Inception/Mysterious Skin - Every Me and Every You (14/30)
Title: Every Me and Every You (14/30)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,020
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Brian opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Neil didn't move from his spot, staring back at the boy, feeling queasy. Brian looked bad; he had dark bruises of exhaustion under each eye, and his hair was starting to get shaggy and hang in his over the rim of his glasses, and he looked like he'd dropped a noticeable amount of weight since Neil had seen him last.
For a moment Neil found himself surprisingly angry. Brian looked like he was withering away, had surely been so for some time, and for the entirety of that time he was here in this house. The fact that Brian's mother had either not noticed or had not at least addressed it made Neil want to seethe in rage. The feeling was so unexpected that he was momentarily overwhelmed by it. The craziest thing was that he didn't know if the woman had confronted Brian about it or not, and he didn't really know either of them well enough to accurately predict such a thing…
…but as he stood there, really thinking about it, he realized that there was another emotion most definitely dampening the anger.
Guilt.
He wasn't sure why he felt it, considering none of this was his fault, but…
"What are you doing here?"
Neil jolted a little, staring wide-eyed at Brian when he remembered where he was. "Eric," Neil said, "Eric told me that… that you wouldn't talk to him. He was worried about you."
Brian's expression looked a little like he'd tasted a lemon, but then he looked away. "I'm not mad at Eric," he mumbled. "I just… I needed some time to think about…"
"Yeah, I know," Neil said because he did. "He just thought…"
"What," Brian said bitterly, looking back at Neil with a grimace, "that I was going to kill myself?"
Neil's stomach twisted into another knot. "I don't know what he thought… exactly…"
"I don't want to see you," Brian said, "ever again."
"That's fine," Neil said, lifting his hands up in defense only for Brian to flinch away from him like he was going to do something. "That's fine," Neil said again, "but don't take this out on Eric. He hasn't got anything to do with this. You don't have to tell him about what happened, but-"
"Don't have to?" Brian asked, face screwing up as he barked out a sarcastic laugh. "That sure takes a load off of my mind. It's only the only fucking thing I can think about."
"Brian-"
"No, you're not allowed to talk anymore," Brian growled, shoving a finger into Neil's face. "I let you talk enough that night. There's nothing else for you to say."
A muscle jumped in Neil's jaw, but he stayed silent.
"I don't know what you expected out of me now," Brian said, "but I'm fucking angry. Everything I've ever been, everything I've ever done-it feels like it was all based upon that night. That fucking night has come to define everything… and you don't know how it fucking feels because you liked it-"
Neil momentarily saw red, and when his vision cleared, Brian was on the floor, hands cupped around a bloody nose, and Neil's fist was extended out in front of him, shaking. There was a smear of blood across his knuckles. Neil gaped at the boy crying out in pain at his feet, feeling like he couldn't breathe for a second.
Neil had punched Brian.
That certainly hadn't been the plan.
Just as Mrs. Lackey and Eric were coming up the steps to see what was going on, Neil turned and swept past them and out the door. He grabbed his bag out of Eric's car and started down the street. He heard Eric call after him, heard him shout, "What happened? Neil! What did you do? Come on, come back! Neil!"
Neil kept walking.
His ears were ringing with the sounds of Brian's cries, the same sounds he'd heard that night on the couch in Coach's house. His nose had bled the same way too, gushing crimson red across his lips and chin, a stain on Neil's jeans. Neil was a stain on Brian's life.
He knew it had been a mistake to come back here. The further away from Hutchinson, the better off he was. There was no helping Brian, and he didn't know why he'd even tried. Looking out for anyone but himself had been his first fault-there was a reason why he shut himself off. Nothing good could come of his attempts at kindness. It had just been a moment of weakness, in the end.
Neil walked briskly out of the neighborhood and up onto the highway. He was pretty sure there was no chance in hell that he could make the walk back to Hutchinson, but he couldn't stop himself from moving. Even with the warm leather coat, it still didn't take too long before his extremities were going numb. Once again he was relieved to feel nothing in his bones, the freezing air filling him up and replacing all of his organs. His eyes stung against the wind, little flakes of snow falling into his hair and onto his shoulders, and again he thought of God and how he had pretended to hear him that night all of those years ago.
Madly, he considered screaming at the sky for the deity to fucking show himself and take responsibility for all of the fucked up suffering in this world, but he knew it was a lost cause. He'd stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.
After a while, he heard a car approaching and wasn't exactly surprised to find Eric pulling up next to him. He imagined if it had been a more reliable car, he would've reached Neil long before the highway… or perhaps he wanted to let Neil freeze a little bit for hurting his precious Brian.
Eric reached over and rolled down the passenger window a smidgen so that Neil could hear him. "Neil, get in the car."
"Go fuck yourself, Eric," Neil replied, not even bothering to glance his way.
"You're going to freeze."
"Fuck off, Eric," Neil said with a bit more malice. "Shouldn't you be back at the house, tending to your little boyfriend?"
"He might be bleeding but at least he's not at risk of frost bite," Eric said. "Get in the car, and let's go back and talk about this like adults."
Neil turned to look at Eric for a moment because it was honestly the most insane thing he'd heard all day. "I tried talking," Neil said. "I'm done. I did my best and I failed, so now you have to live with it. That's what I told you to start with. Besides, he doesn't ever want to see me again."
"Why did you hit him, Neil? Come on, please get back in the car. I won't take you back to Brian's, I swear. Just get inside before your arms and legs fall off."
Neil just kept his eyes forward, kept moving his legs, one foot in front of the other.
He heard Eric's car pull over and stop, and then he heard the door slam shut.
"Neil," Eric said, jogging to catch up to him. "Neil, come on, please."
When Eric reached out to grab Neil's arm, he turned and smacked at his hands. After that it sort of became a shoving match, Eric trying to pull Neil back towards the car while Neil resisted every way he knew how. His movements were sluggish from the cold compared to Eric's, but he was still stronger than him and meaner too. When Eric seemed to have the upper hand, Neil kicked him in the knee, and the boy let out a cry of pain that sounded entirely too much like Brian's.
Neil turned on his heel and ran as fast as he could.
When Neil got too tired and cold to move, he let himself be picked up by a passing truck driver. By then the tips of his fingers were turning blue, but the heat inside the truck helped. He slept in the passenger seat for about twenty minutes or so when the man pulled off into a gas station, and then he got out and went inside the convenience store.
He dug inside his backpack for some cash to grab something to eat, but instead he found the paperwork Eames had sent to him. He wandered off to the side and flipped through it again for no real reason, and for a moment he just wanted to sit down in the corner and cry (also for no reason). He shoved the papers back inside and went to put the passport away when a scrap of paper slipped out of it. There was a phone number on it that Neil didn't recognize, but he knew immediately who it had to be.
Neil dug up all the change he had and went to the payphone, inserting each coin one at a time and leaving a pile of them below it in case he needed more. Still shivering from the cold, he dialed the number, pressed the phone to his ear, and waited.
It took several rings before anyone picked up, but then there it was, voice heavy with sleep, "Hello?"
"Eames?" Neil said softly, filled with disbelief. He'd had his number all of this time and hadn't even noticed.
There was a moment of silence and then a yawn on the other line. "Who's this?"
Neil cringed. He thought for a second that he really must have been that forgettable, but then he figured he probably sounded different on a phone thousands of miles away. "It's Neil," he said.
"Oh," Eames said, sounding more awake. Neil could hear him shifting on the bed, couldn't help but imagine the man naked and wrapped in a sheet, hair mussed and eyes sleepy. Neil would have expected the mental image to conjure desire, but instead it just sledge-hammered him with loneliness and a longing to see Eames face to face. "Didn't know if you'd ever ring me up."
"I didn't know the number was in the paperwork," Neil said. "I just found it."
"It's all right," Eames said. "It's good to know you still give a damn about me, I suppose. How are things on your side of the pond?"
Neil swallowed thickly. "Uh, fine, I guess," he said softly. "I'm just… bored, you know? I want to get back to work."
"There's nothing quite like it, is there? Well, the heat seems to be dying down already, so I'd say in another week I'll start looking for jobs again. I'll see if I can't find one for you too, yeah? I need to touch base with you anyway and show you all the different technology you can practice on to become an ace pointman… Mm… maybe I should start traveling before the week is out. Do you want to meet up somewhere?"
"I'm in Kansas right now," Neil said, feeling like his brain had switched over to auto-pilot.
"Oh, darling, no wonder you're bored."
Neil smiled and felt like sobbing at the same time. "I'm visiting my mom… but if you want to come here, I… I can pick you up at the airport. No one would ever suspect you of anything here anyway so you'd probably be even safer here than you would be at… wherever you are."
Eames hummed thoughtfully. Neil wanted to pull him through the phone and kiss him. "Okay, I suppose I can give that a try. It may take me a few days."
"That's fine," Neil assured him, wondering why he was doing this. He felt like he was going insane. "You can just call when you get here."
He gave Eames his mother's number, and they said their goodbyes. Neil hung up and went back outside, asking a man with Hutchinson plates if he could take him back into the city. Apparently he looked pathetic enough to not render any threat, because the man agreed to (though Neil sweetened the deal by offering to pay for his gasoline).
When Neil got back to his mom's house, he acted as though everything had gone splendidly. He played the part precisely as he always had, and his mother didn't suspect a thing had gone awry. He slept on the couch during the day though most of the time because there were some things in his room that he didn't want to face in the daylight.
He slept for most of the next day, only getting up to be social with his mom during meals. He didn't really want the subject of Eric to come up, so instead he found himself talking about Eames (he was, after all, headed towards them at some point).
He explained to her that Eames was getting more work lined up and would be coming to Hutchinson to give Neil the details and that he was expecting a phone call from him any day now. He described Eames to her, letting the little details slip out because her suspicions about Eames would be far less horrifying than any suspicions about why Eric wasn't around, and his mother listened intently to every word. The more he told her about Eames, the more she seemed to like him, and for some reason that made Neil very pleased.
It was over a lunch of grilled cheeses that she finally brought up, "You really seem to like this guy, Neil."
He was pretty sure she'd meant it in a platonic sense, not in the way Wendy had suggested, but it still made his face feel hot.
"Um… yeah, he's a really cool guy, I guess," Neil nodded, focusing on his sandwich instead of her gaze.
"Honey," she said frankly and took his hand, squeezing it a little until he looked up at her. "Honey, you don't have to look so shy, you know? It's okay."
"What's okay?" Neil asked defensively.
She smirked at him, staring him down flatly. It was a look he was sure he'd had on his own face a million times. "Babe, I have seen that face before, okay? If I didn't know better, I'd say you were crushing on this Mr. Eames something fierce."
"Crushing?" Neil spluttered. "I'm not exactly in grade school anymore, Mom. I'm not crushing on anyone, jeez."
"I think it's cute," she sing-songed, teasingly tousling his hair. "My little man has a crush."
"I'm not little, and I don't have a crush," he complained. "Fuck, Mom, have you ever known me to be that kind of guy?"
She sighed, leaning her cheek against her fist. "Well, no," she admitted, "but you wouldn't be getting so defensive of it if it wasn't true. It's not a big deal, you know."
Neil sighed too, slumping into his seat and taking another bite of his grilled cheese. "I don't want him to get the wrong idea about… us… I guess," he said. "I don't want to lose this job just because he thinks I might… like him."
"Well, what if he likes you back, Neil? Did you ever think of that?"
"He can't like me back because I don't like him that way in the first place," Neil huffed. She was as bad as Wendy at this point.
"Okay, but what if, hypothetically, you liked him, and he liked you back? What then?"
"I don't know!" Neil said in frustration, throwing his hands in the air. "It wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows and kisses in the rain or whatever the fuck… I'd guess we'd probably get sick of each other really fast."
"You don't know that for sure."
"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter because I don't have a crush on him anyway, all right?"
Her eyebrows furrowed for a moment, and he thought she might continue to poke and prod at this ridiculous notion, but instead she said, "New York's taking away your accent. I thought maybe I was imagining it, but you talk differently these days. Just a little bit."
"Oh," Neil said softly, and then added, "yeah, I guess I hadn't really noticed it."
"Well, hey," she said, combing her fingers through his hair again, "let me buy you a decent haircut. Whether you like him or not, you'll want to look nice for your Mr. Eames since he's your boss and all."
Neil figured it was as close as he was going to get to convincing her they were nothing more than friends (and bed partners that one time), so he just offered a small smile, a nod, and a thank you. "You don't have to pay for a haircut though," Neil assured her. "I can take care of it."
"I want to do it," Ellen said. "I should've gotten it for you before you ran off to New York. I'm your mom. I'm supposed to do nice things for you."
"All right, fine, but I'm buying ice cream for us afterwards," he said, giving her a quick kiss as he got up, carrying their paper plates to the trash can.
"I will most certainly take you up on that offer," she laughed. "Screw the fact that it's winter. Ice cream is good year round."
It felt good to smile, and it definitely felt good to spend time with his mother. He never really realized how much he missed her until he was back around her. He'd gotten used to her not being around much since she was usually gone when he was little, but he really did love her company.
She didn't have the suspicions about things that Eric did or question his morality like he was sure Wendy did. When he was with his mother, he didn't have to think about that summer when he was eight or talk about what had happened in his past.
That time in his life may have come to define who he was, but when he was with his mom, he didn't have to look in the mirror.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,020
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Brian opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Neil didn't move from his spot, staring back at the boy, feeling queasy. Brian looked bad; he had dark bruises of exhaustion under each eye, and his hair was starting to get shaggy and hang in his over the rim of his glasses, and he looked like he'd dropped a noticeable amount of weight since Neil had seen him last.
For a moment Neil found himself surprisingly angry. Brian looked like he was withering away, had surely been so for some time, and for the entirety of that time he was here in this house. The fact that Brian's mother had either not noticed or had not at least addressed it made Neil want to seethe in rage. The feeling was so unexpected that he was momentarily overwhelmed by it. The craziest thing was that he didn't know if the woman had confronted Brian about it or not, and he didn't really know either of them well enough to accurately predict such a thing…
…but as he stood there, really thinking about it, he realized that there was another emotion most definitely dampening the anger.
Guilt.
He wasn't sure why he felt it, considering none of this was his fault, but…
"What are you doing here?"
Neil jolted a little, staring wide-eyed at Brian when he remembered where he was. "Eric," Neil said, "Eric told me that… that you wouldn't talk to him. He was worried about you."
Brian's expression looked a little like he'd tasted a lemon, but then he looked away. "I'm not mad at Eric," he mumbled. "I just… I needed some time to think about…"
"Yeah, I know," Neil said because he did. "He just thought…"
"What," Brian said bitterly, looking back at Neil with a grimace, "that I was going to kill myself?"
Neil's stomach twisted into another knot. "I don't know what he thought… exactly…"
"I don't want to see you," Brian said, "ever again."
"That's fine," Neil said, lifting his hands up in defense only for Brian to flinch away from him like he was going to do something. "That's fine," Neil said again, "but don't take this out on Eric. He hasn't got anything to do with this. You don't have to tell him about what happened, but-"
"Don't have to?" Brian asked, face screwing up as he barked out a sarcastic laugh. "That sure takes a load off of my mind. It's only the only fucking thing I can think about."
"Brian-"
"No, you're not allowed to talk anymore," Brian growled, shoving a finger into Neil's face. "I let you talk enough that night. There's nothing else for you to say."
A muscle jumped in Neil's jaw, but he stayed silent.
"I don't know what you expected out of me now," Brian said, "but I'm fucking angry. Everything I've ever been, everything I've ever done-it feels like it was all based upon that night. That fucking night has come to define everything… and you don't know how it fucking feels because you liked it-"
Neil momentarily saw red, and when his vision cleared, Brian was on the floor, hands cupped around a bloody nose, and Neil's fist was extended out in front of him, shaking. There was a smear of blood across his knuckles. Neil gaped at the boy crying out in pain at his feet, feeling like he couldn't breathe for a second.
Neil had punched Brian.
That certainly hadn't been the plan.
Just as Mrs. Lackey and Eric were coming up the steps to see what was going on, Neil turned and swept past them and out the door. He grabbed his bag out of Eric's car and started down the street. He heard Eric call after him, heard him shout, "What happened? Neil! What did you do? Come on, come back! Neil!"
Neil kept walking.
His ears were ringing with the sounds of Brian's cries, the same sounds he'd heard that night on the couch in Coach's house. His nose had bled the same way too, gushing crimson red across his lips and chin, a stain on Neil's jeans. Neil was a stain on Brian's life.
He knew it had been a mistake to come back here. The further away from Hutchinson, the better off he was. There was no helping Brian, and he didn't know why he'd even tried. Looking out for anyone but himself had been his first fault-there was a reason why he shut himself off. Nothing good could come of his attempts at kindness. It had just been a moment of weakness, in the end.
Neil walked briskly out of the neighborhood and up onto the highway. He was pretty sure there was no chance in hell that he could make the walk back to Hutchinson, but he couldn't stop himself from moving. Even with the warm leather coat, it still didn't take too long before his extremities were going numb. Once again he was relieved to feel nothing in his bones, the freezing air filling him up and replacing all of his organs. His eyes stung against the wind, little flakes of snow falling into his hair and onto his shoulders, and again he thought of God and how he had pretended to hear him that night all of those years ago.
Madly, he considered screaming at the sky for the deity to fucking show himself and take responsibility for all of the fucked up suffering in this world, but he knew it was a lost cause. He'd stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.
After a while, he heard a car approaching and wasn't exactly surprised to find Eric pulling up next to him. He imagined if it had been a more reliable car, he would've reached Neil long before the highway… or perhaps he wanted to let Neil freeze a little bit for hurting his precious Brian.
Eric reached over and rolled down the passenger window a smidgen so that Neil could hear him. "Neil, get in the car."
"Go fuck yourself, Eric," Neil replied, not even bothering to glance his way.
"You're going to freeze."
"Fuck off, Eric," Neil said with a bit more malice. "Shouldn't you be back at the house, tending to your little boyfriend?"
"He might be bleeding but at least he's not at risk of frost bite," Eric said. "Get in the car, and let's go back and talk about this like adults."
Neil turned to look at Eric for a moment because it was honestly the most insane thing he'd heard all day. "I tried talking," Neil said. "I'm done. I did my best and I failed, so now you have to live with it. That's what I told you to start with. Besides, he doesn't ever want to see me again."
"Why did you hit him, Neil? Come on, please get back in the car. I won't take you back to Brian's, I swear. Just get inside before your arms and legs fall off."
Neil just kept his eyes forward, kept moving his legs, one foot in front of the other.
He heard Eric's car pull over and stop, and then he heard the door slam shut.
"Neil," Eric said, jogging to catch up to him. "Neil, come on, please."
When Eric reached out to grab Neil's arm, he turned and smacked at his hands. After that it sort of became a shoving match, Eric trying to pull Neil back towards the car while Neil resisted every way he knew how. His movements were sluggish from the cold compared to Eric's, but he was still stronger than him and meaner too. When Eric seemed to have the upper hand, Neil kicked him in the knee, and the boy let out a cry of pain that sounded entirely too much like Brian's.
Neil turned on his heel and ran as fast as he could.
When Neil got too tired and cold to move, he let himself be picked up by a passing truck driver. By then the tips of his fingers were turning blue, but the heat inside the truck helped. He slept in the passenger seat for about twenty minutes or so when the man pulled off into a gas station, and then he got out and went inside the convenience store.
He dug inside his backpack for some cash to grab something to eat, but instead he found the paperwork Eames had sent to him. He wandered off to the side and flipped through it again for no real reason, and for a moment he just wanted to sit down in the corner and cry (also for no reason). He shoved the papers back inside and went to put the passport away when a scrap of paper slipped out of it. There was a phone number on it that Neil didn't recognize, but he knew immediately who it had to be.
Neil dug up all the change he had and went to the payphone, inserting each coin one at a time and leaving a pile of them below it in case he needed more. Still shivering from the cold, he dialed the number, pressed the phone to his ear, and waited.
It took several rings before anyone picked up, but then there it was, voice heavy with sleep, "Hello?"
"Eames?" Neil said softly, filled with disbelief. He'd had his number all of this time and hadn't even noticed.
There was a moment of silence and then a yawn on the other line. "Who's this?"
Neil cringed. He thought for a second that he really must have been that forgettable, but then he figured he probably sounded different on a phone thousands of miles away. "It's Neil," he said.
"Oh," Eames said, sounding more awake. Neil could hear him shifting on the bed, couldn't help but imagine the man naked and wrapped in a sheet, hair mussed and eyes sleepy. Neil would have expected the mental image to conjure desire, but instead it just sledge-hammered him with loneliness and a longing to see Eames face to face. "Didn't know if you'd ever ring me up."
"I didn't know the number was in the paperwork," Neil said. "I just found it."
"It's all right," Eames said. "It's good to know you still give a damn about me, I suppose. How are things on your side of the pond?"
Neil swallowed thickly. "Uh, fine, I guess," he said softly. "I'm just… bored, you know? I want to get back to work."
"There's nothing quite like it, is there? Well, the heat seems to be dying down already, so I'd say in another week I'll start looking for jobs again. I'll see if I can't find one for you too, yeah? I need to touch base with you anyway and show you all the different technology you can practice on to become an ace pointman… Mm… maybe I should start traveling before the week is out. Do you want to meet up somewhere?"
"I'm in Kansas right now," Neil said, feeling like his brain had switched over to auto-pilot.
"Oh, darling, no wonder you're bored."
Neil smiled and felt like sobbing at the same time. "I'm visiting my mom… but if you want to come here, I… I can pick you up at the airport. No one would ever suspect you of anything here anyway so you'd probably be even safer here than you would be at… wherever you are."
Eames hummed thoughtfully. Neil wanted to pull him through the phone and kiss him. "Okay, I suppose I can give that a try. It may take me a few days."
"That's fine," Neil assured him, wondering why he was doing this. He felt like he was going insane. "You can just call when you get here."
He gave Eames his mother's number, and they said their goodbyes. Neil hung up and went back outside, asking a man with Hutchinson plates if he could take him back into the city. Apparently he looked pathetic enough to not render any threat, because the man agreed to (though Neil sweetened the deal by offering to pay for his gasoline).
When Neil got back to his mom's house, he acted as though everything had gone splendidly. He played the part precisely as he always had, and his mother didn't suspect a thing had gone awry. He slept on the couch during the day though most of the time because there were some things in his room that he didn't want to face in the daylight.
He slept for most of the next day, only getting up to be social with his mom during meals. He didn't really want the subject of Eric to come up, so instead he found himself talking about Eames (he was, after all, headed towards them at some point).
He explained to her that Eames was getting more work lined up and would be coming to Hutchinson to give Neil the details and that he was expecting a phone call from him any day now. He described Eames to her, letting the little details slip out because her suspicions about Eames would be far less horrifying than any suspicions about why Eric wasn't around, and his mother listened intently to every word. The more he told her about Eames, the more she seemed to like him, and for some reason that made Neil very pleased.
It was over a lunch of grilled cheeses that she finally brought up, "You really seem to like this guy, Neil."
He was pretty sure she'd meant it in a platonic sense, not in the way Wendy had suggested, but it still made his face feel hot.
"Um… yeah, he's a really cool guy, I guess," Neil nodded, focusing on his sandwich instead of her gaze.
"Honey," she said frankly and took his hand, squeezing it a little until he looked up at her. "Honey, you don't have to look so shy, you know? It's okay."
"What's okay?" Neil asked defensively.
She smirked at him, staring him down flatly. It was a look he was sure he'd had on his own face a million times. "Babe, I have seen that face before, okay? If I didn't know better, I'd say you were crushing on this Mr. Eames something fierce."
"Crushing?" Neil spluttered. "I'm not exactly in grade school anymore, Mom. I'm not crushing on anyone, jeez."
"I think it's cute," she sing-songed, teasingly tousling his hair. "My little man has a crush."
"I'm not little, and I don't have a crush," he complained. "Fuck, Mom, have you ever known me to be that kind of guy?"
She sighed, leaning her cheek against her fist. "Well, no," she admitted, "but you wouldn't be getting so defensive of it if it wasn't true. It's not a big deal, you know."
Neil sighed too, slumping into his seat and taking another bite of his grilled cheese. "I don't want him to get the wrong idea about… us… I guess," he said. "I don't want to lose this job just because he thinks I might… like him."
"Well, what if he likes you back, Neil? Did you ever think of that?"
"He can't like me back because I don't like him that way in the first place," Neil huffed. She was as bad as Wendy at this point.
"Okay, but what if, hypothetically, you liked him, and he liked you back? What then?"
"I don't know!" Neil said in frustration, throwing his hands in the air. "It wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows and kisses in the rain or whatever the fuck… I'd guess we'd probably get sick of each other really fast."
"You don't know that for sure."
"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter because I don't have a crush on him anyway, all right?"
Her eyebrows furrowed for a moment, and he thought she might continue to poke and prod at this ridiculous notion, but instead she said, "New York's taking away your accent. I thought maybe I was imagining it, but you talk differently these days. Just a little bit."
"Oh," Neil said softly, and then added, "yeah, I guess I hadn't really noticed it."
"Well, hey," she said, combing her fingers through his hair again, "let me buy you a decent haircut. Whether you like him or not, you'll want to look nice for your Mr. Eames since he's your boss and all."
Neil figured it was as close as he was going to get to convincing her they were nothing more than friends (and bed partners that one time), so he just offered a small smile, a nod, and a thank you. "You don't have to pay for a haircut though," Neil assured her. "I can take care of it."
"I want to do it," Ellen said. "I should've gotten it for you before you ran off to New York. I'm your mom. I'm supposed to do nice things for you."
"All right, fine, but I'm buying ice cream for us afterwards," he said, giving her a quick kiss as he got up, carrying their paper plates to the trash can.
"I will most certainly take you up on that offer," she laughed. "Screw the fact that it's winter. Ice cream is good year round."
It felt good to smile, and it definitely felt good to spend time with his mother. He never really realized how much he missed her until he was back around her. He'd gotten used to her not being around much since she was usually gone when he was little, but he really did love her company.
She didn't have the suspicions about things that Eric did or question his morality like he was sure Wendy did. When he was with his mother, he didn't have to think about that summer when he was eight or talk about what had happened in his past.
That time in his life may have come to define who he was, but when he was with his mom, he didn't have to look in the mirror.