Requiescat, pt. three
Title: Requiescat
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~4700
Rating: R
Warnings: Neil McCormick, basically.
Summary: The death of Neil McCormick was gradual, not sudden, and not permanent by any means. In the end, Arthur goes much more quickly.
Author's Note: This is a Mysterious Skin crossover, though it isn't necessary to have seen the movie (I hope).
part one, part two, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight.
+++
It's a strange feeling to be hated so thoroughly by one's grown-up self.
Neil doesn't hate himself. He might regret a couple things, here and there, but he doesn't hate himself. He's pretty satisfied with who he is, actually.
Arthur, though. Arthur definitely hates him.
He can tell this by the way Eames watches him. Eames doesn't say much, but his lips will thin a little bit when Neil does certain things. Neil can tell that Eames hates the way he slouches, hates the swagger in Neil's stride, hates when he gives certain words a broad Kansas inflection (which is getting broader by the day, judging by Eames' expressions). He orders a greasy breakfast sandwich from a questionable cafe in the airport and Eames has to turn away. His body language reads loud and clear: Arthur wouldn't do that.
Arthur probably eats a lot of salad. Neil hates him, too.
And Eames.
Eames tails him like a bodyguard. It's probably how he sees himself. Guarding Arthur's body from all the terrible things Neil might do to it. Like Neil's the imposter.
He's a perverse spirit and when Eames follows him into the washroom at the airport, he says, standing at the urinal, grinning cockily, “If you wanted to see my dick again, you could've paid me.”
It's worth it for the way the corners of Eames' eyes tighten in a slight wince.
“You're twenty-nine,” he says, once Neil's zipped up and washing his hands. “Not a teenager anymore. Stop acting like a kid.”
“Stop treating me like one,” Neil fires back. “I don't need a babysitter.”
Eames snorts. “Right, well, the real you would never forgive me if I let eighteen-year-old-mentality you run off to Amsterdam because I took my eyes off you for a second, so there's that.”
Neil turns to face him. Eames never seems to meet his eyes directly.
“What makes Arthur real?” he demands. “Just that you like him more than me? 'Cause I was here first. I got a lot more right to be in this body than he does.”
“Yes,” says Eames flatly. “I like him better than you. Now let's go before we miss our flight.”
Neil checks a dozen times that they're for sure going to New York before he boards the plane with Eames. He doesn't trust the other man. Once the plane takes off, though, and it's definitely headed to JFK, he finds himself relaxing. He's going to go and find Wendy. Wherever she is, he's going to find her. That's how soulmates work.
He wonders what she's like now, if she's happy. He was never able to picture the two of them growing up. He wonders, did she get married? Does she have kids? Is she happy?
“My friend Wendy, who we're gonna find,” he says to Eames, “did you ever meet her?”
“Why would I?”
“You and me, we're friends or something, right?”
“We're--” Eames seems stuck for words for a moment. “Colleagues,” he finishes eventually. And, shutting his eyes tiredly: “You and I.”
“Whatever,” says Neil. “Didn't I ever talk about her?”
“No,” says Eames. “I don't like to burst your bubble, but you really haven't got many friends. You're fairly anti-social.”
“No. Wendy's different. Even if I changed my name and stopped talking to my mom and everyone, I'd still talk to her.”
“Well, you never talked about her,” says Eames, “and that's another thing, just a theory I've been toying with. You don't remember having been Arthur.”
“That's a genius fuckin' deduction,” says Neil impatiently.
“So I suppose it's possible,” Eames talks over him, undeterred, “that Arthur doesn't remember you.”
“No, it's not.” Neil's bristling immediately. Flushed with anger, he hates them both even more profoundly -- Eames and Arthur. “Stop fuckin' talking about him like he's a different person. I was here first. He's not some other guy who just took over my body. He's living my life, not the other way around, got it?”
“Because your life was so winsome and droll and there's nothing about it you'd ever like to change,” says Eames dryly, staring out the window.
“I like my life.”
“You were a hustler,” says Eames, lowering his voice, even though the roaring of the twin engines on the plane drowns their conversation pretty well.
“Yeah. And I fuckin' like it,” says Neil forcefully.
“Well, then, we have to question how you went from this to having the libido of a celery stalk, don't we?”
“Wendy will know.” Neil leans back in his seat and folds his arms comfortably. “She'll know what happened to me. She knows everything about me.” And when he's with her again, he can get Eames off his tail and it'll be like old times. Partners in crime.
Eames just sighs.
The flight's boring, especially when Eames pulls out a set of headphones, plugs them into his personal touch-screen, and starts listening to music. Neil doesn't have headphones and he doesn't have three dollars to buy them from a stewardess, so he just has to sit there for most of the flight. He doesn't last very long.
Eames blinks when Neil yanks his sleeve. He loops the headphones around his neck.
“What?”
“You said we're colleagues. What do we do?”
“Crime,” says Eames. “Mind crime. We use the PASIV and we steal ideas from people's subconscious.”
“Am I good at it?” Neil asks. Eames seems to hesitate.
“You're the best,” he says.
Neil likes that. He's a criminal and he's good at it. He smirks.
“Arthur's the best,” Eames amends, seeing the look on his face. “You, apparently, don't even have the capacity to dream up oxygen.”
Neil slouches back into his seat. “Whatever.”
“Which is what makes me wonder,” Eames says thoughtfully, almost to himself, “if that's Arthur -- I mean, if he conditioned himself so well never to think about you or bring up certain memories, that you stonewall yourself when you even try to access your own subconscious.”
Neil snorts and starts to say, “That's dumb. Nobody can repress--”
But he has to stop, because he's just remembered Brian. Brian, that scrawny little nerd who was dumb enough to think he'd been abducted by aliens instead of raped when he was eight. Brian, that poor fucker, with his nosebleeds and his black-outs. His whole life revolving around a black hole where memories went dark.
The stupid thing is, Neil remembers Brian, and he remembers meeting Brian, but there's something on the periphery of that memory that he doesn't remember. It's like a blurred spot in his vision. He can look around it, but not directly at it.
“What is it?” Eames asks.
“Shut up. I'm thinking,” Neil says, because he doesn't want to admit that Eames is right: There's something he's hiding from himself.
Even Brian couldn't stay repressed forever.
He lets a whole hour pass between them before he bugs Eames again.
“What?” Eames snaps, yanking down his headphones again.
“Tell me more about me,” Neil says. “Maybe it'll jog my memory,” he adds.
Eames frowns. “I don't know that much,” he says. “You were in the military when you were younger.”
“US military don't let fags serve,” says Neil dismissively.
“It does if they keep mum and stay in the closet.”
“That doesn't sound like me.”
“Well, that's what I know about you,” says Eames. “You joined the military, and they taught you dreamsharing. Then you deserted. You met Cobb and Mal. Cobb introduced us. Then Mal died, and everyone thought Cobb had done her in, so he went on the run, and got into crime to pay for his lawyers, and you followed him.”
“Tell me about Cobb,” says Neil.
Eames does, though he seems reluctant to share any more than he thinks Neil needs to know. Still, Neil is able to surmise that his relationship with Cobb doesn't extend beyond platonic, which definitely doesn't sound like him.
“Now tell me about us.”
Instantly Eames is uncomfortable. “There's not much to tell. Like I said, we're colleagues.”
“Yeah, colleagues who take vacations together and share a room and fuck.”
“I thought you were Arthur,” Eames says, pained.
“You should be happy I'm not, then,” says Neil. “If Arthur'd never fuck you. I mean, did we ever fuck before that?”
“No.”
“Then stop lookin' so fuckin' sad. You got what you wanted. I know you wanted it, you said so yourself.”
Eames shakes his head. “There's ... no.”
“Would Arthur fuck you if you told him you loved him?”
Eames' eyebrows furrow.
“Would he fuck you if you told him he was special?” Neil presses. “If you called him your fucking angel?”
“No,” says Eames, drawing back almost imperceptibly.
Neil leans back into his seat and grunts, satisfied. “Then at least he learned something from me.”
They stop talking. Eames puts his headphones back on and closes his eyes for a long time.
+++
Contrary to what most people believe, Arthur didn't hate Eames at first sight. When Cobb first introduces them, the forger is polite and professional and Arthur is civil in turn, even though he is aware that Eames is a criminal in the dreaming world. They get to work.
True, he is probably the most fidgety person Arthur's ever met in his life. Arthur notices this about him almost right away. Eames plays with his hands a lot. He flicks each fingernail against his thumb and it makes an annoying clicking sound. Cracks his knuckles one-handed. He bites his nails, too, and sometimes this makes Arthur want to smack his hand away from his mouth. He's a compulsive shredder: when he's holding a candy wrapper, he tears it up methodically; when he's holding a match or toothpick, he snaps it up and down; and when he's holding a pen, he chews it.
All these things Arthur notices as a matter of fact. He doesn't hate Eames.
Eames shows off in the dreamscape, adopting a couple different visages. Arthur is careful not to look impressed, knowing that Eames is flaunting for his benefit. He tries it later, on his own -- forging. He can't do it, not even a little. It equally frustrates him and gives him new respect for his colleague.
When all the prep work is out of the way and they're able to get the mark put under, they go down together, all three of them. And it goes well, until there's a hitch, and Arthur tries not to be surprised when Cobb turns to Eames instead of him and says, “We need you to run a distraction. Pick something pretty.”
And Eames just casts a lazy eye over the place, the bar of Arthur's design that the mark has filled out with his subconscious, and he says, “I don't think a lady will be to his tastes.”
“He dates women,” Arthur points out, because he's the point man and he should know their mark better than Eames does. He does.
Eames just smiles at him -- a knowing smile that makes Arthur burn inexplicably -- and says in a voice that's a purr, “Trust me, Arthur.”
He doesn't even forge. He saunters over to the bar, takes a seat next to their mark, and starts talking. He doesn't fidget. He leans in, casually invading personal space. He smiles. Touches the man's arm. Then his knee. He laughs.
In the end Cobb doesn't have to do any extracting at all, because the mark spills all his secrets to Eames.
While Cobb is filling out their report afterward, and Arthur is packing everything up, his brain is buzzing. He can't believe he didn't realize that the mark was gay. The truth is--
The truth is he didn't even consider it.
His nerves tingle and he feels unusually lightheaded. His back goes rigid when he feels Eames' fingers curl over his shoulders.
“What's the matter?” Eames' breath tickles the back of his ear. “See something you like down there, darling?”
Arthur says nothing. Eames slides away and chuckles.
That. That is the moment that Arthur first starts hating Eames.
He's burning and prickling and flushed with inexplicable anger all the way back to his hotel. Eames' words circle in his head like a song on repeat. He doesn't understand how somebody can sound like that, have a voice that's pure fucking sex all the time, almost too silky and low and husky for normal conversation. He thinks about how easily Eames strolled up to that mark and started flirting. Like hitting on men is something he does all the time.
When Arthur gets back to his hotel room he realizes, belatedly, that he's hard. It happens. Sometimes as a side effect of the Somnacin upon waking up.
He crawls onto his bed, lies on his stomach and doesn't think about it.
But he can't stop thinking about Eames.
That fucking voice. The breadth of him, how assuredly masculine he is. How easily he seduced their mark. Arthur wonders what would have happened if it hadn't been a job, if Eames had met that man at a real bar and tried to pick him up. Would they have left the bar? Arthur wonders, would Eames have sucked his cock -- or fucked him in the ass--
His mouth goes completely bone-dry. That's a disgusting thought. He's a little sickened at himself for having had it.
He wonders, what if it were him at that bar. If Eames would try to pick him up. If they would fuck--
There's a nauseating physical pain in his gut that makes him curl up on the bed and shut his eyes, breathing hard. He pushes his erection between his thighs and clamps his legs together. Hisses through the pain. It makes him feel better. It's a meagre penance. The blood starts to leave his groin, and he feels so much better.
And then, without warning, he's crying into his hand.
Arthur can't remember the last time in his life he cried. But it's happening now: he's shaking, sobbing, tears stream from his eyes and he has no idea where they come from.
And it's not just weeping. It wracks through his entire body like a hurricane. Before he knows it, he's sobbing so hard he can't draw breath. He feels so sick and guilty and doesn't know why. He grips tight fistfuls of the bedcover as though to anchor himself. His hands shake. The tears come in a relentless flood. His whole body is quaking with the force of his sobs and it's like he's been stabbed, like his heart is breaking, and he can't stop it.
It rolls through him until he's gasping for breath and then begins to taper to a trickle. He fights to gain control of himself. Guilt still squirms in his stomach and he gets shakily to his feet to get a glass of water from the bathroom.
He drinks, and almost immediately falls in front of the toilet and starts heaving.
That guilt in his stomach, squirming so unpleasantly -- it's like a huge worm, writhing in there. In an instant he feels so sick he thinks he might just keep vomiting until he shrivels up and dies.
Everything comes up, all of it. All the food he's had to eat recently. Then liquid digestive juices. It burns his throat and his nasal passages like acid. Then it's just bile and mucous and he still can't stop. His stomach clenches like it's being squeezed out, like a sponge in someone's fist. It hurts terribly. Every retch grips and seizes his whole body and leaves his muscles quivering in its wake. Every time he thinks he doesn't have any strength left to bring up anything more, his body convulses involuntarily again and he gags violently into the toilet.
It's not a worm, that he's trying so hard to eject from his body. Not a worm -- a word, inlaid on every inner surface of him and making him sick. He can feel it in his stomach, his gut, his throat, everywhere. Stomach acids scrape his insides raw in an effort to get it out, leaving him hollow.
Slut.
When he's done he collapses on the bathroom floor and shivers uncontrollably, covered in a sheen of sweat. He feels like he's been thrown against a wall repeatedly. Everything inside him is empty. Everything is clenched tight. He hates the taste on his tongue. He hates his body. Everything.
But it's over. The pain starts to fade.
Then the headache comes on.
It's a burning hot poker being driven through his eye and the back of his skull. It's the worst pain he's ever felt in reality or in a dream. Childbirth couldn't be more agonizing than this. Amputation without anaesthetic would be kinder. Tears are streaming from his eyes again; he has no control over them. He loses vision in one eye. He vomits again, bringing up blood now, sobbing weakly at how badly it hurts his stomach muscles. He rocks back and forth; he can't breathe through his nose. He's half delirious. He wishes for a gun.
By morning he's been purged completely. Emotionally, physically and mentally scraped bare and flushed out. A clean slate.
“You look like hell,” Cobb says the next day, when they meet in the lobby of the hotel.
Arthur feels hungover. He can't remember drinking.
“I don't think I got much sleep last night,” he says. His voice is hoarse; his throat is so raw.
Cobb frowns at him with concern. “Take care of yourself, Arthur.”
Arthur nods, exhausted. He really should take better care of himself. His stomach's cramped so tight he feels like he hasn't eaten in a week.
+
Arthur hates Eames. Hates everything about him. Hates the way he dresses. Hates how he plays stupid and then shows Arthur up in front of everyone.
Hates that sometimes he thinks he could be attracted to Eames. If he were gay.
He swears Eames reads his mind, because he takes special pleasure in tormenting Arthur. If he gets stuck in some tight, dark space in the dream, it's invariably Eames who is trapped with him, not Cobb or Mal, which he could handle. If he stays late at the warehouse it's Eames who leaves last, lingering behind his shoulder and making comments about Arthur's work or -- or his ass.
And it always builds up to a point where finally Eames stands a little too close, touches for just a little too long, and Arthur goes back to his hotel and breaks down in tears and doesn't know why. In the morning he's been completely wrung out and made fresh and raw once again. Broken down and reassembled mechanically.
It only happens when he works with Eames.
He's quaking at the end of a long crying jag, just finished throwing up and sitting on the toilet seat, on the cusp of a migraine when his phone rings, because he forgot to turn it off. A name flashes on the screen. It takes him a colossal effort to pull himself together enough to answer it.
“What the hell do you want, Eames?”
There's a startled pause.
“Arthur? Is everything okay?”
“What do you want,” Arthur enunciates slowly for him.
“You just sound a bit rough, that's all.”
Arthur exhales sharply. “I'm hanging up now.”
“No, hang on.” Eames' voice makes him pause. There's a short silence. “No, I've forgotten. Sorry to have bothered you.”
He hangs up.
Arthur does the same.
He shouldn't be surprised when Eames is at his door five minutes later. Shouldn't be, but he is.
“What?” Arthur bites out.
Eames just looks at him for a long moment. Arthur can imagine how he must look. Like he's been flattened by a steamroller, probably, because that's approximately how he feels. He straightens out his waistcoat self-consciously.
Eames just looks, and Arthur's chest caves in. He breaks.
“Here, Arthur.” He tries to pull away when Eames' arms wind around him -- he's not tactile, he's not -- but he has no strength. Eames folds him into a loose embrace and Arthur lets himself weep against Eames' chest. “It's alright,” Eames murmurs, smoothing a hand over the back of Arthur's head. “I'm here now.”
You're the last person I want, Arthur wants to say. But he can't. Can't because he's happy Eames is standing so close to him and he wishes -- Eames would--
His throat clenches, his head spins dizzily and he's puking again, on the floor.
“Oh, pet,” Eames says, when he's done, gasping and shaking. And he hugs Arthur again like it's that easy to touch him.
“I don't know what's wrong with me,” Arthur whispers.
“It's alright. I'll take care of you,” says Eames.
And Arthur wants to tell him, no, don't. Stay away from me, stop touching me, please, please.
But he can't. Because Eames is standing so close to him, and it makes him sickeningly happy.
Slut.
The migraine swallows him up and it's so much worse than it's ever been before; but, of course, he doesn't remember.
+++
Neil's ready to tear New York apart.
He can't find her. He looks everywhere. Checks all their old haunts, their old apartment, even. He asks every person he meets in the neighbourhood if they know her or remember her. He goes to the restaurant where she used to wait tables and asks them, too. No one remembers them. No one knows who or where Wendy is.
His hands are shaky by the time Eames sighs and steps in and drags him to a Starbucks, orders him some fancy kind of roast and pulls out a phone. It's touch-screen and he starts scrolling through it, typing things in, while Neil sips his drink and jogs one leg nervously under the table.
“This tastes like dog shit,” he declares, shoving the drink back at Eames when it's half gone.
“It's your favourite.” Eames rubs his knuckles over the bridge of his nose, tiredly. “I'm not coming up with anything.”
“So try harder.”
Eames puts the phone away and looks at him levelly. “Did you think she'd be waiting here for you when you arrived?”
“She always used to be,” Neil mumbles.
Eames takes him to a police station. Neil drags his heels at first. He doesn't like cops (and the NYPD have a record of not liking him very much, either). But if it's his only shot at finding Wendy, he'll do it. Eames waits outside for him and smokes the whole time he's in there.
When he leaves, he starts walking down the street, away from the station. Away from everything. Eames falls into step behind him. He walks until he can't possibly contain it anymore; then he fists his hands and stops and screams, “Fuck!” as loud as he can.
Eames is swift to usher him off the street, away from the prying eyes of pedestrians. He hustles Neil into the alcove of an apartment building, between two glass doors. Neil's breathing like a racehorse.
“Stabbed? And she was always on my case about staying safe? How dumb d'you have to be -- taking the subway at night -- God--”
He slams his fist against the wall and every breath grates against his lungs. His eyes squeeze shut.
“I'm sorry,” says Eames.
“She always wanted to keep me safe. Always. She took care of me. She was my fuckin' soulmate. And I left her here? In this dirty fuckin' city, alone?” He rounds on Eames. “That's who I am?”
“Look,” says Eames, “you're a lot of things, but you're not--”
Neil skitters out of his reach when he moves forward, like a cornered animal.
“Stop. Stop pretending like you understand me. Nobody does. Only her.”
“I know you're upset--”
Neil folds himself to the wall, makes himself small and runs his fingertips up and down the ugly wallpaper. “It should've been me.” He laughs. “I thought I was the one who wouldn't live to thirty.”
“Don't you think she'd be happy you got your life sorted out?” Eames asks him.
Neil has to concede, she probably would. She'd be happy he wasn't turning tricks anymore. She'd think his job, mind crime, is cool. Even though she'd probably hate Arthur too.
“D'you think I ever wrote to her?” he asks, now feeling a twinge of regret over all those letters he never bothered writing.
“Come on.” Eames puts a hand on his shoulder. It's the first time they've touched all day. “Let's just go.”
They take a cab to their hotel. Neil gets tired and quiet in the car, stops thinking and feeling things. He's always been good at that. Shutting everything off. The grief doesn't hurt so bad and by tomorrow it'll almost be gone.
It's just hard to imagine a world without his other half in it.
If he had the presence of mind or the emotional empathy, he might have wondered if this is how Eames feels right now, too.
“So what's in LA, anyway,” he asks dully, peeling off his leather jacket and throwing it onto his bed.
“Cobb is.” Eames' voice is equally lacklustre. It's already getting dark and they're both jet-lagged, but Neil knows it isn't just plain exhaustion bringing Eames down. He's been slowly running out of emotional battery all day, like just being near Neil bleeds him out. Neil starts rummaging through his suitcase while Eames goes on, “If anyone knows what's going on with you, it's Cobb, and if he doesn't, well, he's the only one who'll be able to fix you.”
“What if he can't?”
Eames looks like Neil has just slapped him in the face. “Of course he can.”
“What if all those years are just ... gone.” He snaps his fingers. “I mean, what if Arthur's dead. What then?”
“He isn't,” says Eames belligerently.
“What if.”
“I'm getting you back.”
Neil squints and pulls something out of one of the zipped pockets in the lining of his suitcase. A red die. He saw it in the hotel room yesterday, too. Eames must have tucked it away in here. “Look at this thing.”
It's snatched out of his hand before he even knows Eames has moved across the room.
“Don't touch that.”
“Sorry.” Neil rolls his eyes and keeps digging. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Eames sit down on the edge of his own bed. He pulls out a square of cloth, a silk hankerchief, and starts wrapping the die up. Once it's all covered up, he hunches over and presses his lips to the little wrapped-up bundle.
He mumbles something so softly Neil almost misses it: I'll keep it safe for you, darling.
In another pocket Neil finds an envelope. It's been folded up numerous times and looks like it's been left that way for a long time. He starts unfolding it. The envelope is sealed. He slits it open and turns it over. Something shiny and silvery falls into his palm. Two identical tags attached to a ball chain. He turns the tags over curiously.
McCormick, Neil is printed at the top.
“Look.” He throws the tags at Eames.
Eames picks them up and reads them. Then he gets up and paces across the room, shaking his head and still staring at them.
Finally, he says, “These are dog tags.”
“Yeah, I know.” Neil grins. “Guess I was fucking military after all.”
Eames throws them back at him. Neil can't read his expression. When he shrugs and loops the chain over his neck, in place of his old necklace, Eames gets into bed and turns out the lights, so as not to look at him anymore.
next part
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~4700
Rating: R
Warnings: Neil McCormick, basically.
Summary: The death of Neil McCormick was gradual, not sudden, and not permanent by any means. In the end, Arthur goes much more quickly.
Author's Note: This is a Mysterious Skin crossover, though it isn't necessary to have seen the movie (I hope).
part one, part two, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight.
+++
It's a strange feeling to be hated so thoroughly by one's grown-up self.
Neil doesn't hate himself. He might regret a couple things, here and there, but he doesn't hate himself. He's pretty satisfied with who he is, actually.
Arthur, though. Arthur definitely hates him.
He can tell this by the way Eames watches him. Eames doesn't say much, but his lips will thin a little bit when Neil does certain things. Neil can tell that Eames hates the way he slouches, hates the swagger in Neil's stride, hates when he gives certain words a broad Kansas inflection (which is getting broader by the day, judging by Eames' expressions). He orders a greasy breakfast sandwich from a questionable cafe in the airport and Eames has to turn away. His body language reads loud and clear: Arthur wouldn't do that.
Arthur probably eats a lot of salad. Neil hates him, too.
And Eames.
Eames tails him like a bodyguard. It's probably how he sees himself. Guarding Arthur's body from all the terrible things Neil might do to it. Like Neil's the imposter.
He's a perverse spirit and when Eames follows him into the washroom at the airport, he says, standing at the urinal, grinning cockily, “If you wanted to see my dick again, you could've paid me.”
It's worth it for the way the corners of Eames' eyes tighten in a slight wince.
“You're twenty-nine,” he says, once Neil's zipped up and washing his hands. “Not a teenager anymore. Stop acting like a kid.”
“Stop treating me like one,” Neil fires back. “I don't need a babysitter.”
Eames snorts. “Right, well, the real you would never forgive me if I let eighteen-year-old-mentality you run off to Amsterdam because I took my eyes off you for a second, so there's that.”
Neil turns to face him. Eames never seems to meet his eyes directly.
“What makes Arthur real?” he demands. “Just that you like him more than me? 'Cause I was here first. I got a lot more right to be in this body than he does.”
“Yes,” says Eames flatly. “I like him better than you. Now let's go before we miss our flight.”
Neil checks a dozen times that they're for sure going to New York before he boards the plane with Eames. He doesn't trust the other man. Once the plane takes off, though, and it's definitely headed to JFK, he finds himself relaxing. He's going to go and find Wendy. Wherever she is, he's going to find her. That's how soulmates work.
He wonders what she's like now, if she's happy. He was never able to picture the two of them growing up. He wonders, did she get married? Does she have kids? Is she happy?
“My friend Wendy, who we're gonna find,” he says to Eames, “did you ever meet her?”
“Why would I?”
“You and me, we're friends or something, right?”
“We're--” Eames seems stuck for words for a moment. “Colleagues,” he finishes eventually. And, shutting his eyes tiredly: “You and I.”
“Whatever,” says Neil. “Didn't I ever talk about her?”
“No,” says Eames. “I don't like to burst your bubble, but you really haven't got many friends. You're fairly anti-social.”
“No. Wendy's different. Even if I changed my name and stopped talking to my mom and everyone, I'd still talk to her.”
“Well, you never talked about her,” says Eames, “and that's another thing, just a theory I've been toying with. You don't remember having been Arthur.”
“That's a genius fuckin' deduction,” says Neil impatiently.
“So I suppose it's possible,” Eames talks over him, undeterred, “that Arthur doesn't remember you.”
“No, it's not.” Neil's bristling immediately. Flushed with anger, he hates them both even more profoundly -- Eames and Arthur. “Stop fuckin' talking about him like he's a different person. I was here first. He's not some other guy who just took over my body. He's living my life, not the other way around, got it?”
“Because your life was so winsome and droll and there's nothing about it you'd ever like to change,” says Eames dryly, staring out the window.
“I like my life.”
“You were a hustler,” says Eames, lowering his voice, even though the roaring of the twin engines on the plane drowns their conversation pretty well.
“Yeah. And I fuckin' like it,” says Neil forcefully.
“Well, then, we have to question how you went from this to having the libido of a celery stalk, don't we?”
“Wendy will know.” Neil leans back in his seat and folds his arms comfortably. “She'll know what happened to me. She knows everything about me.” And when he's with her again, he can get Eames off his tail and it'll be like old times. Partners in crime.
Eames just sighs.
The flight's boring, especially when Eames pulls out a set of headphones, plugs them into his personal touch-screen, and starts listening to music. Neil doesn't have headphones and he doesn't have three dollars to buy them from a stewardess, so he just has to sit there for most of the flight. He doesn't last very long.
Eames blinks when Neil yanks his sleeve. He loops the headphones around his neck.
“What?”
“You said we're colleagues. What do we do?”
“Crime,” says Eames. “Mind crime. We use the PASIV and we steal ideas from people's subconscious.”
“Am I good at it?” Neil asks. Eames seems to hesitate.
“You're the best,” he says.
Neil likes that. He's a criminal and he's good at it. He smirks.
“Arthur's the best,” Eames amends, seeing the look on his face. “You, apparently, don't even have the capacity to dream up oxygen.”
Neil slouches back into his seat. “Whatever.”
“Which is what makes me wonder,” Eames says thoughtfully, almost to himself, “if that's Arthur -- I mean, if he conditioned himself so well never to think about you or bring up certain memories, that you stonewall yourself when you even try to access your own subconscious.”
Neil snorts and starts to say, “That's dumb. Nobody can repress--”
But he has to stop, because he's just remembered Brian. Brian, that scrawny little nerd who was dumb enough to think he'd been abducted by aliens instead of raped when he was eight. Brian, that poor fucker, with his nosebleeds and his black-outs. His whole life revolving around a black hole where memories went dark.
The stupid thing is, Neil remembers Brian, and he remembers meeting Brian, but there's something on the periphery of that memory that he doesn't remember. It's like a blurred spot in his vision. He can look around it, but not directly at it.
“What is it?” Eames asks.
“Shut up. I'm thinking,” Neil says, because he doesn't want to admit that Eames is right: There's something he's hiding from himself.
Even Brian couldn't stay repressed forever.
He lets a whole hour pass between them before he bugs Eames again.
“What?” Eames snaps, yanking down his headphones again.
“Tell me more about me,” Neil says. “Maybe it'll jog my memory,” he adds.
Eames frowns. “I don't know that much,” he says. “You were in the military when you were younger.”
“US military don't let fags serve,” says Neil dismissively.
“It does if they keep mum and stay in the closet.”
“That doesn't sound like me.”
“Well, that's what I know about you,” says Eames. “You joined the military, and they taught you dreamsharing. Then you deserted. You met Cobb and Mal. Cobb introduced us. Then Mal died, and everyone thought Cobb had done her in, so he went on the run, and got into crime to pay for his lawyers, and you followed him.”
“Tell me about Cobb,” says Neil.
Eames does, though he seems reluctant to share any more than he thinks Neil needs to know. Still, Neil is able to surmise that his relationship with Cobb doesn't extend beyond platonic, which definitely doesn't sound like him.
“Now tell me about us.”
Instantly Eames is uncomfortable. “There's not much to tell. Like I said, we're colleagues.”
“Yeah, colleagues who take vacations together and share a room and fuck.”
“I thought you were Arthur,” Eames says, pained.
“You should be happy I'm not, then,” says Neil. “If Arthur'd never fuck you. I mean, did we ever fuck before that?”
“No.”
“Then stop lookin' so fuckin' sad. You got what you wanted. I know you wanted it, you said so yourself.”
Eames shakes his head. “There's ... no.”
“Would Arthur fuck you if you told him you loved him?”
Eames' eyebrows furrow.
“Would he fuck you if you told him he was special?” Neil presses. “If you called him your fucking angel?”
“No,” says Eames, drawing back almost imperceptibly.
Neil leans back into his seat and grunts, satisfied. “Then at least he learned something from me.”
They stop talking. Eames puts his headphones back on and closes his eyes for a long time.
+++
Contrary to what most people believe, Arthur didn't hate Eames at first sight. When Cobb first introduces them, the forger is polite and professional and Arthur is civil in turn, even though he is aware that Eames is a criminal in the dreaming world. They get to work.
True, he is probably the most fidgety person Arthur's ever met in his life. Arthur notices this about him almost right away. Eames plays with his hands a lot. He flicks each fingernail against his thumb and it makes an annoying clicking sound. Cracks his knuckles one-handed. He bites his nails, too, and sometimes this makes Arthur want to smack his hand away from his mouth. He's a compulsive shredder: when he's holding a candy wrapper, he tears it up methodically; when he's holding a match or toothpick, he snaps it up and down; and when he's holding a pen, he chews it.
All these things Arthur notices as a matter of fact. He doesn't hate Eames.
Eames shows off in the dreamscape, adopting a couple different visages. Arthur is careful not to look impressed, knowing that Eames is flaunting for his benefit. He tries it later, on his own -- forging. He can't do it, not even a little. It equally frustrates him and gives him new respect for his colleague.
When all the prep work is out of the way and they're able to get the mark put under, they go down together, all three of them. And it goes well, until there's a hitch, and Arthur tries not to be surprised when Cobb turns to Eames instead of him and says, “We need you to run a distraction. Pick something pretty.”
And Eames just casts a lazy eye over the place, the bar of Arthur's design that the mark has filled out with his subconscious, and he says, “I don't think a lady will be to his tastes.”
“He dates women,” Arthur points out, because he's the point man and he should know their mark better than Eames does. He does.
Eames just smiles at him -- a knowing smile that makes Arthur burn inexplicably -- and says in a voice that's a purr, “Trust me, Arthur.”
He doesn't even forge. He saunters over to the bar, takes a seat next to their mark, and starts talking. He doesn't fidget. He leans in, casually invading personal space. He smiles. Touches the man's arm. Then his knee. He laughs.
In the end Cobb doesn't have to do any extracting at all, because the mark spills all his secrets to Eames.
While Cobb is filling out their report afterward, and Arthur is packing everything up, his brain is buzzing. He can't believe he didn't realize that the mark was gay. The truth is--
The truth is he didn't even consider it.
His nerves tingle and he feels unusually lightheaded. His back goes rigid when he feels Eames' fingers curl over his shoulders.
“What's the matter?” Eames' breath tickles the back of his ear. “See something you like down there, darling?”
Arthur says nothing. Eames slides away and chuckles.
That. That is the moment that Arthur first starts hating Eames.
He's burning and prickling and flushed with inexplicable anger all the way back to his hotel. Eames' words circle in his head like a song on repeat. He doesn't understand how somebody can sound like that, have a voice that's pure fucking sex all the time, almost too silky and low and husky for normal conversation. He thinks about how easily Eames strolled up to that mark and started flirting. Like hitting on men is something he does all the time.
When Arthur gets back to his hotel room he realizes, belatedly, that he's hard. It happens. Sometimes as a side effect of the Somnacin upon waking up.
He crawls onto his bed, lies on his stomach and doesn't think about it.
But he can't stop thinking about Eames.
That fucking voice. The breadth of him, how assuredly masculine he is. How easily he seduced their mark. Arthur wonders what would have happened if it hadn't been a job, if Eames had met that man at a real bar and tried to pick him up. Would they have left the bar? Arthur wonders, would Eames have sucked his cock -- or fucked him in the ass--
His mouth goes completely bone-dry. That's a disgusting thought. He's a little sickened at himself for having had it.
He wonders, what if it were him at that bar. If Eames would try to pick him up. If they would fuck--
There's a nauseating physical pain in his gut that makes him curl up on the bed and shut his eyes, breathing hard. He pushes his erection between his thighs and clamps his legs together. Hisses through the pain. It makes him feel better. It's a meagre penance. The blood starts to leave his groin, and he feels so much better.
And then, without warning, he's crying into his hand.
Arthur can't remember the last time in his life he cried. But it's happening now: he's shaking, sobbing, tears stream from his eyes and he has no idea where they come from.
And it's not just weeping. It wracks through his entire body like a hurricane. Before he knows it, he's sobbing so hard he can't draw breath. He feels so sick and guilty and doesn't know why. He grips tight fistfuls of the bedcover as though to anchor himself. His hands shake. The tears come in a relentless flood. His whole body is quaking with the force of his sobs and it's like he's been stabbed, like his heart is breaking, and he can't stop it.
It rolls through him until he's gasping for breath and then begins to taper to a trickle. He fights to gain control of himself. Guilt still squirms in his stomach and he gets shakily to his feet to get a glass of water from the bathroom.
He drinks, and almost immediately falls in front of the toilet and starts heaving.
That guilt in his stomach, squirming so unpleasantly -- it's like a huge worm, writhing in there. In an instant he feels so sick he thinks he might just keep vomiting until he shrivels up and dies.
Everything comes up, all of it. All the food he's had to eat recently. Then liquid digestive juices. It burns his throat and his nasal passages like acid. Then it's just bile and mucous and he still can't stop. His stomach clenches like it's being squeezed out, like a sponge in someone's fist. It hurts terribly. Every retch grips and seizes his whole body and leaves his muscles quivering in its wake. Every time he thinks he doesn't have any strength left to bring up anything more, his body convulses involuntarily again and he gags violently into the toilet.
It's not a worm, that he's trying so hard to eject from his body. Not a worm -- a word, inlaid on every inner surface of him and making him sick. He can feel it in his stomach, his gut, his throat, everywhere. Stomach acids scrape his insides raw in an effort to get it out, leaving him hollow.
Slut.
When he's done he collapses on the bathroom floor and shivers uncontrollably, covered in a sheen of sweat. He feels like he's been thrown against a wall repeatedly. Everything inside him is empty. Everything is clenched tight. He hates the taste on his tongue. He hates his body. Everything.
But it's over. The pain starts to fade.
Then the headache comes on.
It's a burning hot poker being driven through his eye and the back of his skull. It's the worst pain he's ever felt in reality or in a dream. Childbirth couldn't be more agonizing than this. Amputation without anaesthetic would be kinder. Tears are streaming from his eyes again; he has no control over them. He loses vision in one eye. He vomits again, bringing up blood now, sobbing weakly at how badly it hurts his stomach muscles. He rocks back and forth; he can't breathe through his nose. He's half delirious. He wishes for a gun.
By morning he's been purged completely. Emotionally, physically and mentally scraped bare and flushed out. A clean slate.
“You look like hell,” Cobb says the next day, when they meet in the lobby of the hotel.
Arthur feels hungover. He can't remember drinking.
“I don't think I got much sleep last night,” he says. His voice is hoarse; his throat is so raw.
Cobb frowns at him with concern. “Take care of yourself, Arthur.”
Arthur nods, exhausted. He really should take better care of himself. His stomach's cramped so tight he feels like he hasn't eaten in a week.
+
Arthur hates Eames. Hates everything about him. Hates the way he dresses. Hates how he plays stupid and then shows Arthur up in front of everyone.
Hates that sometimes he thinks he could be attracted to Eames. If he were gay.
He swears Eames reads his mind, because he takes special pleasure in tormenting Arthur. If he gets stuck in some tight, dark space in the dream, it's invariably Eames who is trapped with him, not Cobb or Mal, which he could handle. If he stays late at the warehouse it's Eames who leaves last, lingering behind his shoulder and making comments about Arthur's work or -- or his ass.
And it always builds up to a point where finally Eames stands a little too close, touches for just a little too long, and Arthur goes back to his hotel and breaks down in tears and doesn't know why. In the morning he's been completely wrung out and made fresh and raw once again. Broken down and reassembled mechanically.
It only happens when he works with Eames.
He's quaking at the end of a long crying jag, just finished throwing up and sitting on the toilet seat, on the cusp of a migraine when his phone rings, because he forgot to turn it off. A name flashes on the screen. It takes him a colossal effort to pull himself together enough to answer it.
“What the hell do you want, Eames?”
There's a startled pause.
“Arthur? Is everything okay?”
“What do you want,” Arthur enunciates slowly for him.
“You just sound a bit rough, that's all.”
Arthur exhales sharply. “I'm hanging up now.”
“No, hang on.” Eames' voice makes him pause. There's a short silence. “No, I've forgotten. Sorry to have bothered you.”
He hangs up.
Arthur does the same.
He shouldn't be surprised when Eames is at his door five minutes later. Shouldn't be, but he is.
“What?” Arthur bites out.
Eames just looks at him for a long moment. Arthur can imagine how he must look. Like he's been flattened by a steamroller, probably, because that's approximately how he feels. He straightens out his waistcoat self-consciously.
Eames just looks, and Arthur's chest caves in. He breaks.
“Here, Arthur.” He tries to pull away when Eames' arms wind around him -- he's not tactile, he's not -- but he has no strength. Eames folds him into a loose embrace and Arthur lets himself weep against Eames' chest. “It's alright,” Eames murmurs, smoothing a hand over the back of Arthur's head. “I'm here now.”
You're the last person I want, Arthur wants to say. But he can't. Can't because he's happy Eames is standing so close to him and he wishes -- Eames would--
His throat clenches, his head spins dizzily and he's puking again, on the floor.
“Oh, pet,” Eames says, when he's done, gasping and shaking. And he hugs Arthur again like it's that easy to touch him.
“I don't know what's wrong with me,” Arthur whispers.
“It's alright. I'll take care of you,” says Eames.
And Arthur wants to tell him, no, don't. Stay away from me, stop touching me, please, please.
But he can't. Because Eames is standing so close to him, and it makes him sickeningly happy.
Slut.
The migraine swallows him up and it's so much worse than it's ever been before; but, of course, he doesn't remember.
+++
Neil's ready to tear New York apart.
He can't find her. He looks everywhere. Checks all their old haunts, their old apartment, even. He asks every person he meets in the neighbourhood if they know her or remember her. He goes to the restaurant where she used to wait tables and asks them, too. No one remembers them. No one knows who or where Wendy is.
His hands are shaky by the time Eames sighs and steps in and drags him to a Starbucks, orders him some fancy kind of roast and pulls out a phone. It's touch-screen and he starts scrolling through it, typing things in, while Neil sips his drink and jogs one leg nervously under the table.
“This tastes like dog shit,” he declares, shoving the drink back at Eames when it's half gone.
“It's your favourite.” Eames rubs his knuckles over the bridge of his nose, tiredly. “I'm not coming up with anything.”
“So try harder.”
Eames puts the phone away and looks at him levelly. “Did you think she'd be waiting here for you when you arrived?”
“She always used to be,” Neil mumbles.
Eames takes him to a police station. Neil drags his heels at first. He doesn't like cops (and the NYPD have a record of not liking him very much, either). But if it's his only shot at finding Wendy, he'll do it. Eames waits outside for him and smokes the whole time he's in there.
When he leaves, he starts walking down the street, away from the station. Away from everything. Eames falls into step behind him. He walks until he can't possibly contain it anymore; then he fists his hands and stops and screams, “Fuck!” as loud as he can.
Eames is swift to usher him off the street, away from the prying eyes of pedestrians. He hustles Neil into the alcove of an apartment building, between two glass doors. Neil's breathing like a racehorse.
“Stabbed? And she was always on my case about staying safe? How dumb d'you have to be -- taking the subway at night -- God--”
He slams his fist against the wall and every breath grates against his lungs. His eyes squeeze shut.
“I'm sorry,” says Eames.
“She always wanted to keep me safe. Always. She took care of me. She was my fuckin' soulmate. And I left her here? In this dirty fuckin' city, alone?” He rounds on Eames. “That's who I am?”
“Look,” says Eames, “you're a lot of things, but you're not--”
Neil skitters out of his reach when he moves forward, like a cornered animal.
“Stop. Stop pretending like you understand me. Nobody does. Only her.”
“I know you're upset--”
Neil folds himself to the wall, makes himself small and runs his fingertips up and down the ugly wallpaper. “It should've been me.” He laughs. “I thought I was the one who wouldn't live to thirty.”
“Don't you think she'd be happy you got your life sorted out?” Eames asks him.
Neil has to concede, she probably would. She'd be happy he wasn't turning tricks anymore. She'd think his job, mind crime, is cool. Even though she'd probably hate Arthur too.
“D'you think I ever wrote to her?” he asks, now feeling a twinge of regret over all those letters he never bothered writing.
“Come on.” Eames puts a hand on his shoulder. It's the first time they've touched all day. “Let's just go.”
They take a cab to their hotel. Neil gets tired and quiet in the car, stops thinking and feeling things. He's always been good at that. Shutting everything off. The grief doesn't hurt so bad and by tomorrow it'll almost be gone.
It's just hard to imagine a world without his other half in it.
If he had the presence of mind or the emotional empathy, he might have wondered if this is how Eames feels right now, too.
“So what's in LA, anyway,” he asks dully, peeling off his leather jacket and throwing it onto his bed.
“Cobb is.” Eames' voice is equally lacklustre. It's already getting dark and they're both jet-lagged, but Neil knows it isn't just plain exhaustion bringing Eames down. He's been slowly running out of emotional battery all day, like just being near Neil bleeds him out. Neil starts rummaging through his suitcase while Eames goes on, “If anyone knows what's going on with you, it's Cobb, and if he doesn't, well, he's the only one who'll be able to fix you.”
“What if he can't?”
Eames looks like Neil has just slapped him in the face. “Of course he can.”
“What if all those years are just ... gone.” He snaps his fingers. “I mean, what if Arthur's dead. What then?”
“He isn't,” says Eames belligerently.
“What if.”
“I'm getting you back.”
Neil squints and pulls something out of one of the zipped pockets in the lining of his suitcase. A red die. He saw it in the hotel room yesterday, too. Eames must have tucked it away in here. “Look at this thing.”
It's snatched out of his hand before he even knows Eames has moved across the room.
“Don't touch that.”
“Sorry.” Neil rolls his eyes and keeps digging. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Eames sit down on the edge of his own bed. He pulls out a square of cloth, a silk hankerchief, and starts wrapping the die up. Once it's all covered up, he hunches over and presses his lips to the little wrapped-up bundle.
He mumbles something so softly Neil almost misses it: I'll keep it safe for you, darling.
In another pocket Neil finds an envelope. It's been folded up numerous times and looks like it's been left that way for a long time. He starts unfolding it. The envelope is sealed. He slits it open and turns it over. Something shiny and silvery falls into his palm. Two identical tags attached to a ball chain. He turns the tags over curiously.
McCormick, Neil is printed at the top.
“Look.” He throws the tags at Eames.
Eames picks them up and reads them. Then he gets up and paces across the room, shaking his head and still staring at them.
Finally, he says, “These are dog tags.”
“Yeah, I know.” Neil grins. “Guess I was fucking military after all.”
Eames throws them back at him. Neil can't read his expression. When he shrugs and loops the chain over his neck, in place of his old necklace, Eames gets into bed and turns out the lights, so as not to look at him anymore.
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