One Little Kick - Inception - Cobb/Eames
Title: One Little Kick
Pairing: Cobb/Eames
Word Count: 2098
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Written for Trope 31 - Love is a Weakness from Fuck Yeah Inception Ships.
Summary: Eames was remarkably good at getting through life unscathed, until Cobb came along to ruin his survival instincts.
Cobb is a charade of peacefulness once his eyes are closed. The hurt slides from his face and the lines on his forehead smooth away. There's a fluid innocence in the way that his hand drapes bonelessly from the arm of the chair, but the only detail that Eames is paying attention to is where the IV snakes into his skin. The inside of Cobb's arm has all the marks and scars of an extractor, ill-treated by its owner - yet it is a different thing to go under when the job requires it. That's what they do. What Cobb does, however, takes it far beyond necessity.
There is no noise in the warehouse but the pounding of Eames's heart in his ears. He isn't nervous; he doesn't get nervous.
He also, of course, doesn't fall in love.
Cobb's involvement in his life always makes the world unstable.
In front of him, Cobb sleeps in dreaming bliss, annoyingly unaware of the thoughts rotating in Eames's mind. They are fresh back from New Zealand, both of them, where Cobb had come to fetch him this time. They had met in a bar - where else? - and it had been so bloody easy to jump right onto a plane with Cobb. He always comes running, like a dog on a leash.
The irritation burns under his skin and he swings back in his seat, tapping his fingers against his legs. Cobb should be awake right now. Eames has more or less offered him the time of his life with every dip of his gaze, touch of his fingers, lick of lips. He's pulling out every seductive stop, short of pinning him down and quoting chat-up lines with him, and Cobb would rather retreat into his pitiful dream world. Rather than embracing life (and, more pleasantly, embracing Eames) he would rather visit Her.
Mal.
It is difficult to wrestle with a dream. The mind is the most powerful thing in their carefully sculpted universe, and Cobb's is more volatile than most. Eames should move on. He has no desire to compete with a dead woman -
And yet that is a lie. Watching Cobb hooked up to the past, and feeling that flood of red anger beneath his skin, Eames knows that he is doing little more than lying to himself - yet it is, on some level, better than what Cobb is doing. After the inception job, he had thought that this might be over, that the spectre of his late wife might have been left behind for good. She doesn't appear on jobs any more; instead, Cobb goes looking for her in his own locked-up memories.
It isn't right.
Eames checks one last time that the warehouse truly is empty, and then he walks towards the seat that Cobb is slumped in. With gentle hands he pulls the IV out of Cobb's arm and then, carefully, places his foot against the front of Cobb's chair, between his spread legs.
From there, it is all too easy to give a small push, a little kick, and watch Cobb fall. There is something absurdly fascinating about the way he crashes to the ground and his eyes open with a shocked burst of blue. Sprawled on the ground, he doesn't look as if he's seriously injured himself. That's a plus. Eames is no good at playing nursemaid.
"What the hell?" Cobb says, scrambling to try to get to his feet while Eames stands above him, towering quite happily. Cobb looks as if he is gearing up for one of his epic temper tantrums; they are never any fun to get in the way of. "What is wrong with you?"
"I got bored," Eames says.
"So you kicked me?"
When Cobb says it, it sounds absolutely outrageous. Eames frowns.
"Watching you commune with your dead wife for the fifth night in the row isn't quite the joy-ride I thought it might be." Even if Cobb is on his feet by now, with a thick line crossing his forehead in outrage, Eames stands his ground. "I was going to ask you out for a drink."
"You just kicked me," Cobb reminds him, as if he might have conveniently forgotten that guilty fact in the last few seconds.
"I dare say you deserved it," Eames says. Perhaps Cobb doesn't deserve to be thrown onto the floor for merely sleeping, but he does deserve it for dragging Eames half-way around the world only to watch him chase the past. "Watching you hook yourself up to that little box every night is - Well, it's rather unpleasant, to put it mildly. Why do you think I'm here in the first place?"
Cobb blinks and shakes his head as if he is a dog trying to get rid of heavy water droplets. It doesn't seem to clear his hazy vision at all. "We've got a job."
"There are lots of jobs. Better ones." Cobb is the best in the business, but Eames could have just as much fun working with the second-best if that was all that he was after. It's not; he's here. "Come out for a drink with me."
"It's late."
"We'll find somewhere that's open. If we can't, I'll take you back to my hotel room."
And there it is, the twitch of confused understanding on Cobb's face. "This is your way of asking me out?" he asks. "On a date?"
As courting goes, it requires a little more work; there are very few people who would find being kicked off their chair out of a reality-evading dream to be a suitable seduction.
"I didn't think you would appreciate flowers."
The squinting frown on Cobb's face says that Eames is missing the point. He doesn't mind that too much; he's got points of his own that Cobb has spent a small eternity evading.
"Are we going or not, Cobb? I can leave you to your dreams, if you'd rather."
Cobb shrugs, and walks towards the door, and - perhaps - it is the start of something.
*
One hour in, Eames is beginning to doubt that hopeful belief.
Cobb is staring at the bottle in his hands. "Do I have to drink this?"
"I buy it for all the girls."
"I'm not a girl."
"You'll like it."
"It's blue."
Eames is used to dating women who are far younger and far less complicated than Cobb could ever hope to be. He's a little bit out of his depth here, and that is usually his signal to abandon ship.
He's spent far too many hours pining and sighing; walking away now would feel like losing an investment. "Drink up," he advises, pint in hand.
Cobb stares at his glass. "Can we swap?"
Eames isn't quite sure what is in the blue alcopop he bought for Cobb out of routine, but he is quite certain that he doesn't want to ingest it. He slides his glass across the table anyway - "You owe me for this," he vows.
"I owe you for a lot of stuff," Cobb points out.
That's certainly very true, and it makes Eames smile as he raises the rim of the blue bottle to his lips. It tastes like mouthwash; watching Cobb holding back a smile for once makes that almost worth it.
*
"This is kind of freaking me out," Cobb says when Eames begins to walk him home - or walk him to his hotel room, in any case, which is as close as they are going to get. "Am I dreaming?"
"Check your totem," Eames suggests, although he's already seen Cobb doing that this evening. Several times, in fact.
The sky is beginning to turn orange and pink with the threat of sunrise, and Eames stares at the horizon in the hope that he might be able to get it to slow down. Tonight has been bizarre and rather terrifying, but he's still loving it. The hotel rears up far too quickly, and the elevator ride to Cobb's floor has to be the fastest that Eames has ever experienced.
"You're walking me to my room?" Cobb checks, their footsteps in sync. "Really?"
"I'm a gentleman," Eames points out.
He's also hoping to get lucky, but it looks as if that's unlikely to happen. Bloody typical.
"Look, this has been the weirdest evening I've had in a long while, and I still don't understand what it is that you want, but -"
It's all too easy to kiss him to make him shut up; it's something he's wanted to do for a long time. A firm push of his hands on Cobb's shoulders, a confident stride forward, and he has him blocked against the wall. It's remarkably comfortable to get to kiss someone roughly the same height as him; no stooping involved. Just lips and hands and fingers tangled in Cobb's hair; the tracing of his tongue against the edges of Cobb's teeth.
"What is going on?" Cobb asks in stops and starts when Eames resorts to short, sharp theft from his mouth.
"A demonstration," Eames suggests, as he thrusts one leg between parted thighs. Cobb leans back against the grungy wall of the hotel's corridor and groans when Eames pushes his leg up; he can feel Cobb semi-hard against him, eager to respond. "I'm teaching you the benefits of reality versus dreaming."
"I- Shit." Cobb's eyes are wild and blue and a little bit beautiful, though hell knows Eames wouldn't admit as much. "Not here. Ariadne's in the next room."
Eames smirks. He doesn't mean to; sometimes it just happens. "Perhaps you better let me in, then."
The first thing that Cobb does when they get inside is spin his top on the coffee table. The second thing he does is allow Eames to fuck him until he forgets how to speak.
All in all, Eames would say it's been a good night.
*
Cobb is a terrible bed-partner, so Eames ends up wrestling him into cuddling with him.
"I don't really do this," Cobb says, captured by one of Eames's arms around his waist.
Eames nuzzles his nose against the nape of Cobb's neck, sleepy, smelly and content. "It's better than snuggling up with your own dreams," he points out. Maybe that isn't the best sales pitch that he's ever come up with, but he's dealing with a brain that is come-drunk and pleased with its own success. Better than your dead wife! is currently the height of his reasoning ability.
"Why are you doing this?" Cobb tries to turn around to face him, so Eames tightens his arm to stop him. He's determined to be the big spoon here. "What's in it for you?"
Eames laughs, and perhaps the tone of it is a bit unkind. "Were you not there for the mind-blowing sex we just had?" he asks: Cobb had seemed very much in the moment at the time, and Eames doesn't think that either of them have come that hard in years. Fantastic. Turns out that years of sexual frustration makes for a damn good turn-out at the end.
That's not the point though, really. He gets that.
He sighs against Cobb's skin and skims his fingers over Cobb's belly, just because he can. "You're dimmer than you look, Cobb. I like you. Rather more than I ought to."
Rather more than is safe.
"And, if you'd like, I'm willing to be around more than I am right now. You'll have to stop dreaming. I won't play second-fiddle to a figment." It feels like a big demand once it is out in the open, especially when he isn't sure whether or not he's truly managed to talk Cobb around in the first place. His jaw clenches.
Cobb is silent - but he doesn't pull away and he doesn't try to make Eames leave. He doesn't elbow him in the gut; he doesn't swear and call him names.
When it comes to Cobb, a lot of the significance is in the absence of acts.
Eames, tonight, is willing to take what he can get.
*
When the job is over, Eames doesn't leave - or, rather, when he leaves town it is on the exact same flight as Cobb and Arthur. Arthur huffs and complains, but Cobb merely smiles, looking down so it is hidden.
There are shared hotel rooms and pints of beer (no more blue bottles, as Cobb had glared at him when he suggested it) and the cases are fun and challenging.
Cobb doesn't go searching for his dead wife in his subconscious - if he does, he hides it, and for Eames that is enough.
When they go under, they go under together.
(As it turns out, dream-sex is rather spectacular.)
Pairing: Cobb/Eames
Word Count: 2098
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Written for Trope 31 - Love is a Weakness from Fuck Yeah Inception Ships.
Summary: Eames was remarkably good at getting through life unscathed, until Cobb came along to ruin his survival instincts.
Cobb is a charade of peacefulness once his eyes are closed. The hurt slides from his face and the lines on his forehead smooth away. There's a fluid innocence in the way that his hand drapes bonelessly from the arm of the chair, but the only detail that Eames is paying attention to is where the IV snakes into his skin. The inside of Cobb's arm has all the marks and scars of an extractor, ill-treated by its owner - yet it is a different thing to go under when the job requires it. That's what they do. What Cobb does, however, takes it far beyond necessity.
There is no noise in the warehouse but the pounding of Eames's heart in his ears. He isn't nervous; he doesn't get nervous.
He also, of course, doesn't fall in love.
Cobb's involvement in his life always makes the world unstable.
In front of him, Cobb sleeps in dreaming bliss, annoyingly unaware of the thoughts rotating in Eames's mind. They are fresh back from New Zealand, both of them, where Cobb had come to fetch him this time. They had met in a bar - where else? - and it had been so bloody easy to jump right onto a plane with Cobb. He always comes running, like a dog on a leash.
The irritation burns under his skin and he swings back in his seat, tapping his fingers against his legs. Cobb should be awake right now. Eames has more or less offered him the time of his life with every dip of his gaze, touch of his fingers, lick of lips. He's pulling out every seductive stop, short of pinning him down and quoting chat-up lines with him, and Cobb would rather retreat into his pitiful dream world. Rather than embracing life (and, more pleasantly, embracing Eames) he would rather visit Her.
Mal.
It is difficult to wrestle with a dream. The mind is the most powerful thing in their carefully sculpted universe, and Cobb's is more volatile than most. Eames should move on. He has no desire to compete with a dead woman -
And yet that is a lie. Watching Cobb hooked up to the past, and feeling that flood of red anger beneath his skin, Eames knows that he is doing little more than lying to himself - yet it is, on some level, better than what Cobb is doing. After the inception job, he had thought that this might be over, that the spectre of his late wife might have been left behind for good. She doesn't appear on jobs any more; instead, Cobb goes looking for her in his own locked-up memories.
It isn't right.
Eames checks one last time that the warehouse truly is empty, and then he walks towards the seat that Cobb is slumped in. With gentle hands he pulls the IV out of Cobb's arm and then, carefully, places his foot against the front of Cobb's chair, between his spread legs.
From there, it is all too easy to give a small push, a little kick, and watch Cobb fall. There is something absurdly fascinating about the way he crashes to the ground and his eyes open with a shocked burst of blue. Sprawled on the ground, he doesn't look as if he's seriously injured himself. That's a plus. Eames is no good at playing nursemaid.
"What the hell?" Cobb says, scrambling to try to get to his feet while Eames stands above him, towering quite happily. Cobb looks as if he is gearing up for one of his epic temper tantrums; they are never any fun to get in the way of. "What is wrong with you?"
"I got bored," Eames says.
"So you kicked me?"
When Cobb says it, it sounds absolutely outrageous. Eames frowns.
"Watching you commune with your dead wife for the fifth night in the row isn't quite the joy-ride I thought it might be." Even if Cobb is on his feet by now, with a thick line crossing his forehead in outrage, Eames stands his ground. "I was going to ask you out for a drink."
"You just kicked me," Cobb reminds him, as if he might have conveniently forgotten that guilty fact in the last few seconds.
"I dare say you deserved it," Eames says. Perhaps Cobb doesn't deserve to be thrown onto the floor for merely sleeping, but he does deserve it for dragging Eames half-way around the world only to watch him chase the past. "Watching you hook yourself up to that little box every night is - Well, it's rather unpleasant, to put it mildly. Why do you think I'm here in the first place?"
Cobb blinks and shakes his head as if he is a dog trying to get rid of heavy water droplets. It doesn't seem to clear his hazy vision at all. "We've got a job."
"There are lots of jobs. Better ones." Cobb is the best in the business, but Eames could have just as much fun working with the second-best if that was all that he was after. It's not; he's here. "Come out for a drink with me."
"It's late."
"We'll find somewhere that's open. If we can't, I'll take you back to my hotel room."
And there it is, the twitch of confused understanding on Cobb's face. "This is your way of asking me out?" he asks. "On a date?"
As courting goes, it requires a little more work; there are very few people who would find being kicked off their chair out of a reality-evading dream to be a suitable seduction.
"I didn't think you would appreciate flowers."
The squinting frown on Cobb's face says that Eames is missing the point. He doesn't mind that too much; he's got points of his own that Cobb has spent a small eternity evading.
"Are we going or not, Cobb? I can leave you to your dreams, if you'd rather."
Cobb shrugs, and walks towards the door, and - perhaps - it is the start of something.
*
One hour in, Eames is beginning to doubt that hopeful belief.
Cobb is staring at the bottle in his hands. "Do I have to drink this?"
"I buy it for all the girls."
"I'm not a girl."
"You'll like it."
"It's blue."
Eames is used to dating women who are far younger and far less complicated than Cobb could ever hope to be. He's a little bit out of his depth here, and that is usually his signal to abandon ship.
He's spent far too many hours pining and sighing; walking away now would feel like losing an investment. "Drink up," he advises, pint in hand.
Cobb stares at his glass. "Can we swap?"
Eames isn't quite sure what is in the blue alcopop he bought for Cobb out of routine, but he is quite certain that he doesn't want to ingest it. He slides his glass across the table anyway - "You owe me for this," he vows.
"I owe you for a lot of stuff," Cobb points out.
That's certainly very true, and it makes Eames smile as he raises the rim of the blue bottle to his lips. It tastes like mouthwash; watching Cobb holding back a smile for once makes that almost worth it.
*
"This is kind of freaking me out," Cobb says when Eames begins to walk him home - or walk him to his hotel room, in any case, which is as close as they are going to get. "Am I dreaming?"
"Check your totem," Eames suggests, although he's already seen Cobb doing that this evening. Several times, in fact.
The sky is beginning to turn orange and pink with the threat of sunrise, and Eames stares at the horizon in the hope that he might be able to get it to slow down. Tonight has been bizarre and rather terrifying, but he's still loving it. The hotel rears up far too quickly, and the elevator ride to Cobb's floor has to be the fastest that Eames has ever experienced.
"You're walking me to my room?" Cobb checks, their footsteps in sync. "Really?"
"I'm a gentleman," Eames points out.
He's also hoping to get lucky, but it looks as if that's unlikely to happen. Bloody typical.
"Look, this has been the weirdest evening I've had in a long while, and I still don't understand what it is that you want, but -"
It's all too easy to kiss him to make him shut up; it's something he's wanted to do for a long time. A firm push of his hands on Cobb's shoulders, a confident stride forward, and he has him blocked against the wall. It's remarkably comfortable to get to kiss someone roughly the same height as him; no stooping involved. Just lips and hands and fingers tangled in Cobb's hair; the tracing of his tongue against the edges of Cobb's teeth.
"What is going on?" Cobb asks in stops and starts when Eames resorts to short, sharp theft from his mouth.
"A demonstration," Eames suggests, as he thrusts one leg between parted thighs. Cobb leans back against the grungy wall of the hotel's corridor and groans when Eames pushes his leg up; he can feel Cobb semi-hard against him, eager to respond. "I'm teaching you the benefits of reality versus dreaming."
"I- Shit." Cobb's eyes are wild and blue and a little bit beautiful, though hell knows Eames wouldn't admit as much. "Not here. Ariadne's in the next room."
Eames smirks. He doesn't mean to; sometimes it just happens. "Perhaps you better let me in, then."
The first thing that Cobb does when they get inside is spin his top on the coffee table. The second thing he does is allow Eames to fuck him until he forgets how to speak.
All in all, Eames would say it's been a good night.
*
Cobb is a terrible bed-partner, so Eames ends up wrestling him into cuddling with him.
"I don't really do this," Cobb says, captured by one of Eames's arms around his waist.
Eames nuzzles his nose against the nape of Cobb's neck, sleepy, smelly and content. "It's better than snuggling up with your own dreams," he points out. Maybe that isn't the best sales pitch that he's ever come up with, but he's dealing with a brain that is come-drunk and pleased with its own success. Better than your dead wife! is currently the height of his reasoning ability.
"Why are you doing this?" Cobb tries to turn around to face him, so Eames tightens his arm to stop him. He's determined to be the big spoon here. "What's in it for you?"
Eames laughs, and perhaps the tone of it is a bit unkind. "Were you not there for the mind-blowing sex we just had?" he asks: Cobb had seemed very much in the moment at the time, and Eames doesn't think that either of them have come that hard in years. Fantastic. Turns out that years of sexual frustration makes for a damn good turn-out at the end.
That's not the point though, really. He gets that.
He sighs against Cobb's skin and skims his fingers over Cobb's belly, just because he can. "You're dimmer than you look, Cobb. I like you. Rather more than I ought to."
Rather more than is safe.
"And, if you'd like, I'm willing to be around more than I am right now. You'll have to stop dreaming. I won't play second-fiddle to a figment." It feels like a big demand once it is out in the open, especially when he isn't sure whether or not he's truly managed to talk Cobb around in the first place. His jaw clenches.
Cobb is silent - but he doesn't pull away and he doesn't try to make Eames leave. He doesn't elbow him in the gut; he doesn't swear and call him names.
When it comes to Cobb, a lot of the significance is in the absence of acts.
Eames, tonight, is willing to take what he can get.
*
When the job is over, Eames doesn't leave - or, rather, when he leaves town it is on the exact same flight as Cobb and Arthur. Arthur huffs and complains, but Cobb merely smiles, looking down so it is hidden.
There are shared hotel rooms and pints of beer (no more blue bottles, as Cobb had glared at him when he suggested it) and the cases are fun and challenging.
Cobb doesn't go searching for his dead wife in his subconscious - if he does, he hides it, and for Eames that is enough.
When they go under, they go under together.
(As it turns out, dream-sex is rather spectacular.)