofa.
Eames' suicide watch didn't change anything. Arthur woke up back at home. He hissed out a very heartfelt 'fuck', carved his name in the wall across from the bed, and went up to the roof. If shooting himself didn't work, maybe jumping would.
~tbc
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He went back to finding Eames at the start of each day. Or, each repetition of the same day. Sometimes parts of the conversation repeated themselves, but more often than not, he was able to direct it differently. It was never deep-- nothing about families, no complete names. But he knew more about Eames' likes and dislikes, knew a few of his favourite jokes now.
All in all, it had been a long time since Arthur had gotten to know someone so well.
"What would you say," Arthur sounded him out again, with more subtlety. "If I told you I was trapped in a dream, right now?"
Eames' hand disappeared into his pocket for a moment. "Can't be. Which is... good news, yeah?"
"Not really. See, either I'm stuck in a dream that I can't wake up from, or I'm in hell. You can see how I'd rather have the dream."
"But you must have *checked*--" Eames began.
"Yeah. I did, about a million times. I still do. Maybe I've been compromised, it's the only way... if someone who knew enough to got a hold of my totem."
"Doesn't explain mine."
"Well, you're a part of the dream, aren't you?"
Eames smiled warmly. "Thanks."
Arthur stopped. "... For what?"
"For dreaming about me. For assuming that I'm a figment of your imagination instead of assuming I've stolen your totem and abducted you into dreamland for some nefarious purpose of my own. Of course, you're *not* dreaming about me, because I am very much myself. I'd prove it to you, if I knew how."
"I tried waking myself up." Arthur confessed.
Eames reached over and pinched Arthur's ass. "There. Now we've both tried."
"No. I shot myself. More times than I can count." Arthur kept his voice low, pulled Eames after him into his apartment and showed him the big red 'X' he'd put on his wall the last time he woke to find it unmarred. "I jumped off my building, and into oncoming traffic, and under a subway train, into a canal... I've done everything."
"I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned?" Eames' eyebrow quirked upwards, but the line of his mouth remained serious, and his eyes themselves were unreadable.
"That about sums it up for me." Arthur returned.
"Well... I mean, what...?"
"I'd ask you to kill me, but I know from experience that ends in you patting me down and putting me on a suicide watch."
"Glad to hear I'm responsible like that."
"You could pat me down for fun." Arthur offered, surprising himself.
~tbc
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i love you.
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They grapple, sort of, but it doesn't take long for Arthur to decide he prefers to stay on the bottom like that, and then it's just the length of Eames' cock sliding against his, their chests colliding, their legs tangling... He'd assumed going in that he'd be fighting for at least a scrap of dominance, and was surprised not to want it, but when Arthur pushes back, Eames laughs, low and throaty, and kisses him hard.
~*~*~
Arthur took Eames to a museum, after, and they walked through a small nearby park.
"A little backwards, don't you think?" Eames said, but Arthur ignored it.
They had dinner together, and then Arthur dragged Eames back-- all the way into his bed this time-- flipped him over and pinned him down this time, and relished in the position for a moment before sliding to the foot of the bed and beginning an earnest exploration into the art of cocksucking.
~*~*~
For a moment, Arthur hoped that Eames had slipped out during the night, but the hope didn't last.
He found him again, of course.
"You seem unaccountably morose." Eames said, midway through their bout of occupying the same table and drinking sub-par coffee.
Arthur suspects the barista does not, in fact, know how to spell espresso or cappuccino.
"Accountably morose." He corrected.Because if the whole mess he was in didn't give him reason to be, what on earth could?
"Do tell." Eames' eyebrows lifted, and he paused a moment, cup halfway to his lips.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
"Not in public." He shook his head. Eames merely guided him outside and around the building, into an empty back alley.
Instead of explaining things, Arthur kissed him.
He was hoping to be kissed back. A small wild part of him, embracing the lack of long-term consequences his life now held, was hoping it might lead to filthy, messy, semi-public blowjobs.
Instead, Eames checked his totem.
"All right. Not dreaming."
"... You dream about that a lot?"
"Well, it's not always kissing." Eames shrugged. "Leaves the question, though, of why you've suddenly decided to respond so enthusiastically to my long campaign of subtle and vexing flirtation."
"You can't possibly be real." Arthur sighed.
"Beg pardon? I can't be real? You're the one behaving erratically."
"I have every right to behave erratically!" Arthur hissed.
~tbc
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"That sounds... more than a little insane, dearheart." Eames said guardedly.
"Dearheart?"
"These things just come out of me." He waved the objection away. "If you think you'll have a problem with an endless stream of endearments, then you should spend your groundhog day fucking somebody else."
"I haven't met anyone else I know, and I'm not going to get far enough with a stranger in one day to have them falling into bed with me." Arthur crossed his arms and tried not to think about the fact that, since running into Eames, he hadn't looked for anyone else. Hadn't phoned anyone else. Hadn't thought about anyone else.
"You never know." Eames said.
"I wouldn't have sex with the kind of person who'd have sex with me after a single day."
"If you're to be believed, you already have. You might have taken your sweet time about it, but I was ready to fall into bed with you from the get-go."
"Whatever. I didn't need to hear that. I don't need-- I don't-- All of this is--"
"Breathe, Arthur." Eames' hand made sure circles on Arthur's back. "I thought sex was the time loop panacea."
"Yeah, well, obviously not. Thanks for taking this in stride this time."
Eames shrugged. "Don't know what else to do. You sound convinced, and frighteningly rational. Provided you don't try to off yourself while I'm watching, what else is there to do?"
"Good point."
"Do you want to have sex with me? Because there is that, apparently. Even if it doesn't fix anything."
"Passes the time." Arthur snorted.
~*~*~
Arthur spends a solid week's worth of the same day convincing Eames that he's come around to the idea of them being fuck buddies, and it's good, if not completely satisfying-- really, nothing short of waking up to a tomorrow would be completely satisfying, and if Eames is unsatisfied, he doesn't say anything to the effect.
Then it's another day, and Eames looks at him with pleased astonishment when he makes the studiedly casual offer, and Arthur suddenly can't breathe.
"Arthur? I can't tell if this is a cruel prank on your part or just second thoughts, but..."
"No," He shook his head. "Just... it's nothing. Forget it. Had a headache for a second."
"You know, contrary to popular belief, a headache is a piss-poor reason not to have sex, since the resulting endorphin rush provides a natural analgesic." Eames smiled winningly.
"It kind of turns me on that you have a scientific argument." Arthur admitted.
Eames' grin widened.
And later, in Arthur's apartment, when they lay panting in the twisted sheets, Eames looked over at him with open amazement and whispered 'you're perfect', and Arthur broke.
"I'm sorry, was that wrong?"
Arthur shook his head, took a moment to compose himself. "No."
"Let me guess." His smile was wry and did not extend past his mouth. "Headache?"
"Let it go, Eames."
"That really was amazing, though. I swear, it's like we just fit, like... I have never had a first time with someone go so well. I-- Arthur?"
Arthur told himself he wasn't going to cry, because that was unacceptable, and he wasn't a girl, and he'd gotten used to this, it was supposed to go the same way as all the other times, it was supposed to be casual, so he could pretend the next day that that was all they were, casual.
"Should I get alcohol?" Eames offered. "Would that make it easier to... talk, or, whatever it is you clearly need to do right now?"
Arthur shook his head. "It's not."
"What's not?"
"The first time."
~tbc
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"It's all right," Eames said, even though no, it really wasn't.
"I wish you would." Arthur brought the gun out of the nightstand, placing it into Eames' hand, and Eames dropped it like it was hot.
"Fuck! What the fucking fuck, Arthur?!"
"It doesn't work when I do it myself. I just thought... I don't even know anymore, but I really can't live through a rest-of-the-day where I've embarrassed myself this badly.
"Oh no." Eames shook his head. "Besides, what if this is the last time it happens and I kill you for real?"
"Please?" He picked up the gun again, wrapped Eames' hand around it like a caress.
Arthur imagined it would be, like a caress. If Eames did it instead of him. The muzzle of the gun kissing his temple and Eames whispering gently in his ear right before pulling the trigger, 'Goodbye, baby'. He imagined it like foreplay, too, the barrel in his mouth and him looking up through his eyelashes, but that was too disturbing to dwell on, not romantic, not sweet, like the first way was.
Or maybe he'd been spending too long killing himself out of desperation or boredom, because that probably wasn't an acceptable way to think about it, either.
Eames just whispered 'fuck' again, weakly. They stayed like that for a long time, naked and sitting in bed, resting up against each other with the gun between them, but in the end, he didn't pull the trigger.
When Arthur woke up in the morning, he tried telling himself he didn't care that Eames wouldn't be there. He stayed in bed another hour, then another.
At two in the afternoon, he got up and tracked Eames down.
"I think I've fallen in love with you." He said. "Just so you know."
And then he walked out.
Eames followed, of course. On foot, to the park they'd walked through on their odd little post-sex 'date', what seemed like a million cycles ago, to where Arthur now sat on a bench and stared at his shoes.
"So you were saying you loved me?" Eames sat beside him.
"Yeah. I didn't mean to."
"That's all right."
"This is serious." Arthur shook his head.
"Yes." Eames agreed.
"I love you."
"And I you."
Arthur just nodded. That was about as much as he was prepared to face.
He went home alone.
~*~*~
Arthur woke with a distinct heavy-heartedness. He'd finally come around to accept his actual, emotional feelings for Eames, confessed them, and now it wouldn't even matter.
He looked at the gun for a while, but it never changed anything.
His phone rang, which had never happened before. The wall was fine, but had he remembered to mark it yesterday? Was it all over?
"Hello," He fumbled for it, thumb feeling too big for the tiny buttons, and there was a moment of panic when he thought he'd lost the one change to his morning in far too long. "Hello?!"
"Eager, darling?" Eames chuckled down the line. "I discovered a charming little place for horrendous coffee yesterday morning, and I wondered if you might join me? Being as we are, after all, in love with each other."
"Yeah, I-- I think I know the place." Arthur smiled. Weight lifted.
FIN
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I loved this, absolutely marvelous.
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Thank you for this, it was brilliant :)
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