FIC: Say It Right [Eames/Arthur kid!fic/marriage!fic] Part 3
In the end, Arthur’s name on his caller id makes the decision for him.
He answers almost immediately, but hesitates to speak, because he wants to say hello, darling, the way he’d always had. But now is not the time for that - he isn’t ready - so when he does finally gather the courage to speak, it’s a terse, hello.
“Eames,” Arthur responds thinly, “we’re at the hospital - it’s Em, she’s worse and I was afraid she would...” he lets the words die out into the silence; Eames tightens his hand on the steering wheel, white knuckled in anticipation for the finish that never comes.
He can hear the other man’s exhaustion through the receiver, imagines him slouched in a hospital chair, his head tipped back and his eyes screwed up in typical I’m-trying-to-stay-in-control-and-not-be-emotional Arthur fashion. When a moment of quiet has passed between them, the younger man sighs in that way he does when he’s trying to end conversations quickly. “I thought you might want to know - I mean, I didn’t, I didn’t know if you’d pick up or not but I just thought…anyway, I already called Dom in case you don’t-“
“Of course I’d want to bloody know - she’s my fucking daughter too, or have you already forgotten?” Eames lifts a hand to his forehead, squeezes against his temples with his thumb and middle finger. He didn’t think the words would come out sounding so angry, but he can’t help but feel a little bit insulted. Why Cobb? Why always Cobb? Does Arthur have no faith in him, even now?
Is it his fault?
“Look, if I’d forgotten that I wouldn’t have called you, would I?” The younger man snaps on the other line, and then lowers his voice again after he’s taken in a deep breath. “I can’t do this right now, okay? Anyway, that’s all I wanted to tell you. You do whatever you’d like from here, Mr. Eames.”
“I’ll be there. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Just…wait for me, alright?” It’s a strange question, knowing there’s no way Arthur will be leaving the hospital anytime soon, knowing he needs to be there for Emily. Still, Eames feels as if his life is hanging in the balance of that one simple request. The breathing on the other line stills for a beat, and it’s a heavy but thoughtful silence, then Arthur grunts the affirmative.
“Okay.”
And then silence.
Eames watches the call ended screen flash a few times before he throws the phone onto the passenger seat, turns the on the engine and pulls fast out of his parking space, determined if nothing else to not fall apart before he gets there.
He arrives eighteen minutes later and heads straight for the front desk, where he tries to muscle out Emily’s room number from the receptionist there while at the same time fighting off the frustration of having to explain over and over again, yes, yes, I know the father is already here. I’m the other father - yes, the other father.
When he finds the room three minutes later, Arthur is there just as Eames had imagined him earlier, only his arms are crossed and everything about him is tight, tense. Emily is in the bed next to him, an oxygen mask on around her mouth and nose, her small chest rising and falling steadily beneath the thin hospital sheet they’ve wrapped her in. Eames’s heart falls into the pit of his stomach at the sight of her, but he can’t find the will to move his legs to touch her the way he wants to. He is still glued to the doorway when Arthur opens his eyes and glances in his direction.
“You’re late.” He says with no real force behind it - Eames can tell he’s trying to keep the mood light, now that they’re actually standing in the same room with the entire day hovering in the empty space between them. There have been very few times Eames has ever felt nervous around Arthur. This is one of those times.
“I would have been here sooner but they held me up at the nurse’s station. Apparently two dads is still one too many for some people.”
Arthur doesn’t respond and guides his gaze back to Emily’s face, but Eames thinks he sees the corners of his mouth screw up a little. If it’s a smile, it’s wry.
Somehow, he musters the strength to take a few steps in, and then a few more, until he’s standing beside the bed, just a few inches from Arthur’s seat. Carefully, he lowers one knee onto the edge of the bed and leans over his daughter’s body until he’s close enough to kiss her forehead. And he does, twice, because the first time feels like a kick but the second time is a liberating taste of reality. She’s warm, still. He tangles his fingers in her hair, smoothes them away from her face, over the pillows. He wishes she would wake up and call him ‘daddy’.
“Will she be all right?”
“She’s better than she was when we got here - they’re hoping her fever breaks tonight so that they can discharge her tomorrow.”
“What’s the diagnosis?”
“Pneumonia. If it weren’t for her asthma I probably wouldn’t have had to bring her in but…I don’t know, it hit her pretty hard.”
“Hm.” Eames says, or sort of says, those butterflies returning to his stomach full force suddenly, when Arthur’s knee accidentally knocks his own. He twists so that he’s sitting straight, his hands braced against the edge of the bed and his feet flat on the floor, not quite at Arthur’s level but close enough. The other man is watching him with a look he can’t quite read, but their eyes are locked now, and there’s no escaping this anymore.
“Well then, are you okay?” And then, a decibel lower, “Fancy telling me what happened?”
Arthur stiffens at this and shuts his eyes as he scrubs a hand over his face. When he opens them again, the look is glassy, worn, and maybe - but Eames can’t be too sure - distressed.
“I was in bed already - I’d just managed to put her to sleep. It was so hard, Dan.” Eames is surprised by the use of his first name, something Arthur never called him unless he was feeling particularly affectionate, and judging by the way Arthur’s shoulders tighten up at the sound of his own voice, he’s just as surprised. It probably just slipped out. He’d probably forgotten they were still, on some level, fighting. Eames decides to let it go, for both their sakes - and because he hadn’t thought he’d ever hear Arthur say it again after today. “After you…left, she just got worse and worse. She was coughing and wheezing and crying, all day, but I mean, she was okay, it was manageable. But then she started coughing again and she wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t breathe.”
Arthur leans his head back and covers his face with both hands now, as if he’s hiding, as if Eames is not allowed to see him like this. And maybe he isn’t. This is the first time they’ve ever really had to deal with anything like this, and Arthur has always been the one with the thick skin. Which isn’t to say Eames is all that great at baring his soul either, and that Arthur never does; it just isn’t something they’ve ever done in front of each other. Eames is torn between leaving Arthur in his own space and wanting to pull him into his arms, kiss away the lines in his forehead. He opts for the former, and listens.
“I didn’t know what to do at first.” Arthur whispers, his fingers worrying over his lower lip. “It was like my brain had shut down. That’s never happened to me before…” He shakes his head as if to affirm his own thoughts and then meets Eames’s gaze again, only this time he doesn’t try to hide the soft sadness in the look. “I wanted to call you but I…couldn’t. Then my brain started working again.”
Eames wishes he could admit to that very same thing, but the most he can say is, “You did the right thing,” and pretends he doesn’t realize how condescending it sounds. What he’d really meant to say was, I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I should have been there. If I could turn back time I would have been home, and you wouldn’t have had to go through that all alone. But he thinks he understands, because Arthur says nothing back, and lets his muscles loose in the chair. Eames follows his gaze back to Emily’s face, purposely avoiding the IV in her arm, because he hates seeing her like this. He has a thought that he would give anything to be in her place if only to spare her suffering, and remembers a time, eons ago, when his mother had held his shaking, feverish body in the bed while he cried and she’d said the same thing.
He wonders if Arthur feels it too - this selfless desire to protect her, and almost asks, but doesn’t.
Arthur whispers, “I just wish she’d wake up and call me papa.”
Part Four