woke up for the first time (the animals were gone)
woke up for the first time (the animals were gone)
Eames/Robert. You forget all about Mr. Charles.
Note: For this prompt on the kink meme: "At the airport it's every man for himself again. But the tables're turned AKA cab hijacking in reality, only it's Eames' cab. Jr can afford to be late, right? Yes." Minor edits were made.
What you mean to say is, what do you think you're doing, this is my cab.
What you say instead is, "Oh god, you're that guy from that dream-- on the plane--"
He laughs. It is a rough, unpolished sound, completely at odds from his slicked back appearance. It makes you wonder if he doesn't really belong in that appearance. Like someone's pet cat gone feral, let loose in first class. There's too much muscle and bone under the suit, and when he rolls his shoulders back, it terrifies you, just a little. "What the fuck are you talking about, darling?" he asks, and that voice too, it's all wrong.
"Nothing. I'm sorry, I'll--" You look up, flustered. The taxi driver gives you both the eyebrow raise in the rear view mirror as if to say, I have somewhere you need me to be, you know, and you say, "You're fine-- I'll just-- I'll get another one--"
What you want him to say is, don't go, stay.
What he says is, "Don't go. Stay."
*
He ends up driving you to the nearest luxury hotel that is not the airport hotel. The ride is filled up with equal parts awkward silence and him interjecting with irreverent comments about various landmarks and you sitting in awkward silence. When the taxi pulls up to the rounded curb of the front door, he gives you this once-over that makes you think he has you perfectly read: sheltered rich boy, never had a friend he couldn't buy off. This is both true and completely riling. You try to sneer and he reads that too, with a snort.
"I was going to ask you to come have a drink with me, but--" His briefcase has snagged on the shotgun seat and he jerks at it. You stare. He's obviously never handled a briefcase with any degree of familiarity. "What?" he asks, brusque.
"Turn it by the handle," you tell him. "Here--"
With your fingers on the hard leather, you wonder, do you remember those hands? Did they feel this cold in your dream? Did they have more calluses, or maybe less? He's lost a cufflink, and the shirt is so white he either has an amazing drycleaner or it's never been washed.
You follow him in for a drink.
*
Or maybe three or four.
*
He drinks scotch on the rocks and makes you do the same. It's what your father used to drink in his office after hours, whenever he deigned to go home, but you don't tell him that. You just tell him you have a bad head for straight alcohol. "A gin and vermouth, then," he says, shoving the glass at you. "Go on."
"I hope you're paying," you tell him, your lips held in a wry smile over the medicinal smell of the vermouth, the slight juniper notes of the gin.
"Don't you worry about anything, Fischer Junior," and how did he know your name, how did he know who you are? You think, ah, the hotel lobby television. But you look at him as warily as you can as the alcohol goes straight to your head--you didn't eat on the plane, you'd slept through it, it must have been the stress, you never sleep all the way through plane flights like that-- and he grins. Not a feral cat at all, you think. Just a man with teeth that are too sharp and a smile that showed too many of them. "Let me tell you something," he says, and his voice is too rich in your ear. You can barely handle hearing it. "I could buy this hotel if I wanted to."
"Big spender," you say, fumbling, not even sure what you mean. To avoid meeting his eyes, you down the drink. There's a funeral to plan, but another 24 hours and a hangover won't make Maurice Fischer more dead, Fischer Morrow less repugnant, or you less lost.
*
In your dreams you are the black king on the chessboard. He is a knight, but not yours, and all dressed in an ill-fitting old leather jacket, trousers that maybe were once ironed but has since seen too many dusty streets to look anything but worn. You're wearing a suit that's not yours. The tie's too narrow, the pants too slender at the ankle. Ariadne is the one who told me about Bobby Fischer, he says. There is a sheepish hint to the words.
What? you blurt out.
Nothing, he says, striding confidently to an empty square. Honestly, this is a little heavy handed, but-- he stops abruptly, turns back to look at you. Your safe's still blown open. Did you know that?
What safe? I don't have a safe.
Your father's then. He pulls a whirligig out of his jacket pocket. Involuntarily, you reach for it, but big black pieces move into your way. The rook, you think. And a pawn that's somehow moved backwards. Still a nice touch, this, he says. I'll have to tell Cobb--
You wake up with your wallet gone and a faint prickling at your right wrist. There's a scrap of hotel stationary stuck on your forehead. There's a number and the name Tom Smith scrawled across it. It's in your handwriting, so maybe you wrote it before you passed out. But somehow you doubt it.
*
Don't laugh, you'd told him after drink five. But you wouldn't happen to be named Mr. Charles, would you?
He laughed anyway.
*
Your credit cards have GPS chips. You follow him to Amsterdam, to Manchester, to Naples. You almost follow him to Ciudad Juarez, but your security detail literally straps you to the backseat of a car and keeps you in house arrest for the next month. When you next track him, he's in Manhattan and an email manages to sneak past all your filters to land in your inbox. You have sixteen hours before I’m in Mombasa, it says, and it's signed with a set of coordinates.
You book a flight to JFK and he's in a dive bar and can tell you the exact flight number and seat you took. It scares you, but not as much as it should. "I think you're Mr. Charles," you tell him, like a petulant child being denied a promised treat, and he laughs and laughs.
He's too obvious to be Mr. Charles. He doesn't blend in or disappear like Mr. Charles did, and he holds his drink with fingers too square to be graceful. But that dream has long dissipated into memories and impressions and smoke. Had it been in a hotel? Was there a woman? What about the snow later, was there snow in the hotel?
"You're so obsessed with this Mr. Charles," Tom says, leering. "It's like you know just how to make a man jealous." He runs a finger, cold with condensation, over your knuckles. Then he leans in close, puts his lips to your ear. "Five hours before my plane takes off," he murmurs, touching your knee.
You forget all about Mr. Charles.
*
In Roppongi, he makes you come so hard you forget English.
In Singapore, he keeps you restaurant hopping so long your personal trainer gives you the stink-eye when you return to the states.
In Paris, he doesn't let you see him once, even though he asked you to come.
In Madrid, you ask him where he was, and he tells you he was getting a crash course in architecture. You tell he's full of shit, and he makes you blow him, which you do, making him watch you the whole time, your lips wrapped around your cock, and the obscene noises you make when he comes down your throat.
In Macau you're hanging his badly tailored suit jacket in the hotel closet when a poker chip falls out. He's asleep and the sound the chip makes when it hits the plush carpet is barely a sound at all, but he wakes up with a start, staring at you blindly, eyes wild and furious. "Don't touch that," he snarls when you bend to pick it up. Frozen, you stare at him as, naked and uncoiled, he bounds towards you and snatches the poker chip right from under your fingers.
"I didn't--" you begin.
"Get the fuck out," he shouts.
"But I didn't-- Tom, believe me, I--"
It's your hotel room, under your pseudonym, but still, you put on your clothes and pick up your suitcase and leave. You're in the Cotai Strip and the streets are lined with casinos, and every second reminds you that you left your watch, your expensive razor, your third-favorite tie behind. You could try to calculate how long Tom needs to clean up and leave.
Or you could just walk away.
*
There is plenty to think about that isn't Tom Smith. You didn't destroy Fischer-Morrow completely. There's still a little segment that you keep and develop. You're going to trash that one eventually too, but it's easier to get experience with a little part of something that once was than to start with something big that doesn't yet exist. You have hidden depths that work for you, blatant weaknesses that take harsh words from Browning to correct. Proclus and its president keeps inviting you to friendly dinners in neutral territories, which you keep responding with out of office replies.
"You should get married," one of your father's old friends tells you.
"Why?"
"It's safer," he says, shrugging. "Keeps the rumor mill from prying. Better public image." He chuckles without humor. "Cheaper than paying for it, unless she asks for a divorce."
I don't want safe, you want to tell him. I don't want a better public image, you want to tell him. Once I got rimmed in broad daylight when I was pressed against a ceiling-to-floor glass window, you want to tell him. Instead, you nod. "I'll think about it," you say.
Sometimes you have dreams about poker chips. But mostly you wake up hard and sweaty and miserable.
*
Three months later, you're leaving LAX and a man gets into your taxi right before it peels away from the curb.
"Just so you know," he says, "I usually like to meet somewhere that doesn't almost run over you if you're just a second or two late. But you're a busy man, and I make accommodations."
What you want to say is, who the fuck do you think you are? Maybe, where the fuck have you been, and what makes you think I want you here?
What you say instead is, "How long do we have?"
He shrugs. "The whole weekend this time. I booked in advance for once."
You don't ask any questions, and he doesn't tell you anything, and you tell the taxi driver the name of the hotel, and then no one says a thing.
*
When you hang up his jacket later that evening, nothing falls out.
Eames/Robert. You forget all about Mr. Charles.
Note: For this prompt on the kink meme: "At the airport it's every man for himself again. But the tables're turned AKA cab hijacking in reality, only it's Eames' cab. Jr can afford to be late, right? Yes." Minor edits were made.
What you mean to say is, what do you think you're doing, this is my cab.
What you say instead is, "Oh god, you're that guy from that dream-- on the plane--"
He laughs. It is a rough, unpolished sound, completely at odds from his slicked back appearance. It makes you wonder if he doesn't really belong in that appearance. Like someone's pet cat gone feral, let loose in first class. There's too much muscle and bone under the suit, and when he rolls his shoulders back, it terrifies you, just a little. "What the fuck are you talking about, darling?" he asks, and that voice too, it's all wrong.
"Nothing. I'm sorry, I'll--" You look up, flustered. The taxi driver gives you both the eyebrow raise in the rear view mirror as if to say, I have somewhere you need me to be, you know, and you say, "You're fine-- I'll just-- I'll get another one--"
What you want him to say is, don't go, stay.
What he says is, "Don't go. Stay."
*
He ends up driving you to the nearest luxury hotel that is not the airport hotel. The ride is filled up with equal parts awkward silence and him interjecting with irreverent comments about various landmarks and you sitting in awkward silence. When the taxi pulls up to the rounded curb of the front door, he gives you this once-over that makes you think he has you perfectly read: sheltered rich boy, never had a friend he couldn't buy off. This is both true and completely riling. You try to sneer and he reads that too, with a snort.
"I was going to ask you to come have a drink with me, but--" His briefcase has snagged on the shotgun seat and he jerks at it. You stare. He's obviously never handled a briefcase with any degree of familiarity. "What?" he asks, brusque.
"Turn it by the handle," you tell him. "Here--"
With your fingers on the hard leather, you wonder, do you remember those hands? Did they feel this cold in your dream? Did they have more calluses, or maybe less? He's lost a cufflink, and the shirt is so white he either has an amazing drycleaner or it's never been washed.
You follow him in for a drink.
*
Or maybe three or four.
*
He drinks scotch on the rocks and makes you do the same. It's what your father used to drink in his office after hours, whenever he deigned to go home, but you don't tell him that. You just tell him you have a bad head for straight alcohol. "A gin and vermouth, then," he says, shoving the glass at you. "Go on."
"I hope you're paying," you tell him, your lips held in a wry smile over the medicinal smell of the vermouth, the slight juniper notes of the gin.
"Don't you worry about anything, Fischer Junior," and how did he know your name, how did he know who you are? You think, ah, the hotel lobby television. But you look at him as warily as you can as the alcohol goes straight to your head--you didn't eat on the plane, you'd slept through it, it must have been the stress, you never sleep all the way through plane flights like that-- and he grins. Not a feral cat at all, you think. Just a man with teeth that are too sharp and a smile that showed too many of them. "Let me tell you something," he says, and his voice is too rich in your ear. You can barely handle hearing it. "I could buy this hotel if I wanted to."
"Big spender," you say, fumbling, not even sure what you mean. To avoid meeting his eyes, you down the drink. There's a funeral to plan, but another 24 hours and a hangover won't make Maurice Fischer more dead, Fischer Morrow less repugnant, or you less lost.
*
In your dreams you are the black king on the chessboard. He is a knight, but not yours, and all dressed in an ill-fitting old leather jacket, trousers that maybe were once ironed but has since seen too many dusty streets to look anything but worn. You're wearing a suit that's not yours. The tie's too narrow, the pants too slender at the ankle. Ariadne is the one who told me about Bobby Fischer, he says. There is a sheepish hint to the words.
What? you blurt out.
Nothing, he says, striding confidently to an empty square. Honestly, this is a little heavy handed, but-- he stops abruptly, turns back to look at you. Your safe's still blown open. Did you know that?
What safe? I don't have a safe.
Your father's then. He pulls a whirligig out of his jacket pocket. Involuntarily, you reach for it, but big black pieces move into your way. The rook, you think. And a pawn that's somehow moved backwards. Still a nice touch, this, he says. I'll have to tell Cobb--
You wake up with your wallet gone and a faint prickling at your right wrist. There's a scrap of hotel stationary stuck on your forehead. There's a number and the name Tom Smith scrawled across it. It's in your handwriting, so maybe you wrote it before you passed out. But somehow you doubt it.
*
Don't laugh, you'd told him after drink five. But you wouldn't happen to be named Mr. Charles, would you?
He laughed anyway.
*
Your credit cards have GPS chips. You follow him to Amsterdam, to Manchester, to Naples. You almost follow him to Ciudad Juarez, but your security detail literally straps you to the backseat of a car and keeps you in house arrest for the next month. When you next track him, he's in Manhattan and an email manages to sneak past all your filters to land in your inbox. You have sixteen hours before I’m in Mombasa, it says, and it's signed with a set of coordinates.
You book a flight to JFK and he's in a dive bar and can tell you the exact flight number and seat you took. It scares you, but not as much as it should. "I think you're Mr. Charles," you tell him, like a petulant child being denied a promised treat, and he laughs and laughs.
He's too obvious to be Mr. Charles. He doesn't blend in or disappear like Mr. Charles did, and he holds his drink with fingers too square to be graceful. But that dream has long dissipated into memories and impressions and smoke. Had it been in a hotel? Was there a woman? What about the snow later, was there snow in the hotel?
"You're so obsessed with this Mr. Charles," Tom says, leering. "It's like you know just how to make a man jealous." He runs a finger, cold with condensation, over your knuckles. Then he leans in close, puts his lips to your ear. "Five hours before my plane takes off," he murmurs, touching your knee.
You forget all about Mr. Charles.
*
In Roppongi, he makes you come so hard you forget English.
In Singapore, he keeps you restaurant hopping so long your personal trainer gives you the stink-eye when you return to the states.
In Paris, he doesn't let you see him once, even though he asked you to come.
In Madrid, you ask him where he was, and he tells you he was getting a crash course in architecture. You tell he's full of shit, and he makes you blow him, which you do, making him watch you the whole time, your lips wrapped around your cock, and the obscene noises you make when he comes down your throat.
In Macau you're hanging his badly tailored suit jacket in the hotel closet when a poker chip falls out. He's asleep and the sound the chip makes when it hits the plush carpet is barely a sound at all, but he wakes up with a start, staring at you blindly, eyes wild and furious. "Don't touch that," he snarls when you bend to pick it up. Frozen, you stare at him as, naked and uncoiled, he bounds towards you and snatches the poker chip right from under your fingers.
"I didn't--" you begin.
"Get the fuck out," he shouts.
"But I didn't-- Tom, believe me, I--"
It's your hotel room, under your pseudonym, but still, you put on your clothes and pick up your suitcase and leave. You're in the Cotai Strip and the streets are lined with casinos, and every second reminds you that you left your watch, your expensive razor, your third-favorite tie behind. You could try to calculate how long Tom needs to clean up and leave.
Or you could just walk away.
*
There is plenty to think about that isn't Tom Smith. You didn't destroy Fischer-Morrow completely. There's still a little segment that you keep and develop. You're going to trash that one eventually too, but it's easier to get experience with a little part of something that once was than to start with something big that doesn't yet exist. You have hidden depths that work for you, blatant weaknesses that take harsh words from Browning to correct. Proclus and its president keeps inviting you to friendly dinners in neutral territories, which you keep responding with out of office replies.
"You should get married," one of your father's old friends tells you.
"Why?"
"It's safer," he says, shrugging. "Keeps the rumor mill from prying. Better public image." He chuckles without humor. "Cheaper than paying for it, unless she asks for a divorce."
I don't want safe, you want to tell him. I don't want a better public image, you want to tell him. Once I got rimmed in broad daylight when I was pressed against a ceiling-to-floor glass window, you want to tell him. Instead, you nod. "I'll think about it," you say.
Sometimes you have dreams about poker chips. But mostly you wake up hard and sweaty and miserable.
*
Three months later, you're leaving LAX and a man gets into your taxi right before it peels away from the curb.
"Just so you know," he says, "I usually like to meet somewhere that doesn't almost run over you if you're just a second or two late. But you're a busy man, and I make accommodations."
What you want to say is, who the fuck do you think you are? Maybe, where the fuck have you been, and what makes you think I want you here?
What you say instead is, "How long do we have?"
He shrugs. "The whole weekend this time. I booked in advance for once."
You don't ask any questions, and he doesn't tell you anything, and you tell the taxi driver the name of the hotel, and then no one says a thing.
*
When you hang up his jacket later that evening, nothing falls out.