[RP] Cobb Blocked - NC-17 - 5900 words
Title: Cobb Blocked
Authors: my_kakistocracy as Nash, koushi as Cobb
Pairing: Cobb/Nash
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 5900
Disclaimer: I have no claim to Inception or any of its characters.
Summary: Ever since Cobb first bumped into Nash at the Omegle party (when Nash messaged him begging for his help in escaping Cobol Engineering), he has been trying to find the ex-architect with the aid of a private jet borrowed from Saito.
Note: UTTER CRACK with tons of references to other RPs and satire on the fandom and inside jokes.
No sign of the sleazy good-for-nothing architect anywhere, Cobb lamented angrily as he glanced at his watch. It was still early in the day, so he had time to fly to another location on his borrowed Saito Airlines jet before sundown. Just as he stepped onto the ladder to the cockpit, however, he saw a flash of brown duck behind a statue on the other side of the plane. Could it be...?
Shit. Nash dodged behind the nearest statue. The private plane was certainly suspicious, but he couldn’t know for sure it was Cobb. He slowed his breath. After all, his mind was apt to play tricks--lately he’d been seeing Cobb in every shadow and outcropping of rock. Just yesterday, a blondish man with a self-confident strut had approached him in the metro station. Nash was halfway through a garbled mess of railing accusations and pleas for mercy when he realized the man had only asked him for the time. The resident schizophrenic drunk had even looked up from his shopping cart, possibly pleased at the prospect of a likeminded friend. It was highly embarrassing. He wound up the courage to take a second peek--fuck. Definitely Cobb. He tried to stay still, and hoped against hope through the distortion of his trademarked squint Cobb would not notice that the stone horse had six legs.
Cobb had always had trouble trusting his vision: this was true. And it didn’t help that his dreams had so distorted reality during his fugitive phase, seeing Phillipa and James behind every corner rather than only when the sunlight inundated his pupils. But this time he felt he should go with his first instinct and check out the possible lead. After all, he’d been searching for weeks now, circumnavigating the globe like most people visit the grocery store. He stretched a hand into the breast of his suit jacket, crinkling the worn black leather gloves that dressed it, pulling out a handgun from his shoulder holster and screwing on the silencer, all in the blink... or squint of an eye. There’s no need to find cover, he thought smugly to himself as he approached the landmark, pistol raised, the smarmy bastard wouldn’t know what to do even if he had a loaded weapon.
Nash heard the bullet ricochet off the stone horse before he even realized Cobb was armed. The first thought that flashed into his head was one of self-importance: Dominick Cobb, in all his black-gloved bass-assery, has taken time out of his impossibly exciting life to settle a vendetta he has with me. The second thought was of the more generic shit, I’m going to die variety that one usually experiences while on the wrong side of a loaded weapon. Nash had no choice. He had to run and hope that Cobb was just as shitty at being a hitman as he was at being an extractor.
Movement sighted. The target darted to the side as fast as he could, greasy brown hair flying behind him as he fled, however clumsily. What a fool, Cobb snickered, only the guilty would run like that. Flipping his tie over his shoulder for a dramatic flourish, he too started after the graceless former architect. He thought he’d be able to outdo Nash easily, but the shots he fired seemed to have released his prey’s adrenaline reserves, allowing him to continue the chase. They wound through empty alleys, down streets full of staring window-shoppers, and even dodged a few vehicles, which honked with ample road rage. This reminds me of that time in Mombassa, but I’m glad there aren’t any crevices I can get my shoulders stuck in. Always forward-looking, turning to the side was not in Cobb’s repertoire.
“Stop!” he shouted between breaths. Traveling in the jet was not doing wonders for staying in shape. “You can’t hide any longer!”
Nash heard Cobb call out, seconds behind him.
“Stop!” Cobb shouted, appearing slightly pudgier than Nash remembered, but no less threatening. Okay, maybe a little less. The gun, however, made up for any comfort Cobb’s developing spare tire could provide. Nash obeyed, standing stock-still in the middle of the road and receivinga bullet between the eyes and a bone-crushing blow from a passing taxi simultaneously. Nash snorted involuntarily at the thought. Yeah...I’m going to give that idea a “no.”
A gaggle of small children in school uniform was being herded across the street by a plump woman he’d seen hundreds of times before. The way to the local primary school wound right by the dingy old building where he rented an aging shithole of a flat from a terrifying old landlady who smelled of cabbage and cheap wine. If he stayed close behind them, he could reach his apartment in relative safety within sixty seconds. Cobb had his own stupid kids he was always on about, so he must like them. Certainly he wouldn’t risk shooting one. Chris Hansen might show up at his door in a few days to inquire why he was hanging about with a crowd of under-tens, but he figured staying alive would be well worth the trouble. He mustered all his energy for the one last sprint to safety.
“I’ll catch you,” Cobb called to Nash, starting to wheeze as his heart pounded nonstop, his legs feeling like heavy tubes of lead, “if I can!” Okay, not sure where that came but it definitely sounded better in my head. He’d been absolutely sure that he could overtake the scrawny little rat, but now it wasn’t looking so certain. The dude was caged up for fuck knows how long: how does he still have any muscle mass? Cobb resigned himself to the explanation that perhaps Cobol makes its prisoners do laps in the company gym, which was not out of the question considering how the goons who were sent for him ran like the wind.
And then he nearly dropped his gun. It was like he’d been drawn into an episode of Madeleine, the squat schoolchildren waddling in rows behind their schoolmarm. He couldn’t risk missing a shot and hurting the children... or even pushing past them in a flurry. But he also could not, he repeated, not lose Nash again. His mind rolled through all the projections that’d been in his way on his endless search: the one ranting about dead hookers, the ones that said “heyyy” and who seemed more interested in pegging him than helping him peg his target, the haters who called him a slut just because of the way he walked. They were painful memories but ones that he was determined would not occur again.
All he could do now was try to tiptoe past the crowd as gingerly as possibly, resuming a half-strut half-race as soon as they were out of the danger zone.
Nash broke off from the line of schoolchildren, who were beginning to eye him suspiciously, and sprinted toward the entrance of the building he called home, dodging mailboxes and little old ladies pushing small dogs in prams. He was suddenly grateful for all the time he spent running from people, each instance of which he had previously regarded as just another entry in a continuing streak of horrid luck. It began in a seedy bar downtown, when he mustered up the courage to hit on a beautiful woman with dark curly hair and stilettos. He had said something to her that was immensely clever, he was sure of it, but apparently girls who run with the Mob are immune to pick-up lines. She had brandished a gun under the bar counter, whist retorting that perhaps he would have a chance when Hell froze over or he washed his hair, the former of which she assumed would occur first. Bitch. Bitch with friends, apparently. Spent all night dodging them. Only now, his heart racing, every muscle fiber twitching as he dove into the entryway of the shady old apartment block, was he slightly grateful. Slightly.
He raced upstairs and fumbled with the key for a few seconds before wrenching open the door to the sordid two-room apartment he called home. The place was covered with a sickly green carpet, which often made him wonder if Saito really was God and these were the sort of pinches of karma he found amusing to dish out. At least it was polyester.
He was immensely proud at having outrun Cobb--that asshole was less of a badass than he thought. He kicked off his shoes and settled smugly onto a sofa that looked as if it had been chewed up by some great beast and then spit back out. There was a rough knock at the door.
“Irina?” He asked hopefully. Now would be the only time he would ever have wanted it to be the landlady whose attempts to evict him often ended with his nursing a splitting skillet-induced headache. But it wasn’t Irina. He could tell. He could practically feel the triumphant squint boring through the cheap fiberglass door…
The first thing Cobb noticed when he entered the building (okay besides the decrepit and moldy condition of the crumbling concrete walls) was the smell. It had notes of sweaty gym socks and a finishing hint of burning rubber: if Nash ever branded his own eau de cologne, it would be captured in this distinct odor. He tried to hold his breath while climbing the stairs but, being out of shape, he had to keep on huffing for sufficient oxygen to power his struts.
Taking his last stride up to the room and knocking on the flimsy door, he was interrupted by a vibrating noise and “My Heart will Go On” ringing from his cellphone. Sigh. Always the worst timing, he thought as he flipped it open.
“What do you want?” he asked impatiently, a squint so slitty appearing on his face that it could have sliced diamonds in half.
“Dude,” Arthur replied, a desperate edge in his voice, “there’s no lube.”
“No lube? That’s not my problem. Why don’t you go to the store or something?” Jesus. Palm? Meet face. Face? This is palm.
“No, you see... Eames and I are in... an awkward position and we can’t get out of it.”
“Well, all I can do for you is to ask where your God is now because I sure as fuck can’t help out from Lyon, France.” He hung up, extremely exacerbated. All advantages of timing and surprise worked against him now as he was sure that Nash could hear him from within his rancid flat.
“Okay, Nash. You and I both know you can’t stay in there forever. So why don’t you make it easier on us by letting me in before I break your door down?” he yelled, rapping on the door frame with his knuckles.
It was Cobb, just as he’d suspected. He knew even before he threatened to take down the door. There was only one person on Earth who would still hang on to that ringtone. If it were any other grown man displaying a penchant for something that peaked in popularity in 1997 and even then mostly among 15 year old girls, it would be ridiculous--but Cobb managed to make even the mellifluous strains of Celine Dion sound like the growls of a thousand angry demons. Nash eyed the fire escape. It was the only other way out of the apartment. Irina had paid off the inspectors for the last thirty years rather than repair the aging ladders, and it showed. He reached out the window and gingerly prodded one of the rungs with his hand. The metal disintegrated instantly into fragments that fell to the ground three stories below and exploded into a puff of rusty dust.
Nash was at a loss. Sure, Cobb was a shitty extractor. And, as he had displayed just a few minutes earlier, quite a spectacularly crappy shot. But it wouldn‘t matter. It was like those dude ranch hunting clubs back in the States where rich old guys paid thousands of dollars to shoot at ‘wild’ buffalo that were in reality enclosed in a twenty acre pen. Except, Nash was the buffalo and his apartment the pen, and he had a hell of a lot less than twenty acres to work with. Thirty square meters and nowhere to hide. It was like the premise of every shitty horror movie that he’d ever watched since he started tapping into the neighbor’s cable hookup.
It hit him, suddenly, like a freight train mashing into the sweet little skull of Mallorie Cobb, that he had run out of options. He had to open the door. He surveyed the apartment, looking for any furniture that might be useful to dive behind if things got hairy. He did a series of mental calculations regarding how far a bullet could travel through his sofa from different angles. They were most likely wildly inaccurate, but by this point the was grasping at nanotubes rather than straws. He stood in front of the door and took a deep, shuddering breath. He wiped his nose on his necktie and ran a hand through his greasy brown hair. Shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other, he grasped the doorknob, and slowly opened the door.
Cobb stood there as smug as a Cobol thug receiving sexual favors, his gloved fist lifted in mid-tap, gun pointing forward in his other hand, the rest of him as suave as could be in his motherfuckin’ three-piece suit. “So... we finally meet again.”
He stepped into the dingy flat, completely unsurprised that the earlier stench had grown immensely with each step forward. Stopping to stare at the monstrosity sitting in the middle of the living room, it hit him like a bullet piercing Saito’s chest that the strangely-colored mass was actually a sofa. He looked around for a blanket or some paper towels to lay onto the surface before sitting down, but the apartment was decidedly void of anything remotely reminiscent of the word “clean.” Cobb wondered if he’d accidentally entered upon a germophobe’s worst nightmare or a bureaucrat’s wet dream.
Still standing, he turned back to Nash, gun still trained on the ratty architect’s hollowed form. “You are one difficult bastard to track down. I’ve spent every wakening and dreaming moment these past few weeks on an epic search for you. From all the reactions I’ve gotten, you’d think Nash was the holy fucking grail or something.”
He chortled sadistically, his formerly slutty and mean side glowing through the falsely pillowy Pillsbury Doughboy figure he’d adopted since taking advantage of the benefits of air travel. “I heard rumors that you’d gone to Istanbul. I hired some ninjas with fighting skills to go after you. I even asked Dr. Phil where the fuck you were, and he said something about a shrubbery. I don’t know how high I was and whether I dreamed all this up, but here I am. Ready to make you pay.”
Nash blinked, staring at Cobb face-to-face for the first time since he was dragged out of the helicopter on that fateful day. A swarm of mixed emotions clobbered him over the head, one after the other. The first was a recurrence of that faint sense of pride that Cobb cared enough to travel the world looking for him even when incapacitated by Yusuf’s chemicals (and he had to have been…Monty Python quoting TV psychiatrists? Really?) and the alternating, less ego-inflating realization that the reason for this flattering dedication was most likely extremely violent.
Cropping up also was mild offense at the fact that Cobb seemed to disprove of the state of Nash’s living quarters. He’d just cleaned the bathroom, thank you very much. He couldn’t read French well enough to be sure any cleaning products he bought wouldn’t combine and kill him with some sort of noxious gas, so he just used vodka. Alcohol kills all kinds of germs and shit, right? Hopefully, because he had gotten wasted on what remained in the bucket after the toilet had been scrubbed. Also creeping slowly into his brain was a begrudging admiration for the three-piece suit that was almost as intimidating as the weapon Cobb was brandishing.
Nash tried to think quickly, but as this was not his strong suit, he decided that he just had to stall Cobb. Keep him talking. Loudly. Hopefully the old guy upstairs who shouted “Tais-toi! Arrete le bruit! Ta guele!” at the volume of his television every night would be perturbed enough by the noise that he would call the landlady. Nash just had to pray that Irina wanted to keep the walls free of bullets and bloodstains more than she wanted him out of the place he hadn’t paid rent for in weeks.
“C-Cobb? What are you doing here, you son of a bitch?”
It wasn’t really a question he needed answered, as Cobb’s intentions were all too transparent already. You don’t bring a gun to a dinner party. Nash’s voice was hostile, but rising in pitch. The skin on his face couldn’t quite decide whether to flush with anger or blanch with fear, which made his pasty complexion appear as if it had been bitten by hundreds of angry gnats. It was true that the only way Nash could have been more bitter towards the shining, strutting extractor was if he had been carved out of a solid block of Denatonium, but it was also true that seeing Cobb in his suit made him want to take his chances and bail out the window, hoping against hope that his luck had finally changed and he would bounce off a passing mattress truck. It was a paradox, indeed. Well…here goes nothing, he thought. At least he would be able to get all that resentment off his chest. Nash didn’t need Dr. Phil and his shrubbery. He was going to work through his negative emotions right here, with the very jackass who incited them.
“Make me pay for what, the carpet?“
His voice rose indignantly. “I made one very, very small mistake which would have gone unnoticed if our mark hadn’t been having some sort of unwholesome relationship with the thing. And what was the outcome of that? Well, let’s see. For ME, it was not even being able to enjoy my first helicopter ride because Saito’s thugs beat me up, being held captive by Cobol for god knows how long, and now constantly running from you, the guys Cobol’s apparently sent after me, and hot chicks at bars who instead of politely declining your propositions threaten to shoot your balls off. Oh, and Saito’s rigged it so I can’t even get back into the States--apparently my passport has now been flagged as belonging to a Mr. Pete O’Bear, who apparently has a lengthy rap sheet for activities even I would find unsavory. And what did my mistake do to YOU, Cobb? Practically nothing. The only thing I can think of is without my error you wouldn’t be banging that sweet piece of ass Ariadne up in her dorm room every weekend. You should be fucking grateful I screwed up.”
Cobb felt a deep growl reverberate through his vocal cords. Shut your dirty whore mouth, you Cobol slut, he wanted to scream, his squint becoming lethal and creasing his forehead like two large plates at a fault line. The whiny shrill voice of his former colleague already so resembled nails on a chalkboard, but with a heightened volume, that Cobb felt his ear drums being punctured like a bullet shot directly into Arthur’s foot. He watched as the glass in the room shook, ready to splinter into a billion pieces similar to CG in a Christopher Nolan action flick.
“Stop,” he demanded in a low hissing voice, braving the smell to step up to Nash and grab his collar, pointing the barrel upwards into his neck menacingly. “You are in no position to complain now. Oh and if you mention Ariadne like that again your peanut brain will be buttered all over the walls.” Not like I even got to bang the jailbait anyway, he thought, disappoint. She was broadcasting her acrobatic abilities all over the net under the alias “sara” who had just turned 18 and got her own webcam, how could he not be tempted? But alas, Cobb, being abroad and evading the police and all, hadn’t been paying attention to the viewing material on Dateline NBC.
He was, however, quite deliciously filled with the hot steaming schadenfreude streaming down his throat. Oh yes, Nash was now in the identical position that he was beforehand: it was as if Saito had traded one passport for another. The difference being that Nash had no children (I mean honestly, who would tap that... willingly?) and oh, the fact that he was a good-for-nothing douchebag. Nash that is. Squint.
“I almost feel sorry for you,” Cobb guffawed evilly. “Your pathetic little story almost makes you look like the victim in this whole ordeal, like you were simply the recipient of luck gone rotten. But I’m nowhere near as stupid as you’d think: I have other redeeming factors beyond ruining routine extraction jobs with my emo wanking, I swear. At least I can say that I am loyal and just to my fellow team members. You see, it’s not the carpet that caused me to blow my gaskets, it’s the fact that you’d betray us to some scum-sucking Cobol thugs and then somehow possess the gonads to message me asking me to help you while in captivity... Now that really lights the ginger in my arsehole. Such foolhardy behavior might well be praised in whatever sewage plant you crawled out of, but in my world-” He pressed the still-warm end of the gun deeper into Nash’s flesh, taking a note to sanitize his precious disco stick later. “In my world, it gets you killed. In reality. And if you die in reality, you die, stupid.”
Nash could feel Cobb’s breath on his face and the hot metal of the gun burning a circle into his neck. This was not going well. Not going well at all. The only thing that kept him from passing out, pissing his pants, or both was the fact that Cobb had just quoted from his favorite episode of Doctor Who. Revenge killer and Doctor Who fan were two things that Nash could not reconcile, no matter how hard he tried, and it gave him a rather desperate spark of hope--maybe Cobb was all bark and no bite, like some 14 year old nerd threatening fellow World of Warcraft players from the safety of his Batman-themed bedroom. And blindly, stupidly, desperately, he dug himself even deeper into the Wrath of Cobb.
“How is Mal doing?” He asked with what he hoped was a vicious snarl. It was more like a squeak, but all things considering, he was quite proud of it.
“Do you still have your little encounters with her in that elevator of yours? You know she’s only a projection, and having sex with her, well, now…it really only amounts to something most guys can get done with their hand and a bootleg copy of Sorority Sluts 3. You’re the only guy I know who needs a piece of sophisticated military-grade equipment like the PASIV to jack off.”
Cobb felt his blood pressure rise, and boy could it rise thanks to the Michelin Man physique he was starting to boast. The daring little fucker was trying to call his bluff. He felt his finger twitch as it tightened on the trigger, although not yet with enough force to actually shoot the bullet. He’d never actually killed anyone in real life, except Mal. But that was only a technicality of course. Dammit, I can’t even fire a warning shot or something to scare the bitch because the other residents would call the cops, or worse the lady in the office on the bottom floor who reminded him of one big cabbage.
“For your information, I can proudly say that I haven’t dreamed of her since the Fischer job,” Cobb spit out, mustering all of his strength to not clonk the bastard over the head in a furious rage. He ended up, instead, sounding like a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who was getting pat on the back for a five day break from binge-drinking.
“And we never did anything like they do in Sorority Sluts 3: it was more like Backdoor Sluts 9, if you catch my drift.” He winked deviously. And Mal was not the backdoor slut either... but this fact did not need to be divulged.
“To get to the point of why I’m here, well it is obviously to make you pay. But your life is worth far too little as it is to let it go with the explosion of gunpowder. No, no, no, a bullet would be a terrible investment on my part. Rather, what I need you to do is to prove right here, right now that I don’t need military equipment to get my jollies. Oh, no. Quite the contrary. All I need is for my ex-architect to demonstrate on a live subject, namely me, the techniques he used to ah... persuade Cobol Engineering into letting him go.”
“--and your children, why have you abandoned them to go gallivanting around looking for me? You’ll ruin them with neglect--Phillipa will end up screwing Arthur and James will grow up to be a pants-less drunk, you’ll see, and--”
His brain caught up with his mouth abruptly. He slowly processed Cobb’s last words and looked into his face, which had contorted into a strange leer aided by what appeared to be almost inhuman levitation on part of his eyebrows.
Nash mulled it over for a few seconds. Why had Cobol Engineering let him go? Not for the reasons Cobb suspected, in fact it was quite the opposite--Cobol was a powerful company, but even that couldn’t save them fully from feeling the recession. Some of the more…frivolous expenditures had to be trimmed. Recently, though--with the dissolution of several Fischer-Morrow enterprises which had previously been competitors--the field operatives had gotten their recreation fund reinstated, and now had an ample budget for booze, video games, and local prostitutes. And he couldn’t compete with those girls. They were professionals…and, well, girls.
Now that they had no carnal use for him, the thugs at Cobol had finally made the phone call they had been putting off for weeks--to an extractor who specialized in brute-force retrieval using chemicals that even Timothy Leary wouldn’t have fucked around with. Apparently Cobol was convinced that somewhere in Nash’s subconscious he knew what was on those plans of Saito’s, and the only way to access them was to pry them out using a method that 90% of the time left you a raving lunatic or a vegetable. This was really the last thing Nash needed. So the next time the door was open, he ran, and since he had never tried to run before the element of surprise worked to his advantage.
He tried to think of how to express all this to Cobb in a way that would be most acerbic, but Cobb’s comments had flooded him with memories of being back at Cobol. With Freddy. Freddy Simmons--Nash was fairly certain this was not his given name, but for some reason he required Nash to address him as such--was the team leader of all the heavies at Cobol. Nash flashed back to those nights, when he knelt before him on the hard industrial flooring, Freddy gripping a large handful of Nash’s hair to the point of it nearly parting company with his scalp, the taste of his warm flesh against the wall of his throat. He found it…not altogether unpleasant. In fact…damn those usurping local call girls.
He hadn’t brushed his teeth since he ate a packet of nacho cheese Doritos a couple hours ago. He wondered vaguely there was still enough residual powdered fromage in his mouth to turn Cobb’s dick orange. Shit, Nash, why are you even thinking about this? He shook his head violently, like a wet dog.
“No, Nash. I don’t care how much he reminds you of Freddy, you are not giving Cobb a blowjob. You hate him and you would rather be shot in the kneecaps. Right? Right.”
Dear God in Heaven (or Proclus Global, as it may be), did he just say that out loud?
“Who the fuck is Freddy? Have you been cheating on me with another extractor?” Cobb barked, surprised at how defensive he’d become. The one-night stand he’d had with his former architect meant nothing, absolutely nothing, besides illustrating how disgustingly desperate he could get when too lazy to strut down to the red-light district for a proper romp. “You could never stay with just one team could you? Always flitting from extractor to extractor, sometimes to the client in Saito’s case. Why are you so hard to satisfy? Why can’t you settle down?”
Huh. It was strange how much that one-night stand meant so little yet prompted so many admonishments. It was strange how much he disdained of Nash yet how much time he’d spent hunting for him night and day. It was all a very strange matter.
But not as strange as the admission he was to make.
“You know, uh. There were plenty of talented architects willing to work with Arthur and me on the Cobol job, but against his advice, I took one with questionable credentials. One who made building with Megablocks look like rocket surgery. Fighting every logical bone in my body, I chose a selfish, cheating, lying, backstabbing bastard called Nash.” Swinging a leg around the back of Nash’s to cause his knees to bend, Cobb simultaneously shoved him down by pulling his collar sharply towards the ground, his gun then pointing to the crown of his skull. “Maybe I thought I had something to prove. But all I proved to myself was my lack of taste. What I lack in taste, however, you shall make up for in tasting.”
His hand now free from the collar, Cobb unzipped, all twelve inches springing forth in veined glory. “You may recall me being significantly less... gifted last time. But let’s just say that Proclus Global offered me a little proclus of my own as part of our bargain.”
Nash’s knees buckled with the force of Cobb’s kick before he could retaliate against the quip about rocket surgery. He was suddenly faced with Cobb’s own personal rocket, which may have indeed seen some major surgery--that monster was a foot long, if an inch.
He had always wondered about those discreet brown packages of “experimental vitamins” that had arrived at the warehouse now and then. It appeared that not only had Saito started to subsidize Cobb’s habit but had turned him on to the “extra strength” variety. Nash had to admit, the results were impressive.
Nash sighed. He remembered the last time he had an encounter with Cobb--Arthur wasn’t around, his favorite hooker had come down with the one STD Cobb didn’t have yet, and they were alone in a seedy motel room waiting for a client to deliver the specs for their next job. Cobb hadn’t seemed to like Nash, even then--he was prone to whining, being pissy, and making off with more than his fair share of the cut. The Casanova-esque sensuality that apparently Cobb in all his sluttiness was well known for was absent--it was cut-to-the chase, quick and rough. It had hurt, badly, and Nash had cried. It was amazing. The pain lingered for days, and along with it a sort of internal buzz that Nash couldn‘t shake. Didn’t particularly want to shake. Cobb had ignored him afterwards, referencing their tryst only once by insisting Nash offer to pay the innkeeper for the pillow he had set irreparably with the imprint of his teeth.
But that was a long time ago, and any affection he ever had for Cobb was overshadowed by the fact that Nash felt Cobb was the progenitor of all his problems, not to mention that he had chased him all over creation threatening to shoot him. After all, Nash had betrayed them to someone he had every inclination to believe would off the whole lot of them, stalked his teammates, made up vicious lies about his family, attempted to tip off Fischer (but alas, they don’t let just anyone speak directly to the CEO…he got stalled by a girl at a call center in India), and if he had any viable information on Cobb he would have sang like the proverbial canary to Cobol. And apparently itsy bitsy little lapses in judgment like these were enough to make a psycho like Cobb go apeshit.
But Nash was going to weasel his way out of this. He was going to get out of there, alive, and his quest for revenge-by-proxy would continue (this face to face confrontation business kind of scared the shit out of him. He’d much rather put something into motion to antagonize them from afar).
But first…there was some business. Slutty Cobb was attempting to live up this name, and Nash couldn’t deny him. He ran his hand along Cobb’s mountainous cock before tentatively placing his lips around it and taking it into his mouth. His mind raced as he worked his tongue around the other man, then began to take Cobb’s new-and-improved dick in deeper and deeper. Being able to deep throat 12 inches was a skill most often only demonstrated by cast members of Sorority Sluts 3, but after both his stint at Cobol and months of habituation to the sights and smells of his flat, what little gag reflex he had once possessed had gone the way of the dinosaurs. Cobb looked smug. But little did he know, Irina was a paranoid freak with no regard for privacy laws. All the rooms were wired for video, and everything was kept on tape for use in future disputes with tenants. Nash had always found it creepy that Irina could sit up at night with a bowl of popcorn watching him jerk off to Sorority Sluts 3 (damn, he needed to diversify his porn collection), but now he was giddy with the thought of it. Cobb was too noble to kill him, and after he had his fun he would leave. And the tapes would be in the mail, addressed to darling James and Phillipa. Maybe he’d wait a few years. They were really too young now. Too young to remember. What is the optimum time for internalizing the trauma of watching your parents caught in a sex act? Ten, maybe? Twelve. He could wait. He’d have all the time in the world…he let his eyes float up to meet Cobb’s. Later, when his mouth was less preoccupied, he would shoot Cobb a twitchy, secret grin.
Authors: my_kakistocracy as Nash, koushi as Cobb
Pairing: Cobb/Nash
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 5900
Disclaimer: I have no claim to Inception or any of its characters.
Summary: Ever since Cobb first bumped into Nash at the Omegle party (when Nash messaged him begging for his help in escaping Cobol Engineering), he has been trying to find the ex-architect with the aid of a private jet borrowed from Saito.
Note: UTTER CRACK with tons of references to other RPs and satire on the fandom and inside jokes.
No sign of the sleazy good-for-nothing architect anywhere, Cobb lamented angrily as he glanced at his watch. It was still early in the day, so he had time to fly to another location on his borrowed Saito Airlines jet before sundown. Just as he stepped onto the ladder to the cockpit, however, he saw a flash of brown duck behind a statue on the other side of the plane. Could it be...?
Shit. Nash dodged behind the nearest statue. The private plane was certainly suspicious, but he couldn’t know for sure it was Cobb. He slowed his breath. After all, his mind was apt to play tricks--lately he’d been seeing Cobb in every shadow and outcropping of rock. Just yesterday, a blondish man with a self-confident strut had approached him in the metro station. Nash was halfway through a garbled mess of railing accusations and pleas for mercy when he realized the man had only asked him for the time. The resident schizophrenic drunk had even looked up from his shopping cart, possibly pleased at the prospect of a likeminded friend. It was highly embarrassing. He wound up the courage to take a second peek--fuck. Definitely Cobb. He tried to stay still, and hoped against hope through the distortion of his trademarked squint Cobb would not notice that the stone horse had six legs.
Cobb had always had trouble trusting his vision: this was true. And it didn’t help that his dreams had so distorted reality during his fugitive phase, seeing Phillipa and James behind every corner rather than only when the sunlight inundated his pupils. But this time he felt he should go with his first instinct and check out the possible lead. After all, he’d been searching for weeks now, circumnavigating the globe like most people visit the grocery store. He stretched a hand into the breast of his suit jacket, crinkling the worn black leather gloves that dressed it, pulling out a handgun from his shoulder holster and screwing on the silencer, all in the blink... or squint of an eye. There’s no need to find cover, he thought smugly to himself as he approached the landmark, pistol raised, the smarmy bastard wouldn’t know what to do even if he had a loaded weapon.
Nash heard the bullet ricochet off the stone horse before he even realized Cobb was armed. The first thought that flashed into his head was one of self-importance: Dominick Cobb, in all his black-gloved bass-assery, has taken time out of his impossibly exciting life to settle a vendetta he has with me. The second thought was of the more generic shit, I’m going to die variety that one usually experiences while on the wrong side of a loaded weapon. Nash had no choice. He had to run and hope that Cobb was just as shitty at being a hitman as he was at being an extractor.
Movement sighted. The target darted to the side as fast as he could, greasy brown hair flying behind him as he fled, however clumsily. What a fool, Cobb snickered, only the guilty would run like that. Flipping his tie over his shoulder for a dramatic flourish, he too started after the graceless former architect. He thought he’d be able to outdo Nash easily, but the shots he fired seemed to have released his prey’s adrenaline reserves, allowing him to continue the chase. They wound through empty alleys, down streets full of staring window-shoppers, and even dodged a few vehicles, which honked with ample road rage. This reminds me of that time in Mombassa, but I’m glad there aren’t any crevices I can get my shoulders stuck in. Always forward-looking, turning to the side was not in Cobb’s repertoire.
“Stop!” he shouted between breaths. Traveling in the jet was not doing wonders for staying in shape. “You can’t hide any longer!”
Nash heard Cobb call out, seconds behind him.
“Stop!” Cobb shouted, appearing slightly pudgier than Nash remembered, but no less threatening. Okay, maybe a little less. The gun, however, made up for any comfort Cobb’s developing spare tire could provide. Nash obeyed, standing stock-still in the middle of the road and receivinga bullet between the eyes and a bone-crushing blow from a passing taxi simultaneously. Nash snorted involuntarily at the thought. Yeah...I’m going to give that idea a “no.”
A gaggle of small children in school uniform was being herded across the street by a plump woman he’d seen hundreds of times before. The way to the local primary school wound right by the dingy old building where he rented an aging shithole of a flat from a terrifying old landlady who smelled of cabbage and cheap wine. If he stayed close behind them, he could reach his apartment in relative safety within sixty seconds. Cobb had his own stupid kids he was always on about, so he must like them. Certainly he wouldn’t risk shooting one. Chris Hansen might show up at his door in a few days to inquire why he was hanging about with a crowd of under-tens, but he figured staying alive would be well worth the trouble. He mustered all his energy for the one last sprint to safety.
“I’ll catch you,” Cobb called to Nash, starting to wheeze as his heart pounded nonstop, his legs feeling like heavy tubes of lead, “if I can!” Okay, not sure where that came but it definitely sounded better in my head. He’d been absolutely sure that he could overtake the scrawny little rat, but now it wasn’t looking so certain. The dude was caged up for fuck knows how long: how does he still have any muscle mass? Cobb resigned himself to the explanation that perhaps Cobol makes its prisoners do laps in the company gym, which was not out of the question considering how the goons who were sent for him ran like the wind.
And then he nearly dropped his gun. It was like he’d been drawn into an episode of Madeleine, the squat schoolchildren waddling in rows behind their schoolmarm. He couldn’t risk missing a shot and hurting the children... or even pushing past them in a flurry. But he also could not, he repeated, not lose Nash again. His mind rolled through all the projections that’d been in his way on his endless search: the one ranting about dead hookers, the ones that said “heyyy” and who seemed more interested in pegging him than helping him peg his target, the haters who called him a slut just because of the way he walked. They were painful memories but ones that he was determined would not occur again.
All he could do now was try to tiptoe past the crowd as gingerly as possibly, resuming a half-strut half-race as soon as they were out of the danger zone.
Nash broke off from the line of schoolchildren, who were beginning to eye him suspiciously, and sprinted toward the entrance of the building he called home, dodging mailboxes and little old ladies pushing small dogs in prams. He was suddenly grateful for all the time he spent running from people, each instance of which he had previously regarded as just another entry in a continuing streak of horrid luck. It began in a seedy bar downtown, when he mustered up the courage to hit on a beautiful woman with dark curly hair and stilettos. He had said something to her that was immensely clever, he was sure of it, but apparently girls who run with the Mob are immune to pick-up lines. She had brandished a gun under the bar counter, whist retorting that perhaps he would have a chance when Hell froze over or he washed his hair, the former of which she assumed would occur first. Bitch. Bitch with friends, apparently. Spent all night dodging them. Only now, his heart racing, every muscle fiber twitching as he dove into the entryway of the shady old apartment block, was he slightly grateful. Slightly.
He raced upstairs and fumbled with the key for a few seconds before wrenching open the door to the sordid two-room apartment he called home. The place was covered with a sickly green carpet, which often made him wonder if Saito really was God and these were the sort of pinches of karma he found amusing to dish out. At least it was polyester.
He was immensely proud at having outrun Cobb--that asshole was less of a badass than he thought. He kicked off his shoes and settled smugly onto a sofa that looked as if it had been chewed up by some great beast and then spit back out. There was a rough knock at the door.
“Irina?” He asked hopefully. Now would be the only time he would ever have wanted it to be the landlady whose attempts to evict him often ended with his nursing a splitting skillet-induced headache. But it wasn’t Irina. He could tell. He could practically feel the triumphant squint boring through the cheap fiberglass door…
The first thing Cobb noticed when he entered the building (okay besides the decrepit and moldy condition of the crumbling concrete walls) was the smell. It had notes of sweaty gym socks and a finishing hint of burning rubber: if Nash ever branded his own eau de cologne, it would be captured in this distinct odor. He tried to hold his breath while climbing the stairs but, being out of shape, he had to keep on huffing for sufficient oxygen to power his struts.
Taking his last stride up to the room and knocking on the flimsy door, he was interrupted by a vibrating noise and “My Heart will Go On” ringing from his cellphone. Sigh. Always the worst timing, he thought as he flipped it open.
“What do you want?” he asked impatiently, a squint so slitty appearing on his face that it could have sliced diamonds in half.
“Dude,” Arthur replied, a desperate edge in his voice, “there’s no lube.”
“No lube? That’s not my problem. Why don’t you go to the store or something?” Jesus. Palm? Meet face. Face? This is palm.
“No, you see... Eames and I are in... an awkward position and we can’t get out of it.”
“Well, all I can do for you is to ask where your God is now because I sure as fuck can’t help out from Lyon, France.” He hung up, extremely exacerbated. All advantages of timing and surprise worked against him now as he was sure that Nash could hear him from within his rancid flat.
“Okay, Nash. You and I both know you can’t stay in there forever. So why don’t you make it easier on us by letting me in before I break your door down?” he yelled, rapping on the door frame with his knuckles.
It was Cobb, just as he’d suspected. He knew even before he threatened to take down the door. There was only one person on Earth who would still hang on to that ringtone. If it were any other grown man displaying a penchant for something that peaked in popularity in 1997 and even then mostly among 15 year old girls, it would be ridiculous--but Cobb managed to make even the mellifluous strains of Celine Dion sound like the growls of a thousand angry demons. Nash eyed the fire escape. It was the only other way out of the apartment. Irina had paid off the inspectors for the last thirty years rather than repair the aging ladders, and it showed. He reached out the window and gingerly prodded one of the rungs with his hand. The metal disintegrated instantly into fragments that fell to the ground three stories below and exploded into a puff of rusty dust.
Nash was at a loss. Sure, Cobb was a shitty extractor. And, as he had displayed just a few minutes earlier, quite a spectacularly crappy shot. But it wouldn‘t matter. It was like those dude ranch hunting clubs back in the States where rich old guys paid thousands of dollars to shoot at ‘wild’ buffalo that were in reality enclosed in a twenty acre pen. Except, Nash was the buffalo and his apartment the pen, and he had a hell of a lot less than twenty acres to work with. Thirty square meters and nowhere to hide. It was like the premise of every shitty horror movie that he’d ever watched since he started tapping into the neighbor’s cable hookup.
It hit him, suddenly, like a freight train mashing into the sweet little skull of Mallorie Cobb, that he had run out of options. He had to open the door. He surveyed the apartment, looking for any furniture that might be useful to dive behind if things got hairy. He did a series of mental calculations regarding how far a bullet could travel through his sofa from different angles. They were most likely wildly inaccurate, but by this point the was grasping at nanotubes rather than straws. He stood in front of the door and took a deep, shuddering breath. He wiped his nose on his necktie and ran a hand through his greasy brown hair. Shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other, he grasped the doorknob, and slowly opened the door.
Cobb stood there as smug as a Cobol thug receiving sexual favors, his gloved fist lifted in mid-tap, gun pointing forward in his other hand, the rest of him as suave as could be in his motherfuckin’ three-piece suit. “So... we finally meet again.”
He stepped into the dingy flat, completely unsurprised that the earlier stench had grown immensely with each step forward. Stopping to stare at the monstrosity sitting in the middle of the living room, it hit him like a bullet piercing Saito’s chest that the strangely-colored mass was actually a sofa. He looked around for a blanket or some paper towels to lay onto the surface before sitting down, but the apartment was decidedly void of anything remotely reminiscent of the word “clean.” Cobb wondered if he’d accidentally entered upon a germophobe’s worst nightmare or a bureaucrat’s wet dream.
Still standing, he turned back to Nash, gun still trained on the ratty architect’s hollowed form. “You are one difficult bastard to track down. I’ve spent every wakening and dreaming moment these past few weeks on an epic search for you. From all the reactions I’ve gotten, you’d think Nash was the holy fucking grail or something.”
He chortled sadistically, his formerly slutty and mean side glowing through the falsely pillowy Pillsbury Doughboy figure he’d adopted since taking advantage of the benefits of air travel. “I heard rumors that you’d gone to Istanbul. I hired some ninjas with fighting skills to go after you. I even asked Dr. Phil where the fuck you were, and he said something about a shrubbery. I don’t know how high I was and whether I dreamed all this up, but here I am. Ready to make you pay.”
Nash blinked, staring at Cobb face-to-face for the first time since he was dragged out of the helicopter on that fateful day. A swarm of mixed emotions clobbered him over the head, one after the other. The first was a recurrence of that faint sense of pride that Cobb cared enough to travel the world looking for him even when incapacitated by Yusuf’s chemicals (and he had to have been…Monty Python quoting TV psychiatrists? Really?) and the alternating, less ego-inflating realization that the reason for this flattering dedication was most likely extremely violent.
Cropping up also was mild offense at the fact that Cobb seemed to disprove of the state of Nash’s living quarters. He’d just cleaned the bathroom, thank you very much. He couldn’t read French well enough to be sure any cleaning products he bought wouldn’t combine and kill him with some sort of noxious gas, so he just used vodka. Alcohol kills all kinds of germs and shit, right? Hopefully, because he had gotten wasted on what remained in the bucket after the toilet had been scrubbed. Also creeping slowly into his brain was a begrudging admiration for the three-piece suit that was almost as intimidating as the weapon Cobb was brandishing.
Nash tried to think quickly, but as this was not his strong suit, he decided that he just had to stall Cobb. Keep him talking. Loudly. Hopefully the old guy upstairs who shouted “Tais-toi! Arrete le bruit! Ta guele!” at the volume of his television every night would be perturbed enough by the noise that he would call the landlady. Nash just had to pray that Irina wanted to keep the walls free of bullets and bloodstains more than she wanted him out of the place he hadn’t paid rent for in weeks.
“C-Cobb? What are you doing here, you son of a bitch?”
It wasn’t really a question he needed answered, as Cobb’s intentions were all too transparent already. You don’t bring a gun to a dinner party. Nash’s voice was hostile, but rising in pitch. The skin on his face couldn’t quite decide whether to flush with anger or blanch with fear, which made his pasty complexion appear as if it had been bitten by hundreds of angry gnats. It was true that the only way Nash could have been more bitter towards the shining, strutting extractor was if he had been carved out of a solid block of Denatonium, but it was also true that seeing Cobb in his suit made him want to take his chances and bail out the window, hoping against hope that his luck had finally changed and he would bounce off a passing mattress truck. It was a paradox, indeed. Well…here goes nothing, he thought. At least he would be able to get all that resentment off his chest. Nash didn’t need Dr. Phil and his shrubbery. He was going to work through his negative emotions right here, with the very jackass who incited them.
“Make me pay for what, the carpet?“
His voice rose indignantly. “I made one very, very small mistake which would have gone unnoticed if our mark hadn’t been having some sort of unwholesome relationship with the thing. And what was the outcome of that? Well, let’s see. For ME, it was not even being able to enjoy my first helicopter ride because Saito’s thugs beat me up, being held captive by Cobol for god knows how long, and now constantly running from you, the guys Cobol’s apparently sent after me, and hot chicks at bars who instead of politely declining your propositions threaten to shoot your balls off. Oh, and Saito’s rigged it so I can’t even get back into the States--apparently my passport has now been flagged as belonging to a Mr. Pete O’Bear, who apparently has a lengthy rap sheet for activities even I would find unsavory. And what did my mistake do to YOU, Cobb? Practically nothing. The only thing I can think of is without my error you wouldn’t be banging that sweet piece of ass Ariadne up in her dorm room every weekend. You should be fucking grateful I screwed up.”
Cobb felt a deep growl reverberate through his vocal cords. Shut your dirty whore mouth, you Cobol slut, he wanted to scream, his squint becoming lethal and creasing his forehead like two large plates at a fault line. The whiny shrill voice of his former colleague already so resembled nails on a chalkboard, but with a heightened volume, that Cobb felt his ear drums being punctured like a bullet shot directly into Arthur’s foot. He watched as the glass in the room shook, ready to splinter into a billion pieces similar to CG in a Christopher Nolan action flick.
“Stop,” he demanded in a low hissing voice, braving the smell to step up to Nash and grab his collar, pointing the barrel upwards into his neck menacingly. “You are in no position to complain now. Oh and if you mention Ariadne like that again your peanut brain will be buttered all over the walls.” Not like I even got to bang the jailbait anyway, he thought, disappoint. She was broadcasting her acrobatic abilities all over the net under the alias “sara” who had just turned 18 and got her own webcam, how could he not be tempted? But alas, Cobb, being abroad and evading the police and all, hadn’t been paying attention to the viewing material on Dateline NBC.
He was, however, quite deliciously filled with the hot steaming schadenfreude streaming down his throat. Oh yes, Nash was now in the identical position that he was beforehand: it was as if Saito had traded one passport for another. The difference being that Nash had no children (I mean honestly, who would tap that... willingly?) and oh, the fact that he was a good-for-nothing douchebag. Nash that is. Squint.
“I almost feel sorry for you,” Cobb guffawed evilly. “Your pathetic little story almost makes you look like the victim in this whole ordeal, like you were simply the recipient of luck gone rotten. But I’m nowhere near as stupid as you’d think: I have other redeeming factors beyond ruining routine extraction jobs with my emo wanking, I swear. At least I can say that I am loyal and just to my fellow team members. You see, it’s not the carpet that caused me to blow my gaskets, it’s the fact that you’d betray us to some scum-sucking Cobol thugs and then somehow possess the gonads to message me asking me to help you while in captivity... Now that really lights the ginger in my arsehole. Such foolhardy behavior might well be praised in whatever sewage plant you crawled out of, but in my world-” He pressed the still-warm end of the gun deeper into Nash’s flesh, taking a note to sanitize his precious disco stick later. “In my world, it gets you killed. In reality. And if you die in reality, you die, stupid.”
Nash could feel Cobb’s breath on his face and the hot metal of the gun burning a circle into his neck. This was not going well. Not going well at all. The only thing that kept him from passing out, pissing his pants, or both was the fact that Cobb had just quoted from his favorite episode of Doctor Who. Revenge killer and Doctor Who fan were two things that Nash could not reconcile, no matter how hard he tried, and it gave him a rather desperate spark of hope--maybe Cobb was all bark and no bite, like some 14 year old nerd threatening fellow World of Warcraft players from the safety of his Batman-themed bedroom. And blindly, stupidly, desperately, he dug himself even deeper into the Wrath of Cobb.
“How is Mal doing?” He asked with what he hoped was a vicious snarl. It was more like a squeak, but all things considering, he was quite proud of it.
“Do you still have your little encounters with her in that elevator of yours? You know she’s only a projection, and having sex with her, well, now…it really only amounts to something most guys can get done with their hand and a bootleg copy of Sorority Sluts 3. You’re the only guy I know who needs a piece of sophisticated military-grade equipment like the PASIV to jack off.”
Cobb felt his blood pressure rise, and boy could it rise thanks to the Michelin Man physique he was starting to boast. The daring little fucker was trying to call his bluff. He felt his finger twitch as it tightened on the trigger, although not yet with enough force to actually shoot the bullet. He’d never actually killed anyone in real life, except Mal. But that was only a technicality of course. Dammit, I can’t even fire a warning shot or something to scare the bitch because the other residents would call the cops, or worse the lady in the office on the bottom floor who reminded him of one big cabbage.
“For your information, I can proudly say that I haven’t dreamed of her since the Fischer job,” Cobb spit out, mustering all of his strength to not clonk the bastard over the head in a furious rage. He ended up, instead, sounding like a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who was getting pat on the back for a five day break from binge-drinking.
“And we never did anything like they do in Sorority Sluts 3: it was more like Backdoor Sluts 9, if you catch my drift.” He winked deviously. And Mal was not the backdoor slut either... but this fact did not need to be divulged.
“To get to the point of why I’m here, well it is obviously to make you pay. But your life is worth far too little as it is to let it go with the explosion of gunpowder. No, no, no, a bullet would be a terrible investment on my part. Rather, what I need you to do is to prove right here, right now that I don’t need military equipment to get my jollies. Oh, no. Quite the contrary. All I need is for my ex-architect to demonstrate on a live subject, namely me, the techniques he used to ah... persuade Cobol Engineering into letting him go.”
“--and your children, why have you abandoned them to go gallivanting around looking for me? You’ll ruin them with neglect--Phillipa will end up screwing Arthur and James will grow up to be a pants-less drunk, you’ll see, and--”
His brain caught up with his mouth abruptly. He slowly processed Cobb’s last words and looked into his face, which had contorted into a strange leer aided by what appeared to be almost inhuman levitation on part of his eyebrows.
Nash mulled it over for a few seconds. Why had Cobol Engineering let him go? Not for the reasons Cobb suspected, in fact it was quite the opposite--Cobol was a powerful company, but even that couldn’t save them fully from feeling the recession. Some of the more…frivolous expenditures had to be trimmed. Recently, though--with the dissolution of several Fischer-Morrow enterprises which had previously been competitors--the field operatives had gotten their recreation fund reinstated, and now had an ample budget for booze, video games, and local prostitutes. And he couldn’t compete with those girls. They were professionals…and, well, girls.
Now that they had no carnal use for him, the thugs at Cobol had finally made the phone call they had been putting off for weeks--to an extractor who specialized in brute-force retrieval using chemicals that even Timothy Leary wouldn’t have fucked around with. Apparently Cobol was convinced that somewhere in Nash’s subconscious he knew what was on those plans of Saito’s, and the only way to access them was to pry them out using a method that 90% of the time left you a raving lunatic or a vegetable. This was really the last thing Nash needed. So the next time the door was open, he ran, and since he had never tried to run before the element of surprise worked to his advantage.
He tried to think of how to express all this to Cobb in a way that would be most acerbic, but Cobb’s comments had flooded him with memories of being back at Cobol. With Freddy. Freddy Simmons--Nash was fairly certain this was not his given name, but for some reason he required Nash to address him as such--was the team leader of all the heavies at Cobol. Nash flashed back to those nights, when he knelt before him on the hard industrial flooring, Freddy gripping a large handful of Nash’s hair to the point of it nearly parting company with his scalp, the taste of his warm flesh against the wall of his throat. He found it…not altogether unpleasant. In fact…damn those usurping local call girls.
He hadn’t brushed his teeth since he ate a packet of nacho cheese Doritos a couple hours ago. He wondered vaguely there was still enough residual powdered fromage in his mouth to turn Cobb’s dick orange. Shit, Nash, why are you even thinking about this? He shook his head violently, like a wet dog.
“No, Nash. I don’t care how much he reminds you of Freddy, you are not giving Cobb a blowjob. You hate him and you would rather be shot in the kneecaps. Right? Right.”
Dear God in Heaven (or Proclus Global, as it may be), did he just say that out loud?
“Who the fuck is Freddy? Have you been cheating on me with another extractor?” Cobb barked, surprised at how defensive he’d become. The one-night stand he’d had with his former architect meant nothing, absolutely nothing, besides illustrating how disgustingly desperate he could get when too lazy to strut down to the red-light district for a proper romp. “You could never stay with just one team could you? Always flitting from extractor to extractor, sometimes to the client in Saito’s case. Why are you so hard to satisfy? Why can’t you settle down?”
Huh. It was strange how much that one-night stand meant so little yet prompted so many admonishments. It was strange how much he disdained of Nash yet how much time he’d spent hunting for him night and day. It was all a very strange matter.
But not as strange as the admission he was to make.
“You know, uh. There were plenty of talented architects willing to work with Arthur and me on the Cobol job, but against his advice, I took one with questionable credentials. One who made building with Megablocks look like rocket surgery. Fighting every logical bone in my body, I chose a selfish, cheating, lying, backstabbing bastard called Nash.” Swinging a leg around the back of Nash’s to cause his knees to bend, Cobb simultaneously shoved him down by pulling his collar sharply towards the ground, his gun then pointing to the crown of his skull. “Maybe I thought I had something to prove. But all I proved to myself was my lack of taste. What I lack in taste, however, you shall make up for in tasting.”
His hand now free from the collar, Cobb unzipped, all twelve inches springing forth in veined glory. “You may recall me being significantly less... gifted last time. But let’s just say that Proclus Global offered me a little proclus of my own as part of our bargain.”
Nash’s knees buckled with the force of Cobb’s kick before he could retaliate against the quip about rocket surgery. He was suddenly faced with Cobb’s own personal rocket, which may have indeed seen some major surgery--that monster was a foot long, if an inch.
He had always wondered about those discreet brown packages of “experimental vitamins” that had arrived at the warehouse now and then. It appeared that not only had Saito started to subsidize Cobb’s habit but had turned him on to the “extra strength” variety. Nash had to admit, the results were impressive.
Nash sighed. He remembered the last time he had an encounter with Cobb--Arthur wasn’t around, his favorite hooker had come down with the one STD Cobb didn’t have yet, and they were alone in a seedy motel room waiting for a client to deliver the specs for their next job. Cobb hadn’t seemed to like Nash, even then--he was prone to whining, being pissy, and making off with more than his fair share of the cut. The Casanova-esque sensuality that apparently Cobb in all his sluttiness was well known for was absent--it was cut-to-the chase, quick and rough. It had hurt, badly, and Nash had cried. It was amazing. The pain lingered for days, and along with it a sort of internal buzz that Nash couldn‘t shake. Didn’t particularly want to shake. Cobb had ignored him afterwards, referencing their tryst only once by insisting Nash offer to pay the innkeeper for the pillow he had set irreparably with the imprint of his teeth.
But that was a long time ago, and any affection he ever had for Cobb was overshadowed by the fact that Nash felt Cobb was the progenitor of all his problems, not to mention that he had chased him all over creation threatening to shoot him. After all, Nash had betrayed them to someone he had every inclination to believe would off the whole lot of them, stalked his teammates, made up vicious lies about his family, attempted to tip off Fischer (but alas, they don’t let just anyone speak directly to the CEO…he got stalled by a girl at a call center in India), and if he had any viable information on Cobb he would have sang like the proverbial canary to Cobol. And apparently itsy bitsy little lapses in judgment like these were enough to make a psycho like Cobb go apeshit.
But Nash was going to weasel his way out of this. He was going to get out of there, alive, and his quest for revenge-by-proxy would continue (this face to face confrontation business kind of scared the shit out of him. He’d much rather put something into motion to antagonize them from afar).
But first…there was some business. Slutty Cobb was attempting to live up this name, and Nash couldn’t deny him. He ran his hand along Cobb’s mountainous cock before tentatively placing his lips around it and taking it into his mouth. His mind raced as he worked his tongue around the other man, then began to take Cobb’s new-and-improved dick in deeper and deeper. Being able to deep throat 12 inches was a skill most often only demonstrated by cast members of Sorority Sluts 3, but after both his stint at Cobol and months of habituation to the sights and smells of his flat, what little gag reflex he had once possessed had gone the way of the dinosaurs. Cobb looked smug. But little did he know, Irina was a paranoid freak with no regard for privacy laws. All the rooms were wired for video, and everything was kept on tape for use in future disputes with tenants. Nash had always found it creepy that Irina could sit up at night with a bowl of popcorn watching him jerk off to Sorority Sluts 3 (damn, he needed to diversify his porn collection), but now he was giddy with the thought of it. Cobb was too noble to kill him, and after he had his fun he would leave. And the tapes would be in the mail, addressed to darling James and Phillipa. Maybe he’d wait a few years. They were really too young now. Too young to remember. What is the optimum time for internalizing the trauma of watching your parents caught in a sex act? Ten, maybe? Twelve. He could wait. He’d have all the time in the world…he let his eyes float up to meet Cobb’s. Later, when his mouth was less preoccupied, he would shoot Cobb a twitchy, secret grin.