eamesfm

[eamesfm]

Arthur's expression barely flickered. Eames wasn't sure if that was flattering or insulting.

The guilt made his palms sweat. It didn't matter how firmly he told himself that this was sensible, actually; that he was choosing the right option, and that he was doing it for the right reasons, his internal monitor was blaring, so loudly that it felt like a pounding in his head. Or maybe his head was actually pounding; it was hard to tell. Probably both; he still felt dehydrated, and he helped himself to a second bottle of water and poured the hot water into the tea, grimacing. A stove kettle. Liptons. Well, it was better than a microwave, and the sugar would help more than anything. The ritual, too, the pouring and letting it steep, and the smell of the steam coming off the top as the water darkened, reminding him of his mother and how she never took milk with anything. Ruins the flavour, she'd say, even when drinking instant coffee. His lips were cracked and dry and he was thinking of his mother. Jesus Christ.

It wasn't that he didn't drink. God, he drank. But this tasted different to him; it tasted of temptation and panic. He focused on his breathing as he sat back at the counter, keeping it slow and steady, sipping at the tea too soon so he burned his tongue; the sensation helped ground him. He nodded at Arthur in thanks and uncapped the bottle, barely taking in the expensive weight of the glass and the slender, elegant label, sloshing a healthy measure into his cup. He might've offered it to Arthur as a half-joke, but he was feeling a little too fragile to acknowledge the whiskey more than he had to, so he just screwed the cap back on one handed and pushed it away. It made a satisfying swish on the countertop. This time when he took a sip, it burned in a different way, and he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingertips, exhaling heavily. It would help, he told himself. It would help more than telling Arthur he was heading off, spending five minutes rifling through his drawers, and walking to the nearest park to spend whatever cash he found on a handful of oxy and a hotel room.

At Arthur's question his head shot up. He regretted it instantly; pain burst in front of his eyelids, like the worst hangover in the world. The kitchen lights were too bright and everything felt too sharp, Arthur's face most of all; too beautiful, really, the lines too clean. But his words were perfect; they cut through the haze, and made Eames laugh. That was all Arthur: seeking knowledge above all things. He was probably seeking to fill in a blank, a empty category in his little filing cabinet in his mind named Eames: Weaknesses; subsection - substances. God, but it felt good to be direct. It felt good to be honest. Eames finished the tea, though it was too warm, really, to drink so fast, and pulled the heavy glass bottle back towards himself, giving up on all pretence. His eyebrow flickered as he uncapped it and poured another helping into the bottom of his cup. "I'll pay you back," he said, meaning: for the Bourbon. For the bed. For the surgery and the vomiting and whatever the hell else you had to do to keep me alive these past few days. But mostly for the Bourbon.

After the second measure, Eames felt steadier. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then wiped his forehead and grimaced at the cold sweat there. "Honestly, it never hit me that way. Not as an addiction, anyway. I'd been on other shit before dreamsharing even came into it - it was everywhere in Musayyib, you know, and the shit they gave me for this," he gestured to his thigh, where the bullet had been dug out in more sanitary conditions than Arthur's house, but still left a deep depression in the skin like a thumb print, "was something else." He whistled long and slow. "Mate. I'd give up - fuck, what, six years of sobriety? - for some of that stuff right this second." He waved the bottle of Bourbon, as if to say, this is enough, and his expression turned serious again. "No, the somnacin was - well, you know what it was like at the start, and I bet you guys had better stuff over here than we did. When it was at its most addictive, right at the beginning, when they had Cobb building cellars and handcuffs, we weren't having pleasant dreams; all any of us wanted was to wake up again. So I was lucky, in that sense." When he grinned it came back in a rush of memory, the taste of blood etched around his teeth. "Now? Well." He poured again, then capped the bottle, a deliberate gesture, enough. The pain was fading; the light hurt his eyes less. "I don't use it enough to know. This was my first time under since..."

Eames stopped himself. Somehow, even here, saying the word inception felt too risky. Instead he tried to roll his injured shoulder back to loosen the tendons and stifled a groan, but the whiskey had relaxed him enough that he was able to move it, little by little. He imagined his joints grinding together and giving off sparks. The word came unbidden, no space between thinking and speaking: "thanks."

eamesfm​:

Arthur was dressed like a newsreader, if newsreaders wore couture, and he drank bottled water like an American, and he was standing in his kitchen looking at Eames like he was about to fall over, which was, frankly, a fair enough appraisal - Eames would have said something clever, but couldn’t find the energy. He just grunted (he probably shouldn’t be out of bed; his skin felt warm and the marble countertop was pleasantly cool against his forearms; he resisted the urge to rest his forehead against it) and sat.

He had never liked kitchens as a gathering place; that was typically American too, he found. Much better to be in a cosy living room, that was where someone’s true personality came out, or skip straight to the bedroom; the irony did strike him that they had done this somewhat backwards. It was like a shite one night stand, in which no one had got off and he had had a bullet dug out of his shoulder. He wondered if Arthur, whose eyes were tracking over him, was ticking bits off on him like a bullet pointed list, one of the infernally neat ones he kept in his little moleskins: tattoos, scars, bandages, freckles, compartmentalising him and finding him lacking. Usually he would’ve been conscious that this was the closest, or at least most alone, they had ever been with this few items of clothing between them, but even he fell short at the post in this state. He just accepted the bottle of water with a nod of gratitude.

“Tea?” he asked, and was surprised to find that his voice came out okay - a little hoarse from disuse, and from the screaming (ouch, yeah, there had been screaming; it was coming back to him now, unpleasantly), but definitely his voice. It was always pleasant, reconfirming that he was himself. He even managed a half-smile. “If it’s not too much trouble, deviating from the norm. Two sugars, ta.”

It felt like his brain was moving underwater - no, worse, like it was encased in jelly, ticking over, but only just, the gears clogged, the motor just two seconds from overload. Opening his mouth, speaking at all, had exhausted him. His mouth tasted of mint toothpaste and blood, which unfortunately was not all that novel. He eyed the water bottle like an alien encountering human technology for the first time, but eventually he opened it - teeth and right hand - and draining it helped, the coldness and the familiar action more than the liquid. With a slight sigh, he pressed the still cool plastic to the side of his neck, just over his pulse, and watched Arthur make tea with half-lidded eyes. He could almost convince himself that this was just a hangover. Almost. “So,” he offered up, “was it good for you?”

Now that was more like it - he liked the sound of the words coming out of his mouth, they reassured him that he was still alive, and they were half-convincing at a play for attention. That was what he was always seeking, with his needling, teasing, almost cruel comments: Arthur’s attention. He had it now; oh, boy, did he have it.

It was also halfway to a real question; the more things came back to him, the more the panic began to wrap real tendrils around his throat. How much did he owe Arthur? What had Arthur done for him? Killed for him, most certainly. Compromised his house - what might be his family home, looking around, remembering the Spiderman. He had compromised his identity, something he had guarded fiercely from the world. Why had he done it? Was it the bond of inception that tied them so close? Was it Mal’s voice in his head, sweetly meddling? Eames couldn’t fathom it. He needed a drink.

“Actually, have you got anything to add to that tea?” In case Arthur thought he was joking, he added, gaze direct: “gotta pick the lesser of two evils, you see. Addiction’s all a see-saw. Balancing act.”

It was a small offering, like a flower on the altar: a secret for a secret - or, if not a secret (addicts, in Eames’s considerable experience, always think they’re more subtle than they are, and Arthur didn’t miss anything) then at least a confirmation. You show me yours, I show you mine. A pact of closeness.

He had tea – Lipton Yellow Label. Gross stuff, really, but to Arthur’s mind – which was surprisingly uncultured when it came to tea – it was just fine. He was born to appreciate many of the finer things in life, but tea did not number among them. At least he had the foresight to just dump a mug and the box of teabags in front of Eames rather than attempt to brew it for him. He once had heard it said that the Brits were best left alone to make their own tea, and Arthur had the foresight not to test that. He poured filtered water into a stove-top kettle, turned the burner on, and waited for the water to come to a boil. While he did that, he looked for a bag of sugar in the cupboard, grabbed a spoon, and put that on the counter in front of Eames, too.

Eames.

In his kitchen.

It kept playing in his mind, like a mantra, or a broken record, something that should worry him more than it did because he wasn’t supposed to throw himself into a loop like that. Calm and clarity. Everything else was a complication. He could handle complications on the job – but in life? He didn’t know what to do with them in life. Maybe he’d had too many of them already.

(Maybe one more wouldn’t be so bad.)

So – was it good for you? 

The kettle started to sing. Arthur shot Eames a capital-L Look, and turned to the stove. He didn’t deign to answer. Not that it was too early, or that he wanted to cut Eames some slack – hell, after accepting that shady as fuck job and getting burnt because of it, Eames didn’t deserve slack – but because maybe, just maybe, he was better off shutting his mouth. Another complication: His mind was still processing; reality pressed in, muted like a handprint on a fogged-up window, a kaleidoscope of blurred grayscale shapes on the other side of the glass. He hadn’t felt like this since the early days, the days when he was a lab rat and Mal the mad scientist, and humanity’s subconscious laid out before them like terra nullius, waiting to be explored. The bleeding effect had been a pain in the ass; dreams and realities overlapping. Rationally speaking, Arthur knew that he wasn’t in a dream right now – but he hated the fact that last night, he had still felt compelled to check his totem to make sure.

Eames asking for booze to go with his morning tea didn’t help in that regard. What did help was that follow-up, blunt and more candid than Arthur reckoned he’d ever heard him talk about the baggage he was carrying around. A different sort of kick. He had the good grace to not fake surprise; but he did seem to consider the request for a moment. Then he stepped out of the kitchen, through the arch into the living room – the rooms were also connected through an open window space where there should have been a wall, all complete with a counter and two bar stools on the living room side – and to the lacquered drinks cabinet in the corner. Marks & Spencer, stained timber legs and Art Deco pattern … all posh, like. He had never claimed to be above guilty pleasure shopping when in London.

By the time he came back with a bottle of Bourbon, the silence between them had settled into something less sharp, less tense. Arthur usually found it was the opposite – let silence grow and it becomes a black hole – so maybe it was something else. Maybe his brain was finally catching up with a reality the loaded die in his back pocket had already proclaimed here and true.

He watched Eames pour, wondering not for the first time how the man kept doing what he was doing. The work had gotten easier since the chemistry side of things had started to smooth out the rough edges that used to undo them all too easily: that dreamlike haze that they started to call the bleeding effect, the feeling when reality and dream blended into an unknown in-between layer of awareness, blissful in the way it made you feel like you were floating through life without a care because you lost your grasp. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream, Shirley Jackson once wrote. Arthur had read that line often enough that sometimes, when he was under on his own, sorting what needed sorting and filing what needed filing, he would hear it tumbling around his mind palace, a disembodied voice that sounded vaguely like Mal’s. 

Dreamshare: a flytrap for your sanity. These days, any chemists worth their money in this business had their own way of going about this unsolvable equation; but the fact remained that there was an expiration date on all of them. For some earlier than for others.

“How do you handle the compound?” Arthur straight-up asked, no skirting around the issue. Not now. Not here. He resisted the temptation to reach into his back pocket. 

[eamesfm]

I would like to nominate “You promised” “I know” as one of the most heartbreaking exchanges in the english language

[eamesfm]

𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐭.    /     eames of inception fame.

ex-special ops. wanted for grand larceny, treason, and homicide in most western countries. former drug addict, gambling problem, slippery character. it's hard to pin someone down when even they're not sure what they look like anymore.

doc (bio/rules/verses). timeline. stats. pinterest. closely affiliated & exclusive with my beloved @imbricare 's arthur

[eamesfm]

gay sex is the most important thing in the world up there w being in bed and doing drugs

[eamesfm]

Beating the alcoholic allegations by easily plugging my phone into the charger with no struggle at all

[eamesfm]

imbricare​:

There was a small satellite radio sitting on the microwave and the WNBM morning show was on, and Arthur took a moment to appreciate the weirdness of this scene: Eames, half dressed, half alive, hovering between Arthur’s kitchen and living room, a man on the run as much as a man out of place.

Eames in his kitchen.

Arthur simultaneously frowned and blinked at him, something that only he could  manage to convey in a single, succinct expression. Today, he looked decidedly more like the Arthur that Eames was used to than he had yesterday. For a man who usually dressed like he couldn’t spell domesticity if his life depended on it, he had shown up looking frighteningly casual, outfitted with a sweater and a pair of denims; now, he was back to rolled-up shirts and business pants. Instead of closing the bottle of mineral water that he had just poured himself a glass from, Arthur reached for a second glass from the top shelf. He filled it up and brought it round to Eames. 

(Eames, in his kitchen.)

“You look like you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

He let his eyes wander, grateful for the excuse and hating himself a little for it. Eames’ old army buddy had done a decent job of patching him back up – better than anything Arthur would have been able to do, which didn’t say much, but hey, he would’ve tried. Eames’ shoulder was tightly wrapped in bandages, as was his hand; otherwise, he still looked like shit: exhausted, bruised ribs, pallid face, which only reinforced Arthur’s firm belief that the man should sleep off whatever hell of a medically-induced hangover he was probably going through. 

Then again, that couldn’t be easy … not when you’re a walking parable of unkicked habits. 

Arthur didn’t know if Eames knew that he knew; but then again he himself didn’t think he knew enough to conclude that he knew. What he had a pretty concrete notion about was this: When Mal wrangled them into a team for the first time, six years ago, Eames had been jittery, sometimes volatile - functional, almost always, but just so. He also had a vague idea that things had gotten better. Gradually, if not overnight. Things that happen overnight are the other way around: the monkey’s on your back in less than a minute, but to get it off again? Job of a lifetime. 

So he offered Eames water, but he didn’t offer any pain relievers, even though he had a pack of Tylenol in one of the kitchen cupboards. 

Surreal. It felt surreal. Six months ago, they had performed inception, had done the impossible – then, nothing. Arthur had half wondered if this had been it, if he was ready to retire from a world of subconscious theft and extortion, but the other part of him had felt something else entirely when he had been roped into Eames’ run-in with the Bosnian mob yesterday: relief.

Bizarrely, undeniably, terrifyingly, he had felt relieved.

Now, he just wanted to hole up in an oversized hoodie and vanish into thin air, which left him tense, ready to pounce. Yesterday, he had acted without thinking, hadn’t hesitated to get involved, which was unlike him (he blamed it on the sort-of-sabbatical) – but now, he had to deal with the consequences creeping up on him. The walls were down, literally so, and he didn’t know what to do other than trying to roll with it and keep his head over water. Throwing Eames out was out of the question – rationally as well as emotionally speaking, he couldn’t fool himself – so he did the next best thing. “Go, sit down. Coffee?”

Arthur was dressed like a newsreader, if newsreaders wore couture, and he drank bottled water like an American, and he was standing in his kitchen looking at Eames like he was about to fall over, which was, frankly, a fair enough appraisal - Eames would have said something clever, but couldn't find the energy. He just grunted (he probably shouldn't be out of bed; his skin felt warm and the marble countertop was pleasantly cool against his forearms; he resisted the urge to rest his forehead against it) and sat.

He had never liked kitchens as a gathering place; that was typically American too, he found. Much better to be in a cosy living room, that was where someone's true personality came out, or skip straight to the bedroom; the irony did strike him that they had done this somewhat backwards. It was like a shite one night stand, in which no one had got off and he had had a bullet dug out of his shoulder. He wondered if Arthur, whose eyes were tracking over him, was ticking bits off on him like a bullet pointed list, one of the infernally neat ones he kept in his little moleskins: tattoos, scars, bandages, freckles, compartmentalising him and finding him lacking. Usually he would've been conscious that this was the closest, or at least most alone, they had ever been with this few items of clothing between them, but even he fell short at the post in this state. He just accepted the bottle of water with a nod of gratitude.

"Tea?" he asked, and was surprised to find that his voice came out okay - a little hoarse from disuse, and from the screaming (ouch, yeah, there had been screaming; it was coming back to him now, unpleasantly), but definitely his voice. It was always pleasant, reconfirming that he was himself. He even managed a half-smile. "If it's not too much trouble, deviating from the norm. Two sugars, ta."

It felt like his brain was moving underwater - no, worse, like it was encased in jelly, ticking over, but only just, the gears clogged, the motor just two seconds from overload. Opening his mouth, speaking at all, had exhausted him. His mouth tasted of mint toothpaste and blood, which unfortunately was not all that novel. He eyed the water bottle like an alien encountering human technology for the first time, but eventually he opened it - teeth and right hand - and draining it helped, the coldness and the familiar action more than the liquid. With a slight sigh, he pressed the still cool plastic to the side of his neck, just over his pulse, and watched Arthur make tea with half-lidded eyes. He could almost convince himself that this was just a hangover. Almost. "So," he offered up, "was it good for you?"

Now that was more like it - he liked the sound of the words coming out of his mouth, they reassured him that he was still alive, and they were half-convincing at a play for attention. That was what he was always seeking, with his needling, teasing, almost cruel comments: Arthur's attention. He had it now; oh, boy, did he have it.

It was also halfway to a real question; the more things came back to him, the more the panic began to wrap real tendrils around his throat. How much did he owe Arthur? What had Arthur done for him? Killed for him, most certainly. Compromised his house - what might be his family home, looking around, remembering the Spiderman. He had compromised his identity, something he had guarded fiercely from the world. Why had he done it? Was it the bond of inception that tied them so close? Was it Mal's voice in his head, sweetly meddling? Eames couldn't fathom it. He needed a drink.

"Actually, have you got anything to add to that tea?" In case Arthur thought he was joking, he added, gaze direct: "gotta pick the lesser of two evils, you see. Addiction's all a see-saw. Balancing act."

It was a small offering, like a flower on the altar: a secret for a secret - or, if not a secret (addicts, in Eames's considerable experience, always think they're more subtle than they are, and Arthur didn't miss anything) then at least a confirmation. You show me yours, I show you mine. A pact of closeness.

[eamesfm]

[eamesfm]

@imbricare​

Eames woke himself up by turning over onto his bad shoulder, an experience he wouldn’t recommend to anyone.

The searing agony was good. He wasn’t dead, for one thing, and he was conscious enough to experience the pain, plus it meant that Brownlow had actually listened to Eames’s garbled, slurring, half-incomprehensible pleadings not to overdose him with too many painkillers (had Arthur heard this? Even as he groaned and struggled into a seated position he was starting to calculate). His mind was foggy with sleep and pain and the last vestiges of a fever, but nothing else. It was good, but it was also bad, and waves of nausea crashed over him; he made it to a perched position on the side of the bed and had to sit, swallowing and breathing heavily, for several minutes before he was certain he wouldn’t spew.

All of this had been conducted through instinct rather than any conscious thought; his brain was scrambling to catch up to his body, running on fumes, saying get up, move, go. Pouring sweat, he held himself still, reminded himself fiercely that - as far as his fuzzy memory could recall - this was Arthur’s place. It was - a quick glance around confirmed - Arthur’s room. It had been here, in Arthur’s inner sanctum, that Brownlow had opened up his shoulder and rebroken his fingers, and Eames faintly remembered, with dawning horror, that it may, in fact, have been Arthur who forced water down his throat and took his temperature every few hours and made him take the antibiotics. Eames grimaced. That was worse than his throbbing shoulder and hand and - Jeez - ribs.

Still, there was no time to waste on self-pity. If he was awake and together, that meant he had likely outstayed his welcome. He ran his hand down his face - at least half a week’s worth of beard, and then some - and, with some effort, stood, then waited for the spots to die down and the room to stop spinning. To the bathroom, then, blind to many of the defining features of the room, a piss, and then a good hard look at himself in the mirror.

Well. He didn’t look his best.

Even after doing his teeth and splashing water one-handed over his face, he looked like he had been run over by a truck. The muscle he had put on for his last job - real life, topside forgery meant he couldn’t change his appearance in the blink of an eye, but in his experience weight did that very effectively for him when worn in the right way - was more defined than bulk now and his face was thinner under the growth of beard. He scratched it contemplatively. He wasn’t necessarily a vain man, not in the way that counted, and there were benefits to a changed appearance. Maybe he would make it to Mombasa alive after all.

He managed his jeans and gave up at the thought of getting the old plaid shirt over his shoulder, which was painful enough to turn him pale whenever he mistakenly twisted in the wrong way; there was, as always, that creeping temptation, the obvious answer that lingered in the back of his mind, sending out seeking tendrils in search of weakness, and Eames wasn’t stupid enough to imagine that he would always be able to resist, but for now he swallowed a handful of aspirin from the nightstand - certainly more than the recommended - and padded, barefoot, in the direction of what he hoped would be a kitchen. A cup of tea, another glass of water, and just one last glimpse of Arthur, Arthur here, with his books and his warm wood panelling and his Spiderman decor, that was all he asked for before he made himself scarce.

[eamesfm]

[ arthur/eames ] 9

SMUT PROMPTS —  beg  [ orgasm denial ]

Arthur’s cock hit the back of Eames’s throat and he thought, suddenly and absurdly, man, I hope this room isn’t bugged.

Keep reading

[eamesfm]

tag drop & canon verses:

short as any dream : pre-dreamsharing

the jaws of darkness do swallow it up : operation titania, iraq, afghanistan

ill met by moonlight : life on the run

if we shadows have offended : post-inception

[eamesfm]

in order to make life easier, I’ve made a little page with all my blogs linked! because I hate sideblogs but also hate disorganisation.

[eamesfm]

✷i’ll tell you a riddle: you’re waiting for a train.                                                           ✷ indie ⇝ selective ⇝ mal from inception (2010)                                                                                                      ✷penned by eliza                                                                                                                                     eames blog

[eamesfm]

here’s the full inception timeline that exists only in my (and @imbricare ‘s) head. you’re welcome. also @ christopher nolan hire me.

[eamesfm]

[eamesfm]

bio page totally complete except for the graphic because I can’t be bothered to open photoshop! I love being professional about this!

[eamesfm]

And you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, that was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.

Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl  (via thirdholmes)