Smanie implacabili: Part V
Ships: Arthur/Cobb, Arthur/Phillipa (one-sided), Eames/Phillipa
Rating: PG-13
Summary: There's a hotel room in Buenos Aires.
A/N: Bad news? This is a day late.
Good news? It is a double chapter.
Even better news? There will be a part six.
Thank you again to my beta. May Raptor!Jesus be with you.
Also, note the rating change. I don't know who I was kidding, marking this 'R'.
Part I| Part II| Part III| Part IV| Part V| Part VI
When classes are over, Phillipa fills her suitcases with the records she’s collected and returns home. She is glad to leave France. It is too tied to her memories of him and her rage to be beautiful anymore. For her last week, it feels as if she can’t get enough air. All of her energy has deserted her even as her school friends throw parties to say good bye. Walking down the streets becomes an exercise in the tolerance of ugliness, as something is sure to bring her mind back to Eames. Phillipa hopes it will be beautiful again one day, but she has no expectations.
Life is simpler at home. Her friends and family are all there waiting for her. She forgives her father and Arthur for being in love, and in turn they say nothing about Eames.
She grows older. She graduates from college and moves on to graduate school. There are many other men and cities. None of them last for long. Some of the men call her callous and very few of the partings are amicable. One accuses her of loving nothing in the world other than the Rodin casts she obsesses over for her thesis and her record collection. Phillipa doesn’t argue with him as she throws his things over the balcony to where is standing in the street, screeching and calling her ‘a whore.’
None of them hurt as badly as Eames. Phillipa has never been quite able to pin down why her heart still stings when she thinks about him.
It might have been that he was the one who dumped her. She never lets the men after him break up with her. At the first sign of the end, she severs her ties. It makes her feel powerful, even when she has no other control.
It might have been that they spent so much time together. Eames had made her feel as if she really knew him. In hindsight this was simply a ploy to gain her confidence.
Maybe it was because she didn’t see the end coming. Things had been going so well between them. Was it just that she was unobservant, or had his betrayal been as sudden as it seemed to her?
Years of thinking never bring her answers.
++ + ++
The summer after she turns twenty six, Phillipa goes home to California for a wedding. After almost a decade, Arthur and her father are getting legally married. At first she isn’t sure she wants to go, but Jim convinces her to come. Phillipa thought it would be a small affair, but her father and Arthur go all out to celebrate, and she spends the entire day on her feet, smiling, dancing, and chatting.
Arthur takes the opportunity to have her clear out some of the things she left behind when she moved out for good. He and her father spend the next day with Phillipa, helping her sort through it and pack what she wants.
Beneath her bed, Phillipa finds a crate of opera records, the ones that mysteriously appeared for her just after her grandfather’s death. She hasn’t listened to them in years and barely remembers what is in the crate.
“I never thanked you for these,” Phillipa says, holding one up to show Arthur.
“You don’t need to--I didn’t get them for you.”
“Then who did?” Phillipa looks to her father, who shrugs.
“Probably Eames,” he says, as if this is not a strange answer.
She remembers playing “ "Lascia ch'io pianga" on repeat to annoy him while everyone else was out and Eames was nursing a hangover, and closing the door on him when he came to investigate.
“Why?”
“Why does Eames ever do anything?” Arthur says as he tapes a box of her books closed.
++ + ++
Phillipa bids her family goodbye, and takes a plane to Buenos Aires where she gives herself a week to find him. She takes an extra week off from work, and her company is happy to give it. Phillipa is one of their best appraisers, but some of the higher ups find her dedication to be a bit too much. In her two years at the auction house, these two weeks are the first vacation time, or even days off, that Phillipa has taken.
She has only a sweater she found while packing up some of her things and the summer clothes she brought for the wedding. As she shivers, waiting for the bus that takes her to her hotel, she decides to put off the search for Eames until she has had a day to shop.
The next day she shops.
The day after she goes barhopping in a neighborhood where the concierge at her hotel recommends she not go after dark. She asks the bartenders about him in her broken Spanish. A few think they might have seen him, but none can say for sure. They’re kind--a few of them offer her drinks on the house that she declines.
Just after midnight Phillipa wanders into her fourth bar of the night. Men are playing cards at several of the tables, and the bar is deserted. She has a good feeling about this place as she approaches the bar. By the time she is settled at the bar, the bartender is there, ready to serve her. Looking around, his quickness shouldn’t surprise her. She is one of maybe four women in the bar, the rest of whom she is pretty sure are prostitutes. He offers her a beer that she takes. Phillipa gathers two things from her conversation with the bartender: Eames is a regular, and he often comes in with a beautiful woman. Part of her hopes that is a euphemism for ‘prostitute,’ but the look in his eyes says it isn’t.
She finishes her beer and promises to come back another night. The bartender tells her he’ll wait impatiently for her return and sends her back to her hotel. She walks back, content at having found Eames and a free beer.
++ + ++
Phillipa makes plans to visit several art museums, but her bed is warm and the morning is cold. She orders room service and pulls the comforter close. The museums will still be there tomorrow. Today is a day for celebration and laziness.
When there is a knock at the door, which should be food service, Phillipa grudgingly crawls out of bed to answer it. The man at the door isn’t one of the bell boys or waiters. He’s dressed in a leather jacket and shirt he must have kidnapped from the ‘80s.
Phillipa slides the chain out of place and unlocks the door.
“Phillipa,” Eames says, but makes no move to embrace her.
“Mr. Eames,” she replies as she leans against the doorframe.
Eames glances back over his shoulder to the empty hallway behind him.
“May I come in?”
Phillipa steps aside and lets him in. Once he is inside, they both reach for the door. She steps aside and lets him close it.
“How did you find me?” Phillipa asks as she crawls back into bed. It is still toasty, but she has to resist the urge to lay down again.
“I have connections.”
His shoulders are tense, and Eames refuses to meet her eyes. She watches him from the bed as he shifts back and forth. There is a chair he could take, but he stands.
“Why did you come here?” Eames asks.
“I wanted to thank you.”
“For?”
“The records. I always thought that they were from Arthur.”
“I don’t appreciate being lied to, Phillipa. Why did you come?”
Phillipa glares at him.
“You’re going senile in your old age.”
“Coming here just to thank me for records I gave you ten years ago is mad. They made telephones so you could call people to thank them, darling,” Eames says. He winces after he says ‘darling.’
“Maybe I wanted to see you,” she says quietly.
“What about ‘fuck you’, and ‘have a good life?’” Eames chirps in a falsetto that sounds far too cheery for what he is trying to accomplish.
“I can change my mind.”
“Changing your mind after so long is cruel.”
“Ending a relationship and failing to inform the other person is just as cruel.”
Eames takes a seat in the chair. He hunches over forward and stares at the floor.
“It was for the best.”
“So you get to decide what’s best for me? I’m a grown woman.”
“You weren’t then.”
“I was old enough to know what I was doing.”
“That doesn’t mean it was right.”
“Like you’ve ever cared about what was ‘right’ in your entire life.”
Eames looks up at her and his eyes are bloodshot. He has either been drinking or up all night. Phillipa guesses a combination of the two.
“I have morals, darling, I just don’t choose to exercise them as much as others might.”
“I knew what I was doing. You didn’t hurt me until the end.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, darling.”
“I know.”
When room service comes, Eames sits on the bed with her and they share the food. He is more of a hog than she remembers, but its adorable when he accidentally gets a dab of cream on the tip of his nose, so she lets it slide. They laugh and joke as they consume the breakfast. It was much too big for Phillipa alone, anyhow, though Eames seems to take everything she wants on the platter before she can get them.
“So who’s the beautiful woman? Your wife?” Phillpa asks as she splits the last bit of her danish in half.
“No need to be jealous. We’re purely business partners.”
Phillipa smirks. “Business partners?”
“Completely professional,” Eames says and stretches back to lay down on the bed beside her.
“I doubt that.”
“On my honor.”
“In that case...”
She glances over at him when he doesn’t respond. Eames has drifted off to sleep, his breathing slow and steady.
He seems much older now. Eames must be at least fifty by now. His hair must have gone gray at the temples years ago, and he looks as if he has put on a little bit of weight. The years have been fairly kind to him. His lips are still as plump as they always were, and Phillipa has to resist the urge to lean over him and kiss him awake.
Carefully, Phillipa climbs out of bed and goes to take a shower, removing herself from temptation.
++ + ++
It is Eames who wakes her with a kiss. At first she registers nothing but cologne and warmth, but as she wakes up, Phillipa realizes it is Eames. She threads her fingers through his hair and kisses him back. He’s taken off his jacket, she finds as she puts her hands on his back. His muscles move under her hands as he works to pull off the jeans she fell asleep in. Having him there so close, it is almost like going back in time to Paris. Eames cups her breasts through her shirt and kisses her neck. It wakes her up, and soon Phillipa is just as eager to be rid of their clothes as Eames.
They pass the afternoon in bed. He’s as passionate as she remembers, but they’re both older now, and she is considerably more experienced than back then. She is happy to doze and cuddle with him between rounds, and Eames seems grateful for the downtime.
Phillipa lays there, her head pillowed on Eames’ shoulder, and realizes that she doesn’t want to leave him in a few days time, possibly ever again.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: There's a hotel room in Buenos Aires.
A/N: Bad news? This is a day late.
Good news? It is a double chapter.
Even better news? There will be a part six.
Thank you again to my beta. May Raptor!Jesus be with you.
Also, note the rating change. I don't know who I was kidding, marking this 'R'.
Part I| Part II| Part III| Part IV| Part V| Part VI
When classes are over, Phillipa fills her suitcases with the records she’s collected and returns home. She is glad to leave France. It is too tied to her memories of him and her rage to be beautiful anymore. For her last week, it feels as if she can’t get enough air. All of her energy has deserted her even as her school friends throw parties to say good bye. Walking down the streets becomes an exercise in the tolerance of ugliness, as something is sure to bring her mind back to Eames. Phillipa hopes it will be beautiful again one day, but she has no expectations.
Life is simpler at home. Her friends and family are all there waiting for her. She forgives her father and Arthur for being in love, and in turn they say nothing about Eames.
She grows older. She graduates from college and moves on to graduate school. There are many other men and cities. None of them last for long. Some of the men call her callous and very few of the partings are amicable. One accuses her of loving nothing in the world other than the Rodin casts she obsesses over for her thesis and her record collection. Phillipa doesn’t argue with him as she throws his things over the balcony to where is standing in the street, screeching and calling her ‘a whore.’
None of them hurt as badly as Eames. Phillipa has never been quite able to pin down why her heart still stings when she thinks about him.
It might have been that he was the one who dumped her. She never lets the men after him break up with her. At the first sign of the end, she severs her ties. It makes her feel powerful, even when she has no other control.
It might have been that they spent so much time together. Eames had made her feel as if she really knew him. In hindsight this was simply a ploy to gain her confidence.
Maybe it was because she didn’t see the end coming. Things had been going so well between them. Was it just that she was unobservant, or had his betrayal been as sudden as it seemed to her?
Years of thinking never bring her answers.
++ + ++
The summer after she turns twenty six, Phillipa goes home to California for a wedding. After almost a decade, Arthur and her father are getting legally married. At first she isn’t sure she wants to go, but Jim convinces her to come. Phillipa thought it would be a small affair, but her father and Arthur go all out to celebrate, and she spends the entire day on her feet, smiling, dancing, and chatting.
Arthur takes the opportunity to have her clear out some of the things she left behind when she moved out for good. He and her father spend the next day with Phillipa, helping her sort through it and pack what she wants.
Beneath her bed, Phillipa finds a crate of opera records, the ones that mysteriously appeared for her just after her grandfather’s death. She hasn’t listened to them in years and barely remembers what is in the crate.
“I never thanked you for these,” Phillipa says, holding one up to show Arthur.
“You don’t need to--I didn’t get them for you.”
“Then who did?” Phillipa looks to her father, who shrugs.
“Probably Eames,” he says, as if this is not a strange answer.
She remembers playing “ "Lascia ch'io pianga" on repeat to annoy him while everyone else was out and Eames was nursing a hangover, and closing the door on him when he came to investigate.
“Why?”
“Why does Eames ever do anything?” Arthur says as he tapes a box of her books closed.
++ + ++
Phillipa bids her family goodbye, and takes a plane to Buenos Aires where she gives herself a week to find him. She takes an extra week off from work, and her company is happy to give it. Phillipa is one of their best appraisers, but some of the higher ups find her dedication to be a bit too much. In her two years at the auction house, these two weeks are the first vacation time, or even days off, that Phillipa has taken.
She has only a sweater she found while packing up some of her things and the summer clothes she brought for the wedding. As she shivers, waiting for the bus that takes her to her hotel, she decides to put off the search for Eames until she has had a day to shop.
The next day she shops.
The day after she goes barhopping in a neighborhood where the concierge at her hotel recommends she not go after dark. She asks the bartenders about him in her broken Spanish. A few think they might have seen him, but none can say for sure. They’re kind--a few of them offer her drinks on the house that she declines.
Just after midnight Phillipa wanders into her fourth bar of the night. Men are playing cards at several of the tables, and the bar is deserted. She has a good feeling about this place as she approaches the bar. By the time she is settled at the bar, the bartender is there, ready to serve her. Looking around, his quickness shouldn’t surprise her. She is one of maybe four women in the bar, the rest of whom she is pretty sure are prostitutes. He offers her a beer that she takes. Phillipa gathers two things from her conversation with the bartender: Eames is a regular, and he often comes in with a beautiful woman. Part of her hopes that is a euphemism for ‘prostitute,’ but the look in his eyes says it isn’t.
She finishes her beer and promises to come back another night. The bartender tells her he’ll wait impatiently for her return and sends her back to her hotel. She walks back, content at having found Eames and a free beer.
++ + ++
Phillipa makes plans to visit several art museums, but her bed is warm and the morning is cold. She orders room service and pulls the comforter close. The museums will still be there tomorrow. Today is a day for celebration and laziness.
When there is a knock at the door, which should be food service, Phillipa grudgingly crawls out of bed to answer it. The man at the door isn’t one of the bell boys or waiters. He’s dressed in a leather jacket and shirt he must have kidnapped from the ‘80s.
Phillipa slides the chain out of place and unlocks the door.
“Phillipa,” Eames says, but makes no move to embrace her.
“Mr. Eames,” she replies as she leans against the doorframe.
Eames glances back over his shoulder to the empty hallway behind him.
“May I come in?”
Phillipa steps aside and lets him in. Once he is inside, they both reach for the door. She steps aside and lets him close it.
“How did you find me?” Phillipa asks as she crawls back into bed. It is still toasty, but she has to resist the urge to lay down again.
“I have connections.”
His shoulders are tense, and Eames refuses to meet her eyes. She watches him from the bed as he shifts back and forth. There is a chair he could take, but he stands.
“Why did you come here?” Eames asks.
“I wanted to thank you.”
“For?”
“The records. I always thought that they were from Arthur.”
“I don’t appreciate being lied to, Phillipa. Why did you come?”
Phillipa glares at him.
“You’re going senile in your old age.”
“Coming here just to thank me for records I gave you ten years ago is mad. They made telephones so you could call people to thank them, darling,” Eames says. He winces after he says ‘darling.’
“Maybe I wanted to see you,” she says quietly.
“What about ‘fuck you’, and ‘have a good life?’” Eames chirps in a falsetto that sounds far too cheery for what he is trying to accomplish.
“I can change my mind.”
“Changing your mind after so long is cruel.”
“Ending a relationship and failing to inform the other person is just as cruel.”
Eames takes a seat in the chair. He hunches over forward and stares at the floor.
“It was for the best.”
“So you get to decide what’s best for me? I’m a grown woman.”
“You weren’t then.”
“I was old enough to know what I was doing.”
“That doesn’t mean it was right.”
“Like you’ve ever cared about what was ‘right’ in your entire life.”
Eames looks up at her and his eyes are bloodshot. He has either been drinking or up all night. Phillipa guesses a combination of the two.
“I have morals, darling, I just don’t choose to exercise them as much as others might.”
“I knew what I was doing. You didn’t hurt me until the end.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, darling.”
“I know.”
When room service comes, Eames sits on the bed with her and they share the food. He is more of a hog than she remembers, but its adorable when he accidentally gets a dab of cream on the tip of his nose, so she lets it slide. They laugh and joke as they consume the breakfast. It was much too big for Phillipa alone, anyhow, though Eames seems to take everything she wants on the platter before she can get them.
“So who’s the beautiful woman? Your wife?” Phillpa asks as she splits the last bit of her danish in half.
“No need to be jealous. We’re purely business partners.”
Phillipa smirks. “Business partners?”
“Completely professional,” Eames says and stretches back to lay down on the bed beside her.
“I doubt that.”
“On my honor.”
“In that case...”
She glances over at him when he doesn’t respond. Eames has drifted off to sleep, his breathing slow and steady.
He seems much older now. Eames must be at least fifty by now. His hair must have gone gray at the temples years ago, and he looks as if he has put on a little bit of weight. The years have been fairly kind to him. His lips are still as plump as they always were, and Phillipa has to resist the urge to lean over him and kiss him awake.
Carefully, Phillipa climbs out of bed and goes to take a shower, removing herself from temptation.
++ + ++
It is Eames who wakes her with a kiss. At first she registers nothing but cologne and warmth, but as she wakes up, Phillipa realizes it is Eames. She threads her fingers through his hair and kisses him back. He’s taken off his jacket, she finds as she puts her hands on his back. His muscles move under her hands as he works to pull off the jeans she fell asleep in. Having him there so close, it is almost like going back in time to Paris. Eames cups her breasts through her shirt and kisses her neck. It wakes her up, and soon Phillipa is just as eager to be rid of their clothes as Eames.
They pass the afternoon in bed. He’s as passionate as she remembers, but they’re both older now, and she is considerably more experienced than back then. She is happy to doze and cuddle with him between rounds, and Eames seems grateful for the downtime.
Phillipa lays there, her head pillowed on Eames’ shoulder, and realizes that she doesn’t want to leave him in a few days time, possibly ever again.