fic: hush a bye baby
Title: hush a bye baby
Author: erethesunrises
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur/Eames, OC (a projection of Eames')
Rating: R for dark themes (some sexual content, language)
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: "You’re the famous Arthur. Eames likes you, you know. Loves you, in fact, in his own silly way. Now that I’ve met you, I can see why." Arthur meets a projection of Eames' who has a dark fascination with nursey rhymes and a certain Point Man.
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
Beta: The lovely and wonderful fiery_twilight who also talked it over with me and let me bounce ideas off her.
run, run, run away little boy.
It is Eames’ subconscious they go into, one that Arthur has been into many times before, where Arthur knows the projections almost as well as he knows his own. He feels comfortable there, even as the dreamer, even when he’s left alone when everyone else goes down into the next level. There are only two levels on this mission, no need for sedatives, and no doubts in anyone’s mind.
Arthur hooks up Eames, partly because the grip Eames has on his wrist is currently dictating his actions but also because it allows Arthur to run his fingers over his brow and along his lower lip when he falls asleep.
“Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.”
“I’ll see you when we wake, pet.”
Arthur is alone, alone in a museum dedicated to World War II art. Arthur is alone, save for the sleeping bodies of his teammates, with an entire museum above him, calling to him in a way that he couldn’t dream of resisting. So he doesn’t. He locks the door behind him and ascends. When he returns, he meets Eamonn.
He is standing in the midst of the sleeping bodies, back to the door, doing absolutely nothing. He makes Arthur’s hair stand on end the moment he opens the door. He tenses and recalls almost immediately that he had locked the door when he left. Before he can question the mysterious man, he speaks.
“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.”
Arthur hesitates at the nursery rhyme and he’s instantly on guard. “Who are you? How did you get in here?” His questions come out like rapid fire and he’s trying not to betray the fact that his voice is trembling like the side of a mountain in an avalanche. Never before has he felt this from a projection. He’s had the experience of projections converging on him, recognizing the strangeness of the dream, but never one who gave a sense of being in tune with the goings on of the dream. He has seen projections that seemed more real than the rest (Mal being the first to come to mind) but never one like this. When he turns, Arthur feels every ounce of breath in his lungs escape him.
The man is roughly the same height as Eames though exceptionally better dressed (though Arthur would give anything for that ridiculous mustard colored shirt right now). He’s slimmer, eerily so in a way that gives him no points, and with darker, slicked-back hair. But the demeanor is similar and the way he holds himself makes Arthur blink his eyes shut tight for a moment so that when he opens them again, he can be sure it’s not actually Eames he’s seeing.
The man starts walking towards him, footsteps carefully thought out and silent, as if he’s stalking Arthur as his prey. The prey in question is frozen. Where Arthur once could easily challenge this man, he now finds himself stuck to the floor, unable to move, a grave mistake on his part.
The man is suddenly on him, pressing his body flush against Arthur’s, who he’s pushed up against the wall. One hand is splayed across Arthur’s neck and the other is on his hip (his fingers are calloused just like Eames’ and Arthur feels his stomach churning). He leans forward, ghosting his lips over the shell of Arthur’s ear before whispering hotly against the skin: “The Itsy Bitsy spider climbed up the spout, down came the rain and washed the spider out.” His fingers crawled up the side of Arthur’s body as he spoke, one finger after the other. He paused before pulling back, regaling Arthur with a fascinated stare, eyes darkening with each passing moment. His accent is Irish but with the same inflection as Eames’, that same deep gruffness and raw and carnal lust. “Hello, Arthur. I’ve been waiting for you.”
When Arthur wakes up, he listens. He listens and he hears. He hears the sound of crashing waves and that voice. Eames’ voice that isn’t Eames’.
“The Sandman's coming in his train of cars, with moonbeam windows and with wheels of stars. So hush you little ones and have no fear.”
He struggles to open his eyes, rubbing then cringing as he rubs sand in his eyes and face. He sits up with a jolt, wiping his hands over his already ruined suit. His head is throbbing and as he uses his sleeves to rid his eyes of the sand, he finally begins to take in his surroundings. He’s on a beach, alone, save for one other person. The person who brought him here. He begins to panic, having no idea where he is and that he left his teammates stranded. He scrambles to his feet.
“Where the hell am I? Who are you? Where’s my team?” It’s rare he feels as panicked as this.
“Aren’t the answers to those first two a little obvious? We’re at the ocean and I’m a projection of Eames’. As for your team, they’re precisely where you left them. They won’t be waking up for a while, right? Which leaves us time to have a little fun.”
The man turns and Arthur wants to run, but his legs won’t let him. The man comes at Arthur, overpowering him the way only a projection can until Arthur’s laying on his back, the wind knocked out of him. He lowers himself onto Arthur’s abdomen, sitting comfortably there.
“You’re the famous Arthur. Eames likes you, you know. Loves you, in fact, in his own silly way. Now that I’ve met you, I can see why.” Arthur is struggling beneath him, arms trapped at his side by the man’s legs. His body freezes when the man places both hands flat on his navel, atop his shirt, and begins slowly traveling upwards until they stop on his neck, lightly gripping there. He leans forward, his face mere inches from Arthur, lips brushing upon lips, voice hot and searing. “My name is Eamonn. It’s nice to meet you.”
He’s walking through the museum with an arm wrapped snugly around Arthur’s waist, holding him close. “World War II gallery. Not so much Eames’ style, is it?” Eamonn purses his lips and furrows his brows, looking to Arthur inquisitively. “Ah, so this must be for you. How thoughtful of him.” His voice is laced with cleverly concealed sarcasm.
Arthur walks stiff as a board. His arms are stock-still at his side and his eyes staring straight ahead. He’s afraid, afraid and furious and feeling ill and wanting nothing more than for this dream to end, wanting nothing more than to die. If he can just get back downstairs to his team -
He suddenly lurches forward, intending to make a run for it, but Eamonn is on him within seconds. He slams Arthur’s body against the wall, right into a painting, the glass shattering against Arthur’s back, the painting falling off its nails but trapped between Arthur and the wall. Eamoon grabs a fistful of Arthur’s hair roughly and looks to the painting and back to Arthur. “Tsk, tsk, look what you did. Not very respectful of you.”
Arthur writhes against the wall but he’s no match for the projection. He could have been physically but not psychologically and that was where he needed the strength right now. But his mind has shut off and he’s never been more terrified in a dream than right now.
Eamonn tightens his grip on Arthur’s hair, the other hand unbuttoning the top few buttons of Arthur’s starched shirt, pushing it aside. He leans forward and licks that beautiful patch of skin where shoulder meets neck. He mumbles into it, pressing his body harder against Arthur’s, crunching glass against the wall. “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.”
There are only two levels of dreams in this assignment and therefore no sedatives were needed. Dying in this world would wake them up. Still, dying remains the less pleasant way of escaping a dream. Instead it was simply a matter of waiting out the allotted time for the dream and waking up naturally. What he wasn’t counting on was standing on the roof of the museum with each of his teammates sitting in chairs on the edge of the roof, backs to the ledge. Eamonn stood behind Arthur, one hand settled in its choice place of Arthur’s neck, spread across the jugular, feeling the bob of his Adam’s apple. The other rested on Arthur’s navel, fingers occasionally creeping downwards beneath the elastic of Arthur’s underwear, sending that unsettling but now familiar chill up his spine.
“Kicks have always been a favourite of mine. You can do most anything to imitate a drop, including the imitation of murder.”
“This won’t be a kick. It will kill them.”
“But wake them up, am I right? Oh, what’s the difference?” His voice was sickeningly jovial.
Arthur then remained silent, jaw clenched tight, eyes firmly settled on the slump of Eames’ body, completely unconscious in the chair. He feels sick to his stomach but does not struggle in Eamonn’s grip. He knows better than to do so, even as he feels the fingers go lower and lower until they’re pressing deep into skin, making Arthur groan despite himself. Still he remains stoic, as his jaw clenches tighter and his eyes brim with tears.
“Are you ready to begin, my pet? It is time, is it not?” He nuzzles his head against Arthur’s head, as if it’s the most natural action in the world. “Give them the kick. Literally.”
Arthur doesn’t want to. It’s nearly time for them to wake. If he can stall, he can save the guilt he’d bear over killing his teammates, even if it merely means waking them up early. But Eamonn is pressing harder against him, breathing labouredly into his ear. It’s a sensation he never wants to feel again. “Give them the kick, darling.” He hisses this time, growing increasingly impatient. Cobb is first. Arthur shuts his eyes tight and tries to drown out the feeling of Eamonn’s hands on him before his lifts his leg and kicks the chair, sending Cobb tumbling over the edge of the building. “We’ll save Mr. Eames for last, won’t we?” He moves past Eames with Arthur, moving instead to Ariadne.
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, I know you want to. I can feel it.” And Arthur groans again, in anguish, as he feels the hand completely take hold of him, gripping tight and painfully.
When they finally reach Eames, Arthur stands before him, his entire body slowing down, fighting against what he’s about to do. He can hear Eamonn’s voice once more whispering in his ear: “Hush a bye baby, on the tree top, when the wind blows the cradle will rock. When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.” But when Eames’ eyes open, Arthur has already performed the deed.
When Arthur wakes, he moves past everyone in a blur and runs straight to the bathroom. He can hear inquiries, hear his name being tossed around but his head is already halfway into the toilet and he’s sick with blotched cheeks from his tears. His suit is rumpled and the knees are already ruined from the bathroom floor. He feels no better.
“Arthur?”
When he hears that voice, the same voice with the real accent, tentative and worried, he shudders. One hand on the toilet and the other in his pocket, clutching to his totem, he stills and freezes up, body tightening with fear. When he feels a soft press of fingers into his shoulder, fingers familiar and comforting, he flinches.
Author: erethesunrises
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur/Eames, OC (a projection of Eames')
Rating: R for dark themes (some sexual content, language)
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: "You’re the famous Arthur. Eames likes you, you know. Loves you, in fact, in his own silly way. Now that I’ve met you, I can see why." Arthur meets a projection of Eames' who has a dark fascination with nursey rhymes and a certain Point Man.
Disclaimer: Don't own it.
Beta: The lovely and wonderful fiery_twilight who also talked it over with me and let me bounce ideas off her.
run, run, run away little boy.
It is Eames’ subconscious they go into, one that Arthur has been into many times before, where Arthur knows the projections almost as well as he knows his own. He feels comfortable there, even as the dreamer, even when he’s left alone when everyone else goes down into the next level. There are only two levels on this mission, no need for sedatives, and no doubts in anyone’s mind.
Arthur hooks up Eames, partly because the grip Eames has on his wrist is currently dictating his actions but also because it allows Arthur to run his fingers over his brow and along his lower lip when he falls asleep.
“Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.”
“I’ll see you when we wake, pet.”
Arthur is alone, alone in a museum dedicated to World War II art. Arthur is alone, save for the sleeping bodies of his teammates, with an entire museum above him, calling to him in a way that he couldn’t dream of resisting. So he doesn’t. He locks the door behind him and ascends. When he returns, he meets Eamonn.
He is standing in the midst of the sleeping bodies, back to the door, doing absolutely nothing. He makes Arthur’s hair stand on end the moment he opens the door. He tenses and recalls almost immediately that he had locked the door when he left. Before he can question the mysterious man, he speaks.
“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.”
Arthur hesitates at the nursery rhyme and he’s instantly on guard. “Who are you? How did you get in here?” His questions come out like rapid fire and he’s trying not to betray the fact that his voice is trembling like the side of a mountain in an avalanche. Never before has he felt this from a projection. He’s had the experience of projections converging on him, recognizing the strangeness of the dream, but never one who gave a sense of being in tune with the goings on of the dream. He has seen projections that seemed more real than the rest (Mal being the first to come to mind) but never one like this. When he turns, Arthur feels every ounce of breath in his lungs escape him.
The man is roughly the same height as Eames though exceptionally better dressed (though Arthur would give anything for that ridiculous mustard colored shirt right now). He’s slimmer, eerily so in a way that gives him no points, and with darker, slicked-back hair. But the demeanor is similar and the way he holds himself makes Arthur blink his eyes shut tight for a moment so that when he opens them again, he can be sure it’s not actually Eames he’s seeing.
The man starts walking towards him, footsteps carefully thought out and silent, as if he’s stalking Arthur as his prey. The prey in question is frozen. Where Arthur once could easily challenge this man, he now finds himself stuck to the floor, unable to move, a grave mistake on his part.
The man is suddenly on him, pressing his body flush against Arthur’s, who he’s pushed up against the wall. One hand is splayed across Arthur’s neck and the other is on his hip (his fingers are calloused just like Eames’ and Arthur feels his stomach churning). He leans forward, ghosting his lips over the shell of Arthur’s ear before whispering hotly against the skin: “The Itsy Bitsy spider climbed up the spout, down came the rain and washed the spider out.” His fingers crawled up the side of Arthur’s body as he spoke, one finger after the other. He paused before pulling back, regaling Arthur with a fascinated stare, eyes darkening with each passing moment. His accent is Irish but with the same inflection as Eames’, that same deep gruffness and raw and carnal lust. “Hello, Arthur. I’ve been waiting for you.”
When Arthur wakes up, he listens. He listens and he hears. He hears the sound of crashing waves and that voice. Eames’ voice that isn’t Eames’.
“The Sandman's coming in his train of cars, with moonbeam windows and with wheels of stars. So hush you little ones and have no fear.”
He struggles to open his eyes, rubbing then cringing as he rubs sand in his eyes and face. He sits up with a jolt, wiping his hands over his already ruined suit. His head is throbbing and as he uses his sleeves to rid his eyes of the sand, he finally begins to take in his surroundings. He’s on a beach, alone, save for one other person. The person who brought him here. He begins to panic, having no idea where he is and that he left his teammates stranded. He scrambles to his feet.
“Where the hell am I? Who are you? Where’s my team?” It’s rare he feels as panicked as this.
“Aren’t the answers to those first two a little obvious? We’re at the ocean and I’m a projection of Eames’. As for your team, they’re precisely where you left them. They won’t be waking up for a while, right? Which leaves us time to have a little fun.”
The man turns and Arthur wants to run, but his legs won’t let him. The man comes at Arthur, overpowering him the way only a projection can until Arthur’s laying on his back, the wind knocked out of him. He lowers himself onto Arthur’s abdomen, sitting comfortably there.
“You’re the famous Arthur. Eames likes you, you know. Loves you, in fact, in his own silly way. Now that I’ve met you, I can see why.” Arthur is struggling beneath him, arms trapped at his side by the man’s legs. His body freezes when the man places both hands flat on his navel, atop his shirt, and begins slowly traveling upwards until they stop on his neck, lightly gripping there. He leans forward, his face mere inches from Arthur, lips brushing upon lips, voice hot and searing. “My name is Eamonn. It’s nice to meet you.”
He’s walking through the museum with an arm wrapped snugly around Arthur’s waist, holding him close. “World War II gallery. Not so much Eames’ style, is it?” Eamonn purses his lips and furrows his brows, looking to Arthur inquisitively. “Ah, so this must be for you. How thoughtful of him.” His voice is laced with cleverly concealed sarcasm.
Arthur walks stiff as a board. His arms are stock-still at his side and his eyes staring straight ahead. He’s afraid, afraid and furious and feeling ill and wanting nothing more than for this dream to end, wanting nothing more than to die. If he can just get back downstairs to his team -
He suddenly lurches forward, intending to make a run for it, but Eamonn is on him within seconds. He slams Arthur’s body against the wall, right into a painting, the glass shattering against Arthur’s back, the painting falling off its nails but trapped between Arthur and the wall. Eamoon grabs a fistful of Arthur’s hair roughly and looks to the painting and back to Arthur. “Tsk, tsk, look what you did. Not very respectful of you.”
Arthur writhes against the wall but he’s no match for the projection. He could have been physically but not psychologically and that was where he needed the strength right now. But his mind has shut off and he’s never been more terrified in a dream than right now.
Eamonn tightens his grip on Arthur’s hair, the other hand unbuttoning the top few buttons of Arthur’s starched shirt, pushing it aside. He leans forward and licks that beautiful patch of skin where shoulder meets neck. He mumbles into it, pressing his body harder against Arthur’s, crunching glass against the wall. “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.”
There are only two levels of dreams in this assignment and therefore no sedatives were needed. Dying in this world would wake them up. Still, dying remains the less pleasant way of escaping a dream. Instead it was simply a matter of waiting out the allotted time for the dream and waking up naturally. What he wasn’t counting on was standing on the roof of the museum with each of his teammates sitting in chairs on the edge of the roof, backs to the ledge. Eamonn stood behind Arthur, one hand settled in its choice place of Arthur’s neck, spread across the jugular, feeling the bob of his Adam’s apple. The other rested on Arthur’s navel, fingers occasionally creeping downwards beneath the elastic of Arthur’s underwear, sending that unsettling but now familiar chill up his spine.
“Kicks have always been a favourite of mine. You can do most anything to imitate a drop, including the imitation of murder.”
“This won’t be a kick. It will kill them.”
“But wake them up, am I right? Oh, what’s the difference?” His voice was sickeningly jovial.
Arthur then remained silent, jaw clenched tight, eyes firmly settled on the slump of Eames’ body, completely unconscious in the chair. He feels sick to his stomach but does not struggle in Eamonn’s grip. He knows better than to do so, even as he feels the fingers go lower and lower until they’re pressing deep into skin, making Arthur groan despite himself. Still he remains stoic, as his jaw clenches tighter and his eyes brim with tears.
“Are you ready to begin, my pet? It is time, is it not?” He nuzzles his head against Arthur’s head, as if it’s the most natural action in the world. “Give them the kick. Literally.”
Arthur doesn’t want to. It’s nearly time for them to wake. If he can stall, he can save the guilt he’d bear over killing his teammates, even if it merely means waking them up early. But Eamonn is pressing harder against him, breathing labouredly into his ear. It’s a sensation he never wants to feel again. “Give them the kick, darling.” He hisses this time, growing increasingly impatient. Cobb is first. Arthur shuts his eyes tight and tries to drown out the feeling of Eamonn’s hands on him before his lifts his leg and kicks the chair, sending Cobb tumbling over the edge of the building. “We’ll save Mr. Eames for last, won’t we?” He moves past Eames with Arthur, moving instead to Ariadne.
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, I know you want to. I can feel it.” And Arthur groans again, in anguish, as he feels the hand completely take hold of him, gripping tight and painfully.
When they finally reach Eames, Arthur stands before him, his entire body slowing down, fighting against what he’s about to do. He can hear Eamonn’s voice once more whispering in his ear: “Hush a bye baby, on the tree top, when the wind blows the cradle will rock. When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.” But when Eames’ eyes open, Arthur has already performed the deed.
When Arthur wakes, he moves past everyone in a blur and runs straight to the bathroom. He can hear inquiries, hear his name being tossed around but his head is already halfway into the toilet and he’s sick with blotched cheeks from his tears. His suit is rumpled and the knees are already ruined from the bathroom floor. He feels no better.
“Arthur?”
When he hears that voice, the same voice with the real accent, tentative and worried, he shudders. One hand on the toilet and the other in his pocket, clutching to his totem, he stills and freezes up, body tightening with fear. When he feels a soft press of fingers into his shoulder, fingers familiar and comforting, he flinches.