the half-remembered wild interior of an animal life

and one more thing...

2014-02-01T15:11:56Z

If you would rather contact me about my editing/writing services via email, please feel free to direct any inquiries to adelaidethegoat (at) gmail (dot) com.

Freelance Editing (and Other Things)

2014-01-31T21:01:58Z

Hello!

As some of you may know, I'm currently underemployed and looking for a job. I'm hoping to be able to afford to go back to school and/or leave my mother's house at some point, so I've been hoping to build up my résumé with more editing and proofreading experience.

Why you might consider letting me edit your work:

-I am able and willing to work with nearly any form, length, or genre: novel manuscripts, short stories (original fiction only), academic papers, nonfiction manuscripts, grant proposals, websites, letters, and more.

-I have four years of experience teaching English composition at a college level, and I provided thorough feedback on my students' work, as well as teaching analytical and linguistic skills to enable them to revise their own work and that of others. I also worked as a one-on-one English language tutor for a year.

-I had a prior freelance job proofreading scientific papers and grant proposals; I am familiar with scientific terminology and style.

-I have completed numerous courses in rhetoric and composition and have knowledge of the elements of persuasive writing, including the concept of ethos and the importance of envisioning one's audience.

-I am familiar with the conventions of written Standard English, and if I am in doubt about the correctness of an edit I look it up in a trusted source. However, I'm not a prescriptivist; I'll respect the stylistic choices you make and try to help you shape your work according to your vision as well as the expectations of your audience and the genre's conventions.

-I have experience with multiple citation styles, including MLA 7, APA, and Chicago.

-Although I've been made aware that betaing fanfiction and being a professional editor are different things, I have extensive experience as a beta, and I believe that I bring similar skills to both activities. I believe in the importance of tact and clarity in providing feedback, and I attempt to learn as much as I can beforehand about what kind of feedback the writer needs and expects. Furthermore, working with fanfic has given me further experience at every level of the editing process, from large structural and content issues to sentence-level analysis of syntax and grammar.

-Whether I am editing a grant proposal or betaing a friend's fic, I take pride in my work. I promise to be thorough, to get it done on time, and to respect your goals and vision.

-I can also do translation (Russian), write short non-fiction pieces, and fact-check.

Rates will vary based on the length of the text and the type of editing/proofreading required. I am also able to provide additional references or writing samples if you wish.

Thanks for your consideration,
Adie

writing!

2012-12-19T04:59:30Z

Some of you may know that for the past few months I've been finding it extremely difficult to write. So I'm sort of amazed that in the past few days I've actually managed to post three fics. They are as follows:

Up From The Craters To The Stars (Inception; Arthur/Eames)

Eames is a makeup artist for Cobb's ultra-low-budget movie, "Cannibal Cat Elves from the Lesser Magellanic Clouds". Arthur naturally plays one of the titular cannibal cat-elves. They grow rather close during filming.

An Ember In The Rafters (A Song of Ice and Fire; Asha/Satin)

Satin and Asha Greyjoy hook up at Castle Black. Porn, porn, porn.

I Saw The Northern Lights, Convinced It Was The End Of Time (A Song of Ice and Fire; Jon Snow/Satin)

Jon takes care of Satin when he falls ill.

A Song of Ice and Fire is my primary fandom right now, and Jon/Satin my primary pairing, although I'm also working on some Jaime x Loras for someone on Tumblr. I've signed up for Harlequin Big Bang, where I'm planning to write Satin as an out-of-luck circus performer hired to take care of Jon, a sea captain injured by saboteurs (based more or less on the premise of Corbin's Fancy by Linda Lael Miller). But I have a Yuletide fic to work on too, and a Warchild fic I'm almost finished with, and for the first time in quite a while I feel like I can actually get it all done. I think I finally reached a state where I know that what I produce isn't necessarily going to be amazing, but I just want to be the kind of person that follows through and works hard, and maybe if I keep at it one day I'll write something I'm genuinely proud of.

Dear Yuletide Writer!

2012-10-31T01:35:36Z

Dear Yuletide Writer,

This is my first year participating in Yuletide, and I'm really excited! I look forward to reading your fic :D

1. Warchild books by Karin Lowachee.

I would love, love, love any story about a romantic relationship between Jos and Niko (preferably with Jos older than 16). It can be canon or canon AU or a total AU, fluffy or porny or angsty (no major character death, please.) Their relationship can be sexual or non-sexual or anything in between. I'd love to see an AU where both Jos and Niko are the same age--perhaps something where Niko's parents, rather than Niko, rescue Jos and brought him back to Aaian-na to be raised with their kids, and Jos and Niko develop a close relationship that eventually becomes romantic. Regardless of what universe or scenario you write them in, I'd like to see reciprocity highlighted in their relationship--rather than Jos merely being in a submissive, student, cared-for role, I'd like to see them caring for and teaching each other and trying actively to negotiate the power in their relationship, as difficult as it may be.

If you'd rather not write Jos/Niko, then feel free to write gen about the relationship between Jos and Niko (preferably without any Jos/Evan), or anything about Niko's childhood and backstory.

2. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Anything Garak/Bashir would delight me, short of either of them dying. I love reading about Cardassian culture, so anything with Julian visiting Cardassia, possibly post-Dominion war, would be awesome. Or Julian disguised as a Cardassian, or Garak disguised as a human. Or Garak visiting Earth! I would also love Garak gen, whether you use his backstory from A Stitch in Time or not.

3. Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness

Suggestions:
-an AU where Cillian somehow survives and he and Ben are reunited
-anything Ben/Cillian
-what happened after the books ended--either immediately after, or any period of time afterward.
-a more in-depth exploration of the relationship between The Return and his one in particular

Things I generally like in fic:
-negotiations of power dynamics
-sci-fi elements
-aliens & alien sexuality
-banter
-cuddling

I have very few squicks and triggers, and I'll be happy with any rating, from hardcore NC-17 porn to the tamest G. I don't care much for overly woobified characters, Jerk Sues, or any shippy fic where one character is put on a pedestal and doesn't seem to reciprocate. But overall I have very eclectic tastes; please write what you feel moved to write.

Thanks for reading!
-Adie

fuck

2012-08-05T01:36:04Z

I had to withdraw from i-reversebang. Aside from a series of annoying life happenings, I've also, over the past two years, become increasingly incapable of performing under even the slightest bit of pressure.

Has anyone ever had this issue? How did you deal with it?

led to the flood - a jos musey fanmix

2012-07-29T02:33:58Z

Welp, I finally made a Jos mix.

download (.zip file)

1. tristan - patrick wolf

Forever young
I come from God knows where
Because now I'm here
Without a hope or care

I am trouble
And I am troubled too

My name is Tristan
And I am alive

Sorrow by name
And sorrow by nature
Working for joy
On overtime

2. white waves - shearwater

He took me out on the tide
To make pearls of my eyes
And uncover me, oh, without asking
Tore every stich, every line, every hook, every eye
Between him and the diamonds, diamonds
I would not give, but maybe tonight I will
With you holding my arms and my stuttering heart
As I'm bound and flayed alive

3. song to the siren - tim buckley

Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
'Til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving to your isle
And you sang
Sail to me
Sail to me
Let me enfold you
Here I am
Here I am
Waiting to hold you

4. never let me down again - depeche mode

I'm taking a ride
With my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
He knows where he's taking me
Taking me where I want to be
I'm taking a ride
With my best friend
We're flying high
We're watching the world pass us by
Never want to come down
Never want to put my feet back down
On the ground

5. ship of fools - erasure

You were the baby of the class you know
You were so young and so uncertain
Suffer little children
Oh what a poor soul

Do we not sail on the ship of fools
Why is life so precious and so cruel

6. army dreamers - kate bush

"What could he do?
Should have been a rock star"
But he didn't have the money for a guitar
"What could he do?
Should have been a politician"
But he never had a proper education
"What could he do?
Should have been a father"
But he never even made it to his twenties
What a waste
Army dreamers
Ooh, what a waste of
Army dreamers

7. dark paradise - lana del rey

And there's no remedy for memory your face
Like a melody, it won't lift my head
Your soul is hunting me and telling me
That everything is fine
But I wish I was dead

Every time I close my eyes
It's like a dark paradise
No one compares to you
I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side

8. runaway - the national

What makes you think I'm enjoying being led to the flood?
We've got another thing coming undone
And it's taking us over

We don't bleed when we don't fight
Go ahead, go ahead, throw your arms in the air tonight
We don't bleed when we don't fight
Go ahead, go ahead, lose our shirts in the fire tonight

What makes you think I'm enjoying being led to the flood?
We got another thing coming undone

But I won't be no runaway
Cause I won't run

9. breaking the yearlings - shearwater

I curl right back into the sound
I take one breath and spiral down
And you, not watching the road
Or watching the flood stage rise
We are yearlings
Now watching the tide run out
Till what the daylight hides
Is known

10. machine gun - portishead

I saw a savior
A savior come my way
I thought I'd see it
At the cold light of day
But now I realize that I'm
Only for me

If only I could see
Return myself to me
And recognize the poison in my heart
There is no other place
No one else I face
The remedy, it will agree, with how I feel

11. oblivion - patrick wolf

I said I need no one
But oh God, now here it comes
And it's too dark to aim this gun
Clicking now faster, faster, faster
Once again I'm on the run
And I hear you say, oh my stubborn son
Don't you said you need no one
But don't you see danger, danger, danger
You're headed to oblivion

12. combat lover - nina kinert

Be careful don't be so vicious with me
My love can also be a killer machine

13. go long - joanna newsom

with the loneliness
of you mighty men,
with your mighty kiss
that might never end,
while, so far away,
in the seat of the west,
burns the fount
of the heat
of that loneliness.

There's a man
who only will speak in code,
backing slowly, slowly down the road.
May he master everything
that such men may know
about loving, and then letting go.

14. the seven sisters - rainer maria

you said I look like a stone sinking
but I am a constellation cut out in the sky
and if I have stopped burning
will you know in your lifetime?
and should I feel cold and far?
and should I feel weightless?

I imagine safety in the stars
'cause you make so many wishes
do you ever hear what the stars are saying to you?

15. leave my body - florence + the machine

I don't need a husband, don't need no wife
And I don't need the day, I don't need the night, the night
Don't need the birds let them fly away
And I don't want the clouds, they never seem to stay

I don't want no future
I don't need no past
One grand moment
Is all I ask

16. breathing underwater - metric

I'm the blade
You're the knife
I'm the wind
You're the kite
They were right when they said
We were breathing underwater
Out of place all the time
In a world that wasn't mine to take
I'll wait

Is this my life?
Am I breathing underwater?

17. heart of my own - basia bulat

Under that burning ether that falls
Down on these walls
Burning my arms
I've been alone
When I sat by you

For every word I could undo
I've been uncrossed
and I've been untrue
I've been the thorn
I've been the heart.

With a heart of my own
Burn it down low
The light in your verse
And the shadow between
The way that I was when I used to know

If I go
What do I hold?

18. animal life - shearwater

Charging down the maw of the ocean
I wanna come close, I wanna come closer
I held your name inside my mouth through all the days of wandering

But called out from the mouth of oblivion
Cast away like dogs from the shelter
I shed the dulling armor plates
That once collected radiance

And surging at the blood's perimeter
The half-remembered wild interior
Of an animal life

POLL: POV Preferences

2012-07-27T21:27:43Z

View Poll: POV in Fanfic Poll

On First Person and Fanfic

2012-07-27T21:16:05Z

I was going to write a rare personal post, but I seem to have lost the ability to talk about myself except to blurt out TMI pity party crap on Twitter like "so restless, ugh" or "I can't write!!!" (These are not direct quotes, but they may as well be.) Taking a Twitter hiatus has been good for me. I think. I'm really quite terrible at assessing my own emotions or knowing what is, in fact, good for me, and that's one reason I've gone back to therapy. The therapist I'm seeing takes a cognitive-behavioral approach and also makes me do a lot of work--there's a lot of recursive stuff, looking back on things I've just said and contextualizing/interpreting them, and sometimes I'm frustrated and think I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT PATTERNS THAT'S EVIDENCE OF but then when I really think about it I actually do.

Well, look at that, I've actually talked about myself.

And that actually fits in (sorta?) with what I wanted to talk about in this post, which is POV in writing and especially in fanfic. I'm currently writing a fic in first person (it's not for Inception, don't worry), and in order to do so I had to overcome a lot of internalized norms like "YOU NEVER WRITE A FIC IN FIRST PERSON! NEVER! NEVARRRRRRRRrr". I've had a number of conversations with people about this, and heard a lot of different interpretations for this rule, but I've never really heard an explanation that made me think "oh, OK, I understand; first person in fanfic really is a bad idea."

-Someone (I forget who) once said that it depends on the source material. For example, in Inception fandom, writing in first person seems "off" because canon isn't from any one person's perspective. It's a really interesting idea, and might explain some of the resistance to first person. But it might also be argued that fanfic is about giving us alternate perspectives on canon. Just by virtue of the fact that fanfic is a different medium than film, we get a different kind of interiority. I have never seen a fic that attempted to give us a "camera-eye" view; they're always anchored to one character's perspective. So what makes third-person limited, where we get only one character's POV, replete with unspoken thoughts and perceptual biases, so different from first person? Does third person give us more of an illusion of objectivity? (I think it might.) And is first person fic more acceptable in fandoms like The Hunger Games where the source canon is in first person? The fic I'm writing is based on a canon that's mostly first person, and I had a much easier time getting into the character's headspace and way of speaking if I wrote in first.

-First person also has a pretty bad rap as "self-inserty", although I've found that self-insertion is every bit as likely in third.

-Is the proscription against first person more of a "don't do this unless you're a highly skilled writer" rule? First person does tend to come out as more conversational; I find I end up starting a lot more sentences with "I", and my sentences are often sketchier, more repetitive. Third person, on the other hand, is more impersonal, removed, formal, both linguistically and syntactically. But I find that sometimes this "weakness" of first person can also be its strength. As an experiment, I switched a third person scene into POV, and writing that had been stilted and sluggish now felt much more vibrant and immediate. I also find that summarizing unimportant events is much less awkward in first person.

-One of the obstacles I've found to writing in first person is, well, my own prudery. In the fic I'm currently writing, everything was going swimmingly until I got to the sex scene. And then my inner censor was like "WHAT? YOU CAN'T WRITE ABOUT IT LIKE IT'S YOUR COCK! YOU CAN'T JUST COMMANDEER SOMEONE'S COCK LIKE THAT!' *turns beet red*" So at first I tried switching it into third person, but that just didn't work at all (see above issue with stilted prose). So, my cock it is.

-Is it because we want to see the characters' names next to each other? There is something very satisfying about that; reading "Arthur sucked Eames's cock" is much more viscerally satisfying than "I sucked Eames's cock" (forgive the blatantly hamhanded example; this is not an actual excerpt.)

AS ALWAYS, I want to hear your ideas.

And for the record, I really like second person too.

"There remains the carnifex himself; I am he."

2012-07-20T03:24:58Z

I recently put out a meme-ish call for constructive criticism here, and I'm really glad I did. After I went through the obligatory knee-jerk reactions of "WHAT IF I CAN'T FIX THESE PROBLEMS AND AM TERRIBLE FOREVER", it made me begin thinking about constructive ways to improve that DO NOT involve staying up all night until my eyes turn red and creepy feather-bumps start growing out of my shoulders.

-I am fortunate enough to have some magnificent betas; extremely gifted writers and readers who pull no punches and (most importantly) genuinely care about my writing. One thing I want to start doing is asking more questions to begin with--I find that I'm a better beta when I know what the writer's biggest concerns are. It helps sharpen my eyes to those areas, and it makes me feel much freer to comment on certain things I might otherwise have avoided pointing out because I was afraid to offend the writer--or thought the writer would see it as a non-negotiable part of the fic. I like to think I can be a pretty hardcore, honest beta, but there are certain things I'm afraid to touch. And there are areas I've rarely spoken about in betaing as either a beta or a writer. So from now on I'm going to ask things like "please tell me if this story is entertaining" or "do you think this character is funny?" or "do you think this character is unsympathetic? If so, how might I keep the character's basic integrity but make the character a little more likeable?" Lately I've been in awe of how George R. R. Martin (and Weiss and Benioff--mostly familiar with the TV series) could make Jaime Lannister so sympathetic (YMMV) despite pushing a small child out a window, having creepy sex with his twin sister, killing an innocent kid to get himself out of capture, and manipulating and insulting everyone and never shutting up.

-Also, writing habits. I write well past my point of burnout. Rather than breaking writing tasks up into small chunks, I try to write EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE and then get burnt out at the end of it. Or the middle. Or somewhere halfway between the beginning and the middle. I also try to write too fast--I often use Write or Die, and it may very well be that my current WPM (won't say what it is in case you're all like OMG THAT'S SO SLOW) is too fast. I could easily cut it in half and still write ten pages in a reasonable number of hours. But really, 700 good words in one day > 6000 mediocre ones. Really, really.

-Somewhat related: am about halfway through Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer (I can see why China Mieville likes him so much), which is so unbelievably exquisite and so far everything I want my worldbuilding to be and more, and it has this gorgeous and perfectly accurate passage about writing:

Many scores and sometimes many hundreds of persons come to watch an execution, and I have seen balconies torn from their walls by the weight of the watchers, killing more in their single crash than I in my career. These scores and hundreds may be likened to the readers of a written account. But there are others besides these spectators who must be satisfied: the authority in whose name the carnifex acts; those who have given him money so that the condemned may have an easy (or a hard) death; and the carnifex himself. The spectators will be content if there are no long delays, if the condemned is permitted to speak briefly and does it well, if the upraised blade gleams in the sun for a moment before it descends, thus giving them time to catch breath and nudge one another, and if the head falls with a satisfactory gout of blood. Similarly you, who will someday delve in Master Ultan's library, will require of me no long delays; personages who are permitted to speak only briefly yet do it well; certain dramatic pauses which shall signal to you that something of import is about to occur; excitement; and a sating quantity of blood. The authorities for whom the carnifex acts, the chiliarchs or archons (if I may be permitted to prolong my figure of speech), will have little complaint if the condemned is prevented from escaping, or much inflaming the mob; and if he is undeniably dead at the conclusion of the proceedings. That authority, as it seems to me, in my writing is the impulse that drives me to my task. Its requirements are that the subject of this work must remain central to it--not escaping into prefaces or indexes or into another work entirely; that the rhetoric not be permitted to overwhelm it; and that it be carried to a satisfactory conclusion.

Those who have paid the carnifex to make an act a painless or a painful one may be likened to the literary traditions and accepted models to which I am compelled to bow. I recall that one winter day, when cold rain beat against the window of the room where he gave us our lessons, Master Malrubius--perhaps because he saw we were too dispirited for serious work, perhaps only because he was dispirited himself--told us of a certain Master Werenfrid of our guild who in olden times, being in grave need, accepted remuneration from enemies of the condemned and from his friends as well; and who by stationing one party on the right of the block and the other on the left, by his great skill made it appear to each that the result was entirely satisfactory. In this way, the contending parties of tradition pull at the writers of histories. Yes, even at autarchs. One desires ease; the other, richness of experience in the execution of the writing.

And I must try, in the dilemma of Master Werenfrid but lacking his abilities, to satisfy each. This I have attempted to do. There remains the carnifex himself; I am he. It is not enough for him to earn praise from all. It is not enough, even, for him to perform his function in a way he knows to be entirely creditable and in keeping with the teaching of his masters and the ancient traditions. In addition to all of this, if he is to feel full satisfaction at the moment when Time lifts his own severed head by the hair, he must add to the execution some feature however small that is entirely his own and that he will never repeat. Only thus can he feel himself a free artist.

WARCHILD GENERAL DISCUSSION POST & FANDOM THINGS

2012-06-24T20:45:58Z

After reading this Tumblr post by Aja about fandom pimping, it made me want to make a new post for discussion about Warchild and its sequels. There are a few people who have read it since my last post, and also I wanted to have a space that was set aside for non-shippy discussions as well as shippy ones, and for discussions of ships other than my OTP, and basically EVERYTHING ABOUT THESE LIFE- AND HEART-SIPHONING BOOKS.

But first, a few BULLET POINTS:

-There are fanworks in progress from me and other people! For my part, I am writing a Jos/Niko canon-divergent AU which is currently over 10,000 words long and presupposes that Jos's parents moved to Austro instead and he was orphaned but never taken by Falcone. After being trained by black ops agents as a spy to infiltrate the sympathizer movement, he is rescued by Niko's ship and has to learn to adjust to life among the striviirc-na while also attempting to fulfill his duties as a spy. And there is angst! And reluctant falling in love! And snarking! And alien mating rituals! If anyone wants to read it as it progresses I can hook you up with the Google doc.

-I will let the others discuss their fanworks-in-progress if they wish to, since I always feel weird being like HEY DID YOU KNOW THAT SO AND SO IS WRITING X? if none of it is yet published.

-After lamenting the lack of non-(apparently) cismale characters, Dana and I started discussing an FTM!Dorr fic, which I am also planning to write.

-Here is Karin Lowachee's Tumblr if anyone is interested.

-Still having the WORST time ever coming up with fancasts for these books--none of the ones I've thought of seem quite right. AND HOW CAN I MAKE A FANMIX WITHOUT FANCASTS??? ANY SUGGESTIONS?

-Sparks by imogen is a SERIOUSLY FUCKING GREAT gen fic about a friendship between Sid (who shows up in Burndive, if you haven't read that) and Dorr. Spot-on character voices and the perfect emotional register make this fic an absolute delight.

-This is basically the perfect Ryan Azarcon song (esp. for the end of Burndive).

ANYWAY. DISCUSS AWAY IF YOU WISH.

the plush-lipped forger's violet-eyed trouser snake: or, the dreaded epithet

2012-06-04T00:59:37Z

I wasn’t sure I was going to tackle this one, but then I found schwa's post about epithets here.

A linguist and native German speaker, he reminds us that stylistic trends may vary in non-English speaking contexts, writing that “my teachers (German and foreign languages) always told us that actually using names all over is bad writing. I don't know what to believe anymore.”

I’m going to assume that most of us in fandom (at least in Inception fandom) are familiar with the epithet controversy. I’m not even sure it is a controversy and more of a widely accepted rule—No Epithets. Epithets are a well-accepted “automatic backspace”. And what’s more, people’s definition of an offensive epithet varies. It’s not just “the point man” or “the lithe soldier” or “the violet-eyed purple trouser snake”. To some, saying “the girl” or “the other man”--seemingly neutral, non-descriptive placeholders—are just as unacceptable.

I know that this is a loaded subject, so before we go any further, I’m just going to say that my intention is not to tell anyone what to do; it’s just to discuss my personal feelings and observations about this subject. Everyone has things they hate to see in fic, so I’m not here to judge anyone for liking or disliking epithets.

1) As I'm sure many of you know, norms vary from fandom to fandom. When I dabbled in Spartacus: Vengeance fandom, stories were rife with “the gladiator”, “the body slave”, “the German”, “the Syrian”. It tended to bother me, and I’m not sure why. Was it the frequency? The use of national/ethnic epithets also tends to bother me, and I had a really hard time reading fics that addressed Nasir as “the Syrian” all the time. Epithets can definitely be offensive, and furthermore, there have been many times when I wondered “of all the ways you could describe a person, why would you choose that one?

2) Speaking of Spartacus fandom, I wonder if epithets are more acceptable when writing about different periods in history. Ancient Greek and Roman literature, for example, made copious use of epithets. If we are attempting to write in a style that reflects the period, might epithets be one way of doing that? Or would it just sound affected?

3) When I looked up epithets on Google, most of the sources advising against epithets were fandom-centric sources. I’ve never taken a fiction writing class, but I’d be curious to hear if anyone’s heard the “no epithets” rule in non-fandom contexts. Do we tend to talk about it more in fandom because epithets are more often abused here? Or is it really just less of a rule in other contexts? Even if epithets are used in published fiction (and I’ve seen them used in decent published books many times), that doesn’t necessarily make “no epithets” an invalid rule—fanfic doesn’t need to obey the same rules as published fiction, and in many ways I like the idea of fanfic as an organic genre with its own conventions.

4) UNPOPULAR OPINION: I have seen fics where I think epithets were used conscientiously. One fic I read had Arthur thinking of Eames as “the forger” at the beginning and then had him grow to think of him purely as Eames. Now, one might argue that there are other ways to show that Arthur’s view of Eames changes from professional to personal over time, but I thought it was clever. You might also argue that no one actually thinks of people in terms of their occupations or other defining characteristics—but there are many tricks of perspective in fiction that people don’t necessarily really do.

That's all I got right now. Curious to hear opinions.

FIC: To spend my life in spitting distance of the love that I have known (Warchild, Jos/Niko)

2012-05-31T11:59:24Z

Reposting in honor of No Shame Wednesday.

Fandom: Warchild
Pairing: Jos/Niko
Rating: PG
Summary: Jos and Niko talk and stuff.

How do you keep a bleeding heart wide open?
How do you stand directly where you’r standing?
-TUnEyArDs, Wolly Wolly Gong

Niko finally admitted to himself that reading the document a forty-first time wouldn't really make much of a difference. The meeting wasn't for another ten shifts, and he'd absorbed all he could of it for the time being. But he wanted something to do while waiting, something that didn't require relaxation (which was impossible) or enjoyment (also impossible) or too many of his mental faculties. He rubbed at his temple as he flipped through the history of EarthHub's legal deliberations regarding its treatment of prisoners of war. Not that much of what they did actually lined up with their laws; Admiral Ashrafi had admitted that much.

Then at last he heard two voices outside the door to his quarters. One, high and melodious, a striviirc-na female. Ter’tlo, his chief of security. And one, harder to hear because of its duller timbre and lower pitch. Human, and male.

Niko rose and straightened his robe before calling out, "Come in."

The door slid open, and Ter’tlo hung back as Jos entered.

"Thank you for escorting him, Ter’tlo-na” Niko said. She withdrew with a deferential flick of her wings. "Jos-na, welcome."

Jos nodded and his eyes flicked downward before he smiled just enough to show his rarely-seen dimples. "I translated what seems to be a pretty generous sampling of the most important EarthHub rhetorical theory. Some of it I summarized since I didn't have enough time to do all of a book like Chaim Perelman's The New Rhetoric. But...I hope it's to your satisfaction."

Niko answered Jos's smile with one of his own. "I'm quite sure it will be. I hope it didn't give you too much trouble. I know written translation is different."

Jos took a few steps forward, making it evident that he wasn't entirely sure what to do with his body in this space that wasn't his. The thought put a splinter of discomfort in his heart.

"Not too much trouble." Jos made as if to cross his arms, then let one arm drop so his hand was holding his elbow. "There were a few words I stumbled over. It seemed like both ‘topos’ and ‘category’ could best be translated as sis’na, even though it isn't exact in either case. And the two words have very different meanings. So I just...I left some words untranslated, with a glossary, as usual. Nikolas-dan, when was the last time you slept?"

Niko laughed a bit. "I can't believe I sleep any less than your Captain Azarcon. Being in command of a ship leaves little time for rest, even during a ceasefire. There is always work to be done. And talks to prepare for."

Whatever concern Jos was feeling for him at the moment had apparently distracted him from his insecurity, and he stepped forward to inspect Niko in greater detail. "You didn't actually answer my question."

Something in Niko wanted to blink, to flinch to look down. It was ridiculous. Why did Jos's gaze, direct as a migrant bird's flight and blue as a class O star, unsettle him, Niko wondered? He had faced every Caste Master on Aaian-na and stared into the sharp dark poison-arrowhead eyes of Cairo Azarcon, and he'd never been frightened in quite this way. Niko had always known his worth, practically been born knowing it. Maybe Jos called that into question.

It was not that Jos thought of him as less than worthy. Quite the opposite.

Maybe that was the problem. The worth Jos saw in him was worth he, for once, feared he didn't deserve. And yet Niko was greedy. He wanted Jos to think of him as worthy in every way possible. Even though the things he had read that day were the thoughts of a lonely, hero-worshipping fourteen year old and in four years so much had changed; so much deserved to change.

Jos sighed, an admission of defeat for his line of inquiry. "I'm sure the kia'redan bae has a good reason to neglect his health. Who am I to question his wisdom?"

Snide creature. Niko had to smile. "Not everyone is as young as you are, Jos-na. Even if you have somehow fit a thousand years into your eighteen." He regretted saying that--how many of those years had been stuffed in by Niko himself?

Niko was sure that thought was mirrored in Jos's mind, but Jos didn't voice it. "Maybe you're right."

"Sit down, Jos-na," Niko said with an affectionate sigh. "I should be grateful that you still care about me."

Jos pulled a cushion from the corner and sat at an adjacent side of Niko's work table. He set the folders down in an empty spot and rested his arms on the smooth polished wood.

"Why wouldn't I care about you?" There was a twinge of exasperation in Jos's voice. He looked up at Niko as Niko removed the tea set from the wall and pressed the button to fill the pot with water. "Sraga, Niko, don't play the martyr.”

"Because I sent you away?" Niko set the pot and cups down before them. "Because I still can't regret it and you know me well enough to know that I would have done the same exact thing even knowing what I know now? Because of what I said after I--" He still found it difficult to talk about what he had done to Ash. About--say it--killing Ash. Not to the kii-redan, or even to their mother, to whom he had merely said "Mother, I had to kill him. He did a great injustice in our name and in the name of our people." But he couldn't dredge up the memories of what had happened afterward. Jos telling him he didn't have to do it, telling him that he himself may have done an injustice--and still, after everything, touching him as if Niko were a drawing he was shading, with softness and deliberate care.

After a long silence, Jos filled his cup but didn't drink, only wrapped his hands around it lightly. "Was it because of me that you did it?"

"That I did--that I killed him?"

"Yes."

You sacrificed children, Niko remembered himself saying to his brother's still, defiant eyes.

"It wasn't why I did it," Niko said softly. "Not entirely. But it was why it was not an option."

"Mercy is not a striviirc-na virtue," Jos said--not as an accusation or a value judgement, but as if he were reading from an ethnographic study. "I never liked that word anyway, mercy."

"What word do you prefer for letting someone live who does not deserve it?"

Jos shook his head. "There are too many reasons. But sometimes it's just because we need to rest. Because no matter how right it is, killing makes us weaker. I don't know."

That word, rest, reminded him of thoughts he'd rather not remember at the moment. Ash's look of near-triumph. The thought (silly as it may have been) that he knew exactly what Ash was thinking at the moment, some last vengeful flare of brotherly connection. It made his head hurt more than it already did, but maybe it was only coincidence.

"I am sorry, Jos-na," Niko said finally. "I am sorry for all that has happened to you, and all I have done to you, and I wish with all my heart that it hadn't been necessary."

"And I am sorry," Jos answered. "I'm sorry I'm not here with you. But I have to be there. This is not my na, and you know that. And Evan..." His voice trailed off.

At the mention of the young man's name an all too familiar mind enemy yawned awake, and Niko tried to shove it back into bed. Wait, at least. Wait.

"Evan. You love him."

"I do." Jos looked a bit exasperated but happy all the same at the mention of that name. "He's...he's my family. The closest thing I have to it."

Wait, Niko told his klal’toric again, more insistently, and swallowed before speaking again.

"And what would you say I am to you?"

He wanted to shut his eyes, dreading the answer.

Jos was silent again. He sniffed at his tea, cold by now, and thumbed at the edge of the cup as if he could rub the lacquer off to reveal an answer. He smiled weakly--more weakly than he had at the mention of Evan.

"You are my u'loka."

If Niko didn't know exactly what it felt like to be hit with a bullet, he would have compared the feeling to that.

U’loka. The heart's unhealing wound.

Not a mind enemy by definition--although it could become one. U’loka was something that would always ache even when you found your na and vanquished your mind enemies. It was not to be feared, and learning whether to steer toward it or away could help you find your place. Harder than it sounded. It was fashionable to call the object of one's passionate love one's u’loka. But Jos was never much for the fashionable.

"You mean family is your u’loka.”

Jos looked up at him, his eyes boring into Niko in the true striviirc-na way. "If I had meant that I would have said it."

"It's an ambiguous word."

Jos was glaring by now. "Don't make me have to find another way to tell you that I don't mean I want you to be my older brother. I want everything, Niko. And we both know we can't have that."

"Why can't we?"

"You know why."

And Niko did know why.

"I do, u'loka'i." My u'loka.

Jos reached across the table and covered Niko's hand with his, hooking his thumb underneath so that he had a hold on him. It gave Niko the strength to continue speaking.

“I found the letters. But I didn’t know if you still felt that way. It seemed more likely that your heart would have changed in the past few years.”

Jos looked taken aback. “You—you read them?”

"When I was last on Aaian-na, I went into your old room," he began. "It had belonged to Ash when he was younger. And there was a hole between the stones in the wall where I know he used to hide things he didn't want me or our parents to find. I looked inside it to see if there was anything there that he had left. Sadly, I had stopped caring much about his life after I went into space, when I became the Warboy, so I didn't have much idea what the end of his childhood was like. And I found them there. If they were not meant for my eyes, I am sorry, but they were addressed to me.”

Jos breathed deeply. "I couldn't send comms to you. And I understand now why that is. But then I didn't. Enas-dan couldn't very well tell me that if they'd been intercepted it would've been serving up EarthHub your, er, trump card on a silver platter."

"Trump card?" Niko asked. Jos hadn't translated the expression.

"Uh, your secret weapon. No bitterness intended. But once I knew you’d never get them, things began coming out of me that I would never actually have said to you.”

"Jos-na, I'm glad I didn't receive these. I'm glad I didn't know how strongly you felt, how much you ached to be with me."

Jos smiled crookedly. "I thought it was obvious."

"I didn't want to be wrong. Especially not with you."

Niko remembered those first moments on Turundrlar when Jos's hand brushed his and he found himself wanting to arrest time. When they spent goldshift together, he wanted to make excuses not to send Jos back to his quarters, and he knew that was exactly why he had to. De society’s ideas about love were considerably different from what he knew of EarthHub's morality; casted students and their teachers often formed close, sensual relationships, believing that it invigorated the exchange of knowledge, and that love forged in study and contemplation was the most sacred of all.

But Jos, Niko knew, was different. Jos had been broken and tormented by a man claiming to be his teacher. He could not be anything like that man; so anything that grew between them would be Jos's choice alone. And Niko's plans for Jos meant that allowing anything like kiri'na, place-sharing love—something like what humans would call romance--to grow between them could do nothing but drive daggers through both of their hearts.

Niko laid his other hand on top of Jos's and looked into his eyes. The fear was gone; the ache, as inseparable from the one in his head as cold from snow, remained. "Shall we look over the translations now?"

Jos gave him a serious smile. "I'd rather not." He edged off of his cushion until he was kneeling on bare floor right beside Niko. Niko could smell his skin; he smelled older, and the scents of strange food and fabrics and detergents were overlaid with his, but beneath it all was Jos. Niko remembered sitting by his bed when he was rescued from Falcone, breathing him in, blood and sadness and dirt. All of it. How badly he wanted to pull Jos into his arms as he slept, to know that the fear he had that Jos's heart was battered and damaged was only a poetic conceit and that it still beat as strongly as ever against his own, like lips tapping together to form sounds.

Now Jos was so close Niko could feel his breath. Jos raised his hand to cup Niko's face, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb against the corner of Niko's lips.

"I've wanted to do this, but I don't really know..." Jos said. Fear flickered in his eyes like the blurry shape of a big, deep-swimming fish, a plea for help. He leaned in and hovered close to Niko's lips but drew back just as Niko felt the first hint of his mouth's warmth. Niko slid an arm around Jos's back, and Jos buried his face in Niko's shoulder.

"Don't do anything you don't want to," Niko whispered into Jos's hair. "It's enough to be close to you, s'yta-na."

"It's--" Jos's lips moved against the bare skin of Niko's neck. "It hurts how good it is to be with you like this."

Niko held him tighter and ran a hand up the nape of Jos's neck and into his thick black hair, hair that smelled like mint and leather and clean sweat.

"I think it might be a good idea to rest after all. Will you--will you come with me? You don't have to lie down. You can sit. Or stand."

"It's your head, isn't it." Jos pulled back and touched his fingertips softly to Niko's temples.

"Azarcon is training you in mind-reading now? You're going to be the most dangerous man in the galaxy soon."

Jos rolled his eyes a bit. "Your quarters are so dim, and you keep touching the side of your head."

"It's nothing serious. All my life I've gotten headaches that don't respond to treatment. They've been a bit more frequent lately. Another thing to be lived with.”

Jos stood and offered his hand. "I'll lie down with you."

Still hand in hand, they walked into the other room where Niko's bedroll was. Jos bent to untie and tug off his shoes, and he was first to stretch out on the bed. He looked a bit stiff and uncomfortable at first, but the awkwardness seemed to melt away as he lay on his side and looked up at Niko, a gentle smile on his face. Of all the things that Niko had encountered in the universe, both concrete and abstract, it was Jos's capacity for gentleness in spite of everything that had brought him closest to crying.

Niko lay down next to Jos and reached out to touch his cheek. Jos gravitated toward the touch, eyes half-closing in a grave sort of bliss that seemed appropriate to him. Jos, in turn, slid both hands into Niko's hair and began to massage slow circles into his scalp. Niko wasn't sure it truly relieved the pain any, but it felt good anyway. He found himself sighing deeply and shifting closer to Jos, forehead pressed against his shoulder.

Jos touched his lips delicately to the crown of Niko's head. "Come here," he murmured.

"I am here," Niko said wryly.

Jos removed his hands from Niko's hair and wrapped his arms around Niko's waist so that he could pull him closer, their bodies overlapping. Niko felt strange about resting all of his weight on Jos, but Jos's hands on the small of his back urged him to relax there and let Jos's body support him.

"You still let me touch you," Niko breathed, as if bearing witness to a miracle. "And you touch me."

"It's always been different with you. I don't feel like I'm being hunted when you touch me. I feel...grounded." Jos's hands were in his hair again, warming and soothing, and Niko thought he might actually be able to sleep like that.

Except that Jos was speaking to him, and he didn't want to waste a moment of feeling as well as hearing his voice, letting the vibrations ruffle him like a pleasant crossbreeze. "Niko?" Jos was asking. "I think I'm ready."

"For?" Niko didn't particularly want to raise his head from Jos's chest, but he lifted his head to look Jos in the eye.

"I want you to kiss me," Jos said.

"You are sure."

"I'm sure. If I want to stop, I'll say so." Jos's hand was on the back of Niko's head, and he pulled him closer. This time their lips actually did touch. Niko didn't open his mouth, only rested his lips against Jos's for a good long measure, soaking in the smoothness and warmth and the mere fact that these were his lips and Jos's lips and they were touching. He pressed another soft kiss to Jos's cheek, then another; he kissed his jaw and his chin and then returned to his mouth to leave another kiss as tender as he could possibly make it. It was Jos who deepened it, opening his mouth and sealing it over Niko's. Jos wasn't quite sure what to do with the kiss after that, but Niko didn't care at all.

"It's perfect, s'yta-na," he said against Jos's cheek. Jos just laughed and turned his head to kiss Niko's temple. "Anything you can give me. My days of demanding from you what you do not wish to give are over."

Jos rested his forehead against Niko's. "I have always wanted to give you everything you asked," he said softly. "That was what hurt so much."

"And it hurt that I couldn't give you everything you asked."

"There are as many kinds of u'loka as there are people on the planet," Jos said. A direct quote from a philosophical text. "I am glad at least that I don't feel I've completely lost you anymore."

In response, Niko just kissed Jos. Soft, closed-mouthed kisses, wanting then and there to give him every kiss he'd ever wanted to give him, as foolish as that was.

After he had driven the knife into Ash's heart, Niko wondered if it had been Ash, and not him, who had truly gotten revenge. Because of the two of them Ash was the one who could stop wondering if his every action was right or wrong. The one who could stop loving. The one who could rest.

But rest would mean not having Jos in his arms right now. For that, he felt, he could keep moving, with the love and the pain and all that brought with it.

"You will only lose me if you want to lose me, Jos-na," he said.

Jos tilted his head up and kissed Niko's forehead. "Don't think about things like that anymore. Sleep."

Niko smiled. "I will try."

A Joyous Shot at How Things Ought To Be, Part 2

2012-05-31T08:58:14Z

Title: A Joyous Shot at How Things Ought To Be
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Summary: Eames is a con artist who poses as Arthur's live-in domestic servant and submissive. Things get complicated.
Warnings: This part doesn't have all that many warm and fuzzy feelings in it, heads up.
Notes: Betaed by anatsuno, night_reveals, and the ragnarok. Art by yjudaes. Title courtesy of Philip Larkin.

Part 1

That day was the first all week where the temperature didn't hit triple digits, so it was a day for yardwork. And for talking about how it was the first day all week where the temperature didn't hit triple digits.

Eames clipped the hedges, mowed the lawn, and cleaned the pool while Arthur sat on a chaise lounge reading a professional journal. The reading material around the house was extensive and eclectic, but by the depth and breadth of the literature in that discipline Eames gleaned that Arthur's career--or at least his training—had something to do with electrical engineering. So if Arthur was an engineer, and secretive about his work, then it stood to reason that whatever was in that silver box was a device of some sort.

For what, Eames wasn't too sure yet. That, he couldn't parse from what Arthur read. At least not from what he read openly. He read articles about archetypes, depth psychology, pharmacology, architecture, chemistry. It might all very well have been the far-flung interests of a curious mind.

Except for one thing.

It was a strange and awkward moment in a relationship that teemed with the like, so it was easy to stash that one particular sequence of broken sentences over bacon, eggs and coffee in the spam folder of mundane memories. Eames just happened to tell Arthur that he'd had an odd dream the night before. And he had; he'd just dumbed it down a bit, turning the Queen Gertrude-type figure into the woman from Supernanny and the naval battle into a game of strip poker on a raft. But when he asked Arthur if he'd had any interesting dreams lately, Arthur shrugged and said rather too quickly "I don't really remember my dreams. They're really boring." Which was 1) a contradiction and 2) didn't someone once say something about protesting too much?

The next item on Eames's list for the afternoon was varnishing the wood bench on the front porch. He wiped the sweat off his back with a towel and headed inside to get his tools.

"Come back here," said Arthur.

Eames regarded Arthur. He was wearing black swim trunks; his tanned skin glistened and sweat slicked the hair on his legs and arms and chest. His posture--one arm behind his head, one leg planted on the ground, the other up on the chaise--accentuated the long, limber lines of his body, and he looked confident and at ease. All in all, an aesthetically pleasing vision except for the triangle of zinc oxide on his nose. Eames couldn't control his laughter when Arthur looked up at him wearing his best I-am-your-lord-and-master look.

"I'm sorry." Eames covered his mouth with his hand. "It's just--"

"I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to laugh at me." Arthur looked back down at the page he was reading, but Eames could see the trace of a smile on his lips.

"It doesn't say that anywhere in the contract, though," Eames said.

"Common sense?" said Arthur, highlighter squeaking over a line of text.

Eames grinned. "But Daddy. I didn't think you hired me for my common sense.”

"You have a point." Arthur looked back at him and motioned to the empty chaise next to his. "Sit down."

Arthur drew the pause, and his intense expression, out for a worrying length of time, so Eames didn't expect what was coming next.

"Are you wearing sunblock?"

Eames wrinkled his nose. "Am I what?"

Arthur glared. "You heard me."

"I'm not--I have sensitive skin."

"Bullshit." Arthur moved to sit upright. "Lie on your stomach."

Eames lay down on the hot plastic slats. Arthur came over and slung one leg over Eames's side so that he was straddling his waist, and Eames heard the snap of a cap and the squeal of a plastic bottle just before he felt something cold and slippery touch his skin.

Arthur massaged the lotion into Eames's shoulders with firm twisting motions, like opening a jar lid. He slapped sunscreen all the way down Eames's spine, even going so far (though not far enough) as to smooth it briskly under the waistband of Eames's shorts. When Arthur touched the back of Eames's neck, it wasn't just the sudden coldness of the lotion that made the fine hairs there prickle. It was a wicked tease, thought Eames. Riding him like that, pressing his cock and balls right into the small of Eames's back only centimeters away from a hole that fucking hungered to be stretched and filled. Touching him, but such businesslike touches; the massage a boxer gets from his trainer was more sensual.

Arthur clapped his hands together. "Turn over."

Eames lay on his back now, chest to the sun. Arthur straddled him again, and somehow when Eames looked up at him the zinc oxide wasn't quite so funny (it was still funny, though). And maybe it was something in the way he regarded Arthur then, curiously and unflinchingly from under the shade of his forearm, that made the difference in Arthur's touches. Maybe it was simply looking at Eames's face. But Arthur touched more softly, hesitated before making contact with the skin. And when he came to Eames's pecs, he stroked circles around the nipples, keeping well away from the nipples themselves.

And Eames found himself breathing deep, pushing his chest out just a bit. As if asking to be touched there.

And as if in direct response, Arthur stood up, wiped his hands on his own stomach, and asked Eames for a glass of iced tea. Sweetened with three parts stevia to one part cane sugar.

*
Of course the doorbell rang when Eames was vacuuming the living room in his underwear. Of course.

Arthur had driven into town to pick up the mail from the PO box. And the person ringing the doorbell wasn't going away. The intervals between rings got shorter and shorter until finally it was just one continuous Ba-dong-ba-dong-ba-dong-ba-dong-ba-dong.

Eames darted upstairs and put on the clothes nearest at hand, a varnish-streaked white undershirt and denim shorts ripped off at the knee. When he was decent, he ran back downstairs to peer through the window and see who was out there.

It was a woman Arthur's age or younger in a low-cut white shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, with long silver earrings nestled in her wavy shoulder-length dark hair.

"Hello?" she called, as she began to slap on the door with her palm. "I can see you in there. You going to let me in or just stand there and watch me like I'm a chimp trying to use a computer?"

Eames was under strict instructions not to let anyone in the house without Arthur's permission, but the woman seemed familiar with Arthur and his house, and seemed to have a reason to be pounding urgently at the door, so Eames wondered what could be the harm. He undid the locks and opened the door.

The woman regarded Eames with a tilted head. "Did you tell Arthur I was here?"

"Are you Arthur's chief of security or something?" he replied. "Apologies for my lapse in judgment. You can demote me to ensign if you'd like."

She ignored his attempt to lighten the mood. "So you're--"

"I'm the plumber."

She laughed out a single, humorless, duckish note. "Sounds like it's my lucky day. You know," she said, meandering into the kitchen and sitting down sideways on one of Arthur's Danish Modern chairs, "I've been wondering if my water heater was installed correctly. I measured it, and it's only raised 10 inches above the floor. Is that safe?"

Eames closed his eyes and shook his head. Clearly she knew the answer to that, or shewouldn't be on about "only ten inches". She was a safety-conscious person, probably even a little paranoid. She was obviously trying to prove that he didn't actually know anything about plumbing.

She smiled cryptically. "I'm just asking for a second opinion."

"Regulation distance," Eames said, his back turned to her as he scanned the fridge for the orange juice, "is eighteen inches."

"Impressive. So what's the best way to allow for the movement caused by thermal expansion?"

Shit, Eames thought. He'd read a Plumbing for Dummies book a couple weeks ago on the off chance that he'd have to meet someone Arthur knew, but that was one of the answers he'd forgotten. Was it building expansion loops?

The door creaked open, followed by the sound of shuffling feet.

"Hello?" Arthur called warily.

"The prodigal errand-runner returns," the woman said drily. "I can't believe your plumber didn't even offer me a drink."

Arthur strode into the kitchen. Eames was still standing in front of the open fridge, tilting the carafe of orange juice up to his lips and gulping it down pulp and all. When Arthur locked eyes with him, he held the carafe out to the woman encouragingly. "Want some?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Sylvia, I'm guessing you haven't been introduced to Eames," said Arthur. "Eames, this is Sylvia. She's a coworker of mine. Sylvia, this is Eames. He's an...independent contractor."

Sylvia snickered.

"Eames, you have my phone number," Arthur said, using the tone of voice you'd expect when your friend's dad has just caught the two of you smoking but isn't sure he has the right to discipline you.

"Didn't want to bother you in case you were having a nature moment or somesuch." Eames paced over to the window and watched the trees twitch in the feeble afternoon wind. "Enjoying this breeze, maybe."

"Luckily, I brought lunch," Arthur said, lifting up a plastic bag. "Eames, would you mind getting out some plates and utensils?"

"Yes, sir. I will do so independently and yet according to contract." He winked first at Arthur, then at Sylvia. She frowned and averted her eyes to Arthur and his dill-and-mayonaise-laden quarry. He couldn't quite tell if she was completely charmed by him, or still struggling not to be. Everyone went through the phases differently.

Eames cut tomatoes and diced buffalo mozzarella while Arthur plated the potato salad and chopped up mangoes. Eames stole a spear of mango off Arthur's plate, nearly getting his fingertip parted from the bone in the process, but it was worth it to suck the juice out of the flesh and get threads of mango stuck between his teeth. Arthur grimaced at the plate and tried to pretend he wasn't watching Eames licking his sticky lips.

"What's this now?" Sylvia asked, reaching for a small red velvet box atop Arthur's pile of mail.

"Oh--oh God." Arthur looked over his shoulder, sounding a bit embarrassed, but he made no real effort to stop her from opening the box. There was silence as she looked down at its contents, followed by a guffaw that made Eames wonder at first if she might need the Heimlich.

"Arthur, what is this?" she cried between her peals of laughter. Between her fingers she held a pair of white plastic fangs.

If Arthur blushed, he'd probably have been blushing at that moment. He started chopping again furiously, even though if the basil was cut any finer it could've been used as eyeshadow.

"Oh Arthur!" Eames laughed. "I had no idea."

"It's not--" Arthur stammered. "It's--it's an invitation to my cousin's wedding."

Sylvia cleared her throat and read. "Claire and Josh invite you, our cherished friends and family by blood and otherwise, to celebrate love and eternal life with us on Friday, September 20, 2004, at blah blah blah in Blahblahblahville, Long Blahland.

"Claire is--She's really...into vampires. As I guess is obvious,” Arthur said.

Sylvia unfolded a piece of white paper imprinted with blotchy, dark-red ink that was obviously supposed to look like blood.

"Oh my, there's more." She began to read again. "'Vampire garb will be required to create an atmosphere hospitable to the living dead.' That shouldn't be a problem for you, Arthur. I bet you've got a velvet-lined cape stashed away somewhere."

Watching Arthur's slightly pained expression, Eames had to stifle a laugh.

"You do have a bit of the old...Dracula hair going on," Eames said, gesturing meaninglessly with his knife. A drop of kiwi juice flew off the blade.

"Clean that up please?" Arthur asked.

"Isn't high-powered eyesight also a gift of the undead?" Sylvia said.

"All that blood's got vitamin A in it, innit?" Eames asked. "All red stuff did, I thought."

"I thought that was just tomatoes and watermelon." Sylvia opened the fangs as wide as they would go until they snapped in half. "Um, Arthur, I really do hope they'll give you a better-made set of fangs, 'cause I just broke these."

Arthur smiled and set the plates down at the table. "OK, lunchtime. Eames, are you, uh, hanging around?"

Eames wiped his brow to emphasize exertion. "Don't think so. I've got some stuff to look at upstairs."

As he walked by, he casually dipped his hand into the purse that was hanging on the back of Sylvia's chair. Luckily neither she nor Arthur looked at him once he declared his intent to leave, and so practiced was he at such legerdemain that he was fairly sure he could have snatched up her wallet even if she, Arthur, and the Metropolitan Chief of Police had been following his fingers as if they were the puck in a hockey game. He shoved it into his front pocket and waited to be stopped, but they just poured their drinks and served up their salads.

Eames waited to look at the wallet until he was in the bathroom (where, he was fairly certain, there were no cameras). The first thing he learned about Sylvia was that her name wasn't necessarily Sylvia. She had two drivers licenses from two different states, one of which bore the name Catherine Rodrigues. She also had four fifty dollar bills, a picture of a woman who looked related to her holding an infant, a few credit cards under several names, and a small pile of business cards. The business cards read:

SYLVIA J. PEREIRA
Jungian Therapist
Specializing in Nightmare Treatment

There was no address, just a phone number. Eames slipped one of the cards into his pocket.

So he was right about Arthur's involvement in something related to dreams. Nightmare therapy, though? Since when had that ever been a top-secret occupation? Unless they were conducting illegal experiments--hooking people up to machines, prying open their eyelids and subjecting them to horrifying images like in A Clockwork Orange or whispered-of Soviet mind-control technologies.

I'll figure you out, Sylvia Josette Cynthia Catherine Rodrigues Herman White Pereira, he thought. And then Arthur will begin to make sense.

Eames left the bathroom, opened the door to his bedroom and paused. He could hear them talking downstairs; their voices were hushed, but if he was still enough he could make out some of the words. Cautiously, he dropped to the floor and lay on his stomach and waited for his ears to adjust to the low volume.

"...just don't trust him, Arthur, I'm sorry," Sylvia was saying. "I know his references were excellent, I know"--at this point her voice became indecipherable..."there's just something about him that doesn't sit right with me."

She's not talking about me, Eames reassured himself.

"I can't explain it. I tested him when I first met him. But if he was good at pretending he was a plumber, who's to say he's not pretending at everything else?"

Dammit.

"Sylvia, there's no reason for me not to trust him. He's not this glib all the time, believe me. He's--he's different." Arthur's voice was wavering a bit, but he sounded determined to be right.

"I know you're probably blinded by lust here--hell, you probably think you're in love with him. And I don't blame you--"

"Don't judge me," Arthur warned. It was a tone Eames knew well. "If I had my way you never would've found out. This is my decision. I don't care what it looks like."

"If this is about the Mal thing--if you're trying to distract yourself--"

"Aren't you a bit too smart to be playing amateur psychologist like this?" Arthur said.

"Haven't you learned by now that some things really are as simple as they look?" Sylvia shot back, a laugh in her voice. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't make light of this. I talked to Dom last week, things are looking even worse than before."

Arthur was silent for a moment, and although Eames couldn't see him, he could see him--mouth turned down, arms crossed, lips pressed together so tightly they began to turn white. "Of course they are," he said at last.

"Sometimes I can't believe how long it's been," Sylvia said. "I mean, since we left the States, that was...nine years ago. God. And you still..."

"And your tact is still legendary." He set a plate down loudly in frustration. "What am I supposed to say? She was my best friend. Is. Fuck. Can we stop talking about this now?"

"You have to talk about it," she said, in what Eames figured was supposed to be a gentle tone of voice that didn’t quite hit the mark.

"Not with you I don't."

"Then with whom? It's not like I give a fuck about who you're in love with, but I'm the only person who knows. Who isn't Dom."

"You think Dom knows?" Arthur sounded pained.

"Of course Dom knows. But Dom is the Garry Kasparov of denial."

"So this is why you came out here." Arthur was fuming at this point. He practically threw his fork down on his plate. And Eames was certain he could hear the subtle changes in Arthur's voice as he drank more beer; he was far from drunk, but he'd had maybe a beer and a half judging by the slight loss of crispness in his consonants. “I have a boyfriend. Did you know that?”

‘What’s his name?”

Arthur sighed. “His name is Ted. And he’s great. It’s kind of a long-distance intercoastal thing right now, but he’s planning on moving out here after he finishes his Ph.D.”

Was there actually something wistful in Arthur’s voice? Was that who he talked to on the phone for hours when he shut himself up in his office? Eames had, he remembered, seen the name TED pop up on the caller ID of Arthur’s phone. So that was it then. He just wanted some meaningless cocksucking until Long Distance Ph.D. was able to suck his cock meaningfully.

And worst of all, Eames thought, was the fact that Arthur hadn’t even told him. He’d manipulated Eames into believing that he was lonely and vulnerable and needed one person in the universe who cared about him. And after Eames had just barely learned to swallow his resentment—or at least how to market it; to sell it as fertilizer and not as crap.

The irony of Eames feeling like the one manipulated was not lost on him. He almost didn’t feel like listening to the conversation anymore, but eavesdropping was something of a reflex.

"That’s wonderful. I’m happy.” Sylvia said. “But I didn’t come here to pester you about your love life. I came out here to talk about a job." Eames heard her rifling through her purse, and he held his breath. But the only sound that followed was that of a dull thud on the table, probably a stack of papers, which Arthur then flipped through. "Don't worry, you can still go to your wedding. I need you for this, though. The client is losing faith that we can even find this guy. I need my bloodhound."

Eames bit his hand to keep from laughing at the mental image of Arthur slobbering and wagging his tail, his nose to the ground.

"Of course we can find this guy. No one ever actually disappears," Arthur said, a bit cockily.

Eames could hear the grin in Sylvia's voice. "That's my Arthur."

Their conversation ceased as Arthur read through the papers. Eames was getting tired of lying on his stomach, and on top of that he was actually hungry. Hungry enough to eat that mess of glue and plasticine that Arthur was fond of calling "potato salad".

After he came down the stairs, he stooped next to the door and pretended to pick something up.

"Um, Sylvia, you dropped your wallet."

She took the wallet from him with a smile, but he could see a glimmer of suspicion in her eyes. At least when she opened it up she'd find nothing gone. Unless she'd counted her business cards.

"There's food left," Arthur said. He didn't meet Eames's eye.

So she had planted the germ of doubt in Arthur's mind. Of course. Humans were simple creatures like that, almost as programmable as computers. Not that Eames really knew much about computers, but he knew they were supposed to be rather predictable.

As Eames regarded them both, he smiled the smile of one who was watching it all go to hell.

It was one of the loveliest, gentlest smiles in his repertoire.

*

They drove Sylvia back to the train station at dusk. It was only a twenty-minute drive, but a tense silence crept over them and they were mostly silent except for a few comments from Sylvia about the brightly painted houses downtown and the restoration of Bald Eagle populations along the river.

Arthur didn't head straight home afterward. From the station, he pulled into the parking lot of a general store.

"You, um, like ice cream?"

Eames looked out the window away from Arthur. "I could take it or leave it."

Without warning Arthur grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked Eames's head around so that he was looking straight in Arthur's eyes. "Where the fuck are your manners, boy?"

Eames let his smile turn wicked. "Gone to find your honesty, I suppose."

"What I choose to tell you is none of your concern."

"Do you treat your boyfriend like this? Make him cater to your every whim and then shove him around if he doesn't obey you?"

Arthur grabbed Eames by the collar. "Did I ever tell you I had a boyfriend?”

“I wasn’t listening, but I overheard.”

Arthur released Eames and slammed the steering wheel. “I thought you respected my fucking privacy. I trusted you at least enough to do that.”

“Privacy?” Eames laughed. “You were talking. Anyone could have heard.”

“You think I’m stupid enough to believe that? I know you stole her wallet too. She’s right. I shouldn’t trust you.”

 “I just wanted to look at it. I didn’t take anything. She’ll tell you that.” Eames infused his voice with a slight whine, and a bit of the fear he genuinely felt. “I used to snatch wallets. Just for fun. I ran with a bit of a rough crowd back then, didn’t I tell you? Thought that was what you liked about me.”

"You are a fucking piece of work." Arthur touched his forehead to the steering wheel. “I’m not in the mood for this shit.”

"What are you in the mood for then?"

Arthur fixed him with a cool, menacing glare. "To shut you the fuck up with my dick."

Eames felt his salivary glands kick in on cue.

"But first I'm getting ice cream. And Eames?”

“Yes?”

“If I ever catch you stealing anything, or touching anything I told you not to touch, you’re gone.”

Eames couldn’t exhale until Arthur had left. His heart kept slamming like an echo of the car door.

Arthur came back with a single cone--Eames could never remember which was sugar, which was waffle, and which was cake--of vanilla ice cream.

"Vanilla?" Eames made a face. "How...vanilla."

"It's really good, though. You want some?" It was back in the triple digits again, and the ice cream was already starting to run down the cone and the back of Arthur's hand.

"Sure." Eames reached for the cone, but Arthur jerked it out of the way.

"No no. Not like that."

With one hand, Arthur unbuttoned his trousers and pulled down his zipper. He wriggled his cock free of his briefs so that it stood bare, slightly engorged, red and shiny at the tip. Then he lowered the ice cream cone so that it dripped a long line of off-white liquid from the base to the slit.

"Come get your ice cream, boy." Arthur put his hand on the back of Eames's neck and guided him down to his cock.

Eames licked the ice cream off with slow, coy licks. He made sure to get a little on his lips so he'd look appropriately sticky and filthy when he turned back up to face Arthur and ask him for more.

Arthur obliged, dripping a little more ice cream on his cock.

After Eames licked off his second helping, he took Arthur's cock into his mouth whole and sucked hard until it felt like all the air had gone out of his mouth. Arthur gasped, and Eames heard his head hit the headrest.

"Oh God, yes, work for me," Arthur said, grabbing his hair and forcing his head up and down. "Suck harder. Make me feel it."

Eames made his mouth a vacuum for Arthur's pleasure. He pulled his lips away briefly, but Arthur reached down, hooked his fingers into Eames's mouth, and molded his lips to wrap around Arthur's hard cock.

"Your mouth is mine," Arthur murmured, leaning down. "Mine to fuck, and mine to use. It does what I want it to do. Is that clear?"

Eames said "yes" as clearly as he could with a cock all the way down his throat.

"That's my good boy." Arthur stroked Eames's hair lazily.

Eames looked up and nodded.

"I'm going to start driving now, and you're going to keep going. Understand?"

Eames nodded again.

The vibrations and the bouncing of the car sometimes shoved Arthur's dick even further back than Eames thought it could go, jamming it against his hard palate, making him gag.

It wasn't bad. It was kind of great, in fact.

Arthur hesitated in getting out of the car when they pulled into the driveway, and he turned to look at Eames with a quizzical expression before he turned away. It looked for a moment as if he wanted to start the car up again.

"I don’t actually have a boyfriend,” he said finally.

"Mmm, OK," Eames said, leaning back against his seat and looking at the nothing on the garage door.

Arthur looked back at him again, and this time he had trouble meeting Arthur's eyes.

"Are you happy here, Eames?" Arthur searched his face for something Eames made sure was carefully encrypted.

Eames knew the perfect interval between thought and response to avoid seeming like you're lying.

He also knew that sometimes you have to handle the truth as if it's a lie. If all its ancestors were lies, if all its friends are lies, if it wears the dizzying stripes of a lie for protection in the wild, if it's a sleeper agent who doesn't yet know what it is.

*

At five thirty am, on the morning of August fourteenth, Eames lay in bed stroking a screwdriver.

The things you can get away with when the man you're calling Daddy likes to see you walking around the house in little more than a toolbelt and underpants, thought Eames. He'd just strolled right into his bedroom the night before with the toolbelt on, and Arthur had probably just chalked it up to Eames's adorable ditsy-ness, if in fact his cock was allowing him to chalk anything up at all after the spectacular blowjob Eames had given him that afternoon.

So Eames had the screwdriver he needed to get at his really important tools. The Bulgarian keychain gun had only been the tip of the iceberg. Taped up and hidden inside the plastic wheel fixture on the rolling suitcase were...

Well, he still had some time before Arthur woke. He didn't need to open it quite yet. He might as well wait until Arthur was in no state to observe the security camera feed.

Eames pushed the screwdriver under his pillow and reached into the suitcase for a belt.

The buckle had a secret back you could slide open. He slid it open and let three tiny blue tabs fall into his hand, then closed his hand around them and slid them into the pocket of his robe. No reason to be paranoid, he told himself; Arthur's asleep, probably not checking the security camera feed at all. Arthur had been sleeping in until 6:30 much more frequently. He'd begun to trust Eames to find his way around the kitchen, then to find his way back to Arthur with toast and coffee and some harmless blunder for him to smile at.

And the complications count was still firmly at zero as Eames got breakfast ready, frying up sausage patties and brewing coffee, then adding a little something extra to the orange juice. It was odorless, tasteless, and completely harmless, as long as one isn't counting monetary damages and blows to egos.

Everything was going according to plan.

"Good morning, Daddy," Eames said, pushing Arthur's door open.

Arthur was in bed. But he wasn't on his back, in the position he usually slept in, ready to spring up like a wind-up soldier at the slightest disturbance. At first the only sign that Arthur was even in the bed was the limp arm and pallid hand poking out from beneath the heavy blanket. Eames's heart lurched in his chest. Then, to his enormous relief, the lump that was Arthur stirred, and the covers fell away. And then Eames noticed the trash can against the side of the bed, moved from its usual place by the door.

"Hnnnn hay," Arthur mumbled into the pillow. Eames placed the tray on the dresser and moved cautiously to Arthur's side. It could have been a trap.

But there was no deception to Arthur's shaking and pallor; his face had a gray tinge to it, and his eyes were dull and glassy. Eames touched the back of his hand to Arthur's forehead. He was burning up.

"Go away, I can take care of myself," Arthur said weakly. "I don't want you getting sick."

"Nonsense," Eames murmured. Arthur's hair was sweaty and plastered to his forehead, and propriety dictated that it be stroked gently back. So that was what Eames did.

The next thing Eames did was start breakfast all over again.

It didn't seem quite fair to drug and rob a man who was puking up his guts, Eames reflected. Besides, who knew what the drugs would do to someone who was that sick.

Until that inevitable day when it's him or you, you bloody twit. Then you do exactly what you have to do.

And the more he allowed himself to indulge in exceptions and tender mercies, the harder it would inevitably be.

He glanced at the pill-and-a-half that he had left, that he hadn't just impulsively poured down the drain. He poured a fresh glass of orange juice, strained it the way Arthur liked, then prepared to do what he had to.

The pills wouldn't leave his hand.

Arthur got a drug-free breakfast of toast, some bananas (Eames made a special trip to the market), juice, and tea. He took only a few bites of the toast before promptly vomiting everything back up again. Between encounters with the bucket, he'd glare at Eames with his droopy, shiny eyes, wordlessly telling him Get out of here and let me puke in peace, but Eames couldn't bring himself to leave.

He sat on the bed beside Arthur and rested a hand on his shoulder while he was getting sick. Then, every time Arthur sat back up, Eames stroked his hair back from his forehead and moved closer until Arthur took the hint to lean against him.

"Fuck," Arthur groaned.

"Does it hurt?" Eames asked softly.

"Everywhere." Arthur lay back down on his stomach and clutched the pillow to his face. And Eames took a chance.

He smoothed his hands across Arthur's shoulders, then rubbed circles into the tense spot between Arthur's shoulderblades. Arthur's scalp was probably painfully tight, so Eames worked at it with gentle, even fingertips.

He could hear Georgi then, as clear as if he'd been in the room with them. You fucking idiot.

Georgi fancied himself a sort of expert on idiots. Paperclipped inside of each of his DVDs was a computer print-out list of the characters in the film ranked by intelligence. It was no impressionistic ordering, either. He had an algorithm for determining it, one he'd been working on since he was twenty-three. Eames had never had an algorithm for anything. This automatically granted him twenty Idiot Points.

No. Really. It did.

"I am an idiot," Eames said softly but definitely out loud.

"What?"

"Nothing," Eames said. "Go to sleep."

Arthur scooted his head closer to Eames’s thigh and bumped it, seeking the peculiar warmth of skin. Why do human bodies seek out other human bodies when they’re sick? Eames wondered. Pillows are softer.

"Oh Arthur. You're barking up the wrong tree, mate," Eames said bitterly under his breath. "Why can't you just understand that I'm not what's going to make you happy?"

And because the trajectory of the scene was heading there, and because he couldn't really salvage his clear-headedness anyway, he bent and pressed a soft kiss to Arthur's forehead. Something for the security cameras to remember me by, he thought.

*

After Arthur's vomiting phase came his sleep phase. Eames brought him clean water and set a bowl of applesauce and a plate of dry toast by his bed, then sat down in a chair by the window hoping to doze off for a moment or two. It didn't work. Exhausted as he was from tending to Arthur, he couldn't ignore the schedule his body had become accustomed to, and it was only 4 pm.

He left Doc Holliday, curled up in a cat-croissant shape at Arthur's side, to tend to her master, and he plopped down on the living room couch and turned on the TV.

There was really nothing on. It was too early for any of the decent sitcoms or crime procedurals, too late for any of the tawdry talk shows. Arthur didn't bother getting the deluxe cable package, since he claimed he rarely watched TV anyway.

Eames lingered on a channel where an big excitable man with a blond toupee was hawking some sort of bizarre Russian nesting doll made of poultry, a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey or something like that. The man kept obsessively cutting a single piece of the Du-Chick-Key, or whatever the hell it was called, into smaller and smaller bits, then pressing down on it with the flat side of his knife until the juices drooled out onto the table while he said things like "Mmm, my God, you just do not get any juicier than this, do you, Megan." Megan, of course, nodded fervently. Of course it couldn't get any juicier.

Eames's higher faculties found the whole Du-Chick-Key business rather revolting, but his stomach begged to differ. He heated up some leftover chicken tikka masala in the microwave--right in the takeout box, despite the disapproving looks that Arthur always gave him when he reheated plastic. Precious freedom, he thought.

It would of course be ridiculous if the most exciting thing he did with his freedom was to microwave plastic. He made his way over to the wet bar. Another Limbert piece; a little scratched, but it would still fetch a pretty penny at auction. He imagined Arthur at an auction, sitting like Slightly Older Lord Fauntleroy in one of those bespoke suits that fit him like an ice cube tray fits an ice cube, legs crossed in his seat, as single-minded as a torpedo as he called out numbers--fifty hundred, fifty-five hundred, sixty hundred--in a voice soft yet firm, unwavering yet devoid of desperation.

Eames mixed himself one of Arthur's favorite cocktails. A Bedford: 2 ounces of rye whiskey, 2/3 oz Red Dubonnet, 1 tablespoon of Cointreau and 2 dashes of orange bitters orange peel garnish. He reclined on the couch with one leg propped on the other and one arm slung over the back of the couch. Mmmm, I'm Arthur, he thought. I'm an eccentric old man in a twenty-six-year-old's body. I have all sorts of old man hobbies. I smell like bay rum and listen to Count Basie on a victrola.

Eames put Count Basie on the victrola and continued being Arthur until he remembered that if he were actually Arthur he'd be lying in bed with a renegade stomach, which reminded him to go check on the real Arthur.

The real Arthur was still dead to the world, face pressed into the pillow. Eames gave his hair a ruffle, made sure his water supply was satisfactory, and adjusted the sheets around his shoulders. Then he went back into the living room and made himself another drink, and another.

Swing-dancing with himself still left him feeling restless, so he turned the stereo off and loped off down the hall still humming. He hadn't been down this hallway much. At the end of it was the room Arthur frequently locked himself inside. It was never expressly stated, but since it was always locked (he'd tested the door once before) and Eames had no duties in there, he knew it was off-limits.

Eames decided to try his luck with the door. And to his infinite surprise, it opened.

If it was rigged to an alarm, it was a silent one. And Eames figured he could always explain his trespassing away as simple bored curiosity; it might earn him a swat on the bottom, but that was a small price to pay. If it was a price at all.

The room looked mostly as Eames expected it might. Some paintings on the walls; a bookshelf stacked high with volumes old and new, from shabby crumbling paperbacks with duct-taped spines to leatherbound codices that probably cost hundreds of dollars. A lovely polished burlwood desk.

And sitting open on the burlwood desk was the silver briefcase Magnusson wanted.

Arthur must've been doing something with it when he got sick, Eames thought. Otherwise he wouldn't have left it out.

The device had a lock on it, but it wasn't locked. It flipped open easily.

The insides looked something like a centrifuge, or the inside of a camera, but he doubted it was either of those things. Then he remembered Arthur's reading materials.

Whatever this machine is, Eames thought, it most likely does something to fuck with your brain.

There was a tube attached to one of the cylinders and a bag of sterile needles.

If he catches me at this, I’m fucking done.

But if Magnusson wants it, it has to be rather grand. And Arthur uses it himself; can’t be a torture device, can it?

At any rate I ought to get my trouble’s worth out of this little situation, eh?

He thought at first that the instructions--if there were any--would be in one of the locked cabinets. But then he wondered if someone like Arthur would keep his classified documents in such an obvious place.

Eames looked around the room. The documents probably weren't attached to anything expensive-looking, in case that thing got stolen, which left out the desk, the chair, the side tables and the paintings. Only the books remained. And of the books, Arthur probably wouldn't keep it in any of the first editions, for the same reasons. So that left the shabby hardbacks and paperbacks.

Twenty-four paperbacks into his search, Eames found an old hardback copy of John Fowles's The Magus with a deep hole cut into the pages and a small book inserted.

*

Eames wondered when he’d scratched his cornea to shit, because everything looked all twinkly. He didn't remember a sandstorm blowing up in his face. It might've been that he was fresh off a chase, what with the way adrenaline always recorded over his memories, leaving him with nothing but brain fuzz, brain crackling, and a vague sensation of giddy dread.

He blinked, and that made things a little better, but not much. Whatever else he was, he was definitely hung over. Or maybe he was still drunk. The sun looked to be about as high as a three-year-old's head, which meant it was no later than nine o'clock. But his sense of time was distorted. The sun was climbing fast. He was walking at his usual pace, maybe a bit slower thanks to the throbbing in his head, but he felt like he was bleeding time uncontrollably, like it would be five in the afternoon by the time he got to the market to get Arthur his shade-grown coffee and currant jam. And what was worse, he felt like it was all his fault.

The old man with the black dog passed him and he waved sheepishly. Does he notice this? Eames wondered. Is time doing speed trials for everyone, or is it still nine o'clock for him? Fuck time, and fuck me for drinking all of that last night, and--

When he saw the Audi pull up next to him, he wasn't alarmed, just slightly peeved. Let all the awful things happen to me today, why not, he thought.

"Eames." The power window buzzed and Georgi's sun-reddened face appeared. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back, untouched by the stiff wind. Eames looked over and noticed that Tomas was in the driver's seat. Tomas gave him a cursory nod and went back to mostly ignoring him like always.

Eames put one hand on his hip. "Fancy seeing you in the neighborhood, Georgi. Jealous of my access to American basic cable? Looking for a vacation home in close proximity to a colony of artisan beadmakers?"

"Magnusson decided you were too much of an unknown quantity," Georgi said with a grin. "He wanted to entrust the goods to someone he'd worked with more directly. So we've come to get the goods, and you, and put everything back where it belongs."

"It's only the sixteenth," Eames protested.

"Deadlines are deadlines." Georgi shrugged, lighting a cigarette. Eames focused on Tomas's hands, beating out a rhythm on the dashboard though no music was playing. Tomas wore a smugger look than usual, Eames noticed. Like he was just waiting for some inferior intellect to realize it had just been duped.

And as soon as Eames glanced over the headrests, he knew why.

There was a man slumped against the tinted window with a gag in his mouth. His eyes were closed; he was obviously drugged. If he wasn't dead already.

"He's a good resource for us," Georgi said in response to the look of shock and fear on Eames's face. "Why do you care what happens to him? You've manipulated hundreds of people into giving us what we wanted. You can't tell me you didn't know something like this might happen when you began to work for him--or, should I say, when he began to work for you."

"Fine." Eames sighed and slid into the back seat of the car.

The Audi picked up speed and turned onto the winding mountain highway. Tomas turned up the volume on the radio and began pounding the steering wheel to the rhythm of "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel.

Whenever Tomas's eyes in the rearview mirror were averted, Eames glanced nervously over at Arthur. Arthur's head kept knocking against the glass with dull thuds, and of all the indignities, it made Eames angry that Arthur couldn't hold his head up to stop it from smacking against the glass. Eames stretched his foot over and nudged Arthur's leg. Arthur grunted but didn't otherwise respond.

I'm gonna get you out of this, he thought. We can go our separate ways, and you can go back to being a serial killer or whatever it is you do.

Eames looked over at the car door. If he could grab Arthur, maybe they could both roll out of the car together. The car was moving fast, but it was worth a shot. His other options were waiting until they stopped the car to piss. Or finding some reason to make them stop the car.

"Georgi," Eames said, threading a note of alarm through his voice. "I don't think he's breathing."

Georgi laughed. "Nice try, Eames. He's drugged. Of course he isn't going to look like he's breathing."

But Eames could see the look of worry in Tomas's eyes. "Georgi, do you think we should check? Magnusson's orders were very clear--"

"Goddamnit, Tomas, you're about to move five spots down on the Idiot List if you keep talking," Georgi grunted.

Eames rested his chin on his hand and looked out the window. He could try and take control of the wheel, but he was outnumbered, and he might just end up getting them all killed. Neither Georgi's gun nor Tomas's was visible from where he sat. He kicked around for anything he might be able to use as a weapon. Just as his foot hit something metallic, there was the sound of a projectile pinging off the bumper. Then the back of the car drooped and he felt the sensation of metal grinding against asphalt run through his body. Georgi and Tomas started cursing, and Georgi pulled the Uzi out of the glove compartment, leaned out of the car and fired a steady tattoo at the pursuing vehicle.

"Fucking drive faster, you idiot!" he screamed at Tomas. "And turn the goddamn radio off!"

Inexplicably, Peter Gabriel was still singing about eagles flying out of the night.

The car following them was dark blue, a Volvo like Arthur's, but Eames couldn't get a good look at who was driving it. He decided it didn't entirely matter; they were an opportunity and nothing more. He leaned over, flicked open the lock and gave the handle a push.

Fucking child safety locks.

In the absence of something long to push down into the lock and get it open, he sat back down and waited and thought as the sounds of splintering glass and crunching metal bloomed in his ears.

Georgi fired off another couple hundred rounds. "I got the bitch!" Georgi crowed. "The windshield and both tires."

Tomas looked in the rear view. "Then why is the bitch still coming after us at ninety miles per hour?" he shouted. "Who the fuck is it anyway?"

"Does your Arthur have a girlfriend?" Georgi said.

Eames wouldn't dignify that with a response.

"Good thing you're a nancy boy, Eames. Leaves more for us. And there seems to be an awful lot of this one. She's feisty."

Eames was fortunate that he had been ducking to check Arthur's pulse when that bullet came hurtling through the back windshield with the intent to prove Georgi's final words all too true. She was feisty.

She was bits of blood and bone feisty, bits of Georgi's hair and skull and grey matter all over the windshield feisty. Half of Tomas's face was lumpy and bloody and strewn with bits of pulp, and he looked like a maskless Phantom of the Opera even though it was temporary. Just some special effects makeup courtesy of Georgi's splattered brains.

Tomas genuflected and punched the accelerator. But with two shot-out tires the car was starting to drag more and more. It was veering all over the road, allowing her to easily shoot out a third tire. The car spun in a circle, and the only thing that saved it from flying over the flimsy guardrail and onto treetops miles below was the other car that pinned it swiftly into the side of the mountain.

*

"You have sour cream on your nose."

Eames looked up. He wasn't sure where he'd be, but he certainly didn't expect to be in the Cafe Kukushka in St. Petersburg. A vague feeling of wrongness hung about him, or maybe it was just one of the clouds of cigarette smoke, thick and whipped as mashed potatoes, that shrouded every table, including his. There were two cigarettes in the ash tray. He didn't remember lighting one. But he picked one up and wasn't scolded.

Smoke moved differently. Differently from where, he couldn't say. But there was something off about the way it seemed to have a will of its own: nubby little arms and legs jutted out like the pseudopods of amoebae, and it snaked back and forth, a slow belly dance. He was so transfixed by it that he almost forgot about the woman sitting across the table from him. Come to think of it, not all the smoke was even attached to cigarettes. It simply was. Each table was an excuse for smoke.

He peered through it and could make out large eyes, dark hair, a round face. The woman from his death scene.

He wiped his nose and sat up straighter, as if that would make up for the previous embarrassment. "So--well, thank you for saving me from those men," he said.

"It's more or less my job," she said tartly. "Now before I answer any of your thousand questions, will you tell me why in the name of fuck you came into a dream drunk?"

"I'm--" He didn't remember having any alcohol. But then, he didn't remember a lot of things. "I suppose I am drunk."

An accordion began to play in the corner, and a man with a raspy voice started crooning a sad song, something about a cat crying in the night.

"I'm so glad you think this is funny," the woman snapped.

Only then did Eames realize he was laughing.

"Somnacin is a sedative. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to mix sedatives with alcohol?" She shook her head. "This is not a toy."

"I don't even know what you're talking about," he begged. "I have no idea how I got here. I'm just...I suppose I'm just enjoying it."

That was true. Something inside him said that he ought to be more curious, more afraid, but it was overridden by the desire not to go back to wherever it was he'd come from. He felt safe here.

"You feel safe here," she said bluntly.

"Wha--you can read my mind?" A spoon he hadn't realized he was holding clattered into a bowl of borscht he hadn't realized was sitting in front of him.

"No," she said. "I'm in your mind. And so are you."

He chuckled. "I should hope I'm in my mind. Otherwise--"

"No. This is--I will give you to the count of ten to stop laughing, Mr. Eames."

"You know my name?" And there was the curiosity.

"It is literally written all over your face," she said. "Or, more precisely, your neck."

She pointed, and he looked down at the open collar of his shirt. There was his name, first and last, written--or was it tattooed?--on his collarbone.

He rubbed frantically at it, trying to get it off. But the black ink was just as dark as ever. He looked at her with pleading eyes.

"Too bad, Lady Macbeth." She turned away from him and crossed her legs. "You can't get away from yourself that easily."

Now the thought of the name on his neck was making his flesh crawl. It felt as though tattoo needles were perpetually going into his skin, going over and over the lines and arcs of those letters (Helvetica, no less) and he watched her implacable gaze as he winced and squirmed. Finally he couldn't take it anymore. Without giving a thought to consequence, he reached beneath the skin itself until his fingernails had dug a flap, and he peeled and peeled. There was a sickening ripping sound.

And then he held a piece of skin, tattooed with his own name, in his hands.

"Impressive," the woman deadpanned.

"Never seen anyone tear off his own skin before?" Eames said.

"I've rarely seen anyone do it without leaving a gaping hole in their chest," she answered.

And when he looked down he saw it was true. There was nothing there but unblemished skin that blended seamlessly with the skin around it.

Mal was suddenly quiet.

"What is it?" he asked.

As he waited for her reply, he mysteriously found two rubles in his hand with which to tip the accordionist walking by.

"I should probably not encourage you to pursue any future dreamshare activities," she said, rather ruefully, "but you seem to have certain--traits--that predispose one to success in this field. That might only be the alcohol, though. You would need to try again."

"What traits are those?"

"A body that can change its properties," she said. She drank from a glass of wine that had just materialized. "And no fear of pain."

"What sort of person doesn't feel pain?" he asked incredulously.

But she ignored his question. "Tell me, Mr. Eames, what do you fear?"

He shook his head. "Why should I tell you that?"

Her expression turned stern. "Because you cannot dream without admitting your worst fear. Otherwise it will overcome you completely, in the most insidious and unstoppable of ways."

"And why do you assume that I'd want to do this again?"

She smiled wryly. "I've seen so many bodies in dreamspaces. You are practically melting into the scenery. You look like a person who is happy for the first time."

Eames wondered what about this scenario would be making him unusually happy. He was in the Kukushka Cafe, where he'd played cards and negotiated over the sale of a stolen shipment of counterfeit Ferraris. Business as usual. He was hoping the deal would get him promoted, but of course--speaking of business as usual--it never did. And Eames watched the old mobsters dancing with their mistresses, and the vodka with anise he slammed down his throat had a chaser of bitterness. He was tired of working for other people. No matter what he felt he owed to Georgi, for trusting him with business, for taking in a fatherless 19-year-old army runaway and showing him the world and teaching him how to do something useful, the fact remained, he was sick of it.

And he didn't want his own men either. He didn't want power. He wanted to be left alone.

"He's jealous of you," she said.

"Who?" Eames looked around.

And there, behind him, was Georgi, sitting alone with his hand over the top of a glass like it was a mouth he was trying to shut. He glared at Eames, but he didn't speak. Or shoot.

"He thinks you're smarter than he is. That's why he makes you feel like a fool. That's why he pretends he doesn't trust you."

Eames threw his head back in frustration. "Really wish he'd go away."

"Then make him go away," she said calmly.

He reached into his pocket. "No, not like that. Just imagine he isn't here."

"...Alright then, Peter Pan." he said, confused.

"Imagine a fold in space. Imagine him being sucked into it. Think of a popping sound if you have to." Now she sounded as if she was leading a meditation session. But he couldn't ignore the authoritative drone of her voice, and he obeyed.

He pictured Georgi disappearing, but nothing happened. Over and over again. He was beginning to feel foolish.

"Imagine that space is a shell," said a deep male voice behind him. It startled him, and he turned around to see Arthur emerge from out of nowhere.

The woman smiled. "Imagine it has a deep pocket."

"A pocket that can pull anything in and cover it with the empty sound of the ocean."

"This is bloody weird," Eames muttered.

"Mal," Arthur said, smiling. "You always find new ways to surprise me."

He took a seat at the table and picked up a cigarette, which flared up as soon as he touched it to his lips. Mal glared at him.

"Kill me later. Now you have to tell me how you learned to split yourself in two."

"Split my--" Mal fell silent as soon as she glanced up at Eames. "Did you plan to do that?"

"Do what?"

Eames looked down at his hands. Smooth, long-fingered, with dark red nails. He looked at Mal's hands. Smooth, long-fingered, with dark red nails.

Arthur smiled matter-of-factly at each of them. "Looks like we've found ourselves a forger."

"But can he control it, is the question." She still didn't sound impressed. Eames was beginning to see a pattern.

"Who knows." Arthur scooted his chair over to be closer to Mal, and either Eames's eyes deceived him or she slipped an arm around his waist.

"You two are--"

"Yes, I suppose so," she said, looking rather sheepish.

"Did you program it this way?" Their faces turned grim, and Eames immediately regretted asking. "Sorry, sorry."

"Not everything can be controlled," Mal said darkly.

Arthur leaned over to kiss her cheek. Eames felt something he didn't quite recognize well up inside him, and he chalked it up to the usual feeling of being left out of the loop. It was a dangerous feeling for him. It made him want to say nasty things.

"So what do you two lovebirds do when this thing gets shut off then?" he asked, taking another swig of his vodka. "Curl up and watch telly and plan your babymaking?"

Arthur's expression went from dark to downright murderous.

"It's time for you to go, Mr. Eames," he said.

That was the last thing Eames heard, aside from the bang.

Part 3

FIC: A Joyous Shot at How Things Ought To Be, Part 1.

2012-05-31T08:57:29Z

Title: A Joyous Shot at How Things Ought To Be
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Summary: Eames is a con artist who poses as Arthur's live-in domestic servant and submissive. Things get complicated.
Warnings: This part doesn't have all that many warm and fuzzy feelings in it, heads up.
Notes: Betaed by anatsuno, night_reveals, and the ragnarok.

Eames was used to near-misses on cracked and broken roads. Used to being a passenger in places where red lights were more suggestions than commands, and used to--even fond of--the incidental music of gunfire and the pings of bullets off the roof and trunk.

But as the taxi hydroplaned and skidded around this hairpin curve, all Eames could think was, I really, really don’t want to die here.

He realized he was gripping the door handle. He shook his fingers out, a bit embarrassed—though who was going to see? The inside of the car was lit only incidentally by the wash of high beams from the occasional passing fellow-traveler, and he was alone except for the driver, Ronald, who interrupted the silence only to remind Eames that the Bible never says it’s a crime to enjoy having sex with your wife. “I’ll pass that on to her,” Eames said buoyantly.

At long last Ronald turned into a driveway. “Life is short,” Ronald confided as Eames slipped him a hundred dollar bill, then, without thinking about percentages at all, tossed in sixty for the tip. “I think you should go home to Harriet and the children as soon as possible. Your career is not nearly as important as seeing your little girl’s first dance recital, you know?”

Eames smiled. “Well, we did just get a Webcam.”

Eames politely refused Ronald’s offer to help with the baggage, and he made his way up the rain-slick pavement. The night vibrated with a soft bass clef of frogs groaning and rain plopping on the driveway, and the house was cupped by forest so thick it was nearly impossible to see any sign of life through branches locked together tight as the teeth of zippers. He rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. Is there a single working doorbell in the entire world? Then he raised his fist to knock. He pounded on the door, again, again.

The door swung open just as he was about to fumble for his cell phone.

“Hey there?” Eames asked the young man who answered.

“You’re Eames. Come in.”

“I didn’t know Arthur had a son,” Eames said casually as he followed the young man, who had not offered to help him, into the kitchen. “Or are you—something else? He didn’t tell me he was gonna have two of us.”

The bloke sat down at the table, glancing at his knees. He had dark deep-set eyes, and a thin, straight, emotionless mouth; all of his features were as minimal and precise as marks on a beaker.

“I’m afraid I’ve led you astray.” He fixed Eames with a defiant gaze. “The thing is”—he slotted his long fingers together and rubbed his hands back and forth—“actually, I’m Arthur.”

Eames let out an incredulous single-note laugh. “You’re taking the piss. Really?”

Arthur, who looked like he couldn’t be more than twenty-two, looked at Eames from under his thick, well-shaped eyebrows. “It seemed like you’d be a good fit for what I needed, but your profile said that you didn’t want to work for someone under fifty. So I used a picture of my father on the site.”

“You lied to me?”

“That is what it generally means to lead someone astray, yes,” Arthur said crisply. “I fully understand if you don’t want to work for me anymore. But I wanted to give you a chance to meet me in person before you made your decision.”

Eames tried to keep his eyes wide and his mouth like a hooked fish. His genuine shock at this development could easily cause him to drop his defenses, and that wouldn’t do; he’d reeled Arthur in by acting like a naïve lollipop of a man-boy in the first place, all shy questions and monosyllables and gum-smacking enthusiasm.

“Well, um.” He peered into the dim living room. Arthur may have pretended he wasn’t a slender, clean-shaven twenty-something, but it didn’t looked like he had lied about being well off. On the wall hung a cabinet full of long daggers with wavy blades that Eames recognized as Indonesian kris. There was a Turkmen carpet on the floor, a dark lacquered screen barricading one corner of the room, and other cabinets both free-standing and wall-mounted (was that really a Limbert sideboard? Oh, hell) whose contents were too small for him to observe without making it fairly obvious that he was casing the joint.

Which, in fact, he was. And Arthur didn’t need to know that.

He could always tell Arthur no dice, call a taxi and go back...somewhere. But the fact was that he had yet to prove his usefulness to some very demanding people. He could start all over from nothing, or he could make do where he already had an in. And who was Eames, after all, to call someone onto the carpet for lying? No one likes a hypocrite.

He looked Arthur straight in the eye. He’d always been good at programming his face like an instant coffee machine--more of this, less of that. The look he dispensed now was curious, docile, slightly dazed, with a pinch of harmless mischief.

“Sure,” Eames said, formulating a half smile. “No problem. I’ll stick around.”

Arthur just nodded, a bit wearily, as though his head weighed a lot.

“I’ll show you around then.”

Eames followed Arthur to the foot of the staircase.

If the little creep doesn't off me first, he thought, I'm safe as houses. I'll crack his accounts if I can manage it, and call Georgi to arrange for a pickup for the loot, and from the looks of it I'll be able to pay Magnusson back and then some.

“Wait.” Arthur turned around abruptly. "I can't let you go any further without making sure you're not bringing anything into this house that violates our contract," he said. "I'm going to check your possessions first."

Eames sucked in a deep breath and held it. It was alright if he looked a little scared, but he couldn't be shitting his pants over a routine frisking. He snapped his gum.

Arthur strode over to him and held his open palm right beneath Eames’s chin. “Spit it out.”

Eames hesitated, gave the gum a single defiant chomp before letting it dangle off his tongue and onto the midpoint of Arthur’s head line. Arthur reached for a napkin, crumpled the gum into it, and threw it away.

"Hey, what--sorry," Eames mumbled and looked at his dirty trainers against the polished wood floor. Real wood. None of that stick-on lino junk.

Arthur disregarded him and lifted Eames’s suitcase, less maroon than silver from being swaddled in duct tape.

He unzipped it. It was stuffed to the gills, and its pressured contents cascaded out onto the table. Tank tops, jeans, boxer shorts (baggy), mateless socks. A silvery strip of condoms, which Arthur just lifted, giving Eames a derisive look.

A couple of packs of chewing gum, which promptly joined their masticated comrade in the trash can. Some Boots toothpaste.

"You're squeezing from the top. Squeeze from the bottom. Otherwise you won't get it all out." Eames wanted to roll his eyes, but he just nodded.

Arthur patted the bottom of the suitcase, felt the lid as assiduously as a phrenologist checking for skull-lumps. He felt down to the toes of all of Eames's socks. He unrolled each bleach-streaked tank top. He reached into the pocket of each pair of denim shorts, faded and cut off at the knee. He shook out the sole pair of khaki pants Eames had brought with him and scowled. Eames wasn't sure if it was a "how am I going to see your arse in these" scowl or a "did these cost any more than a loaf of white bread" scowl, but he had a feeling the khakis would share the fate of the gum and of Eames's pride.

After Arthur gently shoved all of Eames's particulars back into the suitcase, Eames let
out the breath he'd been bottling. Arthur remained still for a moment, his hands held symmetrically at his sides, resting on the hips of his fitted black trousers.

He tilted his head and regarded Eames.

"Put your hands on the table," Arthur finally said. It was little louder than a murmur, but it carried. Eames blinked.

"You heard me." There was an aftertaste of hostility in Arthur's tone. And Eames began to panic, remembering what was taped under his left arse cheek.

He grinned his best scintillatingly brainless get-out-of-an-ASBO grin and bounced his weight from foot to foot. "C'mon. You trust me, right?"

"The contract said," Arthur intoned as if talking to a child, "that you wouldn't be able to bring any of the items I prohibited into my house. How did you think I was going to find those? Intuition?"

"Yeah, but the contract also said you were 56, mate!"

No it didn't.

"No it didn't," Arthur agreed with the voice in Eames's head.

Eames sighed and placed his palms flat on the kitchen table. As Arthur circled around to stand behind him, Eames amused himself imagining him pulling on a pair of black leather gloves, asking Eames to touch his toes, holding a ruler up to his spine, calling in his imaginary colleagues to come and look at the depravity and weakness of will that manifested in the shape of his buttocks.

For a good minute Arthur didn't touch. Didn't move. Just stood and scanned him up and down. Eames would’ve sworn he could feel it, could feel the radiation of Arthur's gaze heating and disrupting his molecules.

Eames hung his head down between his arms and clenched his buttocks involuntarily. Arthur touched a hand to Eames's shoulder blade first and squeezed, then repeated with the other side. He ran his hands down Eames's arms and over his chest, and Eames felt a shiver drench his nerves like a freezing shower turned suddenly on full blast.

It's just like a massage, Eames told himself.

The kind of massage you get before entering a maximum-security prison, he amended after Arthur reached down between his legs to cup his genitals with a pressure just this side of alligator. After he'd fondled Eames's cock and balls to his satisfaction, Eames's buttocks got their turn; Arthur gripped a handful of each and dug his fingertips in so hard Eames could feel the sting of his short nails even through denim and a pair of boxers. (Unless Arthur suspected Eames of hiding crack rocks in a pair of fake arse cheeks, that stage of the examination wasn't entirely necessary, Eames was sure.)

Then Arthur's accomplice in the ritual inspection arrived.

"What the--" Eames muttered, feeling a warm, organic pressure against the back of his calf. He looked down between his legs and saw the smoking-pipe curve of a sleek black tail. Jesus, a fucking cat?

"Keep your eyes on the table," Arthur warned. "Never mind Doc Holliday."

Arthur broke from his fake buttock hunt long enough to grab the animal gently by the flanks and dispatch it to a place behind the kitchen island. Eames heard its plaintive mew. Then Arthur crouched just enough to rest a hand on Eames's inner thigh.

"Spread your legs," he said, emphasizing the direction with the push of his palm.

Eames obeyed with a sigh.

Arthur's mouth was up at his ear before his sigh was fully out. "I don't like your attitude, boy," he said, and another snarl of nervous energy licked up Eames's spine.

"Sorry," Eames mumbled.

These lapses of etiquette were calculated. Even before Eames had set foot in the house, during their email exchanges and phone conversations, Eames had found out that Arthur liked to punish. When Eames cursed, Arthur would threaten to wash his mouth out with soap and water. He'd describe it in detail, too, no doubt with one hand fondling the balls he was fond of describing to Eames as big and hairy. I'll push you down on your knees, he'd said. Pull your hair, force your head back, and put the bar of soap in your mouth. Make you taste it. Make you keep it in your mouth 'till you drool, boy. And you look up at me with those big blue eyes, and you're so sorry, and you just want me to tell you I forgive you.

Mmm, yes, Daddy, Eames had said so very earnestly, one hand scribbling out the clues he'd pieced together as to how much Daddy might be good for in offshore bank accounts.

Oh, but Daddy wouldn't be good for anything if Daddy found Eames's special toy. Provided he knew what it was. There was the possibility that he wouldn't.

Arthur patted down Eames's inseam.

"Shoes off," Arthur ordered briskly. He untied the laces of Eames's trainers and allowed Eames to toe them off. “Socks too,” but Arthur pulled those off himself. He was apparently satisfied by shaking out Eames’s shoes and socks, and he placed the shoes under the table neatly with a sock in each. 

And then came the part Eames was dreading.

Arthur ran his hands up the backs of Eames’s calves. It was a light, ticklish touch, and it made Eames’s legs threaten to buckle once Arthur touched the unbearably sensitive spot behind his knees. Eames closed his eyes, though, and pushed down into the table harder, willing himself not to betray the slightest sign of weakness.

It was inevitable that Arthur’s fingers would creep up to the pouch hidden under Eames’s left arse cheek. But when they did, Arthur didn’t say anything. He just patted Eames’s hips down, then withdrew his hands from Eames’s body. Eames waited for him to say something. Anything. Surely he had felt it. But Arthur just stepped back.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” he said simply.

Eames tried to nod away the lump in his throat.

Really, he thought. Some Walter Mitty type gives me the Homeland Security treatment and I’m quaking in my boots. Half an hour in a suburban house and I’m domesticated already?

He thought of doing some sleight of hand now, of hiding the contraption. But Arthur already knew something was out of the ordinary, that the object hiding in the balmy shade of Eames's arse cheek wasn't money or medication or anything like that. The crucial thing was that Arthur didn't know Eames's intentions. And judging by Arthur's home alarm system, his (supposed) military history, and his fascination with weapons, Eames figured that Arthur would probably respect a man-boy who knew how to protect himself. So he decided to go for honesty.  

"You should probably know about this," he said, worming a hand down the back of his pants to angle for the gadget. "It's a keychain gun. Comes from Bolivia or somesuch. My uncle gave it to me when I got a job in the city, said I should have something to protect myself. So, you know...took it with me just in case."

He quirked a winsome smile at Arthur. Arthur was cranking the handle on a coffee grinder, looking down at the counter.

"You'll give it to me, of course."   Eames nodded.

"Of course. Only fair."  

"Put it on the table."  

Eames slid the gun into the center of the table. He’d picked it up on the street in Sofia and gotten it for 25 USD, and it looked like a harmless enough toy, but if you twisted a ring at one end and pressed a button on top of the barrels it would fire off a .32 caliber bullet that could kill a person at close enough range.

“There.” Eames raised his hands over his head. “No more secrets, eh?”

“Glad to hear it.” Eames watched Arthur pour rounded spoonfuls of coffee into a cafetiere. “Now, don’t think I’m gonna be making coffee for you all the time. I’m tired tonight and didn’t feel like taking my chances on sub-par coffee. But tomorrow I’ll explain how I want my coffee made, and you’re going to be making it.”

“Yes,” said Eames brightly. “Yes, of course.”

Arthur swept Doc Holliday aside with a gentle foot motion and raised an eyebrow. “Yes what?”

Eames smiled in a way that reminded him, and probably anyone else who’d ever watched basic cable late at night, of the devil-child from The Omen. “Yes, Daddy.”

*

The grandfather clock in his new bedroom--Kieninger, walnut case with walnut burl and maple inlays, worth roughly 3000 USD--showed 11:16. Arthur had dropped him and his suitcase off up here with a total of eleven words (Eames had counted). Nothing more than “Your instructions are on the bed. Read everything before tomorrow morning.” And he’d shut the door behind him without so much as a goodnight. Either he really is a rude tosser, or he’s laying the iron fist thing on a bit thick.

It was like coming to a hotel, he thought, setting his suitcase down on the floor. Except that instead of a list of spa services and overpriced room service items, the maroon binder on his bed contained his orders. The layout of the house, instructions for the washing machine and the oven and various other appliances, his schedule of daily duties. Eames wasn’t getting spa and room service. Eames was the spa and the room service.

He looked at the front page, a bit of amusement skiffing through his aggravation. His list of chores for the next day.

MONDAY, JULY 8th

6:00 AM: WAKE UP--ALARM IS SET.
6:10 AM: FETCH PAPER FROM OUTSIDE

Fetch? Am I a bloody dog?

6:12 AM: FEED DOC (DOC IS THE CAT. DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS ON PAGE 26)

Yes, I know what the little hobgoblin is. At least it’s not a dog. Why do I despise every manner of fuzzy footstool, anyway?

6:14 AM: MAKE BREAKFAST (CHECK COUNTER FOR ANY REQUESTS; IF NONE, EGGS AND SAUSAGE WITH WHEAT TOAST ARE ALWAYS GOOD. COFFEE ALSO A NECESSITY. MORE DETAILS ON P. 27)

Eggs and sausage with wheat toast are always good, he mumbled to himself in a n obnoxiously high pitched-mocking tone.

6:30 AM: BRING A. BREAKFAST, COFFEE AND PAPER IN BED

Hope I won’t get my ears boxed for neglecting to include a single daisy in a bud vase.

7:00 AM: VACUUM AND DUST A.’S BEDROOM
8:00 AM: DO DISHES AND CLEAN KITCHEN
8:30 AM TOUR OF THE HOUSE
9:00 AM: SHOPPING
12:00 PM: VACUUM AND DUST LIVING ROOM
1:00 PM: MAKE LUNCH--ASK A. WHAT HE WANTS

Can’t wait to introduce him to my specialty, Mouse with Canned Halved Pear Body, Licorice Whip Tail, and Peppercorns for Eyes.

2:00 PM: DO DISHES
3:00 PM: MASSAGE (this was crossed out in blue ink)

From 3-7, the list included such brilliantly fun activities as “prepare the bathroom for painting”, “feed Doc” and “make dinner.”

7:30 PM: TV W/A.

Oh. How very sweet.

-AFTER 10 PM YOUR TIME IS YOURS.
-YOU WILL HAVE VARYING AMOUNTS OF FREE TIME. BUT YOU ARE ALWAYS EXPECTED TO BE ON CALL AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE IF A. NEEDS YOU.
-ANY AND ALL OF THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT A’S DISCRETION.

Eames flipped through the rest of the schedule for the week. He was surprised to notice the lack of scheduled physical contact; they’d agreed beforehand that blowjobs and massages were part of the package, but “massage” was crossed off of every schedule on where it featured, and nary a mention of a blowjob anywhere. Maybe Arthur just expected one whenever he wanted it, would just order Eames to get down on his rugburned knees, stick his cock down Eames’s throat and cork him like a wine bottle.

He stripped out of his jeans and undershirt and draped them sloppily over the back of a chair before turning the sheets down and crawling into bed. The mattress was nice, he had to admit; neither too soft nor too firm, like sleeping on a ripe peach. One of those Swedish foam things, no doubt. He clicked the lamp off and lay on his back. Then he heard a faint noise that seemed to be coming from his bedroom door. His first thought was, what can I use as a screwdriver to crack open the bottom of the suitcase and get at my best defense. But it was too feeble to be human. A tap, once every three or four seconds. It got more insistent. And then a thin wedge of light spread over the ceiling. What in God’s name.

Oh. The furry hobgoblin.

“Get out of my room right this moment, you little--” he said crossly.

The cat did not respect his authority. Eames watched a thin black shape leap onto the bed and wrap itself around the lump that was Eames’s feet under the blanket. “Oh, come on, get off,” he hissed, but he knew enough about cats to know that they’re like finger traps, the harder you pull away, the more they jam their claws into your sorry flesh. The cat hugged Eames’s feet, then slid away, arching into an elegant hinge before pouncing again. Eames sat up and pulled his feet toward him, and bodily encouraged the animal to return to the primordial soup/suburban hallway from whence it came. It worked for a moment. He got up and closed the door, and realized that there was no click.

The door had no latch.

He began to hear the tapping as soon as he stretched out again. It was going to be a long night.

*

Approximately ten minutes of sleep in all.

The phrase cycled through his mind like a perverse meditation. As he passed Doc Holliday on the stairs, looking sprightly as ever, he thought, I hate you more than I hate the National Rail and Lipton tea combined.

He wasn’t a big fan of the man he unexpectedly found in the kitchen, either. Arthur was sitting at the table, already dressed for the day. His hair was slicked back, still damp from a shower, and he wore a white cotton shirt, fitted brown trousers, and tan loafers. A fresh, leafy scent wafted off of Arthur’s skin, and Eames cursed the ability of smells to pierce the brain like an ice pick. But no matter. He’d known a lot of very bad men who smelled very good.

Not that Arthur was Very Bad, but...well, Eames wasn’t sure.

“Good morning, Daddy,” Eames said, hoping his words rang as false as they felt.

“I’m going to show you how to make the coffee.” Arthur rose from his seat.

Arthur showed him the coffee grinder (manual) and the canister where he stored his beans. He wanted his coffee ground fresh every morning, he said, finely ground for maximum strength, and he demonstrated how long and how vigorously to turn the handle. “It’s all written down, but I wanted you to see,” he said.

While Arthur was as focused on his coffee-alchemy as a kid with a new chemistry set, Eames took the time to size up the situation. He didn’t know whether to find Arthur intriguing, or irritating as a too-tight pair of briefs. With this none-too-shabby piece of real estate, with his antique furniture and walls of collected artifacts and ornate lamps (at least he hadn’t said Everything here’s a something--but give him time, perhaps--) and his love of bossing hapless young rentboys around, he reminded Eames of a little kid at his father’s desk, legs too short to reach the floor, slamming a big inkless stamp down on stacks of paper he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

But no, perhaps that wasn’t exactly fair. There was something about Arthur that suggested he’d seen things, experienced things; that he was older than he looked, older perhaps than he actually was. Not that that made him wise--age rarely did that, Eames lamented--but he was clearly someone who’d been working on curing loneliness for a long time, no doubt using all sorts of quack methods, and now it drew Eames’s eye to it like the warped line of an ill-set bone.

"C'mere and pour the coffee," Arthur said. Eames did as he was told.   Arthur had lights in all of his cabinets, and the kitchen had a warm, search-lighty glow despite the dim setting of the main overhead fixture. "The mugs are up here."

Eames took out two black stoneware mugs (all the ceramicware was black) and poured coffee into them. The pungent steam hit his nostrils, and he breathed deeply, steadying himself. A little grogginess could be helpful for the ruse he was trying to pull. But generally it took a lot of brainpower to act so dumb.   He carried the mugs over to the table and set them down. They sloshed a little, leaving watery brown rings on the pine, and Eames couldn't wait to turn around and see Arthur's expression when that happened.  

"Careful," Arthur practically barked. "If you warp that wood, you're buying me a new table."

  "Sorry, sir," Eames mumbled.  

Arthur was hovering at his shoulder now. "You're just assuming that I take my coffee black?"

  "What? Oh." That wasn't part of the act. Eames really had forgotten that there was such a thing as cream and sugar.  

"This is how the coffee should look." Arthur walked over to the kitchen island, pulled something out of a drawer, and held it in front of Eames's face before slapping it down on the table before him.

He'd taken a bloody picture of the proper color of his coffee.

"What do I do if I put too much milk in and there's not enough room to add more coffee?"  Arthur scowled and huffed his words into Eames's ear. "Then I guess you're just going to have to drink it yourself so that it doesn't go to waste, hmmm?"  

"Yes, sir."  

"Try it now. The milk is in the refrigerator."  

It was, as expected, a nice refrigerator, stainless-steel, quiet and big enough to comfortably nap in. There was nothing stuck to the front, no niece-and-nephew drawings of crookedly smiling suns, no business cards, no free calendars from various public service departments featuring pictures of horses and firefighters’ helmets full of kittens. Eames felt slightly tempted to bow down before it and ask its permission before opening. But he could feel Arthur’s gaze on his back. No time to joke, not even with himself.

The fridge had a sort of a Wizard of Oz effect, though. While imposing from the outside, on the inside it was very little to write home about. A couple of bags of some long leafy green vegetable. A few pouches of cold cuts. A loaf of bread. A disproportionate number of lemons. And yes, a thick glass bottle of milk. He grabbed it by the neck and brought it over to the table.

“You’re just going to pour it in there like that?” Arthur was not impressed.

“More used to those little plastic cups with the hazelnut and whatnot. Er, Daddy.”

Eames’s first few tries were unsuccessful and resulted in him pouring three cups of second-rate coffee down his gullet. It woke him up. It also woke up his bladder in a cranky and unwelcome sort of way.

“I really have to use the bathroom,” he whispered, watching the milk marble the dark surface of the coffee and really wishing Arthur had granted him the use of a pipette instead.

“You’ll just have to hold it until you’re done,” Arthur said calmly.

The pressure was getting more and more insistent. The sound and sight of liquid streaming from the tiny pitcher wasn’t helping either. I’m going to wet myself, he thought. And then what’s he going to make me do? Please, please let this cup be to his satisfaction. Eames examined the photo; unless his vision deceived him, steel wool-scoured by exhaustion as it was (which was entirely possible) the coffee was the same fallow-brown as the cup in the picture. The exact same.

Arthur looked back and forth between the real cup and the image for an agonizingly long time.

“Not quite,” he said at long last, the bastard. “Still too light.”

Eames didn’t mouth off, didn’t question, but he turned to look at Arthur incredulously.

“You agreed you’d do what I asked,” Arthur said. “It’s part of the contract.”

He’s testing me. Georgi is going to hear it about this one, that’s for sure. Tomas never has to do shit like this.

Eames considered giving up, considered letting piss darken the crotch of his jeans and just daring Arthur to complain about the damage to his hardwood seats. It was kind of funny, he thought; for someone depending so largely on people’s obsessions with objects to make a living, Eames certainly had grown to resent such fixations. As if certain kinds of wood had more innate dignity, had feelings. As if wood didn’t get pissed on all the time in nature anyway.

But instead of letting his bladder do the talking, he fixed Arthur with an unblinking gaze and lifted the mug to his lips.

Then there was no more coffee in the cafetiere, so Eames had to make a new pot. Now he had even more chances to fail--he could misgrind the beans, mispour the water, to say nothing of his hopeless track record with the milk. His bladder was beginning to press against his waistband. If he stood up too straight he felt like he would lose control.

Miraculously, when Eames set the mug (rewashed and everything) down in front of Arthur, Arthur took one look at it, then, without a word, took a sip. Then another sip. Then, before Eames knew it, the mug had been drained.

“This is acceptable,” was all Arthur said after only coffee grounds remained.

“I’m done now,” Eames asked. He didn’t want to sound like he was begging, except that he sort of was. “Can I go to the bathroom now?”

Arthur tapped the tip of his pen against an empty box in his crossword. “Make breakfast first.”

Eames gritted his teeth together. "Sausage and eggs? That right? I did my reading, Daddy sir."

"Actually," Arthur didn't look up from whatever he was scribbling on the page, "I think I'd rather have waffles. There's a waffle iron in the third cabinet, lower level, to the left of the sink. You have to grease it up first with the margarine and let it heat until the red light comes on. The mix is in the pantry."

Eames had no idea how he managed to stay in control of his bladder for as long as it took to mix the batter, pour it into the waffle iron, and allow the waffles to turn golden brown. He was certain that if Arthur so much as dared to pull out a picture of his perfect waffle, the rest of the batter was going down the collar of that pretty starched shirt.

But when Eames set the waffles in front of Arthur, having heeded well the reminder that there also needed to be butter, syrup, and utensils, Arthur just picked up his fork and knife and dug in.

"Aren't you going to make yourself one?" Arthur asked, mouth half full of waffle.

"No. I'm going to the loo," Eames declared and turned on his heel. "You said make breakfast first. You didn't say I had to make it for both of us."

"You're right. I didn't." Arthur laid down his fork. "But we also agreed, didn't we, that you were to obey me. If I say you have to hold it in, then you have to hold it in."

Eames clenched his abdominal muscles tighter and willed himself to ignore the pressure that had gone from nagging to excruciating. "Yes, sir," he bit off, trying to stand as straight as possible. "If you tell me I can't take a piss for another ten hours, then I will hold it in. If you tell me I can never go to the bathroom ever again, then I won't and I will just let my bladder explode into tiny bits. I am here to obey you, sir." Saying all those words winded him.

"You mean that?"

"Yes," Eames huffed.

Arthur took another bite of waffle and ruminated. "Well, I guess you deserve to go take a leak, then."

Eames nodded in approximation of a bow and walked off as slowly as he could manage so as to maintain the last tattered post-party streamers of his dignity.

"Bathroom's on the left," Arthur said.

Doc followed on Eames’s heels. He didn't even care about closing the door. The cat sat at his feet and watched him piss with her sleek black head cocked to one side as if she were listening to him tell the most fascinating story.

*

They’d come to this upscale burger joint on Madison Avenue after a day of Arthur playing paper doll with Eames, sitting on the plush Bloomingdale’s couches as Eames tried on suits and hoodies and jeans and trousers and shoes. Arthur was a gentle despot, giving Eames final power of veto if he absolutely hated anything—you won’t look your best if you aren’t comfortable, Arthur had said. But he also hadn’t been reluctant about grabbing items out of Eames’s hands and hanging them back up with a you’ve gotta be kidding look. The thing was that Eames hadn’t really wanted any of those things. The character Eames—Year Eleven dropout, sometime porn actor, loutish but bubble-hearted—was the one who wanted them. Eames didn’t remember what it was like to want clothes for a reason that didn’t have to do with sex, money, power, or disguise. But wasn’t that true of most people?

“So, uh, what do you do for a living?” he asked Arthur. Good a time as any to ask, he thought, now that they were on relatively neutral ground.

“Well, I—“ Arthur began. Then their waitress, a soft-spoken, freckle-faced woman named Cassandra, arrived and apologized for her delay in taking their order. Arthur ordered a lamb burger, light on the tzatziki sauce, with a Greek salad instead of fries on the side. Eames just said, "I'll have exactly what he's having."

"So, do you want to watch the next part of ‘I, Claudius’ tonight?" Arthur asked as soon as Cassandra left. "I mean, we don't have to if you don't want to."

Still reluctant to discuss his job, Eames noted to himself. Wonder why.

"No, no, that's fine," said Eames. He swirled the straw in his Coke. "I always liked all that Greek stuff. It was one of the only things I liked learning about in school, the Gods and all that. Like Zeus, god of thunder. Fuckin’ brilliant."

Arthur smiled benignly. "And the Romans? Did you like them?"

Eames shrugged. "Could never really be arsed about the Romans. I know togas, Nero fiddling while Rome burned. That's about it. I did watch Caligula with some of my mates when I was thirteen or so. A risky enterprise. My mum didn't like me watching movies with naked birds."

"Naked birds?" Arthur seemed confused.

"Birds meaning ladies." Eames grinned. "Don't know why they're called that. Maybe because some blokes like to watch 'em with binoculars."

Arthur chuckled sincerely. "Sounds like as good an explanation as I could've come up with."

"You got any hobbies?" Eames asked.

Arthur ran a finger through the condensation on his glass of water. "Well, I like bidding for antiques, as you can probably tell by the house. Fishing too, when I get a chance."

"Doesn't that get a bit boring sometimes?" Eames wrinkled his nose. "Just sitting on a dock waiting for fish to show up? You don't start hallucinating your dead relatives or anything?"

"I find it pretty relaxing, actually. And it's all about strategy. You have to show up at the right time, have the line at the right angle, observe the behavior of other animals in the area to see where the fish are most likely to be. I think it's fun.” Arthur’s phone buzzed faintly in his pocket. Hang on, I have to take this call."

Arthur pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Yeah, hi." He paused. "What? Where was she? Oh God." He covered the mouthpiece. "I'll be right back." He practically jumped out of his seat and strode out the door.

Eames could still see him through the big windows in front. He was pacing back and forth, head bowed. He seemed to be doing more listening than talking; when he did talk, it was only a few words at a time. He looked tense, frustrated, worried. The hand that wasn't holding the phone was fisted and pounding against his thigh.

When Arthur came back in, there was no more talk about Romans or fishing. Arthur balled up his straw wrapper and stared at it for long enough to disprove the theory of spontaneous combustion.

"You alright?" Eames finally asked.

"It's nothing," Arthur said darkly. Then the burgers arrived. Arthur barely reacted. Eames's stomach had been making noises like an obstinate car since 11 o'clock in the morning, but he didn't want to look rude.

After what Eames judged to be five minutes, he gingerly took a bite of the burger.

“It's really good," he said, rather apologetically. "You should try it."

"Not really hungry," replied Arthur. "Don't worry about me."

Neither of them mentioned the conversation again.

*

On Day 4 of his stay with the man he'd taken privately to calling "My Gay Mr. Rochester", Eames got his first whiff of independence.

Arthur had been at the computer all day. Every time Eames passed by him, Arthur had a cigarette between his fingers, dripping ash into a plastic cup. Eames figured he must've gotten rid of all his ashtrays, but he was a little surprised about the cup, surprised Arthur wasn’t using some $50,000 urinal designed by a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

"You know, it's your responsibility to let me know when we're out of things," Arthur said sourly.

"Sorry, been a bit busy between the lawn mowing and the spackling and the indexing your 6,000-record collection before noon," Eames said. "But I'd be happy to remedy the egg problem as soon as possible. Would you like me to lay you some?"

"What you need to do," said Arthur through gritted teeth, "is get me some fucking eggs."

Eames quickly set about finding a market within walking distance.

*

You have three voicemail messages.

The first two were blank.

The third simply said Call me at the Salonika house.

Eames looked around to make sure he was alone. No one but an elderly man walking a huge shaggy black dog on the opposite pavement. The animal looked to be a beagle crossed with a retriever crossed with something black (Eames had never known much about dogs, preferring to stay as far as possible from anything with genuine instinct).

He seemed safe, and dialed Georgi's Salonika number. But the dog then began straining at its leash, and the man obeyed his two-foot-tall furry master and crossed the street.

Shit.

"Eames. Hello."

"Oh, hello there, Uncle Rob!" Eames shouted at the receiver. "Did you get my package?"

There was obviously some sort of gathering in the background. Throbbing continental techno music and boisterous male voices. Probably Tomas with the cloud of women that followed him everywhere, the sleazebag, and Azzopardi, and Watts and Sokolov. Mid-level entrepreneurs all, engineers of mail-order-bride fraud and pyramid schemes and anything they could get into without stepping on the toes of the Ndranghetas and Mafias and Yakuzas of the world.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Eames,” Georgi’s voice on the other end was muffled by poor reception. “But I have important news for you."

"That's fantastic!" The dog had leapt up on the sidewalk and begun to snuffle at Eames's kneecaps. Eames reached down and gave its head a cursory pat, which it seemed to like enough to coat Eames's hand with nose-slime as a reward.

Georgi sighed. "Magnusson has cast a wide net of inquiry about this Arthur fellow, and as it turns out, he is in possession of things more interesting than offshore bank accounts and antique weapons."

Eames raised an eyebrow as the dog circled him and its keeper just looked on, utterly charmed.

"Oh?"

"In his home, there should be a silver briefcase. I want you to take that briefcase and bring it to us."

"What's in it?"

"Not important."

"But don't you think it's relevant that I know what's in a...fruit basket going to my own grandmother?" Eames wheedled. "You would've told Tomas what was in it, wouldn't you?"

"Eames, Eames, I don't understand why it always has to be a competition."

Eames snorted.

"But it is a competition. You know that better than anyone. Everything's a limited resource, is it not? Even something vague like loyalty. To say nothing of...caramel popcorn and apples, which are most certainly finite goods. You wouldn't have gone into the business you're in if you didn't believe in zero-sum games."

Finally the dog spotted a squirrel and lost interest in Eames’s trousers. Eames gave the man a wave as the pair jogged off, then turned his full attention to the phone.

"I have a card game in ten minutes," Georgi said dismissively. "I don't have time for this sort of thing. You go and do what you do best and bring us that briefcase, all right?"

“Oh, I’ll just bet you knew about this from the beginning didn’t you? Probably knew he--” Eames knew he couldn’t say anymore at that moment. But he withheld his assent for as long as he could stand, then said "Yes. Yes, Of course."

*

Two weeks in this place, Eames thought, winding the vacuum cord around the handle and stowing it in the closet by the top of the stairs. He’d begun to develop an internal clock synced to Arthur-time. It was now telling him it was time to make dinner.

As usual, Arthur was still poring over papers when it was time for Eames to start preparing dinner. Arthur sat at his desk in the living room, the TV’s volume at a mumble, and he paid no attention as Eames walked down the stairs and right past him in the tight jeans and made-to-be-threadbare T-shirt Arthur had spent all that time picking out for him at Bloomingdale’s. And as much as Eames was annoyed by Arthur, as much as he resented Georgi for sending him out here and playing a trick on him, he really didn’t like being ignored when he was supposed to be captivating someone.

It was a matter of professional pride.

 He plopped a can of wet food, the kind with visible fish eyeballs in it, into Doc Holliday’s dishwasher-warmed dish, then pulled out one of the cookbooks. When he’d asked Arthur what he wanted for dinner, Arthur had just wiped a lackadaisical hand across his eyes, shrugged, and said, Surprise me. In the past week there had been no diagrams, no whip-cracking, no Arthur breathing down his neck. Arthur checked in on him briefly when he was vacuuming, would stand at the window and glower down at him when he was mowing the lawn, and disappear when Eames noticed him looking.

Surprise me. Well. If Arthur wanted a surprise, he’d get one.

“Dinner’s ready!” Eames proclaimed. The plate he held in his hand contained a single piece of turkey with dry lentils scattered on top of it. He’d squirted ketchup rings around all the lentils. “Look, I made you the solar system,” he said, setting it down on Arthur’s stack of papers.

Arthur looked up at him like he’d just announced his marriage to an opossum. Then his expression changed into something darker.

“This isn’t necessary. I’m not your jailer. Would you like to leave? Just say the word,” he said, glaring at Eames.

“No. No, I don’t want to leave.” Eames said in as small a voice as he could muster. He slunk up next to Arthur as if about to rub his cheek against Arthur’s shoulder.

“Why, because you get to live in the fucking lap of luxury here? Of course you don’t want to leave.” Arthur muttered. “I’m sick of you acting like you don’t give a shit, Eames,” he said. “I can’t work with that. If you don’t even want to try, why should I bother wasting my energy disciplining you? When you’re not going to take me seriously to begin with?”

Eames hung his head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Are you.” Arthur side-eyed him. “You’re not acting very sorry.”

“Maybe you should make me.”

Arthur gripped Eames by the arm, digging his nails into Eames’s flesh hard, and dragged him into the kitchen.

“Fine. You want me to make you sorry, boy?” Arthur shoved him hard against the kitchen counter. The edge of the counter bit into Eames’s stomach, and Arthur grabbed a fistful of Eames’s hair to push his face down. “Bend over.”

Arthur wrenched Eames’s forearms off of the counter, fitted Eames’s hands around the edge. Eames didn’t dare look anywhere but ahead, intimately learning the grain of the wood as he felt Arthur’s hands work open the fly of his jeans. Arthur tugged Eames’s jeans all the way down his legs, then his briefs. The cold air tickled his bare arse.

With one hand still tight in Eames’s hair, Arthur brought his hand down hard on Eames’s arse. Eames clutched the counter in reflex. He gasped sharply, and the sudden rush of air stung his sensitive front teeth. Arthur struck him again. Harder. Pain at both ends of his body, certainly not bad compared to the kinds of pain he’d experienced (knife through the thigh, fist in the nose, broken glass through the scalp) but it was amplified by concentration; the pain was the only thing in his mind. Not we have to get out of here or where is that list of numbers or I’m going to gut that fucker.

It was just pain: pain as installation art, in a simple pale-wood frame, beneath a museum-like light, the terminus of every path. It sent chills down his spine, his arms.

“Are you sorry? You see what happens when you piss me off?” Arthur growled.

“I’m sorry,” Eames breathed out. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you’re sorry enough.” And Arthur switched to whacking him with something wooden.

A spoon?

A spatula.

Arthur pushed Eames’s head flat against the counter and brought the spatula down hard on each of Eames’s arse cheeks. Eames was beginning to lose count. He just knew how raw his arse felt. Arthur paused to stroke the spatula’s head over the welts, and Eames bit down on his lip and cringed.

But the pain was doing something to Eames. His cock was starting to swell. And the shame of knowing that Arthur could see everything that was happening to Eames’s body--the goosebumps on his pale thighs and his arse quivering with each slap and his cock getting hard--just made Eames more aroused.

Arthur delivered hard whacks all down Eames’s legs, to the backs of his calves, in between his thighs. And then there was nothing but the feel of Arthur’s thumbs hooking into the rawest spots, and the sensation of Arthur leaning over him, warm breath in his ear.

“You see what I can do to you? I’m not scared of throwing my weight around a little,” Arthur purred. “That’s gonna hurt for days, boy. You’ll sit down and you’ll be squirming in your chair because it’s just going to hurt”--Arthur underlined the words with another harsh slap—“so”--slap-- “bad.”

Arthur took a step back. “God, that’s fucking amazing. You should see what your ass looks like right now. A bruised red mess. I should take a picture.” Arthur’s voice was thick. “Don’t turn around.”

Eames could hear Arthur’s breathing getting heavier. Arthur didn’t move from where he was standing, he just kept panting, and it didn’t take long for Eames to figure out what was going on. And Eames knew a few weeks earlier he would have found the whole scenario a turnoff—a kid who gets off on his own unearned power, standing behind him and wanking to the sight of his poor whipped arse. But Eames just couldn’t find the idea of Arthur masturbating, of Arthur masturbating over him, unappealing.

It didn’t take Arthur long to come. Afterward, he didn’t do what Eames expected: didn’t order him to clean himself up and pull his pants back on and make dinner. Instead he spread his fingertips lightly over Eames’s arse.

“You all right?” Arthur asked.

“What do you mean all right?” Eames asked shakily. He hadn’t expected to be this tired. “Everything’s okay but my arse.”

Arthur ran his hand up Eames’s back. “Don’t move, okay? I’ll be right back. You can turn around if you want.”

 Eames turned around while Arthur went to grab some things from the cabinet and the refrigerator. He watched Arthur pour a glass of water and fill a pot and set it to boiling. Arthur handed Eames the glass.

“Drink that. I’m gonna go upstairs and get some ointment. It’ll help the welts heal.”

Eames swished the water around. Arthur’s footsteps, thudding up the stairs, reverberated in the hollow space that had been made of his head. He was suddenly pissed off. What gave Arthur the right to act like the fucking injured party who’d forgiven Eames out of the grace of his heart? Arthur was the one who’d been impossible to please. God, was there no end to the sorts of righteousness money could buy you.

There wasn’t much time for navel-gazing. Arthur bounded down the stairs, ointment in hand.

“Turn around for me?” he asked, his gentle tone a far cry from his earlier guttural snarling.

Eames put his hands back on the counter and winced at the antiseptic sting. Arthur put a hand at the small of Eames’s back to steady him as he worked, liberally coating the lattice of welts with the salve.

“Here, I brought these for you, too.” He handed Eames a pair of boxer shorts, light-blue-and-white striped, taken from Eames’s own room--Eames’s heart pounded every time Arthur went into his room, but it looked like he was safe for now.

The water was beginning to boil. Arthur shook out an entire box of pasta into it.

“Leftovers never hurt anyone, hmm?” Arthur said with a soft smile.

Eames didn’t want pasta. He wanted Arthur and all of the things Arthur made him think about to just fucking disappear.

“Yeah, you can eat ‘em yourself then,” Eames said coldly, and stomped upstairs without looking back.

*

One voicemail message.

BEEP.

Magnusson requests that the delivery be made by August 13th. He and his associates are in urgent need of the contents.

 END OF MESSAGES.

Fuckin’ Magnusson, Eames thought. He slumped down against the side of the bed but winced the moment his arse touched the ground. Oh, right. He eyed the bottom of his suitcase. Tosser just likes to make people jump. How can he need something so badly already if he’s only just learned it existed?

Unless he’d hasn’t just learned it existed.

The truth was that Eames was more afraid of Magnusson than he was of Georgi. If he disappointed Georgi, Georgi would just call him a stupid, pretty boy, ridicule him in front of all the associates, put him on letter-writing duty again. Magnusson was different. No one really knew why Magnusson, a multimillionaire who used his aviation company as a front to smuggle guns to war-torn countries and organized crime rings the world over, was bothering to do business with Georgi. No one in this case meant Eames. Georgi obviously knew. Tomas probably had an inkling, at least.

I’m a grunt, Eames thought, wishing he had a cigarette to accompany his lamentations.

But I’d like to live to grunt another day. So I can’t afford to fuck this up.

He climbed into bed with all his clothes on and fell asleep with the lamplight still blazing in his eyes.

*

The next morning he almost didn’t see Arthur sitting on the couch. Arthur looked like an underexposed photograph--grainy, with darkness spilled all over him like wine. He was smoking a cigarette, and by the smell of the room it was far from his first. Doc was curled up at Arthur’s thigh, and his other hand was scratching beneath her collar.

“Come here for a second,” Arthur said. His words were slurred from more than tiredness. There was an open bottle of wine at his feet. “Sit next to me.”

Eames sat at the opposite end of the couch.

“This isn’t working, Eames.” Arthur took a long drag and exhaled over his shoulder, away from Eames and the cat.

“It’s not?” Dread was pooling in Eames’s belly. How would he answer to Magnusson now?

“You know it isn’t.”

“Why not?” Eames asked. The cat fixed him with iridescent copper eyes.

“Because. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. You’re right. Who the fuck am I to command any sort of respect?” Arthur ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “At some point I obviously lost touch with how things actually work, because I thought maybe my age wouldn’t matter. But I can’t even project the image of control. I’m just some schlub with too much junk and too much time on his hands.”

Eames had to salvage the situation. In light of last night, the mark was likely to have negative associations with spanking; plus the effect would be diluted by repetition. He could make Arthur a nice breakfast, but that would seem too tame.

Usually what your mark wants is a lot simpler than you'd imagine, his first mentor had told Eames, over a game of chess at some fellow grifter's temporary kitchen table. Don't strike at the big wants. Learn what he's wanting at that very moment and how he's wanting it. Those little wants are the atoms of the big want.

(Eames wasn't actually sure how true all that was. But it was a strategy that could lead to concrete action, and in that moment that was good enough for him.)

He could imagine Rudy hovering at his shoulder, gray-bearded and oily-scalped and wearing the pinky ring that signified an old-school operator. Look, you clod, his body is a sodding hieroglyph, telling you what it wants.

Give it to him.

Eames slid off the couch and twisted his body around, gracefully but not too gracefully, so that he was on his knees facing Arthur. He rested his palms on Arthur's knees provisionally and looked up into Arthur's eyes.

"Can I just have one last chance to worship you like you deserve?" Eames pleaded.

"Haven't we been through this before?" Arthur scoffed. He placed his hands in his lap, a barrier.

"I'm a complete beginner at all this," said Eames softly. "Never had a master before. Always been a right brat. I know I need someone strong to break me in, put me in my place. Might take some time, but I'll make it worth your while." His hands glided up Arthur's thighs so that his fingertips were touching Arthur's. "Promise."

Eames fingered Arthur's belt buckle kittenishly. "Can I?"

"You are so fucking manipulative," Arthur whispered. He did nothing to stop Eames from undoing the buckle and sliding it out of Arthur's pants.

"When you were spanking me last night, God, it got me so hot," Eames said. "You were so totally in control of me. I didn't know what to do. Scared me a little, to be honest." And that wasn’t a lie. Even liars, like stopped clocks, had to be right occasionally.

"So what, you're asking me to be more gentle with you?"

"No." Eames pulled Arthur's trousers over his hips. "I want you to show me more of your power.”

Oh, that was corny.

Arthur hesitated, but he leaned over and stubbed out the cigarette. “And how do you want me to do that?”

“I didn’t think it mattered what I wanted. But if you really want to know,” he paused, lifting one of Arthur’s hands from his lap and placing it on top of his own head. “I want you to use me.”

“I use you all the time. C’mon, shoo.” Arthur pushed Doc off the couch.

“No, Daddy. I want you to fuck my face.”

Eames ground his knees into the carpet and shifted forward close enough to rest his cheek against Arthur’s knee. He tried to use his face to urge Arthur’s legs apart, but Arthur clenched his knees tighter together.

“Come on,” Eames begged. “Own me, Daddy. Own me with your cock.”

Arthur exhaled through pursed lips, a breath-only quasi-word meaning fuck it, I surrender. Post-haste, he did the rest of the clothing removal work for Eames, shucking his shoes and pulling off his trousers and briefs but leaving his socks on.

“There. This what you wanted?”

And there, maybe a third of a meter away from his face, was Arthur’s cock. He wasn’t hard right now, but Eames could tell his cock was pretty, pink and cut and thick enough to potentially leave a calling card of pain. Fuck, I’d sit on that, Eames thought with some minor sadness for what would never be.

“It’s beautiful, Daddy,” Eames said with reverence as he wrapped his fingers around it. “Make me taste it?”

With a sigh Arthur stood and lined his hips up with Eames’s mouth. He fed the tip of his cock between Eames’s lips, and Eames’s tongue fluttered teasingly over the head.

“Gotta get you properly hard so you can drill this whore mouth of mine.” Eames licked the underside of the shaft all the way down to the base of Arthur’s scrotum. “I just want to be a good boy for you.”

Eames moaned theatrically as he suckled the whole of Arthur’s sac. But it wasn’t all theatrics. Eames had always likened the smell of a gorgeous cock to leveling up in a video game; it ripped away the tired old scenery, and it made him feel stronger, better, more full of new tricks. (Sometimes it also gave him more opportunities to get rich.) And Arthur’s cock and balls smelled good enough to send Eames into God Mode.

He pumped Arthur’s shaft and let his wet lips play, sans tongue, over the head. He felt Arthur’s cock harden, and when Arthur’s breathing started to get a little too heavy, he went back to teasing his balls with lips and fingers.

“Tell me what you like?” Eames asked. He lapped at the slit where Arthur was starting to dribble precome. His cock was stiff now, jutting out at an obtuse angle.

Arthur didn’t respond in words, but he grabbed both sides of Eames’s head and began to force his lips rapidly up and down Arthur’s swelling shaft. Arthur’s hips followed the same rhythm. He jerked into Eames so hard that Eames would’ve sworn he could feel Arthur’s cock tap the dangly thing at the back of his throat.

It was big. At first he thought he was going to choke when it pushed down the back of his tongue and pressed insistently against his hard palate, but then came the moment he always reveled in, the moment when his throat relaxed even without his express permission just because it had to. Because fuck, there was a cock in it that wasn't going anywhere and the only option was to soften up and take it all like a good little slut.

Eames strained to defy the hands that were in his hair, keeping him in place, and looked up at Arthur. All he could see was the underside of Arthur's chin and the cartilage bulge in his long white throat as he threw his head back and groaned, the groan seeming to give him the momentum to slam into Eames's mouth harder and harder still.

Arthur's balls slapped against Eames's chin and Eames opened his jaw wide enough to lick at the sac again. His jaw was stretched open to the point that the tension was just this side of audible, the pressure just this side of pain, and he was so giddy with the fullness and the taste and Arthur's low curses like a bass line throbbing through him that he dared the universe to lock his jaw in place for good.

The rhythm rocked him into a deep relaxation. It wasn't so much an erasure of what was happening as it was an acceptance of it: he was gagging, he accepted it; his knees were itchy, he accepted it; he was antsy from being in the same position for time indeterminate, and he just screwed himself into that feeling like a washer onto a bolt and let it hold him. His eyes opened just long enough to catch Arthur looking down at him, but not long enough to know what he might be thinking.

Arthur grabbed the back of Eames's head. He was close. Eames's nose was getting squashed into Arthur's pubic bone as he thrusted, and Eames focused on the scent embedded in the sweaty curls that were tickling his nose.

Eames was fully anticipating having to take thick jets of come straight down his throat. But instead Arthur pulled out and shot his load across Eames's face, from one cheek to the other like a big grotesque smile.

After giving a few last little licks to Arthur's softening cock, cleaning the stickiness off of it, Eames looked up at Arthur and smiled.

"Mmm, fuck. Thank you, Daddy."

Arthur's expression didn't change as he looked at the Pollock he'd made of Eames's face; flushed and breathing heavily, he just sat back down on the couch and reached first for his pants, then his pack of Camel Lights. He slapped the bottom of the pack against his palm absently, then lit one.

Eames licked the come licked it off his lips, then ran his fingers across his cheek and licked the viscous stuff off his fingertips. But maybe, he thought, Arthur might prefer something a bit more subservient.

Closing his eyes, he began to rub Arthur's come into his cheeks. He spread it down his neck, rubbed it into the hollow of his collarbone, sometimes stopping to lick drips off his fingers. Arthur just kept watching him.

He was harboring some foolish hopes that Arthur might notice and acknowledge that Eames was half-hard, turned on as he was from being on his knees and taking it. He wasn't sure whether he could rightly call the images in his mind desires, but he knew they weren't going anywhere anytime soon--these thoughts of Arthur wrapping a hand around Eames's cock and pumping, of Arthur licking his cock, of Arthur fingering him until the teasing pressure against his prostate had him crying out to be fucked.

"Sir, may I--" He wasn't stupid enough to get off of his knees without permission. Not after what he'd just worked so hard to win.

"Go." Arthur nodded.

Something inside Eames deflated. Maybe nothing had been won after all.

He stretched out his tense limbs and looked back at Arthur. He was resting his head on the back of the couch and looking up at the smoke cloud he'd just blown out. His mouth was probably terribly dry.

Eames turned around. "Can I bring you anything after I come back, sir?"

Arthur lifted his head just enough to speak without effort. "Water. Oh, and Eames?"

"Yes?"

Arthur finally straightened his head out to look at Eames. The look he gave Eames got translated in Eames's mental dictionary as "sly, amused fondness".

"Well done."

Eames hoped that the permission for "may I go" wasn't granted on the assumption that Eames was going to the bathroom. Because that wasn't where he was going.

He veered right instead of left, and headed down the dank staircase that led to the basement. And the laundry room. There was a pile of warm whites right by the door, undershirts and socks and underwear; he'd sorted it himself. He grabbed a pair of Arthur's briefs and pressed his nose to the crotch area, let the smell of cock and sweat drag through him like a thick, hot, threaded needle. With his other hand he took hold of his cock. Keeping mindful of the ticking of his watch, he pulled himself toward a hard, shaky orgasm.

He came all over the laundry pile.

Part 2

walk of shame

2012-05-31T07:30:10Z

I have a shameful confession to make: I'm a shame-deleter. If I'm really ashamed of something I've written, I will delete it. I'll always try to leave it up *somewhere*, if someone really wants to find it, but won't link to it anywhere. And I realize that's completely unfair to people who may actually like it. And it's not like it will erase it from my memory, or make it so that the people who may have read it and hated it didn't actually read it and hate it. So...I guess part of being an adult is learning to live with my mistakes. Basically I know I need to stop doing it.

This is an aspect to the topic of "what do fanwriters/artists/creators owe their audience" that I hadn't yet considered. And I'm still not entirely sure. Do we owe it to our audience to keep our works available (partly so they don't have to go through the trouble of correcting broken bookmark links?) Obviously people often delete things for reasons other than being ashamed of them, and many times we don't know exactly why someone has removed something. Is it OK to take something down if we offer an explanation? Is It OK to take something down with the intention of editing it and re-posting it later? Lots of people I've talked to have the belief that if you've put something up on the internet that's its final form and they have to learn to live with it. But it can be tempting to tweak--there's always that EDIT and DELETE button.

And if we're just like "oh my god this SUCKS I can't deal with it anymore", is it insulting to assume that our assessment of our work is superior to theirs? If I am ashamed of something I've written, I certainly don't think that the people who like it have terrible taste--I tend to separate the two in my mind in some illogical way. But I'm curious to know what you think about this, so I've made a poll. (If the poll doesn't address something you have to say, please say it in the comments & feel free to discuss any you've had with this subject.)

View Poll: SHAME DELETING

100 Things about Writing, Speculative Fiction, and Fandom: Master Post

2012-05-30T12:31:18Z

1. Exposition and Small Details
2. On Shipping and Surprise
3. Does shipping trivialize "serious" works?
4. Warchild by Karin Lowachee: mostly a Jos/Niko ship manifesto
5. On Deleting Fanworks (The "mini-flounce")
6. The Dreaded Epithet
7. On learning how to troubleshoot
8. On first person POV in fanfic
9. POV and Tense Poll

you change the equation i add up to: on shipping, surprise, and sexy time with socrates

2012-05-30T12:05:56Z

If you haven't read this essay by saucery about why some pairings become more popular than others, do it. It's incredibly thought-provoking and funny.

"Something about it speaks to you, beyond the mere socially acceptable forms of fannish liturgy; something about it is exactly what you need, the call of Self to Other, a binary opposition resolving itself. Something about it is basal and basic, a primordial chemistry, an ancient balancing-act in the process of... well, balancing itself."

It certainly explains why, for example, Sirius/Remus was infinitely more popular than Sirius/James--aside from James being dead at the time of the novels, Sirius and James were also maybe just too similar. (They also both had dark hair. I found a thing on Tumblr that said that dark hair/light hair couples* tended to be most popular, and I might be inclined to agree.) Everyone loves a good binary, or apparent binary, when it comes to relationships.

And I think that things like power dynamics (official or unofficial or some combination thereof) play a role in this too. It's why agekink and student/teacher pairings are so popular. First of all, we've got that Platonic cultural inheritance where student and teacher relationships (in the broadest sense) are often seen to be infused with an erotic power. Writes Kathleen Hull,

Plato’s own thinking—indeed, his whole project in philosophy—had its source in his love of his teacher, Socrates. Plato’s eros was real. Illuminated by the reality of his concrete experience, his love for Socrates was eventually transformed into a love of wisdom. Thus, Jaspers suggests, for Plato, thinking—good, hard, philosophical thinking becomes an upward-tending enthusiasm. In other words, both desire for wisdom and the intellectual means to it emerge through eros."
(Hull 26)

Which dovetails nicely with Saucery's point about the ideal shippy relationships being especially dialectical. We, or the characters we ship, are not only in love with the other person, but with everything around them, everything that makes them great or that they make great by their association with it. And, if something about them finds some harmonic point within us, we want them because of who they can help us to be. And, speaking of dialectical, such relationships can reveal the weakness in "strong" and experienced characters, can show that they still have things to learn and that they need love. THE TEACHER BECOMES THE STUDENT! </cliche>

This reversal, I think, whether it happens in a single plot arc or repeatedly, can be one of the things that most draws people to ships. One of my first big ships was Garak/Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and some of my favorite moments were those when Garak, the older, more experienced spy whom Bashir at first seeks to emulate, needs Bashir's help or forgiveness or validation. And they are constantly learning from each other in their conversations about literature. The combustion of Bashir's humanity and Garak's cold pragmatism make a lot happen in the plot. And the moments where they mirror each other, whether they are together or not, are immensely satisfying--Bashir threatening to shoot Garak in "Our Man Bashir"; Garak's conscience prohibiting him from torturing Odo in "The Die Is Cast". These actions and qualities may not have come about because of their interactions, but it shows us that they are capable of understanding each other. That there is something in each of them that symbiosis with the other can reach and expand upon. And there is something inside them with which they can surprise each other. Characters who seem incapable of surprising each other (in good or at least interesting ways) don't, in my mind, make the best ships--whether that's because they know each other too well, BROTP style, or because they don't have inner depths that speak to interests or qualities shared by their opposite number.

This, I think is one of the reasons I like Arthur/Eames so much. Despite our knowing so little about these characters, they seem like they could surprise each other. Whether or not Eames already knows that Arthur doesn't lack imagination, we see Arthur exhibiting a finely-honed aesthetic sense, coming up with innovative solutions to problems, and having a bit of fun. And we know that Eames impresses Arthur ~~with his lips~~ with his intelligence and competence. If they aren't thoroughly surprised at this point, I get the feeling that they have surprised each other quite a bit before, and that they have the potential to do so in the future. The kind of surprise I'm talking about that makes for a good ship isn't quite the "oh wow, you can do awesome motorcycle tricks! I thought you were brave, but you're REALLY brave!" It's seeing an idealistic young doctor be as cold-blooded as an assassin, or seeing a quiet and unassuming friend fearlessly battle evil, or seeing the kindness and vulnerability in a seemingly heartless person. It's not always a good thing; it's seeing that the person you had to sacrifice for the greater good now has the strength to sacrifice you for some other necessity, while you're the one clinging to him and asking for reassurance that he loves you (HI NIKO).

But the point is, maybe sometimes you don't really fall in love so much as you're shocked into it by seeing in someone else something that you thought was yours alone, or something that you love but don't think the other character is capable of giving. Or maybe even your worst fear that also somehow magnetizes you. And that gives us lots of fodder for interiority of the kind that spawns A Thousand Fics. What is X character THINKING when this happens? It's gotta be a doozy. How fucking AMAZED/SCARED/TURNED THE HELL ON does zie have to be right now? It doesn't necessarily go both ways, in which case ANGST may result. But it's always somehow delicious.

And this is one of my favorite tropes in fic. The fic that first comes to mind is toomuchplor's The Sweetest Downfall, where Eames realizes that Arthur isn't the stone-cold hardass he appears to be (at least not in bed). Then there's immoral_crow's Captains Courageous, where Eames's solicitous, mysterious lover and his aloof coworker appear to be two completely different people--the keyword being appear. Come to think of it, her Correspondence Course also addresses this theme beautifully.

I address it in my own Erasure and Stiff Drink, which are, perhaps not coincidentally, two of my most popular fics. They surprise each other, and they surprise themselves with what they are willing to do for each other.

Here's a good song. Anyone remember this one?

"With you, there's no easy answer, it's true. You change the equation I add up to. And all of the things that I thought I knew, you turn it around."

*Of course, there are also racial and gender issues that play into what ships become popular. The popular ships tend to include white people. This could be partly because the writers of canon tend to write white characters into these sorts of complex relationships--I wish I could find that list of "what white characters get to do in movies/what black characters get to do"--and partly because of what many fans gravitate toward. Garak/Bashir is actually one of the few major ships I can think of that includes a character of color, but then, I'm not familiar with every fandom. I'd love to hear more.

of banana pancakes and salad: character exposition, little human details, and stuff

2012-05-28T11:42:24Z

Tonight, for some reason, something made me think back to my disenchantment with Star Trek: Enterprise. I didn't hate the show--I watched most of the episodes, and there were things I enjoyed. (Most of them were probably Commander Shran, to be honest.) But I was trying to pinpoint what exactly it was about it that made it pale in comparison to the other series.

And a big part of it was the feeling that I never really knew any of the characters. Even on Voyager, about which my feelings are very mixed to say the least, there were characters that felt alive. Which I think was partly the acting and directing and partly the writing, as it usually is. Even when things were cliched and silly, they were memorable. Which makes it more fun. I remember Torres eating banana pancakes, the Doctor trying to create a holographic family (god that episode was sad), Tom Paris's ridiculous shirts, Harry Kim's clarinet. About the characters in Enterprise? I...erm...Malcolm Reed was allergic to pineapple? The ways they reacted in situations told us about them, but it was hard for me at least to relate to them on a really visceral level. Not that this is the only measure of how good a show is, but I've always found it difficult to connect with characters who don't have a plethora of silly little human details. Hobbies, memories, pet peeves, etc. I'm sure they did have some of them, but I just...keep completely drawing a blank.

I realize the absurdity of an Inception fan (and fanfic writer) saying this. As I've pointed out before, it's interesting that in a movie so concerned with creation and aesthetics, we know so little about what the characters actually like in those areas. We know Arthur and Saito both like Francis Bacon and a certain style of interior decor. And we know that Cobb and Mal like, um, skyscrapers. That's it. But it's like the characters are the ad executives or designers who achieve the perfect erasure of their own desires to fulfill someone else's. And from what I've read about those fields, that isn't even actually what happens--often there's room for the artist's own initiative. And presumably in designing the levels Ariadne as the architect had some room to personalize. But we don't know what her personal touches were, because we don't know her outside of those scenes. And we see some details around the characters, but we don't know what their relationship to them is. Does Yusuf actually like cats? Does Arthur actually like salad?

There is a point to all this.

My question is, if there are so few details about these characters, why do so many people (including me) find them so compelling? Does it just have to do with the relationships they're possibly in? That's assuming that we can separate who a person is from who they are in relation to others (we can't) but--did you like the characters on their own before you shipped them, and do you think you'd be so fascinated with Eames if Arthur weren't in the cast (or vice versa?*) Or is the field of dreamshare so otherworldly and interesting in itself that we just can't help but speculate about the kind of person who would go into it? I think part of it is the productive frustration the film sets up. We are literally GOING INTO THESE PEOPLES' MINDS, and yet...we can't actually find out anything about them. They really are so good (for the most part, ahem, Cobb) that they can cloak their desires to the viewer as well as the subject. They're actors to us as well as to Fischer, consummate professionals doing their jobs and not showing their hands. And so we want more. We wonder, what if that defense crumbled, what would we find? And a thousand fanfics were born.

This, then, I think, is what makes Inception so much more interesting than something like Enterprise--the intimation that there is something there. On Enterprise, the lack of memorable detail doesn't seem to have a narrative purpose (character as archetype or the above-mentioned mimesis of effect-on-subject and effect-on-viewer.) It just seems boring.

I promised I wouldn't try to offer the dreaded ADVICE in any of these posts, but I'm thinking about times when it might be a good choice to create a character without offering much in the way of likes and dislikes, fond memories, quirks, etc. (Taking for granted that YMMV as far as what "memorable" means.)

Here are some situations I can think of where not telling much about a character's desires and preferences can work well:

-A character who intentionally appears a bit mythical.
-Similarly, a character who is supposed to be allegorical.
-A character who is intentionally repressing a part of themselves--i.e. someone who doesn't want to like anything because they don't want to be tied to a particular place or become attached to something they could lose (HEY JOS MUSEY HEY)
-A character with a distinctly "different" psychology--someone with some sort of neurological/psychological difference** or who has undergone a personality-affecting change, perhaps, or an alien?
-A character whose job it is to appear opaque or mysterious.
-A character for whom you don't want to engender any sympathy.
(Of course, there's also fun and profit in subverting some of these tropes. Showing an otherwise unsympathetic or mythical character wearing pajamas and relishing a Snickers bar in a way that is neither rarefied nor grotesque can cause a great moment of cognitive dissonance.)
-If it seems awkward to insert them. I acknowledge that film and fiction are quite different as far as POV, and it would have been a little weird for Arthur to say "Man, this salad is AWESOME" or "This sure beats the other 1,453,452 salads I've eaten in my life! I've reviewed every salad I've eaten in my Moleskine notebooks, ever since I left the Marines and embarked on a turbulent affair with the slippery Mr. Eames!" It might have been interesting to hear a discussion between Ariadne and Cobb about the tension between personal aesthetics and the needs of the dream, though.
-to set a mood. This might be another reason for the lack of expository quirks in Inception. It makes the movie seem much more, well, dreamlike. And a bit grave, despite the humor.

Then, of course, the second part of the question is how to make those details memorable and serve a purpose. Again, YMMV. I remember reading some writing advice saying that characters should sometimes perform ambient actions that have nothing to do with the plot--just for the sake of verisimilitude. And I think that perhaps it is not always so much the detail that must be memorable as the character's relationship to it. How does the character express hir appreciation of a song? It's possible, of course, to get too bogged down in using things like favorite songs as substitutes for other aspects of characterization as well. (Not if you do it well, I guess!) But I have no real suggestions other than that. And, erm, banana pancakes rather than regular pancakes?

But I like using those details as jumping off points for plots. How do you turn "Arthur likes Star Trek" into a story or part of a story? Sometimes it's fine just to mention those details in passing, but I think it's also fun to try to weave it organically in so that the detail becomes the plot. Arthur appears as a Klingon in a dream, or runs into Eames in the street while in costume for a convention, or breaks up with Eames because he broke his collectible bat'leth and refused to pay for a new one. Or maybe, based on your reading, that particular character's everyday likes and dislikes just don't intrude that much into their lives, don't move their plots along. And there are other ways we can relate to characters--we too have guiding values and duties and passions and grand ideals.

Though I can't speak for everyone. Maybe, for some people, the greatest good in life is eating cranberry jelly straight out of the can.

*Apologies for assuming that everyone is an A/E shipper. Substitute your preferred names if you will.
**As a person with a neurological difference myself, I am loath to imply that people with neurological differences don't have likes or dislikes or memories! Not at all! But there could hypothetically be some sort of neurological reason for something like this, is all I'm saying. Or a side effect of Somnacin. Or SOMETHING.

I KNOW THIS IS BOUND TO GO DOWN AS THE BIG ONE.

2012-05-27T15:30:18Z

1) I've made the decision to leave graduate school. Just the other night I was talking to a friend and I found myself saying "I never wanted to go." It just came out of my mouth unchecked, but I thought about it and realized that it was true. It's not that I don't enjoy scholarship, but I went into the wrong discipline for me first of all--in college I always enjoyed history, linguistics, and languages much more, but I was already an English major, so I figured I'd rather do that. And then I had just planned to get my MFA, because I wanted to be a creative writer, but my professors convinced me to pursue a PhD in English instead. They were looking out for my best interests, and I don't blame them at all; the decision was mine. So now I'm doing what I wanted to do all along, which is--not go to grad school for English.

So what next?

No idea. I'm going to move back home with my mother for a bit while I look for a job (hopefully not in Maryland, but at this stage I'll take what I can get). I never wanted to do that, but at this point I'm looking it as just doing whatever it takes to get me from here to there. I'm going to try to take classes in advanced Russian and computer coding. I'll do clerical work or retail. I'll volunteer at the hospital again. Ultimately I'd like to find a job in editing or mental health advocacy. And I want to write original fiction. Or, rather, to keep writing it. Whether I get published or not. But I want to finish novels, to send out manuscripts. I've finished one manuscript in my life, so that bodes fairly well, I guess?

For the longest time this was exactly what I wanted to avoid, but I supported myself through much of college with clerical and retail work; I know I'm capable. Also, having ADHD, it's important to find a job with some sort of structure. Set hours within which I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I know myself, and I know that's what works best for me. For many others, academia is a great and liberating environment; for me, it's a time-budgeting nightmare. I'd be willing to work a fairly boring job for awhile as long as I know what my tasks are and when I'm supposed to be doing them.

There are things I'll miss. I probably won't miss any of the people; most of my friends were either MFA students who graduated after 3 years, or they transferred or moved out of town. I'll miss taking long walks at night. I'll miss the restaurant where my best friends and I went for popovers and salad, and the swingset in front of my old apartment, and the view from the 26th floor of the library. I'll miss being able to get on the bus to Providence or Boston on a whim.

I'll miss the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), where they currently have an Invisible Cities exhibit that I will never see.

Oh well.

File all of this under "scale of expectations rapidly recalibrating."

2) I'm also trying to figure out the appeal of Jedward. I can't. I can't stop listening to the song, though, so I guess there's my answer? I have this habit of glutting myself on videos of artists who are terrible and/or make me think "WTF?" Like, I think I once watched five Brokencyde videos in a row. I go way beyond indulging curiosity and straight into masochism.

Have a Jedward. (Damn, Eurovision is awesome). Also, I wish there was someone around that I really wanted to annoy, because I'd play this over and over.

TEAM SPIRIT

2012-05-22T12:53:39Z

I found this on Tumblr this morning and it made me mad. (I should probably get a bumper sticker saying that, since Tumblr is full of maddening things.)

Earlier I had made a Tumblr post complaining about people claiming that shipping is antithetical to people caring about worldbuilding or plot or characterization. And this reminded me how much it bothers me when people say that shipping or loving certain characters trivializes “serious” books or movies or shows. Yes, The Hunger Games is about a totalitarian state that abuses children. Yes, most of its characters probably suffer from PTSD and other trauma-related psychological and physiological injuries. No, sex and romance are not going to solve any or all of their problems, and their relationships are most likely going to be informed by what they’ve been through. But as readers we’re allowed to care about the whole character, and this can include their sexual and romantic lives. And we’re allowed to find the characters attractive too.

One thing I always have to remind myself when I feel guilty about being attracted to a character in a book with heavy subject matter is that it’s quite likely that the author intended for the characters to be appealing in some way. Suzanne Collins chose to make Peeta charming, funny, selfless, kind, intelligent, and physically attractive. It’s hard to expect people not to react positively to a character like that. And even if the author didn’t intend it? That’s still your right as a reader. Just like we’re allowed to be attracted (or not attracted) to whoever we want in real life, we’re allowed to be attracted to, or to ship, whoever we want in fandoms too.

Also, I am reminded of the whole “first world problems” thing, and the rebuttal by Teju Cole and others that people in “third world” countries care about technology and clothes and relationships too. We’re allowed to care about who Katniss ends up with, and to write fic or make art or talk about it. The characters care about these things themselves. They, and we, can even find humor in their lives; to use a movie example, laughing about Gale's manpain doesn't in any way diminish how harrowing it is to watch the District 11 revolt. And calling yourself “Team Peeta” or “Team Gale” or whatever does not in any way imply that you don’t understand or care about the wider implications of the book. “Team Peeta” and “Down With Snow” are not mutually exclusive sentiments, even if Peeta (or some other character) is what draws you to the books and the fandom. This relates to Warchild, my latest fannish obsession, quite well. I can want Jos to end up with Niko, and still acknowledge that their relationship isn't perfect and that there are many other things Jos and Niko both need in addition to romantic love. (Like therapy.) True, some people might have a shallow understanding of the material and only care about the characters because they're cute. But there are lots of people with shallow understandings of material who aren’t shippers or fangirls, either.

I might also argue that many of us like the characters and their relationship precisely because we understand the gravity of their situation. We like seeing characters who are strong and brave. We like seeing love flourish amid adversity. It is arguably problematic to use violence and exploitation instrumentally, just to make the romance more appealing, but I would also say that that's the pitfall of fiction in general. Very often we are using someone else's troubles to gain something for ourselves, even at the same time that we are using them in admirable, witness-bearing ways.

I can understand taking issue with the implication that characters, especially female characters, need relationships with men to be happy, that that is their ultimate goal in the narrative. But I also see nothing wrong with wanting to see a female character pursuing romantic desire. Even Bella Swan. More importantly, it bothers me to see people shaming fans for expressing their desires and opinions.

Teams can also divide fandoms and incite ship wars, which suck. But here's a team I think we can all agree on:

Warchild by Karin Lowachee: FINALLY, A POST.

2012-05-19T01:08:07Z

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have probably heard me babbling about this book, Warchild by Karin Lowachee. I loved many of the characters so much that it's pretty much taken over my life, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys angsty, subtext-filled m/m relationships, sci-fi, and/or coming-of age stories.

The setting: about 100 years in the future, humankind is at war with aliens called the striviirc-na (SPOILERS: it's all our fault), but we've also got a pretty serious problem with human pirates who steal and sell children. The narrator is Joslyn Musey, who at the age of eight watches his parents murdered and his ship destroyed by a sociopathic space pirate who then abducts him and begins training him to be a sex slave. (Although nothing explicit is ever shown, trigger warnings for rape and child abuse definitely apply.)

Jos manages to get away, though, and is rescued by Nikolas S'tlian, the dashing young human general of the alien resistance forces. (Lowachee imagines him as a young Johnny Depp. yjudaes and I imagine him as a combination of Rodrigo Santoro and Jon Kortajarena. I'M NOT SHALLOW AT ALL FOR BELIEVING THIS IS IMPORTANT. GOD NO.) Niko, as Jos comes to call him, is not really in a position to be anyone's fulltime caretaker, but he patiently and unsentimentally teaches Jos his language and their history. Soon, Jos accepts his offer to teach him the ways of a ka'redan (or assassin-priest--lots of swordfighting). Although Jos mistrusts everyone and hates being touched, he not only opens up to Niko, but grows to adore him. Unfortunately, Niko is still first and foremost a war leader, so he has to leave Jos behind for four years with his other teachers.

Over those four years, Jos adapts to striviirc-na culture and bonds with his other teachers and his alien classmates, but in the narrative they still go by in a blur. He never stops writing to to Niko or longing to be with him. When Niko does return, Jos gets over his sense of betrayal again and jumps at Niko's offer to accompany him back to space. But things aren't exactly what they seem. Niko confesses that he has something else in mind for Jos: a deep undercover mission onto an enemy human ship. The mission, however, isn't about sabotage, but about gathering information to help open up negotiations and hopefully begin a peace process. Although Jos has a choice, letting Niko down isn't an option for him. He enlists as a marine aboard the Macedon, and from there things...get pretty interesting. Without giving too much away, I can say that the Macedon and its crew are not what they appear to be at first, and that Jos will meet many more people who challenge his loyalties and shape his sense of self.

As I mentioned before, one of the reasons I love this book is the characters. Jos is captivating both as a narrator and as a main character: perceptive, dryly funny, at times poetic, contemplative but extremely strong-willed. Lowachee renders him believably damaged, but beneath the suspicion and anger his kindness and humor are intact. And you can't help but see enormous potential for him in the future. He's a witty (if reluctant) conversationalist, a talented artist, an efficient fighter with (I would argue) an enjoyable flair for the dramatic, a skilled hacker, and a keen observer of people and political situations. He's basically the love child of T.E. Lawrence and Lisbeth Salander. How could that be anything but fascinating? (In case you can't tell, I love him.)

I also love Niko. When writing this, I kept thinking "uuugh, wow, he probably sounds like a real prick, taking a kid in and then basically sending him off to the slaughter like that. Nice going, Sexy Dumbledore." And yes. Niko is far from perfect. But I empathize with his dilemma, and I have a real soft spot for characters who balance pragmatism with heart. He's a war leader, and he wouldn't be believable if he didn't have a certain hardness to him. And he is always honest with Jos, and he never pities or coddles him. The backstory Lowachee hints at is fascinating. His parents were the first to rebel against the humans, and Niko became known as the "Warboy" because from an early age he fought alongside his parents. It's pretty obvious that his parents wanted him to take up their cause; he mentions that his name means "Victory of the People", which suggests some pretty high expectations. His brother's name, on the other hand, is...Ash. Which I don't think means anything but "Ash", unless it's short for something? Niko and Ash's mother is an interesting figure too; she's kind but seems distant and a bit tactless and not especially nurturing with children, and I imagine her and Niko's (dead) father as rather single-minded, loving their children but more intent on training them as military prodigies and devoted rebels than anything else. Lowachee is planning to write novels with her, Ash, and Niko as the narrators at some point, and I fervently hope it happens. So many questions. Was their integration into striviirc-na society as seamless as it appears? Are there any strivs who resent the humans? If Ash is a war leader in his own right, why has Jos heard only of "the Warboy", not knowing that he has a brother? And why did Ash turn out to be such a fucking dick? yjudaes and I were also wondering if any humans have ever slept with strivs. I say yes. In my headcanon Niko's first love was a male striv who died in battle, and Niko never found love again until--erm--ahem--never mind.

Turn back now unless you really want to know what I think about this >___> Also, spoilers ahead.

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Those of you who know me probably know that I'm an enthusiastic shipper. If I'm alone in a garden I'll find two rocks to ship together, or I'll start thinking about flower sex. But there's also a lot of intentional homoeroticism (and straight out gay sex) in this book and its sequels. There are, first of all, rather few important female characters--I sorta wish there were more--but it's also basically a universe where Everyone's Gay. Except for Captain Azarcon, his son, and the English pilot kid who never shuts up, seriously. Everyone is either gay, bi, or thinking rapturously about the way his teacher holds him and how he smells and the perfection of his muscles (Jos Musey, I'm looking at you, bro.)

Yes, I ship Jos and Niko pretty hard. And I felt bad about it at the beginning. I don't see their relationship as being mutually romantic until Jos is older, at the end of the novel, certainly, but there's a lot of potentially squicky stuff there--unequal power dynamics, the fact that Jos is way-underaged when they first meet, and Jos's history of exploitation and abuse. I totally understand if anyone thinks it's gross and weird to ship it, although everyone I've spoken to who's read the novel ships it as well (even against their better judgment). For me, there are several things that make the relationship appealing.

-The feelings. THE FUCKING FEELINGS. It's pretty blatantly obvious that bb!Jos hero-worships Niko, possibly even has a ~~huge~~ little crush on him. And these feelings don't go away, even after four years of separation. Jos writes to Niko every day and marks off the days until he's back. He's not isolated; he makes other friends, but it's Niko he really wants. And this for me sort of mitigates the suspicions of Stockholm syndrome, IMO. Niko wants Jos to be around other people, even when Jos doesn't want to be. Jos is also perceptive and smart and a pretty keen judge of character. He wouldn't love or be grateful to Niko just for rescuing him--he actually resented him for it in the beginning. No, he loves Niko for respecting his boundaries, for treating him like an intelligent adult, for showing him attention and care. It's pretty obvious, too, that Niko sees Jos as much more than a pawn. He gets Jos the tag with the images of his parents on it (which also shows, I think, how un-possessive he is--he doesn't want Jos to be cut off from his past or his family). A more cynical reader might think this might all be ploy to ensure his loyalty, but I think the moment when his voice breaks and he sounds genuinely distraught shows how true his feelings are:

"'I didn't tell you about coming with me on Turundrlar,' he said, 'because I didn't know if I could ask you--I didn't plan on not wanting--' He stopped.
I looked up in surprise. Never before had he stumbled on himself like this. His eyes were steady and unusually bright."

After Niko asks Jos to do his undercover assignment, Jos is hurt and accuses Niko of throwing him away. Which breaks my fucking heart. And I feel for Niko here too, because, like he said, he both does and doesn't hope that Jos will say yes.

-Even after everything, Jos continues to care immensely about Niko. He is the only person who follows Niko out of the room after he has killed Ash, the only person who understands and/or cares how difficult that had to be and can both challenge and comfort him. He is unafraid of standing up to Niko and telling him that he might have been wrong. But then, ultimately, he takes the knife from him, holds his hand, and caresses his face until Niko--out of guilt or who knows what--can't take it anymore and walks away. Which breaks Jos's heart. This lovely, subtle fic has a take on the moment that matches things I've also considered--maybe Niko was afraid of what he might do or feel if he allowed himself to accept Jos's affection.

And the whole scene with Ash, I think, carries so many undercurrents of their relationship and their characters. Ash helped pirates abduct and smuggle children. Might this have had something to do with why Niko had no qualms about killing him? And Jos, who hates pirates so much that he kills the man who took him, is the one who feels empathy for Ash, because Ash was his teacher.

-The way their relationship has changed at the end. Jos's time on Macedon has changed him; he has found humans his own age that he cares about, and a place that feels right for him. So when Niko says "Tell them that you are mine" and Jos replies "Niko, I'm not yours," as sad as that sounds, I think that's actually very healthy. Jos has a right to feel betrayed. And to assert his individuality. Because, regardless of who he loves or doesn't love, he doesn't belong to anyone. Another meaning that can be read into this is that Niko doesn't act as though Jos belongs to him. After Jos says that, Niko is definitely not unmoved, but he simply lets Jos go and gives him his rifle to kill Falcone with.

AND--I thought this was weirdly romantic in itself: Jos kills Falcone not by shooting him (although he has a rifle) but with a knife. The way Niko killed Ash. The way that ka'redan assassins kill their victims. We know Jos wants Falcone to see his face, but I can't help but read it as his wanting to do it the way Niko taught him, to do it in the ritualistic way that is significant to Niko, gives them something in common and is worthy of Niko's respect.

-AND THEN IN BURNDIVE JOS SAYS "YES" WHEN RYAN ASKS IF HE LOVES NIKO. It's never specified what sort of love Ryan means. Ryan probably means a familial or friendly sort of love, but then, Ryan's got his "Dad Goggles" on and is probably primed to see things in that light.

Of course there's the question of whether all these feelings are romantic or sexual or brotherly or platonic or WHAT. And I don't think there's an easy answer. Jos definitely mistrusts sexual desire and doesn't appear to feel any of his own, but his relationship with Niko definitely has a physical, sensual aspect. Niko is the only person whose touch he not only tolerates but also welcomes. And I can see their physical and emotional relationship being something that they don't define, something that just progresses naturally according to their needs and their desire to be close to each other. Their relationship also hits my "romantic friendship" or "platonic cuddle-partners" kink pretty hard, btw. I honestly can't even imagine them NOT cuddling when Jos visits the Turundrlar or Niko comes to Macedon and they're alone together. Niko seems pretty isolated himself, and it's quite likely that Jos is the first person in a long time who has fulfilled his need for intimacy. I do so love the idea of them snuggled up together on a couch having a spirited discussion about galactic politics or language or art *_______*

So I bet you're asking me, "now that I ship it like a mofo, what's next?"
Sadly, there's not much in the way of fic or art. There's a smattering out there, but the only two fics that I can really recommend are gen, but definitely hint at deeper feelings. Along with Somewhere Beyond Reach (linked above), there's Resting Here by Frostfire, which has Niko and his mother discussing Jos.

And then there's what I'm writing or planning to write, which includes an AU in which Jos is orphaned but not taken by Falcone and is instead taken in by spies who want him to go undercover on a sympathizer ship (includes alien mating rites and porn!); one where Jos takes care of Niko after an assassination attempt and h/c and asexual romance ensue; and one where Niko finds Jos's unsent letters to him many years later and reads them and Feelings Happen.

Also there's a fanmix I made.

100 THINGS

2012-04-18T07:08:55Z

{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

Well, I've decided to do the 100 Things Challenge. Since I spend most of my time when I'm not writing either thinking about, talking about, or reading writing, I figured that the topic of my 100 blog entries would be horse grooming products. HAHAHAH, just kidding. It's totally writing.

I'm planning to discuss a variety of writing genres, themes and subcultures. And I don't want it to be either a prescriptive "HOW TO WRITE" thing (I have opinions and will offer them, but I don't feel qualified to give blanket advice) or a tedious log of my own writing processes and hangups that no one wants to read. But I am actively soliciting topics! So if there's anything (broad or specific) that anyone wants to hear about, please let me know.

(Things I'm planning to do thus far:
-talking about a few poets/poems, novels, and fics I love & why
-essay on porn & style
-essay on the responsibilities/ideal relationships between fan creators & audiences
-reflections on some key experiences in my life as a writer
-discussions of tropes, rules, & advice
etc...)

FANWORK MEME IDEA: THE "GIVE IT A CHANCE" MEME

2012-04-11T20:03:41Z

IDK if anyone else thinks this would even be a remotely good idea, but here goes:

Sometimes I find it inspiring to try to engage with a trope that, for whatever reason, turns me off, or something otherwise popular that I am kind of lukewarm about. It forces me to think—do I not like this trope because I haven’t considered all of the possibilities? Is there something about the way I’ve seen it handled that just doesn’t ping my interest? Am I not giving it a fair chance? Can I play with it/subvert it?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with disliking tropes, just like there’s nothing wrong with liking them. I don’t think everyone has to give everything a chance. But I am wondering how many people out there find the idea of a meme dedicated to grappling with ideas you hate/dislike/are ambivalent about/just think “WTF is the big deal???” in any way stimulating. You would simply pick one (or more) tropes and write, draw, or—basically just do something with it.

I realize that this could be a sticky subject, and that some people might not be comfortable declaring their dislike for popular or controversial tropes. So I would suggest the following:

1) it’s not necessary to say anything about how you actually feel about the trope, or why. We don’t need to know if you’ve read 100 high school AUs and loathed each one or if you’ve never touched a single one out of disinterest. Just create something. Also, it should be clear that choosing a trope doesn’t mean that you’ve never liked anything that’s been written with it before. On that note, do you think it would be a good idea to make the meme anon (or anon optional)?
2) Although (I would argue) funny and satirical elements are fine, I also would hope there’d be a rule against trope- or kink-bashing, and there should definitely be a rule against parodying individual fics/artworks (unless it’s with the creator’s permission). This is obviously a fine line here, and one person’s respectful satire is another person’s bashing. But respect is key—the guiding idea is “give it a chance”, not “make it and everyone who likes it look ridiculous”.
3) Somewhat related—I would probably not recommend picking a trope that you find triggering, morally reprehensible, squicky, or just 100% boring. Ideal would probably be something that you sort of “love to hate” or wonder what the appeal is or just don’t think you’ve ever seen it done in a way that fully “sells” you on it. Do a lot of people have tropes that they feel this way about? I personally don’t read high school AUs as a rule—it’s not that I think they’ll be bad; they’re just not high on my list of priorities. But I’ve also wondered what my take on the trope might be like.

And questions:

1) How common would the tropes need to be? Should there be a predetermined list, or prompting, or could it just be a free-for-all?
2) What is the difference between kinks and tropes? Is there one? I would say that kinks count as long as they’re also plot-related…does that make any sense? So roleplaying, hatesex, and genderswap count, but cock rings and docking don’t…
3) Would it be a good idea to make the meme anon or anon-optional? That way, if you’re worried that someone will see you writing about a trope that they’ve also written about, they won’t have to think “Hey, but I thought you liked my military superpowered catboy kidfic!”
4) Would anyone be interested in hosting such a thing? And when would be a good time? I know there’s the Romance Fest going on, and Reverse Bang is in progress too.

FIC: Close To The Frozen Borderline, 3/3 (Spartacus--Agron/Nasir; NC-17)

2012-04-08T11:53:18Z

Fic: Close To The Frozen Borderline (3/3)
Fandom: Spartacus: Vengeance
Pairing: Agron/Nasir
Rating: NC-17 (THERE IS SEX! FINALLY!)
Warnings: cruelty to animals (boar hunting)

I FINISHED IT YOU GUYS.

Part Two

Agron and Crixus set out early the next morning armed with spears and knives, and Crixus carried a bow as well. Agron and Crixus--once Agron had never thought he would imagine those names together unless followed by smote each other with fists and swords. Yet here they were, taking one last glance at the rough map Agron had drawn on the cave floor with a piece of charcoal, a map with zigzags and X-es showing the path through the woods to the spring near which Agron had sighted the boar wallows. The trees were thick enough there to serve as a blind so they could watch the creatures undisturbed, preparing to make their move.

Or they might have, were there any boars in the wallows to begin with.

They crouched there silent as the sun ascended in the sky. Time passed too fast; the shadows of the trees seemed to withdraw into the trees’ bodies quick as the fly-catching tongues of lizards. Sometimes, as he watched and waited, Agron forgot everything--the sweat beading on his skin, Crixus breathing at his side, even the absence of the arm he had learned to fight and grasp and masturbate with. He thought only of his desire to drive his spear through flesh.

As if that would anchor him to his own flesh; drag him violently into making peace with it, somehow.

"If the Romans kill us while we're squatting here waiting for imaginary pigs, I will cut off your balls in the afterlife," Crixus grumbled.

"Oh, cease idle threats" said Agron. "I'm going to go take a piss. Unless you'd prefer I did it on your head."

“Thought might harden your cock, but mine fails to stir." Crixus said dryly.

Agron stood and turned around, and he walked off in search of a slightly more secluded spot. They planned to disturb the woods as little as possible, knowing not who might live there or be passing through on an inauspicious visit. The Romans were not going to let Spartacus and his band alone for long, Agron knew. It was folly to forget for a moment that they were probably hunting them even now, and every trace of their presence in these woods was one more clue that could lead the eyes of Rome back to the caves.

It would be wise to turn back, thought Agron.

But something on the ground caught his eye. He went toward it and found that it was a piece of animal scat. The size and shape of a boar's waste.

And leading away from it, the shallow impression of a split hoofprint with two sharp points.

In spite of his excitement, he tried his best not to make too much noise as he returned.

"I have found direction of their travels," Agron said.

"Likely they hide in lairs. We shall never find them," Crixus replied, sounding unimpressed."It would be best to return home."

"The thought did not fail to cross my mind," Agron said, a bit testily. "But we should make attempt."

"Picking up trail does not mean successful hunt." Crixus sounded firm. "Perhaps only of us, by the Romans."

Agron opened his mouth to speak, but he knew Crixus was right. The rebels could subsist on hare and greens and the occasional deer that ventured close to camp. Boar was a luxury.

"Quiet. Do you hear that?" Crixus lifted a finger. "Movement in the woods."

The creature that broke twigs beneath its feet was heavier than a deer. Heavy, perhaps, as a Roman soldier. They both stilled immediately and diverted their whole minds to listening. And Agron, as he used to do at least once every day, prepared himself for the end of everything. He imagined what he would say to Nasir, as imagination would have to suffice until they could hold each other again in the afterlife.

What a fool I have been, to weep over arm when I still had heart alive and by my side. And in this life please remember me with love; save anger at my folly for the next world and then, simply, know this, Roman shits; I die free and in love.

The sound's approach interrupted the writing of his epitaph. He recognized the rhythm of its footsteps and knew instantly that it was no man. And an incredulous smile spread across his face.

"The Gods favor us this day, you sour fuck," Agron said, grinning.

"We shall see," Crixus answered.

Without waiting for Crixus's leave Agron trod cautiously in the direction of the sound. The sound of the boar. Big one too, from what he could tell. He held his spear at the ready and stepped as quietly as he could, cursing inwardly with every twig he disturbed. And then at last he saw as well as heard. A low hanging branch shuddered, and a flash of black was visible between the trees. He knew he could wait no longer.

He didn't have a clear enough shot to employ the spear, so it would have to be the knife at first. Agron gritted his teeth. It would have been so much easier with another hand to hold the spear while he fished a knife from his belt. But he did not have to think about this for long. A silvery glint flew through the air and between the branches, and a vicious bellow told him that the animal had been hit. His impulse was to turn and glare at Crixus for trying to claim a victory that should have been his alone, but he did not have time.

An enraged and wounded boar was hurtling through the trees and heading straight for them.

Crixus's first knife had sunk into the animal's rear. A hit that could not kill or even maim. The Gaul threw another knife, but it glanced off the boar's side and landed in the dirt. Agron leapt aside as the boar charged and watched it run about, hurt and unsure now in which direction to pursue its vengeance. Agron tucked the spear under what remained of his right arm and drew a knife from his belt. That knife, too, grazed the boar. And Agron began to doubt. Did his hand lack the strength to aim?

The boar howled. Another of Crixus's knives had pierced the place where its front leg met its chest, and now a trail of blood spattered the ground. The boar huffed and before Agron knew it it was charging Crixus again at full speed. Crixus ran through the trees and, agile as ever, lead it back towards where Agron waited. Agron could see that the boar was beginning to favor its left leg, and for a moment he pitied the creature, who was powerless to stop its strength from leaving it.

Crixus kept running, trying to wear the animal out, and Agron knew he had missed a few chances when they passed him. But he had only one spear. It had never been like him to be indecisive. But he feared that the small things would once again add up as they had in his fight with Crixus--the change in his balance, the relative weakness of his left arm, the fear itself.

Finally he became weary of the doubt. I have thrown heavy things with my left arm before, he thought. And his eyes focused on the point on the boar's body most likely to yield a clean kill. Right through the shoulder. He imagined the spear piercing that shoulder as if it was going through water. And he lifted his arm and imagined a chain between the spear and that point on the shoulder.

Blade and flesh are joined by destiny already, he remembered Doctore telling them.

Blade and flesh are joined by destiny, he repeated to himself. Saw the cord hovering in midair despite the animal's attempt to tug away from it. Aimed along the cord. It was foolish to move as though he doubted the cord, he thought silently. The cord is real.

And the spear flew along the cord. Agron heard the wet crack as it burst through flesh and the point buried itself in the ground. The impaled animal struggled, and Crixus leapt to put it out of its misery.

"We will eat well tonight, brother," Crixus said, smiling. Once he had slit the boar's throat, Crixus hefted it over his shoulder. Agron felt a moment's bitterness that he could not lift his own kill, but he could not help but return Crixus's smile as they looked up for the sun to reorient themselves.

"We did well," Agron said, and he slapped Crixus on the back. "Today boars, tomorrow Romans."

"Indeed," Crixus agreed, and they made their way back toward home.

*

Around nightfall, when Crixus had nearly finished butchering the boar, the chatter in the camp increased in volume and urgency.

"Something has happened," Agron said, and he could not contain his grin. He looked toward the entrance of the cave to see Spartacus entering and being greeted by those currently on watch.

"Go," Crixus said, waving his knife toward the returning party. Agron did not need to be told.

He offered brief "welcome backs" to Spartacus and Gannicus before turning his full attention to Nasir. Nasir looked tired and somewhat bedraggled from traveling, but he also looked healthier than Agron remembered. Agron took a moment to look upon his face, to cleave every detail to memory, since he could swear that Nasir's face changed slightly every time he saw it and he did not wish to lose a single version of it.

"You have seen me before, you know," Nasir laughed, an impish smile breaking out on his face. "My flesh is not made of wet clay. I cannot be molded."

"I would not be so sure. I think the gods make you lovelier each time I look upon you."

Nasir rolled his eyes playfully and wrapped his arms around Agron's shoulders. "And what do you hope to gain by this flattery?"

Agron rested his forehead against Nasir's. "Only everything you have."

*

They ate and drank well. The men returning from Stabiae had acquired wine as well as information, and Agron could not be sure which intoxicated him more--the wine, or Nasir's presence, or the joy of having gotten for Nasir this token of his love and repentance.

"You have slain formidable beast," Nasir said, admiring the kill. "Do you feel like a man again?"

"It was Crixus's kill as well as mine." Agron looked down at the shadows of the fire undulating on the dirt. "I could not even carry it home or butcher it."

"Agron," Nasir said sternly. "If one man or woman could do all, would there be need for armies?"

"No, of course not."

"Did Crixus's time killing animals in the arena teach him how to track them in the woods?"

Nasir's wisdom never failed to delight Agron except when it was aimed at him. "No," he mumbled.

"There is no shame in men helping one another." Nasir ran his hand over Agron's thigh. "There is something you can help me with."

"Is there." Agron could not help but turn to Nasir then; it was difficult to give life to any bitterness when Nasir's fingertips were stroking him, insinuating past touches that did not stop at his knee or his hip, touches not meant for the eyes of company.

Nasir leaned in and breathed in his ear. "On my journey," he began, "I could not stop thinking of your cock."

Those words swallowed the entire world around Agron. He lost the power of speech for a moment and could only close his eyes and part his lips like a boy who has only lain with a lover in fervent dreams.

"And what--" he was finally able to say, "what did you wish my cock to do?"

"I wished it to be inside me," Nasir whispered. "I wished to feel your strength. Touch me between my legs and know now that I do not lie."

Agron's eyes flew open and he rested his hand on Nasir's thigh. Discreetly as he could manage, he brushed his thumb over the place where Nasir's breeches clothed his cock and felt the hard tip.

"I would have you now," he groaned into Nasir's neck.

Nasir rose from his seat and offered Agron a hand. "Daylight still favors us for long enough," he said teasingly. "We will not give our friends a show this night."

This he said loud enough that a number of the other rebels heard him, and it was answered by incoherent whoops and hollers that he didn’t care to decipher. He cared only for Nasir’s hands around his, leading him.

"Do you have--" he asked.

"In my coat," Nasir said, smiling wryly.

They found a spot in the shade of the mountain, and Agron laid his coat down on the ground. After that he hesitated. In the life of their love, one month was a long time. He remembered how to touch Nasir, but it felt like a story related by a close friend, replete with counterfeit memories--looking like memories, but strangely hollow.

"You wish this to happen?" Nasir asked with caution. Agron nodded and cupped the side of his face.

"More than you know. My cock has a message similar to yours." Nasir reached to touch his cock through the subligaria and smiled at the hardness he found there.

"Then I will have its orders carried out," Nasir replied. "Lie down." His hands pressed Agron back toward the coat, and Agron obliged.

As Nasir straddled him, his hands crept across Agron's shoulders and he drew him into a kiss. With Nasir's lips against his, gently pressing and sucking before beginning to tease Agron's tongue with his own, he wondered how he could forget this. It was the easiest thing he knew, letting his tongue drift between Nasir's lips so Nasir could suck at it like he'd later suck Agron's cock, kissing at the corners of Nasir's mouth and the way it invariably made Nasir tilt his neck up so Agron could kiss his way down Nasir's jaw and throat in an attempt to put lips on his pulse.

When Agron kissed his way back up to Nasir's lips, Nasir mirrored Agron's earlier travels. He let his lips linger over the stubble on Agron's chin, then licked down to the cords of muscle on Agron's neck. Agron threw his head back and felt himself whimper. His neck was on intimate terms with his cock, and he feared that if Nasir did not undo his garments soon there would be proof of that in his clothes. But Nasir did not work his magic in that region for long; he proceeded downward to flick his tongue against the hollow of Agron's throat, and from there he kissed a path like the zig-zag path of an oxcart, pressing his lips over Agron's chest and stopping only to tease each nipple briefly with a lapping tongue. He sat up and replaced his lips with his hands, squeezing Agron's pectorals gently.

"Yes?" he said.

Agron nodded and ran his hand up and down Nasir's back, where he felt the dampness of early sweat.

Nasir traced his upper arms--both of his upper arms.

"You must not doubt that for me nothing has changed." Nasir said, his voice saturated with reverence. Honest reverence. "Your body is still the most beautiful I have ever seen."

"Now it is you who flatters," Agron laughed, but he drew Nasir down for a kiss. His hand wandered back down Nasir's back and played at the base of his spine, right where the cleft of his ass began. Nasir was slightly ticklish there, and he bit down on Agron's lip as his body twitched.

At the urging of Agron's hand, Nasir slid his body up Agron's chest. He did not need to be asked to retrieve the vial of oil from the pocket of his coat, and after he found what he needed he discarded the coat along with his breeches. Agron looked up at Nasir's form with longing. How his skin glowed. How his long hair traced the strong peaks of his shoulders and clung to his graceful neck.

Nasir uncorked the vial and spread a bit of the oil over his hands.

"No," Agron insisted. "Let me."

So Nasir took Agron's hand in his. And for a moment he merely held it, palm-up, in both of his hands, looking at the calluses and lines that predicted an early death for a foolish reason. Then Nasir brought the hand up and kissed each of its curled fingers one by one. And then he poured the bottle over it, a generous amount of the oil glopping over Agron's fingers.

"A blessing in case I lose that one too?" Agron said dryly.

"Stop prophesying doom and finger my ass," Nasir growled.

Agron pressed his palm against Nasir's back and urged him still closer. When Nasir's hips were astride Agron's shoulders, Agron lifted his head and took the tip of Nasir's cock between his lips. In an instant Nasir's face lost its tart expression and his eyes clenched shut with pleasure. He moaned Agron's name, and please, and Gods, and the moaning became louder still when Agron pushed the first finger into Nasir's hole. Nasir moved his hips from side to side to relax himself, and then he slowly pushed backwards onto Agron's finger. Agron kept up his licking at Nasir's cock and tried to banish thoughts of what he might do with another arm--thoughts of spreading Nasir's ass wide, of digging his fingernails in, of gripping tight to Nasir's thigh to feel those muscles twitch and stretch and tense. I have but one arm, Agron thought. So I will use mouth instead.

When Agron had added a second finger, and then a third, he thought he might be willing to stay inside Nasir like that forever. But his cock ached to be touched. As if Nasir knew his thoughts, he pulled away from Agron's hungry fingers and moved back down Agron's body to undo his subligaria. When Agron's cock was revealed, Nasir bent down to kiss it from base to head, his lips idolatrous and greedy. Then he positioned himself over Agron's cock and sank down onto it, slowly but with an unbroken movement. Agron gasped; it was the feeling of Nasir around him, squeezing him all the way down to the base of his cock, but also it was the sight of Nasir, eyes half-closed, lips parted and tongue sadly too distant to kiss. He rose back up and sank back down, and as he kept up this rhythm he ran his hands over Agron's chest, teasing his nipples and stroking his ribs and landing ticklishly light on his neck.

Agron could not decide where he wanted to touch, so he brought his arm around Nasir's back, drew him close, and turned them both over. There was now grass under them, and his weight pressed Nasir into it; with a smile Agron imagined the vivid green streaks of grass-juice that would later decorate Nasir's skin. Nasir wrapped his legs around Agron's hips and opened his mouth for a kiss. And Agron had to rein himself in to keep from coming in that moment; the feel of Nasir's skin stroking against his, knowing that Nasir wanted to be weighed down like this, by him, and did not see it as a loss of his freedom...He guided his cock back to Nasir's hole again and pushed in. He fucked him hard, fighting each time he pulled out against the strength of Nasir's thighs pulling him back in. He gave in to Nasir's lips, open and vibrating with cries and slapping messily against his, and their noses smashed together and their teeth dragged against each other's skin and it was so good that Agron did not want to come even when he was on the verge of it, but he knew Nasir's cock was still full. So he gave his mind the final permission to let go. He sank his teeth into Nasir's shoulder as all of his strength rushed out of him in one joyous flood.

He breathed heavily against Nasir's chest for a moment and let Nasir stroke his hair.

"Not done yet, do not worry," he said hoarsely. "My lips would give you equal share of the bounty."

And, summoning all his energy, he peeled himself off of Nasir and moved to kneel between his legs. Fucking had brought Nasir close; there were droplets of precome inching down his shaft, and Agron licked them off before taking Nasir's whole cock in his mouth. It only took a few bobs of his head and swirls of his tongue before Nasir was crying out and coming down his throat.

"It is too bad there is no cock-sucking contest in the arena," Nasir said as Agron kissed his way back up Nasir's stomach and settled down to rest in his arms. "You would have won for certain."

"I am not so sure," Agron laughed. "There are more than a few cock-sucking Gauls."

Nasir was silent at that. "What, you have become defender of the Gauls now? I say such things in jest."

"No, it's not that." Nasir still sounded pensive. "Move for one moment. I must find something."

Agron nodded and rolled onto his side. Nasir reached for his coat and fumbled for something in the pocket; what he drew out was so small he could easily enclose it in a folded hand, and Agron was intensely curious.

Nasir lay on his side next to Agron and rested his head on his hand. "You must know how serious I am when I say what you mean to me. And that nothing can change that. Not loss of arm. Nothing. You are handsome and brave, and you have a keen mind and a gentle heart. And I ache to be touched by you, and work and fight always with your regard as utmost goal."

"As I do for yours." Agron edged closer to Nasir.

"And you must know," Nasir continued, "that were we man and woman, I would offer you guarantee of my love and all else that is mine. Guarantee to last as long as we may live." A note of trepidation crept into his voice. "Would you do the same for me, if we could?"

"Without doubt," Agron said, and did not hesitate.

Nasir opened his palm and held an object out to Agron. Agron reached for it and examined it; it appeared to be a small bronze brooch in the shape of a swan.

"I bought this from one of the artisans in Stabiae," he explained, looking a bit sheepish. "It is not much. Just a token of a promise intended to be kept."

Agron couldn't speak in answer to that. He only looked at Nasir, at the warmth and openness visible in his face despite the dying-out of daylight, at the slight nervous tremor in his fingers, and he hoped as he reached for Nasir, the brooch still clutched between two fingers, that his own face said enough.

*

Agron was fool enough to try to mount the stallion again. He ran and swung a leg over its back, and it flared its white-spotted nostrils nastily and bucked him off easier than a cow swats off a fly. He landed on his side and pain radiated through his chest.

"Brother, your arm," Duro cried out in a tone of voice he used to use to warn Agron of ghosts.

"Broken?" Agron looked down and expected to see it bent or painted with blood. Instead, there was no arm there at all.

"It isn’t there.”

Agron wanted to tear the house and pastures apart looking for it; had it been hidden as a joke? Taken as punishment? But he had been told he should not make Duro worry. He knew as the elder brother it was his job to stay calm. Cowardice, like pestilence, spreads, his father had told them once. Don’t be the dung it lives in.

So he swallowed a curse to the gods. And he turned to Duro, and he said, "So it is, brother. Let us take a walk and tell each other stories. You have been gone a long while…”

PIMPING: THE SPARTACUS KINKMEME!

2012-04-04T11:10:46Z

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