Disclaimer: I don't own Inception nor any of it's characters.

Warnings: Graphic and Non-graphic scenes of torture. Non-graphic sex later in the story. Slash, Eames/Arthur

Rating: T

Reviews: Thanks so much to Eshlyn Kar and Gabbyluv23

Note: Same deal as before, I'll update two weeks from today but with every review i'll update a day sooner. If you login and review I'll send you a sneak peak into the sequel/prequel for this story which I'll post a couple months after this story is up. Thanks for reading and reviewing :D

Chapter Six

Vancouver

Eames woke up in the middle of the night with hands restraining him. He fought against them wildly. He looked over to Arthur's side of the bed to see the point man missing and he called out for him. Arthur answered from on top of him, surprising him into stillness.

"Arthur, why are you on top of me?" Eames asked out of breath.

"You were having a nightmare, tried to take my head off," Arthur responded still holding Eames down. His voice had a minuscule frightened quake in it and Eames didn't blame him. Eames hadn't had a dream in four years.

"Well I'm awake now, you can get off; or not but you'd better be willing to make it worth my while," Eames teased because he was just as scared as he knew Arthur was. Arthur rolled off of him and laid back down facing him. The two of them calmed their breathing and remained silent for a space. After a few minutes of silence Arthur reached over and pushed the hair from Eames' forehead and spoke in a low tone, "Do you remember anything?"

"No, nothing. Did I hurt you?" Eames replied in a breathy voice. He grabbed Arthur's hand and held it to his cheek.

"No, I'm fine."

"Did I say anything in my sleep?" Eames asked after a moment of silence. He shifted himself closer to Arthur and pressed his forehead to his.

"No."

They stared at each other and hoped that this wasn't something that was going to become a habit for Eames again. When they had first start working together exclusively Arthur had taken to sleeping with his friend to ensure that he wouldn't take off in the middle of a nightmare and hurt himself or others. It had been a very tense time. Neither of them fell back asleep that night. They held each other close, forehead to forehead and talked about nothing until morning.

Eames had been working at the retirement home now for two weeks and Arthur was nowhere closer to finding out who Walcott was and why he had killed Rickard. It frustrated him to no end. Eames hadn't seen much of Walcott at the home because they had different shifts. He'd been trying to change his work hours to match Walcott's but it wasn't working out.

Eames had been studying videos and photos of the late Rickard for the past few days. Their client had sent the videos to them after Eames had decided that his forge would be the old man himself. The plan was for Eames to go in forged as Rickard and to confront Walcott as a "ghost". Try to get Walcott talking about his murder or for his subconscious to store the guilty deeds in a safe that Arthur would break into. Arthur wasn't happy about the plan at all but there wasn't anyone they knew for certain that was tied up with Walcott. If they could get Eames to become one of his former contacts, someone he would trust it would be much safer for Eames but Arthur hadn't found anyone. He had never come across such an airtight alias before.

"Maybe we should just quit this one," Arthur suggested on a walk with the dogs.

"Arthur we'll be fine. We have everything we need to know about the man to pull off the case. The stuff we don't know we'll find in the dream and then get paid handsomely. Even if the man has his own personal army in his head we've dealt with that before. We are ready for anything this guy can throw at us in the dreamscape. No chance of limbo so if we die it'll be okay," Eames tried to soothe Arthur.

"I'd feel a lot better if we could get someone we trust to watch us in real time while we're in the dream. Maybe I could give Dom a call or we could call Puck," Arthur suggested.

"You could give Puck a call, see where he's at if you insist. I don't really want to call Dom away from his kids," Eames leaned over and planted a kiss on Arthur's temple as they walked side by side, "We can do this love, no hassle."

Puck was the forger that had mentored Eames. Everything he knew about forging came from Puck. He was a former military man, one of the original pasiv device test subjects and one of the first forgers in the world. He had taught Eames the three rule of forging:

Don't die as the forge, don't trust the forge and don't lose yourself in the forge.

Puck was a muscular and lithe 6'2'' man with curly brown hair and a mischievous smile. He was every bit the trickster he was named after. Eames and Puck got along swimmingly but Arthur fairly detested the man. The first time they had met Puck had kissed him on the mouth and told him he needed to live a little. He was just like Eames but not nearly as adorable, which made him insufferable. His mischievous nature had a streak of maliciousness that Eames' didn't. Eames would have kissed Arthur and told him to live a little because he was worried Arthur was too stressed for his own good. Puck on the other hand had done it because he wanted to stress Arthur out more. He was completely self-serving, arrogant and dangerous. So how he had gained the undying trust and loyalty of Arthur and Eames was still a mystery to both of them. The fact that it was well deserved was another mystery.

Eames pulled the needle from his arm and fiddled with the poker chip in his pocket as he walked out to the garden. He opened the sliding door and greeted his dogs with good cheer. Llydd came out first, pawing at his pants and grinning his puppy grin when Eames pet his ears. Twyrch dropped a dead bird at his feet and Eames tried not to gag. He smiled at the dog but he had a feeling it looked more like a grimace. As Eames picked it up by a bloody wing and dropped it into a compost pile in a bin by the door Twyrch sat wagging his tail, obviously proud of himself. Eames chuckled and pulled out his cigarette case from his pocket. He shook it lightly before flipping it open. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a slight hurry. He basked in the moonlight as he took his first drag.

The smooth burning feeling as the smoke filled his lungs seeped into his muscles, relaxed him considerably. He hadn't been able to sleep again tonight so he'd gone into the pasiv to practice his forge. It was already perfect so the dream had been dull and redundant. Eames was left feeling bored and restless. A cigarette always helped after a trip down. Nothing grounded him like the sharp burn of the smoke blowing through his lips. He slid his cigarette case back into his front pocket.

He had gotten the case from his grandfather years ago. The front was etched with the likeness of the Island Gibraltor and the name of the Island was on the top right corner. He'd added the scratches inside the lid that said '"Dreaming men are haunted men," Stephen Vincent Benet.' It had been a gift to him from his paternal grandfather, who had gotten it in the 1950's to commiserate his wife, who he had met in Gibraltor. Eames recalled with fondness the times he had seen his grandfather using it when he was child. He would sit and listen to all of his grandfather's war tales while he flipped open the case and smoked the cigarettes inside. His first cigarette he had snuck out of the case when he was 12.

He continued to flick the poker chip through the fingers of his right hand while the left was busy smoking. His dogs played around him and the moon shined down. Eames felt the only thing that could make this night more beautiful was to have Arthur sharing it with him. He decided let him sleep and prepared himself for the next day.

Eames had heard through the grapevine at the home that Walcott was going on a weekend vacation to Vancouver to watch a hockey game the following week. Arthur did the research and got the date of the flights and the hotel room that Walcott was staying in. Eames and Arthur decided it would be the perfect time for them to spring the trap. They called Dom because the hotel that Walcott was staying in was only three hours from where he was living. Arthur had texted Puck before they had talked to Dom to see where he was at but hadn't gotten a reply.

They decided on getting a hotel room adjacent to Walcott; break in through their conjoined door while he was sleeping, do the job and leave the country with Dom in his jeep. Dom was happy to help and the job was all lined up. Eames spent the last week perfecting his forge and continuing at the home to try and get some kind of lead on Walcott. Arthur kept up with his research but nothing new came in.

Everything was set up and ready to go by Friday. They were hopping on a flight that morning to the Canadian city and got ready for Walcott's arrival that evening. The flight was uneventful and they met Dom at the airport. He drove them to their hotel and the three of them got set up for the job that night. Eames was on lockdown because Walcott knew who he was from the retirement home but Dom and Arthur were periodically wandering the hotel to keep an eye open for their mark and for anything out of the ordinary.

At 6 in the evening, Walcott's plane arrived on schedule and Arthur tracked him to the hotel. Walcott got his reserved room next to theirs and everything was going to plan. Arthur loved when a plan panned out just the way it was suppose to. Though this job was shaky at best. Arthur didn't feel like they knew enough about the man to do this job with any sort of confidence. Though Eames had playfully reminded him that they had done more dangerous jobs with less information to go on. He was right but there were so many variables when it came to mob or gangster connections like they suspected Walcott to have. Arthur knew, he had witnessed it first hand growing up with the intrigue and danger occurring in his living room. Arthur had spent most of the week coming up with every single contingency plan to ensure they'd get out if shit hit the fan. If he couldn't have a solid plan about what they were getting into, he'd sure as hell have a million solid plans to get them out safe, quiet and quick.

Dom had gone back to legal dream work after returning to his kids. He had started a company in dream security. He really was Mr. Charles now. He taught the minds of the rich and influential how to keep the best extractors out, because he was the best after all. He made sure that in each of the securities teams he set up in people's heads there was a loophole that only Arthur and Eames knew how to get through. They were the only extraction team that knew how to get around Dom's clients and the clients were none the wiser. It would appear Dom's security worked and he kept his reputation as the best security man in the business and Arthur and Eames got to go in, steal the info and make a killing with the not so legal side of things. Dom of course got a cut of their shares. It was a lucrative joint enterprise that was working well for the three of them. Dom got a 9-5 normal job where he could be home to his kids each day and Eames and Arthur were certain that the subconscious security would not destroy them or send them to limbo. Walcott's subconscious had not been taught by Dom and it wasn't going to be as smooth sailings as some of their other more recent extractions had been.

Dom kept surveillance on Walcott while Eames and Arthur slept till their appointed break and enter time. At 2 in the morning the time arrived. Dom woke up Arthur and Eames. Walcott was in his room and judging from the obnoxious snoring they could hear through their paper-thin walls, fast asleep. Eames picked the lock on their joint door between the two hotel rooms and all three of them were silently in the room, setting up and ready to go under in just a couple of minutes. They gave Walcott a mild sedative to keep him under and stable but not one that would send them to limbo if they died. Eames and Arthur hooked themselves into the device and after a nod from Dom, he pressed the plunger and they were off.