FIC: Say It Right [Eames/Arthur kid!fic/marriage!fic] Part 6/6
He wakes up alone for the second time this week, only this time there’s a note on the pillow next to his head.
Cobb called. Went to pick up Em. Should be back in a few hours. Will call if the need arises. Take it easy and eat something, will you darling? You’re turning into a bag of bones.
-E
It’s true his eating schedule has been off kilter this week but Arthur is hardly on the track toward emaciated. He resents the idea, tosses the note aside, bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling, even a little. If there is one thing he will allow himself to be happy about, it’s the fact that Emily will be home soon, and this thought alone gives him the strength to push himself out of bed - sore thighs and back and bruised, debauched neck be damned.
He makes himself a quick and easy brunch of scrambled eggs and bacon and toast, tells himself it isn’t because Eames wants him to eat but because he’s actually hungry (even though he isn’t really). He makes an extra plate for Eames and a smaller one for Emily, puts them in the oven with the oven light on, just in case. Then he spends what’s left of the morning disinfecting every surface in Emily’s room, from the nightstand to the dresser, to every toy he can remember her playing with in the last week.
It’s a slow and meticulous job, but the precision of it all soothes Arthur. It reminds him of cleaning up after a job, erasing any evidence of their existence before the mark wakes up from the dream; it reminds him of his painstakingly organized workspace at the far end of the Paris warehouse, of Cobb writing notes on the dry erase board, of Ariadne building scale models and Yusuf mixing serums; it reminds him of Eames doing everything he can to ruin it all, if only to grate on Arthur’s nerves.
For this reason, he takes his time with the task, making sure every surface is sparkling, germ-free. The last thing he does is change the bed sheets.
When he’s satisfied that every wrinkle on the quilt is in its proper place, he sighs in a way that makes him feel like he’s just shed a thousand pounds and sits up against the side of the bed, one knee drawn up to his chest and a hand idling through the hair of one of Emily’s favorite Barbie dolls. He lets himself think about Eames, last night. Eames, back home. Eames, kissing fiery trails down his abdomen. Eames, whispering I didn’t mean it.
Something in him stirs. Arthur isn’t sure how to place the feeling. He touches his lips and thinks about Eames kissing the breath out of him.
But only for a little while.
--
Eames returns at half past two with a bag of home treatment supplies from the hospital in one arm and a worn out Emily on his hip. Arthur is fresh out of the shower, hair damp and slicked back, a towel around his shoulders. The moment she sees him she calls out, weakly, papa! and Arthur meets Eames halfway when he passes her, presses her against his chest and lets her wrap her tiny arms around his neck.
He kisses her nose and asks her how she’s feeling, calls her sweety in that voice that Eames used to try to get Arthur to use on him until he’d resigned himself to the fact that, for Arthur, baby talk would remain talk for babies only. And this feels right, Arthur thinks; at least this part of his universe has finally shifted back into place.
Eames is watching them from the couch, his arms crossed and a look on his face Arthur can’t read. Emily tightens her hold on him, presses her cheek to his, and while she’s preoccupied playing with the hair on the back of his head, he motions to the kitchen with his eyes and says, ‘There’s food in the oven if you’re hungry.” Then he leans his head back to smile at his daughter.
“What about you, sweety? Are you hungry?”
But Emily, despite her most valiant efforts to stay awake is struggling just to keep her eyes open, and what starts off as a firm and almost petulant no ends in a gasping yawn.
“She’s still really tired.” Eames pipes up in that none-too-helpful way of his, standing, stretching, slowly making his way to the kitchen. “Cobb said when she woke up and saw him there instead of you she hardly put up a fuss. I think that says a lot, don’t you?”
“Indeed it does.” Arthur says after a moment, more to himself than to Eames, who is retrieving his plate of eggs from the oven and making a seat for himself at the table. “What did the doctor say? And what’s in the bag you left by the door?”
“They can’t give her anything to treat her, really. Said to keep her hydrated, lots of rest...” Eames shoves a torn piece of toast into his mouth, chews roughly for a few seconds, swallows, and makes a motion with his wrist toward the aforementioned bag still sitting next to the front door. “They gave us a breathing treatment machine for her asthma though. It should help while she’s recovering now, too.”
Arthur sighs into Emily’s hair, strokes the back of her head with a hand until she starts to doze, head resting comfortably on his shoulder. “Treatment, huh? You’re sure going to love that.” Then he looks to Eames who is no longer watching them and almost says something to the effect of, I’m glad you’re home, but doesn’t.
“I’m going to put her to bed.” He says instead.
He is almost out of the kitchen when he hears Eames call out from behind him, Arthur, softly enough to still be heard without waking Emily. Arthur stops but doesn’t turn around. Simply waits.
“Meet me out back when you’re through.”
“Alright.” He responds, even though he thinks he knows what will happen when he does meet Eames out back. And he should be terrified, probably would be, if this were all happening yesterday, but today is a different day; he knew it the moment he opened his eyes and he knows it, even now, as he pulls Emily’s quilt back and lays her gently on the bed.
--
Still, despite the calm he feels at the knowledge of what’s to come, it takes him a while to find the nerve to actually take those steps out onto the back porch. When he finally does, the afternoon sunlight is an assault to his senses which, over the past forty-eight hours have become accustomed to the dim artificial lights of a half-lit home, of the somber atmosphere of a hospital. The weather is a perfect contradiction to the mood building inside of him at the sight of Eames sitting quietly, patiently, at the garden table in the middle of the yard, his hands folded neatly on his lap and his poker chip lain flat on the tabletop.
It only takes a look from Eames as he approaches - a deep, suggestive look - for Arthur to understand what it is he is expected to do, and does it, though his hands are shaking when he reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, still shaking when he sits across from Eames and places the red die in the middle of the table. He’d brought it out of storage after Eames left, before Emily got so sick. Admitting to his own hypocrisy like this makes his insides stir, but he remains, under the the older man’s unsurprised stare, resolute.
Eames murmurs, “I love you, Arthur.”
From there, it all goes rolling overwhelmingly quickly. They fight about yesterday morning. They fight about the past week. They fight about months and months uncertainty, of doubt, of frustration. Somewhere along the line, Arthur is crying with a hand on his forehead and his elbow on the table, gesturing with his free hand as he tries to explain feelings he didn’t know he had, feelings he had ignored, thoughts and suspicions he had fully intended on keeping to himself, insecurities he has always denied. It is the most embarrassing thing he has ever done in front of the other man, so embarrassing he finds himself shouting accusations and explanations if only to keep some semblance of his dignity. Eventually Eames is fiercely scrubbing at his own tear stained cheeks and stinging eyes and shouting back. Eventually they are both standing barefoot in lawn, pacing, grabbing elbows, jerking in and out of each other’s space, pointing fingers.
Eventually their neighbors begin shutting their windows.
Eventually the kids playing in the alley disperse into their own homes.
They do all this because they have to. Arthur sees that now. Knows that Eames knew it before he did. There is no running away to all corners of the world to avoid dealing with each other anymore. There is no more acting like children in the face of their problems. This revelation is a frightening one for Arthur until he realizes that it really just can’t be that way anymore because now they have their own child, a child who calls them papa and daddy, which means they are her family, which means she loves them, which means they love her, which means they will always have to keep on loving each other, if only for her sake.
And it doesn’t matter that the rest of the world can hear them trying to fix themselves as long as Emily is still sleeping soundly in her room, away from it.
By the end of it they have decided they will return to work when Dom does, because while they want to be alive long enough to see Emily get married, they need the dreams, the adventure, the challenge. They need to feel useful not only to their daughter but to each other, to themselves. They want to have more and more stories to tell her, to tell their grandchildren. They need to go back like they need to breathe.
They are standing, bodies flush, Eames’s hands fisted in the back of Arthur’s shirt and Arthur’s fingers cupped around Eames’s ears. They are breathing each other in, kissing like it’s the first time they’ve ever kissed - only it feels better than the first time ever did, newer somehow. Arthur hears himself saying things but doesn’t feel the words coming out when they do; it’s like he’s separated from himself and yet still somehow entirely present. Please, he’s begging when Eames’s lips find his ear, his jaw, his throat. Eames, as they hit the dewy grass all tangled limbs, as Arthur straddles him and pushes his shirt up his chest with quivering hands, as Eames reaches between their grinding bodies and undoes the front of Arthur’s pants.
The afternoon sun is hot on Arthur’s skin. Eames’s eyes on his, hotter. Eames’s tongue on his chest, searing.
Arthur leans forward gasping, sighing, chest to chest so that Eames can feel his heart racing. Look at what you do to me, it’s saying, look at how much I need you.
It’s the closest he comes to saying I love you too without words.
--
Dom calls them in for their first job out of retirement several weeks later. He’s worked it out so that they can get it done as close to home as possible, all three of them, but Emily will be staying with Philippa and James at Mal’s mother’s house while they’re gone.
It’ll be good for them, Dom had said through the phone, then added, with a slight lilt in his voice, and maybe Emily and James will fall in love and get married some day.
Arthur had tried to suggest the idea to Eames later, only to have had to spend the next hour convincing him that sending her off to the Cobb household was the best thing for their situation because, damnit, no filthy boy is so much as touching my daughter until she’s at least thirty years old.
They wake up early their first day of work, feed each other and Emily, and, before they leave they each take a few minutes to choose something of Emily’s that they’ll use as their new totems. This is Eames’s idea. Arthur ends up stuffing one of Emily’s rhinestone butterfly hairclips in his pocket, and doesn’t ask Eames what he grabbed when they meet up on the front porch. Emily talks in her car seat the entire drive to Dom’s mother-in-law’s house; some of it Arthur understands and responds to from the passenger seat; some of it makes Eames laugh behind the wheel; most of it is unintelligible, one long and scattered ramble about the pwitty flowers and cats and Daddy’s silly ears, whatever that means.
Mal’s mother ushers them into the house when they arrive at her doorstep. She is a slight woman, graying now, but elegant in the way she stands and smiles and speaks; seeing her reminds Arthur so much of Mal. James is the first to meet Emily in the front room and, two minutes into the reunion Emily is already crying because James has taken her doll and won’t give it back.
Arthur pulls Eames back out the door before he can do something stupid like Arthur knows he wants to do, like, say, shove James in the shoulder for a taste of his own medicine, while mother Mal is trying to get the situation under control. Kids will be kids, and Emily, while sensitive, will toughen up eventually. Plus, Arthur likes the idea that this might be young love in the making.
He doesn’t say this out loud, though.
Eames is uncharacteristically quiet on the ride to their meet up point with Dom. Arthur finds himself glancing at him from the corner of his eye every few minutes. His shirt is too loud and his hair doesn’t have enough gel, but this familiarity is a comfort that distracts him from the anxiety building in his chest the closer they come to their destination. It’s a bit like what he imagines stage fright is like for a retired actor who’s about to make a big comeback.
He smoothes a wrinkle off the front of his impeccably tailored vest and lets himself feel like the hundreds of dollars the suit is worth.
Suddenly, he feels strong fingers threading through his own and immediately curls his hand around Eames’s hand, offering a gentle squeeze.
“You know darling, after seeing how James treated our little princess I’m beginning to believe that she’s going to need someone in her life to stand up for her.” Eames’s expression is even as he speaks, but there is something warm in his eyes, a slight wrinkle at the corners. “Like, I don’t know. A brother…or something.”
Arthur doesn’t point out the fact that were Emily to have a little brother the whole dynamic would be different and she would probably be the one defending him, if nothing else. Instead he lets the idea wash over him like the heat of summertime. He can feel Eames holding his breath, though his thumb is still rubbing circles into Arthur’s palm. He thinks about what that would be like, raising a little boy with the snarky, impulsive Brit.
After what feels like forever even to him, Arthur leans his head against the window as carefully as he can without messing up his hair and says, through a small smile, “You might be right, Mr. Eames. I guess we’ll have to propose the idea to Emily sometime.”
Back to Part One