Inception - Pretend That You're Alone (5/11)

[osaki_nana_707]

Title: Pretend That You're Alone (5/11)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Word count: 4,059
Pairings/Characters: ArthurxEames, Yusuf, Cobb
Rating: R(this part)
Warnings: language, underage, age difference (16/32)
Summary: AU. Eames is a burned out university professor who goes to the park for lunch to get away from the chaos of his life. There he meets 16-year-old Arthur and begins to befriend him for his ability to have an intelligent conversation with him. When he discovers the boy is homeless, he decides to take care of him, but things with Arthur get more complicated than he could ever expect.



Part Five

When Eames awoke, it was to a dull ache in his head and a warm lump pressed up against his chest. He wanted to curl up into that heat and go back to sleep, but his mind supplied him with the idea that it was Friday, and he did have a class to get to eventually.

He sighed, rolling onto his back and scrubbing his hands over his eyes. He yawned and checked the time only to discover it was just barely five o'clock, and that was when he remembered.

He remembered what he'd done.

Fuck, why had he done that?

He shot up, and the arm Arthur had slouched around him dropped from his chest to his waist. The boy didn't sound, didn't move, just kept snoozing so silently that Eames momentarily wondered if he was dead.

Eames looked at him.

His hair was tousled, dark and hanging in loose curls around his eyes and across the pillows. His eyelashes, equally dark, didn't flutter even a little, and his breath puffed out from his slightly parted lips so quietly that Eames couldn't even hear them unless he leaned in close.

God, he was beautiful.

Eames traced a thumb along Arthur's bottom lip, purely for curiosity value because he wasn't that fucked up, really.

Arthur made a tiny sound and, unexpectedly Eames felt the tip of his tongue push against the pad of his thumb and then the boy was taking his entire thumb into his mouth and sucking at it. When Eames was able to rip his eyes away from the sight of his mouth around the digit, he managed to look to Arthur's eyes and see that they were wide open and watching Eames for some sort of reaction.

"What are you doing?" Eames asked, though that much was very obvious.

Arthur smiled, teeth pressing against the skin of his thumb on both sides, and Eames tugged it out of his mouth.

"Oh, what?" Arthur asked, pushing himself up on both arms so that he could look down over Eames. "You're not going to go all righteous and self-loathing on me again, are you? You do realize it's just going to lead to another moment like this, right?"

"Oh, God," Eames said, staring up at Arthur like he was a judge on the altar. "You… you seduced me-"

"You started this," Arthur replied, terribly pleased with himself. "Don't try to blame this on me."

"I had been drinking, and you were upset, and-"

Okay, even Eames thought those were some terrible excuses, and the way Arthur was rolling his eyes was proof that he did too. Arthur crawled out of the bed ungracefully and then walked to the window, pushing open the curtains.

"Take a look outside, Mr. Eames," Arthur said smartly.

Eames sighed through his nose and propped himself up on his elbows. "I don't see anything," he mumbled in frustration.

"That's exactly my point," Arthur replied, turning around. Eames couldn't help but take in the lines of his body when he leaned against the window frame. He was so lean and milky white… Eames could still see the lines of his ribs.

"See," Arthur continued, gesturing to the window. "I thought you might need to see this. I thought you might need a visual aide to help you realize that the world's still going on. It didn't end in hellfire and destruction because you slept with me, and the cops didn't come storming to this building, surrounding it and having SWAT shoot up at the windows. Nothing changed. We jerked off each other, you touched me, and no punishment befell you. Are you satisfied now with the idea that God or Buddha or whoever it is you worship doesn't have time to smite you with all the real pedophiles and hebephiles prowling the streets?"

Eames stared blankly for a long moment, just at Arthur's face even though there was plenty more to look at.

Then, he said, "I wasn't going to say that I regretted what we'd done."

"Liar," Arthur replied, moving away from the window to come back towards the bed.

"Okay, fine, maybe I was," Eames said, pausing to lick his lips when Arthur crawled back onto the bed, "but it's not like I can take it back now. What's done has been done."

"Glad you're starting to see things my way," Arthur said, slumping in the bed next to him.

"I'm not," Eames replied, smirking a little in spite of himself. "I'm not going to deny I've done things that have been done, nor am I going to deny that things have been done to me when they have in fact been done."

He thought he saw Arthur flinch a little at that, but he couldn't be sure.

"…and so you shouldn't," Arthur agreed, but there was something in his voice that didn't sound entirely convinced. "So."

"So?"

"So… what do we do now?" Arthur asked. "I bet I can guess what you're going to say."

"Oh? What's that?"

Arthur peppered on a rather sad interpretation of his accent and said, "We are not doing this again."

Eames turned his head so he could look at him directly. "That was a right awful accent, pet. We English don't all sound that snotty, I hope you know."

"Oh, so sorry," Arthur said mockingly, "I'll leave the English to you from this point on. Come on, tell me that I'm right."

"I will not tell you that you're right because you're not, and even if you were I wouldn't dare give you that amount of satisfaction."

"So, we are going to do this again?" Arthur asked, and surprisingly there wasn't a leer to go with it. "That's an interesting turn of events for you."

"I didn't say that."

"Okay, so… enlighten me, professor," Arthur said, folding one arm to lay on while using the other one to walk his fingers up Eames's thigh. "What's going to happen now?"

"I don't know," Eames admitted, sighing. "I don't even know why I-why I did such a thing, why I wanted to."

"Can I theorize?" Arthur asked, fingers wandering up Eames's abdomen.

"I don't see why not."

"You don't have anyone in the whole world and neither do I. I don't believe in 'destiny' or any kind of shit like that, but maybe you and I found each other because we need each other. So what if I'm a teenager? So what if people can't know? What's so wrong with having someone to go to at the end of the day? To like… I don't know, let out your frustrations on so you can fucking sleep at night?"

Eames smiled a little ruefully. "It sounds like bollocks."

"You agree with me, and you know it," Arthur replied. "If you need somebody in your life, I can be that person. In exchange for room and board and all the stuff you've supplied me with, you can have me. It's really all I've got to offer."

"You're offering to be my sex slave. You do realize that, don't you?" Eames asked, partially horrified and partially amused.

"No, I'm not," Arthur responded, chuckling. "We don't have to have sex. You can do whatever you want with me. You can complain about other people, you can yell at me, you can fuck me; I can fuck you if you want me to. I'm just offering my services here. Don't cheapen by saying I don't do anything but have sex for nothing. The absolute least I would be is a prostitute, not a slave. I can leave whenever I want."

"You're not a prostitute," Eames said with disgust, though if his assumptions were correct, that would be the appropriate term. "That makes me sound like some dirty old man."

Arthur crawled on top of him, sat on him, and said with mirth, "you are a dirty old man… but it's okay, because I happen to be just as naughty."

"Little bastard," Eames said.

Arthur leaned over and kissed him. "Use me, motherfucker," he whispered against Eames's lips.

Eames was late to school that morning. Arthur had occupied him by sucking off his morning wood and taking his damned sweet time doing it too (bloody tease). Almost immediately afterward Arthur had fallen asleep again leaving Eames to rush through breakfast, a shower, getting dressed, and having to catch a cab because he missed the bus.

His students were packing up to leave, thinking he was a no-show, when he burst through the door. "Sit back down," he commanded, waving his hand at them, and they did with sighs of agitation.

He dropped his disorganized mess of supplies onto his desk and then rolled his shoulders. "All right, who's ready to learn about the inner workings of the human mind?" he asked with a rather derisive smile. "If you're not, congratulations, you still get to."

He wrote on the board with a piece of chalk and then turned back to his students. "Today we're going to have a little review session of what we've been learning, and by we I mean I considering most of you haven't had the gall to even show up to class. You're lucky I'm such a nice guy, doing this today. I could just let all of you fall behind and fail miserably."

He wasn't sure what came over him all of a sudden, but he found himself saying, "I mean that when I say you'll fail miserably by the way. How much money your folks make in a year means absolutely nothing to me. There isn't a bribe you can give me or my superiors that will convince me to change your lousy grades because… well, for the love of God, don't you think it might be worth it to actually learn something while you're here? This is a university, and coming here isn't just about drinking until you pass out and dicking around in your rooms. There's a reason while they actually make you come to fucking class, you know."

The class was silent, staring at him with saucer-sized eyes. He cleared his throat and turned back to the board, writing down subjects they would be covering.

He couldn't imagine how he'd managed to say all of that out loud, after he'd kept it inside for so long. Maybe he just felt fearless because what Arthur had said that morning had been right.

He'd done something illegal, something most of society would find absolutely sick and wrong, something religious fanatics would expect him to be burning for, and nothing had happened.

Nothing.

Fuck, Eames was a goddamned adult. Arthur was right. He could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

"So," Eames said, and this time his smile was genuine. "Let's start at the beginning. Who can give me the definition of psychology?"

"You're in a good mood," Yusuf mentioned at lunch time.

"Class went well," Eames said, smiling. "I got every one of my students actually writing notes. Whether they study them is none of my business, but at least I got their lazy arses to make an effort."

"Really? How did you manage that?"

"I… told them to," Eames shrugged. "I told them I would fail them if they didn't pay attention because I didn't care about their money."

"You might be getting some complaints then," Yusuf said, throwing his meal into the microwave. "What caused this decision? You've never been quite so ballsy in the past."

"I guess I took what you said about me fading away to heart, Yusuf. I decided not to take it anymore. It's one of those 'the only thing stopping me was me' kind of things, I guess."

"Well, that's good," Yusuf said with a wave. "It's good to see you smile again, Eames."

Eames's smile grew as if just to satisfy Yusuf all the more.

"I don't see why I have to take shit from them, after all," Eames continued, leaning his cheek onto his fist as he scooped a spoonful of pudding out of the cup sitting before him. "Why should I, right? I'm tired of those selfish little bastards assuming they can have the easy life just because they have money. It's an outrage, really. We spent a long time and a lot of effort just so that we could supply them with this knowledge, and they don't even care. It's not fair to us, and it's not fair to our future. I don't have to stand for that. I'm an adult. I can do as I please."

"So, you're rebelling, eh? That was perfectly fine and good when we were sprogs with nothing to lose, but do you think it completely wise to be shaking things up now? You could be risking your job here."

"I don't give a fuck about my job anymore," Eames sighed, and it was only after he'd said it that he realized just what it was he had said.

"Are you serious?" Yusuf asked, raising his eyebrows, clearly stunned.

"I… no, no, I didn't mean that," Eames said, shaking his head. "That's just my frustration talking. I didn't mean it."

"You had me worried there for a minute, Eames," Yusuf said with a sigh of relief. "After all, you're not exactly a spring chicken. It's not a very good idea to just abandon something and start over from scratch now."

"You make me sound so bloody old, Yusuf," Eames said with disdain. "I'm only thirty-two. You're acting like I'm sixty-four."

"Eames, by now most people have found their career. I'm just saying that it's difficult to start over at our ages, and there's really no point in getting offended, considering you never intended to quit in the first place. That is, unless you were."

Eames exhaled. "Yusuf," he said flatly, "I wasn't being serious. It doesn't mean I don't think about what could have been. You know I wanted to be an actor. That was my first love, and of course I'm going to imagine the what ifs. It doesn't mean anything, all right?"

"What's gotten into you, Eames? You're acting loony," Yusuf said unsurely. "All this obsession with your age and what could have been…"

"Oh, come on, Yusuf!" Eames complained. "I can't please you, can I? One day you're worried about me because I'm miserable, and the next day you're worried because I'm happy."

"I'm not worried because you're happy. I'm worried because you might be borderline delusional if you think you could still have an acting career waiting for you."

"You never know," Eames mumbled stubbornly.

"Don't pout, Eames. You're too old to pout. Pouting is for sprogs."

"I'm not pouting. You're being an arsehole."

"You're acting like a teenager."

Eames grumbled but didn't respond to that. Yusuf was sort of right, he supposed. Maybe he'd been spending too much time with Arthur.

Maybe Arthur was having too much of an effect on him.

"Use me, motherfucker."

Arthur had issues. Eames shouldn't have been letting Arthur influence him at all. What the fuck was he thinking?

Arthur wasn't in the apartment when Eames got home from play rehearsals, and momentarily he was both panicked and relieved, and he wasn't entirely sure why.

He'd just settled down to a dinner of Chinese takeout when the door slammed shut and in sauntered Arthur in a pair of the clothes Eames had bought him that fit him entirely too well. He was thumbing through a wad of bills when he saw Eames, gasped and casually stashed the money in his back pocket. "Oh, hey," he said. "I didn't expect you to be here. I thought you had the um-the play thing."

"I let rehearsal out early since it was just a read through," Eames replied suspiciously, "where did you get that money?"

"Oh, you know… I uh… I panhandle. I sell stuff to my buddies down at the tent city sometimes too-not any of your stuff though, I swear. You can check. I promise nothing's missing."

Eames made a mental note to actually check everything to make sure Arthur wasn't a grubby little thief. It wouldn't be all that surprising considering the boy's lack of a moral compass. Still, he wasn't going to pretend he didn't know where that money had come from. He wasn't as dumb as Arthur apparently thought he was.

"I told you that I didn't want you going out and doing that with other men," Eames said quietly, kicking out a chair for Arthur to sit in. He would complain about it, but he wasn't going to act like it devastated him. He did care about Arthur, but he didn't care about him that much.

"Oh, relax," Arthur said, pulling the wad out and slamming it on the table. "I just sold two of those outfits you bought for me, not that I'm not grateful for them. I just didn't need more than a couple is all. Plus, you'd be surprised how much someone will fork over for a cigarette. I can buy a whole pack from the money I make off of a few."

"Bollocks," Eames said with a smirk that absolutely wasn't faked.

Arthur rolled his eyes, counting off some of the money to hand over to Eames. "Here, for the clothes I sold… and all right, I gave like… two hand jobs, but I already had them scheduled in my appointments. I'll stop from here on out, since you're the king of the castle and all."

"I don't want your money," Eames said, shoving it back to towards him. "Just eat, all right? Put some meat on your bones. That's what my mum used to tell me when I was a scrawny thing like you."

"My mom never gave me any sort of advice," Arthur snorted, twirling a fork in the noodles because he apparently wasn't going to attempt to use chopsticks. "The best advice she ever gave me was to turn a trick before they can turn a trick on you. Don't trust anyone, she said."

"You've certainly put a lot of faith in me," Eames mentioned idly.

Arthur looked up at him for a moment, his eyebrows wrinkling his forehead, but then he looked back to his meal and resumed chewing, mumbling, "Yeah well… I don't take much of what she said to heart."

"Well, I'd say a better piece of advice is to not trust everyone. There are some people you can trust," Eames said, "but if you blindly trust anybody who comes your way, you'll end up fucked over."

"So, why trust me?" Arthur asked, lifting his eyes to look at him again.

Arthur seriously must have read a book or something that taught him how to control people with his eyes because it seemed that every time Eames looked into them he was never the first one able to break contact.

"Whoever said that I trusted you?" Eames asked, grinning.

Arthur grinned right back. "Touché, Mr. Eames."

They finished their meal and Eames cleaned it up. It was as he was putting the dishes away that he noticed his answering machine was blinking with a new message. He hit the button and returned to his cleaning until a familiar voice spoke up.

"Eames, this is Cobb. I need to see you in my office on Monday morning. It's important."

That was the whole message, and Eames could guess what the inevitable meeting was about. Dominic Cobb, after all, was the head of his department. He'd only taken up the position a couple of years ago when his father-in-law retired, but he was very serious about his work. Eames had always been a bit fond of Cobb and his wife since both of them were friendly and clever, but he feared come Monday morning, he and Cobb wouldn't be getting along as swimmingly as they had in the past.

"Who's Cobb?" Arthur asked, clearly amused from where he was leaning in the doorway. "Why is he so pissed off at you?"

"He's a kind of supervisor for me," Eames replied, running a hand over his hair. "He's probably upset because I sort of threatened my students with failure if they didn't straighten up their act."

"Ooh, such a rebel," Arthur said teasingly, "Sexy."

"I wasn't doing it to be sexy," Eames said, tousling Arthur's hair as he passed him. "I'll just explain myself and hope I still have a job."

"They're not going to fire you for making your students pay attention," Arthur scoffed, following Eames into the lounge, hopping up onto the coffee table and wandering across it, "and if they do then you shouldn't be working for someone so pathetic anyway. Why don't you just go back to the acting thing? That seems like a way cooler job to do."

"It's not that simple," Eames said, digging out some of his students' work to look over and grade. "I didn't make it as an actor, and I'm too old to go out and give it another go. I can't just do whatever I want."

"Sure you can," Arthur said, hopping off of the table to crawl up onto Eames's thigh. "You're an adult. You live in America. You can do all kinds of shit."

"There are still consequences," Eames said, pretending his mouth didn't go dry. "There are always consequences when we do risky things. I am a gambling man of sorts, but some stakes are ridiculously high, not worth the bet."

"Yeah, but what if it is worth the effort?" Arthur asked.

"What are you really trying to ask me, darling?"

Arthur leaned in and pressed a kiss to his mouth.

"I have to grade these papers," Eames murmured, eyelids dipping as he attempted not to lean into the kiss.

"Uh-huh," Arthur said, not listening as he kissed along his jaw.

"You're avoiding my question," Eames mentioned, though he did tilt his head back to let Arthur mouth down his neck.

Arthur dragged his teeth along Eames's collarbone, pushing open the lapels of his shirt.

It took all of Eames's wherewithal not to give into him right then and there. "Arthur," he said again, tugging at the back of his shirt to get him to stop and look at him. "Arthur."

"What?" Arthur asked in agitation.

"What were you really trying to ask me?" Eames asked again, ghosting his thumb across his cheekbone.

Arthur looked away, wetting his lips. "I… well…" he turned those black eyes back to Eames, and his lips parted absolutely gorgeously, and he said, "am I worth the effort?"

He looked so frightened, so vulnerable, so young and lost…

All Eames could say was, "Of course, love," and kiss him again.

He pretended not to notice that Arthur kissed him with his eyes open or that his hand immediately went to Eames's trousers, rubbing his cock through the fabric in the attempt to get it to stand at attention.

He also pretended not to notice that, for all the adultness and freedom he had in his own flat and in his own life, he was completely and utterly consumed by all things Arthur. He wasn't as strong as he liked to think he was, and his loneliness had been crushing down on him for such a long time…

He just needed someone, anyone to help rid him of the pain of his existence, to make him feel relevant and important for one damned second.

…and Arthur…

"Use me, motherfucker."

Well… Arthur wanted to be used.

At least… that was what he said.

"You like that?" Arthur asked, nibbling at his neck.

"I really do need to-" Eames tried to say but was cut off with a moan from his own mouth. Arthur was so fucking good with his fingers.

"You've got all weekend for those papers," Arthur whispered against his ear. "All work and no play makes Eames a dull boy, so let's play."

"Fuck," Eames hissed and shoved Arthur down onto the couch. "You are a bloody cocktease."

"A cocktease doesn't let you have it in the end," Arthur said, lifting his hips to press against Eames. "How do you want me?"

Eames dropped his head to Arthur's shoulder, panting against the thin fabric of his t-shirt. "I just… want you…"

Arthur momentarily stilled in Eames's arms then.

…but Eames pretended not to notice.