Disclaimer: Inception does not belong to me. Copyright infringement is not intended.
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Warning: I have mild dyslexia and dyscalculia. There may be small grammatical errors and large mathematical ones. Religious themes.
Summary: It's a different kind of release. Arthur/Eames.
Release
Eames isn't the first to find out.
His cousin Marie does when he's seventeen. She's twenty-three, a psychologist. She doesn't ask him to stop, doesn't psychoanalyze, which is what makes her good. She just goes with the flow, even though (and he's unaware of this, as she has a poker face better than his) she's silently terrified.
"I have to be reliable," he explains simply.
"Just don't go too deep."
And that's it.
Mal was the second to find out. She saw his bare chest.
"Not around the children."
Mal was so hauntingly lovely in that moment that he forgot to breathe.
Dom never finds out. He thinks they're from jobs, when he sees them.
Ariadne doesn't know either. She'd try to help.
Miles guessed. As usual, he says nothing.
Eames knows immediately that they're self-inflicted.
"Why do you do this, luv?"
Sex can't give it to him. Eames silently worries, but doesn't ask him to stop. He knows Arthur too well to think he'd do it, and doesn't want to hear the 'no', the 'no' that might break him. But Arthur knows that Eames worriedly traces them when he thinks Arthur's asleep.
So he cuts. So what?
"They need me reliable. A form of release."