[INCEPTION] Fic: One kick's as good as another (Cobb/Eames) R. Sort of. I'm not sure. R-ish.
One kick's as good as another
Eames/Cobb
College fic, where Cobb is in need of living arrangements and Eames presents a most attractive solution.
I blame smilevintage and toestastegood for this. Also, ilu forever walkingxorgasm and fermine for the beta. You betta believe it, fermine. Give in and ship this son of a bitch. PS: TOTES IN CELEBRATION OF THE BRAND-SPANKIN NEW COMM FOR THIS PAIRING. Fuck yeah, cobb_eames. \m/
“New around here, aren’t you?”
Cobb whips around to find someone he hasn’t before. Someone whose cocksure tilt of hips probably means bad news, paired with a knowing smirk around a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.
The stranger offers a hand, puffing out a careless burst of smoke that above their heads, under the dim light mounted on the bulletin board, reminds Cobb of the fog he’s had too much of since arriving in London only a few days ago. “I’m Eames.”
Cobb shakes his hand a little uncertainly, shifting the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Cobb.”
Eames’ eyebrows lift, too languid to be surprised. “Like Madonna.”
“W-What?” Cobb stammers out.
“Just the first name, or the last,” Eames shrugs. His cigarette bobs up and down as he speaks. “Bit mysterious, a bit tacky.”
Cobb smiles sheepishly, runs a hand down the side of his neck. “No, actually, it’s Dominic.”
Eames twists his lips, and the lit embers of his cigarette hovers over his left cheek. Cobb expects him to flinch at the heat, but Eames only draws in a breath. It glows brightly in the late afternoon shadow cast by the building right behind them.
“Yeah,” Cobb shrugs. “So Cobb it is.”
Eames grins, then finally takes the cigarette from his lips. Smoke pours from his mouth as his breath moves air. “What were you looking at there, then?”
Cobb glances back over his shoulder, at the bulletin board he’d just been looking at. “Looking for an apartment.”
“Any luck?” More smoke, drifting towards Cobb as the wind changes direction. Smoke and cold air tickle his cheek. He almost coughs, but he’s smoked enough cigarettes in his time to not let it bother him.
“Yeah, but-" He gestures vaguely with his hand. “There’s a guy who needs a roommate, I guess. That’s about it.”
“Really,” Eames looks genuinely surprised by that. “Who?”
“Brown?” Cobb tries, “Something Brown, I don’t really remember.”
Eames laughs, shaking his head. Cobb suddenly feels like he’d just been pulled from the brink of a very very bad decision.
“What is it?”
“He’s awful.”
“Just like that?”
Eames nods, to some beat that only he hears. “Take it from me. I’ve been here long enough to know. Bertie never finds anyone to room with ‘cause he’s a fucking nutter.”
“I don’t know,” Cobb admits, “I’m desperate enough for anything right now.”
Then Eames turns thoughtful, drawing in another lungful from his cigarette. Cobb feels his eyes peer at him through the haze of smoke between them. “How desperate?”
Cobb chuckles humorlessly. “Very desperate.”
“Desperate enough for a quickie out by the pool?”
Cobb does a double take. “Wha-" he waits for Eames to laugh at the crude joke but Eames doesn’t look like he’s trying to be funny.
“Or a blowjob?”
Cobb gapes inelegantly for a second.
“Anal sex?”
“What the fuck,” Cobb blurts out loud, and immediately looks around to see if anyone’s heard him. By this time, there were very few students left milling around that part of the campus. He suddenly feels very alone, and very, very near Eames, even though they had an arm’s length and thickening smoke between them.
Eames smirks. “You heard me.”
Cobb chokes a little, and almost hates himself for not even feeling the slightest bit of offense at the proposition. The several propositions. He’s fucking tired of the student hostel and he must be really desperate, he realizes, to even consider-
Then Eames laughs, a long drawn-out laugh that makes Cobb flush in embarrassment.
“You’re an asshole,” Cobb tells him, but he’s relieved, grinning shakily as the rush of adrenaline drains the tension that set his jaw.
Eames nods again, his laugh tapering to random chuckles around his cigarette filter. “But you didn’t punch my face just now, did you.”
“Should I have?” Cobb replies with a smirk.
“Well I’m bloody thankful you didn’t.” Eames drops his cigarette on the pavement, then puts it out with a twist of his foot.
He’s not wearing sneakers, is the first thing that Cobb notices about Eames. He’s not wearing jeans, either, neither is he wearing a proper shirt with big font about some concert or other. He doesn’t even look like a student.
“Still looking for a flat?” Eames asks. He’s tilting his head back, pushing out the last of the smoke with an effortful clench of his chest. Cobb eyes the line of his neck that lead down to the sharp press of his collar, and the undone buttons of his shirt.
“Yeah,” Cobb replies. “Preferably one that doesn’t require payment in sexual favors.”
Eames throws him a smile that almost reassures Cobb. “Yeah, I’ve got a place.”
Cobb weighs this, a possible living arrangement versus trusting a stranger. Then he remembers the cramped space of a very small room he’s currently sharing with five other students. That makes the decision for him more than anything else his parents have said about not trusting people he’s only just met.
“Don’t look so worried,” Eames smirks teasingly. “Your virtue’s safe with me.”
Cobb waits for a second, because the glint in Eames’ eyes and the nonchalant smile that curls his lips all look like he was gearing up for a punchline. But it doesn’t come like expected, and when Eames turns away and gestures for him to follow with a wave of his hand, Cobb feels that slight drop of his center of gravity, kind of like missing a step, or expecting one to be there when there isn’t.
***
Cobb had expected a very small apartment, with very narrow stairs, with ancient doorknobs and creaky floors and posters tacked onto walls that are uninteresting and bare.
What he gets is a two-bedroom flat in Knightsbridge, just a well-aimed piss away from Harrod’s.
It’s all clean lines and sharp edges, with warm lights over a marble-top bar that separates the kitchen from the dining area. It has glass tables and leather couches, and a fireplace that looks like it can’t be bothered to emit warmth in the winter.
To one side is the view of sprawling London, of penthouses and brick-walled apartments that remind him of that one Beatles song he’s too distracted to remember right now.
“Still no on the sexual favors, I suppose?” Eames calls out from the kitchen. His voice rings across, to the living room where Cobb is rooted to the wooden floor.
Cobb turns, holding himself together as if taking every precaution not to accidentally break something expensive.
Everything looked fucking expensive.
He sees Eames holding two beer bottles by the necks, rummaging inside a drawer for a bottle opener.
Everything looked expensive except for Eames.
“This is yours?”
Eames looks up, hands jerking as he opens one bottle. Spirit escapes through the newly opened mouth, fizzing sharply. “Like it?”
Like it? It’s.
It’s.
“Really,” Cobb asks, disbelievingly. He still has his bag sat on his shoulders. He doesn’t know where to put it. Right by the meticulously upholstered arm chair, right on the cream-colored rug, or up against the white-washed walls?
His well-worn Omnibag doesn’t look like it’s going to fit in anywhere.
“What do you want me to say here?” Eames asks, amused, holding out the other beer bottle as he nears Cobb. He’s juggling his own beer and an empty glass in his other hand.
Cobb takes it. The bottle is warm against his palm. “Just wondering.”
Eames shoots him a deadpan look as he pours his own beer into the glass, tilting it just right to prevent the ensuing thick layer of foam. “Fine, I’ll be straight with you. We’re trespassing. This is actually some bloke’s apartment but he’s dead now. I killed him last night. I’m reaping the benefits of-"
Cobb snorts, rolling his eyes, before taking a sip of the beer. It’s strong against his tongue. He’s never tried Foster’s before. Now he knows why.
“We split the electricity, the water, the cable,” Eames says, waving his glass around. Cobb feels anxious on behalf of the clean furniture. “The phone,” he ticks off from a mental list that he seems to have just drawn up on the spot. “And the plants.”
“The plants?” Cobb says, amused, the bottle hovering just by his lips.
Eames swallows his beer as his nods, “Yeah. You water the ones in here.”
“Do you keep a lot of plants?”
Eames grins. “Just the ones in here.”
***
“What about rent?” Cobb brings up over several cartons of Indian food laid out on the kitchen table.
Eames is picking through his rice with subtle pokes of his fork. “What about rent?”
“Do I have to keep my half of it too?”
“Sure,” Eames answers with a casual shrug. “More money for me, I suppose.”
Cobb stops mid-chew. “This place is yours?”
“Yeah,” Eames nods, almost shyly, but the smile on his face more than makes up for the brief show of self-deprecation. “My father’s, really.”
Cobb doesn’t know what to make of that, just several stereotypes of rich kids and their richer parents leeching off of trustfunds from Switzerland and endless credit on plastic.
***
Cobb walks in on Eames sitting bare-chested in his bedroom.
(That he almost never closes, Cobb realizes early on when he’d woken up one morning to find the door half-open, as if Eames had considered privacy only as an afterthought.)
He’s on a high bar stool, right in front of a blank canvas. He doesn’t have a brush in his hand and there aren’t any traces of paint anywhere in the room. It’s just canvas, sitting on an easel.
Eames is staring at it like he’s stared at a fuzzy screen, waiting for it to right itself. Not quite bothering to stand up from the couch and fiddle with the cable.
“Dinner’s here,” Cobb ventures to interrupt Eames, poking his head in with his weight braced on the doorframe.
“Yeah,” Eames answers distractedly. He shifts a little, folding an arm over his middle.
Cobb frowns curiously. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m trying to impregnate the canvas with my seed.”
“By staring at it,” Cobb answers blankly.
“By staring at it,” Eames nods.
“You’ll need semen for that, I think.”
“Would you like to give me a hand?” Eames teases, a lewd smile easing the intense look of concentration from his face.
Cobb snorts and closes the door behind him.
***
“No, seriously,” Cobb finally snaps, when he finds Eames lugging around a large canvas covered in thin brown paper. “What are you doing?”
“I’m working.”
Cobb’s surprised, and it shows. Eames almost laughs at the sudden widening of his eyes, his hands slipping around the edges of the canvas.
“You really think that I spill my-"
Cobb grunts, batting away the rest of the shit that usually comes from Eames’ mouth when he’s in the mood to tease.
(Which is, as Eames goes, most of the damn time.)
“I’ve got to earn a little bit on the side if I want to buy this flat.”
Cobb frowns. “I thought this was your dad’s.”
Eames nods, a sharp jerk of his head. “Precisely.” He grunts under the weight of the canvas. “Little help here would be nice, by the way.”
Cobb acquiesces and leaves the sudden barrage of questions in his head for another day, when his physicality’s not being put to the test, lifting the canvas from the other side.
They manage to maneuver it into the narrow hallway and into Eames’ room without dislodging the framed Paul Maze hanging from the wall.
“So you’re a painter?” Cobb asks once they’ve pushed up the canvas against the wall.
Eames has a switchblade in his hand that Cobb hadn’t seen him get from anywhere. He’s ripping the brown paper apart, pushing them aside. “Not exactly.”
The canvas is not blank, as Cobb had assumed it would be. It’s a perfectly, and beautifully, painted scene of something country, but not, somewhat hazy and vague and abstract and everything that Cobb should be able to interpret well, considering the art history classes he’s had to take that term.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Eames asks him with a proud grin, looking as if he himself had painted it. Which Cobb doubted. The signature at the bottom didn’t look like Eames’.
(And he’d seen Eames’ signature before, on some school-related waiver he’d left on the kitchen. Something about an educational trip to somewhere.)
“How much was it?” Cobb asks, assuming that Eames had bought it.
By Eames’ silence, however-
--Cobb throws a look of disbelief at him. “Eames.”
Eames clicked his tongue, smiling apologetically at Cobb with an exaggeration that Cobb thinks is not sincere at all.
“What the fuck,” Cobb exclaims, the panic unfurling in his belly as his mind starts to wrap around the fact that this painting had not been painted by Eames. Had not been purchased by Eames.
“Oh relax, would you?” Eames sniffs at him.
Cobb is expecting an explanation, somewhere between the lines of Eames receiving this as a gift. Something innocent and not at all what Cobb is vividly painting in his head.
“I was careful.”
Cobb throws his hands in the air. “You stole it.”
“I borrowed it,” Eames corrects him, wagging his finger at Cobb’s face as if his sensibilities are very much offended that Cobb would think such a thing.
(Even though that thing is exactly what Cobb thinks it is.)
“You could’ve at least told me that you’re some kind of-of-" he struggles to find the right term for it.
“Thief,” Eames finishes for him.
“Art thief,” Cobb adds on. Then he’s distracted by the painting, and how it really does look nice, propped up against Eames’ navy blue wallpaper. “Nice painting, though.”
“Isn’t it?” Eames regards it as well, and they both hum under their breaths in appreciation. “But I’m not exactly a thief,” Eames says after a moment, as if only just remembering to defend his dignity. “I’m an art imitator.”
“Same thing,” Cobb says with a roll of his eyes.
“I don’t see anything wrong with providing another copy of a good piece of art for those who can’t afford the real thing.”
Cobb sees nothing wrong with that, when it put in perspective. But the architect, or the would-be architect in Cobb, finds it a little offensive that Eames would do something like that. To a piece of art.
“The Mona Lisa has tons of copies all around the world,” Eames continues, in reaction to what must’ve been a look of disapproval on Cobb’s face.
“They’re commercially distributed posters, Eames. It’s not exactly the same.”
Eames relents, “Fine. But I’m getting paid good money for this. A job’s a job.”
Cobb doesn’t point out that making coffee is a job, being a teacher’s assistant is a job, fixing the books at the library after school is a fucking job.
Not stealing art and imitating it.
But Eames is already preparing his easel and shrugging off his jacket and Cobb knows that when Eames is moving so quickly, with his mind set on something, any wise words he’d say would just fall on deaf ears.
***
Cobb unearths Eames’ Nintendo 64 three weeks after moving in.
It’s dusty, and it takes a while for him to set it up properly in the living room.
Eames comes home late that evening to find Cobb sitting on the floor with a bowl of chips sitting by his knee.
“So this happened,” Cobb says by way of explanation. He’s already gotten past Level 6, this close to getting Mario leaping off the stairs of bricks to get to the flag.
“It’s still happening,” Eames says with a smile and it doesn’t take long for Cobb to feel Eames sitting right next to him, pressed against his side. He’s leaning even further in to get a handful of chips from the bowl and for a second or two, all that Cobb could smell was a little bit of sweat, a little bit of aftershave, when Eames’ head is just there, his hair tickling Cobb’s nose.
“Would you mind?” But he’s not bothered by it at all.
“Of course I mind. I haven’t seen this thing in ages,” Eames says over the crisp crunch of the chips in between his teeth.
“You’re kidding. This just came out.”
“What did?” Eames asks, distractedly. He’s leaning back, and Cobb can see only Eames' loosely folded legs sprawled out in front of him.
“The console, Eames,” Cobb answers just as distractedly, fingers skillfully pushing all the right buttons.
It takes a second for Eames to reply. Cobb has to nudge him with his knee to snap his attention back.
Eames grunts, murmuring sleepily in reply, “So that’s what it’s called.”
“What did you think it was?”
Eames is quiet, and Cobb waits, rather patiently, for his answer. But it doesn’t come. He pauses the game and turns to look at Eames, only to find him leaning against the couch, his arms folded on the leather seat. His face is turned away, pressed against the crook of his elbow.
“Eames,” Cobb checks, keeping his voice quiet.
Eames doesn’t stir. His breathing has evened out, and his jacket stretches over his shoulders at every rise of his chest.
Cobb wants to wake him up because sleeping all throughout the night in such a position would wreck his back, but he just scoots back a little to lean against the couch as well, Eames’ arms pressing against his back. He turns the television’s volume low, but not too low that he misses out on all the fun Nintendo sound effects, and keeps on playing.
He doesn’t mind that Eames stirs later on, curling his knees slightly inward until his shins are pressed right against Cobb’s side, or that his hands somehow wedge themselves between Cobb’s back and the couch.
He likes the weight of Eames’ knee against his thigh, when it falls there sometime later. He likes it enough that he rests his arm on it several times, during the bonus levels that he coasts through with simple taps on the arrow buttons.
***
It’s a Friday and they’re both not in the apartment.
They’re at a house party, where the walls are splattered with spilled beer and it’s a sea of people that Cobb has to wade through to find Eames.
“Eames!” Cobb calls out over the din of very loud music and much louder people.
Everywhere he looks, there’s too much skin and even less clothing.
Cobb himself has forgotten where he’d put his jacket, and his thin shirt is almost wet-through with sweat. It’s hot, and stifling, and the crowd is swelling around him until all the sensation that he has room for in his head are very intimate touches by strangers in places he’d rather not think about right just now.
He may also be a little drunk.
He was holding a cup of beer at some point but looking down at his hand, he realizes that it's empty.
“Eames!” He tries again and finally he finds Eames, backed up right against a corner of the living room. It’s dark, and Cobb almost doesn’t recognize Eames, if not for the most fortunate timing of the man pressing up against him-
Cobb blinks, swaying a little where he stood.
There’s a man pressed up against Eames, the man isn’t wearing a shirt. He has his hands splayed out on the walls and Eames looks like he’s drowning a little, tilting his head back with his hands scrambling for purchase on the man’s back.
“Oh my God,” Cobb gasps out and before his head could even comprehend what he’s doing, he’s rushing forward and pulling the man right off of Eames.
His fist hurts.
It’s probably because he’s bumped it somewhere, he thinks idly, then slowly realizes that the man is pitched forward, clutching his cheek.
Eames is laughing behind him, an arm coming around to pull Cobb farther away from the man and nearer and nearer back to the swell of dancing bodies. His laugh is infectious, and also a little too loud in Cobb’s ear.
“You’re a bloody savior, aren’t you, Cobb,” Eames says, and his stubbled chin is right there, scratching the side of Cobb’s neck.
Cobb shrugs off the humor, looking Eames over with hazy eyes that pick out the details that he doesn’t need. Like the rumpled shirt, half-untucked from the waistband of his jeans. Jeans, this time, Cobb realizes belatedly, jeans that are tight around his hips, and line his legs just right. He notices Eames’ uneven teeth, and the wobbly grin that splits his face, the heavy droop of his eyes.
(What he wants to know, of course, is if Eames is fine. Because Eames didn’t look fine just then. He looked like he was suffocating.
He hits himself over the head the next morning when he pieces it together properly, all the right ends in the right slots-a pun which makes him grimace over his breakfast, of course. That Eames hadn’t been in trouble and had actually looked like he was in the middle of something very, very good.)
***
They stumble into the apartment and ruin the comfortable silence with random spurts of laughter because the man had been furious enough to chase them down two blocks before almost getting hit by a car.
Cobb doesn’t really remember if he got hit at all. All they heard was a car honking his horn very loudly, and a string of curses that even Cobb had laughed at and Eames only nodded in support of that scandalized man.
Old man, from the sound of it.
But then Eames is laughing into his ear and he forgets about the man, and the old man, and near misses with oncoming traffic.
He’s got an armful of drunk Eames and fuck it, if he wasn’t drunk either.
He was, he must have been, because there’s absolutely no excuse, Cobb thinks, that he’s pressed against Eames’ front, with Eames back pressed right against the door and it’s all pressing and pressing and pressing until Cobb is pretty sure his chest is numb from the pressure of just Eames’ weight as well as his, just resting there for a moment. Heaving and panting and breathless.
He’s still drunk, he thinks, when Eames is pressing his cheek against Cobb’s, and his hands are fisted into Cobb’s shirt.
Still drunk that the hardness he feels against his hip is not Eames’ wallet, nor is it any other object that radiates so much heat that he presses against it instinctively, his whole body jerking forward.
The moans from both their lips are ripped apart by teeth that gnash together and tongues that collide.
“Fuck,” Eames says at the brief moment they needed for air. “This is intense.”
Cobb laughs, and so does Eames, then they’re not laughing anymore, and both their breaths are sucked in by the other, filling their lungs with the need to wet their lips with each other’s tongues.
Their hands are grasping at skin that are suddenly bare, their shirts discarded on the floor.
It takes a while for them to realize that it’s still dark, and the air is cold, and the heat hasn’t been turned on yet.
But they don’t realize this for at least another few hours, until they’ve both spent themselves on each other’s pants, and they’re sprawled, sated and breathless, on the couch.
***
“About last night,” Cobb ventures the morning after, while Eames is cradling his head, sitting haphazardly at the bar with his hair plastered to his head.
“What about last night,” Eames grunts into his palm.
Cobb hesitates, and takes his time sipping on the orange juice he’d plucked at random from the refrigerator.
Eames is looking at him expectantly, peering at him from between the fingers pressed against his face.
“That was good, I think,” Cobb finishes. “It felt good.”
“Really.”
Cobb thinks about it for a moment, turning it over in his head. It’s all skin and teeth and heat that plays over in his mind that, he concludes: “Yeah, it was good.”
“Well,” Eames grunts, “I’m glad one of us enjoyed it.”
Cobb sets down his glass, eyes wide. “What-"
Eames smirks. “I can’t even remember a fucking thing.”
Cobb releases a sigh. Eames always does this to him. “Not a thing?”
Eames shakes his head, then bites back a groan when the motion dislodges the remaining part of his brain. “Not a bloody thing, no.”
Cobb looks thoughtful for a moment, and the silence discomfits Eames enough that he removes his head from his hands and peers at him almost anxiously. “Wanna try it again?”
Eames snorts, but he’s smiling and he clearly wants to. Again and again and again.
“With a bed this time, and lots of light,” Cobb continues, eyes raking over the shirt that tightens over Eames’ arms.
“Candles?”
Cobb scoffs. “Candles.”
“Roses?”
Cobb rolls his eyes. “Daisies?”
Eames snorts. “Daisies have God-awful petals that’d make my bed look like some kind of funeral pyre.”
“Your bed?”
Eames raises an eyebrow. “What, you want to do it on yours?”
Cobb shrugs. “My bed’s large.”
“My bed’s larger.”
Cobb thinks about this, thinks about it well. “Yeah. Yeah it really is.”
Eames grins. “My bed, roses, candles.”
Cobb nods. “That’s the plan.”
***
Fuck plans.
***
They have the kitchen island and their pants around both their ankles and an exam in the morning for Cobb and a paper and several paintings to imitate for Eames.
They don’t have much time, but they make up for it with thrusts that bang both their hands against the marble, and keep their hips sore for the rest of the week.
***
“You remember it now?” Cobb says much, much later, while he’s pouring the rest of the Coco Puffs into his bowl.
Eames shrugs, toweling his hair dry. “Yeah, vaguely.”
“You just want another reminder.”
“Oh, was I being subtle about it?”
“Not if it’s taken me around five seconds to figure out what’s going on inside your head.”
Eames grins. “I have an awful memory.”
He doesn’t, but Cobb humors him anyway because it doesn’t hurt, really, to commit certain things to memory. Like deadlines, and papers, and things that needed to be studied, and things that needed to be remembered, things that he really, really liked, like Super Mario, and chips in bowls, and the swell of the back of Eames’ head, and the taste of beer and greasy food at the back of their mouths where they dig just right, just deep enough, that they don’t remember anything else afterwards.
Until Eames needs to be reminded again.
And Cobb is only happy to oblige.
END
Eames/Cobb
College fic, where Cobb is in need of living arrangements and Eames presents a most attractive solution.
I blame smilevintage and toestastegood for this. Also, ilu forever walkingxorgasm and fermine for the beta. You betta believe it, fermine. Give in and ship this son of a bitch. PS: TOTES IN CELEBRATION OF THE BRAND-SPANKIN NEW COMM FOR THIS PAIRING. Fuck yeah, cobb_eames. \m/
“New around here, aren’t you?”
Cobb whips around to find someone he hasn’t before. Someone whose cocksure tilt of hips probably means bad news, paired with a knowing smirk around a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.
The stranger offers a hand, puffing out a careless burst of smoke that above their heads, under the dim light mounted on the bulletin board, reminds Cobb of the fog he’s had too much of since arriving in London only a few days ago. “I’m Eames.”
Cobb shakes his hand a little uncertainly, shifting the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Cobb.”
Eames’ eyebrows lift, too languid to be surprised. “Like Madonna.”
“W-What?” Cobb stammers out.
“Just the first name, or the last,” Eames shrugs. His cigarette bobs up and down as he speaks. “Bit mysterious, a bit tacky.”
Cobb smiles sheepishly, runs a hand down the side of his neck. “No, actually, it’s Dominic.”
Eames twists his lips, and the lit embers of his cigarette hovers over his left cheek. Cobb expects him to flinch at the heat, but Eames only draws in a breath. It glows brightly in the late afternoon shadow cast by the building right behind them.
“Yeah,” Cobb shrugs. “So Cobb it is.”
Eames grins, then finally takes the cigarette from his lips. Smoke pours from his mouth as his breath moves air. “What were you looking at there, then?”
Cobb glances back over his shoulder, at the bulletin board he’d just been looking at. “Looking for an apartment.”
“Any luck?” More smoke, drifting towards Cobb as the wind changes direction. Smoke and cold air tickle his cheek. He almost coughs, but he’s smoked enough cigarettes in his time to not let it bother him.
“Yeah, but-" He gestures vaguely with his hand. “There’s a guy who needs a roommate, I guess. That’s about it.”
“Really,” Eames looks genuinely surprised by that. “Who?”
“Brown?” Cobb tries, “Something Brown, I don’t really remember.”
Eames laughs, shaking his head. Cobb suddenly feels like he’d just been pulled from the brink of a very very bad decision.
“What is it?”
“He’s awful.”
“Just like that?”
Eames nods, to some beat that only he hears. “Take it from me. I’ve been here long enough to know. Bertie never finds anyone to room with ‘cause he’s a fucking nutter.”
“I don’t know,” Cobb admits, “I’m desperate enough for anything right now.”
Then Eames turns thoughtful, drawing in another lungful from his cigarette. Cobb feels his eyes peer at him through the haze of smoke between them. “How desperate?”
Cobb chuckles humorlessly. “Very desperate.”
“Desperate enough for a quickie out by the pool?”
Cobb does a double take. “Wha-" he waits for Eames to laugh at the crude joke but Eames doesn’t look like he’s trying to be funny.
“Or a blowjob?”
Cobb gapes inelegantly for a second.
“Anal sex?”
“What the fuck,” Cobb blurts out loud, and immediately looks around to see if anyone’s heard him. By this time, there were very few students left milling around that part of the campus. He suddenly feels very alone, and very, very near Eames, even though they had an arm’s length and thickening smoke between them.
Eames smirks. “You heard me.”
Cobb chokes a little, and almost hates himself for not even feeling the slightest bit of offense at the proposition. The several propositions. He’s fucking tired of the student hostel and he must be really desperate, he realizes, to even consider-
Then Eames laughs, a long drawn-out laugh that makes Cobb flush in embarrassment.
“You’re an asshole,” Cobb tells him, but he’s relieved, grinning shakily as the rush of adrenaline drains the tension that set his jaw.
Eames nods again, his laugh tapering to random chuckles around his cigarette filter. “But you didn’t punch my face just now, did you.”
“Should I have?” Cobb replies with a smirk.
“Well I’m bloody thankful you didn’t.” Eames drops his cigarette on the pavement, then puts it out with a twist of his foot.
He’s not wearing sneakers, is the first thing that Cobb notices about Eames. He’s not wearing jeans, either, neither is he wearing a proper shirt with big font about some concert or other. He doesn’t even look like a student.
“Still looking for a flat?” Eames asks. He’s tilting his head back, pushing out the last of the smoke with an effortful clench of his chest. Cobb eyes the line of his neck that lead down to the sharp press of his collar, and the undone buttons of his shirt.
“Yeah,” Cobb replies. “Preferably one that doesn’t require payment in sexual favors.”
Eames throws him a smile that almost reassures Cobb. “Yeah, I’ve got a place.”
Cobb weighs this, a possible living arrangement versus trusting a stranger. Then he remembers the cramped space of a very small room he’s currently sharing with five other students. That makes the decision for him more than anything else his parents have said about not trusting people he’s only just met.
“Don’t look so worried,” Eames smirks teasingly. “Your virtue’s safe with me.”
Cobb waits for a second, because the glint in Eames’ eyes and the nonchalant smile that curls his lips all look like he was gearing up for a punchline. But it doesn’t come like expected, and when Eames turns away and gestures for him to follow with a wave of his hand, Cobb feels that slight drop of his center of gravity, kind of like missing a step, or expecting one to be there when there isn’t.
***
Cobb had expected a very small apartment, with very narrow stairs, with ancient doorknobs and creaky floors and posters tacked onto walls that are uninteresting and bare.
What he gets is a two-bedroom flat in Knightsbridge, just a well-aimed piss away from Harrod’s.
It’s all clean lines and sharp edges, with warm lights over a marble-top bar that separates the kitchen from the dining area. It has glass tables and leather couches, and a fireplace that looks like it can’t be bothered to emit warmth in the winter.
To one side is the view of sprawling London, of penthouses and brick-walled apartments that remind him of that one Beatles song he’s too distracted to remember right now.
“Still no on the sexual favors, I suppose?” Eames calls out from the kitchen. His voice rings across, to the living room where Cobb is rooted to the wooden floor.
Cobb turns, holding himself together as if taking every precaution not to accidentally break something expensive.
Everything looked fucking expensive.
He sees Eames holding two beer bottles by the necks, rummaging inside a drawer for a bottle opener.
Everything looked expensive except for Eames.
“This is yours?”
Eames looks up, hands jerking as he opens one bottle. Spirit escapes through the newly opened mouth, fizzing sharply. “Like it?”
Like it? It’s.
It’s.
“Really,” Cobb asks, disbelievingly. He still has his bag sat on his shoulders. He doesn’t know where to put it. Right by the meticulously upholstered arm chair, right on the cream-colored rug, or up against the white-washed walls?
His well-worn Omnibag doesn’t look like it’s going to fit in anywhere.
“What do you want me to say here?” Eames asks, amused, holding out the other beer bottle as he nears Cobb. He’s juggling his own beer and an empty glass in his other hand.
Cobb takes it. The bottle is warm against his palm. “Just wondering.”
Eames shoots him a deadpan look as he pours his own beer into the glass, tilting it just right to prevent the ensuing thick layer of foam. “Fine, I’ll be straight with you. We’re trespassing. This is actually some bloke’s apartment but he’s dead now. I killed him last night. I’m reaping the benefits of-"
Cobb snorts, rolling his eyes, before taking a sip of the beer. It’s strong against his tongue. He’s never tried Foster’s before. Now he knows why.
“We split the electricity, the water, the cable,” Eames says, waving his glass around. Cobb feels anxious on behalf of the clean furniture. “The phone,” he ticks off from a mental list that he seems to have just drawn up on the spot. “And the plants.”
“The plants?” Cobb says, amused, the bottle hovering just by his lips.
Eames swallows his beer as his nods, “Yeah. You water the ones in here.”
“Do you keep a lot of plants?”
Eames grins. “Just the ones in here.”
***
“What about rent?” Cobb brings up over several cartons of Indian food laid out on the kitchen table.
Eames is picking through his rice with subtle pokes of his fork. “What about rent?”
“Do I have to keep my half of it too?”
“Sure,” Eames answers with a casual shrug. “More money for me, I suppose.”
Cobb stops mid-chew. “This place is yours?”
“Yeah,” Eames nods, almost shyly, but the smile on his face more than makes up for the brief show of self-deprecation. “My father’s, really.”
Cobb doesn’t know what to make of that, just several stereotypes of rich kids and their richer parents leeching off of trustfunds from Switzerland and endless credit on plastic.
***
Cobb walks in on Eames sitting bare-chested in his bedroom.
(That he almost never closes, Cobb realizes early on when he’d woken up one morning to find the door half-open, as if Eames had considered privacy only as an afterthought.)
He’s on a high bar stool, right in front of a blank canvas. He doesn’t have a brush in his hand and there aren’t any traces of paint anywhere in the room. It’s just canvas, sitting on an easel.
Eames is staring at it like he’s stared at a fuzzy screen, waiting for it to right itself. Not quite bothering to stand up from the couch and fiddle with the cable.
“Dinner’s here,” Cobb ventures to interrupt Eames, poking his head in with his weight braced on the doorframe.
“Yeah,” Eames answers distractedly. He shifts a little, folding an arm over his middle.
Cobb frowns curiously. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m trying to impregnate the canvas with my seed.”
“By staring at it,” Cobb answers blankly.
“By staring at it,” Eames nods.
“You’ll need semen for that, I think.”
“Would you like to give me a hand?” Eames teases, a lewd smile easing the intense look of concentration from his face.
Cobb snorts and closes the door behind him.
***
“No, seriously,” Cobb finally snaps, when he finds Eames lugging around a large canvas covered in thin brown paper. “What are you doing?”
“I’m working.”
Cobb’s surprised, and it shows. Eames almost laughs at the sudden widening of his eyes, his hands slipping around the edges of the canvas.
“You really think that I spill my-"
Cobb grunts, batting away the rest of the shit that usually comes from Eames’ mouth when he’s in the mood to tease.
(Which is, as Eames goes, most of the damn time.)
“I’ve got to earn a little bit on the side if I want to buy this flat.”
Cobb frowns. “I thought this was your dad’s.”
Eames nods, a sharp jerk of his head. “Precisely.” He grunts under the weight of the canvas. “Little help here would be nice, by the way.”
Cobb acquiesces and leaves the sudden barrage of questions in his head for another day, when his physicality’s not being put to the test, lifting the canvas from the other side.
They manage to maneuver it into the narrow hallway and into Eames’ room without dislodging the framed Paul Maze hanging from the wall.
“So you’re a painter?” Cobb asks once they’ve pushed up the canvas against the wall.
Eames has a switchblade in his hand that Cobb hadn’t seen him get from anywhere. He’s ripping the brown paper apart, pushing them aside. “Not exactly.”
The canvas is not blank, as Cobb had assumed it would be. It’s a perfectly, and beautifully, painted scene of something country, but not, somewhat hazy and vague and abstract and everything that Cobb should be able to interpret well, considering the art history classes he’s had to take that term.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Eames asks him with a proud grin, looking as if he himself had painted it. Which Cobb doubted. The signature at the bottom didn’t look like Eames’.
(And he’d seen Eames’ signature before, on some school-related waiver he’d left on the kitchen. Something about an educational trip to somewhere.)
“How much was it?” Cobb asks, assuming that Eames had bought it.
By Eames’ silence, however-
--Cobb throws a look of disbelief at him. “Eames.”
Eames clicked his tongue, smiling apologetically at Cobb with an exaggeration that Cobb thinks is not sincere at all.
“What the fuck,” Cobb exclaims, the panic unfurling in his belly as his mind starts to wrap around the fact that this painting had not been painted by Eames. Had not been purchased by Eames.
“Oh relax, would you?” Eames sniffs at him.
Cobb is expecting an explanation, somewhere between the lines of Eames receiving this as a gift. Something innocent and not at all what Cobb is vividly painting in his head.
“I was careful.”
Cobb throws his hands in the air. “You stole it.”
“I borrowed it,” Eames corrects him, wagging his finger at Cobb’s face as if his sensibilities are very much offended that Cobb would think such a thing.
(Even though that thing is exactly what Cobb thinks it is.)
“You could’ve at least told me that you’re some kind of-of-" he struggles to find the right term for it.
“Thief,” Eames finishes for him.
“Art thief,” Cobb adds on. Then he’s distracted by the painting, and how it really does look nice, propped up against Eames’ navy blue wallpaper. “Nice painting, though.”
“Isn’t it?” Eames regards it as well, and they both hum under their breaths in appreciation. “But I’m not exactly a thief,” Eames says after a moment, as if only just remembering to defend his dignity. “I’m an art imitator.”
“Same thing,” Cobb says with a roll of his eyes.
“I don’t see anything wrong with providing another copy of a good piece of art for those who can’t afford the real thing.”
Cobb sees nothing wrong with that, when it put in perspective. But the architect, or the would-be architect in Cobb, finds it a little offensive that Eames would do something like that. To a piece of art.
“The Mona Lisa has tons of copies all around the world,” Eames continues, in reaction to what must’ve been a look of disapproval on Cobb’s face.
“They’re commercially distributed posters, Eames. It’s not exactly the same.”
Eames relents, “Fine. But I’m getting paid good money for this. A job’s a job.”
Cobb doesn’t point out that making coffee is a job, being a teacher’s assistant is a job, fixing the books at the library after school is a fucking job.
Not stealing art and imitating it.
But Eames is already preparing his easel and shrugging off his jacket and Cobb knows that when Eames is moving so quickly, with his mind set on something, any wise words he’d say would just fall on deaf ears.
***
Cobb unearths Eames’ Nintendo 64 three weeks after moving in.
It’s dusty, and it takes a while for him to set it up properly in the living room.
Eames comes home late that evening to find Cobb sitting on the floor with a bowl of chips sitting by his knee.
“So this happened,” Cobb says by way of explanation. He’s already gotten past Level 6, this close to getting Mario leaping off the stairs of bricks to get to the flag.
“It’s still happening,” Eames says with a smile and it doesn’t take long for Cobb to feel Eames sitting right next to him, pressed against his side. He’s leaning even further in to get a handful of chips from the bowl and for a second or two, all that Cobb could smell was a little bit of sweat, a little bit of aftershave, when Eames’ head is just there, his hair tickling Cobb’s nose.
“Would you mind?” But he’s not bothered by it at all.
“Of course I mind. I haven’t seen this thing in ages,” Eames says over the crisp crunch of the chips in between his teeth.
“You’re kidding. This just came out.”
“What did?” Eames asks, distractedly. He’s leaning back, and Cobb can see only Eames' loosely folded legs sprawled out in front of him.
“The console, Eames,” Cobb answers just as distractedly, fingers skillfully pushing all the right buttons.
It takes a second for Eames to reply. Cobb has to nudge him with his knee to snap his attention back.
Eames grunts, murmuring sleepily in reply, “So that’s what it’s called.”
“What did you think it was?”
Eames is quiet, and Cobb waits, rather patiently, for his answer. But it doesn’t come. He pauses the game and turns to look at Eames, only to find him leaning against the couch, his arms folded on the leather seat. His face is turned away, pressed against the crook of his elbow.
“Eames,” Cobb checks, keeping his voice quiet.
Eames doesn’t stir. His breathing has evened out, and his jacket stretches over his shoulders at every rise of his chest.
Cobb wants to wake him up because sleeping all throughout the night in such a position would wreck his back, but he just scoots back a little to lean against the couch as well, Eames’ arms pressing against his back. He turns the television’s volume low, but not too low that he misses out on all the fun Nintendo sound effects, and keeps on playing.
He doesn’t mind that Eames stirs later on, curling his knees slightly inward until his shins are pressed right against Cobb’s side, or that his hands somehow wedge themselves between Cobb’s back and the couch.
He likes the weight of Eames’ knee against his thigh, when it falls there sometime later. He likes it enough that he rests his arm on it several times, during the bonus levels that he coasts through with simple taps on the arrow buttons.
***
It’s a Friday and they’re both not in the apartment.
They’re at a house party, where the walls are splattered with spilled beer and it’s a sea of people that Cobb has to wade through to find Eames.
“Eames!” Cobb calls out over the din of very loud music and much louder people.
Everywhere he looks, there’s too much skin and even less clothing.
Cobb himself has forgotten where he’d put his jacket, and his thin shirt is almost wet-through with sweat. It’s hot, and stifling, and the crowd is swelling around him until all the sensation that he has room for in his head are very intimate touches by strangers in places he’d rather not think about right just now.
He may also be a little drunk.
He was holding a cup of beer at some point but looking down at his hand, he realizes that it's empty.
“Eames!” He tries again and finally he finds Eames, backed up right against a corner of the living room. It’s dark, and Cobb almost doesn’t recognize Eames, if not for the most fortunate timing of the man pressing up against him-
Cobb blinks, swaying a little where he stood.
There’s a man pressed up against Eames, the man isn’t wearing a shirt. He has his hands splayed out on the walls and Eames looks like he’s drowning a little, tilting his head back with his hands scrambling for purchase on the man’s back.
“Oh my God,” Cobb gasps out and before his head could even comprehend what he’s doing, he’s rushing forward and pulling the man right off of Eames.
His fist hurts.
It’s probably because he’s bumped it somewhere, he thinks idly, then slowly realizes that the man is pitched forward, clutching his cheek.
Eames is laughing behind him, an arm coming around to pull Cobb farther away from the man and nearer and nearer back to the swell of dancing bodies. His laugh is infectious, and also a little too loud in Cobb’s ear.
“You’re a bloody savior, aren’t you, Cobb,” Eames says, and his stubbled chin is right there, scratching the side of Cobb’s neck.
Cobb shrugs off the humor, looking Eames over with hazy eyes that pick out the details that he doesn’t need. Like the rumpled shirt, half-untucked from the waistband of his jeans. Jeans, this time, Cobb realizes belatedly, jeans that are tight around his hips, and line his legs just right. He notices Eames’ uneven teeth, and the wobbly grin that splits his face, the heavy droop of his eyes.
(What he wants to know, of course, is if Eames is fine. Because Eames didn’t look fine just then. He looked like he was suffocating.
He hits himself over the head the next morning when he pieces it together properly, all the right ends in the right slots-a pun which makes him grimace over his breakfast, of course. That Eames hadn’t been in trouble and had actually looked like he was in the middle of something very, very good.)
***
They stumble into the apartment and ruin the comfortable silence with random spurts of laughter because the man had been furious enough to chase them down two blocks before almost getting hit by a car.
Cobb doesn’t really remember if he got hit at all. All they heard was a car honking his horn very loudly, and a string of curses that even Cobb had laughed at and Eames only nodded in support of that scandalized man.
Old man, from the sound of it.
But then Eames is laughing into his ear and he forgets about the man, and the old man, and near misses with oncoming traffic.
He’s got an armful of drunk Eames and fuck it, if he wasn’t drunk either.
He was, he must have been, because there’s absolutely no excuse, Cobb thinks, that he’s pressed against Eames’ front, with Eames back pressed right against the door and it’s all pressing and pressing and pressing until Cobb is pretty sure his chest is numb from the pressure of just Eames’ weight as well as his, just resting there for a moment. Heaving and panting and breathless.
He’s still drunk, he thinks, when Eames is pressing his cheek against Cobb’s, and his hands are fisted into Cobb’s shirt.
Still drunk that the hardness he feels against his hip is not Eames’ wallet, nor is it any other object that radiates so much heat that he presses against it instinctively, his whole body jerking forward.
The moans from both their lips are ripped apart by teeth that gnash together and tongues that collide.
“Fuck,” Eames says at the brief moment they needed for air. “This is intense.”
Cobb laughs, and so does Eames, then they’re not laughing anymore, and both their breaths are sucked in by the other, filling their lungs with the need to wet their lips with each other’s tongues.
Their hands are grasping at skin that are suddenly bare, their shirts discarded on the floor.
It takes a while for them to realize that it’s still dark, and the air is cold, and the heat hasn’t been turned on yet.
But they don’t realize this for at least another few hours, until they’ve both spent themselves on each other’s pants, and they’re sprawled, sated and breathless, on the couch.
***
“About last night,” Cobb ventures the morning after, while Eames is cradling his head, sitting haphazardly at the bar with his hair plastered to his head.
“What about last night,” Eames grunts into his palm.
Cobb hesitates, and takes his time sipping on the orange juice he’d plucked at random from the refrigerator.
Eames is looking at him expectantly, peering at him from between the fingers pressed against his face.
“That was good, I think,” Cobb finishes. “It felt good.”
“Really.”
Cobb thinks about it for a moment, turning it over in his head. It’s all skin and teeth and heat that plays over in his mind that, he concludes: “Yeah, it was good.”
“Well,” Eames grunts, “I’m glad one of us enjoyed it.”
Cobb sets down his glass, eyes wide. “What-"
Eames smirks. “I can’t even remember a fucking thing.”
Cobb releases a sigh. Eames always does this to him. “Not a thing?”
Eames shakes his head, then bites back a groan when the motion dislodges the remaining part of his brain. “Not a bloody thing, no.”
Cobb looks thoughtful for a moment, and the silence discomfits Eames enough that he removes his head from his hands and peers at him almost anxiously. “Wanna try it again?”
Eames snorts, but he’s smiling and he clearly wants to. Again and again and again.
“With a bed this time, and lots of light,” Cobb continues, eyes raking over the shirt that tightens over Eames’ arms.
“Candles?”
Cobb scoffs. “Candles.”
“Roses?”
Cobb rolls his eyes. “Daisies?”
Eames snorts. “Daisies have God-awful petals that’d make my bed look like some kind of funeral pyre.”
“Your bed?”
Eames raises an eyebrow. “What, you want to do it on yours?”
Cobb shrugs. “My bed’s large.”
“My bed’s larger.”
Cobb thinks about this, thinks about it well. “Yeah. Yeah it really is.”
Eames grins. “My bed, roses, candles.”
Cobb nods. “That’s the plan.”
***
Fuck plans.
***
They have the kitchen island and their pants around both their ankles and an exam in the morning for Cobb and a paper and several paintings to imitate for Eames.
They don’t have much time, but they make up for it with thrusts that bang both their hands against the marble, and keep their hips sore for the rest of the week.
***
“You remember it now?” Cobb says much, much later, while he’s pouring the rest of the Coco Puffs into his bowl.
Eames shrugs, toweling his hair dry. “Yeah, vaguely.”
“You just want another reminder.”
“Oh, was I being subtle about it?”
“Not if it’s taken me around five seconds to figure out what’s going on inside your head.”
Eames grins. “I have an awful memory.”
He doesn’t, but Cobb humors him anyway because it doesn’t hurt, really, to commit certain things to memory. Like deadlines, and papers, and things that needed to be studied, and things that needed to be remembered, things that he really, really liked, like Super Mario, and chips in bowls, and the swell of the back of Eames’ head, and the taste of beer and greasy food at the back of their mouths where they dig just right, just deep enough, that they don’t remember anything else afterwards.
Until Eames needs to be reminded again.
And Cobb is only happy to oblige.
END