Glitch - 4
Jan. 19th, 2011 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabi_essentiallyWarning for possible disturbing imagery. Warning for hardcore cuddling, OMG, what have I become?
** ** ** **
Eames finished the night as he had least expected to.
He might have counted on Arthur remembering a handful of things about himself, about them. He might have expected falling into bed with him, though it had seemed unlikely, earlier. He had wound up as an outlet for Arthur's frustration, which was really nothing too new. Arthur's desperation – that was new, and set an uncomfortable edge to the entire thing. Arthur, braced over him on his good arm, frantic and a little lost, repeating his name as if he had just understood it for the first time.
Arthur had gotten out of the bed eventually. He found a box of organic spinach ravioli in the fridge. Eames cooked it and helped Arthur open a jar of sauce, and they ate together at the kitchen table. Then Arthur went in for a shower.
Eames looked around the apartment. It was spare, spacious, with wood floors, small rooms and high ceilings. An acoustic guitar sat on a stand in one corner, covered in dust. Arthur had a stack of neatly arranged video games next to some systems, like the Wii, he supposed, and maybe a Playstation, he couldn't tell. Hanging above his collection of DVDs was a re-creation of Aivazovsky's Ninth Wave. With a sudden jolt, Eames recognized his own brush strokes. He had not given this print to Arthur, and had no idea how the sneaky bastard had even come by his work.
Arthur came out of the bathroom looking waterlogged and unsure of himself in his own home. Eames didn't bother asking him if he felt any better.
"You play," he said to Arthur, nodding toward the guitar. "I didn't know that."
"I didn't either," Arthur said with a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
Eames sat on the long sofa. "Come and sit. Maybe you'll relax enough to fall asleep."
Arthur did, for about fifteen minutes. The second he started to nod off, he got up again. Eames watched him as he wandered around his apartment, first with purpose, and then later, aimlessly. He checked his laptop, his cell phone. Then the wandering turned into pacing. He made coffee. Looked out the window. Paced again.
At 2 AM, Eames pulled him back into the bedroom, stripped him of his shirt, and physically put him into the bed. He turned him face-down, the way Arthur always liked to sleep, and pressed against his back, one arm around his narrow waist and his nose in Arthur's curls.
"Please go to sleep," he said.
"I don't want to."
Eames had expected that reply, too. He leaned away a little and stroked his hand down Arthur's back, again and again. "If something happens, at least I'll be here, yeah? You won't be alone. And it's nothing I haven't seen before, Arthur. Shall I tell you of our adventures together?"
Arthur laughed into the pillow. "I guess we've been through some pretty bad shit."
"We have. Much of it having to do with dreams."
His back tensed beneath Eames's hand. "I don't want to talk about dreams right now."
"Then I won't. I'll just tell you of our legendary exploits."
Eames didn't need any sort of bright, rhythmic gleaming light or hokey swinging stop-watch to attempt this trick. It was one of the oldest techniques he used and it pre-dated Somnacin by hundreds of years. He dropped his voice to a steady drone, and matched the stroking of his hand to the seconds ticking by on the clock, first one stroke every two seconds. Then every four seconds. Six, and so on, slower and slower as he spoke.
"We hid behind a dumpster in an alley in Munich for seven hours, one time. The reek was terrible because it was behind a bar, but it was dark and deserted. Dull and tedious. So boring we fell asleep a few times."
"That doesn't sound like an exciting exploit, Eames," Arthur said into the pillow.
"No, I suppose not. But it did keep us safe from those who were chasing us, you see."
"We get chased a lot?"
"Hush. Let me tell you. Yes, we do. But we always come out ahead." He slowed his hand on Arthur's back, breathed in time with him. "We've been pursued all over the world for different sorts of crimes, most usually of a gentlemanly nature. Or so I like to think. I'm a forger, as you know. You're a point man, made of steel and patience, Arthur. We didn't always work together, you know. At some times, we worked opposite each other. For many years, actually. We were on rival teams a few times."
"When did we start fucking?" Arthur sounded slurred, tired.
"Around the time we met, even when we were working against each other."
"I made the first move."
"You like to think so," Eames said, smiling into Arthur's hair. "I had planned it from the beginning though, at least since I saw you work. Not since I saw you, but since I saw you work, you understand. At first glance I thought you were a pretty, posh little thing and quite possibly too young to be doing any of the things I had in mind. Awkward, with freckles, ears too big for your head, terrible hair and an undeserved sense of entitlement. But pretty."
"So you were an asshole."
Eames ignored him indulgently, because he sounded not only comfortable, but exactly like Arthur. "But seeing you at work made you into something else. You turn into something else when you work. Something beautiful, if a person likes that sort of thing." He lowered his voice to a near-whisper, lightened the pressure of his hand across Arthur's back. "Because you're stronger than you look, which is saying something. And every time I've thought you've reached the limits of your strength, you reach down a little more. It's what makes you a good partner and a safe wager on any job. It's what puts you in high demand and allows you to set the terms, which you always do. That's what you are, Arthur, you're safe."
It was a little like inception, Eames thought, only without dreamsharing, without the PASIV, and really without sleep. He repeated this idea in different ways: You're safe, you're in control, until, as he had expected, Arthur dropped off to sleep.
What he didn't expect came about a half an hour later, when Arthur, in hysterics and seemingly still asleep, abruptly stopped breathing.
** ** ** **
It had taken Arthur a few tries to remember how to adjust the water in his shower. The smell of his own soap and shampoo did nothing to bring his identity back. His clothes, when he was finished showering, felt alien on his skin. The man he saw in the mirror looked like a half-drowned cat, scared witless and looking for a place to hide. He hurried out of the bathroom and looked at his laptop, but couldn't remember the password for the important files, for anything he would need to know about what had led up to his being attacked and left for dead, void of memories. The password must be something personal to him, then. He didn't mention this to Eames, even though he had just fucked the man soundly against his own foreign bed. It felt normal and new all at once. He wondered if it always felt like that.
He checked his cell phone and noticed that none of the numbers had any names attached to them. God, what kind of man was he, to keep such secrets?
Eames told him to sit on the couch, and for a few minutes, he did. It was warm, comfortable and for the first time since coming home, he actually felt at home.
The first few stirrings of a dream tugged on his consciousness and something squirmed around in his mind, coiling, constricting and then threatening to burst wide open and take his brains with it. For a few seconds he felt like he was drowning, and then he got up and walked around his apartment again.
Eventually Eames had enough of his wandering and put him into his own bed, where he started babbling to him about what they had done together. He pet him like a cat, which made him feel first annoyed and coddled, and then vaguely aroused until he realized that his intention wasn't to have another round with him at all, but to make him go to sleep.
He knew he couldn't put it off forever. It wasn't possible to never sleep again. He had slept, in the hospital. It was smothering and terrifying, and painful when he'd broken his stupid nose, and he felt like an idiot waking up screaming and flailing, but he hadn't died.
And like Eames said, at least he was with someone he knew. Or, rather, someone who knew him.
This man, this Eames, he had a soft, gravelly, mellow voice that sounded dark and sweet, the way he thought dreams should be. Maybe if he kept talking, it wouldn't be so bad this time.
That's what Arthur told himself.
What did happen was that the voice eventually faded into the periphery of subconscious hearing. Part of him still understood this fundamental aspect of dreams, ingrained in him: the outside world lost most of its relevance in the face of dreams.
He was unsurprised when he found himself standing in a swamp at night. Towering bamboo stretched to inconceivable heights around a marsh of sluggish, dark water. A high, small moon loomed above, peeking through the branches. The night was quiet, no frogs or crickets or other usual night sounds.
Arthur didn't know why he was there or which way to to. He searched for some significance, more than anything simply relieved that nothing terrible was happening. In the beginning, he knew it was a dream. He felt in control.
The deeper he went, the more he lost track of the idea of control, and then of control itself.
There was something on the other side of the swamp, and he had to get to it. He now had a purpose. Sloshing through the brackish water, soon he saw a bridge across a slow-moving, icy stream. The silhouette of a man stood against the moonlight, on top of the bridge. This man was broad, familiar, and Arthur knew that was where he was supposed to be going. To that man up there. It was important – no, imperative – that he get there in time. Because the water was freezing, and he had to stop this man from falling in.
He ran, though the icy mud slowed him down. The harder he struggled against it, the deeper the slush sucked his legs into it, until it was up to his thighs, then his hips. He tried clawing his way through it, now starting to lose his breath with the exertion.
Don't let him fall. Just don't let him fall.
Then he heard the sound.
click click
First only that: Just two dull clicking noises, like the *snick* of a dull pair of scissors. It was low and quiet, yet it stopped his struggling and stilled him.
click click... click click...
Tearing his eyes away from the silhouette of the man on the bridge, Arthur looked down in front of him.
In the marsh, sitting on the wet, muddy stump of a dead tree, was something that looked at first glance like some sort of marsh-life. A kind of crab-like creature, with legs and claws but no shell. It glinted strangely in the moonlight, in the way that organic things did not. It had a sharp beak the color of cobalt that parted to make a quiet hissing sound. A needle-like protrusion emerged from its beak, dripping fluid.
It was made of metal. It had as many as twelve legs, possibly more, and when it straightened the hinged joints, it stood about six inches high. Its back resembled some kind of silicone disk. It had eyes on flexible stalks, with little metal lids closed over them.
click click....
It snicked two sharp claws at him and opened the metal lids of its eyes. They were blue, and they glowed like two tiny stars. Arthur froze under its electric gaze.
click click... click click... click click...
Finally he turned as far as he could and looked behind him. Three more little, blue-eyed metal creatures crept on silent joints through the marsh behind him, lighter than water and quicker than air. They clicked their sharp metal claws at him.
Panting, Arthur turned again and started digging through the mud. But the marsh held him still as the one in front of him made its way toward the soaked hem of his shirt and pulled itself up, tearing the fabric. More of the creatures flanked him on either side. One of them leapt onto his arm and he cried out, trying to pull away.
He felt them crawling up his back, and one of them went under his shirt, its pin-prick legs digging into his skin for purchase.
He felt sick, numb wherever they touched him and then he understood that they weren't just sharp, they were toxic. They were meant to inject something. Their bright, blue eyes sought his, surrounding him with moving points of light from those flexing stalks. They clicked their claws, hissed through their beaks and he thought, Glitch, glitch, glitch over and over again in his frenzy.
The one under his shirt made its way up to the back of his neck and Arthur pitched himself forward to get away from it, but it was too late. It sank its needle into the back of his neck, around the third vertebrae and he felt the paralysis instantly, locally. Within seconds, it traveled down his arms and chest.
His diaphragm seized up. He couldn't use his arms to push himself upright, he couldn't turn his head away from the water, and his lungs had gone dead.
All around, he heard them clicking and hissing. He could blink, he could move his eyes, but he couldn't shut out the blue glow that spread like lightning through his nervous system, shutting it down inch by inch.
He was suffocating slowly, yet dying quickly, and then he was falling, endlessly. Waiting to land.
** ** ** **
Thirty minutes, that was all Arthur got after Eames began to drift off himself. He was behind him still, almost afraid to move. Sleep had never felt so fragile. He went on alert every time Arthur twitched, ready to either wake him, or even to restrain him if necessary. He hated the idea, but Arthur had wrenched his arm out of the socket and had managed to break his nose over the last two weeks.
The normal, gentle movements of sleep gradually gave way to a few murmured phrases that Eames thought sounded more urgent than they should. Still, he didn't wake him. Arthur wasn't one to talk in his sleep (or really even move in his sleep) but obviously, much had changed.
When Arthur jerked in his arms, and his entire body went stiff, Eames just put a hand on his arm and waited. It could be normal sleep behavior, even if it wasn't normal for Arthur.
And then he started thrashing, truly thrashing, his arm coming up and catching Eames right in the mouth as he flipped himself over onto his back. Eames caught him by the wrist and tried just calling to him, his own heartbeat now racing because he could only imagine how this was going to escalate. Arthur's eyes were open, but he clearly saw nothing but what was inside his mind.
Eames got up onto his knees for better leverage and grabbed both of Arthur's arms, as the rest of his body strained upwards, as if trying to break free of some invisible bond. Yet Arthur was strangely silent as he struggled. He didn't scream or call for help, he actually didn't make a sound, and that was somehow more frightening than anything else.
Eames let go of one of his arms to reach across him and turn on another light.
"You're all right, Arthur, you're all--" he began.
And then he saw that Arthur wasn't screaming or calling for help because Arthur wasn't even breathing. He was trying to, and there was terror in his eyes as he realized that he couldn't.
With the sudden calm that always came to him in a crisis, Eames quickly considered his options. Arthur wasn't choking on anything, he wasn't cyanotic yet, and he probably didn't have any residual toxins in him. So he simply picked him up completely off the bed, and dropped him back down, hard.
Arthur hit the mattress with a gasp. His hands flew to his chest, to his throat, and his mouth as he stared at the ceiling, dragging in each breath.
"You're all right," Eames said, calm, and not yet touching him because he didn't know how he was going to react. "Arthur, you're awake. Come on, now."
"I couldn't get to you," Arthur said. "Eames, you're in trouble, you're going to die, I can't get there in time." He sat up, panting like an animal, his eyes glassy and wet. "You're on a bridge, you're going to die, I can't reach you, I'm paralyzed, I can't breathe and you're going to die."
"Arthur, I am right here," Eames insisted, grabbing him by the shoulder because now he didn't care if Arthur wanted to be touched or not. The words chilled him, not only because they were about him dying and Arthur apparently now remembered who he was, but because of how certain Arthur sounded.
Arthur got to his knees facing Eames, looking earnestly afraid, and completely convinced of what he was saying. The words left him in a rush and he gripped Eames by the arms, his palms slick and cold. "Don't let them take you to the bridge, I won't get there in time, Eames, you're going to die, you're going to die." He started to hyperventilate and dropped his head against Eames's shoulder.
"I'm not going to die, Arthur, Jesus Christ. Please, I am right here, look at me." He tried to hold him, but now Eames felt shaky, too, and a little out of control. "Just breathe, all right? For now just do that for me. Please. We'll talk about this when you can do that."
Arthur nodded against him and tried to rein himself in. He slowed his breathing, purposefully, his hands gripping and releasing Eames's arms rhythmically. Sweat cooled on him and in a few seconds he was shivering. Eames pulled the sheet around his shoulders and let Arthur brace himself against him for a few more minutes.
Finally Arthur said, "I'm so fucking exhausted, Eames."
"I know you are."
"I don't know what to do next. How do I get there in time?"
Eames smoothed his hair, which he knew he was only allowed to do under certain intimate circumstances without getting swatted away. This time, Arthur allowed it. "Well, we'll figure it out, won't we? Nothing has ever kept you down, Arthur. This won't, either. And if I find myself in trouble, you'll get there. You always have in the past."
Arthur nodded, then lifted his head and looked him in the eyes. Finally, he seemed present, if tired beyond reason.
"I think I need the PASIV. Not now though. I need to call Cobb, okay?"
So he remembered Cobb too, and he remembered the PASIV. Eames wondered if he actually remembered everything now, if somehow the last terror had cleared some sort of block from his mind. But he was afraid to push too hard.
"I'll go down with you. In case you need help."
Arthur pulled away from him, his eyes blazing. "No."
Eames sat back on his heels and leveled Arthur with his most determined stare. It rarely failed him. "There's nothing down there I haven't seen, Arthur. You know that."
"There is now," Arthur said, pulling the sheet tighter around his shoulders. "And it's not something I need to hide from you. It's just that." He pressed his mouth into a tight line, shook his head, as if considering how best to articulate it. "It's contagious. That's what it is."
"Not possible," Eames said. "We studied this. Dreamsharing doesn't lead to the sharing of whatever issue the mind has, not to a trained dreamer."
"Not this time. Eames, listen. I think we did an inception once, or did I dream that?"
"No, we did," Eames said. "The Fischer case. And it took. But inception has to be planted, Arthur. You would have to do it to me on purpose. I can't simply catch an idea from you."
"It's not an idea. What I meant by bringing that up was that this is different from what I think we did. This isn't inception, it's nothing like it. It's like a bug. It's a glitch." His eyes went distant. And for a moment, his eyelids fluttered. Eames reached for him, but Arthur waved his hands away. "Wait. Give me a second." His shoulders dropped, his mouth went slack and for a few moments, he seemed to be somewhere else. "There was a device. It wasn't the PASIV. I don't remember how it got into me. I was with some other people. When they caught up with me they called it a glitch device, or a machine, or something. It had wires." He curled his hands into fists and released a long breath. Then he looked back at Eames. "That's all I remember."
Eames stored those words away, the meager facts that Arthur had finally supplied. It might not be too hard to dig around the underworld of dreaming to learn more about this, unless it was something so new that only a small group of people still had the technology. He could make a few calls, but he could not go out searching for answers. It wouldn't do to leave Arthur like this.
"Cobb might know," Eames said, tiredly scrubbing his face with the back of his hand. "It wouldn't be wrong to call him. He's lost all his senses for danger, but in his current position of research, and working with new dreamers... yes. He might have heard something. Much as I hate to admit it."
When he looked at Arthur, he saw that he was still kneeling, though his head was bowed and his eyes were closed. He was micro-sleeping, at least. It was something.
An hour later, and Eames wasn't sure how much longer he could stay awake. Arthur was wandering his apartment like a ghost again, randomly leaning against various surfaces, sleeping for a few seconds and then coming awake again. He tripped over a rug, almost knocked his guitar over. Went into the bathroom and then came out of it. Sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands.
Eames gave up trying to sleep and sat on the sofa in the living room, turning on the television. Some American animated show was on, something funny. Arthur heard the television come on from his seat in the kitchen and he picked his head up as if he'd forgotten that Eames was there. Then he came in and sat on the couch beside him.
Arthur's eyes looked glassy and empty. He stared at the screen as if he didn't recognize it.
"At least lie down," Eames said. "Get horizontal and take some of the strain off."
Arthur seemed inclined to just sit there staring, so Eames pushed him down onto his back, and lifted Arthur's legs up onto the sofa. He scooted aside to give him room, and pulled Arthur's feet into his lap.
"Be there if I fall asleep," Arthur said.
Eames curled his hand around Arthur's narrow ankle and stroked his thumb along the inside of it. "Not going anywhere 'till we finish this," he said. "I've got nothing else lined up, and anyway, one doesn't leave his mates behind in a bad situation."
Arthur smiled at that and rubbed his palm over his forehead. Eames gave his ankle another reassuring squeeze. When Arthur looked at him again, it was from under lowered lashes and with blatant invitation.
Eames sighed, tired beyond measure and confused. "Why, Arthur?"
"Because I want to."
Trying to be obliging, but determined not to follow up all the way anyway, Eames gently moved Arthur's knees apart and settled between them, resting his head on Arthur's hip, placing his hand flat against his stomach. He inhaled slowly, the familiar scent of Arthur's body wash, and clothes, made a bit different by the fact that he was in his home, with his own belongings around him.
Arthur exhaled along with him, and tangled his fingers in Eames's hair. "Darling," he whispered.
Eames looked up at him, startled. Then he crawled up a bit higher so that he was looking down at Arthur. "Listen. We're not doing this again yet. Not now. All right? I'll stay, I'm not going anywhere, but this is not happening."
"Fair enough," Arthur said. He arched up with his hips.
Eames hissed in a breath. "Okay, keep doing that and I will move to the other end of the sofa. You are an awful person, with liquid nitrogen in your arteries pumped by a truly terrible heart. I don't know why I even put up with your demands sometimes, Arthur." He reached down between them, efficiently feeling Arthur up anyway. What he felt—or rather didn't feel--surprised him. "You don't even want this. What the fuck, Arthur?"
"I'm just tired," Arthur said. "Things aren't working right. But you can... I mean, you could still. Fuck me if you want, I mean. It would feel good. I want you to stay here, for now. Like this. Hold me down if I start to lose it."
Eames dropped his head against Arthur's neck, unable to look him in the face after that line of incoherent non-logic. "Arthur, at least listen to yourself. My dick is very confused right now but at least I realize that I'm not able to fuck you better. If you want, if you promise to behave, yeah? I'll stay right here and I will not let you get hurt again. But I'm not fucking you, only to have you fall asleep, wake up panicking and rip my balls off. Think a little, all right?"
"Unlikely that I could rip your balls off," Arthur snorted. He snaked both arms around Eames's shoulders and pulled him down close, as if Eames was the better option than the jacket they'd had him strapped into in hospital. "You outweigh me by about thirty pounds, I think, maybe more. Pretty sure you could tie me in a knot if it came down to it."
"True that we're usually evenly matched when we fight. But if you're fighting for your life and I'm holding back so as not to hurt you, you would destroy me. I don't know who did what to you, but I do know that it had to be at least a group of trained agents. Six, at the very least, and maybe more since they had to drug you. You're not a bruiser, but you snap bones very efficiently. Honestly, a shag with you half-awake and not even hard anyway? Not worth the risk. Sorry."
"Pussy," Arthur said.
"Primary school taunts." He braced on his elbow and ran his thumb across Arthur's lower lip. "How the mighty have fallen."
Arthur's eyes slid closed. "Grab my left arm if I wake up swinging," he murmured. "Careful of the right shoulder and watch out for my legs, I use them in a fight. Hold my head down because I'll break your nose with my forehead."
"Yes, quite. Now I'm very turned on. The idea of my face spurting blood as you struggle to murder me is always the quickest way to my heart."
"Just don't go anywhere," Arthur said, and drifted off for about thirty seconds.
He woke with a gasp, stiffened for a moment, then looked up at Eames and fell back into a light sleep, this time for about two minutes.
This pattern went on for over an hour. At one point he came awake and made Eames promise once again not to go to the bridge.
NEXT PART.
** ** ** **
Eames finished the night as he had least expected to.
He might have counted on Arthur remembering a handful of things about himself, about them. He might have expected falling into bed with him, though it had seemed unlikely, earlier. He had wound up as an outlet for Arthur's frustration, which was really nothing too new. Arthur's desperation – that was new, and set an uncomfortable edge to the entire thing. Arthur, braced over him on his good arm, frantic and a little lost, repeating his name as if he had just understood it for the first time.
Arthur had gotten out of the bed eventually. He found a box of organic spinach ravioli in the fridge. Eames cooked it and helped Arthur open a jar of sauce, and they ate together at the kitchen table. Then Arthur went in for a shower.
Eames looked around the apartment. It was spare, spacious, with wood floors, small rooms and high ceilings. An acoustic guitar sat on a stand in one corner, covered in dust. Arthur had a stack of neatly arranged video games next to some systems, like the Wii, he supposed, and maybe a Playstation, he couldn't tell. Hanging above his collection of DVDs was a re-creation of Aivazovsky's Ninth Wave. With a sudden jolt, Eames recognized his own brush strokes. He had not given this print to Arthur, and had no idea how the sneaky bastard had even come by his work.
Arthur came out of the bathroom looking waterlogged and unsure of himself in his own home. Eames didn't bother asking him if he felt any better.
"You play," he said to Arthur, nodding toward the guitar. "I didn't know that."
"I didn't either," Arthur said with a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
Eames sat on the long sofa. "Come and sit. Maybe you'll relax enough to fall asleep."
Arthur did, for about fifteen minutes. The second he started to nod off, he got up again. Eames watched him as he wandered around his apartment, first with purpose, and then later, aimlessly. He checked his laptop, his cell phone. Then the wandering turned into pacing. He made coffee. Looked out the window. Paced again.
At 2 AM, Eames pulled him back into the bedroom, stripped him of his shirt, and physically put him into the bed. He turned him face-down, the way Arthur always liked to sleep, and pressed against his back, one arm around his narrow waist and his nose in Arthur's curls.
"Please go to sleep," he said.
"I don't want to."
Eames had expected that reply, too. He leaned away a little and stroked his hand down Arthur's back, again and again. "If something happens, at least I'll be here, yeah? You won't be alone. And it's nothing I haven't seen before, Arthur. Shall I tell you of our adventures together?"
Arthur laughed into the pillow. "I guess we've been through some pretty bad shit."
"We have. Much of it having to do with dreams."
His back tensed beneath Eames's hand. "I don't want to talk about dreams right now."
"Then I won't. I'll just tell you of our legendary exploits."
Eames didn't need any sort of bright, rhythmic gleaming light or hokey swinging stop-watch to attempt this trick. It was one of the oldest techniques he used and it pre-dated Somnacin by hundreds of years. He dropped his voice to a steady drone, and matched the stroking of his hand to the seconds ticking by on the clock, first one stroke every two seconds. Then every four seconds. Six, and so on, slower and slower as he spoke.
"We hid behind a dumpster in an alley in Munich for seven hours, one time. The reek was terrible because it was behind a bar, but it was dark and deserted. Dull and tedious. So boring we fell asleep a few times."
"That doesn't sound like an exciting exploit, Eames," Arthur said into the pillow.
"No, I suppose not. But it did keep us safe from those who were chasing us, you see."
"We get chased a lot?"
"Hush. Let me tell you. Yes, we do. But we always come out ahead." He slowed his hand on Arthur's back, breathed in time with him. "We've been pursued all over the world for different sorts of crimes, most usually of a gentlemanly nature. Or so I like to think. I'm a forger, as you know. You're a point man, made of steel and patience, Arthur. We didn't always work together, you know. At some times, we worked opposite each other. For many years, actually. We were on rival teams a few times."
"When did we start fucking?" Arthur sounded slurred, tired.
"Around the time we met, even when we were working against each other."
"I made the first move."
"You like to think so," Eames said, smiling into Arthur's hair. "I had planned it from the beginning though, at least since I saw you work. Not since I saw you, but since I saw you work, you understand. At first glance I thought you were a pretty, posh little thing and quite possibly too young to be doing any of the things I had in mind. Awkward, with freckles, ears too big for your head, terrible hair and an undeserved sense of entitlement. But pretty."
"So you were an asshole."
Eames ignored him indulgently, because he sounded not only comfortable, but exactly like Arthur. "But seeing you at work made you into something else. You turn into something else when you work. Something beautiful, if a person likes that sort of thing." He lowered his voice to a near-whisper, lightened the pressure of his hand across Arthur's back. "Because you're stronger than you look, which is saying something. And every time I've thought you've reached the limits of your strength, you reach down a little more. It's what makes you a good partner and a safe wager on any job. It's what puts you in high demand and allows you to set the terms, which you always do. That's what you are, Arthur, you're safe."
It was a little like inception, Eames thought, only without dreamsharing, without the PASIV, and really without sleep. He repeated this idea in different ways: You're safe, you're in control, until, as he had expected, Arthur dropped off to sleep.
What he didn't expect came about a half an hour later, when Arthur, in hysterics and seemingly still asleep, abruptly stopped breathing.
** ** ** **
It had taken Arthur a few tries to remember how to adjust the water in his shower. The smell of his own soap and shampoo did nothing to bring his identity back. His clothes, when he was finished showering, felt alien on his skin. The man he saw in the mirror looked like a half-drowned cat, scared witless and looking for a place to hide. He hurried out of the bathroom and looked at his laptop, but couldn't remember the password for the important files, for anything he would need to know about what had led up to his being attacked and left for dead, void of memories. The password must be something personal to him, then. He didn't mention this to Eames, even though he had just fucked the man soundly against his own foreign bed. It felt normal and new all at once. He wondered if it always felt like that.
He checked his cell phone and noticed that none of the numbers had any names attached to them. God, what kind of man was he, to keep such secrets?
Eames told him to sit on the couch, and for a few minutes, he did. It was warm, comfortable and for the first time since coming home, he actually felt at home.
The first few stirrings of a dream tugged on his consciousness and something squirmed around in his mind, coiling, constricting and then threatening to burst wide open and take his brains with it. For a few seconds he felt like he was drowning, and then he got up and walked around his apartment again.
Eventually Eames had enough of his wandering and put him into his own bed, where he started babbling to him about what they had done together. He pet him like a cat, which made him feel first annoyed and coddled, and then vaguely aroused until he realized that his intention wasn't to have another round with him at all, but to make him go to sleep.
He knew he couldn't put it off forever. It wasn't possible to never sleep again. He had slept, in the hospital. It was smothering and terrifying, and painful when he'd broken his stupid nose, and he felt like an idiot waking up screaming and flailing, but he hadn't died.
And like Eames said, at least he was with someone he knew. Or, rather, someone who knew him.
This man, this Eames, he had a soft, gravelly, mellow voice that sounded dark and sweet, the way he thought dreams should be. Maybe if he kept talking, it wouldn't be so bad this time.
That's what Arthur told himself.
What did happen was that the voice eventually faded into the periphery of subconscious hearing. Part of him still understood this fundamental aspect of dreams, ingrained in him: the outside world lost most of its relevance in the face of dreams.
He was unsurprised when he found himself standing in a swamp at night. Towering bamboo stretched to inconceivable heights around a marsh of sluggish, dark water. A high, small moon loomed above, peeking through the branches. The night was quiet, no frogs or crickets or other usual night sounds.
Arthur didn't know why he was there or which way to to. He searched for some significance, more than anything simply relieved that nothing terrible was happening. In the beginning, he knew it was a dream. He felt in control.
The deeper he went, the more he lost track of the idea of control, and then of control itself.
There was something on the other side of the swamp, and he had to get to it. He now had a purpose. Sloshing through the brackish water, soon he saw a bridge across a slow-moving, icy stream. The silhouette of a man stood against the moonlight, on top of the bridge. This man was broad, familiar, and Arthur knew that was where he was supposed to be going. To that man up there. It was important – no, imperative – that he get there in time. Because the water was freezing, and he had to stop this man from falling in.
He ran, though the icy mud slowed him down. The harder he struggled against it, the deeper the slush sucked his legs into it, until it was up to his thighs, then his hips. He tried clawing his way through it, now starting to lose his breath with the exertion.
Don't let him fall. Just don't let him fall.
Then he heard the sound.
click click
First only that: Just two dull clicking noises, like the *snick* of a dull pair of scissors. It was low and quiet, yet it stopped his struggling and stilled him.
click click... click click...
Tearing his eyes away from the silhouette of the man on the bridge, Arthur looked down in front of him.
In the marsh, sitting on the wet, muddy stump of a dead tree, was something that looked at first glance like some sort of marsh-life. A kind of crab-like creature, with legs and claws but no shell. It glinted strangely in the moonlight, in the way that organic things did not. It had a sharp beak the color of cobalt that parted to make a quiet hissing sound. A needle-like protrusion emerged from its beak, dripping fluid.
It was made of metal. It had as many as twelve legs, possibly more, and when it straightened the hinged joints, it stood about six inches high. Its back resembled some kind of silicone disk. It had eyes on flexible stalks, with little metal lids closed over them.
click click....
It snicked two sharp claws at him and opened the metal lids of its eyes. They were blue, and they glowed like two tiny stars. Arthur froze under its electric gaze.
click click... click click... click click...
Finally he turned as far as he could and looked behind him. Three more little, blue-eyed metal creatures crept on silent joints through the marsh behind him, lighter than water and quicker than air. They clicked their sharp metal claws at him.
Panting, Arthur turned again and started digging through the mud. But the marsh held him still as the one in front of him made its way toward the soaked hem of his shirt and pulled itself up, tearing the fabric. More of the creatures flanked him on either side. One of them leapt onto his arm and he cried out, trying to pull away.
He felt them crawling up his back, and one of them went under his shirt, its pin-prick legs digging into his skin for purchase.
He felt sick, numb wherever they touched him and then he understood that they weren't just sharp, they were toxic. They were meant to inject something. Their bright, blue eyes sought his, surrounding him with moving points of light from those flexing stalks. They clicked their claws, hissed through their beaks and he thought, Glitch, glitch, glitch over and over again in his frenzy.
The one under his shirt made its way up to the back of his neck and Arthur pitched himself forward to get away from it, but it was too late. It sank its needle into the back of his neck, around the third vertebrae and he felt the paralysis instantly, locally. Within seconds, it traveled down his arms and chest.
His diaphragm seized up. He couldn't use his arms to push himself upright, he couldn't turn his head away from the water, and his lungs had gone dead.
All around, he heard them clicking and hissing. He could blink, he could move his eyes, but he couldn't shut out the blue glow that spread like lightning through his nervous system, shutting it down inch by inch.
He was suffocating slowly, yet dying quickly, and then he was falling, endlessly. Waiting to land.
** ** ** **
Thirty minutes, that was all Arthur got after Eames began to drift off himself. He was behind him still, almost afraid to move. Sleep had never felt so fragile. He went on alert every time Arthur twitched, ready to either wake him, or even to restrain him if necessary. He hated the idea, but Arthur had wrenched his arm out of the socket and had managed to break his nose over the last two weeks.
The normal, gentle movements of sleep gradually gave way to a few murmured phrases that Eames thought sounded more urgent than they should. Still, he didn't wake him. Arthur wasn't one to talk in his sleep (or really even move in his sleep) but obviously, much had changed.
When Arthur jerked in his arms, and his entire body went stiff, Eames just put a hand on his arm and waited. It could be normal sleep behavior, even if it wasn't normal for Arthur.
And then he started thrashing, truly thrashing, his arm coming up and catching Eames right in the mouth as he flipped himself over onto his back. Eames caught him by the wrist and tried just calling to him, his own heartbeat now racing because he could only imagine how this was going to escalate. Arthur's eyes were open, but he clearly saw nothing but what was inside his mind.
Eames got up onto his knees for better leverage and grabbed both of Arthur's arms, as the rest of his body strained upwards, as if trying to break free of some invisible bond. Yet Arthur was strangely silent as he struggled. He didn't scream or call for help, he actually didn't make a sound, and that was somehow more frightening than anything else.
Eames let go of one of his arms to reach across him and turn on another light.
"You're all right, Arthur, you're all--" he began.
And then he saw that Arthur wasn't screaming or calling for help because Arthur wasn't even breathing. He was trying to, and there was terror in his eyes as he realized that he couldn't.
With the sudden calm that always came to him in a crisis, Eames quickly considered his options. Arthur wasn't choking on anything, he wasn't cyanotic yet, and he probably didn't have any residual toxins in him. So he simply picked him up completely off the bed, and dropped him back down, hard.
Arthur hit the mattress with a gasp. His hands flew to his chest, to his throat, and his mouth as he stared at the ceiling, dragging in each breath.
"You're all right," Eames said, calm, and not yet touching him because he didn't know how he was going to react. "Arthur, you're awake. Come on, now."
"I couldn't get to you," Arthur said. "Eames, you're in trouble, you're going to die, I can't get there in time." He sat up, panting like an animal, his eyes glassy and wet. "You're on a bridge, you're going to die, I can't reach you, I'm paralyzed, I can't breathe and you're going to die."
"Arthur, I am right here," Eames insisted, grabbing him by the shoulder because now he didn't care if Arthur wanted to be touched or not. The words chilled him, not only because they were about him dying and Arthur apparently now remembered who he was, but because of how certain Arthur sounded.
Arthur got to his knees facing Eames, looking earnestly afraid, and completely convinced of what he was saying. The words left him in a rush and he gripped Eames by the arms, his palms slick and cold. "Don't let them take you to the bridge, I won't get there in time, Eames, you're going to die, you're going to die." He started to hyperventilate and dropped his head against Eames's shoulder.
"I'm not going to die, Arthur, Jesus Christ. Please, I am right here, look at me." He tried to hold him, but now Eames felt shaky, too, and a little out of control. "Just breathe, all right? For now just do that for me. Please. We'll talk about this when you can do that."
Arthur nodded against him and tried to rein himself in. He slowed his breathing, purposefully, his hands gripping and releasing Eames's arms rhythmically. Sweat cooled on him and in a few seconds he was shivering. Eames pulled the sheet around his shoulders and let Arthur brace himself against him for a few more minutes.
Finally Arthur said, "I'm so fucking exhausted, Eames."
"I know you are."
"I don't know what to do next. How do I get there in time?"
Eames smoothed his hair, which he knew he was only allowed to do under certain intimate circumstances without getting swatted away. This time, Arthur allowed it. "Well, we'll figure it out, won't we? Nothing has ever kept you down, Arthur. This won't, either. And if I find myself in trouble, you'll get there. You always have in the past."
Arthur nodded, then lifted his head and looked him in the eyes. Finally, he seemed present, if tired beyond reason.
"I think I need the PASIV. Not now though. I need to call Cobb, okay?"
So he remembered Cobb too, and he remembered the PASIV. Eames wondered if he actually remembered everything now, if somehow the last terror had cleared some sort of block from his mind. But he was afraid to push too hard.
"I'll go down with you. In case you need help."
Arthur pulled away from him, his eyes blazing. "No."
Eames sat back on his heels and leveled Arthur with his most determined stare. It rarely failed him. "There's nothing down there I haven't seen, Arthur. You know that."
"There is now," Arthur said, pulling the sheet tighter around his shoulders. "And it's not something I need to hide from you. It's just that." He pressed his mouth into a tight line, shook his head, as if considering how best to articulate it. "It's contagious. That's what it is."
"Not possible," Eames said. "We studied this. Dreamsharing doesn't lead to the sharing of whatever issue the mind has, not to a trained dreamer."
"Not this time. Eames, listen. I think we did an inception once, or did I dream that?"
"No, we did," Eames said. "The Fischer case. And it took. But inception has to be planted, Arthur. You would have to do it to me on purpose. I can't simply catch an idea from you."
"It's not an idea. What I meant by bringing that up was that this is different from what I think we did. This isn't inception, it's nothing like it. It's like a bug. It's a glitch." His eyes went distant. And for a moment, his eyelids fluttered. Eames reached for him, but Arthur waved his hands away. "Wait. Give me a second." His shoulders dropped, his mouth went slack and for a few moments, he seemed to be somewhere else. "There was a device. It wasn't the PASIV. I don't remember how it got into me. I was with some other people. When they caught up with me they called it a glitch device, or a machine, or something. It had wires." He curled his hands into fists and released a long breath. Then he looked back at Eames. "That's all I remember."
Eames stored those words away, the meager facts that Arthur had finally supplied. It might not be too hard to dig around the underworld of dreaming to learn more about this, unless it was something so new that only a small group of people still had the technology. He could make a few calls, but he could not go out searching for answers. It wouldn't do to leave Arthur like this.
"Cobb might know," Eames said, tiredly scrubbing his face with the back of his hand. "It wouldn't be wrong to call him. He's lost all his senses for danger, but in his current position of research, and working with new dreamers... yes. He might have heard something. Much as I hate to admit it."
When he looked at Arthur, he saw that he was still kneeling, though his head was bowed and his eyes were closed. He was micro-sleeping, at least. It was something.
An hour later, and Eames wasn't sure how much longer he could stay awake. Arthur was wandering his apartment like a ghost again, randomly leaning against various surfaces, sleeping for a few seconds and then coming awake again. He tripped over a rug, almost knocked his guitar over. Went into the bathroom and then came out of it. Sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands.
Eames gave up trying to sleep and sat on the sofa in the living room, turning on the television. Some American animated show was on, something funny. Arthur heard the television come on from his seat in the kitchen and he picked his head up as if he'd forgotten that Eames was there. Then he came in and sat on the couch beside him.
Arthur's eyes looked glassy and empty. He stared at the screen as if he didn't recognize it.
"At least lie down," Eames said. "Get horizontal and take some of the strain off."
Arthur seemed inclined to just sit there staring, so Eames pushed him down onto his back, and lifted Arthur's legs up onto the sofa. He scooted aside to give him room, and pulled Arthur's feet into his lap.
"Be there if I fall asleep," Arthur said.
Eames curled his hand around Arthur's narrow ankle and stroked his thumb along the inside of it. "Not going anywhere 'till we finish this," he said. "I've got nothing else lined up, and anyway, one doesn't leave his mates behind in a bad situation."
Arthur smiled at that and rubbed his palm over his forehead. Eames gave his ankle another reassuring squeeze. When Arthur looked at him again, it was from under lowered lashes and with blatant invitation.
Eames sighed, tired beyond measure and confused. "Why, Arthur?"
"Because I want to."
Trying to be obliging, but determined not to follow up all the way anyway, Eames gently moved Arthur's knees apart and settled between them, resting his head on Arthur's hip, placing his hand flat against his stomach. He inhaled slowly, the familiar scent of Arthur's body wash, and clothes, made a bit different by the fact that he was in his home, with his own belongings around him.
Arthur exhaled along with him, and tangled his fingers in Eames's hair. "Darling," he whispered.
Eames looked up at him, startled. Then he crawled up a bit higher so that he was looking down at Arthur. "Listen. We're not doing this again yet. Not now. All right? I'll stay, I'm not going anywhere, but this is not happening."
"Fair enough," Arthur said. He arched up with his hips.
Eames hissed in a breath. "Okay, keep doing that and I will move to the other end of the sofa. You are an awful person, with liquid nitrogen in your arteries pumped by a truly terrible heart. I don't know why I even put up with your demands sometimes, Arthur." He reached down between them, efficiently feeling Arthur up anyway. What he felt—or rather didn't feel--surprised him. "You don't even want this. What the fuck, Arthur?"
"I'm just tired," Arthur said. "Things aren't working right. But you can... I mean, you could still. Fuck me if you want, I mean. It would feel good. I want you to stay here, for now. Like this. Hold me down if I start to lose it."
Eames dropped his head against Arthur's neck, unable to look him in the face after that line of incoherent non-logic. "Arthur, at least listen to yourself. My dick is very confused right now but at least I realize that I'm not able to fuck you better. If you want, if you promise to behave, yeah? I'll stay right here and I will not let you get hurt again. But I'm not fucking you, only to have you fall asleep, wake up panicking and rip my balls off. Think a little, all right?"
"Unlikely that I could rip your balls off," Arthur snorted. He snaked both arms around Eames's shoulders and pulled him down close, as if Eames was the better option than the jacket they'd had him strapped into in hospital. "You outweigh me by about thirty pounds, I think, maybe more. Pretty sure you could tie me in a knot if it came down to it."
"True that we're usually evenly matched when we fight. But if you're fighting for your life and I'm holding back so as not to hurt you, you would destroy me. I don't know who did what to you, but I do know that it had to be at least a group of trained agents. Six, at the very least, and maybe more since they had to drug you. You're not a bruiser, but you snap bones very efficiently. Honestly, a shag with you half-awake and not even hard anyway? Not worth the risk. Sorry."
"Pussy," Arthur said.
"Primary school taunts." He braced on his elbow and ran his thumb across Arthur's lower lip. "How the mighty have fallen."
Arthur's eyes slid closed. "Grab my left arm if I wake up swinging," he murmured. "Careful of the right shoulder and watch out for my legs, I use them in a fight. Hold my head down because I'll break your nose with my forehead."
"Yes, quite. Now I'm very turned on. The idea of my face spurting blood as you struggle to murder me is always the quickest way to my heart."
"Just don't go anywhere," Arthur said, and drifted off for about thirty seconds.
He woke with a gasp, stiffened for a moment, then looked up at Eames and fell back into a light sleep, this time for about two minutes.
This pattern went on for over an hour. At one point he came awake and made Eames promise once again not to go to the bridge.
NEXT PART.
