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"I'm just saying you should try it."
Eames is sprawled in the old office chair in the corner, his feet propped on the windowsill and a laptop precariously balanced on one knee. Once, Arthur might have questioned how anyone could work effectively in that position, but years of experience with Mr. Eames' specific brand of casual disorganization has taught him better.
"When's the last time you had a normal dream?" Eames continues, "Not for work, not something you planned, just weird subconscious bleeding in at the edges, non-Euclidean geometry, tentacles, whatever."
"Is that a normal dream for you, Eames?" Arthur frowns and hits enter perhaps a bit too hard as he moves to a new line in his recon report. "You know I don't dream naturally anymore," he says shortly, his tone a clear invitation for Eames to drop the subject. "Most professionals don't."
"But you've never used the PASIV for something fun?" Eames asks, sounding genuinely curious.
Arthur shrugs. He supposes his idea of 'fun' might be quite different from Eames'.
Eames doesn't say anything else as Arthur saves the page of notes, shuts his laptop, and grabs his umbrella. Then, just as he's reaching for the door knob—
"You should try it sometime," Eames insists. "Just put some time on the clock and let your mind wander. Don't try to build anything, don't focus on the job. It'll do you some good."
"Goodnight, Mr. Eames." Arthur closes the door firmly on his way out.
He can't help considering what Eames had said. He does nothing about it that night, but he thinks about Eames' words as he lies in bed, drowning out the traffic with white noise in headphones and still unable to sleep. The next morning, Arthur finds himself at the rented office that is their staging ground early, and without thinking too hard about it, he dials in 10 minutes on the PASIV and punches the button.
Arthur tries to follow Eames' instructions—he's curious, despite himself. He relaxes his mind as the Somnacin takes hold, thinks of the sunrise from his balcony this morning, the rain last night on the way back to his hotel, the garish pattern of Eames' shirt from yesterday...
At first nothing seems out of the ordinary, an empty street, a bit reminiscent of the older parts of Boston or maybe somewhere in northern Europe, stonework and streetlamps and wet puddles after the rain. Warm colors shimmer in the reflections on the wet cobblestones and the warm, foggy air feels perhaps a bit more impressionistic than Arthur usually allows himself, but then he had just been thinking about Eames.
He wanders down the street, leather boots splashing in the puddles, taking in the tall, branching elm trees and the shadows of their low-hanging leaves in the puddled reflections. This isn't anywhere he's been, not exactly, but it's nothing like the busy streets outside their office in Bangalore. He doesn't know quite what he's doing here. Arthur can't remember the last time he entered a dream without a specific task in mind; maybe Eames had a point.
It's not like a natural dream; for one thing, Arthur knows he's dreaming. It's tempting to take charge, build a staircase or a whole building or a scenario to take part in, but Arthur resists the urge. He perches on a low wall, miraculously dry despite the damp streets and dripping leaves, and looks up through the canopy of the trees. At first, there's no moon, but as soon as he thinks it, the clouds part, and the full moon comes sliding out, surrounded by a scattering of stars, all blue-white and twinkling.
Arthur lets himself tilt back, lookin up at the sky, and the tree canopy seems to melt away. The longer he looks, the more there is to see: The surface of the moon grows clearer, and more and more stars emerge in the previously empty spaces between the existing pinpoints of light. The Milky Way sharpens in his view, swirling across the sky like a beautiful nebula of color, clearer than Arthur has ever seen it while awake.
Arthur's not sure how long he lies there, exploring the depths of the night sky, but it suddenly feels like enough, a sense—in the weird way of dreams—that it is time to move on, although he's certain the timer has not yet run out. He straightens, rocks to his feet, boots sending up droplets of water as they smack on the wet cobblestones, and it is then that he notices the snake.
It's massive—easily as big around as Arthur's torso—dark gray-black, and winding through the shadows along the top of the wall, lamplight and starlight glinting off its scales. Strangely, he feels no urge to step back, to escape, although the sight of the great serpent is unsettling. Arthur's eyes search along the length of its body, and it's there that he finds the woman.
She's beautiful, with fine, androgynous features and long, dark hair that falls straight to her shoulders and then coils, like a mass of snakes itself. Her face resembles that of a human, but her eyes are dark, with deep black pupils and no whites like a venomous cobra. As he traces his gaze down over her flat chest and delicate arms to the beginning of the dark scales at her waist, Arthur already knows the truth. This creature is both woman and snake, a Naga or perhaps Lamia, incongruous as she might seem in this setting.
Unsure what else to do, Arthur extends a hand, palm up in invitation, as though inviting the creature to dance. Delicate fingers grasp his own, and then he is being pulled forward and her mouth is on his.
The Naga's lips are surprisingly soft. A thin forked tongue explores Arthur's mouth, teasing along his lips and dipping inside. He tries to reciprocate and quickly withdraws his own tongue as it brushes against the smooth dagger point of a deadly fang. The Naga softens the kiss, drawing back slightly as her arms wind around his neck, and Arthur becomes aware of the muscular, scaly body wrapping around his torso in turn.
Her grip is constricting, but hardly painful. His clothes vanish with barely a thought, and Arthur has only a moment to wonder if perhaps he is being too forward with this creature of his own subconscious before his face is cupped in both of her hands, sharp nails dimpling his cheeks as she turns his head to the side to nip along his neck.
The new position presses Arthur's face to the Naga's flat chest, mouth resting right by one end of a sharp clavicle. The dusky skin under his cheek is freckled with smooth, dark scales, glinting like tiny shards of obsidian in the moonlight. He nuzzles against them, enjoying the textures of soft skin and hard keratin as the Naga sucks open-mouthed kisses down his neck. Arthur can't remember the last time he experienced such intimacy in real life; their job doesn't lend itself to romantic entanglements. He lets the thought drift away, reveling in the firm, hungry touches and the full-body sensation of this creature's affection.
Arthur goes to lift his arms to sink them into her hair, only to find both limbs pinned by his sides, wrapped from elbow to wrist in dark, glossy coils that squeeze once, gently in response to his movement.
Then the Naga draws back, unwinding, and takes Arthur's hand, guiding it down a smooth trail of paler ventral scales to a barely-visible slit, just below where skin melts into the snake's coils. Tentatively, Arthur traces the edges of the opening, feeling the softening where the scales give way to a fleshy interior, nearly invisible in the dim, dappled light.
The Naga turns, slithering more fully into the moonlight. The slit widens, revealing a pair of pale, narrow hemipenes, and Arthur realizes that he was mistaken to call this creature a woman, at least in the traditional sense. Perhaps it is a change wrought by the dream, perhaps his partner is neither or both, or perhaps the snake was a man all along. Arthur finds himself surprisingly uninterested in the explanation, only filled with excitement at the possibilities presented by this new discovery.
He startles as something smooth and hard prods between his ass cheeks. The Naga hasn't moved closer, and Arthur twists to see what is behind him, catching a flicker of smooth scales as the tip of the creature's tail nudges again at his opening. The Naga drifts closer, reaching out again with both arms, and Arthur allows himself to fall forward into that cool embrace, consciously relaxing as the flexible tip of the snake's tail slides between his cheeks and enters him.
It's smoother than it ought to be. Arthur knows, abstractly, that some sort of lubricant should be involved, but his mind is presently not concerned with that reality, and so neither is his body. The Naga pulls him close, sucking at his neck again as that tail tip works its way deeper into his body, a delicious stretch that grows with the expanding girth of the tail the deeper it reaches. It's hardly a new sensation for Arthur, but one he hasn't felt in entirely too long—years now, since he graduated college.
The tail kinks inside him, pressing against his prostate for one blinding, beautiful moment before withdrawing entirely. Arthur hears a faint keening noise and realizes, with a rush of embarrassment, that it could only have come from him. The Naga lifts him, effortlessly repositioning Arthur so that he straddles the twin hemipenes, now fully emerged from their slit and glistening slightly in the pale light.
Arthur reaches out, bracing himself against the Naga's chest as he drops onto one of the two cocks. The Naga releases him, and Arthur gasps in shock as he slides fully down the thin shaft, sheathing it inside himself. The impact reverberates through his pelvis, all his muscles clenching at the sudden intrusion; the Naga's cock is narrow but reaches far deeper than the tail had gone.
Arthur takes a moment to breath deeply, feeling his body adjusting to the intrusion. He rocks slightly, trying to put pressure on his prostate, but as deep as the Naga's shaft goes, he still feels empty.
A heavy weight slides over his shoulder as the Naga's tail wraps around him, effortlessly crushing his arms to his sides and causing him to topple helplessly forward until his partner deigns to catch him. Human arms push him back upright, seizing him by the shoulders and lifting him bodily into the air, only to drop him back onto the Naga's cock.
All the air leaves Arthur's lungs in a rush, a soundless moan escaping him at the smooth scrape of the cock against his walls. It barely grazes his prostate, and he struggles, not to get away, just to get more pressure, a hint more stimulation. His own cock has barely been touched, brushing teasingly against the Naga's scales as they move together, but not close enough to get any real friction.
"More, please," Arthur begs. He's almost startled to hear his own voice. Everything in the dream so far has felt so clear, so instinctual, that he's struck by the realization that this is the first time either of them have spoken aloud.
The Naga's head tilts to the side, considering, and then Arthur finds himself lifted again, sliding fully clear of the Naga's shaft. The coils around him shift, and just as he's opening his mouth to beg, his hole clenching around nothing, the Naga lowers him again.
This is less of a drop and more of a controlled slide. Arthur feels slick pressure against his hole, more than before, and it's only as the heads of both hemipenes pop inside together that he realizes what is happening. The Naga pushes him down, pressing up relentlessly to meet him, and where the single shaft from before had felt far too thin, the fullness Arthur feels now is almost unbearable. His walls stretch, pressure in every direction as his muscles seize at the intrusion. Then the pair of cocks reach his prostate, and the moment of white hot pleasure is incredible.
The Naga pulls back slightly, lifting Arthur a quarter inch up, only to press into him again, sending another spike of pleasure skittering across his mind. The pattern repeats: lift and drop, pull and push, the tips of both hemipenes pressing him open only to draw back as soon as they reach his prostate.
Until they don't.
Arthur feels the Naga's coils tightening around him, and it's the only warning he gets before both cocks press in again and don't draw back. The Naga bears him down, and the pressure mounts, every fraction of an inch scraping beautifully across his prostate. Arthur isn't even aware of his own cock anymore, bouncing idly against the Naga's stomach and largely untouched as that blinding wave of pleasure builds and builds and doesn't break.
He thrashes, overstimulated and full to the brim, eyes squeezed shut and blinded by moonlight all the same, and then the Naga gives one final push and Arthur feels fangs at his neck, and he's coming, the wave peaking and crashing over him and running away in a wash of foam that gently seeps back into the moonlit sands of his mind.
He's still drifting in that hazy, post-orgasm fog when the first drawn-out notes of Édith Piaf creep in at the edges of his hearing. He feels the shuffling of great coils as the snake unwinds, and then Arthur is blinking blearily in the dim light of a wet, cobblestone street, reality scattering into reflections and raindrops and the shadows of leaves as the dream dissolves around him.
He blinks awake in the ambient heat of their third-floor office, light filtering through the blinds along with the clamor of the busy main street outside. A clatter off to his left distracts him, and Arthur sees, to his surprise, that Eames is already here, standing quite close with his back turned to Arthur and fiddling with his left shirtsleeve. Almost as if...
"Eames, were you down there? Was that you?"
Arthur hears himself voice the suspicion almost before it finishes occurring to him, an impulsiveness he'll have to blame on the post-dream haze.
Eames, for better or worse, ignores the accusation entirely. He steps smoothly around the table, both sleeves buttoned as normal, and snaps the PASIV closed before Arthur can check the remaining Somnacin levels. "You're looking positively energized this morning, darling. Good dreams?"
"Eames, were you the snake?" Most of Arthur's pleasant, post-sex feelings have evaporated into the more usual frustration that Eames seems constantly to generate, but his memories of the dream are as clear as ever.
Eames ignores him, apparently occupied in carefully resetting and stowing the PASIV, not that he's ever shown much interest in tidying up before.
"Did I just have sex with you as a giant snake, Eames?" Arthur demands, aware, even as he says it that he sounds a bit unhinged and that if the answer is 'no' then this is definitely not an appropriate thing to be shouting at a coworker.
Eames' eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, and he smirks. "I'm flattered darling, but a sexy cobra lady, really? Isn't that a little gauche?"
He sounds slightly baffled and greatly amused, so Arthur lets it drop. In a surprising show of discretion, Eames is kind enough not to mention Arthur's weird outburst for the rest of the day.
It is only lying in his bed that night, listening to the rumble of the traffic under a grainy recording of rain sounds that Arthur realizes: He had never mentioned the Naga specifically, and so how would Eames have known?