FIC: The Slowest Art (3/3)
Summary: After the inception, Saito offers Dom a regular position.
Disclaimer: Inception is all WB's; no ownership, claim, or profit here.
Author's note: Special thanks to hitlikehammers for beta reading. Any remaining errors are my own.
(Part 1, Part 2)
Phillipa’s birthday wasn’t long after Christmas, which had been the first holiday the kids had celebrated with their father but not Mal. James was too young to remember the difference, but Phillipa had regressed into misbehaving for attention almost nonstop. That left James an unhappy, overstimulated mess, and Dom had spent the school vacation soothing him and battling the urge to shake Phillipa. Before the new year, he’d started to dread her impending birthday.
But she was perfectly well behaved at the family celebration, to the point of agreeing to let James, who had finally mastered “Happy Birthday,” provide the piano accompaniment at the dinner. Dom spent so much of the day playing hide-and-seek with them that didn’t get a chance to talk with Arthur until Claudine sent them out for last-minute party supplies. “So what exactly is a Shirley Temple?” Arthur asked, halfway to the store.
“Good question. I thought you would know, for some reason.”
“Well, I’ve got an iPhone.”
Ten minutes later, Dom found himself standing in aisle four, trying to decide between maraschino cherries with stems and those without. It was difficult to make sense of how there could even exist a market for more than one basic type of them. Apparently there could, though, and he decided that the ones with stems looked better. Of course, they only came in bottles of thirty. “Maybe we should serve these at the kids’ party this weekend,” he said to Arthur, who had returned with grenadine syrup.
“Bubbly pink things for a bunch of six-year-old girls? Yes, you should.”
“Bubbly, pink, and full of sugar.”
“That goes without saying. How many are coming?”
“About eight.” Emily, Jennifer, Sofia, Kimberly, Grace, Mia, Jessica, the other Emily... He didn’t think he was forgetting anyone.
“Her best friends?”
“We invited all the girls in her kindergarten and riding class. Eight yeses, seven nos.”
“Jesus, Dom, even after...”
Even after the county had finished its arduous re-investigation, something that Dom wasn’t allowed to know about until it was nearly complete. He was proud that it had been a clean endeavor, no greased palms or secret communiqués. Of course, that meant it had taken a long time, and he’d spent it wondering what he would have to explain to James and Phillipa in another few years, what would happen to the cloud that hung over their family’s name. It was almost Christmas when the coroner officially ruled it a suicide, an outcome that had done little to quell Dom’s worries.
“Dom?”
He shook himself. “The gossip mill slows down over the holidays. It wasn’t front-page news anymore, either.”
“But you know that...”
“That some people will never believe it? Yes, I know.” He put economy-sized bottles of Sprite and ginger ale into the cart, then replaced them with diet. He didn’t want to see the effects of that much soda sugar on top of what was in the cake. “James’ Tee-ball coach actually said - ” he could hear the man’s words - “‘You must feel vindicated.’”
“Vindicated?”
“That was what I said.” Along with a few other things, which necessitated his finding James a new team. He was just glad that Claudine was responsible for piano instruction.
“Can I ask you something, Dom?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“Have you visited Mal yet?”
“No. Claudine’s hinted at wanting us to go, but...”
But Dom hadn’t been there since the day Mal was buried. The stone was one she would’ve liked well enough. Dom had put up little argument for including “Mal,” although no one had used her legal name since, early in her childhood, her family began summering in England and Maëlys became Molly and then just Moll, Mal. The inscription seemed wrong without it, and the coffin was heavy on Dom’s shoulder, pressing his steps into the ground.
“But you want to go alone,” Arthur supplied.
“At least the first time.” James and Phillipa would want to visit with him someday, maybe someday soon. It was another reason they couldn’t try to start over someplace else, apart from the fact that Dom had already spent too long running away from his problems. Problems that were theirs already, even without their realizing it, and would soon be even more so.
He cleared his throat. “I probably shouldn’t be driving there.”
“I can pick you up once the kids leave for school tomorrow. Morning sessions, right?”
“Eight to noon... Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Dom.”
He swallowed hard. “Mal used to like white roses.”
“I know.”
“On our first date, that’s what they had in the restaurant, and she mentioned how much she liked them.” Dom had remembered that. Valentine’s Day was easy for him. Everyone else in the world wanted red roses, or at least pink ones. The florists could not quickly enough be rid of their white ones, and Dom knew where he could get heavy, fragrant white cabbage roses without fighting for them. “I need to bring something else,” he said.
“You’ll think of something.”
Dom jerked his chin in a nod. “We should probably go home before Claudine starts wondering where we are.”
February’s work time passed mostly in the poring over of building plans. The city records division was linoleum tiled and lit with fluorescent bulbs, a world away from the libraries of Paris. Dom was grateful when, late in the month, the ringing of his phone cut through the hum of the light bulbs. He shoved aside the blueprints he’d been studying and dashed into the hallway before the attendant’s wrath could fall on him. “Dominic Cobb.”
“Mr. Cobb. I hope I have not called at an inconvenient time.”
“Not at all.”
“I find myself in Los Angeles unexpectedly.”
Dom doubted that. “Unexpectedly?”
“The flight from La Paz to Tokyo stops here to refuel. A storm in the Pacific has prevented us from completing our journey today.”
“I hope you’re not stuck at the airport.”
“Only at an airport hotel. If it would not disturb your work, perhaps we might confer this afternoon.”
“I’ll finish things here and come by. Between that and traffic... let’s say ninety minutes?”
“Very good.”
It only took him an hour to get to the hotel, which was was downmarket for Saito, actually advertising its five stars. There were limits on what was available near the airport, Dom supposed, and the staff at least was competent. Before he’d presented himself, a receptionist with a Japanese flag pin on her lapel said, “Mr. Cobb?”
“Yes. I’m early.”
“Mr. Saito is swimming... Chotto omachi kudasai.” She picked up the desk phone and spoke to someone in a flurry of Japanese too colloquial for Dom’s understanding. “He has just finished swimming. You can meet him in our sauna.” She handed him a pass card.
“Thanks.”
Dom got on an elevator going up instead of down, initially, and managed to get to the pool area just as Saito dismissed a bowing attendant. “Mr. Cobb. It is a pleasure to see you.”
“Likewise. How was the flight?”
“In the future, I will place more trust in my Bolivian associates, and visit them less often.”
“It sounds like you need the hot soak.”
“Very much... Despite the limits of this hotel, at least it possesses a sento.”
To Dom’s surprise, it was more or less a proper sento, down to the attendant handing them each a locker key and pointing to the rules posted in Japanese, English, and Spanish. The men’s vestibule was tiled in imitation of wood and bamboo, which Dom considered as he untied his shoes. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the effect. And he was nervous, absurdly: he’d certainly been to a sento before. But then, Saito wasn’t a stranger, accommodating a foreigner’s sensibilities by conspicuously not watching him. Dom was glad he hadn’t worn a full suit, and he was grateful for the hiss and mist of the showers.
Saito closed his eyes and stretched as he sank into the warm bath. Dom took a few deep breaths and wished for his totem. Instead, he rolled his head several times, quickly, which produced no result aside from pain in his neck. He castigated himself for indulging doubts in immediate reality. He and Saito had communicated several times since his prior visit, down to having the inevitable, faintly awkward discussion about health and precautions. Dom had never tried to convince himself that their previous meeting had been a dream.
Dom closed his eyes as well and allowed his mind to wander: to the points of entry in the apartments he was designing, to the prospect of braving spider exhibits at the insectarium for James’ sake, to how he should observe Claudine’s upcoming birthday. Claudine, to whom he had spoken nothing of what was transpiring with Saito, who for the children’s sake would accept anything and for the sake of Mal’s memory would welcome nothing.
“I told Arthur about this,” he said suddenly.
Saito opened his eyes. “What was his response?”
“He said ‘okay’.”
“‘Okay’?”
“Yes.” There had been a bouquet of magnolia and red lycoris on the front seat and in the air between them, and Arthur took his eyes off the road for a fraction of second to look at Dom as he spoke. There had been no need for questions, for because no one is like Mal.
And, for now, there was no need to say anything more about it. Saito put his arm around Dom’s shoulders, and Dom leaned in to it. “When I was a boy,” Saito said, "we would often visit the Izu Islands. But I have not been there in many years.”
“I know.”
“Please give Mr. Arthur my compliments for his thoroughness.”
Dom looked down with a hot rush of guilt and then, after a minute, ventured a hand on Saito’s thigh. He had imagined doing that for months, and he drank in chlorinated air for the sake of establishing reality. “Am I to take it you’re reconsidering your absence?”
“The length of it was not well considered.” Saito fixed his eyes on some indeterminate point, as if searching for words. The ones he found were, “Will you come to Japan this spring, Mr. Cobb?”
Dom turned the prospect over in his mind. “I could visit the Hawaii sites during the kids’ spring break and stop over for a few days."
“I do not wish to create an obligation.”
“No, they’re overdue for a little just-grandma time,” he said; lately Claudine had been the one taking weekends out of town. More quietly, he added, “You can show me the islands.”
In Hawaii, James and Phillipa built a real sand castle, on a real beach. Dom wasn’t sure he could bear it. But he also couldn’t turn away from watching the messy, untenable thing take shape, alternately delighting the children and frustrating them as, inevitably, it failed to live up to what they had imagined.
“Look at them,” said Claudine. “I had hoped that they would never become interested in the family business.”
Dom didn’t trust himself to say anything pertinent. “You’re sure you don’t want me to cancel Japan? I shouldn’t have asked you to handle them on vacation - ”
“We will all be more relaxed as three, Dominic. One day the children will ask why it upsets you to take them to the beach, but I would prefer that it not be yet.”
Dom wondered what questions Claudine would eventually ask him, and when.
He avoided thinking about it for most of the flight. He would be well hidden in the stream of Japan’s corporate guests, and if he wasn’t, news of the occasional nanshoku elements in someone else’s love-play would meet with general indifference, even if Saito was the someone else in question.
Dom wasn’t going to get much sleep flying into daylight. Once the early turbulence had passed, he got up from his seat and took advantage of the essentially empty business cabin to do the entire cycle of exercises that were possible on a plane, and to drink an unfair portion of the plane’s bottled water supply. As he counted reps, he occupied his mind with Hawaiian architecture and the need to bring in an associate better versed in it.
Landing procedures were the polite, well-organized nightmare Dom remembered, very different from his last entry, when he carried false documentation that the yakuza contracting at Cobol’s private airfield didn’t bother to check. The immigration officer checking his passport declined to check his electronic fingerprint or shunt him aside for a random security interview. He made his connection for the Hachijojima regional airport easily, expecting to be greeted by a junior associate holding a sign with his name. He found Saito instead, albeit with a driver in tow. “Mr. Cobb. I hope that the flight was not unpleasant.”
“No, it was fine, thank you. Arigato,” he added, as the driver took his bag. Within half an hour, they were at the site of a traditional inn, or the boutique version of one. It was a full suite that Saito had reserved for them, and by the time they got into it, Dom’s bags had been unpacked for him and a light dinner set out for them in a central room. He recognized the okazu dishes beside the rice as his own favorites. “Please tell me you didn’t order just according to me.”
“What else would I have done?”
“Well, I hope you’re not offended if I can’t finish my half.”
“It will not offend me, Mr. Cobb. I see no use for such formality.”
Dom took his seat with a small feeling of relief. “Do we have plans for tomorrow?”
“The beaches here are lovely, but perhaps some alternative is more advisable for our circumstances. We might prefer to hike.”
“Yes, I’d prefer it.”
“I can still remember my favorite path.” From there, they fell into a sharing of stories of hikes and walks they’d taken over the years. Dom had always been inclined toward the latter, Mal even more so, but it wasn’t a set rule.
When he’d eaten as much nozawana and rice as he cared to, Dom excused himself to call Claudine. Having been assured of his safe arrival, she put James on the line to relate to him, at length, all the unfamiliar insects he’d seen in the past day, Phillipa to detail the beach ride Claudine had organized for her, the Welsh pony she’d seen and fallen in love with.
After the kids hung up, Dom flossed and brushed the remnants of dinner from his mouth, then stepped into the shower, lingering under the hot water. His in-flight calisthenics had spared him a backache, but nothing could prevent the dry, grimy feeling that resulted from a long flight. He drank in the scent, which he couldn’t place, of the hotel’s soap and shampoo. He wrapped himself in a hotel bathrobe and looked for the Hawaiian architecture book he’d brought on the plane. It had been placed on a low table, beside a setting of exactly the kind of sake he expected to find in a place like this. He nursed a cup as he tried to brush up on everything from heiau temples to Vladimir Ossipoff. The task was daunting, and eventually he decided to put it aside for the night. He refilled his glass with the best sake he’d ever tasted and set aside Hawaii: An Architectural History in favor of the first of the stack of complementary magazines. There was a dense, concise article on Tonakai Shoji’s position in the natural gas market.
“The Economist is a well-informed publication,” came Saito’s voice, “but they know much less than they could about my company.”
Dom, lying on the futon, was too relaxed to be startled, although Saito had come within ten feet without his knowing it. “That’s exactly what you want, though, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Of course. But it requires skill to maintain the circumstances. With the Wall Street Journal, it is easier.”
“How about Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun?”
“It is somewhere between the two.” For a minute, Saito looked off as if into the distance, although his view was of the fusuma wall. “When I was dreaming, I would open a newspaper and find only the poems that every child must learn in school here.”
Dom moved so that Saito could lie beside him on the mattress. He touched his thumbs to Saito’s cheeks, fingers around his ears, and let the silence enfold them for a long time. When he felt the urge to speak, he said, “Tell me.”
Saito moved closer to Dom. “They were in my mind often before I woke up, as if to tell me that something was not right. ‘Kaze o itami iwa utsu nami no onore nomi...’”
“‘...crushed on the shore, remembering what once happened.’”
There was nothing either one of them could say. They lay there for another while, Dom still cradling Saito’s head, running his fingers over the ridges behind Saito’s ears. Saito put one arm around Dom’s waist until they lay there half-entangled, kissing with a mellow intensity that increased almost too gradually for Dom to perceive it. He was faintly aware of kissing back with more vigor, of cradling Saito’s head. He wanted to be closer to Saito, and Saito seemed to want to feel every ridge of his mouth.
When the fierceness of kissing burnt itself out, Saito moved his lips to Dom’s neck, hands on his biceps, so that Dom could only move his hands to Saito’s chest. Dom loosened Saito’s robe and roved the tips of his fingers over nearly-smooth skin and pectoral muscle laid flat against the ribs. Saito’s hands were all over him, chest and back and hips, and he wanted them everywhere. He pinched a nipple, and Saito tilted his head back and groaned. Dom repeated the gesture several times, and then he found himself flipped on his back with Saito looming over him, breathing hard. “Onegai shimasu - please -”
“Yes.” Dom reached for the belt on Saito’s robe, and his fingers felt clumsy. “I don’t know what -”
“Allow me.”
His robe was gone quickly, and Dom was glad for the feel of lean, hard thighs against his own, for the sake that let him escape from detailed planning. He watched with an almost-detached excitement as Saito moved his left hand down him, neck to sternum to chest to stomach and then resting at Dom’s pubic hair. He carded it softly, rolling Dom’s balls over and over his right hand. Dom heard a rasping sound that he recognized as his own breathing, which grew fast and shallow as Saito moved the hand to his increasingly attentive cock. Saito gave him a few strokes up and down, swirling a fingertip firmly at the underside juncture of glans and shaft, and brought him nearly to full mast.
Saito shrugged off his own robe completely, the low light and his faint perspiration giving a sheen to his skin, unmarred by scars or ink and bearing little body hair. He reached into the pocket for a bottle of lubricant that he opened with and poured onto a steady hand, then spread over Dom’s thighs.
Without conscious intent, Dom arched his hips upward. Saito worked the lube inward to make Dom’s perineum slick, getting Dom ready for something he hadn’t participated in since he was a teenager whose girlfriend wanted to stay a virgin. He didn’t have time to unpack that thought before Saito retrieved a condom - to avoid chafing, Dom supposed vaguely - one of the thin Japanese brands that made it feel like you were wearing absolutely nothing. He used to stock up whenever he went to Japan. Mal would always take the packet from between his fingers and put the condom on for him.
He wasn’t going to think of Mal right now. He was not. He almost offered her usual courtesy to Saito, but he’d never put a condom on anyone but himself, and Saito wasn’t circumcised. Dom stared as Saito took the head of his cock between his thumb and pointer and peeled back the foreskin. There was a gasp that Dom recognized as his own, and Saito chuckled almost inaudibly and stroked himself through applying the condom.
Dom didn’t have time to think before Saito was arranging himself on top of him. He just parted his thighs narrowly and allowed Saito to slip his cock between them before squeezing them in, making the grip tight. Dom jumped at the wet friction of a thrust over the back of his scrotum, but he kept his grip on Saito’s upper arms. “Come on. Keep going.”
He complied, and Dom felt a jolt of pleasure as Saito’s erection rubbed some hitherto neglected bundle of perineal nerves. He tensed the muscles in his thighs, and the sensation intensified enough that he had to suppress a moan. Then Saito re-angled his body so that his abdominal muscles moved up and down Dom’s erection with the pumping of his hips, and the breath went ragged in Dom’s chest. Dom clenched and relaxed his adductors in a rhythm, and it felt like Saito was pressing all over him, moving all over him.
Saito’s eyes were closed, and he was biting his lip. Flushed, he was flushed, Dom saw, and over him. Saito was on top of him, and Dom felt like his body was a spiral of nerves with its fulcrum where they touched. A vein in Saito’s forehead bulged, and Dom made his gluteal muscles tense. Saito closed his eyes and moved faster, with less and less precision, until he’d thrown his head back and come.
Dom gave a whimper of protest as he withdrew. He couldn’t tolerate a break in stimulation, not now, and he was frantic as he took his cock in his hand. “So impatient?” Saito asked.
Dom nodded, but Saito pushed his hand away from its stroking and retrieved another condom, no more able to read Dom’s thoughts than Dom was to speak and say Don’t bother, it’s been too long, I’m going to -. He could only watch, again, as Saito opened the packet, and he almost came as Saito brushed the head of his cock with his fingers, as he jerked the shaft to prevent any softening.
He arranged himself between Saito’s thighs and oh, god. Saito was lying under him. This power. He began to move - clumsily, he thought, probably clumsily, but he didn’t care, couldn’t care. He wasn’t too clumsy to keep Saito from moving in a rhythm with him, from following his lead. Saito’s thighs were working him in ways he couldn’t have imagined. He thought he’d die if he didn’t come, felt like he was going to burst, and then he wasn’t aware of anything - and then he was coming, gasping noisily and slumping into Saito’s chest.
He woke up in mid-fall, going backwards in mid-air. There was no telling how the fall had started: it had just been, and then Dom was - he was on a futon mattress, soft and thick. Awake. He wasn’t sure where he was, and he reached frantically for his totem. When he found it, he turned on the light and spun the top twice, both times watching it until it not only wobbled, but fell. Only then did he try to catch his breath.
When his head cleared, he realized, with a languid surprise, that he was under the sheets. He was alone there, feeling as if the sheets were stuck to his naked skin.
Dom didn’t like his chances of getting back to sleep before morning. He rinsed himself off in the shower and tiptoed across the suite in his robe and slippers. Saito lay in his own bed, lost in a natural sleep that Dom had never seen him in.
He was on his left side, hands clutched in front of him and mouth slightly open. There was a stillness about him, the muscle atonia of REM sleep. If Dom looked closely, he could make out, even in the dark, fluttering eyelids and nocturnal tumescence that was sometimes absent, and sometimes hyper-present, during dreams induced by somnacin. His limbs gave little spasms, and saliva glistened on a corner of the pillow.
Light was creeping through the curtains when Saito came awake. Dom expected him to jump to full alertness at the ring of his alarm. Instead, a firmness began to return to his posture before the clock sounded. His breathing deepened and his eyelids fluttered a few times, slowly, before they opened. When they did, Saito spent a few minutes just staring at the ceiling, then turned his head and blinked at the sight of Dom. “Did you stand there all night, Mr. Cobb?”
“No. I woke up at three-thirty, but...”
“But you have woken up by yourself for three years. I did not wish to presume anything.” He turned down the covers, and Dom lay down next to him. “You will not be too warm in your robe?”
“It’s all I’m wearing.”
Saito gave him an indulgent smile. “Mr. Cobb. Surely -”
Dom grinned back and shrugged the robe off. “You’re right. But given the circumstances, you should really call me Dom.”
“Dom,” Saito repeated, as if sounding it out. “If you would prefer it, I will try to change my custom.”
“You don’t have to.” Dom doubted he’d ever think of Saito by anything but that, and he admitted it aloud.
“Please use the form of address which you prefer,” Saito said. After a moment’s pause, he added, “I must commend you for teaching your children the correct titles. But it would not be an insult if they were less formal.”
That was a polite request to exchange Saito-sama with Ayumu-ojisan. The kids could manage it, Dom thought. “I should bring them to Japan sometime, when they’re old enough to handle the flight.”
“It will be my honor to host them.”
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate that.” He fitted his body to Saito’s. “I’ll miss this until then. I won’t be able to get to Japan very often.”
“I have considered the advantages of having a regular office in Los Angeles,” Saito said. “I have also considered whether it would impose on an architect to have more frequent visits from his employer.”
“On the contrary. A good architect benefits from communication.”
“I am happy to hear it.”
Dom smiled, but only briefly. “We’ll both have to talk about Limbo. About what happened to us there.”
“I know.”
“And it’ll have to be soon.”
“Yes,” Saito murmured. “We must do this soon.”
“You can’t expect it to be easy. I don’t think I’ve found the words for it yet, any more than you have, but...”
“Aishiteru yo,” Saito whispered, letting the sound hang in the air. “These are the only words I can find. Will they do for now, Mr. Cobb?”
Dom nodded. “For now, I think they will.” He rested a hand on Saito’s hip and, to his own surprise, yawned before he could say or do anything else.
“Rest,” Saito whispered. “Rest here.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Do you believe that you are dreaming?”
It was a question Dom couldn’t answer. Daylight was beginning to fill the room from the east. He knew how he’d gotten here. Making sense of it wasn’t in his grasp, any more than he could grasp the tides of the sea or of his mind. For now he was warm and contented, and he allowed himself some confidence that he and Saito would soon be walking over Hachijojima’s hillsides, far away from anything he had built.
(Image credits: Stock: mcrnut (2x), fierce_icons, lastdance_icons, rachelwsz, crownlet, jackstwistdmind, beforethecalm, nyxenart, mcrnut, marlenem, manderleyicons)
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