This is the second part of electricity-verse. It's teeny-tiny, I know, but the shorter it is, the more likely I don't get bored and never finish. And that would make me feel bad, so, well, short.
Rating - T
Warnings - PTSD, slash, swearing.
Summary - Eames knows that it's not personal. He knows Arthur, and he's not stupid.
Disclaimer - Not mine, except for the OCs.
JOLT
Second in the series ONE SHOCK FOR YES (TWO FOR NEVER)
BadActs
Eames makes regular reports while he's based with the American dream-share team, but he knows none of it is terribly exciting. They aren't doing anything that their British counterparts haven't already done and done better, besides the new Jack-of-all-trades point man position.
The Cobbs change that, and everything else.
Their ideas could shake apart the world of dream-sharing, turn it on its head completely. Mallorie – Cobb now, not Miles like Willard had said, because apparently half the reason Miles is here is to visit the newlyweds in their LA house – is a chemist, Dominic an architect and extractor. They want to go deeper into the dreams, create more layers, of all things. Eames is understandably wary of the concept: it seems impossible, and incredibly dangerous even if it can be done.
Personally, Eames thinks that Dominic is a manipulative prick, and doesn't trust him as far as he could throw him. He rather likes Mal, though, with her earthen beauty and French humour. She seems to return the sentiment.
His least favourite part of the Cobbs' involvement is probably the way they look at Arthur: like he's a gem they've found still uncut, like he's a tool of rarity and great value. Of course, Arthur is probably used to that, because he is those things and definitely knows it.
However, Mal delivers that with warmth that isn't at all feigned, as though she'd adopt Arthur if she could. Arthur, who Eames has figured out by now has a bit of a thing about intimacy, absolutely bloody blooms under her gentle hands.
Eames wonders who Arthur would choose if it came down to the decision between these people and his country. He thinks that the man will have to make some choices sooner or later. He also suspects he knows what the man will pick.
They all sign on for the Cobbs' trials, even White, who is thankfully a better architect than he is a forger. Eames takes on that role for them, and it's rather like the old days all over again. He should hate it, sometimes does, but somehow the Cobbs make the whole experience different. They are both charismatic and charming, and they are both very, very good at what they do.
Mal takes several days to work out the compound they should use for a simple dream. They decide that Smith should dream the first level and Arthur the second, with Nelson staying on the first level while Eames and Cobb go down with Arthur. Miles and Mal stay topside with heart monitors, ready to kick them awake if needs be.
The first trial is an absolute disaster.
The upper level is a relatively simple hotel, riddled with traps to keep the projections at bay. The second is meant to be an apartment block.
However, as soon as Eames blinks himself into what should be a solid, safe building, he finds himself in something like the dreams he'd been in with the SAS. The entire fabric of the dream is threatening to tear, battering the building with hurricane-force winds.
"Shit," Arthur says, slamming the room's door open. "Shit. Cobb?"
"Here," comes the man's voice from down the hall. "Can you hold it together until the timer runs out?"
Concrete groans and one of the windows breaks, exploding straight into Eames's face. For a moment he feels cold – and then, shit, fucking agony. Cursing and pressing his fingers to a particularly deep cut on his forehead, Eames stumbles backwards away from the window. He thinks that's a pretty clear answer to Cobb's question.
"How long have we got?" Eames shouts, and then collides with Arthur and drops to one knee. Dream or not, blood-loss isn't particularly good for one, because his brain is screaming with warning alarms.
"Brain function is increased on this level, so we've theoretically got hours down here," Cobb says, sounding like the scientist he is. Arthur, being a soldier, swears at the man. Eames flinches when the point man touches his shoulder, encountering a bit of glass embedded in the flesh. He should get that out, he thinks. It's then he realises that he's going into shock.
"Wake yourself up," Arthur says in Eames' ear over the howl of the gale. "Come on. Then you can kick the two of us awake on level one."
Eames doesn't question him. He knows he's dreaming like he knows his own name, but that's not why it's amazing. Eames hasn't trusted anyone since he stopped trusting his teammates to stop him from going crazy in the SAS. However, in two weeks he's learnt to trust Arthur. He's not quite sure what that means, in the grand scheme of things.
He puts his gun to his head, cocks it, and fires-
-and comes awake with Smith staring down at him, immediately reaching out to shove Arthur's chair over. Nelson does the same with Cobb a split-second later, so that they come to in almost the same instant. Eames is only there long enough to see awareness in both of their eyes, to feel a jolt of relief, before he's awake topside on his back, the reverberations of his impact on the concrete floor still ringing in his bones.
"Fuck me," he says, faintly, sitting up too quickly. His vision goes dark at the edges for a moment and then clears, taking the roaring in his ears with it. When he comes around properly, he's holding Mal's hands pinned to the ground where she's clearly tried to reach out for him. He lets go in an instant, horrified at himself.
"Mal," he tries, voice hoarse and cracking. Miles has dropped the others, all of them coming awake with the attendant gasps and flails of a physical kick. He has to stop, breathe, and then he knows he really, really needs to get out of there.
He stands – gracelessly – and just, well, leaves. Cobb says his name, once, and Eames makes out Arthur telling him to let him alone. Arthur's voice sounds too sharp, though Eames isn't quite sure why. Anger, probably. Arthur's job is to keep the entire team safe, and both Cobbs just made it very difficult for him to do so. They all could have fallen into Limbo if he'd lost control of the dream.
He did protect them, though, is the funny thing. Eames can still remember very clearly the calm, even tone of Arthur's voice in the second layer of the dream, where the memory of the pain is already fading.
And then he's remembering other things, too: the man who, in another dream, had shot himself awake in a dream on his command so that he could wake the rest of them up. Eames had known something was wrong when they weren't woken, although he hadn't known until later that the man had dropped himself into Limbo rather than waking up. He'd been completely mad after the timer had worn off.
And the time when the scientists had manipulated the compounds running through the PASIV device as they were still dreaming, turning the entire run into something feverish and drugged. Eames had spent two hours trapped in a mirror-maze in a carnival, unable to control his own forging and unable to remember the specific shape and form of his own body for long enough to get back to it.
And the first time he'd questioned whether he was dreaming or in reality, holding a gun to his head and squeezing his eyes shut, his heart climbing up his throat-
And the time his roommate had, in a fit of nightmare-inspired terror, shot Eames in the chest and then himself in the head in real life-
Eames isn't sure, later, how he actually gets back to his hotel. The walk is only ten minutes, maybe less, but he doesn't actually remember any of it. He's not sure if he runs, if he shambles like a drunk, because by the time he actually gets a hold of himself, he's sitting in the shower with water just shy of scalding pouring down onto his head. He's taken off his shoes, socks and jacket, but nothing else.
Perfect, he thinks, letting his head thud back against the tiled wall behind him. The water hurts his upturned face, makes breathing even harder, so he bows his chin down to his chest instead.
The water goes cool, and then cold. Eames eventually becomes aware of someone knocking on his door, calling his name. It's a vague sound over the pounding of the shower, the rumbling of his calming heart in his ears. It stops for a little while, before Eames hears the unmistakeable click of a key card unlocking the door and the sounds of clearer voices as it swings open. One of them, at least, is familiar.
"Thank you," Arthur says, and Eames can't be imagining the relief in his voice, unless he really has gotten that pathetic. "If you'll excuse me?"
The unfamiliar voice replies, and then Arthur shuts the door. Eames should probably move – stand up, at least take his sodden clothes off, because he looks vulnerable like this, is vulnerable like this and knows it – but he doesn't. He pushes his hair back from his face and cups his eyes briefly with his palms.
"Eames?" Arthur says, swinging the bathroom door wide. He's holding a handgun, his Glock, like he thinks that Eames might actually pull a weapon on him. Like Eames doesn't know what reality is, like he might actually try murder-suicide on for size even after nearly being a statistic of that particular method – and Eames just looks at him. He's not sure what's showing on his face, he doesn't particularly want to think about that, he can't really think about it anyway because at least part of him is still lost in memories.
"Shit," Arthur mutters, putting his hand under the stream of water and then withdrawing it in a hurry, "shit, what the fuck."
He turns the shower off and, actually, it does feel better. Eames is shuddering, faintly, his hands unsteady as he presses them to his knees. He's cold, all over, and not just because of the water. His throat is heavy, and he's gasping, half-retching, but he's not crying.
Thank god, because the indignity, really. He doesn't want to weep like a little girl in front of a man he's known two weeks, even if he does apparently trust him.
Arthur jostles him as he sits down in the still-draining base of the shower, throwing his arm around Eames' shoulders and hauling him in. Arthur is a soldier, probably always will be, which is beside the point, but – the point is that he knows how to deal with this shit like he deals with everything, that touch is the surest way to bring Eames out of the backslide.
Arthur does what needs to be done.
And Eames knows that it's not personal. He knows Arthur, and he's not stupid. And he should know better than to let his body go lax, to let his head fall to rest in the hollow of Arthur's neck, but right now he doesn't care. He doesn't bloody care.
Eames ends up lying on his belly in bed, his hands and feet still chilled. Arthur sleeps pressed alongside him, breathing deep and easy in the middle of the night. Eames is too uncomfortable to actually fall into slumber, which he's rather glad about. He'd rather not wake Arthur up flailing over his nightmares.
Now that he's more aware, he feels a little embarrassed. Not a lot, because he can't bloody help it that experimental dream-shar almost drove him out of his mind just as surely as it did others. It's more that Arthur saw him looking that pathetic.
He tries not to think it, and gets about a half-hour's sleep after the sun has already risen. He doesn't dream, and by the time he wakes up Arthur is already gone.
It figures, Eames thinks wearily as he dresses. He's not quite sure why.
The others on the team keep watching him warily, like he's a bomb they aren't quite sure has been defused. Eames ignores them and pretends to be deaf whenever anyone tries to bring up what happened the day before with him. It seems as good a strategy as any. They're military and don't really want to talk about emotion anyway, so they seem almost grateful for this.
Mal is the only one who worries him, because she's not the type to just not talk about things, but she is at least kind enough to follow his example in pretending that nothing happened. Her wrists are marked where he held her down. Eames feels sick to even look at them.
"I've added more sedative to the mix," she says, looking like she has been awake most of the night as well. Going by your experiences from yesterday, I'm sure this will work. We'll use the same formation we used yesterday, yes?"
Arthur sits down next to Eames for once, which is unlike him – usually Cobb sits between them. Eames shoots him a look that says, you don't need to baby me. Arthur gaze seems to reply, says the man who I had to rescue from drowning in the shower. Eames might just be projecting, though.
Arthur doesn't need to worry, though, because this time the run goes perfectly.
Eames reports to Willard about this, and is rather surprised by what he hears. MI6 has received word of the Cobbs from the Americans: apparently, the two of them don't limit themselves to working in the legitimate side of the business. Everyone wants to work with them, so they have the pick of the criminal aspect of dream-sharing as well.
Which is why, apparently, the high-ups want him to go deep undercover as a criminal.
Eames doesn't bother wasting his breath in protest. He doesn't need Willard to tell him that it's only a matter of time before the Cobbs, like all good dream-workers, turn or die. He doesn't limit the choices like he does with Arthur, because he has seen Cobb's determination to push himself even harder than he pushes the others, and he's glimpsed the dark melancholy that lurks in Mal's gorgeous eyes.
If he's on the other side, then he's actually better placed to get to them than he is right now.
So Eames goes, and just to make it authentic he steals the American version of the PASIV right from under their noses. He leaves his number stashed in Cobb's wallet with his name, knowing that the man will call him at need.
He also inputs himself into Arthur's cell phone on the last night they spend together, while Arthur is lying spread out like a starfish and utterly unconscious on the bed. Arthur has spent every night since that night with Eames, a surprisingly easy presence. Eames isn't quite sure what the other man will do when he realises that Eames is long gone.
Eames doesn't kiss him goodbye while he sleeps, because that would be too sappy for the thief and criminal he's now playing, never mind the hardened soldier-turned-spy he actually is. He'll see Arthur again, as long as Cobb doesn't get him killed at some point. He just doesn't know what the circumstances will be at the time.
If he feels a pang in his chest at the sight of Arthur's dark hair spread across the pillow, the lines of his jaw and cheekbone softened by sleep, then no one else never needs to know about it.
Keep an eye out for part three in the next few days: STATIC.
BadActs