Title: Open Your Eyes
Pairings or Characters: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG
Warning: None
Word Count: 1047
Summary: Fill for the prompt: During a job with the team, Arthur is keeping watch while everyone is under. But the job goes wrong and someone attacks and leaves Arthur to bleed out next to everyone. And Arthur is laying on the ground next to a sleeping Eames and can't do anything because he's dying while his sleeping friends are all in the room with him doing the job.
But no one realizes that anything is wrong in the real world, and I want Eames waking up with a bloody, dying Arthur lying next to him, maybe holding his hand because he couldn't do anything. And Eames freaks out and is desperately trying to save him cause he LOVES ARTHUR! Oh and bonus for protective!brotherly!Cobb too.
Well. Here goes.
When Arthur offers to be the lookout for this job, a sense of unease plagues Eames like it never has before. Eames says so to Arthur, worried lines creasing his face and aging him prematurely, but Arthur just brushes a thumb over Eames' cheek and smiles. Because Eames is literally physically incapable of refusing Arthur, he smiles back and lies down as Arthur gently (and Eames does enjoy the care that Arthur takes because it is a side of Arthur that is somehow very much intimate) slides the needle into Eames' skin and breathes a soft 'go to sleep, Mr. Eames' in his ear like he always does. And as always, Eames listens.
Eames feels uneasy when he first finds himself in the dream world. He feels naked and lonely without the reassuring presence of Arthur, but he dampens down the feeling with a quick shake of his head and focuses his attention on the job at hand. The faster Eames completes this job, the faster he returns to reality, to Arthur. He hears Cobb in the background saying something obvious and repeated, but he forces himself to listen because Eames is a professional.
Halfway through the job, Eames feels a stabbing pain in his heart, and a phantom squeeze in his hand. He frowns, unsure. But at that moment, the mark's mind decides that it has had enough of strangers rampaging around unwanted, and unleashes projections on them that takes the team surprised. Eames, forever dreaming big, unleashes a flurry of bullets far into the distance where he cannot see just for good measure, and runs.
Eames pauses for a moment, breath coming heavy, because he thinks he hears Arthur's voice. It is silly, Eames decides, how much he thinks of Arthur. Arthur is not here; Arthur is in the real world and waiting for him to return.
Eames yells at Cobb to hurry the fuck up with the extraction, and dodges behind a wall before leaping out and emptying a clip into projections that are getting more menacing by the moment.
The job seems to be almost over, and Eames cannot help but think that once this is over, he and Arthur should be off some place to relax. They have enough money after all - they have always had enough money. But Arthur is a workaholic, too obsessed with the thrill, too caught up in the adrenaline to stop, and as much as Eames wants that holiday, what Arthur wants is what he wants in the end.
The kick comes, and Eames sighs a breath of relief, and nods at Cobb, who has the information safely in his head.
Eames can feel the smile that forms on his face when he slowly comes awake. He feels a hand in his, and he squeezes lightly, enjoying the feel of a hand in his.
Eames hears an anguished shout then, and he registers that something is not right.
The hand in his is cold.
Eames snaps his eyes open, and it comes to rest on Arthur, as it always does whenever Eames wakes. This time, Eames does not see an Arthur radiant with success, flushed with delight, smile threatening to break through and ensnare his heart forevermore. This time, Eames sees an Arthur whose face is pale and bloodless before him, half slumped at the bottom of the lawn chair.
In his peripheral vision, Eames sees Cobb leap out of his own lawn chair and launch towards them, but Eames is closer, and Eames gets out of the lawn chair (never letting go of Arthur's hand because he will never ever ever let go of Arthur) and draws Arthur's body against his chest.
Arthur's head lolls across Eames' shoulder with the limpness of the dead, and Eames feels his heart shudder to a stop. He can see nothing beyond Arthur, not even Cobb, who kneels down in front of Arthur and presses his hands on Arthur's stomach. Eames blinks, and he sees blood gushing out of Arthur's stomach, out of a gruesome bullet wound that is not ever supposed to be on Arthur's flawless skin.
Then Eames snaps back into the present, and he hears his voice, raspy with disbelief and shock. 'Call the ambulance, Cobb. Call the fucking ambulance!' His voice rises exponentially when it nears the end of the sentence, and Cobb nods, motioning to Arthur's stomach with his head. Eames is sickened, nauseated by the blood that is flowing out of Arthur because this is not possible, but he quickly takes the place of Cobb's hands with his own as the extractor dials.
Eames pulls Arthur closer to him, hoping for warmth, hoping for something from Arthur, because hope is all that Eames has right now, and he is rewarded when he feels Arthur's breaths, weak and barely there, but it is there, and that is all that matters.
'You stay with me, you hear me. You stay with me.'
Eames keeps up this litany, this order, this prayer all the way up till the ambulance arrives and he has to let go of Arthur to save his life.
The moment before Arthur awakens, he remembers the searing pain that spread like wild fire throughout his entire body before he falls to the ground, gasping in pain. He remembers the face that grins down maliciously at him, jealousy twisting in that monstrous face and making it hideous. Arthur remembers feeling surprised and aghast that someone has managed to surprise the pointman that is the best in the business, but he also remembers that he had managed to slide his gun out of his holster and put a bullet right through the man's heart.
Arthur recalls Eames warmth in his hand, recalls that in the blinding pool of pain that threatened to drown him, he had reached out for Eames, for the one person he trusts enough to put his life in his hands.
In the end, Arthur wakes with a gasp, and he feels a hand on his chest, holding him down gently. Arthur knows that touch, and he calms, and his vision focuses to see Eames, brilliant in his weary happiness and relief, and Arthur smiles again.
'Welcome back,' they both say.