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He should be sleeping. Of course he should be sleeping. In the quiet haven of a luxurious hotel room, with his lover resting peacefully in bed next him, he should have been out cold hours ago. Because, seriously, when even Arthur has called it quits for the day, then no mere mortal should still be awake.
But Eames can’t sleep.
He can’t stop thinking.
The Rio job had been a cake walk, nothing to write home about—assuming Eames would ever be of a mind to write home. Yet here he is, mind on a loop, replaying every instant of the job. And he doesn’t know why until his mind stalls on one image in particular: Arthur, his face a hard mask of irritation, holding a gun to his own temple. Arthur lying motionless at his feet.
In the dark, with no one to see him, Eames flinches.
The extraction itself had gone off without a hitch, Eames is proud and pleased to recall, but the timing of the dream had been complete shit—fucking Gerard—and they had to shoot themselves out of the dream in order to stay ahead of the mark.
Arthur had been all shirty about it, complaining about incompetence in the workplace for hours. And Eames remembers he’d been ill-tempered himself, that evening. But not, he realizes now, for the same reason.
Eames has long ago stopped counting the number of times he’s died in the dreams, has stopped thinking about the number of lives he’s lived and the years that weigh on his psyche if not his body. An occupational hazard, really. Everyone in dreamshare exists in a state of quasi-immortality, aged beyond what the lines on their faces show. Their outlook on fatality is too skewed, the primal fear of death rendered numb, and their respect for life perverted by phantoms wearing human faces.
Forgers have it even worse, Eames acknowledges, with the way they absorb and cast off identities like used up chewing gum. Every forge is a kind of theft in its own right, stealing all the bits and pieces that make a person unique in the universe and wearing it as his own skin for nefarious purposes. The only thing in a forger’s world that remains sacred is the sense of self, that egocentric core they all keep buried beneath distraction, guile, and reserve. Another occupational hazard—to do otherwise would be planting the seeds of schizophrenia deep within one’s own mind, where it would be guaranteed to take root.
Of course, Eames accepts that he probably wouldn’t fit any clinical definitions of sane. Likely no one in the business would.
And then there are those, like Arthur and himself, that have been at this longer than most. Against all odds and common sense, they’ve endured and flourished in a lifestyle that sports a sixty-four percent mortality rate—Arthur says the statistic has actually dropped some in the last three years. It hasn’t been survival instinct that has pushed them through the years—that was obliterated lifetimes ago. No, it’s just pure willpower and stubbornness—a refusal to obey the dictates of nature or reality, not even the dictates of death. The majority of times Eames has died have been at his own hands, and each death has been as transitory as a shooting star, remarkable for only a flash of time.
But now, with Arthur, and him, and them, it’s suddenly all different. Now the thought of a gun pressed to Arthur’s head puts a cold sweat on his neck. Now the thought of dying carries with it an unfamiliar taste of regret.
Fear, Eames discovers at the grand age of thirty-six, sucks balls in a major way.
So he lies awake, unable to sleep.
He looks over at Arthur beside him. In the shadow-filled room, he can barely make out the pale stretch of neck and dark, tousled hair above a heap of blankets. Arthur had fallen asleep almost immediately after dropping into bed, exhausted from staring at his super-high tech laptop doing super-clever things with their respective finances. He’d once asked Arthur about it and had to sit through forty minutes of indices and derivatives market and whatever the fuck before he was able to distract Arthur by dropping his trousers. Since then, he stays clear when Arthur is playing with money, but he makes a point of stepping in when the hour has gone late and Arthur’s eyes have gone hazy with fatigue. Before getting together, he hadn’t fully appreciated how lousy Arthur is at taking care of himself—he always does such a stellar job of taking care of everyone else—and he’s been repeatedly horrified by the levels of abuse and neglect Arthur will put himself through when there’s no one making him behave.
Tonight, he’d gotten distracted by a Canadian chat show and was late putting Arthur to bed, his punishment being he didn’t even get a goodnight kiss, just a front and center view as Arthur gave a gigantic yawn and collapsed onto his pillow. That was an eternity ago—as judged by an insomniac’s clock—and Arthur hasn’t stirred since. Not a single movement. For hours.
It’s completely stupid, but Eames is compelled by a sudden need to make sure that Arthur is still breathing. He levers up a bit and strains his eyes in the dark, but he can’t discern any movement of the blankets. He tries to listen for the sound of breathing, but Arthur probably trained himself out of such human obviousness years ago. But maybe he can provoke movement without waking the sleeping—definitely just sleeping, you bloody idiot—dragon. So he slowly wiggles closer and blows in Arthur’s ear. At least, the direction he’s pretty sure Arthur’s ear lays in. It’s terribly difficult to aim in the dark.
Nothing.
Eames chews on his lip, torn by indecision. Should he just reach over and give Arthur a jostle? And if he is asleep, if he wakes up, say what? Sorry for being a stupid twat, go back to sleep? Or maybe he should concede to insomnia and get up, get a drink, read a book. And wait until morning, when he’ll find his lover lying dead between the sheets, having suffocated in his sleep while Eames faffed about in the next room.
He can’t stand it anymore. He reaches out, two fingers placed on Arthur’s neck, fumbling around until he finds the carotid. He has a second to feel the strong, comforting thrum of a pulse before Arthur wakes on a quick inhalation.
“Eames?” The soft whisper is tight with tension, and he senses Arthur reaching for the gun under his pillow.
Eames yanks his hand back, feeling like a right fool. “Everything’s fine,” he rushes out. “We’re fine. I was just checking.”
“…okay.”
The calm acceptance in Arthur’s voice makes it worse, causes him to babble his way through an explanation. “It’s… nevermind. I just wasn’t sure, you see. So I was checking. But it’s fine. You should go back to sleep. It’s fine, now, I just wanted to make sure.”
A beat of silence, then the rustle of cloth as Arthur moves onto his side, facing him in the dark. “Are you sure now?”
“I’m…” He doesn’t actually know how to answer that question honestly.
“Roll over.”
“I don—”
“Come on.” And hands are maneuvering him around, nudging him onto his side. Then the deluge of warmth as Arthur wraps his body around him, presses in close so that Eames can feel Arthur’s heartbeat against his back and his breath on the nape of his neck. “Good?”
“Perfect.” And with that, Eames sleeps like a baby the rest of the night.