[Inception fic] Tactile
Title: Tactile
Fandom: Inception
Author: saintdogstreet
Disclaimer: Inception belongs to someone other than me. One of these days I'll look up exactly who that person is.
Pairings/Warnings: Arthur/Cobb. Torture, profanity. Experimentation with tenses and POV.
Summary: Arthur hurts. Cobb tries to make him feel better.
A/N: Argh. I'm really dissatisfied with this fic but I've already re-written it three times and it's driving me insane and I figured I better just post the damn thing. That'll learn it.
For this prompt at the kink meme: community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/756.html
**
This is what's going to happen.
You'll wake up in a bright room. Even through the blindfold you'll know it's bright, the lights will be strong enough to stain your vision dull red, the colour of old rusted metal and western dirt and scabs. The floor is hard under your fingers, cold through your clothes. You'll try to stay awake now that you're up, but it won't work. You'll fade in and out. Things will be hazy.
You won't know where you are and it wouldn't matter if you did.
Your mouth will be sticky and your throat will be dry and you'll be thirsty and tired and your head will ache. Your hands will be tied and after a while your wrists will ache, too. You'll fight the bonds until you bleed.
After a while in the muddy brightness, there will be footsteps. Eventually, you'll be able to recognize them, the differences between the heavy falls and the soft steps. The different ways they breathe. Their smells. How hard their hands grip you. How much they hurt.
But at first this is something new, and all you'll be able to do is fight. You'll kick and you'll lash out with your bound hands and you'll shout because they won't have gagged you. It won't matter how much noise you make.
You'll fight, and it won't get you anywhere.
They'll wait until you've worn yourself down, until you're lying crumpled and panting on the hard floor. Then they'll start.
They'll take off the blindfold and your eyes will sear. Black-and-white fireworks will burst across your vision and when they finally fade you'll see them, cold-eyed and interested and looking at you.
First, they're going to burn off your fingerprints. One by one.
They'll hold your hands down and you'll scream and twist and won't be able to break away. When they're done, when all ten are smoothed out and oozing, they'll leave you alone again. You'll lie on the cold floor cradling your hands to your chest, tears drying itchy on your face, and the lights are too bright to sleep.
When they come back, they'll cut away your clothes, leave you bare. They'll shave off your hair and drench you in cold water, scrub you clean until your skin is red and they've erased every trace of anywhere you've ever been. Cut your fingernails to the quick. You'll shiver in the cold bright room and your hands will bleed, blood soaking into the bindings.
When they bring out the pliers you'll know you're fucked and there won't be anywhere to run. You'll scramble backwards in the tiny room and they'll catch you easily, pry your jaw open. They'll pull out your teeth and you'll scream around the blood filling your mouth and after the first few you'll pass out.
But you'll always wake up again.
They'll take a hammer to your face, reshape the bones in the quickest kind of plastic surgery.
Your retinas are still yours, still perfect and beautiful and all your own.
They're going to cut out your eyes.
They'll take away everything that makes you different, makes you recognizable, makes you you. And they'll make you scream and bleed and stay awake while they're doing it.
You're asleep, you're asleep already, this isn't real, this is a dream, you're asleep, wake up, wake up wake up wake up, WAKE UP--
They'll pour gasoline on you and set you ablaze, burn your naked skin inch by inch, work their way up.
They'll tell you you're nobody, tell you you're not real, tell you this is all there is and all there ever was.
Reshape you into nothing.
You'll start to forget.
Pretty soon, you're not going to be Arthur anymore.
Pretty soon, you're not going to be anybody.
**
Arthur hurts. He knows that he shouldn't but he does.
His fingertips sting. He keeps looking at them, checking to see the familiar ridges and whorls are still there. His mouth hurts, and he runs his tongue over and over around his teeth, counting them, feeling the smooth hard sides of them. His shoulders ache. He flexes them, stretches his arms, proves to himself he can move his hands more than just closer together, sees that his wrists are unmarked and clean of blood. His face throbs and he stares at himself in the mirror, sees only things he recognizes. His eyes burn and he keeps them closed.
His skin crawls and he's just glad it's still there.
Tiredly, he walks to the freezer, blinking in the sudden light as he opens it. He's been keeping his apartment in the dark for a while now, shutting all the blinds and turning all the lights off. The yellow glow of the freezer stings a little a familiar way and he swallows hard.
"Arthur?" Cobb asks suddenly from behind him, and he jumps, the plastic ice cube tray falling to the floor and skittering across the tile. "What are you doing?"
Arthur doesn't say anything a moment, just looks at Cobb. Sometimes he forgets he's not alone. Sometimes he forgets that there are other people in the real world. Sometimes he forgets people are real at all.
"Arthur?" Cobb says again, and his voice is concerned now. He walks over, picks the ice tray off the floor and glances at it bemusedly.
"I just. . . "Arthur says, and trails off. Just what? Just wanted some relief for pain that wasn't there? To soothe wounds from flames that never really burned at all? He doesn't know what to say.
"Are you okay?" Cobb asks.
Arthur nods. "I'm fine."
Cobb sighs. "Yeah. I kind of figured you'd say that."
The freezer door is still open, light spilling out, casting half of Cobb's face in sickly yellow. Arthur shuts it instead of responding and for a moment he's blind as his eyes readjust to the darkness.
"I am, really," he says eventually. Because he is. He should be. Injuries from the dreamworld don't carry over into real life, he knows that. It's a fact, hard science, like centripetal motion and entropy and inertia. Arthur knows all about going in circles and chaos and not getting anywhere, and he knows that he's okay.
He has to be.
Cobb shakes the ice tray so Arthur can hear it rattling in the dark. "Thirsty?"
"Something like that."
**
You're not going to die.
You'll think you will, at first. You'll think it's inevitable. You'll think there's only so much your weak breakable body can sustain.
They'll cauterize your wounds. They'll pump you full of saline and blood. They'll bandage you up and force water down your throat, filling your mouth and choking you and spraying it over your face and up your nose and in your eyes and accidentally you'll breathe it in. They'll make you take pills, little generic white pills that might be antibiotics and might be painkillers, but you don't see how that last one's possible with what you're feeling.
At first, you'll want to die because you'll remember that it's a safe way out. You'll remember that death in this place just means you'll wake up in the real world, you'll be all right, you'll be unstained and warm and pain-free.
After a while, you'll forget all that. This place is all there is. After a while, you'll only want to die not because it seems like a safe way out, but because it seems like the only way out. And that's all you'll want.
You won't remember that you'll ever wake up again. You'll just want to go to finally go to sleep.
You're already asleep, Arthur, your name is Arthur, this is just a dream, it's just a dream, it's all just a dream, it's not real, it's not
But it won't matter, anyways. They won't let you die.
**
"I wish you would tell me what's wrong," Cobb says with a sigh, stepping closer and hovering just outside Arthur's personal space. Arthur's personal space is a lot bigger nowadays. "Let me help."
Arthur's eyes are stinging even in the dim and for a minute he doesn't understand why. Then he remembers that here, in this place, he can still cry.
It's such a stupid thing but Arthur's just so worn-out. And Cobb is just too much. Arthur bites his tongue (sometimes he bites his tongue so hard it bleeds just because he can) and swallows back the emotions burning his throat.
Its' hard to be real, to be somebody, to be Arthur, to be anything other than nothing again.
He forces himself to keep it together and the pressure gets to be too much inside of him and he starts to talk.
"You want to know what's wrong with me?" he says, and he keeps his voice steady through sheer force of will. Cobb nods, looking at him with steady understanding eyes, and Arthur looks away.
"It hurts," Arthur says. "My skin still feels burned and when I look down at it I don't see any scars, I just see this." He thrusts his arm forward, clean and unblemished skin white in the dim light. The shiny pink scars he can see so clearly in his own mind invisible in this place.
"My fingertips still feel scarred and burnt and ruined. And my hands. . . they still feel like they're tied," Arthur says. "And all the fucking light still hurts my eyes. I still feel like I'm just walking out of a dark room. I still feel like someone fucking cut out my eyes, Cobb."
"And I feel like I'm going fucking crazy," Arthur's voice breaks.
Cobb watches him quietly, jaw set and eyes glittering in the gloom.
"I just want it to stop hurting me," Arthur finishes quietly. "I just want it to stop."
Cobb doesn't say anything and Arthur figures with a small measure of triumph that he's finally fucking stumped him.
Then Cobb pries an ice cube out of the tray with his fingernails. They've started to melt, just a little, and little trickles of water run down his fingers as he holds it up. It sparkles like an uncut diamond and Arthur doesn't know what he's doing.
Cobb steps closer, reaches forwards and grabs Arthur's hand. Arthur flinches at his touch.
Cobb doesn't say anything, just rolls Arthur's hand over and carefully slides the ice cube over his fingertips.
It burns a little like a different kind of fire, cold and shocking and sticking to his skin.
"What are you doing?" Arthur asks as Cobb glides the ice cube over fingertip to fingertip and it melts between their hands.
"Relax, Arthur," Cobb says, and Arthur's hand is wet.
Arthur shakes his head, tries to pull his hand away and Cobb lets him.
"This isn't real," Arthur says. "These things I'm feeling, they aren't real. That's not how it works."
Cobb shrugs. "It's real enough in your head. And that's where it counts. You and I both know pain is just your brain at work, Arthur. If you can feel it in dreams when nothing's actually hurting you why shouldn't you feel it when you wake up?"
He reaches for the tray and cracks out another ice cube, grabs Arthur's other unresisting hand and goes to work. Slides the ice down every joint of Arthur's ring finger, leaving a raw trail of nerves behind it.
"You're not crazy, Arthur," Cobb says calmly.
Arthur's hands are cold.
"Come on," Cobb says, and he twists his fingers through the hand he's holding, palms slick against each other. He leads Arthur out into the living room, doesn't bother to turn on the light. He guides a lenient Arthur to the couch and pushes him down to sitting.
"It's all right to ask for help sometimes, Arthur, you know that?" Cobb says, crouching in front of him. "Really."
Arthur swallows hard and doesn't look at him. He looks at his unlit apartment and tries to see more than four close walls and bright lights.
"You still haven't told me what exactly happened," Cobb says, fighting with the ice tray as he talks. "What they did to you before we got you back."
"I don't want to talk about it," Arthur says, and he uses the opportunity to fold his hands in his lap, twist them in the fabric of his slacks.
"They say talking helps," Cobb says. "Have you heard that one before?"
"Sometimes they are idiots."
"Sometimes," Cobb agrees.
There's silence as Cobb pulls Arthur's hands back, uncurls them from the tightly-wound fists they're in. The third ice cube is less of a shock to his skin but Cobb's touch still makes him start.
He moves slowly, so slowly, running the ice over Arthur's skin like he hasn't got anything in the world he should be doing instead.
By the time the ice melts and Arthur's hands are soaked, water dripping off them to spot darkly on his trousers, the words are coming out of his mouth before he can stop them.
"They burned off my fingerprints," Arthur says and his voice is quiet but it seems loud in the hush.
Cobb's hand squeezes his. He twists until their palms are flat against one another, phalanges pressing up to each other through thin layers of flesh. Like each pair of hands was a prayer.
**
You're going to start forgetting.
You'll try not to, just like you tried to fight. You'll tell yourself your own name over and over, your mother's name, the city you were born, the colour of your favourite tie, the lines from your favourite film, the recipe for a perfect martini.
Arthur, my name is Arthur, Arthur Lucy Las Vegas Brown I remember every detail the Germans wore grey you wore blue Two measures gin and two measures vodka one measure vermouth splash of olive brine to make it dirty and two olives in case you get hungry lots of ice and stir don't shake unless you want to water down your drinks you jackass
But more than just that you try and remember them. Their names, their faces, every bit about them. Their smell and the feel of their fingers in your own and what they used to dream about.
Eames blue eyes and leather and cigarettes and poker chips and gorgeous blondes and rough and Ariadne young brilliant beautiful sweet unbroken scarves and blueprints and Yusuf chemical smell and cats and dim lights and foreign places and genius and Saito the invisible puppeteer benefactor investor employer smooth as expensive wine and filthy rich and determination and Cobb Cobb Cobb, oh god, Cobb. . .
It won't work. But you'll try.
Eventually, you'll start to forget. And that's the worst part. You'll hate yourself for that, for forgetting them. Until you forget why you were hating.
And then you'll start to forget if this is real or if this is a dream.
In the beginning, you'll have your totem. That perfect familiar little red die that's as much a part of you as your skin. The weight of it, the feel of it, the honesty of it.
You'll roll it. Six. Three. Two. Two. Four. One. Six. Four. Five.
On and on and on. Eventually, the die starts coming up twelves and twenty-ones and perfectly blank.
Eventually, they take it away from you, like they take away everything else. Leave you naked.
You'll forget what the numbers were. They all start becoming the same in your mind. Just one number. Just the right one.
In that bright tiny room, you'll start to go crazy.
You'll forget this is a dream.
Because what the fuck will it matter? It's real enough to you.
It's a dream, you're asleep, it's a dream and eventually you'll wake up eventually you'll be okay they'll save you he'll save you someone will save you it will all be over soon it's only a dream
**
"What else?" Cobb says. He's straightened up from his crouch and sat down on the sofa beside Arthur, too close. Close enough that Arthur can feel him without touching him.
Arthur shrugs. "They beat my face. Broke my cheekbones. Tried to make me look like someone else."
The next ice cube slides over him without sticking, already slick with melted water. Cobb runs it over Arthur's cheeks and Arthur struggles to stay still, trembling.
By the time the ice is gone Arthur feels like he's been crying, wet little comet-tails running down his face. His skin feels chilly and tight.
"What else?" Cobb says again, and his hands haven't left Arthur's face.
"They yanked out my teeth," Arthur says, and Cobb's eyes darken and he looks away. He doesn't say anything just pries out another ice cube.
He runs it over Arthur's dry lips, water dripping down his chin, and looks into his eyes steadily and asks without saying anything.
Hesitantly, Arthur opens his mouth.
Cobb pushes the ice cube in. Two of his fingers follow, brushing over Arthur's tongue.
Arthur moves the ice around with his tongue, scraping it against his teeth and pushing it up against the roof of is mouth, lips closing around Cobb's fingers.
The ice melts quickly in the heat of Arthur's mouth. The unfrozen tap water tastes sharply of minerals.
Arthur swallows, licking Cobb's fingers as he does and opens his mouth again.
Cobb draws his hand away, still watching Arthur.
**
You're going to go a little crazy.
They're going to take away your eyes, use sharp knives and curved tools and flames to gouge them out and prevent you from bleeding to death. You'll scream, of course, and you'll fight and they'll just hold you down tighter.
It's going to hurt. Like nothing you've ever known.
And afterward, when they leave you alone, gauze taped over your empty eye sockets soaking through with dark blood, you'll lie there blindly on the cold, cold floor.
The bright lights won't bother you anymore.
You'll listen to your own breath, wait for the footsteps. You'll feel every pound of your own pulse. Your head will ache from your own smell of unwashed skin and vomit and blood. You'll taste nothing but bile and blood, too, sharp and metallic and corrosive. You'll tongue the soft wet little holes in your gums from where your teeth used to be and you won't be able to even fucking cry.
The pain's going to lap at you in waves and never really go away as it ebbs. Every piece of you will hurt and you'll slowly realize there's nothing you can do about it.
Blind, you're going to start thinking too much, thinking crazy things.
They're going to take everything from you, and last of all, they're going to take your mind.
You're asleep. You're asleep. You're asleep, Arthur, you're somebody, somebody real, and you're just asleep right now and someday you'll wake up again. You'll wake up and everything will be okay.
**
"What else?" Cobb asks once more and all Arthur can taste is tap water on his tongue.
"They took my eyes," he says, and he forces his eyelids shut until Rorschach blots rupture across his vision as he talks, remembering. "They cut them out."
Cobb skims the ice over Arthur's shut eyes lightly, just once, lets the rest of it all turn to water in his hands and then grips Arthur's face.
Little droplets cling to his eyelashes as Arthur finally blinks them open. He stares up at Cobb, whose eyes are flickering, studying Arthur's numb unmarked face.
"They kept me tied," Arthur says in Cobb's grip, and Cobb doesn't need to ask. "For weeks they kept me tied and I couldn't move and I couldn't fight them."
He rolls his shoulders reflexively.
Cobb's hands slide down him then, cold through the silk/cotton of Arthur's shirt and heavy and damp. They warm up quickly.
Arthur just closes his eyes again and lets Cobb guide him into lying, face-down and head turned to the side and breathing tight.
Cobb digs his thumbs between Arthur's shoulder blades, works his fingers on the curve of his neck. He rolls his knuckles down his back, digs his fingers in outwards over the backside of his ribcage, traces down his spine. Each touch scorches Arthur, leaves his skin prickling. The pressure unwinds aching muscles, unknots and loosens and soothes. Arthur exhales.
"My wrists were tied," Arthur says when Cobb has touched every inch of his back, words half-muffled in the sofa.
Cobb slides his hands down Arthur's shoulders and past his elbows and further, grips his wrists tightly. Rolls his thumb and middle finger around them, around the unbloodied skin. Arthur's pulse throbs against him. His skin is hot now under Cobb's touch but his fingertips still feel frozen.
"They lit my skin on fire," Arthur says, breath quickening, and Cobb's hands slip under his shirt. His touch is steady and damp and Arthur can feel it on him long after it's moved away. Against his bare skin it feels nothing like flames. Cobb touches every piece of him he can reach, traces the slopes of Arthur's back, the curve of his spine and the shivering flux of his muscles.
Arthur opens his eyes.
"They made me forget," Arthur says, staring out glassily. His fingers dig into the sofa. "Everything. Who I was."
Cobb shifts, pushing Arthur over a bit and stretching out next to him. It's a tight fit on the couch and they're pressed up against each other. They're lying nose-to-nose, knees touching and individual warmth blurring together and even the ice-cold pieces of Arthur' start to grow warm.
"You're Arthur," Cobb says, touching Arthur's cheek. "Arthur, my best friend and point man, he of the impeccable suits and sarcasm. You're the one that does his best to keep me in line and follows me anyway when I get out of it. You're wickedly smart and stronger than you look and graceful even upside down and you put chocolate on your pancakes like some kind of freak. You're Arthur. Just Arthur. That's all you ever need to be."
Cobb's breath is light against him, warm against his cool face, drying his ice-cube tears. Arthur can see each blink of his eyelids and each shift of his muscles and his five o'clock shadow, the tug of his lips over his teeth and flash of his tongue as he talks.
"They made me forget you," Arthur says quietly, studying the shadows and streaks and bright swaths of colour in Cobb's irises, the hundred shades of blue, his own distorted reflection in his black pupils. He touches a cool finger to Cobb's skin.
"I'm Cobb," Cobb says, and he leans in the inch or so between them and kisses him.
**
This is what's going to happen
They're going to break you into a thousand pieces and keep breaking until there's nothing left. They're going to take everything from you. They're going to ruin you.
You'll forget your own name and everyone you love. You'll forget what's real and what's not. You'll lose everything. Even when you're finally safe, you're still not going to be better. You'll still be fucked-up and miserable and hurting.
They're going to make you go insane. They're going to make you lose yourself.
You'll be nothing.
This is going to destroy you, and there's not a thing you can do about it.
And after a while. . . after a while. . . you're going to be all right.
You'll be put back together again. Piece by millionth piece. Rebuilt into something new and whole and warm and unstained and painless.
They're going to take everything from you, and eventually, you'll get it all back.
This is the real world. You're awake now. Your name is Arthur, you're somebody, you're somebody and you're wide awake and when you go to sleep next to someone else for the first time in a long time you won't even dream.
Fandom: Inception
Author: saintdogstreet
Disclaimer: Inception belongs to someone other than me. One of these days I'll look up exactly who that person is.
Pairings/Warnings: Arthur/Cobb. Torture, profanity. Experimentation with tenses and POV.
Summary: Arthur hurts. Cobb tries to make him feel better.
A/N: Argh. I'm really dissatisfied with this fic but I've already re-written it three times and it's driving me insane and I figured I better just post the damn thing. That'll learn it.
For this prompt at the kink meme: community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/756.html
**
This is what's going to happen.
You'll wake up in a bright room. Even through the blindfold you'll know it's bright, the lights will be strong enough to stain your vision dull red, the colour of old rusted metal and western dirt and scabs. The floor is hard under your fingers, cold through your clothes. You'll try to stay awake now that you're up, but it won't work. You'll fade in and out. Things will be hazy.
You won't know where you are and it wouldn't matter if you did.
Your mouth will be sticky and your throat will be dry and you'll be thirsty and tired and your head will ache. Your hands will be tied and after a while your wrists will ache, too. You'll fight the bonds until you bleed.
After a while in the muddy brightness, there will be footsteps. Eventually, you'll be able to recognize them, the differences between the heavy falls and the soft steps. The different ways they breathe. Their smells. How hard their hands grip you. How much they hurt.
But at first this is something new, and all you'll be able to do is fight. You'll kick and you'll lash out with your bound hands and you'll shout because they won't have gagged you. It won't matter how much noise you make.
You'll fight, and it won't get you anywhere.
They'll wait until you've worn yourself down, until you're lying crumpled and panting on the hard floor. Then they'll start.
They'll take off the blindfold and your eyes will sear. Black-and-white fireworks will burst across your vision and when they finally fade you'll see them, cold-eyed and interested and looking at you.
First, they're going to burn off your fingerprints. One by one.
They'll hold your hands down and you'll scream and twist and won't be able to break away. When they're done, when all ten are smoothed out and oozing, they'll leave you alone again. You'll lie on the cold floor cradling your hands to your chest, tears drying itchy on your face, and the lights are too bright to sleep.
When they come back, they'll cut away your clothes, leave you bare. They'll shave off your hair and drench you in cold water, scrub you clean until your skin is red and they've erased every trace of anywhere you've ever been. Cut your fingernails to the quick. You'll shiver in the cold bright room and your hands will bleed, blood soaking into the bindings.
When they bring out the pliers you'll know you're fucked and there won't be anywhere to run. You'll scramble backwards in the tiny room and they'll catch you easily, pry your jaw open. They'll pull out your teeth and you'll scream around the blood filling your mouth and after the first few you'll pass out.
But you'll always wake up again.
They'll take a hammer to your face, reshape the bones in the quickest kind of plastic surgery.
Your retinas are still yours, still perfect and beautiful and all your own.
They're going to cut out your eyes.
They'll take away everything that makes you different, makes you recognizable, makes you you. And they'll make you scream and bleed and stay awake while they're doing it.
You're asleep, you're asleep already, this isn't real, this is a dream, you're asleep, wake up, wake up wake up wake up, WAKE UP--
They'll pour gasoline on you and set you ablaze, burn your naked skin inch by inch, work their way up.
They'll tell you you're nobody, tell you you're not real, tell you this is all there is and all there ever was.
Reshape you into nothing.
You'll start to forget.
Pretty soon, you're not going to be Arthur anymore.
Pretty soon, you're not going to be anybody.
**
Arthur hurts. He knows that he shouldn't but he does.
His fingertips sting. He keeps looking at them, checking to see the familiar ridges and whorls are still there. His mouth hurts, and he runs his tongue over and over around his teeth, counting them, feeling the smooth hard sides of them. His shoulders ache. He flexes them, stretches his arms, proves to himself he can move his hands more than just closer together, sees that his wrists are unmarked and clean of blood. His face throbs and he stares at himself in the mirror, sees only things he recognizes. His eyes burn and he keeps them closed.
His skin crawls and he's just glad it's still there.
Tiredly, he walks to the freezer, blinking in the sudden light as he opens it. He's been keeping his apartment in the dark for a while now, shutting all the blinds and turning all the lights off. The yellow glow of the freezer stings a little a familiar way and he swallows hard.
"Arthur?" Cobb asks suddenly from behind him, and he jumps, the plastic ice cube tray falling to the floor and skittering across the tile. "What are you doing?"
Arthur doesn't say anything a moment, just looks at Cobb. Sometimes he forgets he's not alone. Sometimes he forgets that there are other people in the real world. Sometimes he forgets people are real at all.
"Arthur?" Cobb says again, and his voice is concerned now. He walks over, picks the ice tray off the floor and glances at it bemusedly.
"I just. . . "Arthur says, and trails off. Just what? Just wanted some relief for pain that wasn't there? To soothe wounds from flames that never really burned at all? He doesn't know what to say.
"Are you okay?" Cobb asks.
Arthur nods. "I'm fine."
Cobb sighs. "Yeah. I kind of figured you'd say that."
The freezer door is still open, light spilling out, casting half of Cobb's face in sickly yellow. Arthur shuts it instead of responding and for a moment he's blind as his eyes readjust to the darkness.
"I am, really," he says eventually. Because he is. He should be. Injuries from the dreamworld don't carry over into real life, he knows that. It's a fact, hard science, like centripetal motion and entropy and inertia. Arthur knows all about going in circles and chaos and not getting anywhere, and he knows that he's okay.
He has to be.
Cobb shakes the ice tray so Arthur can hear it rattling in the dark. "Thirsty?"
"Something like that."
**
You're not going to die.
You'll think you will, at first. You'll think it's inevitable. You'll think there's only so much your weak breakable body can sustain.
They'll cauterize your wounds. They'll pump you full of saline and blood. They'll bandage you up and force water down your throat, filling your mouth and choking you and spraying it over your face and up your nose and in your eyes and accidentally you'll breathe it in. They'll make you take pills, little generic white pills that might be antibiotics and might be painkillers, but you don't see how that last one's possible with what you're feeling.
At first, you'll want to die because you'll remember that it's a safe way out. You'll remember that death in this place just means you'll wake up in the real world, you'll be all right, you'll be unstained and warm and pain-free.
After a while, you'll forget all that. This place is all there is. After a while, you'll only want to die not because it seems like a safe way out, but because it seems like the only way out. And that's all you'll want.
You won't remember that you'll ever wake up again. You'll just want to go to finally go to sleep.
You're already asleep, Arthur, your name is Arthur, this is just a dream, it's just a dream, it's all just a dream, it's not real, it's not
But it won't matter, anyways. They won't let you die.
**
"I wish you would tell me what's wrong," Cobb says with a sigh, stepping closer and hovering just outside Arthur's personal space. Arthur's personal space is a lot bigger nowadays. "Let me help."
Arthur's eyes are stinging even in the dim and for a minute he doesn't understand why. Then he remembers that here, in this place, he can still cry.
It's such a stupid thing but Arthur's just so worn-out. And Cobb is just too much. Arthur bites his tongue (sometimes he bites his tongue so hard it bleeds just because he can) and swallows back the emotions burning his throat.
Its' hard to be real, to be somebody, to be Arthur, to be anything other than nothing again.
He forces himself to keep it together and the pressure gets to be too much inside of him and he starts to talk.
"You want to know what's wrong with me?" he says, and he keeps his voice steady through sheer force of will. Cobb nods, looking at him with steady understanding eyes, and Arthur looks away.
"It hurts," Arthur says. "My skin still feels burned and when I look down at it I don't see any scars, I just see this." He thrusts his arm forward, clean and unblemished skin white in the dim light. The shiny pink scars he can see so clearly in his own mind invisible in this place.
"My fingertips still feel scarred and burnt and ruined. And my hands. . . they still feel like they're tied," Arthur says. "And all the fucking light still hurts my eyes. I still feel like I'm just walking out of a dark room. I still feel like someone fucking cut out my eyes, Cobb."
"And I feel like I'm going fucking crazy," Arthur's voice breaks.
Cobb watches him quietly, jaw set and eyes glittering in the gloom.
"I just want it to stop hurting me," Arthur finishes quietly. "I just want it to stop."
Cobb doesn't say anything and Arthur figures with a small measure of triumph that he's finally fucking stumped him.
Then Cobb pries an ice cube out of the tray with his fingernails. They've started to melt, just a little, and little trickles of water run down his fingers as he holds it up. It sparkles like an uncut diamond and Arthur doesn't know what he's doing.
Cobb steps closer, reaches forwards and grabs Arthur's hand. Arthur flinches at his touch.
Cobb doesn't say anything, just rolls Arthur's hand over and carefully slides the ice cube over his fingertips.
It burns a little like a different kind of fire, cold and shocking and sticking to his skin.
"What are you doing?" Arthur asks as Cobb glides the ice cube over fingertip to fingertip and it melts between their hands.
"Relax, Arthur," Cobb says, and Arthur's hand is wet.
Arthur shakes his head, tries to pull his hand away and Cobb lets him.
"This isn't real," Arthur says. "These things I'm feeling, they aren't real. That's not how it works."
Cobb shrugs. "It's real enough in your head. And that's where it counts. You and I both know pain is just your brain at work, Arthur. If you can feel it in dreams when nothing's actually hurting you why shouldn't you feel it when you wake up?"
He reaches for the tray and cracks out another ice cube, grabs Arthur's other unresisting hand and goes to work. Slides the ice down every joint of Arthur's ring finger, leaving a raw trail of nerves behind it.
"You're not crazy, Arthur," Cobb says calmly.
Arthur's hands are cold.
"Come on," Cobb says, and he twists his fingers through the hand he's holding, palms slick against each other. He leads Arthur out into the living room, doesn't bother to turn on the light. He guides a lenient Arthur to the couch and pushes him down to sitting.
"It's all right to ask for help sometimes, Arthur, you know that?" Cobb says, crouching in front of him. "Really."
Arthur swallows hard and doesn't look at him. He looks at his unlit apartment and tries to see more than four close walls and bright lights.
"You still haven't told me what exactly happened," Cobb says, fighting with the ice tray as he talks. "What they did to you before we got you back."
"I don't want to talk about it," Arthur says, and he uses the opportunity to fold his hands in his lap, twist them in the fabric of his slacks.
"They say talking helps," Cobb says. "Have you heard that one before?"
"Sometimes they are idiots."
"Sometimes," Cobb agrees.
There's silence as Cobb pulls Arthur's hands back, uncurls them from the tightly-wound fists they're in. The third ice cube is less of a shock to his skin but Cobb's touch still makes him start.
He moves slowly, so slowly, running the ice over Arthur's skin like he hasn't got anything in the world he should be doing instead.
By the time the ice melts and Arthur's hands are soaked, water dripping off them to spot darkly on his trousers, the words are coming out of his mouth before he can stop them.
"They burned off my fingerprints," Arthur says and his voice is quiet but it seems loud in the hush.
Cobb's hand squeezes his. He twists until their palms are flat against one another, phalanges pressing up to each other through thin layers of flesh. Like each pair of hands was a prayer.
**
You're going to start forgetting.
You'll try not to, just like you tried to fight. You'll tell yourself your own name over and over, your mother's name, the city you were born, the colour of your favourite tie, the lines from your favourite film, the recipe for a perfect martini.
Arthur, my name is Arthur, Arthur Lucy Las Vegas Brown I remember every detail the Germans wore grey you wore blue Two measures gin and two measures vodka one measure vermouth splash of olive brine to make it dirty and two olives in case you get hungry lots of ice and stir don't shake unless you want to water down your drinks you jackass
But more than just that you try and remember them. Their names, their faces, every bit about them. Their smell and the feel of their fingers in your own and what they used to dream about.
Eames blue eyes and leather and cigarettes and poker chips and gorgeous blondes and rough and Ariadne young brilliant beautiful sweet unbroken scarves and blueprints and Yusuf chemical smell and cats and dim lights and foreign places and genius and Saito the invisible puppeteer benefactor investor employer smooth as expensive wine and filthy rich and determination and Cobb Cobb Cobb, oh god, Cobb. . .
It won't work. But you'll try.
Eventually, you'll start to forget. And that's the worst part. You'll hate yourself for that, for forgetting them. Until you forget why you were hating.
And then you'll start to forget if this is real or if this is a dream.
In the beginning, you'll have your totem. That perfect familiar little red die that's as much a part of you as your skin. The weight of it, the feel of it, the honesty of it.
You'll roll it. Six. Three. Two. Two. Four. One. Six. Four. Five.
On and on and on. Eventually, the die starts coming up twelves and twenty-ones and perfectly blank.
Eventually, they take it away from you, like they take away everything else. Leave you naked.
You'll forget what the numbers were. They all start becoming the same in your mind. Just one number. Just the right one.
In that bright tiny room, you'll start to go crazy.
You'll forget this is a dream.
Because what the fuck will it matter? It's real enough to you.
It's a dream, you're asleep, it's a dream and eventually you'll wake up eventually you'll be okay they'll save you he'll save you someone will save you it will all be over soon it's only a dream
**
"What else?" Cobb says. He's straightened up from his crouch and sat down on the sofa beside Arthur, too close. Close enough that Arthur can feel him without touching him.
Arthur shrugs. "They beat my face. Broke my cheekbones. Tried to make me look like someone else."
The next ice cube slides over him without sticking, already slick with melted water. Cobb runs it over Arthur's cheeks and Arthur struggles to stay still, trembling.
By the time the ice is gone Arthur feels like he's been crying, wet little comet-tails running down his face. His skin feels chilly and tight.
"What else?" Cobb says again, and his hands haven't left Arthur's face.
"They yanked out my teeth," Arthur says, and Cobb's eyes darken and he looks away. He doesn't say anything just pries out another ice cube.
He runs it over Arthur's dry lips, water dripping down his chin, and looks into his eyes steadily and asks without saying anything.
Hesitantly, Arthur opens his mouth.
Cobb pushes the ice cube in. Two of his fingers follow, brushing over Arthur's tongue.
Arthur moves the ice around with his tongue, scraping it against his teeth and pushing it up against the roof of is mouth, lips closing around Cobb's fingers.
The ice melts quickly in the heat of Arthur's mouth. The unfrozen tap water tastes sharply of minerals.
Arthur swallows, licking Cobb's fingers as he does and opens his mouth again.
Cobb draws his hand away, still watching Arthur.
**
You're going to go a little crazy.
They're going to take away your eyes, use sharp knives and curved tools and flames to gouge them out and prevent you from bleeding to death. You'll scream, of course, and you'll fight and they'll just hold you down tighter.
It's going to hurt. Like nothing you've ever known.
And afterward, when they leave you alone, gauze taped over your empty eye sockets soaking through with dark blood, you'll lie there blindly on the cold, cold floor.
The bright lights won't bother you anymore.
You'll listen to your own breath, wait for the footsteps. You'll feel every pound of your own pulse. Your head will ache from your own smell of unwashed skin and vomit and blood. You'll taste nothing but bile and blood, too, sharp and metallic and corrosive. You'll tongue the soft wet little holes in your gums from where your teeth used to be and you won't be able to even fucking cry.
The pain's going to lap at you in waves and never really go away as it ebbs. Every piece of you will hurt and you'll slowly realize there's nothing you can do about it.
Blind, you're going to start thinking too much, thinking crazy things.
They're going to take everything from you, and last of all, they're going to take your mind.
You're asleep. You're asleep. You're asleep, Arthur, you're somebody, somebody real, and you're just asleep right now and someday you'll wake up again. You'll wake up and everything will be okay.
**
"What else?" Cobb asks once more and all Arthur can taste is tap water on his tongue.
"They took my eyes," he says, and he forces his eyelids shut until Rorschach blots rupture across his vision as he talks, remembering. "They cut them out."
Cobb skims the ice over Arthur's shut eyes lightly, just once, lets the rest of it all turn to water in his hands and then grips Arthur's face.
Little droplets cling to his eyelashes as Arthur finally blinks them open. He stares up at Cobb, whose eyes are flickering, studying Arthur's numb unmarked face.
"They kept me tied," Arthur says in Cobb's grip, and Cobb doesn't need to ask. "For weeks they kept me tied and I couldn't move and I couldn't fight them."
He rolls his shoulders reflexively.
Cobb's hands slide down him then, cold through the silk/cotton of Arthur's shirt and heavy and damp. They warm up quickly.
Arthur just closes his eyes again and lets Cobb guide him into lying, face-down and head turned to the side and breathing tight.
Cobb digs his thumbs between Arthur's shoulder blades, works his fingers on the curve of his neck. He rolls his knuckles down his back, digs his fingers in outwards over the backside of his ribcage, traces down his spine. Each touch scorches Arthur, leaves his skin prickling. The pressure unwinds aching muscles, unknots and loosens and soothes. Arthur exhales.
"My wrists were tied," Arthur says when Cobb has touched every inch of his back, words half-muffled in the sofa.
Cobb slides his hands down Arthur's shoulders and past his elbows and further, grips his wrists tightly. Rolls his thumb and middle finger around them, around the unbloodied skin. Arthur's pulse throbs against him. His skin is hot now under Cobb's touch but his fingertips still feel frozen.
"They lit my skin on fire," Arthur says, breath quickening, and Cobb's hands slip under his shirt. His touch is steady and damp and Arthur can feel it on him long after it's moved away. Against his bare skin it feels nothing like flames. Cobb touches every piece of him he can reach, traces the slopes of Arthur's back, the curve of his spine and the shivering flux of his muscles.
Arthur opens his eyes.
"They made me forget," Arthur says, staring out glassily. His fingers dig into the sofa. "Everything. Who I was."
Cobb shifts, pushing Arthur over a bit and stretching out next to him. It's a tight fit on the couch and they're pressed up against each other. They're lying nose-to-nose, knees touching and individual warmth blurring together and even the ice-cold pieces of Arthur' start to grow warm.
"You're Arthur," Cobb says, touching Arthur's cheek. "Arthur, my best friend and point man, he of the impeccable suits and sarcasm. You're the one that does his best to keep me in line and follows me anyway when I get out of it. You're wickedly smart and stronger than you look and graceful even upside down and you put chocolate on your pancakes like some kind of freak. You're Arthur. Just Arthur. That's all you ever need to be."
Cobb's breath is light against him, warm against his cool face, drying his ice-cube tears. Arthur can see each blink of his eyelids and each shift of his muscles and his five o'clock shadow, the tug of his lips over his teeth and flash of his tongue as he talks.
"They made me forget you," Arthur says quietly, studying the shadows and streaks and bright swaths of colour in Cobb's irises, the hundred shades of blue, his own distorted reflection in his black pupils. He touches a cool finger to Cobb's skin.
"I'm Cobb," Cobb says, and he leans in the inch or so between them and kisses him.
**
This is what's going to happen
They're going to break you into a thousand pieces and keep breaking until there's nothing left. They're going to take everything from you. They're going to ruin you.
You'll forget your own name and everyone you love. You'll forget what's real and what's not. You'll lose everything. Even when you're finally safe, you're still not going to be better. You'll still be fucked-up and miserable and hurting.
They're going to make you go insane. They're going to make you lose yourself.
You'll be nothing.
This is going to destroy you, and there's not a thing you can do about it.
And after a while. . . after a while. . . you're going to be all right.
You'll be put back together again. Piece by millionth piece. Rebuilt into something new and whole and warm and unstained and painless.
They're going to take everything from you, and eventually, you'll get it all back.
This is the real world. You're awake now. Your name is Arthur, you're somebody, you're somebody and you're wide awake and when you go to sleep next to someone else for the first time in a long time you won't even dream.