[INCEPTION] Fic: Solid Ground (Arthur/Eames/Cobb) ~2,600 words
Sort of inspired by a conversation with sucuri.
ETA: Oops, sorry. Fixed a typo or two. My bad.
Title: Solid Ground
Summary: Something about three men and how something among three. Damn. Men. Is enough sometimes.
Warning: None. Yeah, I know. Not even sex. Tch.
QUOTE: But for all the distance and the inches and the lives and the circumstances that separated them at times, they didn’t want any more than this and they didn’t move for a long time to fix it.
The history of Arthur, Eames, and Cobb is not written in stone.
It’s one of those things that are never said amongst three gentlemen, one of whom had a wife. Has two children.
Instead, their history is written in skin and anger and words that should not have been spoken in the first place, when tensions had run high and all their energy had been sapped by an assignment gone wrong and all hell had blown out of proportion.
“You messed up,” Cobb said, his hand running down his face. He wasn’t looking at Arthur but Arthur knew those words were for him.
“It was a mistake, Cobb, calm down,” Eames replied, cautioning, but for all the calm in his voice, the steel in his eyes warned both Arthur and Cobb that he was this close to flinging the PASIV out the window. For all the good it did the three of them.
Arthur, on the other hand, quietly sat in his lawn chair but the fidgeting in his fingers were more than just fidgeting. He was wringing his fingers dry, as if enough pressure against his skin could milk the frustration that tightly strung his whipcord arms.
Cobb wasn’t listening to Eames. He wasn’t listening to anybody. “What do you mean calm down? We were there. So close.”
“Well it was nobody’s fault, now was it?” Eames insisted, but the steadiness had flaked with an edge that reminded Cobb of his capacity to put a stop to the conversation whenever he needed to.
“Shut up, Eames,” Cobb snapped, throwing him a stubborn look that meant he wasn’t going to calm the fuck down. That these things, they needed to be fucking said.
Eames punched him in the face, clipping him the jaw. A good solid punch that was so crisp, Arthur had jumped in surprise.
Cobb fell back a few steps, more surprise in his face than actual pain.
“I did tell you to stop, now didn’t I?” Eames shook his hand, once.
When Cobb didn’t move, Eames took a breath. And so did Arthur, but Arthur was relieved. And Eames was not.
Eames was livid. Fucking livid, but he had always been the most patient of the three of them, and wasn’t likely to lose it altogether at a job gone wrong.
(That came much later, when someone got hurt, or when Eames himself was the one who screwed up. Really screwed up. And not just the screwed up that could be remedied by a quick trip back into the PASIV. Arthur had seen Eames at his worst, when alcohol had clouded his mind and gambling didn’t help him at all. That was when he truly lost it, because what else was there to cling to when none of your vices worked to assuage the gaping hole of doubt in your mind?
Arthur, on the other hand, lived side by side with doubt and uncertainty. Eames avoided them like the plague, or flooded them with fine whiskey.)
Cobb shook his head, as if snapping himself back from the stunned silence. He opened his mouth, to say something.
(Something that would hurt, preferably. Something that would point fingers and make them realize, Arthur and Eames, make them fucking realize that this job meant something to him. Because he had kids to think about now, because he had Mal waiting at home, because he trusted them, trusted them most of all, to be there when he needed them to be.)
Eames raised his eyebrows in challenge.
Arthur, though, he didn’t. He never really did. He just stood up and began to pace, running his hands through his hair and worrying the tie that had suddenly become too tight against his neck.
Then Cobb shook his head again, let out a forceful breath through his nose, and left.
The slam of the door, however. Well, that spoke a million words that Cobb didn’t have, didn’t it.
Arthur stopped, stilled, with his hands on his hips. His eyes glared at an innocent groove on the floor. “Eames-“
Eames cleared his throat, interrupting him. “None of that now. Not much use for it, eh, Arthur?” But he wasn’t smiling, not like he usually did when he was being ironic. He wasn’t looking at Arthur, either.
“I should have-“
“Yes,” Eames replied.
Arthur’s head shot up, worry creasing his forehead.
But Eames didn’t see this. “You should have.”
“What, you think this is my fault too?”
Eames chuckled humorlessly, before turning to Arthur. And Arthur knew the answer then, that he did screw up and Eames and Cobb, well, they both knew it too, and Arthur didn’t.
Arthur wanted differently, but he knew he could expect nothing short of the truth from Eames.
The smile on Eames’ face faltered, then, and so did the line of his shoulders.
“Arthur,” Eames began, standing in front of Arthur but not touching him.
Eames never touched Arthur when he needed it.
“We’re not playing with mazes anymore,” Eames said, and Arthur knew this. He really fucking did. The patronizing tone didn’t comfort him this time.
Arthur waited for the other shoe to drop. For something like an atomic bomb that would rattle his senses, but it never came. It almost always never did, when it came to Eames.
“Just do better next time,” was what Eames said instead.
Arthur nodded, several times. More times than was necessary. But Eames stopped him with a gentle hand that suddenly wrapped the back of his neck and Arthur, never a man of instinct, leaned against it anyway.
Eames pulled him in and Arthur let him. Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders and maybe Eames’ lips, maybe the tip of his nose, maybe just a whisper of some draft in a room that had no windows, touched his hair.
**********
“Where is he?” Cobb asked as soon as he walked into the kitchen of some four-star, one-bedroom suite they had rented for the week.
Eames looked up from the newspaper he was reading. He had been sat there, at the small breakfast table, with his feet propped up on the empty chair across from him, for the past couple of hours. And he still hadn’t read past the front page.
“Eames.” Cobb said again, in case Eames didn’t hear him the first time. But Cobb knew this wasn’t the case. Eames didn’t like divulging information that meant sacrificing one for the other. He was a neutral man, most of the time, and it fucking frustrated Cobb to no end that his protective streak kicked in when Cobb didn’t need it.
They all didn’t do things when they needed to and they all did things they didn’t need to and it was fucking, fucking, unbearable how that always worked for the three of them and how none of them wanted to change it.
“I heard you,” Eames replied under his breath.
“Where is he?” Cobb asked a second time, towering over Eames with his hands in his pockets.
Eames looked up. All the tension had loosened in the past few or so hours Cobb had spent away and the slight tilt of his hips as his weight shifted from foot to foot was almost casual. Almost.
But Eames knew better. As a forger, it was his job to know better.
The tightness about Cobb’s lips, the clench of his fists underneath the cotton of his pants, and the way he held his breath for Eames’ reply. They were all telling enough that Eames hesitated.
Cobb sighed. “Is he okay?”
Eames shrugged, then took his feet off the empty chair. An invitation for Cobb to sit down and Cobb did.
“You’re not giving me anything here.” Cobb raised his eyebrows, in the way that almost looked sly but wasn’t, not really. Because he was only sly when he teased, or when he played, or when he was at the verge of saying something really important but didn’t want to sound or look like the keen educator that his father-in-law was. Cobb, at that moment, wasn’t sly. He was almost pleading.
But Cobb never pleaded either, never once in the few years that Eames had known him. So Eames was left with this, with an expression that was ambiguous and dishonest and smoke-screening what Cobb really meant.
What Cobb meant was Help me. No, don’t help me. Fucking tell me what to do.
But Eames, however much of a manipulative bastard that he was, didn’t move his ass for anyone when he knew they could figure it out for themselves. There was no use being redundant.
“Look, we’re all grown men here,” Eames said instead, folding his newspaper and tossing it to the table. “I’m not going to play bloody messenger for you.”
“Yeah, didn’t expect you to,” Cobb relented. “Where is he?”
Eames jerked his head at the door, closed door, that led to the one bedroom.
“Has he been in there long?” Cobb asked, looking at the door, still closed, hesitantly. Cautiously, as if he knew Arthur was listening from the other side and chances were, he probably was, but Cobb and Eames both knew they were speaking too softly to be heard from across the room, let alone a door that looked thick enough to seem expensive and worth the hotel’s four stars.
“Moping,” Eames replied, smirking indulgently. “All the better for you to comfort him, darling.”
Cobb rolled his eyes at Eames but didn’t stand up right away. If this were any other relationship, if this were Mal, Cobb would have kissed Eames because Eames wasn’t angry, because Eames stopped him before he could say anything else with a bruise to the jaw that he himself wasn’t angry about, not really. Not when the beer had calmed him down and the rush of anger had left him.
But they didn’t work that way, either.
“What, do you need me to open the door for you, draw the curtains in the bedroom, so you can have the proper atmosphere?” Eames almost smiled. Almost.
Cobb snorted lightly, and shook his head.
“If you don’t wipe that look off your face, I’d assume differently.” Eames turned back to his newspaper, flipping the pages to the Sports section that Cobb knew Eames wasn’t really impressed by, but he liked sports photography. For some reason.
(“I’m in it for the crotch shots, really. I like to know if their egos are as big as the headlines suggest.”)
“Get the fuck up and get in there, for fuck’s sake,” Eames muttered, kicking Cobb lightly in the shin with a jerk of his foot underneath the table and proceeded to look intensely occupied with the basketball scores Cobb knew Eames didn’t give a rat’s ass about.
**********
Arthur wasn’t moping when Cobb opened the door. Arthur was on the bed, with the remote control in his hand, and a Jerry Spring rerun on the flat screen TV mounted on the wall.
He looked at Cobb when he saw him, and almost immediately tried to not look as self-conscious as he felt.
“Arthur,” Cobb began.
Arthur shook his head, sharply, as if he himself found it ridiculous that the apology was there, in Cobb’s head, in Arthur’s head, in the middle of the fucking room where it pressured the both of them to do something about it.
“Did Eames guilt you into this?”
Cobb laughed. Almost. What came out was something of a snort, something of a scoff, as he sat on the bed and pillowed his head with the crook of his arm. He didn’t look at Arthur, but watched Jerry Springer without really seeing it.
At the corner of his eye, Arthur’s feet shifted as if they didn’t know what to do with themselves.
Eames didn’t guilt anyone into doing anything. His jokes did, and probably the fist to his face did as well, but nothing so straightforward from Eames ever really hit the mark as much as the irony of his words did so effectively.
“That woman,” Cobb was referring to the lady currently bawling her eyes out on screen. “She’s lying.”
“How can you tell?” Arthur asked, as he fiddled with the remote control in an attempt to do something as the awkwardness panned out between them.
Cobb paused, then got distracted from the screen altogether. “You didn’t screw up.”
Arthur made a noise half-heartedly strangled, belatedly, by his throat.
“No one did.” Cobb sneaked a glance at Arthur. Not so much glanced as shifted his eyes without turning his head. “Shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”
“It’s fine, Cobb,” Arthur replied. And to Cobb, he really did sound fine, but he couldn’t just let the matter rest when it was clearly bothering the hell out of Arthur, could he. “I’m gonna learn from this then I’ll do better next time.”
“That’s the thing, you know?”
At that, Arthur did look at Cobb. Met his eyes and held it, probably out of surprise, but the flash of something, something that was not surprise, told Cobb that Arthur was trying to not hope for something else.
“I trust you,” Cobb said, and he meant it. Really meant it. “I know you’re not gonna turn your back on me and when you do make mistakes, you don’t make them again.”
“Yeah,” Arthur replied, then turned back to the screen.
Arthur should have said, Yeah, I’m a good point man. But he didn’t, because Arthur didn’t like repeating what his actions were already accounting for. Neither did he want to say something that may be up for debate because he didn’t want to debate about anything that concerned him or his job. Or his competence.
Or his loyalty to Cobb.
“I leave you two alone,” Eames interrupted from the doorway, leaning casually against it dressed down in his undershirt and faded jeans, fist on his hip. “And you still don’t sort all of this out like you’re supposed to.”
Arthur rolled his eyes at him; Cobb only smirked and settled into the pillows even more.
Eames pushed himself off the doorway. “And to think, a couple of smart blokes would know what comfort sex actually means.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Mr Eames,” Arthur replied and when Cobb looked at him, Arthur wasn’t frowning anymore. He was almost smiling. Almost. In that ambiguous way he usually showed that he was pleased with something but was loathe to admit it.
Eames toed off his shoes. “Move over, then,” he gestured with his hand. “Since it doesn’t look like neither of you is making any progress.”
Cobb just smirked, indulgently, and inched a little bit to the edge as Eames eased himself in between them.
“You want to move a bit more, Eames? I don’t think I’ve fallen completely off the bed yet here,” Arthur complained, swatting Eames on the arm with the remote control.
Eames just grunted, but did stop his wriggling, and grabbed the remote control from Arthur’s hand. “What the bloody hell are you watching anyway?”
“Jerry Springer. It’s not her baby,” Cobb replied.
And just like that, the awkwardness left the room altogether. Eames’ arms were warm against Arthur’s and Cobb’s, and the King-sized bed kept their sides barely an inch apart. But for all the distance and the inches and the lives and the circumstances that separated them at times, they didn’t want any more than this and they didn’t move for a long time to fix it.
ETA: Oops, sorry. Fixed a typo or two. My bad.
Title: Solid Ground
Summary: Something about three men and how something among three. Damn. Men. Is enough sometimes.
Warning: None. Yeah, I know. Not even sex. Tch.
QUOTE: But for all the distance and the inches and the lives and the circumstances that separated them at times, they didn’t want any more than this and they didn’t move for a long time to fix it.
The history of Arthur, Eames, and Cobb is not written in stone.
It’s one of those things that are never said amongst three gentlemen, one of whom had a wife. Has two children.
Instead, their history is written in skin and anger and words that should not have been spoken in the first place, when tensions had run high and all their energy had been sapped by an assignment gone wrong and all hell had blown out of proportion.
“You messed up,” Cobb said, his hand running down his face. He wasn’t looking at Arthur but Arthur knew those words were for him.
“It was a mistake, Cobb, calm down,” Eames replied, cautioning, but for all the calm in his voice, the steel in his eyes warned both Arthur and Cobb that he was this close to flinging the PASIV out the window. For all the good it did the three of them.
Arthur, on the other hand, quietly sat in his lawn chair but the fidgeting in his fingers were more than just fidgeting. He was wringing his fingers dry, as if enough pressure against his skin could milk the frustration that tightly strung his whipcord arms.
Cobb wasn’t listening to Eames. He wasn’t listening to anybody. “What do you mean calm down? We were there. So close.”
“Well it was nobody’s fault, now was it?” Eames insisted, but the steadiness had flaked with an edge that reminded Cobb of his capacity to put a stop to the conversation whenever he needed to.
“Shut up, Eames,” Cobb snapped, throwing him a stubborn look that meant he wasn’t going to calm the fuck down. That these things, they needed to be fucking said.
Eames punched him in the face, clipping him the jaw. A good solid punch that was so crisp, Arthur had jumped in surprise.
Cobb fell back a few steps, more surprise in his face than actual pain.
“I did tell you to stop, now didn’t I?” Eames shook his hand, once.
When Cobb didn’t move, Eames took a breath. And so did Arthur, but Arthur was relieved. And Eames was not.
Eames was livid. Fucking livid, but he had always been the most patient of the three of them, and wasn’t likely to lose it altogether at a job gone wrong.
(That came much later, when someone got hurt, or when Eames himself was the one who screwed up. Really screwed up. And not just the screwed up that could be remedied by a quick trip back into the PASIV. Arthur had seen Eames at his worst, when alcohol had clouded his mind and gambling didn’t help him at all. That was when he truly lost it, because what else was there to cling to when none of your vices worked to assuage the gaping hole of doubt in your mind?
Arthur, on the other hand, lived side by side with doubt and uncertainty. Eames avoided them like the plague, or flooded them with fine whiskey.)
Cobb shook his head, as if snapping himself back from the stunned silence. He opened his mouth, to say something.
(Something that would hurt, preferably. Something that would point fingers and make them realize, Arthur and Eames, make them fucking realize that this job meant something to him. Because he had kids to think about now, because he had Mal waiting at home, because he trusted them, trusted them most of all, to be there when he needed them to be.)
Eames raised his eyebrows in challenge.
Arthur, though, he didn’t. He never really did. He just stood up and began to pace, running his hands through his hair and worrying the tie that had suddenly become too tight against his neck.
Then Cobb shook his head again, let out a forceful breath through his nose, and left.
The slam of the door, however. Well, that spoke a million words that Cobb didn’t have, didn’t it.
Arthur stopped, stilled, with his hands on his hips. His eyes glared at an innocent groove on the floor. “Eames-“
Eames cleared his throat, interrupting him. “None of that now. Not much use for it, eh, Arthur?” But he wasn’t smiling, not like he usually did when he was being ironic. He wasn’t looking at Arthur, either.
“I should have-“
“Yes,” Eames replied.
Arthur’s head shot up, worry creasing his forehead.
But Eames didn’t see this. “You should have.”
“What, you think this is my fault too?”
Eames chuckled humorlessly, before turning to Arthur. And Arthur knew the answer then, that he did screw up and Eames and Cobb, well, they both knew it too, and Arthur didn’t.
Arthur wanted differently, but he knew he could expect nothing short of the truth from Eames.
The smile on Eames’ face faltered, then, and so did the line of his shoulders.
“Arthur,” Eames began, standing in front of Arthur but not touching him.
Eames never touched Arthur when he needed it.
“We’re not playing with mazes anymore,” Eames said, and Arthur knew this. He really fucking did. The patronizing tone didn’t comfort him this time.
Arthur waited for the other shoe to drop. For something like an atomic bomb that would rattle his senses, but it never came. It almost always never did, when it came to Eames.
“Just do better next time,” was what Eames said instead.
Arthur nodded, several times. More times than was necessary. But Eames stopped him with a gentle hand that suddenly wrapped the back of his neck and Arthur, never a man of instinct, leaned against it anyway.
Eames pulled him in and Arthur let him. Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders and maybe Eames’ lips, maybe the tip of his nose, maybe just a whisper of some draft in a room that had no windows, touched his hair.
**********
“Where is he?” Cobb asked as soon as he walked into the kitchen of some four-star, one-bedroom suite they had rented for the week.
Eames looked up from the newspaper he was reading. He had been sat there, at the small breakfast table, with his feet propped up on the empty chair across from him, for the past couple of hours. And he still hadn’t read past the front page.
“Eames.” Cobb said again, in case Eames didn’t hear him the first time. But Cobb knew this wasn’t the case. Eames didn’t like divulging information that meant sacrificing one for the other. He was a neutral man, most of the time, and it fucking frustrated Cobb to no end that his protective streak kicked in when Cobb didn’t need it.
They all didn’t do things when they needed to and they all did things they didn’t need to and it was fucking, fucking, unbearable how that always worked for the three of them and how none of them wanted to change it.
“I heard you,” Eames replied under his breath.
“Where is he?” Cobb asked a second time, towering over Eames with his hands in his pockets.
Eames looked up. All the tension had loosened in the past few or so hours Cobb had spent away and the slight tilt of his hips as his weight shifted from foot to foot was almost casual. Almost.
But Eames knew better. As a forger, it was his job to know better.
The tightness about Cobb’s lips, the clench of his fists underneath the cotton of his pants, and the way he held his breath for Eames’ reply. They were all telling enough that Eames hesitated.
Cobb sighed. “Is he okay?”
Eames shrugged, then took his feet off the empty chair. An invitation for Cobb to sit down and Cobb did.
“You’re not giving me anything here.” Cobb raised his eyebrows, in the way that almost looked sly but wasn’t, not really. Because he was only sly when he teased, or when he played, or when he was at the verge of saying something really important but didn’t want to sound or look like the keen educator that his father-in-law was. Cobb, at that moment, wasn’t sly. He was almost pleading.
But Cobb never pleaded either, never once in the few years that Eames had known him. So Eames was left with this, with an expression that was ambiguous and dishonest and smoke-screening what Cobb really meant.
What Cobb meant was Help me. No, don’t help me. Fucking tell me what to do.
But Eames, however much of a manipulative bastard that he was, didn’t move his ass for anyone when he knew they could figure it out for themselves. There was no use being redundant.
“Look, we’re all grown men here,” Eames said instead, folding his newspaper and tossing it to the table. “I’m not going to play bloody messenger for you.”
“Yeah, didn’t expect you to,” Cobb relented. “Where is he?”
Eames jerked his head at the door, closed door, that led to the one bedroom.
“Has he been in there long?” Cobb asked, looking at the door, still closed, hesitantly. Cautiously, as if he knew Arthur was listening from the other side and chances were, he probably was, but Cobb and Eames both knew they were speaking too softly to be heard from across the room, let alone a door that looked thick enough to seem expensive and worth the hotel’s four stars.
“Moping,” Eames replied, smirking indulgently. “All the better for you to comfort him, darling.”
Cobb rolled his eyes at Eames but didn’t stand up right away. If this were any other relationship, if this were Mal, Cobb would have kissed Eames because Eames wasn’t angry, because Eames stopped him before he could say anything else with a bruise to the jaw that he himself wasn’t angry about, not really. Not when the beer had calmed him down and the rush of anger had left him.
But they didn’t work that way, either.
“What, do you need me to open the door for you, draw the curtains in the bedroom, so you can have the proper atmosphere?” Eames almost smiled. Almost.
Cobb snorted lightly, and shook his head.
“If you don’t wipe that look off your face, I’d assume differently.” Eames turned back to his newspaper, flipping the pages to the Sports section that Cobb knew Eames wasn’t really impressed by, but he liked sports photography. For some reason.
(“I’m in it for the crotch shots, really. I like to know if their egos are as big as the headlines suggest.”)
“Get the fuck up and get in there, for fuck’s sake,” Eames muttered, kicking Cobb lightly in the shin with a jerk of his foot underneath the table and proceeded to look intensely occupied with the basketball scores Cobb knew Eames didn’t give a rat’s ass about.
**********
Arthur wasn’t moping when Cobb opened the door. Arthur was on the bed, with the remote control in his hand, and a Jerry Spring rerun on the flat screen TV mounted on the wall.
He looked at Cobb when he saw him, and almost immediately tried to not look as self-conscious as he felt.
“Arthur,” Cobb began.
Arthur shook his head, sharply, as if he himself found it ridiculous that the apology was there, in Cobb’s head, in Arthur’s head, in the middle of the fucking room where it pressured the both of them to do something about it.
“Did Eames guilt you into this?”
Cobb laughed. Almost. What came out was something of a snort, something of a scoff, as he sat on the bed and pillowed his head with the crook of his arm. He didn’t look at Arthur, but watched Jerry Springer without really seeing it.
At the corner of his eye, Arthur’s feet shifted as if they didn’t know what to do with themselves.
Eames didn’t guilt anyone into doing anything. His jokes did, and probably the fist to his face did as well, but nothing so straightforward from Eames ever really hit the mark as much as the irony of his words did so effectively.
“That woman,” Cobb was referring to the lady currently bawling her eyes out on screen. “She’s lying.”
“How can you tell?” Arthur asked, as he fiddled with the remote control in an attempt to do something as the awkwardness panned out between them.
Cobb paused, then got distracted from the screen altogether. “You didn’t screw up.”
Arthur made a noise half-heartedly strangled, belatedly, by his throat.
“No one did.” Cobb sneaked a glance at Arthur. Not so much glanced as shifted his eyes without turning his head. “Shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”
“It’s fine, Cobb,” Arthur replied. And to Cobb, he really did sound fine, but he couldn’t just let the matter rest when it was clearly bothering the hell out of Arthur, could he. “I’m gonna learn from this then I’ll do better next time.”
“That’s the thing, you know?”
At that, Arthur did look at Cobb. Met his eyes and held it, probably out of surprise, but the flash of something, something that was not surprise, told Cobb that Arthur was trying to not hope for something else.
“I trust you,” Cobb said, and he meant it. Really meant it. “I know you’re not gonna turn your back on me and when you do make mistakes, you don’t make them again.”
“Yeah,” Arthur replied, then turned back to the screen.
Arthur should have said, Yeah, I’m a good point man. But he didn’t, because Arthur didn’t like repeating what his actions were already accounting for. Neither did he want to say something that may be up for debate because he didn’t want to debate about anything that concerned him or his job. Or his competence.
Or his loyalty to Cobb.
“I leave you two alone,” Eames interrupted from the doorway, leaning casually against it dressed down in his undershirt and faded jeans, fist on his hip. “And you still don’t sort all of this out like you’re supposed to.”
Arthur rolled his eyes at him; Cobb only smirked and settled into the pillows even more.
Eames pushed himself off the doorway. “And to think, a couple of smart blokes would know what comfort sex actually means.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Mr Eames,” Arthur replied and when Cobb looked at him, Arthur wasn’t frowning anymore. He was almost smiling. Almost. In that ambiguous way he usually showed that he was pleased with something but was loathe to admit it.
Eames toed off his shoes. “Move over, then,” he gestured with his hand. “Since it doesn’t look like neither of you is making any progress.”
Cobb just smirked, indulgently, and inched a little bit to the edge as Eames eased himself in between them.
“You want to move a bit more, Eames? I don’t think I’ve fallen completely off the bed yet here,” Arthur complained, swatting Eames on the arm with the remote control.
Eames just grunted, but did stop his wriggling, and grabbed the remote control from Arthur’s hand. “What the bloody hell are you watching anyway?”
“Jerry Springer. It’s not her baby,” Cobb replied.
And just like that, the awkwardness left the room altogether. Eames’ arms were warm against Arthur’s and Cobb’s, and the King-sized bed kept their sides barely an inch apart. But for all the distance and the inches and the lives and the circumstances that separated them at times, they didn’t want any more than this and they didn’t move for a long time to fix it.