Title: Both Feet On The Ground

Title: Both Feet On The Ground
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Really not mine, not at all.
Word Count: 5640
Summary: Eames vanishes for five days and comes back married. It takes twenty-five years for all the fractioned pieces to make sense in a bigger picture.
Notes: Endless thanks to flareupwithlove for the beta.



Eames takes a five-day furlough when they’re in London tidying up loose ends when it comes to the military’s newest mishap in dream-sharing. The army is light-years behind the thieves and every once in a while there’s someone they need to clean up after so that the waking world doesn’t realize what is lingering out there. On the very rare occasion, they’re even paid for their expertise instead of merely told they’re lucky to not be rotting away in a jail somewhere.

The rest of them continue to work. Yusuf can’t be there and so Cobb brings in a chemist for a single day’s work to take measurements, weights, and make assessments before she hands over six bottles and leaves. Ariadne only works for two days to design an intricate maze with several exits and a room that can only be entered once before it’s permanently sealed.

This leaves Arthur and Cobb to do the brunt of the work.

Ariadne remains, saying that she has nothing better to do, but she refuses to go into the field this time. She sips at her coffee in large mugs and watches the men do their work, pointedly not asking questions about Eames and where he’s gone.

Eames, who left saying he had something important to do.

Eames, who left saying he’d be right back.

Eames, who is back after five days with a ring on his finger and bearing seemingly no intention to discuss it. Arthur is the consummate professional and ignores it, his only care for facts and figures on the page.

Ariadne and Cobb are not quite so disinterested. Such a shiny trinket on Eames’ fingers beckons to them and Eames has always been the consummate storyteller. He wouldn’t wear something like that if he didn’t want to be asked. Ariadne rolls over in her chair, grasping hold of Eames’ hand and gapes up at him in wonder. “Eames!”

“Eames, is this why you left?” Cobb asks, still interested, but cataloguing the expression on Eames’ face as he looks up rather than pressing into his personal space to steal answers.

Eames reclaims his hand from Ariadne, slides the band a quarter twist, and sets himself down in a chair. “Yes,” he says, simple and final. It’s firm and it tells them that he has no desire to talk about the topic anymore. He turns his head to Arthur and smirks lazily, nudging at his chair with his foot. “Aren’t you going to ask? Or fondle my hand as kindly as Ariadne did?”

“You’re a married man, now, Eames,” Cobb warns mildly. “I would be careful if I were you.”

Eames doesn’t seem to take the advice. He merely rolls his chair closer until he’s right in front of Arthur, anchoring himself with his palms on Arthur’s knees and smirking as he nudges his knee in between Arthur’s legs. Arthur merely bears it, raising his brow and looking up from his notebook, clicking his pen shut. “Yes, Eames?”

“I just wanted to extend the fondling offer to you one more time,” Eames all but growls at Arthur. If Ariadne hadn’t seen worse in her time as an undergrad, she might have blushed. As it is, she just feels very sorry for whoever Eames married. “Up close and personal.” He winks and laughs even harder when Arthur gives him one hard push at the knee, sending him skittering off with a spin of his chair.

Ariadne sucks in her lower lip. Cobb taps the marker against the whiteboard.

Eames just lets his gaze linger on Arthur for a moment longer and Arthur tries his best to suppress any amusement, but for just a moment, the smile shines through.

“So you found someone to marry you, Eames,” Arthur finally joins in the conversation, sounding light as a feather. “Is she beautiful?”

“Love of my dreams,” Eames assures him with a grin so wide that it could brighten a whole township with its joy. Eames wheels himself back over and drapes his arm over Arthur’s shoulder for the rest of the briefing.

No one says a word more about Eames’ flirting.

*

Phillipa

They are lying on the grass staring up at stars. She is nine and has developed a terrible crush on her Uncle Eames, which Cobb has insisted will go away with time. She prefers to think differently because her stomach tumbles with butterflies every time he smiles at her and calls her Pips and her cheeks flare up with pink every time he braids her hair with deft fingers.

The sky is alight with meteor showers tonight and every time a rocketing star goes shooting by, she gasps, breath in her throat as she tightens her finger’s clasp on his palm and points upwards. “Eames!” she gets out, desperately. “Look!”

“I’m looking,” he assures with a warm laugh. They do this routine over and over. James is nearby with a flashlight, poking his nose into brushes where he doesn’t belong and calling out for like-minded boys who might be out wandering. As the nearest neighbors are miles away, he’s not going to have much luck.

She’s still clutching onto his hand when she realizes, for the first time, that there’s something new there that she hasn’t seen before. She brushes her fingers against cool metal on his finger and her heart sinks low in her stomach.

Sure, she’s only nine, but it’s not exactly fair that her dreams have to be dashed on such a pretty night.

“Eames,” she starts, her voice tight in her throat. She misses three rocketing stars shooting over the sky and tries to quell the slight shake in her voice. She doesn’t know how to ask this when she dreads the answer, but she’s sure that she’s supposed to want to know. “What’s that mean?” she asks, rubbing her thumb hard against the bright band.

Eames turns to look at her and she looks back. The grass itches her neck, cool and refreshing in the evening that feels like a stark contrast to her flushed cheeks. He’s smiling so warmly and happily that Phillipa wonders if all adults are this open with their emotions.

“It means I found someone,” he says simply.

“Does it mean you’re happy?”

“Oh, darling,” Eames exhales and brings her closer. “I couldn’t be happier than this moment.”

Years later, when she’s seventeen, Eames will talk to her about how happiness is not directly correlated to romance. He will be comforting her and drying her tears whilst fixing her mascara because a bastard of a boy has broken her heart. She doesn’t exactly understand it then, but she thinks that whoever made Eames love them, they must be something else entirely. At seventeen, Phillipa will know how true that is.

“Look!” is Eames’ excited murmur as he clasps her hand. “That one’s got a tail,” he says, all bright laughter and boyish excitement. “James, James, Jimmy-boy,” he calls out. “You’re missing the show!”

Maybe James only has to shine the light back their way to find someone as equally amazed by what the big wide world has to offer. Phillipa just giggles and watches the stars go shooting by and accepts that maybe sharing Uncle Eames won’t be the worst thing in the world.

*

Ariadne

At twenty-seven, she’s made a partner in an architecture firm.

At twenty-eight, she’s the head of her own firm and has buildings in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Chicago. She’s just finished breaking ground on the property that’s going to be her home when she gets the call from Eames asking why, with all the money she has, has she decided to settle in Portland.

Her immediate hotheaded reply had gone along the lines of, ‘says the man who set up home in London’.

They started playing a game two months ago. She’d sent him the weather report for the day and he would reply in turn. Whoever got more sun over the course of a year period owed the other ten-grand. She smiles to herself and thinks that it’s something else that ten thousand dollars should be such a small amount – and secretly, she thinks it a safe bet. Portland’s got the edge and the good grace of not occupying some of the northernmost corners of the earth.

She picks up a voice message from Eames that morning, having missed it the night before and she grins as she dials in her password, ready to hear about the weather report for the day. The light buzz and silence of the message is not what she expects.

It’s scary, at first. First instinct for so many years has been to take any dangerous indication and hide. She’s still nervous about the wrong sort of people after the inception job and she has no idea how people like Eames and Arthur do it, but maybe that’s the worth of having a background with the military to teach you how to protect yourself.

“Hello, darling,” comes the soft sigh, sounding slightly slurred and exhausted. Ariadne realizes, very quickly, that Eames has dialed the wrong number, especially as he goes on. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it tonight. You know that I wanted to be there more than anything.” Her chest tightens as she realizes that this is a message for someone very special to Eames – to his wife. She clenches the phone tighter in her fingers and stares at the workers in front of her, holding the phone tighter to her ear as if to protect Eames’ words. He heaves a breath over the line and it sounds like he’s fumbling for words. “I do want to make it up to you. How about you and me at that little Italian restaurant you like, where they fix bibs to your outfits so not a drop of sauce gets on your beautiful clothes. You know I’d rather have been with you last night than here. I hate Monte Carlo. Don’t you dare laugh, I do. You can’t cheat here like you can in back alleys and that takes away half the fun.”

There’s more silence, so much more that Ariadne momentarily thinks that he must have hung up, but then there is the slightest of sounds, like Eames purring in the background.

“Anyway. I’m going to sleep now, I just thought I’d try and reach you. Obviously not. I’ve had a bit to drink, but you needn’t worry. I’m alone. Miss you terribly, darling. Call me in the morning.”

Ariadne doesn’t call back. She takes a picture of the site in front of her, framed by a cloudy sky, and texts that along to Eames instead.

*

Fischer

Robert’s first trip to Paris is marked with a dangerous depressed hue that he tries to shake off the minute he lands in Charles de Gaulle. With Fischer-Morrow dissolved for eight years and Fischer Industries slowly taking their way to climb to the top, this is the first vacation he’s been able to take in a very long time.

The first place he goes is a cemetery. It’s been what he does in every city since his father died, out of a need to pay respects to the dead, to visit those who might not have had family. Fischer rubs his thumb over the map he’s found and drifts through unmarked paths and nudges in between gravestones and mausoleums.

“I can’t,” he overhears, huffed and disbelieving laughter, “believe you took me to a graveyard for our anniversary.”

“Ah, but you would never be happy with a normal gift.”

“Edith Piaf’s gravestone defies unusual, you know.”

Fischer consults one of the markings in the crossroads of the road to find the numbers, consulting his map and finding that yes, he is very close to Piaf’s grave, a tourist mark where roses are laid down. The two men he can overhear – one British, one American – don’t sound like the kind of people who would be fans.

Fischer peeks around the corner of a mausoleum with weeping statues and tries to keep out of sight. He’s tried to do that on a matter of principle. He’s hardly a celebrity, but he’s a famous enough face that he gets unwarranted attention. There are two men near the grave. The brown-haired man is holding himself tight, hands in his suit pockets, and the other man paces back and forth, gravel crunching beneath long loafers.

The dark-haired one grunts, gets the other’s attention. “Jack,” he protests. “I want to get back to the city.”

“Yes, yes, I know, we will get to the D’Orsay,” the British man assures in a teasing growl, with a voice that confuses Fischer, makes something deep inside him turn and awaken. He frowns and presses his back to the mausoleum, breathing hard and heavy as something grabs him by the gut and makes him try to remember.

Fischer, in that moment, mistakes it for arousal.

The two men nearby leave.

Fischer lingers for only a moment later before creeping through narrow passageways until he makes his way to Piaf’s grave and stares at it. Out of the corner of his eye, for just a moment, he sees a pinwheel blowing in the wind, child’s drawings lining edges of yellowed paper. He blinks and the image is gone, just a lingering remnant of something from so long ago.

*

Yusuf

“We can’t keep doing this,” is what he hears from outside Mr. Eames’ apartment. He’s come to deliver his weekly shipment of chemicals to the man. They have a standing appointment for when Eames is in Mombasa. Yusuf makes new mixes and Eames allows him to test them upon him.

He does not expect to hear Arthur’s voice, especially so tight.

“Oh, for god’s sake, Arthur,” Eames is sighing. “If you didn’t like the pottery, you could have said before we flew it all the way down from London. And you know my mother will sulk if we don’t bring back photographs proving her monstrosity is on display.”

“Eames, you can’t keep an apartment in Mombasa when we already have six to maintain in far less chaotic locations,” Arthur says, clipped. “You have to give this place up.”

“I really don’t recall that part of my vows,” Eames’ reply is light, but there is an edge that Yusuf recognizes as warning that Arthur should not push much further. This is all very curious. Last he heard, Eames had married, but from the last conversation he had regarding the subject, it did not sound like it was Arthur who was involved in the relationship.

According to Cobb, Eames had left for five days. Arthur had continued to arrive for work.

He hears Arthur heave a sigh and then the sound of something falling and crashing to the ground before Eames’ sharp sound of shock. “Arthur!”

“It was just a ceramic pot.”

“It was from my mother!” Eames is all-but-growling and Yusuf hears footsteps crashing towards the door. It’s all too quick and he doesn’t have time to duck away before Eames opens the door, a dustpan in his hand and pieces of red clay ceramic littering the pink dustpan. “…Yusuf,” Eames remarks, sounding more shocked than Yusuf feels, which is something that Yusuf doesn’t think possible. “You’re early.”

“Actually,” he says and taps his watch to indicate that he’s right on time.

“Right. Fuck,” Eames mutters, wildly clasping at his pocket watch, even though Yusuf knows it’s broken. He doesn’t know what time the second and minute hands have stopped on because he’s not supposed to. He doesn’t look over his shoulder, but Yusuf does that for him, spying Arthur in a pair of loose jeans that clearly do not belong to him, greyed socks, and a tucked-in short-sleeved blue button-down. “Yusuf, would you like some tea?”

“We have alcohol,” Arthur assures him, already moving about the place like he owns it – expertly dodging the remaining jagged edges of a ceramic vase.

“When Cobb said that you got married, I admit,” Yusuf says as he steps into the apartment carefully, knowing better than to take sides in a wedded-couples’ argument – even if he is on Eames’ side as he doesn’t want to lose one of his better clients – “that I thought you married a supermodel.”

Eames glances up from fidgeting with the teapot, sucking on his thumb when he scalds the skin there and casts a rueful grin across the room at Arthur. “Wouldn’t you know, I found someone far more attractive.” He fetches the cream and milk from the small rattling fridge under the counter and when he pokes his head up again, he looks very pointedly at Yusuf. “We don’t like telling people. You’re the first to know, and only because you were early…”

“On time.”

“Early,” says Eames again, as if stubbornness will make him right.

Yusuf glances to Arthur and looks for hints of warmth or joy or love. It’s been ten years since the rumor made it to Kenya about Eames’ marriage and now he is looking in on his friends in a new light. He sees the slightest of flickers at Arthur’s lips when Eames stumbles in the kitchen over one of the stray kittens and curses the thing out, but what strikes him most is when Arthur gets up not to help Eames, but to continue cleaning up the clay.

He takes the pieces to the kitchen, pats the stray on his way, and begins to aid Eames in fetching the sugar, murmuring something to Eames in Spanish – a language only Eames and Arthur ever spoke, from what he recalls. “I’ll tell her it didn’t match the curtains,” is what Yusuf barely overhears when they switch back to English.

Eames’ warm and joyous laugh is easy to see and hear, though.

Yusuf takes tea with them, spikes it liberally with a shot of rum, and leaves a gift with them the next week. It still rests there, even when the new owners buy the apartment and Eames sends a postcard from Paris apologizing to Yusuf.

Compromises must be made, is what it says. I don’t know how else to reach twenty years.

*

Saito

He is, in most circles, the most powerful man in many countries. Thanks to the dissolution of Fischer-Morrow, Saito’s industries are fit to command whole areas of commerce. It means that he knows more than most people. It does not make him perfectly omniscient.

“Cheers, Saito,” Eames says brightly as he lifts his shot glass of sake. “Now, I really don’t think you’ve flown me all this way to discuss my year. It’s been fourteen years since the job and we’ve spoken exactly twice.”

Saito slides his fork over the steak before him, inspecting the cut and the color, assessing the forger across from him. Eames had flown in the other night and had brought along Arthur, hefting the younger man’s bags for him, with no complaint.

“I have a problem,” is what Saito says. “One that cannot be solved in dreams and one that I do not possess the necessary information about.” He pauses, looks Eames over in his matching three-piece suit with silk waistcoat. “Not yet.”

Eames isn’t eating, but he is drinking. He is also consistently checking the time on his watch.

“Am I keeping you from an appointment?” Saito casts a glance at the ring on Eames’ finger. “I heard rumor you wed. I did not believe it true. And yet, you do not bring your wife for me to meet?”

“Saito,” Eames laments with a heavy sigh. “Why on earth would I ever bring anyone to meet you? You’d steal them away in seconds flat with all that charm and money,” says Eames easily, more charming himself than most people could ever hope to be in their lifetime through lessons. “Go on. The night is young and so am I. I have plenty of time for my extracurricular activities later.”

“I have a thief.”

“Yes, you do,” Eames agrees, smarmy and charming in the way he has. Saito appreciates the candor and humor, but finds it is not the time.

Saito dismisses his help with a flick of his hand, preferring to indulge Mr. Eames in more private conversation. “If you were to rob my casino, how would you do it?” And such is the advice he seeks.

Eames lights up at that and begins to apportion salt shakers, pepper dispensers, and cutlery to symbolize a great many things in his explanation of the points and pieces of a good heist. It is three in the morning and they are now discussing the various cheats of the card-counting system when Arthur joins them, looking weary and dressed-down in his white slacks and brown button-down.

“Arthur, please,” Saito invites, gesturing to the chair beside him. “Join us. Mr. Eames was going to…”

“Call me down to talk about security?” Arthur interrupts and holds up his phone to show off the text, thumb hiding a portion of text beneath the invitation. Perhaps something personal that Saito has no interest in discovering. “I got the message. Whoever you have on your hands is good.” He pauses, slides his palm around Eames’ cup of coffee and claims it as his. “The good news is, we’re better.”

Eames doesn’t say a single word about his coffee being stolen. He simply orders another and slides his plate of biscotti Arthur’s way – a kind gesture that Saito is impressed with. Honor among thieves, he thinks, and thinks that it is a good thing these thieves are on his side.

*

James

He is twenty-one years old. He is too old to have his father pacing up and down and glaring at him while he shouts on the phone that he wants to talk to Mrs. Eames, and he knows that she exists because there are marriage documents and a ring and he wants his better half to talk the man into flying to Los Angeles straightaway.

James sits on the couch, the PASIV to his left. This isn’t the first time he’s snuck it out of the attic to use and to practice his forgeries. It’s just the first time he’s been caught.

--he hadn’t expected his father to come into the dream and shoot him out of it, though--

His father hangs up and angrily punches new numbers in, muttering on about the thieving community under his breath. “Arthur!” he snaps when someone on the other end picks up the line, and James has the good sense to have fear quelling in him at that name. Arthur only ever comes around when there are mysterious messes to clean up and James isn’t sure that he wants him coming now. “Arthur, where the hell is Eames?”

Cobb casts a sideline look of warning at James, as if any delay in consequence is not going to lessen the punishment.

“Well, if you see him, tell him to get here, now.” He pauses, face flushing with fury. There are gray hairs littered all over Dominic Cobb’s head and he swears every day that James Cobb is the reason for them. “What’s he done? My son has just told me that he wants to learn to be a professional forger in dreams, what do you think he’s done?”

“Dad!” James snaps, finally, because for all the fury and the indignant rage, his father’s got it all wrong. “Dad, Uncle Eames didn’t make me want to do any of this.” James has been acting since he was twelve, since he was too shy and teachers talked in hushed whispers about a dead mother and a distant father. He’s been falling into other peoples’ lives and roles so easily that when he found out about dream-sharing, forging had been the only natural jump.

It’s strange, actually, to have just learned something new and for it to not even be the most important thing of the moment. He feels an odd sense of accommodation that someone he’s known for so long could know something about this.

“Why do we have a PASIV? Did you used to use it?”

You can go to any number of parties at school and if the kids are rich enough, they’ll have picked one up from the black market. James still isn’t sure why there’s one in the house, doesn’t know and never asked while he used it to vanish into dreams and see what slipping on a character’s skin felt like in a dream.

He’s never told anyone he owns one. He doesn’t want to share.

His father isn’t answering and so James decides to try a different tack. “Why are you so insistent that Uncle Eames come? What does he know about forging?”

“Arthur?” his father says to the phone, as if shocked out of his silence. “No, I don’t need to talk to Eames. Is he there? …okay, well…” Dom’s face screws up, like he’s confused and for a minute, he looks as if he suddenly understands a long-unsolved problem, but then it disappears like it was never there. “You should come by for dinner. Give Eames the message. Might as well bring some good advice into this mess.”

He hangs up and turns to look at James, taking a deep breath and pushing both hands onto the table as he pries out a small spinning top from his pocket and places it down in front of the both of them.

“This used to belong to your mother…”

*

Arthur

It’s been twenty-five years since the inception job and it’s Ariadne’s idea to come together in Los Angeles and have something of a reunion. It’s true that they don’t like to talk about it and while the details have long become blurred, it still means something to them – it is accomplishment unrivalled and unmatched.

“Suit jackets,” Eames reads from a list, sprawled on the couch. They’re at their Los Angeles townhome and Arthur is packing the small overnight bag to bring with them while they stay at Cobb’s home.

Arthur has begun to wear his wedding band. For years, he kept it on a chain, thinking that his coupling was a private matter and no one needed to know. Now that he’s drifted so far from that world, he doesn’t mind the heavy and comfortable band on his finger. He’s too old to play games anymore and he’s tired of women presuming that bare hands means that he’s interested.

Arthur surveys the neat array before him. “Two for me, one for you.”

Eames scribbles something. “Trousers?”

“Two apiece.”

“Gifts for the children?”

“James is twenty-nine and Phillipa is thirty-one,” Arthur narrates back, even as he picks up the bottle of tequila that they bought in Argentina for James and the necklace they found in Venice for Phillipa. “And she looks at you strangely sometimes.”

“It is called lust, my darling,” Eames remarks with a smirk, poking his head up from the couch. “And apparently it doesn’t matter that I am about to turn fifty-eight. I am just that strikingly gorgeous that it doesn’t matter.” He fidgets with a cigarette, leaning forward to light it only to have it put out mere seconds later by Arthur. Eames lets out a huff of a sigh. “Arthur,” he complains.

“No smoking,” Arthur says, plucking the list from Eames’ hands. “It’s not healthy for you.”

“You’re not healthy for me. It’s all health and worry and needling…”

“The doctor says you need to get in better shape,” says Arthur curtly. “And that means no more cigarettes outside of dreams.”

“Twenty-five years and I still haven’t gotten the stick out your arse,” Eames groans and pries himself to his feet, offering both hands in a show of surrender. “Fine, Arthur, fine. No smoking. What else are we forgetting?”

Arthur stares at the list, but all the items blur together as he sees the ring on his finger and he remembers why he’s so anxious, why he doesn’t want to think about this meeting. Yusuf remains the only one who actually knows and while Arthur has his reasons for keeping the marriage to himself, he knows that twenty-five years is just slightly too long a time to keep a secret without there being serious ramifications.

They’ve all drifted. Arthur and Eames have been at the center of these tentative friendships. Eames and Saito are the closest of the team because of their continued correspondence in regards to all matters dangerous. Cobb and Arthur are close and they both talk to Ariadne. They’ve not seen Yusuf in over a decade, not since they sold the apartment in Mombasa. They barely even see their military contacts, any longer, but all these pieces revolve around them like the planets of a solar system constantly revolving around a sun.

Arthur folds the list neatly and tucks it away as he packs in ties, a pack of cigarettes for Eames, and two books, one for each of them to read during their one-night stay.

He does make Eames carry the bag for him all the way to the car and smiles kindly as he dangles the keys to the Aston in the air, allowing Eames to take them – and only because this is one of the cars imported from their London summer home, with the wheel on the wrong side. Arthur may be able to master that in a dream, but he’s had one accident too many in reality to justify taking the wheel any longer.

They arrive and Eames turns off the engine. Neither of them move, at first, even if Cobb’s home is one of the least terrifying places in the world to them. It holds no specters of ghosts, no haunted memories bearing down on the happy moments.

Arthur glances over to ask Eames a question about whether this is a good idea, but Eames is already out of the car, holding his arms open wide to embrace Phillipa as she comes running, only closely shadowed by Ariadne and Yusuf. Arthur smiles wryly and shakes his head, only slightly surprised by how excited Yusuf is to see Eames.

“You asshole!” Ariadne cries, smacking Eames’ shoulder. “You look like you’re still forty.”

“Los Angeles does keep me in firm shape,” he replies smugly, casting a look over his shoulder and holds out his hand expectantly as he waits for Arthur. “Come along, darling,” he says, taking a step back in order to clasp Arthur’s palm in his own, tugging him along.

Yusuf is the first to speak, clapping a hand on Eames’ shoulder tightly as he rambles on about his newest chemical, his newest cat, and the new owners of an apartment in Mombasa that they haven’t seen in ages. Arthur would go with them, but his other hand is tugged on by two smaller hands and he goes stumbling backwards to be presented with Ariadne and Phillipa staring at him in wonder.

“Did Eames get divorced?” Ariadne asks, confusion hinting around her eyes.

Phillipa merely looks lost, all of Mal’s vulnerability in her eyes and Dom’s toughness to her mouth. She has a boyfriend, now, an English man who wears suits like Arthur and who tells stories like Eames. Arthur still feels the slightest of uncomfortable twinges when he catches her looking at Eames like he’s hung the moon.

Arthur merely turns his gaze to watch Eames go, taking his time to appreciate what in twenty-five years (and then some) he’s yet to grow bored of. “No,” he says simply. “Eames is just a slacker. When you get married in a little chapel in London in front of one side’s parents, you don’t actually need to take five days off. You just need about five hours.”

“Arthur!” Eames calls from the front step. “Did I lock the car?”

“Yes, Eames, the car is locked,” calls Arthur in reply, pressing his lips together to hide the bemused smile that’s attempting to break through on his face. He turns back to the girls and sighs heavily. “No, there are no pictures, and we don’t like to talk about it.”

That subject is done, but he still takes the time to greet them properly, with hugs apiece. Ariadne still has to lean up on her toes to even get close enough to wrap her arms around his neck – she seems to be getting shorter with every passing year. Phillipa is taller than him and never fails to mention that when she leans down from her six-foot-frame to hug him. When they’ve each had their turn, he gives them promises of gifts from a world traveled many times over. When he gets to the front porch, he comes face to face with Cobb.

“I should have told you,” Arthur admits. No ‘hello’, no ‘you’re looking well’, nothing else. Merely the apology. Cobb doesn’t seem to care much. He reaches out and shakes Arthur’s hand firmly, inviting him into his home and talks about the latest news – he hasn’t been able to convince James to stop forging, Phillipa’s young boyfriend has asked permission to propose – and inevitably they stop and overlook the backyard. “You’re not mad?” Arthur asks warily.

“You’re a married man, now, Arthur,” says Cobb, with a teasing smirk on his face. “It’s not me whose moods you need to worry about.”

And that, of all things, is all Arthur needs to hear. He relaxes visibly and when Cobb leaves to let Saito into his home, Arthur drifts over to Eames’ side. “Stick up your arse,” Eames sing-songs against his ear, the vibrations tickling sensitive skin. “Look at you, so stolid and tense.”

This time, Arthur can’t restrain his idiotic grin as he shoves his palm in Eames’ face and pushes him away, fully expecting Eames to come right back.

He never has been able to stay away very long at all.

THE END

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