[INCEPTION] Fic: I watched it for a little while (Eames/Cobb) | Part 1 of 2
This. Is seriously. The longest frickin anything that I've written in my whole life. Might be word vomit. alskfjasdf.
Ehe.I removed the word count. Cause it was making my eye twitch. T_T
I watched it for a little while (1/2)
Cobb/Eames
For the inception_kink prompt: Years after the inception job, Philippa and James are growing up. Eames becomes their very strange mother figure (he teaches Philippa about heels and makeup! he talks to James about girlfriends). And Cobb might be starting to have very confusing feelings for Eames. But I added on some stuff beyond what the prompt asked for.
Some elements of this were sorta inspired by this prompt to but this isn't a fill for it.
“James wants to take the car,” Cobb says, over a very big mug of his morning coffee and Good Morning America turned low on the kitchen’s flat screen.
When that doesn’t get a reply from Eames, who’s only just begun with the newspaper’s daily crossword puzzle, his eggs and bacon cooling on his untouched plate at his elbow, Cobb tries again.
“James wants to take the Bentley.”
That gets him a flicker of Eames’ eyes, suddenly distracted from the still-blank and still-very-difficult crossword puzzle.
“Forever?” Eames replies dryly. He's running one of James’ errant pencils over his fingers as expertly as he’s run countless of poker chips over them for years. A habit he hasn't broken.
Cobb snorts incredulously, shaking his head. “For Monday,” he replies, glancing at the screen for a moment, catching the latter half of Ryan Seacrest’s spiel for Celebrity Dos and Don’ts for the Season.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Cobb’s head whips to Eames so quickly, Eames would have heard the bones of his neck crack if he weren’t staring so intently at 10 Across - 18th century narcotic. “He’s not even eighteen yet and he wants to drive the Bent.”
A beat. Eames looks expectantly at him over the folded newspaper.
Cobb almost bristles under the weight of his gaze, but doesn’t. They need to resolve this, and he wasn’t going to crack. Again. “Without me.”
Eames smirks. Knowingly. Like he always smirks when Cobb is being especially predictable. “It’s a ’12 model, let it go.”
He’s not going to let it go because Bentleys, regardless of when they were made, where they were made, or how they came to his possession, are still Bentleys. They may have three cars now, Cobb’s Bent, Cobb’s other Bentley, and Eames’ Ford but Cobb likes that he doesn’t spoil his children too much. Had gone at terrible length, much to the chagrin of James and Philippa, about their friends’ parents giving them everything.
Philippa, when she graduated from high school and moved to study in Paris, had taken her Honda with her. Never gonna part with it, she said, even though the ’10 Civic was littered with awful pink-yellow-fusion-marriage-thing (“Girly,” she said, “It’s nice that I look like a girl sometimes, dad.”) on the rear windshield where she and her friends had gotten too excited by Philippa getting her very own car. Even if it had been pre-owned.
(“Your father’s a cheapskate, dearest. He won’t apologize but that’s how it is with fathers, eh?”)
The key is moderation, Cobb seems to believe. Eames disagrees but there are things that even he doesn’t say out loud.
“A car’s still a car,” Cobb mutters anyway and the Bent isn’t just a car. A smirks comes unbidden at the sudden memory-or fifteen--that reminds him, no, confirms that the Bent isn’t just something he’s willing to give out at the next opportunity.
Eames grunts, thinking the same thing, and probably of several more instances that his far sharper memory could pick out from the periphery of his mind.
They look at each other. Cobb over the rim of his mug, Eames over his newspaper, and they smile, that knowing quirk of lips that they rarely ever use when the kids are anywhere near them.
-----
“This is the Z90,” Cobb introduces to the three of them. The plastic still packed tightly against the upholstery, the license plate reading Bentley - Los Angeles. No scratches. No dents. Still has the new car smell to it, even in the Los Angeles summer non-breeze.
“It’s another Bentley,” Eames replies.
James and Philippa nod in agreement. They do their damn hardest not to look impressed but they were their father’s children and cars always gets them going.
But it’s still a Bent. Still another Bent.
“No, that,” Cobb gestures at the ’12 model sitting almost forlornly inside the garage. “Is the Bent. This-“
“Is the Z90,” Eames finishes for him, a fond smile on his lips. “2020 Z-series, I know. It takes an idiot not to notice the big-arse lettering on that magazine article you painstakingly clipped from Speed and taped to the bathroom mirror.”
“Dad. You didn’t raise my allowance for this,” Philippa points out, bemused, from beside Eames, arms crossed, but despite the bland tone of her voice, her eyes were already raking over the sleek hood, and the even sleeker grill.
Eames chuckles. “Never say your needs were ignored, children,” he teases, to which Cobb could never really take offense. Not when the tenderness in Eames’ eyes belies the irony of his words. “To celebrate, how about we take this baby out for dinner, yeah?”
At that, Cobb does hesitate. Hesitate a lot, eyes widening a fraction. “What, tonight?”
Eames looks expectantly at him, the smile on his lips more of a challenge than anything and Cobb never cowers from a challenge implied more plainly than any come-on he’s endured from Eames.
But maybe he could make this one exception?
“Now, actually.”
James and Philippa both grin and make their way to the car. Cobb resists the urge to shield it with his body.
“Yeah, Eames burned the roast.”
Eames ruffles James’ hair as he passes by him. “I can never trust you anymore, can I?”
James just sticks out his tongue before ducking into the car and closing the door as he did.
“Fine,” Cobb huffs, relenting, and reaches for the driver’s side door.
“No,” Eames stops him. “I’m driving.”
Cobb almost, almost gapes at him. Almost. It does take a lot of effort not to let it go all the way. “What, right now?”
Eames rolls his eyes, snatches the keys from Cobb’s hand, and gives him a slight nudge with his hip an inch closer towards the passenger side door and very much away from the driver’s. “Let’s see if beans and vegetables for a whole month is worth your bloody Z90, shall we?”
-----
“Let’s not fight in front of the kids.”
Eames, who had been rather disgruntled coming into the bedroom, his sleeves rolled up his elbows and his hair sticking up in places, glares at Cobb from the corner of his eye. He breathes, in and out, but doesn’t do anything else but calm down. Slightly.
“I wasn’t the one raising my voice in there, you know,” Eames points out, the calm in his voice more forced than anything.
“Well I wasn’t the one pushing it, was I?” Cobb bites out, barely remembering that James and Philippa are just downstairs and the walls are thin enough for even the slightest footfall to be heard from the kitchen directly below the master bedroom.
“Hey,” Eames eases, his hand held up in such an achingly familiar gesture that Cobb looks away. He always gets distracted by it, by how that comforting tone in Eames’ voice just derails all the frustration that just need to be said.
They’re both quiet for a while, each left to the rhythm of their own breaths, calming their own nerves. Cobb paces, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. Eames sits, on arm chair some way away, finger thoughtfully running through his top lip.
Cobb feels Eames’ eyes on him and he fidgets, almost, but stops eventually, when he’s sure that he’s drawn himself back from the brink of raising his voice.
“What’s the real problem here, then?” Eames asks when Cobb stops his pacing. He doesn’t move, his words almost smothered by the palm on his chin.
Neither of them remembers what they were really fighting about. Something about dinner, and how it’s like this, like that, Eames and Cobb arguing over half-cooked chicken.
Cobb tells him, and somewhere in the middle of it all, Eames fishes out a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and lights one.
Eames knows the rules. No smoking in the house. But Cobb lets him anyway, pausing for a moment to open a window.
They talk for what seems like hours and when they’re done, Philippa and James have set the table, a perfectly golden-brown roast sitting at the center.
-----
It’s almost half-past ten in the morning and James isn’t in class. He’s in the principal’s office, his fingers wringing themselves thin in his lap with both eyes drawn to something very interesting and very worth his time on the floor, or at a patch on his shoe that, Cobb is very sure, doesn’t exist.
(He should know. He had bought those shoes not two weeks ago and James doesn’t scuffle his feet like Cobb does. He carries them, however heavy his feet always seem to be when he bounds up and down the stairs.
Cobb blames that on Eames.)
“We won’t tolerate violence in this school, Mr Cobb,” the principal says, hands on sheets of paper that are too neat to be just called sheets, Cobb thinks, Eames’ voice saying echoing the exact same thing in that ironic drawl. They’re fucking buildings, orderly and straight and everything that James doesn’t do with his homework, usually crumpled and wrinkled and liberated from their neat corner-page staples.
Cobb glances down at his son, his downturned face failing to hide the blossoming bruise on his jaw.
“Mr-"
“Doctor Davis,” the principal corrects. Doctor Davis corrects.
“Dr Davis,” Cobb continues without missing a beat, ignoring the inflection and all that the principal’s voice had implied with just two syllables wrapped around his false teeth. “My son’s twelve, he’s bound to do these things. He’s a kid.”
Davis smiles, ironically, and Cobb doesn’t like how it implies so much more distasteful things than his pompous doctorate. It reminds him of the way a college professor had once used on him, when he bothered to elaborate on German architects rather than French ones. Basics first, Mr Cobb, ground up before you get cocky.
Cobb hated that then and James, who’s usually loud, exuberant, and fuck-all about a lot of things, reduced to a squirming mass of limbs and shame in a chair that suddenly looks too big for his gangly form, probably hates it now as much as Cobb ever did.
Davis continues on, undeterred. He looks like he’s began this very same speech countless of times and his business-like detachment just irks Cobb more than it should. “Wilshire boys,” then he looks at James, and amends with an indulging--condescending--smile on his face that probably feels too out of place to be even called a smile, let alone an actual facial expression when the muscles of his face look awkwardly stiff at the gesture, “Wilshire gentlemen don’t do stuff like this. They have the best breeding, the best manners, and something needs to be done about your son’s-“
Say it, you piece of shit, Cobb practically yells in his head and the sudden pressure at the back of his skull surprises even him. He bites his tongue. Just in case.
“--situation. It won’t be the first of its kind in Wilshire and it certainly won’t be the last but I assure you, our young boys grow out of it during their time here.”
Cobb doubts it, and so does James. Cobb had grown up in Los Angeles and while his family hadn’t had the money for Wilshire, Cobb had had some of his friends study there. Some of them graduated, some didn’t, and Cobb thinks that the success rate of one over the other will be a better punch to Davis’ gut rather than an actual punch to his mother-loving gut.
(Eames is a terrible influence.)
But the meeting goes on for an hour more than Cobb had expected coming in and all that time, James doesn’t say a word and neither does Cobb.
-----
They never really fight but when they do, Eames and Cobb both lose themselves so completely that they hardly ever realize that James and Philippa are right there.
Eames is pushed up against the wall, Cobb’s hands on his chest. He can still feel the jarring impact of something hard biting into his hip but never mind that, their eyes are in deadlock, both glaring, both seething.
Moments like this are when Cobb is startled out of the bubble he’s lived in for the past few years. That Eames isn’t Mal and never will be. That arguments with Mal never spiraled down to a battle of wills, or a strain in his arms, or his hands actually making contact with a solid chest that doesn’t back down so easily. So he pushes even further, until Eames, solid and steady, buckles under the force of it and reels back.
Arguments with Arthur never started the same way. When they argued, they did it with words. With words spat out in anger; that drove in deep and crawl under his skin until they stayed there for days at a time. It took Eames days, hours at best, for Arthur to stop looking so hurt; it took Arthur more than kisses to wipe off the stern line of Eames’ lips.
When Cobb and Eames fight, it’s quick and messy. Frames pictures on walls rattle, tables are cleared, and many of those times, well-aimed fists bruise their skins.
(And neither of them bruises easily.)
Many of those times, the kids are there, startled into silence as they watch with wide eyes.
Eames never buckles first, but he’s always quick to realize that they’re not alone. He walks away, disappears for a couple of hours, probably wastes some of his money on a drink or two, and when he comes back, Cobb is there to open the door for him.
They don’t apologize.
It doesn’t take them hours, or days.
Their anger lasts all of the few seconds spent with hands roughly pushing at each other, with gritted teeth and tense jaws. They cool off, they spring back, and by dinner time, they sit at the table with easy smiles on their faces and all the tension long since leeched out from their bones.
-----
Philippa is thirteen years old and wearing her first gown. A gown that Cobb had insisted on lengthening until the satin, purple, touched her toes.
“Don’t fidget, my dear, you look wonderful,” Eames says as he stands behind her. Their eyes meet in the mirror at the foyer. With two-inch heels (“Just two inches, alright? No higher than that,” Cobb had said. Specifically, when Eames and Philippa went off to God knew where to shop for her shoes.), Philippa didn’t have to stand on tip-toes just to see as far down to her waist.
“It itches,” Philippa complains, but her hands don’t move from where her fingers clasp on the silver clutch. Her mother’s, which Cobb had unearthed from the very back of the closet for the first time in several years.
Eames smiles. “I imagine it does. And it’s supposed to.”
Philippa eyes him, skeptically. Her brown hair curls down the sides of her face, framing the fullness of her cheeks in the way that Mal’s did. Her mother’s eyes meet Eames’ and for a moment, Eames almost buckles. But the smile on his face merely widens, even as a coil wound of both hesitation and a sense of Not Right suddenly knotted, tightly, in his throat.
“You’ve worn a dress before?” Philippa asks him.
Eames scoffs, his fists tightening in his pockets even as an air of nonchalance eases the bow of his shoulders. “More times than I’d care to admit, yes.”
“What in the bloody hell for?” Her eyes are wide, both with surprise and distrust. Eames sometimes jokes, often teases, and sometimes she doesn’t know when he’s serious. Especially when his eyes suddenly shift and she strains a little to catch them.
It’s hard to tell, really, when Eames is speaking from some half-truth, some spool of his creative mind, or some genuine sentiment. His eyes are guarded most of the time, and she only ever sees his eyes truly open, truly, truly honest when her dad asks something in that serious tone of voice, that serious no-nonsense voice that fills her with dread when he uses it on her.
But before Eames replies, his father’s there, his suit jacket slung over his arm. “See what you did? Now she’s not even cursing properly.”
“Piss off,” Eames fires back, and by that slight curl of his lips that Philippa sees from the angle of Eames’ profile in the mirror, she knows he’s not serious now.
Cobb snorts, a delicate noise that is never as accurate as when Eames does it. But her dad isn’t looking at Eames. He’s looking at her.
With a warmth that makes Philippa fidget in her shoes. That she doesn’t want to go away, not really, but Eames turns away completely until all she could see of him is the strong line of his back and the slight bow of his head.
“What’s wrong, dad?”
Cobb shakes his head, reassuring her with a smile. But the smile doesn’t quite do it and Philippa fidgets even more, shifting her clutch from one hand to the other. She turns, facing her dad fully.
There’s pride on his face. She recognizes that look. He’d worn it several times. When she got those three ribbons at the end of fifth grade, when she picked him out of the crowd during that spelling bee (that she lost, but they celebrated anyway), when Eames visited that one time (from New York, or Las Vegas, or Amsterdam, she doesn’t remember) and didn’t leave a week later like he had, up until that point, always did.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart,” Cobb says again, his hand coming up to ease the frown on her brow.
She grimaces and pulls away. “Make-up, dad, you’re gonna ruin it.”
Cobb laughs, a short bark of one that replaces that odd look in his eyes with something brighter. Philippa thinks it looks better on him, when the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes are pronounced, and his lips spill open with a grin.
“Let’s go. You wouldn’t want to be late for your first father-daughter dance.” Her dad shrugs on his jacket and Philippa, knowing the routine without even thinking about it, fishes out the keys to the Bent from the bureau and hands it to him.
“Hold on,” Eames stops them, the new 15.0-megapixel digital camera in his hand.
Then they’re standing together, Philippa and her dad, her shoulder pressed against his side as his arm wraps around her shoulders. They smile as the camera flashes.
The next morning, when Philippa thumbs through the pictures on her iPad3, she picks out Eames’ reflection on the mirror behind them. The flash blinds one side of his face but the proud grin he wears flashes just as brightly as her dad’s as she looks at the lens with eyes startlingly not-gray, not-blue, but a warm, golden brown that reminds her of someone she once knew.
-----
In the middle of the faculty meeting at UCLA, he gets a call from James’ school and he all but stumbles out of the stiff wooden chairs, barely gathering his things into his briefcase and shrugging on his coat before he’s pushed through the doors of the main building and into his car.
His thumbs tap an irregular beat on the steering wheel. The traffic light remains red.
It’s nothing serious, Mr Cobb, but we thought it best to inform you that James fell from the monkey bars and sprained his ankle. Mr Cobb? Mr-
Cobb had hung up and stuffed his mobile in his pocket without even bothering to press the end call button.
He makes it to James’ school in record time. Forty-five minutes. In rush hour traffic, it had meant swerving, counter-flowing, over-taking, and ignoring a few traffic signs on the way but he gets there.
The hallways are empty, and his leather shoes are crisp against the tiled floor. He must look a mess, not someone with a doctorate in architecture, or an assistant professorship at a prestigious institution.
By the time he reached the clinic, he’s out of breath.
He had expected a lot of wailing, a lot of tantrums, a lot of Cobb stepping in and holding James down as a nurse prepares a syringe. But what he finds on the other side of the door surprises him.
James is propped up on a bed, his mouth split open by a wide yawn. His pants leg is pushed up to his knee and the white bandage of the temporary splint wraps around his ankle. Beside him is Eames, his back turned to the door, as he sits there, on the narrow bed, barely bracing his weight against the edge.
Then James is smiling, and grinning, almost shyly but not really. James isn’t shy around Eames, not like he’s shy around Ms Thelma, the matronly woman next door.
Cobb watches them for a moment, craning his neck to peek around the partly-drawn curtain of the partition that separated the small ward from the rest of the clinic. On the floor beside Eames’ foot is his luggage. He never lugs around big, hefty bags on wheels, but a big carry-on duffel with leather-strapped handles that fit comfortably in his fist, regardless of his luggage consisting only of overnight clothes, or an entire wardrobe good for three weeks, or a grenade launcher. Or two. The bright orange strip from the airport check-in is still taped around the strap. TO: LA - VIA: CZE.
“-pushed me!” James exclaims, hands gesturing wildly.
Eames’ hand lands gently on James’ injured leg, as if to anchor it on the bed as James moved this way and that, sucked into what’s starting to sound like a very legendary story for an inelegant tumble down a flimsy playground structure and onto the sandbox that had been more box than sand.
“What did you do, then?” Eames asks, humoring him. Cobb hears the fondness in his voice.
“Well I couldn’t push him back, cause my ankle hurt already so I told him to wait for me when my ankle’s all healed up and I’ll push him then,” James resolves, sounding really very serious about this.
Eames’ shoulders shook lightly, but Cobb doesn’t hear his laughter. “Push him off the monkey bars too?”
James nods, vehemently. “Course I will. Teeth for teeth, right?” Pride steels his voice and Cobb is sure that James hadn’t learned that from him.
“Tooth for a tooth, James,” Cobb interrupts.
James grins, sheepishly, but it falters to a tentative smile at the stern look of disapproval on his father's face. James knows how much his father didn’t like it when he and sister got hurt, but James thought that this time, his excuse is as valid-valid, is that the word? valid, right-one. David was being a colt. Bolt. Dolt. Dolt.
Eames, turns his head, his face softening as he greets Cobb with a subtle nod. The hand on James’ leg doesn’t leave, not even when Cobb has approached the bed and sat on the edge as well, his side pressing against James’ feet. His folded knee against Eames’ back.
“Took you long enough,” Eames says, the first words uttered between them in a handful of months and it’s playful, not tender.
For some reason or other, Cobb finds this the most comforting thing of all.
“Traffic,” Cobb explains.
He turns to James, his son with a bright grin on his face as he looks at the two of them, eyes darting from one to the other.
“What are you smiling about?” Cobb asks with mock sternness, an eyebrow raised and everything. Then he looks down at the James’ bandaged ankle, and Eames’ large hand resting on his son’s calf. He reaches out to touch it, lightly prod at the bone underneath, to make sure that it wasn’t anything serious.
James winces, slightly, but his smile doesn’t waver. “This means we’re going to Pinkberry, right?”
Eames holds up his hand, almost proudly, and he and James high-five without even missing a beat. “That’s my boy.”
Cobb’s elbow nudges Eames’, in an attempt to be adult enough for the both of them.
“The man wants his frozen yoghurt, bloody give him his frozen yoghurt,” Eames exclaims with as much passion as one would expect from someone deeply wronged by something so foul.
“Yeah, dad,” James presses on, nodding vigorously now that he’s found an ally. “Give me my bloody frozen yoghurt.”
“Don’t say bloody,” Cobb scolds, gently, but his voice may not have enough bite to it because James is still grinning like a fool. Grinning so wide Cobb wouldn’t have thought he’d just nearly broken his foot that afternoon, almost forgetting that he’d darted off from an important faculty meeting for a trip to Pinkberry when it’s not even Sunday yet.
Then he turns to Eames, “And you just stepped off a plane.” Cobb leans forward, almost by instinct, and catches a whiff of Eames’ aftershave and the bold hint of the airport and too many hours spent in an airplane. He smells distinctly of something new, but familiar. “You should be tired.”
Eames shrugs, a carefree roll of his shoulders. The lines of his face, however few they are, are deep with exhaustion but the even more carefree smile on his face tells Cobb that Eames doesn’t care much about rest right now. “Stamina. You should look into it.”
Cobb doesn’t roll his eyes, but when he pulls himself up off the bed, and his hand lifts from James’ leg, he touches Eames’ shoulder, briefly, and that’s all they need, really. Hello, how are you, how was your flight, hungry?, we missed you, all in the brief contact of his fingers and Eames’ suit.
When Eames leans against his hand, and the firm stretch of muscle, and the firmer set of bone, underneath layers of cloth, they’re as much of a reply as Cobb can expect.
But the moment passes, and Eames is on his feet as well, lifting his bag from the floor as he goes. He hefts it over his shoulder and between Eames and Cobb, negotiating the door, then the hallway, then the stairs, James hops on one foot, each of his small hands held and held tight and firm.
-----
It takes a while for Cobb to notice. It takes him months. Months in between filling out the preliminary identification forms at the start of the school year to the end of the semester, when his children’s grades were sent to him by email.
At the bottom of the page is his children’s personal information, and even farther down, are the names of his children’s guardians, in case of emergency.
Cobb sees his name, and Miles’.
And Eames’.
He frowns at the screen. He doesn’t remember adding Eames’ name on the list. Neither does he remember writing down Eames’ contact number (his personal line, the one he only ever uses on Cobb, and before him, Arthur).
Later that evening, after dinner, while Cobb clears the plates and Eames shovels the leftovers in plastic containers, Cobb asks, “So you’re a legal guardian now?”
Eames stills for a moment, the spoon inches-deep in that evening’s beef stew. “I’d almost forgotten about that already.”
Cobb shrugs, “I didn’t know you wanted to be.”
There’s an ironic twist to Eames’ lips that Cobb is uncomfortable seeing. “Not so much legal as guardian now, am I?”
Cobb turns the plates underneath the jet spray of the faucet hose. He doesn’t look at Eames.
“Cobb,” Eames finally says, when the silence between them has gotten so thick that Cobb could almost hear Eames’ every breath when they were several feet apart.
Cobb turns to him, shutting off the faucet and wiping his hands on the dish towel.
Eames is leaning against the kitchen counter, arms braced on either side of him. He opens his mouth to speak, then hesitates. He licks his lips. “Dominic,” he starts again, and his voice sounds awkward around Cobb’s name. A slow twist of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Eames almost never calls him that; he never calls him anything else, either.
He waits. Notices how Eames worked his throat around something that could only be apprehension and everything else that has gone unspoken between the two of them since it all started.
He knows a drowning man when he sees one and Cobb, for all the years that he’s known Eames, has never seen him struggle with words that a man like him never really needed, when all that he needs to convey he does so with deft fingers, all masked in something alluding to emotion without ever really needing to be emotion itself.
“Don’t worry about it, alright?” Cobb says instead, when Eames couldn’t seem to claw his way to the surface. “I hope you don’t regret this. Philippa’s school’s personal hobby is contacting parents on a regular basis.”
Eames nods, an unsteady rhythm of his head, but he doesn’t look up and Cobb doesn’t force him to. Some things, they don’t need to happen just because the moment calls for it.
They have an understanding, and they honor it with boundaries, and wrecking balls, and silence, and nonsilence.
Cobb knows when to step back and Eames, however much distance there is between them, also knows when to reach out.
And while this moment seems as perfect as any, neither of them needs it, despite the well of want and longing that suddenly pulls at Cobb’s center with an ache to his chest that reminds him of Mal and how she had always been good at this, at reading him and saying all the right things, at reaching for his hand and just holding him for a while until the cloud in his mind passes.
But Eames is not Cobb and Cobb is not Mal and it doesn’t work that way in any dreamscape they’d created several times over and lived in for months. Years.
They don’t have the words now but later that evening, after they finish in the kitchen, and Cobb makes sure that James and Philippa are asleep, all that needs to be said is written on skin, mouthed and kissed. They claim, fast and hard and proper, biting into pillows, pressing into sheets, and making sure that all the things that are left unsaid, however unheard, are not unfelt.
-----
“Happy birthday to you,” Eames sings, a messy drawl if Cobb ever heard one, but Eames sings anyway, as he holds the chocolate cake he’d bought just the night before. Cobb joins in, but he doesn’t really sing and his lip-synching isn’t fooling Philippa at all. But she’s smiling anyway, and Cobb doesn’t mind.
His fingers touch Eames’ underneath the cake as they both kneel on Philippa’s small bed, her princess-themed trappings falling on their foreheads. Cobb watches his daughter smile and laugh and clap her hand to her face as he realizes that it’s her birthday. Today.
Heavy footsteps scramble outside Philippa’s bedroom and soon enough, James joins in on the singing. Eames’ dark voice and James’ high notes mangling the tune and Cobb laughs, because it’s the most horrible sound in the world.
“Make a wish, sweetheart,” Cobb tells Philippa.
She closes her eyes, squeezes them real tight, and after a lungful of breath, blows the candles-all nine of them. James joins in, and more spittle than air bursts from his lips.
“Ew, Jamie!” Philippa shrieks, wiping her face. “We’re going to eat this cake, you know!”
“Now you gotta eat my,” and James sputters, purses his lips together and blows. Spittle flies everywhere and Eames is laughing and doing his damn best to shield his newly pressed shirt and his newly pressed pants from being a collateral damage. “Spit!” James ends with a flourish, sticking his tongue out this way and that, touching his top lip, then his chin, then the sides of his face.
Philippa wails. “Daddy! Jamie’s being disgusting!”
Cobb shakes his head and takes the cake from Eames, whose hands are suddenly busy wiping away the worst of it. But the grin on his face doesn’t fade, and even though he’s looking more and more rumpled, Cobb knows he doesn’t mind this at all.
“Come on, Jamie. Let’s slice this up, alright?” Cobb tells his son, balancing the cake on one hand and James’ flailing hand in the other.
As he turns to leave, his eyes meet Eames’. Eames nods, his mood turning somber.
Soon, Eames is left with Philippa, and regardless of his pants suit, he lays down next to her, only just managing to squeeze himself in the narrow space.
“What did you wish for, then?” He asks her just as Philippa kicks back the sheets and inches closer to his side until all he’s left to see is the top of the girl’s head. Her slim arms wrap around his chest and before he knows it, his hand is on her back.
Philippa muffles her answer into his side and he strains, slightly, leaning forward, to hear her.
“As much of a psychic I like to think I am, dearest, I really can’t hear you like this,” Eames tells her, the hand on her back reaching up to cup her chin.
“I said I want you to be at my party.” Her eyes are wide but she doesn’t cry. The longing on her face, however, well. That works just as well.
Eames almost grimaces; a twinge in his chest that he couldn’t shake off and probably won’t for at least a few more days, until he comes back with a gift under one arm and a promise on his lips that he won’t leave again for a long time.
“It really does suck, doesn’t it?” Eames says, and he doesn’t even attempt to smile. He hates to sugarcoat anything. He can lie through his teeth and tell her that it will be alright, with her friends, and her grandparents flying in from Paris, and all her gifts, and the very big cake her father’s ordered three weeks ago. She’ll be wearing that new dress Eames had bought her the week before, and wear those silver shoes she’s been needling Cobb to buy her for this very day.
But he doesn’t say any of it, because Philippa knows better.
“But the thing is,” Eames continues, and his grip on her tightens. Her cheek presses against his chest and her hand fists in his shirt. “I won’t be gone for very long. And we’ll have another party when I get back.”
“No balloons.”
Eames almost smiles. Almost. “Just those party poppers that explode in your father’s ear, of course.”
Philippa giggles, the sound half-smothered.
“I don’t think your father would approve of just pizza for dinner but it’ll still be your birthday then, right?”
She shakes her head, stubbornly. “No. Today’s my birthday. Birthday. I only have one day for it.”
Eames scoffs, his fingers ghosting over her hair. “One thing I never liked about rules.”
“You hate rules,” she points out.
Eames agrees. “Exactly my point. So you see, technically, in our twist of these things, regardless of the fact that I miss your party today, and miss all of the fun your father’s going to have cleaning up your gift wrappers, we’ll still celebrate, yeah?”
Philippa nods, slowly. Eames knows she’s not convinced, and he can’t really blame her.
They stay like that for what seems like hours but, really, with a quick glance at the wall clock across the room, Eames knows it’s only been a few minutes and hours, he can’t afford that. Not when Miles and Marie are already on their way.
“Happy birthday, Philippa.” He kisses the top of her head and when she tilts her head back up, he ignores the twinge that grows into an ache so stifling he sets his jaw and grits his teeth. “You have fun today, alright, dearest?”
Before Eames leaves, Cobb pulls him into the kitchen. Jamie is in the living room, a saucer with a big slice of chocolate cake precariously sitting on his lap. Spongebob is on and Jamie hardly ever misses that for anything.
Cobb’s fingers around his wrist, pressing his watch tighter against his skin, insist and Eames relents, tearing his eyes away from James. He lets Cobb pull him in until they stand, almost touching but not quite.
“We can always get married, then you’ll run out of excuses to not be around when Miles and Marie visit for the kids’ birthdays,” Cobb says, plainly, and Eames snorts at how ludicrously simple it all sounds when put in so few words.
But they both know that it’s not as simple as that.
“God forbid you actually fork over the money for a ring, let alone get down on one knee and propose to me,” Eames teases, but the humor in his voice doesn’t translate as well in the stance of his hips, the way his feet are rigid in his shoes and the tightness across his shoulders is more than just the firm fit of his shirt.
Cobb pulls on his arm again, a forceful jerk that almost makes Eames stumble onto him, before finally letting go. Hands anchor on his hips, a frustrated line creasing his brow. “I’m serious.”
“As am I,” Eames fires back, and he turns away for a moment, a steady hand sweeping over the curve of his jaw. His stubble scrapes against his own palm.
“It’s been legal for five years.”
Eames smothers a smirk under his hand before turning away completely to get his suit jacket from the back of a kitchen chair. “Stop.”
His voice takes on an edge, a warning, that pushing this even further won’t get a different result from the last ten or twenty times Cobb has brought up the subject. Only mad men do these things and Eames and Cobb, whatever they have, it’s not mad.
It’s sensible, both uncomplicated and difficult. And it’s just fine the way things are.
Then Eames sighs, and Cobb does as well, and all the fight in both of them sinks low, lower and lower only to rise up again at some point in the future. Eames knows Cobb won’t let this go easily but they never do end up marrying each other.
As much as that would mean victory for Eames, it won’t feel like one.
“I’ll see you in a week,” Eames finally says, as he shrugs on his suit jacket and pulls at his lapels.
Cobb nods and lets Eames go as he calls out for James. His son bounds over; he knows the routine by now and although the smile on his face is as cheerful as ever, there’s no denying the slight downturn of his eyes or the way his arms tighten around Eames’ neck as Eames pulls him up off the floor and pulls him to his chest.
At the door, to the sound of James calling out with a litany of possible gifts (“Bribes, Eames, you’re bribing them.”), from the new Nike shoes to a Darth Vader helmet, despite James’ racket, and the silence from Philippa’s room, and the broad daylight, Cobb has Eames to himself.
“My mobile’s always on,” Eames says, even though Cobb already knows this. He flashes the keys to Cobb’s Bent. “And I’m driving this.”
Cobb doesn’t rise to the bait and instead kisses Eames on the lips, in the way he never does in front of the kids, or anywhere else outside the privacy of the bedroom. Eames kisses back, but their hands remain at their sides and soon enough, they part.
Eames leaves, for the nth time since he first arrived on Cobb’s doorstep, but Cobb knows that this time he’ll be back.
-----
It’s been three years since the Inception job, and several months since he has locked away his totem in his safety deposit box. The PASIV that had taken away his life at some point, and had sustained him for nearly a year since his return to America is, in so similar a fashion, locked away in the darkest corner of the attic.
He hasn’t seen it since Christmas.
He wakes up, to a king-sized bed of ruffled sheets. He’s alone.
Sleep clouds his vision for a while and he blinks, adjusting to the streams of late-morning light that filters in from the wooden slats at the windows.
He looks around, peering at the room with half-lidded eyes. His chest is bare, but it’s too late in the summer for a cold draft and the shudder down his spine is not because they hadn’t bothered with the duvet that night. Nor the fact that he’s down to his boxer shorts and the only thing that separates him from the still air are the bed sheets draped languidly about his legs.
Clothes are on the floor, a shirt a size too big for him discarded on the bedside table. He parts it with a finger to check, blearily, at the alarm clock. It’s half-past ten.
He should have been out of bed by seven. It’s a Sunday and while Eames prefers to sleep in on Sundays, James and Philippa like their pancakes hot, piled high on their plates, and this day out of the entire week is the only other day Cobb gets to prepare something more than just cereal for his kids.
The bedroom door is open, he realizes, as he props himself up on his elbows.
The sound of Sunday morning cartoons--Cartoon Network, of course-is faint from where he’s sure James has maxed out the volume of the living room television.
His laugh, bubbly and sporadic, pierces the air.
“-But I want-! ” Cobb hears Philippa shout from the kitchen, quickly cut off by someone he assumes is Eames because he can still hear James sing the F-U-N Song at the top of his lungs and as energetic as his son may be, he doesn’t multi-task that well at all.
When Cobb finally drags himself out of bed, pulling on Eames’ shirt on the bedside table and taking out the nearest bottoms he could find without actually poking his head inside the closet-sweatpants-he goes downstairs.
He walks into the kitchen to the smell of breakfast. Actual breakfast that he didn’t have to cook himself.
Philippa is standing on a chair, Eames supporting her by the waist, as she liberally--liberally--douses her cereal with a tube of sprinkles.
“Those are going to be the ugliest looking cornflakes that I have ever seen,” Eames comments from behind her, peering skeptically at the bowl on the table.
Boxes of cereal, from Coco Puffs to Corn Flakes to Super Shapes to Froot Ooo’s pile up on the small breakfast nook, all of them torn open at one side. Spills of milk puddle on the table and while the kitchen is a bit of a mess, with dishes in the sink, and pancake batter smeared on the countertops, Cobb can’t find it in himself to be annoyed.
He’s looking at Eames, dressed down to faded jeans Cobb has only ever seen twice before, and a clean shirt he must’ve had in his bag. Eames is making breakfast, with Philippa.
James squeals in glee from the living room.
And James, he glances over his shoulder, is holding a pancake in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. (Watching Spongebob.)
Cobb sighs. This isn’t contentment. Contentment would be Mal cleaning up the mess, wearing an apron, and oven mitts, and never letting Philippa take too much control of the sugar she eats in the morning.
It’s something close to it. The comfort of knowing that they’re all here and Cobb, who hasn’t had a need for his totem in a long time, doesn’t reach into his pocket like he had done so innumerable times in the past.
-----
When Cobb comes home, it’s to the sound of the Loony Tunes theme song breaking the silence of an otherwise still tableau of his children asleep on the couch with Eames sandwiched between them.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Eames says by way of greeting. “I might bristle.”
Cobb only smiles at him and sits down beside James, careful not to shift too much. James’ back presses against his side and Eames’ outstretched arm along the back of the couch is a solid weight against the back of his neck.
“Didn’t know you were a huge Bugs Bunny fan.”
Eames snorts, changing the channel. The Deadliest Catch is on the Discovery Channel, and the roars of giant waves replace the jaunt of the Loony Tunes jingle.
James stirs, groaning, still mostly asleep. But his hands scramble dazedly, swatting at Eames’ chest.
Eames switches back to cartoons and James stills. He throws a pointed look at Cobb and Cobb can only smile, sheepishly, in silent resignation.
“You really need to wean your son off the telly.”
Cobb frowns slightly as he looks down at James. “He likes it.” He touches his son’s hair, a rhythmic threading of his fingers through the short crop of James’ blond head. James stirs, shifting, leaning into his father’s hand.
Eames relents, shrugs, and turns his eyes to Bugs Bunny munching on his carrot. “Well he’s not impressing Therese with any of his Spongebob impressions.”
“They’re five, Eames, don’t play matchmaker.”
“I’m just saying. The girl’s interested, James here is a strapping young man. It’s a day care romance and it won’t work if James doesn’t put in the effort of wooing his lady with anything else besides his stock knowledge of Nickelodeon,” Eames smiles at Cobb, and he knows it’s all only in jest. But the thought of his son dating any girl, at any age, still upsets him.
“He likes Cartoon Net work more,” Cobb points out.
Eames laughs, tilting his head back, and sinking further into his seat. Philippa stirs beside him but doesn’t wake, only burrows herself even closer against Eames, her legs folded underneath her, her hands fisting his shirt.
“It’s a step up, if you ask me.”
Eames turns to him with a leer. “You’re obviously a very bad influence to your own children.”
“Not like you,” Cobb replies, irony tinting his deadpan voice.
Eames nods, almost sagely. “The upside to my being here is the complete lack of Disney in the foundation of your children’s sense of creativity.”
That’s not the only upside, Cobb wants to say, with something lewd and terribly inappropriate coming to mind. But images of Eames and his children and ice cream, and late night movies, and dinner, weathers at the thread of the basest things.
Eames and the calm in his voice, the lingering touch of his fingers at the back of his neck, of the careless laughter of his children, and the quiet presence of someone, some solid someone, pressing against him in bed and filling in the space that had been cooled by too much time Cobb had spent alone.
Cobb sobers, the smile gone from his face, and they spend the rest of the night in silence until they, too, fall asleep to the sound of cartoons and the rise and fall of his children’s backs against their sides.
-----
James and Philippa send an email to Eames using Cobb’s account on a Tuesday.
They don’t get a reply because Eames isn’t overly fond of emails in general. They’re more likely to talk to him over the phone but Cobb has only ever called him thrice before. All three of those times when MESSAGE SENDING FAILED, THIS ADDRESS HAS EXPIRED responds to his e-mails almost immediately after he clicks SEND.
Eames arrives on a Thursday, a ready smile on his face as James and Philippa thunder from the living room to greet him despite the tired hunch of his shoulders or the way his grip on his duffel bag is strained, his fingers pink and slack.
Cobb ushers him in around the excitement of his children following Eames as he deposits his coat in the closet by the door.
“Did you get the email we sent you? Mine was in purple and yellow,” Philippa chatters on, Eames nodding and smiling down at her as James hugs him from behind.
“I told Dad to put a picture of Goofy and-" James pipes up, Eames’ arm coming around until his hand steadied James against him as they walked--negotiated--their way to the living room.
As they pass, Cobb smiles at him and shrugs, helplessly, at his children’s antics.
Eames shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to mind at all.
He all but collapses on the couch, a tired breath rushing from his lips, but he doesn’t get a moment of reprieve when James scrambles next to him and Philippa practically throws herself to Eames’ bag on the floor.
“Philippa, don’t be rude,” Cobb admonishes, but he doesn’t move to stop her. He stands behind the couch, leaning forward, arms braced on the couch’s tall back.
Below him, James squirms in his seat, excitedly launching a long-winded tale of this playground, this girl, and that girl, and the Pinkberry that’s just opened near his school.
When Cobb breathes in, it’s the scent of Eames’ aftershave that assaults his nose. He finds that he’s comfortable just where he is.
The spell breaks when Eames jerks, suddenly, pitching forward with his arm outstretched. “No, Philippa, don’t touch that.”
Philippa looks up, surprised to stillness. Her hands hover just above the outside pocket of the duffel bag.
Then Eames smiles at her, indulgently, before standing up and taking the bag from the floor. He opens the main zipper and takes out-
--to a cacophony of James and Philippa’s excited squeals-
--two bulky objects wrapped in brown paper. They’re snatched from Eames’ hands before Eames has the chance to hand it to them.
Soon enough, they’re tearing at the paper.
“Eames,” Cobb says and Eames’ eyes snap from the children to Cobb. The warmth on his face sobers at the apprehension that lines Cobb’s face.
“Alright, kids, your father and I need to talk for a bit,” he tells them, but they’re too busy getting their fingers around the loops of straw-woven rope around the packages.
Eames follows Cobb to the study, closing the door behind him.
“I still don't know how you can sneak a gun past airport security,” Cobb says, but it’s not what he wants to say, what he’s been meaning to say, what he’s been planning to for days.
Eames shakes his head, distractedly, dropping his bag on the floor by his feet. The gunmetal hidden beneath the thick cloth of his bag thuds dully against the wooden floor. “I picked up a trick in Bangui.”
Bangui, where Eames had mentioned three months ago that he was being offered a job that includes more forgery than actual extraction. He had described it in great length but Cobb doesn’t remember the details anymore. All that was on his mind at the time, as he had held his mobile to his ear, was the months that Eames would spend elsewhere.
“It’s meant to enhance the sensory value of the forge,” Eames continues, undoing the two buttons of the shirt he wears underneath his jacket. “Taste, smell, touch, more vivid. Do you still have some of Mal’s perfume here somewhere?”
At the mention of Mal, her name sounding so off, so foreign, uttered in Eames’ voice, Cobb drops his gaze and stuffs his suddenly restless fingers in his pockets. “Yeah, I do.”
“That should do it,” Eames concludes, almost thoughtfully. “What time will Miles pick up the kids?”
“Nine, nine-thirty.”
“Alright, well, you’ll have to wait a bit. I’ll need to prepare and-"
Cobb cuts him off with a hand. “I didn’t want you here for that.”
Eames chuckles, but it’s a hollow sound against his teeth. “I thought the kids were the ones who e-mailed me, not you.”
Cobb doesn’t roll his eyes because he’s being serious, and it’s hard enough as it is, to press on when Eames seems to be doing his hardest to skirt around the purpose, a very insistent one, that darkens the look on Cobb’s face.
“Why am I here, then?” Eames finally asks, and the humor is gone. Replaced by something tentative, hidden beneath the hard exterior of the stern line of his lips and a brightness in his eyes that Cobb realizes is the look of a man who’s prepared, and willing, to hightail out of any corner, any compromise, without looking back.
Cobb treads carefully, his voice steady. “The kids miss you.”
Eames knows, but that’s not what he needs hear, Cobb thinks.
He shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair.
With a breath, he steps forward until all that’s left between him and Eames is action. Something more than the lucidity of dreams and the vividness of someone else’s face morphing the stubble from Eames’ jaw, softening his cheeks with angles that swelled and dipped in graceful patterns on skin fairer and softer.
Eames’ eyes take on an edge, a warning that deafens Cobb’s ears to the sound of his children playing in the living room. All he hears is caution, and care, and something breakable emphasized only by the pressing silence in the air.
But Cobb ignores it and when he moves, Eames does as well. Their lips meet in a kiss that’s both familiar and foreign, with a roughness against Cobb’s cheeks, and the hard plane of Eames’ chest against his.
In the end, Cobb doesn’t say what he wants to say because this is enough, hands around his sides that pull him further and further in and all that needs to be spoken are wrapped around their tongues as their lips meet over and over and over, in as much times (and more) that Cobb has fought off the want, and the need, to do this, exactly this, during the many times he blinks awake, IV line in his wrist, and Eames sitting too far away from him.
After Miles picks up the kids, while Eames showers in the bathroom, Cobb takes the PASIV from its usual place under the bed. He brings it up to the attic, in between the yellowed rolls of blueprints, variations of the dream house he’d wanted to build with Mal.
When he turns off the light and closes the door behind him, he presses a hand to his front pants pocket on instinct. He’s reassured that it’s empty.
-----
PART TWO
Ehe.I removed the word count. Cause it was making my eye twitch. T_T
I watched it for a little while (1/2)
Cobb/Eames
For the inception_kink prompt: Years after the inception job, Philippa and James are growing up. Eames becomes their very strange mother figure (he teaches Philippa about heels and makeup! he talks to James about girlfriends). And Cobb might be starting to have very confusing feelings for Eames. But I added on some stuff beyond what the prompt asked for.
Some elements of this were sorta inspired by this prompt to but this isn't a fill for it.
“James wants to take the car,” Cobb says, over a very big mug of his morning coffee and Good Morning America turned low on the kitchen’s flat screen.
When that doesn’t get a reply from Eames, who’s only just begun with the newspaper’s daily crossword puzzle, his eggs and bacon cooling on his untouched plate at his elbow, Cobb tries again.
“James wants to take the Bentley.”
That gets him a flicker of Eames’ eyes, suddenly distracted from the still-blank and still-very-difficult crossword puzzle.
“Forever?” Eames replies dryly. He's running one of James’ errant pencils over his fingers as expertly as he’s run countless of poker chips over them for years. A habit he hasn't broken.
Cobb snorts incredulously, shaking his head. “For Monday,” he replies, glancing at the screen for a moment, catching the latter half of Ryan Seacrest’s spiel for Celebrity Dos and Don’ts for the Season.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Cobb’s head whips to Eames so quickly, Eames would have heard the bones of his neck crack if he weren’t staring so intently at 10 Across - 18th century narcotic. “He’s not even eighteen yet and he wants to drive the Bent.”
A beat. Eames looks expectantly at him over the folded newspaper.
Cobb almost bristles under the weight of his gaze, but doesn’t. They need to resolve this, and he wasn’t going to crack. Again. “Without me.”
Eames smirks. Knowingly. Like he always smirks when Cobb is being especially predictable. “It’s a ’12 model, let it go.”
He’s not going to let it go because Bentleys, regardless of when they were made, where they were made, or how they came to his possession, are still Bentleys. They may have three cars now, Cobb’s Bent, Cobb’s other Bentley, and Eames’ Ford but Cobb likes that he doesn’t spoil his children too much. Had gone at terrible length, much to the chagrin of James and Philippa, about their friends’ parents giving them everything.
Philippa, when she graduated from high school and moved to study in Paris, had taken her Honda with her. Never gonna part with it, she said, even though the ’10 Civic was littered with awful pink-yellow-fusion-marriage-thing (“Girly,” she said, “It’s nice that I look like a girl sometimes, dad.”) on the rear windshield where she and her friends had gotten too excited by Philippa getting her very own car. Even if it had been pre-owned.
(“Your father’s a cheapskate, dearest. He won’t apologize but that’s how it is with fathers, eh?”)
The key is moderation, Cobb seems to believe. Eames disagrees but there are things that even he doesn’t say out loud.
“A car’s still a car,” Cobb mutters anyway and the Bent isn’t just a car. A smirks comes unbidden at the sudden memory-or fifteen--that reminds him, no, confirms that the Bent isn’t just something he’s willing to give out at the next opportunity.
Eames grunts, thinking the same thing, and probably of several more instances that his far sharper memory could pick out from the periphery of his mind.
They look at each other. Cobb over the rim of his mug, Eames over his newspaper, and they smile, that knowing quirk of lips that they rarely ever use when the kids are anywhere near them.
-----
“This is the Z90,” Cobb introduces to the three of them. The plastic still packed tightly against the upholstery, the license plate reading Bentley - Los Angeles. No scratches. No dents. Still has the new car smell to it, even in the Los Angeles summer non-breeze.
“It’s another Bentley,” Eames replies.
James and Philippa nod in agreement. They do their damn hardest not to look impressed but they were their father’s children and cars always gets them going.
But it’s still a Bent. Still another Bent.
“No, that,” Cobb gestures at the ’12 model sitting almost forlornly inside the garage. “Is the Bent. This-“
“Is the Z90,” Eames finishes for him, a fond smile on his lips. “2020 Z-series, I know. It takes an idiot not to notice the big-arse lettering on that magazine article you painstakingly clipped from Speed and taped to the bathroom mirror.”
“Dad. You didn’t raise my allowance for this,” Philippa points out, bemused, from beside Eames, arms crossed, but despite the bland tone of her voice, her eyes were already raking over the sleek hood, and the even sleeker grill.
Eames chuckles. “Never say your needs were ignored, children,” he teases, to which Cobb could never really take offense. Not when the tenderness in Eames’ eyes belies the irony of his words. “To celebrate, how about we take this baby out for dinner, yeah?”
At that, Cobb does hesitate. Hesitate a lot, eyes widening a fraction. “What, tonight?”
Eames looks expectantly at him, the smile on his lips more of a challenge than anything and Cobb never cowers from a challenge implied more plainly than any come-on he’s endured from Eames.
But maybe he could make this one exception?
“Now, actually.”
James and Philippa both grin and make their way to the car. Cobb resists the urge to shield it with his body.
“Yeah, Eames burned the roast.”
Eames ruffles James’ hair as he passes by him. “I can never trust you anymore, can I?”
James just sticks out his tongue before ducking into the car and closing the door as he did.
“Fine,” Cobb huffs, relenting, and reaches for the driver’s side door.
“No,” Eames stops him. “I’m driving.”
Cobb almost, almost gapes at him. Almost. It does take a lot of effort not to let it go all the way. “What, right now?”
Eames rolls his eyes, snatches the keys from Cobb’s hand, and gives him a slight nudge with his hip an inch closer towards the passenger side door and very much away from the driver’s. “Let’s see if beans and vegetables for a whole month is worth your bloody Z90, shall we?”
-----
“Let’s not fight in front of the kids.”
Eames, who had been rather disgruntled coming into the bedroom, his sleeves rolled up his elbows and his hair sticking up in places, glares at Cobb from the corner of his eye. He breathes, in and out, but doesn’t do anything else but calm down. Slightly.
“I wasn’t the one raising my voice in there, you know,” Eames points out, the calm in his voice more forced than anything.
“Well I wasn’t the one pushing it, was I?” Cobb bites out, barely remembering that James and Philippa are just downstairs and the walls are thin enough for even the slightest footfall to be heard from the kitchen directly below the master bedroom.
“Hey,” Eames eases, his hand held up in such an achingly familiar gesture that Cobb looks away. He always gets distracted by it, by how that comforting tone in Eames’ voice just derails all the frustration that just need to be said.
They’re both quiet for a while, each left to the rhythm of their own breaths, calming their own nerves. Cobb paces, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. Eames sits, on arm chair some way away, finger thoughtfully running through his top lip.
Cobb feels Eames’ eyes on him and he fidgets, almost, but stops eventually, when he’s sure that he’s drawn himself back from the brink of raising his voice.
“What’s the real problem here, then?” Eames asks when Cobb stops his pacing. He doesn’t move, his words almost smothered by the palm on his chin.
Neither of them remembers what they were really fighting about. Something about dinner, and how it’s like this, like that, Eames and Cobb arguing over half-cooked chicken.
Cobb tells him, and somewhere in the middle of it all, Eames fishes out a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and lights one.
Eames knows the rules. No smoking in the house. But Cobb lets him anyway, pausing for a moment to open a window.
They talk for what seems like hours and when they’re done, Philippa and James have set the table, a perfectly golden-brown roast sitting at the center.
-----
It’s almost half-past ten in the morning and James isn’t in class. He’s in the principal’s office, his fingers wringing themselves thin in his lap with both eyes drawn to something very interesting and very worth his time on the floor, or at a patch on his shoe that, Cobb is very sure, doesn’t exist.
(He should know. He had bought those shoes not two weeks ago and James doesn’t scuffle his feet like Cobb does. He carries them, however heavy his feet always seem to be when he bounds up and down the stairs.
Cobb blames that on Eames.)
“We won’t tolerate violence in this school, Mr Cobb,” the principal says, hands on sheets of paper that are too neat to be just called sheets, Cobb thinks, Eames’ voice saying echoing the exact same thing in that ironic drawl. They’re fucking buildings, orderly and straight and everything that James doesn’t do with his homework, usually crumpled and wrinkled and liberated from their neat corner-page staples.
Cobb glances down at his son, his downturned face failing to hide the blossoming bruise on his jaw.
“Mr-"
“Doctor Davis,” the principal corrects. Doctor Davis corrects.
“Dr Davis,” Cobb continues without missing a beat, ignoring the inflection and all that the principal’s voice had implied with just two syllables wrapped around his false teeth. “My son’s twelve, he’s bound to do these things. He’s a kid.”
Davis smiles, ironically, and Cobb doesn’t like how it implies so much more distasteful things than his pompous doctorate. It reminds him of the way a college professor had once used on him, when he bothered to elaborate on German architects rather than French ones. Basics first, Mr Cobb, ground up before you get cocky.
Cobb hated that then and James, who’s usually loud, exuberant, and fuck-all about a lot of things, reduced to a squirming mass of limbs and shame in a chair that suddenly looks too big for his gangly form, probably hates it now as much as Cobb ever did.
Davis continues on, undeterred. He looks like he’s began this very same speech countless of times and his business-like detachment just irks Cobb more than it should. “Wilshire boys,” then he looks at James, and amends with an indulging--condescending--smile on his face that probably feels too out of place to be even called a smile, let alone an actual facial expression when the muscles of his face look awkwardly stiff at the gesture, “Wilshire gentlemen don’t do stuff like this. They have the best breeding, the best manners, and something needs to be done about your son’s-“
Say it, you piece of shit, Cobb practically yells in his head and the sudden pressure at the back of his skull surprises even him. He bites his tongue. Just in case.
“--situation. It won’t be the first of its kind in Wilshire and it certainly won’t be the last but I assure you, our young boys grow out of it during their time here.”
Cobb doubts it, and so does James. Cobb had grown up in Los Angeles and while his family hadn’t had the money for Wilshire, Cobb had had some of his friends study there. Some of them graduated, some didn’t, and Cobb thinks that the success rate of one over the other will be a better punch to Davis’ gut rather than an actual punch to his mother-loving gut.
(Eames is a terrible influence.)
But the meeting goes on for an hour more than Cobb had expected coming in and all that time, James doesn’t say a word and neither does Cobb.
-----
They never really fight but when they do, Eames and Cobb both lose themselves so completely that they hardly ever realize that James and Philippa are right there.
Eames is pushed up against the wall, Cobb’s hands on his chest. He can still feel the jarring impact of something hard biting into his hip but never mind that, their eyes are in deadlock, both glaring, both seething.
Moments like this are when Cobb is startled out of the bubble he’s lived in for the past few years. That Eames isn’t Mal and never will be. That arguments with Mal never spiraled down to a battle of wills, or a strain in his arms, or his hands actually making contact with a solid chest that doesn’t back down so easily. So he pushes even further, until Eames, solid and steady, buckles under the force of it and reels back.
Arguments with Arthur never started the same way. When they argued, they did it with words. With words spat out in anger; that drove in deep and crawl under his skin until they stayed there for days at a time. It took Eames days, hours at best, for Arthur to stop looking so hurt; it took Arthur more than kisses to wipe off the stern line of Eames’ lips.
When Cobb and Eames fight, it’s quick and messy. Frames pictures on walls rattle, tables are cleared, and many of those times, well-aimed fists bruise their skins.
(And neither of them bruises easily.)
Many of those times, the kids are there, startled into silence as they watch with wide eyes.
Eames never buckles first, but he’s always quick to realize that they’re not alone. He walks away, disappears for a couple of hours, probably wastes some of his money on a drink or two, and when he comes back, Cobb is there to open the door for him.
They don’t apologize.
It doesn’t take them hours, or days.
Their anger lasts all of the few seconds spent with hands roughly pushing at each other, with gritted teeth and tense jaws. They cool off, they spring back, and by dinner time, they sit at the table with easy smiles on their faces and all the tension long since leeched out from their bones.
-----
Philippa is thirteen years old and wearing her first gown. A gown that Cobb had insisted on lengthening until the satin, purple, touched her toes.
“Don’t fidget, my dear, you look wonderful,” Eames says as he stands behind her. Their eyes meet in the mirror at the foyer. With two-inch heels (“Just two inches, alright? No higher than that,” Cobb had said. Specifically, when Eames and Philippa went off to God knew where to shop for her shoes.), Philippa didn’t have to stand on tip-toes just to see as far down to her waist.
“It itches,” Philippa complains, but her hands don’t move from where her fingers clasp on the silver clutch. Her mother’s, which Cobb had unearthed from the very back of the closet for the first time in several years.
Eames smiles. “I imagine it does. And it’s supposed to.”
Philippa eyes him, skeptically. Her brown hair curls down the sides of her face, framing the fullness of her cheeks in the way that Mal’s did. Her mother’s eyes meet Eames’ and for a moment, Eames almost buckles. But the smile on his face merely widens, even as a coil wound of both hesitation and a sense of Not Right suddenly knotted, tightly, in his throat.
“You’ve worn a dress before?” Philippa asks him.
Eames scoffs, his fists tightening in his pockets even as an air of nonchalance eases the bow of his shoulders. “More times than I’d care to admit, yes.”
“What in the bloody hell for?” Her eyes are wide, both with surprise and distrust. Eames sometimes jokes, often teases, and sometimes she doesn’t know when he’s serious. Especially when his eyes suddenly shift and she strains a little to catch them.
It’s hard to tell, really, when Eames is speaking from some half-truth, some spool of his creative mind, or some genuine sentiment. His eyes are guarded most of the time, and she only ever sees his eyes truly open, truly, truly honest when her dad asks something in that serious tone of voice, that serious no-nonsense voice that fills her with dread when he uses it on her.
But before Eames replies, his father’s there, his suit jacket slung over his arm. “See what you did? Now she’s not even cursing properly.”
“Piss off,” Eames fires back, and by that slight curl of his lips that Philippa sees from the angle of Eames’ profile in the mirror, she knows he’s not serious now.
Cobb snorts, a delicate noise that is never as accurate as when Eames does it. But her dad isn’t looking at Eames. He’s looking at her.
With a warmth that makes Philippa fidget in her shoes. That she doesn’t want to go away, not really, but Eames turns away completely until all she could see of him is the strong line of his back and the slight bow of his head.
“What’s wrong, dad?”
Cobb shakes his head, reassuring her with a smile. But the smile doesn’t quite do it and Philippa fidgets even more, shifting her clutch from one hand to the other. She turns, facing her dad fully.
There’s pride on his face. She recognizes that look. He’d worn it several times. When she got those three ribbons at the end of fifth grade, when she picked him out of the crowd during that spelling bee (that she lost, but they celebrated anyway), when Eames visited that one time (from New York, or Las Vegas, or Amsterdam, she doesn’t remember) and didn’t leave a week later like he had, up until that point, always did.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart,” Cobb says again, his hand coming up to ease the frown on her brow.
She grimaces and pulls away. “Make-up, dad, you’re gonna ruin it.”
Cobb laughs, a short bark of one that replaces that odd look in his eyes with something brighter. Philippa thinks it looks better on him, when the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes are pronounced, and his lips spill open with a grin.
“Let’s go. You wouldn’t want to be late for your first father-daughter dance.” Her dad shrugs on his jacket and Philippa, knowing the routine without even thinking about it, fishes out the keys to the Bent from the bureau and hands it to him.
“Hold on,” Eames stops them, the new 15.0-megapixel digital camera in his hand.
Then they’re standing together, Philippa and her dad, her shoulder pressed against his side as his arm wraps around her shoulders. They smile as the camera flashes.
The next morning, when Philippa thumbs through the pictures on her iPad3, she picks out Eames’ reflection on the mirror behind them. The flash blinds one side of his face but the proud grin he wears flashes just as brightly as her dad’s as she looks at the lens with eyes startlingly not-gray, not-blue, but a warm, golden brown that reminds her of someone she once knew.
-----
In the middle of the faculty meeting at UCLA, he gets a call from James’ school and he all but stumbles out of the stiff wooden chairs, barely gathering his things into his briefcase and shrugging on his coat before he’s pushed through the doors of the main building and into his car.
His thumbs tap an irregular beat on the steering wheel. The traffic light remains red.
It’s nothing serious, Mr Cobb, but we thought it best to inform you that James fell from the monkey bars and sprained his ankle. Mr Cobb? Mr-
Cobb had hung up and stuffed his mobile in his pocket without even bothering to press the end call button.
He makes it to James’ school in record time. Forty-five minutes. In rush hour traffic, it had meant swerving, counter-flowing, over-taking, and ignoring a few traffic signs on the way but he gets there.
The hallways are empty, and his leather shoes are crisp against the tiled floor. He must look a mess, not someone with a doctorate in architecture, or an assistant professorship at a prestigious institution.
By the time he reached the clinic, he’s out of breath.
He had expected a lot of wailing, a lot of tantrums, a lot of Cobb stepping in and holding James down as a nurse prepares a syringe. But what he finds on the other side of the door surprises him.
James is propped up on a bed, his mouth split open by a wide yawn. His pants leg is pushed up to his knee and the white bandage of the temporary splint wraps around his ankle. Beside him is Eames, his back turned to the door, as he sits there, on the narrow bed, barely bracing his weight against the edge.
Then James is smiling, and grinning, almost shyly but not really. James isn’t shy around Eames, not like he’s shy around Ms Thelma, the matronly woman next door.
Cobb watches them for a moment, craning his neck to peek around the partly-drawn curtain of the partition that separated the small ward from the rest of the clinic. On the floor beside Eames’ foot is his luggage. He never lugs around big, hefty bags on wheels, but a big carry-on duffel with leather-strapped handles that fit comfortably in his fist, regardless of his luggage consisting only of overnight clothes, or an entire wardrobe good for three weeks, or a grenade launcher. Or two. The bright orange strip from the airport check-in is still taped around the strap. TO: LA - VIA: CZE.
“-pushed me!” James exclaims, hands gesturing wildly.
Eames’ hand lands gently on James’ injured leg, as if to anchor it on the bed as James moved this way and that, sucked into what’s starting to sound like a very legendary story for an inelegant tumble down a flimsy playground structure and onto the sandbox that had been more box than sand.
“What did you do, then?” Eames asks, humoring him. Cobb hears the fondness in his voice.
“Well I couldn’t push him back, cause my ankle hurt already so I told him to wait for me when my ankle’s all healed up and I’ll push him then,” James resolves, sounding really very serious about this.
Eames’ shoulders shook lightly, but Cobb doesn’t hear his laughter. “Push him off the monkey bars too?”
James nods, vehemently. “Course I will. Teeth for teeth, right?” Pride steels his voice and Cobb is sure that James hadn’t learned that from him.
“Tooth for a tooth, James,” Cobb interrupts.
James grins, sheepishly, but it falters to a tentative smile at the stern look of disapproval on his father's face. James knows how much his father didn’t like it when he and sister got hurt, but James thought that this time, his excuse is as valid-valid, is that the word? valid, right-one. David was being a colt. Bolt. Dolt. Dolt.
Eames, turns his head, his face softening as he greets Cobb with a subtle nod. The hand on James’ leg doesn’t leave, not even when Cobb has approached the bed and sat on the edge as well, his side pressing against James’ feet. His folded knee against Eames’ back.
“Took you long enough,” Eames says, the first words uttered between them in a handful of months and it’s playful, not tender.
For some reason or other, Cobb finds this the most comforting thing of all.
“Traffic,” Cobb explains.
He turns to James, his son with a bright grin on his face as he looks at the two of them, eyes darting from one to the other.
“What are you smiling about?” Cobb asks with mock sternness, an eyebrow raised and everything. Then he looks down at the James’ bandaged ankle, and Eames’ large hand resting on his son’s calf. He reaches out to touch it, lightly prod at the bone underneath, to make sure that it wasn’t anything serious.
James winces, slightly, but his smile doesn’t waver. “This means we’re going to Pinkberry, right?”
Eames holds up his hand, almost proudly, and he and James high-five without even missing a beat. “That’s my boy.”
Cobb’s elbow nudges Eames’, in an attempt to be adult enough for the both of them.
“The man wants his frozen yoghurt, bloody give him his frozen yoghurt,” Eames exclaims with as much passion as one would expect from someone deeply wronged by something so foul.
“Yeah, dad,” James presses on, nodding vigorously now that he’s found an ally. “Give me my bloody frozen yoghurt.”
“Don’t say bloody,” Cobb scolds, gently, but his voice may not have enough bite to it because James is still grinning like a fool. Grinning so wide Cobb wouldn’t have thought he’d just nearly broken his foot that afternoon, almost forgetting that he’d darted off from an important faculty meeting for a trip to Pinkberry when it’s not even Sunday yet.
Then he turns to Eames, “And you just stepped off a plane.” Cobb leans forward, almost by instinct, and catches a whiff of Eames’ aftershave and the bold hint of the airport and too many hours spent in an airplane. He smells distinctly of something new, but familiar. “You should be tired.”
Eames shrugs, a carefree roll of his shoulders. The lines of his face, however few they are, are deep with exhaustion but the even more carefree smile on his face tells Cobb that Eames doesn’t care much about rest right now. “Stamina. You should look into it.”
Cobb doesn’t roll his eyes, but when he pulls himself up off the bed, and his hand lifts from James’ leg, he touches Eames’ shoulder, briefly, and that’s all they need, really. Hello, how are you, how was your flight, hungry?, we missed you, all in the brief contact of his fingers and Eames’ suit.
When Eames leans against his hand, and the firm stretch of muscle, and the firmer set of bone, underneath layers of cloth, they’re as much of a reply as Cobb can expect.
But the moment passes, and Eames is on his feet as well, lifting his bag from the floor as he goes. He hefts it over his shoulder and between Eames and Cobb, negotiating the door, then the hallway, then the stairs, James hops on one foot, each of his small hands held and held tight and firm.
-----
It takes a while for Cobb to notice. It takes him months. Months in between filling out the preliminary identification forms at the start of the school year to the end of the semester, when his children’s grades were sent to him by email.
At the bottom of the page is his children’s personal information, and even farther down, are the names of his children’s guardians, in case of emergency.
Cobb sees his name, and Miles’.
And Eames’.
He frowns at the screen. He doesn’t remember adding Eames’ name on the list. Neither does he remember writing down Eames’ contact number (his personal line, the one he only ever uses on Cobb, and before him, Arthur).
Later that evening, after dinner, while Cobb clears the plates and Eames shovels the leftovers in plastic containers, Cobb asks, “So you’re a legal guardian now?”
Eames stills for a moment, the spoon inches-deep in that evening’s beef stew. “I’d almost forgotten about that already.”
Cobb shrugs, “I didn’t know you wanted to be.”
There’s an ironic twist to Eames’ lips that Cobb is uncomfortable seeing. “Not so much legal as guardian now, am I?”
Cobb turns the plates underneath the jet spray of the faucet hose. He doesn’t look at Eames.
“Cobb,” Eames finally says, when the silence between them has gotten so thick that Cobb could almost hear Eames’ every breath when they were several feet apart.
Cobb turns to him, shutting off the faucet and wiping his hands on the dish towel.
Eames is leaning against the kitchen counter, arms braced on either side of him. He opens his mouth to speak, then hesitates. He licks his lips. “Dominic,” he starts again, and his voice sounds awkward around Cobb’s name. A slow twist of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Eames almost never calls him that; he never calls him anything else, either.
He waits. Notices how Eames worked his throat around something that could only be apprehension and everything else that has gone unspoken between the two of them since it all started.
He knows a drowning man when he sees one and Cobb, for all the years that he’s known Eames, has never seen him struggle with words that a man like him never really needed, when all that he needs to convey he does so with deft fingers, all masked in something alluding to emotion without ever really needing to be emotion itself.
“Don’t worry about it, alright?” Cobb says instead, when Eames couldn’t seem to claw his way to the surface. “I hope you don’t regret this. Philippa’s school’s personal hobby is contacting parents on a regular basis.”
Eames nods, an unsteady rhythm of his head, but he doesn’t look up and Cobb doesn’t force him to. Some things, they don’t need to happen just because the moment calls for it.
They have an understanding, and they honor it with boundaries, and wrecking balls, and silence, and nonsilence.
Cobb knows when to step back and Eames, however much distance there is between them, also knows when to reach out.
And while this moment seems as perfect as any, neither of them needs it, despite the well of want and longing that suddenly pulls at Cobb’s center with an ache to his chest that reminds him of Mal and how she had always been good at this, at reading him and saying all the right things, at reaching for his hand and just holding him for a while until the cloud in his mind passes.
But Eames is not Cobb and Cobb is not Mal and it doesn’t work that way in any dreamscape they’d created several times over and lived in for months. Years.
They don’t have the words now but later that evening, after they finish in the kitchen, and Cobb makes sure that James and Philippa are asleep, all that needs to be said is written on skin, mouthed and kissed. They claim, fast and hard and proper, biting into pillows, pressing into sheets, and making sure that all the things that are left unsaid, however unheard, are not unfelt.
-----
“Happy birthday to you,” Eames sings, a messy drawl if Cobb ever heard one, but Eames sings anyway, as he holds the chocolate cake he’d bought just the night before. Cobb joins in, but he doesn’t really sing and his lip-synching isn’t fooling Philippa at all. But she’s smiling anyway, and Cobb doesn’t mind.
His fingers touch Eames’ underneath the cake as they both kneel on Philippa’s small bed, her princess-themed trappings falling on their foreheads. Cobb watches his daughter smile and laugh and clap her hand to her face as he realizes that it’s her birthday. Today.
Heavy footsteps scramble outside Philippa’s bedroom and soon enough, James joins in on the singing. Eames’ dark voice and James’ high notes mangling the tune and Cobb laughs, because it’s the most horrible sound in the world.
“Make a wish, sweetheart,” Cobb tells Philippa.
She closes her eyes, squeezes them real tight, and after a lungful of breath, blows the candles-all nine of them. James joins in, and more spittle than air bursts from his lips.
“Ew, Jamie!” Philippa shrieks, wiping her face. “We’re going to eat this cake, you know!”
“Now you gotta eat my,” and James sputters, purses his lips together and blows. Spittle flies everywhere and Eames is laughing and doing his damn best to shield his newly pressed shirt and his newly pressed pants from being a collateral damage. “Spit!” James ends with a flourish, sticking his tongue out this way and that, touching his top lip, then his chin, then the sides of his face.
Philippa wails. “Daddy! Jamie’s being disgusting!”
Cobb shakes his head and takes the cake from Eames, whose hands are suddenly busy wiping away the worst of it. But the grin on his face doesn’t fade, and even though he’s looking more and more rumpled, Cobb knows he doesn’t mind this at all.
“Come on, Jamie. Let’s slice this up, alright?” Cobb tells his son, balancing the cake on one hand and James’ flailing hand in the other.
As he turns to leave, his eyes meet Eames’. Eames nods, his mood turning somber.
Soon, Eames is left with Philippa, and regardless of his pants suit, he lays down next to her, only just managing to squeeze himself in the narrow space.
“What did you wish for, then?” He asks her just as Philippa kicks back the sheets and inches closer to his side until all he’s left to see is the top of the girl’s head. Her slim arms wrap around his chest and before he knows it, his hand is on her back.
Philippa muffles her answer into his side and he strains, slightly, leaning forward, to hear her.
“As much of a psychic I like to think I am, dearest, I really can’t hear you like this,” Eames tells her, the hand on her back reaching up to cup her chin.
“I said I want you to be at my party.” Her eyes are wide but she doesn’t cry. The longing on her face, however, well. That works just as well.
Eames almost grimaces; a twinge in his chest that he couldn’t shake off and probably won’t for at least a few more days, until he comes back with a gift under one arm and a promise on his lips that he won’t leave again for a long time.
“It really does suck, doesn’t it?” Eames says, and he doesn’t even attempt to smile. He hates to sugarcoat anything. He can lie through his teeth and tell her that it will be alright, with her friends, and her grandparents flying in from Paris, and all her gifts, and the very big cake her father’s ordered three weeks ago. She’ll be wearing that new dress Eames had bought her the week before, and wear those silver shoes she’s been needling Cobb to buy her for this very day.
But he doesn’t say any of it, because Philippa knows better.
“But the thing is,” Eames continues, and his grip on her tightens. Her cheek presses against his chest and her hand fists in his shirt. “I won’t be gone for very long. And we’ll have another party when I get back.”
“No balloons.”
Eames almost smiles. Almost. “Just those party poppers that explode in your father’s ear, of course.”
Philippa giggles, the sound half-smothered.
“I don’t think your father would approve of just pizza for dinner but it’ll still be your birthday then, right?”
She shakes her head, stubbornly. “No. Today’s my birthday. Birthday. I only have one day for it.”
Eames scoffs, his fingers ghosting over her hair. “One thing I never liked about rules.”
“You hate rules,” she points out.
Eames agrees. “Exactly my point. So you see, technically, in our twist of these things, regardless of the fact that I miss your party today, and miss all of the fun your father’s going to have cleaning up your gift wrappers, we’ll still celebrate, yeah?”
Philippa nods, slowly. Eames knows she’s not convinced, and he can’t really blame her.
They stay like that for what seems like hours but, really, with a quick glance at the wall clock across the room, Eames knows it’s only been a few minutes and hours, he can’t afford that. Not when Miles and Marie are already on their way.
“Happy birthday, Philippa.” He kisses the top of her head and when she tilts her head back up, he ignores the twinge that grows into an ache so stifling he sets his jaw and grits his teeth. “You have fun today, alright, dearest?”
Before Eames leaves, Cobb pulls him into the kitchen. Jamie is in the living room, a saucer with a big slice of chocolate cake precariously sitting on his lap. Spongebob is on and Jamie hardly ever misses that for anything.
Cobb’s fingers around his wrist, pressing his watch tighter against his skin, insist and Eames relents, tearing his eyes away from James. He lets Cobb pull him in until they stand, almost touching but not quite.
“We can always get married, then you’ll run out of excuses to not be around when Miles and Marie visit for the kids’ birthdays,” Cobb says, plainly, and Eames snorts at how ludicrously simple it all sounds when put in so few words.
But they both know that it’s not as simple as that.
“God forbid you actually fork over the money for a ring, let alone get down on one knee and propose to me,” Eames teases, but the humor in his voice doesn’t translate as well in the stance of his hips, the way his feet are rigid in his shoes and the tightness across his shoulders is more than just the firm fit of his shirt.
Cobb pulls on his arm again, a forceful jerk that almost makes Eames stumble onto him, before finally letting go. Hands anchor on his hips, a frustrated line creasing his brow. “I’m serious.”
“As am I,” Eames fires back, and he turns away for a moment, a steady hand sweeping over the curve of his jaw. His stubble scrapes against his own palm.
“It’s been legal for five years.”
Eames smothers a smirk under his hand before turning away completely to get his suit jacket from the back of a kitchen chair. “Stop.”
His voice takes on an edge, a warning, that pushing this even further won’t get a different result from the last ten or twenty times Cobb has brought up the subject. Only mad men do these things and Eames and Cobb, whatever they have, it’s not mad.
It’s sensible, both uncomplicated and difficult. And it’s just fine the way things are.
Then Eames sighs, and Cobb does as well, and all the fight in both of them sinks low, lower and lower only to rise up again at some point in the future. Eames knows Cobb won’t let this go easily but they never do end up marrying each other.
As much as that would mean victory for Eames, it won’t feel like one.
“I’ll see you in a week,” Eames finally says, as he shrugs on his suit jacket and pulls at his lapels.
Cobb nods and lets Eames go as he calls out for James. His son bounds over; he knows the routine by now and although the smile on his face is as cheerful as ever, there’s no denying the slight downturn of his eyes or the way his arms tighten around Eames’ neck as Eames pulls him up off the floor and pulls him to his chest.
At the door, to the sound of James calling out with a litany of possible gifts (“Bribes, Eames, you’re bribing them.”), from the new Nike shoes to a Darth Vader helmet, despite James’ racket, and the silence from Philippa’s room, and the broad daylight, Cobb has Eames to himself.
“My mobile’s always on,” Eames says, even though Cobb already knows this. He flashes the keys to Cobb’s Bent. “And I’m driving this.”
Cobb doesn’t rise to the bait and instead kisses Eames on the lips, in the way he never does in front of the kids, or anywhere else outside the privacy of the bedroom. Eames kisses back, but their hands remain at their sides and soon enough, they part.
Eames leaves, for the nth time since he first arrived on Cobb’s doorstep, but Cobb knows that this time he’ll be back.
-----
It’s been three years since the Inception job, and several months since he has locked away his totem in his safety deposit box. The PASIV that had taken away his life at some point, and had sustained him for nearly a year since his return to America is, in so similar a fashion, locked away in the darkest corner of the attic.
He hasn’t seen it since Christmas.
He wakes up, to a king-sized bed of ruffled sheets. He’s alone.
Sleep clouds his vision for a while and he blinks, adjusting to the streams of late-morning light that filters in from the wooden slats at the windows.
He looks around, peering at the room with half-lidded eyes. His chest is bare, but it’s too late in the summer for a cold draft and the shudder down his spine is not because they hadn’t bothered with the duvet that night. Nor the fact that he’s down to his boxer shorts and the only thing that separates him from the still air are the bed sheets draped languidly about his legs.
Clothes are on the floor, a shirt a size too big for him discarded on the bedside table. He parts it with a finger to check, blearily, at the alarm clock. It’s half-past ten.
He should have been out of bed by seven. It’s a Sunday and while Eames prefers to sleep in on Sundays, James and Philippa like their pancakes hot, piled high on their plates, and this day out of the entire week is the only other day Cobb gets to prepare something more than just cereal for his kids.
The bedroom door is open, he realizes, as he props himself up on his elbows.
The sound of Sunday morning cartoons--Cartoon Network, of course-is faint from where he’s sure James has maxed out the volume of the living room television.
His laugh, bubbly and sporadic, pierces the air.
“-But I want-! ” Cobb hears Philippa shout from the kitchen, quickly cut off by someone he assumes is Eames because he can still hear James sing the F-U-N Song at the top of his lungs and as energetic as his son may be, he doesn’t multi-task that well at all.
When Cobb finally drags himself out of bed, pulling on Eames’ shirt on the bedside table and taking out the nearest bottoms he could find without actually poking his head inside the closet-sweatpants-he goes downstairs.
He walks into the kitchen to the smell of breakfast. Actual breakfast that he didn’t have to cook himself.
Philippa is standing on a chair, Eames supporting her by the waist, as she liberally--liberally--douses her cereal with a tube of sprinkles.
“Those are going to be the ugliest looking cornflakes that I have ever seen,” Eames comments from behind her, peering skeptically at the bowl on the table.
Boxes of cereal, from Coco Puffs to Corn Flakes to Super Shapes to Froot Ooo’s pile up on the small breakfast nook, all of them torn open at one side. Spills of milk puddle on the table and while the kitchen is a bit of a mess, with dishes in the sink, and pancake batter smeared on the countertops, Cobb can’t find it in himself to be annoyed.
He’s looking at Eames, dressed down to faded jeans Cobb has only ever seen twice before, and a clean shirt he must’ve had in his bag. Eames is making breakfast, with Philippa.
James squeals in glee from the living room.
And James, he glances over his shoulder, is holding a pancake in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. (Watching Spongebob.)
Cobb sighs. This isn’t contentment. Contentment would be Mal cleaning up the mess, wearing an apron, and oven mitts, and never letting Philippa take too much control of the sugar she eats in the morning.
It’s something close to it. The comfort of knowing that they’re all here and Cobb, who hasn’t had a need for his totem in a long time, doesn’t reach into his pocket like he had done so innumerable times in the past.
-----
When Cobb comes home, it’s to the sound of the Loony Tunes theme song breaking the silence of an otherwise still tableau of his children asleep on the couch with Eames sandwiched between them.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Eames says by way of greeting. “I might bristle.”
Cobb only smiles at him and sits down beside James, careful not to shift too much. James’ back presses against his side and Eames’ outstretched arm along the back of the couch is a solid weight against the back of his neck.
“Didn’t know you were a huge Bugs Bunny fan.”
Eames snorts, changing the channel. The Deadliest Catch is on the Discovery Channel, and the roars of giant waves replace the jaunt of the Loony Tunes jingle.
James stirs, groaning, still mostly asleep. But his hands scramble dazedly, swatting at Eames’ chest.
Eames switches back to cartoons and James stills. He throws a pointed look at Cobb and Cobb can only smile, sheepishly, in silent resignation.
“You really need to wean your son off the telly.”
Cobb frowns slightly as he looks down at James. “He likes it.” He touches his son’s hair, a rhythmic threading of his fingers through the short crop of James’ blond head. James stirs, shifting, leaning into his father’s hand.
Eames relents, shrugs, and turns his eyes to Bugs Bunny munching on his carrot. “Well he’s not impressing Therese with any of his Spongebob impressions.”
“They’re five, Eames, don’t play matchmaker.”
“I’m just saying. The girl’s interested, James here is a strapping young man. It’s a day care romance and it won’t work if James doesn’t put in the effort of wooing his lady with anything else besides his stock knowledge of Nickelodeon,” Eames smiles at Cobb, and he knows it’s all only in jest. But the thought of his son dating any girl, at any age, still upsets him.
“He likes Cartoon Net work more,” Cobb points out.
Eames laughs, tilting his head back, and sinking further into his seat. Philippa stirs beside him but doesn’t wake, only burrows herself even closer against Eames, her legs folded underneath her, her hands fisting his shirt.
“It’s a step up, if you ask me.”
Eames turns to him with a leer. “You’re obviously a very bad influence to your own children.”
“Not like you,” Cobb replies, irony tinting his deadpan voice.
Eames nods, almost sagely. “The upside to my being here is the complete lack of Disney in the foundation of your children’s sense of creativity.”
That’s not the only upside, Cobb wants to say, with something lewd and terribly inappropriate coming to mind. But images of Eames and his children and ice cream, and late night movies, and dinner, weathers at the thread of the basest things.
Eames and the calm in his voice, the lingering touch of his fingers at the back of his neck, of the careless laughter of his children, and the quiet presence of someone, some solid someone, pressing against him in bed and filling in the space that had been cooled by too much time Cobb had spent alone.
Cobb sobers, the smile gone from his face, and they spend the rest of the night in silence until they, too, fall asleep to the sound of cartoons and the rise and fall of his children’s backs against their sides.
-----
James and Philippa send an email to Eames using Cobb’s account on a Tuesday.
They don’t get a reply because Eames isn’t overly fond of emails in general. They’re more likely to talk to him over the phone but Cobb has only ever called him thrice before. All three of those times when MESSAGE SENDING FAILED, THIS ADDRESS HAS EXPIRED responds to his e-mails almost immediately after he clicks SEND.
Eames arrives on a Thursday, a ready smile on his face as James and Philippa thunder from the living room to greet him despite the tired hunch of his shoulders or the way his grip on his duffel bag is strained, his fingers pink and slack.
Cobb ushers him in around the excitement of his children following Eames as he deposits his coat in the closet by the door.
“Did you get the email we sent you? Mine was in purple and yellow,” Philippa chatters on, Eames nodding and smiling down at her as James hugs him from behind.
“I told Dad to put a picture of Goofy and-" James pipes up, Eames’ arm coming around until his hand steadied James against him as they walked--negotiated--their way to the living room.
As they pass, Cobb smiles at him and shrugs, helplessly, at his children’s antics.
Eames shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to mind at all.
He all but collapses on the couch, a tired breath rushing from his lips, but he doesn’t get a moment of reprieve when James scrambles next to him and Philippa practically throws herself to Eames’ bag on the floor.
“Philippa, don’t be rude,” Cobb admonishes, but he doesn’t move to stop her. He stands behind the couch, leaning forward, arms braced on the couch’s tall back.
Below him, James squirms in his seat, excitedly launching a long-winded tale of this playground, this girl, and that girl, and the Pinkberry that’s just opened near his school.
When Cobb breathes in, it’s the scent of Eames’ aftershave that assaults his nose. He finds that he’s comfortable just where he is.
The spell breaks when Eames jerks, suddenly, pitching forward with his arm outstretched. “No, Philippa, don’t touch that.”
Philippa looks up, surprised to stillness. Her hands hover just above the outside pocket of the duffel bag.
Then Eames smiles at her, indulgently, before standing up and taking the bag from the floor. He opens the main zipper and takes out-
--to a cacophony of James and Philippa’s excited squeals-
--two bulky objects wrapped in brown paper. They’re snatched from Eames’ hands before Eames has the chance to hand it to them.
Soon enough, they’re tearing at the paper.
“Eames,” Cobb says and Eames’ eyes snap from the children to Cobb. The warmth on his face sobers at the apprehension that lines Cobb’s face.
“Alright, kids, your father and I need to talk for a bit,” he tells them, but they’re too busy getting their fingers around the loops of straw-woven rope around the packages.
Eames follows Cobb to the study, closing the door behind him.
“I still don't know how you can sneak a gun past airport security,” Cobb says, but it’s not what he wants to say, what he’s been meaning to say, what he’s been planning to for days.
Eames shakes his head, distractedly, dropping his bag on the floor by his feet. The gunmetal hidden beneath the thick cloth of his bag thuds dully against the wooden floor. “I picked up a trick in Bangui.”
Bangui, where Eames had mentioned three months ago that he was being offered a job that includes more forgery than actual extraction. He had described it in great length but Cobb doesn’t remember the details anymore. All that was on his mind at the time, as he had held his mobile to his ear, was the months that Eames would spend elsewhere.
“It’s meant to enhance the sensory value of the forge,” Eames continues, undoing the two buttons of the shirt he wears underneath his jacket. “Taste, smell, touch, more vivid. Do you still have some of Mal’s perfume here somewhere?”
At the mention of Mal, her name sounding so off, so foreign, uttered in Eames’ voice, Cobb drops his gaze and stuffs his suddenly restless fingers in his pockets. “Yeah, I do.”
“That should do it,” Eames concludes, almost thoughtfully. “What time will Miles pick up the kids?”
“Nine, nine-thirty.”
“Alright, well, you’ll have to wait a bit. I’ll need to prepare and-"
Cobb cuts him off with a hand. “I didn’t want you here for that.”
Eames chuckles, but it’s a hollow sound against his teeth. “I thought the kids were the ones who e-mailed me, not you.”
Cobb doesn’t roll his eyes because he’s being serious, and it’s hard enough as it is, to press on when Eames seems to be doing his hardest to skirt around the purpose, a very insistent one, that darkens the look on Cobb’s face.
“Why am I here, then?” Eames finally asks, and the humor is gone. Replaced by something tentative, hidden beneath the hard exterior of the stern line of his lips and a brightness in his eyes that Cobb realizes is the look of a man who’s prepared, and willing, to hightail out of any corner, any compromise, without looking back.
Cobb treads carefully, his voice steady. “The kids miss you.”
Eames knows, but that’s not what he needs hear, Cobb thinks.
He shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair.
With a breath, he steps forward until all that’s left between him and Eames is action. Something more than the lucidity of dreams and the vividness of someone else’s face morphing the stubble from Eames’ jaw, softening his cheeks with angles that swelled and dipped in graceful patterns on skin fairer and softer.
Eames’ eyes take on an edge, a warning that deafens Cobb’s ears to the sound of his children playing in the living room. All he hears is caution, and care, and something breakable emphasized only by the pressing silence in the air.
But Cobb ignores it and when he moves, Eames does as well. Their lips meet in a kiss that’s both familiar and foreign, with a roughness against Cobb’s cheeks, and the hard plane of Eames’ chest against his.
In the end, Cobb doesn’t say what he wants to say because this is enough, hands around his sides that pull him further and further in and all that needs to be spoken are wrapped around their tongues as their lips meet over and over and over, in as much times (and more) that Cobb has fought off the want, and the need, to do this, exactly this, during the many times he blinks awake, IV line in his wrist, and Eames sitting too far away from him.
After Miles picks up the kids, while Eames showers in the bathroom, Cobb takes the PASIV from its usual place under the bed. He brings it up to the attic, in between the yellowed rolls of blueprints, variations of the dream house he’d wanted to build with Mal.
When he turns off the light and closes the door behind him, he presses a hand to his front pants pocket on instinct. He’s reassured that it’s empty.
-----
PART TWO