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Eames is at something of a loss. The Berlin job is still seven weeks away; long enough that he doesn’t want to just head there, not long enough that he really wants to look at finding himself something else to do in the mean time.
Rather than making a decision either way he buys a tatty second hand car in Geneva and meanders his way south east, aiming for Germany in the vaguest way possible. He finds he doesn’t really want company, doesn’t want to be company. He sleeps in the car, until he buys a tent, but even then he mostly climbs into the back with the seats down instead of putting the bloody thing up every night. It is surprisingly comfortable; it’s warm at this time of year, and the further he drives the more common the songs of cicadas get.
Eames has a lot of time to think. Inevitably, he thinks about Arthur.
In Northern Italy, on the small roads that meander along the bottom of Aosta Valley, he thinks about the expansive feeling in his chest when he ran his fingers through Arthur’s hair. He thinks about the feeling of hesitation that had curled through him at the warmth of Arthur’s hand on his leg; the same weightless feeling as going over a humpback bridge too quickly that washed through him at the needy, breathy little moan Arthur made around the head of his cock, not just pushing but drop kicking him over the edge of reason to wind up in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the cliff. He thinks about coming on Arthur’s tongue with an intensity that left him rudderless.
Even at the time he had thought this was about something else as well as sex.
When he gets to Verona he is starting to wonder whether the reason he is so hung up on it is because he thinks it might be more for Arthur. He thinks about Arthur breathing him in; the flighty sensation under his ribs that he felt when Arthur said “don’t do that” and nuzzled at his skin; the slight panic on Arthur’s face when Eames asked if he wanted him to expect something. He remembers shying away from what felt like the certainty that it was something other than sex, like he was on the edge of a precipice and looking down at waves crashing on a rocky shore, too close to the edge and sure that he was going to fall.
He wonders whether he is shallow enough to string Arthur along, go along with it because he finds the thought of Arthur wanting him intoxicating, egotistical enough to want more because of the novelty. He could just enjoy the benefits. He could let Arthur bestow his affections and pretend they were returned. He hopes that’s not the case, but he thinks he probably could. At least, he fears he might be capable.
By the time he gets to Hungary, giving Budapest a wide berth and taking a road through a national park, an unpleasant feeling is shadowing him. He feels like he knows himself less and less, like he’s slipping, somehow, becoming unmoored. Eames wonders whether he’s capable of stringing Arthur along because it makes him feel wanted, that somebody knew him, could pinpoint him; like Arthur is his anchor in a stormy sea.
He wonders what that says about him.
But having tried it on for size it is obvious that this skin does not fit, that Eames can’t walk around and convincingly pretend that this too-small persona is not constricting, suffocating, like he is trying to force himself into a suit that is too small. Eames is a thief, but even he cannot pretend to steal Arthur’s heart like that.
It leaves something buzzing inside him, itchy and unsatisfied and growing.
As he drives through the Low Tatras there is a fluttery, panicked sensation in his chest, a bird caught a glancing blow by a car, flopping around on the floor and unable to fly away. He feels like he is running out of time, that it was all a dream, that the timer is about to run down at any second and Eames is standing there frozen, clueless yet paralysed. He can’t even begin to figure out where the information is, can’t even move to try and look, rooted to the spot despite knowing that when he wakes up there is somebody with a gun pointed at his head waiting for him to hand over what he finds.
Around the time he crosses the border into Czechia he realises, with uncomfortable clarity, that he misses Arthur, that this discomfort might be because he feels simultaneously caught by Arthur’s tentative affection and held to ransom by the thought that he might want to return it. He wonders whether he’s only struggling now he realises the trap has been sprung.
He wonders whether this is love.
And when this became about love he couldn’t say, but the emotion is damp and soft-skinned like a newly emerged insect, not hardened to withstand the world yet. He thinks there was probably something afoot long before it became visible on the surface, a seed that blew in on the wind years ago that has been starved of water and the right ground temperature for it to germinate. He remembers seeing something on the telly once about forest fires; pine cones that remained closed until they caught fire; plants that didn’t grow until the old ones burnt down. Something about the analogy of devastation enabling life seems somehow apt, because Eames is finding that maybe he wants to make a space for this thing to grow but doesn’t know where to plant it, needs to clear the undergrowth to give it light.
He tests a theory in Prague, spends the night with some dark haired stranger that he meets in a bar, but it’s not the same. This beautiful man wants him to do whatever he desires, but it’s not the same as Arthur sucking him off in the cramped confines of a sports car, doesn’t have the same thrill of it possibly being something other than purely physical. Objectively awkward blow jobs have made more of an impression than this evening of athletic sex with a stranger; when Eames licks the man’s skin he immediately forgets the taste.
He drifts into Poland, spends three nights in a hotel in Wrocław.
The first night all he does is sleep; judiciously ignoring everything else in favour of a proper pillow and an actual bed for the night.
On the second night he finds a bar, spends the evening in the company of a man who tries to sell him a stolen car and invites Eames to meet his grandmother in the same sentence. He has smiling eyes and an easy laugh, and if Eames wasn’t excruciatingly aware of the contradictory sensation of an absent Arthur taking up all the space in his head then he probably would have gone with him.
On the third night, he catches himself thinking about what might have happened if he had managed to say something back in Lyon. He realises that what he feels is uncomfortably like regret.
As he is packing his bag the following morning, he realises he might be completely buggered.
He had never expected tenderness from Arthur, hadn’t quite known what to do with it when it happened, but he can recognise the lurch he felt when Arthur got out of the car without saying anything else probably meant he wants what he thinks Arthur was hinting at.
He wonders how he could ever have missed it, but then how could he recognise it when he didn’t know what it looked like, what it felt like to be in receipt of an affection that had a longer half-life than a fuck.
Between leaving the hotel and arriving in Berlin, he tries to figure out what Arthur wants. He wonders why, if Arthur felt the way Eames thinks he does, he went about it in the way he did, sucking his dick in stolen cars and nothing beyond that. Why it felt like Arthur would build another wall in order to avoid being discovered. Why Arthur would say one thing and mean another and that Eames didn’t think Arthur realised that he was more transparent than he thought.
Desire, yes; desire is easy. It is easy to see that Arthur desires him. He thinks about the needy little noises Arthur made, the warm slide of his mouth and the taste of his sweat, just a hint but enough make him salivate. Desire is easy, but figuring out what Arthur wants isn’t.
Eames thinks he might have managed to say something, but in Lyon Arthur had seemed to cut him off before he could speak, left Eames with too many words rattling around inside. Left unspoken the words might grow and stretch until they were too big to force past his teeth and out into the open, misshapen and trapped inside so they perished for lack of sustenance. That or they became something else, something that grew out of unexpressed emotion and matured into something bent and twisted, no longer an expression of want offered freely but a selfish grasping shadow of it, something that coveted rather than shared its joy.
-
Eames arrives in Berlin on a Tuesday morning, walking into the dingy office they’re using just in time to witness Arthur call their extractor a fuck up with a notable amount of vitriol. Arthur isn’t the sort of person to resort to violence—at least generally not particularly quickly—but he is the sort of man to actively encourage a reputation that he might be. He has one hand resting lightly on the grip of his Glock where it sits on the table, his apparent casualness incongruous given the tension in the air.
Eames wonders what he just missed, but Nem shakes his head slightly at his questioning look. Arthur barely spares him a glance, nodding at him impersonally before retreating to the opposite end of the room to scribble aggressively in a notebook.
There isn’t really any reason for Arthur to be on the warpath, not that Eames can see; Nem isn’t new and he isn’t Cobb, and the more Eames sees the extractor and Arthur butt heads the more he thinks it’s because Arthur is just being a stroppy git and Nem happens to be the closest target.
It is only obvious to wonder why he himself isn’t the closest target, now that he’s here, and given that always he seems to be the closest target regardless of his proximity. He wonders if maybe Arthur is just tired. Maybe he’ll be back to normal in the morning. He doesn’t know where Arthur went after Lyon, but there is a strong chance he’s jet-lagged.
Eames leaves him alone, but by mid-afternoon he realises Arthur is trying to avoid him, because normally Arthur will fill him in on minute details, all the little observations he’s jotted down in his notebook. He notices that Arthur isn’t bickering with him like he normally does. It is only now, with something that feels an awful lot like foolishness, that Eames realises he misses it, the absence like a gap left by a missing tooth that he keeps running his tongue over.
Some time after seven in the evening, after Nem has called it a day and Eames has been left with far too much time to think, he decides to see how far Arthur will let him push. Because it is a question of that; Arthur will let him get away with as much as he sees fit before he closes up like a limpet on a rock, a gentle touch not nearly as effective in prising it off as a surprise push.
“Been up to much?” Eames asks, fiddling with the corner of one of the photographs Arthur had wordlessly handed him earlier.
“Troubleshooting for Naimh,” he replies, and doesn’t elaborate, focusing far too intently, even for Arthur, on the screen in front of him. Arthur when he’s trying to appear casual is like a cardboard cutout of the real thing, flat and stiff, so obviously trying to conceal something that he’s practically shouting about it. His attention is focused on the information in front of him, but his fingers are gripping the mouse in a way that makes the tendons in the back of his hand stand out, a far cry from the picture of indifference he is trying to paint.
“How was that?” Eames finds he’s asking because he genuinely wants to know, not just because he’s trying to get a rise out of Arthur. He wants to know what Arthur’s last few weeks have been like, that the job he did was okay, what else he did, because it seems unlikely that’s all he’s done since they saw each other. If Eames hadn’t already come around to the idea that he did, possibly, like Arthur, that he was, in fact, completely fucked, then this would have been a flashing neon sign that even Eames at his most wilfully blinkered would have been hard pressed to ignore.
Arthur makes a noncommittal noise that could be interpreted in any number of ways, but doesn’t deign to look at him.
“Been in any nice cars recently?” Eames asks. It’s a cheap shot, and one he doesn’t really expect to get a response to, but the thought that maybe Arthur is in the habit of getting into cars with people other than himself is suddenly parading around in front of all the other thoughts, taking up far more of his attention than he would be prepared to admit. The hot stab of jealousy that follows leaves him reeling, having reared it’s ugly head from some depth of personhood Eames didn’t realise he was still in contact with.
Arthur looks up at him then, his gaze measured. He really does have a pretty mouth, even when it’s slightly pursed in irritation. Arthur doesn’t speak, and Eames decides he might as well talk anyway for all the good it will do, Arthur the limpet probably having well and truly adhered himself to his rock by now.
Eames tells him about his trip. He tells him about fields of ripening wheat and stopping for saints days in small villages, about sunshine and the smell of ripe tomatoes and washing his face in water that has come straight out of the side of a mountain, cold and crisp and invigorating. He tells him about losing at cards and eating goats cheese and too many peaches, back road cafés and farm dogs that lie panting in the dust under trees, who watch to make sure the car disappears up the road but are far too hot to do anything about it unless necessary.
After a while Arthur’s expression relaxes slightly, to the point he looks both entranced and gutted at the same time, and he almost smiles when Eames talks about the taste of bread, the cool air in tiny mountain churches, the smell of the mud drying in the sun on the shores of Lake Trasimeno.
Eames feels like seven weeks was both too long and not long enough, because it had felt like ages, but if it was longer he would have had more stories to tell. If it had been nine weeks he might have managed to make Arthur’s wobbly attempt at a smile into a proper one; ten and he thinks he might have been able to make Arthur laugh. He had missed Arthur, but he thinks twelve weeks might have been worth it if he could make some of the lines in Arthur’s forehead smooth out, even if only temporarily.
Perhaps Arthur just needed a distraction; maybe he’s just had a rough time of it on whatever job Niamh was running. Maybe he was trying overly hard to maintain some sort of professionalism in front of Nem and he thought talking to Eames like he normally did might arouse some sort of suspicion.
And maybe Eames is behaving like a besotted fool. But despite his sense of self-preservation shouting ever louder, he is more inclined to listen to the quiet voice telling him with something close to certainty that he will regret it if he walks away.
Eames leans his hip lightly against the table Arthur is sitting at, the closest they’ve been in weeks, and something in him wants to reach out and touch his fingers to the hand Arthur is squeezing the mouse with.
And then Arthur sneers. It has the desperation of somebody trying to backtrack, to cover for something. Arthur latches onto what Eames said with a mean sort of glee, because he’s an utter wanker when he wants to be.
“Let me get this straight,” says Arthur, with a mean twist to his mouth. “You’ve been bumming around central Europe in some piece of shit car, you bought a tent, and you had a nice time, like some sort of coming of age story. What were you doing, trying to find yourself?”
The sarcasm is practically dripping from his voice but it is at least familiar territory, even if Arthur’s words are sharp, clearly intended to land somewhere that hurts. Eames tries his hardest not to let any of it ripple across his face, but he realises with a sudden rush of understanding that what Arthur says might be true; maybe Eames was trying to find himself, because Arthur has ripped him open and scattered the contents to blow about at the mercy of the wind.
Eames has been trying to piece himself back together again, round up all the fluttering bits of himself that wriggle and evade his grasp, but every time he thought he was close he found another piece of Arthur in the mix; Arthur’s ire and Arthur’s mirth, his schoolboy joy at a silly joke. Arthur’s fingers, the way he tentatively brushed them against a patch of skin on the inside of Eames’ thigh, the only bit Arthur could get to from the awkward vantage of giving him a blow job whilst Eames was driving. Somewhere along the way Arthur patting a hand on the case of the PASIV when he thinks nobody is watching, like other people reward a dog, became part of Eames.
His sense of self has somehow been altered by the knowledge that perhaps Arthur means more to him than he thought, that what he is beginning to recognise as affection has caused some long neglected part of him to grow, like a houseplant that spent its life in a dark room that has been moved to a south facing window.
Perhaps the reason he can’t stitch himself back together the same way he was before is because he is trying to put more back in than he started with, trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with more pieces than required and the wrong picture on the box. He is trying to fit his own neuroticism back inside along with an awareness of Arthur’s care and finding he has to grow accordingly, a sudden growth spurt that results in stretch marks.
He realises the pause he has left is too long, that whatever he says in response it will be obvious that what Arthur said has made him think, but his normal repertoire of comebacks and remarks remain elusive.
Steering the conversation back towards familiar territory feels like effort, forced.
Arthur’s barbed comments are nothing new, but this seems like it contains more malice than normal, to the extent that Eames isn’t quite sure whether this apparent return to form is a positive development or not. Maybe Arthur wants Eames to take the initiative for once, is tired of Eames being dense and having to do all the leg work when what he really wants is for Eames to take the reins and bend him over a table and shag him senseless.
“What are you doing later?”
Arthur looks away again, and it is a clear enough answer even before he speaks. “Is that the best you can do?”
Eames feels his face flushing with a horrible combination of anger and embarrassment that Arthur seems to have a knack for eliciting. That he is reacting like this at all is bad enough, that it seemed to be so easy for Arthur to do it is even worse. It knocks something loose, and before he can stop it he finds himself being mortifyingly honest, the words tumbling out of him in a cross sounding rush.
“What is the matter Arthur? You’ve barely looked at me since I got here. You’ve managed to say about three words to me all day. You’re not exactly renowned for your ability for small talk but you can do better than this, even if it’s just about the job. Which, I hasten to add, you have barely discussed with me; that you’re breaking your own rules regarding professionalism is concerning.”
He tries to tell himself that this is an appeal to Arthur’s sense of pride, but as he says it a feeling of dread drops through him like lead, setting something vibrating nervously though his chest in its wake.
“What the hell is it to you, Eames.”
It manages to surprise him when Arthur’s words sting. They might not be all that close, but somehow they are. That Arthur seems to completely disregard this is a kick in the teeth.
He thinks back to the dingy airport car park in Lyon when Arthur kissed him, how much it had taken him by surprise. When Arthur got out of the car without a backward glance it seemed like the air had taken longer than it should have done to fill the void, like there was some thin skin between reality and the space Arthur had occupied that collapsed in on itself later than should have been possible, like a bubble bursting; as if even in his absence Arthur took up space.
Eames remembers thinking when they were still driving that he thought he wanted to kiss Arthur. That, maybe, it wasn’t just him, that they were gradually moving closer to each other. He remembers the warm fluttering he felt when Arthur seemed to be trying to breathe him in, fill his lungs up with the smell of Eames’ skin, and that Eames might not have known how to respond but he wanted to learn.
He still does. He realises with a rush that he wants to know how Arthur sees him, that Eames wants to know what he looks like when reflected off Arthur.
It strikes him now that maybe Arthur, despite his appearance to the contrary, might be just as nervous as himself about breaking some unspoken rule.
“You were the one to kiss me,” Eames says. “Christ, if we’re playing that game you were the one to stick your hand down my trousers.”
“I made a mistake,” replies Arthur, a shrug in his voice. He is still looking at the screen instead of Eames, but there is a tension in the line of his back that makes Eames think that Arthur is not as indifferent as he appears, that there is more running under the surface than he wants to let on.
“You made a mistake,” Eames repeats, his voice flat. Arthur’s coldness looks defensive, because Eames thinks there might be something there that Arthur is trying to distract from, lead him off down another path and away from whatever it is Arthur feels the need to protect.
“The thing is, Arthur, I don’t believe you.”
Arthur snaps his head round, looking up at him with something guilty flashing across his face.
Eames takes a step closer. Arthur doesn’t move, but his shoulders tense, his chin coming up ever so slightly, as if he’s squaring up for something. Eames puts a hand down on the table, close enough that he could reach out with a fingertip to touch Arthur’s hand where it is still crabbed over the mouse. He leans down, into Arthur’s space, puts his mouth close to Arthur’s ear.
“I don’t believe you, and I think you want me out of the way because it’s easier than being vulnerable,” he says softly, like a secret.
He feels Arthur flinch slightly at his words, something hot and greedy awakening in him at the thought that he caused it. He can feel the heat radiating off Arthur’s skin, can smell the traces of his aftershave, wants to press his face to Arthur’s and let his warmth seep into him. A wash of arousal floods though him, saturating him from the inside out until it feels as if his skin is almost tingling, like jumping into water so cold it burns then climbing out and feeling more alive than before.
Arthur’s earlobe is a scant half inch from his mouth, close enough that he could close his teeth on the velvety skin before Arthur could react, and the temptation is huge. Instead he leans back slightly so he can see Arthur’s face, far enough that the impulse fades into the hum of desire that has been quietly building unchecked in the background.
“I’m wracking my brains to think why that might be, and there’s only really one explanation I can come up with that sounds like it might be plausible,” Eames says.
He watches Arthur as he says it, and Arthur stands his ground, meets Eames’ gaze with something that does a good impression of being impassive. But he also hears Arthur swallow. He looks at the gentle swell of his mouth and recalls the way it felt curved around his cock, the sensation of his tongue pressing against him.
“And what’s that?” Arthur asks, but it clearly costs him something, his poker face not nearly as robust as it should be if he’s going to play this game. The muscles in his jaw tense where he’s clenching his teeth, like he knows it’s a gamble on whether Eames will stick or twist and he’s trying to delay the inevitable because he’s losing either way.
Arthur is mistaken if he thinks Eames will be intimidated out of saying it. Eames keeps things close to his chest but it is wilfully naive to assume that Eames will keep his cards hidden if he has a winning hand. He is starting to suspect that Arthur thinks of himself as playing a game with higher stakes, that he believes Eames is playing for small change. Only Eames realised a while back that while the buy in was steeper than he anticipated, the pot was deeper than he imagined.
“I think you’re afraid that I don’t want this,” he says softly. “And also terrified that you do.”
Eames watches the words land, like dropping a breeze block into a bath full of water.
“You talk about vulnerability as if it’s one sided,” Arthur says eventually.
And, well, shit.
Arthur’s words are the sound of a snare closing on an unsuspecting rabbit. Eames’ first instinct is to try and escape, to twist and turn and try to bite his way out, pull at the thing that has trapped him even if it hurts, even if struggling only pulls it tighter around his neck. Because it is closer to the mark than he was ready to admit out loud. Because he thought he was the one cornering Arthur with an accusation of deceit, thought he was being honest with himself. But it turns out all the things he can accuse Arthur of also apply to him.
“We can wind each other up more and more until something snaps,” he says instead. “You can be stubborn when you want to be, especially when you’re trying to prove a point, and I’m not above letting myself get caught up in it. I would let you have your way, piss me off to the point that all I can think about is punching you or fucking you, but I’m past leaving, Arthur.” As he says it, his fingers circle Arthur’s wrist. Arthur doesn’t relax his hand, but his eyes flick down to look at where Eames’ hand covers his own.
“What point am I trying to prove?” Arthur asks, and his voice is low, vaguely threatening, or perhaps threatened is more accurate.
“I suspect you think you’re going to goad me into getting irritated. I think you want me to get annoyed by this because you think I’ll just bugger off anyway, and if you piss me off I’ll leave you to it and that will be that. You’ll be proven right, and you won’t have had to let me in only for me to disappear. And I think you probably fight dirty well enough that you’ll stoop to saying something you don’t really believe in exchange for getting me to do what you want.”
“You’ve always done what you want, I doubt I can change that,” Arthur replies. It feels as close to a confession as Eames thinks he’s going to get right now.
“How about I tell you what happens if we do this your way,” Eames says, and Arthur’s pupils dilate slightly, his hand flexing slightly under his own. “You say something calculated to hurt; you aim one of your pointed little sentences at something soft, those ones with words you’ve thrown in there to make it sound like something more than a mean little remark. And I’ll probably respond with something that makes it obvious that what you’ve said has achieved exactly what it was designed to. It’ll have been intended to hurt, but you’ll still feel bad about having said it, because actually it was never about causing offence and everything to do with defence.”
Arthur looks at him, something defiant lurking in his expression.
“Doesn’t mean it won’t piss me off,” Eames adds with a shrug. “Only this time I’ve been thinking about the noises you made when you were trying to stuff as much of my cock into your mouth as you could. How I can still taste the sweat from the back of your neck, and it’s nowhere near enough.”
He thinks he might be winning when Arthur looks at his mouth briefly.
“We could push each other to find out who breaks first,” he continues. “You could shove, console yourself with the idea that if it doesn’t work as a deterrent then it might at least knock me off course. And I would push back with equal force, as if I could knock you hard enough to make the truth drop out like ripe apples off a shaken tree. Newton’s third law, if you like.”
“I’m not sure you’ve grasped the laws of physics,” Arthur counters, but that it is this he has chosen to comment on feels like a victory, of sorts.
Eames is still bent over, his hand around Arthur’s wrist, and he leans in close again to where he can smell the warmth of Arthur’s skin, the echoes of that morning’s soap and the addictive trace of perspiration.
“I’d put my hand in your hair and pull,” he murmurs, and it sends a wave of lust washing through him as he says it, imagines Arthur’s little movements that would transmit themselves through Eames’ fingertips.
“I’d bite your nipples through your shirt, leave teeth marks in the cotton for you to get annoyed about,” he adds, breath leaving him in a warm damp rush against Arthur’s neck.
“You could insult my thuggish tendencies at the same time as straddling me,” Eames muses, “belittle me at the same time as wanting my hands on you. I could tell you about how I wanted to taste you, bite you, rub my face between your thighs until your skin turned red. How I had thought about how lovely you looked with your face flushed and my cock in your mouth and had wondered whether the rest of you turned the same shade of pink; how your arse might look if I spanked you until your skin was hot and you were writhing in my lap, that each time the flat of my hand connected you made those maddening little noises you make when you let the control slip - when I make your control slip.”
Arthur’s breathing is shallow, and he barely moves at all, but then Arthur pulls his hand out of Eames’ grasp and closes it slowly on the collar of Eames’ shirt. Eames hears the dry sound of fabric being squeezed in Arthur’s capable fist.
“And that pisses you off, doesn’t it,” Eames continues. “It pisses you off that you would let that happen. You’d let me lavish attention on you whilst telling yourself that it was illusory, that this was just something I was indulging in before I wandered off like a stray dog. But I think that might be a false summit. I get the feeling I bought into a game I thought was for peanuts when actually it was for everything I own. And I’m calling your bluff, I suppose. Because I think the cards you’re holding are different than the ones you want me to think they are.”
He says this against Arthur’s jaw, lips catching ever so slightly on the barest trace of stubble, and the fact that Arthur isn’t moving away is as clear a signal as any, leaves arousal pooled low down in Eames’ gut and stirring his cock.
“You’re a thug,” Arthur says with something awfully close to a shiver, and Eames’ dick twitches in interest. “You have terrible taste in suits and even worse in cars. Your flightiness is infuriating. You’re calculating and deceptive.”
Arthur is breathing hard and fast, and his hand on Eames’ shirt is clenched tight, preventing him from leaning back even if he wanted to, like Arthur wants to keep him there. Something seeps in around the edges of lust, something slower, deeper, inexorable; a river near the sea compared to a mountain stream, and Eames wants to dive into the current and let it sweep him along.
“You have the emotional maturity of child,” Arthur continues, “despite your ability to theorise about the same in everybody else. You take things to heart but you’re also flippant about everything and it drives me round the fucking bend. You have so many faces that I don’t know which one is real, so I have to mistrust all of them rather than trusting the wrong one. You piss me off.”
Arthur is pulling steadily at his shirt, and Eames gives in, let’s Arthur hold face against him, and Eames can’t see Arthur’s expression but he feels the next thing he says vibrate in his chest.
“But do you know what the worst thing is? That I’m here anyway.”
Arthur’s tone is angry but he speaks quietly, and he’s holding his head at an angle so Eames’ lips can brush against the skin under his ear. It puts his own mouth close to Eames’ temple, and Arthur’s words ruffle his hair and send a tingle down his spine. Arthur’s fingers now rest lightly at the neck of his shirt, and if Eames was a gun this would be a textbook example of trigger discipline, because despite the position they’re in their only point of skin contact is Eames’ mouth on his neck.
All Eames can think about is the smell of Arthur, the sensation of feeling almost helpless as Arthur sucked him off, that he wants Arthur to bury his face against him and make that breathy little sound of wanting again, the one that cuts through him like a hot knife through butter.
He still hasn’t kissed Arthur, and he doesn’t yet, either, because it implies a certain amount of tenderness that he doesn’t think Arthur will appreciate just now. The thought of kissing him sends something possessive crashing through him like a dam bursting, obliterating everything else. He swallows audibly, his eyes momentarily closing at the wave of wanting that floods through him from head to toe.
He wants him. He wants his anger and his attention and his care, wants Arthur to wrap his legs around his head as Eames licks into him, wants to press his thumbs against the crest of Arthur’s pelvis and hold him in place so he can fall apart.
“I think you want to make me angry because you can’t ask, because you don’t want to make yourself vulnerable like that,” Eames manages, voice gravelly.
“We don’t have to do anything,” says Arthur, his voice hitching slightly in the middle, “if it’s such an inconvenience.”
“I didn’t say that,” says Eames, and bites Arthur’s collarbone through his shirt.
Arthur goes momentarily limp, and Eames feels his cheek brush against the top of his head, but then Arthur seems to remember the role he’s adopted and shoves him.
“We’re not doing this here,” Arthur says, clearly trying to maintain the upper hand.
“I’ll let you drive,” he tells Arthur, as if it was somehow magnanimous of him.
-
Arthur takes them to a hotel with little personality. The journey up to his room in the lift is interminable, for all that it lasts about three minutes. Because while Eames is confident in his assessment of the state of play, he isn’t sure of Arthur’s tactics; he might decide that he is better off cutting his losses and throwing the game, bowing out and maintaining face, even if he loses his buy in.
The only chair in the room has Arthur’s fancy leather bag occupying it, so Eames sits on the bed and watches him. Arthur busies himself taking off his jacket, putting things away for the evening. He checks the magazine of his gun three times before Eames decides he’s had enough of the prevaricating.
“Come here,” he says, standing up.
Surprisingly, Arthur does.
Arthur looks like he is steeling himself for something, preparing to rip a plaster off his leg and knows it’s going to take hair with it. Arthur stands right in front of him, like he’s resigned to the fact he’s going to be sent down and he’s going to take the stand with his head held high.
“Do you remember what I told you?” Eames says. “I said I wanted to taste you. I said I wanted to hold you down and run my tongue over you from armpit to arsehole, and I remember the way you shuddered at the words.” He drags his hands up Arthur’s sides, feeling his shirt bunch up under his finger tips. He can feel the tension in Arthur’s flesh, the way he holds himself in check. He runs his hands down Arthur’s arms until he’s cradling his hands in his own, palms to the back of them.
Arthur’s fingers are loose, unsure, like he knows what he wants but he’s not sure he’s allowed to have it.
“That’s the thing about words though,” Eames continues, tracing small circles on the insides of Arthur’s wrists with his thumbs. “Everybody says talk is cheap. Only words cost something, don’t they. There is the potential that they will cost more than you can afford to spend. And I think you want me to be one thing because it will be cheaper, easier, but the reality is you know this is expensive. This is a DB4 Zagato, not some knackered Ford Fiesta."
“That’s a terrible line,” replies Arthur.
“Ah, yes, but you’re also secretly pleased that I was paying attention to you talking about cars, aren’t you.”
Arthur’s answering grimace is amused, and he looks almost shy, like he’s self-conscious about being found out. Eames rather likes it, likes that he caused it, when Arthur has been the source of so much of his own discomfort recently.
Maybe vulnerability is a two way street after all.
“I can hold you down and make you whimper,” he tells Arthur. “Let you pretend this is less than what it is, just an exchange of fluids.” He lets his lips drag at the skin of Arthur’s neck as he speaks, delights in the way Arthur shifts against him slightly at the formulation of each consonant. “Or we can be honest.”
“You haven’t got an honest bone in your body,” replies Arthur, but he turns his hands so their fingers interlace.
“But you do, don’t you, Arthur. Even when you’re lying you’re unfailingly honest. You were glaring at me earlier, when I discussed the finer points of biting your nipples through your shirt, making them all pink and sensitive, peeling your trousers down your gorgeous legs and watching you flush at the attention. But I didn’t miss the way your pupils dilated when I said I wanted to spank you.”
He watches Arthur’s face as he says it, watches his lips part slightly and his throat work as he swallows with a click.
“See? You like that idea, don’t you; Honest Arthur.”
Eames can almost see the exact moment Arthur’s defences rally themselves.
Arthur lets go and shoves him backwards so he’s sitting on the bed and straddles him. Eames’ hands come up instinctively to rest on his waist.
“I like a lot of things, Mister Eames,” says Arthur, and his voice is deep, rich, like this is something indulgent that he is rolling around his mouth and savouring.
Arthur’s arse is in his lap and he wants to press himself upwards, chasing more of the warmth that is spreading out through him. Arthur wriggles slightly against Eames’ stiffening cock, a small smile finally playing around the edges of his mouth. He places his hands on Eames shoulders and leans forward, pressing his chest to Eames, index fingers tucking into collar of Eames’ shirt to rub softly at his skin.
“I want you to do something for me,” says Arthur, speaking softly into Eames ear, and the sound of it makes Eames want to live up to his expectations, makes him want to be good for him.
“Yes,” says Eames, and pulls Arthur’s hips down to punctuate it, hardening dick pressing up against him.
“What?” he asks, not because he needs to know what it is so he can decided if he’ll do it but so he can do whatever it is that Arthur wants, because he knows he’s going to do it regardless.
There is a pause, and Eames half imagines that Arthur knows just what this is doing to Eames and is drawing it out, only he’s reasonably sure that the reason Arthur pauses is because he knows there is no coming back from this, that once he steps off this cliff he’s going to land at the bottom either way and he can’t see if it is water or rocks down there. He’s breathing against Arthur’s neck, waiting for him to speak, and the wait to find out what he’s going to say is a delicious torture.
“I want you to hit me,” says Arthur, voice quiet and deep. “I want you to strip me, lie me face down over your lap and spank me until it stings, until your hand hurts and I’m begging you to let me feel your cock inside me, feel your skin against me where I’m hot and pink, and know that it’s all because of you.”
Arthur’s voice is like honey drizzled into white wine, sinking through him in glossy coils. Eames feels the tip of his dick get slightly wet, and his hands squeeze at Arthur’s waist, holding him still while Eames grinds up against him. Eames has thought about this a hundred times over but it still doesn’t come close to the reality of hearing Arthur whisper it against him, like he can’t say it any louder, like he can’t say it at all when he’s looking at Eames.
Eames had known that he wanted this, but it is almost more than he thinks he can stand. He needs to feel Arthur, needs to touch him, see him, taste him. He opens his mouth against Arthur’s neck, presses his tongue to him, and can’t stop the noise he makes in the back of his throat. Arthur rocks his hips downward in response, fabric taut over the bulge of his erection.
“You’re still wearing too much,” Eames manages, letting his lips move over Arthur as he says it.
Arthur reaches up and pulls at the knot of his tie, the silk slithering from around his neck with a hiss. He looks straight into Eames’ eyes as his nimble fingers undo the fiddly little buttons on his stupidly expensive shirt. Eames pulls at his shirt tails impatiently, untucking them and sliding his hands hungrily around his waist again.
When Arthur tosses his shirt away Eames’ hands trace the muscles either side of his spine, fingers slipping into the groove between erector spinae and up, until his thumbs are in Arthur’s armpits, sliding against sweat damp hair.
It probably tickles, because Arthur squirms delightfully, clamping his arms down, but all Eames does is retract his hands and stick a thumb in his mouth, watching Arthur as he does it. Arthur’s irises are already almost all pupil, and Eames wants to run his tongue over the indent left behind where Arthur has been biting at his bottom lip, lick at the glisten of saliva there.
Eames watches, mesmerised, as Arthur wraps his fingers gently around Eames’ wrist and pulls it towards him, sucks Eames’ thumb into his mouth and holds it against his tongue, not holding him there but cradling.
“Trousers,” Eames croaks, temporarily robbed of verbosity.
When Arthur lays out across his lap he isn’t quite relaxed, palpable in the way he doesn’t quite let himself go slack. Eames runs his hands up and down his back, tries to sooth some of the tension from him.
When his palm smacks down on Arthur for the first time, the sound of the breath punching out of Arthur goes straight to his cock and something else takes over, something that feeds on the soft sounds that Arthur makes every time the flat of Eames’ hand lands on his rapidly pinking arse, that consumes the sharp slap of skin on skin with something approaching ecstasy.
Arthur goes boneless, his legs jostling each time Eames’ hand lands hard against him, and Eames can feel it transferred into his own legs where Arthur’s pelvis rests against him. Arthur makes a squeaky little moaning sound every time Eames spanks him, and his skin is pink, hot to the touch. When Eames rests a hand lightly against him he starts moving his hips, seeking friction for his as yet untouched cock where it juts down between Eames’ thighs.
Arthur is always gorgeous, but there is something quite spectacular about him lying naked across Eames legs having his arse spanked, each strike undoing a little more of the tightly wound control that Arthur wraps himself in.
All Eames can think about is wringing more of those noises from Arthur, the way each one sounds closer to the truth. He sucks his thumb into his mouth again, gets it good and wet, and brushes it lightly over Arthur’s hole, making Arthur shiver, before bringing his other hand down sharply on his red skin again.
Arthur’s back arches sharply, his hips jolting forward, accompanied by a wordless exclamation. He shifts delightfully against Eames’ cock where it is trapped against him, still fully clothed and aching.
He presses the pad of his thumb against the tight furl of Arthur’s hole, feels the way it clutches at him as Arthur writhes in his lap, almost feels like it is sucking him in when Arthur clenches and then lets go. He rubs his thumb in tiny circles, encouraging muscle to relax, and when he dips in up to the first knuckle he thinks about it being the head of his cock that he can see disappearing inside.
Eames stills, but Arthur is moving about still, trying to push forward and backwards at the same time and accomplishing neither. Eames thinks that it is somehow earnest in it’s ineffectiveness, almost endearing, considering Arthur has always prided himself on being the best.
“Stop,” he says, and brings his hand down sharply against Arthur again. Arthur goes motionless immediately, Eames’ thumb still in his arse, and then Eames feels him deliberately clench, like he’s testing the limit of the word “stop”.
Their breathing is hot and fast, open mouthed and loud in the bad acoustics of the room.
Eames keeps still, but he brushes his free hand lightly down Arthur’s side, feels the warmth coming off his skin.
“Your bloody gorgeous Arthur. You’re all red and hot where my hands have been, and your pink hole is clutching at my thumb like you want me to stay there. And I would, I would have you in my lap like this all day, keep you pressed against my cock like this and watch the way the light plays over the muscles in your back. Your perfect arse has let me just slip inside, nothing else needed but a bit of spit because you wanted me in there so much.”
Arthur moans into the bed covers, his hands clenched in the sheet, and it is the hottest thing Eames has ever heard, makes him want shove him down onto the bed and fuck into the warm promise of him over and over, until Arthur breaks, until he shatters, so Eames can hold him cradled in his hands like shards of glass, still wary of cutting himself.
“But I also want to see your cock. I want to see if you flush at what I’m going to tell you, see if the rest of you goes as red as your arse when you’re on display for me to see. I want to know if you can bear being seen Arthur.”
He reaches up and runs a hand over the back of Arthur’s neck, buries his fingers in his hair and pulls lightly. Arthur is breathing fast against the bed still, and Eames twists his thumb, relishes the way Arthur writhes in response, the needy hitch to his breathing.
“Because I kept thinking about that when you were sucking me off; it bothered me that I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t see the way your lips stretched around me, couldn’t see the state you had made of yourself where you rubbed your face against me, covered yourself in spit and precome and that you absolutely loved being a mess like that for me. I couldn’t see what you were telling me when you said “don’t stop”. I could hear you; two little words repeated over and over in my head, but I couldn’t see what expression you wore.”
As he says it he slides his thumb out of Arthur, who seems content to be guided for the moment. Eames lies him down on his front on the bed, smoothing a hand down his back to cup gently over his pink arse.
“I hope you had the forethought to come prepared, Arthur.”
“Of course I did,” he says, vaguely affronted even now. “Even after I’d decided this wasn’t going to go any further I still bought lube; in the bag on the chair.”
Eames doesn’t move immediately, just stands there looking down at Arthur, lying there with his head pillowed on his arms.
“Take your clothes off?” Arthur asks quietly, like he’s asking if Eames will let him have this, the question in his tone a tentative hint that makes Eames want to wrap his arms around him and just hold him.
Eames rushes to get undressed, nearly falls over trying to get his socks off and leaves the whole lot in a pile on the floor. He tosses things out of Arthur’s bag haphazardly, then stretches out on his side next to Arthur with his fist clenched around the bottle, the sharp corner of a condom packet pressing uncomfortably into the web between index and middle finger.
“I can’t believe I get to see you like this,” he says, as he presses lubricated fingers into Arthur, watches him shift his hips against the bed. “I’ve wanted to see what you looked like for so long. I knew you’d be gorgeous, but it isn’t the same as seeing.”
Arthur is quiet, but the fingers of one hand skim lightly backwards, curling around Eames' forearm like he wants to hold on but isn’t sure it’s allowed.
“Christ, Arthur,” Eames chokes out, as he presses his aching cock into the heat of him, feels Arthur stretch to accommodate him. He runs a finger around where Arthur’s hole pulls tight around him, feels Arthur’s answering shiver cascade through him.
Arthur bucks his hips up to meet him, his fingers wrapped tight in the sheet, and each little breathy moan that Arthur makes gets further and further inside Eames, takes up residence next to all the other little bits of Arthur that seemed to have worked their way under Eames’ skin.
“You’re utterly gorgeous Arthur,” he says, and he doesn’t know where to put his hands, wants to put them everywhere. “You're so fucking stunning like this, face down underneath me, taking my cock like you were born for it. I want you to show me what you like. You always take such good care of things, hold them in your hands like they’re precious to you. I want to see you hold your cock, want to see the way your fingers hold the weight of you, touch all the little sensitive parts that only you know about so I can see where they are. I want to see so I can do that for you. I want to make you fall apart and know that the only reason I can do that is because you have let me see where to touch you.”
“For fuck’s sake Eames, shut up and fuck me,” Arthur hisses, speaking through his teeth. He has his eyes screwed shut, like he can’t bear to look.
“Why don’t you want to hear it, Arthur? Why don’t you want to hear me say it? Do you want me to keep quiet? Because I want you to hear, I want you to know what you make me feel. I want to tell you how much I want you, what you make me want to do. I want you to know.”
And Arthur whimpers. Eames feels his cock twitch where he is buried inside Arthur.
“I don’t want to hear it Eames, please. I just... I only want this,” he says, “Just this.” But even as he says it the fingers of one hand reach backwards to brush softly at Eames hip.
Something lurches through Eames chest, and he stills, rests his weight against Arthur’s sweaty back for a moment as he tries to see the edges the vastness that it makes him feel.
“I think you’re desperately clinging to some semblance of control, when in fact you’re only just managing. Because how much you want this terrifies you and you need it to be on your terms somehow, need to feel like this is something you have chosen. Because you need to feel like you have free will. Only you never had a choice. You can’t choose who you love Arthur, just like I didn’t.” The words fall out of him unchecked, and Eames is pushing himself in as deep as he can, trying to get as much of himself as he can into the tight clutch of Arthur as possible.
They both still. Eames feels like he has just stepped off a cliff into thin air and is waiting to plummet to the ground.
“Shit. Wait, I mean…”
The rigidity is back in Arthur’s spine, and Eames knows what he’s going to say before he says it, is already bracing himself to pull out.
“Get off,” Arthur bites out.
It’s still winding, despite knowing.
Arthur makes a quiet hissing sound as Eames shuffles backwards, but he doesn’t move. He screws his eyes closed and takes a deep breath, then opens them, the look he gives Eames veering between anger and pain, though how much of either is directed at Eames and how much at himself is entirely unclear.
Eames stands there, his cock starting to droop in the condom, and watches Arthur try to decide which part of himself to listen to. The urge to cover himself up is almost overpowering.
“Talk to me?” he asks, and it it probably the hardest question he’s ever asked.
Arthur’s face crumples.
“You already know, don’t you. You’ve figured me out, why do you need me to say it?”
“Because knowing it isn’t the same as hearing you say it. Talk might be cheap but words are worth an awful lot, sometimes.”
Arthur turns his back to Eames and curls in on himself, drawing his legs up. Eames looks at the curve of his spine and thinks about archways, about how they support more weight than a solid wall.
“You didn’t seem interested,” Arthur says, and Eames feels like it might actually break him apart. “I thought maybe it would be enough, that I could accept that. But the more I had the more I wanted. I panicked. I thought I was taking more than you wanted me to, because you didn’t say anything. You’re always fucking talking and yet you didn’t say anything. I thought I should back off.”
Eames watches him take a deep breath.
“You didn’t say anything,” Arthur continues. “You always have something to say but you were quiet, and I thought maybe you felt inconvenienced by it but wanted to, I dunno, maintain our working relationship or something. I thought maybe you were just letting me. I was waiting for you to say something, like, it was your move, you needed to roll the dice before I could take my turn.”
“I thought it would be enough,” he adds. “But it isn’t. It’s not enough and I’m an idiot for thinking it might have been.”
Eames thinks about the way Arthur holds the things he cares about. He thinks about the little noises Arthur was making and the way he pressed his face against Eames’ armpit and they way his hands cradled Eames’ wrist after he spanked him, placed his chin in Eames’ hand and held his thumb in his mouth, tongue curled around it warm and wet.
He thinks about how Arthur gave himself; submitted, in a sense, how it wasn’t a sacrifice but given freely. Arthur had made himself vulnerable; even if he didn’t say anything, even if everything he said was at odds with that.
Maybe Arthur would understand what it might mean, if Eames gave him something. Not in return but just to give.
He pulls the condom off his softening dick and goes back over to the bed.
“Shift up a bit,” he says, lying down on the bed next to Arthur, stretching out on his front, mirroring the position Arthur had been in earlier.
Eames just waits. He’s sure he’s right, but the longer he lies there, exposed in more ways than one, then doubt starts to creep in. The sensation of it crawls through him, that he might have misjudged, that maybe this was only sex, that what he thought was Arthur’s vulnerability was actually just him not wanting to make this into more than it was.
“I see you, Arthur. I’m letting you see me.”
And just like that, Eames feels like a weight has been lifted. He hadn’t expected it to feel like a relief, but the thought that the words are no longer stuck inside seems somehow freeing, like Eames has more space to breathe and more space to let things grow.
“We shouldn’t,” Arthur says behind him, and Eames steels himself for Arthur getting off the bed, leaving him lying there humiliated.
“I can think of a hundred reasons why this a bad idea,” Arthur adds. His voice is closer this time, like he’s facing Eames, and something swoops through him.
“And they usually manage to drown out the one that says I’d be a fool not to do it anyway.”
Eames feels Arthur close his fingers around his ankle.
“I’m trying to get better at listening,” Arthur says softly.
Then Arthur presses himself against Eames’ back, kisses between his shoulder blades, and now Arthur has kissed him twice and it is completely unfair.
He rolls, tipping Arthur off him only to wrap his arms around him and finally pull their mouths down to meet.
Arthur kisses him like his strings have been broken, slumping against Eames’ chest as if he needs the support and pressing his lips to him in a way that practically shouts that he is trying to say something without talking.
They kiss without any real intention, the fervour of earlier having receded like the tide. Arthur is mostly hard against his hip when the thought occurs, and the idea stirs Eames into being fully erect again.
“You said I always do what I want,” Eames says, speaking into the space between them. “Well, what I want is for you to trust me. I want you to want me.”
“What the hell do you think I’m doing here. You spank my ass then we have some sort of argument, and then neither of us get off. If I was just here for the fucking I would have given up a while back.”
“No, wait, shut up, let me finish. I want you to just… stay inside me.”
Arthur doesn’t say anything, and Eames isn’t sure why, whether it is because he hasn’t quite grasped what Eames is asking or he is taken aback by the request, whether actually Arthur doesn’t like what he’s found now that Eames has dropped some of the pretence and he wants to go back to just doling out blow jobs like they don’t mean anything, like Eames’ entire being hadn’t been reorganised by what started out with just nicking some entitled twat’s Porsche-
Arthur kisses him.
Arthur sucks Eames’ tongue into his mouth and inhales Eames’ breath, and the tension Eames didn’t even realise he was holding pours out of him in a rush.
Arthur doesn’t hold him like he holds a gun. Arthur holds a gun like he owes it a debt, an uneasy truce brought about by begrudging respect. Arthur’s gun is a tool, but it is not valuable, as such; when Arthur’s fingers touch lightly behind behind his ears, Eames realises he might be worth something.
When he kisses over Eames’ face, as if he needs to in the same way he needs air, Eames starts to believe he might be wanted.
When Arthur presses into Eames it is almost sweet, his fingers stroking Eames from the inside out until he is a quaking, sweaty mess, his cock leaking steadily against his stomach.
“I won’t break, you know,” he gasps.
“I know,” Arthur replies. “But I want to take care of you properly.”
Arthur’s hands can give away the truth, and when he presses his cock into Eames, holds his fingers to Eames’ mouth and strokes the contours of his lips, Eames can find no lie.
“I’ve always trusted you, you know,” says Arthur, when Eames is tucked in by him, Arthur’s arm across his chest and his cock in Eames’ arse.
“Pull the other one.”
“I blew you in Lamborghini that can do 0-60 in 2.4 seconds. I trusted you not to kill us both; don’t you think that should tell you something?”
Eames feels his mouth drop open slightly in surprise. He swallows down the protestation in his throat, that Arthur shouldn’t trust him, even though Eames wants him to.
It is a strange thing, because he knows Arthur is usually right, but it still feels alien to think he might be right about Eames.
Vulnerability is, after all, a two way street.
He takes a deep breath.
“Trust your instincts, Arthur, you’re usually right.”
He feels Arthur smile against his back, basks in the warmth that spreads from his chest.
“Go to sleep, Mister Eames.”