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They move in together months after Cobb finds his way back to the States.
After the inception job, Dom Cobb stops moving around once he disappears. Arthur generally understands the need to stay in one place, knowing that his family is safe and sound and ready to move on and be normal again. They get lost in the millions of faces in New York City, and that's it.
Still, Arthur can't help but worry about him constantly, and the whole dream sharing business is starting to get rather tiring. Even he knows that Saito checks in on the Cobb family like clockwork, but there's nothing like peace of mind. The house that Arthur buys is in a small, no-name town maybe thirty minutes away from the city.
"You didn't tell me you were buying a house, love." Eames tells him over the phone, one day. He's somewhere in Beijing, tying up loose ends, and Arthur's moving cardboard boxes into his house.
Arthur repositions the phone between his ear and his shoulder. "I didn't think I had to." he says honestly, and Eames grunts, almost in concession. There's the sound of bustling traffic and voices shouting in languages Arthur doesn't understand crackling over the speaker.
Eames' Mandarin is rapid and distant, and Arthur waits patiently for him to come back on the line, unpacking his books and a painting or two, some of Ariadne's older drawings, some architectural sketches his father did years ago that make him smile. "I've been thinking about getting a place myself, you know." Eames continues, and there's a sound of a car door slamming, and suddenly the bustling is much quieter.
"You weren't planning on running off to Mombasa, then?" Arthur asks, and it's only partly a joke. Mombasa is all warm weather and dubiously legal activities and gambling and women, and it sounds right up Eames' alley. "Or at least somewhere warm?"
He can practically hear the shrug. "I'd be running back to London if it weren't so gray. Where did you say you were?"
Two weeks later, Eames is on his doorstep with bad Italian takeout and a grin, and Arthur tells him he can sleep on the couch.
--
Arthur's always dreadfully cold in the mornings, and Eames makes damn sure he knows it, too.
"Just because some of us aren't human radiators..." Arthur mumbles sleepily into his pillow, and Eames' arms are strong around his waist, pulling him back. The dips and swirls of black ink on the forger's arms are blurry in Arthur's groggy vision, but he still thinks they're beautiful.
"I'm not letting you get sick on my watch." Eames offers as an answer, and his voice is low and rough in Arthur's ear. "You're the one who pays the bills for this place."
"Yes," Arthur yawns, "doesn't that speak volumes."
--
Ariadne's off in France for school, but she and Arthur Skype on a regular basis, despite Arthur's laptop being old and slow and far too inefficient for someone as sharp as him. She talks about her projects, Arthur talks about his suddenly much more normal life in the rural areas of New York, and sometimes, Miles says hello, so that's nice.
At one point, Eames ducks his head over Arthur's shoulder. "Ariadne, sweetheart, you're looking lovely as usual. Arthur's not boring you to death, is he?" Arthur reaches up to flick Eames' ear, but the Englishman just catches his fingers and kisses them.
Ariadne's grin is sweet, like it always has been, and she leans her head against her hand. "Arthur mentioned something about you moving in with him, Mr. Eames. He tells me you're something of a freeloader."
"Well, look at this face." Eames says in answer, gently grasping Arthur's chin. The point man lifts his head to shake the grasp, but he's smiling, anyway. "This is the face of a master conman, my dear. I wouldn't trust a word out of this man's mouth."
Her laugh is soft, and Arthur has to keep himself from frowning, because she's tired and she's not making much of an effort to hide it. She's the only one, post-inception, who'd gone straight back to work. Cobb's somewhere in New York City, Saito's virtually off the grid, aside from his contacts with Cobb's team, and apparently Yusuf is off taking a vacation in Italy, the last time Eames checked.
"The sooner I finish school," Ariadne sighs, "the sooner I can come out and find you guys. Professor Miles is as much company as I need for now, I guess." She shrugs, and Arthur nods. "I'll send you some of my sketches soon, okay, Arthur?"
"I can't wait to see them." Arthur tells her with a smile, and Eames winks at her before she ends the call. Arthur closes his laptop and cracks his back, because the computer chair he'd purchased from Ikea is pretty much the shittiest thing he owns.
"So," he starts, and Eames looks at him with curiosity, "you wouldn't trust a word I say?"
He must be smirking or something, because Eames just laughs and kisses him, and he figures that's alright. He wasn't too upset, anyways.
--
Cobb finally comes out of hiding maybe a month or two later. He shows up at Arthur's, wringing his hands and grinning apologetically, and Arthur lets him in for coffee.
"James and Phillipa are at school." he tells Arthur as he gets water for the coffee pot, and Cobb's eyes wander around the small house. "It's not that big, but you've made good use of the space so far."
"We try." Eames calls from the bedroom, and Cobb seems more than a little bit surprised to see that Arthur isn't alone. "Or, you know, he tries. I sort of just throw my things wherever."
Cobb squints, which makes Arthur chuckle. It's some deeply ingrained father instinct, Arthur figures, and he can tell that Cobb's more perplexed than disapproving.
"You didn't tell me you moved in with Eames." He turns back to Arthur, but his next comment is obviously meant for Eames, thrown over the shoulder and joking. "I'm not surprised he's freeloading."
"You wound me, Dom!" comes from the bedroom, and Cobb smiles. Arthur hasn't seen him smile much, and it's comforting, to say the least.
--
It rains later on in the week, and the typical blues and greens and yellows of spring get faded into an all-encompassing monochrome of gray and more gray. Arthur insists that he likes it, but Eames starts getting stir crazy.
Arthur's reading a book on the moth-bitten old armchair he'd gotten from a second-hand furniture store when Eames comes back in from a jog. He turns the page in the book and sniffs. "If you get sick, I'm not taking care of you." he says bluntly, and Eames slips off his hood.
His hair's somehow wet, despite the hood, and Arthur rolls his eyes, because Eames is the kind of person who would be dumb enough to go out running in the rain. Still, the forger smiles at him.
"That's fine." he says with half a shrug. "I don't pay the bills, anyway."
--
Eames gets sick two days later.
"God, I hate you." Arthur mumbles when he hands Eames a cup of tea, and he kisses the other man's temple because he can, goddammit, he pays the bills around here.
--
Arthur reminds himself that he really shouldn't get into the habit of letting Eames keep him in bed for the majority of the day, because they always end up having sex, and that's just not conducive to the rest of Arthur's day, especially when they have unexpected visitors.
He just barely zips on a pair of jeans and throws on a shirt before swinging open the front door to greet a rather puzzled Saito, looking a bit out of place, wearing a nice suit in such a small town. Arthur figures the locals only see suits like that at funerals, and then he thinks that it's probably fitting.
"Mr. Saito." he says with a smile, and gestures inside. "Come in, sorry for the wait."
Saito puts a hand up, gently declining the offer, but his eyes do flit past Arthur inside the house. Yeah, yeah, whatever, not everybody's a multibillionaire and owns an airline. "I'm sorry for the impromptu visit, but Cobb mentioned that you moved. I figured it'd only be polite to say hello."
Arthur's at a loss for words for a moment, because Saito can be a surprisingly considerate person, when he really wants to be. "That's fine, you didn't have to." he says without thinking, and then realizes how stupid it sounds because there's nothing Saito can do about it now. "Really, though, you came all this way, are you sure you don't want coffee or something?"
"I'm fine, thank you." Saito tells him. He tells Arthur about some client he has nearby (which makes him wonder vaguely if this is a "client" or "somebody that's going to have their day ruined by Saito's guards") and they shake hands with just a hint of awkwardness before Saito turns to return to his car.
And then, of course, Eames pops up behind Arthur in a tank top and his boxers and puts his hand on Arthur's hip. "Nice seeing you, Saito!" he calls, and Arthur has to concentrate so hard on not elbowing Eames in the stomach (less out of fear of hurting Eames and more out of fear of breaking his elbow.)
Saito waves, and there's some evidence of what looks like a confused smile on his face. Arthur shuts the door finally, and when Eames tries to pin him there, he turns around, his eyes dark. "Oh, no, sex is over for today. Go take a shower."
Eames pouts, but he eventually does as he's told, and Arthur goes back to reading his novel and trying his best not to laugh whenever the forger decides to belt into a rather horrid rendition of any given power ballad from the eighties.
--
They get a phone call from Yusuf maybe a week later.
"You're living together?" The speaker phone echoes through their small kitchen, and Yusuf laughs. "So you're sleeping together, right? Cause I totally called that."
Arthur hangs up a few minutes later, and Eames just laughs.
--
That Friday, it rains again, and Arthur stays up late, looking through his books and the old drawings Ariadne and Miles have sent him through the mail, poetry from Cobb and Mal, scribbles and sketches in old artist's pads that belonged to... well, somebody. Arthur can't quite remember.
He lays on the floor, and at some point, Eames joins him, wearing some baggy sweatshirt from a university Arthur's never heard of. He rests his head on Eames' chest as he goes through some photographs.
They get to one of Arthur and Nash.
"Oh, Christ, dear," Eames laughs, and Arthur can't help but grin, "let me see that one. I'd like to have the satisfaction." He rips the photograph in half cleanly, and Arthur's surprised at how well Eames had managed to separate him from Cobb's old architect.
"We need to take more pictures with Ariadne, I think." Arthur says, and Eames hums in agreement. It doesn't take them long to get through all the photos -- some from Dom's wedding, a few of Miles, a few of Yusuf and Eames, and there's three paper clipped together at the end.
One of them is a picture of Arthur and Eames, looking over the edge of the Chengyang Bridge on the river below. Somebody had lit off fireworks, and there's a bit of a glare on the photograph, and a blur of somebody else near the edge of the frame, but they're smiling at each other.
The second isn't candid, and looks much more official than the first. They're standing in front of an old, bronze plaque that reads something in beautiful, ornate French -- Arthur can't remember where this was taken, or what the plaque says, but it brings up a warm nostalgic feeling deep in his stomach that makes him happy.
And the third, he doesn't remember being taken, but apparently Eames does, because his chuckle rumbles through his chest underneath Arthur's head. It's rather... nice, Arthur thinks. They must be in the lobby of some hotel, and it's near dusk, but they're sitting close to one another on a sofa and Eames is talking animatedly about something, and Arthur's just watching him with a smile. It's... it's sweet.
Eames pulls him closer with a strong arm and kisses the top of his head. "I'm looking for a job, you know." he murmurs. "I'll be out of your hair before long. Or, at least, I won't be freeloading."
Arthur laughs at that, and it's not that he thinks it's absurd, but just... unnecessary. "I'm the only one who hasn't called you a freeloader so far, you know." he says quietly. "And you're not leaving, I can tell you that. I pay the bills around here, I decide who stays and goes."
"I'm stuck here, then, aren't I?" the forger asks warmly, and he rubs Arthur's arm affectionately.
"Probably would have been safer staying in Beijing."
And at that, Eames laughs, and Arthur can't help himself. He climbs on top of the larger man and kisses him, slowly, and it stays dark in their house for quite a time that night, with Eames' hands on Arthur's hips and a house that is less "his" and more "theirs."
--
Ariadne comes to visit in the summer, and Eames is off on a jog when she drops by.
"I'm staying in the area." she shrugs after giving Arthur a rather bone-crushing hug. "I can stop by again to see him." She looks around the house, at the bookshelf stuffed with Arthur's old novels and encyclopedias, and near the bottom, little glass figurines that Eames finds rather charming. There's a painting on the wall, Arthur's, and a poster for The Dark Knight Rises, Eames'. The moth-bitten armchair has been joined by a creaky old rocking chair.
Ariadne laughs. "You must love him a lot, to let him do this to your place." Arthur smiles.
"It has its charm." he concedes with a shrug, and Ariadne gives him a kiss on the cheek before walking further in. "Besides, I wouldn't put up with it if I didn't like it a bit myself."
The architect snorts. "Right." she says. "I mean, you pay the bills, after all."
And Arthur grins, leaving the front door unlocked. "Well, that's only part of the reason."