double buck

[wldnst]

part 2

9.

Eames does bring a toothbrush over, eventually, and then his clothes appear in a heap in the corner of Arthur’s room, because he keeps stealing clothes from Arthur that don’t fit him, so Arthur washes them and folds them up in the bottom drawer of the dresser where Arthur usually keeps winter clothes, which he moves to the closet.

“It’s not a thing,” Arthur tells Ariadne, and she looks somewhere between skeptical, exasperated, and smug, which makes Arthur wonder how one person’s face can possibly hold so many expressions.

“Would you let Eames sleep with anyone else?” Ariadne asks, and Arthur stares at her.

“Is he?” he says, and if his voice is a little high and strained--it isn’t.

Ariadne just raises an eyebrow, and Arthur will maybe, maybe, give her this round.

“You were the one who called him a floozy,” she says, and Arthur isn’t sure how his private conversations have gotten tossed all over the place--well, he does now how, because his friends are the worst kind of gossips, but that’s besides the point.

“It’s not like it was with Nash,” Arthur says, and that’s as far as he’s willing to go. He changes the subject without subtlety, and for some reason Ariadne lets him, and talks about her new chainsaw instead.

Actually she probably lets him because, for once, Arthur is willing to listen to Ariadne talk about chainsaws without pulling faces, because at least she’s not telling him he’s being an ass about Eames.

Arthur just doesn’t like things to move too quickly. And he doesn’t see why he and Eames need to start going on dates or whatever, when they eat breakfast together every morning.

They qualify for the world championships at their next competition, and when they’re done sawing Arthur looks at Eames, who is wearing one of Arthur’s shirts and has soaked it through with sweat, and there is a hickey on his neck and Arthur did that, which maybe explains why Arthur catches him by the wrist and pulls him off into the woods, and they’re probably going to to miss the awards ceremony but awards can wait, can’t they?

It doesn’t entirely explain how Arthur ends up with his back against a pine and his legs around Eames’ waist, and the bark is rough and he’s probably getting resin all over his shirt, but Eames’ hands are cupping his ass and Arthur doesn’t have it in him to care.

Everyone looks smug when they get back, which is to say Ariadne and Cobb and Mal look smug, and Phillipa asks Eames if he’s wearing lipstick, because his lips are red, and Eames says that Uncle Arthur gave it to him, which--

Phillipa tells Arthur he’s blushing, and Arthur can feel it, rising in his cheeks.

“You also have resin on your back,” Ariadne notes.

“I guess you owe me, for making you saw double buck,” Cobb says.

“Yes,” Eames says, at the same time as Arthur says, “No.”

“I was thinking a threesome would be appropriate payment,” Eames continues, and Cobb sputters slightly and then ignores them.

“You guys won, by the way,” Ariadne says. “I had to go up and accept for you.”

“Nash wanted to know where you were,” Mal says, looking at Arthur, and Eames slips his hand into Arthur’s back pocket like Arthur’s ass belongs to him.

“He left already,” Mal continues. “But he’ll be at the championships.”

“Asshole,” Eames says, for no apparent reason.

Arthur just shrugs, because he has nothing to contribute to this.

“Okay,” he says. Nash is really the least of his concerns, at the championships, and the whole thing is not any of Eames’ business, because Nash is really the least of Arthur’s concerns, in life.

10.

The championships come up faster than they should, really. Thinking about it makes Arthur inordinately flustered, because it’s not like he hasn’t been before--but there’s double buck. And there’s Eames, who is apparently living in his house.

“I still think you owe me one,” Cobb says after Eames hands the phone off to Arthur one morning. “For getting you a boyfriend and all.”

“What?” Arthur asks, and Cobb makes a sound that translates roughly to disapproval.

“The man,” Cobb says. “You’re living with. Do you want me to get Mal to explain it?”

“Oh,” Arthur says, looking across the kitchen to where Eames is poking the coffee maker with a screwdriver. “I think he broke my coffee maker, so maybe you owe me.”

Cobb makes another sound of disapproval.

“If you keep acting like this, I’m going to register you for a chainsaw competition somewhere and get Nash to goad you into going.”

Arthur wishes everyone would shut up about Nash, because it’s not a thing, it was never a thing.

He hangs up on Cobb and throws a balled up napkin at Eames’ head.

“What’d Cobb want?” Eames asks, looking up from the coffee maker.

“Gossip,” Arthur replies.

“That reminds me, Ariadne’s coming over tonight to watch a movie.”

“Which movie?”

“Didn’t say,” Eames says, returning his attention to the coffee maker, and Arthur groans.

“No, you have to ask her which movie, otherwise she’ll bring porn.”

Eames continues to investigate the coffee maker, which means Arthur needs to call Ariadne, now, and is it really too much to ask for everyone to be normal, and okay, and just do their lumberjack shit? It apparently is, because there’s Eames breaking the coffee maker and not policing Ariadne’s movie selection, and Cobb calling just to be an ass, and Mal was probably goading him on, and Yusuf may not be doing anything particularly bothersome right now, but he will. And everyone’s bringing up Nash all the fucking time, like Nash was a thing when Nash wasn’t a thing.

Sometimes it’s like Arthur’s the only sane person he knows, and maybe there’s a colony of sane people some place else that failed to invite him.

“Which movie?” he asks, as soon as Ariadne picks up. Which is on the sixth ring, because she refuses to buy an answering machine.

“Damnit,” she says. “We can just watch something you have, then.”

“Go to the rental store,” Arthur mutters, because he’s sick of all his movies.

“Do you not pay attention to anything?” Ariadne says. “They went out of business two weeks ago. About time, too. Netflix and shit.”

Arthur prides himself on his observational skills, so he’s not sure what he’s been doing that caused him to miss this, especially because if the video store closed there was probably a sale, and a sale would be nice, about now.

Eames is doing something slightly vulgar to a spoon for no reason Arthur can discern, which might explain the situation slightly. Arthur wads up another napkin and throws it at his head, which earns him a scowl but at least gets Eames’ mouth to stop violating the damn spoon.

“Don’t you have Netflix?” Arthur asks, and Ariadne snorts into the phone.

“You don’t want to watch the one I’ve got right now,” she tells him. Which, really.

“Right,” he says. “I’ll see if Eames has anything.”

Eames looks up at the sound of his name, and arches and eyebrow, and Arthur covers the receiver.

“Movies? Do you have any movies?”

“My DVDs are all zone 2,” Eames replies, so Arthur tells Ariadne they’ll watch the fucking “Matrix” even though he’s already seen it a couple dozen times.

“Like leather, do you?” Eames asks when Arthur hangs up, and Arthur frowns at him.

“No,” he says. “I just don’t have very many movies.”

“We should fix that,” Eames says, and that reminds Arthur that yes, they do seem to be living together, and maybe this is something that warrants discussion, like maybe he should give Eames a key instead of just leaving the house unlocked all the time.

But maybe they’re just living together so they can practice double buck, and this conversation can wait until after the championships.

Arthur’s theory about practicing double buck is proved slightly wrong when he suggests doing that and ends up naked on the kitchen table instead, but he’s not in any position to complain. By the time Ariadne shows up they’re both mostly clothed, but she looks between the two of them and shakes her head.

“I don’t know how you two went so long without fucking,” she says.

“I don’t, either,” Eames says, throwing an arm around Arthur’s shoulders, and Arthur just scowls and pokes Eames in the side.

11.

They’re driving to the world championships, because everyone is cheap as hell. And because Arthur is encompassed in ‘everyone’ it’s not like he can even complain when he ends up in the middle of Ariadne’s truck’s ridiculous bench seat again (which doesn’t even make sense, because Ariadne is the shortest, but of course she’s driving because she’s a freak about her truck, which means the bench is pulled up ridiculously far and Arthur’s knees are up against the dash), with one of Eames’ arms flung across his shoulders and Eames warm body pressed fully against his side. And if Arthur falls asleep and drools on Eames’ shoulder, and Ariadne takes a picture with her phone and texts it to Mal and Cobb in the other car, fuck them all. Especially Eames, for permitting it.

“Fuck you,” Arthur mutters to Eames when he finds out, and Eames just smirks at him and says, “Please.”

That’s pretty much the trip summed up.

“I can drive,” Arthur offers when they’re somewhere in some shit state outside some shit McDonald’s.

“No,” Ariadne says.

“Why are you such a freak about your truck?” Arthur asks, and she just looks at him.

“Because you let other people drive your truck all the time,” she replies. They’re sitting on the curb with their legs stretched out in front of them, and eventually Eames comes out with a paper bag and a cardboard carrier full of milkshakes, and Arthur would probably rather have a Frosty but he’ll take what he can.

Eames sucking a doublethick milkshake through a straw is positively pornographic, and Arthur wants to cover Ariadne’s eyes and also keep Eames far away from the play place, but otherwise their meal passes uneventfully, watching heat rise off the pavement in waves.

“You guys ready for this?” Ariadne asks, and Arthur shrugs.

“We’ve been practicing,” he replies, and both Ariadne and Eames sort of snort.

“If by ‘practicing’ you mean ’fucking’,” Eames says, poking him in the ribs. “Then, yes, we’ve practiced every day.”

A middle aged woman walks past and looks at them disparagingly, like they’re ruining McDonald’s normal wholesomeness.

“Shut up,” Arthur mumbles into his apple pie. Ariadne is laughing at him. Cobb and Mal are inside trying to keep Phillipa from burying James in the ball pit, and so they’re no help at all.

They stay at a motel that night, and Arthur wants to fuck Eames into the unsanitary bedspread, but they’re sharing a room with Ariadne so it doesn’t really work out like that.

Even though Ariadne would probably be okay with it, because she’s kind of a perv. You wouldn’t think so, by looking at her, but if the number of pictures of Arthur and Eames spooning that are on her phone the next morning are anything to go by--

“Yusuf had to see,” she says, like that’s any sort of explanation.

Arthur deletes them all, and sends Ariadne to Cobb and Mal’s room to help with the children.

When Eames comes out of the shower toweling his hair, Arthur pushes him back in.

“You know,” Ariadne says when they’re all back in her truck. “We could hear you through the wall. Also, you missed the continental breakfast, but it was just a bag of bagels on top of a toaster oven.”

Arthur sputters.

They do, eventually, make it to Hayward, and no one dies despite the three saws in the back of the truck, which stands as a testament to Arthur’s self control and ability to withstand vast quantities of shame.

Cobb made camping reservations forever ago, and Arthur and Eames have brought Arthur’s tent to share and kicked Ariadne off into her own, which offers the illusion of privacy.

It’s nice, Arthur thinks, as he curls into Eames’ side on top of their sleeping bags. Eames is stroking his back, and his hand is calloused and warm, and it makes up for Ariadne’s shit and Cobb being a smug bastard.

“Ready for tomorrow?” Arthur murmurs, because in the morning both of them will be competing in the quarterfinals for their single events.

“Good luck kiss?” Eames asks, and that--that’s something Arthur can provide.

They drive to the competition grounds in the morning, and there are groups of people there already, clustered around the competitors in the dusty parking lot. There are amateur competitions to watch, and Phillipa’s in the logrolling bit, and she does pretty well for a kid whose limbs are growing too fast for her coordination to keep up. The big events are in the evening, though, and they wander around until then, until Eames has hot saw and Arthur has single buck.

Nash is there, of course, looking the way Nash usually does, skulking around during the quarter finals like watching everyone else saw will somehow make him better. Arthur’s not worried about him so much as he’s concerned about the guy from New Zealand who has a nigh incomprehensible accent but whose saw eats wood like a beaver.

Only then Nash is there, next to Eames, when Arthur’s sawing.

He shuts it out. His saw slides through the wood, and he falls into rhythm with it, his legs lunging forward and then pulling back, because this is something he’s able to do, and he’s not sure if the thing with Nash and Eames is something he’ll be able to deal with.

Then it’s over, the head of the log falling away, and someone is telling Arthur his time, and it doesn’t matter quite as much as Eames, and Nash, standing too close together and Nash is whispering.

“What the fuck?” Arthur says, grasping Eames by the shoulder and pulling him away, glaring at Nash.

“I was just talking to your friend,” Nash says, and then he’s slipping away like a fish.

Arthur looks at Eames, who is looking at him.

“Good job on hot saw,” Arthur says.

“Yeah,” says Eames, who is still looking at Arthur with this indecipherable expression on his face. He catches Arthur by the elbow, then, and they make their way through the crowds and back to the parking lot, and they’re supposed to see how Ariadne does on the logrolling, and they’re probably going to miss it now, but--fucking Nash, really.

When they get to Ariadne’s truck, Eames pushes Arthur up against the door, arms on either side of his shoulders, and says, “What was up with you and Nash?”

“I slept with him,” Arthur says. “You know that.”

“And then he freaked out on the podium during some po-dunk competition where he took second and you took first.”

“Yes,” Arthur says, and shifts his left shoulder upwards slightly. “That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Eames says, and his face is very close, and Arthur doesn’t understand what’s going on.

“Yeah.”

“Because Nash thought it was more.”

“Well isn’t that the point?” Arthur says. “Nash is a fucking dumbass.”

“Do you not get what’s going on here?” Eames says, and his voice is slowly increasing in volume, and his hands are on Arthur’s shoulders and they’re pressing, and the truck’s door handle is hard on Arthur’s back.

Eames is angry about something Arthur doesn’t understand, and Arthur can see it in his face, and he hopes Eames can see the same thing in Arthur’s.

“Arthur,” Eames says. “I’m not going to be your next fucking Nash.”

And then he leaves, and there isn’t time for the part where Eames can’t be the next fucking Nash, because there was Avery in between, or the part where Arthur figures out what he’s supposed to say this time to make Eames come back. There are things Eames should be able to figure out, Arthur thinks, and there are truths spoken in eating breakfast together, and sleeping together, and Eames wearing Arthur’s shirts and Eames’ own shirts in the bottom drawer of Arthur’s dresser.

Nash didn’t have any of that. And Arthur doesn’t understand why Eames can’t see that, and he’s not sure what Eames expects him to do about this.

Because Arthur is a fucking lumberjack, and these are the world championships, and he’s not going to carve little E + A hearts into trees or anything.

Arthur goes to Ariadne’s competition, and she isn’t up yet, and Eames is there with Cobb and Mal, and Arthur wonders how Eames managed to turn his whole fucking club against him. He wants to go over and say as much, but instead he stays where he is and watches Ariadne’s tiny feet maneuver the log, and when her opponent falls he claps with the others. But his hands are clapping, and he’s just standing there, trying to work this out.

Fuck Eames, Arthur thinks. If Eames can’t figure this out--just fuck him. If he wanted someone prone to bold declarations, maybe he should’ve slept with Nash himself.

The thing is, they’re still sharing a tent, and Arthur’s used to sleeping with Eames touching him, and it feels weird to roll over so their backs are together rather than their fronts, and to go to sleep with nothing to touch.

Eames had to understand Arthur, to some degree, when this started. He had to know that Arthur was serious when Arthur got down on his knees on the kitchen tile and sucked him off. Arthur doesn’t know what else Eames wants.

By the time he falls asleep, Arthur has to admit that this situation probably calls for Ariadne.

He wakes up spooning Eames, anyway. Eames just sort of rolls over and looks at him, and then says he’s going for a walk and leaves.

Arthur goes to find Ariadne.

“What does Eames want?” he asks when he finds her. She’s going for All-Around Lady Jill, somewhat improbably, so she’s practicing single buck.

“Your form’s bad,” he tells her, and she shrugs.

“Made it to semifinals, didn’t I?”

Which is a point in her favor, maybe. She sits down on the end of the log, leaning forward and putting her head on her arms, and looks at Arthur.

“You know what Eames wants, you dumbass,” she says fondly. “You just don’t want to give it to him.”

Arthur waits.

“He just wants you to ask him to out on a date, or to move in with you, or to be partners, or anything, really,” she continues after a moment. “He just wants to know he’s more than just someone to fuck occasionally.”

“He lives with me,” Arthur says, and Ariadne looks at him.

“Does he know that, though?” she asks. “Or does he think he might need to move back at any moment? What’s his mailing address?”

Arthur scowls.

“Do you want me to fix your form or what?”

She doesn’t respond either way, but she lets him show her how to stand, take her arms and adjust her posture and tell her she’s doing it wrong, and here’s the way it should be done.

They have the semifinals that night. Everyone has advanced, including Nash, and hot saw is the first event up.

Eames flubs it. Arthur isn’t even sure how it happens--some sort of saw malfunction, maybe, because the saw doesn’t start and everything after that is off, radically. Arthur didn’t realize how closely he’d been watching hot saw until he sees how far gone Eames is on this, and he probably isn’t going to make the finals, and Arthur can see it on Eames’ face and all over his body when it happens.

Cobb and Mal and Ariadne are looking at Arthur, like there’s something he can do to fix this, which is so far from the truth. He just sort of stands there when Eames rejoins them, feeling stiff and strange in his body while the rest of them hug, and when Eames turns to Arthur Arthur shakes his hand, like that’s something, like that’s anything at all.

It isn’t. Even Arthur knows that, and the squares of Eames fingertips chafe against the back of his hand, and Arthur wants to be someplace else.

Instead he watches Mal do underhand, and Ariadne do the boom run and single buck, and barely manages to clap in the appropriate places.

Ariadne’s form looks better, on the single buck, anyway.

Men’s single buck falls immediately after intermission, and it’s only moments before that Arthur comes up with the sort of stupid gesture that will satisfy Eames.

He throws the competition. It’s easy enough to do--he just saws slow, gives it less than his whole. Nash beats him, but the guy from New Zealand will beat Nash for sure, so it doesn’t phase Arthur much.

Eames catches him when he comes off, and drags him to the parking lot again.

“We really have to stop meeting like this,” Arthur says, because all told he feels pretty good about things, now, like maybe he’s made his point.

“What the fuck was that?” Eames asks, and he’s glaring, which is not how this was supposed to go.

They were supposed to have sex in the bed of Ariadne’s pick-up until both of them had ridges pressed into their backs.

“Why’d you throw that?” Eames asks. “Why the fuck did you throw that?”

Arthur doesn’t know what to say, because “for you” is corny as hell, saccharine and ridiculous.

He tries to kiss Eames instead, but Eames pushes him off.

“Explain it to me,” Eames says. “Use your words.”

“Use my words?” Arthur spits.

“Explain it!” Eames shouts, and then they’re both looking at each other, breathing hard, and there are people in the parking lot, looking at them and then pretending not to.

“I was--the fuck--Eames,” Arthur mutters, and Eames just looks at him impassively.

“Arthur,” Eames says, quieter now.

“If I threw single buck,” Arthur starts. “If I threw single buck, then double buck is all I’d have.”

“We aren’t going to win double buck,” Eames says, and Arthur stares at him, because everyone says Arthur is the dense one.

“That’s the point,” Arthur mumbles, and he’s ashamed that he can’t speak more clearly, but this is too much.

“What’s the point?” Eames asks, because he is such a dumbass.

“You. I just need you, and double buck is ours, and we don’t need to win, it’s just--. Then double buck is the whole thing, for both of us.”

Eames looks like a sunrise, like maybe he gets it, like maybe Arthur’s done right after all.

“God, Arthur,” he says. “That wasn’t--”

“Yeah,” Arthur replies. “I know.”

And Arthur thinks it might be okay to kiss now, and when he tries the answer is yes, the answer is slow and gentle and soft and not quite like it had been before. It’s waking up together in bed and being exactly where they want to be. Arthur sucks on Eames’ lower lip until he moans, and Eames presses Arthur back against the truck so Arthur’s head bangs across the glass window, and that’s alright.

Somewhere after Eames’ hand makes its way up Arthur’s shirt but before Arthur’s shirt makes its way over Arthur’s head, they pull apart.

“We should maybe go watch,” Eames mutters.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, and they stand together for a moment, foreheads pressed together, and then Arthur catches Eames’ hand is his and they go back to the stands.

Cobb forgives them for missing underhand, and Ariadne just rolls her eyes when they apologize for skipping logrolling.

“It was pretty much the same as yesterday, anyway,” she says. “But unlike you losers--”

“You advanced?” Arthur asks, and she beams and nods. Ariadne will be in the finals for boom roll and logrolling, though not single buck, and Cobb and Mal will both be competing in underhand.

“We’re going to celebrate, if you two can handle that,” Cobb says, and although celebration almost certainly means Cobb buying endless rounds at the nearest bar, Arthur catches Eames’ hand.

“We might celebrate somewhere else, if that’s alright,” he says. “Can we borrow your truck, Ariadne?”

Cobb looks slightly sick, but Ariadne tosses Arthur the keys to her truck for once in her life.

“I don’t imagine you’ll be driving far,” she says, smirking. “Clean up after yourselves.”

Arthur has been thinking about truck bed sex practically since the county fair, and he has a feeling it’s a terrible idea and going to be uncomfortable, but he finds a logging road in the woods and drives them down it anyway, and pulls off to the side, and then he climbs into the bed of the truck and offers Eames a hand.

“You really know how to turn up the romance,” Eames says as Arthur pulls him up into the bed, and Arthur spreads out Ariadne’s disgusting truck blanket and jumps him, just to make him shut up.

After that it’s not entirely clear, but somewhere in there Eames makes good on his promise to lick Arthur’s tattoo from root to tip, and Arthur doesn’t even notice the mosquitoes because it’s too sweet, everything they did before but better, more, and when they’re done Eames wraps his arms around Arthur and they look up at the trees branching above them, spreading and spreading and spreading again, verdant and alive.

“So does this mean I live with you now?” Eames asks, and they’re such a tangle of limbs Arthur isn’t even sure where each of them end, isn’t sure why this is a question.

“Yes,” Arthur replies, and he manages to resist the urge to qualify it. “You do.”

“Okay,” Eames says. “I can work with that.”

They get back to the campground eventually, and there are raised eyebrows all around, but Arthur knows that no one expected anything less.

Arthur and Eames switch shirts for the competition the next day, and stripping in the parking lot to swap is probably one of the most stupidly sentimental things Arthur has ever done. When they get to the competition Ariadne looks between the two of them with a smirk.

“Whose idea was that?” she asks.

It was Arthur’s, but they don’t tell. Arthur just likes watching the taut lines of his shirt across Eames’ shoulders, and he knows Eames likes the way the collar of his shirt pools around Arthur’s clavicle, and why not, really? They’re partners, now, properly partners at last.

So sawing double buck with Eames--is like sawing double buck with Eames. They’re at the world championships, but it turns out that doesn’t actually make a difference. In the end, it’s about the relationship between two people and the rhythm of their bodies and the saw, it’s about twenty inches of white pine, it’s about the pull of Eames on the other end of the metal strip that separates them.

It ends quickly enough, and when the slice of pine falls away, Eames wraps his arms around Arthur’s waist and lifts him off the ground. But that’s not really the end, not at all, which is maybe why those details thin to nothing in Arthur’s memory, because they’re just the culmination of one summer and the beginning of everything else, so many more summers, so many more moments at either end of a saw.

They take second. When the awards are being presented, Eames waves at the Master’s double buck competitors and says, “When we’re fifty, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says.

epilogue

That winter Arthur and Eames invite everyone over for a white elephant gift exchange, because Eames says couples should host shit, which must be some British thing Arthur’s never heard of, because Cobb and Mal never host anything. Then Eames sends Arthur outside to chop firewood, because he says it makes Arthur more presentable.

Arthur is pretty sure by “presentable” Eames means “pink-cheeked” but if he calls Eames on that Eames will stop wearing plaid, even though he knows Arthur has a kink the size of Alaska for flannel shirts and would probably withhold sex in such an event.

They get on well, really.

Arthur brings the wood in and piles it next to the wood stove, and Eames is making venison stew and putting the smoked turkey from Ariadne’s roadkill out with crackers, like smoked turkey with crackers is something people eat. When Arthur goes to take a piece, Eames slaps his hand.

“I smoked that turkey,” Arthur says, looking at it.

“It’s for the guests,” Eames says, and Arthur hides a snort.

“You’re just being an ass,” he says, and reaches around Eames to a snag a piece. Eames catches him by the hips, and Arthur ducks and looks up through his lashes, which makes Eames scowl.

“Now who’s the ass?” he asks. “Take the turkey, just don’t try to seduce me when our guests are going to arrive any minute.”

“Our guests,” Arthur says. “Are Ariadne, and Cobb and Mal, and Yusuf. I seriously doubt--”

“Mal and Cobb are bringing children,” Eames hisses, and peers in the oven to check on the bread.

Arthur slaps Eames on the ass and leaves the kitchen, then goes to the wood stove and pokes the fire with a poker.

Ariadne arrives first, unwinding a bulky scarf from her neck and carrying what looks like a burnt pie.

“I can’t cook,” she says cheerily, handing Arthur the pie and running back out the door. “So I bought some Danishes at the gas station.”

She reappears with an Entemann’s box and a carton of ice cream, then rifles through their cabinets until she finds a platter to put the Danishes on.

“You’ll make someone a wonderful housewife some day,” Eames says dryly, and Ariadne twists to look at him.

“You’re wearing an apron,” she says. “So shut up.”

“And you’re so charming,” he continues.

“You can eat my pie, if you want,” she offers. “I did bring it.”

“Arthur,” Eames says. “I’m your boyfriend.”

“And I was all-around Lady Jill this year.”

“You’re both wonderful people,” Arthur says, looking between the two of them, and he wonders why he even agreed to this, except for the part where Eames asked him immediately prior to putting his tongue up Arthur’s ass.

“Wow, Arthur,” Ariadne says. “When did you get so diplomatic?”

When Yusuf shows up, he sheds snow everywhere like some sort of bear, and frowns around the living room.

“Arthur,” he says. “What happened to your twelve-point buck?”

Arthur glances at Eames and frowns, and Ariadne laughs.

“Eames made him move it to the garage.”

“Whipped,” Yusuf says with a low whistle.

“That was the worst taxidermy job I’ve ever seen,” Eames says, even though Arthur is shaking his head in the background, because Eames is clearly a dumbass.

“Yusuf did that,” Ariadne says, and Eames fails to look anywhere near contrite.

And then the Cobb family arrives in its entirety, trailing Matchbox cars, and Phillipa and James install themselves in the living room to have races.

Dinner is loud, mostly. Yusuf brought Wild Turkey, which is to say the bourbon, and Mal brought escargot because sometimes she likes to remind everyone that she’s actually French, and therefore classier than them or something. They make a drinking game out of snails and bourbon, and Cobb keeps slipping sidelong glances at the children and trying to remind them all that they’re a terrible influence.

“They’ll be fine,” Mal says, patting him on the knee, and then she proceeds to somehow make doing a shot with a snail floating in it look elegant, and not disgusting the way it does for everyone else.

They put the children to sleep before the gift exchange, which is something of a relief because it turns out Eames’ contribution is a dildo.

“Is this used?” Ariadne asks when she unwraps it.

“No,” Eames says. “But I’ll have you know it’s very high quality.”

Arthur can’t believe he just let this person cook dinner.

“I want it,” Ariadne says, and everyone else sort of pulls faces like they’ll let her have it, only then Eames decides to put up a stink for the fucking dildo he contributed.

“You aren’t supposed to go for your own gift,” Arthur says, only then Eames looks pointedly at Mal, who is hanging onto some Pixar DVD that she brought.

“I wanted it for the children,” Mal says when Arthur forces her to trade him for the plastic pink flamingo Yusuf brought, mostly out of spite but also because he’s sick of all the movies he owns, and Eames’ DVD collection made precisely zero significant contributions.

The game ends when Yusuf and Cobb having a fight in the snow over the ten pounds of coffee that was Arthur’s gift, which makes him feel extremely smug, because he didn’t have to get into a fight over something he himself brought.

“White elephants are supposed to be something you had laying around,” Eames mutters as they sit on the porch and watch Yusuf stuff Cobb’s head in a snowbank.

“You said that was unused,” Arthur says.

Eames shrugs.

“That’s why I had to get it back,” he says, and Arthur stares at him. Ariadne had ended up with the badly rusted hatchet Cobb had brought, which was possibly the worst of the lot.

“That was not--” Arthur starts.

“I sanitized it,” Eames offers, like that somehow makes it better.

“That was in my ass,” Arthur hisses and hopes that Mal and Ariadne don’t hear.

“I was surprised you didn’t recognize it, darling,” Eames says lazily.

“You’re disgusting,” Arthur mutters.

“Says the man who nearly gave my ass frostbite because he wanted to do it in the snow,” Eames mutters, and Arthur gapes at him again.

“That’s what this was about?” he asks.

“It was cold,” Eames says, looking sulky, and Arthur is pretty sure that was the point of this entire party, revenge for the snow sex, and he really should want to do something other than laugh and kiss Eames breathless, but really.

“How about we get them to leave,” he whispers instead. “And take a nice hot shower so I can make it up to you.”

And maybe he gives Eames’ ear a bit of a lick, and maybe they clear their house in record time and don’t bother to clean up the kitchen, but really, that's nobody's business.