Inception - Bite Hard (5/11)
Title: Bite Hard (part 5)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Word count: ~3,500
Pairings/Characters: ArthurxEames, Dom Cobb, Yusuf
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: language, age difference/underage, dub-con
Summary: AU. Sixteen year old Arthur wakes up in another man's apartment.
Part Five
Arthur wore Eames's aviators to school the next day to block out the mocking sun from his hangover.
Arthur decided that the wine after they got back from the karaoke bar was a mistake. He also decided that leaving without a shower was a bad idea too. He had scurried out of the apartment to catch the bus that morning and only realized once he was sitting in the seat that he had his own seed dried to his stomach after their third round of sex that had caused both of them to drunkenly fall asleep.
He'd left Eames sleeping.
He already missed him.
"-Arthur."
He blinked, glancing up at the teacher. She had her arms crossed over her chest and a sneer on her lips, and Arthur couldn't help but think that maybe all the teachers at the school looked exactly the same.
"Is there any particular reason for this fashion statement of yours, Arthur?"
"Huh?" Arthur asked dumbly and didn't realize until the teacher removed the sunglasses that he'd still been wearing them. "Oh… I guess I forgot to take them off." He tried not to wince when the light burned into his retinas, but he must have because the teacher's nostrils flared.
"Problem, Arthur?" she asked condescendingly.
"No, no, I'm fine," he said weakly, but the light had immediately magnified his headache from a dull roar to an unbearable one.
The teacher yanked him up out of his desk by the arm. "Tuck in your shirt and straighten your tie. You look slovenly and shouldn't have even been allowed inside this morning!"
Arthur groaned in the back of his throat, trying to shut out the pain by shutting his eyes. Her voice was too loud.
"Do it!"
"Do what?" Arthur whined, rubbing his temples.
"Arthur!"
She grabbed him by the ear to force him to look at her, and he vomited all down the front of her shirt.
The class was torn between laughing hysterically and gasping with horror. The teacher settled with screaming, and that only made Arthur's ears ring.
"Oops," he said.
Arthur was sent to the principal's office rather than the school nurse, and he discovered quickly that he hadn't been fooling anyone about simply being sick.
"Mrs. Porter said that you smelled of alcohol," the principal, Mr. Monroe said, standing from his seat. "You do." He was an older man, probably pushing fifty, with thinning, dark gray hair and watery blue eyes.
"My… mother has a problem with…" Arthur started, barely able to raise his voice above a whisper.
"Apparently so do you."
Arthur flinched. "I… I don't."
"How old are you, Arthur?" the principal asked, coming around to stand behind his chair. His hand lingered on his shoulder for a moment longer than Arthur was comfortable with.
"Sixteen."
"You're aware that's below the legal age for alcohol consumption, don't you?"
"You can't prove I was drinking," Arthur said, staring at the wall. He flipped Eames's sunglasses around in his hands. He actually didn't know if they could or not. "Look, Mr. Monroe, can we just get to the point here? Are you gonna put me in detention or whatever?"
"You didn't turn in any of your homework this morning either," Monroe replied, moving away from Arthur and tossing Arthur's backpack onto his desk. "A search through your things revealed a change of clothes smelling strongly of alcohol, and three cigarettes. We could suspend you just for having those cigarettes, Arthur."
Arthur momentarily forgot his pain and nausea for the moment. "What? Suspension? Isn't that a little harsh? They're not mine!"
"Whose are they, then?"
"They… They must be my mom's-they fell in my bag. They must have. I mean… I don't… I never…"
"You've always been an adequate student here, Arthur," Monroe interrupted, leaning against a corner of his desk. "You've gotten good grades, you've been well behaved. I didn't believe it when I heard what had happened."
Arthur licked his lips and straightened his back a little in the chair. "Sir…"
"Arthur," he said, pacing around the desk then and then stopping so he was just in front of him, tilting his head upwards to stare at him. "Your eyes are bloodshot, and…" his fingers trailed down to the collar of his shirt, which he pulled away just slightly to reveal a bruising teeth mark on his collarbone. "What is this, I wonder?"
Arthur swallowed, fighting not to squirm in his chair.
"Please d-don't suspend me," Arthur said, voice cracking. "If my Dad finds out, he'll-" Well, Arthur's dad only needed an excuse to disown the one reason he married his mother in the first place, and there was an unfounded fear that one thing would lead to another, and another, and another, until Eames was discovered to be the one who left that little love bite. He couldn't let that happen to Eames.
He could never let that happen to Eames because he'd fallen in love with him.
Hell, he may have been in love with him at first sight, if things like that truly existed.
"Please-"
The principal shushed him by placing a finger on his lips. "I won't suspend you. You will have to make it up to me though."
Arthur felt his heart thud against his ribcage, and he was sure his nausea wasn't just from the hangover.
"You'll bang erasers, wipe down all the desks, clean every blackboard after school, every day, for the next two months. You will come to school with your uniform worn properly, and you will not wear sunglasses or anything against dress code. If you are caught with cigarettes or alcohol again, you will be suspended. Do you understand?" His finger trailed up and brushed a loose strand of hair out of Arthur's eye.
"Y-yes."
"Good boy. Run along."
Arthur couldn't get out of the office fast enough. As soon as he was free, he went into the bathroom and threw up.
He wasn't sure why he felt so sick and blamed it on the hangover, even though a nagging feeling in the back of his mind told him that it wasn't the case.
"I think I would have just stuck with the suspension," Cobb said, spinning in Arthur's computer chair.
Arthur didn't lift his head from his pillow. "I can't get suspended. You know how my dad gets."
"Not really. When was the last time you even saw him?"
"I think he'd make a special case to come home and kick my ass if I got suspended from the school he so called 'worked his ass off to get me into' or whatever. 'My grades weren't good enough to get me in there on merit alone, but he still pulled all the strings' and all that shit."
"He doesn't actually beat you, does he?" Cobb asked, lighting a cigarette.
Arthur lifted his head to look at Cobb, thought about it, and said, "No. He doesn't."
He had a belt-buckle shaped scar on his ass to prove the contrary, but the only one who had seen that was…
Arthur remembered the painting and how Eames had left the scar out, and for some reason it made him want to cry.
"Still, you've basically been turned into a janitor," Cobb continued after taking a few puffs. "That's gotta suck, right?"
"I'll manage."
"And all that over a few cigarettes?"
"And barfing on Mrs. Porter."
"I don't think that was fair. I mean, you said you were sick, right?"
"I wasn't fooling anyone, Cobb," Arthur grumbled, tossing an arm over his eyes. "I know I'm not fooling you, so you can stop pretending for my sake. Go ahead and chew me out, all right? You might as well get it out of your system before Mal finds out and you double-team me."
"Rumor has it you were hungover."
"Yeah, well… I didn't realize how much I was drinking."
"Where were you drinking?"
"Karaoke bar."
Cobb snorted. "No, really."
Arthur looked at him. "I'm serious. I sang a Katy Perry song. That alone should tell you I was drunk."
Cobb stopped spinning in the chair and slouched back into it. "You're cool new guy friend convince you to drink?"
"No," Arthur said. "He actually told me I shouldn't drink so much, but I was having fun."
He couldn't remember if Eames had actually said that.
"Are these," Cobb asked, grabbing the sunglasses off of Arthur's desk, "from that cool guy friend too?"
"I just borrowed them. You borrowed shit from me all the time back before you got taller than me."
"I wasn't accusing you of anything. It was just a question," Cobb said, putting the sunglasses on for a second and admiring his reflection in Arthur's computer screen before putting the lenses back on the desk. "Who is this guy, anyway? How'd you meet him?"
"I ran into him on the way outside of the library," Arthur lied, sitting up and folding his legs Indian-style. "I apologized. We talked. He thought I was cool, so we became friends."
"That doesn't sound like you. It also doesn't explain how this guy showed up in your life right after your blow up in the classroom and subsequent disappearance… and you've been acting weird ever since, man. Come on, you know you can tell me. I won't tell anyone, I swear."
"Liar," Arthur said flatly, snagging Cobb's cigarette and taking a drag off of it. "You tell Mal everything."
"She doesn't know I still smoke. She doesn't know I jerk off. Hell, Arthur, she doesn't know that I made it to third base with my last girlfriend before I met her. Believe it or not, I'm not quite as susceptible to her guilty eyes as you might think. I've been with her long enough to work up at least a bit of an immunity. Besides, there are some things that just stay between guys."
Arthur got up and started pacing the room, snagging his camera off of the dresser in the process and holding it protectively to his chest. "Well, it's not… I mean, what if I tell you and you go back on it? I can't let this get out, Cobb."
"Can't let what get out, Arthur? I swear on my mom's life that I won't tell anyone."
Arthur turned, running a hand over his hair and said, "I… I had sex with him, okay?"
It took ten seconds before Cobb even processed the sentence. It took ten more seconds before he managed to say anything, and when he did he said, "Whoa, what?"
"Secret's out and so am I, apparently," Arthur said, cradling the camera because he didn't actually have Eames there to do so. "We've been having sex, this friend of mine and I."
Cobb stared, eyebrows knitted together in the middle of his forehead. "So… you're gay."
"…Yeah, I think so," Arthur sighed. "I really like it, and I really like him, and that's why I'm not going to tell you who he is."
"Why can't you tell me?"
"Because he's twenty-two."
"Okay… what? What the fuck, Arthur?" Cobb jumped to his feet then, holding his arms out as if the closer his hands were to the walls, the closer he'd come to a conclusion.
"You're taking this better than I expected," Arthur said sardonically.
"Fuck, Arthur, do you-fuck. Fuck, you're fucking a twenty-two year old? Isn't that like… pedophilia or something?"
"Pedophiles like prepubescent children, Cobb. Don't talk about him like that, okay? Jesus, he's not some crazy pervert. He's only six years older than me. That's not that much-"
"Are you listening to yourself?" Cobb shouted, pointing his entire hand at Arthur, but then he paused, seeming to calm down, and ran his hand through his hair, sending it falling into his eyes. "Okay… I don't know the guy. I don't know what this is all about… I'm your friend, not your dad, so I shouldn't be… but… fuck…"
"We're careful," Arthur assured him weakly. "He always wears protection-"
"Don't… Don't tell me that. I don't want to hear about that," Cobb interrupted, sitting back down and placing his face into his hands. "I swore I wouldn't tell, and I won't, but… Are you sure you should really be doing this? How do you know you're not just some creepy, underage fetish for him?"
"I lied to him, told him I was eighteen before, and I… I know that it's not just… because it isn't just that. He… He's really nice to me, Cobb." He couldn't stop the soft smile from forming on his lips, and he looked down at the camera where, in the viewfinder, was the picture of Eames's profile in Yusuf's car.
"Holy shit, are you in love with this guy?"
"I… I don't know. Maybe a little…" Arthur said, wilting away from Cobb's stunned gaze.
"Do you even know what love is?"
Arthur sighed through his nose. "I don't know."
He stood and put his hands on Arthur's shoulders, and his gaze was so intense that Arthur couldn't look away. It frightened him just a little, the look on Cobb's face. "Just… don't go rushing into anything like this, okay? I can't say for sure, but you could be heading down a bad road here… a really bad road. I won't tell anyone unless you keep getting into trouble because if it's to help you, you know I'll step in to protect you, Arthur. We've been friends since grade school, and I just don't want to see you hurt."
That night, after Cobb left, Arthur passed his mother's room to find her asleep, and a man pulling his jeans on. He stared at Arthur who just walked away, shoving his earbuds in his ears to drown out the silence.
…and then he had a thought.
What makes me any different than her?
He spent the rest of his evening taking pictures of things in his yard until it was too dark to see, and he fell asleep looking at his only photograph of Eames, wondering what his first name was, wondering how many people Eames had slept with before him, wondering if Arthur was anything more than a free fuck to him.
Eames was exhausted after another double shift at the restaurant, and an ungrateful table had kept him there past closing time without so much as a fifteen percent tip. As soon as he reached the lobby of his apartment complex, he was ready to collapse.
Yusuf was there.
"Oh, hey, Yusuf," Eames said, waving halfheartedly as he started for the stairs. "What are you doing down here so late? Got a hooker coming or something?"
"I was waiting for you," Yusuf said unsurely. "I need to talk to you because it's bothering the hell out of me, and I can't sleep."
"If this is a confession of love, I can assure you it can wait until tomorrow," Eames replied, starting up the stairs with Yusuf on his heels.
"Eames, I don't know how stupid you think I am, but you must think awfully lowly of me if you think you've fooled anyone about that Arthur boy."
Eames froze and looked back at Yusuf, trying to keep his expression neutral. "What about-"
"Eames, he's clearly still a kid. His bloody voice still cracks. You really thought you could put him in a blazer and shove a cigarette in his mouth and I'd be convinced otherwise?"
"He told me he was eighteen," Eames said, returning to his climb so he didn't have to look Yusuf in the eye while he lied.
"I also know you're not that stupid. Even when you were shooting up three times a day, you were still capable of telling the difference between what was jailbait and what wasn't."
"I don't recall ever having to make that decision," Eames said. "Yusuf, you're barking-"
"I know you're fucking him, Eames. I saw the way he looked at you. I saw the way you looked at him. I'll repeat, I'm not that stupid."
Eames groaned and took the next flight of stairs two at a time. "It's not really fair that you're cornering me after such a rough night at work, you know. I wouldn't do it to you."
Eames finally reached his floor, but when he went to put his key in the lock, Yusuf snagged Eames by the shoulder and whirled him around, forcing him to look at him. "This isn't a bloody game, Eames," he said darkly. "I could call the police on you tonight."
Eames swallowed the knot in his throat. "Yusuf…"
"He's just a kid, Eames. How old is he?"
"…"
"Eames."
"…" he sighed. "He's sixteen, all right? I didn't know that when I met him. I was… kind of… piss drunk. I met him in the club, so I assumed he was old enough, all right?... and when it was over, and I realized my mistake, I decided to just pretend it never happened, but…"
"You couldn't stay away," Yusuf replied quietly.
"No! That's not it at all, Yusuf. He came back here by himself. He came back to me, Yusuf. I didn't force him… Fuck, you don't understand. You didn't… You didn't hear him, Yusuf, the way that he fucking cried. He acts like I'm the only person in the entire world who even knows he exists. I couldn't just turn him away. He would have bloody killed himself."
Yusuf's expression was a mix of horror and confusion and sympathy, if it was possible. "This is a big deal, Eames. You can't just pretend it isn't because you don't want to hurt his feelings."
"He's a good kid, Yusuf. He's smart and he's beautiful, and I just don't want him to think I'm using him."
"Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Are you using him? What possible reason would you be screwing around with a cute sixteen-year-old piece of ass for?"
"I…" Eames started but stopped himself before he said something too personal. "I draw. I paint again. I… I feel alive again when he's around, Yusuf. I haven't done any good art since Roxanne died, but when he's around… I don't feel so… alone."
It came out a bit personal anyway.
"Y-you said so yourself that my art had improved," Eames continued.
"But Eames-"
"Please, Yusuf, just-just give me some time. I need to figure some things out. You don't want to send me to prison, do you?"
"No, I don't. Just…" Yusuf sighed, rubbing his temple. "Don't keep fucking around. This isn't something you can keep secret forever, you know."
Eames didn't want to think about that, so instead he went to bed and went to sleep.
He dreamed of Arthur's laugh.
Short chapter is short. Next one will come after I finish some stuff I have to do. Hopefully that will be soon.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Word count: ~3,500
Pairings/Characters: ArthurxEames, Dom Cobb, Yusuf
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: language, age difference/underage, dub-con
Summary: AU. Sixteen year old Arthur wakes up in another man's apartment.
Part Five
Arthur wore Eames's aviators to school the next day to block out the mocking sun from his hangover.
Arthur decided that the wine after they got back from the karaoke bar was a mistake. He also decided that leaving without a shower was a bad idea too. He had scurried out of the apartment to catch the bus that morning and only realized once he was sitting in the seat that he had his own seed dried to his stomach after their third round of sex that had caused both of them to drunkenly fall asleep.
He'd left Eames sleeping.
He already missed him.
"-Arthur."
He blinked, glancing up at the teacher. She had her arms crossed over her chest and a sneer on her lips, and Arthur couldn't help but think that maybe all the teachers at the school looked exactly the same.
"Is there any particular reason for this fashion statement of yours, Arthur?"
"Huh?" Arthur asked dumbly and didn't realize until the teacher removed the sunglasses that he'd still been wearing them. "Oh… I guess I forgot to take them off." He tried not to wince when the light burned into his retinas, but he must have because the teacher's nostrils flared.
"Problem, Arthur?" she asked condescendingly.
"No, no, I'm fine," he said weakly, but the light had immediately magnified his headache from a dull roar to an unbearable one.
The teacher yanked him up out of his desk by the arm. "Tuck in your shirt and straighten your tie. You look slovenly and shouldn't have even been allowed inside this morning!"
Arthur groaned in the back of his throat, trying to shut out the pain by shutting his eyes. Her voice was too loud.
"Do it!"
"Do what?" Arthur whined, rubbing his temples.
"Arthur!"
She grabbed him by the ear to force him to look at her, and he vomited all down the front of her shirt.
The class was torn between laughing hysterically and gasping with horror. The teacher settled with screaming, and that only made Arthur's ears ring.
"Oops," he said.
Arthur was sent to the principal's office rather than the school nurse, and he discovered quickly that he hadn't been fooling anyone about simply being sick.
"Mrs. Porter said that you smelled of alcohol," the principal, Mr. Monroe said, standing from his seat. "You do." He was an older man, probably pushing fifty, with thinning, dark gray hair and watery blue eyes.
"My… mother has a problem with…" Arthur started, barely able to raise his voice above a whisper.
"Apparently so do you."
Arthur flinched. "I… I don't."
"How old are you, Arthur?" the principal asked, coming around to stand behind his chair. His hand lingered on his shoulder for a moment longer than Arthur was comfortable with.
"Sixteen."
"You're aware that's below the legal age for alcohol consumption, don't you?"
"You can't prove I was drinking," Arthur said, staring at the wall. He flipped Eames's sunglasses around in his hands. He actually didn't know if they could or not. "Look, Mr. Monroe, can we just get to the point here? Are you gonna put me in detention or whatever?"
"You didn't turn in any of your homework this morning either," Monroe replied, moving away from Arthur and tossing Arthur's backpack onto his desk. "A search through your things revealed a change of clothes smelling strongly of alcohol, and three cigarettes. We could suspend you just for having those cigarettes, Arthur."
Arthur momentarily forgot his pain and nausea for the moment. "What? Suspension? Isn't that a little harsh? They're not mine!"
"Whose are they, then?"
"They… They must be my mom's-they fell in my bag. They must have. I mean… I don't… I never…"
"You've always been an adequate student here, Arthur," Monroe interrupted, leaning against a corner of his desk. "You've gotten good grades, you've been well behaved. I didn't believe it when I heard what had happened."
Arthur licked his lips and straightened his back a little in the chair. "Sir…"
"Arthur," he said, pacing around the desk then and then stopping so he was just in front of him, tilting his head upwards to stare at him. "Your eyes are bloodshot, and…" his fingers trailed down to the collar of his shirt, which he pulled away just slightly to reveal a bruising teeth mark on his collarbone. "What is this, I wonder?"
Arthur swallowed, fighting not to squirm in his chair.
"Please d-don't suspend me," Arthur said, voice cracking. "If my Dad finds out, he'll-" Well, Arthur's dad only needed an excuse to disown the one reason he married his mother in the first place, and there was an unfounded fear that one thing would lead to another, and another, and another, until Eames was discovered to be the one who left that little love bite. He couldn't let that happen to Eames.
He could never let that happen to Eames because he'd fallen in love with him.
Hell, he may have been in love with him at first sight, if things like that truly existed.
"Please-"
The principal shushed him by placing a finger on his lips. "I won't suspend you. You will have to make it up to me though."
Arthur felt his heart thud against his ribcage, and he was sure his nausea wasn't just from the hangover.
"You'll bang erasers, wipe down all the desks, clean every blackboard after school, every day, for the next two months. You will come to school with your uniform worn properly, and you will not wear sunglasses or anything against dress code. If you are caught with cigarettes or alcohol again, you will be suspended. Do you understand?" His finger trailed up and brushed a loose strand of hair out of Arthur's eye.
"Y-yes."
"Good boy. Run along."
Arthur couldn't get out of the office fast enough. As soon as he was free, he went into the bathroom and threw up.
He wasn't sure why he felt so sick and blamed it on the hangover, even though a nagging feeling in the back of his mind told him that it wasn't the case.
"I think I would have just stuck with the suspension," Cobb said, spinning in Arthur's computer chair.
Arthur didn't lift his head from his pillow. "I can't get suspended. You know how my dad gets."
"Not really. When was the last time you even saw him?"
"I think he'd make a special case to come home and kick my ass if I got suspended from the school he so called 'worked his ass off to get me into' or whatever. 'My grades weren't good enough to get me in there on merit alone, but he still pulled all the strings' and all that shit."
"He doesn't actually beat you, does he?" Cobb asked, lighting a cigarette.
Arthur lifted his head to look at Cobb, thought about it, and said, "No. He doesn't."
He had a belt-buckle shaped scar on his ass to prove the contrary, but the only one who had seen that was…
Arthur remembered the painting and how Eames had left the scar out, and for some reason it made him want to cry.
"Still, you've basically been turned into a janitor," Cobb continued after taking a few puffs. "That's gotta suck, right?"
"I'll manage."
"And all that over a few cigarettes?"
"And barfing on Mrs. Porter."
"I don't think that was fair. I mean, you said you were sick, right?"
"I wasn't fooling anyone, Cobb," Arthur grumbled, tossing an arm over his eyes. "I know I'm not fooling you, so you can stop pretending for my sake. Go ahead and chew me out, all right? You might as well get it out of your system before Mal finds out and you double-team me."
"Rumor has it you were hungover."
"Yeah, well… I didn't realize how much I was drinking."
"Where were you drinking?"
"Karaoke bar."
Cobb snorted. "No, really."
Arthur looked at him. "I'm serious. I sang a Katy Perry song. That alone should tell you I was drunk."
Cobb stopped spinning in the chair and slouched back into it. "You're cool new guy friend convince you to drink?"
"No," Arthur said. "He actually told me I shouldn't drink so much, but I was having fun."
He couldn't remember if Eames had actually said that.
"Are these," Cobb asked, grabbing the sunglasses off of Arthur's desk, "from that cool guy friend too?"
"I just borrowed them. You borrowed shit from me all the time back before you got taller than me."
"I wasn't accusing you of anything. It was just a question," Cobb said, putting the sunglasses on for a second and admiring his reflection in Arthur's computer screen before putting the lenses back on the desk. "Who is this guy, anyway? How'd you meet him?"
"I ran into him on the way outside of the library," Arthur lied, sitting up and folding his legs Indian-style. "I apologized. We talked. He thought I was cool, so we became friends."
"That doesn't sound like you. It also doesn't explain how this guy showed up in your life right after your blow up in the classroom and subsequent disappearance… and you've been acting weird ever since, man. Come on, you know you can tell me. I won't tell anyone, I swear."
"Liar," Arthur said flatly, snagging Cobb's cigarette and taking a drag off of it. "You tell Mal everything."
"She doesn't know I still smoke. She doesn't know I jerk off. Hell, Arthur, she doesn't know that I made it to third base with my last girlfriend before I met her. Believe it or not, I'm not quite as susceptible to her guilty eyes as you might think. I've been with her long enough to work up at least a bit of an immunity. Besides, there are some things that just stay between guys."
Arthur got up and started pacing the room, snagging his camera off of the dresser in the process and holding it protectively to his chest. "Well, it's not… I mean, what if I tell you and you go back on it? I can't let this get out, Cobb."
"Can't let what get out, Arthur? I swear on my mom's life that I won't tell anyone."
Arthur turned, running a hand over his hair and said, "I… I had sex with him, okay?"
It took ten seconds before Cobb even processed the sentence. It took ten more seconds before he managed to say anything, and when he did he said, "Whoa, what?"
"Secret's out and so am I, apparently," Arthur said, cradling the camera because he didn't actually have Eames there to do so. "We've been having sex, this friend of mine and I."
Cobb stared, eyebrows knitted together in the middle of his forehead. "So… you're gay."
"…Yeah, I think so," Arthur sighed. "I really like it, and I really like him, and that's why I'm not going to tell you who he is."
"Why can't you tell me?"
"Because he's twenty-two."
"Okay… what? What the fuck, Arthur?" Cobb jumped to his feet then, holding his arms out as if the closer his hands were to the walls, the closer he'd come to a conclusion.
"You're taking this better than I expected," Arthur said sardonically.
"Fuck, Arthur, do you-fuck. Fuck, you're fucking a twenty-two year old? Isn't that like… pedophilia or something?"
"Pedophiles like prepubescent children, Cobb. Don't talk about him like that, okay? Jesus, he's not some crazy pervert. He's only six years older than me. That's not that much-"
"Are you listening to yourself?" Cobb shouted, pointing his entire hand at Arthur, but then he paused, seeming to calm down, and ran his hand through his hair, sending it falling into his eyes. "Okay… I don't know the guy. I don't know what this is all about… I'm your friend, not your dad, so I shouldn't be… but… fuck…"
"We're careful," Arthur assured him weakly. "He always wears protection-"
"Don't… Don't tell me that. I don't want to hear about that," Cobb interrupted, sitting back down and placing his face into his hands. "I swore I wouldn't tell, and I won't, but… Are you sure you should really be doing this? How do you know you're not just some creepy, underage fetish for him?"
"I lied to him, told him I was eighteen before, and I… I know that it's not just… because it isn't just that. He… He's really nice to me, Cobb." He couldn't stop the soft smile from forming on his lips, and he looked down at the camera where, in the viewfinder, was the picture of Eames's profile in Yusuf's car.
"Holy shit, are you in love with this guy?"
"I… I don't know. Maybe a little…" Arthur said, wilting away from Cobb's stunned gaze.
"Do you even know what love is?"
Arthur sighed through his nose. "I don't know."
He stood and put his hands on Arthur's shoulders, and his gaze was so intense that Arthur couldn't look away. It frightened him just a little, the look on Cobb's face. "Just… don't go rushing into anything like this, okay? I can't say for sure, but you could be heading down a bad road here… a really bad road. I won't tell anyone unless you keep getting into trouble because if it's to help you, you know I'll step in to protect you, Arthur. We've been friends since grade school, and I just don't want to see you hurt."
That night, after Cobb left, Arthur passed his mother's room to find her asleep, and a man pulling his jeans on. He stared at Arthur who just walked away, shoving his earbuds in his ears to drown out the silence.
…and then he had a thought.
What makes me any different than her?
He spent the rest of his evening taking pictures of things in his yard until it was too dark to see, and he fell asleep looking at his only photograph of Eames, wondering what his first name was, wondering how many people Eames had slept with before him, wondering if Arthur was anything more than a free fuck to him.
Eames was exhausted after another double shift at the restaurant, and an ungrateful table had kept him there past closing time without so much as a fifteen percent tip. As soon as he reached the lobby of his apartment complex, he was ready to collapse.
Yusuf was there.
"Oh, hey, Yusuf," Eames said, waving halfheartedly as he started for the stairs. "What are you doing down here so late? Got a hooker coming or something?"
"I was waiting for you," Yusuf said unsurely. "I need to talk to you because it's bothering the hell out of me, and I can't sleep."
"If this is a confession of love, I can assure you it can wait until tomorrow," Eames replied, starting up the stairs with Yusuf on his heels.
"Eames, I don't know how stupid you think I am, but you must think awfully lowly of me if you think you've fooled anyone about that Arthur boy."
Eames froze and looked back at Yusuf, trying to keep his expression neutral. "What about-"
"Eames, he's clearly still a kid. His bloody voice still cracks. You really thought you could put him in a blazer and shove a cigarette in his mouth and I'd be convinced otherwise?"
"He told me he was eighteen," Eames said, returning to his climb so he didn't have to look Yusuf in the eye while he lied.
"I also know you're not that stupid. Even when you were shooting up three times a day, you were still capable of telling the difference between what was jailbait and what wasn't."
"I don't recall ever having to make that decision," Eames said. "Yusuf, you're barking-"
"I know you're fucking him, Eames. I saw the way he looked at you. I saw the way you looked at him. I'll repeat, I'm not that stupid."
Eames groaned and took the next flight of stairs two at a time. "It's not really fair that you're cornering me after such a rough night at work, you know. I wouldn't do it to you."
Eames finally reached his floor, but when he went to put his key in the lock, Yusuf snagged Eames by the shoulder and whirled him around, forcing him to look at him. "This isn't a bloody game, Eames," he said darkly. "I could call the police on you tonight."
Eames swallowed the knot in his throat. "Yusuf…"
"He's just a kid, Eames. How old is he?"
"…"
"Eames."
"…" he sighed. "He's sixteen, all right? I didn't know that when I met him. I was… kind of… piss drunk. I met him in the club, so I assumed he was old enough, all right?... and when it was over, and I realized my mistake, I decided to just pretend it never happened, but…"
"You couldn't stay away," Yusuf replied quietly.
"No! That's not it at all, Yusuf. He came back here by himself. He came back to me, Yusuf. I didn't force him… Fuck, you don't understand. You didn't… You didn't hear him, Yusuf, the way that he fucking cried. He acts like I'm the only person in the entire world who even knows he exists. I couldn't just turn him away. He would have bloody killed himself."
Yusuf's expression was a mix of horror and confusion and sympathy, if it was possible. "This is a big deal, Eames. You can't just pretend it isn't because you don't want to hurt his feelings."
"He's a good kid, Yusuf. He's smart and he's beautiful, and I just don't want him to think I'm using him."
"Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Are you using him? What possible reason would you be screwing around with a cute sixteen-year-old piece of ass for?"
"I…" Eames started but stopped himself before he said something too personal. "I draw. I paint again. I… I feel alive again when he's around, Yusuf. I haven't done any good art since Roxanne died, but when he's around… I don't feel so… alone."
It came out a bit personal anyway.
"Y-you said so yourself that my art had improved," Eames continued.
"But Eames-"
"Please, Yusuf, just-just give me some time. I need to figure some things out. You don't want to send me to prison, do you?"
"No, I don't. Just…" Yusuf sighed, rubbing his temple. "Don't keep fucking around. This isn't something you can keep secret forever, you know."
Eames didn't want to think about that, so instead he went to bed and went to sleep.
He dreamed of Arthur's laugh.
Short chapter is short. Next one will come after I finish some stuff I have to do. Hopefully that will be soon.