dipenates | You Let Your Ladder Down For Those Who Really Shine (2/2)

Title: You Let Your Ladder Down For Those Who Really Shine
Fandom: Inception (with a smudge of 'Mysterious Skin')
Rating: R
Word Count: ~4100
Characters: Eames/Arthur, Cobb, Ariadne
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: For Inception and Mysterious Skin
Summary: Arthur doesn't want to have shower sex with Eames.
Warning: Talks, in a non-explicit way about rape, prostitution and child abuse, in the context of a new relationship, and of recovery.
Note: Written for a prompt at inception_kink: Arthur refuses to have shower sex. (Crossover with 'Mysterious Skin'.)

You Let Your Ladder Down For Those Who Really Shine - Part Two

(Part One)

(Paris, December)

Eames was fisting the sheets, head thrown back, as Arthur twirled his tongue around the head of his cock, and scraped his teeth, just enough, along his length. His balls tightened, and everything went staticky behind Eames's eyelids.

He collapsed backwards, and opened his eyes, to see Arthur running his thumb along his swollen lower lip. "That was marvellous, darling. You are wickedly good at that."

Arthur looked out of the window. "I got practicing young."

"Oh, yeah?" Eames smiled, sated. "Doctors and nurses with the hot little boy next door?"

"Something like that." Arthur's voice was flat.

"Arthur?" Eames sat up, and looked at Arthur, and read wrongness in the hunch of Arthur's shoulders.

"We need to get dressed." Arthur turned back towards Eames, backlit against the open window, and the grey stone of the courtyard merging into the grey sky. "Cobb wants to brief us in five minutes."

--

(San Francisco, March)

Arthur's head was bent over his plate of pollo en mole, and Eames allowed himself a small burst of self-congratulation for figuring out that Mexican food was his favourite, as though Arthur was a particularly cryptic crossword.

The restaurant was a good choice, unfussy but excellent, and he mentally blessed the concierge who had suggested it.

Eames had spent the whole day watching tape of the mark's ex-wife, a local news anchor, and perfecting her Bay Area vowels. He'd noticed Ariadne looking at Arthur with concern, and smiled inwardly at the way she was incapable of keeping any of her thoughts from marching across her face, but he'd still watched Arthur covertly at lunch. Arthur had pushed the deli Yusuf had bought around on his plate, and Eames had felt the inward lurch that came when he knew that Arthur was unhappy.

Arthur had seemed pleased as he scanned the menu, and ordered drinks, and was leaning against the leather of the booth with a near-perfect simulation of relaxation. Eames knew better, though, and the fact that he knew Arthur's misery tells was a source of grinding exhaustion as well as pride, because communication shouldn't still be this game of chess, this parry and thrust.

"Everything okay, old thing?"

"How did you meet Cobb?" Arthur asked, in response. It was a non sequitur, always a pissing non sequitur, and Eames didn't know how much longer he could do this.

Eames wiped his fingers on his napkin, and took a sip of his margarita.

"Mutual acquaintances were having a party in Saint-Tropez. I was there on the arm of an heiress I was trying to separate from her fortune. He was there doing something else." Eames scooped up more guacamole. "He offered me a job in meatspace, and I did little bits and pieces for him for a few years. Then he gave me the choice between the red and the blue pill, and I took it."

Arthur ran his fingers up and down the stem of his wine glass. "You were a grifter?"

"A grubby con-man," Eames agreed, lifting his chin. "Disappointed, darling? My father was."

Arthur shook his head, eyes far away, and Eames would have given a million dollars, cash on the barrel, to know where. "What was your father like?"

I'll show you mine, Eames thought. "A violent, sadistic drunk. A judge, whose lack of humanity and petty tyranny ensure that he is frequently overturned on appeal. A keen rider to hounds."

Arthur nodded, face serious.

"What were you doing?" Eames took another swallow of his drink, gathered the threads of the conversation. "When you met Cobb?"

Arthur hesitated, smoothing the tablecloth under his fingers, and Eames almost took the question back, because in someone else, that would have been a blazing red distress flare.

"Hustling." Arthur's voice was flat.

Eames raised an eyebrow. "Blackjack? Snooker? Five-card stud?"

"Sex."

"You were a gigolo?" Eames could picture him, handsome in a dinner jacket, with his hand resting lightly on the small of a silk-sheathed back.

"Always wanting to think the best of everything, Eames." The corner of Arthur's mouth quirked. "I was a rent-boy."

Eames looked at the man opposite him in the booth, at his suit, and his neat hair, and his beautiful hands. Arthur's eyes were half-ashamed, half-defiant, and Eames caught a flash of him, in dirty jeans, on his knees in an alley. He swallowed, and Arthur looked away.

"Cobb hired me to seduce a teacher who liked teen boys." Arthur took a sip of his wine, hand steady. "What he now gets from people's subconscious, he used to get by blackmail."

"Christ."

"Which part?"

"All of it." Eames slid his hand across the table and covered Arthur's with his own. "Just bloody all of it."

--

(Rome, May)

"A Cardinal?" Eames was half-lying, half-sitting on the bed, dressing drink next to him, watching Arthur press his pants. "Don't you think we'll go to hell for this?"

Arthur flicked the iron off, and shook out his pants. "I don't believe in hell."

Eames picked up his drink, ice clinking. "Well, neither do I. But being in the Celestial City does give one pause for thought."

"Eternal City," Arthur said, mildly. "The Celestial City is Christian's destination in Pilgrim's Progress."

Eames swung his legs round and reached for the shirt that Arthur had ironed for him. "I have this image", he said, "of you reading a pile of well-thumbed paperbacks in your rat-infested apartment by candlelight, after a hard day's hooking."

Arthur laughed, a burst of delighted pleasure that made Eames smile.

They dressed in dinner jackets, and Arthur tied Eames's bow-tie, brow wrinkled in concentration. He finally pulled the ends straight and leaned forward, brushing his lips against Eames's forehead.

--

(London, September)

"Ariadne, could you turn the bloody telly down?" Eames knew he was bellowing, but he only had another day to memorise an unfathomable amount of environmental chemistry, or this job was going to go utterly tits up.

"I'm just watching the news."

He leaned over in his chair, and looked around the partition that separated his workspace from the communal area of the office space. Ariadne was sitting on the edge of the conference table, swinging her legs, and sharing takeout from a white cardboard container with Arthur.

"I hardly think that we're going to learn anything from the news." Eames ran his hand through his hair. "Saito is off meeting with the source now."

"I'm just trying to keep myself informed, Eames." There was an unmistakeable tone in Ariadne's voice. "Some of us got dragged away from school before we finished learning about the constitutional niceties of the Vatican."

"Fine." Eames got to his feet. "Is there any kung pao chicken left?"

"The dregs," Arthur said, and passed it to him.

"And what's going on at the Vatican?" He unwrapped some chopsticks and delved into the carton.

"The Pope is visiting the UK," Ariadne said. "It's a shame we don't have time to go and protest."

"You feeling a revolutionary moment coming on, Ari?" Eames had a mouth full of chicken.

"Nice, Eames." She frowned at him, like a sister would. "I just don't think they should get away with protecting a bunch of child rapists."

He was about to respond when something made him look at Arthur, who sat between them, head bowed with his hands clasped in his lap.

He rested his hand lightly on Arthur's knee. "As sorry as I am to break up your lunchtime current affairs club, I need Arthur's help to go over some of this chemistry."

--

"It wasn't a priest."

Eames rolled over, and faced Arthur's back. "What, darling?"

"I can almost hear you thinking, Eames." Arthur's voice was tight. Controlled. "It wasn't a priest."

The silence had hung between them all day, almost palpable in its intensity. Arthur had spoken to everyone else, making plans and jokes and preparations for the next day, but he hadn't met Eames's eye, had only asked him to pass files and papers, and the water at dinner.

He had gone into the bathroom when they'd finally retired to their room, and come out in the pyjamas Eames hadn't seen him wear in months. The sight of him in black silk had made Eames's throat ache.

"Who was it?" Eames didn't know what to ask, but this seemed to be the information being offered.

"Little League coach."

"How old were you?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to take them back, because what the fuck did it matter whether Arthur had been five or twelve or fourteen when some adult had put his hands on him?

"Eight."

A little kid, then, and Eames could almost see a younger Arthur, wearing some kind of baseball shirt, and sneakers, with his knees pulled into his chest. Afraid and alone, and trying to tough it out, and Eames realised that he was crying.

Arthur rolled towards him, and Eames could see him blinking in the dark. He ran a careful thumb under Eames's eye, and rolled the wetness against his forefinger.

"Why are you crying?" Arthur sounded genuinely confused.

Eames cleared his throat. "Because I love you, and someone hurt you."

"Oh," said Arthur, faintly. "I love you, too."

They were so close that Eames could feel the heat coming off Arthur's skin.

"Can I hold you?"

"Of course." Arthur's voice was stiff, and he flicked his eyes away from Eames's.

Eames tucked his hand under his own pillow and inhaled. "Do you want me to?"

There was a long silence, and then Arthur shook his head. "No," he breathed, and it was so quiet that, as close as their heads were, Eames almost missed it. Almost missed the knowledge that he was trusted blossoming in his chest.

--

(Moscow, November)

"This hotel is colder than a witch's tit." Arthur raised an eyebrow at Eames suggestively. "Are you sure you can't be persuaded to go back to bed."

"Isn't that my line?" Eames didn't look up from the blueprints that Ariadne had given him that morning, which he had spread out across the desk.

"Please?" Arthur leaned over Eames and wrapped his arms around his chest.

"You reek of vodka." Eames elbowed Arthur in the ribs. "That's the last time you're allowed out to play with Saito and his Russian mobster pals. I think you might still be drunk."

"Please?" Arthur stretched out the word, like a child pleading for chocolate.

"Why don't you go and have a shower to warm yourself up?" Eames tapped his finger on the blueprints. "If I get these committed to memory I might come and join you."

"No."

"Well, freeze to death, then—" Eames looked up, and the look on Arthur's face stopped him in mid-sentence. "Arthur?" He stood up.

"I don't do shower sex." Arthur sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor. "Any more. Since-" He stopped.

"You don't have to tell me, darling." Eames sat down next to him, as gently as he could. "Whatever you don't want to do, we won't do."

Arthur considered that. "It's always me." He looked at him, sideways. "You never have to tell me 'no'."

In for a sodding penny, Eames thought. "There are things I won't do, my love," Eames said. "Can't do."

Arthur took his hand, and it was so warm and gentle that Eames was nearly undone. "Like what?"

"Be hit. Be burned." Eames tried to get the tremor out of his voice. "Be hurt."

He'd never caught Arthur looking at the cigar burn on his back, but Arthur dropped his mouth to it then, and Eames closed his eyes against the ache in his chest.

"The bathroom thing," Arthur said, eventually. "A trick went south on me once."

Eames bit his lip, hard enough to hurt, because he wanted to know, but he didn't, all at the same time.

"I locked myself in the bathroom, but he got in." He gripped Eames's hand. "He raped me in the shower. Beat the crap out of me."

There was a buzzing in Eames's ears, like the pain in the Arthur's voice had its own special frequency.

"I'm so sorry," Eames said, voice cracking. "I'm so very, very sorry, darling."

"I know," said Arthur. "And I never would've believed that would make a difference. But it does."

"Can I—"

"Yes," said Arthur, simply, and twisted sideways so his head was resting on Eames's shoulder, and his chest was facing Eames's.

--

(New York, March)

Eames flung open the door. "I can't believe you're finally here, darling."

Arthur laughed, tipping his head back, and dropped his bags on the floor of the hallway. "I feel like I've been on a plane for forever."

"Come in." Eames picked up one of his bags. "I can't wait to see what you think."

"I like the hall." Arthur looked at the hardwood floors, and the green walls, and the enormous mirror just like one that he had admired in Paris. "Is that—?"

Eames nodded. "I had them ship it. The walls are the same colour as the hotel room in Boston that you liked."

"You never even stayed at that hotel in Boston."

Eames shook his head. "No, but I know how to work a phone."

Arthur swallowed. "It's awesome."

"I haven't done much else, because I thought you would want to pick furniture, too." Eames threw open another door. "And the removal people arrived yesterday with all of your things, but I didn't want to open any of those boxes."

Arthur opened a door into a gleaming white bathroom. Eames's toilet bag was lying on the counter next to the sink, and his dressing gown was hanging on a hook next to the door. He closed it, and opened the door next to it.

"What's this?" He turned round to face Eames.

"It's your bathroom, my love." Eames knew that he sounded uncertain. "You're welcome in mine, but yours is for you."

Arthur felt the weight of the door. "It has a spyhole."

Eames cleared his throat. "You can close it from the other side. It's—"

"Eames," said Arthur, eyes glistening with unshed tears. "Thank you."

Eames crossed the floor to him. "No, you silly man. Thank you."