La Vie En Rose (VII)
Title: La Vie En Rose
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur, Eames, Mallorie Cobb, Dominick Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf, Nash (slight), Saito, Robert Fischer
Rating: PG-13 (May change to NC-17 later)
Warnings: Language, some violence, mentions of anorexia/starvation, mentions of drug use, non-descriptive suicide, homophobia, m/m, f/m (brief and slight)
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of Inception, but I wish.
Notes: As a child, Arthur is loud, rambunctious, obnoxious, and easily entertained. As a teenager, he is quiet and reserved. As an adult, he is simply Arthur. As a child, Eames is mischievous, rollicking, and ill-mannered. As a teenager, he is mirthless and spurious. As an adult, he is a stranger.
La Vie En Rose (Continued)
Eames is sixteen.
As a teenager, Eames is polite, loving, and well-kept.
(At least, in front of his parents and Amelia. They deserve that much.)
He helps his mother with meals, aids Amelia in shopping, and joins his father in weekly poker games with his buddies. He offers drinks to guests and does his own laundry because he knows his mother works odd shifts at the health clinic and likes to come home to a clean house.
He doesn’t mind doing any of it (he doesn’t love it, but who does? It’s more because his family means the world to him and he would do anything for them).
Sometimes, on poker night, he’s allowed to invite some of his own friends over, to hang out or gamble alongside his dad. (They don’t gamble with money, because money is tight and IOUs are taken much more seriously. Instead, they trade small personal items. Eames has lost three poker chips, a pair of gloves, a deck of playing cards (minus two kings and a joker, which were missing originally, but found a week after he lost the deck), and a lighter (not The Lighter, though). In return, he gained a tattered scarf, a different pair of gloves, and a motorcycle kickstand.)
He laughs, knowing that someone, somewhere, has a bike that won’t stand up straight. His sense of humor is…unique, to an extent.
As a teenager, Eames is crude, improper, and rugged.
(At least, in front of his friends. And Fredrick. They don’t deserve any better.)
Eames is sixteen when Timothy shows him and Freddy how to properly shoot up. It’s too tight and the room is stuffy and smells strongly enough of weed that they could probably get a contact high that’s just as strong as the real thing. He dislikes the pinch of the needle jabbing under his skin, and the feel of something foreign entering his bloodstream. He never asks himself why he does it.
(But he does wonder, sometimes.)
Eames throws up afterwards, whether from the dizziness or the guilt, he really doesn’t know.
Fredrick asks for another hit.
(“Eames.”)
(“Hm?”)
(“You’re a bloody fucktard, you know?”)
(“Oh?”)
(“Stealing shit. You owe me my lighter, dick.”)
(“Ah.”)
(“And I want my lighter, not some bloody replacement.”)
(“Ok.”)
Fredrick passes out after that, and doesn’t ask about the lighter the next day.
It’s not the first time he forgets.
(It’s not the last time Eames puts himself into that situation.)
Eames is sixteen when his mom is diagnosed.
(“Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis,” the doctor speaks lowly.)
(Treatment, expenses, diagnosis, expensive, no cure, terminal, expensive, money, money, money, we’resosorry, blah blah blahblahblah.)
Eames is sixteen when he steals again. It’s for a good reason, really. Honestly. He means it for the best. They need the money.
(He doesn’t want her to die. Never ever ever ever.)
They can’t afford proper treatment. It’s getting harder for her to breathe, to talk, to move. Eames stops going to school. He comes up with reasons (excuses). He was skipping most of the time anyways. It was too easy. They didn’t challenge him. They can’t afford it.
They shouldn’t be able to afford it, and yet not be able to pay for his mother’s treatment.
It’s not fair.
(“It’s not fair, Millie.”)
(“I know, Eames, child.”)
(“Don’t tell me it’s God’s will.”)
(“Then I won’t. She loves you very much.”)
(“Thanks.”)
He’s sixteen when he does the one thing that will haunt him for the rest of his life. His mom is staying at the hospital for the weekend, his father is asleep, Amelia is staying with her family. And Eames has an idea.
(Most stupidity starts that way, after all.)
(But is it stupid if it’s meant for the best?)
He carefully sneaks out of his room that evening, purposefully avoiding the creakier areas of the house, and finds his way into the studio. He doesn’t even have to turn on the light to find what he’s looking for. A small wooden box, filled with trinkets. Necklace chains, a few pendants, tickets to that one concert no one really remembers, hair ties, a pocket watch that’s cracked, but still works.
He grabs one of the pendants (turquoise, he thinks), and slips it into his pocket, next to The Lighter.
(No one will miss it.)
(Except they do.)
After he pawns it off (it’s easier because technically it’s his, so fewer questions are asked. He gets about four hundred dollars for it. Not much when you look at the big picture, but Christ. It’s so much more than they had before.), he hands to money to his dad.
(“Where did you get this?”)
(“I worked odd jobs around town. We need money for mum.”)
(“Hm.”)
He doesn’t think his dad knows. He knows he’s lying, but he’s not sure what about.
(At least, that’s what Eames hopes.)
His mom finds out. She’s looking through the box and simply says two words.
(Wheezes.)
(“Eames, darling.”)
(“I love you.”)
(“I know.”)
(“I don’t want you to die.”)
(“Everyone dies, dear.”)
(“Not you. Not like this.”)
(“I’m sorry.”)
She apologizes for something out of her control, so Eames feels that he should be able to fess up to something in his.
(He can’t.)
(She dies anyways.)
He’s beside her bed when it happens. They’re not touching, not speaking, not blinking, not even breathing at times.
She reaches out to hold his hand.
He flinches.
(Not because he’s scared, goddammit. Her hands are cold. Shut up.)
(Please.)
She holds tight to him, brings his hand to her lips, and offers him a chaste kiss on his knuckles.
His teeth chatter.
(Not because he’s going to cry. This room is too cold. Someone should turn up the heat.)
(Please.)
(“Be strong,” she whispers.)
(“Christ, mum,” he says brokenly. “Hypocrite.”)
(She smiles, knows he’s not serious, and kisses him one more time.)
(Please please please.)
He kneels beside her for the next five hours, not moving once, despite the ache in his knees, his joints, his arms. He kneels beside the bed when the doctors come in to turn off the machines, to unhook the lines running into her body, to change the sheets on the bed.
Eames is sixteen when he truly cries for the first time.
As a teenager, Eames realizes that life isn’t fair.
As a teenager, Eames learns that you have to take what you want, before it’s taken from you.
As a teenager, Eames becomes a shadow of himself.
Part 8