Fic: Render (Inception, NC-17)
title: Render
Written for Round One of the Inception Reverse Big Bang @ i_reversebang
author: ilovetakahana
artist: neomeruru
characters/pairings: Main pairing - Arthur/Eames. Secondary pairing - Ariadne/Saito. Includes original characters.
warnings: Mention of PTSD, dream-torture, descriptions of domestic and sexual abuse [spousal and child abuse], sociopathy. BDSM themes including mentions of knifeplay, shibari, and a complete D/s scene that includes spanking, use of toys, and bondage - and aftercare.
betas: neomeruru , photoclerk , and chn_breathmint.
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: For Eames, pain is a coin that always has two sides. He remembers the pain of dying, of fighting in wars, of being tortured. But he forgets it all, he blanks it all out, because the other side of pain is pleasure. And Arthur knows just how to make the pain go away.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org.
Click here for a bigger view
Eames opens his eyes slowly, painfully. His skin feels wrong, like it’s too tight in some places and too loose in others. Wet here and there, drying to a crust, nothing like sweat - so unnatural it can only mean one thing. Metallic tang already heavy on his tongue, the feelings of dread and the awful knowledge familiar from warzones in both real life and the dreams.
The first thing he realizes is that he’s no longer wearing the forge. A man in his early thirties, thinning grey hair in a neat comb-over, glasses perched low on his hooked nose. Sallow scars of acne persisting well beyond his teens, scattered around his nose and his cheeks. The thick line slashing through one eyebrow, remnant of a knife attack. The careful way he carries his right arm, as though still remembering a terrible break or some other injury.
No, here he is in his own body, stripped almost naked. He tries to look over his shoulders, down at his chest. Just a dream, he tells himself. Just a dream.
But it’s a dream where his throat is already scraped raw and painful, where he hears the faint echoes of his own screaming in the tight, confined space. A dream in which he is suspended off the floor by his wrists. He looks up, and even that movement sends pain signals crawling, like many-legged flares, over his skin. Chains wrapped around the heavy manacles clamped around his wrists, leading up to the huge hook in the ceiling.
He looks down, at his feet.
The mark is sitting on the floor near him. Her blank, eerie eyes. Reflecting his shock and his pain, the trails of blood already dried down his sides. His body remembers her attacking him with her nails, tearing him open, and all the while the silence, the utter lack of reaction.
Eames has seen killers claim sanity and think nothing of dancing in the spilled viscera of their victims; he’s seen killers apologize even as they slit their victims’ throats. He’s seen more shades of sanity and madness in the dreams than he cares to remember. But until now he’s only read about killers who showed absolutely no emotion, not even accomplishment, even as they held their victims’ lives literally in their hands.
Now he knows exactly what that is like, and he feels the tears run down his cheeks, and he makes no effort to stop himself. Fear, and a helpless rage, burning through him, threaded into the pain and into the smell of blood.
The mark is holding a pair of rusty pliers, not with fear or trepidation or tentativeness, and she’s staring at his feet.
The information in the safe comes back to him, the hints in the dossier on the case.
Sexual abuse. Dissociative disorder. Fugue states. Injuries were initially self-inflicted, and then passed on to others: her daughter, her son, her husband.
The mark closes the pliers around the nail of his little toe, a movement that only means one thing, and Eames grits his teeth and closes his eyes.
As she pulls and he starts to scream, again, Eames thinks longingly of escape.
///
Eames is no stranger to pain, of course. Not for him the crippling fear or the blank stoicism. Instead, he copes, and he catalogues the pains and aches, makes lists in his mind.
A barehanded fight in the barracks, the men cheering and betting raucously around him, and the adrenaline rush that buries his bruises and his destroyed knuckles. A gunshot tearing through the meat of his upper arm. Running on a broken leg, and sniper’s bullets whizzing past. Paper cuts and the sting of his own saliva. Hangovers when words and sounds are like blows to the back of his head.
Some pain is inevitably pleasurable. The first time he bottomed, the stretch and burn of someone entering him. The knots in his muscles unraveling under a massage. Water heated to near scalding in a bathtub. Szechuan food for breakfast.
Lately, he’s been testing his own limits, trying to find out where the thin line between pleasure and pain becomes a white-hot flash of light and becomes meaningless. Arthur writing on his back with a scalpel, the thin lines shallow enough to leave no visible scars, deep enough for the blood to run down his back. Rope in a complicated pattern, the knots and lattices beautiful against his skin, his immobilized limbs. Arthur holding him down and fucking his mouth, his lips and throat straining under the onslaught, tears leaking from his eyes from the pleasure.
And there is pain, too, in coming down from the scenes, in drawing the first breath and realizing that he is, in fact, back in his own self. Arthur helps him with that, too, with the same single-minded focus and the affection that he pours out like honey wine, sweet words and solicitous hands. Even then it’s always so different. Even then, the rush leaves him as if drawn out on barbed wire, leaving Eames himself, and all right, and longing for the next time.
///
Eames tries to unfocus, to retreat into another place in his mind, even as the mark goes on with her gruesome work, finishes pulling out the toenail on his big toe. The pain is like gasoline poured along every single nerve and then lit on fire, burning hot and hard into him. It’s a dream, and he looks forward to shrugging it off when he wakes up, but waking seems so very far away, as does the scant comfort of falling into limbo.
Even waking up a vegetable, an old man in a young body, would be preferable to this.
And in the back of his head there’s a dark anger flaring up, and it helps him stay aware, helps him tune out the screaming in his nerves. Their client is the mark’s ex-husband. He’s been abused, of course, the knife-scar near his eye is the dead giveaway, but he wants to know exactly what’s been done to their son and daughter.
Eames lists the details easily, a mantra against the mark: dipped the daughter’s hands into boiling soup. Hit the son with a belt and then when he began to bleed, hit him with bare hands. In her less lucid moments the mark has taken knives to the children, thrown heavy books, talked down to them, screamed endless obscenities.
It helps, a little.
And thankfully, he doesn’t have to go any further into the details because the first sound he hears over his own panicked breaths and the mark’s grunts of effort is the BAM of a door being kicked open. Two familiar silhouettes: one smaller, with long hair flying; one taller, and the light glints off an unmistakable muzzle.
The mark turns, looks at Ariadne and Arthur blankly, doesn’t even react when Arthur strides right up to her and pistol-whips her across the face. She crumples silently, and Arthur nods at Ariadne, and she drops to her knees next to the mark. Produces a coil of rope from somewhere and hogties her. Swift, assured knots.
Ariadne’s time in the Girl Scouts has given her several skills that have turned out to become immensely useful in the dreamshare. How to handle rope, of course, and her thorough knowledge of first aid. Unexpectedly, a specialty in throwing and catching things - Eames has seen her idly juggle teacups at the office.
Eames feels himself moving, being lowered to the floor, and the movement jars every abused nerve and muscle all over again. Even the shock of being guided to the bloody, sticky floor is too much, and he bites his lips, fights to keep the screams from escaping.
He feels Arthur lay him out, scarred hands and rough fingertips, and Ariadne hovers over him, eyes wide with shock.
Eames finds the strength to whisper: “Safe to kick me out?”
Arthur nods. He may not be speaking, but his harsh, worried breaths tell the whole story, fill the spaces between them, and for that Eames is grateful. Not for Arthur the eerie silence of the insane and single-minded.
“Whenever you’re ready, then,” Eames says, and he attempts to smile when the cold muzzle touches his forehead.
///
He opens his eyes slowly to golden sunlight; he reaches for his totem, moving slowly, and he brings the scarred chip up to his eyes and here are all the lines and incisions in all the right places. The comforting weight in his hand, the misspelled words.
He’s made it out, he’s whole, he’s uninjured.
Eames sucks down the first untainted breath he’s had since the dream began, and he listens for the sounds of the others stirring.
A face swims into his line of sight. Arthur, not a hair out of place, his eyes hard and worried. “Are you all right?”
“Something tells me,” Eames says, “that I’m going to get tired of hearing that for a while.”
Arthur shrugs one shoulder. Elegant and precise movement, while he waits him out.
Eames sighs and brings his other hand up to cover his eyes. “I’m all right.” Pause. “Completed the extraction, too. Give me a minute before I talk to the client, though.”
“Take your time,” Arthur replies.
And he moves away and there is Ariadne in his place. She simply takes his hand and squeezes it, her fingers warm and light and gentle against his. A tiny smile, a flicker of understanding in her eyes. Eames uses his other hand to brush stray strands of hair from her face, and he pats her once, on the head, and says, “Thank you, love.”
“Oh, Eames,” is all she says.
He levers himself slowly to a sitting position. There is a water bottle near his foot, condensation in fine beads, and he places it across the back of his neck, lets the welcome coolness soak into his skin, before he pops the cap and drains the water in one long swallow.
And then he braces himself and he walks past Arthur as he puts the PASIV back together. Eames pats his shoulder, once, and then he’s in the outer room.
Their client is looking down sadly at the woman in the straitjacket. Her hands and feet are securely bound. She’s tied down to her wheelchair, the restraints looped and knotted around the sturdy frame. Her face is slack.
Eames waits for the client to look at him, and when he does all Eames says is, “You might want to start thinking about sending your children to more serious therapy. Have them undergo a complete physical examination. Move away from here. Give them some new memories.”
The man falters for only a moment. His shoulders straighten as Eames watches, his eyes go flinty-firm. “I will. Thank you.”
Eames nods, and the man stares at the woman for a moment before turning away and pulling a phone out of his pocket.
When he walks back into the other room, Ariadne is bouncing three ping-pong balls off the wall and he watches her for a moment, admiring the flick of her wrist, the fingers closing and releasing each tiny projectile in turn. In her other hand she’s holding up her mobile phone, and she keeps one eye on the juggling, even as she says, “Do you mind if I crash with you for a few days? No, I don’t care how long it takes before I get there. I’m having Arthur book my tickets. I don’t want any upgrades, I just want to be gone from here. The job was a bitch and a half. Okay. Suki yo, mata ne.”
“Give my regards to Saito,” Eames says, and he snatches one of the ping-pong balls from the circuit, drops it in Ariadne’s lap. The other two balls continue to hit the wall in a soothing click-like rhythm.
“I will. And give mine to Amy.”
“If she even remembers who we are,” Arthur deadpans, and he clicks his laptop closed, repacks the PASIV in its outer case. He pulls on his light coat. “If we can entice her back from our neighbors.”
“She’ll be fine,” Eames says. “She’s still our cat.”
They split up at the elevators: Eames ushers Ariadne into one of the cabins and presses the button for the ground floor; Arthur slips through the door to the emergency stairs, with the PASIV in tow.
Eames is on the street a few moments later, having handed Ariadne into a taxicab and reminded her to keep in discreet contact. The sun is beating down on his shoulders. Life and sound of the city around him: a woman cooing at her yapping Pomeranians, three Japanese men in ties but no jackets debating their next meal, a woman wearing both an oversized pair of plastic-framed eyeglasses and a set of earbuds whistling as she walked by with her hands in her pockets, three girls in pink and purple wigs and extremely short skirts.
Something stops nearby and he tenses before he looks, but it’s Arthur in the front seat of his Mini Cooper, tie and jacket gone and the first button on his shirt undone. “Need a lift,” he says.
Eames sighs and loosens the knot on his own tie and gets into the front passenger seat.
“Sorry,” Arthur says after a few moments. “For taking too long to come and get you, I mean.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Eames says, though if he closes his eyes he can still vividly remember the mark firing a bolt gun into his upper arm. “Did you check for the transfer?”
“Yes. We’re good.”
“Then can we please leave now? I have a terrible urge to break into the cellar and find one of those bottles we were saving up for a rainy day.”
Arthur regards him with a tilted eyebrow for a moment, and then he pulls Eames close, places a soft kiss on his forehead.
Eames sighs and slouches back, wills himself to relax.
///
When they arrive at the apartment they are carrying groceries: bittersweet chocolate, flour, cream cheese. They find Amy sitting near the door and she meows happily at them, winds herself several times around their ankles. When she’s satisfied with them she goes back to her usual spot under Eames’s desk; he can see her tail twitching as he passes the study.
Eames glances at himself in the bathroom mirror; he looks all right, but naturally he knows his own tells. The tap of his foot inside his shoe, silent and insistent; the cold pinch in the small of his back. Nothing visible, even when anyone else would be screaming for help.
Arthur has always been able to read him like a book, so he gently touches Eames’s shoulder, looks him in the eye. “Do you need me, tonight?”
“I will,” Eames says, after a long moment. “After that job, I will. But let me try to calm myself down, too.”
“Of course,” Arthur says, and there is one of his tells: the twitch in his cheek. Easy enough to read that one, and the whole team knows what it means. Arthur is worried. “Call me when it’s time to eat.”
Eames smiles at that, a little, and reaches out to squeeze Arthur’s hand. He relishes the feel of his own whole hand against the warmth of Arthur’s. “You’ll be in the kitchen long before that.”
And then Arthur is gone and Eames goes blank, hands working, independent of his brain. Mix, fold, slice, bake. The knife is an extension of his hand. Not for him the mark and her careless, destructive dexterity. His gran taught him how to make chocolate pound cake, but he’s swiped the idea of the cream cheese from Nigella, and everyone he’s fed it to has loved it.
Amy keeps him company when she wanders in after another lazy tour through the house; he grabs her in a hug, and she bats affectionately at his nose before squirming down and vanishing again.
Arthur comes in, once, for a glass of water and a finger swiped through the remnants of the cake batter.
Eames cleans up afterwards.
He walks into the guest bedroom, the linens fresh and cool against his skin, and he’s gone before he can blink twice, gone into dreamless sleep.
///
He comes awake slowly.
It’s the smell in the bedroom that alerts him, that lets him expect the sudden nakedness and the wide lengths of silk lashing his wrists together. White musk and sandalwood. Arthur’s hands working the knots, familiar enough to Eames even in sleep; the cockring being snapped on. A faint undertone of sulfur.
He wills himself to relax and he opens his eyes.
Arthur is sitting next to him, lit match in hand. The room, his face, is bathed in flickering candlelight. A thin sheen of sweat is already forming on the bared skin of his shoulders. The look in his eyes is infinitely gentle, infinitely in command. “Do you want this? I’ll put it all back if you’re not interested. We can do something else.” He lights the last candle, a tall pillar on the bedside table, and he blows out the match.
Eames just looks at his bound hands. One long length of silk, wound carefully around one wrist and then up each arm, shoulder to shoulder and down to the other hand. His own tanned skin and the lines of ink, restrained, lovingly. The dream-memories of chain and manacle flow away, the job and its painful miseries vanish in warmth. Eames quiets, gradually, and all the while Arthur strokes him down, hands running a long loop from wrist to shoulder, down to his sides, before coming back up and traveling down again.
Eames catches Arthur’s fingers with his mouth as they pass, curling his tongue around each digit and sucking them down, cheeks hollowing, and he hears Arthur laugh and murmur his name, kiss the top of his head in approval.
And this is how Eames ends up turned over a stack of pillows. He goes where Arthur tells him to go; he positions himself so he’s on his knees. The blood rushes to his head; he can hear it in his ears, a quieting wave of sound. He doesn’t know what Arthur has planned for him tonight, and he’s going to take it, because they’ve agreed to this, because Arthur offered it and he accepted it.
The first stroke cracks loudly in the room and Eames gasps, jolts on the pillows. “One,” he says, without needing to be told, and he hears a distant hum of “Yes” and the paddle comes down again.
Arthur hits like he’s trying to make Eames forget everyone else, everything else. Eames’s voice cracks with each hit, and by the time they’re up to twenty he’s down to somewhere between a groan and a rasp. He can feel every inch of his skin come alight, pain and pleasure singing together, the hot redness of his arse, the blood rushing again, this time to his cock.
By the time he counts off five more hits he can feel the tears sliding down his cheeks. It hurts all over, it’s the kind of hurt he can’t get enough of, it’s the kind of hurt he wants. And then he wonders if he’s already begging because somewhere in the distance he can hear Arthur laughing, long and low and dark.
Arthur runs a hand over his back, down to his arse, and Eames whines and squirms and fights to get away. He’s never felt anything so keenly, so acutely. The splay of Arthur’s fingers, the calluses catching on his hot skin. When Arthur crooks his fingers, digs into the muscle - sharp sliver of almost-pain from his nails - Eames lets out a surprised, needy yelp. Arthur does it again, and again, until Eames is whimpering under his hand.
“God, Eames, the things I want to do to you.”
And through the haze of his senses the next thing Eames knows is Arthur spreading him open, fresh heat slamming through him at the touch of those hands, and all the breath is knocked out of him when Arthur licks into him, one long searing stroke. “No no no,” he says, but his body’s already betraying him, and he pushes back eagerly onto the intrusive tongue. He feels himself open up for Arthur, and he thinks he might actually shake himself apart, and the words pour from his mouth, babbling and pleading.
“We’re just getting started,” Arthur says, the words laden with darkness and with promise, and he flips Eames off the pillows, onto his back.
And now that Eames can see him, he looks thoroughly wrecked, he’s there and he’s laughing, deep lines around his eyes. His mouth is sloppy and shining-wet, and Eames watches hungrily as Arthur licks his lips.
Eames goes, helpless, when Arthur spreads his legs wide; he watches as Arthur opens the bottle of lube and digs around in the drawer for something. A quiet crow of triumph, and Arthur is grinning and he’s pulling a small blue egg-shape from its container and Eames laughs, knows what’s coming. It’s not going to be him, not any time soon, and if it makes Arthur smile like that, he’s going to take it all.
Slip-slide of an object being doused in lube and Eames is so relaxed, so ready, that he takes the vibrator in easily, it moves past the tight ring of muscle without any resistance - and he catches the light in Arthur’s eyes, the quirk of his eyebrow, and he closes his eyes just in time for the first shock to slam into him, for the first cry to sneak past his gritted teeth.
Oh my god oh my god he is actually going to kill me, Eames manages to think, he’s going to kill me just like this, and it all blows away, he lets it all go and becomes pure feeling. Again and again all the thoughts are shaken out of his head. He thrashes on the sheets; his hands spasm above the silk binding his wrists.
Pleasure to the point of pain. His cock, hard and red and restrained and lying flat against his stomach. Every movement stoking the heat in his skin. Arthur’s eyes, watching him fly apart.
He reaches up eagerly when Arthur kisses him: hard slant of Arthur’s mouth over his, Arthur’s tongue curling possessively around his. Arthur kisses Eames deeply, kisses him like he owns him, and Eames chases after him frantically when he lets up - only to be stopped with a hand planted, hard, over his sternum.
And Eames tries to get up and Arthur only bears him down harder into the sheets, one hand on his chest becomes both hands on his shoulders.
“Arthur,” Eames breathes, and he does his best to buck Arthur off - he fights, he tosses his head, writhes beneath Arthur, who is holding him down so hard his knuckles are turning white, watching him with hooded eyes. With his hands bound overhead he can’t get any leverage, and gradually Eames is limp and down to deep, gasping breaths, all the fight gone out of him.
And that’s when Arthur crawls up the bed - and immediately traps Eames’s shoulders under his knees. “Open your mouth,” he says, and Eames’s eyes widen, he knows what that means, and Arthur sinks into him without any warning, one smooth motion all the way down. Eames squeezes his eyes shut; the heavy musk and the smell that is only Arthur overwhelms him. Short, springy hair at his lips, Arthur’s cock a burning weight on Eames’s tongue.
“Hold still.”
Arthur snaps his hips forward and fucks into his mouth, hard; his cock hits the back of Eames’s throat with every stroke and Eames fights for every breath, tears springing from the corners of his eyes. And Arthur keeps going, and Eames feels the wild thrill building inside him, can suddenly see himself in all clarity as he lies there on the bed and Arthur uses him, need and power and yes I want this a wildfire licking at every inch of his skin, until Arthur suddenly pulls out, and Eames lets out a small cry of shock.
“Please,” and he has no idea what he’s asking for, any more, and suddenly it all stops. Soft pop of the vibrator being pulled out of him; his hands being untied, and Arthur mouthing and licking the insides of his wrists, moaning softly as he goes.
He watches as Arthur looms over him, hooks one of Eames’s knees over his shoulder and the other around his waist and, yes, that’s Arthur’s cock nudging at him, and he nearly sobs with relief, with anticipation. Eames grabs at Arthur’s arms.
Arthur sets a brutal pace, he’s pounding like he’s going to drive Eames into the mattress and finally he unsnaps the cock ring with shaking hands, and he takes Eames’s mouth in a hard kiss, and says, “Now.”
Eames’s eyes fly wide as Arthur sinks his teeth into his tattooed shoulder, he’s arching right off the bed, and the world dissolves in a rush of fire and silence.
///
He floats, warm and safe, and when he looks down at himself he no longer remembers the pain or the blood. The memory of the woman with the blank eyes fades away.
///
“Eames.”
He breathes. He thinks about being safe. In. Out. And someone is calling his name.
He comes to like he’s climbing a long staircase. A gentle slope, warm and careful hands pulling him up, letting him set his own pace. One step at a time, deep and healing breaths.
And then Eames opens his eyes and Arthur smiles at him, passes a cool washcloth over his sweating brow, the back of his neck. Arthur takes each of Eames’s wrists in turn, rubs soothing circles into the skin. Arthur cards his hands through Eames’s hair, scatters featherlight kisses across his forehead and around his mouth. Never letting his hands stray far from Eames, he traces over the marks of the night, carefully looks Eames over for any injury. Those intense eyes trace every inch of him. Eames smiles, and shakes, but with pleasure, with love.
“Cake?”
Eames nods, and Arthur feeds him a slice of the cake from earlier, one small bite at a time. Rich dark chocolate, sharp tang of the cream cheese. He rolls the crumbs around on his tongue, licks Arthur’s fingers around the fork.
Amy comes into the room while Arthur is helping him finish a glass of water; she settles in near their feet, and Eames lets Arthur guide his hands toward her, and he smiles when she purrs under their shared touch.
He pulls the silence and the candlelight and Arthur’s arms around him closer, and he takes his time, and finally he asks, “How was it? How’d I do?”
“Good. Beyond good,” and Arthur laughs and shifts them around, gently, so he’s the big spoon. Eames lets his head fall back onto Arthur’s shoulder. “You did so well.”
And Eames smiles, and he turns his head to kiss Arthur, and they tumble together into a sweet sleep.
fin
Written for Round One of the Inception Reverse Big Bang @ i_reversebang
author: ilovetakahana
artist: neomeruru
characters/pairings: Main pairing - Arthur/Eames. Secondary pairing - Ariadne/Saito. Includes original characters.
warnings: Mention of PTSD, dream-torture, descriptions of domestic and sexual abuse [spousal and child abuse], sociopathy. BDSM themes including mentions of knifeplay, shibari, and a complete D/s scene that includes spanking, use of toys, and bondage - and aftercare.
betas: neomeruru , photoclerk , and chn_breathmint.
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: For Eames, pain is a coin that always has two sides. He remembers the pain of dying, of fighting in wars, of being tortured. But he forgets it all, he blanks it all out, because the other side of pain is pleasure. And Arthur knows just how to make the pain go away.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org.
Click here for a bigger view
Eames opens his eyes slowly, painfully. His skin feels wrong, like it’s too tight in some places and too loose in others. Wet here and there, drying to a crust, nothing like sweat - so unnatural it can only mean one thing. Metallic tang already heavy on his tongue, the feelings of dread and the awful knowledge familiar from warzones in both real life and the dreams.
The first thing he realizes is that he’s no longer wearing the forge. A man in his early thirties, thinning grey hair in a neat comb-over, glasses perched low on his hooked nose. Sallow scars of acne persisting well beyond his teens, scattered around his nose and his cheeks. The thick line slashing through one eyebrow, remnant of a knife attack. The careful way he carries his right arm, as though still remembering a terrible break or some other injury.
No, here he is in his own body, stripped almost naked. He tries to look over his shoulders, down at his chest. Just a dream, he tells himself. Just a dream.
But it’s a dream where his throat is already scraped raw and painful, where he hears the faint echoes of his own screaming in the tight, confined space. A dream in which he is suspended off the floor by his wrists. He looks up, and even that movement sends pain signals crawling, like many-legged flares, over his skin. Chains wrapped around the heavy manacles clamped around his wrists, leading up to the huge hook in the ceiling.
He looks down, at his feet.
The mark is sitting on the floor near him. Her blank, eerie eyes. Reflecting his shock and his pain, the trails of blood already dried down his sides. His body remembers her attacking him with her nails, tearing him open, and all the while the silence, the utter lack of reaction.
Eames has seen killers claim sanity and think nothing of dancing in the spilled viscera of their victims; he’s seen killers apologize even as they slit their victims’ throats. He’s seen more shades of sanity and madness in the dreams than he cares to remember. But until now he’s only read about killers who showed absolutely no emotion, not even accomplishment, even as they held their victims’ lives literally in their hands.
Now he knows exactly what that is like, and he feels the tears run down his cheeks, and he makes no effort to stop himself. Fear, and a helpless rage, burning through him, threaded into the pain and into the smell of blood.
The mark is holding a pair of rusty pliers, not with fear or trepidation or tentativeness, and she’s staring at his feet.
The information in the safe comes back to him, the hints in the dossier on the case.
Sexual abuse. Dissociative disorder. Fugue states. Injuries were initially self-inflicted, and then passed on to others: her daughter, her son, her husband.
The mark closes the pliers around the nail of his little toe, a movement that only means one thing, and Eames grits his teeth and closes his eyes.
As she pulls and he starts to scream, again, Eames thinks longingly of escape.
///
Eames is no stranger to pain, of course. Not for him the crippling fear or the blank stoicism. Instead, he copes, and he catalogues the pains and aches, makes lists in his mind.
A barehanded fight in the barracks, the men cheering and betting raucously around him, and the adrenaline rush that buries his bruises and his destroyed knuckles. A gunshot tearing through the meat of his upper arm. Running on a broken leg, and sniper’s bullets whizzing past. Paper cuts and the sting of his own saliva. Hangovers when words and sounds are like blows to the back of his head.
Some pain is inevitably pleasurable. The first time he bottomed, the stretch and burn of someone entering him. The knots in his muscles unraveling under a massage. Water heated to near scalding in a bathtub. Szechuan food for breakfast.
Lately, he’s been testing his own limits, trying to find out where the thin line between pleasure and pain becomes a white-hot flash of light and becomes meaningless. Arthur writing on his back with a scalpel, the thin lines shallow enough to leave no visible scars, deep enough for the blood to run down his back. Rope in a complicated pattern, the knots and lattices beautiful against his skin, his immobilized limbs. Arthur holding him down and fucking his mouth, his lips and throat straining under the onslaught, tears leaking from his eyes from the pleasure.
And there is pain, too, in coming down from the scenes, in drawing the first breath and realizing that he is, in fact, back in his own self. Arthur helps him with that, too, with the same single-minded focus and the affection that he pours out like honey wine, sweet words and solicitous hands. Even then it’s always so different. Even then, the rush leaves him as if drawn out on barbed wire, leaving Eames himself, and all right, and longing for the next time.
///
Eames tries to unfocus, to retreat into another place in his mind, even as the mark goes on with her gruesome work, finishes pulling out the toenail on his big toe. The pain is like gasoline poured along every single nerve and then lit on fire, burning hot and hard into him. It’s a dream, and he looks forward to shrugging it off when he wakes up, but waking seems so very far away, as does the scant comfort of falling into limbo.
Even waking up a vegetable, an old man in a young body, would be preferable to this.
And in the back of his head there’s a dark anger flaring up, and it helps him stay aware, helps him tune out the screaming in his nerves. Their client is the mark’s ex-husband. He’s been abused, of course, the knife-scar near his eye is the dead giveaway, but he wants to know exactly what’s been done to their son and daughter.
Eames lists the details easily, a mantra against the mark: dipped the daughter’s hands into boiling soup. Hit the son with a belt and then when he began to bleed, hit him with bare hands. In her less lucid moments the mark has taken knives to the children, thrown heavy books, talked down to them, screamed endless obscenities.
It helps, a little.
And thankfully, he doesn’t have to go any further into the details because the first sound he hears over his own panicked breaths and the mark’s grunts of effort is the BAM of a door being kicked open. Two familiar silhouettes: one smaller, with long hair flying; one taller, and the light glints off an unmistakable muzzle.
The mark turns, looks at Ariadne and Arthur blankly, doesn’t even react when Arthur strides right up to her and pistol-whips her across the face. She crumples silently, and Arthur nods at Ariadne, and she drops to her knees next to the mark. Produces a coil of rope from somewhere and hogties her. Swift, assured knots.
Ariadne’s time in the Girl Scouts has given her several skills that have turned out to become immensely useful in the dreamshare. How to handle rope, of course, and her thorough knowledge of first aid. Unexpectedly, a specialty in throwing and catching things - Eames has seen her idly juggle teacups at the office.
Eames feels himself moving, being lowered to the floor, and the movement jars every abused nerve and muscle all over again. Even the shock of being guided to the bloody, sticky floor is too much, and he bites his lips, fights to keep the screams from escaping.
He feels Arthur lay him out, scarred hands and rough fingertips, and Ariadne hovers over him, eyes wide with shock.
Eames finds the strength to whisper: “Safe to kick me out?”
Arthur nods. He may not be speaking, but his harsh, worried breaths tell the whole story, fill the spaces between them, and for that Eames is grateful. Not for Arthur the eerie silence of the insane and single-minded.
“Whenever you’re ready, then,” Eames says, and he attempts to smile when the cold muzzle touches his forehead.
///
He opens his eyes slowly to golden sunlight; he reaches for his totem, moving slowly, and he brings the scarred chip up to his eyes and here are all the lines and incisions in all the right places. The comforting weight in his hand, the misspelled words.
He’s made it out, he’s whole, he’s uninjured.
Eames sucks down the first untainted breath he’s had since the dream began, and he listens for the sounds of the others stirring.
A face swims into his line of sight. Arthur, not a hair out of place, his eyes hard and worried. “Are you all right?”
“Something tells me,” Eames says, “that I’m going to get tired of hearing that for a while.”
Arthur shrugs one shoulder. Elegant and precise movement, while he waits him out.
Eames sighs and brings his other hand up to cover his eyes. “I’m all right.” Pause. “Completed the extraction, too. Give me a minute before I talk to the client, though.”
“Take your time,” Arthur replies.
And he moves away and there is Ariadne in his place. She simply takes his hand and squeezes it, her fingers warm and light and gentle against his. A tiny smile, a flicker of understanding in her eyes. Eames uses his other hand to brush stray strands of hair from her face, and he pats her once, on the head, and says, “Thank you, love.”
“Oh, Eames,” is all she says.
He levers himself slowly to a sitting position. There is a water bottle near his foot, condensation in fine beads, and he places it across the back of his neck, lets the welcome coolness soak into his skin, before he pops the cap and drains the water in one long swallow.
And then he braces himself and he walks past Arthur as he puts the PASIV back together. Eames pats his shoulder, once, and then he’s in the outer room.
Their client is looking down sadly at the woman in the straitjacket. Her hands and feet are securely bound. She’s tied down to her wheelchair, the restraints looped and knotted around the sturdy frame. Her face is slack.
Eames waits for the client to look at him, and when he does all Eames says is, “You might want to start thinking about sending your children to more serious therapy. Have them undergo a complete physical examination. Move away from here. Give them some new memories.”
The man falters for only a moment. His shoulders straighten as Eames watches, his eyes go flinty-firm. “I will. Thank you.”
Eames nods, and the man stares at the woman for a moment before turning away and pulling a phone out of his pocket.
When he walks back into the other room, Ariadne is bouncing three ping-pong balls off the wall and he watches her for a moment, admiring the flick of her wrist, the fingers closing and releasing each tiny projectile in turn. In her other hand she’s holding up her mobile phone, and she keeps one eye on the juggling, even as she says, “Do you mind if I crash with you for a few days? No, I don’t care how long it takes before I get there. I’m having Arthur book my tickets. I don’t want any upgrades, I just want to be gone from here. The job was a bitch and a half. Okay. Suki yo, mata ne.”
“Give my regards to Saito,” Eames says, and he snatches one of the ping-pong balls from the circuit, drops it in Ariadne’s lap. The other two balls continue to hit the wall in a soothing click-like rhythm.
“I will. And give mine to Amy.”
“If she even remembers who we are,” Arthur deadpans, and he clicks his laptop closed, repacks the PASIV in its outer case. He pulls on his light coat. “If we can entice her back from our neighbors.”
“She’ll be fine,” Eames says. “She’s still our cat.”
They split up at the elevators: Eames ushers Ariadne into one of the cabins and presses the button for the ground floor; Arthur slips through the door to the emergency stairs, with the PASIV in tow.
Eames is on the street a few moments later, having handed Ariadne into a taxicab and reminded her to keep in discreet contact. The sun is beating down on his shoulders. Life and sound of the city around him: a woman cooing at her yapping Pomeranians, three Japanese men in ties but no jackets debating their next meal, a woman wearing both an oversized pair of plastic-framed eyeglasses and a set of earbuds whistling as she walked by with her hands in her pockets, three girls in pink and purple wigs and extremely short skirts.
Something stops nearby and he tenses before he looks, but it’s Arthur in the front seat of his Mini Cooper, tie and jacket gone and the first button on his shirt undone. “Need a lift,” he says.
Eames sighs and loosens the knot on his own tie and gets into the front passenger seat.
“Sorry,” Arthur says after a few moments. “For taking too long to come and get you, I mean.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Eames says, though if he closes his eyes he can still vividly remember the mark firing a bolt gun into his upper arm. “Did you check for the transfer?”
“Yes. We’re good.”
“Then can we please leave now? I have a terrible urge to break into the cellar and find one of those bottles we were saving up for a rainy day.”
Arthur regards him with a tilted eyebrow for a moment, and then he pulls Eames close, places a soft kiss on his forehead.
Eames sighs and slouches back, wills himself to relax.
///
When they arrive at the apartment they are carrying groceries: bittersweet chocolate, flour, cream cheese. They find Amy sitting near the door and she meows happily at them, winds herself several times around their ankles. When she’s satisfied with them she goes back to her usual spot under Eames’s desk; he can see her tail twitching as he passes the study.
Eames glances at himself in the bathroom mirror; he looks all right, but naturally he knows his own tells. The tap of his foot inside his shoe, silent and insistent; the cold pinch in the small of his back. Nothing visible, even when anyone else would be screaming for help.
Arthur has always been able to read him like a book, so he gently touches Eames’s shoulder, looks him in the eye. “Do you need me, tonight?”
“I will,” Eames says, after a long moment. “After that job, I will. But let me try to calm myself down, too.”
“Of course,” Arthur says, and there is one of his tells: the twitch in his cheek. Easy enough to read that one, and the whole team knows what it means. Arthur is worried. “Call me when it’s time to eat.”
Eames smiles at that, a little, and reaches out to squeeze Arthur’s hand. He relishes the feel of his own whole hand against the warmth of Arthur’s. “You’ll be in the kitchen long before that.”
And then Arthur is gone and Eames goes blank, hands working, independent of his brain. Mix, fold, slice, bake. The knife is an extension of his hand. Not for him the mark and her careless, destructive dexterity. His gran taught him how to make chocolate pound cake, but he’s swiped the idea of the cream cheese from Nigella, and everyone he’s fed it to has loved it.
Amy keeps him company when she wanders in after another lazy tour through the house; he grabs her in a hug, and she bats affectionately at his nose before squirming down and vanishing again.
Arthur comes in, once, for a glass of water and a finger swiped through the remnants of the cake batter.
Eames cleans up afterwards.
He walks into the guest bedroom, the linens fresh and cool against his skin, and he’s gone before he can blink twice, gone into dreamless sleep.
///
He comes awake slowly.
It’s the smell in the bedroom that alerts him, that lets him expect the sudden nakedness and the wide lengths of silk lashing his wrists together. White musk and sandalwood. Arthur’s hands working the knots, familiar enough to Eames even in sleep; the cockring being snapped on. A faint undertone of sulfur.
He wills himself to relax and he opens his eyes.
Arthur is sitting next to him, lit match in hand. The room, his face, is bathed in flickering candlelight. A thin sheen of sweat is already forming on the bared skin of his shoulders. The look in his eyes is infinitely gentle, infinitely in command. “Do you want this? I’ll put it all back if you’re not interested. We can do something else.” He lights the last candle, a tall pillar on the bedside table, and he blows out the match.
Eames just looks at his bound hands. One long length of silk, wound carefully around one wrist and then up each arm, shoulder to shoulder and down to the other hand. His own tanned skin and the lines of ink, restrained, lovingly. The dream-memories of chain and manacle flow away, the job and its painful miseries vanish in warmth. Eames quiets, gradually, and all the while Arthur strokes him down, hands running a long loop from wrist to shoulder, down to his sides, before coming back up and traveling down again.
Eames catches Arthur’s fingers with his mouth as they pass, curling his tongue around each digit and sucking them down, cheeks hollowing, and he hears Arthur laugh and murmur his name, kiss the top of his head in approval.
And this is how Eames ends up turned over a stack of pillows. He goes where Arthur tells him to go; he positions himself so he’s on his knees. The blood rushes to his head; he can hear it in his ears, a quieting wave of sound. He doesn’t know what Arthur has planned for him tonight, and he’s going to take it, because they’ve agreed to this, because Arthur offered it and he accepted it.
The first stroke cracks loudly in the room and Eames gasps, jolts on the pillows. “One,” he says, without needing to be told, and he hears a distant hum of “Yes” and the paddle comes down again.
Arthur hits like he’s trying to make Eames forget everyone else, everything else. Eames’s voice cracks with each hit, and by the time they’re up to twenty he’s down to somewhere between a groan and a rasp. He can feel every inch of his skin come alight, pain and pleasure singing together, the hot redness of his arse, the blood rushing again, this time to his cock.
By the time he counts off five more hits he can feel the tears sliding down his cheeks. It hurts all over, it’s the kind of hurt he can’t get enough of, it’s the kind of hurt he wants. And then he wonders if he’s already begging because somewhere in the distance he can hear Arthur laughing, long and low and dark.
Arthur runs a hand over his back, down to his arse, and Eames whines and squirms and fights to get away. He’s never felt anything so keenly, so acutely. The splay of Arthur’s fingers, the calluses catching on his hot skin. When Arthur crooks his fingers, digs into the muscle - sharp sliver of almost-pain from his nails - Eames lets out a surprised, needy yelp. Arthur does it again, and again, until Eames is whimpering under his hand.
“God, Eames, the things I want to do to you.”
And through the haze of his senses the next thing Eames knows is Arthur spreading him open, fresh heat slamming through him at the touch of those hands, and all the breath is knocked out of him when Arthur licks into him, one long searing stroke. “No no no,” he says, but his body’s already betraying him, and he pushes back eagerly onto the intrusive tongue. He feels himself open up for Arthur, and he thinks he might actually shake himself apart, and the words pour from his mouth, babbling and pleading.
“We’re just getting started,” Arthur says, the words laden with darkness and with promise, and he flips Eames off the pillows, onto his back.
And now that Eames can see him, he looks thoroughly wrecked, he’s there and he’s laughing, deep lines around his eyes. His mouth is sloppy and shining-wet, and Eames watches hungrily as Arthur licks his lips.
Eames goes, helpless, when Arthur spreads his legs wide; he watches as Arthur opens the bottle of lube and digs around in the drawer for something. A quiet crow of triumph, and Arthur is grinning and he’s pulling a small blue egg-shape from its container and Eames laughs, knows what’s coming. It’s not going to be him, not any time soon, and if it makes Arthur smile like that, he’s going to take it all.
Slip-slide of an object being doused in lube and Eames is so relaxed, so ready, that he takes the vibrator in easily, it moves past the tight ring of muscle without any resistance - and he catches the light in Arthur’s eyes, the quirk of his eyebrow, and he closes his eyes just in time for the first shock to slam into him, for the first cry to sneak past his gritted teeth.
Oh my god oh my god he is actually going to kill me, Eames manages to think, he’s going to kill me just like this, and it all blows away, he lets it all go and becomes pure feeling. Again and again all the thoughts are shaken out of his head. He thrashes on the sheets; his hands spasm above the silk binding his wrists.
Pleasure to the point of pain. His cock, hard and red and restrained and lying flat against his stomach. Every movement stoking the heat in his skin. Arthur’s eyes, watching him fly apart.
He reaches up eagerly when Arthur kisses him: hard slant of Arthur’s mouth over his, Arthur’s tongue curling possessively around his. Arthur kisses Eames deeply, kisses him like he owns him, and Eames chases after him frantically when he lets up - only to be stopped with a hand planted, hard, over his sternum.
And Eames tries to get up and Arthur only bears him down harder into the sheets, one hand on his chest becomes both hands on his shoulders.
“Arthur,” Eames breathes, and he does his best to buck Arthur off - he fights, he tosses his head, writhes beneath Arthur, who is holding him down so hard his knuckles are turning white, watching him with hooded eyes. With his hands bound overhead he can’t get any leverage, and gradually Eames is limp and down to deep, gasping breaths, all the fight gone out of him.
And that’s when Arthur crawls up the bed - and immediately traps Eames’s shoulders under his knees. “Open your mouth,” he says, and Eames’s eyes widen, he knows what that means, and Arthur sinks into him without any warning, one smooth motion all the way down. Eames squeezes his eyes shut; the heavy musk and the smell that is only Arthur overwhelms him. Short, springy hair at his lips, Arthur’s cock a burning weight on Eames’s tongue.
“Hold still.”
Arthur snaps his hips forward and fucks into his mouth, hard; his cock hits the back of Eames’s throat with every stroke and Eames fights for every breath, tears springing from the corners of his eyes. And Arthur keeps going, and Eames feels the wild thrill building inside him, can suddenly see himself in all clarity as he lies there on the bed and Arthur uses him, need and power and yes I want this a wildfire licking at every inch of his skin, until Arthur suddenly pulls out, and Eames lets out a small cry of shock.
“Please,” and he has no idea what he’s asking for, any more, and suddenly it all stops. Soft pop of the vibrator being pulled out of him; his hands being untied, and Arthur mouthing and licking the insides of his wrists, moaning softly as he goes.
He watches as Arthur looms over him, hooks one of Eames’s knees over his shoulder and the other around his waist and, yes, that’s Arthur’s cock nudging at him, and he nearly sobs with relief, with anticipation. Eames grabs at Arthur’s arms.
Arthur sets a brutal pace, he’s pounding like he’s going to drive Eames into the mattress and finally he unsnaps the cock ring with shaking hands, and he takes Eames’s mouth in a hard kiss, and says, “Now.”
Eames’s eyes fly wide as Arthur sinks his teeth into his tattooed shoulder, he’s arching right off the bed, and the world dissolves in a rush of fire and silence.
///
He floats, warm and safe, and when he looks down at himself he no longer remembers the pain or the blood. The memory of the woman with the blank eyes fades away.
///
“Eames.”
He breathes. He thinks about being safe. In. Out. And someone is calling his name.
He comes to like he’s climbing a long staircase. A gentle slope, warm and careful hands pulling him up, letting him set his own pace. One step at a time, deep and healing breaths.
And then Eames opens his eyes and Arthur smiles at him, passes a cool washcloth over his sweating brow, the back of his neck. Arthur takes each of Eames’s wrists in turn, rubs soothing circles into the skin. Arthur cards his hands through Eames’s hair, scatters featherlight kisses across his forehead and around his mouth. Never letting his hands stray far from Eames, he traces over the marks of the night, carefully looks Eames over for any injury. Those intense eyes trace every inch of him. Eames smiles, and shakes, but with pleasure, with love.
“Cake?”
Eames nods, and Arthur feeds him a slice of the cake from earlier, one small bite at a time. Rich dark chocolate, sharp tang of the cream cheese. He rolls the crumbs around on his tongue, licks Arthur’s fingers around the fork.
Amy comes into the room while Arthur is helping him finish a glass of water; she settles in near their feet, and Eames lets Arthur guide his hands toward her, and he smiles when she purrs under their shared touch.
He pulls the silence and the candlelight and Arthur’s arms around him closer, and he takes his time, and finally he asks, “How was it? How’d I do?”
“Good. Beyond good,” and Arthur laughs and shifts them around, gently, so he’s the big spoon. Eames lets his head fall back onto Arthur’s shoulder. “You did so well.”
And Eames smiles, and he turns his head to kiss Arthur, and they tumble together into a sweet sleep.
fin