Who: Evan/Cory -> Eames/Arthur What: Bleeding all over Arthur's apartment Where: Inception Door: Paris When: Seconds after the Masquerade Warnings/Rating: B for Blood and Boxers
It wasn’t like Halloween. It wasn’t just the clothes, you put ‘em on, you play pretend, you take them off again. After the Masquerade ended, it was like he’d had some bad coke, or maybe some coke so good that reality just sucked afterwards. Cory hadn’t done drugs since the first anniversary of Becky’s death, but the comedown after the Masquerade brought that feeling of depressing emptiness into sharp relief. Hard to be content with the gutter when you’d been in the stars. An indeterminable time later--maybe minutes, maybe hours--Cory found himself moving sluggishly through the halls of Passages, watching with blank battlefield emptiness as people in varying states of physical and emotional distress slid past him like tiny fish as he moved upriver along the stairways and down the empty hall toward Arthur’s mahogany door.
He hung out here now and again when he wanted to think, or when he wanted to argue with Arthur, whose intense desire to take control again was becoming a sore tooth Cory liked to prod, just to see how far he could push the guy until he lost it and proved that he was just a brain-sucking parasite again. Cory knew the carpet well, had counted the cracks on the wall, and though Arthur was quiet--keeping to his promise of a 24 hour silence in trade for a night of his own as long as he didn’t leave Cory’s bedroom--Cory wanted to hide somewhere, and the best place he knew of was in the back of Arthur’s intensely organized, militarized, anesthetized little mind.
That carpet that Cory knew so well, it was dotted with blood all the way to the mahogany door which, interestingly, was not mahogany just then. It was that old motel room door, the one that belonged to a pay-by-the week apartment in the sweltering heat of Mombasa. There wasn’t any snow behind it, and the thing was cracked open to reveal the brown-on-gold interior of the cheapest room the place had to offer. The key was in the lock, but there was no movement inside. And there was no movement inside, because the person who had put the key in the lock (and left a rather large amount of sticky, red blood behind) wasn’t there.
Oh, he had to be close, because the door wouldn’t still be open if he wasn’t, the sounds and smells of Kenya bright and vibrant in the hallway of the dark, dusty hotel. And, ah, yes, there, just around the corner. It was just a puddle of blood at first glance, just beyond the door. But, upon careful examination, the fingertips of a hand were visible. Around the corner, Evan slumped against the wall, throat working as he tipped his head back. It was still Eames, of course, but Evan’s body, and even the stronger man hadn’t managed to actually get inside the door. It was a bloody mess of a combination, Evan’s health issues and the blood at his neck. Eames had no desire to die in some hotel in Las Vegas, and when he heard footsteps nearing he turned his head. “Darling, please tell me you’re someone who can give me a shove through that door that I overshot?”
At first, Cory didn’t understand what he was seeing. The carpet was dirty, and that was all he understood at first look. He realized it was a trail soon after that (ink?) and it was a moment after the big stain that he realized it was blood. His stomach churned, and he lurched into panic not long after that. Cory knew what blood smelled like, and he’d seen a lot of it, and worse, at the accident, but all he thought he managed to cover up with scar tissue came back with a surge of confused adrenaline. He accelerated down the hall, almost barreled through the door to the foreign, rundown hotel before realizing it was visibly empty, and skidded to a stop and whipped back around to face the end of the hall just beyond the door.
The voice was what woke Arthur up from wherever he’d withdrawn, but he was unable to work out what was happening from Cory’s wash of panicked emotion, and Cory barely felt his questioning thought as he ran the short two yards to Evan’s side. Cory barely recognized the man, there was too much blood. “Oh God,” he said, dropping to his knees immediately and blindly trying to find where the injury was. “Oh God, oh God.” Cory’s eyes were wide and white all the way around his irises, and his face pinched as he tried to think through the pounding in his ears. “What do I do, what do I do? What happened? Oh, God.” He awkwardly touched Evan’s shoulder, smearing rust blood on his hand, and his whole mind turned off as run impulses fought with memories and hindbrain hell.
“Isn’t this rather poetic,” Eames said, but even he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep control of this body very much longer, not in its current state. His options were limited: the door, or this scared child. Because this was certainly not the always capable, eternally calm Arthur. He’d seen jobs fall to shreds, all without Arthur ever losing his cool until they were over, and this was not that man. “Cory, you will listen to me, darling,” he said, trying to sound as unconcerned about his own state a he possibly could, which was a challenge. Eames, you see, was no martyr. He wanted to die for no one, and while he was precisely the kind of man one wanted on their side during a fight, he would never admit he was that sort of man. “I need stitches, and something to stem the blood. Then, a cold room and somewhere to rest while the amount of blood in my body comes back to normal.” He didn’t mention all the drugs that would need to be dealt with inevitably, because that wasn’t an immediate concern; the blood was.
Cory was in a rabbit panic, seeing flashes of asphalt instead of carpet, and he was too stricken to even cry or choke another word out. Arthur was shouting at him now, because the other man had realized who was under his hands, and there was a jarring sensation just before a falling one as Arthur forcefully took Cory’s place behind his eyes. The adrenaline and the fear was already pumping, and Arthur took a gasp and a pant as his hands started to move. He didn’t bother saying anything as his pupils normalized and Cory’s white pallor became tense and closed rather than slackly panicked, he just worked off Cory’s old sweatshirt, leaning over to pull it off his back, and he stuffed a pad of the material against Evan’s neck. “Hold that.”
Arthur pushed up to Cory’s feet, staggered against the amount of fear adrenaline Cory had been working with, and got to the door. “African hospitals are not happening. The hell are you thinking?” Lunging for the door, he hauled it shut and had it open again with his own key second later, both keys back in his pocket and returning for Evan’s bloody body only a moment after that. He put his hands under Evan’s armpits and started dragging him purposefully toward the door. The apartment beyond definitely wasn’t Mombasa anymore.
Evan-Eames smiled when Arthur’s rather competent voice took over the panic, and it was the kind of lazy smile that spoke of limited consciousness and little blood flowing to the brain. In other words, it was all thoughtless and unfocused. “Ah, beautiful, there you are. Knew you’d fix things,” he said, and he had. He noticed, strangely, that Cory and Arthur did look alike in many ways, it was just impossible to see the similarities when Cory was flailing around like a fish out of water, and Arthur was so infuriatingly competent. He watched the sweatshirt come off, and there was enough perusal there to indicate he wasn’t about to die just then. He held the shirt, as requested, and he chuckled at the slur to his beloved Mombasa. “The police are terrible in Kenya, darling,” he explained, “and the casinos never know a con when they see one.”
All the blood loss meant that holding the sweatshirt balled to his neck was, really, the only thing that Eames could make Evan’s body manage, and he let himself be dragged along without offering any resistance. “You’re lucky he’s thinner than I am,” he said of Evan, which was true. “Paris?” he added, the question asked without thought, indicating that he knew perfectly well where Arthur holed up when they weren’t working together, and that he knew it well enough not to even need to think before uttering the location.
“Yes, Eames,” Arthur said, trying to convince himself that all this adrenaline was still Cory’s, and he just had to keep his head. Why did Evan seem so heavy? He wasn’t that big of a man. “You make the problems, and it’s my job to fix them.” He took one step back through the door, Cory’s lazy, peeling sneakers taking on a black leather shine as his heel slid across the threshold. With a last grunting heave, he hauled Evan through the door. Arthur was much stronger than Cory was--all that training, probably, and fuck me, the same amount of adrenaline--and he had no trouble getting Eames’ abruptly bigger mass flat in the middle of the Parisian apartment’s living room.
The floor was polished oak; it was a bright yellow summer sky outside, though the apartment had a certain stale abandon to the air that implied an oft-absent owner. It smelled like Prada Pour Homme’s pleasantly green vetiver, and the sharper chemical scent of wood varnish, the latter because there was a small side table upside down on a plastic painter’s tarp sitting amid bits of used sandpaper off to one side.
“You’re not supposed to know people’s private information, like addresses, Eames,” Arthur reminded the other man, crouching down beside him and trying to assess how much of a mess he had to deal with. His hands were cool on the side of Eames’ face.
Eames was, admittedly, glad to be Eames again. Not that he felt any better in his own body, because he didn’t just then, but he did try to push himself up onto his elbows fruitlessly. His attempt to look around the apartment thwarted, he had little choice but to look up at Arthur, who looked even more displeased with the world than he did when a job went tit up. “It’ll wash out, Arthur,” he said, assuming there was blood staining the floor inconveniently. Even without being able to see the Parisian flat, Eames could picture it in his mind. He’d been in enough dreams constructed by the man whose hands were on his face to know his taste in art, his taste in furniture, and his impossible taste in music. His eyes drifted shut, and he was thankful no one was singing at him in French just then.
A smile crossed Eames’ face, making it through the pain that seemed to sear his neck with every movement. “Darling, you know where I live, and I know where you live,” he said plainly, because it was true. Arthur made it his job to know where Cobb’s potential team members were, but Eames was just nosy; he liked knowing things about people. “The neck needs stitches, and there’s a lot of blood missing. The arm isn’t as bad,” he explained, because he knew precisely how bad that neck wound looked, and he wanted to minimize it if he could. Arthur did panic on occasion, Eames knew, and he’d prefer it not happen now.
There was enough time to see some prints in dark colors, some deep wood and a Tiffany lamp, but no more detail than that, as Arthur blocked all view to the rest of the apartment as he leaned over Eames body. He had a slight squint to his eyes that was controlled worry, and Eames would know the look. “Stop moving, you idiot.” He sucked air in through his teeth when he saw the wound, a straight-edge slice. Arthur had seen a lot of wounds, but few of them had been in reality. “You got into a knife fight? And lost? You?” He forestalled argument by reapplying pressure with the sweatshirt. “I don’t have blood lying around... I need to... call someone.”
Eames had already stopped moving, and he was a perceptive sod, generally, when it came to things that didn’t involve himself. “Arthur,” he said calmly, one hand moving to touch the other man’s hip, because it was what he could reach without moving again, “it’s going to be fine. You’re not going to let me die, because you’d be all alone in Las Vegas, and you’d miss my bloody arse.” As for the comment about losing, Eames could only scoff as his hand fell away from whatever plainly boring designer fabric Arthur was wearing. “It was Evan, and he was useless dog for the evening.” Curiosity managed to light his eyes as he opened them again. “You didn’t stab Evan, did you? Your Cory?” He ignored the comments about needing to call for blood, trusting Arthur with those particulars.
“No. Cory isn’t capable of that kind of violence, I don’t care what fucked up dreamscape it was in.” Arthur didn’t know why Eames was reassuring him. Who was the one bleeding here, and bleeding a lot, bleeding everywhere? Arthur’s cool hands left Eames’ skin dipped in red, his head shaking. Arthur wet his lips and rolled over on one knee to reach a sleek black phone connected to a landline. The message light was blinking, but Arthur picked up the corded handset and, after a short hesitation, dialed from memory.
Arthur’s French was fluent, but he had an American accent that thickened when he got upset, and the person on the other end was cross with him even after he identified himself. It seemed that this shady person (undoubtedly shady, as Arthur specified fast and specified private) knew Arthur well, however. Arthur told him Eames’ blood type without batting a lash, did not give an address, and hung up. He came back to Eames’ side with an entire drawer he’d pulled out piecemeal from a huge antique chest of drawers at one side of the room.
Eames watched Arthur roll toward the phone with that same unnervingly interested, yet dangerously unfocused look in his eyes. The French made him smile, and his eyes drifted closed again as he tried to make out words that made no sense to him. It was better than that bloody music, though, and he knew it meant someone would be coming shortly to keep him from dying. See, he’d known Arthur would handle matters. He’d no idea Arthur had passed along private information, such as blood type, and he’d likely rib him about it if he had known. But, as it was, he merely winced as he raised a hand to his throat, Cory’s sweatshirt long since discarded on the floor in the hotel.
“Did he have sex then? It would be good for him,” Eames continued about Cory. “I rather hoped Evan would, but that didn’t work out as planned.” He cracked open one eye, and he watched for Arthur’s reaction. He could at least entertain himself while he was lying there almost-dying. “Cory didn’t go as a sex starved boy did he?” There was teasing in the question, because he knew Arthur would take offense. He would have continued on, but a sharp pain in his throat made him hiss, sucking a long breath of air through his teeth, which he had to release in short pants. He tried to rock onto his side, but that didn’t work very well, and he coughed a moment later, a dangerously wet, gurgled cough.
Arthur didn’t have enough antiseptic for this immediately at hand, and he poured several shots of extremely expensive fine brandy onto a wide white pad that he used to compress against Eames neck, having looked at the arm and prioritized the worst injury. Arthur was not at his best, and his control was slipping even if his hair and tie were still neatly in place. Embarrassment and irritation touched his sharply planed features before he concentrated again on the wound. “No.”
The wet cough made Arthur seize up. Please don’t be blood, please don’t be blood. Coughing up blood could mean something somewhere had punctured or damaged a lung. Maybe Eames had a cut in his mouth, or something. Before he could say anything, or do anything other than bend closer and grip Eames by the good shoulder in preparation to pick him up and turn him sideways in case he couldn’t breathe, there was a knock on the door and some French babbling in a young, male voice.
Arthur didn’t want to leave Eames long enough to get to the very well locked door. He turned around at the waist, picked up a piece of delicate blown glass the color of melted chocolate shaped like a round bauble, and smashed it behind him. He picked up a key to the apartment out of the shards and, with a sharp flick of his wrist, slid it across the polished wood of the living room and entryway, and then under the door to ping off the visitor’s foot. The babbling stopped, and the newcomer was a young man, couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, dressed as a medical student.
He joined Arthur on Eames’ other side. The silent security alarm hadn’t been deactivated so it was going off by the door in staccato blinks. Arthur’s mobile was ringing from his suitpocket. For some reason, cheaply typical tourist French music (La Vie en Rose?) was passing several yards outside the window, the source muffled and not visible below the blue sky.
The sting of the brandy made Eames attempt to curse, even as he began to cough up precisely what Arthur didn’t want him to cough up. The blood wasn’t excessive, however, and it was bright red, indicating it didn’t come from an organ or body cavity. It was, all things considered, a good sign. Eames, however, just knew the bloody thing hurt like hell, and he felt a strong desire to annoy Arthur to make himself feel better. It was all impossible, though, and he was left to grab Arthur’s tie, in case the other man was thinking of getting up to answer the door. It was illogical, and Eames had spent a great deal of his life as a mercenary. He’d seen death, real death, since his youth; he should not be having this bloody reaction. He blamed Evan, and all the drugs that clouded the mind he shared with the other man. Or, perhaps, shock.
The doctor, Eames was certain, was too young. And he hated that bloody song, wherever it was playing from. Maybe, he thought as the doctor knelt with his kit, this was all a dream. This was the singer he associated with Arthur’s kicks, and he’d never wanted something to be a dream as badly as he did then. He fished in the pocket of his gray, designer-imitation trousers for his chip, which he knew he’d find if he could just get his fingers deep enough. He twisted his hand tighter in Arthur’s tie, and he tugged on it without intentional thought. The doctor was talking, but Eames couldn’t understand the bloody French, and he turned his attention to Arthur and demanded, even though it hurt to do so. “What’s he saying, darling?” It came out sounding rather calm, he thought, given his deathgrip on a strip of designer fabric.
Tugged down to an uncomfortable angle but still unresisting, Arthur squeezed Eames’ upper arm and looked down again as the doctor took over. “He’s saying he wants to take you to a hospital, and if we don’t go he’ll have to stay until you get better. He’s complaining that he is missing work and that I made him steal things.” The first was true, the second was a lie, and the third was true. Arthur was good at that kind of layering; he used to work for the government. His face was clouded with worry, though, and he took his hand from Eames’ arm and shifted one knee under his shoulder so he could support him off the ground. If he was coughing blood they didn’t want him flat and choking.
The doctor was cutting off Eames’ shirt and doing things with the wound on the other side. Out beyond the window, the tourist boat floating past on the Seine moved out of earshot, and so did Edith. Arthur blinked hard and, when he looked to see what Eames was trying to do, he caught his elbow. “Don’t struggle, you’re making it worse. Find out later.” A pause. “Please don’t die on me.”
No, wrong song, was Eames’ thought as the doctor poked and prodded, but they all sounded the same to him, and they all sounded like Arthur, and there was little deviation beyond that. The knee beneath his shoulder earned Arthur a pained moan, and the doctor clucked things Eames couldn’t understand. The last thing he heard, before a needle pierced the skin of his upper arm, was Arthur’s pleading voice, and he managed a sluggish smile. “I knew you liked me, darling, somewhere deep down.”
That was the last thing Eames managed before the sedative kicked in, and he slept through the doctor’s frenzied complaining and moments of fear-white intensity, during which Arthur was forced to play nurse. Eames would be sorry to have missed the dramatics, which included a rather large needle to numb the neck, while blood dripped all over Arthur’s knee and his previously-pristine floor. The stitching was a time consuming process, one which required a layer of dissolving stitches both inside and out, and the doctor complained the entire time about the unsuitable conditions. Stitching up the arm was easier, and by the time the doctor was washing up, Eames was situated on Arthur’s bed, an IV of O-type blood dripping into his arm. It would take two hours, the doctor had explained once he emerged, and he would return with antibiotics at that time. He recommended Arthur clean up in the meantime, and he left in the same complaining manner that he had arrived, with instructions for Arthur to call a hospital if something happened while he was away.
To Arthur, the whole process had seemed surreal. Lucid dream training had been a hellish experience, because as Ariadne had learned, pure creation came at a price, and Arthur had been killed by angry projections in so many ways that one day he expected the actual act of death would be dull and unexciting. Pain of all kinds was a normal experience, and the very visceral didn’t even turn his stomach anymore. He’d seen other people die in just as many ways, and red muscle being stitched under Eames white face was only strange because someone was actually trying to stitch it at all. Felix, the doctor, liked to talk a lot when he was working, something that had balanced Arthur’s blank silence and restrained fear, and before he left he told Arthur that his suit was too American with a tease to his voice that didn’t sink in until long after he’d left.
The flat was tiny, as all Parisian apartments were, but it was clear where Arthur’s money went, as apartments in Paris’ Arrondissement 7 did not come cheaply. It was a one-bedroom overlooking the Seine, the splendid circle of stained glass that marked the graceful spirals of Notre Dame was in sight from the small windows, the view of the brown water and the cement walls of Île de la Cité interrupted only by an occasional passing tourist barge. The bed, with its reassuring cool violet-gray coverlet and white sheets, dominated the bedroom entirely in the shadow of the blue intensity of Rothko’s 1944 ventures into pastel surrealism. Eames looked strange lying there on his back, first because he was just too large to be believed, and second because he was just lying there, not twitching or moving or doing any of the things that dreamers did.
After watching him for a little while, Arthur returned to his sitting room. He deactivated the alarm, which had been calling him repeatedly on his cellphone for the last hour, then reset it in case anyone came through the door. He stood with his back to it and stared at the mess in front of the bedroom door. Bleak black stains had sunk into the parquet de Versailles, and the remains of Felix’s work was littered around Arthur’s footprints. He made no move to clean it. More tourist barges came and went.
Eventually, he ignored the blinking message light, stepped around the antique table he’d been hoping to restore in his horribly amateur way, and, trying to be sensible, went to change. Felix wouldn’t ever have to see this suit again, so there was that. Arthur was in the shower until he realized it had gone cold, and then he returned to the bedroom with a warm towel. He stared at Eames until he was sure the man was breathing, and then he vanished behind the open door of a huge cherry armoire that made maneuvering around the bed difficult.
Eames slept through all of the watching and the beeping, and it was the sound of running water that began to rouse him. He was, albeit groggily, awake by the time Arthur exited the bathroom and stared at him, though closed eyes gave no indication of it. It wasn’t until Arthur moved away that Eames finally managed to drag open his eyes and take in his surroundings. Perhaps it was the effect of the sedative, but everything seemed slow and unrushed, and he registered the fact that he was on Arthur’s bed, which was hopelessly stained and ruined. There was an IV hooked up to his arm, and his neck was still numb, which was lovely; he knew that wouldn’t last forever, but he’d be grateful for as long as it did. It took seconds, the realizations, but it felt like countless hours thanks to the sedation, and he wondered how much it had taken to knock out someone with the tolerance he had in his body (thank you, Evan).
A few second later, the sound of movement at the armoire drew Eames’ attention in that same drugged, sluggish manner, and he chuckled quietly enough that the sound didn’t carry across the small space. He couldn’t see much, not with Arthur hiding behind the open door as he was, but he could make out one bare shoulder, the plush white of a towel, and bare feet. A glance down at his own body revealed that the blood on him had dried, but he was shirtless, wearing only the cheap, knock off trousers he’d arrived in. His attention went back to the obstructing door, and his voice was like sandpaper when he spoke. “Darling, if you wanted me in your bed, you only needed to ask,” he said, adding (after a wince), “do come out from behind that door if you’re going to be naked.”
No one in their right mind would have expected Eames to be awake considering the condition he was in, and Arthur dropped a silk shirt the color of ripe pears in surprise. It drifted gently down, the way finely-milled silk should, and slid across the floor and out of reach. Arthur cursed silently to himself and, with a movement not at all casual, he leaned about six centimeters around the wardrobe door and fixed Eames with a reproachful dark eye. His hair was still wet and slicked back away from his forehead the way he always had it, and he would have as soon gone down the catwalk in the towel as come out from behind the door. Words got stuck in his throat and he had to try twice to begin the reply. “You’re supposed to be dead or asleep.”
Arthur pulled himself back behind the door and there was some shuffling as he tried to find something that matched the nice warm black slacks he’d chosen quickly, but of course as soon as he got rushed everything within reach looked wrong. All the right colors were now in the other armoire in the living room. Damn. More shuffling.
“It’s a tolerance to drugs, Arthur. I’m amazed whatever he gave me worked. Quit snapping, and come tell me what the doctor said. It’s not as if I haven’t seen a man without a shirt before,” Eames said calmly, his voice that same rough sandpaper that hinted at morning intimacies. “I think this is the first time I’ve stained a bed without enjoying it,” he added, a grin just making it around lips that were still too pale, a reminder of how close he’d just come to dying. “Am I allowed a shower, or am I to be covered in blood as punishment for bad behavior?” Despite the sandpaper, that question was a more serious one. Eames was eager to forget everything that had just happened - he had an aversion to tasting his own mortality - and cleaning up was the first step to making himself feel normal again.
The shuffling behind the armoire stopped at this information about drug tolerance, but it started up again soon after. Arthur dropped the white towel to step into briefs, his feet lifting up one at a time from behind the solid wood of the open door. He hopped up and down a couple times to get the first leg of the slacks in. “You’re wasting too much energy on the smart comments,” Arthur said, as if this was an answer to all questions, still not reappearing. “You should rest.” Some clattering as he picked up a watch and then put it down again, found deodorant, again tried to choose a shirt.
After a few moments of silence, there was the sound of movement and a groan as Eames attempted to sit up on the bed. “Come here,” he said as he moved, the words pained and exertion-hard.
The sounds of pain got Arthur out from behind the armoire immediately. He just avoided stepping on the shirt, and stood there for a second, brows drawn together, eyes narrowed. Arthur’s shirtless body revealed much of who and what he was. He was naturally small, with overlong limbs, but everything about him was stretched muscle, coiled, worked, every movement without exertion because he put so much effort into it during some other time and place, probably on cold mornings when no one was awake. His profession meant no scars, an academic’s fingers, and a rich man’s healthy color. He took several steps toward the bed. “I said not to move.” (He hadn’t, but it was like he had.)
It hadn’t been a tactic to get Arthur out from behind the door without a shirt on, but there was enough of the rake in Eames to appreciate it regardless. He was sitting upright now, after a good deal of work, hands braced on the ruined bedsheets at his sides. The IV was a contained stream of slow red, and it looked bright and real in the muted colors of the room. “You didn’t,” Eames said with a grin and droplets of perspiration along his brow. He looked at Arthur, because he wasn’t dead, and Eames would look at anything that was attractive so long as he wasn’t dead. Arthur’s body was a distinct contrast to his own, which was thickly muscled and spattered with hair, bruises and jailhouse tattoos. “I’m not dying, and I want a washcloth or running water,” he said logically, trying to calm the other man with his tone. Whoever thought he would be the one trying to calm Arthur, of all people.
Arthur was calm; or at least, he wasn’t in that angry battlefield panic that he acquired when things went really horribly wrong, or when he thought he’d made a mistake. His face showed signs of fatigue around his eyes, which were red at the far corners under his lashes. He stopped in his approach to bend over and pick up the silk shirt, which he started to work his fingers over to get the buttons open. He resumed his path, put the shirt to one side where the coverlet covered Eames’ knee, and then he leaned to an angle so he could look at Eames’ stitches. “You were dying not long ago,” he pointed out, looking intentionally clinical.
“That was earlier, darling,” Eames insisted, his IVed hand closing around Arthur’s wrist when the other man leaned to check on the stitches. “Clean bedsheets would also be nice. I realize you don’t have anything as nice as Mombasa, but I’ll tolerate it,” he added, his smile almost a lazy smirk. “We have to figure out what happens when our time here is up, Arthur,” he added logically. Arthur seemed to be stuck in now, which was odd to the oblivious Eames, who saw Arthur as the eternal planner. “There’s the matter of Evan’s withdrawal.”
Arthur turned his head, as if in slow motion, his eyes moving from Eames’ neck to the hand on his wrist. More strange, surreal feelings moved behind his eyes, like fish in a bowl. He did not smile back. “I’ll deal with it. You need to lie down.” He picked up his hand where Eames gripped it and pulled it toward him, very slowly, to disengage it, and then he tried to put it to the center of Eames chest to push him back.
“Arthur,” Eames said, wielding the other man’s name with as much scratchy strength as he could manage just then, “I’m not going to lie down. I want to clean up, darling, with or without your help.” The hand on his chest was enclosed in those same fingers, and he used it as leverage to attempt to stand.
Arthur’s eyes flashed a wide white flag of worry before they narrowed again into their usual dark observance. As if waking up, he took Eames’ support by picking up his elbow and then caught his good shoulder to make him lie flat. It was a skilled move but not one he thought about before he did it. All he thought about was Eames getting up and hurting himself again, dealing with more blood and whatever it was he had just gone through in the living room. “Lie down.”
Eames never took Arthur for the kind of man to resort to physical measures. Oh, he’d seen Arthur lose that temper of his, even recently in the dream world, but this was different, and he allowed himself to be pushed back (though he would have likely been powerless to resist if he tried - too weak). “I’m going to start thinking you’re worried about me Arthur,” he said, his expression ineffably calm and lazy-smug. His eyes were clearer than earlier, skin a bit less pale thanks to the blood flowing through the tubing that was now wound around Arthur’s arm. “The bathroom is only a few steps away, darling,” he added with utter rationality.
Eames was flat again, and Arthur could feel the man’s heart beating through the oddly thin skin under his palm. He didn’t move. His face didn’t move, the muscles at either end of his mouth and the wires under his shoulderblades froze in place. “I’ll bring the washcloth.” Arthur started breathing again, made a move to draw back, stopped because he saw the tubing, and leaned back to his former position. “Don’t move.”
Eames made a sound that was outward agreement, but even he noticed how still Arthur went. He’d no idea Arthur harbored any feelings for him other than annoyance, general dislike and the kind of loyalty that one always gave to teammates, but he did grasp physical reactions in others rather quickly (and even drugged, it seemed). A brow went up, and he touched a hand to Arthur’s side before repeating that sound of agreement. He would get up and get rid of the sheets as soon as Arthur went in search of the washcloth, but there was no need to tell him so.
With care, Arthur redistributed his weight on his bare feet. He became increasingly conscious that he was standing in his bedroom without a shirt and the line of his briefs visible over the hem of his pants. He pulled his hand away from Eames’ chest, flinched slightly away from the commiserating hand at his hip, and gently disentangled himself from the tubing. He picked up the shirt in a smooth movement and fled away to the bathroom. The sink water started running, and cupboard under the sink banged against the molding.
Eames waited until Arthur was in the bathroom to push himself up again. He was quieter this time, careful to muffle the groan that came with the local anesthetic wearing off at his throat. He reached back and began pulling the corners on the bedsheets, even as he tried to maintain a calm speaking voice, so that Arthur didn’t return and insist he lie down again. “Would you like to tell me about your evening, Arthur?” he asked, because his own experience from the previous evening was all over Arthur’s floor.
Arthur was taking too long because he couldn’t get his shirt buttoned properly, his fingers were shaking. “Uneventful. Cory enjoyed himself.” The sink was still running, and after shoving his hand between shirt and hem to push it in place, Arthur checked to see if the sorely taxed water heater was up to the task. Lukewarm thanks to summer, but that was about it. He got a clean washcloth from one of the deerskin-tan sets on the shelf above the sink, and threw it under the tap. He watched it darken and then eyed his appearance. His hair was starting to dry in all directions.
“Any chance he had sex? It would greatly improve his outlook on life,” Eames said, a muffled curse escaping his lips as he tugged the final sheet corner free. His face had gone clammy and too pale, but he felt mildly successful. Now if he could only find fresh sheets without Arthur emerging from the bathroom and pinning him to the bed. Which, in retrospect, sounded rather appealing. Hmm. “I can’t get you to pop to Mombasa and fetch me some clean trousers, can I?” he asked, bracing a hand against the wall as he moved to his feet, letting his head cease its spinning once he was upright. “Where do you keep the sheets, darling?”
Arthur reappeared again, fully-dressed apart from socks and shoes, the washcloth dripping in his hand as he stood in the doorway to the bath. Familiar irritation crossed his face, and he visibly prevented himself from shouting as he strode across the room. “I’ll get the sheets and find you some clothes.” The ghastly look on Eames’ face made Arthur’s nostrils flare in anger, and he rounded the edge of the bed again. He took Eames’ free wrist, turned his palm up, and plopped the wet washcloth in it. He turned away and fisted the bedclothes to give them a sharp yank that pulled them all the way off the mattress. He seemed temporarily incapable of speech.
“You have a wonderful bedside manner, Arthur,” Eames replied, a grin once the washcloth was unceremoniously deposited in his hand. “And I don’t think it’s possible to pull on those sheets any more angrily than you already are,” he added, carefully making his way over to the nearest chair and dropping into it with a groan. He began rubbing the washcloth over his arms, but his movement was limited with the tubing and needle in his hand, and it was even harder to reach his chest with the stitches on his other arm. He was wincing a few seconds in, but he didn’t ask for help. He could be stubborn, on occasion, perhaps.
Arthur ignored that. He left the bedclothes (oh, that coverlet was nearly 900 euro, dammit) in a heap on the floor, and then walked out into the living room and to the linen closet behind the front door. He was back with an arm full of sheets and his winter coverlet, which was a crisp holly green with ivory edges. His hair was drying and frizzing like Cory’s did, except Arthur had twice as much length in the front and it made him look simultaneously sleepy and angry. He kept jerking his chin to get it out of the way.
Upon entering the bedroom again, Arthur surveyed Eames with a scorchingly scornful gaze, and then he set about making the bed with the same efficiency that he did everything. He refused to respond to any casual comments during this time, and once he was done he moved back in front of Eames with the same look he might have worn if they were about to enter the ring together.
Eames looked up at him, quirked an impossibly frustrating brow, and then he had the audacity to smile. “Yes, darling?”
Arthur raked his eyes down Eames’ chest. “Are you done?”
Eames looked down at himself, then back up at Arthur. “Now is not the time for a condescending I told you so, Arthur,” he replied, clearly winded, even if he kept the infuriating smile on his face. He held out the washcloth, and that brow quirked again. There was still blood on nearly every inch of his chest and stomach, and he was curious if Arthur would actually take that volley. It made him feel amazingly better, really, this turn of events.
Arthur took the cloth, turned around and walked away. He left it in the sink and, before Eames could so much as shift, came back with a clean one. Returning to lean his knees against the side of Eames’ recently appropriated chair (a svelte modern curve that bore up under his weight despite its fragile appearance), Arthur leaned down to pick up Eames’ wrist again without comment. He rubbed the washcloth over the stained, exposed skin with a deliberate scrubbing motion. He worked around the wound, giving it a wide birth, and up to the good side of his neck.
It wasn’t intentional, really it wasn’t. But the scrubbing felt bloody good, especially after the night he’d had, and Eames closed his eyes and leaned back against the chair. He made the occasional sound of approval or pleasure, and a stretch resulted in a wince, a move resulted in a groan, but he didn’t open his eyes. His hand caught Arthur’s wrist when the other man rubbed the washcloth over his neck, stilling him a moment. “Thank you, darling,” he said, and there was earnestness in his scratchy voice. They might bicker endlessly, but he had known Arthur wouldn’t let him die, and Arthur had proved up to the task.
“You don’t deserve it, after what you put me through,” Arthur said, with a perfunctory annoyance and every appearance of trying to concentrate on what he was doing. He cleaned off Eames’ other arm, wondering what all the ink could possibly be for, and then put an arm that felt like it was no wider or stronger than a playing card behind Eames spine to support him into a straight sitting. He swiped the horribly stained cloth over Eames chest as he held him upright with one arm, and he didn’t sound out of breath when he said, “Watch the IV.”
Eames harbored no illusions about the type of men they were. At the end of the day, however Arthur dressed, he was still a criminal. He could shoot a gun as well as he needed to, and he could maintain calmness in a fight, and he could think under pressure. It didn’t surprise Eames, then, that there was capable strength in Arthur’s narrow frame. “Barking at me doesn’t hide the fact that you were worried about me, Arthur,” he said knowingly, because poking Arthur was one of his favorite pastimes, even when he was starting to feel every bit of searing pain return to his neck. “You won’t allow me to pull the IV out, and we both know it,” he added, fingers loosely held around Arthur’s wrist still.
Arthur did a decent job with the blood, but something in his face changed, and with it came so much youth and anguish, so suddenly, that for a second it was as if Cory was standing there and not Arthur at all, but then he took his weight off his knee against the chair and leaned over Eames so that their faces were inches apart. “A few hours ago you almost bled to death on my floor, and there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t about allowing anything. I couldn’t do anything. I just had to sit there and watch you bleed. Do you like the idea of me not being able to control something Eames? I’m glad you fucking enjoyed it.” He snatched the bloody washcloth off Eames’ chest and turned again for the bathroom.
Eames opened his eyes when Arthur began speaking, but he didn’t interrupt during the diatribe. Arthur could be a bloody drama queen at times, but Eames was accustomed to it, and it didn’t come as any kind of surprise. When Arthur turned, Eames’ grip on the other man’s wrist tightened. It took all the strength he had in him, but the grip was like a vise, even with the IV in his hand. But where Arthur was wiry strength, thin and angles, Eames was all arms and chest, and even injured there was a force in his grip that Arthur would have trouble shaking. “Arthur,” he said. Nothing more than the other man’s name, and a gaze that said everything was fine. He knew panic, and he knew it residually in Arthur’s eyes just then. “It’s fine, darling.” Eames tended to be a man of few words, and this moment was no exception. He simply tugged Arthur back toward him, between the vee of his spread thighs, and he kept him there until he calmed.
Arthur resisted the restraint once with a pointless tug of his arm, but he gave in almost immediately and came back, this time not to one side but in front of the other man. His expression was tired and resigned, and he looked older again, though he was nothing like the capable man whose appearance he usually cultivated. Arthur was angry at Eames for the comment about leaving him, and the anger warred with real worry that he actually would, and it would just be him, Cory, Las Vegas, and the big question mark that could really only be solved by a bullet. The sense of abandonment shook Arthur to the core, and he wanted, selfishly, to somehow inflict it on Eames so that he wouldn’t ever do anything like this again. Head down and eyes averted, he put an arm up and caught his fingers in the muscle leading to Eames’ neck, the good side, fortunately. He kneaded there, meant to take his hand away, but couldn’t.
The kneading touch was unexpected, but not unwelcome, and Eames kept that iron grip on Arthur’s wrist. It loosened slightly, the vice grip, but not terribly much, and Eames let his eyes drift closed again at the feel of strong fingers pressing against the muscles leading to his neck. A beat, and then he tugged Arthur slightly forward with that grip, until the other man had no choice but to rest against the front of the cheap, dirty trousers Eames still wore; then he let go. His hand drifted back to Arthur’s hip, and he didn’t hide his sound of pleasure. “That feels bloody nice,” he said, voice low and rough. “Much nicer than the knives on the other side.” His voice stayed low, like someone speaking without giving much thought to the words. “Evan was hungry. He’s never hungry. Neither am I anymore. It’s maddening.”
Arthur let himself lean against Eames' shoulder, chest and thigh. Not for long, but just for a second, a minute. The grip grounded him, reassured him that Eames would be in one piece, and he barely listened to the words as they moved past him. "Hungry," he said, blankly, clearly not understanding fully and not necessarily inquiring to do so. He pulled himself together and took his hand off Eames' shoulder abruptly. He slid it around his ribs a second later. "You need to get back to bed," he said, lifting expectantly.
Eames didn’t clarify, and he made a sound that was part complaint, part agreement when Arthur lifted. “I can walk to the bed,” he insisted, but he didn’t make any move to push the other man away. Standing, Eames’s fingers dropped to his trousers, where he undid zipper and button and let the blood-stained gray fabric drop as he moved, stepping out of it in boxers that had pale pink lines against their snowy white background. The plastic bag that held the blood was almost empty, and it seemed to him that the pain was increasing with every drip. “You’ll have to plan out what happens once our twenty-four hours is up, darling,” he said as he walked, knowing the doctor would need to give him something strong for the pain once he returned.
With his shoulder in the curve of Eames’ arm under the good shoulder, Arthur took most of the other man’s not inconsiderable weight. It was a short trip to the bed, and if he got him there, the pain would probably make him stay. Arthur was thinking about how long it would take Felix to get back when Eames quite casually took his pants off, and Arthur was several seconds late helping him to continue toward the bed, stopped by an unexpected gutstab of lust. He was usually good at keeping that kind of thing to himself, but he let out a hot breath through both nostrils and tried to get his eyes up back where they belonged. Once they got to the bed he unwound Eames’ arm as soon as physically possible and stopped himself from shoving the other man flat to get him either safely away or somewhere he couldn’t escape, Arthur wasn’t sure which. “We’ll just come back through.”
It was a good thing that Eames was too focused on the increasing levels of pain, because it kept him from noticing Arthur’s reaction. Of course, the heavy level of medication clouding Evan’s mind helped with that. Eames, the undrugged version, would have noticed a physical reaction to the removal of his trousers from yards away. As it was, he sat down on the mattress, before stretching out with a groan of pain through clenched teeth. He dragged in a breath, stomach going slightly concave and ribs stark against lightly haired skin for a moment as he waistband of the boxers dipped, and then he exhaled and it was all competence again, thick and bulky and one knee raised as he settled onto the clean bed. “I trust you,” was all he managed for words, before his eyelids drifted shut; he did. If Arthur had demonstrated anything in this exercise, it was that he wasn’t likely to let Eames die anytime soon.
Arthur made sure Eames didn’t strain his neck or break any stitches, stuffing the pillow under his head and inwardly thinking about really filthy things that didn’t have anything to do with playing nursemaid. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He watched to make sure that Eames wasn’t pretending to be asleep so he could wake up again, walk around the room, or mess with Arthur’s head when he least expected it. Satisfied the sleep was genuine, Arthur picked up the bloody washcloth and retreated to the kitchen. He’d just clean until he was himself again. If he had to take the floor apart to do it, then so be it.