When You Grow Up Your Heart Dies 5/20

[twowritehands]

Fandom: Inception x Dark!Breakfast Club

Pairing(s): Arthur/Eames, Cobb/Mal

Summary: They went into detention with nothing in common. They witnessed something frightening that may or may not have actually happened: a dead body and blood on the walls spelling 528491. Can a nerd, a jock, a criminal, a pampered prince and basket case, brave crossing the social cliques in order to stick together and solve this mystery?

Previous Four Parts Can Be Found By Clicking "breakfast club" in the tags


Arthur had a few sketches of swimmer’s bodies in his pockets, and dimples in his cheeks as he danced down the steps after school, over the stone wall lining the green lawn. In the grass, he started dragging his bag at the end of its strap, and stopped more than once to pull up a clover and count the petals before discarding it with frowns of disappointment.

Cobb stood at the flag pole where his Youth group prayed every morning, watching the strange guy take his precious time getting over there. Everyone else had made it minutes after the bell, but Ariadne had insisted they wait until all were present to avoid needing to repeat everything. Eames, though now running late for practice, leaned on the pole and watched with significantly more ease and amusement than everyone else.

“Jesus-HURRY UP, MAN!” Cobb called when Arthur stopped to stare at the sky. Eames turned to see what could have his attention. It was a massive, utterly shapeless, uninteresting cloud. Mal giggled as Cobb continued to mutter under his breath about space cadets.

Ariadne gave him a motherly look. “He’s just creative, I think.”

Cobb snorted. “Whatever.”

“Hi,” Arthur said when he arrived a few minutes later, a four leaf clover for all their troubles. “So did you find anything, Cobb?”

Smiles went around at the use of the surname, like they were cops or something. It erased the look of annoyance from Cobb’s face, mostly. What was left was from the dead end of their lead. “No. The only new student this year was Yusuf.” Eames looked down at the name, but Cobb continued with a deep breath, “She’s not in our system. Still have no idea who she could have been.”

“Or if she even existed,” Mal said primly, shrugging one shoulder. Cobb clenched his teeth but said nothing. He and Mal had spent the first ten minutes waiting for Arthur arguing the existence of a murder cover-up, and had agreed to disagree about which one of them was the crazy one. For Eames’ sake, Cobb ignored his chance to argue with the scary beautiful young woman again so that the swimmer wouldn’t miss much more of practice. He whipped a post-it note from his breast pocket, “But I did manage to find out who was officially at the school on Friday.”

“Excellent!” Ariadne said, snatching the square of paper to read the six lines of print.

• Us
• Mr. Browning
• Ms. Marie
• Moe and Rod ( janitors)
• Coach Cobol
• Swim team
• The band at 4:00

“Well, if she’s not on that list, the killer doesn’t have to be either,” Arthur said. “But it’s a start. We should question everybody, see what they know.”

Nods went around the group. Eames checked his watch. “Excellent, if Coach isn’t too pissed at me I can knock him and the guys off the list right now,” Eames said, shouldering his bag. “See you around.”

“Later,” Cobb said as Ariadne waved. Eames broke away to hurry to the gym, only to realize a few steps later that Arthur was following him. He glanced at the silent shadow a few times before asking, “So what do you usually do after school, Arthur?”

“Look for stuff, mostly,” was Arthur’s answer. His attention had gone back to the sky, which now had a bigger spread of formless cloud. “I found an elephant earlier,” he pointed at the cloud. “You can still almost see it.”

That made Eames stop and stare hard at the sky. No. Not even a little bit did that cloud look like an elephant. Arthur had not stopped walking, and Eames jogged to catch up. When he did, Arthur handed him the clover.

“Oh so you found one,” Eames teased, taking it with a smile.

“I try to see what everybody else ignores. It-“ Arthur cut himself off, dimples popping, and shook his head. Eames waited for him to continue but he never did.

They entered the gym from the front, passed through the silent, air-condition lobby full of trophies, across the basketball court with shoes squeaking, and into the pool house, where the team was already splashing away with practice full swing. Cobol barked at Eames for being late, and Arthur let him hurry off to the locker room to change.

“Uh, Coach?” he asked, approaching the beefy older man. The white-haired champion eyed Arthur top to bottom and looked back at the water. “Can you swim, kid?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Then maybe next year. Roster’s full and season ‘bout done.”

“I don’t want to be on the team.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I need to ask you a few questions about last Saturday.”

“Listen, kid, this is a closed practice. No school reporters or-friends,” he said, editing girl out of the word last minute as Eames exited the locker room in nothing but speedo, cap, and goggles, and shared a grin with Arthur as he passed on his way to dive right in.

One side of Arthur’s face kept smiling, and he started swinging his bag around and around his body, tossing the broken, knotted strap from hand to hand to complete the revolutions. The coach eyed the misshapen hazard dubiously and moved a half-step away. “Didn’t you hear me, kid? I don’t have time for an interview. Just say we’re too busy preparing to win to spare a comment, alright?”

“Oh, I’m not on the school paper.”

The coach took a deep breath and looked Arthur up and down again, back to the water, to Eames’ lane. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Listen, you don’t need to be making it a habit coming down here. The boys will get antsy. I don’t let their girls in here, so I really shouldn’t let-“

“I just wanted to know if you went up to the school at all last Saturday, saw anything weird?” Arthur cut in.

Cobol’s face scrunched. “Son, I stood right in this spot and barked corrections at Fischer’s butterfly all morning, then I worked on the football roster all afternoon. The only weird thing I’ve seen lately is you. Now are we done, or can I get back to coaching?”

Arthur shrugged. “Thanks, sir.”

The coach grunted and Arthur lingered, took his time circling the pool so that he could catch Eames’ eye as the swimmer climbed back on the cinder block. Arthur waved, and Cobol blew his whistle shrilly so that Eames had to dive.

....

As the jock and the basket case made a beeline for the pool, Ariadne called dibs on interviewing the marching band. Like Eames and his coach, it just made sense to let Ariadne quiz her own people about what they might have seen or heard.

Cobb nodded, “Good. I’ll talk to the faculty, I guess.”

Behind her, Ariadne heard the familiar sound of her mother’s old station wagon-clunky engine and screaming brats. Spotting the family-loaded car as it pulled into the drop-off zone, she shouldered her heavy pack with a dreary sigh. “Guys, could you pretend to be in the Chess club for like a second?”

Cobb and Mal traded amused smiles and the prep shrugged. Mal batted her eye lashes. “Do I look like someone on a Chess team?”

Cobb rolled his lips, trying to contain a smile.

“I’ll tell her you’re also in a play, dress rehearsal,” Ariadne said with a shrug. “Gender-blind West Side Story or something.”

Cobb snorted. “She buys that stuff?”

“She’s got four boys to keep in line and a full time job. She doesn’t have time to really question my stories.”

Mal laughed with delight. “You really aren’t a goody two shoes after all, are you?”

Ariadne tried not to look too pleased as she denied the accusatory compliment. “When I got a murder to solve, I’m not.”

The car pulled up to the curb in front of them, and the boy in the front seat rolled the window down.

“Who are you guys?” he asked with unmasked suspicion.

“Chess club,” Cobb answered as if that were supposed to be obvious. “Who are you?”

“Theo,” the boy answered, as if surprised to be singled out like that, talked to like a grown up. Cobb chuckled and waved to Ariadne’s mom, who looked pleased to meet them, if this could be called meeting. All in good manners and high spirits, the over-worked mother wished Cobb and Mal a good evening as Ariadne wrestled her brother into the middle seat so that she could close the car door, and then the loud family drove away, leaving Cobb suddenly alone with Mal.

The flag flapped above them, and someone shrieked with laughter over at the steps. Nash reigned over the group there, flirting with all the girls that Cobb used to focus his energy on impressing. Distantly, he tried to summon the energy to join his friends and win more giggles than Nash, but he couldn’t. That stuff felt childish now, a ridiculous way to spend one’s time when there were bigger things like unsolved murders happening every day in the world-had to be happening every day, how else could it have happened here in Sherman, if it wasn’t just a matter of time for evil like that to seep into every inch of the world?

Cobb’s sigh was a troubled one.

“Are you okay?” Mal asked.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Let’s go talk to someone-who do you feel like interviewing? Janitors or the French dragon?”

Mal gasped and said something in rapid French that sounded like a scolding. All Cobb got out of it was the teacher’s name, “Mademoiselle Marie!”

Cobb could read French fine, but when someone spoke it properly, like with the accent that Mal or the teacher could do, then it just sounded like something totally different, and so he wasn’t positive it had actually been the kind of compliment it sounded like. He laughed, feeling a little tingly because he hadn’t realized how pretty French could be until just now. “Okay. I’m sorry I called her a dragon. Let’s go talk to her.”

Mal smiled, aware that Cobb had meant for them to split up and cover the entire list but had changed his mind in order to hear more of her French. The teacher was more than happy to turn the interview into an oral exam, which Mal passed with flying colors, and that Cobb suffered through with very stunted and slow pronunciation, but came away with the extra credit anyway, thanks to Mal’s helpful hints.

“Can I talk to English Mal now, please?” Cobb asked through his chuckles as Mal jabbered at him in intermediate French that seemed fluent to Cobb because of her accent and speed. They were in the sun warmed grass on the hill opposite the tennis courts. Cobb had seen many of her crowd stretched out here, sleeping through gym class. The grass was littered with cigarette buds but vacant of any of her leering friends.

In the distance, they could hear the marching band practicing on the football field. For some reason, they were playing their music ten times slower than it needed to be, so that each note was separated by enough space to forget about it before the next one blared through the sky. Cobb laid back and closed his eyes. It was kind of nice-better than going home and listening to either parent on the phone with the lawyers all evening.

“Sure, what would you like to talk about?” Mal asked, pillowing her head with her arm. It pulled the material of her shirt up, exposed her smooth concave waist. Cobb resisted the bizarre urge to tickle it.

“Why do you like French so much?” he asked instead.

“Same reason as anybody,” she shrugged. “It’s cool.”

Cobb thought he knew more people who detested it than who thought it was cool but let it alone. Behind them, it sounded like the tubas or whatever seemed to be attempting the loudest sound on the planet, blaring a note that made Cobb feel vibrations. He chuckled and shook his head; the band certainly had their own special brand of fun, the nerds.

Mal seemed content with falling asleep here in the sunshine. Ordinarily, Cobb might have allowed it, but with every passing note of the slow song, he remembered that he was only staying this late after school because he was supposed to be questioning suspects. Ariadne had already sent him a text that said no one in the band had seen anything out of the ordinary, and she’d asked what he knew so far.

“I guess we should find the janitors and ask them what they know.”

The change this brought in her was drastic. She lost all of her humor in a breath and then she waved a hand and Cobb sensed the tough scary girl coming back, “You do that without me. Maurice is my arch nemeses and I don’t feel like dealing with him right now.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, rolling to put her back to him with a big fake yawn.

“Something is,” Cobb dared to declare as if he knew her that well. But on some levels he did, somehow.

The girl shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t like one of the janitors.”

“Yeah, you said something once about Maurice being evil, right?” Cobb laughed as he said it, a reflex, a way to keep things light and fun like before...before the real world showed its ugly face to him.

Horsing around with friends and flirting with girls had been the only thing that kept his parent’s divorce out of mind, hopefully it would serve the same purpose with this maybe-murder-definitely-a-conspiracy-thing that had him temporarily receiving welcome texts from geeks and French lessons from freaks.

She waved a hand, “Not him. I mean, yeah, he’s got it out for me since I trashed some stuff a few years ago, but I’m talking about the other one. Rod.”

Frowning, Cobb looked at the list he’d made, at the name he’d scrawled without a second thought. He didn’t have a face to associate with either janitor so he was forced to asked, “Whose Rod?”

“My step brother,” she muttered darkly. “I hate him.”

The sheer sincerity of it made Cobb fall back on his elbows. He didn’t ask the first question that came to mind, which was something lame like, whoa, you’re step brother’s a janitor? Because one, someone had to clean toilets, and two, if anyone here didn’t go to college (and Cobb didn’t want to sound mean) but it would be Mal’s brother. Her parents obviously didn’t condition the kids to do well in school.

Swallowing, he asked, “Why?”

She didn’t seem like she was going to answer for a long time and then she suddenly jerked up the sleeve of her trench coat, displayed a perfectly round burn on the tender skin of her forearm; a cigar burn. Cobb sat up, took her arm gently and brushed it with his thumb without even thinking, “What happened?”

“Rod,” she said tightly. “His games, most of them involved me in one way or another.”

“Jesus Christ--“ he cracked, but she took her arm back and dragged her sleeve down and pulled out a cigarette.

“I was a kid, helpless. But now I’m stronger.” She lit the cigarette and looked out at the tree line as she inhaled and released the smoke in a cloud of white. Cobb could only stare in horror.

She gave him a sideways look and explained, “And it helps that I can leave, you know, go out into town and to friends’ houses and stuff on my own. I couldn’t when I was little, I was stuck with him. But now I just get away from him when he comes around. It’s been years since he’s hurt me.”

“But--“ Cobb choked and cleared his throat, “But he did it all the time?” His voice cracked on time. He was too concerned to care. This stuff wasn’t real, this stuff didn’t happen outside of the news about faraway places. All fiction.

She took another draw and said with her fake French accent and smoke falling out of her lips, “Just cuts and bruises, nothing too bad. He just likes to see pain, my dear step brother.”

With sudden energy, he leapt up and started pacing, waving his arms around, “You have to tell people!”

“I tried, but back then he never left scars; and him and his mom always managed to make up stories about how I hurt myself by accident or whatever.” She picked something off of her tongue with the same hand she held her cigarette and flicked the stacked ashes at the end of the rolled paper to the ground, “When I got this,” she motioned the cigar burn, “Rod was drunk or else he would have been more careful about leaving a mark. After that, Daddy believed me and he’s at least tried his best to keep Rod away-told me to join some after school activities to keep me out of the house until he came home from work,” she pronounced it with the French accent and a smile, trying to make it funny. “So I choose detention and stay here,” she thumped the grassy hillside.

Cobb didn’t laugh. “That’s messed up, Mal.”

She looked down. “Now even here is not safe.”

“You think Rod did this, don’t you?” he asked, blue eyes wide. “Why didn’t you say anything that day? Why did you just pretend nothing happened if you knew--?”

“I told you. Browning showed me the bathroom, she wasn’t there.”

“Rod could have cleaned it up, Mal! He’s a janitor for crying out loud!”

“Rod’s not that smart. And why would he hurt her? Who is she to him? He only hurts me.”

“Obsessed?” he offered. She nodded, eyes far away, not on the tree line but on a dark memory.

“That’s how he used to do when he was hurting me. He’d get this idea, just one little idea, but it would take him over, you know? He would need to see me bleed and he wouldn’t not stop until it was done. I--“ she broke here and dropped her face in her hands. She sniffed and collected herself with a world weary sigh that spoke of how many times she considered her options. “Rod’s family. Or so my step mom says. Daddy won’t fight her about it.”

“Christ,” Cobb huffed and he felt like he needed to put his head between his knees. So he did for a second. When the spell passed, he thought of something.

“Has he ever--“ Cobb cut off when he realized he was giving the question a voice. He clamped his mouth shut and wished he could take the words back because not only was it her private business whether or not she had ever been molested or attacked, but he didn’t want to know, not really; he’d never be able to sleep again.

But Mal knew what he was asking and after taking a moment to draw from her cigarette and flick the ashes to the ground, she met his eye and shook her head, “Not yet.”

“Yet?” Cobb echoed, horrified.

Mal rather impressively flipped the burning cigarette between her fingers like some people do coins. “That’s why the cigar burn happened. I was fourteen; he was realizing I was pretty. He was making me uncomfortable so I called him names and we got into a fight and… since then I feel him looking at me and he’s made comments… I just know that at any minute he could get fixated on the idea.”

“Still, though, someone has to know how dangerous he is--“

“I’ve told my uncle a million times--he’s a cop-- but he always thought I was making things up out of spite. Everyone knows I hate my step brother, but no one understands why. They think I’m being petty, like this war between us is just something to do with favoritism or whatever else regular siblings fight over.”

The prep pulled his knees close and absorbed this frightening information. More of that ugly world his pampered life had shielded him from. Some parents didn’t even protect their own children.

Something Arthur had said when they were getting high came back to Cobb then. It had seemed profound then, and even now rang with truth that made Cobb’s stomach hurt.

When you grow up, he’d said with the air of a campfire ghost story, your heart dies.

Chapter 6