(fic) More pregnant!girl!Arthur fic

[cicer]

Aha. Ha. Look, the story's moving forward! ...At a snail's pace.



When the phone rings, Dom is slicing apples and arranging them on a plate, next to a pair of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

For the first time in a long time, he feels at peace, lulled by several weeks of the sort of domestic tranquility he thought he’d lost forever. He is more relaxed than he’s been in over a year…at least, until he checks his phone and sees Ariadne’s number flashing at him.

A cold surge of panic floods through his veins, and a thousand horrible possibilities run through his mind; Ariadne’s hurt, Arthur’s hurt, something’s gone wrong, he should have known better than to think that he could just leave the field, leave them on their own like that.

Dom forces his hands to steady, swallows hard, clears his throat, and thumbs the ‘talk’ button.

“Yes?”

“Hey!“ Ariadne’s voice bubble over the line, cheerful and excited. “It’s me!”

Dom feels his stomach slowly pick itself up from where it had dropped, somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

He realizes, suddenly, that he has been unconsciously gripping the knife; his knuckles are white. He puts it down and forces a smile onto his face, into his voice.

“Hey. How’s the job going?”

Ariadne laughs, a little awkwardly.

“Oh, good, good. Almost done.”

She stops, somewhat abruptly, and Dom feels his stomach tighten up again. It’s a bad sign: usually, he can hardly get Ariadne to stop talking about her work. He can’t remember the last time she answer a question about her work in less than five hundred words.

“Um….” Ariadne draws a deep breath; Dom can hear it over the line. He waits.

“I’m gonna tell you something, okay?” Ariadne pauses again, and then continues in a rush. “Don’t tell Arthur I told you. I mean, she’ll probably know I told you, ‘cause I think I’m the only one who knows, but whatever. Don’t tell her anyway.” Another pause. “And don’t freak out.”

Dom rubs his forehead. He can’t quite sort out what’s going on, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sound too critical. Ariadne sounds…almost mischievous, and he’s pretty sure that if something were seriously wrong, she’d come right out and say it.

Still, there’s something in her voice that makes him suspect that whatever she’s about to tell him is going to give him a serious headache.

“Ariadne. What’s going on? What doesn’t Arthur want me to know? Did something go wrong with your work?”

Phillipa tugs his pant leg, and Dom passes her the plate of sandwiches absentmindedly before leaning back against the counter heavily. “Are you both okay?”

“Oh, yeah, we’re fine. No, it’s not that. It’s just…” Ariadne trails off, and Dom gets the distinct impression that she’s drawing this out solely to build up suspense. He feels his patience start to fray.

“Ariadne.” Dom shoves the phone between his ear and shoulder, and reaches out with a napkin to wipe peanut butter off of James’ face. “What is going on.”

“Arthur’s pregnant!” Ariadne blurts out. She sounds almost triumphant.

Dom pauses, then crumples the napkin and tosses it away.

“What?”

“She’s pregnant. Seriously.”

Ariadne’s voice is a little fuzzy, tinny from the overseas call, but Dom can clearly hear the smugness. He can picture her, leaning back in her chair, delighted to be able to pass along this sort of gossip. Dom focuses on that mental image of her, because the words refuse to form themselves into a coherent picture.

Arthur.

Pregnant.

…Yeah, right.

“What…” Dom rubs the bridge of nose again, and sighs. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t believe me?”

The Ariadne in Dom’s mind is now sitting up straight, full of righteous indignation. Dom thinks about it.

“Actually…no.”

“Cobb! I’m serious.” Since she can’t see him, Dom let himself roll his eyes, and rinses the knife off in the sink.

“Why would I make this up?” Ariadne persists.

It’s a fair question, and Dom is forced to admit that can’t think of a good reason.

Still. He tosses a dishtowel over his shoulder and leans back against the sink, scratching his scalp distractedly.

“Okay. Why do you think she’s pregnant?” The words feel incredibly strange in his mouth, and Dom shakes his head automatically, as if to dislodge them.

Arthur.

Pregnant.

Could she really…?

No, Dom thinks immediately.

Ariadne must be confused. She’s always so eager to know everyone else’s business, and doesn’t have the slightest scruples against invading other people’s privacy.

Admittedly, it’s not the worst quality someone in their line of work could have, much as it might annoy Dom from time to time. And Ariadne is unusually good at understanding whatever information she might come across. But in this cases he must be wrong. She’s young, Dom reminds himself. She’s young, and sort of excitable, and probably she saw something and misunderstood…

“Cobb!” Ariadne’s voice jolts him out of his rationalizations. “She told me. She says she’s seven weeks along.”

Well.

That…that just doesn’t make sense. Dom blinks.

Phillipa calls out to him from the dining room, asking for something, and he shushes her. And he can feel guilty about that later, but right now…

He rubs his forehead again and shuts his eyes.

“Wait. She. She told you?”

Ariadne starts to answer in the affirmative, but he cuts her off.

“No, wait. You’re sure you didn’t…misunderstand her or something?”

Ariadne snorts indelicately.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure I just misheard her. ‘Cause there are a lot of things that sound like, ‘I’m seven weeks pregnant’.”

Dom tilts his head back and stares and the kitchen ceiling. He’s definitely going to have a headache. Oh, yes.

Arthur. Arthur is pregnant.

He struggles arrange this information in his mind. It’s surprisingly difficult. On one hand, he’s got ‘Arthur‘. On the other, he’s got ‘pregnant’. No problems there. It’s when he tries to put the two together that he feels something in his brain short-circuit.

“Cobb! Are you there?”

“Yes. I’m….” He clears his throat., and stops. He can’t think what to say. He wants to say, holy shit!, but the kids are right there, and he doesn’t want to swear in front of them.

Or Ariadne, for that matter.

“How are you taking this so calmly? I kind of thought you’d freak out.”

Ariadne sounds decidedly disappointed, and that almost startles a laugh out of Dom.

“I’ve learned to freak out quietly.”

Ariadne snorts again. “Seriously. How is this not big news?”

He turns around and braces his hands on the sink. Outside, the sun is dipping low in the sky, sinking toward the horizon in the slow, downward slant of light that marks the late afternoon.

Dom draws in a breath and thinks. Ariadne’s voice echoes in his head.

How is this not big news?

It is.

It’s big. It’s very big. It’s so big, Dom can’t quite wrap his head around it, and there aren’t very many things in the world that he has difficulty processing. Processing information is his job, or it was, anyway. But this…

Dom clears his throat. “You’re sure.”

He can’t help but ask again.

Ariadne makes a frustrated noise.

“Yes! I’m sure! Arthur! Pregnant! This is not a test, Cobb!”

“Ah.” He licks his lips, blink rapidly. “Uh. Okay. Do you know…who’s the father?”

The question sounds utterly bizarre, even to his own ears.

He never imagined Arthur having children. Now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure why. She’s great with Phillipa and James. They absolutely love her. She changed their diapers and put Band-Aids on their skinned knees. She was there when they took their first steps.

She’d be a good mother, Dom thinks suddenly.

Still, somewhere deep down, he had assumed that if Arthur ever did have children, it would be well after she got married, presumably to some dutiful, stable, nice-but-slightly-boring young man.

The idea of her having a baby…well, out of wedlock, is strangely shocking.

Ariadne hums vaguely, a negative, and Dom jerks out of his thoughts and back into the conversation.

“No clue,” Ariadne says. “I asked, obviously, but she wouldn’t say.”

Dom wonders, suddenly, if he is going to have breaks someone’s kneecaps. He feels pretty safe assuming that if anyone ever tried to hurt Arthur in any way, she would put them in traction herself. But if she needs help dealing with some guy who thinks he’s not going to have any responsibility here, Dom is certainly going to be there.

“Um. Hey.” On the other end of the line, Ariadne’s voice turns awkward. “Can I ask something?”

He opens his mouth to answer, but Ariadne pushes on.

“Uh…it’s not yours, right?”

For a minute, Dom doesn’t quite get it, and he’s about to say, my what? Then it all slots into place, and he chokes on his own saliva.

“Ariadne! No,” he hisses, when he can breathe clearly again.

Phillipa looks up from her peanut butter sandwich. Dom gives her a tight smile and a wave before turning around so he’s facing the refrigerator. He drops his voice to a furious whisper.

“Why would you even ask that?”

“Well, I didn’t think so!” Ariadne mutters defensively, obviously injured by his vitriolic response. “But I had to check!”

The headache pulsing behind his eyes is reaching critical mass. Dom rubs his temples, hard.

“No. Just. No, Ariadne.”

“Okay, okay. I get it.” A pause, and then Ariadne adds cheerfully, “I was wondering if it might be Saito’s baby.”

Dom chokes again, and begins to regret ever adding Ariadne to the team. She’s by far the most brilliant architect he’s ever met, but sometimes she’s just…well. She’s blunt, to say the least.

“Why would you think it would be Saito’s?”

It’s ridiculous, but Dom automatically begins mental review of all of Saito’s contact with their team. He hastily tries to remember if there was anything suspicious in the way he treated Arthur.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Ariadne lets out a gusty sigh. “I don’t actually think it’s his. Though he did seem to kind of like her…but, no, I was just wondering.” She pauses again. “I mean. It’s Arthur, you know?”

“Yeah.” That sums it up nicely, Dom thinks. It’s Arthur.

Pregnant.

Oh, Jesus. If there isn’t a wedding in the near future, he’s definitely going to have to kill somebody.

“I kind of can’t imagine what kind of guy he is,” Ariadne adds.

“Yeah,” he repeats dully, too lost in thought to really process Ariadne’s words.

It’s not really his place to interfere of course. Arthur’s a grown woman, and can take care of herself. He knows it. He’s always been able to trust her to take care of business.

But this isn’t business. And it isn’t that Dom thinks she’s a pushover or anything; far from it. Still, for some reason, he suddenly finds himself thinking of Arthur, not the way she is now, but the way she used to be when he first met her: a thin, tight-lipped girl barely out of her teens, who flinched every time Mal touched her arm.

Quietly, Dom promises himself that if this baby isn’t the result of a fully consensual, mutually gratifying encounter, then there will not be enough left of the bastard to fill a teaspoon once Dom’s through with him.

Then he makes a face, because thinking about Arthur doing gratifying things with people thoroughly grosses him out.

“Cobb? Hello? You there?”

Ariadne sounds puzzled, and Dom realizes that he’s been silent for a good thirty seconds, thinking about different methods of castration and decapitation.

“I’m here,” he says faintly.

“Oh, hey, are you finally freaking out?” Ariadne’s laughter rings out across the line.

Dom laughs with her, quietly, and rubs a hand over his face.

He is. A sudden rush of memory draws him back, back to Mal telling him she was pregnant for the first time, back to his mingled joy and fear, the way he‘d caught her in his arms while they laughed together.

The memory still stings, but not as bitterly as it had before.

What would Mal say about all this, Dom wonders.

He doesn’t have to think hard; he knows how she’d react. If Mal were here for this, she’d already be planning the baby shower. She’d be laughing, telling Dom not to be so upset, that this was a blessing. She’d be calling up Arthur to recommend obstetricians, and demanding to be named the baby’s godmother. She would have been overjoyed, and her happiness would have been contagious.

But if Arthur needed defending, she would have been right beside Dom, grinding into the dirt any man who dared to hurt the woman she’s considered a younger sister.

Guilt twists Dom’s insides, but these days, it’s not so much guilt over her death. That still hurts, will always hurt, and Dom fully expects to carry that burden to his grave. He deserves it. But these days, that old guilt has been largely replaced by guilt over allowing Mal’s memory to be tainted, twisted into something horrible.

He hadn’t been able to see it before, too lost in grief. But since returning home, Dom has had a sick feeling every time he thinks of the things Mal’s projections did. He remembers Mal sticking a knife into Ariadne’s side, Mal shooting out Arthur’s knee. He can’t revisit those memories without a hot wash of guilt.

Mal would never have hurt Arthur, not for anything. And if she’d ever known Ariadne, Dom is sure she would have been very fond of her, too. She would have been so angry with him for allowing her memory to be corrupted into something that hurt others.

Dom swallows the guilt back down, and it curls into his stomach, where it’s been since he watched his wife step out of the hotel window. He rubs a thumb over his forehead and closes his eyes.

“You’re freaking out, huh?” Ariadne‘s voice bubbles over with laughter.

Silverware clatters on the kitchen table. Phillipa drops her cup of milk onto the table with a thud. James is singing to himself, softly, some song he’s made up.

Dom swallows again and centers himself.

“Maybe a little,” he admits.

“Ha!” Ariadne cries, triumphantly. “Success!”

Dom hears a faint squeak, as if she’s moving around in her chair. He can just picture her, sitting in the warehouse, proudly spreading the news. It almost makes him smile.

She’s right though; Arthur’s not going to be very happy that she told him.

“She’s going to be angry,” he warns, and Ariadne seems to know what he’s talking about, because she laughs again.

“Yeah, I know. I’m hoping she’ll forgive me if I buy her some really cute baby clothes or something.”

Dom can’t help it; he grins when he thinks of Ariadne dragging Arthur to baby shops.

“Well,” he says, half-laughing, “I guess it’s worth a shot.”

Now that he thinks of it, he does have plenty of Phillipa and James’ old things stowed away in the garage… “Don’t tell anyone else though.”

“Yeah, no, I won’t!” Ariadne doesn’t sound particularly chastised, and Dom isn‘t quite sure whether he believes her.

“It’s not my business, I know,” she adds quickly, as if sensing his skepticism. “But I had to tell you. You’re like…her brother, or something.”

Retirement is definitely making him soft, because that’s almost enough to get Dom choked up. He hastily changes the subject.

“What are you two working on again? That business partnership case?”

Arthur outlined the basic plan to him weeks ago, and it hadn’t sounded risky then, but that was well before he knew that Arthur would be doing the job pregnant.

Dom quashes the urge to call her up and tell her she’s not allowed to do any more jobs until the baby comes. He wants to, but he knows he can’t.

Arthur would be furious, for one thing. And she’d probably point out that Mal had done the odd job or two while she was pregnant, though Dom had been very careful then to select jobs where there was absolutely zero risk of violence. Arthur wouldn’t be swayed by that, though, he’s sure.

“Yeah, the guy wants to know if his partner’s trying to squeeze him out.” Ariadne pauses. “I don’t think it’s dangerous. The guy’s security isn’t all that great. And Geralds- that’s the extractor?- he seems like he knows what he’s doing. I mean, he’s not you, but…”

Ariadne trails off and is silent for a minute. “I think it’s okay. Arthur thinks it’s okay, anyway. I’m more worried about the Somnacin. Is that stuff even safe for pregnant women?”

It‘s a familiar question, and one Dom is relieved he can answer. He remembers having the same concerns about Mal.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he tells Ariadne. “It’s safe. Mal used it a couple times, when she was pregnant. It shouldn’t do any harm.”

“Oh, good. I told Arthur I was afraid it was gonna give the kid two heads or something, but she said it was okay.”

There’s another squeak over the line, and the sound of shuffling, and Ariadne adds, “Hey, I’ve kinda got to get back to work here. You’re doing okay?”

Dom smiles wryly to himself, and nods, even though Ariadne can’t see him. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later then. Unless Arthur kills me for telling you,” she adds cheerfully.

“I’ll come to your funeral,” he shoots back.

Ariadne laughs, and hangs up.

He listens to the dial tone for a few seconds, then thumbs the phone off and drops it on the counter.

Well.

Shit, he thinks dumbly. Arthur. He can hardly believe it.

“Daddy!”

James is suddenly at his knee, waving a clumsily-drawn picture in his face, and Dom startles out of his thoughts. His son looks up at him with bright, expectant eyes, and Dom can’t help but smile as he bends down to examine the paper..

“Hey, buddy. What’ve you got there?”

James launches into a semi-incoherent monologue about the picture he’s drawn, but Dom is only half-listening. He drops down onto the kitchen floor and pulls his son into his lap, but he can’t keep his thoughts on the bright green sketch of a lizard-like creature James is so proud of.

Arthur. He can’t help but worry about her, though he knows it entirely unnecessary. After all, it would be an understatement to call her a capable person. She can handle virtually anything. Dom is sure that she can handle this, too. Still…

He’d feel a hell of a lot better if the father was in the picture, that’s for sure. Maybe he is, Dom thinks. But no, Arthur probably would have said something to Ariadne if that was the case.

Instead, Ariadne said that Arthur refused to answer any questions about the baby’s father. That meant that she was embarrassed, or trying to hide something. And that…that set Dom’s teeth on edge.

He ruffles James’ hair and thinks. He can’t remember ever seeing Arthur with anyone during the time they were working on inception, but Dom knows that doesn’t mean anything. Arthur is discreet, and he…well, he wasn’t paying attention to much other than the job.

It’s not Saito, he’s sure of that. The idea almost makes him laugh. He doesn’t have any evidence to back it up, but he’s somehow sure that Saito is definitely not Arthur’s type. Neither is Yusuf. And Eames…

Eames.

He turns that over in his mind, clenches his jaw. He doesn’t think Eames is her type, either but…Eames did seem to like to flirt with her, tease her.

Dom hadn’t thought that meant much, at the time. Eames was the sort of man who flirted easily, casually, and as often as he breathed. Dom had thought that Eames just liked trying to get under Arthur’s skin, liked trying to ruffle her seemingly-impenetrable aura of seriousness.

He can’t imagine Arthur giving Eames the time of day, not seriously. But then he couldn’t picture Arthur getting pregnant either, so there they are.

“Daddy!”

James is looking at him again, eyes wide, clearly waiting for praise. Dom has barely heard a word his son said, but he rushes to give it all the same, scooping his son up and assuring him that this is definitely the best drawing of a lizard that Dom has ever seen.

James beams, and Phillipa watches them with her pretty hazel eyes, her thick dark lashes, so much like her mother’s.

Dom lets that thought wash over him, and it’s not as painful as it used to be. He kisses her forehead and opens the back door so the kids can go play in the backyard. The dirty dishes are in a pile on the table, and he gathers them, fishes the crumpled napkins from the piles of crayons and contraction paper, and stacks the plates in the sink.

Arthur can handle this, he reminds himself, as he puts the cups in the dishwasher. This really isn’t any of his business. And she’ll be angry enough to find that Ariadne has been spreading the news around; there’s no reason for him to do anything to make the situation worse.

Like, say, pack his Glock and fly to Mombasa to interrogate Eames.

There’s no need to do that.

Even if he kind of wants to.

He scrubs dried peanut butter off the plates and thinks. The truth will come out eventually. He just has to wait.

And maybe clean the Glock in the meantime.

Onto the next part...