Inception/Mysterious Skin - Every Me and Every You (30/30)
Title: Every Me and Every You (30/30)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 2,327
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
A few nights after Mal jumped, Neil showed up on Eames's doorstep in Mombasa. Arthur had been working a job down in Mexico, but after the news started traveling that Mal Cobb was dead, Arthur had gone AWOL. Eames honestly shouldn't have been and wasn't surprised. Neil may have met her first, but Arthur was the one who'd grown fond of her over the past several years.
When Neil showed up, Eames could tell instantly that it was him. He wasn't dressed in Arthur's suits that were his proverbial battle armor, and the way he stood was casual and even somewhat slouched. He was also smoking, which Arthur never did, and he'd opted out of the brown contact lenses that Arthur usually sported. Besides, when he was Arthur, he very seldom came to visit Eames.
"Hey," Neil said, hands crammed into the pockets of his jeans.
"I heard you'd gone missing on the job," Eames said.
Neil shrugged. "Not me," he said, tossing his cigarette butt to the ground and stomping it out with the toe of his sneaker. "So, um… Mal's dead."
Eames could tell by the slightest wobble in that sentence that Neil was upset about it. He knew that if Arthur had been the only one devastated by the turn of events, Neil probably would have stayed and completed the job (and likely confused his co-workers with his shift in attitude). Neil never would have been on Eames's doorstep if he had been fine because Neil didn't know how to do anything but run away when he was hurting. He'd never quite outgrown that habit, but Eames had made it easier by giving him a place to run to.
"I heard," Eames said, stepping aside to let Neil in. "I've been expecting you. You want a beer or some tea or something?"
"Water's fine," Neil mumbled, stepping further into the house. Eames's eclectic taste for furniture and decoration always looked bizarre around Neil at first glance, but he always eventually molded into the scenery, a puzzle piece to help complete Eames's life. Whenever Neil would stay he would tan under the Kenyan sun, wandering around without a shirt most of the time because of the heat and grinning as warmly as the day when he would see Eames.
Today though Neil was pale, his expression guarded, and there were storm clouds in his eyes.
Eames returned from the kitchen with a glass of water and sat down next to Neil on the couch. "How are you feeling?" he asked. He knew it was stupid to bother since there was no way he was all right given the circumstances, but he wasn't entirely sure how to start the conversation otherwise. Out of all the people Eames knew, it was Neil (or Arthur) who was most difficult to respond to. Eames could read them just fine, but there were still a lot of secret spaces they liked to hide in during times of trouble. There were times even now that it felt like pulling teeth to get one of them to open up to him, but surprisingly enough Neil was easier. Eames supposed it was because he already knew all of Neil's secrets while Arthur surely had some of his own that he did not dare tell anyone.
Neil sighed, taking a sip from the glass and letting his head fall against the back of the couch. "Arthur shut himself inside my subconscious. I don't think he wants anyone to see how broken up he is about all this, even though everyone knows Mal was like a sister to him. I don't think he ever felt like he quite belonged with my family, and she kind of filled the space there, but… Well, I guess I created him with the duty of a soldier, and soldiers aren't supposed to cry."
"That's bollocks," Eames sighed. "Soldiers can cry."
"Yeah, well, Arthur's supposed to be unbreakable, but I think this has kind of put a crack in his resolve," Neil mumbled, taking another small sip and setting the glass down on the table. He pulled a knee up to his chest and wrapped his arms around it, staring at the floor. "I guess I thought that since you were able to help me when I was falling apart, you could help him too."
"The last thing you need is a third personality, darling."
"I know," Neil huffed, a small, sad smile working its way onto his lips. "I don't think that's going to happen. I just… I thought maybe you could just hook up to the PASIV device with me and go talk to him. I've never been very good at talking about this kind of stuff, and I don't want to make it worse, you know?"
Eames did know. He probably knew better than anyone else on the planet.
"Perhaps it's time you and Arthur stopped playing this switcheroo game whenever you don't want to deal with something," Eames suggested as he got up to fetch the PASIV device from his bedroom. When he returned, Neil had already sprawled himself across the couch, head cushioned by a throw pillow.
"Well, Arthur's never been the one unable to deal with something before," Neil said softly, "at least nothing this big. Sure, he might have been depressed a few times, but this is… this is Wendy for him."
Eames could say nothing to that, so instead he just set the PASIV onto the table and started unwinding the tubing. Neil was more than capable of sliding the needle into his own vein, but Eames still did it for him just because he wanted to touch his skin for a moment.
"It's been four months since I've seen you," Eames said as he hunted his own vein, settling into a nearby armchair that he'd pulled up close to the table.
"I think everyone knew Mal was spiraling," Neil sighed. "Arthur buried himself in work so he wouldn't have to face it, I guess."
"Well, I appreciate the phone calls at least," Eames said, grinning.
"Your dick appreciates my phone calls," Neil replied and Eames rolled his eyes.
After setting the radio timer to start playing at a certain time, Eames depressed the plunger on the PASIV device and sent them both to sleep.
Eames had no trouble hunting down Arthur, finding him stored away in a very nice hotel room. Neil was there too, lounging on the bed, and that was an odd enough sight considering the two very seldom interacted with one another. Eames momentarily thought of a fantasy he'd had once or twice, but then he decided that now was neither the time nor the place.
"Hello, Arthur," Eames greeted.
Arthur turned from where he was staring out the window, expression blank. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy though, instantly giving him away. "Neil told me he brought you here," Arthur said. "He felt some stupid need to have you check up on me, but I assure you I'm fine. I just… needed some time alone to think."
"Think about what?" Eames asked.
This wasn't the first time he'd gone into Neil's head and met with both of them, but it was a rare enough thing that it was still entirely bizarre.
"You know what about," Arthur replied, walking across the floor a few paces until he remembered he didn't really have anywhere to go. "I'm just… I should have been there. I should have stopped her. It's my job."
Neil watched him from the other side of the room and said nothing, but Eames knew that Neil had felt the exact same way about Wendy's death.
"There was nothing to be done," Eames told Arthur. "You know that. You can't blame yourself for this."
"I knew she wasn't well," Arthur said softly. "I knew something was wrong, and I knew Cobb knew too… but he wouldn't tell me what happened. She kept talking about how her world wasn't real, and even though I knew it was dangerous, I… I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I knew there was no point… and it felt good to hear someone else feel like they were-"
Arthur abruptly cut himself off when he realized he'd said too much.
"Feel like they were what, Arthur?" Eames asked, sitting down on the bed next to Neil. He couldn't help but wonder when and why he'd become the McCormick therapist of sorts. "There's no point in holding it in now."
"If you don't say it I can hunt it down. Your mind exists in the same realm as mine so I should be able to find it pretty easily, and your projections won't hurt me," Neil reminded. Eames supposed that considering Neil was the alternative therapist to himself, Eames was the better candidate.
"Mal felt like her world wasn't real," Arthur sighed, turning to face them, "and that felt relieving, okay? I feel that way always. I wasn't born into reality. I was created here. I don't have a family or an identity that isn't forged paperwork. Down here I am real, but up there I'm not… and sometimes I just want it to stop, but I can't. I exist because Neil created me. He needs me around, and if I were to stay down here, the world around me might fall apart again."
Neil looked away awkwardly.
"Perhaps there's another way," Eames offered. "Merge your consciousness with his. It's been in the plan since the beginning, hasn't it? It's been years after all. Neil, you could handle it now, don't you think?"
Neil said nothing, still giving Eames the cold shoulder.
"I'm perfectly content to merge my consciousness," Arthur replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "Nothing would make me feel better than to have this grief shared rather than all on me and to get rid of this feeling of fakeness. I don't have a say in it though because I was created by him. It's his call, and he won't let me."
Eames hadn't expected that. "Neil-" he said, reaching out to touch the man's arm. "Why won't you merge your consciousness with Arthur? You said from the beginning that you wanted to, and it must be terribly hard living with two different personalities, isn't it?"
Neil said nothing.
"I already know why," Arthur said. "He's afraid that if he merges with me, you won't be able to love him anymore because he won't be the same person."
Neil always had been full of surprises.
"Is that true?" Eames asked Neil, even though he knew Arthur had no reason to lie about it.
"This isn't about me. It's about him," Neil evaded.
"Darling," Eames said, tugging him gently until Neil rolled over and looked at him. "Nothing's going to change how I feel about you. I mean honestly… think about how much we've been through. I went down into your subconscious when it was literally crumbling, I picked you up off the streets of New York. I'm still here, years later. Nothing is going to send me away. If you merge yourself with him, it's not going to change you. There will just be new parts in that beautiful brain of yours for me to discover. I love you, Neil. I always will."
"Love is what destroyed Mal. I know it is," Neil said, voice wobbling just a little but eyes completely dry. "How do you know it won't destroy us?"
Eames ran a hand through Neil's hair. "If love was going to destroy us, I'm pretty sure it would have happened by now."
Neil kissed the pad of Eames's thumb as it drifted over his lips. "What if I'm more Arthur than Neil when I wake up?"
"I take pieces with me whenever I become someone else, but I always wake up as Eames. You'll always be Neil, even if there are parts of Arthur in you. You're strong enough to do this now."
Neil sighed and got off of the bed before turning and aiming a gun at Eames's forehead. "I need my privacy," he said. "I'll see you when I wake up."
Pop.
Eames's eyes opened to the sight of his living room again. He pulled the cannula out of his own arm and then leaned over Neil to check on him. He was still sleeping peacefully.
Eames picked up Neil's water glass and took a long drink from it and wandered into the kitchen to check and see if he had anything to cook for dinner. He figured he could make the chicken he'd purchased at the market the other day, along with Spanish rice. Maybe he could bake a cake for dessert.
The radio started to play, so Eames returned to the living room just in time to see the PASIV timer zero out, and then Neil's eyes were fluttering open.
"Eames?" was the first thing he said.
"Right here, pet," Eames said affectionately. "How did it go?"
Neil sat up, looked Eames straight into the eyes…
…and he started to sob.
"Mal is dead," he whimpered. Eames immediately sat down next to him and wrapped him in his arms, rocking him slowly back and forth.
As heartbreaking as the sight was, Eames couldn't help but be glad for it. Neil never did know how to grieve when he lost people, and Arthur only felt safe enough to do it down in the subconscious where he felt like he belonged. Perhaps now that they'd combined Neil could face it. Perhaps now that they had combined, Neil was complete.
Eames held him and petted his hair and kissed his temple until the tears stopped. He knew there would probably be more of them over the next several days, and quite a few of them might even be Eames's, but he also knew that Neil would be okay.
He'd lost a friend, but Eames wouldn't let him lose himself.
That was why love would never destroy them.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 2,327
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
A few nights after Mal jumped, Neil showed up on Eames's doorstep in Mombasa. Arthur had been working a job down in Mexico, but after the news started traveling that Mal Cobb was dead, Arthur had gone AWOL. Eames honestly shouldn't have been and wasn't surprised. Neil may have met her first, but Arthur was the one who'd grown fond of her over the past several years.
When Neil showed up, Eames could tell instantly that it was him. He wasn't dressed in Arthur's suits that were his proverbial battle armor, and the way he stood was casual and even somewhat slouched. He was also smoking, which Arthur never did, and he'd opted out of the brown contact lenses that Arthur usually sported. Besides, when he was Arthur, he very seldom came to visit Eames.
"Hey," Neil said, hands crammed into the pockets of his jeans.
"I heard you'd gone missing on the job," Eames said.
Neil shrugged. "Not me," he said, tossing his cigarette butt to the ground and stomping it out with the toe of his sneaker. "So, um… Mal's dead."
Eames could tell by the slightest wobble in that sentence that Neil was upset about it. He knew that if Arthur had been the only one devastated by the turn of events, Neil probably would have stayed and completed the job (and likely confused his co-workers with his shift in attitude). Neil never would have been on Eames's doorstep if he had been fine because Neil didn't know how to do anything but run away when he was hurting. He'd never quite outgrown that habit, but Eames had made it easier by giving him a place to run to.
"I heard," Eames said, stepping aside to let Neil in. "I've been expecting you. You want a beer or some tea or something?"
"Water's fine," Neil mumbled, stepping further into the house. Eames's eclectic taste for furniture and decoration always looked bizarre around Neil at first glance, but he always eventually molded into the scenery, a puzzle piece to help complete Eames's life. Whenever Neil would stay he would tan under the Kenyan sun, wandering around without a shirt most of the time because of the heat and grinning as warmly as the day when he would see Eames.
Today though Neil was pale, his expression guarded, and there were storm clouds in his eyes.
Eames returned from the kitchen with a glass of water and sat down next to Neil on the couch. "How are you feeling?" he asked. He knew it was stupid to bother since there was no way he was all right given the circumstances, but he wasn't entirely sure how to start the conversation otherwise. Out of all the people Eames knew, it was Neil (or Arthur) who was most difficult to respond to. Eames could read them just fine, but there were still a lot of secret spaces they liked to hide in during times of trouble. There were times even now that it felt like pulling teeth to get one of them to open up to him, but surprisingly enough Neil was easier. Eames supposed it was because he already knew all of Neil's secrets while Arthur surely had some of his own that he did not dare tell anyone.
Neil sighed, taking a sip from the glass and letting his head fall against the back of the couch. "Arthur shut himself inside my subconscious. I don't think he wants anyone to see how broken up he is about all this, even though everyone knows Mal was like a sister to him. I don't think he ever felt like he quite belonged with my family, and she kind of filled the space there, but… Well, I guess I created him with the duty of a soldier, and soldiers aren't supposed to cry."
"That's bollocks," Eames sighed. "Soldiers can cry."
"Yeah, well, Arthur's supposed to be unbreakable, but I think this has kind of put a crack in his resolve," Neil mumbled, taking another small sip and setting the glass down on the table. He pulled a knee up to his chest and wrapped his arms around it, staring at the floor. "I guess I thought that since you were able to help me when I was falling apart, you could help him too."
"The last thing you need is a third personality, darling."
"I know," Neil huffed, a small, sad smile working its way onto his lips. "I don't think that's going to happen. I just… I thought maybe you could just hook up to the PASIV device with me and go talk to him. I've never been very good at talking about this kind of stuff, and I don't want to make it worse, you know?"
Eames did know. He probably knew better than anyone else on the planet.
"Perhaps it's time you and Arthur stopped playing this switcheroo game whenever you don't want to deal with something," Eames suggested as he got up to fetch the PASIV device from his bedroom. When he returned, Neil had already sprawled himself across the couch, head cushioned by a throw pillow.
"Well, Arthur's never been the one unable to deal with something before," Neil said softly, "at least nothing this big. Sure, he might have been depressed a few times, but this is… this is Wendy for him."
Eames could say nothing to that, so instead he just set the PASIV onto the table and started unwinding the tubing. Neil was more than capable of sliding the needle into his own vein, but Eames still did it for him just because he wanted to touch his skin for a moment.
"It's been four months since I've seen you," Eames said as he hunted his own vein, settling into a nearby armchair that he'd pulled up close to the table.
"I think everyone knew Mal was spiraling," Neil sighed. "Arthur buried himself in work so he wouldn't have to face it, I guess."
"Well, I appreciate the phone calls at least," Eames said, grinning.
"Your dick appreciates my phone calls," Neil replied and Eames rolled his eyes.
After setting the radio timer to start playing at a certain time, Eames depressed the plunger on the PASIV device and sent them both to sleep.
Eames had no trouble hunting down Arthur, finding him stored away in a very nice hotel room. Neil was there too, lounging on the bed, and that was an odd enough sight considering the two very seldom interacted with one another. Eames momentarily thought of a fantasy he'd had once or twice, but then he decided that now was neither the time nor the place.
"Hello, Arthur," Eames greeted.
Arthur turned from where he was staring out the window, expression blank. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy though, instantly giving him away. "Neil told me he brought you here," Arthur said. "He felt some stupid need to have you check up on me, but I assure you I'm fine. I just… needed some time alone to think."
"Think about what?" Eames asked.
This wasn't the first time he'd gone into Neil's head and met with both of them, but it was a rare enough thing that it was still entirely bizarre.
"You know what about," Arthur replied, walking across the floor a few paces until he remembered he didn't really have anywhere to go. "I'm just… I should have been there. I should have stopped her. It's my job."
Neil watched him from the other side of the room and said nothing, but Eames knew that Neil had felt the exact same way about Wendy's death.
"There was nothing to be done," Eames told Arthur. "You know that. You can't blame yourself for this."
"I knew she wasn't well," Arthur said softly. "I knew something was wrong, and I knew Cobb knew too… but he wouldn't tell me what happened. She kept talking about how her world wasn't real, and even though I knew it was dangerous, I… I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I knew there was no point… and it felt good to hear someone else feel like they were-"
Arthur abruptly cut himself off when he realized he'd said too much.
"Feel like they were what, Arthur?" Eames asked, sitting down on the bed next to Neil. He couldn't help but wonder when and why he'd become the McCormick therapist of sorts. "There's no point in holding it in now."
"If you don't say it I can hunt it down. Your mind exists in the same realm as mine so I should be able to find it pretty easily, and your projections won't hurt me," Neil reminded. Eames supposed that considering Neil was the alternative therapist to himself, Eames was the better candidate.
"Mal felt like her world wasn't real," Arthur sighed, turning to face them, "and that felt relieving, okay? I feel that way always. I wasn't born into reality. I was created here. I don't have a family or an identity that isn't forged paperwork. Down here I am real, but up there I'm not… and sometimes I just want it to stop, but I can't. I exist because Neil created me. He needs me around, and if I were to stay down here, the world around me might fall apart again."
Neil looked away awkwardly.
"Perhaps there's another way," Eames offered. "Merge your consciousness with his. It's been in the plan since the beginning, hasn't it? It's been years after all. Neil, you could handle it now, don't you think?"
Neil said nothing, still giving Eames the cold shoulder.
"I'm perfectly content to merge my consciousness," Arthur replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "Nothing would make me feel better than to have this grief shared rather than all on me and to get rid of this feeling of fakeness. I don't have a say in it though because I was created by him. It's his call, and he won't let me."
Eames hadn't expected that. "Neil-" he said, reaching out to touch the man's arm. "Why won't you merge your consciousness with Arthur? You said from the beginning that you wanted to, and it must be terribly hard living with two different personalities, isn't it?"
Neil said nothing.
"I already know why," Arthur said. "He's afraid that if he merges with me, you won't be able to love him anymore because he won't be the same person."
Neil always had been full of surprises.
"Is that true?" Eames asked Neil, even though he knew Arthur had no reason to lie about it.
"This isn't about me. It's about him," Neil evaded.
"Darling," Eames said, tugging him gently until Neil rolled over and looked at him. "Nothing's going to change how I feel about you. I mean honestly… think about how much we've been through. I went down into your subconscious when it was literally crumbling, I picked you up off the streets of New York. I'm still here, years later. Nothing is going to send me away. If you merge yourself with him, it's not going to change you. There will just be new parts in that beautiful brain of yours for me to discover. I love you, Neil. I always will."
"Love is what destroyed Mal. I know it is," Neil said, voice wobbling just a little but eyes completely dry. "How do you know it won't destroy us?"
Eames ran a hand through Neil's hair. "If love was going to destroy us, I'm pretty sure it would have happened by now."
Neil kissed the pad of Eames's thumb as it drifted over his lips. "What if I'm more Arthur than Neil when I wake up?"
"I take pieces with me whenever I become someone else, but I always wake up as Eames. You'll always be Neil, even if there are parts of Arthur in you. You're strong enough to do this now."
Neil sighed and got off of the bed before turning and aiming a gun at Eames's forehead. "I need my privacy," he said. "I'll see you when I wake up."
Pop.
Eames's eyes opened to the sight of his living room again. He pulled the cannula out of his own arm and then leaned over Neil to check on him. He was still sleeping peacefully.
Eames picked up Neil's water glass and took a long drink from it and wandered into the kitchen to check and see if he had anything to cook for dinner. He figured he could make the chicken he'd purchased at the market the other day, along with Spanish rice. Maybe he could bake a cake for dessert.
The radio started to play, so Eames returned to the living room just in time to see the PASIV timer zero out, and then Neil's eyes were fluttering open.
"Eames?" was the first thing he said.
"Right here, pet," Eames said affectionately. "How did it go?"
Neil sat up, looked Eames straight into the eyes…
…and he started to sob.
"Mal is dead," he whimpered. Eames immediately sat down next to him and wrapped him in his arms, rocking him slowly back and forth.
As heartbreaking as the sight was, Eames couldn't help but be glad for it. Neil never did know how to grieve when he lost people, and Arthur only felt safe enough to do it down in the subconscious where he felt like he belonged. Perhaps now that they'd combined Neil could face it. Perhaps now that they had combined, Neil was complete.
Eames held him and petted his hair and kissed his temple until the tears stopped. He knew there would probably be more of them over the next several days, and quite a few of them might even be Eames's, but he also knew that Neil would be okay.
He'd lost a friend, but Eames wouldn't let him lose himself.
That was why love would never destroy them.