Fisch Filter

A/N: YAY! More Eames/Robert! This turned out to be about twenty thousand words longer than intended, and in first person no less which rarely happens, but because of that certain plot points had to be given justice. PLEASE REVIEW!

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Chapter 1: Something's Wrong With Me

My steps feel careful across the smooth marble floors of the lobby. Usually my pace is brisk, but today I might as well be fresh out of a coma and on my feet for the first time, strolling down the hallways, peeking cautiously into all the rooms. I'm not really moving that slowly; I only feel like I am.

Lethargic.

That word has never been me before. I'm active. I'm enthusiastic. I'm not sluggish, tired all the time. Not usually. But today feels off. Maybe I'm coming down with something. Maybe the flight from Sydney and Dad's funeral yesterday took more out of me than I thought. And last night can't have helped; no sleep.

The elevator is empty, and I'm relieved. So far my every encounter with a person has gone strangely. Freakishly. It's part of what makes me tired. I feel like I need to just go back home, get back into bed and wake up again, start this day all over because so far I've just been doing it wrong. I remember the director of my school orchestra, her terse words when my bow slipped on the strings.

"No. Start over."

I don't realize I'm even saying it out loud except that I see my lips move in the polished metal doors of the elevator. The skin over my sharp cheeks turns red, but I feel that more than see it in the fuzzy reflection. I clear my throat, a hand clamped over my mouth. I squeeze with my fingers, parting my teeth so I can feel my cheeks mash into the gap, and I keep squeezing until my fingers meet with the insides of my cheeks slick between them.

My lips are puckered fishlike into my palm for a moment, and I focus on the feeling of them stretching over my molars and kissing over my tongue. Then I release my face and sigh deeply. Composure. It's just a weird morning, the first day without Dad, the first day as CEO of the company.

The first day as an orphan.

The doors slide open with a chime and I step out, hardly aware that I'm fidgeting nervously with my cuff links. My secretary will be at her desk outside my office and I suddenly dread the sight of her.

Will it happen again?

Kirsten is pretty, straw hair, eyes like old blue denim, faded in the middle, but the edges of her irises are darker, still new. She makes a lot of noise on her way over, shoes with heels that could stake a vampire with one temper-tantrum stomp on his chest. Her legs are squeezed together in a pencil skirt, her breasts half on display in a blouse I can count her ribs through.

She's my best friend in the world; I hope this goes well.

"Rob!" she cries upon seeing me, "You look like hell."

I sigh, pressing on my eyes. She grips my bicep reassuringly.

"I miss him, too," she means my dad. He was always nice to her. He was nice to pretty women and men richer than him. In the end, there weren't any left of the second and far too many of the first.

Dad was the one who hired Kirsten as my secretary. I was given no say in it. I'm still not certain if she actually slept with him to get the position. I'm not going to ask; some things are best left alone. I still haven't spoken. Still afraid to try after what happened with the doorman, the driver, and Mr. Brandon outside the building.

After a minute, she senses I'm not going to talk about Dad and starts doing her job. I thank her silently for it. Perking up, she instantly starts on an overview of my day's schedule so far: Meetings. Brunch. Meetings. A Luncheon. Meetings. Squash with Peter.

I dread it all. I am going to have to speak. It will happen again if I do. It almost happens now. I bite my tongue and silence the thought. Or try to. It is still there, though. I hold onto my tongue with my teeth. So long as I feel that sharp pain, I can be sure I'm not talking out loud.

I'm not saying the thought out loud, but I'm shouting it in my head. But am I? Is that really my voice in my head? Why has it turned against me? People are supposed to be able to control their inner voice, aren't they? But here it is, not shutting up, screaming at me, and I'm half inclined to believe that if someone put their ear to mine, I'd hear this thought distantly echoing in them like the sound of my blood echoing in a conch shell.

It's a thought which plagues me, a single thought. It hasn't gone away since I thought it. And I'm not even sure when it was that I did, first. It was just there yesterday as I made my way through security, retrieved my bags and left LA X. One thought, now whirling in circles in my head.

I don't want to be him.

"Rob?"

I snap out of it at the sound of her voice, loud with worry. My jaw drops. I realize it was tense. I taste blood as I feel my teeth tug out of the meat of my tongue with a biting sting. A warm metallic taste, slippery, fills up my mouth. I jerk the handkerchief from the breast pocket of my suit and press it to my lips.

"Rob?" Kirsten clacks back to my side, grips my elbow.

"I'm fine," I mumble into the silk at my lips. I make the mistake of pulling it away just enough for her to see the bloodstains. I knew better than to do it, but looking is kind of instinctual—I knew it was blood, but I kind of had to see it, see the quantity, or something. I glance, am somehow satisfied with the size of the red blossoms on the white fabric.

But she sees, too, and then it is ten minutes of freaking out on her end and me trying to reassure her with as few words as possible. It ends up happening anyway, the thing. The-there isn't even a word for it.

"I'm fine, Kirsten, really," I'm saying. "It was an accident. An accident. They happen all the time. Just—I just have to apply pressure and it'll stop."

But she's ignoring me, talking over me, demanding to see the extent of the damage, babbling something about a salt water rinse before I try to let it clot. She grates my nerves and I snap, "Jesus, can't you leave me alone for five seconds? The last thing I feel up to dealing with today is a busy body trollop."

She stops speaking abruptly, takes an accented step back, wounded. Fuck.

I say it out loud a few times (Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.) looking around where we're standing, the waiting room outside my office, but thankfully there are no witnesses. I head into my office, still speaking as if my string of profanity had been the springboard into sudden loquaciousness.

"I'm sorry, Kirsten. I don't know—it's been a really weird morning. I don't think of you like that." I do, actually, but it would be another one of those things best left alone. I might think she's too promiscuous, but she's still my best friend.

"Then why did you say it?" she demands, crossing her arms. Her feet are planted as far apart as the skirt will allow—woman power stance. I sigh, loosen my tie, blot my still-bleeding tongue on the kerchief. "Fuck if I know, Kirsten! I've been saying all kinds of unexpected words today. It's like, I don't know, I'm thinking directly out loud all of a sudden."

I flop down onto the couch in my office, fiddle with the bloodstained fabric in my hands, folding it so that most of the crimson isn't showing, so that a field of unsullied cloth waits for contamination. It reminds me of how one folds tissue still capable of one more use.

"Blood is more fun than snot." It pops out there before I can stop it. I spring up, look at her wildly. "FUCK!" I cry.

She blinks at me rather owlishly with her big eighties-blue-jean eyes. She's still standing with her feet apart and her arms crossed. Her patience unnerves me. "Was that an example, or something?"

"That was it happening, Kirsten!" I hiss.

"What, the thing about snot, or fuck?" she asks.

"Snot," I snap, losing patience. "It's like I start thinking about these random things and then I'm saying them out loud before I know it."

She smirks. "That's weird, Rob. Maybe you've picked up an alien virus."

"Fuck you. I'm going crazy over here." I groan and my tongue stings as I press it against the cloth in my fingers once more. I wonder if what I just said is true, if I'm seriously losing it. Instantly, I feel like I'm letting Dad down just by not being sure on this issue. Then, suddenly, the inner voice is back.

I don't want to be him.

I snap out of it and find her staring at me strangely, and I sense how long the office has been silent. Her blond eyebrows are high, "Be who, Rob?"

FLUMPthump FLUMPthump FLUMPthump My heart is in my ears and my breaths are roars inside my head. I stand. "Kirsten," I pant and I feel extremely lightheaded, "Something's wrong with me."

I hit the floor.