13. Rub 'Em Together
Title: Rub 'Em Together
Length: 1637 words
Genre: Humor/general
Characters: Cobb, Eames
Disclaimer: these characters and concepts belong to cooler people. *See creators of Inception.
Summary: Pre-movie. Cobb and Eames are forced to share a bed, and Cobb finds that Eames is one hell of a cuddler. Fills prompt from inception_kink. Originally posted there under the username shywritergirl
Sharing was neither man’s idea. It was a necessity, the only solution taking into account all the factors: only one room, only one bed, only one night, Eames’ crap shoulder, Cobb’s bad back, they were mature adults, they were on a job, and they were straight -- no big deal. (Apparently a big enough deal for them to come up, together and enthusiastically, with eight entire reasons why it was absolutely unavoidable, but their typical rough-and-tough-men-too-far-into-the-job-to-have-had-any-sex-recently insecurities aside, it really was no big deal.)
Eames took the right side, because it was his left shoulder that gave him trouble, and if he was on the right side of the bed he could lay on his right while facing the wall; apparently the man couldn’t fall sleep flat on his back or his stomach. Cobb really couldn’t care less about his friend’s sleeping positions, but didn’t say anything about it since Eames’ babbling was effectively smoothing over the awkwardness of them deciding to sleep together (sure REM-sleep together, but it was a nuance thing that stripping
out of their clothes together didn’t help).
Being just a queen-sized mattress, it was a small bed for two men with such wide shoulders, but with both of them on their sides, there was enough space of No Man’s Land between their backs that they were both comfortable within moments of settling in. Cobb turned out the lamp and the room fell into darkness. He punched his pillow and cleared his throat, “Well--goodnight.”
“Yup,” Eames answered.
At first every move one man made alerted the other, tensed his muscles like a meerkat ready to flee an approaching hyena. It wasn’t so much as a fear of being hit on as a fear of being betrayed. In their line of work, they never, ever, let their guard down around each other, even with a friendship tentatively in place.
They lived on the edge, these men, always grasping for the better deal, the fastest way to avoid prison or death. In their world of lies, secrets, and dreams, being unpredictable was how they survived--being a traitor was practically expected. And sleeping, well, there was hardly a position more vulnerable than that.
Eames chuckled after about an hour of nervous shifting and sighed, “Well I tell you what: I’m too bloody exhausted to be wary of you anymore. If you’re going to kill me, do it right now.”
Cobb chuckled, “We’re being stupid.”
“Not really, I’d sell your head for nickel.”
“Thanks.” Cobb replied drily.
“Well, it’s not like you wouldn’t harvest my organs if it got you back to those kids, is it?”
“You’re right there.”
“’Course I am.”
Cobb chuckled, “I swear I’m under no such contract. You?”
“I’m a one-job-at-a-time man,” Eames said, doing enough wriggling to make the whole bed shake.
“Good,” Cobb replied craning around to see the shape of Eames against the motel room windows as he settled down again, mysterious reasons for so much movement unanswered but apparently innocent in nature.
“Great,” the Englishman replied.
“Goodnight, then.”
“Yup.”
Within the next hour they were both asleep. Eames snored a little, but Cobb didn’t notice. The night waxed, growing quieter as the luminous dials of the clock rolled steadily into the smaller numbers. Eames flopped onto his face, bad shoulder hanging off the mattress. Cobb rolled onto his back, swallowing No Man’s Land with his t-shirt-clad torso.
Eames’s body started sliding over the edge, and he reflexively rolled and scooted inward. When the heat of his shoulder touched Cobb’s, he instinctually, and entirely unconsciously, moved even closer. In the exact same manner, Cobb let him sidle right up to him.
Cobb’s dreamless mind recognized the feel of a body next to him in the bed, and it registered it as a normal thing, so that when wayward pillows nearly suffocated him, he lifted his head in an unconscious-zombie-way to situate everything and dropped back to sleep with his arms around his wife.
Eames snuggled into the security of an unexpected embrace, one of his legs dropped over Cobb’s, his cool feet finding Cobb’s hot ones, as he tucked a blond head under his chin. Eames kept snoring and Cobb slept on. This position didn’t work though, not with the pressure on Eames’ bad shoulder so after a while, he pushed the comforting body away. Cobb went easily and cool air rushed in to where body heat had been accumulating.
A moment later, Eames’ sleep-zombie mind made a compromise. He wanted the heat, but not the pressure on his shoulder: simple solution, lay on the heat instead of letting the heat lay on him. Tah-dah! He flopped over after Cobb and caught him, wrapped arms and legs around him once more, only now it was his head that was tucking under Cobb’s chin.
He moaned lightly. Oh, come on, that’s lovely. His still-not-shot-of-dreaming mind slid seamlessly between pictures of Tahitian goddesses in bikinis, his Nigerian ex-wife in nothing but one of his old shirts, and various members of the Royal Family.
If Cobb’s somnicin-shriveled brain had anything to say about his current level of comfort, it translated his soft sighs of content into muscle-memory indicators, so he caressed the body that was clinging to him in the manner he’d of done his wife eight months and two days previously, when she was still alive.
Both men settled into a sleep deeper than they’d had in years.
Cobb woke first. He was asleep and then he wasn’t, typical of somnicin abusers, and one of the reasons he so easily distrusted reality. He used to take it for granted, that way the mind drifted up out of sleep, shaking slumber away like hay from a horse’s mane. The abrupt drop from relaxed to alert hurt every time. His widened pupils resisted the light, his relaxed lungs protested being called into drastic action so unexpectedly, and his heart skipped a beat while his mind raced, dream? How’d I get here?
This time, though, answering those questions came second to a whole other situation. He found he was trapped under a lot of weight: warm, comforting, weight. A body -- Eames’ body. Eames’s head was on his chest, arms and legs around him. The scruffy man was sound asleep and snoring lightly, wide lips settled into a little smile.
The strange part that Cobb would never repeat to anyone was that he wasn’t freaked out. In fact, he was extremely comfortable for the first time in a long, long time and thus not at all willing to get up just yet.
God, how long had it been since he’d been like this with anyone? Eames was a man, sure, but this wasn’t a sexual thing. This was more like a pack animal thing, a need for the security of closeness, the calmness of a burrow crammed with fuzzy siblings all trusting each other not to have intentions of harming one another.
That was it, the trust. Cobb’s world was so utterly void of trust these days; it was a relief to wake up alive in the first place, let alone to wake up alive and cuddling with a fellow human being. There was peace, no manipulation, not trying to find ulterior motives, no second guessing and looking for the fastest exit should people start shooting….
Cobb lay there, more stunned than anything, and felt Eames’ body swelling with his breaths, which bled hotly through Cobb’s undershirt on the out and whistled lightly with his snore on the way in. The longer it went on the weirder it got, so he finally shifted and gave Eames a push.
Eames moaned, and Cobb pushed him again, and Eames held onto him stubbornly, rolling an open mouth onto Cobb’s chest and catching a mouthful of shirt, lashes fluttering opened. Cobb watched green eyes take a moment to focus on him and then Eames pulled away, not going too far in his bleary state before collapsing on the mattress. “Wot the bloody hell--?”
Cobb rolled out of the bed and stood, plucking at the place on his shirt where Eames had drooled and then slicing his hands through the air, “Nothing happened.”
Eames checked himself over as if looking for evidence of being abused in any way, and when he found himself unharmed, he glared at Cobb, “What are you playing at?”
Cobb laughed, “Nothing, you were the one on top of me.” Both men winced at that. Grumbling, Eames sat up and rubbed his eyes, “It was nothing.”
“That’s what I said.”
After pushing sleep from his eyes, Eames glanced over at him, smiling now. He looked Cobb up and down, “Well, I guess we didn’t kill each other.”
“No,” Cobb chuckled, scooping up his pants. Eames stood and he rolled his shoulder, grinning, “In fact, it seems we took the night in the opposite direction, wouldn’t you say?”
“Don’t go spreading it around,” Cobb warned playfully.
“Who do you take me for? I don’t snuggle and tell.” Eames looked up from stepping into his pants and winked at Cobb. Cobb rolled his eyes. The weird thing was it wasn’t that weird. Secretly, both men were kind of too fond of how how relaxed and at peace they’d been to be offended.
They packed their things and Eames broke the silence, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Cobb, but--“ he stopped and didn’t continue.
“But what?” Cobb asked, shouldering his pack. Eames shrugged, opening the door and laughing, embarrassed, “I trust you more now, I think.”
Cobb clapped his friend on the shoulder and teased, “Eames, you romantic sod, should I buy you flowers now?”
“Piss off,” Eames grumbled and they headed out to finish the job they were there to do.
FIN.
I love these two as just bros. <3
Length: 1637 words
Genre: Humor/general
Characters: Cobb, Eames
Disclaimer: these characters and concepts belong to cooler people. *See creators of Inception.
Summary: Pre-movie. Cobb and Eames are forced to share a bed, and Cobb finds that Eames is one hell of a cuddler. Fills prompt from inception_kink. Originally posted there under the username shywritergirl
Sharing was neither man’s idea. It was a necessity, the only solution taking into account all the factors: only one room, only one bed, only one night, Eames’ crap shoulder, Cobb’s bad back, they were mature adults, they were on a job, and they were straight -- no big deal. (Apparently a big enough deal for them to come up, together and enthusiastically, with eight entire reasons why it was absolutely unavoidable, but their typical rough-and-tough-men-too-far-into-the-job-to-have-had-any-sex-recently insecurities aside, it really was no big deal.)
Eames took the right side, because it was his left shoulder that gave him trouble, and if he was on the right side of the bed he could lay on his right while facing the wall; apparently the man couldn’t fall sleep flat on his back or his stomach. Cobb really couldn’t care less about his friend’s sleeping positions, but didn’t say anything about it since Eames’ babbling was effectively smoothing over the awkwardness of them deciding to sleep together (sure REM-sleep together, but it was a nuance thing that stripping
out of their clothes together didn’t help).
Being just a queen-sized mattress, it was a small bed for two men with such wide shoulders, but with both of them on their sides, there was enough space of No Man’s Land between their backs that they were both comfortable within moments of settling in. Cobb turned out the lamp and the room fell into darkness. He punched his pillow and cleared his throat, “Well--goodnight.”
“Yup,” Eames answered.
At first every move one man made alerted the other, tensed his muscles like a meerkat ready to flee an approaching hyena. It wasn’t so much as a fear of being hit on as a fear of being betrayed. In their line of work, they never, ever, let their guard down around each other, even with a friendship tentatively in place.
They lived on the edge, these men, always grasping for the better deal, the fastest way to avoid prison or death. In their world of lies, secrets, and dreams, being unpredictable was how they survived--being a traitor was practically expected. And sleeping, well, there was hardly a position more vulnerable than that.
Eames chuckled after about an hour of nervous shifting and sighed, “Well I tell you what: I’m too bloody exhausted to be wary of you anymore. If you’re going to kill me, do it right now.”
Cobb chuckled, “We’re being stupid.”
“Not really, I’d sell your head for nickel.”
“Thanks.” Cobb replied drily.
“Well, it’s not like you wouldn’t harvest my organs if it got you back to those kids, is it?”
“You’re right there.”
“’Course I am.”
Cobb chuckled, “I swear I’m under no such contract. You?”
“I’m a one-job-at-a-time man,” Eames said, doing enough wriggling to make the whole bed shake.
“Good,” Cobb replied craning around to see the shape of Eames against the motel room windows as he settled down again, mysterious reasons for so much movement unanswered but apparently innocent in nature.
“Great,” the Englishman replied.
“Goodnight, then.”
“Yup.”
Within the next hour they were both asleep. Eames snored a little, but Cobb didn’t notice. The night waxed, growing quieter as the luminous dials of the clock rolled steadily into the smaller numbers. Eames flopped onto his face, bad shoulder hanging off the mattress. Cobb rolled onto his back, swallowing No Man’s Land with his t-shirt-clad torso.
Eames’s body started sliding over the edge, and he reflexively rolled and scooted inward. When the heat of his shoulder touched Cobb’s, he instinctually, and entirely unconsciously, moved even closer. In the exact same manner, Cobb let him sidle right up to him.
Cobb’s dreamless mind recognized the feel of a body next to him in the bed, and it registered it as a normal thing, so that when wayward pillows nearly suffocated him, he lifted his head in an unconscious-zombie-way to situate everything and dropped back to sleep with his arms around his wife.
Eames snuggled into the security of an unexpected embrace, one of his legs dropped over Cobb’s, his cool feet finding Cobb’s hot ones, as he tucked a blond head under his chin. Eames kept snoring and Cobb slept on. This position didn’t work though, not with the pressure on Eames’ bad shoulder so after a while, he pushed the comforting body away. Cobb went easily and cool air rushed in to where body heat had been accumulating.
A moment later, Eames’ sleep-zombie mind made a compromise. He wanted the heat, but not the pressure on his shoulder: simple solution, lay on the heat instead of letting the heat lay on him. Tah-dah! He flopped over after Cobb and caught him, wrapped arms and legs around him once more, only now it was his head that was tucking under Cobb’s chin.
He moaned lightly. Oh, come on, that’s lovely. His still-not-shot-of-dreaming mind slid seamlessly between pictures of Tahitian goddesses in bikinis, his Nigerian ex-wife in nothing but one of his old shirts, and various members of the Royal Family.
If Cobb’s somnicin-shriveled brain had anything to say about his current level of comfort, it translated his soft sighs of content into muscle-memory indicators, so he caressed the body that was clinging to him in the manner he’d of done his wife eight months and two days previously, when she was still alive.
Both men settled into a sleep deeper than they’d had in years.
Cobb woke first. He was asleep and then he wasn’t, typical of somnicin abusers, and one of the reasons he so easily distrusted reality. He used to take it for granted, that way the mind drifted up out of sleep, shaking slumber away like hay from a horse’s mane. The abrupt drop from relaxed to alert hurt every time. His widened pupils resisted the light, his relaxed lungs protested being called into drastic action so unexpectedly, and his heart skipped a beat while his mind raced, dream? How’d I get here?
This time, though, answering those questions came second to a whole other situation. He found he was trapped under a lot of weight: warm, comforting, weight. A body -- Eames’ body. Eames’s head was on his chest, arms and legs around him. The scruffy man was sound asleep and snoring lightly, wide lips settled into a little smile.
The strange part that Cobb would never repeat to anyone was that he wasn’t freaked out. In fact, he was extremely comfortable for the first time in a long, long time and thus not at all willing to get up just yet.
God, how long had it been since he’d been like this with anyone? Eames was a man, sure, but this wasn’t a sexual thing. This was more like a pack animal thing, a need for the security of closeness, the calmness of a burrow crammed with fuzzy siblings all trusting each other not to have intentions of harming one another.
That was it, the trust. Cobb’s world was so utterly void of trust these days; it was a relief to wake up alive in the first place, let alone to wake up alive and cuddling with a fellow human being. There was peace, no manipulation, not trying to find ulterior motives, no second guessing and looking for the fastest exit should people start shooting….
Cobb lay there, more stunned than anything, and felt Eames’ body swelling with his breaths, which bled hotly through Cobb’s undershirt on the out and whistled lightly with his snore on the way in. The longer it went on the weirder it got, so he finally shifted and gave Eames a push.
Eames moaned, and Cobb pushed him again, and Eames held onto him stubbornly, rolling an open mouth onto Cobb’s chest and catching a mouthful of shirt, lashes fluttering opened. Cobb watched green eyes take a moment to focus on him and then Eames pulled away, not going too far in his bleary state before collapsing on the mattress. “Wot the bloody hell--?”
Cobb rolled out of the bed and stood, plucking at the place on his shirt where Eames had drooled and then slicing his hands through the air, “Nothing happened.”
Eames checked himself over as if looking for evidence of being abused in any way, and when he found himself unharmed, he glared at Cobb, “What are you playing at?”
Cobb laughed, “Nothing, you were the one on top of me.” Both men winced at that. Grumbling, Eames sat up and rubbed his eyes, “It was nothing.”
“That’s what I said.”
After pushing sleep from his eyes, Eames glanced over at him, smiling now. He looked Cobb up and down, “Well, I guess we didn’t kill each other.”
“No,” Cobb chuckled, scooping up his pants. Eames stood and he rolled his shoulder, grinning, “In fact, it seems we took the night in the opposite direction, wouldn’t you say?”
“Don’t go spreading it around,” Cobb warned playfully.
“Who do you take me for? I don’t snuggle and tell.” Eames looked up from stepping into his pants and winked at Cobb. Cobb rolled his eyes. The weird thing was it wasn’t that weird. Secretly, both men were kind of too fond of how how relaxed and at peace they’d been to be offended.
They packed their things and Eames broke the silence, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Cobb, but--“ he stopped and didn’t continue.
“But what?” Cobb asked, shouldering his pack. Eames shrugged, opening the door and laughing, embarrassed, “I trust you more now, I think.”
Cobb clapped his friend on the shoulder and teased, “Eames, you romantic sod, should I buy you flowers now?”
“Piss off,” Eames grumbled and they headed out to finish the job they were there to do.
FIN.
I love these two as just bros. <3