Sitting in a Tub of Formaldehyde Bubbles

Who is the most awesome-sauce in the world?

moragmacpherson — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 02:29:52 GMT

fish_echo is, that's who.

Back in Halloween she dressed up as Delirium-Who-Was-Once-Delight, in particular, the design from my icon.

I just got a package from her. It contained

One (1) card in an enveloped marked "To: [Morag] Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas (much belatedly) P.S. open presents before the card (card contains spoilers)" with many stars on

AND

One (1) boomerang from Australia (I'm hoping she wasn't intending this as a death threat ala Scandal in Belgravia, but then I remembered I can't even make a yo-yo work, there's no way I'll actually get a boomerang to come back

AND

Twelve (12) crocheted and knitted fish of many varieties.

So, if I find a cheap old black leather jacket, here in meatspace, I can actually look like I do on the internets.

As I said, who is made of awesome-sauce? fish_echo is, that's who. Thank you, sweetie, I love the presents and you too.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/90000.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Sad Sappy Suckers (Inception-SPN), (Gen, pre-slash Sam/Arthur, PG-13)

moragmacpherson — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 06:38:02 GMT

Title: Sad Sappy Suckers
Author: moragmacpherson
Betas: sistabro and callowyn
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Series: Not Such as I Was
Pairings: Sam/Arthur, pre-slash
Timeline: Pre-canon, Stanford-era
Disclaimer: None of the canonical characters contained herein belong to me and this work is not intended for any profit or other commercial purposes. Title from the Modest Mouse album of the same name.
Contents include: Language, disturbing dream imagery
Summary: Everyone needs their secrets, Arthur knows that, but there’s something huge he’s missing here and without it, Sam’s a puzzle he can’t quite solve.

September 4, 2001

Arthur's sitting in a diner booth across from the Winchester kid (emphasis on 'kid'), who's sucking down a milkshake like he’s going for a prize, giving these tiny groans of pleasure every time he pauses for breath. Arthur looks down at the milkshake in front of him, wishing he could block the sounds as as easily as the visuals, both of which are just a little too interesting to the baser parts of him. He takes a sip as a way to distract himself. Then he lets out a noise of his own, startled, because it's exactly how he likes them, just like—

"Where's yours from?" asks Sam.

They’re sitting in a diner; the question doesn’t make sense. There’s no way Sam could know what Arthur was just reminded of. "If you’re asking what flavor this is, the answer is vanilla mixed with hot fudge." Arthur holds up a finger to forestall the usual question. "Totally different from a chocolate milkshake. The fudge makes it melt faster." Then he frowns. "Didn’t you hear me order?"

Sam smiles and Arthur would be distracted by that, except that this whole situation is suddenly bugging him—why the hell is he taking the Winchester kid out for milkshakes? That's so sappy that it overpowers even the taste of a milkshake the way they make it at Tierney's Diner down the street from his parents' house. Everything here is way too sweet—and where is here, anyway?

Meanwhile, Sam says, "One, I asked exactly what I wanted to know, because mine's from a soda fountain in Texas and I doubt you’ve ever had the pleasure.” He looks at Arthur’s shake with a smile that’s almost wistful. “Two, I know there’s a difference with fudge: my brother used to order them that way sometimes." His expression shifts again and he looks even younger, like a kid turning in a late homework assignment. He takes another demure sip of his own milkshake before continuing. "And no, I didn’t hear what you ordered, because you never did."

The din of the other customers around them dies down, like everyone in the whole diner is waiting for Arthur's response.

"This can't be a dream,” Arthur says, refusing to turn and start checking for soft spots. “I can smell. I can taste. I can read all the words on the menu." To prove it, Arthur points to the wall over Sam’s head. "Hamburger, two dol—" But even as he reads them off, the words on the menu change. Suddenly he’s looking at entries like "Your favorite food when you were a kid, free; Your favorite thing to do, free; Something you've always wanted to try, free." Arthur swallows hard as he looks down at sugar packets labeled "Do you believe me now?" He starts to stand but the exit sign overhead flashes to him, one word at a time, "CALM DOWN OR THEY WILL HURT YOU."

Indeed, every eye in the diner is locked on Arthur. He's thinking up a Beretta M9 to shoot them both out, trying not to panic. Yes, Sam builds the most realistic dreams anyone has ever shared: Arthur's been in one already and Mal can't shut up after every time she takes Sam down. But has Mal been so obsessed with that realism that she's forgotten to teach Sam about Limbo?

Sam reaches across the table and grabs Arthur's right wrist before he can reach for the gun now holstered and cocked at his side. "You really don't want to do that, Arthur," he whispers, his eyes casting about, looking at the projections. Sam's grip on Arthur is firm, his long fingers warm, gun-callused, and he's running his thumb up and down the inside of Arthur's wrist, which is both soothing and totally unfair. Even as Sam’s voice stays soft and calm, however, his projections become more menacing; light glints off the enormous knife the cook's brandishing. "We should probably get out of here."

Arthur keeps his voice low and his eyes on anything but Sam's face. "Do you even know about Limbo, Sam? Or soft spots? We don't need to leave the diner, we need to end this whole dream. Now."

Sam's grasp loosens. Arthur sighs in relief and starts to pull away, but then Sam twines their fingers together and holds tight again. "Actually, you told me everything there is to know about them earlier tonight." Sam tilts his head so that Arthur has to look at his face, bangs flopping into his hazel eyes. "We're going to walk across the street to the park. There aren't going to be any soft spots, I promise."

There are seventeen ways Arthur could break Sam's hand or arm right now; he could think up a grenade in his left hand if he had to. Sam squeezes Arthur's hand once. "Trust me, Arthur."

Arthur lets Sam lead him out of the diner.

As their feet hit the sidewalk outside, Arthur realizes he's the one clutching Sam's hand now, but he can't make himself stop; he's too busy looking for any of the surreal warning signs that mean he could walk into a soft spot and never walk back out. But if Sam hadn't said anything, Arthur still wouldn't be able to tell they're in a dream. There are kids on the playground, watchful parents sitting on benches nearby, flowers in full blossom with bees buzzing around them. Nothing blurs along the horizon or at a distance: every detail holds up to close inspection. This is a whole new kind of dangerous.

"What is this place?" Arthur asks as Sam sits them down on a bench in front of the fountain.

Sam shrugs. "The fountain's in Portland, the diner's from Texas and Tampa, the park is sort of a mash-up of a whole bunch of places. Mal's scared that if I build dreams out of whole memories, I might lose track of reality." Sam huffs out a breath, looking sheepish. "Sorry about dream-napping you, but to be fair, you pretty much did the same thing to me right after we met."

A stray drop from the fountain hits Sam's jeans and Arthur watches, fascinated, as the water sinks and spreads into the fabric. The physics are perfect. "I guess so," he says.

Sam squeezes his hand. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Arthur blinks and it takes him a few moments to bring it back to mind. "I was in my office, filling out the paperwork on... on Achun. Specialist Nol." Tears prick unpleasantly at Arthur's eyes but he pushes them back. "Which is exactly why we should wake up now, Sam. She was an even better builder than me, but that didn't stop both her and the subject from dropping through to Limbo on a routine training run." Arthur turns to look Sam in the eyes. "You may not think they're out there, Sam, but I've lost—Achun was the only other survivor of my AIT class, did you know that?"

"You lost a lot of people, you told me." Sam looks down and Arthur thinks he may have finally won. "I’m sure you already know I have too."

Arthur does know that already, but he doesn’t remember telling Sam anything of the sort. "Did you look through my files?" he asks, suddenly furious. Sam lets his hand go. Arthur would stand up if he had the courage to trust the ground beneath his feet.

"You offered to give me a ride home once you finished the letter for your friend,” Sam says. “I sat there and waited. One second you were awake, staring at a blank document, the next thing I knew you faceplanted onto the desk and started to snore." Sam looks up, with his eyes all round and dewy. “I didn’t want to have to wake you up to talk.”

Arthur's fury takes one look at those eyes and sort of rolls over. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter instead. Sam frowns at that, but fuck him. Not like it's real nicotine anyway. And Sam still has a lot of explaining to do. "So what, then? You looked through all my confidential files—which is technically treason, by the way—managed to get the PASIV out of a concealed, locked safe, then hooked us up without any training on timing or dosage-to-weight ratios?" Sam's jaw quirks to the side and Arthur nearly chokes on his smoke. "There's more?"

Sam bites his lip. "I only looked at the files you had on me—which were a complete violation of my civil rights, by the way.” He doesn’t look sorry at all, the little brat. “I did crack the lock on your safe, though beneath your desk hardly counts as concealed. There was a manual on the dosage stuff in there, and I've been watching Mal when she does setups." Sam looks down again. "I knew your weight from carrying you out to the car." The cigarette slips from Arthur's fingers even before Sam adds, "Which I had to hotwire, because I couldn't find your keys in the office, and I didn't want to root around in your pockets."

"Nice to know you recognize some privacy boundaries," Arthur snaps as he lights a new smoke. "So not just dream-napping, but real-life kidnapping and multiple counts of grand theft to go along with the treason. That’s pretty fucking impressive, even after seeing the list of warrants out on your father."

Sam winces at the word 'father,' Arthur notices, and reminds himself that Sam's just a kid; his childhood isn't his fault. "That's one of the things I wanted to talk about, actually," Sam says.

"And in the waking world, this conversation is taking place where?"

Sam shrugs. "My dorm room. The bed isn't great, but you won't have as bad a crick in your neck this way." Like that excuses any of it. "It's probably about one thirty in the morning by now."

Arthur takes a long drag, staring at Sam—the multiple felon, the medical miracle, the guilty object of his own most secret daydreams. A kid who left his equally felonious family behind by somehow cobbling together the grades he needed for Stanford, a runaway who still flinches every time someone mentions family. Arthur's on his next cigarette by the time he's calm enough to speak. "You've got me here now. So talk."

Sam watches Arthur take another drag, and then his gaze drops. “So I—I guess first I should say thank you, to you and Mal, because this shared dream stuff is just—I mean, wow. But at the same time...” He stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Honestly, when I got to your office, I was trying to find how to say I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

Arthur pities Sam’s naïvité in thinking the government would let the most important discovery in dreamshare since the concept was proved walk away from their project just like that. It almost works to cover his bubbling panic at the idea of Sam leaving. “But?”

“But—” Sam sighs, shoulders slumping. For a long time he doesn’t say anything. The sky in the park is getting darker. “Do you know why I came to Stanford?”

John and Dean Winchester’s arrest records flash through Arthur’s mind, along with the three-page list of schools Sam attended between ages six and eighteen and abandoned cases from Child Protective Services in five different states. He takes another drag. “I imagine the full ride had something to do with it.”

Sam laughs. “That wasn't a reason, that’s just what made it possible.” He casts a quick, suspicious look at the people in the park, then stares down at his hands. Most of the projections, Arthur notes, have stopped moving. Sam says, “College was it for me, you know? I went for so long thinking the only thing I’d ever do was—what I’d always done, and then one day one of my teachers says well, what about college, and from then on everything I did was about trying to get in somewhere. To get out.”

Out of what, Arthur wants to know, because he’s not stupid enough to think the bits that got onto Sam’s permanent record are the whole story. But his attention strays to the projections across the park, who have begun to move again—but not in the carefree play he’d seen before. The child-shaped ones are twitching in ways humans usually don’t, their limbs hanging loose and almost-jointless in their sockets. Undulating. "Your childhood was fucked up, I'm getting that," he says, pulling at his tie.

“I thought, once I got to college, I’d get a chance to be normal,” Sam says. There’s a wet ripping sound, and Arthur jumps, horrified, when the child-projection closest to him splits its limbs right down the middle. The new appendages wriggle, thinner and more flexible, getting used to their new freedom. But Sam seems oblivious, still talking. “If I could just start over, find someplace where I wasn’t the freak—”

“Sam,” Arthur says warningly. Across the park, the young projections have turned on their parents, tearing them apart with too many limbs and too-sharp teeth.

“Wouldn’t that make it worth it? Leaving—leaving everything? Wouldn’t it?” Thunderclouds churn overhead, thick and strange-colored. “And then I come here,” Sam says, “and I sign up for one simple sleep study, and then it turns out my dreams are the key to some whole secret project that wants to pick me apart. Turns out I’ve got a whole different flavor of freak in my grapefruit.”

“Sam!” Arthur snaps, because the older projections are just bloody smears now and he doesn’t want to find out what happens when the children are finished with them.

Sam looks up at him. “But then there’s you,” he says, and the thunder stops.

“What about me?” Arthur says, watching Sam’s face instead of the massacre drawing to a close around them. Everything goes very still.

“You’re scared,” Sam says.

Arthur trips over a whole spectrum of possible responses to that, from outright denial to no shit Sherlock, and gestures inarticulately at the projections. But when he turns to look, the park is back to normal, and utterly empty.

“You are,” Sam says. “You’re scared of Limbo; you’re scared you’re gonna fall through a soft spot like all those people you trained with and never come back out. I get it.”

Arthur’s mouth snaps shut. Nobody but Mal has been able to read him this well, and she had months to get to know him first, and Sam’s just a kid. Sam smiles a little.

“But I can fix it,” he says. “My dreams don’t have soft spots, you see? And I figure, if my nightmares can make someone else’s go away—” He shrugs, looking sheepish and very, very young.

“You shouldn’t have to—” Arthur begins, even though what is he saying, this is exactly what he wants and anyway Sam does have to, sort of. “It’s not your responsibility to look after me,” he says instead.

“I know that.” Sam’s grin turns wicked. “If it were, I’d’ve made you stop smoking.”

Oh, that is just not playing fair. Even less so when Arthur looks down and realizes that sometime during their conversation, the pack of cigarettes disappeared right out of his hands.

“I know at least twenty ways to kill you,” he feels compelled to point out, but Sam’s laughter ruins his delivery. He stands up with a huff, straightening the lines of his suit, and Sam grabs his arm.

“Okay, okay, I’ll take you back. I’ll keep doing the project. Just—two conditions, okay?”

Arthur is not at all sure he can give Sam everything he wants. Still, it would be easier for everyone if Sam’s participation in the project was voluntary. "Those conditions are?"

"One: I get to stay in school. At least three-quarter time; enough that people don’t ask questions." Sam still hasn’t let go of his arm.

"I think we can manage that," says Arthur.

"Good.” Sam grips his arm a little harder. “The second is, stop digging into my past."

The official file on Sam Winchester already has everything about him that was put on record, but Arthur knows that’s not what Sam means. Sam stares up at him, supplicating, even though he’d tower over Arthur if he stood up.

"I know most of it’s bullshit, but what's in your files right now is plenty enough to know. I won’t let the rest of it get in my way. Just please, Arthur, stop looking.”

That’s a hell of a temptation to look even harder. Everyone needs their secrets, Arthur knows that, but there’s something huge he’s missing here—something huge and possibly tentacled—and without it, Sam’s a puzzle he can’t quite solve.

On the other hand, they’ve been in this park for fifteen minutes, and oddly-behaved and shaped projections aside, the dream itself seems as real and stable as it did when they first left the diner.

“That’s what you want?” Arthur says finally. “Your Stanford career stays as normal as it can under the circumstances, and no one else goes sniffing around your life before this?” Sam nods, and Arthur adds, “That’s not much to ask, considering.”

“Yeah, well.” Sam stands up and oh, Christ, the dimples are back. “You and Mal have done enough for me already; I don’t want either of you dropping into Limbo from a bad dream. And I—” He pauses, and shuffles a little. “I like you, all right? I won't let you fall, I promise."

The pinkish tinge to Sam’s cheeks might be Arthur’s imagination, but his own face is hot enough that he’s definitely blushing. Dammit. “Sam—”

What Arthur took for an approaching boombox in the background resolves into an old R.E.M. song getting louder in his ears. Arthur's been so convinced by Sam's world, so focused on his words, that he's forgotten to even think about a musical countdown. Before he can give Sam a reply, he blinks and then he's lying on an extra-long single bed with cheap airline headphones on his head.

Arthur turns on his side. The PASIV sits on the room's single wooden chair, already powering down as Sam blinks awake on the tiled floor, his head resting on a rolled up duffel bag. Other than the desk and an alarm clock reading 1:35 am, there's nothing else in the room except for a few clothes in the closet. Sam clears his throat. "So, we have a deal?"

Arthur presses his lips together. This kid is going to get him into worlds of trouble he can't even begin to imagine. But he says "Yes," because he can't say no, not to someone who's offering to compromise his lifelong dream in order to spare Arthur pain. He’ll come up with some way to shut down interest in Sam’s background, and stifle his own urge to pry, if that’s what it takes. Embarrassingly, Arthur discovers he would do pretty much anything to see another smile like the one he's getting now.

He hands over the headphones and his cannula and watches Sam wrap the needles in a ball of tinfoil before tossing them in the trash. Then Sam flushes the lines with the bleach/saline solution and coils them neatly inside the case. Anyone else would think he's done this a thousand times before. Mal and Sam are definitely right about one thing: they'll have to come up with some method to keep track of dream versus reality soon, because Arthur's having trouble even now believing that this man can possibly be real.

But the criminal habits might be an issue. "My car keys actually were back in the office; did you leave the steering column open or am I going to have to start from scratch?"

Sam shakes his head. "Worry about it in the morning, Arthur. You should go back to sleep, you look like shit."

"You're—" This dorm room is a single. Arthur's not fool enough to ask to share the bed, but he'll trade places.

"I've slept through worse, trust me.” Another clue he’ll have to ignore. Sam clicks the case shut and stores it under the bed, hovering near Arthur’s midsection. “Come on. You know PASIV sleep doesn’t count."

"Yes, Mal," says Arthur, because it's hard to argue while he's having trouble keeping down a yawn.

Sam moves to the door and checks the dead bolt, then looks down at something on the threshold that Arthur can't see. "I'd say sweet dreams, but let's just go with, 'Didn't I tell you to go to sleep already?'"

Arthur flips Sam off as Sam flips off the lights, and he flashes Arthur a grin in return. From what he can tell in the dark, Sam grabs a shirt from the closet to use as a blanket, then drops off into sleep almost as soon as he's on the floor.

Arthur doesn't fall asleep so easily. He tells himself that it's because he has to win at least one battle with Sam tonight. And if listening to Sam breathing safe and sound under his guard is more relaxing than sleep ever could be, then Arthur isn’t going to think too much about that.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/89107.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Lost in Her Loving Embrace (Inception-SPN), (Gen, R)

moragmacpherson — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 15:55:09 GMT

Title: Lost in Her Loving Embrace
Author: moragmacpherson
Betas: sistabro and callowyn
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural
Rating: R
Series: Not Such as I Was
Pairings: Mal/Dom, Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames
Timeline: Set during the first half of season four in Supernatural, during an in-movie flashback for Inception.
Disclaimer: None of the canonical characters contained herein belong to me and this work is not intended for any profit or other commercial purposes.
Contents include: Insanity, suicidal ideation
Summary: There are many reasons why Mal must make Dom wake up with her.

November, 2008

Mal sweeps her arm across the table she'd just carefully set, sending the food, flowers, and flatware flying across the hotel room. She thinks for a moment and then grabs one end of the table and pulls it over on its side. The salt shaker tumbles to the floor, creating a thin arc of salt on the carpet between her and the door.

Salt on the carpet, salt blocking the doors: Sam had kept on doing that when he'd stayed at her house with Arthur so long ago. Or what felt so long ago? Mal can't calculate how little time has truly passed in the waking world any longer, lost track on the last level. But never mind — she'd only just broken Sam of the habit right when he'd broken away from them. This dream reminds her of dreaming with Sam. It feels so solid, so close to real that she has to stage this scene by hand rather than simply bringing it into being with her own will.

Once she wakes up, Mal will call up Hosni and let him know that he's finally managed to formulate a compound which allows for others to construct dreams every bit as stable as Sam's natural ones. That will be such a relief for Hosni. He'll finally be able to come out of hiding from those wretched thugs who've never stopped harassing him for Lavoisier's identity. Kidnapped twice: she hardly blames him for his reaction, but now he'll have a free life again, maybe come and meet the children. Mal misses Hosni; misses them all.

And Sam... maybe Sam will stop running too. All his life spent running from the monsters planted in his mind by his monstrous father, holding them back with lines of salt far thicker than this in hotel rooms nowhere near as elegant as this one. She knocks a lamp over and listens to the crack of the porcelain without any concern for its apparent value. Mal can understand her sweet lost boy, now. Having seen how Dom treats her here, like a madwoman... Mal knows how hard it must have been for Sam to give up any of his secrets or the superstitious habits and routines he always struggled to hide or break. With dreams like this, it's little wonder that Sam's nightmares chased him into waking life, and from there into Arthur's arms.

Arthur. God, Mal can't wait to lean against her solid, loyal, true Arthur. Her own melancholy reveals itself in the ways her projection of him behave on this level. Always so despondent, overly-protective of her, and the dark circles around his eyes never disappear, even as he pines after Eames. Eames might be one of the mercenaries hunting for Lavoisier, but he's one of the more civilized, less brutal ones. More importantly, he makes Arthur laugh. With Hosni's perfected formula, their old secret will no longer matter. Arthur will no longer need to protect his old lover from his new one. Though she doesn't envy him the choice, settling with one or the other will give Arthur the stability and order that he craves.

Still, Mal can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. She kicks over a chair, making sure to bruise herself against it. Dom will have to believe her, must trust in her completely to make this work. This little scene has been so exhausting and painful to arrange, and there are so many calls yet to make once she awakens.

Mal is doing this first and foremost for Phillipa and James, the children of her womb, but she yearns to return to the boys she's raised into men as well. And Eames, well, he's a natural fit in their group — he doesn't get along easily with Dom, but then again, neither had Sam. And Sam... her beautiful, damaged, brilliant foundling: she will finally be able to ease his tortured mind, able to communicate and empathize with him on a new level. Now that she knows what he goes through every day of his life, she'll be able to help her mother understand why it's so difficult for him to escape his terrors, to trust anyone to help him. But Mal will show her mother, will show Sam the subtle tells of the dream, how to see through its tiny cracks of unreality. Together they will find a way to truly control his nightmares; to keep him from that complete break with reality he's teetered upon for as long as she's known him.

Poor Lavoisier, whose natural dreams are so realistic that he can never trust them to provide any release or escape from his own reality. She'd spoken with Sam... well, it must have been the other day, and he'd been in near-hysterical denial, unable to accept the premature death of his beloved brother. Sam had denied that sad fact so vehemently that his projection here keeps insisting Dean had returned from the grave after a mere four months. But Mal had looked into the eyes of the projection who'd reluctantly joined them at the diner. They hadn't been the twinkling eyes of the Dean Winchester she'd met after Jess died, the mischievous boy forced into manhood too soon by their despicable father's inability to be a father. No, Mal recognized him as the cold, brutal guardian that killed intruders in his brother's dreams indiscriminately, and without hesitation or mercy.

A tragedy, Dean, but Sam — Mal can still save him, even after all these years. But time is of the essence.

She tears the left strap on her dress, looks around the room and nods. Illusions within illusions to a level that's almost absurd, but one of the reasons she loves Dom is the way he can stand up against her: right or wrong, stubborn and brilliant in his own way. What's more, he's a wonderful father, affectionate and attentive, loving James and Phillipa just as much as he loves her. Mal will never leave him, not if she can help it, but if something happened to her she knows that unlike John Winchester, Dom will never put her memory ahead of their children's futures.

Mal needs to get Dom back to their children, and if this is the only way, well, she's tried every other. It only appears cruel down here. When they awaken, Dom will understand her, will thank her, and then will come up with some new obsession; hopefully one that will let him stay closer to home. Perhaps he'll go back to physical architecture like her father. Mal doesn't imagine that he'll be willing to risk dreaming for a few months—possibly ever again, considering how close he'd come to losing himself in Limbo this time.

A gust of air blows up through Mal's dress as she steps out of the window. She feels more alive than she has in what seems like decades, a woman reborn: young and refreshed. This last part, creeping on the scrollwork that runs along the niche dividing the two windows feels so dangerous but she has to ignore that. This whole dream has been a dangerous experiment, but one well worth it. In mere minutes — truly mere seconds — Mal will be able to set the wrongs of so many years to rights. Once again she'll be a mother to her children, a daughter to her parents, and bring peace to Dom, to Hosni, to Sam, and, if she's very lucky, maybe even to her dear, stoic Arthur.

The knowledge warms her heart, gives her the strength she needs to keep edging along the wall on her own. Just as she planned, she hears the door open. She braces herself as she sits down on the opposite window sill, pushing down her irrational fears for the sake of her children, for her husband, and for her boys. Right now, Mal needs to be strong enough to save them all.

Her mind is clear now, free from any lingering hesitations. Mal waits for Dom to reach the window and the unavoidable abyss she's carefully set between them, between him and remaining in this dream, the chasm that will truly bring them together again. Only moments now, and the darkness below will reunite Mal with all the people she loves.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/88957.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Wherein Morag proves she's as inappropriate in gaming as she is everywhere else

moragmacpherson — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:43:36 GMT

Okay, so these are a little random, so short captions while I remember it all, yeah? Bear in mind I slept through about five hours of the entire beta and wrote this up last night before going to sleep and forgetting why I'd taken each shot in the first place.

First screencap, just to prove that my health cap was, at one point, 666, possibly because dear Yoavina, my character, is in fact The Whore of Babylon. More signs to come.
.

So, the screenshots started coming quicker as the weekend drew to a close and a random bug opened every waypoint to me. Squid managed to jerry-rig himself and Sin in later, but this was in case they couldn't -- proof I'd gotten to places we weren't meant to go. Also, I worship the moon and colorful windmills. Tilt away, Señor Quijano -- some of us are busy worshiping the gorgeously rendered moon.

Also, I like pretty shiny swirly things. Now, we were fairly sure the programmers didn't intend for most players to reach these areas this weekend, like here on the windmill, but this was actually surprisingly functional. That won't last.

Pretty. Shiny. Fully clad. This too does not last -- well, just that final bit.

Also, images Squid had only seen in the videos before this: the ghastly floating pirate ship.

And the floating castle (this cap courtesy of Squid)

And this one from Sin, both of whon I had to convince to climb after me despite the number of Ettins on the mountainside (this one is from the bottom of the mountain. It's a gorgeous shot, but to get the full impact of the Floating Castle, we really had to climb the mountain. Also, isn't Sin's character hot? And like twice the size of me?)

Really cool manor house. We're starting to get to places the programmers really didn't want us in yet -- the monsters killed me constantly (Squid and Sin are professionals, I'm just coming back to gaming after a fifteen year absence, okay?). The thing to remember is: you can revive your character, but your armor takes damage every time you do.

More moon worship, as well as saluting gorgeously graven images.

I'm one of those people who obsessively climbs in video games I love to find the highest spot and just watch things move along -- part of the reason I'm a bad beta who sneaks into Places Players Ought Not Yet Go.

I love to climb because you get images like this. It's so much better in motion, I wish...

Well, I had to keep your attention somehow. This is Yoavina, on top of the icy mountains, in nothing but her mask, bikini, and things I want to call epaulets but Squid knows the right term and I can't be bothered right now.

Yeah. I didn't mean to get attached to her - I played a class I'm not particularly suited for and gave her the most cliched background possible (how cliched, you ask? Sin, Squid, and I all had the exact same background for our human characters). But she's kinda hot, even if those mountains aren't the only stiff peaks around.

Okay, so if the slattern hussy act wasn't doing for you, then here, have this bizarre combination of the Whore/Beast of Babylon. (As we got further on, the clipping got worse and worse, cluing us in to how unfinished the areas were.) I have a bad feeling this is going to inspire a kink-meme prompt.

Me and my bear buddy watch Sin and Squid murder things, which is what they're good at, from the roof of the arena, because the thing I'm good at is climbing.

Oh, and casual bestiality. did I forget to mention that?

Oh, that's the word: pauldrons. The shoulder pad bits. In my case, the Mighty Swindlers Pauldrons of Vampirism. Is there any question why they were among to only pieces of clothing I kept on earlier?

She's also a Saint Paulie's girl on weekends, but would you get a load of those columns... and, well, yes, those breasts?

But if I was the Whore of Babylon, Sin was definitely Satan. Look at that get up. Also, notice the height difference. I wanted there to be a command so I could make my character lick her's bare belly button and back.

But all ends well, in heaven. Actually, it didn't. The dragon appeared and all hell broke loose. But for one beta weekend, it was paradise.

</br>
This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/88600.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Penrose Stairs (Inception-SPN), Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames, NC-17) Master Post

moragmacpherson — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:49:40 GMT

Title: Penrose Stairs
Authors: moragmacpherson dragonspell.callowyn
Betas: callowyn, sistabro
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural crossover fusion-AU; let's just call it Superception
Rating: NC-17
Final Word Count: 19,541
Pairings: Sam/Arthur, Eames/Arthur
Timeline: Set during "Mystery Spot" (3.11) for Supernatural, pre-movie for Inception.
Disclaimer: None of the characters contained herein belong to me and this work is not intended for any profit or other commercial purposes.
Series: Not Such As I Was
Contents include: Language, graphic sexual situations,canonical character death, angst
Summary: The stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. This is clearly impossible in three dimensions.

Tuesday's Child is Full of Grace

Wednesday's Child if Full of Woe

Thursday's Child Has Far to Go

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/88265.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Penrose Stairs (Inception-SPN), Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames, NC-17) 3/3

moragmacpherson — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:40:37 GMT

Title: Penrose Stairs (3/3)
Authors: moragmacpherson dragonspell.callowyn
Betas: callowyn, sistabro
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural crossover fusion-AU; let's just call it Superception
Rating: NC-17
Final Word Count: 19,541
Pairings: Sam/Arthur, Eames/Arthur
Timeline: Set during "Mystery Spot" (3.11) for Supernatural, pre-movie for Inception.
Disclaimer: None of the characters contained herein belong to me and this work is not intended for any profit or other commercial purposes.
Series: Not Such As I Was
Contents include: Language, graphic sexual situations,canonical character death, angst
Author's Notes: Included at the end.
Summary: The stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. This is clearly impossible in three dimensions.

Master Post

Tuesday's Child is Full of Grace

Wednesday's Child if Full of Woe

Thursday's child has far to go
Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The entire world was made of pain and someone was laughing at Arthur. Arthur clutched his Glock, ready to raise it as he cracked one eye open. This was a mistake: there was light in the room, and it didn't just stab, it skewered his eyeball. The empty bottle of Cuervo falling out of his left hand and onto the floor probably explained that. But Arthur couldn't be in this much pain if he were still drunk, so he still lacked an explanation for the bearded redneck seizing his wrist and taking his gun away. "Don't point that piece of Tupperware at me, boy, there are young'ns about." Arthur had seen this man before and heard that voice before—but somehow not at the same time. Nothing in the world made sense any more.

The old guy shook his head and sat down on Mal's divan, taking a drink from a flask he pulled out from his vest. "So you're Sam's 'friend', huh? Believe it or not, it's actually reassuring to meet you, poor arrogant bastard."

Sam. Sam had left. Again. Arthur hadn't been able to stand the emptiness of his own house so he'd gone to the Cobb's. Then there had been drinking, and more drinking, and... "Bobby?"

"Mr. Singer was already on his way to California when you called him last night, Arthur," said Mal as she walked in, carrying a tea tray and looking like an angel of mercy in yoga clothes. "Still, I did not expect him to arrive quite so soon."

She set down the tray and handed Bobby a cup of coffee to which he replied with lowered eyes and an even lower "Thank you, ma'am."

Then she stepped over in front of Arthur and dropped a white tablet in his hand. "This first," she said, and he took it without question. It was an Altoid, not an aspirin, but considering his mouth's current ashtray flavor, he gave her an appreciative groan as he continued his struggle to get into any kind of upright position. Once he finally reached a stable incline, Mal offered him a glass of water and two more tablets, these ones almost certainly aspirin. Arthur swallowed it all gratefully while she laid the cool backs of her fingers against his forehead. "You'll live," Mal told him when he finished. "What's more, we have a guest, so s'il te plaît?" she said, gesturing expectantly.

She seemed to want him to scoot up so that she could share the couch with him, but Arthur was still taking a full stock of his own misery. Leaning further onto his right side to pull himself up on the arm of the couch made something stab into his leg; with a grunt, he lifted his hips so that he could pull his keys out of his pocket and toss them on the coffee table. Mal was still watching him; Arthur occupied himself with pulling his legs out from under himself and trying to present himself as something resembling a human being. Coffee helped.

Bobby made a show of not staring while Arthur tried to snap the cricks out of his neck, studying the bead on Arthur's key chain instead. Once Arthur had settled, he cleared his throat and said, "So, Arthur Mendelsohn or Dortmunder or Denton or Schwartzreich or Hammond, not only are you the world's authority on Project Lavoisier, but you're also the first and only person Sam's gone to for help since Dean died. Any ideas why?"

"You mean, why didn't he go to you first, Agent O'Connor?" rasped Arthur. He took another sip of coffee; Mal must've let him smoke through an entire pack last night. "Can't say for sure. He said it was family business." Arthur coughed and cleared his throat, shaking his head. "It looked more like a psychotic break to me, but Sam's also spent our entire relationship making certain that I don't understand the family business."

Mal scowled at Arthur before flashing Bobby an apologetic smile. "Sam has always been rather guarded about his past with us. As we have long been about his past with others. Regardless of which secrets we keep for him, we do all care about him, very much."

"Caring about Winchesters will be the death of all of us one day, mark my word. It's something of a comfort to know Sam has other people out there." Bobby looked down. "If there's any— Sam won't even return my calls. I had to find out about Dean from the Broward County Coroner's office."

Arthur had a fleeting moment of déjà vu, but he chalked it up to the hangover. "I'm sorry. About Dean. But Sam— as bad as losing Dean is, it's got to be more than that. Last time I saw Sam was in January, after I spoke to you. Day before yesterday he showed up at my house looking at me like it had been years, and not good years either." Arthur finished his coffee and pushed away the craving for one of the cigarettes Mal had likely hidden away already. "So, Bobby, you tell me: what else happened during February?"

Bobby shook his head. "Pittsburgh was the last time I saw the boys too. Dean—" And hell, his voice broke a little when he said it. "Dean called me the Saturday before he got shot. He and Sam, they'd been trying to track down this con-artist who'd stolen something... very valuable from them. The trail had gone cold, so Dean said they were going to check out a possible job down in Florida. He didn't think the case would pan out. Couldn't raise them for a week and a half, then the coroner called me up, tells me that as his listed next of kin, I needed to arrange for the disposal of Dean's remains." Bobby's face pinched; he opened and drank from his flask like he didn't notice he was doing it. "It's like I've lost them both." Bobby stared at the table for a long minute, then shook himself, offering Arthur the flask. "Sam— how was he?"

Arthur ignored Mal's glare and took a sip, savoring the burn of surprisingly well-aged single malt Scotch. Apparently, Bobby Singer had priorities. "Robotic at best," he said. "The couple of times he let himself get anywhere close to emotional, he started acting like a sulky kid until he caught himself. I made him a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and then he bolted the first chance he got."

Mal rubbed Arthur's shoulder. "I didn't get the chance to see him, but with Sam and his issues since childhood... it's always been a fine line between nervous breakdown and psychotic break. We're leaning towards psychotic break this time."

Bobby's lips quirked to the side. "Let me guess: thick slab of government cheese melted on split-top wheat, cut diagonally?"

Arthur blinked. "Yes."

"Can't tell you how many hundreds of times I've seen Dean make Sam that sandwich since they were both little boys." He let out another bitter laugh. "Grief ain't a psychotic break, but Winchesters will try to make it look like one, what with all their dramatic gestures."

Mal pursed her lips together. "Still, I think we can safely say that Sam is pursuing some reckless path of revenge. He... his dramatic gestures, as you say, may progress into deliberate acts of self-harm."

"He’s a Winchester." Bobby shrugged. "No disrespect intended towards your diagnosis, Dr. Cobb. But if we want to find the boy and stop him, I need to know what he's tracking. I may have been able to pick up the trail from Florida to California, but if you hadn't called when you did, I'd be in Palo Alto this morning, not Los Angeles." He picked up the coffee cup again, giving Arthur's keys yet another glance before looking up at him. "Just— what exactly did he ask you to do? Don't matter how little sense you think it makes."

Arthur rolled his eyes and scratched at the stubble on his cheeks. "Sam wanted me to do a highly intrusive global search and data mining project, searching for, quote, 'ironic deaths'." Arthur closed his eyelids so he could massage his still-aching eyes. "Never gave me any real definition of what that meant, and half of the deaths in his files— they were unlikely, but still, the deaths resulted from apparently natural causes."

He heard Mal lean forward on the couch. "Mr. Singer, you know who he's looking for."

Arthur's eyes shot open to see Bobby avoiding eye contact and once again fiddling with Arthur's keys. "Well, ma'am, yes, I expect I do. Trouble is— do you know what this is?" he asked Arthur, pointing at the charm.

"It's from Sam's— I mean, Sam gave it to me back in Pittsburgh. Called it a," and Arthur paused here, pretending he didn't replay every conversation he ever had with Sam over and over in his mind, "— said it was a little piece of his world, to keep me safe from the crazy. Looks like it didn't work." And what did it have to do with anything?

Bobby let out another bitter laugh. "Idiot should've told you they work better if you wear 'em." Then a brief look of horror flashed over Bobby's face; he didn't quite manage to hide it by drinking his coffee. "See, Sam isn't just hunting something, he's also being hunted by a totally different something. And that thing—well, better safe than not," he said, finishing the cup. "Dr. Cobb, could you please call your daughter in for a moment?" Bobby asked, tucking Arthur's Glock behind his back, out of sight.

Mal frowned but nodded and walked to the dining room, where she could see Dom and the kids outside the patio doors, Phillipa blowing bubbles while Dom cradled a smiling but still pale James. "Phillipa? Could you come inside for a moment, s'il te plaît?"

As she followed her daughter back into the living room, Mal continued to eye Bobby suspiciously, but the old coot transformed as soon as the child came into the room. A warm smile appeared on his face and his posture shifted from jaded barfly to beloved children's television host. "Hello again, Miss Phillipa. Tell, me, when's your birthday?"

"Next month!" Phillipa announced proudly. "I'm gonna be..." She paused, trying to remember, and gave her Uncle Arthur a pleading look.

Arthur tried to imitate Bobby and straighten up, managing to say, "Pippa's going to be three years old." Phillipa beamed at him, and okay, life wasn't quite so terrible as he'd been thinking.

Bobby nodded. "Well, I have a very special present for a pretty little girl who's about to turn three. I don't know if I'll be able to come around for your birthday, so is it okay if I give it to you right now?" Phillipa didn't even bother to glance back at her mother for permission before skipping over to Bobby, who had pulled what appeared to be a necklace out of his pocket, dangling it in front of her. "This is a magic wishing charm. Can you turn around and hold your hair up so I can put it on, please?" Pippa turned around to let Bobby tie the leather thong around her neck, and Arthur saw a charm identical to his bead—the same design as Sam's tattoo.

Bobby straightened Phillipa’s shirt, smiling at her. "Now, you just make a wish and always keep this necklace on. If you can keep it on for a whole year, right up until you turn four, then your wish will come true."

"Really?"

"Well, so long as you don't wish for a pet unicorn, princess. Now, you go on with your pa, little one, and look out for your brother."

Pippa's nose wrinkled. "James is too sick and little to play with any good."

"Maybe now, but give him a couple months, I reckon you'll hardly be able to keep up with him."

Phillipa wrinkled her nose. "Sure," she said, heading out the door.

Mal stopped her with a hand. "What do we say to Mr. Singer?"

"Merci, monsieur," Phillipa sighed.

"You're welcome, little one." Bobby's face remained soft as he watched Phillipa go. Then he turned to Mal. "Willing to bet you'd have to wrestle her to get that off her neck now, but all the same, make sure that stays on day and night."

Mal's lips thinned, her eyes narrowing. "Will you explain to me why?"

"The design's the same as Sam's tattoo," said Arthur, brain still firing a half-second slow.

Bobby nodded slowly. "Yes, well, the boys—err, Sam, he needed something a little more durable. I'll make up some for you, Dr. Cobb, and your son and your husband just as soon as I can. But let's all show our cards at the same time, shall we?" He took a drink from a different flask, then handed it to Mal. "Indulge an old man's whimsy and take a sip of that please, ma'am."

Mal did so, then frowned as she swallowed. "It's just water." She stuck out her tongue and reached for her coffee.

"Arthur, if you could take a drink too." Arthur opened his mouth to protest and Bobby cut him off. "It'll do your head some good, especially if I don't have to beat you over the head with it when you try to refuse."

Arthur scowled and tipped the flask back. The water tasted more than a little stale and vaguely salty. "What's this all about?"

"Precautions," said Bobby. "Sam had good reason to try to keep you folks out of this whole mess. What we do... well, this ain't a life he chose, but for whatever reason he always winds up stuck back in the middle of it." Bobby paused briefly and then said, "It’s not his fault, but so far as I'm concerned Sam's lost any right he had to keep secrets from any of us." He looked up at them, his face frank and open. "Thing of it is, if I do tell you, I can't un-tell you, understand?" Bobby's gaze met Arthur's with some additional weight of meaning.

Arthur leaned forward. "Then Sam should've thought of that before he left the reservation."

Bobby nodded grimly and looked at Mal. "And you, ma'am?"

"Even if you hadn't as much told me my own family could be in danger,” she said, “Sam is also family."

Bobby broke into a single, bitter laugh. "Ain't that the truth? Well, now that we're all on about the same level, I'm going to say that I got closer to the truth of Project Lavoisier than most other folks when I gave you a call, Arthur? Tell me, how deep into it was our Sam?"

Mal and Arthur exchanged looks. "He was... involved," said Mal.

"So right in the middle of it." Neither Arthur nor Mal changed their expressions and Bobby sighed. "Like I said, boy's got a talent. Now, if what my research told me was correct— up until I ran up into you." Bobby shook his head at Arthur, but with some admiration in his expression. "Then one or the both of you has access to a device that would, ah, let me illustrate my side of the problem for you in very clear, believable terms?"

Arthur blinked. "You're not wrong."

Bobby slapped his hands against his thighs. "Well, break it out, because it's about damn time someone else knew what keeps me up at nights."

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Five months later and the closest Arthur had gotten to Sam was last month, a vampire nest in Austin that Sam cleared out. Arthur was three days too late.

Bobby’d had a good laugh when Arthur had asked him whether the vampire infestation was related to the huge colony of bats in the city. "You've got a lot to learn, kid, but you'll get there." On the other end, Arthur heard Bobby flipping through an address book. "Haven't heard about any other jobs in the area, but there's an arms dealer that John used to be friendly with just outside of Marfa. Sam ought to be running low on ammo by now."

As it turned out, Sam had gone east instead, taking care of a load of ghouls in Louisiana, and had rearmed not through any arms dealer but by breaking into the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant. It took Arthur a week to plant enough false leads to keep those incompetent hacks at the FBI from blundering into Sam first. But even given the delay, and the fact that the whole stunt made it clear that Sam had stopped caring about his personal safety at all—Arthur had to give him points for sheer ballsiness.

And Arthur's trip to Marfa hadn't been a total loss: Vito No-Last-Name-Given had somehow procured an FN-SCAR-L and been willing to part with it for a mere six grand. Arthur had been wanting to try one out for ages. Not only was it an improvement on the M-16, but it also shot silver bullets with nearly the same accuracy and penetration as a NATO round.

Now Arthur was driving somewhere in Tennessee and losing ground. Arthur's phone chirped and he pulled it out of the center console. Mal texted, Blue coyote in AZ was rabid not Loki. no sign of Sam. Mal and Dom had meant to spend the summer investigating the potential risks and opportunities of building dreams within dreams, but instead Mal and Arthur had been criss-crossing the country looking for Sam while Dom watched the kids. Arthur shook his head: that coyote had sounded like a good lead, especially after that one anti-immigration sheriff had been mistaken for a border crosser by his own Minutemen and shot dead. They'd even had Bobby pass it along to Sam's voice mail, running the risk that he would see it as the trap it was — though Sam wouldn’t know that Mal and Arthur were working with Bobby.

The phone chirped again, softer this time. Eames. That made ten already this week. Arthur had been forced to put a password on his voicemail for people to leave messages, after both Mal and Bobby had been bounced out because his box was full of messages from Eames. But for once, just because the phone was already open, Arthur looked without deleting. i know youre alive. found you on CCTV at the atm last week + nobody else is that surly arthur I can help.

Arthur stared at the screen far longer than was legal or safe while driving. He could always—

No. If Arthur was considering calling Eames back, it meant his exhaustion had hit the level when he needed pull over for the night. Arthur finally understood Sam's low standards when it came to sanitary conditions in American hotels, but he was coming up on a decent-sized town called Clarksville and he could probably find a respectable chain, at least. All Arthur needed was a place to shower, sleep, and leave again in eight hours.

Those eight hours were cut down to five when the room phone rang at seven that morning. Arthur was already snarling by the time he had the receiver against his ear. "I didn't ask for a wake-up call.”

"I know Lavoisier didn’t pick you for your morning-after cuddles, but my goodness, someone is cranky," came an unfamiliar male voice. It might as well have been a bucket of ice-water.

"Sam Winchester is a hard man to find, isn’t he, Arthur?” the voice said. Arthur sat up. “Oh, but I don’t want to be rude—would you prefer I call you Sergeant Lan—"

"Who the fuck are you?" Arthur shouted, cutting him off. He jumped out of bed and started searching the room for bugs. This man knew Arthur's room number. He knew Sam's full name, and the codename Arthur had been protecting for seven years—more than that, he knew Arthur's real name. Arthur hadn’t heard his own name from anyone except his mother in years. No one in the world knew all four of those things. Whoever this guy was—government, dreamshare, hunter— this was someone to be reckoned with.

“Relax, hotshot,” said the voice. "Your secrets are safe with me.”

“Forgive me if I’m not inclined to believe you,” Arthur snapped. “Now what the hell do you want?”

“I've always liked you, Arthur, and you're very good at your job. So sit down and get a piece of paper."

Arthur grabbed the complimentary pad of paper beside his bed. "Why?"

"Because I'm going to tell you exactly when and where you're going to find Sam Winchester."

Arthur gripped the pen tighter. "You some kind of psychic?" After Pamela Barnes had hit a dead end, Arthur had mostly given up on psychics—she’d grabbed Arthur's ass and been horribly disappointed to find out his sexual preferences, though at least they'd been able to bond over mutual love of the Ramones. But Sam was good. Not even Bela Talbot, when Arthur'd tracked her down (the antique Colt now safely ensconced in one of Arthur's private safehouses), had been able to locate him.

The smug asshole on the other side started laughing again. "Oh, Arthur, you're even more adorable when you first wake up." His voice turned less playful. "If you’d had your morning coffee, you’d know exactly who I am."

Arthur wished he had that coffee to swallow around. "The Trickster."

"There's the best point man in the business," he said, and it sounded he was praising a small child. Did he really think Arthur would appreciate the condescension, or was he antagonizing Arthur on purpose? If finding Sam was playing into the Trickster’s game, maybe Arthur should stay out of it, wait for another chance.

"Sam's finally tracked me down,” the Trickster said. “Now, before you start getting your panties in a knot, you should know: I'm not going to hurt him. I'm trying to help him." And now he sounded like an exasperated parent. "I'm on your side, kiddo. Which is why you need to get your scrawny butt down to the Broward County Mystery Spot at exactly 9:15 pm tonight." He gave Arthur the exact address, exit number, and street directions for when Arthur got off the highway. Then he added, "Don't take too long in the shower, and eat one of those gas station hotdogs for lunch. You should make it right on time."

If not now, when? Arthur had been missing Sam on every job he worked for months. This might be the best chance he’d get at making Sam see sense, even if the Trickster’s intentions did end up being more malicious than he claimed. Arthur wished again for a stake that would get the job done and checked his watch. "That’s cutting it pretty close, considering I hit Atlanta at rush hour."

The Trickster laughed. "Today, Arthur, you don't have to worry about luck." He could hear the smirk on the other end of the line. "See you tonight."

~*~

The Trickster proved to be a demi-god of his word, at least as far as directions were concerned. Arthur parked next to Sam’s ridiculous car in the Mystery Spot parking lot at 9:12 pm. He paused for a moment, resting his head against the top of the steering wheel. Then he sat up, shrugged the wrinkles out of his jacket, and checked to make sure his Glock had a full magazine. It wouldn’t do much good against the Trickster, if the lore was to be believed. Then again he had led him to directly to Sam so maybe Arthur could give him the benefit of the doubt. Arthur considered it for a moment then chambered a round before pointing it at the ground and slipping through the unlocked back door, as per the Trickster's instructions.

The Mystery Spot was shoddy showmanship and cheap superstitious pandering combined into one tacky oversaturated hellhole. From the day-glo hallway, Arthur could hear voices from deep inside, but it was difficult to track the source with all the narrow halls and thin walls. It didn't help that a couple of the props — the tables on the ceiling, the clocks running backward — reminded him too much of dreamshare before Sam came along, when the rules of physics really didn’t have meaning. Some of the things that Arthur had seen in peoples' heads... the old soft places didn't always come with a warning, but the moment a dream started to resemble a Salvador Dali painting, you knew one was near. Better to shoot out than risk Limbo.

Arthur paused and pulled out his totem. He'd rolled it plenty of times today, but just seeing the pips and reassuring himself of its proper imbalance was enough for now. He let out a soft sigh, tucked his totem away, and moved his finger back on the trigger guard before continuing onwards.

Finally he came to a corner where the murmurs became coherent. He could hear Sam sniffling, but nothing sounded immediately threatening—the voice from the phone, the Trickster, actually sounded like he was considering giving in to the puppy dog eyes, just like the rest of the world. "... don't know. Even if I could—"

Sam jumped on the words desperately. "You can!" he said, and Arthur could hear the quaver in his voice.

The Trickster shot back with a "True," that sounded as firm and confident as Cobb. The tone shifted again after a brief pause, to that consoling, patient voice he'd used on the phone. "But that don't mean I should."

Sam replied with nothing but hitched breaths. Arthur tested the boards ahead of him and dared to creep forward to get a better view, using a few random seahorse sculptures to keep himself concealed. The new position revealed a sight far more disturbing and unnatural than any of the lame props.

The Sam Winchester Arthur knew charmed his way through situations. He was always ready with a quick retort, or a distraction so subtle that you didn’t realize he hadn’t answered your question until halfway through the next conversation. He cajoled, he used those damn eyes, he nagged, and if necessary, he wasn't above resorting to threats. Sam Winchester did not beg. But there he stood, shoulders and jaw quivering as his throat worked to keep the sobs down, staring down at a... short guy wearing a shirt straight out of Eames' wardrobe.

"Sam, there's a lesson here that I've been trying to drill into that freakish Cro-Magnon skull of yours," said the Trickster. Arthur's brief disappointment at the demi-god's unimpressive appearance fell away when Sam didn't try to contradict the comment — or complain about the insult.

"Lesson? What lesson?" asked Sam, sounding lost and confused. His shoulders kept shaking, his neck flexing, and Arthur was a split second from revealing himself to protect his Sam from this inhuman bastard, but the Trickster's reply stopped him in his tracks..

"This obsession to save Dean? The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other?” For the first time there was no hint of a smile in the Trickster’s manner. “Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood. And pain."

Arthur drew back a little, unsure. He’d pick Sam over any god that stood in his way, but the Trickster wasn’t entirely wrong. Wasn’t Sam’s inability to leave Dean the whole reason he was in this mess?

"Dean's your weakness,” the Trickster said, and Arthur couldn’t bring himself to disagree. “The bad guys know it too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam.”

And that—that sounded entirely too much like a god stating a fact. How much did this Trickster god know? There had to be a way to stop it, whatever was coming for Sam. Maybe, if Sam could just hear the truth in the Trickster’s words, that would be enough to shake him free of this path.

"Sometimes you just gotta let people go," the Trickster finished, turning away, and Arthur allowed himself the hope that that would be the end of it.

But Sam stood his ground: one last, senseless plea. "He's my brother."

The Trickster tossed the stake into his other hand and caught Arthur's eye just as he said, "Yup." He flashed Arthur a small smile before turning back to Sam. "And like it or not, this is what life's gonna be like without him."

"Please—" Sam began, on the verge of tears, but the Trickster held up a hand.

"There's more to life than brothers, Sam. Turn around.”

Arthur took a short step into the light, and Sam’s overbright eyes found his.

The Trickster beckoned Arthur. "Don't get all stabby again, Sam, because this is the genuine article.” Arthur stepped forward, and Sam stared, eyes wide and lower lip trembling. He looked almost like he might bolt for the closest exit, and Arthur's greeting froze in his throat. He couldn't stand this, couldn't stand the idea that Sam's first instinct was to run from him now.

"And why should I believe that?” Sam turned away from Arthur. “Ten minutes ago you were Bobby. Six months ago you sold radio ads. You’re trying to distract me, okay, and I can't —"

“I’m not a projection,” Arthur broke in. “This asshole woke me up at the crack of dawn and made me drive all the way down here but I only came because I wasn’t sure how else to find you.” Couldn’t Sam tell the difference between an illusion and the real Arthur?

“Arthur's been tracking you for five months,” the Trickster said, and Sam looked from one to the other, frowning. The Trickster sauntered closer. “The kind of thing you’d notice if you didn’t have your revenge blinders on, Sammy.”

“Don’t call me that,” Sam said, looking so lost and afraid that Arthur moved toward him instinctively.

“Sam.”

“Arthur?” Sam’s eyes skittered around Arthur’s face.

Arthur tried a smile. “Bobby kind of...told us what you do. Mal and I. And he gave all the Cobbs those little beads like the one I have so they’re safe, more or less. We’ve been trying to find you, Sam.” Sam looked back to the Trickster, and Arthur added quickly, “Check your totem. It’s me, I promise.”

“He came for you, Sam,” said the Trickster. “All by himself. He always would’ve followed you if you asked. If I didn’t know the word gave you crazy kids hives, I’d call it love.”

Very deliberately not thinking about that last bit, Arthur pivoted to face the Trickster, raised his Glock, and put two bullets in the chest and one in the forehead. The body slumped and disappeared before it hit the floor.

Sam coughed. "Mozambique drill’s not gonna work on a Trickster."

"Bobby said as much," said Arthur, shrugging and holstering the gun. He turned back to look at Sam and smiled. "But you know how I hate people who wake me up."

Sam laughed weakly, not quite able to meet Arthur's gaze. "He'll be back soon. He's not — he's never done." He swallowed roughly.

“So how were you planning to stop him?” Arthur asked.

"He killed Dean," Sam said, his voice eerily quiet and even. "Over...and over again. And he thought it was fun." Sam’s voice cracked as he finally looked Arthur in the eye. "And now it's been six months and he won't give him back."

“It’s gonna be okay, Sam,” Arthur said, and split-second later he had to brace himself as Sam's full weight leaned into his chest and Sam's knees buckled.

Arthur was strong, but even he couldn't keep all of Sam Winchester standing alone. He managed to drop them both to their knees without letting go, rubbing circles on Sam's back and moving his fingers through the curls at the nape of Sam's neck. Sam was trying to say something, face buried in Arthur’s collar, but Arthur couldn’t understand him between the sobs and hiccups. For his own part, there wasn’t anything that words would convey better than the tightening of his grip around Sam’s shoulders.

With a rustling sound, the Trickster reappeared. He didn’t say anything, just pulled a chair off the ceiling and settled in to stare at them with a look on his face that Arthur couldn't quite place: something between triumph and envy. Arthur glared back, bringing one hand to the back of Sam’s head as though to shield him; Sam’s fingers twisted like claws into the fabric of Arthur's shirt.

After another minute or so, the sobs finally began to subside. Arthur could feel the instant when Sam finished fully processing their conversation. His fingers released Arthur's sides, his spine went stiff, and Arthur let him do it, let Sam pull away. Arthur had had five months to adjust to knowing Sam's secrets; Sam was only now realizing that his carefully-protected façade had been shattered.

"Hi," Arthur said. Sam gave a watery, hysterical laugh, and Arthur resisted the impulse to hug him again. “Look, these past few months—I just want to say that I get it, okay? I understand why you never—I understand a whole lot."

Sam tried to wipe the snot from his nose, but he still looked like he was about to throw up, and Arthur couldn't stand it. Arthur offered Sam his pocket square and tried to phrase his next statement correctly.

"The whole time I've just—“ Arthur had to take a deep breath and lean back again, watching Sam clean himself up a bit. "I just wanted to know if you meant it."

Sam pushed his hair out of his face, still sniffling. "If I meant what?" he asked, his eyebrows knitted together.

And so what if he didn't remember the note Arthur still kept in his glovebox? He’d still written it. Arthur could quote it back for him if he liked—eight words weren’t hard to memorize. Arthur glared at the Trickster again, but the Trickster seemed deeply involved in consuming a lollipop and wasn’t looking at them. That would have to be close enough to privacy. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut and pushed the words out. “When you said you—wanted to stay."

Arthur hadn’t thought it possible for Sam to look more miserable. “Arthur,” he began.

"I can deal with this, Sam,” Arthur said, and his voice was steady, calm. “I’ve been dealing with this for the last five months." He smiled a little. "Learned how to bless my own holy water and everything. Mom's gonna have a fit if she ever finds the crucifix."

Even spooked and anguished, Sam had to laugh at jokes about Arthur's mom. That let Arthur say the last bit, the part he'd been rehearsing in his head over and over for five months. “So can you please just come back?”

Sam flinched, but the time for hiding was over. Arthur continued, “You always said if things had been different that we could’ve worked something out, and things are different now. Right? I found out and I’m okay. It’s okay, Sam.” Sam still wasn’t looking at him. “I want you to come back,” Arthur said, and it was probably the most difficult sentence that had ever come out of his mouth. “Or I'll go with you. I don't care. I just want you. I want you to stay with me. ”

Silence, save for sniffles.

And Sam was still looking at the floor, and Arthur looked down too, because he needed to know if the ground was dropping out from underneath him or if it just felt that way. Then Sam whispered, "I did—I do want to."

“Then what’s the problem?” Both Sam and Arthur twisted around to look at the Trickster, who'd stood up and come closer without either of them realizing. Arthur suppressed the urge to shoot him again. Sam scrambled to his feet, and Arthur followed suit.

"You can have this, Sam,” the Trickster said, pointing at Arthur. "This? Is something healthy. This road doesn't lead to the Apocalypse..”

“You shouldn’t have brought him.” Sam’s jaw clenched, and he was back to not looking at Arthur. “He’s not part of this, he shouldn’t even know about it, this isn’t—“ He choked a little, throat closing.

The Trickster looked up at Sam, and he looked…tired. “I swear, it’s like talking to a brick wall.” He sighed, and walked a few steps away before turning back to Sam with a flourish. ”Fine. The way I see it, you’ve got two choices here, Sam. I give you what you want, and it’ll be Wednesday again, this time without the nut job in the parking lot. And you’ll have three more months. And then Dean’s deal will be up. And you’ll have to do all this again.”

“What deal?” Arthur asked, but they ignored him.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Sam said, emphasizing his words through the nasal stuffiness his tears had given him. “We could still find a way to get him out of it.”

"I do know that, Sam. You've watched me tie time in knots like a sailor: you think I can't see the future?" The Trickster jerked his chin at Arthur. “There are other people in the world besides Dean. People who care about you.”

Arthur wanted to be wary of someone who could see that so plainly. This asshole had just witnessed Arthur confessing things to Sam that he usually didn’t even let himself think about. But he couldn’t worry about how the Trickster might use this against him when he was so busy watching every unhappy line of Sam’s face.

“He found out your big secret and he’s still here,” said the Trickster. “Go hunting together. Or go back to that dreamsharing business, if it makes you feel better. Hell, I’ll even throw in a bonus—those demons you’ve been after? Lilith, all her henchmen, that Ruby chick? I can keep them off your tail for good.” The Trickster moved toward Sam again, watching the way Sam’s mouth shook. He sighed. “That’s my counteroffer, Sam. Wake up tomorrow as safe as you’ll ever be, with a damn good shot at a long and reasonably happy life.” He moved until Sam made eye contact and said, ”Stop looking for things you’re not gonna find, Sam, and look at what's right in front of you. You have another choice here.”

Sam choked on another sob, but Arthur didn’t move, could barely keep his breathing steady as he waited for Sam to choose.

“I need—” Sam said, nose dripping and tears on his cheeks, “to go back—to Wednesday.”

Wednesday. Dean. And nothing Arthur had done for the past five months would matter.

Arthur had taken bullets that felt better than this, the sick twisting in his gut saying he didn’t choose you. He never chooses you. He never will. Even when Sam left Stanford, Arthur had held onto some hope that he’d come back, if not to dreamshare then at least to their little circle, to him. He’d been hoping that much longer than he wanted to think about. They just worked together, him and Sam, and Arthur was more than ready to follow Sam into his life if Sam wouldn’t come back to his. Sam said he still wanted this, dammit, so why wasn’t he willing to try, why was Arthur never going to be good enough to keep him?

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered, and for all Arthur’s control he couldn’t stop a tear from rolling down his face.

“Winchesters,” the Trickster snarled. “Why can’t you let each other go?”

Almost voiceless now, but loud enough to Arthur when he couldn’t let himself breathe without sobbing, Sam said, “He’s my brother.”

"And what am I?"

"Arthur—" Sam began, but the Trickster cut him off.

“You know what? Fine. This all stopped being fun months ago. And maybe you’ll remember this in three months when Arthur’s gone and Dean’s still dead.” The Trickster stalked away to the center of the room, looking somehow taller. Sam gave a shuddering gasp, his face blotchy red again, but didn’t say anything else.

The Trickster paused, though, and looked fully at Arthur for the first time. Arthur reached for his handkerchief, found it still missing, and tried to surreptitiously wipe his eyes on his sleeve.

“If it’s any consolation,” he told Arthur, “you aren’t going to remember any of this. You won’t even be thinking of him, I’ll make sure of it.”

Arthur looked at Sam and tried to imagine ever not thinking about him. “It’s not.”

The Trickster nodded and held up one hand. “I wish he had picked you,” he said, almost to himself.

Arthur thought, so do I.

The Trickster snapped his fingers.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Arthur raised his shoulders and rolled his head around, trying to get the cricks out of his neck. The mark hadn't emerged from his hacienda during this entire eight hour shift, and Eames was late to take over. This particular hole in the wall was actually a hole in the wall, a little niche in the hillside where Arthur could lie and wait outside of any sniper's line of sight and get some idea of the mark's routine. The grass made it softer than Afghanistan, but the bugs made it much itchier.

Finally his phone vibrated in his pocket and Arthur grabbed it, keeping his voice low and reminding himself that no matter what, he couldn't scream at Eames for whatever excuse he was about to give. "Yes?"

"I'm coming to take over, don't shoot," said Stella, hanging up immediately. Arthur frowned—it was definitely Eames' shift, he'd taken over for Stella at noon. Nonetheless, he started packing up, and by the time Stella crept over the ridge, he had the station set up just the way she liked it. "Where's Eames?" he whispered.

Stella shrugged, pushing him out of the way so she could get into position. "Said he'd found an anomaly in the background research, wanted to talk to you about it at the office. Sounded serious. I told him he'd do double shifts tomorrow."

Arthur's eyes narrowed; that was just vague enough that Eames could have something entirely different in mind. Then again, the mark had been behaving oddly— it was also entirely possible that Eames' evil mind had realized some evil illogical possibility that would never occur to Arthur. "Okay. Thanks."

Stella gave him the double pat on the shoulder that was her version of a full-hug. "Don't worry about it, just get out of here. You're noisy."

He crawled off, smiling. Working with Stella made things easy: she and Arthur came from similar backgrounds, even though hers was Belgian Jewish military, and they tended to think very much alike. It made dealing with Eames and Ivan and their mercurial ‘creativity’ much more tolerable. Stella stuck with things that worked, and it was her superior ability to infiltrate that made her an extractor rather than a point woman. He'd never once blown a job with her on lead, unlike other extractors he could think of; Mal's and Dom's experimental jobs tended to be much more exciting, but he kept getting shot during them— and not always in dreamspace.

By the time he’d reached the truck to drive back to the office, Arthur had run through his mental file on the mark and figured it had to be something about the step-daughter. Eames understood psychology and family dynamics far better than Arthur ever could, so there was the possibility that a freshly uncovered secret on that front might make the job much simpler—and require Arthur and Victor to completely redesign the dream.

Really, everything was going fine until his phone rang again and he picked up without looking. "I'm almost there," he said, expecting Eames' usual impatience when he'd had a breakthrough.

Instead, Sam Winchester hummed wordlessly. "Uh, okay. Is this a bad time?"

Arthur kept his eyes on the road. It was eight pm on Valentine's Day and Arthur was on the phone with Sam Winchester, who most likely was a thousand miles away, doing whatever it was that he never wanted to talk about. "There could be worse, but make it quick."

"Okay," said Sam, before taking a long pause. Arthur dodged a trench in the road and gave the phone a look, to see if there was still a connection. "I've just been, you know, thinking about things."

Actually, given the tone of Sam's voice, there would never be a good time for this conversation. But Arthur kept his tone light. "Important things, I hope?"

"Yes," came Sam's immediate reply. "I—Look, you remember Pittsburgh?"

“Uh,” said Arthur.

“Because I guess, seeing you again, that you were willing to show up, uh.” Sam cleared his throat. "I guess I hadn't realized how much I missed you."

Sam paused again; Arthur pulled over into the undergrowth and killed the engine. "Sam, what's going on?" It had already been a long day— Arthur itched in places he didn't want to think about— and Sam's voice sounded too tense, too nervous, too much like the worst was yet to come. And that little spark of... no, Arthur wouldn't let himself think that.

Sam sighed. "Arthur, I love you."

Fuck.

"And I want you to be happy. And it looks like you're— I mean, you were stressed, but you looked good last month." Because this was Sam Winchester, he would never have considered that part of the reason Arthur looked good was because he'd been there to see Sam. But Arthur didn't have anything to say back, because he might not be quite as intuitive at social interactions as Eames but he wasn't a moron.

"You looked happy," said Sam. "And... I want that for you, okay? Just not. Not with me."

Arthur checked his watch again to confirm: Sam had indeed chosen to have this conversation on Valentine's Day. "You do know we're not dating?" he said roughly, cutting off something about how Sam took Arthur for granted—which was damn fucking straight, but Arthur didn't mind, because Arthur never minded doing something for Sam because... because...

"No, we're not," replied Sam, and Arthur could hear just a little hitch in Sam's voice. "But that's... that's good. Because I really do love you, Arthur. I just... I think we should stop pretending that I'll ever be able to make you happy."

Arthur squeezed the bridge of his nose. "May I ask what led to this epiphany?" He wanted to hang up, he did, but this was Sam and he couldn't quite make himself pull the phone away before Sam answered.

"I'm fucking this up,” Sam said, and his exhale came as a rush of static. “What else is new, right?” Arthur frowned, but Sam was still speaking. “I just—needed you to know, I guess. And you— you can always call me if you need help, or if I forget to send James and Phillipa their birthday cards, or if you just need to scream at someone, because I deserve it, I really do."

Arthur straightened his back; he hadn't expected that much of an overcorrection. "Sam, are you okay?" he asked, soft and gentle as he only ever could manage with Sam.

“Yeah.” Sam sniffled again. "Trust me, worrying about me will just make you miserable. I know you'll still—check up on me, and all, and if the FBI ever grabs me I know who's bailing me out. But you should just—find someone better for you, all right?"

"This isn't making me worry about you any less," said Arthur after a moment's pause.

“Nobody’s dying anytime soon,” Sam said, oddly emphatic. “But it's not fair to you to keep doing...this."

Arthur sighed and knuckled his forehead with his free hand. "What about to you?"

"Told you: don't worry about me." Sam's voice had gone uncharacteristically calm—not detached, not resigned, but somehow serene. "And give Mal a hug next time you see her?"

Arthur's eyes went wide. "Sam—"

"I’ll update the Oblivion File if anything goes really wrong,” Sam said. “Until then, I've made my bed and I'm gonna sleep in it." He let out one bitter laugh. "It's just not a bed you really want to join me in."

Fuck, Arthur was tired, and he was especially tired of fighting with Sam. He never won anyway. "Okay. You say so."

"Good," said Sam, sounding relieved; Arthur envied him. "Good. Okay. Go get some sleep or something, okay? And just—thanks."

Arthur started to say, "Goodbye," but the line clicked shut before he could get it out.

About ten minutes later, Arthur pulled into the office courtyard, planning to tell Eames that whatever it was could wait. Yes, it was barely half past nine, but Arthur needed... Arthur needed some rest. Some normal sleep. And possibly a couple of shots of José Cuervo's Extra-Añejo Reserve, which he just happened to have on hand at his hotel room.

But before Arthur could even kill the engine, Eames opened the passenger door and hopped into the truck with him. "Your couch is comfier and you sprang for the beachside room, so we're definitely doing this at your place," Eames said, like that explained anything.

"What?" said Arthur, totally lost. Eames was holding a couple of paper bags that he set in the footwell, their contents an utter mystery.

Eames smiled and turned on a dim flashlight on his keychain, flashing it at Arthur's face. "As expected," he said, turning it off and stuffing it back in his pocket. Arthur kept staring at him blankly and Eames sighed. "Four years I've known you, and as surly as you are generally, you're the most miserable bastard on the planet come Valentine's." Somehow Eames had Arthur's phone in his hand. "Mmm. Ten minutes. Just get a call from the usual suspect?"

Arthur was this close to shooting him in the head, damn the consequences, but then the expression on Eames' face softened. "You don't have to answer, you know. I just figured— don't get that look on your face. If I ever decide I'm set on sweetly romancing you, I'll do a far better job of it than this." Eames winked at him. "But I figured that an Alfred Hitchcock marathon, some mole, and a quart jar of Angel LaGuerta's freshest bathtub rum would be a pretty decent prescription for whatever it is."

Arthur stared at Eames for a second before saying, "The rum's in a glass jar, right?"

"Of course."

"And it's his best stuff?"

"He has a soft spot for me," said Eames, sounding entirely too sure of himself.

"So there's only a forty percent chance we'll wake up blind," said Arthur. Even sealed in a jar, he could scent a hint of LaGuerta's brew already.

Eames grinned. "I've set up a tidy nest egg for us to retire on, just in case," he said. "Come on, the mole's getting cold and I know how much you hate microwaved rice."

Arthur looked at him for just a second more, then let himself smile just a little, and put the car into gear. "It always comes out crunchy and nasty," he grumbled to save face.

Eames chuckled and put his hand over Arthur's on the shifter. "So you've informed me, darling." Then he pulled his hand back, and once again they were just Arthur and Eames: two of the best in the business, there to watch each other's back even when they bickered like schoolchildren; partners because sometimes... sometimes Eames made Arthur laugh when he wanted to die. Arthur slanted Eames one last glance and felt the corners of his mouth turn up.

Sometimes, Eames made Arthur happy.

___________________

End Notes: If you made it this far, sorry about the delay -- I had to finish that pesky M.A. and then... well, then this chapter got a little out of hand. I started this story back in December as a complete puff-piece. "Ha ha -- it'd be funny to see Mystery Spot from the point of view of someone stuck in the loop -- and ooh, phone sex!" Maybe 5k, a few bits emotional, but most of it fun and goofy.

Then Cally and Bridget and DS took a look at it and informed me that, "No, the real story starts on Wednesday." And we all chatted and wrote and certain facts about this 'verse I hadn't understood previously revealed themselves. It was a bizarre moment for me, an admiral in the Eames/Arthur armada, who still believes this series will ultimately be "Eames/Arthur, past Sam/Arthur," when I realized that 'oh, fuck: Arthur loves Sam and he is about to... oh they're both going to be so fucked over by this." It's Shakespearean tragedy: even though Gabe ships Sam/Arthur (a fact which may be further elaborated on later, if I ever convince Lass to write it), there was simply never a question of who Sam was going to choose at the Mystery Spot. There's just a bit left to tell in this season three trilogy -- hopefully that story won't manage to double the word count of the entire series. **shakes head**

All of my love and gratitude to the everyone who helped me write and beta and revise when weaknesses that had been in the outline since the earliest days suddenly became glaringly obvious on the last run-through. I love you all dearly, even you Cally, even when you made me write a scene so angsty that I broke out into hives. (If you need it, there's photographic proof.)

Oh - and in case some of you missed it: back in March, I posted the series' timeline to anyone who wants to join in on the fun (oh, right now, what I'd give for some fluffy Sam/Arthur Stanford era fic). There's a couple of spoilers still left in there, but with this story out of the way, I think most of the biggest surprises are finally in the open.

And thanks for making it through to the end, and for your patience, and for reading.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/87854.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Kaddish (Inception, Eames/Arthur, R)

moragmacpherson — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:06:15 GMT

Title: Kaddish
Author: moragmacpherson
Beta: callowyn
Fandom: Inception
Rating: R
Pairings: Eames/Arthur
Characters: Arthur, Mal, Philippa, Miles, Eames, Dom, OCs
Timeline: Pre-movie
Contents include: Canonical character death, religious imagery, language, graphic sexual situations
Author's note: Never mind that I made her beta it, this is kind of a graduation present for callowyn inspired by this conversation with my roommate (Further proof that just knowing Cally will enable you to inject angst into anything). Congratulations, hon: you made it out alive (which is more than I can say for many of your thesis characters).
Summary: Regardless of which calendar Arthur uses, Mal has been dead for thirty-four days now.

The sun has set and now it's Monday, the Twenty Fifth of Kislev, first night of Hanukkah in the year 5769. Winter twilight does not linger and it is Sunday, December Twenty First, the Solstice and the longest night in the Year of Their Lord, 2008. Regardless of which calendar Arthur uses, Mal has been dead for thirty-four days now.

Once he'd left the military, Arthur, who'd never been terribly observant in the first place, had quit keeping track of the Jewish calendar at all. But then he began doing freelance work with Mal, and she had lectured him about the importance of traditions and rituals to help ground himself in the real world. After the second year that Mal needed to remind him to fast on Yom Kippur, slapping his hands away from the bacon she invariably cooked (she'd been lovely, yes, but cruel in her own way), Arthur had made a tradition of his own. The first night of Hanukkah, he would give Mal a small gift.

The first year it had been a pewter menorah from Ethiopia. The second year, a mezuzah he carved himself out of boxwood. Now the menorah stands in the window of the Cobb's house, two candles lit, and the mezuzah still guards the front door, as impotent to keep evil spirits away as Arthur had been to convince Mal that this house was really and truly her home.

This gathering was Deborah's idea. Arthur's sister hadn't known Mal terribly well, but Sophie won't be able to return to Los Angeles and her grandchildren until after the New Year, and Deborah had declared the children needed a woman in their lives. "You can play Uncle Arthur all you want, but those kids lost their mother forever,” she'd said. “Besides, it's an excuse to spoil them and make that house a little less empty for awhile." Miles had sided with Deborah, the traitor; now he's sitting on the couch, holding James while failing to keep his grandson from getting gelt all over his face, shirt, and surroundings. On the floor, Arthur's niece and nephew keep singing the damn song while Deborah teaches Pippa the rules.

I have a little dreidel,
I made it out of clay
When it's dry and ready,
then dreidel I shall play.

This year, Arthur had made Mal a dreidel. It isn't made of clay. He'd carved it from cocobolo wood and inlaid the letters in silver by hand. Arthur's good with his hands and he likes the feeling of creating something in the real world, something that won't collapse. The dreidel is solid and lovely and perfectly balanced as he rolls it in his palm, the other cradling a tumbler of scotch while he leans on the threshold, just outside of the celebrations. No one in the room except for Miles knows it, but Arthur has a red eye flight in a few hours, the first leg of a long journey that will reunite him with Dom. After that, well...

"Uncle Arthur wants to play, doesn't he?" says Deborah, and Arthur flinches, torn between annoyance at her dragging him into this and relief that she'd interrupted his train of thought.

He's about to shake his head when Pippa looks up and says, "Come on, Uncle Arthur."

Arthur smiles — he's about to abandon her without a word, there's no way he can deny Phillipa anything right now — finishes the scotch and leaves the glass on the sideboard, then settles down next to Phillipa. "Your dreidel looks just like the floor," she says, her eyebrows knitting together just the same way Mal's always had.

The dreidel in his hand does in fact have almost the same finish as the Cobb's floor, exactly the effect he'd been trying for. Arthur pauses for a moment, the scotch maybe getting to his head just a little, before he offers the toy to Phillipa. "You're right. Seeing as it matches, I think you should keep it."

Phillipa eyes dart between the tiny work of art in his hand and the fluorescent pink piece of plastic that Deborah had given her, clutching it tighter. But Phillipa is her mother's daughter, and fuck, it might almost be better for Dom that he isn't around, because she puts down her preferred pink top and accepts Arthur's gift with a formal inclination of the head. "Thank you, Uncle Arthur. We can both use this one."

In the weeks since their mother died and their father fled, Pippa's been veering between needy child — barely more than a toddler, really — and this odd, funhouse mirror image of her mother. Arthur gives her a smile he thinks is sincere and cups his hand around the back of her neck, running his thumb up and down along her spine. It's something Dom always did to himself when stressed, and at the touch Pippa's needless poise eases away and she settles closer to Uncle Arthur — Uncle Arthur, who's going to abandon her too in just a few short hours.

For almost an hour, he watches Pippa add to the pot, take half the pot, all of it, or do nothing at all. Jael, Ben, and Deborah do the same, shin, gimel, hei, and nuun showing up about as randomly as expected. But every time Arthur spins the top, it swirls, wobbles, then drops, the silver shin, shtel arayn, telling him to give another piece of gelt to the pot.

Deb's eyes go a little wide after the sixth spin. "It's just not your night, I guess."

Arthur's remaining calm — his die is in his left pocket, under Pippa's head. There's just no way for him to check it without causing some awkward questions. He turns his head to look back at Miles, but the old man's disappeared, apparently having taken James off to be cleaned up and probably put to bed.

Within ten turns, Arthur's bankrupt. Pippa offers him a loan and he hugs her but says no. "I'm not having much luck anyway, sweetie — it's better off in your hands." He gives her a kiss and then retreats to the kitchen, where he can roll his die. Maybe it was too much to hope this was a dream, a sign; that he'd fallen into Limbo and Mal was trying, in her own way, to pull him out without risking falling down herself. It was a dreidel — half-top, half-die —

But no, this is reality. There are tears running down his face but it’s all real. He washes up, pours himself another tumbler of scotch, then another, and hides in the kitchen until the game finishes and he hears Deborah and Miles giving hints about bedtimes.

Arthur's legs are a little unsteady as he walks to the living room; Deborah gives him a dirty look, Miles a concerned one. Arthur's able to hide a stumble as an intentional drop to one knee so that he can hug Pippa goodbye properly. He holds her a little too tight, but with the way her fingertips clutch at his jacket, she's holding a little tighter than normal too. When he pulls away her eyes are lowered and her lips are twisted to one side. For a moment Arthur's terrified that somehow she can read him as well as her mother always could, that Philippa's figured out that he's about to leave her too. But then she holds up her hand and offers him the wooden dreidel back. "It's very pretty, but I like the pink one. And I don't think you'd like the pink one," says Philippa.

She's right, and Arthur can't really do anything but slip the gift back in his pocket. Pippa gives him another kiss on the cheek. "Shalom, Uncle Arthur," she says, not quite getting the pronunciation right, but she gives it a good try.

Deborah berates him in hushed tones the entire drive back to his house, her own kids falling asleep almost as soon as they pull onto the highway. "I know Mal was your friend, but I swear, Philippa's dealing with this better than you are. You're supposed to be strong for her, Arthur — not the other way around."

Arthur slumps his forehead against the cool, non-judgmental glass of the window. 'I know," he whispers.

"Sleep it off — but you have to promise me you'll be better tomorrow," says Deb, pulling into Arthur's driveway. Arthur nods, fumbles with the belt and manages to get it off — it's a good thing he'd packed this morning — when Deborah grabs his arm. "I love you, Arthur, but I'm your big sister and I know you. You weren't even this bad when Dad passed." She sighs. "If you need some help — I know the Army messed with your head and you don't like shrinks, but you could just talk to Paul over coffee once, get some of this out. I think it would help." Paul, her husband's brother, the therapist Arthur met only once, at the wedding.

Arthur lays his hand over Deb's and pulls her into a hug. "I love you too," he tells her he pulls away. "And I'm gonna try to be better tomorrow, I promise."

She gives him one last, sad, resigned smile as he steps out of the car. "Are you gonna be able to get your key in the lock?" she asks, raising one eyebrow.

And this is better. He can play little brother, one last time. That's how he wants to say goodbye this time. Arthur pulls his keys out of his pocket, tosses them in the air, spins around on one foot, and catches the keys just as he makes it all the way back around. "I'll be okay, Deb."

She laughs. "Mom and Dad really should have let you keep up those dance classes. You're wasted as a security consultant." Arthur shuts the door and she lowers the window. "Be good," is the last thing she tells him, and he waves goodbye.

Deborah drives off and Arthur watches her go before he stumbles to his front door and manages to unlock it on the third try. He goes to the kitchen, drinks down three glasses of water, strips haphazardly on his way to the bedroom — he loves his bed, he's going to miss his bed — and collapses onto the mattress. Before he lets himself pass out, he sets the alarm for two am and calls the taxi company to confirm his pick up time.

Four hours later, Arthur's on a flight to Heathrow.

It has a lovely body, with legs so short and thin.
When it gets all tired, it drops and then I win!
Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, with leg so short and thin.
Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, it drops and then I win!

It's Christmas Eve, December 24, 2008, the fourth day of Hanukkah and Arthur is sitting on Eames' couch while Eames rustles through some cabinets . They're in Eames' studio apartment in Dresden, the one that looks like it hasn't been renovated since the bombings, but Eames owns the whole building, so it's actually more secure than most of Saddam Hussein's bunkers. This floor, the third, is the only one that's actually habitable, or so Eames claims—hence the warmer than normal greeting, the lack of sarcasm, and Eames' apparent assumption that their on-again-off-again thing is on again, at least for tonight. Normally Arthur would balk at the presumption, but Mal's been dead for thirty-seven days (thirty-eight? It's so hard to keep track when traveling), and he hasn't slept since that nap right before he got on the plane, and Eames is, if nothing else, familiar.

Which is part of the reason Arthur jumps up when Eames returns to the couch and drops a box of Leonidas bon bons, what appears to be the alcoholic contents of at least six hotel minibars, and Arthur's dreidel onto the table. "Where'd you get that?" he shouts.

Eames stops him with a hand. "Oh hush, darling, it was in the pocket of your coat. And you're off your game if you’re letting me take your coat for you, which means you're sorely in need of creature comforts." Eames begins doling out the bon-bons and tiny bottles of alcohol. "Besides, it's Christmas Eve, you're my guest, and I didn't even put up any mistletoe for you. So we'll indulge in your traditions instead."

Eames picks up the dreidel and rolls it in his hand, getting a feel for it, then spins it a few times to ensure it's properly weighted — in general, neither of them gamble honestly, save with each other. "It's really quite lovely. Your work, I assume?" Arthur nods, settling back onto the couch, Eames warm and smiling at his side. "You have a signature style," says Eames, and Arthur's spine stiffens just a bit, waiting for the customary jibe about obsessive compulsive behaviors. Instead Eames pats Arthur's thigh and says, "I like it. Guest spins first."

To Arthur's initial relief, the top drops on hei that first spin, and Arthur claims an ounce of Gray Goose from the pot. But then it starts happening again. The game keeps going and going, because while Eames takes turns claiming the whole pot, or half or it, or throwing his winnings in, or doing nothing at all, Arthur rolls hei, halb, half, every time. Eames discreetly checks his totem; Arthur blatantly checks his own. Then, rather than playing or talking about it, they just start eating the sweets and drinking the booze and pulling each other's clothes off before making their way to Eames' bed.

The mattress is too soft for Arthur's taste, but Eames' body is firm and the sex is slow and sloppy, if a little awkward. Arthur's trying to be rough, wrapping his legs around Eames’ hips and pulling Eames deeper into his ass on every thrust, but Eames is forcing him to accept that it's going be tender, caresses up and down his body and only breaking their kisses for a few moments while he comes. Then Eames gives Arthur one of those fantastic blowjobs like only Eames ever can, where Arthur loses track of time and his mind and everything else in the world except for Eames' hands and mouth on his body.

They've had enough to drink that Arthur doesn't need to put up any token resistance to Eames’ customary insistence on cuddling afterwards. Eames' skin is warm and marked with scars and tattoos; his heart beats slow and regular under Arthur's ear. Eames lives enough life for any other three people in the world, and in his arms, not feeling quite so alone, Arthur finally gets some proper sleep.

The sleep is so refreshing that Arthur manages to wake up and leave before either the sun or Eames rises.

My dreidel's always playful. It loves to dance and spin.
A happy game of dreidel, come play now let's begin.
Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, it loves to dance and spin.
Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. Come play now let's begin.

It's almost December 30th, 2008; Hanukkah ended at sundown, and Cobb's hooked up to a PASIV when Arthur finally walks into the shack on the outskirts of Hrodna, Belarus, where Cobb has been hiding for the last three weeks. Arthur dumps his bags in the living room before he hooks his foot under Cobb's chair and tips the damn thing over.

Arthur's face is red and he's breathing heavily and he knows it, but he doesn't care. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Cobb's hasn't been doing much else besides dreaming since he got here, judging by the smell of him and how groggy he is as he comes out of the dream. "Arthur, how'd you get here so fast—?"

Arthur stops him with a slap across the face. "I'm two days late, asshole. I caught a tail in Poland and I had to detour through Ukraine. What the fuck are you doing, going down alone?" Is Cobb trying to get himself stuck in Limbo, to put Arthur through the last hellish six months all over again?

Even worse, Mal had talked Arthur into agreeing to be the kids' guardian in the event she and Dom and her parents all died. It hadn't seemed possible at the time, but now— ‘Hi kids, this is Uncle Eames, always check your pockets after he gives you a hug.' He certainly can't rely on Eames for help — or any of the other career criminals he counts as his closest personal friends. And Mal, with her traditions — sure, Philippa would probably be able to let him know about the personal family ones, but what about those weird little things that goyim just assume everyone knows? Arthur only remembers the version of Jingle Bells where the next line is 'Batman smells'! Is he supposed to raise the kids Catholic? Is a gay Jew even allowed to raise kids Catholic? How is he supposed to handle this on his own?

"Look at this place!" Arthur yells instead. Cobb blinks at him. It's a safehouse they've used before, mostly due to the lack of extradition treaties, but it's poorly built even by 1970s Soviet standards. "What if the fucking furnace exploded? In Soviet construction, building collapses you, asshole!"

"I was just —"

Arthur pulls Cobb up to his feet. "I don't want to hear it. Go to the damn bathroom and get in the shower. If I'm feeling really nice, I'll remember to turn on the water heater before you figure out how the spigots work." Arthur looks down at Cobb's left hand as he pulls out the IV, noticing the pale band of skin where a wedding ring ought to be. The plain gold band is still sitting on Mal's vanity, next to her ring, in their bedroom in L.A. James and Phillipa will have those mementos of their parents, at least.

Arthur's not going to let that be all. "Dom!" He snaps his fingers in front of Cobb's face. Cobb’s eyes focus for long enough that Arthur feels comfortable turning him around and pushing him towards the bathroom. "Shower. Don't bother shaving —" he's shaking so bad he'd turn his face into mincemeat— "but you might want to brush your teeth." Cobb stumbles forward, slowly but surely, and because Arthur does love him, does need him to keep living, he flips the switch in the closet that turns on the hot water.

He still has to fetch Cobb out of the shower forty-five minutes later when there's no hot water left and Dom is still curled in the tub, blue-lipped and not really responsive. Arthur towels him off — at least not eating means he's light enough for Arthur to move around pretty easily. He throws a t-shirt and sweatpants onto Dom before dragging him to the only bed in the house.

Then Arthur reaches for a small brown bag that he'd swiped from Eames' apartment. It's not something they talk about often — it's not something most people know about, or should know about, and they certainly shouldn't have to use it — but it's something Eames, if anyone, would have on hand. Arthur pulls a full dose out of the vial, taps all the air out of the syringe, and cleans Dom's right bicep with an alcohol wipe.

He injects Dom with 15 ccs of Somcan and pulls the needle out as quickly as he can, because with that much Somnacin in his system suddenly neutralized by the competitive antagonist, the very first thing Dom's going to do is have a mild seizure. Arthur holds him down — Dom brought it on himself, he shouldn't be dreaming at all in this condition, much less alone — until Dom's limbs quit spasming.

When Dom's eyes pop open, his gaze is clear. He looks at Arthur. "Why?” he whispers. “Why did you bring me back here?"

Arthur hands Dom a granola bar and a glass of milk. "Because Phillipa and James still have a father. And they're going to get him back one day." Dom looks down and doesn't say anything.

Arthur grabs another vial out of the bag, and Dom raises an eyebrow. "I'm not a cold bastard," Arthur says.

After a moment's hesitation, Dom says, "You're not."

Arthur nods. He fills another syringe and cleans off Dom's other bicep with another alcohol wipe. "This is morphine. The good stuff. You'll be down for eight hours, no dreams, just sleep. Then, we'll talk."

Dom finishes the milk and sets the glass on the side table. "Okay."

"Go to sleep, Mr. Cobb," says Arthur, pressing down the plunger.

Later, after Arthur's put away groceries and shoveled some more coal into the furnace—after he's put Dom's things away in the closet and found Mal's top tucked into Dom's favorite jacket pocket; after he's eaten and showered himself—he makes up a bed on the sofa and turns on the small black-and-white television. The only channel it receives is playing a poorly dubbed version of It's a Wonderful Life, but in this part of Belarus, he's lucky that he's getting anything at all. Arthur lies down on his side and then shifts, because he has to pull that fucking dreidel out of his pocket. He looks at it for a second, then at Mal's top, which he's set on the coffee table in front of him.

Arthur's not an observant Jew; he doesn't pray. But he does think of Mal. He spins the dreidel one more time. Nuun, nisht, nothing. He spins the dreidel again, but a little too hard this time, so that it skitters off of the table and falls to the floor in the dark. Arthur shakes his head: he's being foolish. He turns off the television right as Violet gets arrested for pickpocketing. He falls asleep quickly and, as usual, does not dream.

In the morning he wakes up, uses the bathroom, then walks to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. His bare foot finds the dreidel first.

"Sonova—!" Arthur cuts himself off, not wanting to wake Cobb prematurely; he needs coffee before he can cope with himself, much less whatever version of Cobb will wake up this morning. He balances on his right leg and lifts up his left foot so that he can pull the dreidel off of it. Because he's a masochist, he checks.

The dreidel had once again landed nuun face up. Nothing.

He scoops Mal's top off of the coffee table and creeps into Dom's room. He sets both tops on the bed stand next to Dom's head. Dom doesn't stir and the house is silent.

Arthur goes to the kitchen and starts the coffee; the sound of percolating makes him jump. The house is empty, the field outside the window is empty, Dom's unconscious; there's nothing but Arthur and the sound of boiling water. Hanukkah is over and day after tomorrow it will be a New Year, 2009, and Mal will never see it, Mal will never see his gift; Arthur will never make her another one. The tradition is over. Mal has been dead forty two days and she's left Arthur here in Belarus with nothing.

No.

Better to think of nothing at all.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/87325.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Not Such as I Was Timeline (Superception)

moragmacpherson — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:08:15 GMT

"I...OK, not a crossover that would have occurred to me right off, but it works kind of scarily well." - Ao3 bookmark comment by MollyC

This sums up about half the comments this series has received, reminding me that not everyone has spent the last six months obsessing over Superception the way I have. For me, this is a parallel head canon, so I'm always confused by people being surprised that it works. Of course it works! This is how it happened!

The thing of it is: I love this crossover and I will never be able to write all of the fic that I want in it. Plus, I'm lazy and would like to read some without having to write it first. Hence this post: the merged timeline of my Superception 'verse, "Not Such As I Was". If you're curious how to pull the two canons together, here are the basic mechanics and back story for how I chose to do it: a mix of canon, fanon, historical fiction, applied phlebotinum, miracles, and, of course, True Love(s).

I post it in the hopes it may inspire some people to cross these canons over in completely different ways. It's also an open invitation for other people to join this sandbox; after the timeline, there are some general guidelines that I'm using while writing the series, further details on Project Lavoisier, quite a bit of miscellany and some story ideas that I don't know if I'll ever get around to incorporating. But maybe one of you will.

Needless to say: here there be spoilers-- probably. This is a living document: it's how I think the two canons interacted prior to June 2012 (with the help of my accomplices - Cally, Squid, Sis, DS, Mel, Lass and anyone else whose ear I've talked off: THANK YOU.). Particular details about events may change in the process of fic writing, or if someone happens to come along with some much better idea about what happened. Also, these are by no means the only places where the canons intersected: others almost certainly happened, it's just they haven't been noticed yet. So if you notice 'em, feel free to tell us all about 'em.

-MM
______________
TIMELINE - 'Not Such As I Was' - a Superception 'verse

(AKA Mashing together the SPN and Inception timelines, AKA - I really hope there isn't some expanded universe origin for somnacin and the dreamshare programs, because I just came up with one and it was complicated. Also, all of these births are included so that I know everyone's ages in both 2001-2003 and 2012 and when various people could be in the army, meet each other, etc.)

February, 1950 - Bobby Singer born (note: according to Superwiki, Bobby is fluent in Japanese)

April 22, 1954 - John Winchester born

December 5, 1954 - Mary Winchester born

August, 1959 - Saito born - only child of a couple that runs a noodle house that doubles as a Perfectly Legitimate Businessmen's Club in Yokohama.

October, 1966 - Ellen Longabaugh (later, Harvelle) is born.

~~Autumn~~ April- May 1973 - Mary makes the deal, death of the Campbells, (thank you, elliemurasaki , for the catch!)

Autumn 1973 - birth of Mallory Miles

Spring 1974 - Dominic Cobb is born

June 1976 - Eames born - blue blood. He is the (much) younger of two sons.

Spring 1978 - Yusuf is born in Karachi; Saito graduates from high school; Dean is conceived; Mary Campbell and John Winchester lose all memories of their adult sons.

January 1979 - Dean Winchester born

October 1980 - Arthur born, youngest child after an older brother, Daniel, and an older sister Deborah; Maxwell Azania, a South African exchange student in Leipzig, East Germany, begins work on his dissertation project examining the potential uses of Silene capensis - African dream root.

March 1982 - Saito graduates from the University of Tokyo with a degree in mechanical engineering ("A great manager will understand every aspect of his business.")

May 2, 1983 - Sam Winchester born

June 1983 - Upon news of his father and brother's imprisonment following the Church Street bombing, Maxwell Azania returns to South Africa, his dissertation drafted but incomplete. Azania is taken into custody upon his arrival in Cape Town.

July 1983 - Azania's advisor, Manfred Ulbricht, still hopeful that Azania may be released and receive his degree, submits a copy of Azania's draft to both the University's administration and the Stasi, as is routine. Two weeks later, the Stasi confiscate all of Azania's notes and briefly detain Ulbricht, who is released as a loyal communist after three months.

May, 1985 - Saito graduates from Harvard Business School with an MBA with High Distinction and begins working as a middle manager at Osaka Electric Power Company, Inc., a Proclus Global subsidiary.

May 2, 1986 - Ulbricht defects to the U.K. during a chemistry conference.

December 1986 - Jo Harvelle is born.

August 1989 - In the chaos leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a member of the Stasi and double agent for MI-6 is killed while delivering Azania's work into the hands of an American courier. Prior to forwarding the package to MI-6, the CIA makes copies.

September 1989 - Professors Stephen Miles is awarded a four year chair as a guest professor in Architecture at Cornell University. His wife, Professor Marie "Sophia" Miles, is given a position in the psychology department as a spousal hire.

December 1989 - Ariadne is born.

June 1990 - During the Apartheid negotiations, the CIA negotiates for the quiet release of Azania and arrange for his emigration to the United States.

September 1990 - Mallory Miles begins studying psychology at Columbia University; Adam Milligan is born.

June 1991 - Saito marries Shinoda Nobuko, daughter of the COO of Proclus Global, Shinoda Kōsai. They manage to expand and diversify Proclus' international holdings and are one of few Japanese-based multinationals to dramatically expand during the Lost Decade.

September 1991: Dominic Cobb enters the architecture program at Cornell.

Thanksgiving, 1992 - Dom and Mallory meet.

Spring 1993 - Mal graduates and returns to Paris with her mother. Stephen Miles is contacted by the United States military and accepts a renewable research grant with them.

Summer 1993 - Sophia Miles is contacted by the British military. At her request, her daughter Mallory joins her as an assistant.

Autumn 1994 - Eames and Yusuf begin reading at Trinity College in Cambridge; despite this, they first meet in Cape Town nearly ten years later.

November 1995 - Eames drops out of Trinity College despite exemplary marks and enters the military as part of a confidential agreement allowing him to avoid imprisonment after The Incident (The records have been sealed for the next 150 years; Eames isn't particularly proud of it, but he doesn't feel terribly guilty about it either.)

December 1995 - Dom Cobb completes his architecture degree at Cornell; plans to continue his degree at the University of Paris are disrupted when he is offered a research position with the U.S. military, which he accepts.

August, 1996 - During holiday, Stephen and Sophia Miles realize over dinner that they're working for competing dreamshare programs. Neither has been able to achieve an entirely stable dream: the U.S. focusing on the architecture while the Brits assumed it was a psychological and /or chemical issue.

September 1996 -   The U.S. and U.K. military finally acknowledge the existence each other's dreamshare programs when Stephen and Sophia Miles together build and populate the world's first stable shared dream. This proof of concept is then replicated by Dominic Cobb and Mallory Miles within a month.

Summer 1997 - Arthur's father dies of natural causes.

Autumn 1997 - Yusuf receives a double first (roughly equivalent to a double major, Magna Cum Laude in Ameri-speak) and a Masters in chemistry and neurobiology from Trinity College; he returns to Karachi and works at a small medical research firm for about a year before the ISI hands him the Azania Paper and a vial of Somnacin and ask him to start reverse engineering.

Spring 1998 - Eames is reassigned to the U.K. dreamshare program.

Summer 1998 - "Try sticking up a notice on any dorm bulletin board.   No one is more interested in sleep and fast cash than a college freshman." - Dom Cobb. The U.S. and CIA begin seeking lucid dreamers outside of the military via "sleep studies," recruiting at Ivy League and other highly competitive universities.

September 1998 - Dean Winchester officially drops out of high school; Arthur matriculates at Columbia and meets Mal Miles.

December 1998 - After excelling in all areas of expertise in the dreamshare program, Arthur drops out of Columbia to join the Army and is fast-tracked to E-5 despite his age.

1998-2001 - Dreams remain highly unstable, with most people unable to sustain them long enough to be very productive. Even the best dreamers will sometimes have "soft places" in the dream where people can drop off into Limbo without warning.   Eames and Arthur are among the lucky 12-18% of candidates who survive the training without severe psychological damage or death - Eames in the SSA, Arthur beats out a conventionally trained Delta Operative after four real-time months. Stephen Miles becomes the first known sane survivor of Limbo; afterwards, he stops going into the field. Mal and Dom continue on as researchers for the U.S. government and receive their doctorates through government arrangement as part of their compensation package.

1999 - During the near continuous shake-up of the ISI that year, Yusuf flees Pakistan and relocates briefly in Qatar before settling in Cape Town, where he begins working with a repatriated Maxwell "Ndonsa" Azania.

Saturday, August 11, 2001 - Arthur and Mal arrive at Stanford University to set up the "sleep study" and begin recruitment; the closest reassignment Cobb can manage is USC, where he also teaches classes.

Sunday August 12, 2001 - Sam Winchester informs his father that he will be attending Stanford beginning in September.

Wednesday August 15, 2001 - Sam arrives in Palo Alto - spends the night at a hotel, but the $250 Dean slipped him will not hold him over.

Thursday August 16, 2001 - Sam arrives at Stanford. Classes are not scheduled to begin until the 23rd of September but he is granted permission due to extenuating circumstances to stay with some other early arrivals and grad students in Lagunita Court until the beginning the the Fall Quarter. He moves into his room that afternoon.

Monday, August 21, 2001 - After being tested by Arthur due to complaints by other students about his screaming, etc. due to night terrors, it turns out that Sam is the first person who can make dreams so clear and stable they feel real. Arthur and Mal arrange for Sam to join the dreamshare program - his participation allows him to follow a five year plan for graduation without academic penalty.

November 2001 - Arthur is reassigned to a combat unit during the first Afghanistan strikes. Sam continues participating in the dreamshare program; Mal uses her connections to keep him out of the military. Eames and Arthur are both involved strategic strikes during the first months of the war. Sam befriends Brady.

January 2002 - Arthur returns to Stanford and is put in charge of Sam's security -- both keeping him safe and keeping him in the project. Sam and he enter into an extremely discreet relationship - Arthur has everything to lose if they're caught, Sam (unknowingly) does as well. Arthur thinks Brady's a trustafarian; Brady only knows Arthur as "that guy who drops you off from work".

March 2002 - Saito is appointed CEO of Proclus Global; the US Army releases the confidential Project Lavoisier paper and new Somnacin blend to the U.K. and other allied programs.

April 2002 - Eames unilaterally releases himself from Her Majesty's service, nabbing a PASIV device AND a copy of the Lavoisier Paper in the process.

March 2003 - Arthur is again called to serve in the real world, this time in Iraq. Sam is unhappy about this.

Spring 2003 - Sam faces increasing pressure to join the CIA as the military winds down its research into dreamshare due to budget re-direction related to the Iraq War; Eames is contracted by Dimera Pharmaceuticals (manufacturers of, among other things, Herpexia), a subsidiary of Proclus Global, to identify and 'take custody' of the theoretical person referred to as Lavoisier.

July, 2003 - Arthur returns from Iraq and is honorably discharged. Begins planning with the Cobbs to make a business out of extraction; he and Sam stop being quite as discreet, and Arthur first asks Sam about leaving Stanford to join him in freelancing.

November 2003 - Dom and Mal marry in Paris; while in France, Sam agrees to drop out of school to join Arthur and Dom. Dean visits Sam two days after he gets home from the trip. Harsh words are said - Sam refuses to discuss it with Arthur or Brady - this is the last time Sam and Dean speak until the Pilot.

Thanksgiving 2003 - Brady is possessed.

Early December 2003 - Brady introduces Sam to Jess Moore.

Late December 2003 - Sam and Arthur break up when Sam states that he will be staying and finishing his degree, and is going to go to law school. "It's not that I don't -- this is exactly why I left my family in the first place. Sure, the pay's better, but it's not what I want." Both walk away believing that the other dumped them. Sam officially leaves the dreamshare program after much signing of confidentiality agreements. Arthur begins freelancing with the Cobbs, with their base of operations located in Los Angeles.

January 24, 2004 - Sam takes Jess out for her birthday; they begin dating.

June 2004 - Arthur and Eames work their first job together. Eames begins flirting immediately. Arthur is still a little ginger from the Sam break-up. While on holiday, Saito scales K2.

April 2005 - Phillipa born.

November 2, 2005 - Jess dies.

November 6 3, 2005 - Mal and Arthur both fly up to help Sam out after hearing about Jess' death and wind up meeting Dean. See the as yet untitled Mal-POV funeral fic (Requiem for Dreams?) for all too many details. Also, Arthur and Sam create the ~~Deadman's File~~ (Oblivion File?) ("Dead man's file? That's bleak. Why don't we call it the Oblivion file instead, because this way we'll never disappear into the oblivion?")

November 9, 2005 - Sam and Dean hit the road.

July 2006 - Hosni al-Ghazali, the last surviving chemist who knows Lavoisier's identity, is the subject of a failed extraction attempt in San Francisco. He moves to Arlington, VA and has not left his apartment since.

Spring 2007 (prior to May 2) - Madeline Velasquez-Garcia, one of the finest extractors/architects in the freelance/criminal dreamshare community from Puerto Rico, an occasional collaborator with Eames and the only known person whose dreams rival the clarity of Sam's/Lavoisier's, disappears and is never heard from again. She is only 24. (Eames never did manage to sleep with her.)

May 2, 2007 - Dean sells his soul.

Later in May, 2007 - James born

January 2008 - Dream a Little Dream of Me - See Discreet and Discrete Lives

February 2008/six months Trickster Time - Mystery Spot - See Penrose Stairs.

March 2008 - Jus in Bello - Arthur spends a frenzied two weeks making sure Sam isn't actually dead. Sam apologizes for not checking in, confesses he might be over his head, but again refuses to let Arthur be involved.

April 2008 - Arthur and Eames have sex for the first time. (Unwritten LDC fic)

May 2, 2008 - Dean goes to Hell; Sam buries him in Pontiac, IL, the closest place he knows with an active crossroads demon, but no one will deal.

June 2008 - The Cobbs find Limbo; Yusuf relocates to Mombasa

July 2008 - The four-man extraction team that botched the al-Ghazali job is found just outside of Austin, TX; they never regain consciousness.

September 2008 - Ariadne begins studying under Stephen Miles at the University of Paris; Dean is gripped tight and raised from Perdition.

November 2008 - Mal (35) jumps off the ledge, Dom flees (judging by their appearance in Dom's dreams and their appearance at the end, their children have aged no more than 18 months since Mal's death). Sam convinces Dean to take two days out of their month-long hunting spree to attend Mal's funeral.

March 2010 - Saito catches Cobb and Arthur - preparations for Inception begin.

May 2010 - Arthur receives a confusing and apologetic message from Sam but is unable to return it until after...

July 2010 - Inception - Arthur returns Sam's call and receives Robo-Sam's very chilly reply. Eames and Arthur begin sleeping together on a regular basis and eventually move in together - riding right along into blissful curtain fic until Sam interrupts them. Cobb goes into semi-retirement, resumes teaching. Yusuf and Ariadne eventually relocate to Los Angeles, as they tend to work with Eames and Arthur as often as not. The group regularly contracts with Saito, who steps down as CEO of Proclus Global after the break up of Fischer Morrow but retains an interest in protecting his investments. Sometimes in unpredictable ways.

August 2011 - Exile on Main Street - Robo Sam comes a callin' on Dean.

May 2012 - The wall falls, Godstiel - Sam's initial re-convergence.

June 2012 - Within two weeks of the reconvergence, Sam starts having hallucinations, admits as much to Dean and Bobby, and calls Arthur for help.

'Verse Rules/More Like Guidelines

General:

Q: How'd we get here?
A: Here's the concept for the 'verse in two sentences: Back at Stanford, Sam and Arthur were secretly in love. Post-Godstiel, Sam finally takes Arthur up on his offers for help. Takes a strict turn for AU during the events of 7.01 and 7.02 (or at least, it will). See the timeline for more details.

Q: Doesn't ~~Godstiel~~ Heaven know about these wacky extracting/incepting people?
A: Seeing as they weren't involved in the supernatural apocalypse, they were never paid much attention. Angels (at the very least) can enter a mortal's dreams at will and without even knowing the mortal's actual location. (See The Rapture, Free to be You and Me) So dreamshare is considered by MOST to be a "stupid human trick" like automobiles. The two main exceptions to this are Gabriel and Balthazar.

Q: We're talking about omniscient, omnipotent Godstiel here, right?
A: Are we? In Dean/Sam/Arthur/Eames' subconscious, Godstiel is only as strong as they think he is. (For the record, Eames is an atheist and Arthur comes from a non-observant Reformed Jewish background..)

Q: What about the demons?
A: Crowley and Meg know of its existence but don't know that Sam ever dealt with it (see 'stupid human tricks') — Azazel DID know and sent Brady to get Sam back on track.

Q: That timeline sure gets hazy at the end and while Arthur and Sam are, ummm, making the beast with two backs.
A: That's because story happens there. And porn.

Q: What's the Oblivion File?
A: If I ever write the original fic idea that started this, it will be a way to avoid needless and endless exposition. =D
Within the 'verse, however, it's a highly secure file server dropbox that Arthur creates and maintains starting in November 2005. He and Sam are the only two people who can access it, and it's originally intended as a courtesy thing because they're both in secretive, high-risk ventures. They each have their own file - and if they're going into a situation where they think they might die, they let the other one know what probably happened to them. They agree to ONLY read the other's file if they have proof of the other's death/the other has totally disappeared. Sam winds up using his as a journal - all throughout canon (except during the Robo-Sam period), Sam has been updating it with all of their cases, including pictures and other documentation. (Yes, Arthur notices how often Sam updates and yes, he's alarmed, but he keeps his word and doesn't look.) When Sam finally calls for help post-Godstiel, he has Arthur and Eames read an edited version of the Oblivion File (he takes out all/most of the teary goodbye notes and declarations of love).   Arthur/the Inception team remain more than a little skeptical (at first), but it's a whole lot of corroborating evidence to deny.

Questions of Romance

Q: What is the pairing header for this 'verse?
A: It's DEFINITELY Arthur/Eames with past Sam/Arthur (and all canon pairings). Any other non-canon pairings are unsettled as yet.

Q: Does Arthur love Sam or Eames?
A: He loves them both. Concurrently. No, really: it happens. Arthur is equally queasy about speaking the "love" word aloud with both. As of 2012, however, he's in a committed relationship with Eames which he has grown comfortable with.

Q: Does Sam love Arthur or Jess or Dean?
A: See above. He is not, as of 2012, sleeping with any of them (especially not Jess).

Q: What's Dean's position on these goings on?
A: He and Arthur have always hated each other -- instinctively, mostly because they each view the other as stepping on their turf, Arthur because he blames Dean in part for what he views as Sam's abusive childhood and because Dean keeps fucking up his relationship with Sam; Dean feels that Arthur is an arrogant prick and is insecure that Arthur might actually be better at mission object #1--Keeping Sam safe. Finding out that Arthur is Sam's ex mostly produces recriminations at Sam for yet another secret kept from him, and now he's got another reason to hate Arthur (for messing with Sam's heart).

Q: This isn't a Wincest 'verse?
A: Not actively, no. If it were and Eames/Arthur/anyone on the Inception side knew (and with everyone all up in Sam's subconscious and Hallucifer blabbing everything he can, they'd find out), they'd make an enormous, plot-hijacking evil fuss about it, and I don't want that. This doesn't mean that there aren't AUs and there is the *slightest* chance that Wincest happened at some point but isn't ongoing. Mostly though, those thoughts are confined to Sam's and or Dean's Subconscious Roomfuls of Angst™ - but feel free to get explicit there if you feel the need.

Q: How does Ariadne fit into all of this?
A: She finds both Winchesters attractive but entirely too damaged for her.

Q: Does (insert name here) trust (insert name here)?
A: Of course not. Everyone involved in this is a suspicious bastard, and rightfully so.

Q: If Arthur and Sam were to forget themselves and revert to old habits of screwing each other stupid, would Eames seduce Dean in a fit of jealousy?
A: Quite possibly.

Fun Facts About Lavoisier/Sam Winchester (aka, if anyone wants to write a fic based on these, please do!)

Due to his demon blood, Sam's dreams are MUCH clearer/more stable than anyone else's. Prior to Sam's joining the project, dreams in general were much less "real"/stable and it was unlikely that anyone could lose track of reality. It's only after going into a dream with Sam that Mal realizes the need for, and then invents, totems. Post-Lavoisier, extraction, which until then had been a largely theoretical and unpredictable use of Somnacin/the PASIV, became one of its most lucrative uses.

According to Squid (and he's right), Sam's totem is WAS a moleskine notebook (like Arthur's <3). In reality the ink was blue, he's numbered the pages on the bottom outside corners, and on page fifteen he's written down Dean's phone number and underneath it, Arthur's (no names or area codes). In the dream, any one of those variables can change. Post-Meg, Sam keeps a bracelet of anti-possession charms in his pocket; in the dream, all of the beads are metal, in reality, one bead is ceramic.

Based on blood and urine tests from Sam, chemists are able to reverse engineer an adjustment to the Somnacin that makes the realistic dreamshare seen in the movie possible. The adjustment/addition to the compound is extremely counter-intuitive, i.e., if you asked Yusuf, he would say, "It was like looking at your brand new house and deciding that instead of using latex paint, you were going to cover it with honey instead." According to Squid (and he's right) the addition involves sulfur. In particular cysteine. Yusuf natters on about it (and Project Lavoisier) to Ariadne extensively here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8QrwuTqHcWZzK4PfN-wJBIr43k0JyDDQ1yHXKG4tec/edit

Mal and Arthur became protective of Sam early on in the project: when the military/CIA discuss taking him in as an asset too valuable to lose, Sam threatens to bolt and is only calmed down by Arthur (this may be when they first kiss/confess feelings); Mal has to use every bit of her (considerable) leverage to give Sam the normal college life he wants. As a result, Sam's identity remains shrouded in secrecy among the dreamshare community. Dom knows Sam as Arthur's boyfriend and protege, but does NOT know that Sam is Lavoisier. In June 2012, the only people still alive and mentally sound who know that Sam Winchester = Lavoisier are Arthur, Sam, Sophia (Mal's mother, (since the series started I became aware of supplementary material that's given her name as Marie, but as it's in so many stories already, we'll go with in this 'verse she prefers to go by her middle name) who was called in to treat Sam's night terrors), and Hosni al-Ghazali, the original chemist on the project. Hosni was the subject of an unsuccessful extraction attempt in 2006 and has not left his apartment since.

The chemists write a complete bullshit cover-up paper for how they figured out the adjustment which is distributed as a classified document (Project ~~Keystone? Brimstone?~~ Lavoisier) when they share the recipe with allied dreamshare programs like the one in the U.K. As the paper gets wider illicit distribution, it becomes an open secret among chemists that the paper is complete bullshit. Thus, when Eames is first getting into freelance/criminal dreamshare, one of his first failed extraction jobs is on a military chemist/the general in charge of the project, trying to find out Sam's identity. (He does discover that Arthur was involved in the process, however, leading to him being extremely surprised when he does his first job with the Cobbs and finds out that Arthur is a point man, not a chemist. Arthur does not share Sam's identity with Eames until post-Godstiel. (Eventually, see "Five Times Eames Asked About Sam Winchester (But Didn't Know It)" because that title is just too damn good to give up. )

Even after the adjustment to Somnacin, Sam's dreams remain more "real" and more stable than any other dreamer (except one - see Spring 2007 in the timeline). He can also adjust the landscape (move objects about - hear things over impossible distances, etc.) without attracting as much attention from projections.

Sam cannot forge (and during most of Sam's time in the business, Eames is the first forger/something of a rumor/something visiting U.K. soldiers brag about.) Sam is the first person who is able to dream stably enough for Mal and Dom to pioneer the concept of having a dream within a dream.

Sam's employment for the government (other than peeing in a cup and letting them draw blood) mostly involves world building for military training/teaching sub-security - with the occasional extraction subject brought in to the lab. He is *never* in the same real world room as the soldiers/subjects.

Sometimes Sam's projections can get out of hand - and they're not always human. Arthur is curious about this (everyone is) but Sam remains highly evasive. Sam chalks it up to his own night terrors/imagination and no one else ever comes up with a better explanation.

Once, while in a military exercise where his projections got out of hand, Sam dreamed up Dean's pearl-handled Colt 1911 to help get rid of them and one of the soldiers made a passing remark about it being a "awfully purty girly gun" or something similarly homophobic. It's after Arthur and Sam have become romantically involved and they both become much more paranoid about being discovered afterwards. From then on, Sam always dreams up the Taurus 92 in dreams. He *never* dreams up a Beretta 92 (the standard U.S. military sidearm) because of his firm stance about "being a civilian." From then on, Arthur is also reluctant to use a Beretta, and begins using a Glock as his usual weapon. (Glocks are often reviled as "Tupperware" due to the fact that parts of the gun are made of plastic) (May be one of the stories in "Five Times Eames Asked About Sam Winchester (But Didn't Know It)" - Eames questioning Arthur's preference in sidearms.)

Re: "Being a civilian" - this is a constant refrain from Sam and the eventual reason he breaks it off with Arthur. The tension manifests in early exchanges about why Sam is sticking with pre-law as a major when he could be studying something more directly related to dreamshare.

Other Miscellany

Gabriel ships Sam/Arthur and may have influenced many of these events.

The Blonde forged by Eames is based on one of Balthazar's vessels. (There is, in fact, a complete plot and outline behind this statement waiting for anyone who has a thing for writing Balthazar voice)

Saito made at least one purchase from Bela Talbot

Arthur knows how to cook five meals; the only one that isn't treyf is grilled cheese.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/87042.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Excuse me while I fan-girl spaz because Neil Gaiman asked me a question

moragmacpherson — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 07:25:24 GMT

I was just procrastinating on tumblr. I reblogged one of his posts and answered a question he posed within, because, well, A Game of You was on the shelf right next to me.

Then I got an e-mail from tumblrbot saying that Neil-Gaiman had asked me a question.

This was obviously from a universe with zeppelins in, except:

As calmly as possible, I tried to piece together a coherent reply.

Then I got to look at my dash again and find this:

And now I'm just sort of in a daze.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/87034.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Penrose Stairs (Inception-SPN), Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames, NC-17) 2/3

moragmacpherson — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:27:48 GMT

Title: Penrose Stairs (2/3)
Authors: moragmacpherson & dragonspell
Beta: callowyn
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural crossover fusion-AU; lets just call it Superception
Rating: NC-17
Final Word Count: 19,541
Pairings: Sam/Arthur, Eames/Arthur
Timeline: Set during "Mystery Spot" (3.11) for Supernatural, pre-movie for Inception.
Disclaimer: None of the characters contained herein belong to me and this work is not intended for any profit or other commercial purposes.
Series: Not Such As I Was
Contents include: Language, graphic sexual situations,canonical character death
Summary: The stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. This is clearly impossible in three dimensions.

Master Post

Tuesday's Child is Full of Grace

March 3, 2008
Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe

If Sam had really wanted to surprise Arthur with his visit, he should have gotten rid of that fucking car. He didn’t even have the sense to park it more than two blocks away from Arthur's house. Clearly they needed to have another talk about conspicuousness—one which wouldn't involve Arthur's Glock only because he knew for certain that Eames was on a Monte Carlo-bound jet at this very moment, which meant that Sam's (or more likely, Dean's) idiocy wasn't going to get Sam caught this time. Arthur did have to give Sam some credit, though; it looked like his lock-picking and alarm-disabling skills had gotten even sharper over the last couple of years.

Arthur set his groceries calmly on the counter. "You showed up just in time for dinner. The least you two assholes can do is help me put this stuff away," he called out.

"Just the one asshole," said Sam, leaning on the threshold.

It had only been a month and a half since that whole mess with the Silene capensis that Arthur'd had to un-happen, but it must have been a hell of a month. Sam looked like shit. His cheeks had hollowed out and he was shivering despite the seventy-five degree heat. If Arthur had to guess, he'd say that Sam hadn't eaten in almost a week.

"Where's the other one?" Arthur asked, opening the cupboards and unloading groceries, leaving out the ingredients he'd planned to use for dinner with the Cobbs on Wednesday. Dean was an idiotic, reckless prick with an attitude problem, but Sam loved his brother. If anything had happened to Dean...

"We had to split up for a little. Get the FBI off of our tails." It came out a little too practiced, but Sam's expression deterred Arthur from calling him on it. "I've got a job I could use your help with."

Arthur folded the empty paper sacks flat and leaned against the counter. "You're asking me for help with the family business."

"You're the one who's been asking all of these years," said Sam, his tone flat. "I just need someone who can do a quick, thorough, global search for a particular pattern."

"Pattern of what?"

"Deaths, usually," Sam said, and he stopped, looking Arthur in the eye before letting out a single, bitter laugh. "Ironic deaths."

"'Ironic deaths'? What the hell does that mean?"

"I've got some files, I can show you examples.” Sam held up a manila folder. “The M.O. varies, but you're gonna have to trust me that they're all the same guy. I need to find him."

Arthur folded his arms. "So that's the family business? You're vigilantes."

"Sometimes," Sam said.

Years of thinking up worst case scenarios to explain the Secret Too Dangerous To Know and the Winchesters were just a tiny, migrant Mafia? Did Sam think Arthur was that untrustworthy? That inept? "Sam, I'm on the wrong side of the law more often than not these days, you could’ve—I wouldn’t judge you for something like that."

Sam’s jaw jumped, and Arthur narrowed his eyes. "There's more?" Somehow, he found he was relieved.

Sam's gaze shifted towards the door. "You know what, this was a mistake."

"Of course I'll do it," Arthur said before Sam could bolt. "You know someone better? Hand over the files—and move that fucking car into the garage.” Arthur threw his own keys to Sam a little harder than the distance warranted. “Didn't we just have this conversation?"

Sam blinked, but after a minute he handed Arthur the mess of print-outs and news clippings. Arthur flipped it open; Sam's handwriting hadn't gotten any better since college. If anything, it was worse now: lines less even, letters more cramped, all of it blotchier. And that didn't even begin to address the seemingly random contents of the file. Arthur glanced up and regarded Sam for a long moment. It could just be exhaustion; Sam had looked stretched in Pittsburgh. But given long enough, stretching led to snapping.

"Go deal with the damn cars," Arthur barked. Sam scowled as he trudged out the door, but anger was better than that blank mask Sam was using to conceal God knew what. Once Sam had slammed the door, Arthur pulled out his phone and sent Mal a quick text. Sam's here, very possibly having psychotic break. Trying not to spook him. More details when I have them.

By the time Sam finished shuffling the cars, Arthur had shrimp simmering in lemon butter and a pot of water on its way to boiling. He also had his laptop open, all of Sam's articles spread out on the table in the closest approximation of a sane pattern that Arthur could come up with, and an open beer in his hand. He waved his bottle at Sam. "There's one for you by the stove; stir the sauce while you're up."

Arthur could sort of see what Sam meant by ironic deaths, but the pattern, if there was one, looked like it had been created by one of those morons who tried to tell the future by putting letters from the Bible into an arbitrary grid. Batshit. Arthur's lips quirked to the side and he looked up: Sam was dumping vermicelli into the now-boiling water, beer untouched.

"I'm taking your word for it that these are all the same guy," said Arthur. "You said you want a global search?"

Sam nodded, unwashed hair falling in his face and getting caught in the scruff on his cheeks. "Guy gets around faster than you do. Putting a timeline together would be nice, but ongoing clusters would be even more helpful. Wherever he is, that's where I've got to go."

"Does he have a name, or a known set of aliases? Or a picture, even if he uses disguises?"

Sam shook his head. "There's a couple of photos in there but... he's too good to be caught like that. The deaths are the thing to focus on, trust me."

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose. "This isn't going to be a smash and grab, you understand? It's not like any of these articles are saying 'just deserts' or anything like that."

Sam stirred the shrimp. "Can you do it or not?"

Arthur sighed. "There are a couple of different sorting algorithms I can work with. It's just going to take some time, and then one hell of a distraction to keep anyone from noticing what I'm doing." Of course, there was one trick he'd been waiting for an excuse to use ever since they extracted from that DNS expert...

"How long?"

"If I start right after dinner and don't want to be assassinated for publicly destroying the internet as we know it?" Arthur took a sip. "Call it four days." Which would also be long enough for Arthur to either talk sense into Sam or get him into an appropriate institution.

Sam nodded. "If you're going to keep my car locked up, is there a cheap hotel in walking distance?"

"You're kidding me, right?" Arthur stood up and walked over to Sam, grabbing the spoon out of his hand. "Sit down, dumbfuck." After a second of glaring, Sam grunted and retreated to the table. Arthur finished assembling dinner and set the plates down on the table, as well as Sam's untouched beer. "There's a guest bedroom, if you want it." Arthur didn't have to mention the alternative option. "Maintaining low visibility would be a good idea, don't you think? Also, I'm going to need you on hand. When it comes to creating search parameters for 'ironic deaths', I suspect you're going to be a little more imaginative than me— Oh, for Christ's sake." Arthur reached across the table and took a sip of Sam's beer then stole a few noodles off of Sam's plate and ate those too. "Satisfied?" Arthur asked, rolling his eyes.

Sam's eyes remained narrow and his face otherwise expressionless, but he did start eating and drinking. "In the meantime, you're going to get some fucking sleep. Regular sleep. I can hook you up to the PASIV if you want to control your dreams, but sleep one way or another. You get fucking weird when you're sleep deprived."

"If I wanted someone to mother me, I would have gone to Mal," Sam muttered.

Arthur gave Sam a tight grin. "You want my help? I'm not giving it to a zombie." Sam didn't reply. Arthur nursed his beer and waited for Sam to finish eating. "Guest bedroom's at the end of the hall, past the bathroom. Linens are in the chest at the foot of the bed. You need me to make up the bed or can I start coding already?"

Sam scowled. "I can make my own fucking bed."

Arthur stood and collected their plates. "You could also consider showering. Just saying."

Sam didn't dignify this with a response, but by the time Arthur finished loading the dishwasher, he could hear the shower running down the hall. He sent Mal another text. Holding back for now. Still skittish and he's hiding something. Dean is MIA.

It took Arthur about two hours to code an exploit that would compromise seven of the thirteen root DNS servers, thereby giving him enough time to search through any online record he wanted—once he convinced Sam to actually explain who he was looking for.

Mal returned his text just as he was finishing. James has ear infection but i've called mother. she can be here in 2 days. keep him close if things change call tout de suite. dom will help you handle him. Arthur scrubbed his face, looked from the message to the articles on the table to the cyber-equivalent of a hydrogen bomb on his computer. After a moment he erased the texts. He owed Sam the benefit of the doubt.

Arthur locked up and reset his security system, then went to the guestroom to check on Sam. To his mild surprise, he didn't find Sam there, only his duffel. Instead Sam was asleep, hair still wet and fully dressed except for his boots, on top of the quilt in Arthur's bed. His thumb was stuck inside the copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas he'd given to Arthur his sophomore year; at least he'd left Arthur's bookmark in place. All of the photos on Arthur's bookshelf had been moved as well; the most recent pictures of James and Phillipa were now on his bed stand. Arthur sighed and picked up the book. He thought about waking Sam, but who knew how long it had been since he’d last slept? Instead Arthur changed into a set of pajama bottoms, turned off his alarm clock, and slid under the covers. After a moment or two, he lifted his arm out above the covers to lie across Sam's waist.

The soft flannel of Sam’s shirt brushed against his nose. Arthur shifted subtly closer and just inhaled that smell, the smell a part of him still thought would mean 'home' one day. Arthur had always and would always give Sam anything he asked for. If only the kid could bring himself to actually ask for it.

About an hour later, Sam shifted out from under Arthur, waking him. "Something wrong?" Arthur asked, sitting up.

In the dim light, Arthur saw Sam wiggle his hips and kick his legs. "Feels like my nuts got caught in a vise," Sam said, his voice still sleep-slurred.

"So take your jeans off and come back to bed." Something in Arthur's chest tightened. They'd had this conversation many times before, years ago, and so much had changed since then but Arthur's response hadn't at all. Would Sam's?

"'kay." Sam fumbled with the fly and the buttons on his shirt, but managed to strip down to his undershirt and boxers without falling over. He still left the clothes on the ground where they fell and sort of lurched back into bed. Arthur didn't move a muscle as Sam slid under the sheets, wrapped one long, hairy leg around Arthur's, and fell back to sleep within seconds.

Gingerly, Arthur slid down the headboard and laid his head back down on Sam's shoulder. Out of habit he pushed Sam's hair behind his ear, and let his hand come to rest on Sam's hip.

"I miss you so much sometimes," Sam mumbled, not really awake. His arm curled around Arthur's waist, his palm open and hot against Arthur's bare skin, spanning nearly the breadth of Arthur's lower back. Sam could crush Arthur like this: just wrap tighter and tighter around him until he swallowed Arthur whole.

The words love you too stalled on Arthur's lips. Not yet: there were too many I love you but...s left to clear up before saying it aloud sounded like anything other than a jinx. He dropped a kiss on Sam’s temple instead, and Sam curled closer like he’d forgotten it wasn’t 2003. Arthur fell asleep letting himself pretend that it was.

~*~

Arthur woke up entirely tangled with Sam. He could feel Sam's pulse against his lips; strands of too-long hair tangled in Arthur's eyelashes when he opened them. Arthur's left elbow cradled the side of Sam's head while his right arm draped over Sam's chest, trapped under Sam's left arm, which had migrated just a bit south in the night so that his fingertips edged under Arthur's waistband, the little perv. Meanwhile Sam's right arm wrapped up and around Arthur's back, fingers slotted along Arthur's ribs. Their legs remained twined together with the slight bulge under Arthur's pajama pants nestled comfortably in the crease of Sam's hip. Arthur gave himself a pat on the back for remembering to shut off the alarm clock—if Sam startled awake in this position, there would be bruising on both sides.

And now that Arthur had this back, he could admit to himself how much he still wanted it. He hadn't had sex since Sam gave him that bonus blowjob back in January. As tempting as Eames was— and after nearly four years and a half dozen drunken or near-death makeout sessions, Arthur couldn't deny the attraction — taking him up on his advances never felt right. Somehow Arthur knew that once he gave in to Eames, it would mean he'd given up on ever keeping this.

Sam's stomach growled loudly; he answered his own body with an annoyed sniff and grumble, his hands pulling Arthur even closer. He felt Sam wake up, breath hitching and muscles tensing as he registered their positions much as Arthur had a minute or so before. Arthur tilted his neck up and to the side so that he could see Sam's face when his eyes opened, before Sam was awake enough to hide anything.

Sam's first expression of mild surprise and disorientation was to be expected; what sucked the air out of Arthur's lungs was the flash of utter despair that followed. The tell-tale anguished furrow between Sam's eye brows appeared at the same time as his lips and that one muscle in his left cheek twitched. Arthur felt his own face fall even as Sam swallowed and sucked on his lower lip. Arthur dropped his gaze, trying to extract himself. "Sorry, Sam, I'm—"

Sam's limbs went rigid, trapping Arthur properly now. "Arthur, no, it's not—" But however he'd intended to finish the sentence, it wasn't something he could make himself speak aloud.

Arthur watched the neutral mask return. Poor Sam could never quite rein in his eyes, though; they flickered to the side, still too wide and a little glassy. Arthur pulled Sam's face in closer, pressing a chaste peck on Sam's lips. "It's okay," he said, but Sam bit his own lip and and shook his head. Their lips brushed together, then they were kissing before Arthur caught himself and pulled back. "It's not okay?" he whispered, and Sam nodded, but pressed his mouth to Arthur’s again rather than elaborate.

The kisses grew deeper and Arthur felt Sam harden against his thigh. "Can I— is this better?" Arthur asked, shifting his leg so that it rubbed against Sam's dick.

"I need—please," Sam whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut even as his hips rolled up into Arthur's. "Please," he repeated, and fuck, whoever it was that had hurt or killed Dean, Arthur was going to hunt them down and make them suffer, then he was going to figure out a way to save Dean. If necessary, Arthur would drag him back from wherever his soul had gone just to beat the shit out of him for reducing Sam to this.

But first, Arthur would make things better for Sam, for both of them, just for a little while. "Let me," he said, and Sam relaxed enough for Arthur to get them both undressed with relative ease.

Sam's kisses kept turning into something starving and desperate; Arthur had to push him back down by the sternum to keep Sam from chasing after Arthur's lips. Christ, he remembered Sam was big, but feeling him in his hand again was something else. Arthur crouched back on his knees between Sam's legs, murmuring wordless reassurances the whole time — Sam and sex and words had never really mixed together well for Arthur— so that he could lick a stripe along Sam's cock from root to tip. Sam’s whole body spasmed, tried to curl in on itself, but Arthur held him down, sucking harder, and after a few seconds Sam flopped back and moaned. Arthur looked up at him: Sam's head was thrown back against the pillow, his eyes still locked shut. Something in Arthur's gut twisted.

He pulled his lips off of Sam's cock. This wasn't about Arthur giving Sam a way out, it was about what Arthur could do if Sam let him back in. Arthur kept working Sam's dick with his hand, but nosed down Sam's groin, pausing to give his balls a quick, teasing lick, before swirling the tip of his tongue over Sam's puckered hole.

"Arthur, fucking hell!" Sam shouted, his eyes snapping open. For all of the jokes about Arthur being a tight-ass—Eames had started most of them—Sam was the one who’d always been really sensitive down there. The muscles clenched even tighter after the first stroke, but Sam didn't actively pull away, so Arthur dove back in. He rubbed his dick against Sam's leg a little, needing the relief as he patiently licked and sucked until he could push his tongue inside Sam, making sure to press down on the base of Sam's dick so this didn’t end too soon.

Sam's thighs quaked around Arthur's shoulders while Arthur tongue-fucked him. Sam kept up a constant commentary of expletives interspersed with Arthur's name, his hands tearing into Arthur's Egyptian cotton sheets. Arthur didn't care. This was the kind of mindlessness that Sam needed: not withdrawing to oblivion but overloaded with sensation. Arthur tongued and stroked him up to the brink and backed off twice, until Sam's babble started making a little more sense. He was saying some very impolite things about Arthur's ancestry, but what mattered was he was here, he was in this moment, with Arthur, and it was good.

"What the fucking fuck?" Sam panted when Arthur pulled away, but he shut up once Arthur's lips wrapped around his dick. Arthur took a few deep breaths through his nose, getting Sam's cock as sloppy wet with spit and pre-come as he could without letting him come. Sam let out a frustrated cry when Arthur's mouth abandoned his dick once again, and now Arthur did let himself grin at Sam. He moved quickly, pinning Sam down and straddling his waist, then pried one of Sam's hands loose from the sheets.

Sam didn't catch on until Arthur pulled the hand up and started licking and sucking Sam's fingers. Understanding dawned in his eyes and he said, "Oh," and started slicking his other hand with his own mouth. Arthur released his hand and Sam wasted no time wriggling a finger into Arthur's ass while he wrapped the other hand around Arthur's dick. Arthur's groan became a gasp when Sam quickly pushed in another finger. Fuck, but he'd missed Sam's hands, Sam's long, nimble fingers that knew Arthur's body better than anyone else. Arthur slumped forward, tilting his hips up to give Sam better access and let Sam take over for a bit, make absolutely sure Sam was paying attention to this and not his own thoughts. Arthur started sucking a hickey onto Sam's shoulder just above his tattoo (and why did Arthur recognize that design)—

The savage burn of Sam’s third finger stopped all rational thought. Arthur bit down on Sam's shoulder to muffle his whimper and Sam shuddered—no, he was chuckling. "My turn," he said, pausing to let Arthur adjust. The hand on Arthur's dick stopped and slid up his chest before it pushed Arthur's chin up into a kiss. That was good too, and it distracted Arthur from noticing that Sam's fingers were moving again, fucking him open. Arthur pushed off of Sam and stretched across the bed. He could almost reach the nightstand—

"Here," Sam said, pulling his fingers out all at once. Arthur yelped, overbalanced, and crashed into the mattress. Sam took the opportunity to roll on top of Arthur: a sweaty blanket with freakish gorilla arms that had no trouble opening the drawer and retrieving the lube and a condom, or lifting Arthur onto his hands and knees.

Let the cunning bastard indulge his ridiculous control issues; Arthur stopped caring the second Sam shoved his slicked-up fingers back into him, the cold both shocking and soothing. "Yes," Arthur hissed, pushing back and fucking himself on Sam's fingers. Arthur was ready, now, for Sam's fingers to slide out, prepared for the blunt pressure of Sam's dick stretching him even wider. Arthur's memories hadn't done Sam justice; he'd forgotten about the little noises that Sam made every time one of his shallow thrusts pushed a little deeper than he'd expected.

Sam bottomed out and grunted right into Arthur's ear, a sound that sent a primal shiver up and down Arthur's spine, and he couldn't help but clench down hard around Sam. They both cried out; Sam pulled back a little and somehow the motion transformed ache into need. The burn faded into the background, drowned out by the friction of Sam's shaft against Arthur's prostate. Arthur stopped trying to hold back his moans.

It wasn't more than a dozen shallow thrusts before Sam had Arthur's hips in hand, the head of his cock pulling against Arthur's rim right before he fucked it all the way back in. No one and nothing could compare. Arthur lost any kind of control—all he could do was roll his hips into the thrust when Sam dragged him back onto his cock.

Arthur tried reaching for his own dick, needing the release to keep up with how rough Sam was using him, but Sam batted his hand away. "No," he said, and Arthur could argue, would argue, but then Sam hooked an arm around his chest and hoisted them both upright, saying "Like this," and Arthur's only answer was a scream. Arthur squirmed and writhed against him but Sam's arm held him tight. "You wanted to ride me," Sam teased.

"Fuck you," Arthur snarled, and he did, pulling on Sam's arm for the extra leverage he needed to fuck himself back on Sam's dick, use Sam as roughly as Sam had used him. He was so close, even without Sam touching him. All it took was Sam moaning in his ear and then biting down.

"Told you," Sam panted out, and that didn't make any sense but Arthur didn’t care. Arthur let out everything, moaning the entire time, grinding his ass down on Sam's cock until his body lay limp on Sam's lap: filthy, covered with come and with nothing left to give.

Sam's arm dropped and so did Arthur, crumpling forward and slipping to the side, his hand dragging across Sam’s sweat-covered chest. Breathing deeply, Arthur let himself lie limply against the mattress, blinking as Sam slid down to join him. Arthur noticed that Sam hadn't come, that he was stripping the condom off his still hard cock and tossing it the general direction of the waste basket. Sam’s face was blank again.

Fuck that— Sam was not allowed to turn this into another way of punishing himself. Arthur pushed himself up on his elbow and scooted down along the bed until his face was even with Sam's dick, one hand drifting along Sam's torso down to his cock. Arthur wrapped his fingers around it with lazy but very intentional strokes. Sam’s eyes slipped closed and Arthur pushed against Sam’s hip, rolling him onto his back. He took a long breath, then leaned over and took as much of Sam's cock into his mouth as he could.

Sam gasped, his hips twitching upward, but Arthur pushed them back down with a hand on Sam's stomach. He pulled back and sucked on just the head, swirling his tongue around it while he snaked his other hand down to cradle Sam's balls, rolling them slow and sure. Sam’s fingers tangled in Arthur’s hair. Arthur hummed and licked into the slit of his cock until he had Sam moaning and trembling beneath him. Sam had been so close already, and it didn’t take long before, with a final twist, Sam filled Arthur’s mouth in long, slow pulses. Arthur took it all, took Sam's groans and hitched breaths and every drop of him he could get, and he swallowed it all.

After Sam’s tremors settled down, they gravitated back towards each other. Sam hadn't quite caught his breath yet. When he opened his eyes, Arthur could still read guilt and despair in eyes too wide and a brow too furrowed. But now they were tempered by the contented curl of his lips and the relaxed set of his jaw and neck. It was a start.

Sam broke the silence with a soft laugh. "I think— maybe I needed that," he said.

Arthur smirked. "I didn't notice," he said, pushing Sam's hair back, combing through it with his fingers. Sam's eyes slid shut and he pushed into the touch. Arthur almost said something, but then Sam let out a small sigh. Arthur kept up the stroking for a few more minutes, but Sam had always been a sucker for the afterglow. If he'd been as sleep deprived as Arthur suspected, Sam would be down for a minimum of three hours.

Arthur would have stayed there all day, but if he wanted to pull Sam back from the brink— well, that meant he had to get moving. He pulled away carefully, checked his totem, resisted the urge to do a Snoopy dance when it came up real, then cleaned up with what had been his favorite sheet and covered Sam with the relatively unsoiled quilt. Arthur had some arrangements to make, some shady figures to bribe, and at least one contract to cancel. But if that was the cost of having a naked Sam asleep in his bed? Arthur would bring down the entire internet, give out markers to the Russians and the Chinese, cancel every job he had set up for the next year, and still consider it a bargain.

~*~

Sure enough, a little before noon Arthur heard heavy footfalls padding down the hallway before the bathroom door swung shut. He set his computer aside and got up to cook lunch. Since he'd been shopping mostly for himself the night before, pretty much the only thing Arthur could cook that he would have enough to share was grilled cheese. It was also a quick meal, even more so because Sam hated tomato on his and preferred the cheapest American cheese possible, a guilty pleasure that he'd passed on to Arthur even as Mal threatened to throw them both out of the house. But it did melt well.

Arthur timed it so he was cutting Sam's (triangles, never rectangles) when he heard Sam walk into the kitchen. "There's a bag of chips in the pantry right next to you," he said as he picked up the plate and a napkin.

When he turned around, Sam had frozen at the threshold. "Sam?" Arthur said, and that seemed to snap him out it. Arthur set his plate down on the table and returned to the range. "Not a lot of options when it comes to drinks, unless you feel like having a beer for lunch."

Sam hurriedly picked up his grilled cheese when Arthur sat down across from him, as though Arthur wouldn’t notice the lack of bite marks. Arthur waited long enough for it to be obvious that Sam was avoiding eye contact before he said, "I didn’t forget the way you like them, you know, it hasn’t been that long."

Sam gave something that might have passed for a laugh if Arthur hadn’t been looking at him. Arthur could actually hear Sam’s stomach growl, but Sam put the sandwich back on his plate and reached for Arthur’s laptop, saying, “So have you found anything yet?”

A weak attempt even by Sam’s standards. “No working until you’ve eaten something,” Arthur said, pretending he didn’t have a Mal-voice.

"Do you, um, could I have something else?" Sam said, not looking up.

About to point out that he’d never seen Sam meet a grilled cheese he didn’t like, Arthur managed to notice in time that Sam did look a little green around the gills. "There’s not much else," he said. “Unless you want that can of Spaghetti-o’s that seems to regenerate every time I throw it out.”

Sam covered his eyes for a moment, his lips quirking from side to side and nostrils flaring. Arthur started counting to ten in his head, but then Sam finally looked up with a half-hearted smile. "I think maybe I should go back to bed."

Arthur waited to see if Sam would offer an explanation, but all that happened was the smile slipping from Sam’s face and his eyes going even rounder. The kicked-puppy look might have been intentional, but it made Arthur feel like a prick anyway. “Sure,” he said, and Sam pushed away from the table without giving the sandwich another glance. Arthur set his elbows on the table and held his face in his hands for a minute or two, then pulled out his phone. He could call Mal. He should call Dom.

He didn't. Instead, Arthur went back to his bedroom, realizing only as he opened the door that Sam might have gone back to the guest room. But there Sam was curled up on his bed, quilt pulled up above his shoulders, and Arthur ignored the tinge of possessiveness in the rush of relief. He sat down on the bed. "Do you want to talk about this?"

Sam didn't turn his head or open his eyes. "Am I allowed to say no?"

"For now."

"Then no."

Arthur sighed. "Is there— you really need to eat something, Sam." If Sam wanted to play dirty, Arthur would play dirty. "Do you really think not taking care of yourself is going to do Dean any good?"

Sam flinched, turning his face into the pillow. "Just— can you get me a Gatorade or something? Crackers maybe. Just.. no grilled cheese, okay?" Sam mumbled half into the pillow.

Arthur blinked. He'd expected more resistance. "Yeah, I can go pick something up. Anything else you can think of?"

"No," came the immediate response. Arthur nodded and, just because he could, gave Sam's shoulder a squeeze before he turned to leave. Sam grabbed his hand, pulled it against his cheek, and gave it a quick kiss. "Arthur— it's not your fault, okay? Don't ever think it's your fault. There's just... this case has been messing with my head for awhile now," he said, squeezing Arthur's fingers.

"And you don't want to talk about it," said Arthur.

Sam shook his head, nuzzling Arthur's hand again. "Not— not now."

Sam still hadn't let go of his hand. "All right," said Arthur, and he had a bad feeling and he didn't want to pull away, but Sam really did need to eat something and he wasn't lying or fighting, just not ready to talk. Arthur could accept that. "Get some rest, I shouldn't be more than a few minutes," he told Sam, pulling his hand away but combing his fingers through Sam's hair one last time. Sam nodded and turned his face back into the pillow, and Arthur left. He tossed Sam's sandwich in the garbage and grabbed his own to eat on his way out.

He should have known. Sam said he wanted to sleep? Arthur should have slipped him a little chemical assistance before he left. At the very least, he should have snatched Sam's keys. But he'd wanted to believe that Sam was okay; he'd wanted to believe that Sam finally really did trust him, with everything.

When he returned home Sam, his duffel and files, and that fucking car were all gone. The note on the kitchen table was brief— Sam had been in a hurry— but it got his point across.

Arthur,
I wanted to stay. I'm sorry.
-Sam

Arthur sat at the table and crumpled it in his hand.

Thursday's Child Has Far To Go

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/86575.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Penrose Stairs (Inception-SPN), Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames, NC-17) 1/3

moragmacpherson — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:33:02 GMT

Title: Penrose Stairs
Authors: moragmacpherson & dragonspell
Betas: callowyn and sistabro
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural crossover fusion-AU; let's just call it Superception
Rating: NC-17
Final Word Count: 19,541
Pairings: Sam/Arthur, Eames/Arthur
Timeline: Set during "Mystery Spot" (3.11) for Supernatural, pre-movie for Inception.
Disclaimer: None of the characters contained herein belong to me and this work is not intended for any profit or other commercial purposes.
Series: Not Such As I Was
Contents include: Language, graphic sexual situations,canonical character death
Summary: The stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. This is clearly impossible in three dimensions.

Master Post

February 12, 2008
Tuesday's Child is Full of Grace

"What on Earth could have persuaded you to go to Pittsburgh in the middle of bloody January?" Eames asked Arthur from across the office while they took a late lunch. 'Office' was the polite term for 'cheapest room the client could rent out in a random Missile Crisis-era concrete bunker turned poultry farm' a few miles outside of Havana. At least on the second floor, the scent of chicken shit from the coops in the courtyard wasn't quite as pungent.

"You know I despise Pittsburgh," Arthur replied around a mouthful of arroz con pollo.

Eames grinned. "So why were you there?"

Arthur leaned back in his chair and said, "I wasn’t," then ate another forkful.

"I have your receipts." Eames looked down in front of his desk. "Going by Hammond this time, looks like. I've always been rather fond of that alias. It makes you sound even more dashing."

Arthur finished chewing, swallowed, then leaned forward so that all four legs of the chair as well as his own feet were on the ground. "Eames?"

"Yes?"

"Why do you have my receipts?"

"Because I lifted your wallet while you were unpacking lunch." Arthur didn't do anything so foolish as pat at his pocket: if Eames said he'd done it, he'd done it. "You really ought to clean it out more often. Mementos of three weeks ago? I expected it to be tidier."

Arthur ignored the obvious distraction attempt. "Which again prompts the question: why?"

"Have to make sure I'm still on top of my game. If I can make it with you, I can make it with anyone, can't I?" Eames hummed a few bars of “New York, New York” with a crooked-toothed leer, holding up Arthur's wallet. "I didn't take anything out or memorize any numbers, you have my word of honor." Eames tossed the wallet over; Arthur caught it and set it on top of his desk.

Eames' word of honor actually did mean something, so Arthur didn't have the need to check now (he would later). Seeing the receipts was bad enough. Arthur cleared his throat. "You are aware that I have killed for less?" he asked.

"Oh, very much so." Eames opening his own container of boliche. "Though I'm not looking forward to you murdering me on our next few practice runs, I'm hoping to encourage your creative side such that you'll find at least one method that surprises me. These are the prices professionals like ourselves must pay to keep our instincts sharp in this nasty business we call life." Arthur pondered the merits of stabbing Eames with his fork in this nasty business they called life. "You still haven't answered my question," added Eames.

Arthur wanted to sigh, he wanted to shake his head, he wanted to grab Eames by the throat and throw him out of the window into the chicken coops outside. He wanted to ask, Why the hell are you pushing this? Why are you forcing me to lie? Do you really need me to tell you that you were on Market Street wearing a pink and orange scarf and a ridiculous yellow beanie and smoking a cigarette on the day I left? Did you forget that when we aren't on the same side of a job, we don't talk about that job? Do you really want me to tell you that I know about your open contract to find Lavoisier with Proclus Global and the one with XanaCorp Enterprises? Do you want me to admit out loud that I will have no choice but to kill you if you ever give Sam Winchester so much as a sideways glance? I made a promise and I keep those and for the love of God, Eames, just shut the fuck up and don't try to be clever, just this once, because as annoying as you are I find your unfailing competence unhealthily attractive and you make me laugh sometimes when I want to die and I don't want to kill you, not most of the time, not really, except right now, when I really do.

Arthur shrugged and said, "Nothing could convince me to go to Pittsburgh in the middle of January."

"Arth—"

"Certain parties may have been under the mistaken impression that events of interest to me were happening in Pittsburgh, but had they gone to Pittsburgh themselves, they would realize that things in Pittsburgh weren't nearly as interesting as rumored. They would have found a number of stupid people experimenting recreationally with a psychedelic plant that got themselves killed. Furthermore, the person who made all the noise about the situation turned out to be a determined and very well-spoken conspiracy theorist with a drinking problem, a Fentanyl problem, and an impressive collection of trucker hats. Said crank would also make sure to tell them all about the aliens that abducted him on the road in Ohio. For an hour or three at a time."

Arthur took another bite of chicken before he continued. "Otherwise reliable observers may have come to those conclusions, but I'm sad to say that they still would have been wrong. Because the fact is that nothing happened in Pittsburgh, and you can check the official records if you'd like. But of course, I can't say for certain, because even if something had happened in Pittsburgh last month, I wasn't there to see it. And if you ever think differently, then this is the last time you and I will work together and you will find that not many other people are willing to work with you either." Arthur dabbed his lips with a napkin, then flashed Eames a tight smile. "Are we clear?"

Eames regarded him for several long moments before he nodded. "Clean-up job for the military then? Say no more. Though, given the terms on which you parted, I can't believe you're still willing to contract with them."

Arthur snorted. "Enormous waste of time and a pain in my ass, but they dropped the assault charges on the Scofield case and it got three of my identities off the no-fly list, along with Thomas Gordon Sumner."

Eames' eyes lit up. "Arthur! I didn't realize you cared."

“Yes, well.” Arthur poked at his chicken. "I've kind of always liked that alias on you. Not that I had anything to do with it. And I ought to stab you for handing out my number." Arthur had his fork halfway to his mouth when his phone started ringing. He sighed, set his lunch aside, and answered. "Yes?"

"Arthur, I need you to cast your totem. Now," said Sam, his voice hoarse and panicked.

Arthur felt his eyes bug out of his head. Not-speaking of the fucking devil. He didn't dare look up at Eames, he just reached into his pocket and grabbed the die. It felt right, but just in case, Arthur spun around and rolled it. "This is reality," he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eames nearly drop his lunch in a rush to check his own totem. Arthur glanced up and Eames mouthed we're awake. "My team just checked. We're definitely awake."

Sam sounded like he was starting to cry. The sound echoed oddly, like he was in a small space, maybe a bathroom. It amplified those choked hitching noises that always made Arthur's eyes start to mist up too. "Fuck, I— but this doesn't really tell me anything, does it? Your projection might just be lying to me. Did they fucking catch me, Arthur? I—I thought we were being more careful with the car and everything but maybe, maybe you were right. God, I hope you find me soon, I can't—I can't take this much longer."

"Hey, hey, hey. Deep breaths, come on, just relax. We're awake, okay? You're just... confused." These episodes happened sometimes, a side-effect of frequent Somnacin use. As far as Arthur knew, Sam hadn't used for years—that disaster of a dreamroot cocktail last month did not count—but then, waking night terrors had been what brought him to Arthur in the first place. "Now, why did you need my totem? Did you lose yours?" Arthur glanced at his keys sitting on the desk, at the odd metal bead from Sam's bracelet that he'd taken to fondling during down time.

"No. I've got it. It—it keeps coming up real."

"Good, good, keep that in mind." Arthur opened up his laptop. "Where are you?"

"Little town in Florida. Broward County."

Less than three hundred miles away, but in order to get from Havana to Fort Lauderdale, Arthur would have to do some tricky maneuvering. Or call in some major markers. Or both. "Okay. Do you remember how you got there?"

Sam's voice broke again. "Sort of. I can remember—how I get to—it repeats, I know how I get here, but I don't know how I get back. That's the thing— shit, is this what Limbo feels like? You've never been to Limbo, you wouldn't know. I'm sorry for every time I made fun of you for being so scared of it. I should call Miles. Limbo would make sense. But why does he keep dying?" asked Sam. "Maybe if I—"

"Hey!" Arthur shouted. "Don't you— don't even start talking about that, asshole." Probably not the best tactic; Arthur tried to follow his own advice. "You need to slow down. Please, please, calm down, just listen to my voice and try to breathe." Eames mouthed the question Who is it? Arthur scowled at him and shook his head as he opened up his notebook. "Miles is in Dhaka. I don't have his number, but I'll get it for you."

Sam was hiccuping now and Arthur could hear the snot bubbles. "That—that'd be, please..."

"I just need one second. Promise me you're won't do anything drastic while I'm getting the number." Arthur scrawled out 'Get the number and then get me a flight to Miami, NOW!' in his notebook and flashed it at Eames, who pulled out his phone. "Just for a little bit. I need you to trust me when I say we're all awake and this isn't Limbo or a dream or anything else." Except for possibly a psychotic break, but Arthur would worry about that once he got there.

"Then what the fuck else could it be?" Sam screamed in a voice that ripped Arthur's heart in two, loud enough for Eames to hear it and blanch.

On the other end of the line, Sam was now openly sobbing. In the background Arthur could hear a door being kicked in and Dean yelling, "Fuck, Sam, what is wrong with you today?"

"Hey, hey, maybe you should let me talk to your brother," said Arthur, words that he'd never thought would ever pass his lips—but he'd never heard Sam like this, not once, not when Jess had died, not even while exploring his nightmares.

But Sam wasn't listening to Arthur. "Dammit, Dean! I told you not to touch the guns today, go put it—no, don’t, I’ll do it myself.” The sound of a scuffle, and something indistinct from Dean. Sam’s voice got more desperate. “Dean, give it to me. Just give me the gun, now. I mean it." Arthur hoped against all evidence that Dean wouldn't be stupid enough to arm someone in Sam's condition.

"I'll give you the gun after you give me the phone and tell me what the fuck's going on," Dean shouted.

Eames tapped Arthur on the shoulder, his scrawl utterly, deadly legible. 'You can be there in ten hours legit commercial, seven if I can put together some papers, four if we both give the Grajales cartel a marker and don't get caught, here's Miles' hotel number, Ivan and Stella understand.'

"Thank you," Arthur whispered at Eames and pointed at 'Grajales cartel'. Dean was still yelling in the background and Arthur needed to get Sam's attention back. Arthur gave Eames one glance and decided, for once, to hope. "Sam. Sam. Sam!"

"Yeah, yes — Dean, I mean it, gimme the goddamn gun!"

Arthur heaved out a breath. "Sam, I'm on my way to you, it'll be a couple hours, I'll find you, just stay where you are and don't—"

"That won't be fast en—" Sam started, but then there was a sickening, wet, bone-crunching sound. Human skull against porcelain, if Arthur had to put money on it. The cold facts passed through the front of his mind while his heart dropped out of his chest. Then he heard Sam whimper, "Fuck. Dean!" before the phone cut out.

Eames stared at Arthur, white as a sheet. "What the hell was that?"

Arthur couldn't stop looking at the phone. "I have no ide—

~*~

Arthur generally slept well in Cuba, whenever his job permitted him to actually sleep in the country. This job was not one of those times. Arthur rolled over, saw it was 7:30, grabbed the ringing phone, and mumbled, "Yes?"

"Hi, need you," said Sam.

Arthur flopped over again, rolled his die, and confirmed this was waking reality. He grunted. "I was working until five this morning, I'm sleeping now, you already owe me, call again in two hours."

"I need you to get to Miami as soon as you can."

"I'm in the middle of a job, I'm exhausted, and I'm not your fucking errand boy."

"Dean and I are holed up in a shitbag motel and there are thugs from XanaCorp Enterprises sitting in a van outside my door," said Sam. The reply came a little too quick, but Sam did sound desperate.

Arthur rubbed grit out of his eyes. "I'm... I'm really not in the best position to get to Miami right now."

"Call your contact in the Grajales cartel, they'll be the fastest."

Arthur sat up in his bed. "What? How the fuck do you know—? What's going on over there?"

Sam had the decency to sound embarrassed. "I'll explain later. They're the quickest way to get you from Cuba to Florida and I need you here."

"Well, that's something of a change from the last few times we talked," said Arthur, feeling just a little bitter. "Why do you need me?"

"Because if you decide someone's going to live until tomorrow, then they will," Sam said, like it was gospel truth. "There's no one better," he added, and that almost made Arthur's eyes sting. "Please."

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose and swung his legs off the bed. One day he'd say no to Sam. Somehow. "Okay, I'll be there in a couple of hours. Just, hold tight, okay?"

Sam sounded hopeful for the first time in the conversation. "We will. We'll try, we'll—hold on—" Arthur heard something in the background that might have been Dean, then Sam called back, "You'll thank me when it's Wednesday!"

Arthur wiped his eyes, starting to reconsider his offer. He'd forgiven Sam a lot of things over the years but this was really beginning to sound like a practical joke. "Sam, can you tell me what's going on?"

"Not really, I don't—" Sam stopped. "Dean?" he gasped, and the phone cut out.

Arthur picked up his die, just to make sure he'd seen it right the first time. He rolled a—

~*~

Eames' eyes lit up. "Arthur! I didn't realize you cared."

“Yes, well.” Arthur poked at his chicken. "I've kind of always liked that alias on you. Not that I had anything to do with it. And I ought to stab you for handing out my number." Arthur had his fork halfway to his mouth when his phone started ringing. He sighed, set his lunch aside, and answered. "Yes?"

"Hi, Arthur," said Sam.

Arthur felt his eyes bug out of his head. Not-speaking of the fucking devil. He fought the urge to glare at Eames: with Eames there, he couldn't scream at Sam about proper precautions because come on, they'd just had this talk. "Are you fucking kidding me?" he asked instead.

"Don't hang up and don't worry. I just wanted to tell you a few things."

Arthur gazed up at the heavens, wondering what the hell he'd done to deserve both Sam and Eames acting up at the same time. "And what makes you think I’ll listen?"

"It's demon blood," Sam said quickly.

Arthur paused. That sounded serious, but if this was one of their codes, it wasn't one Arthur remembered. "I'm sorry, I think I missed that. Try again?"

Sam laughed, the little prick. "It's not code, Arthur. You always said you wanted to know, right? I promised you I'd never lie about my past. So, just as an experiment, I'm going to see what happens when I don't hide it."

"Uh, okay." Arthur felt more than a little confused.

Sam took a deep breath. "Okay, here goes: I have a little bit of demon blood, that's why my dreams are so clear and stable. I used to have some psychic powers in reality too, but I haven't had any visions since we killed Azazel."

"Killed who?"

"Azazel, the yellow-eyed-demon who killed my mother and Jess. Try to keep up."

"This isn't funny."

"It isn't, is it? You should try living it for awhile. My mom died when she caught Azazel feeding me his blood when I was a baby, that's why Dad took us out on the road. We're professional demon hunters." Christ, Sam sounded serious. "And monster hunters, we kill a lot of those too. The reason I've been so freaked out lately is because after this other guy with demon blood killed me last year, my brother sold his soul to bring me back, and on my birthday hell hounds are going to show up and rip him to shreds. I've spent the last nine months trying to figure out how to save him, and you know what, that's really not funny anymore either." Sam still sounded serious, but his voice was starting to edge toward manic.

Arthur clenched his jaw. "Are you high?"

"I wish. That's the truth I've been hiding from you all these years. Also, there's a pretty good chance I'm the Antichrist. I don't think it's contagious, though, so you shouldn't worry."

Whatever face Arthur was making, it had Eames alarmed enough that he was standing up and coming over to check on him. "I— what?"

"I told you it was crazy. Now you know. Go ahead and check your totem: you're not dreaming." Arthur froze, a little freaked out about the fact that he'd already been reaching for the die when Sam spoke. He dutifully checked it: at the very least, Arthur was awake.

After the silence stretched out a few moments too many, Sam sighed. "It's not because I don't trust you. It's because my life is seriously fucked up and no one should have to put up with this shit. Especially not you."

Arthur cleared his throat. "Any particular reason you decided to tell me now?" he asked.

"Yes, but that doesn't matter," Sam said, resigned to... something.

Arthur opened up his laptop. "I, uh. Tell me where you are, I think we need to talk about this in person." He dashed off a quick e-mail to Mal: Sam's having a psychotic break, get packed, more details when I have them.

Sam sighed. "Wish we could. But you can't get here in time. You've tried, but it looks like we're all just stuck where we are on Tuesday. I just... between this and everything else, I was sick of lying. I wanted to see how this would go. But I guess it's going about as badly as I expected. You think I'm nuts, don't you?"

Arthur paused. "I didn't say that."

"I heard you typing. You can check— I've been using the Oblivion File as a journal. You'll find all of the evidence you need there. I'm not crazy, not yet." Sam said, and he sounded ancient. "Give me a few more Tuesdays."

Arthur felt his heart lurch up into his throat. "Just... tell me where you are. Maybe Mal can get there if I can't."

"She can't. Unless the universe is genuinely conspiring against me and this is the day Dean actually survives, in which case, I guess I'll see you soon. Love you."

"But where—" Arthur began, but the line cut off. He fell out of his chair when Eames put a hand on his shoulder. "Jesus," he yelped, stumbling down to his knees.

Eames had the decency to look apologetic. "Sorry, it's just that— you look a bit stricken. Is everything all right?" he asked, offering Arthur a hand.

His hand was warm, strong, and solid around Arthur's: everything Arthur needed at that moment. "No, I don't think it is," Arthur told him.

"Can I help?" Eames asked.

"I don't—

~*~

Arthur settled his plate of arroz con pollo in his lap, tipping his chair back to get a little more comfortable. Even though he technically slept for a living, this particular job left him exhausted, in part because of the heat, in part because of a difficult mark, and in part because Eames thought it was fun to 'keep him on his toes' when they worked together.

His fork hadn't even touched the plate when his phone rang. Arthur twitched, the chair slipped, and then he was falling backwards.

Really? was his first thought, watching his rice fly like fireworks, followed by: Eames is never going to let me live this down. Then the back of his head hit the concrete floor at exactly the wrong angle and he really saw fireworks.

After that his vision went kind of dim. Everything felt distant. The damn phone was still ringing, and somewhere over him Eames was not acting at all like himself. Eames hardly ever shouted; when Eames was angry, he got quiet. And Eames wouldn’t let his face twist in all those horrible ways just because Arthur had fallen down.

Someone was stroking his cheek, pushing his fingers through Arthur's hair. Eames was also talking. "Arthur, darling, stay with me. Don't try to move."

Arthur would have smiled but it felt like too much work. Even moving his mouth was getting difficult. The phone was ringing again. "You should get that," he muttered.

The last thing Arthur heard was Eames shrieking, "Arthur can’t come to the bloody phone because you've gone and likely killed him, you fucking twit!"

~*~

Arthur had his fork halfway to his mouth when his phone started ringing. He sighed, set his lunch aside, and answered. "Yes."

"I wish you were here," said Sam, his voice low and warm.

Arthur felt his eyes bug out of his head. Not-speaking of the fucking devil. "What's going on?" he asked. This was not how their phone calls started. Ever.

"There's somebody with you right now."

Arthur frowned and glanced at Eames. "Yes, but I can go somewhere a little more—"

"Don't," said Sam and it was a command. Arthur froze. "Want you to stay right there at your desk. It's almost a hundred degrees in there and you've got your sleeves rolled up but you're still wearing your tie, aren't you?"

Sam had it exactly right, actually, but Arthur's response to the words wasn't exactly... verbal.

"You can turn towards your desk. Pull out your moleskine if you need an excuse." Arthur did both. There was a promise in Sam’s words, a hint of what was to come, and Arthur was waiting. Waiting and listening.

“Of course you’re wearing your tie,” Sam continued. “You’re always wearing your tie.” A sigh shivered through the line and Arthur closed his eyes. He could picture Sam, right there, in the room, standing just behind him, breathing into his ear. “Always wanted to...” Sam brought himself up short, then finished with a growl. “Wanted to fuck you in it and nothing else.”

Arthur flicked his eyes over to Eames, ice water in his veins, chased by a heat he didn’t want to admit to. “You—”

“But this time I wouldn’t want to wait. I wouldn’t have the patience to get you naked. Probably rip your shirt if I tried. I'd just go straight for your cock, wouldn't even push those fancy suit pants down further than your knees cause you'd already have gotten them messy just thinking about me, wouldn't you?”

“Presumptuous,” Arthur said. Presumptuous of Sam to think that he could. Presumptuous to think that Arthur would allow it.

“Would you mind?” Sam asked, and there was a thread of amusement in his voice.

Arthur swallowed, his eyes fluttering closed again. He was about to have a problem with his suit pants right now and Sam wasn’t even in the room. “No.”

Sam growled into the phone, the sound rumbling past Arthur’s ear. “I like that,” he said and Arthur was reaching out, needing something to ground himself. His fingers closed over his keys, the metal jingling, and he smoothed his thumb over the small metal bead. “If you were here, I’d bend you right over. If I was there. Take you against that desk.”

Arthur could feel Eames' eyes on his back but he couldn't—Sam had told him to stay put. He so desperately wanted to move, find somewhere quiet to take care of the problem pressing against his zipper. He wanted to listen to what Sam said. Arthur took a breath to steady himself, grasping at the control he felt slipping. His keys dug into his palm, reminding him of where he was, of what was happening. Jesus, Eames was right there—but whatever Sam’s game was, Arthur knew he wasn’t going to hang up.

He could hear Sam breathing, harder than normal, a harsh panting that seemed to echo. “Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hard yet, Arthur? I’d be working you open right about now. You’d be tight. Always so damn tight.” There were sounds echoing through the phone, a slick, familiar slide that had Arthur unable to breathe. Sam’s voice was starting to rasp and Arthur bit his lip. Fuck. “Touch yourself.”

“What?” Arthur sucked in a lungful of air and stared straight ahead again. “I can’t.” Eames was eyeing Arthur with a detached curiosity that wouldn’t remain indifferent for long.

“Touch yourself,” Sam repeated, harsher and deeper. Arthur dropped the keys on the desk and brought his fingers up to his neck, lightly tracing his skin before digging in to the muscle at the join of his shoulder, aware of his audience. “Not like that,” Sam said with a chuckle, and Arthur froze, wondering how Sam knew. “Touch yourself, Arthur.”

Oh, God. Arthur trailed his hand southward, trying to be subtle, and kept his breathing slow and easy. He didn’t want to give himself away. He flicked open the top button and heard Sam sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, are you there yet? Do you have your pants undone? Do you have your dick out or do you just have a hand down your underwear?”

“Christ.” Arthur flattened his palm against his stomach and pushed it below his waistband, reaching down to grasp himself tightly. “The...the latter. Asshole.” He inched the zipper downward, trying not to make a sound.

“Modest,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t be so modest if I was there.” His voice was a growling purr that sent a thrill racing down Arthur’s spine.

“That so?” Arthur said, completely failing to sound disinterested. His fingers squeezed around the base of his dick to keep himself in check.

“Couldn’t be modest with your pants around your ankles and my dick in your ass.” Jesus, but Sam didn’t fight fair. Arthur moved his hand slowly over himself, using only his wrist. He shouldn’t be so close already, not with Eames sitting just across the room, not with Sam God knew how many miles away, but Arthur was caring about that less and less. If he closed his eyes he could imagine that Sam there with him, the only ones in the room. That it was Sam’s hand on him instead of his own.

“I’d make you come all over that desk,” Sam said, voice dropping even lower. “Ruin all those neat piles you’ve been making, trying to pretend I’m not talking you off right now. And you’d let me, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t give a damn about your papers if I was holding you down on top of them.”

“Yes...” The word was more of a hiss than anything else. God, the things Sam’s voice did to Arthur shouldn’t even be legal. Just his voice.

“Hold you just by your hips while I was pounding into you, wouldn’t even need to touch you to make you come. Are you thinking about that? Thinking about how I’d feel? How I’d make you feel?”

Arthur let his mouth drop open, needing air, trying to be careful. His fingers were deliberate, tight as they stroked. There was only one way that this was going to end. Christ, Eames was going to know; Arthur was lucky if Eames didn't know already.

“Then I’d pull you back up by your tie,” Sam rasped, “Hold you against me while I fucked you, hold you tight. I’d leave marks all the way down your throat, high enough that you wouldn’t be able to hide them. Mark you everywhere. Let you know, let everyone know. God.”

Sam was close, impossibly close; Arthur remembered what he sounded like. Sam’s grip would be getting rougher, his thrusts faster, and Arthur couldn’t think beyond Sam. He could already hear the steady, wet sound of Sam’s fist speeding up. Arousal stabbed deep into Arthur’s gut and he felt pleasure starting to knot together, tightening his body.

He bit down hard, savaging his lip as he choked back a moan, and then he felt himself soak his underwear, the fabric going wet and sticky around his hand, and— Fuck, he thought, tipping forward, Oh fucking Christ.

His head bowed over the desk as he finished. He was breathing too hard, completely obvious, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Eames’s eyes could burn a hole straight through him.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Sam breathed. “Oh fuck. You came, didn’t you? You fucking came. God, that’s so damn—oh fuck, Arthur—” Sam panted into Arthur’s ear, whining and growling as he came, and Arthur drank it all in, jealous of the noise, grateful for it. “Shit,” Sam whispered as he came down from his high. “Oh, shit, I needed that.”

Arthur stifled the irrational urge to start laughing and stared down at the desk. His arousal was draining out of him and cold, hard reality began to set in, brought front and center by the sound of Eames standing up. “Fuck,” Arthur said quietly. Sam was hundreds of miles away, the asshole; he wouldn’t have to explain. As far as Eames was concerned, Sam was just some disembodied voice on the other side of a telephone. Arthur was stuck here.

A fist pounded on the door and Arthur jerked upright before he realized that the sound was coming from the phone. “Sam, what the hell are you doing in there?” came Dean’s voice. Arthur cut his eyes over to Eames, who had frozen, staring at him with both eyebrows raised.

“I’m having sex with my boyfriend!” Sam shouted and Arthur pulled the phone away from his ear to stare at it, just barely catching Dean’s shocked “What?”

Eames echoed Dean with a great deal more unholy glee. "Arthur, I didn’t know you had it in you. On the job, no less. How terribly unprofessional." Arthur could feel his cheeks start to burn, watching Eames stare at the spreading dark stain on his pants. "If you were that hard up, all you ever have to do is ask, love," said Eames, licking his lips.

Arthur was going to have to shoot him, there was no other way to recover from this. "Eames," he began—

Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/86288.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Out of Hand: A User's Guide to Unraveling Morag

moragmacpherson — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:41:34 GMT

Psych #1: Why is the first word you always use to describe yourself "short"?
Me: Because it's the obvious one. "Look for the short chick." People pick me out of a crowd every time.
Psych #1: You seem to focus on being small, it comes up almost randomly in conversation. Why is that?
Me: Because it's not something I ever have a chance to forget about.
Psych #1: Why? Do other people always bring it up? Because you seem to be the one always bringing it up in our conversations.
Me: No, it's because... well, being as short as I am is really tedious.
Psych #1: I don't understand. How is being short tedious?
Me: Like when I cook, if I need something in the pantry, I have to climb up a stool to grab it. God help me if I forget to grab everything I need in one trip, otherwise it's back up the stool. And standing in grocery aisles, waiting for someone, anyone to show up to grab something for me. People are always nice about it, but I'm still the one always stuck there waiting for them.
Psych #1: Huh. I never thought of it like that.

Hi. I'm Morag! There's a number of new people about (I'll get to that in a minute), and it's been awhile since I posted anything that wasn't, well, porn (there's an explanation!), so an intro/update post isn't uncalled for. I've been doing a lot of tumblr-ing too, which has added think-y things, as well as thesis-ing, so more thinking. But yeah, first thing to know about me: I'm 4'9", short enough for it to be annoying, not quite so short that people ask if it's a symptom. Also probably a good giveaway up there: the necessity of numbering my psychiatrists and psychologists.

Another thing about me: I'm allergic to lanolin (read: almost all wool, except for certain goats and as it turns out, buffalo) and the only craft-y thing I have any talent for is knitting (spacial perception and I are not friends). Ain't life a bitch? So, this is the yarn I mostly use:

Typically 100% cotton, fairly cheap, unravels at card tricks, no elasticity whatsoever, because not once in my life have I found a worsted weight yarn I could use that wasn't 100% acrylic and felt like a cat's tongue. Bulky or small enough that my size 5 needles never run out of work, those are my choices. So when I beta'd a fantastic and truly FILTHY blindfold fill, (I provided the title "Start With a Slip Knot". I am a horrible person.) that contained what looked like a fun and easy new stitch (linen stitch), I decided to give it a shot, and it's pretty cool. But the thing is: see up there where the yarn label says "24 stitches across = 10cm"?

Bullshit.

(Ginger candy is fromjjhunter who remains awesome)

That's 36 stitches in 10 cm. Which means that, in order to make a scarf roughly the same size as the ones my pal churns out on a daily basis (18 stitches, worsted), I have to make twice as many stitches. This is just one of the ways that my life gets quickly out of hand.

How out of hand do I get? Here's my "to-finish" list at the moment, just fandom related and only stuff that isn't in complete hibernation (in order of when project started):

1. Need to write Sam/Arthur phone!sex portion of my Not Such As I Was take on "Mystery Spot"
2. Need to write promised sequel for blindfold fill (The Other Side of Mt. Hell Hound) that actually fulfills the Sam/Jo portion of the prompt.
3. Need to have Robo!Sam ravish Sherlock now that I've finally got his clothes off.
4. Oh, yeah: I started a somewhat successful multi-fandom (60+ at last count) self-cest comment meme that I wrote two fills for (Novakcest and Robo!Sam/Boy King!Sam) which sort of makes me the mod. Whoops.

What have I learned? I need to stop talking to callowyn and sistabro so much, as they are bad and highly creative influences. Also, I seem to be fandom bicycling Sam Winchester like no one's business lately. Which is probably not terribly surprising to many of you, but is still funny, because most of those projects started as attempts to get characters played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt naked. I got Helena Bonham Carter instead, which is pretty awesome, but the lack of naked JGL in my life means I spend a lot of time tumblring the JGL tag. Which is where how I found this:

NPH: Yes, but who cares about what happens in the world when you've got this cloud of doom like a disaster movie hanging over all of it. And you're not even John Cusack, you're like a CGI extra.

I beg to differ, Mr. Patrick-Harris. JGL is actually a lot like John Cusack. Compare the resumes. This theory isn't quite as well-developed as my "James Franco is Bizarro!Jensen Ackles" rant-- and this is where I should insert another professional caveat:

Psych #2: [In middle of our first visit, laughing] What is life like inside your head?
Me: Very associative. And alliterative. It makes me very suggestible. And even I don't know what's going on in here half the time.

Which is why, in my brain, the obvious transition from John Cusack goes to: there's also this other thing I keep running across on tumblr about the misogyny inherent in the concept of "friend zone". It's a good read: you should read it, but tl;dr is gordonecker's comment of "The thing I find particularly disgusting and infuriating about the whole “friend zone” is how it implicitly characterizes male-female friendships as con games in which men use friendship to exploit women for sex while women try to use the implicit promise of sex to exploit men for friendship." How does Mr. Cusack fit in? Because he played Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything and thus was typecast as the quintessential Nice Guy, a genuine Nice Guy, which all of the so-called "nice guys" have totally misinterpreted.

(If you haven't seen Say Anything, it's fucking Valentine's week: WATCH SAY ANYTHING. It's a good fucking movie and part of the collective culture. Also, it has Lloyd Dobler holding a boombox over his head while it plays Peter Gabriel.)

The thing people miss about Lloyd Dobler is that yes, all of his friends are women. At least one of them has a crush on him. But he never leads them on, and he talks to them about the woman he is actually romantically interested in (apparently to the point of excess). See: male-female non-romantic friendship wherein the guy isn't in it with an expectation of sex. THAT'S WHAT MAKES HIM A REAL NICE GUY. And that's what 500 Days of Summer points out: if a person tells you from the start that no, not really interested in romance (even if s/he is interested in sex), and you continue to presume s/he's in it for the romance, the only person you're fucking over is yourself. And you've earned it

... and how did we get here again? Possibly because I have opinions. But there's also a chance:

Me: I've been having a big problem with false awakenings lately. I've "woken up" into another dream as many as five times in a night. What the hell?
Psych #3: Have you been worrying about your plans for tomorrow a lot lately?
Me: Well, that's the going theory, but the problem is that for the last couple of mornings, I have operated on assumptions that things that happened in some of the dreams actually happened. This morning it meant the cats didn't get fed, but, well, yeah. Inability to distinguish dream from reality? I felt I should ask.
Psych #3: Good point: lemme look at your meds. [makes adjustment to timing of doses, I stop having false awakenings]

So it might be Inception. Another moral of the story: if I ever ask you "Am I crazy or...?" just remember that "crazy" is actually something I've always considered a valid option.

Now, just a little something that would be useful for my real life and to show that I'm not just a porn-obsessed internet recluse -- there's this problem I'm having with my thesis. (Masters in Middle Eastern History if you must know). Ten years of liberal arts education have taught me better than to trust a liberal arts source on maths too much (Kukkonen, the source who inspired this conclusion, has a background is philosophy/intellectual history); also, while I have taken many philosophy classes, most of the basics I had to self-teach. So, if anyone out there knows someone who REALLY understands Godel's Proof of Incompleteness Theory (and bear in mind, I have asked people with doctorates in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and gotten nothing for my troubles) and/or anyone who reads this excerpt of thesis and can make a definitive argument for "Bullshit, you've got it wrong," could you please let me know? Thanks. And yeah: this is me and most of this is just crap I had to get out of my head so I could start actually working again. If you've gotten this far: cheers!

-MM

Thesis excerpt:

Begin with the proposition that arithmetic is the least problematic test case for a logical proof, as the natural numbers and their interactions (2+2=4) are apodeictic; i.e., true in and of themselves. The givens in a mathematic proof therefore have a predetermined positive truth value, to which the methods of formal logic and axioms of mathematics are then applied. If finite sets of logical mathematical axioms can both express true propositions which cannot be proven true using that set of axioms, and also the axioms cannot prove themselves, when dealing exclusively with givens that are by their own nature true, then application of a finite set of logical axioms dealing with givens that are assertoric or problematic will encounter even more difficulty in proving all true propositions within that system, i.e. if we can’t have a unified logical theory of math, then we can’t have a unified logical theory of everything.

Averroes ascribes to a neoplatonist belief that an explanation for the existence of the universe can be adduced from the application of the formal rules of logic and mathematical proofs (arithmetic being by its nature apodeictic and unchanging - the underlying arithmetical givens within a proof are simple and true in and of themselves, 2+2=4). While new sets of mathematical axioms have developed since the time of Averroes (calculus, etc.) the underlying form and process of the formal mathematical proof have not changed since their invention by Pythagoras. However, if we maintain that Averroes’ philosophy must have perfect internal logical consistency (which is implicit in the belief that total knowledge is possible), total knowledge - the underlying mathematical-philosophical-logical equation for all existence, must not only explain existence, but in and of itself, explain its own form and existence.

If we extend Averroes’ philosophy to the present and current understandings of mathematics with modern methods that are logically derived from the pre-existing arithmetic (as Einstein attempted to do), then the premise of a complete logical theory of existence is shown to be an impossibility by Godel’s proof of the theorem of incompleteness, which shows that a finite set of formal logical axioms in mathematics will allow for the expression of propositions and problems which cannot be solved using that set of axioms, further, the set of axioms will not, in and of themselves, be able to prove/explain their own necessity.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/86153.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Self-Cest Meme Update: Looking for Authors!

moragmacpherson — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:06:51 GMT

Banner by thecookiemomma

So, the response to the meme has been rather overwhelming. I couldn't be happier: there are some prompts in there that I'm absolutely dying to read. I'm also not entirely sure how word of is spreading: there are people promoting it on tumblr (thanks!), I posted a promo at crossoverfic and at a couple specific fandom communities; but I've never met half the commenters (which is awesome, nice to meet you all!), and what's more, I've never heard of some of these fandoms before!

Which is fantastic, but I do have one worry. It's great to see such diverse prompts, but it's a Comment-Fic Meme and those aren't nearly as fun as they should be if there aren't fills to go with the prompts. I've been doing my part, but my f-list is obviously dominated by people from my fandoms and this has become a truly multi-fandom meme.

So while I don't want to stop the prompts (not for another week or two at the least), if you're an author in any of the following fandoms, consider dropping in and seeing if you can make a fill (and feel free to leave your own prompt while you're there). Anonymous commenting is ON and IP logging is OFF for now; so if you're feeling a little shy about filling or prompting a kinky situation, feel free to do so anonymously.

Bear in mind, these are only the fandoms with existing prompts (and if I classified a fandom incorrectly, my apologies, I had to wiki more than a few of these and make my best guess).

Films/TV Films:

500 Days of Summer
American Gangster
Another Earth
Bronson
Fight Club
Inception
Indiana Jones films
Jack Ryan films (Patriot Games, Clear & Present Danger)
Mission Impossible
Moon (2009)
The Losers (2010)
My Bloody Valentine
Stonehenge Apocalypse
Ten Inch Hero
SWAT

Television:

Andromeda
Criminal Minds
Dharma & Greg
Doctor Who
Farscape
Firefly
Fringe
Glee
Luther
The Magnificent Seven
McGuyver
NCIS: LA
Sanctuary
Stargate (I think every series)
Supernatural
White Collar

Miscellaneous (anime, comics, theater, multiple media, things I've never even heard of which is kind of awesome, etc.)

Batman
CHAOS
Death Note
Digital Devil Saga
Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog
Equus
Hamlet (RSC 2009)
The Seeker: Dark is Rising
Harry Potter
Lord of the Rings
Marvel Comics (including Avengers)
Real Person Fiction (there are plenty of character/actor pairings)
Sherlock Holmes (All known incarnations)
Star Trek (I think all known forms)

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/85787.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Self-cest Comment-Fic Meme

moragmacpherson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:18:11 GMT

Many thanks to thecookiemomma for this lovely banner</user>
This is a multi-fandom comment-fic meme based on the following exchange:

Callowyn: to me, there is no such thing as a crack pairing.
Morag: Would you ship Arthur from Inception with Tom from 500 Days of Summer?
Callowyn: dude, I invented a verse solely for reasons of misha kissing misha. I WOULD SHIP ANYONE WITH THEMSELVES. AND YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THAT.
Morag: Challenge accepted.

And there’s so much to work with! How many times have characters canonically met their past selves, or alternate reality versions of themselves, or an evil doppelganger, or even run across the actors that play them? How many crossovers have you read where someone meets their look-alike from another universe? Think of the classic Buffy episode The Replacements, in which Riley Finn says of two Xanders: "Doesn't it make everyone wanna lock them in separate rooms and do experiments on them?"

Fuck that shit, let's see what happens when they're locked in a room together! Maybe they'll have sex? Awesome. We all love imagining pretty faces making out with each other. Now it’s time to imagine pretty faces making out with themselves!

Rules:

All fandoms welcome! Both RPF and Fanfiction are fair game. And yes, this is an invitation for someone to write Brit Marling/Rhoda Williams (Another Earth).
Threesomes and more-somes are more than welcome, provided that at least TWO participants have the same face. You may have Arthur (Inception)/Tom (500 Days of Summer)/Zooey Deschanel. You may have Eames (Inception)/Tom Hardy/Handsome Bob (Rocknrolla). You may NOT have Eames/Joseph Gordon Levitt—at least, not in this meme.
For fictional characters, you may prompt different ages of the same character, even if that character was played by a different actor onscreen. For example, Dean Winchester as played by Brock Kelly can be shipped with Dean Winchester as played by Jensen Ackles. However, you may NOT prompt Brock!Dean/Tom Hanniger (played by Jensen). If the face doesn’t match, the character must be the same.
This is a kink-friendly meme: both YKINMK (Your Kink is Not My Kink) and YSINMS (Your Squick is Not My Squick) apply. Please respect both, and use thread titles to warn and avoid as needed.
Re: Underage — I'm sorry this is an issue, and remember, that which is condoned in fiction has NOTHING to do with what is condoned in reality — but if an ACTOR is currently underage, then writing RPF about that person is off limits. You may have Sam Winchester (age 15)/Sam Winchester (age 24), because Sam Winchester is a fictional character. You may NOT have Colin Ford/Sam Winchester, because Colin Ford is a real person under the age of seventeen. Please be considerate when warning. If you need clarification, feel free to private message me.
Wheaton's Law rules: DON'T BE A DICK. Otherwise angry nerds in ugly clown sweaters will storm your house and possibly attack you with photon torpedoes.

Prompts should list the pairing (including fandoms) in the subject line and the details of the prompt in a comment. Please add “Fill” to the subject line when answering a prompt, as well as any relevant warnings (including changing the warnings for later parts, if necessary). Do try to keep a reasonable proportion of your fills/prompts; i.e. if you leave five prompts, it's time to think about putting in a fill before you make another prompt. Remember: don't be a dick!

Unless it becomes an issue, anon commenting is ON and IP logging is OFF. I'm hoping this doesn't become an issue. I hate being Authority, because then I have to rebel against myself.

ETA: An excellent question about the eligibility of voice actor pairings was raised by black_sluggard. [Link to Thread] See the linked thread for details, but the tl;dr is: if you're unsure, ask, and there will be a case by case decision following the procedures I outlined in my reply.

So go forth and have fun!

List of Fills
(listed in order of posting for now, until I figure out a better method - by character or fandom or something, I'm not sure yet)

Hooked by moragmacpherson - Jimmy Novak (SPN)/Jacob Glaser (Stonehenge Apocalypse); Novakcest, marking, mild blood play. (Explicit)
Untitled by metonomia - Rhoda Williams/Herself (Another Earth); no warnings but contains some spoilers (Teen or Mature)
Let the Right One In by moragmacpherson - Robo!Sam/BoyKing!Sam (SPN); rough sex, mild breathplay, power play, violence (Explicit)
Similarities and Differences by thecookiemomma - Tenth Doctor (Doctor Who)/Barty Crouch Jr. (Harry Potter); oral sex, (Explicit)
Untitled by joelthecat (posted as anonymous) - Vala Mal Doran (SG-1)/Aeryn Sun (Farscape); frottage (Mature)
In Which There Are Two Jensens by orchidfire - Dean Winchester (SPN)/Boaz Priestly (Ten Inch Hero); oral sex, tattoo and piercing kink (Explicit)
Untitled by joelthecat - Donna Noble (Doctor Who)/Lauren Cooper (The Catherine Tate Show); no warnings (General Audiences)
Alabaster by orchidfire - Bellatrix Lestrange (Harry Potter) / Marla Singer (Fight Club); Violence, rape/non-con, object-insertion, torture, humiliation, hate sex, power imbalance, racism, misogyny, choking/breathplay (EXPLICIT)
Believe by orchidfire - Jimmy Novak (SPN)/Jacob Glaser (Stonehenge Apocalypse) (non-Novakcest); no warnings (General Audiences)
Close Encounters of the Fourth-Dimensional Kind by orchidfire - Trueform!Castiel/Trueform!Castiel (SPN); no warnings (General Audiences)
in these silences something may rise by knightblazer - Jimmy Novak (SPN)/Jacob Glaser (Stonehenge Apocalypse); Novakcest, hand-kink (MATURE)
At the Double Palm by joelthecat - Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1)/Jimmy (Sanctuary); oral sex (Mature)
Untitled by Anonymous - Laura Roslin(Battlestar Galactica 2003)/Sharon Raydor(The Closer); oral sex (Explicit)
No Time Like the Present by Anonymous - Eduardo Saverin (The Social Network)/Frank (Doctor Who); no warnings (General Audiences)

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/85726.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

LOL

moragmacpherson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:26:44 GMT

If you haven't been watching, the spontaneous transformation of E! Online's TV's Top Couples poll comment section into a Doctor Superlock RP session is one of the greatest and most beautiful things ever. My favorite moment? When Jim Moriarty started flirting with Lucifer.
This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/85348.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Today

moragmacpherson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:47:11 GMT

This is a fair summation of my achievements and plans for today.

Groundhog Day is so much less exciting when you're in Texas.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/85223.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

An Open Letter to Google

moragmacpherson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:11:59 GMT

You came to power on the same wave that gave us Web 2.0, the one built on user-provided content. As it turns out, people were a lot more interested in each other than we were in pretty much anything else (okay, except for porn). One of the reasons many of us were comfortable sharing content was because it was not necessarily linked to our meatspace identity. We could be different people on different sites (there are things said on this site that would not be said on sites linked with my meatspace identity -- in turn, information on my meatspace life here tends to be descriptive but not specific).

Has there been a single instance since the inception of Web 2.0 that users have reacted positively to post hoc information sharing without explicit consent? Or has there been massive outrage until users were permitted to limit data sharing in accordance with individual comfort level? IT HAPPENS EVERY FUCKING TIME.

And yet you don't seem to learn. So here we go again.

Google, you provide some wonderful services; I've had a gmail account since the first round of invites. Last time I checked I have... eight separate log ins. But I'm gonna have to limit my use of them now. Announcing a sweeping privacy reform while not permitting users to choose which of your services they want to use? Does not count as asking for our permission. (Completely abandoning google just isn't convenient at this time, especially given the dearth of alternatives without equally troublesome privacy issues of their own)

I won't miss google+ (although given that it's been several hours since I deleted the google+ accounts, those profiles really ought to be gone by now). No more browsing while logged in. No more personalized news. I now have to delete your cookie EVERY DAMN DAY. Basically, chrome is now my google docs viewer and nothing more. And no more logging in to gmail unless I need to search for a conversation-- thunderbird is go. I'll log in to gchat using the less reliable gchat widget, and I'll be annoyed about it. But you really haven't given me much choice, have you?

Moral of the story: Take an inch: watch me pull back a mile.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/84785.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Sam and Eames and Lucifer and the Creeps (Superception pic-spam)

moragmacpherson — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:36:51 GMT

Stage directions are over-rated (also, I need to write some porn for the next scene in the next actual story in this 'verse, which means I need my porn writing security blanket, aka callowyn , to settle in for the semester and make me write the phone sex.) Anyway: more Superception pic-spam/pretty things to distract you from exposition dumping.

Warning: While being a PG-13 story, this ficlet contain references to dub-con Samifer goings on.

	“Sam and I need to have a word. The rest of you need to be elsewhere. Out of earshot.”
“Why?”
	“Is that really such a good—?” “Worry not, gentlemen. Sam has nothing to fear from me. Simply testing a theory.”
“Well, I for one could use a drink." “Should I grab you one, Sammy?” “No, I’m good. Thanks.”
“Now that they’re gone, will you tell me where he is?”	“It’s okay, Eames. Really. I’m ignoring him.”
	“And you’re making a valiant effort at it, Sam. But in my experience it’s hard to concentrate on research while your mind’s convinced that someone’s sucking on your right earlobe. Or is he licking your neck now?”
“Uh, well… it was my left ear actually.” “Well, tell him to knock it off. Real or not, I won’t abide by that sort of behavior, even from the Devil. And neither should you.” “How did you—?”
	“How did I notice you’re being molested while the rest of them are clueless? Probably because Dean’s your brother, Bobby may as well be your father, and poor Arthur is trying his very best to right now not think about you and sex at the same time. Not to mention that they’re all ultimately good, decent people and it doesn’t occur to their sort that Satan might be doing that sort of thing.”
“Funny how it quickly it occurred to him, though.”

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/83746.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Dean versus Arthur Sartorial Snark-tacular!

moragmacpherson — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:38:44 GMT

Okay, I admit it: the temptation to pic-spam Dean in his '40s get up is too strong to resist. So I tacked some dialogue from one of the up-coming "Not Such As I Was" stories onto them to justify myself (and that way I get to pic-spam Hotel-Level Arthur and Eames too!). Also, tabaqui was asking about Arthur and Dean's relationship after the last story — this is about as well as the two of them will ever get along.

	"I feel like I'm a goddamn Ken-doll. Why the hell am I doing this again?" "Because you're about to meet Mr. Saito. He's the kind of man you want to take you seriously." "And he'll only take me seriously if I join you in the ridiculous monkey-suit club?"
	"Better monkey-suit than Joe the Plumber. Saito's the head of Proclus Global and one of the ten wealthiest men in the world. We've worked together before. He has the kind of resources we'll need if we want to go up against someone like Dick Roman."
	"Sounds like I'm going to ruin the knees on these pants first time out. Anything else I should know about Mr. Saito-san before we go grovel in front of him?"
	"It's just Mr. Saito and we don't have to grovel. But you should know that Proclus Global has a large pharmaceutical subsidiary. Saito has spent millions of dollars over the last decade trying to kidnap your brother in order to perfect the Lavoisier formula."
	"Saito's just arrived. My, Dean, but you do clean up a treat."
	"Don't objectify me and hold up. Not only are you asking me to place nice with a shady billionaire who's been after Sam for God knows how long, but how come Eames doesn't have to wear a tie?" "Because Saito and I are old acquaintances: I was the man he was paying to find Lavoisier all those years. Never got anywhere close though: dearest Arthur is entirely too good at keeping secrets."
	"A tie still would have been appropriate. Where's Sam?"
	"Not fit for company today, I'm afraid. But you've done some excellent work, darling: this will more than do. I'm certain Dean is more than capable of making all the right impressions on his own. Come along now, Saito's type doesn't like to be kept waiting."
	"What type is that? Bond villain? I'll come along if you can give me one good reason why I shouldn't go in there shooting. It wouldn't be the first time we ganked a demonic drug-company executive." "I was the one who was hiding Sam from them all these years and I've forgiven them. Trust me: we need this. If it makes you feel better you can dose the drinks with holy water, but at least try to be civil."
	"Sure. Can't be any worse than having pizza with Death. Of course, that didn't have a dress code." "Maybe Death was just too polite to bring it up."

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/83603.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

[Meme] Your sex life in 2012 (aka, fun with bibliomancy grin)

moragmacpherson — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:00:14 GMT

From edenfalling

Pick up the nearest book to you. Turn to page 45. The first full sentence describes your sex life in 2012.

Shit. The nearest book I have is by Dan Savage. All things considered, it could be worse. From The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family:

"They must know people are coming here for summer vacation," Terry said, "and they figure they'll gouge you on drink mix."

Drunken sex after overpriced drinks? That sounds nothing like me at all. =D Of course, when it comes to real life, I am an enormous Dan/Terry shipper, and Terry can make me quadruple margaritas any time he likes.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/83398.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Not Such as I Was Masterpost

moragmacpherson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:21:04 GMT

The series/'verse previously known as my Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames Supernatural-Inception Fusion of Doom™ actually has a name, "Not Such as I Was." Now that it has more than a couple of stories in it, it's earned a masterpost! So, from now on, links will be collected here. Furthermore, if anyone else is interested in contributing to the 'verse, you can private message me and I will send you a link to the original timeline that birthed this beast.

Updated: 01 December 2012

The following links and brief headers/summaries lead to the DW posts with complete headers, which are also crossposted to LJ for those who prefer to comment there. I suggest reading in posting order, as chronologically things get a little tricky.

Timeline
NB: This is essentially the story bible of the entire 'verse. It is presented to encourage others to write more Superception crossovers/make more art, etc., either within the 'Not Such' series or by having others look at it and say, "Well, no, it obviously the crossover happened this way." It also contain copious spoilers, but if you're getting impatient with the pace I write at, the titbits offered here are better than nothing -- and maybe you'll write some of the more atmospheric fics and world building ones better than I could. I'd love to read them.

Not Such As I Was Timeline

Tumblr
Feel like contributing just a couple of words whenever you feel like it? This 'verse now has a collaborative tumblr that you may join or simply submit materials to. It's slightly haunted by Lucifer, but we're starting to feel cozy there. So, please, join us at luciferknowsyourtotem

Stories

The Call
PG-13, Slash (Arthur/Eames, Sam)
(1,802 words)
June 2012
Summary: Sometimes, destiny calls while you're still getting dressed.

The Drive
PG-13, Slash (Arthur/Eames)
(3,574 words)
June 2012 (5 hours later)
Summary: It's a long drive from Pierre to Sioux Falls.

Who Knows What Might Be Lurking
PG-13, Multiple (Arthur/Eames, Mal/Dom, Sam/Arthur)
(1,809 words)
August 2003, September 2008, May 2010, June 2012
Includes: Canonical character death
Summary: Mal survives in different memories in different ways.

Discreet and Discrete Lives
NC-17, Slash (Sam/Arthur, Dean, Bobby)
(4,018 words)
January 2008
Includes: Graphic sexual content
Summary: Sam never expected both of his lives to catch up with him at once.

Penrose Stairs
NC-17, Slash (Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames, Dean, Mal, Trickster, Bobby)
February 12, 2008
Includes: Graphic sexual content, canonical character death
Summary: The stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. This is clearly impossible in three dimensions.

Lost in Her Loving Embrace
R, Gen (Mal/Dom, references to Sam/Arthur, Arthur/Eames, Dean, OCs)
November, 2008
Includes: Insanity/Incepted!Mal, suicidal ideation
Summary: There are many reasons why Mal must make Dom wake up with her.

Sad Sappy Suckers
PG-13, Gen (pre-slash Sam/Arthur)
September 4, 2001
Includes: Language, disturbing dream imagery
Summary: Everyone needs their secrets, Arthur knows that, but there’s something huge he’s missing here and without it, Sam’s a puzzle he can’t quite solve.

Pic Spam Ficlets

Dean vs. Arthur Sartorial Snark-tacular
June or July 2012

Sam & Eames & Lucifer & The Creeps
June 2012
Includes: allusion to dub-con Samifer goings on

Arthur vs. Dean's Organizational Skills
March 2008

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/82885.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Deadwood Question (this time with spoilers)

moragmacpherson — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:53:07 GMT

So, I'm just finishing 3.10 of Deadwood and I have to ask:

Does the actors subplot ever go anywhere? Does it have any connection whatsoever to the rest of the story? Or did the writers find out they hadn't been renewed and decided to take a whole lotta LSD before writing up the finale? I am literally gnawing on my fist every time there's a scene change and we wind up with the actors. This is worse than watching the wheels come off of Twin Peaks. At least with David Lynch, I expect this sort of bizarro-plot foil.

On the other hand, there's also my ongoing crush on Calamity Jane... well, maybe not so other hand with the whole dream bit-- but anyway, much approval for Jane/Joanne.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/82610.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Discreet and Discrete Lives (Inception-Supernatural Fusion AU, Sam/Arthur, NC-17)

moragmacpherson — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:19:12 GMT

Title: Discreet and Discrete Lives
Author: moragmacpherson
Betas: callowyn and kalliel
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural fusion AU
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Sam/Arthur,
Timeline: Set during "Dream a Little Dream" (3.10) for Supernatural, pre-movie for Inception.
Series: Not Such As I Was
Contents include: Language, graphic sexual situations
Summary: Sam never expected both of his lives to catch up with him at once.

January, 2008

Dean picked out one of the papers from Bobby's mural of research. "'Silene capensis,' which of course means absolutely nothing to me."

Things clicked into place in ways that were totally fucking impossible. Silene capensis might not have meant anything to Dean, but it meant a whole other world to Sam, one he thought he’d left behind. Fortunately, Dean was looking away while Sam schooled his expression into something more neutral.

"Here, obit," Sam said, a little too eager, and started reading it aloud. There had to be something in here to occupy Dean for a few hours. Dean always had preferred leg work, and Sam wasn't surprised when Dean decided on his own to go find out what killed the neurologist (whose name Sam didn't recognize), dumping all of Bobby's research on Sam's lap.

Sam was still fucked, but he wasn't surprised.

While they stopped at the Gas 'n' Go, Sam bought a burn phone with cash and tried not to feel like a fugitive. He was a fugitive, of course, but that was hardly new. It was just that between Lilith and Ruby and Dean's deal, Sam hadn't given much thought to the other things chasing him. Someone else was all too fond of doing that for him.

As soon as Dean finished getting dressed to interview the people at the sleep clinic, Sam took every scrap of paper from Bobby's room and laid them out on the bed. He swallowed hard when he found an article mentioning an aborted government operation named Project Lavoisier, before he found Bobby's handwritten note in the margins: "Men Who Stare At Goats bullshit" with bullshit underlined three times, along with a phone number.

Sam didn't know the phone number, but he had a bad feeling about it. He went to the vending machines to pick up a soda, 'bumped' into a fellow guest and temporarily liberated his phone to send a message containing the number from Bobby's papers along with the words 'aircraft carrier?'

Roughly a minute later the phone chimed. 'Submarine, idiot. L7.'

Sam smirked, deleted both messages, wiped off the 'borrowed' phone, and casually dropped it in the hall. Then he returned to his room, took a deep breath, and punched in the number for Arthur's Chicago safehouse on the new phone.

"What part of 'land line' do you not understand, asshole?"

"Calm down, this is a burn phone."

"Nice to know you still know how to take some kind of precautions," Arthur snorted. "Congratulations, by the way: you have an FBI file."

"Well, if it comes to it, I've got people over their pay grade," said Sam. Arthur replied with a non-committal grunt. "You didn't peek, did you?"

"Didn't want to ping it," Arthur lied. Sam knew full well that Arthur considered anything in the public record to be fair game and only left a ping if he wanted to. "Why am I not surprised to be talking to you?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Same reason I called battleships. Somebody calls you asking questions about the mysterious death of a neurologist running a sleep study and says Lavoisier? No way you weren't coming to investigate it on your own."

"You're lucky you caught me at this number. The airline lost my luggage somewhere over the Pacific and I had to stop home for clothes during my layover."

Sam hoped Arthur wasn't expecting to find a PASIV when he got here. Being Arthur, he’d also probably want fresh clothes. Sam took a minute to imagine Arthur swanning around wearing one of Sam’s old t-shirts. The one with the purple greyhound, perhaps. "So I take it this study isn't sponsored."

"Entirely under the radar. No studio chatter either—well, not yet. According to my voice messages, you're talking to the official cleaner."

Shit. Arthur would be even nastier if he had government backing. "How is the general?" he asked, trying to keep things light and at least somewhat natural-sounding to anyone else who might be listening.

"Diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, so we'll be down to beryllium pretty soon. He's still lucid for now, and cranky as ever." Sam blinked. The casualty rate for people who knew Lavoisier was almost as bad as his mother's family. They'd started with ten. Beryllium—four— would leave only Arthur, Mal, Sophie, and Hosni. Arthur's voice took on the slightest hint of admiration. "Speaking of which, do you know the cranky sonovabitch who managed to get to my number?"

Sam had to laugh. "Nice job pulling one over on him. He can be persistent." No use dancing around it. "He's a family friend."

On the other end of the line, Arthur stopped zipping up his spare wardrobe. After several moments of silence, Arthur repeated, slower, "I'm the official cleaner."

Sam closed his eyes, rubbing them with his index finger and thumb. "I'll be waiting."

"That is the last fucking place in the world you should be and you know it," came the instant shrill response, and Sam had to pull his ear away from the receiver. "Unless this is your way of saying you want back in the business."

Sam cringed. "No." The words hung between them, as loaded now as they had been four years ago. "It's not—I don't want you roughing it in the back country with my folks either, but the sonovabitch is drifting unbaptized."

"Fuck." A coffee cup or something shattered against the wall and Sam felt a pang of sympathy for any and all people Arthur would encounter on his way to Pittsburgh. "You sure?"

"I haven't had a chance to go down and look for myself. I'm defrocked and this isn't exactly papal doctrine. There aren't any fresh tracks." Sam was willing to bet one crazy professor’s concoction didn’t make a lot of distinctions between the usual dreamscape and Limbo.

"Bullshit. You must have missed them."

If Sam hadn't examined Bobby's arms for needle marks he wouldn't have believed it either. But for all of the scars and spots on Bobby's arms, there had been no tell-tale twin dots. Whatever Bobby had been dosed with, it didn’t come from a PASIV. He sighed. "Remember who you're talking to."

"Wanna throw a little virgin birth in there while you're at it? Fucking hell. You're worse than the Cobbs." Arthur sighed. "They say hi, for what it's worth. When you have an actual land line, you might consider giving Mal a call. She worries about you."

No use trying for subterfuge when it came to the Cobbs, much as Sam wished some things from his past could be erased. They knew everyone in the dreamshare community; not knowing them would stand out worse than acknowledging the friendship. "I write."

"Hard to hold a baby with a postcard."

"I know."

"I've got a plane to catch. Get the hell off that phone and burn it already. And you'd better have meant it when you said 'waiting'."

"Phone's burned, can't promise anything else. See you when I see you."

"Assho—"

Sam hung up, cracked the phone in half, and dropped it into the sink with Dean's socks. He had at least three hours before Arthur landed and probably another half-hour or so before Arthur tracked him down and hit him over the head for being so easy to find.

Sam looked back at Bobby's notes and groaned. He kept these parts of his life strictly segregated for a reason. Now he had to figure out something to tell Dean, preferably something that didn't involve divulging details of Project Lavoisier or Sam’s precise sexual orientation. Sam was certain Dean had no idea about any of it, and he planned to keep it that way. If Dad had ever noticed Sam's boyfriend—or Sam's two years as a 'military contractor'—during one of his covert visits to Stanford, then he'd taken that secret with him to Hell and beyond.

But time was ticking down before a collision was inevitable, and Sam still wasn't even sure which half of his life was more insane. Your family, said a voice in his head that sounded distinctly like Mal. Arthur would probably agree.

Maybe, if Sam was really clever, he'd figure out exactly how the hell someone was sharing dreams without a PASIV. Then he could worry about pulling Bobby out of Limbo-or-whatever and keep Arthur from snooping his way into the apocalyptic quagmire they called the family business.

Reaching into his pocket, Sam toyed with the bracelet of metal anti-possession charms he'd kept there since the Meg incident. He had the tattoo now, but these charms were more than a fail-safe. His fingers found the single ceramic bead on the strand easily. Still reality; still his life.

A part of him wanted to hook Dean up to a PASIV, take him two layers down, maybe try for three. Sam had the power to give his brother another few years, even if only in the dream. But Dean would still be signed up for an eternity in Hell when he woke up.

Fuck.

Dean would flip his shit if he learned about Somnacin. Then he'd do it again about Sam's special abilities in the dream. The only reason Dean wouldn't freak out about Arthur was because they'd hated each other on sight when they'd met at Jess' funeral. And Dean wouldn’t want to live in a dream with him anyway; he’d already made that choice with the djinn.

The thoughts worked better than a double-shot of espresso. Sam stifled a yawn and opened his laptop. There were places and things in this world that neither Bobby nor Arthur would ever think to put together. Sam would find them.

Three hours later, when he reached Bobby's floor at the hospital, Sam did indeed have a good idea of the 'what', the 'how' and a vague idea of 'how to fix it'. Arthur was right: sharing a dream without a PASIV was impossible with processed Somnacin. It required shamanistic magic, actual bits of Silene capensis and a tissue sample. At least it didn't involve drinking reindeer piss; the tea supposedly tasted worse, but Dean would put up less of a fight over it.

Bobby's instincts were good: this was their kind of problem. The trick was stopping its rapid transformation into Arthur's kind of problem. The situation would have to be contained, and there was no better man for that job than Arthur, but Sam wasn't giving up on Bobby yet.

Sam took Bobby's research, edited out any hints of overlapping worlds, turned it into bullet points, and then illustrated it for Dean's consumption. The folder still wasn't quite as neat as one of Arthur's dossiers. There was still a slim chance he and Sam could get this whole thing cleaned up before Arthur even landed. Sam let Dean go to the hospital ahead of him as he double-checked that his tracks were covered.

Sam had barely entered the hospital’s grey halls, however, when Arthur darted out from an open doorway and dragged him into a dim room. Sam tried to break the hold and Arthur whipped him into the wall instead. The elderly coma patient currently occupying the room didn't seem to mind their ruckus. "Jesus Christ, the FBI must be fucking blind to miss that car, what were you thinking—" Arthur got out, before Sam gave up and kissed him.

Contrary to popular opinion, Sam had never left Arthur. He just didn't always follow him.

Speech stifled, Arthur continued to let Sam know exactly how he felt. Fingers strong enough to double tap with a fucking Glock dug into Sam's arms and wrapped in Sam's hair, pulling Sam closer. Sam may have started the kiss, but Arthur finished it, holding on until Sam was hard and starting to feel a little dizzy, then tugging at Sam's lower lip with his teeth when he finally did break it off. "I was here to check on the crank when your fucking brother showed up to sit vigil."

Sam hadn't caught his breath yet.

He let his forehead fall against Arthur's and twined their fingers together—not just because it felt right, but because neither of them would relax without keeping track of the other's hands. "It's good to see you," he breathed out, completely honest.

"Is it some kind of hiding in plain sight thing?" Arthur said. "The car, I mean. It's not working."

"Wasn't lying when I told you the car was home," Sam replied. "We've been kind of winging it since the hospital called us. Unplanned detour."

The words broke through Arthur's paranoia-fueled fury. "I'm sorry, shit, I'm sorry," he muttered, and Sam let him pull his hands away long enough to push the hair out of their eyes. "This was a huge snafu before you called, and sleep on planes isn't real sleep." Arthur tucked his head under Sam's chin, probably the longest he'd closed his eyes since he got Bobby's call. Sam didn't mind giving him the break.

When Arthur spoke again, he spoke softly. "I had time to check your friend's chart before Dean showed. He's been out at least ten hours. He called me twenty hours ago, but that's still a less than eight percent survival rate." Sam had forgotten Arthur's attitude about Limbo: once someone was down there, Arthur turned into an actuary. "We can give it a shot, but you've got to go in with realistic expectations."

A point man's job was to plan for every eventuality, Sam reminded himself. Arthur was not in possession of all the facts. "Arthur, I think you're being a little—"

"I don't think your friend would want this scenario to end with Dean locked away in a Supermax while you're boxed up and bounced from lab to lab for the rest of your life," Arthur snapped. Sam shuddered at the thought. "I can cover your tracks, but you've got to bail now."

"We're not just going to abandon Bobby—"

"That's not what I said and it's not what you'd be doing." Arthur's hands moved up to Sam's neck and his voice dropped to a whisper. "I will do whatever I can to save your friend, but the fact is that I'm here and the person who gave Bobby my number won't be far behind me."

Whoever that was would have to get in line behind the hell hounds, Lilith, and almost every other demon in Hell. Arthur didn't know that; then again, he didn't have to. Sam knew enough for them both.

Arthur looked Sam in the eye, all clear lines and certainty. "I can give you ten minutes down with Bobby if you can distract your brother, but after that you both need to bail. The FBI may be criminally incompetent, but there are some very smart, very good people out there who have lost a lot of money looking for the person you used to be."

Having said his piece, Arthur stepped back and shrugged, the motion smoothing out every wrinkle on his jacket. Sam had always wanted to learn that move. "Do we have a week?" he asked.

"We're already well into 'cutting our losses' territory," said Arthur, shaking his head.

"I've got a different angle if you can stall for a week."

One eyebrow rose. "What angle is that?"

"Family business."

"Fuck you."

"We need to finish this before you start mopping up."

Arthur scowled. "I should have drugged you when I had the chance."

Sam let his hands drop to his sides. "Five days topside, access to the PASIV if I ask for it, and I won't stop you the next time you take a shot at Dean."

"If there is the smallest blip on my radar, I will drug you and I'll break Dean's jaw." Arthur pressed his lips together. "I have a job to do. If he's still here in three days, your friend is a loose end."

Sam let out the breath he'd been holding. Life was always easier with Arthur on his side. "Thank you, Arthur," he said. "And if you find any of the dream root while you're cleaning up the good doctor's mess, I might need that too."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "One day, someone is going to say no to you."

He leaned up for another kiss, this one lazy and tender and new. Arthur didn't kiss like this. By the time his hands had skimmed all the way down Sam's body from his shoulders to his ass, Sam didn't care about their comatose audience any more, nor the niggling feeling that Dean was getting worried. He just wanted to claim a little piece of Arthur back from whomever it was that had finally taught Arthur to kiss sweet and slow.

"Suspenders? Really?" Sam asked between kisses, tucking his fingers in Arthur’s waistband. Probably not even Arthur himself could say how old his mind was after a decade spent in and out of the dream, but that was still no excuse to dress like a middle-aged banker.

Arthur grabbed the flaps of Sam's jacket, indicating with a downward glance and twist of his lips that someone wearing brown corduroy didn't have much ground to stand on here. He seemed to forget that Sam could be freelancing with Arthur and the Cobbs; Sam could have been wearing bespoke Dunhill right now. But between the grave dirt and all of the blood spatter, Sam thought wryly, the dry cleaning bills would really add up.

Under his thrift-store jacket, all of that grave digging had built up a lot more muscle than Sam'd had the last time they'd done this. Sam growled, took Arthur's bony hips in his hands, and spun them around so that Arthur was the one pressed against the wall. Their kisses turned more urgent, more demanding, more like the kisses they'd always had to steal from underneath the military's nose.

Sam had made his choice—twice. It wasn't that he didn't love Arthur; it wasn't that he had loved Jess more; it wasn’t even entirely about how much Dean needed him. If Sam was going to lead a dangerous, nomadic life of crime, then it had to be for something more important than money and thrills.

On the other hand, Sam could never resist the opportunity to make perfectly-put-together Arthur cry out and beg for mercy.

"Tell me again about how you're gonna drug me," Sam said, crowding in so that he was all Arthur could see. At the same time, he popped open the buttons of Arthur's fly, both inside and out, then dragged the zipper down.

Arthur was the one panting now, threading his fingers through Sam's hair. "Just need to get in close enough," he said. "Doesn't look like that'll be a problem. When did you stop cutting your hair?" He gasped as Sam tugged his boxers down to free Arthur's dick. Sam dropped down to his knees and took care to pull it out gently, running the tips of his fingers up and down Arthur's shaft before sucking the head into his mouth.

"Christ, Sam, you don't—we're on the clock," Arthur whispered, but he wasn't pushing Sam away. One hand gripped Sam's shoulder while the other remained buried in Sam's hair. "Fuck, I didn't—Sam," Arthur hissed as Sam took the entire length down his throat, tongue massaging the underside of Arthur's dick while he sucked hard. "Sam, please—"

Sam pulled back a little so that he could fit a finger into his mouth along with Arthur's cock. Both Sam's finger and his tongue stroked the head until his finger was wet with spit and precome. Sam pulled his finger out and pushed it under the elastic, past Arthur's balls, and into Arthur's tight little asshole. At the same time, he sucked the rest of Arthur's cock back into his mouth and moaned around it. Sam could hear Arthur's muffled cries as he came down Sam's throat.

When Sam looked up, he saw that Arthur was biting down on his own wrist. Sam cupped Arthur's twitching sac in his palm, drawing out and swallowing every trace. He licked Arthur's dick clean as it slid out of his lips, cradling the soft flesh in his hand before pulling Arthur's underwear back up and over it. Then he zipped the fly, redid the buttons, and got back to his feet.

Post-orgasm, with his eyes closed and all of the tension out of his face, Arthur looked like well-dressed jailbait. But he remained Arthur; even sagging bonelessly against the wall, he managed to hold a hand out, offering Sam his white pocket square. Sam took the handkerchief, unfolded it, wiped off his lips and chin, then folded it back into a double point before tucking it into Arthur's pocket. Arthur's cheeks were a little rosy; Sam's lips were a bit swollen, but otherwise there was no evidence indicating why Arthur promptly collapsed into Sam's arms like a marionette with cut strings.

Sam loved that he could give this to Arthur, even though the effects never lasted more than a few hours at best. He put his hands on Arthur's shoulder and the small of his back, helped him find his own feet again. Arthur tottered for a moment or two before leaning forward into Sam, his hands returning to their earlier position on Sam's ass. "What was that about my hair?" Sam asked him, smiling.

"Nothin'," Arthur mumbled into the brown corduroy. "Can I," he started, nudging his leg between Sam's, but Sam shook his head, as tempting as it was.

"Don't need you worrying about me any more than you already do."

"'Kay." After a brief pause, Arthur turned his face away from the fabric. "Hey Sam?"

"Yes?"

"Where's your totem?"

It took Sam a second to realize that during the earlier frisking and groping, Arthur had been looking for his old moleskine notebook. "Had to get a new one about a year ago."

Arthur's eyebrows quirked, a hint of hurt in his eyes, a little stiffness returning to his spine. Sam pulled the bracelet out of his jacket pocket, just to prove to Arthur that he wasn't stupid enough to walk around without a totem. "Sorry, long story." But then Sam had a single, terrifying thought. He bit the leather thong open and slid one metal bead off the line, into Arthur's palm. "Have one."

Arthur eyed the charm suspiciously, looking for any chance it might be a bug of some kind. "Why?"

Sam concentrated on re-tying the knot. "They're good luck," he said, trying for casual. Arthur made the non-committal grunt. "Little piece of my world, keep you safe from the crazy, okay?"

By the time Sam looked back up, the bead had disappeared into one of Arthur's pockets and had been replaced by a new burn phone in Arthur's hand and a slip of paper with yet another number on it. "For the rest of this job," Arthur explained.

Sam pocketed the phone, and then Arthur wrenched him down into one last, wet, stolen kiss. "In case I get lucky and don't see you for awhile," said Arthur. He took two steps to the side and grabbed the PASIV out from behind the bathroom door, then walked away, a study in elegance and economy.

Arthur did things like that. He and Bela would get along. And if Hell ever got hold of him, the world was doomed. The charm wasn't much, wouldn't mark Arthur out, but Sam already felt a little better knowing Arthur had it.

Sam washed out his mouth in the bathroom, waited two minutes, grabbed Dean's folder, and tried to act like nothing had happened.

They did get lucky, or at least as lucky as Winchesters ever got. Saved Bobby, killed the madman, lost the Colt. If anyone was looking for Lavoisier in that mess, Arthur handled it quietly. Two weeks later, neither the sleep study nor any of the people who'd died in Pittsburgh had ever existed on record. Sometimes it was better not to ask.

Sam didn't get desperate enough to call Arthur again until Florida.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/82130.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Two Things and Three Six-word Stories

moragmacpherson — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:03:35 GMT

Thing the First: Catching up on Leverage and there was Hardison in a waistcoat. I thought my waistcoat-thing was just due to Arthur, but no, it's its own thing.

Thing the Second: I'm actually trying real, no-holds-barred self-editing on a story, which I haven't done in ages because my betas spoil the crap out of me. I swear that most of what I'm doing is deleting over-dramatic lines, eliminating parts that at one point fit where I thought the story was going but didn't in the finished product, and stream-lining dialogue. Despite this, the word count has gone up by almost a thousand words from where it started. Seriously, WTF?

Six-word stories: I've posted about these before, and they can be both tricky and a lot of fun. If you come up with one, please, share it in the comments—any fandom, no fandom, whatever— all are welcome. To kick things off, here are three six-word stories from my Inception-Supernatural AU fusion series... thing.

1. Azazel's 'special children' built spectacular dreams.

2. Sam didn't give Arthur pet names.

3. Eames could always spot Lucifer's tells.
This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/81852.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.

Fic: Who Knows What Might be Lurking (Inception-Supernatural Fusion AU, multi-ship, PG-13)

moragmacpherson — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:16:28 GMT

Title: Who Knows What Might be Lurking
Author: moragmacpherson
Beta: callowyn
Fandoms: Inception-Supernatural fusion AU
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Sam/Arthur, Mal/Dom & Arthur/Eames
Timeline: Part of the Not Such As I Was 'verse and kind of all over it in time, between 2003 and 2012.
Series: Not Such As I Was
Contents include: Language, mentions of canon character death
Notes: Title from the Prologue to Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. Arthur POV.
Summary: Mal survives in different memories in different ways.

Ariadne pulled her wrist away and shouted, "That's some subconscious you've got in there, Cobb!" Arthur froze for a split-second as the pain narrowed to a needle-fine point in his chest, knowing what was coming. "She's a real charmer!"

It still hurt. He rolled his eyes to cover the wince. "I see you met Mrs. Cobb," he muttered, looking down and rolling the still-warm strap in his hands.

Ariadne gaped at him, her breath still shaky from that first death. The first one always sucked. "She's his wife?" she yelped, aghast.

"Yeah," Arthur admitted, then switched the subject before she noticed. He could explain totems to the girl; he had no way of explaining Cobb's personal demon.

Mrs. Cobb, he called it, because it looked like Mal, it sounded like her, it even—fuck, it even felt and smelled like her, but Cobb's projection wasn't Mal at all. Ariadne had met a sadistic, malevolent, guilt-warped doppelgänger that did no justice to its inspiration. Arthur felt a piece of the real Mal chip away every time Mrs. Cobb appeared and revealed a new method to torture Dom and Arthur both. He couldn't imagine how that monster had reacted to discovering an ingénue like Ariadne poking around Dom's psyche.

Arthur knew Mal. He could never let himself forget the real, breathing, flesh-and-blood woman. Mal was brilliant, she was beautiful; she sometimes had a vicious temper but otherwise she only resorted to violence in dreams, and then only when she had no other choice. As to the frequency with which their extractions had turned into shootouts...

"I blame your influence," Mal had told Arthur over the last of their second bottle of wine, a few nights after he'd finally received his official discharge from the army. "You know how Dom is, and then you taught him how to fire a gun."

Arthur had grinned. "Not my fault," he'd said, then mouthed the words, 'All him,' while pointing his finger at Sam.

Mal's teasing grin shifted into a sharp glare at as she turned on Sam, and Arthur had almost fallen over as Sam yanked his arm away.

"Traitor," Sam scowled at Arthur before he looked up at Mal, a sheepish, pleading look on his face. "It was when we first met! Dom asked me to!" Sam's eyes went wide and dewy, bangs falling into them. "He had no way to defend himself down there."

Mal's look remained stony as she leaned in towards him.

"I didn't know I was releasing the Kraken!" Sam yelped, his voice cracking—God, he'd been so young; they'd all been so young— and Arthur had had to choke his laughter down while for a few seconds Mal just stared Sam down. Then in a flash she pulled back, snatching up Sam's glass as she walked away. "Hey—!"

"Non, Sam. I will no longer be party to corrupting minors who corrupt my fiancé," Mal called back from the kitchen. "Arthur, don't you dare hand him yours," she added. It happened to be the very moment that the rim of Arthur's glass touched Sam's lips. He froze, but then Arthur winked at Sam and Sam tossed the wine back, swallowing the whole thing down in a single gulp. Sam handed off the empty glass to Arthur, who managed to pantomime finishing the glass himself right as Mal reappeared at the threshold.

Mal leaned against it, shaking her head and tutting her tongue, but smiling. "You two," she said. "Next time I turn my head you'll be taking ten-year-olds down to the firing range."

"I learned when I was eight," Sam said, with a shrug of the shoulders that had finally begun to fill out. The whole atmosphere of the room changed: Mal's expression turning brittle, Arthur pressing himself back under Sam's arm and laying a hand over Sam's thigh, giving it a squeeze. No matter how infuriating and painful they were to learn, details of Sam's childhood were precious breadcrumbs in the forest, found under leaves and roots, left unclaimed by the birds only through luck and coincidence. And if there was also a sense that somewhere out there, children were doing their best to outwit a terrible monster, well...

I won't lie if you don’t ask. Don't go looking and you won't get hurt. That was ever Sam’s line, from the beginning to the end. All they'd ever known were tidbits volunteered out of the blue or carelessly thrown into conversations—but Arthur had always known those scraps were true.

Arthur arched into the arm tensing around him as Sam pressed his lips to the crown of Arthur's head. They'd been together and perfect, for a moment that might have been in a dream, the way it stretched out and then slipped away.

Who knew how long it had been before Mal had asked, "Shall I open another bottle?"

"No," Sam sighed into Arthur, his body going lax and supple beneath him. "Class in the morning." His head turned away, and Arthur heard rather than saw Sam making his bashful dimple-face at Mal. "I should get some sleep.”

Arthur grinned as Sam twined their fingers. "Don't look at me," Arthur said. "No formations for me, never again."

Arthur could still feel the way Sam's fingers had carded through his hair, the thumb of his other hand stroking the inside of Arthur's wrist.

"Yes, I'm certain sleep is what you need, Sam." Mal had laughed then, and it was tender and warm and every reason Arthur had fallen half in love with her in the first place. "Off with you, then, and don't even bring up driving, Arthur: the guestroom is made up. I'll tidy this away." She shot them a happy, knowing look. She too had been in love. Mal had been lovely...

No: his Mal had nothing to do with the twisted wraith that pressed in from the dark corners of Dom's mind. Arthur smiled to himself with the memory of Mal as she truly was while he wrapped Ariadne's cannula back inside the PASIV, the smile broadening as he remembered the how that night had ended once Sam and he had reached the guestroom. Sam's updates to the Oblivion File were coming bigger and with an urgency that stopped Arthur from sleeping lately. Sam had even called while Arthur and Cobb were flying to Paris, his voicemail still waiting for Arthur to—

And then Cobb interrupted Arthur to ask about Eames, who was a terrible idea, and in Mombasa no less. Arthur was too strung out by now to cope with Eames' teasing, maddening, lecherous patience on top of everything else in this impossible job. But Cobb had a point, and Eames had his uses...

And later, no: Ariadne proved to Arthur over and over that she was anything but an ingénue, but the fact remained that she simply hadn't been there. She didn't know—couldn't know—how badly it hurt Arthur every time she spoke Mal's name with disgust or contempt. Arthur didn't dare dream of Mal himself, not after a few encounters with Cobb's version. Like Cobb, he'd been there for the last few months. "I miss you so much sometimes," she'd told Arthur one morning over breakfast, her eyes lingering over the knife in his hand with a yearning that hinted at the ghoul that Cobb would loose after her death.

"Don't be silly, Mal," he'd replied her as set a plate in front of her. He pressed a kiss to her cheek before hiding the knife away. "You'll never get rid of me, no matter what. Pre-nup, remember?"

"I get you in the divorce," she murmured, and they ate together.

The next day Arthur'd flown off to go retrieve Eames from Minsk so he'd be alive for the next job. He and Eames were still stranded in Frankfurt am Main on the Cobbs' anniversary, but Dom had said on the phone that Mal was getting better...

Mal was always terribly clever and determined; Cobb had that much right. Unlike Cobb, though, Arthur'd had years of practicing not dreaming about someone by the time Mal died, and he was good at it. Arthur didn't dream of Mal, because if Mrs. Cobb turned up instead, he thought he might just follow her example.

Then there was Eames. Eames had known Mal in life; Eames had never seen her sick or met her shade. But in Eames' mind, Mal lacked depth. Mostly she would tease and flirt and encourage Eames' advances, sly fox-like innuendo sparkling from her eyes, begging Arthur to be happy again—to be happy with Eames. And that was better; that had its own roots in the truth, and Arthur was happy. But it still wasn't quite Mal.

All of these are reasons why it's such a shock for Arthur to find himself in Sam's shattered mind and see not Sam, not Eames, but Mal looking up at him. "You're back," she breathes, and pulls Arthur into a tight hug, and Arthur lets himself fall into it, Mal's quiet strength holding him up as his eyes slip back shut while inhales the real-ness of her. No dreams are ever as real as Sam's dreams—that's all the more true with a decade's worth of Yusuf's chemical tinkering to help them along.

"We've been waiting so long," Mal tells Arthur. "I'm trying, but I can't keep him together on my own, and Dean— he tries, but he's a," and Mal pulls back and looks around the cheap motel room, beds unmade and every surface littered with empty liquor bottles and take-out containers. The walls are marked with the arcane graffiti that's all over the Singer house. This is a safe place in Sam's mind. "He's a Winchester too," Mal finishes.

Arthur smiles back at her. "I know," he says. "But we can fix this, I swear."

Mal nods. "I hope so." She takes Arthur's hands and they turn together towards the door. There's a hint of smoke to the air outside, a faint trace of sulfur on Arthur's lips, and when he looks at the floor in front of the door, a line of salt. Somewhere out there, Arthur will find Sam, will find Eames, will find out what the hell is really going on down here.

"Be careful,” Mal reminds him. “There are monsters out there, Arthur. They are very real." She has to stay here, he understands. There have always been monsters in Sam's mind, but Mal is not one of them.

"I'll try to tidy this up," she says. “Good luck.” Arthur can hear Eames calling his name down the hall; hear Sam's voice doing the same from somewhere else; and under it all, a faint rustling of wings. He gives Mal one last look before he goes through the door.

"Thanks," he says. Arthur knows they'll all need it.

This entry was originally posted at http://moragmacpherson.dreamwidth.org/75576.html. Please comment on the Dreamwidth entry if possible. This post has comments on DW.