Who: Eames and Arthur What: UST and NPCs Where: Paris. Inception Door. When: Nowish Warnings/Rating: Sexual Tension
Evan was released from the hospital Saturday morning, as promised, and he left on his own steam, slow and steady and slightly dazed, but feeling better than he had in weeks. Clearer, despite the daze, and with a bunch less orange bottles in his future. But it wasn’t all fun and games. He had psyche and therapy every day of the week, alternating, but that was alright. It was cool, he could deal with that stipulation if it meant he got out and didn’t think the entire world wasn’t real again.
The apartment was too white, and Evan called in someone to fix it. They came early, color swatches and furniture catalogues and too much talking. It made Evan’s head hurt, but he was glad to have something going on in his mind now that he was home. Being there, it was the hardest place to be and avoid a drink. Old habits, and the fact that he knew exactly how many steps it was from his door to the corner store. It made him send the interior designer home, and he called a realtor instead. Maybe it was time for some new scenery.
That evening, Evan didn’t argue or try to talk Eames out of whatever it was that Eames had planned. He let the other man cross over to Paris (not Mombasa) and he took a backseat. Arthur and Eames were like a movie, man, and all that was missing was the popcorn.
Eames arrived an hour before he’d told Arthur to join him, and he spent the first half hour of that looking for the ever popular Félix. It turned out the man lived in the same bloody building as Arthur, which was rather convenient. Eames, clad in khakis and a sage shirt that was (for once) neither garish nor to snug, dropped by to pay the Frenchman a visit. He intended to conduct his own extraction, one without need of chemicals or a PASIV. But, instead, he found a rather academic young man.
Immediately, plans changed. Eames propped open the hotel door so it led straight into Félix’s apartment (a closet, convenient and out of sight), and then he joined the professor - Marc - for a smoke and a lovely bottle of red. Intimate laughter, and then, he waited.
For such a smart guy, Cory thought Arthur was being kind of stupid. It seemed to Cory like Eames was just playing with the guy, and it also seemed like Arthur was just letting him. On the other hand, he didn’t really look into it all that deeply. In the end he didn’t care what Arthur did as long as he didn’t do it with his body while he was asleep, and that included killing both of them just to wake up. When Evan had told him to have Arthur show up, Cory had assumed Arthur would just agree, but that definitely had not been the case. For some reason, Arthur was angry that Cory had agreed to walk him into anything at a certain place or time, an anger that was only the layer over some hesitation or concern that Cory couldn’t read. He figured he was just being stupid about Eames, and walked through anyway.
Arthur felt a little better just because he was wearing linen milled so fine it felt like silk, but other than that, his mood was not improved. He was surprised to find himself just outside the closet door of Félix’s apartment, and he blinked a few times before shifting on his heels and looking around. He knew this place, of course, he just hadn’t been here in quite some time. Only Félix had so many ridiculous candles. “Félix...?” Arthur stepped out of the hallway into the front room of the apartment and saw Félix’s boyfriend hobnobbing with Eames, who was looking dangerously smug. Arthur was searching his mind for the man’s name while staring at Eames with the annoyance he liked so well.
Eames looked up when he heard Arthur’s voice, and he grinned at the confused looking Marc, who was blinking away a look that was possibly too warm, a lean that was too tellingly close. “Darling, we’re in here. Do join us. We were just having a chat,” he said, leaning back onto the back legs of Félix’s chair, which seemed entirely too small for a man like Eames. Despite Marc’s immediate attempt at bodily withdrawal, Eames didn’t spare the man another glance for the moment. No, his attention was entirely on Arthur’s ridiculously put-together and expensive looking linen. “Marc teaches, I believe. Isn’t that interesting?” said Eames, who had never seen a classroom that held his interest, not unless there was an attractive professor or some education at predicting odds unintentionally occurring. The grin was smug, not even trying to pretend it wasn’t what it was.
Arthur profoundly wanted to be somewhere else. He stopped in the threshold and looked back at the door once he realized that Félix wasn’t there, almost nervously, and then he advanced the rest of the way into the room. “Excuse the interruption,” he said, in French, Marc, trying to be very civil about it. He knew very well that Marc’s English was probably flawless, or at least fifty times better than Félix’s half-ass attempt. That was not good. Arthur wasn’t sure how much Félix had told Marc about him, and it could have been anything from Arthur’s illegal activities to his obsessive housekeeping. He ignored Eames (to the extent he was able).
Marc assured Arthur that they were not in the way, though Arthur was not expected, and would he like some wine? Eames’ smile became more smug (if possible). “Please, Arthur, join us. We were discussing your friendship with Félix. Fascinating subject, don’t you think, Marc?” he asked, turning the full force of his charm on the academic man who went a little red in the cheeks and around the collar. Eames was hoping to make Arthur sweat, and he turned his attention back to Arthur a moment later in an attempt to verify success. He kicked a chair closer to Arthur with the tip of one, Italian shoe (a horrid shade of puce), and he motioned to it with two fingers as Marc went to retrieve the aforementioned wine.
You did not turn down wine in France. Arthur gave Marc a polite, though faintly nervous, smile, an exact mirror of the one Marc was wearing, no doubt. He came in and sat down in the chair Eames indicated, palms sliding down the tops of his thighs as he brought his knees in and put his back stiffly against the frame of the seat. “What are you doing?” he hissed at Eames, looking down despite himself at the shoe and becoming, if possible, even more irritated. Where did one even find shoes like that?
“Chatting,” Eames said companionably, and he leaned close to Arthur’s chair, as if he intended to whisper something in confidence. Instead, he closed rough fingers over one of the hands on Arthur’s thigh, holding it still. “Don’t fidget, darling. I find it distracting,” he said, hand sliding away from Arthur’s hand and over his thigh, fingers calloused, palm impossibly large against the smooth linen. “Do you think Marc has more secrets than can be got through extraction?” he asked, showing his hand and sitting back with the smuggest of grins. Eames did like games he felt certain he would win, and he didn’t mind showing it.
Arthur thought for the thousandth time that it had been a serious mistake to let Eames find out just how attractive he was, because now he was using it as a weapon whenever he got half the chance. The reminder didn’t prevent Arthur’s mouth from going dry, though, and he pulled slightly away to keep the reaction from getting any worse. He scowled the way he always did, attempting to repair the damage and shifting his feet around in the unmistakable fidget that he always indulged in when he was sitting. “Everyone has secrets. Don’t bother these people, Eames, I already owe Félix for sewing your throat back together and it isn’t as if--” He broke off as Félix chose that moment to enter the room, wearing his hospital scrubs, a bemused expression, and a sports bag.
Félix’s eyes moved to Eames, examining him for more injury to explain their presence, but then he looked back at Arthur who was trying not to blush. Félix was a couple inches shorter than Arthur, thin, like most Frenchmen, but also possessing a soccer (‘football’) player’s muscle in neck and legs. He turned and called out for Marc, registering that he was home, and then he sat down across from the pair. He pretended not to notice when Arthur started turning a red six-sided die in his hand over and over, and looked at Eames. “You feel okay?” he asked, eying the scar on the side of Eames’ neck.
Eames was in the midst of crafting a rather smart response to Arthur’s claim that everyone had secrets, but then the infamous Félix walked in, and Eames’ attention turned entirely to the Frenchman. He found Félix to be intolerable recently, where he’d previously found him only mildly annoying, and Eames’ green-tinted gaze was nothing friendly as he watched the Frenchman drop into his own chair. “Wonderful. A bit of a scar, but nothing that detracts,” Eames said, turning his neck to show the good nurse the results of his handiwork. An arm draped across the back of Arthur’s chair, and Eames’ sour smile turned intentionally causal, winning, even. “I was discussing how you and Arthur met with your lovely partner,” he said, glancing in the direction of Marc and his wine.
Arthur looked from Félix to Eames, and back again, and he rolled the red die through his fingers while he secretly hoped something not far away might explode so he would have a reason to run out. Félix’s English was good enough not to really need a translation for “wonderful” and “scar,” so he nodded slowly. You could tell he still couldn’t figure out what they were doing there, and he was waiting for someone to explain it to him. Arthur fidgeted. Félix’s eyebrows arched as he followed Eames’ gaze to Marc. The nurse smiled at his partner and then looked back at Eames. “Me and Arthur,” he repeated, obviously confused. “Was before Marc and myself,” he said, obviously under the impression Eames needed explanations. Arthur put his chin down on his chest and tried to sink into the chair.
Marc looked guilty, which was never a good thing in a room with four men and copious amounts of jealousy. “Yes, I can tell time, darling,” Eames told Félix, who he possibly liked less for the comment. Eames’ arm across the back of Arthur’s chair was heavy, and his fingers tugged thoughtlessly at the fabric at Arthur’s shoulder. His thighs were spread, his chair still tipped slightly, and he leaned forward and reached for the wine glass Marc held out without disengaging himself from the man at his side. “I meant about how you’d met.” He smiled at Marc, making it rather clear that Marc had already told the story, perhaps with a bit of jealousy of his own wound in. Eames didn’t blame him. When it came right down to it, Marc would have a hard time competing with Arthur. The thought didn’t make Eames feel much better about anything, truly.
Arthur turned his head to take in Eames’ behavior with obvious surprise, reading the possessive lines of his body as if he couldn’t quite believe it. There must be some kind of sly reason for it, and he looked back at Félix in time to read the man’s understanding in a couple blinks. Arthur didn’t think Félix had it right, since Eames didn’t like anybody enough to get jealous, and Arthur’s discomfort only increased. He took the glass Marc offered and looked down into it. He wouldn’t blame the man if he’d poisoned it. Looking up at Félix’s faint sound of question when his English didn’t prove up to Eames’ casual accents, Arthur opened his mouth to translate, but Marc cut in with it instead. “Ah,” Félix said, glancing back to Eames. “You wish to know about meeting Marc?” He frowned and looked at Arthur, who tried to give him a wordless apology but didn’t quite manage it. “Or Arthur? Pourquoi?”
Eames thought the man was a daft idiot. Either that, or Félix was intentionally being as annoying as a person could be, which was rather more likely. He drank down his wine, and he held the glass back out to Marc with a wink and a look that was warm enough that it made Marc almost fat finger the wine bottle. “Marc seems to think you’re rather still interested in Arthur,” Eames said, which was obviously something he was told in confidence, because Marc began sputtering in French, which Eames couldn’t understand. No matter, because Eames turned his attention to Arthur instead. “Are you still interested in Félix, darling?” he asked, because Eames did remember the incident when he was bleeding all over the place, even if he remembered it all rather poorly; Félix had responded quickly, hadn’t he? “And I meant how you met Arthur, of course.” Another too warm smile at Marc. “I already know how you met Marc.”
Arthur choked on his wine about the same time that Marc did, and he was about to intercept all those warm glances with a stern warning that Eames was not to proposition some kind of grand group sex act before all these questions exploded the relative calm of the tense room. A proposition for an orgy probably would have been better. Félix turned toward Marc and the two of them had a terse conversation in French that Arthur tried not to hear. “We met in the lobby downstairs. In passing. He is not interested. Why are you doing this?” he demanded over the babble of accusation and answer from the other two men, wondering if he got up and pulled at Eames’ elbow he could get the man to follow. Probably not.
Eames felt rather pleased with all of it, actually, and he gave Arthur a smile that bordered on beatific - the only thing missing was a halo. “They seem displeased,” he said, which he was perfectly certain about, and which he didn’t actually require clarification about. This had all begun as a way to find out Arthur’s secrets, but all he’d learned so far was that Marc was insecure because Arthur and Félix were too friendly, and Eames found himself as annoyed as the academic on that count - unexpectedly. He cleared his throat, and he proposed precisely what Arthur feared he would, though he very much anticipated getting shot down by Arthur; he was counting on it, actually. “I’m certain we could clear this up in the bedroom.”
Arthur changed color. He explored several shades, actually, and came back to a kind of unhealthy yellow that came from not breathing deeply enough when the lungs needed air. Félix eyed Marc sideways as they broke off their conversation, clearly revisiting a subject that was relatively familiar to both. Félix turned a smile that was, perhaps, as dangerous as Eames’ own back to Arthur. “Arthur, you say no but then you bring your big friend to meet us?” Félix was all for the bedroom solution.
Arthur’s yellow started to go pink, and he fisted the red die in one hand and pulled himself up so he was balancing on the edge of his chair. “I did not bring...” He broke off and switched to French, and it sounded suitably accusatory. “He came on his own, because I mentioned something about us being together, and he likes to torment me. C’est rien, Félix.”
Eames, the maker of the suggestion about the orgy, was suddenly annoyed by the prospect, but not enough to call it off. He had pride, after all, and Marc only seemed displeased by Arthur’s inclusion in this party, if his glares at Arthur were any indication. “Yes, well, if we’re decided,” Eames said, standing and looking down at Arthur. His smile was all challenge that lit his eyes, and somehow he managed a very clear, what are you going to do now, darling? without saying anything at all. Somewhere behind him, Marc was chattering, but Eames didn’t care. He held out the most gracious of hands to Arthur, who he was fairly certain was going to have that die permanently embedded into his palm soon, and he winked.
Arthur knew all about Felix's appetites, enough to know that he really did think Eames' idea was a good one, and he wasn't going to let Marc's obvious dislike of Arthur get in the way of trying it. Half of their relationship had consisted of Félix talking the much more reserved (sexually, anyway) Arthur into various stunts, but Arthur got the feeling the academic wasn't quite as easily convinced--and probably did not have access to a PASIV. Sure enough, Felix said, in his broken English, "You have the dream machine, yes? To make it very interesting." Arthur glared at Félix, which only earned him a suggestive look that made Marc nearly turn green where he sat, and then Arthur glared up at Eames.
Arthur refused the hand and, as awkward as it might be with Eames standing over his chair, he got to standing on his own. "Non." He was firm about it. He looked at Marc. "Merci pour le vin," he said, with a note of farewell. He poked Eames in the chest with a hand newly freed from the die, which he had stowed away in a pocket. "You're such a jerk."
Oddly, Félix's question only served to annoy the fuck out of Eames, rather than making him want to try experimental sex. Not that he hadn't tried just about everything the PASIV could offer in his time, but that was all rather unimportant just then. He was still annoyed, and it was only the poke to his chest that made him feel this had all been worth it, that annoyed push of Arthur's and the very decisive rejection of the foursome. He smiled when Arthur assured him that he was a jerk, and he leaned close to Arthur, close enough that his stubble scratched at Arthur's cheek. "Not interested in sharing me, darling?" he asked, exceedingly masculine and exceedingly pleased with his own importance, puce shoes and all.
Arthur's breath crept across Eames' cheek in an unpredictable burst, and then he shoved past him, enough coiled muscle and a deliberate shoulder at the right place to get Eames out of the way. "You are not mine," he said, bitterly, turning his head away toward the door and striding into the small space between table and couch. Both Félix and Marc turned to watch him stalk out, Félix with visible disappointment and perhaps a hint of regret at his too obvious eagerness and Marc with equally visible relief, and a hint of vindictive triumph. Arthur waved a hand at both of them, exactly the same movement of rippling knuckles and bones standing out under blue veins that he had used in Old Paris when he had indicated his agreement, or perhaps dismissal, before Eames had departed entirely. "You want to make friends, fine. Have a bonne nuit, for all I care." It was just like Eames to come in and find Félix, probably because of that comment about Félix's preferences in the library, for his usual passing conquests. And he made sure Arthur would be here, too. Unbelievable.
The bitter comment was not expected by Eames, who was all game and tease when it came to lovers and sex. He considered reaching out a hand to grab Arthur’s elbow, to keep him from storming past, but he decided better of it. In the end, he let Arthur have his final jab, and then he turned to Félix and Marc and gave them a helpless shrug, all apology that the evening’s plans had been torn asunder. A second later, hands casually in the pocket of his pants, Eames followed Arthur out of the apartment. He was close enough to speak without having to raise his voice to be heard, and he could have said something soothing. Instead, he grinned, and the grin was mischief and trouble and a hint of green all wrapped up in his smooth voice. “Care to tell me exactly what you did with the PASIV, Arthur?”
So Eames had given up on Félix and Marc, which made perfect sense, because he was only interested in a challenge, and Félix was probably too easy. Marc was a goddamn pushover. Arthur, who had too many variables to work with considering Eames’ behavior over the last several years combined with that in Old Paris, in recent dreams, and finally now, decided to halt halfway down the hall and turn to intercept Eames’ progress. “You know I’m no good at con games, Eames. What is it you think I did while Cobb was off making babies? Build badly constructed dreams for people who wanted to populate them with their nice fantasies. Kill people, have sex, see dead relatives, that kind of thing. Félix saved himself several thousand dollars a session, I think.”
Eames was expecting the anger when Arthur turned, and he found he still liked it as much as he had before, seeing him get worked up in annoyance. It was rather more attractive than he’d realized before now, too. “No, darling. I meant for you and Félix specifically.” He closed in, narrowed the space with his large frame, crowded Arthur toward the wall, not caring that this was a hallway and anyone could wander by. “I want to know about the sex, Arthur.” And he did, even if he was fairly certain it would put him in a strop. But Eames was the type of man who liked to know, even if it made him feel all the anger in the world. Eames was never afraid of feelings, after all, good or bad. That was Arthur, Arthur with his tightly wound blanket of protective anger. His body was impossibly large against Arthur’s smaller frame, and he smiled down at the man with a hint of a snarl at the edge of his lips.
Arthur didn’t wait to hit the wall. He resisted after the first few steps and aligned himself along Eames’ body with an uncanny precision. That air of frustrated restraint that was usually around him intensified. His knee pressed to the inside of Eames’ leg, his hip to his crotch, and his hands to his stomach. Arthur lifted a chin, his eyes without weight as his hair was slicked properly back and off his forehead. The warm brown was hidden in the keen, flat slits under his brows. “None of your business.” Then something seemed to occur to him, and he played it up by turning his head. “Why? Are you jealous?” He made a little huff of a laugh in the back of his throat at the ludicrous notion.
“I don’t get jealous, Arthur,” Eames said, momentarily affronted at the suggestion - no, at the possibility. He was angry, that was all, and he wasn’t terribly interested in thinking about why that might be. “I just didn’t know you had it in you,” he added, his tone (he thought) impressively believable. All the near-touching registered then. The knee, the hands, and the challenge of Arthur’s up-tipped chin. It all felt like invitation to Eames, despite the coiled up anger in the other man. And if it wasn’t invitation, Eames certainly decided to interpret it as invitation. He grinned a wicked grin, and he ducked his head close enough that it was almost a kiss. “Unless you’re ashamed to tell me, darling.”
Arthur wasn’t sure he believed this explanation, and his dark eyes shifted from side to side as he tried to read the glint in Eames’ eyes accurately. Emotions were rarely quantitative, and that made them a little more difficult for him than most people. He couldn’t be sure. “Sanctity of the bedroom,” Arthur said, close enough that the air from the words touched Eames’ lips, implying the motion of the syllables as they passed between them. A faint crease appeared at the outside of either eye, and he stepped back. “Or wherever.” The hand that had been sliding over Eames’ stomach went up over that sage green cloth, a familiar caress, almost an investigation. Arthur’s gaze quivered into a squint. “If you’re not jealous, then what is it? You’ve got... that look.”
“There is no sanctity of the bedroom,” Eames said, leaning his arm against the wall beside Arthur’s head, all his weight going onto his forearm there. “Especially when Félix would invite us all into that bloody bedroom at the drop of a hat, Arthur.” Stepping back, that wasn’t something Eames intended to allow, and he used his free hand to grip Arthur’s hip, to keep him right there, sandwiched between him and the wall. He looked down at the familiar caress, and something like a smile touched his features. “You get rather familiar, rather quickly, don’t you?” he asked, intentionally looking for a reaction with the words and tightening his grip after posing the question, in case Arthur should decided to shove away. “What look have I got?”
Arthur let the wall scrape against his shoulderblades through the comfortable loose white linen, and the shadows of a fighter’s stomach and faintly dark nipples showed briefly under the fabric before he let his shoulders come back down. His eyes never left Eames’ face. He liked being boxed in, if he had to be honest about it, because he could enjoy a guarantee of Eames’ attention, however passingly physical he knew it must be. “You invited yourself into his bedroom.” Something about him went defensive, a cold line in the warmth of his gaze, and his eyebrows came down in a newly suspicious scowl. “What do you mean, I get familiar?”
Eames chuckled, the scowl so very Arthur that he almost couldn’t stand it. It was old Arthur, the one who didn’t always expect the teasing, the one who lashed out once he realized he’d been teased at all. And, there in that hall, Eames found it endearing. It should have troubled him, that realization, but his head was ducked, still focused on where that bit of dark skin and nipples had been visible through the white of Arthur’s shirt. “Yes, but I didn’t mean the invitation,” he said. “He did. Have you ever been part of an orgy, Arthur? It sounds much more interesting than it is,” said the voice of experience. He didn’t answer the familiarity question, because Arthur was already scowling, and that had rather been the point.
Arthur didn’t need it answered, because a second later he figured out what Eames had meant, and he immediately pulled his hands back, off Eames’ clothes. The defensiveness went up under his expression, yet strangely enough the tension in his body increased. Arthur spent energy on keeping himself from climbing Eames like a damn tree whenever the man looked at him with the smug little flicker in his eyes, and it was an automatic reaction. The shadows on the shirt moved as the fabric stretched and then settled again. His scowl turned darker. “No. I don’t have to take part in anybody else’s fantasy unless I want to. That’s what the constructs are for, to keep the subject busy.” He didn’t say that he preferred to have his lover’s complete attention. He wasn’t quite confident enough to frolic around with other people that might not give a damn. Arthur viewed it as combination of fortune and failing. “Félix always preferred me, though,” he added, unable to prevent himself from throwing it in, like a child poking at a fire with a stick.
“I meant for your own pleasure, darling,” Eames said, voice calm and measured, though the smirk had only grown wider when Arthur pushed and became more defensive. Eames still didn’t move, his body an unforgiving weight that kept Arthur right there. The statement about Félix’s preferences wasn’t nearly casual enough to be anything but a jab, and yet Eames found himself unable to write it off. “Félix is something you settled for, Arthur,” he said, his own jab in return, though it was sharper than intended. It came with a press of hips, and with a hand that skated along that white fabric, over Arthur’s stomach, where those shadows teased just out of sight. “Shall I make you confess that?”
Arthur could have tried to resist all that warmth and weight, but it was Eames, and there really wasn't a minute in the day when he didn't want Eames to touch him, or look at him, and the only thing he wanted more was for Eames to think about him. His stomach flexed under the questing touch, and his shoulders left the wall but a few centimeters as he tipped his head down and hid his gaze as he smoothed both hands across Eames' chest. "Can I ask you a question, Eames?" He asked it in a very quiet voice, a low voice at the back of his tongue. "If I wasn't here, would you be with someone else?" Arthur had a vision of himself filling a void, a simple void easily filled by the first person that came along. It wasn't as though Eames had trouble acquiring lovers of any sex, in any situation. Too handsome for his own good. Arthur's fingers trickled through the divide of Eames' chest.
It was a trick question, Eames was sure. Unfortunately, that flex of muscle beneath Eames’ fingers made it rather hard to think, to reason, and then Arthur was touching him again, and Eames had never been good at restraint. He wasn’t the type of man to label, which was a given at this point, and he knew the question was just a way to approach the label from another angle. But that quiet voice at the back of Arthur’s throat made Eames willing to agree to anything if he could just have the man, and he supposed he was a cad that way, but they both knew that too. When Arthur’s fingers found the space between the buttons of his shirt, Eames moved the hand bearing his weight against the wall, and he gripped Arthur’s chin with large, calloused fingers. He tipped Arthur’s face up, and his green eyes were darkly intense. “Darling, you are here. You’re here because I want you to be here, and that’s all that bloody matters,” he assured, slanting his mouth over Arthur’s a moment later in a searing kiss.
Eames' reply was not reassuring. Arthur felt as if the man was only describing the void that came so readily to mind, like a dream construct, a person easily supplied to the mind's needs. Along that logic, this could have happened any time, in almost any place. Arthur, hardly inhibited by his sexual preferences but rather more by his compulsive need to guard against unnecessary hurts, could have dragged Eames off to a closet at any point over the last several years, and instead he had hid his interest not because he was embarrassed, but because he knew, in a black part of his mind that tasted aspirin bitter, that Eames wouldn't think anything of him, either before or after, not unless something happened to challenge or amuse him. Arthur really would just be a body in a dark closet, and the thought was utterly devastating.
There wasn't time to see that vulnerable flicker in the back of Arthur's dark eyes, the young look of combined longing and restraint, because Eames was close enough to kiss by that time. Arthur kept thinking about his eyes, and then just about sex, which he tended to do whenever Eames was actually touching him. He might just be a body in the dark, but once the taste was in his mouth, he was willing. Very, very willing. He could be devastated later, as he knew he would be. It made him frantic and needy, which were a bad combination with Eames, and the cool assessment about what was needed to keep a relationship going (the very kind he'd used on Félix) was not available.
The tips of Arthur's fingers scraped over Eames' sternum, his nails so short that the movement was almost a caress, at least until Arthur got a fist full of shirt and pulled himself into the kiss. It was a blatant kiss, an absolutely available, all-of-it kind of kiss, open mouth and giving tongue and hints of hungry teeth. Arthur meant to make it clear that if physically present was all he could be, then he would be that, and he would have Eames' familiar, unthinking attention for an ecstatic hour or two. Nothing could have been farther from his reaction in Old Paris--something that for a thinking man, probably would have been a warning. Arthur knew Eames too well for that, though. The man didn't analyze, and Arthur would prevent him from trying. The press of hip became a grind, and Arthur solved the problem of height difference by literally taking his weight off his feet and putting one knee behind Eames' hip to hold himself there with muscle and wall alone.
Arthur was correct in his understanding of the kind of man Eames was, at least in that Eames wouldn’t think there was anything behind the frantic heat but, well, frantic heat. He didn’t understand that it was motivated by Arthur’s fears or, surprisingly, he would have tried to explain. That didn’t mean the explanation would have made Arthur feel any better, but Eames would have made an effort to make the other man see things his way. But there wasn’t any knowledge of that, and all Eames felt was burn and need, an unexpected capitulation that he attributed to the jealousy he’d invoked in the Frenchmen’s apartment.
Eames hand slid beneath that thigh that Arthur used to even out their height, fingers bruising against soft linen and the promise of muscle beneath. He encouraged the grind, encouraged the desperation in the other man with a hand that slid along the bottom of that thigh to lose itself in an intimate caress where thigh met pelvis. Eames’ kiss, too, was a rough fight for control, something that met Arthur’s demand and, somehow, demanded more. There was more teeth and saliva and the rough brush of stubble than should be possible, and Eames moaned as his teeth scraped along the other man’s jaw. “You’d let me have you in a hall, Arthur?” he asked, and there was something in his voice that said he intended no such thing, despite his want of it. Which, if either of them had been thinking, would likely be telling of something.
As Eames so often liked to point out, Arthur over-thought everything if given half a chance. He could have tried to find what Eames most wanted to hear, something challenging, maybe something about Félix, but nothing came to mind. His mind was mostly blank and focused on the movement of Eames’ hand through linen as the grind acquired mouthwatering hints of rhythm. “Do you want me in the hall, Eames?” It was a halfway serious question, because if Eames asked him for something like that Arthur seriously doubted he would be able to say no, so intent upon keeping the other man’s attention that small things like decency were being left by the wayside. Arthur’s fingers slid up the back of Eames’ neck, faintly cool, distinctly foreign, long bones and pressure as he let out a breath over Eames’ collar and shoulder.
“Do I want you in the hall, darling?” Eames repeated, ducking his head a touch for Arthur’s fingers. “Yes.” The response came with a hard tip upward of Arthur’s jaw with one hand, with a string of bruising kiss-bites along the column of the other man’s neck. “Will I have you here?” Eames asked against that warm skin, bruised red now by the pressure of his mouth. “No.” The statement was met with a groan at the effort it took to say it, at the added effort to push himself away from the man he had pinned against the wall. His breath was coming hard, chest rising and falling with it, eyes dark and hungry as he looked at Arthur. He’d no idea what Arthur’s fears were, so he wasn’t concerned with how Arthur would react to the push away. “Next week. Saturday.” And why he was making a rather large deal of fucking a man was entirely beyond him. Luckily, he wasn’t thinking deeply about it. A second later, he added a plausible reason. “I’ve a dream in mind.”
Arthur hadn’t ever been with anyone quite so willing to move him and with the strength to do so, and he was surprised, but not displeased, when the strong fingers pulled his chin and mouth aside. The movement of his hips slowed. Arthur wasn’t really listening to Eames’ answers to his own questions, choosing instead to occupy himself with soft hissing noises against the hard kisses. The step back took him entirely without preparation. Arthur dropped back onto his heels, slacks now uncomfortably creased and with eyes foggy from the brief contact. He blinked and then focused on Eames’ face. He had never seen the man say no. Not ever. “...A dream,” Arthur repeated, trying to understand and wondering what brought this strange aberration about. He hadn’t gotten to the idea that he’d done something wrong, not yet.
That was quite a good thing, because Arthur hadn’t done anything wrong, actually. “Yes, you’ve heard of them, Arthur?” Eames asked with a grin that was equal parts entertainment, equal parts desire. His hand dropped without thought or hesitation, and he caressed Arthur’s cock through the linen slacks - stroke, and outline, and rough fingers over the head. “Unless you’ve some reservation?” The question was a challenge and, the longer Eames thought on it, the more he liked the idea. Give him a few seconds, and he would decide it was the best idea he’d ever had, all while tracing Arthur’s cock in the middle of the hallways. “Your friend,” he said, glancing toward Félix’s closed door, “is not invited.”
Arthur blinked twice more, and then he looked suspicious. It was the grin, really. He was always suspicious when Eames grinned that grin. It meant he was up to no good. The expression slipped away remarkably fast as soon as Eames came close enough to touch, though, and the almost casual touch felt like cheating as if he didn’t much have a right to have that much effect without effort. Arthur took in a breath, this time through his teeth, and didn’t bother to hide the catlike flutter of his eyes. Eames wasn’t going to help him with the trip back to his apartment.
Arthur’s pupil-wide eyes came open all at once then. He followed Eames’ gaze at Félix’s door without much seeing it, and then he closed the middle distance, wrapping a hand around Eames’ elbow to lock it in place so he could take advantage of the movement. “No,” he said, as if making a serious decision. “No, now.” He gave Eames an experimental push against one hip, down the hall toward the elevator.
Eames was determined, but he thought Arthur’s push and declaration of no was rather interesting, even through the haze of mounting desire and planning (planning for sex was the only kind of planning that was acceptable to Eames). “Why, darling?” he asked, not budging but, possibly, curious enough to be swayed. He didn’t pull his hand back, didn’t stop his slow, teasing caress, the one that was rougher and lighter by turns. He dragged his gaze from Arthur’s face to his own hand, and he outlined Arthur’s cock against the linen and watched it with eyes that were tellingly dark with desire.
Arthur hesitated. He had his lower lip set under his teeth, and he knew very well that Eames was intentionally trying to work him up into a sweat, but there wasn’t anything he felt like doing about it. “Because I don’t want you to find something else to distract you before Saturday. Now.” A faint ripple of sound worked its way up through Arthur’s chest at the resumed touch, but this time he abandoned the attempt to restrain Eames’ arm and gave him another shove, this one stronger and calculated. It was high on the chest, just to push him off balance, and then Arthur went for his hemline with both hands.
There was something in that sentence that Eames felt rather certain he should pay attention to. Normally, Arthur didn’t slip, and he felt there was a slip there, if he could only think with something other than his cock for a moment to recognize it for what it was. He grabbed Arthur’s wrists, and he held them in an unforgiving grip as he thought. He might have stopped, in the midst of all that thinking, to kiss the other man, all teeth and demand, but then a very, very dangerous smile blossomed against Arthur’s lips, and it dragged over to his cheek with deliberate slowness. “Nothing is going to distract me, Arthur,” he said, and he sounded bloody triumphant, as if he’d figured out the mystery to the universe, which, rather, he had.
Arthur was still working Eames’ belt off as he stepped into his leg in an attempt to keep him moving back, not worried about the grip on his arms, bruising as it might be. He stopped when Eames appeared to lose interest again, and this time doubt crept into his gaze, slowly but very surely, across his brow and sinking into the space under his lower lip. Flesh scraped loose from his teeth, and he looked into Eames’ eyes, trying to find out why he was so pleased with himself. It wasn’t as if it was all that hard to turn Arthur on and keep him that way, and even Arthur knew that. It was Arthur’s turn to pull back. “...What?”
“You aren’t going to lose me to anyone between now and Saturday,” was Eames’ reply, smug and sure and terribly proud of himself for having gotten it right. He pulled on Arthur’s hips when the other man pulled back, his fingers unforgivingly tight and keeping Arthur from running. “You see, Arthur,” he said, voice a low rumble in the other man’s ear, “I want you thinking about it all bloody week. I want you so hard for me that you can’t sit down, so hard for me that you can’t stand still. Darling, I want you begging by the time I get you naked.” And if there was any doubt that Eames enjoyed sex, reallyenjoyed it, that should have chased it right away in an instant.
Strange trickles of sensation worked their way up Arthur’s spine, and they were all the way at the back of his neck and sending red wires curling down into the bottom of his stomach before he even realized what was happening. Arthur had been seduced before, but not with quite so much skill, and certainly not when he had already capitulated--without even much of a fight. There was a game here, and Eames was doing thing to his body to keep him distracted from whatever it was. Eames would feel the little tremor trying to fight its way through Arthur again, but Arthur turned his head so that his nose brushed a line over the stubble along Eames’ jaw. He kept his hands to himself this time. “If I want you that bad, what makes you think I won’t find someone between now and Saturday?”
Eames laughed, and it was rich, belly laugh, all the confidence of the world in the rumble. “You won’t, Arthur,” he said, and his eyes said he knew the other man wouldn’t. Perhaps he didn’t understand the depth of Arthur’s feelings, but he certainly understood the strength of the other man’s desire. He leaned close, mouth just below Arthur’s ear, then just behind it. “You won’t.” The smile almost vibrated in the words, and there was no need to see his face to know it was there.
Eames stepped back, and he ran his knuckles along the front of Arthur’s trousers. “I’ll handle the setting, the chemical, all of it. You just come to Mombasa.”
Arthur attempted to pretend he was not standing in a hallway with a hard on in fucking obvious white linen and glared at Eames and all his confidence. The last words against the edge of his jaw made his insides twist, and it took almost all he had just to stay standing and keep something desperate behind his teeth. “I don’t think I want you digging through my head again, Eames,” Arthur said, ignoring the ridiculous number of double entendre available to the other man if he chose. “Why don’t you just come here?” Arthur didn’t necessarily want to deal with the PASIV, and Félix had always let him deal with the settings--mostly because Félix’s settings collapsed within minutes. Arthur might be in love with Eames, but he certainly didn’t trust him.
Eames wasn’t budging. “Mombasa, darling. Saturday.” There was a grin there, one that said there was more to it, but he didn’t clarify. He slid his hand along Arthur’s jaw, and he held Arthur there while he kissed him one last time, all linger and rough promises that he fully intended to keep. He bit the other man’s lip as he pulled back, drawing blood and a growl from his own chest. Then, he took two steps back and, without saying anything else, he opened the door behind himself, and he disappeared.
Arthur had to stand there because he was too fucking confused to do anything else. There was a small, terrifying chance that Eames had figured out a little bit more than Arthur had been willing to give him credit for outside of a bedroom in Old Paris, but Arthur didn’t want to consider it. He barely had time to enjoy the kiss, though the bite elicited a sound closer to anger than desire, and then Eames was actually leaving. Arthur blinked when the man did not return, and finally swayed there on the spot. That bastard. He really should go march back into Félix’s apartment. That would teach him. Arthur stared at the door a few more seconds, but nothing happened. “Shit.” He turned around and, pulling uncomfortably on his pants, he punched the button for the elevator.