Chapter Text
Next time Cobb tries to reach Eames, it takes him almost a week to even get a phone number. His suspicions get confirmed when Eames immediately disconnects once Cobb so much as opens his mouth for a ‘hello-’.
Fucking hell.
Eames doesn't want to work with them anymore. No matter what Cobb says, as long as Arthur is on the job (and he always is, he is Cobb’s point man), Eames will decline. It's a fucking disaster. And just flat out rude, if you ask him.
"Eames, really-"
"How many times do I have to change numbers until you finally give up?"
"I'm persistent Mr. Eames."
"That you are Mr. Cobb. The answer is still no. You know my conditions."
"It will go smoothly. You make it seem like the last job blew up because of this. You don't want to limit yourself like this, if both of you take meds-"
"Which isn't limiting myself at all."
"Mal and I are pulling the most lucrative jobs, people fall over their feet at a chance to work with us, work with Arthur-"
“Did you actually ask your point man if he wants to work with me anymore?”
Cobb opens his mouth to snort, because duh, Arthur had fucking jumped him the first time- The line goes dead.
Fucking. Rude.
It continues like that for about half a year before Cobb gives up.
He doesn’t see anything of Eames for almost three years. He hears of him, of course, dream share is a group of old quibbling grandmothers.
Cobb manages to get on the same team as Eames for a job again in spring. Without Arthur, that is. Cobb supposes he should feel bad about not telling the point man. He will use the opportunity to butter Eames up. It’s the best for all of them. Arthur doesn’t need to know.
The team already has a point man. He goes alone, without Mal, because the job is in Kenya and the flight and weather wouldn't become his pregnant wife. It feels a little lonely without them. But he uses the time well, working like grain on Eames’ resolution.
He should have taken a shower and maybe a change clothes before letting Arthur pick him up from the airport afterwards. But damn it, he had been on a plane for 14 hours straight, Arthur can deal. Cobb just wants to see his wife.
Arthur goes awfully still once Cobb is in range (damn omegas and their sensitive noses) and he can see the smile freezing and then dropping even from the distance.
Oh Jesus, here we go…
Cobb resolutely ignores the way the omega murders him with his eyes all the way while Cobb walks towards him until they stand in front of each other.
And then Arthur resolutely ignores his 'Hey, Arthur', giving him the stoic -you betrayed me- scene as if Cobb had framed him for a federal crime or something. Omegas are so fucking dramatic. Is it his fault that Arthur smells Eames on him like a bitch in heat?
He pointedly keeps himself occupied with his phone, writing Mal, not looking at the white knuckled grip on the steering wheel, where Arthur is driving in his usual suicidal way. Cobb isn’t in the mood for Arthur’s shit after a 14 hour flight. It’s enough that the tension radiating from him is rising Cobb’s hackles instinctively.
“Thanks for the ride. Look-” He tells the point man, once they stop in the driveway, bur he barely gets his feet out of the car, before Arthur goes into reverse, leans over to shut the door and drives off without so much as a word.
“Jesus…” Cobb mutters darkly and shakes his head. He turns and takes off to greet his glowing, pregnant wife waiting by the door. At least she knows how to welcome him home.
They receive a best wishes card and flowers from ‘–E’ when Phillipa is born and Cobb doesn’t have to wonder long which ‘E’ it could be, with Arthur staring at the card, probably thinking himself subtle. Mal generously acts as if accidentally leaving the card on the table for Arthur to take. Cobb doesn’t even want to know what he is going to do with it. Probably put it down his pants.
With Mal out of the picture with beautiful Phillipa there and freshly hatched James, Cobb is short on an extractor and outsources more than he likes. But what to do. Dream share is still a small pool with little fishes. So little fishes, that it isn’t long before Zimmermann hires Cobb, Arthur and Eames for a lucrative heist.
He finds Eames in the lobby of his hotel and slides next to him into the booth. If the alpha is surprised, he hides it well, only continuing to nip on his drink.
“So…,” Cobb starts and leaves it at that, waiting for Eames to acknowledge the pink elephant. He disappoints Cobb, nursing his drink and playing with an undoubtedly faked poker chip.
“Zimmermann hired us all,” Cobb continues, not in the mood to start a battle in silence with the forger, who would be a stubborn oaf about it anyway.
Eames still doesn’t say anything, but he leans back in his booth then, looking up expectantly.
For god’s sake…
“You won’t have a problem with it?” Cobb inquires. It’s like pulling teeth sometimes with the guy.
“I won’t have one. You better ask your point man if he will have one.”
“Arthur, you know we need that job.”
Arthur stays stubbornly silent, as he unpacks his suitcase, not even looking up from where he is taking out his socks.
“Eames said it wouldn’t be a problem-,“ he swallows the rest of his sentence, when the omega’s head snaps up to throw him a murderous look. Jesus Christ, attitude, he thinks, swallowing the instinct to take a step back.
“I’m just saying, Zimmermann is a pretty big fish and if something happens again and she-“
“It won’t be a problem.” Arthur interrupts short-tempered, turning back to packing out his stuff.
“If we put you back on-“
“I said”, Arthur hisses and Cobb feels a little worried for his own well-being, “It won’t be a problem.” There is a warning note to his voice now and Cobb knows when to back off, so he holds up his hand and nods.
“Alright, alright.”
He trusts Arthur and when the omega says he can keep himself in check, then Cobb is going to believe him. And stay close to hold him back by the collar, if needed.
Eames comes in, late as always, and Cobb prays to all that is holy.
Zimmermann doesn’t do more than lift her telling brow of expectance, before going back to her notes. Eike, idly sketching on his board, formulas Cobb can’t even begin to understand, turns while still holding the red marker up. The room around them seems to get smaller. Arthur, sitting by the desk, is staring at Eames, face set in stone. The alpha freeze for a split second, their eyes meeting.
Please don’t. Cobb presses his lips together.
Eames breaks eye contact and casually walks over to Zimmermann to slouch into a chair by her table. He offers her what he has written down after tailing the mark before coming here, talking in his usual murmured accent and ignoring Arthur. One could almost be fooled by this display of nonchalance, if Cobb wouldn’t feel Arthur practically vibrating silently in his seat.
He sees Arthur shift, eyes switching between Zimmermann and Eames interacting with each other. Seeing Cobb was the one vowing for Arthur, he gets up from his 3D model part of the supermarket he wants to create and deliberately positions himself between Arthur and his line of vision towards Eames. Arthur gives him a look that could turn milk sour. Cobb stares back warningly.
It’s going to be an exhausting three weeks, Cobb can already tell.
After managing to ignore each other for two days, they suddenly start to interact one morning without any warning. Cobb is ready to jump in, fearing the worst – but all they do it throw a few quips against each other. Cobb watches them, eyes narrowed.
What?
At least Eike seems to have fun watching Arthur’s and Eames’ antics as the week proceeds. And antics they have. A lot. If his kids are going to be only half as confusing as these two, Cobb will be grey by the end of the year. Apparently being not too befuddled with scents and instincts and having a two-day refractory phase alphas and omegas do not only manage to have semi-normal conversations, they can actually work together. Which turns out to be a whole new sort of… thing.
Cobb still sits on the edge of his chair every damn second, in case he has to bodily throw himself at Arthur… or Eames, for that matter.
“You’re late.”
Arthur is staring at Eames, who has strolled in just now with a coffee holder in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other.
“I bought breakfast.” The alpha replies smoothly, offering Zimmermann first dips, which is clever, seeing she is the boss, but it has Arthur’s metaphorical hackles rise (damn omegas and their rivalry complex) and Cobb can see the train wreck happen already.
“We don’t have time for this, our briefing-,“ Arthur snaps, when Eames holds out the bag with bagels towards him. Eames just gives him a placating smile and interrupts him, “I thought about using a company outing as a scenery for the first level instead of the working place office like you proposed, darling.“
“-Oh, that could work,” Zimmermann nods from where she is nursing her coffee and Eike hums around his bagel. There is ticking muscle in Arthur’s jaw from where he is grinding his teeth, because there is little he hates more than his plans being thrown overboard without a power point presentation with little bullet points for chronologically listed reasons.
Arthur and Eames stare at each other, both suddenly going still, Eames’ cocksure grin turning into something else and Cobb quickly gets up from his chair when he notices Arthur’s fists clenching, leaning forward slightly.
“-Why do you think a company outing a good idea?” he asks a little louder (and quicker) than needed to unfurl the building tension.
They slowly, but surely start to verbally fight instead of just quip at each other. Small things at first, pointing out little logic flaws in their plans. They turn it into big squabbles over the following days that sometimes go on for hours and hours, as if they strive on it. Maybe they found their worthy verbal sparring partner in each other or something. Cobb wonders aloud at the end of week two if this is how it ends with compatible partners when they reject each other and try to get along anyway.
Mal just laughs and laughs on the other end of the phone, James’ gurgling laughs interrupting her and she tells him to let them get to know each. Whatever that means. Women are a mystery. And so are alphas and omegas, for that fact.
For all the nagging and not having one nice word for each other (sometimes downright insulting and riling each other up), they manage to wrap up the job flawlessly without a hitch. When they part with the promise of a huge sum to greet their accounts soon, Cobb swears he sees Eames staring briefly after Arthur, his lips twitching and when he and Arthur leave in one direction, Eames in the other, Cobb sees Arthur looking over his shoulder out of the corners of his eyes.
The damn bickering really was just that – bickering. Weird alpha-omega interactions. Metaphorical pigtails pulling.
Cobb doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know. Mal says she knows what’s going on between them, because she is a woman and women know such things, but Cobb is too proud to ask her to tell him, when they sit together on the couch that night, drinking wine and enjoying being back together. But he did call it, didn’t he? That they would balance each other out and work together splendidly? Eames creativity and spontaneity mixing with Arthur’s calculated calmness and providence.
He would like to pat himself on the back for this one. He knew they would be preeminent together, he said so himself. He has always had an exceptional knowledge of human nature after all.
Both Eames and Arthur are at their top when they work together. Cobb knows, because he worked a lot with both of them separately already. They may contradict each other every step of the way, but in that way they manage to make each other good, better, the best. Whether it is because they want to outdo each other, or themselves in order to impress each other, Cobb doesn’t care.
They tentatively start to take more jobs together, consciously seeking each other out for jobs. Cobb notices that their squabbles becoming friendlier, more familiar and Cobb is glad that with each one, he seems to need to be less on guard because of them.
Not every job goes perfect, not even with Arthur, Eames and him as a cumulative force. They have a pretty good quota, Cobb likes to think, but even for them, once in a while, a job goes south and they have to leg it, while someone like the angry shouting Swedish mafia chases them, letting bullets fly past their heads, as they sprint through Malmö’s harbor back alleys.
Which may be a very specific result of a failed job, because, well, the angry shouting Swedish mafia is fucking shooting at them right this moment.
Cobb didn’t even know Sweden had a fucking mafia being involved with goddamn fishery company secrets.
Arthur is ahead, PASIV in hand, running like a young god and Cobb knows he could outrun them in a lick of a minute, but he is holding himself back. At least until Eames from behind Cobb shouts “Each for themselves!” and dives into an alley to the left.
Fucking Bastard, Cobb curses, he had kind of hoped the Swedes would fire on Eames behind him first, and now Cobb’s back is the target. When he risks a look over his shoulder, a bullet whistled past his nose and he swears and looks back ahead – Arthur is gone as well. “Fucking Hell!” he shouts and promptly careens to the right. So much for fucking loyalty.
Cobb doesn’t hear from Arthur for 48 hours. Which is protocol, but Cobb still worries about his point man. Did he make it? Is he okay? Did these blonde goons get their hands on him? He knows, logically, that Arthur is old enough and more than capable enough to take care of himself (probably a lot better than most twats in dream share), but for Cobb he is still the barely twenty-three year old rookie Miles sent to them.
In the end, he never hears what happened after they split up. When Arthur turns up by the café they agreed as their meeting point in Copenhagen two days later, there is not a scratch on him.
“Everything went alright?” Cobb wants to know, sitting outside in the afternoon, Arthur nursing his cappuccino and Cobb nipping on his own drink, eyes idly wandering around. There’re lots of people around, which is good. The omega hums around the edge of the cup and nods, a smile tugging on his lips as he puts it back down, but he keeps staring at the foam. It is a little disconcerting to watch Arthur take up his spoon to just stir it around the foam, obviously engrossed in his own thoughts. It’s not like him to be anything but sharp and focused.
“Arthur,” Cobb wonders, narrowing his eyes slightly in concern. The omega doesn’t immediately look up.
“Arthur?” he repeats, a little more insistent.
“Hm? Yes?”
Now, this is just worrying.
“Are you okay?”
Arthur looks up then, mild surprise flashing over his face, blinking.
“Yes? Why shouldn’t I?” he inquires, putting the spoon down again and looking at him as if Cobb is the one acting strange.
“You’re all-,“ Cobb vaguely gestures around his own face, “All smiley and the like,” which, alright, might not be the most eloquent explanation, but cut him some slack, alright? He got shot at by tall, blonde Swedish people two days ago, which was unnecessarily stressful.
Arthur’s expression immediately gets replaced by a sort of scowl, before he schools his face into the usual stoic status quo.
“I’m not ‘smiley’-,“
“I didn’t say you have to stop-,“
“I didn’t stop anything, this is just my face”.
“That face was doing the smiley-thing”.
“I wasn’t smiling-!” Arthur snaps, brows drawing together and Cobb holds up his hands, knowing when the omega starts to get defensive in embarrassment.
“Do you know if Eames made it out okay?” Cobb changes the topic, before Arthur completely clamps down.
Arthur visibly freezes, before casually dropping his gaze to his cappuccino again, taking up the spoon once more to stir in his foam and draw little patterns with the chocolate powder on top.
“He’s fine.”
Cobb lifts a brow, “So, he contacted you?”
Arthur licks the foam off his spoon and puts it aside to take a sip of his drink.
“… He’s fine,” Arthur repeats, voice purposefully indifferent and Cobb decides not to ask. He is stressed enough as it is. As long as they all made it out and the PASIV is safe, Cobb doesn’t care.
And then Cobb is gone for fifty years, he and Mal building their own world and destroying their reality. And he his wife’s sanity.
Arthur is there, toeing along the edge. Like in the periphery of a dream, where you never look, because it’s blurry and unimportant. He wanders at the outline of Cobb’s focus. His eyes are on Mal, always on Mal these days. Meals appear at the dinner table. The kids are told to eat, they are put to bed, brought to kindergarten, read stories. Not by him and definitely not by Mal.
Arthur is there, when Mal throws plates at him in a fit. He is there to take the confused children off him, hearing Mal cry a room further. He is there to contact Miles and Marie. He is there when Mal grabs a kitchen knife and comes at them, slicing Cobb’s tie and part of his shirt off with a wild strike and almost shanking Arthur’s guts, before they manage to wrestle the knife out of her hand, their carpet stained pink with Arthur’s blood.
Cobb only knows Eames has to have been in the area afterwards because it’s him in the driver’s seat when Arthur gets out of a foreign car, Cobb watching them tiredly through the kitchen window. Cobb doesn’t have the energy to wonder about it and not the time to ask.
Mal kills herself.
Cobb doesn't know who helps him get away a few days later. He guesses it is one of Arthur's contacts, because Arthur isn’t there.
They meet up in Denmark again, Cobb feeling numb and reeling, as if still in vertigo. Not unlike he felt after waking up from a fifty years long dream, looking into the face of the woman he loves more than anything. He will never see her beautiful eyes again and how her lips curl and how she brushes her hair from her forehead –
Arthur, when they meet, is stone cold. Has it always been this silent and rigid in his company? Or is it because he thinks he killed her?
“Do you think I did it?” Cobb is too tired to pretend.
Arthur looks at him as if he is the dumbest person on earth and something about it is so relieving that Cobb wants to sob.
“No.”
Cobb might have hid his crumbling face behind his hands, in a manly way.
Arthur keeps by his side. Keeps him sane, keeps him close. Cobb always knew Arthur to be loyal. Loyal to him. Loyal to Mal. He can’t say where he would end up without Arthur at his side. The situation gnaws on his point man, though, Cobb can tell.
He doesn’t know if it is Mal’s death, their life on the run, all of it together, or something else, but Arthur is miserable. He looks aged, worn down, even though he holds himself even straighter than before. Cobb may not be as observant as an alpha or as sharp as an omega, but he knows people. A beta knows his people inside out. And he knows Arthur.
Face grey, dark circles under his eyes, spine rigid, frame thinner and shoulders tense with the weight of worries invisible to anyone but him. He is short tempered, too, clipped, aggressive, quick to anger, his patience as thin as a sheet of bread wrap and as pulled tight as wire.
Cobb is so grateful to have him. He wishes he had the energy to take care of him better in turn.
Little people want to work with a suspected murderer of his own wife. Not even in dream share. They don’t even see a glimpse of Eames in the following months. Cobb asks once about him when they could use a thief for a risky job (the only ones they still get) and the look of forced detachment immediately settling on Arthur’s face tells Cobb enough.
Cobb knows they have been working up to something before... Before Mal. That Eames doesn’t want to have anything to do with them anymore is hypocritical bullshit. Eames is a conman, he is a fucking criminal. Acting like this is fucking rich coming from someone like him.
While shit hit the fan with the Cobol job, it does offer them something far, far more valuable. Another chance for Cobb to get home to his children.
Cobb likes to think later that he is the one who brings Arthur and Eames back together in the end when he casually inquires about a thief and Arthur immediately knows where to find him.