A Bad Dream, pt. eight
Title: A Bad Dream
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~5000
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sometimes, the recovery can be just as hard to cope with as the trauma. Arthur and Eames learn this the hard way.
Warnings: Language, noncon, violence
Author's Note: lol oh my God you guys this fic is so long. But almost there!
part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part nine.
+
Eames opened his eyes, crumpled on a floor so hard, in what must have been the most uncomfortable position in the world, he felt like a goddamn cat that had just curled up for an impromptu nap. He groaned softly and raised his head, feeling something in his neck creak.
And it was definitely his neck. He was back in his own body. He wasn't in his own clothes, though. He frowned and squinted down at himself -- the room was so dark he could barely see. He recognized the clothing, though: a pair of jeans so faded they were turning white over the knees, a plain white t-shirt, a washed-out, worn old grey hoodie.
He hissed a soft curse through his teeth. These were not his clothes. These were Charlie's clothes.
His head hurt. He raised a hand to his forehead, sluggishly. Why was he sluggish?
“I didn't want to overstimulate you.”
He jumped, and felt himself recoil against a wall. JJ's voice.
Two of the walls of this room were windows, almost floor-to-ceiling. Pale moonlight leaked in through them and cast sparkles on a moving black sea outside. JJ was sitting on a bed in front in him.
“I made it dark so it wouldn't overwhelm you,” he said. “Thought it better to ease you in.”
Eames didn't say anything. Plausible deniability would be his defense.
JJ studied him for almost a full minute, maybe waiting for him to speak. Eames started to make out more than just his silhouette against the window. His eyes were narrowed thoughtfully.
“You're your own worst enemy, Eames,” he broke the silence at last. “You know that, don't you? Best forger in the world makes a name for himself, gets himself kidnapped so his forging can be put to ill use, and what does he do when he escapes the bad guys' nefarious clutches? He goes right back to forging. Do you know how easy it was for me to find you?”
It occurred to Eames how ridiculous it was to remain sprawled at the foot of this wall in such an uncomfortable attitude, but the most he could do was push himself into an upright sitting position. His mind raced. He could tell he had no weapons on him. There were still no doors in this room.
“Do you know exactly how rare a man like you is?” JJ asked. “Nobody in the world forges like you. I'm a bit of a forger myself, and--”
“You're a shoddy one,” Eames interrupted him, voice husky, like he actually had been caught sleeping.
There was a pause. Eames saw JJ's lips curl slowly into a smile, and his heart sank.
“Aha,” said JJ softly. “I knew you recognized me.”
+
Four minutes had passed.
“You asked Cobb for thirty to sixty minutes,” JJ reminded him. “You took less than fifteen. How long do you think I'll have you to myself down here?”
Hours and hours.
“How'd I get here?” Eames asked, pulse pounding thickly in his ears. He felt hungover.
“I drugged you. I have connections with the chemist who designed the compound to keep you under for four months. It's what Ford's on, too. This should feel nice and familiar for you.”
He felt like shit, actually, and wondered just how big of a dose JJ had slipped him. He was deep, that much he could tell; very deep. Maybe that was why he wasn't panicking out of his mind, yet. That or because he was facing this man for the first time in a dream as himself, Eames, and not lean, whip-thin Charlie.
“Did you miss me?” JJ asked.
“Fuck you.”
“That's not what you said last time.”
“Fuck you,” Eames snarled. “Why'd you bring me here?”
JJ raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Not for anything untoward, Eames, don't be so crass. I want to talk to you.”
Eames didn't believe him. Had to believe him.
“You could have done that up above,” he pointed out flatly.
“You're very difficult to get alone,” JJ said. “The way you follow Arthur like a lovesick puppydog. Or Cobb. I don't think you like Cobb as much as you do Arthur, though.”
Eames was stubbornly silent. Plausible deniability. His shoulders were rigid.
JJ chuckled, unexpectedly. “You're still so tense! Loosen up a little. I don't want you like this, Eames. Who would?”
He kept his mouth shut.
“Arthur?” JJ smiled crookedly. “Do you want him to look at you like that?”
“Fuck off,” said Eames.
“Do you want him to make you feel the way I made you feel?”
He closed his jaws together till it hurt. JJ chuckled again.
+
After eleven minutes Eames managed to stand, hands planted on the wall behind him for support, head spinning. He felt a little more confident at once.
“You think that gives you a psychological advantage,” JJ observed. “You standing while I'm sitting. But it doesn't.”
“You wanted to talk,” Eames said. “Talk.”
“You're telling me a lot already,” JJ told him. “How nervous you are to be near me.”
“Fuck off.”
“Your blink rate has increased since you first got here. You're swallowing more and your pupils are dilated more than they should be. You keep shifting your posture, almost as though you don't know what to settle on. Defensive, or aloof? Aggressive? Or reserved? You want to play it as though you're not afraid of me, but you can't let your guard down.”
“I'm not fucking afraid of you.”
“Eames.” JJ smiled at him patiently. “I think we've been through too much for this. You did miss me, you know. The last time I asked. I almost couldn't believe it. Everything I did to you down there, and you missed me.” Eames could feel the other man's stare boring into him. “You've been thinking about me ever since, haven't you?”
“No.” He bit out the word.
“I was so happy to see I'd left an impression,” JJ said. “So cute. You begging Arthur to fuck you. You're still such a good boy, aren't you?”
For once in his life, Eames couldn't think of a single thing to say in response.
“I had your rooms bugged, in case you spilled and I had to skip town. I was almost stumped when I found that Cobb had booked only three hotel rooms. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were rooming with Arthur. A man.” JJ laughed softly. “And you begged him, and he still didn't want you.”
Eames couldn't stand it. Maybe it was because he'd managed to hang onto his own skin without changing, or because Arthur was being dragged into it, but he felt a surge of hot fury that Charlie would never have allowed himself to feel for this man. He growled impulsively, “Arthur knew that I didn't mean it. And he's not a depraved lunatic.”
“You did mean it, Eames.” Every time he heard his name, the name his team used, coming from JJ's mouth, it felt like the man was claiming just a little bit more of him. “Maybe not every time. But most times, by the end. At first you wanted it to happen because you were afraid of the alternatives. But eventually you just wanted it.”
“You're insane,” Eames told him coldly, even while the sour thought was worming its way through him: yes. He had meant it, hadn't he? He'd meant it desperately, with everything he had, sometimes.
“By the end, you thought we were doing something natural.” Now, JJ sounded almost sad. He said softly, “You poor, confused thing.”
+
After thirty minutes Eames still hadn't moved away from the wall. JJ's attention kept him pinned there, like a bug to a card.
“Arthur's awfully quiet during sex,” JJ remarked.
Eames laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “Arthur's going to kill you in so many ways.”
“You say 'I love you' when you make love. He doesn't.”
“He doesn't need to,” Eames growled, crumbling into his game.
“It's so much easier to lie back and think of your country than it is to summon up the attraction required to fuck somebody, don't you think?”
“I think you don't know Arthur very well,” said Eames, every word crisp and cold. “You can't make him do anything he doesn't want to. And he doesn't do anything in halves.”
“You do know why he won't give head?” said JJ. “The same reason he won't fuck you even when you're gagging for it. Think of how dirty you must seem to him, Eames. You beg him, and you're thinking of me. And he knows it.”
“No,” Eames protested. He still felt sick and dizzy.
“Yes. You used to beg me just like that.”
“Because I had to.”
“I put no gun to your head,” said JJ. “No knife to your throat. You could have forged somebody bigger and stronger than me. You could have dreamt up an assault rifle.”
“Don't you think I tried that?” said Eames hopelessly.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you'd kept trying?”
“Every fucking day of my life,” Eames answered, wearily.
“You chose to be Charlie. You liked being Charlie, because at least he was something consistent.”
“Maybe.” His head was reeling, he was so exhausted.
“You begged for my cock, Eames.”
“I didn't want you.”
“Why do you suppose you did that?”
“Because I thought you were leaving me!” Eames shouted all of a sudden.
His chest gave an ache like a heart attack.
JJ was taken aback. He didn't even have a response lined up right away. Eames wanted to curl up on the floor and die.
“Well,” said JJ.
He stood up. The atmosphere in the room was suddenly charged with electricity. Eames shrank against the wall. He felt small. He felt uncomfortably aware that he was at a psychological disadvantage.
JJ moved within one step of him. Eames' chest fluttered for breath and couldn't quite snatch enough of it.
“Do you want me to fuck you?”
“Yes.” It was instant, automatic, tripping off his tongue before he could catch it. He swallowed and growled, “No,” but he didn't know, didn't know anymore, couldn't remember who he was here. Eames, or Charlie?
JJ touched his cheek lightly. He stopped breathing and shut down altogether, and slumped dazedly forward into JJ's arms.
+
He was on the floor again.
“Don't worry,” said JJ, sitting across from him. The room was a bit lighter now. “You were only gone for twenty minutes.”
He felt, as always, as though no time had passed at all. It was always unsettling. He looked over himself hastily. Still Eames. Thank God.
“Yes, I always knew about your little dissociative episodes or absent seizures or whatever they were. I tried to make the chemist change your compound, but all it did was decrease the frequency of them.”
Eames hauled himself into a sitting position again, his teeth chattering slightly. He couldn't think of a single way to talk himself out of this, and that scared him. His silver tongue had once held him in such good stead.
“You had one in front of Arthur, is that right?”
Eames nodded.
“Things have been harder for you since you woke up, haven't they?”
He nodded again.
“Yes,” said JJ, drawing in a sharp breath, eyes narrowing contemplatively. “Things were a lot easier before.”
He couldn't see where this conversation was going, and he could feel his mindset changing already. Part of him wanted to head any punishment off at the pass, crawl across and put his head on JJ's lap, prostrate himself in a sign of total, work-thy-will-upon-me surrender. That part told him it was stupid to resist. There was only one possible way this could go, and the sooner he gave into it, the sooner they could just get it over with, with minimal brutality.
But half of him was still awake, and wary.
“Arthur is going to kill you when you wake up,” he vowed in a low voice. “I'm going to kill you.”
“I don't think you are, Eames,” said JJ calmly. “Do you want to know how I think this is going to happen?”
This time, he just barely managed to bite back the word yes. JJ continued regardless.
“I think you're going to wake up, and you're going to look at Arthur and feel such gut-wrenching, nauseating humiliation that you'll barely be able to speak to him for fear of embarrassing yourself around him even more than you already have. Arthur's going to shoot Ford and I'm going to suggest that we all split up. You're going to leave the apartment building, pick a direction, and start walking. I'm going to be right behind you. If you try to flag a cab, I'll follow you. If you try to tell your colleagues, I'll shoot them, starting with Arthur, because he's the only one carrying a gun tonight, and if you follow one of them, same thing. It's the middle of the night now and shootings are a frequent occurrence in this neighbourhood. Nobody will save you.
“You're going to keep walking, and within a few minutes, you're going to feel the drugs start to work again. Within a minute of that, you won't be able to walk straight. You'll collapse. And then you'll be mine.”
“You're psychotic,” Eames told him tonelessly. “Really.”
“Dreaming is very ... addictive.” An odd look flitted over JJ's face. “As you well know, or I suppose you wouldn't be here. The past year has been ... unhealthy for me.”
“How very difficult for you,” Eames sneered.
“At first I only did it to sate my curiosity. See how good of a forger you really were. You were ... beguiling. I was surprised at how willingly you played your role. I had to keep coming back to you. Pushing my limits. And you never fought me. You took it like you were born to be a whore for me. You bring these things upon yourself, Eames.”
“You seem to be under the impression that I had any choice,” said Eames.
“We always have a choice,” said JJ. “You chose to play along, so well that you even convinced yourself, in the end. You need to know,” and he threaded his fingers together in his lap and leaned forward, making Eames lean unconsciously back, “I understand you, Eames.”
“No, you don't,” said Eames bluntly.
“I know that you hate yourself,” JJ told him. “You wonder how Arthur could ever love you when you yourself can hardly stand to look in the mirror. It makes you nauseous to think of his eyes on your body. You hate the way you are and how he looks at you when you do something inappropriate just because you can't help yourself. You feel like you're making his life miserable every single day, and holding him back from all the things he used to do. And you can't figure out why he wants to be with you if he doesn't want to use you for sex, and part of you is terrified by that, because you just don't see anything else that's remotely appealing about you.”
Every word was a nail through Eames' heart.
He didn't even try to deny it. There was nothing he had to argue with, anyway.
JJ got up and brushed off his pants. Eames dipped his head even lower when he approached, starting to shrink away again. He shuddered and stilled when JJ ran a hand through his hair, and his eyes fluttered shut.
“The truth is, you don't even know your place in the world when nobody wants to fuck you,” said JJ.
“Not true,” Eames mumbled, though he didn't really feel it.
JJ crouched down in front of him and ran the back of his hand over Eames' cheek. Eames had to consciously stop himself from leaning into the touch, and was sickened.
“Even when Arthur does something to make you happy,” JJ said, “it's nothing compared to the rush you felt when I did you any sort of kindness.”
“No.”
“Yes. I know you, Eames. Nobody ever made you feel like I did. I could tear you down and build you back up using my words alone.” He cradled Eames' face in his rough palm, stroking with a thumb. “Do you know why you missed me when I left you down there? Why you begged me to fuck you so that I wouldn't go?”
Eames shook his head mutely.
“Because everybody who paid to use you came for the sex,” JJ told him. “But I came for you. I made you feel wanted. I called you by name and talked to you and almost made you feel human again. You didn't know how badly you needed that. You needed me.”
JJ had both hands at Eames' face now and he leaned down and kissed him. Eames let his head fall back against the wall with a dull thump, a weak sound of protest in his throat, but he didn't fight because he knew the rules and because he was good.
He hated himself so much.
+
“I don't want you like this,” JJ reminded him, when he'd gone back to sitting on the bed and given Eames room to breathe.
“If this is to happen, you should understand I won't go quietly.”
“What's waiting for you on the other side, Eames?”
He took a full few seconds to force his brain into grinding out an answer. Arthur. Arthur.
Right?
His doubtful silence made JJ laugh.
Eames was curled against the wall and he dropped his head into one hand. This wasn't inception. But the man facing him had torn down Eames' mental defenses now and many times before, and the tears that burned the back of his eyelids felt very real.
+
The longer he was down there, the lighter the room became, the sicker and dizzier he felt.
“How much did you give me?” he slurred. A sedative should not make him feel like this in a dream, especially two levels down. Ford had been under nice and deep, and hadn't suffered any ill effects. Eames had never felt like this when he'd been comatose.
“I may have given you more than a sedative,” said JJ.
“You put drugs in me.” He was sure that some waking part of him, very far away, felt horrified.
“Only to help you relax.”
They were working, then, because Eames was still crumpled at the foot of the wall and couldn't find it in him to get up. He didn't know what the hell they were waiting for now. Why JJ didn't just kick him out of the dream and start executing his plan was beyond him, because Eames was pretty sure, up top, he'd be as useful at resisting as he was down here.
The fire was fading in him fast, dwindling to a spark.
“You won't fight as much as you think,” JJ was saying. “I'm going to take good care of you. I'm going to give you everything you want.” He chuckled. “You should have seen the amount I was going to buy you for. I should thank Cobb and Arthur for liberating you.”
“How did you find me?”
“I secured this job. I gave Ford some lessons in subcon security while McAvoy thought I was trying to extract from him, so that I would have an excuse. I put the word out for a forger and everybody pointed to Cobb.”
Eames would try very hard not to blame Cobb. He could only blame himself, after all, for so stubbornly going through with it when Arthur had protested and Cobb had given him several outs. He really had brought this upon himself.
“And why am I here?” he demanded again, tiredly.
“I told you,” said JJ patiently. “We needed to talk.”
“We've talked,” said Eames. “I want out.”
“We need to talk because I don't want this to be violent, between us, Eames. By the end of tonight you're going to be glad to go home with me.”
“And why, in God's name, would I be glad for that?”
“Because,” said JJ, “the alternative is to go home with Arthur, spend another awkward year trying to make it work, and failing, because of you. He's going to drift further and further from you because you're too limited in bed to hold his attention, or one day things will go too far and you'll have to leave because one of you's done some minor, petty thing to set you off, or you're just going to stay together, day in and day out, draining all the potential out of his life and turning him from the world's most lethal point man to a goddamned babysitter, all because he might have been attracted to you once and wishes, someday, that he could recreate that.”
It had stung and goaded him, at first, to hear JJ bring Arthur into this, but by now Eames had gone strangely numb. He just listened, dull-eyed.
“But I never stopped wanting you,” said JJ, “and you've never stopped at anything to get my attention.”
Eames wanted to go to sleep, but he was already dreaming.
“Everything will be so much easier for you now, Eames.”
“You're right,” said Eames. He wanted to sleep, cry, throw something. Give in. “You're right.”
+
He knew why he was here.
He knew what JJ wanted, would not let him go until he had.
The look that burned in the other man's eyes when Eames shrugged out of his own body, slipped easily into Charlie's like no time had passed at all, was positively inhuman.
They stared at each other levelly.
“Get on the bed,” said JJ. There was gravel in his voice.
Eames hauled himself upright on the wall and staggered to the bed. He crawled onto it and dropped flat on his stomach.
“You're perfect,” JJ growled. He was moving over Eames, shoving him onto his back. Eames just looked at him, silent, calm, empty inside.
JJ kissed him again. Eames parted his lips compliantly and JJ was fucking into his mouth with his tongue, hot and possessive. His hand was knotted in Eames' hair. Eames felt like the last ten months of his life had been spent waiting for this, had maybe even been pushing him toward it.
“Take off the hoodie,” JJ breathed against his mouth.
Eames did that, too, squirming out of the garment, pinned under JJ's hips and not breaking eye contact. He threw it off the bed.
“Fuck, you're good,” JJ purred, and Eames' eyelids lowered in wordless response.
He reached one hand up to grip the hem of JJ's jacket, a smooth, expensive-looking leather jacket that was very different to the touch from the white suit, gave it a little tug, and JJ chuckled. He pulled the jacket off and cast it aside, then gripped Eames' wrist and brought his hand to the crotch of his pants. Eames smoothed his palm over the heavy erection he could feel pressing against the material, and began kneading expertly. JJ moaned into his mouth, kissing him again.
“Charlie--”
He was completely rapt, so caught up in Eames that he didn't even realize he was not the one in control anymore. Did not even feel the arm Eames wrapped around his waist, as though to press them closer together; not until after his hand had closed on the gun JJ kept tucked in the waistband of his pants, at the small of his back.
JJ always had a gun.
Eames yanked it out and coldcocked him with it as hard as he physically could.
They both rolled, JJ with a strangled yell, twisting away, Eames following him across the mattress. He slammed the butt of the gun into JJ's face again, and again, pistol-whipping him with an angry snarl.
“Did you think I would go easily?”
JJ swung an arm up and Eames struck it away, putting the gun up right between his eyes.
“You pathetic piece of shit,” he spat raggedly. “You're nothing but a sad, horny fuck who's probably got a prick so small in reality he can't find anything to fuck but a broke-down fantasy. I'm talking!” he barked, when JJ blinked and began to move. Eames promptly shot him through the shoulder. JJ howled and Eames shoved the gun into his mouth, to the back of his throat. He shed Charlie's appearance distastefully and leaned down over JJ's face. He was breathing hard.
“My mind is not a toy. My mind is not something you can violate at will. My mind belongs to me. Do you understand?” He shoved the gun deeper, making JJ gag. “Do you fucking understand me?”
JJ started to nod, eyes streaming, and suddenly retched. Eames pulled the gun back, in time to be spattered with flecks of blood. He scowled and dropped his gaze, not immediately understanding what he was seeing.
A small patch of blood had appeared on JJ's chest, below the reach of the slick, bloody stain on his shoulder, and was slowly but surely spreading. JJ's breaths were rattling, wheezing, wet, his eyes wide and panicked with incomprehension. The ceiling was rumbling above them. The other dream was collapsing.
Eames laughed harshly, and it sounded nearly like a sob.
“You're already fucking dead, mate,” he said brokenly, and shot himself.
+
He was only on Ford's crumbling bedroom floor for a second or two before he was snatched out of the dream.
“Eames.” Arthur's hands were on him, touching his face with concern. “Jesus. You're awake.”
Eames pushed him off quickly and looked around, trying to get his bearings. The loft was nearly empty. Cobb and Ariadne were gone. Only JJ was still hooked up to the PASIV.
He gave another rasping wet gasp. Eames twisted round sharply, hand clenching around a gun that was no longer there.
Arthur caught him by the shoulder, sending an involuntary shudder through him.
“He's still dreaming. Did you find out if Ford--?”
“He's guilty,” said Eames. Arthur raised his arm and there was a muted crack! as he shot Ford through the head with a silenced gun, dispassionately, barely glancing at him. He had eyes only for Eames.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Ford?” said Eames groggily.
“JJ.”
Arthur's voice shook slightly. That caught Eames' attention. He looked Arthur in the eyes, and shook his head an inch from side to side.
“How'd you know?” he asked, voice thick with sleep.
“I saw the way you looked at him when we met him. I found your bodies when I went looking for you in Ford's apartment. I shot myself out of the dream, and I thought you'd already be here, but goddamnit, Eames--” His voice very nearly broke, and he touched Eames' face again, compulsively “--I know when you're having a nightmare.”
His touch shouldn't have made Eames feel sick, but it did. He tried to stand. Arthur had to help him, and Eames had to let him.
“I sent Cobb and Ariadne away. They left the dream before I did. I had to go back for you.”
“I'm okay,” said Eames, unconvincingly. He was covered in sweat. He ran a hand over his forehead and tried to avert his eyes from the mess that was Ford's brains on the wall.
“Come with me.”
Arthur took him by the hand. Eames had had enough of fighting. He allowed Arthur to lead him out of the loft, down the first flight of stairs, before he remembered and dug in his heels.
“The PASIV. He's still alive.”
Arthur gritted his teeth. “I wasn't aiming for his heart,” he said, and tugged at Eames' hand.
“Arthur,” Eames pleaded, not understanding why he was doing this, walking away from the predatory monster upstairs.
“I gave him one of Ford's sedatives and shot him in the lung. It'll take him a few hours to die. I want him to spend at least a day and a half choking and drowning in his own blood in the dream.”
His voice was unaffected and cold. He started to walk away, moving for the stairs.
“Arthur,” said Eames again. Arthur looked up at him again, furiously.
“I know he hurt you.”
“I know,” said Eames weakly, “and he deserves all the hurt in the world, but all the same, love. We're not him. We don't use the dreamspace to hurt people.”
Arthur just looked at him, frustrated, not understanding. Eames wanted to let it go. JJ deserved it, dying down there, choking on blood, bullet wound through his shoulder, but it wasn't right and somehow, he hated what he could see in Arthur's eyes.
“We don't do this,” said Eames. “We're not like them.”
Arthur set his jaw. For a minute it didn't look like he was going to move.
Then he turned and sprinted back up the stairs. Eames heard a second sharp crack.
Arthur reappeared with the PASIV in hand and gun tucked out of sight. Eames couldn't see the loft upstairs, couldn't hear, and therefore could not know whether Arthur had actually put the second bullet in JJ or fired into the wall and walked away. He decided it didn't matter.
“Let's go before any of the neighbours hear us,” Arthur said. He took Eames' hand to lead him down the stairs again.
By the time they reached the street, Eames' steps were dragging and slow. He was panting, his vision blurring, and he remembered what JJ had said to him.
“Arthur,” he said faintly.
“What's wrong?”
“I'm going to pass out in a minute.” The mild night air felt freezing cold on his clammy skin. He fumbled to grip the side of a building, trying to stay upright. “I'm going to ... I don't know when I'll wake up ...”
And then Arthur was there, sliding one of Eames' arms around his shoulders, supporting him easily, no longer angry and cold, but gentle and real.
“It's okay,” he said softly. “I'm here, and I'll get you back to the hotel. I'll take care of you. It's okay.”
“I know,” said Eames, closing his eyes. “I trust you.”
He stumbled into Arthur's side as his legs gave out, and the last lucid thought he had before he let the darkness swallow him up was that as soon as he could move, he was going to book a flight to Mombasa, and never set foot in Paris again.
It wasn't inception, that was the problem. It had all been the brutal truth.
next
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~5000
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sometimes, the recovery can be just as hard to cope with as the trauma. Arthur and Eames learn this the hard way.
Warnings: Language, noncon, violence
Author's Note: lol oh my God you guys this fic is so long. But almost there!
part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part nine.
+
Eames opened his eyes, crumpled on a floor so hard, in what must have been the most uncomfortable position in the world, he felt like a goddamn cat that had just curled up for an impromptu nap. He groaned softly and raised his head, feeling something in his neck creak.
And it was definitely his neck. He was back in his own body. He wasn't in his own clothes, though. He frowned and squinted down at himself -- the room was so dark he could barely see. He recognized the clothing, though: a pair of jeans so faded they were turning white over the knees, a plain white t-shirt, a washed-out, worn old grey hoodie.
He hissed a soft curse through his teeth. These were not his clothes. These were Charlie's clothes.
His head hurt. He raised a hand to his forehead, sluggishly. Why was he sluggish?
“I didn't want to overstimulate you.”
He jumped, and felt himself recoil against a wall. JJ's voice.
Two of the walls of this room were windows, almost floor-to-ceiling. Pale moonlight leaked in through them and cast sparkles on a moving black sea outside. JJ was sitting on a bed in front in him.
“I made it dark so it wouldn't overwhelm you,” he said. “Thought it better to ease you in.”
Eames didn't say anything. Plausible deniability would be his defense.
JJ studied him for almost a full minute, maybe waiting for him to speak. Eames started to make out more than just his silhouette against the window. His eyes were narrowed thoughtfully.
“You're your own worst enemy, Eames,” he broke the silence at last. “You know that, don't you? Best forger in the world makes a name for himself, gets himself kidnapped so his forging can be put to ill use, and what does he do when he escapes the bad guys' nefarious clutches? He goes right back to forging. Do you know how easy it was for me to find you?”
It occurred to Eames how ridiculous it was to remain sprawled at the foot of this wall in such an uncomfortable attitude, but the most he could do was push himself into an upright sitting position. His mind raced. He could tell he had no weapons on him. There were still no doors in this room.
“Do you know exactly how rare a man like you is?” JJ asked. “Nobody in the world forges like you. I'm a bit of a forger myself, and--”
“You're a shoddy one,” Eames interrupted him, voice husky, like he actually had been caught sleeping.
There was a pause. Eames saw JJ's lips curl slowly into a smile, and his heart sank.
“Aha,” said JJ softly. “I knew you recognized me.”
+
Four minutes had passed.
“You asked Cobb for thirty to sixty minutes,” JJ reminded him. “You took less than fifteen. How long do you think I'll have you to myself down here?”
Hours and hours.
“How'd I get here?” Eames asked, pulse pounding thickly in his ears. He felt hungover.
“I drugged you. I have connections with the chemist who designed the compound to keep you under for four months. It's what Ford's on, too. This should feel nice and familiar for you.”
He felt like shit, actually, and wondered just how big of a dose JJ had slipped him. He was deep, that much he could tell; very deep. Maybe that was why he wasn't panicking out of his mind, yet. That or because he was facing this man for the first time in a dream as himself, Eames, and not lean, whip-thin Charlie.
“Did you miss me?” JJ asked.
“Fuck you.”
“That's not what you said last time.”
“Fuck you,” Eames snarled. “Why'd you bring me here?”
JJ raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Not for anything untoward, Eames, don't be so crass. I want to talk to you.”
Eames didn't believe him. Had to believe him.
“You could have done that up above,” he pointed out flatly.
“You're very difficult to get alone,” JJ said. “The way you follow Arthur like a lovesick puppydog. Or Cobb. I don't think you like Cobb as much as you do Arthur, though.”
Eames was stubbornly silent. Plausible deniability. His shoulders were rigid.
JJ chuckled, unexpectedly. “You're still so tense! Loosen up a little. I don't want you like this, Eames. Who would?”
He kept his mouth shut.
“Arthur?” JJ smiled crookedly. “Do you want him to look at you like that?”
“Fuck off,” said Eames.
“Do you want him to make you feel the way I made you feel?”
He closed his jaws together till it hurt. JJ chuckled again.
+
After eleven minutes Eames managed to stand, hands planted on the wall behind him for support, head spinning. He felt a little more confident at once.
“You think that gives you a psychological advantage,” JJ observed. “You standing while I'm sitting. But it doesn't.”
“You wanted to talk,” Eames said. “Talk.”
“You're telling me a lot already,” JJ told him. “How nervous you are to be near me.”
“Fuck off.”
“Your blink rate has increased since you first got here. You're swallowing more and your pupils are dilated more than they should be. You keep shifting your posture, almost as though you don't know what to settle on. Defensive, or aloof? Aggressive? Or reserved? You want to play it as though you're not afraid of me, but you can't let your guard down.”
“I'm not fucking afraid of you.”
“Eames.” JJ smiled at him patiently. “I think we've been through too much for this. You did miss me, you know. The last time I asked. I almost couldn't believe it. Everything I did to you down there, and you missed me.” Eames could feel the other man's stare boring into him. “You've been thinking about me ever since, haven't you?”
“No.” He bit out the word.
“I was so happy to see I'd left an impression,” JJ said. “So cute. You begging Arthur to fuck you. You're still such a good boy, aren't you?”
For once in his life, Eames couldn't think of a single thing to say in response.
“I had your rooms bugged, in case you spilled and I had to skip town. I was almost stumped when I found that Cobb had booked only three hotel rooms. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were rooming with Arthur. A man.” JJ laughed softly. “And you begged him, and he still didn't want you.”
Eames couldn't stand it. Maybe it was because he'd managed to hang onto his own skin without changing, or because Arthur was being dragged into it, but he felt a surge of hot fury that Charlie would never have allowed himself to feel for this man. He growled impulsively, “Arthur knew that I didn't mean it. And he's not a depraved lunatic.”
“You did mean it, Eames.” Every time he heard his name, the name his team used, coming from JJ's mouth, it felt like the man was claiming just a little bit more of him. “Maybe not every time. But most times, by the end. At first you wanted it to happen because you were afraid of the alternatives. But eventually you just wanted it.”
“You're insane,” Eames told him coldly, even while the sour thought was worming its way through him: yes. He had meant it, hadn't he? He'd meant it desperately, with everything he had, sometimes.
“By the end, you thought we were doing something natural.” Now, JJ sounded almost sad. He said softly, “You poor, confused thing.”
+
After thirty minutes Eames still hadn't moved away from the wall. JJ's attention kept him pinned there, like a bug to a card.
“Arthur's awfully quiet during sex,” JJ remarked.
Eames laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “Arthur's going to kill you in so many ways.”
“You say 'I love you' when you make love. He doesn't.”
“He doesn't need to,” Eames growled, crumbling into his game.
“It's so much easier to lie back and think of your country than it is to summon up the attraction required to fuck somebody, don't you think?”
“I think you don't know Arthur very well,” said Eames, every word crisp and cold. “You can't make him do anything he doesn't want to. And he doesn't do anything in halves.”
“You do know why he won't give head?” said JJ. “The same reason he won't fuck you even when you're gagging for it. Think of how dirty you must seem to him, Eames. You beg him, and you're thinking of me. And he knows it.”
“No,” Eames protested. He still felt sick and dizzy.
“Yes. You used to beg me just like that.”
“Because I had to.”
“I put no gun to your head,” said JJ. “No knife to your throat. You could have forged somebody bigger and stronger than me. You could have dreamt up an assault rifle.”
“Don't you think I tried that?” said Eames hopelessly.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you'd kept trying?”
“Every fucking day of my life,” Eames answered, wearily.
“You chose to be Charlie. You liked being Charlie, because at least he was something consistent.”
“Maybe.” His head was reeling, he was so exhausted.
“You begged for my cock, Eames.”
“I didn't want you.”
“Why do you suppose you did that?”
“Because I thought you were leaving me!” Eames shouted all of a sudden.
His chest gave an ache like a heart attack.
JJ was taken aback. He didn't even have a response lined up right away. Eames wanted to curl up on the floor and die.
“Well,” said JJ.
He stood up. The atmosphere in the room was suddenly charged with electricity. Eames shrank against the wall. He felt small. He felt uncomfortably aware that he was at a psychological disadvantage.
JJ moved within one step of him. Eames' chest fluttered for breath and couldn't quite snatch enough of it.
“Do you want me to fuck you?”
“Yes.” It was instant, automatic, tripping off his tongue before he could catch it. He swallowed and growled, “No,” but he didn't know, didn't know anymore, couldn't remember who he was here. Eames, or Charlie?
JJ touched his cheek lightly. He stopped breathing and shut down altogether, and slumped dazedly forward into JJ's arms.
+
He was on the floor again.
“Don't worry,” said JJ, sitting across from him. The room was a bit lighter now. “You were only gone for twenty minutes.”
He felt, as always, as though no time had passed at all. It was always unsettling. He looked over himself hastily. Still Eames. Thank God.
“Yes, I always knew about your little dissociative episodes or absent seizures or whatever they were. I tried to make the chemist change your compound, but all it did was decrease the frequency of them.”
Eames hauled himself into a sitting position again, his teeth chattering slightly. He couldn't think of a single way to talk himself out of this, and that scared him. His silver tongue had once held him in such good stead.
“You had one in front of Arthur, is that right?”
Eames nodded.
“Things have been harder for you since you woke up, haven't they?”
He nodded again.
“Yes,” said JJ, drawing in a sharp breath, eyes narrowing contemplatively. “Things were a lot easier before.”
He couldn't see where this conversation was going, and he could feel his mindset changing already. Part of him wanted to head any punishment off at the pass, crawl across and put his head on JJ's lap, prostrate himself in a sign of total, work-thy-will-upon-me surrender. That part told him it was stupid to resist. There was only one possible way this could go, and the sooner he gave into it, the sooner they could just get it over with, with minimal brutality.
But half of him was still awake, and wary.
“Arthur is going to kill you when you wake up,” he vowed in a low voice. “I'm going to kill you.”
“I don't think you are, Eames,” said JJ calmly. “Do you want to know how I think this is going to happen?”
This time, he just barely managed to bite back the word yes. JJ continued regardless.
“I think you're going to wake up, and you're going to look at Arthur and feel such gut-wrenching, nauseating humiliation that you'll barely be able to speak to him for fear of embarrassing yourself around him even more than you already have. Arthur's going to shoot Ford and I'm going to suggest that we all split up. You're going to leave the apartment building, pick a direction, and start walking. I'm going to be right behind you. If you try to flag a cab, I'll follow you. If you try to tell your colleagues, I'll shoot them, starting with Arthur, because he's the only one carrying a gun tonight, and if you follow one of them, same thing. It's the middle of the night now and shootings are a frequent occurrence in this neighbourhood. Nobody will save you.
“You're going to keep walking, and within a few minutes, you're going to feel the drugs start to work again. Within a minute of that, you won't be able to walk straight. You'll collapse. And then you'll be mine.”
“You're psychotic,” Eames told him tonelessly. “Really.”
“Dreaming is very ... addictive.” An odd look flitted over JJ's face. “As you well know, or I suppose you wouldn't be here. The past year has been ... unhealthy for me.”
“How very difficult for you,” Eames sneered.
“At first I only did it to sate my curiosity. See how good of a forger you really were. You were ... beguiling. I was surprised at how willingly you played your role. I had to keep coming back to you. Pushing my limits. And you never fought me. You took it like you were born to be a whore for me. You bring these things upon yourself, Eames.”
“You seem to be under the impression that I had any choice,” said Eames.
“We always have a choice,” said JJ. “You chose to play along, so well that you even convinced yourself, in the end. You need to know,” and he threaded his fingers together in his lap and leaned forward, making Eames lean unconsciously back, “I understand you, Eames.”
“No, you don't,” said Eames bluntly.
“I know that you hate yourself,” JJ told him. “You wonder how Arthur could ever love you when you yourself can hardly stand to look in the mirror. It makes you nauseous to think of his eyes on your body. You hate the way you are and how he looks at you when you do something inappropriate just because you can't help yourself. You feel like you're making his life miserable every single day, and holding him back from all the things he used to do. And you can't figure out why he wants to be with you if he doesn't want to use you for sex, and part of you is terrified by that, because you just don't see anything else that's remotely appealing about you.”
Every word was a nail through Eames' heart.
He didn't even try to deny it. There was nothing he had to argue with, anyway.
JJ got up and brushed off his pants. Eames dipped his head even lower when he approached, starting to shrink away again. He shuddered and stilled when JJ ran a hand through his hair, and his eyes fluttered shut.
“The truth is, you don't even know your place in the world when nobody wants to fuck you,” said JJ.
“Not true,” Eames mumbled, though he didn't really feel it.
JJ crouched down in front of him and ran the back of his hand over Eames' cheek. Eames had to consciously stop himself from leaning into the touch, and was sickened.
“Even when Arthur does something to make you happy,” JJ said, “it's nothing compared to the rush you felt when I did you any sort of kindness.”
“No.”
“Yes. I know you, Eames. Nobody ever made you feel like I did. I could tear you down and build you back up using my words alone.” He cradled Eames' face in his rough palm, stroking with a thumb. “Do you know why you missed me when I left you down there? Why you begged me to fuck you so that I wouldn't go?”
Eames shook his head mutely.
“Because everybody who paid to use you came for the sex,” JJ told him. “But I came for you. I made you feel wanted. I called you by name and talked to you and almost made you feel human again. You didn't know how badly you needed that. You needed me.”
JJ had both hands at Eames' face now and he leaned down and kissed him. Eames let his head fall back against the wall with a dull thump, a weak sound of protest in his throat, but he didn't fight because he knew the rules and because he was good.
He hated himself so much.
+
“I don't want you like this,” JJ reminded him, when he'd gone back to sitting on the bed and given Eames room to breathe.
“If this is to happen, you should understand I won't go quietly.”
“What's waiting for you on the other side, Eames?”
He took a full few seconds to force his brain into grinding out an answer. Arthur. Arthur.
Right?
His doubtful silence made JJ laugh.
Eames was curled against the wall and he dropped his head into one hand. This wasn't inception. But the man facing him had torn down Eames' mental defenses now and many times before, and the tears that burned the back of his eyelids felt very real.
+
The longer he was down there, the lighter the room became, the sicker and dizzier he felt.
“How much did you give me?” he slurred. A sedative should not make him feel like this in a dream, especially two levels down. Ford had been under nice and deep, and hadn't suffered any ill effects. Eames had never felt like this when he'd been comatose.
“I may have given you more than a sedative,” said JJ.
“You put drugs in me.” He was sure that some waking part of him, very far away, felt horrified.
“Only to help you relax.”
They were working, then, because Eames was still crumpled at the foot of the wall and couldn't find it in him to get up. He didn't know what the hell they were waiting for now. Why JJ didn't just kick him out of the dream and start executing his plan was beyond him, because Eames was pretty sure, up top, he'd be as useful at resisting as he was down here.
The fire was fading in him fast, dwindling to a spark.
“You won't fight as much as you think,” JJ was saying. “I'm going to take good care of you. I'm going to give you everything you want.” He chuckled. “You should have seen the amount I was going to buy you for. I should thank Cobb and Arthur for liberating you.”
“How did you find me?”
“I secured this job. I gave Ford some lessons in subcon security while McAvoy thought I was trying to extract from him, so that I would have an excuse. I put the word out for a forger and everybody pointed to Cobb.”
Eames would try very hard not to blame Cobb. He could only blame himself, after all, for so stubbornly going through with it when Arthur had protested and Cobb had given him several outs. He really had brought this upon himself.
“And why am I here?” he demanded again, tiredly.
“I told you,” said JJ patiently. “We needed to talk.”
“We've talked,” said Eames. “I want out.”
“We need to talk because I don't want this to be violent, between us, Eames. By the end of tonight you're going to be glad to go home with me.”
“And why, in God's name, would I be glad for that?”
“Because,” said JJ, “the alternative is to go home with Arthur, spend another awkward year trying to make it work, and failing, because of you. He's going to drift further and further from you because you're too limited in bed to hold his attention, or one day things will go too far and you'll have to leave because one of you's done some minor, petty thing to set you off, or you're just going to stay together, day in and day out, draining all the potential out of his life and turning him from the world's most lethal point man to a goddamned babysitter, all because he might have been attracted to you once and wishes, someday, that he could recreate that.”
It had stung and goaded him, at first, to hear JJ bring Arthur into this, but by now Eames had gone strangely numb. He just listened, dull-eyed.
“But I never stopped wanting you,” said JJ, “and you've never stopped at anything to get my attention.”
Eames wanted to go to sleep, but he was already dreaming.
“Everything will be so much easier for you now, Eames.”
“You're right,” said Eames. He wanted to sleep, cry, throw something. Give in. “You're right.”
+
He knew why he was here.
He knew what JJ wanted, would not let him go until he had.
The look that burned in the other man's eyes when Eames shrugged out of his own body, slipped easily into Charlie's like no time had passed at all, was positively inhuman.
They stared at each other levelly.
“Get on the bed,” said JJ. There was gravel in his voice.
Eames hauled himself upright on the wall and staggered to the bed. He crawled onto it and dropped flat on his stomach.
“You're perfect,” JJ growled. He was moving over Eames, shoving him onto his back. Eames just looked at him, silent, calm, empty inside.
JJ kissed him again. Eames parted his lips compliantly and JJ was fucking into his mouth with his tongue, hot and possessive. His hand was knotted in Eames' hair. Eames felt like the last ten months of his life had been spent waiting for this, had maybe even been pushing him toward it.
“Take off the hoodie,” JJ breathed against his mouth.
Eames did that, too, squirming out of the garment, pinned under JJ's hips and not breaking eye contact. He threw it off the bed.
“Fuck, you're good,” JJ purred, and Eames' eyelids lowered in wordless response.
He reached one hand up to grip the hem of JJ's jacket, a smooth, expensive-looking leather jacket that was very different to the touch from the white suit, gave it a little tug, and JJ chuckled. He pulled the jacket off and cast it aside, then gripped Eames' wrist and brought his hand to the crotch of his pants. Eames smoothed his palm over the heavy erection he could feel pressing against the material, and began kneading expertly. JJ moaned into his mouth, kissing him again.
“Charlie--”
He was completely rapt, so caught up in Eames that he didn't even realize he was not the one in control anymore. Did not even feel the arm Eames wrapped around his waist, as though to press them closer together; not until after his hand had closed on the gun JJ kept tucked in the waistband of his pants, at the small of his back.
JJ always had a gun.
Eames yanked it out and coldcocked him with it as hard as he physically could.
They both rolled, JJ with a strangled yell, twisting away, Eames following him across the mattress. He slammed the butt of the gun into JJ's face again, and again, pistol-whipping him with an angry snarl.
“Did you think I would go easily?”
JJ swung an arm up and Eames struck it away, putting the gun up right between his eyes.
“You pathetic piece of shit,” he spat raggedly. “You're nothing but a sad, horny fuck who's probably got a prick so small in reality he can't find anything to fuck but a broke-down fantasy. I'm talking!” he barked, when JJ blinked and began to move. Eames promptly shot him through the shoulder. JJ howled and Eames shoved the gun into his mouth, to the back of his throat. He shed Charlie's appearance distastefully and leaned down over JJ's face. He was breathing hard.
“My mind is not a toy. My mind is not something you can violate at will. My mind belongs to me. Do you understand?” He shoved the gun deeper, making JJ gag. “Do you fucking understand me?”
JJ started to nod, eyes streaming, and suddenly retched. Eames pulled the gun back, in time to be spattered with flecks of blood. He scowled and dropped his gaze, not immediately understanding what he was seeing.
A small patch of blood had appeared on JJ's chest, below the reach of the slick, bloody stain on his shoulder, and was slowly but surely spreading. JJ's breaths were rattling, wheezing, wet, his eyes wide and panicked with incomprehension. The ceiling was rumbling above them. The other dream was collapsing.
Eames laughed harshly, and it sounded nearly like a sob.
“You're already fucking dead, mate,” he said brokenly, and shot himself.
+
He was only on Ford's crumbling bedroom floor for a second or two before he was snatched out of the dream.
“Eames.” Arthur's hands were on him, touching his face with concern. “Jesus. You're awake.”
Eames pushed him off quickly and looked around, trying to get his bearings. The loft was nearly empty. Cobb and Ariadne were gone. Only JJ was still hooked up to the PASIV.
He gave another rasping wet gasp. Eames twisted round sharply, hand clenching around a gun that was no longer there.
Arthur caught him by the shoulder, sending an involuntary shudder through him.
“He's still dreaming. Did you find out if Ford--?”
“He's guilty,” said Eames. Arthur raised his arm and there was a muted crack! as he shot Ford through the head with a silenced gun, dispassionately, barely glancing at him. He had eyes only for Eames.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Ford?” said Eames groggily.
“JJ.”
Arthur's voice shook slightly. That caught Eames' attention. He looked Arthur in the eyes, and shook his head an inch from side to side.
“How'd you know?” he asked, voice thick with sleep.
“I saw the way you looked at him when we met him. I found your bodies when I went looking for you in Ford's apartment. I shot myself out of the dream, and I thought you'd already be here, but goddamnit, Eames--” His voice very nearly broke, and he touched Eames' face again, compulsively “--I know when you're having a nightmare.”
His touch shouldn't have made Eames feel sick, but it did. He tried to stand. Arthur had to help him, and Eames had to let him.
“I sent Cobb and Ariadne away. They left the dream before I did. I had to go back for you.”
“I'm okay,” said Eames, unconvincingly. He was covered in sweat. He ran a hand over his forehead and tried to avert his eyes from the mess that was Ford's brains on the wall.
“Come with me.”
Arthur took him by the hand. Eames had had enough of fighting. He allowed Arthur to lead him out of the loft, down the first flight of stairs, before he remembered and dug in his heels.
“The PASIV. He's still alive.”
Arthur gritted his teeth. “I wasn't aiming for his heart,” he said, and tugged at Eames' hand.
“Arthur,” Eames pleaded, not understanding why he was doing this, walking away from the predatory monster upstairs.
“I gave him one of Ford's sedatives and shot him in the lung. It'll take him a few hours to die. I want him to spend at least a day and a half choking and drowning in his own blood in the dream.”
His voice was unaffected and cold. He started to walk away, moving for the stairs.
“Arthur,” said Eames again. Arthur looked up at him again, furiously.
“I know he hurt you.”
“I know,” said Eames weakly, “and he deserves all the hurt in the world, but all the same, love. We're not him. We don't use the dreamspace to hurt people.”
Arthur just looked at him, frustrated, not understanding. Eames wanted to let it go. JJ deserved it, dying down there, choking on blood, bullet wound through his shoulder, but it wasn't right and somehow, he hated what he could see in Arthur's eyes.
“We don't do this,” said Eames. “We're not like them.”
Arthur set his jaw. For a minute it didn't look like he was going to move.
Then he turned and sprinted back up the stairs. Eames heard a second sharp crack.
Arthur reappeared with the PASIV in hand and gun tucked out of sight. Eames couldn't see the loft upstairs, couldn't hear, and therefore could not know whether Arthur had actually put the second bullet in JJ or fired into the wall and walked away. He decided it didn't matter.
“Let's go before any of the neighbours hear us,” Arthur said. He took Eames' hand to lead him down the stairs again.
By the time they reached the street, Eames' steps were dragging and slow. He was panting, his vision blurring, and he remembered what JJ had said to him.
“Arthur,” he said faintly.
“What's wrong?”
“I'm going to pass out in a minute.” The mild night air felt freezing cold on his clammy skin. He fumbled to grip the side of a building, trying to stay upright. “I'm going to ... I don't know when I'll wake up ...”
And then Arthur was there, sliding one of Eames' arms around his shoulders, supporting him easily, no longer angry and cold, but gentle and real.
“It's okay,” he said softly. “I'm here, and I'll get you back to the hotel. I'll take care of you. It's okay.”
“I know,” said Eames, closing his eyes. “I trust you.”
He stumbled into Arthur's side as his legs gave out, and the last lucid thought he had before he let the darkness swallow him up was that as soon as he could move, he was going to book a flight to Mombasa, and never set foot in Paris again.
It wasn't inception, that was the problem. It had all been the brutal truth.
next