Against Us 1/15
Title: Against Us 1/15
Author: safaiagem / bloody_hellfire
Fandom: Inception
Couples: Arthur/Eames
Rating: hard R for violence, language and sexual situations
Words: 2,196 32,283 total
Notes: Based on this prompt in inception_kink. I swear this is the last origins story I write. Really. Three is enough. laria_gwyn is my beta and I <3 her. Also, here is my list of claimed prompts. Let me know which one you'd like to see me work on next.
Summary: When Arthur and Eames first met they thought they had met the person that they could comfortably call a 'friend' for the rest of their lives. The mind crime business, like most things, complicates things.
Copyrights: I own nothing from Inception and I am making no money from this.
Against Us
Part One
Contrary to widespread rumors, they did not meet in the military. They worked in the same program and they might have crossed paths once or twice but neither of them ever knew the other until much later. Eames even claimed that he remembered seeing Arthur at one point or another but Arthur was fairly sure that the forger was just messing with him. Their first meeting happened by pure chance one night when they were both fresh out of the dreamsharing project. Arthur was drinking in a dead end bar in the middle of New York on a freezing cold night in January. The project had ended three months ago and as much as Arthur tried to put logic behind it that did not stop this itch underneath his skin. The dreaming was like a drug, it had gotten into his system and would not let go, and now he was going through withdrawal. The worst part was that there was no one that he could talk to about it. There were no self help groups for people who were addicted to doing impossible things in dreams.
The people in the bar with him were also addicts and Arthur spent the majority of the evening trying to read each of them, to figure out what their addictions were. He wondered how many of them were in denial, how many of them had just fallen off the bandwagon and how many of them were just tired of trying. Arthur wondered which group he fell into and if there was anything he could do to change it. Giving up the thought, he nursed a beer and watched a ten year old English Premiere League match. He wondered idly who would request that channel since no one in the states seemed to care about soccer.
“Cheers, mate,” a voice said and Arthur looked up to see a lean man drinking Guinness from the tap and watching the television with interest. His short hair was sandy blond and he seemed to be watching the game like it was the only thing in the room. He was on the other side of the half circle bar and he looked relaxed. There was something about the look in his eyes that made Arthur watch him with interest. It was not until the man turned and their eyes met that Arthur even realized he was staring. He did not get bashful or look away, he locked eyes with the stranger until the man got up and walked over so they were sitting elbow to elbow. “Any reason you're staring at me?” the man asked.
“Yes and no,” Arthur replied honestly as he took another drink of his beer. He enjoyed this place in the bar because his back was to a wall and he had a clear view of the exit. It was not until he was more than halfway through his beer that he realized that the other man was watching the exit with the same intensity that he was. “You were in the military,” Arthur said as he considered this stranger who turned and looked at him.
“You were too. No other reason someone would choose this spot at the bar unless they wanted their back to a wall and eyes on the exit,” the man said and he held out a hand. “I'm Eames.”
“Arthur,” he said taking Eames' hand. They fell into easy conversation as they bought beers for one another. Arthur found out that Eames had been in the service at around the same time he had been and had been let go around the same time. When this information came out they both stared at one another. “Odds of that happening are pretty slim.”
“The universe is not so big, Arthur, and sometimes things just turn out that way,” Eames replied and he flagged a bartender down. The more they drank the warmer the room seemed to get and before long both of them had their sleeves rolled up. Arthur was in the middle of a story from boot camp when Eames snatched his wrist and turned it over. He ran his fingers over the track marks on his wrist from the PASIV device. “I know what these are.”
“I got into some nasty stuff when I was younger; they're just scars,” Arthur lied effortlessly but Eames stared at him with intense eyes. Eames moved his arm so that their wrists were side by side. Arthur's eyes nearly bugged out when he saw identical marks on Eames’ arm, marks that indicated exactly what Eames had done while he was in the service. If he was wrong then he would be breeching his non-disclosure agreement and might get himself killed but if he was right there would finally be a person that understood what he was going through. He ran a million statements through his head trying to find one that would get the point across if Eames really had been in the program. “Tell me, Mr. Eames, do you still dream?” Arthur asked and the way the other man's eyes lit up was all the proof he needed.
“As a matter of fact, I don't,” Eames replied. “Let's go somewhere else.” The 'because this isn't a safe place to discuss this' was implied but Arthur nodded. Eames released his hand and they both paid for their tabs. Arthur wrapped himself in his coat tightly as he walked with Eames down the cold New York streets. Eames had a loft within walking distance and as Arthur followed him upstairs he wondered if this was a trap and he was going to get himself killed. He sized up Eames and decided he could take the Brit if need be. The heat from the apartment seemed to melt the ice from his bones and Arthur could feel the chill start to leave. Eames hung up their coats and vanished into the kitchen only to return with two glasses of brandy. “Here, because I know you're worried even if you won't say so,” Eames said and he took a sip of both; Arthur grinned.
“Every instinct I have said coming up here was a bad idea,” he said taking the glass from Eames.
“Yeah, well, all of mine said that bringing you here was a bad idea,” he said sounding a little sheepish. They lounged on the couch and sipped the brandy as they waited to warm up from the cold outside. “Did you ever go to Europe?”
“Yeah, did you come to the states?” Arthur asked.
“Sure did. We must have just missed each other,” Eames said tilting his head to the side.
“Must have; I have a feeling I would remember you,” Arthur said without hesitation. He did not see a point in beating around the bush or being subtle and judging by the way Eames' eyebrows shot up he had not expected that.
“Cheers to that,” he said and they clinked glasses. The hours dragged on as they talked about the dreams, about first reactions, the first time they had gotten hurt or killed, the first time they had gotten ill, the first time they had managed to build a dream and how it all fell apart in the end.
“I guess it was all too expensive,” Arthur said and just barely noticed that the bottle of brandy was almost empty. “Training soldiers to kill easily isn't something that they really want to broadcast anyway.”
“It always comes down to funds though,” Eames said as he finished the last of his brandy. “I wonder what else you could do down there though. I mean, we had only just learned that we could control the structure of the dream. I imagine there were all sorts of things that we never touched on.” Arthur hummed in agreement and finished the last of his drink.
“I should probably head out,” he said and Eames rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, you're not walking through New York at 2A.M after all of that booze. I don't care if you were special forces, I'm calling a bloody cab,” Eames said and he picked up the phone to do so. Arthur laughed and rested his head against the back of the couch. He felt lighter than he had in three months and he knew it was not because of the liquor. Eames hung up the phone and they walked down to the entrance of the building to watch for the cab. “You going to hang around the city for a while?”
“Thinking about it,” Arthur replied as he leaned against the door; the window fogged just a little whenever he took a breath.
“Well, give me a ring if you want to get drinks again sometime. You can't exactly talk to anyone about what we had to do,” Eames said offering a piece of paper with a number on it. Arthur took it without hesitation and smiled.
“I'd like that,” he replied honestly when the cab pulled up. Arthur nodded to Eames and walked outside to his cab. When they pulled away he risked a glance back at the door and saw that Eames was watching him as well.
---
“It's called 'extraction,’” Eames said one night over a year later over a box of Chinese food. Arthur creased his eyebrows and stared at the man on the couch next to him. Somehow, over the last year, Arthur had found a friend in Eames that he had never had in anyone else before. The two of them spent most of their days together and drank enough to fund a small island nation. The topic rarely drifted from the dreams for very long but when it did they were usually just sorting out basics.
“My first name is Daniel,” Eames had said after their third beer and a terrible movie a few months earlier. Arthur arched an eyebrow.
“I already knew that,” Arthur had replied. “I was intelligence before I was in the program so knowing things about people is natural. I got curious so I looked you up.” Eames had stared at him before bursting out laughing.
“And what did you find?” he had asked with a grin.
“That you're a thief for one,” Arthur had replied and he gave Eames a little credit for not reacting at all. “You forged papers to get to America because like me, you're not supposed to exist anymore.”
“It's kind of freeing, don't you think? And I have to say I'm impressed; you must have gotten through some decent security to get information on a dead man.” They did not talk about anything else that night but by the time the liquor was gone Arthur had his normal spot on the couch. Now they were eating Chinese food over a year later and not really watching re-runs of some British show that Eames claimed was amazing.
“It's the act of going into a person’s mind and taking their secrets. What of it?” Arthur asked and he had to stifle a laugh when Eames glared at him.
“Right, so, rumor is that a few of the PASIV devices got out onto the black market and people have started doing extractions for frankly embarrassing amounts of money. The people doing these things are mediocre at best, but you and I? We're trained, we know what to do, and I bet we could take all of those people by surprise,” Eames said and he sounded excited.
“Illegal dream work? Sounds tempting,” Arthur said as he set his food on the table. “What marketable skills do we have that could possibly make these people want to hire us?”
“You're kidding, right?” Eames asked but when Arthur did not reply the Brit rolled his eyes. “You, for one, could gather all of the information. You know as well as I do that going into someone's mind and not knowing what you're getting yourself into leads to less than pleasant experiences.” Arthur clenched his jaw tightly and tried not to think about the projections that had torn him apart slowly when they went into the mind of a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. “You know how to dissect things and look at them from every possible angle.”
“And what would you do?” Arthur asked but he was not surprised when Eames gave him that cheeky grin that he always did when he had the upper hand. “Eames, what do you know that I don't?”
“We'll go to a guy downtown who has a machine that he lets people use to live out whatever fantasies they want. I'll show you because telling you won't quite cover it,” Eames said and Arthur rolled his eyes.
“Fine,” he said and they went back to their Chinese food and the terrible television show though the smirk Eames had on his face did not go away.
Part Two
Author: safaiagem / bloody_hellfire
Fandom: Inception
Couples: Arthur/Eames
Rating: hard R for violence, language and sexual situations
Words: 2,196 32,283 total
Notes: Based on this prompt in inception_kink. I swear this is the last origins story I write. Really. Three is enough. laria_gwyn is my beta and I <3 her. Also, here is my list of claimed prompts. Let me know which one you'd like to see me work on next.
Summary: When Arthur and Eames first met they thought they had met the person that they could comfortably call a 'friend' for the rest of their lives. The mind crime business, like most things, complicates things.
Copyrights: I own nothing from Inception and I am making no money from this.
Against Us
Part One
Contrary to widespread rumors, they did not meet in the military. They worked in the same program and they might have crossed paths once or twice but neither of them ever knew the other until much later. Eames even claimed that he remembered seeing Arthur at one point or another but Arthur was fairly sure that the forger was just messing with him. Their first meeting happened by pure chance one night when they were both fresh out of the dreamsharing project. Arthur was drinking in a dead end bar in the middle of New York on a freezing cold night in January. The project had ended three months ago and as much as Arthur tried to put logic behind it that did not stop this itch underneath his skin. The dreaming was like a drug, it had gotten into his system and would not let go, and now he was going through withdrawal. The worst part was that there was no one that he could talk to about it. There were no self help groups for people who were addicted to doing impossible things in dreams.
The people in the bar with him were also addicts and Arthur spent the majority of the evening trying to read each of them, to figure out what their addictions were. He wondered how many of them were in denial, how many of them had just fallen off the bandwagon and how many of them were just tired of trying. Arthur wondered which group he fell into and if there was anything he could do to change it. Giving up the thought, he nursed a beer and watched a ten year old English Premiere League match. He wondered idly who would request that channel since no one in the states seemed to care about soccer.
“Cheers, mate,” a voice said and Arthur looked up to see a lean man drinking Guinness from the tap and watching the television with interest. His short hair was sandy blond and he seemed to be watching the game like it was the only thing in the room. He was on the other side of the half circle bar and he looked relaxed. There was something about the look in his eyes that made Arthur watch him with interest. It was not until the man turned and their eyes met that Arthur even realized he was staring. He did not get bashful or look away, he locked eyes with the stranger until the man got up and walked over so they were sitting elbow to elbow. “Any reason you're staring at me?” the man asked.
“Yes and no,” Arthur replied honestly as he took another drink of his beer. He enjoyed this place in the bar because his back was to a wall and he had a clear view of the exit. It was not until he was more than halfway through his beer that he realized that the other man was watching the exit with the same intensity that he was. “You were in the military,” Arthur said as he considered this stranger who turned and looked at him.
“You were too. No other reason someone would choose this spot at the bar unless they wanted their back to a wall and eyes on the exit,” the man said and he held out a hand. “I'm Eames.”
“Arthur,” he said taking Eames' hand. They fell into easy conversation as they bought beers for one another. Arthur found out that Eames had been in the service at around the same time he had been and had been let go around the same time. When this information came out they both stared at one another. “Odds of that happening are pretty slim.”
“The universe is not so big, Arthur, and sometimes things just turn out that way,” Eames replied and he flagged a bartender down. The more they drank the warmer the room seemed to get and before long both of them had their sleeves rolled up. Arthur was in the middle of a story from boot camp when Eames snatched his wrist and turned it over. He ran his fingers over the track marks on his wrist from the PASIV device. “I know what these are.”
“I got into some nasty stuff when I was younger; they're just scars,” Arthur lied effortlessly but Eames stared at him with intense eyes. Eames moved his arm so that their wrists were side by side. Arthur's eyes nearly bugged out when he saw identical marks on Eames’ arm, marks that indicated exactly what Eames had done while he was in the service. If he was wrong then he would be breeching his non-disclosure agreement and might get himself killed but if he was right there would finally be a person that understood what he was going through. He ran a million statements through his head trying to find one that would get the point across if Eames really had been in the program. “Tell me, Mr. Eames, do you still dream?” Arthur asked and the way the other man's eyes lit up was all the proof he needed.
“As a matter of fact, I don't,” Eames replied. “Let's go somewhere else.” The 'because this isn't a safe place to discuss this' was implied but Arthur nodded. Eames released his hand and they both paid for their tabs. Arthur wrapped himself in his coat tightly as he walked with Eames down the cold New York streets. Eames had a loft within walking distance and as Arthur followed him upstairs he wondered if this was a trap and he was going to get himself killed. He sized up Eames and decided he could take the Brit if need be. The heat from the apartment seemed to melt the ice from his bones and Arthur could feel the chill start to leave. Eames hung up their coats and vanished into the kitchen only to return with two glasses of brandy. “Here, because I know you're worried even if you won't say so,” Eames said and he took a sip of both; Arthur grinned.
“Every instinct I have said coming up here was a bad idea,” he said taking the glass from Eames.
“Yeah, well, all of mine said that bringing you here was a bad idea,” he said sounding a little sheepish. They lounged on the couch and sipped the brandy as they waited to warm up from the cold outside. “Did you ever go to Europe?”
“Yeah, did you come to the states?” Arthur asked.
“Sure did. We must have just missed each other,” Eames said tilting his head to the side.
“Must have; I have a feeling I would remember you,” Arthur said without hesitation. He did not see a point in beating around the bush or being subtle and judging by the way Eames' eyebrows shot up he had not expected that.
“Cheers to that,” he said and they clinked glasses. The hours dragged on as they talked about the dreams, about first reactions, the first time they had gotten hurt or killed, the first time they had gotten ill, the first time they had managed to build a dream and how it all fell apart in the end.
“I guess it was all too expensive,” Arthur said and just barely noticed that the bottle of brandy was almost empty. “Training soldiers to kill easily isn't something that they really want to broadcast anyway.”
“It always comes down to funds though,” Eames said as he finished the last of his brandy. “I wonder what else you could do down there though. I mean, we had only just learned that we could control the structure of the dream. I imagine there were all sorts of things that we never touched on.” Arthur hummed in agreement and finished the last of his drink.
“I should probably head out,” he said and Eames rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, you're not walking through New York at 2A.M after all of that booze. I don't care if you were special forces, I'm calling a bloody cab,” Eames said and he picked up the phone to do so. Arthur laughed and rested his head against the back of the couch. He felt lighter than he had in three months and he knew it was not because of the liquor. Eames hung up the phone and they walked down to the entrance of the building to watch for the cab. “You going to hang around the city for a while?”
“Thinking about it,” Arthur replied as he leaned against the door; the window fogged just a little whenever he took a breath.
“Well, give me a ring if you want to get drinks again sometime. You can't exactly talk to anyone about what we had to do,” Eames said offering a piece of paper with a number on it. Arthur took it without hesitation and smiled.
“I'd like that,” he replied honestly when the cab pulled up. Arthur nodded to Eames and walked outside to his cab. When they pulled away he risked a glance back at the door and saw that Eames was watching him as well.
---
“It's called 'extraction,’” Eames said one night over a year later over a box of Chinese food. Arthur creased his eyebrows and stared at the man on the couch next to him. Somehow, over the last year, Arthur had found a friend in Eames that he had never had in anyone else before. The two of them spent most of their days together and drank enough to fund a small island nation. The topic rarely drifted from the dreams for very long but when it did they were usually just sorting out basics.
“My first name is Daniel,” Eames had said after their third beer and a terrible movie a few months earlier. Arthur arched an eyebrow.
“I already knew that,” Arthur had replied. “I was intelligence before I was in the program so knowing things about people is natural. I got curious so I looked you up.” Eames had stared at him before bursting out laughing.
“And what did you find?” he had asked with a grin.
“That you're a thief for one,” Arthur had replied and he gave Eames a little credit for not reacting at all. “You forged papers to get to America because like me, you're not supposed to exist anymore.”
“It's kind of freeing, don't you think? And I have to say I'm impressed; you must have gotten through some decent security to get information on a dead man.” They did not talk about anything else that night but by the time the liquor was gone Arthur had his normal spot on the couch. Now they were eating Chinese food over a year later and not really watching re-runs of some British show that Eames claimed was amazing.
“It's the act of going into a person’s mind and taking their secrets. What of it?” Arthur asked and he had to stifle a laugh when Eames glared at him.
“Right, so, rumor is that a few of the PASIV devices got out onto the black market and people have started doing extractions for frankly embarrassing amounts of money. The people doing these things are mediocre at best, but you and I? We're trained, we know what to do, and I bet we could take all of those people by surprise,” Eames said and he sounded excited.
“Illegal dream work? Sounds tempting,” Arthur said as he set his food on the table. “What marketable skills do we have that could possibly make these people want to hire us?”
“You're kidding, right?” Eames asked but when Arthur did not reply the Brit rolled his eyes. “You, for one, could gather all of the information. You know as well as I do that going into someone's mind and not knowing what you're getting yourself into leads to less than pleasant experiences.” Arthur clenched his jaw tightly and tried not to think about the projections that had torn him apart slowly when they went into the mind of a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. “You know how to dissect things and look at them from every possible angle.”
“And what would you do?” Arthur asked but he was not surprised when Eames gave him that cheeky grin that he always did when he had the upper hand. “Eames, what do you know that I don't?”
“We'll go to a guy downtown who has a machine that he lets people use to live out whatever fantasies they want. I'll show you because telling you won't quite cover it,” Eames said and Arthur rolled his eyes.
“Fine,” he said and they went back to their Chinese food and the terrible television show though the smirk Eames had on his face did not go away.
Part Two