Chapter Text
Part Three
Eames gets his own flat and makes sure the windows face north and south and there are only modern splashes of paint for art on his walls. He doesn't want to float away, or wind up drifting down some fantastical river someone had imagined once.
Arthur takes care of the children, although no one has asked him to and it's really Cobb that needs the most looking after. No one has asked Eames to do anything but the children have gotten their sticky little hands on him and now he can't stay away. He brings them sweets and stories he says he's made up.
It doesn't hurt either that they're always with Arthur, who retains only the bitter remnant of a smirk these days but still has a bit of a swagger to him.
Eames would like to give him sweets too, if he's quite honest.
They go to the playground.
The children immediately turn the swings into a ship, where Phillipa is the captain and James the merman first mate. Eames can see the water lapping at the prow, Phillipa's proud hat with its enormous plume, James' grin as he promises he'll get them through the rocks. There's a crocodile that circles around them and ticks like a bomb.
Arthur is quiet next to him. Eames looks over, unsure what he'll find: affection, probably, nostalgia, the slightly condescending pleasure adults take in the rules children make up for themselves.
Arthur's face is shadowed, his fingers rubbing anxiously together.
He notices Eames looking, and turns to look at him. "Miles is gonna take the kids for a long weekend at his place upstate when we get back. You got plans?"
Eames hesitates. Arthur seems like the pragmatic kind of fellow who'd handle his grief by inviting a man over for dinner and a blowjob and then skip dinner. He hasn't forgotten that first frenzied time with Arthur, and he did depart on poor terms with Fischer, but—"Perhaps only dinner."
Arthur shrugs. "Cool."
All of his things prick their ears as Eames walks in. He has to check them frantically as Arthur rustles about in the kitchen, keep them from marching off to where they ought to be.
"Peace pipe?" Eames turns and finds Arthur holding up a bong.
"I thought we were sharing a meal."
"You were expecting wine and candles?"
"I'd settle for a takeaway menu."
Arthur laughs. "Help yourself."
Eames rummages through the cabinets, checks the refrigerator, and is deeply unimpressed. "Do you have anything besides candy?"
"There's beer."
"You're revolting."
"You like it."
Eames turns and finds him grinning, all dimpled American charm.
Bugger.
They order Chinese and light up on the parlor floor. Eames has never tried this particular vice and he discovers it has fingers, rolling over and in him until he giggles. He and Arthur don't talk, but it's a peaceable silence. The ceiling is suddenly very engaging, the floor quite comfortable. Eames drifts, wonders idly what Arthur is seeing and feeling right now. He wonders if Arthur will want to fuck him, what he ought to do if he offers.
"Hey," Arthur rolls up, his eyes heavy-lidded. "You have a nice smile."
Eames grants him one, surprised and unaccountably chuffed.
"You shouldn't show me that," Arthur states bluntly.
"Pardon?"
Arthur gestures at the poker chip. "Your totem. You shouldn't let me see it so close."
"Get as close as you like." Eames flips the chip at him. Arthur catches it, frowning. "Don't need a totem."
"Are you fucking—" Arthur takes a calming breath that only angers him more. "How can you be so irresponsible after—after what's happened?"
"It's not as though hers did Mal any bloody good. And they were even her idea, for Heaven's sake."
"Don't talk about her that way. You don't even know what you're talking about."
Currently Eames has four compatriots in dreaming: one is half-mad, the other too grief-stricken to function, another so frightened he'll follow suit he's tearing himself to bits trying to take care of everything. The last committed suicide and abandoned her children because she was utterly insane.
"Dear boy," he purrs, aims to sting, "I am the only one who knows what he's talking about."
Arthur rises from the table and marches out of the room.
Eames breathes and the house breathes with him, until his anger has dissipated and the breeze beckons him outside. Arthur is sitting on his little balcony, elbows on his knees and head hunched. Eames sits down next to him and is relieved when he doesn't move away, when the world stays steady under him. The cool night air of the courtyard buzzes faintly with crickets. They sound disapproving.
"I shouldn't have said what I said."
Arthur fidgets, mouth an unhappy line, but when he speaks he only sounds tired, "That's not an apology."
"They've never been my strong suit. Fortunately, I excel in the art of petty bribery; let me take you to dinner."
"I'm a picky eater."
"I'll think of something."
"You always do." Arthur lies back, interlocks his fingers over his stomach, stares up at the sky. "Cobb's not doing too good. He hasn't said anything but I know he's thinking of leaving, getting out before they can haul him off to jail for real."
"You really think they would?" He knows Mal has made trouble for Cobb with the psychologists' notes, but that's hardly evidence.
"He does. Cobb's like a dog with a bone once he's got an idea in his head." Arthur closes his eyes. "Don't you worry about getting lost?"
Eames knows what Arthur is talking about, but not how to explain. He can't tell Arthur that this world and any other have been his oyster since he was born. He knows what the world feels like and he knows what a dream feels like and he's about as like to confuse one for the other as he is his left hand for his right foot.
He looks at Arthur, lying on the polished concrete of the balcony, and thinks with sudden warmth that it's Arthur's nature to try to put everything right—Arthur, who clearly hates ties with all of his contrary soul and still wears one every day, caging himself up so he can put on a brave face.
"I've developed a foolproof test for determining a dreamscape."
"Yeah?"
Arthur's eyes fly open when Eames pinches him, around his ribs where it will tickle. Arthur lashes out, nearly snaps Eames' wrist by reflex before Eames pulls him over and straddles him, pressing down on Arthur's biceps. Arthur wriggles until Eames lets his arms go but doesn't struggle any further. Eames looms, just to see what he'll do: Arthur rolls his eyes.
"You think you're so fucking clever." He sounds grumpy but his eyes are crinkled, dimples beginning to show.
The night air is suddenly too hot, and Eames' mouth is stuck between a kiss and a grin. "Unbearably."
The kitchen helps, but Arthur needn't know that.
He gambles and makes things he hasn't seen anyone over the age of six eat: chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, chips with ridges, miniature hot dogs wrapped in pastry.
Arthur's face goes slack when he sees it. "Really pulled out all the stops, huh?"
"Shut it, this is your culinary wet dream."
Arthur gives him a look meant to be intimidating, but undercut by the fact that he is obviously thrilled and absolutely adorable.
He inhales everything and goes back for thirds. In fact he barely talks through the meal, except to say, "It's good."
Then, when they've settled into a bottle of wine, "Cobb is using Mal's old totem."
"Why's that?" Eames asks, wary of starting another row.
"Because he's a miserable fuck, is why." Arthur rubs his face. "He's convinced he's got to leave the country before he gets arrested."
"I doubt the children would do well with that. They're a bit young for exile."
Arthur actually laughs, a sad little huff. "You and the fucking kids. He wouldn't take them. He can barely look at them these days."
Eames hadn't even considered that. He hates even the idea, wants to crush it—to snuff it out and salt the earth. "He can't possibly."
Arthur seems surprised by his vehemence. "He really loved her, Eames. You didn't know Mal, or you'd understand. It was impossible not to love her. She was like a fairytale."
"Much good that will do the children. I don't care if he's a grieving widower, Arthur, he can't abandon his family."
"It's not like that."
Eames has to bite his tongue, calm all the filaments in the light bulbs so they don't explode. "You do know him better than I."
The moment passes.
Then Arthur asks, "So why'd you take off so quick, anyway?"
"Pardon?"
Arthur gestures with his glass. "With Fischer. Did I scare you off?"
"No."
"You're not a very good liar, Mr. Eames."
Eames hums and drinks his wine.
Arthur kisses him at the door. His lips are still a little greasy from dinner and he smells like the rain outside. It's perfect and Eames can't even enjoy it because ninety percent of his energy is devoted to keeping them both on the ground.
He makes Eames need to do magic.
He makes Eames wish he couldn't.
Eames freezes. He's not sure what he's afraid of, exactly. Arthur was clearly surprised when he'd come out of his post-fuck glow to realize his shirt was rucked up against the ceiling, but he hasn't made anything of it since. And he can hardly call the coppers for a flat that suddenly has full closets and a visible floor.
"I had a system," says Arthur.
"Now you have a better one."
Arthur scrubs a hand through his hair. "You're gonna have to explain it to me, someday—this system of yours."
"It's a date," Eames promises, although he never quite finds the time. Arthur doesn't press, so Eames returns the kindness by never asking how exactly Arthur became so comfortable with magic.
"Oh, Fischer, love."
Fischer tells him the whole story: his last words, the pinwheel.
Disappointed, for Heaven's sake.
"It was really bad at the end. He forgot where he was all the time—said he'd stolen something. And he kept going on about cards, and a trial—and about my mother."
"What did the doctors say?"
"He could barely look at me, Eames. I couldn't—I kept trying to talk to him but he wouldn't even fucking look at me."
Fischer is continents away but Eames can still feel him here: shadowy clocks tick insistently in his ears.
"What did you want to tell him?"
"What's it matter when he's fucking dead? Jesus, Eames, are you even fucking listening?"
"I'm sorry, love. What do you need?"
"I need you to come back."
"For the funeral? Of course, when is it?"
"No. Don't come to the funeral. I need you back here, with me."
"I know, but I can't—it's not that simple. Tell me when the funeral is and I'll—"
The call ends abruptly, the dial tone ringing in Eames' ears even as he puts the phone down.
"Bad news?" Arthur asks. They're at the playground again.
"Fischer Sr. is dead."
Arthur nods.
James runs up to show Eames a flower, giggles when Eames uses it to tickle his ear before scampering off again.
"So what's Fischer's deal, anyway?"
"His father just died."
"No, I mean before. You ran off to another country with him the day after you met him. What was it?"
"Jealous?"
Arthur snorts. "Curious, more like. I only knew one other person that ever had that kind of hold on anybody, and Fischer doesn't remind me of her."
"You don't even know him."
"So tell me about him."
"Fischer is—well, he's a wee bit lost, isn't he? Especially now."
Arthur shrugs. "He's not the only one."
"Then you should understand."
Arthur scoots closer. "I know what it's like to have a problem you don't want to face, Eames. But we all have to grow up sometime."
"And Fischer hasn't?"
Arthur sighs. "I'm not talking about—you're kind of impossible sometimes."
"I'm impossible all the time."
They fall silent again for a time. Arthur doesn't seem ruffled, but then he never does until his face goes completely shadowed, the way it did right after Mal had died.
He seems resigned, like a man burying a dead dog. No one ever expected the dog to live forever, but that didn't make it hurt any less.
Eames wants the pigeons to carry them away, a great flock of them until they both felt light as air. The children could come with them. James would dig holes in the clouds, and the birds could braid Phillipa's hair.
"Do you want to come home with me tonight, Arthur, after we take the kids home?"
Arthur looks up, surprised and delighted and dimpled. "Sure."
Arthur laughs at every possible juncture and smokes a joint in between rounds. His breath is dry and bitter and his come is sweet as sugar. Eames licks his balls for an hour and the silly sweaty spot behind his knees and then his toes until Arthur kicks him in the face reflexively and can't stop apologizing until he's got Eames' cock in his mouth to shut him up.
His face is blissful when Eames fucks him. Eames doesn't even try to stay on the bed. They don't go far, but it takes ages to get there and by the time Eames' head knocks against the ceiling he's forgotten which way is up at all, can't understand why the bed doesn't fall down on top of them.
He curls up with his arm around Arthur's bony ribs and wants everyone he's ever known to see them right now. Arthur would like all of his uncles; they could laugh together.
"I can take you anywhere."
"Not everywhere."
"Tell me," Eames begs. "I can draw it for you. Anywhere."
"It doesn't matter." Arthur looks him in the eye, confesses, "I can never go back."
Eames sighs. Arthur's is an old man's regret, and there's no magic for that. "Not even in a dream?"
"Not even in the place between asleep and awake."
Eames draws the covers over both their heads and draws his favorite place to go, until the moonlight is bright enough that Arthur opens his eyes. His mouth twists and he clutches Eames' wrists. For one harsh second Eames believes Arthur will strike him—but then he relaxes, breathes out like he'd been inhaling a joint.
The water is warm, built up around them so that they rest at the edge of the lagoon. It's not the place where Arthur cannot go, but it does the trick: Arthur relaxes against him, his back to Eames' front. He can feel Arthur's heart battering away. "We can stay here for as long as you like."
Arthur breathes deeply. His eyes are closed again.
He says: "No one can run away forever, Eames."
"We have to do something about Cobb."
Eames can't help but chuckle.
Arthur frowns. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing—absolutely nothing—only I was thinking the same about Fischer."
After that it's easy.
The plan is complicated but the idea is simple: as Cobb drives into someone's head, he'll be going deeper into his own. Miles has an architect and Arthur's found an investor. All they're missing is someone to sic Cobb on.
"I can take care of that."
He expects Arthur to bicker over it, but he doesn't. He doesn't know whether he's relieved or angry.
"Cobb has gone insane," Eames says to Fischer over the phone. "We have a plan to take care of him, but we need your help."
"No, you don't."
"I can't do it without you."
A harsh exhale. "What do you want from me?"
Eames explains the plan. He waits a long time after he's finished before Fischer says, "Why me?"
This is the trickiest part. "Cobb doesn't know you, and we've set it up as an inception for a business rivalry, so you'll be a plausible mark. Inception only works if you can't trace the origin of the thought, and since you're already in on the game you won't be affected. You just have to play along."
"It still seems like I'm putting a lot more on the line than anyone else."
"Not as much as you might think: Arthur and I will be doing the heavy lifting, with Miles' help and a few others. All you'd have to do is act the part."
Fischer says nothing.
Eames plays his trump card: "I can't leave until Cobb is sorted."
He doesn't say where he'd go afterwards, but he knows Fischer is thinking about it.
The reason Eames knows inception will work in a dream is that it works in the real world too.
"I'll get back to you."
"Yes. Do you trust me?"
Fischer says nothing for a while, and then, "Do I have to work with the dormouse?"
Eames laughs. "Very little. I'll be with you the whole time."
"I know you will," Fischer says, and hangs up.
He has the same unruly hair, the same pale eyes, the same tendency to swan about with a sneer on his lips because he is so very anxious all the time. He's a little shite, the same as he always has been, fragile and angry.
None of the others like him.
None of the others will have him; he belongs to Eames—to Eames and his father and his mother, whose shadows creep over him further every day.
Eames can fix it. He can sweep all the shards of Fischer's anxiety into a bin and take it out with the PASIV needle. Fischer knows about the Cobb scheme but Eames has seen the landscape of Fischer's mind, knows it will be the easiest thing in the world to turn it on its head one more time. He could make Fischer believe the sun was the moon, nevermind something he actually wanted to believe—like that his father loved him, and that he was his own man.
That he would never need someone like Eames again.
Fischer pulls him away from the others the first chance he gets and then his courage seems to fail him. He holds Eames' wrists tightly, skin dry and cold. "Eames, I—"
Eames waits, letting his wrists go numb, knowing he holds Fischer just as surely.
"You're so beautiful," Fischer says, like he's admitting it. "You're like a dragonfly."
He frowns, small and unhappy like a child who must go to bed.
"I've missed you too."
He has: no one has ever needed him the way Fischer does.
"Eames." Fischer's supercilious eyelashes fall.
When he touches Eames' face with his cold fingers the world rings; Eames can hear colors and smell the number three.
Eames wants to run away, because he knows what he has to do.
He doesn't want it to end.
But they're prepared.
Cobb falls for it hook, line and sinker—and why wouldn't he, poor chap, so addled out of his wits that he can hardly tell the difference between life and death, never mind truth and lies.
Eames worries that Fischer won't be tricked so easily. He puts on Browning's face with no small amount of trepidation.
It's a relief when Fischer doesn't hesitate, switches from pretending to believe to believing in half a heartbeat.
Browning has been a second father—a real father—to Fischer since he was a boy.
Eames is going to change that too.
It's a sorry business, Eames decides, saving someone's life.
He's angry and sarcastic in turn, plays his role to the hilt by lying as little as possible. Half the trick is convincing Cobb that they had no idea that Fischer's mind would be armed, but Arthur looks properly abashed. Eames is ridiculously proud of him.
He watches Arthur's face blur as he lies on the floor of the hotel and knows that his sleeping body couldn't be in better hands and wishes all the same that Arthur were coming with him.
He can see the mountains, and the complex, and the dots of people and bodies and splashes of blood. He knows every possible path in this closed circuit, and every floor of the complex. He's added tunnels, if he needs them.
He isn't lost. He just doesn't know where to go.
The projections are hounding them, the earth shuddering from the levels above. Cobb is on his way to Limbo and eventually salvation, although he doesn't know it yet.
He's certain Arthur has everything under control one level higher.
It's up to Eames now.
The trap's been laid, and Fischer has long since entangled himself in it. A few more steps, a snatch of forged memory, and he'll forget his father ever died hating him with his final breath. The weight of disappointment will be gone from his shoulders, and he'll float away. All because he's trusted Eames, and Eames wants to help him, badly enough that he'd betray his trust.
He won't back down, but he doesn't know if he should watch. Fischer had been so hopelessly vulnerable, in the forest of glass. How can Eames watch him open up the vault of his mind?
He stands in the valley until he starts to go blind from the glare.
He almost doesn't notice the rabbit racing by on its hind legs, so white it's near invisible in the snow.
It hops away deliberately, staring back every so often like an anxious dog.
Eames follows him.
It leads him to the complex through a winding route of snow, but Eames follows placidly, along through the tunnels. He doesn't want to go, can't stand the thought that Fischer might see him and realize what's happening before the inception can occur—but then it might be worse to see Fischer fall for it completely, to watch him eat up the lie and become whole again and never need Eames the way no one else has in his life.
The rabbit leads him right to the heart of the complex, where Eames watches Fischer open the chamber.
His eyes are wide but fearless as kneels by his father's bed and listen to the words that his own mind is telling him, the ones that will save his life.
Arthur is here for Cobb, and for Mal, but Eames had only ever wanted this moment. He's surprised how sad it makes him, watching Fischer tell himself a lie that will make his life so much easier. He has no doubt that the inception will take hold; Fischer has never quite been able to tell what is real and what is not, even less so when he clearly wants so badly for this to be the truth.
Perhaps it's because, no matter what Fischer thinks afterwards, Eames will always remember what Fischer's father really had been.
But as Fischer stands, his hands shaking, Eames thinks ruefully that it's because Fischer won't be his anymore. Fischer was a tether, the only one that could ever hold him.
Eames has done what was necessary to let Fischer be the man he was always meant to be, and he does not regret it, but he lets himself lament it for the artificially lengthened time that passes until the kick.
Eames knows that a good man would feel guilty, that his father would, but he doesn't. He feels sorrow, looking at Fischer, but it's not the same thing. "Like a charm."
He is his mother's child, driven to help children of all ages, but born to come and go.
He kisses Fischer on the cheek and watches him walk away.
It's a new feeling, that acceptance; Eames would worry about its origins if he weren't so certain of the source.
Arthur doesn't quite smile when Eames finds his way over, but his eyes crinkle.
"You should see my place in LA."
"Is it as bad as your other flat?"
"Worse. But I'll let you clean it and buy me real groceries, if you want."
"If that's what you'd like," he says—and realizes he's heard those words before. "But first I need to see a man about a dog."
She looks up at his arrival, more surprised than he's ever seen her.
"I'm sorry," he says. He offers her the picture back, still warm from where he'd kept it tucked into his chest pocket.
"Keep it," she says. "I remember him very clearly."
Only a short time ago, he might have mistaken her tone for severity.
"It's yours," he assures her, and offers it again.
She takes it, soothes the hopelessly creased corners. His father's smile seems brighter when she holds it.
She looks up at him, and the features he remembers as crystalline are blurred. "I—"
She bursts into tears. Weeping is less dramatic underwater, the tears invisible, but when he pulls her in close he can feel the warmth of them against his shoulder.
Fischer will never forgive Eames for leaving because he will never understand what Eames did in the first place, won't think of him at all beyond the occasional dream about the magical man he used to fuck. He can grow up now, and grown ups tend to forget him.
That knowledge hurts; he hugs his mother tighter. He wonders how many children she's watched grow up, how many she's had to leave behind. He wonders how old she is, how old he'll live to be.
When she's wept herself to exhaustion, he takes her to a flowerbed and tucks her in, watches her sleep awhile before he remembers that he has other goodbyes to make.
The children latch onto Eames' legs immediately.
"Can you bring our mama back too?" James asks, while Phillipa stares at him with the kind of gravity that means she knows his answer.
"Afraid not, love."
"But you're magic!" James insists.
"I am." Eames is a con man and comfortable with lies, but this is true: "But you don't need my magic now."
"Why not?"
Because he has brought their father back to them, finally let their mother go. Because they have begun to realize now, what it means that he is there and she is gone. Because there are other children elsewhere who need his help.
Because there are some things that magic and the magical cannot do. He cannot regret. He cannot remain.
Eames says: "She's with you already."
James watches him a moment more and then nods solemnly, lets Phillipa clutch him.
He knows he will see them again, when they're older and have forgotten what it was like to ride a peppermint horse. That's all for the best: missing someone who travels by wind is too painful for most people to bear.
He looks over at Arthur, wishing he could offer more.
Arthur shrugs, eyes warm.
He fucks Arthur against the ceiling and thinks that Arthur knows.
Eames waits tensely for the Arthur to say something about it, remembering his father begging Mary to come back soon. He hasn't promised Arthur anything, but neither had Mary, and that hadn't helped one bit.
Promises and tuppence will feed the birds.
They float gently back down onto the bed, while the silence stretches on.
Arthur must realize what Eames is waiting for, because he explains: "I don't say goodbyes."
"Worried you might cry?"
Arthur's lip twitches, kissable. "Goodbye means going away, and going away means forgetting."
Eames gives in and kisses him, but when he pulls away the kiss is still there, teasing. "That is absolute nonsense."
Arthur taps some invisible tattoo onto his chest, one dot over his heart and then a second to its right.
"The wind will change again, you know." It's the best he can offer.
"I'll keep my window open." Arthur seems satisfied.
Eames thinks, with the kind of bubbling lightness that means he's going to float away soon, that he is too.
He sleeps straight on til morning.