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bouncy fandom. inception/sherlock
rating. nc-17
pairing. eames/arthur, sherlock holmes/john watson
note. thanks to q, g, and ilovetakahana for looking this over
word count. 11600
part one.
He's the son of the two most highly praised psychologists in all of Europe.
It's expected of him to continue the family business and inherit their affluent client list—the dukes and duchesses, the Princess of Spain and her lover, the handful of businessmen and women that have kept the silver spoon in Eames's mouth highly polished.
It's expected of him to play polo and rugby with William and Harry on the weekends and attend Madame Couiotte's etiquette classes to learn how to be a proper gentleman. He takes ten years of stiff, dull ballroom dancing and skived off as often as he can to play football with the blokes he'd bum fags off of in the park—shows up to recital practices with split lips and skinned knees and makes all the pretty birds squeal in horror when he flashes a bloody grin.
He spends the first ten years of his life acting as bratty and insufferable as he can, stomps and throw wobblies when his mother informs him his poor attitude is perfectly reasonable considering where he is in his psychosexual development. His father firmly ignores the nightmares that keep him shaking and screaming by explaining dream theory.
It's hard—Eames realizes early on in his life—to maintain a rebellious attitude when his parents will excuse away his actions and cite Freud and Jung and Vygotsky as the instigators.
It doesn't stop him from trying, though.
His parents went to Cambridge, so Eames's name is practically printed on the acceptance letter long before he even applied.
He decides to read for psychology and follows the family tradition, partly because he can't be bothered to look through the other fields of study, but mostly because he can't be bothered to look through the other fields of study.
A week after his eighteenth birthday, he finds himself in a hollowed out version of his childhood room. All his clothing is neatly folded into two suitcases, all his possessions in a single, tightly packed box. Eames looks at the accumulation of his life and nearly laughs at how pathetic and immaterial it all is.
He buys a mystery novel at the train terminal and leaves it on the seat when the conductor announces his stop. It wasn't a particularly good book and he already knows the butler did it.
The pretty girl at Student Services hands him a thick brochure packed with clubs and mixers and his class schedule. He has an ID badge that grants him access to Peterhouse—the same residency his father was given—and carries his box up the three flights of stairs to room 33.
There's a vending machine that only sells three brands of cigarettes and two brands of English toffee by the communal bathrooms. His room is at the end of the hall near the emergency stairs.
His roommate is already there.
Eames places his box on the edge of his bed, brushes the dust on his slacks, and extends his hand to the boy perched perfectly on his bed reading a thick chemistry book. He has slanted eyes and a mop of curly brown hair. The covers haven't even dented under his weight.
"Jonathan Eames," he introduces pleasantly.
"I know who you are." Comes the curt reply. Gray eyes zip around Eames's body, over his rumpled shirt and scuffed shoes. The man sighs dramatically before returning to his textbook, blatantly ignores Eames's outstretched hand. "Sherlock Holmes."
Eames tightens his jaw, drops his hand and squeezes his fingers. "Like chem, do ya?"
Sherlock makes a face that very clearly says Eames's questions—no, very presence—are offending him.
"With deductive reasoning such as yours, one can only hope you've enrolled in a soft science," Sherlock's voice drips condescension. There's a pause as his eyes zip around Eames's frame again. "Ahh, yes, psychology."
Eames straightens his back, turns his gaze heavily upon Sherlock. By the look on Sherlock's long face, he thinks he's got Eames figured out like a bug pinned under a microscope.
Two can play this game, and Eames has been trained by the best.
Sherlock's already wearing the uniform even though classes begin in three days, yet his collar is popped high, his eyes alarmingly cold. Eames runs Sherlock's biting words and contemptuous tone through the filters in his brain, the thousands of diagnoses he's intimately familiar with, hundreds of hundreds of psychologists shouting their theorems and conclusions.
It's not the first time Eames has run into a narcissist—not even the first time this week—but the very brief, very lasting impression Sherlock has left on him takes narcissistic personality disorder to a whole other realm. Eames has never met a genuine misanthrope before, though. He remembers reading how Aristotle described a misanthropist as a man who considers himself a god amongst the beasts. Eames knows better, knows Sherlock is just a feral pup with words shaped like poisonous claws.
The student care package has been messily ripped open—all fliers for clubs and activities crumpled up and shoved in the waste bin—his schedule and campus map at the top of the rubbish bin. There's cold Chinese takeaway that's barely been picked at, and thirteen cigarette filters in the crystal ashtray on Sherlock's bedside table. He's clearly been here at least overnight, yet the room is as empty as if they'd both just arrived.
Sherlock has no personal items in the room—no photographs or trinkets, total detachment to his family. Eames can smell his own, knows it's not a father issue—and notes his apparent dislike for socialization, the arrogant messiness, the lack of appetite and obvious addiction.
Eames laughs to himself—is certain he could write an entire dissertation on Sherlock Holmes and never have to leave his room.
"Exactly how long have you resented your brother?" Eames finally replies crisply. He watches the ripple in Sherlock's spine with a satisfied, smug smirk.
Sherlock glowers before slamming his book shut.
Three years of this? Eames is honestly looking forward to it.
The night before the first day of class, students from King's Hall throw a party called a Tight and Bright. The women arrive in scandalously skimpy outfits that leave Eames's impressive imagination running circles around itself all night, and the men are decked out in obnoxiously loud hues of pink and yellow and neon orange.
Eames arrives in a gaudy, lime and pink patterned paisley shirt, and by the end of the night he has a silky purple top wrapped around his neck like a scarf, which he slipped off a girl named Lauren. It's been three pints since he cared about where his shirt was, and he cares even less when Lauren starts shimmying in his lap. Lauren doesn't seem to mind that he's spilling rum all over the top he'd never let her put back on if he had his way.
She apparently studies economics and kisses Eames before she even knows his name, steals his cigarettes and leaves Eames hard and in desperate need of a smoke. She shouts something about supply and demand before she springs off his lap—right out of his numb fingers like vapor—and disappears into the mass of thrashing bodies.
He stays at the party until campus security chases everyone back to their respective halls, and when Eames drunkenly falls into his bed, Sherlock is still awake, still flipping through the chemistry textbook he's been reading since Eames arrived.
"You're still awake, luv?" Eames laughs into his pillow, drunk and a little cloudy from the pills he crushed up and dropped into his drink. His skin is boiling hot but his fingers and toes are freezing cold, his tongue thick in his mouth.
"You smell like the back end of a horse," Sherlock complains, winkles his nose in disgust. He's on his tenth cigarette of the day, an impressive feat considering the nicotine patch plastered on his arm.
Eames's throat is scratchy from the booze but he's been craving the burn of a good fag, knows Sherlock smokes an expensive brand imported from France. He sloppily smiles, stretches his arms above his head before making his way to Sherlock's bed and plucking the cigarette right from his lips.
He savors the look of flustered outrage on Sherlock's face when he inhales—the kick of the nicotine like a burst of adrenaline through his blood. He moans and Sherlock schools his face into a tidy, haughty glare.
"You're insufferable," Sherlock snaps, lights another cigarette even though it's four in the morning.
"And you," Eames inhales sharply, near swallows the smoke, "are a fucking wanker."
Sherlock looks as if he's about to retaliate, but Eames pinches the cigarette between his fingers before he stumbles back one step and passes out on the floor.
He isn't sure why, but Eames expected his classes to be a bit more intellectually stimulating and challenging then they are.
He has to take introductory courses as if he's some simpleminded hack who hadn't received Rollo May's Psychology and the Human Dilemma as a tenth birthday present from his mother.
After the first week of classes, he schedules an appointment with his academic advisor and spends an hour outlining the many, many ways in which his current schedule offends him. When he walks back to his room, he has a completely different curriculum and licks his lips in anticipation of rubbing minds with the post-grads completing their masters and doctorates.
Sherlock is supposed to be in the labs till eleven, but the room is a smoky haze when Eames turns the knob. Sherlock's at his desk, quickly glances at him before he says, "You've changed schedules."
Eames really is impressed with Sherlock's uncanny deductive reasoning.
"I see your mother's called," he volleys back and watches as Sherlock squeezes his pen—never a pencil—tighter in his grip.
They could probably be something great together.
If only they didn't loathe each other.
He's eating lemon jelly when Stefania Wozniak finds him.
She's from Poland and has honey-blonde hair and pale skin and the most beautiful eyes Eames has ever seen. Ten hours prior, he'd had her slipping and sliding against the shower tiles in her bathroom, her nails clawing the back of his neck, her heels crossed and digging into his lower spine.
She'd looked amazing naked and slippery, was vocal and commanding and knew exactly where she wanted Eames's hands and mouth and nails. They'd been like two cripples dancing, cut from the same cloth: mummy a psychologist, daddy a philosopher. Stefania grew up with psychological and existential scars across her psyche—lived her life by the Tao of Dean and Monroe—planned on leaving behind the most beautiful corpse this side of London.
She'd smoked after sex, stroked the chaffed, pink lines across her belly from Eames's nails. She likes the bite of pain, likes causing it even more. Eames is convinced the gauges she'd dug out of him will never seal properly, that he'll bear her marks for the rest of his life.
In the post-coital glow of some truly spectacular fucking, Eames nuzzled her belly and nipped at her hip, and candidly told her she had a death drive that would put most bipolar patients to shame.
Stefania had laughed, lifted her leg to hook around his shoulder and squirmed until his mouth was even with her cunt.
"There's a reason Freud mentioned it in Beyond the Pleasure Principal," she'd stated, arching into his mouth, fingers curling in his hair. He'd felt the ash of the cigarette fall on his neck and even the minor burn hadn't been enough to pull him away from how incredible she'd tasted on his tongue.
They debate Thanatos and Eros and the push toward destruction instead of creation while Eames eats her out like a starving man. He argued for sex as creation as he sucked on her clit and swallowed her bursts wetness, and she reminded him sex was more destructive in a postmodern society as she bucked into his face and squeezed her thighs tightly around his ears.
Now, Stefania walks right toward him, swishes her hips in her hiked skirt, straddles Eames and licks the taste of artificial lemon from his mouth. When Eames slides his hand up her thigh, she presses closer and makes it apparent she isn't wearing any knickers. She bites his lip to get him to open his mouth and pinches a bruise she left when his fingers slide along her smooth pelvis.
If she weren't using him so blatantly, Eames thinks he could very well fall in love with a girl like her.
"Are you coming back to bed with me, darling?" She licks her lips and the remains of the gloss Eames knows is smeared across his mouth. "Mondays are so dull."
Gavin and Luisa interrupt before Eames can reply. They take seats in front of Eames and steal the rest of his jelly. Gavin studies microbiology, Luisa, chemistry. Eames doesn't have a single class with either of them and can't remember for the life of him how they all met, but they're people he enjoys spending time with quite a bit.
"Oi!" Gavin laughs when Eames props his feet up in his lap, doesn't try to move them as he spoons in the last bit of jelly. He makes a face like he can't believe anyone would eat such a thing and swallows thickly.
"You lot goin' to the party tomorrow?" Luisa asks, thumbs through a paper with a red, visible A on the front. It reminds Eames he has a paper due in two days on catatonic schizophrenia.
"Oh, bollocks," Luisa suddenly hisses. "Don't look," she warns to which Stefania immediately twists her head so quickly her hair sprays out like a fan and hits Eames in the face. "It's him."
Eames cranes his neck, sees Sherlock walk through the cafeteria doors, heading straight for the coffee machine.
"Is that Sherlock Holmes?" Stefania asks, nails drumming on Eames's shoulders. "I've heard about him."
"Insufferable tosser," Gavin chimes in. "Acts like he owns the bloody uni."
"He's actually quite cute," Stefania adds, her eyes lazily appreciating Sherlock's tall, lean frame and wildly curly hair. Sherlock looks over at him, his cold, gray eyes penetrating Eames like a tractor beam to the gut.
He leaves with a cup of coffee clutched in his long fingers. Eames hasn't seen him eat anything in close to ten weeks.
"He sits behind me in Atomic Structure and insults Professor White to his face. The man's won a Nobel, for godsakes!" Luisa laments.
"He's still cute," Stefania finishes lamely. "Don't you share a room with him, Jon?"
"You share a room with the freak?"
It's not the first time Sherlock's been called a freak—won't be his last, either.
Eames has a notebook he keeps in his bedside table that he uses to jot down Sherlock's behavior. He'd feel guilty about studying his roommate like a science experiment, but Sherlock already knows his intentions and has taken a red pen to his atrocious spelling errors.
Eames is back from an exam one afternoon when he catches Sherlock on the phone. His entire face is pinched, his lips curled upward in a truly hideous sneer. The grip on the phone suggests he's frustrated and furious—that he's restraining himself the best he can from slamming the phone into the cradle and subsequently smashing the phone into pieces.
Eames sits on his bed, pulls out his heavily revised notebook.
This is clearly the brother—Mycroft.
It's a cut and dry case of sibling rivalry, something so common and petty it actually bores Eames. Sherlock is all about the exotic—the explosive. There should be a more exciting reason for his dislike, but it's clear his mother favored Mycroft until all Sherlock's love for her turned into bitter resentment for his older brother.
Eames wonders what Sunday dinners must be like.
When Sherlock hangs up, he instantly reaches out for his cigarettes, crumples an empty pack with an expression Eames associates with samurai committing seppuku.
Eames pushes himself off the edge of his bed—already has a cigarette dangling from his lips. He takes one last inhale before he presses the fag between Sherlock's lips and tosses him his pack.
"Next time,” Eames says as Sherlock sucks in half the nicotine in one haul, "try texting."
Sherlock has vices—thank god.
He smokes the way the medical students do—sucks back cigarette after cigarette like it's a race, like the nicotine won't work if he doesn't chase the smoke with fire. Their entire room smells like the cheap cigarettes from the vending machine—like tobacco and smoldering matches. There isn't a night that goes by that Eames doesn't inhale the smoke, feel the burn in the back of his throat.
Eames nearly coughed out his lungs the first time he plucked the vending brand smoke from Sherlock's lips and inhaled the cheap tar and sandy ash. He loves it now, bums cigarettes from Sherlock's pack and picks the grains off his tongue after. He's gotten used to the taste, matches the rough smoke with a smooth cognac and laughs when Sherlock makes a face.
The cocaine comes later, in their third year.
Eames blames himself for that one.
He and Sherlock have it out at the end of the first year, with a week left to classes.
Sherlock plays his violin without stopping, the same three scratchy notes over and over until Eames can practically feel his ears bleeding.
"Either you learn a new bloody song or put the damn violin away," Eames snaps one night, nerves frazzled and fried. Sherlock's schooled face doesn't change as he lowers his bow, inhales like it's a labor of Hercules.
Sherlock hasn't opened a single textbook all week, has just been smoking and drinking plastic cup after plastic cup of grainy cafeteria coffee. He stares at Eames as if assessing the situation before his posture stiffens and he raises his bow, starts scratching out a new song that grates on Eames's nerves all the same.
Honestly, Eames knows he's the one to blame, but Sherlock's been whittling at him all year. He throws an abnormal psychology book across the room and marches toward Sherlock, rips the bow from his fingers and snaps it over his knee with a satisfied crunch.
There's a moment where there's complete stillness in the room—where Eames can hear his ragged breathing and sees the anger materializing on Sherlock's face like a paper flower submerged in water. Eames lunges first and Sherlock reacts just as quickly.
They both topple off Sherlock's bed and hit the ground hard, Eames landing on Sherlock's bony body before Sherlock uses a surprising strength to flip him over. Eames shouldn't be surprised Sherlock is so strong—simply supporting the weight of his ego had to be enough to build muscle mass.
Sherlock fights like he was trained and Eames fights like it's a crowded pub. Their blows connect with shoulders and jaws and noses and guts and Eames feels Sherlock's blood dripping on his face, licks it from his lips and spits it back at him, drives his knuckles into Sherlock's thin stomach and grunts when Sherlock pinches a group of nerves that paralyze his left arm. He shouts out every diagnosis he's ever thought suited Sherlock while Sherlock snarls and hits twice as hard.
They roll apart, scramble to regain their footing and end up collapsing in pain on opposite sides of the room. Sherlock is bleeding all over Eames's sheets, Eames leaving bloody fingerprints along Sherlock's blue quilt.
He tries to take a step forward but his knee buckles and he ends up face first on the floor, laughing at how Sherlock Holmes—the skinny little beanpole—bested him in a physical altercation. He rolls onto his back and keeps laughing, groans and moans, but keeps laughing.
Sherlock looks puzzled for far longer than Eames thinks he'd be comfortable with before he gracelessly falls on his ass and quirks a truly hideous excuse for a smile.
"You scrappy fuck," Eames compliments, licks away the blood trickling down his lips from his nose. When he looks over, Sherlock is pinching the bridge of his nose, his lips split in two places and dripping down his chin. Combined with the pallor of his skin, he looks like a vampire after a fresh kill.
That would imply Sherlock eating at one point, which sends Eames into another fit of laughter.
Once he's collected himself, he pushes off the floor and shuffles toward Sherlock, extends a cramped, knuckle-chaffed hand to him. Sherlock eyes him warily before realizing he's not going to be standing up any other way and allows Eames to tug him from the floor.
"Sorry about your bow," Eames apologizes once Sherlock's collapses on his bed.
"You're usually a much better liar than that, Jon," Sherlock critiques, quirks his lips like a sneer that's really a smile.
"Ya," Eames agrees. "I am."
next
