merry go round

blood & glory rp: anon smorgasbord

bronson — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:13:14 GMT

b&g anon post!

okay, here's how it goes. got praise? post here. anonymously. got comments? same. got questions to ask a character? ditto. got questions to ask a player? also ditto. want to fangirl over a pairing? ditto, times three. wanna discuss anything? yep sure go ahead. anonymous comments, please, but if you want to reply to an anonymous comment then you can just be logged in. especially if you want to be notified for a reply.

anonymous comments will be unscreened as they're received. this is just so no unnecessary hate will ~cause undue chaos upon paradise~ etc. etc.

have fun! :)

game of thrones vampire au ficathon

bronson — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:57:54 GMT

game of thrones
vampire au ficathon

a ficathon. for game of thrones. but they're vampires. plot twist!
anything goes.
except sparkly vampires, because that's not cool.
yay have fun.

fills.
aerys/viserys / "that's a good boy."
cersei / cersei owns a nightclub, "maybe it's because i wear too much pink"
cersei/jaime / after his family is murdered by vampires, jaime becomes a hunter in an attempt to avenge their deaths. he doesn't expect that two years later, he will find his sister as one of the creatures who destroyed his life.
cersei/sansa / cersei is sansa's sire. "come here, i have horrible things to tell you."
cersei/viserys / she took pity on a dying boy
dany/viserys / she was about to die, and he turned her. she never wanted it. he never wants her to leave.
general / origin stories (fill #1)
mel/cersei / new york is too small for us
rhaegar/elia / she's dying, but refuses to let him save her (fill #1, fill #2, fill #3)
rickon / "they made me. then they left me."
robb/theon, ramsay/theon / theon wants to be a vampire and approaches the only vampire he knows. robb is not too keen on the idea. theon stumbles into another who can do the deed. when robb sees theon again, everything's changed.
robb/theon / werewolf robb
stannis / purging the new blood
stannis/davos/melisandre / "they massacred my family. i want revenge." - "we'll give you more than that."
tywin/joanna jaime / Jaime has only known that he's vampire for a few days, but his mother is dying, and Jaime would give anything to make his father smile.

stupid school.

bronson — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:38:30 GMT

SO THE SCHOOLYEAR'S WINDING DOWN and i set myself a deadline for the help_nz fics. i was supposed to do 'em within a week then came an avalanche of papers and take-home final exams and lotsa studying, yanno, productivity and stuff, so i'll probably be able to finish one of em within the week, then start the next two by this weekend. if i do this right, i'm looking at 4k-word fics each of: cobb/eames, mal/saito, and eames/fischer. aww yeah, variation.

help_nz!

bronson — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:13:27 GMT

Hey, guys! I'm coming out of hiding for the first time in months. Hale. I signed up for the help_nz effort and my request post is here if you guys wanna take a look. Taking bids for Inception only, I'm afraid, since it's the only fandom I'm really confident in writing fics for.

That aside. HOW HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN?

[INCEPTION] Fic: My nine rides shotgun (2/2) (Eames/Robert, R) written with fermine

bronson — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:20:04 GMT

My nine rides shotgun (2/2) by fermine and bronson
Eames/Robert
AU fic where Robert is in high school and Eames is his bodyguard.
LINK TO PART ONE

Things get a little tense after that. Well, tense is an understatement - Eames just completely stays out of his way, hardly in the periphery anymore unless summoned by emergencies requiring his presence. But nothing happens for a while and Eames is never summoned. Robert is too tired to try masking his mood and goes about his daily routine with a kind of mechanical apathy.

At home, nobody speaks to him except for the maid whose job it is to inquire of his needs. Robert stares at his phone, brow furrowing as he scrolls through week-old messages. Just Uncle Peter again and Eames, and Robert is tempted for a moment to press the “call” button. He’s still angry but now it’s fizzled to a curling, pitiful thing in the pit of his stomach, keeping him up most nights.

A week before Robert’s birthday, he ditches school and wanders around the street, eats a sandwich in Central Park, people-watching and leaving his uniform jacket on the bench. He feels like a rebel, dirt in his shoes and his tie loosened, but there’s something off, something missing, a heaviness in his chest when he checks his phone and finds no new messages.

He takes a cab to Rochester where his mother is buried and eats french fries on her grave, legs crossed.

For the first time in a long time, Robert feels lonely in her absence as he runs his eyes over the words etched in the stone: loving mother and wife. He finishes his food and lies on his back, fingers greasy, mouth limp, blinking back the wetness from his eyes that isn’t tears. The skies have cracked open overhead. It’s started to rain.

His mother always told him to wear a jacket with a hood and he did, for a time. It was big on him and Murphy and Garfield both teased him relentlessly the rest of the week.

Needless to say he didn’t wear it again.

He shrinks into his thin shirt, digging his arms into his pockets as he says goodbye to his mother--quietly, because his father doesn’t believe that she’ll hear him there--and walks the rest of the way out of the cemetery.

The rain whips across his back, turning his clothes sodden and heavy on his shoulders. His hair is wet, plastered onto his forehead, and when he licks his lips, the rain tastes faintly of metal.

He walks for what seems like hours.

His shoes are heavy where he’d unwittingly stepped into puddles overflowing into faint streams along the sidewalk.

It’s already dark when he finally finds a cab. His wallet is wet, and it takes great effort to pry apart the twenty-dollar bill from the rest of his money. His hands are shaking but he doesn’t notice. It’s cold, and his fingers have grown numb.

When he gets home, he’s greeted by the maid and no one else.

He doesn’t ask where everyone else is. He’s assuming his father is still out, from the locked door of his study as he passes by it on the way to his bedroom.

He passes out in his bed before his head even hits the pillow.

*

When he comes to, his eyes are crusty, his nose running. He sits up in bed, wobbling a bit on his elbows before collapsing against the pillows. He’d left the light on and slept in his wet clothes. He squirms out of them tiredly, wiping his nose against the sleeve of his shirt before wriggling into a dry, clean one. He’s slipping into drawstring pants when the door suddenly whips open and Robert schools his face instantly into a scowl. It softens when he sees who it is.

“Where the hell have you been?” Eames roars, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. He’s tall enough that Robert’s feet skitter against the carpeted floor and it’s only when he starts moaning in discomfort that Eames releases him, repentant the moment he realizes what he’s doing.

“I went for a walk,” Robert says, clearing his throat. He’s having trouble keeping his legs upright. His head feels like it’s been hit repeatedly with a sledgehammer. He grasps the bedpost to steady the swimming between his eyes. “What is it to you? You’re not my keeper.”

“I’m your bodyguard, so yes, I am your keeper.”

“Don’t worry,” Robert says spitefully, trying his best to keep his jaw from giving, “I won’t tell my father you slipped up. You’ll still be on his payroll tomorrow morning. If you have no more business with me, I suggest you leave and lock the door on your way out. I’m tired, it’s late, and I still have school tomorrow.” He sits at the foot of his bed, cradling his hands like children, doesn’t look up to meet Eames’ searing gaze even as Eames walks over to him.

“Your skin is flushed,” Eames says, putting a hand down the side of his neck. Robert slaps his hand away, applying enough force that his hand leaves a stinging mark on Eames’ skin.

“Robert,” Eames says.

“Get away from me,” Robert points to the door, swaying slightly on his feet. “Get out. Or I’ll tell my father.”

“Robert,” Eames says again. “You’ve got a fever.”

“I don’t fucking care if I have a fever. I want you to leave.”

Eames stands there for a moment, unblinking before nodding his head. “Very well, Mr. Fischer,” he says, and Robert flinches at the name, “Have a good night’s sleep. I’ll send a maid up here to tend to you.”

He sounds serious and he probably is; but he doesn’t leave and Robert doesn’t know what it is that Eames wants. Robert groans, shuddering. His head is cotton, all blurry images and oversaturated color that makes his eyes swim.

“Robert,” Eames tries again, with a tone much gentler now.

Robert feels his bed dip, and he bites his lip at the sudden lurching sensation at the pit of his belly. “Let me sleep, Eames,” he sighs. He’s too tired to play bitter, especially when Eames is warm and firm against his side, and the hands that undo the buttons of his shirt brush against his flushed skin.

“Sleep, then,” Eames tells him matter-of-factly, and if Robert doesn’t know any better, Eames’ smile looks more forced and less sure of itself. Robert doesn’t remember a time when Eames had smiled that way.

“Okay,” he mumbles, pressing his cheek against the pillow.

He’s coaxed to a restless sleep by the lingering warmth of Eames’ palm against his belly and strong fingers gently weaving through the wet knots of his hair.

*

Robert wakes up in the middle of the night.

He thinks he’s seeing elephants. He must’ve gasped loudly because the noise is enough to turn the elephants’ eyes to the bed. They stare him down.

“What—” he panics, grasping at the blanket.

“Sh, it’s alright,” someone murmurs into his ear. Breath warms the shell of his ear and he shudders at the sensation. “Go back to sleep, pet.”

He does. He dreams of elephants who talk in warm voices, and stare at him with gray eyes that he thinks are too smart on things with such floppy ears and mis-matching tweed suits awkwardly firmly sat on bulky shoulders.

*

He misses school the next day and wakes up not feeling any better, alone in his bed and not in the company of elephants, his mouth and head thick with sleep. The doctor on call prescribes him a tray of vitamins and analgesics which he swallows down with thick soups and scalding hot tea sent from the kitchen. His father calls, sends him his best fucking regards as if Robert were a business associate and not his son.

Robert spends half the day sleeping, sweating in his sheets, feverish, and worming his way under the newly changed sheets. His hair is sticky, syrupy with sweat and plastered against the sides of his face. He moans miserably just to hear his voice echo in the still, empty room, curling up into a little ball and thinking about his mother, how she used to whisper in his ear when he was a child and read him bedtime stories before she left for tea parties and gala events.

The door opens in the early afternoon, creaking, and Robert peeks up from the rise of blankets and pillows to see who it is. He wishes, not for the first time, that people knocked before they came in, but that should’ve been the tip off, his first clue that it’s the person he’s been missing all week.

Eames closes the door behind him, walking around the bed to sit at Robert’s feet. Robert lets his head drop miserably and he turns his face away, even as Eames puts a hand over his forehead to check his temperature. His touch is cool, a welcome contrast to the sterile, detached prodding of the doctor on call.

“Are you feeling better, Robert?”

Robert doesn’t respond. The corners of his eyes are crusted with sweat and he’s making whistling noises as he breathes. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?”

“You’re only here because you pity me.” Robert says, “Don’t think I don’t know.”

Eames looks at him sadly, eyes resting on his, unwavering. “Why would I pity you?”

“Do you want me to enumerate?” Robert rolls onto his side, tucking his hands under his cheek. The bed shifts when Eames does, moving behind him to rub broad circles on his back. “I don’t have any friends,” Robert says, “My father barely acknowledges my existence. The only person who’s ever loved me is dead and has been dead before I even hit puberty. No one talks to me unless they’re paid to talk to me. Yesterday I skipped school and my father barely batted an eye. I don’t even understand why he hired you. I suspect the only reason I’m still living under his roof is that he needs an heir to keep business going.”

“I don’t pity you,” Eames interrupts, “I simply want to do my job properly and competently and you’re making it bloody difficult for me. You’re lying there now, sick with fever and all I can think of is,” he trails off and Robert feels the hair at the base of his skull being pushed back, Eames settling behind him to press a kiss to the top of his spine, lingering and slightly wet. “All I can think of is pinning you down and kissing you until your knees buckle. That is, of course, the PG-13 version of it.”

Robert sniffs out a laugh and elbows him on the stomach.

“But I do mean it,” Eames continues, pressing his chest to Robert’s back, “I don’t pity you. Pity is the last thing I feel for you.”

“Dirty old man,” Robert mutters under his breath. It earns him a tight squeeze around his sides and he laughs, in between hacking coughs and undignified sniffling. “Fuck, I feel awful.”

Eames’ hands still on his back, and they don’t move again until Robert stirs underneath his fingers.

“Eames?” Robert strains to turn his head.

“You shouldn’t do that ever again,” Eames says, his voice deadly quiet. Robert finds nothing gentle at all about it.

“It’s just a bit of rain, okay?” Robert reassures him, leaning back to push against Eames’ hands but Eames refuses to move. His fingers remain pliant, and the non-pressure that ghosts over Robert’s back almost makes him sigh in frustration.

“It’s clearly not just rain if you’re ill right now, eh, pet?” His fingers start moving again but they’re gentler now, more cautious. As if they’re not quite sure if they should be there in the first place.

“Were you worried?” Robert eases him with a grin.

Eames snorts, lightly pinching Robert’s side.

“Well?” Robert presses on, nudging the hand at his ribs with a jerk of his arm.

“Of course I was.”

Robert stills. He wanted that answer, but now he doesn’t know what to do with it. “Really?”

Eames clears his throat, and his voice turns rough. “I really don’t know why you’re surprised by this. You’re a human being and I just happen to be a very caring, very sensitive, very genuinely concerned about--”

Eames is trying to make light of the situation. Robert knows evasion when he sees it. He does it to some of his classmates himself. One word here, several there, their attention shifted to a string of details that easily pours from his lips. So it’s with full confidence that he turns on his back to stare up at Eames, his eyes levelled with a seriousness that’s almost urgent.

The smile he receives is reluctant at best, but the large hand that cups his cheek, almost so tenderly that he almost longs for the contact even though it’s right there, just air and God damn trepidation getting in the way.

“Do you.”

“What do you want me to say, Robert?” Eames asks, so softly that his lips barely even more. “Of course I care for you, of course I think you’re gorgeous, but--” he hesitates.

“But what?”

“But you’re also really very young and I can’t possibly--”

Robert cuts him off, “I thought you had more balls than that.”

Eames sucks in a noisy breath when Robert slides a hand up his neck. Robert twists two fingers in Eames’ hair and Eames shuts his eyes, leaning into his touch. “I want to do so many things to you, your head will reel when you hear them.” He smiles ruefully.

“Then go on,” Robert insists. “Make my head reel. Prove you’re not all bark and no bite.”

He stares Eames down and for the first time, actually wins. Eames caves quickly, gathering him in his arms and pressing his face against Robert’s neck, breathing in his scent. He settles between Robert’s legs where Robert can feel the heat of his arousal pressing against his thigh. He rubs their hips experimentally, curling his arms around Eames’ neck as he spreads his knees and traps Eames between his legs so that their cocks are brushing.

“Do you really want this, Robert?” Eames lets out a startled gasp.

Robert nods, tightening his arms around him. He pushes his hips up and muffles an embarrassingly long moan into Eames’ shoulder blade. “I want this,” he confirms, pumping his hips against the hard ridge of Eames’ cock, watching Eames’ concentration break as he braces his arms on either side of Robert’s head.

Robert aligns their mouths together, kissing Eames as deeply as he can with deliberate swipes of his tongue. It’s messy and awkward and their teeth clack painfully, but Eames doesn’t complain and wriggles a hand down the front of Robert’s pants.

“Fuck,” Robert hisses as Eames tugs his pajamas down his ankles, followed by his underwear. The cool air makes his cock twitch and so do Eames’ eyes, sly and darkened with lust as he dips down to catch the faint traces of precome beading at the tip of his cock.

“Tell me what you want Robert,” Eames whispers, breath searingly hot against Robert’s thigh. He mouths the skin nearest his lips, mapping out a path with swirls of his tongue that lead up the inside of Robert’s knee.

“I want you to suck me off,” Robert says, chest shuddering. “Fuck--” That’s just as far as he gets before Eames’ mouth engulfs him completely. He bucks against his lips but Eames’ hand on his thigh is keeping him down firmly. Robert’s fingers dig into the sheets as Eames hollows his cheeks and curls his tongue around the head, pumping him in erratic unmeasured strokes until Robert feels the familiar rush pooling in the pit of his belly, tongue soft in his bellybutton, running down the sides of his thighs, and then a finger, slick, wiggling inside him, pushing insistently against the stubborn ring of muscle as Eames alternates between fucking him with his finger and milking his cock.

And then he’s coming, the strength draining out of him as his cock twitches feebly in Eames’ hand, his knees jerking apart as Eames’ fingers brush against something behind his balls, something that makes his bellybutton tug sharply.

Later, Eames cleans him up with a wet rag, pulling up his pajamas and tucking him back into bed, Robert too disoriented to protest and simply curling up against Eames’ chest, warm, sleepy, sated, moaning when Eames disturbs his hair with his fingers.

“You owe me,” Eames says, “Remember that.”

Robert nods weakly. He thinks his fever has worsened but despite his condition, he’s inexplicably giddy.

“Don’t worry old man,” he smirks into his neck, stifling a yawn, “I won’t forget to return the favor and let you fuck me over the settee. It’s my favourite seat in the room.”

Eames blinks, torn between surprise and sudden arousal.

Robert smiles and pats Eames on the cheek.

*

Robert goes back to school on Monday and for the first time since he could remember, he didn’t walk out of school feeling like he’d just been ignored by the most part of the world.

He’s smiling as he approaches the sedan. Eames is waiting there for him, leaning against the hood with a stick of Newport in between his fingers.

For weeks this becomes their routine.

Robert greets Eames in the morning with a brief kiss, timed just right so that the security cameras mounted in the hallway as well as the newly-fixed camera in Robert’s bedroom catch nothing of it.

Eames always finds something to fix: Robert’s tie; Robert’s pocket square; Robert’s collar. His touches always linger, masked half-heartedly by formal Mr Fischers and Allow me sirs that the maid overhears but never comments on.

Maurice, on the rare occasion that Robert catches him at home, notices nothing. As always, his eyes are on stacks of papers, or on CNN’s Wall Street report, or on someone else on the phone.

They smile when they pass each other in the large, three-thousand square-foot apartment. Eames nods in an exaggeration of courtesy that Robert doesn’t help but smile at; Robert nods back in a mockery of stiffness broken only by the mischievous glint in his eyes.

Eames always brings the sedan when he picks up Robert. He always waits for him by the door, impeccable in his forbidding suit. Robert always smiles when he catches sight of him the moment he exits the school premises.

Robert’s suitcase gets tossed in the backseat and the passenger’s side chair is backed up to the farthest possible peg that his feet barely even touch the glove compartment.

They’re always careful.

Robert never kisses Eames in public and Eames never touches Robert at home.

But they forget, sometimes, that they’re not always alone. That not all eyes are friendly.

*

He gets a text on Tuesday. It's from an unknown number and attached to the message is a picture of Robert and Eames standing by the sedan, Eames with his hands smoothing down Robert's hair and Robert laughing, batting his hands away. The caption reads: getting cozy are we? and Robert almost drops his phone on his way out of school as he joins the jostling crowd.

Eames, as usual, is waiting for him by the car, stubbing a cigarette on the ground as he takes Robert's bag.

"Had fun at school today?" Eames greets him, tossing the bag in the back as Robert makes himself comfortable in the passenger side. Robert nods, once, shaky and deletes the message before pocketing his phone.

"Yeah," he says, forcing a smile and doesn't duck away when Eames leans forward to plant a kiss on his forehead.

Eames pays him a visit that night and Robert forgoes half of his French homework in favor of pulling Eames down into bed with him. The security cameras are rigged which is just as well, because Robert will die if someone sees them together like this, his knees spread as Eames fits two fingers inside him, pumping them slowly as he strokes up and down Robert’s thighs. They rut against each other a little bit and Robert is struck with a newfound sense of bravery, dragging his tongue down the slope of Eames’ muscles and crawling his way to his stomach, curling his hand around Eames’ cock.

For once in his life, Robert is happy, content even, but a few days later he gets another text from an unknown number. This one makes his blood run cold. Below a picture of him and Eames eating ice cream in the parking lot are the words: you think i don’t see you but i do.

Robert doesn’t sleep that night. After school the next day, his worst suspicions are confirmed when Garfield and Murphy corner him by his locker. “We have to talk,” Garfield says, and his hand is firm on Robert’s arm as he drags him down the hall.

“About what?” Robert asks, heart hammering in his throat. Garfield and Murphy are on the lacrosse team, their strength and bulk allowing them to manhandle Robert should they please. Garfield shoves him inside the gym where Robert trips backward on his palms, Murphy snatching his bag from him and tossing it on the floor.

“What is this about Garfield? This isn’t funny.” He gets up to pick up the scattered contents of his bag when Garfield presses the heel of his shoe against his hand. Robert cries out. The hard ridges of Garfield’s loafers dig into his skin and it’s almost as painful as the time Robert accidentally shut the door on his hand.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing with your driver there, Fischer.”

“He’s not my driver, he’s my bodyguard.” He yelps in pain as Garfield presses his shoe down farther. “Fuck! What did I ever do to you? It’s not my fault you can’t afford a bodyguard.” He allows himself a smirk as Garfield’s face contort in anger. He releases Robert’s hand but only after stomping down hard enough that Robert feels something dis-align, and he cries out again, howling in pain. Tears spring to the corners of his eyes as he clutches his abused hand, curling on the floor and glaring up at Garfield.

“You disgust me,” Garfield scoffs. “Who would’ve thought, eh? The heir to the Fischer fortune, a pillow-biting cocksucker.” Robert flinches. “I’ve seen you with that man. Do you think you’re being clever, Robert, hiding it from everyone? Does he bend you over the desk and fuck you in the ass? I bet you like that, don’t you Robert? You like taking it up the ass and sucking cock.”

Robert spits at him. Garfield’s nostrils flare as he seizes Robert by the the collar, slamming him against the wall so hard, he hits his head a few times. “This is slander,” Robert says, “I can sue you.”

“Oh can you?” Garfield smirks. “I have pictures. Do you want to see my collection?”

“How did you--”

Garfield pushes him to the ground, nudging his chin up with the point of his shoe. “Do you want to negotiate, Robert? One picture for every time you suck my cock. I’m sure you’ve gotten good at it. Look at that mouth on you.” He bends down to Robert’s eye-level and presses the pad of his finger between Robert’s teeth.

Robert bites down and spits it back out, bloody, red smearing his mouth.

“Why you little shit--”

He scrambles to gather his things, hastily stuffing books and papers back into his bag before running out the door, tripping on his feet. Murphy grabs him by the elbow, knocking him down on the ground but Robert manages to dislodge his grip by kicking him in the face. He makes it safely across the street, towards the sedan, heart hammering in his chest, his once impeccable uniform jacket creased in misery.

“Robert, what happened?”

Robert doesn’t even bother hiding it anymore. He throws himself into Eames’ chest, burying his face into his shirt. His fingers twitch but he can hardly move them. When the tears come, Robert moans pathetically and clenches his eyes shut.

“My hand,” he whispers, cradling his arm to his chest, “they broke my hand.”

*

To say that Eames is pissed beyond belief is an understatement.

“They’re going to tell my father,” Robert says, clutching his bandaged hand in his lap. “They know Eames. I thought we were being careful.”

“No, no, it’s my fault. I’m the adult here. I shouldn’t have--” He stops mid-sentence when Robert fixes him a challenging look.

“I don’t regret anything. Do you?”

“Of course not, pet,” Eames sighs miserably.

Robert nods, banging his head against the headboard, face crumpled in absolute despair. “What are we going to do now? I don’t want you to get fired. I don’t want my father to find out. I don’t want you to,” he shrugs, cheeks flushing. “have to leave.”

Eames pats him on the knee. “I wish I could smoke right now.”

“You’ll set off the fire alarm.”

Eames laughs without any real humor. “What’s going to happen now?” Robert asks after a pause.

“Don’t worry about it, love,” Eames rubs circles on his palm, “Let me handle it.”

*

When Eames says he’ll handle it, Robert realizes belatedly that Shit.

Eames will handle it. And a thousand scenes of graphic violence flashes in his mind’s eye. A part of him is pleased by that. Garfield’s skull smashed in, Murphy skewered on a ten-foot pole. (Unsharpened ten-foot pole.)

But he sobers quickly enough and the pleasure makes way for dread, a cold ball of dread that floors him.

Over the weekend, he tries to needle Eames into telling him what he’s planned.

But Eames only smiles in that reassuring way, and pats his bandaged wrist. He kisses him and Robert doesn’t think of it again.

*

When he blinks awake on Monday morning, however, it all comes crashing back.

He’s almost afraid to walk out of his room.

But Eames pulls him out of bed with gentle, coaxing hands. Eames even dresses him, gingerly pulling his arm through the sleeves of his shirt and blazer, buckling his belt, and straightening the knot on his tie.

“Dead man walking,” Robert jokes with a nervous laugh.

Eames quiets him with a dry kiss on his cheek. “Don’t worry about it.”

Robert snorts. “Easy for you to say.”

Eames sighs. “Well, that’s hardly fair now is it?”

Robert pulls away, tugging at the lapels of his blazer to smooth the wrinkles that he and Eames both know aren’t there. “I hate them.”

“It’s been taken care of, Robert,” Eames reassures him again.

Robert likes to believe that and he probably does, to an extent, but it doesn’t comfort him at all.

*

When he walks into school later that morning, nothing seems out of the ordinary. He keeps expecting Garfield and Murphy with pitchforks and torches, rallying the rest of the student body, running him down and tying him to a stake and burning him in the school courtyard with the dean officiating the proceedings with some Gothic mask over his face.

But the mob doesn’t come. And neither do Garfield and Murphy.

He goes back home with Eames with a big smile on his face and when Eames tells him to not worry about it anymore, that everything is fine, Robert believes it.

*

He sees neither hair nor shadow of Garfield and Murphy for a whole week.

*

(When Eames says he’ll handle it, he does.

His list of references is long and locked, airtight, from the military to brief affiliations with Interpol.

He also has connections, from as underground as gangs in Queens to as high up as multinational corporations he’s done legwork for.

Eames doesn’t say that he has friends among the petty criminals and that it doesn’t take a leap of effort to hint to send text message about a certain SUV, black, and two high school students cruising along a street notorious for car robbers and pickpockets.

Eames also doesn’t say that these friends carry crowbars and spikes, and switch knives, and a whole lot of rage for the rich and obnoxious.)

*

Robert is happy, and Eames sees that he is. He’s grinning like a fool at the tie in his hands, his teeth flashing white.

Eames raises an eyebrow in amusement, watching Robert’s deft fingers work his collar from the reflection on the mirror. He himself is dressed to the nines for the occasion, Robert’s eighteenth, in a tuxedo that he hasn’t worn in ages.

“What are you so jolly about?”

Robert shrugs, ducking his head. A stray lock of hair falls on his forehead and Eames resists the urge to draw it back behind Robert’s ear.

Eames smiles fondly at him, before turning him around and brushing the strict line of Robert’s shoulders. “You’re old now, I suppose.”

Robert smirks. “You’re older.”

Eames shrugs. He tips Robert’s chin up with a gentle push of his thumb. “Do you know what this means?”

Robert makes a thoughtful sound. “This means that you’re giving me my birthday present.”

“Oh,” Eames’ eyes flash with mischief. It makes Robert’s skin crawl in anticipation. But Eames does nothing else but move a little closer, until they’re standing just so, pressed against each other. “That comes much later, don’t you think? Can’t keep your guests waiting.”

Robert sighs, impatient. “Then I have no use for you. Leave me.”

Eames rolls his eyes. “So theatrical, Robert.”

Robert grins up at him, biting at his lower lip in an effort to not look too giddy with excitement. It’s his eighteenth, after all. He shouldn’t be so excited, considering that twenty-one is a more momentous age for a young man. But he’s legal now, and fuck is he going to get rip-roaring drunk tonight.

It takes a while for Robert to realize that Eames hasn’t spoken, and when he looks up, he sees such open affection on Eames’ face that it takes him by surprise.

“Are you crying?” Robert teases him.

“Don’t be cheeky,” Eames chides. He leans forward, and Robert tilts up his head, and they’re almost kissing, with their lips hovering just over each other’s, and their breaths intermingling in the bare width of air between them.

“Are you kissing me or what?” Robert huffs.

And Eames does, a slow, lingering kiss like the languid burn of a newly-lit candle. Robert revels in the softness of Eames’ lips, and the gentle stroke of Eames’ hands down his sides. He brings up his arms, winding them around Eames’ neck, and he sighs, relieved and happy and ecstatic.

“Happy birthday,” Eames whispers against his lips when he pulls away.

Eames moves in his arms, but Robert stubbornly holds him there. Eames doesn’t stiffen awkwardly, and Robert doesn’t hesitate. They press against each other with an acquiescence that humors them both, because it’s not acquiescence at all.

It feels something close to contentment. Robert makes a sound against Eames’ shoulder, and Eames’ breath stirs the top of Robert’s head.

“Thank you,” Robert mutters.

Eames barely catches it but he does, and he smiles. “You’re lucky I have no standards at all.”

Robert makes a face over his shoulder, at Eames’ reflection on the mirror. But he stops short when he sees the two of them.

They look happy. Robert’s smile widens to a grin that can’t help itself. Yeah, Robert thinks. They’re happy.

END

[INCEPTION] Fic: My nine rides shotgun (1/2) (Eames/Robert, R) written with fermine

bronson — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:15:02 GMT

My nine rides shotgun (1/2) by fermine and bronson
Eames/Robert
AU fic where Robert is in high school and Eames is his bodyguard. Warning for, uh, underage sexytimes.
mmm, rarepairs. also, this was written out of pure fun. fuck yeah, spontaneity. big thank you to furloughday and jacquise for the beta! <3

“If you think you can just sneak out of your room without my knowing, think again,” Eames says, smiling serenely as he braces his arm against the wall, leaning over Robert. He’s Robert’s new bodyguard - Robert’s third in the last week or so.

Robert hopes this one doesn’t get shot or dismembered (the previous one quit after Robert faked a seizure and snuck out of his bedroom window), not because Robert particularly cares for him but because he really doesn’t want to deal with a constant rotation of heavily armed, brawny men believing themselves to be his protector.

Eames doesn’t step back even though Robert lifts his head with dignity, staring him straight in the eye. They’re close enough that it could be immediate grounds for sexual harassment with the way Eames is trapping him against the wall, his nose nearly touching Robert’s.

Robert ducks a little, hunching his shoulders, pulling his uniform jacket around his chest. He is already five minutes late for school.

“I thought I’d told you to not hassle me in the morning, Eames.” Robert looks around, to make sure that they’re alone. (Of course they’re alone. His father’s never around this late in the morning, despite it being only eight-thirty; and the maids keep to themselves in the kitchen. But the close call a few days ago had bothered Robert to no end that he promised himself he’s never going to be caught in such an undignified situation.)

Eames smirks, lazily, leaning against the wall. His suit jacket wrinkles slightly and Robert winces on its behalf. “I thought you owed me a little more than that after last night.”

“I owe you nothing,” Robert says, and when his voice stutters it’s only because Eames is leaning even closer, tilting Robert’s chin up with two fingers and breathing down his face.

Robert’s chin almost wobbles but he steels himself against it. He slaps Eames’ hand away when it reaches for his cheek and Eames steps back, stung, recovering remarkably fast.

“Feisty.”

Robert sniffs, shooting him a glare he doesn’t bother to mask. “I’m late for school,” he says, turning up his nose when Eames merely starts to snigger, reaching for his head to muss up his hair.

“Don’t touch me!” Robert hisses, batting Eames’ hands away. Eames makes a face, shrugs, and pockets his hands quickly.

“All right then,” he concedes, “No touching.” He holds up both his arms in a gesture of defeat. Robert straightens his jacket, pushing the hair from his forehead, and stalks down the hall.

*

Eames is waiting by the car. He shouldn’t be; that’s the driver’s job. But Robert forgets that Eames has his way of manipulating things to his own advantage. A quick glance at the driver’s seat tells him that the driver isn’t there and that Eames has brought the sedan, not the stretch limo.

(Eames never does what he’s supposed to do.)

Robert sighs, exasperated. But Eames is grinning at him as he opens the passenger’s side door. The front passenger’s side door. Which, he knows from the monthly meetings with the family’s head of security, is the worst possible thing in terms of keeping with the whole caution, lock and key, us against the world system that they’ve been maintaining since Robert had been born.

“Well? How was algebra?” Eames says by way of greeting.

Robert rolls his eyes at him. “Why do you even ask these things when you already know how much I hate algebra?” He sighs tiredly as he allows himself to sink into his seat. Eames’ arms are perched on top of the still open door -- yet another violation of security protocol.

“What?” Robert lifts an eyebrow as Eames continues to stare at him, undeterred. Finally, Eames shrugs his shoulders and steps back from the car.

“Nothing ever pleases you, does it? You find little things to complain about every five minutes whether it be Algebra or my new cologne.”

“Your new cologne makes me nauseous.”

“Shush,” Eames says. He shuts the car door without warning, making Robert startle in his seat as he shakily pulls on his seatbelt. Eames slides into the driver’s side, waggling his eyebrows in a way that makes Robert uncomfortable, flush to his ears. He rubs at them, pushing his hair back out of a lack of a better thing to do.

“I’ll treat you to ice cream,” Eames says, easing the car into first gear.

Robert sniffs. “I’m allergic to ice cream.”

“That isn’t completely true and we both know it; the only thing you’re allergic to is happiness. Honest to god, every day you find something to whine about. Without fail.”

“I do not whine,” Robert says indignantly, and maybe he does squeak a little but it’s only because Eames is crossing the line.

Eames pats him on the knee. Robert jerks at his touch and turns away, twitching, facing the window where the landscape outside streaks past in a colorful blur.

“It’s just ice cream, Robert,” Eames says. “It won’t kill you.”

“Actually-” Robert says, on the verge of recounting his brief run-in with kidnappers last month when he stopped for take out after school, but Eames holds up a hand, silencing him before he can continue.

“I’m taking you out today, Robbie.”

“It’s Robert.”

“Whatever,” Eames rolls his eyes. “Just sit back, relax, and smile a little or wrinkles will start to form on your forehead. Look, there’s one right there.” Robert glares just as Eames pulls away, flicking him on the nose.

*

“What’s this?” Robert asks, trying to look very much in charge even in his pinstriped pajamas, even though the kitchen isn’t exactly the battlefield he had been planning conquering Eames in.

Everyone else is asleep and his father hasn’t arrived home yet. Meaning, he’s stuck with this. This and Eames.

And this is--

“Ice cream,” Eames says, frowning, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world and a smart guy like Robert should know better than to question the unmistakable pint of Ben and Jerry’s thrust into his hand.

“It’s eleven-thirty in the evening and I have school in the morning,” Robert replies with a long-suffering sigh. He passes a hand over his eyes, but Eames doesn’t give up.

(Fucker never gives up.)

“Come on, then,” Eames cajoles him, plucking a spoon from the drawer of newly washed (rinsed with distilled water, sterilized) cutlery he’d opened with the hook of his pinky. “Just a spoonful, eh?”

Robert hesitates a moment before accepting the spoon. He rolls his eyes as Eames’ expectant face looms over him, watching his every move. He takes a small bite of ice cream, letting it melt on his tongue, soft and cool. A few scoops later and Eames is grinning smugly at him, arms crossed. His gun is peeking out of his holster.

Robert puts the ice cream away with a muffled sigh of satisfaction. “Thank you,” he says curtly, licking the corners of his lips. Eames nods, seemingly satisfied and swipes a thumb across Robert’s cheek, biting on the pad of his thumb.

“Sorry,” Eames laughs. “You had a little-”

“Don’t,” Robert says, “Don’t do that ever again, touch me like that.” His face is warm even though it shouldn’t be. Probably because it’s late, he thinks, and rubs a hand furiously across his cheek. Still warm, and Eames is still looking at him with the strangest expression on his face.

“It’s late,” Robert tells him, as if Eames doesn’t know, “I’m going to bed.” He doesn’t wait for Eames to respond but pads up the stairs, into the sprawling hallway until he finally stops in front of the door of his room. His hand hovers over the doorknob, twitching.

Finally, he heaves a sigh and steps inside.

*

When Robert gets in the car the next morning, his door is held open by the driver and Eames just stands to one side, with his hands clasped behind his back, glancing this way and that like the bodyguard that he’s hired to be.

Eames only smiles at him as he passes, but says nothing else beyond that.

Robert should be relieved, that the morning will go as it has always gone before Eames had arrived. Quietly, peacefully, where Robert can use the time to cram on his math homework in the car.

But he gets nothing done in the half-hour drive to school. He sits at the back and almost the entire time he’s forcing himself not to stare at the back of Eames’ head. It’s like he’s bracing himself for the quiet to be snapped with some witty retort but it doesn’t come like Robert expects it to and he’s left in anticipation until the car pulls up at his school’s driveway and he realizes that it’s a painful thing, anticipation, it’s tense about his chest and skittish underneath his skin.

The week ends without so much as a word from Eames except for the requisite good morning or watch your step, sir. Robert doesn’t understand why this bothers him so much when he hardly ever spoke to his previous bodyguards at all.

They were, of course, nothing like Eames whose complete disregard of personal space was highly commendable. Eames however, despite his faults, was competent at his job and, even though Robert will be loathe to admit, different from the rest of the staff. He was entertaining to say the least -- he made Robert laugh.

When Saturday night comes to a close with Eames hardly batting an eye in Robert’s direction, Robert finds himself irritated out of his wits, marching down the hall to the balcony where Eames is playing poker with one of the guards.

Eames looks up, startled, mouth pursing into a fine line. “Robert,” he says, “You’re in your ... pajamas.”

Robert colors but only briefly and waves the guard off in dismissal. “You,” he starts, and then realizes he’s at a loss. He came here to say something but he hardly remembers what it is anymore.

“Me,” Eames replies, smiling brilliantly at Robert. Robert hates that he’s nonplussed about this because Robert knows that Eames knows that something’s off. Something’s off and he’s causing it.

Eames throws several chips into the pot but the other guards aren’t paying as much attention to the game as they’re paying attention to their employer’s son, in his pajamas.

Robert is beside himself, but he reins in his temper before he disgraces himself in front of his employees. (His father’s, but, details.) He takes a breath and just stands there for a while, glancing at the guards, then pointedly ignoring the curious look on their faces.

“Well, what about me?” Eames finally asks him, turning his cards face down on the table before facing Robert fully. His fingers tap some rhythm on his downturned cards, an expectant expression glazing his eyes with passing interest.

“Can I talk to you in private?” Robert says instead.

“But of course,” Eames exclaims with exaggerated cheer. He stands from his chair and he and Robert quickly head to the kitchen--some kind of neutral ground for the two of them, apparently--where the dim light from the living room barely makes out Eames’ face in the darkness.

“So,” Robert ventures, voice taking a haughty lilt. Eames is leaning back against the counter, eyeing him with interest.

“So,” Eames echoes.

“Did I do something?” Robert blurts and it’s only then he realizes how needy he sounds when his voice chokes at the last syllable. He swallows, steeling himself, but when Eames doesn’t respond and simply continues to stare at him, he follows with a moan of despair, scrubbing a hand through his face.

“I know I can be a bit of a chore,” Robert says, “And I’m rarely impressed by a lot of things.” He chews his lip. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t try to extract joy from life. It’s not like I intend on being miserable.”

Eames blinks. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

Robert makes a frustrated noise. “I’m not sure I follow myself, either.” He shakes his head. “This is stupid. I’m going to bed.”

Robert is already halfway down the hall when Eames catches up to him, jogging by his side, one hand resting lightly on his arm.

“What?”

Eames is smiling. Robert shouldn’t feel comforted by the warm weight of his hand, shouldn’t feel flustered or relieved that he’s speaking to him but that’s how it is: he’s embarrassed, giddy, and confused at the same time.

“You didn’t do anything,” Eames assures him. “I just wanted to keep things professional between us. Er, I mean.”

“Professional,” Robert repeats, nodding his head. Eames still hasn’t let go of him. Robert stares at his hand. “You didn’t speak to me for the rest of the week. You gave me the cold shoulder.” He swallows at the hiccup in his throat - it’s how he gets when he’s nervous, sweaty palms, a squeak to his voice.

“I thought you were angry,” he finishes lamely, shrugging Eames’ hand off and rubbing the warm spot he’d left with his hand. “I thought...”

“Oh, Robert,” Eames laughs. Robert looks up and Eames is shaking his head and sighing, reaching forward to knot his fingers in Robert’s hair. This time, Robert doesn’t pull away even when they’re standing close enough that he could smell Eames’ cologne.

“I didn’t want our friendship to get in the way of my job,” Eames says.

Robert’s head snaps up. “Friendship?”

“Yes,” Eames confirms. “Well, that’s what we are, I assume? Friends?”

“Right,” Robert says. “Right. But you’re my bodyguard first and foremost, an employee of the Fischer household.” He doesn’t know why he says that when he knows it’ll only piss Eames off.

Eames’ hand in his hair stiffens briefly and his voice is standoffish, almost--if Robert doesn’t know better--offended, when he says, “You never make me forget that for a minute, do you?”

Robert opens his mouth, but shuts it with a defiant click a second later.

Eames laughs again. His hand travels down Robert’s cheek and it stays there. Robert wants to pull back but he doesn’t, because it’s large and warm and it reassures him for some reason.

“What’s so funny?” Robert mutters, glaring up at Eames.

“I was wondering what it would take to shut you up, actually,” Eames says casually, like it’s nothing quote as offensive as it sounds, put in that way. In Eames’ patronizing tone of voice. “I think I’ve finally got it cracked, though.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really,” Eames nods. His thumb strokes circles on Robert’s skin. It tingles. “You never talk to anyone in this house besides me.”

“That’s not true,” Robert protests, shifting a little that Eames’ palm grazes over his nose.

Eames is unfazed, however, and just lets his hand rest on Robert’s shoulder, dangerously close to the naked skin of his neck. “You know why that is? Because I talk to you.”

Robert shakes his head, but it’s a useless effort. It’s true.

“And that’s what gets you started, isn’t it?” Eames smiles at him and Robert thinks it’s a little bit sad, how Eames’ eyes are soft when the smile on his face is just as somber. “I annoy you and you tell me off with a bloody paragraph, really. Fancy semi-colons and everything.”

Robert frowns. Sometimes, it’s hard to follow Eames as he goes along. Robert always has to wait. Most of the time, he chooses to cut Eames off entirely, pretending that he’s either uninterested or otherwise preoccupied. But this is one of those few times when he really wants to know what Eames has to say.

“And don’t you think it’s rather ironic that I’m the one who shuts you up as well?” Eames is smiling now, a little too widely, and his hand has already migrated to the back of Robert’s neck. His fingers pressing against the fine hairs, his palm fitting over the bony knob at the top of his spine.

“What are you even talking about?” Robert asks, voice shaking as Eames lowers his head even closer. Their noses touch and Robert sucks in a noisy, shuddering breath when Eames bridges that tiny stretch of distance between them, fitting their mouths together and cupping the back of his head.

Eames’ lips are dry, warm, and Robert startles at the gentleness of the kiss. Robert’s head starts to swim and it’s with dawning horror that he realizes he’s moaning a little, tipping his head back and curling his arms around Eames’ broad shoulders. But Eames is the first to pull away, although not before pressing his teeth lightly against Robert’s bottom lip and rubbing the pad of his thumb against his cheek.

“You’ve quieted down, I see,” Eames observes cheekily, winking when Robert’s face fills with heat.

Robert splutters, but he can’t summon any other feeling besides embarrassment so he settles for shoving Eames off with a hand to the chest, except it backfires because Eames catches him by the wrist, kissing the inside of it and trailing his lips up Robert’s elbow.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispers against Robert’s skin, breath hot and sending ripples up Robert’s spine. He looks up at Robert through his eyelashes, smiling, serene. “Goodnight, Robert.” And then he’s off, walking down the hall and whistling, one hand inside his pocket. Eames waves without looking back and Robert swallows at the lump in his throat, leaning against the wall for support, knees shaking.

He lets out a nervous laugh before running his tongue over his bottom lip.

His father will kill him.

*

Dinner with his father the next day is both unexpected and dreadful. They hardly speak a word to each other, each preoccupied by either the food on their plates or the food in their mouths.

For the first time, Robert wishes for the silence to stay there. That way, he doesn’t need to stutter, things don’t need to be said, and his father won’t ever have to find out.

“Eames,” his father suddenly says and Robert violently jumps in his seat.

“Sorry,” Robert apologises into his lamb chops, shifting back to a more dignified position. He tries not to meet his father’s confused gaze.

“Anyway, Eames tells me you haven’t been late for any of your morning classes in the last few weeks,” Maurice brings up.

Robert breathes, relieved, but the nerves in his belly remain afloat. “Y-yeah?”

Maurice nods, but looks otherwise unimpressed. “That’s good,” he says, but his eyes are directed elsewhere, to some middle distance that always seems to be more interesting than Robert that it holds his father’s attention most of the time. (Times like these are when Robert misses his mother the most.) He’s holding his wine glass to his lips and Robert almost misses the words he mutters into his wine as he sips, “Keep it up.”

---

Keep it up, his father says. Robert knows he doesn’t mean continue fooling around with the new bodyguard but these days that’s what Robert finds himself doing. Eames doesn’t kiss him again and it’s not like Robert is waiting on him (he isn’t, he’s got plenty of other things to do: homework, lacrosse and violin lessons on the weekends) but he does notice a slight change in their relationship.

(“Friendship.”)

Eames touches him more. A hand on the shoulder, the small of Robert’s back. He walks close enough that their shoulders bump and Robert has to hop a few paces forward to keep himself from colliding with Eames.

Sometimes Eames even walks him to his classroom door never mind the raised eyebrows when Robert stands awkwardly in his school uniform, stiff shouldered as Eames brushes invisible lint off his jacket or leans forward to smooth the errant strands of his hair. They’re fast approaching a level of... intimacy? The word makes something in Robert’s stomach tighten, but he can’t say he isn’t pleased. Still, there’s his father, and the fact that Eames is fifteen years older, and happens to be his father’s employee. And there’s also the fact that Eames probably doesn’t want a scrawny teenager like Robert, anyway.

*

Eames arrives at Robert’s school alone one afternoon, driving the sedan. The smile on his face is cocksure, lowering the passenger’s side window as Robert nears the car with an amused, albeit wary, smile on his face.

“You’re really pushing it, aren’t you,” Robert says as he opens the car door.

Eames doesn’t bother responding and just smiles wider, winking. Robert tosses his bag in the passenger seat and pulls on his seatbelt, shifting in his seat to make himself comfortable. He looks up - Eames is watching him.

“What?” Robert asks self-consciously, rubbing the back of his hand against his cheek. “Why are you-”

He never gets to finish because Eames leans down to kiss him, quick, before pulling back and starting the car. “How was school?” he asks, punctuating the statement with a smirk.

Robert opens his mouth but no words form. He colors and looks out the window instead, pursing his lips.

“Well?” Eames asks him again as he puts the car in gear.

“Well what?” Robert shrugs, looking out the window. Nothing interesting is outside, and he’s really not looking at anything else but at the reflection of Eames as he runs a finger down his bottom lip. It tingles, and he’s both thrilled and discomfited by the sensation.

“We’re back to this, are we?” Eames sighs, glancing at Robert as he shifts gears. “Anything the matter?”

“It’s just weird, okay?” Robert confesses, shifting in his seat. He’s suddenly feeling very self-conscious of himself. Of how his blazer is slightly wrinkled, or his tie is too tight against his neck, or how his pants cave where his thighs should be lean and strong. Of everything, that his hands are restless on his lap, twisting into the loose cloth of his pants.

Eames chuckles. “Don’t you worry about that, of course it’s weird.”

“Then how do you make it not weird, Eames?” And he really wants to know. He looks at Eames, eyes wide with a sudden claw of desperation to make it all work in his head. “You’re older than me. You work for me. You’re a bodyguard. You--”

“Do you like me?” Eames asks, interrupting him. Robert blinks, caught off-guard. The answer should be painfully obvious but he can’t seem to put them into words. Eames waits for his response, face serene and somehow Robert can’t look away.

“Yes,” he moans quietly, snorting out a laugh of embarrassment. He hides his face in his hands, clenching his eyes shut. Eames reaches over to him, twirling his fingers in his hair and rather than protest Robert leans into his touch.

“You’re cute,” Eames says.

“You only like me because I’m young.”

“No, although that plays a large part in it.” Eames smiles, shifting into second gear. Robert shoots him a look. “Don’t pout, Robert. It’s unbecoming of you.”

“You’re a pedophile.”

“Only in America.”

Robert laughs in spite of himself. “It doesn't matter anyway,” he says when he sobers up. “I’m turning eighteen soon.”

“Yeah?” Eames asks.

Robert nods, not sure where he’s going with his. His skin flushes under the intensity of Eames’ gaze and he rubs his palms on his knees, willing the trembling of his hands away. “Two weeks,” he says finally, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “Father’s throwing a party. Inviting people I have never met in my life.” He rolls his eyes.

“Will he give you away like some debutante?” Eames teases, but there’s a strange look on his face, Robert thinks, that isn’t as playful.

He scoffs. “Of course not,” then he sobers. “But I’ll probably need an escort.”

“Do you,” Eames raises his eyebrows, and he’s smirking as he turns his attention back on the road. “I know a few people who would--”

“Really,” Robert stares at him. “Are any of them my age?”

Eames blinks at him in surprise. “Well no of course not, that would be illegal anywhere in the world, really--”

Robert groans, but he’s grinning, and the discomfort eases to genuine amusement that loosens that knot of something big and stifling at the back of his throat. Like a dislodged thorn. He relaxes in his seat. “Not those kinds of escorts, Eames.”

Eames smiles at him wryly. “I know.” Then he turns thoughtful, his smile softening around the corners, and Robert thinks Eames should look like this more often. Less forward. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“To find something incredibly amusing,” Eames says as he draws the car to a full stop. They’re in a quieter part of the neighborhood, Robert realizes, near an empty park. This is the kind of neighborhood that’s defined by foreclosed house and dilapidated buildings. Robert looks up to find the streets nearly empty of pedestrians.

“What are we doing here?” he asks. Nervousness washes over him like a tidal wave as Eames unlocks his seatbelt and leans towards him. At this proximity, Robert can smell Eames’ cologne. He licks his bottom lip, waiting for the inevitable as Eames cups the back of his head and touches the tips of their noses together. This is how they’re different, Robert thinks, eyes tracing the definitions of Eames’ unshaven face.

It’s not just Eames’ physicality but his candor, the easy way he goes about things, lowering his mouth over Robert’s but never sealing the distance. Robert skin itches with want and impatience and he makes a frustrated noise as Eames runs the pad of his finger across his cheek.

“If you want something Robert,” Eames says, slow. “You mustn’t be afraid to chase after it.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Robert says. “I’m seventeen.”

“Going on eighteen,” Eames reminds him cheerfully. Robert snorts, rolling his eyes, and when Eames laughs, decides to shut him up with his mouth. Robert gasps as the heat of Eames’ tongue touches his own. He groans and clutches at Eames’ shoulders desperately, tipping his head back for Eames to tug at his collar and press dry kisses down his throat. A hand loosens the top button of his uniform short, making quick work of his necktie. Robert nods, hisses, “Yes,” although he still isn’t sure what he’s agreeing too. This, wanting Eames, or some other third thing he can’t name.

Eames’ mouth is hot, sly, and his hands reach up to cup Robert’s sides, stroking his back and wrinkling his shirt as a sharp pull loosens Robert’s dress shirt from his trousers.

Robert is aching, and suddenly he can’t remember ever wanting anything as much as this: Eames’ hands, his mouth, the heat of his breath on Robert’s face. Eames’ teeth scrape his throat gently, mouth closing over his adam’s apple as he unbuttons each of Robert’s buttons meticulously.

Robert moans, grasping Eames’ forearm and all at once Eames’ ministrations stop. Eames almost looks horrified and Robert takes a moment to keep his emotions in check, his arousal, even though he is anything other than dignified with an erection in his pants and the needy noises he’s making.

“We should go,” Eames says, revving the engine back to life.

“What?” Robert asks shakily.

Eames looks sheepish, apologetic. “It’s a school night. You probably have a lot of work to do, don’t you Robert?”

“No,” Robert says firmly. “I don’t have any work. And even if I did, I can always do it later. It was just about to get good, Eames.”

Eames shrugs one shoulder, looking pained. “We’re going home.”

“But-”

“This isn’t a negotiation.” Eames says pointedly.

Robert huffs and tucks his shirt back into his pants, smoothing the wrinkles and turning his nose up haughtily.

“Fine,” he sneers. “It’s nothing a little rub can’t fix anyway.” He makes sure that last jab sinks and sure enough, Eames looks conflicted, a furrow between his brows followed by an unconscious swallow.

Robert sits stiffly during the entire drive home while Eames best attempts not to touch him.

*

The morning after, Eames isn’t there outside his bedroom for the usual good morning. In fact, Eames doesn’t appear to be anywhere in the house at all.

He tries the kitchen, where the cook is preparing his breakfast for the day. Bacon and eggs, and waffles, and a tall glass of something fruity and cold. It smells good.

“Have you seen Eames?” he asks her.

She shakes her head as she slices up an apple. “He didn’t come in this morning, Mr Fischer.”

Oh.

He leaves the house and finds another bodyguard waiting for him by the car. The driver’s there; they’re taking the limo.

The following afternoon, the same faceless bodyguard waits for him at the school gate.

The ride home is quiet; this bodyguard doesn’t like to talk and Robert doesn’t talk unless spoken to, not when the person is of no interest to him at all. And this new guy, with his closely cropped hair, generic suit, and blank face, is not very interesting at all.

That evening, he’s laying down on his bed. His legs dangle off the edge until his feet graze over the carpet.

It’s quiet.

His mobile is on the bedside table. No texts. Not a lot of messages in his inbox except for the few from his Uncle Browning, asking about this and that. Most had been from Eames--the most recent one is nearly two days old now.

He’s not lonely; because how can he be lonely when his room is half the size of a regular New York apartment? When he’s got a skyline outside his window, and video games just beyond the double doors of his entertainment system?

He’s not lonely.

He’s bored, is what he is.

And in a house so big with only him in it, Robert thinks hell, I need to entertain myself, don’t I?

He pushes himself out of the bed and climbs the antique wardbrobe pushed against the wall. His foot slips a little but he manages to claw his way up eventually. Once there, he takes the security camera just within reach.

He grabs the head and pulls.

It short circuits. Debris of the lens’ plastic casing crumble on the floor.

As predicted, alarms go off somewhere in the house. In the main security room where he’s sure Eames is hiding from him.

He’s bored, that’s why he smashes his lampshade against the wall. The bulb erupts, like a clap of thunder.

He shouts for good measure.

Feet thunder down the hallway and soon enough, Eames is barging into his door, his semi-automatic clutched in his hand. Behind him are several other bodyguards that Robert forgets about almost immediately.

Eames is breathless as he looks around the room. The lamp is smashed, so is the security camera, but other than that, Robert’s room is spotless and Robert--

--Robert is in the middle of it all, his hands on his hips, and the slyest smirk on his face.

“What the hell happened?” Eames practically roars out loud, that even his colleagues jump back in surprise. His breaths come in short gasps and he really is scared, Robert realizes.

“A minor accident,” Robert shrugs, tipping his head to the side. “You came.” He feigns surprise, and the stark relief in Eames’ face as he slips his gun back in his holster fills him with inexplicable satisfaction. Robert waves the rest of them off with a dismissive hand, waiting until the doors have closed to cross the room and stand directly in front of Eames.

They stare at each other for a second. “What are you doing, Robert?” Eames groans, shaking his head. “Did you do all this to get my attention?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Robert says, covering up his embarrassment. “But what if I did? I hate Louis or Willis or whatever it is that guy’s name is. The new bodyguard. He’s not...” you, Robert says in his head, “competent.”

“I’ve seen him on the field He’s one of the best, comes with an impressive list of references.”

“He’s a tool.” Robert rolls his eyes. His hands ball into fists at his sides, itching to sweep aside Eames’ hair from his face. It’s been awhile since they’ve talked to each other, and even though Eames is looking at him like he wants to strangle him or leave him alone, it feels good to be able to stand in the same room as him again.

“Anyway,” Robert continues, “why haven’t you been driving me to school lately?”

“It’s not part of the job description.”

“Really? And sticking your tongue inside my mouth is?”

“Robert-” Eames pleads.

“No, you be quiet. You’re my father’s employee and mine by extension. You’ll do what I tell you to because you’re on my payroll!” He lets out a long breath, raking shaky fingers through his hair and breathing hard.

“What on earth do you want me to do then?” Eames asks, looking bored already as he rolls his eyes and raises his arms to appeal to the ceiling. “Polish your shoes, do your laundry--”

“Kiss me,” Robert says, voice firm. It’s a miracle his voice doesn’t stutter. “Well? I said kiss me.”

There is a pause before Eames sighs and cups Robert’s jaw in his hand. Robert’s eyes close automatically and he lets out an appreciative moan as Eames pulls him closer and winds his arm around his waist.

“Oh, pet,” Eames whispers, tucking Robert’s face into his neck, “You’re ridiculous. What am I ever going to do with you, mm?”

“You can start by kissing me.”

“You don’t want me to kiss you. I reek of cigarettes. I’m an old man.”

“I don’t care,” Robert says stubbornly, “It doesn’t matter to me.”

“It will,” Eames says, almost sadly. “Maybe not right now when your brain is clogged by your hormones but years from now you’ll look back on this moment and think, ‘why did I ever let that silly man have his way with me.’”

“Is that what you want, then?”

“What?”

“Do you want to have your way with me?”

Eames blinks, releasing him somewhat, laughing nervously. “No, I mean. I meant that-”

“-because I might be okay with that. I might.” Robert squirms and pulls Eames by the sides of his jacket, looking down at his feet. “Why are you fighting this? It’s obvious you want this too.”

“This is more complicated than you think.”

“Do you have any idea how unfair that is?” Robert cries out, frustrated. “You come on to me, relentlessly, every day, and I’m here! You won! I can’t go against,” he gestures vaguely at Eames, gesturing at all of him. He ignores the solemn look on that Eames’ face. He has a point to make, God damn it. And he’s tired of being on the wrong side of things all the time. “All this. I don’t--What--”

He doesn’t understand.

Eames sighs and he moves a little towards Robert that Robert almost holds his breath in anticipation of Eames’ touch, a hug, a kiss, anything that would assuage him.

But Eames stills and he looks away for a moment.

“Well?” Robert prompts him, a mockery of Eames’ own impatience towards Robert’s dark moods. His voice twists with frustration, heavy with a merciless prodding that Robert has learned from his teachers. If you prod hard enough, if you push hard enough, then something will give eventually.

“Go to bed,” is what Eames says instead. “You have school in the morning.”

And just like that he turns to leave and Robert desperately wants to call Eames back inside his room.

But the door opens and beyond it are the other bodyguards waiting to make sure that the situation is under control. And beyond the wall of black suits and stern faces is the maid, with a broom in one hand and a bin in the other.

All of a sudden, it’s no longer him and Eames and Robert’s breath catches in his throat.

He hurls the nearest object--a snow globe--against the wall. It doesn’t shatter. It falls on the floor with a thud.

*

PART TWO

INCEPTION TUMBLR FOLLOWING MEME

bronson — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 22:13:58 GMT

</td>

EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS ON THE TIN, YOU GUYS. This post is where you advertise your tumblrs to get more followers as well as to follow other awesome people like you.

As always, here's a handy-dandy form you can copy-paste by way of introducing yourselves:

ANON COMMENTS ARE ON. FOR THE PEOPLE WHO'D LIKE TO KEEP THEIR LJs AND THEIR TUMBLRS SEPARATE BUT WOULD STILL LIKE TO GET MORE INCEPTION PEOPLE TO FOLLOW/BE FOLLOWED BY.

Bonus celebratory Togepi gif:

Also, because I'm a bit of a whore, I'm on noroomfortourists. Sh, just come. And credit goes to thisisnotbruce for this fab fab idea.

[INCEPTION] Fic: I say the road only grows long (Cobb/Eames) R, for, uh, sex. ~8.2k

bronson — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:14:35 GMT

I say the road only grows long
Cobb/Eames + Cobb/Mal
College fic. A sequel to One kick's as good as another but can function as a stand-alone. Where Eames and Cobb share a flat in London while they're both in college, and with the living arrangements come certain benefits; Eames is an art forger on the side and Cobb is a full-time student, next to being a full-time Mortal Kombat champion.
omg fermine, love you long tiem.

“What are you doing?”

Eames jumps, and the egg carton in his hands almost falls to the kitchen floor. “Bloody hell, Cobb, honestly,” he exclaims, exasperated.

“No, answer me first,” Cobb replies, hands on his hips. He has that serious expression on his face that Eames can wipe away with a kiss or a thorough fuck over the kitchen counter but he does neither. He’s wearing his good shirt after all, and he’s due for a meeting in five—

--he glances quickly at his Breitling—

--three minutes.

“I’m making breakfast,” he answers Cobb, his tone patiently slow. And to make a point of it all, he turns to the stove and proceeds to crack an egg open.

Then another.

It takes three cracked eggs before Cobb nears him. He’s warm against Eames’ back even though they’re not really touching.

Cobb’s wearing little else but his boxers and a thin tank top. Eames pointedly ignores this fact by cracking yet another egg on the stainless pan.

“I told you not to make breakfast.”

“I’m hungry. I’m going to cook,” Eames says, in that same slowness that grates a little on Cobb’s nerves but, as much as he’d like to admit otherwise, makes him smile a little. Just a little. “Now what’s the problem here?”

Cobb shrugs, reaching around Eames to take the spatula from him. He nudges Eames aside with his hip and Eames, who’s trying to avoid getting burnt scraps of food spills he should have cleaned eons ago, steps aside to lean against the marble-top counter.

“What’s the use of setting an alarm if you’re not even going to wake up?”

Cobb ignores that, in favor of salting the eggs with perfect precision.

Perfect. Precision.

Eames nudges his bare shin with the tip of his brogue. “Hey.”

Cobb flips the egg. Still with perfect precision. He only allows a grunt.

Eames snorts, smirking a little.

Cobb glances up at him.

Okay, Eames is smirking a lot, fixing the cuffs at his sleeves and shifting the watch around his wrist. His ears are tinged slightly pink from the hot shower he’d taken earlier that morning but he looks well-rested, his eyes bright, and his clothes neat. It’s a nice look, Cobb thinks, and he wonders yet again why Eames doesn’t look as well put-together as he does now when he wears jeans.

He even smells strongly of aftershave, despite the pungent aroma of slowly cooking eggs emanating from the pan.

(Slowly burning eggs, but who cares, he has a midterm in three hours. He’s not mentally prepared for this.)

“You’re going to be late,” Cobb points out.

Eames agrees, making a thoughtful noise through pursed lips. He’s checking his watch, frowning at it like it’s the cause of his delay. “I’m also hungry. So hop to it, Mary Poppins, pip pip.”

Cobb snorts, flicking a pinch of salt in Eames’ direction.

Eames chuckles, dusting off his shirt with a sweep of his hand. “Well you did offer last night, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t offer,” Cobb corrects him. “It’s routine.”

Eames raises his eyebrows. “Routine, really. My Raiden kicked your arse last night. This is my prize. I daresay this is well-earned service you’re giving me here.”

Cobb frowns. Eames’ Raiden did not ‘kick his arse’. Cobb’s Johnny Cage just wasn’t feeling up to ‘finishing him’, okay.

“Well,” Eames pushes himself from the counter and strides over to the fridge. He rummages inside for a bottle of orange juice that Cobb had forgotten to—

“You finished all my Drysdale.”

Cobb refuses to look at him, instead busying himself with picking a random plate a little too eagerly from the dishwasher.

“Cobb.”

Cobb hums, pursing his lips with half-hearted innocence, before plating the eggs in a rush.

“Cobb,” Eames presses on, putting the offending (and very empty) Drysdale bottle on the counter right by Cobb’s elbow. “Why do you always surprise me like this, honestly. It’s going to give me a bloody heart attack.”

Cobb clicks his tongue, handing Eames the plate and switching off the stove. “Eat your eggs.”

Eames narrows his eyes at him before picking at a piece of egg and popping it in his mouth. Oil waxes his lips with a faint shine.

Cobb stares at it, then catches himself a moment too late.

Eames is smirking as he swallows his mouthful.

“You’re going to be late.”

Eames nods. “Yeah.”

Cobb shrugs. “Your loss.”

Eames hums, then pulls at Cobb’s arm until they’re pressed up against each other, chest to chest, Cobb’s hip digging into the knobs on the stove. He can feel the heat rising off the gradually cooling pan.

Then they’re kissing because the thing with Eames, and the thing with Cobb, that is so convenient for the two of them is that there is no pretense and that when they want something they get it.

And Eames gets it, with his tongue against the roof of Cobb’s mouth.

Cobb gets it too, digs in deep, with his fingers edging the waistband of Eames’ trousers.

They moan into each other’s lips and Cobb tastes eggs at the tip of his tongue, then the contrasting taste of something minty.

Something rings.

Eames pulls away with a put-upon sigh, fishing out his mobile from his back pocket. He checks the LCD screen with a frown, shifting a little in Cobb’s arms and pretending very much to be professional despite the fact that Cobb’s lips are just by his ear, mouthing the patch of skin by his jaw.

“It’s Turner,” he mutters, his thumb hovering over the ACCEPT CALL button. The shrill of the monotonic Nokia ringtone shrills, bouncing off the tiles, hurting both their ears until Cobb pulls away completely.

“Answer it already,” Cobb mutters, taking the plate of eggs from Eames. He proceeds to eat with his hands.

Eames tries not to grimace as he picks up the call and puts the phone to his ears.

Cobb tries not listen in on the conversation, especially when Eames has wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room, right by the wide windows that look out to the rest of London.

What he hears is a jumble of nonsense in an accent so deep that Cobb strains to untangle it from Eames’ deep voice, deepened even further by the hush-hush way that Eames deals with things that aren’t completely legal.

Okay, aren’t legal at all.

The call ends a few minutes later and by then Cobb has already finished most of the eggs. He’s feeling thirsty, but the Drysdale bottle is empty and the fridge is too far away.

And besides, Eames is back in the kitchen, right there, and Cobb feels the sharp fold his trousers brush the fine hairs at his legs.

“So?” Cobb prompts him, setting aside the plate and swallowing the last bits of egg down his throat.

Eames smiles. “I got the deal.”

“Maze¹?”

Eames shrugs. “Elwes ².”

Cobb hums. “Yeah, that’d be a bitch.”

Eames agrees with a grimace. “You’d better stock up on coffee,” he tells Cobb, then he’s pulling away so fast that Cobb barely has time to register what he’d just said.

“Hey,” Cobb exclaims in protest, but Eames is already halfway to the front door, swiping the keys from the bureau at the hallway as he goes. “It’s your turn to do the groceries!”

“Yeah, well—“ Eames proceeds to explain, and Cobb waits very patiently, but then the front door clicks shut.

Cobb curses under his breath, but he’s smiling as he finishes the rest of the eggs, and the rest of the Drysdale juice he’d kept at the very back of the fridge, behind the large jar of Nutella that Eames dared not to touch.

Taste of justice, served purposelessly since Eames is not there to see his precious Drysdale dwindle to nothing.

***

Cobb and Eames both like this set-up. There’s no relationship to speak of because they went right from being roommates to occupying each other’s beds for most of the evening before sleeping in their respective rooms before dawn.

They don’t tell each other where they’re going for the sake of informing the other person because things come up during their conversations.

Because they have conversations and they like that they do because they don’t do it out of the obligation to break the silence.

Because they’re hardly ever silent.

Usually, they play Mortal Kombat on Eames’ Nintendo. Eames uses the handicap excuse, Oh I’ve just started getting into this you bloody cheat. Sometimes, Eames paints, working on a forgery with his brow knight a little too tightly, and Cobb distracts him by munching on his Cheetos a little too loudly around some long-winded tale about his professors.

***

But as these things go, they can’t keep on keeping on without hitting a few walls every now and then because Eames has boundaries and Cobb has boundaries and sometimes, when two people get too comfortable, they forget that boundaries even exist.

***

“I told you—"

“You didn’t tell me anything!” Cobb is laughing, very heartily, with his head thrown back. The kind of hearty laugh that echoes in the living room and blots out the sound of the Nintendo, where Cobb’s Raiden is on some level closer to greatness. On a normal day, when Eames isn’t annoyed, he’d laugh it off as well and take over the controls.

But Eames is very annoyed.

“That was a very important call,” Eames informs him, trying very hard to control his voice. Eames is a mostly patient man, whose coffer very deep, whose threshold can occupy a stampede. He likes Cobb, he really does, and when he likes people, he makes the extra effort.

Cobb, sometimes, is dense.

“Cobb.”

“Eames,” Cobb fires back, his laugh tapering off to a foolish smile. He’s still not looking at Eames, concentrating very much on finishing off Kane with Raiden’s thunderbolt killing move.

“Cobb, honestly.” He doesn’t sound amused. In fact, he sounds like he’s much closer to losing it.

Cobb picks up on this, but a little too late, when Eames had stomped off to his room and slammed the door behind him.

With a long-suffering sigh, Cobb pauses the game and picks himself up off the rug on the floor. He knocks on Eames’ door, surprised that Eames had actually closed it.

(Eames almost never does, claiming that he hasn’t got things that people would want to steal. Unless they can pilfer heavy paint canvases without waking him up.

And he’s a very light sleeper, Cobb knows this first hand.)

He turns the knob to find it locked.

Cobb frowns, then knocks on the door. “Eames?”

Eames doesn’t answer. Cobb presses his ear to the door, trying to pick up a sound, or any sign of life.

Nothing.

He sighs and goes back to his game. They don’t talk the rest of the evening, and he doesn’t see Eames the morning after.

***

What they do by way of apology is kiss and make-up.

Literally.

Cobb corners Eames the following evening, bearing nothing else but a whole crate of Eames’ beloved Drysdale orange juice and a hesitant smile on his face.

Eames raises his eyebrows, trying very hard not to look pleased at Cobb’s peace offering. “What’s this?”

“Your fucking juice, that’s what it is. I thought the label’s big enough for you to read it properly.”

Eames rolls his eyes. “I’m not the one who’s in denial about his imperfect vision.”

Cobb does not have imperfect vision, he’s told this to Eames many many times. But Eames has seen him squint at the screen more and more often since Cobb had developed the habit of playing the Nintendo without turning on the room lights.

Also developed the habit of pouring through his Lit class readings (which are hundreds and hundreds of pages of Proust’s purple prose) in bed, with only a dim lamp light to help him out.

Eames appreciates that Cobb doesn’t want to wake him but seriously, Cobb, he says at some point, give your eyes a break, would you?

(But Cobb is a stubborn bugger, as they both know all too well.)

As Cobb is reminding Eames right now, his smile pulling upwards to a cheeky grin.

Eames relents, with a sigh that disguises the pull of a returning smile.

“Okay, I’m sorry already.”

“Take me seriously every once in a while, would you?” Eames tells him, and his tone is serious enough that Cobb sobers a little bit, shrugging apologetically.

“I do take you seriously.”

Eames waits.

“Sometimes.”

There it is. Eames nods. They don’t talk about these things that much because roommates understand things that don’t need to be spoken out loud; like who needs to wash the dishes, or who answers the phone, or who pays the delivery guy.

What they do afterwards doesn’t need to be talked about either.

The box of Drysdale sits on the floor at the foot of Eames’ bed, forgotten for now.

Eames is panting into Cobb’s ears as Cobb drapes himself all over the hard body beneath him and they rock to some rhythm that they both fight their way into some form of compromise. Eames comes with a ragged groan, and Cobb bites into Eames’ shoulder to stifle his.

“So,” Cobb pants out, his breath warm on Eames’ cheek. He pushes himself up with an elbow right by Eames’ head, a tired grin plastered on his face.

Eames wipes it off with a thorough kiss. He doesn’t like to be outmatched.

It’s a battle wills even as they wait for their nerves to calm, and their highs to anchor back into reality. The mattress is soft, as is the duvet that wraps around both their legs, and a cold draft wraps around Cobb’s spine and stays there, despite the heat of Eames’ fingers that run down his sides.

In the end, it’s Cobb who relents. He was at fault in the first place. He’ll give Eames this, at least, even though the Drysdale, he thought, had been an ample enough apology.

He lets his lips drift open, and allows Eames’ tongue to kiss him to submission. His lips throb, numbing, and he moans, half in surrender, half in sated pleasure.

Eames relents, finally, when he’s sure that Cobb’s pliant in his arms. When he pulls away, Cobb smiles tiredly down at him. “Have you exacted your revenge, Mr Eames?”

“Yeah,” Eames breathes out, a hand coming up to card through Cobb’s closely cropped hair. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Cobb rolls his eyes, then pushes off of Eames, landing on the space next to him with a tired sigh.

Eames glances at the clock by his bed. “Three hours,” he appraises, impressed. “Not bad.”

Cobb blinks in the darkness. “Three hours?”

Eames smiles, burrowing deeper against the mattress until the duvet comes up to mid-thigh. Cobb’s arm presses against his side.

“That’s damn good, actually,” Cobb concludes, after mulling that over, and the several times and the several hours spent they’ve done doing this, whatever it is.

Eames hums in agreement. He’s slowly nodding off, his tired limbs sated, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead.

Cobb’s head lolls sideways on the pillow, to find Eames drowsy, as expected. “And this is when you sleep on me.”

Eames makes a noise, that sounds like he agrees, or it must’ve been a trick of his breathing, when he’s finally succumbed to the leaden weight of tiredness and satiation.

Cobb smiles slightly, watching Eames turn a little on his side, pressing his cheek against the pillow. He waits for a moment, then when he’s sure that Eames’ breathing had evened out, he pushes himself off the bed.

“It’s alright,” Eames murmurs sleepily. “I won’t ask for a cuddle.”

Eames never asks for a cuddle and Cobb has never slept in Eames’ bed after they have sex to know if Eames cuddles in his sleep.

But then the proposition slowly sinks in and Cobb blinks in surprise. But he does lean back a bit, sinking a bit lower under the covers, and before he even tries to be polite about declining, he abandons the idea altogether. Eames’ bed is comfortable, and he’s comfortable around Eames. This makes sense.

He sighs as he lays himself down. The silence lulls him, and so do the even breaths that warm Cobb’s bare shoulder.

Yeah. Makes sense.

***

But just like walls that they hit, they catch on pockets along pavements that they thought were smooth and even.

***

“There’s this girl in my class,” Cobb brings up over breakfast. Eames doesn’t have class Fridays and Cobb has stopped asking if he even attends class anymore. He’s gone for hours at a time on any other day, even Sundays, so Cobb assumes—or at least tries to—that Eames is doing something productive, or something more relevant than forging art for a living.

Eames grunts. He has a book in his hands, his elbows on the table top. They’re seated at the breakfast nook because they’re both too lazy to plate the breakfast they’ve cooked and Eames doesn’t like eating in the formal dining room anyway.

“Eames.”

“I’m listening,” Eames says, turning a page.

“There’s a girl,” Cobb says again, to make sure that Eames hears him.

“In your class, yes, you’ve said that already,” Eames continues, throwing Cobb a look over the top of his book.

(Badlands by a Robert someone³. Eames had told him about at some point but Cobb can’t be assed to remember exactly.)

“Well she’s really pretty,” Cobb shrugs, then scoops a spoonful of corned beef into his mouth to avoid saying anything else.

Eames waits for him with an expectant look. He’s even closed his book a little; how thoughtful. “A girl?”

Cobb raises an eyebrow, leveling Eames’ gaze with challenge. “Yeah.”

“A girl is underaged, Cobb. I don’t know how it is with you Americans but that’s illegal here,” Eames smirks.

“Dick,” Cobb snorts. “You know what I mean.”

“A lady, then.”

Cobb relents. “Fine, a lady.”

“See, you have to wrap your head around the fact that there are words that are appropriate and words that are—"

“Eames,” Cobb cuts off the lecture. He gets it already.

Eames shrugs, then goes back to his reading. “So what’s the problem?”

“She speaks French.”

Eames makes a thoughtful noise, aside from the slight twitch of his lip, he seems indifferent about that little fact. Then Cobb reminds himself that he’s in London and the English aren’t as surprised by these things as Cobb is.

“Well,” Cobb amends, “She’s actually French.”

Eames sighs, pointedly turning a page. “That’s really good to know, Cobb.”

“Well?” Cobb nudges Eames’ foot with his under the table. “Aren’t you going to help me out?”

“Do you need a translator?”

Cobb purses his lips. “She speaks English too.”

“Of course she does. She’s studying here, isn’t she?”

“Eames,” Cobb grinds out. Someone needs to steer this conversation accordingly.

Eames isn’t smirking, but Cobb doesn’t need that to know that Eames is amused. “Fine,” Eames closes the book, inserting the table napkin in between pages. Eames does this all the time, inserts whatever object is small enough—sometimes a pen, sometimes the TV’s remote control, sometimes the Nintendo controller—in between pages when Cobb interrupts his reading, fully intending on resuming where he left off the moment Cobb has gotten what he wanted from him.

“I like her a lot,” Cobb says without thinking because he really does. She’s funny, she’s pretty, and she’s smart.

Eames is quiet for a while, looking thoughtful, and Cobb realizes his mistake.

They don’t have a relationship, not really, but they’ve had sex several times. More times than Cobb could count, and he’s slept in Eames’ bed and Eames has slept in his, and they’re sharing a roof over their heads. They even cook breakfast together, damn it. They’re practically married.

But then Cobb isn’t sure if he really did commit a mistake because how can it be called thus when there’s no gauge of what’s right and wrong in whatever’s between the two of them?

He chooses to stay quiet, gauging the unchanging expression of thoughtfulness on Eames’ face, waiting for a clue as to how to proceed.

But Eames does it for him. “What’s her name?”

“Mal.”

“That’s a curious name,” Eames says, mildly surprised. “Mal is evil in French.”

Of course Eames would know this. “It’s short for Mallorie.”

“I see.”

Cobb waits for a moment before nudging him again. “So?”

“So what?” Eames does this sometimes, waits for Cobb to say what he needs to. Sometimes he also says it for Cobb. Cobb isn’t sure which one he prefers because he never really knows if he should be insulted or relieved that Eames waits. Or that Eames butts in.

“Would you help me out a little?” Cobb elaborates a little weakly, hiding behind another scoopful of corned beef.

Eames knows surrender when he sees it. “I should just stick a Babelfish in your ear and be done with it.”

Cobb frowns in confusion.

Eames waves it off with a hand. “Just talk to her like it’s perfectly normal that you’re talking to a woman for a change. You’ll be fine.”

Cobb gapes a little, insulted. “Hey, I talk to women.”

Eames smirks. “But you’re sleeping with a man.”

Cobb gives him that.

Eames takes it with a triumphant smile. But he does take pity on Cobb eventually, after picking up his book, removing the table napkin, and finishing a page. “Don’t worry about it.”

***

But Cobb worries about it a lot. He worries about it over the next few days, worries about it so much that Eames even beat him with a flimsy Raiden killing move that Cobb could’ve easily blocked with quick random buttons punched on the controller.

Eames lets it slide, eyeing him amusedly over breakfast when Cobb fumbles for the phone at the first ring.

When Cobb drifts off when he’s trying to sit through a hundred or so pages for a paper he needs to write.

When Cobb forgets to put the Drysdale in the fridge, where the Drysdale always should be.

On the second week, Eames finally takes pity on the bastard.

“Sit down.”

Cobb does, looking a little confused as he sits at the kitchen nook. It’s half-past brainless in the middle of the night but neither of them has gotten any sleep.

Eames, at least, has ample excuse for that. He’s just arrived from school—or so he tells Cobb—with his shirtsleeves wrinkled at the back from several hours driving around.

(So no, he hadn’t come from school.)

He pushes up the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows before fishing out a couple bottles of McEwans from the fridge, kicking the fridge door closed as he turns back to Cobb.

“She’s pregnant?” Baptism by fire, that’s always enough to snap Cobb out of it, whatever ‘it’ is.

Cobb startles a little, then shakes his head. “What?”

“This Mal, did you get her pregnant?” Eames knows that’s not it, because then Cobb wouldn’t look so damn eager to answer the phone. Or so damn excited leave for class, with his shirt wrinkled and his hair a mess. Despite the tired lines on his face, he’s jittery with pent-up energy that Eames has had to chase after him sometimes to give him his phone.

“No,” Cobb exclaims, looking scandalized by the thought. “We haven’t even gone out yet.”

Eames nods, opening both bottles with a nifty twist of his car key over the caps. He pockets his key ring and hands a bottle to Cobb. “What’s got you in such dire melancholy then? You look like you’ve swallowed a wasp most of the time.”

Cobb snorts, but even he is inclined to believe Eames. (He’s seen himself in the mirror. It’s not very pretty, what meets him on the other end.) He takes a swig of beer, letting the cool liquid calm his throat a little.

Eames allows him a moment, turning his back to get a glass from the dishwasher.

“I really like her, Eames.”

Eames nods, tilting his glass and pouring his beer as he nears the breakfast nook. He sets both bottle and glass on the table. As per usual, allowing the beer to warm a little before he drinks it.

“Really like her.”

Eames grunts as he settles on a stool. “We’ve already covered that.”

Cobb shrugs. “I think I’m trying to let the fact sink in a little bit.”

Eames blinks. Cobb’s never one for introspection. He knows things, sure, but on a shallow enough level that he doesn’t let his problems bother him until they’ve blown up in his face from too much repression.

Like the final exam that shall never be mentioned ever again.
Eames allows him a moment, under the pretense of checking the temperature of his beer, closing his hand around it contemplatively. Tapping his fingers against the glass, peering into it, tasting a bit.

When he’s sure that Cobb has settled his nerves, he tries again. “Have you asked her out?”

Cobb looks a little too hopeful at that. “Do you think I have a chance?”

Eames thinks it over. “How attractive is she?”

“Very.”

Eames hums under his breath. “How smart is she?”

“She’s Miles’ daughter.”

Eames brushes that off. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Genes, Eames.”

Eames shrugs. He doesn’t believe much in that excuse and Cobb knows why, he really does, but he forgets sometimes.

(He forgets all the fucking time.)

“Alright she sounds like someone who wouldn’t go for a man like you so stop now before you get your heart broken into tiny little pieces,” Eames says in a lungful of breath, out in a mechanical rush that Cobb is winded by it.

“Wow.”

Eames smiles, then finally takes a sip of his beer. It’s a little too cool for his tastes but Cobb likes his beer cold. It’s much easier to warm something up than otherwise. “Was that what you wanted to hear?”

Cobb isn’t sure. What did he want?

(He wants several things: for Mal to say yes when does ask her out for a movie, maybe, or a walk in the park, or anything, really. He also wants to not feel awkward about talking to Eames about these things.

It’s been weeks since they’ve had sex and Eames never asks and Cobb, well, he just forgot about it, really.

As hard of a feat that must have been to pull off but he pulled it off anyway. He really just forgot.)

He wonders idly if Eames is sleeping with someone else, to keep him in this good of a mood when Cobb is shrinking slowly in on himself because of someone who is not Eames.

Then he wonders what Eames thinks about all of this, but then he checks Eames’ face for any sign of discomfort, or anything that looks off, anything at all, but Eames looks as patient and as unconcerned by things as he usually is that it’s really difficult to tell.

“Well?” Eames prompts him.

Cobb shakes his head, sighing as he rests his chin on his hands. “I like her.”

Eames nods, as if that confirms something that he’s been thinking all along. “There we are, then. Problem solved.”

Cobb frowns, taking another gulp of beer, his jaw working against the pressure of his palm pressing against his chin.

Eames sets his glass down with a dull thud. The beer almost spills over at the impact. “You do or you do not. Cobb, honestly, why do you make things so difficult?”

Eames is right, but then he isn’t. No, he is. Cobb grunts in frustration, opting to finish off the rest of his beer instead of facing Eames head on.

But Eames persists, because when he knows he’s right he likes to convince Cobb to see how he sees it too. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. Cobb, at the moment, is feeling particularly vulnerable, and he hates Eames a little bit for knowing better than he does when it’s him on the line, God damn it, not Eames.

“You’re going to call her, Cobb,” Eames calls after him when Cobb had thrown his beer bottle in the trash and headed to his room, leaving Eames behind in the kitchen. “Because it’s going to keep you awake all night.”

***

Eames is a fucker not because he’s right but because he is a fucker.

Cobb believes this so hard, even as he punches in Mal’s number the morning after.

***

He gets the much coveted yes, a real, fucking, yes some few days later. It’s on a Friday and they have a date the day after and Cobb practically bounds the five flights of stairs up their apartment building in excitement.

He’s panting by the time he manages to unlock the front door and deposit his keys, some random paperclips, and a pen or two that he’d forgotten to return to his classmates after class.

(Two classmates, two classes. Keeps forgetting to bring his own pen, keeps forgetting that he’s already borrowed a pen. Keeps forgetting to give them back.

Because Mal said yes that morning and that’s the worst possible way to start off the day when he’d sworn to himself that he’d study a bit harder this term.

It’s really fucking distracting.)

But he’s happy, and he’s fighting off a very stupid grin from invading half of his face when he dumps his bag in his room and barges into Eames’.

But he’s not there.

Cobb falters a bit, his enthusiasm dampened a little, his momentum lost.

He shrugs, then wanders off to play Nintendo, to weather out the flutter of nerves from his fingers until Eames gets back.

***

But he doesn’t see Eames until after he returns from his date with Mal. He’s dog tired. They walked and walked and walked along West End, just talking, really, until several hours had passed without either of them noticing.

He closes the door with a smile.

“The bloody hell are you grinning about?” Eames greets him. He’s lying horizontally on the couch, an arm folded under his head, the remote control resting on his belly. He’s peering at Cobb over his crossed feet planted on the arm rest.

“Mal’s great,” Cobb tells Eames as he nudges Eames’ feet with a slap of the back of his hand. Eames shifts until Cobb could weasel himself down on the space he’s given, then promptly rests his legs on Cobb’s lap.

“I already knew that,” Eames smirks at him, but his eyes are trained on the TV, on some show about lemurs that, apparently, Eames likes.

“Well, you’re right again, aren’t you,” Cobb smiles fondly, and he barely notices Eames glance at him from the corner of his eye.

He’s not smiling at Eames, he’s not smiling at anyone in particular. But his fingers do linger around Eames’ ankle, through the cloth of his trousers, where he feels the jut of bone against his knuckles.

Eames nudges his hand with a jerk of his toes. “My left foot’s already married to my right. Don’t look so lovingly at it.”

Cobb snorts, slouching against the couch and letting his arms rest across Eames’ stretched-out legs. “So what have you been up to?”

Eames grunts. “What?”

Cobb shrugs. “Where’ve you been?”

“Around,” Eames answers noncommittally, his eyes unwavering from the TV screen.

Cobb flicks his big toe and Eames fidgets a little, frowning in annoyance. “Come on.”

“Around, Cobb, honestly, what more do you want?” Eames snaps.

Cobb grins. He likes to tease Eames sometimes but Eames doesn’t smile back. His grin wavers, then altogether drops when the silence stretches out between them.

Well, he can be in a good enough mood for the both of them for now.

***

Things with Mal progress from tentative touches on each other’s hands to comfortable whispers in each other’s ears, to looks of indifference from her father that slowly, gradually, over the course of the weeks that follow, turn into something like reluctant approval.

Cobb tells Mal about things he doesn’t tell Eames, and when they sit in her apartment (that she shares with other women, all of whom smirk when they open the door for him) watching late night television they eat popcorn. Cobb even forgets about his Mortal Kombat high score until he almost trips on the game console poking out from underneath the coffee table. At first he thinks that Eames must’ve played, then he opens the last saved file and realizes that Eames hadn’t touched the game at all.

Cobb frowns, then stows away the console (under the coffee table, of course, he’s already running a bit late) and barely five minutes later, he’s out of the apartment.

He sleeps with Mal that night and he doesn’t leave her flat until two days later, on Monday morning.

“Eames?” he calls out, closing the door behind him. He’s wearing new clothes, when he and Mal decided to buy something from the thrift store around the corner rather than have Cobb take the tube in the middle of the night just because he forgot to bring an overnight bag.

It’s quiet in the apartment. It feels like nothing’s moved at all since he left on Friday evening. But then again, he hasn’t seen Eames in a while. Not properly, at least. There were brief greetings in the morning, when Eames slipped in after spending the whole night elsewhere, looking like he’d gotten more than eight hours of sleep and a hearty breakfast to boot while Cobb looks like shit.

“Eames?” he tries again. He checks Eames’ room first, but finds the bed made and the paint canvases propped up against the wall like they usually are. Cobb frowns, then runs a hand through his hair. It’s still wet from the quick shower he’d had at Mal’s apartment (it took longer than his usual five minutes but, details, a shower is a shower).

He checks the kitchen next. The dishes are clean and when he looks inside the fridge, he finds that the new Drysdale as well as the new carton of eggs he’d bought last Wednesday had yet to be touched.

His frown deepens and he checks his phone for any messages. None. His inbox is full of texts from Mal. He scrolls through the messages, trying to the find the last one that Eames had sent him, as he wanders out of the kitchen and into the living room.

MESSAGE RECEIVED: 21-11-1998 21:40
Eggs drysdale laundry turkey peas

That had been two weeks ago, when Cobb had forgotten to do his chores again.

Cobb blinks, surprised that it’s been two weeks since that last message, and days since he’d last seen another soul in their apartment.

Since he’d last seen Eames.

Huh.

He sinks into the couch with a tired sigh, tossing his dodgy Nokia next to him.

It takes a while for him to realize that he actually misses the bastard.

Times like these, when he comes home fully realizing that he’s alone, and that he’s tired, and usually, at this time of the morning—

--he checks the clock—

--half-past six—

--Eames is already in the kitchen, fixing his cuff links or brewing his coffee or leafing through the paper, with the dim noise of the BBC Morning News buzzing in the background.

He sighs through his nose, but it’s not enough to dispel the silence that crowds his ears.

Cobb sighs again, this time a bit louder, and when that doesn’t satisfy him, he lowers himself on the floor, toes off his shoes, and reaches for the Nintendo underneath the coffee table.

He finds a note, a post-it tacked on one of the controllers.

Well, finally.

He snatches it up and reads Eames’ hasty scrawl.

OFF TO SEE MUM. FATHER PASSED AWAY. BE BACK NEXT WEEK.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Cobb’s eyes widen and the note falls to the floor in his mad scramble to get his phone from the couch. He dials Eames’ number.

The number cannot be reached, the operator buzzes in his ear.

He tries again, several times.

And several times more until it’s half-past ten and his battery has run low.

Why hadn’t Eames told him? Why hadn’t he called? Thoughts crowd his head as he paces the living room, wearing the rug thin, and he doesn’t even notice that the plants have dried up, or that his hunger is burning low in his belly.

Fuck.

He finally gives up when his battery dies, and he tosses his phone back on the couch, where it thumps and falls on the hardwood floor with a resounding clack of plastic.

Cobb sinks on the couch, carding his hands roughly through his hair, and doesn’t know whether to curse himself or to curse Eames, but the guilt is there and it gnaws at him, painfully, only to subside when the helplessness settles in and drags him even deeper and lower on the couch, as if shrinking in on himself against the silence that resounds much more ominously now could somehow shield him from the fact that he’s a bit of an asshole.

Okay. Much of an asshole.

***

Eames comes back the next day and it takes very little for Cobb to not do anything stupid when Eames steps through the door.

He looks tired, with his hair a bit mussed, and shadows darkening his eyes, but his clothes are pressed neatly and his stride is as confident as it usually is.

It takes a while for Cobb to say something.

And it takes Eames a while longer to realize that Cobb is there, with the pan in his hand, a spatula in the other, and that the entire flat smells of cooked meat.

“Hey.”

Eames visibly jumps in surprise, his keys falling from his hand and landing miles from the bureau. He whips around to find Cobb wiping his hand on the kitchen rag. “Oh, hey.”

Cobb grimaces. How do people do these things? Should he offer his condolences?

Eames smiles slightly, and it pains Cobb that it’s little more than a half-hearted twist of his lips. There’s a deep set to Eames’ eyes that darkens them, that weighs down his brow and lines his forehead with deep grooves that Cobb doesn’t remember to be so pronounced.

“I read your note,” Cobb says hesitantly.

Eames nods, and passes Cobb on the way to the kitchen. He dumps his overnight bag right by the kitchen nook, nudging aside a stool as he does.

“Are you hungry?” Cobb follows after him, tossing the rag next to the sink as he leans against a counter top, across the kitchen from Eames, where he stands there, unsure of what to say, exactly, or what to do, or what Eames needs.

“It’s alright,” Eames mutters, opening the pantry door beside the fridge to take out the Samuel Adams he keeps there.

(It’s expensive shit, the Samuel Adams⁴, and they’d only opened two bottles once before, and it had been to celebrate Cobb’s survival of his first full year in London.

Cobb had even forgotten that Eames still has six more until Eames is twisting the cap off one with a jerk of his arms and a tight purse of his lips.)

Cobb gets a glass from the dishwasher, but stops halfway when Eames takes a swig from the bottle itself.

Eames never drinks from the bottle.

“Eames?”

Eames grunts. “Want some?”

Cobb opens his mouth, his tongue is dry and leaden, and he doesn’t know what to say, so he closes it with a click of his teeth.

“’salright. I’ll buy us some more,” Eames says with a tight smile.

Cobb frowns, but he takes the bottle from Eames and takes a swig himself. The copper finish on the bottle leaves an odd tang on his lips and he grimaces as he forces the bitter down his throat.

Strong shit, the twisted expression on Cobb’s face seems to say.

Eames agrees with a solemn nod of his head. He stands next to Cobb, and leans back as well. Both their feet stretch out in front of them. Cob in his slippers, and Eames in his brogues, dulled now by what looks like dust. Or crusted earth that had just been brushed off with dry cloth.

“You okay?” Cobb finally asks, working his throat.

Eames seems to think about this for a while, taking his time as he takes another gulp and lets the warmth pool low in his belly. He’s not looking at Cobb, and Cobb desperately wants him to. Because there are times when he doesn’t know what Eames is thinking. Usually, he’s fine with that, but he’s not used to this Eames, who prefers to swallow down the usual stream of words that needs little else by way of provocation.

“Eames?” Cobb nudges him with his elbow.

Eames licks his lips. “Good riddance, I say.”

Cobb frowns. Eames doesn’t mean that, does he? But Eames doesn’t smile, nor had his words sounded ironic. He’s dead serious, with a set to his jaw that forbids little else by way of argument.

Cobb doesn’t even try.

They finish all of six bottles in the kitchen, propping themselves up on the counter, with the pan of fried porkchops between them, tearing off the meat with their own fingers.

They’re quiet for a while, but as the bottles pile up on the floor, Eames loosens up and Cobb waits until he does.

“I’ll take you to the family estate,” and he says this with irony-laced flourish, “one of these days.”

Cobb raises an eyebrow, swaying a little where he sits.

Eames is leaning back, against the tiled wall, his head tilted up to the ceiling.

Cobb follows the strict line of his throat, from the swell of his Adam’s apple when it bobs as Eames’ swallows, to the dip right between his collar bones where his shirt parts just so.

“We’ve got a lake, and my room has a view of the damn thing. You’ll like it there, I think.”

“Will I?”

Eames nods sluggishly, and his head thuds against the wall, cracking loudly. Cobb winces at the sound, but he doubts that Eames even notices. “I’ve got a horse. Well, I had one. He died when I was young but my father breeds horses. A lot of ponies frolicking about. We’ll train one, and I’ll teach you how to ride.”

Cobb smiles. He doesn’t tell Eames that he’s ridden a horse once before, even mounted it properly.

“And we’ll ride off into the sunset, you and I.”

Cobb snorts up a laugh, wiping his moist lips with the back of his hand. He looks down at the bottle in his hands, swirling the remaining beer.

They’re quiet for a while longer, Cobb with his thoughts of horses and sunsets and vast greenery. Eames with thoughts of Cobb, his head turned to the side.

“Cobb.”

Cobb looks up to find Eames staring at him, with eyes so bright with something he can’t quite place. “Yeah?”

Eames swallows, and Cobb sees his throat work around it, his skin stretching then relaxing, then just like that, he gets it.

“Would you—"

“Yeah,” Cobb nods, and he doesn’t even have to think about it anymore.

Because then Eames’ fingers are in his hair, gripping the back of his head, and their tongues clash, and so do their teeth, and all that Cobb tastes is bitter, expensive beer as they kiss.

Cobb takes him there and Eames lets him, with Eames’ shirt halfway open, and Cobb’s bunching at the front. Eames’ pants fall down to his thighs as he levers himself on the edge of the counter, Cobb standing right between his legs.

It’s hard and quick and fast, Cobb’s hands gaining purchase on the tiled wall behind Eames’ back. Strong arms wrap around his neck, teeth biting, lips mouth, at the tender skin of his neck.

He smells aftershave, beer, and stale cigarettes as he buries his nose in Eames’ shirt; the sharp edges of Eames’ watch dig into his shoulder, tearing small holes through his thin shirt.

Eames comes with a long, drawn-out moan, and Cobb feels the twist of his brow when he does, his teeth latching onto his skin and Cobb barely feels the pain through the quickly tipping orgasm that breaks through the haze of near-drunkenness.

Eames clenches around him, even as his arms fall slack on Cobb’s shoulders. Cobb grips Eames’ legs by the back of his knees and comes with a groan ripped from the very depths of him.

For a moment, they both see nothing, their eyes clenched shut as they pant, breathless, against each other’s skin.

Cobb feels Eames’ lips move, pushing air that tickles the fine hairs at his nape. He doesn’t hear the words, not really, but then Eames’ hand lingers at the back of his neck, and a kiss is pressed lightly on the skin behind his ear.

Cobb only sighs and leans in, a hand coming up to pull Eames’ head against his.

They don’t hug, not really, but Eames’ arms are loose around his middle, and Cobb’s other hand is firm on Eames’ lower back, and they stay there for a while, riding out the breathlessness that makes their heads spin.

***

“About last night—” Eames says, and it’s he who brings it up first, with eyes that dart to and fro in an unusual show of self-consciousness that Cobb almost wants to rub in his face.

But Eames looks severely hung over, with his hair sticking up all over the place. Cobb is, too, and he’s cradling his head in his palm as they set together at the breakfast nook with both of their eggs and ham untouched on their plates.

Cobb doesn’t even remember cooking it, but apparently he did without burning the skin off his hands.

(Eames poured the juice. Juice, all over the place.)

“What about last night?” Cobb mutters into his palm.

Eames shrugs, drawing out a breath that shudders his parted lips as he pokes at the food on his plate.

“I don’t remember a fucking thing,” Cobb says with a smile.

Eames frowns at first, confused. They’d both been drunk, but not too drunk to not—

Oh.

Oh.

Eames laughs, and remembers the time, more than a year ago, when they had a very similar exchange with slightly different circumstances, and that had been the start of something good that feels like a very long time ago now, after Mal, and after the death of Eames’ father.

Cobb grins at him and it’s a weight off both their shoulders when Eames answers with a grin of his own.

This was where they began.

“So how’s Mal?” Eames asks.

“She’s good. Stayed there over the weekend,” Cobb shrugs, then flinches when the movement jostles his head. “You should meet her.”

Eames nods, thinking it through in his head. “I’d love to meet the Frenchwoman who’d stolen you from my arms.”

Cobb snorts, shaking his head.

***

This is where they end.

***

“Cobb,” Eames calls out to him when Cobb rushes past in a hurry to make the six o’clock reservation at a downtown restaurant. Eames pauses the game and pushes himself up to his feet.

“Yeah,” Cobb answers distractedly, fixing himself up at the mirror near the front door.

Eames turns him around, fixing his starched collar for him. Brushes the neat press of his fine cotton snug around his shoulders.

Cobb raises an eyebrow. “How do I look, mother?”

Eames throws him a look, but his hands linger at Cobb’s waist. He stares at Cobb, with a leveled gaze that’s both hopeful and humored. “One more for the road?”

Cobb smiles. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Eames answers back.

They share a kiss, languid and slow and thorough, and it feels like both the first and the last time.

“Now go on,” Eames nudges him towards the front door with a crisp slap on his ass. “Tell Mal I need to borrow that Doisneau⁵ book she was telling me about.”

Cobb waves a hand, “Will do,” before closing the door behind him.

When Cobb comes back, he grins a grin so stupid and so wide that Eames skirts around his struck-dumb Raiden with a finishing move he’d been practicing the whole evening while Cobb was away.

Then they share a bowl of Cheetos and they go to their separate beds and years down the line, Eames runs off to exotic parts of the world, and Cobb marries Mal, and they all live like that for a while.

When Cobb thinks about calling Eames, he remembers the thousands of miles and the many years between them and Eames, he tries not to think about Cobb at all. Because after Philippa, and James, and Eames’ exile to Mombasa, and Arthur, then Nash, and the entrance and exit of so many people in their lives, they forget sometimes.

Then they forget entirely.

END

¹ Paul Maze, turn of the century French-British painter.
² Luke Elwes, British contemporary painter.
³ Badlands by Robert Minhinnick, Welsh author.
⁴ Samuel Adams' Utopias. Lemme just copy-paste: "This comes second in the list of the world’s most expensive beer which costs around $100 per bottle (24 oz) or about $67 per pint, sold in copper bottles resembling the copper brewing kettles which are used by brewers for hundreds of years. The alcohol content is 25%, making it the strongest beer in the world (listed in the Guinness Book of Records). The process of making this beverage can take up to 12 years, giving it the unique and rich flavors. It is said that the production was limited to 8,000 bottles per year."
⁵ Robert Doisneau, French photographer.

[INCEPTION] Fic: You are not allowed to follow me (Arthur/Eames)

bronson — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 07:45:55 GMT

You are not allowed to follow me
Arthur/Eames
For the inception_kink prompt: During the taxi cab shoot-out scene, it's Eames that gets shot, not Saito.
this was originally posted on the meme but i've worked out the tenses, proofread it, and made it all shiny and stuff. AND I GAVE IT A TITLE ALREADY. rock yeah. \m/ just posting this on here for safe-keeping. :)

The sound of gunfire clears the air.

“Eames, you alright?” Arthur shouts from the driver’s seat.

He’s met with silence.

“Eames?” Arthur asks again.

“Fucking hell,” Eames finally replies, gasping out a pained breath, “Fucking hell.”

Arthur turns around then, and the obnoxious honking of horns and the projections and the rain spattering against the cracked wind shield are all forgotten.

Blood spatters Eames’ torso, a hand stained red grasps at his chest.

“How bad?” Arthur asks, worriedly, tearing his gaze away to concentrate on his driving.

“In and out,” Eames answers, his voice bitten off the edges with a wheeze of air that, Arthur is certain, didn’t come from Eames’ nose. Or his lips. It’s labored, and pained, and everything that a suppressed whistle sounds like. “I hate getting shot.”

Arthur stares at him, intently.

“Still alive, Arthur,” Eames reassures him. That would have to do, Arthur thinks, but the half-hearted smile that stutters on Eames’ lips doesn’t reassure him at all.

From the passenger’s seat, Saito reloads his gun. “You better get us to the warehouse quickly.”

Arthur grunts. He doesn’t need to be told twice when the urgency is all but screaming in his ears.

He glances at the rearview mirror, at the pinched look of pain on Eames face, and the way his chest shuddered when he gasped in much-needed breath.

(He doesn't even notice that Fischer’s bagged head still rests on Eames’ lap. He only has eyes for Eames, and the steady trickle of blood that seeps from between his fingers.)

“Eames?”

Eames shakes his head and sinks further in the backseat, his arm falling on Robert’s back. The hand on his chest doesn’t falter; it tightens even more.

“Go,” Saito urges.

And Arthur goes, flooring the gas. If he bumps a few cars on the way, and his eyes are not a hundred percent focused on the road, Saito doesn’t comment on it. He just buckles himself in and braces his arm against the door.

*****

At the warehouse, Saito slides the door open. Eames keeps his arm on Fischer’s back but his hand is limp and his gun has fallen to the floor.

“Get Fischer, go, go, go,” Cobb shouts from outside.

Yusuf and Saito wrench the door open and pull Fischer out quickly from where he slumps against Eames.

Arthur, however, all but scrambles from his seat and onto the back, jarring Eames’ knees.

“You holding up?”

Eames chokes up a laugh. Where from, Arthur can only wonder. He gently pulls back Eames’ hand from his chest and he winces, actually winces, his countenance stuttered for a moment by the grotesque splatter of blood that darkens Eames’ grey suit jacket and soaks the shirt underneath.

Arthur makes a sound somewhere deep in his throat as his own hand presses against the wound, Eames’ hand falling limply to his lap. “That’s the last time you try to impress me with your crap shooting, Eames.”

When Eames doesn’t have a ready retort, Arthur glances up at his face. He’s not worried, of course he’s not. This is just a dream, after all, and when Eames dies—and he will die, Arthur’s pretty damn sure of that, confirmed even more so by Eames’ labored breathing and the fact that just under his palm, against his skin, is the rattle of breath as Eames inhaled-exhaled-inhaled-exhaled, gasping in air that rushes out through the bullet hole as quickly as Eames draws them in.

Nicked lung. Arthur clicks his tongue, and taps Eames on the cheek. “You still with me here?”

Eames smiles, dazedly, “Never left.” But I’m going to, the unspoken reply, is all that Arthur hears in his head.

Before Arthur can do anything else, the passenger side door wrenches open. The stern line of Cobb’s face greets him and he knows he’s in trouble. Not because he had gotten Eames shot—Eames has died in dreams before, and a lot of those times Cobb had been more amused than annoyed—but because Arthur’s supposed to be prepared for these things and he chose now to screw up.

“The hell happened back there, Arthur?” Cobb demands, sounding angrier than Arthur has heard him in a long time.

Cobb grabs Eames by the shoulders, and Yusuf is there to take him by the torso. They lay him down on the floor while Arthur is left inside the car, the smell of freshly spilled blood assaulting his nose, crawling up his skin.

He refuses to look at the large patch of blood on the backrest, and how it seeps into the corners of the upholstery like a crudely painted waterfall.

Eames bites back a moan when Yusuf tears open his shirt. Buttons fly to the floor but no one takes notice.

“—not ready for this kind of violence!” Cobb all but shouts, and the accusation is as good as both of Cobb’s fingers pointing at Arthur.

Arthur knows this, he does. He has no excuses to worm his way out of blame this time, not when Eames has his eyes screwed shut and the fucking whistling of his lungs at every drawn-in breath is loud enough to snap Arthur back to awareness.

He can’t take this. He fumbles almost blindly for Eames’ gun on the floor and pulls himself out of the car. With a practiced jerk of his hand, the crisp click of screws and bullets and springs lock in place, snapping the silence in the air.

Arthur aims for Eames’ head but before he can pull the trigger, Cobb rushes at him and grabs his arm, pressing him up against the cab.

The impact jars Arthur’s remaining hold on his composure and he pushes back, taking aim a second time.

“Don’t,” Cobb snaps at him, and the vice-like grip on Arthur’s arm sobers his frayed nerves.

“He’s dying, Cobb. I’m taking him out,” Arthur snaps right back, his eyes flashing dangerously at Cobb.

Tension tightened in his arm but Cobb’s fingers, just as stubborn, tighten even more around Arthur’s wrist.

“You can’t. If you kill him in this dream, he’ll go straight to limbo.”

Arthur blinks. He didn’t expect that, and neither did Eames.

“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” Eames forces out between lips now stained even redder with flecks of blood.

Cobb sighs, his now shaking hand releasing his grip on Arthur’s arm as he steps back and away. Farther away, where he can breathe.

“You die in a dream, you wake up, Cobb,” Arthur says flatly at Cobb’s back. When Cobb doesn’t reply, Arthur turns to Yusuf. “That is how it goes, right?”

Yusuf’s hand on Eames’ chest falters, slightly, and Eames grunts at the added weight on his chest.

“Not exactly—"

“Not in this dream. We’re too heavily sedated,” Cobb interrupts, averting his eyes from Arthur’s incredulous gaze.

“That is just fantastic,” Eames snorts, then coughs almost immediately after.

When the coughing doesn’t stop, Yusuf pulls him up by the shoulders and shifts him gently—or as gently as Yusuf could manage, as Eames hacks and shudders, blood splattering all over his lap and the floor—against the cab.

“You knew this,” Arthur accuses him, the gun now lowering to his side, pointed away from Eames. Away from anyone, now that the information has sunk in. “And you didn’t tell anyone.”

Cobb shakes his head. It’s not denial. If anything, it confirms the gravity of their situation much more than a nod possibly can.

Arthur’s chest tightens at the realization. Eames dies, he goes to limbo, and even though Arthur knows it was the projection who had shot Eames, that it was Fischer’s subconscious who summoned the heavy security, that it was Cobb who roped them all into this, Arthur can’t shake the feeling that if--when--Eames falls into limbo, it’s his fault.

This time, he can’t do a fucking thing about it.

*****

Somehow, among Yusuf, Saito, and Cobb, they prop Eames up on a chair in front of the mirror. His shirt is unbuttoned, and his ruined grey jacket in a heap somewhere that Arthur can’t see from where he sits behind Eames’ hunched back.

Over Eames’ shoulder, Arthur sees Browning looking back at him but Arthur doesn’t take in the fine details of an old face, or the white head of hair. All he sees is the back of Eames’ head and how his head droops slightly forward, his shoulders rising sporadically in a futile attempt to regain his breathing.

In another room, Yusuf and cob plays bad cop-bad cop, masks over their heads.

“I know Browning,” a whistle of air, a wheeze of breath, “Is a damn fine specimen of male, Arthur, but—"

“Shut up, Eames,” Arthur admonishes, and he means it this time. Not because Eames is being his usual annoying self but because Eames is dying, for fuck’s sake, and he’s not allowed to yet.

Eames struggles to cough up a bark of laughter and fails just before he begins. What remains is a shaky smile on Browning’s face. “—but stare at him for too long and I’ll get insanely jealous.”

Arthur doesn’t say that it’s not Browning he’s staring at. That he’s not staring, not really. He’s checking, every fucking second he possibly can, and he probably won’t let Eames out of his sight until he’s sure, one hundred percent sure, that Eames is awake in his first-class seat in Saito’s newly bought airline and that he’ll walk out of that fucking plane with his mind intact and his tongue sharp like it should be. Like it always should be.

Eames in limbo, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture in Arthur’s head. But Arthur doesn’t tell Eames this either.

Just as Eames braces himself on the dresser, spitting blood and God knows what else on the floor, Cobb comes in from the door. His mask is pulled up to his forehead and from where Arthur sits, he spies something like a photograph in his hand.

He allows Eames a moment to catch his breath before handing the photograph to him. “Saw this in Fischer’s wallet.”

From the reflection of Browning in the mirror, Eames peers closely at the picture in his hands as if having trouble seeing it when it’s already right up in his nose.

“Useful,” Eames agrees.

“Ready?” Cobb asks him, and Arthur pushes himself upright. The gun is still in his hand, he realizes then. He’s still tempted, so very tempted, to put Eames out of his misery and his finger itched against the trigger. But a look from Cobb cuts this thought short.

Eames nods. More like let his head fall and heavily pulls it back up, then lets it fall again.

“Let’s give him a good show, shall we?” He replies in between short coughs and even shorter gasps of air.

*****

As it turns out, Eames’ injury had worked to their advantage. Fischer has apparently never seen his godfather in such dire straits, let alone heard him breathing through a hole in his chest. He spills out secrets, angst, and all the tragedy of his unsatisfying childhood in under an hour and soon enough, Eames and Cobb are discussing the next level of inception at the back of the van.

Eames bites off a curse under his breath as Yusuf does a sharp turn, making Eames jar his shoulder against the side of the van.

Arthur turns to look at him.

Eames looks back with a quickly fading lucidity in his eyes. The smile on his face stretches languidly across his lips.

“Eames.”

Eames’ head rolls, slowly, against the backrest of his chair as he turns to Cobb, the smile falling from his face. He raises an eyebrow, in that same slow, languid pace that agitates Arthur. Because Eames is lazy, Eames is casual, Eames takes his own time sometimes so annoyingly that Arthur fidgets. But he's not slow, not like that.

“Next level, you’re sure Fischer’s projection of Browning will hold?” Cobb asks as he pulls out the IV lines from the PASIV and proceeds to hook himself up before passing the rest to Arthur.

“Course I’m sure,” Eames replies sluggishly, as sluggishly as the blood has blotted a jagged map on his (Browning's) pinstriped shirt.

(There’s no other way around it but to hope that the projection does take, because Arthur’s sure Eames won’t last under the strain of forgery all over again.)

Arthur glances at Eames as he sticks his own IV line on the inside of his wrist.

Even with his eyes closed, Eames feels Arthur’s eyes on him. He meets his gaze under the heavy droop of his eyelids and Arthur wonders how Eames can muster up the strength to fucking smirk when his chest doesn’t even look like it could still shoulder through another lungful of air.

Arthur can practically hear all of the possible jokes and taunts playing through Eames’ brain. Something about Arthur’s eyes on him, something about staring at his face, something about being not being in control and how Eames has always known that Arthur has a heart underneath all the Armani.

“Be a darling and help me out with this, would you?” Eames says instead, weakly raising the IV line in between loose fingers.

Arthur hooks him up, and pretends that the slight shake of his hand as he touched the dried blood on Eames’ wrist is due to the fact that Yusuf is an awful driver and his projection of New York’s streets has way too many potholes and inch-deep puddles.

*****

At the hotel, Arthur helps Eames lower himself on the armchair next to the bed.

He doesn’t tell Eames to go to sleep once Arthur had inserted the IV line, because he doesn’t want Eames to go under again. He wants him to stay there, on that level, where Arthur’s confident Eames could weather out the next few minutes by his side.

Eames doesn’t tell Arthur to be back before the kick. The edge in his eyes speaks of enough urgency and enough want for all this to end that Eames knows Arthur will never forgive himself if he screws up a second time.

Just as Eames goes under, he can almost feel Arthur’s hands as they cup his face and when he closes his eyes, he can almost chalk it up to his vivid imagination that Arthur, maybe, presses their lips together in a chaste kiss that chases him to the winter cold of his subconscious.

*****

It’s Ariadne who dreams up the third and final level; she and Cobb fight off the projections as Saito waits with a sniper rifle atop one of the high-security hospital’s many towers.

Eames accompanies Fischer into the ward, gun in one hand, grenade in the other.

He dies as Fischer opens the vault and his stumble into limbo is to the chorus of Fischer’s sobs and Maurice’s death.

*****

When Arthur breaks through the surface of the lake, his first thought is of Eames’ still body underwater. How the blood rose in curled wisps above his chest, surrounding his head in a grotesque halo of red.

Ariadne gasps for air beside him and they crawl up the banks of the river together. Some few feet away are Yusuf and Saito, both of them holding back Fischer as he shouts for Browning’s name, over and over.

“They’re going to make it, Arthur, don’t worry,” Ariadne says, her tone vaguely reassuring but Arthur gleans nothing from it but the optimism that goes hand in hand with inexperience.

Ariadne doesn’t know anything about limbo and how it captures the soul and never lets go until the mind weathers out the years of human existence and all that’s left is a wisp of an old and ancient spirit longing for release. All of it in a span of mere hours, when the body remains young but the mind tires and tires and tires until all it wants is nothing else but a quick end.

When Arthur dives back into the water, his two-minute breathhold just enough to get him back down to the van at the bottom of the lake, he ignores Ariadne’s cries.

Inside the van are Cobb and Eames, both still very much lost in their own versions of hell, and without hesitation, Arthur grabs an IV line and joins them.

*****

Arthur opens his eyes and all he sees is the murk of the surf. He sputters, sitting up in the crashing waves of the shores of limbo. Buildings crumble above his head but the debris doesn’t hit him like he expects them to.

Nothing goes as one expects them in limbo.

First, he finds Cobb. The beard on his face has grown thick. He stands on the roof of Mal’s childhood home and even though the brick on the building is a fiery red, an insistent flow of stark grayscale seems to crawl slowly up the walls.

“Cobb!” Arthur calls out to him from the sidewalk. “Where’s Eames?”

Cobb shakes his head and looks at Arthur as if through an opaque glass. “How long has it been?”

Arthur doesn’t know.

Cobb grimaced, passing a hand over his face. “I can’t find him.”

“Go back, Cobb,” Arthur tells him, his jaw tightening as his resolve hardens even further. He’s going to find Eames. If anyone’s going to find him, it’s going to be the one who brought him here in the first place. “I’ll take care of it.”

And just like that, Cobb nods. Without hesitation, he falls back, back, off the rooftop and back to wakefulness.

It takes Arthur days before he could track any semblance of Eames’ subconscious in the sudden vastness of nothing once Cobb had woken up.

The buildings are gone and in their place, Arthur fills the void with white. White sand that stretches over to the horizon. A white sky overcast with clouds that promised no rain and no wind. He’s a long way away from the beach now. He can’t even hear the soft lap of the ocean against soft sand.

His feet are dry as he trudges on, due north, and behind him is a trail of footprints that leads off to as much nothing as the nothing that meets him as he travels ever forward.

The first thing he stumbles on is a patch of grass that peeks from mounds of sand. He bends down to touch it. Lush, green grass that doesn’t look like the kind of grass that flourished in tropical countries.

He looks up. He’s met with a stretch of grassland that spanned over hills and hills of even more lush greenery. He breaths in and smells the earthy tang of dew and rain-dampened soil.

When he sees a young boy and a herd of sheep pass over a swell of earth, he knows he’s on the right track.

He walks for what feels like days, and soon enough he finds himself on a cobblestone road at the heart of downtown London. The street is empty, except for a cul de sac lined with blue double-decker buses.
Yorkshire, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool are painted on their sides in white block letters.

Farther on, deeper into the city, he finds red double-decker buses.

Paris, Mombasa, Las Vegas, New York.

Until finally, a private jet in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace, the same white block letters on the buses written on its side. Atlantic City.

He climbs the opened hatch-ladder that led inside.

The interior is as garish and expensive as he remembers it, all those years ago, or has it been just last spring? When Arthur himself has boarded this plane, with Eames in his blue suit just behind him. He glances over his shoulder; he’s alone.

He finds Eames in the cockpit.

He’s thin. His face has grown older, lined with years--decades--spent in an empty England, spent riding empty buses leading to empty cities that may or may not be special to him. He stares blankly at the windshield that separates him from the rest of his endless dreamscape. His stubble has grown thicker and the line of his shoulders, that had always been strong and stern, is bowed under the weight of too much empty thought projected on a blank canvass that stretches to eternity.

“Where are you headed?” Arthur asks him as he sits down on the co-pilot’s chair.

“New Jersey,” Eames answers him in a tone so bland and a voice so rough with disuse.

(Arthur wonders how long it’s been since Eames has talked to someone. He hadn’t bumped into a projection the entire time he’d prowled the empty streets.)

“What’s in New Jersey?”

Eames shrugs, but a fond smile plays at his lips. He reaches into his jacket—a blue one, Arthur realizes, the very same blue suit jacket Eames had worn on that trip to Atlantic City—and takes out a folded piece of paper.

Arthur takes it. It’s grown soft, the familiar handwriting of the short note has faded until Arthur could barely make out the words he still vividly remembers penning himself.

“Do you think he’s still waiting for me?” Eames asks. “He’s not the most patient man in the world, you see. He’s always got somewhere else to go, other people to see. Another job waiting somewhere.”

517, Trump Marina, Sunday. Don’t be late, Arthur reads, but he already knows this note by heart. He remembers writing so many notes, all of them much longer and much more eloquent than this one. All of them had wound up in the trash bin until the only sheet of paper Arthur had left was a receipt for a three-hundred fifty-dollar suit he’d bought a couple of days earlier.

Arthur turns the paper over. Gieves & Hawkes, Atlantic City, New Jersey, written in elegant serif at the heading.

“He did,” Arthur finally says, once the silence has pressed on far too heavily on him. He looks at Eames and wills for Eames to look right back at him, with piercing gray eyes that seem to dive deep into his soul in the infuriating way that Eames has always read other people. “I waited for you. You were three days late but I was still there.”

Eames frowns, then, as if only just remembering that detail. Then he laughs, threw his head back and laughed. “He gave me hell for it, you know. Him and his bloody schedule.” Then his laughed tapers off, leaving behind a wistful look so full of open affection and longing that Arthur has never seen on the youthful face he remembers on Eames.

Arthur turns in his seat. He takes Eames’ face in his hands and looks into eyes so very old and so very tired that Arthur shudders out a breath at the realization that Eames has been in this plane, this plane heading to nowhere to Atlantic City to the young Arthur that he remembers.

“Merry chase, Eames?” Arthur teases lightly with a smile that doesn’t quite dispel the edge in his eyes. “You gave me one hell of one, you know.”

Looking into Eames’ eyes he sees the cloud of too many empty days, months, years, wither at the seams until the brightness of recognition flashes. Brightly. And Eames smiles, his same cocky smile that softens somewhat as he finally finally remembers that this man’s voice is Arthur’s. That this is Arthur.

Arthur smiles back at him and when he does, Eames presses their lips together in a kiss that is nowhere near the novel passion of that weekend in Atlantic City. The kiss is chaste, almost tentative, but the insistent thrum of longing is full of nothing else but the very same affectionate patience Eames has always reserved just for him.

“Arthur,” Eames breathes out, as if the very taste of Arthur’s name on his lips is enough to awaken him. “Missed you, you know that?”

Arthur laughs, quietly, and the touch of his breath against Eames’ lips is real enough.

Eames kisses his cheek. “What do you say we resume this up there, eh?” He whispers into Arthur’s ear.

*****

Arthur opens his eyes at the blinding light of the sun streaming in from the open airplane window. He blinks back the sleep from his eyes. Exhaustion leadens his mind but it doesn’t stop him from shooting upright in his seat.

He’s met first with Fischer’s confused face, then Cobb’s nod of greeting. The PASIV is nowhere to be found.

And Eames—

--Eames is smiling, and Arthur thinks that Eames’ smugness has never been a source of such profound relief.

“Morning, Arthur,” Eames greets from where he sits, his feet crossed at the ankles atop the LCD screen of the in-flight first-class entertainment system. “Slept well, I hope?”

Arthur rolls his eyes at him and pretends that the grin on his face is not amused, but annoyed. That the deep sigh he expels through his nose is not respite, and not satisfaction, and not a lingering sense of what he had lost there in limbo, but what he had found. Again. After months of forgetting and years of finding.

“That, I believe, is a yes,” Eames whispers into his ear as strong arms—not thin, not old, not aged, not tired—wrapped around his chest from behind. “Now what do you say we go ahead and continue what we started in there?”

END

INCEPTION SELF-REC POST. WARNING: THIS IS A MASTURBATORY EXERCISE.

bronson — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:28:16 GMT

The banner pretty much says it all. This post is:
1. WHERE YOU REC YOUR OWN FICS.
2. WHERE YOU REC YOUR OWN FICS.
3. WHERE THERE IS NO SHAME IN RECCING YOUR OWN FICS.

Rec what you think is your best work, or several of your best works, or all of your works, really, and rec them here.

Here's a handy-dandy html code you can copy-paste for the format:

Please link all of your fics in just the one comment. Cause my inbox does not want to be ~~raped~~ thoroughly debauched. D: Woe. Put the pairings in the subject line.

CAPICHE? :D

ALSO, AND I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH: ALL PAIRINGS WELCOME.
Rarepairs aren't just welcome, they are needed. Like burning.

ETA: FAN ART SELF-RECS WELCOME TOO! SORRY ABOUT THAT. :)

bronson — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 01:26:57 GMT

ALSO, SLOW REACTION I KNOW

BUT

TO WHOMEVER BOUGHT ME PAID TIME

I

I CAN'T.

I.

:( thank you so much tho. i. yes.

[INCEPTION] Fic: End Game (Arthur/Eames, Arthur/Other) PG-13

bronson — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 01:20:15 GMT

End Game
Arthur/Eames
For the inception_kink prompt: Arthur finds out that Eames has been telling other people in the dreamsharing community that he and Arthur are an item. Arthur thinks it's to protect Arthur, which makes him see red, but really Eames just wants people to keep their hands off Arthur. Because even if he doesn't know it yet, Arthur belongs to Eames.
ty walkingxorgasm for betaing this. lol fermine, not for you. and going to post this on the meme too.

“You told Cobb that we were sleeping together.”

Eames looks up from the folder in his hands. He thinks about it for a moment. “When did he say this?”

Arthur grunts. “He didn’t—"

Eames raises an eyebrow, and tosses the folder on the glass table. He leans back in his chair, both arms braced on the arm rests, and Arthur can almost consider that as some form of defensive stance if not for the stupid smirk on his face.

“I assumed.”

Both eyebrows, halfway up Eames’ forehead, “That’s very presumptuous of you.”

It frustrates him how Eames turns the tables on Arthur all the time but he’s not backing down now. His dignity is on the line. “You weren’t there.”

Eames hums. “Pity, that.”

“Eames.”

Eames finally relents with a casual shrug of his shoulders. His shirt stretches across his chest and if Arthur tilts his head just right he can almost see skin through the gap between the buttons. But he’s not going to. He sets his jaw, but Eames doesn’t do anything else beyond shift in his seat a little, chair’s wheels creaking as they inch a bit farther away from the table and, if Arthur hadn’t been too focused on regulating his breathing, a bit farther away from him too.

“Well?” Arthur digs his hands on his waist, squeezing the tough leather of his belt. He’s this close to—

“Well what?” Eames shrugs again.

Arthur sighs. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re too frustrated with—"

“You.”

“—life,” Eames presses on, without missing a beat.

Arthur blinks. “I like life.”

Eames smirks knowingly and Arthur dislikes that expression because it means Eames actually knows something, as opposed to simply looking like he does.

Arthur heaves a sigh of surrender. “Cut it out, Eames. I’m trying to be professional here.”

“Just trying to help, Arthur,” Eames mutters in reply.

Arthur looks back at him, a little confused by that because there’s nothing about slander that is the slightest bit helpful, but Eames already has the folder back in his hands and the stern line of concentration at his brow tells Arthur that he won’t be going anywhere with this.

***

But Arthur doesn’t give up that easily, especially when he’s reminded of the damage Eames had caused.

***

Over—

***

“So, you and Eames,” the middle-aged man across from him asks with too much amusement on his face than Arthur’s comfortable with.

***

And over—

***

“He’s great in bed,” says another, a busty brunette whose eyes are too keen and whose lips are too teasing.

***

And over—

***

“Eames—"

Arthur snaps. “Nothing going on there, Harrison.”

The man, Harrison, an elusive thirty-something and already-balding man whose business starts and ends with the paycheck and a job not-so-well-done snaps his mouth closed.

Arthur tries to steer them back to the job at hand.

“—He’s not so bad,” Harrison mutters later on over files of faceless people and important things that Arthur barely even remembers shortly after when Harrison continues, in a much lower mutter but Arthur picks it up all the same: “But I’m better.”

***

On it goes, really.

***

Arthur has his hand on the doorknob.

“Arthur.”

He turns his head. “Yeah?”

Cobb is checking his phone, frowning. “Eames changed his number again.”

Arthur grunts, his hand on the doorknob tightens.

“Would you mind...?” Cobb trails on. It’s not so much as a request as an insinuation.

“For the last time,” Arthur grits out, and Cobb can almost hear the grind of his molars from all the way across the room. “We’re not sleeping together, Cobb.”

Cobb holds up his hands, but he doesn’t look worried at all. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Calm down.”

That doesn’t calm Arthur down at all. “I am calm.”

Cobb holds up his hands even higher. “Okay, Arthur.” Then, a bit more slowly and a lot more cautious. “Okay.”

Arthur exhales heavily through his nose, a rush of air that leaves him winded, and slams the door behind him on his way out.

***

He pounds on Eames’ door some few days later.

(It takes three plane rides from Europe to Asia then back to Europe to hunt him down but Arthur’s nothing if not determined.)

Eames doesn’t answer right away. In fact, Arthur waits for more than fifteen minutes before he finally snaps and fishes out the lockpicks in his jacket pocket.

(He came prepared.)

It doesn’t take him thirty seconds. He pushes the door open like he owns the place and finds the apartment empty.
Bastard.

But Eames does leave a note.

(How thoughtful, Arthur thinks, with a roll of his eyes.)

Not here. Lock the door on your way out.

Arthur crumples the paper—a post-it, with several numbers written on the back (or the front, he can’t really tell)—in his fist and tosses it on the couch. The bright yellow crumpled ball of a thing clashes with the beige upholstery but Arthur’s feeling vindictive and he leaves it there with a hollow air of triumph that, he tells himself, is not petty at all.

(Neither is leaving Eames’ door halfway open behind him when he walks out)

***

Arthur knows he doesn’t need help because he doesn’t have a problem.

It takes a while for him to admit differently.

***

“Are you and Eames—" Harrison tries again, the next time they meet.

(This job needs to end already, is Arthur’s first thought, when Harrison waves over the waiter for the drinks list. Which shouldn’t be that interesting, being in a wine bar in downtown New York and all. But Harrison does it anyway and he peruses the fucking thing like it’s an account on quantum physics.)

Arthur doesn’t roll his eyes, but it takes great effort not to. “No, Harrison. For the last time—"

Harrison grins. “Great. Chardonnay?”

Arthur blinks, surprised. “What?”

Harrison falters a bit but he looks as apprehensive as someone who had already shrugged off his coat, put it in the coat closet, introduced himself to the family, and brought along wine, turkey, and the rest of Christmas dinner with him.

Which, as far as Arthur’s experience with awkward uninvited guests go, means that they’re not going anywhere.

“Do you drink wine?”

Of course Arthur drinks wine. Harrison orders a bottle.

It takes Arthur a while to catch on.

Judging by the half-finished plate of something beef-that-tastes-like-chicken when he does, a while really is a while.

“Is this a date?” Arthur finally asks when everything clicked into place.

(The final piece being Harrison’s foot nudging too comfortably against his under the table.)

Harrison’s smile says yes.

So much yes.

It takes all of Arthur’s pride not to let the fork in his hand clatter on the plate. But it does waver a little, and that drop in his center of gravity awakens him the rest of the way to finally realizing what the hell is going on.

***

Harrison likes him, is the conclusion he ends up with and Harrison is a nice guy, a very nice guy, who’s a little too sloppy with his work but not so bad and—

Arthur pats some rhythm on his lip with a pencil.

He shakes his head.

No, he doesn’t like Harrison at all.

***

The same busty brunette, but eyes that are far too soft this time, and much too lenient.

“Beatrice,” he greets her with a smile. They’re meeting at a coffee shop, which is a signal all on its own but Arthur thinks about the job first, hidden agendas later, because as much as he’d prefer it to be otherwise, he too needs other people in order to work.

She looks up at him, with lips so red and a blouse so revealing that even that should have prompted some sort of suspicion.

But Arthur is also a gentleman and when Beatrice kisses his cheek instead of shakes his hand, like she usually does, he’s only slightly taken aback.

Then they don’t talk about the job at all.

“I have a dog. She’s an old Terrier but I love her,” she turns her eyes up at him under very long eyelashes. “Do you like pets?”

Arthur shakes his head, sipping on his tea. “Not much.”

She doesn’t even falter. She has plans, plan Bs for every plan A graphed in her too-quick head. “Don’t you feel lonely sometimes?”

This makes Arthur pause. What does that have to do with anything?

Beatrice recovers smoothly, fingers straying to the fork at her elbow—

--and people don’t need forks when they’re drinking coffee, obviously.

Her nails are long, and her fingers are slender, and they linger on the fork with too much tenderness than any fork deserves.

Not even spoons get that much attention.

“Come on, Arthur, you must need company every now and then?”

Arthur chokes on his sense of time and place. It’s a very big thing to swallow because Arthur is the most sensible guy that Arthur knows.

Beatrice sighs, then fishes out a pen from her purse and scribbles on a square of tissue paper. She hands it to Arthur, her touch lingering much too comfortably against Arthur’s palm.

“If you need anything,” Beatrice says by way of goodbye. “Anything at all.”

No, Arthur amends, that is not the goodbye.

The soft kiss on his cheek, just a mistake away from actual contact of their lips, is the goodbye.

***

I must be really popular, is what Arthur gets from this.

Arthur smiles to himself, nodding. That must be it.

***

No, that most definitely is not it.

***

The man with the very old face on a relatively not-as-old-but-still-really-quite-advanced in age body sits beside him on a park bench.

This is covert, the man—Jackson—says. Confidential, you know the drill.

And Arthur ‘s a bit wary, which should have tipped him off already, what with his instincts being the only other thing he trusts more than his brain. But Jackson has connections to the military so he goes with the benefit of the doubt—

--the little shit that it is—

--and went, all of the files pressed neatly in his brown bag.

Arthur starts taking out the folders, one by one. “So this is the initial report that I’ve--"

Jackson waves him off, looking a little too serenely at the vast and sparsely populated park in front of them.

Arthur hesitates. “I really need to—"

Jackson presses a finger to his lips. Arthur wants to say something that could hasten this eccentric bullshit along because he doesn’t have the time or the good humor to put up with it right now. But Jackson’s closed his eyes, leaned back against the hard metal back of the bench, and looked like he was soaking in the energies of the world.

“Jackson.”

Jackson hums. “Don’t you just love the weather?”

Arthur frowns. “We really must be—"

Jackson turns to look at him, with narrowed eyes that are far too amused and far too teasing. “You’re so serious. Business all the time.”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “Well that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

Jackson smiles a bit wider, and it’s discomfiting Arthur enough that he snaps his brown bag closed and says the last thing he’s ever imagined himself saying:

“I’m sleeping with Eames.”

***

He says it again.

“I’m sleeping with Eames.”

Harrison sighs, nodding dejectedly, and launches back into the lecture mode that Arthur had been expecting from him all along.

(Regardless of the fact that they’re at the Ivy.

And that it’s Valentine’s Day.)

***

He says it a third time, in fact.

And he doesn’t even cringe: “I’m sleeping with Eames.”

Beatrice pouts, and when Arthur doesn’t look like he’s going to drop the other shoe—or that he’s got anything to drop, or any line to punch, really—Beatrice rolls her eyes. “Typical.”

***

“So we’re sleeping together again, are we?” Eames greets him as soon as Arthur opens the door.

He’s leaning against the door frame, looking up at him with a slow smile curling his lips.

Arthur rolls his eyes and doesn’t even try to shut the door in Eames’ face. He knows defeat.

(Although he also knows not to acknowledge it.)

“Check and mate?”

Eames nods, looking far more victorious than Arthur would like. “Hook, line—" He eases his way inside, through the very narrow gap left between the doorframe and Arthur’s body.

(It’s not that narrow but Eames presses up against Arthur anyway, his arm sweeping over the span of Arthur’s front.)

“—and sinker,” Eames finishes with a flourish.

Arthur closes the door behind him. “So? What do you win?”

Eames blinks innocently. “Win?”

“Isn’t this a game?” It always is and Arthur’s a good enough sport (most of the time) to humor Eames. “I lost, you won. What do you win?”

Eames smiles, but he ducks his head that Arthur almost doesn’t see it. “Well—"

When Eames wins, or almost half the time, when Arthur wins, they never really acknowledge it because it’s not professional, playing games while on the job. But Arthur yields when he’s been outwitted, and Eames quiets when he’s been debunked and Arthur’s submission and Eames’ silence, they’re both rewards enough, in and of themselves.

But this is the first time Arthur’s lost because of his own damn fault and he’s enough of a gentleman to acknowledge a clever ruse when he sees it.

Or, in this case, when he doesn’t.

(Eames amazes him sometimes. He doesn’t say this, of course, because Eames already has far too much pride, but there it is.)

“—Everyone knows we’re already sleeping together.”

That, Arthur blinks, he did not expect. “What the hell, Eames?”

Eames smiles again, but it falters before it even gets there. “You heard me.”

Arthur shakes his head, more at himself than at the situation, really, trying to get back his bearings.

But apparently Eames considers this differently, and he nods his head. “I’m s—"

Arthur holds up a hand. “No, you’re not.”

Eames smiles. He really isn’t.

“I don’t owe you for cockblo—"

“Say that again,” Eames interrupts.

Arthur frowns.

Eames is looking far too intently at him. “Go on.”

“Cock—"

Eames makes a thoughtful sound.

Arthur wants to throw up his hands, but he’s too frozen in place by Eames’ eyes looking far too piercingly at him for his brain to even make this happen. “Are you really that easy?”

Eames nods, clicking his tongue. “Fending off the devil, Harrison, and Jackson is not at all easy,” he chuckles. “Believe me.”

Arthur does. He really does. After all, he did have to whip out the big guns to fend them off himself. He works his jaw around that, and the fact that Eames is here, and not just anywhere in the vicinity but here, within just several feet, and he’s looking at Arthur a little too intently that it’s stifling.

Eames claps his hand. The silence echoes, but bounces right back when Arthur doesn’t move.

“So,” Eames tries again, but the silence remains. Not even a creak of Arthur’s joints tries to help him out. Nothing helps him out, and it’s beginning to show, how Eames had built up to this and probably even hoped for it, and how it’s not looking very good at the moment.

Arthur, on any given day, would like to revel in that.

Eames continues after a beat and nothing at all from Arthur. “Honestly,” Eames sighs, “It’s not that hard to process.”

Arthur speaks mechanically, simple logic taking the wheel from him. “You want to sleep with me.”

Eames nods. “Yes, very good.”

“That’s why you told them off.”

Eames smiles then. “Correct.”

Arthur releases a breath. “That’s—"

Eames shrugs, and he’s nearing Arthur, and Arthur’s not moving away, until they’re this close.

This. Close.

“Here I thought you just didn’t want Jackson’s old wrinkly—"

Eames winces.

“—cock—"

Eames looks conflicted, now, torn between liking the word rolling off Arthur’s tongue and imagining Jackson's--God.

Arthur smirks.

Eames throws him a look. “How petty of you.”

Arthur shrugs. “Yeah, well.”

“Well,” Eames prompts him, now standing much closer until Arthur can feel the heat from his chest through the thin shirt that he wore.

“Well.”

Eames has his hands inside his pockets, Arthur’s pretty sure of that, but there’s a sudden tug at his waist and Eames finger is right there, hooked around his belt loop. “The reason why I told such slanderous lies,” Eames drawls, and it’s a very disconcerting thing, Arthur finds, that Eames’ voice can curl around his spine and twist it. “Is because I like a bit of foreshadowing.”

Arthur snorts.

“I’m a considerate human being,” Eames says, with a deadpan look that Arthur presumes means he’s serious. But his eyes flash, and so do his hands, and Arthur feels a very sharp pull around his waist.

And he’s falling, right against Eames, that when Eames breathes, Arthur does too, and they know this because of the slight pressure on both their chests, and the warm air on both their cheeks.

“Because I want you,” Eames confesses, and his eyes are startlingly gray, Arthur realizes. “They do too but,” Eames shrugs. “I’ve wanted you a bit longer than they have, I think.”

“Territorial,” Arthur chokes up, around the chokehold of adrenaline that rushes down his veins at the sensation of hands down his back, at the rough catch of tweed on the minute ridges of his fingertips.

Eames smiles. “I want to kiss you.”

Arthur considers this. “No, actually, I think standing here obscenely pressed against you is—"

And Eames kisses him, and Arthur doesn’t even remember where he was going with it, or if it was even ironic, or if it was the truth, or if it was a ploy to get this.

A curl of something warm unfurls somewhere, and that’s enough for Arthur to kiss him back.

It’s all lips and teeth, and it’s not exploratory, because they’ve done too much probing, prodding, testing, and teasing throughout the years that they’ve mapped out the very shores of each other’s character well enough to know that this kiss is meant to claim that which they’ve discovered and, in Eames’ case, that which they’ve protected.

Eames claims with a sweep of his tongue against Arthur’s and they both moan, breathing, and panting against each other’s lips.

“That is much better than I expected,” Eames says when they pull away from air, both their hands are fisted in each other’s shirts, and cloth tightens across both their fronts.

“Stopping there?” Arthur taunts him.

Eames snorts. “Not likely.”

***

“Arthur—"

Arthur grunts, smoothing down his hair.

Cobb stops at the sight of him. Shirt wrinkled, eyes tired. “Hey, are you okay?”

Arthur nods. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Cobb almost looks apologetic. “That bad?”

Arthur frowns. “Is what that bad?”

“The teasing?”

Arthur frowns even harder. “What teasing?”

Cobb shrugs, “You know.” He gestures with his hand, down the crotch area of his pants.

Arthur’s eyes widen. “What the hell?”

Cobb flinches. “I thought you knew.”

Arthur slams his palm down on the glass table. Of course it doesn’t hurt, but he does grit his teeth a little bit. “That asshole.”

***

This, of course, leads to a whole other chess game where Eames explains, with great elaboration.

Great. Elaboration.

Because it’s always a game between the two of them and Arthur minds, very much, how this method leads to slander and slander leads to a grape vine well-juiced for tidbits of his sex life, but Eames apologizes accordingly.

Accordingly.

And Arthur ends up not minding at all.

END

[INCEPTION] Fic: Picking out our eyes by coal and candlelight (Arthur/Eames, Cobb/Mal) R.

bronson — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:03:48 GMT

Picking out our eyes by coal and candlelight
Arthur/Eames, Cobb/Mal
Harry Potter AU. For the inception_kink prompt: "Cobb - James, Arthur - Remus, Eames - Sirius, Yusuf - Peter, Ariadne - Lily, Saito..... Tom Riddle?? idek." Set pre-War, with Mal as Lily instead of Ariadne, and Nash as Saito instead of Yusuf. Warning: Character death. (Because, yes, Cobb is James and Mal is Lily. You know how it goes.)
For fermine cause she's a ho like that. And ty for the sort of beta, walkingxorgasm. Fuck school.

Cobb and Mal die on a Tuesday, to an explosion of brilliant green light.

Three days later, he’s inside a very familiar shack near a very familiar castle with Philippa and James tucked in a narrow bed that neither of them deserves at all.

“Do you have food with you?” Eames asks in a rush of breathlessness that ruins the eerie silence.

Arthur’s sat by the bed, resting just against it. He nods heavily and sees nothing but the dirt on the flimsy hardwood floors and the singed cuffs of his shirt.

Eames’ feet come into his line of sight, followed by knees thick with dirt and dried earth, then Eames is there, holding his face in his calloused hands.

His eyes are almost kind, but they’re tired. They all are.

They’ve been running for days.

Eames is studying him like he studies other people, with eyes that are earnest and calculating, but when he blinks, his lips soften downwards, and Arthur thinks he hasn’t seen Eames look so fucking sad in a very long time.

Arthur opens his mouth because times like these are when he’s supposed to say something to calm himself down. Because he’s the one who makes Eames smile sometimes, and because it’s too quiet that Arthur is almost afraid to look at the kids because however illogical it is to think that they’re dead, he can’t—

--then Eames’ arms wrap around him, and he stops thinking for just one second.

He’s warm, like he’s always been, and Arthur’s breath tickles his neck as he heaves low, drawn-out breaths, sucking in the scent of sweat and grime and nights too long,

too fucking long,

that Arthur falls asleep like that, with Eames’ legs pressing against his, reassured by the knowledge that he’s not running away from the world alone.

***

“Eames.”

Eames grunts, barely shifting where he’s draped all over Arthur’s couch, laying on his front. His nose is buried into his elbow, his legs every which way, and Arthur thinks maybe he should mind that it’s too early in the morning to deal with this kind of mess.

But he’s head is still floating from too much Butterbeer and muggle liquor that he finds he doesn’t much care that Eames is almost naked, with his shirt unbuttoned, riding up that Arthur can rest a hand there, right on his lower back, and it would feel warm, and smooth, and everything that he shouldn’t really think about right now when most of his sensibilities are busy battling an oncoming hangover.

“Eames,” he tries again, kicking the couch with his foot. “Get up.”

“Piss off.”

“It’s almost lunch time.” When in doubt, use food.

True enough, that gets more of a response than Eames’ colorful language. His head snaps up, and Arthur frowns in sympathy when his face pinches to a grimace at the sharp motion.

“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” Arthur sighs, nudging Eames’ shoulder (gently, because he can be vindictive, and cruel, but there are times and places for both of those things) to make room for him on the couch.

Eames indulges him, albeit begrudgingly, sitting up with a heavy sway of his torso.

Arthur sits down, gingerly lowering himself until he’s sure he’s not going to puke all over Eames. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” Eames pulls out of what sounds like the bottom of his gut, guttural and viscous with not enough sleep. “Why do you even ask these things, honestly.”

“It’s called courtesy.”

Eames snorts, leaning his head back. He flinches when the angle allows a slash of unmerciful sunlight to sluice his eyes.

“Here,” Arthur allows him, resting an arm along the back of the couch to make room for Eames.

Eames sighs a thank you, or what should be a thank you, Arthur turns over in his head, if he’s drawn up the proper translations for Eames’ body language accurately enough in the ten years that he’s known him. He rests his head on Arthur’s lap and they lay there for a little while, enjoying the utter waste of time and the fact that they don’t really care that it’s gone five, ten, fifteen minutes.

It’s quiet and it’s comfortable, and Arthur’s fingers are threading through Eames’ hair and Eames’ palm is delightfully warm on Arthur’s thigh.

“Where’s your wand?”Arthur asks idly, his hand coming to tap Eames on the cheek, then lingers there for a moment. Eames’ head turns in his palm, his breath tickles Arthur’s skin. “Eames.”

“Somewhere.”

“Did you lose it?”

“I don’t lose everything,” Eames bristles, or tries to. In truth, he doesn’t know where his wand is right at this moment but he doesn’t remember it getting lost in the party, or getting stolen by anyone so it must be safe somewhere that isn’t particularly here.

And it’s true, Eames doesn’t lose everything, but he tends to forget that he’s responsible when he’s too drunk to notice that he’s also got a problem to take care of in his pants that Arthur would be most appropriate to solve.

Because most of the time, Eames is right next to someone busty and beautiful and when he’s drunk, he also forgets that he doesn’t like women in that way.

Arthur had rescued him from some scandalized guest batting away his hands and Eames had thanked him by passing out in his living room.

Arthur forgave him for that, but it’s now time to take stock.

“Do you want to get married someday?” Eames asks him.

Fine, Arthur sighs inwardly. Take stock later. He allows a thoughtful sound through his closed lips as he thinks for a moment, his hand idly lowering even further until it’s nestled right there, underneath Eames’ shirt, his thumb running over the smooth rise of Eames’ collarbone.

“Just because Mal and Cobb got married last night doesn’t mean—"

Eames interrupts him with a sharp nudge of his shoulder against Arthur’s thigh. “I’m not getting sentimental about that.” Arthur wouldn’t exactly use the world sentimental but Eames always knows what Arthur’s about to say next, or in this case, what he wants to say in expense of Eames’ pride.

(Eames likes to ruin things when he doesn’t like them.)

“Then what the hell are you talking about?” Arthur raises an eyebrow down at him, his voice soft despite the impatience of his words.

Eames looks up at him, turning so that he’s lying straight on his back. Arthur’s hand turns as Eames does, coming to rest on the hard patch of his sternum.

“Marriage, Arthur,” he replies. “I’m talking about marriage.”

Arthur knew as much. “What about marriage?”

“You,” Eames hesitates, and Arthur’s breath catches when Eames doesn’t speak right away. “And marriage.”

Arthur exhales both relief and impatience. “This is a game, right? I’m supposed to—"

Eames grunts, and pushes himself off the couch too quickly for someone hungover. He sways on his feet for a moment before getting his bearings together and making his way to the kitchen.

(Stumbling into random pieces of furniture as he goes.)

“Are you going to propose to me?” Arthur asks, trying to sound indifferent. He’s half-way successful, but ‘propose’ is a word that doesn’t go well in his throat. It catches, and his breath is stuck with it.

Eames pokes head out the side of the fridge. “Do you want me to?”

Arthur thinks about it for a moment. Yes. And no. “No,” is what he goes with.

Eames allows a smile, and Arthur almost doesn’t see it when he ducks his head back into the fridge so quickly that he’s pretty sure Eames had bumped his head somewhere in there, from the sound of rattled bottles and the slight jerk of the whole fridge.

“But are you?”

Eames draws himself up with a carton of milk in one hand and a carton of leftovers from the wedding reception in the other. “You don’t want me to.”

Arthur presses on, standing up and nearing Eames with a sudden seriousness that even Eames sobers a little.

He drinks from the carton (God damn it, Eames, use a glass, Arthur almost wants to say) a little too thoughtfully.

Arthur looks at him expectantly, standing across the kitchen table from Eames. “Well?”

Eames shrugs. “It’s a hard time,” he starts, once he’d swallowed down his mouthful of milk. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “They were lucky nothing happened yesterday. I was afraid something would.”

So was Arthur. He’d kept his hand inside his pocket, gripping the handle of his wand, all throughout the ceremony. But he doesn’t tell Eames that because Eames tends to de-stress Arthur by distracting him completely and he didn’t want to be distracted, when Mal was beautiful in her dress and Cobb was grinning like a fool and they were both beautiful, they really were, and it was a grand time and he wasn’t going to spend it completely fucked through by Eames.

“My point is,” Eames continues. “Who knows what will happen in the next several weeks and where we’ll be after that.”

Months, Arthur wants to say. He’s done the numbers, he’s attended the planning sessions, and he’s written out all the possible outcomes of this fucking war and it’s going to take months. Even years. Not weeks.

He hopes to God, it’s not weeks.

Eames leans forward and stares at him and Arthur knows that Eames is seeing what Arthur doesn’t want him to see.

They kiss, because it’s what they do when they don’t want to talk.

Eames’ hand is cupping the back of his neck, and the table digs into their hips, but Eames is reassuring him with languid strokes of his tongue against his teeth.

Arthur sighs into his mouth and when they part, Eames smiles at him.

“I don’t want to marry you,” Arthur says again. “But I do love you.”

Eames smirks around the milk carton at his lips. He winks, “I know.”

Arthur rolls his eyes but his smile doesn’t fade just yet until an owl swoops in from the living room.

The envelope lands on the kitchen table, an unmistakable seal gluing it shut.

That’s when Arthur stops smiling and soon enough, they’re into their clothes, with their wands wedged in their sleeves, and they don’t talk about marriage or themselves for a long time afterwards.

They have a job to do.

***

They’re in The Three Broomsticks, all thirty of them cramped into the small space in the room above the main hall. This isn’t where they usually meet but it’s the middle of term and Hogwarts is teeming with students. It would be too big of a risk, Miles had said.

“Saito’s expanding towards France,” Miles explains after they’ve all ushered in and deposited their coats in the downstairs closet.

Rosmerta clicked her tongue at every drop of melted snow that blemished her floor but Eames, as Eames usually does, reassures her with a disarming smile.

(Arthur elbowed him as they climbed the stairs.

“Honestly, darling,” Eames purrs into his ear, pulling Arthur in by his hip. “I’m taking one for the team here, really. If I don’t ease my way in—"

Arthur grimaces at Eames’ word choice, to which Eames only smirks.

“—We won’t be getting any more free Butterbeer, now would we?”

Would I, Arthur amended in his head, because Eames can afford a hundred Butterbeers in one sitting if he so chooses. He’s an Eames, he comes from old money and pure blood. He can afford anything. Arthur learns early on that Eames only chooses not to because Arthur can’t.)

Cobb nods, outlining a pattern on the map lain out on the table. Behind him trails an army of painted Death Eaters, burning paper-flames on paper-buildings as they went from Etchingham to Robertsbridge until his finger stops at a yet-burnt node and stays there.

He and Eames share a look. Always one step ahead of the others, they are, and Miles is right there with them.

“Hastings,” Eames says.

Cobb nods. “End game.”

Miles elaborates for the rest of them. “He’s crossing the channel straight on to French soil.”

Arthur feels dread, a cold ball that drags down the rest of his nerves with it as it plummets ever downwards. Saito crossing over to France means that this would become an international affair, that the Death Eaters are shaping up to be much more than the Wizarding World can handle.

Crossing the channel doesn’t mean finding a ship and sailing right through it.

Crossing the channel means a dozen Portkeys and a sudden army of purists invading French coastal towns.

They all begin to realize this and a sudden, heavy silence descends upon the group.

“Does that really mean that they’re going to France?” Nash asks. He fidgets a little as he speaks.

They all turn to look at him and Arthur almost pities his friend, because this always happens to Nash, and he’s usually the one who defends him from Eames and Cobb and their relentless teasing when they were much younger.

But the Order is not Hogwarts, and this is a much different game that they’re playing.

“Yes,” Cobb answers for Miles. “The pattern lines up. Saito takes London,” and they all wince at the very fresh memory of an onslaught on West End, where many Muggles had died and even more witches and wizards had stumbled away with only half their lives intact. “And when that doesn’t get a response, he tears down the neighbors.”

Nash shakes his head, stuttering a little, but his spirit more than makes up for the slight quiver in his voice, “Saito doesn’t—"

“Nash,” Eames interrupts, and it’s all that Nash needs to shrink in on himself and keep quiet for the rest of the meeting.

“Is Fischer heading this one?” Arthur pipes up, twirling his
l in between his fingers. He pities Nash, he really does, but there are times when even he has no room for anything else.

Miles shakes his head. “Saito’s heading it himself.”

Cobb curses, and so does Eames, and soon enough, the whole room erupts in a chaos of panic and too many ideas and too much uproar all at once.

Arthur grimaces at the rush of both dread and noise sucking out all the air from his ears. He puts down his quill and brings up his hand to ease the ache from his head but Eames is already there.

Eames grasps his hand, squeezing it in the hopes of being reassuring. Arthur looks up at him, reveling in the warmth of his fingers and how Eames’ thigh is just there, pressed up against his. He brings their hands down underneath the table.

“Arthur.”

Arthur grits his teeth at his voice. It’s too calm, he thinks. Too calm and he shouldn’t be calm because this is a war they’re getting into and nothing is calm about fucking war.

“Arthur,” Eames tries again, squeezing Arthur’s hand a little tighter. “It’s going to be alright.”

***

Eames is wrong.

***

Of their thirty witches and wizards, ten fall dead at Hastings.

Eames stumbles away with an unconscious Arthur in his arms and they both lick their wounds at some cottage that Arthur hadn’t realized Eames owned.

It takes them both three weeks to finally get themselves together and even then, Eames’ chest still aches when he breathes, and Arthur’s leg buckles when he walks.

***

On the day that Philippa is born, Cobb isn’t there.

Arthur smiles down at the bundle of flushed pink cheeks and bleary eyes. “She’s beautiful, Mal.”

Mal nods tiredly, and falls asleep almost immediately after.

Arthur sighs and sits down on the chair beside the bed; the only chair in the room.

This is no place for a baby. Hell, it’s no place for anyone to give birth in.

This is a rundown shack in downtown London that Arthur had been renting for the past few weeks specifically for this purpose because Cobb is out there and so is Eames and they’re fighting the fight that Arthur’s supposed to as well.

But Cobb asks him to stay and so does Mal and Arthur knows he can’t refuse.

“You’re going to be a Gryffindor, just like Cobb,” Arthur tells Philippa and she looks up at him with eyes so wide and so startlingly blue that he forgets for a moment that if he pulls down the wards and looks outside the window, there’s nothing beautiful at all that he’ll see.

That half of London is scorched to the ground, and that maybe they won’t last another day in here, with too little food and the both of them, he and Mal, itching to go back to the war because there too many Death Eaters, and the Ministry isn’t ready, and this is Philippa and she’s a day old, and it’s Arthur holding her, not her father.

***

“Eames.”

Eames grunts from inside the drawn curtains of his four-poster.

“Eames.”

A grunt, a shift of the curtains, Eames’ foot sticking out from underneath his blankets.

Arthur sighs and flicks his wand to blast the curtains right out of the metal rings.

Eames is naked.

He’s always naked.

“Bloody hell, Arthur,” Eames sits up, blearily, the sheets pooling down on his lap and all that Arthur sees is the bare skin of his chest.

But Arthur’s much too used to the sight already to let it bother him. “We’re late.”

Eames blinks the sleep from his eyes and checks the grandfather clock. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

They’re in the Gryffindor tower. Arthur belongs there and so does Cobb, but Eames does not. He belongs underground, with all the other Slytherins, but for some reason or another he’s charmed his way through most of Arthur’s fellow sixth year friends. How Shacklebolt had let Eames sleep in his bed, Arthur did not want to know.

“But I’m still here,” Eames grins.

Arthur smirks. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Fuck Potions,” Eames dismisses with a derisive snort and shifts in the bed to pat at the empty space beside him.

It’s a very narrow bed.

“Well?” Eames raises an eyebrow.

Arthur rolls his eyes in response, but it doesn’t take much for him to drag himself out of bed and clamber onto Eames’. (Shacklebolt’s.)

They miss Potions, as well as Charms.

(As well as lunch, Cobb and Nash had cared to point out, but neither of them cared so much.

Arthur did but Eames had always been a very bad influence.)

***

“And you’re going to be good at Potions,” Arthur tells Philippa, weaving a very intricate life for her in his head that involves none of the Order and none of the Death Eaters, that has Cobb and Mal, and her Uncles Arthur and Eames.

Philippa gurgles.

“You’re going to be better at it than Yusuf.” Arthur snorts. “Yeah, you’d probably meet him at some point. He’s the head of Slytherin now.”

He eases the frown on her little brow with a swipe of his thumb.

“But don’t worry about that. You’re going to be a Gryffindor and your grandfather Stephen will be your head of house,” Arthur smiles proudly. “You’re a lucky girl.”

The smile slowly grows to a grin. “And you’re never going to miss any classes, right? Not like me, or your Uncle Eames and Uncle Nash. In fact, you’re never going to meet a man like Eames, you never should. He shot my OWLs to hell, you know.”

Arthur sighs, and the grin blinks out from his face. “You’re going to be Head Girl, just like your mother, and you’re never going to have to run from very, very bad people.”

Ever.

***

Arthur is wrong, too.

***

They run for several hundred miles and three years, and they’re still in England, because so is Saito and so is Fischer and they never stop fighting so the Order doesn’t either.

When James is born, both Arthur and Eames aren’t there.

They hear about it some few weeks later, in between skirmishes and massacres that need cleaning up after, and the Three Broomsticks is far too large for their fast dwindling numbers.

“You’re godfather, by the way,” Cobb tells Eames after the meeting.

Arthur smiles under his hand and pretends to be busy with a map that doesn’t need intense reading.

Eames doesn’t mind, because he’s trying very hard not to smile too widely. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever come up with, Cobb.”

“That’s what I said,” Mal interjects, her arm wound around Cobb’s.

They’re both tired, with circles around their eyes that draw out the lines on their young faces. But they’re smiling and they’re happy and Arthur and Eames, they worry about Hastings, and they worry about devastated London, but they give them this.

Because they’re not the only ones who need it.

“Well,” Eames scoffs in mock indignation. “I’m relieved you have such confidence in me, then.”

Cobb shrugs sheepishly. He smiles at Mal, then grins at Eames. “Arthur’s already Philippa’s, so it’s only logical, right? Isn’t that how these couple things go anyway?”

Arthur and Eames both raise their eyebrows. They exchange a look over Cobb’s shoulder.

“Couple things,” Arthur echoes for Eames.

Mal laughs. “Mr and Mr Eames.”

Eames grimaces, “I’ll be paying for that one, you realize.”

Mal laughs again, and so does Cobb, and for a moment they don’t worry about the war.

They sip the Butterbeers that Rosmerta brings up from the kitchen she’d closed hours ago, stowing away a map that they’re trying very hard not to think about again for the rest of the night. And they talk about Philippa, and James.

Arthur holds Eames’ hand under the table, Eames’ fingers playing at the pulse at Arthur’s wrist.

For a while, it’s fine. This is fine.

***

But all good things come to an end, and Arthur and Eames are both loathe to admit how ignorant they had been to even hope that things would not end as they will.

***

As they do.

***

Arthur wakes up to an insistent banging on the door. In an instant, he’s on his feet, and so is Eames, and they both have their wands grasped tightly in their hands. Never mind that Eames is down to his boxers, or that Arthur’s hair is sticking up in places.

Their hearts thunder in their chests as they inch their way out into the hallway.

“Who is it?” Arthur calls out from several feet away from the door.

Eames’ fingers tighten around his wand, with a dozen counter-spells, hexes, and an Unforgivable Curse or two waiting on the tip of his tongue.

“It’s Cobb.”

The tension snaps, and they both breathe.

Arthur charms the door open with a flick of his wand and Cobb stumbles in, dripping wet, but the weather outside the window is clear and dry.

“You alright?” Eames hurries to Cobb’s side as Arthur pushes past them to lock the door, casting several other wards just in case.

Cobb nods shakily. “Yeah. Weather’s a bit bad.”

Eames looks doubtful, and he shares a look with Arthur that says as much. “Sit down.”

Cobb doesn’t. Instead, he fishes out a shiny object from his pocket and puts it firmly in Eames’ hand.

Eames opens his fist, and he and Arthur both catch the glint of the faint light from outside the window on the shiny polish of—

--a top.

“What is this?”

“A Portkey,” Cobb says in a rush. “I need you to come with me.”

He says this to Eames and Arthur looks away for a moment, mumbling an excuse to off and go into the kitchen. To fix some coffee, he says.

When he looks up again, he has the one cup of coffee for himself, because he knows he’s the only one who’ll be staying long enough to drink it.

Eames has shrugged on a random shirt, an arm already halfway through a sleeve of his coat. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Arthur.”

Cobb is already at the door, his hand impatiently fiddling with the doorknob.

Arthur dispels the wards with a wave of his wand, but he’s not looking at Cobb. “Where are you going?”

Eames hesitates and Arthur sees the doubt there that he had never seen before. But Eames doesn’t let him speak and they kiss, for a moment, a lingering kiss that tastes oddly like an apology.

***

“Secret keeper, huh?” Arthur says bemusedly, testing the weight of the top in his hand. It doesn’t weigh a thing next to something unexplainably heavy that fills out Arthur’s chest.

Eames sighs, rubbing his eye with the back of his thumb. “It appears so.”

Arthur’s not hurt. It’s only logical, he rationalizes because Eames has known Cobb since they were children, from social events from the parties or whatever else the Purebloods did to entertain themselves and they’ve been friends despite Cobb being a Gryffindor and Eames being a Slytherin. Despite all that and a lot of other things.

(That the Eames family is a publicly known supporter of Sato. That Eames’ father had been a Knight before he had been a member of the Inner Circle.

That Eames knows risk; that Eames also knows when to quit when things get too messy.)

But Arthur doesn’t want to think of all of that yet he does, and it disappoints him a little.

Eames sighs again, and wraps his arms around Arthur until not even Arthur’s stubbornness could keep him frozen when he’s pressed up against Eames’ chest, and his face is buried in Eames’ neck, that even as he breathes he smells Eames.

“They’re going to come after you.”

“No one knows I’m the Keeper, Arthur,” Eames reassures him.

“Except me.”

Eames nods, and Arthur feels the stubble of his cheek scratch his ear. “I trust you.”

Arthur catches his breath on something, and he forgets for a moment that he does. His head swims when he needs to.

Eames kisses his cheek, and his arms tighten, and Arthur finds himself hugging him back. The top digs into his palm and Eames’ shoulder blade. It’s sharp, and it wakes him up from something he doesn’t want to face anymore.

***

Saito finds out. They don’t know how but he does, and Arthur discovers this when Eames stumbles inside their apartment bleeding from a gash down his side.

“Fuck,” Arthur curses as Eames collapses into his arms.

He hauls him bodily to the couch, and he doesn’t even notice that his arms strain under Eames’ weight, or that sweat is beading at his brow, or that his heart has probably stopped and so has his lungs.

He seizes up, his mind wiped blank, and he can only watch with detached amazement how his hands move too quickly on Eames’ body, checking every limb, unbuttoning his shirt.

What he sees is a wash of dark, red blood, staining his coat a much darker shade of red.

He doesn’t stutter when he utters the right charms, nor does his fingers waver when he bandages the wound after wards, and taps Eames awake on the cheek, smearing blood on his face.

He breathes when Eames’ eyes flutter open.

“Fuck,” he shudders, and finds himself too spent that his hands slip on the couch.

Eames grunts under his weight, and Arthur feels his hand shake where it lands on his thigh.

“Still alive.”

“You’re a fucker,” Arthur grits out, but he doesn’t mean it, and Eames knows that he doesn’t, because Arthur is kissing him too deeply that Eames can barely even move.

Eames smiles weakly when Arthur pulls away, a blood-stained hand twisting in Arthur’s equally stained shirt. “A fucker, sure, but a live one, aren’t I? Still kicking.”

Arthur nods. That’s what matters.

***

But it’s not enough.

“Nash.”

Eames looks up from the paper in his hands. “What about Nash?”

“I trust him.”

Eames raises an eyebrow. “I know you do. What about him?”

Arthur meets his gaze with a stubborn set to his jaw. “I don’t want you to be the Keeper anymore.”

Eames opens his mouth, ready to say No. No.

Absolutely not.

But he sees Arthur’s face, and knows that Arthur had spent many hours trying to remove the stain on the couch, and even more hours spent by Eames’ side in the days that followed the incident.

Eames nods. “Okay.”

***

“What’s this, then?” Eames asks, looking down at some slim circular disc in his palm.

“A Portkey.”

Eames frowns. “I don’t need one.”

Arthur holds up a shiny red die. “I have one too.”

“Arthur,” Eames sighs, shaking his head.

Arthur holds up a hand. “Just listen to me.”

Eames does.

“I don’t—" Arthur begins.

Eames waits a bit more, because Arthur had asked him to, and Arthur doesn’t know why that stops him more than the sudden rush of both panic and dread that pools low in his belly.

“I don’t want to,” Arthur begins again. “To—"

Eames pockets the chip, and tries to smile. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes and Arthur hates it when Eames pretends but there are times when they both need to not because it makes them feel any better but because it’s the only way to go about things anymore.

“Half-bloods,” Eames says with a snort. “I could’ve done perfectly well with a Gobstone, you know.”

Arthur shrugs sheepishly. “It’s a poker chip.”

“Poker?” Eames shakes his head at the word.

Arthur smirks.

“What’s got you all smug about?” Eames narrows his eyes.

“I know something you don’t.”

Eames raises his eyebrows. “You’re smug about the fact that I know not a bloody thing about your Muggle references.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s cheating. I’m a Pureblood,” Eames points out, as if Arthur needs a reminder.

“Yeah, well, you boast about your virgin sacrifices all the time, so.”

Eames grabs him by the arm, and they’re both laughing, with their Portkeys tucked away in their pockets. Arthur’s pushed down onto the bed and soon enough, Eames is pressed right on top of him, grinning triumphantly. “For the last time, I was not a virgin when that happened.”

Arthur gapes at him for a moment.

Eames laughs and kisses him. “Alright, alright, we’re even.”

“What?” Arthur snorts, perfectly content with where he is, with Eames’ hands on either side of his head. “I already knew you haven’t been a virgin since you were born.”

“Why you little bastard,” Eames breathes in mock offense, and proceeds to show Arthur that yes, Eames hadn’t been a virgin then, and he’s not a virgin now.

Arthur doesn’t always like being proved wrong but there are times when even Eames makes defeat feel so fucking good.

***

Cobb and Mal die on a Tuesday.

***

Eames explodes.

He blasts off the door to Nash’s apartment with a rage of too much emotion in such powerful magic and soon enough, Nash is bleeding out through his nose.

He dangles from the floor by an invisible chokehold around his neck.

“What the fuck did you do?” Eames roars at him, his cheeks flushed red with so much anger that Arthur had never seen.

Nash splutters, kicking air.

“You fucking fucking coward!” Eames throws his hand upward and Nash flies from the restraints of Eames’ magic, his head smashing up against the ceiling, and he falls on a heap on the floor.

He doesn’t move.

Arthur doesn’t bother to check if he’s still alive.

But Eames does, and Arthur doesn’t know if he’s disappointed that Nash’s chest rises and falls, and that his heart is still strong underneath Eames’ fingers on his throat.

They search him—they find Cobb’s top in his pocket, they find Cobb’s wand.

They roll up his sleeve.

Arthur grimaces, and he chokes on too much that he staggers back against the wall. He feels weightless and heavy both at the same and the sensation tears at his heart.

Eames, however.

***

Eames is merciless.

***

“You’re wanted for murder,” Miles tells him the morning after.

Eames doesn’t say a word, and neither does Arthur when Miles turns to look at him for answers.

On the table is the Daily Prophet, Eames’ face in a contortion of rage, wiped out by an explosion of bright light that in black and white, Arthur can’t tell if it’s green or any other color.

He was there, he remembers it well, but he chooses not to, because Miles is piercing him with eyes too knowledgeable, and Arthur feels the insistent prodding at the base of his skull.

He’s no Occlumens, but he’s learned from Eames enough to know when to not think about certain things he doesn’t want anyone else to know.

But Miles doesn’t need explanation. He only gives them a pouch of Galleons, and sends them off to the middle of nowhere, trusting them to take care of his grandchildren.

***

Eames leaves, sometimes for days, sometimes for hours, but he always comes back.

This time, he doesn’t.

***

Arthur feels the familiar rush of broken wards and he looks up, expecting to find Eames.

He’s met with a wand, and several armed men.

“You’re hereby arrested for the murder of Dominic and Mallorie Cobb,” he says in a voice so toneless that Arthur forgets that he has a wand in his pocket, that his die on the kitchen table, that Philippa and James are sleeping upstairs.

That Eames is supposed to be here and no one else has—

--A flash of light, and Arthur doesn’t have the chance to think about these things anymore.

***

Eames is sent to Azkaban by a court of fools.

He’s a traitor; he’s a Pureblood; his father is a Death Eater; he’s a Slytherin.

They circle and plummet in Arthur’s head as he sits at the stands and watches Eames from so far away. And they don’t look at each other, because Eames can’t find him, and Eames can’t hear him, over the din of balding heads and judging eyes, and the noise of the conceited and ignorant who yell the loudest, who the point, and blame, and want him dead.

They win the war.

Arthur comes home after the celebration, much too sober, to two children sleeping in his and Eames’ bed.

He lays down beside them and he thinks maybe this is fine, that James and Philippa are there to need him to keep it together.

He sends letters that are never answered, because Azkaban is Azkaban, and the world thinks that the souls inside its walls no longer exist.

Arthur rolls his die in his pocket, and thinks maybe if he charms it the right way, if he learns new spells, if he asks Miles, that it will take him to Eames.

But he doesn’t, because he knows that the poker chip is elsewhere, and Eames is no longer where Arthur can reach him, and James and Philippa need him more than Eames does and Eames will understand this, Arthur reassures himself as he takes out his die and throws it inside his closet drawer.

END

[INCEPTION] Fic: One kick's as good as another (Cobb/Eames) R. Sort of. I'm not sure. R-ish.

bronson — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:32:58 GMT

One kick's as good as another
Eames/Cobb
College fic, where Cobb is in need of living arrangements and Eames presents a most attractive solution.
I blame smilevintage and toestastegood for this. Also, ilu forever walkingxorgasm and fermine for the beta. You betta believe it, fermine. Give in and ship this son of a bitch. PS: TOTES IN CELEBRATION OF THE BRAND-SPANKIN NEW COMM FOR THIS PAIRING. Fuck yeah, cobb_eames. \m/

“New around here, aren’t you?”

Cobb whips around to find someone he hasn’t before. Someone whose cocksure tilt of hips probably means bad news, paired with a knowing smirk around a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

The stranger offers a hand, puffing out a careless burst of smoke that above their heads, under the dim light mounted on the bulletin board, reminds Cobb of the fog he’s had too much of since arriving in London only a few days ago. “I’m Eames.”

Cobb shakes his hand a little uncertainly, shifting the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Cobb.”

Eames’ eyebrows lift, too languid to be surprised. “Like Madonna.”

“W-What?” Cobb stammers out.

“Just the first name, or the last,” Eames shrugs. His cigarette bobs up and down as he speaks. “Bit mysterious, a bit tacky.”

Cobb smiles sheepishly, runs a hand down the side of his neck. “No, actually, it’s Dominic.”

Eames twists his lips, and the lit embers of his cigarette hovers over his left cheek. Cobb expects him to flinch at the heat, but Eames only draws in a breath. It glows brightly in the late afternoon shadow cast by the building right behind them.

“Yeah,” Cobb shrugs. “So Cobb it is.”

Eames grins, then finally takes the cigarette from his lips. Smoke pours from his mouth as his breath moves air. “What were you looking at there, then?”

Cobb glances back over his shoulder, at the bulletin board he’d just been looking at. “Looking for an apartment.”

“Any luck?” More smoke, drifting towards Cobb as the wind changes direction. Smoke and cold air tickle his cheek. He almost coughs, but he’s smoked enough cigarettes in his time to not let it bother him.

“Yeah, but—" He gestures vaguely with his hand. “There’s a guy who needs a roommate, I guess. That’s about it.”

“Really,” Eames looks genuinely surprised by that. “Who?”

“Brown?” Cobb tries, “Something Brown, I don’t really remember.”

Eames laughs, shaking his head. Cobb suddenly feels like he’d just been pulled from the brink of a very very bad decision.

“What is it?”

“He’s awful.”

“Just like that?”

Eames nods, to some beat that only he hears. “Take it from me. I’ve been here long enough to know. Bertie never finds anyone to room with ‘cause he’s a fucking nutter.”

“I don’t know,” Cobb admits, “I’m desperate enough for anything right now.”

Then Eames turns thoughtful, drawing in another lungful from his cigarette. Cobb feels his eyes peer at him through the haze of smoke between them. “How desperate?”

Cobb chuckles humorlessly. “Very desperate.”

“Desperate enough for a quickie out by the pool?”

Cobb does a double take. “Wha—" he waits for Eames to laugh at the crude joke but Eames doesn’t look like he’s trying to be funny.

“Or a blowjob?”

Cobb gapes inelegantly for a second.

“Anal sex?”

“What the fuck,” Cobb blurts out loud, and immediately looks around to see if anyone’s heard him. By this time, there were very few students left milling around that part of the campus. He suddenly feels very alone, and very, very near Eames, even though they had an arm’s length and thickening smoke between them.

Eames smirks. “You heard me.”

Cobb chokes a little, and almost hates himself for not even feeling the slightest bit of offense at the proposition. The several propositions. He’s fucking tired of the student hostel and he must be really desperate, he realizes, to even consider—

Then Eames laughs, a long drawn-out laugh that makes Cobb flush in embarrassment.

“You’re an asshole,” Cobb tells him, but he’s relieved, grinning shakily as the rush of adrenaline drains the tension that set his jaw.

Eames nods again, his laugh tapering to random chuckles around his cigarette filter. “But you didn’t punch my face just now, did you.”

“Should I have?” Cobb replies with a smirk.

“Well I’m bloody thankful you didn’t.” Eames drops his cigarette on the pavement, then puts it out with a twist of his foot.

He’s not wearing sneakers, is the first thing that Cobb notices about Eames. He’s not wearing jeans, either, neither is he wearing a proper shirt with big font about some concert or other. He doesn’t even look like a student.

“Still looking for a flat?” Eames asks. He’s tilting his head back, pushing out the last of the smoke with an effortful clench of his chest. Cobb eyes the line of his neck that lead down to the sharp press of his collar, and the undone buttons of his shirt.

“Yeah,” Cobb replies. “Preferably one that doesn’t require payment in sexual favors.”

Eames throws him a smile that almost reassures Cobb. “Yeah, I’ve got a place.”

Cobb weighs this, a possible living arrangement versus trusting a stranger. Then he remembers the cramped space of a very small room he’s currently sharing with five other students. That makes the decision for him more than anything else his parents have said about not trusting people he’s only just met.

“Don’t look so worried,” Eames smirks teasingly. “Your virtue’s safe with me.”

Cobb waits for a second, because the glint in Eames’ eyes and the nonchalant smile that curls his lips all look like he was gearing up for a punchline. But it doesn’t come like expected, and when Eames turns away and gestures for him to follow with a wave of his hand, Cobb feels that slight drop of his center of gravity, kind of like missing a step, or expecting one to be there when there isn’t.

***

Cobb had expected a very small apartment, with very narrow stairs, with ancient doorknobs and creaky floors and posters tacked onto walls that are uninteresting and bare.

What he gets is a two-bedroom flat in Knightsbridge, just a well-aimed piss away from Harrod’s.

It’s all clean lines and sharp edges, with warm lights over a marble-top bar that separates the kitchen from the dining area. It has glass tables and leather couches, and a fireplace that looks like it can’t be bothered to emit warmth in the winter.

To one side is the view of sprawling London, of penthouses and brick-walled apartments that remind him of that one Beatles song he’s too distracted to remember right now.

“Still no on the sexual favors, I suppose?” Eames calls out from the kitchen. His voice rings across, to the living room where Cobb is rooted to the wooden floor.

Cobb turns, holding himself together as if taking every precaution not to accidentally break something expensive.

Everything looked fucking expensive.

He sees Eames holding two beer bottles by the necks, rummaging inside a drawer for a bottle opener.

Everything looked expensive except for Eames.

“This is yours?”

Eames looks up, hands jerking as he opens one bottle. Spirit escapes through the newly opened mouth, fizzing sharply. “Like it?”

Like it? It’s.

It’s.

“Really,” Cobb asks, disbelievingly. He still has his bag sat on his shoulders. He doesn’t know where to put it. Right by the meticulously upholstered arm chair, right on the cream-colored rug, or up against the white-washed walls?

His well-worn Omnibag doesn’t look like it’s going to fit in anywhere.

“What do you want me to say here?” Eames asks, amused, holding out the other beer bottle as he nears Cobb. He’s juggling his own beer and an empty glass in his other hand.

Cobb takes it. The bottle is warm against his palm. “Just wondering.”

Eames shoots him a deadpan look as he pours his own beer into the glass, tilting it just right to prevent the ensuing thick layer of foam. “Fine, I’ll be straight with you. We’re trespassing. This is actually some bloke’s apartment but he’s dead now. I killed him last night. I’m reaping the benefits of—"

Cobb snorts, rolling his eyes, before taking a sip of the beer. It’s strong against his tongue. He’s never tried Foster’s before. Now he knows why.

“We split the electricity, the water, the cable,” Eames says, waving his glass around. Cobb feels anxious on behalf of the clean furniture. “The phone,” he ticks off from a mental list that he seems to have just drawn up on the spot. “And the plants.”

“The plants?” Cobb says, amused, the bottle hovering just by his lips.

Eames swallows his beer as his nods, “Yeah. You water the ones in here.”

“Do you keep a lot of plants?”

Eames grins. “Just the ones in here.”

***

“What about rent?” Cobb brings up over several cartons of Indian food laid out on the kitchen table.

Eames is picking through his rice with subtle pokes of his fork. “What about rent?”

“Do I have to keep my half of it too?”

“Sure,” Eames answers with a casual shrug. “More money for me, I suppose.”

Cobb stops mid-chew. “This place is yours?”

“Yeah,” Eames nods, almost shyly, but the smile on his face more than makes up for the brief show of self-deprecation. “My father’s, really.”

Cobb doesn’t know what to make of that, just several stereotypes of rich kids and their richer parents leeching off of trustfunds from Switzerland and endless credit on plastic.

***

Cobb walks in on Eames sitting bare-chested in his bedroom.

(That he almost never closes, Cobb realizes early on when he’d woken up one morning to find the door half-open, as if Eames had considered privacy only as an afterthought.)

He’s on a high bar stool, right in front of a blank canvas. He doesn’t have a brush in his hand and there aren’t any traces of paint anywhere in the room. It’s just canvas, sitting on an easel.

Eames is staring at it like he’s stared at a fuzzy screen, waiting for it to right itself. Not quite bothering to stand up from the couch and fiddle with the cable.

“Dinner’s here,” Cobb ventures to interrupt Eames, poking his head in with his weight braced on the doorframe.

“Yeah,” Eames answers distractedly. He shifts a little, folding an arm over his middle.

Cobb frowns curiously. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to impregnate the canvas with my seed.”

“By staring at it,” Cobb answers blankly.

“By staring at it,” Eames nods.

“You’ll need semen for that, I think.”

“Would you like to give me a hand?” Eames teases, a lewd smile easing the intense look of concentration from his face.

Cobb snorts and closes the door behind him.

***

“No, seriously,” Cobb finally snaps, when he finds Eames lugging around a large canvas covered in thin brown paper. “What are you doing?”

“I’m working.”

Cobb’s surprised, and it shows. Eames almost laughs at the sudden widening of his eyes, his hands slipping around the edges of the canvas.

“You really think that I spill my—"

Cobb grunts, batting away the rest of the shit that usually comes from Eames’ mouth when he’s in the mood to tease.

(Which is, as Eames goes, most of the damn time.)

“I’ve got to earn a little bit on the side if I want to buy this flat.”

Cobb frowns. “I thought this was your dad’s.”

Eames nods, a sharp jerk of his head. “Precisely.” He grunts under the weight of the canvas. “Little help here would be nice, by the way.”

Cobb acquiesces and leaves the sudden barrage of questions in his head for another day, when his physicality’s not being put to the test, lifting the canvas from the other side.

They manage to maneuver it into the narrow hallway and into Eames’ room without dislodging the framed Paul Maze hanging from the wall.

“So you’re a painter?” Cobb asks once they’ve pushed up the canvas against the wall.

Eames has a switchblade in his hand that Cobb hadn’t seen him get from anywhere. He’s ripping the brown paper apart, pushing them aside. “Not exactly.”

The canvas is not blank, as Cobb had assumed it would be. It’s a perfectly, and beautifully, painted scene of something country, but not, somewhat hazy and vague and abstract and everything that Cobb should be able to interpret well, considering the art history classes he’s had to take that term.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Eames asks him with a proud grin, looking as if he himself had painted it. Which Cobb doubted. The signature at the bottom didn’t look like Eames’.

(And he’d seen Eames’ signature before, on some school-related waiver he’d left on the kitchen. Something about an educational trip to somewhere.)

“How much was it?” Cobb asks, assuming that Eames had bought it.

By Eames’ silence, however—

--Cobb throws a look of disbelief at him. “Eames.”

Eames clicked his tongue, smiling apologetically at Cobb with an exaggeration that Cobb thinks is not sincere at all.

“What the fuck,” Cobb exclaims, the panic unfurling in his belly as his mind starts to wrap around the fact that this painting had not been painted by Eames. Had not been purchased by Eames.

“Oh relax, would you?” Eames sniffs at him.

Cobb is expecting an explanation, somewhere between the lines of Eames receiving this as a gift. Something innocent and not at all what Cobb is vividly painting in his head.

“I was careful.”

Cobb throws his hands in the air. “You stole it.”

“I borrowed it,” Eames corrects him, wagging his finger at Cobb’s face as if his sensibilities are very much offended that Cobb would think such a thing.

(Even though that thing is exactly what Cobb thinks it is.)

“You could’ve at least told me that you’re some kind of—of—" he struggles to find the right term for it.

“Thief,” Eames finishes for him.

“Art thief,” Cobb adds on. Then he’s distracted by the painting, and how it really does look nice, propped up against Eames’ navy blue wallpaper. “Nice painting, though.”

“Isn’t it?” Eames regards it as well, and they both hum under their breaths in appreciation. “But I’m not exactly a thief,” Eames says after a moment, as if only just remembering to defend his dignity. “I’m an art imitator.”

“Same thing,” Cobb says with a roll of his eyes.

“I don’t see anything wrong with providing another copy of a good piece of art for those who can’t afford the real thing.”

Cobb sees nothing wrong with that, when it put in perspective. But the architect, or the would-be architect in Cobb, finds it a little offensive that Eames would do something like that. To a piece of art.

“The Mona Lisa has tons of copies all around the world,” Eames continues, in reaction to what must’ve been a look of disapproval on Cobb’s face.

“They’re commercially distributed posters, Eames. It’s not exactly the same.”

Eames relents, “Fine. But I’m getting paid good money for this. A job’s a job.”

Cobb doesn’t point out that making coffee is a job, being a teacher’s assistant is a job, fixing the books at the library after school is a fucking job.

Not stealing art and imitating it.

But Eames is already preparing his easel and shrugging off his jacket and Cobb knows that when Eames is moving so quickly, with his mind set on something, any wise words he’d say would just fall on deaf ears.

***

Cobb unearths Eames’ Nintendo 64 three weeks after moving in.

It’s dusty, and it takes a while for him to set it up properly in the living room.

Eames comes home late that evening to find Cobb sitting on the floor with a bowl of chips sitting by his knee.

“So this happened,” Cobb says by way of explanation. He’s already gotten past Level 6, this close to getting Mario leaping off the stairs of bricks to get to the flag.

“It’s still happening,” Eames says with a smile and it doesn’t take long for Cobb to feel Eames sitting right next to him, pressed against his side. He’s leaning even further in to get a handful of chips from the bowl and for a second or two, all that Cobb could smell was a little bit of sweat, a little bit of aftershave, when Eames’ head is just there, his hair tickling Cobb’s nose.

“Would you mind?” But he’s not bothered by it at all.

“Of course I mind. I haven’t seen this thing in ages,” Eames says over the crisp crunch of the chips in between his teeth.

“You’re kidding. This just came out.”

“What did?” Eames asks, distractedly. He’s leaning back, and Cobb can see only Eames' loosely folded legs sprawled out in front of him.

“The console, Eames,” Cobb answers just as distractedly, fingers skillfully pushing all the right buttons.

It takes a second for Eames to reply. Cobb has to nudge him with his knee to snap his attention back.

Eames grunts, murmuring sleepily in reply, “So that’s what it’s called.”

“What did you think it was?”

Eames is quiet, and Cobb waits, rather patiently, for his answer. But it doesn’t come. He pauses the game and turns to look at Eames, only to find him leaning against the couch, his arms folded on the leather seat. His face is turned away, pressed against the crook of his elbow.

“Eames,” Cobb checks, keeping his voice quiet.

Eames doesn’t stir. His breathing has evened out, and his jacket stretches over his shoulders at every rise of his chest.

Cobb wants to wake him up because sleeping all throughout the night in such a position would wreck his back, but he just scoots back a little to lean against the couch as well, Eames’ arms pressing against his back. He turns the television’s volume low, but not too low that he misses out on all the fun Nintendo sound effects, and keeps on playing.

He doesn’t mind that Eames stirs later on, curling his knees slightly inward until his shins are pressed right against Cobb’s side, or that his hands somehow wedge themselves between Cobb’s back and the couch.

He likes the weight of Eames’ knee against his thigh, when it falls there sometime later. He likes it enough that he rests his arm on it several times, during the bonus levels that he coasts through with simple taps on the arrow buttons.

***

It’s a Friday and they’re both not in the apartment.

They’re at a house party, where the walls are splattered with spilled beer and it’s a sea of people that Cobb has to wade through to find Eames.

“Eames!” Cobb calls out over the din of very loud music and much louder people.

Everywhere he looks, there’s too much skin and even less clothing.

Cobb himself has forgotten where he’d put his jacket, and his thin shirt is almost wet-through with sweat. It’s hot, and stifling, and the crowd is swelling around him until all the sensation that he has room for in his head are very intimate touches by strangers in places he’d rather not think about right just now.

He may also be a little drunk.

He was holding a cup of beer at some point but looking down at his hand, he realizes that it's empty.

“Eames!” He tries again and finally he finds Eames, backed up right against a corner of the living room. It’s dark, and Cobb almost doesn’t recognize Eames, if not for the most fortunate timing of the man pressing up against him—

Cobb blinks, swaying a little where he stood.

There’s a man pressed up against Eames, the man isn’t wearing a shirt. He has his hands splayed out on the walls and Eames looks like he’s drowning a little, tilting his head back with his hands scrambling for purchase on the man’s back.

“Oh my God,” Cobb gasps out and before his head could even comprehend what he’s doing, he’s rushing forward and pulling the man right off of Eames.

His fist hurts.

It’s probably because he’s bumped it somewhere, he thinks idly, then slowly realizes that the man is pitched forward, clutching his cheek.

Eames is laughing behind him, an arm coming around to pull Cobb farther away from the man and nearer and nearer back to the swell of dancing bodies. His laugh is infectious, and also a little too loud in Cobb’s ear.

“You’re a bloody savior, aren’t you, Cobb,” Eames says, and his stubbled chin is right there, scratching the side of Cobb’s neck.

Cobb shrugs off the humor, looking Eames over with hazy eyes that pick out the details that he doesn’t need. Like the rumpled shirt, half-untucked from the waistband of his jeans. Jeans, this time, Cobb realizes belatedly, jeans that are tight around his hips, and line his legs just right. He notices Eames’ uneven teeth, and the wobbly grin that splits his face, the heavy droop of his eyes.

(What he wants to know, of course, is if Eames is fine. Because Eames didn’t look fine just then. He looked like he was suffocating.

He hits himself over the head the next morning when he pieces it together properly, all the right ends in the right slots—a pun which makes him grimace over his breakfast, of course. That Eames hadn’t been in trouble and had actually looked like he was in the middle of something very, very good.)

***

They stumble into the apartment and ruin the comfortable silence with random spurts of laughter because the man had been furious enough to chase them down two blocks before almost getting hit by a car.

Cobb doesn’t really remember if he got hit at all. All they heard was a car honking his horn very loudly, and a string of curses that even Cobb had laughed at and Eames only nodded in support of that scandalized man.

Old man, from the sound of it.

But then Eames is laughing into his ear and he forgets about the man, and the old man, and near misses with oncoming traffic.

He’s got an armful of drunk Eames and fuck it, if he wasn’t drunk either.

He was, he must have been, because there’s absolutely no excuse, Cobb thinks, that he’s pressed against Eames’ front, with Eames back pressed right against the door and it’s all pressing and pressing and pressing until Cobb is pretty sure his chest is numb from the pressure of just Eames’ weight as well as his, just resting there for a moment. Heaving and panting and breathless.

He’s still drunk, he thinks, when Eames is pressing his cheek against Cobb’s, and his hands are fisted into Cobb’s shirt.

Still drunk that the hardness he feels against his hip is not Eames’ wallet, nor is it any other object that radiates so much heat that he presses against it instinctively, his whole body jerking forward.

The moans from both their lips are ripped apart by teeth that gnash together and tongues that collide.

“Fuck,” Eames says at the brief moment they needed for air. “This is intense.”

Cobb laughs, and so does Eames, then they’re not laughing anymore, and both their breaths are sucked in by the other, filling their lungs with the need to wet their lips with each other’s tongues.

Their hands are grasping at skin that are suddenly bare, their shirts discarded on the floor.

It takes a while for them to realize that it’s still dark, and the air is cold, and the heat hasn’t been turned on yet.

But they don’t realize this for at least another few hours, until they’ve both spent themselves on each other’s pants, and they’re sprawled, sated and breathless, on the couch.

***

“About last night,” Cobb ventures the morning after, while Eames is cradling his head, sitting haphazardly at the bar with his hair plastered to his head.

“What about last night,” Eames grunts into his palm.

Cobb hesitates, and takes his time sipping on the orange juice he’d plucked at random from the refrigerator.

Eames is looking at him expectantly, peering at him from between the fingers pressed against his face.

“That was good, I think,” Cobb finishes. “It felt good.”

“Really.”

Cobb thinks about it for a moment, turning it over in his head. It’s all skin and teeth and heat that plays over in his mind that, he concludes: “Yeah, it was good.”

“Well,” Eames grunts, “I’m glad one of us enjoyed it.”

Cobb sets down his glass, eyes wide. “What—"

Eames smirks. “I can’t even remember a fucking thing.”

Cobb releases a sigh. Eames always does this to him. “Not a thing?”

Eames shakes his head, then bites back a groan when the motion dislodges the remaining part of his brain. “Not a bloody thing, no.”

Cobb looks thoughtful for a moment, and the silence discomfits Eames enough that he removes his head from his hands and peers at him almost anxiously. “Wanna try it again?”

Eames snorts, but he’s smiling and he clearly wants to. Again and again and again.

“With a bed this time, and lots of light,” Cobb continues, eyes raking over the shirt that tightens over Eames’ arms.

“Candles?”

Cobb scoffs. “Candles.”

“Roses?”

Cobb rolls his eyes. “Daisies?”

Eames snorts. “Daisies have God-awful petals that’d make my bed look like some kind of funeral pyre.”

“Your bed?”

Eames raises an eyebrow. “What, you want to do it on yours?”

Cobb shrugs. “My bed’s large.”

“My bed’s larger.”

Cobb thinks about this, thinks about it well. “Yeah. Yeah it really is.”

Eames grins. “My bed, roses, candles.”

Cobb nods. “That’s the plan.”

***

Fuck plans.

***

They have the kitchen island and their pants around both their ankles and an exam in the morning for Cobb and a paper and several paintings to imitate for Eames.

They don’t have much time, but they make up for it with thrusts that bang both their hands against the marble, and keep their hips sore for the rest of the week.

***

“You remember it now?” Cobb says much, much later, while he’s pouring the rest of the Coco Puffs into his bowl.

Eames shrugs, toweling his hair dry. “Yeah, vaguely.”

“You just want another reminder.”

“Oh, was I being subtle about it?”

“Not if it’s taken me around five seconds to figure out what’s going on inside your head.”

Eames grins. “I have an awful memory.”

He doesn’t, but Cobb humors him anyway because it doesn’t hurt, really, to commit certain things to memory. Like deadlines, and papers, and things that needed to be studied, and things that needed to be remembered, things that he really, really liked, like Super Mario, and chips in bowls, and the swell of the back of Eames’ head, and the taste of beer and greasy food at the back of their mouths where they dig just right, just deep enough, that they don’t remember anything else afterwards.

Until Eames needs to be reminded again.

And Cobb is only happy to oblige.

END

Okay this is all random but I re-watched, like, the first 15 minutes of Inception.

bronson — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:06:21 GMT

And I noticed some things about these lines:

“I choose to leave, sir.”
Cobb to Saito. Hehe. Cobb calls Saito sir, probably out of respect? Since, you know. He's basically telling Saito to go fuck himself. :D But softening the blow by adding the sir. So Cobb isn't afraid to say no but he isn't foolish enough to risk a lion's wrath while he's in its den.

“My main competitor.”
Saito regarding Fischer. My main competitor. Saito is the head bitch in charge, baby.

“I need him to decide to break up his father’s empire.”
Saito regarding the Inception of Robert Fischer. I. I. Yep, definitely the head bitch in charge.

“Assemble your team, Mr Cobb.”
Saito to Cobb. So Saito knows that extraction requires a team, but he probably doesn't know enough of the extraction business side of the dream technology that he'd assumed Cobb was the dreamer ("You see, Mr Saito, we're in my dreams" uh, paraphrasing, but yeah Nash says that), just because he's more infamous than Arthur or Nash. UNLESS. Saito had known Cobb as an architect as well as an extractor, but then Cobb stopped being architect after Mal's death? Hmnmnmnmn.

“I gotta go visit Eames.”
Cobb to Arthur about Eames. He says visit. He doesn't say, I gotta go get Eames. Or something along those lines. He says visit. Another sign of respect, maybe? A visit is something made out of courtesy. So Eames doesn't owe him anything or Cobb doesn't consider himself more important than Eames that, you know, he goes to Mombasa for a visit. Meaning, he doesn't know yet if Eames will take the job or not. Also, this makes me think about how Arthur says, "He's in Mombasa", followed later by, "That's Cobol's backyard" and Cobb's "It's a necessary risk". It sounds more like Arthur's reminding Cobb that it's gonna be way risky to sneak into Mombasa rather than Arthur informing Cobb where Eames is.

...Random thoughts, random thoughts.

SUCCEED.

bronson — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:08:06 GMT

http://community.livejournal.com/cobb_eames/
GET ON THAT HORSE. GET ON IT.

[INCEPTION] Fic: All your theories turn to dust (Eames/Cobb) G, sort of pre-slash

bronson — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:24:31 GMT

All your theories turn to dust
Eames/Cobb
For the inception_kink prompt: C: Why didn't you sell me out, Eames? - E: Money wasn't good enough. - C: What happens when it is? - E: *sly smile* Well now, that'll be an interesting day.
BIG-ASS THANK YOU TO BOTH fermine AND callmebombshell FOR THE BETAS. even though i sorta noncon-ed fermine into reading it for me. :3

Arthur doesn’t know where Eames is.

“He’s not in Mombasa. I checked in on Yusuf,” Arthur explains, running a hand through his hair as he rifles through a considerable stack of thick folders on the table. “Hasn’t seen him in weeks.”

Cobb frowns thoughtfully, making sure to not spill coffee where he’s pouring them both a cup each. “Have you tried Cobol?”

“Of course I’ve tried Cobol,” Arthur snaps at him, then immediately shoots him an apologetic look that doesn’t even bother to be more obvious than a distracted frown on his brow and the slightest downward curl of his lips. “The man I’ve got in there doesn’t know where he is, either. They don’t have him on for a job or anything.”

“That can’t be right,” Cobb shakes his head, handing Arthur his coffee before taking a sip of his own. It scalds the tip of his tongue.

Cobb opens his mouth but Arthur beats him to it with an impatient click of his tongue. “Nothing, Cobb. When Eames doesn’t want to be found, he can’t be found.”

But you found him last time, he wants to point out. But that had been easy for Arthur because When Eames wants to be found, he’s suddenly everywhere for those who know where to look and Arthur always knows where to look.

“We’ll just have to find someone else,” Arthur says with a sigh. Almost three weeks of looking for Eames and they’re both tired of doing nothing else but that. They’ve put off the job for too long that their window of opportunity is starting to get smaller. “I’ll track down Davies.”

“Yeah,” Cobb finally relents. Davies is an aging man with old school methodologies and he and Cobb never get along well. “Come get me when you do.”

***

He finally gets a call three months later.

The phone rings sharply, pulling Cobb from his sleep, at three in the morning. “Yeah?” He mumbles sleepily into the receiver.

“Cobb?” It’s Eames.

Cobb blinks himself awake, flipping the switch at the headboard for the warm lights above his head. The clock at his bedside table makes him frown, both in confusion and in surprise. “What are you—“

“Are the kids with you?” Eames interrupts. He sounds breathless, like he’s been running for miles and still has a very long way to go.

“Y-yes, they’re here.” Cobb suddenly feels dread that pushes him off the bed and onto his feet, stumbling from the tangle of his limbs and the bed sheets. “The hell is going on, Eames?”

Eames chuckles, and the sound is a rapidfire burst of just ragged exhalation that it crackles the line and hurts Cobb’s ears. “How fast can you get to your car?”

Cobb considers his state of undress, his bare chest and the faded pajama bottoms; the keys at the bureau in the foyer; the several feet between his bedroom door and his children’s room.

“Cobb,” Eames snaps his attention back, urgency pitching his voice a notch higher than Cobb remembers it.

“Ten minutes.”

“Try five.”

Cobb is already pulling on a shirt, balancing the phone pressed against his ear and the tugging of his arms through the proper holes. “What did you do?”

Eames snorts. “Nothing.”

Cobb knows differently, and Eames knows this too, from the knowing silence Cobb gives him.

Eames takes it in stride, doesn’t even miss a beat. “Fischer.”

Cobb pauses, he’s already at the door, his feet rushing to squeeze themselves inside his loafers. His hand clenches the doorknob. “What happened?”

“Just get out fast,” Eames urges him and Cobb does.

He ends the call and tosses the wireless receiver back on his bed before he goes to collect his children.

They’re sleepy, rubbing their eyes and clutching at their stuffed toys, but he carries James and pulls Philippa by the hand. They whine as Cobb leads them out of the house and into his car.

Five minutes and thirty seconds, Cobb counts in his head as he glances at the digital clock on the dashboard.

***

Arthur’s not as lucky.

Eames calls Cobb first, and the thirty minutes he’d spent jumping from phone booth to phone booth in the darker streets of East End in London had been enough for the men to get to Arthur before Arthur had had the chance to load his gun.

Eames is silent on the other end as Cobb digests the news. It’s a boiling pit he’s trying to force down his throat, a mixture of betrayal and dread and the desolation that comes with panic and paranoia.

He shouldn’t even be using the phone, not when his kids are just in the next room and he didn’t even have the time to buy ammo for the gun he keeps in his glove compartment.

He’s staring down at now. A Glock that doesn’t feel as heavy in dreams as it does in reality. He’s cleaned it, twice, and just as he locked in the magazine and turned off the safety, Eames had called.

“Where is he?”

He can almost hear Eames shake his head. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Cobb bites out, not even bothering to rein anything in. Eames got them in this mess; he better do something about it.

“I said I don’t fucking know, Cobb,” Eames thunders right back, and the roar of utter helplessness that worms through the wires and into Cobb’s ears is enough to calm Cobb down. He never hears Eames out of control. That’s usually him and it’s usually Arthur’s job to calm his nerves.

But Arthur’s not here right now, is he.

“I’ll find him,” Eames says after a second, his voice strained.

The call ends and Cobb slams down the corded phone with a heaviness that hurts his palm and drives the nail even further in.

He sinks into his bed, staring at the gun at the bedside drawer, and hopes very much that he doesn’t have to use it.

***

“What is it, Dom?” Miles greets him once Cobb ushers him into the sparse hotel suite.

He looks terribly out of his place, in his tweed and his square shoulders, among the walls of bare space and straight-edged furniture. The children are in the sitting area, plopped down on their bellies on the carpet, ignorantly watching their usual afternoon cartoons.

Cobb sighs, as he glances at them, before bolting the door shut. “Something’s come up. I need you to do something for me, Miles.”

Miles throws him a look that Cobb is immediately sobered by. He crosses his arms and tilts his head, his eyes scrutinizing Cobb in that silent way that makes Cobb fidget even more.

“The Inception, it backfired.”

Miles frowns. “I thought you’d finished—“

“I did,” Cobb bites out. He’s tired of defending himself. He’s been doing it for the past couple of years, first from the authorities, then from Arthur. But he doesn’t know what else to say, and Miles spares him from further digging himself into a hole that he himself has been gradually filling, in increments, in the months since Mal’s death.

He’s greeting the kids with a hearty laugh, spreading his arms wide open for his grandchildren to rush up to him.

Cobb looks on worriedly, because this has happened before. He never thought he’d have to go through it all over again.

***

Miles leaves with the kids an hour later and the room bears no proof of his children even being there in the first place. They took all of their stuff from Cobb’s car, down to the Spongebob sticker plastered on the backseat, from where James had gone too trigger-happy with his sticker album.

Cobb gets the call just as he checks out from the hotel the day after.

“Where are you?”

“Is this a safe line, Eames?”

Eames hesitates, and it’s all that Cobb needs.

He sighs into the receiver just as he pulls up at a gun shop just outside of town. “You’re going to have to make it up to me after this,” Cobb says, trying to lighten the mood.

It falls flat, because Eames doesn’t laugh like he usually does. “I know,” and he sounds somber enough for Cobb to believe that he really is sorry. “I have him.”

Cobb’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “That was fast.”

“Yeah, well,” Eames begins, sounding sheepish, but that too falters quickly enough. “Meet us here. He says you’ll know where it is. Where,” he trails off, and Cobb assumes it’s because the slight muttering in the background is Arthur, as Arthur usually does, trying to control the situation. “—bloody—“

Cobb almost laughs, if Eames hadn’t sounded so damn harried and the moan in the background didn’t sound so achingly familiar.

“The apartment, where you made him choose the red pill over the blue,” Eames rushes out and Cobb can imagine him rolling his eyes, pushing out the words with an expression that almost pains him.

“The Matrix,” Cobb snorts at the half-remembered memory from some ten years ago, then sighs as he opens the door and locks it behind him. “How is he?”

Eames pauses, Cobb hears the rustle of cloth into the earpiece. When he speaks again, his voice is hushed. “He’ll stand to point another day,” he answers with forced humor.

Cobb appreciates the effort, but not the underlying truth. It bothers him, that he hadn’t had the capacity to rescue Arthur when Arthur would’ve moved mountains for him. It bothers him even more that Eames had caused all this.

The conflict rips him apart, that he’s both thankful and angry.

“That,” he pushes out, around a lump in his throat, “That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah,” Eames breathes, and Cobb imagines his head nodding solemnly in agreement. “It’s the worst fucking thing, really.”

***

The ‘apartment’ is actually a very small room on the third floor of a student residential building in New Hampshire, in between a plateau of bright countryside and the busy streets of the university town filled with very few else but students clustered in groups.

If Cobb stood out, weaving through the pedestrians along the streets, he could’ve easily passed off as some harried professor trying a hand at a social life outside of his workplace.

He remembers this place well enough. He’d visited it several times in the hopes of fishing out a very promising young man from a sea of average dullards aiming for equally dull white collar jobs.

It took him a while. A whole year, to be exact, and it was enough for Cobb to have committed the whole town’s streets and alleys to memory that when he crept up the apartment building, he was confident that he hadn’t been followed.

Someone else opens the door, someone big and quite clearly African, with a head shaved bald and eyes dark with suspicion. He has a gun in his hand.

Cobb almost thinks that he had the wrong room—but no, this is 301A, he remembers the number well enough—but then Eames is there, nudging the man aside.

He looks tired, with dark circles under his eyes, and his suit looking very much like it needed a long, thorough wash. His stubble is thick, crowding his cheeks, and Cobb can barely distinguish the alertness in Eames eyes from the shakiness of pure exhaustion.

“That bad?”

Eames smiles tiredly, waving him in. Cobb pushes his way through, between Eames’ bulk, which he doesn’t remember to be so un-bulky as before, and the stranger’s.

Inside is Arthur, in the bed that used to be his now worn thin by disuse. His head is bandaged, and the rest of him looks as beaten down as he had expected. He’s sleeping.

“He’s fine,” Eames tells him from behind and Cobb turns to face him.

The stranger’s already gone, the door closed behind him. Cobb assumes it’s so he can guard the apartment building well.

“Who’s he?”

Eames shrugs, running a hand down the back of his neck. He approaches Cobb, until he’s just there, where Cobb can touch him, but it’s only to sit down on a chair that doesn’t look comfortable at all. There’s only one bed and Arthur’s occupying most of it.

Eames sits in the chair like he’s been sitting there for hours, and will stay there for several more if he needs to.

“I trust him,” is Eames’ only explanation, and Cobb doesn’t venture much further than that. He doesn’t, because he trusts Eames.

Then it all comes back to him in a rush; he’s almost guilty that he’d forgotten in the first place. “Care to tell me what happened?”

Eames tells him.

***

It turns out that Fischer has a security detail that can rival a state politician’s, and that this security detail has a hierarchy down from the head to the peons that make coffee in between bouts of interrogation and shock treatment.

Someone leaked the information, or someone buried its nose right into it.

Either way, some loan shark or other weak-willed man that Eames had worked with before had ratted him out in exchange for an easy way out of a very long prison sentence.

He spent a few weeks in the middle of nowhere, all desert and no air in the morning, all darkness and cold in the evening.

***

“How did you get out?” Cobb interrupts, just as Eames pulls his gun from his holster and drops it on the table at his elbow. His eyes are on Arthur the whole time, Cobb realizes, and what he sees there is something he hasn’t before.

For all of Eames’ bravado, Cobb knows that he doesn’t like failure, especially when failure ends in unnecessary casualty.

“I told them where you were.”

Cobb grits his teeth. He’d feared that, and wanted so desperately not to believe it. He’s not a stupid man, he knows that Eames will have to risk a lot of things in his line of work because God knows he’s risked enough lives on his. But a part of him wanted otherwise, and he’s surprised that he feels this way.

“San Diego, California.”

Then his teeth ease, and he looks up slowly with a confused frown. “I don’t live there.” His chest loosens, and he thinks it may be relief that he feels, thawing at his sides.

Eames smirks humorlessly, dropping his head to his hand and rubs at eyes with his fingers. “My mistake, then.”

Cobb sucks in a breath. “You made me think—"

“Piss off,” Eames says, but there’s no venom in his voice. Just a startling weariness that sounds heavier than Eames looks, draped all over the chair with his arm hanging down one side, and his legs splayed out in front of him.

Cobb has to shift where he’s sat on the edge of Arthur’s bed to make sure he doesn’t jostle Eames’ feet. He tries, but he doesn’t succeed. His shin ends up touching Eames’ calf and neither of them bother to pull away.

“Worked though, didn’t it?” Eames huffs out, indignantly. His eyes are red when he rests his head in his palm. “I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“What happened with Arthur, then?”

Eames grimaces. That was a mistake, he says, a very stupid move that he’d had to do out of sheer desperation, when he pilfered a mobile phone from someone and hadn’t bothered to check if he was being followed.

“It happens.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Eames denies with a subtle shake of his head.

No, Cobb agrees. No, it doesn’t. Eames elevates his work to an art, as careful and meticulous about his work as Cobb is, and they both know the repercussions of loose ends and even looser lips. They take all the precautions necessary.

But they buckle every now and then, when moments of weakness seize them at the most unfortunate time. Cobb thinks it ironic that the casualty of his was Nash and Eames’ is Arthur.

It reminds him of the very thin line they walk, and how easy it is to tip over to one side or the other.

“They’ll be looking for you,” Cobb says, almost mechanically. He leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, and stares intently at Eames as the realization dawns on him like a punch to the gut. “When they find out that—"

“They already have.”

“Then—"

Eames shakes his head, then rises to his feet with a painful creak of his back. Cobb winces on his behalf, but Eames, as he usually does, takes it in stride. He picks up his gun and puts it back in the holster at his hip. “I’ll take care of it.”

Cobb stands up as well, the sudden movement jerking Arthur in his sleep. Arthur moans softly but Cobb doesn’t have the time to check up on him. “Where are you going?”

Eames raises an eyebrow, then jerks his head at the bed. “Stay with him. I’m going to rest for a while.”

Cobb doesn’t believe this, and Eames knows that Cobb doesn’t. But Eames doesn’t say anything at the knowledge that darkens Cobb’s eyes.

“I’ll be back later.”

No, he won’t be. Cobb knows this too. But he lets him go anyway, because if he doesn’t, Fischer will find Eames with them and Arthur doesn’t look like he’ll be able to put up much of a fight.

Cobb stills at the realization that he’d rather risk one than lose both. It seizes him, a cold rush that stills time and air, that he’s not bothered by this as much as he would like.

He looks away from Eames to find Arthur still asleep, his head turned into the pillow.

He wants to keep Arthur safe, but the thought of Eames on the run with no one else at his side but a stranger that Cobb doesn’t trust caves out his chest. His breath rushes out from his nose, and his lungs are hollowed out by a dense ball of dread that presses against his sternum.

But Eames makes the choice for him, with a soft click of the door when he leaves.

***

The morning after, Cobb dials Eames’ number.

He hears the answering ring echo in the room.

***

He goes back home and so do his kids. Arthur finds another apartment in Washington State.

“Where I’m less likely to be found,” he says ironically.

Eames is taking care of Fischer’s men; Cobb takes care of the rest.

He calls Saito.

“How can I help you, Mr Cobb?” Saito answers him after the third ring.

Cobb tells him and it takes a while for Saito to respond. That can’t be good, he thinks to himself, but he knows that this is something that he has to do. If he doesn’t want to run for the rest of his life and leave his children again.

(If he doesn’t want Eames to be running his entire life, either. But this thought is buried much deeper than the rest, only to be realizes later on, when the relief eases more than just the tightness around his neck, or the clench of his fist around his Glock.)

“Even I am under investigation as of this moment, Mr Cobb,” Saito says, then he hesitates. If there’s anything that Cobb knows of Saito, it’s his sense of honor. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

***

What Saito does is ban Fischer or any of the people under his employ from American soil.

How poetic, Cobb thinks, when he hears about it through Arthur, that he’d spent months trying to buy his way back into the States.

Now he can’t leave it.

***

When he’s sure that most of the danger’s passed, he calls Ariadne.

She’s still in Paris.

“What’s wrong, Cobb?” She’s worried; she’s always seen right through him, in that uncanny way that she does.

“Fischer’s honed in on us,” Cobb confesses, not even bothering to lie anymore. “I just called to check in on you.”

Ariadne makes a thoughtful sound.

“What is it?”

“So that’s why Arthur called in.” She pauses, “Eames did too.”

Cobb blinks in surprise. “When did Eames call you?”

“A few weeks ago, maybe.” Cobb can practically hear the cogs turn in her head. “Why?”

Cobb doesn’t know what he was expecting. Probably some sign of life from Eames, the smallest bit of promise that Eames had made it out alive. Now that he knows Arthur is here, and Ariadne is safe, and that Saito’s clout still holds some influence over some things, Cobb wants to know.

Because that’s what a leader does, he tells himself. But he knows that the apprehension that fogs over his mind and numbs his ear to the phone pressed against it, is not his sense of obligation kicking in.

He’s concerned, he realizes.

“Cobb?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah. Just stay safe, okay? Stick with Miles.”

They say their goodbyes, Ariadne with a thousand held-back questions and Cobb with half-a-mind set elsewhere.

He sits on his bed, holding the wireless phone in his hand, for a long time afterwards.

***

Five months pass, and no word from Eames.

In between jobs, Cobb has Arthur picking out trails on the grid that don’t exist, that lead to dead ends that had been dead beginnings in the first place because when Eames disappears, he blots out his tracks as he goes.

***

He gets a call when he least expects it, and barely hears the ring of the kitchen phone over the loud sizzle of lunch on the pan.

He turns off the flame and wipes his hand on his shirt before he picks up the call.

“Yeah?” He answers distractedly, keeping an eye out on the pan and how it’s teetering almost dangerously off the stove’s metal frame.

“Busy, are you?” Eames.

And just like that, he doesn’t even mind that the pan clatters noisily on the kitchen floor, spilling their lunch everywhere.

“What was that?” Eames chuckles into his ear.

It’s a welcome sound; that’s what it is, he realizes, relief, that stutters his breath as he regains his hold on things. “What the fuck, Eames,” he breathes into the receiver.

Eames answers him with a hearty laugh that reassures Cobb more than anything else.

A shaky smile tapers off Cobb’s frayed nerves as he shakes his head at himself. He braces a hand against the wall. He doesn’t realize that he’s closed his eyes, clenched them tightly, until he discovers that what he’s looking at is the kitchen floor.

Eames clears his throat, but Cobb hears the answering smile in his voice. “I’m calling collect, by the way.”

“It’s about damn time.”

“Piss off,” Eames snorts, “Kept you in suspense, didn’t I? That’s good for the heart, I think. Avoids arterial blockage and all that nonsense.”

Cobb doesn’t take the bait, because he has questions and he’s waited too damn long to talk to Eames again. “Where are you?”

“Somewhere.”

That’s not good enough, but Cobb understands the risks too. “Are you safe?”

It surprises him that he asks this, and it probably surprises Eames too. He’s answered by a ringing silence that makes it much too discomfiting to breathe so loudly so he stops breathing altogether.

“Of course I am,” Eames grunts, saving both their faces with his casual ease. “I have friends too, you know.”

Cobb recovers himself. “You must be digging so low into the ground, then.”

Eames’ answering laugh is one that he’ll never forget. It trails on until Eames is chuckling and both of them are smiling on the phone, at no one in particular.

“Eames,” Cobb clears his throat. “Why didn’t you sell me out?”

“I didn’t need the money Fischer offered.”

Cobb doubts that very much. “Imagine how many trips to Macau that would’ve gotten you.”

“Eh,” Eames dismisses with a sniff. “I never do things for money anyway.”

Cobb nods. He knows how that goes, when the job blurs into a passion for skill and getting better and better and better until he becomes the best.

Cobb did become the best, and so did Eames.

“What happens when you do?”

Eames hums, and Cobb imagines the slight tremor of his throat, and the thoughtful glaze to his eyes as he does. “That’ll be one for the books, wouldn’t it? That’ll be an interesting day.”

They both know that that day may come, when Eames is backed up against the wall, torn between saving himself and saving Cobb and Cobb knows that Eames will choose himself above anyone else because in their line of business, there aren’t any heroes.

But they both take comfort in the fact that they’re both safe wherever they are. That as far as today is concerned they have an understanding of an unspoken loyalty twisted into something else entirely that doesn’t fit them together.

END

[INCEPTION] FIC: I'm a heathen and evil like you (Cobb/Eames) R, to be safe.

bronson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:31:26 GMT

I'm a heathen and evil like you
Cobb/Eames
For the inception_kink prompt: Eames didn’t seem too surprised when Cobb showed up at the casino. Yeah, he might have contacted him off-screen to arrange a meeting, but I’d prefer to think that Cobb drops by so regularly that Eames is completely unphased.
not for fermine, who does not support this pairing. >:O but is long-suffering enough to have betaed this for me. ty, bebs. aaaand for the people on tumblr WHO LIKE THIS PAIRING. COBB/EAMES, WAVE THAT FRICKIN FLAG.

i. london, england

Beer spills all over the floor as the crowd cheers and Eames jumps to his feet.

“The bloody hell was that, then?” He shouts at the makeshift boxing ring nearly two floors down.

His fighter is clearly winning, even with blood splattered all over his face and torso, even though his fingers are splintered and somewhat misaligned. He was winning and that’s what matters. But one blow to the head and he was down.

Fuck. Three thousand quid he put in this match.

The balcony is packed, and the air is hot, but Eames ignores the pack of bodies that press against him. Nobody cares what happens in the crowd here, and no one complains about the heat, or the sweat, or the fact that it’s not at all sanitary to nurse wounds already gritted through with debris and God knows what else.

He doesn’t notice the hand on his shoulder until it presses too tightly.

Eames looks up. He’s surprised by the face that meets him, here of all places. “What are you doing here, then?”

Cobb shrugs and he looks out of place, Eames thinks, in his usual suit and shirt and trousers and brogues, next to the sea of ripped jeans and rugged faces around them. “I was serious about that offer, you know.”

“What offer?” Eames asks, innocently, before stepping away from the balcony railing and weaving through the swell of the crowd.

Cobb follows him.

“What I got was an offer to fuck up someone’s conceived reality and it all sounds too Ray bloody Bradbury for me, mate,” Eames smirks over his shoulder, then takes a swig of (what remains of) his beer. It’s warm down his throat.

“It’s real, Eames,” Cobb presses on, shouting a bit as the crowd cheers again.

Eames grimaces, barely catching a word of what Cobb had just said. (Though sometimes, it helps that he can read lips really well.) He heads outside.

Cobb is relentless, and keeps at his tail even as a hulk of too much muscle and very little courtesy had almost side-stepped him right into a wall.

Outside, London is dark, and the contrasting quiet sucks the air from their ears.

“Well?” Cobb prompts him as soon as Eames has gotten rid of his beer bottle. (By hurling it into a dark alley, no less. Cobb doesn’t hear the ensuing sound of smashed glass.)

“Well what?” Eames replies snidely, fishing a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. It’s a ratty old thing, but it keeps him warm. He taps the pack against his hand, and pulls out a stick by his teeth. He offers the rest to Cobb.

Cobb holds up a hand. “You’re interested, aren’t you? I can tell.” He’s smug.

Eames snorts at the air of confidence about him. Of course he’s fucking interested. Dangle something like that in front of anyone’s face and see if they don’t come begging for more.

But he takes his time, lighting his cigarette and dragging in a long, filling draw of smoke and air, puffing perfect little circles over their heads.

Cobb stares intently at him, expecting only one answer and Eames can’t be arsed to prove the little shit wrong.

Not when he’d stared too long at Cobb’s face and such a telling thing like that and Cobb immediately knows what Eames will say.

But Cobb needs to hear it anyway. What a gentleman.

Eames finally relents. “Have you got a live demonstration for all this, then? Or are you just whisking me off my feet with your purple prose?”

Cobb grins, flashing promise.

Eames narrows his eyes in suspicion, but he can’t help but stare at Cobb for longer than necessary, even as Cobb turns away to flag down a cab that hasn’t arrived yet.

Eames likes a challenge, and after living on the dwindling girth of his inheritance (from his grandfather, he can’t give a shit about his father’s trustfund right just now and his father doesn’t give a shit about him right just back), spending the bulk of it on gambling and cheap liquor, this stranger drops out from nowhere and gives him the world.

He’s no man of superstition but he knows an opportunity when he sees one.

***

Eames gasps awake, the IV line in his wrist. They’re in a hotel room somewhere, and Eames tries to grasp at the floating bits of blurred details of the dream in his head.

Tokyo was vivid, down to the last snowflake that melted on his brow. He’d never been to Tokyo.

“Good, isn’t it?” Cobb grins down at him.

Arrogant prick, Eames wants to say, but he doesn’t. Because Cobb is grinning too widely, and his nerves are too unsteady.

And it’s been so long, God damn it. He doesn’t even recall the last time his mind has been so awake and so open. Not since his brief stint in MI6 did he feel so fucking alive.

“Piss off,” Eames snaps up at him, but there’s no anger in his harsh tone. Just ragged breathing, and adrenaline. And everything that he’s been thirsting for in the several months that he’s spent coasting about the backstreets of London.

He needs this.

Eames’ arm shoots out from his side and Cobb almost steps back in surprise. But Eames’ fingers are there, fisting into Cobb’s shirt, and Cobb is stumbling forward until he lands on Eames, sprawled right on top of him.

Then Eames is suddenly kissing him, all fervor and no finesse, soft lips that wet Cobb’s skin.

It feels good, he thinks, and he almost kisses back. But he doesn’t. Cobb shakes his head and pushes against Eames.

He doesn’t get very far. Young as Eames may seem, his hands are strong, and his arms pulse underneath his shirt at the effort of keeping Cobb just there, flush against him.

“What are you doing?” Cobb pants down at him, reeling breathless not just from shock but a sudden warmth that pools low in his belly.

“You do want me to do this, don’t you?” Eames points out, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

“No, not—" Cobb struggles to push out the words, but Eames’ hips curl and dip and—

--Cobb shudders. He sets his jaw, stubborn against the sensation.

“Of course not this but I want it, it feels good, and why the fuck not, eh?” Eames taunts, leaning in for another kiss.

Cobb turns his head, just so that Eames’ lips touch his cheek instead. “I have a girlfri—"

Eames laughs against his skin. “Do I look like I need a boyfriend?” Cobb thinks no, absolutely not, no. “It’s just sex and this is your fault anyway.”

Cobb acquiesces, yes it is. Yes it really, fucking, is, and he almost regrets it all, really, but Eames is kissing him again, even though Cobb’s lips are pliant and unresponsive. Eames is kissing him like he doesn’t need Cobb to move at all. He’s fine just how it is and he sounds so good, and he feels so good that Cobb can’t really find a good enough reason to pull away completely.

Not when Eames is unbuckling his belt, his fingers clumsy with tightly-strung energy.

This is how it feels, that first time under. The exhilarating sensation of creation and destruction, and the god-like power that grants the mind to do the impossible.

Cobb knows that feeling well enough, how it stretched his chest until his heart is rotund with too much desire for it, all at once. Now. Right. Now.

***

This is how Cobb knows that Eames is the perfect choice.

Not because Eames’ hand is tucked underneath his waistband. Or because his lips are just there, at the juncture of his neck, tonguing at his collar bone.

He knows Eames is perfect because Eames knows how it feels and he’s not embarrassed to admit it.

That is the first step to power, the confidence and the arrogance of raw power, and that is what creation is all about after all.

ii. monaco, monaco

“King of hearts,” Eames chants under his breath. “Bloody king of hearts, come on.”

The dealer reveals the turn: Queen of spades.

“Bloody hell,” Eames cries out, throwing his now useless hand at the table. All the players look at him with knowing smiles.

Eames ignores them, sipping on his White Russian with too much enthusiasm.

“Bad hand?” Someone pipes up behind him.

Obviously no, I just won the fucking block—Eames wanted to say—but it all stumbles back into his throat when he sees Cobb standing where he shouldn’t.

Right in the middle of a casino in Monaco.

Last he checked, Monaco is very very far away from America.

“Either someone’s dead or you have a hundred thousand dollars on your person right now and Christmas just came early for me,” Eames says by way of greeting. He smirks around his glass as he takes another gulp of his drink.

“No,” Cobb smirks softly at Eames. “I just missed you. I went all the way here, straight from my honeymoon, just to see you again.”

Eames raises both eyebrows in a pointed look that is neither humored nor particularly indulgent.

“Job.”

“I know,” Eames smirks right back. He puts down his now empty glass and gathers his very small stack of chips before rising to his feet.

Cobb takes a chip for himself, flipping it in the air.

Eames frowns. “That’s a thousand.”

“Yep.” Cobb flips it again.

“Here,” Eames hands him a five-hundred dollar chip, then takes his thousand and quickly puts it in his pocket.

“Short on cash, Mr Eames?” Cobb teases.

Eames rolls his eyes. “What’s the job, then?”

Cobb doesn’t tell him yet. They go upstairs, to Eames’ room, a two-bedroom suite even if Eames had only the one suitcase and no companion.

Cobb doesn’t tell him even after Eames had deposited his chips on the bureau by the door. (He’ll cash it in later.)

Or after Eames had toed off his shoes and took off his shirt.

Or after, well God forbid during, Eames rocks his hips against Cobb, hands on either side of his head, sweat on both their skins and making it a slick and messy and rough affair, the headboard rough against the wall, the sheets tight around both their fists.

***

Cobb tells him over room service, when they’d both showered, dressed down to pants they’d just picked up off the floor.

The waistband is tight around Eames’ waist and cloth caves around Cobb’s legs.

They don’t notice these things.

Several folders are already strewn about the coffee table, in between plates of half-eaten food, and wet rings from bottles of ice cold beer. (Cobb’s; Eames prefers his beer warm.)

“So you’re saying you want me to be someone else, is that it?”

“In the dream,” Cobb adds, around a mouthful of chicken.

Eames frowns at this, thinking it through. “That should be possible, I suppose. If you can build continents in a dream, then I wouldn’t be surprised if you can create people as well.”

Cobb shakes his head, quickly swallowing down his food. “You don’t create them. Just the illusion of them.”

Eames’ head quickly wraps itself around this. “I wear their faces. Convince the mark’s mind that they’re seeing the person that we want them to see, is that it?”

Cobb smiles, nodding. “Exactly.”

Eames snorts in good humor, sinking further in the couch. “What do you call this, then?”

“Forgery.”

“Forgery,” Eames echoes, rolling it around in his tongue. Tasting it, amidst the fine wine, and Cobb’s skin. “You’re making a habit of this, aren’t you?”

“Habit of what?” Cobb asks, picking through the rest of the chicken on his plate.

“Stringing me along like I’m some,” he tries to look for the right word for it. “Trout.”

Cobb sputters, trying very hard not to spit out his food. “You don’t even need bait. You just lay there and put the hook in your own mouth.”

Eames twists his lips. His eyes pierce Cobb’s, and neither looks away.

They’re quiet for a moment, regarding each other over paperwork and dinner and the fresh steam of the shower radiating from their half-dressed bodies.

Then they smile, both thinking of something less innocent than trout or bait or the job.

They both know that Eames is in it because he wants to be, that Cobb is there to provide it for him.

What it actually is, they don’t really care to find out either.

iii. las vegas, nevada

He’s losing again.

At Blackjack.

Because he doesn’t give a shit about numbers and apparently the way to beat this system is to be good at something that Eames doesn’t give a shit about.

He sighs as the dealer scoops in the rest of his chips. Fifteen thousand dollars, down the drain.

He waves over a waiter for a refill of his whiskey just as—

--his phone vibrates in his pocket.

He sighs. Goldman’s been calling him nonstop since that botched up Cobol job last month. Eames didn’t screw up but everything else did and just as everything goes with Cobol, everyone on the team takes the blame.

“Yeah,” he irritably answers his phone, without checking the ID.

There’s a pause on the other end, before: “Wow, you sound really pissed off.”

Cobb. Eames’ eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and he turns around in the swivel chair to see if Cobb’s anywhere near him. Like he almost usually is when he drops by.

He’s not.

“You have God-awful timing,” Eames remarks snidely, just as the waiter arrives with his refill. He gulps down most of it in record time, knowing that the call would end with him up and leaving the casino even quicker than the liquor could fog up his sense of better judgment.

“Let me guess, you were just about to win something big.”

“Lose something big,” Eames corrects him, in between mouthfuls of whiskey. He suddenly feels rejuvenated. He blames it on the ill-advised manner of alcohol consumption. “Just did, actually. I prefer that my descent to despair goes uninterrupted.”

Cobb snorts. Eames hears traffic over the rush of air into the earpiece, as well as the familiar sound of slot machines and loud, obnoxious drunkards.

“You’re here, aren’t you.” Eames doesn’t even need to ask anymore.

“Yeah, well, I’m here to celebrate.”

Eames frowns at this. “Divorce?”

“No, no,” Cobb rushes to cut that thought short. “It’s a girl.”

What’s a—Right. Of course. Eames smiles. “Well let’s celebrate properly, shall we?”

“I’m at the Hard Rock.”

“How very predictable of you.”

“Yeah, well,” Eames hears his smile over the crackle of the line.

“I’ll be there in ten.”

***

He gets there in six.

***

It doesn’t take a second between opening the door and closing it behind him when Eames finds himself pushed, then pulled, then engulfed in Cobb’s arms, met by Cobb’s lips.

He kisses back, because it feels so damn good.

When they pull apart for air, they’re both hard through their pants. Eames gasps in a breath, they’re both grinning at each other much too widely, their cheeks flush with arousal.

“That is a good and proper greeting, Cobb,” Eames lauds, teasingly.

“I’m happy, okay? Give me a break here.”

“I know you are,” Eames smiles, kissing him again to prove that yes, he knows. And yes, he’s happy for Cobb too. Very happy. He doesn’t care much for children himself but he knows what it means to a man to be a father. His own comes to mind and some bad blood remains there but he knows for a fact that his father was in love with the idea of fatherhood. Too in love with it, in fact. Eames can appreciate that separately from all the other shit.

“I don’t have a job for you,” Cobb admits, but he doesn’t look remorseful.

Eames doesn’t mind that. There’s nothing to be sorry about, anyway. Fuck pretense. “You’re just here for me, clearly,” he replies with a snort.

“And the strippers.”

Eames agrees. “And the strippers.”

Cobb pulls him to the bed. A very large bed, draped in white linen and a meticulous innocence about the white, eight-hundred thread count that Eames knows it’s going to be fucked up soon—

—Cobb starts undoing his pants—

—Very soon.

“Hold on a moment,” Eames starts, thoughtfully, turning Cobb around to unbuckle his belt for him. “Should we still be doing this?”

Cobb’s eyes flicker up, suddenly guarded.

Eames shrugs. “You’re a dad now, aren't you? Isn’t that a bit strange?”

“Why is it strange?”

Eames doesn’t remember why. The feeling just came up and even though Eames doesn’t care much for feelings either, not when things are good and things are good as they are without feelings complicating them and Eames appreciates things like that. Simple. Unattached. “Ethics and all that crap, really.”

“You care about ethics?” Cobb doubts it.

Eames doubts it too, but some things just need to be said. “Not most of the time, but I’m not a complete hedonist either.”

“Neither am I.”

“Are you an infidel?”

Cobb thinks about it. “I’m having sex with you behind my wife’s back.”

“Do you love me?”

Cobb doesn’t even bat an eyelid. “I care for you as a person.”

Eames laughs. “That’s a no.”

Cobb looks sheepish, then hurries to assuage him. “I don’t mean—“

“Cobb, honestly,” Eames gives a long-suffering sigh as he pulls Cobb’s belt from the loops. “My heart is not broken. It does not need to be fixed, yeah?”

Cobb shrugs, still looking more cautious than Eames thinks he should. He’s Cobb, for fuck’s sake. They’ve been through hell (well, the mind’s version of hell) together. They even got shot together and it feels real enough in dreams that Eames considers it as some sign of brotherhood. However feeble.

“Well,” Eames shrugs, stepping back and holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll just be off for another round of poker, then.”

“You’re bad at poker.”

“I have a good poker face,” Eames cares to point out.

“But you’re also good in bed,” Cobb reminds him.

Eames doesn’t need reminding, but he does acquiesce. “That is true.”

“You see my logic here, right?”

Eames smirks, already unbuttoning his shirt and toeing off his shoes. “I don’t need to be told twice.”

iv. seoul, south korea

When Eames hears about Mal’s death, he’s somewhere in South Korea. In the belly of the underground gambling system. He’s watching a cockfight, of all things, and for the first time in years, he’s actually got a winning streak to be proud over.

He hears about it through Arthur, whom he’s only ever met a few times before. (And none of those times were particularly pretty, but Eames takes things in stride and Arthur does not. It festers after several days until Eames finds the thrill of taunting Arthur a little too much to be entertained by anymore.)

He doesn’t expect Cobb to be waiting for him at his hotel room.

“What are you doing here?” is Eames’ way of greeting him. He’s both surprised and not. Surprised, because the man just lost his wife, for God’s sake. Not, because Cobb tends to find him wherever Eames is, even though Cobb doesn’t have his number and Eames doesn’t have Cobb’s.

(They call each other when they need to, only if they need to, and they tend to change their numbers afterwards. Caution and all that.)

He blames Arthur.

Cobb shakes his head, his face in his hands. He’s sitting on the couch, still wearing his suit jacket. He looks tired, dark shadows underneath his eyes. Hair a mess.

When Eames nears him, sitting down on the coffee table until they’re close enough that their knees touch, Cobb smells of the airport. And sweat. And the smog from the streets.

“Cobb.”

“I have a job,” Cobb finally says, threading his fingers through his hair as he pulls up, his back creaking, and sinking into the couch. Heavily.

Eames frowns. “That surprises me.”

Cobb’s eyes flash dangerously. “Why?”

Eames takes this in stride too. “Because Mal just died,” and he says it like it is. Because that’s what he does.

“Why is that supposed to be related to anything?”

“Because she was your wife.” Two blows in one go. Eames hates to do these things but there are things. There are things.

“I still need to work.”

“You should be hiding,” Eames shakes his head.

“I am hiding,” Cobb’s voice starts to rise, “Why the hell do you think I’m here in the first place?”

It takes a lot for Eames to snap and for the people he doesn’t mind wasting time on, his patience can run for miles.

Cobb looks at Eames, before realizing that he’s probably gone too far. He draws in a breath, steadying himself. He doesn’t apologize, because dealing with Eames means not dealing with needing to make sure that he’s not getting hurt by anything.

“What’s the job, then?”

“I need to extract from a business mogul.”

Eames nods. “Whom?”

“Man from,” Cobb gestures, shaking his head as if dislodging all the other things that he doesn’t need to think about to get to what he does. “From—Saito. Saito is the mark.”

“Just a regular extraction, then?”

Cobb nods. “Shell of it, yeah.”

“Then you don’t need a forger,” Eames tells Cobb for him.

Cobb knows this and Eames knows that Cobb knows but Eames likes to think that Cobb makes mistakes sometimes too and that Cobb does these things not because of sentimental reasons because they never have use for sentiments anyway.

Eames looks away, eyes sweeping the one-bedroom suite. “Where’s Arthur?”

“Japan.”

Eames turns back to him. “Really. You left him there?” Eames finds it hard that Arthur had allowed such a thing. Usually, he’s right by Cobb’s side. It annoyed Eames to a point but he understands loyalty. He’s no fan of it but he understands it and appreciates a man’s man, and Arthur is Cobb’s.

Cobb shakes his head. “We’re meeting there.”

“Does he know you’re here?” Eames expects yes, Arthur does, because Arthur never lets anything past him.

Cobb shakes his head again, after a moment’s pause.

Eames sighs. “I don’t know why you’re here, Cobb. You certainly don’t need me on this job and you and I both know it.”

Then Cobb looks at him, with eyes that speak more than is allowed for the both of the them. Eames feels that this is crossing some line that had been there since this all started almost fifteen years ago, back in London, when Mal was still Cobb’s girlfriend, and there was no family, and no obligation, and nothing else but the thrill of unexplored terrain to fuel their want for everything. All at the same time.

They were young back then.

Now—

--Now there’s much more at stake and Eames is a smart man, he knows these things despite not having the need to say them out loud.

Eames takes that plea for what it is, in the way that he approaches any kind of business.

Up front, face first. To hell with the consequences.

***

They don’t bother with the bed. They stay in the sitting area, with Cobb splayed over the couch and Eames towering over him. They pound against each other with a rawness that startles even Eames.

Hands claw at his back and Cobb, Cobb is screwing his eyes shut, and doesn’t bother to be silent.

Eames gives him what he needs because it feels good first. Because he likes Cobb second.

Because Cobb isn’t leaving here when Eames knows that anything can happen between now and the moment Cobb steps out of the door and damn it all, he doesn’t need guilt in his line of business.

***

To hell with the consequences.

But always, always leave room for a quick exit.

***

“Did you kill her, then?” Eames says after Cobb tells him the whole story. They’re both pulling up their pants, zipping up their flies. Eames’ shoe is lodged underneath the couch and Cobb’s suit jacket is wrinkled, a heap on the floor.

He’s met with silence.

Eames looks up, knowing full well what’ll meet him when he does.

For all the foresight, however, the punch to his face is still painful as fuck.

He reels back, clutching his cheek in his hand.

Cobb pants, his fist still wound tight. “Fuck you.”

Eames shakes his head at Cobb, smiling sadly. “I’m doing you a favor.”

Cobb leaves soon after that, and Eames doesn’t see him again for several months.

v. mombasa, kenya

Eames is a hundred chips down, in between jobs, and several months away from his last actual paycheck, when Cobb finds him again.

There’s Saito, and Fischer’s face on an A4-size paper, and the sensation of routine falling back into place like something straight out of muscle memory.

He remembers doing this, a very long time ago, cupping Cobb’s head in his palm, the swell of his groin, the hard lines of his chest.

They both finish with a sigh that’s almost nostalgic.

Eames finds it incredibly funny.

“I thought that fist to my face was some kind of theatrical farewell,” he brings up, as he pours them both two thumbs of the only bourbon he keeps in a glass tumbler. It’s hot in his apartment and both his and Cobb’s bare chests glisten with sweat.

“Apparently I’m a dense guy,” Cobb replies with a smirk, taking the glass from Eames and grimaces as the hot torrent of unsaturated liquor blots out the taste of everything else on his tongue.

Eames looks at him in amusement, preferring to take his own drink in tiny sips.

“What do you say to this Fischer job? Are you in?”

“I already said yes, didn’t I? Looked at the dossier and everything,” Eames allows with a vague gesture with his glass.

Cobb nods, hand on his hip, his own glass hovering just before his lips. He looks thoughtful, almost nonchalant. But Eames has studied so many people over the years that Cobb is anything but.

“Yes, I’ll take the damn job,” Eames sighs indulgently. It feels right, this. Just like old times. “Waving bait in front of me again, as is your wont.”

Cobb laughs, and Eames smiles at the sound. He doesn’t miss it, because they don’t meet often enough for Eames to be acquainted with it too intimately.

But it does look good on Cobb, laughing does, especially when months ago, in South Korea, Cobb kissed Eames goodbye with a fist that bruised his face for weeks afterwards.

Eames shakes his head, smiling silently to himself. He gulps down the rest of his drink, and so does Cobb. They dress up, and don’t touch again.

Arthur will be there, and so will Saito, and it’s going to be a job that will mean everything to Cobb.

Eames doesn’t know family, but he’s known urgency closely enough that the stakes are too high this time. He gambles away his wealth, he risks his own life for something he doesn’t need, but wants so badly. Cobb, however, needs this, and Eames knows need too despite it being as foreign a concept as family, and obligation, and things that anchor to him to places he feels no emotional attachment to.

So he does his job, and does it well, and when Cobb disappears in Los Angeles and doesn’t call for a long time afterwards, Eames respects that too.

END

cause i'm spineless. finally made an effort to make my dreamwidth account homier.

bronson — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:43:59 GMT

http://lestrange.dreamwidth.org
who else is on there? add? :D

time for productivity. makes a list.

bronson — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:59:14 GMT

cobb/eames

C: Why didn't you sell me out, Eames?
E: Money wasn't good enough.
C: What happens when it is?
E: *sly smile* Well now, that'll be an interesting day.

cobb/eames

"What do you want?"

"Nothing. That's a lie, I do want something. That's also a lie, I want everything. But for now I'll settle for anything."

cobb/eames & arthur/eames

Cobb pays Eames to role-play Mal in his dreams. At first he swears it's therapeutic, but he starts pushing for sex. Eames is reluctant but compassionate, really likes Cobb but thinks it might not be healthy. Cobb starts to become unhinged again, and Arthur finds out what's been going on, and steps in. When confused Eames tries to explain how he owes Cobb his loyalty, Arthur gives him a wake-up call and then claims him for himself.

eames/saito

a one night stand somehow ends up turning into a longstanding vacation at saito's forty bedroom mansion in japan. bonus points for him being under the same roof as saito's wife / other mistresses. angst, crack, orgies - whatever tickles anonauthor's fancies!

robert/saito

Five times Robert almost figures out Inception and one time he finally does.

robert/saito

He's supposed to break up his father's empire. He doesn't. Instead he destroys Saito's. Why? And what's Saito going to do?

robert/saito

Both of them are too proud to say "I love you."

[INCEPTION] Fic: Not to mention the gods (Robert/Saito) PG-13

bronson — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 21:29:58 GMT

Not to mention the gods
Robert/Saito
The five times Saito’s assistant put someone important on hold to wait for Saito to finish his (God damn) business (with Robert Fischer).
fermine's incentive for staying up with me all night. even though she did nap for a bit and left me all alone. shakesfist. and cause i'm procrastinating finishing my r/s vamp fic i give you this. also, ty to evocates for telling me about sapporo, hokkaido. that bit is for her. <3

i. david rockefeller jr, rockefeller family

“—act like this!”

“I’m not behaving out of the ordinary. If there’s anyone who’s losing their—"

“Fuck off. Don’t act like you’re the—"

Silence through the wooden double doors of the conference room. It shouldn’t be this difficult to know what’s going on, Saito and Robert’s yelling aside. The conference room is walled in by nothing else but glass but Saito likes his privacy, and so does Robert, and Saito’s assistant knows that both are loathe to deal with anything private anywhere public, much less Saito’s office. The blinds were drawn, a neat row of thick canvas that touch the carpeted floor. Saito’s assistant can’t see a thing but he, and several others in the room with him, can pretty much know what’s going on without visual help.

“Robert,” Saito says after a while. His tone is more placating; calmer; and Saito’s assistant knows that his boss had taken several breaths to achieve that kind of evenness to his voice when only a moment ago he’d been shouting at the top of his lungs.

He doesn’t hear much else after that. The clock ticks seven-thirty five, in the evening.

The phone crackles under his hand and he realizes that the call is still on.

“Sir, Mr Saito will be just a moment,” he stutters slightly, trying to remembering that he has a five figure job to handle these types of calls and that he should start acting like he’s worth every God damn cent.

“What the hell is he making me wait for?” David Rockefeller all but shouts into his ear.

“He’s,” he glances at the doors, then at the glass walls, then at the people nearby eyeing him right back. All with question marks for eyes. Saito hires people like him, which makes Saito’s assistant pretty fucking game for any challenge presented to him. He steels himself and accepts it with a tilt of his chin at his colleagues. “Preoccupied.”

They smirk knowingly, waiting for his next move.

“Well of course he’s preoccupied,” Rockefeller snorts, “What the hell else will be keeping him away from—“

He pulls his mobile away from his ear, grimacing. He waits for five, ten, fifteen seconds, and when he’s sure that his earpiece is no longer trying to short-circuit its wires, he tries again. “He will only be a moment, sir.”

“Get him,” Rockefeller grinds out, and he can almost hear the old man’s molars grind against some unfortunate soul’s bone marrow. “Now.”

Saito’s assistant gulps, but there’s not much else he can do when he’s been stalling David fucking Rockefeller for the past twenty minutes. He knocks on the door, once, maybe twice, and when he’s sure that the men inside have gotten the message that someone is coming in so you better look presentable at the very least, he turns the knob and pokes his head in.

He’s seen his boss in several positions before.

He’s seen him swallowing someone’s soul from someone’s mouth in the hallway of the hotel Sofitel in Los Angeles with a blonde woman whose name he forgets.

He’s seen him in absolutely nothing, nothing but sauna mist and sweat, when he just had to answer someone’s call and that someone had sounded like the entire city was on fire and Saito was the only person who could put it out.

He’s seen him punch a bartender in the face after too many whiskeys.

He’s seen him after too many whiskeys in his study.

This one he hasn’t seen before, not even while Saito had still been married, or, for that matter, while Saito had still kept his Brazilian mistress on the side.

Their backs are to the door, both of them looking out the window. His boss’ bespoke suit stretch across his shoulders as his arms strain to wrap around the man in front of him and the man—Robert Fischer, no less—is leaning back against him. They’re whispering too lowly for him to pick up on any of the words.

He’s still for a moment, surprised, and that’s all that Robert and Saito needs, really, for smiles to be exchanged, and for Saito’s arms to tighten even more. Robert Fischer, whom he had never seen smile before, is smiling. Smiling so widely and so unguardedly that he finally remembers that things like this aren’t meant for his eyes.

So he looks away for a moment, before he finally clears his throat and the silence is ruptured.

Robert jumps, but Saito’s arms keep him there, pressed up against him. Saito doesn’t so much as bat an eyelid when he turns his head; but his glare at his assistant does speak more than he needs to.

“Mr David Rockefeller on the line for you, sir.”

Saito grimaces, shaking his head, but when he looks at Robert, he does so with great tenderness that his assistant wonders if Saito had ever needed affirmation from anyone in his entire life.

The answer, it appears, is yes.

Robert nods, but he doesn’t look happy about it. Saito doesn’t, either, but he does pull away, and holds out his hand.

He gives his boss the phone. “I’m sorry for the interruption, sir, but Mr Rockefeller insisted that I—“

Saito waves him off, distractedly, already holding the phone to his ear.

He turns to leave, but before he does, Saito turns back to him, pressing a hand against the speaker. “Next time. You wait for me, do you understand?”

“But sir—"

Saito shakes his head, once, sharply. Very sharply. And he knows that Saito is dead serious. “You wait for me.”

He can only nod, but Saito has already turned away, exchanging hurried pleasantries, but he can almost swear that the entire time Saito’s on the phone, or as much of the conversation he can glean from it as he turns to leave the conference room, his eyes were on Robert alone.

ii. richard stengel, managing editor, time magazine

“Where is he?” She asks him the moment he tells her that, Sorry, madam, Mr Saito can’t be with you right at this time but—

“He’s—"

--in a meeting with the company’s board of trustees. From where he’s seated at some corner of the room, right beside the other assistants, all with Macbooks open on their laps, mobile phones in their hands, and both of their ears and all of their attention concentrating on everything their respective bosses say, he sees only Saito’s back, a forbidding line of fine, tailored suit, cut off by the equally forbidding line of fine, tailored leather upholstery of the swivel chair he’s sat in.

“—busy.”

“Too busy for me? Come now, that simply cannot be. This article cannot be stalled for any longer than necessary,” Stengel clicks her tongue.

“Thirty-five percent to Shell,” someone says from the opposite end of the table. A meaty fist pounds on the table top.

Saito’s shoulders tighten, and his arms brace themselves on the armrests. His knuckles turn white.

“No,” Saito says. It’s the first time he speaks and the meeting has been going on for nearly an hour now. “Thirty-five percent goes to us. Fischer-Morrow is a topnotch company that has just been served on a silver platter and the other companies are rushing to get at least one percent. We have this opportunity to get a large share, I suggest we take it.”

The trustee scoffs. Saito’s hands tighten even more until his assistant can almost hear the leather groan at the pressure. “Fischer-Morrow was worth twice as much when Maurice Fischer was still alive. Now that the ownership had moved on to his son,” he shakes his head, “It’s barely a commodity.”

This is when Saito’s assistant knows he should intervene. Otherwise, it’s going to be another repeat of the Valencia Expo ’03, which Saito had had to make up for by working twice as hard for the rest of his life.

“Mr Saito,” he quips, and several heads swivel to his direction. “A phone call for you.”

Saito grunts, but he does rise from his chair. He doesn’t ask who it is. He simply grabs the mobile and leaves the room.

He’s gone for nearly half an hour and when he comes back, the board had moved on to other affairs—the Pfizer deal that’s been on the grill for months now—and he doesn’t speak another word for the next three hours.

***

When he picks up Saito’s personal mail, picking through the bills, the junk mail, the random letter or two from his parents in Japan, he finds a copy of next month’s Time.

On the cover is Robert Fischer.

***

Three weeks later, on the front page of the New York Times’ business section—

--is Robert Fischer.

***

Nearly two months later, Fischer-Morrow flashes brightly in the marquee along Wall Street.

15.4% in green.

***

During the board meeting the week after, the corporation purchases the thirty-five percent of Fischer-Morrow and Saito isn’t there.

His assistant, however, tells him the good news over the phone but Saito only laughs before ending the call.

Saito already knows, even before Fischer had been the cover of Time, before that fantastic interview on Anderson Cooper 360, before Fischer had even decided to dismantle his father’s corporation.

He likes to think that he works for the master of circumstance. Saito never settles for coincidences; he fucking makes them.

iii. eitaro itoyama, real estate

They’d arrived in Hokkaido just three hours ago, and shortly after that had immediately headed straight to Sapporo. It’s cold, and he shivers slightly inside the coat he had sworn was thick enough for this kind of weather, from the numerous times he had come to Japan with his boss, but apparently, he’s doomed to this kind of suffering whatever he does.

Beside him, Fischer’s assistant barely bats an eye as a cold gust of wind hits him in the face the moment he leaves the warmth of the van they’d ridden in.

Saito and Fischer are already inside. It’s Fischer’s first time in Saito’s house in Sapporo. From what he remembers, Fischer doesn’t like the cold very much.

His—or, rather, Saito’s—mobile buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out.

“Saito-san?” he’s immediately greeted by.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this is his assistant. He’s currently—"

“It’s alright, it’s alright, I’ll wait. But I won’t too long, yes?” the man says in heavily accented English. “The green is waiting and Saito owes me a game,” he laughs, the sudden spurt of laughter that business men seem to have a knack for when other people find nothing at all funny about the situation. Or the joke. As Saito’s assistant, however, he’s obliged to laugh as well. Then the man turns serious, “Tell him.”

He rushes inside, bypassing the thin stream of Fischer’s security detail already taking their posts at the entrance. (He doesn’t see the point in this, considering that Saito’s neighbors are ridiculously wealthy people who probably won’t even have half a mind for petty thievery. But the Americans are always careful.)

Once inside, he’s relieved by the warmth that immediately thaws the stiffness of his ears.

It’s homey. He’s been here before. On several occasions with Saito’s wife, when she felt like going for a ski and Saito had felt like going to Brazil to escape from her.

They’re talking in the living room and he strains to hear them.

Their voices echo against the wood, muffled slightly by the crackling fire in the large hearth nearby.

“It’s quite lovely, isn’t it?” Saito asks Robert, looking almost hopefully at him. His eyes shift to his assistant, right over Robert’s shoulder, and he holds up a hand. Makes him wait. Saito always makes him wait, but he’s used to that already.

He takes the moment to let the warmth tingle down his spine and un-freeze his suit from his sides.

Robert shrugs, unimpressed. He’s pulling the gloves from his right hand with his teeth. “It’s fine, I suppose.”

Saito frowns, and if his assistant didn’t know any better, he can almost mistake the slight shift of Saito’s black turtleneck around his chin as Saito actually shrinking, tentative. “I bought this ten years ago. We can have it renovated, of course.”

He’s trying to sound casual, and he does succeed to a point. The way he shifts to look at the miniscule cracks on the walls, or the very thin film of dust on the Gemelli coffee table right by his feet.

However, he knows his boss. He’s been in his employ for nearly twenty years now; he also knows that Saito keeps this house spotless, practically hires a team to redecorate it every year, despite him not being around for most of it.

(He’s visited the Ethan Allen website too many times to know that Saito likes details and he chooses every piece of furniture himself.)

Robert smiles, but it’s strained, and patient. Indulgent. Saito sees right through it but he does it anyway. “I don’t care. As long as you don’t fly out of hear the following morning then,” Robert chuckles, shaking his head, “I really don’t care.”

Saito doesn’t seem reassured by this. If anything, he looks like he’s stumbled even deeper into despair. “If this is about that Matisse painting, we’ll have it here,” he points to the wide, white ceiling beside the fireplace. It’s where his wife’s paintings used to be; they’d all been of her. “How wide is it? Some five feet? Six?”

“It’s fine,” Robert interrupts. He’s not looking at Saito. He’s rubbing his eye with his ungloved hand and lowering himself on the newly vacuumed settee, an old Barbara Barry that Saito himself had flown to London to purchase in person. “Really,” Robert looks up at him, tired but earnest. “I’m fine.”

Saito frowns, he doesn’t believe that.

Then the earpiece crackles against his palm and he remembers that someone’s still waiting on the other line. “Sir?”

Saito looks up at him, eyebrows raised. “Who is it?”

He checks the LED screen for the ID. “Eitaro Itayoma on the line.”

Then Saito’s face lights up and reaches over to take the phone from him.

(It’s not that easy, his assistant has to weave through an 19th century round table, a large bonsai, and some statue of a dog that may be gold, may not be gold, but still looks too expensive for him to accidentally bump and break into tiny little pieces.)

“Ah, Itayoma-san,” Saito greets the man once he’s pressed the phone to his ear. He throws a smile at Robert before walking off to the kitchen to take the call.

“Who’s Eitaro Itayoma?” Robert asks him, looking up at the ceiling with vague interest. His arms wrap around his middle, even though his coat is probably already too thick for the warm air indoors.

He tells Robert and Robert only sighs in response.

They both know what this call means.

***

Saito bought a house.

“Rented it,” Saito corrects Robert over breakfast some few weeks later. “My good friend thought it’s the ideal place for a vacation and I know we both need one every now and then.”

Robert hums; he doesn’t even bother to try to look excited when Saito already knows how unexcited he is about it.

Saito looks at him intently. “In Spain.”

Here, Robert does look interested. In fact, his eyes even light up, and Saito’s assistant doesn’t remember Mr fischer looking so engaged in anything related to Saito’s expenditures. Normally he scoffs at them when he learns of his latest big spend. “Where in Spain?”

“Madrid.” Saito smiles mischievously.

Robert smiles back, biting his lower lip in an effort to not grin altogether. “Really.”

Saito shrugs, feigning casual dismissal. “I didn’t think you’d be interested, of course. But my friend did insist that—"

“For fuck’s sake,” Robert laughs. “You had me at Madrid.”

Saito grimaces at the cliché reference, but he laughs too, and soon enough they even forget that Saito has a meeting at ten-thirty, or that Robert has a flight to make later that noon. They forget that their two assistants are waiting at the table beside them, and that they’d already finished their breakfast hours ago.

iv. roger blumenthal, m.d., johns hopkins university school of medicine

Saito is delirious and has been for the past several hours now. His skin burns to the touch when his assistant presses a warm palm across his forehead; he flinches at the fever that’s suddenly spiked since the last time he’d checked.

He has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the most unprofessional he’s ever been since he’d been hired by Saito years ago.

They’re in Tokyo, thousands of miles away from the doctor on hold and the only other people left within shouting distance are three of Saito’s bodyguards and the maid who’s already busy cooling blankets in the kitchen.

“—high?” Blumenthal asks him.

“Higher than two hours ago, sir,” he answers, the mobile wedged in between his chin and his shoulder. He’s too busy tracking Saito’s body temperature with one hand, unbuttoning Saito’s shirt with the other.

Saito collapsed in the middle of a meeting earlier that morning, and since batting away his assistant’s hands in the few seconds he’d been lucid, he’d promptly fallen beneath some kind of fog that he hasn’t surfaced from since they’d called for the security detail to assist Saito to his car.

He claims it’s only the heat, but the A/C in the conference room had been set to near freezing.

“Has he finished his medication?”

He hesitates at that. On Saito’s bedside table are several bottles. He rattles the one nearest to him. It’s still heavy; he himself had bought it almost two weeks ago.

“Well?” The doctor prompts him.

“N-no.” After Saito’s streptococcal infection had faded a few days ago, he didn’t appear to have bothered to continue with the medication.

Blumenthal sighs. “Get him—"

Saito moans, turning his head to press his cheek against the pillow. He mumbles something into it and his assistant dislodges the phone in his ear to lean forward, trying to catch the words.

“—bert.”

“He’s not here right now, sir. But you need to drink something, alright?” He tries to sound placating, but Saito’s not having it. He knows that the person he needs is not there.

Saito sighs, his eyes screwing shut with a tightness that looks painful to watch. “Find him.”

Negative. Robert Fischer is in Australia, and has been there for the past few weeks trying to pin down a merger deal he’s been working on, day and night. Saito’s assistant knows this from the several times he’s been sent to find Fischer and invite him to dinner with Saito—most of those times, he’d returned to his boss with nothing remotely good to say.

“I—Sir,” he tries, more forcefully this time. He puts the phone down on the bedside table before getting the pill bottle and shaking a couple into his hand. He grabs the water bottle he’d asked for the maid to bring in earlier.

Saito shakes his head, then turns his back to him. He shivers, slightly, underneath his wrinkled shirt, but his pillow is stained with sweat, and the line of his shoulders is tense, stubborn, even in his semi-conscious state.

He sits on Saito’s bed for a moment, but Saito doesn’t stir again.

So he grabs the mobile, ends the call with Blumenthal without so much as a goodbye and speed-dials Robert Fischer’s private line as he pushes himself up and walks out of the room with a soft click of the door.

***

Robert arrives later that evening and by that time, Saito’s fever had already fluctuated and altogether left. He’s sitting up against a pile of pillows, dressed in a plain undershirt his assistant had unearthed from somewhere he didn’t bother to ask about.

His assistant immediately stands up from where he’s slumped in the sitting area nearest the LED television mounted on the wall but Robert waves him off and heads straight to Saito.

He leaves them once he hears Saito’s tired laugh, and he’s sure he’s not needed anymore.

***

He gets a call from Blumenthal a couple of hours later. He’s downstairs when the phone rings, thudding on the marble countertop in the center island of Saito’s kitchen.

He grabs it as he rushes, leaving his half-eaten sandwich behind, taking the stairs two at a time.

He almost bumps into Robert, who’s dressed down to his shirtsleeves, his suspenders hanging by his legs.

“He’s resting,” Robert stops him with.

“Yes, but the doctor’s on the line and—"

Robert grabs the phone from him. (They both have a habit of doing that, he muses.) “I’ll take it from here.”

He hesitates, and Robert clearly sees it.

“It’s fine,” Robert reassures him, turning to go back to the bedroom. “Get us some food too, would you? I finally convinced him to eat something,” Robert says over his shoulder.

v. kanon saito

Ten weeks in Japan, during the winter, and he’s just about ready to sleep in for the rest of the weekend. Saito had promised him a break, after almost forty-eight hours, straight, of too much traveling and too little sleep for the both of them.

He’s reclined in his economy class seat. He has a flute of champagne in one hand, and White Tiger in the other. His legs feel like lead.

Then his phone rings.

Of course. His phone always rings.

He puts everything down and fishes his mobile from his coat pocket. Almost fifteen thousand feet up in the air, somewhere over Africa, and a call still gets through. Saito, of course, buys an airline that allows cellphone use on board.

“Why is my son not answering his phone?” A calm, slow voice of a woman speaks softly into his ear.

Shit.

He glances at the curtains that separate the first class cabin from the rest of the plane. Rather, Robert and Saito from the rest of the passengers (which consists only of him, five security personnel, Robert’s assistant, and five of Robert’s security personnel—they’re all separated by rows upon rows of empty seats).

Those curtains have been drawn since the moment they’d boarded the plane.

“Mrs Saito,” he begins, already stumbling out of his seat and into the aisle. He doesn’t have his shoes on. “Your son is—“

“I just received that package he sent last week,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard him, and it’s in the same soft, placating tone that he wishes his mother would use every so often. “I want to thank him.”

Saito’s assistant chuckles nervously. He’s right by the curtains. The plane kitchen is empty, save for the packed lunches (all in plates, covered in thin plastic film, chicken, lovely) stacked against the wall. “I can tell him for you if you like, Mrs Saito.”

“No, no,” she answers, breathily. She pauses. She pauses so long that he’s not even sure she’s still there when his thumb hovers over the END CALL button. “No. I want to tell him.”

He curses, silently. “Well, Mrs Saito,” he says in a much louder voice, hoping that his boss would take the hint and go outside. He personally doesn’t want to poke his head in there. “Mr Saito will be available in a moment if you would like to stay on the line.”

He hears Robert’s laugh from beyond the curtains, quickly muffled by something. Someone.

He stands by the curtain for a while longer, holding the phone near his ear to make sure that the call is still connected. He shifts, from one foot to the other.

He checks their lunch. Oh, beef and chicken.

He checks the economy cabin, and finds Fischer’s assistant asleep, propped up against the window.

He goes to the lavatory, double checks it to make sure it’s empty. (Of course it is.)

Saito still hasn’t come outside.

He sighs. “Mrs Saito?”

A very long pause. He even hears her breathe rather loudly. “Yes?

He sighs again. “Hold on a moment, please.”

He’s starting to get frustrated. Checking his watch, he realizes that it’s been almost fifteen minutes since he’d hinted, really quite loudly, that his boss’s mother is waiting on the line.

Just as he gets to the curtain, Saito draws it with a quick jerk of his arm. He’s in his suit, impeccable as always, but there’s a flush to his cheeks that his assistant is sure isn’t some lingering symptom of the illness he’d just recovered from a few days ago.

Wordlessly, he hands the phone to his boss. If he’s too confident with the raised, and albeit unamused, eyebrow, he chalks it up to exhaustion and sleep deprivation.

Saito, however, is in a good mood, and simply smirks at him as he takes the phone.

“Ma?” he greets her, and wanders back into the first class cabin. He leaves the curtains open.

Around him, his assistant realizes that the cabin now looks like the entirety of a private jet’s cramped interiors. The several seats had been removed, to give way to a white settee to one side, a carpet in the middle, and the most comfortable looking airplane seats to the other side.

Robert is on the settee, draped lazily on it, with his feet dangling from the arm rests. His feet are completely bare, and his undershirt rides up to reveal a patch of pale skin.

“Is that your mother?” Robert mouths at Saito.

Saito nods, and they share a wide grin. “No, Ma, it’s only Robert,” he says into the phone.

“We’re sorry about the wait, Kanon,” Robert calls out. “Your son is a very important man. He’s terribly in demand.”

Saito rolls his eyes at Robert as he resumes his seat on the settee. Robert lifts his legs to accommodate him, then rests his feet on his lap once he’s settled in. “She says thank you for that coat you’d bought for her.”

Robert shrugs, but the sight of Saito’s assistant lingering at the aisle distracts him. He’s given a look; a very meaningful one that possibly means the longevity of his employ, so he ducks his head, resumes his seat, and when he hears more laughter, and more talk, and the sharp draw of the curtains some few minutes later, he can only be relieved that his mobile isn’t on his person anymore and he doesn’t need to disturb Robert and Saito again for the remainder of the flight.

END

[INCEPTION] Fic: Tear down these monuments (Robert/Saito) [1/2]

bronson — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 05:50:02 GMT

Tear down these monuments
Robert/Saito (past Eames/Saito, some implied Arthur/Eames.
Vampire AU, where Eames, Saito, and Arthur do not sparkle, and Robert requires a mountain in the middle of Africa to be impressed by anything.
for fermine, cause she puts up with my shit all the time. also, thank you walkingxorgasm for the quick beta.

“You’re watching him again,” Eames says from somewhere above him.

Saito stands just underneath an oak tree, the shadows of the canopy above concealing him in a darkness that encompasses all things at such an ungodly hour.

“I’m watching the house.”

Eames smirks. The tree doesn’t so much as groan underneath his non-weight as he jumps from his feet and onto a comfortable perch on the tree branch. Saito hears his feet sway, shifting the air above his head.

Saito doesn’t look at him; he doesn’t need to. He can hear him just fine, even though Eames hasn’t opened his mouth since he’s arrived.

“There’s nothing interesting about that bloody house. It’s just another ski lodge in the slopes of-"

“Colorado.”

Eames snorts. “Colorado,” he echoes, derisively, making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world.

“I didn’t ask you to be here,” Saito points out. He’s been standing there for nigh on several hours now, leaning against the tree, but he doesn’t feel the scratch of rough bark against his cold skin. Nor has he noticed the passage of time or the growing hunger in his belly as the night wore on till the early hours of the morning.

“You never ask,” Eames points out, and Saito hears the smile in his thoughts. “But you need me around anyway.”

Saito doesn’t even bother to argue with that. He needs Eames around because Eames is Eames and Saito needs a push every now and then, especially when he hesitates for too long, or forgets to eat when he needs to.

He has never been quite as neglectful.

***

“Wait till he's asleep, Mr Eames,” Saito admonishes the fledgling bursting with energy.

They’re in an abandoned building somewhere in the backwaters of London, sharp eyes trained on a ragged thing of a human being. Someone who won’t be missed.

Eames’ hunger is loud and abundant and at such a young age, Saito knows that it is all that Eames world consists of: a gnawing pit of hunger that claws at his exanimate innards, growling and rumbling. The only other feeling that Eames will ever have to feel from now till the rest of eternity.

“What bloody hell do I have to wait for?” Eames hisses at Saito, but Saito doesn’t hear him speak. All that Eames needs is a sharp glare for Saito to know that the loud voices in his head are as demanding as Eames’ thirst. “He’s right there, for fuck’s sake.”

Saito grasps Eames’ trembling arm and pulls him away, a little farther away from the building and into the safety of a crumbling overhanging thing above them. Some remnant of England’s discontinued renaissance. It smells faintly of old mortar.

“This is your first lesson, Mr Eames,” Saito grits under his teeth. He doesn’t bother with silence, because some things need to be said. “Control.”

Eames licks his lips, and the sparse moonlight glints off of his sharp teeth. “Fuck control.”

“No,” Saito admonishes him, forceful even in the gentleness of his tone. He pulls at Eames’ arm until they’re standing close enough that Eames strains to look up at him. Saito draws to his full height, his hands anchoring Eames by his waist. He leans in, until all that Eames could smell is Saito and the nonscent of his cold, marble skin of several lifetimes. “It is what will save you in the end.”

***

The minutes wear on and all that time, the silence is disturbed only by Eames’ fidgeting. Three hundred years and Eames is still restless. Always doing something with his hands. Saito knows that if he looks up, he will find Eames wearing the branch’s bark into flattened wood, or some leaf or several into unrecognizable tufts of dead, moist green.

Saito sighs, and closes his eyes in an attempt to rein in his patience.

Three hundred years and Eames still manages to get under his skin.

“Where’s Arthur, then?”

Eames shrugs. “Fuck if I know.”

Saito looks up, then, sharply. “You should know.”

“Well, I bloody don’t right now, alright?” Eames rolls his eyes at him, before dismounting from his rather obnoxious straddle of the tree branch. He lands silently beside Saito, his feet finding purchase on the earth broken haphazardly by the crawl of roots and stone outcroppings.

“Where have I gone wrong with you?” Saito asks him, to which Eames only grins.

“I’m perfect.”

Saito sighs, but he does allow himself a small smile. He doesn’t, however, let his attention waver from the house he’s been watching for several nights now. He needs every minute there is to the night. He craves it more than he craves for blood.

“Huh,” Eames mutters under his breath.

“Hmm?” Saito asks, distractedly.

“We agree on something for the first time in months.”

“We won’t be agreeing on anything if Arthur ends up massacring the rest of Colorado tonight because of your negligence,” Saito replies, his tone curt. He’s a generous man. Or he used to be, but he likes to believe that he’s retained that quality even now. He’s generous but he’s stern; he doesn’t like insubordination and Eames just happens to be the very definition of the word.

Eames snorts, but he does bristle and glance away for a moment. To which direction, Saito can only guess that it’s Arthur’s. Wherever he is.

“Find him.”

“What, and leave you here to starve? Not bloody likely.” Eames says, and Saito knows concern when he hears it. It takes a while to get used to Eames’ absurd form of affection but Saito has had the past three centuries to figure Eames out and he likes to think that aside from Arthur, Saito knows Eames the most.

“I’ll be fine right where I am, like I have been since before you came along,” Saito reassures him. He also knows when to relent; when to let Eames have his little victories every now and then.

“Well, you haven’t stalked anyone as hard as you’ve been stalking this one,” Eames points out, jerking his head at the lodge’s general direction.

“I don’t stalk,” Saito corrects him.

Eames smirks, but he does start to move away, presumably to go look for Arthur as Saito has instructed him to. “Sure,” he throws over his shoulder. “Because several months of you following me around through West End was not stalking at all.”

Saito grunts.

“And,” Eames continues, even from several feet away. “Cobb waiting for Ariadne to turn eighteen before he—"

“Alright,” Saito interjects. “I get your point, Eames.”

Eames smirks, triumphant, before throwing a wave at him as he disappears with a gust of fog and wind.

Saito sighs, shaking his head at himself, before returning to his nightly vigil.

Lights begin to dim inside the ski lodge. One by one, the windows darken until the balcony on the second floor remains lit.

There, that is what Saito has been waiting for.

The barest glimpse of a silhouette through the glass panes of the balcony door. A slender figure of a man, looking outside to the absolute darkness that only Saito can see through.

Bright blue eyes, looking farther and farther away from the oak tree. Towards a sea of stars that Saito intends for him to never ever reach. A stern jaw that, clenched too tightly shut, lips that barely move when he speaks. Lips that never smile.

Saito tenses, fighting the urge to step out from the shadow of the tree. It will take only one small leap up onto the balcony, a litany of smooth words and age-old charm to edge this man into utter compliance under his hands, to welcome Saito into his world. For Saito to never leave it.

But Saito holds back, just as he always does, and the moment is gone.

The light dims, and altogether darkens, and the man leaves his sight.

***

It’s winter in New York.

“Bloody coats,” Eames mutters beside him, his shoulder bumping Saito’s, as they walk down the brightly-lit sidewalk along Rockefeller Center.

Saito smirks, “Then you shouldn’t have worn one.” But he’s wearing one himself, tweed and plain, but thick around his arms and light around his ankles at every stride.

“I’d look a bit stupid without them,” Eames points out.

“Then why are we discussing this?”

“Because,” Eames bites out, “It’s your genius idea to come all the way here in the first place. I was perfectly happy with Australia.”

Saito had been, as well. Sydney was warm, and he knows that Eames missed warmth. London nights are dreary and warm and much too crowded; St Petersburg is just dreary, however cheerful the place had been after the Cold War.

“If you’re here because of—"

Eames stops, and Saito does too.

“Bugger.”

Saito ignores him because right across the street, lit dimly by a garish shop window that Saito promptly forgets about, is the man from Sydney.

Eames’ elbow nudges his side. “Go on, then.”

Saito grunts at him, shaking his head, but his eyes never waver. Even from several feet away, he picks out the fine details of the man’s coat, the bespoke quality of the suit that hardly stretches across his front, the long line of his legs, the dulled toe of his shoes, the moist curl of the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

“Wait a bit longer and he’ll be eighty and wrinkled.”

Saito frowns at Eames, annoyed. “Not everyone is as impatient as you.”

Eames snorts, then jerks his head at the man’s direction. “Apparently your boy there is.”

Saito turns back to the man but he’s no longer there, in his place is a group of drunken teenagers, waving their hands at the oncoming traffic. A cab had already come and gone.

“And there he goes.”

Saito elbows Eames in the side, and he doesn’t even bother to be gentle. “Just for that, we’re going to Alaska tomorrow.”

The groan that Eames emits should please him, but it doesn’t, because an opportunity had slithered past his grasp for the nth time in the past several months. Saito is a patient man, but he hates it when something like fate or, in his case, Eames intervenes and screws everything up for him.

He’d think that immortality is enough of a screw you to the laws of the universe, but sometimes he forgets that he’s got a companion that saddles him with a universal counter to everything that the effort of evading the natural flow of things had already been rendered pointless.

***

“—have you done, Arthur?” Eames cries out from the living room.

Pleasant evening, Saito thinks to himself, as he eases himself into a more decent attire for the night. He grasps his suit jacket in his hand on his way out of the basement.

He feels Eames just above, and a presence that must be Arthur some few feet away. But he needs neither to know that the two of them are arguing again. Eames’ voice is loud enough and Arthur, who hasn’t had the proper time to reel in his strength yet, is punching fists through the wooden walls again.

(Saito reminds himself to invest in a concrete home next time.)

Once he makes the top step of the stairwell, however, he reels back.

A strong scent of something, something good, and something delicious. Something so painfully familiar assaults his nose.

He grimaces, grunting as his foot slips and he stumbles down several steps.

Hands grasp on the railing mounted on the wail. His chest heaves, dragging in air that he hasn’t needed to fill his lungs in more than a thousand years.

His throat chokes, working awkwardly around a hunger that he’s spent several nights completely forgetting about.

He smells—

“You alright?”

And Eames is suddenly there, startling Saito from his thoughts. The basement door opens, and just around him Saito sees the warm glow of the kitchen. The scent returns, clawing at his skull, tugging painfully at the endless pit of his belly.

He groans, as he attempts to regain his footing.

Eames helps him up with strong hands around his arms.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—"

“What’s going on?” Saito bites out through gritted teeth.

Eames shakes his head, his lips pursed. “You’re probably going to love Arthur for it. But I,” he hesitates, and it takes all of Saito’s remaining control to not strangle the words from him. “Played it safe and made Arthur leave for the rest of the night.”

“Eames.”

Eames clears his throat, then backs away slowly, nudging the basement door open with his shoulder as he goes.

Saito eyes him warily as he climbs the rest of the way up. The scent grows stronger at each step until he finally reaches the top and there, draped all over the kitchen floor—

“Good or bad, Saito?” Eames asks him, hesitantly.

But Saito has all eyes, all ears, on the prone figure. He grimaces, as the hunger grows ever fiercely, until all he wants is to touch the painfully pale skin, soothe the man’s eyes to wakefulness.

“Get out,” Saito barks at Eames. “Get out and make sure Arthur stays far away from here.”

Eames nods. He, too, knows how to pick his own battles.

***

Saito waits for him to wake up. He sits in his arm chair by the window, where none of his attention is drawn to the panoramic view of the snow-capped mountains outside but on the man that lay in his bed.

He knows that the man still lives because he breathes, his chest rising and falling softly as he lay against the pillows, dark red velvet against the man’s dark, dark hair, and the contrasting lightness of skin that Saito remembers is much too warm against his cold fingers.

He presses his hand to his lips, his unnaturally long incisors biting into the back of his thumb.

Saito knows control; it is, after all, the one law that has ruled his post-life existence, and the one law that he never lets Eames forget. But control can only do much when the man is right there.

Right there.

The man moans softly in his sleep, then turns to his side.

From this angle, Saito can see his face more freely. The patrician angle of his nose, the square jaw, the slight flush to his cheeks, the strands of hair that stick to his forehead, the hands that splay out on the dark covers.

Saito stifles a groan as he squeezes his eyes shut and for the first time in a very long time, he regrets having the most observant mind. All he sees at the back of his eyelids are vivid images, vivid details, burning more brightly than the last sunrise he’d ever laid eyes on.

***

Robert blinks awake to a dim glow of warm lights from behind wooden slats that frame the ceiling.

It’s not his ceiling.

He startles to wakefulness, sitting up right. But his head swims, and his breath catches in his throat the sensation.

He groans, pressing a hand to his eye where a headache starts to build in his skull.

Hands press on his shoulders, gently, trying to coax him back to the bed and he jerks away from it.

Robert lives alone—

--why.

He flinches, inching away from the hands--cold hands, he now realizes, a startling cold that makes the skin at his shoulders tingle uncomfortably.

A man stands by the bed, awkwardly so but Robert doesn’t see that. Nor does he see the way the man holds his hands, stiffly, in front of him, in a gesture that presumes to be reassuring but to Robert only threatens to engulf him.

The dim light makes the man’s brown eyes glare an unnaturally bright brown and Robert knows that this can’t be—

--can’t be—

He breathes. He tries to.

“What—Who—" he tries to say, inching farther and farther away from the stranger until the back of his head hits the wooden headrest behind him.

“Don’t move,” the man says, and Robert hears the faint traces of an accent, layered underneath a depth in a baritone that should not be so deep in the first place. It’s soothing, comforting; languid yet heavy like the duvet that weighs down his legs. But his nerves are in flight underneath his skin and Robert isn’t reassured at all.

“Who the fuck are you?” Robert finally manages, breathlessly, but try as he might, he can’t look away.

“What is your name?” The stranger asks, the eyes warming slightly until Robert starts to wonder if they had ever been bright in the first place.

Robert shakes his head, trying to force the wakefulness into himself. “Who the fuck are you?”

The stranger sighs and leans back, drawing to his full height. It should be intimidating, how the stern line of his shoulders are all horizontal, all planes on his chest, all sturdiness in his arms. But Robert only feels the sudden distance between them, and it eases him more so than the man’s attempts at comfort did.

Robert breathes, calming himself.

“My name is Saito,” the man introduces himself. “You’re in my home.”

Robert frowns. He tears his eyes away from the man--Saito--to look around the room. It’s large and spacious, with windows everywhere that look out to nothing but greenery and snow. He’s still in Colorado, then.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Saito smile. Robert looks back at him, warily, and his fingers clutch at the duvet around his middle. He itches for the gun he keeps in his own bedside table but he doesn’t need to look to know, to remind himself, that the one within reach is not his own. And that there is no security in the act of reaching over and finding out for himself.

“What are you smiling about?” Robert asks, annoyed by how he’s in someone’s bed and that someone has the gall to—to—

“I gave you my name. Will you give me yours?” Saito says, and Robert is surprised. He doesn’t know what he had expected the man to say. Maybe some hint of violence or smugness. Robert has been kidnapped twice before, once when he was seven years old, and the second time when he was a teenager. Both of those times he had been kept in some dark room with a bag over his head.

Not in a bed. Not in someone else’s bed.

“I’m insured up to ten m—"

Saito laughs, then, his eyes crinkling as he shakes his head. “I don’t need your money.”

“What do you need, then?” Robert snaps. He hates games, especially when they’re at his expense.

“I don’t need anything,” Saito tells him and Robert doesn’t know why he believes this. “I want only your name.”

Robert swallows something foul and large and discomfiting, his throat working around it with a sluggishness that irks him. “Robert Fischer.”

“Robert Fischer,” Saito echoes, as if testing the way it sounds on his lips. “It’s a wonderful name.”

Robert frowns. “What the hell do you want from me, then? Why am I here? What the fuck is going on?” He demands, all but shouting, and his voice startles the silence from the room.

But Saito just stands there, unfazed by it. If anything, his gaze seems to soften even more until it almost looks like pity.

Robert hates pity.

He grits his teeth, opening his mouth to say something. To get answers. To—

“Hush now,” Saito says, in a voice so eerily calm that Robert does fall quiet. His eyes widen as he looks up at Saito.

His arms turn to lead, he realizes, and a deep and settling exhaustion suddenly eases the coiled tension in his limbs. He’s feeling languid, and before he knows it, he’s falling and falling, pliant and unmoving and utterly helpless to stop it.

He starts to panic—

--then Saito is there, his large hands cupping his face, and the cold spreads from Robert’s cheeks until it feels like his entire being is engulfed in a vat of something—

--something—

His mind grasps at straws, at words chopped off and flung to the sides of his head, to very far ends that Robert can’t reach.

Fingers stroke his jaw, crawl up the sides of his face until a soothing, constant ghost of Saito’s fingers through his hair eases the ache in his head.

His eyes start to droop and he fights it, determined to know and to ask and to—

“Sleep now,” Saito tells him.

And Robert does.

***

When Robert wakes up again, it’s to the harsh glare of the sunlight.

He sits up sharply, expecting the ache he vividly remembers gnawing at the back of his skull to return full force but all that nags at him is the sleep in his limbs rudely awakened by movements too quick for them to catch on fast enough.

He’s in his room.

The parted drapes that frame the windows are his.

The duvet tucked around his waist is his.

He wonders if it had all been a dream.

But then he remembers the fingers in his hair and the warmest brown eyes he had ever seen. He closes his eyes, trying to remember them again.

They remain too vivid, too real, and he’s never really remembered any of his dreams so easily.

***

“You’re not going out tonight?” Eames asks Saito.

He’s in the kitchen, sitting on top one of the ornate marble countertops that they never really use for anything else other than decoration. He’s reading yesterday’s paper.

Saito shakes his head. He’s in his pants and shirtsleeves but the belt around his waist had yet to be buckled properly, and the buttons on his shirt are halfway done.

Saito doesn’t realize that Eames had gone quiet until he looks up and finds Eames staring at him with the most indiscernible eyes. He had always been excellent at reading people and making sure that people didn’t read him. Saito has had practice, of course, but even he can find it difficult to know what Eames is thinking until Eames lets him.

Eames shrugs, but doesn’t apologize. He rarely apologizes for everything. “So what happened last night? The house wasn’t burned down to the ground when I came home before sunrise so it must have gone well, hey?”

Saito scowls at him. He doesn’t want to talk about it and when Saito doesn’t want to talk about things, he changes the subject. “Where’s Arthur?”

The rustle of newspaper, as Eames folds it up and tosses it in the kitchen sink. (Dry. They never use it for anything either.)

“Not here,” Eames replies, his tone suddenly hardening. Defensive.

Saito waves a dismissive hand, already turning away to wander into the dining room adjoining the kitchen.

The set-up is as elaborate as it can be, given that no one ever eats there anyway. All old wood and plastic flowers and candles they’ve never lit. He drags a finger along the fine, smooth surface as he passes. A faint layer of dust has settled in.

“Where is he, then?” Saito asks, walking through the archway that leads to the living room. Eames is still in the kitchen, but proximity never stops Eames from hearing anything that Saito says.

Eames pauses, then a soft thud of weightless feet as Eames pushes himself off the kitchen counter. Saito hears it through the several layers of concrete and wood that separate them.

“I’m not angry,” Saito reassures him as he eases himself down on the leather couch that occupies most of the room. The fireplace is unlit and still looks relatively untouched, even though it’s been years since they’d moved in, and several months since Arthur had started living there.

“Really.” Eames sounds much closer. From the echoes against the walls, Saito assumes he’s in the hallway. “You should be.”

Saito smiles. “Do you want me to be?”

Then Eames is there, by his elbow, in a blur of unmoved air and time. He’s looking down at him, with the same sharp scrutiny in his eyes that had made Saito choose him above all the others all those centuries ago. “No, of course not,” then he turns thoughtful as he perches himself atop the couch’s armrest.

Saito feels Eames’ lower back against his arm. “But--?”

“You have every right to be.”

Saito agrees. “I’d have ended him months ago,” he admits to Eames. He even finds the propriety to look sheepish at the raw honesty that clearly unsettles Eames, from the way his brow creased and his lips downturned to a surprised frown. “If it weren’t for you.”

Eames smirks humorlessly, he strong fingers of his hands coming to rest on Saito’s shoulders. They stays there for a while. “You’re getting soft,” Eames teases him, but his tone is fond.

Saito sighs, leaning all the way back until his head fell on the backrest, his eyes coming up to trace the smallest imperfections on the ceiling. He tries to ignore the fact that Eames’ eyes are right up there too and from this angle, he can see the scar on the underside of his chin. “I know what it’s like to be consumed by an idea, Mr Eames. I just take comfort in the fact that I am a far better man than you for holding out this long.”

Eames squeezes his shoulder, smiling down at him. “A compliment in an insult,” he surmises, appraising it in his head. “That’s not even remotely fair, now I’m torn.”

Saito smiles at nothing in particular, and shrugs off Eames’ hands. He jerks his thumb at the front door. “Now go before he does any more damage.”

***

It’s Saito who first stumbles into Arthur somewhere in Maryland. He’s a broken mess of a thing, bleeding in places, stabbed in several, and his eyes have already closed halfway into a dreamless sleep he’ll never wake up from.

Saito has himself wrapped in an overcoat. The winter wind is harsh against his skin, but he doesn’t feel the cold. Just the biting sense of a thousand pinpricks against his cheeks. He hunches slightly, burrowing his chin deeper into the thick scarf at his neck.

He’s looking at Arthur; he gauges the slow breathing that, eventually, will be lulled to an absolute stillness.

“Eames—“ he turns, but Eames has already left his side.

Saito sighs and shakes his head, before turning away and leaving Arthur to Eames. When Eames is hungry, Eames is hungry, and not even Saito can kick any sort of sense into him.

He leaves for a while, to walk around the sparse forestry. The air smells faintly of wet earth and melted snow, and just there, Arthur’s spilled blood. His stomach clenches, but he tries not to grimace. He’ll find someone else. There’s a village not too far away from the forest.

A sharp cry pierces the night air.

Saito whirls around, dread pitting at his stomach. He fears the worst.

Some humans, like the deer hunter in Nevada or the old world lord of a dismantled earldom in England, they believe in Them, in myths and legends, and Saito and Eames had had the misfortune of stumbling into the business end of their stakes twice already.

They had escaped, and Eames had forgotten all about it the following day but Saito never forgets.

He rushes through the woods; his light feet propelling him into flight until his feet barely even touch the earth.

In seconds, he arrives at the clearing to find both Arthur and Eames sprawled on the ground. Arthur to one side, clutching his stomach, his jaw locked open in a silent scream. His eyes bugged out from his sockets as he sees sightlessly into an afterlife he can only really glimpse now, and never return to ever again.

Saito kneels down next to Eames, where he lay breathing raggedly, clutching his bleeding wrist to his chest. He’s laughing, a blood-curdling laugh that makes his teeth shine red and Saito’s skin crawl.

“Oh, Eames," Saito frowns, disappointed.

Eames licks at his teeth. “I couldn’t.”

“Well you can’t turn every pretty thing you lay your eyes on,” Saito snaps at him.

Eames shakes his head, and leaves shift underneath him. He turns until his cheek rests on the ground, watching Arthur.

(Eames likes to watch everything. He has the most vivid memory that Eames has ever seen on anyone. He can paint war on walls, down to the detail of torn name patches and every ounce of shed blood accounted for.

Eames watches when he wants to commit something to memory.

It won’t be until much later that Saito realizes just what in God’s name he wants Arthur for.)

***

“You’re lonely?” Saito stares at Eames, disbelieving. Three hundred years and Eames is lonely?

Eames looks sheepish, his hand swiping at the back of his neck. “Not lonely, no—“

“Then what is it?” Saito prompts him, getting impatient.

Arthur is in the basement, having already had his first fill. It’s still several hours until sunrise but the young can never be left outside too close to the end of the evening. It’s much too dangerous when they’re at their most rampant.

Eames sighs. He approaches Saito with a hesitation that Saito never likes seeing, but then Eames’ chest touches his and full lips ghost over his jaw. Saito can almost imagine warm breath tickling his skin but it’s been a while since he’s felt that sensation. His only frame of reference is a lingering memory dulled mostly by time, in a world different than this one.

“Don’t you just want to be with someone?” Eames asks him, his voice painfully low that even Saito’s ears strain to hear him.

“You’re with me,” Saito says.

Eames’ eyes sharpen, briefly, and it’s enough to shatter the bubble, hollow, thinned over time and too much familiarity. There’s an ache in Saito’s chest that he can’t ignore.

“This is enough.”

“You don’t understand,” Eames says, patiently, and Saito feels hundreds of years too old but never quite old enough to pin Eames down.

***

“I knew you’d be here.”

Saito doesn’t need to turn around to know that Eames is there, somewhere, amidst the crowd of expensive perfume and graying hair.

It’s someone’s birthday, Saito assumes from the elegant banner at the hotel’s grand lobby. A buffet lines up one part of the function room, embezzled with white cloth and yellow-gold trimmings. The chandeliers several feet overhead glimmer and shine; champagne flutes everywhere, even in Saito’s own hand where it remains untouched. Saito never gets drunk anymore, but he does miss the grandeur of freshly pruned grapes in wine jars as tall as his waist.

“Where’s Arthur?” Saito asks him. They’re standing somewhere off the corner, by a sparse crowd of gentlemen holding cigarillos between their wrinkled, robust fingers.

“Somewhere.”

“Here,” Saito infers.

Eames bristles. “It’s a public affair, isn’t it?”

It’s not. It’s a black tie affair that Saito had bribed his way into.

“He misses these things,” Eames finally allows him. “And he won’t cause much of a ruckus.”

“Of course he won’t,” Saito says, even though he’s almost sure that something will happen tonight but he does plan on slipping away early enough in the evening to pretend that nothing will. “I just want to be sure.”

“He’ll behave. I told him to. And besides, he wouldn’t want to ruin your boy’s party.”

Boy. Saito hates that term, but he does perk up at the mention of him. His eyes immediately seek out any sign of Robert in the thick crowd milling about in the middle of the large ballroom. Robert’s here, somewhere.

“Bloody ties.”

Saito looks at Eames. He’s wearing something formal, for once, fitting in with the strict black-and-white affair of the room with a subtle flair that he always manages to ensconce himself in when he needs to. But he’s restless, Saito can tell by the way Eames is fiddling with the tie wound tight around his neck. His waistcoat stretches tightly across his chest, despite the utter stillness of his torso, they ripple as he shifts to lean against the post.

The tie is Arthur’s. “I have plenty of ties at home,” Saito says, but already his fingers are loosening the knot, and the fine silk gives a little around the collars.

Eames shrugs, shying away from Saito’s hand with an impatient jerk of his head. “I like this one.”

Saito rolls his eyes. “You like everything of Arthur’s, even his denim trousers.”

“Jeans,” Eames corrects him, but Saito’s attention is already elsewhere.

He spots Robert by the large, glass-paned doors that lead to the connecting balcony. He looks hurried, stressed. Restless. Saito frowns, immediately straightening, and the urge to follow him makes his fingers curl into tight fists at his sides.

Saito feels Eames’ eyes on him the entire time. “He’s already met you. I don’t understand what it is you’re waiting for.”

Saito looks at Eames, and he sees certainty and stubbornness.

Eames smiles at him, soft with a reassurance that eases him somehow. “I’d run interference for you but I think you can handle this already.”

“Your faith in me is comforting,” Saito smiles back.

“Well, I do try.”

***

Saito finds Robert leaning against the stone railing. They’re alone on the balcony; the rest of the guests are inside, where the bar had just announced a free round of drinks, and the master of ceremonies is struggling to catch their attention.

It’s noisy and quiet both at the same time. The breeze whispers around the shell of his ears, the same breeze that ruffles the collar of Robert’s suit, shifts the hair at his forehead.

“Mr Fischer?” Saito tries, tentative.

Robert turns around at the sound of his voice and freezes at the sight of him.

They stare at each other for a while until Saito breaks the spell when he glances away for a moment, over his shoulder, to check if Eames is still there. He’s not.

“I didn’t think you were real,” Robert tells him.

“I’m sorry to have left you so abruptly,” Saito apologizes with an uneasy smile. He doesn’t want to disarm Robert, but at the look of steely determination that sets Robert’s square jaw, his eyes flashing caution and threat in a haze of an indiscernible murk, Saito knows that it takes much more than his presence to disarm such a man. “But I didn’t think you would want to see me when you woke up again.”

“I’d appreciate it if my abductor manned up to the consequences of his actions,” Robert says with a pointed look, before he turns back to the view of the moon-tinged countryside.

“For the record, it wasn’t I who brought you there in the first place.” Saito nears him until he, too, is leaning against the railing. The stone is cold against his palms and if he reaches over, he can touch Robert again. But he doesn’t, because Saito has more control than that.

“Who did, then? One of your minions?”

Saito almost laughs at the thought of Eames as his minion, but he does sober at the idea of Arthur being such a thing. And the laugh falls short and Saito’s throat constricts as the sound staggers back behind his teeth.

“I don’t see anything funny,” Robert snaps at him. “I can get you arrested for that. Kidnapping, trespassi—“

“But you won’t.”

Robert blinks, derailed from something that Saito knows Robert had prepared for.

“You won’t call the authorities. And you won’t tell anyone what happened,” Saito says for him, turning to face him fully. He braces a hand on the railing, fingers ghosting over the flat surfaces as he nears Robert with a fluidity that, he knows, shocks the man.

Robert continues to stare at him, his arms tightening, and Saito knows that this is the point that everyone reaches eventually. Fight or flight, the natural instinct that Saito had had to conquer with a swiftness of a predator, or, if needed, the charm of seduction. Saito chooses to do neither.

“Because it sounds so ridiculous that even you aren’t entirely convinced that it happened in the first place,” Saito finishes.

Silence meets him, and Saito waits. Reluctance claws at Robert’s resolve until the dead set of his jaw gives way to a visible struggle of his teeth to rein in a rising restlessness.

“We should start again.”

Robert looks back at him, and all reluctance gives way to wariness. “Start again?”

Saito nods, before righting himself and offering his hand. “My name is Saito.”

His chest constricts, tightly, and Saito is vaguely reminded of the sensation of held breath, of a trepidation so seizing that his entire torso freezes in wait.

Then Robert shifts, and shakes his hand. “Robert Fischer.”

Saito’s chest loosens, and his throat unwinds, and a stutter of a smile reaches his lips as he feels warmth spread through his palm, linger at the base of his wrist. He longs for it to stay there. Then he tries to remind himself that he doesn’t measure victory in increments; that this is something, but not everything. “Robert Fischer. It’s a wonderful name.”

Robert’s eyes narrow for a moment, then he chuckles, amused. His hand is firm around Saito’s as he shakes it, deftly, with a friendliness that allows far more than Saito has hoped for.

***

Eames looks up as soon as he hears the door open. He’s kneeling on the couch, and Saito sees everything in a glance; the flex of his fingers clench the top of the backrest, his forearm braced heavily, and the upholstery dips around the weight of it; his feet are bare, the soles of his feet unnaturally pale, from where they’re anchored on the arm rest He’s panting; his tie dangles loosely around his neck, dislodged from beneath his starched collar. The top buttons are undone, but the couch obscures most of what Saito can tell from where he stands behind the couch.

Saito raises an eyebrow, closing the heavy oak door behind him with the slightest nudge of his foot.

Eames lips curl slowly to a grin. “Didn’t realize you’d be back so soon.”

Then Arthur pokes his head up; his hair is mussed from where Saito can see him over the back of the couch. “Oh,” he looks uncertainly at Eames, then back at Saito. He almost looks scared, but he tries his best not to show it.

Saito almost lauds him for it. Not a lot of people has his gall and if there’s anything that Saito can respect in a person—“I see you’ve finally found a use for our furniture.”

Eames laughs, and Arthur does too, but it’s shaky around the edges. Confused and out of place.

“Why are you back so early, then?” Eames asks him, lowering his weight on his hunches.

Saito shrugs off his suit jacket, and slings it over his arm. “Robert needed to go.”

Eames’ eyes widen. “Robert.”

“Yes, yes, Robert,” Saito replies, hurrying the shock along. “You knew this would happen, don’t even pretend to be surprised.”

“Who’s surprised?” Eames looks innocent; or tries to be; and shares a smile with Arthur. It coaxes ease from Arthur, in a way, Saito realizes, until the shakiness to Arthur’s lips widen sto something more confident. More relaxed. And Arthur’s head disappears behind the couch once again.

Saito just snorts at both of them, and heads to the bedroom. There’s still some of the evening left to salvage. Normally, Saito will take every opportunity to roam the streets until the first signs of dawn but not tonight. He’s already gotten what he wanted.

“Well? I’m waiting for a thank you at the very least,” Eames calls out to him.

“Thank you,” Saito throws over his shoulder. “Arthur.”

Eames laughs, and beneath that he can almost hear Arthur laugh too.

***

When Saito wakes up the following night, it’s to Arthur sitting on meshed oak and mahogany, as dark and as smooth as he keeps his hair. His feet are stretched out in front of him, his hands braced on either side of his legs. His jaw is clenched tightly, and he refuses to look up.

Saito rubs at his eye with the back of his thumb. “A bit early for you to be awake, isn’t it?

Neither of them needs to check the grandfather clock to know that it’s only half-past six in the afternoon. The sun should still be up, and none of them should be.

“Eames told me I should apologize for what I did,” Arthur clears his throat, he looks uncomfortable as he struggles to push the words out of his mouth. No, not push, Saito thinks. It’s as if Arthur is visibly pulling the sentiment from somewhere that doesn’t exist, and it’s clearly painful for the both of them.

“That’s very cautious of him,” Saito observes, but doesn’t allow anything else as he rises to his full height, stretching his legs as he goes. He winces as the stiffness is stretched from his spine. His shirt is wrinkled, and he keeps half a mind to check his wardrobe for something more presentable.

“I’ve seen you angry,” Arthur says, and he finally looks up. His eyes are wide, but there’s a hard quality to them. An unbreakable stubbornness and Saito is reminded of why Eames chose Arthur in particular, out of all the others that he had had the opportunity to make his companion. “Eames says you can get much angrier.”

Saito laughs, and the sound visibly reassures Arthur more than the non-hostility of Saito’s voice. “You’re learning, Arthur.”

Arthur nods, a firm jerk of his head.

Saito regards him with a newfound inclination to see him in the manner that he prevented himself from doing so. Arthur did half Eames’ time away from Saito, but Saito never holds a grudge. He hurts, but he’s not quite as vindictive as Eames sometimes thinks he is.

“Are you hungry?” Arthur asks, and Saito acknowledges it as the peace offering that it is. There’s nothing more placating than generosity. Barring that, nothing more placating than food offered among two people; Saito retains that much of his upbringing, despite the several lifetimes that have weathered away at its shores.

“I’m famished,” Saito says with a smile.

They ascend the steps together, where Eames is lounging in the kitchen with an expectant look on his face. He grins at the two of them, then Saito dresses (“I don’t know why you bother with velvet. It’s so hard to wash,” Eames says from the doorway of his walk-in closet).

They prowl the streets together, picking off hooligans from the darkest alleys, staying very far away from eyes that remember them.

***

“I learned something last night,” Eames says around a graphic splash of red around his lips. He’s speaking into his coat as he pats down his chest, looking for the handkerchief Saito knows is always on his person.

Saito waits for Eames to continue, but he doesn’t, not even after dismantling the perfect Cagney fold of the handkerchief he’d finally found in his suit pocket.

“You’re so theatrical,” Arthur interjects. He’s crouching by an unmoving figure on the ground, his fingers pressed against the man’s neck. Saito can tell that the man still breathes, his sharp eyes picking up on the subtlest rise and fall of his chest.

Eames smirks at him, his mouth now wiped clean.

“Well?” Saito prompts Eames, casually wiping off a spot of blood on Eames’ chin with his thumb.

“I learned two things,” Eames finally says. “That your boy is the heir to some great fortune, and that his father is dead.”

Saito brushes off the sleeves of his coat. “I already know that.”

Eames snorts. “Of course you do,” he looks away for a moment, his eyes lingering on Arthur. When he turns back at Saito, his eyes flash in the darkness with too much mischief that almost immediately sets off alarms in Saito’s head. “I lied. I know three things.”

Saito waits. He’s learned early on that needling Eames for information only serves to prolong the agony.

“He likes roast lamb and bergère chairs.”

Saito raises an eyebrow, surprised that Eames assumes he doesn’t already know these things. He knows the first because of the whiff of Robert’s breath on the balcony; the second because of the several months he’d spent watching Robert through the windows of his home.

“Four things,” Eames quickly follows up.

Arthur interrupts him. Arthur, who knows when to disrupt the momentum of Eames’ games. “The fourth being Robert Fischer’s head of security does not stay with him during the evening. He has a driver, but he sleeps elsewhere. He also comes home straight after dinner at the Four Seasons. The driver drops him off, then takes the car with him.”

Saito eyes the both of them, wary. The smirk on Eames’ face is sly but Arthur’s lips are set on a grim line.

Then Eames shakes his head, turning away and pulling at Arthur’s arm. “You’re welcome, Saito.”

Arthur follows him, to where Saito doesn’t want to know.

He waits until they’ve disappeared into the dense forestry some few feet away, their ringing laughter interrupting the otherwise still air. Then before he’s even thought it over, he’s already heading back to the city, his stride taking on speed until the night around him blurs homogenous and vague.

***

Saito finds Robert in a more sparsely occupied part of the hotel restaurant. He’s picking through his salad, chewing slowly. He’s alone.

“Robert,” Saito greets him as he approaches Robert’s table. He makes sure to land his feet more solidly on the carpeted floor, the unfamiliar sound of his shoes is all that he hears above the muted noise of fine metal on fine plates.

He smiles when Robert looks up at him. “Saito. Fancy meeting you here.”

Saito shrugs, the barest life of his shoulders. He gestures at the empty seat. “May I?”

Robert allows him with the smallest twitch of the fingers holding his fork, and Saito sits, unbuttoning his suit as he settles in.

“Dining alone tonight, then?”

“I’m a man of routine,” Robert tells him, setting his fork on his plate to lean back against his chair. He’s nowhere near finished with his meal, Saito assumes from the barely touched food on his plate.

“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Robert shakes his head, but his face allows nothing else besides that. “There’s nothing to interrupt.”

Saito nods, crossing his legs at the knees as he too leans back and rests an elbow on the arm rest. Through layers of his clothing, he feels the fine, ornate carvings on wood. “I assume that a busy man like you has several important individuals vying for a second off of your busy schedule.”

Robert’s lips twitch. “I leave my work in the office.”

“You’re right,” Saito indulges him. “Now is the time for pleasure, yes?”

The almost-smile fades from Robert’s lips, and quicker than Saito had expected, his face closes off entirely. “Can I help you with something, Mr Saito?”

Take it slowly, then, Saito tells himself. “I just happened to be here, and you looked like you needed the company.”

Robert stares at him for a moment and Saito unflinchingly meets his eyes. He can play this game; he’s good at it, having stared down Eames several times before. (And it’s no easy task, staring down someone whose sense of self-preservation is a thick wall of concrete.)

Robert blinks first. Saito likes to think that it’s not a trick of the light that he sees in Robert’s eyes, but an actual change of heart—or, at the very least, the start of one.

“Order something, then,” Robert says, picking up his fork. “If you’re staying then I’d rather not have you watch me eat the entire time.”

Saito laughs as he turns in his seat to call for a waiter. From the corner of his eye, Robert may be smiling. Or it may be a trick of the light. Saito is, by nature, optimistic, so he hopes that for all of Robert’s bravado, Saito may just be getting somewhere after all.

Small steps, he tells himself. Small steps.

***

END PART 1

TBC.

bronson — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 05:32:35 GMT

ok i've been wondering. is fyallships like, a default rss feed thing? or did someone make it?

bronson — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 04:08:26 GMT

this is a ken watanabe picspam.
for real this time.
like, screencaps underneath the cut.
a shitload of screencaps.
enter at your own risk.

don't let yer man walk away, robert. D:

bronson — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:11:14 GMT

not sure if you guys have seen this already but:
how much does an inception cost?
Saito hires Cobb to break up Fischer’s company. So that raises the question: is this a profitable investment for Saito? Just how much does an inception cost?
wow, this article is like the full rundown of saito's unexplained wealth, uh, explained. nice.

holy shitballs, it costs about $1.4 billion to buy an airline. and not just any airline. but an airline that would do nonstop flights from sydney to los angeles. wow. wow, saito, jfc.

Saito’s spending $21 million to bribe an attorney general and several members of Congress, $1392 million to acquire an airline and $0.35 million to pay the extraction team’s wages. Total costs: $1413.35 million (or $1.4 billion).

If Saito invested $1416 million in his company’s assets, he should expect a return of 5.45 times as much, or $7702 million ($7.7 billion). The only reason Saito would be spending it on an inception is because he thinks the inception will bring more.

What could be worth more than $7.7 billion? How about a controlling interest in the Fischer conglomerate?

Saito and Fischer are business rivals in the energy industry. Saito could probably acquire bits of Fischer’s company if he wanted. “We’ll take over your Southeast Asia holdings; the joint venture will retain both the Saito and Fischer brand.” But the only reason Saito could want to break Fischer up would be to snatch up the pieces. Saito doesn’t want to modestly increase his holdings – he wants to buy up Fischer outright. To do that, he needs Fischer’s company in smaller chunks.

Again, we don’t know how much Fischer is worth. But movies are always more entertaining if the heroes are going after high stakes. So let’s assume, again, that the Fischer conglomerate is one of the ten biggest oil and gas companies in the world. In the real world, those ten companies (ExxonMobil at the top, Suncor Energy at the bottom) have an average EBITDA of $24 billion. (EBITDA = Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization. It’s not everyone’s favorite form of bookkeeping, but I think it’s a handy measure of how much a company makes)
Saito hopes to snatch up enough of Fischer’s assets, once the Fischer conglomerate breaks up, to capture most of that $24 billion in earnings. Are the stakes high enough for you?

saito you sexy, business-savvy person you.