Disclaimer: As always I own nothing but the original characters and the plot. Thanks for reading.

First Study Date

Eames felt as eager and nervous as a little kid on his first day of school. Or at least how he figured he had felt way back then, and his mum's video recording of the event would suggest he wasn't wrong to think so. Either way he couldn't wait for Arthur to get to his house even as he worried that this was all going to blow up in his face and the other teenager would throw his hands up in the air, declare him far too stupid to waste his time on, and go. Logically he knew that he wasn't stupid, and that Arthur wasn't the type who would give up that easily, but being rational wasn't easy when the guy you'd fancied for months was coming over to your house to spend an hour and a half with you, just the two of them.

Well, sort of.

They'd decided that he and Arthur would work in the dining room, which led into the parlor where his grandmother and Arthur's little sister would have their first knitting lesson. That way the girl would be able to see that her brother was close by if she got nervous being in a strange place with a stranger, and Arthur would know she was okay too. Where the little boy would go would be up to him and Arthur, they'd decided, especially since James was obviously very shy. And while normally Eames would have liked the privacy of his own room, especially now that he as sleeping in his own bed again, the idea of being in his bedroom with Arthur was a little more than he could handle at the moment.

"They're here." His grandmother called out, having been keeping a lookout. "So are they just half siblings then? I mean with the age difference and all. The oldest one certainly doesn't look like his daddy." Not that she'd known Dominic Cobb's well, her only child being seven years older, but she'd known the man's mama back in the day.

"Mom, don't spy on them." Not that she expected her mother to listen. "And from what I understand they're full siblings but don't badger Arthur about it, he's doing us a major favor not charging us for this, knitting lessons or not. We looked up what a tutor costs, remember?"

Ignoring her daughter Mimi stayed right where she was, frowning when she commented that the boy was in some sort of booster seat, which made no sense to her given that he was six years old, wasn't he?

"It's the law." Dr. Eames reminded her, due to the boy's age and small stature. Personally she thought it spoke well of Arthur that he obeyed that law instead of ignoring it because people were too relaxed about car safety in this town.

The tension and oppressive memories descended on them all like a ton of bricks, the silence deafening until Eames's grandmother recovered enough to launch into an approving tirade about the fact that her future student didn't look like a mini hooker. The disgraceful way young girls dressed these days was one of her favorite rants and she was more reassured to see that the girl's stomach wasn't showing than she was that Arthur had had James in a booster seat. So far she approved of the Cobb siblings, she announced as she finally moved away from the window, adding that the oldest one was certainly a handsome one, even if he wasn't in his father's league. Pity about the ears.

"His ears are bloody adorable." Eames blurted out before he could stop himself.

Turning her head as her lips shaped into a wide grin, Eames's grandmother looked like the cat that got the canary as she inquired if she would be correct in assuming that this Arthur Cobb was her grandson's type.

"Mimi…" Eames began warningly, cheeks flushing a little pink as he squirmed tellingly.

"Oh, Sweetie, why didn't you tell me you have a crush on him?"

"MUM!"

The sound of the doorbell going off canceled the conversation, thank God, but Eames had no doubt that it would be brought up as soon as their guests were gone, dammit. Yup, crappiest year of his life, Eames silently muttered as he followed the women towards the front door, hanging back a little since there wasn't room for all of them and his chair.

"Hello, Dr. Eames." Phillipa said as soon as she was inside. "Thanks for having us. Hello, Mrs. Pegg, I'm Phillipa but you can call me Phil if you want to. Thanks very much for agreeing to teach me how to knit, I promise I'll work really hard. We went to the store and bought all the stuff the websites said I might need." The little girl motioned to her bright pink satchel, the strap across her chest. "These are my brothers, Arthur and James."

Arthur greeted everyone with his usual, impeccable manners, while James clutched his big brother's hand and nodded in everyone's direction.

"Well you three can just call me Mimi." Mimi announced, explaining that whenever anyone called for Mrs. Pegg she thought they meant her former mother in law. She and the woman had gotten along about as well as two wet cats in a sack, so the thought of her being around was never a pleasant one. "Now you three come on in and we'll get started, shall we?"

)

In short order Mimi had everyone where they were supposed to be, James curled up in a chair near his sister with a book in his hand to read while the lessons were going on. Eames and Arthur were stationed at the dining room table, the former trying not to freak out a little as he watched the latter take out two thick math textbooks, a binder that was already full, and sheets of lined paper from the elegant leather satchel he'd seen the other teen use at school all the time.

For his part Arthur had his ear cocked to pick up the noise from the parlor, reassured by the sound of his sister's happy chatter as she and Eames's grandmother got acquainted and Phil showed off her knitting supplies. There wasn't a peep coming from James, naturally, but Phillipa would watch over him and call out if they needed him.

"We're going to start with the most basic and work our way up." Arthur began once everything was where he wanted it to be. "This isn't meant as an insult to you, it's simple common sense since I have no idea what your injuries might have caused you to forget or have problems understanding. Today's students also have a deplorable dependency on calculators and you need to be broken of the habit if we're going to work together. Without the foundation that mathematics is built on there's nothing to build on, and cheating with a machine isn't learning. So we'll start with these samplers I've put together and we'll see how far you can get before we need to give you a refresher."

Accepting the pieces of paper he was handed Eames saw that the other man wasn't kidding about the starting from the bottom, the first questions dealing with adding and subtracting. He should probably be glad that they were all in the hundreds.

And not about to argue he got to work, breezing through the adding and subtracting and nearly done the multiplication and division when Arthur spoke, interrupting his mental calculations with a question.

"Why do you do that with your fingers?"

"Do what?"

"You mutter the math under your breath as you're doing it, and whenever you're dealing with the nine times tables you move one of your fingers and then put in the correct answer. Why?"

Eames knew he tended to mutter during tests and such, he learned better verbally and it helped him problem solve if he heard it even though teachers were constantly telling him not to because it distracted people. He was surprised that Arthur had been able to understand him, not to mention a little worried that Arthur would consider what he'd been doing as cheating now that he thought about it. But he'd been caught in the act so Eames fessed up that he always used his fingers to do the nine times tables.

"I don't understand." Arthur's voice made it clear that he didn't like that one little bit.

Holding his hands out in front of him like he was going to push someone Eames explained that by lowering the finger that represented whatever number the nine was being multiplied by you got the answer to the math question by putting the number on the one side alongside the number on the other side. For instances if you lowered the forth finger you had three fingers on your left and six on the right, making thirty-six which was what nine times four was.

Catching on Arthur immediately brought up his own hands and quickly lowered each finger in turn, noting the truth of Eames's statement. "It works. Who taught you this?"

"My dad."

"I see. I'll teach this to Phillipa and James as a way to double check their answer, thank you. Now back to it."

Turning his attention back to his work Eames finished his multiplication and division, grimacing over the need to use BEDMAS and deal with exponents and then fractions, which he'd always hated and struggled with. Rather than admit to that Eames decided to claim foggy memory due to brain injury as opposed to fraction stupidity, and asked Arthur for help with those, applying himself to the best of his ability and ridiculously grateful that Arthur was the sort who broke things down easily and had the knowledge to explain things in a variety of ways until the concept was grasped.

For his part Arthur was pleased that the other man was doing reasonably well, especially considering the fact that he'd hypothesized that Eames might have trouble with him as a tutor given his crush on him. But then again he'd watched a few of the football games and been impressed by the single-minded focus Eames had shown when it came to that white and black ball, so perhaps this was similar.

Actually, he might be just as likely to lose his focus, Arthur acknowledged, his eyes drawn once again to the tattoos that were just visibly under Eames's T-shirt sleeves. He'd seen the same hints at school, but had never had a chance to see any of them properly. He'd never been good at not having his curiosity appeased. Plus it had been quite a while since he'd been this close to a male he would, under different circumstances, be interested in sexually, and that was a factor he couldn't ignore either.

Concentrate on the math and the man's oddly sweet muttering, Arthur ordered himself, pulling his attention back to the work with a single-minded focus to mirror Eames's.

The two were nearing area and diameters when Phillipa loudly stating the really long word from Mary Poppins interrupted their work, Arthur looking up and over in her direction with a look of amusement that had his dimples flashing sexily.

Wanting to keep those dimples there Eames asked Arthur if the girl was a fan of the books as well as the movie.

"I don't believe she's read them, we don't have them at home."

From the parlor the two could hear Mimi ask the girl why she'd said that word so suddenly, Phillipa explaining that Arthur had told her that 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' was the closest thing to a swear word she was allowed to say. Any other bad word and she got sent to her papa's room to read the dictionary until Arthur said she could stop.

"He sends you to your father's room instead of your own?"

"Well it's not a punishment if he sends me to MY room." The little girl stated in her best impression of her big brother. "All my stuff is there. There's NOTHING to do in my papa's room BUT read the dictionary. I like learning big words that none of my friends know though."

"And what's your punishment, James?" Mimi asked, obviously trying to include the boy in their discussion, amusement in the older woman's voice.

"The same thing, though he hardly ever gets in trouble." Phillipa told her as she obviously, to her brothers anyway, cut off Mimi's attempt to talk to James. Older women unnerved James most of all, and even though Mimi was just trying to be nice James wouldn't see it that way until he got used to her.

"He can read the dictionary?"

No response was heard so both Eames and Arthur assumed one of the children had nodded, Phillipa shifting Eames's grandmother's attention back to her by claiming she needed the woman's help because she'd made a mess of her latest row.

)

Both lessons continued on after that until it was ten minutes before the scheduled end of the lesson, James coming into the dining room to remind Arthur of the time just in case. Nodding Arthur assured his brother that he was aware of the time and that he'd made sure they would have plenty of time to get to the restaurant before Ariadne started to wonder what was keeping them. Satisfied with that answer James went back into the parlor while Arthur turned his attention back to Eames, who was looking at him in a way that had him quirking an eyebrow in question. "What?"

"Nothing. You and the kids are hanging with Ari tonight?" Not that it was any of his business…he was just curious.

"We're having dinner with her at Delia's and then we're driving to the drive-in to see a movie with Himiko Makino and two of her siblings."

Eames didn't know Himiko well, just that she had a heavy accent, was seriously brilliant, and had eaten lunch with Arthur regularly last term, enough that people had speculated the two were dating before the rumors about him and Ariadne came to light. Oh, and her parents owned a Japanese restaurant. That Arthur was going to the movies with both girls…well he could only assume a lot of the speculation had just been rumors.

"So what movie are you seeing?" He asked, just to say something.

"'The Secret World of Arrietty' by Studio Ghibli. We've seen if before, but never on a large screen. Have you seen any of Hayao Miyazaki's work?"

Judging by the name Eames shook his head, assuming that they were going to see some foreign movie with subtitles. Poor kids. Though there was something about the name…where did he know the name Arrietty from?

"Being half British you might know the books the movie was based on. 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton?"

Eyes widening Eames snapped his fingers, lighting up as he made the connection. "The stories about little people who live inside houses and borrow stuff from regular people, who they call 'beans'?" When Arthur nodded Eames expressed the sentiment that he couldn't believe that no one had told him there was now another version besides the one with the actor who'd played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies. He'd loved those books as a child, his Gran had read them to him all the time. He'd searched her house high and low whenever he'd visited her in England because she'd convinced him there might be Borrowers living with her.

"I'll have to look it up on Netflix tonight, even if I do hate subtitles."

"It was translated by Disney, most Studio Ghibli's works are, so there's an English version which is what we're going to see. James is too young for subtitles yet." A pause. "And if you like you could just come with us tonight, if you think you're up to it. I can bring you back afterwards."

Stunned by the offer Eames didn't know what to say. He'd dreamed about Arthur asking him out of course, which really wasn't what this was but still…it was certainly a step in a positive direction. On the other hand the idea of going out wasn't terribly appealing, especially since he could never be sure when his body would decide to throw him for a very painful loop. He wouldn't want to ruin the night for the rest after all, especially the kids. And if Arthur really was dating one of the girls in question…he really didn't want to see the other man snuggling with some girl instead of him.

"The kids will stretch out on a blanket while the rest of us are sitting in lawn chairs anyway. And I'm stronger than I look, if you need help with your chair."

"I'd hate to be a fifth wheel." Eames hedged, trying to figure out how to back out convincingly when he actually really did want to go.

Arthur's lips curved into a smile that hinted at his dimples, which were like kryptonite as far as Eames was concerned. "No one is ever left out of a conversation with Phil, she'll probably talk your ears off since she doesn't know you. And we'll only be five until the movie, when you'll even our numbers out."

"Well I suppose-if you're sure it wouldn't be a bother…I'll just have to clear it with my mum."

Eames mother, as it turned out, was thrilled with the idea of Eames getting out of the house and was more than willing to come and pick him up wherever they were if Eames's body decided to revolt badly enough that his pain killers couldn't deal with it. He hadn't hung out with Ariadne in forever after all, and she'd heard nothing but good things about Arthur when she'd called the girl about the boy's tutoring abilities. Ariadne had also stated that she was most definitely not dating Arthur, they were just friends, which meant that maybe her baby had a chance with him?

Mentally cursing her lack of gaydar, she hadn't even known her son was gay until he'd told her, Eames's mother could only cross her fingers for luck a short while later after seeing her son safely into Arthur's car, waving the four off from the front porch.