The warp and the weft that hold life together (2/2) - Inception - NC-17
Title: The warp and weft that hold life together
Part 1
If you're coming in from the kink meme, go here.
The traffic is awful and Arthur is late to the next PTA meeting, so he slips in quietly and sits down at the back. He hasn't missed too much. The secretary is wrapping up a brief summary of the last meeting's minutes, and then cedes the floor to the president for the bulk of the day's agenda. It's about a fundraiser for the school's arts program--if they get enough votes in favour, they'll have a (free) student car wash in the parking lot. Arthur's not so naive that he doesn't realize that means parent car wash while the kids run around dumping water over each other and shrieking with laughter, playing unwitting donation bait.
Eames leans up against the wall the whole meeting, and Arthur ends up watching him for most of it instead of paying attention. The back and forth and pontification and endless opinions and clarifications don't really deserve Arthur's attention anyway. Sometimes he catches Eames glancing back at him, which makes something pleased and self-satisfied uncurl in his chest, somewhere between his stomach and his lungs, even if he does thwart all of Arthur's attempts at catching his eye.
Then Eames leaves right as they start taking the vote. Arthur waits an extra ten minutes, after, making up excuses to chat with the teachers, the other parents. Eames doesn't come back in.
Arthur has to fight the traffic on his way home too, and by the time he gets back he's in the worst mood he's been in in weeks. Everything Dom says gets on his nerves, and the third time Arthur snaps at him over how much noise he's making grading final papers, Dom asks him what crawled up his A-S-S and died and then tells him that Phillipa behaves better than Arthur is right then, and Arthur's got 24 years on her.
Arthur tells Dom to F-U-C-K himself and goes to his room before he stops remembering to spell while the kids are awake.
*
Arthur gets up extra early and makes pancakes the next morning to apologize. Dom is finally talking to him again by the second plate.
*
"Mr. Eames," says Arthur, coming up to stand by him between the new book section and about six lonely carts full of books in need of reshelving.
"Not trailing any little ones today?" Eames says, because kids are safe. Kids have nothing to do with the way Arthur still, despite Eames's better judgment, looks devastatingly gorgeous in a jumper and a pair of dark jeans, or the way that his hair has just the slightest curl as it's brushed away from Arthur's face. Eames never thought he'd be the type of person to hide behind children. He's not proud of this moment.
"No, I've left the ducklings at home," Arthur says. Home, Eames thinks. Arthur's home, Cobb's children. Cobb. "They called and said some of my interlibrary loan books had come in. They only hold them for three days, so I couldn't put it off, even for a Saturday morning sleeping in." Arthur gestures to the books he's holding.
Eames leans forward, and Arthur obligingly holds up his short stack of books. Salt: A World History, and Um -- Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean. "You made a special trip to the library to get those? A history of salt; you wanted to read a history of salt so much that you asked them to find it for you special?" Eames asks.
"I felt like my brain was going to get stuck in Dr. Seuss-land forever. Don't get me wrong. Dr. Seuss is classic, but there are only so many times you can read Green Eggs and Ham before you wish ham and eggs had never been invented." Arthur expression is grave, but his eyes are wry.
"I do not like them, Sam-I-Am, I do not like green eggs and ham," Eames says. He can't help himself, not with the way Arthur is looking at him, the way it twists in his chest that Arthur lets him see him open and playful.
"Would you like them here or there?" Arthur asks, seriously, and Eames for an instant has the dizzying, wild, impossible thought that Arthur is asking him something else entirely.
Still. "I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere," Eames tells him, slightly less seriously because he can't keep the smile off his face. Eames had never imagined his Saturday morning would contain such a delightful joint recitation. His Saturday mornings usually don't.
"So you can see how I might need some stimulating reading--or at least, reading that's stimulating for someone who'd learned how to read a couple decades ago," Arthur says.
"Here," Eames says, plucking a book off a reshelving cart. "Try this one. I think it'll do you good, once you're finished learning about salt." He hides the cover until Arthur puts out a mock-grudging hand to take it, and then drops the hardcover book into his waiting fingers. Overachievers: the Secret Lives of Driven Kids. Arthur arches an eyebrow at him.
"Very subtle, Mr. Eames," he says.
"What can I say?" says Eames, grinning outright now. "I've never been very good at subtle." Something in Arthur's expression shifts then, shifts from amused and playful to amused and a little bit like interest, and oh no. No, Eames isn't, he can't. Eames wasn't supposed to do any of this at all. Eames is supposed to be keeping his distance, and he is failing miserably at it, and he needs to leave, now; so he does. He checks his watch, just for show, and lies through his teeth about being late for something, and he leaves calmly but quickly, hoping like hell Arthur can't tell that he's really running away.
Eames takes his books to return to one of the other branches, even though it means driving an extra 40 minutes. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.
*
In January, there's an actual parent-teacher conference--not like the meet and greet at the beginning of the year--where the teacher schedules a meeting with every student's guardian or guardians and talks about their behavior in class and their academic progress, such as it is for kindergarteners. Theirs is scheduled for a Tuesday night.
Arthur and Dom both plan to go, which is, of course, why their childcare for the night falls through in disasterous ways. They try to find alternatives, but Mrs. Eisington next door is out of town, off to her yearly "girls' Vegas trip." Melissa Williams, the seventeen year old down the block, broke her wrist in lacross practice two days before and is higher than a kite on pain meds. As a last ditch effort, Dom calls Ariadne.
That goes straight to voicemail, so Dom stays home. Arthur would never ever admit to cheating at rock-paper-scissors, but he might have cheated, just a little bit. Arthur might, if pressed, admit to taking things like student teacher meetings a little too seriously, never mind the ridiculously attractive teacher conducting this particular meeting.
Something about Eames is stilted and shuttered when Arthur gets there, as he settles into the miniature chair across the table. It feels like being careful, and Arthur wants to push and push until he finds out what it is.
Eames's eyes linger just a little too long on Arthur's mouth, though, and his hands are just a little too close to the heat of Arthur's skin when he points something out on the print-out Arthur's given about Phillipa's progress for the first half of the school year. It makes Arthur's skin itch.
"...and mandatory state testing doesn't start until first grade. Anything else you want to address while you're here?" Eames finishes.
"I read that book you recommended. It was a good read--gave me a lot of ideas. I think we'll need to sign Phillipa up for supplemental math courses, so she doesn't think that girls can't do math. It's so hard to counter societal messages. Also, I think we should find her a Chinese tutor and maybe look into somewhere she can do advanced reading lessons," Arthur tells him, just to get a rise out of him. "We'd probably be able to swing the English reading on our own though. There are pros and cons to getting a professional, but doing it yourself means you know exactly what kind of progress the pupil is making."
"I think you might have missed the point of the book," Eames says at last, carefully, and clearly nonplussed. Arthur smirks at him, and waits the full beat it takes before Eames realizes Arthur is fucking with him and he starts laughing.
*
"I'm having a pot luck at my house on Sunday," Yusuf says one Thursday when he comes to pick Ariadne up. She'd come back with Dom from the university with a pile of half-graded papers, and conned Phillipa into helping her alphabetize the ones she finished and running them to Dom like a courier by convincing her it was the best game ever. Arthur has to kind of admire resourcefulness like that, even if it’s taking shameless advantage of the children under his care. "Do you think you can make it?"
"Eames has already said he's coming," Ariadne interjects, sly with the way she eyes Arthur. Yusuf frowns.
"I'm not sure that's-" he starts to say, but Ariadne's already tugging him out the door.
"See you on Sunday!" Ariadne calls from the driveway, just before climbing into the passenger seat.
Dinner's nice, busy, chaotic in the good way that means there are a lot of people crammed around a too-small table all having a good time. Dinner's nice, but Arthur's going slowly crazy because one minute Eames is laughing at his jokes and the next he's avoiding looking at him, eyes fixed on his plate, or face turned very carefully away as he listens to another story down the table. Arthur's never liked playing games, but with Eames, Arthur can't figure out what he's trying to do, what he's trying to get, which makes it worse.
Arthur feels like he's strung out on the end of an elastic line, bouncing back and forth, but if he concentrates hard enough on the way Ariadne is demolishing Dom on the Wii, he can forget that. So Arthur focuses on enjoying himself like he focuses on contract sub-clauses, and it mostly works.
"Where's the bathroom?" Arthur asks Yusuf, while Dom protests loudly that Wii bowling is nothing like actual bowling and that Ariadne might not be taking any classes from him, but Dom can still fail her. Eames is in the garage, bringing in another bottle of white and another bottle of red. Arthur's annoyed with himself that he'd still, despite his best efforts, been paying enough attention to Eames to know that. He doesn’t know where half the other people still at the potluck are, not even the ones he’s known for years. In the kitchen talking, probably, or out in the back yard.
"Down the hall on the right. The door on the left is a closet; don't go in there," Yusuf says.
Arthur nods, and heads off, not quite curious enough about what Yusuf could be keeping in his closet to bother snooping. When Arthur comes out again, he runs into Eames.
Eames is looking at him, caught in the small space between the bathroom and the coat closet, just looking at him, and Arthur has no idea what he's thinking. He never does. Eames is looking at him, like he's caught out, like he wants him, like he wants to run and Arthur can't think of any good reason for that. He doesn't want to give him another chance to slip away, doesn't want to give Eames another couple of weeks of hemming and hawing and skirting around the edge of what do we want to do?
So Arthur steps forward and steps forward again, and Eames just looks at him and doesn't step back.
Arthur just stands in his space for a moment, waiting for a reaction, a go ahead, a get away, for something definite. "Arthur," Eames says. Arthur can't read his tone of voice, but he's looking at Arthur's lips now, face tilted just a little bit up, but his eyes locked on Arthur's mouth like he can't tear them away. That's good enough.
Arthur leans in, brushing his lips over Eames's, and Eames sucks in a breath, like he's surprised, like he wants, so Arthur pulls him in.
Eames's lips are wet and soft, but absolutely nothing about the way Eames kisses him back is pliant. It's blind and searching and getting, and all Arthur can think when Eames ratchets it up another notch is yes, finally. It's burning him up, fast and sharp like guncotton, and if the back and forth from before was going to drive him crazy, this might just kill him. And then, Eames pushes Arthur back and looks at him, absolutely, unmistakably horrified.
"Arthur, we can't do this," he says. He's got a hand on Arthur's chest, fingers clenched in his shirt, not letting go but just as definitely holding him back.
Arthur doesn't lean back. "Why not?"
"What would Phillipa think?" And now Arthur pulls away. Eames fingers tighten in his shirt for a second, and then release. Let him go.
Arthur schools his features until they're carefully bland. "I wasn't really planning on telling her. She's five." Eames's hand is still kind of hovering between them, like it can't decide whether or not he's going to reach for Arthur, or if he needs to guard against him. Arthur looks at it for a moment, but Eames doesn't say anything else. Whatever, Arthur's done with this. He leaves.
Eames doesn't try to stop him.
*
By the time Eames gets his shit together enough to go back out into the main room with the wine he'd promised to fetch, Arthur and Cobb and the kids have left. Eames tells himself firmly it's for the best, and tries to pretend he believes it.
He hands off the wine to Ariadne, who's pouting because she's been banned from the Wii because she gets too competitive. He doesn't ask where Arthur and Dom and the kids have gone; he's just grateful they are, that he won't have to avoid anyone's eyes when he makes his goodbyes.
He doesn't stay, even though he'd been planning to, at least for a little longer. No one remarks on it. Sunday is a school night, after all.
It is, Eames finds, much worse to find you can have what you want when you still can't have it. Whatever Arthur's offering isn't what Eames wants anyway.
*
Arthur stops going to PTA meetings altogether. He just, he doesn't want to risk it, and feels incredibly stupid for giving in to the feeling. It's not the most mature thing he's ever done, but Arthur considers it considerably more mature than his other options, so he takes it. Arthur hasn't been this hung up on someone since Tadashi, and that had imploded spectacularly.
He makes Dom go to all of them instead, and resolves not to let himself grill Dom about the details when he gets back because if he can't be mature enough to go to a half an hour to forty-five minute meeting where he might (ok, probably would) run into Eames, then he is not allowed to drag other people through his shit.
Dom tries to ask him about it, once. Arthur just presses his lips into a thin line, and goes back to mashing the potatoes a little bit more viciously than before. Dom doesn't press the issue.
*
"I'm in love with an arsehole," Eames tells his scotch mournfully. The scotch, at this point, is the only one listening, because Eames has been saying variations of the same thing for the past forty-five minutes, and even the bartender has started ignoring him except when he waves for a refill. It'd be cheaper to do serious drinking like this with his own scotch, but there are lines and alcoholics, and Eames is not crossing any more of them. The lines, he's not crossing. Cross alcoholics are different.
"I think you've had just about enough, buddy," the bartender says at Eames's next attempt at a refill, and Eames is so despondent about everything that he doesn't even try to fight it. He just resigns himself to a life without lovely scotch and lovely Arthur and lovely loveliness forever. The bartender sets a glass of water down in front of Eames, and Eames just sighs and lays his face down on the bar.
"Hey now, no sleeping here. Got someone we can call?" the bartender says, forcing Eames to sit up a little, and nudging the water at him. Eames takes an obliging drink.
"Arthur is an arsehole," Eames tells him. 'D'I tell you? He kissed me, but he can't kiss me and it's no good."
"What's this Arthur's number?" the bartender asks.
"Dunno," Eames says. He takes another drink of water because the scotch is all gone and he's thirsty. Eames starts to lay his head back down again, but the bartender intercepts him.
"Hey, you got a cell phone right?" the bartender says. Eames nods his head, drinks more water. "Lemme see your cell phone? Just for a minute. I'll get you another drink," he promises. Eames nods again, and fishes his mobile out to hand over. He watches while the bartender presses some buttons and then makes a call. Eames doesn't like the way the room is spinning anymore. It used to be spinning sympathetically, but now it's being malicious and gloating a little about it.
Eames puts his head down, successfully, because the bartender is busy talking into his mobile. The room may not like him anymore, but the counter top is still his friend.
"Here's your phone back," says the bartender, putting down a new glass of water in front of Eames as promised. "Your friend Yusuf is coming to pick you up." Eames nods his head against the counter, and the bartender doesn't try to make him sit up again, so Eames counts it as a win.
"We are changing me from your emergency contacts when you're sober," Yusuf says as he fights gravity to get Eames into his car. Eames nods at him sloppily, but isn't very concerned because he thinks Yusuf probably doesn't really mean it.
Eames wakes up in the middle of the night with a glass of water and a couple of aspirin on the table by his bed. He's got his shoes off, at least, but he's still in all his clothes and he smells like a distillery, which isn't helping his heaving stomach any. It's not until he's thrown up into the toilet twice, tried to rinse most of the taste out of his mouth, and staggered back to bed that he notices the crumpled post it note in his sheets.
"I called you in sick pre-emptivelyx Told them it was a stomach bugx Get your shit togetherx I'll come round tomorrow after work to make sure you're not deadx"
That's when Eames remembers it's a Friday, and he'd gotten drunk off his arse on a school night. Brokenhearted weeknight benders were acceptable in college, and when he had an art project but no real schedule; they're not acceptable now. No more of this. Arthur's not worth it.
*
When Phillipa comes home from school and tells them all about her substitute teacher Ms. Vazquez, Arthur squishes his concern down firmly and then ignores it while nodding along attentively. Eames isn't interested, and he's kind of chicken shit about expressing it. Arthur doesn't need that.
He doesn't call the school on Monday, not even to make sure Eames isn't going to pass anything contagious off to the students.
At work, Arthur's new restructuring plans for a silicon valley computer chip maker are so vicious President Saito calls him and tells him to tone it back a little; the company contracting them as consultants isn't going that bankrupt. During the team meeting, Markus buries his attention in the draft in front of him, studiously ignoring Arthur until Arthur actually starts to feel guilty enough to buy them all coffee. Then El spends the rest of the meeting smirking at him over her Arthur-sponsored coffee because he'd previously rejected all four of her decidedly less ruthless plans and they'd probably have to go with one of them now.
*
The fifth time in a week Arthur makes apology pancakes, Dom tells him to stop bothering. Forgiveness isn't something you can earn anyway. Arthur scowls and flips another pancake onto a plate. They're chocolate chip this time. He's only mostly sure Dom's talking about Arthur's behavior and not trying to give him a 'experienced life lesson'.
Then the latest restructuring job kicks into high gear, and he can take out his pissy moods on his coworkers instead.
*
When Arthur gets home from work, he's exhausted. Dom has dinner on the table, and is keeping half an eye on the ratio between the number of peas on Phillipa's plate that actually make it into her mouth, and the number of peas that she tries to hide in her napkin. James smiles as soon as Arthur walks in the door, all three of his teeth shining white in his mouth around half a mouthful of partially chewed hot dog. James brandishes a small piece of boiled hot dog at Arthur, and makes a happy noise. Arthur's just worked a 70 hour week in three days only to have the client decide they are going to do it all in-house instead, and Arthur is embarrassingly grateful that a non-verbal toddler is happy to see him.
"I'm home," Arthur says. He drops his bag by the door.
"Dinner just started," Dom says, bending down to rescue some dropped peas from the floor. "I wasn't sure if you'd make it, so I put your stuff on a plate in the kitchen. Was going to saran-wrap it, but now I don't have to. Should still be warm."
It is still warm, and Arthur settles into his seat at the table with something like bliss. Arthur doesn't even care that it's hot dogs and peas from a can and leftover mashed potatoes he'd made over the weekend. Phillipa chatters about her day at school, and James makes happy, gurgling sounds and the odd word, and Arthur tells them how getting Thursday and Friday off doesn't really make up for losing the latest job at such a late stage in the game. Arthur is home, and Arthur is happy, and Arthur is so tired he barely thinks of Eames at all.
And then Dom drops the bomb on him.
"What do you mean, I'm chaperoning a class trip to the zoo on Friday?" It's a valid question, particularly for a Wednesday night. "You're chaperoning a trip to the zoo on Friday," Arthur tells Dom. Perhaps, if he clarifies for him, Dom will say, 'Oh, right, yes. I mean I'm chaperoning a trip to the zoo on Friday while you sleep off a week from hell and continue to avoid Phillipa's kindergarten teacher.' Though, perhaps, on second thought, not quite like that because Arthur is not steadfastly avoiding Eames, and even if he were, Dom wouldn't know about it.
Dom does not say any variation of that, however, which is what Arthur was afraid of. Instead he says, "No, I was supposed to be chaperoning, but I've just been invited to give a guest lecture at Stanford on my paper about the cognitive effects of lucid dreaming on Friday, so I have to leave Thursday night."
Arthur would suspect that Dom is conspiring against him, except he doesn't really think Dom has it in him to succeed. Arthur doesn't think Dom's above trying--he's definitely conniving enough--but Dom is, at heart, a big-picture kind of person. It's one of the reasons Arthur had moved in in the first place. He couldn't abandon sweet little Phillipa and James to that.
"Someone else can do it," Arthur says, but he knows he'll go. One day isn't a lot of time for the school to find a replacement chaperone, phone trees or not. "Right, ok. Fine." Arthur gives up before Dom even has a chance to say anything else. He just doesn't have the energy to fight.
*
The trip starts out well enough. There's an hour or so of children doggedly not learning anything because they're too excited about the zoo to sit still, much less pay attention. Any chaperones who hadn't just stayed when they'd dropped their kids off are all supposed to arrive by 8, the kids buddy up and chaperones claim their sets of eight students each, and then they all go out to the parking lot.
Both kindergarten classes and all the chaperones are piled onto a couple of school buses and drive across the city to the gigantic park that houses the Los Angeles Zoo. They've got the school discount, and while there are two more chaperones than the zoo lets in for free, they just divide the extra 10 bucks among all the adults, and they're through the gates by 10:15.
"Alright, everyone. You're responsible for your own group of children. We'll meet up here at 12 for lunch and again at 3, when we'll regroup to get back on the buses and head home. Kids, you stay with your buddy, and with your chaperone. Either myself or Mr. Eames will be here by the elephant statue all day, so if you get separated from your group, you come back here first. Don't try to find your group by yourself," the other kindergarten teacher instructs them all. The kids are barely listening, but she's an old hand at this, and just waits until they quiet down, and repeats herself as many times as necessary.
When she's satisfied with the response she gets, she nods, and Eames says, "Alright then. Off you go," and then Arthur is preoccupied with corralling eight overly excited kindergartners as they rush off to see the small mammal exhibit first.
Arthur has to hold Grace Lee's hand through the reptile house, because the other kids are resolute in their desire to see snakes and lizards. It was difficult to get her to agree to the compromise, but leaving her outside by herself was even less of an option than letting the other 7 kids go in on their own. Nothing in the world will make her go near the komodo dragons, so Arthur diverts them to the new baby rock hyraxes instead.
They spend a lot of time with the birds in the Asian Rainforest exhibit, and are absolutely fascinated when Arthur tells them that birds are little dinosaurs with wings. Phillipa falls in love with a tiny little deer there called a chevrotain, and it takes Arthur an extra fifteen minutes to convince her that they absolutely cannot have one as a pet. Grace, unexpectedly, thinks giant fruit bats are the coolest things ever and makes Arthur read every single placard with a picture of a bat on it to her.
Once Arthur's torn them away from the Asian rainforests, they go to look at meerkats and zebra and chacoan peccary and North American river otters, and then head back to the group meeting place for lunch only a little late.
It's chaos when they get there. Mrs. Anderson is off to one side talking in a low voice to a clearly panicking chaperone from the other class. Eames and the other chaperone who's already back are keeping an eye on the gaggle of kids, so Arthur takes his over to join the group and asks the other parent what's going on.
"One of her kids is missing. She's half-convinced she's been kidnapped. Mrs. Anderson is talking her down." Despite the distance between the distraught parent and the students, some of the kids are still picking up the frantic atmosphere and turning it into misbehaviour. Arthur stops Embert from putting a dead cicada down the back of another little boy's shirt and tries to field Phillipa's persistent questions about what they're having for lunch.
"Hey, Adam," Eames says. "Now that Arthur's here to help, I'm going to go put a notification in with the zoo's staff that Alice is missing and have their employees keep an eye out for her." Arthur can't help the way his heart stumbles when Eames says his name, and then immediately feels guilty because, missing child. Priorities.
Adam nods, and Eames disappears into the crowds in the direction of the information desk. Mrs. Anderson and Alice's chaperone check in briefly with them to say they're going to retrace the exhibits they'd stopped at, to see if they can find her themselves.
"Where did you go first?" Mrs. Anderson asks as they leave.
"The Jaguars. And then the tamarins. She was definitely with Rachel when we were at the gorilla exhibit," Arthur hears her respond, still sounding shaky.
Nina Gonzales's mother and someone else's mother arrive together with their kids, and, a few minutes later, the last chaperone comes back with her kids. Eames returns before there's too much aimless milling around or the kids break down into cranky hunger-tears--just in time for a little boy to go shaky-pale and collapse. Several other children scream as he goes down, one setting another off, and then it seems like half the combined classes start to cry.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Eames is good in a crisis. He gets everyone to stop screaming and has the boy up in his arms and to the nearby med station in a few quick moments, efficiently delegating crying duty to Arthur and Mrs. Gonzales, and general 'watch' duty to the other remaining chaperones. Arthur shouldn't find that as hot as he does--but he does, even as he's getting half a dozen hiccuping children to stop crying altogether.
A little bit later, Eames is waving the entire group over to the med station, where the boy who'd passed out is lying down, but conscious. He's got a bandaid applied to one elbow, where he'd scraped himself falling.
Once they get in range, one of the boy's friends attaches himself to Eames's leg and won't let go, but Eames just pats him on the head and tells him his friend will be fine. The boy nods gravely, still clinging to Eames while Eames explains the situation to the chaperones. "Just a little heat exhaustion. He just needs to cool off and to drink a lot of water. Why don't we start getting these kids fed before anything else happens, hmm?"
It takes all five chaperones to get the kids settled into tables and benches in the nearby the zoo concession area. They're stressed and cranky now, and it's almost a relief when Arthur and Adam get to go drag the coolers of sandwiches and fruit in from the bus in the parking lot.
By the time they've gone to get bottles of water and juice boxes for everyone, the tableau is considerably calmer. Mrs. Anderson and the worried chaperone are both back, Alice holding both their hands as she walks between them. She'd been at the lion exhibit the whole time, totally oblivious to the fact that she'd been left behind, utterly enraptured by one of the younger lionesses trying to dunk the older one in the pool in the enclosure.
Arthur can't help but smile at Eames wearily when he finally comes back from the med station, paperwork filled out, parents notified and the boy much recovered, because Eames has earned a break. Eames shoots him a tired smile back, and sucks apple juice out of a tiny straw in a way that Arthur finds a lot more endearing than he's currently allowing himself to acknowledge, even to himself.
By the time lunch is over, Embert is still trying to put bugs down other kids' shirts, but all the other trauma of the past hour seems to have been forgotten in favour of the opportunity to go see the elephants and tigers. Arthur doggedly prevents Phillipa from sticking something slimy down the back of Embert's shirt ("Because that's not ok for you to do either, Phillipa") and takes his group to see the wallabies. He's always wanted to see the wallabies.
*
Even a blessedly detached Arthur--an Arthur who doesn't flirt, who doesn't look at him like they're sharing a joke, who only occasionally smiles, guarded, because it's polite--runs Eames ragged. He misses the attention, and he hates that he misses the attention, and he's depressingly grateful that the time he'll actually be spending in Arthur's company will be minimal. He's only just getting to the point where he can think about Arthur without remembering the way his lips felt under his.
The day is hectic, but thankfully all the crises contained themselves to lunchtime. Arthur is dependable, and the rest of the day goes well. The kids are all exhausted but happy on the way back to school, where they perk up just enough to chatter excitedly to friends in other grades as they climb into buses or into parents' ears as they get picked up.
Mrs. Anderson takes the time to thank all the chaperones for volunteering all day, and Arthur and Phillipa only wave at Eames from a distance before climbing into their own car and heading home. Eames almost feels like they've reached a truce. All Eames has to do now is convince himself he's happy he's signed the terms.
*
Arthur keeps avoiding PTA meetings, but it's a tired, determined kind of avoidance now, all the anger gone out of him. He resigns himself to being hopelessly, half in love with Eames for a while and the very least Arthur can do is continue avoiding him until it passes.
As a plan, it works pretty well--the avoidance, at least--despite the way that a tangled knot of anticipation and dread lodges itself in his gut whenever he has to go into the elementary school. The school year ends in a little less than a month, and that's all Arthur needs to get through. Less than a month, and he won't ever have to think about this again, about smart, sly, amusing Mr. Eames. Won't have to think about wanting Eames and getting shot down and continuing to want Eames anyway, and the awful possibility of bumping into him casually, or Phillipa coming home with stories about her school day innocently full of him.
Arthur sees more of Ariadne and Roth as finals come upon them, both of them spending so much time grading frantically for undergraduate classes that Arthur isn't sure how they have time to write their own papers. Two nights out of three Ariadne just sleeps over, curled up under a blanket on the love seat in the study because she's tiny enough to fit, and every third night or so, Yusuf comes to collect her because, he jokes, "driving her home is practically the only time I get to see her until the end of term."
Eventually they run out of papers to grade, and Ariadne disappears completely for four days straight, after which she shows up at their house briefly to ask Dom if he'll be her thesis adviser. She hands him a term paper as soon as he's agreed, telling him it's going to become her QP1, and then drives home to sleep forever.
Arthur hits a lull at work. The days get longer, settle into that lazy stretch right before the mad dash at the end of the fiscal year in June and July. May's nearly over. Arthur starts to think that just maybe he'll make it. He hasn't had to try to breakfast treat his guilt away for weeks.
Of course that's when Phillipa comes home so excited she can barely talk, because her school is going to have a 'family field day' the Friday before school lets out for the summer. It seems like an event that's half field-day, half carnival, with sack races and water balloon tosses, cake walks and face painting, and most exciting of all, a dunking booth. Phillipa tells them all about the field day six separate times between getting from home from school and being put to bed, even though it's a whole week away.
"You and Daddy and James are going to come, right? Right, Uncle Arthur?" Phillipa asks, snuggling into her pillow. Arthur nods. He doesn't even have to ask Dom about it. Obviously they're all going.
*
Phillipa races back to them the instant the parent volunteer gets her leg untied from Nina's. "Daddy, did you see? Were we fast? We were so fast!" She's bouncing around them all in an excited circle because Dom's holding James and doesn't have the arms to pick her up. She hasn't even had any of the cotton candy yet. The inevitable crash isn't going to be fun later, but right now her sheer, unmitigated glee is kind of contagious.
"So," Dom says, once Phillipa's calmed down a little, and they're watching the other half of her class start their own three-legged races. "Want to talk about Mr. Eames?"
"What about Mr. Eames?" Arthur asks dryly.
"He's kind of all you talk about," Dom says. Lying bastard. "Corporate takeover, my inability to do laundry properly, and Mr. Eames."
"That is untrue. Except for the laundry. You're old enough to know better, really."
Cobb actually rolls his eyes at him. This is becoming a distressing pattern in Arthur's personal life. No one at work rolls their eyes at Arthur. No one would dare. "Stop trying to change the subject. Sometimes you pretend you're complaining about how Mr. Eames doesn't stress the value of simple arithmetic skills for Phillipa's future enough, but I've known you since Mal," here Dom pauses to swallow thickly, but presses on, "was your TA in undergraduate phonology. You do it with that tone of voice that means you secretly want to pick out curtains with him. You haven't done that since, what's his face, that chemical engineer."
No, they are absolutely not talking about Tadashi. "Eames can't be trusted to pick out curtains on his own."
Dom arches an eyebrow at him, well, archly. Arthur's caught in the position where if he tries to say anything, he's protesting too much, but if he doesn't say anything Dom effectively wins.
Dom's eyes dart to the side, breaking the moment. He smiles, "Hi, Mr. Eames. Enjoying field day? James, can you wave hi to Mr. Eames?" Eames waves at James the way adults who like children wave at toddlers, this expression of sheer delight on his face. James waves a pudgy hand obligingly back, and then stuffs it in his mouth to chew on it a little. Dom smiles down at James indulgently. Then Dom shoots Arthur a look, too fast to make out, and fucks off somewhere, taking both kids with him. Abandoning him with Eames. Lying traitor bastard.
"Mr. Eames," Arthur says.
"Arthur," Eames returns. There's a painfully awkward moment where no one says anything and Arthur wonders how quickly he can run away without looking like he's running away. Eames breaks it. "Your family seems to have left you rather purposefully. This is rather awkward, particularly as Mr. Cobb told me he'd like to speak with me while he was here today."
"What would Dom want to talk to you about?" Arthur asks. He's got an idea. He doesn't much like it.
"Well," Eames says, careful, neutral, "I rather got the impression it was you." Arthur about sees red.
"Of course he did," Arthur manages. He keeps his face carefully blank; he's good at it. Eames looks away then, like he can't bear looking at him any more. Arthur's just barely angry enough with Dom that he can tell himself that it doesn't hurt, not even a little.
"Don't worry, Arthur," Eames says, and something's gone funny in his voice, twisted up in a way Arthur can't figure out. "I'll tell him nothing's happened. I'm not ok being part of your little games, or whatever it is the two of you are doing, but I'm not going to wreck anything for you either."
Arthur stops, because that isn't where he'd expected Eames to go, even if he is trying to let Arthur down gently. It doesn't even make sense. "Wait, what?"
"Don't fuck around with me as you work out whatever your problems with Dom are. Leave me out of and I'll lie about Yusuf's party."
"Why would Dom care about what happened at Yusuf's party?" Arthur's being slow, he knows he is, but it's like his brain is misfiring. His conclusions aren't adding up.
Eames boggles at him, and a lot of things suddenly start falling into place for Arthur, in one of those blinding rushes, like a rock slide, the kind he gets just before the corporate plan he's working on comes together at last. The flirting and the pulling away. What would Phillipa think? and why that might possibly matter.
"Eames, I think we need to talk."
"I don't really think we do," Eames says, turning away already, and that can't happen, not if Arthur's right this time.
"Eames, really," Arthur says, jogging up beside him as he picks up his pace. "I'm not, Dom's not- I mean, Mal--Dom's wife--died last year. It was really sudden. I just, Dom couldn't do it by himself, two little kids. I've known them both forever; I was the best man at their wedding. So I moved in."
Eames stops moving so suddenly Arthur nearly trips over himself.
"What the fuck, Arthur?" Eames demands, but he doesn't wait around for an actual answer. He still sounds angry, but the only thing Arthur can read on his face is shock, so he lets him go.
"Well?" Dom asks, when he and the kids find Arthur again.
"We're idiots, and I think we're doomed," Arthur scowls. Dom seems genuinely sorry about forcing the issue, so he drops it and gets Phillipa to drag Arthur over to the face painting booth. The grandmother running the booth paints a red and blue rocket on Arthur's left cheek, and then Arthur lets Phillipa talk him into getting a white unicorn head on the back of his right hand.
Then Phillipa asks if they can try dunking Mr. Cohen, the gym teacher, in the tank again and Dom lets James down so he can throw properly. James immediately starts making 'you hold me' motions at Arthur, so he scoops him up and cuddles him while James pats in fascination at his red and blue cheek. It does kind of cheer Arthur up.
*
Eames returns to his classroom after all the kids have finally gone home with their families. They've cleaned most of it up, but there will probably be debris in the school's field for most of summer break. Monday he'll start taking everything in the classroom down and packing it away. School administrations always like to wait till it's three days from the start of term and then declare that they're changing all the rooms around, like having fourth graders where the kindergarteners were the year before will magically make all the students learn better. Monday the school year will be officially over for the kids, and a bare two weeks after that it'll be over for the teachers as well.
Eames goes to the front office and gets Arthur's phone number from the school secretaries. It rings four times, and then goes to voicemail. Eames barely hears the pre-recorded message, something like nerves clawing at his gut, his throat. He leaves Arthur a message and then turns his phone off so he can pretend that he isn't waiting for Arthur to phone him back.
*
"Come on, take the rest of the day off," Arthur says when he shows up at Eames's classroom door. Eames is halfway through unsticking F-J from the wall above the front blackboard.
"Excuse me?" Eames says as Arthur drifts into the room to stop a little ways from the chair Eames is standing on. It's one of the little student chairs, designed for little bodies, and it's bright yellow.
"You didn't leave a number. To call you back, I mean, when you left the message on my office machine."
"I didn't realize that was your work number," Eames says, still standing on the chair. Arthur's got his hands in his pockets, like he's casual, like Eames is a sure thing, and well, he is at this point, no maybe about it. The set of Arthur's shoulders is tense anyway though, line like the difference between hoping for something and thinking you'll get it, and that just won't do.
"I've been waiting to get you into bed for months, and kicking myself for it for nearly as long," Arthur says, cocky, but there's something nervous in his smile as he looks up at Eames. "You've been waiting for months. Do you really want to wait some more?"
Eames steps off the side of the chair directly into Arthur's space, bumping into him as he gets down because of course Arthur doesn't step back. Eames wouldn't have wanted him to. "No, I don't think that I do," he says, and goes to clock out.
"We're going to your place," Arthur tells him, buckling into the passenger seat of Eames's car.
"Oh, are we?" Eames says. His tone is light, but his grip is too tight on the steering wheel, trying to keep all the energy buzzing under his skin in, at least until they get out of the school parking lot.
"Yes. Summer vacation. Dom and the kids are at home, and I am not fucking you in a bed above a living room with a couple of small children running around in it."
Eames smirks at him from across the console, and turns left. "Anyone ever tell you that you're bossy when you're horny?"
"I am bossy all the time," Arthur says, smirking back. His gaze sweeps down from Eames's face, then back up again. It catches somewhere around Eames's mouth, and Eames licks his lips, and reminds himself to watch the road. "Drive faster."
Eames drives faster.
*
There's an awkward moment just inside Eames's front door when Arthur wonders if he should leave his shoes there and realizes he's never been to Eames's house before. He steps out of his shoes, clumsy, and when he looks up, he catches Eames giving him another of those unreadable looks, the ones Arthur never could quite figure out. He doesn't know what to do with them any more now, even though he's finally got a hint of what they'd meant. Arthur doubts Eames realizes he's still doing it, so he says, "Hey," and steps in close.
Arthur kisses Eames, and it's like last time, hot and curling up somewhere in Arthur's throat, unfolding in Arthur's chest until there's no space for air left and he has to break away to gasp against the side of Eames's mouth. Eames twists his neck and catches Arthur's lips again, drowning him in it all, and that's not like last time at all. Arthur digs his fingers white into Eames's shoulders, feels him burning hot through the cloth. He needs something under his hands to ground him.
Arthur tugs the bottom of Eames's ridiculous button down out of the waist of his pants and worms a hand down the back of Eames's jeans, just a little. Just the tips of his fingers dip below the cloth, but it's enough to feel some skin under his hand, and that's enough, just what he'd wanted.
It's not enough for Eames, though, who pulls away and says, "Bedroom," and starts pulling Arthur through the house. In the doorway, Eames kisses him again, hot and impatient, and Arthur thinks he's going to burn up with it. He shoves Eames backwards till the backs of his knees hit the bed and starts working at his belt.
Arthur steps out of his pants while Eames sits on the edge of the bed, working on his own buttons. Arthur pushes Eames down as soon as he pulls his shirt off, follows him up on the bed to straddle his hips; he doesn't even wait for Eames to get his pants off. Maybe in a moment he'll be frustrated at the denim, when he wants Eames's skin, but for right now, he doesn't care. He is getting Eames's skin, all the beautiful skin of Eames's chest and arms and back, and he's wanted to put his tongue on the dark whorls of ink on Eames's bicep since he'd first seen them at Ariadne's party.
Eames has more ink curling across his chest, crawling down across his hip bones, so Arthur rests his palm on the one low on his stomach that reads till I die, and bends down over him. Arthur sets his teeth to the cursive running across Eames's collarbone and Eames sucks in a breath and arches up.
"Shit, Arthur, get your bloody shirt off," Eames says, suddenly frantic, pulling at the collar, the buttons Arthur hasn't bothered undoing yet. He gets it off both of Arthur's shoulders, off one arm completely, but it catches around his other wrist because that's the arm that's holding him up.
Then Arthur gets his mouth on Eames's neck, latches on at the pulse point. Eames gives up on the shirt to tangle his fingers in Arthur's hair and yank him up for another kiss. The move unbalances Arthur, tumbling him down against Eames's chest. He shakes the shirt the rest of the way off, and pulls Eames closer, lets him lick his way into Arthur's mouth.
Arthur rolls his hips down, rubs his dick against all the solid press of Eames below him; Eames pushes back up until they've got a rhythm going, fast and frantic. Eames hasn't even gotten his pants off yet.
Eames runs a hand down over Arthur's ass, palm spread wide to push Arthur's hips down against his, to get more friction. Arthur grinds himself forward against Eames's stomach, his hips, his cock hard through the denim, and then grinds back against Eames's hand until Eames gets the picture and presses his fingers into the crease, just a little. Arthur presses back against that harder, more intent, and sucks on Eames's tongue.
"Fuck," Eames says, breaking away from Arthur's mouth suddenly.
"What?" Arthur, demands, stretching to chase Eames's lips. He detours to the corner of his mouth, the underside of his jaw, so Eames can finish what he's saying.
"I haven't got any rubbers. I could suck you?" Eames offers, almost apologetic, and Arthur groans and shuts his eyes to enjoy that mental image. But. He wants Eames in him.
So he says, "In my pants pocket. Just in case."
"You dirty fuck," Eames says, planting a last kiss on Arthur's lips and then scrambling off the bed. He fumbles through Arthur's pockets, digging for the condoms. Arthur pulls off his underwear while Eames is at it, and by the time Eames turns around, triumphant with condoms and lube, Arthur has settled himself in the center of the bed, pulling lazily at his cock. Arthur loves the way Eames's eyes catch there, the way he licks his lips and stares at the red tip as Arthur spreads precome everywhere. Eames tosses the condoms up on the bed.
Arthur says, "Take your pants off,' and Eames does. He doesn't take it fast and clumsy like Arthur might have thought after the way he'd pawed up one pants leg to get at Arthur's pockets just a moment ago. He's slow and deliberate about it, and Arthur holds his breath to hear the rasp of the zipper coming down.
Eames crawls out of his jeans and crawls up onto the bed until he's hovering above Arthur, and Arthur catches the back of his neck and pulls him down into a kiss, too greedy for him after months of dancing around each other like idiots to waste the opportunity. Arthur hooks a leg behind Eames's thighs, and pulls him down between his legs. "Hurry up," Arthur says, grinding back against Eames, and Eames uncaps the lube with a snap.
Arthur hisses at the sudden cool of Eames's fingers against him, but he pushes back into it anyway, because he's crazy with waiting and he can't get Eames in him fast enough. He rocks his hips back, until Eames is knuckle-deep, until he's sliding in easily, and he sinks his teeth into the muscle of Eames's shoulder when Eames gives him another.
He bears down on Eames's fingers until Eames is gasping with it and Arthur is grinding back onto them more than he's grinding his cock up against Eames's stomach, trying to get him in just that little bit deeper. Eames brushes a kiss against the side of Arthur's face, near the hairline, and Arthur's had enough. He pushes Eames off him, ignoring Eames's confused protests, and snatches up the condoms lying forgotten by their knees. He tears open the foil, and then he's got Eames by the dick, rolling the condom down.
Eames pushes in, just a little too rushed to be steady. Arthur wants to feel him, pressed down against him, pressing him to the bed, but Eames sits back on his haunches and pulls Arthur down onto him instead, hand curled around one hip. Arthur wants Eames pressing him into the bed, but he wants Eames like this too, watching the way he takes him in. The way Eames stares, rapt, as he disappears into him. There's something on Eames's face that Arthur can't put a name to, something in the focus in Eames's eyes, that has Arthur clenching down around him, trying to pull him in faster.
"Jesus Christ," Eames swears, and Arthur moans, feeling Eames fill him up, and scrabbles at his shoulders, fingers slipping in the sweat, as he pulls him down.
"Yes," Arthur babbles, and, "Come on," and Eames speeds up, fucking into him. Arthur wraps his legs around Eames's hips, opening up for him, rolling back to meet him, and Eames takes everything Arthur has to offer. Arthur tangles his fingers in the hair at the back of Eames's neck, sucking bruises into Eames's jawline. Eames gasps, and fucks into Arthur harder, desperate with it, until he's coming, in Arthur as far as he can go.
Eames freezes in place, everything tense, and Arthur squeezes his eyes shut and groans, "Fuck," wraps a hand around his cock. His pulls, fist tight, until he's coming in ragged strips over his fingers, onto his stomach and up his chest, and he groans again: "Fuck, fuck, fuck," until he's spent.
*
Later, cleaned up but still naked, Arthur wraps himself around Eames in the bathroom, pressing up behind him and tucking his head over Eames's shoulder to meet his eyes in the mirror. One of Eames's hands comes down to settle over where Arthur's hands lock around his stomach, right above the edge of the counter, but the other stays up by his face. "This is going to show tomorrow," Eames says accusingly, pointing at what are pretty clearly teeth marks just under his jaw.
"Good thing school's out for the summer," Arthur says, and gives Eames another matching mark, on the other side. "Wouldn't want you to be a bad role model."
*
epilogue:
The summer before Phillipa enters the third grade, Arthur comes home from work one day to find the dining room table covered in blueprints. Eames is coming over to join them for dinner in an hour and Arthur can hear the TV on in the next room where James and Phillipa are watching Cartoon Network. Life feels pretty perfect.
"What's all this?" Arthur asks, leaning his briefcase up against the dining room wall.
"We need the room," Dom responds.
"James isn't going to need his own room for another couple of years, and then we can just re-convert the study back into a bedroom," Arthur tells him. Underneath one corner of grid paper, Arthur finds a stack of unsigned contracts and cost estimates.
"Yeah, we could, but you're not going to move out--trying to turn my children against me from a distance would be too inefficient--which means Eames is moving in."
"Who says anyone is moving anywhere?" Arthur counters, but Dom just looks skeptical and eventually Arthur gives it up. He had been worry about the space, in a kind of idle way. It wasn't a problem quite yet, but it would be nice to have a bedroom with space for more than the twin bed in the guest room he'd appropriated.
It takes another year for the work to be finished, and the last month and a half of that has Eames set up in the study on a fold-out futon they'd picked up in Japantown because his lease was up and it seemed really, really stupid to look for a short term place while they were waiting for them to finish laying tile in the bathroom. Arthur spends half his time sleeping on the study floor, and the other half smashed sideways against the wall in his bedroom because twin beds weren't designed to hold two grown men.
The first night after Eames officially-unofficially moves in, Arthur wakes up to a tiny, squirming body dropping straight onto his diaphram. James. Arthur is James's undeniable favourite, a fact over which Arthur feels absolutely no shame gloating. James wriggles off Arthur's chest and burrows his way into the blankets between him and Eames. But, when they'd gone to bed-
Arthur opens his eyes and finds Phillipa staring him straight in the face. She's kneeling on the floor by the fold out futon and she's got her patient face on, like she'd be doing her nearly-eight-year-old best to be quiet and wait until they woke up.
Seeing Arthur's eyes open, Phillipa asks, "Uncle Arthur, why are you and Mr. Eames both sleeping on the floor? Are you having a sleep over?"
Arthur spares a second to be really, really grateful they'd both crawled into boxers and T-shirts in between having very quiet sex, and falling asleep. Then,
"Phillipa, how did you and James get in here?" Arthur asks, lifting up the edge of the comforter so she can climb in as well. She'd been eyeing James in the middle with one of those decidedly jealous faces. She snuggles up to Arthur, head pillowed on his shoulder, but then immediately rolls over onto her stomach.
"I picked the lock with a butter knife," she says, beaming at Arthur. "So are you and Mr. Eames having a sleepover?" she repeats, not to be deterred.
"Sometimes, when grown ups love each other a lot, they sleep on the floor together," Eames says then, before Arthur even realized he was awake. His voice is all rumbly with sleep and suddenly Arthur very much wishes they were alone. Phillipa clambers across the covers to snuggle up against Eames's other side, kneeing Arthur in the gut in the process.
"Are you having a party in here?" Dom says from the doorway then, and Arthur gives up entirely on morning sex.
"Daddy!" James cries from the middle of the bed, raising his arms up in the air to be picked up. Dom comes into the room and hefts him obligingly into his arms. He tosses him up into the air, once, twice, and then James is squealing delightedly, and Arthur gives up on the possibility of going back to sleep in ten minutes too. Phillipa decides everything is too exciting to be lying around, even if she is getting all of Eames's sleepy cuddles, and wriggles her way out from under the blanket. James squirms to be put down, and they go tearing off to somewhere else in the house. Something crashes, and Dom says "uh-oh" and chases after them.
Alone again, Arthur rolls up onto his side, so he's facing Eames across the pillow. "Morning." Arthur smiles, fond and happy.
"Morning," Eames rumbles back at him.
"You know this means we can never ever have sex in here again, right? If Phillipa can unlock the door from the outside with a butter knife."
Eames just drags Arthur close enough to kiss, morning breath and all, and then rolls over and goes back to sleep.
*
Phillipa is absolutely delighted when Eames lets her help them move rooms, carrying books one or two at a time from Eames's boxes in the garage to stack on his old bookshelves, rescued from storage and finally put up in the addition. James gets into everything, endlessly curious about this process of carrying things from Arthur's room or the garage or the living room--everywhere Eames had crammed his things temporarily--so all moving of heavy or bulky objects has to be done with extra care to a four-year-old getting underfoot.
Ariadne skips out on helping entirely by being conveniently out of town when the construction finally gets done. No one comes right out and says anything, but they all suspect that she secretly extends her visit home a few times to get out of coming home straight into helping her thesis advisor's co-parents change rooms. Yusuf isn't so lucky, and complains about Eames calling in his 'oldest friend' card two times in six months.
"There are not enough beers in the world," Yusuf says darkly, holding up one end of the world's heaviest dresser.
Eames grunts, and shifts his grip, and only says, "James, why don't you go find Arthur and see if he needs any help," to prevent him from becoming a James-shaped smudge in the hallway when they crush him with furniture.
"Ok!" James calls, and runs on little toddler legs back in the direction of the new bedrooms. Eames has never been so grateful Arthur is James's favourite, because it means he can put the bloody dresser down sooner.
*
Moving from one part of the house to the addition takes about three weeks all told, just because there's no real reason to rush. It's mid-summer by the time everything's done, and by the time Arthur crawls into bed with Eames and realizes there's nothing left to do, and promptly decides he's never getting out of bed again. It's a lie, since he plans on going to work in the morning, but he doesn't care. He doesn't even have the energy to push Eames off when he rolls over on top of him and threatens to never move again.
When he does drag himself out of bed in the morning, Dom's already got the kids both up and eating breakfast.
"What's going on?" Arthur asks, because usually everyone but Arthur gets to sleep in during the summer.
"We taking a trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa," Dom says, refilling Phillipa's glass of milk.
"Miles and Marie are in France," Arthur says kind of stupidly, just because he's so confused. There's no way Dom would have gotten plane tickets properly on his own, or at least, not without Arthur hearing something about them first.
"Not those grandparents. They're coming here for Christmas. My parents, in Nebraska. We're driving," Dom says before Arthur can say anything about flight times. "No childhood is complete without traumatic drives cross-country tormenting your siblings in the backseat."
"But," Arthur says, as Phillipa dutifully moves her plate and her glass to the kitchen counter. James tries too, but Dom makes him climb back up into his chair and take three more bites of his peanut butter toast first.
"Besides, I thought you and Eames might want to enjoy having your very own bedroom by yourselves for a week."
"Oh," is all Arthur can respond to that, because the idea, now that it's been put into his head, sounds very appealing indeed.
Dom calls when they get there to let Arthur and Eames know they've arrived safely, and then it's basically radio silence after that until Saturday, the night before they're starting back. "So, I think we'll leave a little after lunch tomorrow and see how far we can get before stopping for dinner and a hotel. Then we'll take the rest of the drive on Monday. We might get in pretty late, so don't start worrying unless you don't hear from us by Wednesday morning," Dom says.
"Sounds good. How was the visit?"
"Good! Mom threatened to kidnap them both and keep them forever. She got the biggest kick out of James's family drawings, though, now that he's got all three of us in them. She'd have him explain them to all her friends in town, and cackle to herself at their politely confused expressions. 'This is Daddy, an' this is Uncle Arthur, an' this is Uncle Mr. Eames. He taught Phillipa kindergarten but now he lives with us so Uncle Arthur and Uncle Mr. Eames can have sleepovers on the floor an' we just got new rooms in the house an' Phillipa an' me got to help move stuff! Big heavy stuff like Uncle Arthur's books cause I'm a big kid now.' Mom was just delighted by the whole thing.
"Dad fixed up my old bike and taught Phillipa to ride it. I thought there were going to be tears when I told her she had to leave it at Grandpa's house. Oh, hey, it's dinner time. I've got to go," Dom says.
"Ok. Drive safely tomorrow," Arthur says and hangs up the phone.
"Well?" asks Eames.
"They plan to be home Monday night, barring road trip-induced sibling-cide."
"That's not a word, love. You know that, right?" Eames says.
Arthur swats him. "Shut up. You miss them too. Now take your shirt off. We're making the most of the rest of our alone time."
Note: Warp & Weft timestamp - 1/2 Cup Sugar.
Part 1
If you're coming in from the kink meme, go here.
The traffic is awful and Arthur is late to the next PTA meeting, so he slips in quietly and sits down at the back. He hasn't missed too much. The secretary is wrapping up a brief summary of the last meeting's minutes, and then cedes the floor to the president for the bulk of the day's agenda. It's about a fundraiser for the school's arts program--if they get enough votes in favour, they'll have a (free) student car wash in the parking lot. Arthur's not so naive that he doesn't realize that means parent car wash while the kids run around dumping water over each other and shrieking with laughter, playing unwitting donation bait.
Eames leans up against the wall the whole meeting, and Arthur ends up watching him for most of it instead of paying attention. The back and forth and pontification and endless opinions and clarifications don't really deserve Arthur's attention anyway. Sometimes he catches Eames glancing back at him, which makes something pleased and self-satisfied uncurl in his chest, somewhere between his stomach and his lungs, even if he does thwart all of Arthur's attempts at catching his eye.
Then Eames leaves right as they start taking the vote. Arthur waits an extra ten minutes, after, making up excuses to chat with the teachers, the other parents. Eames doesn't come back in.
Arthur has to fight the traffic on his way home too, and by the time he gets back he's in the worst mood he's been in in weeks. Everything Dom says gets on his nerves, and the third time Arthur snaps at him over how much noise he's making grading final papers, Dom asks him what crawled up his A-S-S and died and then tells him that Phillipa behaves better than Arthur is right then, and Arthur's got 24 years on her.
Arthur tells Dom to F-U-C-K himself and goes to his room before he stops remembering to spell while the kids are awake.
*
Arthur gets up extra early and makes pancakes the next morning to apologize. Dom is finally talking to him again by the second plate.
*
"Mr. Eames," says Arthur, coming up to stand by him between the new book section and about six lonely carts full of books in need of reshelving.
"Not trailing any little ones today?" Eames says, because kids are safe. Kids have nothing to do with the way Arthur still, despite Eames's better judgment, looks devastatingly gorgeous in a jumper and a pair of dark jeans, or the way that his hair has just the slightest curl as it's brushed away from Arthur's face. Eames never thought he'd be the type of person to hide behind children. He's not proud of this moment.
"No, I've left the ducklings at home," Arthur says. Home, Eames thinks. Arthur's home, Cobb's children. Cobb. "They called and said some of my interlibrary loan books had come in. They only hold them for three days, so I couldn't put it off, even for a Saturday morning sleeping in." Arthur gestures to the books he's holding.
Eames leans forward, and Arthur obligingly holds up his short stack of books. Salt: A World History, and Um -- Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean. "You made a special trip to the library to get those? A history of salt; you wanted to read a history of salt so much that you asked them to find it for you special?" Eames asks.
"I felt like my brain was going to get stuck in Dr. Seuss-land forever. Don't get me wrong. Dr. Seuss is classic, but there are only so many times you can read Green Eggs and Ham before you wish ham and eggs had never been invented." Arthur expression is grave, but his eyes are wry.
"I do not like them, Sam-I-Am, I do not like green eggs and ham," Eames says. He can't help himself, not with the way Arthur is looking at him, the way it twists in his chest that Arthur lets him see him open and playful.
"Would you like them here or there?" Arthur asks, seriously, and Eames for an instant has the dizzying, wild, impossible thought that Arthur is asking him something else entirely.
Still. "I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere," Eames tells him, slightly less seriously because he can't keep the smile off his face. Eames had never imagined his Saturday morning would contain such a delightful joint recitation. His Saturday mornings usually don't.
"So you can see how I might need some stimulating reading--or at least, reading that's stimulating for someone who'd learned how to read a couple decades ago," Arthur says.
"Here," Eames says, plucking a book off a reshelving cart. "Try this one. I think it'll do you good, once you're finished learning about salt." He hides the cover until Arthur puts out a mock-grudging hand to take it, and then drops the hardcover book into his waiting fingers. Overachievers: the Secret Lives of Driven Kids. Arthur arches an eyebrow at him.
"Very subtle, Mr. Eames," he says.
"What can I say?" says Eames, grinning outright now. "I've never been very good at subtle." Something in Arthur's expression shifts then, shifts from amused and playful to amused and a little bit like interest, and oh no. No, Eames isn't, he can't. Eames wasn't supposed to do any of this at all. Eames is supposed to be keeping his distance, and he is failing miserably at it, and he needs to leave, now; so he does. He checks his watch, just for show, and lies through his teeth about being late for something, and he leaves calmly but quickly, hoping like hell Arthur can't tell that he's really running away.
Eames takes his books to return to one of the other branches, even though it means driving an extra 40 minutes. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.
*
In January, there's an actual parent-teacher conference--not like the meet and greet at the beginning of the year--where the teacher schedules a meeting with every student's guardian or guardians and talks about their behavior in class and their academic progress, such as it is for kindergarteners. Theirs is scheduled for a Tuesday night.
Arthur and Dom both plan to go, which is, of course, why their childcare for the night falls through in disasterous ways. They try to find alternatives, but Mrs. Eisington next door is out of town, off to her yearly "girls' Vegas trip." Melissa Williams, the seventeen year old down the block, broke her wrist in lacross practice two days before and is higher than a kite on pain meds. As a last ditch effort, Dom calls Ariadne.
That goes straight to voicemail, so Dom stays home. Arthur would never ever admit to cheating at rock-paper-scissors, but he might have cheated, just a little bit. Arthur might, if pressed, admit to taking things like student teacher meetings a little too seriously, never mind the ridiculously attractive teacher conducting this particular meeting.
Something about Eames is stilted and shuttered when Arthur gets there, as he settles into the miniature chair across the table. It feels like being careful, and Arthur wants to push and push until he finds out what it is.
Eames's eyes linger just a little too long on Arthur's mouth, though, and his hands are just a little too close to the heat of Arthur's skin when he points something out on the print-out Arthur's given about Phillipa's progress for the first half of the school year. It makes Arthur's skin itch.
"...and mandatory state testing doesn't start until first grade. Anything else you want to address while you're here?" Eames finishes.
"I read that book you recommended. It was a good read--gave me a lot of ideas. I think we'll need to sign Phillipa up for supplemental math courses, so she doesn't think that girls can't do math. It's so hard to counter societal messages. Also, I think we should find her a Chinese tutor and maybe look into somewhere she can do advanced reading lessons," Arthur tells him, just to get a rise out of him. "We'd probably be able to swing the English reading on our own though. There are pros and cons to getting a professional, but doing it yourself means you know exactly what kind of progress the pupil is making."
"I think you might have missed the point of the book," Eames says at last, carefully, and clearly nonplussed. Arthur smirks at him, and waits the full beat it takes before Eames realizes Arthur is fucking with him and he starts laughing.
*
"I'm having a pot luck at my house on Sunday," Yusuf says one Thursday when he comes to pick Ariadne up. She'd come back with Dom from the university with a pile of half-graded papers, and conned Phillipa into helping her alphabetize the ones she finished and running them to Dom like a courier by convincing her it was the best game ever. Arthur has to kind of admire resourcefulness like that, even if it’s taking shameless advantage of the children under his care. "Do you think you can make it?"
"Eames has already said he's coming," Ariadne interjects, sly with the way she eyes Arthur. Yusuf frowns.
"I'm not sure that's-" he starts to say, but Ariadne's already tugging him out the door.
"See you on Sunday!" Ariadne calls from the driveway, just before climbing into the passenger seat.
Dinner's nice, busy, chaotic in the good way that means there are a lot of people crammed around a too-small table all having a good time. Dinner's nice, but Arthur's going slowly crazy because one minute Eames is laughing at his jokes and the next he's avoiding looking at him, eyes fixed on his plate, or face turned very carefully away as he listens to another story down the table. Arthur's never liked playing games, but with Eames, Arthur can't figure out what he's trying to do, what he's trying to get, which makes it worse.
Arthur feels like he's strung out on the end of an elastic line, bouncing back and forth, but if he concentrates hard enough on the way Ariadne is demolishing Dom on the Wii, he can forget that. So Arthur focuses on enjoying himself like he focuses on contract sub-clauses, and it mostly works.
"Where's the bathroom?" Arthur asks Yusuf, while Dom protests loudly that Wii bowling is nothing like actual bowling and that Ariadne might not be taking any classes from him, but Dom can still fail her. Eames is in the garage, bringing in another bottle of white and another bottle of red. Arthur's annoyed with himself that he'd still, despite his best efforts, been paying enough attention to Eames to know that. He doesn’t know where half the other people still at the potluck are, not even the ones he’s known for years. In the kitchen talking, probably, or out in the back yard.
"Down the hall on the right. The door on the left is a closet; don't go in there," Yusuf says.
Arthur nods, and heads off, not quite curious enough about what Yusuf could be keeping in his closet to bother snooping. When Arthur comes out again, he runs into Eames.
Eames is looking at him, caught in the small space between the bathroom and the coat closet, just looking at him, and Arthur has no idea what he's thinking. He never does. Eames is looking at him, like he's caught out, like he wants him, like he wants to run and Arthur can't think of any good reason for that. He doesn't want to give him another chance to slip away, doesn't want to give Eames another couple of weeks of hemming and hawing and skirting around the edge of what do we want to do?
So Arthur steps forward and steps forward again, and Eames just looks at him and doesn't step back.
Arthur just stands in his space for a moment, waiting for a reaction, a go ahead, a get away, for something definite. "Arthur," Eames says. Arthur can't read his tone of voice, but he's looking at Arthur's lips now, face tilted just a little bit up, but his eyes locked on Arthur's mouth like he can't tear them away. That's good enough.
Arthur leans in, brushing his lips over Eames's, and Eames sucks in a breath, like he's surprised, like he wants, so Arthur pulls him in.
Eames's lips are wet and soft, but absolutely nothing about the way Eames kisses him back is pliant. It's blind and searching and getting, and all Arthur can think when Eames ratchets it up another notch is yes, finally. It's burning him up, fast and sharp like guncotton, and if the back and forth from before was going to drive him crazy, this might just kill him. And then, Eames pushes Arthur back and looks at him, absolutely, unmistakably horrified.
"Arthur, we can't do this," he says. He's got a hand on Arthur's chest, fingers clenched in his shirt, not letting go but just as definitely holding him back.
Arthur doesn't lean back. "Why not?"
"What would Phillipa think?" And now Arthur pulls away. Eames fingers tighten in his shirt for a second, and then release. Let him go.
Arthur schools his features until they're carefully bland. "I wasn't really planning on telling her. She's five." Eames's hand is still kind of hovering between them, like it can't decide whether or not he's going to reach for Arthur, or if he needs to guard against him. Arthur looks at it for a moment, but Eames doesn't say anything else. Whatever, Arthur's done with this. He leaves.
Eames doesn't try to stop him.
*
By the time Eames gets his shit together enough to go back out into the main room with the wine he'd promised to fetch, Arthur and Cobb and the kids have left. Eames tells himself firmly it's for the best, and tries to pretend he believes it.
He hands off the wine to Ariadne, who's pouting because she's been banned from the Wii because she gets too competitive. He doesn't ask where Arthur and Dom and the kids have gone; he's just grateful they are, that he won't have to avoid anyone's eyes when he makes his goodbyes.
He doesn't stay, even though he'd been planning to, at least for a little longer. No one remarks on it. Sunday is a school night, after all.
It is, Eames finds, much worse to find you can have what you want when you still can't have it. Whatever Arthur's offering isn't what Eames wants anyway.
*
Arthur stops going to PTA meetings altogether. He just, he doesn't want to risk it, and feels incredibly stupid for giving in to the feeling. It's not the most mature thing he's ever done, but Arthur considers it considerably more mature than his other options, so he takes it. Arthur hasn't been this hung up on someone since Tadashi, and that had imploded spectacularly.
He makes Dom go to all of them instead, and resolves not to let himself grill Dom about the details when he gets back because if he can't be mature enough to go to a half an hour to forty-five minute meeting where he might (ok, probably would) run into Eames, then he is not allowed to drag other people through his shit.
Dom tries to ask him about it, once. Arthur just presses his lips into a thin line, and goes back to mashing the potatoes a little bit more viciously than before. Dom doesn't press the issue.
*
"I'm in love with an arsehole," Eames tells his scotch mournfully. The scotch, at this point, is the only one listening, because Eames has been saying variations of the same thing for the past forty-five minutes, and even the bartender has started ignoring him except when he waves for a refill. It'd be cheaper to do serious drinking like this with his own scotch, but there are lines and alcoholics, and Eames is not crossing any more of them. The lines, he's not crossing. Cross alcoholics are different.
"I think you've had just about enough, buddy," the bartender says at Eames's next attempt at a refill, and Eames is so despondent about everything that he doesn't even try to fight it. He just resigns himself to a life without lovely scotch and lovely Arthur and lovely loveliness forever. The bartender sets a glass of water down in front of Eames, and Eames just sighs and lays his face down on the bar.
"Hey now, no sleeping here. Got someone we can call?" the bartender says, forcing Eames to sit up a little, and nudging the water at him. Eames takes an obliging drink.
"Arthur is an arsehole," Eames tells him. 'D'I tell you? He kissed me, but he can't kiss me and it's no good."
"What's this Arthur's number?" the bartender asks.
"Dunno," Eames says. He takes another drink of water because the scotch is all gone and he's thirsty. Eames starts to lay his head back down again, but the bartender intercepts him.
"Hey, you got a cell phone right?" the bartender says. Eames nods his head, drinks more water. "Lemme see your cell phone? Just for a minute. I'll get you another drink," he promises. Eames nods again, and fishes his mobile out to hand over. He watches while the bartender presses some buttons and then makes a call. Eames doesn't like the way the room is spinning anymore. It used to be spinning sympathetically, but now it's being malicious and gloating a little about it.
Eames puts his head down, successfully, because the bartender is busy talking into his mobile. The room may not like him anymore, but the counter top is still his friend.
"Here's your phone back," says the bartender, putting down a new glass of water in front of Eames as promised. "Your friend Yusuf is coming to pick you up." Eames nods his head against the counter, and the bartender doesn't try to make him sit up again, so Eames counts it as a win.
"We are changing me from your emergency contacts when you're sober," Yusuf says as he fights gravity to get Eames into his car. Eames nods at him sloppily, but isn't very concerned because he thinks Yusuf probably doesn't really mean it.
Eames wakes up in the middle of the night with a glass of water and a couple of aspirin on the table by his bed. He's got his shoes off, at least, but he's still in all his clothes and he smells like a distillery, which isn't helping his heaving stomach any. It's not until he's thrown up into the toilet twice, tried to rinse most of the taste out of his mouth, and staggered back to bed that he notices the crumpled post it note in his sheets.
"I called you in sick pre-emptivelyx Told them it was a stomach bugx Get your shit togetherx I'll come round tomorrow after work to make sure you're not deadx"
That's when Eames remembers it's a Friday, and he'd gotten drunk off his arse on a school night. Brokenhearted weeknight benders were acceptable in college, and when he had an art project but no real schedule; they're not acceptable now. No more of this. Arthur's not worth it.
*
When Phillipa comes home from school and tells them all about her substitute teacher Ms. Vazquez, Arthur squishes his concern down firmly and then ignores it while nodding along attentively. Eames isn't interested, and he's kind of chicken shit about expressing it. Arthur doesn't need that.
He doesn't call the school on Monday, not even to make sure Eames isn't going to pass anything contagious off to the students.
At work, Arthur's new restructuring plans for a silicon valley computer chip maker are so vicious President Saito calls him and tells him to tone it back a little; the company contracting them as consultants isn't going that bankrupt. During the team meeting, Markus buries his attention in the draft in front of him, studiously ignoring Arthur until Arthur actually starts to feel guilty enough to buy them all coffee. Then El spends the rest of the meeting smirking at him over her Arthur-sponsored coffee because he'd previously rejected all four of her decidedly less ruthless plans and they'd probably have to go with one of them now.
*
The fifth time in a week Arthur makes apology pancakes, Dom tells him to stop bothering. Forgiveness isn't something you can earn anyway. Arthur scowls and flips another pancake onto a plate. They're chocolate chip this time. He's only mostly sure Dom's talking about Arthur's behavior and not trying to give him a 'experienced life lesson'.
Then the latest restructuring job kicks into high gear, and he can take out his pissy moods on his coworkers instead.
*
When Arthur gets home from work, he's exhausted. Dom has dinner on the table, and is keeping half an eye on the ratio between the number of peas on Phillipa's plate that actually make it into her mouth, and the number of peas that she tries to hide in her napkin. James smiles as soon as Arthur walks in the door, all three of his teeth shining white in his mouth around half a mouthful of partially chewed hot dog. James brandishes a small piece of boiled hot dog at Arthur, and makes a happy noise. Arthur's just worked a 70 hour week in three days only to have the client decide they are going to do it all in-house instead, and Arthur is embarrassingly grateful that a non-verbal toddler is happy to see him.
"I'm home," Arthur says. He drops his bag by the door.
"Dinner just started," Dom says, bending down to rescue some dropped peas from the floor. "I wasn't sure if you'd make it, so I put your stuff on a plate in the kitchen. Was going to saran-wrap it, but now I don't have to. Should still be warm."
It is still warm, and Arthur settles into his seat at the table with something like bliss. Arthur doesn't even care that it's hot dogs and peas from a can and leftover mashed potatoes he'd made over the weekend. Phillipa chatters about her day at school, and James makes happy, gurgling sounds and the odd word, and Arthur tells them how getting Thursday and Friday off doesn't really make up for losing the latest job at such a late stage in the game. Arthur is home, and Arthur is happy, and Arthur is so tired he barely thinks of Eames at all.
And then Dom drops the bomb on him.
"What do you mean, I'm chaperoning a class trip to the zoo on Friday?" It's a valid question, particularly for a Wednesday night. "You're chaperoning a trip to the zoo on Friday," Arthur tells Dom. Perhaps, if he clarifies for him, Dom will say, 'Oh, right, yes. I mean I'm chaperoning a trip to the zoo on Friday while you sleep off a week from hell and continue to avoid Phillipa's kindergarten teacher.' Though, perhaps, on second thought, not quite like that because Arthur is not steadfastly avoiding Eames, and even if he were, Dom wouldn't know about it.
Dom does not say any variation of that, however, which is what Arthur was afraid of. Instead he says, "No, I was supposed to be chaperoning, but I've just been invited to give a guest lecture at Stanford on my paper about the cognitive effects of lucid dreaming on Friday, so I have to leave Thursday night."
Arthur would suspect that Dom is conspiring against him, except he doesn't really think Dom has it in him to succeed. Arthur doesn't think Dom's above trying--he's definitely conniving enough--but Dom is, at heart, a big-picture kind of person. It's one of the reasons Arthur had moved in in the first place. He couldn't abandon sweet little Phillipa and James to that.
"Someone else can do it," Arthur says, but he knows he'll go. One day isn't a lot of time for the school to find a replacement chaperone, phone trees or not. "Right, ok. Fine." Arthur gives up before Dom even has a chance to say anything else. He just doesn't have the energy to fight.
*
The trip starts out well enough. There's an hour or so of children doggedly not learning anything because they're too excited about the zoo to sit still, much less pay attention. Any chaperones who hadn't just stayed when they'd dropped their kids off are all supposed to arrive by 8, the kids buddy up and chaperones claim their sets of eight students each, and then they all go out to the parking lot.
Both kindergarten classes and all the chaperones are piled onto a couple of school buses and drive across the city to the gigantic park that houses the Los Angeles Zoo. They've got the school discount, and while there are two more chaperones than the zoo lets in for free, they just divide the extra 10 bucks among all the adults, and they're through the gates by 10:15.
"Alright, everyone. You're responsible for your own group of children. We'll meet up here at 12 for lunch and again at 3, when we'll regroup to get back on the buses and head home. Kids, you stay with your buddy, and with your chaperone. Either myself or Mr. Eames will be here by the elephant statue all day, so if you get separated from your group, you come back here first. Don't try to find your group by yourself," the other kindergarten teacher instructs them all. The kids are barely listening, but she's an old hand at this, and just waits until they quiet down, and repeats herself as many times as necessary.
When she's satisfied with the response she gets, she nods, and Eames says, "Alright then. Off you go," and then Arthur is preoccupied with corralling eight overly excited kindergartners as they rush off to see the small mammal exhibit first.
Arthur has to hold Grace Lee's hand through the reptile house, because the other kids are resolute in their desire to see snakes and lizards. It was difficult to get her to agree to the compromise, but leaving her outside by herself was even less of an option than letting the other 7 kids go in on their own. Nothing in the world will make her go near the komodo dragons, so Arthur diverts them to the new baby rock hyraxes instead.
They spend a lot of time with the birds in the Asian Rainforest exhibit, and are absolutely fascinated when Arthur tells them that birds are little dinosaurs with wings. Phillipa falls in love with a tiny little deer there called a chevrotain, and it takes Arthur an extra fifteen minutes to convince her that they absolutely cannot have one as a pet. Grace, unexpectedly, thinks giant fruit bats are the coolest things ever and makes Arthur read every single placard with a picture of a bat on it to her.
Once Arthur's torn them away from the Asian rainforests, they go to look at meerkats and zebra and chacoan peccary and North American river otters, and then head back to the group meeting place for lunch only a little late.
It's chaos when they get there. Mrs. Anderson is off to one side talking in a low voice to a clearly panicking chaperone from the other class. Eames and the other chaperone who's already back are keeping an eye on the gaggle of kids, so Arthur takes his over to join the group and asks the other parent what's going on.
"One of her kids is missing. She's half-convinced she's been kidnapped. Mrs. Anderson is talking her down." Despite the distance between the distraught parent and the students, some of the kids are still picking up the frantic atmosphere and turning it into misbehaviour. Arthur stops Embert from putting a dead cicada down the back of another little boy's shirt and tries to field Phillipa's persistent questions about what they're having for lunch.
"Hey, Adam," Eames says. "Now that Arthur's here to help, I'm going to go put a notification in with the zoo's staff that Alice is missing and have their employees keep an eye out for her." Arthur can't help the way his heart stumbles when Eames says his name, and then immediately feels guilty because, missing child. Priorities.
Adam nods, and Eames disappears into the crowds in the direction of the information desk. Mrs. Anderson and Alice's chaperone check in briefly with them to say they're going to retrace the exhibits they'd stopped at, to see if they can find her themselves.
"Where did you go first?" Mrs. Anderson asks as they leave.
"The Jaguars. And then the tamarins. She was definitely with Rachel when we were at the gorilla exhibit," Arthur hears her respond, still sounding shaky.
Nina Gonzales's mother and someone else's mother arrive together with their kids, and, a few minutes later, the last chaperone comes back with her kids. Eames returns before there's too much aimless milling around or the kids break down into cranky hunger-tears--just in time for a little boy to go shaky-pale and collapse. Several other children scream as he goes down, one setting another off, and then it seems like half the combined classes start to cry.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Eames is good in a crisis. He gets everyone to stop screaming and has the boy up in his arms and to the nearby med station in a few quick moments, efficiently delegating crying duty to Arthur and Mrs. Gonzales, and general 'watch' duty to the other remaining chaperones. Arthur shouldn't find that as hot as he does--but he does, even as he's getting half a dozen hiccuping children to stop crying altogether.
A little bit later, Eames is waving the entire group over to the med station, where the boy who'd passed out is lying down, but conscious. He's got a bandaid applied to one elbow, where he'd scraped himself falling.
Once they get in range, one of the boy's friends attaches himself to Eames's leg and won't let go, but Eames just pats him on the head and tells him his friend will be fine. The boy nods gravely, still clinging to Eames while Eames explains the situation to the chaperones. "Just a little heat exhaustion. He just needs to cool off and to drink a lot of water. Why don't we start getting these kids fed before anything else happens, hmm?"
It takes all five chaperones to get the kids settled into tables and benches in the nearby the zoo concession area. They're stressed and cranky now, and it's almost a relief when Arthur and Adam get to go drag the coolers of sandwiches and fruit in from the bus in the parking lot.
By the time they've gone to get bottles of water and juice boxes for everyone, the tableau is considerably calmer. Mrs. Anderson and the worried chaperone are both back, Alice holding both their hands as she walks between them. She'd been at the lion exhibit the whole time, totally oblivious to the fact that she'd been left behind, utterly enraptured by one of the younger lionesses trying to dunk the older one in the pool in the enclosure.
Arthur can't help but smile at Eames wearily when he finally comes back from the med station, paperwork filled out, parents notified and the boy much recovered, because Eames has earned a break. Eames shoots him a tired smile back, and sucks apple juice out of a tiny straw in a way that Arthur finds a lot more endearing than he's currently allowing himself to acknowledge, even to himself.
By the time lunch is over, Embert is still trying to put bugs down other kids' shirts, but all the other trauma of the past hour seems to have been forgotten in favour of the opportunity to go see the elephants and tigers. Arthur doggedly prevents Phillipa from sticking something slimy down the back of Embert's shirt ("Because that's not ok for you to do either, Phillipa") and takes his group to see the wallabies. He's always wanted to see the wallabies.
*
Even a blessedly detached Arthur--an Arthur who doesn't flirt, who doesn't look at him like they're sharing a joke, who only occasionally smiles, guarded, because it's polite--runs Eames ragged. He misses the attention, and he hates that he misses the attention, and he's depressingly grateful that the time he'll actually be spending in Arthur's company will be minimal. He's only just getting to the point where he can think about Arthur without remembering the way his lips felt under his.
The day is hectic, but thankfully all the crises contained themselves to lunchtime. Arthur is dependable, and the rest of the day goes well. The kids are all exhausted but happy on the way back to school, where they perk up just enough to chatter excitedly to friends in other grades as they climb into buses or into parents' ears as they get picked up.
Mrs. Anderson takes the time to thank all the chaperones for volunteering all day, and Arthur and Phillipa only wave at Eames from a distance before climbing into their own car and heading home. Eames almost feels like they've reached a truce. All Eames has to do now is convince himself he's happy he's signed the terms.
*
Arthur keeps avoiding PTA meetings, but it's a tired, determined kind of avoidance now, all the anger gone out of him. He resigns himself to being hopelessly, half in love with Eames for a while and the very least Arthur can do is continue avoiding him until it passes.
As a plan, it works pretty well--the avoidance, at least--despite the way that a tangled knot of anticipation and dread lodges itself in his gut whenever he has to go into the elementary school. The school year ends in a little less than a month, and that's all Arthur needs to get through. Less than a month, and he won't ever have to think about this again, about smart, sly, amusing Mr. Eames. Won't have to think about wanting Eames and getting shot down and continuing to want Eames anyway, and the awful possibility of bumping into him casually, or Phillipa coming home with stories about her school day innocently full of him.
Arthur sees more of Ariadne and Roth as finals come upon them, both of them spending so much time grading frantically for undergraduate classes that Arthur isn't sure how they have time to write their own papers. Two nights out of three Ariadne just sleeps over, curled up under a blanket on the love seat in the study because she's tiny enough to fit, and every third night or so, Yusuf comes to collect her because, he jokes, "driving her home is practically the only time I get to see her until the end of term."
Eventually they run out of papers to grade, and Ariadne disappears completely for four days straight, after which she shows up at their house briefly to ask Dom if he'll be her thesis adviser. She hands him a term paper as soon as he's agreed, telling him it's going to become her QP1, and then drives home to sleep forever.
Arthur hits a lull at work. The days get longer, settle into that lazy stretch right before the mad dash at the end of the fiscal year in June and July. May's nearly over. Arthur starts to think that just maybe he'll make it. He hasn't had to try to breakfast treat his guilt away for weeks.
Of course that's when Phillipa comes home so excited she can barely talk, because her school is going to have a 'family field day' the Friday before school lets out for the summer. It seems like an event that's half field-day, half carnival, with sack races and water balloon tosses, cake walks and face painting, and most exciting of all, a dunking booth. Phillipa tells them all about the field day six separate times between getting from home from school and being put to bed, even though it's a whole week away.
"You and Daddy and James are going to come, right? Right, Uncle Arthur?" Phillipa asks, snuggling into her pillow. Arthur nods. He doesn't even have to ask Dom about it. Obviously they're all going.
*
Phillipa races back to them the instant the parent volunteer gets her leg untied from Nina's. "Daddy, did you see? Were we fast? We were so fast!" She's bouncing around them all in an excited circle because Dom's holding James and doesn't have the arms to pick her up. She hasn't even had any of the cotton candy yet. The inevitable crash isn't going to be fun later, but right now her sheer, unmitigated glee is kind of contagious.
"So," Dom says, once Phillipa's calmed down a little, and they're watching the other half of her class start their own three-legged races. "Want to talk about Mr. Eames?"
"What about Mr. Eames?" Arthur asks dryly.
"He's kind of all you talk about," Dom says. Lying bastard. "Corporate takeover, my inability to do laundry properly, and Mr. Eames."
"That is untrue. Except for the laundry. You're old enough to know better, really."
Cobb actually rolls his eyes at him. This is becoming a distressing pattern in Arthur's personal life. No one at work rolls their eyes at Arthur. No one would dare. "Stop trying to change the subject. Sometimes you pretend you're complaining about how Mr. Eames doesn't stress the value of simple arithmetic skills for Phillipa's future enough, but I've known you since Mal," here Dom pauses to swallow thickly, but presses on, "was your TA in undergraduate phonology. You do it with that tone of voice that means you secretly want to pick out curtains with him. You haven't done that since, what's his face, that chemical engineer."
No, they are absolutely not talking about Tadashi. "Eames can't be trusted to pick out curtains on his own."
Dom arches an eyebrow at him, well, archly. Arthur's caught in the position where if he tries to say anything, he's protesting too much, but if he doesn't say anything Dom effectively wins.
Dom's eyes dart to the side, breaking the moment. He smiles, "Hi, Mr. Eames. Enjoying field day? James, can you wave hi to Mr. Eames?" Eames waves at James the way adults who like children wave at toddlers, this expression of sheer delight on his face. James waves a pudgy hand obligingly back, and then stuffs it in his mouth to chew on it a little. Dom smiles down at James indulgently. Then Dom shoots Arthur a look, too fast to make out, and fucks off somewhere, taking both kids with him. Abandoning him with Eames. Lying traitor bastard.
"Mr. Eames," Arthur says.
"Arthur," Eames returns. There's a painfully awkward moment where no one says anything and Arthur wonders how quickly he can run away without looking like he's running away. Eames breaks it. "Your family seems to have left you rather purposefully. This is rather awkward, particularly as Mr. Cobb told me he'd like to speak with me while he was here today."
"What would Dom want to talk to you about?" Arthur asks. He's got an idea. He doesn't much like it.
"Well," Eames says, careful, neutral, "I rather got the impression it was you." Arthur about sees red.
"Of course he did," Arthur manages. He keeps his face carefully blank; he's good at it. Eames looks away then, like he can't bear looking at him any more. Arthur's just barely angry enough with Dom that he can tell himself that it doesn't hurt, not even a little.
"Don't worry, Arthur," Eames says, and something's gone funny in his voice, twisted up in a way Arthur can't figure out. "I'll tell him nothing's happened. I'm not ok being part of your little games, or whatever it is the two of you are doing, but I'm not going to wreck anything for you either."
Arthur stops, because that isn't where he'd expected Eames to go, even if he is trying to let Arthur down gently. It doesn't even make sense. "Wait, what?"
"Don't fuck around with me as you work out whatever your problems with Dom are. Leave me out of and I'll lie about Yusuf's party."
"Why would Dom care about what happened at Yusuf's party?" Arthur's being slow, he knows he is, but it's like his brain is misfiring. His conclusions aren't adding up.
Eames boggles at him, and a lot of things suddenly start falling into place for Arthur, in one of those blinding rushes, like a rock slide, the kind he gets just before the corporate plan he's working on comes together at last. The flirting and the pulling away. What would Phillipa think? and why that might possibly matter.
"Eames, I think we need to talk."
"I don't really think we do," Eames says, turning away already, and that can't happen, not if Arthur's right this time.
"Eames, really," Arthur says, jogging up beside him as he picks up his pace. "I'm not, Dom's not- I mean, Mal--Dom's wife--died last year. It was really sudden. I just, Dom couldn't do it by himself, two little kids. I've known them both forever; I was the best man at their wedding. So I moved in."
Eames stops moving so suddenly Arthur nearly trips over himself.
"What the fuck, Arthur?" Eames demands, but he doesn't wait around for an actual answer. He still sounds angry, but the only thing Arthur can read on his face is shock, so he lets him go.
"Well?" Dom asks, when he and the kids find Arthur again.
"We're idiots, and I think we're doomed," Arthur scowls. Dom seems genuinely sorry about forcing the issue, so he drops it and gets Phillipa to drag Arthur over to the face painting booth. The grandmother running the booth paints a red and blue rocket on Arthur's left cheek, and then Arthur lets Phillipa talk him into getting a white unicorn head on the back of his right hand.
Then Phillipa asks if they can try dunking Mr. Cohen, the gym teacher, in the tank again and Dom lets James down so he can throw properly. James immediately starts making 'you hold me' motions at Arthur, so he scoops him up and cuddles him while James pats in fascination at his red and blue cheek. It does kind of cheer Arthur up.
*
Eames returns to his classroom after all the kids have finally gone home with their families. They've cleaned most of it up, but there will probably be debris in the school's field for most of summer break. Monday he'll start taking everything in the classroom down and packing it away. School administrations always like to wait till it's three days from the start of term and then declare that they're changing all the rooms around, like having fourth graders where the kindergarteners were the year before will magically make all the students learn better. Monday the school year will be officially over for the kids, and a bare two weeks after that it'll be over for the teachers as well.
Eames goes to the front office and gets Arthur's phone number from the school secretaries. It rings four times, and then goes to voicemail. Eames barely hears the pre-recorded message, something like nerves clawing at his gut, his throat. He leaves Arthur a message and then turns his phone off so he can pretend that he isn't waiting for Arthur to phone him back.
*
"Come on, take the rest of the day off," Arthur says when he shows up at Eames's classroom door. Eames is halfway through unsticking F-J from the wall above the front blackboard.
"Excuse me?" Eames says as Arthur drifts into the room to stop a little ways from the chair Eames is standing on. It's one of the little student chairs, designed for little bodies, and it's bright yellow.
"You didn't leave a number. To call you back, I mean, when you left the message on my office machine."
"I didn't realize that was your work number," Eames says, still standing on the chair. Arthur's got his hands in his pockets, like he's casual, like Eames is a sure thing, and well, he is at this point, no maybe about it. The set of Arthur's shoulders is tense anyway though, line like the difference between hoping for something and thinking you'll get it, and that just won't do.
"I've been waiting to get you into bed for months, and kicking myself for it for nearly as long," Arthur says, cocky, but there's something nervous in his smile as he looks up at Eames. "You've been waiting for months. Do you really want to wait some more?"
Eames steps off the side of the chair directly into Arthur's space, bumping into him as he gets down because of course Arthur doesn't step back. Eames wouldn't have wanted him to. "No, I don't think that I do," he says, and goes to clock out.
"We're going to your place," Arthur tells him, buckling into the passenger seat of Eames's car.
"Oh, are we?" Eames says. His tone is light, but his grip is too tight on the steering wheel, trying to keep all the energy buzzing under his skin in, at least until they get out of the school parking lot.
"Yes. Summer vacation. Dom and the kids are at home, and I am not fucking you in a bed above a living room with a couple of small children running around in it."
Eames smirks at him from across the console, and turns left. "Anyone ever tell you that you're bossy when you're horny?"
"I am bossy all the time," Arthur says, smirking back. His gaze sweeps down from Eames's face, then back up again. It catches somewhere around Eames's mouth, and Eames licks his lips, and reminds himself to watch the road. "Drive faster."
Eames drives faster.
*
There's an awkward moment just inside Eames's front door when Arthur wonders if he should leave his shoes there and realizes he's never been to Eames's house before. He steps out of his shoes, clumsy, and when he looks up, he catches Eames giving him another of those unreadable looks, the ones Arthur never could quite figure out. He doesn't know what to do with them any more now, even though he's finally got a hint of what they'd meant. Arthur doubts Eames realizes he's still doing it, so he says, "Hey," and steps in close.
Arthur kisses Eames, and it's like last time, hot and curling up somewhere in Arthur's throat, unfolding in Arthur's chest until there's no space for air left and he has to break away to gasp against the side of Eames's mouth. Eames twists his neck and catches Arthur's lips again, drowning him in it all, and that's not like last time at all. Arthur digs his fingers white into Eames's shoulders, feels him burning hot through the cloth. He needs something under his hands to ground him.
Arthur tugs the bottom of Eames's ridiculous button down out of the waist of his pants and worms a hand down the back of Eames's jeans, just a little. Just the tips of his fingers dip below the cloth, but it's enough to feel some skin under his hand, and that's enough, just what he'd wanted.
It's not enough for Eames, though, who pulls away and says, "Bedroom," and starts pulling Arthur through the house. In the doorway, Eames kisses him again, hot and impatient, and Arthur thinks he's going to burn up with it. He shoves Eames backwards till the backs of his knees hit the bed and starts working at his belt.
Arthur steps out of his pants while Eames sits on the edge of the bed, working on his own buttons. Arthur pushes Eames down as soon as he pulls his shirt off, follows him up on the bed to straddle his hips; he doesn't even wait for Eames to get his pants off. Maybe in a moment he'll be frustrated at the denim, when he wants Eames's skin, but for right now, he doesn't care. He is getting Eames's skin, all the beautiful skin of Eames's chest and arms and back, and he's wanted to put his tongue on the dark whorls of ink on Eames's bicep since he'd first seen them at Ariadne's party.
Eames has more ink curling across his chest, crawling down across his hip bones, so Arthur rests his palm on the one low on his stomach that reads till I die, and bends down over him. Arthur sets his teeth to the cursive running across Eames's collarbone and Eames sucks in a breath and arches up.
"Shit, Arthur, get your bloody shirt off," Eames says, suddenly frantic, pulling at the collar, the buttons Arthur hasn't bothered undoing yet. He gets it off both of Arthur's shoulders, off one arm completely, but it catches around his other wrist because that's the arm that's holding him up.
Then Arthur gets his mouth on Eames's neck, latches on at the pulse point. Eames gives up on the shirt to tangle his fingers in Arthur's hair and yank him up for another kiss. The move unbalances Arthur, tumbling him down against Eames's chest. He shakes the shirt the rest of the way off, and pulls Eames closer, lets him lick his way into Arthur's mouth.
Arthur rolls his hips down, rubs his dick against all the solid press of Eames below him; Eames pushes back up until they've got a rhythm going, fast and frantic. Eames hasn't even gotten his pants off yet.
Eames runs a hand down over Arthur's ass, palm spread wide to push Arthur's hips down against his, to get more friction. Arthur grinds himself forward against Eames's stomach, his hips, his cock hard through the denim, and then grinds back against Eames's hand until Eames gets the picture and presses his fingers into the crease, just a little. Arthur presses back against that harder, more intent, and sucks on Eames's tongue.
"Fuck," Eames says, breaking away from Arthur's mouth suddenly.
"What?" Arthur, demands, stretching to chase Eames's lips. He detours to the corner of his mouth, the underside of his jaw, so Eames can finish what he's saying.
"I haven't got any rubbers. I could suck you?" Eames offers, almost apologetic, and Arthur groans and shuts his eyes to enjoy that mental image. But. He wants Eames in him.
So he says, "In my pants pocket. Just in case."
"You dirty fuck," Eames says, planting a last kiss on Arthur's lips and then scrambling off the bed. He fumbles through Arthur's pockets, digging for the condoms. Arthur pulls off his underwear while Eames is at it, and by the time Eames turns around, triumphant with condoms and lube, Arthur has settled himself in the center of the bed, pulling lazily at his cock. Arthur loves the way Eames's eyes catch there, the way he licks his lips and stares at the red tip as Arthur spreads precome everywhere. Eames tosses the condoms up on the bed.
Arthur says, "Take your pants off,' and Eames does. He doesn't take it fast and clumsy like Arthur might have thought after the way he'd pawed up one pants leg to get at Arthur's pockets just a moment ago. He's slow and deliberate about it, and Arthur holds his breath to hear the rasp of the zipper coming down.
Eames crawls out of his jeans and crawls up onto the bed until he's hovering above Arthur, and Arthur catches the back of his neck and pulls him down into a kiss, too greedy for him after months of dancing around each other like idiots to waste the opportunity. Arthur hooks a leg behind Eames's thighs, and pulls him down between his legs. "Hurry up," Arthur says, grinding back against Eames, and Eames uncaps the lube with a snap.
Arthur hisses at the sudden cool of Eames's fingers against him, but he pushes back into it anyway, because he's crazy with waiting and he can't get Eames in him fast enough. He rocks his hips back, until Eames is knuckle-deep, until he's sliding in easily, and he sinks his teeth into the muscle of Eames's shoulder when Eames gives him another.
He bears down on Eames's fingers until Eames is gasping with it and Arthur is grinding back onto them more than he's grinding his cock up against Eames's stomach, trying to get him in just that little bit deeper. Eames brushes a kiss against the side of Arthur's face, near the hairline, and Arthur's had enough. He pushes Eames off him, ignoring Eames's confused protests, and snatches up the condoms lying forgotten by their knees. He tears open the foil, and then he's got Eames by the dick, rolling the condom down.
Eames pushes in, just a little too rushed to be steady. Arthur wants to feel him, pressed down against him, pressing him to the bed, but Eames sits back on his haunches and pulls Arthur down onto him instead, hand curled around one hip. Arthur wants Eames pressing him into the bed, but he wants Eames like this too, watching the way he takes him in. The way Eames stares, rapt, as he disappears into him. There's something on Eames's face that Arthur can't put a name to, something in the focus in Eames's eyes, that has Arthur clenching down around him, trying to pull him in faster.
"Jesus Christ," Eames swears, and Arthur moans, feeling Eames fill him up, and scrabbles at his shoulders, fingers slipping in the sweat, as he pulls him down.
"Yes," Arthur babbles, and, "Come on," and Eames speeds up, fucking into him. Arthur wraps his legs around Eames's hips, opening up for him, rolling back to meet him, and Eames takes everything Arthur has to offer. Arthur tangles his fingers in the hair at the back of Eames's neck, sucking bruises into Eames's jawline. Eames gasps, and fucks into Arthur harder, desperate with it, until he's coming, in Arthur as far as he can go.
Eames freezes in place, everything tense, and Arthur squeezes his eyes shut and groans, "Fuck," wraps a hand around his cock. His pulls, fist tight, until he's coming in ragged strips over his fingers, onto his stomach and up his chest, and he groans again: "Fuck, fuck, fuck," until he's spent.
*
Later, cleaned up but still naked, Arthur wraps himself around Eames in the bathroom, pressing up behind him and tucking his head over Eames's shoulder to meet his eyes in the mirror. One of Eames's hands comes down to settle over where Arthur's hands lock around his stomach, right above the edge of the counter, but the other stays up by his face. "This is going to show tomorrow," Eames says accusingly, pointing at what are pretty clearly teeth marks just under his jaw.
"Good thing school's out for the summer," Arthur says, and gives Eames another matching mark, on the other side. "Wouldn't want you to be a bad role model."
*
epilogue:
The summer before Phillipa enters the third grade, Arthur comes home from work one day to find the dining room table covered in blueprints. Eames is coming over to join them for dinner in an hour and Arthur can hear the TV on in the next room where James and Phillipa are watching Cartoon Network. Life feels pretty perfect.
"What's all this?" Arthur asks, leaning his briefcase up against the dining room wall.
"We need the room," Dom responds.
"James isn't going to need his own room for another couple of years, and then we can just re-convert the study back into a bedroom," Arthur tells him. Underneath one corner of grid paper, Arthur finds a stack of unsigned contracts and cost estimates.
"Yeah, we could, but you're not going to move out--trying to turn my children against me from a distance would be too inefficient--which means Eames is moving in."
"Who says anyone is moving anywhere?" Arthur counters, but Dom just looks skeptical and eventually Arthur gives it up. He had been worry about the space, in a kind of idle way. It wasn't a problem quite yet, but it would be nice to have a bedroom with space for more than the twin bed in the guest room he'd appropriated.
It takes another year for the work to be finished, and the last month and a half of that has Eames set up in the study on a fold-out futon they'd picked up in Japantown because his lease was up and it seemed really, really stupid to look for a short term place while they were waiting for them to finish laying tile in the bathroom. Arthur spends half his time sleeping on the study floor, and the other half smashed sideways against the wall in his bedroom because twin beds weren't designed to hold two grown men.
The first night after Eames officially-unofficially moves in, Arthur wakes up to a tiny, squirming body dropping straight onto his diaphram. James. Arthur is James's undeniable favourite, a fact over which Arthur feels absolutely no shame gloating. James wriggles off Arthur's chest and burrows his way into the blankets between him and Eames. But, when they'd gone to bed-
Arthur opens his eyes and finds Phillipa staring him straight in the face. She's kneeling on the floor by the fold out futon and she's got her patient face on, like she'd be doing her nearly-eight-year-old best to be quiet and wait until they woke up.
Seeing Arthur's eyes open, Phillipa asks, "Uncle Arthur, why are you and Mr. Eames both sleeping on the floor? Are you having a sleep over?"
Arthur spares a second to be really, really grateful they'd both crawled into boxers and T-shirts in between having very quiet sex, and falling asleep. Then,
"Phillipa, how did you and James get in here?" Arthur asks, lifting up the edge of the comforter so she can climb in as well. She'd been eyeing James in the middle with one of those decidedly jealous faces. She snuggles up to Arthur, head pillowed on his shoulder, but then immediately rolls over onto her stomach.
"I picked the lock with a butter knife," she says, beaming at Arthur. "So are you and Mr. Eames having a sleepover?" she repeats, not to be deterred.
"Sometimes, when grown ups love each other a lot, they sleep on the floor together," Eames says then, before Arthur even realized he was awake. His voice is all rumbly with sleep and suddenly Arthur very much wishes they were alone. Phillipa clambers across the covers to snuggle up against Eames's other side, kneeing Arthur in the gut in the process.
"Are you having a party in here?" Dom says from the doorway then, and Arthur gives up entirely on morning sex.
"Daddy!" James cries from the middle of the bed, raising his arms up in the air to be picked up. Dom comes into the room and hefts him obligingly into his arms. He tosses him up into the air, once, twice, and then James is squealing delightedly, and Arthur gives up on the possibility of going back to sleep in ten minutes too. Phillipa decides everything is too exciting to be lying around, even if she is getting all of Eames's sleepy cuddles, and wriggles her way out from under the blanket. James squirms to be put down, and they go tearing off to somewhere else in the house. Something crashes, and Dom says "uh-oh" and chases after them.
Alone again, Arthur rolls up onto his side, so he's facing Eames across the pillow. "Morning." Arthur smiles, fond and happy.
"Morning," Eames rumbles back at him.
"You know this means we can never ever have sex in here again, right? If Phillipa can unlock the door from the outside with a butter knife."
Eames just drags Arthur close enough to kiss, morning breath and all, and then rolls over and goes back to sleep.
*
Phillipa is absolutely delighted when Eames lets her help them move rooms, carrying books one or two at a time from Eames's boxes in the garage to stack on his old bookshelves, rescued from storage and finally put up in the addition. James gets into everything, endlessly curious about this process of carrying things from Arthur's room or the garage or the living room--everywhere Eames had crammed his things temporarily--so all moving of heavy or bulky objects has to be done with extra care to a four-year-old getting underfoot.
Ariadne skips out on helping entirely by being conveniently out of town when the construction finally gets done. No one comes right out and says anything, but they all suspect that she secretly extends her visit home a few times to get out of coming home straight into helping her thesis advisor's co-parents change rooms. Yusuf isn't so lucky, and complains about Eames calling in his 'oldest friend' card two times in six months.
"There are not enough beers in the world," Yusuf says darkly, holding up one end of the world's heaviest dresser.
Eames grunts, and shifts his grip, and only says, "James, why don't you go find Arthur and see if he needs any help," to prevent him from becoming a James-shaped smudge in the hallway when they crush him with furniture.
"Ok!" James calls, and runs on little toddler legs back in the direction of the new bedrooms. Eames has never been so grateful Arthur is James's favourite, because it means he can put the bloody dresser down sooner.
*
Moving from one part of the house to the addition takes about three weeks all told, just because there's no real reason to rush. It's mid-summer by the time everything's done, and by the time Arthur crawls into bed with Eames and realizes there's nothing left to do, and promptly decides he's never getting out of bed again. It's a lie, since he plans on going to work in the morning, but he doesn't care. He doesn't even have the energy to push Eames off when he rolls over on top of him and threatens to never move again.
When he does drag himself out of bed in the morning, Dom's already got the kids both up and eating breakfast.
"What's going on?" Arthur asks, because usually everyone but Arthur gets to sleep in during the summer.
"We taking a trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa," Dom says, refilling Phillipa's glass of milk.
"Miles and Marie are in France," Arthur says kind of stupidly, just because he's so confused. There's no way Dom would have gotten plane tickets properly on his own, or at least, not without Arthur hearing something about them first.
"Not those grandparents. They're coming here for Christmas. My parents, in Nebraska. We're driving," Dom says before Arthur can say anything about flight times. "No childhood is complete without traumatic drives cross-country tormenting your siblings in the backseat."
"But," Arthur says, as Phillipa dutifully moves her plate and her glass to the kitchen counter. James tries too, but Dom makes him climb back up into his chair and take three more bites of his peanut butter toast first.
"Besides, I thought you and Eames might want to enjoy having your very own bedroom by yourselves for a week."
"Oh," is all Arthur can respond to that, because the idea, now that it's been put into his head, sounds very appealing indeed.
Dom calls when they get there to let Arthur and Eames know they've arrived safely, and then it's basically radio silence after that until Saturday, the night before they're starting back. "So, I think we'll leave a little after lunch tomorrow and see how far we can get before stopping for dinner and a hotel. Then we'll take the rest of the drive on Monday. We might get in pretty late, so don't start worrying unless you don't hear from us by Wednesday morning," Dom says.
"Sounds good. How was the visit?"
"Good! Mom threatened to kidnap them both and keep them forever. She got the biggest kick out of James's family drawings, though, now that he's got all three of us in them. She'd have him explain them to all her friends in town, and cackle to herself at their politely confused expressions. 'This is Daddy, an' this is Uncle Arthur, an' this is Uncle Mr. Eames. He taught Phillipa kindergarten but now he lives with us so Uncle Arthur and Uncle Mr. Eames can have sleepovers on the floor an' we just got new rooms in the house an' Phillipa an' me got to help move stuff! Big heavy stuff like Uncle Arthur's books cause I'm a big kid now.' Mom was just delighted by the whole thing.
"Dad fixed up my old bike and taught Phillipa to ride it. I thought there were going to be tears when I told her she had to leave it at Grandpa's house. Oh, hey, it's dinner time. I've got to go," Dom says.
"Ok. Drive safely tomorrow," Arthur says and hangs up the phone.
"Well?" asks Eames.
"They plan to be home Monday night, barring road trip-induced sibling-cide."
"That's not a word, love. You know that, right?" Eames says.
Arthur swats him. "Shut up. You miss them too. Now take your shirt off. We're making the most of the rest of our alone time."
Note: Warp & Weft timestamp - 1/2 Cup Sugar.